Trigger warnings for this chapter: references to abuse, references to character death, references to rape.
There was stunned silence in the Bunker as the storm outside died down.
"Temporal shields holding, Mistress!" K-9 squeaked happily. "Feedback from alternate timeline fading."
"Good boy, K-9," said Sarah Jane, sounding a bit breathless.
"Do we still have control of the Valiant?" asked Luke.
"Yes, Luke," the computer answered serenely. "Estimated arrival at UNIT Headquarters in 2 hours and 7 minutes."
"I wonder what's going on up there," Santiago murmured, looking at the ceiling like he expected to be able to see the Valiant through steel walls and metres of dirt.
"Jo can handle it, whatever it is," said Clyde. "I think. Probably."
"She can," Santiago confirmed. Rani wished she had his confidence. "All of them can." Luke reached out and squeezed his hand, and, belatedly, she remembered all of Santiago's family members who hadn't shown up.
There was another long, strained silence.
"…Mum?" Luke said finally. "Does this mean we…"
"…Can get out of here!" Rani hadn't seen Sarah Jane look this happy since they'd discovered non-dehydrated actual granola bars among the Grant-Joneses' rations. Her enthusiasm was contagious; Clyde whooped and scrambled over Rani to get to the hatch. Luke and Santiago laughed while they pulled each other onto their feet and ran after him, but then Santiago tripped over K-9 (who requested sharply that he desist improper handling of the K-9 unit) and ended up stumbling into the wall and Luke shrieked and yanked his hand away to stop himself from breaking his nose on the metal door.
Sarah Jane sighed.
"Come on," she said with a smile, and Rani grinned and jumped up. They climbed up out of the trapdoor just a little bit slower than the boys; they had to stop so Sarah Jane could hand K-9 to Rani. He wiggled his ears at her, which she had learned meant he was happy, so she kissed his nose. He didn't even protest that physical gestures of affection were unnecessary, so she was pretty sure he was happy to be out of the bunker too. Maybe he'd go chase some computer mice. Or was that cats?
Sarah Jane stuck her head out of the trapdoor and looked around in wonder. "I don't believe it…"
Bannerman Road was back.
The carpet-bombed, blackened wasteland it had been reduced to by the Master was no more; everything was green and growing again outside, and they'd emerged right back in the comfortable, homey kitchen of Sarah Jane's house, which Rani hadn't been able to fully appreciate in the five seconds she'd had before diving into a bunker while aliens took over the world. It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen; warm and golden and welcoming, just a little cramped in all the right ways. It smelled like old books and sunshine, which Rani hadn't even realised until now even had a smell. The television was on in the background; a horse race of some sort, there was nothing important going on today, no First Contact, and definitely no Harold Saxon.
Sarah Jane's neighbours were probably going to think they were all crazy; Clyde had bolted out the door and was currently cheering and kissing the ground and hugging fence posts. Santiago and Luke were also getting in on the kissing and hugging, except they hadn't quite made it outside and were too busy trying to eat each others' faces to do much cheering.
"'scuse me," Rani said loudly, edging between them, "Think my mum's calling…"
She was, and Rani stopped caring about anything else the moment she saw her face. "Mum!" she cried, hugging her tightly. She pressed her face into Gita's shoulder, breathing in the smell of frankincense, sandlewood, and charcoal. She'd always hated her mum's incense—while she had nothing against inviting Lakshmi into the house, she didn't particularly want her in her clothes—but now it was the most beautiful thing she could imagine.
"Rani?" said Gita. "What's this about? You've only been gone ten minutes, you can't have been missing me already!" She looked around. "Oh, have you made friends then? Hello!" she said brightly, disentangling herself from her daughter and pulling at the newly-made creases in her churidar kameez. "I'm Gita Chandra, Rani's mum. You are…?"
"…Sarah Jane Smith," said Sarah Jane, shaking her hand after only a slight hesitation at being introduced to someone she had previously run a planetwide underground resistance with. "My son Luke and I live right across the way, I'm sure he's around somewhere."
Clyde looked up briefly from kissing the ground to wave. "Hi!" he called, "I'm Clyde Langer!"
Rani closed her eyes in exasperation.
"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you," her mum told Sarah Jane. "Rani's a big fan, we had no idea we'd run into you. Oh, and Rani, where is your dad? He's not even seen the back garden yet and I don't have the slightest idea where he ran off to."
Rani's mouth went dry. She'd known what might happen when her dad had joined the Valiant team but it hadn't sunk in yet, not really, and she hadn't considered that she'd be the one to have to tell…
"There was an… emergency," she said haltingly. "At the school." Yeah, it got blown up by a psychotic Time Lord. "He had to leave." Sarah Jane squeezed her shoulder gently.
