Disclaimer: I don't own "Doctor Who" or "Twilight", and the essential details of the original concept of this fic came from a video posted on YouTube by heroesdwtw- which has unfortunately now been taken off YouTube- and is used with their permission
Feedback: Much appreciated
AN: Hope you like this; it was surprisingly difficult to find a transcript for this episode to be sure I got everything right…
The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith
As I casually floated in the TARDIS pool, I was amazed that it had taken me so long to try this place out. I'd always been slightly uncomfortable swimming back home- I knew how, of course, I just always felt inadequate in a swimsuit in public-, but with the Doctor not regularly using the pool I felt more comfortable just relaxing in it.
After all the time I'd spent running around for the last few months, with at least half of my time outside the TARDIS focused on running for my life or some variation of that activity- I enjoyed my time with the Doctor but it wasn't always as relaxing as it could be-, it was good to have the opportunity to sit back and drift for a moment. With the water maintaining a comfortable temperature, along with some function of the pool allowing me to actually program it to allow me to float, I was taking the opportunity to catch up on my reading, perusing a few time-travel novels I'd found in the library out of curiosity.
The subject matter wasn't my usual choice, but considering what we'd recently dealt with I thought it only appropriate to get a better feel for what people believed were the 'rules' of time travel so that I'd have a better understanding of what we were talking about when I spoke to the Doctor later. Considering how panicked the Doctor was about the idea of changing history, I was fairly sure that time travellers didn't automatically create new timelines whenever they got involved in the past- from some stories the Doctor told me, it sounded like at least half the time he went anywhere his actions ended up being part of history rather than changing it-, but he had mentioned that there was still a risk of altering the original timeline, even if he'd been unclear if he preferred to avoid that for practical reasons of endangering history, moral reasons of not wanting to risk things becoming worse, or a combination of the two…
One of the more interesting examples the Doctor had cited was actually Hitler; I'd never really thought about politics before joining the Doctor, but after he explained the dangerous structure of the Nazi party it was actually rather interesting to consider how things might have gone if Hitler had died before the war began on an intellectual level. Would the Nazis have fallen apart without Hitler to keep them together, would someone else have taken over in his name, would the new leader have been sane enough to keep them together while lacking Hitler's ability to inspire...?
It was like the Doctor had told me during our encounter with the Daleks; changing history couldn't be done because it made things too complicated, regardless of your original intentions.
It was sad, but in a strange way, it helped me appreciate the opportunities I'd discovered when I accepted the Doctor's invitation to travel with him all the more; for all the occasions when we couldn't do something, that just made the occasions when we could make a difference all the more important…
My thoughts were cut short when the TARDIS suddenly shook, knocking me out of my earlier floating position and nearly sending me into the side of the pool before I regained my balance. Quickly hauling myself out of the pool, I shrugged on a loose white shirt and a blue sarong that I'd draped over a deck-chair when I'd come to the pool- I'd been uncomfortable walking around the TARDIS in just a swimming costume- before hurrying from the swimming pool to the console room, where the Doctor was anxiously examining the console.
"What's wrong?" I asked, looking at him anxiously.
"I'm detecting a build-up of potential temporal disruptions in the vicinity of Earth," the Doctor said, looking at the readings on the TARDIS monitor in confusion. "It's as though… something's… stopping me from materialising…"
"Something's trying to keep you away from Earth?" I said, looking at the Doctor in surprise. "Why would- I mean, who could do that?"
It wasn't exactly hard to work out why someone would want to keep the TARDIS away from Earth, given the Doctor's constantly-expressed interest in protecting it, but working out who could do that was harder…
"No idea, but I think I can get around it," the Doctor said, looking thoughtfully at the screen before him as he began to work grimly at the controls. "No matter how powerful this is, they can't maintain something like this forever; just need to find a point that the barrier isn't blocking, materialise there, and then take a short temporal hop backwards…"
"Isn't that dangerous?" I asked, trying to remember whatever I'd read about time travel and what the Doctor had told me. "I mean, if we're going to a point after it happened-"
"It's only an issue if we see what happens; so long as we don't know what took place to block it, we can do whatever we want and assume that it stopped because we did what we did…" the Doctor explained, still hurrying around the console to adjust relevant controls, before he hit a final large lever and grinned in relief as the sound of materialisation filled the room. My initial smile of hope faltered as the Doctor's expression shifted while the wheezing continued, as though the TARDIS's attempts to dematerialise were being constantly drawn out, but the ship finally fell silent.
"Had to adjust the destination once or twice, but we're almost there now," the Doctor said, looking at me with a slight smile before he dashed around the console to head for the door. "Come along, Swan!"
