So thanks to those following this story and thanks for the reviews. I live off of positive reinforcement (which imo, are reviews, favs, and follows), so keep that coming!

01: Put On Your Socks and Mittens

She's not entirely sure what her plans were for the next few weeks. She found herself sitting in her flat, unpacking and setting items up, checking around for mold and insects, and unconsciously, every possible escape route. The apartment itself is an unattached gift from UNIT, as a way to compensate for the Master blowing up her old one. They wanted to interrogate her, and ask about what exactly she was doing during that year, but Jack, thankfully, is keeping them at bay. Also an unattached gift, as a way to say thank you and sorry all at once.

She couldn't salvage a lot of things from her old place, not a lot of things that matter anyway. But a lot of the things that remind her that she's not on a mission anymore, that she had a life before all of this, are in a small little shoebox, sitting on top of her couch. She doesn't want to unpack that right now, and she doesn't want to think about life before all of this, because she was stressed enough as it was back then, and as horrible as it sounds, this horrible shift in her life was a welcome distraction from that as well.

And because she's not the type to not multitask, Martha sets up a mental checklist of the next steps while putting up curtains. She needs to get a new mobile (and deactivate her home phone; everyone seems to call at night and the ringing is terrifying to her), and she needs to get a hold of Royal Hope, to see if she hasn't been booted out. She needs to update her address on all of her identification papers, she needs to call her mum. She needs to (eventually) get back to UNIT, and she needs to check on Tish. She needs to go grocery shopping, and she needs to call and thank Jack. Her phone and groceries get bumped up to the top of the list, and after finishing the curtains, she heads out to the market.

The weather is warming up considerably, but Martha still found herself wearing jeans, boots and a black jacket. She knew she has enough cash on hand, but still kept her hands in her pocket, just to make sure. She adds "get a new debit card" onto the ever growing list (and wistfully sighs; all of time and space and a bloody credit card is still out of her reach). Just a few weeks ago, she was sitting back in her childhood room, trying erase that horrible year from her mind. But it's a hard thing to avoid; there's a bunch of dead timelines settled in her head and it was unsettling to see a wasteland one month, and... this the next.

The air is fresh, and the skies aren't clouded with smoke. There aren't dead bodies lying about and though she keeps a lookout for them, the toclafane aren't hunting her anymore. The toclafane don't exist. Not anymore and not ever. The contradiction still bothers her.

Her senses are still sharp after the year, and being properly rested only makes them better, so through the crowded streets, above all the engine sounds from the cars passing by her, one familiar screeching and groaning reaches her ears. Though she continues on her way, as if she hasn't heard a thing, she feels a bit of a warmth for the first time in a while, because it almost feels like it's the TARDIS herself, not the Doctor, is checking to make sure she's okay.

...

She doesn't want volunteer any information until she gets proper information from them about what UNIT is.

Jack has interacted with them long enough, and admitted that they haven't like him or Torchwood since they were LONGBOW. Which has been a long time apparently. She knows they're international (it is in the acronym), but she still needs to hear what she knows of the organization from the organization itself. She was being handled by a tall man. Skinny, slightly balding with blue eyes, Martha almost expected him to be something of a cold fellow. But he greeted her with a polite smile that held no hint of malice.

"Hello, I'm Colonel Alan Mace," he held out his hand, which Martha immediately shook.

"Martha Jones," she smiled.

He turned from her and made a gesture for her to follow. Apparently they were going to do a walk and talk.

"How much do you know about us," he began. They were walking through a long hallway and Martha assumed that they were heading to his office, because all the doors they passed by so far only held titles to other personnel in the huge building.

"Ah, not much, I'm afraid," Martha shrugged, "I know the Valiant was yours, that you guys are military and you guys are international."

Mace gave her something of an appraising look, like he knew she was holding back. They were heading towards a flight of stairs and Martha noticed that all of the people nodded at the colonel while some stopped to salute. She didn't know much about military culture and etiquette but she assumed it was safe for her to guess that he was very important around here.

"It's a start," he responded, "the Unified Intelligence Taskforce - UNIT, as you know it, is a military organization set up to investigate and combat any extraterrestrial and paranormal threat to the Earth."

"Timelords included?"

"If they're threatening Earth, yes. We've worked with the Doctor before, and he's still currently employed with us." The tone of his voice let Martha know that he personally hasn't dealt with him, and she nodded at that. He was probably the one who told them to contact her then, because aside from being checked for injury, her family wasn't interrogated and the debriefing was a simply them offering to help with any post traumatic stress and to keep this incident quiet.

"I don't really know much about Timelord physiology," Martha told him as they reached the top of the stairs, "so I can't really help you past what happened during Saxon's reign. Sorry."

"While we would like to hear more about that year," a third voice called out, "that's not exactly why we've been trying to get a hold of you."

