"Doctor!", Sarah shouted, but felt breathless at the same time. She ran as close to him as she dared, moving carefully with his every step, right at his side, but now she hesitated to reach out for his hand. Color returned to his form only gradually, and much too slow for her taste. Her hands were shaking as she waited for him to stabilize to a certain degree. The feeling of reaching through him was a sensation she was afraid to experience, since she had no idea what kind of damage it could do. Was it not bad enough already that she had no clue how to help? If she only had the faintest notion of what she could do to get him back to reality and keep him there. But here she was helpless again, she just… She was forced to watch him break down in the grass.

Even though she finally got a hold of his hand, the man was far too heavy for her to stop his fall. Instead, he pulled her down with him and the girl landed on her knees next to the man's unmoving body. When she noticed the peaceful expression on his face, there was nothing she could do about it anymore – tears were filling her eyes. "Nooo..." Sarah squeezed the large hand in hers tightly as the first tear fell from her cheek. It wasn't fair, she thought. She'd done everything right! They were supposed to be safe now – both of them! The girl rubbed her eyes, but it didn't help to quench the sadness at all, which made her just more furious about how useless she already felt. Desperate for a reaction, Sarah grabbed at her adult friend's waistcoat and shook him forcefully.

"Doctor! Doctor!", her voice sounded broken and even more high-pitched than usual. Oh, how pathetic she sounded. She could have drowned herself in self-pity, on top of everything. "That's not fair! You promised!" The anger began to break out of her, all the ways in which she had been upset about her helplessness, and that was quite a lot. She wanted to do something so badly, and didn't want to accept that her friend's fate was final.

"Not fair, not fair…!", she repeated over and over, her voice getting quieter again with every word and every punch, as she let out all her frustration by hitting the man's chest with her small fists.

Thankfully, she didn't mean harm and wasn't very strong anyway...

"Ow, ow...! Ouch!"

With the widest eyes of disbelief Sarah looked up as the hand of an adult caught hers mid-air and she saw the figure that lay in front of her shifting with a grunt. The Doctor had come around quite suddenly, thanks to her rude wake up call no doubt. He coughed and wore a tired look in his eyes, but a smile stretched across his face when his sight fell on the girl. He had, however, very quickly found the strength to banter with her again.

"Sarah, there's no point in beating a dead horse. I'm already awake."

"Doctor...", Sarah sniffled, but her insides were flooded with a new feeling of relief, so glad was she to see he was – considerably – well.

His smile faded a bit when he noticed the tears in her eyes. She didn't do a very good job at hiding them, she would admit. "Oh, don't you worry." While giving the child a sympathetic look, the Doctor sat back up in the grass.

"I'll always be alright.", he said, and, between these words and the next, he leaned closer to her and nudged the child's head with his own in a playful manner.

"And I know you'll be alright, too. Won't you, hm? I know. I'm certain of it. Did I already tell you that I've been to the future?"

Sarah pushed him away by his shoulder, but didn't put much force behind her action. In fact, even her giggling revealed that she was in no way upset with him. He had tried to make her laugh, and that he had achieved already. She just wouldn't let him have that last word. "Don't you dare play dead ever again!" The child's giggles mixed with her still broken sounding voice into a funny tone when she jokingly replied and this time it was the Doctor who laughed at her.

"I don't think I can promise you that.", he teased back, and Sarah let it go now, because when she tried to rub at her eyes again, she suddenly found them to be dry already!

"Well then..." When the Doctor finally rose back to his feet, he swayed a bit at first, but despite being a bit out of balance he offered Sarah a hand to help her get up from the grass, too. As they stood steady again, he took a good look around the garden, before pointing at the patch of lawn where the space ship had crash landed earlier. There was not a single trace of what had happened now and Sarah even had the impression that the very memory of the sphere sitting in the grass had begun to fade from her mind.

"Look!", the Doctor showed her, with his voice sounding as if he was quite fascinated by this discovery. "Now that we have undone the disruptive event, the fabric of time has begun to repair itself. It's coming around full circle. It will be as if none of this ever happened; Forgotten by time itself."

Obviously he had tried to give an explanation for the alien's ship vanishing, but there wasn't much which Sarah understood about it. She didn't really care either, because she was just so glad that the danger was gone. For once, she didn't feel like asking more questions. And Auntie Lavinia wouldn't ask either, because there wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary when she returned home. Twice as good for Sarah, because that meant she could avoid getting into trouble. The fact that the Doctor did not continue to say anything else and the long pause which followed forced the child to look up into his face. She had no idea why, but his smile had been replaced with a rather serious expression and a light frown. This seriousness gave the child a bad feeling and she dearly hoped that it was nothing more than a strange impression this time.

"… Is something the matter?", she asked him.

"Hm? Oh, no no." The Doctor blinked surprised and by the time he turned to face her the seriousness was gone.

"I'd say we've done well, wouldn't you? Personally, I could have skipped on time trying to fast-forward my fate, but as you know; No plan's perfect. That reminds me..." His look fell on something in the grass and when he moved over to pick it up, Sarah saw that it was the burnt out bracelet, which he examined for but a short moment.

