THIS, MY FRIENDS, IS THE THRILLING CONCLUSION OF "FIRST DO NO HARM."

THANK YOU FOR READING AND REVIEWING AND ALL YOUR KIND WORDS AND CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK! I'VE RARELY HAD THIS MUCH FUN WRITING FAN FICTION! YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME.

TWENTY-ONE

Forty-five minutes later, the Master was back in whatever rearward world he'd exiled himself to. The Doctor, who had planned on pontificating one more time on the evils of the path the Master had chosen for himself, had found that he didn't have the energy. After exhausting discussions with Raj and Rose in turn, he found that he just couldn't do it. He took the Master to the rift in Cardiff and Captain Jack escorted him into the vortex with the help of a manipulator only good for one trip.

After that, Jack saluted his friends, then returned to the Hub. He'd have one hell of a confused team to deal with, and he was sort of looking forward to hearing about what sort of lives Gwen and Ianto had had in his absence. Besides, he had said his goodbyes, and had absolutely no desire to witness the tearful carnage that was to come when they hit the beach in Norway.

Better just to walk away now.

Dusk, the end of a long, long day.

Darlig Ulf Stranden. The Doctor's least-favorite place in the universe. This cold, bleak, white speck on the face of the cosmos seemed to swallow him whole every time he came here. He stood in the sand and stared at the place where she had disappeared into 'Pete's World'. The goodbye had been brutal for him, but she had been brave, which hadn't made it any easier. She'd kissed him – no tears, just stoic resolve, with the assuredness that her sacrifice was necessary, and was bringing closure and balance.

Martha had been brilliant. She had been alone in the world for months, with incendiary knowledge that no-one else shared, with feelings and memories she could not discuss. She had known something was wrong and faced it, brought 'David' out of the darkness almost single-handedly, and once again helped to save the world... even though it hadn't gone as he had hoped. And then, when all was said and done, she had volunteered to give up everything she knew in this life to live in another reality, just to make him happy. Her family, her job, even her name, her very identity, were not her own, on the other side of the void.

And, she'd be letting go of him. Their many travels in the TARDIS, their one night together in the petrol station and all hope of reprising any of that... she'd known what the implications were. In the last year or two, she had made it amply clear that she loved him, but he never would have thought she'd make a decision like this just to give him a taste of joy.

He turned and faced his TARDIS, and walked slowly back. He opened the door and went inside to see his most faithful companion sitting atop the navigator's chair, and Raj leaning against a railing.

"Did everything go all right?" she asked.

"I assume so," he told her. "No way to know – just have to have faith."

Raj assured him, "It was the right thing to do. Closure and balance."

The Doctor didn't respond to this. Instead, he asked, "Can I give you a lift home, Raj?"

"Thanks, but I left a spacecraft camouflaged in an abandoned Underground tunnel – I'd better go the old-fashioned way. Just a lift to Kensington station will be fine."

"All right, then," the Doctor said.

"Seriously, are you all right?" the lovely woman on the stool asked him.

"I will be," he assured her, facing her and squeezing her hands. She leaned forward and hugged him, resting her head on his chest.

"I wish you had let me go," she told him, whining just a bit, even though she was glad to be here.

"No, Martha," he said. "Wouldn't have been right. Besides, an inexact exchange like that would have given us some stability, but not total. We could have lived that way, but for how long?"

"Raj said a hundred years, maybe more," Martha protested, pulling away from him to emphasize her point.

"A drop in the bucket of the grand scheme of things," the Doctor said, bopping a TARDIS control with his fist. He set about flicking switches and turning dials round the console, and the hum of the great machine filled he air. "A hundred years from now, who knows? Another reality collapse, and we might not be lucky enough then to have someone with their head screwed on so straight." He winked at her.

"Or a Kaf Celapian to whisper in her ear," Martha added, giving some of the credit rightfully to Raj.

"Besides," the Doctor said, shoving his hands in his pockets, the TARDIS flying steadily. "I'm not the one who wouldn't let you do it."