As we emerged from the TARDIS, I was surprised to find us standing in what appeared to be a hotel lobby, a large set of stairs on our right and a large door on the left leading outside.
A noticeboard in front of us revealed that the main conference hall was set up for the marriage of a Peter Dalton to a-
"Sarah Jane Smith?" the Doctor said, looking at the words on the board before us in shock just as I was processing the words.
"You know her?" I asked, looking curiously at the Doctor; now that he mentioned it, the name did seem familiar from some of his stories…
"Old friend of mine," the Doctor said briefly, before his eyes narrowed grimly. "And I don't recall anything in her future history about marriage, and someone was going to great lengths to stop us getting here, which means…"
I didn't have the chance to ask the Doctor what he was talking about before he virtually tore the door open and ran into the hall, revealing a group of people dressed in fine clothes sitting around the room, chairs laid out in rows of three on either side. A couple in what looked like their fifties were standing at the other end of the room in a black suit and a white dress respectively, the man possessing a strong nose and greying brown hair while the woman had thick brown hair and vivid blue eyes.
"STOP THIS WEDDING NOW!" the Doctor yelled, looking urgently at the group of people sitting before us, his gaze fixed on the older woman who was most likely the Sarah Jane Smith he'd mentioned earlier.
"Uh… we're not related to her!" I said, feeling stupid as soon as I'd said it; we were dealing with something powerful enough to stop the TARDIS going somewhere, and I was worried that a bunch of strangers would think the Doctor was an older woman's boytoy and I was their illegitimate daughter?
God, Emmett would be laughing his head off at that if he was here…
The muttered confusion of the other wedding guests drew my attention back to more immediate matters as the bride and the various guests looked at my friend in shock, the sudden appearance of what looked for all the world like a robotic dog from under a nearby table only adding to my confusion .
"I said," the Doctor said, his shoulders tense as he glared at the groom, "stop the wedding."
Before anyone could say anything else, the wind started to blow around the room despite the fact that we were currently inside, sending the Doctor actually staggering back even as everyone else in the room just suddenly had hair blowing in their faces.
"Alert, alert!" the robotic dog said, rotating on the spot. "Danger, Mistress!"
"Sarah!" the Doctor yelled, confirming my identification of the woman as he reached out towards the woman. "Get away from him!"
"Peter, no!" the woman said, straining against the man standing beside her; the man was holding on to her wrist, but she evidently hadn't realised it until now.
"Don't be afraid, Sarah Jane," the man said, his expression disturbingly solemn despite what was happening around us. "It's the angel."
Angel? I thought in confusion.
What could be happening here that would make anyone believe there was an angel involved…?
At least part of my question was answered when a strange new figure appeared, the size of a man and dressed in a long white robe with an unusually wide hat, but any thoughts that it might have been an angel were dispelled by its disturbingly smooth face, with sunken depths where its eyes should have been and sharp teeth in a lipless mouth.
"The Trickster!" a girl's voice called out from near the front of the hall.
"Mum!" a male voice yelled.
"Sarah!" the Doctor yelled, still flailing against the wind. "Trickster, let her go!"
"Too late, Time Lord!" the entity that was apparently the Trickster said, malevolence in its tone as it pointed at the Doctor before it moved towards the woman that was apparently Sarah Jane, a grin on its face. "You're mine, Sarah Jane; mine forever…"
With those ominous words, the creature made contact with the bride and groom and they both vanished, the Doctor and Sarah yelling each other's names before she disappeared from view while the groom just looked out in satisfaction, the wind dying down at the same time.
"Sarah!" the Doctor yelled, anxiously running to the area where the bride and groom had been standing earlier. "Sarah, no!"
"What happened?" I asked as I hurried up to join him, trying to ignore the confused stares I was receiving in my loose-fitting attire compared to their more formal style of dress.
"I…" the Doctor began, before the room started to shake, further questions cut off as virtually everyone else in the room began to yell in shock. The Doctor and I could only watch as what I could only describe as energy waves washed over the people still sitting in the room before they almost all vanished in a white shimmer, leaving only me, the Doctor, the robotic dog I'd seen earlier, and three teenagers sitting near the front of the room.
"Mum! Dad!" the girl I'd heard yelling earlier called out.
"Hold on, everyone!" the Doctor yelled, diving to the ground and grabbing a table leg, grabbing my arm and pulling me down to do the same. "Hold on!"
As I followed his cue, I only had enough time to notice the other remaining three residents holding on to their chairs before everything around me went white…