Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The familiarity of Earth assaulted his senses as he opened the door. Of course, he had ended in up in good old turn of the 21st century London. If there was anywhere in the universe that felt like home other than Gallifrey it was Earth and its stupid brilliant inhabitants. Feeling him be sick with longing and grief for the home he had lost, the TARDIS had brought him here. Gallifrey was gone, sealed away where even he couldn't get to it. Where else would she have taken him? The Doctor lovingly stroked the TARDIS's surfaces before stepping out into the night. At least she was not lost.

That was more than The Doctor could say for himself. He wandered the streets aimlessly. There was always alien life here, but on this particular night he felt more attuned to it than ever; he was now no different from these refugees of a thousand distant stars. Alone.

He picked up the trashiest tabloid paper the newstand on the next corner carried, scanning it as he had a thousand times before for anything out of the ordinary. He craved purpose, meaning, distraction from his own thoughts. Right now, he didn’t feel he deserved his name, though he knew he could have done nothing else. He could not help himself, could not unmake the terrible decision he had been brought to, but at least maybe he could help someone else. Triage, necessary losses… Those words rang hollow and he flipped the pages with renewed restlessness, searching for direction.

It was mostly the same old things as always: economic fear mongering, celebrity gossip, some sort of advertisement for what was very clearly a gold scam (you’d think that in the last couple thousand years humans would have changed the same one they’d been using since before the fall of Rome up a bit but apparently not), and finally something more promising. A medical mystery was stumping doctors. Half a dozen cases had come in of people shrinking, not from old age but rapidly and inexplicably. The Doctor felt quantifiably invigorated as he headed to the hospital where the victims were being kept.

That is where he met Martha Jones.

“You can’t be here,” she told him, firmly but with compassion rather than malice, “This area is going to be quarantined before long and you do not want to get caught up in all that.”

“Sure I can, Doctor... Jones,” he added, glancing at her name badge and then quickly to the chart she was working on to see what she was attempting, “I’m here to help.”

“Oh really? And just how are you going to help, Mr…”

“Doctor,” he told her, “Just the Doctor. Pleasure to meet you.”

She turned to look directly at him, rather than merely glancing back over her shoulder again in the midst of taking vitals from a patient. For a moment he thought she was about to balk, shame as they’d been doing so well. Something in her stiffened, her eyes narrowed slightly, and he was prepared to have to lock her out of the room for her her own good.

She exhaled deeply and turned back to her patient, “Might as well make yourself useful then, Doctor. I’m going to run a couple quick scan comparisons through the system, so why don’t you take these charts and see if you can find any commonalities in patient histories: location, infection history, blood type, that sort of thing.”

Fresh in his grief and his guilt, this remarkably capable and insightful doctor immediately reminded him why he loved the human race. They were a surprisingly resourceful lot. Even though she had no frame of reference, he hadn't known her five minutes and she had done the tests to realize that the source of the problem was parasitic in nature.

“Why do you say that?” he enquired, charmed by her energy and sense of purpose.

“Simple laws of conservation. It has to be going somewhere, and nothing indicates that there is energy being burned that would account for the loss of mass, no fever or other over-reactive systems.” She pointed at the chart as he learned in close to get a better look. She made no comment about him invading her personal space. “Also, the loss seems to be localized, the matter is disappearing from a concentrated area, and then being filled in from more dense parts of the body.”

It made sense and narrowed the field a bit in terms of possible culprits. The Doctor weighed the likelihood that clueing Martha into the existence of extraterrestrial life on Earth would help her figure out a solution versus that doing so leading to her losing focus and being distracted by the revelation or to her deciding he was delusional and wasting both their time while he persuaded her otherwise.

“Nothing on Earth would use this combination of chemicals, without a bunch it’s leaving behind,” she noted, interrupting his deliberations.

“And what do you think that means?”

“Well if is isn’t from Earth, its got to be alien. Hasn’t it?”

Apparently, she didn’t need him to tell her. She didn’t even really seem that surprised. She hardly blinked. Unusual. Most humans could be staring at proof of life from across the galaxy and in a spaceship and they’d still come up with increasingly improbable theories about how it couldn’t possibly be true.

“You aren't going to try and tell me that I am wrong, are you... Doctor?”

The way she said his name was like an embrace and a challenge all in one. He found himself coming up with ways to get her to say it again. After losing everyone who truly knew him, even the illusion that this stranger might was exhilarating.

“ Why would I do that,” he shrugged and walked over to start searching the hospital database, “You know a lot of these patients have a history of anemia or at least risk factors for it. Whatever these things are, they’re avoiding iron.

“I suppose we could try iron infusions and hope they detach, but we could do serious harm and possibly cause a chemical reaction we don’t understand and cause collateral damage.”

Cautious words for one so young, even by human standards. She did not fit the usual molds for prodigies, hyper focused and relentless or expansive and scattered. Something had given her experience beyond her years, not just aptitude.

“You know the Mitocreodendriati, a cold blooded species that used to live in symbiosis with giant space whales who have nearly gone extinct, might fit the profile for what we are looking for. Look for trace residue of a chemical compound with copper and an element you don’t recognize at the point of parasite attachment.”

She didn’t ask how he knew this and instead walked over to get a sample swab from a patient and then moved over to examine it under a microscope. Maybe she just didn’t think it was what they needed to focus on right now or maybe she’d already come up with some theory about him working for a secret organization dealing with alien presence on Earth.

“Got it,” she declared, “If this creature is cold blooded, applying ice should debilitate it. I'd rather not kill it if we don’t have to. Who knows it if even knows what it is doing.”

The Doctor didn't think he could have stood a bloodbath at this time, someone panicked and lashing out at the unknown. Nor did he think he could have stopped anyone from a deadly response. Who was he to judge anyone for taking things nuclear? After what he’d done to his own people- But Martha, wonderful lovely Martha, she was one to decide that alien life was worth saving, even when a human life might be risked.

Passion matched with logic and critical thinking, not one overwhelming the other, but a dialogue… a collaboration.

“Doctor, live up to your name and help me stabilize this patient,” she entreated, indicating for him to apply the ice packs as she monitored vitals.

The first of the parasites lost its camouflage as it fell from its host, and the Doctor picked it up using care not to touch it directly or squish it and placed it in the warmed sterile chamber she’d prepared.

Turning around, he found Martha holding the hand of the recovering patient, calmly but warmly reassuring her. While there was something hard about Martha, something that he felt was sympathetic to his loneliness, Martha was anything but cold and detached. There was a kind side to her as well, in the way she looked after everyone that crossed her path, not just her patients but the Mitocreodendriati. It had even been her first impulse when she saw him to protect him.

Moving from one bed to the next to treat and then comfort each patient, she moved with a graceful precision that highlighted her soft dark skin and shiny hair. Her smile was radiant. Like a goddess but not in the cold sterile model of detached omnipotence; connected and grounded. She was utterly mortal but there was something of that impression that remained… that she was more than your garden variety human ape.

Finishing with the final patient, Martha turned and watched him for a moment, doubtless realizing that he had been observing her intently. She looked at him like he was a bit of a puzzle, but also with a warmth that he reckoned was more than her standard. Setting down her tools, she walked over to him.

“Thank you,” she said simply, and again he felt the sympathy of loneliness, “I know what you did for them, even if they won’t.”

“I can take care of the Mitocreodendriati,” he offered, “I know a planet where they could live in symbiosis with local inhabitants, who had a tendency to grow into overcrowding anyway.”

He waited for him to ask him how, to demand answers.

“Just don't take any detours,” she smiled with a tiredness that should not have have been compatible with her youth, before shaking it off and brightening.

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Take care of yourself too,” she turned, looking at him as though she saw the desperation behind his jovial expression. Craning her face up, she kissed his cheek. Then she walked out of the door past him and into the bustle of the rest of the hospital.

He stood there for a moment, feeling the ghost of the warmth of her lips on his cheek and the energy of her optimism and determination. He hadn’t travelled with companions since before the war got bad, since before he ended it. How could he? He didn’t deserve it. He couldn’t promise them safety. This singular woman, this doctor, this human didn’t need to be rescued or diverted, didn’t need more. She was purposeful and focused, successful. Certainly, he couldn’t risk all of that for her.

Still, what was one planet and time to galaxies and millenia? Maybe just one trip, surely she’d appreciate that, and perhaps he considered that he had been too much alone. He talked to her, but the TARDIS didn’t speak back in words exactly.

He made the decision long before he even got back to the TARDIS.

“Hello again,” he called out, swinging the door open to find her standing there with her hands on her hips, almost as if she expected him.

“Forget something, Doctor?” she replied, not asking how a police box had just suddenly appeared out of thin air or why he was inside it.

“I’m an alien, too. Did I mention that?”

“You didn’t, but I pretty much had it figured,” she seemed amused not shocked, “Did you come back just to tell me that?”

“I also travel in space and time,” he held out his hand to her, “Martha Jones, how would you like to go anywhere and anytime? Back to the birth of the sun or into the far future when humanity has spread out across the stars.”

She looked him up and down for a time with real seriousness, and there was a moment where it felt like she might decline, but then she smiled.

“Somewhere nice,” she replied, taking his outstretched hand and letting herself be pulled inside the TARDIS, “No earlier than the 20th Century if it’s on Earth, no slums, no pig or rhinoceros people, and absolutely no New Earth. Deal?”

“Deal,” he responded, not sure how else to answer. How she knew about New Earth was beyond him.

He didn’t register that she had made no comment about the TARDIS being bigger on the inside until they were already on their way hurtling through time and space.

Chapter Text

“What do you say to the 36th Century, scenic wintry planet with beautiful ice crystal formations and sentient felines?”

Yes, he was clearly making an effort to impress her, but that was nothing new Martha reminded herself. The Doctor loved to impress, to show off, and that wasn’t something that was going to change just because he looked different, sounded different. Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy the benefits.

“I think I’m going to need a warmer jacket,” she replied, knowing from experience that the TARDIS had a wealth of clothing options which had been presumably been left by prior passengers or maybe the ship just generated them somehow.

“Second door on the left… or at least that’s where it was last time I saw it. Things might have rearranged themselves a bit since then.”

As she searched for the right room, she considered that she should probably mention to him that this wasn’t her first trip on the TARDIS. Martha couldn’t say why it was exactly but she found herself reluctant to tell him that they’d already met. Perhaps she didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to enjoy his attempts to charm her, which would surely fade once he knew she was not a fresh audience to win over. After all, it had before.

On the other hand, maybe it was the puzzle of him not remembering her that made her hesitate. Martha found it perplexing: If he was an earlier version, he should have recognized her when she met him the day they were transported to the moon. If he was a later one, he should know her already. Naturally, logic dictated that either he had lost his memory of her or was going to in the future. Either their past or their future was going to be forgotten by him. Thinking of it, she felt almost more angry and confused. She felt an urge for him to pay, at least a little, for being so cavalier with her memory as well as her heart.

She tamped down that thought. It wasn’t fair and she knew it. Taking a deep breath, she refocused and found a beautiful fur lined coat that seemed just right for sightseeing in arctic type conditions and retraced her steps to find the Doctor standing in the TARDIS doorway, silhouette stark against the dramatic lighting outside.

“Perfect timing. The sunrises here are famous; the light reflects off of the ice like a million diamonds. Come take a look.”

She stepped past him and out of the TARDIS and found he was not exaggerating. It was breathtaking and uplifting and she found her mood brightened in the face of it.

“This is spectacular,” she exclaimed, spinning around in the light and watching falling snowdrops that looked like prisms as the sun refracted off of them. It truly was magical, but then she turned around to tell him so and he was not behind her.

Not again, she groaned internally, scanning the horizon, only to find him a few hundred meters away, faced away from her and the TARDIS towards a deep ravine.

“What do you want?” he snapped when she got a meter and a half or so from him, harsh and hard, and suddenly she wished she hadn’t come here with him, wished she hadn’t met this version of him at all, that earlier resentment welling back up.

“You brought me here. Don't get angry that I am not interested in being left behind to be forgotten million of miles from home or eaten by some exotic beast. Don't wander off goes for you too, Doctor.”

She was too frustrated to care if he was displeased with her. She wasn’t going to follow along being discounted anymore, so if he didn’t like her standing up for herself he could very well take her home right now as far as she was concerned.

“Well I can’t very well argue with my own advice can I?” he grumbled with a mixture of sheepishness and self satisfaction.

It occurred to her that he hadn’t berated her about wandering off yet, that she might have just tipped her hand by repeating the other him’s words back to this him. He didn’t seem to be commenting on that though, as he continued to stare off into the distance. Without him looking at her, she was able to focus more on the details, see the slump of his shoulders and the tension in his jaw. It was clear he was in pain, pain deeper than when she’d met him before. She couldn’t find it in herself not to care, it wasn’t in her nature, not in general and definitely not with him.

Martha considered what the source of this Doctor's pain might be and found she already knew the likely answer. Surely there was only one thing that could suck the light out of his eyes like this, wasn’t there? This must be him just after he destroyed his entire planet and people. Of course, she reminded herself, that was a big assumption and she could easily be wrong. It was possible that he had lost Rose, again, or had some other personal tragedy. The thought made her want to pull away, want to cut and run. She had already lived through it once, paid the price for his grief.

This wasn't even her Doctor, not really. The way he grabbed her hand, the way he flew the TARDIS, the difference was more than skin deep. At the same time though, even though his face, his hands, his mouth were all different from the Doctor she knew, it was unmistakably him, and it had always been hard for Martha to resist taking care of the Doctor, bad for her health or no. Otherwise, she would never have come; otherwise, she would demand to be taken home before he broke her heart all over again. She knew she would never do that though. She missed had him, with every inch of her being.

She laced her fingers through his, squeezing in what she hoped was a reassuring gesture. “You might as well tell me about it, or take me home. I am not wasting my life playing at guessing your secret pain.”

“The coat you’re wearing,” he sighed, “It belonged to a friend of mine. Her name was Romana. She was Time Lady… that is… was my species, my people: the Time Lords. Seeing you in it reminded me of her and that I’ll never see her again, in that coat or any other.”

“She died?” she asked, expecting that he would let that suffice and that would be the end of it, that he would explain no further, but he surprised her.

“My planet, my people, there was a war...” he began, “It was called the Time War and it threatened to envelop the whole universe. I had to do something, and I did, but saving the rest of existence I destroyed both my home and my entire race. I am the last of the Time Lords, sole survivor and the source of the genocide.”

She never expected him to tell her the truth so easily. Her Doctor never had. She caught herself thinking about the Doctor in that way, even though he had never really been hers, even when she was with him. Still she looked at this Doctor, who both was and wasn't the same impossible spaceman as had so utterly destroyed her before, opened her arms and her heart to him to find solace in, listened to his hearts beat against her as he told her about the splendor of Gallifrey and how lost he was without it.

This was probably a dream, she thought, the kind that she would wake from frustrated and grieved, to find herself at home in bed. She would laugh to keep from crying about it, when she talked to Jack later. It being a dream explained how strongly she felt about this Doctor, who didn't even look like the Doctor she knew. Dreams used people symbolically like that all the time, or at least that’s what her supervisor during her psych rotation had claimed.

When this Doctor leaned in to kiss her, it only confirmed that this was nothing more than her sleeping brain's pathetic fantasy.

The moment that their lips touched was electric, hot, exhilarating, and immediately interrupted by a blood curdling howl. Stepping backwards, Martha pinched herself to try and wake up as she spotted some terrifying snow beast loping towards them from the distance. She didn't wake up.

“That is not a good face,” the Doctor commented with a cheerful grimace, seemingly unaware of the danger closing in on them.“Still getting used to this new mouth, but it wasn't that bad was it?”

“Doctor, not to change the subject but there is a giant animal with large teeth running towards us,” she warned, garnering a quick look, and immediate reaction from him.

Clasping her hand in his, the Doctor began to run, pulling her along quickly. She started to lose her footing a number of times, but he kept hold of her. Running towards a hillside, the Doctor made sure she made it into the natural looking cave with him, before using his sonic screwdriver to initiate an avalanche that came down between them and the snow beast.

He made sure they weren't separated. This was the first glimmer of hope Martha felt, wondering if this Doctor might actually be different than the version of him she already knew. In the time she had travelled with him before, Martha had been forgotten, accidentally separated, kidnapped, and left behind too many times to count. This Doctor, he never seemed to want to let go of her hand. Of course, if they were going to die trapped in this cave, it wasn't much good him being different.

“I must have gotten my centuries mixed up again,” the Doctor seemed to apologize. Could it really be an apology, from him? “I meant to take us to the 36th Century, where the Byragi are extinct, but obviously this is earlier.”

“When you said, new mouth...” Martha began. Even if they were going to die here, maybe especially then, she wanted to know, to understand.

“I regenerated,” he said straightforwardly, “It is... well was an ability that Time Lords have...had? When my body is destroyed, I get a new one. Unless of course, something stops it, for example if my body was in a fire the ongoing damage would inhibit it...”

“Does it make a big difference?” Martha asked, genuinely curious, “I mean, obviously you look different, but you have all the same memories, same personality?”

She couldn't resist asking. Since he was in a confessional mood she was going to take advantage of it, even if some part of her felt a little bad about not being completely open with him in return. If they were going to die here, buried under a ton of snow, she wanted to know what the rules were. If not, it was doubly important. She had been devastated by a kiss before, and she couldn't think of any reason that today’s kiss was strategic, but if she was going to play with fire she wanted to know her certainty of getting burned.

“Generally speaking yes, but some things change, like for instance right now I have a hankering for strawberries, last regeneration I couldn't stand them.”

“Does that go for anything else?” Martha didn’t want to read too much into his words, but they gave her hope that she might not be misreading his reaction to her.

“A surprising amount, for instance one regeneration split me up from my wife.” His voice became sorrowful at the word. “We used to be crazy for eachother, but then I regenerated and the next thing I knew it was all wrong. I mean we still loved each other in some ways, but we just didn't fit together anymore, the biochemistry was way off. I spent ages chasing after something that was long gone.”

Listening to him speak so openly, more openly than his future self had ever spoken to her, Martha knew she should tell him the truth about why she wasn't surprised about there being aliens or about learning what happened to his people, but she had to admit she enjoyed whatever advantages she might have against this impossible man who still made her entire being thrum with excitement. His wide cheeky smile, the way he rambled on, even the way he said certain words, it all was already dear to her. The change of regeneration wasn’t going to do anything, apparently, to change the way she felt.

Martha considered this information, what she’d learned from him and from her own reactions. His confession about the way he ended the Time War made it clear that this was an earlier regeneration, which made another thing clear: unless she had destroyed the time continuum, he would not remember her. Martha wasn't sure whether that was better or worse. The thought of being forgotten stung, but so did the thought that whatever happened next, his future self would have so little regard for her in light of it. Forgettable, replaceable, Martha would have walked the earth for a decade, a lifetime for him, but ultimately, like the year she had traveled, it would never have been.

Of course, if they didn’t find a way out of here, none of that would matter… At least not for her. With renewed motivation, she started searching for alternative exits to the one it sounded like the Byragi was currently doing its best to dig through..

“Is it just me, or does the snow pack look at little darker here?”

