prompt response: oncoming_storms 145.1(b) - losing
The Doctor lies prone on the floor of the TARDIS, and the other Doctor gazes down at him. Martha wants to ask what it's like to be in the same room as yourself, but decides it's better not to. She doesn't know this Doctor, with his young, worried face and his cold eyes, and she's not sure she ever will. She's not sure she wants to.
She crouches down next to the Doctor - not hers originally, but he's become hers, over the course of months, as surely as she's become his - and trails her fingers down his cheek. Martha knows why the other Doctor's here, of course. Her relationship has been a ticking time bomb since the beginning; she can either choose to leave now or rip a hole in the fabric of time and space. She's not young and foolish anymore, if she ever had been in the first place, and she knows it's really no choice at all. But leaving him is still the hardest thing she's ever done.
"I'm sorry, Martha," the other Doctor says quietly, and it's weird, his voice is too high and the timbre is different and he's just not the Doctor to her. She hunches in on herself, wiping away a teardrop that's fallen onto the worn leather, letting her fingers come to rest on his sternum. She can feel his pulses, steady and reassuring even now, and she feels a desperate urge to gather him up in her arms once more and press herself close to him. She wants their own little universe back, the one where they're together and happy and nothing else matters because they're gallivanting through time and space. She wants to keep going to mad alien carnivals and remote, uninhabited planets and everywhere else in between.
The timelines that once flexed to allow them to meet are converging on one of those fixed points, though, the sort that can't be altered. The Doctor has to meet Rose, because if he doesn't, then he can't regenerate and ultimately meet Martha for the first time, which makes their second meeting (and third, and fourth, and so on) impossible. (She's tried to work all the twists and tangles and might-have-beens out for herself, but it all ends up in one great Gordian knot that can only be solved by leaving.)
"You remember eventually, though," she says without looking up. He has to, otherwise he wouldn't be here. "About us." It seems unfair to her that someone as lonely as the Doctor would have to permanently forget a few moments of happiness in his long life. (Not that any of this could be called fair, not from Martha's point of view.) And, well, if she's allowed to be selfish about one thing, she doesn't want him to forget how she made him feel, what she did for him. (She's not sure he'll ever know the full extent of everything he's done for her.) Knowing that someone you love has forgotten about you entirely is, in some ways, worse than that person dying.
"Yeah. Well, not till now, actually. Look, I don't mean to hurry you, but we've really got to go-"
Martha kisses her Doctor on the lips one last time, then stands up and slowly turns away from him. Her eyes are dry now; she'll do her mourning later, in private, as she's always done it. She's lost two of them now, and, unlike a Time Lord, she's only got one heart to break. By all rights, she should have learned the first time she sellotaped her heart - and her life - back together, but Martha's never been able to ignore someone who needs her.
"You don't have anything to take with you?" he asks, and Martha almost laughs at the absurdity, as if she'd kept a bag packed for a day she hoped would never come. She just shakes her head, though; all she has here are clothes, really, and a few trinkets she's acquired. Her possessions are the least important of what she's leaving behind. The one thing she's taking is the ring hanging from the chain around her neck, with an inlaid band of polished TARDIS-coral and the Gallifreyan inscription on the inside. (He would never tell her what it meant - and now, she supposes, she'll never know.)
"I guess you could probably just, you know, pick it up later, anyway," the other Doctor adds, his tone of voice uncertain, as if he doesn't quite know how to handle her anymore. She simply ignores him and heads for the door, looking resolutely ahead.
Every journey begins with a single step.
Every journey ends with a single step.
And as one TARDIS door closes behind her, she slips her key into the lock of another, the metal of this one shiny and new, and smiles sadly as it turns to let her in. (It's not the key, he'd told her, so much as it's the person using it.) None of them are who they used to be - not the Doctor, not Martha, and not even the TARDIS, with her gleaming new console room. But they'll all manage somehow.
Muse: Martha Jones
Fandom: Doctor Who
Words: 858
She crouches down next to the Doctor - not hers originally, but he's become hers, over the course of months, as surely as she's become his - and trails her fingers down his cheek. Martha knows why the other Doctor's here, of course. Her relationship has been a ticking time bomb since the beginning; she can either choose to leave now or rip a hole in the fabric of time and space. She's not young and foolish anymore, if she ever had been in the first place, and she knows it's really no choice at all. But leaving him is still the hardest thing she's ever done.
"I'm sorry, Martha," the other Doctor says quietly, and it's weird, his voice is too high and the timbre is different and he's just not the Doctor to her. She hunches in on herself, wiping away a teardrop that's fallen onto the worn leather, letting her fingers come to rest on his sternum. She can feel his pulses, steady and reassuring even now, and she feels a desperate urge to gather him up in her arms once more and press herself close to him. She wants their own little universe back, the one where they're together and happy and nothing else matters because they're gallivanting through time and space. She wants to keep going to mad alien carnivals and remote, uninhabited planets and everywhere else in between.
The timelines that once flexed to allow them to meet are converging on one of those fixed points, though, the sort that can't be altered. The Doctor has to meet Rose, because if he doesn't, then he can't regenerate and ultimately meet Martha for the first time, which makes their second meeting (and third, and fourth, and so on) impossible. (She's tried to work all the twists and tangles and might-have-beens out for herself, but it all ends up in one great Gordian knot that can only be solved by leaving.)
"You remember eventually, though," she says without looking up. He has to, otherwise he wouldn't be here. "About us." It seems unfair to her that someone as lonely as the Doctor would have to permanently forget a few moments of happiness in his long life. (Not that any of this could be called fair, not from Martha's point of view.) And, well, if she's allowed to be selfish about one thing, she doesn't want him to forget how she made him feel, what she did for him. (She's not sure he'll ever know the full extent of everything he's done for her.) Knowing that someone you love has forgotten about you entirely is, in some ways, worse than that person dying.
"Yeah. Well, not till now, actually. Look, I don't mean to hurry you, but we've really got to go-"
Martha kisses her Doctor on the lips one last time, then stands up and slowly turns away from him. Her eyes are dry now; she'll do her mourning later, in private, as she's always done it. She's lost two of them now, and, unlike a Time Lord, she's only got one heart to break. By all rights, she should have learned the first time she sellotaped her heart - and her life - back together, but Martha's never been able to ignore someone who needs her.
"You don't have anything to take with you?" he asks, and Martha almost laughs at the absurdity, as if she'd kept a bag packed for a day she hoped would never come. She just shakes her head, though; all she has here are clothes, really, and a few trinkets she's acquired. Her possessions are the least important of what she's leaving behind. The one thing she's taking is the ring hanging from the chain around her neck, with an inlaid band of polished TARDIS-coral and the Gallifreyan inscription on the inside. (He would never tell her what it meant - and now, she supposes, she'll never know.)
"I guess you could probably just, you know, pick it up later, anyway," the other Doctor adds, his tone of voice uncertain, as if he doesn't quite know how to handle her anymore. She simply ignores him and heads for the door, looking resolutely ahead.
Every journey begins with a single step.
Every journey ends with a single step.
And as one TARDIS door closes behind her, she slips her key into the lock of another, the metal of this one shiny and new, and smiles sadly as it turns to let her in. (It's not the key, he'd told her, so much as it's the person using it.) None of them are who they used to be - not the Doctor, not Martha, and not even the TARDIS, with her gleaming new console room. But they'll all manage somehow.
Muse: Martha Jones
Fandom: Doctor Who
Words: 858