Etched in History
Not Just A Pretty Face
Martha couldn't believe that she had agreed to do this. It was absolutely ridiculous! With the Doctor making his excuses that he had to try and run a few more tests in simulations in the TARDIS, of course it was left to her to try and steal that poor girl's work. For all the pair knew, there just happened to be a ton of amazing coincidences, and now they were just going far too over the top over it. Then again, when did the word 'coincidence' ever pop up during her adventures with that Time Lord friend of hers? Shaking her head, the woman just carried on hurrying up the side streets of the city, hoping that she could work out whether Rynne was home or not. If she wasn't sure, she could always make up some excuse to hang around nearby, or something... didn't people often do that in police TV shows and the like? It couldn't possibly be much more difficult in real life!
It was much more difficult than the dark skinned woman had first imagined, trying to work out if someone was in the house. Oh, if the Doctor were with her, he could have just whipped out that sonic screwdriver of his, searched for life signs, and that would have been it. Cursing herself for relying too heavily on that alien technology of his, the realisation made Martha more determined than ever to get this right, proving that she was much more useful than that Time Lord obviously thought. There were too many times where the man berated her for what she thought were perfectly acceptable reactions, but a little voice always told her that she would never be good enough. She wasn't Rose.
Rose Tyler was a subject barely broached in the TARDIS, or with the Doctor at all, for that matter. All that was clear was how much the Time Lord cared about her, with her name bringing tears to his eyes, heaviness to his heart, and a distinct lack of information. Did the Doctor love her? Martha knew that he did, but it was if he was in a permanent state of denial over that fact. There were pieces of Rose everywhere: even down to the jumper that was left hanging casually on one of the bars of the TARDIS control room, as if the machine were expecting her to come back at any moment. By now, Martha had been travelling through Time and space for the equivalent of a number of months now, and was well established as a companion, but there was always this nagging doubt that she would never be good enough to compete with that memory.
Shaking those thoughts out of her head, Martha frowned in concentration, walking up and around the street surreptitiously, pretending to talk into her mobile phone. Eventually, there was movement in the flat that Rynne called home, and the student left in a hurry, thankfully not noticing Martha in her hurry to get to whatever her destination was. The theft would be much trickier now: if Rynne were hurrying to be somewhere, would she also be hurrying back?
Waiting a moment for the brunette to get out of sight, Martha walked calmly up to the front door. Despite the fact that the trainee doctor's heart was pounding, she knew that she could pull this off, if only she imagined the Doctor were here with her now. Knocking on the door, a minute passed before Dina opened it, the second member of this tiny household obviously wanting to be away doing something else. For a moment, the woman stood, realising that it must have been this girl and the guy from earlier that had made Rynne so angry. "Oh, it's you. What do you want? You got me in trouble with Rynne earlier, you know!"
"Oh, yeah, I'm sorry about that." Martha tried to stay completely upbeat, smiling at the woman in the doorframe, desperate to cover her nerves. "It was just a misunderstanding, that's all," she explained, not wanting to go into any more detail. As far as Martha went, she understood that a simple lie was much easier to remember and use again, so why make it unnecessarily complicated? Dina could always ask questions about it, though, so before the girl could ask them, Martha asked her own. "Look, I left a couple of bits of paper in Rynne's room, and I need them desperately. Can I just go and get them? I'll be two minutes; I won't ruin anything, I promise."
Dina looked at her suspiciously for a moment, but something else got the better of her. "Oh, alright!" she answered impatiently. "Rynne's going to be away for about half an hour, so you'd better hurry. I wouldn't let you in, but she'll kill me if she sees you or that other bloke around here again. Just don't do anything else, right?" Smiling and nodding, Martha was more than pleased that Dina didn't want to get on the wrong side of her housemate, so she went straight into the bedroom, as if she knew exactly what she was looking for, as well as where. Luckily, Dina didn't seem to be as uptight about everything as Rynne, so Martha was also just left to get on alone in the room, searching for the manuscript herself.
Now, right in the middle of a tiny room, she had hoped that the papers would be left on the desk as they had been earlier, but obviously Rynne had thought better of it. Instead, Martha had to start going through drawers – as quietly as possible – but they weren't there either. Sighing heavily, the woman was getting a little too panicky for her own good. Where could they be? Pausing for a moment, Martha thought about where she would hide her own most treasured possession. After such a bizarre turn of events, Rynne realising that her characters were real, Martha guessed that she would want the papers to be hidden where no one could possibly guess where they would be. Slumping down on the bed, the woman looked around the room, no clues as to where it would be. The strange papers were still on the walls, and the time travelling companion was satisfied to note that the Doctor's own scrap of paper was no longer on the desk. Okay, so it was more than feasible that Rynne had just thrown it out, but that suggested that she had at least touched it, which was more than she did for the Doctor. Her gaze then drawn up and around the room, Martha then had a brainwave. Of course!