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something worth remembering

Summary:

“I had a brother, once,” says the Doctor.

 

 

 

The Doctor and Sarah-Jane Killian, in pieces.

Notes:

Additional warnings: offscreen assault/racial targeting, Sarah-Jane being a bit insensitive about said offscreen assault.

Title’s from Devil Town by Cavetown. Any confusion over ‘wait, what fandom is this’ can be explained over here. I could explain why I felt the need to integrate obscure expanded universe barely-canon into this podcast’s Human Nature adaptation episode, but I don’t think I will. Various snatches of concepts stolen from Lungbarrow, Empire of Glass, and that one Gallifrey arc where Brax explains the Lord Burner’s role. And probably other places, but who's keeping track at this point? Definitely not me.

 

Anyway, here’s Wonderwall. Wait, no, Michael made that joke already. Well, here’s... something, I guess.

Chapter Text

The story goes something like this:

Before anything else – in all of your memories and recollections, pressed up tight against the very start of your conscious existence – there is your brother.

*

*

She wakes to the rhythm of a train trembling underneath her back like a finely-tuned drum. She wakes to an ache in her head and the horrible, crawling sensation of her skin not fitting right on her bones, and she stares up at the two people kneeling over her anxiously with her vision blurry and her heart racing in her chest like a frightened rabbit’s.

“I can’t see,” is the first thing she says, her voice rasping painfully in her throat – because it’s true, she can’t.

She hears motion, whispered argument, and then warm hands close around hers, pressing a pair of fragile metal-framed glasses into her hands. She clumsily pushes herself up on her elbows, shoves the glasses in the vague direction of her face. There. All sorted.

She looks up again, and sees them clearly now. Pale, worried faces. Oh. They’re worried about her. She clears her throat, squints. “What happened?”

“You fell, hit your head,” says Travis, looking indescribably anxious. Travis? Oh. Yes, of course, Travis; it’s her brother Travis, why would there be any call for confusion? “You – you were out for a while. We were wondering if we should call for a…”

His voice dies a bit. He looks lost, afraid.

“But it’s fine,” says Carrie. Carrie? Carrie, of course. Carrie’s fidgeting with the bodice of her dress, looking as if she’s never worn it before. If she fidgets any harder she’s going to run ragged tears down the fabric. “You’re fine. Right. Right? You know what date it is? Who’s the president? The – what are you supposed to ask people when they hit their heads?”

She hadn’t been aware there was any sort of protocol for this sort of thing. She says, “Um.”

“Your name,” says Travis. “You’re supposed to ask them their name.”

He reaches out to help her to her feet. She thinks she’d normally brush him off, complain incessantly at the unnecessary overprotectiveness; but today she lets him drag her to her feet, balance her against the wall. He looks really scared. He won’t stop looking at her, eyes darting up and down, as if trying to take in every inch of her, make sure she’s all right head-to-toe. She frown at him, says, “It’s… May, I think; you know I’m not good with keeping track of dates.” She keeps on frowning, and looks around. A train. That’s right, they’re on a train, heading to… “The president’s Woodrow Wilson, and legally, I’m…”

She swallows. Her skin itches.

She says, “John Killian.”

The train bounces, shakes. Beyond the grimy windows, stiff brown-yellow fields roll past, dirty and dull under grey afternoon skies.

“But, like,” says Carrie after a second, and a nervous little not-quite-a-laugh escapes her throat, dying quickly in the air. “Uhm. Illegally?”

It’s a small compartment, just the three of them, their personal possessions – a modest lunch spread already out on the single table, untouched and shuddering as the train moves onwards. The doors are shut. She can’t see anyone outside. They’re looking at her so expectantly.

“Sarah-Jane,” she says. It feels so sweet to say it, but the instinctive aftershock of acidic fear, jittery and sour, is hard to ignore. She swallows against it, turns the fear into a bit of exasperated annoyance even though she knows they’ll see right through it. They know her too well in some ways, but in others they don’t know her at all. “You know that.”

They look so relieved when she says that. It’s a bit silly and she almost wants to laugh, because it’s not as if a bump to the head would make her forget who she is – this isn’t one of Travis’s adventure books, after all, amnesia doesn’t work like that.

