EVENTUALLY MAYBE FOREVER

AN: Hi! The main ideas behind this story is that I never got over Rose leaving, would have loved to see more Ten/Metacrisis interaction and also I can't help but admitting that Clara is lovely. And, um, I could have done without River Song :B This is an attempt to bake these things together and still my restless heart(s). I hope you won't realize the plot too early, welp.

Disclaimer: I don't claim to own anything. Nada.

Chapter 1 - Silence In The Library (Forest Of The Dead)

"So. We weren't just in the neighborhood?"

"Yeah. I kind of, sort of… lied a bit. I got a message on the psychic paper."

"What, it works like some sort of mail?"

"Well. Sometimes a cry for help comes through. Somewhere in space… And time. So what do you think?"

"Huh. 'The Library. Come as soon as you can. I need you and you need me.' Sounds more like a date than a cry for help. Who's it from?"

"No idea."

"Fat lot of good that mail service is!"

.

The room they had ended up in was large and round. Above them was a glass cupule, letting the last rays of daylight shine down on the books lining the walls. The shadow from the wall crept closer with every minute.

"Doctor," Donna breathed and the Doctor felt her touch his arm. "That shadow… It's gone."

That confirmed it. Shadows were moving, lights seemed to be going out. Oh, they were in so much trouble. Whoever had called them here better show up soon, because the Doctor supposed that this would be where he needed them.

"We need to get back to the TARDIS," he said and swallowed hard.

"Why?" Donna asked, terror growing in her eyes as she stepped backwards away from the flickering light in the corridor.

"Because that shadow hasn't gone. It's moved."

Suddenly, the courtesy node, face 'donated' from the late Mark person, beeped up. "Reminder. The library has been breached. Others are coming."

Their eyes met and the Doctor could see that Donna was terrified. Why had he dragged her into this? Why did he keep taking her to dangerous places? He slapped himself mentally, just as a loud bang made them stagger backwards and forget about the flickering light.

The door was bashed open, the book they had used to seal it with easily breaking apart. As its pages were strewn across the floor, a silhouette walked in. Several others followed the first. The Doctor and Donna stood frozen in the middle of the room, where light still shone down from the sky above, as the first figure walked seemingly calmly up to them. They were all clad in white spacesuits, but the visors of their helmets were darkened, making the Doctor wary. If they were dealing with what he was suspecting, he should really be ready to tug Donna's hand and run for their lives in only moments.

The figure stopped only a meter from the Doctor. They were noticeably shorter than he was. Actually, the Doctor quickly noticed that this figure was the shortest out of all the ones who had swarmed into the room now. He looked down at the dark visor, just as a hand was moved up to the side of it, and cleared the darkness away with the push of a button.

He couldn't help raising his eyebrows at the face that was revealed. Donna very audibly let out a breath of relief beside him. She had obviously feared the same as him. Well, not the same perhaps, but something bad nonetheless.

"Hello there," the woman behind the visor said. Her face was round and her eyes a warm brown. Chocolate. The presence of a few wrinkles and a slight lack of luster in her skin told him that she was probably just past her middle age, but her full lips smiled a wide, red smile at him and made the Doctor feel… Odd.

"Hello," the Doctor replied after the few seconds of assessment, but then sharpened his tone. "Get out. Back to your spaceship, tell your grandkids you came to the library and lived. They won't believe you!"

But the little woman just smiled. "Pop your helmets everyone. We've got breathers!"

With that, all of the intruders took off their helmets and glanced at their surroundings like they owned the place. The Doctor was appalled.

"Who is this?" a man with a bitter face and graying hair said, walking up to the people in the middle of the room. "You said we were the only expedition, I paid for exclusives!"

"Seems I lied then," the woman said, shrugging with an innocent face. "Bound to be others, really."

The man grumbled and called for his assistant about some contracts. But the Doctor had reacted at the exchange of words.

"Hang on. Did you say 'expedition'?"

"My expedition!" the grumpy man said, without a change in tone. "I funded it."

"Oh… You're not… Are you?" Perfect. The last kind of people he needed running around this place at this point. "Tell me you're not archaeologists."

The short woman beside him raised an eyebrow as she reached up to fix her hair into a bun. "Got a problem with archaeologists?"

"I'm a time traveler. I point and laugh at archaeologists."

