==== ==== Harry Sullivan ==== ====

On the same day wandered through the corridors at UNIT HQ a man in his early Thirties, dressed in a navy blue buttoned jacket and light grey trousers, with an overall very well-groomed appearance. He had curly, dark brown hair, but unlike the Doctor's, his was a lot shorter and saw a brush regularly, which made it effectively less curly. That dapper gentleman was Harry Sullivan, a Royal Navy Surgeon-Lieutenant, who had been working for UNIT for a considerable amount of time now.

He had just been called back from the Space Defence Station in Devesham to meet the Brigadier and an old friend of his at the headquarters. There was not much his superior had told him on the phone, yet the most important thing he had gathered was that Sarah Jane and the Doctor had found a bit of time to stop by on Earth again – an occurrence which happened less frequently than one would expect of a bunch of time travellers. But Harry knew how it was, since he had been a part of the team once. When he had finally returned from his trip to thirty-thousand years in the future, a whole year had passed on Earth in his absence. A simple 'Yes' to the Doctor, and he could have continued down this path, to explore and to experience things beyond most people's imagination – but Harry did not consider himself the right kind of person to live so dangerously, especially with the eternal uncertainty whether they would return home or not. He liked to have some regularity in his life. Working for UNIT alone could be quite exciting in its own right, without the additional alien monsters and confusion in time, and at least they let him go home after closing time.

Something else the Brigadier had told him during his call was that something bad was brewing. What exactly, he had not been able to explain to him in the short amount of time available, but it most certainly had something to do with the medical officer's far-travelled friends. 'Of course it would.', Harry had thought to himself. 'Where there's the Doctor, trouble's never far.' Whether the trouble followed him or he was following the trouble, either of which could apply.

Harry took a turn on his way to the Brigadier's office and politely greeted a soldier passing him by. Although he knew that he was far too late to make it to the meeting, he had to start somewhere. More specifically, he had to ask his superior what was really going on. As he walked past the corner, he noticed a woman standing in front of the office door, who was looking the other way and apparently waiting for someone. She wore a green military jacket on top of a jumper and a pair of heavy soldier's boots on her feet, which were clearly two sizes too big for her. The mud covered edges of her trousers and unkempt hair made it seem like she had been fighting wet grass and cold winds for some time before someone had finally brought her into the warmth of a house. Even so, Harry recognized her immediately.

"Hello, old girl!", he greeted Sarah as he approached the door she was standing in front of. A feeling of gladness swept his body just knowing it was her. He had missed her a little, like he always had when she was away. She was wonderful company; despite her young age full of stories to tell, and he admired her readiness of mind, as did so many others who had met her. Only knowing that the Doctor kept an eye on her – and she on him for that matter – helped Harry not to miss her as much.

She jerked her head around, startled by the sound of his voice, and the officer's eyes met hers. Her expression showed not only the joyful surprise to see him, but also something else… something sadder he had not quite figured out yet.
"Harry!", she called his name and came running towards him. "Oh, am I glad to see you!"

It was not simply a common phrase that she uttered. Before he had found the words to reply something, she gave him a tight hug. Only then the medical officer finally understood what that other notion was which he had discovered in her gaze. It was like a part of her emotions had just washed over his mind. "What's happened, Sarah? You seem a little distressed…", the medical officer asked. His smile was accompanied by a confused, worried frown while he returned the gesture.

Sarah stepped back to look into his face again and sighed heavily. "The Doctor and his TARDIS were just taken captive by his arch enemy… he left me stranded on the French coast. The consequences could be disastrous; We have to find them!", she explained as quickly as she could, but a little too quick for Harry's taste.

"His arch enemy?", he looked at her wide-eyed. The Doctor had never mentioned one in front of him, so he was left guessing. "… You mean the creator of the Daleks...?"

Whatever he had done now, he had no idea, but Sarah rolled her eyes at him, annoyed. "You still haven't looked into the Doctor's old UNIT files, have you?"

Obviously, he had not. "Uhm..." Harry tried to think of an excuse, but failed to come up with something plausible in the time she gave him before she just continued.

"I'm speaking of the Master, Harry! He's a Time Lord, too, but unlike the Doctor, he's downright evil. Mad, you would say!" The pretty woman was getting quite upset as she spoke. Just the thought of the man seemed to cause some of her distress. "You see, he's tried to destroy both the Earth and the Doctor several times already. And that's not all! Apparently, he wants to control as much of the universe as he can."

"Isn't there an intergalactic police force of some kind to deal with these cases? I mean, the Time Lords can't expect the Doctor to clean up the messes their criminals cause on top of everything, can they...?", suggested Harry after a moment of thinking.

