Chapter Twenty-six: The Wolf and the Shadow
Rose smiled at the Doctor as he bounced and spun around the reading room. Figuring something out had soothed his earlier fatalistic outlook, though of course he would be happier if he could figure out where the Vashta Nerada came from.
She pivoted in a slow circle as she turned that particular mystery over in her mind. The one thing she'd picked up from the Doctor about the life cycle of the Vashta Nerada was that they laid their eggs in trees.
She laid her hand on the carved railing of the staircase. There was a lot of wood in the Library, she mused—much more than she'd imagined in a building so futuristic. It was almost as surprising as the paper books.
Oh.
Paper. Paper made from trees, which had been cut down from a forest somewhere.
"Doctor," she said quietly, using the bond to get his attention rather than volume. He wheeled around and looked at her. "I think I've figured out where the Vashta Nerada came from."
His eyes widened. "Where? They hatch in forests, and this entire planet is a city."
Rose shook her head. "No, this entire planet is a forest." She lifted her hands and turned slowly, pointing at the shelves. "You said all the books here were printed specially for the Library. Which means they were printed at once, likely on paper made from the same batch of wood pulp… cut down from the same forest."
"Oh," he whispered, turning in a circle. "These are their forests."
oOoOoOoOo
Miss Evangelista stood up while Donna was still grappling with her memories and gestured to the walk that encircled the playground. "Shall we?" she asked, sounding exactly like the genteel Victorian lady she looked like.
"Mind if I join you?" another familiar voice asked as they stood up.
Donna spun around to look at her niece. "Jenny! What are you doing here?"
Jenny looked at her steadily, and Donna cringed when she saw something sad in the younger woman's eyes. "Miss Evangelista and I talked earlier," she explained. "And we agreed that this would be the best way to show you."
"To show me what?" Donna looked back and forth between the two women, her temper sparking. "Listen, you," she snarled at Miss Evangelista, "I don't know who you are, but my niece had a very serious brain injury. If you've been messing with us both…"
"She is not your niece," Miss Evangelista said calmly. "Think, Donna. Remember the person you were when you knew me before."
Jenny put a hand on her shoulder. "Just… listen for a little bit longer, Donna, all right?" she pleaded. "If we get to the end, and you still think we're bonkers, you can tell Doctor Moon I've relapsed and we won't ever mention it again."
Donna pressed her lips into a thin line and took a deep breath through her nose. "All right then. Talk fast."
Miss Evangelista pointed at the children playing as the trio started their walk. "I suggested we meet here because a playground is the easiest place to see it," Miss Evangelista explained. "To see the lie."
"What lie?" Donna demanded. She could hear her children shrieking happily as Miss Evangelista tried to dismantle her whole world, and it made her even more snappish than usual.
"The children," Jenny said gently. "Look at the children."
But Donna couldn't look away from Miss Evangelista. She told herself she was fascinated by the woman's veil, but deep down, she knew she was terrified of what she'd see if she looked at the playground.
"Why do you wear that veil?" she asked. "If I had a face like yours, I wouldn't hide it."
"You remember my face, then?" Donna couldn't be certain, but she thought Miss Evangelista was smiling behind the veil. "The memories are all still there. The Library, the Doctor, me. You've just been programmed not to look."
Donna slowed down as an awful memory returned—the memory of this young woman, talking to her through death. "Sorry, but you're dead."
Miss Evangelista turned and looked straight ahead. "In a way, we're all dead here, Donna," she said, with the calm only the dead can achieve when talking about death. "We are the dead of the Library."
"Well, what about the children? The children aren't dead." Donna looked at the playground, and something seemed off. The world is wrong. She pushed the thought aside and looked back at Jenny. "My children aren't dead."
She hated that there was even a hint of question in her voice.
Jenny pursed her lips and shook her head. "Ella and Joshua aren't real, Donna."
Donna waved her arms at Jenny, her body shaking with fear and anger."Don't you say that. Don't you dare say that about my children!" She gestured at the playground where she could hear Ella and Joshua playing. "You were there when they were born! You held them!"
Jenny's eyes, usually bright blue with excitement or happiness, now looked like the sky right before a storm. "Was I, Donna?"
"Look at your children," Miss Evangelista interrupted. "Look at all of them, really look."
Donna spun around to tell the other woman where she could take all of her comments about things being wrong, but as she did, her gaze landed on the playground, and she finally saw it. One little boy and one little girl, repeated over and over. Wearing the same coats, laughing with the same childish giggles, smiling the same toothy smiles.
