Linear Loop G 944 words
Sep. 10th, 2007 08:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainshadedTitle: Linear Loop
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
agapi42
Recipient, request: Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
otp_indomitable ficathon for avendya who wanted Sarah Jane/Other character, between her last serial with the Fourth Doctor and School Reunion, angst, normalcy.
Ratings, warnings: G
Word count 944
Author's notes: A bit of this is similar to Making It Rain byorbythesea. This is completely accidental and was already written when that was posted. Thanks to lilypeters for the beta! This is my first attempt at writing Sarah as a main character and my first time writing any Harry at all, so I'd love any feedback/constructive criticism.
Summary: Living a linear life just means that time travel takes a bit longer.
Sarah Jane has stopped whistling by the time she discovers that she was right.
This is not South Croydon, it’s Aberdeen. Aberdeen in Scotland. Aberdeen, over five hundred and fifty miles from South Croydon.
The Doctor has most definitely blown it.
A search of her possessions reveals an insignificant amount of valid currency. Nothing like the fortune she would need to catch a taxi. How much will the train fare cost?
She asks for directions and walks to the station, ignoring the strange looks she attracts, clutching onto her odd assortment of goodies.
It’s too much. How many buses would she need to catch? Can she stay somewhere for the night?
Turning to leave the station, she bumps into someone or at least pushes her armful of belongings into their chest.
This solid, familiar, comforting someone speaks in a voice she had expected to next hear on the phone.
“Hello, old girl.”
“Don’t call me old girl,” is all Sarah can find to say.
She doesn’t say anything in the car. Harry is silent as well, waiting for her to speak, and she soon falls asleep.
She wakes in her own bed, fully dressed but for her socks and shoes and her cardigan, which she can see hung neatly across the back of her chair. Her socks are most probably rolled together and placed in the laundry basket and her shoes neatly positioned at the side of her bed.
The clock on the bedside table shows ten minutes to seven. The second hand ticks around inexorably.
She watches it. Sixty different positions, sixty seconds. One completed circuit, one minute. The time is now nine minutes to seven. Another completed circuit and it’s eight minutes to seven. Then seven minutes to seven.
Time is passing. The future becomes the present becomes the past, measured by her heartbeat, her breath and the steady tick of the clock.
Feeling suddenly claustrophobic, she buries the clock under her pillow and marches off to have a shower, telling herself that the still-audible tick is her imagination.
Harry is just stirring on the sofa when she enters the living room and sitting up by the time she returns with two mugs of tea.
“Thank you.”
She drinks half the mug before placing it on the table and speaking.
“How did you know I was there?” It’s something she wants to know, but it’s not what she wants to say.
But there’s too much she wants to say. She wants to explain it all away, reassure herself more than him, to-
“The Doctor told me,” Harry says and her stomach lurches and all her concentration is on this one sentence. He knew where she was. Why then hadn’t he come back for her?
She asks.
“He told me he couldn’t. It wasn’t the same Doctor. He was young and skinny. Wore a pinstriped suit. But he’s very sorry about landing you in Aberdeen even though-” he hesitates.
“Even though?” Sarah demands.
“Even though, when you have the whole universe to choose from, Aberdeen is near to Croydon and he really did quite well,” Harry finishes, keeping a carefully straight face.
Sarah laughs. She can’t help it. She laughs until her stomach hurts, until her throat is raw, until the laughter turns to sobbing.
Harry holds her and rubs her back in circles in a way that she’s not sure is soothing or annoying. But she doesn’t want him to stop. She doesn’t want to be alone.
Silly little things annoy her now. As do some more serious and not-so little things.
Bus tickets are one of the trivial irritants, annoying by their sheer irrelevance. A slip of paper, stating that you had handed over a few discs of metal for the privilege of going for point A to point B, which weren’t that far apart anyway, had a habit of disappearing, seemingly into thin air.
The trials faced by many every day, all around the world, sometimes seem almost intolerable and she wants to escape it all.
It rains the day the pipe bursts, a rather more significant annoyance. Sarah sits outside in Harry’s garden and remembers the rain of different planets: rain that stained the ground purple, a daily rain of meteorites, a rain of furry quadrupeds.
“You’ll catch your death,” he says when he finds her.
“You don’t get Earth rain on any other planet,” she tells him. “It’s wonderful.”
They sit outside and watch the rain fall, cool droplets on their skin, glistening crystals clinging to the petals of flowers. Sarah’s damp hair hangs heavily and her vision is blurred by raindrops clinging to her eyelashes.
When the clouds have cleared, they go inside. Sarah showers, at Harry’s insistence, and he makes her hot chocolate instead of tea, at her request. They sit together on the sofa and, for a longer and longer moment, she is happy.
“I’d forgotten,” she murmurs, a smile on her face.
“Forgotten what?”
She leans up and kisses him. “I promised the Doctor I’d give you his love.”