"Really now?" the woman said, eyes narrowing in a way the Doctor would have called interested unless it hadn't been more likely that she was offended. Suddenly though, she reached out a hand to shake his. "Doctor Oswald, archaeologist," she said, smile never faltering.

"Doctor, you say? Doctor Oswald? Interesting name. I'm a Doctor too, but just 'the' Doctor," the Doctor said in fake hospitality before he grabbed her hand harder and pulled her with him as he started walking towards the door. "As you're leaving, and you're leaving now, you need to set up a quarantine beacon. Code-wall the planet. The whole planet! Nobody comes here, not ever again."

As if that would work on a bunch of hellbent archaeologists with a planet full of mystery. Minutes later, they were at least working on finding a safe way out rather than investigating what they originally came for. Much to Mr Lux's dismay. It seemed the female doctor had more influence over the group than the funder of the expedition cared for. And for some reason, she had been the first one to see reason and listen to the Doctor's warnings.

Doctor Oswald was rummaging through the contents of her backpack on a table when the Doctor found himself watching her rather than help going through the computer records. A thought struck him, and he walked over to the woman, arms crossed.

She looked up as he approached, her small smile no less cheerful than the previous ones, despite the Doctor's recent story about the Vashta Nerada lurking in the dark.

"Were you the one who called for me?" he asked.

"Called?" Oswald said, slightly confused.

"I got this," he said and pulled up the psychic paper to show her. The message still flashed on it.

He saw her smile grow stale. Another wrinkle appeared between her eyes and she slowly took the psychic paper in her hand. Recognition?

"Did you send it?" he asked again.

"No, I… Strange." She let out a short, quiet laughter as if in disbelief. "I dreamed that I wrote this, the night before we got here. Yeah. At least that part, the 'I need you and you need me' bit. That is so odd."

She looked up at him, the narrowed eyes back. "Who are you?"

The Doctor stared just as intensively back at her now, glasses up on his nose. "That is odd. But not unheard of, I suppose."

"Who are you, really?" she repeated, more seriously.

"The Doctor. I come when people need help… Sometimes," he answered absentmindedly while watching her closely. He suddenly noticed that he had moved up to stand close to her, their faces now mere centimeters apart. Breaking away, he shook his head. "So let's help each other out of this mess then, doctor?"

"Agreed, Doctor," Oswald said, the seriousness erased again from her mature face. Quite the optimistic soul, the Doctor couldn't help thinking, as they got back to work.

.

"She's just brainwaves now. Pattern won't hold for long."

"I don't know what I'm thinking…"

"She's a footprint on the beach. And the tide is coming in."

"Don't tell the others. They'll only laugh."

"That was the most horrible thing I've ever seen…"

.

The Doctor made sure everyone was standing in the light they had prepared with torches in the middle of the room, before he got to work at the edge of the shadows with his ever buzzing sonic screwdriver, doctor Oswald's lunchbox sitting on a table beside him. Whatever he was going to use that for. Donna found that the female doctor was watching the male one with a strange smile on her lips. A warm smile.

"Do you know him?" she asked quietly, moving up to stand beside the shorter, older woman. "The Doctor, I mean."

"No, no I don't," doctor Oswald replied, glancing at Donna before looking back at the man crouching intensively on the floor in front of the group.

"You sure you haven't, maybe, met him somewhere before?"

"Why?"

"I just thought, I mean, the way you look at him," Donna said with an evasive laughter.

Doctor Oswald let out a little laughter back, shaking her head. But the thoughtful look that glazed her eyes for a moment didn't escape the red haired woman.

"You travel with him, don't you?" the female doctor suddenly said.

"Hm?"

"The Doctor. You travel with him?"

"Yeah. Been doing it for a while now. Make a pretty great team, the two of us. You know, when he isn't busy… Being him."

Oswald laughed again at that, much more genuine, Donna realized. It sounded much better. Wait a bit. If she didn't know the Doctor…

"How did you know he's traveling?"

The question made Oswald's smile freeze anew. She turned to look into Donna's eyes slowly, and the redhead could tell that this was just as genuine. It just wasn't happiness. It was confusion.

"I… don't really know. I just assumed?"

"You just assumed he was a traveling Doctor?" Donna asked skeptically.

Oswald shook her head and stared off into the distance for a moment, before her eyes fell on the back of the man on the floor. Blue suit, dark red shirt underneath. Dark, unruly mane of hair, thick glasses on his nose. That ever buzzing screwdriver.

