Fic: Turn Again (3/?)
Feb. 15th, 2009 12:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dbskylerTitle: Turn Again
Rating: PG
Characters: Sarah Jane, Ten, Maria, Luke, Clyde, Alan, the Brigadier, Harry, Capt. Magambo, Ross Jenkins, Rose
Spoilers: Turn Left (and the DW episodes referenced within it) and the first season of SJA
Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction, offered freely. Doctor Who, Sarah Jane Adventures and all characters belong to the BBC.
Summary: Sarah Jane wakes to a world where the Doctor is dead. A missing story from "Turn Left."
Warnings: Should go without saying, but let's be clear: There's character death here, folks. Not my fault; go complain to RTD. But it's all just a canon AU, so don't worry.
A/N: While there’s angst, especially in the first chapter, this story will not be an angst-fest. Promise.
Thanks toellisbelle for kindly continuing to beta. This still hasn't gotten to where my original chapter break was going to be, but it's over 2000 words so I've decided to go ahead and post anyway. I've given up on predicting how many chapters this fic will run, but I can say for sure that there will be at least two more, how's that?
(Chapter One here)
(Chapter Two here)
Sarah woke slowly, feeling a strange lethargy that wasn't a normal part of her mornings. Sleepily she cast her mind back, vaguely wondering what she'd been doing the previous night that could leave her feeling so tired. When she remembered, the sudden rush of adrenaline was enough to chase the last trace of sedative from her system.
She sat straight up in the bed. She was in her own bedroom and Harry was sitting in a chair nearby, putting down a book. She gave him her most severe glare. "You drugged me."
"Yes," he agreed. He nonchalantly reached across her bed to check her pulse.
"Why did you drug me?"
"Because I needed to," he replied.
She gave him another glare, but he just continued to hold her wrist and look at his watch, timing beats. So she pulled her wrist away.
"Ah, well," said Harry. "From the way you're acting, I suspect that your pulse is just fine." He stretched, then rose from the chair. "Luke's gone out somewhere I'm afraid, but I promised to call him to say how you're doing. Better yet, you might want to call him yourself," and he smiled. "I'll wait downstairs while you get dressed, then you can tell me if I'm invited for breakfast or not. If a metal dog shows up and shoots me instead, I'll assume the answer was no." He left the room.
Sarah pursed her lips, thinking that setting K-9 on him shouldn't be quite the tempting idea that it was. But instead she got up and put on some clothes. The outfit she'd been wearing yesterday was lying on top of her chest of drawers, and she found the puzzle box still in the pocket. She drew the box out and held it in her hands, watching the glow coming through her fingers. She realized that she was indeed feeling a lot better than she had the previous night -- either she was getting used to the sensation of the world being wrong, or Harry had been correct and she really had needed the rest. Which was a very annoying thought. With renewed determination, she placed the puzzle box into her current pocket and marched down the stairs to confront him.
"I'm not going mad," she said as she joined him at her kitchen table. She noted that he had apparently taken the breakfast invitation for granted after all, as a plate of scones was laid out along with butter and jam and he was halfway through eating one.
"I never said you were," he replied, pushing the plate towards her.
"The Doctor's not supposed to be dead."
"I know." He picked up a teapot and started to pour tea into his cup.
She took the pot away from him before he could finish. "No, but really," she said.
He put his half-empty cup back down again and sighed. "I heard the whole story last night," he said. "And those teenagers are quite amazing, Sarah; UNIT needs to take lessons from you on finding and training young talent."
"This isn't about them." She tried to lock eyes with him but he looked away. "You don't believe what they told you. Well, I'm telling you the same. Are you going to say that you don't believe me, either?"
Harry continued to avoid her gaze. "Sarah, you and I saw too many strange things together for me to just not believe you," he said slowly. "It's just that . . . well, this isn't like what happened to you before. If there were a person to point to who was switched with the Doctor, that would be one thing. If nothing else, it would give us somewhere concrete to start. But there's no evidence that there’s anything amiss at all."
