Prologue . . .
Martha stood looking at herself in the mirror and realized that she didn’t even recognize the woman looking back at her anymore. What happened to that promising young medical student so full of hope and a desire to help people at their most vulnerable? At what point had that stopped being the goal and something else took over? The answer could be summed up in two words . . . The Doctor. She wasn’t blaming him; after all she made the choice to follow him that rainy night after her brother’s birthday debacle. He, though, was like force of nature that just blew into your life and rearranged everything in it before vanishing once again, leaving chaos in his wake. She remembered a memo on him from when she worked at the UNIT that called him something like, the Oncoming Storm. The name fit him perfectly yet while he could simply move on to the next adventure, the next companion, the aftermath for those who were left behind was never as good as the ride before it.
This was the situation Martha now found herself in. Her life had become something unrecognizable to her. The moment she stepped out of the TARDIS after the final, failed Dalek invasion, everything she had always thought she wanted in life was forever altered. She quietly wondered to herself if she would ever know normalcy again or if she really wanted to. She inhaled deeply. For now all she wanted was to escape . . . escape all of the expectations, all the probing eyes . . . the disappointment of a life unfulfilled.