Colonel Mace and Martha both turned to their right and watched as a smiling woman wearing the same uniform as Mace came walking towards them. Her arm was stretched out for Martha to shake.

"Hello Martha Jones," she greeted as they shook hands, "I'm Brigadier Emily Chaudhry and we have much to talk about."

...

She had a month to decide. Work with UNIT? Stay with school? Or a third option in Jack at Torchwood? In all honesty, she wanted a proper break, like a proper gap year to just relax and expand her boundaries. But her time with the Doctor might've been considered that, yeah? She felt like her experience broadened her horizons, but... she didn't feel relaxed, she didn't feel much of anything as of right now and the emotions she did feel weren't quite so positive. Her emotional state wasn't so stress-free and she didn't quite know what to do right now.

Jack had a bias, so calling him was out of the question. She didn't want to talk to the Doctor, that was definitely out of the question.

She had found herself a small part time job (a retail job, doing inventory), to pass the time before she made a decision (or that's what she told her sister, though they both knew it was to pay the bills so she wouldn't have to move back into her mum's place). And occasionally she entertained the thought of keeping this as a job, saving up and just moving somewhere remote and doing medicine there. But that felt too extreme, especially since she was aiming to look like she wasn't bothered by her previous adventures. Plus, it felt too much like 1969 and that... no.

So a day after work, Martha called up Jack. Then hung up at the second ring, then let all of her calls go straight to voicemail for the rest of the day.

...

When Adeola was still alive, she use to send Tish letters. Martha use to be annoyed by them in all honesty, because her elder sister use to joke that they were getting mail from Martha's twin. Martha had only seen Adeola a few times, in pictures and in passing at family reunions or funerals (Adeola's side of the family weren't fans of weddings) and while she was aware of the resemblance, she never really went out of her way to get to know the other woman. Primarily because the family would unconsciously pit the two against each other and Martha resented the fact that her older cousin would always be the de facto winner because of experience alone. And she prided herself on not being the petty one in her immediate family. So to avoid seeming like a hypocrite, she avoided dealing with Adeola both indirectly and directly.

But then Adeola died and well, it's hard to avoid all of that when she was walking around with her face.

By then, Martha was in med school, being labeled as a negative little skeptic. There were ghosts roaming about, faceless human sized ghosts frollicking about and it was possible that since she never personally experienced death herself, she couldn't feel the warmth and aura like the rest of the world was feeling. She never went out of her way to debunk the ghosts, like Julia had at the time. But she never held the ghosts up with that same kind of reverence and awe. She never stopped her work to speak to them and she just left the room whenever one would approach her. She certainly didn't feel smug when those faceless hollow creatures turned out to be murderous cyborgs.

And when those creatures (Cybermen, she remembered) were sucked back from where they came from, all that was left of their occupation were lots of cyborg body parts, and ash. The streets were still littered with their remains when they had gotten a call from her aunt, saying that they were going to do the burial immediately.

Looking back now, the only thing that stood out to Martha was her sister, still locked in the habit of checking the mailbox on the weekly basis, and being gutted when there wasn't any mail addressed to her.

Back then, she never understood how deep unhealthy habits and routines really ran until she stopped travelling with the Doctor. A few months she found herself in the process of grieving deaths that technically didn't happen, checking her phone for her old number to wind up on her caller ID, and always, always, creeping into the far corner of places and just observing instead of actively engaging people. Her internal clock wasn't working quite right but she still woke up before most people in her building, and she unconsciously found herself touching the Tardis key she never returned whenever she found herself short of breath. On some level, she knew why this was happening but she had too much pride to seek help for it.

It was when she started confusing her tenses in front of people that made her act. She grabbed her mobile and paced about in her room. Grabbing her hair with one hand and scrolling through her contacts in the other, Martha tried to call herself out of calling anyone. She didn't want to deal with that unconscious sense of disappointment from not being at her super human altruistic self. Logically, she knew that everybody needs help sometimes and she was no exception. But a whole life of taking care of everyone else meant that she forgot how to take care of herself.

So she played out all the likely scenarios in her head of how the conversation would go dependant on who she chose and sighed, looking down at her phone and pressing the call button on her phone. She was about to falter out and hang up at the second ring when the person on the other end answered.

"Leonard Jones here."

"Oh it's Leonard now, is it?" She laughed when she heard the groan on the other end, "So professional sounding."

"Oh sod off," she heard Leo laugh through the sound of running water and clinking dishes, "whatcha want?"

"Are you free today," she asked. There was a moment's pause and Martha was afraid that he was going to dog on her for the slight tilt of insecurity in her voice, all she heard was huff of laughter.

"I've got to bring Keisha with me," he replied, "but I'm always free for you, sis."

...

