Chapter Text
The potatoes were Kate's contribution, which was the arrangement they'd arrived at sometime in the second year of Sunday dinners and one memorable incident with a roasting tin that neither of them discussed anymore.
Alistair handled the meat. Kate handled everything that required precise timing and a willingness to read the instructions. It worked. It had become, without either of them quite deciding it, the thing they did.
The kitchen was comfortable in the way of spaces that have learned two people. A particular drawer for his things. The good knife always returned to the same place. Small negotiations conducted entirely without words.
"You checked the UNIT logs on Peter Dalton," he said.
Not an accusation. Not quite a question.
Kate didn't look up from the carrots.
"Sarah was engaged. Of course I checked."
"When did you check?"
She considered the question. It was oddly specific.
"When I first heard about it. Why?"
"Your logs were pulled during the event," he said.
Kate's knife slowed.
"...what event?"
"The Trickster." A pause. "Peter Dalton was already dead when I checked."
Kate set the knife down.
She did this carefully, which was how her father knew she was processing something she hadn't expected to need to process.
"When I pulled the file he was alive," she said slowly.
"Because the Trickster had made him alive. Within the terms of what the Trickster does, the engagement was real. Sarah Jane had agreed to marry a dead man without knowing he was dead." A pause. "The Doctor intervened."
Kate was quiet for a moment.
She knew that name. Everyone at UNIT knew that name, in the way you knew the names of things that didn't follow the rules. The Trickster operated in a space that made conventional intelligence gathering close to useless — it rewrote the conditions under which the information had been gathered.
Which meant her file was wrong. Had been wrong since she'd pulled it. And she hadn't known to go back.
"She doesn't know I looked," Kate said.
"No."
"She wouldn't have told me." It wasn't a criticism. It was simply Sarah — the careful distance, the not-pulling-people-in. "She would have handled it and moved on."
"Yes."
Kate looked at him.
There was something in his expression she was trying to classify and finding she couldn't quite, which was unusual. She was generally very good at reading her father.
"You checked after," she said.
"Yes."
"After the Doctor had already—" She stopped. "How did you know to look again?"
"I monitor Bannerman Road," he said. Simply. As if this were obvious. As if this were something he had always done and she should have assumed.
Kate absorbed this.
"...since when?"
"Since she moved there."
Which meant — Kate did the arithmetic — since before Kate was running UNIT. Since before a great many things.
She picked up her wine glass. Put it down without drinking from it.
"Dad."
"Mm."
"Why are you telling me this now?"
He turned back to the stove. The careful adjustment of something that didn't strictly need adjusting.
"I intend to go to Bannerman Road," he said.
"You've been to Bannerman Road."
"Yes." A pause. "This would be different."
Kate looked at the side of his face. He was doing the thing where he was being very precise because imprecision felt dangerous, which meant he'd thought about this for long enough that the words had been selected.
"How different," she said.
"I am reliably informed," he said, "that a man appeared at Bannerman Road and nearly married Sarah Jane Smith while being technically deceased, and that this was not the first time someone has attempted something of that nature."
"The Trickster targets her specifically. She's—"
"I know what she is." Quiet. Certain. "I know exactly what she is."
Kate went still.
Because that wasn't the voice he used for professional assessment. She knew that voice. She'd grown up with that voice and she knew every register of it, and that particular one was not professional assessment at all.
"Oh," she said.
He didn't respond.
"Dad."
"Mm."
"How long?"
A pause. He considered the question with the same seriousness he considered most things.
"That's not a straightforward question."
"Try."
He was quiet for a moment. The thing on the stove received attention it probably didn't require.
"She came to Doris's funeral," he said finally.
Kate remembered. Of course she remembered. Sarah Jane at the back of the church, slipping in after everyone was seated and leaving before the reception. Characteristic. The not-imposing, the allowing-of-space, the being-there-anyway.
"That was—" Kate stopped.
"Yes," he said.
Several years ago. Several years of Sunday dinners and UNIT briefings and the occasional phone call and Bannerman Road monitored quietly from a distance without a word to anyone.
Kate picked up her wine glass again. This time she drank from it.
"She doesn't know," Kate said.
"No."
"You haven't said anything."
"No."
"Because of the distance she keeps."
"Partly." He turned. Met her eyes properly for the first time since he'd brought this into the kitchen. "And partly because I wasn't certain. I don't—" A brief pause. "I don't act on things I'm not certain about."
No. He didn't. That was absolutely true and also, Kate reflected, occasionally maddening.
"And now you're certain," she said.
"A dead man nearly married her," he said. "While I was monitoring and said nothing and did nothing because she keeps her distance and I was respecting that." Something moved across his face. Not anger exactly. Something quieter and more decided than anger. "I find I'm no longer interested in respecting it quite so completely."
Kate looked at him for a long moment.
This was her father. Who had faced things that would have unmade most people and remained entirely himself throughout. Who had built a life after her mother with a steadiness Kate had spent years trying to learn from. Who had, apparently, been quietly watching over Sarah Jane Smith since Doris's funeral without saying a word to anyone.
Who was now standing in Kate's kitchen telling her this before he did anything about it, because he thought she should know.
Because Sarah was family. Had been family — Kate thought of a caravan, a difficult year, a woman who had shown up and asked no questions and stayed anyway — for longer than either of them had formally named it.
