Chapter Text
The meeting room has been commandeered.
That's the only word for it. The Brigadier's own conference table — the one that has hosted alien threat assessments, interspecies crisis negotiations, and at least one very tense conversation with the United Nations — now has a floral centerpiece on it.
He has been staring at it for approximately four minutes.
"Brigadier." Sir Gerald Pemberton folds his hands on the table with the comfortable authority of a man who has never once been told no and found the experience educational. "I appreciate that UNIT operates under somewhat... particular circumstances."
"Quite," says the Brigadier.
"And I appreciate that in previous years, certain scheduling conflicts have made participation impractical."
"Quite."
"This year," Sir Gerald continues, pleasantly, "there are no scheduling conflicts."
The Brigadier's expression does not change. Yates, seated two chairs to his left, has the wisdom not to look at Benton. Benton, for his part, is studying a point approximately six inches above Sir Gerald's head with the focused attention of a man thinking very hard about nothing at all.
Miss Hartley makes a small, precise note.
"The Royal Navy participated three years ago," Mrs. Eleanor Voss says, from the other side of the table. She is a woman of perhaps sixty who somehow occupies the room in a way that suggests she has organised considerably larger problems than this one and found them equally straightforward. "The RAF two years ago. The Army last year." A small pause, timed with the precision of someone who has done this before. "UNIT has declined on each occasion."
"We have an unusual operational tempo," the Brigadier begins.
"You have run out of road," Sir Gerald says, still pleasantly. "I do want to be clear about that."
Another small, precise note from Miss Hartley.
The floral centerpiece is daffodils.
The Brigadier cannot account for the daffodils.
"The format," Mrs. Voss continues, opening a manila folder with the unhurried confidence of someone holding all the cards and aware of it, "is a fundraising variety performance. Each participating unit provides a minimum of three acts." She glances up. "The performance is the twenty-second of December."
The Brigadier is quiet for a moment.
December the twenty-second.
He does the arithmetic without meaning to. Three months. Slightly more. Long enough to mean this is not a thing that can be managed or minimised or quietly allowed to run aground. Long enough to mean rehearsals. Commitments. People from outside these walls coming inside them on a regular basis and expecting things of his personnel.
Long enough to mean it is actually happening.
"I see," he says.
It is not quite what he intended to say.
"Rehearsals to begin within the fortnight," Mrs. Voss continues, in the tone of someone who noticed that pause and is choosing not to comment on it. "Mr. Hale and Miss Webb will oversee all preparation."
Mr. Thomas Hale leans forward immediately, with the energy of a man who considers the phrase from the top an invitation rather than a threat. "We're not prescriptive about format. Singing, dancing, comedy, instrumental — last year the Army did a rather lovely medley of wartime classics. Brought the house down."
"Lovely," Miss Patricia Webb agrees, though her tone applies the word with some reservation. She has said very little. She has, however, been looking at everyone in the room with a quality of attention that makes Benton feel he is being assessed for something he hasn't agreed to yet.
"Personnel requirements," Mrs. Voss adds, "are not limited to active service. Administrative staff, scientific personnel, attached civilians—" a brief glance at her folder— "all count toward your act minimum."
"Three acts," the Brigadier says.
"Minimum," says Mrs. Voss.
A short silence.
"And there is no possibility of a—"
"No," says Sir Gerald.
"Right."
Miss Hartley makes another note. She has the handwriting of someone who has taken minutes at a great many meetings and found human nature fairly predictable throughout.
"We'll need a list of your intended participants by Friday," Mrs. Voss says, closing the folder with the quiet satisfaction of a woman who has never once lost this particular argument. "Mr. Hale and Miss Webb will be in touch directly after that."
The meeting concludes with handshakes.
The daffodils remain on the table.
Nobody explains them.
The corridor afterward is quiet.
The three of them walk for a moment without speaking, which is its own kind of conversation.
Then the Brigadier says, "Three months."
"Yes, sir," Benton says.
"Three acts."
"Yes, sir."
Another few steps.
"I want nobody volunteering for anything," the Brigadier says, "without running it through me first."
"Understood, sir," Yates says.
He says it with complete sincerity.
Benton, who has worked alongside Captain Yates for long enough to know the difference between sincerity and compliance, says nothing.
It happens on a Tuesday.
Which is, in Benton's experience, when most things go wrong. There's something about Tuesdays — not the shock of Monday, not the momentum of Wednesday — just enough of the week gone that people have stopped being careful.
He's in the corridor outside the lab, writing up a duty roster that keeps refusing to balance, when he becomes aware of something coming through the slightly open door.
He stops.
Tilts his head.
It's Miss Smith.
She's in there on her own — not unusual for a late Tuesday afternoon, when the lab emptied out early and Miss Smith had a tendency to stay long after everyone else had found somewhere else to be. She'd claimed a corner desk some weeks ago with the quiet confidence of someone who knew that if you simply started using a space nobody would think to tell you to stop. Working on something, by the sound of it. Papers, maybe. Her typewriter.
And singing to herself the way people do when they've entirely forgotten the world can hear them.
Just quietly. Unselfconscious. The kind of singing that has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with the fact that she's apparently incapable of silence when left to her own devices.
Benton stands there for a moment.
Then he goes back to his roster.
He thinks nothing more of it.
The thinking nothing more of it lasts approximately forty minutes, which is how long it takes him to find Yates in the mess, nursing a cup of tea and staring at the blank piece of paper in front of him that is presumably meant to become a list of volunteer acts.
Benton sits down across from him.
"Any ideas?" he asks.
"Henderson plays trumpet," Yates says. "Apparently."
"Does he play it well?"
Yates considers. "He plays it."
Benton looks at the paper. Henderson's name is the only thing on it.
"What about you, sir?"
"I'm working on it." Yates taps the pen against the table. "We need at least three. Something that'll actually — you know. Make an impression."
Benton thinks about this. Names various people. Discusses, briefly, the possibility of a regimental marching display, which they both agree is probably not what Mrs. Voss has in mind.
The tea goes cold.
"It'd help," Yates says eventually, with the air of a man thinking aloud, "if we had someone who could actually — properly perform. Not just soldiers doing their best."
And here it is.
The moment.
Benton will replay it afterward, many times, trying to identify the exact point at which he could have stopped. Could have said nothing. Could have kept his mouth entirely shut and let Yates stare at his blank piece of paper until something else occurred to him.
Instead, with absolutely no sense of what he is about to do, he says —
"Miss Smith can sing."
Yates goes very still.
It is not the comfortable kind of stillness.
"...can she," he says.
Benton hears it.
The tone.
He hears it approximately half a second after the words have left his mouth, which is half a second too late.
"I only meant—" he starts.
"Properly?" Yates says. "Or just—"
"I heard her earlier. Just to herself. In the lab." Benton puts his pen down. "Sir. Whatever you're thinking—"
"She'd murder me," Yates says.
