Sarah Jane
XI.
He barges into her small office like the whirlwind of energy Sarah Jane is getting used to him being, a long-sleeved shirt open over a t-shirt which looks utterly incongruous in the place of tweed and bowtie, that ridiculous flop of hair dangling over a young face and eyes that no longer hold the wisdom of the universe; and she feels, as ever, uncertain.
His utterly outdated but cherished Leica M4 is hanging precariously from his neck, in perpetual danger of crashing into something, or someone, due to the fact that he never stays still – even now his limbs are flailing about, making his clothes flap madly around his tall frame as he stomps here and there in the confines of the tiny room, touching everything in his range, attention flitting about at a head-spinning rate, absently relocating her items in a haphazard way that never fails to irritate her.
It's tiring just to watch him.
He's already ranting, typically, in that odd way of his that is half arrogant boasting and half childish pouting and more than half just whining and which Sarah really, really shouldn't find endearing. But there you go.
"…and whatever you say, Madam-Editor-In-Chief, the fact remains that I'm the best reporter you have and you know it, Sarah Jane, don't pretend you don't, and this is big, I promise, it's nothing like the spiders story... Sarah Jane, this is big, I feel it in my gut, and if you'll just let me…"
He's going on and on about a new kind of dieting pill and if she was in her journalist frame of mind, she'd likely agree that this is news worthy indeed, but she isn't listening too closely.
Instead, she lets him rant and rave and idly wonders in the privacy of her mind whether she will ever get used to his radical changes - dapper, flamboyant man of action to aloof, bohemian-looking explorer, to cheeky, foxy and sad, to… this. Yet she knows that this latest change is unnerving not because she can't wrap her mind around the new him, but because it isn't him.
Just a manic, uncoordinated, upcoming journalist, with dreams of seeing the world one day and a useful knack to get the weirdest stories out there captured in vivid pictures and flashy words.
As human as they come – and isn't that mind-boggling.
The Doctor she'd fallen for had been alien even to his own people; she can find no trace of him in this… kid.
He's resorted to the puppy-eyes now, attempting to stand still and look beseechingly at her but unable to stop fidgeting. His green eyes are wide and pleading and they almost hurt her in their innocence, in their ignorance.
Not the Doctor. Just John Smith.
She sighs and feigns a reluctance she doesn't feel when she grants him permission to investigate whatever has him all fired up. So long as she can keep him away from UNIT and Torchwood and all things alien, she's fine with whatever he wants to write about, really; it's not like the magazine she's running is even real, after all. Just the cover the Tardis came up with when she brought him to Sarah Jane for... safekeeping. Implanted cover or not, it is real to him, however, and he lights up with enthusiasm at her agreement, crowing loudly and making even the articles pinned to her walls flitter and flap with his mere, whirlwind-like presence.
Her mind is elsewhere. She absently strokes the ornate fob watch she keeps on her person at absolutely all times and freezes with faint embarrassment when she realizes she's doing it.
He tosses a cheery goodbye at her and she watches him flounce off, as usual finding herself vaguely amazed that he doesn't trip on anything, let alone his own flailing limbs; when he's gone she falls back against her chair dejectedly.
She's honoured that he's chosen her for this, chosen to trust her, over all his other companions, with his safety; honoured and flattered and humbled, a little; as well as reassured about the strength of their friendship.
And of course, she'll do anything in her not inconsiderable power to keep him safe.
But...
Her hand strokes gently the fob watch holding the real him once more.
Six more weeks to go.
And God, she can't wait for this to be over.
X.
Sarah tries hard to quench her bitterness; she really does. It's unbecoming; most likely unwarranted, she tries to tell herself.
But the way Dr. John Smith – not the Doctor, no: just 'a' doctor, just human, albeit temporarily – barely spares her a glance while crossing paths with her in the corridors, hurts her.
