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"Daleks," Sarah Jane says, and shivers.
Harry's had the usual UNIT briefing about the metal pepperpots, knows what a threat they are and what they're capable of. In theory.
Theory, as he's been learning repeatedly this week, is quite a bit different than practice.
"I'm afraid so," the Doctor says briefly, picking his way over Skaro's stony ground. "Their genesis, in fact. We might be able to stop them here and now- always assuming we live that long, mind you."
The whistle of gunfire in the distance is a bleak suggestion of what might be awaiting them. "Are you all right, old girl?"
Sarah Jane snorts at him, pulls her yellow slicker about herself more firmly. How she's scrambling over the rocks in that footwear is beyond him, but he supposes she's had practice. She and the Doctor both seem so strangely at home in the wildest environments, however hostile.
"Stop them how, Doctor? Kill them?"
"...possibly. Or possibly making them nicer. It all depends."
"Oh, come on. What can the Time Lords expect you to do, turn all the Daleks into lollipop ladies?"
It has the shape of a joke, but Sarah Jane looks deadly serious and the Doctor's voice is grimmer than Harry's ever heard it. Not for the first time he feels out of his depth.
"So that's what we're doing," he ventures, almost wishing for the reassurance of a sharply barked order. Way to make a man miss his naval days.
"Of course not," the Doctor says, abruptly pulling up short and flashing that delightful grin of his. "We're going to find a nice cosy foxhole and wait out the night, see if it's less foggy in the morning- I'm sure you two must be exhausted."
"I was looking forward to a good night's rest," Sarah says. "Even in that ridiculous trundle bed- why can't I ever find the same bedroom twice?"
"Can't you? I'll have to have a word with the TARDIS about that..."
"I say. It has bedrooms too?"
"Quite nice ones," Sarah Jane says. "With bubble bath laid on. Rather preferable to some dirty old foxhole."
It's on the tip of Harry's tongue to press the question- whether she and the Doctor ever happen to be sharing said bubble bath, whether he's invited if they ever make it back. That train of thought is what tempted him into a blue box that all of UNIT agrees is downright cursed.
He settles for blushing instead.
*****
The foxhole they do end up in can hardly be described as cosy, but there aren't any corpses or freakish slime monsters in it, so good enough. Sarah nods tiredly to the Doctor's inquisitive look.
For all that she travels with a Time Lord, time is an increasingly muddled abstract these days. How long ago was the Ark, how long ago was Kettlewell's robot? Impossible to say. She leans against a crumbling dirt wall, too exhausted even to help.
"Sarah, you're not afraid of needles?"
"No." She opens her eyes, studies Harry suspiciously. "Why?"
"Well, I do have a sedative that could help you sleep. UNIT stocks some very strong stuff."
"That might have come in useful back on Nerva," the Doctor muses, fiddling with a lantern. "To subdue Noah, perhaps."
"Steady on. I never thought to use my medical kit as a weapon."
For that Harry gets a toothy smile- this Doctor's much more eager, she's noticed, not a bit of standoffishness about him. The lantern comes on, throwing off very little light but a delicious warmth that's all the more welcome after the fog outside.
"Anyhow, I'll sleep like the dead," Sarah Jane says. "No fear there."
"Just in case you need looking after," Harry says quietly. "I mean, Styre torturing you and everything, that couldn't have been easy."
"All in a day's work." If she didn't believe that, she wouldn't be here; and how could she ever give up travelling?
He looks incredulous, but doesn't press the issue. "Then let me give you something for shock, at least."
"If it makes you happy." The sooner he stops fussing the sooner she can sleep.
Harry nods, rolls up her sleeve, wipes her skin with a bit of dark liquid. There's undeniable pleasure in his softly professional touch; it's been a while since she slept with someone her own body temperature.
"Brandy?"
"It works on sailors."
He produces a surprisingly futuristic white device, flourishes it, and in so doing manages to stab the Doctor.
"Ow! Really, Harry, must you be so unfailingly clumsy?"
"...sorry about that. Ah. If I remember Doctor Shaw's chart correctly, the cocktail shouldn't hurt you."
The Doctor sucks his wrist indignantly. "Glucose? I think jelly babies are rather more fun."
"And a few vitamins and things," Harry says apologetically. He reloads the gizmo, does her next and then himself. It does hurt, but only for a moment- which she teases the Doctor about- while Harry keeps saying sorry.
It ought to be miserable, really it should. She's trapped who knows how many miles away from home, with alien weaponry threatening to kill them any minute and no way out until they've completed an impossible task.
They're eating jelly babies and snuggling under seventeen yards of scarf while watching an alien sky turn colors unimagined on Earth, and there's nothing that could ever match this in her entire life. Tension and curiosity singing through her, just as always.
"You did that on purpose," she whispers to Harry.
"He might be the Doctor, but I'm still a doctor, you know."
Sarah Jane nods and quietly giggles herself to sleep.
*****
Not again, not again, not again.
They've taken his TARDIS away and trapped him in a slice of spacetime so narrow it's claustrophobic, exiled to nightmare-
"Doctor?"
He breathes out, calms down. The new body helps, as does his awareness that nothing's really the matter in their dark hidey-hole. To say nothing of Sarah's warmly intimate concern.
"Sorry, Sarah. Go back to sleep, it's all right."
"I won't tell Harry, but you've been crying." She wipes his cheek with a corner of spotted handkerchief.
Ah. The trouble and the glory of a journalist, she's so inquisitive. And good at drawing conclusions.
"They knew I've improved the TARDIS defences, so they had to snatch me when they had the chance. But there was no reason for them to take you two as well." Is his voice steady? More or less.
Not far away, someone is machine-gunning people who scream in agony. He hopes they aren't so close as all that.
"Well, I wouldn't want to be left behind in the TARDIS kicking my heels. And Harry's a brick really, you know we'll help you all we can."
"I don't think the Time Lords sent you two here to help me."
Sarah looks puzzled. "What for, then?"
"Memento mori," the Doctor says brutally. "To die, Sarah. To remind me of all the victims the Daleks will exterminate if I don't succeed."
"All right," she says eventually, and her voice is calm as ever. "We'll just have to do our best not to die. You know, I have a better track record at that than you do."
He does laugh at that, her sense of humour that's sometimes more than a match for his. She presses the advantage both literally and figuratively, as only Sarah knows how to do, until they wake Harry and it becomes a trio. Humans have such a delightful ability to live for the moment.
And privately, in the back of his mind, the Doctor makes a small bet with himself. If Harry and Sarah make it through this alive, all of Skaro's horrors and battlefields...
well, then perhaps there's worse than Daleks in the universe after all.