Travis looks like he doesn’t know what to do with himself for a moment or two, and then he just steps forward and hugs her. Really tightly. She squirms. Honestly, what’s got into him? “Travis – ”

“Sorry!” He releases her, takes a few quick-steps back, and gives an awkward strained sort of smile. “I know, I know, I – sorry.” Quick words, choppy sentences, all nervous and staccato. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

Sarah-Jane squints at him. Resists the urge to stick her tongue out. “I’m always okay,” she says, and goes to sit down at the window seat. “Just give me a few minutes, let my head clear.”

“Okay,” says Travis. “Okay, whatever you need. Just – let me know if you need anything, okay?”

She rolls her eyes at her brother. “Travis.

He holds his hands up in silent surrender and she almost-smiles at him, and then begins to poke at the meagre offerings on the table. She’s hungry, but it’s a distant and vague sort of hunger. None of this is appetizing. Chicken sandwiches. Ugh.

Travis is muttering something to Carrie, barely audible, and for a minute she strains to hear, but all she can catch is all right, she’s going to be all right, and she bites back a frustrated sigh because she’s fine and she’d just been out for a second or two but for some reason he’s still worried about her.

Well, maybe it’s easier for him to be worried about her than everything else, so she’ll leave him to it for the moment. Because Farringham awaits, along with a bookshop and a teaching job and all numbers of new unknowns. She supposes she should be excited that they’re getting out of their home town at last. It’s been a long few months, the animosity rising, their parents getting more and more pointed and barbed about her proclivities. It probably wouldn’t have been too long at all before something snapped.

She should be excited. Mostly, she’s just tired. She is in a world that doesn’t want her, a body that feels too tight and too loose all at once.

Sarah-Jane picks at the salad and stares out the window and wonders how long it’ll be before everything begins to go wrong again.

*

*

The House is alive under your feet as you stick to the walls and skirt your way down the corridors, rounding dark corners and tiptoeing past doorways. There is no such thing as midnight around here, not in the way that humans might understand it to be. But even so, it is late here and now. The House is finally free of the sound of pacing feet and murmuring words and Cousins moving from room to room – the silence left behind giving way to the creaking-breathing of the walls and the rustle-rattle of tafelshrews and cobblemice in the rafters.

You’re sure most people would find it ominous – some of the younger Cousins definitely do. You tend to find it thrilling, especially when nobody else is around to spoil the moment. The House at night is like a mini-adventure all in its own, never mind how dangerous everyone keeps saying it is. And like most adventures, it’s best to experience it with bare feet and an open mind.

So here you are, barefoot and mind open as anything, following that familiar, well-worn route to your brother’s room. The House can be tricky with things like directions and consistency, especially at times like this, but you’re used to its moods and tempers; you know how you’re going even if you don’t know where you’re going. And soon there it is, you’re there – you’d recognize his door anywhere.

You don’t bother to knock. That’ll only wake him up quicker, and if you move fast enough and get in quick enough he won’t have nearly enough time to object and throw you out. You know the trick, you’ve done it enough times – the digi-lock to his room has a fault that means if you press your tiny frame up against it just right and slam your fist into the reader just enough so it pops open, quick and quiet as a dream, and you can just slip in. (You don’t feel guilty about this. He probably could have fixed the fault by now, if he’d really wanted to, but he hasn’t. So really, it’s more his fault than yours that you keep breaking in, no matter what he says.)

You navigate the familiar cluttery-chaos of his room – books everywhere, your brother loves his books – and slink up to his bed where he’s silent and still with his face tilted away from you. You pause, lean your weight against the edge of the mattress, and whisper his name. After a second, where he doesn’t respond, you whisper it again. And again. Louder, this time.

The fourth time stirs him. You say his name one more time, even so. Just to make sure.

“For the love of Rassilon,” moans your brother, and you watch as he sits up, unfolding himself upright with an irritated little shake of his head. His hair, carefully braided back in an elaborate spiral of a weave, is just a bit frizzy, just a bit dishevelled. He squints at you, clearly irritated. “Theta, what–? – this had better be an emergency.”

