Doctor and Martha Relationship Drabbles (everything focused on the Doctor and Martha as a pair, including both het and gen)


Title: A Superimposed Image
Rating: G
Character/s: Martha, Ten
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 333: Grievance

It seems as if ten consecutive seconds never go past without the Doctor thinking of Rose. It's all over his face, and in that far-off look in his eyes that has nothing to do with his constant longing to see the stars up close.

Martha can see it all so clearly. She can hardly stand it.

She hates that he looks at her and superimposes another face over hers. Not all the time, no, but certainly often enough that it hurts.

She wants to grab him and force him to seeher. She doesn't, fearing it would change nothing anyway.


Title: A Step in the Right Direction
Rating: PG-13
Character/s: Ten/Martha
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 240: Game. Goes AU from 'Last of the Time Lords'.

Martha walks a tightrope, but somehow it's not quite stretched in a straight line. The game is to find the correct path without misstepping.

She finds that she falls off a lot along the way.

She's been with him for a year, now, and she thinks she's getting better at anticipating the steps. When she stays with him after the Master is killed, she knows she's done something right.

He slides into bed with her and buries himself in her. Even though tomorrow she knows that he'll pretend it didn't happen, it's still the next step in the right direction.


Title: The Light of Day
Rating: PG-13
Character/s: Ten II/alt!Martha
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 217: Wake. Set in Pete's World, post-'Journey's End'.

The Doctor understood many types of guilt, but he'd never quite grasped how someone could have sex and then be horrified by that decision the next morning. He couldn't see how the light of day changed anything.

He woke beside Martha (not even Martha, really, but her parallel version), and suddenly understood that regret completely.

He'd never meant for it to happen, or even considered it as a possibility. He'd just been searching for something familiar beyond Rose. She was everything to him; that was the problem.

He'd wanted more. Instead, one mistake might cost him everything he already had.


Title: A Newer Model
Rating: PG
Character/s: Martha/Eleven, Martha/Mickey
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 195: Model. Written at some point post-'The End of Time Part Two'.

When he shows up again properly (not just standing in the distance with a mallet dangling from his hand), he looks different. Regeneration, like Mickey has described. He's a newer model, but he's the same man.

Except, in a way, he isn't.

He doesn't just look different. He looks at her differently. He's changed enough that he can finally appreciate her the way she's always wanted.

She thinks about Mickey, who's been left by a woman he loved for the Doctor once before.

No, she won't leave Mickey. But she can't quite bring herself to say no to him, either.


Title: Mistaken Identity
Rating: G
Character/s: Ten, Martha
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 193: Insult. Set during Season 3.

"Doctor, just tell me already!"

"Leave it, Rose!"

The Doctor's suddenly wide eyes meet Martha's.

"Er," the Doctor says awkwardly. "Sorry. Martha. I meant Martha."

"I... it's okay," Martha says softly, trying not to sound stricken.

But it's not all right. It's the worst slight possible, not even remembering it's her he's talking to. They've been together for months, and still she feels like just a replacement. He goes to say something sometimes, grinning, and looks surprised that she's there instead of someone else. Not just surprised. Disappointed.

It breaks her heart, but she bears it. She has little choice.


Title: The Taste of Her
Rating: PG-13
Character/s: Ten/Martha
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 182: Acid Test. Good lord, I had trouble thinking of something for this prompt, so I went pretty abstract. Set during Season 3.

He sometimes has a bit of trouble figuring humans out. Their brains work in different (and, regardless of their contrary claims, far more insane) ways than his own.

However, Martha is fairly easy to read sometimes. Particularly, there's one thing in her mind that screams out to him without him ever having to press his fingers against her temples.

She wants him. And she's willing to do almost anything to get what she wants.

She wants him. He wants comfort. He's willing to find out whether the combination can work.

The taste of her burns his tongue. It tastes wrong.


Title: A Companion to Save
Rating: G
Character/s: Ten, Martha
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 172: Pod. Set during '42'.

He can't quite work out why those two backed themselves into an escape pod. Martha wouldn't have recognised its purpose, so that's understandable. The boy, however, should have known.

