Thanks to Vilinye, Sol3Bug, Avatar Rikki, Torchwood Cardiff, and Mystic Lover of the fairtale for their reviews! This chapter is setup for the next, which I'm REALLY looking forward to writing... As always, enjoy and let me know what you think!

CHAPTER NINE

Sarah Jane's primrose living room was very quiet as Santiago finished speaking, but the words the Doctor is dying seemed to echo around the usually tranquil space, giving body to long unspoken fears.

Sarah Jane herself had turned very white, but almost at once she lifted her chin, her hands going automatically to her hips. 'Don't panic, everyone,' she said firmly. 'We've heard this before, remember? Besides, Santiago said dying – not dead. While there's life there's always, always hope!'

'Just right!' Jo nodded, her bright hair moving in emphasis. 'Why, you wouldn't believe the things that man has experienced – and survived. A little thing like imminent death won't stop him, just you see!' All the same, her grip on Santiago's arm tightened.

'So what do we do?' Clyde asked, turning to Sarah Jane. There was no trace of the joker in him now. 'How do we help? There's gotta be something,' he added, ''cos otherwise Patchy there wouldn't be asking for it, would she?'

Sarah Jane was chewing her lip again, mulling over the events of the day in her mind. 'We need to find a way to contact our friend with the eyepatch. If she's able to hack otherwise dead phones, theoretically she should also be able to get through to Mr Smith – and he's got more power than any Earth smartphone.'

'Up to the attic, then!' Clyde sounded like his customary cocky self, but his gaze was soft and concerned when it rested on Sarah Jane. 'You go on up,' he urged. 'Clani'll sort the teas, won't we?'

''Course we will,' Rani agreed readily.

'"Clani"?' Santiago queried.

Sky grinned up at him, her eyes sparkling. 'That's what Luke calls Clyde an' Rani. Clani!' She giggled.

Sarah Jane looked at her daughter. 'Do you want to help?'

Sky had recently taken up 'cooking lessons' with Clyde after the latter had declared that a diet of pizza was yum, but no good for growing girls, even sparky growing girls. To Sarah Jane's surprise – and, it must be confessed, chagrin - the child enjoyed the sessions very much, and took great pride in her ability to make perfectly brewed tea and uncharred toast.

Sky's face lit up. 'Can I? Al can help,' she added, ignoring how her friend's glum face turned even glummer at this statement.

Luke laughed and put his arm around his mother's shoulders. 'Looks like we're gonna have a contender for Junior Masterchef on our hands,' he teased. 'Just as well; I live in fear of you poisoning yourselves.'

'Oi!' Sarah Jane protested, but only half-heartedly. She knew what they were trying to do, and appreciated it, but she could not shake the cold dread that was pooling ever more insistently at the pit of her stomach.

The whole universe might just shiver…

She shivered herself at the thought, trying to rub some warmth into her arms through the thin fabric of her pastel coloured shirt. 'Tea's a great idea,' she said at last when she realised that everyone was looking expectantly at her. 'Luke, I need you upstairs. Jo, Santiago?' She raised a questioning eyebrow at them.

'I'll help – Clani,' Santiago said with a smile. 'Gran'll go with you, I know she's dying to poke around in that glory-hole of an attic.'

'Santiago!' Jo reprimanded, turning faintly pink.

Sarah Jane relaxed and smiled, putting her arm around her fellow ex-companion and guiding her out of the room. 'Let's go then, and you can poke to your heart's content.' She allowed the other woman to precede her up the stairs; Luke had already gone ahead. When they finally entered the attic, it was to find Luke half-buried in Mr Smith's internals, various panels lying nearby.

'What are you doing?' Sarah Jane asked, coming to kneel by her son. She was experiencing a twinge of déjà-vu, remembering all the times she'd entered the TARDIS's control room to find the Doctor in Luke's very position. 'Wasn't he working?'