"She's going to be surprised," Kate said.
"Very probably."
"The children won't be."
Something shifted in his expression. Not quite amusement. Approaching it.
"No," he agreed. "I don't imagine they will."
Kate considered the carrots. Considered her father, who was watching her with the patience of a man who had learned to wait and was, apparently, done waiting.
"Don't ring ahead," she said. "If you ring ahead she'll have time to be sensible about it."
A pause.
"And take her something. Tea, the good kind. not the UNIT canteen kind." Kate picked up the knife. "That's rather the point."
Alistair was quiet for a moment.
"Kate."
"Mm."
"Thank you."
She didn't look up. But something that had been complicated since he'd said I monitor Bannerman Road and she'd done the arithmetic on how long settled into something that felt considerably more like relief than she'd expected.
"Don't make a mess of it," she said.
"I'll endeavour not to."
"And update the file on Peter Dalton. It's going to bother me."
He almost smiled. She could hear it without seeing it, which was its own kind of thing.
"Already done," he said.
The door opened twelve seconds after he knocked, which suggested someone had seen the car.
Luke Smith looked up at him with the particular expression of someone who had arrived at a conclusion and was carefully not saying it.
"Brigadier," he said. "This is unexpected."
"I should have rung ahead," Alistair said. "Is your mother in?"
"She's gone to get some things from the shops. She'll be back soon." Luke stepped back. "Please come in."
The hallway was familiar. He'd been here before, several times, in the capacity of someone checking in on an old friend. He was reasonably certain Luke had always known the distinction between checking in and what this was, and had been waiting with considerable patience for the distinction to become apparent to the relevant parties.
"Tea?" Luke said.
"Thank you."
In the kitchen Luke filled the kettle with the focused precision he brought to most things, and Alistair set the tea he'd brought on the counter without comment. Luke looked at it. Looked at it for slightly longer than necessary.
Said nothing.
The back door opened and Clyde came in from the garden, stopped, and took in the scene with the instincts of someone who had learned to read a room under pressure.
"Oh," he said. "Hey. Didn't know you were coming."
"He didn't ring ahead," Luke said.
Clyde looked at the tea on the counter. Looked at Alistair. Settled into a careful neutrality that was doing more work than it appeared to be doing.
"Cool," he said. "Cool cool cool."
Rani appeared in the doorway a moment later, took in the room, and had the most readable face of the three of them. A rapid sequence of emotions crossed it — surprise, comprehension, something warm, and then a very deliberate neutrality that she assembled quickly and wore with more effort than she probably realised.
"Brigadier," she said. "Nice to see you."
"And you, Rani."
Luke made the tea. The good tea, Alistair noticed, not the everyday box. Another thing that went unmentioned.
They settled in the sitting room. Alistair in the chair, the three of them arranged on the sofa with the unconscious coordination of people who had faced things together and knew each other's weight.
The silence lasted approximately four seconds.
"You've decided to court my mother," Luke said.
Rani closed her eyes briefly.
Clyde turned to look at Luke with an expression that was caught between you can't just say that and but also I need to hear the answer.
Alistair regarded Luke with the calm of a man who had not expected to get this far into the conversation without something of this nature occurring.
"Is it that apparent?" he said.
"You didn't ring ahead," Luke said. "You brought good tea. You're in your good jacket." He paused. "Also I've been expecting this for some time."
"Have you."
"Yes." Luke said it without apology. "I think it's the correct decision. I wanted you to know that."
"Luke—" Rani started.
"It's relevant information."
"It's really not our—"
"It's relevant," Clyde said.
Rani looked at him.
"Don't look at me like that," Clyde said. "It is." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and looked at Alistair with an expression that had shed the casual neutrality entirely. This was Clyde being serious, which was a different thing to Clyde being Clyde, and it was worth paying attention to. "She doesn't have great history with this. With people. Not because she's bad at it — she's not, she's brilliant at it. But the people she—" He stopped. Tried again. "The Doctor. You know about the Doctor."
"Yes," Alistair said.
"He leaves. He always leaves. And she knows he's going to before it happens and she's fine, she's completely fine, and then he does and she just—" Clyde's jaw tightened. "She gets on with it. Because she's Sarah Jane and that's what she does. But there's always this stretch after where she's—"
"Less there," Luke said quietly.
"Yeah." Clyde looked at his hands for a moment. Then back up. "Less there. And we've watched that. More than once. And we're not saying don't — that's not what this is. But we need to know that you understand what you're—" He stopped again, searching for it.
"Are you someone who stays," Luke said.
The room was quiet.
Alistair set down his tea. Deliberately. Giving the question the weight it had earned.
"The Doctor," he said, "is what he is. I've known him a long time and I say that without criticism. He cannot be other than what he is." A pause. "I am not the Doctor."
"We know that," Clyde said.
"Then you know that my history is not one of leaving. I have spent the better part of my life staying. In positions that were difficult, with people who needed steadiness, in situations that required someone to remain when remaining was the harder option." He looked at them both steadily. "I am not here because this seems like an interesting prospect. I am here because I have thought about this for considerably longer than is perhaps obvious, and I have arrived at a conclusion I intend to act on carefully and with full awareness of what it means."
Clyde held his gaze for a moment.
"How long?" he said.
A pause.
"She came to my wife's funeral," Alistair said.
The sitting room went very quiet. A different quality of quiet than before.
