Hi folks! First of all, yes, I am going to post the end of "Here and Now" in the next couple of days! Don't worry!

But I have something new I've been working on. Spring break is upon us (me), and my fertile mind cannot be quelled. And I can't be convinced to do my actual WORK, so, well... you see how I've been spending my time.

This is a seven-part story, something that came to me inexplicably one day recently, and just wouldn't die. It takes place three months after "The Last of the Time Lords."

Fair warning, this story is pretty much total fluff! It's a ship fic, through and through. Mushy, analytical, dialoguey, with no smut and no science fiction. And alas, our dear Tenth Doctor isn't the most likeable guy throughout the story. Like his counterparts, he is rather smitten and uses his ridiculous intellect and powers of observation (and his truly uncanny ability to speak with a Scottish accent) to his advantage! But the Doctor unlikeable is when he is at his most compelling, wouldn't you say?

If you think, as I do, that Martha Jones is freaking amazing, then you will very likely find this story incredibly satisfying.

Thanks must go out to my friend Miggs, who helped me see the holes! :-)

And, as always, play fair: review!

Here we go...

FIRST THERE WERE THREE

"Dr. Heinrich Vogelsong, nearly everyone in-the-know can agree, is one of the great medical visionaries of our time. He is revolutionising the field by integrating holistic healing with the so-called traditional milieu of Western medicine. He will be taking us on an adventure through..."

"Rubbish," Martha whispered.

"I know," her friend Emily sighed from beside her.

They were in their last remaining med-school seminar, requiring three hours per week of pure sit-time. Graduation was in three months, and Martha viewed this as something she had to endure in order to get where she was going. Most days, she could just sigh and get through it. She was, she found, quite thankful for a simpler life.

Some days, it really tested her patience, though. And why shouldn't it? She had just spent a year travelling through time and space in a police box with probably the most interesting man in the universe, and another year saving the Earth. She had loved hard, lost even harder, been stranded in time (twice), met Shakespeare, been to the End of the Universe, and watched Japan burn. Not that she was looking to re-live much (if any) of it, but as far as excitement, this little "adventure" with Dr. Vogelsong wasn't going to cut it. Watching what amounted to a propaganda film for holistic medicine was more trying to her emotional and intellectual constitution than the usual seminar fodder.

"What are they thinking with this?" Martha asked, practically hissing at the screen.

"Did this guy pay to have the university show the film? Is that even allowed?" Emily wondered.

"I'm sure he had to do some mighty manoeuvring to get a lecture on the premises tomorrow night. Some holistic bribes, perhaps."

At that moment, a ping came from Emily's rucksack on the floor. She leaned down, in spite of the fact that mobile phones were strictly prohibited in this seminar, and extracted the device from the front pocket. She opened the display, and whispered, "It's George Perris."

"From Hippocratic Theory?" Martha asked. "Isn't he on your rotation?"

Now, there was someone Martha hadn't thought about in a while. In the previous year (though, much longer ago for Martha), she and George, along with Emily, had had their Hippo class together. He had rather fancied Martha, and once upon a time, she might have thought that he was a worthy candidate... at least for a few fun nights out, if not a long-term, highly cerebral relationship. He was handsome in a swarthy Mediterranean sort of way, and was a very nice guy with a reputation for being quite the life of the party (and quite adept at darts, even when sloshed). But he had never had quite the brains of some of Martha's closer cohorts.

These days, George and Emily were both on the same internal medicines internship in Chelsea.

"What does he want?" Martha asked, though she wasn't actually terribly interested.

Emily giggled again, and this time happened to snort, which resounded awkwardly throughout the lecture hall. She and Martha both looked about nervously, as people pretended not to hear.

"He wants to know if you'll be at the Vogelsong lecture tomorrow night," Emily told her.

"Ugh," Martha groaned. "What choice do I have? It's part of the seminar isn't it?"

"Erm, yeah..."

"Wait, he wants to know if I'll be there?"

