Disclaimer: I don't own 'Doctor Who' or any of the related characters; you should know the drill by now
Feedback: I'd appreciate it, believe me
AN: Sorry about the delay; this chapter was NOT easy to write- coupled with the fact that free time's been a bit tricky to come by- but I hope you'll find it worth the wait.
Broken Faith
The Doctor blinked.
"What?" he said, looking at in surprise; he might have been expecting disbelief after his original attitude towards her, but 'How dare you?' hadn't even been on the list of possible answers he'd created in his mind for this scenario.
"I just spent a year going through Hell… I had to see everyone around me die… and you… you-" Martha said, before she finally stood up and stormed out of the restaurant, brushing past a waiter who appeared to have been bringing them their pieces of cake.
"Oh, no…" the Doctor muttered, shaking his head as he stood up, pulling out some money- he'd dipped into his old UNIT account before he came to Cardiff just in case of a situation like this- and tossing it onto the table as he glanced up at the waiter apologetically. "Sorry, lovely meal and all, but I have to go; keep the change, bye!"
With that he hurried after Martha, weaving around the crowds outside the restaurant as he fixed his eyes on Martha's red leather jacket as she hurried down the main street, barely aware of her surroundings as she stormed along the pavement. The Doctor only just noticed her turning down a nearby alley- most likely deserted; even at her worst, Martha wouldn't stop paying attention to a detail like that after spending a year surviving on a nightmarish Earth under the Master's reign- before he almost passed the alley himself, pausing to glance down as he saw Martha standing beside a couple of what looked like old oil drums with a fire escape at the other end (A part of him vaguely noted the similarities between this alley and the alley where she'd entered the TARDIS, but he pushed that thought aside; this wasn't the time to ponder coincidences).
"Martha?" he said, walking uncertainly towards her after a moment's silence in which neither of them moved (Although he noted his companion's shoulders shaking from evidently barely-suppressed emotion). "Martha… I'm sorry if-"
"Leave me alone!" Martha yelled, turning around to glare at him, the faint trace of tears visible in the corner of her eyes even as barely-restrained rage was also visible in them. "Don't you think you've maybe screwed up my life enough? After all the shit I've been through since I met you, you don't get to just… apologise by saying you love me-!"
"This isn't about that!" the Doctor replied, looking desperately at her. "Martha, I'm incredibly impressed by what you did, but that's not why I'm saying this; I realised it on the Valiant-"
"What, you mean after you ran into Rose again?" Martha spat.
Even the Doctor's sometimes-questionable people skills could see where she was going with that line of questioning.
"Wha- it's not like that, either-!" he began.
"What, you mean it's not that your ex-girlfriend turns out to be a psycho bitch, so I'm the convenient replacement?" Martha countered, enraged tears trickling out of the corners of her eyes. "Be honest; that's all this is, isn't it? If she'd never been there, you'd never be saying this-"
"No!" the Doctor protested. He briefly thought about grabbing Martha's shoulders to try and reinforce his point, but swiftly forced that thought aside; physical contact wouldn't help to reinforce his point any more than words would. "Rassilon, I'm not going to lie and say that seeing Rose like that wasn't a part of this, Martha; I'm just saying that's not the only reason for it! She made me think about how I felt, but she couldn't make me feel anything! I'm almost thirteen hundred-!"
