In a room in the TARDIS, Martha looks out of a porthole.
She had often been told that to look at a thing was to participate in it in some way and had calculated out how this was so, but she'd had no idea that the TARDIS took it so literally.
Martha sat with her forehead against the porthole and her eyes open wide while in another room of the TARDIS the Doctor was opening the doors and letting Mother of Mine fall into an instantaneous forever while he didn't ask Martha what she thought about it while there were no more possibilities for Jenny while to the TARDIS it didn't matter. Probabilities went past the glass and looked in on her like fishes.
I see you now, said Martha to the TARDIS.
The Doctor lay on a settee, his hands tucked beneath his head. He didn't look like her Doctor. He looked like a collage.
He was sick. Martha knew that, though she didn't know when this was or why he was able to see her. Parts of him didn't even exist, yet.
"Hello, my dear," he said.
Mute, Martha stood on the carpet, made of quiet curiosity and a little fright because she started her A-levels today.
His face looked so grey. "Do you know why the seat of love and grief is the heart, Martha, for more species than just yours?"
She shook her head.
He turned his head on the settee to look at her better. "Because it's the muscle that never stops laboring. The mind can lie idle, but the heart goes to work no matter what."
That smile again, like dry leaves. He slipped one hand out from under his head and held it out to her. "Come here."
Wordlessly, she came up to the couch and gave him her hand. He slid his fingers about hers, cool and dry, and smiled like an old man. "There." One finger pressed in gently against her wrist's pulse. "Humanity, the world's wind-up clock. You love what you like, Martha. Go on, now."
Martha stared out the porthole. In a while, the Doctor would find her and shake her hard and demand to know what she thought she was doing, and she wouldn't be able to answer because she wouldn't remember. People remember things, not possibilities. But for now she couldn't look away. The TARDIS pressed her lips against her ear and whispered, "I see you now."