This is the first part of what will be a three part story. Spoilers for all of Season 1 of SJA with references to NewWho as well. Crossposted on lj and I may put it on Teaspoon also.

Review, please. All feedback and concrit welcome.

Summary: What if The Lost Boy had unfolded differently?

It was a bright Saturday morning and Maria Jackson and her dad, Alan, were getting ready to sit down to their usual weekend brunch of toast, beans and poached egg. The news was playing in the background, but Maria paid relatively little heed to it until it started talking about a missing boy named Ashley Stafford. A missing boy who looked identical to her neighbour and best friend Luke Smith.

Maria was just about to comment on this when her father suddenly leaned forward and peered through the window over the sink. "There's something going on across the road," he said. "At Sarah Jane's. Police cars and everything."

She swallowed the huge lump of dread that was choking her. "Look at the news, Dad."

"But -"

"Look at the news. Someone from round here must have seen and reported Luke." Maria slammed her cup down and circled around the table to stand by her dad, who'd turned the TV up and was watching with a gravity that made Maria feel all shaky inside. He'd been right about the police, she noted.

"I thought you said that Luke wasn't completely human, that he'd been grown by those aliens," Alan said as a photo of the boy-who-looked-like-Luke-but-wasn't appeared on screen again.

"He isn't," Maria said, fiercely. She started walking towards the front door. She had to get across the road and find out what was going on. She heard her dad call her back, but she ignored him. Her feet began to move faster, and faster so that she wasn't exactly walking but wasn't running either ... there were too many people, she thought, even though Sarah Jane's drive was bigger than any other drive on Bannerman Road. Through them she could see Sarah Jane and Luke.

"Miss, you can't go in there," said a small, blonde policewoman, abruptly blocking her view.

"This is all a mistake," Maria said, trying to stay calm. "You can't take Luke away."

The people Maria had seen on telly, the ones who'd cried and said they were Luke - Ashley's - mum and dad and would Ashley please, please come home, shoved through. "His name isn't Luke, it's Ashley," the woman hissed, "and we're taking him home, today. Away from that evil woman."

"Sarah Jane isn't evil!" Maria shouted as all the hustle and bustle around her seemed to pause. She winced; that sounded so much louder than intended.

The woman's eyes narrowed. "Were you in on it too?" she asked. Maria thought she looked unhinged and shrank back. She caught sight of a gap in the crowd and surged forward, towards Sarah Jane and Luke, and away from the hands that pulled and grasped at her.

Her friend hardly even acknowledged her presence and Maria grabbed her arm. "Tell them, tell them it's all a mistake," as the people who thought they were Luke's parents managed to get past the police. The woman, her mascara streaking in black tear tracks down her face, pulled a reluctant Luke into her arms.

"See," Maria hissed desperately in the older woman's ear, "he doesn't even know who they are."

Sarah Jane looked at her. "They're his parents," she said in the polite, toneless voice Maria remembered from her first encounters with her. "They have every right to take Luke - Ashley. It was my mistake for not checking it more thoroughly." Her eyes went to Luke, who was being herded away and Maria felt tears come to her own eyes as she saw the numb expression on the other teenager's face.

The small crowd continued to heckle at Sarah Jane - and Maria was horrified to spy her own mother amongst them, towards the very back - but the two burly policemen urged them on their way and the drive of 13 Bannerman Road began to gradually clear.

The small blonde policewoman came forward again. She laid a peremptory hand on Sarah Jane's arm, and Maria tightened her own grip. "What are you doing?"

The policewoman glared. "We need to ask Miss Smith some questions. Let her go!"

"No!" Maria knew that tears were running down her face, but she didn't care. "You can't!"

She felt a touch on her shoulder and her mother was standing there, with an expression that Maria could not define. "Let the police do their work, love," Chrissie Jackson said. "Let Mary Jane go."

Sarah Jane looked at Maria's mum and then at Maria, and for a fraction of time she smiled in the old way. "It'll be all right, Maria, you'll see," she said softly as she detached herself from Maria's hands.

"Honestly, how you can say that, after what you've done!" Chrissie expostulated. "I always knew you were a loony, Sarah Jane Smith, and this just proves it. You're not safe to be around kids!"

