The Inestimable Value of a Good Pair of Shoes (Harry, Sarah Jane, Four, Benny, Eight)
Title: The Inestimable Value of a Good Pair of Shoes
Author: wishfulaces
Recipient: paranoidangel42
Rating: G
Character(s): Harry Sullivan, Sarah Jane Smith, Four, Bernice Summerfield, Eight, and the occasional officious customs agent
Warnings (if any): None
Summary: Harry Sullivan, a man who knows the fine art of shoe loss and replacement.
Notes: Many thanks to livii & nonelvis for looking at this! I ignored anything that wasn't television canon due to forgetfulness of what happened in such things as Harry Sullivan's War & Wolfsbane, so, um, yes. I'm also assuming that the Doctor did not get them back to Earth to take care of the Zygons *quite* as quickly as he had no doubt intended.
The first time that Harry Sullivan lost his shoes--one cannot count the sort of childish scrape any lad might get into, though most boys probably would not lose a perfectly good pair of shoes by getting stuck in mud that acted more like quicksand--the first time that Harry truly lost his shoes was in medical school. A prank by some of the other lads, during a night of unusual debauchery for Harry (he had to admit, he was a fairly straight-laced sort of chap, though he was certainly no slouch at knowing how to tie one on), he'd fallen asleep in the medical lab they had appropriated, on one of the long lab tables, and his fellow students had made off with his brogues. Just a bit awkward the next morning when one of the tutors had to wake him up.
Little did Harry know it would be the start of a sort of ridiculous second career in perpetual shoe loss and replacement.
*
“I have some horrible news,” the Doctor announced, turning around to rejoin his friends. Sarah and Harry had watched in increasing doubt as the Time Lord had argued with the two customs officials, his gestures becoming more extravagant, their posture more obsequious yet firm.
“They're not going to let us leave, are they,” Sarah sounded dismayed. “Doctor, the TARDIS is right there!” She pointed across the spacious, sunlight-filled dome to where they could distantly see a blue box on the other side of the glass.
“They're demanding the customary bribe,” the Doctor told them.
“Bribe?” Harry exclaimed. “Now see here, Doctor, this is ridiculous! What sort of culture would operate their official government transactions this way?”
Sarah elbowed him to hush, but the Doctor was already giving him a mild, steady look that Harry had never quite decided meant the Doctor pitied him or disapproved of him. Whatever it was, he found it jolly uncomfortable and kept meaning to tell the Doctor so, only the moment never seemed quite ripe for that particular sticky conversation. Certainly not while Sarah was around.
“Official bribes as opposed to under-the-counter bribes, you mean?” was all the Doctor said, at least, and Sarah Jane jumped in before the Doctor could start lecturing them again. He did that an awful lot, actually, Harry thought.
“What sort of bribe do they want?” Sarah asked apprehensively. “You haven't got any local currency, Doctor, have you?”
The Doctor sighed. “They prefer objects, actually,” he said. “Small things that delight and amuse them.”
Sarah put a hand to the silver chain around her neck. “I have this necklace,” she said, pulling it out so they could see the pendant attached, a charming little bauble in shades of blue. Harry smiled at her and turned to appeal to the Doctor.
“Surely Sarah Jane doesn't have to lose her jewelry?” he said. “You've got all sorts of oddities in your pockets, I know you do. Haven't you any bit of fluff to 'delight and amuse' them with which you'd be willing to part?”
The Doctor started pulling things out of his pockets, handing them to his friends to hold. String, a cricket ball, a pince-nez, a five-hundred-year diary (“That's where it went!” the Doctor exclaimed when he pulled it out), a wide variety of Earth and alien currency, a startling number of Boots receipts, an even more startlingly large ball of twine (“Largest ball of twine ever to fit in a pocket”), a recorder (“I didn't know I had this coat back then”), the odd contraption built from bits and bobs, a handheld computer actually built to fit the hands of a Sontaran, a tribble.
Sarah and Harry looked at the small pile of items they were clutching. They looked at each other and then at the Doctor. His hands were empty.
“I suppose I could give them the recorder.” He sounded doubtful.
“Why not the twine?” Sarah suggested, biting her lip, and Harry had to look away from her before he started grinning himself. This was no time to become giddy, he lectured himself.
“Rubbish!” The Doctor snatched the twine out of Harry's hands and bundled it back into his pocket. “It took me decades to build up that much twine!”
“I don't suppose they'd be interested in the cricket ball?” Harry intervened.
