Disclaimer: As much as I'd like to, I don't own Doctor Who
Feedback: Of course
AN: "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" are here, and I warn you all in advance, there will be some SLIGHT River-bashing (I'll try not to overdo it, but I just do not like that woman; she's too arrogant- all that talk about 'spoilers' while nevertheless casually sharing details without even TRYING to confirm whether she's met a Doctor who already knows who she is-, and she kills far too easily)
AN 2: Thanks to Haleine Delail, who gave me permission to use some elements of her story "Not Better, Just Different" in this rewrite
AN 3: Bonus points to anyone who recognises the writer the Doctor quotes later on
AN 4: Updated on 10 October 2011 to accommodate both recent discoveries about River's past and my own plans for this series' future
The Legacy of Gallifrey
Looking sceptically at the group of people before him, the Doctor couldn't help but wonder why it was that this kind of thing always ended up happening to him. Whenever he arrived somewhere that gave every sign that it had been abandoned- and most of those times what he found out suggested that it had been abandoned for a very good reason- there was always somebody who'd shown up at just the right time to potentially activate/restart/insert-other-relevant-term-here whatever had caused the original problem...
Admittedly, he already had a fairly clear of what was causing the problem, but that just made it all the more urgent that he solve it on his own; right now, the more people who came here, the more people he had to try and keep safe, and he had more than enough on his plate with trying to work out who had sent him that slightly flirtatious message via the psychic paper without making Martha jealous...
"Hello, handsome," one of the new arrivals said to him, her tinted visor fading to reveal a woman with a slight smile on her face.
"Get out," the Doctor said in response, ignoring the slight stare he received from Martha at the woman's name for him- if he didn't register it, maybe Martha would leave it alone, given that he had no answer to give her anyway- as he walked past the woman to address the rest of the new arrivals as they gathered around the hall, pointing sharply at the door they had just entered by. "All of you, turn around, get back in your rocket and fly away! Tell your grandchildren you came to the Library and lived; they won't believe you."
"Pop your helmets, everyone; we've got breathers," the woman said, none of them apparently concerned about the Doctor's words as they obeyed her instructions, the woman's now-exposed head revealing blonde curls and distinctive green eyes.
"Who is this?" one of the other figures- an older, balding man who appeared to be slightly overweight- said, walking up to the first woman. "You said we were the only expedition; I paid for exclusives."
"I lied," the woman said nonchalantly. "I'm always lying; bound to be others."
"Miss Evangelista," the man said, turning away from the first woman and addressing another woman with pale skin, long dark hair and a seemingly perpetually stunned expression on her face, "I want to see the contracts."
"You came through the north door, yeah?" the woman said, as the dark-haired woman hurried over to a nearby desk. "How was that; much damage?"
"Please, just leave," the Doctor said, his hands on his hips as he looked at the woman. "I'm asking you seriously and properly, just lea..."
His voice trailed off as he processed what he'd just heard. "Hang on; did you say 'expedition'?"
"My expedition," the first man said (In the absence of names, the Doctor had to think of him as 'the balding man', given that the other two now-helmetless men had fuller heads of hair), glaring at the woman as he adjusted his gloves. "I funded it!"
"Oh, you're not, are you?" the Doctor said, rolling his eyes as he looked at the new arrivals in exasperation. "Tell me you're not archaeologists..."
"Not your favourite people, right?" Martha asked, looking at the Doctor with a brief smile.
"Archaeology?" the Doctor said, looking over at Martha with a shrug. "Not a bad science in principle, but as I once said to Fitz, archaeological digs are boring and require the wearing of mittens; I point and laugh at archaeologists!"
"Really?" the woman said, walking over to him with a teasing smile. "Professor River Song, archaeologist."
"Right, River Song- interesting if slightly odd name, and speaking as the man who met a centipedial alien called Queegvogel Duck Duck Duck Duck Duck Duck Seven, that's saying a lot-, as you're leaving- which should be now-, you need to set up a quarantine beacon," the Doctor said, walking River back towards the door. "Code-wall the planet, the whole planet. Nobody comes here, not ever again... not one living thing, not here, not ever- stop right there!" he yelled, as one of the expedition came too close to one of the shadows. "What's your name?"
"Anita," the woman replied, clearly confused about the reason for the Doctor's question as the Time Lord grabbed her by the shoulders and virtually dragged her back towards the rest of the group.
"Anita, stay out of the shadows," the Doctor said, looking intently at her. "Not a foot, not a finger in the shadows till you're safely back in your ship. Goes for all of you. Stay in the light. Find a nice, bright spot and just stand. If you understand me, look very, very scared."
Looking at the people before her, Martha wasn't sure if she should feel disappointed or amused at the relative lack of reaction; the Doctor was definitely serious about whatever threat they were dealing with, but it was hard to take him totally seriously when they didn't know what they were up against...
"No, bit more scared than that," the Doctor said after a brief pause, only for his second glance around the room to reveal only a slight twitch of fear on the face of the woman who had been identified earlier as 'Miss Evangelista'.