“Oh very clever,” the Doctor praised, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and vibrating free the layer of covering that had concealed the entrance to a tunnel, which it turned out led to a series of tunnels that took them through the hills and out unto the plateau the TARDIS was parked on.

Of course, the Byragi resumed its chase as soon as they emerged back into the open.

“Running. Nothing feels more alive than running.” He grinned so widely as they ran full speed towards safety, holding tightly onto her hand once again. “Well maybe not nothing… but very few things.”

Of course he still loved running, that was apparently something that no loss or regeneration could kill. Martha barely had time to think about the second implication of his declaration, trying to keep up with his long legs.

They reached the TARDIS's door, just in time to get safely inside as the Byragi caught up to them. A perfect adventure: danger but no casualties. The Doctor seemed more cheerful that she had seen this version of him be so far, and Martha had to admit that the mixture of adrenaline and proximity had her feeling something close to giddy.

“As fun as that was,” she laughed though short of breath, “I vote for warm beaches and no predators on the next planet.”

She looked down at their still entwined hands and then back up into his eyes, finding herself suddenly very aware of the way their heavy breathing was synchronized. It would be very easy, she thought, too easily to get caught up in this moment. Was she afraid that he would kiss her again or that he wouldn’t? Martha couldn’t be sure but she looked away, letting go of his hand.

Chapter Text

“An entire ocean of orange blossom water?” Martha questioned, “What’s the downside?”

“No downside,” the Doctor assured her, feeling exhilarated and vital in the wake of having so recently triumphed over danger, “You did say you wanted to go somewhere nice. So what do you think?”

Yes. He was showing off. Their latest adventure confirmed that Martha was a good traveling companion, smart and resourceful, and it was important she wanted to stay on the TARDIS. Traveling alone was torture, too much time to think about what he’d done. Since he’d met Martha, the Doctor had found he was able to set aside some of the heavy weight of his grief and guilt temporarily and feel more than half alive. It was more than just a distraction from loneliness having her here though, or anyone might have done. He liked her.

“I think I am going to need a bathing suit.” Martha replied to his suggested destination, and that was an image that went straight to the Doctor's visual processing cortex and threatened to create a problem with his trouser situation. He was finding that she was having a rejuvenating effect on more than just his mood.

He was not blind to the fact that that she was… well beautiful on the outside as well as the inside.

He’d kissed her earlier, impulsively perhaps, but a not fleeting impulse. As for his timing, it was possible that having bared his soul to her in words had led to reaching out in another way. It was also possible that his willingness, almost compulsion, to talk to her about things he hadn’t exactly planned on was a side effect of his attraction to her. The Doctor had found that the trust and desire didn’t always go together but where they did they tended to become entwined.

While Martha disappeared into the depths of the TARDIS to find something more warm weather friendly, he surveyed his newfound reflection on one of the TARDIS' many surfaces, something he’d been too despondent or distracted to do yet with any particular intention. This new body wasn't terrible, but he had been hoping for ginger, and these ears were at least somewhat clownish. He was tall, if a bit pale, and he had definitely had worse looking regenerations. A quick check inside his pants, revealed additional promise. This outfit was most certainly not helping.

“Oy! Martha! Can you bring me out something to wear?” he shouted down the hallway.

“Come and get it yourself,” she retorted.

His reflection grinned at him as he turned to go do just that.

He found Martha, knee deep in clothing, pulling on a light tank top over a bathing suit top, and found himself following the temporarily exposed flesh of her lower back until it disappeared. Grief or regeneration, really was shifting his perspective in a rather explicit way. He was feeling unusually physically focused, at least when it came to this woman. This body wasn't young enough to justify the extent of it. Maybe it was a reaction to all the loss and death, to being the only one left, a very literal thirst for life.

“Here, try this.” Martha told him, turning around to throw him an olive green t-shirt, “And those trousers are not doing you any favors.”

He attempted not to turn bright red. He was relatively certain he failed. Martha seemed to survey him up and down and then selected a dark pair of trousers before turning around, presumably to give him privacy. Both the trousers and the shirt fit, and when Martha turned back around to see the finished product she smiled and handed him some work boots.

“Much better,” she agreed to his unspoken question, “Now let's go see those beaches I was promised.”

On this occasion, he actually managed to end up when and where had he planned, and not even have a disaster follow him. Apparently the universe thought he could use a break, and he didn't disagree. Of course it wouldn't last, but the luxury resort, which his psychic paper convinced the concierge they had reservations at, was a pleasant change from war, destruction, and loss… not that he deserved it.

She did though. There was a pleasure in witnessing Martha’s reactions to her surroundings. He hoped for her sake that he wasn’t about to discover some sort of trouble in paradise here.

“Nice.” Martha grinned, looking around their hotel suite, “Now provided there isn't some freaky alien secretly killing guests or workers here or a meteor about to blow up the planet, I will say you have done well with your promise, Doctor.”

It was as if she could read his thoughts sometimes. He supposed it was possible, if unlikely. At some point he should probably look into it.

“Everything suggests the situation is normal,” he told her, making a big production of scanning every inch of the hotel room with his sonic screwdriver.

“Well then,” she accepted, linking her arm with his, “Let's go see this famous floral water.”

They went down to the resort's private lagoon where, as advertised, the smell of orange blossoms was inescapable and every flowers of every color bloomed around them

“It's stunning,” Martha proclaimed, seeming suitably impressed, as they made the walk along the beach to the shore. She dipped her toes in the water and her whole face lit up with joy as she exclaimed, “And the water is warm!”

It was. This place was the perfect escape and her excitement was contagious, but the moment she dove into the water, leaving him standing behind on the shore, he felt his guilt start to press back in. Shouldn’t he be doing something, making some sort of amends instead of soaking in the sunshine?

“Aren’t you coming?” Martha popped her head out of the water to look back at him, “Or is swimming beneath you?”

“To be honest, I’m not sure if this version of me is much of a swimmer,” he considered.

“Only one way to find out,” she invited, holding out an arm towards him, “Come on. I was a lifeguard for four years. I’ll rescue you if you run into trouble.”

“Alright then,” he shrugged, pulling off his shoes and shirt and walking into the water towards her.

It turned out he could swim very well indeed. Many cultures believed that water had healing properties, and floating on his back amongst the flowers with his hands holding Martha’s the Doctor could really understand where they got the idea.

Afterwards, at the attached waterfront restaurant, Martha made friends with some of the other guests. Unlike most humans out on their first interstellar adventure, it didn't seem to phase her that one of them had three heads and another's eyes were in in the palms of his hands. She was accepting and open, which was part of that warm energy he’d been drawn to in her immediately.

“Doctor, I want you to meet Illctoo.” She smiled, “She has invited us to her summer house in Quadrant 347.”

Martha seemed every bit as much at home here as she had back at the hospital on in Romana’s coat. Travel agreed with her, though as he watched her talking to her new acquaintances he noticed her glancing back at him sometimes with a look he wasn’t sure was altogether positive.

Was he being a spoilsport with his somber mood? Did she not trust him not to leave without her? Yet, she didn’t seem accusatory, just a little wary. She didn’t tug her hand free of his though, even if she wasn’t always talking to him. He might not have even noticed if he has been paying less close attention to her.

After dinner, she took him dancing. She didn't ask or insist, just led him out onto the dance floor, where he discovered that this body was not a terrible dancer either. Add that to the list with the ability to swim, liking strawberries and pici kebobs, but not mincemeat pies.

Oh, and the overactive libido. Honestly, he knew that normally he would not be so focused on the feeling of her skin against his palm as it rested against her lower back or the curve of her throat. He was very aware of how much he desired physical intimacy with Martha, something he wasn’t sure he deserved, or that she would reciprocate.

She’d kissed him back, right before the Byragi attack, but then she’d brought up his regenerative ability rather than that, so he wasn’t sure where she stood when it came to him. Was he merely a guide to a larger world, one that maybe she’d tolerate a certain level of advances from but felt nothing for but her unusual blanket level of compassion? After all, she’d just met him.

You just met her as well, he reminded himself, but the Doctor had never been one to shy away from acting on good first impressions. If he had, he might never have invited anyone to join him on board the TARDIS. Not everyone operated that way, though. She might still be making up her mind about him.

Finding he remembered how to spin his partner round, her twirled Martha and then brought her back into close to him, and she draped her arms around his neck and smiled up at him. He saw something in her eyes that he thought might mirror his own desire but then another guest insisted on cutting in, leaving the Doctor to watch and stew in his own thoughts.

Still, she sought him out when the song ended, beckoning him back onto the floor. She didn’t shy away from him when he held her closer, resting her head against his chest during a slow bit with a little sigh of what sounded like contentment. Still, it felt like every time he started to think about saying or doing something other than merely dance with Martha someone else cut in.

The night flew by and it was almost sunrise by the time that they walked back to their rooms, one of her hands in his and the other holding her shoes. Barefoot Martha was smaller than she seemed, surprisingly petite for someone with so much of a presence.

Martha said goodnight and shut the door adjoining their rooms. He imagined her on the other side. Would she strip down before getting into bed? Part of him was contemptuous at himself for even thinking about it, though it was a welcome distraction from the carnage that haunted him so vividly. That thought was followed by guilt. He didn't even deserve to be living with all his people gone. At the same time, a little comfort, what else did he have left?

He stood staring at that door for a good long while, but eventually turned away. She didn't seem interested in bringing up his confession or the interrupted kiss. He decided to let both stay unremarked upon, at least for now. The last thing he wanted was to be alone, so as long as she would stay with him, he was not going to rock that boat.

He wasn't good at being by himself. Even knowing that Martha was right on the other side of the door, the Doctor felt so alone, the whole weight of his bereavement pressing down on him, once more. His shoes hit the floor with a doom-filled thump, followed by his shirt. Lying in the center of his hotel bed, the Doctor hugged his knees to his chest, curling into a fetal position, and tried to fight the horrific images that plagued his mind every time he closed his eyes.

He fell asleep eventually, too exhausted to resist, but that didn’t stop the nightmares from coming.

Blood and planets burning, haunting eyes that condemned him, accusatory cries. He tried to explain, to plead, but his own face stared back at him harsh and unforgiving. He tried to flee but everywhere he ran there he was in one form or another: cradling the corpse of a once dear friend, bleeding out under the sky that was filled with ash.

“Doctor,” a reassuring voice called, “It’s alright. I’m here.”

Wreathed in angelic light, she bent down over him, quieting the chaos that had enfolded him. He buried his face in her lap, clinging to the shield against the horror and she stroked his head, humming a lullaby his mother used to sing. More than once, he felt her slipping from him, but he clung to her and disaster stayed at bay, receding to a low thrum.

Coming to consciousness, or at least something close to it, the Doctor became aware that he was not alone in the bed. He turned to identify the warmth behind him and found it was Martha, curled around him protectively. So his mind had not made up her dream intervention all on its own but with inspiration from reality. Muddling through half awake grogginess, he surmised that he must have cried out in his sleep, causing her to come to soothe him. Generous thoughtful Martha, that fit what he was coming to understand about her. She’d let him sleep rather than wake him.

Of course now he was awake and there were other thoughts on his mind than the horrors of his dreams. . Martha was brilliant, and kind, and very good company, but that wasn't the only reason he wanted her around. His reaction to her body pressed against his made for an extremely clear reminder. She was already in his bed and the idea of rolling over and waking her was enticing. She murmured his name softly in her sleep, and he very nearly made the decision towards action but, as he turned, he noticed tear stains on her face and changed his mind.

He was relatively certain that she was interested, but there was something else going on beyond that, some wound she was nursing. He’d sensed something from her the first time they met, but this confirmed it: he was not the only one with bad dreams. He lay there awake for some time, feeling the sensation of her warmth against him, aware of her breathing his name in her sleep periodically and the evident turmoil of her dreams.

Miss Jones had her own secrets, which he felt a need to unlock, to fix. After all, he was the Doctor was he not? Genocide or not, he could still help people.

That idea felt good to think. Comforted by it he drifted back of to sleep, this time without nightmares.

He stirred, eyes darting open to find a spot of darkness surrounded by bright light.. Sensing movement but not recalling where he was of how he had gotten there he felt a wave of confusion and panic overtake him until he identified Martha’ hovering above him. He felt himself relax and the grin spread across his face at the pleasure of the memory and the sight of her.

“Martha? Is everything alright?”

Martha leaned away from him, straightening her robe, looking a bit unsure of what to say. She recovered quickly, smiling reassuringly and minimized the situation, “You were just having bad dreams, Doctor. I came in to check on you.”

He wasn’t fooled, but he appreciated the presumbed concern for his pride. He reached out and took her hand, not letting on that he knew there was more to it than that.

“I don't know about you, but I am ready for adventure,” she told him, “I hear Beta Zeta fourteen has spectacular rock climbing.”

“What about the hot springs here? Or the other beaches? I thought you wanted to go sailing,” he countered, grinning.

Beta Zeta fourteen was frequently the site of disasters, never a dull moment. The Doctor smiled at her, perfectly aware that she had evidently decided he did better with action than leisure in his currently compromised emotional state.

“Seen one beach, you've seen them all,” she shrugged. “Just let me shower first”.

Stepping into warm and perfumed spray the ornate hotel shower, Martha closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She’d needed this, this moment of privacy and reflection. A good hot shower was the perfect place to achieve both, a place both to recover from and process everything that had happened.

Between staying up so late dancing and then what had happened after they finally went to bed, she knew she had not slept enough to be clear headed but she was full of emotion filled energy rather than exhausted.

She had awoken to the sound of sobs, through the wall. It was a sound she knew well, a sound she'd heard from her mother, her sister, from flatmates, and even from the Doctor once in awhile. Post-traumatic stress, she identified to herself. She ought to know, they'd all gone through it after the year that never happened. Her year traveling the world, powerless to interfere with the atrocities the rest of the world later forgot: Her family stuck at the heart of the vortex. Jack and his countless deaths. They all slept poorly, jumped at unexpected noises, couldn't explain their reactions to some things that seemed harmless. For some people peace and quiet helped, but neither she nor the Doctor were the type.

Throwing on the soft robe provided by the hotel, she’d first tried knocking, but got no response. She had slid the door separating her room from the Doctor's open, to find him twisted on the bed, tears running down his sleeping face, sheets tangled beyond repair.

“Doctor...” she had called softly, but he had not woken up.

Although part of her had felt like she was invading something too personal without permission, Martha had never been able to leave anyone in distress, least of all him.

So she had climbed onto the bed next to him, stroked his forehead, wrapped her arms around him from behind, and murmured “There there” softly, like you would to a child with a fever or bad dreams. After all, for all of his age, experience, and wisdom, the Doctor had always been that in a way: a child with bad dreams. She'd done this for that other Doctor, trapped in 1969, with him grieving, she knew, over the TARDIS. It had been bittersweet, even trapped together, even with her arms around him, he had been just as distant, even as he pressed against her. Remembering it, Martha felt a tide of emotion, but it subsided and they both drifted into deeper sleep.

She had awoken some time later, still curled against the Doctor, light streaming in through the window. He had been sleeping peacefully then, but as she had shifted to head back to her room he grabbed hold of her, breathing increasing. Every time she had tried to pull away, he had held on to her tighter. She hadn’t been think of a way to leave without waking him up.

Which had left her there, staring at him, exploring this new face at leisure. There was nothing boyish about his visage, although, their adventures so far had certainly shown that he had the same enthusiasm, energy, and sense of wonder as the other version of him she had known. Yet she had recognized him, it had been almost immediate. The light in his eyes, the commanding presence, how excited he got about new discoveries, even when they were terrible.

She was suddenly sure that she could grow to love all the planes of this face just as desperately as she had the other: the pronounced nose, the curve of his lips, the edge of his hairline, the angle of his jaw. She would adore the changes in his mannerisms too, the gruff edge and at the same time the vulnerable softness which could be seen peeking from beneath the surface. His smile, his excitement to share wonder and adventure, all of it would pierce her heart like a thousand knives.

Turning up the temperature on the water, Martha tried to reign in her increasingly intense thoughts but his words echoed in her mind, how regeneration changed the body's tastes. She wasn't sure why she was still in his sway in this new old body, but for every similarity in his personality there was also a difference. She kept feeling his gaze on her, and she was fairly certain she was not just projecting the heat contained there. After all, he had kissed her with no explanation or disclaimer, just a heated gesture.

Still it felt like a lie. Since this wasn't a dream, maybe it was psychosis. If not, well it felt like cheating, since she knew him already, knew how vulnerable he was, knew that she would be tempted to permanently change the space-time continuum, to try and keep him. Martha generally thought of herself as a noble and self sacrificing person, but she would move the heavens to hold on to the Doctor.

The hot water scalded her body, as Martha listed to herself all the reasons that this Doctor was just as dangerous as the one she had already had to leave. She shouldn't be here, couldn't be the one to heal his wounds, tend to his scars. It had been such a short while and already she was willing to make sacrifices for him.

She needed more perspective than a shower could provide, no matter how luxurious. Stepping out of the shower but leaving the water running, she picked up the phone and called Jack.

“Hello beautiful.” Martha could pretty much hear the smirk, “I see this is super long distance. Did you relapse? Did He magically come to his senses?”

Good old Jack, never one to beat around the bush. He was one person evasion did nothing with.

“Umm, sort of. Listen, I ran into Him, but another Him. He didn't know me yet and He looks different, but I still got the invitation.”

The invitation, they both knew what she meant. There was only one Him, and he did have a routine, whatever body he was in. If you were smart or brave or pretty enough, he would offer you a ride through space and time, an irresistible lure.

“Of course you did. Intriguing. Do describe.”

“Tall, big nose, sounds like he is from the North. I'm sending you a picture.”

It was a picture taken less for the view she claimed she was capturing and more for the man in the foreground. She briefly wondered whether the jiggery-pokery the Doctor had done with her phone would give her data coverage out here as well.

“Oh yes! Nice!” Jack sounded excited, “You are one regeneration back. You have the model who first stole my heart.”

“Obviously a running theme,” she commented.

“He's dangerous, with the tortured gaze and the soulfulness and the smile,” Jack continued. “ Interesting that he didn't recognize you later.”

“I am figuring memory loss somewhere between the two. That or I am contorting the space-time continuum.” Martha said with a great deal more levity. Both options were awful; she still wasn't sure which one she was hoping for.

“So what are you going to do?” Jack asked, emphasis on that last word.

“I don't know. I haven't told him I know him yet. And I don't know, it’s like he sees me in a way the other Doctor never did. I know that it is a terrible idea, I just...”

Jack would understand, if anyone in the universe could.

“Ride out the storm, then. I know I would.”

Martha wasn't sure how it was possible for anyone to put that much innuendo in a simple sentence, but Jack consistently did it.

“By which you mean if it was you this would already not be a family friendly excursion.”

“No one likes a hypocrite, Martha. Don't tell me you don't want to at least take him for a spin.”

He called her bluff. Of course she wanted to, she wanted to fall into the bed with the Doctor and not come out until both of them forgot what they had even been grieving over. She was pretty sure that this Doctor wanted that too. She was afraid for what would come next though; he was going to forget her. Sure, it might be in a long time, but it could be tomorrow. Or what if this Doctor was just a skirt-chaser, and that was all he was after? Jack had made his position clear, but that didn't mean it could be hers.

