The Doctor and Martha waited. Martha managed to find a board game to play - Snakes & Ladders. The Doctor won all the games they played. Martha may or may not have gotten frustrated and threw the dice at his face. It felt like Charls never even existed at one point. Like they were an imaginary friend from your childhood who disappeared when you grew up.
"Should we look around again?" Martha suggested.
"I suppose we could," The Doctor tossed around a rubix cube that he'd found in a box.
The Doctor strolled through the many halls of the TARDIS, checking the rooms again. He'd been so lost in thought that he didn't even notice that the air had changed. The buzzing had faded away. Martha didn't notice either, she was too busy searching every corner of every room. It took them hours. Then they ended up at the white, wooden door. The Doctor entered first, then Martha. It was the same as the last time. Grey rug, grey couch, blue throw pillows, and plain coffee table.
"There's nothing that's changed." The Doctor muttered to himself, searching under the coffee table for clues.
Martha leaned on the door frame and watched, "What is this room? It's very...regular."
The Doctor scanned the carpet with the sonic screwdriver, "It's just a random room."
"Did you find anything?" Martha sighed.
"Still looking." The Doctor commented absentmindedly.
It was quiet, the only noise was the TARDIS's engine huffing very far away.
"What are we looking for?" a new voice cut through the silence. A voice that was eerily similar to the Doctor's except a higher pitch and maybe less harsh.
Martha's head snapped up and Doctor's head slowly raised to look at the couch. The two of them looked at the owner of the voice in shock. A person that they'd never seen before, sat on top of the back of the couch with their feet on the cushions. They looked average height with short, fluffy, brown hair that covered their head, bright green eyes and a round face but more on the masculine side. They looked around 19 or 20 years old and a clean, black shirt with a white squares spread on it, dark blue jeans that were cuffed at the legs, a dark purple waistcoat (unbuttoned), and no shoes or socks.
"What?" They straightened up and tugged their waistcoat down.
"Who are you?!" The Doctor stood up and exclaimed, "How did you get in here?!"
They flinched back, and slowly slipped their feet onto the floor, hands raised in surrender. The Doctor hurriedly pointed the sonic screwdriver at the strange person. He rushed forwards and scanned the new person. They watched as the Doctor paced circles around them.
"Who are you?" Martha repeated and stepped closer.
They leaned forward then whispered, "Am I allowed to speak?"
Martha nodded.
"Brilliant!" They smiled, "So, who are you?"
"Hey, we asked you first!" Martha crossed her arms.
They clapped childishly, "Yes, right. I have no clue who I am." They smiled and put their hands down, "Nice to meet you!"
The Doctor circled them, scanning with the sonic screwdriver. He backed away and looked over the readings.
"Impossible." He murmured.
"What?" Martha walked over to him.
The Doctor pocketed the sonic screwdriver and ran his hands through his hair, "Absolutely impossible!"
"Doctor!" Martha shouted.
The Doctor looked at Martha, snapping out of his thoughts, "Martha, this is Charlie Grey." He gestured to the strange person.
"Is that my name?" Charls asked, "It's a bit iffy."
"You normally go by Charls," The Doctor told them, "Do you really not remember who you are?"
"Not a clue!" Charls grinned.
Martha tugged Doctor's shoulder, "Doctor, are you absolutely sure that that is Charls?"
The Doctor stared into her eyes, "When I scanned them it said 33.32% human, 66.68% unidentifiable. The only person - the only thing - in the universe - in all of time and space - that I can remember that's 66.68% unidentifiable is Charlie Grey."
"But that's not them!" Martha exclaimed and pointed at Charls.
"Oi!" They shouted, "It's rude to point. Now are you going to tell me what I'm doing with no socks on?"
"How should I know?" Martha snapped back.
They shrugged, "Just that my feet are cold." They rubbed their feet on the carpet, "Need socks."
The Doctor went up to Charls and placed his hands on their shoulders. He looked them in the eyes, "Your name is Charlie Grey. I'm the Doctor and that's Martha Jones. You disappeared nearly 48 hours ago. The last time you saw us was when we went to New New York. We'd hopped on top of car roofs? Do you remember?"
"Sorry," Their eyebrows furrowed together, "I don't know what you're talking about."
Martha looked at them more, "Maybe you should read some of the books. The ones about you. Maybe it'll help you remember."
"Brilliant suggestion, Martha!" The Doctor exclaimed and grabbed Charls' hand. They ran to the console room and the Doctor grabbed the first book out of the stack.
"What?" Charls asked after catching their breath.
"Take this," the Doctor shoved the book into their arms, "You wrote about yourself because you had a bad memory. Everything you need to know should be in there."
"I don't understand." Charls held the book and examined it.
"Just read it!" Martha ordered.
Charls shut their mouth and sat in the yellow-ish chair. They opened the book and began to read. The Doctor moved Martha to the opposite side of the console and whispered.
"That should occupy them for a little. Enough time for us to figure out what happened." He bit his thumb.
"It looks like they're not Charls anymore." Martha noted.
The Doctor looked over at Charls, "It's still Charls, just not the same face. It's disorienting, I know, but you probably would have experienced this at one point."
"What do you mean?" Martha looked serious.
The Doctor stuttered, "Ahhh. It's just a thing that happens when I'm dying. You don't need to know now but it could hold clues as to why Charls looks different."
