Fic: Dream a Little Dream (PG, Gen, 2/4)
Title: Dream a Little Dream
Author: paranoidangel
Words: ~16,000 altogether
Rating: PG
Characters: Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan, Nat Redfern, Josh Townsend
Spoilers: SJS audios: Buried Secrets and Fatal Consequences, School Reunion and small ones for The Rise of the Cybermen and Age of Steel
Summary: Sarah Jane Smith often wished she believed in coincidences but so far her faith had been shown to be true every time.
Beta: by tellitslant
Disclaimer: Not mine, guv
Notes: I am still just as horrible a person because this is half of the fic (not including the prologue) and I'm going away, again, so you'll not get part 2 until Monday, probably
Previously: Prologue
It was the same old Harry - he did not even look different. Well, maybe a little older and a little more tired if she was honest but then she had changed since she last saw him too. Once she had recovered from the initial shock, Sarah itched to be able to talk to Harry, so the rest of the ceremony seemed to drag interminably.
She did not even get a chance afterwards because during the wake there had been the Brigadier's family to pay their respects to. Also, Harry had not had an opportunity to catch up with some of the other people there. She ended up chatting amiably enough about the Brigadier, as well as other subjects, but could never quite take her eyes off Harry for very long, so surprised was she to see him. If anyone else noticed her lack of attention they did not comment.
It was a few hours before people started to drift away. Sarah kept looking at her watch, hoping to hint to Harry that she wanted to leave. After a few attempts she remembered he was a man, so she gave up and joined in his conversation with a couple of men she did not recognise. Their discussion was not really one she was interested in, so she did not listen much, instead allowing her mind to wander. When the men made their goodbyes she looked back at Harry to find him grinning at her.
"Did you want to talk to me, old girl?"
Sarah could have hit him. He was doing it on purpose, as he always did, just to get a reaction out of her. Well, she was determined not to give him the satisfaction, so went for the guilt trip instead. "Where have you been? No-one had heard from you for so long, I thought you must be dead."
Her ploy worked because his expression became serious once more. "I'm sorry, Sarah, but it's a secret. I can't tell you."
She sighed, although she was not really expecting any other answer.
"So what have you been up to?" he asked her.
Sarah smiled and shook her head. "That might take a while. Given that I can tell you all of it," she added.
He ignored her barb. "I don't have any other plans. Why don't I take you out to dinner and you can tell me all about it?"
"It's a deal."
~*~*~
The advantage of relating the past few years' experiences, Sarah found, was that it was easier, with a bit of distance, to laugh about them. Harry lived closest, so after dinner they both went back to his flat. She had caught him up on most of her life that he had missed by this point - hence the reason their meal had taken so long - but she was still finding it difficult to believe he was back and she was not ready to let him go just yet. Although Harry said he had only been back a few days his flat looked like he had never been away, which Sarah supposed was the effect of having had Will house-sit it.
There was a photograph on the mantelpiece that looked old. Harry was still a young man in it, younger even than when she had first met him, and the boy with him must have been Will. She smiled but it was bittersweet. She knew she would have to tell Harry the truth about Will, hoping that he would understand.
"What do you know about what happened to Will?" she asked, picking up the photo with one hand as she took a mug of tea from him in the other.
Harry glanced over her shoulder at the photo before he sat down. "I know he got mixed up in some nasty business with a company called, um..."
"Mandrake."
"That's it, Mandrake. He gave his life to stop them releasing a bio-weapon."
Although she felt she owed Harry the truth, she wanted the Sullivan family to remember Will as a hero, not as a member of a cult trying to infect the world's population with a deadly virus and murder her in the meantime. And Will was a good man, of that she was sure. "I asked him to help," she said, "and I got him killed."
"It's not your fault," Harry said. "No-one blames you."
She shook her head and turned to replace the photo while she blinked back tears. If Harry knew the truth and her part in it she was sure he would have no choice but to hold her responsible, as she did and she could not deal with that, not just yet.
"Sarah?" she heard from close behind her.
She turned to see Harry had got up to stand behind her and he was looking concerned, which she could not bear. She smiled at him and changed the subject so he would not ask any more questions. "I saw the Doctor," she said, stepping around him to sit down in the seat he had just vacated.
He followed suit, moving some papers to create some space on the other end of the sofa. "What, recently?"
"Well, not that long ago. He had regenerated again and he was different. But he was still the Doctor." She smiled at the memory. "It was just like old times, really, with aliens trying to kill us and take over the world. You know the sort of thing."
He grinned. "I remember."
It was hard talking about the Doctor because her happy memories of the time she had spent with him were always tinged with sadness. Unable to sit still, she got up again and went over to the window. Although it was dark out, and had been since before they finished dinner, there was enough light outside from cars and houses in the vicinity that she could still see quite clearly. It reminded her just how much she missed living in London. "He asked me to go with him."
"And what did you say?"
"I told him no. It was the right decision, I know, but..." She shivered. It did not help that all she could think about was that she could have asked the Doctor to find Harry, now that she knew he was alive.
Harry came up behind her again and put one hand on her shoulder. She let him this time, but not quite trusting herself to speak, she just stood there, not moving. After a few minutes she slipped out from under his hand and gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile.
"Sarah--" he began but she was not going to let him finish whatever he intended to say.
"Look at the time," she said, as she noticed the clock on the wall over his shoulder. "We've talked so long I've missed the last train."
"Don't worry, old girl, you can stay here."
"That would be good, thank you. As long as you don't call me old girl," she offered up the old gripe but could not quite bring herself to make it sound as if she really meant it this time. As much as she complained, she had missed being called that and he knew it, if the number of times he had actually used her name that evening was anything to go by.
"You can take my bed; I'll sleep on the sofa."
She might have argued with him about that but she did not have the energy, and knew she was not going to win anyway. So she did not even bother with a token protest, as much as Harry would expect her to, and she borrowed one of his t-shirts instead.
~*~*~
Sarah woke with a jump in the middle of the night and immediately panicked because the shadows were in the wrong place. It was a minute before she remembered where she was and lay back, gazing at the ceiling and feeling her heart beating wildly. Once she had calmed down a little she found the clock, which told her in big red numbers it was 3.42. She had just turned over and closed her eyes again when she discovered what had woken her: a cry from Harry. She could not quite make out what he had said and her first thought was to wonder if he was being burgled.
She got out of bed and crept down the hall back to the lounge. It was lighter in there than the bedroom, as the streetlights filtered through the curtains, but it was just as quiet as the rest of the flat. She frowned and approached the sofa, verifying for herself that Harry was still lying on it. So he was not being burgled. She was just starting to think she must have imagined it and turned to go back to bed when Harry gave a shout. This time he definitely said, "No," and nearly threw the blanket that half covered him onto the floor.
Concerned, Sarah knelt down, gently laid one hand on his shoulder and called his name quietly into his ear. Harry was instantly awake, hyperventilating and frowning at her.
"You were having a nightmare," she told him.
"Sorry," he said. "Did I wake you?"
She shook her head and tried not to shiver in the cold. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked him instead, hoping it might help.
"Not really, no."
She sat back on her feet, looking at him and wondering what else to suggest. She was glad that he seemed to know because he asked, "Will you stay a while?"
"Of course."
Harry sat up, so there was space next to him, and he rearranged the blanket so it was over both of them. She could feel the heat coming off him, even while they were not quite touching, and she wondered why sitting so close was suddenly so uncomfortable.