"OK, do for now," the Doctor said, walking through the small group towards the door, speaking to a dark-skinned man with a thick head of hair that put Martha in mind of the Doctor when he'd worn a long scarf, "you- who are you?"
"Uh... Dave..." the man said.
"OK, Dave-" the Doctor began.
"Uh, well, Other Dave," the man clarified, indicating one of the other members of the expedition with what looked to Martha like a radio antenna, "because that's Proper Dave the pilot, he was the first Dave, so when we-"
"Other Dave," the Doctor said, waving that topic of conversation aside as he took the man up to the door the expedition had entered by, "the way you came, does it look the same as before?"
"Yeah," Other Dave (Martha already knew she'd dislike that way of distinguishing the two Daves; she'd had enough trouble thinking of the Doctor's past selves as their 'numbers', never mind thinking of someone as 'other' just because he'd arrived later) said, before he seemed to start slightly in surprise. "Oh, it's a bit darker."
"How much darker?" the Doctor asked, his voice low as he addressed the man.
"Oh, like I could see where we came through just like a moment ago," Other Dave said, indicating the path with his 'antenna'. "I can't now."
"Seal up this door," the Doctor said, turning around and walking back to the rest of the group. "We'll find another way out."
"We're not looking for a way out," Mr Lux said resolutely as he passed a clipboard to the dark-haired woman. "Miss Evangelista?"
"I'm Mr Lux's personal... everything," Miss Evangelista said, stepping forward to address the Doctor, Martha and Donna as she held out a plastic clipboard. "You need to sign these contracts, agreeing that your individual experiences inside the Library are the intellectual property of the Felman Lux Corporation."
"Well, I'll take those, thanks," Martha said, taking all three contracts from the woman and promptly ripping them in half, shooting a nonchalant smile over at the Doctor before she looked back at Miss Evangelista. "Sorry, but we don't really do contracts like that; our experiences are our own."
"Quite right, too," the Doctor said, smiling in approval over at her.
"My family built this Library," Mr Lux protested, walking up to address the three directly. "I have rights-!"
"You have a mouth that won't stop," River put in, her gaze shifting to the Doctor as Mr Lux glared at her. "You think there's danger here?"
"After something came to this Library and killed everyone on an entire planet?" Martha pointed out. "I think it's safe to assume it's dangerous!"
"That was a hundred years ago," River said dismissively. "The Library's been silent for a hundred years; whatever came here is long dead."
"Bet your life?" the Doctor asked.
"Always," River said, a broad smile on her face that the Doctor disliked on principle.
It wasn't that he didn't admire confidence- it was a trait he himself possessed to a certain extent in all his lives-, but after he'd had time to reflect on his attitude in his sixth incarnation, he'd come to recognise the dangers of the line between confidence and arrogance, and River so far struck him as a woman who was worryingly on the wrong side of that line; it was as though she felt that nothing could happen to her because she was her, rather than being confident that she could find a way to deal with whatever might be about to happen with the skills and resources available to her.
"What are you doing?" Mr Lux asked, walking past the group to where 'Other Dave' had closed the door they'd just entered by and had begun applying screws to hold it in place.
"He said seal the door," Other Dave replied uncertainly.
"You're taking orders from him?" Mr Luz said, waving a hand incredulously before the Doctor walked over and promptly yanked the torch out of the other man's hand.
"Spooky, isn't it?" he said, ignoring Mr Lux as he turned the torch on and quickly took in the room around him, the torch shining into the room's darker corners.
"Always every species in the universe has an irrational fear of the dark," he explained as he studied their surroundings, Donna and Martha walking over to join him as he stared down one of the corridors. "But they're wrong... 'cause it's not irrational. It's Vashta Nerada."
"It's what?" Martha asked, looking uncertainly at him, clearly puzzled at this sudden new twist in the conversation.
"It's what's in the dark," the Doctor replied, his gaze fixed intently on the corridor. "It's what's always in the dark..."
With that, he turned around and faced the group once again, evidently having now reached a decision.
"Lights!" he said, casually tossing the torch back to Mr Lux. "That's what we need; lights! You got lights?"
"What for?" River asked.
"Form a circle, safe area, big as you can, lights pointing out," the Doctor said, standing in the middle of the room's floor as he indicated the stone pattern under his feet.
"Oi!" River yelled, walking over to Anita as she shrugged a bag off her shoulders. "Do as he says!"
"You're not listening to this man?" Mr Lux yelled incredulously at the woman.
"Apparently, I am," River replied, before she began to turn to address the rest of the people in the room. "Anita, unpack the lights. Other Dave, make sure the door's secure, then help Anita. Mr. Lux, put your helmet back on, block the visor. Proper Dave, find an active terminal. I want you to access the Library database, see what you can find about what happened here a hundred years ago."
"And you," River added, turning to look at the Doctor with a stare of exasperated fondness that put Martha in mind of her own old attitude with the Doctor when he was so caught up in something that he didn't seem to notice her own feelings about what had just happened, "you thick, thick, thick genius... you're with me; we can talk in my office."