"They're not real," Miss Evangelista pressed in a low voice. "Do you see it now? They're all the same. All the children of this world, the same boy and the same girl, over and over again."
"Stop it. Just stop it. Why are you doing this?" Donna glared at the other woman, who wouldn't even let her see her face. "Why are you wearing that veil?"
Jenny watched with morbid curiosity when Donna yanked the veil off. She'd wondered the same question, but had managed to curtail the impulse to ask, thinking that Rose would call the question rude. Donna didn't have Jenny's mum's voice in the back of her head, though, and obviously felt no compunction about unveiling their mysterious friend.
The loud gasp Jenny let out when Miss Evangelista's face was revealed was quiet compared to Donna's yell. With one eye three times the size of the other and the crooked mouth, it looked like someone had melted her face.
She looks like a Picasso, Donna thought, just barely managing to stem the hysterical laughter rising up.
Miss Evangelista readjusted her veil, then looked at them calmly while they gathered their wits again. "What happened to your face?" Jenny asked finally.
The young woman shrugged wryly. "Transcription errors. Destroyed my face, did wonders for my intellect. I'm a very poor copy of myself."
"Where are we?" Donna asked. "Why are the children all the same?"
They were finally getting down to the most important part of the story, and Jenny leaned forward to take Donna's hand. "The same pattern over and over," she told her. "It saves an awful lot of space."
Donna looked at the two of them, her forehead knit together. "Space?"
Miss Evangelista nodded. "Cyberspace."
oOoOoOoOo
"Doctor," Melody said, "what were you saying a moment ago about everyone being saved?"
He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and nodded firmly. "Right, yes. Here, let me show you." He ran to a computer terminal, and quickly pulled up the archives from the day the Library had gone silent.
Once he had the record open, it was easy to find what he was looking for. "See, there it is, right there." He pointed at the screen for the four people who'd gathered around him. "A hundred years ago, massive power surge. All the teleports going at once. Soon as the Vashta Nerada hit their hatching cycle, they attack. Someone hits the alarm. The computer tries to teleport everyone out."
Melody peered at the screen. "It tried to teleport four thousand twenty-two people?"
The Doctor rocked back on his heels. "It succeeded," he corrected. "Pulled them all out, but then what? Nowhere to send them. Nowhere safe in the whole library. Vashta Nerada growing in every shadow. Four thousand and twenty-two people all beamed up and nowhere to go." He twirled his finger in the air. "They're stuck in the system, waiting to be sent, like emails. So what's a computer to do? What does a computer always do?"
Rose sucked in a breath. "It saved them," she whispered.
The Doctor nodded, then looked for a surface he could draw on. His gaze landed on the mahogany table, and he ran to it and shoved the books out of the way as he pulled a marker out of his pocket.
"The Library," he said, drawing a large circle right on the table. "A whole world of books, and right at the core," he added another circle inside the smaller circle, "the biggest hard drive in history. The index to everything ever written, backup copies of every single book. The computer saved four thousand and twenty-two people the only way a computer can." He added an arrow, pointing at the centre circle. "It saved them to the hard drive."
Rose tapped her fingers over the centre circle. "And that's where Jenny and Donna are?" she asked, her voice tight and not quite hopeful.
The Doctor put his hand over hers. "That's where Jenny and Donna are," he said, hoping as he said the words that he was right.
oOoOoOoOo
Jenny linked her arm through Donna's as Miss Evangelista led them to a bandstand where they could talk a little more easily. "How are you doing, Donna?" she asked quietly. "I know it's a lot to take in."
"How am I supposed to believe this?" Donna countered. "We're not even real? This isn't my real body? But I've been dieting."
Jenny giggled. "Well, we've actually only been in the database for…" She squinted and tried to count back. "A little over an hour. So, you haven't been denying yourself for as long as it feels, if it makes you feel any better."
Donna snorted. "Just a little," she allowed.
Miss Evangelista turned to them, and even without being able to see her face, they could sense her annoyance. They both quieted, and she nodded sharply.
"Your physical self is stored in the Library as an energy signature," she explained. "It can be actualised again whenever you or the Library requires."
"The Library?" In the middle of trying to grasp what she was being told, Donna suddenly remembered the faceless doll Ella had made of her. "If my face ends up on one of those statues…"
Jenny laughed. "Of course you remember the statues. Oh, you hated those."
Miss Evangelista gestured at the park around them. "What you see around you, this entire world is nothing more than virtual reality."
The three ladies looked around slowly, then Donna looked straight at Miss Evangelista.
"So why do you look like that?" she asked, her voice soft.
