The Running Man

Plans, Mistress?

The world swam in Sarah Jane's vision before righting itself, like a camera suddenly snapping into focus. She sat up, rubbing the bridge of her nose. The insides of her nostrils burned as if something had singed them. A jacket fell off of her as she sat up all the way.

The first thing that hit her was the cold. It was absolutely freezing. She instinctively curled her arms around her knees.

"Where are we?" she asked.

The Doctor seemed smaller without his jacket. She scooted over to sit beside him and dropped it over both their shoulders.

"Freezer," he said.

"They took your screwdriver?"

He nodded. Sarah Jane had the feeling that he was keeping something from her, but didn't press.

"You should have stayed in the TARDIS."

She ignored him, instead choosing to survey the small room. It was indeed a freezer, a big one like in the back of a restaurant. The door was locked, but Sarah Jane was pleased to note that the door opened inwards. She hopped to her feet and began to examine the hinges on the door.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting us out. I learned a thing or two about surviving on the slow path."

She slid her hairpin out of her hair.

"You can't pick the lock."

She rolled her eyes. "If it was possible, you would have done it already. I'm doing something else."

"Where'd you get that?"

"Harry's Christmas present two years ago," she said absently, wedging the hair clip underneath the bottom of the pin on the hinge. "Industrial steel."

Sarah Jane removed her shoe and proceeded to whack the hairpin with it, driving the hinge's pin up and up. She removed the hairpin, grabbed the top of the hinge pin and pulled. With a screech of metal on metal, the pin gave way. She did the same to the other two and then stepped back to admire her handiwork.

~o0o~

The Doctor couldn't help but marvel at her. Little Sarah Jane, the intrepid reporter who'd stowed away on a spaceship to get her scoop had grown up. How many aliens had gone after her (or vice versa) that she would know a trick like that?

"We still can't get it open," he pointed out.

"When they open the door, we'll knock it down on top of them," Sarah Jane said, positioning herself in such a way that it would look like she wasn't there when the door opened.

It was a clever plan. Strange not to be the one orchestrating an escape.

"Have they said anything to you about why we're here?" she said, mistakenly thinking that the duplicates of Dorothy-the-telepath were individual people.

"She's one of the last Geminis," he said, figuring that would speak for itself.

She immediately sobered up. "Oh."

They waited in silence for the door to open. Nine minutes and six seconds later, the handle turned. Sarah Jane shoved the door down on their captor with a sickening crack. Dorothy-the-telepath crumpled, hard, on the ground, eyes rolling up into the back of her head.

"Let's go," said Sarah Jane calmly, stepping over her prone body.

The Doctor checked the telepath's pulse. She was alive, but he knew she wouldn't harm anyone else. Her quarrel was with him, not with Earth.

"Your screwdriver?"

"It's about time I made a new one anyway."

~o0o~

It took them four hours to find their way back to Sarah Jane's house, and by extension, the TARDIS. The warehouse where they had been prisoners wasn't in a place that she recognized, and there weren't any taxis around. When they finally found a subway, they rode it to a stop in the city and then took a taxicab home. There was no doubt in Sarah Jane's mind that the Doctor would leave as soon as he had the chance. He'd proved his own point about putting her in danger.

She shut the TARDIS door firmly behind her and settled herself on the jump seat. The Doctor tugged spare parts and other loose ends from the TARDIS to recreate his sonic screwdriver. Occasionally, he'd spout a string of what Sarah Jane suspected were swear words in a language she didn't recognize and the TARDIS didn't translate. She just watched him, knowing she'd likely never see this guilt-ridden leather-clad Doctor again.

"Sarah Jane?" he asked an hour later. "Get K9."

She looked suspiciously at him, trying to decide if it was a ploy to avoid a long, drawn-out goodbye of the type she knew this Doctor would detest. There was nothing she could do but get K9.

Heart pounding, Sarah Jane took one step out of the TARDIS, then a second, vowing to leap back in if she heard the engines begin to move. He wasn't getting away so easy this time.

Another step, and then another. She was too far away now to get back in if he started to move. She took a deep breath and broke into a run. She reached the porch in record time and wrenched open the door.

K9 was sitting in her hall closet, sandwiched between an old coat and an umbrella with a hole in the top. She winced.

"Sorry, boy."

She wrapped her arms around the tin dog's body and pulled. An avalanche of coats and hats tumbled down on her head. Coughing, she emerged from the pile, lugging K9 with her.

She exited the house, breathing a silent sigh of relief when she realized that the TARDIS was still sitting awkwardly on the sidewalk. She got a few odd looks from the woman across the street, who was watching her three children toss a ball around, but as usual she ignored them.

"I'm back!" she said cheerfully, placing K9 at the Doctor's feet.

He flicked his new sonic screwdriver into the on position. Without a word, he began to tinker with the metal dog. Sarah Jane took her place at the jump seat again and waited.

"Master?"

His face broke into a delighted grin. "How've you been, boy?"

Sarah Jane crouched beside him and touched K9's head.

"Poor condition," he said. "Ineffectual repairs."

Sarah Jane put her hands up defensively. "It wasn't as if I could waltz into a hardware store and ask for a thermoelectric generator small enough to fit in my palm."

"Well, he's ready to go."

Summoning all her courage, Sarah Jane spoke. "You too?"

The smile slipped from his face and his gaze hardened. Sarah Jane rose to her feet and took his hand. He focused intently on K9.

"It's all right, Doctor. Big universe out there. Things to do, people to save."

A small smile escaped her lips as she looked around the console room, so different than before, but still so achingly familiar—just like him. She'd give anything to go back to when she could be in 1773 pushing boxes of tea into the ocean one day and then advocating alien rights in 4160 the next.

"I'll come back, some day."

She forced a smile. "I'm sure you will."

She let his hand go and headed for the door. Neat and clean, just like the last time. To her surprise, he followed her.

"What'll you do?"

"Right now? Sleep. Then find a good relator. Dorothy's not coming back any time soon. After that? Let adventure find me. I've learned from the best, you know."

He held the door open for her, the perfect time-travelling alien gentleman. She stepped out on to the pavement, not feeling sadness but just a strange sort of emptiness. He stood in the doorway, hands shoved deep in his pockets, staring out into the street.

The Doctor didn't ask. She didn't press. Her days of gallivanting around the universe were over.

"Well then, I suppose this is goodbye," she said stiffly.

He opened his arms and stepped out of the doorway. She closed her eyes and hugged him.

"See you around, Sarah Jane," he said.

Giving her shoulders a quick squeeze, he released her and stepped back into the relative safety of the TARDIS.

"Why can't you ever just say goodbye?" she asked, the words sticking in her throat.

He chuckled. "But Sarah Jane, it isn't goodbye."

With that, he closed the door. She stared at the blue box that could show her the universe and fought the urge to reach for it as it disappeared.

"Goodbye, Doctor."

"Plans, Mistress?" asked K9, swiveling his neck to look up at her.

Sarah Jane took a deep breath and stared up at the clouds, wishing she could see the stars.

"Trouble usually finds me," she said.

As big as the universe was, she still had an entire world to explore, a world she'd been ignoring while dreaming about the stars.

"Jeopardy friendly," K9 said, repeating a phrase he'd heard hundreds of times before.

"Absolutely."

She headed back for her house, K9 motoring along at her heels.

That's it for her time with Nine. A few years after this chapter, she's transported into another adventure in the form of the story The Five Doctors, where she meets One, Two and Five for the first time and meets Three and Four again. Of course, to preserve the timelines, she never tells them about the Time War, though she sincerely wishes she could.

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