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The little red cell phone left on the console of the TARDIS began to vibrate and ring out in the empty room, its lonely chirping the only noise to be heard; that is, until a quick stomping of feet grew suddenly louder from one of the many hallways connected to the main console room.
As the cell phone shook precariously towards the edge of the console, the Doctor barreled into the room and dove towards the now falling cell phone, his coat flapping like a cape as he slammed onto the floor with the phone cradled in his palm.
He winced at the lump he knew was quickly forming on the back of his head and fumblingly flipped open the phone.
"Hello? Hi?" No reply. He gave the phone an evil look and turned the phone right side up. "Hello? Martha? Are you there?"
A sigh of relief answered him on the phone. "Oh God…Doctor! I was so afraid you wouldn't pick up!"
"I'll have you know, Martha Jones, that I even willingly inflicted physical pain upon my person in order to be at your service." The Doctor winced again as he got up from the floor and felt the bump on his head. "I've found that I am even more reckless without my personal doctor aboard," he said with a laugh.
"Speaking of being a Doctor….that's why I called you." Martha said in a breathless rush. "I'm at the campus getting ready to take my finals in 30 minutes, and I am so nervous that I don't know if I can do it!"
"Oh…come now…is this the same Martha Jones who saved my life on multiple occasions, as well as the entire world?" The Doctor answered with disbelief obvious in his voice as he sat in the Captain's chair and leaned his feet up against the console.
Martha laughed forlornly in reply. "Sometimes it doesn't feel like it…especially without you around. Now that I'm home and you're….whenever…it all feels like reality is crashing down around me and I've got nowhere to run anymore."
The smile slipped from the Doctor's face as he muttered quietly to himself, "Or no one to run with…"
Martha continued on, unfortunately too nervous to hear the Doctor's admission, "And that's why I need you."
"What…you want me to come get you right before your exams? You know I can't do that…you've been studying for this so long!" the Doctor said in disbelief.
"Oh no…no…that's not it…"
"Oh." The Doctor replied in a deflated voice. "Then what?"
"I need you to talk to me….tell me something to get my mind off of the fact that the rest of my life hinges on a few pencil marks I'm going to make on a piece of paper in 20 minutes….and I don't mean your usual trivia. I need you to talk to me…tell me something about you that I can hold onto." Martha paused as the Doctor gripped the phone tighter and swallowed hard as he ran his other hand through his tousled hair.
"Martha…I…"
"I know!" Martha said brightly, "Tell me why you became The Doctor. So many titles are out there: The Cook, The Cleaner, The Candlestick Maker, so why did you pick The Doctor? If you can tell me that, I'll tell you why I chose to become a Doctor too. Please, Doctor?
No. No…no…no…don't make me do this, Martha…I don't have you to distract me anymore when my past rears up and threatens to swallow me whole…don't make me face my pain alone.
The Doctor paced around the console, one hand gripped tightly on the phone, the other gripping his hair so tight he was threatening to pull it out; physical pain better than his long buried emotional pain any day.
"Doctor?" Martha asked again in a weak, begging voice, her nervousness and desperation clear to him over their tenuous connection.
Selfish coward! Listen to what you're doing to her…the great Martha Jones, savior of the world (and yourself), walked the world alone, turned to a nervous mess begging for nothing more from you than a little information.
But I never even told Rose… (She never asked! She was happy living a dream, and so were you.) There's so much I never gave Martha, yet she's put up with so much from me that she never asked for…and before he knew it, he was talking to Martha.
"Remember when I told you about the Master and the Time Lords…how as children we were forced to look into the Time Vortex?" The Doctor sighed as he stopped pacing and leaned hard against the console.
"Y-yeah…you said that it drove 'him' mad, and after you looked into it you've been running ever since," Martha replied.
"Well…I rather simplified things when I told you that," he tugged his ear nervously as he stared down at his shoes. "When I looked into the Time Vortex…I…I think I saw what it was that drove the Master mad."
