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Rose shivered as she materialized into existence, staying stock-still until she was sure she was completely solid and then immediately setting off to explore. She’d learned early-on that focusing on the vertigo was the absolute worst thing to do, and it was much easier to ignore the way her head was splitting if she directed her attention to the rest of the mission until the pain passed.

She swore the place looked like a giant, futuristic library. There was a help desk, currently swarming with visitors asking for directions, as well as what appeared to be helper bots milling about through the crowd. 

Hesitantly, she made her way over to one of the towering shelves of books that were catching her eye, and gently ran a finger along the spines. They didn’t seem to be particularly well-organized, though she supposed that the first few shelves might serve as mostly decorative--the size of the massive corridors that appeared to lead into other areas of the building suggested that she had merely found the entrance hall. She’d nearly turned away, ready to go ask one of the helper-bots for some information about the place, when one of the titles caught her eye.

The Ancient Legend of the Time Lords

And Rose’s heart lodged itself into her throat. 

There was, if she wasn’t mistaken, precisely one universe with Time Lords in it--or, more accurately now, one Time Lord. And it was the one universe she was looking for.

“Shit,” she swore, fumbling with her Torchwood communicator to hastily type out a message to Mickey. “‘Think the universe is right,’” she mumbled aloud. “‘Gonna call Doctor now.’”

The moment her fingers hit send, she whipped out her mobile and shuffling through her contacts until she found the phone number for the TARDIS. 

You can do this, she thought to herself shakily. You came all this way. Just hit dial.

But as she moved her thumb to the key to do so, Rose felt the sharp jolt of a teleportation device locking onto her just before it whisked her away.

“I’ve lost Rose,” Mickey said, eyes wide with panic.

“What the hell do you mean you’ve lost her?” Pete asked, rushing over to check Mickey’s equipment and swearing loudly when he saw the readings. “Didn’t she say she’d found the right place?”

“Yeah, and then she just vanished!” Mickey exclaimed, hitting every single refresh button in hopes of getting an update on Rose. But she was gone. All of the data readings had simply stopped, and no coordinates or vitals were being transmitted over to the Torchwood displays. 

“How can she vanish? Even if she--” Pete swallowed hard, closing his eyes. “Even if something happened to her, aren’t we still supposed to see location, coordinates, and vitals?”

“Yeah,” Mickey said, anxiously tapping his hand a few times before leaping out of his seat. “Know what though? We did save the original jump coordinates.”

“I can’t let you go after her,” Pete said in a strangled and regretful voice, overcome with fear for the woman he’d come to see as a daughter over the last couple of years. “As the Director of Torchwood, it would be irresponsible of me to send a member of our team directly into danger that we know nothing about. And as Jackie’s husband, well, she’ll skin me if I manage to lose both of you in the same way,” he whispered, and Mickey thumped him on the back.

“You don’t know that you’ve lost her yet,” Mickey said, forcing a smile and trying to sound confident and reassuring even as he felt anything but. “‘Sides, I’m not going to hop over. I’m going to contact the Doctor.”

“Are you sure you can do that?” Pete asked, the faintest bit of hope sparking in his eyes. “We’ve never been able to successfully do that before.”

“We got close though, when Rose was in the right universe,” Mickey answered with determination. “And this time, we know Rose is in the right universe. Or at least, she thought so. We can use her last saved coordinates to establish the link.”

“Excellent. Try it. Try anything,” Pete instructed. “And now that you mention it, I’ll try to contact that universe’s Torchwood.”

Mickey froze, looking at Pete in horror. “Not sure that’s a good idea, boss. They caused the nearly universe-ending nightmare that got Rose stuck here in the first place, remember?” he asked cautiously, not wanting to further upset the man who was already quite on edge.

“I do,” Pete said, voice hard. “And I’m not saying they’re good people. But they have advanced technology, alien technology, that they could use to find Rose. And you don’t even know if you can get a hold of the Doctor. I’ll be damned if I’m picky about who I can get to save my daughter,” he said, voice cracking a bit on the last word. 

Mickey sighed and nodded slowly, still not liking the plan but understanding the rationale behind it. “Alright. I’ll be back with more equipment,” he said after a long moment, and Pete nodded in his direction, barely even glancing up from the data that he was now desperately refreshing in Mickey’s place.

They had to find her.

“Books. People never really stop loving books,” the Doctor mused as he lounged against the console room railing. Donna had showered and changed out of her 20’s clothing and was sitting in the jump seat, sipping a cup of tea and asking more questions about Agatha Christie.

“Their work outlives them,” she commented speculatively. “Nice to think that people’s stories go on.”

“You know what they say. Legends never die,” the Doctor said quietly. 

The pair of them jumped when a shrill ringing echoed around the room, and the Doctor frowned as he glanced over at the monitor.

“No,” he breathed out, eyes wide, and Donna immediately stood upon seeing his frantic expression. “No, that’s not possible.”

“What?”

“We’re getting a call,” the Doctor replied in a tight voice. “From outside of the universe.”

Donna gasped, gently touching his arm. “Well, go on then. It might be…”

“Yeah,” he replied, swallowing hard as he hit the button to accept the call.

To his everlasting disappointment, Mickey Smith’s face filled the screen. 

“Doctor,” he exhaled with relief, and the Doctor’s eyes darted around the edges of the frame, hoping against all odds to see Rose Tyler standing somewhere behind him.

“Mickey Smith, now this is a surprise,” he managed. “How did you manage this one? It shouldn’t be possible. Should be right impossible, actually. And where’s… where’s…”

“Rose is in trouble,” Mickey said urgently, and the Doctor’s hearts dropped like stones. “She… it’s a long story, but we built a device to travel between universes, and--”

“Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?” the Doctor asked sharply, pulse racing as he thought about how much danger Rose could be in right now. “Bloody humans, always messing in things far too advanced for you, Rose could be--”

“Do you think we don’t know that?” Mickey demanded. “Thing is, it’s not just that Rose wanted to get back to you, though that was certainly part of it. There’s an emergency, and she was trying to go to you for help. Only now there’s a different emergency. We lost Rose.”

“How do you mean, ‘lost’?” Donna asked hesitantly when the Doctor fell silent, practically hyperventilating over the monitor.

“Who are you?” Mickey asked, eyeing Donna warily.

“Donna Noble, this alien git’s best friend while he's been moping over Rose. Now how do you mean ‘lost’?” she repeated. “You need us to find her? Or… or…”

“Yeah, that,” Mickey said. “Thing is, she made it to the right universe, or at least she thought she did. And she was gonna call the TARDIS, but right after she sent that update, all of the data input seemed to vanish. We don’t have her current location or any way of communicating with her.”

“Where did she land?” the Doctor asked frantically. “Can you send me there?” 

