"Why not?", Sarah demanded to know, perplexed by this change of mind.
Although the Doctor looked at Sarah with his head cocked at an angle, his haunting stare made her feel quite uncomfortable. "Because I…", he paused for a moment before he rushed his words again, "Have you considered that, maybe, I don't want these memories?"
While Sarah stared back at him dumbfounded, Harry took it with a bit of humour. "Don't be ridiculous, Doctor; They're yours, after all!", the medical officer said to the older man.
"After everything I've heard from you about this Doctor fellow, I believe I have an awful lot to live up to.", argued the Doctor. "Saving worlds, travelling through time, deciding over life and death of entire alien species… Those are pretty big tasks..."
Sarah shook her head vehemently. "And you have a natural talent for them, there's nothing to fear!", she replied. His sudden reluctance seemed rather illogical to her, but she could only assume it was the still human part of his mind that had taken over again. "In fact, we're saving good old Britain right now, aren't we?"
"From an invasion by the mirror people, that is, I suppose.", added Harry with a light-hearted smile on his face.
The Doctor pondered about their counter-arguments for a little while. "Yes, well… See, that's what I find so hard to believe. That doesn't sound like me, like, something I would do.", he replied eventually. Although he seemed daunted by his own true identity, he tried to plead his case in front of his friends. "Maybe I help old grannies cross the street on occasion, but I've never saved a single man's life. I don't even know who that hero of yours is – for all I know, he might be a very different man!"
"Oh no, he isn't.", chuckled Harry. His response was so quick that it had almost cut into the Doctor's words. "You're every bit as stubborn and unpredictable."
"Not to mention compassionate and clever. Oh! And silly at times, of course! You still owe me one for that prank you pulled on Halloween, by the way!", added Sarah, along with a smile of her own. She couldn't tell exactly why, but she felt that Harry was onto something. "Maybe your view of the world was narrowed down a lot, but that didn't stop you from trying to expand it again, did it?", she argued confidently. Would he not find it strange, if he looked back at his false past life, that he never had the urge to travel before?
The Doctor blinked at the two of them perplexed. He had to acknowledge by the way his friends were speaking to him that nothing had ever really changed for them. They were describing him so bluntly, knowing him so well… Much better than someone should who had only known him for about a month or two. And he knew them, too, deep down. He did not want to miss Sarah at his side, and would willingly place his life in Harry's hands, although the man was supposed to be a half a stranger to him.
"Maybe we've put it the wrong way this whole time...", Harry chimed in again to suggest an alternative phrasing. "I suppose you wouldn't think of yourself as a hero. But, you're a traveller, and your moral code forbids you to walk past people's misery. The rest plays out it by itself, I imagine." He gave another shrug and then passed over to Sarah.
"That's it, exactly! Thanks, Harry.", she nodded at the medical officer. Maybe they had indeed painted a slightly different picture of the Doctor than they should have. As Sarah looked back at the tall man, confidence was sparkling in her eye and she gave him her best smile as she placed her hands on her hips. "Well! Don't expect us to walk past your misery now!"
She was not aware of the infectious property of her own smile until she saw the worries fade from the Doctor's face. He began to chuckle instead, and he turned his sight down for a moment while he shook his head at them. "I don't get why you're so loyal, but I must admit, humans are rather difficult to understand!", he said partly to himself, partly to his friends, and although he was still smiling, did not really seem aware of the words he had spoken.
Sarah raised an eyebrow at him. "...Says the Time Lord?"
The Doctor suddenly lifted his gaze again. No longer was he looking at her distrustful or sorry. "Yes, of course, who… …else?", he confirmed, but trailed off as he finally realized what he had just admitted and furrowed his brows again. "Oh. I see...", he stopped a moment to think about it some more. "Now, I still don't remember... but… I suppose I'm much further in between already than I thought I was..."
Sarah fixed in his gaze, he walked back around the console to join his friends on the other side of it again. He opened his palms to reveal the glistening bright fob watch anew and held it out to the young woman. "Here, take it! And whatever I say, don't hand it back to me.", he instructed her. "I trust your decision, Sarah." Once the watch was safely back in his assistant's hands, the Doctor stayed close, but folded his own hands behind his back, as though he didn't quite trust himself not to intervene again.
Sarah took a deep breath as she prepared herself mentally for what she was about to do. With her fingertips, she felt for the lock on the watch because the light was now too bright to still make out its details. Maybe it was her imagination, but she thought the intensity of its glow had grown even stronger yet as the watch had changed hands. While she tried to dig her fingernails into the crack between the two halves of the fob watch casing, her thoughts were still trying to figure out what she was doing exactly. Though she tried to hold her worries off, she felt them nagging at her from within her subconsciousness. If her theory about the nature and behaviour of the light had been wrong, fatally wrong, then she was about to destroy the remains of the Doctor's original identity. The watch might open, the particles escape, and the Time Lord be gone for good. He would be stuck in this mentally and physically dangerous, in-between state forever. Sarah remembered discussing with Harry the probability of the Doctor remaining human for the rest of his life, but now he was already halfway back to normal. His conflicted mind would drive him mad before the end of his time, eventually. That is, even more mad than he already was.
Sarah shut her eyes so she would not have to see the mesmerizing light, and prayed internally that she would not be mistaken. But even though she had the will to perform the mostly simple action, her hands failed her. Her palms were damp with the cold sweat of her anxiety, and so she struggled to get a grip on the lock tight enough to tear it open. Knowing that the Doctor's and Harry's expectations rested on her caused her to try harder, but to no avail.
"Here, Sarah... Let me try.", the medical officer's calming voice suddenly interrupted her. As Sarah dared to look, Harry offered to take the fob watch from her hands.
Since the Doctor had given the object to her specifically, and she had been the one to take the decision in the first place, she wanted to do it herself, but she could feel that this was no time to start an argument. Who opened the fob watch, or how someone did it, probably did not matter much, and so, Sarah allowed the medical officer to have the alien object. "Thank you, Harry...", she whispered to him. After all, she was glad that there was someone around who was not as nervous as she was or as conflicted as the Doctor.
Harry wiped it clean with his jacket's sleeve, before he, too, turned it a few times around until he had found its lock. As he exchanged a decisive glance and a nod with Sarah and the Doctor, she knew he had found it and was ready to put her theory to the test.
Finally, with one strong motion, Harry broke the two halves of the fob watch apart.
It cracked loudly, and, as pieces of the watch clattered to the wooden floor, the room was filled with the golden light pouring out of it, unhindered, into every direction. It swallowed the walls, the few furniture pieces and the console, and eventually even Sarah's friends. They young woman was encompassed so completely, that everything seemed to be bright and golden, and that there was no more but her and the mesmerizing light.