Donna and Martha exchanged uncertain glances with each other as River walked over to an information terminal, looking slightly impatiently back at the Doctor as she did so, before they reached a silent consensus.
"Uh... Doctor?" Donna said, walking over to where the Time Lord was crouching down to examine the floor. "The professor wants a word with you."
"Really?" the Doctor said, looking up at her in surprise.
"She said she wanted the 'thick genius'; you in a nutshell," Donna clarified, a slight smile on her face at the Time Lord's confusion.
"Thick?" the Doctor repeated, standing up to look at Martha incredulously. "She called me 'thick'?"
"Well, you do tend to miss the obvious sometimes..." Martha said, the teasing smile on her face concealing the slight pain at the memory those words invoked before she indicated the terminal. "Look, just go to her; she might have something important to tell you."
"Right..." the Doctor said, standing up and walking across the hall towards River's 'desk', addressing the rest of the group as he did so. "Don't let your shadows cross! Seriously, don't even let them touch; any of them could be infected!"
As he walked around the desk, the Doctor briefly registered that Martha and Donna had begun talking with Miss Evangelista- the only member of the group who hadn't just been given a task- about something, but he didn't have the time to try and listen to it; if it became relevant, he'd ask later, but with the current apparent infestation he didn't have time to split his focus like that.
"Thanks," River said, drawing the Doctor's attention back to her.
"For what?" the Doctor asked, looking in confusion at the archaeologist.
"Coming when I called," River replied, as though it was obvious.
"That was you?" the Doctor said, raising his eyebrows in surprise; humans might be capable of remarkable things, but the mental power necessary to send a message to the psychic paper like that was definitely out of the ordinary...
"OK, you're starting to overdo it, aren't you?" River said, smiling slightly at him with just a slight trace of apprehension in her eyes.
"Overdo what?" the Doctor asked, slipping his glasses on as he looked at her; something told him that the more professional he looked right now the better it might be with that 'Mr Lux'...
"The whole 'not knowing me' thing," River answered with a slight smile. "I assume there's a reason for it?"
"Uh... yeah, there is," he replied, deciding he might as well give her an honest answer to try and conceal his confusion. "A very good one, actually..."
"OK then," River said, pulling a small blue book out of her bag and starting to flick through the pages with a slight smile, "where are we? I'm guessing early, but... crash of the Byzantium ringing any bells? Stonehenge? Asg-"
"Hold it right there; who are you?" the Doctor interjected, looking pointedly at her; given the appearance of the book's covers, he had some ideas about where this strange woman before him was going with her current line of inquiry, but he wasn't about to give her an excuse to say any more. "You can't just go telling me about this; I had enough of this whole mess when I met Nyssa and Mel before I met them..."
He trailed off as he registered the expression on River's face, his mind flashing back to the moments when he'd seen that same look of pain on Martha's face when she'd overheard John Smith discussing his Journal with Joan...
"Who... who were they?" River asked, looking at him in confusion.
"Oh, just a couple of old... friends of mine," the Doctor said, stopping himself from saying anything further; he didn't want to give away too much of his past to a woman he'd only just met, no matter what suspicions he might have about her history. "Anyway, that's not important; what's important is-"
"You're... young," River whispered, leaning over to look at him with a suddenly slightly tearful expression.
"I'm, uh, really not that young, you know..." the Doctor said, uncomfortably shuffling back a few inches from the woman in front of him; he didn't want to be blatantly rude, but given his admittedly fragile understanding of human emotional interaction in this body at times he didn't want to do anything to give Martha or this woman the wrong impression...
"But you are," River whispered, leaning over with a slight smile on her face despite the still-faint-but-nevertheless-present hint of tears. "Your eyes... you're younger than I've ever seen you."
"You've seen me before, then?" the Doctor asked, leaning slightly further back to neatly avoid River's hand as it reached for his face; this woman was definitely getting too close for comfort...
"Doctor, please tell me you know who I am," River said, looking slightly desperately at him.
"Who are you?" the Doctor asked.
River sighed.
"Typical..." she groaned, lowering her hand as her shoulders slumped back down, continuing to stare at him. "Just when I thought-"
The sound of an alarm suddenly blaring stopped the Doctor learning what River had thought, forcing his focus back to the present as he quickly glanced around the room, taking immediate stock of everyone's location in case they had done something he'd missed while he was distracted...
With the group still slightly reeling from the death of Miss Evangelista- Martha wasn't sure how to cope with this, the idea of something so dangerous that the Doctor wouldn't even try to fight it was something she'd never thought she'd experience-, they were left with relatively limited choices about their next course of action. As the expedition stood anxiously in the illuminated area of the reading room where they'd met earlier, the Doctor was currently scanning the surrounding corridors with the sonic screwdriver- although he'd yet to tell them what he was scanning for-, leaving Martha and Donna to exchange uncomfortable glances with the others while wondering what the Doctor was going to do next.