"I had no choice," the other woman said briskly. "You both teleported. You're perfect reproductions. I was just a data ghost caught in the wifi and automatically uploaded."
"And that's why you're able to interact with the program without oversight from Doctor Moon," Jenny said, realising the answer to a question that had bothered her from the moment she'd met the virtual Miss Evangelista.
The veiled woman nodded, but Donna asked another question before she could speak.
"And… being uploaded to the computer made you clever?"
Miss Evangelista shrugged. "We're only strings of numbers in here. I think a decimal point may have shifted in my IQ. But my face has been the bigger advantage. I have the two qualities you require to see absolute truth. I am brilliant and unloved."
Jenny had only been alive for three months, but she had already seen enough to know the truth in what Miss Evangelista said. Even within the world of a virtual reality, no one would pay any attention to someone who looked like Miss Evangelista. It was one of the saddest truths she'd faced yet.
Donna squinted at the two of them. "If this is all a dream, whose dream is it?"
"It's hard to see everything in the data core, even for me, but there is a word. Just one word. Cal."
Jenny's mouth dropped open. "But we know what CAL is," she said. "Sorry, Mr. Lux was telling us about her when you… ah…"
"When I died," Miss Evangelista said calmly. "Yes, now that you mention it, I do remember hearing the start of a conversation… but I was too focused on the opening in the wall to pay attention. Continue."
"CAL stands for Charlotte Abigail Lux. Technically, she was his aunt—his father's younger sister. She was dying when she was just a girl, so her father—Mr. Lux's grandfather—built the Library, with a computer at the centre. He gave her everything she wanted, all the stories in the universe."
Miss Evangelista nodded. "Then CAL is the data core, in a way. And it is her dream we have all been folded into."
Donna's head was swimming. The idea that she was just… just a string of numbers was hard to swallow. But harder still was the notion that nothing of her life was real. She had everything she'd ever wanted—a perfect life with a gorgeous man who adored her and two beautiful children.
Is that really everything you ever wanted? her subconscious niggled at her. You remember the travelling now. Don't you miss the adventure?
Ella called out to her before she could tell her subconscious what it could do with that errant thought. "Mummy, my knee!"
Donna ran to her daughter, who had fallen off a swing and skinned her knee. "Oh! Oh, look at that knee," she said as she knelt down besides Ella. "Oh, look at that silly old knee!" She scooped Ella up into her arms and cuddled her close.
"She's not real."
Donna's head snapped back so she could glare at Miss Evangelista, who had followed her across the playground.
"They're fictions," the woman insisted. "I'm sorry, but now that you understand that, you won't be able to keep a hold. They are sustained only by your belief."
Jenny put her hand on Miss Evangelista's shoulder. "I think you've made your point," she said, her voice kind, but firm. "We know this isn't real, but until we can find a way to get out of the computer, is there any harm in pretending it is?" She took Joshua's hand and smiled at Donna. "Let's go home, yeah?"
Donna nodded. "Yeah."
She wanted to be surprised when she blinked and they were back at home, but the afternoon had destroyed her ability to believe Doctor Moon's lies.
Joshua pulled his hand away from Jenny's and wrapped an arm around Donna's waist. "That was quick, wasn't it, Mummy?"
"Donna." Jenny's tension-filled voice forced Donna to acknowledge her, and she turned around, trying not to see the red light or hear the alarm shrieking. "Donna, something is wrong."
oOoOoOoOo
Rose held the Doctor's hand tight as she let herself really believe they would find Jenny and Donna. They knew where they were; now it was just a matter of finding a way to retrieve their data signals.
Hope had barely had time to gain a foothold when red lights started flashing in time with a blaring siren.
"What is it?" Mr. Lux asked. "What's wrong?"
"Auto destruct enabled in twenty minutes," a recorded voice announced.
They all ran back at the computer terminal, which was flashing two messages: one, the countdown to the auto destruct, and the other, a warning of maximum erasure.
"Maximum erasure doesn't sound good," Rose observed, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.
"Yeah, not so much." All those people on the hard drive, including Jenny and Donna, would be deleted. The Doctor shoved his hand through his hair as he stumbled back from the terminal. "In twenty minutes, this planet's going to crack like an egg."
"No," Mr. Lux burst out. "No, it's all right. The Doctor Moon will stop it. It's programmed to protect Cal."
Rose wanted to groan, because Sod's law dictated that as soon as Mr. Lux assured them nothing could go wrong, it would. And sure enough, a moment later, the monitor went blank.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no!" the Doctor yelled. He jumped up on the table so he could look behind the terminal, and Rose saw him pull his sonic screwdriver out.
