Well, here it goes...

It's been forever since I've written anything, so if it's awful, I apologize.

This story is third-person POV of Sally Sparrow, alongside the Tenth Doctor. Ten is my Doctor, and Sparrow is amazing—she would have made an excellent companion, and I'm always a bit sad that circumstances under which she could have been one were never explored. So what do I do? Write about it. :)

Series:
1 - One Day as a Lion
2 - Sad is Happy for Deep People: /OYKjpG
3 - Life is What you Make of It: /OYKMrS

One Day as a Lion

"He's holding you back."

Sally absorbed her friend's pointed look and averted her gaze.

"He's a good man, Bea," she said.

"But you're not happy."

The cold knife of Beatrice's insight slipped through Sally's ribs and into her heart. "I can see it all over your face," Beatrice insisted.

Sally plucked a smile from somewhere deep inside her. "Thank you for your concern, but I'm perfectly happy." Beatrice loosed an exasperated sigh and dropped the topic—for now, at least.

Sally studied her coffee cup. She sipped its now-lukewarm content—two sugars, one cream. The way Larry took it. She had never really been a coffee drinker until she met him. As a night owl, he had little choice in the matter, but she knew how much he enjoyed it, too.

A familiar panic tugged at her heart. Why was she still here? In this city, this country? What was she doing—running a shop? Going home every night? Watching TV until one in the morning? Falling asleep, waking up, doing it all over again? Was this her life? Was this all there was?

She stood up suddenly, coffee cup still half full. She gave a nervous laugh in response to Beatrice's startled look, and tied back her long blonde hair. "Thanks for the coffee, Bea," she said graciously, "but I have things to do, I remembered just now. We'll have to do this again soon!"

"Certainly," Beatrice agreed as Sally retrieved her things.

She slipped on her brown wool coat and wrapped a scarf of orange, blue, and red around her neck before venturing out into a chilly afternoon on London's mucky winter streets.

She walked swiftly, allowing her feet to guide her down the sidewalks she'd traversed a million times, lost in thought. It had been three years since Sally had met her best friend Kathy's brother, Larry...and since she had lost Kathy to the Weeping Angels, and since she had met the Doctor, ever so briefly. The most exciting, terrifying, and heart-wrenching day of Sally's life...and somehow, she found herself yearning for it.

The things monotony will do to a person...

The day the Doctor met her was also the day she began her relationship with Larry—more than a year later. As the Doctor might say, the timing was somewhat 'wibbly-wobbly'—She knew him long before he knew her, and yet for 40 years, he had been laying out messages for her.

Before Sally knew it, she was ascending the stairs to her flat. She checked her mailbox—empty, to no surprise—and opened her door.

...However, to the contrary, her house was not empty. And stranger yet, she recognized its contents.

The mysterious police box she had encountered so many years earlier sat in her hallway, and as she peered into the living room, she found that was not the only familiar thing in the house.

A man—lanky, with messy brown hair, a three-piece suit and tie, a brown coat, and red sneakers—sat on her couch with her orange tabby cat in his lap. He took no note of her entrance, but continued talking to the cat.

"Now, you say you've noticed their eyes glowing?"

"Doctor?" Sally sputtered in surprise.

"Just a minute," he said dismissively before doing a double-take. His eyes narrowed in disbelief. "Sally?" he asked in surprise, "Sally Sparrow? ...Sorry—we'll have to do the 'isn't this odd' bit in a few moments, Charlie has something pressing to tell me."

Sally scoffed. "My cat. You need to talk...to my cat."

"Well, I can't exactly read his mind, now can I!?" the Doctor retorted. "Now," he continued to the large feline, "What were you saying?"

"Like I said," Charlie began as Sally stood agape, "I've noticed people with glowing eyes, not really acting themselves."

Sally burst in. "I'm sorry, just hold on..." She looked at Charlie in shock, "You can speak!?"

"Yes, of course I can!" Charlie sounded exasperated. "I thought you understood by now!"

The Doctor broke in. "The TARDIS is translating, now, please, sit down. No time to explain right now." He gestured to a chair across the room from them and turned his attention back to Charlie. "Go on."

"Yes, well, there are children down the street who no longer talk to me, and Mrs Smith hasn't given me treats for weeks now!"

"And you say it's a yellow glow?"

Charlie closed his eyes briefly—Sally presumed in ascension. "Just sometimes. I catch it out of the corner of my eye mostly."