Martha chucked at the memory of Rose's commanding, almost intimidating voice as she instructed Raj to make sure that Martha did not move from that seat until she was good and gone. She hadn't entertained Martha's plan even for a second. Rose certainly understood the sacrifice, and offered her thanks over and over again, but nothing in her eyes had even betrayed any temptation.

Martha had protested, entreated Rose to think of the life she could have here, and Rose entreated Martha to think of the difficulty of having to hide from her own family, change her name and live someone else's life. Martha thought she was ready for all that – she had been willing to give up anything for the Doctor, she'd made that decision on the night of Leo's 21st when she'd allowed him to wisk her away. The two girls locked horns for the ensuing two hours, starting in the pub, out into the streets, in the TARDIS, in Cardiff near the rift and back in the TARDIS agian. The men, even the Master, chose not to get involved (though they all knew what was right, and how it would eventually turn out).

Rose knew. The stability of universes depended on her crossing over, and so, she needed to go home and make room for new adventures both for the Doctor and for herself. In the end, Martha found herself inside the TARDIS, being 'guarded' by Raj, waiting for the Doctor to come back and tell them Rose had gone.

"I mean, don't get me wrong," the Doctor added, interrupting her thoughts. "I would have tried to stop you."

"Yeah, but you were going to talk to her," Raj said in a mocking tone. "Have you met this woman? Hello, stubborn! No, Rose's direct, militant approach proved much more effective."

The Doctor cracked a smile. "I prefer to think of it as tenacity. On both of their parts."

The TARDIS materialised in an abandoned tunnel, and when they looked outside, they saw a spacecraft very like the one they had used to travel to Kef Celape earlier that day.

"Right on target," the Doctor mused, patting himself on the back. "That makes a nice change."

Martha said goodbye to Raj, but she chose to stay inside as the Doctor walked him to his spacecraft.

"So what's next for you?" the Doctor asked him.

"It's homeward, try to repair the reality manipulator," Raj said, taking keys from his pocket. "And I'll probably appeal to the Court of Legislation to appoint a committee for researching intergalactic relations. We wouldn't have been in this pickle if we'd known not to trust Davros in the first place."

"Great idea," the Doctor commented. "Time to join the eight-ninth century."

"Quite right." Raj looked uncomfortably at his shoes.

"I know what you're going to say," the Doctor said. "You're going to tell me you're sorry that it didn't work out the way I'd hoped but that it's all for the best."

"I wasn't going to say that," Raj said, smiling wryly. "Doctor, I know what Rose meant to you, but when you look at her now, your aura goes blue."

The Doctor eyed him suspiciously. "My aura?"

"Yes," Raj admitted. "Kef Celapians can read auras. You've been running cold round Rose ever since you got your memories back, and she's been projecting uncertainty. Maybe you see her as tainted now, because of the Master..."

"No, I could never think that, not ever."

"But maybe she is. Sorry, tainted is the wrong word, but what I mean is, you are all changed. You, Rose, Jack, the Master, you're all different now. Something's happened to you as a result of spending three months as a med school professor, because your loyalties – or at least your affections – have changed. I saw it while the girls were arguing, and I saw it just now when Martha hugged you."

The Doctor sighed. He didn't like people in his mind like this, but he wasn't going to argue. Both he and Raj were quiet for a while.

Finally, Raj made eye contact with the Doctor, and then eyed the TARDIS, tilting his head, in indication of the beautiful, dynamic woman waiting inside for the Doctor. "You know what I'm going to say now?"

"Yes, and you're right. And I know it was difficult for you to say."

"Damn right it was, you lucky bastard."

"I'm sorry, Raj. The universe is a topsy-turvy place."

"Well, I suppose it's a day marked by sacrifice," he told the Doctor, sighing. "She was willing to make one for you, for love, so I'm making mine for her." A pause, and then, much more forcefully, Raj added, "You just make sure it's not in vain, all right? I'm not kidding – she loves you, and I want you to think every day of how fortunate you are. Got it?"

"Got it," the Doctor promised, earnestly.

"And if you don't," Raj said, retreating a bit, and then sounding just a little bit pained. "Then send her my way, will you?"