She thought that running into that careless, older him and... Rose... had been heartbreaking enough; but apparently, he can be even more thoughtlessly cruel than she'd given him credit for. Now he's manipulated her into helping him with yet another mad plan, one that is by far the craziest and stupidest she's taken part in, and without a care for her feelings he's taking advantage of her friendship.
She's still not entirely over the shock of meeting him again. She's barely coping with the shock of watching him be... not himself; young and attractive and flirty – although not with her. Oh, no. She's a bit out of his apparent age range and... she's never felt so old.
It's hard to watch him talk animatedly with the other scientists of his team and feel so excluded. She's responsible for him, after all!
But of course, he doesn't realize – doesn't remember this. Isn't even himself.
Still, she'd thought the 'residual awareness' he'd mentioned would ensure he'd recognize her as the friend she was sure of being! Instead, they're nothing more than workplace acquaintances, if even that. Had they ever been more?
In all honesty, she feels used.
She also wonders where Rose is, why she isn't the one taking care of the human he's turned himself into, whether it's because he's left her as he'd left Sarah herself, just like she'd expected him to do; she wonders why the blonde girl hasn't come to her after being abandoned, whether she will one day; whether her Aberdeen was simply too far away from this space and time for her to be able to.
She sighs despondently.
She's been expecting Rose to come to her for help and instead, it's the Doctor who's come; and like the wide-eyed girl she'd been so long ago, she's jumped at the chance, let him rope her into his life again, wilfully blind to the consequences.
A part of her wishes she could have hold fast to her refusal, which had cost her so much – she'd so longed to feel the hum of the Tardis all around her once more! - but which was the right choice for her. The choice that let her grow into the future she deserves, without rejecting the past but without clinging to it either.
Somehow, with Rose there it had been much easier.
She spends far too much time going over her long years of acquaintance with the Doctor with a fine-toothed comb, wondering how much she'd misunderstood their relationship or what has happened to change it so radically.
This stranger walking about in his newest body has no recollection of her, no 'residual awareness' at all; no regard or friendship or even, she suspects, respect for her. She finds herself inexorably wondering if he ever did.
Watching him move confidently in the UNIT labs brings back memories of happier times, that make it even harder to cope with the situation he's put her in.
He's going through this fake life of his like the stereotypical absentminded genius – spiky hair and all – and he fits right in with the other geniuses employed by the organization. Sarah has watched him getting chummy with Dr. Malcom, who's over the moon at having a friend, let alone one that understands his technobabble; reverse engineering a salvaged alien sonic depth-sounder in less than 72 hours; cooperating to a joint project for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy; ...generally being invaluable.
She hasn't had much of a role in Dr. Smith's life so far.
It's only thanks to her long-standing contacts inside UNIT that she can stay close to him at all – enough to keep an eye on him, at least, because there is certainly no closeness between them. She's just one of the many, many faces that crowd any UNIT building. A co-worker at best, though the general attitude among scientists is that, as one of UNIT's official chronicler and press liaisons, she's more like a janitor than like them.
She's oh, so very grateful to the Brigadier for his help. The old man is far too familiar with the Doctor's weird existence and he's taken the latest challenge in stride; he's also influential enough in UNIT, still, to pull all the needed strings to ensure the Doctor's safety. A part of her wonders if the Doctor shouldn't have gone to him directly. Another part of her wonders if maybe she was wrong in roping UNIT into this; but she's too familiar, herself, with the Doctor's lifestyle, to hope that everything will go smooth and when these Hunters find them, as they inevitably will, she wants no civilian to become collateral damage.
She doesn't like that she's living under armed escort because of this, but the precious treasure she's refused to hand over – the silver casing hiding the Doctor's true essence – justifies this. Regardless of her feeling towards him, she'll never let anything happen to him, in whatever form. She takes her role as custodian very, very seriously.
It's too bad none of the over-professional soldiers assigned to her can help at all with the emotional side of this mess, however.
It's all up to her and so far, any overture she's attempted towards the human him has been, well, not rejected outright, no; but rather, politely ignored.
It hurts.