Maria protested, but Sarah Jane seemed almost unmoved. "Yes, Mrs Jackson. No responsibilities, no ties. It's much better that way. I'll get more done without children slowing me down."

"Sarah Jane!"

The older woman glanced at her again. "I told you when we first met, Maria. My life is dangerous. It's better if you stay away," and with that she allowed herself to be led towards the police car without a backward glance.

Maria wiped her face and then looked around for Luke; there he was, watching with an anguished expression as his mother - the only mother he knew or remembered - was driven away. His eyes met Maria's, and she saw him try to wrench himself from the Staffords ... but his 'father' gripped him tightly as he finished talking to the C.I.D.

"Let's go home," Maria heard Mrs Stafford say, and again she had to watch as a friend drove away. A sob escaped her and she felt a solid, warm arm go about her and pull her close.

"I'm so sorry," Alan whispered into her hair, and she sobbed harder as her newly established world crumbled about her.

"I'm not! She got what she deserved, that one."

"Chrissie!" Maria heard her father hiss. Then a pause. "Christina, was it you?" Maria lifted her head to glance at her mother and was robbed of breath at the look on her mum's face.

Triumph, that's what it was.

"It was you, wasn't it, Mum? You phoned the police and told them Sarah Jane had that Ashley person!"

"I did. Good thing too, if you ask me."

Without a word, Maria pulled away from her parents and ran back inside, up to her room. As quickly as she could, she pulled off her pajamas and jumped into her jeans and top before running out again. Bannerman Road was the last place she wanted to be just now.

Maria sat on the swing in the deserted park and used her feet to swing gently, back and forwards and back again. She'd felt slightly guilty for running off as she had done, and had sent a text to her dad to let him know she was safe and would be back. Then she'd gone round to Clyde's, knowing that Luke's best mate (and hers) would understand and and sympathise with the total wrongness of the morning's events. Her dad thought that Sarah Jane had been careless, she could see. Even though he knew about the aliens, and about Luke's origins, it was plain now that he simply believed that the boy had somehow lost his memory.

Only he hadn't, he couldn't have.

But Clyde had been out. Gone to football training, his mum had said. Unwilling to return home, Maria had headed here, to the park on the off chance she'd get to use the swings for some thinking time. Weird there's no kids about, she thought, but didn't care enough to give the matter further consideration.

Back and forwards she swung, the movement of the air caressing her hair and soothing her, a little.

She wrinkled her brow and thought carefully about what she knew of Luke's 'birth'. Synthesised from DNA taken from several thousand people. Grown to be the perfect human being, an archetype who could help the Bane conquer Earth. Only it hadn't worked out that way. Sarah Jane and Maria had intervened, and they'd found themselves landed with a boy with the body of a teenager, the brain of a genius, and the absolute innocence of a newborn baby.

Her phone beeped. It was a message from Clyde. He couldn't come now, he said, but he'd come as soon as he could. Not to worry. It was all a mistake and they'd sort it out, just as they always did.

Maria looked gloomily at the line of text. It would be great if they could sort it, but she had a horrible sinking feeling that Sarah Jane wouldn't co-operate, and there was relatively little they could do without her. Her phoned beeped again.

Clyde. What does Mr Smith say?

Maria stiffened. Events had moved at such a pace she doubted that anyone had time to ask the alien supercomputer in Sarah Jane's attic for an opinion. Or a contribution, rather. Mr Smith could do DNA scans, Maria remembered, and, what was more, he could tap into the records held on every computer on the planet, never to mention those of passing alien vessels. She jumped off the swing and ran, feeling better by the minute. She had work to do.

"Mr Smith, I need you," Maria gasped as well as she could through her attempts to draw breath. The run from the park and then up three flights of stairs was enough to tax anyone, and she'd been so excited she'd forgotten to use the breathe-and-run technique Sarah Jane had shown her.

The computer emerged with its customary (and irritating) fanfare. "Maria. Does Sarah Jane know you are here?"

Maria carefully moved a heap of random wires and bits of metal out of the way and sat on a table. "No," she said truthfully. "Sarah Jane's in real trouble, Mr Smith, and so's Luke. The police have taken them away."

