Sadie's Story - Present of a One-Shot
A thirty-something woman strode purposely into the clothing store.
She herself wore simple blue jeans, a black t-shirt and old trainers. Either she needed to shop for real clothes or she was on the hunt for something else.
She spotted her quarry at the registers.
“SADIE!” she yelled.
The cashier at the register was finishing bagging a dress for a primly dressed customer. The cashier jumped about two feet in the air, dropped the dress completely and shouted “WHAT!?!”
Then she saw the casually clad woman.
“AMBER! Oh my GAWD!!” Forgetting both the customer and the dress, Sadie raced around the counter and launched herself at Amber.
“Omph!” was all Amber got out before both women tumbled on the ground. “You’re going to get your khaki’s dirty!”
“Like I care about my work clothes! What the HELL are you doing in Florida?”
Amber giggled. “Ha! Surprise! Now go take care of that freaked out chick and hang on a min for another surprise!”
“Okay, okay, okay!!” said Sadie as she bustled back behind the counter to the startled customer. “Oh my gawd, oh, I’m so sorry, that’s my friend! I haven’t seen her in months, here you go, have a GREAT DAY!” she babbled at the woman.
Her smile and cheer was contiguous. “You too!” the customer smiled as she turned to walk out of the store.
Sadie ran back to Amber. “Okay, what? What? What’s the surprise?!”
“Hang ON a minute! First, who and where is your manager?” asked the manically smiling Amber.
“What? Where? Oh, okay, um, she’s over there.” Sadie pointed. “Oh my gawd!”, she repeated, jumping up and down and grabbing Amber into another tight hug.
“Omph!” Amber repeated, as she turned the both of them towards the door. She focused on something beyond the door and pointed back where Sadie indicated her manager was. Sadie squirmed the both of them back around so she could see the door herself.
The door burst open and in walked the skinniest man Sadie had ever seen. He smirked at both ladies and speed walked to the manager. His medium length hair stood nearly straight up from his scalp while he reached in his left coat pocket a brown wallet the same color as his suit, hair and eyes. His tan trench coat flew backward in his wake. All the brown should have been monotonous, but the speed and spring of his walk quickly distracted the eye to focus on his determined, slightly smiling face. His handsome, determined, slightly smiling face.
Sadie’s own bright eyes nearly popped out of her skull. This reminded her of her massive headache as she already felt her eyes would like to popping out of her skull to avoid the pounding in her head. She closed them for a moment, as her excitement increased her blood pressure exponentially and renewed the pounding in her skull.
“Oh, honey!,” exclaimed Amber, as she broke the extended dance mix hug to peer into Sadie’s eyes. “Still have that ‘I wish my eyes would go ahead and pop out and bounce against the wall a couple of times so that I could have a little relief’ headache? I’m so sorry.”
“’s okay, ‘s okay,” Sadie straightened her posture and tried to appear alert while looking at the brown suited man. Despite the pain, she started bouncing on the balls of her feet and squeeing as quietly as she could.
The man reached the defenseless manager. He shoved the open wallet into the manager’s face and started a monologue that sounded more like stream of consciousness.
“Frightfully sorry, I need that woman over there, Sadie Brown, in a VERY important investigation, see, I’m with the police, well, extended loan from, er, Scotland Yard, yes I saw that you noticed my accent, yes, very important investigation, oh, no, she’s not in trouble in the least, oh my, she is very helpful in, ah, investigations of this sort, no, I can’t tell you what it’s all about, so, going to take her away for the day, so sorry about her shift, there is some sort of ‘time-shift,’ ha, ‘make up you pay for her hours missed’, right, ‘for official business’, right? Of course you do,” he took a breath. “So we’ll be off! See you later!” He turned his back on the dumbfounded manager and walked back to the women.
Without looking, Sadie knew the “credentials” in the wallet that the man flashed at her helpless manager. It would be blank to anyone else, but the manager saw whatever she needed to simply nod at the skinny man.
Sadie looked at her friend suspiciously. “Amber, did you kidnap the Doctor?” she whispered.