"I have a computer in the attic who confirms a temporal disruption."
"And who can't confirm exactly what that means."
Sarah glowered. "I can't believe you got them to tell you that."
"I didn't 'get' them to tell me anything, Sarah. They wanted to help. They're worried about you. So am I." And finally he met her eyes, the concern in his expression obvious.
She crossed her arms, annoyed. "There's no need to be. I'm fine."
"It's normal for the mind to do funny things when you're grieving a major loss. You're expecting too much of yourself. You have to give yourself time."
"Time for what? To accept that the Doctor is dead?"
"Yes," said Harry quietly.
She stared at him. Suddenly she took out the puzzle box and placed it on the table between them. Its glow was clearly visible even in the sunny kitchen.
Harry hesitated, then reached out and took it into his hands. "I don't notice any differences."
"You wouldn't," she said. "It only works if it's in your possession at the moment that time is changed."
He put the box down again. "Then I don't see what good it does to show this to me."
"It's glowing," she said.
"Lots of things glow, Sarah. I'm afraid that doesn't prove anything."
"I didn't realize that I needed to give you proof," she said. "And I seem to recall you not believing the Doctor about the TARDIS, and you know where that got you -- on a space station in the far future, besieged by a man-eating insect. Haven't you learned anything since then?"
Harry shifted and looked uncomfortable. "Look, Sarah, I want to believe you, you know that I do. It's just that . . ." he trailed off.
"You don't," she finished for him.
"There's nothing to go on here except your feelings, and I'm sorry, but you can't trust your feelings right now."
"Who says I can't?"
He took a breath. "If I prove to you that you're not functioning normally, will you at least accept the possibility that you might be wrong?”
She laughed. "Do you honestly think you're going to be able to prove to me that there's something wrong with me?"
"Not something wrong, just . . . grieving. In shock. It's normal, Sarah. Everyone understood."
She wondered where in the world he was going with this. "Everyone understood what?"
Harry leaned forward. "What day is it today?"
"What day?"
"Yes. I want you to think about this, Sarah. What's the day today? And what was the day yesterday?"
She paused. It was strange, but now that he had brought it up, she wasn't actually sure of the day. Her first impulse was to say it was June, but that didn't seem right at all. Why did she want to say June? No, it was definitely winter. Winter, and cold . . . December. Yes, she could remember it being December. Thinking about how it was almost Christmas . . .
Her eyes widened as the realization hit her. Then she buried her head in her hands. "Harry, I'm the worst mother in the world."
"Sarah, no." She felt him lay a hand on her shoulder. "It wasn't your fault. In fact, Luke told me that once they realized you'd forgotten, they conspired to make sure you didn't get reminded. Clyde kept the DVDs going for hours just so you wouldn't turn on the telly."
"It was Luke's first Christmas, and he missed it."
"Actually, he told me that he had quite a nice Christmas dinner over at the Jacksons'. Well, until you called and asked them to all come running over here."
She raised her head and frowned. "Really not helping."
"Sorry," he said awkwardly. He took his hand away again. “But do you see now why I think you shouldn't go running around interfering with everything and everyone because of some vague feeling?”
Sarah sat there, silent, then carefully she picked up the puzzle box and examined it, turning it over and over in her hands. “Yes,” she said slowly. “I do.” She looked up at him again. “But I’m still going to, you know.” It was both a challenge and a declaration.
The corners of Harry’s mouth twitched, and then he smiled. “Doesn't surprise me in the slightest.”
She found herself smiling back as their mutual understanding hung in the air between them, unsaid and never needing to be said. Then the front door banged open and Luke appeared, followed by Clyde and Maria. “You’re awake!” Luke exclaimed, and he gave her a quick embrace.
“Where’ve you been?” she asked. She grew suspicious at his expression, and she turned to regard all three of them. “What have you all been up to?”
