In loving, eternal memory of Elisabeth "Lis" Sladen. Goodbye, our Sarah Jane...
"I see."
The man on the phone looked to be about twenty-five, with a shock of black hair and wise, bottomless grey eyes. But twenty-five he was not, and the grief in his voice was that of an aged man accepting the death of yet another beloved friend.
"Yes, of course I'll come see her," he continued. "The Bannerman Road place? What day?" He nodded in answer to the devastated voice on the other end of the line. "The nineteenth. So soon..."
"I'll be there, Luke," said the man at last. "For her, I'll be there."
He dropped Amy and Rory at home, telling them to take advantage of a chance to see the elder Ponds before their adventures continued. Amy asked and asked, but the Doctor never did tell her where he went as she drank tea with her mum and groaned over her dad's ribald post-wedding jokes.
As much as he loved Amy, he didn't want her with him when he said goodbye to this old friend.
Not his Sarah Jane.
She was propped up on the couch in the attic, glasses on her nose, Luke by her side. The young man let out half a sob, then kissed his mother's forehead and quietly left the room.
"Hello, Sarah."
Frail she might have been, but her voice was still the same rose-petal silk it had been for so long, and her eyes were the warm, velvet brown he remembered so well. "Hello, Doctor."
"It will be soon, won't it? Why aren't you in hospital? You ought to be in hospital. I could take you to the 51st century, River knows a-"
"No," she said simply.
"No?"
"No. It's my time. Everybody dies, Doctor."
"Not you." He shook his head, fierce denial. "Not you, Sarah. Not my Sarah Jane."
"Yes. Even me. Luke can make it now. He has Clyde and Rani here; if he does go to America and Maria, as I think he will, he'll have them if he wants to come home. He can fly. So can they. And you..." She smiled, that enchanting curl of lips that had made so many fall in love with her. "You have Amy, and Rory. You'll have more in times to come. And you know this doesn't have to be the last time you see me. But there has to be a last time I see you. I'm ready for it now. Please, let me say goodbye when I can handle it, here, at the end."
"Sarah."
"I know."
"Do you?"
"I know I was special, the same way all of us have been special-"
"No!"
"No?"
"No. Not the same as all the others. Sarah, my Sarah – there will never be anyone to compare to you. You're the only one I let back in, really let back in. No one compares to you. Not to you, my Sarah Jane. I am so proud of you. Never think otherwise. Never, ever, ever."
For the first time since he'd walked through the door, her eyes filled with tears, and he scooped her off the couch and cradled her frail body like a child against his shoulder. He sat where she had been, with her in his arms, as she wept – and as he did, too. No one was here to see him, after all. He could give her this.
Some unnamed time later, they sat, mostly dry-eyed, in comfortable silence, when she tapped his shoulder. "Doctor..."
"Luke!"
The boy came running in.
"Luke? It's time," said Sarah Jane softly, and her son fell to his knees beside the mother who had been his world for as long as he had lived.
"Mum!"
"Hush, my brave, beautiful, brilliant boy. But you're not really a boy, are you? You're a man now."
"Because of you."
"Yes." She smiled, a smile the Doctor hadn't seen on her ever since he had known her. "Luke, my darling, I love you. You gave me everything. You are my world. I'm so sorry to leave you like this..."
"Mum, no."
"Hush, darling. I'm so sorry. But some things not even the TARDIS can fix. Some things not even the Doctor can heal. Some things must happen. And this is one of them. Remember this, Luke, remember this for me. I love you. I am so, so proud of you. And I will see you again, when you have changed the world and then left it for the place beyond. Don't be afraid, my love. I will see you there. This is not goodbye. This is au revoir. Until we meet again, my darling."
"Doctor." She turned her eyes to the face she barely knew and the being she knew so well. "There is so much to say, and nothing that needs saying except this. Doctor, don't forget me."
"Never. Never, ever." The sorrow in his voice was fathoms deep and as dark as space itself. "Goodbye, my Sarah Jane."
"Goodbye, Doctor." Her voice was as faint as a whisper and as strong as the TARDIS. "Luke. My darling, I love you... until we meet again..."
And, with the Doctor's hand in hers, her cheek pressed to her son's, she closed her eyes and sighed, and Luke let out a wail of unbearable pain as Sarah Jane Smith's pulse fluttered, birdlike, to a stop.
Alan Jackson and Maria arrived minutes later. The Doctor shared a look of understanding with the man who would help Mr Chandra with the final arrangements – they would be simple, as she had wished.
The Doctor did not attend. It would have been more than he could bear.
"Doctor?"
"Yes, Luke?"
"How do I go on?"
The Doctor looked the young man straight in the eye. "You live for her, Luke. You live every day and never waste a moment. Live for her. It's all she would have wanted. Because as long as you live for her, she's not really gone."
Luke nodded, and then Maria had her arms around him, and they retired to the corner so they could grieve together. Clyde and Rani and Mr Chandra joined them, and in a little attic in a house on Bannerman Road, four young people swore to live on for Sarah Jane Smith.
The afternoon of 22 April was grey and wet, and it seemed as though the skies cried for her. But that night was clear and cloudless, and as Alan and Maria and Luke and Chrissy, Rani and Clyde and Haresh and Gita, gazed at the stars from the attic window, the stars seemed to reshape themselves.
"Oh, Doctor," murmured Luke.
Five miles away, in an abandoned meadow, a man with a shock of black hair and wise, bottomless grey eyes twisted his hand, and the stars spelled out her name.
Sarah Jane Smith, they scripted across the sprawl of the darkness of space.
"Goodbye, my Sarah Jane."
Goodbye, Doctor, whispered the wind, and the Doctor smiled.
It was many, many years before the Doctor's adventures finally ended. He had taken with him on his journeys many companions: men and women, medieval Scots and shopgirls, temps from Chiswick and bubbly blondes and suave, flirtatious men, fiery redheads and even a curly-haired archaeologist who had him so tangled up in knots he fell on his nose for the first time in his life, and who he loved with a singular and unadulterated passion.
But none of them were her.
Sometimes, on planets galaxies away, the wind would whisper through the grass. He'd hear her silvery laughter, and he'd close his eyes and smile, and he'd remember a woman with brown eyes and brown hair who had set the standard that nobody else quite managed to reach.
After all, she was his Sarah Jane.
In Loving Memory
Elisabeth "Lis" Sladen
Once And Future Companion
1 February 1948 ~ 19 April 2011
We Shall Never Forget
Godspeed, Lis, and Goodbye, Our Sarah Jane...