“Benton?”
“Are you kidding me?” Charley asked with a laugh. “Benton’s a good bloke, but he wouldn’t know which end of a computer was up if you hit him with it.”
“Yates?”
Charley shook her head. “Retired, like the Brigadier. Only he didn’t keep his clearance when he left active duty like the Brigadier did.”
The Doctor grimaced. “And nearly everyone else I knew was down in that room. It doesn’t have to be UNIT: what we need is just someone who understands computers well enough to hack a submarine.”
Well, Charley could think of one person with the computer to pull it off, but she highly doubted she’d much like the idea. She sighed, dropping her head in her hands. They’d been working all night, trying to figure this out. If they didn’t come up with something soon, the UN would finish deliberations and release the codes before they could. “God. Why didn’t we just stay at the Brigadier’s and watch it all on telly?” she moaned.
The Doctor’s head snapped up, just as it had last night when he’d finally figured out what the Slitheen were after. “What did you say?”
Charley started to repeat it, but the Doctor cut her off. He turned to Harriet. “Are there CCTV cameras inside Downing Street?”
Harriet opened and shut her mouth a couple of times. “I…I don’t know. I’ve never noticed any.”
The Doctor grimaced. “What about TV cameras? Reporters? This place was crawling with them earlier.”
“Not anymore, though,” Charley pointed out. “At least, I doubt it. Not with the Slitheen running about out of uniform. Why?”
“You said it yourself: proof.” The Doctor began to pace, his brow furrowed in concentration. “If we could just get some sort of image of the Slitheen in their natural state, broadcast it to the UN, somehow I think it just might be enough to convince them where the real threat lies.”
“But we don’t have a camera,” Harriet pointed out.
“No,” Charley sprang to her feet, reaching for her phone again. “But I know someone who might.”
+++
“You know Sarah Jane?” The Doctor sounded as though he couldn’t quite believe it. “You’re friends with Sarah Jane Smith, and you never told me? Why not?”
Charley covered the phone with one hand and hissed at him, “For the same reason I didn’t tell her when I thought you’d been killed. You’re so bloody brilliant, you figure it out!” She then went back to her call. “Sarah Jane? So, do you think Mr. Smith could pull it off?”
“Oh, I think so,” Sarah Jane answered thoughtfully. “To tell the truth, I’ve never put him to the test quite that way. Hang on.”
Charley heard running footsteps, and then the alien computer’s usual fanfare. She listened as Sarah Jane explained the plan and heard Mr. Smith agree that yes, he could probably manage that.
“He’s zeroing in on Ten Downing Street now,” Sarah Jane said breathlessly as she came back to the phone. “Where did you say they’d be?”
“If they’re waiting on a call from the UN, probably the Prime Minister’s office,” Charley guessed. “That is where the special phone is kept, right?” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I just hope one of them decides to attend this meeting au naturel or we’re back to submarine missiles.”
“Hold on. Hold on, I think we’ve got something.” Another pause, then. “Oh. Oh my. Yes, that’s definitely the Prime Minister’s office, and I’d say those are definitely not humans!”
“Wonderful!” Charley exclaimed, turning to give a thumbs up to the Doctor.
The Doctor took a step closer. “May I?”
Charley handed it over, albeit reluctantly. Of course, she was almost sure that Sarah Jane had probably figured out by now that she was with the Doctor, but she still didn’t know how her friend would react to actually speaking to him for the first time in so many years.
“Sarah? Hello, it’s the Doctor. How’ve you been?” There was a long pause, then he smiled and said. “Good, good. Listen, love to chat, but we’ve got a planet to save. Can your Mr. Smith break the communications lock on this room as well…? Brilliant. Put me on.”
He handed Charley’s phone back to her. “We owe her a visit, for this,” she told him in a voice that brooked no argument.
The Doctor grinned. “Of course. Be lovely to see Sarah Jane again. But not right now.” Then he turned back to the speakerphone on the table, depressing the button that would connect him. “Hello, hello, is this the United Nations? Sorry to interrupt such an important meeting, but I think before you go making any decisions, there’s something you should know…”
+++
“So, that’s it then?” Charley asked as they stood outside Ten Downing Street several hours later, watching while men from UNIT loaded the surviving Slitheen into large laundry trucks at the point of a gun. “No more Slitheen, no more threat of nuclear war?”
“The former, yes. Can never say as to the latter, not with you humans,” the Doctor answered. His arms were folded carelessly across his chest as he looked out at the scene that could have been very different. Reporters were everywhere once again, but somehow in the melee one man in a leather jacket and one blonde girl had been overlooked. Thanks in large part to Ms. Harriet Jones, who was giving probably the best speech of her life to a group of journalists outside the gates.
