Doctor Who | Coming Home
Mar. 31st, 2008 11:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eponymous_roseTitle: Coming Home
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eponymous_rose
Word Count: 1751
Rating: G
Characters: Sarah Jane Smith, Luke Smith, Grace Holloway
Author's Note: Written fortigerkat24 in the Sarah Jane Adventures Ficathon.
Summary: Life as usual on Bannerman Road; Sarah meets an old friend.
There were few things in life that Sarah Jane Smith feared.
After all, when one had traded witticisms with creatures from across the universe, put paid to several historical inaccuracies, and then come home in time to deal with one's taxes, one tended to cultivate a calm and collected demeanour, an air of sophisticated apathy. She scoffed at the monsters under the bed, laughed in the face of all sorts of terrible things, and occasionally had dinner with characters so dubious they'd make most politicians' skin crawl. There was one small matter, though, inconsequential and irrational though it was, that still gave her chills.
Unexpected visitors when the house wasn't clean.
Reaching past a pile of books to swipe at a still bigger pile of dust, she realised that she was becoming her mother, really, all neat this and tidy that, all let's make a good impression, and that wasn't her at all. It was strange to care so much about something so small - after all, it wasn't as though Grace would be offended by a mess, given the sorts of things she saw in the operating room on a daily basis - but she wanted to show, just this once, that she'd managed to keep things together, everything in its place, that she was doing just fine.
"Can I vacuum in here as well, Mum?" Luke called from the dining room.
He loved cleaning - of course he did - and that made it all the more strange, because, like so many things with Luke, what had previously been an onerous chore was actually becoming a bit fun; she'd already caught herself whistling as she swept the kitchen floor. "Yes," she said, and laughed, "you can clean wherever you like."
With an energetic roar, the vacuum came back to life, gave a horrendous creaking noise, and the lights flickered ominously.
"Luke?" The panic that stole into her voice was irrational, she knew, but she couldn't help a sigh of relief as she dashed round the corner and spotted Luke, unharmed, trying to extricate the lamp's cord from where it had become entangled in the vacuum.
"Sorry, Mum," he said, with such a miserable tone of voice that she couldn't help laughing.
"No harm done," she said. "Tell you what - I'll sort out this mess and you can go back and finish the dusting. All right?"
"Okay," he said, and paused. "Mum, Clyde and Maria are going to the cinema tonight, and they wanted me to come along."
"It's already past seven. How late are they going?" Sarah said, and winced as the vacuum's rollers pulled the lamp cord deeper still.
Luke cleared his throat. "Half-ten," he said.
Sarah paused to gape at him. "Half-ten, and you're going into town alone? Is Alan coming along?"
Luke shrugged, and Sarah felt a sudden surge of relief at his apparent unease; if there was one thing he wasn't preternaturally bright about, it was lying. "He said it was all right."
"And I'll bet Maria's telling her dad that I said it was all right," Sarah sighed, and went over to unplug the vacuum. "This was Clyde's idea, wasn't it?"
With a thoughtful frown, Luke considered the question. "Yes," he decided at last, apparently unable to come up with a better alternative.
Sarah pulled him into an awkward one-armed hug, which he protested with the sort of half-hearted rebellion she knew Clyde had been teaching him. "Sorry," she said, and stroked his hair back out of his eyes; he needed a cut, she realised, his first haircut. "But you understand why I'm nervous, letting you go out alone?"
"You're worried something could happen to us," Luke said, and frowned. "But something could happen to us right now. Wouldn't it make more sense to stay together?"
The doorbell rang; Sarah cast a panicked glance at her watch, realised that it was still running a half-hour slow, and released Luke to go get the door. "We'll have a chat about this later, Luke," she said. "But no cinema, not that late, okay?"
"Okay," said Luke, and started packing away the vacuum cleaner.
Sarah cast a disparaging glance at the half-finished cleanup job, shrugged off the last of her anxieties, and pulled the door open.
Grace didn't look all that much different than she had two years ago, when they'd finally met for the first time after their long e-mail correspondence; there were a few new lines around the eyes, but she still looked radiant, the special sort of cheerful that comes from having seen a hint of the impossible in the mundane. It had been just such an impossibility that had attracted Sarah's attention in the first place - when an article had appeared in a medical journal, a highly controversial and ostensibly hypothetical article about binary vascular systems - she'd known.
"Hello, Sarah Jane," Grace said with a smile, and it took Sarah a moment to reconcile the accent with such a long e-mail correspondence; funny how she'd been ascribing her own tones to it. "How are you?"
"Oh, I'm fine," said Sarah, grinning, and they hugged. "You look exhausted. Was it a good flight?"