She almost expected to see her niece out of the pram. Her sense of time was a bit skewed from both The Year and from her travels with the Doctor. It was a year or two total since she's been away but biologically (according to UNIT) she's only aged about a few months. If she ever saw him, she'd ask if the Tardis was keeping her body in some kind of stasis. Like an echo of a whisper, Martha gets an inkling of a feeling, like the answer is both yes and no, a mix of a paradox (she stopped aging when she started travelling in the Tardis but she knows that if she checked, the time she aged would equate to her time actually being in the Tardis) and pure fucking magic in her mind (and she catches the fact that this is the biggest contradiction to her character, but was with Shakespeare, so. Yeah).

Leo's walking alongside her at the park. The sun is close to setting and there's this lovely orange haze littering across the skies. Martha feels the need to keep moving when the days get like this and though Martha knows Leo isn't a fan of walk and talks, she does appreciate the fact that both picks up on her need to walk out this excess energy, and for not pointing it out. Her niece is sleeping in the pram right now, head lolling over to the side and Martha opts to just give her brother a kiss on the cheek to say hello while smiling fondly at Keisha.

She tells him everything post The Year, because telling him about everything that happened to her and her family was one of those unspoken offlimit things and she's feeling rebellious. It's different for Martha, because everyone was up there and Martha was down on Earth, so it wasn't like Martha felt like she could talk about it. But Leo eavesdropped a bit, and Martha did answer a few questions. So he knew that much, but not the full details. He knew that Saxon was completely mad, but after the death of the US president, he didn't know much else. The government did a full cover up after the president was murdered, and even now, both countries kept a tight lid on everything. He knew that it was extraterrestrial, but there were so many gaps that he didn't know how to fill in the pieces.

But as she starts to explain, Martha abbreviates and leaves out things. Obfuscation was one of those big things that she couldn't stand about the Doctor, as much as she did understand it, but now, being walking in the park with her little brother and her niece, Martha can finally rationalize the way he did. It was a method of protection, for both her and him. And those sidelong looks that Leo gives her says that yes, he understands why she's doing it, and no, he won't question it right now. Martha realizes that in this family, Leo is the real star of the family, and she envies him a bit, for being able to get out the way he did.

(She hates herself a little more each time that thought comes up. It's more frequently these days.)

When she's finished, Leo lets out a sharp breath, as if it was him talking and not her, then lets out something of a laugh.

"Well," he says after a moment, "What do you want?"

And she thinks on it. Because all these options and she forgot that this was her choice to make now.

"I don't want to be at the Royal Hope anymore," she answers finally, "it's not me anymore."

"Makes sense; all that..." Leo makes a wild gesture, "vastness out there, makes it hard to get back to being ordinary." And she laughs, honestly laughs, because yes, that's exactly it.

"I want to be a Doctor though," she adds in quickly, "I've worked too hard to not be one."

"True," he says with a nod, "but here's the thing: You're talking to me to ask what to do."

Martha gives her brother a sharp look, to say of course I am, but he cuts her off before she can start.

"Oh don't start, you know I'm right," Leo rolls his eyes, "I think that ultimately whatever you choose, you'll be fine. But you gotta know that you're doing this for you."

Martha sighed, ready to point out that her mum and Tish both needed her to be nearby but Leo shook his head.

"You've been worried about us for way too long," he started, pointedly not looking at her, "you chose a uni nearby because you knew that Tish wasn't ready to move out yet and that I was too young to be without both of my sisters being a buffer. You didn't move nearby the Royal Hope when you started your residency because of the divorce, mum needed you then. You're usually our swing vote and you never choose a side."

He paused then, gave her sad smile before continuing.

"You travelling with the Doctor was probably the most selfish thing you've done," he said, "but I don't think you stayed for yourself."

And that hit her like a punch to the gut. Was she that obvious now?

"Do this for you, Martha. You're allowed to be selfish sometimes. So UNIT, Cardiff, whatever, do it for you," he told her, "If you want to head off to bloody America and become a farmer, go on and do it. As long as it's something you honestly are going for. Something you want."

And Martha couldn't help but laugh, because the relief that rushed through her came in waves. They stopped in the middle of the park. The skies were orange, the park was empty, and they were out in the open and for the first time in such a long time, Martha felt so unbelievably safe, because for the first time in a long time, she felt as if world wasn't going to end if she decided to be a little bit selfish.

...

UNIT was a big organization, that apparently had close to 1,000 different branches across the world. As a way to lure her over to them, UNIT gave her the option of choosing to travel to any of them for any amount of time (through the rumour mill, she found that it was a perk of all former companions recruited to UNIT). They required another medical exam and though Martha was irritated by the amount of poking and prodding that they did, their facilities were impressive. Next to the Tardis, UNIT's med labs were beautiful.

She noted that a good portion of their materials were from other planets (from the future, at that), and opted to say nothing. She didn't trust the people at UNIT so while she didn't want to outright lie when they asked her questions, there was nothing wrong with omitting certain things. She would've laughed at how much her mentality on that changed, but if she were honest with herself, it wasn't such a super huge transition of views.

