Arcadia's Love (Book TWO)

Goodbye Song

Another apology... Izzi xx

The Doctor:

Sarah... She was drawing the future, how was she doing that? Seraphina, Jenny and Melody all had that ability through Time Lord genetics, the girls through their mother, but Sarah? How was she doing it?

And she was smart, so, so smart, far too smart for someone from the Victorian era, yet she wasn't Phi regenerated. She couldn't be, only one heart, and no Sarani in her human blood. Lady Sarah Lake and Priestess Seraphina Pond, were different people.

But I needed Sarah to pretend, just this once.

I found her in the Library, doodling away on a new sketch pad, the intricate Architectural Reconfiguration System that I hadn't shown her yet, though I don't think that even she understood what she was drawing, just absently moving the pencil on the page. Then she looked up and saw me. "Hey, Love, you OK?"

There was nothing right about what I had to do next. "D, do you remember, when I said I had daughters with Seraphina?" She nodded. "Melody and Jenny. Jenny is happily living with her boyfriend Luke on earth, but Melody. Well, she has something she needs to do. And we need to give her a good night before hand."

"Does she know that her mums..." She trailed off, and I knew what she was going to say. Dead. 

"No, not to my knowledge. But I don't want her to know. Her mum was the only thing that kept her going for so many years. This is her, this is her last night of freedom, Sarah. And... I want you to pretend to be her mum, just regenerated." I'd already explained regeneration to her, so I was hoping that it would be fine. And River knew that last time her mother regenerated she lost her memory for a while and that this time they just weren't coming back. "Just for one night."

Sarah was staring at me, her white eyes full of shock and confusion at the prospect of pretending to be the woman she had taken the place of in my hearts. "Doctor... I can't. She deserves to know, if she's... If she's going to die, then she deserves to know that she'll be meeting her mother on the Other Side, instead of being alone."

"There is no Other Side, only darkness, my Lady." i smiled sadly, tucking a strand of her long blue hair behind her ear as I remembered what River, my Melly, told us just before she was downloaded.

"Funny thing is, this means you've always known how I was going to die. All the time we've been together, you both knew I was coming here. The last time I saw you, the real you, the future you, I mean, you turned up on my doorstep, with a new haircut and a suit. Alice, you had just regenerated and had blue hair! You took me to Darillium to see the Singing Towers. What a night that was. The Towers sang, and you both cried. Oh, how you cried..." 

When Phi was still Alice, and we were at the Library with Donna, brilliant Donna. A simpler time when Alice was human, and still my little firey princess. When we didn't know that River was our Melody, and that we were going to lose her. Or that I would lose Seraphina for good this time, meaning that I was alone for a while. So I fell for another human, though this time... I really loved her.

But Sarah. She had the blue hair River was talking about, and I knew that Sarah would cry no matter what, because this was someone's last night, and she hated death, and violence. Sarah would pretend to be Seraphina, for my Song. 

"Sarah, you know I wouldn't ask if it didn't mean something. Melody is my daughter, and I already know she thinks you to be her mother in... in her final moments. Please, please do this for me..." I whispered, taking her hands and kissing them lightly, seeing her white eyes already full of tears at the fact mine were too. "Just one night, and then she is gone, she is buried with my daughter."