Selfish Chp. 2/
Fandom: Doctor Who
Summary: Sarah runs into the Doctor, informing him of the impending danger from the Blaidd Drwg project.
Chapter Two
Rose frowned down at nothing, fingers idly playing with a piece of the TARDIS console.
“Is there a plan, or something?”
Her eyes went over to Mickey, but her expression remained displeased. “Yea, sumthin'.”
“Don't know what it is?”
She sighed, exasperated. “No. Not yet.” She flicked the console then turned and rested her back on it. “Doctor is trying to convince her to stay behind while we go talk to Margaret.”
“Trying? Doesn't she, like, have a giant hole in her arm?”
“Yup.” She turned her head away from him, hoping the condescension in her thoughts hadn't leaked out as much as she felt it had.
“Hm..”
Rose didn't like the slight chuckle in Mickey's reply.
“You're jealous aren't you?”
“Of a giant gaping wound?”
“No! Of her.” He was smiling, but it quickly faded. “You're all happy to run about with the Doctor and Captain Cheesecake, but the moment another woman is on board-”
“Another woman? Where?” Jack bounded into the control room, shoes clanking against the grating.
“Nothing,” Rose said quickly, shooting Mickey a quick glower before refocusing her attention. “So, we got a plan yet?”
Jack tactfully avoided the tension between the young couple. Typically it was something he would have been more than willing to dive into, but impending doom via nuclear blast refocused his priorities. The sex would come after they confirmed that they were definitely going to die and then again if they lived. “Doc's convinced Sarah to stay here and rest while we go get to hunt a Slitheen.”
“What, those giant.. things? With the claws? And the smelling, and vinegar?” Mickey immediately became fidgety.
“Yea, those,” Jack confirmed, checking Mickey's list against the one the Doctor had given him in describing the alien they were about to face. “And you're coming with us.”
“What?”
“Need the hands.. for what they count for. Got your phone on you?”
--
Now that he wasn't trying to save her life, or under the eye of his current companions, the Doctor took his time in studying Sarah Jane. She was older, obviously, though a great deal of her countenance was still the same. The only thing of her features that worried him was that the gentle lines left by her smiles seemed faded, and the worried furrow of her brow and her displeased frown appeared more commonplace. Her eyes too carried the wisdom of greater years, though in them he could also see scars in which he normally found reflection of himself within old warriors. The Doctor suddenly felt more worried for his old friend then he had when she was unconscious and bleeding under his medical ministrations.
The slight frown on her features lifted as she looked from the floor to him. “Thank you,” Sarah's focus dropped quickly back down, as if uncomfortable with admitting he had just saved her life. She watched her bare feet swing above the above the ground as she dangled them off the edge of her sickbed. Her left arm was done up in a sling, to keep motion on her shoulder to a minimum. The waistband of her trousers held several patches of dried blood around it, and the only thing keeping her top half from nudity was a crude cut of cloth tied around her breasts.
“You're welcome.” He resisted the urge to put his hands in his pockets and scuff his shoe on the ground like a school boy. The Doctor's eyes focused on the Sarah's currently uninjured shoulder, though it showed scars of a previous marring. As if sensing his eyes her hand touched briefly on her own shoulder before slowly trailing down to rest on a similar blemish at her hip. The Time Lord resisted the urge to demand who had shot her. Instead, he hesitantly spoke, “It's good you're staying behind.” He made himself ignore the much older damages he could spot on her torso. It made him wonder that, without regeneration, just how marred he might look if he bore all of his wounds.
She glared at him, making him realize his poor choice of words. “As you said,” she snapped, “it's not that I could do much in my state anyway.” Sarah held his gaze though her tone turned less hostile, “me showing up again would only cause undue fuss anyway.”
“Yes, I imagine a reporter who.. what exactly were you accused of? The men I asked couldn't say.” He crossed his arms, expression curious.
“Probably for attacking the bloody mayor of Cardiff. Though as I'm the one who was injured I hardly see how her case would have held up..”
“She doubted you would live.” The Doctor decided he wasn't going to pull any stops and continued with, “you would have if you'd gone to a human hospital. Honestly, sometimes it's like you lot are still using leeches and assigning incorrect function to anatomy.”
“Well, I think my stomach holds plenty of courage,” Sarah retorted with a smile.
He smiled back a moment before pressing on with, “courage that can get you killed.”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes in exasperation. “I hardly knew she was going to pull off her own arm and stab me with the great big bloody claw under it.”
“Precisely.”