“We asked Mr. Smith for the locations of any strange readings he’d noticed recently, anything that could indicate a temporal anomaly or inter-dimensional shift,” explained Luke. “He said there'd been two, and we went to check them out. One of them was on Christmas Eve, near where the Doctor was found. But the other one was just this morning, right around the corner from here.“
Sarah wanted to look disapproving, but she couldn't help but feel excited. “You know you shouldn't do things like that without me -- what if you'd run into something dangerous?"
"But we wanted to help," said Maria. "And we agreed that if we found anything we would come straight back here."
"And did you find anything?”
“Not when we went to look, no,” said Clyde. “But we did find something just now.”
Maria held out an envelope to her. “Someone left this for you right outside your front door.”
Sarah took the envelope and examined it. It was plain and white, the sort of envelope one could find in any stationer’s shop, and the handwriting was unfamiliar. It was addressed to Sarah Jane Smith.
She started to open it. “It’s probably something completely ordinary. Perhaps Mrs. Wainwright down the street wants to invite me over to her book club.” But her hands shook even as she said it.
She got the envelope open and looked at the note inside. It was written in the same handwriting as the envelope, on a plain sheet of paper. It said:
You need to be patient. There’s nothing you can do right now. Meet me at the park on February 1st, at noon.
The stars are going out.
R.T.
* * *
Sarah tried to be patient, but it was difficult. They had spent the rest of the day having a delayed Christmas celebration -- "second Christmas" Maria had called it, which Luke had seemed to like, although he also didn't seem bothered at all by the way they had spent his first Christmas, asking, "Isn't Christmas celebrated by spending time with friends and family, and isn't that what we did?" She'd invited Harry to stay but he'd declined, saying he had to get back to UNIT and after that back home. When he hugged her goodbye he asked her to please take care of herself, and something in his eyes made her tell him she would, even though she thought it was a silly thing to promise. Then she set about giving Luke the best Christmas she could.
The teenagers had been very curious about the note, of course, but she had managed to deflect all questions by pretending that she was just as mystified by it as they were. Maria in particular had complained about its vagueness, asking how in the world they were supposed to know which park to go to when it was finally time for the meeting. Sarah had nodded abstractly while she took the turkey out of the oven.
But she knew which park, of course. She knew.
The fact that Rose Tyler was out there somewhere -- and apparently in possession of more knowledge about the situation than Sarah had herself -- was simultaneously a comforting and worrying thought. Where was Rose now, and why hadn't she been with the Doctor when he'd been killed? Or had she been there before UNIT arrived? Why on Earth was she asking Sarah to wait five weeks for their meeting? And what was "the stars are going out" supposed to mean?
Sarah waited for February 1st. But in the meantime she did what she could. She had Mr. Smith scan for energy signatures day and night. She spent hours holding the puzzle box and staring into its glow, hoping she could learn more about the nature of the temporal disruption. When she was feeling particularly low she would call for the Trickster, demanding that he appear so she could confront him, or else trying to wheedle him with offers to take the Doctor's place. But he never answered her, and nothing else ever happened either.
Time moved on around her, the world that was wrong lurching forward as if oblivious of its wrongness. UNIT held a memorial service for the Doctor and notified all the friends of his they could find. It was a well-attended memorial; she heard that someone flew in all the way from Australia for it. The Brigadier gave the eulogy, and apparently it was very moving.
She didn't go.
She marked out the time while she waited to meet with Rose Tyler. And every night she looked up at the sky and thought about the Doctor, and counted the stars to make sure they were all still there.
---------
tbc . . .
(Chapter Four here)
Rating: PG
Characters: Sarah Jane, Ten, Maria, Luke, Clyde, Alan, the Brigadier, Harry, Capt. Magambo, Ross Jenkins, Rose
Spoilers: Turn Left (and the DW episodes referenced within it) and the first season of SJA
Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction, offered freely. Doctor Who, Sarah Jane Adventures and all characters belong to the BBC.
