Warnings: Dark!Fic, Angst, Horror, Assumed Character Death, Introspection, Missing Scene, Character Speculation, Vague 'spoilers' for the Eighth Doctor Adventures books
A/N: Written for the dw_50ficathon and is comprised of the usual overly thinky ramblings, too much speculation and a general sense of whimsy. Wandery-blithery within (youse has been warned), as per usual - with a tad of 'bzuh?!' thrown in for good measure. No, I have no idea where this came from and I'm rather afraid to ask; I can only hope it is mildly enjoyable. Accuracy to character was aimed for, but likely missed...sorry about that. As always, mostly unbeta'd and written in one go, so please forgive any mistakes and/or blatant vagueness. I apologize for any repetition, misspellings, sentence fails, grammatical oh-noes and general horridness. Unbeta'd fic is overly-thinky/blithery and unbeta'd.
Disclaimer(s): I do not own the scrumptious Doctor or his lovely companions. That honor goes to the BBC and (for now) the fantastic S. Moffat. The only thing that belongs to me is this fiction - and I am making no profit. Only playing about!
There were a lot of things that could shake the unshakeable. That could rattle the jaded and bring the stony-hearted to their knees.
There were things out there (amongst the stars), that could send the coldest icemen screaming to their mothers, the blackest murderers praying to gods they never believed in.
Samantha Jones was none of these things.
She wasn't cold, murderous, stony-hearted or jaded (even as much as she would like to think she was the latter). She was a girl who longed to be a woman who saw things that could dazzle the unimaginative and sober the daydreamer. She was a rebellious teenager born of rebels that had found the mundane and thrived there.
She wasn't just the product of her age: she was the poster child of an era.
Not that she knew any of this. Nor would she really care (though deep inside, her rebellious heart would have screamed rage at the very concept). She was a girl whose past was changed by her future – by the very fact that her present was wrapped in all of time and space.
Samantha Jones was a Time Traveler. A Companion of the Doctor. A special woman (who was still a child), even though she was aware (too aware) that this alone did not make her unique. Unfortunately, the Time Lord she revered (and sometimes feared), was well known to take on travelers and that they were often considered special and unique in their own right. So she was one amongst many (if the TARDIS' mainframe collection was anything to go by), but there was one thing that set her apart from quite a few of those travelers he called friends, partners and (sometimes) enemies: she had seen the Doctor die.
Not once, but twice.
And both times, he had not regenerated. A phenomena he had hinted at, but that (of course) she had not yet seen.
There was another thing that set her apart (at this moment, anyway): Samantha Jones was lost.
It was one thing to be lost. It was quite another to be lost and quite sure that the man you were half-in-love with (or wholly, if you were honest with yourself), was dead – and that he wasn't coming back. If he was alive, he would be there to rescue you. He had done so many, many times – so his not being there was pretty much leaning towards the idea that he never would.
The idea of never going home again was daunting. The idea of being stuck in a disgusting slag-pile of a ship that oozed muck and made horrible screeching noises to itself at intervals that were startling and unnerving was even more daunting. The memory of your would-be-rescuer lying sprawled under the broken remnants of a busted computer console –
Green-gray eyes lifeless, pointed towards a dank metal ceiling that put you so, so far from home, even as his magical box of wonders was just around the corner; but so were they – the horrid, hulking monsters that had made this mess of a too-long day even worse…and he needed to move now. He needed to sit up and tell her it would be okay and that the worst was over, he was just playing opossum. He didn't mean to frighten her with his gray-green eyes staring at nothing, his velveteen frock-coat tattered and scorched, golden-brown curls tangled about his head like a halo…but he couldn't be an angel, he was too alive for that –
No movement to indicate that he had survived – that was all she was left with.
He always survived. He was centuries old to Sam's mere handful of years and he always survived. She should know – she was a survivor herself. Even when she was sure she wouldn't be able to, even when she knew that last leap was truly the last one – she survived. She had lived through vampires, body-snatchers, an alternate earth and a day that never died. She had seen monsters of metal and monsters that looked human – and quite a few that weren't human, but didn't seem like monsters either (until you looked beneath the surface). She had seen a future that never was and a past that could have been.
But here on this ship, her only escape long gone and far away with the woman she'd saved (only to be abandoned by the same), it was hard to remember that she was a survivor.
She had seen many things, Samantha Jones had. She'd endured terrors that would bend the mind of the rational and serve sanity to those hopelessly beyond the brink. But her nightmares only revolved around the things that might have been, the choices that could have gone the other way.
The times when it could have gone wrong.
As she drifted in and out of sleep, it wasn't the death of a Tractite at her hands that haunted her (the one thing she could never tell him - he would never understand and he would never look at her the same way again); it wasn't the horrors she found at the hands of the Faction Paradox that plagued her waking dreams. Nor was it the school boys that chased her practically into the Doctor's arms when she first met him – and surprisingly it wasn't the Zygons or the Daleks that caused her to toss and turn in the fitful, restless sleep of a woman who had seen true terror. You'd think it would be the vampires that had attacked her so long ago (relatively speaking), in one of the first adventures she'd had with the romantic madman in a magical box: the first time she had ever doubted him. The first time she had ever feared him. The first time she truly believed that he was nothing more than just a mere man – or worse, no better than the beings that had hurt her.
Fear and doubt…the two things that could shake the faith of the unshakeable. But it wasn't that making her half-dreams in the Kusk ship into living nightmares. It wasn't the bite of that vampire in the club that tore at her when she slept the tumultuous sleep of the fevered and exhausted – even as surreal, frightening and reality-shaking as it had been at the time. It wasn't (oddly enough), the days that followed, when she was afraid of the very being that had brought her so far away from home and the (mundane, drudgery, monotonous) familiar she had called her life from before.
