The Running Man

Rose

It was times like these that Sarah Jane was glad she was a reporter. It gave her an easy excuse to get in places normal people were not allowed and get inside looks where otherwise she wouldn't.

"You want to interview me, you say?" asked the headmaster, looking genuinely surprised, but pleased.

"Oh yes," she replied. "Your test scores with the students are simply incredible! I'm very impressed."

That was a word. Impressed, yes, but also suspicious. Strange things always grabbed her attention. Sarah Jane had learned to trust her instincts where aliens were concerned. Whether her knack for picking up on odd activity was natural or developed from spending time with the Doctor, she didn't know.

"Tell me about your work here," she said, turning her head a fraction of an inch to look inside a classroom.

Finch moved back ever so slightly, obscuring her view. She continued to walk, as if she hadn't noticed.

"Our work here," he said excitedly. "My improvements aren't confined to the classroom. Oh no, no, no, no, no. We've introduced a new policy. School dinners are completely free, but compulsory."

Sarah Jane made a mental note to check out the kitchens at the first available opportunity.

"Do try the chips," he finished.

"Oh, I'd love to," she lied. "Thank you. And it's got to be said, the transformation you've brought around is amazing. I mean, maybe you're working the children a bit too hard now and then, but I think good results, they're more important than anything."

"Exactly," Finch said, pleased that someone else agreed with him. "You're a woman of vision, Miss Smith."

"Oh, I can see everything, Mr. Finch. Quite clearly."

They entered the cafeteria, empty for the moment except for a few of the kitchen staff. One, a blonde, looked up for a second before dropping her gaze back down to the mess she was cleaning up.

"Chips?" asked Finch, holding out a tray.

Sarah Jane accepted one, and while the man's back was turned, tossed it over her shoulder into the pile on the floor the blonde was cleaning. The other woman bit her lip to keep from laughing.

"Excellent," she told Finch when he turned his attention back to her. "May I speak to some of the other staff?"

"Of course, Miss Smith."

Finch kept up a brisk pace as they walked towards the staff room. This stopped any snooping on Sarah Jane's behalf, though she did notice a hint of green light coming from the crack under one of the classroom's door. That would be something to check out when she came back uninvited.

"Excuse me, colleagues. A moment of your time. May I introduce Miss Sarah Jane Smith? Miss Smith is a journalist who is writing a profile on me for the Sunday Times. I thought it might be useful to her to get a view from the trenches so to speak. Don't spare my blushes."

Sarah Jane very nearly rolled her eyes. He thought it might be useful, indeed! Finch was one of those men (aliens?) who stole credit when it suited him, even for something as stupid as a reporter suggesting a talk with his teachers.

"Hello," she said, approaching the tall man with unruly hair.

There was something about him that drew her to him first. He just stared at her for a long, almost star struck second before answering.

"Oh, I should think so."

"And you are?"

He seemed familiar in a way she couldn't place, as if he had been in an advert on the telly.

"Hmm?" he asked, still totally distracted. "Er, Smith. John Smith."

John Smith. She offered a wry smile. He managed to follow her, even when she hadn't seen him in nearly three decades.

"John Smith. I used to have a friend who sometimes went by that name."

"Well, it's a very common name," he said.

Common. Her Doctor was anything but. Perhaps that's why he had always chosen the name. It gave him a simple façade to wear that he couldn't anywhere else. His name was known all over the universe.

"He was a very uncommon man," she said, staring fondly into the distance. Right. Down to business. "Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you. Yes, very nice. More than nice. Brilliant!"

If she didn't know any better, she'd say the man was in love with her, a thought she found a little more than uncomfortable.

"Er, so, er." Way to start, Sarah Jane. "Have you worked here long?"

"No," said John. "Er, it's only my second day."

She deflated a little. There'd be no point to questioning him if he hadn't been around a while. At least it explained the twitchiness. Not many second day teachers were submitted to questioning about their work.

"Oh, you're new then? So what do you think of the school? I mean, this new curriculum? So many children getting ill. Doesn't that strike you as odd?"