“Shall I say hi, Jack?” she asked with mock bravery.

“Better yet, bring him for a play date. Good children share their toys.”

“I don't think so. You can wait your turn,” she teased.

“You are no fun. It's never my turn.” Jack mostly pretended to sulk.

“Love you too. Tell the team hello.”

Martha hung up somewhat comforted but no more sure of how to proceed than she had been beforehand. She shut off the shower and dressed, knocking on the door before re-entering the Doctor's room.

He held out his arm and they went down to retrieve the TARDIS from valet parking, a situation that the highly trained full service staff were in no way prepared for as they couldn’t “drive” the TARDIS and eventually had to let them down into an area that was not intended for guest viewing.

“If you hadn't said no New Earth, I would suggest ice skating in New Moscow,” he commented.

“I guess, as long as it isn't New New York, I could be persuaded,” she agreed, apprehension somewhat lessened by this most recent demonstration that it actually was possible for this Doctor to show her the nice side of somewhere.

Unfortunately, their ice skating date was hijacked by adventure, when it turned out that some crazed heiress was turning skaters into ice statues. Neither of them really seemed to mind, and the Sisters of Plenitude seemed confident that they would be able to reverse the process and return all the victims to full health.

Chapter Text

The business on Ultimol Kri with the Judoon was a little more dire. They were lucky that Martha figured out the patrol route and managed to get them to relative safely in a storage closet that they they could plot their next move, since the Judoon refused to believe his bio-scan.

He couldn’t really blame them. After all he was supposed to be extinct. His race was extinct. What were a simple, rule-bound people like the Judoon supposed to make of that? His scans were technically impossible so the Judoon figured they were faked, and for the Judoon there was only one reason for deception: People who lied must have something to hide. People who hid things were criminals.

“In a way the Judoon are right about me,” he found himself saying out loud, not sure whether he was looking for judgement or consolation, “I ended my entire race. I saved the galaxy, but I erased them all, forever.”

Martha didn't move away from him at his admission of guilt; she put her hand on his face.

“You saved the galaxy,” she reminded him, eyes shining with a tender warmth that shook him out of his sulk, “You impossible-”

If she hadn't been there, maybe he would have decided that he deserved to be taken down like he had done to the rest of his race, but not here, not in front of her, not to bureaucratic thugs like the Judoon.

She looked at him like he was more than a necessary evil, like he was something precious instead.

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, feeling her collapse against him. It was stupid and impetuous, an insane monkey decision. Just for a moment though, he wasn't burdened by all the survivor's guilt, with the need to constantly assuage his feelings of bad faith with miraculous heroics. Instead, Martha Martha, Martha, was all he could think, kissing her deeply, feeling her slight frame enveloped by his.

Perhaps a storage closet, with the sound of violence outside, wasn't the most romantic setting, but the Doctor was more focused on peeling Martha's shirt off of her, her mouth sucking at the pulse point at the base of his neck, his tongue

“I shouldn't...” she murmured, making no effort to pull away from him, as his tongue trailed from her clavicle down towards the valley between her breasts.

“Why not?” he asked. Working at the clasp of her bra, he cursed his clumsiness with new hands, “It seems like you want to. Unless there is someone else...”

Giving up on the bra, he traced her hipbones with his thumbs,

“No. There is only you, that's the problem. It is too dangerous. You are...”

Even as she uttered these words of protest, Martha pulled him closer, guiding him up against the nearest wall and grinding her hips up against his.

“Dangerous?” He looked her right in the eyes, lifting her up so their faces came closer together, as he struggled to reassure her, “I would never, ever, do anything to...” He bent his face down to her breasts, fighting the strong desire to mark her skin, brushing against the underside of her breasts, dragging his tongue just under the edge of the fabric. “Whatever it is. If someone has been rough or forgetful or whatever else has gotten you all mixed up... Tell me and I promise...”

It was as if he didn't have enough hands or mouths to experience Martha as fully as he wanted to. Hearts beating hard in his chest, he ran his hands over her bare skin, mouth tracing her shoulders and collarbone.

“Doctor, you are the most dangerous man in the universe. Don't make any promises. I don't think I can bear them. Don't ask. Telling you would help no one.”

He wanted to ask her why, what she was so afraid of, but that last request was so earnest and her fingers gripping the back of his neck so distracting. It could wait while he kissed her some more.

Martha was the one to pull his shirt over his head, pressing her flesh against his.

He was the one to spin them around so he could press her firmly between him and the wall of the closet, bringing their bare skin into more direct contact.

It was a scared looking teenage boy, who inadvertently opened the door and then stood gaping.

“Don't just stand there with the door open,” the Doctor snapped: startled, annoyed, and suddenly remembering the danger they were in,“You will lead them right to us.”

Somehow Martha had her shirt back on before he even found his.

“I'm Martha; this is the Doctor,” she told the man child, her voice kind and coaxing.“What's your name?”

“Sam,” the boy said in a hushed voice. “My name is Sam.”

“Alright there, Sam. It looks like you could use some help. Fortunately for you, that is what we do,” he told the boy, trying to shift gears and willing his body to follow his brain in this endeavor.

“They killed my mum,” Sam confessed, brushing his shaggy hair out of his eyes. “She was only trying to protect me.”

“Why would the Judoon want to hurt you, Sam?”

“Because I'm a halfbreed.” Sam looked down at the floor ashamed, as his distinctly non-human looking ears poked through his hair. “They say it's a crime, what she did, and that I am an abomination according to code 443784.”

“Do you have any other family, Sam?” Martha asked, her voice full of compassion.

Sam shook his head no. Martha put an arm around the boy, which made him blush, “Okay, well when we get out of here, the Doctor will take you to a planet where no one is stupid enough to hate you just because your parents weren't the same species. Right, Doctor?”

Over the years, he had been asked so many times why he was so attached to the human race. Martha Jones was an excellent summary of all of his reasons.

Martha's heart was racing, and only a fraction of the reason was the danger involved in dodging the Judoon patrol. After all, the Judoon were predictable in their dogmatism, deadly and inflexible but easy to outsmart. The Doctor, on the other hand, was extremely dangerous. The floodgate of desire and emotions and every impossible longing were being pried loose with every look and what they had just done, what they had almost done... she could easily be consumed altogether. Maybe it would be worth it.

She knew they were not the same, even without today's example. The other Doctor would have pressed up against her and done nothing, ignored her ragged breath, the implications of their closeness. In fact, they had been dealing with the Judoon the day she met him, the day he carelessly ignited her feelings for him with a kiss that meant nothing to him but all too much to her. That memory had seemed faded today, though, pale and insubstantial in the face of what was right in front of her.

This Doctor, his desire was like a live flame, matching her passion for passion. She could feel the need in each kiss, each brush of his hand against hers. But at the same time, he was still the Doctor, forever in search of adventure, heroism, and the next shiny thing to captivate his attention. How much of his clinging to her was a coping mechanism, his reaction to the tragedy he had experienced so recently?

Then there was the matter of honesty. Didn't she owe it to this Doctor, this person she cared so much for, to be straight with him about her adventures before him, about their future history? What would he say? Would he feel betrayed, tricked?

Her distraction almost led to them getting caught, especially since the Judoon had attempted to confiscate the TARDIS.

She went left instead of right, even though she was the one who had come up with the route. A patrol spotted her and it was only some quick thinking, and just as quick running, that allowed them to get out of sight and ultimately use that slip up as a distraction for the two Judoon who were supposed to be watching the TARDIS entrance.

So it worked out, that didn’t mean it hadn’t been careless and dangerous of her.

Afterwards, everyone agreed that a nap was needed before any navigation would be advisable.

Martha set Sam up in a room full of bunk beds (seriously she was not sure how many people the TARDIS was intended to house but it was a lot more than two or three) and sat with him until he fell asleep.

The Doctor wandered off to who knows where, Martha made no guesses as to what he was up to but realized she probably could use the time alone to think. The adrenaline was wearing off and the all of the thoughts she’d pushed aside swelled back up, vying for attention. Martha wandered down yet another corridor, wondering about all the other people that had walked these hallways. The thought was overwhelming; this experience being on the TARDIS was so all encompassing to her, but she was just a tiny footnote to it... to him.

She felt so small and the universe so vast. It swallowed them all up, even people like him. She’d never given up, never given in, always pushing on, but suddenly she couldn’t help thinking what would happen if she stopped: nothing really in the grand scene of things. Bad things happen, good things happened, but none of them were truly significant. To her, these feelings she had for the Doctor, how he might or might not feel about or act towards her, felt so critical, and yet no matter the truth or the outcome in the end they would be a mere speck of dust in the universe.

In the end, humanity itself would be as completely erased as the Time Lords, twisted and trapped. She’d seen it, seen them blotted out, a horror she had not had room to grieve for: all the deaths she had seen, whether they had been undone or not. She didn’t just mourn for what the Toclafane had done, but also for what had happened to them. With the luxury of time and distance, she felt their tragedy, how they had been pushed to the brink by despair, and how that despair had been warped into a weapon by another mind distorted by loss into madness.

How had the Doctor stayed as sane as he’d been, as sane as he was? She had to marvel at it, found herself thinking forward and back at the same time.

Slumping down onto the ground, Martha let herself feel the sadness and loss she had been carrying with her, shoved down in the interests of doing what was needed of refusing to be beaten or broken. She mourned for herself, for the fear of being insignificant, for the desperation in how she felt about the Doctor, for knowing that if it hadn't been for Sam she would not have denied him anything, for knowing she would still be forgotten, but she would never forget him, never forget it. Finally, she mourned for the Doctor, so alone even when she was with him, even if the whole world was with him.

Caught up in her grief and her thoughts, she didn't notice him walking towards her, didn't notice him sit down beside her. Martha only realized the Doctor was there when he put his hand in hers and pulled her close.

“Homesick?” he asked her.

She shook her head no. Home was the one thing she wasn't mourning, she realized.

“Is it about a man? Some boyfriend you have left at home and didn't want to tell me about?”

“No, I really don't have a boyfriend,” she promised honestly, not sure what to make of his pressing of that question.

“You broke up with him, then. Or it’s a girlfriend?” the Doctor ventured.

“No. Nothing like that. There is, there was someone, but we were never together, and it's not him, not exactly.”

“What is it then?” he asked. He truly asked and she found wanted to tell him everything, the truth and all her fears. How would he respond? What could he possibly say? It was too big, too hard to explain. Still she had to start, had to try. She couldn’t keep avoiding telling him the truth forever.

“You know how I didn't want to go to New Earth, and I wasn't at all surprised that aliens were real...” she began.

“Yes, fantastic.”

“I'd seen them before, not that species but I lived through an invasion, an invasion that nobody remembers because it was undone, but I was there at the center and I remember it all. Millions died, the rest were enslaved, and the beings that enslaved us...” Her voice broke.“It was us. The minds of the end of mankind, desperate to survive no matter the cost.”

“That is what disturbs your sleep at night, then” He wrapped his arm over her shoulders and she let herself lean against him, taking in the comfort of his closeness.. “You are a survivor, too.”

So he had woken at some point during that night she had fallen asleep comforting him, he had noticed the echoing turmoil of her sleep. He hadn’t said anything, had let her think that he didn’t know, but he had noticed. He’d just waited for her to tell him why rather than asking, not because he wasn’t ready to hear it she suspected, but because she had not been ready to say it.

“It probably seems silly to cry about the deaths of people who are alive and well now. But their suffering was real, and I just can't forget it.”

Martha felt badly about telling him a half-truth, almost wishing he’d press for more, but she wasn’t prepared to tell him the rest yet. She would though. She promised herself that she’d find a way.

“As far as the world is concerned, the Time Lords never existed, there never was a Gallifrey. It doesn't make me miss it any less.”

Martha didn't know was to say to that, so they just sat there. This Doctor could be so gentle, so patient. He did have a tendency to snap when something annoyed him or he felt someone was being stupid or dangerous, but he could be caring too.

That was one thing she’d noticed about him. He cared about people, not just specific ones but every last living being he encountered. He didn’t tune out irrelevant distractions. He focused on the details, on the bystanders, on the little things. She didn’t know how he did it and was saddened to think it was something he would lose, one way or another. She could understand how he could though, right now when she was feeling so aware of just how small and insignificant the scale of her experience was. Surely he must feel it more strongly, and yet that wasn’t how he behaved.

“Does all this ever seem pointless to you? How can you still care about one planet, one town, or lost child when you have seen it all from the vastness of time and space where all that just blinks into nothingness? I mean none of it is really important, is it?”

“Nonsense,” he replied with complete conviction, cupping the side of her face to encourage her to meet his eyes. “I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important, Martha. Every person, every decision, you have no idea the ripples that carry out from each and every one of us, past the memory of human lifespan, past the reach of your exploration. You matter, more than you can possibly imagine.”

She believed him, felt the genuine emotion behind his words, despite his grief.

Part of her wanted to kiss him, to burn away this sorrow with the passion that had been interrupted by Sam's arrival, but at the same time this moment was too precious to discard, the trust and the comfort. She felt strangely safe in his embrace. To complicate that, to open up into the unknown, it felt too soon for that now, too much of a risk when this was so much more than she had thought she’d find there.

It was not a matter of whether it would happen now, though, but of when.

Chapter Text

“Doctor, I don't think this is a very great environment to leave a kid to grow up in.”

“Agreed. Just one problem, of course. How do we get Sam out without causing a major incident?”

He and Martha were lying fully clothed in a large four poster bed. Neither of them seemed to be able to sleep.

Delivering Sam to an appropriate planet had seemed like an easy enough task. The Doctor knew just the place, so once they got back to the TARDIS is should have been a piece of cake, should being the operative word. Instead on their first try they ended up on the wrong planet, and it was a planet full of giant angry wasps.

After narrowly avoiding being stung to death, the Doctor's second try wound up with them in the middle of a what was in all likelihood a cult. The group was very solicitous and very much interested in adopting Sam into their circle. Apparently he fit some sort of prophecy they had and that was all well and good, except in the Doctor’s experience it usually wasn’t. Who knew what kind of seedy underside there was to this group or what this prophecy really had in mind for the boy. Slippery things, prophecies.

Assuming that they were a couple, the friendly cultists had considerately offered them a room. The Doctor wasn’t sure exactly what to consider them, or what Martha might consider them. They were headed towards something but this hardly seemed the time to pursue or discuss that. Sam’s future hung in the balance.

“I have no idea.” Martha sighed, her hair spread out on the pillow. She seemed particularly despondent lying there. Something about this place was pressing against an old wound.

So much about Martha began to make sense, now that he knew some small fraction of that she had survived. Few humans had to live through and remember something like what she had gone through, and he wished he had been there to help her, spare her from the experience if he could. At the same time he was proud of her, of her strength in the face of something so horrific. He stared at her beautiful face and swore to himself that he was going to take care of her.

“I'll think of something. I am good at rescues.” He grinned at her.

“What about rescuing me from insomnia?”

Her tone was playful, but the Doctor was hesitant to respond in kind as he debated what to do. Something tickled the back of his mind, not quite putting together the pieces of how her earlier protests tied into what he knew now, but feeling that they did. Whatever she said, Martha was scarred, and he didn't want to bring up painful memories by pushing.

His initial impulse when he had found her crying back on the TARDIS had been to kiss away the tears, to overwhelm her with his need of her, but there was a need to talk about tragedy, that would not have been helped by that strategy. She had listened to his, had comforted him, and now had shared some of the same trust he had shown in her in him. That was more important. He was almost a thousand years old. He could wait.

“I am not sure you you would like my methods,” he told her, thinking about the timeless cure for sleeplessness anyway.

“Try me,” she dared him, still staring off into space with her back to him.

He hesitated, but she had been receptive to his advances thus far, reciprocating even if she hadn’t initiated contact on her own. Scooting up against Martha, the Doctor gently swept her hair out of way so that he could kiss her neck and was rewarded with her pressing her backside more firmly against him. Encouraged, he did not back away.

“Go on,” she invited him, prompting him to slide his hands up under her shirt, over her stomach until he hit the underwire of her bra.

“Yes,” she encouraged him, as he found the pulse point at her throat, “this seems promising.”

Squeezing his fingers between her bra and skin, he was able to caress the bare skin of her breasts, enjoying the feeling of her nipples stiffening against his touch. Martha ground her hips, pressing against his crotch in a way he could not help responding to.

“How about this?” he asked, sliding one hand free and trailing the fingers under the waistband of her jeans.

Martha placed one of her hands over his and guided it further down, inside of her jeans, into her knickers. Taking the hint, he continued down, searching until he found her clit, enjoying her uneven breath.

“Is this the right direction?” he whispered in her ear, breathing against the damp skin below it.

“Yes. Please don't stop,” she gasped, wriggling against him as he began to rub.

“What about this?” He grinned, pressing a finger against her wetness.

“More. You have such strong, capable hands.”

She was slick, his forefinger slid inside of her with ease. He paused the middle joint, enjoying her pressing forward against him until he was pressed to the knuckle.

“How about that?” he asked, gently rubbing her both inside and out.

“Another, please.” Her voice was barely audible over heavy breathing. He was straining against his pants with an erection that was hardwired into her responses.

Withdrawing his forefinger for a moment, he then returned it along with the middle finger. Martha moaned, encouraging him to increase the speed and motion he was working at. Sucking on her shoulder, he rutted against her backside, while thrusting his fingers in and out of her, thumb still working at her clit. The feeling of her spasming on his hand and the realization that he had pretty certainly left a mark on her skin, left him painfully hard.

He couldn’t see her face from this position, didn’t know what she was thinking. The Doctor slowly withdrew his hands from inside Martha's clothing, but he did not move away or make any other major movement. Had he gone too far? No, she’d pushed him forward, urged and directed, not just with her reactions but with words. It was a shift, one that the Doctor hoped wasn’t momentary.

As though she could read this thoughts, Martha twisted suddenly around to face him. She kissed the Doctor, as she surprised him by bringing one hand down and tracing the bulge in his trousers. She seemed pleased by whatever reaction she saw in his face and felt from his body as she unfastened them and reached inside, freeing him from the constraints of fabric. He shuddered against her as she wrapped her fingers around him and moaned into her mouth as she slowly slid her hand first upwards and then back down to the base.

“As a doctor, I should learn all the remedies I can. Don't you agree, Doctor?” She smiled at him, some mixture of confidence and bravado in her voice.

“Oh agreed.” His voice was a little jerky, as she continued working with her hand. “Fantastic plan.”

“Just let me know, if I go wrong somewhere,” she replied, before changing gears with her mouth, kissing his neck, capturing his earlobe with her lips and sucking lightly, all the while gradually increasing her hand's pace.

He relinquished himself to her attentions: head rolling back, feeling himself pulsing in her hand, His gaze stayed on her, wanting to fully feel the connection between them.

Returning to kissing his open mouth, she pressed her chest against his and grinned.

“I can feel your hearts racing, Doctor.”