“Noooo,” Amber denied, smiling. She held up her black cell. “Universal roaming.”
The Doctor extended his arms and herded both women outside the store. The door barely closed behind him before he turned towards Sadie.
“Sadie!” he squeaked as he bundled her up in a near suffocating hug.
“Doctor!” Sadie hugged back, “but what are you doing here?”
“Amber called me.” he smiled.
Sadie turned to Amber, “Why did you call him?”
Amber shrugged, still smiling. “Was bored. The Doctor was bored, too.”
The Doctor denied this. “Was not! I was doing important sociological research in the early 21st century via the interconnectedness of servers and computers around the world!”
Amber smirked. “You were on Facebook. Like I was. Bored out of your mind.”
“Why would you think I was bored?”
“What level vamp are you?”
“Two hundred thirty six. What?”
Amber nodded at the Doctor then looked at Sadie. She tilted her head back to the Doctor. “See?,” she said.
The Doctor took a deep breath. “ANYway,” he continued, looking at Sadie, “fancy a trip? Where do you want to go? And when, of course?”
“To see Captain Jack!,” Sadie squealed. On one hand, she was getting a little embarrassed about her irrepressible, inarticulate squeaking. On the other, much bigger hand, she didn’t give a flying flip.
“Cardiff?” replied the Doctor incredulously, leaning on the first syllable. “All of time and space and you want to go to Cardiff?”
The Doctor’s volume and pitch had increased in his excitement, finally making Sadie involuntarily wince. She didn’t want to spoil the fun so she schooled her face in effort to mask her pain.
The Doctor, of course, noticed immediately. “What’s this? Head still bothering you? We can’t have that, can we? Been wanting to try this,” he extended his hands to Sadie’s head.
Sadie involuntarily jerked back. “What?,” she asked, before slowly moving back where she was.
“Shhshhshhshh,” said the Doctor, already closing his eyes while taking Sadie’s head in his hands.
Sadie took the hint and closed her own eyes.
A look of concentration came over the Doctor’s face.
“Oh! I’m… so… sorry… ,” he stammered when the distressing images flooded his mind.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Oh, god, I’m sorry!” Sadie’s eyes flew open and she jerked back again, horrified, and clamped her hands to her mouth.
The Doctor shook his head. “Shhshhshhshh!” he repeated. He looked sadly down into Sadie’s eyes.
“Its alright. It’s ALRIGHT. I’M sorry. That was MY fault. I was just trying to get those nasty blood vessels calmed down, see if I could do it,” He paused.
“Still have quite a bit going on in your head, mm?” he asked gently. He already knew the contents of that head from previous times together.
“Welcome to my hellhole,” sighed Sadie, looking away.
The Doctor took Sadie’s head in his long, gentle hands again and lifted her eyes to his own. “Hey, now,” he began.
Previously forgotten, Amber now spoke up. Concern filled her face. “Hey, let’s do this somewhere other than the front of Sadie’s work, okay?”
“Oh, yes, yes, let’s go to my TARDIS.” said the Doctor in a softer tone. He released Sadie’s head and took her left hand into his right. He smiled “Shall we?”
Tears welled up in Sadie’s eyes. “Yes.”
++++++++
They walked across the street to a tiny park where the police box stood. She only gained a few puzzled looks from passersby, which goes to show, even an old British police box can go unmolested when the local society ruthlessly minds it’s own business.
The Doctor released Sadie’s hand, turned the Yale key in it’s lock and opened the door for the ladies to enter. The two of them walked up the slight incline to the consol. They took in the familiar, comforting sight of the huge tannish colored room which still inspired excitement and awe.
“Wibbly Woobly,” started Amber randomly.
“Timey Wimey!,” Sadie finished, giggling a little through her tears.
The Doctor closed the door carefully and followed them up the ramp. He tossed his trench casually on one of the coral shaped pillars and walked to Sadie and Amber.
“Sadie,” he began.
“I’m sorry!” cried Sadie, believing in her heart that she was at fault for all the images in her mind that dared to distress the Doctor in any way.
“Now, now, now, none of that, shhshhshh,” he responded, taking Sadie’s shoulders and head into his arms to press against his chest.
