The Running Man

Daleks in Breakfast Food

For the second night in a row, the Doctor dreamed. Indistinguishable figures whisked away old friends and companions, the nightmarish screams of the Time Lords echoed in his head and then the cruel silence took over. He preferred the screams. Daleks, shouting their favorite battle cry, plowed through the city, one holding a limp Sarah Jane in its grip, saying he should have never gone to her, because everyone who came near him wound up worse off for it. His fault. Always his fault.

He awoke to the sound of his own cries.

"Don't hurt her!" he bellowed.

In his half muddled mind, he heard the words in the voice of his old regeneration.

"Doctor?"

The door opened and suddenly the Doctor was bathed in light. He released his grip on the sheets and sat up.

"I'm fine," he said, trying to slow his thudding hearts.

She entered anyway and sat down next to him, legs dangling over the side. The Doctor glanced at the clock. It read 12:00 in flashing red letters.

"Your clock is wrong," he said.

She rolled her eyes. "The electricity short-circuited. Power surge, probably caused by your regeneration energy. It's back now, but the clocks are all messed up."

He pulled his sonic screwdriver from his jacket pocket and aimed it at the clock. It read 3:25:23.45. Sarah Jane smiled fondly at the little device. She was a little less pleased with his modifications, though.

"Yet another thing to hide from the neighbors," she said.

Never one to waste unnecessary time (and that was why he'd taken her as a companion, because even a Time Lord can't afford to waste time) she continued.

"Are you all right?"

The Doctor nodded. Her eyes narrowed.

"I saw you last night, Doctor."

"What did I say?"

He couldn't remember much about the nightmares—good thing, too, his subconscious was loud enough as it was—but what he did remember was not pretty.

Her brow furrowed. "You screamed, woke me up. Then you started shouting 'No' and then you suddenly got this lucid look in your eyes, but you weren't looking at me, you were looking through me. You asked me to help them. Help who?"

"I was there," he said bitterly. "Fall of Arcadia. I was there."

She clapped her hand over her mouth and laid her head on his shoulder, her own shoulders shaking.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

~o0o~

She hadn't missed the wild, almost animal look in his eyes when she came in. It had softened as the minutes wore on (and the nanoseconds, which she could now see fly by on her clock) but his eyes remained dark.

"I can't help it," she said.

"You humans empathize too much," he replied.

She laughed a watery laugh.

"And you stay with us anyway."

"Yeah, I suppose I do."

Silence, long and drawn out. In the darkness, it could have lasted an infinity. Sarah Jane allowed him a full minute to think, a personal record, before pouncing on the subject again.

"Your home…"

"Hasn't been my home for a long time. I've got the TARDIS—"

"That's not the same."

"Don't let her hear that," he warned.

The glimmer of humor was gone almost as quickly as it had come, but Sarah Jane couldn't help but think she had made a major breakthrough. Slowly but surely, the Doctor she knew was coming back to her.

"Go back to sleep, Sarah Jane," he said, nudging her off of his shoulder.

She left, not bothering to look and see if he'd lain back down. She knew already that he hadn't.

~o0o~

"Morning!" she said, a little too cheerfully for his liking.

At least she hadn't tacked 'good' onto the beginning of that sentence. The Doctor hadn't been this tired in years. Maybe even decades. It had been a rough regeneration.

"I was thinking we'd go to the library," she said, oblivious to his silence: that or she'd decided to ignore it.

He wandered over to the stove, where it appeared Sarah Jane was putting her best effort into pancakes. A majority of the batter had missed the pan entirely. That explained the smoke. She'd tugged her hair into a messy bun, not that it was helping much. Most of it still hung around her face. She dumped a misshapen pancake on a plate and shoved it into his hands.

He glared at it. "It looks like a Dalek."

Indeed it did, right down to a fleck of batter shaped almost exactly like an eyepiece. How mad was he, to see Daleks in breakfast food?

"Then bite its head off," Sarah Jane said offhandedly, turning her attention to her next crime against pancakes.

He seated himself at the neatly polished square table and stabbed the pancake viciously through the eyepiece. "They're weakest there." He'd said it a million times.