Luke's voice was hollow when he answered, echoing around the supercomputer's components. 'He was, but it was like the phones – flickering. I thought that if I could hook him up wirelessly to K9, that'd help boost the signal.'

She gave a wry smile. 'It's just as well Mr Smith isn't completely present,' she commented as she regained her feet and stood back. 'He wouldn't appreciate that at all!'

'It's time they got over that,' Luke said sternly, sounding much older than he was. 'There's a time and place for tech-rivalry, and this isn't it! Now let's see.' He slid out from inside Mr Smith, thumped the panels into place, and sat back on his haunches, his gaze fixed on the uncharacteristically dull screen.

They were not waiting long.

They heard her before they saw her, saying the words that Santiago had gleaned earlier: the Doctor is dying, please, please help and Sarah Jane stiffened, grateful when she felt Luke's steady hand close over hers in silent support.

Mr Smith's screen began to flicker. It was odd watching him come to some sort of life without his usual pompous fanfare.

Then the woman they had momentarily glimpsed earlier was filling Mr Smith's screen. The sound was intermittent; it didn't seem to match the movements of her mouth.

Jo came to peer at the screen after pulling her glasses off her head and shoving them up her nose. 'Golly, she's got some hair, hasn't she? What's she saying?'

Luke returned to the panel he'd been working behind and thumped it three times.

Jo's eyes were very wide. 'Does that honestly work, Sarah Jane? Won't he break it?'

Sarah Jane shook her head. 'Not him; and if he did, he'd be able to put Mr Smith back together again, so –' She shrugged, a testimony to her confidence in Luke's abilities.

'…all the Doctor's friends,' the woman on Mr Smith's screen voice said, and they jumped and turned to look at her.

Sarah Jane stepped forward. 'Who are you? What do you want?'

The other woman leaned forward, her mass of curls taking up more of the screen than her face did. 'I'm River Song,' she began. 'And you're Sarah Jane Smith.'

Sarah Jane folded her arms. 'How do you know my name?'

River smiled – a smile that was both indulgent and coquettish. 'Come, dear, how could I not know your name? The Doctor's best friend, and her amazing, brilliant band of children, all saving the world from an attic in Ealing…'

'You still haven't answered Mum's question,' Luke pointed out from Sarah Jane's other side. 'Are you the Doctor's latest companion?'

'What a nice young man,' River remarked in an ambiguous tone. 'I do like your son, Sarah Jane, he's just as direct as you are, but there's a lot you can't be told, either of you. Spoilers, you know.' The smile flashed again.

'Now, look here,' Jo objected. 'You've hijacked our thingummyjigs, even when they were broken – awfully impressive, I must admit – and now you've managed to get through to us. You want something, your sort always do… so stop… stop nattering and spit it out!'

River's face enlarged alarmingly as she leaned closer to look at Jo. Sarah Jane wondered if this was how the Lilliputians had felt when confronted with Gulliver.

'Why, it's Jo Grant!' River exclaimed. 'I hardly recognised you, dear, but I suppose I should have. The Doctor said he'd seen you, and that you looked… baked.' She beamed. 'Oh, that man. He does have a way with words, doesn't he?'

Sarah Jane gestured at Luke. 'Cut her off,' she ordered abruptly. 'Get back to me when you're ready to be serious, River Song.' She turned away from Mr Smith and waited… one… two… three.

'No-no, wait, I-' River began as Luke moved to obey, but fortunately for her, both Luke and Sarah Jane were distracted by the entrance of Rani, Clyde, Sky, Santiago, and Al, all burdened with various cups, pots, and comestibles.

'Who's that?' Clyde asked, dumping his pot and handful of cups down on the desk next to Sarah Jane's computer. 'Is she the one who's been messing with our gear?'

'That's what we're trying to find out,' Luke answered grimly, 'but she won't give us a straight answer to a straight question.'

'I like your hair, Mrs-Whoever-You-Are,' Sky said, coming to stand at Luke's side. 'I hope my hair is like that some day.'