Summary: Sarah Jane wakes to a world where the Doctor is dead. A missing story from "Turn Left."
Warnings: Should go without saying, but let's be clear: There's character death here, folks. Not my fault; go complain to RTD. But it's all just a canon AU, so don't worry.
A/N: While there’s angst, especially in the first chapter, this story will not be an angst-fest. Promise.
Thanks to
ellisbelle for kindly continuing to beta. This still hasn't gotten to where my original chapter break was going to be, but it's over 2000 words so I've decided to go ahead and post anyway. I've given up on predicting how many chapters this fic will run, but I can say for sure that there will be at least two more, how's that?(Chapter One here)
(Chapter Two here)
Sarah woke slowly, feeling a strange lethargy that wasn't a normal part of her mornings. Sleepily she cast her mind back, vaguely wondering what she'd been doing the previous night that could leave her feeling so tired. When she remembered, the sudden rush of adrenaline was enough to chase the last trace of sedative from her system.
She sat straight up in the bed. She was in her own bedroom and Harry was sitting in a chair nearby, putting down a book. She gave him her most severe glare. "You drugged me."
"Yes," he agreed. He nonchalantly reached across her bed to check her pulse.
"Why did you drug me?"
"Because I needed to," he replied.
She gave him another glare, but he just continued to hold her wrist and look at his watch, timing beats. So she pulled her wrist away.
"Ah, well," said Harry. "From the way you're acting, I suspect that your pulse is just fine." He stretched, then rose from the chair. "Luke's gone out somewhere I'm afraid, but I promised to call him to say how you're doing. Better yet, you might want to call him yourself," and he smiled. "I'll wait downstairs while you get dressed, then you can tell me if I'm invited for breakfast or not. If a metal dog shows up and shoots me instead, I'll assume the answer was no." He left the room.
Sarah pursed her lips, thinking that setting K-9 on him shouldn't be quite the tempting idea that it was. But instead she got up and put on some clothes. The outfit she'd been wearing yesterday was lying on top of her chest of drawers, and she found the puzzle box still in the pocket. She drew the box out and held it in her hands, watching the glow coming through her fingers. She realized that she was indeed feeling a lot better than she had the previous night -- either she was getting used to the sensation of the world being wrong, or Harry had been correct and she really had needed the rest. Which was a very annoying thought. With renewed determination, she placed the puzzle box into her current pocket and marched down the stairs to confront him.
"I'm not going mad," she said as she joined him at her kitchen table. She noted that he had apparently taken the breakfast invitation for granted after all, as a plate of scones was laid out along with butter and jam and he was halfway through eating one.
"I never said you were," he replied, pushing the plate towards her.
"The Doctor's not supposed to be dead."
"I know." He picked up a teapot and started to pour tea into his cup.
She took the pot away from him before he could finish. "No, but really," she said.
He put his half-empty cup back down again and sighed. "I heard the whole story last night," he said. "And those teenagers are quite amazing, Sarah; UNIT needs to take lessons from you on finding and training young talent."
"This isn't about them." She tried to lock eyes with him but he looked away. "You don't believe what they told you. Well, I'm telling you the same. Are you going to say that you don't believe me, either?"
Harry continued to avoid her gaze. "Sarah, you and I saw too many strange things together for me to just not believe you," he said slowly. "It's just that . . . well, this isn't like what happened to you before. If there were a person to point to who was switched with the Doctor, that would be one thing. If nothing else, it would give us somewhere concrete to start. But there's no evidence that there’s anything amiss at all."
"I have a computer in the attic who confirms a temporal disruption."
"And who can't confirm exactly what that means."
Sarah glowered. "I can't believe you got them to tell you that."
"I didn't 'get' them to tell me anything, Sarah. They wanted to help. They're worried about you. So am I." And finally he met her eyes, the concern in his expression obvious.
She crossed her arms, annoyed. "There's no need to be. I'm fine."
