Title: Memories Are Killing
Author: Kristin
Rating: All ages
Pairing: Nine, Sarah
Summary: Shortly after the Time War, the Doctor decides to visit an old friend
Disclaimer: Characters belong to the BBC and I wouldn't claim otherwise
Notes: I was purposely nondescript about the larger details of what might have happened during the Time War, etc. (since we don't know all that much anyway, and everyone else infers what they'd like) and just decided to focus on this one particular moment, wherein the Doctor, in his mind, says goodbye before moving onto a new life. Of course, life is always in motion, so it could all change :)
"Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, of those that are
dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don't there is the
danger of finding them, in your mind, little by little. That is to say, you
must think of them for a while, a good while, everyday, several times
a day, until they sink forever in the mud. That's an order."
-- Samuel Beckett
The shadows keep him in their silence, so that he is unseen, but can see everything he desires to. He feels younger than he should as he crosses his legs, seating himself on the damp grass. There could be something disturbing about this, if he were anyone else, but he is the Doctor, and they call this sort of thing nostalgia. But what he calls it, really, is watching an old friend and trying to decide if he can leave her again.
This is why he shouldn't have come back.
A drizzling rain leaks through gaps in the bunched leaves forming a canopy over his head. He looks up, at the darkness, catching raindrops against his sight, then looks down to touch his pocket, where the key to her flat is. He won't use it, he just likes to know it's there.
A little bit of trivia about the Doctor that he doubts anyone would know, or maybe care to know: he has two keys at all times with him, one for the TARDIS, and one for Sarah Jane Smith's flat in South Croydon, England, Earth, Milky Way Galaxy. To be accessed at any time between 1980 and...
--no, best not to finish that thought.
This is why he shouldn't have come back.
He never wanted to think on her death. He shouldn't ponder it now. Ever.
He thinks it must be cold, as he watches various people walk past with coats and scarves, some rubbing their hands together vigorously. Wherever she is, he thinks she shouldn't be lingering in this chill and rain that her fellow humans seem to desire avoiding. But...she is Sarah Jane, and she's never been conventional.
At least, when he knew her, she never was. He hopes that hasn't changed. He hopes nothing has changed, because he doesn't know if he can bear it now.
Everything else has ended. Which is why she never can.
But she will.
She doesn't have to. Not anymore. He can take her away, from this, from -- but she will still end. This is his fate: learning to accept how finite every existence but his own is. If Sarah doesn't die on Earth, she will die with him, because that is her fate. And that is why he left before, why he knows now that --
--he shouldn't have come back.
So she musn't know he was here, until he is gone again.
He is an orphan. A destroyer. An alien that used to see in the dark, but now becomes it. He hopes she can forgive him this, but he has to see her just this once -- the one friend, at the last, to close the chapter of his prior lives. He needs to assure himself that she's still here, that not everything is gone.
The Doctor must go on, not as the Time Lord from Gallifrey, but as the lonely wanderer in a brilliant blue box. Sarah belongs to the Time Lord. She should never have to belong to the ghost. Not his Sarah Jane. She deserves better than that.
He sees a figure coming down the path across from him. The rain is not heavy, but steady enough to have soaked her clothes. A dog is attached to the leash around her wrist, and he thinks of the metal dog he once had, that he gave to her.
She stands there, looking down the road. She doesn't have an umbrella and he can't imagine why she doesn't seek immediate shelter in her flat.
Then she turns to the trees, looking beyond the one he's under. She can't see him, no one can. But he sees her, always.
Oh, Sarah Jane, thank you for this moment.
Then she finally heads inside her flat and his shoulders slump as he stands, leaning against the tree. He should have done something just then, should have--
Sarah comes back out, holding a tiny device he can't identify, and comes towards the brick wall dividing the grove of trees he's in. She drops the device gently to the ground, grinning, then turns away, staring around the block again.
He moves forward quietly, studying the device. Seems to be a sort of tracker. What could she be up to? Then he grins. The one thing he wanted never to change, of anything, and here she stands, a short distance from him, the best of all memory manifest. She's still investigating. He wishes he could ask her what's she's sniffing out, but it would be too suspicious, so he must leave it to his imagination.
Sarah, he notices, is alone. He wonders if that further means he's lonely.
And if she is, and he's lonely...it would be the perfect opportunitiy to take her with him again. Two lonely creatures, grounding each other in baseless existences, and fusing meaning between their voids. But maybe she wouldn't want to come. He crouches down, walking along the wall quietly.
Of course she'd want to come.
No, she's got on with her life.
But she's the best thing I've got left.
The very reason you've got to let her be.
As he stands, leaning against the brick wall, he tries to think of the last memory he has of her. Travel does broaden the mind, lips tight, slight nod, clutching the owl and plant he'd given her on two separate journeys. Then leaving, alive.
