Centenary - by Sian

Synopsis: After a hundred years, the Doctor still watches the stars for a long lost planet.
Characters: The Doctor (ten), Martha
Episode/Spoilers: Anything up to Doomsday, vague series 3 spoilers - set early series 3.
Rating: G
Notes: Goes with the idea (seen on OG) that the Doctor leaves Earth for a hundred years or so after Doomsday.

The Doctor was sitting outside the TARDIS gazing up at the night sky, when Martha found him. "Do you never sleep?" she asked.

"Not as much as you. Feeling better?"

"Bit more awake now. I made you a tea." She handed the Doctor the mug, sat down next to him and joined him in staring at the night sky. She'd been in the TARDIS for a week now, and she was finally starting to enjoy herself. It was going to take her a while longer to get used to the ship and its pilot though. She stole a sideways glance at him, this man who looked human, but insisted he was an alien. "Have you been to all of them?" she asked.

"Most."

Martha tried to follow his gaze, but it was impossible to say what he was watching so intently. "Whereabouts are you from?"

"Why do Humans ask me that? Like you'll know where it is?" the Doctor's tone was amused, but there was an edge of something Martha couldn't quite put her finger on.

"We're curious. Isn't that one of the things you like about us? Anyway, you know where I'm from, it only seems polite to tell me about your home."

"I never claimed to be polite. Rude, now that I've been accused of."

"Rude, you? Never!" Martha laughed. "Can you see your home planet from here?"

The Doctor continued to stare at the stars. "Used to be able to, not anymore."

"And yet you still sit and look for it," Martha guessed.

"I'm strange like that," he agreed quietly.

Martha knew when someone was shutting her out, but she was trapped 2000 years in the future with this man and she needed to know more about him, because at the moment all she knew was his name, or the name he'd told her - the Doctor. So she persisted in her questioning about his home. "What's it called, your home planet?"

"Gallifrey."

"So you'd be what, Gallifreyan?"

The Doctor tore his gaze away from the sky and looked at the TARDIS's latest passenger. "I'm a Time Lord."

Martha smiled. "The lord of time. Seems apt. Is that a nationality? A race? A religion?"

"No, no and definitely not, well maybe a little. It was something you trained to become, took, well actually longer than Humans live for."

Martha caught the Doctor's sad tone, and decided not to press anymore about the Time Lords. "I know it's not visible, but whereabouts is Gallifrey?"

He pointed into the sky, to the spot he'd been staring at for the last ten minutes. "Used to be around there. At one time you could see the star from here. It's gone now though."

Martha looked away from the sky and back at the Doctor. "Actually gone?" she asked. "I'm sorry," she said when the Doctor nodded. "When?"

"Hundred years ago today. This is the centenary anniversary of the death of a planet that no one's sure even existed."

Martha had no idea what he meant by that, but she heard the pain in his voice. "What happened?"

"We fought a war that we could never win. Now there's just me and my TARDIS." He dragged his gaze away from the night sky and turned to face Martha, making an effort to lift his mood. "I'm not normally this miserable. Be fine in a bit."

"You want to be alone?"

Every bone in his body was screaming, 'Yes, go away, far far away and leave me in peace.' But it wasn't Martha's fault she was here - another accidental passenger on his journey. So he shook his head.

"If it's been a hundred years, how old are you?"

"I've lost track," the Doctor admitted as he tried to work out his age. "I was 236 when I left home, been travelling for oh, one thousand and, erm, eight years." 'Wow,' he thought, 'that is a long time to be homeless.' Which is what he'd been since he'd first left Gallifrey; not that he'd ever felt at home there. "So that would make me 1244."

"1244? Okay, well that's a little older than I thought, certainly older than you look; you've definitely aged well," Martha told him with a smile.

"Thanks, but this body is only about 100 years old. Time Lords don't age, at least not on the outside, and when a body does die, we regenerate into a new one. This is my tenth," he explained.

"A completely new body?"

"Yes."

Given her training, Martha thought she had a good grasp on medicine and anatomy, so the idea of a body not aging was hard to accept. As for regeneration; the same person in a new body, that was science fiction surely? But here was the Doctor, telling her that was what his people did, and although she hadn't known him long, she found she trusted him. Anyway, why would he lie? "I can't even begin to understand how that works," she said. "So you're immortal?"

"Possibly. Used to be that we got 13 lives and then that was it, but that was regulated by the Time Lord Council. Now that they're gone," the Doctor shrugged and gazed back up at the sky, "it's possible that I could keep regenerating indefinitely. Now there's a thought, and let me tell you, it's not necessarily a pleasant one. Still more chance of me being ginger at some point." He turned his attention back to Martha. "Well, sitting here moping isn't going to get you home. What do you say we have some dinner and then see if I can actually get us to 2007?"

"Sounds like a plan. We eating out or in?"

"Out. This place has some amazing restaurants." He reached down and pulled her to her feet. "You'd probably better let me order though, some of the food doesn't really agree with the Human digestive system."

"Poisonous?" Martha asked.

"Not in a deadly sense, more of a week in bed with a raging fever." He grinned at her, the amiable mask back in place. "Would you rather stay in?"

"What and have you laughing at my lack of a sense of adventure all the way back? No, let's try the restaurants. There's no mega rush to get me back to 2007 by the way," Martha added, "I don't want you to think that I'm not enjoying travelling with you. I just..."

"Need to see your family and friends," the Doctor guessed. "I know, and it's alright, it's good in fact. But the TARDIS has got into the habit of choosing her own destinations over the last few years, it might take a few goes to get her out of it. But we'll get there."

"And ... what if I wanted to stay with you after that?" Martha asked nervously.

'You can't' the Doctor wanted to say. She couldn't stay too long, he was determined never to become as attached and dependant on anyone as he had been on Rose. But he was finding that, after a hundred years away from them, he was actually enjoying having Human company again; and in spite of his better judgment and his reservations, he wasn't in too much of a hurry to see Martha go. "That's up to you," he said.

Martha smiled. "Okay. Then let's go and eat."

END