Sarah smiled now. "I'm all for that, but may I ask why?"
"Well, you see when Sidney integrated with the Cyber-Controller, he basically … well, let's just say that when it was over, there wasn't anything left. Think of it as if his brain took hold of the Cyber-Controller and leapt off a cliff with it. Sidney Wakefield was alive, but he wasn't … Sidney anymore. He wasn't anybody anymore, really. No memory, no capacity for dealing with this world and all of its complexity."
"I'm so confused," said Sarah Jane. "If John can't live here anymore, wherever here is, then why have you brought him back to this time to be helped?"
"Well, he can't live here, per se, but he can visit. As long as nobody tells him what's going on, of course, and they'll be smart enough to figure that out. It's not like the air's poisonous to him or the magnetic field is going to rip him apart or something, it's just that he's like a child now. Or he was, at that point. He'd gone from being the equivalent of your Einstein to basically a toddler dribbling down his chin." He thought for a moment. "Consider how much more complicated it is to live in 1997 than it was when you were a child. How much more technology there is. How many more things you have to think about. And the Internet's just getting started. Wait till you see how that turns out. This is thousands of years more complicated. My point is that Sidney - John, he deserved the rest. He deserved to go somewhere slower, calmer, where he could just live and have a good life. Don't you think so?"
"I think John deserves the best of everything, but that still doesn't explain how he ended up at my house and on my doorstep."
"Wellll, I couldn't leave him here, and with no memory I couldn't leave him alone. Then I thought that the one person I'd trust with someone so … precious was someone else precious to me." He looked at his Chucks. "You always deserved better than me. Here I'd found someone who filled that bill, and who really needed you."
She drew closer to him. "Doctor, could you at least look at me when we're talking," she said.
He took a deep breath and slowly looked up at her, the tip of his tongue lodged against his front teeth.
"Thank you," she said. Now that she knew she had his attention, she looked deeply into his eyes. "So, you fobbed me off on someone else to ease your conscience?"
He looked confused for a moment. "Um … no. I wanted you to be happy, and here was somebody I thought could really make you happy. He's a good man," the Doctor insisted. "The best. You deserve that. And anyway, it was your choice, it's not like I sold you into servitude or anything. You chose for yourself."
"All the same, you seem pretty sure that I would learn to care for him. Unless you knew ahead of time that we would fall in love, you took an awful chance. He almost ended up in a homeless shelter, for your information. Not only that, why did you leave him bleeding and hurt? I shudder to think what could have happened if Harry hadn't been visiting me when we found John just lying there and out cold."
Again, he looked sheepish. "That was … unintentional. Welllll, the bleeding part, anyway. I'd meant to keep him out cold and just sort of ring and run, but he started waking up and flailing and he hit his head. I checked him out and I knew it wasn't serious, but he was waking up, and if he saw me … well, he might remember bits and pieces and there'd be questions and instead of starting out with a clean slate - albeit a mysterious one - he might spend his whole life obsessing over little bits and pieces that weren't part of his life anymore. And anyway, I knew you wouldn't let anything happen to him, whether you fell in love or not."
"How well you know me, Doctor. But then again we were quite close once, weren't we," she said with a voice that could cut steel. "I have to congratulate you. You managed to help John and avoid me at the same time. Tell me, when you came back that time when the Daleks were attacking Earth, was that to save John too? I'm sure you must have tried to keep an eye on him over the years."
He sighed. "No, I didn't even know him then. That was before I'd met him. I came to Earth to save you."
"To save me and avoid me at the same time, right. Let's be honest with each other, Doctor. You never had any intention of coming back for me when you dropped me back on Earth all those years ago, did you? You were probably relieved to have an excuse to get rid of me. I'm sure you got disgusted with yourself every time you had to look at me."
"Disgusted with myself? What are you talking about?"
"You were ashamed of what happened between us, weren't you? That's why you never said anything to me about it after it happened." She shook her head and made a bitter sort of laughing sound. "When I think of all the nights I stayed up not able to sleep until I cried myself out, till it was too hard to stay awake. Well, you can rest easy on that one if your conscience ever troubles you. I never wanted you to be anything but happy, Doctor."
He was quiet for a moment. "I never wanted you to be anything but happy either, Sarah." He turned to face her. "Whatever you may think, I loved you then, and I love you now. I never stopped loving you. All I ever wanted for you was the best. And I'm …" He stopped for a moment. He seemed to be holding back a flood of emotion. "I'm not the man I used to be. I try. I want … I wish I could go back to the days when it was just you and me against the universe, and everything was … different. When I came back during that invasion, I knew I couldn't face you. Not the way that I was. Not with what I'd … Not as the man I'd become."
He stood for a moment, rubbing his face and pacing. "You used to say that I spent my whole life running. And you're right. But when you're running from yourself, how do you ever stop?"
She was shocked to finally hear the words she would have given anything to hear so long ago. She didn't even try to hide her feelings. She knew that try as she might, no matter what he did, she would always forgive him. She gathered her thoughts before she spoke; she wanted to be sure she said exactly the right thing. "I still love you Doctor," she said softly. "I know I always will, but I'm not in love with you anymore. It's been a long time since the day I realized that John was the only man I really wanted to share my life with." She stood up and walked over to the Doctor and put her hand on his shoulder.
"I'm sorry for speaking so harshly to you. I've been so overwrought with worry about my husband and lack of sleep that when I found out about you and John, I seemed to find an outlet for my worry, hurt and anger. It wasn't very fair of me to take it out on you. I just wish you had trusted me more. I could have told you that the way to stop running from yourself is to find someone to run to."
"You, my dear Sarah Jane, are not the problem." He held out his arms, hoping for a hug.