It was that reckless light in his eyes when he dangled eight stories above the unforgiving pavement, threatening a madwoman with suicide if she didn't cede to his wishes. Using the life-link he had been tricked into to turn the tables on her – force her hand…for Samantha Jones. He had saved Sam, but only by threatening to end his own existence (and the existence of her captor in one swift, messy fall) – and he hadn't even once hesitated. She hadn't seen it happen personally, but she could easily imagine it. He had done it before – and would likely do it again.
Actually, he had…and now she was stuck in a ship that was just as frightening, just as surreal as those vampires had been. It wasn't the logical fear one would (and likely should) expect: it wasn't the very real idea that she was never going home. It wasn't the fact that she didn't even know where she was going.
It all boiled down to the person she didn't have beside her. Even if (by some insane miracle) she was rescued, all she was doing was moving further and further away. She never got that chance to say goodbye. She didn't get a chance to say she was sorry for any trouble she had caused him – because she had, she knew she had.
She was afraid of what had happened to him. It had already happened. She had already seen him die – but she had seen that before, too. By the very same creatures that had tried to kill her in that nightclub. He had been set upon by several of them, all of them eager to eat what made him special (as if they ever could have). It was their undoing – but for a few moments, she had tasted that fear: him so still and lifeless at the feet of beings that were born of nightmares.
She still felt that fear. He was dead and gone (hours, days, weeks?), but she still carried that dread low in her gut. Fear had no rational basis in this context. You can't be afraid of what has already come to pass. You can't fear the inevitable. But she did. It was as if some small, superstitious part of her had waylaid all sense – the thought that ran ceaselessly through her mind comprised of hope. Small hope. Dim hope. But hope all the same.
He had escaped death before. He had lived past what should have been the end. He looked it in the face and ran towards it anyway. And for some strange, terrible reason – she followed. She still couldn't say why. Her dreams on board this horror show of a ship were murky, dark and restless – her outlook should match. But she still had this odd notion that if she turned her head at just the right time, there he would be. He would smile at her in that faintly sad, almost tired way he had, tug on the lapels of his ridiculously outdated waistcoat and invite her opinion on where they should head next. And she wouldn't think of home. She likely never would.
Even now, she was daydreaming (restless, hot, hungry and exhausted) of him. She wasn't thinking on the fact that any hope of going back was drifting further from her as this ship oozed its ugly way through the stars. She wasn't really thinking about how the viscous, disgusting excuse for food was really hurting her more than helping her. She was thinking about the Doctor. Hoping for something that couldn't be.
Sometimes hope is all we have. Most times that is enough.
She dimly recalled him saying that once. She wanted to thank him for deeming her special enough to be his friend. She wanted to smack him for scaring her, for plunging her heart into despair with his reckless disregard for himself when those he cared for were threatened. She wanted to be worthy of the ideals he held and the faith he put in her.
She had never felt it was enough before. She had accused him of holding what she was against her (human, female, not quite an adult yet) – but she saw his actions for what they truly were, now that she could no longer tell him. He saw himself in her. Someone who would willingly give so that others could have. Someone he wished to protect (for a little while longer) from having to do just that.
She loved him for a variety of reasons. Most of them (she was ashamed to admit) were rather shallow and terribly human reasons. But the small handful that she couldn't even explain to herself was what made him proud of her. And he had been. He had told her so several times. She wanted to be worthy of that again. She wanted to go back and erase any wrong she had committed and give of herself, like he had.
The only way that she could see to do that was to look forward. To take what came at her with a brave face, a true heart and her wits firmly about her. He may be gone, but she could still make him proud. She could still be a friend of the Doctor, even if the Doctor himself was no longer there to see it.
Home was long gone and far away – getting further all the time. But she was surprised to conclude that 'home' wasn't the small backwater of Coal Hill. It hadn't been home for as long as she could remember. Home was the TARDIS. Home was the Doctor. And his home was the stars.
She longed for home, but knew that likely she would never see it again. Just as she would never see him again. But that was okay. She could face that one day – she would look that fear head on and accept it for what it was. Until then she could pretend…even if for a little while. She could hold onto that small parcel of hope – that she would see his smile, that she could hold his hand and run through the universe he called his own – and she would keep it as a beacon on her path.
Samantha Jones wasn't a lot of things. The things she was at the moment were temporary, just another step on the long journey that she was quite sure laid just ahead. But there was one thing she knew would never change – Sam had been a friend and traveler with the Doctor. She had survived things that people older, wiser, smarter and surer of heart never would have. She was unique and singular in the universe. She might be lost. She might be frightened, confused and sick at heart, but these things would pass. She would give of herself and be worthy of being his friend.
As white light washed over the Kusk vessel (a rescue party? Raiders? Lost souls like herself?) she knew that her time had come. The Doctor might be gone – long lost and so far away – but she carried a piece of him with her. She likely always would. She realized (with a mild pang and only a small amount of dismay) that she missed him: fiercely, terribly, selfishly – but she also knew she could make him proud still.
The airlock opened with a small hiss and Sam struggled up from the chair that fought to hold her captive, the ooze and muck that clung to her skin no match for the determination and will of one Samantha Jones. She held onto her epiphany, turning to face the beings that were either her rescuers or her new jailers – her chin high and her hope held shining and bright within her heart.
It was time to face her future, even if it wasn't what she thought it would be. It might even be time to become more than just Samantha Jones: survivor. She could see that happening. She could see (for just a moment) what he must have seen and it made her stagger closer to the airlock, curiosity over-riding any terror of what lay beyond. She knew that she could (and would) become so much more than even he had expected. The possibilities were endless. The beginning was right in front of her. All she had to do was have faith. Forget fear and believe in the impossible. Leave the power of nightmares and touch what dreams were made of.
There was no better time to start than now.