his_sarah_jane | [Theatrical Muse] Response

3 am

Three a.m. meant a lot of things at Torchwood House. Three a.m. meant ghostly hauntings. Three a.m. meant late night feelings. Three a.m. meant that now was just a good a time as any for a shag. Three a.m. meant conference calls to California’s UNIT base, or the burgeoning Torchwood base in Australia. Three a.m. meant a lot of things.

And now, apparently, it also meant visits from the Doctor.

“So which one’s this then?” he asked as he joyfully strolled across the nursery towards Sarah Jane and the rocking chair. “Not a twin, cause last time I checked, they’d be a little too big. Owen? Alice?”

She shook her head as she looked from him to the TARDIS, now standing in a corner of the room. Her children slept through the strangest things, she knew. Alice was still asleep. And her two week old newborn, Mirren, was far too interested in her early morning feeding. At age thirty-eight, she still looked youthful enough to pass for younger. Keeping up with her alien lover and five children certainly helped with that, not to mention her freelance journalism career and her work with Torchwood. But the Doctor hadn’t aged a day since the last time they had met.

Since she had met the Doctor, there had never been a dull moment in Sarah’s life. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Mirren,” Sarah answered softly. Unlike her brothers and sisters, this child had blonde curls like her father. Right now, though, she was nursing away as hungry as any other of the Smith-Harrow children had been. “Mirrenanhar'roh, after her grandmother.”

The Doctor tilted his head, smiling softly. She couldn’t tell what was going on in his mind right now. His brown eyes were distant, probably filled with forgotten memories and some sort of longing she didn’t understand. For a brief moment, Sarah thought he may have been angry with her. She knew he hadn’t been all that happy when she told him that she was staying in Cardiff and not going back to 1980. By then, she had been stranded for two years. Friendships and relationships had been formed that she couldn’t stand to part with.

But since that day, he had long forgiven her. There had been visits – more visits, she realized, than she had had with her friends in Cardiff.

“And where’s Rose?” The silence needed to be broken before it drove her mad. “Didn’t lock her in the TARDIS, did you?”

“Nah,” the Doctor replied, snapping himself out of whatever daze he had been in. “Left her in Cardiff. Demanded a visit with Jack and Bron and who was I to deny her?

“She doesn’t look like you.”

Sarah Jane snorted. Mirren took that opportunity to yawn and move her head away from her mummy’s breast. The momentary exposure caused both friends to flush in embarrassment. The Doctor turned around before Sarah even had to order him to do so. She pulled her nightgown back up and stood, bouncing her daughter in her arms.

“She is mine, surprisingly enough,” Sarah whispered. She adjusted Mirren in her arms so the Doctor could better see her. “Owen’s just about had it playing midwife, as he calls it. And I’m getting old. It’s three a.m. and I’m absolutely exhausted. Didn’t used to be like that, you know.”

He held out a tentative and curious finger in front of the baby’s face, a small frown appearing when Mirren just blinked sleepily at him. Then, his face brightened and he shook his head quickly. “Oi, don’t say that, Sarah Jane. Look at you, living a life you’d never dream of. Mother of five extraordinary children, still writing, workin’ with Torchwood? Any other woman’d look near fifty now. ‘stead you don’t look a day over thirty”

“Doctor,” she interrupted with laughter. “I don’t look that young.”

“Coulda fooled me.” It was said with full sincerity. He glanced over at the clock on the wall and grinned. “How ‘bout it then? You put this little one to bed, write a note to that alien prince of yours, and the two of us go share a cuppa in nineteenth century Paris. I promise to have you home before dawn, Sarah Jane Smith.”

It sounded so lovely. Sarah Jane hadn’t been inside the TARDIS in so long, let alone on a trip through time. She smiled at the prospect. Paris, in the nineteenth century – they had never gone there before, had they?

She was ready to nod. Ready to put Mirren in bed and write that note. Running away with the Doctor, if just for a few hours, oh, the prospect was lovely. As she took a couple of steps towards the cot, the Lady passed through the room and smiled down at sleeping Alice. Suddenly, Sarah remembered where she was. It was 3 a.m., she was in her nightgown that was still damp from breast feeding her newborn. She was home, and had a sleeping lover in the next room waiting for her to come back to bed. Thirty-eight and a mum five times over. She wasn’t that young girl that could go running off with him anymore.

So she shook her head. It broke her heart to say no. In the shadowy room, she could watch his face go from brilliantly happy to lonely and morose within seconds. She was Wendy, all grown up, and he was Peter, still always a boy at heart.

“I can’t, Doctor.”

And five seconds later, that manic grin returned.

“Cuppa tea with the ghosts, then.”

“That,” Sarah answered slowly, “I can do.”

[ooc: based on possible future scenario in