Luke looked at Clyde. Clyde looked at Luke. Something passed between them that didn't need words.
"Okay," Clyde said finally. The edge had gone out of his voice entirely. "Okay. Yeah." He exhaled. "That's — yeah."
"There is one other thing," Alistair said.
They looked at him.
"She is going to push back," he said. "When I speak to her. She will be very reasonable about it and she will have very sensible explanations for why this is complicated, and most of them will not be true."
Rani made a sound that was very carefully not a laugh.
"Yeah," Clyde said. "That tracks."
"I intend to be patient," Alistair said. "But I thought you should know I am aware of that particular pattern and I am not deterred by it."
Luke nodded. With the gravity of someone issuing a formal verdict.
"Good," he said.
The front door opened.
All four of them looked toward the hallway. Then, with a coordination that owed something to having faced considerably stranger things together, they each independently arrived at a natural position and assumed it.
Alistair picked up his tea.
Clyde reached for a magazine.
Luke turned to say something to Rani that he hadn't been saying thirty seconds ago.
Rani looked at the ceiling very briefly, in the manner of someone asking it for strength, and then arranged her face into a smile as Sarah Jane Smith came in from the shop with a bag of groceries and stopped at the sight of her sitting room.
"Sir Alistair," she said. Genuinely surprised, which meant the car had been out of sight. "I didn't know you were coming."
"He didn't ring ahead," Luke said helpfully.
Sarah looked at her son. Something in the quality of his helpfulness made her eyes narrow very slightly. Then she looked at the Brigadier, who had stood, because he always stood, and said —
"I brought tea. I hope that's all right."
Sarah Jane Smith looked at him for a moment that was slightly longer than the sentence required.
"Of course it is," she said. "Sit down, I'll just put these away."
She went to the kitchen.
Clyde very carefully did not look at anyone.
Rani studied the middle distance with great composure.
Luke picked up his tea with the serenity of someone who had said what needed to be said and was content to let things proceed at their natural pace.
Which, he calculated, given who was involved —
Would probably not be very fast.
But would, he was fairly certain, get there.
Sarah came back from the kitchen with her own tea and found the sitting room had quietly rearranged itself.
Luke had remembered something he needed to do upstairs. Rani had mentioned something to Clyde about the garden. The details had been vague in the way of things that aren't quite true but aren't quite false either, and Sarah had let them go because she was carrying two mugs and didn't have a free hand to stop anyone.
She sat down.
The sitting room settled around them the way it did when the children weren't in it. A different kind of quiet. Not empty — it was never empty, this house — just slower.
"Sorry about that," she said. "They're usually — well. No, they're always like that actually."
"They're good children," Alistair said.
"They're extraordinary," Sarah said, with the simple certainty of someone who has seen extraordinary and knows how to recognize it. "Though I'm not sure I can take much credit for it."
"I think you can take more than you do."
She looked at him. He was looking at the middle distance with the expression he wore when he'd said something he meant and wasn't going to elaborate on.
She let it go.
The tea was good. She'd noticed that immediately — not the everyday box, something better — and had decided not to comment on it because commenting on it felt like it would make something small into something larger than it needed to be.
"How's Kate?" she said.
"Well. Busy. She sends her love."
"She never sends her love, she's too sensible for that."
"She implied it strongly."
Sarah smiled into her mug. "That sounds more like her."
Outside the garden was making the particular sounds of two teenagers not quite doing whatever they'd said they were going to do. A murmur of voices. Clyde laughing at something. The ordinary texture of Bannerman Road on an afternoon that hadn't had anything planned for it.
"How is the work?" Alistair asked.
"Which work."
"Both."
She considered. "The writing is fine. There's a piece I've been putting off for three weeks because the angle isn't quite right yet. The other—" She tilted her head slightly toward the attic, a gesture that meant everything that lived up there. "Quieter than usual. Which is either a good sign or the kind of quiet that means something is building."
"Mm."
"You sound like you know which one."
"I have no information suggesting the latter," he said. "For what that's worth."
"Coming from you it's worth quite a lot actually." She settled back into the sofa cushions. "Are you going to tell me if that changes?"
"Yes."
Simple. No qualification. She'd asked if he would and he'd said yes and that was the end of it.
Sarah looked at him for a moment. He was comfortable in her sitting room in the way he always was — upright but not stiff, present but not crowding. Taking up exactly the space he needed and no more.
She'd always liked that about him. The not-crowding.
"You didn't ring ahead," she said.
"No."
"You usually ring ahead."
"I was in the area."
She considered this. It was entirely plausible. It was also, she thought, not quite the complete explanation. But it was a perfectly reasonable thing to say and she had no particular grounds to push on it, so she didn't.
"Well," she said. "It's nice. You should do it more often."
He looked at her then. Briefly. Something in his expression that was — settled. Like something that had been waiting had found a place to rest.
"Yes," he said. "I think I will."
The afternoon moved around them unhurriedly. The garden murmured. The tea cooled to the right temperature and then past it. Luke came downstairs at some point and put his head in briefly, apparently satisfied by whatever he saw, and disappeared again.
When Alistair stood to leave it was at exactly the right moment. Not too soon. Not after the point where staying would have required explanation.
Sarah walked him to the door.
"Thank you for the tea," she said. "The good stuff. You didn't have to."
"I know," he said.