“Martha...” he mumbled, pulling away a fraction of an inch.

“Yes, Doctor?” she replied, clearly having noticed the way he seemed to react whenever she said his name. “Doctor, Doctor, Doctor...”

It being intentional did nothing to diminish the effect. If anything it made it more intimate, as though her words were additional hands she was using to touch him.

“You keep saying my name like that and this practice session is going to be over,” he groaned, feeling the whole of reality narrow down to the two of them, to her voice and her touch.

“Hopefully it can be repeated at a later date, for some fine tuning, Doctor,” she breathed, hand steady and insistent.“If you don't mind, Doctor. Doctor...”

He came, body shaking, her name on his lips, eyes locked with hers.

Hearing her name like that, Martha could easily understand what he might enjoy about hearing his name spoken.

Post-orgasm, she felt a little shaky, somehow nervous and relaxed at the same time. Lying there, in a little bit of a haze, she could still feel the memory of the Doctor's hands up her shirt and knickers, the ghost of his fingers inside of her. It was so different than the night she'd spent in Shakespearean London, staring at an inscrutable Doctor from across the impassible distance of the narrow bed.

She had to stop comparing the two. It wasn't fair. She had to tell him that truth. Yet she didn’t know how, or maybe she did but she was starting to worry she’d waited too long.

As they lay there, breath recovering, Martha felt the awkwardness start to creep in. She wasn't sure what to say, what to do with her limbs, whether to stay staring into his eyes or look away.

“I don't suppose sonic would do anything to clean this mess up?” she joked awkwardly.

“Unfortunately not.” he said, disentangling their limbs and going to the bathroom to clean up, returning with a towel for her, “Sorry.”

She did her best to wipe clean, looking forward to changing when they got back to the TARDIS. Lying back down, Martha wasn't sure how close or far away from the Doctor to place herself. Ugh. She had not felt this unsure in a bed with someone since she was going for her bachelors. So she tried to pick a middle distance and stared at the ceiling.

“We still have to figure out how to rescue, Sam,” she commented, for lack of a better subject.

“They aren't bad, as far as cults go,” the Doctor mused, “I mean they haven't tried to force us to convert, or kicked us out of here.”

“I don't see any weird blood sacrifices or teenage brides or harems, either,” she had to agree.

“And they welcomed a kid without money and who isn't entirely human.”

“I can't believe we are talking about the benefits of a cult.” She sighed, “I guess people do flock to them for some reason.”

Usually a charming and charismatic leader, she thought to herself. People follow them to their deaths all the time. Like me, like everyone else who has loved the Doctor, like everyone who has fallen under his spell.

“Has anyone ever told you that you are terrific, Martha Jones?” the Doctor said, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her against him, so that his mouth was level to kiss her forehead.

“Someone once told me I was a star,” she replied, the pain of the associated memories and the pleasure of this moment warring for influence within her .

“You are a star,” he replied, without irony, “Beautiful, brilliant, fantastic...”

Alone, she almost said, the negative energy attempting to creep out from beneath the endorphin release, but instead she focused on the warmth of the Doctor's body encircling her until the impulse passed. It wasn't his fault that he had an effect on people. This Doctor had never done anything to hurt her. All he had done was offer her what she had been longing for from a future he couldn't control or know about. It wasn't his fault he wouldn't remember her. If he wasn't going to wipe the memory of his planet's destruction, the Doctor would never intentionally run away from any memory.

“No.” She smiled, “That's you, Doctor. We are all just the debris that orbits around you.”

“You mean planets? The place where life is,” he replied, “The only reason anyone cares about the sun is because it makes Earth with all of you possible.”

Martha relaxed against him, breathing in his scent, basking in his warmth. She listened to his hearts beat, counting them like sheep, first the left and then the right, a slightly syncopated rhythm. Even the thought of meeting his future self, pretending to be human, and first hearing that odd and now familiar rhythm, she pushed aside. Just count. She told herself: One, two. Three, four. Five. Six. Seven, Eight .

Martha couldn't remember the last number she counted before drifting off into sleep.

She awoke, however, with an idea.

“You know,” she mused out loud to the Doctor, who was already awake and perusing some sort of religious pamphlet that had been left on the nightstand by their hosts, “We don’t have to convince all of them to let Sam go, just the leader. The rest of them will follow whatever he says.”

“Alright,” he closed his reading and looked at her directly, “The question then becomes how do we get him to change his mind.”

“He doesn’t like confrontation,” she realized, “That’s why he treated us like honored guests instead of unwelcome intruders. You notice how he reacted when that woman provided an alternative interpretation of the prophecy he was talking about. A lot of leaders would have made an example of her, but he just acted like they agreed.”

“So he’s a bit of a coward,” the Doctor summarized, “I don’t suppose we could just bully him into letting us have the boy.”

“I think,” she smiled as she the idea solidified in her head, “That we can get him to beg us to take Sam away with us.”

“Really?” The Doctor seemed intrigued, excited like a child waiting for a present to be opened as he turned his whole body to face her. “How?”

“We tell him the truth, well part of it. I think we ought to thank him for taking Sam off our hands, what with him being a fugitive and all. We ought to be grateful that we won’t have to figure out what to do when the Judoon show up looking for him.”

“They’d be way out of jurisdiction,” he scoffed, “ No way they’d ever come here.”

“Yeah, but no one here knows that except me and you.”

She watched the Doctor process the thought, going from skeptical to impressed in a matter of seconds.

“Brilliant, Martha. Absolutely brilliant.”

It was hardly the first time one of her ideas had been considered brilliant by the Doctor, but instead of rushing off, leaving her still hanging on the moment of intense eye contact, the feeling of flying dropping out from under her like a sack of rocks with his departure, this Doctor leaned in and kissed her.

Chapter Text

Watching Martha handle the situation with those cultists, the Doctor had been once more impressed by the woman traveling with him, a woman so strong and competent and yet unaccountably despondent at times. Just the night before, she had gone from assertive, passionate, and playful to shrinking within herself in the course of a few minutes.

He wondered what she was not telling him about her history of trauma. There had to be more to it, she had skirted around the question when he asked her about a boyfriend, maybe there was a heartbreak. That person might have gotten killed, or had to be separated from her. That could explain the dejection, even guilt. He should know. He had plenty of both to go around.

The mystery of those things she was keeping to herself didn’t make him worried or resentful. Part of him even liked that she had secrets for him to uncover, a sort of psychological dance of the seven veils.

What was haunting was that, watching Martha Jones save the day, the Doctor had struck by the thought: What if they didn't need him anymore? What if mankind had outgrown him? Who was he, if not their protector, the guardian angel of humanity?

There was one other title he could claim. It was one that made his blood run cold.

“Brilliant,” he congratulated Martha, smile hard enough to crack diamond, “And you...” he continued, putting one arm around Sam and one another Martha, “Let's see about actually getting you to New Calcutta.”

“Actually Doctor, Sam has a request.”

If she was bringing it up, it was Martha as well as Sam's request. One more trip. They were predictable sometimes.

“Does he... and what might that be?” he asked, as if he did not know.

“I want to see Earth, please... please!”

Sam's earnestness made it impossible to say no, even if he had wanted to. There was nothing The Doctor enjoyed more than playing tour guide an easily impressed audience.

“Okay,” he said with feigned nonchalance, “Earth it is.”

“I am changing and taking a shower first,” Martha said in a way that left no room for argument.

“Your wish is my command,” he said with a little mock bow, smiling at the thought of her naked and wet.

“Alright Sam. I guess we'd better find you something more Earth looking to wear,” he said, mussing the boys hair, “And maybe a hat to cover those ears.”

The Doctor did his level best not to think about Martha in the shower. He did his best not to think about the water running over her bare flesh, not to think about the droplets cascading down her breasts, hanging on her nipples before splashing to the ground. He did his best not to think about her hands on her own skin. He was saved from getting further than that by Sam's irritating questions.

“So are you and Martha, you know...” The manchild asked, picking up a truly awful looking uniform.

“Are we what? And it is none of your business,” The Doctor snapped, pulling the offending clothing out of Sam's hands and handing him a plain red jumper.

“Just wondering, jeez.” Sam rolled his eyes, like countless other teenagers across the galaxy, “I mean when I met you-”

“You get to be my age and questions like that, they just don't make sense.”

“How old are you? I mean, you look like maybe my mum's age,” the boy continued to pry.

“I am nine hundred years old.”

That shut him up for a moment, if only that.

“What about Martha, is she?”

“She is too old for you,” he glowered.

“Hey, just asking.”

“Just go put these on and forget it,” he said with an air of finality.

Then there she was, radiant as ever in a fresh pair of jeans, a red top, and cropped leather jacket.

“Are we all ready?” Martha asked, and the Doctor smiled with all the force of both hearts.

The Doctor did not really mean to take them to Cardiff; no one ever really intended to go to Cardiff. He had to admit though, that in the 23rd Century it wasn't so bad. The high speed rail system made more remote areas desirable again, and the BBC had decided to cash in on the popularity of their programs abroad, creating a theme park.

Martha seemed a little on edge, realizing they were in Cardiff, though the Doctor wasn't sure why. It wasn't like anyone she knew was going to be around in a hundred and fifty years. Maybe that was it. Seeing her text, the Doctor concluded that she was simply facing the eventual mortality of humans; because, she was mortal, so very mortal.

He stood next to her, squeezing her hand reassuringly.

“What do you say we check out BBC One-derland? he suggested, holding out a gaudy flyer.

“They didn't...” Martha exclaimed.

“They did,” he grimaced, “Big money to be made, and you apes never can resist that. Come on. It'll be fun.”

Martha shrugged, “Why not?”

Jack was still in Cardiff in 2276 and Martha didn't trust him not to show up and complicate their time streams further. If the Doctor didn't know Rose yet, he was not supposed to know Jack yet either. He isn't supposed to know me either, she had to admit.

It wasn't that she wouldn't be glad to see Jack. The year that never was and the bonds that tied them to the Doctor both linked them in a way that made them... something. They were close to friends but not quite explained by that simple definition, not because their bond was something less than friendship, if anything it was something deeper. It was however, complex. Jack would be a comfort. Then again, part of her didn't want to share. This was Jack's Doctor as well. Everything about the situation put Martha on edge.

Martha wasn't sure whether it was disconcerting or reassuring to see that they were still using pounds in the 22nd Century; either way she paid for them all to get in to the amusement park, with its terrible roller coasters named after literary classics.

“I am not doing Miss Marple's Madhouse,” she said flatly, “Or Gruesome Expectations. Ugh, or any ride named after one of Shakespeare's history plays; though, I am sure HE would be thrilled.”

The Doctor gave her a strange look.

“I mean, based on what I have read about him,” Martha added awkwardly. One of these days she was going irrevocably slip up.

“What about the ferris wheel? I guess it is supposed to somehow be based on Persuasion.”

“Boring,” Sam complained.

“Well then, you go ride the Wuthering Heights monstrosity,” the Doctor replied unsympathetically, pointing at a twisting daredevil ride off in the distance.

“Meet us back here in an hour!” Martha called after Sam as he disappeared into the distance.

“So the Jane Austen ferris wheel?” the Doctor asked her, a friendly hint of sarcasm in his voice.

“Neither, we are going on the Hounds of Baskerville Ride. I adore synthetic fog and strobe lights,” Martha smirked, taking his offered arm.

Standing in the queue, she contemplated whether texting Jack to tell him not to come would be helpful and decided it would probably have the opposite of the intended effect. At least at this point Jack didn't know where in Cardiff they were, though probably it was not a huge leap to guess.

Martha had to admit that another reason she didn't want to bring Jack into the situation is that it would probably force everything out into the open and even though she kept telling herself she was going to do that, it never seemed to be the right time. After they got Sam settled, she told herself, then she would tell the Doctor the rest of her story.

“You are a might twitchy today. Everything alright?” the Doctor asked her.

“Cardiff just makes me think of a friend. It’s like I keep expecting to see him around every corner,” she said with partial honesty.

“This the bloke from your past? The one who wasn't your boyfriend?”

“Well, Ja- he certainly wasn't my boyfriend, but no we were just friends, or allies maybe.”

“Is it the mortality thing? Thinking about him dead and gone?”

“Maybe,” She let him think, even though she knew Jack was very far from dead and not exactly mortal.

“You know. I still miss them all: The ones I lost, the ones who left.” The honesty in his voice made her feel terrible about her evasion.

“Of course, you can still go sneak a visit if you want to,” she started to tease, trying to change the mood, then realized her mistake as his face hardened, “Sorry! I didn't mean that. I just...”

The quiet of the rest of the wait was awkward and palpable. When they got on the ride, she took his hand in hers and he allowed it, but she still couldn't think of what to say. Maybe there was nothing.

The ride involved a lot of stops and starts and, as predicted, fake fog and strobe lights. Sitting in the pitch black, Martha knew she had wounded him and that nothing she said could do anything but press on that wound more deeply. She leaned closer against the Doctor, turning her face sideways into his neck, wanting to comfort him.

She felt him exhale, tension lessening, and he turned his face in towards hers. She could feel his breath against hers and he met her lips with his own. They pulled apart as the ride began to move again, but after that he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and she rested her head against him.

Martha was feeling relieved until she spotted Jack as they emerged back into the afternoon light. She considered trying to avoid him, but he caught her eye and she knew she'd been spotted.

“Martha! Doctor!” Jack cried out, boisterously embracing them both and planting a kiss on each of them.

“Doctor this is...” Martha hesitated.

“Captain Jack Harkness, I'll meet you later in your life, Doctor, if you know what I mean.” Jack winked.

“Jack is an ex-Time Agent,” Martha added in, not wanting Jack to have a chance to answer the obvious next question.

“I know, I know. Purveyors of cheap tricks,.” Jack added. “Still, useful to those of us who don't have access to our very own TARDIS.”

“What are you doing here Jack?” Martha asked quickly, hoping to direct the flow of conversation away from everyone’s respective relationships past, future, and present.

“Oh, we seem to be getting some abnormal energy readings out of this place. It looks like the BBC is getting a different kind of tourist than they were intending. I don't suppose you two want to help out.”

“Aliens in Cardiff. Fantastic! What do we know?” the Doctor exclaimed with the air of a kid in a candy shop.

“I think that is a yes,” Martha smiled. “But we do have to go take care of a teenage half-alien boy we rescued from the Judoon. He is like, fourteen,” she added, with a stern glare, “So don't go getting any ideas.”

Jack put up his hands in response to her implied accusation, a pledge to behave .

The Doctor couldn't help picking up on the fact that there was more going on than either Martha or Jack was saying. Humans, they were so predictable most of the time and so perplexing whenever they weren't. It was one of the things he found thrilling about them, that after all these years they could still surprise him.

Watching Martha and Jack work together, he knew without question that this was not the first time they had faced a threat to Earth with one another. He also knew that the way Jack looked at him had more of a story to it than he was likely to get. What surprised him was the similarity between his gaze and Martha's. An idea began to form in his mind, but it seemed impossible. If Martha knew him already when he met her, wouldn't she have said something, like Jack had today? Yet... he thought back over their adventures, the way that she already knew so many impossible things about traveling on the TARDIS, the way her phone was already enabled to get reception across space and time, and the questions she had asked about regeneration on that first day when they were being chased by the Byragi.

The conclusion was inescapable-- Why hadn't she told him?

“Doctor, what do you think about using this infrared signal to try and lure them away from populated areas?” Martha smiled at him, reminding him of the taste of her skin, the hitch in her breath as she reacted to him. Were they lovers in what was his future and her past? Was she trying to avoid him feeling obligated based on something that would happen down the line in his life?

Jack gave him a look which implied so much that the Doctor had to wonder whether they might not also be lovers in his future. He had to admit, he wasn't crazy about being on the receiving end of dramatic irony.

It turned out that the interstellar tourists were exactly that: harmless sightseers.

Sam also latched on to Jack almost instantaneously. Except for a good ten minutes in which Martha dragged Jack across a plaza and an intense conversation ensued in which they both spent a lot of time emoting with their hands and glancing over towards where the Doctor and Sam were eating overpriced ice cream, Sam barely left Jack's side. Jack seemed to enjoy being fanboyed over. It didn't look like they would be taking Sam to New Calcutta after all.

Once that was settled, Martha dragged Sam into a shop; if he was going to stay here, he would need an appropriate wardrobe. Jack stayed sitting on the park bench beside him, though naturally The Doctor got up and began pacing almost immediately.

“She will die for you, if you let her,” Jack said out of the blue, “In case you hadn't realized.”

The Doctor didn't know how to respond, his initial impulse was to snap back impatiently and walk away in a huff, but he didn't know what Jack's relationship with his future self was like so maybe this seemed appropriate given that. Still his words were bitter.

“Is that who I am then, to you? Someone who lets everyone else die for me?”

“You can't tell me that it hasn't happened before. I am not blaming you, but-”

“In your opinion, I should let her go. For her own good,” the Doctor replied indignantly, more because he couldn’t counter Jack’s words than anything else.

Jack didn’t seem to take a offense, he merely shook his head and for a moment he looked at the Doctor like he wanted to say more than he was willing or able to.

“Martha's a big girl. Just, be careful; she's been through a lot. She doesn't need to have her heart broken again either.”

“I don't suppose that you'd tell me about that,” he said with a raised eyebrow.

“Wouldn't dream of it. That would be cheating, Doctor.” Jack smiled flirtatiously, the serious tenor of his recent comments dissipating back into suggestive frivolity.

“Today it would appear that you two are the ones cheating.”

“A trick learned from someone near and dear,” Jack countered, and the way he said the words made the Doctor wish he already knew who Jack was to him in his future. Sometimes non-linear living was a real pain.

“Am I meant to be inviting you to come with us? Is that what I do later?” the Doctor mused, scratching his head.

“Not like this. It would be a lie and we both know it. Try and remember me though; we will be seeing each other soon, and then I'll be there, when you get lonely.”

Jack leaned in and kissed him solidly on the mouth, a brief kiss that matched the tragic hungry look of longing in Jack’s eyes as he pulled back, gazing at him intensely for a moment before quickly shifting to a clearly practiced smirk of a smile and winking at him.

Then he stood up and disappeared inside the shop to join Martha and Sam, leaving the disoriented and slightly mystified Doctor to mull over the day's events.

“I got you a present.” Martha grinned, emerging at last from the shop, “I noticed you eyeing my jacket, so...”

It hadn't been Martha's leather jacket that he had been gazing at longingly, but the leather coat that she pulled out of her shopping bag had a siren call all of its own. Sliding it on the Doctor felt the sort of electric hum that always accompanied a new regeneration's correct combination of clothing. It was as if the coat was a part of himself that he had been without until this moment.

“I don't have to ask if you like it,” Martha smiled. “I think that grin speaks for itself.”

He pulled her to him, squeezing her small frame and kissing her deeply. He ignored the knowing smirk on Jack’s face when they pulled apart.

“Just what the doctor ordered,” he told her.

Waving goodbye to Jack and Sam, they proceeded back to the TARDIS, hands clasped together.

