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He could feel her nightmare long before Martha came into what passed for the TARDIs kitchen these days. He could feel it by the pressure at the back of his skull—a dull headache that seemed to persist whenever she was distressed in her sleep. Psychic tremors, most likely; Martha was unusually empathetic. It was, he thought, both a gift and a curse; she picked up on his moods faster than most humans, but he felt her emotions far more than he felt most, in turn.
He winced and tried to focus more on the faulty wiring on the console he was supposed to be repairing. He instead focused on denying himself his strong desire to go to her. The Doctor did not like that he was becoming too aware of Martha’s thoughts, of her dreams; he had gotten close with Rose. He had gotten far, far too close, and it had hurt so badly when she had been ripped away with him. He wouldn't let the same happen to Martha. Better this way.
For her and for him.
Half his guilt was because he knew he had broken Rose’s heart along with his own. He wouldn’t make that mistake with Martha. No, better to let only his heart break when it inevitably ended.
The problem, of course, was Martha.
Martha was lovely. In every possible way, Martha Jones was a wonderful specimen of humanity: hyper intelligent, empathetic, sweet, kind, resourceful, a good runner and a caring friend. He sighed, and changed his settings on the sonic, trying to dispel the headache by making the psychic shielding around her room stronger. Hopefully, she would do what he normally did, when the thoughts of his family grew too loud in his brain: drink some water, clear her mind, and let herself fall asleep thinking of something, perhaps anything, else. Forget the people who you loved and left behind. Focus on being a Doctor. Saving the day.
The problem, of course, was Martha.
Martha was too much like him. Martha wanted to run away, as fast as she could, but she also refused to leave things behind. He was hardly good at it either. Perhaps more able to successfully keep his distance but…it didn’t make the partings hurt any less.
He swallowed.
He heard a dull noise several corridors away; the quiet noise of her door shutting (quietly, so quietly; she didn’t want to be a bother, so thoughtful). Then he heard the unmistakable soft noise of her feet padding down the grating as she walked toward he TARDIS’ console, where he was currently attempting to solder his broken heart together.
Er—fix the TARDIS navigation console. Yes. That.
Martha padded in, in fuzzy slippers that he wouldn't admit he found cute.
"Hey," she said, her voice soft and sweet. "You're up late."
"I don't sleep. Well. Erm. That is. I don’t require that much sleep. Human amounts of sleep. You know." He ran a hand through his hair, well aware he was babbling but somehow unable to stop himself from doing it. "And you know, there’s plenty to do. The TARDIS is supposed to have multiple pilots and mechanics and it’s just me, so, always something to do. When you’re sleeping I just…” He pointed the screwdriver toward the console, somehow compelled to prove that he had been working on it and certainly not ruminating on her sheer…loveliness. “I…run maintenance. Diagnostics. Keep the old girl busy, my old mind busy and the old screwdriver warm." He gave her a smile that even he thought was not so convincing, but Martha seem distracted by her own troubles enough not to notice. She ran her hand down the console, and he tried to not focus on how graceful her fingers were. He failed.
She’d be a master pianist, Martha Jones.
"It must be nice," she said softly, "not to have to sleep so much. God, you must get so bored though." It surprised him, constantly, how Martha thought of his perspective, how it would feel to wait hours for company that wasn't awake. He had done so, numerous times, for different companions; it had been unbearable, at times, waiting for the humans to wake. It threw him, how naturally she could put herself in his shoes.
"It's alright." He sniffed, pretending to be less affected than he was. "A man has his...hobbies. Great time to build hobbies, you know. Chess. Scrap-booking. Catching up on all my soap operas. Maintenance. Uhm, reading maintenance manuals."
"You forgot trying not to remember things that keep you up at night," she said, half-smiling, but it wasn't really a joke.
Too perceptive for her own good was Miss Martha Jones.
"Yeah, well." He looked away. "Like I said. Don’t really need sleep, Martha. I never have. I'm not human."
"Two heart pulmonary system with a respiratory system bypass. I know. Your body’s wholly different. But emotions? I don’t think that’s so different, across all the species in the galaxy.”
Too. Damn. Perceptive.
She would have made a fantastic time lord. Better than him.
“I know what it’s like. Not wanting to sleep. Worrying about all the things I have yet to fix. Always seem so much bigger in the dark, my family problems.” She chuckled, and he looked away, uncomfortable with the way his throat hurt; how well she could see through him. "Sometimes I wonder if my family is giving me some version of PTSD, to be honest."
