A/N: This is a follow up to my story Burnt Toast, Bus Stations and Unrequited Love... That story starts out as a Seven / Sarah Jane Smith story (you can find it by searching on those characters) and ends up the week before this one kicks in. It would be best to read that first. Someone who reviewed on that story suggested the idea of a sequel and I suppose that idea must have taken root in some errant recess of my brain.
This starts with Eleven settling in at Sarah Jane's house.
'Duncan' was Sarah Jane's name for Seven. Well, one of them. ;)
He stood there at the window not really looking out at anything. Just thinking. Thinking about how it was her bedroom window, and how Sarah Jane would be quick to allow that it could just as easily be considered their bedroom window. He closed his eyes then, trying to keep from picking up the reflection of that face he wasn't quite sure of yet.
He might not be sure of who or what he was now, but at least Sarah seemed to understand. There was a little smile on his face now, as he scrubbed at his head and thought about Sarah.
A lot had changed in the week he had been back at her house.
He thought about yesterday evening. Luke had gone to sleep over at Clyde's, so the Doctor had known there was bound to be the obligatory adult, relationship conversation.
He hated those. Usually.
...
'This you...' that was how she had started it last night.
'You hate it, I know,' he said too defensively as he flopped onto the couch next to her. 'Too young. Too tall... Too...'
She had tried to shush him with a finger to his lips, but he had prattled on. Or tried to. 'Too geeky looking,' came his half-muted complaint. 'You know I can't choose these things!'
'This you is young looking. Yes, I'll say the obvious one last time. But what I wanted to tell you before your impatience got the better of you, is that this you is wonderful, too. That I want you to stop worrying about how you are different now. I can't expect you to stay the same. We can't stop what time does to either of us.
He let her kiss him, but then he just chuckled.
'Okay, what's so funny?' she demanded.
He kissed her then in apology and in thanks.
'I was remembering me. Especially, a much younger and not-so-wonderful me. One you should be glad you didn't know. If you think I'm impatient...'
'I have loved you all,' she said cheekily.
'Hmmm, determined to work yourself through each and every model?'
'You are not a set of collectible glasses.'
'Although some of me have been decidedly... cracked.'
'Alright. I'll bite. Who was so bad?' she asked with a smile.
'The first. I was so young, ill-tempered, and a know it all. And at the end, I was trapped in such an old body. Oh, I wore that body out.'
'Whereas I am wearing this one out?'
'Really, I'm here to serve,' he said with a small groan, as she settled into his lap.
...
Standing there, remembering all of that, he decided that maybe those obligatory adult relationship discussions weren't so bad. He may have laughed out loud then, because he heard Sarah Jane waking up.
"Smug, are we?" came Sarah's sleepy voice.
"What?"
"You. Still smug after all these years. Over there congratulating yourself," she teased.
He didn't dare turn around to face her. She might misinterpret the purely happy smile on his face. Goodness knows, he had been told he looked smug before. He wouldn't risk it this morning. He fiddled with the blinds and pretended to be peering out at her garden.
"Just thrilled to be back, Sarah Jane. Really, is that so hard to ..." he paused then and pulled at the blinds to get a better view of the back lawn. "No. Couldn't be. Who would? Which would?" He groaned then and finished with a "No. No. No!" that sounded distinctly less mature than his 900 years.
Sarah demanded an explanation at that point, but got no where with him. He just continued to fume at the window glass.
"Oh, damn. Really, really horrid timing." He looked down at himself then and confirmed what he had suspected. "I'm not even dressed."
She clamored out of bed and once to the window, she pushed him a bit to get a look outside. There were TWO blue boxes in her flower bed now. "TARDISes don't spawn or reproduce... I mean like splitting cells. Um, Meiosis? Mitosis? I always got those... "
"It's two TARDISes, Sarah. Mine and one that isn't mine-mine. What idiot would do this?"
"What? Come visit this house? The 'idiot' in any TARDIS has invariably been you in one shape or another. You, the collective you, don't seem to really coordinate these things too well from what I've seen."
The Doctor glared at her obviously wanting to object to that assessment, but he couldn't. A bit of movement down below pulled their attention back to the window.
They watched as the new TARDIS door opened and half a man leaned out. The gray hair was longish. And the cane the formally dressed gentleman carried was being wagged accusingly at the Eleventh Doctor's TARDIS now.
Shaking his head, the man disappeared back into his ship.
"That was you?" Sarah asked with quiet disbelief.
"I can't go down there."
"Well, not like that, you can't," she said indicating the trousers that were still open at the top and the absence of a shirt.
He reached for his button-down while he talked and then pulled it on roughly. "Other than my state of undress, I just shouldn't see him. Or he me. It can't go well. Never, never does."
She left him to get tucked in and turned back to the window. "Someone's coming out. It's not him. It's... I've seen them! Well, pictures of them..." Sarah decided, squinting at the couple in stylish retro. Sarah Jane had the feeling the pair should be in washed out colors like the snap shots she had seen of them in the TARDIS. "It' s Ian. Ian and ... what's her name?"
"Barbara?" the Doctor nearly squeaked. "Can't be." He bounded over to the window. "It is!" After a few guilty moments of watching the pair survey their new surroundings, the Doctor turned on Sarah Jane. "You remember Ian's name and not Barbara's?"
"I always thought he was cute," she admitted. "Hmmmm, seems I was right." She moved quickly for the edge of the bed to pull on her robe.
"You aren't going to talk to them," her sometimes-husband said.