He does not say it like a man being warned off.
He says it like a man doing a cost-benefit analysis.
"She would," Benton agrees, firmly. "She absolutely would. And the Brigadier would—" He stops.
Yates looks up.
"The Brigadier would what, Sergeant?"
Benton closes his mouth.
Because he'd been about to say the Brigadier would back her up, which is true, but it is also — now that he thinks about it — not the whole picture. The Brigadier would be at these rehearsals. The Brigadier would be in that audience.
He looks at Yates.
Yates is looking back at him with the expression of a man who has just had his idea quietly upgraded.
"Benton," Yates says pleasantly, "this is extremely helpful."
"I rescind it," Benton says. "Whatever I said, I rescind it."
Yates is already writing something on the piece of paper.
It is not Henderson's name.
Benton picks up his roster, stands up, and leaves with what dignity he has left.
In the corridor, he stops.
Stares at the wall for a moment.
"Oh no," he says quietly, to nobody.
Then he goes back to his Tuesday.
Yates finds her in the lab at half past four on a Wednesday.
She's at her corner desk — the one that appeared there about three weeks after she started turning up regularly and has somehow never been questioned — surrounded by the organised chaos that passes for her filing system. There's a press card tucked into the edge of the desk lamp. A cup of tea going cold beside the typewriter. Notes in three different colours of ink spread across everything like she's conducting an argument with herself on paper.
She doesn't look up when he comes in.
"Whatever it is," she says, "I didn't take the classified file. I borrowed it and put it back."
"That's not—" Yates stops. "Which file?"
"Doesn't matter. What do you want, Captain?"
He pulls up a stool and sits down, which she does notice, because Yates standing in a doorway is routine and Yates sitting down means he wants something and has decided to be comfortable about asking for it.
She looks up.
He gives her his best smile.
"Oh no," she says.
"I haven't said anything yet."
"You're doing the smile." She puts her pen down. "That's the smile you do when you want something and you think being charming about it will help." A beat. "It won't."
Yates considers abandoning the smile. Decides it's too late now. "You know UNIT's been asked to participate in the Armed Forces Christmas fundraiser."
"Vaguely. Benton mentioned something."
"We need acts. Performances." He pauses. "You know — singing, that sort of—"
"No."
"Sarah—"
"Absolutely not."
"You haven't heard the whole—"
"I don't need to." She picks her pen back up. "I'm not UNIT personnel, I'm a journalist, and whatever Benton told you he shouldn't have."
Yates has the grace to look slightly guilty at that. "It's for charity," he says.
The pen stops moving.
He sees it.
Doesn't say anything, because he's not stupid.
"Which charity," Sarah says, after a moment. Her voice is carefully neutral in the way that means she's already losing this argument internally and is aware of it.
Yates tells her.
She closes her eyes briefly.
It's a good one. Of course it's a good one. Mrs. Voss does not do things by halves.
"Three months of rehearsals," Yates adds, gently. "Performance is the twenty-second of December. The musical director and choreographer are apparently very good."
"I'm a journalist," she says again, but it's lost some of its conviction.
"You're the best option I've got," Yates says, and has the sense to mean it genuinely rather than just strategically. "Henderson plays trumpet."
"Does he play it well?"
"He plays it."
Sarah looks at her notes. At the press card tucked into the lamp. At the cold coffee.
At the base around her that she has quietly, incrementally made into something that works for her — the desk, the resources, the access, the fact that the gate guard waves her through now without checking. None of it official. All of it dependent on a continued atmosphere of goodwill that she is sensible enough not to take entirely for granted.
She thinks about all of that for approximately four seconds.
"Fine," she says.
Yates blinks. He'd had at least two more arguments prepared.
"Fine?" he repeats.
"It's a good charity." She's already picking her pen back up. "And I assume my participation would be — useful. To UNIT. In terms of filling the requirement."
"Very useful," Yates agrees, carefully.
"And the Brigadier's approved this?"
A very small pause.
"He will," Yates says.
Sarah gives him a look that suggests she understands exactly what that means and is filing it away for later. "Right. Well. Let me know the details when you have them."
Yates stands, recognising a dismissal. He gets as far as the door before she speaks again.
"Yates."
He turns.
"When's the audition?"
"Friday week," he says. "Two o'clock."
She nods, already back to her notes.
He leaves.
The lab settles back into quiet.
Sarah sits for a moment, pen in hand, not writing anything.
Three months. A proper stage. An audience of — she assumes — rather a lot of people, given the nature of these events. A musical director who is apparently very good.
She thinks about that.
She thinks about Yates's face when she'd said fine, that brief startled look of a man who'd prepared for a siege and found the gates already open.
She thinks about the audition.
A slow, considering expression crosses her face.
Not mischief, exactly.
Just — clarity.
Because if she's going to do this, she's going to do it properly. And if she's going to do it properly, then there's really only one song that makes any sense. Something with a bit of movement. Something that rewards confidence. Something that she has, if she's honest, been able to do since she was nineteen and her aunt had a record player and entirely too much time on their hands one summer.
She picks her pen back up.
Writes three words at the top of a fresh piece of paper.
Not the article she's supposed to be working on.
A set list.
Outside in the corridor, completely unaware, Benton passes the lab door on his way to the mess.
He does not hear anything suspicious.
He does not know that anything has been set in motion.
He will think about this later, on the twenty-second of December, and feel it rather keenly.
The audition is being held in the large briefing room.
This is Mrs. Voss's doing. She had surveyed the available spaces at UNIT with the eye of a woman who has organised events in considerably less promising venues and pronounced the briefing room adequate, which from Mrs. Voss apparently constitutes high praise. The chairs have been pushed back. The long table repositioned. Someone has put up a small portable stage at one end that looks slightly incongruous next to the tactical maps that nobody remembered to take down.
The Brigadier sits at the end of the table.
This is partly because it gives him the best sightline and partly because sitting at the end of a table is his natural habitat and he sees no reason to abandon it simply because the table is currently being used to assess whether Corporal Henderson can play the trumpet.
Corporal Henderson can play the trumpet.
He is playing it now.
He is playing it with great sincerity and adequate technique and the particular expression of a man who has committed entirely to something and is seeing it through regardless of how it's landing. Hale is nodding along with the careful encouragement of a man who has heard worse and is trying to remember when. Webb has her pen poised over her clipboard and has not written anything for approximately two minutes.
The Brigadier watches.
He keeps his face neutral, because he is always neutral, because that is simply how his face works in professional contexts.
When Henderson finishes, there is a short silence of the kind that does a great deal of work.
"Lovely," Hale says, with feeling. "Really — committed. Wasn't it committed, Patricia?"
"Very," Webb agrees.
Henderson beams.
"We'll be in touch," Hale says.
