chanter1944 | attack of the muse

Yeah, this one.

Surprise surprise, it's not Geordi-Leah this time *gasp!* shocking, I know. The muse got hold of me after I saw one line in a quirky sort of drabble... how to explain it. It was five-word ficlets that made up two drabbles, and two of the lines were "Sarah and Harry travel." "More daleks, Sarah abandoned abruptly." And naturally the part of me that feels like Sarah Jane had something to say about that. I got inspired, commandeered the computer and wrote this. It follows on in the same universe as shape Shifting, obviously, and I confess I was writing *me* as much as I was her. My RL life and daydreams are uber-visible, I know. This just... had to get written.

And the tongue twister that gets de-twisted and changed as part of Sarah's thought processes actually goes like this:

Say this shortly, say this sweetly,
say this softly, say this sharply,
say this sixteen times in succession.

but I flaming well wasn't going to have four do *that*!

And there's a song with the same title as this fic, that's where I got it. That and... life.

When The Dawn Breaks
Author: Chanter
Series: Doctor Who
Rating: G
Pairings: very faint (one-sided?) Four/Sarah
Summary: How did she leave, and why? Sarah Jane clears up a myth.
400 words

I wasn’t abandoned.

“And when I wake up...”

The Tardis door opened on summer midnight, crickets and warm air and breezes. “And when you wake up, you might just believe you dreamed this.”

“But I haven’t.” The world outside was my kind of ideal, dewy grass and a worn wood staircase and a swinging door and even the odd flying insect--starlight, electric light, one from the sky and one filtered through a windowscreen.

“No, you haven’t. If anything Sarah, you haven’t dreamed this. I swear that.”

“Call me that again? ... Please?” Perfect inside, and perfect outside. This life had been a fairytale, the stuff of my most vivid daydreams and restless mental adventures from nights when I’d crawl beneath the blankets but not fall asleep for hours, dreaming whole universes and living lives as the most unique little girl I knew. This life had been my fantasy.

“Sarah.” Say this softly, say this sweetly. We were standing almost in the doorway, turned sideways so that two steps to the left and we’d have been out under the sky. When he took one swift step toward me and rested a hand on either side of my face I let him. And when he tilted my chin up and stared straight into my eyes I stared back. “Sarah.” And when those hands broke contact and reached behind me, lacing fingers in my hair, twirling, shamelessly playing I didn’t mind. “Sarah.” I loved it, when he called me that. Just Sarah. Say this slowly, say this surely. Say this three times in succession.

“And when I wake up, Doctor...” I couldn’t help it, repeating myself like that. Tonight it was midnight. Tonight it was perfect.

“You’ll remember.”

He was right. I would remember in the morning. I’d climb out of bed and draw back the curtains and think I’d maybe imagined the whole thing but really I’d know I hadn’t. I was no Time Lady, but I’d almost regenerated. I’d already lived my kind of life. And when I woke up, I’d be living my second one.

“and I’ll love it.” He held me for a second, then let me go. And I stepped out into midnight.

When I left, I wasn’t just disappearing. It might have looked like I had been, but I wasn’t abandoned, wasn’t just dropped off.

I left at midnight.

Because I wanted to leave that way.