John leaned a little closer, as if he was about divulge a secret.

"You don't sound like someone doing a profile," he observed.

"Well, no harm in doing a little investigation while I'm here."

"No, good for you."

She gave him an odd look and walked off to speak with some of the other teachers.

~o0o~

Of all the reporters in the world, it had to be Sarah Jane. The Doctor knew it was no accident. Sarah Jane had a knack for being in precisely the right place at the right time—or the wrong place and time, depending on how you looked at it. It hadn't been long since he'd seen her, just over a year of his subjective timeline, but it had been far, far longer for her. His fifth regeneration had been the last one she ran into…when? 1983, in her timeline? Yes, that was it. Too long, and he would never visit, at least not in this regeneration.

He sipped his coffee—horrible stuff, coffee, but the break room didn't have anything else—and joked with Parson, his eyes wandering over to Sarah Jane every so often.

"Got a fancy there, John?" the other man teased.

"I know her from somewhere, I think," he said.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. She hadn't changed at all. Still running directly into trouble. Still sticking her nose where it didn't belong. Still his Sarah Jane.

~o0o~

"I'm getting too old for this," Sarah Jane muttered under her breath.

She shoved open the window and swung one leg inside, then the next. Just your average unauthorized night investigation. Switching on her handheld recorder, Sarah Jane exited the classroom and made her way into the hallway.

Where was that room? She retraced her steps mentally, but before she could finish, there was a loud noise behind her. Not wasting any time, Sarah Jane broke into a run, feet slapping on the ground. She threw open a large red door and took two steps inside.

Her jaw dropped. The recorder clattered to the floor. Silently shaking her head, she backed up a few paces, mind reeling. She had to be hallucinating, dreaming, something! It wasn't the TARDIS, it couldn't be!

"Hello, Sarah Jane."

Her heart stopped. A new voice, a new face, a new man to file away under the same name. Fighting back a swell of tears, wondering if she'd have to hide the fate of Gallifrey from him again, she responded.

"It's you," she said dazedly. "Oh, Doctor. Oh my God, it's you. You've regenerated!"

"Yeah. Half a dozen times since we last met."

She smiled, a little pleased he'd bothered to tell her in her own subjective timeline. Ten, then. The number fit him.

"You look…" Oh, what was she supposed to say? "…incredible."

He looked more than that. He was happy, and only a regeneration past the Doctor who'd shown up on her doorstep, fire inside and out.

"So do you," he said.

She shook her head. "I got old." Then, true to her reporting nature, she went straight to the point. "What are you doing here?"

"Well," he said, stretching out the L, "UFO sightings, school gets record results, I couldn't resist. What about you?"

"The same," she replied, barely able to contain a grin. Then she sobered up. "I thought you'd died. I waited for you and you didn't come back and I thought you must have died."

His gaze hardened.

"I lived. Everyone else died."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Everyone died, Sarah."

She shook her head as she regarded him. So much different than his ninth incarnation. What had saved him?

"I can't believe it's you."

A scream split the air. Her eyes lit up.

"Okay, now I can," she said, exhilarated by the idea of a new adventure.

A blonde girl ran up to the Doctor, a little panicked. She had been working in the kitchens! Sarah Jane frowned. She didn't doubt that the Doctor had taken many companions since herself, but it still hurt to come face to face.

"Did you hear that?" Her brown eyes found Sarah Jane. "Who's she?"

"Rose, Sarah Jane. Sarah Jane, Rose," said the Doctor, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

"Hi. Nice to meet you," she said to Rose. "You can tell you're getting older. Your assistants are getting younger."

Rose flared up at the word assistant. Sarah Jane barely concealed a smirk. A little voice in the back of her head told her not to act like a child, but she silenced it.

"I'm not his assistant!" she said indignantly.

"No?" Sarah Jane asked teasingly. "Get you, tiger."