Without looking at him, Sarah Jane said, "I'll make the next one a Cyberman."

He smiled his first genuine smile in what felt like decades. Sarah Jane still didn't turn around, but she seemed pleased with herself. The next pancakes were an unsuccessful Cyberman and then a round TARDIS. ("Chameleon circuit," Sarah Jane had said, trying to pass off her abomination as a planned mistake.) The sonic screwdriver she made wasn't half bad, especially once she'd dug out an old jar of blueberry jam and added color.

"The library?" he asked, unpeeling his second banana.

Sarah Jane nodded, bringing a mug of coffee to her lips and inhaling the warm scent. She'd finally given up on the pancakes after she failed to make a single one that didn't taste like burnt rubber.

"The TARDIS has a library."

"I'd remembered," she replied. "But what about books you don't have?"

He just looked at her.

"If I can't find a book you don't have already, I'll buy you an ice cream," she prompted

"I'm not a child Sarah Jane."

"Need I remind you of—" she said, a mischievous glint coming into her eyes as she remembered an incident on Inteligonfurinthius.

"Right, then," he said hastily. "Library."

~o0o~

As much as it lifted Sarah Jane's spirits to see the Doctor bounding around the library like, well, a child, she couldn't help but worry. It was painfully obvious to her that a majority of what she was seeing was an act. There was no way a fully grown man, much less a nine-hundred-year-old, practically immortal Time Lord could get that emotional over the end of Charlotte's Web. She made sure to keep him away from a thick volume of War and Peace.

Feeling that she'd be safe leaving him alone in the teen's section while she went to find a winning book for the bet, Sarah Jane headed for another section of the library. Even Time Lords that could read at superhuman speed couldn't get through Lord of the Rings in less than five minutes. He'd have to check the appendix at least once, right?

She hurried through the library, ignoring the Languages section. Even though the TARDIS automatically translated foreign languages, she wouldn't put it past him to have a French to German dictionary in some dusty old corner. Likewise, she ignored all the classic authors. He'd met half of them, after all. After ten minutes of searching, she found the perfect book.

~o0o~

The Doctor set down the Return of the King. Frodo leaving Middle Earth for good had hit a little too close to home and he didn't want to risk another book. Instead, he perused the titles and recommended one to a lost-looking girl who mistook him for a librarian.

"I'd like to see you own this!" came a triumphant voice from behind him.

Sarah Jane held out her find, a children's book called I Can Science! The Doctor just looked at it for a long, painful moment.

"She can science, but the question is, can she English?" he wondered aloud.

"I don't care so long as you don't have it."

They approached the checkout desk, Sarah Jane rummaging through her purse to find her library card.

"Did you finish Lord of the Rings?"

He nodded. Her face fell at his expression and she didn't say another word. The librarian gave her a strange look at the book choice.

"Do you have your card?"

Sarah Jane gave her purse one last cursory glance, then shook her head. The Doctor withdrew his psychic paperfrom his pocket and handed it over. Sarah Jane sent him a look that said 'You have a library card?'. The librarian scanned the paper and handed the receipt and book over to Sarah Jane. Together, they walked through the exit.

"What on Earth was that?" she asked.

"Psychic paper," he explained. "Shows you what you want to see, or what I want you to see."

~o0o~

She was more than interested in the paper. Paired with the sonic screwdriver, it would be a miracle if there was a single facility on Earth or anywhere else for that matter that he couldn't break into. Still, she reflected as they entered the TARDIS, she'd rather that power be in his hands rather than anyone else's.

Sarah Jane was too wrapped up in the book, which she had mentally dubbed 'I Can't English' to notice the changes to the control room.

"We've got a problem," said the Doctor a moment after they stepped into the hallway.

"You have no idea where the library is, do you Doctor?"

He shook his head, completely turned around. This time, even Sarah Jane could hear the amusement emanating from the TARDIS.

"She wants us to see her renovations," he said, raking his fingers through hair that was no longer as long as he was used to.

"Fine by me."

They wandered down the hallway, which seemed much more like a space ship then it had been when Sarah Jane had lived there. She was used to warm paneling and creaking floorboards. (Now that she thought about it, maybe that was the reason she liked her worn old steps.)