They sat in silence for a while and Sarah heard Harry's breathing return to normal again. She eventually decided he was not going to talk about what was on his mind, especially given that all day he had never said anything to her that even hinted about what had happened to him. There was something about not being able to see him properly in the dark, though, which made it easier for her to tell him things she had not been able to earlier.
"I think there's someone else out for revenge on me," she began. "I keep getting untraceable silent phone calls and anonymous letters with no fingerprints."
"That's terrible. Who do you think is doing it? And why didn't you tell me this earlier?"
"I don't know. I seem to have made more enemies than friends in my career." She sighed. Even if she had known the trouble she would end up causing for herself, she would not have done anything any different. As long as it was the right thing to do at the time, then it was still the right thing to have done, even after various attempts at retribution. "I'm not sure I can see any of them going in for something so petty, though," she added.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, I just don't answer the phone much." It was easier to lie to Harry in the dark too. Sarah sighed. "I've missed you."
Harry's answer was a kiss on her forehead. She leaned her head against his shoulder and he put his arm around her. The silence and her position were comfortable enough that Sarah closed her eyes and enjoyed the sensations. She certainly had no intention of moving for a while.
~*~*~
Sometime in the night she must have shifted round because by morning she lay with her head resting on Harry's chest. She sat up carefully, so as not to wake him but in doing so she thought he was probably not all that comfortable in the position he was in. She was reluctant to wake him, though, while he looked so peaceful, with no hint of the trouble he had faced in the night showing on his face.
As a compromise she got up to make some tea and by the time she got back she found he had removed the burden of the decision for her as he was already awake and rubbing his neck.
"Sorry," she said, handing him his tea, "you should have woken me up."
"I fell asleep just after you did." He smiled at her. "No harm done."
She settled back on the sofa next to him. "Harry, what happened to you that scared you so much?" She hoped he might be more amenable to answering now it was daylight and the previous night seemed further away.
He took a sip of tea and a long hard look into his mug. When he spoke at last it was halting, as if he was unsure of his words. "I was sent on an important mission, for peace, to help people. But not everyone wanted us there and they tried to stop us. I was lucky, they only captured me."
Sarah bit her lip, her imagination going wild with what he was not saying. "But it didn't work," she said. "I mean, you came home."
"I came home," he echoed.
"Oh, Harry, what did they do to you?" she asked, softly, resting one hand lightly on his arm.
He just shook his head. It had to be bad if he was refusing to tell her. Doubtless he felt it was not for delicate, female ears to hear. If he only said that she would correct him but then if he was not comfortable talking about it with her she did not really want to force him.
She unfolded her legs from underneath her and stood up, stretching. "I should get dressed," she said, and went back to Harry's bedroom, leaving him contemplating his tea. She wanted to give him some time alone so did not rush, although trying to find a way to tame her hair using only his comb was quite tricky in itself.
By the time she was ready to face the day she found Harry cooking breakfast. She decided to leave their conversation for another time, so put on a smile and sat down to eat.
~*~*~
Sarah hung around at Harry's flat for a few hours after breakfast, neither of them wanting her to leave just yet. Eventually, though, she'd had to go home, for she still had a piece needing to be written up by the end of the day. Getting back into journalism, even if it was just freelancing for a few newspapers, had been a way of trying to get her life back to normal after everything that had happened with the Orbus Postremo. She should have known it was never going to last.
When she got home in the middle of the afternoon, K-9 raced to meet her in the doorway, practically running over her feet. Sarah smiled at his enthusiasm, although it was good to be welcomed home.
"Did you miss me, K-9?"
"Yes, mistress."
She reached down to scratch behind his ears, which seemed to make him happy, and she picked up the post, looking through it as she followed K-9 into the house. It was a mixture of the usual junk and bills and as she bent to throw it on the coffee table she realised the table was no longer where it usually lived. In fact nothing was where it was supposed to be. Her lounge looked as if a tornado had hit it, with all the furniture toppled over, and her books and papers strewn across the floor. Yet her TV and computer were still there, so it was not an ordinary burglar. It said something about her life lately that she was not at all surprised by this.
"I don't believe it," she cried as she knelt down and picked up a book that was unfortunate enough to have landed open and have half its pages creased. "What happened, K-9?"
"The house has been broken into."
"Yes, I can see that." K-9 could be annoyingly literal at times. "But you were supposed to be guarding the house, not letting burglars in."
"Apologies, mistress. I believe I was disabled for a period of several hours."
"If the Doctor fixed you wrong, I'm going to kill him." Sarah sighed. It was just another mystery to add to the list. Who wanted revenge on her and had the ability to disable K-9? To say nothing of how they had done it.
She found the phone buried under the yellow pages only after she rang it from her mobile.
~*~*~
Josh turned up just as DC Taylor was leaving.
"Wow, they really made a mess in here," he stated the obvious, when he got inside.
Sarah ignored him, which tended to be a good idea at times and instead told him, "You could make yourself useful and help me clear it up."
"Is that all you called me for?" he asked, bending down to start tidying anyway.
"No. Look, this is something new. Can you speak to Nat and see if the two of you can find out anything useful? It looks like I'm going to be busy here for the rest of the day." The bright side was that she could have that clear out she had been meaning to do for weeks. It was always a good idea to find a bright side, she had discovered, it kept you from going mad.
"Yeah, sure. Any idea who might have done this? Apart from someone after you, as per usual." Josh frowned at one of her bank statements.
His tone was joking but Sarah was not in the mood and she snatched the statement off him. "Well, yes, thank you, Josh, I had worked that out for myself."
"Sorry."
"No, I'm sorry, this isn't your fault. It's just all of this is just a bit...you know," she said, pausing for a moment in the middle of a sea of paper. She had not realised how much she had accumulated, although she was sure a fair bit of this had come from other parts of the house.
"Yeah, I know. Why don't I finish this and you can write a list of anyone who might have done this."
"Okay. Thanks, Josh."
She smiled at him as he turned his attention to the furniture, trying to work out where it all lived. Although Josh had a tendency to annoy her he was at least just as easy to wind up. His heart was in the right place, though, and she settled down to attempt his suggestion.
Writing down the names of anyone who might hold a grudge took long enough because Sarah seemed to have accrued a lot of enemies over the years. She then started to cross off any that would not know about K-9 and would not have the resources to disable him until she realised there would not be anyone left on it. So she gave up and wrote the list out again, by which time Josh had made her lounge, at least, look like nothing untoward had happened as well as making her a cup of tea.
"It doesn't look like they took anything," he said, as they drunk their drinks.
"That's something, I suppose."
She fed him for his trouble and afterwards Josh took her list with him to meet Nat, and Sarah worked through her 300 emails, most of which were spam. She would change her email address but it just made life too difficult for work, so she had to live with it. She had let Nat loose on her computer on one occasion and ended up with various spam filters. But whoever was sending her letters also seemed to be working on her email account too, as their contents changed too often for the filters to keep up.
When she finally did get to do some work she ended up sending her article only a few hours before the deadline and was half asleep when she wrote it. It would not be the first time but that had happened more often when she was younger and less disciplined. It was not a habit she particularly wanted to fall back into.
She could not quite bring herself to go to sleep, though; afraid whoever had been there the previous night would come back while she was in the house this time. She liked this place, however much Josh nagged her about moving back to London. Besides, she had got settled here and did not really want to go back to the life she'd had a few years previously when she had never had enough time to unpack before moving again.
In the end she slept awkwardly in a chair with the TV on and K-9 at her feet. By dawn she had to admit she was going to need to move again. She gave up on sleeping and emailed Nat, who would be able to find somewhere new far quicker than she did. Afterwards, she started packing.