“Just his?”
It doesn’t last, of course. They’re not an advertisement for the TARDIS Matchmaking Service. But they never could be and neither of them thought otherwise.
They keep each other company, they have fun, they understand about things no-one else really can.
Their friendship predates and outlasts their romance.
When Sarah Jane meets a young, skinny Doctor, wearing a pinstripe suit, she is careful to mention that she was dropped off in Aberdeen.
And nearly thirty years before, Harry Sullivan gets in his car and starts out for Aberdeen.
Author:
agapi42Recipient, request: Written for the
otp_indomitable ficathon for avendya who wanted Sarah Jane/Other character, between her last serial with the Fourth Doctor and School Reunion, angst, normalcy.Ratings, warnings: G
Word count 944
Author's notes: A bit of this is similar to Making It Rain by
orbythesea. This is completely accidental and was already written when that was posted. Thanks to lilypeters for the beta! This is my first attempt at writing Sarah as a main character and my first time writing any Harry at all, so I'd love any feedback/constructive criticism.Summary: Living a linear life just means that time travel takes a bit longer.
Sarah Jane has stopped whistling by the time she discovers that she was right.
This is not South Croydon, it’s Aberdeen. Aberdeen in Scotland. Aberdeen, over five hundred and fifty miles from South Croydon.
The Doctor has most definitely blown it.
A search of her possessions reveals an insignificant amount of valid currency. Nothing like the fortune she would need to catch a taxi. How much will the train fare cost?
She asks for directions and walks to the station, ignoring the strange looks she attracts, clutching onto her odd assortment of goodies.
It’s too much. How many buses would she need to catch? Can she stay somewhere for the night?
Turning to leave the station, she bumps into someone or at least pushes her armful of belongings into their chest.
This solid, familiar, comforting someone speaks in a voice she had expected to next hear on the phone.
“Hello, old girl.”
“Don’t call me old girl,” is all Sarah can find to say.
She doesn’t say anything in the car. Harry is silent as well, waiting for her to speak, and she soon falls asleep.
She wakes in her own bed, fully dressed but for her socks and shoes and her cardigan, which she can see hung neatly across the back of her chair. Her socks are most probably rolled together and placed in the laundry basket and her shoes neatly positioned at the side of her bed.
The clock on the bedside table shows ten minutes to seven. The second hand ticks around inexorably.
She watches it. Sixty different positions, sixty seconds. One completed circuit, one minute. The time is now nine minutes to seven. Another completed circuit and it’s eight minutes to seven. Then seven minutes to seven.
Time is passing. The future becomes the present becomes the past, measured by her heartbeat, her breath and the steady tick of the clock.
Feeling suddenly claustrophobic, she buries the clock under her pillow and marches off to have a shower, telling herself that the still-audible tick is her imagination.
Harry is just stirring on the sofa when she enters the living room and sitting up by the time she returns with two mugs of tea.
“Thank you.”
She drinks half the mug before placing it on the table and speaking.
“How did you know I was there?” It’s something she wants to know, but it’s not what she wants to say.
But there’s too much she wants to say. She wants to explain it all away, reassure herself more than him, to-
“The Doctor told me,” Harry says and her stomach lurches and all her concentration is on this one sentence. He knew where she was. Why then hadn’t he come back for her?
She asks.
“He told me he couldn’t. It wasn’t the same Doctor. He was young and skinny. Wore a pinstriped suit. But he’s very sorry about landing you in Aberdeen even though-” he hesitates.
“Even though?” Sarah demands.
“Even though, when you have the whole universe to choose from, Aberdeen is near to Croydon and he really did quite well,” Harry finishes, keeping a carefully straight face.
Sarah laughs. She can’t help it. She laughs until her stomach hurts, until her throat is raw, until the laughter turns to sobbing.
Harry holds her and rubs her back in circles in a way that she’s not sure is soothing or annoying. But she doesn’t want him to stop. She doesn’t want to be alone.
Silly little things annoy her now. As do some more serious and not-so little things.
Bus tickets are one of the trivial irritants, annoying by their sheer irrelevance. A slip of paper, stating that you had handed over a few discs of metal for the privilege of going for point A to point B, which weren’t that far apart anyway, had a habit of disappearing, seemingly into thin air.
The trials faced by many every day, all around the world, sometimes seem almost intolerable and she wants to escape it all.
It rains the day the pipe bursts, a rather more significant annoyance. Sarah sits outside in Harry’s garden and remembers the rain of different planets: rain that stained the ground purple, a daily rain of meteorites, a rain of furry quadrupeds.
“You’ll catch your death,” he says when he finds her.
“You don’t get Earth rain on any other planet,” she tells him. “It’s wonderful.”
They sit outside and watch the rain fall, cool droplets on their skin, glistening crystals clinging to the petals of flowers. Sarah’s damp hair hangs heavily and her vision is blurred by raindrops clinging to her eyelashes.