You shrug, and shift from foot to foot, looking at him for a moment or two. “Nightmare,” you tell him. Simple, to the point. Almost completely true.

“Time Lords don’t have nightmares,” he grunts, which is almost completely a lie. “Go back to bed.”

Which to anyone else would be a dismissal, but he’s not getting up to bodily push you out the door, which means you can stay. You grin and scramble up to throw yourself into the bed next to him, bouncing a bit as you land. You burrow sideways, wriggling and shimmying your way up to curl up right at his side. “You’re the best.”

“I know,” he says, quite long-sufferingly, and falls back once more against the bedcovers, resigned to his fate as you weave your fingers into the fabric of his nightclothes and snuggle in tight. “I know, and I rather think I hate it.”

Your brother is odd to lie next to, all weird angles and strange slopes and gentle awkwardness, but he shifts and his arm comes around you. And then he’s tugging you just a bit closer, and his chin brushes the top of your head as he lets out a worlds-weary sigh, and you know that he loves you in that exasperated exhausted way of his, even if he’d never say it out loud.

“Tell me a story,” you say, not even bothering to hide the pleading little whine that creeps into your voice – and you feel rather than hear him sigh again. “It doesn’t even have to be a long one. Tell me about Pandora – ”

“Absolutely not,” he says flatly. “You’ll be awake for days, and then neither of us will get any sleep.”

“Or about Rayla’s TARDIS – ”

“That’s not enough to make a story out of.” And now he just sounds a bit affronted. “If you’re going to pick myths and legends for me to spin for you, at least pick ones with some substance.”

“You’re the expert. Tell me a story,” you say again, and he huffs and complains unendingly – but he does. He always does, for you.

*

Sarah-Jane thinks, there’s something missing, and she’s fairly certain she only means the sounds of the house around her.

She’s sitting on her bed, in her tiny cosy room in the upper floor of the bookshop, and it’s late enough that her eyes are aching and she’s having to use the erratic flickering light of her bedside lamp to write by. Her journal’s open, pages falling across her lap. Gunther’s sprawled out on the bedcovers nearby, collar glinting. Her fingers are stained with ink.

The thought remains. She knows she’s right. Something is missing.

It’s quiet. It’s quiet and lovely and it’s too quiet, and she knows Carrie is just downstairs and Travis is only a few doors away, and yes the wind is occasionally brushing through the trees and skittering along the streets and rooftops and sometimes there is distant birdcall from outside, but the silence is entirely too overwhelming. She is trying to write, to commit the latest of her bright-and-brilliant dreams to paper, but the lack-of-everything is too loud, and she finds herself trailing off frequently, pen leaving slowly-growing patches of dark ink as it stalls on the paper mid-sketch.

It’s quiet.

She’d grown up in a rattly, creaky beast of a house; windows always clattering and clacking merrily away on especially cold and windy nights, floorboards aching and wheezing with heat in the summers. This is nothing like that house.

So maybe that’s the problem – maybe she’s just too entirely used to the noise of home, and this small town in the middle of nowhere is throwing her off. It’s probably nothing, and to be perfectly honest she should stop trying to scribble down her half-remembered dreams, grit her teeth and bear it and try to sleep anyway.

Here’s the thing, though: Travis is just down the hall. She knows exactly how far away he is, can perfectly imagine the route she’d have to take to get there and the slightly-too-big chest of drawers halfway there that she’d need to take care not to bump into.

He won’t mind, she tells herself. And if she’s very quiet and very careful, he won’t even know she’s there.

She dog-ears her journal, sets it on her bedside table, gives a dozing Gunther a quick gentle scratch behind the ears, and slips out of bed.

There’s something very nostalgic about sneaking out across the house at midnight like this, even though the house itself is unfamiliar. Not quite the same, but not quite different either. There’s a hallway and moonlight from the fire escape casting strange shadows across the floorboards and she has to skirt the chest of drawers as predicted, and then there it is – Travis’s room.

She nearly reaches out to jiggle the lock just right before she catches herself and realizes – new house, no locks, no trick to get in. Not that Travis ever bothered to lock his room, anyway. She turns the handle slowly, is pleased when the hinges don’t creak or screech unpleasantly, and slips into her brother’s bedroom.