Grace pulled a face, dragging her suitcase in behind her. "Is it ever? Really, though, thank you for letting me stay here over the conference. The hotel was booked solid and-" She trailed off, staring over Sarah's shoulder. "Er," she said. "I suppose it's possible I'm just hallucinating after being up for twenty-four hours, but there seems to be a teenaged boy in your dining room."
"Hi," said Luke. "I've put the kettle on for tea."
Sarah grinned. "Grace, I'd like you to meet my son, Luke. Luke, this is Grace."
Grace covered her surprise well enough, shaking Luke's hand with a smile. "Hi," she said. "Your Mum and I have a mutual friend - I'll be sticking around here for a few days at least."
"She told me," said Luke, and extricated his hand. "Is it true you met the Do-"
"Luke, why don't you go check on that tea," Sarah said, and he met her eyes for a second before dashing off. "Let's go to the sitting-room, Grace - the rest of the house is a bit of a mess right now."
"Don't worry about it," Grace said, and Sarah felt a surge of comfort at the familiarity of that ritual; things may change, a hundred billion things, but she'd still get nervous before company came and then feel utterly silly about it.
They sat across the table from each other in an awkward sort of silence. "Er," said Grace, "if you don't mind my asking-"
"It is a bit of a long story," Sarah said, and told it, all of it, the bits about the Bane and the kids and Alan - Grace's eyebrow raised in a significant way when Sarah let slip that he was divorced and therefore available. "Oh, don't you start."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Grace intoned solemnly. "But really, when you said you'd been a bit busy lately, I figured, well, a particularly long newspaper article or something. Not alien invasions, certainly."
"Not exactly the quiet life, is it?" Sarah leaned back and shrugged. "I think I might have forgotten what a quiet life is."
"Good," said Grace. "Because quiet gets downright boring."
They laughed at that, but there was a hint of wistfulness in Grace's expression, and Sarah quickly changed the subject to the other woman's flight, which had apparently featured a world-champion screaming baby and no fewer than twelve giggly girls who screeched with laughter every couple of minutes. "I think I could've swam it and been more comfortable," Grace said with a grimace.
At that moment, Luke wobbled into the room, only half-balancing the tea tray, and Sarah jumped up in time to stabilise it. "I've got it," he protested, and together they set it on the table.
As Sarah poured the tea, Luke sat across from Grace, studying her with a thoroughness that bordered on the scientific - and on the rude, Sarah noted with a wince. To her credit, Grace merely stared back, with a hint of teasing defiance.
"Did you travel with the Doctor?" Luke said finally, leaning forward.
Sarah was prepared to intervene, but Grace's smile only widened. "No," she said, "I didn't go with him, in the end. But do you know what I did?"
Not too long ago, Luke would have made a comment to the effect that he wouldn't have asked her if he already knew, but now he merely shook his head, eyes wide.
"I asked him to come with me," Grace said, and Sarah smiled, darting a glimpse at her son as she poured the last cup of tea. He was frowning - Clyde liked to make comments about hamsters running in their wheels when Luke looked so thoughtful - and finally, he smiled.
"That makes sense," he said. "It's nothing for you to want to see the whole universe, all of time and space, but it would really mean something if he left it all behind."
"Ah," said Sarah, "I'm not sure that's what-"
"Close enough," said Grace, and waved a biscuit at him. "You are perceptive, aren't you?"
Luke nodded, and Sarah resolved to have a word with him about humility at some point in the very near future. "Sorry," he said, "but Mum, can I go to Maria's? I think Clyde's coming by; he sent me a message on my phone."
"All right," said Sarah, "but tell Alan I'm not letting you go into town that late."
He was already on his way out by the time she'd finished speaking; he evidently found their company a bit uncomfortable, though it was difficult to tell with him. "I'll tell you if anything strange happens!" he called, and closed the door behind him.
"Most families just part with a 'goodbye'," Grace noted, raising an eyebrow, and they laughed again. "It's not so much that I regret it, you know," she said, when they'd stopped giggling, and they both knew what she was talking about. "He was too much, all over the place. We would've driven each other absolutely nuts inside a week."
Sarah managed a self-deprecating grin. "Tell me about it," she said. "He can be a bit impossible."
"Yeah," said Grace. "He can."
They sank into a companionable sort of silence, then, ruminating on the strangeness of ordinary things, and wondering at the adventures yet to come.
Author:
eponymous_roseWord Count: 1751
Rating: G
Characters: Sarah Jane Smith, Luke Smith, Grace Holloway
Author's Note: Written for
tigerkat24 in the Sarah Jane Adventures Ficathon.Summary: Life as usual on Bannerman Road; Sarah meets an old friend.