He can do this, Rose thought, biting hard on her lip. The Doctor will get the computer to work again, and then he'll save everyone.
A different automated voice killed that thought. "All library systems are permanently offline. Sorry for any inconvenience."
oOoOoOoOo
Donna sat down with her children on the couch and wrapped an arm around each of them. Jenny sat in the chair, and the sympathetic look on her face cut to the quick. "You just, you just stay where I can see you, all right?" She couldn't stop the tears running down her face. No matter what she told her children, no matter how many precautions she took, she was going to lose them. "You, you don't get out of my sight."
"Is it bedtime?" Ella suggested innocently.
This time, Donna felt it happen—the computer glitch as they all moved from one room to another. At least in the children's bedroom with the curtain closed, they couldn't see the red light anymore. The alarm was still there in the background, though even it was harder to hear.
Ella and Joshua were tucked snugly in their beds, and she was sitting on Ella's bed while Jenny was on Joshua's. The two women looked at each other, resigned, fearful expressions of their faces, then Donna took a deep breath and faked a smile.
"Okay." Donna pulled the covers up to Ella's chin while Jenny did the same for Joshua. "That was lovely, wasn't it? That was a lovely bedtime. Aunt Jenny made warm milk, and we watched cartoons, and then Mummy read you a lovely bedtime story."
Ella looked at her, through eyes that were far too knowing for a child of seven. "Mummy, Joshua and me, we're not real, are we?"
"Of course you're real," Donna lied. "You're as real as anything. Why do you say that?"
Joshua answered first. "But, Mummy, sometimes, when you're not here, it's like we're not here," he protested, and the little lisp in his voice broke Donna's heart, almost as much as his words..
"Even when you close your eyes, we just stop," Ella explained.
Donna had tried so hard to ignore the facts, but having them presented to her by… by the computer programs she'd thought were her children made it impossible. She blinked back tears as she looked from one to the other.
"Well, Mummy promises to never close her eyes again." She smiled at Joshua, then turned back to kiss Ella on the forehead, but the bed was empty.
"No!" She jumped up and yanked the cover down, but the there was no little girl hiding in the sheets. She wheeled around to Joshua, but he'd disappeared too, leaving Donna standing in between two empty beds, begging the universe to give her her children back. "Please! No, please!"
She fell to her knees, pulling at the covers, trying to find her son and daughter, but they had vanished. Her desperate whispers escalated into shrieks of denial. "No! No, no! No, no!"
Jenny grabbed her arms. "Donna. Donna!" She shook her gently, and finally the other woman's eyes focused on her. "You need to calm down!"
Donna drew back, a snarl contorting her features. "Don't you dare tell me to calm down!" she hissed. "My children…" Her throat closed up, and she swallowed, then tried again. "My babies are gone!"
Jenny flinched. Right, not the best way to start. What would Mum say to get through to her? She nodded slowly, then tried again. "Okay, I know this is… horrifying," she said slowly, trying to project Rose's compassion. "I can't imagine what it would be like to see your children disappear in front of your eyes. But maybe this is the start of us getting out of the computer. And if we get out of here, you can meet someone and have actual children of your own. Children who are real, that you share every moment of their lives."
Donna sniffed and wiped at her eyes. "I don't even remember being pregnant," she admitted. "Not that I was particularly looking forward to feeling like a beached whale, but…" She sighed wistfully. "I did want some parts of it. Feeling my babies move. I never had that."
Jenny nodded, relieved that the computer hadn't managed to perfectly replicate every detail of life. "See, it'll be better when you have the real experience. But for that to happen, we need to get back to the real world. So this… as scary as it is, this might be a good thing." She nudged Donna with her elbow. "You know Dad and Rose are out there working like mad to get us back."
Donna opened her mouth and Jenny held her hand up. "Both of us," she insisted. "Donna, you're like the older sister neither of them ever had. Why do you think the computer decided you were my aunt?"
Donna stared at her for a long moment, then a tiny smile crossed her face. "Look at you; only three months old and already smarter than me," she teased. "All right, let's go back downstairs and wait for the world to end so we can go home."
oOoOoOoOo
Mr. Lux hollered over the warnings. "We need to stop this. We've got to save Cal."
Rose snorted. "And how do you propose we do that?" she countered. "As far as I can tell, Cal is the one who's trying to kill us!"
Mr. Lux shook his head. "I think the Doctor could stop her, if we got to the main computer."
The Doctor's eyebrows rose. "It's at the core of the planet."
