AN: Hi. This is my first Doctor Who story. It's sort of a practice piece for another story I'm in the process of writing (re: trying to stop procrastinating on). To those of you wishing my newest post would be an update... Sorry. I've had this bit done for a while. Decided it would work better as a four-shot instead of a giant one-shot. Because the third bit is taking a lot of work...
Anyways, please enjoy. And I'll try to post the rest of this soon.
The Doctor had been exhausted after dealing with the Family. He was more tired than she'd ever seen him, a fact that he had proven by sending himself to bed. She'd never actually seen him go to his bedroom before. She didn't even know where it usually was.
She had been really surprised when he walked towards an empty stretch of hall right outside the console room. Just as he reached it, two doors appeared, the one on the right swinging inward.
Frowning, Martha walked up to the other door. It was so close to the Doctor's, they were almost touching, almost a set of double doors leading to one room. There was just the barest bit of wall and their respective door frames separating them. She briefly touched that bit of wall, and was rocked by the wave of grief rolling from it; her hand snapped back to her chest of its own accord.
Her eyes traced over the seam of the Doctor's door, making sure it was shut tight, then flicked to the door on the left. She grasped the handle, and gently turned it. She began to turn harder when it didn't budge, and had to resist the urge to kick the door when she realized it was locked. She sighed, and leaned her head against it, fighting the urge to lean away as she was assaulted with a variety of emotions: sadness, joy, peace, and deep sense of longing and loss.
After a moment of allowing those feelings to roll through her, she turned and made her way to the kitchen. A nice cuppa would do her a world of good. Then it was off to find her bedroom, which never stayed in the same place, and the TARDIS seemed to be actively hiding from her.
.
.
.
The next morning—well, time was always pretty weird on the TARDIS, but Martha considered that the few hours after she woke up were "morning"—the new doors were still in their place. Worried for the Time Lord who never seemed to need sleep, she walked up to the door on the right and knocked. The door swung inwards to reveal an obviously male bedroom: deep blue walls and dark-stained woods for the furniture. Bits of "alien" technology were spread all over the place. The Doctor's coat was hanging on the open door of the closet, and his trainers sat on the floor in front of an easy chair. She glanced around the room, looking for the man himself, but didn't see him in the room. Utterly confused, Martha turned back through the doorway, crying out as she crashed right into the Doctor's chest as he exited the door to the left. He had been pulling it shut behind him, and through the small gap she glimpsed a bright room with pink walls. The edge of a shelf lined with framed photographs could be seen on the far wall, and a dresser blocked Martha's view of the corner.
She pulled her eyes from the room and cast them up into the brown ones boring down into her.
"What were you doing in there, Martha?"
"Sorry, I—I was just… I was worried. I've never seen you sleep at all before, and I saw you come in here 10 hours ago. Just wanted to make sure you were alright."
"I wasn't sleeping."
"Oh… Why's the wall sad?" She felt a little crazy asking such a strange question, but the Doctor insisted that the ship had a telepathic connection with him. Perhaps it was empathic as well.
His eyebrows drew together, and his gaze shifted to the sliver of wall peeking out from between the door frames. "Because it's just like the one at Canary Wharf."
"What d'ya mean?"
The look he gave her was one of a man broken beyond repair, of a man who had lost everything he'd ever given importance to, of a man who been shattered by the emptiness surrounding him. "Do you remember how I said Rose and I were 'together'?" he asked. After she nodded, he continued, "Well, we were at Canary Wharf… And we were trying to stop… everything. I opened up a portal to this place. Well, I say 'place', I mean the Void, which is this empty space where there's nothing. The Dalek and Cybermen, they had all been in there, and could be sucked back in using the portal. But Rose and I had briefly crossed through the Void—by accident, mind you—and we could get pulled in to. She—she fell. But a man from a parallel universe jumped back across at the last second and caught her, and then jumped again before the breach closed."
He paused, taking a deep breath, like he was trying to hold himself together.
"The wall where the breach was… I could feel her on the other side of it. I hate that wall, because it kept us separated. Just like this one did."
"So that's her room, then?"
The Doctor nodded, blinking rapidly for a moment.
"I'm sorry."
He just stared at her for a moment. "Yeah, so am I."
Oh, and reviews are love! :)