Mad Epic Sj fic o'Doom
Title: A Little Black Book
Author: kowarth
Characters: Sarah Jane Smith, Benton, The Doctor (3 with cameos from 5 & 8) and Mr Smith.
Rating: PG
Words: 2730ish
Disclaimer: I don't even own the words, just the order I put them in.
Summary: A character study of the evolution of Sarah, her convoluted continuity and the role of the companion.
Notes: Using as reference Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Hand of Fear, The Five Doctors, The TV Movie and the Sarah Jane Adventures. I’ve covered the mess that is 90s Who continuity and how New Who rewrote most of it with two words.
Not really as dry as it sounds, it is a fic honest!
Feel Free to Play spot the continuity reference too :)
It had started in 1980, or was it 1974? She was sat in a deserted office in London waiting to use the UNIT communications equipment to contact Aunt Lavinia. The rather affable Sergeant Benton had brought in some tea and sat to operate the bulky radio device that would allow her to phone outside the exclusion zone created by the Dinosaur Invasion.
“What number is it Miss?” he’d smiled
“Moreton Harwood 5.. Oh no, She’ll be in the States still...” Sarah fetched her jacket and scrabbled about for the small notebook she kept with her.
Benton had retired to the far side of the room to let her talk, fiddling about in a filing cabinet that had seen better days after being shunted from one temporary HQ to another. When Sarah Jane had finished he switched the machine off and handed her a little black notepad embossed with the UNIT emblem.
“What’s this for?”
“All the top secret stuff, if the Doctor’s got you on his side, you’re going to see and hear things that no one should know, including telephone numbers. Have somewhere special for those; you never know who you need to talk to.” Sarah smiled and kissed his cheek affectionately.
She’d only known the Doctor’s colleagues at UNIT for a handful of hours but already they seemed like old friends.
II
1976 its October and Sarah Jane Smith is stood in a phone box in Aberdeen. The Doctor had told her it was Croydon but that wasn’t why she was crying.
He’d had to leave, had to dump her and return to the Time Lords. She used to joke at him when he complained that they had interfered. Pulled faces at him behind his back in the electric thick atmosphere of Karn while he sulked and played with his yoyo.
And now, suddenly, she realised why he hated his people so. At a word from them he could be forced to drop everything to go home. Everything including... no, especially her.
She wondered if it had happened before, how often it might have happened before.
UNIT records had been very helpful in finding out about her friend when he had run off to Metebelis Three that once. She knew she wasn’t alone in travelling with him and already had a list of names to look out for. How many of them had been forcibly removed from his side she wondered.
She stared at the 10p she had dug from her bag and then at the phone.
She needed to talk to someone. She needed someone who could understand all of this (although part of it would do).
She reached back into the bag and pulled out the little black notebook Benton had given her, now heavily annotated with dates next to the names. She had soon realised that time travel made keeping track of people complicated. She needed to know when people would be at which number. And that wasn’t as easy as it sounded…
It was only as she turned the dial on the last number and heard the line burr to itself that she realised she wouldn’t need to keep dates in her book anymore.
When Harry Sullivan picked up the phone he knew from her sobbing that the thing he’d feared the most wasn’t actually the worst thing that could have happened.
III
1983 November 23rd. He was supposed to take her straight home, the will of Rassilon he’d said. But he never did bother that much about rules as she remembered.
She felt like a little girl again, rattling about the universe in that battered police box. But this time it was different. Even on the azure shore of Mammetine under three suns she knew it wasn’t the same. She knew that she had to go home.
She took his hand and squeezed sadly, terrified in the knowledge that she already knew how his journey was going to end. He looked down at her, his bright eyes alive with that towering intellect and that shock of white hair, lit faintly green by reflection. She couldn’t help but be reminded of the way the light had faded from those eyes on the dirty floor of the lab at UNIT HQ all those years ago.
It felt like losing him all over again.
‘A tear, Sarah Jane?’ he smiled down at her, unknowingly foreshadowing that very event. She couldn’t hold it back any longer and wept, curling herself into the ruffles of his shirt.
He patted at her head fondly.
‘Now, now Sarah Jane, no need for that. ’ his voice was rich and warm and Sarah tried her very best not to let it slide from her memory.
‘I... I won’t, you said I wouldn’t remember any of this... because I was taken out of time to go to the Death Zone.’
‘Well...’ he stepped back and stroked his lower lip with his thumb ‘That’s how it’s supposed to work. How it will happen for me at least. But...’ he straightened up and smiled again. ‘You trust me, don’t you Sarah Jane?’