"Hmmm," said the computer, sounding eerily human as it sometimes did. "Yes; I am aware of what has occurred. Sarah Jane has been accused of abducting Ashley Stafford, who went missing six months ago. It is assumed that the boy has lost his memory."

"That's it," Maria agreed. "Only it can't be, it just can't. Luke was created by the Bane. He's really only six months old!" She played with the end of her dark braid as a thought occurred to her. "Do you have a record of Luke's DNA?"

"Of course," the computer responded, sounding almost offended. "It was the first thing Sarah Jane did when she decided to adopt the boy."

She leaned forward in her eagerness. "How does Luke's DNA compare to a normal human's?"

Mr Smith made whirring and grinding sounds, and Maria found herself wondering what kind of processor he had, to make a noise like that. Dad would say he needs a new fan, she thought absently as she nibbled the ends of her hair.

The door burst open and Clyde erupted into the attic, looking as out of breath as Maria had been some minutes earlier.

"Any luck?" he panted as he collapsed beside her, his sports bag dropping on the wooden floor with a heavy thump.

"I told Mr Smith to scan Luke's DNA to see if it's different from ours," she told him tensely.

Clyde nodded. "Good thinking. Don't think Sarah Jane herself could have done better."

Maria managed to give him a shaky grin. "It was your idea in the first place, to come and talk to Mr Smith."

Clyde's teeth gleamed whitely. "Yeah, 'cos I'm the real brain of this outfit, y'know?"

"I have the results of the scan," Mr Smith announced, rather jerkily, and the two teenagers fell quiet.

"Well?" Clyde prompted when nothing more was forthcoming.

The supercomputer whirred again, and Maria realised that she was biting her nails. Please don't crash, Mr Smith, please don't...

"Luke ... Smith ... DNA... scan ... is .... human," stuttered Mr Smith, much to the disappointment of the teenagers. "However ... there ... are ... some.... anomalies.."

Maria found that she and Clyde were gripping each other.

"There's something wrong with him!" Clyde said, his dark eyes wide.

"Mr Smith, please don't go," Maria begged. "Tell us more about the anomalies. Is Luke's DNA the same as Ashley Stafford's?"

"They ... are ... not ... the ... same ... because ..." The viewscreen went black and all the lights on the console went out.

Maria and Clyde watched in horror. Now they were on their own, and they'd apparently killed Mr Smith.

"Sarah Jane is gonna be so ticked off," Clyde breathed into the suddenly dark and silent attic.

"You got that right at least," said a cool voice behind them. "Would one of you care to explain what is going on?"

"...so you see, it's really a mistake. Luke and Ashley must be two different people," Maria insisted after telling Sarah Jane the whole story. "Mr Smith said that their DNA wasn't exactly the same, so they must be, mustn't they?"

Clyde scowled. "Those people who took Luke have got to be aliens. We need to get him back, Sarah Jane! Who knows what they're doing to him?"

Sarah Jane sighed. "I don't think they were aliens at all, Clyde. They were just two very worried and relieved parents."

She turned her head away from them, towards the window, and as the light fell on cruelly on her face Maria thought for the first time that their friend looked old. She moved to kneel beside her. "But you won't let it go, will you? We'll check it out?"

Sarah Jane glanced at her. "Of course I will. If there's any chance at all ..." Restlessly, she moved away from the big red leather sofa where they were sitting and began to roam the attic, picking objects up and then putting them down again. She turned to face the teenagers. "I don't want you involved," she said urgently. "This could be dangerous, and without Mr Smith I'll have to do more hands-on investigation than usual. I can't risk you two as well."

Maria's chin went up. "You can't get rid of us that easily, can she, Clyde?"

"No chance! You're stuck with us, Sarah Jane."

"Besides, we care about Luke as much as you do," Maria added staunchly. Sarah Jane looked unsure. "Please?" Maria whispered.

The older woman looked at them for what seemed like a long time. "You're such kids, both of you," she said, very gently.

"We've been through loads," Clyde reminded her. "Maria's done the Bane and that creepy Trickster guy, and we've both done Slitheen and Gorgons. We're not helpless."

"Oh!" Sarah Jane opened her arms and without a pause, Maria and Clyde ran straight into them. They clung to each other for a long moment until Sarah Jane pulled back and smiled at them. "Together, then?"