"…Huh," said Gita. "I hope everything's alright."
"I'm sure everything will be fine," said Sarah Jane.
They had actual hot water for the first time in almost a year (35º wasn't hot, no matter what K-9 said) and they had an actual bathroom with a real actual shower with a showerhead and a drain and a curtain and there were soft towels and soap and shampoo and conditioner and Rani was sure, for a moment, that they hadn't really gotten out, that they hadn't won, that the Master had killed them and this was the afterlife or something, maybe they'd been bombed and she was in a coma…
There was an irritable knock at the door.
"Rani!" Clyde complained. "Leave some for the rest of us! It's Luke's shower, you know!"
"Not while the door's locked," she sang back, but she shut the water off anyway. She was borrowing some of Luke's clothes, as they had all been living off of about three outfits each for a year (they were lucky it was that much, thanks to Jo and her clan) and their clothes were so past saving they were embarrassing as firestarter.
"Yeah, well, you're gonna miss the muffins," Clyde informed her. "They're cool enough to eat in three minutes and going into my mouth in three minutes and two seconds, so…"
Rani lunged for her borrowed trousers. "Don't you dare!" Clyde cackled as he ran downstairs.
Rani's hair was still wet when she skidded into the kitchen two and a half minutes later, but she got there in time to smack Clyde's hand away from the first muffin with a triumphant "Ha!" and burn her tongue on a blueberry. It tasted like victory and also burnt tongue.
"Hey," Clyde complained. "I ran all the way home and back! Sarah Jane…!"
"Clyde!" Sarah Jane responded in the exact same tone of voice. "Behave," she told them both, before adding "Don't even think about it."
Rani was somewhat confused until she noticed Luke and Santiago attempting to casually slip upstairs while Sarah Jane's back was turned. Luke muttered something about conserving water and slumped back onto the sofa. Rani felt bad for him, so she threw a muffin at his head.
He turned to flip a V at her, muffin in his other hand, when the doorbell rang.
"I'll get it!" said Clyde, or at least that's what she thought he said; he was talking through a mouthful of blueberry muffin as he jumped up to answer the door. "Hel—woah."
Rani craned her neck to see who was at the door but she couldn't see over Santiago's head.
"Sarah Jane?" Clyde called uncertainly.
"Yes, Clyde?"
"…Door's for you."
"Who is it?" Sarah Jane asked as she walked in. "The Grant-Joneses can't have gotten back from UNIT already, they've… Oh," she broke off. "Doctor?"
The third time Theta aimed them for Bannerman Road, they actually made it. Not only were they at the right house on the right continent, they weren't even three thousand years in the past trying to drag Theta away from fascinating corded pottery, which was apparently more interesting than the alien cult building Stonehenge.
About bloody time.
"…Doctor?"
Donna was exasperated at that—honestly, was it that hard to call em Theta when that was obviously what ey wanted to be called?—but she was too excited to yell. She'd talked with this woman before, of course, but never face-to-face, and she'd liked her.
"Sarah Jane Smith!" she exclaimed, elbowing past Theta to hug her first.
"Donna Noble?!" She didn't need to sound quite so surprised.
"The very same. Great work on that hack, by the way. Made our jobs a whole lot easier."
"I'll remember to thank Mr Smith," said Sarah Jane, looking a bit dazed. Donna sometimes had that effect on people. Natural charm. "Doctor… Theta… ?"
"Please," said Theta with a little smile.
"Theta then," Sarah Jane said after only a momentary hesitation. "What are you doing here? I assumed you'd go with UNIT…"
Theta flinched, and Donna decided to spare em having to answer. "Oh, you know," she said carelessly. "Got the TARDIS back, grabbed the first person ey saw, swanned off to see the universe. Is there always that much running?"
"Yes," Sarah Jane and the kids said in unison.
"Got tired of the explosions, decided to pop back in and say hello." It wasn't really true, but it wasn't a lie, either. Donna was good at those.
"Well… come in, won't you?" said Sarah Jane. "Would you like a muffin?"
"I hope not," a girl whose voice sounded a lot like Rani's called from the kitchen. "Clyde just ate the last one."
Sarah Jane had a look on her face that could only be the result of a year in a bunker with four teenagers. "There were twelve of them!"
Clyde looked up, crumbs on his lips. "Sorry."
There were footsteps behind Donna as the lovebirds finally came out of the TARDIS. "Are we actually there this time?" Tish asked drily. Lucy giggled. No… Donna thought about it. No, Lucy laughed, even if it was just her way to laugh in that little trilling quiet way. She hadn't given that modest society-girl giggle in months now. Still hung on Tish's arm like a climbing pole, but it looked a lot more natural than when she'd done the same thing with Harold Saxon, affectionate rather than nervous or possessive. She kissed Tish's neck sweetly, and Tish tried to act like she didn't want to grin.
