The Singing Smoke of the Ash Rim Area
The TARDIS spun unevenly along the edges of the Mycene Drift, like a dreidel wandering home drunk across a railroad crossing. The Doctor had one hand on the controls, and one hand fingering a slip of paper he had found in the pocket of his raincoat while showing Martha the prismatic falls of New(er) Victorianopolis, and one hand stroking his chin thoughtfully.
"Wait a moment–that's three hands," he said suddenly. He grabbed for the console just as the TARDIS pitched wildly to one side. Martha was thrown into his side, a not altogether unpleasant event under normal circumstances. Of course, being under 1000 years old, he could not actually recall any circumstances yet in his life which could objectively be considered "normal."
"Do what?" she asked, reaching past him to steady herself. For a moment, her body was extended along with his, her hip against his, her compact but surprisingly warm bosom against his arm. She noticed, and pulled back, glad that he had not noticed. She took a step back as the ship steadied and the inertial compensators caught up with their flight.
Of course, he did notice. He noticed everything, slicing time and perception into such thin shavings that sensations humans found overwhelming, he found filled with discrete moments of joy and sorrow. The joy of her voice, the joy of her against him, the joy of her leather jacket hissing just below the range of human hearing as it slid back down over her hip. The joy of the tip of her tongue, flicking out to moisten her lips as she flushed, the joy of the capillaries in her face singing with blood as she reacted to touching him, the joy of her relief when she thought he had not noticed.
And sorrow. The slip of paper, the scrawled message from another Companion, another woman, the teasing reminder to remember to come in out of the rain. Rose. Damn it. He didn't want that thought, that memory. The Doctor's problem was not that he lost, nor that he forgot, it was that he remembered. With incredible precision of sensation, with fidelity of memory, with intellect and experience to parse and process the rawest of raw data, the Doctor had realized long ago that he could never hope to wait, to sit, to have patience until time itself healed all wounds. Forgetting–that one precious balm was denied him–the only way in which time, his one constant love, was not his friend. The only way to lesson the pain of any one memory was to bury it under others. From the loss of love, or family, or home, from the minor partings of old friends to the searing scar of the Time War, there was no forgetting. Not for him.
Gods do not heal. Gods have no mechanism to heal. What can harm a God? And what use should a Time Lord have for forgetfulness? In a perfect world, none. But they are not, none of them, perfect worlds.
All of this had tumbled, spinning like the TARDIS, though his mind in the multifaceted moment it had taken Martha to step back and moisten her lips with the tip of her tongue. The Doctor turned. Time to bury a memory or two.
He moved forward, sudden and smooth, stepping to her. He entered her personal space, his face moving through the boundary layer of air which her body had heated by its presence to a fraction of a degree warmer than the rest of the air around them. Her lips were still parted, her eyes wide and dark. He leaned forward and kissed her, just quickly, just lightly, just firmly enough that neither could pretend that they had imagined it or deny it, just so.
Her eyes grew wide, then started to close, her arms started to raise towards him, her knees flexed, rolling her hips ever so slightly towards him, the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck stirred and began to rise. Blood flowed ever so minutely faster to her lips, her fingertips, her ear lobes. It had not yet begun to flow more quickly to other, more intimate places when he stopped.
He stopped. The Doctor turned back, punched at a control and practically sang out to her over his shoulder.
"Right then, how's about a quick spin to the Singing Smoke of the Ash Rim Area? Lovely this time of year. Well, any time really. Always a good time for the Ash Rim Area. Because, you see," and he paused to wink back at her, "I've got a time machine."
Martha Jones stood, blinking quickly, the memory of him on her lips so faint yet so immediate, she was almost convinced she had dreamt it.
She moved beside him and held on to the console, as if she was holding on to the surface of the Earth to stop herself from spinning off into space. She smiled a warm and very human smile, and twitched her hip into his, just physically bumping him off balance as he so often figuratively did to her. She called out to him, "Well, Allons-y!"