~*~*~
Nat outdid herself once again by finding Sarah both a new flat and a new mobile phone in the space of a day. It did involve her moving back to London, as she had requested, which made Josh happier. He constantly complained about her living in the middle of nowhere, although anything smaller than a large city was the country as far as he was concerned.
She felt slightly safer in her new place, or at least she told herself she did. Only Josh and Nat knew her new mobile number and as far as Royal Mail was concerned her forwarding address was a PO Box number. It did not stop her from jumping every time the phone rang or she heard a noise, though, as much as she told herself not to be so silly.
Having sorted that all of that out, even with Nat's help, Sarah remembered why she really did not like moving and desperately hoped she would not have to do it again in the near future, even though the local charity shop had benefited from it. Once she had dealt with the most important things, the only other person who needed to know, and had not been involved in her fly-by-night moving experience, was Harry. She carefully dialled 141, as Nat had reminded her more than once, before Harry's number.
"Sarah, old girl!" he exclaimed, once she had established her identity. "Where the devil have you been?"
She could not help but smile at his words. "Sorry I haven't been in touch earlier, I had to move."
"Had to? What happened?"
"Someone broke in, the other night when I was at your place. They didn't take anything," she added, certain that otherwise that would be his next question, edged with guilt.
"Isn't moving house a touch drastic? Do you really think they'll come back?"
She looked out of the front window but did not see anything suspicious. "I don't know."
There was a pause at the other end of the line. "Is everything all right?"
He sounded so worried that Sarah could not really say yes. Besides, she was not very good at actively lying to Harry. Leaving things out, on the other hand, was rapidly becoming an art form.
"There's a park across the road from your flat, isn't there?"
"Well, yes, but--"
"I'll meet you there in..." she looked at her watch, calculating routes, "...thirty minutes."
He agreed but still sounded confused, which was not a surprise really, given he knew next to nothing about the real reasons for the increase in her usual levels of paranoia.
~*~*~
It was cold out, being winter, so Sarah felt justified in wrapping herself in a big coat and hat, so that she would have trouble being recognised. She did not stand out too much, for there were other people taking advantage of the sunshine, although most of them were using it to take strolls with their lovers or walk their dogs. She almost wished for a dog on a lead too, for camouflage, except that she already had one. Even if he did need walking, taking him out on the streets would reveal what he really was and that was not really something she could explain. Not even Josh and Nat knew the whole truth and they had taken a little while to accept K-9.
Her disguise certainly worked because when Harry arrived he carried on walking right past her, until she called out to him.
"Sorry, old girl! I didn't recognise you."
"That was the point." She felt like she blended in a little more now that Harry was here. For once, she hoped that people did get the wrong idea about them.
He frowned and touched her arm. "What's wrong, Sarah?"
"I think someone is trying to, I don't know, scare me maybe." She pulled her sleeves down over her gloved hands and folded her arms. "It started with the letters and phone calls, and then they broke in. And disabled K-9. I don't know anyone who could do that, except maybe the Doctor."
"You should have told me."
She almost said, "I did," but she knew what he meant: brushing it off was not the same at all. She turned and started walking again so she did not have to see his face. "There wasn't anything you could do," she said instead. "Even the police have no idea who is behind it."
"Sarah--" he began, but she cut him off.
"It's fine, I'm dealing with it. I'll give you my new number, just don't write it down." She did not mean to sound so harsh but she could tell what he was thinking because he was calling her by her name. It was not as if her life was in danger, so she did not want his sympathy just at the moment.
He said, "Okay," quite quietly, putting his hands in his pockets.
When Sarah glanced over at him, he was resolutely looking straight ahead. By way of apology she put her arm through his, at which point he relaxed and smiled at her. She changed the subject as they passed other people on their way out of the park and spoke of inconsequential things as she led him on an indirect route back to her place.
~*~*~
K-9's tail was wagging as they entered her new flat and he trundled towards them. Harry reached down to pat him. "Hello, old boy. Good to see you up and about again."
Sarah was thinking that K-9 almost seemed to be more pleased to see Harry than her, so she missed the A5 brown envelope that lay on the mat until she stepped over it. "That's odd," she said. "It's a bit late for the post."
"No stamp," Harry pointed out as she turned it over. "It's been hand delivered."
"While I was out." Sarah frowned. She did not believe in coincidences but this was getting ridiculous. She was not entirely sure she wanted to open it but it was not the size of the usual anonymous letters she'd had and her curiosity was getting the better of her. She regretted her decision when she saw the contents: photographs of her; her old house and her new one.
It was the last straw and every hope that she'd had that day died quickly and suddenly and she put a hand to her mouth in a futile effort to prevent a sob from escaping.
Harry pulled the photos from her unresisting fingers and put an arm around her. She gave up the battle for tears and cried into his coat.
~*~*~
Afterwards, Sarah let Harry make her some tea while she rung Nat. When the doorbell rang at last she leapt up. It would not help to have Harry open the door when she was not quite sure what Nat might do in her defence.
"Who is it?" she asked K-9, who had not left her side since she got in.
"Natalie Redfern," he informed her, so she opened it.
"Are you all right?" Nat asked as she entered. "You sounded terrible on the phone."
"These were put through my door while I was out," Sarah said, handing Nat the photos. "Someone put them through next door's letterbox, so K-9 can't tell us who delivered them."
Nat frowned at the photos. "I'll see what I can find out, then pass them onto the police. Don't hold your breath, though."
"Thanks, Nat." Normally Sarah would investigate herself but it was hard to concentrate at the moment, so Nat would be much better than she would.
Sarah suddenly realised Nat had been eyeing up Harry suspiciously. "Oh, Nat, this is Harry Sullivan. Harry's an old friend. He was here when I found these." If she thought that gave him some sort of alibi in Nat's eyes she was mistaken but she carried on anyway. "Harry, this is Nat Redfern, she helped me find this place."
"If he's an old friend," Nat said, "why haven't we met before?"
"Harry's away a lot. There's no need to be suspicious. Or jealous." Not that Sarah could blame her, given that Harry reappeared just after all this started and that she had never mentioned him.
Harry smiled but Nat's expression did not really change.
'And she says I'm paranoid,' Sarah thought.
Nat did manage to drag herself back to the topic at hand, at least. "Maybe we can get Josh to do a recce, find out where these people have been watching you from. When I find him, that is."
"I hope nothing's happened to him."
"You know Josh. He'll turn up eventually, with no idea what the fuss is about."
Sarah gave a small laugh but could not help but worry that whoever it was that was after her might go through Josh.
"Will you be all right if I go and work on this?" Nat asked.
Nat could not live without a broadband connection. Although in all fairness it was quite hard for her to do any of the things she was good at on a 56k modem.
"I can stay," Harry put in.
Sarah smiled at him and purposely ignored Nat's expression. Normally she would have felt perfectly safe with only K-9 for company but if whoever was after her could disable him he was suddenly more useless as a guard dog.
~*~*~
Josh, for once, displayed some remarkably good timing by turning up while Harry had gone back to his place for some things.
"Where have you been?" Sarah scolded him, for once not caring that she sounded like his mother. "You know these people probably wouldn't hesitate to use my friends to get to me."
"Sorry. I was out late, got drunk, woke up with a hangover."
"And turned your phone off."
"Yeah, well, I didn't want to be interrupted."
Sarah considered what he might have been doing that he did not want them to disturb before deciding she did not really want to know. "Have you spoken to Nat?"
