Martha narrowed her eyes slightly, scrutinizing the Doctor as he tinkered with the TARDIS console. They had dematerialized not too long ago, leaving the Pentallion drive ship and the living sun behind. Some had died. All of them had faced death. Even the Doctor.
He seemed all right. He almost always seemed all right. But Martha had seen his face earlier, when she'd stepped inside the TARDIS. She could see the way his hands sometimes shook at the controls, the way he grinned at her without entirely resting his eyes on hers. That...thing had been inside him, trying to take over his mind, burning him from the inside out.
Her fingers clenched slightly around the console railings, thinking about the sounds of his screams from the stasis booth. How he had actually told her he was scared. She would have never expected to hear those words come out of his mouth, and she had the feeling they really didn't very often.
Now he was humming something by Beethoven, if she recognized the tune correctly anyway, behaving with practiced nonchalance. She sighed, the repeated wish that he'd open up to her more resounding in her head. His humming was muffled slightly as he ducked beneath the console to work on some part of the TARDIS. She gazed at the view screen aimlessly for a bit until several moments later, he called up to her. Sort of.
"Rose, hand me that spanner, will you?" Martha turned her head and stared at his hand as it appeared beyond the edge of the console. He waved it after a moment. "On your left, by the hand brake. See it?"
The sinking feeling Martha felt whenever he mentioned Rose or unknowingly made this kind of identity mistake returned to the pit of her stomach. She couldn't help feeling a pang of jealousy, that she was just the replacement, when moments like these came about.
Even so, watching his fingers shake as he held his hand there, Martha retrieved the odd-looking tool and passed it to him. "Here it is." Her own hand slid round the cold, silver metal of her TARDIS key.
"Thanks," the Doctor called up, oblivious.
"You're welcome," Martha said quietly.