Boo hoo! Last chapter! This story was so much fun to write and one of the easiest! And certainly, the reviews have been the best in all of my fanfiction "career." This speaks very well of you, that you are so invested in your favorite characters, seeing them do the right thing and that everyone does right by them... it's why I write! I'm so glad you've all stayed with me! Thank you!

And now, get ready for some serious sappy endings!

23

Taking readings from the latest finger-pricking, he could see that after ten days, his regeneration "cocktail" was at ninety-eight per cent. This was probably more than enough now to ensure that, provided a death didn't occur uncommonly quickly, and if things proceeded as they usually did, he could probably regenerate without too much trouble, if he absolutely had to. He noted that for the past few days, he'd been feeling less tired and the paper cut he'd got two days before from Martha's spiral notebook had healed straight away. The effects of Martha's special brand of ardour were taking hold faster than the Doctor had anticipated, though he wasn't surprised, particularly.

But, if he wanted to guarantee that there would be no diminishment, that there would be no chance that they would be in this boat again, he'd have to have the full one hundred per cent - it's what would be needed for the DNA re-shaping to take complete hold, and cast off any other possibilities, as evolution had done so many generations back.

And so, he knew that one more even mediocre night with Martha would do the trick - though, no night, morning, afternoon or anything in-between with Martha had ever been mediocre. He'd be cured. After all the sneaking about, all the sniping, making excuses, dodging bullets, testing and cursing, it would finally be over and life could go back to normal.

Obviously, part of him did not want to go back to normal. In fact, most of him did not. Back to normal meant that he'd have to give up the most intimate side of his relationship with her, at least for two weeks, possibly forever.

But he knew she had been right to put him off. He was rather addicted to the high she gave him, and there was no empirical way to tell whether he was truly in love with her at this stage, or just enamoured of the rush.

In theory, that is.

In theory, she was right. In practise, however, who could prove love empirically anyhow? And, the Doctor knew himself, and he'd known love. He knew where he stood.

But he understood her trepidation, and had agreed to give it two weeks after the cocktail had been replenished.

Briefly, he contemplated dragging it out a bit longer, getting another few days of unadulterated Martha, but he knew... the sooner they began their two-week trial period, the sooner that period would be over, and they could start anew together. Also, he knew that the best way not to begin anew together was with more lies.

So he shut off the lights in the lab, and found her in her bedroom, folding laundry for the both of them, and watching one of the Lord of the Rings films as she did so.

"Hi," she chirped as he came in. "How many of these identical light blue dress shirts do you own, exactly?" She gestured to a pile that already consisted of five.

"Erm," he answered, clearing his throat uneasily. "Like forty, I think."

She chuckled. "Okay. 'Cause these are just the ones I have found in this room over the past week or so. And there are a couple of tan ones, too, in the other pile."

"Oh, that reminds me, I found your purple hair-tie tangled in my sheets this morning.

"Oh yeah, I looked for that after my shower," she said. "Wondered where it had got to."

"Listen, there's something you should know," he blurted, without much ceremony at all.

Martha stopped in her tracks, folding the arm of a black tee-shirt. Her eyes opened wide, and she asked, "Oh, God, what is it?"

"We're at ninety-eight per cent," he told her. He wasn't sure how he should act. Showing happiness might be interpreted as a rejection of her, showing sadness might betray the fact that he'd almost rather have her than his regeneration abilities back. So he had said it with an impassive face.

"Already?" she asked, also impassive. "Very interesting."

"Yes," he sighed. "So, that means..."

"Maybe one more go?"

"Officially, yes," he told her. Then he ventured to say more, though he knew it would make her uneasy. "Though unofficially, I was still hoping..."

"Shhh," she interrupted, gently. "Just leave it. We'll talk about it in two weeks."

"Okay," he agreed, reluctantly, though internally he was thinking that she was lucky that he hadn't said what he'd wanted to say over the past ten days. Anytime they were together, he'd had to hold back. He'd had to keep himself from touching her during moments when they were clothed and upright. And when they weren't, he'd bit his tongue to stop himself telling her he loved her, that she was sexy and brilliant and he just wanted to consume her.

"So, let me finish folding here, and then... did you have some adrenaline-inducing adventure in mind for us?"

"Nothing specific, apart from..."

"Okay. Well, maybe we can find some trouble to get into together. Just give me ten minutes."

The Doctor had contemplated having their day's adventure be something "romantic," the sort of wining and dining women say they want. Well, some women. But he had done plenty of that lately, with lesser women, and it had got him very little in the long-run. Besides, Martha was one to be set apart from the rest, no matter in what group one wanted to place her.

And so, unsure of how else to proceed, he let their "last go" pass with no more than the usual external emotion. Although, the idea of finality, something dying (even though this was literally a life-affirming operation) pervaded him, the whole time. It felt fantastic as it always had, but in truth, the high had dissipated days ago. The depth of her love was palpable in all of the normal, human ways of affection and desire, but the intoxicating effect, the Doctor reckoned, had been the result of an initial overdose. Since then, his body, his cells, had become acclimated to the onslaught. He told himself, he should have known this would happen, since the "hangover" he had experienced after their first time together had been fairly easy to dispatch.

