rude_not_ginger | Ten Years Later (for alan_skater

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featuring: alan jackson

Ten Years Later (for alan_skater_boy)

Follows this.

The Doctor wanted to pretend that he couldn't feel Alan's pain. There must've been nothing worth than waking up with the love of his life wrapped around him, dead. He wished he could've made it up to him somehow. Any way he could. But there was no way to undo the past.

He'd wanted to think that seeing Alan again, after Sarah's---after everything that had happened, would somehow make something right. He had an awful feeling it didn't.

"Live," the Doctor replied without hesitation. "Because that's what Sarah would've wanted us to do."

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I was afraid you were going to say that.

"I'm not ready. I can't. I can't think of those times, not yet." How could he? How could he separate that precious time from the knowledge that it was gone, never to return or repeat?

Suddenly angry again, he thumped the creature that was holding so tightly to the Doctor. "Let him go! Take me instead! I'm the one you're feeding from, Barney!"

The creature roared again.

"Don't be stupid!" the Doctor snapped. "You're feeding it more!"

He felt himself get thrown about as the creature writhed around, but managed to keep himself centered. Had to be calm. Couldn't get angry. Not an easy thing for the angry Time Lord.

"Alan, no one's ever ready," he called down to him. "It took me this long to get here, and I'm still not ready to let her go! But we have to focus, we have to remember her the way she was. We have to fight this."

He took a breath. "Sarah loved you more than anyone in the universe, Alan. Do you really think she'd want you to end here, like this?"

"I'm being selfish. I don't want to be selfish."

He had so much still left to live for, even with the hole Sarah Jane's death had ripped in his heart and life. He had Maria and Luke and the possibility of eventual grandchildren from one or the other.

And what about Jack? You promised him you'd be around for a good while yet.

"Did..." Oh, God, he didn't even know if he was starting in a good place. "She talked about you... so much, sometimes. Before I understood, I was so... I was bloody jealous. Before I even knew why. She was... she almost ran me down the first time I saw her. I teased her about it later."

It wasn't working yet. It couldn't be working. The... thing that had the Doctor wasn't letting go.

The creature was still feeding. The Doctor looked over to it, then back to the man at its feet. Alan was just a man. He was just a silly little human, probably didn't even know a millionths of the things the Doctor knew. But there he was, pushing past something the Doctor ran from.

It wasn't the first time the Doctor envied him.

"You didn't have anything to be jealous about," the Doctor said. "On her birthday last year, I offered her a trip around the universe. She said she'd rather stay with Luke and you. Something about a picnic, I wasn't really paying attention."

The Doctor had paid attention. He wanted to know what it was that was so much better than spending time with him. He was, after all, the Time Lord and all that rubbish. But Sarah wanted to stay at home. She was so excited about so many little things. She was so happy.

Alan looked up at the Doctor. Somehow he wasn't all that surprised to hear it.

"I wouldn't have minded. You were her best friend, Doctor. She worried about you, quite often." He wiped his running eyes. "You brought her so many friends, even when she thought she was past making new friends."

Maybe it didn't have to be joy versus grief. Maybe he could just stop being so damned angry with the Doctor for not being the person he really wished he was with.

"Maria came back from telling her -- Sarah Jane -- we weren't going to America after all... she said Sarah Jane was happier than she'd expected. She knew she'd be happy, of course... I knew how much Sarah Jane loved Maria."

He could feel the grip around him loosen. The creature was trying to feed on Alan's words, but couldn't feel anything it needed. It was working.

"She called me," the Doctor said. "When she thought you were leaving. Said she didn't want to lose the only new friends she'd made."

She didn't call when she knew they were staying. It wasn't until later that he learned they were there, that she had a family to go home to.

"You were her family," he said. "I envied that."

Suddenly, he found a small smile touched his lips. "Sarah told me that I shouldn't be so lonely. That I had the biggest family ever. And she said she was part of that."

He missed her. He had found himself so angry, so deep in self-pity that he hadn't realized how much he just missed his old friend.

Alan didn't even realize it was happening, but the anger was slowly subsiding.

"We would've loved to see you again. I'll never understand how you keep your own timeline straight. Remember that, Doctor. We would have loved to see you, no matter who you are."

And they had loved seeing a different him, a happier him. A him that had let so much of the terrible baggage behind. But he couldn't tell the man he was trying to save right now of those times. He'd been expressly forbidden.

"Sarah Jane... she..." he blew out, sighing wistfully. "She saw me out jogging one night, not long after we'd moved in. Invited me for some tea. We swapped some parenting stories. I told her... I told her to just wait until Luke gave her her first handmade card. The smile on her face... it just fit her perfectly. I knew she was beautiful the first time I saw her, but she was... breathtaking."

He could imagine her like that. He'd never thought she'd be a mother, but she fit the role so beautifully. She knew how to be young, and knew how to stay young even as she aged.

"I remember the first time I took her to a different world," the Doctor said. "All young with...with wide eyes and excitement. I felt young."

He'd been in a much older body, then. A sadder, older self. She made him young. She took care of him when he regenerated, she never gave up on him.

"She was my best friend," he said.

He shoved back the part of his mind that wanted to add in and you left her.

Alan looked up at the Doctor.