“What, do you think I wont go into a new situation just because I can't be positive of the extent of the threat? The whole of Cardiff can go up in a nuclear blast while I wait it out to check for a different trouble? Like you spot half the things you stumble into.”
“Stumble?” He protested.
“You didn't even know what was happening here until I ran into you!”
“You only ran part way.”
“It was most of the part,” she growled.
“We still don't really know what's going on,” the Doctor changed the subject. “Blowing up Cardiff for fun isn't a good enough reason for her.”
“Which is why I was talking to her.”
“And she stabbed you.”
“You keep saying that.”
Before he could rebuke with how important it was to realize she had been stabbed, Jack appeared in the door. “Hey,” he flashed a toothy smile at Sarah, though he spoke to the Doctor. “All ready Doc, waiting for you.”
“Right,” he dropped his arms to his side, gaze lingering on Sarah. “Let's go,” he pushed past Jack who gave her a wink before following after him.
She remained frozen on the bed, listening to their footsteps as they headed down the hall. She felt frustrated, mainly with herself, at her inability to follow them. Her words with the Doctor were more in self defense than any actual reason she applied, though really, the thought of getting hurt hadn't made her pause in going into any other potentially dangerous situation. It was an override of personal safety she had mainly learned from him, greatly enforced as their travels continued. Still, getting jumped this time irritated her in a way she couldn't say.
Sarah felt she should be used to such horrors leaping out at her at every turn. She had at least been anticipating it this time. A part of her worried that she had let it happen, and would let it happen again, up to the point where she might get hurt and no one would be around to save her.
Her social life had suffered horribly after her firing from Planet Three, but it was in the past few years that she had really started to push away from people. Sarah couldn't remember if she'd even done anything social within the past months. She couldn't even remember the last time she had a simple, pointless conversation with someone. Everything was work related or the task of asking a waiter for a bill.
Glaring at the wall in an attempt to banish her rising sense of self pity, Sarah let herself drop from the edge of her sickbed. Her shoulder jarred even at the light impact, making her wobble. The Doctor had accelerated the healing process some, but due to her blood loss and the severity of the wound he had only let it heal so much. He told her the energy still came from her body, and that it would be best if she rested and ate before he worked on her shoulder again.
Her stomach suddenly growled, as if in affirmation.
Stepping carefully, Sarah slowly headed out of the room. The ground wasn't as cold as she thought it would be, though she still curled her toes at the strange sensation she felt in walking across the TARDIS floor barefoot. When she first lived in the vessel she compared the sensation to feathers brushing against her heels. The Doctor had told her it was just the dampened effects of a static field generated by the power flowing in the TARDIS under her feet. She had liked to fancy it was the TARDIS reaching out, trying to touch them the only way she could.
The thought had been comforting then, at the moment, it unnerved her.
Guiltily, Sarah laid her hand against the wall and muttered, “sorry old girl, nothing personal.” She thought she could feel something brush her fingertips before her hand dropped back to her side.
Aimlessly wandering the halls had once been a pastime, now it was about to become a nuisance. When the Doctor redecorated or moved console rooms the whole interior of the ship shifted, and Sarah was certain more than a few shuffles had occurred since she had last been on board.
Figuring she might as well try to know where the way out was, she started in the direction she had heard the Doctor's footsteps fade to. The hallway was lit with soft gold and green lights, making the place feel earthy and underground. The shape of the walls was different as well, no longer the static line up of roundels, the designs looked organic, grown. Sarah brushed her fingers against them once more as she turned a corner.
Though the hallway stretched on before her, a door to her right caught her attention and she immediately went to it, foregoing her plan to find the exit. Pushing it open she carefully peeked in side, then smiled.
“Thank you,” she muttered, coming into the room. It was a small cozy space, with a round table that could sit four taking up most of the room. An old fashioned fridge sat tucked in the far corner next to a sink that had copper pipes poking out the bottom.
The fridge yielded a tall glass of cold orange juice and a strangely warm plate of eggs with toast. Deciding not to question the TARDIS's icebox capabilities, Sarah slowly moved her prizes to the table and sat down to eat. The meal quieted her stomach, though she was left feeling restless if not rejuvenated.
Waiting for someone to come back from a dangerous task was something she would never grow used to. Especially since in her experience most tended not to come back.
Gently placing her used utensils in the sink, Sarah decided she could at least go look for some new clothes. She hadn't bothered to look around the infirmary for the rest of her things, and she doubted her shirt was still intact.