In the end, the Doctor took the ball, the recorder, the tribble, a handful of boiled sweets he'd discovered in a breast pocket he'd forgotten about, and Sarah's necklace--at her insistence--to show the customs officials.
“Haven't you anything, Harry?” Sarah asked.
Harry felt about his blazer and trouser pockets. “My watch?” he said, and the Doctor took that too.
More arguing, more gesticulating, some careful weighing of the Doctor's small trophies. Sarah and Harry watched anxiously and stiffened a little--they couldn't help it--when the Doctor pointed them out to the officials. The two people looked them over from a distance--particularly unnerving because they both had two sets of eyes--as carefully as they had the baubles, and then they leant in to discuss something with the Doctor. Sarah and Harry looked at each other and swallowed. Sarah's hand crept out to find Harry's. He gave it as reassuring a squeeze as he could muster.
The Doctor straightened--perhaps he was surprised? He turned around toward his companions again and yes, he definitely looked surprised. His eyes were at their widest. He walked back to his friends, still holding everything they'd been willing to sacrifice in order to get back to the TARDIS.
“Harry,” the Doctor said as soon as he was close enough, and Sarah Jane's hand convulsively tightened around her friend's. “Harry, I hate to say this, but they want your shoes.”
Harry blinked. Sarah blinked. The Doctor nodded.
“My shoes?” Harry repeated blankly.
“I know! It's astonishing!” The Doctor handed Sarah her necklace, Harry his watch, started stuffing his own bits and bobs back into his pockets. “But that's what they said. They're fascinated by your footwear.”
“It's no different from yours!” Harry spluttered. “Or--or almost anyone else's that I can see!” He gestured wildly around the spaceport.
“Oh but it is,” replied the Doctor. “Earth leather. Even from where they're standing they can tell they've never seen such a material.”
“Why not my shoes?” Sarah asked, looking down at her boots.
“Too much synthetic,” the Doctor explained. “They've got enough plastics of their own.”
In the end, Harry knew he had no choice but to give up his shoes if they were going to get back to the TARDIS, and Earth, and home. He handed them over to the Doctor, grumbling, and at last they were free to leave the spaceport.
“Ow,” Harry muttered more than once as they crossed gravel and prickly weeds. The Doctor forged ahead, scarf trailing in the breeze behind him. Sarah slipped a comforting arm around Harry's.
“Look at it this way,” she said, “you're really standing on alien ground now, aren't you?”
For a shameful moment, Harry seriously thought about swearing at her. Then he saw the little grin peeking out at the corners of her mouth, and--despite himself--Harry had to return it.
“At this rate, the Doctor won't have any shoes left in the ship at all,” he said.
*
“Harry! Don't go out there till I've double-checked these readings!”
“Nonsense, Doctor, look at it! It looks marvelous out there! I'm sure it's fine.”
A mere twenty seconds later, Harry was back in the TARDIS, barefoot and trying very hard not to swear. Sarah had already run off to find a medical kit. The Doctor was lecturing. Again.
“I thought that soil didn't look good,” he told Harry, as Harry hopped around the console room. “The scanner indicated the level of acid in it would have burnt through your skin in only another moment if you'd stood out there any longer.”
“That,” Harry said through gritted teeth, “is highly interesting, Doctor.” The Time Lord at least had the grace to look abashed.
Sarah came back with a small stool and the medkit and she clucked at Harry to sit down and let her see.
“It's alright, Sarah old girl, really,” Harry told her as he seated himself on the stool with only a minor wince. He and Sarah both examined his feet. “I wasn't out there that long.”
“Harry, Harry,” the Doctor sighed, “I have never had a companion go through as many shoes as you.”
*
Dr. Harry Sullivan walked down the corridor confidently. He was supposed to be here. He was supposed to be here. He was supposed to be here. No, that last one sounded too defensive. Not that Harry was attempting to construct any sort of story in case anybody asked him what he was doing. After all, he was supposed to be here.
Right.
The call from the Brigadier had been unexpected--Harry had been sure the old chap was retired, and quite rightly too, but perhaps it should not have been surprising that UNIT would call in its former staff in times of need. Including Harry himself, not that he was complaining, mind you. It was all a bit of jolly cloak-and-dagger, and Harry had to admit (to himself only) that he'd always liked that sort of thing, and he'd rather missed it of late.
Right now, he was trying very hard not to remember Sarah's scathing tone as she hissed “James Bond!” at him when they tied him up next to her.
