AN: Written to celebrate the life and work of Elisabeth Sladen. She was nonpareil.
"I'm sorry." Captain Jack Harness looked up at the expectant faces surrounding him. As one, the hopeful expressions on all four faces crumbled. He knew just how they felt – helpless, frustrated, impotent. Wanting to rage against the terrible unfairness of it all.
He returned his gaze to the woman on the couch. Her slender frame was gaunt and her face flushed with fever. A sheen of sweat shone across her brow. The alien virus that was ravaging her body continued unchecked, reducing with horrifying speed this energetic, vibrant lady to a frail, emaciated shadow of her former self. How she had managed to find the energy to even dress herself and make her way downstairs to her sitting room just now astounded him. "I'm so sorry."
She shook her head at him weakly but firmly. "Don't be," Sarah Jane Smith replied, her voice a hoarse whisper. "I knew the risks. And you…you did everything you could."
Jack's lips pursed into a thin line. For two days – ever since Sarah Jane's computer Mr. Smith had contacted them with the news that its mistress had contracted a mysterious extraterrestrial virus – he and Gwen and Ianto had researched every hypothesis, scoured every database, and tested every alien artifact in their arsenal in an all-out attempt to identify and eradicate the invisible enemy that was draining the life of their friend and colleague. They had failed. The bitterness of the defeat tasted like bile in his mouth.
Sarah reached for his hand, hoping to provide some measure of wordless comfort. She had always known it might come to this and long ago had made her peace with death. It was the price she was fully prepared to pay for the life she led, a life rich in excitement and adventure and yet filled with danger that was ever-present and real. Three days ago when the Alzarian planet-killer Mr. Smith had been tracking landed and prepared to discharge its deadly contagion, she'd known that her risky plan to neutralize it might result in her exposure to the virus. It was why she insisted that she be the one to do it, rather than any of the others.
Her plan, her responsibility. So she had gambled, as she had so many times before – only this time, she had lost. "Please tell everyone…that – I'm grateful…for all they've done."
Jack smiled and gently squeezed her hand, trying not to let the depths of his sorrow show. She wouldn't want that. After everything she was still a spitfire at heart. And as remarkable, as indomitable, as ever. "I'll tell them," he promised.
Suddenly a thought struck him and he set his jaw, his blue eyes alight with possibility. "But you're not through yet, beautiful. I've got another idea." He released her hand and bolted upright, racing for the door. At the threshold he paused and stuck his head back into the room. He threw her a rakish grin. "Don't go anywhere, ya hear?"
"I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do." Dr. Martha Jones removed the stethoscope from around her neck and looked up at the expectant faces surrounding her. As one, the hopeful expressions on all five faces crumbled. "I'm so sorry."
The frail woman in the bed shook her head slightly. "Don't be," she murmured in a voice so soft Martha could barely hear it. She'd come at once when Jack had rung through to her at UNIT, tersely explaining what had happened to their mutual friend.
Sarah sighed and let her head relax back into the pillows. It seemed her last chance was gone. Jack and his Torchwood team were insisting on running even more blood tests this afternoon, but even if they found something now it would likely be too late for her.
She was fading fast. The fever burned through her, boiling every cell in her body in an inferno of raging heat, but instead of the searing pain she expected would accompany it she felt only a bone-deep weariness that sapped the last of her strength. It was the hallucinations that were the worst. Faces looming over her, their eyes ghostly and pale. Aunt Lavinia. Mike Yates. Harry. People she'd known, people she'd been close to. People who were long dead.
And now she was dying, too.
She had often suspected she might die before her time – vaporized by a Dalek, or torn apart by a Slitheen. She'd always expected she would die alone. But it seemed the latter fate, at least, would be spared her, for which she found herself quite profoundly grateful.
She looked up at the people surrounding her. Jack – a recent friend, but a stalwart one. Clyde – all bluff and bluster on the surface, but underneath the bravado a steady and resourceful young man, good in a crisis. Dear, lovely Maria, in whom she glimpsed a brighter, keener version of her younger self. And Maria's father Alan – having come late to the party, but showing signs of being able to get his head around it all. And, of course, there was Luke.
It was Luke she worried about the most. Her son. Even after all these months it still felt strange to think of herself as a mum. She had long ago resigned herself to the fact that she would have no children of her own – ever since her travels with the Doctor had driven home the realization that she would never feel about any human man the way she felt about a certain 900 year old Time Lord with two hearts and an infuriating grin. But then, all unlooked for, came the Bane and a child grown in a vat and a bond that had developed between them as tight as any forged by the kinship of blood.
Her eyes sought Alan's where he stood near the window with both arms wrapped tightly around his inconsolable daughter.
"Luke," she scratched out in a raspy voice. "You'll take care of him, won't you?"
Alan gazed down at her sadly. It was the third time she'd asked him in as many hours. "Of course I will. I promise."
Martha stood at the end of the drive, looking up at the old house. It killed her inside that she hadn't been able to help Sarah Jane. Then she remembered the tiny cell phone nestled in her inside jacket pocket. The one she always carried with her in case of the direst emergency. She reached for the instrument. Perhaps there was something she could yet do, after all.
She flipped the phone open and hit the speed dial button, then tucked it between her shoulder and ear. "Doctor? Doctor, it's me."