Blimey, he's not even here and the Doctor still dominated her thoughts.

She wasn't being taken in by the colonel this time around, but a young blond doctor in training who was extremely happy to work with Martha ("I'm being trained by Dr. Sullivan himself," he said, to which Martha could only respond to with a very blank stare). He lead her to metal version of a lazyboy chair. Upon closer inspection, she could see little sensors running through the entire chair. She squinted at the man (an assistant, he said) to read his tag clearly.

"Meadows, is it?"

"Call me Memphis," he said with a smile. He was going through and writing preliminary stuff onto the chart and Martha smiled back. Her general unease of this place didn't mean she had to be cold to the young employee.

"Memphis," she amended, "what exactly are we going to do here?"

"Just basic scans for our records," he said with a shrug, "height, weight and whatnot."

"And after that?"

"Not my department."

"Ah."

He lead her to the lazyboy scanner (if it wasn't done already, Martha wondered if she could get a copyright on that title), and gave her a reassuring smile.

"Now," he said, "let's get this over with."

...

She had a full blown UNIT badge and after training, a full blown UNIT title. They told her that she still had a good month before she could come in as long as she signed the paperwork between now and the end of the week and Martha said that she would just need to tell her family that she has a new profession. She wasn't the type to procrastinate, but there seemed to be so much going on in one go, and now that Martha decided to go on and move on, it felt like everything sped up, and Martha had to scramble to catch up.

So she what she knew best and prioritized.

She had money saved over to keep her afloat until her paycheck and UNIT came in, so she went in to quit her job. Her school were trying to deal with UNIT to make a deal with them for more training. So she'd leave that out until they laid their offers on the table. Jack... she wasn't ready to talk to Jack in person, so she left him an email, detailing everything she was allowed to. He responded nearly an hour later, and there was an attached file with it. Talking to people she personally knew was still too much for her, so Martha agreed to meet family and friends next week. She let out a silent thanks at the fact that there didn't seem to be any sounds of exasperation in their responses.

Her unpacked boxes were remnants of her destroyed apartment and she decided to leave that in a box, tucked out of sight. She wasn't ready.

She had the rest of the week to go on and do anything and aside from the simple practical things like paying her bills and grocery shopping, Martha wasn't required anywhere until next week. She continued screening her calls, and sent text messages in apology. After a moment, Martha sighed and sat on her bed, restless, but not willing to head outside for a run. On her dresser laid a set of Harry Potter books, a housewarming gift from Tish. It's been a while since she's recreationally read anything, and even before the Doctor, it was hard to read up on things due to her extensive studies.

She picked up one of the books, and got as far as the first chapter before she found herself crying. She didn't want analyse any of that right now, and Martha blamed herself because she should've known that this was going to give her a reaction of some sort. The more she tried to force the feelings down, the more pervasive and pained she felt, and Martha had to get up and pace for a moment.

He had her mobile, but he probably didn't keep it. She was the one who left, so she had no right feeling sorry for herself like this, but everything about that man screamed safety to her right now and she knew better than that. She tried to work herself up to calling him, because maybe all of whatever her problem was now would stop when she heard his voice. Because she missed him and maybe he missed her?

But immediately after the thought left Martha, she felt a sharp heavy pain at the pit of her stomach. And it was a strong feeling now, that Martha knew that on some level, wasn't actually coming from her, that yes, the Doctor would come running if she called right now, but they shouldn't be anywhere near each other right now. And not for practical reasons like the fact that they're both in pain and aren't emotionally equipped to support each other, that even if they could support each other, Martha wasn't ready to see him, yet alone travel with him.

But for the fact that he needed to become reaquainted with someone right now, because there were certain things that needed to be put in place before Martha could call him. And this strong feeling started to feel like a certainty, now. She knew that they were going to meet a few times over, more poised and centered, and he and the universe would need that. She felt an unreal calm pass through her at that, and thought back to what the Doctor use to say, about certain events needing to happen in order for the world to keep going. She was no Time Lord, but Martha felt like this was maybe what knowing about those events felt like for him.

And there was that small pang again. She felt like this was a thing that had to happen, her being on Earth, that something horrible would happen if she tried to circumvent that. But it still hurt. She missed him. She honestly missed him. Then she felt guilty, because she had a life and family to back to, they were her reasons for leaving him in the first place and she wasn't even making a huge effort to communicate with them. A horrible thought came to her then and Martha stopped pacing, and grabbed all of Harry Potter books to keep from putting words to it.

She threw the books into a box, taped the box up and left the box alongside the other only unopened box in her closet, unlabeled so hopefully she could forget about it later on. She stared at both boxes for a moment, grieving a moment before angrily slamming her closet door. No use being nostalgic for things that never were.