"Yeah, she said you were being spied on."
"They've got pictures of me and the house. They must have set up somewhere or someone must have seen them. Do you think you can find out?"
"I'll give it a go."
She smiled. "Thanks."
~*~*~
Sarah ended up spending most of the rest of the day with a screwdriver (although sadly not a sonic one) inside K-9. It was something of a vain hope really, that his wiring might give them some clues as to how these people disabled him. Mostly she was just hoping not to touch the wrong thing and break him. She wished he came with a manual but since she probably would not understand it anyway, it would not be much good. K-9 himself was not terribly helpful because he was in the wrong position to see what she was pointing at and he had a tendency not to understand what she was describing to him.
She was half-expecting someone to break in that night, so slept fitfully, even though she knew Harry was in the spare room. She was already awake when she heard him cry out. She lay in bed and debated whether to wake him up when she heard him call out her name.
K-9 was hovering outside Harry's door but disappeared without a word when he saw Sarah. She pushed open the door tentatively and there was enough light for her dark-adjusted eyes to see he still slept. As she approached he called her name again, quieter this time. She said, "Harry," softly. He smiled - that must have done the trick. He seemed calmer but she stayed for a few minutes and he did not make another sound, so she decided to leave him and check the house before going back to bed and failing to sleep due to having another thing to worry about.
The sun was rising when she gave in and got up. She lay on the sofa with a mug of herbal tea and a now-sleeping K-9 in front of breakfast TV in the hope that she might fall asleep again, against her expectations. All that actually happened was the TV bored her and she was just thinking of making another drink when she heard Harry get up.
"Good morning," he greeted her.
"Morning," she said, and held out her mug, too tired to care about manners just at the moment. Harry got the message, though, and she got her tea.
"So it was a quiet night in the end," he said, settling on a chair with a mug of his own.
"Was it?"
He frowned and she took pity on him.
"I heard you having another nightmare," she said. "How often have you had them?"
He did not answer straight away and Sarah was wondering if coffee might have been better for keeping her awake. She stared at him until he was uncomfortable enough to look away and answer.
"Every night."
"Oh, Harry." Sarah felt frustrated that he was so obviously hurting and there seemed to be nothing she could do about it. She was determined to get him to tell her something more this time. After all, at this point it could hardly make him worse. "You called my name last night. Was I in your dream?"
He smiled and looked at her. "Yes. I don't really know what happened, it doesn't make any sense, but I thought you rescued me."
"You're right, it doesn't make any sense."
"You took me to a UNIT base, not far away. I could well have made it there on my own except that I didn't know that base existed."
"You must have known about it once and you remembered when you needed to." He turned to look out the window but Sarah could tell the view was not what he was seeing.
"You gave me some water and patched me up." He turned back to smile at her. "I think you threw me in a river."
Sarah could not help smiling as well. "You definitely have an interesting imagination."
"You weren't my imagination." He sat back down and gave her a piercing look. "Those were the exact words you used."
"It doesn't really matter how you got here, as long as you're here now."
"There isn't anyone else I'd prefer as my guardian angel."
Suddenly uncomfortable, Sarah rolled her empty mug between her hands and deliberately changed the tone from intense to light. "So I am useful for something other than making tea."
"I believe I made yours."
She grinned. "That's because it's the women who are in power now."
"Don't I know it," he said but since he smiled back Sarah counted that as a victory.
~*~*~
Josh and Nat both arrived just before lunch. After another round of introductions for Josh and suspicious looks from Nat, Sarah decided she would prefer an easy life, so wrote a list and sent Harry to Tescos. It was a trip that needed doing anyway, as dinner the previous night had been take-away and breakfast had been microwaved take-away. About the only thing in the house that was edible was tea and Sarah was starting to run out of that.
"So, he's an old friend?" Josh asked.
Sarah could tell where this was going from his tone of voice. "Yes. And yes, he's just a friend, before you ask."
Josh closed his mouth and Nat giggled.
Sarah decided to get down to business. "So, what have you found out?"
"The photos were taken with a digital camera, so no way of telling where they were developed. The police are trying to find out if it was bought locally recently."
"You seem to be spending a lot of time with the police lately," Josh said
"Yes, well, they've been very helpful," Nat said. "And you do want them to catch whoever's doing this to Sarah, don't you?"
Sarah thought she had better step in before there was an argument, although she did think Nat seemed to be acting overly defensive for no obvious reason. "What about you, Josh?"
"I met an old lady who lives opposite. I think, from what she said, they've been in there, watching the house."
Sarah shivered and very carefully did not look round in the direction of her front window.
"Not much of a description, though, she was nearly blind."
"That's a start, at least."
"Yes, and we know they're not there any more. So either they've given up or found somewhere else," Nat said.
"Let's hope it's the former."
"There was one strange thing she said," Josh put in, "Well, lots really but only one was actually relevant."
Sarah rolled her eyes. "Go on."
"The man who was there told her he was in the army. Or at least, she thought that's what he said."
"That is odd," Sarah agreed. "I mean, pretending to be the police I could understand."
"Assuming he was telling the truth," Nat said, "why is the army after you?"
"I don't know. I don't even know anyone in the army."
Out of ideas, and with Harry back, they stopped for lunch. Afterwards, Nat promised to see what she could find on their mystery army man and Josh was dispatched to go back to the old lady who lived over the road, whose name he had not even managed to learn in all the time he had spent with her.
~*~*~
A week later they were no further on than they had been before and nothing much had changed. Whoever was trying to scare her had even found out Sarah's new mobile number, at which point she had given up answering it any more. When Harry had eventually given in and picked it up, Nat had given him a load of stick before she realised who was on the other end. Sarah had just let Harry take all her calls after that, at which point the silent breathing ones had mysteriously stopped. She fervently hoped it was just a coincidence this time.
She was starting to go stir crazy, or possibly just crazy, she could not quite tell. She was almost amazed Harry was still polite to her being as he ended up on the receiving end of most of it, as he was around her the most. It did not help that in addition to her insomnia, which had not improved since her first night in the new flat, Harry was still having loud nightmares, which Sarah had got to the stage of ignoring until he quietened down again and she could go back to sleep.
It was not really much of a shock when they had a flaming row over something so trivial she could not remember what they had started arguing about by the time they finished. The only surprise was that they had lasted this long without one.
"Will you stop making me more tea and defend yourself?" she shouted. "I don’t want any more tea."
Harry switched the kettle off and put the box of tea bags down. "You drink too much anyway."
She held onto the kitchen side tightly. "Oh, right, because you're a doctor you know best and I should just do everything you say."
"Now, look, Sarah..." He held his hands out but she would not be placated.
"You might not have noticed but times have changed and the world has woken up to the fact that women are just as good as men. Your Victorian attitude just isn't going to cut it any more."
He looked hurt at her words, just for a moment until he turned his back on her. She was temporarily glad just to have got a reaction from him, until she had an attack of conscience.
"Harry..." she began but he did not acknowledge her. She decided distance was probably a good thing and ran outside. She sagged against the front door and breathed, intending to go back in and apologise after a minute or two.
She never got the chance, though, because just as she pushed herself away from the door there were suddenly hands holding her still and something horrible smelling being pressed to her mouth. She tried to shout but the only sound that came out was too muffled for anyone to hear. She struggled but there were more of them and they were stronger, even before the drug started to take effect. She thought she heard K-9 call, distantly, but his voice faded quickly, as if in a dream.
