From Bad To Worse | Doctor Who Fanfiction

9. The Painful Stories

The Doctor awoke slowly after he had finally sorted through all his memories. He sighed, had he really decided to forget his feelings so he wouldn't have to deal with them? He knew that the answer was yes, he had literally just gone through the memories of doing just that.

Not for the first time, he found himself wondering what had been wrong with his previous regeneration.

You can't run away from your feelings, making yourself forget about them doesn't make them go away. The Doctor saw this fact very clearly now but obviously hadn't seen it back when he still had been wearing a pinstripe suit and had had middle long spiky hair.

The Doctor groaned, he knew that he couldn't make himself forget about his feelings again, well, technically he could but he wouldn't, not again. He had to deal with his feelings, not run away from them, something he had always been good at, especially in his previous regeneration. Making himself forget about his feelings for Martha wasn't the solution, that was merrily shoving the problem forward to deal with it later.

And later was now.

The problem was though, that The Doctor didn't know what to do with these feelings. His Tenth self had had a point by arguing that a relationship with Martha would only end in pain and sure knowing your feelings was worse than not knowing them but he just knew that his previous self hadn't made the right decision when he had activated that memory lock, he couldn't argue it, he just felt like that.

There was also the fact that Martha was a married woman now, something that made this even more complicated. Martha was unattainable which actually would make it easier for him to not act on his feelings, he had no right to. On the other hand, if he did slip up and accidentally confessed something on the subject of his feelings he would be in huge trouble. Although it wasn't like he could help having feelings for Martha, he thought it would be fine as long as he didn't act on them.

He sighed again, he had found himself in a complete mess, feelings like, he knew that the best option was to hide his feelings from everyone until he was better again and then get the hell away from here as soon as Martha would declare him healthy enough to go and travel again.

Thinking of Martha he decided to let the TARDIS give her a call so he could tell her he was awake.

"Martha Jones speaking." He heard as she picked up the phone.

"Hey Martha." He answered cheerily.

"You're awake then?"

"Yeah."

"I'll be there in a few minutes." Then she hung up and The Doctor waited for her.

As she had promised she indeed came in a few minutes later, carrying a tray with food and tea, seeing that made him realise how hungry he was.

He smiled at Martha, who looked slightly down at the tray.

"You've been asleep for almost twenty hours, so I figured you would be hungry."

"Twenty?" She nodded her confirmation. "Right, sorry, it was a bit more to sort out than I expected." He looked at her sheepishly as she put down the tray on his night stand.

"It's okay." She sat down on the side of the bed. "You said that it could take a couple of hours longer, so I figured this meant a couple."

He rose an eyebrow.

"Okay, I will admit I was getting a bit worried." She admitted making him chuckle.

"I knew it." He said cheekily.

"Oh shut up."

"Me? Shutting up? Never." He joked, causing Martha to giggle which made him smile.