- In memoriam Elisabeth Sladen.
It rocked him to the core, silenced him when the Doctor heard of his dear friend's final struggle with life. After all she'd faced, something so trivial as mere cancer was about to snatch her life away.
Then Mr. Finch's words came back to him. Lives so fleeting...so many goodbyes...
He brutally tamped down the sob that threatened to choke. Stood tall -even alone, as always- and quietly tapped in co-ordinates. Wouldn't give in to the fear. He drew himself up high. Never would.
The TARDIS whirled into existence with its dying breath, and as he donned his jacket, feeling her anguish pulse inside, radiating from her core.
"I know, old girl. I know..."
And the Doctor knew why he hated hospitals; it was the acrid scent of disinfectant hiding death and illness and huamn frality behind a smoky guise. HIs shoes squeaked on the pristine floor, and all was white, clinical, but all he saw was death.
He commanded the corridors as he strode down them, and nobody spared a glance.
Only the kind-eyed young nurse who nodded softly and parted the door to reveal a darkened room.
His Sarah-Jane, meek journalist to one thriving, amazing, fantastic companion was a still figure swallowed up by the hospital bed. She was a mess of wires, of tubes, and of a machine that was living for her.
This wasn't right.
But it was here, presenting itself to him.
Her oh-so-wise words were the only thing he could muster thought of.
Everything has its time, and everything ends.
And her time was up.
But unlike him, there was no coming back. Once again in his long life, his gift of cheating death, mocking the shadowed figure- was no more than a curse.
Why should he live why everyone else die? It wasn't fair.
And he'd been so caught up in running that he hadn't looked back. Not once.
His friend was in need. The Doctor was in.
...But, the only thing he could give her was comfort. He hated it, and the fact he could take her to somewhere where cancer was a curable as the common cold but wouldn't made him feel ill.
However, Sarah-Jane was a dear friend, someone he'd known over four lifetimes ago. How they'd both changed. He had to honour her request, even as he could smell her body's mass necrosis, sense it possessing her body like a cackling Wraith.
The starchy sheets had irritated him. Now she was here, esconced in warmth, in comfort -by those who loved her.
He could only hold her hand as her breathing became shallow and her life slipped away.
But she would always- always- hold a dear place in his hearts. His Sarah-Jane.