Henderson collects his trumpet and leaves with the satisfaction of a man who has given his best and has no idea that his best has set a bar that will be cleared with some ease in approximately eight minutes.
The door closes.
Hale makes a note.
Webb makes a note.
Yates, seated between them, does not make a note because he is looking at the door with the expression of a man running through contingencies.
"Who's next?" the Brigadier asks.
Yates looks at his list.
"Miss Smith," he says.
She comes in without knocking, which is simply how Sarah enters rooms.
She's dressed practically — dark trousers, a deep green top, low heels that suggest she's thought about the dancing without making a production of announcing it. Her hair is down. She has the look of someone who has made a decision and is comfortable with it, which the Brigadier files away without quite meaning to.
She takes in the room in one quick sweep. The table. Hale and Webb with their clipboards. Yates, who she fixes with a look of brief, specific assessment.
The Brigadier, at the end of the table.
"Miss Smith," Hale says warmly, already leaning forward. "Lovely to meet you properly. Thomas Hale, musical director. Patricia Webb, choreography. Whenever you're ready."
"Thank you." She sets her bag down by the wall. Rolls her shoulders once, loosely. "I'll be doing These Boots Are Made For Walking."
"Wonderful," Hale says.
Webb's pen moves.
The Brigadier settles back slightly in his chair.
She doesn't need much by way of introduction.
She just — begins.
And the thing is, it starts almost casually. Like she's simply found the rhythm of it, easy and unhurried, moving into the space with the confidence of someone who has done this before and isn't performing the fact of having done it before. Her voice is good. Genuinely, straightforwardly good, warm and clear with a bit of an edge to it, which suits the song entirely.
You keep saying you've got something for me.
The Brigadier watches.
He watches because it's an audition and watching is the appropriate response and for no other reason.
She's moving now — not elaborate, just purposeful, the kind of movement that knows exactly where it's going. And where it's going, he notices, is toward Yates.
These boots are made for walking, and that's just what they'll do.
She finds him about halfway through the first verse.
Yates, to his credit, holds his ground for approximately four seconds.
Then she gets closer, and tilts her head, and does something with her expression that the song entirely calls for —
One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.
— and Yates — Captain Michael Yates, who has faced down Daleks and Ice Warriors and at least one very unpleasant business with spiders — goes slightly pink around the ears.
The Brigadier looks at his notes.
He looks at them very carefully.
He is not smiling.
He is absolutely not smiling.
She's in full stride now, working the space with the ease of someone who has quietly calculated every square foot of it, and Yates is the fixed point she keeps returning to — not letting him settle, not letting him look away, close enough at one point that he leans back slightly in his chair with the instinct of a man who has been cornered by something he didn't see coming.
Are you ready boots? Start walking.
Which, the Brigadier thinks, is entirely fair.
He did volunteer her.
She moves back out into the space for the final section, and there's a moment — just a moment — where she's fully in it, voice and movement and that particular quality of attention that fills a room without demanding it, and the Brigadier—
Doesn't smile.
But it's a near thing.
A near enough thing that he schools his expression back to neutral a fraction of a second later and hopes nobody was looking at him.
She finishes cleanly, one hand on her hip, chin up.
Silence.
Then Hale makes a sound that is not quite a word but communicates a great deal.
"Miss Smith," he says.
"Sarah," she says.
"Sarah." He's already turning to Webb. "Patricia—"
"Yes," Webb says simply, and writes something with some enthusiasm.
"That was—" Hale gestures. "Can you do that again? All of it? Because the movement with the — and the way you—" He stops. Collects himself. "You've performed before."
"A bit," Sarah says. "Long time ago."
"It shows." He means it as the compliment it is. "Sarah, can I ask — do you have anything else? Another number?"
She opens her mouth.
Closes it.
And that's when it happens.
Because she glances at the Brigadier — just briefly, the automatic sweep of someone checking the room — and catches it. The almost-smile. The careful neutrality that arrived approximately a second too late. The faint evidence that Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart had found the last three minutes rather amusing and has been hoping she didn't notice.
She noticed.
Something shifts in her expression. Something that isn't quite mischief and isn't quite a decision and is probably both.
"Actually," she says, "yes."
The door opens quietly at the back of the room.
Benton steps in, a folder under his arm, intending to leave something on the table for the Brigadier to sign.
He takes in the room.
Sarah, standing in the middle of it.
The Brigadier at the end of the table.
The particular quality of quiet that means something is about to happen.
Benton stays very still.
He does not leave the folder.
He does not, in fact, move at all.
She starts simply.
Just her voice, no movement yet, finding the opening of Fever like it's something she's locating rather than beginning.
Never know how much I love you, never know how much I care.
Low and unhurried and entirely in control of what she's doing.
It's a different instrument to Boots. Boots had personality and movement and bright edges. This is something else. This is the song of someone sitting in a quiet room and meaning every word of it, and the room — which was already fairly quiet — goes quieter still.
When you put your arms around me, I get a fever that's so hard to bear.
She moves on the second verse.
Not toward Yates.
Toward the Brigadier.
He sees it coming early enough to maintain his composure, which he does, because he has maintained his composure through things considerably more alarming than this and he is not about to stop now. He is perfectly still. His expression is perfectly professional. He is the picture of a senior military officer conducting an audition.
She reaches the end of the table.
Keeps moving.
You give me fever.
She's not performing at him, exactly. It's more like — a conversation he hasn't quite agreed to, conducted entirely on her terms, and she's very comfortable with that and he is—
Also fine.
Perfectly fine.
She comes around the side of the table, close enough that he could reach out and — not the point. Not relevant. He keeps his eyes forward and his face neutral and his hands flat on the table where they are supposed to be, and she drifts past him like she has all the time in the world, voice never wavering —
Fever in the morning, fever all through the night.
— and he is—
Absolutely fine.
She's in front of him now. Not close enough to be inappropriate. Exactly close enough to be deliberate. She tilts her head and finds his eyes and holds them for a bar, maybe two —
Sun lights up the daytime, moon lights up the night.
— with an expression that is equal parts Sarah Jane Smith and whatever the song requires and he cannot, at this precise moment, locate the line between those two things.
His jaw is set.
His face is neutral.
A muscle in his jaw moves.
Just once.
She sees it.
The song doesn't falter but something in her eyes does — a flicker of something warm and pleased and slightly surprised, because she'd been testing and she hadn't quite expected to find anything, or perhaps she'd expected to have to work harder for it.
I give you fever.
She finishes three feet away from him, voice dropping to almost nothing on the last note, and then it's just silence.
The room remembers how to breathe.
Hale makes a sound like a man who has just seen something he was not prepared for.
Webb has stopped writing entirely, which is apparently the highest form of praise she has.
Yates is looking at the Brigadier with an expression he schools away very quickly when he realises Benton is in the room.
Benton is looking at the floor.
