Doctor Who/ Pushing Daisies: Someone Else's Story
Title: Someone Else's Story
Fandom: Doctor Who/Pushing Daisies
Author: kawaiispinel
Feedback: ...Is loverly.
Word Count: 512
Rating: G
Characters: Martha, Alfredo
Pairings: Implied Alfredo/Olive and Doctor/Martha.
Summary: He's been her traveling companion for the past three hundred miles because he was a traveling salesman before "all this" and he was just never accustomed to staying in one place for very long.
Disclaimer: It's still not mine. Really.
Author's Note: Written for chicafrom3, who requested Martha and Alfredo with the prompt "Long ago, in someone else's story." I may learn to be comfortable writing Martha yet!
He’s been her traveling companion for over three hundred miles, because, as he told her, he was a traveling salesman before "all this," and he was just never accustomed to staying in one place for very long. He’s a charming man in his own right and she’s glad of the company, and it almost feels invigorating to hear someone else tell a story for once.
He tells her about traveling the world and peddling homeopathic antidepressants, although he hasn’t been doing that much anymore- well, not so much peddling, anyway. The box he carries with him is occasionally opened and little vials of instant happiness are given freely to people that he feels needs them, but he’s never actually sold a single drop- his contribution to helping the world heal, he explains. Martha can’t say she doesn’t find that to be completely endearing.
What he speaks of most, however, is a little blonde waitress he hadn’t seen for two years before half the population of the world was decimated by The Master’s attack. In a lot of ways, she’s the real reason he’s been traveling- he wants to find her again. He spares no detail in explaining her over roaring campfires and Martha listens, hanging on every word, because to hear him talk about this woman he loved and, in a lot of ways lost (provided you could lose something you never had), was like listening to someone reading poetry, except most poetry, give or take some of Shakespeare’s works (especially from his own lips) and maybe a few other brilliant wordsmiths, never broke her heart the way that his words did.
"That almost feels like someone else’s story, though," he tells her one night, for the first time seeming genuinely sad when he spoke of this wonderful girl he loved so dearly. "I never really had the chance to make it our story before I left, and now... Well, there’s this, and I don’t suppose there’s really any hope for happy endings anymore."
That night is the first night she dares to tell The Doctor’s story with any hint of her personal love for him. To her, it really does feel like that was someone else’s story, and that the girl she was talking about wasn’t her at all, even though all the sadness and intense regret and every feeling of inadequacy were hers and hers alone. Meanwhile, he listens just as intently as she listened to his story, and when she’s finished, he half-smiles, but doesn’t say a word.
They part ways the next morning. He wishes her luck on her journey; she wishes him luck on finding his beloved. Just before he leaves, he passes her a one of his vials with a note wrapped around it and she waits until he’s gone from her sight before she reads it.
"There may be little hope for happy endings these days, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t believe that they exist. And besides, it’s not really someone else’s story at all- it’s ours, and we choose how it ends, whether happily or not."