Du Liebes Kind, Komm, Geh Mit Mir by Lyricwritesprose (All Ages)

[beatrice_otter]

Fandom: DOCTOR WHO, SARAH JANE ADVENTURES,
Characters: Maria, Sarah Jane Smith, Four
Length: 12035 words
Author on LJ: lyricwrites
Author Website: Teaspoon,
Why this must be read:
Some time after she moved to America, Maria Jackson deals with mysterious temporal events and her mentor Sarah Jane's past.

Written for the girlsavesboy ficathon, this is a charming treat.  Maria, a character from the Sarah Jane Adventures, moved to America with her Dad mid-way through the show.  In this story, we see her still saving the world from alien invasions.  Although Four is there as well and provides assistance and instructions, Maria was the only one who could save the day.  And she does.  It's a well-written and interesting adventure with a dash of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimeyness.  It's also creepy enough in places for a story to post on Halloween.

The first time it happened, I was on the school bus.

American school buses aren't as cute and–I don't know, cartoony–as they seem on the telly. They really do look just like you think, bright yellow and unmistakable, and all the other drivers are supposed to be extra careful around them. They even have little stop signs on their sides to stop oncoming traffic. But on the inside, they're all hard brown seats and unbelievable racket. Every five minutes our bus driver would yell for the boys in the back to shut up, and every five minutes, like clockwork, they ignored her.

It was the worst environment in the world to help my new friend Yoko with her maths, but I was trying anyway. "It's just that Mr. Jankowski is useless at explaining," I said, as loudly and clearly as I could without shouting. "My dad showed me how to work this one. It's like a computer program; you just sort of plug numbers in, and the one on top tells you where to stop–"

And then everything did. Stop, I mean.

I pitched forward and hit the seat in front of us. For a second, I thought the bus had hit something.

For another second, I thought I'd concussed myself and gone deaf somehow. I couldn't hear anything. It was beyond quiet. The only thing I could hear–the only sound in the entire world–was me, breathing.

I sat back up.

Yoko was frowning at her textbook, mouth slightly opened as if to say something. Frozen mid-motion, as if someone had pressed pause for the entire world.

I looked around, and it was everyone. The boy across the aisle from me, who was trying to ride the bus with his trombone case–stopped. The ginger boy who was leaning over the back of his seat, about to poke his shoulder–stopped. A pencil that had fallen out of someone's knapsack–stopped mid-air.

It wasn't just the bus. Outside the window, the cars and pedestrians and birds were frozen too. We were passing the hospital, and I could see a helicopter hanging near the roof, propeller blades motionless.

It sounds a bit wrong to say that there was a thrill underneath the creepy tingle running down my spine, but there was. Last year–last bizarre, marvellous year–I'd found out that the universe is gigantic and strange and wondrous and alive. There are dangers that would scare you senseless, myths made real, ancient evil creatures making devil's bargains for other peoples' lives–but there are also people who sing in color and beings that speak only through dance and lost tourists who just happen to be able to fly. This had to be part of that. Time doesn't freeze on its own, humans can't do it, so who does that leave? From what I had seen, a whole galaxy's worth of options.

I stood up cautiously. I didn't see anything moving, but I was ready to duck the moment I saw anything the least bit gun-shaped. The first thing to do was figure out whether whoever-it-was was hostile or not. My heart was pounding and part of my brain was screaming, of course they're hostile, this is spooky!  Being scary wasn't a guarantee that something was bad, though. Last year, I'd met someone who looked like a giant spider with huge mandibles and a language made of hissing and clicking noises. He'd swapped Sarah Jane about a carload of useful alien tech for an iPod full of Bach concertos. Ethnomusicologist, he'd told me. (Mr. Smith's translation gave him a ridiculously posh accent.) He travelled the universe collecting music from all different cultures and making comparisons among them, to figure out who had been influenced by alien traders and visitors. He said that he thought human larvae were extraordinarily charming and polite and if I couldn't pronounce his full name, I could call him George.

When in doubt, act unafraid. "Hello?" I said.

The air sounded–I don't know. There's a difference between the silence in an empty auditorium and a closet, and this wasn't either of them. It was–deader than that.

I really wished I hadn't thought of it like that.

Whatever was happening, I thought, it didn't have to be centered around the bus. Things could be frozen for miles around. I stepped into the aisle.

And that was when everything started again, with a lurch. I had to grab onto the seats on either side of me to keep from falling. Everybody was shouting again, and it hit me like I'd walked into a wall.

"Maria?" Yoko was looking at me, wide-eyed. "What's the matter? You all right?"

Du Liebes Kind, Komm, Geh Mit Mir