"Yes."

"His text actually says, will Martha Jones be at the Vogelsong lecture?"

"Yes!"

"He used my first and last name? George Perris did?"

"See for yourself," Emily sighed, shoving the phone at Martha.

Martha confirmed for herself that this was, indeed, the contents of the text message from the man in question.

"Well, what the hell does he want to know that for?" she wondered, a bit more loudly than strictly appropriate in this venue.

"Why do you think, genius?" Emily asked, with a chuckle.

Martha's head snapped to the right. "No."

"Yes!" Emily protested. "Of course."

Martha sighed and sat back in her seat, cursing under her breath. Ten seconds ago, she had been thinking about how George Perris had fancied her, and was thinking on him fondly. Now, suddenly, he was becoming a nuisance.

"Can you just tell him no?" Martha asked.

"I could try," Emily offered. "But he knows you'll be there. He knows it's required."

"Then why is he asking?" Martha exclaimed, again, more loudly than necessary.

"Shh," warned her friend. "Probably just to get a read."

"Get a read?"

"Yeah, on whether he's got a shot with you."

"Well, tell him he hasn't."

"Hasn't he?"

"No!"

"What, didn't you used to fancy him?"

"No, not really. I just thought he was sort of cute."

"Well..."

"Besides, I'm seeing someone!"

Emily's jaw dropped. "Wha... well, when the hell did this start?"

"About a month ago," Martha said, with finality, crossing her arms and sitting back in her seat.

"Well, why didn't you tell me? Who is he?"

"It doesn't matter," Martha insisted. "I'll tell you later. For now, would you please tell George that I'm not available?"

"I can't do that. It would betray the fact that I know what he's up to," Emily said. "And it would imply that I've talked to you about him."

"Well you have!"

"Yeah, but you don't want to let the guy know that!"

"What?"

"Blimey, Martha, you'd think you hadn't played the game in years!"

Martha's face went stony. "Don't start with me, Emily."

"Seriously, though," Emily whined. "There are rules..."

"No, no rules, because there are no games. I'm not going to muck about with other people's affections," Martha protested, no longer amused in any way.

"Would the two of you shut up?" hissed the young man seated behind them. They had thought they were being discreet by whispering their exchange, but as these things tend to do, it had got out of hand.

"Sorry," Martha muttered.

Emily said nothing, but tucked into her phone, returning the text message.

Martha leaned over to see.

Emily leaned away, until the message had been sent. Then she turned the phone so Martha could read it. "The lecture is required, isn't it?" she had texted.

Martha gave her a look.

"It's as non-committal as I get without being a bitch or making you sound like one," Emily proclaimed. "If you want him to know you're shagging someone else, you tell him yourself."

"I didn't say I was shagging someone else."

"Shh!" the young man behind them insisted.

As the seminar let out, without preamble, Emily demanded, "Okay, so who is this guy?"

Martha rolled her eyes.

If she was honest with herself, as she was in this moment, she could admit within her own mind that perhaps she had somewhat outgrown Emily. The two of them had been in the same preliminary classes at med school in their first semester, and had shared a flat for most of their second year. They had swapped a million stories about men, catty girlfriends and hangovers. But now... well, it wasn't Emily's fault. Circumstances being what they were, Martha actually felt she had outgrown medical school, the single life as she had known it, and frankly, almost everyone and everything she knew. She had seen and done so much in such a short (relative) period of time...

The possible lone exception, apart from her family, was Tom Milligan. He was one thing that was new since she'd come back from her trek across the cosmos. He was the one thing that wasn't a holdover from Life Before the Doctor. Unlike just about everything else she could think of, there had been nothing to come into her life and completely change her perspective of Tom, or to make him seem small.