Their "last go," though, turned out to be their "second-to-last go," as they woke in the morning and had a fairly protracted encore, both of them unwilling to let go. They pretended the night had never finished, acted like they hadn't just slept for eight hours, that they were just revving up again for good measure, after a brief nap. For a time, the Doctor had hope that this meant he wouldn't have to wait another two weeks to talk to her about it, or maybe they wouldn't have to talk about it at all, that perhaps they could just fall into something real and wonderful, and all for each other...

But that evening, after a three-planet jaunt saving a family of Winged Harraclons whose wings had been clipped seven hundred years ago just before they were separated and sold into slavery, Martha simply said "Good night," and she retired to her own quarters. There was no particular emotion in her eyes, no looking back at him, and certainly no invitation. For a horrible hour, he sat alone in the console room, ostensibly deleting unneeded data, and wondered if their roles had now switched entirely. If so, how had Martha managed to live with him all that time? How had she survived loving him as much as she did (and as he now loved her), knowing about his sexual exploits without clawing out her own eyes?

This point of view made an extraordinary woman even more extraordinary, to his way of thinking.

And yet, somehow he found the wherewithal to get into his own bed and fall asleep. His last thought was to be thankful for the plight of the Harraclons having exhausted him, so he wouldn't have to think about Martha anymore tonight.

Naïve, indeed. Because of course, the first night in two weeks without Martha by his side brought dreams of her - of every part of her. He woke with a start, in a cold sweat, frightened but aroused, and more sure than ever...

Their days were, as they should be, filled with mad dashes and near-deaths, and he managed to keep his angst at bay. He reminded himself that this was how Martha had felt for months upon months, with no guarantee of any solace from him, ever. And she wasn't even shagging strangers behind his back! She had simply asked him to wait a fortnight - he could do that, right?

But the nights... she was in his mind and wouldn't go away. Approaching him, walking away. Her being and consciousness wrapped around him, or just out of reach. He saw her appear from nowhere, and also fade away. They were weightless and together as one like a ball of energy, and they were two cold bits of black rock on opposite ends of the universe. He saw her appear from nowhere, or disappear. He saw her naked, or wrapped in fur. She was in the throes of ecstasy, and in horrible pain. He watched her come, and saw her die. She consumed and she gave life.

And each morning he woke earlier and earlier, certain that he would never sleep again, and even more certain that he would never be able to take fourteen nights in a row.

At nine minutes past three a.m. on day six, he reached his limit.

She woke when he opened her bedroom door.

"Hello, lovely."

"Hello yourself," she replied, groggily.

He took this as not-a-rejection, and walked toward the bed slowly, contemplatively.

"Is everything all right?" she asked.

"No," he answered.

"What's going on?" She struggled to sit up and wipe the sleep out of her eyes with her knuckles. "You aren't ill are you?"

"No, all of that rubbish has passed," he told her. "Thanks to you."

"Then what's wrong?"

He sighed. "Now listen. I know it's only been six days, and you asked for fourteen. And I know that you're going to try and interrupt me when I start talking, but I need you not to do that, okay? I just need you to hear me out."

"Okay," she replied, concern in her eyes.

"I have been aching to get through this two-week trial period, or whatever it is. I'm over nine-hundred years old and I can travel in time, and yet getting through fourteen days on my own time stream is too bloody much to ask. Ironic, eh?"

"I've never had occasion to think about it, but... yeah."

"I've never been a particularly patient man, Martha. I've always been a rogue that way. The Time Lords were patience personified, patient to a fault. It's why I couldn't stay, it's why..."

"Doctor, I honestly don't mind a bit of meander when it's noon, but it is currently just after three o'clock in the morning, and I'm knackered."

"Well, I told you, I want this to be over, in the worst way. I'm absolutely champing at the bit to tell you that I love you, and I'm not just a juicehead."

She smiled in spite of herself. "Okay, fair enough."

"Do you love me?" he asked, quite bluntly.

"You know I do. I always have," she answered with a lump in her throat.

"Then, why are we bothering with all this? I don't need that trial period."

"Doctor..."

"You said you'd hear me out," he interrupted. Then he paused to gather his thoughts. "Martha, I stopped feeling the effect of your ardour after a week of our being together. I knew that what you were giving me was still nourishing because I could see it under the microscope. But the high - it was gone quite a while back. Once the nucleotides at the regeneration locus recombined and the cocktail reached fifty per cent capacity, the intoxication faded away."

She gaped at him for a few seconds in her sleepy haze, then asked, "Why didn't you say?"

"It took me a while to notice, actually."

With an exasperated laugh, she wondered, "How could you not notice?"

