I own nothing, I'm just playing in the BBC sandbox. This is all AU, so of course Luke here isn't SJA's Luke. :-)

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Sarah ran her hands along the TARDIS console, feeling the familiar hum beneath her fingers. She could almost feel the TARDIS reaching out, soothing and comforting as she looked around and took in the surroundings. It wasn't the white console room from her time travelling in the TARDIS, but more warm browns with Victorian furniture dotted along the edges of the room. 'This is so similar, yet at the same time so different.'

'I've had some time on my hands to redecorate.' the Doctor said as he came up and slipped an arm around her waist.

She glanced over at him. 'I have a hard time reconciling the Doctor that I travelled with all those years who was nothing more than emotionally distant at best, and you, the John Smith I married who is tactile and loving.' She pulled away from him. 'Which brings up another point, which regeneration are you? And if you were going to stay here, why wouldn't you come as one of the regenerations I was familiar with?'

'This is my seventh incarnation. And as for choosing a particular time to come back to you, I have to confess that I didn't do that. The TARDIS did.'

'What do you mean?'

'She sensed you were in danger. I'm the one that found you after…' he let the end of that sentence fade.

Sarah let her head drop, 'Please don't say you stayed all this time out of guilt.'

The Doctor took her face in his hands, making her look him in the eyes. 'Look at me. I did not stay because I felt guilty, Sarah Jane.' He stepped away and walked around the console, flipping switches and looking at dials along the way.

'How did I not pick up on this? It seems so obvious now. You're an eccentric, yet brilliant scientist who spouts off jargon every time I turn around in answer to a question. Going from extreme talkativeness to silence without batting an eye. You even worked with UNIT!'

He didn't look up from the console. 'As long as you didn't remember Andrew and Christopher, you wouldn't have realised who I was.'

Sarah didn't like the tone in his voice. She walked around the console to him. 'Doctor.' When he didn't respond, she gingerly touched him on the arm, 'John.' She stepped back from him and sighed. 'I don't even know what to call you anymore. What is it you're not telling me?'

The Doctor simply looked up at her. 'You can call me whatever you're comfortable with. You've called me John longer than you ever called me Doctor. As for what you feel I'm not telling you…' the rest of his sentence hung unsaid.

Sarah picked up instantly. 'Oh…you messed with my head again.' She ran a hand over her eyes then let her head drop as if exhausted. 'I don't think I know what's real anymore. There are still huge gaps that I don't remember.'

The Doctor took her by the arm and led her towards a nearby chair. 'Sarah, it might be for the best that you don't remember everything.'

She broke free of his grasp, 'How can you say that? What are you hiding? I want to know everything, and I want to know now!'

'As you wish, Sarah Jane, but it will change things.'

'How?'

'All those memories flooding back in so rapidly, it changes your perception on things. It will change your perceptions of our time here together, our relationship, even your perception of Luke.'

She finally sat down in the chair. 'Are we based on a lie? On my missing memories?'

He shook his head, 'No, no. We are a constant, Sarah.'

'Then bring them back. I want all my memories.'

'Are you sure?'

'All of them.'

'Very well.' He kneeled in front of her and placed his right hand on the back of her head. Softly, he ran his other hand through her hair and across her face and told her, 'This is going to be painful. I wish I could change that, but I can't.'

Sarah nodded, 'I understand, it's ok.'

Gently, the placed his left hand against her right temple and looked into her eyes. Instantly her face contorted as searing pain ripped through her mind. She refused to scream in agony, but tears ran down her cheeks unbridled. The Doctor couldn't help his own tears falling as he watched. A few moments later, it was over and Sarah collapsed forward into his arms, sobbing uncontrollably. All he could do was hold her and whisper meaningless consolations to her. It frustrated him that it wasn't nearly enough, and that nothing would be able to make up to her the pain of what she was re-living.

He pulled her into a standing position where he could more easily pick her up and carry her back towards her old bedroom. As he was walking, he changed direction and took her to another room instead.

~!~!~!~

When the Doctor came back into the console room, Luke was standing there, looking at some of the readouts. 'Ah, Luke, you figured out where we were.'

'It wasn't hard, Dad.' He pointed at his own temple, 'It rather came flooding in.'

The Doctor walked over and squeezed Luke affectionately on the shoulder. 'I'm sorry about that, son. Now that your mother has her memories back, the telepathic link between us all will strengthen.'

'How is Mum?'

'Sleeping at the moment, but she's distraught, of course.'

'Of course. All of her things from the other house are still here in storage, aren't they?'

The Doctor nodded. 'Yes, I made sure of it. I somehow suspected that this day might come eventually. There are still implications that I'm sure have not occurred to your mother yet.'

'You mean about the DNA changes so I could be born, and how that affects her lifespan?'

