Author's Note: Okay, I had a lot of trouble with the editing of this chapter, some parts I've had to change like 5 times and would still feel like it's a not working sentence or something like that. Honestly, I actually stopped editing it one of the past days because I was fed up with it, even after asking my friends for help with some of the sentences... (I did come back to finish it later.) so please go easy on me for this chapter as I'm sure there are some terrible mistakes here *looks hopefully*

Disclaimer: I don't own the rights Doctor Who, nor do I own a drivers license or anything fancy :(

Reviews:

Altoclefislife: Love it so far! Fantastic way to start my evening!

~Alto

Thanks :)

jacks marie: Please a 10..Martha story.

Errrr... I'm not sure what you're trying to communicate here, but if you're asking whether this will be a 10/Martha ship fic I'll say yes and no... this is a suggestive ship fic, which means that it can go server ways after the end and one of them will be with them ending up in a relation, however I have no plans on expending this fic as I still have like 3 unfinished fics... I might in the far future if there's demand for it and I've got inspiration. And I have no clue whether all this is relevant to the review but *shrugs* I'm good at trailing off of the subject. And before anyone asks, no I don't edit my author's note/ reviews replies.

2. In the Car

On their way towards Torchwood, The Doctor and Martha caught up with each other a bit.

The Time Lord told Martha about the events around Agatha Christie, the revolution on the planet of Maldem, which he had witnessed with Donna. He had also told her about what had happened with Jackson Lake and he had also told her a part of the events of the Library. He kept silent about River Song, lying about how they ended up downloading the people back to the real world. He really didn't want to talk about the mysterious woman from his future with Martha. He didn't mention anything about the events of Midnight either, not wanting to relive those events.

Martha told him about her job at UNIT, the time she spent at Torchwood helping the team out and about her break-up with Tom Milligan.

"We never saw each other and we just came to the conclusion that it wouldn't work that way." She explained.

The Doctor nodded in understanding.

Martha was telling the story of the pink fluffy alien the Torchwood team had been chasing for hours and, thankfully, eventually caught. As she was telling about how it had escaped once again in the Torchwood headquarters she registered that her alien friend had been very quiet in the last five minutes.

A quick glance to her right told her just why she hadn't heard anything from Time Lord in a while.

He was fast asleep.

Martha smiled slightly to herself, but she was also slightly worried. The Time Lord rarely slept. That wasn't why she was worried about him falling asleep in the car though. No, the problem was that he absolutely despised sleeping anywhere but in the TARDIS. This was something she had learned while sharing a flat with him in the 1960's, after a couple of weeks he had been unable to hide his exhaustion from her any longer and had admitted that he was afraid someone or something would hurt him in his sleep, he only felt safe enough in the TARDIS, as she was the safest ship in the universe.

After his confession, Martha had tried very hard to comfort him and make him feel safe enough to get his needed rest. Eventually, as he was about to collapse from exhaustion, she had managed to convince him by promising she wouldn't leave the room as he was sleeping, specifically with her awake instead of him.

After her little victory, she had hoped that the Time Lord would be able to get enough sleep from then on, with her being free on Sundays to watch over him, as he obviously wanted or even needed someone to watch over him. However, The Doctor wouldn't have been The Doctor if he hadn't been his stubborn self and hadn't claimed that with the couple of hours of sleep he had gotten with Martha's help, which actually had been way too little considering how sleep deprived he was, he would be able to go on without sleep until they got the TARDIS back and therefore wouldn't need something like a weekly nap time.

When Martha argued that he would need to sleep before they had the TARDIS back, because it wasn't healthy, he had argued back that he was 900 years old and certainly not a toddler who needed instructions all day long.

Martha had silently agreed on the toddler part since toddlers weren't nearly as stubborn as the last of the Time Lords regarding nap time (and some other things that were purely for his comfort).

unsurprisingly, after two weeks The Doctor had been back to the same sleep-deprived condition as he had been in before, nevertheless, it still had taken her a while to convince him to climb into bed again under the same conditions as earlier.