"Because there was so much else to be had, to be enjoyed, in those moments, Martha!" he exclaimed, moving closer to her, taking her hands. "That was when it started to get exciting because I could finally see you, feel you, and not through a haze, or some sticky veil of bliss. I started to get high on something else, something regular, human, accessible..."

She continued to gaze at him, and he had trouble reading her expression.

So he did what he did best: continued talking.

"Martha, us being together... making love, it wasn't in vain, or just for fun or whatever - it served a purpose. It has cured me. You have cured me. I can literally live again because you've loved me so well."

"Very well-put."

"But you've also cured me of something else."

"Don't tell me: that roadblock of thinking you'd never love again."

"Okay, I won't tell you," he said with a smirk. "Clearly, I don't need to 'cause you already know."

She sighed. "When exactly did the high go away?"

"When I reached fifty per-cent, or thereabouts," he shrugged. "I can't say exactly. Over two or three days, a layer of magig smoke lifted, and then it was just... you and me. No weirdness. No high. No palpable nourishment... that all got relegated to where it should be, as abstract, Time-Lordy stuff. The simple stuff, what I can feel and hold and want... that's love."

She suppressed a smile, because she wanted so badly to believe him, and have him crawl into bed with her right now, and take her and never stop.

But something inside her was still sceptical - she didn't know why. She didn't really believe the Doctor would lie to her about the intoxication having faded away two weeks ago. She didn't really believe he'd wake her up in the middle of the night, feigning torment, playing games with her. But what if it was still just some kind of craving come back home to roost?

"Doctor, have you bothered to check your nucleotide levels since we had our last go?"

He let out a mild frustrated expletive. "Martha listen to me. I'm not a child. When I look at you, I want to... just..." He reached out to her with both hands and stopped for a few moments. Then he went the rest of the way, grabbed her cheeks and kissed her with all of the gusto he felt. Their lips and tongues entwined, and both moaned a little, just in release of the pent-up emotion they had both been carrying about. They had both missed their quality time together, to be sure.

When the kiss broke, she asked, "You want to what? Shall I interpret that as the ending to the sentence?"

He smiled. "Yes, more or less. Except that so many things happen to me when I look at you. I am in awe of you, of how well and completely you have loved me, even when I did not deserve it."

"That's the great thing about love. You don't need to deserve it," she offered weakly.

"Well, thank heaven, because after all the rubbish I've put you through, even before all this regeneration business began... Martha, the last six days, I have been, more than I ever cared to be, in your world. I see how you have lived. Running with me, troubleshooting with me, soaking in adrenaline and fire and... and I can't just grab you and kiss you, or pull you into a broom cupboard and have my way with you..."

"When did you think of doing that?" she asked loudly, with a reluctant smile.

"In the control complex yesterday with the Aeode creatures," he said. "I reckon if there had been time, I might have lost my resolve."

"Blimey, Doctor."

"The point is, you've been putting me through something that isn't a tenth as bad as what I threw at you, and I couldn't even survive it for two weeks, let alone for six months! How did you not kill me in my sleep?"

"I thought about it, but decided it might be counterproductive if I wanted you to ask me out on a date someday," she said dryly, with a smirk.

"You've been insulted and cast off in the worst way, been ignored, lied to, and had guns pointed at you. Anyone else would have turned and run, but you stayed and helped."

"Well, I did try to run once, but I reckon I wasn't that serious about it," she commented, meekly staring at the blankets in her lap.

"See?" he said, squeezing her hands. "God, you must love me."

"I do," she whispered.

"So much, you pretty well put my lights out once," he reminded her with a smile. "And then brought them all back! How could one little person be so big? You put up with so much, and still had enough love leftover to save my life with it!"

"Yeah..." she mumbled.

"I look at you, and I just want you, Martha, that's all there is to it. I want everything you are. I want to... grab you so hard that you could break, and kiss you untill you have no breath, and own you, almost. I want to be covered with you! I want to squeeze, and drink, and dive in..."

She made a sound, something like laughter, something like a sob. And the tears indeed began to fall.

"Sorry, there just aren't good words for it. Except... I don't need time to tell me what we both know. If being in awe-inspired reverence of your capacity for love, and wanting to catch fire whenever I can't touch you, doesn't mean that I'm in love with you, then I give up, because it means that I don't know what love is anymore."

And at that point, he felt a certain finality. He had no idea what else to say or do. He felt that this was the end of the line. He felt completely exposed. He felt that if she put him off one more time, asked him for more contemplation, or indeed asked any more questions, he might turn to ash right then and there. Once again, he knew how she must have felt hundreds of times in his presence, times when he was largely oblivious to the power he held. He winced at the thought of it.

"Okay, then," she said, clearly, evenly.

"Okay, what?"

"Crawl in."

His question got stuck in his throat for a moment, and his eyes opened wide. "In - in bed with you?"

"Yes," she replied easily. "Unless you'd rather talk about it more."

"God, no."

"Then crawl in, Doctor," she said, peeling back the covers, taking a chance on doubts cast off. "And make me feel it."