Even though he had no idea about any of it, and might actually be surprised to find that he had any heroics in him at all, she had seen his true colours. It was a year that never was, in a dystopia that never existed, and she was thinking of acts of valour that he had never actually committed, decisions he was never really faced with. And yet, she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that somewhere within that mild-mannered paediatrician, there was a warrior who would stick his neck out for his fellow man, and who would not think twice about dying for her. She had only ever seen that kind of full-on combative commitment from one other man...

She shook it away.

Or, at least, she tried to. Because in that direction, there lay a whole world of useless thinking.

"His name is Tom Milligan," Martha told her friend. "He's in paediatrics at London Bridge."

"Fantastic!" Emily chirped as they turned left and started down the stark-white corridor. "How did you meet?"

"In a sandwich shop across from Bridge Hospital," she said. She did not reveal that she had intentionally gone there to meet him, after entering the hospital, losing her nerve, then following him across the road at lunch time.

"And it's been a month?"

"Thereabouts, yeah."

"Good kisser?"

Martha groaned inwardly. "Yeah, I suppose."

"But haven't got your kit off yet?"

"No, not yet," Martha said indulgently.

"Well, what are you waiting for? You know that there's no way to know whether you can truly move forward with a man until you've been there and done that!"

Martha shrugged, but the fact was that in spite of herself, she rather agreed with her friend.

She knew that Emily wasn't just talking about finding out whether a man could rattle a headboard loose from its frame, as a gauge for moving forward. There was a bit more to her than that. Emily had her own reasons for adhering to this credo.

Martha had hers as well. It was about seeing a man's behaviour in the heat of the moment. It was about his handling of insecurity and uncertainty, his level of consideration. It was about his treatment of others when all of his practised finesse gets stripped away. And also, it was about the fun, of course.

"When will you see him?" Emily wondered.

"Tonight."

They burst through a door out into a courtyard area, where students and professors milled about. They headed for the gate that would lead them out to the mean streets of London.

Before Emily could ask further questions, she seemed to bump into something. Namely, a fairly large man.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said quickly.

"No, it's my fault entirely," the man said.

Martha thought the voice sounded familiar, mostly because it was billowy and hollow all at the same time, and came with a lilting German accent. Before she could stop herself, she turned and looked at the man's face. The man noticed her at the same moment.

"Martha! Martha Jones!" he said.

"Professor Franks," she said, feeling a bit awkward. "Hello. What are you doing here?"

"I'm in town for Dr. Vogelsong's lecture," he told her. "Heinrich and I are old friends. This is the first time he's been in Britain in more than ten years!"

Professor Franks was about six-foot-two, fifty years old, maybe fifty-five, and quite broad across the shoulders. His facial features reminded Martha of the actor Sean Bean - rather prominent nose, rather thin mouth, rather thin, scruitinsing eyes. And though he wore the requisite brown tweed jacket with elbow patches, he wore his greying, sandy blond hair just a touch too long, and his facial hair just a tad too unshaven.

"Oh, really? Very interesting," Martha commented. "Er, Professor Franks, this is my friend Emily. Emily, this Dr. Pieter Franks, professor of microbiology and biochemistry at St. Andrews. He was my professor for two semesters at university."

Emily and Franks shook hands.

"How are you enjoying medical school?" he asked.

"Well, it's serving me well," Martha told him.

"Are either of you ladies in any of Professor Sobol's classes?" he wondered. "He is also a friend of mine."

"Well, it's not a class, but he runs a discussion group every Thursday afternoon," Emily told Franks.

"Really?" he asked, with genuine curiosity. "What sort of discussion group?"

"An Arabic-language group," Emily answered.

"Ah, yes," Franks commented. "There's a growing number of Arabic-speakers immigrating to the UK. A doctor in the twenty-first century would do well to be able to speak to them in their own language. A compassionate doctor, that is."

Emily nodded. "I took Arabic at uni - I am an intermediate speaker, but Sobol is fluent. About seven of us get together at a coffee shop and just practice. We talk about... whatever."

"What an excellent idea," Franks said with a smile. "Thursday. That's today."

"Yes, I'm headed there now."

