Disclaimer: Doctor Who is not mine. Simple.

Spoilers from series 3

Explanatory Note: I'd just like to apologize in advance to any Martha fans who might dislike my melancholic portrayal of her. I tried to portray her as a strong woman who's growing through her experiences with the Doctor. It just might be that perhaps, in my effort to get Ten/Rose across, I had to portray her as slightly sad.

Nevertheless, hope you enjoy this :)

Pretending

When he first popped into her life, on the busy streets of London right before her day shift, she thought he was cute. Tall. Slim. Rich brown locks. He looked good in the suit and long coat. Very suave. Even the runners didn't detract much from the overall image.

Then he proceeded, without any greetings or warnings, to yank his tie off, utter a nonsensical phrase before dashing off into the crowd again.

Why was it the good looking ones were always crazy?

Still, she couldn't complain. The sight of his exposed neck acted as a good distraction from her usual morning of family politics. She thought she was off to a good day.

Of course, that was before the rising rain, the moon, the Plasmavore and the Judoons. It was before the man she thought was handsome and crazy turned out being a heroic double-hearted alien. It was before what could have been one of the best snogs of her life. And it was before he tracked her down and offered her a trip into time and space as a gift.

Falling in love had been so easy. Flirting came out like second nature. And though he seemed alarmed by her advances and then visibly relieved by the retraction, she never really stopped falling for him. How could she when all of time and space is wrapped up in a handsome charming package that is known as the Doctor?

Then she found out about the previous companion. Rose.

"Not that you are replacing her."

"Never said I was," she had said casually at the time. And she meant it. She was going to make her own mark.

Because she had fallen and was still falling. Every time he put his life on the line in order to save hers. Every time he beamed that cheeky grin her way. Every time he grabs hold of her hand as they ran for their lives. Every casual wink and phrase and gesture. They meant something, right? They could mean something, right? They could eventually mean something, right?

She was pretending. And she knew. But she was good at it. With family dynamics as crazy as her own, she had to pretend, at times, that things would go her own way. She would continue to have adventures with the Doctor and not dwell over the lingering ghost of the previous companion.

But there were moments when she was made to feel second best. Moments when she was reminded that she wasn't the first nor will she be the last. Moments when he looks at her and doesn't see her for who she was, but the ghost of the one who was gone. Moments when he wasn't living but remembering.

Moments when even Martha Jones couldn't pretend.

"Rose would know."

He would drop her name casually. It was usually in one of his long rambling monologues. Or whenever he's lost in thought, trying to figure out how to get the pair of them out of whatever sticky situation he landed them in. (Seriously, if the man would just stop talking altogether, they wouldn't get into trouble as much as they have) Most of the time, Martha didn't even think he realised that he said her name. It just slipped in, seamlessly and unnoticed.

It hurts. She wasn't going to lie and say it didn't. But it never hurts as bad as the times when he did realize.

Because during those times, he would stop. The manic twinkle in his eyes would die. And it would take him a good moment or so before he recollected himself and carried on. But even then, it was obvious that remembering had been painful. Sure, he would continue rambling on like a five year old at a funfair high on cotton candy, but the enthusiasm level was not quite the same. His shoulders weren't as straight as before. His gestures a little bit more listless.

He would trudge on, almost as if he had to because there was no better alternative. He would turn away and pretend that he had never uttered that name.

And over time, Martha pretended with him.

But things never got any easier. Because even when her name wasn't spoken out loud, the echoes of her presence could still be felt.

"Oh, with music, you can dance to it, sing with it, fall in love to it."

At the time, with the Daleks and Dalek Sec, his words barely sunk in. She was hyperventilating, tachycardic and had adrenaline pumping through her circulation like there was no tomorrow. Then came the chase, the surrender and the trek up into the Empire State Building. It was only in the quietness of the top floor when the memory of that sentence floated back to her. The way he paused, directed his gaze at the Dalek and dropped his tone at that last phrase.