“Yeah, I’ll send you her last recorded coordinates,” Mickey answered. “Keep us updated, if you can. I think since we managed to establish the link--”

“We should be able to keep it up or recreate it,” the Doctor finished. “If it makes you feel better, I can also leave the call open, though you’ll be staring at an empty screen once we’ve left the TARDIS.”

“Fine,” Mickey shrugged, desperation and worry evident in his face. “Just… find her, boss.”

“Oh, there’s no power in the multiverse that could stop me.”

Jack Harkness was tired. 

He figured it was a symptom of old age--anyone who lived longer than a century would agree that he had long since earned the right to be tired. Add in running Torchwood Three for the last few years, and he was downright exhausted all the damn time. 

Canary Wharf had really been the nail in the coffin; running one branch of Torchwood and trying to keep an eye on the primary-and-almost-certainly-evil head location had taken a lot out of him, and he still hadn’t managed to prevent them from orchestrating what had nearly been a universe-ending catastrophe. 

He’d wished for death a lot over the years, in the way one always wishes for what they can't have, but never more so than when he’d seen Rose’s name on the list of the dead.

The Doctor informing him of the truth had lifted a thousand weights off of Jack’s chest, and he’d felt like he could breathe properly again for the first time in years when he realized that his negligence hadn’t cost the life of one of his dearest friends. It hurt to know that she was gone in a completely different way, but gone and dead were two very different things. He’d learned that the hard way by being both a time-traveller and a multi-centenarian. Gone still left room for hope and miracles. Dead was permanent, unless your name was Jack Harkness. 

Since the destruction of Torchwood One, Jack had been careful to thoroughly dismantle the main organization from top to bottom. They were far, far too dangerous and power-hungry to be allowed to continue operating, and he’d wished frequently (as he had many times over his life) that the Doctor had been around to help him. Not that he would've, but it was still a nice dream. In the end, he’d decided to keep Torchwood Three up and running and reroute all communications directed to Torchwood One to the Cardiff hub instead. 

So when the monitors started flashing with an incoming call, Jack was hardly surprised. He’d initially been shocked and perhaps slightly terrified at the amount of alien interaction that Torchwood received, but he’d eventually become almost numb to it after a few months of feeling like Earth's personal secretary. He only hoped that it wasn’t a worldwide emergency this time, since he’d dispatched the rest of the team on a week-long mission only a few days ago.

“Torchwood Three. Captain Jack Harkness speaking, how can I help you?” Jack answered as he accepted the video call, only to freeze slightly at the face on the screen.

Because if he wasn’t mistaken, that was Rose Tyler’s dead father staring back at him. 

He’d seen him only once in person, when he’d been spying on Rose’s timeline as she grew up. Pete Tyler had died so early on in her life that he’d never seen the man again, but Rose had shown him a picture once, while they were chatting and the Doctor was tinkering, and she’d told him rather abruptly that the Doctor had taken her to meet him (which sounded like exactly the sort of fundamental rule of time-travel that the Doctor would break on Rose’s behalf, actually) without going into much detail. 

“Hello, I’m Director Tyler,” the man said, sending chills down Jack’s spine. Because how could it be…?  

“I’m hoping that this call connected to a point after 2007 in your universe,” the man continued, and Jack’s eyes widened. 

“It’s post-Canary Wharf, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Jack hedged, and the man looked both relieved and saddened.

“Right. So your Torchwood should be well aware of parallel universes at this point, given how that situation was resolved,” the man said delicately. “If you hadn’t figured it out by now, I’m calling from a parallel Torchwood. We need your help.”

“What can I do for you?” Jack asked carefully. He swallowed hard, wondering what the chances were that it was…

“We lost an agent that was trying to travel back to your universe. ‘Lost’ meaning literally lost, not…. Not dead, as far as we know. She’s actually from your universe.”

“Rose,” Jack exhaled, blinking back tears, and the man stared at him in shock.

“Have you found her?” he asked hopefully, and Jack quickly shook his head.

“No, sorry--you’re… you’re her parallel dad, aren’t you?” he asked rhetorically. “So you probably know about the Doctor. I used to travel with both him and Rose.”

“Will you help us, then?” Pete asked, straight to the point, and Jack nodded without hesitation. 

“Anything,” he promised. “What do you need me to do?”

“51st Century,” the Doctor explained to Donna as the TARDIS landed according to the coordinates Mickey had sent over. “We’re at The Library. Planet-sized, so big it doesn’t need a name. Just a great big ‘The,’” he said, opening the door and leading her outside. They headed briskly towards the open air, glancing around anxiously at the crowded shelves and empty floors.

“It’s like a city,” Donna said, slightly awestruck despite the severity of the situation. 

“It’s a world,” the Doctor replied quietly. “Literally, a world. The whole core of the planet is the index computer. Biggest hard drive ever. And up here, every book ever written. Whole continents of Jeffrey Archer, Bridget Jones, Monty Python’s Big Red Book. Brand new editions, specially printed.”

“Agatha Christie?” Donna asked lightly, and he smiled tiredly in return.

“Absolutely.”

Absent-mindedly, Donna pulled a book from the nearest shelf and began to flip through it, only to jump when the Doctor snapped the book shut in front of her.

“Nope,” he tsked. “Spoilers.”

“What?”

“These books are from your future,” the Doctor explained, gesturing at the section divider labeled Biographies. “You don’t want to read ahead. Spoil all the surprises. Like peeking at the end.”

“Isn’t travelling with you one big spoiler?” Donna asked with amusement. 

“For one, I try to keep you away from major plot developments. Which, to be honest, I seem to be very bad at. And for another, living it is very, very different from reading it,” the Doctor warned. “If you live through a moment, you have free-will. You have autonomy. The future is still yours to shape; your future is still yours to shape. But once you’ve read what happens, it’s set in stone.”

“Oh,” Donna said, quickly shelving the book. “I quite like free will, thanks.”

The Doctor smiled warily at her, shoving his hands into his pockets and glancing around once more. “This is the biggest library in the universe,” he said, tone dark and speculative. “So where is everyone? Where is Rose? It’s silent.”

He whipped out his sonic screwdriver and buzzed it at the nearest computer screen, impatiently waiting for it to turn on.

“Well, you said it’s planet-sized,” Donna said. “Maybe they’re just in a different area?”

“We’re in the information center,” the Doctor countered grimly. “At the very least we should see employees here. And the people should still show up on the system even if they’re in a different area. Scanning for life forms,” he explained, gesturing at the search the computer was conducting. “If I do a scan looking for your basic humanoids--you know, your book readers, few limbs and a face--apart from us, I get nothing. Zippo, nada. See? Nobody home. But if I widen the parameters to any kind of life…”

The computer screen refreshed, and blinked ERROR: 1,000,000,000,000 - LIFEFORM NUMBER CAPPED AT MAXIMUM RECORD.

