(no subject)
He’s in Sarah Jane’s attic. He has no reason to doubt it, because even though he can’t specifically remember leaving Milliways, or how he got here, he’s here and it’s all just as he remembers.
“Sarah Jane!” he calls out. “Mum! Mr. Smith? Clyde? Maria?”
There’s a floorboard, just a few steps away from Sarah Jane’s worktable. It’s never made a sound before, but now it sque - e - eaks as he steps across it. “Come in, Luke,” Mr. Smith says. And Luke is drawn inevitably forward, as he was and as he always will be in his memories.
‘Where’s Sarah Jane?” he asks, wary. (He doesn’t know yet. He can’t. He does. It’s happened before.)
‘She left.”
something for you
(the missing words hang in the air, gentle and insistent like an itch in his mind that refuses to go away. This isn’t how it happened. This isn’t-)
“I don’t understand,” Luke says, quickly. “Where did she go?”
-And then the room shifts, and he’s facing a man instead, not Mr. Smith, not anyone he’s ever met before. He’s holding the MITRE headset, absent-mindedly tossing it from hand to hand, catching it. “You’re the genius kid, aren’t you?” he asks. “Figure it out.”
“I don’t understa-“
The man throws the headset at him. Luke reaches out to catch it, just a second too late. “So how’d it feel, kid? Having your world pulled from under you?”
The room spins, and then it’s filled with balloons and streamers and party hats. There’s a banner stretched out across the wall: Baby’s First Betrayal!!!, it says. “He’s a computer. He was doing what he was programmed to do-”
“And you trusted him,” the man says, advancing on him. “He was always there, just like your Mom and Maria. You never, not even once, doubted him. And then it turned out he was lying to everyone, lying to you since hour one. Doesn’t it just terrify you?”
He stumbles back, and the floor gives under him a little. He can’t look away. “Yes.”
The word echoes echoes echoes echoes echoes, and his head hurts, and the floor’s stopped holding his weight, it’s just not there anymore; he’s falling through space, faster and faster towards the ground-
-And, still standing calmly on the floor of the attic, the man. “Just think how much it’s gonna hurt the next time.”
He wakes up just before impact.