He said it pleasantly and without weight and she found, afterward, that she couldn't quite find anything in it to examine.
She stood in the doorway and watched him go down the front path and thought — something. She wasn't sure what exactly. Something quiet and unformed that she didn't quite reach for.
Then Clyde appeared from the direction of the kitchen asking what was for dinner and the thought dissolved entirely and she went inside.
Upstairs, Luke was reading.
Clyde appeared in the doorway.
"So," he said.
"Yes," Luke said, without looking up.
"That was — good. Right? That was good."
"It was very good."
Clyde leaned against the doorframe. "She didn't notice."
Luke turned a page.
"She noticed," he said. "She doesn't know what she noticed yet."
Clyde thought about this.
"How long do you think it's going to take?"
Luke considered the question with appropriate seriousness.
"She's very clever," he said. "But she's also very good at not seeing things she's not ready to see."
"So."
"So." He turned another page. "A while."
Clyde exhaled.
"Good thing he's patient," he said.
"Yes," Luke said. "I thought of that."
Luke had waited until he was certain his mother had actually left — watched her go down the path, turn the corner, disappear — before he went downstairs and rang the Brigadier.
He didn't examine this too closely. It was a practical decision.
"She's out," he said when Alistair answered. "If you wanted to — I thought you might want to see Mr. Smith."
A pause.
"I'll be there in twenty minutes," Alistair said.
He was there in fifteen.
Luke brought him straight upstairs, past the accumulated geography of Bannerman Road — the photographs, the particular smell of the attic that was partly old wood and partly something that had no name — and into the room where Mr. Smith lived.
Alistair took in the room with the habit of someone who has spent a lifetime assessing spaces.
The equipment. The setup. The particular organised chaos of someone who works here seriously and often.
And on the wall —
He looked at it for a moment. Just a moment. A photograph, framed, his own face looking back at him from what must have been — he calculated — about forty years ago. UNIT uniform. The one she'd known him in first.
The only photograph on the wall.
He looked at it for precisely as long as it took to note it, and then he looked away, because Luke was talking and the room required his attention.
But something that had been held at a careful tension — something he hadn't quite admitted was tense — eased. Very slightly. Very quietly.
He filed it where it needed to go and turned his attention to the matter at hand.
The screen was already active.
"Mr. Smith," Luke said. "You know who this is."
"Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart," Mr. Smith said, in the tone of someone consulting a very thorough file. "Formerly of UNIT. Currently retired, though the classification is somewhat nominal. OBE. Decorated. Distinguished record of—"
"Yes," Alistair said pleasantly. "Thank you."
A brief pause that might, on a less sophisticated computer, have been called chastened.
"What can I do for you, Brigadier?"
Luke straightened slightly. He had thought about how to phrase this.
"I wanted to introduce you properly," he said. "And to ask — if you could keep the Brigadier informed. When things—" He paused. Reconsidered. "When things go down a more serious track. Not just the day to day. But when it becomes the kind of thing where—"
"Where having someone else aware of the situation would be prudent," Alistair said.
"Yes," Luke said. "That."
Mr. Smith was quiet for a moment.
This was not, Luke knew, because he was processing the request. Mr. Smith processed things considerably faster than the pause suggested. The pause was something else.
"I see," Mr. Smith said finally.
The quality of it was — thoughtful. Assessing. Luke had the distinct impression that Mr. Smith had looked at the request, looked at the man standing in front of him, looked at the shape of what was actually being proposed here, and arrived at a conclusion that had very little to do with alien threat assessment.
"That seems," Mr. Smith said, "like a sensible arrangement."
Alistair inclined his head slightly. "I appreciate it."
"Sarah Jane is—" Another pause. "She is not always forthcoming about the seriousness of a situation. To people she doesn't wish to worry."
"No," Alistair said. "I'm aware of that."
"I'll keep you informed," Mr. Smith said.
Something in the room settled. The particular quality of an agreement reached between two parties who understand each other without requiring the full explanation to be spoken aloud.
Alistair glanced, once more, at the photograph on the wall.
Then back at Mr. Smith.
"Thank you," he said.
Luke nodded. He felt, though he didn't say this, considerably better than he had this morning.
Downstairs, Clyde was on the sofa. Rani was in the armchair. They were ostensibly doing homework, which was more or less true depending on how strictly you defined the term.
Clyde looked up when Alistair came down.
"How'd that go?"
"Well," Luke said.
Clyde nodded, apparently satisfied, and looked at the Brigadier. "So. Sarah Jane's going to be a couple of hours probably. She had that thing with the editor and then she said she had to stop somewhere after." He paused. "We were probably going to do beans on toast."
Alistair looked at him.
"Probably," Clyde said again, slightly defensively.
Alistair moved toward the kitchen with the air of a man who has made a decision.
"Let's see what your mother has in," he said.
The refrigerator was — functional. Organized in the way of someone who meant to do a proper shop and hadn't quite gotten there yet. Eggs. Milk. The end of a block of cheese. Half a packet of sausages that were well within date. The usual geography of a household where feeding people was something that happened in between everything else.
Alistair opened the freezer. Assessed. Closed it.
Opened a cupboard. Found flour. Found a jug.
"Right," he said, to no one in particular.
"What are you making?" Rani asked from the doorway.
"Toad in the hole."
Rani looked at Clyde, who had appeared behind her.
