"What did your mother mean?" The Doctor asked without any lead up to it.

They were back in the Tardis and had been chatting idly as he showed her a few parts of the ship he hadn't shown her before. They'd walked back into the main room and after a momentary silence, he'd thrown that question at her.

"When?" Martha asked.

"When she asked what we'd been busy with," The Doctor said. "She seemed quite… upset."

Martha stared at him. The Doctor was preoccupied with fiddling with some part of the Tardis. And she did believe it was fiddling, rather than anything productive. Wasn't it obvious what her mum had meant? Was he teasing her, or did he really not know?

"She, erh…" Martha hesitated, but decided to take The Doctor's question at face value. "She thought we'd been sleeping together… a lot."

A tense silence began. God, this was awkward. The Doctor clearly thought so, too; he kept his eyes firmly on the Tardis panel. She was happy he didn't look up, as that meant she could be sure, she was the only one to notice, how heat had risen to her cheeks.

"Not literal sleeping, I take it," he finally said.

"For christ's sake, she thought we'd been having too much sex to talk!" Martha exclaimed, immediately feeling further embarrassed.

The Doctor finally looked up her, eyes a bit wide.

"Oh, I… don't really do that," he said.

"You don't… do that," Matha repeated in a carefully neutral tone of voice.

"It's not really something Time Lords... do," he said. "Weeellll, not in any way that's recognizable to you lot, anyway."

"But…" Martha began as she sat down on the Tardis railing. "What about… Rose."

"Rose?" The Doctor asked, frowning. "What does she have to do with… oh.. oh! Is that what humans…?"

He trailed off as he shook his head in confusion.

"Rose and I never… we weren't…"

"You loved her," Martha said. She knew that much. Far too well.

The Doctor opened his mouth, then closed it again without making a sound. He slowly walked around the center of the Tardis in silence. Martha didn't know if he was building up to say anything, or simply looking for a way out of the conversation and before she got to find out, she realised something.

"Oh… oh, I think I get it," she said. "You're asexual. But not aromantic. Isn't that it?"

The Doctor blinked at her a few times and shot a look at the the center of the Tardis.

"I'm not sure how accurately the Tardis translated what you just said…" he told her, "But it sounds about right, yeah."

The Tardis was…. translating what she said? So... The Doctor wasn't speaking English?!

Martha desperately wanted to ask about that remark, but she forced herself to stay on topic.

"I have a mate like that.; a human one, that is," she said. Really it was more of a friend's girlfriend than Martha's friend, but that didn't seem relevant.

The Doctor looked at her and it was clear he was at a bit of loss.

"Quite," he said. "It was the norm for Time Lords. I didn't realise… weellll, I knew it was prominent for you lot, bit hard to miss, but… is this why everyone treats me like that this time around...? Am I... hot?"

He looked down at himself with a confused frown and it would have been comical to look at if Martha hadn't felt so embarrassed. She didn't want to answer his question, so instead she decided to ask him one that had been building up in her mind.

"But wait, I know you're an alien and all that, but..." she said, then hesitated slightly before continuing. "Surely all species need to procreate."

"Yes, well," The Doctor said. "Time Lords found a way around that long ago. We had these machines…"

"You're cloned?" She asked, unable to keep a bit of shock out of her voice.

"Well, not exactly, but... more or less, I suppose."

It took Martha a moment to process that.

"Still with me?" The Doctor asked with a grin; he seemed more at ease now that they'd gotten away from the subject of Rose.

"Just about," Martha said, glad that she'd already sat down. "You said 'not in any way that's recognizable to us'... what did you mean by that?"

The Doctor seemed to hesitate for a moment.

"We're telepathetic beings, Martha," he said. "It's all about the minds for us."

Martha nodded as if she understood; in truth, she was finding it a bit hard to wrap her head around. The Doctor seemed to realise that, because he finally walked over to her and has he did so, he held a hand up near her temple.

"Can I…?" he asked and though she felt unsure, she trusted him enough to nod.

His fingers gently touched her temple and she instinctively closed her eyes as images started appearing in her mind. Images of herself, at first, though in them she seemed… different. Despite a vagueness in the visual aspects, she recognised herself, but in these… not images, impressions, she seemed brighter, smarter, more important and more brave than how she tended to think herself to be. She realised, slowly, that these were The Doctor's impressions. This was her through his eyes - through his mind.

The impressions changed to some of her own memories and she felt a vague questioning nudge from The Doctor as these appeared, which she interpreted as a question about whether this was okay. She didn't know how to nudge back, but she focused on the thought that it was okay for a little while, and that seemed to do it. They didn't stay in her memories long, though.

The impressions changed quickly from there on, and in contrast to her own, there were almost no visual aspects involved. An impression of someone brave and bright and loyal and the antithesis of loneliness came first, and she knew, quite quickly, that this had to be Rose. Countless impressions followed, of so many different people of different character; the only thing they all had in common was that The Doctor had loved them.

A few stood out from the rest and Martha felt that they had been Time Lords capable of doing… this. Capable of reciprocating… whatever this was.

One in particular stood out. It felt so deep and intimate, but also dark and twisted with bitterness and hatred. There were wounds there, like the ones only someone you loved could leave you with. There was still love though. Complex and mixed up, nothing like what she'd felt in the Rose impression, or that of herself, but love regardless.

It had felt longer, but when The Doctor withdrew from her, less than 30 seconds had passed.

"Wow," she said breathlessly.

The Doctor smiled melancholically.

"Imagine that between two telepaths."

Martha smiled and nodded slowly. She was beginning to understand, or at least she thought she was. It had been… nice. She couldn't reciprocate it - like how he won't ever reciprocate your feelings, a bitter voice remarked - but at least in this, if nothing else relating to The Doctor, she and Rose were equals.

...or were they? What had The Doctor just…?

She frowned.

"What did we…?"

The Doctor opened his mouth, but it took him a moment to gather his words.

"We… it was like…" he grimaced in frustration. "Hugging, I suppose. Or an intimate conversation; a bit one-sided, mind, but..."

"Right. I think I got it," Martha said as she jumped down the railing.

They looked at each other in silence for a bit, then The Doctor sprung into action.

"Well then, where are we off to next? How about Oxpil'tar, where the cities are ships? Or what about NÆK? NÆK is brilliant; it's a space station home to over a billion people of all kinds of species! Or maybe Losque! The Planet of Learning, they call it! Humans and Hath colonised different parts of the planet and it ended up a sort of neutral place for all sorts-"

"Let's try that one!" Martha interrupted; she feared he'd keep going if she didn't.

"Sure thing, Martha Jones," The Doctor said, and grinned at her in that way what made her feel as if she was the most brilliant person he'd ever met.

He was just about to start steering the Tardis, when he looked over at her and quietly said, "Thank you, by the way."

She didn't think she need to ask for clarification, though she might have, anyway, if he hadn't spurred the Tardis into action right after.

"Right, then, allons-y!" He said and smiled at her again, in that way of his, and she smiled back. Then the Tardis was off and all her focus shifted to making sure she didn't fall over.