"Yes!" Clyde high-fived Maria, who found herself laughing with relief.

"Together," Maria agreed, giving Sarah Jane another hug.

When they separated, Sarah Jane became brisk. "First, we need to find out what's gone wrong with Mr Smith." She frowned in the direction of the computer. "Perhaps your dad would be willing to help, Maria?"

Maria's smile faltered. "I don't know," she admitted. "He doesn't think you abducted Luke, or anything," she added hastily when Sarah Jane's face became very still. "I think he'll accept this explanation, 'specially since he knows the rest of it. And as long as we don't let on to my mum," she finished ruefully.

Sarah Jane accepted this with a nod. "All right then, if you could do that - possibly this evening?" She glanced at Mr Smith again. "I'm in rather a hurry to get him up and running. Otherwise, we need to be sure that Ashley and Luke really are two different people."

"Could Luke be a clone of Ashley?" Clyde suggested.

Sarah Jane stared at him. "That would explain some things, but the Bane grew Luke."

Maria's mind was racing. "Maybe they didn't, literally. Maybe they cloned Ashley, like - like taking a plaster cast of something, and then filled it in."

Clyde gave a shout of laughter. "It sounds like he was made at Cadbury's. You know, when they make all the same chocolate cases and then fill them differently?"

"H'mm." Sarah Jane eyed them. "Those are possibilities, I agree. The question is, how do we test our hypothesis?"

"Don't talk like a Maths teacher," Maria heard Clyde grumble under his breath. "I get enough of that at school."

Sarah Jane had been playing with her watch, lifting the flap up and down again. Suddenly, she looked at it as if seeing it properly for the first time. "I wonder. Clyde, come here."

"What? Why?"

"I want to scan you."

"Heh." Clyde looked nervous. "I'm totally human, I tell you."

"Sometimes I'm not sure of that," Maria quipped, putting her hand on his shoulder and propelling him over to where Sarah Jane stood. "Here's your victim."

Once they'd determined that Sarah Jane's watch was just as capable of giving detailed scans on humans as it was on any other race in the galaxy, and that there was actually a handy little mini-USB port that allowed it to be linked up to an ordinary computer, they started to feel more confident.

Sarah Jane ordered Clyde to run into Luke's bedroom and grab Luke's comb. He grimaced, but obeyed, and then watched with Maria as Sarah Jane fed the resulting scan into her PC.

"It's taking a long time," Maria said when after a few minutes they were still waiting.

Sarah Jane gave her an amused look over the top of her thick rimmed reading glasses. "This is a standard twenty first century Earth computer, Maria. We're spoilt by Mr Smith. This box would be considered high end by almost anyone else. There's a lot of data to process."

The computer beeped and they leaned closer to see. "What does it mean?" Clyde complained as lines and lines of plain text scrolled. "Are we expected to read all that?"

This time he was the recipient of the amused-over-the-glasses look. "I wouldn't expect you to exert your brain to that degree, Clyde," Sarah Jane said drily while Maria grinned. "Seriously, no, you aren't. If you look closer you'll see that the text is not in a standard word processor. There's options. See." She moved the cursor so that it clicked on an icon in the toolbar with a little stick person.

Instantly, the lines and lines of text reduced to a summary. Maria squealed. "'Human DNA: 99.999%. Genetic Markers: 99%. Age Drift: 5%.'" She frowned. "Does that make any sense to you?"

Sarah Jane folded her arms. "It means that Luke is mostly, but not entirely human. The medical equipment we have at the moment would register him as completely human, however, but my watch uses technology from a millennia's time." Her lips compressed. "That's why I've always been so keen to keep Luke away from Torchwood or UNIT. They have this technology too, or very close to it."

Clyde heaved a gusty sigh. "Yeah, well, let's get to the point. If Luke's not completely human, he definitely can't be this Ashley guy, can he?"

Sarah Jane glanced from him to Maria. "No," she said slowly. "I suppose not."

"Could we find out if Luke shares any DNA with Ashley Stafford? To see if he's a clone?"

"We could," Sarah Jane said, "but we'd really need Mr Smith for that. Maria, could you go and get your dad?"

