Solidarity
Mar. 26th, 2007 04:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meddowI bring Sarah Jane Smith fic, because, well, SJS is awesome. It's that fic I was going on about yesterday.
Title: Solidarity
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
meddow
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Summary: In the dark depths of his despair she would be there beside him, even if he had no idea.
Author's Notes: Thank you very much tosnorkackcatcher who beta'ed this fic.
---
Sarah loved those times when she would dream of such things as large blue flowers with petals the size of a field. When she would dream of travelling through the rings of far distant planets with colours never to be repeated on earth. Or times when she would dream of crowds of alien creatures cheering under a purple sky. Those dreams were a species of their own compared to her regular ones, incredibly vivid and never repeated.
Initially, she put it down to her imagination. Sarah had always had an active imagination; it was something her aunt had nurtured, her teachers had tolerated, and her editors would spend meetings agonising over; how could she remain credible with the sometimes unbelievable things she reported, while having a side career writing books? With thorough research, uncompromising professionalism and a pseudonym, she would reply with amusement, enjoying getting everyone all worked up.
But Sarah came to realise she was seeing things through another person's eyes. They were not things she had ever seen and not things she would ever think of. She would see faces of people she had never met show up time and time again. She would see things that would defy all logic. She would see electric storms so powerful they would tear from the planets that created them and light up galaxies. The latter was impossible according to Edward the physicist (who was always quick to explain his view of the world, but never once to entertain the possibilities of what she knew to be reality).
And sometimes she would see what appeared to be a simple blue police box, a left over antique of an age now well past sitting in the background of a sky-scraper-filled city or as a speck on a desert plain.
It was five years between the time he left her in Aberdeen (with no money, no clue and much explaining to do) and the dreams beginning – slowly at first, one every few months. They were so full of joy - his joy- that she longed for more. She shared his happiness with him; it would last through the morning and she revelled in it, wearing a private smile she would not explain to those who asked, not her boss, not her colleagues and certainly not Isaac the cartoonist (who would so often smirk but never grin).
More dreams came, their frequency increased, and as the long years passed and not once did he arrive on her doorstep to take her away, they became, for her, bittersweet. The thought of him out there though, kept what had happened to her so many years ago still real. It kept the world full of energy, just as it had been when travelling with him.
But the dreams began to change. The same planet began so show up with regularity, one she had never seen before. She saw people in strange robes deliberating with dour expressions. From those dreams she would wake up in a state of anxiety. She would tell herself that it was not real, but the unease would hang around her and she would find herself in front of a keyboard intending to write, but instead staring into nothing deeply worried about something she could neither articulate nor comprehend.
And then she saw them. They swarmed from their ships like locusts, destroying all they touched, a plague in time and space. The Daleks advanced and planets fell in their path, and Sarah Jane would wake with a racing heart and an unshakable feeling of despair, his despair mixed in with her own. He was in pain and where was she? She was trapped on Earth, so far away and utterly useless, unable to crack a silly joke or use a stupid pun to try and make him grin like she once would have done.
She needed to know what was going on, and so she tried her contacts. Neither Jo nor Liz were any help. They had not dreamt of him once. The Brigadier she avoided, unwilling to place her and the Doctor's problems on him when he had an ailing wife.
With nothing, Sarah went back further to every person she had managed to link to him over the years, to Ian and Barbara, to Dodo, to Ben and to Polly only to find out nothing. The air hostess, Tegan, whom she spoke with briefly in a restaurant in a crowded Heathrow Airport, talked only of mild headaches. After weeks of searching, Sarah had nothing to indicate that what she was feeling was real and no means at all to track the Doctor down.
So Sarah tried a different route. There was only one doctor she could possibly trust. But Harry Sullivan had been missing for years and so she went to her regular physician, who wondered if she had experienced any trauma. Just the usual amount, she replied, not able to tell her of the numerous times someone or something had fiddled with her mind. Sarah wondered to herself if things had gone wrong the last time the Doctor was patching her up and that was why she was dreaming what he could see. It was not an entirely useless trip; she did end up with a bottle of sleeping pills she declined to take. She was hardly going to let him face the Daleks alone, she just wished more than anything that there was something she could do.