The Doctor nodded, a pensive look on his face. "This might be the Graskes at work, but it's impossible to tell yet." He lifted Charlie off his lap and set him on the couch. "Thank you, Charlie. I'll get to the bottom of it," he said as he stood and made for the door. Sally followed suit.

"Wait," she asked, "where's your friend?"

An expression of pain crossed the Doctor's face for a moment, but it left as quickly as it came. "You mean...Martha?" he asked. "Long gone, new life now."

He turned to leave again, but this time he paused. He turned to Sally. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to lend a hand? You were brilliant last time," he said, grinning roguishly.

Sally's heart jumped into her throat and she beamed. "I would love to!" she said, breathless.

The Doctor's wide grin lit up his face. "Well then! Allons-y!"

As they walked down the quiet street in the waning daylight, the Doctor began speaking, half to Sally and half to himself. "Now, the Graskes take over a planet by abducting its populace and replacing them. They copy their victims so as not to arouse suspicion, and eventually all of their resistance is gone and they can roam freely on their newly acquired planet. To facilitate these abductions, they must have a large ship in orbit, or maybe a number of small ships and a mothership—probably cloaked—and it would have to be big enough to hold six billion pods so they can sustain their disguises. The question right now is how do we find it?"

Sally took an Android phone out of her pocket and sighed. "Too bad we couldn't reverse GPS so we could track them from the satellites..."

The Doctor stopped dead in his tracks. "Wait...Wait, yes! The phone is probably too small, but that's a start...Can I see that?" She handed him her phone and he removed the backing. He applied a strange device to it—long and metallic, with a blue light at the end. It made a buzzing noise, and after using it on a few different points, he replaced the case and handed it back. "Now," he began, looking over her shoulder, "try zooming out as far as you can, let's see if we can pick up anything."

Sally zoomed out, past the city, the country, the continent...and finally, she was staring at the earth as if from outer space.

"Can you spin it around?" the Doctor asked.

Sally lay a finger on one side of her screen and moved it across, spinning the Earth. "This is incredible!" she said, looking at him in awe.

The Doctor grinned, obviously pleased with himself. "Yeah, I'm pretty clever."

Sally tried to look annoyed, but his smile was contagious. She grinned back at him. "Now, don't get too full of yourself. No one likes a show off." She examined her phone again, continuing to spin the globe, until she spotted an anomaly above Russia. "There's a red dot there." She pointed to it on her screen. "How did you do that?"

"The satellites see their skies every day," he answered. "There are a very limited number of things in orbit around the Earth, and the mothership couldn't have been cloaked the entire time. I told the satellites to look around for something that wasn't there a few months ago."

"I see..." Sally nodded. "Well, we know where it is...now what?"

"Now, we go find some experts!" the Doctor answered. "May I use your phone?"

...

They ascended the steps to the second floor of the apartment building and approached a door. The Doctor knocked three times—stopping himself short of a fourth knock with what Sally perceived as undue dread.

A mousy little man with glasses, large ears, and sandy brown hair answered the door promptly. "Doctor! So good to see you!" he hugged the Doctor tightly.

"'Allo, Malcolm!" the Doctor answered, returning the embrace. Breaking from it, he gestured to Sally. "This is Sally Sparrow. Sally, Malcolm Taylor. He helped me get out of a right mess a few months back."

Sally offered her hand and Malcolm shook it excitedly. "Pleased to meet you," she said, smiling brightly.

"Oh no, the pleasure is all mine!" he told her enthusiastically. "Any friend of the Doctor is welcome here any time! Come in, both of you!" he said, ushering them through the door. "I put the kettle on, shouldn't be a moment. Make yourselves comfortable!" He left them in the living room and bustled to the kitchen, where they heard loud clattering. Sally glanced at the Doctor, amused, and he back at her likewise. They moved to sit on the couch when a white, fluffy cat sauntered in from another room.

"...And who might you be?" the cat asked haughtily.

"I'm the Doctor, and this is Sally," the Doctor answered. "We're friends of Malcolm's."

"Not sure I'll ever get used to that," Sally whispered to him.

The large cat eyed Sally with distaste and stalked out of the room once more. Malcolm returned with a tray, carrying a teapot, three cups, and biscuits. "Here we are!" Malcolm said cheerily, and put down the tray. "Now, what was it you needed?"