"It's normal for the mind to do funny things when you're grieving a major loss. You're expecting too much of yourself. You have to give yourself time."
"Time for what? To accept that the Doctor is dead?"
"Yes," said Harry quietly.
She stared at him. Suddenly she took out the puzzle box and placed it on the table between them. Its glow was clearly visible even in the sunny kitchen.
Harry hesitated, then reached out and took it into his hands. "I don't notice any differences."
"You wouldn't," she said. "It only works if it's in your possession at the moment that time is changed."
He put the box down again. "Then I don't see what good it does to show this to me."
"It's glowing," she said.
"Lots of things glow, Sarah. I'm afraid that doesn't prove anything."
"I didn't realize that I needed to give you proof," she said. "And I seem to recall you not believing the Doctor about the TARDIS, and you know where that got you -- on a space station in the far future, besieged by a man-eating insect. Haven't you learned anything since then?"
Harry shifted and looked uncomfortable. "Look, Sarah, I want to believe you, you know that I do. It's just that . . ." he trailed off.
"You don't," she finished for him.
"There's nothing to go on here except your feelings, and I'm sorry, but you can't trust your feelings right now."
"Who says I can't?"
He took a breath. "If I prove to you that you're not functioning normally, will you at least accept the possibility that you might be wrong?”
She laughed. "Do you honestly think you're going to be able to prove to me that there's something wrong with me?"
"Not something wrong, just . . . grieving. In shock. It's normal, Sarah. Everyone understood."
She wondered where in the world he was going with this. "Everyone understood what?"
Harry leaned forward. "What day is it today?"
"What day?"
"Yes. I want you to think about this, Sarah. What's the day today? And what was the day yesterday?"
She paused. It was strange, but now that he had brought it up, she wasn't actually sure of the day. Her first impulse was to say it was June, but that didn't seem right at all. Why did she want to say June? No, it was definitely winter. Winter, and cold . . . December. Yes, she could remember it being December. Thinking about how it was almost Christmas . . .
Her eyes widened as the realization hit her. Then she buried her head in her hands. "Harry, I'm the worst mother in the world."
"Sarah, no." She felt him lay a hand on her shoulder. "It wasn't your fault. In fact, Luke told me that once they realized you'd forgotten, they conspired to make sure you didn't get reminded. Clyde kept the DVDs going for hours just so you wouldn't turn on the telly."
"It was Luke's first Christmas, and he missed it."
"Actually, he told me that he had quite a nice Christmas dinner over at the Jacksons'. Well, until you called and asked them to all come running over here."
She raised her head and frowned. "Really not helping."
"Sorry," he said awkwardly. He took his hand away again. “But do you see now why I think you shouldn't go running around interfering with everything and everyone because of some vague feeling?”
Sarah sat there, silent, then carefully she picked up the puzzle box and examined it, turning it over and over in her hands. “Yes,” she said slowly. “I do.” She looked up at him again. “But I’m still going to, you know.” It was both a challenge and a declaration.
The corners of Harry’s mouth twitched, and then he smiled. “Doesn't surprise me in the slightest.”
She found herself smiling back as their mutual understanding hung in the air between them, unsaid and never needing to be said. Then the front door banged open and Luke appeared, followed by Clyde and Maria. “You’re awake!” Luke exclaimed, and he gave her a quick embrace.
“Where’ve you been?” she asked. She grew suspicious at his expression, and she turned to regard all three of them. “What have you all been up to?”
“We asked Mr. Smith for the locations of any strange readings he’d noticed recently, anything that could indicate a temporal anomaly or inter-dimensional shift,” explained Luke. “He said there'd been two, and we went to check them out. One of them was on Christmas Eve, near where the Doctor was found. But the other one was just this morning, right around the corner from here.“
Sarah wanted to look disapproving, but she couldn't help but feel excited. “You know you shouldn't do things like that without me -- what if you'd run into something dangerous?"
"But we wanted to help," said Maria. "And we agreed that if we found anything we would come straight back here."