"So... you travel with him?" a voice said, prompting Martha and Donna to glance back at the strange woman who'd introduced herself as River Song. "Both of you?"
"Yep," Donna said, smiling slightly at the other woman. "Well, I travel with him; she, on the other hand..."
As Donna glanced slightly teasingly in her direction, Martha could only sigh.
"You'll never get tired of that, will you?" she said, rolling her eyes even as she looked sympathetically over at River; how was it that, even after the mess he'd nearly made of things with her over his old feelings for Rose, the Doctor could go and make the same mistake again in his future with this woman?
It wasn't like Martha was going to encourage the Doctor to move on after her death- that kind of issue was something she'd prefer not to think about; if she thought about the future, she preferred to focus more on the fact that the Doctor would stay in relatively good shape for the duration of their relationship rather than on what would happen to her in the end-, but the knowledge that this woman had been where she had been before the 'Year That Never Was'...
"Tired of what?" River asked, looking slightly apprehensively between the other two women, as though she guessed what they were talking about but didn't want to actually say anything in case she was wrong.
"Never mind," Martha said, as she looked back at River. "So... you'll know him? In his future, I mean..."
"Oh, do I know him..." River said, sighing slightly wistfully even as she smiled briefly at Martha, clearly grateful that her troubles had been understood by someone. "We go way back, that man and me... just not this far back."
"I'm sorry, what?" Donna asked, looking between the other two.
"He hasn't met me yet," River clarified, her gaze fixed sadly on the Doctor. "He kept telling me to take care, but I always got him when he knew me when I asked him for help before... I thought I didn't need to worry about that any more... and if I was smart, maybe I could tell him not to do it now- tell him where to go and where not to go so I'd never get myself caught up in everything he brought-, but even without... what I wanted to happen..."
She sighed briefly, barely holding back a sound that seemed more like a sod as she did so. "I wouldn't change what we did have for anything..."
Martha could only nod sympathetically at that last statement of River's; how often had she contemplated leaving the Doctor in their early days together, only to be drawn back by the thrill and wonder of the universe of awe that his presence had opened up to her.
"And I know it shouldn't kill me that he still looks through me- that at least he's got a good reason for doing it this time-, but..." River began, before sighing and shaking her head. "It all just gets to you..."
"I know what you mean," Martha said, trying slightly uncomfortably to reassure the other woman. "I was there myself once, but..."
"Martha!" the Doctor called over to her, turning back to glance at her with that teasing, eager smile she had always loved, even as the sonic screwdriver continued to buzz away as he scanned the area before him. "What happened to 'keeping the private life private', mmm?"
"Sorry, Doctor," Martha called back, allowing herself a slightly self-depreciating smile at her boyfriend's comment- he did make a valid point; after all the times she had to stop him talking a bit too much about their relationship she couldn't be blamed if he felt like stopping her doing the same-, before she turned back to look at River, only to be surprised by the renewed intensity in the professor's stare.
"Martha?" River said, looking pointedly at her as she took in the name. "As in, Martha Jones?"
"Uh... yeah," Martha said, nodding uncertainly at River, whose eyes had suddenly narrowed as she looked at her.
"Martha bloody Jones..." River said, shaking her head as she stared at the other woman. "You know, you set a ridiculous standard after he lost you."
"Y'what?" Donna asked, looking at the woman in confusion.
"Uh... what do you mean?" Martha asked, uncertainly looking between River and the Doctor. "You mean... in the future, you..."
"Let me stop you right there; I travelled with him," River finished for Martha, shaking her head as she looked at the young doctor with a sudden intense glare that put Martha uncomfortably in mind of Rose's stare during their brief 'conversation' when the other woman was taking her up to the Valiant. "Oh, I knew him... and I... you know... for him... but you had to know him first, didn't you?"
"Uh... so?" Donna asked, shrugging uncomfortably. "He knew me before he knew Martha; doesn't mean he's closer to me than he is to her..."
"Oh, it wasn't just that; you were there for him in a way he'd never let me be," River practically spat as she walked up to stand in front of Martha, still intently glaring at the other woman. "I would have done anything for him... I took so many risks for him... and in the end, he shared more about himself with Amelia Pond than he did with me, and she didn't even care about what happened-!"
"Enough of the spoilers; we've got a live one!" the Doctor suddenly called out, standing up from the ground and turning to address the group. "That's not darkness down those tunnels, and this is not a shadow; it's a swarm."
With that, he leaned over and picked up what looked to Martha like a lunch box of some kind, filled with lettuce leaves and some chicken, and crouched down once again.
"A man-eating swarm," he finished, throwing a chicken leg from the box into the shadows; even as the others watched, the meat on the bone was suddenly stripped of all its flesh, the bone of the leg the only thing to hit the ground.
"The piranhas of the air," the Doctor said grimly, as Martha and Donna crouched down on either side of him, neither one particularly keen on hearing River continue her miniature 'rant' in case it went too far. "The Vashta Nerada; literally 'the shadows that melt the flesh'. Most planets have them, but usually in small clusters. I've never seen an infestation on this scale, or this aggressive."