Pushing through the door at the other end of the hall rather than go back the way she came, Sarah continued her walk. Of some of the doors she passed she thought she could hear soft hums and chimes behind them, and though snooping was something her life and profession called for, she let the noises be. Clothes were quickly becoming a priority if she were to leave the TARDIS again, and if Cardiff did blow up she didn't want to sit by half dressed while it happened.
The hall ended with a tiny spiral staircase, and Sarah frowned at it's wiry steps. With no other way but back to go, she slowly started up, though it seemed to stretch on forever beneath her as well as above. She had to pause every so often, the dizziness she had felt earlier coming back as she turned in such tight circles.
Eventually she came to a floor that held racks and racks of clothes suspended from old hangers. As she stepped off the stairwell she caught sight of movement between rows of clothing and froze before realizing it was just a mirror. Shaking her head at her own foolishness, she approached her reflection, now curious as to how she appeared. She frowned at the gritty state that was shown to her on the mirror's surface.
“First,” she muttered, tugging at the cloth around her torso, “bra.”
Sarah eventually found one peeking out of the pocket of what appeared to be an old military greatcoat. The Doctor running around in it with a bra poking out of his pocket didn't seem right, but the image her mind conjured of it amused her. Actually getting the bra on with her injured shoulder turned into a much less entertaining ordeal.
Sitting down with a hand resting lightly on her shoulder, Sarah began to wonder why it had been strictly necessary for her to get the bra on. She was starting to consider it a highly overrated piece of underwear, but, now that it was on she might as well leave it. Still, as she pulled herself back to her feet, she decided she did not want to go through all of that again when getting a shirt.
Traipsing around in her bra started to seem like a really good idea until she caught her own reflection again. Though Sarah was rather proud of the way she looked at forty-six, seeing her image suddenly made her realize that forty-six year old woman did not run about in their undergarments on a time traveling space-ship with an alien and who knew what Jack and Rose were, though from the look of them they were probably just people the Doctor picked up in twentieth century Earth. Of course, Sarah didn't really have any other people to compare with about what women her age would wear in a TARDIS, but she decided to go with what she came up with.
Who knows how the Doctor would react anyway, she thought, continuing down the long aisles and hoping to find something that wasn't too ostentatious. Or Jack for that matter.. She wondered if he was always as flirtatious as he appeared to be.
Passing off what looked like a coat the Mad Hatter would wear while tripping on acid, Sarah found herself facing something that looked familiar. Several somethings that looked familiar, in fact. She smiled at the frilly shirts, which were jammed between the coat and what looked like a jumper covered in question marks. Carefully, as if they would run were she to move too fast, Sarah reached out to touch the material. The lace on some of the sleeves scratched, but it didn't stop her from running her hands across the material to feel the silk of the body and sleeves.
Smiling, she grabbed one off it's hanger.
--
The Doctor knew the plan, stopped it's execution, and had Margaret in custody.
An uneasy feeling still resided in the pit of his stomach. Perhaps it was just old apprehension from when he and the others had to tag around her for a few hours as she wrapped up matters in the office. Kidnapping the mayor of Cardiff was bound to have ramifications, so they had tried to make her departure seem as natural as possible. There had been that one PA who had seen her crawl out the window though, and he had given them funny looks the entire time they were there.
Stepping into the TARDIS, the Doctor kept his eyes trained on Margaret's back, Jack had bounded ahead of the whole group and was by the console, extrapolater board in hand. Behind him he could feel Rose and Mickey hovering.
“Oh this is marvelous,” the Slitheen gushed. “I feel a little less ashamed at being thwarted by you.. however did you-?” Her words stopped the moment she spotted who was sitting on the ratty old chair which stood off to the side from the console.
There was a small pause in the Doctor's step as he caught sight of Sarah as well, but he kept himself moving forward, stepping around Margaret. She had obviously gotten to wandering around the TARDIS in their absence, changing into a pair of jeans, and opting for black riding boots instead of bare feet. The shirt she had chosen was simply buttoned up over her sling, giving the impression her left arm was missing at first glance.
The Doctor did a double take, not only to make sure she still had her arm, but because he just realized she was wearing his shirt. Or, what once had been his shirt, though technically it still was...
Sarah had a slightly muzzy look on her face, as if she had just woken up, but when she realized who they had brought back with them she sat up straighter, eyes focusing.
“My Doctor,” Margaret's voice was strained as she spoke. “I thought I was a special occasion, but it seems you're in the habit of keeping murderers on board your ship.”