In any case, there were dodgy medical experiments going on here, and Harry was just the chap to do an infiltration job. Or so the Brigadier had told him; his UNIT credentials would actually do him good under the circumstances, in order to get him the clearance since it was technically a government operation that may or may not have been infiltrated by enemy agents. And now Harry was just exploring the complex--the public areas and areas his security could access, naturally, nothing more--getting his bearings, that sort of thing. He was supposed to be here.
It was all a bit nerve-wracking, Harry was remembering now. That was the thing about these hush-hush cloak-and-dagger affairs.
Harry rounded the corner and found himself thrown against the wall, a hand over his mouth. He immediately started struggling--instinct--and then immediately stopped when he realized it was a woman. Dashed chivalry. Sarah still occasionally lectured him about it, but he couldn't very well help it.
She was tall, with short hair and--at the moment--fierce eyes. “You don't work here,” she hissed at him accusingly, and Harry's eyes widened in surprise. She still had a hand over his mouth. “I've looked at pictures of every single bloody employee, and you? You do not work here.”
Harry carefully removed her hand so he could lick his lips and speak. “You're quite right,” he said. “I'm a guest. Somehow I don't think you are. Who are you, miss?”
Her eyes narrowed as she looked him over. “What kind of guest would possibly be invited here? And what guest would want to come?”
“My name is Sullivan,” he said. “Doctor Sullivan. And you are?” he added pointedly.
She took a step back. “So you're the outside expert they brought in,” she nodded. “Right, then, you're probably just the chap.” She pulled something out of her jacket pocket--she was carrying a backpack too, snug over both shoulders to leave her hands free--and pointed it at him. “You're going to help me, or I'll shoot,” she said.
Harry blinked.
She sighed. “Look, I know I'm pretty crap at the threats, they're more Ace's or even the Doctor's thing, but just go with it, would you?”
“Doctor?” Harry repeated. “You know the Doctor?”
“What?” She frowned and looked him over. “Of course. Of course you know the Doctor. He even said something about the medical expert being an old friend from UNIT. Goddess,” she sighed and put away her plastic, rather fake-looking, gun. “C'mon then, Doctor Sullivan,” she said, “you'd best help me break into the super secret labs, hadn't you?”
“The Doctor's here?” Harry persisted. “But--well, why doesn't he do something himself? I mean, where is the old fellow?”
She waved a hand. “Off taking care of things at another end. What else is new? He said you'd be just the chap to help.” She looked him over again, a bit dubiously. “I hope he's right. C'mon, I've studied the plans to this place backwards and forwards, so you can follow me.”
“You haven't even told me your name,” Harry pointed out in a mutter as he started following the woman.
She stopped and turned around. “Benny Summerfield,” she said. “Professor Summerfield. And you,” she added, pointing down, “are going to take off your shoes.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I've disabled the cameras, the motion sensors, the microphones, the whole technological lot,” Professor Benny Summerfield said. “I do not, however, have any way to stop your shoes making that awful racket. I could hear you coming a mile off, Sullivan. We're trying to be stealthy.”
“I was just going to tell them I'm supposed to be here.” Even to his own ears, it sounded a trifle lame, Harry conceded.
Instead of rolling her eyes or making a face like Sarah would have done, Benny merely patted him on the arm. “I'm sure it would have worked marvelously,” she said, “but let's try my way instead, shall we? C'mon, off with them.”
Resignedly, Harry took off his shoes. He handed them over to Benny so she could shove them into her backpack.
In the end, after the smoke had cleared, the bodies had been carried away, and Benny had disappeared into the TARDIS with a strange little Scottish man who didn't even say hello, Harry realized she never actually gave him back his shoes.
*
Harry woke up to an awful racket, the likes of which he hadn't heard in a number of years. He threw off the bed covers and jumped upright, just in time to see the TARDIS in its usual police box exterior materialize in the corner of his darkened bedroom.
The door opened. A man stepped out.
Harry blinked. “Who the devil are you?” he said.
He couldn't make out many details, in the dark, but he could see enough of the other chap to know he wasn't the Doctor. The curly hair might have been right but he was too short, too slender, too altogether different.
“Harry!” the other man exclaimed in delight. “Harry Sullivan, my dear chap, how delightful to see you!” He bounded across the bedroom to shake Harry's hand, using both of his own.
Harry pulled back. “I've never seen you before in my life,” he declared. He was finding it a trifle difficult to maintain his dignity wearing only his stripey pajamas. “I ask again, who are you?”
“It's me, Harry! The Doctor!”
“Don't be ridiculous, you don't look a bit like him!”
“No,” the other chap said, sounding surprised, “no, I don't suppose I do. You don't know about regeneration, do you?”
Harry frowned.