Travis is curled up a bit too far to the right of the bed, covers pulled tight around him and pillows bundled up in an awkward knot behind his head. He snorts gently in his sleep. Sarah-Jane halts in the doorway, and bites her lip, feeling a smile rising to her lips. As always, Travis is physically incapable of sleeping like a normal person. Maybe things really haven’t changed quite so much.

A small stack of books takes up most of the space on his bedside table. They’ve spilled out onto his floor, too, and onto his bed – there’s several occupying the side of the mattress he’s not on. She sees a ragged-looking cookbook, a notebook occupied with his scrawling, messy writing, and just at his back, The Chronic Argonauts, makeshift scrap-paper-bookmark hanging crooked only a few pages in. He has a soft spot for HG Wells; always has. For most science-fiction, really. Her brother loves his books, the more improbable and out-of-this-world the better. 

She reaches out, and carefully tugs the books away, piling them up on a clean spot on the floor. And then she hesitates for several seconds too long before sitting down in the space she’s cleared out for herself, and swinging her legs up over the edge and onto the mattress. This is better. The silence isn’t so overwhelming, now, not when she can hear him breathing like this and be sure of his existence.

It’s silent and calm for a moment or two, and then she makes the mistake of trying to steal one of his pillows. He starts and startles awake, flailing wildly for a moment or two. “Wha – ” he begins, voice a bit panicked, and then he twists around and his eyes fall on her and they widen and he says, “D – um, Sarah? What are you-?”

It occurs to her, quite suddenly, that it’s been years – quite possibly decades, actually – since the last time she snuck into his bedroom to curl up next to him and bother him into waking up properly and demand a story from him or at the very least a hug. Things have changed, since then. Things have really changed, they’ve changed a lot. They aren’t kids anymore, and this isn’t allowed.

“Oh,” she says, and slides back hurriedly like she’s been forcibly tugged back, swinging her legs off the edge of the bed. This isn’t allowed. She needs to go, and maybe they can both pretend it never happened. “Oh, I – it’s stupid. I was just... you know what, never mind. Go back to sleep.”

“What?” Travis is still half-asleep, still drowsy and confused, but he’s forcing himself upright and rubbing his eyes and reaching clumsily for her arm, trying to keep her from leaving. “No, it’s not, you’re not... what’s wrong? Did something happen?”

“I’m fine,” she says, mildly furious at herself for her moment of weakness. “I just couldn’t sleep, and I thought... no, no; it is stupid.”

Travis stops trying to pull her back, and he looks at her, and he’s now fully awake, pyjamas rumpled and wrinkled, hair messy and dishevelled, and he says, “Oh,” and he blinks at her like he’s looking at a stranger, and she feels like an impostor for a moment because it’s like he doesn’t even see her, not properly, not really. And then he says, “Oh,” again, then, “You couldn’t sleep – and you... you? Were you-?”

“It’s stupid,” she repeats, the self-directed fury simmering dully within her. “I just thought – you know, when we were kids, and we... I mean, it’s not like you’re going to tell me a bedtime story and carry me back to my room in the morning so our parents don’t realize we’re up all night. What was I even thinking? It’s...” She shakes her head. “No. Good night, Travis.”

“Wait,” he says, and looks at her for a moment, and then takes the messy, tangled covers and starts trying to clumsily straighten them out, drape them over the bed, and as she watches he lifts the edge of the covers towards her. “C’mon.”

“Travis – ”

“It’s fine,” he says. He yawns, and smiles. It’s a bit strained, a bit worried, but there’s no denying its legitimacy. “Like when we were kids, right?”

She stares at him. And then she can’t help it, she snorts. “When we were kids you had the world’s boniest elbows,” she tells him. “Every time I snuck into your room for storytime, I woke up the next morning with bruises so bad Carrie thought I kept getting into fights after school.”

Travis laughs, but it’s a bit bewildered.-sounding “She did?”

