amberfocus | Dare to Discover (1/1)

A/N: Set during chapter nineteen of To Call Our Own, Dare Tyler's thought on meeting Martha Jones 11 years too early.

Dare to Discover

The future’s not set, supposedly. But I’ve pretty much known all my life who I’m supposed to grow up and marry. It was prophesied before my birth. Well, I say prophesied, but really it was just my mum Rose, the Time Vortex, and that particular woman having a little glimpse of what the time lines had in store for me before I’d even been conceived.

Ridiculous, you say? Then you don’t know my family. We travel through time and space and generally make a mess of things or fix them, sometimes both, depending on who you ask and who happens to be the one messing or fixing at the time.

So this woman I’m supposed to marry? I’m not even meant to meet her until I turn thirty. But the year I’m meant to meet her is eight years before I’m born. The whole thing is impossible if you look at it in a linear fashion, but we don’t do that in my family. I’d seen pictures and she’s pretty and she used to travel with Dad for awhile when Mum went missing in a parallel universe, so I know she’s bright. Dad has a real low tolerance factor for stupid people. She wouldn’t have been on the TARDIS if she wasn’t clever.

Her name’s Martha Jones and she’s a doctor, or will be a doctor. Not really sure at the moment. I guess it really depends on the year. But everything that was foretold or predicted or whatever, well it all went out the window when I had to go and save my family from a paradox when Mum was pregnant with me.

Because for some reason Martha Jones was there twice. So I had to go and get the younger version of her out of there or the universe could have gone boom. I have to admit I was curious to meet her. She’d saved the world all on her own once and that counts for a lot. And again, I’ve seen photos and she’s pretty, so I wasn’t exactly fighting the opportunity.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the instant attraction. It was like being lit up with electricity. She felt it to. It was completely and utterly the wrong time for us to meet. I was nineteen and she was twenty-five. Didn’t matter. I wanted her from the minute she put her hand in mine. And the crazy thing was she wanted me to.

Of course, rule number one of time travel is don’t screw up the time lines. Well, it’s rule number two actually. The first one being don’t wander off but everyone always ignores that one. So technically it really is rule number one. Anyway, I knew I had to return her to her own time and get her out of my very young TARDIS as soon as possible.

Only thing is, we couldn’t resist a kiss. We both tried. We really did. But some things you just can’t fight, even if the age gap seems ridiculous. Though considering there’s a bit over 900 years between Dad and Mum, well six doesn’t seem all that much, now does it?

But as I’m sure they would both be happy to remind me, Martha and I aren’t them. So I kissed her and she kissed me and in my mind time lines shifted. Shifted so I’d meet her in just a couple more years. Oh, there’d still be an age gap, but at least I wouldn’t be a teenager anymore.

The saddest thing I had to do was take the memory away from her. The memory of meeting me and kissing me and knowing that if the prediction of us living happily ever after was going to play out right it had to be erased. At least for a couple of years.

But after that day I didn’t doubt it anymore. I was happy to have the future others had put on me. Because that Martha Jones? She is something else.