What that what they did? She wouldn't help but wonder, and couldn't stop her heart from sinking a bit. Which was probably why when Tallulah exclaimed over their partnership, instead of laughingly brushing it aside, she couldn't help but let her insecurities show.

Finally revealing all her pent up thoughts and self-doubts had been a cathartic experience, even if Tallulah couldn't offer any words of advice. The showgirl had enough problems of her own with the man she loved getting caught in the middle of all the madness.

The pig and the showgirl.

Martha wasn't sure whether to laugh incredulously or cry at the heartbreak.

But still, when it came right down to it. Tallulah and Lazlo loved each other. And for the two of them, that was all that mattered. It just goes to show, there's somebody for everyone.

Utterly charmed by the thought of the odd pair, Martha had turned cheerfully to the Doctor.

Only to see his face turn from a smile to a pensive look.

"Maybe."

She tried to move on. She really did. Damn his charms for making it so difficult for her. How could she move on when he was always around her? Enthralled by his antics and the adventures they shared, she couldn't look at anyone else. Of course, the few occasions when she was tempted, the circumstances were never right. She had a family to go back to and a degree to finish. It wasn't as if she could let all that go for a chance with a man in a half-wrecked illegal spaceship in the far flung future. No matter how hot his kiss was.

But for a brief moment, she could sort of imagine the type of life she would have had with a normal man. They would share a flat, she supposed. Her career was a well-paying one, so even if his wasn't, she couldn't imagine that they would have to rent for too long before buying a house together. Work during the day. Enjoy each other's company at night. And perhaps, one day, somewhere down the road, they'll talk about expanding the family.

Trouble was, whenever she thought about it, it was hard to describe her ideal man without borrowing some or all the features of the Doctor.

If only the Doctor was human and they stayed still in one place.

At least, that was what she would have thought at the time. Until it really happened.

That lesson came in two parts. The first part was hard to deal with. For a long time now, she had always assumed that he just wasn't capable of falling in love.

But it turned out, he could.

Just not with her.

Martha thought it was only a ghost she had to deal with and she was okay with it. Because a ghost wasn't there most of the time and even when the ghost flicked into existence, she could always turn her head away and pretend. But a real living and breathing person standing in front of her was hard to ignore. Especially when Martha had to service her.

In hindsight, Joan Redfern wasn't all that bad. The things that came out of the Matron's mouth were simply in keeping with the time they were in. Being black and a maid in 1913 sucked. Period.

But that wasn't the difficult bit. The heartbreaking realization came when she was given the nearly impossible task of convincing a human that he wasn't real. He was just a story created to last for 3 months before being taken over by the body's true owner. Convincing him to take the damn watch and open it, effectively killing himself, had led to an outburst not about whether or not he should do it, but about how she could have stood by and let him fall in love.

And when she told him, he was incredulous.

"Falling in love? That didn't even occur to him?"

No, it didn't. She thought as she watched the shadow of the man she knew struggle to deal with it all. And neither did it occur to her, at first. Not when, despite having his entire biology rewritten and his memories erased, he still could remember her. Perfect Rose as Martha noted, hastily scribbled over and over again on one of the pages in his Journal of Impossible Things.

"Then what sort of man is that?"

There were two sorts. One who was simply incapable of loving and another who had loved so deeply that it was impossible that love could ever be replaced or topped. Given that John Smith was clearly not the former, it could only mean that the Doctor was the latter.

The look on the Doctor's face as he strolled away from Joan for the last time was not one of heartbreak or regret. It was a pensive look that spoke of apology and "I didn't mean to hurt you."

Like Martha, Joan would have to deal with the presence of a woman from the past.

Seeing it happen to someone else snapped Martha out of the self-pity party she had held for herself. Perhaps there was someone out there for everyone, but hers was not the Doctor. And for the first time since she first came across him on the busy streets of London, she was okay with that.

The second part of the lesson came when they got stuck. Without any means of escape.