“Really, Harry, it is me.” He took another step forward and even in the dim streetlight from outside Harry could see the other man's persuasive look. “I can change my appearance--you met me just after I'd regenerated, didn't you hear Sarah Jane and the Brigadier discussing it? Sergeant Benton, perhaps?”
“I…” Harry studied the other man, then sighed and turned around to flip on the bedside light. He squinted against the light until his eyes adjusted, and then he studied the other man more closely.
He was a bit younger perhaps than the Doctor Harry remembered, and he had no extravagantly long scarf, but his eyes were just as blue and depthless. This chap only looked friendly and engaging, though--not a bit like the Doctor.
“They did mention something of the sort, yes,” Harry said at last, uncertainly. “But how anyone could so thoroughly change his appearance…”
“Oh!” the other chap started digging through his pockets. Eventually he came up with a stethoscope. He held it out to Harry, who took it with a strange sense of deja vu. “Feel my heartsbeat, Harry, surely that will clinch it for you.”
Harry took the proffered object and put the ear pieces in his ears, then pressed the chest piece against the other chap. And--yes, there it was, that strange double thump Harry had first detected all those years ago and would probably never forget.
“Doctor!” Harry grinned suddenly, dropping the stethoscope into one of the Doctor's hands while vigorously shaking the other, the Time Lord laughing the whole time. “My dear chap, how wonderful to see you again!”
“You too, Harry, you too! You're just the chap in fact; I need someone to help me.”
“What do you need, Doctor? Anything to oblige.”
“Well, first, I need a pair of shoes.”
Harry stepped back and held up his hands. “Oh no you don't, Doctor,” he said, shaking his head. “Absolutely not.”
“You don't even know what I need them for!” the Doctor looked hurt.
“I have sacrificed enough shoes for you!” Harry said.
“Harry,” said the Doctor. He stepped right up to Harry. “Harry, Harry, Harry.”
The vague memory of a jump rope and a nursery rhyme drifted across the back of Harry's mind, and he swallowed.
“Yes?” he said.
The Doctor looked deeply into his eyes. “What if I told you the fate of the world depended upon me getting a good, solid pair of shoes?”
“I would say you were mad,” Harry told him frankly, “but as it's exactly the sort of thing you're likely to say, I think I might be the mad one.”
The Doctor grinned. He'd always had a charming grin, Harry admitted glumly to himself even as he turned to his closet.
“It's a good thing I keep more than one pair of shoes about me these days,” he said.
*
“Well, old girl?” Harry settled himself more comfortably on one of the lawn chairs Sarah Jane kept in the garden behind her house on Bannerman Road. “What have you been up to lately? Saved the world a few more times since last I saw you?”
Sarah grinned as she set the tea tray down on the small table next to his chair. “Just once or twice,” she told him with sunny modesty, and Harry laughed. She sat down across from him and started pouring. “And you?”
The two old friends caught up with each other, chatting and drinking their tea. “Where's Luke?” Harry asked at one point.
“School trip with Clyde and Rani,” Sarah said. “He'll be sorry he missed you.”
“Will he?” Harry said. “I always get the feeling he's…amused by me.”
“Luke? Surely not,” said Sarah. “He quite likes you. 'A very good model of behavior,' he once said,” she did a terrible imitation of Luke's scholarly, youthful exuberance. She smiled and dropped the pose. “He could have worse role models.”
Harry smiled, flushing a little despite himself. He crossed his legs as he relaxed, and Sarah glanced down at his shoes.
“Did I tell you?” she asked brightly. “I met somebody from near the Horsehead Nebula a few months back. Lovely fellow, wonderful storyteller. I was helping him get back to the Calmaree Station--you know, that stopover spaceport where we--”
“Almost got stuck because the blasted customs people jolly well wanted a bribe?” Harry still sounded irked after all these years. “Yes, I remember that one.”
Sarah laughed. “Oh, Harry, you'll never guess! You're famous there now!”
“What?” Harry sloshed tea over his cup into his saucer as he set it back down on the table, astonished.
“Your shoes were the talk of the planet,” she assured him. “I think we must have gone there centuries ago, relative to our own time; you're practically a legend now. My friend was very disappointed to miss you--'Just think of all the stories I could tell!' he kept saying.” She grinned at him widely. “How does it feel to be an intergalactic legend, Dr Sullivan, known the universe over for your shoes?”
Harry had sat staring at Sarah Jane uncomprehendingly throughout most of her short speech. Now he blinked and slowly smiled. He sat back in his chair, looking positively smug.