"Right," Sarah says, briskly, and takes a small step back. The song drops off her like a coat. She's just Sarah again — straightforward, slightly flushed, looking at Hale and Webb and conspicuously not at the Brigadier. "So. I imagine that's — I mean, I've done my bit, so if you don't need—"
"Need you?" Hale stands up. Actually stands up. "Sarah, we absolutely need you. Patricia—"
"Both numbers," Webb says firmly. "Both. The contrast alone is—" She gestures. "Brigadier, we need her."
And there it is.
Everyone looks at the Brigadier.
Who has had approximately forty-five seconds to reconstruct his composure, which is not as long as he would like but will have to do.
He looks at Sarah.
Sarah looks back at him. Something careful in her expression now. Uncertain, under the composure.
She wants to back out. He can see it. The slight tension in her shoulders. The way she's already half-turning toward the door, already constructing an excuse in her head.
He thinks about three acts. About Henderson and his trumpet. About Mrs. Voss, who does not accept no.
He thinks about three months of rehearsals.
He thinks about Sarah at UNIT, informal and indefinite, the desk in the lab that appeared by degrees, the gate guard who waves her through.
He makes a decision.
"Miss Smith." His voice is completely level. "UNIT has a position — researcher, civilian grade — that has been vacant for some time. A one year contract." A pause. "It would formalise your access to the base. And make you formally eligible to represent UNIT at the performance."
Silence.
Sarah blinks.
"That's—" she starts.
"A yes or no will do," he says.
She looks at him for a long moment.
He meets it steadily.
"Yes," she says.
Hale actually claps his hands together.
Webb is already writing.
In the back of the room, Benton closes his eyes briefly.
He thinks about a Tuesday afternoon. A lab door slightly ajar. Three words he should never have said to Captain Yates over a cold cup of tea.
He picks up his folder.
Quietly, without drawing attention to himself, he leaves.
In the corridor, he stops.
"Oh," he says softly.
And then, despite everything:
"...well."
He walks back to his desk.
He does not tell anyone what he saw.
He doesn't need to.
Some things, Benton thinks, have a way of working themselves out.
The first rehearsal is on a Thursday.
The briefing room has been more thoroughly cleared this time — someone has taken down the tactical maps, which the Brigadier had not authorised but decides not to pursue. The portable stage is still there. The table has been pushed further back, which gives considerably more floor space, and Miss Webb is already measuring it out in some private internal calculation when Sarah arrives.
She arrives, as she does everything, without particular ceremony.
Boots off the shoulder bag. Hair already up. She's wearing trousers she can move in and flat shoes and the expression of someone who has decided to be entirely practical about this, which Hale correctly reads as meaning she's been thinking about it since the audition and has arrived with intentions.
The UNIT contingent is arranged along the back wall with the slightly uncomfortable energy of men who have been told to observe and are not entirely sure what they're observing. Henderson has his trumpet case, which suggests he has hopes. Three others stand with him, at attention in the way that means they're trying not to look like they're at attention.
"Right," Hale says, rubbing his hands together with the energy of a man who considers Thursday mornings full of possibility. "Sarah. Let's start with Boots, get a feel for the space with Patricia's input, and then we'll move on to the second number."
Sarah nods. Rolls her shoulders.
"Positions," Webb says, and produces her clipboard.
Boots, it turns out, was made for a room like this.
Or rather — Sarah was made for a room like this when she has Boots to work with. Webb sets the first marks carefully, watching how Sarah moves between them, how she holds the space between movement and stillness, and there's a running quiet commentary between them that sounds almost like negotiation.
"Here on the second beat — yes, like that — and then back—"
"Can I go wider on the turn?"
"Show me."
She shows her.
Webb makes a note. "Yes. Keep that."
It's working, is the thing. Even with the stopping and starting, even with Webb calling out adjustments and Hale occasionally singing a bar to check timing, the shape of the performance is visible underneath the scaffolding of it. The UNIT men along the back wall are making a collective effort to watch with professional detachment.
The effort is not entirely successful.
These boots are made for walking—
Henderson is looking at the ceiling.
And that's just what they'll do—
The man to Henderson's left has found something very interesting about the floor.
One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.
"Good," Webb says. "Again from the bridge."
Sarah grins, which is somehow worse, and goes again from the bridge.
By the time they've run it twice through, the choreography roughed out and Sarah hitting her marks with the ease of someone who has quietly decided to be good at this, Hale is beaming and Webb has filled half a page of her clipboard and the UNIT men along the wall have reached a collective détente with the situation that involves looking slightly above her head when she moves in their direction.
"Wonderful," Hale says. "Patricia?"
"She's got the instinct for it," Webb says, making a note with the satisfaction of someone whose job has just become more interesting. "We'll keep building."
Sarah accepts this with a small nod that doesn't quite hide being pleased.
"Right." Hale checks his notes. "Fever."
The room settles differently for Fever.
That part works. The atmosphere shifts the moment Sarah finds the opening — the soldiers along the wall go still in a different way, not the awkward professional detachment of Boots but something quieter, more genuine.
Never know how much I love you, never know how much I care.
Her voice is good. It's always good. Warm and controlled and she knows exactly what the song is doing.
When you put your arms around me, I get a fever that's so hard to bear.
She moves through it cleanly. Hits the marks Webb has sketched out, which are sparser than Boots — the song doesn't need elaborate choreography and Webb knows it. What it needs is presence. Weight. The sense that every word is going somewhere specific.
You give me fever.
It's good.
Hale watches.
It's good and it's controlled and it's —
He tilts his head slightly.
Fever in the morning, fever all through the night.
Webb glances at him. He glances back. A small, silent conversation conducted entirely through eyebrows.
Sarah finishes. Clean ending, well placed, voice landing exactly where it should.
There's a beat of silence.
"Good," Hale says.
He means it. It is good.
He just knows, with the instinct of a man who has been doing this for twenty years, that good is not what he saw in the audition. In the audition there had been something else underneath it. Something that made the room forget to breathe.
This is a performance.
That had been something closer to real.
He writes a note on his clipboard that Sarah can't see from where she's standing.
Underneath blocking — sparse, keep it he writes: find her focal point.
He underlines it.
"Let's run it once more," he says pleasantly. "From the top."
Afterward, when Sarah has gone and the UNIT men have filed out with the slightly dazed quality of people re-entering ordinary life, Hale finds the Brigadier in the corridor.
He'd been there for Boots — standing just inside the door, arms folded, doing an excellent impression of a man with somewhere else to be who has briefly stopped — and Hale had noticed him leave quietly before Fever. Which had told him something.
He falls into step beside him now with the ease of a man practiced at approaching difficult conversations sideways.
"Brigadier. A moment, if you have one."
The Brigadier doesn't slow down. "My afternoon is spoken for, Mr. Hale."
"It won't take long." Hale keeps pace with him easily. "Miss Smith is exceptional."
"She is," the Brigadier agrees, in the tone of a man confirming a fact.