"I can think he is attractive and maintain our wedding vows!" She winked then. "I am woman... watch me multitask," she off-quoted.
"Well, you can't go out there in a pink fuzzy robe and slippers."
She looked down and wiggled her toes before telling him, "Nothing says 'busy enjoying domestic bliss – please shove off' quite like fuzzy slippers. It will go much quicker this way."
/ / / / / / / / /
He was in the kitchen now and watching her heave the slider open. This was all really happening, he tried to remind himself. Why did his life never seem to give him a chance to settle in? To properly adjust?
Only in the past few days had he gotten back to a feeling of 'familiarity' with Sarah. And now this had to happen... He paused then while his highly distractable brain skipped the euphemism and flashed him the stunning highlights of that 'familiarity' since his return.
Oh, lovely. Now he was blushing and face to face (well, nearly) with a pre-Sarah him... and a TARDIS full of companions. He'd be damned if he'd let the 'old poser' warn him off or whisk him away somewhere. Galactic emergencies be damned.
Sarah was out there now in all her pink-slippered glory. A surprised looking Barbara was letting the woman happily hold her hand. Ian was ... well, being Ian, the Doctor thought with a smile. He was out doing Sarah Jane by peppering the diminutive reporter with questions ... even the silent movie version from behind the glass told the Doctor that much.
They were all looking expectantly at the kitchen slider now. At him. Great, he thought. An audience. Couldn't the universe have waited until I was a bit more... ready?
They were in front of the slider before he could form a more cogent thought.
Sarah pulled the door open. But it was Barbara who launched into conversation (after an obvious assessment of the state of this new Doctor's hair).
Bright, wonderful, direct Barbara. Yes, she would see that further introductions were superfluous.
"Sarah Jane tells me... she says, you are the Doctor, too. And that this is England. But in our future," Barbara said.
"Yes," the shaggy headed Time Lord answered. They were all quiet then watching the way this new Doctor was staring at them warily. There were a thousand time paradoxes and rules buffeting him as he stood there, they knew.
"Our Doctor said to tell you, he won't risk coming out," Ian said indicating the blue box that contained their Time Lord somewhere inside the open door.
"No," the Eleventh one said as he stepped into the back yard. "He would know this was bad enough. I can't remember being sentimental enough to allow anything like this."
"It's not sentimentality!" came the disembodied and gruff objection from the second TARDIS' interior.
"It is, too," the newest Doctor fired back. He addressed his old companions then. "He knew how glad I would be to see you two. But he also knew I would be unlikely to come out if he was here."
"You miss us?" Barbara prompted.
"I really, really do," the tall Time Lord replied and then grinning he stooped down to hug a startled Barbara. "And if you ever get exasperated with that Doctor's seeming callousness, just remember that he knew how I would feel about seeing you again. And that means he is just as fond of you as I am."
"Get on with it!" the older voice demanded. "This is not a reunion. We are delivering a message."
"You've got something you need to tell me?" the later Doctor asked.
"Um. Well, it's a bit odd. The Doctor," and here Ian pointed over his shoulder at the box he had arrived in, "received a sort of psychic summons."
"He was in a trance," Barbara supplied. "And when he came out of it, he told us he had been instructed to find someone important and relay a message."
"Yes," the elder Doctor told them. "Go on. You can tell me. Or is it something difficult to explain."
"It isn't for you, you presumptuous, fatuous..." an exasperated, older-voiced Doctor was heard to shout.
"It's for Sarah Jane," Ian cut in. "We were aiming to get here sooner. The message was quite urgent. We were meant to get here almost 10 years ago given when Sarah said it is now."
Something changed then in the new Doctor's face, and he took halting steps to the bench that sat by the bed of roses. He lowered himself down and put a hand to his head.
"You might well try to remember," an old man's voice yelled out to him. "Will there ever be a more selfish Time Lord?"
"Than us? I doubt it," Eleven managed, bleakly.
"Barbara," her Doctor said more gently then. "Tell her."
"The Doctor said he had been 'contacted' by someone named Duncan." As Barbara talked she guided Sarah Jane away from both Doctors. "Our Doctor hasn't been quite right since this happened."
"Sort of a melancholy, I thought," the trailing Ian supplied.
"I don't know how to tell you this," Barbara began and she clasped a stunned Sarah's hands now. "Apparently, Duncan was injured. Shot. And he wanted you to know that he loves you. That he would do his best to always love you. But mostly he just said he was sorry. He felt horrible that he had let you down, the Doctor said."
"Is this message coming too late?" Ian asked cautiously.
"I don't think it's ever too late to get a message like that," Sarah assured him.
She walked for the new TARDIS then without a word and disappeared inside it.
/ / / / / / / / /
"You had forgotten that you had contacted your first self?" she whispered to him in the dark of their room that night.
"I suppose I had. And I hadn't contacted him specifically. When I knew I was in danger of dying, I focused on the TARDIS so that she could try to send the message out. I felt so guilty ..."
"Shh. It's done," she told him gently.
There was a pensive silence then, before the Doctor's mind turned to jealousy.
"Today... you didn't... kiss him, did you?"
"Who? Ian?" she teased. "Or that younger but older you? Because I most certainly did kiss him," she replied. "I kiss them all. I'm collecting the set. Remember?"
/
New A/N: (July 2010) If you want to read the sequel to the sequel it is called EVEN BETTER THAN CATS. Search on SJS as a character and it should pop up. Or just go to my page. (God, I don't know what to tell you. I seem to have some sort of obsession with this Sarah Jane and ALL the Doctors now.)