She walked over to him, took his hand, then laid her head against his arm. "How long can I stay before it's time to go?"

He stroked her head once more. "I'm afraid we'll need to start heading back soon."

Sarah Jane nodded sadly and went back to playing with her doll. After a few moments, she grew very quiet. She was staring down at the doll and soon it began to take on the appearance of her mother. Sarah kissed the doll and just sat there, hugging and rocking it.

The Doctor watched the expression on her face. She'd been so brave through all of this. He'd seen enough death in 900 years to know that children don't always react the way adults expected them to, but those feelings were still inside, and he wanted so badly to help her.

He sat down on the floor next to her and put his arm around her. "You know," he said quietly, "Not too long ago my mum and dad died." Images of Gallifrey burning pushed into his mind, unbidden. Normally, he would force them back, but that seemed somehow wrong, now. "If you ... if you want to talk about what that's like, I'm here for you."

Her eyes searched his for a moment. Then she put her head down and stroked the 'mum' doll's head. "What happened to them?" she asked.

He took a deep breath. Expressing healthy emotions was one thing; breaking down in front of a five year old who needed him to be strong was something else. But even leaving out his part in it, how could he possibly begin to explain the death of an entire planet to her? "It was ... it was a fire."

Sarah Jane looked up at him. "My mummy and daddy were in a fire too," she almost whispered.

He just held her. "I know."

She was quiet for a while. Then she looked up at him suddenly. "Is it my fault? If I loved them more would they have been able to stay with me? I loved them as much as I could, why did they have to go away?" A small tear trickled down her cheek and she quickly wiped it away.

"No," he said firmly, looking into her eyes as though he could force her to understand. "Your mummy and daddy's accident was just that: an accident. It wasn't anybody's fault, and it certainly wasn't your fault. Death is just something that happens in life. People, they're born, and they live, and they die, that's what life is. Sometimes it just happens sooner than we want it to." He rubbed his eyes. 'Like a beautiful fleeting human life for a Time Lord,' he realized. For a split second she was no longer a five year old sitting on the floor with him, but a twenty-nine year old standing at the door begging him with her eyes not to leave her. How could he have been so stupid? "But that's not your fault, and you shouldn't ever blame yourself for that," he told her.

She thought for a moment, then looked at him with an expression of pain mixed with guilt that he would never forget. "Why didn't I die with them?"

If a bolt of lightning had struck him right on the spot, it would have jolted him less than that one simple question. The memory of that time came back to him, riding waves of pain still fresh despite years of pushing it away. How many times had he asked that question? How many times had he replayed the activation of the Moment in his head, watching as everything that was at his core burned and sank into the void, watching the conflagration hurtling towards him, cursing the TARDIS for stealing him away, unbidden, from his death. What could he say to her? "You ... you have a life to live, Sarah Jane. You're going to do great things. You're going to ..." He smiled, realizing what he was about to say. "You're going to help people, and save people, and if you had died with them, all of those people ... You're meant to live." He felt the tears welling in his eyes and pushed them back. "The universe needs you. I know that's a lot for you right now, but one day, you'll understand that."

She stood up and put her arms around him, then reached up and stroked his cheek solemnly. "Did it make you very sad, and did you cry when your Mummy and Daddy died?"

He closed his eyes at the touch of her hand. She was so young, and so old, all at once. He looked at her. "Oh, I was very, very sad, and boy, did I cry. I cried and cried and cried. I cried until I didn't think I'd ever have any more tears left, ever."

"Did they come back after a while," she asked hopefully.

He swallowed hard. "Sarah Jane, I know this may be a little difficult for you to understand, but when somebody dies, they don't ... they're not just going away for a while. My mum and dad, and your mummy and your daddy, they loved us very much, and they didn't leave us exactly. It's just ... it's just that they ... they aren't alive any more, so they can't come back and be here to talk with us, and read us bedtime stories, and hold our hands. It's not their fault, it's no one's fault, that's just the way it is when someone dies. He felt the tears coming, and this time he couldn't stop them. He didn't know if he was crying for her, for the sorrow he knew would come once she understood, or for himself.

Sarah Jane threw her arms around the Doctor and cried, and he cried with her. Together they held each other and all of that emotion they'd both been holding in check for so long began to flow. The Doctor felt himself letting go of so much pain he'd been clinging to and realized that here he was trying to help her, and she'd helped him. How very like Sarah Jane. No wonder she meant so much to him. No wonder he felt so empty without her.

The Doctor rocked her back and forth as she cried harder than she had ever cried before in all of her five tender young years. Up until today, her life had been happy and full of love. Suddenly all the security she had ever known had been ripped away from her. For the first time since the accident, Sarah Jane started to realize that death meant being separated from her parents. As what she had really lost began to sink into her little mind, she realized that her parents would no longer be there to love and care for her, and she was afraid. While she didn't understand everything about death, she understood enough to know that she didn't want to be alone. "Please don't leave me too," she pleaded with the Doctor, still sobbing.

He held onto her as though she were the most precious gift the universe had ever given him -- and in fact, she was. He stroked her head, not knowing what to say to her. Knowing what would happen in her future, what she'd said echoed in his mind, haunting him. When her crying slowed a little, he put his finger under her chin and turned her head up to face him, so that she could look into his eyes. "Sarah Jane, I want you to listen to me very carefully," he said, with an intensity that would have been frightening coming from anyone else. "No matter what happens in the future, no matter how far away I may have to go, I want you to know that I will always, always, love you, and I promise to make sure that you are always going to be safe and cared for. You're never really going to be alone. Do you understand that?"

Tears ran quietly down her cheek now as she stared deeply into his eyes. "I love you too, Doctor," she sniffed. "For ever and ever."

He held her again, feeling her bury her face in his shoulder. "For ever and ever," he murmured, knowing exactly where he was going when he got her settled in with her Aunt Lavinia. He looked into her eyes once more. "When we leave here, we're going to go to your Aunt Lavinia's, and she's going to love you, and care for you, just as your mummy and daddy would want her to. Do you understand?"

"Yes, if that's what you want," she said sadly. "But I really wish that you could take care of me," she said hopefully.

"Leaving you with your Aunt is not what I want. But it's what you need right now, because I really can't take care of you. I'm not good at it. I'm a lot of fun to be around most of the time, and I can take you to magical places, but you said it yourself, I'm not exactly a grown up, and a little girl needs a grown up to take care of her. That's why we need to go to Aunt Lavinia." He smiled, drying his face with a handkerchief he'd pulled out of is pocket, then handing it to her. "But I promise you that you will see me again."

Sarah nodded. "I need to change my clothes then, and get my things together," she said as she bit her bottom lip trying to stop crying.

He hugged her one more time. "Before you do, there's one more thing you need to know."

"What's that," she asked, still trying her hardest to be brave.

"It's all right to be sad. You might be sad for a long, long time, and that's all right. But eventually the sad will get smaller and smaller," he said, willing himself to believe it. "And you'll be able to think of Mummy and Daddy without being sad at all, and just think of the happy times. But you don't have to be in a hurry to get there. For now, it's all right to be sad, and to cry whenever you need to."

Sarah Jane put both her hands on his face. "Who's going to take care of you? You lost your mummy and Daddy too. You need someone to hug you when you're sad and need to cry."