"Boots is almost there already. Patricia thinks two more sessions. The timing, the movement — she's a natural."
"Good."
"Fever," Hale says, "is technically very accomplished."
The Brigadier says nothing, which is itself a kind of answer.
"She's performing it," Hale continues carefully. "Correctly, professionally, well. But in the audition—" He pauses. Chooses the next words with some care. "In the audition there was something else happening. I think she needs someone to perform it to. A fixed point. Someone the song can — land on."
The Brigadier has stopped walking.
Hale stops beside him.
The corridor is empty. Somewhere distant, a door closes.
"In the audition," the Brigadier says, "she had an audience."
"She had you," Hale says simply. "Specifically."
A beat.
Hale waits. He is, professionally, very good at waiting.
He watches the Brigadier look at the middle distance for a moment with the expression of a man conducting a very brief and very private argument with himself.
"Next rehearsal," the Brigadier says finally.
"Thursday," Hale confirms.
"I'll be there."
He says it in the tone of a man accepting an operational requirement, which Hale respects entirely and does not believe for a second.
"Thank you, Brigadier." Hale pauses. Then, because he is a perceptive man and cannot quite help it: "She'll perform it better for having you there."
The Brigadier looks at him.
"That," he says, "is what I'm afraid of."
He walks away.
Hale watches him go.
Then he takes out his clipboard and underneath find her focal point he writes one word.
Draws a small, satisfied line under it.
Walks back to collect his things.
The second rehearsal is on a Thursday.
Sarah arrives the same way she always does — bag off the shoulder before she's fully through the door, hair up, flat shoes. She's been thinking about Boots since Tuesday, has some thoughts about the turn on the bridge that she wants to try, and she is in the middle of formulating how to put this to Webb without it sounding like she's second guessing the choreography when she stops.
The Brigadier is in the room.
Not in the doorway this time. Not passing through. He's standing to the side, arms folded, in the particular way that means he has decided to be somewhere and has committed to it, and he meets her look with the calm expression of a man who has absolutely nothing to explain.
Sarah looks at him.
Looks at Hale.
Hale smiles pleasantly and says nothing.
She works it out in approximately three seconds.
Something crosses her face — not quite embarrassment, not quite the opposite — and then she puts her bag down and says, "Right," in the tone of a woman who has decided to be entirely professional about this, and Hale beams at her like a man whose plan is already working.
The UNIT men along the back wall are arranged as before. A few new faces today alongside the regulars. Henderson has his trumpet case again, which suggests optimism rather than instruction. One of the newer men leans toward another and murmurs something. The other one glances at Sarah and then immediately at the ceiling, in the manner of someone who attended the first rehearsal and is managing expectations.
"Boots first," Webb says briskly, clipboard already open. "From the top. I want to see the turn."
Boots is good.
Better than Thursday, which had been better than the audition, which had already been good. There's a shape to it now — the choreography settling into Sarah's body rather than sitting on top of it, the marks becoming instinct rather than calculation.
These boots are made for walking—
The newer soldiers are getting their first proper look.
And that's just what they'll do—
Henderson is looking at the ceiling again, which the man beside him correctly reads as a survival strategy and adopts immediately.
One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.
Webb calls an adjustment on the bridge turn — sharper, hold the eye contact a beat longer — and Sarah does it, and it's better, and Webb makes a note with the satisfaction of someone whose instincts are being confirmed.
The Brigadier watches Boots with his arms folded and his expression neutral and the slight air of a man waiting for something, which he is, and which he is not going to examine.
Are you ready boots? Start walking.
She finishes with her chin up and one hand on her hip and the newer soldiers are doing the collective recalibration of men who have just revised an assumption, which the regulars observe with the sympathy of experience.
"Good," Webb says. "The turn works. We'll keep it."
Sarah nods. She's slightly flushed with the movement, pleased with the turn, and doesn't look at the Brigadier because she is being professional about this.
"Fever," Hale says.
The room does its thing — that particular quality of stillness that arrives every time, like the air is paying attention.
Sarah rolls her shoulders once.
Finds the opening.
Never know how much I love you, never know how much I care.
The soldiers along the back wall go still.
The ones who were at the audition go still in the way of men who know what's coming.
The ones who weren't go still in the way of men who are finding out.
When you put your arms around me, I get a fever that's so hard to bear.
She moves on the second verse.
There is a moment — brief, almost imperceptible — where she finds the Brigadier across the room. Not performing yet. Just locating. The way you find a fixed point before you commit to a direction.
He meets it steadily.
She comes toward him.
You give me fever.
The Brigadier keeps his arms folded. His expression is composed. He is a senior military officer fulfilling an operational requirement and his face reflects this entirely.
She's closer now. Moving around him the way she had in the audition, unhurried, like she has all the time in the world and the song agrees with her.
Fever in the morning—
She passes behind him.
The Brigadier does not turn to follow her.
He is perfectly still.
He is also, he is dimly aware, not breathing in quite the normal way, which he addresses quietly and without drawing attention to it.
Fever all through the night.
She comes around to face him.
This is the part.
He knows it's the part. She knows it's the part. Hale and Webb, watching from the table, know it's the part. The soldiers along the back wall, several of whom have been here before and several of whom have not, collectively know it's the part even if they couldn't explain how.
Sun lights up the daytime—
She tilts her head.
Finds his eyes.
Moon lights up the night.
He holds it.
There is, in the Brigadier's considerable professional experience, a significant difference between maintaining composure and having nothing to maintain composure against. He is aware of this distinction now in a way that is not entirely comfortable and which he files carefully away to not think about later.
Her voice does something on the next line.
Not louder. Not more — it's not a technical thing. It's the difference between singing a song and meaning it, and whatever it is, it happens here, now, in the space between them, and the room feels it.
I give you fever.
Almost quiet. Almost just for him.
Almost.
A muscle moves in his jaw.
Just once.
She sees it — the same flicker in her eyes as the audition, that small startled warmth — and the song doesn't waver but something in it deepens, settles, like she's found the ground under it.
Fever till you sizzle—
Webb writes something.
Hale doesn't write anything. He's watching with the focused attention of a man seeing exactly what he hoped to see and making very sure he remembers it.
What a lovely way to burn.
The last note drops away.
Silence.
The room stays very still for a moment, the way rooms do when something has happened in them that isn't quite finished happening yet.
Then Henderson, from the back wall, lets out a breath that is technically quiet and practically very loud in the circumstances.
The man beside him closes his eyes briefly.
The door at the back of the room opens.
Benton steps in with a folder under his arm, intending to leave something for the Brigadier to sign, taking in the room in one practiced sweep —
Sarah, three feet from the Brigadier.
The Brigadier, arms still folded, expression reconstructing itself from something into nothing with the speed of long practice.
The wall of UNIT soldiers, several of whom are looking at various uninhabited areas of the room with great concentration.
