Author's Note: This is a missing scene for the Season Three episode "Family of Blood", set right after Martha and the Doctor leave in the TARDIS at the end of that episode. Because something more needed to be said between those two. Because heartache needs a companion.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except the pen in my hand.

He had acted like everything was fine. He had pointedly avoided any further inquiries about Joan. He had requested, practically ordered, that they move on. But despite how the Doctor had behaved outside the TARDIS, everything was not all right.

Martha looked over to where the Doctor was sitting. Where he was still sitting. He hadn't moved since they had left Farringham. The only sound in the hours since had been the hum of the TARDIS.

Falling in love? That didn't even occur to him?
No.
Then what sort of man is that?

The sort of man who shut the pain out and locked it away in order to keep going. But sometimes that wasn't enough.

She walked over to where he was sitting, against the wall of the TARDIS. "Doctor?"

There was, of course, no response. Of all the times for him to stop talking.

"Doctor? Please say something." The figure hunched over at the wall didn't move. But she waited. And waited. And waited. In the end, he spoke.

"Go away, Martha." He sounded beyond weary. All the energy—the sheer aliveness that she had always associated with the Doctor—was gone. She was afraid it might never come back.

You're this Doctor's companion! Can't you help? What exactly do you do for him? Why does he need you?

"Doctor," she said, hesitantly placing a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry. For not—"

He spun around, his sudden transformation knocking away her hand. "Don't say that. Don't you dare say that you're sorry, Martha Jones. You've nothing to be sorry for." His voice was bordering on hysterical.

Martha desperately wanted to agree with him, but she kept going, because the Doctor was finally talking. "I still could have done better," she said. "I should have—" She stopped. "I just…"

She didn't know what she was trying to say. And this was not the time to bring up her own frustrations.

I wish the Doctor had been there. The unspoken thought hung in the air.

The Doctor broke the silence. "It was my fault." Martha didn't know what to say.

"I don't know how you do it," he said. "How can—" He broke off.

Finally, he spoke again, his voice thick, his words muffled. "How can a Time Lord be so completely rubbish at being human?"

He was carefully not looking at her. And she felt suddenly inadequate to deal with this. She was tired, and hurting herself from the strain of dealing with the Family of Blood. But the list of possible volunteers was remarkably sparse, and he was the Doctor, so she tried.

"No," she said quietly, "I'm afraid you were all too good at it."

He turned his head to look at her. "What's that?" Martha didn't answer. "No!" He stood up. "You tell me, Martha Jones. You think I was good at it! Oh, yeah. I was so good that I made a bloody fool of myself falling in love with someone when you knew—" He stopped abruptly, breathing hard, his eyes wild.

Martha could feel her eyes filling with tears and she was so close to giving the whole thing up and letting him go back to his self-imposed exile while she went and cried somewhere for, oh, a good couple of days. And she knew that he knew, because that was why he had stopped and sometimes she felt like this whole thing was rubbish but then she'd look at him and…

"I'm sorry, you can't believe how sorry I am." She was aware that she was desperately trying to justify herself before him, but she couldn't stop. "I should have stopped you. But I kept thinking, 'It's only three months,' and I thought we'd be gone before…"

He was silent for a while, but then he said, "I'm glad you didn't stop me." Martha could hear the I'm sorry, in those words, and that gave her the courage to ask.

"What made you open the watch?"

Beside her, the Doctor tensed, but she continued. "I know it wasn't anything I did. Or said." That last bit was probably a bit of a cheap shot, but she was on her last edge, and she didn't know how they were going to make it through this one.

For a long moment Martha thought she had gone too far; that they would be back to the silence and the pain, but at last he answered.

"Don't you know? The Doctor always saves the day." His voice was tinged with a weary bitterness that she didn't understand.

"But you do. You did. I mean—" Martha knew she wasn't making any sense, and the Doctor's face was shutting down before her very eyes and she didn't even know what the problem was. "I mean, you're the Doctor…" She trailed off.

"Oh, yeah," he breathed, "I'm the Doctor. Barrel of laughs, that is. The last of the Time Lords…"

He turned towards Martha, but even though his eyes were on her, they weren't seeing her, not at all. They were looking at something very far away that she couldn't even begin to imagine. All she could see was his grief and anger and pain.

"Oh, I like being the Doctor. Having the people around me, people I—"

Martha could guess what he hadn't been able to say.

The Doctor slumped back against the wall. When he spoke, his voice was utterly broken. "I've tried not caring. I've tried shutting everything out but…I'm the Doctor. And so I can't. And people die, again."

Martha didn't say anything. Couldn't say anything. So the two of them sat there, on the floor of the TARDIS. She didn't know for how long. But still she sat there, just waiting. Being. Listening.

There is a sound to silence.

Finally, the Doctor spoke. "She asked me…If I had never come…would anyone have died."

This matter of fact statement caught Martha completely unawares. Oh, Doctor.

"Sometimes I wonder, who am I to decide who lives and who dies? Because people always die, around me."