Alive. That's the last memory he has of her. He realizes he wants that to always be the last memory he will have of her. Now he really knows. So he steps away from the wall, one hand in his pocket, one clutching a coat.
Sarah still stands there, watching her flat across the street. The rain is delicate now, almost a memory itself.
"Do you do this often?" he asks of her, smiling as he approaches cautiously, not wanting her to think of him as a threat.
Her arms cross her chest as she turns to face him.
"Talk to strange men in rainstorms?"
Her tone is guarded, but he recognizes the subtle tease in it, so he takes a step forward.
"Am I strange?"
"You're standing on a sidewalk, in the rain, wearing a leather coat and...holding a velvet coat. Something's slightly off."
"I'll give you that, but you're on a sidewalk in the rain as well. And with no coat, or umbrella."
"Nostalgia," she shrugs, turning away from him to look up at the sky.
"You always," he begins to whisper, but she turns as he starts, so he catches himself, continuing, "Did you always do this then, in the past?"
Sarah tightens her arms, turning away again.
"Sometimes, with...a friend. My best friend."
"Where is this...friend now?"
She takes a deep breath, rewarding him with the most beautiful sight he's seen in centuries, one he decides to build his new life on.
"Gone," Sarah says quietly, looking down.
"Dead?" he persists, hoping she doesn't think that, but knowing he can't say otherwise.
"I hope not, but I think so. I used to think he'd come back, even just to pop in and see how I'm getting on. Absurd to think, really, because he was...maybe it's better this way, because sometimes I think I'm glad he's gone, and other times...look, I don't know why I'm--"
A knot tightens in the Doctor's stomach. She must be starting to sense, even subtly, who he might be, which he suspects is the reason for her ease with an ostensible stranger. And he is dangerously close to pulling her near enough to feel the glorious single beat of her human heart, and knows if he does, he won't ever be able to let go. And he must.
So he pushes the velvet coat towards her, saying, "Look, I've got to go. Sorry to be abrupt. Take this, all right?"
Sarah drops her arms, loosely clutching the offered coat, a look of confusion on her face.
He makes sure not to touch her skin. Sarah's smart. He fears she might already have some of the pieces assembled in her mind, and if she feels his unnaturally cold hands, it will all coalesce. And he couldn't bear to hurt her that way. The only reason he can leave her now is because she doesn't know who he is. But she will have a piece of him, a remnant of his most recent life, which she will never know, not having met that incarnation.
So it's safe, just this once, and gives him the strength he needs to leave.
He smiles brightly, "Just take the coat. Humor the strange man, all right? Don't want to leave you on a sidewalk in the rain with this chill and nothing for warmth. Go inside before you catch cold. You must've worried your friend mad."
Sarah puts her arms through the sleeves of the coat, saying, "I did. One thing I was very good at."
"Among others, I'm sure. Anyway, that's probably why he never came back, you'd have been the death of him."
She smooths her hand over the fabric, a fondness lighting her dark eyes.
"I miss him."
The Doctor looks at her one last time, hoping she doesn't catch the intensity with which he's clinging to the image of how vividly alive she is in this last moment before he becomes a Doctor she should never know.
Sarah looks at him, squinting her eyes in concentration, then catches his wrist, tentatively whispering, "Doctor?"
He does not react, and very deftly maintains a look of confusion, scrunching up his face as though he were trying to decipher why she would refer to him as that.
"Doctor? You need one, then?"
She lets go of his wrist, looking downward.
"No, no, it's just--"
"You all right?"
Then she looks up at him again, smiling sadly, and taking a very slow, deep breath again, huffing it out harshly.
"I always am. Thanks for the coat," her voice cracks faintly at the last, but she's still smiling.
Then she crosses the street and goes inside her flat, her gaze lingering on his retreating figure for a few seconds before she goes inside, but he is walking away from her, and he doesn't turn around to watch her disappear again. Because he decided, in the span of their encounter, which moment was going to be his last memory of her. And he doesn't want to tarnish it with another image of her walking away from him because he forced her to.
He will find other companions. And he will love them, just as he has loved all of them. But he knows that the ones he loves most are the ones he can never travel with again. He has to pick his memories carefully now, after all.
So he leaves Sarah Jane for the last time, he thinks. Maybe he will learn how to be alone someday, and only then, will he allow himself the privilege of taking her with him, if she chooses to. But he doubts that day will come.
So he hugs this last memory of her, like he wanted to hug her.
And it's a good one.
The image of her perpetual breath drifting from her lips--a quiet white exhale framed by the chill and held by the rain--as though it were the most natural thing in the world, as though it might never end.
He decides to believe that it never will.
fin.