“You were there,” she says, frowning at him, and then snorts again. “She kept asking where and when it was happening because she wanted to get in on it.” There’s a brief pause where she’s caught in the unexpected memory, and then she adds, “I’m just reminding you so you know. If you elbow me tonight, I’m hiding your lesson plans for tomorrow.”

There’s a definite grin in his voice when he says, “All right. Got it.”

She grins back at him even though he probably can’t see it, flops down on the mattress next to him, and wiggles sideways under the unevenly-laid covers. He settles down next to her like he doesn’t quite know what he’s doing, and for a moment or two they lie there in silence. It’s probably the most awkward experience of her life, but there really is something strangely calming about it.

“You okay?” he asks eventually.

“I’m fine,” she says after a moment. He’s warm next to her. Present.

He makes a little noise, and he sounds sceptical. “You snuck into my room at... I don’t know what time it is.”

She’s not good at remembering times. She hadn’t checked the clock. But... “Past midnight. I think.”

“Sure,” he says. “That doesn’t seem fine to me, I’m just saying.”

She scrunches her face up at him, even though he probably can’t see it. The awkwardness has settled into familiarity. She realizes that she’s missed this. Him and his bony poky elbows, her sniping playfully at him, and him taking it with that easygoing grace of his.

She doesn’t know how to respond, though, and after a minute she clears her throat and tries to change the conversation topic. “I’ve been dreaming a lot, lately.”

“Oh,” he says, and after a second appears to accept the new direction. “Um. Weird sort of dreams?”

She doesn’t know how he knows. Although maybe it’s not that strange of a guess. “Very weird. Very... bright.”

“...Bad dreams?”

Sarah-Jane thinks about this for a moment.

“No. No, I don’t think so.” She stares at the ceiling. Their shoulders are brushing. The two of them haven’t really talked properly, not since moving in on that first day. He’s been thrown head-first into a teaching job he wasn’t ready for in the least, and he hasn’t complained – not a word, not at all – but his exhaustion is tangible. She really shouldn’t have woken him up. “...You don’t need to sound so worried about me all the time. They’re just dreams.”

“Being worried is kind of my job,” he says wryly.

“They’re not bad dreams. They’re... nice, actually.” She shifts, head against his shoulder, and he wiggles his arm to accommodate. “Even if I don’t understand all of them. Sometimes you’re there. You and Carrie, and... other people, people I don’t know but I feel like I should know. And I’m me, but I’m not me, and I’m... better.”

She feels him shift next to her, going ever-so-slightly more tense, more alert. “What do you mean?”

“Better than this. Better than...” She doesn’t know how to put it into words. “You know.”

There’s movement, and after a second she realizes that he’s clumsily fumbling to hold her hand. She lets him do it, and listens as he tells her, “You’re fine. You’re fine the way you are. You don’t need to be better.”

She would laugh, but she doesn’t think she can manage it. “I’m not fine. If I went out into town looking like I want to look, they’d arrest me. Or shoot me. Or worse.”

He’s silent. He lets out a little sigh that’s barely a sigh, just a little exhale of breath. “You don’t need to be better,” he repeats, a bit quieter.

“No,” she agrees, and surprises herself with her own intensity. “The world needs to be better.”

For a moment, her words hang between them and they are both united in their exhausted agreement of the sentiment.

“Anyway,” she says, when the silence is too much again. “I had a dream, it woke me up, and then I couldn’t sleep afterwards. And I...” She swallows. This used to be so much easier when they were younger. Now the truth makes her shiver instinctively, tense up for an inevitable blow from the universe itself. She bites the bullet, forges ahead. “I... missed you.”

He doesn’t laugh or poke fun at her, not that she thought he would. “Too quiet, right?”

He gets it. Of course he gets it. “Right. It’s just... I’m used to home being noisy.”

“Yeah,” he says.

“It feels like there’s something missing.”

“Maybe,” he says, and then, “What were you dreaming about?”

“Space.” For a second, she just closes her eyes and loses herself in the memory of a half-remembered dream. “Stars. So many stars, Travis, you wouldn’t believe how many stars are out there when you’re right there; right in the middle of them.” She opens her eyes, and swallows. Clears her throat. “I mean, that’s what it felt like. Obviously, I don’t actually know – but it’s not like anybody really knows, right? Travelling in space. It’s like something out of one of your adventure stories. Oh, you’d love it out there.”