"Stop it." The words burst out. Startled, the Doctor looked over at her; as if he'd forgotten she was there."

"Right. Sorry." He cleared his throat and Martha could almost see him push the wayward thoughts back underneath the surface until the only trace of their existence was a hint of pain shadowing his eyes. "Well. Shall we?" He stood, offering his hand as if to get up and leave all this behind.

"No!" She said. Angry. Frustrated. She wasn't sure. But she knew that something needed to be done, or at least that she wanted to do something. For him. Because…

At that line of thought the anger returned, and some of it was directed towards him, because at least—Before she could stop them, the words burst out, "At least, for the tiniest little bit, you had her. At least she…and you…"

The Doctor sighed and slid down the wall next to her. "Fine pair we make, eh." Martha looked away. He tilted his head back against the wall and said, "What's it they say? Better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all?"

Martha mumbled, "That's a load of rubbish."

"Mm." He hesitated for a moment before continuing on. "Do you remember the Daleks?" She nodded, wondering what had caused him to bring up this new subject.

"I had fought them earlier, at Canary Wharf. That was before I lost—"

Rose, Martha's mind supplied.

"Heh." The Doctor's laugh was rueful.

"They told me I was proof. That emotions destroy you. And they were right. They were so right. But I told them…" His voice cracked. "I told them 'Mind you, I quite like hope. Hope's a good emotion.'" He sat there for a while. Then he said, "But it's not, is it? Hope is what destroys you. Because once it's gone there's nothing left."

"Doctor—"

He turned on her. "Don't. Just leave me be. Just leave me be and soon enough everything will be back to normal."

She couldn't. "It wasn't easy, you know." The rational part of Martha's brain was screaming at her to get up, to leave, to flee before his anger was unleashed on her.

The Doctor didn't respond.

"You were there, but you weren't and in some way that was worse. Because, at the beginning, especially, you were friendly and kind and sometimes, when we were talking together, it seemed like almost nothing had changed. But it had. And John Smith was…" Martha trailed off, not quite knowing how to get through the next point.

Surprisingly, the Doctor spoke. "Thoughtless. Foolish." Martha winced at the self-recriminating undertones. "Mostly helpless."

"Yes." It slipped out. "No! I don't know," Martha said. "He wasn't you. And there was just me to worry and to wait. And to watch…" You fall in love and break my heart, again, and somehow still make me wish that I never had to wake you from the dream.

"Yeah," the Doctor said. He looked away. Didn't try to explain, didn't try to argue, didn't say anything else.

Martha had to get through to him.

"Do you know the most terrifying thing that ever happened to me?"

The Doctor looked mildly interested at this. A spark of the normal irrepressibility was back in his eyes. "Daleks in Manhatten?"

"No."

"Judoon on the moon?"

"Nope."

"Shakespeare?"

She laughed. "Not even close."

"I've got it. Sentient sun creature."

"Still no."

His face turned serious again. "What then?"

Martha never thought she'd be telling him this, but it seemed to be the time for confessions. "It was when you took me back. After Manhattan. You dropped me off at my flat and left. And I…I panicked. Because you were gone. Because the most brilliant, incredible, fantastic…"

…Man.

"…I didn't know how I could let that go and go back to my life again."

The Doctor's voice was quiet. "Ah. That." Then he gave her a tiny grin. "So not the Slitheen?"

Martha smiled a little in return. "No. When I was with you I was never afraid."

Beside her, he stiffened. "Because I'm the Doctor. Because nothing bad can ever happen when the Doctor is around. No one ever—"

"Doctor," Martha said. He ignored her. She was desperate. Somewhere this conversation had gone very wrong, and she needed to make him understand. "Thank you."

Surprisingly, these two words were sufficient to halt his rant.

"Because this is what I was going to say, about Farringham. No one noticed me. No one cared. I was the one doing all the dirty work and keeping things together and getting no credit, no recognition." She eyed the Doctor to see how he was responding to this. His face might as well have been made of stone. "And at the end, even after all I did…well, it wasn't about me." She took a deep breath and turned to look at him. "But that's what it's like for you all the time. So thank you, Doctor. Thank you for saving the world when it doesn't even know it needs to be rescued. Thank you for facing the monsters so we can sleep at night. Thank you…for being you."

A long silence followed her words. Finally, the Doctor spoke. "Do you know, no one has ever thanked me before." His words were suspiciously light and he avoided looking at her.

"No?"

"No," he said.

"Long overdue, that."

"Mmm…" He seemed about to get up, but hesitated and said, "Martha?"

"Yeah."

"Thank you."

The Doctor was back.

End Note: It's funny, I was fully prepared to hate Martha forever. "She'll never be as good as Rose," was my battle cry. And yet…somewhere along the road of the last six episodes of Season Three I came to…understand…Martha. And yes, maybe even like her. Somewhat. Argh. Enough that when she left, I was mad at her all over again. Curse you Doctor Who, for making us care about characters and then having to let them go!

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