“A million million,” the Doctor said. “Gives up after that. A million million.”

“But there’s nothing here,” Donna said nervously, looking around as if expecting to see people peeking out of the shadows. “There’s no one.”

“And not a sound. A million million life forms, and silence in the library.”

“But there’s no one here. There’s just books. I mean, it’s not the books, is it? I mean, it can’t be the books, can it? I mean, books can’t be alive.”

“Best weapons in the world,” the Doctor whispered distractedly. 

“Welcome,” a clear voice rang out, and both the Doctor and Donna jumped in surprise. 

“That came from here,” Donna frowned. “But there’s no one here.”

“Yup,” the Doctor agreed darkly. “C’mon, let’s have a look.”

The pair of them walked back towards the initial reception desk and paused upon seeing an abstractly humanoid sculpture with what appeared to be a male human face attached to the front of its head. It spoke with a correspondingly male human voice that gave Donna the chills when she heard it.

“I am Courtesy Node 710/aqua. Please enjoy the Library and respect the personal access codes of all your fellow readers, regardless of species or hygiene taboo.”

“That face,” Donna commented faintly. “It looks real.”

“It is,” the Doctor said grimly, hearts thudding as he worried desperately for Rose. She’d been here, on a planet with a current population of a million million, where no humanoid life forms were left. He felt sick at the thought. 

“What do you mean, ‘it is’?!” Donna half-shrieked, taking a step back from the node. 

“This flesh aspect was donated by Mark Chambers on the occasion of his death,” the node said in Mark’s voice.

“It’s a real face?” Donna moaned, and the Doctor wrapped an arm around her shoulders. 

“It has been actualized individually for you from the many facial aspects saved to our extensive flesh banks. Please enjoy.”

“It chose me a dead face it thought I’d like?” Donna exclaimed hysterically. “That statue’s got a real dead person’s face on it.”

“It’s the 51st Century,” the Doctor said roughly. “That’s basically like donating a park bench.”

Donna opened her mouth to argue, but was cut off by the node making another announcement. 

“Additional. There follows a brief message from the Head Librarian for your urgent attention,” it informed them. “It has been edited for tone and content by a Felman Lux Automated Decency Filter. Message follows,” the node continued, and then the voice of the Head Librarian filled the room. “Run. For god’s sake, run. No way is safe. The Library has sealed itself, we can’t… oh, they’re here.” A few muffled and horrifying noises followed before the node began to properly speak again using Mark’s voice. “Message ends. Please switch off your mobile comm units for the comfort of other readers.”

“Any other messages?” the Doctor demanded urgently, walking right up to the node and glaring at it as though his eyes could pull all further information from its casing. “Any from the same date stamp?”

“One additional message,” the node confirmed. “This message carries a Felman Lux coherency warning of 5-0-11.”

“Yeah, yeah, fine, fine, fine,” the Doctor rattled impatiently. “Just play it.”

“Message follows. Doctor,” the node said, switching voices accordingly, and the Doctor felt faint.

“Rose,” he managed, strangled, as the voice he wanted to hear most in the universe spilled out of the bloody donated mouth of the Library node. He idly felt Donna clutch his hand tightly, but barely noticed it, barely registered anything beyond the voice of Rose Tyler. 

“Doctor, I know you always find trouble, so with any luck...” Rose’s voice broke off into a hysterical, panicked half-laugh. “Well, if you’re here, if you get here--count the shadows. I’ve never seen anything like it, there’s some sort of teleporter that keeps activatin’, like it’s trying to do something, and there are--just count the shadows,” she continued desperately, sounding out of breath. “It’s the only way to survive.”

“Message ends,” the node finished in Mark Chambers’ voice.

“There has to be more,” the Doctor insisted immediately. “Footage. Audio. What happened to her? What happened to the woman who left you that message? What happened to every single person in this Library?”

“Error. Cannot compute the question. Please see a live attendant at the reception desk at your earliest convenience for further assistance,” the node responded, and the Doctor clenched his jaw so tightly it clicked. 

“Donna?” he said, voice strained.

“Yeah?”

“Stay out of the shadows,” he commanded before turning with a sweep of his coat and stalking down one of the corridors.

“So that… that was Rose?” Donna asked carefully. 

The Doctor said nothing. 

“Is she--do you think,” Donna began, swallowing hard, and the Doctor stopped in his tracks and whipped around to face her.

“I don’t know,” he said tersely, face contorted in distress. “If…. What she said about the shadows…”

All of a sudden, the Doctor’s eyes widened as he looked just over Donna’s shoulders. 

“Donna,” he said carefully, nodding at the hallway behind her. The lights were going out panel by panel, almost as if the darkness were giving chase to them. 

“What’s happening?” Donna asked, panicked, and the Doctor grabbed her hand and dragged her along. 

“Run!” he shouted pointlessly; Donna had already picked up on his unspoken memo and was racing along beside him. They hit a dead end with a door far too quickly for comfort, and the Doctor rattled the handle furiously before pounding on the wood in desperation. 

“C’mon!” he roared, glancing back to see that the darkness had halved the distance between them. 

“What, is it locked?” Donna asked frantically.

“Jammed. The wood’s warped,” he bit out, jiggling the handle again.

“Well, sonic it!” Donna shouted. “Use the thingy!”

“I can’t, it’s wood!” he snapped. 

“What, it doesn’t do wood?” Donna exclaimed exasperatedly, shooting him a simultaneously withering and hysterical look, and the Doctor pulled the sonic out anyway in panic. 

“Hang on, hang on,” he fumbled. “I can vibrate the molecules. Fry the bindings. I can, I can shatterline the interface,” he panicked, running through his options, and Donna’s face hardened with determination. 

“Oh, get out of the way,” she snapped, before kicking the door open in one blow.

The Doctor rushed in after her, and the two of them each took a door and shut it desperately. Thinking quickly, the Doctor snactched a book from the table and wedged it between the handles for good measure.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when he turned to see what appeared to a floating wooden orb watching them. “Oh! Hello. Sorry to burst in on you like this. Okay if we stop here for a bit?” 

The globe dropped to the floor as he spoke, and he walked forward to lightly prod it with his foot and then bent to inspect it as Donna hovered over his shoulder. 

“What is it?” she asked after a long moment, watching the Doctor delicately poke at different parts of the sphere before aiming the sonic at it cautiously.

“Security camera,” the Doctor explained as the familiar whirring sound of the sonic filled the room, and Donna raised an eyebrow. “Switched itself off. Also, nice door skills.”