Despite working until well after midnight, and all of Sunday, they had no luck in reviving Mr Smith. Consequently, they had to come up with an alternative, but it took them several days to settle on one that they thought would work. Visits (by Maria and Clyde) to Luke's new 'home' came to nothing: they were unceremoniously shown the door on both occasions. Then Maria remembered that a cousin of her dad's lived in the same suburb, and there was a good chance that his kids would be going to the same school as Luke, and she asked them to keep an eye on him.

"He's a sweet, geeky boy who really isn't on Planet Earth most of the time," she explained. "Just watch out for him and don't let the bullies get him. Please?" Luckily, the cousins had agreed, but it would be some days yet before Maria could contact them. At the very least, her cousins would be able to tell her if the new Ashley Stafford resembled the old.

Meanwhile, Sarah Jane was clearly torn between mingled relief and anxiety: relief that at least Luke was safe, and she knew where he was, relief that she hadn't inadvertently kidnapped someone else's son, and anxiety for the real Ashley Stafford, who'd been missing now for nearly seven months.

"Perhaps it was the Bane," she said a few evenings later to Maria as they worked together repairing the neverending pile of alien junk that always seemed to accumulate in the attic. "If you're right, they cloned that poor boy, doing who knows what to him in the process, and then afterwards ..." She shrugged.

Maria shuddered. "You think they killed him, don't you?"

Sarah Jane bit her lip. "You've met them. They were ruthless. I think we have to admit it is at least a possibility."

Maria pushed her chair back and stood up. "We need to find out. Come on. Let's go back to the factory. We didn't completely explode it," she added as Sarah Jane looked dubious.

"It's dark," the older woman pointed out.

Maria grinned. "So? Fewer people to get in our way."

"I'm too old to be clambering around shambolic factory units in the dark," Sarah Jane complained as she pushed back her own chair. "And if your mother ever finds out, Sontaran torture is nothing to what she'll come up with."

"You were just as old two years ago and that didn't stop you going to investigate Deffrey Vale, or any of the stuff we've done in the past year," Maria told her with the ruthless severity of youth. "That's just a cop out."

"And they say I'm a bad influence," Maria heard Sarah Jane mutter to herself under her breath. "Maria, stop a minute." She turned the girl to face her. "Think this through. We've just agreed that there's a good possibility that if the Bane kidnapped Ashley Stafford, and if he was used as the basis for Luke .... we could well find a dead body. A very dead body. Are you prepared for that?"

Maria felt her stomach turn, but she met Sarah Jane's gaze squarely. "I hate the idea, but if that's what it takes..." She shrugged. Sarah Jane gave her a smile that was so full of pride that Maria felt a lump come into her throat. When was the last time her own mother had looked at her like that? She smiled back, weakly, but felt somehow strengthened. Dead bodies or not, this was not going to be a pleasure trip.

"I'm starting to realise why you didn't think this was such a good idea," Maria hissed to Sarah Jane as she fell over yet another pile of breeze blocks. They'd entered through the side of the factory that remained more or less intact, and had actually managed to get some light besides that cast by Sarah Jane's huge industry-standard torch. All the same, it still couldn't be described as bright.

"Well, we're here now," Sarah Jane said absently, her attention focused on her watch. She looked up and smiled. "We're in luck. My watch has built in GPS; it scans wherever I am and downloads maps as appropriate. According to this, we're in the block that held Mrs Wormwood's office and the suite where Luke was 'grown'. Come on, it's this way!"

"Is there any way I could get one of those?" Maria asked hopefully, running after her mentor.

"Not a chance, unless you meet the Doctor," Sarah Jane threw back over her shoulder as she began to run up the stairs. "However, I'll check at home. We might be able to cobble something together."

"Excellent!"

They ran together in silence, the atmosphere of a deserted, derelict building closing in around them. Now and then they could hear the sound of some piece of equipment that still functioned, and they'd stop for a moment, their hearts thumping hard.

"It's in here," Sarah Jane panted at last after they'd been running for what seemed like forever. She gave the door a gentle push, and then jumped back in surprise as it moved sideways, allowing them to enter.

"Clyde'd love this," Maria said appreciatively as she took in the room, large and spacious and modern. "Alien or not, at least the Bane had taste."

