"Oh wow. It's so beautiful," I said as I took in the building in front of us. My knees wobbled slightly under me at the majesty of it and I gripped the Doctor's forearm tightly. "I might need to sit down."
"Emma it's just a library," he said with a teasing laugh and I smacked him on the shoulder with one hand while I gestured at the building in front of us.
"This is not just a library! It's the Library of Alexandria! Bite your tongue!" He threw his head back and laughed as he caught my hands in his and dragged me up against him.
"Happy anniversary Emma," he said before he kissed me.
"Is it?" I asked with a frown after we separated, because trying to keep track of dates was hard on the TARDIS and I still hadn't gotten the hang of it yet.
"The TARDIS informed me that it was when we woke up this morning and I thought that this would make a good gift," he said, and I laughed as I spread my palms over his hearts.
"It's amazing. God just look at it."
"You know Emma we can go in. As a matter of fact, I had assumed we would spend most of the day there," he said, and I wobbled in his arms, mostly for effect but partially with a bit of weak knees over the idea of walking into the Library of Alexandria.
"I might need to sit down," I said, and he laughed before tugging us towards the door.
"Might as well sit inside." He led us inside and settled me on a bench, teasingly checking me for a fever with one hand.
"Oh my God what am I going to get you?" I asked and he chuckled at that. "No seriously what do you get the Time Lord who has everything?"
"Emma I'm very easy to shop for." I snorted at that and he laughed. "Well perhaps not to shop for."
"I rest my case," I said as he started digging around in his pocket and pulled out the psychic paper to hand over to a flustered looking employee who had just run up to us.
"Ask me." I blinked up at him in confusion. "Ask me what I want."
"What would you like for an anniversary present?" I asked, mostly to humour him. He shifted his hand so that it was cupping my cheek.
"Tell me you love me," he said, and I laughed.
"That's it?" He nodded earnestly and I laughed again as I leaned forward to kiss him. "Well you might be impossible to shop for, but you certainly are easy to please I'll give you that much."
"Yes I am." He nuzzled my nose with his and I smiled at him.
"I love you Doctor." The employee cleared their throat gently and the Doctor sat down on the bench next to me and looked up at him.
"Terribly sorry to interrupt it's just that we have been waiting for someone of your calibre to arrive for weeks," the man said and the Doctor and I shared a confused look before I reached out and pulled the psychic paper out of his hand.
"Calibre?" The Doctor repeated while I bit down harshly on my smile while I angled the psychic paper towards him.
"Well who else are you going to call?" I asked as he read the fact that the psychic paper had declared us as ghost busters and his eyebrows went straight up towards his hairline. "Oh, you can't be that surprised that we've somehow ended up right in the middle of something as usual."
"Emma ghosts don't exist," he said, and I blinked at him in shock.
"Really? That is where you draw the line? Ghosts?" I asked. "What happened to 'the universe is vast and endless and full of improbabilities'?"
"I'm quite certain I've never said that," he said dryly.
"So, I trimmed the speech a little bit," I said with a wave of my hand. "That's not the point."
"If ghosts existed, I would have encountered them by now." I raised my eyebrow up at him because I knew how many things, we had encountered that he hadn't met previously. It wasn't a high number, but it was still enough that I needed two hands in order to count them all. His forehead scrunched up like he'd realized how bad of an argument that was. "Let me rephrase."
"Well if you insist."
"Any time I have encountered something that people were claiming to be ghosts it turned out to be something that isn't a ghost," he said, and I hummed.
"And I'm assuming that you are proposing that this is the same scenario," I said, and he nodded. The employee cleared his throat again and the Doctor and I both shifted out gazes to him guiltily.
"Sorry," I said meekly as the Doctor jumped up from the bench and held his hand out to me, pulling me up to my feet when I took it.
"Would you mind taking us to the place with the most frequent ghost activity?" The Doctor asked smoothly, and the employee nodded before gesturing us into a dark part of the library that was roped off.
"I just want you to know that I am still a little overwhelmed by the fact that I'm standing in the Library of Alexandria," I whispered to the Doctor as we walked through stacks and I gently reached out to run the tips of my fingers over the scrolls. He lifted our joined hands so he could press a kiss to mine.
"Emma you are also spectacularly easy to please," he said, and I smiled at him.
"I've believe that you've mentioned that before," I said before I focused on the employee. "I'm so sorry but I missed your name."
"Octavius," he said stiffly, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at his hesitance to speak to me because I'm a girl.