Hale, writing something on his clipboard with a small private smile.
Webb, watching Sarah with the expression of a woman whose professional instincts have just been thoroughly vindicated.
Benton takes all of this in.
He does not move for a moment.
Then Sarah steps back, brisk, professional, the song dropping off her like a coat, and says to Hale — "Better?" — in the tone of a woman who knows the answer and is asking anyway.
"Much," Hale says warmly.
She nods. Doesn't look at the Brigadier.
The Brigadier unfolds his arms. Looks at Benton. "Was there something, Sergeant?"
"folder for your signature, sir," Benton says, in a completely normal voice. "Whenever you have a moment."
"Leave it on the table."
"Sir."
Benton sets the folder on the table.
He does not look at Sarah.
He does not look at the Brigadier.
He does not look at the wall of soldiers, several of whom are looking back at him with the desperate eyes of men who would very much like to discuss what just happened and are never going to get to.
He leaves.
In the corridor he walks six paces, stops, and stands very still for a moment.
He thinks about a Tuesday.
A lab door slightly ajar.
Miss Smith can sing.
Three words.
He thinks about the Brigadier's face, in the fraction of a second before it became the Brigadier's face again.
He thinks about Sarah, stepping back, professional and flushed and conspicuously not looking at anyone specific.
He thinks about the next — he counts quickly — eleven weeks of rehearsals.
"Oh," he says quietly.
He straightens his jacket.
Walks back to his desk.
Does not say a word to anyone.
The third rehearsal, the Brigadier tells himself, is simply a matter of routine.
He arrives before Sarah, which he tells himself is also simply a matter of routine and has nothing to do with anything else. He takes his position to the side of the room. Folds his arms. Waits.
Boots first, as always.
These boots are made for walking—
The soldiers along the wall have developed, by this point, a system. Eyes slightly above head height during the movement sections. Professional attention during the stops and starts of Webb's adjustments. A collective careful neutrality that they have arrived at through approximately two weeks of trial and error.
It mostly works.
One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.
It mostly works.
Fever comes after.
Never know how much I love you, never know how much I care.
She finds him the same way she always does — that brief locating glance before she commits to the direction, like checking a compass bearing — and comes toward him, and the room does its thing, and the Brigadier maintains his composure with the ease of a man who has had two weeks to prepare for this and has used them.
You give me fever.
She passes close. Closer than Webb's choreography strictly requires, he has noticed. Not dramatically. Not enough to comment on. Just — close.
He says nothing about it.
Neither does she.
What a lovely way to burn.
Hale writes something.
Webb watches with her pen poised.
Neither of them says anything either.
The fourth rehearsal.
Boots, sharp now, the choreography fully settled into Sarah's body. Webb is adding detail — small things, expressions, the precise angle of a look — and Sarah takes each note and does something with it that is better than what was asked for.
The UNIT men along the wall are managing better. Mostly.
Henderson remains committed to the ceiling.
Fever.
When you put your arms around me—
The Brigadier is ready. He is always ready now. He knows the shape of it — the approach, the orbit, the moments where she finds his eyes, the muscle in his jaw that he is controlling with increasing deliberateness.
She comes close on the second verse, as she always does.
And then—
She doesn't pass him.
She stops, just behind his left shoulder, and continues singing there, voice directed at the side of his face, warm and unhurried—
Fever in the morning—
— and the Brigadier keeps his eyes forward with the focused stillness of a man who is very carefully not turning his head.
Fever all through the night.
She moves away.
He breathes.
Behind him, he hears a very small sound from the direction of the soldiers that is immediately and ruthlessly suppressed.
Hale writes something on his clipboard.
Webb writes something on hers.
Neither of them looks up.
The fifth rehearsal.
The sixth.
By the seventh, the UNIT men along the wall have stopped pretending they're not watching and settled into something more like reverent attention, which is at least honest.
Henderson no longer looks at the ceiling.
Henderson looks at the ceiling during Boots out of habit and then forgets during Fever, every single time, without fail.
The Brigadier has noticed this and has decided not to address it because he has no moral ground to stand on.
Fever has changed.
Not the bones of it — Webb's sparse choreography is still there, the marks, the movement, the deliberate economy of it. But Sarah has been adding things. Small things. Incremental. A tilt of the head that becomes a lean toward him, close enough that he can hear the song slightly differently in that proximity, feel the warmth of it, almost—
He does not finish that thought.
A shimmy on fever in the morning that the song absolutely calls for and that he is not going to have any feelings about.
Fever in the morning—
She does it again.
He does not have any feelings about it.
Fever all through the night.
Then the shoulder.
This is the new thing. The thing she'd added last week that he is still, privately, dealing with.
She comes up close — very close, closer than any of the other movements — and turns, so her back is almost to him, and sings the next line over her shoulder, face turned just enough that he can see her profile, her mouth on the words, her eyes finding his from that angle—
Sun lights up the daytime—
He is still.
Completely still.
Moon lights up the night.
She holds it a beat longer than necessary.
He is aware, with some precision, of the exact distance between them.
She moves away.
I give you fever.
He breathes.
Across the room, Hale and Webb conduct another silent clipboard conversation with their eyebrows.
Hale: well.
Webb: yes.
Hale: shall we—
Webb: absolutely not.
They return to their notes.
The eighth rehearsal.
Boots first.
Are you ready boots? Start walking.
The soldiers are. By now they have simply accepted that Thursday afternoons are a particular kind of Thursday afternoon and have made their peace with it. There is even, among the regulars, a faint air of proprietary pride — our rehearsal, our Miss Smith — that the Brigadier observes and files away without comment.
Fever.
Never know how much I love you.
She finds him.
He is ready.
Except —
She doesn't come to him immediately. She takes her time with the first verse, moving through the space, the song settling into the room, and the Brigadier waits, which he is by now practiced at, and watches, which he is by now practiced at pretending he isn't doing.
And then she comes.
Close.
You give me fever.
She leans.
Not dramatic. Not staged. Just — a lean, her shoulder almost against his arm, her voice low and warm and directed somewhere private—
Fever in the morning—
He does not move.
He does not turn his head.
He is aware of approximately nothing in the room except the distance between his arm and her shoulder, which is not very much distance, and her voice, which is—
He does not finish that thought either.
She straightens. Steps away. Turns and sings over her shoulder—
What a lovely way to burn.
And looks at him.
Just for a moment.
Just long enough.
The last note drops into the silence and the room sits very still and the Brigadier looks back at her with his face completely composed and thinks—
She might be testing him.
She might be performing. Finding the song, doing what good performers do, using what's available to her.
She might be—
He stops.
Looks at his hands.
Unfolds his arms, which he has been holding rather more tightly than usual.
Across the room, Hale is saying something to Webb in a low voice, and Webb is nodding, and both of them have the quiet satisfied air of people watching something go exactly as predicted.
