Ten Years Later (for alan_skater_boy)

[rude_not_ginger]

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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[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"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."

[alan-skater-boy.livejournal.com]

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."

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"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."

[alan-skater-boy.livejournal.com]

"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.