Chapter Text

Back at the TARDIS, alone at last, Martha let herself dissolve into the Doctor's embrace as the door swung shut. Hands were everywhere, a chaotic flurry of need, as they crashed up against the side of the TARDIS' control room. Bolstered by Jack's reinforcement of the chemistry she was only part of, Martha let herself feel the longing ache in its full intensity. For better or worse, she was in this to the end.

“Doctor...” she breathed, sliding one hand up under his shirt and along his back, as she pressed her body closer.

“I want to kiss every centimeter of your body,” he whispered against her lips.

“Yes,” she gasped. “Me too.”

She kissed him again, wrapping her free hand behind his neck to hold the back of his head. He responded by placing his hands on the backs of her thighs and hoisting her up, as she took the hint and wrapped her legs around him. He buried his face against her neck, apparently deciding to begin making good on that promise right there.

Most of her wanted nothing more than to continue down that road immediately, but a small but vocal portion of her brain remembered that she had things she needed to tell him, that if it were her she would want the truth first.

“Doctor...” It was hard to begin speaking. He reacted to her tone though and pulled his face back to look at hers.

“Doctor,” she repeated, watching the confusion spread over his face. “I have something I need to tell you.”

“You are secretly a werewolf? Promised bride to the God King of Valantir? You really really hate milk in your tea? You...”

“I know you.” It hurt to say it, to intentionally interrupt his playful frivolity with the truth. “I mean I knew you before we met in the hospital.”

She was not prepared his reply of, “I know.”

“How long?” she asked, unsure of what else to say.

“It took me longer than it should have. I mean your comment that first day about New Earth ought to have been a giveaway, but most people who cross my timeline out of order just tell me, like your friend Jack. Why you didn’t you?” he added, setting her back down on the ground and moving a few steps back.

“It is complicated,” Martha began, all of her carefully planned speeches crumbling from her mind, “When I knew you before... it was a different- a future regeneration.”

Brows furrowed, the Doctor didn't say anything for a while. He opened his mouth to start a couple of times and then closed it. Finally he asked, “So in my future, different regeneration, you and he...”

“No,” Martha interrupted to tell him decisively. “I mean I loved him from day one, but he never felt that way about me... preferred...not me..”

“Stupid ape,” he responded immediately with surprising vitriol, then paused and shrugged, his gaze hardening. “So this, really it’s him that you want to be with?”

She and the other Doctor never had been and never would be. That had just finally started to feel like a truth that didn’t hurt, now that she’d met his one, but she’d cocked that up royally, hadn’t she.

“No!” she protested, at a loss to explain. “I mean I did, but it was terrible for me. He was always leaving me behind, taking me to the worst places, I don't think he ever really saw me, just a space filler for someone else. I left, got out.”

“He... I did what?” The Doctor sounded disgusted as he paced back and forth. Martha wasn’t sure who he was disgusted with.

“He didn't mean to...” she tried to defend, sounding absurd even to herself, “I just could never quite compete.”

“So. Why'd you go with me, if I am going to be so terrible? Revenge?”

It was hard to meet his eyes when they were so full of suspicion. She slumped down on the ground, pulling her knees up to her chin.

“No... remember you told me that story once, about your wife, how you regenerated and you still loved her and wanted to be with her, but she just didn't feel the same anymore? Well, I guess this is kind of the reverse.”

“Meaning?” He stopped pacing, standing directly in front of her with his arms crossed, looking down at her with an intensity she wasn’t sure whether to be bolstered or destroyed by.

“You are not him... thank heavens. But at the same time, that spark, that way I couldn't think about anyone else when he was in the room... well, it is the same with you. Except you know, not the same, because you are different. I admit that I went with you because no matter how terrible he was for me, I missed him. But I am still here because even though you are the same person, you aren't: not when it comes to me. I am sorry I didn't tell you, but I didn't know, I didn't know you would be so much the same and yet so different.”

Now that she’d said it, Martha knew it was the truth.

“Why tell me now?” he asked, dropping down to her level, eyes searching her face as they both sat on the TARDIS control room floor, his back to the control panel and hers to the wall.

“Because, Doctor, it wouldn't be right... being with you without being honest. It wouldn't be fair... to either of us.”

Her heart was in her throat. She couldn't tell what the Doctor was thinking, other than that he was upset.

“Martha Jones. Brilliant, beautiful, clever Martha, who never wanders off and always asks the right questions, what kind of a monster am I becoming to ignore you, look right through you?”

His voice was quiet, his eyes searching her face for an answer.

“Not a monster,” she said with confidence, reaching out to caress the side of his face with her hand., “Never that. Just someone who sometimes, in the process of saving the world, fails to notice the little things.”

“You are more than that, you know,.” he told her, “Never let me let you think you are anything less than vital. I’m asking myself how I could forget about you for even a moment, but I can’t. Nothing you are telling me about how I am going to behave in the future makes the least bit of sense to me.”

“So this doesn’t change things?” Martha asked.

“Of course it does. Martha... Oh Martha! How could I become so neglectful? How can I expect you to forgive me?” How can I forgive myself? How am I ever going to make this up to you?”

Martha wanted to kiss away the pain in his expression, to heal the wound she herself had just opened.

“Sshhh,” She leaned forwards towards him and pressed her finger to his lips. “This is part of why I didn’t want to tell you. You can’t blame yourself for something you haven’t done yet, especially since I don’t. I know you always want to take responsibility for everything wrong in the universe but if you really want to make things right for me, don’t.”

“How can you look at me like that, after what you have told me?” the Doctor asked in disbelief.

“I love you,” Martha told him, with all of the force of belief she’d given to audiences around the world in the year that never was, telling her tale.

“How?” he asked, staring into her eyes. He tried to understand how she could go through what she had told him about and still look at him with such trust and warmth. For her he wanted to be something other than the broken man he was.

“Around you, miracles happen every day,” Martha smiled for the first time in the conversation. Standing up, The Doctor held out his hands to help her right herself.

“Martha...” his voice trailed, as she reached her head up and kissed him. He responded gently, as if some part of him was afraid of breaking her with the slightest force.

“Yes?” she asked nervously.

The Doctor looked at Martha and tried to understand how a woman that brilliant could be so confident for him and unsure for herself. It made him feel sickened to know that his future self had a hand in it.

“I am going to show you how much you mean to me. How I feel...how much I want...”

Martha whispered in his ear, her tone betraying that whatever glimpses of longing he might have seen from her were just the tip of the iceberg, “Me too. I can hardly believe I have held back from this long.”

Standing and then sweeping her up in his arms, he grinned, “Do you have enough patience to make it to somewhere more comfortable?”

She nodded and wrapped her arms around him and he carried her to one of the TARDIS's bedrooms, the closest one with a decent sized bed. Being tall was making him more aware of things like that. He gently laid her down on the bed, crawling onto it next to her and leaning over to kiss her, intending to start slow but finding himself instantly aroused as she caressed the back of his neck with her hand. Not being attracted to this stunning woman seemed impossible.

Martha smiled and rolled over, her legs straddling his as she sucked on his earlobe and the contact through clothes reminding him of how restricting clothing could be. He kissed her neck and then down and across the swells of her breasts, hands sliding up under her shirt and pulling up and over. Each kiss was an apology and an act of worship. Cupping her breasts through her bra, his mouth found hers again, reveling in the enjoyment of this moment. His hips moved to match the pace of hers as they ground against him.

Reaching around to attempt to unhook Martha's bra, he was successful. Taking a moment to admire her, poised over him, he began to explore her with his mouth, running his tongue along the underside of each breast, kissing between them, lips brushing gently against each nipple in turn. He enjoyed the hitch in her breath and the feeling of her nipples rising up to meet him as they hardened. His hands caressed her back, her sides, up her ribcage. She tilted her head back and gasped as his mouth found where her neck met her shoulders as his hands covered her breasts, thumbs rubbing over her nipples, reveling in the feeling of her. She increased the intensity of her hips circling, dragging his shirt upward, until he sat partway up so that it could be pulled off completely. Pressing him down into the bed, Martha made sure that their bare torsos had a maximum of contact. The feeling of her hot flesh against his, nipples stiff against him, made him eager to get access to the rest of her body but hesitant to move from this moment.

He sat up turning the tables on her and guiding her onto her back, while he began following up on his promise to kiss every part of her. Her shoulder blades, sides, the insides of her arms, and her stomach were each explored in turn, sometimes with long trails of his tongue, other times light presses of his lips, and sometimes with a longer pause to suck gently at a pulse point or a particularly attractive spot. His hands trembled, undoing her jeans and then pulling them down off her hips with her cooperation. He unlaced her shoes, pulled them off, and at last she was left with only her knickers on. He resumed his kissing with the soles of her feet, determined not to rush more than he could help. He kissed her feet, her ankles, the back of her calves, all the while ignoring how little his pants and trousers were fitting him. The discomfort was a good way of slowing the inevitable down.

By the time he reached the edge of her knickers, he was cradling her thighs in his hands and a simple run of his forefinger over the front of them revealed them to be beyond damp. Taking a break from kissing the junction where her legs met the rest of her, he dragged her knickers off of her and was rewarded with a breathy moan as his mouth finally found her, tongue sliding along her opening, mouth brushing her clit. Tongue plunging in, he made a mental note that this tongue was a benefit of this body, as he curled it inside of her and she whimpered with a growing intensity.

Gently massaging Martha’s legs as he continued to use his tongue to its best advantage, The Doctor was suddenly struck by a wayward thought. The idea that he could be so cavalier with Martha after this, it made even less sense than not caring had out of context. Something didn’t make sense here and the Doctor could never leave these kind of unanswered questions well enough alone. Unable to stop this train of thought, he stopped what he was doing and sat up to look at her.

“Doctor?” Martha asked, worry spreading across her face. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t stop thinking about it. The idea that after all this, I am just going to treat you like rubbish? How can you? How can you be so open with me when you know for a fact that I am only going to hurt you later?”

Martha sat up as well, folding her legs under her, “Well, for me it isn’t later. It’s in my past”.

She leaned in to kiss him once more, and the Doctor wanted to believe in the sweetness of that kiss, but he needed answers.

“It is my future though,” he said. “My future and I just can’t imagine it. How can we be together and then I just ignore all that...”

The pain written in Martha’s face made him wish he could take the words back, however true they were.

“I don’t think you know,” she whispered, tears in her eyes. “There weren’t any signs of recognition, and even if you wanted to lie to me you would have slipped up, Doctor. In all the time I travelled with you there would have been a point where you forgot I didn’t know you’d known me before.”

Martha wished she could have spared him that realization, but she couldn’t. She watched what she had just said be filtered through his brain. His expression changed as he contemplated this new information-- his eyes widened and his forehead wrinkled.

“How? How is that possible?” His voice was low and somber, “Do you know?”

She shook her head, “I could only think of two options. Either it is memory loss or when we met this time we were destroying the time continuum by creating a paradox. In either case, I hope I am wrong.”

Martha felt impossibly vulnerable sitting a foot away from him stark naked. He pulled her against him again, but it felt like it was more for comfort than anything that he had been thinking before. Her body ached with the combination of the emotional memories and thoughts being brought up and feeling that just a few moments before they had been so close as he enthusiastically explored her body and now the awkward distance between them was springing up at an alarming rate.

“Martha... Martha... You are always so rational and the first to figure anything out. I wish I could tell you that you are wrong. I can’t though; what you’re saying makes sense.”

A silence fell over them, growing stronger by the moment. Martha wasn’t sure what to say or do next. She had to do something though.

“What are you thinking, Doctor?” she asked, holding her breath and feeling the growing tightness in her chest.

“That I am almost a thousand years old and I know better, but I can’t help hoping that we are rewriting history, because I don’t want the future you lived to be the real one.”

“Don’t say that,” Martha told him, choking on tears and laughter. “I know you need to save the world, more than anything.”

“Not this time,” The Doctor promised her. “Not if I have to lose you.”

“I’ll still be here,” Martha argued, hollowly, “You just won’t remember or care.”

It was almost funny how easy it was to tell the Doctor things she couldn’t make herself believe.

“I’m going to find a way,” the Doctor insisted. “Time can be rewritten.”

Martha almost replied, Not yours. Instead she craned her neck up and met The Doctor’s lips with her own. She was sure that whatever he said, the price to change his history would be too high, but she could hope that the time span between now and then would be long, maybe even most of her life.

The heat between them began to build again, as they held each other close, skin pressing together. Martha reached down to start working his trousers open. The Doctor groaned into her mouth, as Martha finally slipped her hand inside of his pants, fingers brushing sensitive flesh.

“Take the rest of your clothes off,” Martha instructed him, surprised to find herself being so direct, but enjoying it as he obeyed. As she watched him stand and strip down completely, Martha crawled to the edge of the bed, reached her arms out to wrap behind him, face resting against his abdomen. A part of her wanted to take him in her mouth and make him dissolve, to just enjoy the effect she had on this Doctor. The part of her that won out though, was the one that wanted to pull him down onto the bed on top of her.

“Martha...” he murmured, readjusting so that their faces were lined up. She kissed him, enjoying the hot crush of his skin against the full length of her body. She let herself relax into the soft tingling sensation overrunning her body: his mouth, his hands, the press of his arousal against her thigh.

He moved again, inching down slowly to resume where he had left off when their last conversation began, but Martha had other ideas, instead guiding him up until he was lined up against her entrance. With a tilt of her hips and pressure from her hands against his backside, he slid inside of her at last. Stifling a moan against his collarbone, Martha arched up against the Doctor, enjoying the feeling of him pressing back against and inside of her. She dug her fingers into his back, holding him tightly against her.

“Doctor...” Martha whispered, arching her hips slowly through intentional restraint because she wanted to savor this moment. She bit her lip to cut off an overly enthusiastic moan and he thrust back deeper inside of her, the tip of him rubbing just the right spot.

He craned his neck down to meet her lips with his and kissed her with growing intensity, starting gently but quickly gaining intensity as she began to move under him. She wrapped her legs around his for better leverage as, despite their best intentions, things sped up quickly. She arched her whole body, head rolling back. Every time his body slid back against hers, Martha found herself more and more overwhelmed by the intensity of the pleasure; she pressed the back of her forearm to her mouth to stifle the sound of it but the Doctor pulled it away.

“Let me hear you,” he gasped, eyes locked onto hers, as he ground down at just the right angle to completely undo her.

It was all too easy to comply as she came, waves of intensity cresting one after the other as every time she started to come down he pushed just a little bit more and her legs shook uncontrollably as she breathlessly writhed under him, screaming a garbled version of his name between incomprehensible whimpers.

Eventually she blacked out momentary from the sustained intensity and when she came back to awareness she smiled and curled her body up against him.

“Now you,” she told him and as she pressed him to the hilt she felt him give way, hearts pounding loudly against her and the warm flood of his release.

As the pumping of his hearts inched back towards normal, the Doctor stared into Martha’s tear soaked face and reached to wipe a tear trail from her skin with the arm he wasn’t supporting himself with.

“No more tears,” he told her, feeling confused as to how he had failed to notice them before.

“That goes for you too, Doctor,” she replied and he became aware that his cheeks were wet as well.

“I think you should give me some leeway,” he defended, stalling for time to process. “After all I have just been...deflowered.”

Martha sighed in mild exasperation, making her seem less vulnerable as well, “I am pretty sure, Doctor, that when you are 900 years old-” she countered.

“Oh no. Regeneration you see,” he grinned.

“Well then... I suppose that counts,” Martha relented, “Fine. You are allowed to cry if you like.”

“That was...” he began, reaching for words as he suddenly felt plunged back into seriousness. Emotions had obviously run as hot as physical sensation, with both releases mixed together. “All joking aside. That was...”

“Intense,” Martha suggested.

Not enough, he thought perversely. Not enough to make up for what I know now about how I was the one to get you hurt in the first place. Maybe nothing ever would be.

He propped himself up using his elbows to kiss her gently. Loathe as he was to pull away from Martha, he couldn’t keep holding himself up this way, so it was his only option if he didn’t want to crush her.

Rolling over to the right of Martha, he pulled her close to his side so that she was cradled between his arm and his body. She sat up, staring down at him. He found himself wanting to pull her on top of him. As if she could read his mind, Martha smiled mischievously and straddled his torso. He grabbed one of her hands and brought it to his mouth so he could kiss the inside of her wrist and started working his way up the soft inner side of her arm. He ended up with her breasts in his face and the lightest of breaths blowing on them made her gasp and her nipples harden, her body extra reactive post-orgasm.

“It looks like someone needs more,” he smirked, holding her by the waist with both hands while his mouth locked onto her skin, alternatively sucking at and flicking back and forth with his tongue, enjoying her moaning and whimpering. Switching sides with his mouth, he sucked on her other nipple while he brought the one hand up to rub and even lightly pinch the tender and erect one now exposed to the cool air. The other hand drifted down her abdomen to find her swollen clit and rub it, getting a large reaction from even the gentlest of movement.

“Martha,” he murmured, pausing to swirl his tongue over skin, “Straddle my face so I can finish what I started earlier.”

“You do know-” she began but he interrupted her by increasing the pressure on her clit.

“Do you have any idea how much I am going to enjoy licking myself off of you?” he told her, “Just thinking about tasting us combined makes me want to be ready to go again.”

She acquiesced, bracing herself against the headboard with her arms as he enthusiastically licked her clean of both of their prior releases, exploring the pace and regions that got the most response. Hands grasping her backside, the Doctor finally succeeded in getting her to climax again this way, and it was infinitely more satisfying than even his fantasies about doing this had been.

As Martha crawled over him to lie back down at his side, she kissed him and smiled at the taste of herself on his lips. The Doctor was pretty sure he had never seen anything more lovely.

“Will you be here when I wake up?” Martha asked him, a joke that wasn’t really a joke.

“I promise,” he told her.

As it turned out, Martha was the one who woke up first, as was evidenced by The Doctor coming into consciousness to her mouth around him, coaxing him towards an erection. She smiled up at him, when she saw his eyes open and refused to be moved from between his legs until he was the one stammering her name and seeing stars.

“Fair is fair,” she told him, curled in the curve of his body, so he reached around and started fingering her. Seeing that they were still swollen and likely tender, he was gentle with her clit, focusing instead of curling his fingers inside of her in just the right spot.

“For every pleasure you give me, I am going to give you that twice over,” he whispered in her ear, breath heavy.

She writhed against him, moaning as he sucked lightly on her earlobe and plunged his fingers inside of her to the very base.

“I have never met someone I was more drawn to, physically as well as in every other way. If you let me, I will just spend a lifetime locked up here with you while the world burns.”

Increasingly, it was important to him that she know exactly how she inspired him to feel, how the angle of her jaw and the curve of her spine and every other little details were burned onto his consciousness.

Keeping his hand where it was, he circled the pad of his finger against just the right spot and was rewarded with his name on her lips as she exploded around him. He wanted to stay right here, covered in sweat and sex, wrapped up in endorphins and serotonin, transfixed by the beautiful woman in his arms, forever.

Unfortunately the TARDIS had other plans as the room lurched and broke both of them right out of their reverie.

“I guess we have to go see to that imploding universe after all,” Martha smiled.

“Unless you can avoid getting seasick in this kind of turbulence,” he bemoaned.