"Thirteen hundred?" Martha repeated; she clearly knew it was a stupid thing to focus on, but she almost couldn't help herself. "I thought you said you were nine hundred-"
"I commented to Rose that I'd been travelling for nine hundred years in my last body and just started using that as my age; I was… well, I was feeling a bit frustrated at her mother implying I was older than I looked so I think I just rounded out the years I didn't like; it's always hard to recall how I was thinking when I did little things like that in previous bodies…" the Doctor said, trailing off in embarrassment as he took in the still-present glare on her face before he continued. "The point is, I have been travelling for centuries, going through nine bodies in a time frame, and I've had approximately enough relationships- this kind of relationships- to count them on one human hand! Even if my first few bodies were never interested in… well, in that… I've still had… those kinds of feelings before, but back then I either wasn't emotionally ready to commit like that or there were other factors in the way…"
He paused for a moment, clearly looking for the best way to say what he was about to say, before he nodded resolutely and continued to talk. "But then I was me- well, the previous me, anyway; he was the one who actually realised this-, and all the old issues… all the old reasons I had for not wanting to go that far… all the factors that stopped me taking that last step… I realised they didn't matter-"
"Just like I didn't, right?" Martha countered.
"Wh- I didn't mean that!" the Doctor yelled; he'd known Martha wasn't exactly going to automatically accept this, but her stubborn refusal to believe him was getting almost ridiculous. "Look, I know this isn't going as well as it could, but I already said I'm not good at this kind of thing; relationships like this weren't exactly common on Gallifrey, and even after I left I never felt entirely certain about taking things further; even those occasions where I did act on these… feelings… before the Time War were based around complicated circumstances…"
He paused, taking a couple of deep breaths to calm himself- his current line of conversation wasn't getting him anywhere; he needed a moment or two to himself before he dug himself a bigger hole than the one he'd created already- before he continued. "Look, what I'm trying to say here is that, for all the times I thought about doing… this… with people I knew in my earlier lives, I was never really comfortable with it- always worried about things like what my people would think, what they might insist on happening, what the other person in the relationship would expect of me, things like that-, but I…"
He swallowed uncertainly as he looked at Martha once more. "In the end, whatever excuses I made up at the time, I was never… certain enough back then, I suppose. I knew that the people I… felt that way about could handle life with me, but I was never certain they could handle life with me-"
"And it took walking across Earth when your worst enemy was in charge to 'prove' that I was worth it?" Martha spat, glaring in frustration at him. "God, your standards are ridiculous-"
"The only thing that changed my 'standards' is me realising that I didn't need any standards!" the Doctor retorted, staring back at her with an ever-increasing intensity and desperation before he stepped back and swallowed, clearly uncomfortable with what he was about to say. "Look… without any concerns about how the rest of the Time Lords would react to the idea of me doing… this… with another race- I mean, they might have been my people, but they were always rather arrogant; it took one of my companions helping me stop an invasion of Gallifrey to realise other species could contribute something, and I don't even want to think about what they'd have been like if things developed this far between me and anyone back then-, I realised that the only thing that could really stop me from at least trying a relationship was my own fear…"
He paused, swallowing slightly as he looked at Martha, before he continued. "And then I met you… and I didn't need to be afraid any more-"
"Because I kept on hanging around with you even when you treated me like crap?" Martha retorted, taking a brief moment of pleasure at the shocked expression on the Doctor's face. "Truth hurts, huh?"
"Wait a… I what?" the Doctor said, looking at Martha in shock; he'd known he hadn't been the best friend to Martha at times during their time together- he already knew that he still had a great deal of apologising to do for the time they'd spent stuck in 1913 and 1969-, but she actually felt that way about it? "Look, I know that things weren't always great, and I know I've been a bit of a prat, but I always appreciated how hard it must have been for you; I just never knew how to apologise-"
"You didn't even try-!" Martha countered.
"I…" the Doctor began, before shaking his head in frustration. "Rassilon, I thought that you knew I cared about you; you've never just been another face in a long line, I just thought that you could see that as easily as you worked out how I was telling you a load of crap about Gallifrey! Rose had a fit when she learned she wasn't the first person I've travelled with-"
"Which I knew the moment I got in that ship, as you so politely told me-" Martha retaliated.
"But she always needed reassurance that she wasn't just another person I'd chosen to travel with me; you… I… I thought you knew that that's not how it was!" the Doctor protested. "I don't just pick up people at random and take them gallivanting around with me for nothing-"
"The first humans you travelled with your granddaughter- and thanks for mentioning that, by the way- and your granddaughter's teachers who wandered in by accident-" Martha continued.
