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You are Martha Jones, and you are smart.
You were a bright Med student, learning the ropes at the hospital. You were able to hold meaningful, relevant conversations with most of the doctors.
Then the hospital was on the moon, and there was a different Doctor.
You are smart, but after he kissed you, you didn’t feel smart. You felt like the dumbest piece of dust on the moon. Because what he said was nothing was what made you fall in love.
You’re smart, so you thought that when he invited you to travel with him, you could eventually work your way into his heart like he had so quickly found his way into yours. You thought that he would fall for you too. You were confident that you could be good enough to fall for.
You shook off the disappointment when you shared the bed in Elizabethan London and he didn’t even casually touch you. You chalked it up to being focused. You’re smart, you know what it’s like to get so involved with your thoughts that the physical world doesn’t matter anymore. Shakespeare’s flirting didn’t hurt, either. You were smart when you finished the line to banish the Carrionites, and his praise made you feel so warm inside.
You didn’t feel too smart when he’d remember her, though. You felt frustrated and small and inadequate. Because surely you weren’t good enough, if he didn’t want you.
You’d remember that feeling as you went to sleep, clinging to your pillow, and feel even less smart.
You felt even less smart when he took you to a place where no one respected you because of the color of your skin so that he could hide, and then he fell in love with someone else right in front of you.
You are Martha Jones, and when you told Yana who the Doctor was, you accidentally did the least smart thing anyone could possibly do.
You gave up on smart and took up being clever for that year that never happened, the year where you visited six continents and helped the human race maintain hope for their future. You were clever because you were sneaky and scheming and planning and careful. You weren’t smart, though, because no matter where you went or what you did, you couldn’t stop thinking about him. About the Doctor, trapped on that ship. Not Jack, in constant torment, not the human race. Just him. And you helped people, but there was always a part of your mind that was distracted.
You are Martha Jones, and when you finally save him, when that hellish year is finally erased, you know what to do. You know the smart thing.
So when you say goodbye, and you go your separate ways, you feel, for the first time in ages, smart.