They ended up in ancient Mesopotamia, where what people thought was a God was nothing of the sort. The Doctor held tight to Martha, afraid if he lost hold of her for an instant he would lose her forever. He couldn’t lose her too.

“Doctor,” Martha smiled indulgently like a school teacher. “I am going to need both of my hands to examine the patient.”

“Right.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and stepped back a few feet to let her work. Which was the right decision because she was able to identify the type of toxin ingested, which led them back to the source of the corruption.

Chapter Text

“My gran was from Accra,” Martha reflected aloud, taking in the bustle of the unfamiliar city’s streets.

“We don’t have to stay here, you know, if you don’t want,” the Doctor offered, clearly interpreting her the nature of her ruminations as something other than what they were, “There’s all of space and time out there to explore instead.”

She almost reached out to him, before considering that such a gesture between the two of them might draw attention in this time and place.

“Of course I want to stay and explore,” she reassured him verbally instead, “She must be here somewhere right now, the time period’s right for it. Wouldn’t it be wild to find out how much of that family legend is actually true?”

“Generally speaking, very little,” he grinned, “But the truth is often a good deal more interesting.”

“Well then, shall we see what kind of family secrets we can uncover, Doctor?”

“With pleasure. Tell me, what do you know about this supposed grandmother of yours and her life here?”

“Not a lot. Her family had been in the cocoa business but moved to the city after the industry’s collapse before she was born. There’s a necklace my dad gave my mum back before any of us where born, a family heirloom. Supposedly she was betrothed to a rather famous goldsmith before the war.”

“This goldsmith, not your grandad then?”

“No. He died overseas and then she met my grandad after she immigrated.”

“Alright then. Fancy doing some window shopping?”

Again, Martha reminded herself not to take his arm, not to lean close against him. It was a strange feeling, exterior limitations rather than a distance coming either of them.

“Before we go, though. I have to warn you. Under no circumstances can we interfere with whatever is happening to her if we find your grandmother. You could end up making it so she never met your grandad or moved to England, causing you to never be born and creating a time paradox.

Martha couldn’t help shivering at that last phrase, despite the warmth of equatorial climate.

“Time Paradox. Got it. Nothing in the world could entice me into getting involved with such a thing, Doctor. Honestly.”

“There’s a story there,” the Doctor didn’t quite ask.

“Yes,” she agreed, “But I’d much rather discover one I don’t know about already at the moment, rather than dwell on the past.”

Dwelling on the worst moments of their lives seemed unhealthy, a poor way to move forward, something they’d been doing so well with for the last while. Since her confession, since she had become lovers with him, Martha had found that what had happened before she’d met this version - her version of the Doctor weighed less heavily on her, pressed less at her thoughts.

He too snapped less at people, brooded more infrequently. It seemed it was difficult to feel terribly tragic in the midst of newly freed passion.

Identifying the source of the necklace in question was more difficult than she’d imagined. There were any number of shops specializing in works featuring the locally mined gold and apparently the style of her grandmother’s necklace had been very in fashion.

After a few hours in the humid heat of the Gold Coast, Martha was very nearly ready to call it a day, when she spotted a face in the crowd that struck her as very familiar.

“Wait a minute,” she paused, taking another look, “That man over there, he looks eerily like my dad.”

“Are you sure, Martha? I mean surely there’s a lot of people here who-”

He was interrupted by the sudden buzzing of her phone. Acutely aware of how conspicuous such a thing could be in this time, Martha hastily ducked out of sight into an alley.

“Tish… now’s not really a very good-”

“Martha. Oh thank god you picked up. Listen I hate to ask, but do you have any was of getting ahold of the Doctor. I wouldn’t ask but I’m afraid I’ve gotten in a bit over my head... again.”

“It fine’s, Tish. Relax. Tell me where you are… when you are?”

“When I am? Wait Martha surely you’re not-”

“I’ll explain.” Martha promised, “Just tell me exactly when you’re calling from and I’ll tell you everything in person.”

“Martha? Is everything alright?” the Doctor caught up with her, placing his hand on her arm.

“I’m fine, Doctor, but I’m afraid this family mystery will have to wait.”

“Who is that on the phone, Jack?”

“It’s my sister. We need to get back to London.”

“Your sister? I don’t do domestic-”

“Don’t do domestic?” Martha laughed, amused by his reaction, despite a lingering concern for whatever had Tish freaking out, “That’s not what I’ve observed, Doctor.”

“That’s different,” he insisted.

“Lucky for you, you missed the real domestic rows back when mum and dad split up. Anyway, you owe my family… or rather you will and that’s the same thing I reckon.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I owe them?”

“Forget I said that,” she backtracked, regretting her words. The last thing the Doctor needed was to feel more guilt, more responsibility. She chanced a quick kiss she hoped was reassuring before heading back towards the main road

“So they’ve met me, then? The other me?”

It was a quick matter for his longer legs to catch up from the small head start she’d given herself.

“Yes,” she admitted, “They did.”

This was exactly the kind of thing she’d been hoping to avoid.

“Are you’re going to tell them I’m well...me?” he surprised her by enquiring.

Why was that the first question on his mind? Martha had to consider that he saw her as someone who hid things, as a general rule. She couldn’t really fault him for the suspicion, given how she’d handled meeting him after her time with the other him. Still, she didn’t want him to think that was who she was.

“Of course,” she sighed, “I know I’ve given you reason to doubt this, but I’m not generally a secretive person.”

“I understand why you were hesitant,” he offered, “But there’s no need for that reluctance now is there?”

Yet there was something he was picking up on: her reluctance to speak in more detail about everything that had happened with the Master and the Toclafane. How could she explain? She wasn’t aiming to protect herself by not elaborating on what had happened during the year that never was. It was the Doctor she was worried about wounding with the knowledge of how they had all suffered, of who had been behind it. It was enough that he had lived through it once, wasn’t it? He’d blame himself… again.

“Doctor, I trust you, completely,” she promised, sidestepping the entreaty.

Despite her protests, Martha was starting to feel that perhaps she truly had become the kind of person who kept secrets. Maybe it was inevitable, given what she knew now, everything she’d seen. Still, how would she like it… how had she liked it, travelling with a Doctor who kept information from her until long past when it would have been natural or useful.

“That year I lived, the one that haunts my dreams: the year that never was… My family was in the center of it and they remember. They remember everything the rest of the world doesn’t.”

There. One less mystery to be dragged out in the future. He’d find out that much soon enough, she supposed, and it was the relevant bit. After all, it wasn’t as if anyone went about sharing every random bit of history and information even to those closest to them. He certainly didn’t.

“I’m to blame for that then?” he asked, predictably centering all responsibility on himself.

“No,” she shook her head, pausing as they looped back around the back of a building to where they had stashed the TARDIS, “You know it’s right egotistical the way you assume that everything that goes wrong is your fault.”

“You’re the one who compared me to the sun,” he pointed out, reaching out for her hand and pulling her close, resting his chin on her head as he added, “It is your doing it it’s gone to my head.”

For a moment Martha just enjoyed the quiet moment of closeness, wrapping her arms around him and closing her eyes to better focus on the sensation.

“You know Tish might give you a hard time,” she warned, sighing and letting go of him at last.

“Your sister?” he ventured, “I take it she didn’t take kindly to my future negligence?”

“I mean she’s my sister,” Martha replied, “I don’t suppose you ever had one?”

“It’s complicated,” he responded vaguely, the way he always seemed to when she asked too much about anything related to Gallifrey and other Time Lords.

“I guess you’ll be prepared for my parents then. Last time I checked they still hadn’t made up their minds whether they were getting back together or never speaking again.”

“Are you sure I can’t interest you in doing absolutely anything other than this little family reunion?” the Doctor mostly joked.

How would she feel if her whole family was gone? Was it really any wonder that he didn’t want to be around someone else’s? What they’d become, it was something powerful and consoling, but there was something different about the people you’d grown up with, the people who knew every version of you from infancy and vice versa.

“Tish asked after you specifically, Doctor,” she resisted the urge to apologize. This wasn’t your typical meet the parents trip home, something she would not have asked of him.

“I thought you said she didn’t like me.”

“It’s… complicated,” she threw his own vague response back at him with a smile, before adding more seriously, “If she’s asking for you though, when she doesn’t even know I’m here with you, there must be a real reason… something outside the range of human expertise.”

“Oh. Some sort of crisis involving aliens then? The entire planet in danger or the like?” He perked right up. “Why didn’t you say so?”

Chuckling, Martha let herself be drawn under the Doctor’s arm and into the TARDIS. Moments like this were every bit as precious as heartfelt confessions. This was who he was. This was what they did.

The look that Martha’s sister cast his way was more curious than spiteful. He watched her visibly scrutinize his arm around Martha’s shoulder and then the rest of him.

“Doctor, this is my sister, Tish. Tish, you know the Doctor.”

“Apparently I really don’t,” Tish replied, something familiar in her inflection, nuanced enough to indicate surprise and amusement and confusion all at once.

“To make a long story short: Yes he’s the same person. Yes he looks different. Oh and he doesn’t know about anything that happened; because, he’s well… earlier in his timeline.”

That last bit was the part Tish seemed to respond to, going from casual interest to more.

“Wait so he doesn’t know about everything that happened with the Master and…”

The Doctor couldn’t be sure what Tish might have said after that because his entire being was preoccupied with that one word. The Master. It couldn’t be. He was gone, like the rest of them.

“The Master?” his stomach dropped, chest tightening around his hearts.

“Doctor I-” Martha’s regretful expression did nothing to settle his reaction.

She knew about the Master. They both did, as impossible as that was. She must have known this would matter to him. She couldn’t have encountered anything to do with the Master with his future self and not known. Typical. Secretive and stupid and dangerous and so stereotypically human.

Grabbing her arm, he pulled her from the posh trendy looking office and out into the hallway.

“Tell me,” he demanded. “If you care for me at all you’ll tell me exactly what she’s referring to. How do either of you even know that name?”

“You have to understand, I only wanted to save you from pain.”

The presumption. That this relative babe should feel entitled to decide what he did and did not need to know, what was best for him. The outrage overtook all his more tender and charitable understandings of Martha’s character.

“I’m not some child to be kept in the dark for my own protection. If the Master somehow escaped the fate of Gallifrey I should have been told. How could you, how could you be so stupid as to hide this from me?”

“Doctor,” Martha reached of for him but he turned away from her and out of her reach, “Listen. I need you to listen to me.”

Turning back to face her, his voice came out sharp and brittle.

“The Master. Tell me what happened.”

He watched her tremble at his wrath, at the hard edges he usually kept turned away from her, but she took a deep breath and tried anyway.

“Yes, he escaped the fate of Gallifrey. He had this device, a pocket watch that made him human for a time. I guess he used it to run from the Time War.”

“Of course he did. Coward.”

Anger seeped through him, though he was not sure whether it ought to be directed at the Master’s actions, Martha withholding secrets, or himself.

“We found him, at the end of time. Oh Doctor. He didn’t know who he was but then when the watch opened he became himself again. He regenerated and stole the TARDIS, brought the twisted remains of humanity back with him to wipe us all out, sustaining the impossibility by turning the TARDIS into a paradox machine.”

It was clearly hard for her to talk about. Even through his impatience, the Doctor remembered her earlier reaction to his mention of time paradoxes. This was it. She’d been talking around it since he first met her, making him coax the details out crumb by crumb. If only she’d simply explained this then. Then what? a more rational part of himself questioned. Would an hour’s difference in revelation have changed anything? A year’s?

“Why?” he asked, “What in the universe did he hope to accomplish with all that?”

“He wanted to punish you, Doctor. He did it because he knew how much you cared for Earth… for humanity. He did it to hurt you, to win. He set himself up as ruler over Earth, captured my family as bait and caught both of us and Jack. You sent me away, to travel the Earth while the rest of you stayed behind being enslaved and tortured for a whole year. He… he suspended your ability to regenerate, Doctor.”

All of it sounded too much like the Master, his old enemy, his old friend, for him to doubt Martha’s veracity or interpretation. Yet he knew now all too well that Martha’s kindness would always cause her to try to shield him. What wasn’t she saying even now? He could feel her hesitation, the impulse to withhold something more that there was to say.

A fruitless attempt to be kind. His own imagination jumped to the most horrific possibilities, hunting for newfound possible tragedies until was should have been most obvious finally occurred to him.

“So he won? He killed me.”

Could that be it? The unfinished business she’d clearly had with this future him, the grief, the protectiveness. It would all make sense if she’d watched him die for good. It was very difficult to end a Time Lord, but if the Master really had found a way to keep him from regenerating-

“No,” Martha exclaimed, grabbing his arms with both hands and looking directly into his eyes, though what she saw there seemed to wound her, “He lost. We beat him using the very psychic network he’d set up via satellites to control the population.”

The Master was out there somewhere. He was his burden and his inheritance. The Doctor broke free of Martha and paced away, conflicted and restless.

“Where is he? He’s my responsibility, my-”

What did this mean for him? The Master had been many different things to him over the centuries but what were they now that the rest of their people were gone?

“He… Oh Doctor. He’s dead now, really permanently dead.”

Martha’s words stopped him dead in his tracks.

“Impossible. No. How?”

“He did it to himself,” she insisted somberly, “You tried to save him but he refused; he chose to die rather than regenerate.”

Her quietness clashed with his mood, making him louder, more emphatic.

“No. It’s a trick, he’s uncanny at them. He woudn’t… he-”

“Stop.” Instead of shrinking away from his reaction, Martha seemed to have regained some of the surety which had momentarily been sacrificed to feelings of guilt. “I’m sorry, Doctor. He did. Think about it, about the pain you’ve suffered at the loss of Gallifrey, a pain you have had time to become accustomed to, a pain you know you did everything you could to prevent. He’s not you, Doctor. He wasn’t stable to begin with. You know that. You told me he went mad when he looked into the time vortex, a madness that no amount of time could soothe.”

The crazed look in the Master’s eyes, his constant tapping. People had accused the Doctor of restlessness, of nervous energy but underneath his pompous charm no one had ever been as unsteady as the Master.

“I just… he’s dead? I just hardly managed to wrap my mind around him having escaped and now to hear that despite that-”

“I know,” Martha looked as grieved as if it were her own loss, “I haven’t wanted to keep things from you, but this just seemed cruel to bring up when there’s nothing you can do.”

“So I wasn’t enough… He chose nothingness over me.”

“You are enough, for me, for Earth. The Master didn’t reject you because you weren’t enough… he just wanted to win one last time. He knew it would hurt you and that’s why he did it. He chose to spite you over saving himself. So don’t let him… don’t let him win by letting his selfishness destroy you.”

She clearly believed her words and in spite of himself the Doctor believed them too, though they brought him little comfort. He would rather have believed that he could have done something, than that he had once again been powerless… or rather that the only power he had lacked the ability to mend rather than end.

“He’s out there… he’s out there somewhere and I-”

All of time and space… knowing the Master had avoided being trapped on Gallifrey meant knowing he could be at their next destination, could be waiting or working his charm in any time or place. Martha had seen the Master die, who who knew where and when else he had travelled before that moment. Why did it have to be him? Why couldn’t it be anyone else to have survived? The two of them, damaged and flawed as they were, somehow the last of the Time Lords while all their betters were lost forever. The thought of an eternity with the Master and only the Master running loose consumed him.

“Look at me. Please Doctor… just try to believe me.”

He had worried her, scared her even. He had, in fact, validated all her reasons for not telling him about the Master’s return in the first place.

“It’s not a matter of belief, Martha.”

“What is it a matter of then, Doctor?”

How could he explain? How could she understand the vastness of this truth to him from her limited human frame of reference. Martha was insightful, empathetic, wise beyond her years, but she was still only human. That reminder cooled his boiling emotions enough to soften his tone and forced what was probably not a very convincing smile.

“Emotions. Wretched things sometimes don’t you think?”

“Please don’t hate me for being the bearer of bad news… again.”

Was this who he was becoming? A man who took his emotions out on those around him, who lashed out and didn’t consider the consequences. He refused to accept that. He refused to be such a person, especially to Martha, Martha who he’d promised not to hurt but just had behaved so callously towards. It was time to pull himself away from the precipice and back towards her.

He stepped closer, reaching out and taking her hands in his, clasping them together as he looked her in the eyes, forcing himself to face the way he’d made her feel.

“Hate you? I’m not your man for that. Not ever,” he promised, a vow to himself as much as to her, “Angry, disappointed, frustrated, impatient even… I have those faults in spades. I reject hatred though. And if I were weak enough to succumb to it, it certainly wouldn’t be towards you.”

“Maybe hatred is the wrong word, but I know that associations can taint our reactions to others. I’ve been the source of your upset, given you a reason to feel betrayed because I didn’t tell you sooner, whatever my reasons.”

She wasn’t convinced and he could not really blame her. He refused to accept the version of reality she suspected though. He was the Doctor and Martha Jones was more than the knowledge she inadvertently forced on him. She was the warmest brightest point in a world without Gallifrey. She was the moment he would be judged on, by himself if no one else.

“Oh I am frustrated, unsettled, restless. Every time I think I’ve managed to swallow the future you’ve already lived some new angle, new aspect comes to light. I wanted to lash out, but what you’ve given me is far more important than what it costs me to hear this. When I promised you to do better by you than the other me I meant it.”

If he wanted honesty he must be willing to give it, even when it was not convenient, even if it flattered neither of them. How could he ask for something he himself was incapable or unwilling of giving in return?

“I thought… Well it sounds ridiculous, but I thought if we could just focus on the present maybe we could avoid the pain of everything else. It’s been better, hasn’t it?”

He felt the lowering of her walls this required, the admission and the vulnerability of hope. He understood it, that same impulse that made him run from dying stars to historic moments of advancement, fires and supernovas and revelations. The thrill was an escape and he needed in the way people needed oxygen.

“Marvelous,” the Doctor agreed, “But you’re more than a holiday from everything I don’t want to think about, Martha Jones, and I’d hope the same applies in the other direction.”

She wasn’t just a novelty. It was easy to see how he might in the future selfishly forget that every person around him was more than whatever point of interest they might represent to him. Despite knowing he couldn’t change his own fate, he fought back against that impulse.

“Are you going to be alright with this Master business?” she asked, bringing the conversation back around to its initial point from philosophy, “Really?”

He would. It had caught him by surprise and he wasn’t sure how to feel about it ultimately, but life was more than self indulgent brooding… Thankfully.

“Got to be,” he assured her, “Whatever problem your sister’s found isn’t going to solve itself.”

He leaned towards her, placing one hand on her cheek and kissing her, feeling bolstered by her obvious relief and reciprocity.

“I didn’t mean to start you two on a domestic,” Tish didn’t exactly apologize, as the Doctor was busy checking round with his screwdriver for any sonic readings that might indicate some sort of extra terrestrial surveillance, “Although to be fair… you didn’t exactly warn me that was a possibility.”

“It’s hard to explain,” Martha couldn’t help smiling as she watched him, “It’s different. He’s different.”

“I’ll say. Only half the charm but exponentially more of some other things isn’t he?”

“You have no idea,” Martha couldn’t resist replying with satisfaction.