"That what has you troubled tonight?" He asked, grateful to turn the tide of topics to something that he didn’t have to think about too deeply. Worrying about the universe was a big problem; Martha’s family, a much smaller one.
"Yeah," she said softly. "Keep having dreams about them being in danger. I know it's just stress but...they feel so real."
"They’re not in danger, Martha. I know your family are dear to you, but to most of the universe they’re ccompletely insignificant." He gave her a big grin, hoping she'd laugh at the pithy way he’d pointed out the universe’s sometimes cruel nature. She didn't. Ah. Swing and a miss.
She ducked past him into what passed for the TARDIS cafeteria and started to go through the familiar human song and dance of making herself a caffeinated beverage. He frowned. "You'll be up all night with that."
"I know, but I think that's what's going to happen anyway. May as well be ready to go when you finish your maintance." She gave him a look that was so painfully earnest, he wanted to hug her. Maybe kiss her. No, not kiss her, not that, they were never contemplating kissing humans again—
Martha brought her lip to the edge of her coffee cup and he tried not to think too much about it. Or stare at her lovely lips. He wasn’t doing a good job not staring. He looked away as fast as he could.
Which wasn’t that fast. He cleared his throat, trying to dispel the thoughts he was having about said lovely lips.
"Look," he said, trying to talk about what they had been talking about, rather than focusing all his attention on the fact that Martha had some of the loveliest soft lips he had ever seen. "I understand they're important to you, Martha, but the odds of anyone attacking your very wealthy, very high-class—"
"You've met my parents,” Martha said, raising an eyebrow as she smiled wryly at him. “They're a lot of things, but high class isn't one of them. Mum never hesitates to throw Dad's new girlfriend under the bus in public, and dad—well, dad's the one who left to chase a white girl half his age. Honestly? Lost count of the number of times I had slip the waiter a couple bills to not throw them out for disturbing the peace with all their squabbling."
"Regardless," he said, not wanting to touch that marital dispute with a ten-foot pole. "They're your parents, Martha. In the extremely unlikely event anyone or anything in the entire known universe—and for you, maybe, even the unknown bits of the universe—" He gave her a cheeky smile. Was he flirting? Kind of felt like flirting, but he wasn't offering a romance, so it wasn't flirting, was it. No, this was just -- just messing around with a beloved mate.
Beloved.
He didn't like thinking about that part too closely. Mate. Right, mate. Focus on friendship. Focus on camaraderie. Focus on being the dashing hero who saved her world time and time again but asked for nothing in return. He puffed out his chest a bit.
"Anyway, were anyone or anything to come after your family, any member of your family, you have my word, my utmost word, that I will do whatever it takes to keep them safe." He bowed playfully, trying to be more re-assuring now that trying to reassure her in a breezier manner had failed, and she looked at him like she could see straight through him.
It bothered him.
"I know," she said, simply. She frowned, pouring herself a second cup of coffee. He'd never been one for the liquid himself, but he took some and sat at the table with her, and told himself it was all to keep her company.
"I think it's all just stress, to be honest, more than some genuine fear of them being tortured or hurt. Everything with my family..." She swirled a bit of milk into her cup, and he watched her fingers, transfixed, as she slowly stirred the coffee with a red glass stirrer. "It feels so selfish, you know? Running away from them into this mad box. But I did run. And...am still running, really. I love my family but I hate the thought of going home." She winced. "It's just—"
"You're tired of being the one in the middle all the time," he said, cutting to the chase. Martha looked up at him, surprised, and the relief on her face was obvious.
"You noticed, huh?" She smiled; her smile reminded him of home, of Gallifrey. It wasn’t the wide smiles Rose had always had—Martha's smiles were something smaller, more reserved, more private. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Yeah, guess it's hard not to."
"A bit," he said, not wanting to point out that it was beyond obvious that Martha was clearly the firefighter born into a house of arsonists. He'd only met her parents a couple of times, but each time had been an exercise in watching Martha tear herself to pieces to try to reach a genuine compromise for everyone. She was empathetic, and more than a few people took advantage of that, in his view.
"Your family must have been complicated, too, then, I reckon," Martha said. He winced, the careful mask that he often wore when it came to anything back home snapping back into place so quickly it almost hurt. "Yeah, for sure. You've got that look."
"What look?" He said, focusing on the look part of it rather than the actual question. Thinking about his face was better than thinking about all those people. He had lost Rose and her family recently, and he had lost more than a few before the war, but the war had—no, don’t think of that. He wouldn’t' let the mask fall in front of Martha. Not again. Think about his funny malleable face, the face that…that he liked because it reminded him so very much of his dear Susan. He winced.