Now, Martha wondered how he had ended to accidentally fall asleep outside the TARDIS. Especially considering she practically had to force him to close his eyes in the past. Though she would wish for it, she didn't believe that he simply had gotten over his fear. Besides, she had thought that he had looked a bit tired earlier, she had refrained from mentioning it and had just resolved to force him to have a nap later when they where in the hotel room before they would head to Torchwood. They had to share the room anyway as it was a nightmare to get a room for Christmas Eve on Christmas Eve, she had booked her room way in advance. Besides, they had shared beds often enough in the past, so she couldn't see why it was a problem now. However, she had to concede that him having a nap in the car suited her planning better. Though she would confront him later when he was awake to find out how this could've happened.

Her plans, however, got ruined when she heard whimpering next to her, she looked at the source of the sound and what she saw was slightly heard breaking, obviously the Time Lord was having a nightmare and she wasn't sure but she thought that he was shaking with fear, she couldn't make sure of it as she had to keep her eyes on the road, an accident really wasn't what they needed.

No, she needed to pull the Time Lord out of the land of nightmares. The problem was that he was rather difficult to wake up. He's had nightmares before, on the TARDIS and it had always taken her a lot of effort to get him to wake up, sometimes she just gave up and had curled next to him to comfort him in his sleep, that usually worked well enough.

Therefore, she knew that just shouting at him to wake up wouldn't be enough and since she was driving, it wasn't exactly safe to do something else. Luckily an off-road parking lot just came up and she gratefully took the opportunity to take the turn off and park there. As soon as she had turned off the engine she turned towards The Doctor and started to shake him heavily while attempting to wake him, she hated to be rough on him, but it was necessary to get him awake and any bruises he would get by her being a bit too rough wouldn't be nearly as bad as continuing being tormented by whatever he was encountering in his nightmare.


The Doctor finally woke up with another whimper, still partly trapped in his nightmare. He took a couple of deep breaths trying to calm his racing hearts. He was vaguely aware of two arms that pulled him into a warm embrace, he momentarily stiffened up as he registered that, momently scared that he would get harmed, until his only partly awake brain supplied that it was Martha who had pulled him into an embrace, causing him to relax again and let himself be comforted. He really needed the comfort.

After a couple of minutes, The Doctor had calmed down a bit and just allowed himself to lay in Martha's comfortable arms. He knew that he would have to move soon, Jack was expecting them to be at Torchwood around a certain time. If that hadn't been the case he would've been content to stay like this for a couple of hours.

He was however mortified that he had fallen asleep. He had been perfectly aware that he hadn't had nearly enough sleep before they had stepped into the car, he had however misjudged just how far he had been behind on his sleeping schedule, he had also forgotten just how much the safe feeling that Martha was radiating towards him affected him. He wasn't sure how that worked, he had just slowly started to feel safe around Martha, at least, at points when there wasn't any attacking by aliens going on. It is a bit hard to feel safe when you are being chased by big bad aliens who are trying to kill you.

He hadn't slept much since the whole ordeal in the shuttle at Midnight, he always ended up reliving the moments where he had been captured by the entity in his dreams. He had been absolutely terrified back then and he woke up just as terrified every time he had somehow nodded off, because by now every time he fell asleep was accidental as he was activity running away from sleep, not wanting to face his fears. Up until now, he had only had accidental naps on the TARDIS, but now he had managed to fall asleep in a car! At least it wasn't in a dangerous place and nothing had been endangered by his unplanned nap.

Except maybe his dignity.

Not that he had much dignity left around Martha, he had exposed too much of himself to her to have any left. Not that he really cared about that, he trusted her, which was the reason that he had exposed himself so much.

No, the real problem was that Martha would be questioning him about his nightmare and about the fact that he had been tired enough to fall asleep in a place that wasn't the TARDIS without encouraging. Sure, she would leave his nightmare alone if he would tell her that he didn't feel like talking about it, which he really didn't as he despised just thinking about the incident, the last thing he wanted to do was to talk about it.

