Labyrinth
This is what happens when you study the Aeneid in Higher Latin and learn about the Minotaur and the maze. And this is my birthday story because I am now sixteen!
I don't own it, most sadly. Although I do have a sonic lipstick now!
"This is like a labyrinth, this is. No wonder you've had to actually show me around, I never knew all this existed - Doctor, you've a loose thread hanging from your scarf."
"How very handy, I must say. It must lead all the way back to the console room. How very clever of you to notice, Sarah. I would have had to rely on - "
"A
Time Lord's superior sense of direction? You're like Theseus now
Doctor, finding your way back with a thread."
"If I'm
Theseus that must make you Ariadne."
Sarah
Shortly after this conversation, Sarah moved herself into a room in the very heart of the TARDIS. When the Doctor asked her why, she had jokingly told him it was to "test a Time Lord's superior sense of direction." When she saw that he actually believed her, she found several loose threads that fell out of his scarf, tied them together, and fixed one end to the console and sticky taped the other end to her door. He never had any problems finding her again.
She never had any problems finding him either, although her sense of direction was considerably better. Even if she couldn't sleep, she would just get up and follow the string to the console room, where he would show her how to fly or fix bits of the TARDIS (something the long suffering ship appreciated very much), all the while regaling her with stories of other times and people and places. And when she felt sleepy enough, she would leave the room and follow the string through the labyrinth of the TARDIS back to her room.
She always managed, somehow, to miss the Doctor whispering, ever so quietly, "Goodnight Ariadne," after she left, before turning back to the zeus plugs.
Doctor
The Doctor always thought of Sarah as Ariadne after this tour of the TARDIS. He never knew why but it was just the way she went slipping back through the maze of corridors to who knew where. The way she had set up the thread so he could do the same. It was a shame to admit that even at 750 he didn't know the way around the ship like the back of his hand, the way his clever companion seemed to. His Ariadne.
The connection returned to his mind after landing in what he thought was South Croydon. Sarah's final destination. He was sure it was in hers too.
Ariadne, helping Theseus defeat the Minotaur and running away with him because she fell in love with him. He left her in the end.
Sarah, helping the Doctor defeat the Sontarans, and running away with him. Now he was leaving her too.
Did Sarah
come away because she loved adventure, or because she, like Ariadne,
loved him? Now he would never find out.
That thought bothered him
more than he cared to admit.
Companions after Sarah never chose a room as deep in the TARDIS as Sarah's had been. On one occasion Romana came across her little room, and asked the Doctor for her story.
As he told her, somehow, Romana seemed to morph into Sarah in front of his eyes. He shook himself. They both had dark hair but that was as far as the resemblance went.
It didn't stop him from kissing her though.
And later on he was left with the feeling that he had somehow betrayed Sarah.
Later companions never came to see what was happening in the console room if they couldn't sleep. There were many a night that he heard Nyssa and Tegan gossiping at heaven knows what time. In a way he was rather glad. It meant it was something he could share with Sarah, and only Sarah.
Even to this day, if he can trust the TARDIS not to blow up a very important switch or go haywire and his current companion is busy, the Doctor will slip off quietly to the vast library, and take out a mythology book and settle in his favourite chair in a cosy alcove, open the book at the section about Theseus and the Minotaur, bookmarked by a very long and multicoloured piece of thread.
His Sarah. His Ariadne.