"The one that looks like you've eaten some very strong cheese, the sort that tastes like feet." The description was comical enough he was thankful; he focused on that instead. "And then washed it down with some swamp water, just for good measure."
"Blimey. Sounds awful. Thought you humans would think this face was attractive." What he wanted her to say was that she thought it was attractive, and he hated himself for thinking it, because acknowledging that thought meant that he wanted to be with Martha, and he'd decided that human was not for him. No matter how bright and how wonderful they were, they burned too bright and too fast. He'd already been burnt to a crisp by his feelings for one magpie; he couldn't make it two. But he knew from the look Martha was giving him that she knew that he wanted her to tell him that she felt he was a very pretty boy.
"Not when you're acting like everything stinks. Just ask my mum." He tilted his head; she hadn't been fond of him maybe, but he wasn't sure what Francine had to do with his attractiveness. "Resting bitch face on that one."
Ah. She wasn't talking about his attractiveness at all.
Why did he feel so irrationally jealous about that?
"There it is again!" She grinned. "So, who was it?"
"What?"
"Who was the family trouble-maker? Clearly you're the peacekeeper like me, you're the one whose been running all this time." She saw him in her; oh, she was trouble, Miss Martha Jones.
"One. Don't ever call me the family peacekeeper again, it's certainly not true. We're lucky a dozen gallifreyan ghosts aren’t streaming in here to correct you on the record. I was an opinionated old fool and everyone treated me as such."
She blinked, and he did too, surprised that that much had come out of him, and, odder still, that it had felt...oddly natural, to tell Martha such.
"...How old?" Oh.
That was a worse question, and he wasn't sure he wanted to answer it. He'd blabbed his age, or at least his closest approximation of it given the constant flux of the time war to Rose, and she'd said it had been a hell of an age gap, and she was right. He was not sure he wanted Martha to see him the same way.
"Old enough," he said, evasively. "Certainly, old enough to know better."
"How old are you?" Unblinking, and unavoidable. That was the problem with Martha; she read him like a book. He sighed.
"About 903," he said, quietly. Might as well get it over with, then. He wanted for revulsion to find her eyes. Waited for her to tell him that was a hell of an age gap and certainly far beyond what she wanted to deal with. But she was just quiet for a moment, her eyes wide.
"Nine hundred?" She sputtered. He nodded. "You look amazing for nine hundred! Don't look a day over thirty-five, honestly."
"Thirty-five, huh?" He grinned like an idiot. He told himself it meant nothing. He knew he was lying. His stomach twisted in guilt, and he hated it. It was silly to feel guilty. It wasn't as if he and Rose had been an item; he'd tap-danced around that enough, hadn't he?
"Imagine the family get togethers must be really rough, nine hundred years in. Do people ever forget about the bad things, when you live that long? Or is it eight hundred years after you last stuck your finger in grandpa’s Christmas cake, people are still asking you about it?"
"One: We don't have Christmas on my home planet. Two: yes. They are annoyingly good at only remembering the bad things you've done, and none of the good. Least my family, anyway. Fraid I'm a bit of a disappointment to them."
"That seems impossible." Martha looked at him like a hero, and he smiled, basking in her warm smile. It was nice to be adored. He didn't like that he felt this so often in this body, this desire to be adored, to be taken care of. It was not a feeling he often had with his family. And much to his surprise, he found himself telling Martha about his family. Nothing important, perhaps, but "you ought to have seen great grand-uncle Gertrudia's annual lecture about the dangers of the tal'zin flower” left his mouth before he could quite stop it.
"Tal'zin flower?" Martha said, her eyes curious. She wanted to know. She was so curious about him. He found himself wanting to tell her, and hated himself for wanting it.
"Big flowers on Gallifrey. The size of a child’s head, quite literally. And also, quite toxic. You win a bet by wearing one on your head one time and throw up at your older brother’s university graduation on his graduation cake, and suddenly you're part of the family annual warning on acceptable behavior. In great detail."
"Oh no." Martha laughed. "My mum is like that, too. Found her secret snickers stash when I was a kid and you'd have thought that I was some sort of detective, that's how long she yelled at me for it. Still was getting the private property lecture when I went off to college."
He snorted.
"And god, my mum -- I love her to bits, but she's always had such high standards for all of us. I don't think I ever got a grade that was good enough for her if it wasn't perfect. B's should have been A's, C's were..." She grimaced. "Not acceptable.”
