"Doctor..."
Melanie stopped in the doorway. She closed her eyes, counted to ten, opened her eyes again, and, alas! Nothing changed.
"Doctor!" she stepped over a pile of magazines, gray with age, to look behind the well-loved library armchairs, right now barely visible from underneath a mound of leaflets, almost as loudly coloured as the Doctor's coat. She found a box of old-fashioned, blank catalogue cards. There even was a cover, abandoned underneath the chair.
"Are you in here?"
Melanie knew from experience how enormous the library was. She also knew the Doctor to venture into this jungle of paper so deep he wouldn't be able to hear her call. Then again, it was normally quite tidy, in a slightly dusty, oddly logical sort of way that considered "Night Flight" to belong with poetry. Now the place seemed to have been swept through by a hurricane. Books were hanging open on the edges of shelves. One slid down to the floor with a heavy thud.
Mel walked between the shelves, calling softly "Doctor! Doctor! Do-Aah!"
She narrowly avoided hitting her head by crashing into the heavy shelving unit arms first. It hurt, anyhow. Ow.
"I hope there's nothing broken" she muttered, scrambling up to a more or less sitting position. "Ow..."
The book she tripped on was right there on the floor, a weapons-grade tome in sensible, gray covers.
The Doctor had a healthy respect for books. People are something else, Mel thought with an involuntary little smile, but books? She had learned to go into her own mental space whenever he turned the conversation to literature, just nodding from time to time, because otherwise she'd be subject to a much longer and more detailed lecture on how "someday you'll ignore me, walk into a swamp and get eaten by a mattress." This mental image always cracked her up, her cracking up annoyed the Doctor, making him mangle the navigation, so in the end they did end up on a planet of sentient baling twine or something. Okay, maybe not twine. Something.
Mel shook her head, trying to focus on the immediately useful. If the Doctor is not responding (which doesn't really mean anything in and of itself), and he left the library an utter mess, which he normally hates, it stands to reason that he left in a hurry. In other words – he's not here.
Unless he's there, just unable to answer from beneath a heap of paper. Mel sighed softly, pulling herself up. She decided to take the methodical approach: divide the library into zones, then evaluate the probability of the Doctor being in each zone, and search them in an orderly way.
Which was when she realised she didn't know the floor plan, and had no idea what it was that the Doctor had been searching for – with his eclectic interests guessing could take ages. The library didn't have its own microclimate, true, but Melanie had more than once exhausted herself in the search for an exceptionally well-hidden book. Besides, the TARDIS had much stranger things on board than a hypothetical air conditioning system. The method, in any case, was not suitable for finding the Doctor. Wait. Where have I seen him lately?
Since there wasn't any furniture nearby, Mel sat on the console room floor. Her knees felt like after a particularly hard training.
"Let this be a lesson." The Doctor closed the doors before walking up to the console. He had a steady, dignified gait. Not a trace of breathlessness. "When in Rome-"
Mel scowled. "All I said was they could use some new cookbooks! Healthier ones!"
"Oh, is this why you smashed the light crystal?"
Seen through the glass column, the Doctor's grin looked too ridiculous to make her angry. Which is why she focused on massaging her leg.
"I didn't even have a chance to see the catalogue" the Doctor's tone was exactly the sort a professional actor would use for stating that the rest was silence. "You could have told me about your library phobia! We'd-"
"Oh, stop it. We've been in eighteen of those this week."
"Oh?"
"I remember. The Congress in 1871, Florana, Vogosphere-"
"I know, memory of an elephant" the Doctor snorted. Mel rolled her eyes. A rainbow-coloured coat flashed on the edge of her vision, then the engines started, with their soothing, wheezing groan.
Mel pushed herself upwards.
"Going to the next library?"
"Since you've made it impossible to use this one-"
She shook her head. "Alright. I'll take a bath in the meantime. Call me when we get there."
Right, thought Mel. One thing at a time. I was in the bath… for how long? Long. An hour? The Doctor never knocked, didn't make a noise outside, like he usually does when I stay in the bath for too long, so he was doing something else!
She examined this reasoning again, only to slap her own forehead. Of course he was doing something else, just look around you! Try again.
He had been looking for something. Information. It wasn't in the TARDIS databanks, that's where he'd look first, so it must be something obscure. Then again, he searched his own library as nineteenth in a row.
