Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who.

Her first night out, the first of what looked to be a long road and a long year, Martha walked. Oh, and she walked and walked. Her feet blistered in her boots and her knees and elbows were skinned raw from falling, her teeth ached from the bitter cold and her hair was blowing everywhere, but she walked. Over rubble and ruins, grasslands and grenade-stricken countryside, she walked.

Then she gathered. It felt like her arms were miles long, reaching out to pull in everyone who might listen and even everyone who wouldn't. She pulled all the refugees close, and as they huddled and prayed and wished for the night to be over, she talked to them.

Martha told the refugees everything she could remember. She spoke of starships which soared between galaxies and mined the sun, and she told of little girls who trapped people in scribbles, and of hospitals on the moon and in the future. She told of cat-people and of Judoon, of Daleks and Timelords. Words falling from her lips were like a feast to the starving survivors, and her travels became legendary.

It pained her that she couldn't stay longer, do more. She was a doctor - she was supposed to be helping people, healing them, not telling stories!

But she only had a year, and so she did what she could during the nights and moved on in the morning, to find a new town and tell a new story.