Well, they had a way. Sometimes, the solution came from the most unlikely of sources. At the time, while they were busy on the trail of the migration, Martha barely paid any attention to the woman that came out of the store. But when they were stuck in 1969 without the TARDIS and the Doctor brandished the folder triumphantly, Martha wanted to go back to Sally Sparrow and give her a backbreaking hug in gratitude.

Still, getting the TARDIS back was no easy feat. According to Sally's account of the events, there was a lot that they needed to do before they get the TARDIS back. Rome wasn't built in a day and neither, apparently, was getting back home. They had to find a place to stay and funds to support themselves. Somehow, all that responsibility fell onto her.

The Doctor was absolutely hopeless at domestics. Just getting him to accept that the two-bedroom flat they were renting was going to have to be home for the next little while was difficult enough. There was no way he was going to get a job. Even their neighbours thought he was not quite right in the head. Not that she had much better luck with job. Having grown up in a relatively well-off family and devoted the majority of her life to her education, she never realized just how difficult it was having to live week by week stuck in a dead-end job.

After three weeks, Martha was sick of it.

"How was your day?" She asked as she stepped into the flat and dumped her bag by the door.

"Not bad, not bad." Came the reply. Popping her head into the living room, Martha saw the Doctor bent over his work. He didn't even bother raising his head to greet her. "Still having the egg problem though. Do you fancy omelette for dinner?"

"So no progress then." It was a statement, not a question.

"No, no, I've definitely made some progress. Of course I've made progress. What do you take me for? Someone who sits around all day? I'm a mover! A man of action! I –"

Martha interrupted him before he could go on any further. "So that's a no, then."

"Well," Doctor drawled out the word with a sheepish grimace on his face, his brainy specs perched on his face. "Not quite a no. But not quite a yes though. Sort of in the middle, though closer towards the no than the yes."

Martha threw her hands up as she joined him on the couch. "Face it, Doctor, we're stuck."

"Well, it's not so bad, is it?" Doctor asked, turning his head to look at her.

"It's not bad?" She laughed in disbelief, throwing her hands up in the air. "Back at home, I was a trainee doctor, this close to finishing my education and starting my career. Now I'm stuck here, in 1969, working as a shopgirl to support you."

She turned to look at him. "Doctor?"

He had stopped working and gone all quiet, which was quite unusual for him. And his eyes. They were shuttered and guarded. His right hand opened and closed, again and again, as he stared at it, almost as if he was seeing something that wasn't there. As if he was hoping for something that wasn't there.

"Doctor?" She repeated.

"What?" Doctor looked up, blinked and the moment was gone. "Right then! Let's go!" He bounded up with excitement in his voice. "There are some walls for us to graffiti!"

Getting the TARDIS back was a relief and absolved her of any notion of ever settling down with the Doctor. But it was also a reminder to Martha that the slow path was what she would return to once her adventures with the Doctor were over. One day, she would have to go back to her life, back to her degree and back to her family. All of time and space, she was definitely going to miss it. But how was it going to end?

"You abandoned me."

"Did I? Busy life, moving on."

Meeting Captain Jack Harkness had been a real eye-opener. Though Martha knew there have been others before her, she never knew how their adventures with the Doctor ended. When she questioned the Doctor, he simply brushed her off, as if it wasn't important. That was when she decided when it was time to go, it would be a time of her own choosing. She just wasn't sure if she would ever be ready to let go.

But she proved to be stronger than she thought.

The year that never was.

It showed her that yes, it was possible to walk the slow path and exist without the Doctor by her side. Giving it all up had been hard. Like having a nicotine addiction and then going cold turkey. But there was a bigger battle to keep her mind occupied. There was a paradox to be broken; an Earth to traverse and it was all up to her.

She was good. And she had proven it to herself.

"So this is me, getting out."

She didn't think it would have been possible. But in the end, she had no regrets. She fell in love, saw both the future and the past, visited planets beyond her wildest dreams and through it all, had the time of her life. She wouldn't take any of it back. She would move forward and continue growing stronger.

Because finally, Martha stopped pretending.