“Yeah, well, you know. Boyfriends. Sometimes you need the element of surprise,” Donna quipped. The Doctor blinked in confusion and turned to ask a question, but Donna beat him to it. “What was that? What was after us? I mean, did we just run away from a power cut?”

“Possibly,” the Doctor hedged, swallowing hard and wishing desperately that it were that easy, that simple.

“Count the shadows,” the memory of Rose’s voice said in his mind. 

Yeah, who was he kidding? It never was.

“Are we safe here?” Donna continued on. 

“Of course we’re safe,” the Doctor lied through his teeth, and Donna shot him a look of annoyance. “There’s a little shop,” he added, waving his hand in the direction of said shop. “Oh, gotcha,” he murmured as part of the security sphere snapped open. 

To his horror, words started scrolling across a small panel on the camera.

NO, STOP IT. NO. NO.  

“Ooh, I’m sorry,” the Doctor apologized frantically, hastily placing the orb back onto the ground. “I really am. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s alive,” he added in Donna’s direction as he stood and backed away from it. She stared back at the globe in alarm.

“You said it was a security camera,” she argued, and he shook his head.

“It is. It’s an alive one.”

He stuffed his hands into his pockets and glanced back down, before swearing slightly as he noticed that he’d missed more red text scrolling across the panel.

OTHERS ARE COMING. THE LIBRARY IS BREACHED. OTHERS ARE COMING.

“‘Others’?” Donna asked, reading over his shoulder. “What’s it mean, 'others'?”

When the Doctor didn’t answer beyond a shake of his head, she walked over to a node statue in the corner of the room that was facing the wall. 

“Excuse me. What does it mean, 'others'?” she repeated desperately, addressing the node, and it slowly swiveled its head around to face her. 

“That’s barely more than a speak-your-weight machine, it can’t help you,” the Doctor said absentmindedly, still prodding at the node.

“Hang on, I’ve seen her before,” Donna commented, surprised, and the Doctor whipped around at her words. 

“How can you have--” he began, and then all the air was sucked from his lungs. 

“Doctor, who is she?” Donna panicked, shaking her head in denial at the way the Doctor’s expression crumpled when he saw the face on the node. “She’s… she’s not. She can’t be!”

“Where have you seen her before?” 

The Doctor’s voice terrified Donna in that moment. His eyes had always been the most alien part about him; no matter how humanoid he was, nothing could erase the timeless depths that stared back at her whenever he looked her directly in the eyes. But that was nothing, nothing, compared to the how completely alien his voice sounded when he asked--no, demanded--for information about when Donna had seen her. 

It was the voice of a man who felt everything but had nothing left to lose.

“When… when I found you again,” Donna stumbled, eyes wide as she watched the Doctor approach the node as if in a trance, each motion slow and unsteady. “After the Adipose, I left… I left my keys with her,” she recalled faintly. “Dropped them in her hands and asked her to look for a woman named Sylvia.”

The Doctor was silent. He stopped just short of colliding with the node’s body, and his hand shook as he reached up to touch the beautiful face that stared back at him.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, so softly Donna almost missed it, and her heart broke at the utter devastation in his voice. “I failed you. I am so, so sorry.”

With trembling fingers he brushed the apple of her cheek--Rose’s cheek--and closed his eyes, his entire body slumping.

Donna blinked back tears, for once at a complete loss for words. The entire time she’d known this man, this daft and lonely alien travelling the stars, he’d been heartbroken. She’d never known him with Rose, only without, and the pain of losing her had plagued him like a shadow. But she’d still been alive, and she’d never forget the look on his face, the way his entire expression shifted as he clung to that last bit of hope.

“And she is not dead. She is so alive.”

But this--this was that last one flicker of hope being extinguished, stamped out and doused so thoroughly that there was nothing left. 

All of a sudden, a switch seemed to flip in the Doctor. He straightened up as though possessed, and when he turned Donna actually shivered and the cold darkness in his eyes. 

He glanced down at the floor and roughly yanked Donna back, causing her to yelp as she fell into him. 

“Oi, hands,” she protested half-heartedly, still peering up at his face in concern.

“The shadow. Look,” the Doctor said flatly, and gestured toward the center of the room.

“What about it?” Donna asked, already winding up to chew him out for burying his emotions so quickly.

“Count the shadows,” the Doctor said, echoing Rose’s words from the message.

“Right. One,” Donna said, staring at the long, triangular shadow before glancing back at the Doctor in confusion. “One shadow. What about it?”

“What’s casting it?” the Doctor asked impatiently. “Oh, I’m thick! Look at me, I’m old and thick,” he spat. “Head’s too full of stuff. I need a bigger head.”

“Doctor,” Donna snapped, desperately wishing that just this once the man would talk about something that actually mattered. “Are you okay?”

“No,” he said shortly. “I’m--how could I be?” he asked, voice breaking slightly before he shook his head again. “But there’s nothing I--all we can do is find out what happened to her. What happened to everyone here,” he said darkly, swallowing hard. “I owe her that much. And I have to know.”

“Alright,” Donna said softly after a brief pause, accepting that for what it was. She knew he was right, that he’d go mad not knowing. She just hoped that the truth wouldn’t destroy him.

They both glanced up as the lights in one of the adjoining corridors started going out.

“The power must be going,” Donna said nervously.

“This place runs on fission cells,” the Doctor disputed. “They’ll out-burn the sun.”

“Then why is it dark?” 

“It’s not dark,” the Doctor said. He could barely feel anything in the fog inside his brain, could barely process anything other than Rose’s precious face left to decorate a 51st Century node. It was a sick, twisted parallel of that awful, awful day when he’d been confronted with just her body, face gone, only so much worse. 

“That shadow. It’s gone,” Donna noticed, pointing at the empty space on the floor. 

“We need to get back to the TARDIS,” the Doctor said urgently. He felt ill. He couldn’t leave Rose here, couldn’t leave without being absolutely, one thousand percent sure what happened to her. He couldn’t leave without knowing every last detail, without finding the precise last spot she’d stood in, without confirming that she really was… gone.

But it wasn’t just him. If it were just him, he wouldn’t have hesitated. But he had Donna to think about, and he refused to get his best mate killed because he couldn’t see past his own grief.

“Why?” Donna argued. “No, you just said. We need to find out what happened to Rose. Why would we leave?”

“Because that shadow hasn’t gone. It’s moved,” he informed her shakily. He hadn’t wanted to accept it, but there was only one real possibility he was entertaining about the shadows, and if he was right….

“Reminder,” the Rose node said, startling them both and causing a different type of shadow to fall across the Doctor’s face. “The Library has been breached. Others are coming. Reminder. The Library has been breached. Others are coming. Reminder. The Library has been breached--”

Its mantra was cut short by a door being blown open at the opposite end of the room, and both the Doctor and Donna flinched at the bright light that filled the room as a group of people in what appeared to be astronaut suits entered.