‘More than I’ve ever trusted anyone.’ She told him with her broadest grin. And she knew it was true. He pulled the TARDIS key from around his neck and delved into the pocket of his velvet jacket for the sonic screwdriver. Suddenly she had a terrible realisation of what he was planning ‘Oh no you don’t! I was fed up of being hypnotised befo...’
The TARDIS key spun in the alien air, the low powered hum of the sonic screwdriver making its surface glimmer as though it were coated in rainbows.
From its heart she saw a tunnel of small lights reach towards her, followed by a twisting petrol sheen that resolved itself around the figure of the Doctor.
When the light died away she was stood behind the gate of her house in Croydon. There was a roaring noise behind her and she spun to see the familiar Police Box fading from the lake side opposite.
K9’s ears whirred at her and she let the tears fall.
‘You didn’t... Why didn’t you let me say goodbye?’ She asked the thin air. And then, with startling clarity she saw a young man, blonde in cricketing whites reaching out his hand with a charming smile.
And she heard her Doctor say ‘It was lovely to meet you too Sarah.’ With it came all the other memories of the Death Zone. And even more names to add to her little black book.
IIII
1999 December 31st
Sarah Jane Smith stood at the window of the attic in Bannerman Road. It was risky returning here, even if only for a night. Nat had warned her against it but she knew she would have a perfect view of the fireworks. As the first starburst of colour rent the sky her mind was suddenly awash with memories of alternatives, things that had or might have happened at that very moment.
Sarah Jane stood at the window of the Planet 3 office block in Docklands and smiled across at the thousands of people jamming the route of the millennium celebrations. It was the first time in an age that she’d felt comfortable in her little black dress. She opened her purse and flicked open her mobile. It wasn’t any real surprise to her that the network would be out, and truth be told she didn’t know who she’d call anyway.
A firework screamed across the sky as the countdown started behind her, she was in two minds to turn and laugh with her colleagues or stay with the view, safe in the knowledge that she’d helped the planet make it to the year 2000.
In front of her eyes she saw the skyline shimmer and distort as though it was tearing free of the planet like some cartoon mouse in the path of a vacuum cleaner. Her head roared with a pounding scream of tortured engines. She knew that the champagne, purse and phone were all on the floor at her feet.
Knew that the noise was lost on those around her, while she crumpled to her knees screaming in pain.
Knew that the scream was a single word
‘Doctor...’
She was standing in the crowd outside a night club, the building shaking as a whirlpool of alien energies struck it like a lightning conductor...
She was standing in the hall at Aunt Lavinia’s dancing under the tinsel with Juno Baker...
She was listening to the chimes of Big Ben on a dented transistor radio from within a packing crate inside a high security compound...
She was pressed over an office table gasping for breath and pleading for more...
She was pinned to alien soil by the broad back of the Doctor as missiles streaked overhead...
She was hiding in a storeroom, straining her hearing for signs of the Viryans...
Sarah Jane Smith stood at the window of the attic in Bannerman Road. In the midst of the night sky she thought, for a fleeting moment, that she could see the TARDIS, spinning slowly above them. And then it was gone.
‘What the hell was that, Doctor?’ she wondered aloud. She turned to the table in the corner and grabbed up her bag, pulling out the phone. No signal, obviously. Then the little picture of the mast flickered back into life and she raised the phone. But who to call...
She scrabbled the little black book from the bag and flipped it open. To her amazement the notes inscribed on its pages were swimming, shifting and changing before her eyes.
Dr Shaw’s number blipped in and out of existence, labelled as PROBE rather than Cambridge.
Harry’s number flickered between London, Scotland and Geneva before settling on London.
She dialled the one number from memory that she knew could help her understand what had happened. There was a whirr and click at the other end and the rusty croak of what was left of K9’s voice coughed into life.
‘Mistress?’
‘Something’s happening K9, what....’
‘aff.af...afffirmative Mi mimi mistress. Massive ttttTEmporal distortion detected. DoctorMasters psych psss Detected.’
‘Temporal?’ she managed. She hated to ask him, the poor dog was collapsing with every syllable.
‘tttt time disruption. History altering through conta....’ the line went dead and Sarah stared at the page.
K9’s number now had a line drawn neatly through it.
Time, it seemed, had decided his was over.
It took her a good three minutes to read through the book again. She was quite disturbed at how much had changed. Everyone she met in the company of the Doctor since 1979 had gone. As though a huge section of his history had been erased and hers along with it.