Charley’s eyes found the MP in question. “Look at her. She’s a natural at all this.”
The Doctor grinned. “I thought I knew the name.”
Charley looked up at him. “Why? Who is she?”
“Harriet Jones, future Prime Minister.” He nodded in her direction. “Elected for three successive terms: the architect of Britain’s Golden Age.”
“Oh!” Charley exclaimed, looking at Harriet with new eyes. “Then I suppose it’s a good thing we didn’t get her killed.”
The Doctor laughed. “S’pose it is.”
+++
It was surprisingly easy to decide what to keep and what to let go of the life she’d built here. Not many clothes went into her one small suitcase; the TARDIS wardrobe was more than sufficient in that department and besides which, many of her own clothes were likely still in there. Toiletries: again, only what the TARDIS couldn’t provide. In the end it came down to a few souvenirs of the life she’d built here, her UNIT credentials (never know when they might come in useful – or get her killed, for that matter, but she was trying to be positive), and one family photo she’d acquired thanks to a generous and extremely open-minded grand-niece.
Charley emerged from the house after bidding Sir Alastair a tearful goodbye – well, tearful on her side, tears weren’t precisely his style – to find the Doctor standing with his back against the TARDIS.
“I’ve told him to go on and sell off the rest and put the money in an account for me,” she explained when the Doctor’s eyes drifted to her rather insignificant luggage. “Since I don’t know when I’ll be back, it seems more reasonable to just start over than to ask him to store it all for me.”
The Doctor didn’t answer, just watched her with a thoughtful frown on his face.
Charley tilted her head to one side and frowned back, concerned. “Doctor, what? What is it?”
“All that time you were here, working for UNIT, not making friends ‘cept for folks that might’ve known me. Were you…” He trailed off with another frown.
“Was I waiting for you, is that what you’re asking?” Charley finished for him.
He looked her dead in the eyes this time. “Yeah.”
“No,” she answered honestly. “I wasn’t waiting for you because I knew you weren’t coming back. I was sure I’d seen you die.” She thought about mentioning that he had, in fact, come back for her, but it had been an earlier him. He clearly didn’t remember that either, though, and she’d expected he wouldn’t. That Doctor had to forget her so her first wouldn’t know he ought to let her die. It was all a muddle, but that was what happened when you spent the early part of your life mixed up with a time traveller.
Either way, she’d been absolutely certain that the Doctor was out of her life forever. All she’d wanted was to live the rest of her life the way he’d taught her, in honour of his memory. “I made do. More than that, I’ve been happy here.”
She looked at him, all in black but for the succession of muted jumpers. So different from her first Doctor, with his silk cravats and velvet frock coats, or her second, with his riot of colours.
She thought about what he’d been through since they separated. A part of her wished she could have been there for him when he’d had to sacrifice his whole world to save the universe. Another part knew if she had, she’d have hated herself for failing to find a way to spare him that awful choice. Because that was her job, had always been her job ever since he’d saved her. She was the one who protected him – from his enemies, from himself – so he could go on doing what he did best, saving the universe. And she was the one who sacrificed him to save the universe if that’s what he asked of her.
Not because he defined her, but because she knew so clearly who she was. She was Charlotte Pollard, the girl who lived when she should have died. The girl who’d nearly un-spun the Web of Time just by existing, until her existence became the thread that tied it back together. The universe had given her one hell of a reprieve. Keeping him safe was just the same as working with UNIT had been: her way of paying it back.
Which only made what she knew she had to say all the harder. “If you really don’t want me along, I’ll stay. I’ll carry on as I have been, doing my bit to protect the Earth. I don’t mind, truly. Just…if I do stay, promise me one thing. Take care of yourself, as well as the universe. She still needs you, you know.”
For a long moment, he didn’t speak. Then, “I almost lost you back there,” the Doctor said quietly. “Twice. And while you were lying there on the floor, unconscious, maybe dying, I remembered something. Something that didn’t fit. You and me in the TARDIS, talking about where to go next: Mafeking, Londinium, the Jovian Fold…”
Charley swallowed hard, blinking back tears. “You remember.”
He smiled at her, and for the first time it felt entirely genuine. “Some things are too good to be forgotten.” The Doctor turned away, but only long enough to open the TARDIS door. “So?”
She hardly dared to hope. “You mean…?”
“I still owe you a thousand year carnival. And seeing as it is a thousand years, I don’t think it’ll much matter if we’re off by a few months.” He grinned and held out a hand. “Well? You coming or not?”
Her past held loosely in one hand, Charley reached out and took hold of her future with the other. “Always.”