She found it the day it was announced that somewhere in the world people were killing each other once again with newsworthy cruelty. They needed someone with some skill and experience to witness and report.
They warned her before she left that she could not be herself in a war zone, diving almost recklessly into stories with only a hunch and her usual pluck. She could not tell them of Skaro of course, but in the end they let her go.
Her sudden change in career path seemed to bother Arthur the barrister (who hadn't touched a jelly baby in near to thirty years). He asked her why and all she could reply was that it was a matter of solidarity - with whom, she declined to say.
Sarah packed her bags, left K9 behind and went to war along with Hamish the photojournalist (who had travelled the world but would never speak well of humanity). By day, she witnessed human atrocities that rarely made the front page, and by night she watched civilisations fall one by one in a war being waged while she slept. She would find herself awakening from the sound of a city screaming to the sound of gunfire in the streets, see human bodies lying in a pit and humanoid bodies lining a the road.
The anger, the hate, the sadness and the horror all began to blur for Sarah, and soon she stopped knowing where his misery ended and her own began. Lost somewhere between the two, it began to take its toll. She felt older than she could ever be, more weary than she thought herself capable of bearing. She wanted so badly to leave but forced herself to stay. Occasionally she eyed the bottle of sleeping pills and decided once again that no, she would not succumb. In the dark depths of his despair, she would be there beside him, even if he had no idea.
And she was there when the end happened. She was there when the fire he created burned up planets and ships alike and thousands upon millions died with a scream that drowned out a supernova. She was there when the silence came and he turned away so sickened and horrified of what he had done with his own hands. She was there when he lay down on a street amongst red-brick houses and under a familiar overcast sky. She was there when the pain overwhelmed him, when he decided it was more than he could ever bear. She was there when he let go.
She woke up screaming and knowing that she had to get to London. She threw her things into her bag while tears steamed down her face. So many tried to find out what was wrong, but all she could reply was that she had to get to London, she had to get to him, and that no-one would understand.
It did her no good; she might as well have been a universe away. It took two days to get back home and not once in that time did she dream. She arrived to find that no bodies had been reported and no blue boxes sighted. Still, the shadows of his final moments remained with her, and within her she knew he was gone.
And so Sarah Jane began to grieve. She ignored what they said behind her back, that Sarah Jane Smith had arrogantly gone off to war and suffered a nervous breakdown. They would never understand what had really happened. She did not dream those dreams anymore, just regular faded and jumbled narratives, and now to her the world seemed so much darker, so much colder and so much uglier. Her world was so much less without him.
It was at a funeral that she found solace, in a conversation with an old friend. Doris had lost her battle and the Brigadier was a devastated man. Sarah found herself quietly talking to him at the back of the room, some way away from the rest of the mourners. He asked if the tales were true and she confessed for the first time the real reason she had gone away and the insanity of it; after all, she had never had confirmation that any of it was real.
He turned to her with the look of a man who had watched suffering as she had done and replied, "I held my wife's hand as she passed away, just as I held it through her sickness and her many treatments. I think that it's only natural to want to share the pain our loved ones suffer."
They stood there in silence, the two mourners together, until she braved the question that had persisted in her mind since she had arrived back.
"What do I do now?"
"I’ve been told we get up in the morning and get on with living our lives, just as we did before. I’m not quite sure how. We just do," the Brigadier replied.
She nodded and they went their separate ways.
The next morning Sarah got up and went to work. She went out and got her story. The rumours subsided and the incident became a thing of the past, to both her and everyone else. She went back to making her editors worry and running headlong into stories with only a hunch. Occasionally she ventured out dating, but nothing ever lasted. No one could ever really understand.
And one Christmas morning as she stared into the sky at the spaceship looming overhead, and while everyone else was wondering what would become of humanity, her thoughts turned to him. Maybe it because of the season, for the first time in years, her thoughts of him were ones of hope. If he were alive, he would be on that ship. Somewhere in the midst of it all, saving the Earth and having a wonderful time.
She remembered then a dream she had a few weeks before, a dream of a golden mist, of a child hugging his mother and the faint strains of a Glenn Miller song. It was her imagination, she told herself once again. Sarah Jane still smiled a private smile.
Title: Solidarity
Author:
meddowRating: PG
Warnings: None
Summary: In the dark depths of his despair she would be there beside him, even if he had no idea.