So why did she remember them? An image of the Doctor appeared in her mind, the first one she had met, stood under a clear sky waving the TARDIS key at her.
Then another man stood in his place, not a memory, she had never met this man before. He was slightly shorter than the Third Doctor had been, still clothed in velvet with a smart silver waistcoat. His arms were pinned above his head by a complex crown of metal thorns and chains.
‘Temporal orbit! Your life force is dying Master...’ he called past her, his voice was rich and slightly accented. She knew it was the Doctor, she prayed that a Temporal Orbit (whatever that was) would save the day.
When he faded from view she sat on the floor and started writing, recalling as much of the missing names as she could in case the memories vanished too.
V
2006 October
Sarah finished typing her article and pushed away from the PC, pinching at the bridge of her nose. She stood, stretched her back and pulled her hair out of its makeshift bun before walking across the attic.
‘Mr Smith. I need you.’ She commanded. The brick wall emitted as much steam as fanfare and the supercomputer unfolded like an industrial impression of a flower.
‘Good evening, Sarah Jane.’ The swirling crystal matrix on the screen pulsed lightly in time to the warm polite voice. ‘How may I be of assistance?’
Sarah allowed herself a brief smile and pulled the black notebook from the rear pocket of her jeans.
‘Another spot of textual analysis I think, Mr Smith.’ She took the post office red elastic band from the note book and opened the computer’s scanner draw. ‘I had an idea when I was going through those business records earlier today. That notebook contains a list of names that I would like you to trace for me. I want to try to and build a picture of their movements if at all possible.’
‘That should not be a problem Sarah Jane.’ Mr Smith confirmed, drawing the scanner bed inside itself.
‘It may prove a bit more of a challenge than usual, even for you. I think you’ll probably have to turn off any temporal and location contexts.’
‘I understand’ the computer replied. She wondered if he did or if he was just being polite.
After 20 minutes Sarah went downstairs for something to eat.
It was three days later that Mr Smith’s fanfare sounded once more, his search program finally finished. His screen displayed a map of the globe, crisscrossed with multi coloured lines that turned it into a neon tube map of continuity.
‘What on earth is that?’ Sarah Jane asked with a mixture of curiosity and disdain.
‘I am displaying the data you asked for. This map shows you the current locations of the individuals noted in your book. I shall isolate one for you’ the screen flashed and a single mid green line trickled across the screen from Kent to Peru. ‘This is the current position of Brigadier Sir Alistair Lethbridge Stewart.’
Sarah tried not to wonder what he was doing in Peru at his age and turned her attention back to the first image she had seen. ‘So why was the screen such a mess?’
‘I took the liberty of extrapolating your instruction to a broader level of search terms. For example’
A red line flecked with purple appeared in Austria and another in Sydney, Australia. ‘This is the current location of Tegan Jovanka’
‘That’s two different places Mr Smith.’
‘Correct Sarah Jane. Her grave lies in Sydney where she died earlier this month. She has been reported in Austria within the last twenty four hours in the company of one Vislor Turlough, a student listed as missing in 1983’
‘Turlough?’ Sarah Jane frowned, recalling a thin redheaded youth imprisoned alongside her under the gaze of Rassilon. The line on the map changed to a white and blue stripe.
‘And that’s Turlough’s location?’
In the next half an hour Mr Smith talked her through the map that he had created. He showed her branches that he had created, names she never knew existed that fed through the network of coincidence and data. Perpugilliam Brown, Dodo Chaplet, Leela.
At the end he showed the list in a new pattern, like a solar system. And the star at its centre was the Doctor, she knew it would be.
She faced a decision then, whether to talk to these anonymous heroes. Seek them out and tell her that life after the Doctor could still be an adventure. But she had no way of knowing whether they’d left him, were with him or hadn’t even met him yet.
She marvelled at the names and how he touched so many lives. Then she told Mr Smith to deadlock seal all his data on the project away and removed her little black book from the scanner tray.
She was Sarah Jane Smith. She stood on the thin grey line between humanity and the cosmos and she knew that any one of those people Mr Smith had found could be of help to her.
But equally, she knew that the Doctor made far more enemies than friends.
If that data, that familiar little black book should fall into the wrong hands it could do far more harm than good. Secrets were secrets for a very good reason.
She stared at it for a few agonising seconds, recalling the smile Benton gave her all those years ago. Then she put it in the bottom of the dustbin and aimed the sonic lipstick at it until it burst into flames.