When the clouds have cleared, they go inside. Sarah showers, at Harry’s insistence, and he makes her hot chocolate instead of tea, at her request. They sit together on the sofa and, for a longer and longer moment, she is happy.
“I’d forgotten,” she murmurs, a smile on her face.
“Forgotten what?”
She leans up and kisses him. “I promised the Doctor I’d give you his love.”
“Just his?”
It doesn’t last, of course. They’re not an advertisement for the TARDIS Matchmaking Service. But they never could be and neither of them thought otherwise.
They keep each other company, they have fun, they understand about things no-one else really can.
Their friendship predates and outlasts their romance.
When Sarah Jane meets a young, skinny Doctor, wearing a pinstripe suit, she is careful to mention that she was dropped off in Aberdeen.
And nearly thirty years before, Harry Sullivan gets in his car and starts out for Aberdeen.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 08:18 pm (UTC)I especially liked:
“Even though, when you have the whole universe to choose from, Aberdeen is near to Croydon and he really did quite well,” Harry finishes, keeping a carefully straight face.
and the TARDIS Matchmaking Service :)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 09:36 pm (UTC)The TARDIS Matchmaker thing comes from the time when I counted up how many companions wouldn't have married the person they married without becoming involved with the Doctor to disprove my friend's claim that 'all the old companions left to marry people they'd just met'.
It came to nine.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 10:58 pm (UTC)And interestingly, two thirds (ie. six) of the nine were First Doctor companions.
Why am I thinking in statistics? I hate maths!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 07:32 pm (UTC)But anyway, three quarters of the First Doctor's companions qualify.
One third of the Third Doctor's companions qualify.
One eighth of the Fourth Doctor's companions qualify.
And one half of the Sixth Doctor's TV companions qualify. (Evelyn is definitely canon in my world)
Stop making me do maths!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 11:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 11:13 pm (UTC)But yay, no more maths!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 09:05 pm (UTC)She leans up and kisses him. “I promised the Doctor I’d give you his love.”
“Just his?”
That's adorable. I can't believe this is the first time you've written Sarah as a main character!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 10:34 pm (UTC)She's one of four companions in the story that I'm posting over at ff.net (haven't updated in a few months, though) which is basically my excuse to explore a zillion different timelines and explore where they split off and just really to play around with the concept that fascinates me but that's SJA Sarah or one of many alternate Sarahs with maybe a paragraph or two in each chapter.
SJA Sarah and Doctor Who Sarah are different, I think. So I watched Genesis of the Daleks and The Hand of Fear, cheering at my pre-cognisant choice of DVDs.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 04:13 pm (UTC)Link to the story please? I haven't seen it, but it sounds like a fun concept XD
no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 07:18 pm (UTC)http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3230947/1/The_Fourteenth_Doctor
I love your icon though.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 07:21 pm (UTC)*sighs* And I held you in such high regard, too :P
no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 07:45 pm (UTC):S
no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 11:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 11:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 11:19 pm (UTC)Also, much love for that icon.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 11:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 01:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 07:35 am (UTC)Gorgeous.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 11:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 04:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 02:07 am (UTC)And um, it has convinced me that I need to see more old school Sarah Jane. Yes.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 06:10 am (UTC)And yes, you should. Wow, I convinced someone of something?
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 01:33 pm (UTC)Conclusion: loved it! Putting in my memories :o)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 06:37 pm (UTC)And yay, I'm glad you liked it! :D
no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 11:57 am (UTC)But what if you lose it?
no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 05:46 pm (UTC)Over 16's are only entitled to free travel if they are still in full-time education, otherwise it's only half-price.
In my case, I doubt it would be a problem. As an experiment, prompted by Chris, I didn't use it. I left it in my bag and just walked on. I repeated it on the way to work the next week and still nothing.
It is now quite a few months later and I have not yet been asked for my card.
And it's just me. When I catch the bus with Hayley, she gets called back and asked for card or fare. She's dropped out of school so she doesn't have one so she has to pay £2 each way.
I know I don't look 17. Maybe I look 15. But I refuse to believe that I look 13!
Which makes a change from that time Hayley, Natalie and I caught the bus. This was in 2004, when we were 14, when you still had to pay £1.20 for an adult fare and 40p for a child fare, which was up to 16.
Us: Child fare, please.
Driver: You got ID?
Us: We're 14.
Driver: Can you prove it? If you haven't got ID, you can't get child fare.
Us: Do we look 16?
Driver: ID or £1.20.
Us: *glower and hand over £1.20*
This was the only time ever. And it being back in 2004, it was back in the time I had to save up for three weeks to get a tenner and the bus fare could take up to half of my money. So having to pay an extra 80p highly annoyed me.
Hayley and I blamed Natalie for wearing her Goth gear.
Well, sorry for the ramble. *is suitably cowed by Ian*