Author's Notes: Thank you very much to
snorkackcatcher who beta'ed this fic. Sarah loved those times when she would dream of such things as large blue flowers with petals the size of a field. When she would dream of travelling through the rings of far distant planets with colours never to be repeated on earth. Or times when she would dream of crowds of alien creatures cheering under a purple sky. Those dreams were a species of their own compared to her regular ones, incredibly vivid and never repeated.
Initially, she put it down to her imagination. Sarah had always had an active imagination; it was something her aunt had nurtured, her teachers had tolerated, and her editors would spend meetings agonising over; how could she remain credible with the sometimes unbelievable things she reported, while having a side career writing books? With thorough research, uncompromising professionalism and a pseudonym, she would reply with amusement, enjoying getting everyone all worked up.
But Sarah came to realise she was seeing things through another person's eyes. They were not things she had ever seen and not things she would ever think of. She would see faces of people she had never met show up time and time again. She would see things that would defy all logic. She would see electric storms so powerful they would tear from the planets that created them and light up galaxies. The latter was impossible according to Edward the physicist (who was always quick to explain his view of the world, but never once to entertain the possibilities of what she knew to be reality).
And sometimes she would see what appeared to be a simple blue police box, a left over antique of an age now well past sitting in the background of a sky-scraper-filled city or as a speck on a desert plain.
It was five years between the time he left her in Aberdeen (with no money, no clue and much explaining to do) and the dreams beginning – slowly at first, one every few months. They were so full of joy - his joy- that she longed for more. She shared his happiness with him; it would last through the morning and she revelled in it, wearing a private smile she would not explain to those who asked, not her boss, not her colleagues and certainly not Isaac the cartoonist (who would so often smirk but never grin).
More dreams came, their frequency increased, and as the long years passed and not once did he arrive on her doorstep to take her away, they became, for her, bittersweet. The thought of him out there though, kept what had happened to her so many years ago still real. It kept the world full of energy, just as it had been when travelling with him.
But the dreams began to change. The same planet began so show up with regularity, one she had never seen before. She saw people in strange robes deliberating with dour expressions. From those dreams she would wake up in a state of anxiety. She would tell herself that it was not real, but the unease would hang around her and she would find herself in front of a keyboard intending to write, but instead staring into nothing deeply worried about something she could neither articulate nor comprehend.
And then she saw them. They swarmed from their ships like locusts, destroying all they touched, a plague in time and space. The Daleks advanced and planets fell in their path, and Sarah Jane would wake with a racing heart and an unshakable feeling of despair, his despair mixed in with her own. He was in pain and where was she? She was trapped on Earth, so far away and utterly useless, unable to crack a silly joke or use a stupid pun to try and make him grin like she once would have done.
She needed to know what was going on, and so she tried her contacts. Neither Jo nor Liz were any help. They had not dreamt of him once. The Brigadier she avoided, unwilling to place her and the Doctor's problems on him when he had an ailing wife.
With nothing, Sarah went back further to every person she had managed to link to him over the years, to Ian and Barbara, to Dodo, to Ben and to Polly only to find out nothing. The air hostess, Tegan, whom she spoke with briefly in a restaurant in a crowded Heathrow Airport, talked only of mild headaches. After weeks of searching, Sarah had nothing to indicate that what she was feeling was real and no means at all to track the Doctor down.
So Sarah tried a different route. There was only one doctor she could possibly trust. But Harry Sullivan had been missing for years and so she went to her regular physician, who wondered if she had experienced any trauma. Just the usual amount, she replied, not able to tell her of the numerous times someone or something had fiddled with her mind. Sarah wondered to herself if things had gone wrong the last time the Doctor was patching her up and that was why she was dreaming what he could see. It was not an entirely useless trip; she did end up with a bottle of sleeping pills she declined to take. She was hardly going to let him face the Daleks alone, she just wished more than anything that there was something she could do.
She found it the day it was announced that somewhere in the world people were killing each other once again with newsworthy cruelty. They needed someone with some skill and experience to witness and report.
They warned her before she left that she could not be herself in a war zone, diving almost recklessly into stories with only a hunch and her usual pluck. She could not tell them of Skaro of course, but in the end they let her go.