--
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Summary: Sarah runs into the Doctor, informing him of the impending danger from the Blaidd Drwg project.
Chapter Two
Rose frowned down at nothing, fingers idly playing with a piece of the TARDIS console.
“Is there a plan, or something?”
Her eyes went over to Mickey, but her expression remained displeased. “Yea, sumthin'.”
“Don't know what it is?”
She sighed, exasperated. “No. Not yet.” She flicked the console then turned and rested her back on it. “Doctor is trying to convince her to stay behind while we go talk to Margaret.”
“Trying? Doesn't she, like, have a giant hole in her arm?”
“Yup.” She turned her head away from him, hoping the condescension in her thoughts hadn't leaked out as much as she felt it had.
“Hm..”
Rose didn't like the slight chuckle in Mickey's reply.
“You're jealous aren't you?”
“Of a giant gaping wound?”
“No! Of her.” He was smiling, but it quickly faded. “You're all happy to run about with the Doctor and Captain Cheesecake, but the moment another woman is on board-”
“Another woman? Where?” Jack bounded into the control room, shoes clanking against the grating.
“Nothing,” Rose said quickly, shooting Mickey a quick glower before refocusing her attention. “So, we got a plan yet?”
Jack tactfully avoided the tension between the young couple. Typically it was something he would have been more than willing to dive into, but impending doom via nuclear blast refocused his priorities. The sex would come after they confirmed that they were definitely going to die and then again if they lived. “Doc's convinced Sarah to stay here and rest while we go get to hunt a Slitheen.”
“What, those giant.. things? With the claws? And the smelling, and vinegar?” Mickey immediately became fidgety.
“Yea, those,” Jack confirmed, checking Mickey's list against the one the Doctor had given him in describing the alien they were about to face. “And you're coming with us.”
“What?”
“Need the hands.. for what they count for. Got your phone on you?”
--
Now that he wasn't trying to save her life, or under the eye of his current companions, the Doctor took his time in studying Sarah Jane. She was older, obviously, though a great deal of her countenance was still the same. The only thing of her features that worried him was that the gentle lines left by her smiles seemed faded, and the worried furrow of her brow and her displeased frown appeared more commonplace. Her eyes too carried the wisdom of greater years, though in them he could also see scars in which he normally found reflection of himself within old warriors. The Doctor suddenly felt more worried for his old friend then he had when she was unconscious and bleeding under his medical ministrations.
The slight frown on her features lifted as she looked from the floor to him. “Thank you,” Sarah's focus dropped quickly back down, as if uncomfortable with admitting he had just saved her life. She watched her bare feet swing above the above the ground as she dangled them off the edge of her sickbed. Her left arm was done up in a sling, to keep motion on her shoulder to a minimum. The waistband of her trousers held several patches of dried blood around it, and the only thing keeping her top half from nudity was a crude cut of cloth tied around her breasts.
“You're welcome.” He resisted the urge to put his hands in his pockets and scuff his shoe on the ground like a school boy. The Doctor's eyes focused on the Sarah's currently uninjured shoulder, though it showed scars of a previous marring. As if sensing his eyes her hand touched briefly on her own shoulder before slowly trailing down to rest on a similar blemish at her hip. The Time Lord resisted the urge to demand who had shot her. Instead, he hesitantly spoke, “It's good you're staying behind.” He made himself ignore the much older damages he could spot on her torso. It made him wonder that, without regeneration, just how marred he might look if he bore all of his wounds.
She glared at him, making him realize his poor choice of words. “As you said,” she snapped, “it's not that I could do much in my state anyway.” Sarah held his gaze though her tone turned less hostile, “me showing up again would only cause undue fuss anyway.”
“Yes, I imagine a reporter who.. what exactly were you accused of? The men I asked couldn't say.” He crossed his arms, expression curious.
“Probably for attacking the bloody mayor of Cardiff. Though as I'm the one who was injured I hardly see how her case would have held up..”
“She doubted you would live.” The Doctor decided he wasn't going to pull any stops and continued with, “you would have if you'd gone to a human hospital. Honestly, sometimes it's like you lot are still using leeches and assigning incorrect function to anatomy.”
“Well, I think my stomach holds plenty of courage,” Sarah retorted with a smile.
He smiled back a moment before pressing on with, “courage that can get you killed.”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes in exasperation. “I hardly knew she was going to pull off her own arm and stab me with the great big bloody claw under it.”
“Precisely.”