"And did you find anything?”
“Not when we went to look, no,” said Clyde. “But we did find something just now.”
Maria held out an envelope to her. “Someone left this for you right outside your front door.”
Sarah took the envelope and examined it. It was plain and white, the sort of envelope one could find in any stationer’s shop, and the handwriting was unfamiliar. It was addressed to Sarah Jane Smith.
She started to open it. “It’s probably something completely ordinary. Perhaps Mrs. Wainwright down the street wants to invite me over to her book club.” But her hands shook even as she said it.
She got the envelope open and looked at the note inside. It was written in the same handwriting as the envelope, on a plain sheet of paper. It said:
You need to be patient. There’s nothing you can do right now. Meet me at the park on February 1st, at noon.
The stars are going out.
R.T.
* * *
Sarah tried to be patient, but it was difficult. They had spent the rest of the day having a delayed Christmas celebration -- "second Christmas" Maria had called it, which Luke had seemed to like, although he also didn't seem bothered at all by the way they had spent his first Christmas, asking, "Isn't Christmas celebrated by spending time with friends and family, and isn't that what we did?" She'd invited Harry to stay but he'd declined, saying he had to get back to UNIT and after that back home. When he hugged her goodbye he asked her to please take care of herself, and something in his eyes made her tell him she would, even though she thought it was a silly thing to promise. Then she set about giving Luke the best Christmas she could.
The teenagers had been very curious about the note, of course, but she had managed to deflect all questions by pretending that she was just as mystified by it as they were. Maria in particular had complained about its vagueness, asking how in the world they were supposed to know which park to go to when it was finally time for the meeting. Sarah had nodded abstractly while she took the turkey out of the oven.
But she knew which park, of course. She knew.
The fact that Rose Tyler was out there somewhere -- and apparently in possession of more knowledge about the situation than Sarah had herself -- was simultaneously a comforting and worrying thought. Where was Rose now, and why hadn't she been with the Doctor when he'd been killed? Or had she been there before UNIT arrived? Why on Earth was she asking Sarah to wait five weeks for their meeting? And what was "the stars are going out" supposed to mean?
Sarah waited for February 1st. But in the meantime she did what she could. She had Mr. Smith scan for energy signatures day and night. She spent hours holding the puzzle box and staring into its glow, hoping she could learn more about the nature of the temporal disruption. When she was feeling particularly low she would call for the Trickster, demanding that he appear so she could confront him, or else trying to wheedle him with offers to take the Doctor's place. But he never answered her, and nothing else ever happened either.
Time moved on around her, the world that was wrong lurching forward as if oblivious of its wrongness. UNIT held a memorial service for the Doctor and notified all the friends of his they could find. It was a well-attended memorial; she heard that someone flew in all the way from Australia for it. The Brigadier gave the eulogy, and apparently it was very moving.
She didn't go.
She marked out the time while she waited to meet with Rose Tyler. And every night she looked up at the sky and thought about the Doctor, and counted the stars to make sure they were all still there.
---------
tbc . . .
(Chapter Four here)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-15 06:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-15 11:33 pm (UTC)Oh, and love the icon. : )
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-15 06:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-15 11:39 pm (UTC)Anyway, glad you're still enjoying it, and hope you continue to do so!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-15 07:52 pm (UTC)Totally worth my impatience!
I love Harry's comment about K9! He's SUCH a sweetheart...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-15 11:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-16 05:26 am (UTC)The idea of SJS setting K9 on Harry was just so funny... And I love the laconic way he says it...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-15 08:12 pm (UTC)How cryptic of Rose, and how annoying! Is she *trying* to drive Sarah insane?!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-15 11:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-15 09:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-16 12:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-16 03:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-16 06:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-18 01:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-16 03:23 pm (UTC)That said, I can't wait for more! (but I bet it'll be worth it!) ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-18 01:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-11 07:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-14 02:23 am (UTC)