“Just goes to show, old girl,” he said, “the peoples of the universe know the value of a good pair of shoes.”
Author: wishfulaces
Recipient: paranoidangel42
Rating: G
Character(s): Harry Sullivan, Sarah Jane Smith, Four, Bernice Summerfield, Eight, and the occasional officious customs agent
Warnings (if any): None
Summary: Harry Sullivan, a man who knows the fine art of shoe loss and replacement.
Notes: Many thanks to livii & nonelvis for looking at this! I ignored anything that wasn't television canon due to forgetfulness of what happened in such things as Harry Sullivan's War & Wolfsbane, so, um, yes. I'm also assuming that the Doctor did not get them back to Earth to take care of the Zygons *quite* as quickly as he had no doubt intended.
The first time that Harry Sullivan lost his shoes--one cannot count the sort of childish scrape any lad might get into, though most boys probably would not lose a perfectly good pair of shoes by getting stuck in mud that acted more like quicksand--the first time that Harry truly lost his shoes was in medical school. A prank by some of the other lads, during a night of unusual debauchery for Harry (he had to admit, he was a fairly straight-laced sort of chap, though he was certainly no slouch at knowing how to tie one on), he'd fallen asleep in the medical lab they had appropriated, on one of the long lab tables, and his fellow students had made off with his brogues. Just a bit awkward the next morning when one of the tutors had to wake him up.
Little did Harry know it would be the start of a sort of ridiculous second career in perpetual shoe loss and replacement.
*
“I have some horrible news,” the Doctor announced, turning around to rejoin his friends. Sarah and Harry had watched in increasing doubt as the Time Lord had argued with the two customs officials, his gestures becoming more extravagant, their posture more obsequious yet firm.
“They're not going to let us leave, are they,” Sarah sounded dismayed. “Doctor, the TARDIS is right there!” She pointed across the spacious, sunlight-filled dome to where they could distantly see a blue box on the other side of the glass.
“They're demanding the customary bribe,” the Doctor told them.
“Bribe?” Harry exclaimed. “Now see here, Doctor, this is ridiculous! What sort of culture would operate their official government transactions this way?”
Sarah elbowed him to hush, but the Doctor was already giving him a mild, steady look that Harry had never quite decided meant the Doctor pitied him or disapproved of him. Whatever it was, he found it jolly uncomfortable and kept meaning to tell the Doctor so, only the moment never seemed quite ripe for that particular sticky conversation. Certainly not while Sarah was around.
“Official bribes as opposed to under-the-counter bribes, you mean?” was all the Doctor said, at least, and Sarah Jane jumped in before the Doctor could start lecturing them again. He did that an awful lot, actually, Harry thought.
“What sort of bribe do they want?” Sarah asked apprehensively. “You haven't got any local currency, Doctor, have you?”
The Doctor sighed. “They prefer objects, actually,” he said. “Small things that delight and amuse them.”
Sarah put a hand to the silver chain around her neck. “I have this necklace,” she said, pulling it out so they could see the pendant attached, a charming little bauble in shades of blue. Harry smiled at her and turned to appeal to the Doctor.
“Surely Sarah Jane doesn't have to lose her jewelry?” he said. “You've got all sorts of oddities in your pockets, I know you do. Haven't you any bit of fluff to 'delight and amuse' them with which you'd be willing to part?”
The Doctor started pulling things out of his pockets, handing them to his friends to hold. String, a cricket ball, a pince-nez, a five-hundred-year diary (“That's where it went!” the Doctor exclaimed when he pulled it out), a wide variety of Earth and alien currency, a startling number of Boots receipts, an even more startlingly large ball of twine (“Largest ball of twine ever to fit in a pocket”), a recorder (“I didn't know I had this coat back then”), the odd contraption built from bits and bobs, a handheld computer actually built to fit the hands of a Sontaran, a tribble.
Sarah and Harry looked at the small pile of items they were clutching. They looked at each other and then at the Doctor. His hands were empty.
“I suppose I could give them the recorder.” He sounded doubtful.
“Why not the twine?” Sarah suggested, biting her lip, and Harry had to look away from her before he started grinning himself. This was no time to become giddy, he lectured himself.
“Rubbish!” The Doctor snatched the twine out of Harry's hands and bundled it back into his pocket. “It took me decades to build up that much twine!”
“I don't suppose they'd be interested in the cricket ball?” Harry intervened.
In the end, the Doctor took the ball, the recorder, the tribble, a handful of boiled sweets he'd discovered in a breast pocket he'd forgotten about, and Sarah's necklace--at her insistence--to show the customs officials.