“What, do you think I wont go into a new situation just because I can't be positive of the extent of the threat? The whole of Cardiff can go up in a nuclear blast while I wait it out to check for a different trouble? Like you spot half the things you stumble into.”
“Stumble?” He protested.
“You didn't even know what was happening here until I ran into you!”
“You only ran part way.”
“It was most of the part,” she growled.
“We still don't really know what's going on,” the Doctor changed the subject. “Blowing up Cardiff for fun isn't a good enough reason for her.”
“Which is why I was talking to her.”
“And she stabbed you.”
“You keep saying that.”
Before he could rebuke with how important it was to realize she had been stabbed, Jack appeared in the door. “Hey,” he flashed a toothy smile at Sarah, though he spoke to the Doctor. “All ready Doc, waiting for you.”
“Right,” he dropped his arms to his side, gaze lingering on Sarah. “Let's go,” he pushed past Jack who gave her a wink before following after him.
She remained frozen on the bed, listening to their footsteps as they headed down the hall. She felt frustrated, mainly with herself, at her inability to follow them. Her words with the Doctor were more in self defense than any actual reason she applied, though really, the thought of getting hurt hadn't made her pause in going into any other potentially dangerous situation. It was an override of personal safety she had mainly learned from him, greatly enforced as their travels continued. Still, getting jumped this time irritated her in a way she couldn't say.
Sarah felt she should be used to such horrors leaping out at her at every turn. She had at least been anticipating it this time. A part of her worried that she had let it happen, and would let it happen again, up to the point where she might get hurt and no one would be around to save her.
Her social life had suffered horribly after her firing from Planet Three, but it was in the past few years that she had really started to push away from people. Sarah couldn't remember if she'd even done anything social within the past months. She couldn't even remember the last time she had a simple, pointless conversation with someone. Everything was work related or the task of asking a waiter for a bill.
Glaring at the wall in an attempt to banish her rising sense of self pity, Sarah let herself drop from the edge of her sickbed. Her shoulder jarred even at the light impact, making her wobble. The Doctor had accelerated the healing process some, but due to her blood loss and the severity of the wound he had only let it heal so much. He told her the energy still came from her body, and that it would be best if she rested and ate before he worked on her shoulder again.
Her stomach suddenly growled, as if in affirmation.
Stepping carefully, Sarah slowly headed out of the room. The ground wasn't as cold as she thought it would be, though she still curled her toes at the strange sensation she felt in walking across the TARDIS floor barefoot. When she first lived in the vessel she compared the sensation to feathers brushing against her heels. The Doctor had told her it was just the dampened effects of a static field generated by the power flowing in the TARDIS under her feet. She had liked to fancy it was the TARDIS reaching out, trying to touch them the only way she could.
The thought had been comforting then, at the moment, it unnerved her.
Guiltily, Sarah laid her hand against the wall and muttered, “sorry old girl, nothing personal.” She thought she could feel something brush her fingertips before her hand dropped back to her side.
Aimlessly wandering the halls had once been a pastime, now it was about to become a nuisance. When the Doctor redecorated or moved console rooms the whole interior of the ship shifted, and Sarah was certain more than a few shuffles had occurred since she had last been on board.
Figuring she might as well try to know where the way out was, she started in the direction she had heard the Doctor's footsteps fade to. The hallway was lit with soft gold and green lights, making the place feel earthy and underground. The shape of the walls was different as well, no longer the static line up of roundels, the designs looked organic, grown. Sarah brushed her fingers against them once more as she turned a corner.
Though the hallway stretched on before her, a door to her right caught her attention and she immediately went to it, foregoing her plan to find the exit. Pushing it open she carefully peeked in side, then smiled.
“Thank you,” she muttered, coming into the room. It was a small cozy space, with a round table that could sit four taking up most of the room. An old fashioned fridge sat tucked in the far corner next to a sink that had copper pipes poking out the bottom.
The fridge yielded a tall glass of cold orange juice and a strangely warm plate of eggs with toast. Deciding not to question the TARDIS's icebox capabilities, Sarah slowly moved her prizes to the table and sat down to eat. The meal quieted her stomach, though she was left feeling restless if not rejuvenated.
Waiting for someone to come back from a dangerous task was something she would never grow used to. Especially since in her experience most tended not to come back.
Gently placing her used utensils in the sink, Sarah decided she could at least go look for some new clothes. She hadn't bothered to look around the infirmary for the rest of her things, and she doubted her shirt was still intact.