Sadie started to sob freely on the Doctor’s suit coat, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she continued, muffled by the embrace.
“Oh, Sadie, I’M sorry, so, so sorry, you have nothing to be sorry about. Do you hear me?” The Doctor’s accent rose and fell with the emphasis of his words. Guessing at the cause of her current distress, he said to her, “Believe me, I’ve seen a lot worse. You would have to throw some pretty intense Cyber Dalek Sontorian hybrid clones at my head to cause ME to fall off my stride! Why, it would take a particularly amorous Captain Jack…”
He was cut short by Sadie angrily shoving herself out of his embrace.
“Why won’t you get rid of my memories like you did with Donna?!?” she demanded.
Amber gasped in shock. The Doctor stood speechless, a rare event. Sadie and Amber knew about Donna, of course, because even the Doctor needed someone to talk to about his own anguish of losing another friend. That time was by his own hand. His own mind. He remembered that Sadie had asked some specific questions about the extent of Donna’s memory loss but didn’t think anything of it at the time. Apparently Sadie had been thinking about it since that conversation and thinking about it hard.
“Sadie,” Amber began, touching Sadie’s back, “he had to do that to Donna. It wasn’t his choice, he had to save her, and he had to kill part of her soul to do it.”
“I don’t care,” protested Sadie firmly. Amber looked sadly at the Doctor.
The Doctor shook his head slightly. “Sadie, please, I can’t. I just can’t. I would be ripping apart everything that makes you, you. I just suppressed Donna’s memory for the time we traveled together. But even in just that short, short time, she changed and grew and became more brilliant, more brilliant into the brilliant person she already was.
“Brilliant, really,” the Doctor briefly smiled. “Don’t ask me to do that to you. I would destroy you. I’ve already lost Donna forever.” Tears welled up in his own eyes, the pain and anguish of losing everything in his life slamming into his heart once more.
“You are brilliant! You haven’t seen it yet, but you are. Everything that happens to you, that you remember, the joy and laughter and tears and pain and love and muck and life and fun - you are stronger because of it. Braver, more loving and understanding, the kindest, most gentle, creative, kooky, crazy, shining light of a person, and,” here the Doctor truly smiled.
“We’ve got an awful lot of running to do.”
Sadie let out a last sob as she launched herself in to the Doctor’s arms again. “Okay, okay, okay,” she started. “It was just a THOUGHT!”
The Doctor hugged her back. “And don’t ever stop thinking! Think! Think! Think! Let’s all sit down and have a good think!”
The Doctor let Sadie go and plopped on the floor. He assumed the “The Thinker” by Rodin pose but looked ponderously up at the high ceiling. “Think, think, think,”
Amber grabbed Sadie to pull her into her own hug while they both giggled at the Doctor.
“Better?” asked Amber.
“Yeah,” sighed Sadie. “Sorry. Same old crap.”
“Meh.” Amber shrugged. “Just because I just watched the Doctor tell you THE SAME THINGS I’VE BEEN TELLING YOU FOR YEARS, that doesn’t mean anything. Oh, no!” Amber smirked. “The thing is, I SHOULD have dug up a skinny, British sounding Time Lord YEARS ago, but he,” here Amber nodded at the Doctor, “won’t go back in my time line! Difficult, he is. Almost as stubborn as you!”
Sadie laughed, the first full throated, full body laugh of the day. She wiped the last of the tears from her face.
“You okay?” Amber looked at her friend. “I mean, for now, for a bit?”
Sadie took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m okay. For right now, for this trip!”
“Hey, DOCTOR,” she started, “I still have that headache, you punk!”
The Doctor refocused on Sadie. He smiled, judging that Sadie’s much needed moment with Amber was done for now. “Well, now. Don’t like hospitals much…”
“DOCTOR!” Sadie and Amber said in tandem, playing at exasperation.
“RIGHT!” cheerfully shouted the Doctor as he popped up from the floor.
“So, where are we going?”
Sadie and Amber looked at each other and proved their mind twin theory.
“CARDIFF!”