Melody smirked and pulled out her screwdriver. "Well, then. Let's go." She ran to the middle of the room and pointed it at the Library logo. The large compass rose opened and a blue stream of light flowed up. "Gravity platform," she said simply.
"Melody Pond, I like you," Rose declared as she stepped onto the gravity platform.
She could hear a note of relief in the archaeologist's laugh, and a pang of sympathy went through her for the other woman. Despite the fact that Melody was older than her, currently, their relationship was very clearly one where she looked up to Rose and not the other way around. It must have been hard, feeling like she had to earn my respect all over again.
"Anita!" the Doctor called out, and the younger woman shuffled slowly towards them. Rose noted with some relief that she still had two shadows.
When they were all on the platform, Melody activated the command to transport them to the centre of the planet.
They had fifteen minutes left in the auto destruct countdown when they reached the data core. The Doctor ran in the direction of an orangish light, and soon he was staring in awe at a massive ball of energy. "The data core. Over four thousand living minds trapped inside it."
"Yeah, well, they won't be living much longer," Melody pointed out bluntly. "We're running out of time."
"Yes, we can all hear the countdown," Rose retorted. "So let's not waste time pointing out the obvious." She took a quick breath, then shook her head. "I'm sorry. I just want them back."
The Doctor squeezed her shoulder, then ran past her down the corridor toward what he hoped was the main server room. He let out a sigh of relief when the multiple terminals filling the room confirmed his guess, and rushed to the nearest one.
However, he'd barely begun his attempt to get it to work when he was interrupted by the plaintive call of a young girl. "Help me. Please, help me."
"What's that?" Anita asked as they scanned the room for the source of the voice.
The Doctor looked at Mr. Lux, who had tears in his eyes. "That's Cal," the other man confirmed. He tugged off his gloves and reached for a lever in the wall. When he pulled it, a door opened on the opposite side of the room.
The group ran into a room filled with more computer processors and terminals, and the Doctor watched in astonishment as a Courtesy Node turned around to reveal the face of the same little girl they'd seen on the monitor upstairs.
"Please help me. Please help me."
"It's the little girl," Anita said, apparently able to see well enough through her visor to pick out the girl's features. "The girl we saw in the computer."
"This is Cal," Mr. Lux said quietly. "I told you my grandfather put her living mind inside the computer… Well, in a way, she is the computer. The main command node."
"Help me. Please help me," the girl continued to beg.
The Doctor stared at the command node, the pieces falling into place. "So Cal is in the computer, dreaming of the perfect life. But she's also part of the Library, so when the shadows came and the alarm sounded…"
"The shadows," CAL said, "I have to… I have to save. Have to save."
"And she saved them." The Doctor peered up toward the planet's surface. They were even closer to the data core here than they had been before. "She saved everyone in the Library. Folded them into her dreams and kept them safe."
"Then why didn't she tell us?" Anita asked.
Doctor. Rose's sharp nudge got his attention immediately. Anita only has one shadow.
The Doctor looked over at her and his hearts dropped. Oh, Anita.
The computer countdown reminded him that he had still-living people who were counting on him, which meant he didn't have time to confront the swarm that had just killed Anita.
"Because she's forgotten," he said, in answer to the question. "She's got over four thousand living minds chatting away inside her head. Imagine trying to keep track of that many individual thoughts at once. Even a computer can't usually handle four thousand twenty-two processes at one time. We'll be lucky if her memory of the truth is the only thing missing."
"So what do we do?" Melody asked matter-of-factly.
There were only ten minutes left on the countdown, and that wasn't enough time to think of a clever plan. "Easy!" He ran back to the terminal and opened a command line. "We beam all the people out of the data core. The computer will reset and stop the countdown." The information he was getting from the computer wasn't promising. "Difficult. Charlotte doesn't have enough memory space left to make the transfer."
"Easy," Rose drawled. "Someone runs back upstairs, gets the TARDIS, and we use her memory space."
Melody snorted. "Difficult. The Library is swarming with Vashta Nerada."
The Doctor looked at Mr. Lux and Other Dave. "You two, go back to the surface. If I succeed, you'll soon have four thousand people who need to be sent home."
The two men looked at each other, then shrugged and turned around. Melody started to protest, but the Doctor put his finger to his lips and pointed to Anita. Melody's shoulders slumped when she saw that her protege only had one shadow.
The Doctor's hearts ached for the young woman who had lost three friends in a single day. "Melody, do you know anything about splicing two computers together, the way we're talking about?" he asked, both because he needed her help and because he hoped it would distract her from her grief.