It'd taken them long enough. Seriously. With the amount of tension between them it really shouldn't have taken being captured and dangled alive over a cooking fire to get them to sort out their problems. Donna was glad they'd finally gotten through the heartfelt apologies and slow, painful "Thank you"s. Lucy's agonised, tearful acceptance of guilt for her willingness in helping the Master and confession that she felt like she would never deserve to be happy with anyone, and Tish's quiet forgiveness, had been sheer poetry.
But they had been dangling over a bloody cooking fire, and Donna had cheerfully kicked them in the face and then there had been a great deal of shouting and swearing by everyone (but mostly Donna, because she was really quite good at it) and by the time they'd all stopped yelling at each other the weird snake-dog alien people were all unconscious and Theta was sitting quietly in the corner waiting for them to realise that ey'd rescued and untied them already.
So it was nice to be back among normal people who didn't have emotional confessions of love at the worst possible times. Unfortunately, there were still some people who were seemingly incapable of having necessary conversations at the proper moment.
Theta stood there awkwardly, and Donna sighed, pushing em towards Sarah Jane gently. Ey took the hint and clasped onto her like something parasitic and absolutely adorable. Sarah Jane hesitated before putting her arms around em as well, and while Donna couldn't see eir face, ey only flinched a moment before relaxing into the embrace.
There was a flicker of uncertainty on Sarah Jane's face, replaced by sadness and then eventually a sort of unreadable peacefulness as she rested her chin on Theta's shoulder and closed her eyes.
Donna had seen photos of them together on the TARDIS, from what Theta described as "thousands of years and several lives ago"; this was like watching one of those photographs move. She was unbearably proud of Theta; in less than two months ey'd managed at least to feel mostly safe around humanoid women who weren't one of the three of them. A tiny accomplishment in the grand scope of things, but amazing on the small-scale.
Finally, they pulled apart. Theta was wearing that expression ey had where ey wanted to cry but didn't have tear ducts; Sarah Jane didn't have that problem. But they were good tears, healing tears. Donna's granddad had always said there was no shame in crying because some things were worth crying over. Donna had a strange and overpowering urge to make both of them tea and take them stargazing.
Theta wiped the tears away from Sarah Jane's eyes with the back of eir hand and they stood there for more than a minute, staring into each other's eyes like they contained the secrets of the universe. Sarah Jane rubbed an absentminded thumb over eir knuckles.
"Come inside," she said quietly.
Theta smiled and shook eir head, and Donna knew she wasn't the only one who could see the pain in eir eyes. "Just stopping by."
"No you're not," said Sarah Jane resolutely. "Come inside."
"Sarah…"
"Come inside," she repeated. "Just for a few minutes."
Theta stared at the ground for a moment before nodding and letting her lead em through the door.
"Tish Jones, isn't it?" she asked as the others filed dutifully in after Theta. Tish nodded. "And… Lucy. You look much better."
Donna was fully prepared to launch a tirade if Sarah Jane started being snide towards Lucy. Donna was very, very good at tirades. They were in fact something of a specialty. So she was rather taken aback at the genuine friendliness in Sarah Jane's voice; it was all honesty and warmth, and if there was something in her eyes that didn't quite match her voice it was concern rather than doubt. Donna felt her respect for the woman go up by several degrees.
Lucy blushed prettily, perched on the couch with her ankles lightly crossed; there were some habits that would never die. Donna suspected she would find the prim-and-proper routine a lot more irritating if she hadn't seen Lucy take out a Sontaran reinforcement shuttle with a mining laser. It was almost a charming habit when they were all like this, sitting in Sarah Jane's sun-soaked living room with Luke and Santiago serving tea "to keep them out of trouble". Not that Donna would ever tell her that, of course.
"It's the exercise," she said modestly, sipping her tea.
"So what brings you back?" asked Sarah Jane. Her voice was light, but there was grief in her eyes as she looked at Theta; ey was trying very hard to remain engaged, visibly struggling with the effort of seeming fine, but instinct and conditioning had eir eyes downcast and voice silenced.
"We have to take care of the Master's remains," Tish said.
"He's dead?"
Theta worried eir lower lip between eir teeth, giving a tiny nod.
"Oh, Theta," Sarah Jane breathed, "I'm sorry."
Ey looked up at her. "So am I," ey said.
End.
On the topic of sequels: eventually. There are some other projects I'm working on (you should check out Those Who Walk in Shadows and the WIP sequel; that 'verse is my baby), but there are definite plans for the future. Thank you all for reading, and special thanks to the few of you who were brave enough to review this monster.