And it stirs up again all the nasty, bitter feelings she'd believed purged after their reunion in that school.
She'd thought herself over what she'd allowed him to do to her and here she is, battling her own disappointment again. She has a feeling she won't be able to forget that he's once again put her into this position, where she doubts herself and wallows in self-pity.
This, more than anything he's done or not done, is why she won't easily forgive him.
Her hand slips into the pocket where the ornate fob watch rests securely and worries at it.
Two more months to go. She's counting the minutes.
IX.
He is exactly where she expected to find him, half-sitting half-sprawled in a corner of the little, run-down playground, wedged between a bench and a trash bin as if he wanted to get rid of himself and couldn't quite manage. His long legs are stretched out before him and his dusty leather jacket is wrapped around his body like a tight armour.
At least the bottle only looks half-empty, this time.
She holds in her sigh and goes to sit on the bench next to him, looking at the shadows of the vandalized swings instead of at the man she's here for, and stays quiet in the deepening darkness.
It takes long enough that night has wrapped itself around her, chilling her and isolating her in the dark, before he heaves himself out of where he's dumped himself and slips onto the bench next to her, his stale smell of sweat and alcohol making her firm her lips over the disapproval she would like to voice.
She doesn't look at him.
It is another long silence before he breaks it and his rough, emotionless voice does nothing to combat the cold that's seeped into her.
"Why are you here, Sarah Jane?"
His northern accent is a slight shock every time, the one thing she just can't get used to, even now that piercing blue eyes and strong features and ever-present leather have become the norm, the way teeth and curls and hat and scarf had, once upon a time.
"To take you home," she answers softly and her hand clutches the ornate fob watch she's been entrusted with, the repository holding the true Doctor's essence.
She doesn't know what happened to him, where this broken man beside her comes from; but she can guess. She's an investigative journalist, after all, and a damn good one: she can piece clues together and get the story.
He didn't come back for her, and when he did, the Tardis was a bit of a mess, poor thing, and his tired, perfunctory explanation broke on the admission that he needed her help because there was no one else left. And this man, this stranger who handles the Doctor's body while he hides away from relentless enemies, believes himself a veteran. Major John Smith, MD, recently invalided back from Afghanistan. Hurt, and lost, and alone.
"I have no home," comes the predicted reply, grieved and bitter and - yes. Sarah Jane has a very clear idea of what happened and she weeps inside for her fantastic friend, and what he's lost, and how broken he is.
He lifts themind-boggling.
"Come on," she says, trying to coax him, but he jerks away from her touch as if it burned him.
"What the hell!" he shouts with sudden fury. "You're not my sodding wife, Sarah Jane! Leave me the hell alone!"
"I'm your friend," she says, forcing herself to keep still, her tone to stay level.
He scoffs loudly and she flinches.
"We used to..." she tries feebly, and isn't even sure of how she means to finish the sentence.
He scoffs again. "Whatever... relationship," he spits it out with contempt, "we might have had once, it's a lifetime ago. You moved on, I moved on, shit happened! Go back to your pretty suburban life and leave me alone!" he yells.
"Doc- John..."
"It's over and done with!" Although she can't see him in the dark, she knows he's glaring. "You're not my anything now!"
She refuses to let the angry words hurt her; refuses to believe there's any truth in them.
"I'm still your friend," she says simply. "I'll always be your friend."
This time, he relinquishes the bottle at least. He's breathing hard and probably glaring at the darkness. Thrumming with energy for a long instant, until he sags in morose weariness.
She gives him a moment and clutches the fob watch tightly again.
Two and a half months left with this human version of him. She can do this. She can also, hopefully, do him some good. Maybe these mayfly-like Hunters are more of a blessing than a curse: a chance for him to work through some of his demons, to heal a little, in a quiet place with a friend nearby.
She doesn't let herself hope that they'll go back to travelling afterwards, because one thing is clear to her: the full Time Lord version of him will be just as much of a wreck.
And her heart breaks for him.