When she looks over to gauge his reaction, she sees that he’s watching her. There’s no judgement there on his shadowy, indistinct face. He says, “Was I there? In your dream?”

She snorts. “Don’t be so self-centred, Travis,” she says, and elbows him sideways. He yelps and flounders for a moment before elbowing her back. His elbows are, as predicted, just as bony as ever. “Not all of my dreams are about you.

He laughs. “Hey, that’s not a no.”

Travis.” She sighs, rolls her eyes. “Yes, fine, you were there. We were on some sort of... vessel. I don’t know how to describe it, it was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. They called it a ship, but it looked nothing like a ship – it was drifting through space, on... some sort of voyage.”

“What were we doing?” Travis asks.

It strikes her that it’s strange, having the roles reversed like this. He was always the storyteller, when they were kids. But right now, he sounds just as fascinated with the tale she’s spinning as she ever had been with his.

“We hadn’t meant to arrive there, we were... pulled.” The details are becoming evasive already. She fights to grasp onto them, determined to put them into words. “And there was... something about angels. The ship was broken, we had to fix it, there was... I had to do something, I think, and then you and Millie were...” She trails off. It had all seemed so vivid when she’d only just woke up. “...Sorry. I – give me a minute. It was a... strange dream. I think I can piece it together – ”

Travis is silent for what feels like several seconds too long, and then he asks, quite softly, “Millie?”

“Another woman,” Sarah-Jane says, and frowns, trying to recall. Scattered snatches of warm eyes and curly brown hair flash in her mind for an instant. Weathered hands gripping a wrench. So very bright and vivid. “A... pilot, I think. I dream about her, sometimes.” She laughs to herself, a bit dazed. “A woman as a pilot, how absurd.”

“It’s not any more absurd than us being on a ship somewhere up in the stars, trying to stop angels from sabotaging it and killing us all,” Travis says, a bit absently.

“...I suppose not.” She sighs, gives up on trying to remember stars and angels and ships-that-aren’t-ships. She’ll try to recapture the thoughts in her journal later on, or maybe she’ll dream about it again. She rarely has repeat dreams, but maybe... “It’s strange. I’ve never met anyone named Millie – anyone that looks like she does, even – but every time I dream about her, it’s as if she’s one of my very best friends who I’ve just... forgotten.”

“That sounds...” Travis trails off, doesn’t finish at first. “Ow.”

“Ow,” she agrees.

“But you do remember her?”

“A... bit. Snatches. Like I said, it’s like she’s one of my best friends who I’ve never met – ” Then she scoffs, just a little. “...But nobody likes to hear someone talk about their dreams. Look, I’ve been talking for too long. You were reading a book; you can tell me about –”

“No,” he says, and shifts closer to her, head brushing her shoulder. “No, tell me about Millie.”

*

*

“I’ve been thinking,” you tell your brother.

“Astounding,” he says, and raises his fingers to the glowing screen of the data projections. Some sort of homework, you think. He’s been waist-deep in it lately. Chin-deep, maybe. Barely enough time to talk. Lucky for him you’re so good at worming your way into his attention. “Top-notch effort. Do try to keep it up, if you can.”

You stick your tongue out at him, and watch the swirling writing rearrange itself as he composes his latest essay. It takes you a second to remember how you were planning on finishing that sentence. Oh, right.

“I’ve been thinking about leaving,” you say.

He stops, fingers stilling.

This is not the first time you have brought this up to him. It takes a second for the silence to abate, and then he sighs and keeps working as if nothing had stopped him. “Oh, do tell.”

When you talk about the stars and the galaxies and running away to see it all, he always sighs like that, as if he can’t imagine such a thing. He’s such a haughty mess of dragon, you think, perfectly content to stay at home curled up on his slowly growing pile of shiny and precious things even when there’s objectively so much out there to see that’s better.

“Suppose I stole a TARDIS,” you say.

“Suppose you did,” he agrees indulgently. “And then suppose you stop right there and take a moment to consider the consequences of such an act.”