In search of inspiration, Mel reached for the gray-bound tome at her feet. A cookbook. Nineteen century. With a scowl she shelved the book. Eggs from the entire coop of hens, and enough butter to fry a pig whole. How did these people even survive? Ugh. Alright, so the Doctor either found what he was looking for, or didn't. If he did, and was just looking for it from curiosity, he'd come and brag, which means he needed the information for something. "TARDIS maintenance for dummies"? If he didn't find it, though, he'd be in another library by now. Either way, Mel decided, I have to go to the console room.
She liked the console room, its smooth, shiny whiteness, the hexagonal console with a distinct Meccano feel to it, the wooden coat hanger, entirely mundane and therefore the weirdest thing there. Right now there was an eye-offending coat hung on it, which meant the Doctor was aboard. Good.
Mel pulled the rocking chair closer to the door. If the Doctor isn't dying somewhere outside, sooner or later he's sure to come to the console room. All she needed to do was wait. Melanie rocked gently on the chair, listening for the nice, squeaky sound, but heard another, very soft, instead. She dug her heels into the floor. The chair moaned.
"Tsk!" Mel clicked her tongue. She listened intently.
Again! And a metallic "dong", just outside. Then another. Where were they coming from?
Suddenly Mel noticed a strange smell in the console room, a sweetish-greasy-ish, slightly acrid, quite unlike the usual mixture of tea, paper and TARDIS oil. She knew the smell – she just couldn't place it at all. Another melodious bang turned her attention.
"Aha!" she jumped off the chair. The TARDIS door was half-opened, held in place with a wedge, even, which explained the smells and sounds. But why… Melanie walked to the door, tense like a tiger. She looked out.
"Oh, this calls for tar and feathers!"
"Awake already, Mel?" The Doctor flashed his teeth at her.
"I wasn't asleep." In the smoke-filled room he shone like a lantern, wrapped in a crazy patchwork apron, his hair white with flour. He had flour on his nose and on his hands, which held a frying pan the size of a wheel.
And he was grinning like an optimist shark.
Mel cleared her throat from the sticky smoke. A door squeaked nearby.
"I've been looking for you all day" she rasped, finger poking the Doctor's chest.
"Oh, dear! You never said you were bringing a friend!"
Mel spun around, surprised.
"I'll help" she muttered, gently taking the basket full of eggs from the old lady's tiny hands.
The old lady tottered away into the smoke, while Mel glared at the Doctor, as darkly as she could despite her eyes watering.
"What's going on?"
The Doctor, smiling serenely, gave his frying pan a sharp shake, sending its contents briefly into the air. "Aha! Perfect! It's in the wrist, you see."
Mel folded her hands, put the basket down and then folded them properly.
"Is the lady an alien?"
"She is for me. Earthling."
"We're not getting invaded by bug-eyed creatures from the planet Zog?"
There was a merry sparkle in the Doctor's eyes. "Mel!"
"So what are you doing here?"
"Yes, yes, my dearies." The old lady said, carrying a tablecloth in. Mel unthinkingly went over to lend her a hand, her eyes never leaving the Doctor, who was smiling and happier than she'd never seen him.
"Done!" he announced before putting the last of the small, golden-brown pancakes on a large plate. "Lovely ladies, the dinner is served!"
The hostess turned rosy pink, while Melanie sighed.
These were rather nice pancakes, delicate and mildly sweet. Mel, who sat down promising herself to charge the Doctor five minutes on the training bike apiece, quickly lost count. His and her own.
"Mmmm..." the Doctor, satisfied, pushed his plate away.
"Cup of tea?" without waiting for an answer, the old lady went to the stove. Mel seized the chance to whisper into Doctor's ear. "Tell me?"
"Tell you what?"
"What are we doing here?"
"You didn't do much. Myself, I've cleaned the chimney, fixed the door hinges, but first and foremost I've aquired an invaluable piece of data."
Gotcha.
Mel straightened. "Was it what you were looking for?"
"Exactly this."
"Is it secret? Top secret and crucial to the fate of the world?"
He gave her a mysterious smile.
"Tell me!"
Cups jingled. The Doctor stood up to help their hostess carry her heavy tray.
"Thank you, dear boy. I hope you'll come and see me again."
"With pleasure."
"Even if you make better cheese pancakes now than I do." The old lady beamed.
"Whenever I see a frying pan, I'll think of you" the Doctor promised merrily, "Of you and your pancake recipe, the best in the universe!"