"Hold on; most planets?" Martha asked, looking at the Doctor incredulously. "As in, these things are on Earth?"
"Earth and a billion other worlds; where there's meat, there's Vashta Nerada," the Doctor confirmed with a nod as he turned back to look at them. "You can see them sometimes, if you look; they hide among the dust in sunbeams."
"But... if they eat like that..." Martha said, clearly trying not to think about the resulting mental image of what had happened to the chicken leg happening to a person (One thing the Doctor loved about her; even after the horrors of the Year That Never Was, she hadn't allowed herself to become hardened to the idea of death).
"If they were on Earth, we'd know," Donna said resolutely.
"Nah, normally they live on road kill," the Doctor shrugged, his voice lowering to a whisper as he continued to speak; he never liked dispelling people's pre-conceived ideas like this, but it was necessary to make sure Donna understood the scale of what they were facing. "But sometimes people go missing; not everyone comes back out of the dark..."
"Every shadow?" River asked, her voice trembling slightly as she held a torch in front of her to look down another corridor.
"No... but any shadow," the Doctor clarified; there was no point over-exaggerating the danger, even if there was no way to distinguish between shadows.
"So... what do we do?" River asked.
"Daleks; aim for the eyestalk," the Doctor replied briefly, looking reflectively ahead of himself as he spoke. "Sontarans; back of the neck. Vashta Nerada..."
He shook his head slightly, a grim expression on his face as he turned around to look at River. "Run. Just... run."
"Run?" River asked. "Run where?"
Martha had to admit, from where she was standing River had just made a good point; with the door that the expedition had entered by locked, their options for somewhere to hide at this point were very limited...
The Doctor almost hated to use the term 'brilliant' for anything that involved putting the kind of strain on a child that Mr Lux's ancestor had used for creating CAL- sticking people in a computer like this wasn't much of a life; how was that little girl meant to enjoy any kind of existence permanently stuck in a computer?-, but he couldn't fault CAL's intentions; if she'd done nothing, everyone would have died, but at least this way she'd been able to keep some people alive, even when faced with such an unexpected attack as living shadows from a book.
"So, what do we do?" River asked, as they stared up at the Library's central computer, rapidly ticking down towards a breakdown as it lost the ability to cope with the burden it had taken upon itself in a desperate attempt to save lives...
"Autodestruct in ten minutes," CAL's voice said (The Doctor wasn't sure if he should be grateful that he was on a time limit or not; his mind always worked faster when he was faced with the need for last-minute solutions, but on the other hand that significantly raised the stakes of the current situation when they were already difficult enough, given that Donna and Martha were in there).
"Easy!" the Doctor said, hurrying away from the main data core and turning his attention back to the terminal they'd been studying earlier. "We beam all the people out of the data core, the computer will reset and stop the countdown. Difficult, Charlotte doesn't have enough memory space left to make the transfer..."
Before he could follow that line of thought to its negative conclusion, another occurred to him; when there was no space available to CAL, he would give hersome.
"Easy!" he added, hurrying over to a panel in the wall and pulling out the cables within it, trying not to consider the implications of what he was about to attempt; hesitation could kill people right now. "I'll hook myself up..."
The Doctor's voice trailed off even as he spoke, a sudden itch in the back of his mind giving him the impression that he'd missed something; with Donna and Martha having both having been apparently downloaded into CAL when he tried to send them back to the TARDIS, coupled with his recent revelation about how the Vastha Nerada had actually come to the Library in the first place, he had more than enough to be keeping his mind occupied right now- particularly how many Vashta Nerada could actually be on this planet if they'd hatched from the books-, but he should be able to think of something as important as his subconscious was trying to tell him what he was forgetting was-
Then it hit him.
When he'd seen River's sonic screwdriver, he'd been struck by the strangeness of it- he'd given Martha a sonic screwdriver for her birthday, and he'd left a sonic lipstick for Sarah Jane when he'd left her the replacement K9, but this woman wasn't striking him as the kind of person he'd do that for normally-, but a comment Martha had made about him needing to work on his people skills before she'd teleported away had prompted him to keep quiet about that particular matter; saying that he wouldn'thave given her a sonic screwdriver after advice like that was the kind of tactlessness he'd hoped to put behind himself four bodies back.
In the end, the real problem wasn't that he'd given her the sonic screwdriver; it was the fact that he'd given her such a bulky one. Even assuming it was a future version of his current screwdriver, that version River possessed had far too many components and attachments around it for it to be really effective; he'd need to have given that thing so many additional settings for it to be that shape that it was unlikely that a human could even keep track of them all...
"Just a minute..." he said, turning around and walking over to River, taking her sonic screwdriver out of the pocket she'd put it in earlier.
"What?" River asked, looking at him in confusion as he studied the device. "What is it?"
