AN: Fistly, thank you to Moonchild94 who beta-ed this what must be nearly two years ago - I still appreciate it very much even though I'm only getting round to publishing now! This is just my little insight into Sally Sparrow's life after her adventure in Wester Drumlins. I really loved her character so this is just my take on her. Hope you enjoy!
Once a year, Sally Sparrow makes a journey. Not a long or dangerous journey or voyage, or anything like what she imagines that magical Doctor does what seems like all the time, from the small bit of him she has seen. It's a simple journey that she takes. It's an annual pilgrimage. She walks it – it doesn't take any special planning: just a short trip to a local florist, and the resulting bunch of white roses. She wishes Kathy could have met him, she thinks, as she walks along the familiar path. Kathy. Poor Kathy. Kathy's grave is the one she visits most often. There's no set date, as there is with this grave visit. She visits Kathy whenever she thinks of it, usually while the sun is still rising into the early morning sky. She leaves flowers occasionally, and laughs always when she sees her date of birth. She recalls seeing a nightingale once soaring above the sky as she sat with Kathy, and how she smiled through her tears, blinking up at the flying bird, thinking how ironic it was that she was sitting with a Nightingale, and at the same time watching a nightingale. She recalls how she wished sometimes she could escape like that little bird to the simpler time before phrases like 'wibbley-wobbley' and '…strict progression of cause to effect…' haunted her dreams. But then again, she has such a bigger perspective now. She is much more appreciative of everything and lives life so that she is happy. Of course, she misses Kathy, and if she'll admit it to herself, misses the excitement the whole time at Wester Drumlins held. When she does finally reach her annual journey's end, and softly lays the lily-white roses on his grave, she lets her mind wander to what-ifs and missed chances. When it comes to him, she feels like she's missed out on it all. She thinks of the unfairness of it all and it overwhelms her. She sometimes comes to the conclusion that there must be a greater power, and they were never meant to be. She feels a bittersweet envy towards her successor, and sometimes finds the courage to dare to wonder what her life would have turned out like, if she had had the chance to sign her name, even once, as the words she had spoken so very long ago now. Of course, she, like Kathy, goes and lives her life and eventually marries a good man, someone who makes her happy. But she knows, that in a way her husband will never know or understand, in the same way he doesn't really understand why she comes on this journey every year, or how he thinks their first's child's middle name is a reference to his wife's love of the sea and sailing instead of that of her dear friend's surname, that she will always be, in a small corner of her heart, a twenty-something Sally Shipton.