Title: Not Just A Fairytale Romance
Chapter: Three
Pairing: Sarah Jane/(older)Maria
Rating: General
Chapter Summary: more revelations and a difficult request for Sarah Jane
Chapter Three
Sarah Jane stood up from the settee and paced the attic floor. She stopped and looked out of the window by the telescope.
"This doesn't make sense Maria. I can't be nearly 80 years old and expecting a child with you. Tell me the truth!" Sarah Jane turned back to look at Maria, the friend she thought she once knew. The things this future Maria was telling her seemed unbelievable. And yet, at the same time Sarah Jane felt something pull at her heart. Maria sighed deeply.
"I am telling you the truth. I guess a lot of things changed when we realised that you didn't age. You were...aren't immortal like Jack Harkness mind you. You've already begun to notice things for yourself haven't you?" Sarah Jane slowly made her way back to the settee. She nodded tentatively at Maria's question as she took up her seat.
"The fact that you've barely aged in the last decade? That you're still menstruating at the age of 60? That you only get a cold once every ten years? You were going to speak to the Doctor about it the last time you saw him, but you didn't get the chance. You get your answers one day though and that's when it all changed. Your physiology has been messed up because of all the time travel you did with the Doctor. You are growing older, just a lot slower than the rest of us."
"So what are you saying? I'm nearly eighty and I look virtually the same as I do now?" Sarah Jane furrowed her brow in thought.
"That's right. Except you have a small collection of grey hair there, there and there." Maria said as she leant forward and pointed out the places where Sarah Jane would one day have grey hairs.
"What about life-span? Will I live longer?" Some kind of emotion flashed up in Maria's eyes but it was gone before Sarah Jane could work out what it was.
"Yes, the Doctor estimated you'd get to be about 160 give or take 5 years." Sarah Jane let out a shaky breath.
"Wow, that's difficult to come to terms with. How did she, the other me, get her head around it?"
"You have me. It put our relationship in a whole new light, one in which it would be acceptable to the wider world. By that point we'd already crossed some boundaries, although very few people knew about us. Dad was talked round eventually. Luke and Clyde were surprisingly casual about it. And Mum is still a problem – don't even get me started about when she found out we were going to try for a baby!"
"So how is it possible that this child is both yours and mine? You may not have noticed, but between us we're missing a vital piece of the puzzle."
"I wanted a child, one that was both me and you. And as much as you love and adore Luke, once you found out it was still possible for you to have a child, you desperately wanted one that was biologically yours too. They've made a lot of progress with helping women to conceive in the last twenty years. There is a way of splicing two eggs together to get the right 23 pairs of chromosomes from each parent. The resulting embryo would always be female of course. It wasn't yet commercially available, but we had some friends in high places who helped us out."
"I need time to digest all of this. It's too incredible to understand."
"I'm afraid we don't have much time Sarah Jane. I need to tell you why I'm here, about the Nyladrone threat."
"Nyladrones? I've never heard of them."
"They come from the Terradon system, which you've also probably never heard of." Sarah Jane shook her head.
"They came to Earth 20 years ago seeking...something. With the assistance of Mr Smith you successfully managed to communicate with them and eventually sent them packing. However they never forgot their defeat and swore revenge on you."
"What did they want? How did we get rid of them?" Maria froze.
"I don't know, I wasn't there...I guess I didn't think that part through."
"Well if we did it without you once, then I'm sure we can do it again. What are the consequences of us being successful in turning them away?"
"From where I've come from, we're right in the middle of a war with them. They came back to destroy us. Twenty years is long time for them and they've brought bigger and better weapons along. They knew we weren't hostile, and wouldn't use weapons against them. We're losing Sarah Jane. Even Torchwood couldn't help us, the only thing Luke could do was send me back in time to here, to prevent them from returning."
"Luke sent you here?"
"He developed the technology whilst working at Torchwood."
"Torchwood? After all I've told him about working for them!"
"Actually you weren't that upset about it when he told you."
"That surprises me, but then again I'm having to get used to a lot of surprises today." Sarah Jane sat forward, her elbows on her knees and held her head in her hands. She eyed Maria suspiciously when she eventually spoke.
"Maria, are you saying that we need to fight these Nyladrone's with weapons? And are you suggesting that we're going to have to kill them?"
"I'm afraid so, there really is no other way." Sarah Jane stood up sharply.
"No, absolutely not - there's no way I'm picking up a weapon and killing these Nyladrones."
"I know it's hard to understand, and I know it goes against everything you've ever stood for - but I wouldn't be here if it wasn't necessary. Do you really think I would travel back in time knowing I was pregnant for no reason? The life of our baby isn't safe Sarah; she may never get a chance to be born. And even if she does, what kind of a life is she going to have?" Sarah Jane stared at Maria in shock. She couldn't get over the suggestion that she was going to have to use weapons against these Nyladrones. Maria ought to have known it wasn't the way she liked to do things; she had never seen the justification for it in any circumstance. She wasn't given much of a chance to think about it before their awkward silence was interrupted by the sound of a knock at the attic door.