You huff and slide to the floor, watching him work. “It’s not like there’s any lack of places to hide in all of time and space. If anyone’s going to chase me around and try to drag me back home, they’re going to have to get really good at running, really fast.”

He lets out a long low hum, which either means he can’t deny your logic, or that he’s gotten distracted with entering a new data-clause.

You patiently let him take his time with whichever of the two it is for a microspan or so, and then say, “No rebuttals this time?”

“You’re just looking for an excuse to argue with me,” he tells you, with just a hint of what you think might be fondness. Well. He’s not wrong, is it? “You’ve already made up your mind.”

“Not even one counterpoint?” you just about whine.

“I’ve already asked you to consider the consequences. I consider my duty as devil’s advocate thoroughly fulfilled in that respect, I think.”

“And I think you’re just disappointing.”

“You and my tutors both,” he says with a sigh, and then turns away, finally, to give you his full attention. “Would leaving make you happy?” he says, and he sounds... weird, really. Not exactly serious, but he’s not joking and sighing and being his usual high-strung sarcastic self.

You take a moment to banish all merriment and levity, and centre yourself away from your usual standard of being here to poke and prod at him. And then you say, “Yes. Yes, I think it would.”

“Well. If that’s the only thing that’s going to make you happy,” he says quietly, “I wouldn’t dream of stopping you.”

*

There’s a flyer pinned to the bar of the Washington Arms, a bit crumpled and half-hidden behind the miscellaneous requests for piano tutors and various job offers around town that hang off the edge like ragged flags. Sarah-Jane is up here to pick up drinks for all of them – well, for Travis and Carrie, she doesn’t drink much these days – but she finds herself hesitating, eyes lingering on the half-hidden showbill. Her heart flutters distantly with a strange bit of desperate longing she isn’t sure what to do with.

She tilts her head, squints – sees an address, a time. The place is one town over, only a short train ride away. And it’s late enough that she could sneak out while her two housemates are sleeping, and if she keeps it quick and keeps an eye on the time, she might even be back by morning. But then there’s the matter of the clothes...

“Everything all right, John?” Alexander asks, leaning over the bar to pass her the two glasses. She starts guiltily, and hastily reaches out to take them, and he laughs as he pulls them back, saying, “Darling, slow down – it’s for your stomach, not your shirt.”

She doesn’t know what to do with darling so she laughs it off too, ignoring the strange bubble of strangeness that’s taken root in her chest at the sound of it. She clears her throat, wiggles her fingers. “Sorry, I’ll... I’ll take it slower this time. I’m just a bit – ” Tired? Strange? Out of place? No. “ – well. You know.”

“Oh, I get it,” he agrees with a knowing look. He’s always shooting her those knowing looks, and she’s starting to get the impression that he doesn’t know nearly as much as he might think he does. He raises his eyebrows, and offers the drinks to her again.

“Just a second,” she says, and before she can lose the nerve, she reaches out, snatches the flyer, and stuffs it in her pocket. Alexander winks at her and she fights the urge to roll her eyes as she takes the drinks from him.

Her head is already filling with music as she carries the drinks back. With some modifications, she and Carrie might be about the same size, she thinks. She’s sure she can arrange for some of her friend’s nicer clothes to get lost mysteriously in the laundry. It’s not ideal, but it’s not as if she can go out and buy any sort of costume for herself...

She passes the drinks over, and Travis asks what’s got her grinning like that. She doesn’t quite know what to say, so she tells him that she’s just been having a really good week. It’s not even a lie. This week’s been better than most, really, even though the bar isn’t very high at all. And if she’s very clever and very careful indeed, it might be about to get even better.

Saturday evening, the flyer says. Starting at midnight, on the dot.

Carrie and Travis are talking, now, but whatever it is that they’re discussing she’s barely hearing it. She’s a million miles away. Songs that she didn’t even know she knew are springing to her mind, unbidden. She knows not to get too hopeful because its easy, oh-so-easy for crushing disappointment to pulverize you in an instant, but even so...

Well, Sarah-Jane has always been more than a bit of a hopeless romantic when it comes to hope.