There were few things in life that Sarah Jane Smith feared.
After all, when one had traded witticisms with creatures from across the universe, put paid to several historical inaccuracies, and then come home in time to deal with one's taxes, one tended to cultivate a calm and collected demeanour, an air of sophisticated apathy. She scoffed at the monsters under the bed, laughed in the face of all sorts of terrible things, and occasionally had dinner with characters so dubious they'd make most politicians' skin crawl. There was one small matter, though, inconsequential and irrational though it was, that still gave her chills.
Unexpected visitors when the house wasn't clean.
Reaching past a pile of books to swipe at a still bigger pile of dust, she realised that she was becoming her mother, really, all neat this and tidy that, all let's make a good impression, and that wasn't her at all. It was strange to care so much about something so small - after all, it wasn't as though Grace would be offended by a mess, given the sorts of things she saw in the operating room on a daily basis - but she wanted to show, just this once, that she'd managed to keep things together, everything in its place, that she was doing just fine.
"Can I vacuum in here as well, Mum?" Luke called from the dining room.
He loved cleaning - of course he did - and that made it all the more strange, because, like so many things with Luke, what had previously been an onerous chore was actually becoming a bit fun; she'd already caught herself whistling as she swept the kitchen floor. "Yes," she said, and laughed, "you can clean wherever you like."
With an energetic roar, the vacuum came back to life, gave a horrendous creaking noise, and the lights flickered ominously.
"Luke?" The panic that stole into her voice was irrational, she knew, but she couldn't help a sigh of relief as she dashed round the corner and spotted Luke, unharmed, trying to extricate the lamp's cord from where it had become entangled in the vacuum.
"Sorry, Mum," he said, with such a miserable tone of voice that she couldn't help laughing.
"No harm done," she said. "Tell you what - I'll sort out this mess and you can go back and finish the dusting. All right?"
"Okay," he said, and paused. "Mum, Clyde and Maria are going to the cinema tonight, and they wanted me to come along."
"It's already past seven. How late are they going?" Sarah said, and winced as the vacuum's rollers pulled the lamp cord deeper still.
Luke cleared his throat. "Half-ten," he said.
Sarah paused to gape at him. "Half-ten, and you're going into town alone? Is Alan coming along?"
Luke shrugged, and Sarah felt a sudden surge of relief at his apparent unease; if there was one thing he wasn't preternaturally bright about, it was lying. "He said it was all right."
"And I'll bet Maria's telling her dad that I said it was all right," Sarah sighed, and went over to unplug the vacuum. "This was Clyde's idea, wasn't it?"
With a thoughtful frown, Luke considered the question. "Yes," he decided at last, apparently unable to come up with a better alternative.
Sarah pulled him into an awkward one-armed hug, which he protested with the sort of half-hearted rebellion she knew Clyde had been teaching him. "Sorry," she said, and stroked his hair back out of his eyes; he needed a cut, she realised, his first haircut. "But you understand why I'm nervous, letting you go out alone?"
"You're worried something could happen to us," Luke said, and frowned. "But something could happen to us right now. Wouldn't it make more sense to stay together?"
The doorbell rang; Sarah cast a panicked glance at her watch, realised that it was still running a half-hour slow, and released Luke to go get the door. "We'll have a chat about this later, Luke," she said. "But no cinema, not that late, okay?"
"Okay," said Luke, and started packing away the vacuum cleaner.
Sarah cast a disparaging glance at the half-finished cleanup job, shrugged off the last of her anxieties, and pulled the door open.
Grace didn't look all that much different than she had two years ago, when they'd finally met for the first time after their long e-mail correspondence; there were a few new lines around the eyes, but she still looked radiant, the special sort of cheerful that comes from having seen a hint of the impossible in the mundane. It had been just such an impossibility that had attracted Sarah's attention in the first place - when an article had appeared in a medical journal, a highly controversial and ostensibly hypothetical article about binary vascular systems - she'd known.
"Hello, Sarah Jane," Grace said with a smile, and it took Sarah a moment to reconcile the accent with such a long e-mail correspondence; funny how she'd been ascribing her own tones to it. "How are you?"
"Oh, I'm fine," said Sarah, grinning, and they hugged. "You look exhausted. Was it a good flight?"
Grace pulled a face, dragging her suitcase in behind her. "Is it ever? Really, though, thank you for letting me stay here over the conference. The hotel was booked solid and-" She trailed off, staring over Sarah's shoulder. "Er," she said. "I suppose it's possible I'm just hallucinating after being up for twenty-four hours, but there seems to be a teenaged boy in your dining room."
"Hi," said Luke. "I've put the kettle on for tea."