"Why would I give you this?" the Doctor said, talking half to himself as he studied it; the two of them hadn't had the time to straighten that issue out earlier, given that he'd been more focused on finding answers about what had happened to Martha and Donna rather than wondering about a little thing like River's anomalous possession of the sonic screwdriver. "I know you're coming here, I know what you're going to be dealing with, I know what's at stake, and the only thing I give you is a sonic screwdriver; why?"
"It was just a present..." River said, sounding partly like she was trying to convince herself more than the Doctor. "You said I might be able to use it..."
"No, a present from me would be an interesting bit of artwork or some rare thing from another planet; this is a tool, which- given that I doubt I'd set up a coincidence to tease myself with in a crisis like this- I gave to you for a specific purpose," the Doctor explained, his eyes flicking from the screwdriver to the computer. "We've got a computer system with insufficient memory space to complete a massive operation down here, we have one of the most elaborate semi-sentient operating systems in the universe up there, and we have this!"
"There is no 'operating system' of that size up there-!" Mr Lux began.
"Nope, there is; the one in my ship!" the Doctor said, smiling over at the other man with an eager grin, brandishing the sonic screwdriver in front of him as he studied the computers before him, his eyes falling on a small hole that was almost certainly a data insertion socket just the right size for the screwdriver he now held in his hand. "What we have here is your typical multi-adaptive computer system, and what I have here is a sonic screwdriver equipped with a remote wireless link-up to the processing systems used by my ship to calculate highly complicated journeys on a very regular basis; all I need to do is plug this into the Library's CPU, establish the remote link, and then I can use the TARDIS's own processing power to fill in the blanks that CAL can't manage on her own!"
"But-" River began.
"To quote a certain writer of far-fetched fiction, 'but me no buts'; I have a plan and it will work," the Doctor said, turning to look urgently at River. "Now then, you and Luxy-boy, back up to the main Library, prime any data cells you can find for maximum download, and before you say anything else, Professor, can I just mention in passing as you're here, shut up!"
"I really hate you sometimes!" River yelled as the Doctor hurried back over to the terminal.
"I've got that more than once," the Doctor said with a shrug before he indicated the passage even as he continued to run rapidly around the terminals before him; compared to piloting the TARDIS, this was fairly simple despite the higher stakes. "Now get to it!"
"What about the Vashta Nerada?" Anita asked, as Mr Lux and River ran from the room, leaving the Doctor to frantically work at the computer terminal; even with the planned link-up to the TARDIS, he still needed to prepare the system at this end.
"These are their forests," the Doctor said, as he hurried over to examine another panel. "If I can seal Charlotte in her world- with a few copies of some of the people here to give her a bit more company; we can sort out 'who' when we get around to that- and then get everyone else out, the shadows can swarm to their hearts' content!"
"So you think they're just going to let us go?" Anita asked, the almost neutral tone of her voice a confirmation of the Doctor's fears even as he continued to examine what was behind the multiple doors around him.
"Best offer they're going to get," the Doctor said grimly, using his own screwdriver to adjust a few settings on the machinery behind the door he'd just opened.
"You're going to make them an offer?" Anita asked.
"They'd better take it, 'cause right now, I'm finding it very hard to make any kind of offer at all," the Doctor said, looking grimly over at the figure in the spacesuit even as he ran back to the terminal. "You know what, I really liked Anita; she was brave, even when she was crying, and she never gave in... and you ate her."
With that statement, the Doctor paused in his work and turned the sonic screwdriver onto the spacesuit's visor, exposing the skeleton within the suit.
"But I'll let that pass," the Doctor said, his gaze fixed on the terminal- he didn't trust himself to keep his cool if he looked at the suit that had once held Anita- even as he continued to speak. "Just as long as you let them pass."
"How long have you known?" the Vashta Nerada that had consumed Anita asked, as the Doctor finished entering the last commands into the terminal and walked forward to face the living shadow directly.
"I counted the shadows," he replied simply. "You only have one now."
A glance at the dim light on the relay on the suit's neck simply confirmed what he already knew.
"She's nearly gone," he said, swallowing slightly sadly as he looked back at the skeleton. "Be kind."
"These are our forest," the Vashta Nerada replied, its voice now noticeably deeper than Anita's, clearly having decided to abandon any pretence of humanity. "We are not kind."
"I'm giving you back your forests," the Doctor countered, staring intently at the skeleton, "but you are giving me them; you are letting them go."
With that, he turned back to the terminal, determined to complete his work; he'd made his offer, and now it was up to them.
"These are our forests," the Vashta Nerada repeated. "They are our meat."
Turning around, the Doctor almost wished he was surprised to see the skeleton pointing at him as shadows began to swarm around it, spreading out from the darkness around the room to approach him; when dealing with a predatory race, a refusal to give up was almost to be expected.
"Don't play games with me!" he said, any fear he might have felt in the face of such an implacable enemy pushed aside by his anger. "You just killed someone I liked; that is not a safe place to stand!"