Yes, the Doctor had been angry and reactive today, but he’d been honest and upset as he was he hadn’t forgotten her or compared her to someone else. Besides, there was always the whispered promise for whenever they actually got back to the TARDIS, a suggestion so evocatively descriptive she was still finding herself replaying it almost an hour later.

“So you’re pretty sure this client is really working for some sort of outside interest?” the Doctor asked, stashing his screwdriver and coming to sit beside Martha on the office couch.

Martha couldn’t blame Tish for being a little alarmist, after Harold Saxon and Doctor Lazarus. Her sister had always had a knack for catching the eye of the extraordinary and the powerful, but all too often those people turned out to be more than that. She knew that’s why Tish had opened up her own public relations firm (a firm that was doing quite well if this new office space was any indication), to make sure she was never under the thumb of someone dangerous like that again.

Besides, it turned out that she was right about the alien influence in the current bent of certain election campaigns.

“Interstellar economics,” the Doctor rolled his eyes, hand clasped with hers as they headed away from another thrilling showdown, “They’re all a bunch of crackpots if you ask me.”

“We don’t have to go to dinner with the family, you know,” she offered, remembering his initial resistance to so much as meet them, “I could always tell my mum that we had to stop a star exploding or something.”

“And miss all the fun of whatever your parents big announcement is? Never. Unless you don’t want to be seen with me that is?”

Martha’s mother certainly narrowed her eyes when she saw Martha arrive with his unfamiliar form, but as soon as she discovered who he was, the Doctor was swept up into the mayhem of the family bustle.

“So he’s what, your boyfriend now?” her dad insisted on asking.

“It feels kind of funny calling him that,” she shrugged, “What with him being almost a thousand years old.”

“And you lot gave me all that grief about Annamarie being younger than me,” he muttered.

“We gave you grief about Annamarie because she was a gold digging airhead,” Martha shook her head.

“You know your mum could do with more frequent phone calls, even if you are traipsing through the galaxy being all heroic. She worries,” her father deflected.

Even now, he couldn’t say that he wanted her to call. Apparently even a year under the Master had limitations in how much it could soften his pride. She found she was grateful for that though.

“Your family,” the Doctor commented later as they walked back towards her flat, “They don’t look at me like I’m the bearer of ill tidings.”

“No. They look at you like you’re the man who saved them and everyone they’ve ever known or will know.”

“The truth is that I’ve been feeling a bit superfluous, without a home or people, watching the likes of you emerging from mankind ready to take on everything the universe has to offer.”

“If you’re grasping for compliments-”

“But your family… They believe in me. It’s different from the way you see me, but it makes me feel like myself again. After the Time War, it felt like maybe I couldn’t be what I was anymore… couldn’t be the Doctor, but I find that again, don’t I?”

“From what I’ve seen, you never stopped. Maybe you just lost sight of it, Doctor. It's an easy thing to do, losing perspective.”

“About that,” the Doctor grinned as she unlocked the front door and ushered him inside, “I think I figured out who that mystery man of yours back in Accra was.”

“Oh?”

Though she’d been interested in this topic earlier, Martha found she was much more invested in the feeling of the moment, the relative normalcy, comfort and investigation, the tension from earlier dissipated. Though she hadn’t arranged it with any such intention, she was relieved that spending time with her family had improved the Doctor’s outlook rather than setting him off into further brooding.

“Your grandfather… wasn’t actually your grandfather, and your gran’s betrothed was more than that.”

“You’re saying that my dad’s real dad…”

“Indeed. It was fairly simple to deduce once I looked a little closer at those family albums. Besides, that necklace your mum has it isn’t a betrothal style exactly.”

“Well, I wonder what she’d have to say if we confronted her.”

“Do you want to go find out now?”

She did want to find out. This piece of salacious gossip was one she couldn’t wait to confirm and share with her siblings. Yet, at the moment she had other things on her mind. After earlier, Martha was even more anxious than usual to reaffirm the intimacy, the physical connection between them.

“Maybe tomorrow,” she told him, “Right now I have some rather more important priorities in mind.”

“Oh really?”

“Like this,” she clarified, grabbing hold of the collar of his coat and pulling him into a deep kiss.

“Good priority,” he murmured,” hands moving to hold her hips.

“Between my family and not wanting to cause a scene back in 1950s Ghana with our interracial affection, I feel like I’ve had to keep my hands off you for so long.”

“Time is relative and I have the authority to declare conclusively that every hour that passes without being able to do this is exponentially longer,” the Doctor concurred, sliding both of his hands down the back of her jeans and squeezing her backside possessively.

“That sounds very scientifically accurate,” she agreed, moving her hands to push up the front of his shirt, palms spreading across his midsection.

“I took very precise measurements I’ll have you know,” the Doctor added, the words slightly muffled as they resumed kissing.

All hands moved to the undoing of trousers rather quickly, bodies breaking contact only long enough for pieces of clothing to be tossed aside. The feeling as they pressed back together, warm skin contact shedding a shiver of thrill through her, made her feel almost lightheaded.

Stumbling backwards towards the bedroom, Martha divided her attention between not tripping and stroking the Doctor rather erratically. His hands traced her body almost frantically, both of them more filled with urgency than any impulse towards finesse.

“From the day I met you, you made me feel more alive, clearer my head of the fog of loss I’d been stumbling in.”

She tumbled back onto the bed, lifting her hips to let the Doctor drag off the last of her clothing while still trying to tug on his at the same time

“Being with you,” Martha gasped as he dropped to his knees and, taking her thighs in his hands, move his head between them and dragged his tongue upwards to her clit, “It’s like I have gotten back a part of myself I thought I’d sacrificed forever.”

“For you,” he murmured, placing kisses against the inside of each of her thighs, before gripping them more tightly and going back to lap at her opening, “Domestic isn’t so unmanageable.”

Martha let out a moan as he moved back to her clit, flicking his tongue back and forth against it, gripping the covers with both hands as her body quaked.

“Doctor.” Her voice trembled, “I’m so glad I gave you another chance. That I took the risk-”

Using her arms to push herself into a sitting position, Martha slid off the bed and down onto the floor with the Doctor, his hands still gripping her legs as they straddled him.

“Martha…” he groaned, as they came together, her fingers digging into his shoulders.

It wasn’t the most drawn out or creative encounter they had engaged in. Martha’s thighs quickly began to burn from the angle and the floor was rough against her knees and thighs, but that didn’t matter when compared to the feeling of him within her and against her.

They thrust together, short direct shuddering movements, gasping and moaning with no aim towards something other than fulfillment. He shifted his grip, adjusting their angle just slightly and she clung to him, shaking as she came ever closer and then collapsed against his shoulder unable to do much more than receive as he pushed past the point of her release and towards his own.

For a moment they stayed there, clinging to one another as they waited for their breathing to recover and the shaking to recede. The he guided her face back up to meet his.

The Doctor kissed her, slow and deliberate, ignoring their combined moisture seeping from her with the relaxation of their bodies.

“Martha,” he said, “Brilliant beautiful Martha Jones. My dear Martha. My savior.”

“I’m right here, Doctor,” she almost giggled, flush with endorphins and drinking in the moment.

“Your mum cornered me tonight, asked me just what I intended towards you.”

“Of course he did,” Martha felt her face heat, embarrassed to imagine the scene, “I didn’t put her up to it if that’s what you-”

“Shush,” he urged softly, “Let me tell you what I told her, and then realized I hadn't told you.”

She let go of his shoulders and moved her hands to his face.

“You don’t have to-”

“My intentions are to stay with you, to explore with you, to value you, to love you for as long as you let me.”

“Why would I ever let you go?”

“Martha…” he paused, “That was meant to be a declaration that I’m in love with you. I realize I’d never actually bloody said it.”

“Oh,” she wasn’t surprised exactly, but still the warmth of the promise enveloped her, confirming what she’d only hoped before, “Good.”

“Good? That’s all you have to say to my heartfelt confession? Good!”

He seemed taken aback and Martha realized that her overwhelmed lack of eloquence had hurt his feelings.

“Better than. Clearly. How am I to respond now when I already went told you I loved you right off. But then you see, I thought I loved you before, but now that we are actually together it’s clear that I had no idea what I was talking about; because, I am so much more in love with you than I thought was possible.”

“More than him? The other me?”

It always took her aback when the Doctor betrayed a feeling as small and human as this kind of insecure jealousy.”

“Of course. There’s not even any comparison.”

There wasn’t. What was longing compared to fulfillment? What was fantasy compared to reality? What were scraps compared to the whole?

When they finally did make it back to investigate her family history in Ghana, Martha found herself wondering whether it was possible that her grandmother had found real love twice, and if not, which time was it that was a false positive.

Chapter Text

Bathing in the herbal hot springs on Beta Twelve was relaxing, as Martha stretched her naked body out against the stone bench lining the pool. They had the entire place to themselves, thanks to the grateful caretakers who appreciated the relocation of parasites that had been infecting the water when they arrived. Her muscles were sore from the chase through ancient Egyptian markets the day before and an earlier crawl through spaceship air vents that morning. Martha craned her neck to the side, trying to loosen a tight ligament.

“Let me,” the Doctor said, pressing his strong fingers against the knot of muscle as he climbed in behind her. She relaxed against him, as he kneaded with powerful but gentle precision. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the moment, the gentle caress of the water all around her body and the firmer touch of the Doctor’s hands.

Adventures with the Doctor had always been exhilarating, but adventures with the Doctor punctuated by enthusiastic bedroom exploits and without being left behind and forgotten, were on a different level altogether. Martha reckoned it had been a few years, as the TARDIS travels, but she was nowhere near even beginning to feel sick of it.

“ You are getting amazing at this,” Martha complimented, melting further against his body with her own.

“I reckon it’s my jiggery pokery skills that translate so well,” he replied with a soft kiss at the base of her neck.

“Mmmmhmmmm...” Martha murmured, circling her hips subtly, but enough to get the attention of her already naked companion. She could feel his reaction against her backside and enjoyed teasing him a little, not least of all because sometimes when he was worked up there was a dangerous seeming aggressive edge to him. It wasn’t that she didn’t like him like this, sweet and full of care, but there was just something about the demanding neediness they could both get lost in, the feeling that only they mattered in the universe.

Kissing her shoulders and back, he moved his hands around to the front of her body, cupping her breasts possessively, pulse speeding up and just an edge of predatory instinct kicking in. Martha leaned her head back, captured his lips with her own, and then used the edge of the pool to slide her body up enough to change the angle so that he slid into her when she pushed back down.

“I thought I was helping you relax those sore muscles after a hard day,” the Doctor said with a smile she could hear.

“You are,” she replied, gripping the edge of the bench with her hands to get better leverage against the water’s resistance.

He reached down to place a thumb over her clit and let her rub herself against it, just as she was sliding herself up and down his length, pausing and circling and then picking up the pace. Leaning her body back a little, Martha’s movements were leisurely and fluid. Her breasts floated at the edge of the water and all around her water provided friction and intensified each movement. With each movement, she could hear the hitch in his breath, intensified against her ear.

It was nice to be this aware of each other’s bodies and preferences. Martha knew that part of him wanted to take control, to lay ownership over her body and her pleasure, but he would let her set the terms of their lovemaking anyway. Lovemaking… Martha had never had the time or inclination for a long term boyfriend before she met the Doctor, and after... well it hadn’t been so easy to move on. She’d never made love instead of simply having sex. Things were different now. Even times when they were fucking, when it was rough and primal and she was being overwhelmed by the intensity, the way he looked at her, the way he said her name… Martha didn’t know how she could ever go back.

Martha closed her eyes, focusing directly on the sensation, only to be interrupted by the ring of her phone.

“Ignore it,” the Doctor told her, holding her tight against him.

She tried but when it went to voicemail only to ring again, she couldn’t ignore that it was Jack’s ringtone any more.

Dammit, Jack. This had better be important.

Regretfully separating herself from the Doctor, Martha stepped out of the pool and walked over to retrieve her phone.

“I would tell you about what you were interrupting if I didn’t think you’d enjoy it way too much.”

“Please do.” Martha could hear the smirk on Jack’s face. “Nothing is too urgent for you to be extremely detailed on that topic.”

“So it is urgent? What century are you in?”

“The 23rd, Cardiff.”

“And what is your problem which requires assistance from the great and powerful Oz?”

“Memory loss. Something is sucking people’s memories from them.”

“Brilliant,” Martha replied with an impending sense of dread.

All the comfort and leisure she’d been able to relax into seemed to drain from her. A moment ago the idea of losing what she had with the Doctor had seemed a far off almost impossibility, but the mention of memory loss brought it right back up to the surface. What if she’d run out time? Part of her wanted to tell Jack they couldn’t help. Part of her wanted to tell him why.

She couldn’t though. Jack wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t important. She knew this day was coming and maybe this wasn’t how the Doctor forgot her, maybe their life together was going to last a little longer, or maybe trying to avoid its end she was going to cause it.

“Everything okay, Martha?” Jack asked and she realized she had been quiet for too long.

“Of course. I’ll tell him and we will see you soon.”

“Always our shining star. Thanks, Martha.”

Martha hung up the phone and turned back to face the Doctor.

“Jack needs us,” she sighed.

“23rd Century Cardiff will wait,” he replied, “Come back into the water and let’s finish our bath before we go back to running through space and time.”

She could have argued but that feeling that their time was running short stayed with her and Martha allowed herself to be coaxed back into the water and into his embrace. An hour undone by time travel wouldn’t matter, she rationalized to herself.

Martha’s kisses were fierce, more so than they had been before, when she returned and this time faced him. the Doctor noticed but did not comment on this abrupt transition from playful and sensuous to fervent. Instead he held her close, matching her intensity with his own. There was nothing of their earlier playfulness left. Their eyes met, as Martha wrapped herself back around him, and there was such despair in hers that it was contagious. He reached on hand up to her face, cradling it as he brought his lips to hers. She clung to him as if this was the first time and she was afraid he might change his mind.

“I love you,” he whispered into her ear, as she worked herself up and down him: slow, intense, and deliberate.

Mouth closing over his once more, Martha clutched his body tightly, fingers digging into his skin as she continued to push through her shaking body trembling through first one and then another orgasm. Despite the obvious pleasure, there was a desperation to it that seemed in no way to be abating. As she quivered past a third, the Doctor stood up, keeping his hands wrapped around Martha’s waist so that they moved together as he walked them against the wall, pressing Martha between him and it, one of his hands moving up to find one of her swollen and sensitive nipples, head swooping down to capture the other with his mouth. If there was one thing that pushed Martha past any wall, it was multiple sources of stimulation after she’d already climaxed.

True to form, the relentless way that the Doctor was rubbing, sucking, and licking such sensitive flesh while driving into her hand and deep had Martha screaming his name between incoherent and increasingly loud moans as her climaxes seemed to melt into one another, like increasing waves cresting upon one another, until finally she collapsed limp against him.

Pulse slowing abating towards normal, Martha looked away, suddenly avoiding his eyes. It reminded him of the early days in their travels, when she was hoarding secrets and pain.

“Are you going to tell me what that was about?” he asked. “Not that I am complaining.”

“I love you too,” Martha replied, ignoring his question completely.

“You would tell me, wouldn’t you? If there was something I could do…” He drew her face up to meet his, “No more secrets right?”

“It’s nothing I haven’t said before,” she whispered and he thought he knew what she meant. He wasn’t sure why Jack calling had pressed on those old wounds, but just thinking about the fact that they existed made him feel rotten.

He could not deny the truth of Martha’s knowledge that he would lose his memory of her at some point, as much as he wanted to defy it. Still, he had thought, well he thought he’d convinced her that there was no reason to believe it would be soon, no reason to believe it would be during her life. The Doctor who forgot her might be hundreds or even thousands of years from now. Yet Martha clearly still feared that day was coming, now or soon. It worried him. It worried him because the thought hurt her, but it also worried him because what if she was right one of these days? He didn’t want to lose her, to lose all these wonderful times they’d had together and all the ways she’d helped him heal and regroup after the loss of the Time War and Gallifrey.

“Then allow me to repeat myself as well,” he told her, turning her face back towards his as he resumed moving, grinding into her more slowly now but no less intently, “I would watch planets burn for you. I would move heavens and earth for you. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know,” she murmured, shuddering against him, “The universe can be cruel but you wouldn’t let it take me without a fight.”

“I’m good in a fight,” he promised, breathing uneven and control slipping.

“You are good in an uncountable number of ways,” she sighed, dragging her nails lightly down his back, “So good.”

Her words and sensations, the bite of her nails and the warmth of her around and against him and the water all around them, all of it combined to drive him forward, gasping and grunting and letting go at last.

The cool Cardiff evening was a change from the steamy pools they had left, but the Doctor was more concerned with Martha’s mood. Despite his assurances and the endorphins she seemed on edge. He might not have noticed it had it been someone else, but after travelling with Martha and sharing the intimacy they’d had for a while he did. He also knew that she would shake it off, but in her own time. He held onto her possessively as they walked to meet Jack, whose knowing smiles the Doctor felt more prepared for this time.

Sam had grown a good foot and the Doctor was struck by how much older he looked, though Jack remained exactly the same. Jack was talking to a scrawny looking man wearing trainers with a suit and a trench coat . The man’s hair looked like a ridiculous bird’s feathers and Jack was looking at him with an intense longing. The expression looked familiar though it was taking him a moment to realize why when he suddenly felt Martha tense up against him.

“Doctor-” Martha swallowed and suddenly the Doctor knew she wasn’t talking to him.

This was him. This man was the version of him who broke Martha’s heart. He gripped her more protectively than ever. He had never wanted to punch himself in the face so incredibly much.

“Martha.” Idiot Hair smiled and held out his arms as if expecting an embrace. What was next? A cookie for a job well done? He really has no idea how badly he wounded her, the Doctor thought to himself. Then his other self noticed the Doctor standing there and a look of surprise took over his face, “I don’t remember meeting me like this.”

Jack looked… uncomfortable, which was a look the Doctor had not seen on him before, and which he very well deserved for putting them, especially Martha, in this situation with his rash carelessness. At least one of the two of them seemed to realize their fault.

“Sorry everyone,” Jack interrupted the tense silence, “I guess my call to the TARDIS went through after all. He showed up right after I called you, Martha. Doctor, meet yourself,” he added, looking the Doctor’s way, and back to Idiot Hair, “And I presume you recognize yourself.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” Idiot Hair grinned, “But Martha, I don’t remember you showing up in that part of my timeline either. Odd that.”

“Seems like there is a lot odd about you, hair boy.” It just slipped out.

“Well, Ears-”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen-” Jack interrupted, with an over-exaggerated wink, “We can all worry about the continuity problems later. For now, I am happy to have you all here. This one is a doozy.”

Cockatoo suddenly seemed to notice the way the Doctor’s arm was wrapped possessively around Martha and it seemed to wipe the grin right off his face. It was hard to think of this preening creature as himself. the Doctor looked down at Martha, concerned about how she was going to react. Would she set him aside for... him? Martha’s face was stony, withdrawn and silent, but she kept her grip on the Doctor’s arm. He leaned down to kiss her reassuringly and watched Showboat’s eyes widen.