Author: kowarth
Characters: Sarah Jane Smith, Benton, The Doctor (3 with cameos from 5 & 8) and Mr Smith.
Rating: PG
Words: 2730ish
Disclaimer: I don't even own the words, just the order I put them in.
Summary: A character study of the evolution of Sarah, her convoluted continuity and the role of the companion.
Notes: Using as reference Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Hand of Fear, The Five Doctors, The TV Movie and the Sarah Jane Adventures. I’ve covered the mess that is 90s Who continuity and how New Who rewrote most of it with two words.
Not really as dry as it sounds, it is a fic honest!
Feel Free to Play spot the continuity reference too :)
It had started in 1980, or was it 1974? She was sat in a deserted office in London waiting to use the UNIT communications equipment to contact Aunt Lavinia. The rather affable Sergeant Benton had brought in some tea and sat to operate the bulky radio device that would allow her to phone outside the exclusion zone created by the Dinosaur Invasion.
“What number is it Miss?” he’d smiled
“Moreton Harwood 5.. Oh no, She’ll be in the States still...” Sarah fetched her jacket and scrabbled about for the small notebook she kept with her.
Benton had retired to the far side of the room to let her talk, fiddling about in a filing cabinet that had seen better days after being shunted from one temporary HQ to another. When Sarah Jane had finished he switched the machine off and handed her a little black notepad embossed with the UNIT emblem.
“What’s this for?”
“All the top secret stuff, if the Doctor’s got you on his side, you’re going to see and hear things that no one should know, including telephone numbers. Have somewhere special for those; you never know who you need to talk to.” Sarah smiled and kissed his cheek affectionately.
She’d only known the Doctor’s colleagues at UNIT for a handful of hours but already they seemed like old friends.
II
1976 its October and Sarah Jane Smith is stood in a phone box in Aberdeen. The Doctor had told her it was Croydon but that wasn’t why she was crying.
He’d had to leave, had to dump her and return to the Time Lords. She used to joke at him when he complained that they had interfered. Pulled faces at him behind his back in the electric thick atmosphere of Karn while he sulked and played with his yoyo.
And now, suddenly, she realised why he hated his people so. At a word from them he could be forced to drop everything to go home. Everything including... no, especially her.
She wondered if it had happened before, how often it might have happened before.
UNIT records had been very helpful in finding out about her friend when he had run off to Metebelis Three that once. She knew she wasn’t alone in travelling with him and already had a list of names to look out for. How many of them had been forcibly removed from his side she wondered.
She stared at the 10p she had dug from her bag and then at the phone.
She needed to talk to someone. She needed someone who could understand all of this (although part of it would do).
She reached back into the bag and pulled out the little black notebook Benton had given her, now heavily annotated with dates next to the names. She had soon realised that time travel made keeping track of people complicated. She needed to know when people would be at which number. And that wasn’t as easy as it sounded…
It was only as she turned the dial on the last number and heard the line burr to itself that she realised she wouldn’t need to keep dates in her book anymore.
When Harry Sullivan picked up the phone he knew from her sobbing that the thing he’d feared the most wasn’t actually the worst thing that could have happened.
III
1983 November 23rd. He was supposed to take her straight home, the will of Rassilon he’d said. But he never did bother that much about rules as she remembered.
She felt like a little girl again, rattling about the universe in that battered police box. But this time it was different. Even on the azure shore of Mammetine under three suns she knew it wasn’t the same. She knew that she had to go home.
She took his hand and squeezed sadly, terrified in the knowledge that she already knew how his journey was going to end. He looked down at her, his bright eyes alive with that towering intellect and that shock of white hair, lit faintly green by reflection. She couldn’t help but be reminded of the way the light had faded from those eyes on the dirty floor of the lab at UNIT HQ all those years ago.
It felt like losing him all over again.
‘A tear, Sarah Jane?’ he smiled down at her, unknowingly foreshadowing that very event. She couldn’t hold it back any longer and wept, curling herself into the ruffles of his shirt.
He patted at her head fondly.
‘Now, now Sarah Jane, no need for that. ’ his voice was rich and warm and Sarah tried her very best not to let it slide from her memory.
‘I... I won’t, you said I wouldn’t remember any of this... because I was taken out of time to go to the Death Zone.’
‘Well...’ he stepped back and stroked his lower lip with his thumb ‘That’s how it’s supposed to work. How it will happen for me at least. But...’ he straightened up and smiled again. ‘You trust me, don’t you Sarah Jane?’