River blinked, but she recovered instantly. 'All right,' she began quietly. 'Enough silliness. I'm… a friend of the Doctor's, and he's in trouble, the worst kind of trouble. I'm sending out a message to everyone, everyone he's ever helped, everyone he's ever called friend, to say: now it's time to pay your debt. The Doctor is dying; please, please help.'

'What's happened?' Rani demanded. 'We've heard this dying-Doctor thing before, y'know. Fool us once and all that. How do we know you're telling the truth?'

There was a long pause, so long that Sarah Jane wondered if the connection between Mr Smith and River had somehow frozen.

Then River's gaze locked on Sarah Jane, and Sarah Jane's breath caught in a gasp. The other woman was telling the truth; it was there in her eyes, sadness and guilt and hope combined.

'I know he's dying,' River said slowly, allowing each word its full weight, 'because I'm the one who killed him.'

There was an odd sound as everyone expelled their breath at once, and then tried to regain the oxygen.

'You killed him,' Luke repeated. 'But how? Why didn't he regenerate? And if you killed him, why are you asking for help now?'

'Because I couldn't do it,' River answered hoarsely. 'His death is a fixed point in time; he said it couldn't be changed or altered, even though I know – and he knows, damn him – that time can be rewritten. He said it had to happen. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill the man I love.'

'The man you – you love?' echoed Jo, sounding utterly stunned. 'Love… as we all love him, or … love love?'

For a split second, the teasing, coquettish River returned. 'Spoilers, darling.'

Almost at once, her haunted alter ego was back. 'I stopped it. I changed time.'

'That's why everything's changed,' Sarah Jane realised. 'You interfered with a fixed point – and now all of history is collapsing.'

'I saved the Doctor,' River stated. Oddly, in that moment she sounded like a child, no older than Sky. 'For now. I've bought us some time. Time to work out how to stop it, how to prevent the Doctor from dying.'

Sarah Jane shook her head and took another step closer to Mr Smith. 'No, you haven't,' she insisted in a voice that trembled. 'You may have destroyed it. If – if it was the Doctor's time, if his death was fixed… you shouldn't have interfered.' And she repeated the words she had said to the Doctor, that day at Deffrey Vale: 'Everything has its time – and everything ends. Even him.'

The heavy silence that greeted Sarah Jane's little speech blanketed the attic, extending even to River. It was shattered abruptly by the sudden sound of thumping and banging.

'What's that?' Rani hissed, pulling Sky and Al towards her. 'It's not the Daleks back, is it?'

She was answered by an unknown voice ordering 'Open up! Open up in the name of the Emperor!'

'Stay very quiet and still, everyone,' Sarah Jane said. 'If we don't respond, perhaps they'll give up and leave.'

Even River nodded her head in acquiescence to this, and the group in the attic huddled together, noiseless apart from their breathing.

'Open up, Sarah Jane Smith!' the voice floated up, in through the open attic window. It was not the original voice. 'We know you're there. If you doesn't come, lady, you an' yours'll be spending the night in the Tower.'

Sarah Jane swallowed and climbed awkwardly to her feet. Her intention was clear, and her children threw themselves at her.

'You can't go with them,' Sky implored, clinging to her. 'Please, Sarah Jane. Please, Mum.' She started to cry quietly.

Sarah Jane tightened her arms around the little girl, and her eyes met Luke's.

He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. 'I know,' he said quietly, pulling his sister away from their mother. 'I'll take care of her.'

'I'll help,' Jo agreed as Sarah Jane passed her.

'I'm comin' down with you,' Clyde told her roughly.

Sarah Jane nodded and began her descent down the dark attic staircase. Clyde stuck to her heels all the way down, and gave her a nod of support when she went to the front door. The dark silhouettes of two men could be seen through the stained glass.

'Ready?' Clyde whispered.

'Always,' Sarah Jane answered, and opened the door.

TBC