However, he knew that it wasn't that simple, Martha would force him to talk when it would be bad for his health, she wouldn't care about his boundaries on the subject if it was a risk for his health. If he was honest with himself he didn't blame her. She had gone further than he liked for his well-being more than once. While he secretly was really glad that she did that, he still set similar boundaries, not able to shred the old habit.

The Time Lord sighed and went to move out of Martha's arms.

"We should probably continue driving." He mumbled, knowing that it had to be him suggesting it, he had no doubts that Martha would allow him to lay in her arms for as long as he wanted, Jack and the others be damned.

"We don't have to, we can make up an excuse if you don't feel up to going after this, though everyone will be disappointed, I'm sure they won't be angry." She told him, slightly sorrowful.

He sighed again.

"Provided we come up with a good enough excuse." The Time Lord pointed out cheekily. "Surely, something along the lines of 'we wanted to spend Christmas somewhere else' will not be accepted easily."

Martha chuckled at his comment.

"Feeling better again, I guess?" She wondered with a smile.

The Doctor nodded, though he still felt a bit tired and honestly had been rather tempted to accept Martha's suggestion to just call Christmas at Torchwood off. However, at the same time, he was rather excited about Christmas and seeing some of his old companions again.

Besides, the Christmas party would be a welcome distraction from the dark place his mind had become in the past month or so, he actually wasn't sure how long it had been since the incident of Midnight, he only knew that it had been the start for the downfall of the life he had led back then. His life was currently terrible lonely, he was left to keep soldiering on on his own. He had to, the universe relied on him, he couldn't leave it alone.

"Okay, let's go then." Martha's voice pulled him out of his musings, he noticed that she had already moved back to sit in her seat properly again.

"Yeah." He nodded decisively.

Martha started the engine again, drove them off the parking lot and back on the road.

After a while spent in companionable silence it was Martha who decided to break it eventually.

"Do you want to talk about it?" She asked him, by now she was fairly certain something was wrong with him and it seemed to be affecting his sleeping habits the most. She really had to figure it out and work on solving it, since sleep deprivation wasn't good for his health at all.

It took a while before the Time Lord answered, she had almost given up on getting an answer from him, taking his silence as a no, it wouldn't have been the first time he just ignored a question he didn't want to answer.

"I don't know what you're talking about." He eventually mumbled, Martha mentally sighed, he had said that in response to these kinds of questions before as well, she had learned that it meant that while he didn't want to talk about it, he would considering saying something on the subject. It was a frustrating answer but it was better than no answer.

"I think you know perfectly fine what I mean." She sighed. "Please, Doctor. This isn't healthy." she pleaded.

"Don't you think I know that!" The Time Lord exclaimed frustrated, then continued in a whisper which Martha could barely hear. "It's just..." He paused trying to contain his emotions. "Just... just thinking about it..." He shivered. "It brings it all back." He turned to look out of the side window, not able to face Martha.

Martha sighed.

"You can't keep going like this." She told him.

The Time Lord sighed as well.

"I suppose not." He admitted.

"You know what... we'll leave it for now, and come back to it after Christmas." She decided.

The Doctor nodded then said slightly snappish. "It not as if you're gonna give me a choice anyway." he looked around at their surroundings then turned back to Martha. "How much longer do we have to drive?"

"About half an hour, we're nearly there," Martha answered him.

"Thanks, Rassilon, I don't think I can handle staying much longer in this bloody car!" He exclaimed frustrated.

Martha smiled fondly at him. "You never can sit still for too long, can you?"

"It's been hours." He answered whinily.

She sighed fondly. "What am I going to do with you?..."

The Time Lord just shrugged.


Author's Note: While editing this chapter I came across a small error that changed the meaning of the sentence and I'd like to share the mental picture I got from it as it's just so cute, in my head at least. The wrong sentence was: he only felt safe enough [to sleep] on the TARDIS.] and well I'm imagining a Time Lord curled up on the roof of the TARDIS hugging the lamp as some sort of teddy bear... I would've drawn that if I'd be able to produce anything more than stick figures... either way, my brain is weird and I'm sorry for bothering you guys with my mental picture