Tht sounded more familiar than he wanted to acknowledge, but he found himself nodding to Martha’s story. She leaned back in her chair, looking keenly at him.
“She used to make us perform for company, any time they threw a dinner party. Me and my sister and brother had to play our instruments for them, and a new piece every time. Any time we disappointed her, we got the “your grandfather didn't leave Ghana for us to lounge around on a council estate” lecture."
"Nothing wrong with a council estate," he said, visions of Jackie Tyler and her terrible coffee dancing in his head with Rose's smile, in a memory so bright it hurt. He took a deep breath in; treasured the memory, then turned it off. Guilt swam in his chest regardless.
I'm sorry Rose, he thought. But you are a world away, and I know I’ll never see you again, and no matter how much that hurts—don't we both deserve a chance to be happy? Can’t I have a…a friend, without you lingering in my thoughts?
He knew she would want him to be happy. And Martha was just as easy to talk to as Rose had been.
“Course not,” Martha said. “But that just…wasn’t the type of life my mum wanted for us. And if you ever met my mum, you’d know…” She scoffed. “You don’t go against her desires. You just try to fit your own around it.”
He thought of his own parents; they had wanted him to be a president. All he had ever wanted was to be a doctor. And he’d achieved that, in a way. Maybe not a way they'd approved of, but...Well, he'd been a rubbish president for a term, too.
"What about school with your kind?” Martha asked; his relief that she did not ask about his mum was palpable. “Are there time lord mums who lecture that you should have gone a couple more centuries back in time if you really wanted to impress the principal, or whatever the equivalent is among aliens?"
He laughed, a sharp bark. "You have no idea. Grades were competition, and I was never impressive in school."
"But you’re so brilliant!" She paused, after saying that, looking at him and then finally nodded after carefully examining him for a moment. "Ah, but you can't sit still. Probably a problem in time lord classes."
"A bit," he said, not looking at her. "And... cutting class to hang out with my friends so often probably didn't help."
"You bad boy!" She laughed. “Bet your mum had conniption fits if she was anything like mine.”
"And then some. Wasn't funny to them. They spent a lot of money to send me to the academy." A long beat. "But I was never good at it. Not the way they wanted me to be. I was always different. And there were times..." He shook his head, suddenly woozy, the way he often could be when he thought too far back. He made a soft noise as his vision swum.
Martha was in front of him in seconds.
“You okay, mate?” She pulled his hand away from his face, and he could see the Doctor in her: analyzing his symptoms. Her hand moved to his; checking his pulse, even if it would be wholly different from what she had known.
“I’m fine.” He winced. “It’s just…sometimes, when I think too far back, I…” He shook his head again. “It’s like something doesn’t want me to think about that. Perhaps it’s just me doing it to myself. Wasn’t a happy childhood, Martha.”
It was an honest answer, one that surprised him. Martha Jones had a way of getting under his skin, of burning away every guardrail that he had put in front of her. He hadn’t even meant to say it; it had just slipped out.
“But who doesn’t have a story like that?” He chuckled weakly, hoping to pivot away from this. “You know, I think there’s some leftovers from our visit to Goa Prime in the fridge, and I could bloody murder for a nice vindaloo right now. Do you want a vindaloo? Skip-skip-skip to my vindaloo?”
He gave her a manic smile, but her frown remained for a long time.
“You sure you’re alright?” She asked; hesitant, a bit soft. Nothing like Rose, nothing like Patience, nothing like Koschei or anyone else he had ever loved; Martha was more like him. A little hesitant, but caring so bloody much it hurt.
“I’m fine, Martha, really. 900 years and your old brainbox gets a little scrambled on the oldest memories, that’s all. Now, Vindaloo?” Please, please vindaloo. I can’t take much more of these memories. Let’s make new ones over rice and naan instead, please.
“…Sure,” she said, and he had a feeling that she was humoring him. But as she brought out the leftovers from their trip to Goa Prime, he couldn’t help but be thankful for her presence.
“What’s Gallifreyan food like?” She smiled as she plated out his. Perhaps she could tell how badly he wanted to move on from all the family talk.
“Maybe I’ll show you sometime,” he muttered, his eyes down. She brought him comfort. Martha was healing up his cracks, and he wished he didn’t find it as terrifying as he did. It wasn’t just the food or the fact the conversation was easy; it was that Martha was so much like him they understood each other on a level he so rarely felt.
“Sounds like a date,” she said, grinning at him, and he did not correct her. Instead, he just smiled, as his stomach twisted into knots—both pleasurable and painful—at the prospect.