As the shadows continued to advance, the Doctor knew that he had just one card left to play; he knew that information about him was fairly common by the vulgar end of time, and there was probably more than a few recorded examples of his history in the history of the universe- Alistair's posthumous autobiography sprang to mind-, but the question was if there was enough available to make the kind of impact he needed...
"I'm the Doctor, and you're in the biggest library in the universe," he said, looking grimly at the creature in front of him. "Look me up."
For a moment, there was nothing but silence as the two figures stared at each other in a weaponless stand-off- the Doctor couldn't even consider it a staring contest when one party didn't even have eyes any more-, the shadows around the suit withdrew back towards their source.
"You have one day," the Vashta Nerada said to him.
With that, the suit and skeleton that had once been Anita's collapsed, leaving the Doctor with nothing but the memory of the woman who had been there earlier.
"Right then," the Doctor said, trying to push the image out of his mind as he turned his attention back to the screens before him, "just need to set everything up- set it to go off at the end of the countdown; blip in the command flow should increase chances of a clean download- and then..."
Despite himself, he smiled. "Four thousand and twenty-four saved; not a bad day's work, all things considered."
It didn't make up for those he'd failed to save, and the loss of the Library was a definite downer- all those books, lost to history forever-, but it was still a good day compared to how it could have gone.
"Right then," he said, focusing his attention on the previously-noticed socket. "Time to get to work; allonys-y!"
With that, he rammed the sonic screwdriver into the plug, and stepped back as it began to glow with a brilliant blue light, the faint wheezing of his oldest and dearest companion at work reaching his brain on a level deeper than conventional senses as she began to transfer processing power to assist in the current task.
It wasn't completely done yet, but at least the hard part was over; with the TARDIS's processing power available to them, and with his new 'deal' with the Vashta Nerada, all he had to do was get everything set up and they were sorted.
A couple of hours later, the visitors who had previously been contained in CAL now back in their own bodies and heading home, Mr Lux promising to do everything he could to get them back into society, the Doctor stood solemnly outside the TARDIS, staring contemplatively at the ship's doors.
It was actually slightly amusing, in its way; he'd just saved over four thousand people- including his companions- from being trapped in a computer or devoured by living shadows, given a giant supercomputer a few select friends to keep it/her company in the long years ahead- the sacrifice of the Library was a shame, but it was just something that had to be done-, and the only thing really on his mind right now was a casual comment he'd heard River make earlier.
"He'd just swagger off back to his TARDIS and open the doors with a snap of his fingers..."
It wasn't just ridiculous, it was impossible; Time Lords needed keys to open their ships...
And yet...
This was the ship that had shown jealousy when he'd almost sacrificed it and himself to save Charley during that mess with Zagreus... the ship whose alternate self hadn't trusted him when he'd been forced to travel in it after that mess with the Silurian Earth simply because he wasn't her Doctor... the ship that had given its very existence in a desperate attempt to save him from the Paradox biodata virus...
If it could do all that for him, why was it so impossible to assume that he could do... this?
Raising his hand before him, the Doctor snapped his fingers, and the TARDIS doors opened before him, the light of the console room spreading out from the interior to surround him, the warmth of his old friend and transport a stark cry from the slight chill of death and loss that seemed to fill the Library, even if it was only on a psychic level...
"Did it ever mean anything?" a voice said from behind him.
"What... River?" the Doctor said, turning around to look at the woman in question as she stood in the middle of the lobby, a slight gleam of tears in her eyes as she looked at him.
"What I had with you... what you will have with me... did it mean anything?" River asked, her lip trembling faintly as she walked up to him. "I've always known you didn't... couldn't... see me the way I..."
Her voice trailed off, River briefly shaking her head as though she wanted to stop herself from finishing that sentence before she looked back at him. "But... the last time I saw you... future you... you gave me the screwdriver... you said that the next time I saw you would be the last time I saw you..."
"And you want to know if everything we spent together was just to get to this moment?" the Doctor finished, smiling sympathetically at the woman before him as he walked over to her.
"Professor Song," he said at last, looking contemplatively at her as he spoke, taking care to pick his words accurately- what he had to say was probably going to be difficult, but there was no point making it more difficult than it had to be-, "I'm not going to lie to you and say that you're the most... conventional person I've ever met..., I can't speak for what reasons I might have for spending time with you in the future when I don't know what I'll be like then, and I'm definitely not going to insult both of us by saying that today's events might not have played a part in what I'll do later... but, even without speaking for my future self- which I can't do because we all change too much it's impossible to speak for ourselves; I can give myself advice from the future but leaving advice or memos for my future selves tends to get ridiculously more complicated since I can never be sure how I'll take it when I get it-, I can tell you this; if I hadn't wanted to spend time with you, I wouldn't have kept spending time with you. I could have just given you the screwdriver before you got here and left it at that; you wouldn't have needed to have met me at any point before that little stop-over."
"And... that would have worked?" River asked uncertainly, even as a slight smile crossed her face. "I am a bit stubborn, after all... and our history has been... tricky."