He had been in her dream, Oswald realized now. And she had written him that message there. She needed him, and he needed her. In the Library, as soon as he could. It was all so odd, yet Oswald didn't feel afraid when she looked at the back of his head now.

Maybe she was getting old and her mind messy. The archaeologist shook her head again and looked back up at Donna with her distinctive smile.

"Of course he's a traveler. How else would he have gotten here, to the Library?"

.

"The real world is a lie, and your nightmares are real."

"Donna Noble has left the Library. Donna Noble has been saved."

.

"Okay, we've got a hot one. Watch your feet!" doctor Oswald hushed as she motioned for the members of her team who were still alive to huddle together in the centre of the room they had escaped into. She has just thrown another chicken leg into the shadows to assert that there were Vashta Nerada there.

"They've got our scent now," the Doctor said seriously and used his screwdriver on the flesh-eating shadow.

Behind him, Oswald held a hand on her friend's shoulder, but her eyes were on the Doctor still. Her mind had spun on, and she wasn't even sure about her own thoughts at this point.

"Doctor," her friend whispered to her. "Who is he?"

"What?" Oswald said.

"You just follow what he says blindly. You just expect us to trust a man we found in the abandoned Library, where we were supposed to have been the only expedition. Why?"

"He's… The Doctor," Oswald replied bluntly.

"That's right," another colleague said. "He hasn't even told us his name. What if he's part of all this?"

"Or worse," Mr Lux shot in, "what if he's working for one of our rivals?"

"Stop it!" Oswald exclaimed all of a sudden, making even the Doctor turn around from the shadows with a raised eyebrow.

Doctor Oswald got up from her colleagues and walked over to the Doctor, just as his sonic screwdriver was starting to make funny, irregular noises. "What's wrong with it?" she asked, just to get her mind off things.

"There's a signal coming from somewhere, interfering with it."

"Well, use the red settings."

"It doesn't have a red setting," the Doctor said and gave her a skeptical glance.

"Then, use the dampers?"

"It doesn't have dampers! What do you even know?"

"Well, mine does," doctor Oswald sighed and pulled out an instrument from a pocket.

A pen-shaped, metallic contraption with a green light at the end and a few buttons and lights on the side. The Doctor got up on his feet, staring at the instrument for a second as if he'd seen something impossible, and then snatched it from her hands. He held his breath as he put the tips of the screwdrivers together… And watched nothing happen.

"It's not mine," he breathed out. Then his face took on a very surprised look. "It's not mine from another timeline!"

"No, I just said it was mine," Oswald said impatiently and snatched hers back from him. "My sonic screwdriver."

"Where did you get that?"

"I built it." She stepped up close to the Doctor, looking up at him, faces mere inches apart. Her brown eyes were like deep wells. The urge for the Doctor to touch her temples and pry inside her mind was almost too strong to resist. But he didn't dive into the minds of people he didn't know. Yet… She had built a sonic screwdriver? 51st century, sure. But a human, an archaeologist at that, making something like this on her own?

"That's impossible," he concluded darkly.

Oswald sighed with clear annoyance. "I didn't pluck it from your future cold dead hands, if that's what you're worried about."

"And I know that because?"

"You just accepted that it wasn't yours!" She sighed. "Listen to me! You've lost your friend, you're angry. I understand! But you need to be less emotional Doctor, right now-"

"I'm not emotional!" the Doctor cried out.

"There are five people in this room, still alive! Focus on that!" the other doctor cried back.

"You're waving a sonic screwdriver in my face, one that's more advanced than mine, and your friends think I am the one who can't be trusted?"

"Oh for heaven's sake!" Mr Lux suddenly roared, getting up from his spot in the middle of the room. "Look at the pair of you! We're all gonna die here, and you're just squabbling on like an old married couple!"

The Doctor took a deep breath and tried to calm down. Of course he was bothered by losing Donna. He knew that saving those still alive was more important right now, but… He always said that he hated goodbyes, yet he wished nothing more right now than the chance to get to see his red haired friend again. If only just to say goodbye.

Doctor Oswald's thoughts went differently. She saw the sorrow in the man's face. She could even feel it herself. Deep in the endless woods that were his eyes, she felt what he felt. And suddenly, she knew what he needed to hear.

"Doctor…" she whispered.

She knew she only had half his attention. But that would change.

