Disclaimer: Doctor Who is not a possession of mine… it may be an obsession, but that is another thing entirely…
A/N: Martha is such a controversial character, but I don't see why. I believe that we all, like the Doctor, can love more than one companion. We can just love her in different ways. So this one is for Martha because not all great love stories are requited.
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HIS PRIDE
Martha stepped out from the TARDIS and pulled her jacket tightly around her… She'd said it finally. She'd told the Doctor how she felt about him. Or she's said something near enough. And then she'd left. He didn't try to stop her, he didn't apologize to her about not reciprocating her feelings, and he didn't suddenly have a change of heart, begging her to stay or claiming that he needed her desperately. Might have been nice, she thought wistfully, squaring her shoulders and letting out a sigh. Might have been.
But, she hadn't expected it, and it hadn't happened. Nope. He'd nodded, like it was all somehow inevitable, and his eyes were kind and understanding and very sad. After all, she was leaving, and he did care for her. And his loneliness seemed to envelope the whole room around them even before she walked out the door. And even though he'd rejected her advances, even though she'd always lived in Rose Tyler's shadow, and even though he wasn't going to ask her, that loneliness might have broken her resolve there right at the last second. His loneliness might have compelled her to stay.
But it didn't because there, in his eyes next to the sorrow, she'd seen something else that gave her the strength that she'd needed to walk out the door. She saw his pride. The Doctor was proud of her. She was taking charge of her own destiny, and she wasn't going to take second best, not his Martha Jones. And, it was his pride in her that gave her the confidence that she needed to take her final steps towards taking first place in her own story.