Sarah blinked at him surprised. "That's actually a good question...", she just replied. "Anyway… The Doctor and I, we foiled one of the Master's plans on this faraway planet, but due to our involvement, the Master was also severely wounded. For some reason, he cannot regenerate and is now stuck in this... horrible state..." By the look of her face and her hesitation, she wanted to give a more detailed description, but could not do it. It was too horrible for her to find the right words. "He forced us to crash-land on Earth and then invaded the TARDIS to have his revenge on the Doctor..."

As she stopped talking, Harry noticed her staring into space. It had happened from one moment to another as though a memory had taken hold of her world of thought. The medical officer waved a hand in front of her eyes to help her snap out of it. "So he dropped you off to make sure you cannot interfere?"

She blinked disoriented, but quickly found his face to look at again. "… He said something about death being too good for the Doctor, and something about leaving him impaired." And something about the implications were disturbing enough to cause her to avert her gaze yet again.

"Sounds like the Master is a nasty piece of work...", stated Harry and frowned at her worriedly. Slowly, he began to understand what kind of situation she had escaped from. It was little surprising that she would be seeking the help of UNIT. They could not just let this Master torture their friend. It was their obligation to safe him from it now, just like he had saved them from harm and suffering so many times before! But how? "...What do you suppose he will do to the Doctor?"

"I think he wants him to suffer through the same agony as he has. Whether that's emotional, or physical… Actually, I don't want to imagine it. I just want him safe.", admitted Sarah without lifting her gaze off the floor.

Harry felt awkward not knowing what to say right away. For a moment, he could have stared at the old coffee stain on the floor tiles with her. She had said that the two Time Lords had vanished together with the time machine… and where would that end them up, then? If he could have, he would have taken her and they would have driven together after them immediately… but like this, it was not possible. Not as easily, anyway. As the medical officer glanced at her face, her eyes half-hidden behind a few loose strands of hair because she was holding her head so low, the sympathy inside of him forbid it to say anything but words of optimism and hope. "Well..", Harry dragged out the word and chuckled sheepishly, "… he spent more time in deep water than a trawler. Presumably, he will make it back onto dry land this time as well – and then he'll laugh at our crude attempts of saving him."

Eventually, Sarah looked back up. On her lips was a weak smile, not entirely convinced, but better than nothing. "There is one hope...", she revealed to him, "The Doctor said that the TARDIS was too damaged to make it far. I believe he wanted to tell me that the Master would not be able to leave the planet with him."

"Oh… so… we know where they are, then? Somewhere on this planet…?" Only once he had spoken it, Harry noticed that this information improved the situation only marginally. The Earth was still… pretty large.

"I've already discussed the matter with the Brigadier, and we will give our best efforts to find him, anyway.", continued the time travelling woman. "Actually, he's given me an office room I can use to read through archive records. You know, to find out whether the TARDIS has landed somewhere in the past…?"

"Ah yes, the past. Good thinking.", nodded Harry. His friend had most certainly gotten more used to thinking in 'the fourth dimension' as he had. Once he had processed what she was about to do, he figured he could at least offer a helping hand. "You don't need someone to carry boxes and push furniture, do you?"

Finally, Sarah smiled a little wider at him. "Not necessarily, but you can still come along if you like." She cocked her head teasingly. "My office's barely wider than a broom closet, but it's got a window."

"A window! That's more than I can say for mine!", chuckled Harry.

She turned to walk away, but waved for him to follow. "Come, I show you."

But just as Harry meant to do that, the door to the Brigadier's office opened behind him, and his superior stepped out.
"Ah, Sullivan! There you are at last! What kept you?"

Puzzled, the medical officer glanced back and forth between the two. He would have favoured to go with Sarah, but now that he had been discovered, he had to respond to his duties. His sense of responsibility forbid him otherwise. "Brigadier! I, uhm..", he stammered.

"Never mind. Come into my office. I have important matters to discuss with you.", the Brigadier cut him off. His attitude and strict tone of voice demanded respect, and so Harry turned to Sarah with a helpless shrug.

"Sorry, old girl. I'll find you later, promised."

He really should have expected that the Brigadier had not merely called him in to meet Sarah. His superior's rank was too important to allow him the reassignment of subordinates for reasons as trivial to the military as friendship. The Brigadier enlisted Harry to help with the search party in Northern France and so, before the Royal Navy officer had a chance to protest, he found himself sitting in a helicopter, unable to keep his promise to Sarah. At least not within the same day.

