A Bright Shadow ('Light and Dark' entry)

[jay-vingt-six.livejournal.com]

Title: A Bright Shadow
Rating: PG
Genre: General/Introspection
Word Count: 539
Pairings or Characters: Tenth Doctor, Martha Jones
Spoilers: None; references from all of Season 3.
Warnings: None
Summary: The Doctor ponders over what he had and what he lost at the end of an especially long day. Continues where Last of the Time Lords ended.


“I’ll see you again, mister.”

He could only smile in response, one that quickly faded as the doors shut behind her. Alone, again. By Rassilon, he hated being alone. You are not alone, Boe’d said(Jack’d said. Jack. Jack bleeping Harkness was the Face of Boe!). Well, that didn’t hold true anymore, did it?
He still felt kind of bowled over, to be honest. It had been a long day. There was the Jack thing, of course. And the Master. And… her.

Martha. His-

What was she to him? He pulled a lever down slowly, pensively. She was hard to place, his Martha. No, not his. Never his. Brilliant Martha Jones. ‘The Woman Who Walked the Earth’. Hmm. A bit long, that. ‘Bad Wolf’ was easier… no, stop. He mustn’t go there, no good would come of that. And it wasn’t fair on her, on Martha. Even now, after she’d left, he had no right –none- to still compare her to Rose.

That’s not to say he hadn’t done it in his head millions of times before, more number of times than Martha would have liked, had she known. Rose had been a sort of template, a paragon of a mould, and he had always tried to fit Martha into it. It was horrible of him, but he did it anyway. And every time he did it, he’d come out supremely frustrated, whether Martha was on par or not. If she didn’t fit, he’d be angry and disappointed. If she did, he’d be even more angry that Rose wasn’t as unique as he’d made her up to be.

She wasn’t, of course. She was just an ordinary human, and yet extraordinary because of that. Martha was exactly the same.

No, not exactly. Didn’t he realise that from all those times he compared the two of them?

He turned the whirly-whooshy lever and gazed at the console rotor absently. He never should have done that. He had many regrets but this one was stinging hard, even now, mere minutes after she’d left.

He really shouldn’t have wasted his time comparing her to his past, to someone that didn’t even exist in this reality anymore. There was no comparison, really. How could he compare Rose, who meant so much to him, to Martha, who-

Who-

There really was no comparison. Rose was Rose. Martha was…

A really good medical student, as good as a Doctor herself. A loving daughter and sister. An untiring walker, as it turned out. Brave, brave enough to face the Judoon, the mad scientist, the Master –all on her own. Compassionate, sympathyzing with kidnappers and pig-mutants alike. Hard-working enough to breeze through “race-appropriate” (how he hated that term) jobs in two different eras. Probably wasn’t a breeze, but she made it seem so easy. Kind, caring, considerate. Garnering admirers in Shakespeare and space pilots alike. A shoulder to lean on, to cry on. A hand to lead, to hold and to follow.

She was his light in the darkest depths of the universe, and she was his shade, his respite from the harsh brightness of reality.

She was Martha Jones.

And she was brilliant.

He flipped a switch, and the world crashed down around him with a bellowing horn.

Comments

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

Very lovely. Martha deserves this one hundred percent. :)