"You met Ian?" the Doctor said, smiling briefly at her- he'd dropped in on Barbara's funeral when he'd noticed it in the papers during that time he and Ace were trying to fix the TARDIS, but he hadn't actually visited his old friend afterwards; sometimes it was too awkward to actually meet the people who'd changed your life, particularly after they'd made him face up, time and again, to how uncomfortably like other Time Lords he'd been back then, and how he needed to change that now that he was out in the universe- before he shook his head resolutely. "We'll talk about that later; the point is that when I did that- abducting them and running off in a panic-, I was still getting used to the idea of travelling at all after I'd spent so long alone back on Gallifrey that I was barely comfortable having anyone around! By the time I got used to the idea of actually liking people around- which actually didn't take that long, really; I think it was the bit where Ian was framed for murder that really got me thinking about what they all meant to me-, I only ever asked people to stick around- if they didn't ask to come with me themselves- if I thought they could handle it; people might wander into the TARDIS for some reason or another during my travels, but I only kept them with me if one of us asked the other if they could come along for a while…"
He paused for a moment, clearly lost in his memories, before he looked at Martha with a renewed sense of purpose. "For so long, I was content with just having a long string of friendships, sharing the universe with people who saw it the way I do, who wanted to explore what was out there with me as guide and friend and teacher and- in some cases- brother or father… but then I was the previous me… no more need to worry about the judgement of the Time Lords, memories of a century seeing humanity at their best and worst, memories of striving and hoping and working and falling with them with no knowledge of the future… and I realised that, given the right person, a life with a human might be possible…"
Reaching out towards Martha, he paused for a moment, waiting to see if his gesture was unwanted, before Martha nodded slightly at him with a small smile as the Doctor gently touched her cheek.
"I know it's a bit… belated," he said, his voice soft as he spoke, one thumb reaching up to brush a small tear from the corner of her eye. "But… if you still want me… if you've got room in your heart for a foolish Time Lord who nearly missed what was right in front of him… the woman who proved that she could be the right person when she risked her life to save a man she barely knew as anything more than a stranger in a hospital… my hearts are yours for the asking."
For a moment Martha simply sat in silence, a reflective expression on her face as she looked at the Doctor, before she finally spoke.
"And… where does Rose fit into that?" she asked, looking uncomfortably at him.
"Why?" the Doctor repeated, looking uncertainly at her.
"You… you said that you realised your old reasons for not falling for someone didn't matter any more," Martha continued, trying not to think too much about what else the Doctor had said- most of his previous reasons for doing nothing involved Gallifrey; there was no point worry about those right now, even if she made a mental note to ask him about those later (If there was a later; she still wasn't exactly happy about him dropping this on her on top of everything else)- as she looked back at him, "but you also said that it would have to be the right person to make you think about having a life with someone… so why did you fall for Rose?"
The Doctor didn't need to know as much as he knew about humans to know what Martha was saying; was he only interested in her because he could be interested in a relationship in this body and she was just his chosen 'test subject' to see if he could do it after the 'previous' one had failed, or was he genuinely interested in a relationship with her because she was her?
He swallowed slightly nervously.
This wasn't going to be a comfortable conversation…
But, after all that she'd been through since he sent her off the Valiant- to say nothing of what she'd been through while she was with him; he was definitely going to have to figure out a way to properly apologise for that whole mess with John Smith (He was just glad Joan hadn't taken him up on his 'offer' at the end; even if he had only asked her to travel with him because of the residual elements of Smith in his head after so long as his human counterpart, things would have been awkward in the TARDIS between her and Martha even before his mind fully cleared up)-, if anyone had earned the right to a decent explanation, it was Martha; she'd put up with him being a bigger idiot than his previous self had perceived Mickey to be, so he could cope with embarrassing himself now.