They ran in the direction of the scream. Sarah Jane desperately hoped it wasn't one of the children, but as it happened, she didn't have anything to worry about. The man—well, boy, really—who had screamed was about Rose's age, and definitely didn't look like he could have made that noise.

"Sorry! Sorry, it was only me,' he said, having the good grace to look sheepish. "You told me to investigate, so I started looking through some of those cupboards and all those fell on me."

Rose knelt down and scooped one of the bags up, brow furrowed.

"Oh my God, they're rats. Dozens of rats. Vacuum packed rats."

The Doctor smirked at the boy, who glared back. Sarah Jane looked suspiciously between him and Rose, beginning to piece together the puzzle. Well, he was getting younger each regeneration…

"And you decided to scream," he said.

"It took me by surprise!" he protested.

"Like a little girl," said the Doctor, continuing as if he hadn't heard him.

"It was dark! I was covered in rats!"

"Nine, maybe ten years old. I'm seeing pigtails, frilly skirt."

Rose rolled her eyes.

"Hello, can we focus? Does anyone notice anything strange about this? Rats in school?"

Sarah Jane, of course, saw nothing wrong with it. She and several other students had staged a sit-in when she was seventeen to protest using dead rats in experiments.

"Well, obviously, they use them in Biology lessons. They dissect them." Sensing an opportunity, she kept going. "Or, maybe, you haven't reached that bit yet. How old are you?"

To her credit, Rose didn't even bat an eyelash. "Excuse me, no one dissects rats in school anymore. They haven't done that in years. Where are you from, the dark ages?"

Before Sarah Jane could formulate a response to the admittedly clever insult, the Doctor intervened, a little flustered.

"Anyway, moving on. Everything started when Mr. Finch arrived. We should go and check his office."

Sarah Jane took the lead, seeing as she was the only one who had ever entered it before. Rose fell into step beside her.

"I don't mean to be rude or anything," she said, in a tone that certainly sounded like she meant the opposite, "but who exactly are you?"

"Sarah Jane Smith. I used to travel with the Doctor."

"Oh," Rose said. Something flashed in her eyes. Disappointment? Anger? Surprise? "Well, he's never mentioned you."

Not even once? It was one thing to be left behind, but swept under the couch like a forgotten doll you used to love but never played with much anymore? It had been a long time, but Sarah Jane refused to believe that he had never even said her name.

"Oh, I must've done. Sarah Jane. Mention her all the time," he said, a little too hastily for her to believe him.

"Hold on," said Rose, pretending to think about it. "Sorry. Never."

"What, not even once?" Sarah Jane asked, addressing Rose rather than turning back to the Doctor. "He didn't mention me even once?"

It hurt, even all these years later. What was the point to traveling with him if she was never even remembered by the Time Lord? He never thought about their time together? Or had he not wanted to tell his new companion that she wasn't the first, nor would she be the last?

Sarah Jane pointedly ignored him the rest of the walk down to the Headmaster's office. He didn't attempt to say anything—apparently this Doctor had learned a thing or two about when to keep his mouth shut, something none of his other regenerations had quite managed. Then again, she'd only been around him for a few minutes. There was more than enough time for him to slip up.

He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and used it on the lock. The door swung open with a creak.

"Maybe the rats were food," he mused aloud.

"Food for what?" asked Rose.

The Doctor stepped partially into the office. The others followed a little more cautiously.

"Rose? You know how you used to think all the teachers slept in school? Well, they do."

Thirteen large, bat-like creatures hung upside from the ceiling. Sarah Jane did a few quick calculations. Seven new teachers, four lunch ladies and a nurse, all hired by Finch. But where was the headmaster?

"No way," the boy croaked.

He turned on his heel and sprinted out of the building at top speed. Sarah Jane let a small puff of air escape her lips. Even Harry at his worst wouldn't have run that soon in an adventure. She, the Doctor and Rose followed him a little more calmly.

"I'm not going back in there. No way," he said, panting.

"Those were teachers," Rose said, apparently having reached the same conclusion that Sarah Jane had.

That bothered her more than she cared to admit.