“Haven't you anything, Harry?” Sarah asked.
Harry felt about his blazer and trouser pockets. “My watch?” he said, and the Doctor took that too.
More arguing, more gesticulating, some careful weighing of the Doctor's small trophies. Sarah and Harry watched anxiously and stiffened a little--they couldn't help it--when the Doctor pointed them out to the officials. The two people looked them over from a distance--particularly unnerving because they both had two sets of eyes--as carefully as they had the baubles, and then they leant in to discuss something with the Doctor. Sarah and Harry looked at each other and swallowed. Sarah's hand crept out to find Harry's. He gave it as reassuring a squeeze as he could muster.
The Doctor straightened--perhaps he was surprised? He turned around toward his companions again and yes, he definitely looked surprised. His eyes were at their widest. He walked back to his friends, still holding everything they'd been willing to sacrifice in order to get back to the TARDIS.
“Harry,” the Doctor said as soon as he was close enough, and Sarah Jane's hand convulsively tightened around her friend's. “Harry, I hate to say this, but they want your shoes.”
Harry blinked. Sarah blinked. The Doctor nodded.
“My shoes?” Harry repeated blankly.
“I know! It's astonishing!” The Doctor handed Sarah her necklace, Harry his watch, started stuffing his own bits and bobs back into his pockets. “But that's what they said. They're fascinated by your footwear.”
“It's no different from yours!” Harry spluttered. “Or--or almost anyone else's that I can see!” He gestured wildly around the spaceport.
“Oh but it is,” replied the Doctor. “Earth leather. Even from where they're standing they can tell they've never seen such a material.”
“Why not my shoes?” Sarah asked, looking down at her boots.
“Too much synthetic,” the Doctor explained. “They've got enough plastics of their own.”
In the end, Harry knew he had no choice but to give up his shoes if they were going to get back to the TARDIS, and Earth, and home. He handed them over to the Doctor, grumbling, and at last they were free to leave the spaceport.
“Ow,” Harry muttered more than once as they crossed gravel and prickly weeds. The Doctor forged ahead, scarf trailing in the breeze behind him. Sarah slipped a comforting arm around Harry's.
“Look at it this way,” she said, “you're really standing on alien ground now, aren't you?”
For a shameful moment, Harry seriously thought about swearing at her. Then he saw the little grin peeking out at the corners of her mouth, and--despite himself--Harry had to return it.
“At this rate, the Doctor won't have any shoes left in the ship at all,” he said.
*
“Harry! Don't go out there till I've double-checked these readings!”
“Nonsense, Doctor, look at it! It looks marvelous out there! I'm sure it's fine.”
A mere twenty seconds later, Harry was back in the TARDIS, barefoot and trying very hard not to swear. Sarah had already run off to find a medical kit. The Doctor was lecturing. Again.
“I thought that soil didn't look good,” he told Harry, as Harry hopped around the console room. “The scanner indicated the level of acid in it would have burnt through your skin in only another moment if you'd stood out there any longer.”
“That,” Harry said through gritted teeth, “is highly interesting, Doctor.” The Time Lord at least had the grace to look abashed.
Sarah came back with a small stool and the medkit and she clucked at Harry to sit down and let her see.
“It's alright, Sarah old girl, really,” Harry told her as he seated himself on the stool with only a minor wince. He and Sarah both examined his feet. “I wasn't out there that long.”
“Harry, Harry,” the Doctor sighed, “I have never had a companion go through as many shoes as you.”
*
Dr. Harry Sullivan walked down the corridor confidently. He was supposed to be here. He was supposed to be here. He was supposed to be here. No, that last one sounded too defensive. Not that Harry was attempting to construct any sort of story in case anybody asked him what he was doing. After all, he was supposed to be here.
Right.
The call from the Brigadier had been unexpected--Harry had been sure the old chap was retired, and quite rightly too, but perhaps it should not have been surprising that UNIT would call in its former staff in times of need. Including Harry himself, not that he was complaining, mind you. It was all a bit of jolly cloak-and-dagger, and Harry had to admit (to himself only) that he'd always liked that sort of thing, and he'd rather missed it of late.
Right now, he was trying very hard not to remember Sarah's scathing tone as she hissed “James Bond!” at him when they tied him up next to her.
In any case, there were dodgy medical experiments going on here, and Harry was just the chap to do an infiltration job. Or so the Brigadier had told him; his UNIT credentials would actually do him good under the circumstances, in order to get him the clearance since it was technically a government operation that may or may not have been infiltrated by enemy agents. And now Harry was just exploring the complex--the public areas and areas his security could access, naturally, nothing more--getting his bearings, that sort of thing. He was supposed to be here.
