Centurion: 2007
2007 - Luke Smith
He was still staring out the window when Luke heard the door creak.
"Luke?" said his mother quietly. Seeing him up and sitting on the windowsill instead of in bed like he should have been, she pushed the door all the way open. "It's nearly three in the morning. You should get some sleep."
"Right," Luke said. "Sorry, Mum. Just finishing some reading."
Sarah Jane looked at him skeptically. There was a book in front of him, but it had fallen closed when he'd lost interest in it some time ago.
"Is something wrong, Luke?" she asked, stepping into the room. She stepped nimbly over the mess of dirty clothes and his overflowing book bag on his floor to sit next to him. "You've seemed rather... distant lately."
"Is that bad?"
"It's not necessarily a bad thing, no. But I worry."
"Sorry," Luke said softly. He scooted back into the corner of the windowsill to make room for Sarah Jane.
"It's nothing to apologize for, Luke," she said. "But I want you to know that if there's ever anything on your mind, you can tell me. Alright?"
"I know," he reassured her. But he turned back out the window and stared out at the sky. They sat in silence for a long moment before he finally asked, "Mum, where did I come from?"
Sarah Jane was slightly taken aback. "Well," she began uncertainly.
Luke interrupted, hearing her tone of voice. "I don't mean people in general. Or babies. I read about that at school. And I know that you adopted me."
"That's right," Sarah Jane said. "Maria and I found you in that Bubble Shock factory."
"I know," Luke said. "That's exactly what I mean. What was I doing in a soda factory? Why wasn't anybody else there? Why can't I remember anything before that? I almost want to say that I was born there, as I am now, but that makes no sense. Everyone has to come from somewhere."
Sarah Jane frowned, trying to put together a vague feeling into a comprehensible explanation.
"Clyde says it must be that I just forgot it. Like something traumatizing happened and I blocked it out," Luke continued, quietly. "Only I don't forget things. It's literally impossible for me to forget anything. I know that. So why can't I remember this?"
He stared at Sarah Jane in silence, his big eyes filled with desperation. There were just so many things he knew, but didn't know why, and it infuriated him. Sarah Jane was his mother, and had been for as long as he could remember; she had to have the answer.
But Sarah Jane just grasped his hand and said carefully, "Sometimes, there are things in life that don't make sense."
Luke pulled his hand away and turned back to the window, leaning his forehead against it. So much for help.
"No, Luke, listen to me," Sarah Jane said. "When I first found you, when Maria brought you to me, she couldn't tell me where you'd come from. And you couldn't understand the simplest things, like family, or love, do you remember?"
"Yes," he said. "I remember everything."
"And you don't have a belly button," she added.
Luke just looked up at her. It had never particularly bothered him.
"And when I was younger, I used to work for UNIT, even though I had no qualifications or useful skills. I traveled, for a long time, but I never left home."
Luke frowned. "That doesn't -"
"Make sense, I know," Sarah Jane finished with a small smile. She sighed and gazed upwards at the seam of the window and the wall. "You see, a long time ago, I met a man. A very strange man, full of wonderful stories. And he told me that the world doesn't make sense, because time has gone off in the wrong direction."
"What do you mean?"
"People, things, events, they've all disappeared, leaving holes behind. All we have left are feelings that something's wrong. And it's possible we'll never get those things back."
Luke pondered that. "Are you saying that my birth was... disappeared? But I'm still here."
"I suppose that is what I'm saying," Sarah Jane said.
Luke gazed back out the window at the sky. The streetlamps twinkled through the glass. "Is that what happened to the stars?"
"Who knows," said Sarah Jane.
"I bet Mr. Smith would."
Sarah Jane frowned at him. "How would my computer know?"
Luke shrugged. It didn't make sense, now that he thought about it. But apparently, nothing in the world did.
He stared at the dark sky for a long time, thinking. "We should have a dog," he said.
"Yeah," said Sarah Jane, reaching an arm out and pulling him close to her. "We should."
Chapters:
Prologue: 102 - An Auton
1941 - The Lone Centurion
1977 - A Security Guard
1981 - Security
2007 - Luke Smith
2008 - Gwen Cooper
2009 - Donna Noble
1996 - Rory Williams
Epilogues