The Brigadier does not look at them.
He does not look at Sarah.
He looks at the middle distance with the expression of a man who has asked himself a question and thought better of finishing it.
"Same time Thursday," Hale says pleasantly, to the room.
"Sir," says Benton, from the doorway, where he has been standing for approximately three minutes and has been noticed by nobody except Webb, who noticed him immediately and said nothing.
The Brigadier turns.
Benton's expression is perfectly neutral.
It is the specific neutrality of a man who has seen everything and intends to take it to his grave.
"Sergeant."
"Duty roster, sir. Whenever you're ready."
The Brigadier nods and walks toward the door, past the soldiers filing out, past Hale and Webb gathering their things, past Sarah who is pulling her hair down and looking for her bag and not at him, which he notices, which he is not going to think about.
"Sir," Benton says, falling into step beside him.
They walk.
"Rehearsal going well?" Benton asks, after a moment.
"Adequately," the Brigadier says.
"Good," Benton says.
They walk a bit further.
"Benton."
"Sir."
"Not a word."
A pause.
"Sir," Benton says, in the tone of a man who would never dream of it.
They turn the corner.
Behind them, the briefing room empties out.
Henderson, last to leave, pauses in the doorway and looks back at the room for a moment with the expression of a man who has spent eight Thursday afternoons revising his understanding of the world.
Then he picks up his trumpet case and goes.
The ninth rehearsal.
The tenth.
Sarah stops counting somewhere around the eleventh and starts just — going. Thursday afternoons. Flat shoes. Hair up. The yellow Beetle in the car park and the gate guard waving her through and the particular quality of the briefing room air that she has learned to read the way she reads a room at a press conference — who's paying attention, where the energy is, what's being said underneath what's being said.
She knows the songs in her bones now.
Boots she could do in her sleep — Webb still finds things to refine, small precise adjustments, and Sarah takes them because Webb is right and because focusing on the choreography gives her something to do with her hands and her attention that isn't — the other thing.
Fever is the other thing.
She knows when it started. Not the rehearsals — before that. The audition, maybe, when she'd caught his almost-smile and made the decision in the space of a breath to turn toward him. Or maybe before even that. Maybe the day she'd agreed to do this at all, sitting in the lab with Yates's retreating footsteps still echoing and a blank piece of paper in front of her and the absolute certainty, sudden and inconvenient, of which song she was going to sing.
She hadn't examined that certainty at the time.
She's examining it now, on a Wednesday night in her flat in London, sitting on the floor with her back against the sofa and Fever playing on the record player because she is apparently doing this to herself deliberately.
Never know how much I love you.
She turns the volume down.
Thinks about Thursday.
Thinks about the lean — which she'd added without entirely planning to, and which he hadn't moved away from, had simply held his ground and breathed very carefully and stared at the middle distance with the focused composure of a man managing something.
That's what it is. Management. The Brigadier manages things. Situations. People. Inconvenient variables. She is, in the context of these rehearsals, an inconvenient variable that he is managing with his usual professionalism, and she has been — she closes her eyes briefly — she has been playing to it. Pushing at it. Finding the edges of his composure because she can, because the song lets her, because every time she finds the crack — the jaw muscle, the careful breath — there is a warmth in her chest that she has no business feeling.
She is not Jo Grant.
She does not fall into things headlong without looking.
She is Sarah Jane Smith and she looks at everything and she has looked at this and she knows, with the uncomfortable precision of a journalist who has spent fifteen years learning to see what's actually there rather than what she wants to see—
That it's real.
That it has been real for some time.
That she is in considerable trouble.
Fever, the record player says quietly.
"Oh, shut up," she tells it.
She gets up. Turns it off. Goes to make tea.
Stands in her kitchen waiting for the kettle and thinks about his face.
Not the composed face. The other one — the fraction of a second before the composition arrives, when something is briefly, completely visible and then isn't. She's been collecting those fractions. Cataloguing them the way she catalogues details at a press conference, automatically, without meaning to.
The problem — and she sees this clearly, because she always sees things clearly when they're about other people and apparently never when they're about herself — is that she has no idea what to do with the catalogue.
Because he's not — he doesn't —
He's professional. He's always professional. He's never once stepped outside the parameters of what these rehearsals are, never given her anything she could point to and say there, that's real, that's not just good manners and military composure and the ordinary human response to someone singing Fever at close range.
He could feel it without it meaning anything particular.
He almost certainly does feel it without it meaning anything particular.
She pours her tea.
Drinks it standing up.
Thinks about Thursday.
Thursday.
Boots first.
These boots are made for walking—
She doesn't look at him during Boots. She never does. Boots belongs to Yates, nominally, though Yates stopped being the actual target somewhere around the fourth rehearsal and is now simply a useful focal point that lets her not look at the Brigadier for the first twenty minutes and call it choreography.
One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.
Webb calls an adjustment. Sarah takes it. The soldiers along the wall do their thing.
She is very professional about all of it.
"Fever," Hale says.
She rolls her shoulders.
Finds the opening.
Never know how much I love you, never know how much I care.
She finds him across the room.
He's already looking at her.
He always is, by now. He doesn't pretend otherwise. He simply — watches, steady and still, and meets her eyes when she finds them, and she has stopped being able to read it as anything other than attention.
What she can't determine is what kind.
She moves toward him.
When you put your arms around me—
He is still.
I get a fever that's so hard to bear.
She comes close — close enough, that distance she has learned over eleven weeks, the one that the song lives in — and she leans, her shoulder almost against his arm, and sings the next line into the space between them—
You give me fever.
He doesn't move.
He never moves.
She turns, so her back is to him, and sings over her shoulder—
Fever in the morning—
And finds his eyes from that angle, which is worse, which she does anyway—
Fever all through the night.
Something in his face.
Not the jaw muscle this time. Something quieter. Something in his eyes, the fraction of a second before the composure seals over it.
She turns away.
Finishes the song facing the room.
What a lovely way to burn.
The silence.
The room breathing again.
She doesn't look at him.
He walks back to his office afterward and sits down at his desk and does not immediately pick up any of the paperwork waiting for him.
He looks at his hands for a moment.
He thinks about the lean. Which she has done before, which he is practiced at managing, and which is somehow not getting easier to manage with repetition. If anything the opposite.
He thinks about her eyes over her shoulder.
He thinks about—
He stops.
Puts his hands flat on the desk.
She is a journalist. She is clever and unsentimental and she has chosen, in her life, extraordinary things. She has traveled the universe with the Doctor. She runs toward danger with the cheerful pragmatism of someone who has decided the world is interesting and intends to engage with all of it, and she is — she is Sarah, who argues with generals and steals classified files and sings to herself in empty labs and fills every room she's in without appearing to try.
And he is—
He picks up the first piece of paperwork.
He is the Brigadier.