"Well, tell Rolando - Professor Sobol - that I said hello," Franks requested.

"I will do," Emily promised.

"Ladies, I must run," Professor Franks said. "Emily, lovely meeting you. Martha, it was enchanting to see you again." He reached out for her hand, and Martha gave it, before she thought about what she was doing.

He didn't just shake it. He held it in his left hand for a moment, and stared at her meaningfully. Then he covered her hand with his right and averted his eyes, as if in sadness.

"Until later," he said.

"Yes," Martha replied uneasily.

With that, the Professor made his way toward the building that Martha and Emily had recently exited.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Emily asked, "What the hell was that? That holding-your-hand, until-later bit?"

They began to walk toward the gate once more.

"Ugh," Martha groaned, and then explained herself reluctantly. "Just before I graduated, he asked me to come to his office to discuss my final paper. I went, and we discussed it, but then he put it aside and..."

"What?" Emily asked bluntly. She stopped in her tracks and faced Martha with fire in her eyes. "What did he do?"

"Calm down, he didn't attack me or anything," Martha said, urging her friend through the gate, onto the street. "He just took my hand, like he did a minute ago, and did that thing where he stalls for a few minutes, telling me that he's wanted to say something to me for a long while. That I have so much talent and potential, and I'm so wonderful and beautiful and blah blah blah... and that if I would give him a chance, he would leave his wife to be with me."

"No way!" Emily exclaimed with a frown.

Martha nodded. "When I declined, he started talking about all the things he could offer me. Publishing support, research facilities, homes in St. Andrews, Hamburg and New York. Connections to the World Health Organisation, an 'in' with just about every major university in Europe, and a few in America. All of which is true, all of which is formidable..."

"But in exchange for sex?"

"Well, yeah, sort of. I like to think he was looking for more than that, but..."

"Ugh. Was this just out of the blue? After he'd been your prof for two semesters?"

"Yep," Martha said, rather sadly. "He'd been one of my favourites as well. Honestly, one of the best teachers I've ever had. I really looked up to him... like an uncle, you know? Then he goes and does that."

"Bit creepy."

"Yeah, I thought so. I had even thought about applying to med school at St. Andrews, so I could attend his biochemical engineering labs. And, I was thinking, if I'd got accepted there, of requesting him as a rotations liaison."

"Whoa, you really liked him."

"Admired him, yes," Martha corrected. "I still do, for his prowess as a scientist. God, it was so disappointing when he..." She sighed.

"Seems like he still carries a torch for you."

"If there ever was a real torch. There was certainly a real midlife crisis." The thought of all of it made her feel incredibly uncomfortable, as well as sad. "And even if there was a torch, what would I be expected to do about it?"

"Touché," Emily conceded.

By now, they were at the corner.

"Is this where we part ways?" asked Martha.

"Yep," Emily said, gesturing to the right. "Sobol's group is meeting at that Starbucks a few blocks over. I'm going to try and get some work done before the others arrive. And you, my coveted friend..."

"Coveted?"

"Yes! You're headed home to get ready for a date, are you not? While two other men pine for your attentions! Have you forgotten about George Perris?"

Martha groaned. "Stop it."

"But George and the professor notwithstanding... is tonight the night?"

"What are you on about?"

"With what's his name... Tom! Tonight?"

"I don't know!" Martha protested, acting like a schoolgirl, and blushing so hard, she felt even her hair must have turned pink.

Because as it happened, Martha had more or less decided that tonight would be the night. She reckoned that after four weeks, it was time to find out whether to move forward with Tom Milligan, or at least begin the process of deciding. She just didn't want to tell Emily.

"Oh my God! Tonight is the night, isn't it! You already know!"

"Shhh!" Martha scolded. "Lower your voice!"

"You vixen!"

"Goodbye," Martha said, mechanically, turning on her heel and heading the other way.

"I'm going to want details!" Emily called after her.

"Not bloody likely!"