For Services Rendered
thedorkygirl

Ten, Martha

Written before the series three premier. Spoilers for DW series three companions.

"You must have known I'd leave someday," she tells him in a matter-of-fact way. "Why do you act so surprised?"

"But you aren't really leaving it all," he protests. The Doctor scuffs a shoe against the polished tile floor and looks for all the world like a petulant schoolboy whose holiday friends are returning home for the year. "You're just leaving me."

Martha scoffs. "Like you can't pop in for a chat when you feel like it? And there's any number of times we could run into each other. You know that, Doctor."

"I suppose if I were bored, I could hang around a couple of plague outbreaks and wait till you show."

"Hmm." Martha purses her lips. "Better be the fourth epidemic at earliest; before that, most of the strains are catalogued. But that's the spirit! Now cheer up, you're guilting me, and I don't take well to guilting."

She arranges her bag on her shoulder purposefully and glances around the corridor. It's nearly deserted this late at night -- early in the morning -- but there are three agents standing a polite distance away, waiting for her as she gives her good-bye. Martha fidgets in her new uniform, feels oddly important. She remembers the first time she put on a lab coat and smiles. She had been outfitted as part of a group then, too, and like that time, she feels the weight of authority her new dress awards her.

"You're not even a real doctor."

"Neither are you. And I'll test, you know that. I'm qualifying in human and closely related species first, but it doesn't mean that I don't have a load of studying yet to do." Her expression softens, and she takes his hand in hers. The Doctor has always been rubbish at good-bye, always keeping hold of souvenirs that she would have thrown away at the end of one of their adventures. "You know I'd never get it done, don't you? I'd always be a student on holiday before the big test."

"Isn't it fun, though?"

"Oh, it is, and that's why I'm staying here. I'll still get a chance to travel around, but I'll be a real doctor. I'll nip in to study the yellow fever, bring back fresh samples for analysis. There aren't nearly enough people whose job it is to collect these samples, and you know it. Besides, I'm starting out as a team medic, and they're always needed. You know how dangerous it is out there -- how many times have I patched you up? I can make a real difference."

The Doctor shoves his hands into his pockets, and Martha wonders what memory he's catching hold of.

"You could make a difference on the TARDIS, still," he says. "You do."

"It's the same thing, but it's different. I don't have the same goals as you, Doctor. I want to know different things and for different reasons. I want to go to the pre-Columbian Americas and see their diet, hear their coughs, count their numbers and extrapolate wild theories from them. I want to be there when someone on my team breaks a leg or catches cold, want to feel necessary and needed."

"I'll take you. We could go to Argentina if you want," the Doctor says hopefully, dodging the tail end of her sentence. "Or the Island of Hispaniola before it was the Island of Hispaniola. We could watch Columbus land."

Martha laughs at that notion. "Like as not we'd end up in Barcelona again -- the one with the dogs with no noses."

It gets a chuckle out of him. "That never stops being funny."

"It isn't anything in particular, Doctor," Martha says. "I like travelling time and space. It's why I'm staying here. I just want more purpose to it. It's all a lark to you. One day you go swanning off to France, the next day it's the edge of the universe, simply because you feel like it. I want plans and details and preparation. I want to know from day to day what I'm to do."

"Stability," and it's almost an accusation, the way it plays off his smile.

"Yes, and a house to come home to, and a weekend off every once in a while. I want a back garden to take my tea in. Colleagues and water coolers. A chance to retire and to know where I'll spend my retirement. I want to see a life before me that I can count on, not just five minutes into my future. For a time machine, the TARDIS can't help with that part, the knowing what's next."

"It's what I like about her," the Doctor says defensively. "It's the best feeling in the world, to walk a hundred thousand years in the past a hundred thousand miles away from home."

"And I liked it too, Doctor," Martha assures him. "I still like it. I love the thrill of stepping out of a ship and not quite knowing what'll be waiting for me. But I want smaller doses. I want to be able to step back after a hard day and say, I can't do it tomorrow. I want to take tomorrow off and read a book, collect my thoughts, phone my mother just for that comfort."

"You can phone your mother from the TARDIS!"

"Conversations lasting fifteen minutes because we'll be arriving in 1432 soon, and Martha, shouldn't you be getting dressed soon?" She teases him gently. "Martha, you spoke to your mother yesterday, don't you think you need to cut the apron strings?"