"Is that good?" she said quietly.
"My nan makes it," Clyde said. "Yeah. It's good."
They watched for a moment as Alistair located a roasting tin, considered its dimensions, and began measuring flour with the efficiency of someone who has cooked in field conditions and finds a domestic kitchen relatively straightforward.
"Can we help?" Rani asked.
"You can lay the table," he said. "And find me another egg if there is one."
There was. There was half a carton. Rani located them with the air of someone completing a mission and set them on the counter.
The kitchen began to smell like something was actually being made.
Clyde sat at the kitchen table on the grounds that he was staying for dinner and had therefore earned a seat. Rani sat across from him. Luke appeared from somewhere and did the same.
Nobody had technically been invited to stay for dinner.
Nobody mentioned this.
Alistair cooked with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled to the elbow, which was apparently just what you did when you were cooking, and if the three of them found this unexpectedly humanizing they kept that observation to themselves.
The batter went in. The oven door closed.
"Twenty five minutes," Alistair said. He washed his hands, dried them, and looked at the table where all three children were now sitting. "Is there something you're supposed to be doing?"
"Homework," Luke said.
"You should do that then."
There was a brief negotiation during which it became apparent that Clyde's homework was at his house but that going to get it and coming back in twenty five minutes was logistically impractical, and Rani's was in her bag but the relevant textbook was also at her house, and Luke had done his.
Alistair looked at them.
"Right," he said.
"We could set the table," Rani offered.
"You already did."
"...we could do it better."
Sarah came home to light in the kitchen windows.
She came home to light in the kitchen windows, which was normal, and to a smell coming through the front door that was — not beans on toast.
She stood in the hallway.
The smell was — batter. Something roasting. Something that required more than one component and a tin and a specific oven temperature.
She put her bag down.
Went to the kitchen doorway.
Her three children were at the table — Clyde, who had a mother and a home to go to, Rani, who similarly had both of these things — eating toad in the hole from proper plates with what appeared to be actual gravy, which meant someone had made gravy, which meant someone had been here long enough to make gravy.
Alistair was at the counter in his shirtsleeves.
He turned when she appeared.
"Sit down," he said. "I'll plate yours."
Sarah looked at her children.
Luke was eating with the focused appreciation of someone who had correctly predicted that beans on toast was not the ceiling of available options.
Clyde didn't look up. "It's really good," he said, in the tone of a man whose conscience was entirely clear.
Rani smiled at her with an expression that was warm and slightly careful in a way that Sarah filed away for later examination.
She looked back at Alistair.
Who was already plating up her dinner with the calm of someone who had expected this exact moment and had nothing in particular to apologize for.
The food smelled extraordinary.
"Sir Alistair," she said.
"Mm."
"We are going to have words."
"Yes," he said pleasantly. "After dinner."
He set the plate on the table. Pulled out the chair next to Luke in a way that was not quite holding it for her but was adjacent to it. Then he went back to the counter and picked up his own plate and sat down at the other end of the table, in the chair that Clyde had not taken, which meant there had been a chair left which meant they had laid a place which meant—
Sarah sat down.
The food was hot and it smelled wonderful and she had not, now that she thought about it, eaten since a very inadequate sandwich at half eleven that morning.
She picked up her fork.
"After dinner," she said.
"Of course," he said.
Clyde refilled his own glass of water with the serenity of someone who was absolutely not listening.
The words, as it turned out, did not happen after dinner.
After dinner there was washing up, which somehow involved all three children in a way that filled the kitchen and made a private conversation logistically impossible. And then Rani needed to get home and Clyde walked her, which left Luke, who showed no signs whatsoever of going anywhere.
Alistair sat in the sitting room with his tea and waited.
Sarah sat across from him and thought about the words she was going to have.
The sitting room was quiet. Luke had taken himself upstairs with the timing of someone who had learned, without being taught, how to make himself absent.
She looked at Alistair.
He looked back.
He was entirely comfortable. There was nothing in his expression that was waiting for something difficult. He looked like a man sitting in a sitting room after a meal that had gone well, with nowhere else to be.
"You cooked dinner," she said.
"You hadn't eaten," he said.
"You don't know that."
He looked at her.
"I hadn't eaten," she admitted.
"No."
The food, she thought. This is what she'd meant to address. The appearing without ringing ahead. The tea. The increasingly — present quality of the visits. She had a perfectly reasonable set of things to say about all of it.
She looked at him sitting in her sitting room in his shirtsleeves — he'd put the jacket back on but not done the cuffs properly, she noticed, they were still turned back slightly — and thought about saying them.
"You should have rung ahead," she said.
"Yes," he agreed.
"The children needed feeding regardless of whether you were here."
"They did," she said. "Beans on toast would have addressed that."
"It would have."
She looked at him.
He looked at her.
"Sir Alistair," she said.
"Sarah Jane," he said.
It landed with the same weight hers had. No more, no less. Just — her name, in his voice, in her sitting room, at the end of an evening that had not gone the way she'd expected when she left the house this morning.
The words she'd meant to have dissolved into something she didn't quite reach for.
"Thank you for dinner," she said instead.
Something in his expression — not quite a smile. The approach of one.
"You're welcome," he said.
Kate was at her desk when her phone rang.
She looked at the screen.
Luke Smith.
She picked up, because she always picked up for Bannerman Road. Old habit. Good habit.
