tree_and_leaf | (no subject)

Title: Girl in Every Port
Author:

tree_and_leaf
Characters: Sarah-Jane Smith, etc.
Rating: PG.
Words:: 1177
Spoilers: School Reunion, Hand of Fear.
Summary: She knew this man when she was younger. Just not the one the Doctor was thinking of.

She had hardy been able to believe her ears when the Doctor had asked if she hadn’t settled down with someone and had kids. After all those years, and all that stuff about how primitive humans were, and he came out with a question worthy of a Daily Mail editorial writer. As if a woman couldn’t have a satisfying life without a ring on her finger and a baby on her hip! Still, perhaps the loss of Gallifrey was making him sentimental. Grief did funny things to people, grief over the loss of things they’d never really appreciated when they were there most of all, perhaps. As she knew… And Rose probably wasn’t helping him there, whatever she was doing for him otherwise. Nice kid, but head stuffed full of romantic notions. Could stand to read some Beauvoir, too… Sarah didn’t think she’d ever been that young, and really, it had been that that had stung in the encounter. Not so much jealousy of Rose’s relations with the Doctor, but that easy elastic youth and bounce that let her take off with him.

She’d said, with an impressively straight face, "Well, there was this man when I was younger… no-one ever compared," and he’d actually believed it. God, he was vain, even worse now than when he’d had the grey hair and the penchant for velvet smoking jackets, and that was saying something in all conscience. Only then it had struck her that actually, it was sort of true, and it hadn’t seemed funny anymore.

Not the Doctor, but Harry. Who’d loved her, had been driven crazy by her in both senses, but that was OK, because, back on earth, she’d found that suddenly the same thing had gone for her. He’d not rescued her from Aberdeen or anything ridiculous like that, because Aberdeen was hardly the end of the universe, but they’d picked up the threads, had a few drinks, though they weren’t actually drunk, and found themselves, rather to their surprise and delight, in bed together. And it had been good. Astonishingly so.

And that had been it, more or less. They’d never married, never even lived together, but they were together, none the less, when Harry wasn’t away with his ship (he’d gone back to the Navy) and she wasn’t off chasing down a story. It had worked. She’d have hated being an officer’s wife, and Harry had known that as well as she did – he wasn’t as clever as the Doctor, but in some ways a lot more perceptive, even if he never did stop calling her "old girl" (sometimes she thought he liked picking fights over trivialities because making up was such fun). Being what Harry insisted on calling "my girl in every port", though – that worked.

The only time anyone brought up the subject of marriage, it had been her that did so, haunted by guilt that she was short-changing him.

“Let’s get one thing straight, Sarah,” he’d said. “Yes, if you wanted to marry me and start a family, I’d love it. But I know you, and –”

“If you’re thinking of saying anything along the lines of ‘half a loaf is better than no bread’, Harry Sullivan, I will never speak to you again,” she said, indignant despite everything.

“I was going to say, I love you and I want to be with you. Not my idea of you. And if you married me because you thought I’d be unhappy if you didn’t, well-”

She’d cut him off there, because that, really, was the most perfect and honest and Harry-ish thing he could possibly have said. “Steady on, old girl,” he’d said, when he was able to breathe again, and she’d said, “Harry, you are impossible,” and he’d said something really stupid like “Nothing’s impossible to an officer and a gentleman,” but the stupidity hadn’t mattered, because he’d had those wonderful deft experienced hands just where it always drove her crazy, and then –

Well, never mind that. That had been on his last leave, before the tour he’d never come back from. Killed in a helicopter accident, back on secondment with UNIT, a real accident, no aliens involved or anything, just mechanical failure, a stupid and inappropriate way for a Navy man to die, but when was death ever anything but stupid and inappropriate?

No ring, no marriage certificate, no widow’s pension; and she wasn’t even listed as his next of kin, because there was that brother Harry’d never really got on with and she’d loathed on sight. But the Brigadier had come in person to tell her, and as soon as she’d seen him on her doorstep, face set, she’d known, even before the words were out of his mouth. He’d only said “Could I come in, Sarah?” and not explained why he was there until she was in the living room and near a sofa, and that alone had told her what he was going to say.

She’d wondered, for a while, whether she shouldn’t have married Harry, whether she’d not appreciated what she’d got. But he'd had been right; it wouldn’t have worked out. Perhaps if he’d lived, perhaps when she’d been older... But she didn’t think so; and anyway, she’d never know, and it was useless to speculate. The universe could be a cruel place, it gave you beauty and snatched it back.

But she’d always known that; she hadn’t needed a thousand-and-something year old alien (especially if he was vain enough to have knocked a few centuries off his age) to tell her that. It hadn’t even needed that damned faulty Chinook and that cairn on a Highland hill, though that had been an extra twist of the knife. No-one who lost their parents before they were old enough to remember them needed reminding that life was short.

Life was short, but it was for living. No-one had ever measured up to Harry, and nothing had ever been quite the same as walking the sands of an alien world, but there was a big, exciting world on her doorstep to explore. She hadn’t lived like a nun, and she hadn’t been miserable.

All the same, it had been good to see the Doctor again, even if it had been a little melancholy, a reminder of her lost youth. And of Harry. He hadn’t asked after Harry. Perhaps he’d known – she had an idea he kept up with Alastair, on and off – but he could have said something. When we’re gone, we’re gone, is that it, Doctor? she had thought, and even as she knew she was being unfair – his whole planet gone, no wonder he shied away from discussing loss – it kept her from feeling much of a pang when she heard the TARDIS dematerialising.

I knew this man, once, she thought, we used to travel together. And somehow no-one ever quite matched up. Not even you, Doctor, much as I love you.

But it was a beautiful day, and there was always something new on the horizon.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

wychwood

This is lovely. Poor Sarah! I like the relationship you show her having with Harry. And I like her less-than-flattering thoughts about the Doctor *g*.

From:

A little orthodox and icony.

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