‘More than I’ve ever trusted anyone.’ She told him with her broadest grin. And she knew it was true. He pulled the TARDIS key from around his neck and delved into the pocket of his velvet jacket for the sonic screwdriver. Suddenly she had a terrible realisation of what he was planning ‘Oh no you don’t! I was fed up of being hypnotised befo...’
The TARDIS key spun in the alien air, the low powered hum of the sonic screwdriver making its surface glimmer as though it were coated in rainbows.
From its heart she saw a tunnel of small lights reach towards her, followed by a twisting petrol sheen that resolved itself around the figure of the Doctor.
When the light died away she was stood behind the gate of her house in Croydon. There was a roaring noise behind her and she spun to see the familiar Police Box fading from the lake side opposite.
K9’s ears whirred at her and she let the tears fall.
‘You didn’t... Why didn’t you let me say goodbye?’ She asked the thin air. And then, with startling clarity she saw a young man, blonde in cricketing whites reaching out his hand with a charming smile.
And she heard her Doctor say ‘It was lovely to meet you too Sarah.’ With it came all the other memories of the Death Zone. And even more names to add to her little black book.
IIII
1999 December 31st
Sarah Jane Smith stood at the window of the attic in Bannerman Road. It was risky returning here, even if only for a night. Nat had warned her against it but she knew she would have a perfect view of the fireworks. As the first starburst of colour rent the sky her mind was suddenly awash with memories of alternatives, things that had or might have happened at that very moment.
Sarah Jane stood at the window of the Planet 3 office block in Docklands and smiled across at the thousands of people jamming the route of the millennium celebrations. It was the first time in an age that she’d felt comfortable in her little black dress. She opened her purse and flicked open her mobile. It wasn’t any real surprise to her that the network would be out, and truth be told she didn’t know who she’d call anyway.
A firework screamed across the sky as the countdown started behind her, she was in two minds to turn and laugh with her colleagues or stay with the view, safe in the knowledge that she’d helped the planet make it to the year 2000.
In front of her eyes she saw the skyline shimmer and distort as though it was tearing free of the planet like some cartoon mouse in the path of a vacuum cleaner. Her head roared with a pounding scream of tortured engines. She knew that the champagne, purse and phone were all on the floor at her feet.
Knew that the noise was lost on those around her, while she crumpled to her knees screaming in pain.
Knew that the scream was a single word
‘Doctor...’
She was standing in the crowd outside a night club, the building shaking as a whirlpool of alien energies struck it like a lightning conductor...
She was standing in the hall at Aunt Lavinia’s dancing under the tinsel with Juno Baker...
She was listening to the chimes of Big Ben on a dented transistor radio from within a packing crate inside a high security compound...
She was pressed over an office table gasping for breath and pleading for more...
She was pinned to alien soil by the broad back of the Doctor as missiles streaked overhead...
She was hiding in a storeroom, straining her hearing for signs of the Viryans...
Sarah Jane Smith stood at the window of the attic in Bannerman Road. In the midst of the night sky she thought, for a fleeting moment, that she could see the TARDIS, spinning slowly above them. And then it was gone.
‘What the hell was that, Doctor?’ she wondered aloud. She turned to the table in the corner and grabbed up her bag, pulling out the phone. No signal, obviously. Then the little picture of the mast flickered back into life and she raised the phone. But who to call...
She scrabbled the little black book from the bag and flipped it open. To her amazement the notes inscribed on its pages were swimming, shifting and changing before her eyes.
Dr Shaw’s number blipped in and out of existence, labelled as PROBE rather than Cambridge.
Harry’s number flickered between London, Scotland and Geneva before settling on London.
She dialled the one number from memory that she knew could help her understand what had happened. There was a whirr and click at the other end and the rusty croak of what was left of K9’s voice coughed into life.
‘Mistress?’
‘Something’s happening K9, what....’
‘aff.af...afffirmative Mi mimi mistress. Massive ttttTEmporal distortion detected. DoctorMasters psych psss Detected.’
‘Temporal?’ she managed. She hated to ask him, the poor dog was collapsing with every syllable.
‘tttt time disruption. History altering through conta....’ the line went dead and Sarah stared at the page.
K9’s number now had a line drawn neatly through it.
Time, it seemed, had decided his was over.
It took her a good three minutes to read through the book again. She was quite disturbed at how much had changed. Everyone she met in the company of the Doctor since 1979 had gone. As though a huge section of his history had been erased and hers along with it.