"Well," the Doctor began, "we think the Earth is in immediate danger of invasion. We have the approximate location of a mothership, but we need to know how far up; how large it is—things like that. As much information as possible. But I don't want Torchwood or UNIT involved. I think we can do this quietly, and I...bloody hate being saluted!" the Doctor's annoyance amused Sally, who stifled a chuckle.

"Aye, I can do that," said Malcolm.

"Here," Sally said, taking a screenshot of the map, "I'll send this as a text to you." She found Malcolm's number in her call history and sent the picture.

Malcolm's phone buzzed in receipt. "Thank you!" he said, examining the screenshot. "Yes...yes, I can use this. I'll call you both again when I have answers." He took a sip of his tea, "So, what is it, do you think?"

"From what I know," the Doctor began, "it sounds like the Graskes, who are probably the most pacifist conquerors in the universe. They've been copying humans and storing the originals, probably in the ship we've detected."

"Fascinating!" Malcolm said a little too enthusiastically, before catching himself. "Sorry, awful...but I can't help it, the worse it gets, the more I love it!"

The Doctor beamed and stood up to clap Malcolm on the shoulder. "And that's why we're best friends, Malcolm! Now, we'll leave you to it—Sally and I have work of our own to do in the meantime."

Malcolm beamed as he walked them to the door, "Yes, of course! We'll see you soon, then!"

As they left the building, Sally asked the Doctor, "What can we possibly do right now if we don't know where the ship is?"

The Doctor shruged. "Well, they have to be getting down here somehow—my guess is by teleporting. I'm hoping we can find some of the teleporters, perhaps shut them down. First, I'll need to see about building a tool to detect them." He looked at Sally as they continued down the street. "You wouldn't happen to have any electronics you're not attached to, would you?"

Sally grinned. "I might...Come, this way!" Sally bolted across the street with the Doctor in tow.

...

Sally and the Doctor rounded a corner and walked toward a shop.

"Hang on..." the Doctor looked around, "I've been here before..."

"This is where you met me," Sally reminded him. "This is my shop."

"Oh yeah!" The Doctor smiled at the building. "I love a little shop!"

Sally smiled and walked to the door. She opened it and they stepped in as she continued. "Larry makes a hobby of trying to repair old TVs and radios. Most of the time, he just breaks it more, though." She smirked and showed the Doctor into the messy back room of the shop. There were parts of various electronics strewn everywhere around a large table, and a couch in one corner.

The Doctor appeared to be positively giddy at the sight of Larry's workshop. "Oh yes, this will do perfectly!"

The Doctor began looking through the debris and picking out bits. He turned to Sally for a moment. "You've got questions, I suppose?" he asked as he rummaged around.

"About a million," Sally admitted. "Do we have time to address them now?"

"Should do, some of them anyway," the Doctor answered.

Sally paused for a moment. Where to begin?

"The TARDIS—is that the phone box?"

"Yes."

"What does TARDIS mean?"

"It's an acronym—Time and Relative Dimension in Space."

Sally nodded. She was curious about the Doctor's strange machine, but she wasn't sure how much time she would have. She chose her next question carefully.

"You said the TARDIS was translating for me?"

"It has a translation circuit. A telepathic field gets inside your brain when you're near enough to it. You were likely attuned when you helped me last time, and when you came into proximity, it allowed you to understand Charlie."

"And...is Charlie just a cat, or..."

"A Glomb, I think. From the planet Anubis. His ancestors would have come here centuries ago to escape persecution, most likely."

Sally, though somewhat baffled, nodded to indicate her comprehension. "So, how did you find us?"

"Psychic paper!" announced the Doctor proudly, producing a small slip of paper with writing on it. It read, Something is very wrong, please come at once! "At first I was expecting it to be from...someone I know. But it turns out that it was Charlie. He's a clever one." The Doctor paused for a moment and looked at Sally, puzzled. "Though...how he's connected to you, is...well, it boggles the mind." He turned back to his salvage, but continued musing. "The last coincidence I had turned out to be anything but, so I'm rather quite baffled at what this might mean...But we can get into that later. Anything else?"

"Just one more thing," Sally began cautiously. "Why...don't you have a friend with you now?"

A guilty, hurt look painted the Doctor's face. "Long story," he said sadly. "I'll tell you when we have a bit more time." He deposited his hoard on the table in the centre of the room and looked up at her with a smile. "Now, I don't suppose you could make us some tea?"

...