Her sudden change in career path seemed to bother Arthur the barrister (who hadn't touched a jelly baby in near to thirty years). He asked her why and all she could reply was that it was a matter of solidarity - with whom, she declined to say.
Sarah packed her bags, left K9 behind and went to war along with Hamish the photojournalist (who had travelled the world but would never speak well of humanity). By day, she witnessed human atrocities that rarely made the front page, and by night she watched civilisations fall one by one in a war being waged while she slept. She would find herself awakening from the sound of a city screaming to the sound of gunfire in the streets, see human bodies lying in a pit and humanoid bodies lining a the road.
The anger, the hate, the sadness and the horror all began to blur for Sarah, and soon she stopped knowing where his misery ended and her own began. Lost somewhere between the two, it began to take its toll. She felt older than she could ever be, more weary than she thought herself capable of bearing. She wanted so badly to leave but forced herself to stay. Occasionally she eyed the bottle of sleeping pills and decided once again that no, she would not succumb. In the dark depths of his despair, she would be there beside him, even if he had no idea.
And she was there when the end happened. She was there when the fire he created burned up planets and ships alike and thousands upon millions died with a scream that drowned out a supernova. She was there when the silence came and he turned away so sickened and horrified of what he had done with his own hands. She was there when he lay down on a street amongst red-brick houses and under a familiar overcast sky. She was there when the pain overwhelmed him, when he decided it was more than he could ever bear. She was there when he let go.
She woke up screaming and knowing that she had to get to London. She threw her things into her bag while tears steamed down her face. So many tried to find out what was wrong, but all she could reply was that she had to get to London, she had to get to him, and that no-one would understand.
It did her no good; she might as well have been a universe away. It took two days to get back home and not once in that time did she dream. She arrived to find that no bodies had been reported and no blue boxes sighted. Still, the shadows of his final moments remained with her, and within her she knew he was gone.
And so Sarah Jane began to grieve. She ignored what they said behind her back, that Sarah Jane Smith had arrogantly gone off to war and suffered a nervous breakdown. They would never understand what had really happened. She did not dream those dreams anymore, just regular faded and jumbled narratives, and now to her the world seemed so much darker, so much colder and so much uglier. Her world was so much less without him.
It was at a funeral that she found solace, in a conversation with an old friend. Doris had lost her battle and the Brigadier was a devastated man. Sarah found herself quietly talking to him at the back of the room, some way away from the rest of the mourners. He asked if the tales were true and she confessed for the first time the real reason she had gone away and the insanity of it; after all, she had never had confirmation that any of it was real.
He turned to her with the look of a man who had watched suffering as she had done and replied, "I held my wife's hand as she passed away, just as I held it through her sickness and her many treatments. I think that it's only natural to want to share the pain our loved ones suffer."
They stood there in silence, the two mourners together, until she braved the question that had persisted in her mind since she had arrived back.
"What do I do now?"
"I’ve been told we get up in the morning and get on with living our lives, just as we did before. I’m not quite sure how. We just do," the Brigadier replied.
She nodded and they went their separate ways.
The next morning Sarah got up and went to work. She went out and got her story. The rumours subsided and the incident became a thing of the past, to both her and everyone else. She went back to making her editors worry and running headlong into stories with only a hunch. Occasionally she ventured out dating, but nothing ever lasted. No one could ever really understand.
And one Christmas morning as she stared into the sky at the spaceship looming overhead, and while everyone else was wondering what would become of humanity, her thoughts turned to him. Maybe it because of the season, for the first time in years, her thoughts of him were ones of hope. If he were alive, he would be on that ship. Somewhere in the midst of it all, saving the Earth and having a wonderful time.
She remembered then a dream she had a few weeks before, a dream of a golden mist, of a child hugging his mother and the faint strains of a Glenn Miller song. It was her imagination, she told herself once again. Sarah Jane still smiled a private smile.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-03-26 11:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-26 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-06 12:30 am (UTC)That was...awesome. My heart was breaking at the end, and I could hear 10 so clearly in my head - "My Sarah Jane!". *sniff*
Thanks so much for writing this. It's exactly the short of thing that makes fanfic a good thing in the world.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-06 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-17 08:14 pm (UTC)very well done :)
no subject
Date: 2007-05-18 02:12 am (UTC)