I used to have the hands of a healer. Rather, I had the hands of a healer studying to pass her exams. Doesn't matter how old you are, the smallest thing can change the entire course of your life. One day was all it took to change mine. A typical day made extraordinary by a funny man with two hearts who trouble just seemed to follow (rather the other way around).

I was clever. Clever enough for him to invite me aboard his space ship and show me the universe (that sounds absolutely daft, but it's true!). In time, I found that I was following the steps of someone else. It destroyed me at times because I fancied him, properly loved him, even though our adventures usually meant I was in some sort of physical peril.

There were times, countless times, where I almost met death galaxies away from my family, hundreds and thousands of years into the future. He gave me the gift of seeing that even though something was happening 3,000 years in my future, I could be just as dead then as I would be in present time at home. Such things were simultaneous. I could call my mum on the phone and she would have no idea where or when I was. Time became such a difficult thing to measure for me.

Before we knew it, things at home were changing. In the few exchanges my family had with the Doctor, my mum had decided he was trouble and maybe she was right. I can't help thinking that if I had actually told her, or been able to explain the amazing things he was capable of, maybe that would have changed everything. That would have been enough to prevent the year that never happened, the year of suffering. But I was more quick on my feet to leave than I was to stay and explain. I don't know if that year could have even been prevented.

I experienced brilliant things, Shakespeare literally dedicated a sonnet to me, I also experienced the stale prejudice of days passed. Those in particular, I learned from. When I protected the Doctor. Saw him at his most vulnerable and scared as a human, that part of him almost costing the whole of who he was out of cowardice. But eventually, he came through just as he always does but I couldn't help but think that sometimes, in all of his gallivanting, if he doesn't sometimes feel like that scared human I saw. He's susceptible to a lot of human emotions, after all. I've seen him love and pine, wrathful and hopeful…

Despite that, I learned from him how to really fight for whatever hung in the balance. I feel I have always been a good person, rather a person who fights for good but somewhere along the way, in travelling with him, I changed. My hands changed.

I had proven myself to him, so much so that when the Master took control, he sent me on a journey, one he could only bestow upon me. I walked the surface of the world carrying his name wherever I went, like my cross to bear. I longed for the day on which I'd be able to return to him and my family. It was a long and bitter year.

Upon my return, under the false pretense of having a gun to destroy the Master, I'll never forget what Professor Docherty said to me just before I left. "Martha, could you do it? Could you actually kill him?" she asked, her eyes penetrating mine. Though I knew the gun was fake and that this woman would eventually betray me, the Master forcing her hand, I also knew one thing in that moment. I really would kill the Master if I had the chance. "I've got no choice." I replied. As if to shake me she said, "You might be many things, but you don't look like a killer to me."

But she hadn't seen what I'd seen. The destruction the Master had brought eroded all of the great civilizations. I'd been in tough scrapes before and knew that sometimes, all you need for a positive outcome is a little bit of cleverness. I'd seen the power of words before. Playing into our plan, the Master brought me before him, his own crude understanding being his downfall.

"As if I would ask her to kill," the Doctor muttered.

Eventually, I was able to walk away from the Doctor. Experiences forced me to realize that while his lifestyle was breathtaking, it came at a cost. I almost lost my mother, my father and my sister simply because of my relation to the Doctor.

When he left, a part of me still really wished I had gone along, whether for him or the sheer thrill of what great mysteries still remained I will never know. It certainly wasn't the last time I'd see him so I'm almost certain it was the latter. I found that in certain circles, knowing the Doctor had its perks. My field experiences with him put me on the fast track to becoming a doctor, myself. For so long I had worked toward it and here I was, with a posh job no less.

I was brought into the fold at UNIT, my out of this world experiences proved to be just what they were looking for. At UNIT I finally received the recognition I deserved and was pushed through the ranks rather swiftly. With the Doctor popping off all the time, Earth had to be protected and that's what I was responsible for. I knew the way the Doctor handled things, I'd learned so much while travelling with him. But I also knew that without the great powers of the universe and a time lord at your disposal, your means limited your ability to be haughty about your personal morals when the safety of the planet is on the line.

Maybe that's why, when I learned of the Osterhagen key and it's purpose, I wasn't even alarmed at how unfazed I was at its extremism. I didn't carry a gun and I always knew that when we really needed him, the Doctor would come through. After all, he was only ever a long distance phone call from me.

But there came a day when we needed a little extremism and my Doctor was nowhere to be found. So I took the key and, along with two others, held the fate of the world in my hands. I held death and destruction and the end to it all, and I was willing to use it. It wasn't until I saw the look on the Doctor's face that I truly saw the difference between the medical student I used to be and the soldier I was now. His eyes held mine and in them I found such profound disappointment. His "Children of Time" so we were dubbed, each of us was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. Willing to die at his feet, we were, inspired by our loyalty to him. In that moment, he saw the grotesque perversion of himself that lived in each of us and perhaps began to doubt the difference between the man that ended the Last Great Time War and the man he thought he was now.

When it was all said and done, we were safe once more thanks to the Doctor. All of us. Then we parted ways but I was still left with that troubling realization. How vastly different my life had become since he strolled into my life. From a student to a soldier, a doctor to a killer. Martha Triumphant, indeed.