He is fifteen years older and considerably less interesting and the idea that what happens in that rehearsal room is anything other than a performer finding her song and a man trying to hold his professional ground—
He signs the form.
Puts it aside.
Picks up the next one.
The idea is not one he's going to finish.
The twelfth rehearsal.
The thirteenth.
Webb is satisfied with Boots in a way she expresses by finding smaller and smaller things to adjust, which Hale has told Sarah means she's very nearly done. Sarah takes the small adjustments and files them and executes them and does not think about Fever until she has to.
She always has to.
Never know how much I love you.
She has stopped being able to sing this line without meaning it, which had crept up on her somewhere around the tenth rehearsal and which she is managing by simply not thinking about it directly. Like looking at something bright — easier from the side.
She moves toward him.
He watches her come.
She leans — slower this time, she doesn't know why, just slower, the movement unhurried in a way that isn't quite what she planned—
Fever in the morning—
She can hear him breathe.
She's that close.
Fever all through the night.
She turns and sings over her shoulder and his eyes are right there, steady and dark and — something. Something she can't name because she's been trying to name it for three months and every time she gets close she loses her nerve.
Sun lights up the daytime.
She holds it a beat longer than she means to.
Moon lights up the night.
He holds it back.
Doesn't look away.
Doesn't —
I give you fever.
She finishes the song somewhere else in the room, she's not sure when she moved, just that she needed distance and took it, and the last note settles into the silence and she doesn't look at him.
"Beautiful," Hale says softly.
Webb doesn't write anything.
The soldiers along the wall are still.
Henderson has his hand over his mouth.
The Brigadier, when she finally glances over, is looking at the floor. Just for a moment. Just long enough that she wonders —
Then he looks up and he's the Brigadier again, composed and still, and she looks away.
Right, she thinks.
Right.
"She's ready," Webb tells Hale quietly, afterward, when the room has cleared.
"She's been ready for weeks," Hale says.
"I don't mean the songs."
Hale looks at her.
Webb is packing her clipboard with the efficient movements of a woman who has worked in theatre long enough to have seen this particular story before.
"And him?" Hale asks.
"Oh, he's been ready for weeks too," Webb says.
"Then why—"
"Because he doesn't believe it." She snaps the clipboard shut. "You can see it. Every time it gets close he — " she makes a small gesture. "He finds somewhere else to look."
"And her?"
Webb picks up her coat.
"She thinks he doesn't feel it."
Hale is quiet for a moment.
"That's a shame," he says.
"It's theatre," Webb says, in the tone of someone who has watched this specific human drama play out in rehearsal rooms across thirty years. "Give it time."
She turns off the light on her way out.
The BBC van is in the car park.
Sarah sees it from the corridor window on her way to the dressing room and stops walking.
Looks at it.
Looks at the cables running from it into the back of the venue.
Looks at the camera she can now see, set up at the back of the hall, which explains the men in headsets she'd passed on the way in and hadn't thought to question because UNIT has men in headsets as a matter of course.
"Miss Smith?" The hair and makeup woman — Carol, she'd said, brisk and warm in equal measure — is waiting in the doorway of the dressing room with the expression of someone on a schedule.
"There's a BBC van in the car park," Sarah says.
"Mmm," Carol says. "They do it every year. Lovely exposure for the charities." She holds the door open. "If you sit down now I can have you done in forty minutes."
Sarah looks at the van for another moment.
Lovely exposure.
She thinks about Fever. About what Fever looks like from the outside. About however many million people watching on Christmas Eve with their selection boxes and their—
"Miss Smith."
She turns from the window.
"Right," she says.
Carol sees something in her face and correctly reads it as useful.
"Sit," she says, in the tone of a woman who has worked with performers long enough to know that contained annoyance is an excellent foundation for a stage presence.
Sarah sits.
Carol works quickly and without unnecessary conversation, which Sarah appreciates. The mirror shows the progress in stages — foundation, eyes, the particular precision of stage makeup that looks like too much up close and exactly right from a distance. Sarah watches it happening with the detached curiosity she brings to most things she doesn't control.
She looks, she thinks, like someone else.
A better-lit version.
"Hair up or down?" Carol asks.
"Up," Sarah says. Webb had been specific about this. Up, so the neck is clear. Trust me.
Carol puts it up in a way that is simultaneously sophisticated and slightly undone, the kind of arrangement that looks effortless and has taken twelve minutes. A few pieces left loose, framing her face.
"There," Carol says.
Sarah looks at herself.
The woman in the mirror looks back at her with Sarah's eyes and considerably more of everything else.
"Right," Sarah says again, quietly.
The dress is hanging on the back of the door where Webb left it. Silver tassels catching the light every time someone moves, layers of them from hip to hem, the bodice a halterneck that requires, Carol informs her cheerfully, a specific approach to undergarments which Sarah has already addressed.
She puts it on.
The tassels move with her when she turns to check the mirror. Every single one of them.
Oh, she thinks. That's what Webb was doing.
The black boots go on last. Knee-high, low heel — enough to be comfortable on stage, enough to do something for her legs that she notices in the mirror and decides not to think about. She zips them up, stamps once to settle them, straightens.
Looks at herself properly.
She thinks about the BBC van.
She thinks about Fever going out on Christmas television.
She thinks about however many million—
The annoyance arrives cleanly, which is a relief. Better than nerves. Much better than the other thing she's been not thinking about for three months.
Good, she thinks. Use it.
"You look fantastic," Carol says, with the professional sincerity of someone who has seen a lot of performers and means it.
"Thank you," Sarah says, and means that too.
She reaches for her boots bag, checks her lipstick once, and turns for the door.
Benton is in the corridor.
He's there on a specific errand — something for the Brigadier, a programme, something — and he has the errand in hand and is covering the ground between point A and point B with the efficiency of a man who has somewhere to be.
He comes around the corner.
Stops.
Beside him, Private Collins — twenty-two, three months at UNIT, has been told about the rehearsals but was never there — also stops, because Benton has stopped, and in Benton's vicinity stopping is generally advisable.
Sarah is coming the other way.
Silver tassels. Black boots. Hair up. Stage makeup. All of it moving the way the dress was designed to move, the way the boots were chosen to work with it, the way Carol's forty minutes were spent ensuring.
Benton has been to eleven rehearsals.
He thought he was prepared.
He was not prepared.
"Sergeant," Sarah says, with the brisk confidence of a woman who has somewhere to be and is going there.
"Miss Smith," Benton says, in a voice that is completely level and represents a considerable personal achievement.
She passes them.
The tassels catch the corridor light.
She turns the corner and is gone.
Beside Benton, Private Collins makes a very small sound.
"Not a word," Benton says.
"I wasn't—"
"Not. A word."
Collins closes his mouth.
Benton looks at the corner she turned for a moment.
Then he looks at the programme in his hand.
Then he goes to find the Brigadier.