Still More Dialogs 1/1; Doctor, Martha, Donna; PG

[scarfman]

Title: Still More Dialogs 1/1
Author: scarfman
Characters/Pairing: Doctor, Martha, Donna
Rating: G? PG?
Setting/Spoilers: mid Season 2008 (incorporates in passing the Season 2008 development revealed in the RTD sidebar in the FA interview in DWM)
Disclaimer: This work is derivative of property of the BBC. No profit shall be made and no market of the owner(s) is infringed upon.
Betareader: qtrhorserider
Summary: This time she's ready.
So far all my Season 2008 speculation fiction has posited that Martha was brought by circumstances to call the Doctor before she felt ready. What if instead it was he who didn't feel ready yet (and may never be, really)? Also, what if Martha and Donna didn't bond instantly? More story fragments dialogs.
crossposted scarfman dwfiction lifeonmartha marriedonmars

---

The TARDIS materialized just where it had when he'd brought her home the first time, after 1930. Martha felt an honest grin widen on her face at the sight of it.

Then nothing happened for about thirty seconds.

Martha was just about to pick up her bag and go to the door when it opened, and the Doctor came out. "Martha!" he cried. He stepped across about half the distance between them with his hands in his overcoat pockets. Martha had expected a hug. "Wonderful to see you!" he exclaimed with a grin, even for him, too wide and forced.

Martha started to reply when someone else came out of the TARDIS. She was a redhead, in a contemporary jumper, older than Martha ... with her arms folded and her chin up in the air.

The corner of her mind with the memories of how she had once felt about the Doctor whinged, He's replaced me already. The rest of her mind gave it a kick. It hadn't been very bright not to suppose the Doctor would move on with his life too, and things were going to be more complex than she thought.

---

"I am over you," Martha insisted as the Doctor worked in the space station's main control console and she reconnected sabotaged comm cables. "In fact there's someone else. That doesn't mean I don't expect a little recognition as a person. And deserve it!"

"You're the first one ever to come back," said the Doctor.

"The way you wish Rose would," said Martha bitterly.

"No!" the Doctor insisted. Then he thought twice. "Well, I say, 'no' ..." Then he grimaced in chagrin and returned to the subject, obviously to keep from being yelled at. "It's a different thing. You girls don't come back. It's ... it's not done."

"Did you think I gave you my mobile because I meant not to call it?"

"Martha, I literally don't know what to think."

He really was confounded, but on this subject she wasn't inclined to cut him any slack. "It's not something you think about," snapped Martha as she finished with the cables she was connecting and left for the next room's, "it's something you're supposed to feel about."

---

"You're exotic."

"You're ginger and busty."

"You're young!"

"You're an adult!"

"He comes when you whistle!"

"He looked you up after you told him no! Like Rose!"

"You're so smart! You walked the world for him!"

"Oh. Told you about that, did he?"

"Sycorax, Canary Wharf, he tells me all sorts of things I missed at the time. Clueless, me. What have I ever done? I don't even pay attention." Donna dropped to a seat on the ground.

Martha sat down next to her. "You're afraid he's going to leave you?"

"Wouldn't you be, if you were here and Rose came back?"

"You want to know what he's afraid of?"

Donna sniffed. "As if he's afraid of anything."

"He's afraid you're going to leave him."

"Get off. What am I? I'm a temp and a spinster."

"You're normal, and everyday, and everything he can never be. You're who he does it for, Donna, manifest in the TARDIS, following him around and keeping him honest. You're the universe to him in all sorts of ways." Martha paused a moment to let that sink in, because the next bit was going to be rough. "But the awful thing is, you will leave. We all do."

"Oh, that's supposed to make me feel better, is it?"

"No one else can live the life he leads. Even the other Time Lords thought he was a nutter. It's the saddest thing in his life that we always come and go. And it's also the happiest, but he's forgotten that bit. Losing the Time Lords did it to him, or losing Rose did, or both. He needs you to remind him, Donna. I can't do it, at least not alone, because he and I already have too much baggage between us."

"I'll say," Donna huffed. "You're all for him accepting you for who you are, but you won't do the same for him."

"Ah -" Martha got out half a syllable of a reflexive retort, and stopped. "You know what, you're absolutely right."