"Luke," she said. "Is everything all right?"
"Yes," Luke said. "Everything is fine. I wanted to ask you something."
The particular quality of his voice suggested this was something he had been thinking about for a while and had decided to approach directly, which was — very Luke. Kate set down her pen.
"Go ahead," she said.
"Your father came for dinner last night," Luke said. "He made toad in the hole. Sarah Jane came home and said they were going to have words about it."
Kate absorbed this. "And did they?"
"No. She said thank you for dinner instead."
A pause.
"I see," Kate said carefully.
"I think," Luke said, with the measured precision of someone presenting a conclusion supported by evidence, "that your father is very good at handling my mother."
"...yes," Kate said. "I think that's probably true."
"Good." A brief pause. "I wanted to ask you something about that."
"All right."
"I know it's early," Luke said. "I want to be clear that I know it's early. That's why I'm asking you rather than just doing it. Because I wanted to check if it was — appropriate. Given where things are."
Kate had a feeling she knew where this was going.
She was not entirely prepared for where this was going.
"Luke," she said slowly. "What are you asking me?"
"I want to know," Luke said, carefully, "if it would be all right to call your father dad."
Kate sat back in her chair.
"Not now," Luke added quickly. "I know it's too soon for now. But — eventually. When things have — progressed. I wanted to know if that would be all right with you. And with him. I thought asking you first was the right order."
Kate looked at the ceiling for a moment.
This boy.
This extraordinarily, completely, entirely Luke boy.
"Can I ask you something first?" she said.
"Yes."
"Why?" She said it gently. "You have time. Things are — early, as you said. Why are you thinking about this now?"
A pause.
The quality of the pause was different to his usual ones. Longer. Less certain.
"I'm going to university next year," Luke said.
Kate went very still.
"And Sarah Jane will be here," he continued. "She'll say she's fine because she's always fine. And Clyde and Rani will still visit but they have their own — they'll have their own things. And I just—" Another pause. "I needed to know that someone was going to be here. At the table. Someone who notices things."
His voice was entirely steady.
That almost made it worse.
"Luke," Kate said.
"I know it's not something I can control," he said quickly. "I know that. But your father has already talked to Mr. Smith. And he made dinner because she hadn't eaten. And she didn't have words with him, which means she's already—" He stopped. "I just needed to know if it was going the right way. And then I thought about the other thing and I thought I should ask."
Kate was quiet for a moment.
Outside her office window London was doing what it always did, entirely indifferent to the fact that a seventeen year old boy had just taken her completely apart with two sentences about a university place and an empty table.
"It's going the right way," she said. "I can tell you that."
"Good." The relief in it was very carefully contained. Not contained enough. "And the other thing?"
Kate thought about her father in his shirtsleeves making toad in the hole in Sarah Jane Smith's kitchen. She thought about a photograph in a UNIT uniform on a wall in an attic. She thought about Sunday dinners and a file on Peter Dalton and I monitor Bannerman Road and the arithmetic of how long.
"I think," she said, "that when the time comes — and it isn't yet, Luke, it genuinely isn't yet — you should ask him yourself."
A pause.
"Do you think he'd say yes?" Luke asked.
Kate closed her eyes briefly.
"Yes," she said. "I think he'd say yes."
"All right." Another pause, shorter this time. Lighter. "Thank you Kate."
"Look after her until he gets there," Kate said. "That's all you need to do."
"I know," Luke said. "I am."
He rang off.
Kate sat at her desk for a moment.
Then she picked up her phone again and rang her father.
He answered on the second ring.
"Kate."
"She said thank you for dinner," Kate said, "instead of having words."
A pause.
"Yes," her father said.
"Luke rang me."
A longer pause. "Did he."
"He wanted to know," Kate said carefully, "if things were going the right way."
She didn't mention the other thing. That wasn't hers to tell. That was something that would happen in its own time, in the right way, and her father would handle it exactly as he handled everything else.
But she heard something shift in the quality of his silence. Something that recognized what she wasn't saying.
"And what did you tell him?" Alistair said.
"That it was," Kate said. "Going the right way."
A pause.
"Good," he said.
The same relief as Luke's. Considerably better concealed. Not concealed enough.
"Dad," Kate said.
"Mm."
"Don't make a mess of it."
"You've said that."
"I'm saying it again."
A pause that was almost — warm.
"Good night, Kate," he said.
"Good night," she said.
She put the phone down.
Sat for a moment in her office with London outside the window and the quiet that comes after something has been said that needed saying.
Then she picked up her pen and went back to work.
The begonias went first.
Sarah Jane noticed on a Tuesday morning, mug in hand, looking out at the garden with the vague intention of doing something about it at some point. They'd been fine on Sunday. They were not fine now. Something had gotten into the bed along the fence and whatever it was had spread overnight in a way that suggested it wasn't entirely — natural.
She looked at it for a moment.
Then she went upstairs to the attic.
"Mr. Smith," she said. "The garden."
Mr. Smith processed this with what she had learned to recognize as minimal surprise. "I see it," he said. "The subsonic signature is low level. Nothing dangerous. But the effect on organic matter in the immediate vicinity will continue to spread if left unaddressed."
"How do I address it?"
"The affected soil will need to be treated and turned. The plants themselves—" A pause. "I'm afraid the begonias are a loss, Sarah Jane."