"I will have to repair this sometime.", he concluded.

Seeing how the bracelet had not disappeared yet and didn't seem to be disappearing anytime soon, either, a thought crossed the child's mind. "What about the thing I fixed up? Will it disappear like the space ship did? And if so, it won't take the TV with it, will it?"

"What thing?" While they were talking, the adult walked back to the house, but waited before stepping through the backdoor until Sarah had caught up to him.

"The projector thing I attached to the TV. The one which captured the jellyfish.", she tried to explain.

"Ah, right! The temporal projection unit has to be disconnected first. Come!" He nodded towards the house and laid an arm around little Sarah's shoulder – as much as that worked with the height difference, anyway – to guide her back indoors.

Sarah-Jane watched him collect his sonic screwdriver from the living room table and how he began to undo the cable amalgamation on the backside of the open TV set. Under the influence of the Doctor's whirring tool, the metal turned back to a liquid state and could be detached easily within mere seconds. After the alien ship's component had been removed, they set the wooden casing back into place together. Very soon, the living room, just like the garden, looked as unexciting as ever, and the Doctor picked up the projection unit and walked back to the house entrance with it. Curious to what he was going to do next, the girl followed his every step, even as he stopped in front of the clothes hanger.

"Hold this a moment for me, will you?" Dropping the electronical component into Sarah's arms, the Doctor went on to collect his hat and coat.

With a sad look in her eyes, but a hopeful expectation twinkling in them at the same time, she raised her head and tugged on the man's scarf to get his attention.

"You are not going to leave, are you?", was what she wanted to know, although it was really quite obvious what the answer would be.

"But I'm afraid I have to."

Disappointed to hear what she had expected, but not hoped for, Sarah's gaze fell to the floor, where the tassels of the long scarf lay. That was also how she noticed the Doctor kneeling down to her level once more. She didn't really want to look into his eyes, but now that he was in front of her she didn't want to turn her head away either. And when he took the device back from her hands and set it next to them on the floor, there was nothing she could have hidden her disappointed expression with anymore.

"You see," he tried to explain himself now,

"I would like to stay, but I believe that your aunt won't approve of me taking care of you."

Sarah's look went straight to the floor again and again, glancing at the Doctor's face only every now and then as she argued. "But it was her who sent you. Wasn't that what you told Madame Bosco?"

The next answer took a while to form. When she checked his face impatiently, she noticed the adult tilting his head and his eyes searching around the room for a bit – obviously trying to make out what kind of answer would be pleasing for her to hear. But Sarah understood all by herself what that pondering meant. A little bit shocked that he even considered lying, she concluded: "You just tried to convince her that you are a friend; You don't even know Auntie Lavinia!"

"Well, I know as much as you will tell me about her in a decade...", he admitted to her accusation, in some way, at least. The guilty look on his face did the rest, although he had without a doubt chosen that expression on purpose. A trick that worked marvelously on Sarah, because she found it suddenly impossible to act upset towards him.

"Now don't be sad, Sarah. You are a brave little girl, and a wonderful future lies ahead of you.", he told her.

The praise came as a bit of comfort, but she didn't dare to smile. Not until she remembered the story he had told her during their game of checkers. In the far future, they were still friends, and she would be there to save his life… another time.

"We'll meet again, won't me?"

He acted a bit appalled when he jokingly replied: "I sure hope so!" But then he was soon smiling wide again, and chuckling, too. He tipped the brim of his hat and added: "Just be patient and you'll see."

Sarah returned her warmest smile and next – well, she hesitated a bit because she wasn't sure if he would allow it – but that hesitation quickly faded away, because she figured eventually that she was worrying too much. The little girl took that one, possibly last chance that he was at one level with her, stepped close and wrapped her arms around his neck. She could feel that she had taken him a bit by surprise, but he relaxed quickly and even hugged her back, although one arm was more than enough for him to wrap around the child. It was a short, but tight embrace that was welcomed by both as parting gift nonetheless.

By the time Sarah stepped back from him, the ever lasting smile on his face had turned soft, and he rose back to full height while picking up the projection unit at the same time.

They walked together to the front door and when the Doctor stepped out into the shades of the early night, he adjusted his hat one more time before saying his farewells.

"Bye, Sarah."

Within the minute he had turned and was walking away from the Smith's very ordinary little house.

The girl still stood and watched him leaving; Saw how he moved towards one of the blue police phone boxes she knew from the town. Funnily enough, she had never noticed that there was one in her neighborhood now. At first she thought he was playing another joke for her. After all, how would he get out of town calling the police? But then she had to realize that he was quite serious about this. He stopped after he had pulled the door open and waved back to Sarah one last time. "Bye-bye, little Sarah!", he shouted.

A bit confused by his action, the child waved back until he stepped in. And then, ever adding to the mystery of the man, a light began to shine and pulsate on top of the police box. It emitted a pleasant, but funny whooshing sound that stopped only when the whole police box had disappeared from the pavement.

A smirk and a chuckle escaped her and Sarah was still waving back slowly, when she replied to herself only:

"Bye, Doctor."