Pushing through the door at the other end of the hall rather than go back the way she came, Sarah continued her walk. Of some of the doors she passed she thought she could hear soft hums and chimes behind them, and though snooping was something her life and profession called for, she let the noises be. Clothes were quickly becoming a priority if she were to leave the TARDIS again, and if Cardiff did blow up she didn't want to sit by half dressed while it happened.
The hall ended with a tiny spiral staircase, and Sarah frowned at it's wiry steps. With no other way but back to go, she slowly started up, though it seemed to stretch on forever beneath her as well as above. She had to pause every so often, the dizziness she had felt earlier coming back as she turned in such tight circles.
Eventually she came to a floor that held racks and racks of clothes suspended from old hangers. As she stepped off the stairwell she caught sight of movement between rows of clothing and froze before realizing it was just a mirror. Shaking her head at her own foolishness, she approached her reflection, now curious as to how she appeared. She frowned at the gritty state that was shown to her on the mirror's surface.
“First,” she muttered, tugging at the cloth around her torso, “bra.”
Sarah eventually found one peeking out of the pocket of what appeared to be an old military greatcoat. The Doctor running around in it with a bra poking out of his pocket didn't seem right, but the image her mind conjured of it amused her. Actually getting the bra on with her injured shoulder turned into a much less entertaining ordeal.
Sitting down with a hand resting lightly on her shoulder, Sarah began to wonder why it had been strictly necessary for her to get the bra on. She was starting to consider it a highly overrated piece of underwear, but, now that it was on she might as well leave it. Still, as she pulled herself back to her feet, she decided she did not want to go through all of that again when getting a shirt.
Traipsing around in her bra started to seem like a really good idea until she caught her own reflection again. Though Sarah was rather proud of the way she looked at forty-six, seeing her image suddenly made her realize that forty-six year old woman did not run about in their undergarments on a time traveling space-ship with an alien and who knew what Jack and Rose were, though from the look of them they were probably just people the Doctor picked up in twentieth century Earth. Of course, Sarah didn't really have any other people to compare with about what women her age would wear in a TARDIS, but she decided to go with what she came up with.
Who knows how the Doctor would react anyway, she thought, continuing down the long aisles and hoping to find something that wasn't too ostentatious. Or Jack for that matter.. She wondered if he was always as flirtatious as he appeared to be.
Passing off what looked like a coat the Mad Hatter would wear while tripping on acid, Sarah found herself facing something that looked familiar. Several somethings that looked familiar, in fact. She smiled at the frilly shirts, which were jammed between the coat and what looked like a jumper covered in question marks. Carefully, as if they would run were she to move too fast, Sarah reached out to touch the material. The lace on some of the sleeves scratched, but it didn't stop her from running her hands across the material to feel the silk of the body and sleeves.
Smiling, she grabbed one off it's hanger.
--
The Doctor knew the plan, stopped it's execution, and had Margaret in custody.
An uneasy feeling still resided in the pit of his stomach. Perhaps it was just old apprehension from when he and the others had to tag around her for a few hours as she wrapped up matters in the office. Kidnapping the mayor of Cardiff was bound to have ramifications, so they had tried to make her departure seem as natural as possible. There had been that one PA who had seen her crawl out the window though, and he had given them funny looks the entire time they were there.
Stepping into the TARDIS, the Doctor kept his eyes trained on Margaret's back, Jack had bounded ahead of the whole group and was by the console, extrapolater board in hand. Behind him he could feel Rose and Mickey hovering.
“Oh this is marvelous,” the Slitheen gushed. “I feel a little less ashamed at being thwarted by you.. however did you-?” Her words stopped the moment she spotted who was sitting on the ratty old chair which stood off to the side from the console.
There was a small pause in the Doctor's step as he caught sight of Sarah as well, but he kept himself moving forward, stepping around Margaret. She had obviously gotten to wandering around the TARDIS in their absence, changing into a pair of jeans, and opting for black riding boots instead of bare feet. The shirt she had chosen was simply buttoned up over her sling, giving the impression her left arm was missing at first glance.
The Doctor did a double take, not only to make sure she still had her arm, but because he just realized she was wearing his shirt. Or, what once had been his shirt, though technically it still was...
Sarah had a slightly muzzy look on her face, as if she had just woken up, but when she realized who they had brought back with them she sat up straighter, eyes focusing.
“My Doctor,” Margaret's voice was strained as she spoke. “I thought I was a special occasion, but it seems you're in the habit of keeping murderers on board your ship.”
--
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