So why did she remember them? An image of the Doctor appeared in her mind, the first one she had met, stood under a clear sky waving the TARDIS key at her.
Then another man stood in his place, not a memory, she had never met this man before. He was slightly shorter than the Third Doctor had been, still clothed in velvet with a smart silver waistcoat. His arms were pinned above his head by a complex crown of metal thorns and chains.
‘Temporal orbit! Your life force is dying Master...’ he called past her, his voice was rich and slightly accented. She knew it was the Doctor, she prayed that a Temporal Orbit (whatever that was) would save the day.
When he faded from view she sat on the floor and started writing, recalling as much of the missing names as she could in case the memories vanished too.
V
2006 October
Sarah finished typing her article and pushed away from the PC, pinching at the bridge of her nose. She stood, stretched her back and pulled her hair out of its makeshift bun before walking across the attic.
‘Mr Smith. I need you.’ She commanded. The brick wall emitted as much steam as fanfare and the supercomputer unfolded like an industrial impression of a flower.
‘Good evening, Sarah Jane.’ The swirling crystal matrix on the screen pulsed lightly in time to the warm polite voice. ‘How may I be of assistance?’
Sarah allowed herself a brief smile and pulled the black notebook from the rear pocket of her jeans.
‘Another spot of textual analysis I think, Mr Smith.’ She took the post office red elastic band from the note book and opened the computer’s scanner draw. ‘I had an idea when I was going through those business records earlier today. That notebook contains a list of names that I would like you to trace for me. I want to try to and build a picture of their movements if at all possible.’
‘That should not be a problem Sarah Jane.’ Mr Smith confirmed, drawing the scanner bed inside itself.
‘It may prove a bit more of a challenge than usual, even for you. I think you’ll probably have to turn off any temporal and location contexts.’
‘I understand’ the computer replied. She wondered if he did or if he was just being polite.
After 20 minutes Sarah went downstairs for something to eat.
It was three days later that Mr Smith’s fanfare sounded once more, his search program finally finished. His screen displayed a map of the globe, crisscrossed with multi coloured lines that turned it into a neon tube map of continuity.
‘What on earth is that?’ Sarah Jane asked with a mixture of curiosity and disdain.
‘I am displaying the data you asked for. This map shows you the current locations of the individuals noted in your book. I shall isolate one for you’ the screen flashed and a single mid green line trickled across the screen from Kent to Peru. ‘This is the current position of Brigadier Sir Alistair Lethbridge Stewart.’
Sarah tried not to wonder what he was doing in Peru at his age and turned her attention back to the first image she had seen. ‘So why was the screen such a mess?’
‘I took the liberty of extrapolating your instruction to a broader level of search terms. For example’
A red line flecked with purple appeared in Austria and another in Sydney, Australia. ‘This is the current location of Tegan Jovanka’
‘That’s two different places Mr Smith.’
‘Correct Sarah Jane. Her grave lies in Sydney where she died earlier this month. She has been reported in Austria within the last twenty four hours in the company of one Vislor Turlough, a student listed as missing in 1983’
‘Turlough?’ Sarah Jane frowned, recalling a thin redheaded youth imprisoned alongside her under the gaze of Rassilon. The line on the map changed to a white and blue stripe.
‘And that’s Turlough’s location?’
In the next half an hour Mr Smith talked her through the map that he had created. He showed her branches that he had created, names she never knew existed that fed through the network of coincidence and data. Perpugilliam Brown, Dodo Chaplet, Leela.
At the end he showed the list in a new pattern, like a solar system. And the star at its centre was the Doctor, she knew it would be.
She faced a decision then, whether to talk to these anonymous heroes. Seek them out and tell her that life after the Doctor could still be an adventure. But she had no way of knowing whether they’d left him, were with him or hadn’t even met him yet.
She marvelled at the names and how he touched so many lives. Then she told Mr Smith to deadlock seal all his data on the project away and removed her little black book from the scanner tray.
She was Sarah Jane Smith. She stood on the thin grey line between humanity and the cosmos and she knew that any one of those people Mr Smith had found could be of help to her.
But equally, she knew that the Doctor made far more enemies than friends.
If that data, that familiar little black book should fall into the wrong hands it could do far more harm than good. Secrets were secrets for a very good reason.
She stared at it for a few agonising seconds, recalling the smile Benton gave her all those years ago. Then she put it in the bottom of the dustbin and aimed the sonic lipstick at it until it burst into flames.