She looked out the attic window at the garden below.
"Right," she said.
She went back downstairs. Made another cup of tea. Stood in the kitchen looking out at the garden, which was doing nothing dramatic, just quietly dying in a way that was going to spread if she left it.
She thought about who she could ring.
She rang Alistair.
She had a reason ready if she needed one, which she didn't, because he picked up on the third ring and said "Sarah Jane" in the tone of someone who is already paying attention, and she said—
"Something's gotten into my garden. Mr. Smith says it's low level but the plants are dying and the soil needs turning and I don't — I'm not sure what I'm doing with a garden at the best of times and I thought—"
"I'll come this afternoon," he said.
Simple. No qualification.
"You don't have to—"
"I'll come this afternoon," he said again, pleasantly.
She didn't argue.
He arrived at two with what appeared to be his own gardening things, which meant he'd gone home first and collected them, which meant he'd had them ready, which meant—
Sarah Jane didn't follow that thought to its conclusion.
He assessed the garden with the same focused attention he brought to everything, crouching down to look at the soil along the fence line, testing it, straightening up.
"The affected area is larger than it looks from the surface," he said.
"Mr. Smith said it spread overnight."
He nodded. "We'll need to get it all up. Treat the soil. Let it rest before replanting." He looked at the begonias. "These are done."
"Mr. Smith said."
"You can replant in a few weeks. Something hardier this time perhaps."
"The begonias were a gift," Sarah Jane said. "From a neighbour. Years ago."
He looked at her.
"I'll find you some new ones," he said. "There's a place here in Ealing."
Sarah Jane opened her mouth.
Closed it.
"All right," she said.
He worked through the afternoon.
Sarah Jane made tea at intervals, which was her contribution, and tried twice to help with the digging, and was redirected both times with the patience of someone who knows how to deploy patience without making it obvious that's what he's doing.
Luke came home from school and took in the scene — Sir Alistair in the garden, Sarah Jane on the back step with a mug, the turned earth along the fence — with an expression of profound satisfaction that he converted quickly into something more neutral.
"Subsonic?" he said to Sarah quietly.
"Low level," she said. "Mr. Smith's already logged it."
Luke nodded. Looked at the garden. Looked at Sir Alistair, who was working with his jacket off again, sleeves rolled up, entirely focused.
"Good," Luke said, and went inside.
The afternoon light shifted. The garden smelled like turned earth and something that was almost but not quite normal.
Sir Alistair finished along the fence line and straightened, assessing what remained.
"Another hour," he said.
"I'll make more tea," Sarah said.
She was in the kitchen, filling the kettle, when she heard herself say —
"I'll make din—"
She stopped.
Stood with the kettle in her hand.
She'd been about to offer dinner. Automatically. Naturally. The way you offer dinner to someone who has been working in your garden all afternoon.
She thought about the last time she'd made dinner.
She thought about the time before that.
She set the kettle down.
Looked at it for a moment.
Then she went to the back door.
"Sir Alistair."
He looked up.
"When you're done," she said. "I could get takeaway. Or—" She paused. "I won't complain if you'd rather cook something."
He looked at her for a moment.
Just a moment.
Something in his expression that was — not quite a smile. Something that had been waiting for something and had, quietly, just found it.
"I'll cook," he said.
"Right," she said.
She went back to the kettle.
She was smiling slightly and she didn't entirely know why and she decided, on balance, not to examine it.
Inside, at the kitchen table, Luke was doing homework with the focused calm of someone who had heard that entire exchange through the open back door and was absolutely not reacting to it.
He was, internally, reacting to it considerably.
He took out his phone under the table.
She rang him, he typed to Clyde. About the garden. And just told him she won't complain if he cooks.
Three seconds.
MATE.
Then:
that's basically a marriage proposal from Sarah Jane.
Luke considered this.
It's not that.
it's basically that.
It's not.
luke she rang him. About PLANTS.
Luke put his phone away.
He looked at his homework.
He looked at the back door, through which the sounds of someone finishing up the garden were clearly audible.
He looked at his homework again.
Yes, he typed, after a moment. I know.
The TARDIS landed in the back garden.
It always landed in the back garden at Bannerman Road, partly because the front was impractical and partly because Sarah had said, in a tone that brooked no argument, that she was not having that box on her pavement where the neighbours could see it.
The Doctor came around the side of the house with his hands in his pockets and the particular energy of someone who has decided to visit without examining too closely whether visiting is a good idea, which was, if he was honest, how most of his best and worst decisions began.
He rang the bell.
Waited.
Looked at the front garden.
Then looked more carefully.
The bed along the fence was newly turned. Fresh soil. New plants bedding in — begonias, he thought — recently planted, carefully spaced. Someone who knew what they were doing had been at this garden. The rest of it was tidier too, in a way that suggested regular attention rather than occasional crisis management.
He was still looking at it when the door opened.
"Doctor!" Sarah's face did the thing it always did — the brightness, immediate and genuine, the smile that he had always thought was one of the best things about any version of Earth he'd ever visited. "I didn't know you were coming."
"Spontaneous," he said. "You know me."
"I do," she said, in a tone that contained several things, and stood back to let him in.
The house felt —
He noticed it in the hallway first. Something he couldn't immediately name. Not different exactly. Just — fuller somehow. Like a space that had expanded slightly to accommodate something new and had settled into the new shape.