As the Doctor worked intently on his device, Sally sat behind the counter of the shop and read a book, but she wasn't really paying attention to the words on the page. She was thinking about her cat; about quirky Malcolm Taylor; and above all, about the Doctor's pained expression when she brought up Martha. I wonder what happened to her? Or... It's been two years...maybe she's been gone for a while. Maybe there was another in the meantime...

Sally mulled over her life's new little mysteries as she idly flipped the pages of the book. She was lost deep in thought when the Doctor finally emerged from the room, a pair of safety goggles still adorning his face. He moved them to the top of his head and beamed, brandishing a strange mess of wires and lights. "Voila!" he said enthusiastically. "Ready to go find some Graskes?"

Sally put her book down and stood up. "Always!"

...

Sally stood in the waning twilight holding the Doctor's Graske-Tracker (his wording, not hers) as he disabled their third teleport pad with his sonic screwdriver when Sally's phone began to ring.

She looked at her screen, then looked to the Doctor. "It's Malcolm," she told him and offered him the phone.

He declined. "I need to finish this before we're spotted."

Sally answered the phone. "Hi Malcolm, hold on..." She held the phone in the crook of her neck while she placed the Graske-Tracker in her bag and searched for paper and a pen. She found them and held the phone with one hand and her pen with the other. "Ok, I'm ready."

"Right, well, the Graske ship is about 2,338 kilometers above the Earth. It's a massive thing, size of a small city, and fairly complicated, too. I've sen the blueprints to your email—"

"Wait," Sally cut him off, "how did you get my email address!?"

"From your Facebook!" Malcolm told her. "You should really take a look at your privacy settings. Anyway, you'll get that in a few minutes I'm guessing, and once you do, you and the Doctor can figure out what to do with it. I've been able to pick up on some smaller ships in the vicinity, I'll try to keep you informed."

"Great," said Sally, "anything else?"

"That's it for now," answered Malcolm.

"Thank you, we'll talk to you later," Sally told him as she hung up.

The Doctor had just finished his work on the teleport pad. "Right," he said as Sally handed him the Graske-Tracker, "what have we got?"

Sally answered him as they began to make their way from the teleport. "We have blueprints. He's emailed them to me, and he said it's 'about' 2,338 kilometers in orbit."

"Good, good...We should find a computer and take a look at those blueprints." He ran his fingers through his hair thoughtfully.

"We're still pretty close to the shop," Sally suggested, "we could use one of Larry's."

"Larry...is he that bloke you were with last time?"

"Yes," Sally said, and felt a pang of guilt. The Doctor took note but didn't say anything. She quickly changed the subject. "What do we need to look for?"

"A storage room, if we can," the Doctor answered. "Somewhere we can land the TARDIS without being immediately detected, so we can poke around."

"And the coordinates?"

"That's in case things go wrong. If we fail, we need something to tell UNIT to aim for." He stopped and turned to her, looking concerned. She faced him. "Being around me is dangerous—we might get captured, tortured...even killed." Sally swallowed hard. "You don't have to come with me," he told her.

Sally stood before him, unsure of what to say, or of what she wanted...She thought of her life as it was, and as it had been for just two days when the Angels had stolen the police box...Then suddenly, an Italian proverb popped into her head and she knew what to do. "Better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a lamb," she told him.

His expression changed from trepidation to relief, and then back again, so quickly that she nearly missed it. "Right, let's go then."

...

They made a fresh pot of tea and began poring over the blueprints. The storage spaces were smaller than they needed them to be, as well as further from the pods than they would like. Sally was beginning to feel her eyes droop; she tried to stifle a yawn, with little success.

The Doctor turned to her. "Tired?" He asked.

"No, just—" Another yawn interrupted her—her own body conspiring against her. She sighed. "I am."

The Doctor smirked ever so slightly. "You humans are adorable when you're tired. Go on, get some rest," he told her, nodding his head toward the couch nearby. "I'll wake you when I'm done."

The couch looked far too appealing for Sally to resist. "Promise?"

"Cross my hearts," the Doctor replied, drawing a cross on his chest and smiling at her.

...

Sally woke a few hours later to see the Doctor hurriedly writing. She sat up and craned her neck to see.

It was a note to her.

"Oh, 'allo," the Doctor said, startled. He covered his writing.

"What is it with you and writing me notes?" Sally asked, amused. "Were you going to leave me behind?"

The Doctor's face exhibited his guilt. "Yes. there's no way I can get the TARDIS landed in there," he told Sally. "I'm going to have to use the teleports, which means it's too dangerous for you to come."