He could hear Martha's gasp of astonishment as he continued, slowly sliding off the console and onto the floor with a thump. "It was horrible, Martha…those hollow voices that called to me from the endless depths. They spoke of stagnation…isolation…apathy, and the death of existence itself all for the sake of 'Order.' Life didn't matter…choice didn't matter…nothing mattered…only their carefully crafted Order." He thumped his head against the back of the console in anger and winced as he remembered too late that he'd already been inflicting head trauma today.
"I know now why I could never stand my fellow Time Lords…always on the outside, watching life but never living it. I think they heard the voices from the Time Vortex and followed them. The Master and I though…had other ideas. I think they drove him insane with the fear of sacrificing all he was like that, and in retaliation he decided to destroy everything else; anything to keep that precious Order from happening."
"What about you, Doctor?" Martha asked, finally working up enough courage to say something as she was afraid that if she interrupted he'd never talk to her like this again.
"The Master tried to destroy Order everywhere he could find it…but me, well…" he stalled as he rubbed his hand against the TARDIS console for comfort, "I ran, but I ran because I decided to fix it.
"Fix it? How do you go about fixing Order?"
"Did I ever tell you about one of my other nick-names, Martha? 'Chaos Bringer,' they called me…it—"
"Doctor," Martha said in her best 'Oh no you don't, you've done this too many times before' voice.
"Life is about balance, Martha: Ying-Yang, Black-White, Yes-No, Order-Chaos. I decided to fix their overblown sense of "boring, never-changing, not-much-fun Order" by throwing in my own brand of "Wondrous, life-changing, thought-provoking Chaos (patent pending). You can't have one without the other…and you never should. What's life without change…without learning…without adventure?" He stared up at the ceiling of the TARDIS as he felt the tears gathering. "I thought…I hoped…maybe I could show him there was another way. I feared those voices just as much as he did…and thought we could fight them together…but you saw what happened with that." The tears escaped and ran down his face in long tracks as he refused to wipe them away.
"That's the hardest part about being a doctor, isn't it?" Martha asked sadly. With all the knowledge you've worked so hard to get, you don't want to think that there might be someone that you can't help…that you can't fix. You wonder what the point is if you can't cure the ones you care about…"
The Doctor could hear a heavy sigh over the phone as he wiped the tears from his eyes and quickly got off the floor of the TARDIS. "Now-now, Martha Jones…that's enough of this self-pity party. We Doctors—"
"Not yet…" he heard Martha interrupt quietly.
"We Doctors have a very important job to do," he continued stubbornly over Martha's objection as he started checking coordinates on his screen. "The TARDIS shows me where the Universe hurts and I do my best to fix it. If I can't fix it, I do my best to ease the pain. If I can't ease the pain, I move on. It's unfortunate and painful sometimes," he grasps a switch tightly as he thinks of Rose, "But the problems of the Universe don't wait for anyone."
"That's you and the TARDIS, Doctor," Martha said pointedly. "What's my role in your grand plan, if I still have one?"
"Why Martha…I thought I made that clear when we started this conversation…you're MY Doctor." Silence greeted him over the phone as he threw a few more switches and the console began vibrating with a happy hum. "Martha? Are you still there?"
"Wha? Y-yeah, I'm still here." She answered distractedly. "Ahh…bollocks!"
"What? What's wrong, Martha?" he asked worriedly.
"I've got to go, Doctor…it's time for the exam!"
"You're okay now, right, Martha?"
Martha paused for a second as she realized the butterflies were gone. "Yeah…I'm fine now. I know I can do this. Oh…but I didn't get to tell you my story yet!"
The Doctor smiled as he strolled towards the doors of the TARDIS. "Weeellll…I guess you'll just have to tell me that one once you're a doctor, eh?"
Martha laughed softly as she replied, "I better get on it then…I've already got my first appointment!"