Title: Corridors

Disclaimer: Not mine, never in a million years. I wish.

Characters / Pairings: Doctor / Rose

Spoilers: Post Last of the Timelords and Children in Need special.

Summary: Drabble. The Doctor muses on the corridors in his own life, the in-betweens.

Everything happened at once in the Doctor's life. Like they say, it never rains but it pours. Two minutes after Martha had left he had been visited by a former incarnation of himself, considered whether he should start wearing a decorative vegetable again, then the hull of the Titanic had crashed into the Tardis. And what followed, well, that was another story.

All that could be said was that 24 hours ( and several bruises ) later the Doctor was left patrolling his ship, walking the long corridors and idly caressing his control panel, neither of his hearts in either activity. For the periods of exhilarating action were always separated by long stretches of nothing. He supposed he could set some co-ordinates for some lonely back world or another, dump the Tardis right into the middle of a civil uprising and lose himself in some trouble and mayhem for an hour or two, but invariably he would just end up back on his ship, musing on how much larger it seemed when he was alone and thinking back to when it had last felt like that. Thoughts which inevitably led to Rose.

Rose had used to fill up those long intervals, whether cradling a cup of tea as she talked to him in the console room in her pyjamas, or trying to force him into trying on an 18th century French maiden's outfit in the wardrobe room she was always doing something, and as the Doctor looked back it seemed to him now as if almost all of that time had been spent laughing.

With Martha it had been different,. At the end of each day, after coming home to the Tardis, wiping the slime off their sleeves and racing to get in the shower first, they would both retire to their own rooms and spend the rest of the evening there without exception, only ever emerging for refreshment. Once when he bumped into her on the way to the kitchen the Doctor had almost found it surprising to see Martha, he had gotten so used to only seeing her as she bounded into the console room every "morning" in a fresh change of clothes for a fresh adventure. He sometimes even forgot she was there when it got really late. The Doctor slept little, if at all, but he sensed that Martha needed time to relax and unwind from their daytime travels, and sometimes she seemed just a little too emotional or tired to really talk. The Doctor too, though he valued it, found it exhausting to be in Martha's company all the time, always having to play the role; The Doctor, the impresser, the wizard with his magical flying machine. He found he could only really be himself when he was on his own, as Rose was no longer there.

Rose.

The Doctor, finding himself tracing one particular corridor, his converses rapping heavy clunks against the iron walkway, came to a stop, outside one particular door.

Or course he had kept her room, losing so much of her all at once, it was all he could do to preserve what she left behind. At least her possessions would stay here immortally, just like himself, as Rose never could have.

He hadn't been in there for a while though. Staring down the once familiar door he felt ashamed to admit that he had visited less and less since Martha had come onboard. She was a force of distraction, and "The Doctor" had found himself putting aside thoughts of ones loved and lost, if only out of self-defence. Which was why he had been quite surprised at the angry words he heard himself spitting at Martha when she had accidentally stumbled across Rose's room, and entered the console room wearing one of Rose's favourite jumpers: the purple one.

Martha had been so confused and hurt she had run back to her room and he hadn't seen anything of her for the rest of the day. She didn't speak of it again, and he didn't apologise but he could see the curiosity brimming within her and he supposed it was better to clarify sooner rather than later and not scare the poor girl to death again.

Showing Rose's room to someone else was a lot harder than the Doctor had anticipated, and seeing Martha touch Rose's things felt wrong somehow, as if two separate worlds within his life were colliding. And when worlds collided … well worlds were to be kept apart, that was the very reason the Doctor and Rose were in different universes.

As Martha ran her fingers gently across surfaces, fingering a scarf here or examining some nail polish there the Doctor couldn't help but notice that Martha's eyes lingered on the photographs of Rose and himself, framed and carefully positioned ( and preserved, even through the hours and days the Doctor found himself sat in front of them ) on Rose's desk. He had cleared his throat at the point, and cheerfully proposed going to see John Lennon but Martha had distractedly declined. ( " I've already seen Shakespeare haven't I? Once you've met one great poet you've met them all. " )

The Doctor had ushered Martha out anyway and pretended to follow her, waiting till she had turned round the corridor bend before he slipped back into Rose's room and sank onto her bed with a sigh. It was just as well: he had already seen The Beatles live with Rose.

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