One of them--the leader, presumably--marched right up to the Doctor and flicked off the reflectors in her visor. Startlingly green eyes stared back at him through the panels, and the woman’s lips curled up into an eerily flirty smile. 

“Hello, sweetie,” the woman greeted, and the Doctor’s lips pursed in disgust and irritation. 

“Get out,” he commanded, glaring down at the surprised woman. 

“Doctor,” Donna objected quietly, knowing why he was so angry but recognizing that the rest of the group would not. 

“All of you,” he roared, pushing past the first woman and pointing angrily back towards the entrance they’d burst through so dramatically. “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 first woman announced, sliding hers off to reveal a head full of ridiculously curly blonde hair, and the Doctor turned and glared at her. 

“How do you know they’re not androids?” a different woman asked as she too removed her helmet. 

“Because I’ve dated androids. They’re rubbish,” the first one smirked. 

“Who is this? You said we were the only expedition. I paid for exclusives,” a man said indignantly.

“I lied, I’m always lying. Bound to be others,” the leader said coolly. 

“Miss Evangelista, I want to see the contracts,” the man said angrily. 

“You came through the north door, yeah? How was that? Much damage?” the curly haired woman asked, turning back to the Doctor, and his patience snapped. 

“What about what I said was unclear?” he asked, voice low and dangerous. “Every single one of you needs to leave, right now. I’m not here to chat and have social hour, nor am I going to babysit a bunch of silly little… you said ‘expedition,’ didn’t you? I’m not going to babysit anyone while I have things to do, let alone a crew of archaeologists.”

“Got a problem with archaeologists?” the woman challenged, and the Doctor gritted his teeth. 

“I’m a time-traveller. I point and laugh at archaeologists. Now get out.”

“Charming,” the woman smiled, unbothered. “I’m Professor River Song, archaeologist.”

“Nice to meet you, River Song,” he said stiffly, taking her offered hand to yank her past him and guide her in the direction of the door. “Now leave. As you’re leaving, and you’re leaving now, you need to set up a quarantine beacon. Code-wall the planet, the whole planet. Nobody comes here, not ever again. Not one living thing, not here, not ever. You! Stop right there,” he said, alarmed, as one of the other women started wandering towards the edges of the room. “What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Anita,” the woman said, startled, as he grabbed her and pulled her back into the center of the room. 

“Anita, stay out of the shadows. Not a foot, not a finger in the shadows 'til you’re safely back in your ship. Goes for all of you,” he added to the room at large. “Stay in the light. Find a nice, bright spot and just stand. If you understand me, look very, very, scared. No, bit more scared than that,” he said, looking around at the confused faces of River Song’s crew. “Okay, do for now. You. Who are you?” he asked the man closest to the door that the group had come through. 

“Er, Dave,” the man said uncertainly.

“Okay, Dave--”

“Oh, well, Other Dave. Because that’s Proper Dave, the pilot, he was the first Dave, so when we--”

“Other Dave,” the Doctor cut him off, wondering why the hell it was so hard to get humans to prioritize anything at all correctly when lives were at stake. “The way you came, does it look the same as before?” he asked, leading the man to the door and gesturing down the hallway.

“Yeah. Oh, it’s a bit darker,” Other Dave commented. 

“How much darker?” the Doctor asked impatiently. 

“Oh, like I could see where we came through just like a moment ago. I can’t now,” Other Dave explained. 

“Seal up this door,” he said, patting the man on the back. “We’ll find another way out.”

“Would you--” Other Dave began, only to be cut off by another man.

“We’re not looking for a way out,” the man said, and the Doctor levelled an annoyed glare at him too.

“Yes, you are, because you’re leaving,” the Doctor insisted. 

“Miss Evangelista?” the man continued as if the Doctor hadn’t spoken. 

“I’m Mr. Lux’s personal everything,” the woman who was apparently Miss Evangelista said as she stepped forward. “You need to sign these contracts agreeing that your individual experience in the Library are the intellectual property of the Felman Lux Corporation.”

“Right, give it here,” the Doctor said impatiently, and smiled inwardly when Donna held out a hand too. 

“Yeah, lovely, thanks,” Donna said sarcastically as they were both handed contracts, and, nearly in sync, the pair of them tore the papers in half. 

“My family built this Library. I have rights,” the man, Mr. Lux, said angrily. 

“You have a mouth that won’t stop,” River said, and the Doctor would’ve been pleased if he hadn’t felt that it was also incredibly ironic coming from another woman who was not listening to him. “You think there’s danger here?”

“Oh, I dunno, I’ve only been asking you to leave since the moment you all stepped foot inside,” the Doctor retorted. “Something came to this Library and killed everything in it. Killed a whole world. Danger? Could be,” he said sarcastically.

“That was a hundred years ago,” River argued. “The Library’s been silent for a hundred years. Whatever came here’s long dead.”

“Did you say a hundred years? ” the Doctor asked, horrified. 

“But it can’t be,” Donna said, eyes wide. “We just--the coordinates, we took the exact coordinates--”

“The TARDIS would’ve had to land after,” the Doctor whispered, eyes closing in self-recrimination for not having thought of it before. “We already knew that she was--we couldn’t arrive in that exact moment, because Mickey wouldn’t have had a reason to contact us yet, so--but we’re so late,” he said, throat closing up. How long had Rose been here, in danger? How long had she been running from the darkness, scared out of her mind, trying to leave him a message to warn him in case he ever came, even if he was too late to--

“‘She’?” River asked, brows furrowing. “‘Mickey’? Who are you--”

Before she could finish, the air around them seemed to fizzle with charge, and everyone gaped as a man materialized in the corner of the room.

“Jack?” the Doctor asked in shock.

“Doctor,” Captain Jack Harkness greeted him, glancing over at the others as he approached the Doctor. “I’m guessing we’re here for the same reason. Have to say, I didn’t expect a full party. You know me, the more the merrier, but you…”

The Doctor opened his mouth, but no sound came out. 

“But I didn’t call you,” River pointed out, and Jack frowned at her.

“No,” he said, confused. “You didn’t.”

“You didn’t call me either,” the Doctor said with a shrug. “So I’m not sure what you’re on about.”

“No, you came when I called. Like you always do,” River argued, and the Doctor openly glared at her. 

“I don’t even know who you are,” he said sharply before turning back to Jack. “Why--and how--are you here?”

“A parallel Pete Tyler contacted me,” Jack said lowly. “You?”

“Mickey,” the Doctor said shortly. “Jack, I--we’re…” he trailed off, unable to look his friend in the eye and break his heart when his own were already shattered. 

“It’s been over a hundred years since Rose arrived in the Library,” Donna interjected, shooting the Doctor a pained and sympathetic half-smile as she rescued him. “Donna Noble, nice to meet you.”

