One Day at a Time || Martha/Human!TARDIS
Martha was what the experts called a “flickerer.” Martha’s wrist would flip back and forth between 00:00:00 and her previous number. It was thought that flickerers were more compassionate overall than others, meaning that there were many potential soulmates for Martha.
This had driven her crazy during her awful childhood crushes, but there was never a more stressful time for Martha’s wrist than when she met the Doctor. Martha’s wrist felt warm and loose when she was near the Doctor, and the numbers flickered faster than they ever had in her whole life. But the Doctor didn’t love her. Martha spent 3 years chasing her crazy Doctor flickers. She loved him desperately to get the numbers to stay at 00:00:00, but they never did.
So she left. And on Earth, her steady countdown returned. It was nice, having her wrist quiet down. For the first time in a long while, Martha forgot about her wrist and relearned to love herself. She would keep from looking at her wrist for weeks on end, even if she could feel it get warm, like the numbers were flickering.
One afternoon, Martha was headed home after her last meeting with her fellow volunteers before they all boarded a plane for Haiti. Now an official doctor, she would travel the world to heal whomever she could. Martha was excited for this, the first big step since her step off the TARDIS. There was an air of adventure waiting to happen, almost like her jitters were coming from her… wrist.
00:00:01
One minute. Martha began to shake. It was happening. Now. It would happen here, on her walk home. But she was ready now. With a smile on her lips, she closed her eyes and opened them.
She locked gazes with a man looking out the window. Just like that, her wrist felt like an iron had branded her. Looking down to try and soothe it, she saw the speeding numbers stop steadily to 00:00:00. A wash of relief coursed through her wrist.
It was him. It was the man in the window. But he was gone now, so she prepared herself to meet him when he came down.
But he had words for her that she never expected to hear. And yet, they made perfect sense to her.
All along, it was never the Doctor. It was the TARDIS. The thrill of time and space, the possibilities to save lives and expand minds and love more. That was what made her wrist flicker with the Doctor. It was the TARDIS the whole time. And her wrist was blissfully silent to prove her point.
But why was the TARDIS in human form? That was no way for her TARDIS, her magnificent love, to live. “Who did this to you? Are you safe in there? I’ll keep you safe, I promise.” Did the TARDIS have to be human for her wrist to stop? Was that why the TARDIS had changed forms? What would happen to the ship part, capable of travel through time and space?
I was too busy reveling in the sound of your voice to even voice an answer to your concern. You had been so good to me when you had been aboard and now you were here, a source of goodwill and comfort and--
And I loved you. What a strange and beautiful thing. I mean, I suppose I always had, but both of us had been blinded by the Doctor then, hadn't we? We both spent so long trying to console the inconsolable, feed a blind ego and care for a self-defeating man. And we were his friends, and he saw what he wanted to see, nothing more.
So I hug you instead and smile.
"I'm fine, I promise I'm fine. The console isn't, but I'm still working on fixing that, but I'm okay." Nothing's burning and it's a miracle. I still haven't forgiven myself for what I did to Rose when I allowed her access to my Heart, nor what I did to the Doctor by proxy when he took that power from her to save Rose's life.
And then the words that I'd waited a hundred lifetimes to hear:
"I’ll keep you safe, I promise.”
I felt tears well up in my eyes, and rubbed at them like a child. "I trust you, Martha Jones. It'll be alright." It would take time, it had already taken the better part of the year to make any progress on trying to get the console back to a workable state, and will take quite a while longer to make it, make me fly again. I was crippled, but I was also human and humans were stronger than they let on. I'd survive, just like you always had, and I had to believe in that for now.
