Title: Those Forgotten
Rating: T
Summary: Sometimes love takes us all by surprise. Ten/Rose.
Disclaimer: Don't own, never will.
This is something that has been drifting around my head ever since I saw "Smith and Jones". And yes, my mind worries me too.
R&R is blessed to the Muse, and enjoy!
Those Forgotten
I'd never felt love before I met him – before I met the Doctor.
Well, I suppose that's not entirely true. I'd lovedbefore; loved my family, loved my friends. And I'd felt the burning heat of passion before; felt the fire of lust and desire ignite in the presence of a near-perfect lover. But never before in my life had I reeled so completely from this sensation of affection and protectiveness and mind-shaking adoration as I do now.
I stand to the side, forgotten as the joyous reunion goes on before me. My heart sings its pain to the uncaring skies, and I can't help but think back, and wonder where I went wrong along the way.
---------
I was sixteen when I lost my virginity, and I was too young.
A shag was the 'in' thing back then; in school, if you'd worked your way into a boy's bed and dashed the bases in a frenzy of heat and ecstasy you were in there immediately, elevated up to the level of the smart and pretty and popular girls. I didn't care so much for the boy – we'd dated a few months, I'd turned sixteen and then we'd slept together. I dumped him two weeks later: the glitz and glamour of a relationship wore off pretty soon.
All these years later, I wish I'd waited. I wish I hadn't listened to my friends and taken that final plunge into adulthood before I was completely sure of myself as a child. My first time was nothing special, nothing memorable – back then it was amazing, astounding, astonishing; but now, looking back, I can't even remember it all that well.
And I wish I'd waited.
"Hey, why d'ya keep smiling, Martha?"
"Yeah – something you're not telling us?"
"Shut up, guys. It's nothing. Really."
" 'Nothing', hey? That's what they're calling it nowadays… Y'know, you might want to pick someone else to shag in the future, girl."
"Yeah, Alex has a big mouth…"
"He didn't."
"He did!"
---------I was eighteen the first time I kissed a girl, and that was too old.
It had been after a night of drunken partying – friends who'd been together since reception were finally being split up as we parted ways to go to different unis. My best mate, Alicia, was going to Oxford and I was staying in London. We both knew that we were going to see each other rarely from now on, too busy with our higher education, and that we would make other friends—better friends—as we slowly lost touch with each other. It was a bitter truth, but a truth nonetheless, and so we drank together to ease the pain of parting.
Alicia had always fumbled around with her sexuality – she'd shagged our mate Josh when she was fourteen, just to prove to everyone that she wasn't a lesbian. But those of us who knew her—really knew her—knew that she was lying to herself and to everyone else. So when she finally came out in Sixth Form we all acted surprised, but silently congratulated her on finally coming to terms with who she really was.
During that drunken night of revelry, when toasts of vodka shots were raised to new beginnings and when bitter tears were shed for friends we may well lose, she pulled me away from the pulsing dancefloor and the screams of laughter. We were both a little drunk, heads swimming with a heady mix of alcohol and joy and grief, and we were both vulnerable.
"Alicia? What's up?"
"Martha…" She shifted nervously.
"Alli? Alli, what is it?"
"Oh, to hell with this."
And then she'd kissed me. Hard, on the lips, tongues colliding in a startled frenzy. She was good, I still give her that. Practised and forceful, and better than any boy I'd ever snogged around the back of the bike shed.
"Alli… Jesus, Alli what was that for?"
She rested her forehead against mine, her breath hot on my face. "That was a goodbye."
---------
I was twenty-one the first time I fell in love, and that was just about right.
It began the first time he spoke her name, just after he'd rescued the hospital and saved the world. We were leant against the console of his time machine—his TARDIS—and he said it; those few words that sparked curiosity and maddening intrigue within my inquisitive brain.
"Her name was Rose."
I saw his face when he spoke those words, saw his agony, saw his grief. He tried to hide it, tried so hard, but he couldn't hide the pain from his eyes. That day, when he first whisked me off on adventures far and wide, I looked into his eyes, and I saw a pit of emptiness. His heart was broken, shattered irreparably – and I shuddered when I saw that: for this magnificent man, who stared down tyrants and destroyed dictators, to be so helpless inside himself… It was just wrong.
And I set out to find what had broken him so utterly.
I roamed the corridors of the TARDIS when he left me to my own devices – roamed, and searched. I wasn't entirely sure what I was searching for: how can you describe a memory of a mere glimpse of another lifetime? If you'd asked me, back then, what I was looking for all I would have been able to give you in answer was a single word, loaded with emotion that wasn't mine.
Rose.
---------
I had been a time traveller for a month when I found it – her room.
When I stepped inside the doorway of yet another chamber in this never-ending ship, I just knew that this was where she had lived. I know I should have felt like an intruder, but somehow I didn't. I felt accepted – not necessarily welcomed, but accepted. Like this was something I was allowed to see.