The first door they came to lead to a kitchen that looked as if it could double as a doctor's office. Everything was neat and white.

"No getting food poisoning in here," she remarked under her breath.

"I think my cooking skills might be gone," he said, examining his hands as if they'd reveal whether or not this regeneration was good with a spatula. He shrugged. "Takeout it is, then."

He cracked a small smile, and without even thinking about it, Sarah Jane took his hand. She didn't want to let go, because when she did, he vanished again.

"Next room?"

They exited the kitchen and stopped outside the next room they came to. Sarah Jane stared at the familiar wooden door, once perfectly fitting in with the hall of the TARDIS, now a sore thumb.

"You kept it?"

"Bigger on the inside," he reminded her.

She dropped his hand and pushed the door open to the room—her room. It was just as she remembered it, with pale green walls and a bookshelf nearly falling apart from the weight of twice as many books it was built to withstand. She turned her attention to the closet, stuffed with clothes from different eras. She'd always loved trying to blend in with local color. Harry had teased her for it, but he'd changed his tune after she'd rescued him from the equivalent of the police on Saquilistion. She smiled fondly at the outfit she'd been wearing for her next-to-last adventure, which lay in a crumpled heap on the floor.

Her bed was unmade, but that wasn't what caught her eye. Lying on the foot of the bed was a very familiar scarf. Tears pricked at her eyes as she scooped it up and held it close. If she closed her eyes, she could pretend she was twenty-three, having just saved the world for the umpteenth time.

~o0o~

The Doctor watched her silently from the door frame. He hadn't been in this room in years, since his fifth regeneration had returned to leave the scarf with her. He'd thought it fitting, and now, four regenerations later, watching her cling to it, he knew he had been right.

She finally looked up from the scarf, eyes still misty. The Doctor knew that look so well. Sarah Jane had seen him in more regenerations than any other companion (well, not this time period's Sarah Jane, yet), but she still missed the second of 'her' Doctors.

"I'm being ridiculous," she said, tossing the scarf down on her old bed. "Getting emotional over a scarf."

"Keep it," he said.

She smiled and picked it back up. Slinging it around her neck, she grabbed his hand once more.

"On we go?" she asked.

"Run," he replied, eyes glinting.

With an exhilarated whoop, she led the way down the hallway, which stretched on and on. The TARDIS hummed contentedly, the first happy sound he'd heard from her for far too long.

"Just like old times!" Sarah Jane crowed, turning to glance at him. "Well, no one's trying to kill us, so that's a step up."

The Doctor didn't want to admit it, but it felt right having someone running alongside him again. He couldn't take Sarah Jane with him again; it wouldn't be fair to her to be left twice. No, she deserved the safe, normal human life she'd been living. She was living proof that it wasn't right to have someone run with him.

Finally they stopped in front of the library, which the TARDIS finally deemed appropriate to let them reach. Sarah Jane laughed, face practically glowing with happiness.

"Haven't been here for a while," she said.

He was pleased to note that the library hadn't changed. It was the only room in the TARDIS that didn't. It was nice to have a constant, even if it was only one room.

Sarah Jane immediately set out to find the book she'd gotten from the library. The Doctor settled himself in front of the fireplace. A book of Gallifreyan fairytales lay open on the desk next to him, on a version of Little Red Riding Hood. He resisted the urge to toss it in the flames.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me."

Sarah Jane morosely offered him two copies of 'I Can Science' one still wrapped in library covering.

"Why do you even have this?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Sale?"

She collapsed into the chair beside him with a huff.

"I suppose I owe you an ice cream, don't I?"

Moral of the story: Never let Sarah Jane cook breakfast.

Interestingly, the Gallifreyan version of Little Red Riding Hood, when translated into English, forgoes the 'Big' part of 'Big Bad Wolf', so all you get is Little Red Riding Hood and the Bad Wolf. ;)

I suppose this story is slightly AU now that Sarah Jane knows about the death of the Time Lords, because she didn't in canon, but…oh well. I'll make it work.

Thanks to Guest (leave a name next time!), Dragonfire2lm, and Madam Rosier for reviewing.

Thanks for reading! Please review.