It was all a bit nerve-wracking, Harry was remembering now. That was the thing about these hush-hush cloak-and-dagger affairs.
Harry rounded the corner and found himself thrown against the wall, a hand over his mouth. He immediately started struggling--instinct--and then immediately stopped when he realized it was a woman. Dashed chivalry. Sarah still occasionally lectured him about it, but he couldn't very well help it.
She was tall, with short hair and--at the moment--fierce eyes. “You don't work here,” she hissed at him accusingly, and Harry's eyes widened in surprise. She still had a hand over his mouth. “I've looked at pictures of every single bloody employee, and you? You do not work here.”
Harry carefully removed her hand so he could lick his lips and speak. “You're quite right,” he said. “I'm a guest. Somehow I don't think you are. Who are you, miss?”
Her eyes narrowed as she looked him over. “What kind of guest would possibly be invited here? And what guest would want to come?”
“My name is Sullivan,” he said. “Doctor Sullivan. And you are?” he added pointedly.
She took a step back. “So you're the outside expert they brought in,” she nodded. “Right, then, you're probably just the chap.” She pulled something out of her jacket pocket--she was carrying a backpack too, snug over both shoulders to leave her hands free--and pointed it at him. “You're going to help me, or I'll shoot,” she said.
Harry blinked.
She sighed. “Look, I know I'm pretty crap at the threats, they're more Ace's or even the Doctor's thing, but just go with it, would you?”
“Doctor?” Harry repeated. “You know the Doctor?”
“What?” She frowned and looked him over. “Of course. Of course you know the Doctor. He even said something about the medical expert being an old friend from UNIT. Goddess,” she sighed and put away her plastic, rather fake-looking, gun. “C'mon then, Doctor Sullivan,” she said, “you'd best help me break into the super secret labs, hadn't you?”
“The Doctor's here?” Harry persisted. “But--well, why doesn't he do something himself? I mean, where is the old fellow?”
She waved a hand. “Off taking care of things at another end. What else is new? He said you'd be just the chap to help.” She looked him over again, a bit dubiously. “I hope he's right. C'mon, I've studied the plans to this place backwards and forwards, so you can follow me.”
“You haven't even told me your name,” Harry pointed out in a mutter as he started following the woman.
She stopped and turned around. “Benny Summerfield,” she said. “Professor Summerfield. And you,” she added, pointing down, “are going to take off your shoes.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I've disabled the cameras, the motion sensors, the microphones, the whole technological lot,” Professor Benny Summerfield said. “I do not, however, have any way to stop your shoes making that awful racket. I could hear you coming a mile off, Sullivan. We're trying to be stealthy.”
“I was just going to tell them I'm supposed to be here.” Even to his own ears, it sounded a trifle lame, Harry conceded.
Instead of rolling her eyes or making a face like Sarah would have done, Benny merely patted him on the arm. “I'm sure it would have worked marvelously,” she said, “but let's try my way instead, shall we? C'mon, off with them.”
Resignedly, Harry took off his shoes. He handed them over to Benny so she could shove them into her backpack.
In the end, after the smoke had cleared, the bodies had been carried away, and Benny had disappeared into the TARDIS with a strange little Scottish man who didn't even say hello, Harry realized she never actually gave him back his shoes.
*
Harry woke up to an awful racket, the likes of which he hadn't heard in a number of years. He threw off the bed covers and jumped upright, just in time to see the TARDIS in its usual police box exterior materialize in the corner of his darkened bedroom.
The door opened. A man stepped out.
Harry blinked. “Who the devil are you?” he said.
He couldn't make out many details, in the dark, but he could see enough of the other chap to know he wasn't the Doctor. The curly hair might have been right but he was too short, too slender, too altogether different.
“Harry!” the other man exclaimed in delight. “Harry Sullivan, my dear chap, how delightful to see you!” He bounded across the bedroom to shake Harry's hand, using both of his own.
Harry pulled back. “I've never seen you before in my life,” he declared. He was finding it a trifle difficult to maintain his dignity wearing only his stripey pajamas. “I ask again, who are you?”
“It's me, Harry! The Doctor!”
“Don't be ridiculous, you don't look a bit like him!”
“No,” the other chap said, sounding surprised, “no, I don't suppose I do. You don't know about regeneration, do you?”
Harry frowned.
