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Sometimes she does it on purpose, to remind him that she is not, will not be, cannot be, Rose Tyler.
But most of the time it’s an accident, she says something and suddenly his face closes up in pain and he turns away from her, his hands never stopping as he tries to tinker away at whatever it is that’s a metaphor for his two hearts this time.
“Rose would know,” he says, and another piece of her own single heart cracks off, and she’s never quite sure if he’s doing it on purpose, to remind her (or maybe even himself) that she is not, cannot be, will never be, Rose Tyler.
And every time they drive themselves further apart, whether by chance or by design, and they wobble between being “Martha-and-the-Doctor,” one cohesive unit that can out-science anything they’re handed, and “Martha” and “The Doctor,” stuck in a broken binary orbit that she’s scared will only collapse.
But they’re constantly hurtling through the universe, and sometimes they’re happy (and then she almost dies again and has a mini existential crisis but how could she leave), and she forgets that there’s this memory who somehow has more substance than she does. And then she comes across a forgotten hairbrush in the corner that is decidedly not hers, and a note tucked into a book she nicks from the library, and a half-empty bottle of perfume that smells like roses (how cliché).
And maybe neither one of them is trying to do it, or maybe they both are. All she knows is that they both know exactly how to twist the knife, and all the hugs and smiles in the universe aren’t going to fix up three patchy hearts scarred with a blonde remembrance.