"Wouldn't that mean it's too dangerous for you to go alone?" Sally argued. "I've been in dire situations before—you know that's a fact—and I got out of them fine. I'll be fine in this one, too, but if you won't take me, I'll find my own way up."

The Doctor read the determination on her face and grimaced. "Fine, let's just...get going." The trepidation he felt was obvious in his voice. Sally felt a little bad that she's made him feel that way, but she was concerned that if he went alone he would find himself in over his head.

As they set out once again into the street, something occurred to Sally. 'You humans'...'Cross my hearts'... "Doctor, are you an alien?"

He looked at her with some surprise. "Yes," he answered as they walked briskly in the night air. "I'm of a race called the Time Lords, and I'm over 900 years old. My ship is actually a living organism, cultivated on my home planet, Gallifrey. But my home is gone now," he said sadly. "I've lost everyone I've ever loved. Not just my people—I've traveled with friends and lost them, too, one way or another. Traveling with me is a curse."

"But they know this," Sally said, "they must. They can't know you for three minutes without realizing that you and danger are a package deal. So it must be worth it to them. It's a symbiotic relationship."

The Doctor seemed to consider this, but Sally broke his reverie almost immediately. "Where are you going?"

The Doctor, a few feet ahead of her, turned around. She was standing at the entrance to the first alleyway they had ventured into when they disabled the teleports.

"We've been to that one," he reminded her. "We disabled it."

"Yes, but couldn't you re-enable it? It's been out of commission for a few hours now, they might not be near if it doesn't work," she pointed out. "I imagine they're more concerned with their conquest at the moment than fixing broken teleports."

The Doctor looked impressed. "Good thinking," he told her with a smile.

"See? I'm worth keeping around!" She smirked.

They walked down the dark alley and found the pad as they had left it. The Doctor scanned it with his screwdriver. "Yep, same as before," he confirmed, "doesn't seem like they've attempted any maintenance." He applied the device to the pad in a few different places and scanned it again. "That seems to have done it," he said, then turned to Sally with a boyish grin on his face. "You ready?"

She nodded, nearly bubbling over in anticipation.

The Doctor returned her nod, and stepped onto the device. "We'll have to ride it together. It might be a bit unpleasant, the Graskes aren't know for their sciences." Sally stepped onto the pad, and the Doctor held her close, then pointed the sonic screwdriver at the teleport. "In three...two...one." He activated the pad and Sally felt a tingling sensation, like pins and needles, all over her body. In a few seconds, it was done and they were aboard the alien ship. They were in a small room that was empty but for the pad, with a door on either side. Sally had been right—there was no one around.

"HA!" The Doctor exclaimed, far too loudly. He shushed Sally ironically, then clapped her on the shoulder. "Well done," he whispered. "Now, let's see if we can figure out where we are..." He listened at a door before opening it...

...Right into a patrol.

For a split second, he and the patrolling Graskes looked at one another in stunned silence. They came to their senses simultaneously—the Doctor just barely managing to shut the door, locking it with his screwdriver. He turned to Sally. "Run!"

Sally spun around and threw open the room's remaining door. She bolted down the hallway with the Doctor close behind. Two Graskes appeared in pursuit at one end of the hallway; the Doctor and Sally turned a corner. Four more at the end of that one; they bolted down another fork. They ran only a short distance before finding themselves at a dead end. Sally spun around to see the Graskes—short, ugly, hairless creatures with long lobes of flesh protruding from their skulls, dressed all in black, and holding something that appeared to Sally to resemble a taser. They were closing in on them; the Doctor was in front of her, hands raised in submission.

"Identify yourself," demanded one of the Graskes.

"'Allo," the Doctor said cheerily. "I'm the Doctor! This is my friend Sally, and we appear to be a bit lost!"

The Graske who was speaking to them laughed. The others joined in. "You are very funny, Doctor! But that will not spare you. I suppose you do not like what we do to your planet?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Well, it's not really my planet," he told them. "I guess I just like it, is all..."

The Graskes laughed again. "Perhaps then you will be pleased that we will spare you the distress of seeing it overtaken, then?" The Graske used the device in its hand, and the Doctor convulsed and dropped his screwdriver. When the Graske was finished, Sally was horrified to find that the Doctor was gone—seemingly absorbed by the Graske's tool. The Graskes laughed heartily to themselves.

"Now, fuzzy yellow thing," the head Graske addressed Sally now, "it's your turn!"