"Tell me?" he asked, desperately. He wanted to know. Short of returning to the cultured older man and the girl who wasn't all that dissimilar to the woman he'd fallen in love with later, it was the best thing. He wanted to hear about her, from someone who'd known her when she was younger than he was now.

He instantly retreated at the crestfallen look in the Doctor's eyes. Too painful.

"I had her on roller skates once." He quickly switched tactics. "Couldn't get her on a skateboard. But I put her in roller skates. She thought she looked ridiculous. She looked fantastic."

That brought a small smile to the Doctor's face. In his mind, she'd always be the twentysomething he traveled with, but he tried to turn the image of her in his mind, struggling on roller skates, into the older woman Alan fell in love with. It wasn't easy, but he could do it.

"I remember the first time she rode in my flying car," he said. "She was so startled that it was flying. So new to everything."

"She never told me about a flying car." And he found that he didn't mind that, at all. Not all the special memories had to be shared, after all. Just as he had his own special memories with her, the Doctor deserved his own. But he was grateful the Doctor was willing to share one of them. "I can just imagine the look on her face."

He laughed suddenly. "If only she would have gotten out of her own way on those skates." He suddenly looked up at the Doctor. "I didn't blame her, I could tell it'd been a good long while for her, if she'd ever been on skates at all. But she was so... nervous over falling... I kept telling her to just relax, keep her legs relaxed, don't worry too much." Fat lot of good that had done. "She fell. Right on top of me. Banged my head right good. Scared her and Maria and Luke to death."

"She loved you," the Doctor said, firmly. "Some people go their entire lives never feeling loved like that. And you two had it."

While there was still jealousy boiling under his skin, he had to admit he didn't mind so much. Sarah Jane spent so long loving the Doctor and him unable to love her back---not the same way, at least---that it was right that she found someone who loved her exactly for who she was. No "excepts" or "maybes" or "Oh, look, I've taken you home rather than coming with me"s.

"What happened on that birthday?" he asked. "With the picnic?"

"Everyone came home from school for it."

He was quite proud of how that picnic had gone off.

"I wasn't quite fool enough to believe we could keep everything a secret. She knew Luke and Maria were coming home to celebrate her birthday with us." He smiled as he thought of the days leading up. "I don't think either of us ever quite got used to having them out of the house. She was so excited."

He then smiled at the Doctor, broadly. "We called some of her friends to come and celebrate with us. Clyde and Rani turned up, excited and happy to do so. I managed to get hold of Jack and then Mickey and Martha made some time for us, brought the kids and Martha's mum and sister. You know, a good deal of that's because of you, Doctor."

"This isn't about me," he said, trying not to sound stern. "It's about her. Keep thinking about her. Talking about her."

If he started to think about himself, negativity was sure to follow. But Sarah, Sarah was good things. She made such a wonderful impact on the people she touched. She changed them, she saved them.

The Doctor felt the creature's hand was loosening. It was growing weaker, and quickly.

"We, uh... I wasn't quite sure whether to invite Gwen and Rhys and Anwen. When I finally got hold of Jack, I was too busy lecturing him on the virtues of answering his phone because he'd damn near missed the whole thing. But he turned up with them."

Here he had to be cautious.

"A few others came around as well, the Chandras and some of her old friends. You know the Brigadier made a special point of getting out of Peru for the occasion? She was so surprised, and so touched."

"What did she tell you, when you invited her for the trip?" he asked curiously. "I wish she'd mentioned it, we could have worked it out." But, then, that might lead to regrets.

Hurriedly, he pressed on, prompted by the Doctor's nods to do so.

"Clyde and his mother made a big cake."

"Nothing," he admitted. "Just a picnic and I was invited. But..you know me, I don't---"

Not about himself. He couldn't make it about himself.

"Sounds brilliant, though. I wouldn't have wanted to miss that, in her place. Though, I bet she'd have stayed even if it was just you and Luke."

Not this him, he didn't.

He was giving himself a headache now.

"We'd've thrown you a party, too." Alan shifted to a more comfortable position. "Sarah Jane and Martha... they hadn't seen each other in a bit, so once the picnic started breaking up, they ordered us boys out. And at the very mention of girlie talk, Jack broke out a few bottles and we all went back to the house, sat in the garden for a while, just talking."

He smiled. "Then the women came back and we spent a few hours out there. Sarah Jane, she said later she wouldn't have missed it." He sighed, feeling all the old feelings returning. "I... loved being a family. I loved it so much."

"You still are," the Doctor said. "Just because---just because people go away, it doesn't stop them being part of you."

It was something Sarah had said to him once, when he talked about leaving. It made so much sense, now. He could almost imagine her saying it to him. How everything had a time and everything ended.

He gave Alan a small smile. "We might never see Sarah Jane Smith again, Alan. But we saw her. She was part of us, and she always will be. That's her immortality. And it's in us."

"I can't accept that I won't see her again someday." Alan replied. "Maybe it'll be easier, believing she's waiting for me."

Oddly, he and Sarah Jane hadn't spoken much on the subject. Maybe because they both knew he would likely outlive her by some years. He hadn't cared to think of it and maybe she'd known, for she hadn't brought it up herself.

"Maybe we should have talked about it once or twice." But there was no real regret or anger there.

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Ten Years Later (for alan_skater_boy)

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