“How could it have been a hundred?” Jack asked frantically. “I used the exact coordinates--”

“Paradox, we had to land later,” the Doctor says shortly, and the ex-Time Agent in Jack groans in quick understanding. “The TARDIS will have redirected you to us. She’s… connected to you, in a way, since you’ve travelled with me--”

“The TARDIS chose our coordinates?” Jack asked hopefully. “So that means… she would never take us to the wrong time, she would never hurt--”

“Jack,” the Doctor cut him off, strangled. “Don’t. Please. Just…”

“Just look here,” Donna said gently, and gestured to the Rose node.

“Who’s that?” River asked loudly, but their group ignored her.

“No,” Jack exhaled, growing pale and suddenly looking every bit his age. “No, but… we can’t have… she…”

“I know,” the Doctor said, voice cracking, and met Jack’s matching, teary gaze. “I’m trying to figure out what’s happened to her. That’s all I can do,” he whispered, and Jack swiped at his wet eyes before nodding. 

“Right, what can I do?” he said, straightening up. 

“You’ve got your vortex manipulator on you?” the Doctor asked, and Jack nodded. “Right, teleport everyone out.”

“You can’t make us leave,” Mr. Lux argued. “I funded this expedition.”

“And I’m trying to save your life,” the Doctor snapped. “Or don’t you care about that? Are things only valuable to you once they’re dead?”

Lux ignored the Doctor completely, spotting Other Dave’s movements in his peripheral vision. “What are you doing?”

“He said seal the door,” Other Dave said simply. 

“Torch,” the Doctor demanded, holding out a hand to Lux. 

“You’re taking orders from him?” Lux asked Other Dave sharply, still staring down the Doctor as he wrenched his torch out.

“Spooky, isn’t it?” the Doctor commented, taking the torch and shining it into the darkest crevices of the room. “Almost every species in the universe has an irrational fear of the dark. But they’re wrong, because it’s not irrational. It’s Vashta Nerada.”

“What’s Vashta Nerada?” Donna asked. 

“It’s what’s in the dark. It’s what’s always in the dark. Lights! That’s what we need, aside from all of you leaving. You got lights?”

“What for?” River asked as her crew all pulled out standard torches, and he rolled his eyes. 

“I just told you that the monster we’re facing is what’s in the dark, and you ask me why we need lights?” the Doctor asked. “Form a circle. Safe area, big as you can, lights pointing out.”

“Do as he says,” River commanded, though her jaw had clenched at the Doctor’s initial sarcasm.

“You’re not listening to this man?” Lux asked incredulously.

“Apparently, I am,” River shot back smoothly. “Anita, unpack the lights. Other Dave, make sure the door’s secure, then help Anita. Mr. Lux, put your helmet back up and 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. Pretty boy, you’re with me, step into my office.”

The Doctor moved closer to Donna as River continued doling out orders, trying to formulate a new plan that would still get her to safety, get all of these other people out of the way, and still allow him to figure out what had happened to Rose. Before he could say a word, however, River spoke up again. 

“Pretty boy. With me, I said,” she commanded and he rolled his eyes. 

“And here I thought you were talking to Jack,” the Doctor said sarcastically. He turned back to Jack and Donna urgently, trusting them to keep each other safe. “Don’t let your shadows cross. Seriously, don’t even let them touch. Any of them could be infected.”

This, naturally, seemed to draw out a number of other questions from the group that seemed eager to trust him enough to ask for information but not enough to heed his advice and leave. Annoyed, the Doctor ignored every last one and stalked over to where River Song was waiting for him. 

“Thanks,” River started, and the Doctor scoffed.

“For what?” he asked shortly. 

“The usual. For coming when I call,” she said, rolling her eyes. 

“You really can’t hear, can you? I’m not here for you,” he said bluntly, but the woman continued to ignore him. 

“You’re doing a very good job, acting like you don’t know me. I’m assuming there’s a reason.”

“A fairly good one, actually,” the Doctor commented sarcastically. 

“Okay, shall we do diaries, then? Where are we this time? Er, going by your face, I’d say it’s early days for you, yeah? So, er, crash of the Byzantium. Have we done that yet? Obviously ringing no--”

“Excuse me,” the Doctor hissed quite loudly, cutting her off completely. “I might be the one having a hearing issue now, but I could swear that you’re trying to convince me that you and I have some sort of camaraderie in the future. Funny that the way you choose to do it is by breaking one of the most fundamental etiquettes of nonlinear interactions.”

“Ooh, etiquette. You’re old-fashioned in this body,” she said flirtatiously, and he felt his patience drain out for the millionth time that day. All he wanted to do was find out what happened to Rose, and instead he was trying to herd uncooperative humans to safety simply because they were too stubborn to listen to logic. And now he was faced with some stupid figure from his future that thought it was fun to flirt right after she’d pissed him off and broken what little trust he did have.

“Right, very old-fashioned, enjoying having control over my own life,” the Doctor snapped. “If you knew even the first thing about time travel, you would know that you can’t just go telling me about my personal future, not any of it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, we do it all the time,” River argued, and the Doctor fought the urge to growl at her. 

“See, that? That kind of thing is exactly what I’m talking about,” he said angrily. “You don’t get to say that to me, or you’re no friend of mine. Past, present, or future.”

“Doctor, please tell me you know who I am,” River said, brows furrowing. 

“I’ve told you several times today that I don’t, and implied a few extra times for good measure,” the Doctor said with finality, quite done with the conversation. Before he could say more, a ringing echoed through the room. 

“Sorry, that was me,” Proper Dave apologized. “Trying to get through into the security protocols. I seem to have set something off. What is that? Is that an alarm?”

“Doctor?” Donna spoke up hesitantly. “Doctor, that sounds like--”

“Yeah, it is,” he answered. “It’s a phone.”

“I’m trying to call up the data core, but it’s not responding,” Proper Dave said, frustrated. “Just that noise.” 

“But it’s a phone,” Donna interjected again. 

“Let me try something,” the Doctor said, walking over and nudging Dave aside. He began typing into the computer and frowned when it flashed a large, red ACCESS DENIED stamp at him. “Okay, it doesn’t like that. Let’s try something else,” he muttered, trying another set of code. “Here it comes,” he said once the next attempt seemed to break through, and his eyes widened in shock when he found himself staring at a little girl coloring in her living room. 

“Hello. Are you in my television?” the girl asked curiously.

“Well, no,” the Doctor fumbled, startled. “I’m… I’m sort of in space. Er, I was trying to call up the data core of a triple grid security processor,” he added helplessly, wondering how in the universe he’d managed to contact a little human girl. 