“Really, Harry, it is me.” He took another step forward and even in the dim streetlight from outside Harry could see the other man's persuasive look. “I can change my appearance--you met me just after I'd regenerated, didn't you hear Sarah Jane and the Brigadier discussing it? Sergeant Benton, perhaps?”
“I…” Harry studied the other man, then sighed and turned around to flip on the bedside light. He squinted against the light until his eyes adjusted, and then he studied the other man more closely.
He was a bit younger perhaps than the Doctor Harry remembered, and he had no extravagantly long scarf, but his eyes were just as blue and depthless. This chap only looked friendly and engaging, though--not a bit like the Doctor.
“They did mention something of the sort, yes,” Harry said at last, uncertainly. “But how anyone could so thoroughly change his appearance…”
“Oh!” the other chap started digging through his pockets. Eventually he came up with a stethoscope. He held it out to Harry, who took it with a strange sense of deja vu. “Feel my heartsbeat, Harry, surely that will clinch it for you.”
Harry took the proffered object and put the ear pieces in his ears, then pressed the chest piece against the other chap. And--yes, there it was, that strange double thump Harry had first detected all those years ago and would probably never forget.
“Doctor!” Harry grinned suddenly, dropping the stethoscope into one of the Doctor's hands while vigorously shaking the other, the Time Lord laughing the whole time. “My dear chap, how wonderful to see you again!”
“You too, Harry, you too! You're just the chap in fact; I need someone to help me.”
“What do you need, Doctor? Anything to oblige.”
“Well, first, I need a pair of shoes.”
Harry stepped back and held up his hands. “Oh no you don't, Doctor,” he said, shaking his head. “Absolutely not.”
“You don't even know what I need them for!” the Doctor looked hurt.
“I have sacrificed enough shoes for you!” Harry said.
“Harry,” said the Doctor. He stepped right up to Harry. “Harry, Harry, Harry.”
The vague memory of a jump rope and a nursery rhyme drifted across the back of Harry's mind, and he swallowed.
“Yes?” he said.
The Doctor looked deeply into his eyes. “What if I told you the fate of the world depended upon me getting a good, solid pair of shoes?”
“I would say you were mad,” Harry told him frankly, “but as it's exactly the sort of thing you're likely to say, I think I might be the mad one.”
The Doctor grinned. He'd always had a charming grin, Harry admitted glumly to himself even as he turned to his closet.
“It's a good thing I keep more than one pair of shoes about me these days,” he said.
*
“Well, old girl?” Harry settled himself more comfortably on one of the lawn chairs Sarah Jane kept in the garden behind her house on Bannerman Road. “What have you been up to lately? Saved the world a few more times since last I saw you?”
Sarah grinned as she set the tea tray down on the small table next to his chair. “Just once or twice,” she told him with sunny modesty, and Harry laughed. She sat down across from him and started pouring. “And you?”
The two old friends caught up with each other, chatting and drinking their tea. “Where's Luke?” Harry asked at one point.
“School trip with Clyde and Rani,” Sarah said. “He'll be sorry he missed you.”
“Will he?” Harry said. “I always get the feeling he's…amused by me.”
“Luke? Surely not,” said Sarah. “He quite likes you. 'A very good model of behavior,' he once said,” she did a terrible imitation of Luke's scholarly, youthful exuberance. She smiled and dropped the pose. “He could have worse role models.”
Harry smiled, flushing a little despite himself. He crossed his legs as he relaxed, and Sarah glanced down at his shoes.
“Did I tell you?” she asked brightly. “I met somebody from near the Horsehead Nebula a few months back. Lovely fellow, wonderful storyteller. I was helping him get back to the Calmaree Station--you know, that stopover spaceport where we--”
“Almost got stuck because the blasted customs people jolly well wanted a bribe?” Harry still sounded irked after all these years. “Yes, I remember that one.”
Sarah laughed. “Oh, Harry, you'll never guess! You're famous there now!”
“What?” Harry sloshed tea over his cup into his saucer as he set it back down on the table, astonished.
“Your shoes were the talk of the planet,” she assured him. “I think we must have gone there centuries ago, relative to our own time; you're practically a legend now. My friend was very disappointed to miss you--'Just think of all the stories I could tell!' he kept saying.” She grinned at him widely. “How does it feel to be an intergalactic legend, Dr Sullivan, known the universe over for your shoes?”
Harry had sat staring at Sarah Jane uncomprehendingly throughout most of her short speech. Now he blinked and slowly smiled. He sat back in his chair, looking positively smug.
“Just goes to show, old girl,” he said, “the peoples of the universe know the value of a good pair of shoes.”