Eventually, two days later, Harry found his way back to the HQ again, but the circumstances under which he met Sarah this time were not as pleasing as the one before. Not only had his search party failed to find any other trace of the TARDIS except a single sighting of its departure in Northern France, but he had to discover on his return that his poor girl had been working in the meantime without a break, without sleep and without any self-regard.

She sat in her new, broom-closet-wide office over stacks of newspapers and UNIT files, with dark shadows underneath her tired eyes and had greeted her friend with a smile so feeble it could have fallen apart at the first wrong word. Although she was still working like a mad woman, her drowsiness made it impossible for her to accomplish anything by the time he had arrived. That, Harry had found out by simply looking through some of her 'work' – all of her newspaper clippings that were so completely irrelevant to the case and yet her sleepy mind had seen some connection to the Doctor in them that was clearly not there.

"Listen, old girl, you shouldn't work yourself to perdition... It's not what the Doctor would have wanted.", Harry tried to tell her. He had always known her to be someone who could become very devoted to a cause, but this was going too far. This time, he had to intervene. "Why do you continue?", Harry asked her sympathetically. "Would it be of any use if I ordered you to rest?"

Tired, and rather unwilling to answer, Sarah supported her head with an arm that was propped on the desk. The light from the setting sun shining in through the window and the exposed light bulb dangling over her head put her face into a strange, gloomy light. "I can't rest, Harry. It's just that..." She took a deep breath as her eyes threatened to fall shut and then tried again. "It's that, I just can't. The Doctor's in grave danger and..."

It was very obvious to the medical officer that she had trouble to form a coherent thought, but it was not difficult to guess where her sentence was going. "So? He has been in grave danger plenty of times. With us; Without us. You know he'll manage." As she sighed in lack of a response, he made an addition. "You ought to know that better than most. Better than me, certainly."

"But, I..."

Harry cut into her sentence before he had to listen to another half-hearted argument. "You, my dear thing, need sleep, and quite a lot of it, too, by the look of you." By now, he could feel distinctly that there was something she was not telling him. It was illogical for her not to agree to the things already he had told her.

"I can't sleep, Harry.", she then finally admitted and sighed once more "Every time I try to close my eyes, I see them… I hear him scream, the Master laughing, and the TARDIS' vanishing..." Looking at her with both great concern and pity in his eyes, Harry watched as she pressed both of her palms onto her eyes, which – no doubt – must have been hurting from staring at black and white texts for so long. Sarah took a shivering breath. "If only I could have done something..!"

"Sarah, it's all right. I'm sure you did all you could." He quickly laid an arm around her shoulder to comfort her before she was crumbling to the image in her mind altogether. Right now, he was a lot more aware of what sleep deprivation had already done to her than she was. No wonder everything seemed twice as horrible. "Besides, it's just a memory now, it's not the present.", Harry reminded her and sought the look into her eyes to regain her attention. "Here, I'll tell you something. Remember when I stopped travelling with the two of you? I was abducted by Zygons before, right? They used me as a body print and one of them posed as me..."

Finally, Sarah looked back up to listen to him. She nodded slowly, because she remembered, and Harry continued.

"I had night terrors for weeks afterwards. Counted all the sheep twice and still couldn't sleep a bit.", he admitted to her. Out of all the horrible foes he had faced, it was the Zygons which had haunted him the most. Daleks and Cybermen; those were at least metal, and the Wirrn stopped being scary anyone after he had dissected one, but slimy underwater creatures with fangs and suckers… No, thank you very much! He'd rather take his chances with the death ray. "I ended up looking just like you at one point."

"Is that true?"

Harry nodded. In her current state of mind, she might have believed anything, but, good friend that he was, he had no intention or need to take advantage of it. "Listen, I'll prescribe you a homoeopathic barbiturate. It's harmless for your health and will give you a dreamless sleep."

A light smile played about Sarah's lips, but then she pressed a hand against her forehead as if to stifle a headache.

"Uh, I'm craving for a night's worth of sleep…!", the young woman exclaimed.

"Well, there's no time like the present as they say." He offered her his elbow, so she could link her arm into his for support. "Here, let me escort you to the sick bay." Thankfully, she accepted his offer without questions and allowed him to find a comfortable place for her to lie down and to drift into sleep undisturbed. The medical officer waited a full hour nearby until he was completely certain that she was sleeping tightly before he, too, headed home.

However, he did so only with an uneasy feeling in his stomach. If she would be scared awake by a night terror, despite his best attempts, he knew he would not forgive himself for it. He might have stayed at UNIT for her sake, but Harry knew that nothing good would come out of it if he, too, began to work overtime. The only way to show Sarah not to worry was to take things a little less serious than she did. It was something he had realized in the long hour he had watched over her sleep...