"When Finch arrived, he brought with him seven new teachers, four lunch ladies and a nurse. Thirteen. Thirteen big bat people. Come on."

"Come on? You've got to be kidding."

Sarah Jane recognized the furious denial that so many people reacted with when faced with something that didn't line up with what they knew about the world.

"I need the TARDIS. I've got to analyze that oil from the kitchen."

"I might be able to help you there," she said, a smile spreading across her face. "I've got something to show you."

Without even checking to see if they were following her, Sarah Jane led the way to her car. She'd thought she'd been mad, carrying K9 around all that time, but she never knew when the opportunity to fix him would arise.

She pulled open the trunk, grinning at the positively delighted expression on the Doctor's face.

"K9! Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, allow me to introduce K9. Well, K9 Mark III to be precise."

"Why does he look so disco?" asked Rose, wrinkling her nose.

Sarah Jane swallowed the disdainful look she'd been about to throw the girl's way.

"Oi!" the Doctor said defensively. "Listen, in the year five thousand, this was cutting edge. What's happened to him?"

She shrugged. "Oh, one day he just…nothing."

She'd panicked, same as any other concerned pet owner, and attempted to fix him, but she had no way of knowing how the parts worked. UNIT had other things to do with their time then fix robot dogs.

"Well, didn't you try to get him repaired?" he asked, almost word for word what his previous regeneration had asked.

"Well, it's not like getting parts for a Mini Metro. Besides, the technology inside him could rewrite human science. I couldn't show him to anyone!"

"Ooh, what's the nasty lady done to you, hmm?"

"Look, no offence," Rose said impatiently, "but could you two just stop petting for a minute? Never mind the tin dog. We're busy."

Sarah Jane helped the Doctor lug K9 out of her trunk and to the small café across the street. It was a longer walk than it should have been, but 'cutting edge technology' was heavy stuff.

"How have you been?" she asked.

Mickey and Rose had gone ahead, presumably to order chips.

"Brilliant!" he said. "I quite like this face."

"You're not the only one," she muttered under her breath.

He pretended to not have heard.

"And you?"

"Oh, the past twenty-three years have been a breeze," she said, punctuating the twenty-three.

He didn't look at her. "I'm sorry."

She softened instantly. "It's nothing."

Sarah Jane opened the door for him and the two made their way inside, ignoring the curious glances that K9 drew. She settled herself down at the table and watched him work.

"I thought about you on Christmas Day. This Christmas just gone? Great big spaceship overhead? I thought, oh yeah, he's up there."

"Right on top of it, yeah," he said, reconnecting a wire that she hadn't noticed was out of place.

"And…Rose?" she asked slowly, telling herself it didn't matter.

"She was there, too," he said.

He chewed on the inside of his lip as he considered K9, head cocked to the side like a curious dog.

"Did I do something wrong, because you never came back for me." she asked, finally having a chance to ask the question that had been nagging at her for twenty-three years. "You just dumped me."

"I told you. I was called home, and in those days, humans weren't allowed."

His voice warbled a little on the word home. She frowned. Nothing had prevented him from coming to get her directly after the trouble finished.

"I waited for you. I missed you."

"Oh, you didn't need me."

Her frown deepened.

"You were getting on with your life."

"You were my life. You know what the most difficult thing was? Coping with what happens next, or with what doesn't happen next. You took me to the furthest reaches of the galaxy, you showed me supernovas, intergalactic battles, and then you just dropped me back on Earth. How could anything compare to that?" she asked, her voice rising a notch.

She'd been sitting on that retort for so many years, going over it in her head whenever he crossed her mind, perfecting it. For someone who loved words as much as she did, it was important that she got every one right.

"All those things you saw, do you want me to apologize for that?" he asked.

"No, but we get a taste of that splendor and then we have to go back."

For the first time, she felt bad for Rose. The poor girl had no idea what was coming for her. If her instincts were right, she and the Doctor were far more than just companions. It would be a thousand times worse. She was vouching for Rose.