She pulled her gloves off and nodded. "Oh, yes," she promised, sounding exactly like… well, him. "You taught me yourself. Said it would come in handy someday—I guess someday is today." She looked at him pointedly. "But none of my fancy computer and electronic skills will matter if you don't get the TARDIS here in time."
The Doctor nodded and turned to Anita, who had crept closer to them while they'd talked. "What about the Vashta Nerada?" she asked.
"Rose, come here, love." The shadows had been lengthening in her direction, and he wanted her outside their reach. When she was close enough to take his hand, he looked back at Anita. "These are their forests. We're going to seal Charlotte inside her little world, take everybody else away. The shadows can swarm to their hearts' content."
"So you think they're just going to let us go?" the Vashta Nerada asked, condescension dripping from their voice.
The Doctor swallowed the angry retort he wanted to give and set his jaw. "Best offer they're going to get."
Anita's helmet tilted slightly. "You're going to make 'em an offer?"
In his peripheral vision, the Doctor watched Melody's tall, willowy form move from one panel to another, using the computer terminals to bring up CAL's memories while he and Rose handled the Vashta Nerada. He recognised every move she made and briefly congratulated his future self on training her well, before focusing on the Vashta Nerada again.
"They'd better take it, because right now, I'm finding it very hard to make any kind of offer at all." Rose rubbed her thumb over his, and he took a deep breath before his temper got out of control. "You know what? I really liked Anita. She was brave, even when she was crying. And she never gave in. And you ate her." The Doctor pointed the screwdriver at the visor of her helmet, and only a skull was visible. "But I'm going to let that pass, just as long as you let them pass."
The voice deepened, gaining an dangerous edge Anita had never used. "How long have you known?"
He walked away from Rose to look Anita's skull in the face. "I counted the shadows. You only have one now." Anita's neural relay flashed. "She's nearly gone. Be kind."
"These are our forests," they said coldly. "We are not kind."
The Doctor crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm giving you back your forests, but you are giving me them. You are letting them go." He turned his back on the swarm to walk to the gravity platform, painfully aware that the clock was ticking.
"These are our forests. They are our meat."
The threat was obvious, but before the Doctor could even blink, he felt a flare of something stronger than anger over the bond. He checked Rose's eyes as she stepped forward and thought he saw tiny flecks of gold dancing in her eyes, along with a determined glint that was all Rose. Not fully Bad Wolf, he thought, but something similar.
At the same time, the bond vibrated with her fury. He forced himself to watch quietly as she confronted the Vashta Nerada.
She held up her hand. "You've come far enough," she ordered.
The Doctor turned back around and narrowed his eyes when he realised the swarm had one arm lifted and had slowly been extending itself toward him.
Power buzzed as the edge of Rose's awareness as she stared down the swarm, but it stayed leashed for now. The TARDIS hummed in the back of her mind, and she smiled, knowing the ship was there if she needed any help.
Rather than stop, the swarm shifted direction slightly, moving toward her instead. Rose smirked and shook her head as she watched its progress. "If you're smart, you'll take the Doctor's offer," she said, her voice deathly calm. "You really shouldn't have threatened my Doctor, but since he's promised to let you go, I won't harm you—as long as you don't harm him."
The swarm scoffed at the warning. "You are mortal, as is he." The shadows moved another six inches closer to both her and the Doctor. "There is nothing you could do to stop us."
The TARDIS sang in the back of Rose's mind, and she knew exactly what to say to get the Vashta Nerada to leave them alone. A surge of confidence shot through her as she tossed her hair back over her shoulder and stared down the swarm.
"I'm the Bad Wolf. Do you really want to test what I can do to protect the Doctor?"
The song in her mind swelled, and to her surprise, the wind picked up around them. A moment later, the familiar grinding noise of the TARDIS engines echoed in the room. She heard the Doctor's sharp intake of breath when he realised what was happening, but she didn't dare look away from the Vashta Nerada.
The shadows paused when the TARDIS materialised only a metre to Rose's right. The air in the room was tense as Rose, the Doctor, and Melody waited for the Vashta Nerada to consider their chances in light of that show of power.
Finally, the shadows receded. "You have one day," they said before disappearing and letting the suit collapse.
The Doctor stared at Rose. "You… How did…" He ran his hand through his hair and chuckled hoarsely.
Rose shook her head. "I can't take credit for the TARDIS. She did that all on her own. As for the rest…" She stepped closer to him and pressed her hand to his jaw. "I want you safe, my Doctor," she said simply.
"Rose Tyler, Bad Wolf and protector of the Doctor."
Melody cleared her throat. "As… um, touching and slightly terrifying as this is, we are running on a clock here. Maybe the two of you could get the TARDIS ready while I finish this up? Please?"