He followed Sarah into the kitchen and sat at the table and accepted tea and talked, because he always talked, and Sarah listened and responded and it was easy the way it was always easy between them, the old rhythm, the particular frequency they'd always been able to find.
But underneath it —
Something was different.
Not Sarah. Sarah was Sarah. Warm and sharp and herself. But there was a quality to how she was that he kept trying to place and couldn't quite. Something settled. Something that wasn't waiting.
He looked around the kitchen while she talked.
A hook by the door that hadn't been there before, or he didn't think it had, at the right height for someone taller than Sarah. A particular arrangement of mugs that suggested a preference he didn't recognize as hers. A tin on the counter — good tea, not the kind she usually bought.
Small things.
The kind of things you didn't notice until you noticed them.
"—and Mr. Smith logged it but the signature had already dissipated by the time UNIT would have gotten there anyway so—"
"Sarah," he said.
She looked at him.
"You seem different," he said.
She blinked. "Different how?"
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
"I'm not sure yet," he said honestly.
She looked at him for a moment with the expression she wore when she was deciding whether to push something.
Then she smiled slightly and said "More tea?" and he said yes and the moment passed.
But he kept looking at the hook by the door.
He heard the gate.
Heard Clyde first, naturally.
"—I'm just saying it's a Bentley. A proper one, a T-Series, late sixties, British Racing Green, do you know what that means—"
"You've said that." Luke. Patient. "Several times."
"Because it keeps being true—"
"Clyde." Rani. "Save it for Sarah Jane."
"I am saving it, I just—"
Sarah had already stood up, already smiling, going to the door — not because she'd heard the gate but because she'd heard them, and she knew the sound of them coming home.
The Doctor followed her to the hallway.
The front door opened.
Clyde saw him first. "Oh — Doctor! You're here! Did you see the Bentley? Please tell me you saw the Bentley—"
"In a moment," the Doctor said, because he was looking past Clyde.
Alistair came through the door last, because he'd stopped to make sure the gate latched properly behind him. He was wearing — not what the Doctor would have expected. Good trousers, yes, but casual ones. A dark green jumper over an open collar. His cane in his right hand and a shopping bag in his left, the heaviest one the Doctor suspected, distributed with the automatic efficiency of someone who had worked out a system.
He looked at the Doctor.
The Doctor looked at him.
"Brigadier," the Doctor said.
"Doctor," Alistair said.
Thirty years of that exchange. The same warmth underneath it that had always been there.
But around it —
Luke had taken the shopping bag from Alistair's hand without being asked, the smooth accommodation of someone who knew exactly when to do that and how to do it without making it a thing. Alistair had let him, the way you let someone do something they've learned to do, without comment or gratitude because it didn't require either anymore.
Natural. Habitual.
The Doctor filed this carefully.
"You're here," Sarah said to Alistair, with the tone of someone who had expected this and was pleased about it.
"I said I'd come by," he said.
"You did." She was already moving back toward the kitchen. "The Doctor's here, spontaneous visit."
"So I see." Alistair looked at the Doctor with an expression of mild, genuine warmth. "Good to see you Doctor."
"And you," the Doctor said.
He meant it. He always meant it with Alistair. That was rather the problem.
The kitchen rearranged itself around the new number of people with the ease of a space that was used to this.
Luke put the shopping away, knowing where things went. Rani filled the kettle because it needed doing. Clyde sat at the table and began his full account of the Bentley for Sarah Jane's benefit, which she received with the expression of someone who had heard the beginning of this several times and was fond of it anyway.
Alistair moved through the kitchen with the ease of someone who knew it. Not taking over — Sarah was there, it was her kitchen — but at home in it. Checking what was in the refrigerator with the air of someone making a decision. Finding the right shelf without looking.
The Doctor sat at the table next to Clyde and watched.
"—T-Series, yeah? Four door saloon, that's not a car you just have—"
"Clyde," Sarah said.
"I know, I know." He subsided. Briefly. "It's just a really good car."
"It is a good car," Alistair said, from somewhere behind the refrigerator door, in the tone of a man who has heard this several times and is not displeased by it.
Clyde pointed at him. "See. He knows."
The Doctor watched Sarah smile at this. Not the brightness she'd given him at the door — something quieter than that. The smile of someone watching something that pleases them in a way they've gotten used to being pleased.
He looked at Alistair, who had emerged from the refrigerator and was looking at what he'd found with a focused expression.
"Have you eaten?" Alistair said, to Sarah.
"I had something earlier."
He looked at her.
"I had a biscuit," she said.
"Mm."
He began assembling things on the counter with the calm of a man who has had this exchange before and knows how it ends.
The Doctor looked at the hook by the door.
Alistair's jacket was on it.
He hadn't seen him put it there. It had just — happened, at some point in the process of coming in and putting down the bag and checking the refrigerator. An automatic thing. A thing you did when you knew where things went.
The Doctor looked at Sarah.
Who was talking to Rani about something, laughing at something Clyde had said, half watching Alistair from the corner of her eye in the way you watched someone you'd gotten used to watching.
Oh, the Doctor thought.
That was what was different.
Not Sarah exactly. Not anything he could have pointed to in the first ten minutes before the gate had opened.
Just —
She wasn't waiting for anything.
He hadn't known she was waiting, all this time, until he saw what she looked like when she wasn't