~*~*~
Part 2
Epilogue
cross posted to sarahjane_fic, worksonsailors and dwfiction
Author: paranoidangel
Words: ~16,000 altogether
Rating: PG
Characters: Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan, Nat Redfern, Josh Townsend
Spoilers: SJS audios: Buried Secrets and Fatal Consequences, School Reunion and small ones for The Rise of the Cybermen and Age of Steel
Summary: Sarah Jane Smith often wished she believed in coincidences but so far her faith had been shown to be true every time.
Beta: by tellitslant
Disclaimer: Not mine, guv
Notes: I am still just as horrible a person because this is half of the fic (not including the prologue) and I'm going away, again, so you'll not get part 2 until Monday, probably
Previously: Prologue
It was the same old Harry - he did not even look different. Well, maybe a little older and a little more tired if she was honest but then she had changed since she last saw him too. Once she had recovered from the initial shock, Sarah itched to be able to talk to Harry, so the rest of the ceremony seemed to drag interminably.
She did not even get a chance afterwards because during the wake there had been the Brigadier's family to pay their respects to. Also, Harry had not had an opportunity to catch up with some of the other people there. She ended up chatting amiably enough about the Brigadier, as well as other subjects, but could never quite take her eyes off Harry for very long, so surprised was she to see him. If anyone else noticed her lack of attention they did not comment.
It was a few hours before people started to drift away. Sarah kept looking at her watch, hoping to hint to Harry that she wanted to leave. After a few attempts she remembered he was a man, so she gave up and joined in his conversation with a couple of men she did not recognise. Their discussion was not really one she was interested in, so she did not listen much, instead allowing her mind to wander. When the men made their goodbyes she looked back at Harry to find him grinning at her.
"Did you want to talk to me, old girl?"
Sarah could have hit him. He was doing it on purpose, as he always did, just to get a reaction out of her. Well, she was determined not to give him the satisfaction, so went for the guilt trip instead. "Where have you been? No-one had heard from you for so long, I thought you must be dead."
Her ploy worked because his expression became serious once more. "I'm sorry, Sarah, but it's a secret. I can't tell you."
She sighed, although she was not really expecting any other answer.
"So what have you been up to?" he asked her.
Sarah smiled and shook her head. "That might take a while. Given that I can tell you all of it," she added.
He ignored her barb. "I don't have any other plans. Why don't I take you out to dinner and you can tell me all about it?"
"It's a deal."
~*~*~
The advantage of relating the past few years' experiences, Sarah found, was that it was easier, with a bit of distance, to laugh about them. Harry lived closest, so after dinner they both went back to his flat. She had caught him up on most of her life that he had missed by this point - hence the reason their meal had taken so long - but she was still finding it difficult to believe he was back and she was not ready to let him go just yet. Although Harry said he had only been back a few days his flat looked like he had never been away, which Sarah supposed was the effect of having had Will house-sit it.
There was a photograph on the mantelpiece that looked old. Harry was still a young man in it, younger even than when she had first met him, and the boy with him must have been Will. She smiled but it was bittersweet. She knew she would have to tell Harry the truth about Will, hoping that he would understand.
"What do you know about what happened to Will?" she asked, picking up the photo with one hand as she took a mug of tea from him in the other.
Harry glanced over her shoulder at the photo before he sat down. "I know he got mixed up in some nasty business with a company called, um..."
"Mandrake."
"That's it, Mandrake. He gave his life to stop them releasing a bio-weapon."
Although she felt she owed Harry the truth, she wanted the Sullivan family to remember Will as a hero, not as a member of a cult trying to infect the world's population with a deadly virus and murder her in the meantime. And Will was a good man, of that she was sure. "I asked him to help," she said, "and I got him killed."
"It's not your fault," Harry said. "No-one blames you."
She shook her head and turned to replace the photo while she blinked back tears. If Harry knew the truth and her part in it she was sure he would have no choice but to hold her responsible, as she did and she could not deal with that, not just yet.
"Sarah?" she heard from close behind her.
She turned to see Harry had got up to stand behind her and he was looking concerned, which she could not bear. She smiled at him and changed the subject so he would not ask any more questions. "I saw the Doctor," she said, stepping around him to sit down in the seat he had just vacated.
He followed suit, moving some papers to create some space on the other end of the sofa. "What, recently?"
"Well, not that long ago. He had regenerated again and he was different. But he was still the Doctor." She smiled at the memory. "It was just like old times, really, with aliens trying to kill us and take over the world. You know the sort of thing."
He grinned. "I remember."
It was hard talking about the Doctor because her happy memories of the time she had spent with him were always tinged with sadness. Unable to sit still, she got up again and went over to the window. Although it was dark out, and had been since before they finished dinner, there was enough light outside from cars and houses in the vicinity that she could still see quite clearly. It reminded her just how much she missed living in London. "He asked me to go with him."
"And what did you say?"
"I told him no. It was the right decision, I know, but..." She shivered. It did not help that all she could think about was that she could have asked the Doctor to find Harry, now that she knew he was alive.
Harry came up behind her again and put one hand on her shoulder. She let him this time, but not quite trusting herself to speak, she just stood there, not moving. After a few minutes she slipped out from under his hand and gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile.
"Sarah--" he began but she was not going to let him finish whatever he intended to say.
"Look at the time," she said, as she noticed the clock on the wall over his shoulder. "We've talked so long I've missed the last train."
"Don't worry, old girl, you can stay here."
"That would be good, thank you. As long as you don't call me old girl," she offered up the old gripe but could not quite bring herself to make it sound as if she really meant it this time. As much as she complained, she had missed being called that and he knew it, if the number of times he had actually used her name that evening was anything to go by.
"You can take my bed; I'll sleep on the sofa."
She might have argued with him about that but she did not have the energy, and knew she was not going to win anyway. So she did not even bother with a token protest, as much as Harry would expect her to, and she borrowed one of his t-shirts instead.
~*~*~
Sarah woke with a jump in the middle of the night and immediately panicked because the shadows were in the wrong place. It was a minute before she remembered where she was and lay back, gazing at the ceiling and feeling her heart beating wildly. Once she had calmed down a little she found the clock, which told her in big red numbers it was 3.42. She had just turned over and closed her eyes again when she discovered what had woken her: a cry from Harry. She could not quite make out what he had said and her first thought was to wonder if he was being burgled.
She got out of bed and crept down the hall back to the lounge. It was lighter in there than the bedroom, as the streetlights filtered through the curtains, but it was just as quiet as the rest of the flat. She frowned and approached the sofa, verifying for herself that Harry was still lying on it. So he was not being burgled. She was just starting to think she must have imagined it and turned to go back to bed when Harry gave a shout. This time he definitely said, "No," and nearly threw the blanket that half covered him onto the floor.
Concerned, Sarah knelt down, gently laid one hand on his shoulder and called his name quietly into his ear. Harry was instantly awake, hyperventilating and frowning at her.
"You were having a nightmare," she told him.
"Sorry," he said. "Did I wake you?"
She shook her head and tried not to shiver in the cold. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked him instead, hoping it might help.
"Not really, no."
She sat back on her feet, looking at him and wondering what else to suggest. She was glad that he seemed to know because he asked, "Will you stay a while?"
"Of course."
Harry sat up, so there was space next to him, and he rearranged the blanket so it was over both of them. She could feel the heat coming off him, even while they were not quite touching, and she wondered why sitting so close was suddenly so uncomfortable.