"What? I got something right?"

---

His evil plot finally defeated, the old man lay dying alone in the medical bay, hoist by his own petard.

"I did give you a chance, Laarm," the Doctor pointed out.

"You made a vague threat that you knew I wouldn't listen to," said the old man, his voice weak but his tone uncompromised. "No, no - you're right, my own fault. Well played. You understand much."

"Me? I understand everything."

The old man chuckled. "You understand much. How a universe turns. The proper temperature for alloying furtesium. What a Rutan metaphor means. But you have no idea what you really mean to your two friends, or they to you."

"Leave them out of this."

"Oh, I don't have to. You already did, on the other side of that door, when you came in. It's what you do: shut them out. You don't mean to, you just don't know any better. For a champion of heart over pragmatism you're singularly out of touch with the hearts of those next to you. I can't be the first to say so."

"You're just saying that from spite, because you think it'll bother me after you're dead."

"That would be petty, and I think you know I'm not petty. But you still won't listen, not because you understand and don't wish it to be true, but because you don't understand."

---

"It's been brought to my attention," said the Doctor quietly, looking up from the TARDIS console to Martha and Donna, "that there are some things about which I may be a bit oblivious."

Donna and Martha could tell that this was very serious to him and they both succeeded in stifling their laughter, mostly.

"I want you to know that I never meant to hurt you. Either of you. Any of you. But you need to know that I'll probably go on doing it."

"Well that's not much of an apology!" said Donna.

"It's not," Martha agreed. "But it's a start. See, you can change if you want to."

"I don't want to," said the Doctor, which got their attention and matched their mood to his. "Especially now, since the War. Since there's only me. Because if I changed," and his gaze dropped back down to whatever he was doing at the console, "the things I do might stop getting done."

Donna frowned and opened her mouth. Then she frowned and shut her mouth. Martha sat in the chair and patted the seat next to her for Donna to join her. When they were both settled Martha said, "All right then, Doctor, where to next?"

fin

Comments

[skywardprodigal.livejournal.com]

I like this.

[honorh.livejournal.com]

I like it very much--the understandings everyone comes to, and especially the style of dialogue, which is terrific.

There is one problem, though: the first time the Doctor brought her home, he landed in Martha's apartment. The Master blew that apartment up in "The Sound of Drums", and it was too far in the past for the Great Reboot in LotTL to retcon it.

Other than that, though, perfect.

[scarfman]

I thought I remembered that the TARDIS appears in her flat in Lazarus (I've only seen up through Evolution). I knew but had forgotten that her flat is blown up in Sound of Drums; but the way I learned it was through stories on LJ, some of which posit that it was rebuilt and Martha still lives there. Mine's one of those.

Thanks for reading.

[eryaforsthye.livejournal.com]

"Especially now, since the War. Since there's only me. Because if I changed," and his gaze dropped back down to whatever he was doing at the console, "the things I do might stop getting done."

Spot on.
All of it.

Wonderful piece!

[hydref.livejournal.com]

I really liked that. Great fic :-)

Change

[syreene.livejournal.com]

Oh excellent...as much as we all may fight against it, it's true. If the Doctor really was as "human" as we wanted him to be, he just wouldn't be the Doctor anymore.

[snorkackcatcher]

Very nice and plausibly characterised! Especially like the little interaction between Martha and Donna.

(PS -- regarding returning companions -- didn't Tegan do that though?)

[scarfman]

didn't Tegan do that though?

Yeah, but that was an accident. Martha is the first one to take a temporary leave of absence, unless you count Victoria's graphology field trip (The Two Doctors). And neither Tegan's or Victoria's hiatus was marked by either a) the Doctor being left alone and/or acquiring a new companion, or b) any screen stories.

In conclusion, not the same thing at all, to characters or viewers.

[significantowl.livejournal.com]

ooh, I love these fics of yours. They always bring the truth and the funny.

[marsgirl101.livejournal.com]

I especially like Donna. I hope she's like this in Series Four.

[trinity-tragedy.livejournal.com]

Ooh I liiikes. More please! (sorry I don't say more, tis my beddybyes time)

Nighty night!


T.