"Look at you, you're investigating. You found that school. You're doing what we always did."

"You could have come back."

"I couldn't."

"Why not?"

Silence. He resumed his tinkering with K9, avoiding her gaze. She settled back into the chair, observing him in a new light. He'd never kept things from her before.

"It wasn't Croydon. Where you dropped me off? It wasn't Croydon."

She'd been waiting for years to comment on his piloting skills.

"Where was it?"

"Aberdeen."

"Right. That's next to Croydon, isn't it?"

She gave him a look that said quite clearly 'You need to brush up on your map skills, Time Lord.' K9 came back to life, saving him from having to respond.

"Oh hey, now we're in business."

"Master," K9 said.

"He recognizes me!" the Doctor said, drawing a few strange glances from the other café patrons.

"Affirmative."

"Rose, give us the oil," he said.

The girl walked over from the counter and handed him a test tube filled with a thick, yellow oil. Sarah Jane wrinkled her nose.

"I wouldn't touch it, though," Rose advised. "The dinner lady got all scorched."

"I'm no dinner lady," said the Doctor. He paused, and considered the statement. "And I don't often say that."

He unscrewed the top of the container and stuck his finger inside. Sarah Jane watched carefully, in case he was about to start screaming about burns. Thankfully, it didn't appear to be toxic to Time Lords. He smeared it on K9's probe.

"Oil. Ex ex ex extract. Ana ana analysing."

Sarah Jane grinned. It was nice to see something familiar from her travels with the Doctor.

"Listen to him, man. That's a voice," Mickey said.

"Careful, that's my dog," she reprimanded lightly.

"Confirmation of analysis. Substance is Krillitane Oil."

"They're Krillitanes," breathed the Doctor.

"Is that bad?" asked Rose.

It certainly wouldn't surprise Sarah Jane if it was.

"Very. Think of how bad things could possibly be, and add another suitcase full of bad."

"And what are Krillitanes?"asked Sarah Jane.

"They're a composite race. Just like your culture is a mixture of traditions from all sorts of countries, people you've invaded or have been invaded by. You've got bits of Viking, bits of France, bits of whatever. The Krillitanes are the same. An amalgam of the races they've conquered. But they take physical aspects as well. They cherry pick the best bits from the people they destroy. That's why I didn't recognize them. The last time I saw Krillitanes, they looked just like us except they had really long necks," he explained, throwing in a human reference for good measure.

Sarah Jane nodded along.

"What are they doing here?" asked Rose.

"It's the children," he said grimly. "They're doing something to the children."

Rose and the Doctor stayed behind to finish up the chips, and Sarah Jane and Mickey made their way back to Sarah Jane's car, carrying K9 between them.

"So you and Rose…?" she asked.

He shook his head. "We…well, my truck can't travel through time."

She laughed, and he grinned.

"S'alright, though. He's a decent bloke." His face grew stormy. "I thought he was, anyway."

"Oh, me?" she asked. "We never—er—he looked much older than me when we traveled together and he never, er, we never had an interest in…"

Mickey nodded. "And he just up and left you?"

"He had to," she said.

Mickey didn't look as if he believed her, but he let the subject drop as they reached the car.

"So what's the deal with the tin dog?"

"The Doctor likes travelling with an entourage. Sometimes they're humans, sometimes they're aliens, and sometimes they're tin dogs. What about you? Where do you fit in the picture?"

She couldn't imagine that he stuck around in the hopes that Rose would change her mind. Even she, a near stranger to this Doctor and a complete one to Rose could see.

"Me? I'm their Man in Havana. I'm the technical support. I'm-Oh, my God. I'm the tin dog."

Sarah Jane repressed a smile at the annoyed expression on the boy's face.

Poor Mickey. Sarah Jane's taken a liking to him, goodness knows why, but that's how it turned out so that's what you've got. . She clearly isn't a big fan of Rose, but she does feel bad for her, knowing what's coming. Thankfully, she's going to start acting like the adult she is, soon. Thanks for reading! Please review.