"Octavius how long has the ghostly activity been happening?" I asked, hoping that maybe he was just awkward, not sexist, since this was a public library and I had every right to be here. Judging by the slight blush that rose up on his cheeks I was starting to think he was just awkward.
"Approximately a month ago," Octavius said. "We had just received new works from Persia when it started."
"Interesting," the Doctor said in that distant way which told me that he was adding ideas and crossing them off a mental list in rapid fire manner. I thought about nudging him to get him to talk out loud, but then decided that I had better not in case Octavius couldn't handle it.
"Yes, it was shortly before Julius Caesar descended upon the harbour," he said, and I grumbled under my breath about Julius Caesar while I resisted the urge to cross my arms in front of me. The Doctor raised an eyebrow up at me.
"Don't ask. Lillian timed my rant once in University and we don't have time for it," I muttered under my breath and he laughed.
"He's a bit of an ass, but also not the worst Roman I've ever dealt with," he said. I quirked an eyebrow up at him. "Nero."
"When was that?" I asked.
"Early, early days. Susan, Ian, and Barbara were still travelling with me," he said, and I whistled slightly.
"Those were early days." I made a mental note to ask for that story later because as much as I wanted to hear it, I also had a feeling that now was not the time.
"Octavius what kind of activity has been reported?" The Doctor asked.
"Unearthly voices. There have been a few unexplained disappearances as well," Octavius said before he pulled a door open. "Everything has occurred here."
"Convenient of the ghosts to stick to one location," I said as the Doctor and I stepped in and took a quick glance around. I realized that that was a dumb idea about five seconds too late and whirled on my heel in just enough time to see Octavius pass me an apologetic look as he slammed the door shut and the lock clicked. "God dammit. I thought he was being shifty because he's historically sexist."
"Emma," the Doctor said in an attempt to be chiding before he burst out laughing. I threw my hands up in the air in mock exasperation.
"What? I gave him the benefit of the doubt and told myself that he was just awkward!" His shoulders shook as he tried to contain his laughter before he looked at me.
"Emma, my darling, I don't know what I did to deserve you," he said, and I twisted my lips at him.
"Would you like that list to be alphabetized or dated chronologically?" I asked and he chuckled again.
"You have a list?"
"No, the TARDIS and I have a list," I said as I moved towards one of the crates that was resting in one of the corners. The lid had been cracked so I started rifling through the scrolls. "Looks like a collection of Persian myths."
"Well that doesn't make sense," he said, and I looked over at him. He'd perched on the end of the table and was looking up at the skylight in the ceiling with a furrowed forehead.
"Going to tell me which theory I just ended?" I asked teasingly as I straightened up and started to walk towards him. He looked down to answer me before his eyes went wide and he held his hand out.
"Emma stop moving!" I froze immediately and automatically checked over my shoulder to see if there was something behind me. He jumped down off the table and moved closer to me with his gaze glued to my feet. I looked down but they looked normal.
"Is there a reason why you've just given me a heart attack?" I asked, though my voice was much weaker than I would have preferred it to be.
"Emma you have two shadows," he said, and his voice sounded like ice.
"Okay that's not horribly abnormal," I said before I realized that I was under the skylight, which was the only light source in the room. I shifted my gaze from the Doctor's face to his feet and confirmed that he only had one shadow.
"Emma! Emma look at me!" He ordered and I snapped my gaze up to him. "Don't panic."
"I'll not panic as soon as you tell me why I remember this having two shadows thing being bad," I said back even as I tried to keep the rising fear down.
"River Song in The Library," he said flatly, and I winced. Now that he'd said it I remembered, it had been the story he'd told me with the Cybermen at the space museum back in our early days of travelling.
"You have terrible luck with blonde girls in libraries," I teased weakly and his eyes filled with fire.
"Don't," he snapped before sucking in a deep breath. When he continued his voice was weak and shaky. "Please I won't be able to think if you talk like that."
"Sorry," I whispered out. "Guess that explains the disappearances."
"It does, but the scrolls don't make sense. The Vashta Nerada in the Library lived in the books because it was paper from the trees where they lived. Papyrus doesn't come from trees," he said as he started to pace back and forth in front of me while running his hands through his hair.
"Crates do," I said, and he stopped dead to look between my face and the crate behind me.
"Why must you be so bloody brilliant?" He said as he yanked the sonic out of his pocket and scanned the shadow behind me.
"You're the one who conditioned me into it," I said as I tried to refrain from flinching at the look on his face at the sonic's results. He looked at me with a frown.
"The only thing I conditioned you into was speaking your brilliance thank you very much. You were already brilliant."