He's reminded of another particularly jeopardy-friendly companion. If it had been her, she'd have probably completely failed to let him know what was going on because she was stubborn enough to think she could work it out on her own. And then, miraculously, somehow she probably would have.

He has a companion to save. He knows she's brilliant as well. It's just that sometimes he can't help wishing Rose was here.


Title: The Beginning of Her Crush
Rating: PG
Character/s: Martha/Ten (unrequited)
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 165: Yen. Set during 'Smith and Jones'.

In retrospect, Martha thinks that the moment the Doctor whips off his second shoe and throws it into a bin with gusto, wiggling his toes and making an offhand joke, signalled the beginning of her crush. They're on the moon in the middle of saving thousands of people and he's making jokes. How could she not fall for him?

The kiss that happens later is what cements it, though. For all that he says that it means nothing, she's never been kissed that way before. It gives her hope that his heart – hearts – might be fluttering the same way as hers is.


Title: Holding Onto Traditions
Rating: G
Character/s: Martha, Ten
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 118: Cartoon. Set during Season 3.

"You're watching cartoons?" Martha asked, incredulous.

"What's wrong with that?" the Doctor asked. "I love cartoons. They're the only things you humans ever create that come close to representing how strange and wonderful the universe is."

"But we could be off seeing the universe for real," Martha said, trying to sound tempting.

The Doctor's face turned quickly obstinate, then. "It's tradition, all right? Cartoons, once a week. Every week."

Judging from the look of him, and just how empty the other side of the couch seemed even to her, Martha didn't have to ask with whom he'd shared that tradition.


Title: Culture Shock
Rating: G
Character/s: Ten, Martha
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 109: The Other Side of the Pond. Set during 'Daleks in Manhattan'.

The Doctor has been through the 'Great Depression' of the 1930s, and many economic downturns with even worse consequences, numerous times before. He's spent some time in the shanty towns. He knows what to expect.

Martha, however, seems stunned. She's fairly well off financially, the Doctor knows, so the idea of people living in the United States (a great nation of its time) worrying about when their next scrap of food will come along is completely foreign to her.

Even taking her to an alien planet wouldn't have demonstrated how small her world really is like this moment has done.


Title: The Chicken Equivalent
Rating: G
Character/s: Martha, Ten
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 89: Witch. Set during 'The Shakespeare Code'.

"It cackled, it had warts, and it could fly on a broomstick," Martha said. "There's no way you can tell me that that wasn't a witch."

"'Witch' is just the word that's used when you don't have another name for it," the Doctor said. "If I could just find the realname..."

"Well, all right, you get right on that," Martha said, rolling her eyes. "But if it walks like a chicken, clucks like a chicken, and lays eggs like a chicken, I don't care if it prefers to be called a wasp; I'm still naming it a bloody chicken."


Title: Wishful Thinking
Rating: PG
Character/s: Martha, Ten
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 61: Shakespeare. Set during 'The Shakespeare Code'.

Bad breath or no, Martha sort of wished she'd gone ahead and kissed Shakespeare. Even apart from the knowledge (though she'd be sectioned if she shared it with anyone back home) that she'd kissed William Shakespeare, at least she might have seen the Doctor's reaction. He'd seemed jealous earlier when Shakespeare had been flirting with her. Maybe if he saw what he was missing...

But she'd missed her chance, and the Doctor was no longer acting like she was anything but a transitory passenger. She'd never really been a jealous person, but she thought of that girl, Rose, and sighed.


Title: Hobbits
Rating: G
Character/s: Ten, Martha
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 54: Tolkien. Set during Season 3.

"Hobbits are so not real," Martha admonished the Doctor. "Quit having me on."

"No, really. Oh, there's no Bilbo or Frodo, and they're actually called Ewoks – bit of miscommunication between Lucas and Tolkein, there – but they are, in every way that matters, essentially identical to hobbits."

"What's their planet called then? Middle Earth?"

The Doctor frowned thoughtfully. "That'd be confusing, what with Earth being called Earth, and it having its own middle. No, it's called Hallivaleriform."

"Oh," Martha says. She's still not sure if he's joking. "Can we go there, then?"

The Doctor grinned. "Why do you think I brought it up?"


Title: Racial Discrimination
Author: Queen of the Castle
Rating: G
Character/s: Martha, John Smith
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 46: Black. Set during 'Human Nature'.