Rose smiled when the Doctor unlocked the door. "We'll just go into the Vortex to give us time to get things ready. We'll be back before you even notice we're gone!" she called back over her shoulder.
While the Doctor moved to the controls to take them into the Vortex, Rose rested her hands on a coral strut. Thank you, she told the ship. The only response she got was a warm chuckle that made her feel like there was some detail she was missing, but Rose shrugged it off and turned back to the Doctor.
His attention was completely focused on the controls, and as they left the Library and reentered the Vortex, some of Rose's exhilaration faded. "Are you…"
He let out a deep breath and looked up at her. "No. Not upset." She opened her mouth, but he shook his head. "We don't have time to talk about it right now. I'll…" He ran his hand through his hair. "I'll explain later."
Rose shrugged and focused on the TARDIS. "Are you ready to save four thousand and twenty-two people, old girl?" she murmured while the Doctor ducked down below the console and pulled up a section of the grating. "We can't do it without you."
The TARDIS hummed encouragingly, and Rose leaned back on the jump seat to watch the Doctor work. There was still some kind of energy buzzing over their bond, and she tried to puzzle it out.
"You were terrifying and sexy as hell," he said bluntly as he dug around in the storage compartment until he found the cables he needed and hooked them up to the console, ready to be wired into the Library's mainframe. "The way you took charge and stared down the Vashta Nerada… I'm still trying to figure out how I can be absolutely petrified and completely turned on at the same time."
Rose finally recognised the desire burning hot over the bond. It was so entwined with his fear that the sensations had merged to feel like something new and different—something she hadn't been able to name until he'd explained it.
It was a heady combination.
But for now, she wanted to ease his fear. She was fine—she knew that instinctively. Rose watched him work, saw how hard he was focusing on what he was doing, and she knew how to shake him out of his fear.
She hopped out of the jump seat and leaned on a smooth section of the console only a few inches away from where he was working. The Doctor's hands stilled and she reached over to touch his arm.
"Well…" she said, keeping her voice low and breathy. "If you're debating which one to act on…" She trailed her fingers down his arm.
The Doctor jumped. "Rose!" His voice was a squeak. "We're in the middle of saving four thousand people."
To his surprise, Rose didn't push her point, or remind him that time was meaningless in the Vortex. Instead, he thought he caught a glimpse of a satisfied smirk on her face as she turned away from him.
It only took him a moment to realise how artfully she'd managed to redirect his thoughts. Surprise over her actions had cleared his mind of his confusing reactions to her display with the Vashta Nerada.
He shook his head, then double-checked the work he'd done, now that he wasn't fighting the urge to drag her to the medbay and run a whole slew of scans on her. After tweaking one wire, he spun around to the navigation panel and started setting the coordinates so they would land only a few seconds after they'd left.
That reminded him of the other mystery of the day—how had the TARDIS appeared, exactly when they'd needed her?
As he turned a dial, he felt the familiar hum of Rose and the TARDIS talking. He looked at Rose through the time rotor. She had her hand resting on the helmic regulator, just waiting for his signal. And as she waited, she was talking to the TARDIS, communicating with her on a level the Doctor could never achieve.
Oh, of course. The TARDIS had come to them today the same way she had when they'd needed to escape the Racnoss. She'd latched onto active huon particles and pulled herself to them.
"You're being awfully careful with the coordinates," Rose observed, breaking into his private thoughts.
"I want to make sure we land only seconds after we left Melody," he explained as he tweaked a control.
"She'll get us there," she promised. "She wants Jenny and Donna back just as much as we do."
The Doctor narrowed his eyes as he finished setting the coordinates, then stepped back and nodded at Rose. He could feel the connection between her and the TARDIS singing at the edges of his mind as she worked to send them back into flight. It felt… different, somehow. Stronger, maybe? Closer, like the TARDIS was just waiting for Rose to reach out to her.
They landed hard, and the Doctor shook his head, more than willing to set that thought aside. The traces of Bad Wolf lingering in Rose always made him uneasy. He'd been told, once upon a time, that the Bad Wolf could not be uncreated. It was a fact he tried to ignore.
"Your driving is getting better, Doctor," Melody said when he stepped out of the TARDIS. She was still standing at the same panel she'd been working on when they'd left. "Or I suppose maybe it's gotten worse as you've aged. You weren't even gone for a full minute."
The Doctor rolled his eyes and carried a cable over to her, while Rose dragged the power cord with her. "You know, those times when our landings are really atrociously bad are actually the exception, not the rule," he pointed out.
