Don't think about the rain, how it's soaking through his shirt till it's limp as old lettuce. Don't think about the bricks pressing against his back. And above all, don't think about why he's here. It doesn't make things any better, imagining their faces…
It's some alien scheme, it has to be. And from a purely logistic standpoint, it's the most successful one he's seen yet. It even topped the Nightmare Man for horror factor—he'd take flipping burgers in a greasy, dry, den over huddling in this doorway. He'd even listen to that distorted, muddled version of Sarah Jane yammering about Luke…that was the worst part, actually. Not the job, not Luke's success, but seeing her so lost, so…old, in all the worst ways.
A drop splashes in his eye. One day, joking with Rani about getting Slitheen guts out of his shirt, and the next… he can't finish the sentence. Rani, Sarah Jane, Luke, his own mum. Is this how it happens for others? One day—the most ordinary day in the world—you do something that makes everybody hate you, and they won't even tell you what it was. And then sleeping in alleyways, eating at soup kitchens, till you're just a statistic with a one-line obituary on page 17.
No, that's not gonna happen to him. It was the totem pole, it had to be. Sarah Jane was susceptible to mind control; she'd mentioned it before. He couldn't blame her for it, just like she didn't blame him for the Berserker pendant. Just remember, he pleaded. Remember the first time I fought off Slitheen, laughing at my jokes, fighting off the Trickster…
Remember who I am. Not whatever that curse thinks I am, but who she knows I am.