Martha Jones doesn't think it's a coincidence that the TARDIS landed them in 1913. It's a place where she wouldn't agree to stay long-term, being treated more like a slave than the servant she's had to become. It's also a place that the Doctor, as John Smith, would never even consider her, looking the way she does, let alone decide to fall madly in love with her.

She's always been proud of her skin colour. There's a lot of heritage there. But for just a moment (a sad little moment alone in the TARDIS), she wishes it could've been different.


Title: On the Hunt
Author: Queen of the Castle
Rating: PG
Character/s: Martha, Ten
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 35: Quarry. Set during 'The Lazarus Experiment'.

That massive beast was once an elderly man who only wanted to live, Martha remembers. Now it's nothing more than a monster stalking its quarry up a bell tower, seeking out their deaths. Even after being with the Doctor for a few weeks, she still can't quite always wrap her head around the fact that these things can happen. A man, brilliant but ultimately ordinary, can become that and hunt his fellow humans like it's sport.

Martha wonders whether the real monsters aren't the aliens, but the people who take action, like Lazarus, without caring who gets in their way.


Title: Stuck
Author: Queen of the Castle
Rating: G
Character/s: Ten, Martha
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 36: Sleepless. Set during 'Blink'.

The fact that the Doctor barely sleeps has never been as obvious as when he's stuck in 1969. There's little he can do but wait around for certain events to unfold.

He can't even fill the time that Martha's off getting some rest with activity to keep his mind busy enough to ease the passing of time. As it stands, they don't even have enough money for him to waste on things like books for entertainment.

Martha grows inestimably frustrated with him. The Doctor thinks that she cannot possibly understand just how hard being stuck like this is on him.


Title: The Importance of History
Author: Queen of the Castle
Rating: G
Character/s: Ten, Martha
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 28: On the Meaning of Space Travel. Set during Season 3 around 'Blink'.

"You want to go to the moon again?"

"1969, to the moon landing," Martha affirmed.

"You know," the Doctor sighed, already circling the console and flicking switches, "when I told you the TARDIS could travel in space, I didn't mean in the human sense, where you can barely make it to the nearest rock. We could go anywhere."

"It's not just about space travel, though," Martha said. "It's history. My history. That's where it started for humans. It's nice to look back between trips hopping across the universe."

The Doctor contemplated her. "Yeah," he said finally. "I suppose it is."


Title: Burning
Author: Queen of the Castle
Rating: G
Character/s: Ten, Martha
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 29: Spring. Set during 'Gridlock'.

Gallifrey in the spring looked like the whole planet was ablaze with burning colours. The snow capping the peaks of the mountains was just finishing melting away, providing nourishment to the red grass regrowing below.

It was this vista that the Doctor found himself describing to Martha in the underbelly of New New York. The scene in his mind's eye was so different from the dreary reality that surrounded the two of them that Gallifrey seemed grander still on reflection.

That was how he chose to remember Gallifrey. It was better than remembering the times when it actually wasburning.


Title: Overheating
Author: Queen of the Castle
Rating: G
Character/s: Ten, Martha
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 15: Heat / Water. Set during '42'.

The Doctor doesn't seem to feel the heat (or the cold, for that matter) quite as much as Martha, so he's coping fairly well with their current situation. Martha, though, feels like she'll burn up into ash and atoms at any moment, it's so hot.

She can't think properly in this heat, which isn't helpful when they now have only about thirty minutes to live and she's got to answer these random questions. It's like a pub quiz, if one was hosted in hell.

When they get out of this (and they will), she's demanding the Doctor buys her ice-cream.


Title: A Sea of Traffic
Author: Queen of the Castle
Rating: G
Character/s: Martha
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 16: Traffic. Set during 'Gridlock'.

Looking out into a sea of vehicles just like the one she's in now, Martha resolves never to complain about London traffic again. An hour or two in peak hour standstill suddenly seems like nothing compared to potentially spending half of her life stuck on the motorway.

She sings along with the others to bolster her spirits, but it's hard to have hope. The traffic seems to never end, so how can she be sure she'll ever escape?

She'll have to pray that the Doctor knows what he's doing, because she has no way to get herself out of this.