It was lying on the bedside table when I found it – a simple photograph of a smiling couple. My fingers picked it up of their own accord; I merely looked at it. I recognised the Doctor immediately, but he seemed… different. Relaxed. Happier. And, as I studied the girl in his arms, I understood why. She was beautiful – smiling and laughing with eyes full of love. The image was caught mid-sentence, and she was caught in the act of reprimanding the Time Lord who held her in his embrace. He was laughing – not at her, but with her, as she scolded him for some tiny offence that no one now remembers.
I stood in her room for I don't know how long, and I looked at that picture for what seemed like an eternity. I still have it in my mind, imprinted firmly on my brain. I can never erase it – an image of perfect happiness that I just know I will never quite obtain.
It was after I had left, banging the door behind me in haste as the Doctor's voice rang through the corridors, calling my name, that the jealousy set in. I refused to acknowledge who I was jealous of, but I knew full well what the jealousy stemmed from. The love I had seen on both their faces, in an innocent moment from so long ago, was something I had never felt, and something that I desperately wanted to feel.
And the fact that a person in that image was in such a state of happiness and joy with the very same someone I was slowly and subconsciously falling head over heels in violent love with didn't exactly help matters.
So when the Doctor found me that day I was quiet, and I barely spoke to him as he led me back to the console room, babbling as he does. I didn't interject smart remarks as I usually do – my heart hurt every time I looked at him, and I didn't dare to think what it would feel like if I spoke to him.
But he noticed, after a while, and called me on it.
"Martha, are you… Are you okay?"
"Me? Yeah, I'm fine. Why?"
"I dunno. You seem kinda… quiet."
"Nah, I'm fine."
"You positive?"
"Yes, Doctor, I'm sure. Okay?"
"Okay, then! Keep your shirt on…"
---------
I can't remember how old I am now, when I finally realise that I am in love, and that the one I love will never be mine.
The actions leading up to this moment in time are somewhat hazy in my mind. I can remember the Doctor running around the console crazily, face joyful and hair a mess. He gabbled on about a rift, about Torchwood, and about Cardiff. I thought that he'd finally lost it, but when he grabbed a lever on the console and yanked it down, sending us spinning through time and space I realised he wasn't crazy. He was ecstatic, and utterly jubilant.
He laughed with joy, and I laughed for him.
But when we tumbled out of the TARDIS that laughter was silenced. We had landed in a hospital, and the wards were full to bursting with injured people, screaming people, dying people. I wanted to stop and help them, but the Doctor dragged me onwards. He was searching for something – for someone. I knew who.
Her – the image, the shadow.
"Her name was Rose."
---------
I knew that he'd found her when he froze in mid-stride, his expression at once stricken and utterly joyful.
It was a private room, and she wasn't alone. Another man was sat with her – dark hair and hard features; someone who had seen a lot and was so tired. I didn't pay him much attention: he could wait. My gaze was drawn to her, as, for the first time in my life, I saw Rose.
And the look on her face as she turned and saw him standing in the doorway, staring at her… The room crackled with electricity as these two parted lovers saw one another for the first time in far too long. It took him three steps to reach her side, and no time at all to kiss her possessively, lovingly, worshipfully.
My heart broke in that instant.
---------
I am drawn aside by a hand on my arm, tugging me out of the room and into the corridor. The man I had seen at Rose's bedside half-closes the door behind us, and then lets me go. He smiles at me. "What's your name?" he asks softly.
"Martha," I manage.
"I'm Jack." He watches me keenly as I look through the gap between door and doorframe; as my gaze fixes on the joyous reunion that I can never be a part of. "You too, hey?"
I glance back at him, confused. "What?"
"You love him too."
A bittersweet smile flashes briefly across my lips, and I sigh. If only it was that easy. "No."
He frowns at me, glances through the door at them, and then back to me. "But I could've sworn…"
"I don't love him," I repeat.
And Jack understands.
---------
I know now, as I stand beside Jack in the corridor of a teeming hospital, that what I love—who I love—is merely an ideal. But I don't care. To love an ideal is better than not to love at all.
"Her name was Rose."
From his first mention of her name I knew that she was something different; something special. For a being to have been given so much of the Doctor's love… They would have to be exceptional. They would have to be fantastic. And I knew then that she was, and I now know that she still is.
I fell in love with someone I had never met, through his words and the look in his eyes as he spoke her name. I wondered who she was – intrigue led to obsession, obsession to admiration, and admiration thrust me into love. I could never love the Doctor – he is dangerous, and what I told him is true: he's not my type. But I am perfectly capable of loving someone who I know will never ever love me back. I can't forget her, but they have both forgotten me.
I love her.
And her name is Rose.
--end--