"In more way than one," Sarah Jane returned grimly as she started scanning. "They came to Earth to seek a food source, remember? And they got involved in the food industry. Food's as much about packaging and propaganda as it is about anything else these days, and the Bane were clever enough to use it."

Maria shuddered as she thought how close the Bane had come to taking over the Earth. Even her father had been affected by Bubbleshock, and she still had nightmares about both her parents chasing her around the house, intoning 'Drink it!' in a manner that reminded her of the first Mummy movie. She moved around the desk to check the drawers, but as might have been expected from an alien species, there was little sign of hard paperwork.

"Didn't you say there were Slitheens in Downing Street a couple of years ago?" she asked suddenly as she closed the last drawer.

"What about it?" Sarah Jane called from the other side of the room.

"There must still be some in the government," Maria returned seriously, "'cos aliens are too advanced for pen and paper, aren't they, and the government's always going about being paperless. They keep telling us about it in school."

Sarah Jane laughed. "That's an interesting explanation for the green-fever that's been running rampant in politics for the past twenty years. I'll have to look into it some time. In the meantime, could you turn the computer on and see what you can get?"

Maria obeyed, and being a computer technician's daughter, had no trouble working out how to get to the desktop. "What am I looking for?"

Sarah Jane straightened and snapped her watch shut with a sigh. "I don't know. Anything to do with creating an archetype, I suppose." She pronounced the word with considerable distaste.

"Didn't you get anything?" Maria asked anxiously as her friend came to stand beside her.

"Nothing, except a piece of random alien trace that could mean anything."

"What about scanning for Luke?" Maria suggested. "I mean, it'll tell you the degree of match, wouldn't it, so you'd know if either Luke or Ashley were here."

Sarah Jane raised her eyebrows but did as Maria said. In another moment she was racing across the room, and Maria wasted no time in following her.

"What is it? Sarah Jane!"

"You were right," Sarah Jane called back in between breaths. "Ashley was here, he must have been. The scan says a close but not exact match for Luke … that'd be right, I think, if Luke was based on Ashley. If only he's still here…"

Down, down they went, through rooms so packed with technology that Maria wanted to stop and stare, even after her exposure to the contents of Sarah Jane's attic. Then, at last, they came to a room with a high white bed surrounded by what looked like hospital equipment. A suspended screen on one side of the room had lines of alien text on it that neither Sarah Jane nor Maria could read. Not that they needed to; their breaths caught as they realised that this was Luke's 'birthplace', the room were he'd been developed and grown.

Sarah Jane scanned again, and her watch beeped more manically than Maria had ever heard. She leaned closer so that she could see the contents of the tiny screen. "What does it say?"

"It's picking up a number of traces," Sarah Jane told her with burning eyes. "Humans including one who's a near genetic match for Luke; Luke himself, the Bane … and something else."

Maria's eyes widened as she took in the implications, but she managed to remain focused on her task: to discover what had happened to Ashley Stafford. Cautiously, she steeled herself to push open the doors of the various ante-rooms, and exhaled in relief as each room smelled stale and dusty, but nothing more. Feeling braver, she began to turn lights on … and then gave vent to an exclamation that brought Sarah Jane running in to her.

"What's wrong?" the older woman asked anxiously.

Maria beamed. "Ashley Stafford may not be here now, but he was. Look!" She held out the school sweater she held. "It's labelled with his name."

"God bless school paranoia," Sarah Jane murmured as she looked at the label for herself. "Excellent work, Maria." She scanned the jumper and smiled broadly. "And now we have something Ashley Stafford actually wore. Scanning for his DNA now…" She glanced up and caught Maria's eye.

"Well?" Maria demanded, shifting from one foot to the other.

"That's the problem with young people nowadays," Sarah Jane commented, her eyes still fixed on the watch display. "No patience. Ah!" She pulled Maria into a quick but fervent hug. "You wonderful, brilliant, brave girl!"

Maria was sure her cheeks would crack from smiling. "They're different, aren't they? Luke and Ashley?"

"They are indeed. Ashley is Ashley and Luke is my son. And I'm damn well going to get him back – get them both back - come hell or high water."

"But how?" Maria whispered and her eyes went back to the jumper Sarah Jane still held.

TBC