One Question Too Many 1/1; Ten/Rose, Martha; G

[scarfman]

Title: One Question Too Many
Author: scarfman
Characters/Pairing: Ten/Rose, Martha
Rating: G
Setting/Spoilers: Season 2007, later than's aired yet
Summary: Martha learns it all.

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Martha found a chair, turned it right side up, and sat down on it, just as she had on New New York. "Rose," she said.

At the TARDIS door, the Doctor snapped his head to look back at her. There was a look of horrified violation on his face, as there'd been on New New York, but now tempered with resignation. He'd learned to accept that when she called him on something she was usually right. But there wasn't a second chair, so he plopped down on the ground in front of her.

"Rose ..." he started, "was the love of my life. Before I knew her I spent almost a millennium traveling in the TARDIS with others along, and before that I raised my own family and spoiled my own grandchildren on my home world. But I never connected with anyone the way I did with Rose.

"Part of that was the Time War. Rose was the first I asked along in the personality I regenerated into in the wake of the last battle. Before that I'd always kept a distance with my traveling companions -"

"'Before that'?" Martha said, chuckling to take the bite out.

"Yes!" said the Doctor with mock affront. "Successfully, I mean! I was better at it then. Never before having been the last of my people, you see. One may choose not to return home with great determination, but it becomes a different thing when one couldn't go home if one did want to. It makes one vulnerable. Not that I didn't maintain my high standards.

"Because Rose ... oh, Rose was fantastic.

"Here's this shopgirl who's just been chased into a lift by shop dummies, and instead of panicking like your everyday stupid ape she's standing there desperately trying to figure out how it can be. To understand. No dummy, she.

"Rose made me want to live again," the Doctor said simply. "She really did always know what to say! At least it seemed like it. And she knew what to do. She pulled my fat out of the fire more than once.

"One of those times was a closer call than she knew, and I had to improvise, and to make a long story short she saw me regenerate before I gave her a proper primer on regeneration."

"That was when you got the face you have now. 'Rude and not ginger.'"

The Doctor nodded. "New face, new personality. It changed the dynamic between us. I suppose it helped that I didn't look old enough to be her father any more. I'd been telling her all along that I don't do domestic, but I was still all right with her. Once it even looked like we'd lost the TARDIS and weren't going to have a choice about the domestic thing, and she was all with the protectiveness. And the tip-toeing, because we'd never spoke frankly about what was developing between us, and she wasn't certain how much she was assuming when she used the M word."

"'M word'?" Martha asked, thinking marriage.

"Mortgage."

"Ah," Martha said. Harder to get out of.

"Well, we did find the TARDIS, and the pressure to have that conversation went away. But we did have it, after a fashion, though it took our parting ways.

"You see, the basis of Time Lord transchronology is the recognition of five dimensions, not just four. Just as you need the fourth dimension, time, to travel in the three physical dimensions, to travel in time you need the fifth dimension, space. Because every time someone makes a decision -"

"Why don't you just say, 'parallel universes'?" Martha interrupted.

The Doctor grinned. "Next time I will.

"Now traveling between parallel universes was so easy and common before the Time War that I usually didn't even say anything to people with me because I was afraid it'd only confuse them. But without the Time Lords and their safeguards and policing it's impossibly difficult, and if you can bring it off it's horribly destructive to the continuum barrier between the two universes in question. Rose and I discovered a broken barrier and set about fixing it before both universes were destroyed ... and by accident, in sealing up the barrier permanently, we ended up on either side."

"Oh, how horrible," Martha murmurred.

"I'd never told her I loved her. So I found a supernova, bled power from it, and punched a hologram beam through the last little hole in the barrier while it was closing up. Just to say goodbye. Just to say, 'I love you.' She said it to me, finally.

"But I wasn't concentrating on the barriers I ought've been: my own. It took me so long to get to 'I love you' that the hole closed just before I got it out."

"No ...," Martha breathed. "No. That is so sad. But I'm sure she knew."

"She did," the Doctor said, nodding. "But through no fault of mine."

"Doctor," Martha said, "I understand. I can't imagine ... What a horrible way for such an intense relationship to end." But it's over now, Martha couldn't help a part of herself from thinking. Soulmate or no, it doesn't take forever to get over a year or two, does it?

The Doctor sighed. Then he brightened up a little. "About two months later she found a safe, one-time way for me to come through and back again. Time passes differently there - for her, it'd been about six years. In a week we wrapped up her business there - including a Blr'dnt invasion of the moon colony that was in progress when I arrived, that's why she called - and returned to this universe. We had seventy-three wonderful years together, and she died of natural causes in our bed on the TARDIS just before I met you."