They sat in silence for a while and Sarah heard Harry's breathing return to normal again. She eventually decided he was not going to talk about what was on his mind, especially given that all day he had never said anything to her that even hinted about what had happened to him. There was something about not being able to see him properly in the dark, though, which made it easier for her to tell him things she had not been able to earlier.
"I think there's someone else out for revenge on me," she began. "I keep getting untraceable silent phone calls and anonymous letters with no fingerprints."
"That's terrible. Who do you think is doing it? And why didn't you tell me this earlier?"
"I don't know. I seem to have made more enemies than friends in my career." She sighed. Even if she had known the trouble she would end up causing for herself, she would not have done anything any different. As long as it was the right thing to do at the time, then it was still the right thing to have done, even after various attempts at retribution. "I'm not sure I can see any of them going in for something so petty, though," she added.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, I just don't answer the phone much." It was easier to lie to Harry in the dark too. Sarah sighed. "I've missed you."
Harry's answer was a kiss on her forehead. She leaned her head against his shoulder and he put his arm around her. The silence and her position were comfortable enough that Sarah closed her eyes and enjoyed the sensations. She certainly had no intention of moving for a while.
~*~*~
Sometime in the night she must have shifted round because by morning she lay with her head resting on Harry's chest. She sat up carefully, so as not to wake him but in doing so she thought he was probably not all that comfortable in the position he was in. She was reluctant to wake him, though, while he looked so peaceful, with no hint of the trouble he had faced in the night showing on his face.
As a compromise she got up to make some tea and by the time she got back she found he had removed the burden of the decision for her as he was already awake and rubbing his neck.
"Sorry," she said, handing him his tea, "you should have woken me up."
"I fell asleep just after you did." He smiled at her. "No harm done."
She settled back on the sofa next to him. "Harry, what happened to you that scared you so much?" She hoped he might be more amenable to answering now it was daylight and the previous night seemed further away.
He took a sip of tea and a long hard look into his mug. When he spoke at last it was halting, as if he was unsure of his words. "I was sent on an important mission, for peace, to help people. But not everyone wanted us there and they tried to stop us. I was lucky, they only captured me."
Sarah bit her lip, her imagination going wild with what he was not saying. "But it didn't work," she said. "I mean, you came home."
"I came home," he echoed.
"Oh, Harry, what did they do to you?" she asked, softly, resting one hand lightly on his arm.
He just shook his head. It had to be bad if he was refusing to tell her. Doubtless he felt it was not for delicate, female ears to hear. If he only said that she would correct him but then if he was not comfortable talking about it with her she did not really want to force him.
She unfolded her legs from underneath her and stood up, stretching. "I should get dressed," she said, and went back to Harry's bedroom, leaving him contemplating his tea. She wanted to give him some time alone so did not rush, although trying to find a way to tame her hair using only his comb was quite tricky in itself.
By the time she was ready to face the day she found Harry cooking breakfast. She decided to leave their conversation for another time, so put on a smile and sat down to eat.
~*~*~
Sarah hung around at Harry's flat for a few hours after breakfast, neither of them wanting her to leave just yet. Eventually, though, she'd had to go home, for she still had a piece needing to be written up by the end of the day. Getting back into journalism, even if it was just freelancing for a few newspapers, had been a way of trying to get her life back to normal after everything that had happened with the Orbus Postremo. She should have known it was never going to last.
When she got home in the middle of the afternoon, K-9 raced to meet her in the doorway, practically running over her feet. Sarah smiled at his enthusiasm, although it was good to be welcomed home.
"Did you miss me, K-9?"
"Yes, mistress."
She reached down to scratch behind his ears, which seemed to make him happy, and she picked up the post, looking through it as she followed K-9 into the house. It was a mixture of the usual junk and bills and as she bent to throw it on the coffee table she realised the table was no longer where it usually lived. In fact nothing was where it was supposed to be. Her lounge looked as if a tornado had hit it, with all the furniture toppled over, and her books and papers strewn across the floor. Yet her TV and computer were still there, so it was not an ordinary burglar. It said something about her life lately that she was not at all surprised by this.
"I don't believe it," she cried as she knelt down and picked up a book that was unfortunate enough to have landed open and have half its pages creased. "What happened, K-9?"
"The house has been broken into."
"Yes, I can see that." K-9 could be annoyingly literal at times. "But you were supposed to be guarding the house, not letting burglars in."
"Apologies, mistress. I believe I was disabled for a period of several hours."
"If the Doctor fixed you wrong, I'm going to kill him." Sarah sighed. It was just another mystery to add to the list. Who wanted revenge on her and had the ability to disable K-9? To say nothing of how they had done it.
She found the phone buried under the yellow pages only after she rang it from her mobile.
~*~*~
Josh turned up just as DC Taylor was leaving.
"Wow, they really made a mess in here," he stated the obvious, when he got inside.
Sarah ignored him, which tended to be a good idea at times and instead told him, "You could make yourself useful and help me clear it up."
"Is that all you called me for?" he asked, bending down to start tidying anyway.
"No. Look, this is something new. Can you speak to Nat and see if the two of you can find out anything useful? It looks like I'm going to be busy here for the rest of the day." The bright side was that she could have that clear out she had been meaning to do for weeks. It was always a good idea to find a bright side, she had discovered, it kept you from going mad.
"Yeah, sure. Any idea who might have done this? Apart from someone after you, as per usual." Josh frowned at one of her bank statements.
His tone was joking but Sarah was not in the mood and she snatched the statement off him. "Well, yes, thank you, Josh, I had worked that out for myself."
"Sorry."
"No, I'm sorry, this isn't your fault. It's just all of this is just a bit...you know," she said, pausing for a moment in the middle of a sea of paper. She had not realised how much she had accumulated, although she was sure a fair bit of this had come from other parts of the house.
"Yeah, I know. Why don't I finish this and you can write a list of anyone who might have done this."
"Okay. Thanks, Josh."
She smiled at him as he turned his attention to the furniture, trying to work out where it all lived. Although Josh had a tendency to annoy her he was at least just as easy to wind up. His heart was in the right place, though, and she settled down to attempt his suggestion.
Writing down the names of anyone who might hold a grudge took long enough because Sarah seemed to have accrued a lot of enemies over the years. She then started to cross off any that would not know about K-9 and would not have the resources to disable him until she realised there would not be anyone left on it. So she gave up and wrote the list out again, by which time Josh had made her lounge, at least, look like nothing untoward had happened as well as making her a cup of tea.
"It doesn't look like they took anything," he said, as they drunk their drinks.
"That's something, I suppose."
She fed him for his trouble and afterwards Josh took her list with him to meet Nat, and Sarah worked through her 300 emails, most of which were spam. She would change her email address but it just made life too difficult for work, so she had to live with it. She had let Nat loose on her computer on one occasion and ended up with various spam filters. But whoever was sending her letters also seemed to be working on her email account too, as their contents changed too often for the filters to keep up.
When she finally did get to do some work she ended up sending her article only a few hours before the deadline and was half asleep when she wrote it. It would not be the first time but that had happened more often when she was younger and less disciplined. It was not a habit she particularly wanted to fall back into.
She could not quite bring herself to go to sleep, though; afraid whoever had been there the previous night would come back while she was in the house this time. She liked this place, however much Josh nagged her about moving back to London. Besides, she had got settled here and did not really want to go back to the life she'd had a few years previously when she had never had enough time to unpack before moving again.
In the end she slept awkwardly in a chair with the TV on and K-9 at her feet. By dawn she had to admit she was going to need to move again. She gave up on sleeping and emailed Nat, who would be able to find somewhere new far quicker than she did. Afterwards, she started packing.