"You're going to tell me about that later but yes, Charls." Martha agreed.
The Doctor rubbed his hands, thinking, "There are many, many reasons that things can change shape. From personal experience, I can say that one cause can be death. Another would just be for comfort or personal preference. Some do it for camouflage and others do it as a hunting mechanism."
"So this also has to do with what species Charls is," Martha added.
"Yes." The Doctor confirmed, "But there's thousands of species that can take different forms and change forms."
Martha hopped over to the stack and grabbed one of the notebooks then ran back to Doctor.
"Maybe there's something in here." Martha handed Doctor the book. She'd grabbed the one that was burned.
"How would this help?" Doctor flipped through the pages.
"Well, they could've written down clues or something. If their change was caused by something they might've written it down." Martha pointed at the book.
"Found something!" The Doctor flipped to the page with the newest ink.
"What's it say?" Martha looked over his arm.
The Doctor read the page, "It says what the Carrionites said to them. 'I burn your soul to ash straightaway and now I name thee Charlie Grey.' Well, now we know the cause."
"What?" Martha asked.
"For any being," The Doctor mimed a sphere, "the soul is just as important as their body. Even more important for some. If you get rid of that, it's the same as killing the body. It's death."
"So Charls died?" Martha whispered.
The Doctor nodded, "Basically, yeah."
"But why were they able to come back?"
"Well, the next lines are things the Face of Boe said to them. I guess these were just said to them, before he died," the Doctor frowned, "'The forgotten species. What a great mind. Such wonderful memories. What a horrible history. They were never treated very fairly. That brilliant species.' It's not really much to go off of."
"Really?" Martha raised an eyebrow, "I think it's a lot. I mean, we know that their history was bad, they have good memory and that they're forgotten."
The Doctor looked at her, "Martha, there's hundreds of species that have a bad history."
"What about the memory thing? And the forgotten bit?" She pointed out.
"Well, it narrows it down a bit," the Doctor tilted his head, "The memory thing can be a lot of different things. But in Charls' case it seems like a natural memory. Like there's a lot of space in there, not like humans. You wouldn't be able to handle all the things in Charls' mind. Anyone would combust. Unless you had the ability to hold all that info. Charls does. Their species has a mind that can hold billions of years of memories."
"What about you?" Martha asked. "You've lived for a thousand years, right? How are you able to handle all that you've seen?"
The Doctor tapped his temple, "Time Lord brain. I guess that Charls has something similar."
"So they're part Time Lord?" Martha suggested.
He shook his head, "That's not possible. Time Lords just watch time pass. We're not supposed to mess with stuff. We don't...dance."
"Dance?" Martha scoffed.
"You what I mean," the Doctor waved the subject away, "If anything, their species could be related to mine. Like cousins or something. That Boe couldn't have given us a planet? Not even a system?"
"Now, that would make it too easy for the genius Doctor." Martha joked.
"The forgotten part is where I'm stuck," the Doctor admitted, "Forgotten could mean a lot of different things."
Martha read the book, "Yeah, Charls took that into account. Wrote about it."
The Doctor read the rest of the page, "I suppose we could always look in a library for some sort of record."
"But there's a possibility that they weren't recorded." Martha told him.
The Doctor strode over to the new Charls, "Get up. We're going to the library."
They tilted their head, "But I'm reading."
"Perfect!" The Doctor said playfully, "You can read at the library. Let's go."
The Doctor led Martha and Charls down one of the halls of the TARDIS, took several lefts and rights and opened the door to the library. A huge room that was filled with shelves of books. There were rows and rows of shelves and there were mysterious dark spots that seemed to never end. The floor was one of those classic library floors and there were beanbags and chairs scattered around. The only lights were glowing panels that imitated windows and small bulbs that had strings to turn them on and off. Charls gave the room a quick look and skittered to the steps that led to the second floor to continue reading.
"Welcome to the library. TARDIS library so it's special. Any book existing or not is in here. Don't read anything that's ahead of your time, though. That'll cause some nasty issues if you do." The Doctor added.
"So we're going to look through all of these books." Martha was stunned.
The Doctor scoffed, "No! That would take too long. We're going to use technology!"
He strode over to a computer that was attached to the back of the wall. It was like a normal computer, just the keyboard wasn't really a computer. It was more like a panel of random buttons that didn't match.
"TARDIS computer. Very useful. Now we just look for books that shouldn't exist." The Doctor typed in words as he spoke. "Enter! Now specifically about species with good memories. Enter. Now here's the difficult part. We have to go look for the books!"
Martha raised an eyebrow, "I thought that this was going to be easy?"
"Well," the Doctor weighed both hands, "the TARDIS helps by lighting up the books that match the search so we don't have to look through all the books. We just need to look through the glowy ones!"
"Glowy ones?" Martha echoed.
"Yeah!" The Doctor smiled, "It'll be fun!"
"Right, fun…" Martha repeated sarcastically.
"We'd better get started." The Doctor smiled and walked around a pile of books, towards the stairs, "I take the upstairs and you can start down here."
He smiled and walked up the steps and paused then looked at Martha. He pointed at Charls and mouthed 'Don't bother them' then walked off. Martha sighed, there were thousands of books in the first floor, thousands of rows and she was looking for glowing books? It would be impossible.