'That's just the beginning of it, Luke, although her DNA was changed long before our marriage, well, before our Earth ceremony. I don't know if she'll remember the ceremony on Aldebarus III, and that was while we were travelling together. I take these things very seriously. She's still going to have questions about our time together from before that she'll want answers to. Why I left her on Earth, why I didn't come back for her. About Christopher.'

Luke looked up questioningly into the Doctor's eyes. 'Dad, can I ask a question?'

'Of course.'

'Now that Mum's memory has returned, are you going back to travelling? And if you do go back to travelling, are you going alone?'

The Doctor gave Luke a reassuring hug, 'Luke, I have no intention of breaking up my family.'

~!~!~!~

Sarah tossed and turned as she dreamt of terrible things that were actually her memories re-establishing themselves.

She watched from the floor, everything appearing in slow motion as Andrew turned and fired the gun at her son, Christopher. After Andrew collapsed from his own wounds, she tried to pull herself over towards the boy, excruciating pain coursing through her arm and leg and head pounding. Just as she reached for Christopher, she heard the familiar wheezing, groaning noise she never thought she'd hear again. It was then she finally lost consciousness…

She woke up in hospital, or what appeared to be a hospital room. Instinctively, she knew this was no ordinary hospital. And there was certainly nothing ordinary about the man sitting next to her bedside. From the cream colour fedora resting casually on the end of the bed, to the crazy question mark-covered jumper the man was wearing, and the umbrella with the question mark handle that he rested his head against.

'Do I know you?' she managed to croak out.

'Sarah, you're awake. Let me get Harry.' The man quickly ran out the room, and came back in with a man in a sharp military uniform with a stethoscope draped across his shoulders. It took a minute, but she finally recognized him as her old friend, Harry Sullivan.

Harry smiled, 'Good to see you awake, Sarah, old girl.'

The gravelly sound to her voice surprised her, 'Harry, don't call me old girl. Where am I, how long have I been here and why am I here?'

The man in the funny jumper laughed, 'Still as many questions as ever, Sarah Jane.'

Harry came over to her and flashed a light in her eyes, then popped the stethoscope in his ears and placed the flat end against her chest. 'Your eyes are now responsive. Heartbeat back to normal, that's a good sign. As for your questions, you're in a UNIT hospital and you've been here about a week.'

'Why?'

Jumper Man, as Sarah began to think of him, motioned to Harry before he should say anything. 'I'll explain everything, Sarah.'

'Who are you?'

The man looked deeply into her eyes, almost speaking to her without words. 'I'm John. John Smith, and I'm your very best friend. Don't you remember?'

Suddenly, she realised she knew this man, had known him for quite some time, and knew she could trust him. 'John, yes, of course. I can't believe I didn't remember. Please, tell me what happened, why am I here?'

John sat down and took her hand in his. 'Sarah, there was an accident.'

'I don't remember it, I don't remember anything.'

John reached out and stroked her hair soothingly. 'It's ok, Sarah. We'll get through this. You and I, together.'

'Please tell me.'

'Sarah, you were shot twice. Once in the leg and once in the shoulder, and you've been banged up pretty badly. I don't know exactly what happened, I found you afterwards.'

Sarah sighed. 'I feel like I've been hit by a lorry.'

John gently touched the side of her face, being careful to avoid the bruises. 'A fairly accurate assessment. Once you're well enough, we'll get you home and out of this sterile room.'

Sarah reached up and tentatively touched John's face, as if he was going to disappear any moment. 'I'd prefer sooner, rather than later.'

When John smiled down at her in her dream, Sarah woke up. She looked around the bedroom in the TARDIS. It didn't take long for her to realise that this was not her former room, but rather the room she remembered seeing only a few times, many, many years previously.

Sarah slowly stood up and walked over to a door she knew was a closet. She took a deep breath and opened the door, the contents surprising her at how timeless they seemed. She ran a hand across the simple, white dress hanging there. 'Looks as if I just wore it yesterday,' she said softly.

Beside the dress hung a large, long, white poet style shirt and a sharp pair of black trousers. Around the middle of the shirt was tied a long black sash. Sarah couldn't help but laugh at the memory. 'There's not everyone I would discard my scarf and wear this overly frilly shirt for, Sarah.' the Doctor had told her when she first saw him wearing it.

She moved the dress and was surprised at a framed 11x17 photograph that sat on an interior shelf. It was a picture of the Doctor she had spent the majority of her travels with, all teeth and curls, wearing the black trousers, sash and frilly shirt. A wreath of small white flowers had been placed like a crown on his head. Beside him, Sarah wore the white dress, her own long hair having similar white flowers braided through it. They were embracing, both of them smiling at each other and looking truly happy.

'Our first wedding,' Sarah said softly. 'We were much better actors than I thought we were.'