"You remember how Jack mentioned that Time Lords regenerate when we're fatally injured?" he said, looking uncertainly at her.
"Yeah…" Martha said, nodding slightly.
"I encountered Rose shortly after my eighth regeneration, after which she stayed with me until some while after my ninth- actually, I regenerated out of that body mainly to save her life when she absorbed the heart of the TARDIS during that incident when she brought Jack back to life; I took the energy out of her along with the cellular damage she'd sustained and it destroyed most of my cells before I regenerated-; to put it simply, things were a bit… rough… for me back then," the Doctor explained. Waiting for a moment to make sure Martha had processed this- he was grateful she hadn't decided to ask any more about what he'd been like back then; he'd need to tell her more about his other selves beyond what she'd seen of them in that 'dream' when he could-, he then continued. "Whenever I regenerate- particularly since it only happens to me when I'm dying of something; if I ever chose to regenerate I'd be fine afterwards but violent death makes everything a bit rushed-, I commonly suffer a period of what's best described as post-regenerative trauma; depending on the severity and nature of whatever killed me last time, for a time my new incarnation can be… unstable."
"Unstable… how?" Martha asked, clearly wondering where he was going with this.
"Well… as an example, my fourth self spent a few weeks in a coma after he was killed by radiation poisoning- I don't think he ever really 'stabilised' throughout his life, really-, my sixth self tried to strangle his companion for a few seconds- that was the most unstable I've ever been; very unlikely to happen again, and I snapped out of it before I could do any real damage- after dying of a fast-acting virus, and my eighth self didn't even know who he was for several hours after he regenerated, although that was mainly due to the anaesthetic my previous self had been injected with before it happened; a heart surgeon thought that there was something wrong with me…" the Doctor trailed off, noting that Martha was starting to look slightly frustrated, and decided to skip to the relevant details (He really needed to work on this incarnation's habit of going off on irrelevant tangents if he was going to make this work).
"The point is," he continued, a resolute gaze in his eyes as he looked at her, "I met Rose just a few hours after I'd regenerated- and only slightly longer after I'd regained my memory of what I'd done to end the Time War; that's another long story I'll have to tell you later- while I was tackling the latest invasion of the Nestene Consciousness, and… no matter where I went or what I did… I just kept on running into her while I was tracking down the Autons… she kept on trying to find out more about me… until, in the end, I felt like I had to let her into my life. When I felt like I'd just lost everything, Rose made me feel like I had something again… when I felt like I'd lost everybody, she wouldn't leave me alone…"
He sighed slightly. "I… well, I guess, in the end, I felt like she… like she was what I needed right now; someone who wanted to be with me, someone who cared about me, someone I… could protect…"
"Like… like you couldn't save Gallifrey?" Martha asked uncertainly; psychology wasn't exactly her field, but she'd picked up enough in her studies to have an idea of where the Doctor was going with this. "You couldn't save your planet, so… you used Rose as… a substitute for it?"
"Yep," the Doctor confirmed, nodding back at her, the expression on his face making it clear how much he regretted that action. "Then, after I lost her… after I'd failed her… after spending so much time- Hell, after sacrificing one of my lives- trying to keep her safe, I…"
He sighed. "Well, I spent so much time trying to convince myself that she'd been worth all that effort- particularly after she took a serious risk to try and help me; there's this whole thing involving her leaving a message for herself to give her the idea of what to do that's all rather complicated- that I ended up… glamorising her in my mind, I guess is the best expression, after she was trapped on Pete's World; I built her up to this… impossibly high standard in my mind… made myself remember her without her flaws and needs… because, after I'd allowed myself to open up so much to the possibility of a life with her, it was… safer to use that memory as an excuse… than open myself up to the chance that I'd be hurt again."