Melody tossed her hair back over her shoulder. "Yeah…" she drawled. "But they're so memorable." She took the computer cable and began hooking it up to her panel. "How long did it take you?"
"About ten minutes." The Doctor pointed at two panels. "Rose, can you get those open while I work with Melody on the memory boards?"
"What do I do after they're open?" she asked as she used her sonic screwdriver to undo the bolts and slide the first panel out.
"There should be five rows of switches on each panel. Make sure that all the blue switches are toggled on, and the green ones are toggled off."
Melody was shaking her head as the Doctor took the control panel next to her. "What?" he asked as he started rewiring the mainframe so it could handle the amount of electricity that would surge through it when they activated the upload.
"Nothing." She looked up at him, a funny smile on your face. "It's just… I know you're not the Doctor and Rose I know, but listening to you talk… it's like nothing has changed. The Doctor and Rose Tyler, always perfect partners."
The Doctor looked up and met Rose's gaze with a half smile. To his surprise, Melody groaned loudly. "If either of you say the word, 'Forever,' I swear I'm going to be sick," she threatened.
Rose laughed while the Doctor sputtered, trying to find some sort of comeback to that. "Come on, you two," she said as she flipped the last row of switches as the Doctor had instructed. "I'm ready over here."
Melody and the Doctor exchanged a sheepish smile, and the Doctor pulled the connection from the TARDIS over to the Library's motherboard. "Melody Pond," the Doctor mused as he watched her expertly splice the cable in. "You are very good at that."
Her eyes widened, and she smiled up at him. "Thank you, Doctor." She bit her lip and bent over her work. "I'm getting everything finished except the last connection. I'll do that at the end of the countdown," she explained. "There'll be a blip in the command flow. That way it should improve our chances of a clean download."
She spliced one more set of wires together as the computer warned them they only had two minutes left until the autodestruct. An awkward silence fell over the room after she stepped back; there were so many questions the Doctor wanted to ask, but if he'd taught Melody Pond how to connect two computer mainframes, there was no way he hadn't taught her how to maintain timelines.
To his surprise, she was the one who broke the silence. "Why didn't you and Rose warn me that our first meeting was out of order like this?" she asked quietly.
The Doctor sighed and raked his hand through his hair. "Because you didn't know when we met you. We prepared you for it, though. Teaching you about avoiding spoilers and giving you the code words so we would trust you."
Melody looked up at him. "But why not just tell me not to come to the Library?"
"Causality loop," he explained. "Because we met you here, it'll be impossible to avoid things that might set you on your path to becoming an archaeologist—even little things, like giving you your own sonic screwdriver. And because of your position, you were chosen to lead this expedition, and suspecting danger, you naturally asked us to join you, which ensured we would meet you here."
"Basically, you met me here, so you had to make sure you would meet me here."
The Doctor smiled at her succinct summary of his rambling explanation. "Basically."
Melody wrinkled her nose. "Yeah… I've never really fancied the way time travel works," she muttered.
The Doctor frowned at her; there was something different about her voice… "You're Scottish!" he realised, pinning down the trace of an accent that had slipped through.
"Autodesctruct in one minute."
Melody shifted her gaze away from him. "No, but my mum is. I guess I have a bit of an accent when I'm tired or upset."
The Doctor narrowed his eyes. He could see the faint lines around her mouth; she hadn't wanted him to learn that piece of her past. Why would it matter if we know Melody's mum is Scottish? He puzzled over that for a minute, then shrugged and let it go.
The computer started the final countdown and Melody took the two cables in hand. "My gloves should protect me from the sparks," she told the Doctor.
"Well, the TARDIS infirmary can take care of you if they don't," Rose said as she took the Doctor's hand.
Melody shook her head and laughed at them, then she connected the two cables in a flurry of sparks. The digital timer ticking down the seconds to the autodestruct froze on 00:01, and all three of them let out a breath of relief.
The TARDIS hummed loudly, making Rose and the Doctor both laugh. "I think she wants to take us all upstairs with everyone else." Rose held the door open. "I won't expect the bigger on the inside comment from you this time, Melody, but please tell me you said it the first time you walked inside."
Melody winked at them as she ran her fingers over a strut. "Spoilers."
AN: When I was writing But Being Spent over two years ago, I realised that there's really no good reason the Doctor couldn't use the TARDIS to boost the computer power... except that the whole point of this story was to set River up as the Doctor's tragically lost future love. And if I didn't need her to be the person in his life that he already knew he lost, then I could feel free to save her life and let her go on living. So, here we have it-the great tragedy of the Library has been rewritten.