"You need to trust me. We need to trust each other. I need you, and you need me."

The Doctor looked up at the familiar words, just as the short woman leaned in close and whispered something in his ear. His eyes widened. His hearts skipped a beat. As she pulled back, she looked at him solemnly.

"Are we good?"

The Doctor just swallowed.

"Doctor. Are we good?"

"Yeah," he breathed, barely audible. "Yeah, we're good."

Oswald breathed deeply. "Good."

.

"It's just a doctor moon."

"It literally meant… SAVED! It saved them to the hard drive."

"What is CAL?"

"I'll show you."

"You weren't protecting a patent. You were protecting her."

"Auto-destruct in 10 minutes."

.

Oswald ran in and caught Anita's spacesuit as it fell. "Anita!"

"I'm sorry. She's been gone a while now," the Doctor muttered from the console. He was still working to wire himself up as the link to the hard drive. To download and restore all the saved people. Maybe Donna would be there as well. "I told you to go!" he shouted back at the other doctor.

She looked up at him. He was about to sacrifice himself. Fry his body, overload his mind. He did it without hesitation, without uttering any regrets. He was such an odd man. And Oswald knew that she couldn't let him do it.

"Lux can manage without me," doctor Oswald said, almost as a matter-of-factly, and walked slowly up to him from behind. "But you can't."

A sharp pain in his head, and everything went black for the Doctor.

When he finally blinked his eyes again, he was just met with a horrible message from a robotic voice.

"Auto-destruct in 2 minutes."

Instantly, he flew up, only to discover that he was held down by his arm being handcuffed to the wall. And in front of him, doctor Oswald had perched herself against the other wall, wiring up the contraption he had started work on before she had knocked him out cold.

"Oh, no no! Come on, what are you doing?" the Doctor cried. "That's my job!"

"I'm not allowed to have a career?" Oswald said with one of her soft smiles, without facing him eye to eye.

"This is not a joke. Stop this now, this is going to kill you!"

The dark haired woman didn't reply. She checked the countdown on a screen in between them.

"I'd have a chance, you don't have any!" the Time Lord continued.

"You wouldn't have a chance and neither do I!"

The intensity of her quick response made the Doctor hesitate. He just looked at her, crestfallen. She still didn't look him in the eyes. Why would she do this? Some stupid human sense of pride or courage, to honor her friends?

"I'm timing it for the end of the countdown. There will be a blip in the command flow. Should improve our chances for a clean download."

"Oswald, please… No!"

"Funny thing is…" She let out her little laughter. "I've had a dream about this too. About how I was going to die. I didn't remember it until I saw you here. But I know now. It's what must happen."

"Auto destruct in one minute," the computer intervened.

"And the screwdriver," Oswald continued, as the Doctor's breath grew quicker and more frustrated in his state of helplessness. "I knew how to build it, because I had seen it before. Also in a dream, of course. Or daydream. I'm not really sure. A sonic screwdriver. Should have patented it, really. Could have made me a lot more money than this archeology business."

She was still smiling as she rambled on, but the Doctor saw a lonely tear rolling down her cheek. That was too much for him. The screwdrivers, both him and hers, were lying on the floor in between them. He threw himself at them, reaching as far as he could. But it wasn't enough.

"There's nothing you can do," she said.

"Let me do this!" the Doctor pleaded.

"You can't die here, Doctor," Oswald said, finally meeting his pained gaze. Her eyes were swollen from emerging tears, but determined just as well. "It's okay. I was always coming here. I know it, somehow. Doctor. Funny how we're both doctors. None of us are of the healing type, yet we're both bent on saving the lives of others. You would save anyone. And I'm the one who will save you."

"But Oswald," the Doctor said, swallowing hard. "You know my name."

Her mature, womanly face suddenly grew more wrinkles as she couldn't keep the tears at bay anymore.

"Auto destruct in 10… 9…" the computer announced, dreadfully.

"You whispered my name in my ear."

Oswald turned to look at the screen. Only seconds left. She put the wired contraption on her head, to allow it access to use her mind as a bridge for the download.

"6… 5…"

"There's only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name. There's only one time I could!"

"4… 3…"

"I liked dreaming about you, Doctor," Oswald said, face glistening from tears but smiling the widest, most genuine smile yet towards him with her red lips and chocolate eyes. "Run, you clever boy. And remember me."