“Would you like to speak to my dad?” the girl asked, and no, he wouldn’t, really, but he figured he’d probably have better luck with an adult.

“Dad or your mum, that’d be lovely,” the Doctor conceded.

“I know you. You’re in my library,” the girl stated matter-of-factly, and every person in the room froze. 

“Your library?” the Doctor asked with a frown. 

“The library’s never been on the television before,” the girl said distrustfully. “What have you done?”

“Er, well, I just rerouted the interface,” the Doctor explained hastily just as they lost connection.

“What happened? Who was that?” River demanded, but the Doctor ignored her in favor of trying to re-establish the link. He slammed the keyboard in frustration when every attempt only brought him back to the ACCESS DENIED screen. 

“I need another terminal,” he said, frustrated. “Keep working on those lights. We need those lights,” the Doctor said. 

“You heard the man,” Jack piped up, taking charge and rounding up some of River’s crew members. “Let there be light.”

The Doctor continued to try to hack into different computer stations, but didn’t have any luck. He remained tense as River Song hovered over his shoulder, seeming intent on staying by his side. 

“Who’s the girl with her face on the statue?” she asked curiously, and the Doctor gritted his teeth and ignored her. “Ooh, must be someone important for a reaction like that.”

“The most important person in any universe,” he sniped, feeling satisfied at the way River feel eerily silent at his declaration. Before he could ask her to leave him alone, books started flying violently off of the shelves, startling every person in the room.

“What’s that?” the Doctor asked, looking around to see if anyone was near the shelves. “I didn’t do that. Did you do that?” 

“Not me,” Proper Dave called back. The Doctor looked back at his screen to see the words CAL ACCESS DENIED flashing back at him this time.

“What’s CAL?” he called out, running his hand through his hair in frustration when no one responded. 

“What’s causing that? Is it the little girl?” River asked.

“But who is the little girl?” the Doctor asked, though privately he thought she might be right. The girl had very clearly called the place her library, after all. “What’s she got to do with this place? How does the data core work? What’s the principle? What’s CAL?”

“Ask Mr. Lux,” River suggested, and the Doctor whipped around to face him.

“CAL,” he began. “What is it?”

“Sorry, you didn’t sign your personal experience contracts,” the annoying man responded.

“Mr. Lux,” the Doctor said disbelievingly. “Right now, you’re in more danger than you’ve ever been in your whole life. And you’re protecting a patent?”

“I’m protecting my family’s pride,” he retorted stiffly.

“Right, because that’s so much better,” Jack cut in. “Let’s all die so that Lux’s family has their pride.”

“Fine,” the Doctor gritted out. “If we insist on creating our own damn obstacles, we’ll play it your way. Let’s start at the beginning. What happened here? On the actual day, a hundred years ago, what physically happened here?”

“There was a message from the Library,” River answered promptly. “Just one. The lights are going out. Then the computer sealed the planet, and there was nothing for a hundred years.”

“Er, excuse me,” Miss Evangelista spoke up, but Jack spoke at the same time. 

“Doctor,” Jack began, “do you think this is the earliest point the TARDIS was able to land us in? Maybe she physically couldn’t materialize during the last hundred years.”

“Maybe,” the Doctor conceded. “Though we can’t know for sure until we’ve got a better picture of what happened.” 

“There was one other thing in the last message,” River added, but Lux scowled at her for bringing it up.

“That’s confidential,” he hissed, and River stared stonily back at him. 

“I trust this man with my life, with everything,” she argued.

“You’ve only just met him!”

“No, he’s only just met me,” River said, seemingly oblivious to the way her words made the Doctor tense. 

“Er, this might be important, actually,” Miss Evangelista attempted again, but Lux waved her off.

“In a moment,” he said shortly. 

“This is a data extract that came with the message,” River said, holding out a small, handheld computer for them to read from.

“Four thousand and twenty three saved. No survivors,” the Doctor read aloud, voice tight. 

No survivors. His hearts stumbled each other and he had to remind himself to breathe.

“Four thousand and twenty three,” River repeated. “That’s approximately the number of people who were in the Library when the planet was sealed.”

“But how can four thousand and twenty three people have been saved if there were no survivors?” Donna asked, confused. 

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” River answered. 

“And so far, what we haven’t found are any bodies,” Lux pointed out. As if on cue, a shrill scream had the entire group jumping, and the Doctor turned to see an open panel in the wall. 

Hearts sinking, the Doctor led the charge and dashed through the panel, stopping short at sight of a skeleton on a chair. “Everybody, careful. Stay in the light,” he instructed, waving a torch around and checking over everyone’s shadows.

“You keep saying that. I don’t see the point,” Proper Dave commented. 

“Who screamed?” the Doctor continued, guilt and anger welling up inside of him. If they’d just listened to him, if they’d gone straight away or teleported out with Jack--

“Miss Evangelista,” Other Dave answered this time.

“Where is she?” the Doctor asked, unable to keep the emotion from thickening his tone. 

River reached for a button on her suit, activating the comms. “Miss Evangelista, please state your current--” she began, only to freeze when her voice echoed from right beside them.

From the skeleton.

“Please state your current position,” River repeated softly. Upon hearing the echo again, she walked cautiously towards the skeleton and pulled at the fraying fabric on top of it, revealing Miss Evangelista’s comm. “It’s her,” she said, horrified, and the Doctor looked away, swallowing hard. “It’s Miss Evangelista.”

“We just heard her scream a few seconds ago,” Anita protested, eyes wide. “What could do that to a person in a few seconds?”

“It took a lot less than a few seconds,” the Doctor corrected grimly, pleading with his mind to turn off, to stop picturing Rose, there, wandering through the darkness alone, scared, hoping that he’d come save her, only to take one wrong step--

“What did?” Anita asked, breaking him from his spiraling thoughts. 

“Hello?” Miss Evangelista’s voice echoed from her comm unit and into the room.

“Er, I’m sorry, everyone,” River began, voice heavy. “This isn’t going to be pleasant. She’s ghosting.”

“She’s what?” Donna asked, at the same time Jack said, “Ghosting?”

“Hello, excuse me? I’m sorry, hello, excuse me?” Miss Evangelista’s voice continued. 

“That’s, that’s her,” Donna gasped. “That’s Miss Evangelista.”

“I don’t want to sound horrible, but couldn’t we just, you know?” Proper Dave began, and River shot him a disapproving glance over her shoulder.

“This is her last moment. No, we can’t. A little respect, thank you,” she said tightly. The Doctor thought there was a bit of disgusting irony in the fact that this was the most respect she’d earned from him all day--after a death that could’ve been prevented if she’d listened to him and taken her group home. 

“Sorry, where am I?” Miss Evangelista’s voice asked. “Excuse me?”