The Graske aimed its instrument at Sally, but she evaded its shot. She dove for the screwdriver and started pushing buttons. The Graske's device blew up in its hand and it howled in pain.

"You will ALL. STAND. DOWN." She held the screwdriver steadily, pointed at the Graskes, "Or I will blow each one of you up. Do NOT try anything funny!" Ohshitohshitohshit...

The Graskes put up their hands. Sally was stunned for a moment, but then she remembered what the Doctor had told Malcolm. It sounds like the Graskes, who are probably the most pacifist conquerors in the universe... They didn't want a fight. "Throw down your weapons," she told them forcefully. One against eight, she thought with dread. I hope this works...

They threw their devices to the ground.

"Back away," she ordered.

They backed up, arms still raised.

Sally collected their equipment and put all but one in her bag. "Now, I'm going to use these on you, and if any of you makes so much as a peep, I'll kill the lot of you!" They all nodded, terrified.

She examined the device. There was a switch reading "copy" on one end and "cage" on the other. She flipped it to "cage" and used it on the Graskes. One by one, they disappeared.

Sally let out a sigh of relief, and then a little chuckle. Her heart was racing; her hands were shaking.

She had never felt more alive.

...

Sally navigated the hallways from her memory of the blueprint. The few Graskes she encountered, she imprisoned—it seemed there weren't many on the ship, however. Wouldn't need many, the way they invade...

Finally, she reached a large door, near what she inferred to be the centre of the ship. She tried the door—locked. She took the sonic screwdriver out of her bag. Well, she thought, I hope this unlocks it instead of melting it or something...

She turned it on, and heard some awful grinding noises. The door slid feebly open. Sally smiled. Close enough.

Sally knew what to expect in the chamber, but it shocked her nonetheless. Acres of pods, filled with unconscious human beings...she gaped for a few moments at the vast expanse of frozen people, when she heard a noise behind her.

She spun around to see a slightly taller Graske, dressed in silver instead of black, and wearing a crown of sorts on his head. "Who," he demanded, "are you!?"

Sally stood up straight. She wasn't tall, but in comparison to a Graske, she was a giant. "I am Sally Sparrow," she told him, "and you have stolen my people. So I have stolen yours." She emptied her bag of the Graskes' instruments—close to twenty by now. The Graske gasped. "And who are you?" she asked him indignantly.

The little being shook with rage. "I am the king of the Graskes," he told her, "and you have done us a great injustice! You will pay!" He pointed a knobbly finger at her accusingly.

"I don't think so," Sally told him, brandishing the sonic screwdriver like a weapon. "You see, this planet is mine. You have abducted my people!" She took a menacing step toward him and he recoiled. "YOU will pay!"

The Graske King cowered against the wall. "Please," he begged, "have mercy! I'll do anything!"

How is this so easy? "Release them. Then leave. There are plenty of other planets out there. This one is mine, and you will NOT take it from me!" The venom in her voice was fueled entirely by terror, but the Graske King obviously couldn't tell.

"I will! We'll leave, we'll never return!" With his hands raised, he skulked over to a control panel. The Graske pushed a button, and every pod vacated.

Sally nodded. "Good. Now, is this a teleport?" She pointed to a pad near a wall. The Graske King nodded mutely. Sally stepped onto the pad. "Activated it. And know that I'll be watching. If you don't leave, I will find you, and I will kill every one of you."

The Graske King nodded, terrified, and flipped a switch on the panel. Sally felt pins and needles again...and then she was standing on a London street—quite far from home.

She sighed in exasperation, and hailed a cab.

...

Sally and Charlie were talking in the kitchen over a cup of warm milk when the Doctor burst into the house in a panic. "Charlie, I lost her! We have to—" he broke off, seeing Sally peer around the corner. His panic turned into elation as he rushed to the kitchen and hugged her tightly. "Oh Sally!"

She giggled and patted him on the back.

The Doctor broke from the embrace and held her at arms length, looking at her in awe. "But...How did you..."

Sally smiled coyly. "I told you I'm clever," she said.

His wide grin lit up the room. "Careful, no one likes a show off," he told her, and hugged her again. "Maybe you can tell me the story over dinner?" He let go of her and stepped toward the TARDIS. "Whadaya say? Perhaps New New York? 5 billion years in the future? Eh?"

Sally's eyes grew large and her words failed her. The Doctor's impossibly wide grin grew wider still. "C'mon," he said with excitement and led her to the door of the TARDIS.