“Are you alright?” he asked, brushing his lips against Martha’s ear in a whisper.

She nodded, tight-lipped but leaning into his embrace.

“Hey there, lovebirds. Sorry to interrupt but I have some medical stuff I need Martha’s help with. Why don’t you two just sit back and get used to ...yourselves?”

Martha squeezed his hand before releasing it. She pulled him down for an affirming kiss and walked out with Jack.

“So… You and Martha.”

“Clearly,” he replied, “She’s fantastic.”

“Yes. Brilliant. I just can’t sort out how-”

“Sort it out? You would be better off trying to sort out what is wrong with you that you could have the chance… That you could have the chance… and what you did to her….well, it’s just…unimaginable.”

He fought the urge to pace, determined to stand his ground. Instead he channeled his aggravation into a fixed stare at what his whole being refused to accept as his counterpart, wishing him to wither under it.

“What I did to her?” This buffoon had the nerve to act indignant. “She was MY companion first! I offered her the UNIVERSE! It’s NOT MY FAULT THAT SHE-”

That was when the Doctor forgot that he was tired of violence.

He’d only meant to punch Shouty once in the face but it was as if he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to erase who he was destined to become apparently: cocky, preening, blind to the effect he was having on others. After he’d had to make the choice… had to sacrifice Gallifrey, the Doctor thought he couldn’t hate himself any more… that there was nowhere to go but up. Looking at the face beneath his fists he couldn’t decide which version of himself he hated more. Other races never got to see it this way, never got to have their inner conflict externalized into a different body. Instead of liberating, it just felt hopeless.

“Doctor!” Martha came running in to try and pry him off his future face, which was now gushing blood.

“Personally, I would have just stood back and watched,” Jack commented, handing him a towel.

“Doctor, you do realize this is your face,” Martha reminded him, placing her hand against his cheek.

“That’s the point,” he told her.

Chapter Text

“What happened?” she asked the version of the Doctor who she had once wished for so desperately, as she cleaned off his face, identifying which cuts were going to require stitches. The damage was not insignificant.

Truly, she’d never seen her Doctor react so violently as he had just now, pummeling his own future face with a complete lack of restraint until she intervened. He got angry sometimes, but that kind of physical row… that was something he held back from. What could this Doctor have possibly done in the few short moments that she and Jack had been in the other room, to possibly provoke such fury?

“I could ask you the same thing,” he responded without giving her a real answer, wincing as she cleaned some of the abrasions with alcohol.

She sighed, “Is it that hard for you to imagine? I mean I know you never…”

She didn’t finish the sentence. It didn’t need to be said, not again, not when it didn’t matter anymore.

“It rather not answer that. The last time someone asked me about this it ended up in blood pouring out of my nose.”

“So it was about me?” Martha asked, ashamed at how much it cheered her up to think that HER Doctor had punched his own future over her.

“Is that surprising?”

“With you… after you…” she turned away and searched out another butterfly bandage.

“It was that bad?”

“It isn’t a question of how bad it was. It is just that with you… it was never about me.”

The Doctor shut up for once, evidently without a response to that truth, and let her anesthetize and stitch up his face. It was surreal, being close to him again but without the choking feeling of hopelessness. He was still attractive but it was like it was muffled somehow, less dangerous. She supposed this is what her non-single friends had been trying to tell her about how when you are in a happy relationship you still find other people attractive but it doesn’t really matter the same way; it doesn’t have the same weight.

Her Doctor burst in, fidgety but seeming relieved, like he had half expected to come in to the two of them making out. A smile spread across Martha’s face from the warmth she felt in the way he looked at her.

“Let me see those knuckles…” She crossed over to him and took his hands in hers. “Are you feeling calmer?”

He leaned down and kissed her. “I am now,” he promised as his lips left hers, planting another kiss afterward.

“Good. I need the two of you to go look for any alien plant life near any of victims’ homes or places of work, while I analyze this blood work. Can you do that?”

“Fine,” he huffed with exaggerated sarcasm, rolling his eyes, “ As long as you promise not to wander off, or get abducted, or-”

“I’ll be fine,” she insisted, “Play nice?”

“Trenchcoat here and I will be the model of teamwork,” he promised, still a little dramatically, but more or less soundly like he meant it.

“Good,” she smiled, wrapping her arms about his neck and letting her body press against his.

He picked her up, clasping his hands around her waist, and spun her around, kissing her enthusiastically. It was impossible not to feel at least a little bit giddy in his arms this way. She watched him go with a smile and a sense of security and fulfillment, ignoring the other Doctor’s facial reactions as he’d watched them. She was aware she was still grinning like a lovestruck teenager when she turned around and found Jack staring bemusedly at her.

“Don’t start,” she told him, heading back over to the microscope she had been peering into before chaos had broken out.

“I didn’t say anything,” Jack smirked, “No really. It is just good to see you so happy. Even if I am jealous…”

“I am sure it will be your turn soon.”

“It’s never my turn,” Jack echoed.

“What’s never your turn, Jack?” a third voice asked, and they both turned around to face a bow-tied and floppy haired man with that signature glimmer in his eyes.

Surely it couldn’t be… And yet somehow Martha felt it was. Seriously was it possible that there were three of them here? This was too weird.

“Doctor?” Martha hazarded, making the cognitive leap regarding his identity.

“Martha. Martha Jones!” this newcomer exclaimed, confirming his identity as he rushed toward her and gave her lopsided hug, “It is you. Oh, Martha, brilliant, beautiful, Martha Jones.” He paused his face going from joyous to serious and plaintive. “Forgive me, Martha. Forgive me… for everything.”

Martha felt like she had the wind knocked out of her, “Forgive you?” she asked.

“I was a right idiot, a proper fool…” he began. “Standing here now I can hardly believe my own memory, but there it is.”

“I do appreciate the apology, but really it is alright.”

“It is anything but… but you, you seem different,” he said, eyes scanning her over thoroughly as his outstretched hands held her shoulders.

“That makes two of us,” Martha pointed out, “Did Jack really summon you too?”

“He did indeed,” this Doctor replied, dropping his hands from Martha and abandoning his surveyal of her face to move over towards Jack, “Good to see you, Jack.”

The Doctor extended his hand out, clearly intending to shake Jack’s, only to have Jack pull him into an embrace, kissing both his cheeks and then his mouth as the Doctor’s hands remained limply trapped at his sides.

“The pleasure is all mine, Doctor. Love the bow tie.”

“Umm.. thanks,” the Doctor stayed standing in the same place as Jack released him, looking a little wide eyed,” So what untold mystery do you have for us requiring both Martha and my expertise?

“We have a string of people with memory loss,” Jack chuckled. “Oh and more than one version of you… You three times over. Guess it’s my lucky day.”

“Three of me? My that’s a lot of me. I mean one of me is more than can really be considered a fair share, but three…” this Doctor rambled on, boastful and self effacing all in the same breath.

It was strange, she had immediately recognized this Doctor as the Doctor and yet it felt so different. She contemplated the issue as she sat back down to examine the samples Jack had acquired. She felt a fondness for this new Doctor but none of the passion for him that she had for his predecessors. She supposed that this was what the Doctor felt when they travelled together that first time. No, she thought, This Doctor is still important to me, even if I don’t have a burning desire to feel his body against mine.

Standing up at this moment, it was as if the universe had read her mind as she nearly collided with that same Doctor who was walking over to Jack’s computer display, their faces ending up inches apart.

“My apologies, Miss Jones,” he overdramatized, reaching out and picking up her hand and kissing it. It was an odd gesture.

“You have got to stop apologizing,” she shook her head, amused at this model’s mannerisms, “And it’s Doctor Jones now, remember.”

“Of course,” he frittered almost nervously, “Doctor Jones. Brilliant Doctor Martha Jones.”

“You can still call me, Martha,” she reassured him with a laugh, “Even if I’m still getting used to the sight of you as… well you.”

“You know, you could have called anytime,” he told her, “There’s a reason I left you with a TARDIS key.”

“Yeah. Probably because you forgot about it,” she teased, but he seemed to take it a bit more seriously than she intended.

“I’m being serious, Martha. You’d love the new TARDIS layout. And well seeing you right now, being who I am right now… Things could be different- would be different if you came back.”

She was a bit taken aback. Yes, like all of them, she recognized he didn’t want to be alone. It didn’t have to be her, though. She’d known that the first trip out, that first Doctor had made it so clear. Yet this one wanted her to come back.

“I appreciate the offer, really. It’s good to see you… meet this you. That time has passed though, for me.”

This Doctor’s apology had been one thing, something she chalked up to time and a difference in manners rather than a change of heart. Now, she felt more there under the renewed invitation. She wondered what she would have made of this had she met him earlier, had she not met her Doctor. She supposed it didn’t matter.

“It really would be different, Martha. I mean it,” he told her, seeming to misinterpret her reluctance as fear of opening old wounds, “This version of me, seeing you now I truly feel-”

“Ahh… but that’s just the thing,” she cut him off before he could get any further, “I don’t.”

Part of Martha felt like laughing but she didn’t. It was absurd yes, but not funny.

“You really have changed,” he said, trying unsuccessfully to conceal wounded pride. “I take it you’ve moved on then? Like you wanted that friend of yours to do.”

“Yes. No. I mean, it’s just different,” she responded, stepping back a few inches. How could she explain to this Doctor.

“Right. Good. Very good then,” he blathered, looking a bit saddened, “of course that’s the way it would work.”

“I’m sorry,” she told him, feeling pity for his situation.

“Probably serves me right,” he countered, “I never did manage to do right by you, Martha. You were a marvel of a companion: brilliant, kind, determined… and I was always so preoccupied with other things.”

It was at this moment that the other two Doctors returned and all chaos broke loose.

Trenchcoat and his ridiculous hair had been one thing but returning to find Bow Tie had joined the party made this whole situation absurd.

The Doctor had brought back a sample of an alien slug he and Trenchcoat were pretty sure was the source of the amnesia, only to find that Bowtie was making moves on Martha.

The Doctor’s hearts were in his throat. He knew that Martha worried about the future, about how his future self wasn’t going to remember her, about how much future they had left. Bow Tie, on the other hand, he was a future version of himself, his storyline was open ended to Martha. He could honor her memory long after she was gone. It stood to reason that she might leave him for the better offer. He couldn’t blame her.

Still, she turned away from Bow Tie who looked a bit deflated, and when she saw him her eyes lit up in a way that made his hearts beat faster.

He reached for her, drawing her close. Despite himself he couldn’t seem to stop worrying about something happening to her. To lose her would wreck him. He was aware of everyone’s eyes on him, but she was the only one he wanted to look at.

“Do you remember that?” Bow Tie mouthed rather loudly to Trenchcoat, gesturing towards them, “Because I definitely do not.”

The next thing he knew the alarms in Jack’s lab started going off, piercing sirens warning of imminent doom.

“I’m not sure what’s making it go off like this.” Jack looked generally confused as he searched the displays for an answer.

“I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that it is three Doctors in one place and time,” Martha suggested, walking over to join Jack at the control panel.

No one seemed to have a counter to that idea. The Doctor certainly didn’t; he’d learned a while back that Martha was usually right and this made sense.

“Why did you summon all of us here, Jack?” Bow Tie asked, curious with an edge of suspicion.

“Too much power of positive thinking, Jack? Were you practicing ‘The Secret’ again?” Martha smirked.

“While that is an inspired idea,” Jack replied, “it was an accident...honest. I was just trying to get one of you, but I guess I must have accidentally sent the message out to multiple points in your timeline.”

Martha had sat down at the computer and was calling up different command queries furiously. The Doctor had learned that in addition to medicine, psychology, child care, and humanitarian work, computers- technology was another of Martha’s strong points. He had yet to find any weak ones… well, except maybe for a couple of moves that were pretty effective for making her weak in the knees.

“Fuck! No. No, this ISN’T happening…”

He was at her side before he realized he was moving. The look of horror on her face filled him with dread as well.

“This is it,” she whispered, “The paradox… all of you being here at the same time. You don’t remember it; because, that’s what alters your memory.”

Her words sent a chill to his bones. He scanned her computations, wishing that just this once they were going to be wrong. They had to be wrong.

“She’s right,” Bowtie concurred, “Martha, I’m…”

“Don’t tell me you are sorry. Don’t you dare,” Martha snapped, pushing away from them all, tears in her eyes.

“It doesn’t matter,” he tried to tell her, reaching out and wrapping his arms back around her, “This paradox is just this afternoon.”

Surely that stood to reason. Why should such an event ripple back years after such a short moment of paradox? Yet some part of him couldn’t forget the way that both future versions of himself had forgotten his time with Martha. There was no denying now that she was right that he was going to forget being with her someday.

“And what if it is not?” she cried, turning her face away, “What if this is when you forget, why you don’t remember?”

The thought terrified him. It had been so hard to come back to himself, without Martha he wasn’t sure he ever would have. Was this the reason he was so callous in his future, because he didn’t have the memory of Martha Jones bringing him back from the brink? Surely, even if he lost his memories, he could discover her again, fall in love with all of her charms fresh.

“Then you make me remember,” he insisted, turning her face back towards his with his hand on her face, till their eyes met, “If I forget, you make me remember. Martha, listen. I need you. Without you… Look, I wasn’t okay. When you met me I was not alright and if I forget, if I forget you and us I am going right back there… to the days after the war.”

She shook her head, trembling.

“I wish I could. Oh, Doctor, you have no idea. I’m not the one who helps put you back together though. I’m not that girl. It’s her… It’s Rose.”

Martha’s words had a feeling of prophecy, a hard metal reverberance of an Oracle foretelling the fall of a kingdom.

“Rose?” he asked, hoping to stall her by asking for an explanation.

She didn’t take the bait though, merely sighing, “I don’t get to keep you. I am pretty sure that no one does.”

Martha’s tears were running down her face now as she kissed him. He held on to her, trying to fight the panic that was bleeding over from her to him.

She pulled away, grabbing his hand and dragging him out to the TARDIS.

“When you get inside, Doctor… this first trip is going to do the trick. The minute you leave this time and place you are going to forget.”

“Then I won’t go. Simple enough,” he told her, and he meant it even though he knew it is ridiculous, even though he had done the calculations by then and she was right.

It truly wasn’t just this afternoon he would lose, as the earlier point in his personal timeline he would be impacted exponentially compared to the others. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right… he had to be able to come up with a solution or what good was that massive brain of his anyway.

Martha stepped inside the TARDIS and he had no choice but to follow her. His arms wrapped around her, picking her up and placing her on the console as he kissed her deeply.

“I love you, Martha Jones,” he murmured against her lips, a reassurance and a plea. Don’t leave me. Don’t let me lose you.

She hands moved to the front of his trousers and started to work them open as she kissed him hard. He followed her lead, unfastening her jeans. He thought to sink down onto the floor and use his mouth on her, persuade her to change her mind, but she grabbed hold of him and pulled him against her needily, pressing against him with clear intentions.

“Doctor-” she almost cried as he slid into her, hands grasping his back hard as she pressed forward into him frantically, lips crushing his. This wasn’t going to be sweet lingering lovemaking. It was rough and fast and desperate and before he knew it she was screaming his name and he hers, as they finished together.

He tried to hold her close, but she pushed him away, pulling her clothing back into place and ducking out of his arms as she punched commands into the TARDIS controls.

“Martha-” he begged, grabbing her arm and turning her to face him.

He could see the tension, feel it, knew that she was using every ounce of her not inconsiderable willpower to push through this goodbye. That was Martha, determined to be strong, knowing the limits of her endurance. She was making this quick because she knew it was the only way she could face it without wavering. She wanted to be strong for them both, not to break.

“Don’t make this harder,” she choked out. “I’m setting the course for London: 2005. That’s where you are going. That’s where she is.”

The word “she” in that sentence was hard and bitter, just as the name she had uttered earlier had been. He began to put the pieces together, surmise who this Rose must be to his future, in her past. He wanted to protest. He wanted to refuse. Whoever this person was, she couldn’t replace Martha. He didn’t want her to.

“Martha…” he didn’t know what to say. He wanted to tell her he was sorry but he was pretty sure that would be the worst thing. He hoped that they were both wrong, that he’d get to London and remember to head right back to her.

She kissed him again: fierce and determined. When they pulled apart she had shred some of the bitterness she’d been battling. Her eyes shone and her voice rang true as she told him, “I love you. I always have and I always will. Thank you for this; this time with you has meant everything.”

As the TARDIS started to creak and groan, Martha slipped out of the door, leaving him behind.

Wait! The Doctor thought, but it was too late.

Martha leaned against the side of the building, gasping for air as she held back the sobs that threatened to overtake her. The TARDIS winked out of sight and she forced herself to turn away, not to wait pointlessly. Despite his protests, the Doctor wouldn’t be able to stop the memory loss. He wasn’t coming back.

With grim determination she walked in the other direction, back to Jack and the wrong Doctor… Doctors. Each step was painful, difficult, as if she were climbing Mount Everest. They got easier though, as she rounded the corner and headed inside. The worst is over, she told herself.

She’d survived The Master, the destruction of Earth as she knew it. She’d survived catastrophe after catastrophe. Martha Jones was going to survive The Doctor having his memory erased. She was going to survive like countless widows whose husbands were never coming home. It was a small tragedy, really: private and mundane.

She heard a second TARDIS departing and knew which Doctor it would be. He wouldn’t want to stay, wouldn’t want to face her.

When she found them, Jack and this new Doctor were standing a little too close not to notice and she felt terrible for interrupting. How would she have felt if someone had done that to her when she finally found her moment? So she stood at watched them for a moment, noticing the differences. He was definitely the Doctor alright, but as different from the two others she had known as they were from each other.

It took them awhile to realize she was there.

“I hate to ask but… I’m going to need a ride back to the 21st Century,” she apologized.

“It’s the least I can do,” he told her, his eyes sad and older than his face.

“Martha-” Jack started.

“I’m fine. Or at least I will be. Look, I got everything, everything that I didn’t think I was going to. How many of us can say that? Now I am just going to have to find something new to want. That’s what happens,” she added, realizing her words were true as she spoke them. “That’s what happens when your dreams come true.”

She realized suddenly that it didn’t matter that the Doctor wasn’t going to remember her. She would: one advantage of being human. She’d remember their adventures and the way they’d clung to one another. She’d remember the joy of rediscovering themselves with one another. She’d remember the way he never forgot who she was or why she mattered, even if the space-time continuum was going to unwrite it.

“Are you sure I can’t interest you in a little trip somewhere exciting?” this Doctor asked, cautiously optimistic, “You too, Jack.”

Martha found herself smiling. She had work to do back home, but she wasn’t quite ready to come back down to Earth… so to speak.

“Well, I did have a couple more destinations on my bucket list,” she agreed.

“Count me in,” Jack grinned, grabbing his coat.

“I suppose one advantage of being a later version of yourself is that you don’t have to worry so much about spoiling your timeline,” Martha teased, at ease with this new Doctor.

“So… where to?”

“Not New Earth,” Jack and Martha chimed in simultaneously.

I am going to be fine. She repeated to herself. She was really definitely almost beginning to believe that.