The Doctor is in no mood for teasing. He takes his hands out of his pockets and crosses his arms, narrowing his eyes at her with that look of intensity that he saves for those moments when he's sure of vanquishing an enemy.

"They took two years of Jack's memories."

"Yes, well, he asked them too," Martha says crossly, angry that he's bring up a settle matter. "It's his fault he didn't remember."

"Actually --"

She sighs, knowing his argument and not wishing to distract herself with who, exactly, was to blame for Jack not remembering the request. "I'm sorry for snapping at you. But it isn't as if I'm leaving you alone. You've got Nic."

"She's almost grown up, too," the Doctor says.

"Nic's got a while yet left in her, don't you fear that."

Martha worries that her departure might be incentive enough for the mother-hen Nic to stay longer with the Doctor than she might have previously been able to put up with, but she's not going to let an opportunity walk passed her because of that. There's already been one friend joined and left the TARDIS, and Jack's come and gone so many times that Martha's stopped counting. She's not going to be the hanger-around, not the last one standing. She doesn't have the Doctor's affliction for knick-knacks and baubles.

"She will, though."

"What about Alina? I think if you asked her, she'd come with you. She's a bright girl, fit in well in the TARDIS. And you know Jack always likes to take a couple of months' turn. Heaven knows he's visited often enough to leave clothes and a toothbrush. Jack'll stay with you till his end."

She doesn't say, I can't, but she suspects he finishes that thought in his own head.

"They don't need you."

"Doctor, they do need me. They need someone interested in the blood and guts at the epidemiology department. Too many work their way into the temporal division there, trying to find what breaks and makes the mind in time travel, but for the dirty work, for the people going down to an infected site and taking samples, there's only a handful. They need someone who can keep their wits about them in the fourteenth century or in the forty-first. They want someone not afraid to step on Martian soil when people are falling over and dying like so many flies. I can help them study those diseases."

"It'll be hell for you," he tells her. "Being there, unable to cure their coughs and ease their suffering. There'll be more times than not when you're given just enough vaccination for yourselves and nothing more, told to let the dying die."

Martha looks down, worries a hole in the sleeve of her shirt. "But if I can stop it from happening again, doesn't that help?"

"Maybe later," says the Doctor. "But not at first. You have to stick it out at first, know that you'll get over it someday --" He stops, shakes his head. "You'll never get over it, Martha. You'll never stop wanting to help those people. But you are right. You keep your head in time travel. You'll let them die, and then you'll come home and have a cry about it, and you'll do it all over again the next day, because you'll help others with your work, and you weren't meant to be there anyway."

She feels as if that cry is about to start now. He's given in, has always been giving in throughout the conversation. "I'm a doctor," she says, and maybe it's a compliment to herself, maybe it's a final awareness and appreciation into his name. "I understand that sometimes, you can't save them all."

"You'll want to try," and his voice sounds strong and weak. "Don't ever stop wanting that. Promise me, Martha Jones, that no matter how many times you take your weekends and how many cups of tea you consume in your garden, you'll always want to save them all. Promise me that you won't forget how it is to feel helpless to help. Promise me you'll remember that everybody dies, no matter what you do."

The intensity of his request catches her breath in her chest and doesn't release it for a moment. Martha takes a shuddering gulp of air and knows that it's something that the Doctor is afraid that he's lost, something that he can't regain. She doesn't know how to assure him otherwise.

"I promise," she says, "that I'll always remember what you taught me. I won't forget, Doctor."

Martha glances over at the three Times Agents again. She's one of them now, on Jack's recommendation and the Doctor's association, and she's more scared than the day of her first dissection and more excited than when she set foot into the TARDIS. There's nothing certain in her future, no matter what she plans, but Martha knows from experience that those feelings will never leave her. It's a strange comfort.

"This is good-bye," he says. "I'm off, then."

A quick hug and a pat on the back, and he turns and walks down the corridor. He doesn't look back, and Martha's glad, glad and sad and a little crazy now that it's done with. She's about to walk away, too, when she notices something on the floor where the Doctor had been standing. It's a stethoscope, worn and missing one of its ear pieces. Her mind flashes back to that first day when he'd pressed the end against his chest and watched her face as she heard the distinctive, echoing thud of his hearts.

Alien, she'd said. How'd you get here, then?

Martha picks it up, loops it around her neck. Her pockets can't hold as much as the Doctor's, but somewhere there's a bedside table and an empty drawer waiting for her souvenir.