~*~*~
Nat outdid herself once again by finding Sarah both a new flat and a new mobile phone in the space of a day. It did involve her moving back to London, as she had requested, which made Josh happier. He constantly complained about her living in the middle of nowhere, although anything smaller than a large city was the country as far as he was concerned.
She felt slightly safer in her new place, or at least she told herself she did. Only Josh and Nat knew her new mobile number and as far as Royal Mail was concerned her forwarding address was a PO Box number. It did not stop her from jumping every time the phone rang or she heard a noise, though, as much as she told herself not to be so silly.
Having sorted that all of that out, even with Nat's help, Sarah remembered why she really did not like moving and desperately hoped she would not have to do it again in the near future, even though the local charity shop had benefited from it. Once she had dealt with the most important things, the only other person who needed to know, and had not been involved in her fly-by-night moving experience, was Harry. She carefully dialled 141, as Nat had reminded her more than once, before Harry's number.
"Sarah, old girl!" he exclaimed, once she had established her identity. "Where the devil have you been?"
She could not help but smile at his words. "Sorry I haven't been in touch earlier, I had to move."
"Had to? What happened?"
"Someone broke in, the other night when I was at your place. They didn't take anything," she added, certain that otherwise that would be his next question, edged with guilt.
"Isn't moving house a touch drastic? Do you really think they'll come back?"
She looked out of the front window but did not see anything suspicious. "I don't know."
There was a pause at the other end of the line. "Is everything all right?"
He sounded so worried that Sarah could not really say yes. Besides, she was not very good at actively lying to Harry. Leaving things out, on the other hand, was rapidly becoming an art form.
"There's a park across the road from your flat, isn't there?"
"Well, yes, but--"
"I'll meet you there in..." she looked at her watch, calculating routes, "...thirty minutes."
He agreed but still sounded confused, which was not a surprise really, given he knew next to nothing about the real reasons for the increase in her usual levels of paranoia.
~*~*~
It was cold out, being winter, so Sarah felt justified in wrapping herself in a big coat and hat, so that she would have trouble being recognised. She did not stand out too much, for there were other people taking advantage of the sunshine, although most of them were using it to take strolls with their lovers or walk their dogs. She almost wished for a dog on a lead too, for camouflage, except that she already had one. Even if he did need walking, taking him out on the streets would reveal what he really was and that was not really something she could explain. Not even Josh and Nat knew the whole truth and they had taken a little while to accept K-9.
Her disguise certainly worked because when Harry arrived he carried on walking right past her, until she called out to him.
"Sorry, old girl! I didn't recognise you."
"That was the point." She felt like she blended in a little more now that Harry was here. For once, she hoped that people did get the wrong idea about them.
He frowned and touched her arm. "What's wrong, Sarah?"
"I think someone is trying to, I don't know, scare me maybe." She pulled her sleeves down over her gloved hands and folded her arms. "It started with the letters and phone calls, and then they broke in. And disabled K-9. I don't know anyone who could do that, except maybe the Doctor."
"You should have told me."
She almost said, "I did," but she knew what he meant: brushing it off was not the same at all. She turned and started walking again so she did not have to see his face. "There wasn't anything you could do," she said instead. "Even the police have no idea who is behind it."
"Sarah--" he began, but she cut him off.
"It's fine, I'm dealing with it. I'll give you my new number, just don't write it down." She did not mean to sound so harsh but she could tell what he was thinking because he was calling her by her name. It was not as if her life was in danger, so she did not want his sympathy just at the moment.
He said, "Okay," quite quietly, putting his hands in his pockets.
When Sarah glanced over at him, he was resolutely looking straight ahead. By way of apology she put her arm through his, at which point he relaxed and smiled at her. She changed the subject as they passed other people on their way out of the park and spoke of inconsequential things as she led him on an indirect route back to her place.
~*~*~
K-9's tail was wagging as they entered her new flat and he trundled towards them. Harry reached down to pat him. "Hello, old boy. Good to see you up and about again."
Sarah was thinking that K-9 almost seemed to be more pleased to see Harry than her, so she missed the A5 brown envelope that lay on the mat until she stepped over it. "That's odd," she said. "It's a bit late for the post."
"No stamp," Harry pointed out as she turned it over. "It's been hand delivered."
"While I was out." Sarah frowned. She did not believe in coincidences but this was getting ridiculous. She was not entirely sure she wanted to open it but it was not the size of the usual anonymous letters she'd had and her curiosity was getting the better of her. She regretted her decision when she saw the contents: photographs of her; her old house and her new one.
It was the last straw and every hope that she'd had that day died quickly and suddenly and she put a hand to her mouth in a futile effort to prevent a sob from escaping.
Harry pulled the photos from her unresisting fingers and put an arm around her. She gave up the battle for tears and cried into his coat.
~*~*~
Afterwards, Sarah let Harry make her some tea while she rung Nat. When the doorbell rang at last she leapt up. It would not help to have Harry open the door when she was not quite sure what Nat might do in her defence.
"Who is it?" she asked K-9, who had not left her side since she got in.
"Natalie Redfern," he informed her, so she opened it.
"Are you all right?" Nat asked as she entered. "You sounded terrible on the phone."
"These were put through my door while I was out," Sarah said, handing Nat the photos. "Someone put them through next door's letterbox, so K-9 can't tell us who delivered them."
Nat frowned at the photos. "I'll see what I can find out, then pass them onto the police. Don't hold your breath, though."
"Thanks, Nat." Normally Sarah would investigate herself but it was hard to concentrate at the moment, so Nat would be much better than she would.
Sarah suddenly realised Nat had been eyeing up Harry suspiciously. "Oh, Nat, this is Harry Sullivan. Harry's an old friend. He was here when I found these." If she thought that gave him some sort of alibi in Nat's eyes she was mistaken but she carried on anyway. "Harry, this is Nat Redfern, she helped me find this place."
"If he's an old friend," Nat said, "why haven't we met before?"
"Harry's away a lot. There's no need to be suspicious. Or jealous." Not that Sarah could blame her, given that Harry reappeared just after all this started and that she had never mentioned him.
Harry smiled but Nat's expression did not really change.
'And she says I'm paranoid,' Sarah thought.
Nat did manage to drag herself back to the topic at hand, at least. "Maybe we can get Josh to do a recce, find out where these people have been watching you from. When I find him, that is."
"I hope nothing's happened to him."
"You know Josh. He'll turn up eventually, with no idea what the fuss is about."
Sarah gave a small laugh but could not help but worry that whoever it was that was after her might go through Josh.
"Will you be all right if I go and work on this?" Nat asked.
Nat could not live without a broadband connection. Although in all fairness it was quite hard for her to do any of the things she was good at on a 56k modem.
"I can stay," Harry put in.
Sarah smiled at him and purposely ignored Nat's expression. Normally she would have felt perfectly safe with only K-9 for company but if whoever was after her could disable him he was suddenly more useless as a guard dog.
~*~*~
Josh, for once, displayed some remarkably good timing by turning up while Harry had gone back to his place for some things.
"Where have you been?" Sarah scolded him, for once not caring that she sounded like his mother. "You know these people probably wouldn't hesitate to use my friends to get to me."
"Sorry. I was out late, got drunk, woke up with a hangover."
"And turned your phone off."
"Yeah, well, I didn't want to be interrupted."
Sarah considered what he might have been doing that he did not want them to disturb before deciding she did not really want to know. "Have you spoken to Nat?"
"Yeah, she said you were being spied on."