"Well, I can't speak for what our history might have been like, but I did do that kind of thing when I had to convince the founder of a colony to listen to me when I woke her up in my past while I was trying to figure out a few mysteries of the time," the Doctor said with a shrug, allowing himself a brief smile at the memory of that meeting with Kirann Ransom on Axtias Four and those long-ago days with Jamie and Zoe- he might have been a bit slow in that incarnation, with most of his plans last-minute botch-jobs more than anything else, but he had definitely been able to relax more in that body than he had been able to in later ones- before he turned his attention back to River. "The point is, however you will know me, I wouldn't be there if I didn't want to be there; if I kept on turning up like I did... well, I must have had some reason for it."
After a moment where the two of them stared silently at each other, River smiled softly at him.
"Thanks," she said, sniffing briefly before she seemed to compose herself, leaning over to kiss him briefly on the cheek before she stepped back once again. "Well... goodbye."
"Goodbye?" the Doctor repeated.
"You said it the last time I saw you... will see you," River said, a slightly trembling smile on her face as she looked at him. "You told me that I'd see you one more time... and then you'd be there to meet me all over again."
"Ah," the Doctor said, briefly wondering how his future self could guarantee that he wouldn't see River in her future from this moment on before pushing it aside; he'd probably understand when he got there.
"Oh, and... you'll be happy with Martha," River added, smiling briefly at him. "When I knew you in the future, one thing you always made clear was that Martha Jones was... well, as far as you were concerned, she was everything to you before I met you..."
Not sure what to say to that comment, the Doctor simply stood in silence as River Song turned around and walked away into the darkness of the Library, heading for the teleporters that would take her away from this world, leaving the Doctor with nothing to do but watch her depart (He thought he heard her mutter something about someone else meaning a great deal to him, but he didn't bother listening to that; anything that encouraged him to think about what would happen to him after Martha was gone was something he didn't care to consider right now).
He had to admit, arrogance issues aside- and those struck him as more of a defensive thing than anything else now that he looked back; act overly confident to conceal her more emotionally fragile state-, she wasn't that bad; she just didn't strike him as someone he could see himself being more than friends with...
"What was that about?" Martha asked, prompting the Doctor to turn around as his two companions walked towards him; they'd been helping Mr Lux sort out where everyone was meant to be sent- as well as making sure that the copies the Doctor had made of a few people to help keep CAL company had come through intact-, so the Library must be almost cleared out by now.
"Oh, River?" the Doctor said, indicating the door that Professor Song had just walked through. "Just... her saying goodbye; apparently I told her that this would be her last meeting with me, but I'm still going to meet her in my future but in her past..."
"Ah," Martha said, nodding slightly, unable to stop a slightly sympathetic glance after River.
The other woman might not have been exactly friendly to her, but knowing that someone you had strong feelings for was going to see you in your past while you'd never see him again in your future had to be weird...
"Time travel does get a bit confusing, doesn't it?" Donna said, looking at the Doctor with a slight smile.
"It has its ups and downs; keeping track of who you've met depending on when you've met them can get a bit complicated- I need to keep a calendar about when I met the likes of Will or Winston to be sure I don't visit them too casually when they don't know who I am-, but it's practically impossible when dealing with other time travellers..." the Doctor commented, before he shrugged and indicated the still-open TARDIS with a wave of his hand.
"Anyway," he said, eager to put the grimness of the Library and the implications of the future behind him until the time came when he had to face them again, "now that that's dealt with, who's for a bit of R&R at one of the most exotic leisure complexes in the universe?"
AN 5: To answer an obvious question, the Doctor's reference to Nyssa and Mel refers to Nyssa's meeting with the Fourth Doctor in "Asylum"- which took place for Nyssa after her departure from the Fifth Doctor in "Terminus" while from the Fourth's perspective it apparently took place after "The Deadly Assassin"-, and the Sixth Doctor summoned Mel, a companion he would travel with in his future, into his present to serve as a witness at his trial in "The Trial of a Time Lord: The Ultimate Foe"
AN 6: The incident where the Doctor talked to the founder of a colony so that she'd trust his past self took place in the novel "The Colony of Lies", where the Seventh Doctor spoke with Kirann Ransom- the daughter of Stuart Ransom, who went on to found a colony on the planet Axista Four- before she went into stasis so that she would be more inclined to trust the Second Doctor when he brought her out of stasis some decades after her ship had crash-landed, since the younger Doctor would need her help solving the colony's mysteries
AN 7: On a personal note, I'll say this right now; River did not, at any point, whisper the Doctor's 'true' name to him (Assuming that's what she said; I've got my doubts about that), since in this take on events the Doctor recognised that the current crisis- particularly with Martha and Donna's lives at stake- wasn't the right time to start asking questions about such a comparatively minor detail as River possessing a sonic screwdriver
AN 8: With that encounter out of the way, after the next chapter- which presents a brief look at how Leela's fit into life at Torchwood, while also leading into that group's role in upcoming events-, the villains launch their first assault, and the new elements of this plot really begin...