| Sep. 1st, 2009 @ 01:09 pm [doctor who] from School Reunion |
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The Doctor watched, from a shadowed distance, as the door opened. As Sarah stepped through. In a way - in a lot of ways - he couldn't help it. Late at night, breaking into a school of mysterious happenings, poking in corners all alone just as...just as she always had, that permanent, competent, investigative curiosity that was so much a part of who she was, just as he remembered her being.
He could no more have stopped himself than he could have told gravity to buzz off in mid-fall from a height. It was so rare, so terribly rare, to have so much joy. Sarah Jane was still there. Always, and ever, exactly herself - one of the best companions he'd ever traveled with. Not something he could say about many of them, really. Traveling with him usually changed them, but Sarah was one of a very few cases where traveling in the Tardis had intensified, rather than diversified, her basic nature.
The bright fierce joy faded a bit as he watched her backing out of the closet he'd hid the Tardis in, as if the dangers of the rest of the school were suddenly insignificant. The Doctor understood it, that shock, but it still stung a bit. Was it fear? Anger? It had been such a long time - far longer for himself than her, but still...
She saved him the trouble. She turned...saw him. And this time, she knew him. He took in the wide eyed shock, the frozen stance, and it was such an effort to say it. "Hello, Sarah Jane." Just that, just hello, because anything else - everything he ought to say, ask - would have taken years, and...and he'd promised to come back for her, hadn't he, all those years ago, and...
...and 'a little late' would be so very much an understatement. Oh dear.
But - for now at least - his reactions seemed to be ahead of hers. "It's you," she breathed (that tone, so familiar, she'd said that a few times before, just that way) the human babble of shock, surprise, recognition, knowing. Only Sarah Jane would say 'you've regenerated' that way. The Brigadier had always been so much more gruff... "You look...incredible."
"So do you," the Doctor replied gently, because it was the truth. And because elaborating on it would have taken novels of babble and the moment would be lost.
She didn't understand, though. A little shake of her head, and "I got old," as if that mattered. Why would it matter? How could it matter? She was still Sarah Jane, breaking into buildings, creeping around schools at night, investigating, learning, reporting. And thinking, clearly, as the delight faded from her face and she asked, "What are you doing here?"
The Doctor gave her what he had, the business about UFO sightings and test results, letting the babble answer the obvious inflection of the question, but the lightly sheepish stance told her the answer to the other half of the question - no, I didn't come here for you. But it was something she could believe, either way, and something she could understand, though just as clearly it was an understanding that stung a bit. Diverting that avenue, he asked the obvious in return: "What about you?"
"Same," she admitted, and that also held worlds, so many worlds of connotation. Shared understanding, shared connection, a momentary smile for all the old adventures - and then the dam burst. "I thought you'd died. I waited for you and you didn't come back and I thought you must have died!"
He had, actually. Several times over. But that wasn't what she meant, and it wasn't an excuse, and it was a brief (very brief) wish that she'd never seen the Tardis in that closet, because she didn't need old wounds reopening like this. Neither, for that matter, did he. "I lived...everyone else died," he said, and it was nowhere near enough explanation.
"What do you mean?" asked Sarah, but all the millions and billions, they weren't people she knew...
"Everyone died, Sarah," he repeated quietly, and it wasn't an explanation and it wasn't much of an excuse, but it had the benefit of being the truth.
And...she did know him quite well, really. She shook her head - he could see her filing it under 'things to ask about later' - and visibly shifted emotional gears, willing to just be happy to see him. "I can't believe it's really you -"
Mickey's scream echoed down the corridor, and Sarah Jane's grin might well have been unadulterated relief. "Now I can!" she said, and the pair of them ran to go see what the trouble was.
Just like old times. |
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muse-pwned. again.![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
amused