Sarah grinned. "Grace, I'd like you to meet my son, Luke. Luke, this is Grace."
Grace covered her surprise well enough, shaking Luke's hand with a smile. "Hi," she said. "Your Mum and I have a mutual friend - I'll be sticking around here for a few days at least."
"She told me," said Luke, and extricated his hand. "Is it true you met the Do-"
"Luke, why don't you go check on that tea," Sarah said, and he met her eyes for a second before dashing off. "Let's go to the sitting-room, Grace - the rest of the house is a bit of a mess right now."
"Don't worry about it," Grace said, and Sarah felt a surge of comfort at the familiarity of that ritual; things may change, a hundred billion things, but she'd still get nervous before company came and then feel utterly silly about it.
They sat across the table from each other in an awkward sort of silence. "Er," said Grace, "if you don't mind my asking-"
"It is a bit of a long story," Sarah said, and told it, all of it, the bits about the Bane and the kids and Alan - Grace's eyebrow raised in a significant way when Sarah let slip that he was divorced and therefore available. "Oh, don't you start."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Grace intoned solemnly. "But really, when you said you'd been a bit busy lately, I figured, well, a particularly long newspaper article or something. Not alien invasions, certainly."
"Not exactly the quiet life, is it?" Sarah leaned back and shrugged. "I think I might have forgotten what a quiet life is."
"Good," said Grace. "Because quiet gets downright boring."
They laughed at that, but there was a hint of wistfulness in Grace's expression, and Sarah quickly changed the subject to the other woman's flight, which had apparently featured a world-champion screaming baby and no fewer than twelve giggly girls who screeched with laughter every couple of minutes. "I think I could've swam it and been more comfortable," Grace said with a grimace.
At that moment, Luke wobbled into the room, only half-balancing the tea tray, and Sarah jumped up in time to stabilise it. "I've got it," he protested, and together they set it on the table.
As Sarah poured the tea, Luke sat across from Grace, studying her with a thoroughness that bordered on the scientific - and on the rude, Sarah noted with a wince. To her credit, Grace merely stared back, with a hint of teasing defiance.
"Did you travel with the Doctor?" Luke said finally, leaning forward.
Sarah was prepared to intervene, but Grace's smile only widened. "No," she said, "I didn't go with him, in the end. But do you know what I did?"
Not too long ago, Luke would have made a comment to the effect that he wouldn't have asked her if he already knew, but now he merely shook his head, eyes wide.
"I asked him to come with me," Grace said, and Sarah smiled, darting a glimpse at her son as she poured the last cup of tea. He was frowning - Clyde liked to make comments about hamsters running in their wheels when Luke looked so thoughtful - and finally, he smiled.
"That makes sense," he said. "It's nothing for you to want to see the whole universe, all of time and space, but it would really mean something if he left it all behind."
"Ah," said Sarah, "I'm not sure that's what-"
"Close enough," said Grace, and waved a biscuit at him. "You are perceptive, aren't you?"
Luke nodded, and Sarah resolved to have a word with him about humility at some point in the very near future. "Sorry," he said, "but Mum, can I go to Maria's? I think Clyde's coming by; he sent me a message on my phone."
"All right," said Sarah, "but tell Alan I'm not letting you go into town that late."
He was already on his way out by the time she'd finished speaking; he evidently found their company a bit uncomfortable, though it was difficult to tell with him. "I'll tell you if anything strange happens!" he called, and closed the door behind him.
"Most families just part with a 'goodbye'," Grace noted, raising an eyebrow, and they laughed again. "It's not so much that I regret it, you know," she said, when they'd stopped giggling, and they both knew what she was talking about. "He was too much, all over the place. We would've driven each other absolutely nuts inside a week."
Sarah managed a self-deprecating grin. "Tell me about it," she said. "He can be a bit impossible."
"Yeah," said Grace. "He can."
They sank into a companionable sort of silence, then, ruminating on the strangeness of ordinary things, and wondering at the adventures yet to come.
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 06:03 am (UTC)(I wince on behalf of Luke, but that's just ye olde teenage rebellion kicking in, probably.)
I was hoping for a bit more balance between Sarah Jane and Grace- when I read through, it seemed that Grace is pretty immersed in the SJA world, although yes, it's from Sarah Jane's point of view. Er, hmm.
Any plans to write Sarah Jane's companions? Along with Maria's dad, of course. >.>
no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 09:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 10:19 am (UTC)This was good... And a nice twist, bringing Grace into it...
no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 01:38 pm (UTC)There's a lack in fics with Grace 'cos of her apparent unpopularity. Which is rather depressing.
Unexpected visitors when the house wasn't clean.
Sounds like my mum. xD
no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 08:45 pm (UTC)