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Story: Looked Up in Perfect Silence at the Stars
Author: Doyle
Rating: All Ages
Word Count: 1978
Author's Summary: “If he’d left me on Earth,” Sarah said, “if he’d had time to take me home, like he’d meant to, before he got dragged back here… everything would have been different. My whole life.” Sarah in the Time War.
Characters/Pairings: Sarah Jane Smith, Romana II
Warnings: None.

Recced because: I appear to have a theme for the week, namely the Time War. I don't really know what to say about this one, the author's summary says it all for me. What if Sarah Jane had been on Gallifrey during the Time War? This fic is your answer and it's fabulous. Like the others I've recced this week, lines and ideas from this continue to knock around my brain months after I first read it and in my book at least, I think that counts for something. I'm sorry to have so little to say but I don't want to give too much away about this one. Please check it out. Oh, I know. I'll let the fic do the talking for me.

“Do you wish you’d let the Doctor take you back to Earth?”

“Sometimes.” Yes: on days when she missed takeaway food and Underground stations and writing on real paper and Christmas at her aunt’s and music and parks and blue skies. No: when she looked around the offices she’d created at the staff she’d trained, or when a Councillor in one of the most powerful races in the universe was ousted from power because she’d been the one to uncover those dealings on the side, or when people forgot themselves and addressed her as ‘Lady’, as if for a moment they’d had the imagination to think a human might be their equal. “If he’d left me on Earth,” Sarah said, “if he’d had time to take me home, like he’d meant to, before he got dragged back here… everything would have been different. My whole life. There’d be a woman on Earth who might be married or have children or be seventy and chasing aliens with UNIT from her zimmerframe. But she wouldn’t be me, this me.”