He swallowed for a moment, shaking his head in a self-recriminating manner, before he looked back at Martha. "You were never second-best, Martha- I never ask anyone to come with me if I don't think they can handle it; Hell, I once took someone home after they made a serious mistake, although I only even let them come along because someone else insisted-; I just… I wasn't ready to show you that I didn't see you like that when I still had… Rose-related issues to deal with…"
"I… Right…" Martha said, nodding slightly uncertainly as she looked at the Doctor, trying to straighten things out in her own mind before she continued. "So… in other words, you latched on to Rose as a human connection after a traumatic experience, and after you lost her you... exaggerated her abilities as a companion to yourself to stop yourself getting hurt again?"
"Pretty much, yep," the Doctor admitted, his slightly flippant tone at odds with the grim expression of regret in his eyes as he looked back at Martha, the casual tone vanishing as he continued to speak. "But with you… there was no post-regenerative trauma. There was no need to connect- when we met I wasn't planning to cut myself off, but I wasn't actually looking for anyone new to travel with either-, there was no desire to be worth your sacrifice, there was no fixation on a dream because I'd lost the reality…"
He sighed, sitting in silence for a moment as he tried to gather courage, before he spoke again. "There was you, Martha Jones, and only you… the you who wasn't scared to be on the Moon in the afternoon, the you who saved a hovercar from being battered by the Macra before I could open the motorway, the you who defeated the pig slaves with one last-minute gambit, the you who survived two months hiding from the Family of Blood even as I- or what was left of me- treated you like nothing, the you who kept fighting when I'd been captured by the Zygons, the you who entered a collapsing mine to save me from the Clade... and I fell in love with you without even realising I'd done it-"
"But you didn't!" Martha yelled, glaring at him as tears gleamed in her eyes again. "I spent months with youand you never said anything-"
"I didn't know HOW to say anything!" the Doctor yelled back. "I'd spent so long never acting on those kind of feelings that it was easier to use Rose as an excuse to do nothing than risk saying the wrong thing; I didn't even realise there might be something there because I was trying to stop myself doing something wrong-!"
"What, so you decided to make me feel like crap rather than just face up to what you felt and tell me?" Martha said, glaring in frustration at the Doctor. "I spent months thinking that I was worthless-"
"I always told you when you'd done something good-"
"You tell a dog it did a good job; that doesn't mean you love it!" Martha retorted, tears now in her eyes as she stared at him. "God, I spent ages waiting for you to just see me, and-"
"Martha, I saw you so well that I trusted you to look after me for three whole months; doesn't that say something about what I thought about you?" the Doctor interjected, looking desperately at her as she paused. "We're talking about my existence here; if I'd had even the slightest doubt I would have gone to find someone else- probably could have asked Alistair for a favour- to keep an eye on me… but I chose to put my faith in you, because I trusted you…"
He paused for a moment, looking her in the eyes as he spoke, praying that she'd take it slightly better when he said the words the second time. "Because I love you."
Once again, silence dominated the alley, until the young medical student facing the Time Lord before her spoke again.
"But you never said…" Martha began weakly, still staring at the Doctor as though waiting for the other shoe to drop, for him to hurt her like he had before, walking all over her feelings without even apparently knowing they were there…
"Because I was scared," the Doctor admitted, a slightly shameful look on his face as he continued to stare at her. "I'm nearly thirteen hundred years old, I'm on my tenth incarnation, I've experienced and witnessed things and beings that not even my fellow Time Lords could have imagined possible, I've lived through the entirety of Earth's twentieth century, I've had several long-term companions and made what seems like hundreds of friends during almost nine hundred years of travel- to say nothing of a century of exile-, and I was still scared… because you make me feel things I've never felt before. I've always cared for my old companions, and there's been some who were closer than others- I've even seen a few of them as my own children, even if I'd never tell them that-, but with you…"
He swallowed slightly, as he looked up at the roof of the TARDIS. "It's… it's deeper. There's been a few companions who… well, who I might have felt something like that for even if none of me back then were... well, emotionally ready to explore it... but even then it was more of a personal thing- I was close to them as people and that was it-; with you, there's a…"
He stopped for a moment, his cheeks- much to Martha's surprise- actually slightly red, as though he was blushing, giving Martha a moment to wonder about what he had been about to say before a possible explanation occurred to her.