"They've got pictures of me and the house. They must have set up somewhere or someone must have seen them. Do you think you can find out?"
"I'll give it a go."
She smiled. "Thanks."
~*~*~
Sarah ended up spending most of the rest of the day with a screwdriver (although sadly not a sonic one) inside K-9. It was something of a vain hope really, that his wiring might give them some clues as to how these people disabled him. Mostly she was just hoping not to touch the wrong thing and break him. She wished he came with a manual but since she probably would not understand it anyway, it would not be much good. K-9 himself was not terribly helpful because he was in the wrong position to see what she was pointing at and he had a tendency not to understand what she was describing to him.
She was half-expecting someone to break in that night, so slept fitfully, even though she knew Harry was in the spare room. She was already awake when she heard him cry out. She lay in bed and debated whether to wake him up when she heard him call out her name.
K-9 was hovering outside Harry's door but disappeared without a word when he saw Sarah. She pushed open the door tentatively and there was enough light for her dark-adjusted eyes to see he still slept. As she approached he called her name again, quieter this time. She said, "Harry," softly. He smiled - that must have done the trick. He seemed calmer but she stayed for a few minutes and he did not make another sound, so she decided to leave him and check the house before going back to bed and failing to sleep due to having another thing to worry about.
The sun was rising when she gave in and got up. She lay on the sofa with a mug of herbal tea and a now-sleeping K-9 in front of breakfast TV in the hope that she might fall asleep again, against her expectations. All that actually happened was the TV bored her and she was just thinking of making another drink when she heard Harry get up.
"Good morning," he greeted her.
"Morning," she said, and held out her mug, too tired to care about manners just at the moment. Harry got the message, though, and she got her tea.
"So it was a quiet night in the end," he said, settling on a chair with a mug of his own.
"Was it?"
He frowned and she took pity on him.
"I heard you having another nightmare," she said. "How often have you had them?"
He did not answer straight away and Sarah was wondering if coffee might have been better for keeping her awake. She stared at him until he was uncomfortable enough to look away and answer.
"Every night."
"Oh, Harry." Sarah felt frustrated that he was so obviously hurting and there seemed to be nothing she could do about it. She was determined to get him to tell her something more this time. After all, at this point it could hardly make him worse. "You called my name last night. Was I in your dream?"
He smiled and looked at her. "Yes. I don't really know what happened, it doesn't make any sense, but I thought you rescued me."
"You're right, it doesn't make any sense."
"You took me to a UNIT base, not far away. I could well have made it there on my own except that I didn't know that base existed."
"You must have known about it once and you remembered when you needed to." He turned to look out the window but Sarah could tell the view was not what he was seeing.
"You gave me some water and patched me up." He turned back to smile at her. "I think you threw me in a river."
Sarah could not help smiling as well. "You definitely have an interesting imagination."
"You weren't my imagination." He sat back down and gave her a piercing look. "Those were the exact words you used."
"It doesn't really matter how you got here, as long as you're here now."
"There isn't anyone else I'd prefer as my guardian angel."
Suddenly uncomfortable, Sarah rolled her empty mug between her hands and deliberately changed the tone from intense to light. "So I am useful for something other than making tea."
"I believe I made yours."
She grinned. "That's because it's the women who are in power now."
"Don't I know it," he said but since he smiled back Sarah counted that as a victory.
~*~*~
Josh and Nat both arrived just before lunch. After another round of introductions for Josh and suspicious looks from Nat, Sarah decided she would prefer an easy life, so wrote a list and sent Harry to Tescos. It was a trip that needed doing anyway, as dinner the previous night had been take-away and breakfast had been microwaved take-away. About the only thing in the house that was edible was tea and Sarah was starting to run out of that.
"So, he's an old friend?" Josh asked.
Sarah could tell where this was going from his tone of voice. "Yes. And yes, he's just a friend, before you ask."
Josh closed his mouth and Nat giggled.
Sarah decided to get down to business. "So, what have you found out?"
"The photos were taken with a digital camera, so no way of telling where they were developed. The police are trying to find out if it was bought locally recently."
"You seem to be spending a lot of time with the police lately," Josh said
"Yes, well, they've been very helpful," Nat said. "And you do want them to catch whoever's doing this to Sarah, don't you?"
Sarah thought she had better step in before there was an argument, although she did think Nat seemed to be acting overly defensive for no obvious reason. "What about you, Josh?"
"I met an old lady who lives opposite. I think, from what she said, they've been in there, watching the house."
Sarah shivered and very carefully did not look round in the direction of her front window.
"Not much of a description, though, she was nearly blind."
"That's a start, at least."
"Yes, and we know they're not there any more. So either they've given up or found somewhere else," Nat said.
"Let's hope it's the former."
"There was one strange thing she said," Josh put in, "Well, lots really but only one was actually relevant."
Sarah rolled her eyes. "Go on."
"The man who was there told her he was in the army. Or at least, she thought that's what he said."
"That is odd," Sarah agreed. "I mean, pretending to be the police I could understand."
"Assuming he was telling the truth," Nat said, "why is the army after you?"
"I don't know. I don't even know anyone in the army."
Out of ideas, and with Harry back, they stopped for lunch. Afterwards, Nat promised to see what she could find on their mystery army man and Josh was dispatched to go back to the old lady who lived over the road, whose name he had not even managed to learn in all the time he had spent with her.
~*~*~
A week later they were no further on than they had been before and nothing much had changed. Whoever was trying to scare her had even found out Sarah's new mobile number, at which point she had given up answering it any more. When Harry had eventually given in and picked it up, Nat had given him a load of stick before she realised who was on the other end. Sarah had just let Harry take all her calls after that, at which point the silent breathing ones had mysteriously stopped. She fervently hoped it was just a coincidence this time.
She was starting to go stir crazy, or possibly just crazy, she could not quite tell. She was almost amazed Harry was still polite to her being as he ended up on the receiving end of most of it, as he was around her the most. It did not help that in addition to her insomnia, which had not improved since her first night in the new flat, Harry was still having loud nightmares, which Sarah had got to the stage of ignoring until he quietened down again and she could go back to sleep.
It was not really much of a shock when they had a flaming row over something so trivial she could not remember what they had started arguing about by the time they finished. The only surprise was that they had lasted this long without one.
"Will you stop making me more tea and defend yourself?" she shouted. "I don’t want any more tea."
Harry switched the kettle off and put the box of tea bags down. "You drink too much anyway."
She held onto the kitchen side tightly. "Oh, right, because you're a doctor you know best and I should just do everything you say."
"Now, look, Sarah..." He held his hands out but she would not be placated.
"You might not have noticed but times have changed and the world has woken up to the fact that women are just as good as men. Your Victorian attitude just isn't going to cut it any more."
He looked hurt at her words, just for a moment until he turned his back on her. She was temporarily glad just to have got a reaction from him, until she had an attack of conscience.
"Harry..." she began but he did not acknowledge her. She decided distance was probably a good thing and ran outside. She sagged against the front door and breathed, intending to go back in and apologise after a minute or two.
She never got the chance, though, because just as she pushed herself away from the door there were suddenly hands holding her still and something horrible smelling being pressed to her mouth. She tried to shout but the only sound that came out was too muffled for anyone to hear. She struggled but there were more of them and they were stronger, even before the drug started to take effect. She thought she heard K-9 call, distantly, but his voice faded quickly, as if in a dream.
~*~*~
Part 2
Epilogue
cross posted to sarahjane_fic, worksonsailors and dwfiction