"Will do," the Time Lord said, silently vowing to himself that he'd never let that happen.

They shook hands, and the Doctor watched as Raj carefully flew his craft through the tunnels. When he was out of earshot, he return to his own craft. Martha was waiting right where he'd left her.

"Did you know Raj could read auras?" he asked, walking up the ramp.

"Yeah, he told me earlier today," she confessed. "He knew..."

He looked at her sideways as he prepared to move the TARDIS once again. "What?"

"He knew about us. About me and David, anyway," she said, trying to shrug to show indifference.

"Oh, that," he sighed.

"Er, Doctor," she said, carefully. "You should know... I told Rose about that."

"I figured," he said, leaning against the console in front of her. "Seeing as how she already knew when I tried to tell her myself."

"Sorry," she whispered.

"No need to be."

"I know it was none of my business. I just said it so she wouldn't feel guilty about the Master, so that she would talk to you without being scared."

"That wasn't her. And for that matter, it wasn't entirely the Master," he whispered back. "I know that, and she knows that I know it. Billie had no vestige of Rose inside her, none of Rose's memories or feelings, and no inkling that anything was out-of-place. She was only human – a victim of the manipulator."

"I guess a lot of us fell victim to that," Martha mused. "Well, a lot of you."

The Doctor could guess at what she meant. Her tone, and her blushing, betrayed everything.

"Martha," he said softly. "You know that David wasn't like Billie."

"In what way?"

"I don't have a human mind, so the reality collapse buried me a bit more shallow than it buried Donna and Rose and Jack. David, he had plenty of my memories," he told her. "He knew something was up – he knew he didn't feel comfortable in his skin or in this world. And when you came into his life, you clawed at those memories so strongly that I was able to break free in just little bits."

"See? I thought so!" she exclaimed, remembering their talk in the petrol station.

"David had that police memorabilia obsession," the Doctor reminded her. "Surely you worked out that was me, trying to find my TARDIS, trying to get out."

"Yeah, I knew that."

"Billie had nothing like that. She totally engulfed Rose. David did not engulf me. Do you see what I'm trying to tell you?"

She did, or at least she thought she did. But she needed to be sure. So she lied. "No."

"Do you remember what I said in the car when you asked me to tell you what I was certain of? Anything that I knew wasn't a lie?"

She gulped. A simple "Yes," escaped her lips. Anything more and she would have cried.

"And you said I had my wires crossed, but I didn't. David was a lie, but he wasn't the only one in the driver's seat last night, Martha," he told her, taking her face in his hands. "I am the truth, and I was there too."

She couldn't hold back now. Tears fell. He kissed them away.

They shared a long, emotive embrace, lips and hearts pressed together, minds finally thinking the same thoughts.

When they were quite finished for now, she told him, "I have to say goodbye to someone."

He waited outside for less than fifteen minutes. He had expected it to take at least an hour of explanation, tears, recriminations... he knew he wouldn't let Martha Jones go without a fight, so why wasn't Tom clinging to her leg and begging?

She came out from the flat they shared looking sad, and she had a rucksack with her. She came inside the TARDIS and set her bag down.

"That was quick," he said. "Hurts him less, I suppose, that way. Like a bandage."

She smiled weakly, "He ended it. Not me."

He hadn't seen that coming. "Why?"

"He'd been a victim of the reality collapse as well, and when he got his memories back he remembered that I'd been a patient, and that I'd seemed completely mad," she said. Then her shoulders slumped a bit. "And he guessed correctly that you were intertwined with whatever was happening, and by extension, I was as well."

"He couldn't handle that."

"No," she said. "I guess he finally worked it out, that I - we - would never have a normal life. My ties to you... I think that had always bothered him."

"Sorry."

"Why are you sorry? I went in there to end it anyway, it just saved me from having to break his heart. I hadn't been looking forward to that." And then, quite suddenly, the sadness dissipated completely, and she smiled at the Doctor. "I can't believe I'm back here."

"I can."

They embraced once more, and it was a kiss that definitely held a promise within.

THE END