Could he mean…?
She knew that it was a bit childish and shallow, but somehow, the idea that the Doctor found her sexually attractive as well as personally attractive…
Then she shook her head slightly, forcing her mind back on track as she glared at him.
"Well… so what?" she said, glaring at him. "Look, I just… whatever I might- might- feel for you, I can't just… I can't leave now, all right? After everything they saw… everything he did-"
"You have to help your family," the Doctor finished for her, nodding briefly in understanding. "Believe me, I was not even thinking of asking you to leave if you thought they needed you; actually, given that you've still got your medical studies to get through- and I think I've kept you away from those long enough; even what you've been looking over in the library in your spare time can only take you so far-, I was…"
He smiled briefly at her. "Well, I was thinking… maybe I could stay here for a bit?"
Martha's eyes widened at the implications of that statement for a moment- although she had to wonder when he'd found out about her visits to the TARDIS library; had the ship told him about them or something?-, only to narrow her gaze again as she looked at him.
"Hold on-" she began.
"Look, I've still got the deeds for a couple of flats I owned around here a couple of bodies back- I was stuck on Earth with no memory of who I was while the TARDIS was repairing itself; I had to live somewhere-, so you don't have to worry about that; it's just…" the Doctor trailed off for a moment, evidently uncomfortable about the current line of discussion, before he finally sighed and looked back at Martha. "Well… after seeing so many old friends this last year, I'd… like to try and get to know them again."
Martha could only stare uncertainly at the Doctor.
Could he mean…?
"If you want to stay with your family…" the Doctor said, pausing briefly as he looked at her, his expression somehow betraying both resolution and apprehension, "…then I'll be sticking around for a bit as well."
He smiled slightly at her. "And while I'm at it… if you've got the time to spare between exams, Martha Jones, any chance you'd be interested in a date at some point?"
For a moment, Martha couldn't believe what she'd just heard.
Ever since she'd met the Doctor, the idea of him being grounded in one place had seemed almost a contradiction in terms; he wandered around through time so much that trying to stay in one place seemed like trying to pin down a fish to one specific part of a river…
And here he was, offering to stay in one place and time… for her?
Even as mad as she was at him for dropping this on her right now, Martha couldn't help but feel touched.
Besides…
After that last 'speech' she'd given Rose during the flight up to the Valiant- about how Rose had never bothered to ask the Doctor about him, apparently content to travel in the TARDIS without ever exploring who the Doctor was as a person-, wouldn't it only be right for her to explore a relationship with the Doctor when he was essentially just another man living his life on Earht?
"A date with you somewhere we didn't travel to by TARDIS?" she said at last, smiling slightly back at him; she wasn't quite ready to forgive him yet, but she felt like she was getting there. "I have to admit, I wouldn't mind seeing that…"
"Thanks," the Doctor replied, smiling briefly back at her before a thought occurred to him. "Although… before we do that, there is one thing I'd like to do before I put the old girl somewhere to rest…"
AN 2: Regarding my segment about the Doctor's age, given that the Seventh Doctor specifically stated that he was 953 shortly after his sixth regeneration, coupled with the century or so the Eighth Doctor spent on Earth waiting for the TARDIS to repair itself, it seems logical to me that the Doctor's current claims to be nine hundred are simply referring to the years he's spent travelling in the TARDIS, most likely 'discounting' the years he wasn't going around in the ship, such as the years before he acquired the TARDI in the first place or when he was stuck on Earth in his eighth life (An odd lie to tell about his age, I admit, but given that the Fourth Doctor was known to claim to be 756 when he was actually 759, it makes a certain sense)