"Oliver Morgenstern."
Applause.
"Martha Jones."
She left the sheltering dark of the steps for the glare of the stage, keeping her gaze fixed on the coveted cylinder in the Chancellor's grasp. All those years of study, punctuated by a sweaty handshake and a clown outfit... You gave up the universe for this, she reminded herself sternly.
"But it's just a box. But it's huge. How does it do that? It's wood. It's like a box with that room just rammed in. It's bigger on the inside."
"Is it? I hadn't noticed. Right then, let's get going."
"But is there a crew, like a navigator and stuff? Where is everyone?"
"Just me."
"All on your own?"
"Well, sometimes I have guests. I mean some friends, travelling alongside. I had. There was recently, a friend of mine. Rose, her name was. Rose. And we were together. Anyway."
"Where is she now?"
"With her family. Happy. She's fine. She's… Not that you're replacing her."
"Julia Swales."
A second's distraction, that was all it took, to step on the hem of her ridiculous gown and plunge headlong down the opposite steps, the auditorium floor rushing up to meet her... only to have the breath knocked out of her a second early by a pinstriped chest and a pair of arms.
"Oof! Oi, steady on!" She barely registered the voice, or Julia's voice inquiring anxiously behind her, staring up in shock at a familiar, devil-may-care grin, an untidy shock of brown hair...
"Never said I was."
"Sorry, what?"
"You're right. Rose. I'm not replacing her. I'd be stupid to even try. So... sorry, I just can't."
"Yeah. Okay."
The eyes... they were still the same, too... so cheeky, so alive, and yet so unbearably sad...
"Take care, okay?" A kindly wink, and he was gone again, before she could even thank him, striding through the milling graduates towards the exit. It was hard to see from here, but for a moment it looked like two more men had fallen in beside him...
"Bye, Doctor," she whispered.
"Spent all these years training to be a doctor. Well, now I've got people to look after. They went to the Moon, they met aliens, they almost suffocated – and half my family's either in shock or about to kill each other. I can't leave them."
"Of course not. Thank you."
"You going to be all right?"
"Always. Yeah."
"Right then. Bye."
Ria: So why did our Martha say no? My headcanon is that she realised that, despite the allure of Time and Space, what she'd really be doing was running away, from her family, her studies – not to mention running into a very toxic situation: her attraction to the Doctor and him clearly still having feelings for another woman (even if she doesn't know yet what happened to Rose). Besides, a time machine piloted by an alien with such a mad and eccentric M.O.? How could that possibly go wrong?