Title: Drabbles of Martha
Author: kbk
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Property of the BBC. So maybe I can own a tiny tiny part? but not really.
Notes: Written for the 1000 Drabbles of Awesome challenge.

After Martha finishes telling The Story, she looks around once more. This time, she looks not with the eyes of an acolyte, but those of a doctor.

She calls over the woman with a dirty bandage on her arm, the girl who's seven months pregnant, a few others. She picks a few more to be her students, and sends the kid in the corner for hot water.

Basic hygiene to prevent infection (the arm is suppurating). Re-setting a dislocated shoulder (much easier when the injury's recent). Hypothermia, shock, concussion. When it's worth risking going to hospital.

She teaches as she treats.

"Martha! I need some help with my boobs!"

She walked into Jack's room to find him jiggling in front of the mirror. He was right: he needed help.

"I told you this wouldn't work," she said.

"Look, I've got the wig, I can do the make-up, my legs look utterly fantastic in this skirt, it's just..."

"The boobs."

"Yeah."

"Your bra needs to be tighter."

"What? It does not! It..."

Martha started tugging at straps. Then she reached around him to resettle the fakes properly.

"Doctor Jones! You're getting kinkier. I like!"

She smiled sweetly, and twanged his bra strap.

She escapes from the crowd of fellow graduates and friends and family members, just for a moment. It's wonderful, of course, and her whole family is there (and Mum and Dad haven't started fighting again, which is weird but good) and...

Once she thought this would be the greatest day of her life. Her greatest achievement. Now, well, it's still a good day, but she's done better. She's saved lives on a dozen planets; she's saved the whole flaming world! Not without some help; if only he...

She turns a corner and he's there. "Doctor," she whispers.

"Doctor," he replies.

In one particular book, the loops on the page don't resolve themselves into words she can read.

The Doctor explains, later, that it's because her eyes can't see a wide enough spectrum of colour. He tells her about the artificial twisting of magnetic fields to direct stellar flares, and cameras set to capture the image of a precise time and place, and the script of loops and whorls that was originally a planning tool but became a language of its own.

First, though, he reads to her; poems of love and loss from a society that she will never see.

She combs her hair until her arm aches; it is smooth and sleek and silky.

(They had a spa day, a couple of weeks After. The hairdresser asked if she'd been using Fairy Liquid instead of shampoo, her hair was so poorly off; Martha worked very hard to reply casually. The deep conditioning oils were nice, though.)

It hangs around her face like a cloud of spun sugar.

(If she'd ever slowed down enough to think about it, Then, she might have cut it all off. It would have been more practical.)

The woman in the mirror is a stranger.

Lucy Saxon reappears after a few months, waiting outside Martha's front door. Martha watches, wary of the other woman; sees red-rimmed eyes, slightly swollen belly, conciliatory body language.

"They weren't human. You know how they were different, don't you? You can tell me..." Lucy's hands rub her belly nervously, unconsciously.

Martha calls in a few favours. She borrows an examination suite at the hospital and takes an ultrasound. She reassures Lucy, hands over a list of phone numbers for various doctors, and gives her an injection to take care of the baby.

Lucy's miscarriage makes page six of The Sun.

The radio spits out, "Here come the drums!" and Tish runs to the bathroom to puke.

Martha watches her go, and doesn't get up. She's been reading the literature on PTSD, but she knows now that she doesn't have the experience to deal with three badly traumatised patients (and there are sound reasons for not treating your own family) and she can't prescribe the necessary medication. All she can do is maintenance, and that's not enough; but any ordinary doctor would diagnose delusions and advise hospitalisation.

When UNIT calls, the first thing she asks is how many psychiatrists they employ.

Hill calls. "Where the hell are you? Your shift started twenty minutes ago!"

It's not the best start to the day. She doesn't get in trouble, once she explains what happened to her flat, but that's about as good as it gets.

"Rough weekend?" she gets asked a few times.

For one patient, she suggests a treatment that's only just been invented. Another chats about watching the moon landings and she has to bite her tongue. Then there's the man who once will have driven her to the coast and been killed for it.

"Rough two years," she doesn't reply.

On Exib Alpha, people never look at Martha directly, but they keep her in their field of vision. She asks for directions and khe simply stutters, gazing at her with wide eyes.

The next one isn't much better, but the third is coherent enough to send her to the Town Hall. There, she figures it out.

They aren't scared of her. They're fascinated.

There, a statue of dark stone gazes down. A terrible queen, a figure from their history; a woman who changed their world and is revered and reviled for it.

She hasn't done it yet. Should be fun.

Martha doesn't know what wakes her, but the sense of unease persists until she reaches the control room. There, the Doctor is snoring gently, leaning against the console.

A small light flashes plaintively above his head.

Martha crouches down beside him, and shakes his shoulder. "Come on, Doctor. Time for bed."

His eyes slowly flicker open, and he smiles. Then he visibly wakes up. "No, no no, I have to realign the gyroscopic..."

"You need to lie down and sleep." She is utterly uncompromising, and the Doctor gives in.

Back in Martha's room, the TARDIS materialises a bunch of chrysanthemums.