“But that’s Miss Evangelista,” Donna repeated, horrified, and the Doctor wrapped an arm around her comfortingly.

“It’s a data ghost,” Jack spoke up quietly, and River nodded in confirmation.

“She’ll be gone in a moment,” she said. “Miss Evangelista, you’re fine. Just relax. We’ll be with you presently.”

“What’s a data ghost?” Donna asked. 

“There's a neural relay in the communicator,” the Doctor explained. “Lets you send thought mail. That's it there, those green lights. Sometimes it can hold an impression of a living consciousness for a short time after death, like an afterimage.”

“My grandfather lasted a day,” Anita chimed in morbidly. “Kept talking about his shoelaces.”

“She’s in there,” Donna realized, looking at the communicator and blinking back tears.

“I can’t see,” Miss Evangelista continued. “I can’t... where am I?”

“She’s just brain waves now,” Proper Dave said gravely. “The pattern won’t hold for long.”

“But she’s conscious. She’s thinking,” Donna continued, as Miss Evangelista continued to talk.

“She’s a footprint on the beach, and the tide’s coming in,” the Doctor corrected, his mind flashing the image of Rose’s hologram at him, the tears running down her face as she stood on a beach in Norway while they waited for each other to fade away. 

“Where’s that woman?” Miss Evangelista asked. “The nice woman. Is she there?” 

“What woman?” Lux asked.

“She means Donna,” Jack piped up. “They were talking earlier.”

“Is she there?” Miss Evangelista repeated. “The nice woman.”

“Yes, she’s here,” River said, pulling Donna forward. “Hang on. Go ahead. She can hear you.”

“Hello, are you there?”

“Help her,” the Doctor said quietly when no words came from Donna’s rapidly opening and closing mouth. 

“She’s dead,” Donna said helplessly, turning to him, and he gave her a sorrowful nod.

“Yeah. Help her,” he told her, proud of Donna for being kind to the woman and regretting even more now that they hadn’t been able to save her. 

“Hello? Is that the nice woman?” 

“Yeah,” Donna said, voice strangled. “Hello, yeah, I’m.... I’m, I’m here. You okay?”

“What I said before, about being stupid,” Miss Evangelista said, and Donna scrubbed at the tears that were quickly falling down her cheeks. “Don’t tell the others, they’ll only laugh.”

“‘Course I won’t,” Donna reassured her. “‘Course I won’t tell them.”

“Don’t tell the others, they’ll only laugh.”

“I won’t tell them,” Donna replied. “I said I won’t.”

“Don’t tell the others, they’ll only laugh.”

“I’m not going to tell them,” Donna insisted, panicking a bit as the green light started flickering.

“She’s looping now,” River said as Miss Evangelista’s words continued to replay. “The pattern’s degrading. Does anybody mind if I,” she began, and then just shut the comm unit down.

“That was,” Donna swallowed, and the Doctor pulled her in for a tight hug. “That was horrible. That was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.”

“No,” River said. “It’s just a freak of technology. But whatever did this to her, whatever killed her, I’d like a word with that.”

“I’ll introduce you,” the Doctor said gruffly, giving Donna one last pat on the back before cautiously leading the group back into the main room. “I’m going to need a packed lunch.”

“Hang on,” River said, opening a lunch box and showing him the contents. “Chicken and a bit of salad. Knock yourself out.”

“Right, you lot,” the Doctor said, hints of the storm brewing in his voice. “Let’s meet the Vashta Nerada.” He crouched down and began scanning the floor with his sonic screwdriver, tuning in and out of the conversation as he tried to locate a swarm.

“Stay inside the light,” Jack reminded everyone, and the Doctor shot him a grateful look.

“Okay,” he announced after a long moment. “Got a live one. That’s not darkness down those tunnels. This is not a shadow. It’s a swarm. A man-eating swarm.” The Doctor tossed the chicken leg into the shadow, feeling chills run down his spine as it became nothing more than a bone in the time that it took to hit the floor.

"You've gotta be kidding me," Jack said. 

“The piranhas of the air,” he explained darkly. “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.”

“What do you mean, most planets?” Donna asked, alarmed. “Not Earth?”

“Mmm. Earth, and a billion other worlds. Where there’s meat, there’s Vashta Nerada,” the Doctor informed them all grimly. “You can see them sometimes, if you look. The dust in sunbeams.”

“If they were on Earth, we’d know,” Donna insisted, but this time Jack shook his head.

“Do you even realize how many times aliens have made contact with Earth?” he said, chuckling humorlessly. “How many alien-related deaths occur all the time? Humans can explain away anything.”

“‘Humans,’ like you’re not?” Donna asked, surprised, but River cut them off of their tangent.

“Every shadow?” she asked.

“No,” the Doctor said. “But any shadow.”

“So what do we do?”

“You reconsider my plan,” the Doctor said, taking a long moment to make eye contact with each and every person in the room. “Jack has a vortex manipulator. He can get you all to safety.”

“And what about you?” River demanded. “You can’t be thinking of staying here.”

“One hundred years ago in her time, and today for me,” the Doctor began in a low tone, “I lost someone here. Someone important. And I’m going to stay here until I find out exactly what happened to her.”

“I’d think it’s pretty obvious what happened to her,” Lux said bluntly, wincing when Jack, Donna and the Doctor all turned to glare at him.

“That’s the thing, though, it’s not,” the Doctor shot back. “Anyone else know why? Jack? Donna?”

“The node,” River realized, and the Doctor grudgingly admitted to himself that he was impressed that she beat Jack to it. 

“What about the node?” Donna asked.

“Her face was on it,” Jack breathed out, hope dawning across his face. “The Vashta Nerada leave nothing left but the bones. So if Rose’s face is on a node--”

“She wasn’t eaten by the Vashta Nerada,” River finished. “Still would like to know who Rose is, by the way.”

“She traveled with the Doctor,” Jack explained. “I tagged along for a bit, too, but she was already there before me and still there after me.”

River frowned. “But--”

“Nope,” the Doctor cut her off, some of his earlier irritation coming back. “Don’t wanna hear it.”

“You can’t read ahead,” Donna realized, blinking at the Doctor in sudden clarity, and the Doctor gave her a sad smile in return. 

“Yeah,” he confirmed. “Anyway, now that you’ve all seen what the Vashta Nerada can do, let’s try this again. Any takers for leaving?”

“Me,” Anita said immediately, and both Daves echoed her sentiment. 

“Great,” the Doctor said, relieved. “Tell Jack where and when to take you, he can set coordinates. Jack, we’ll wait for you, assuming you want to stay.”

“You bet I do,” he confirmed. “Be back soon.”

The Doctor turned to Lux and River as Jack walked over to the other three and began booting up his vortex manipulator and asking for their destination. “And you two? Donna?”

“Fat chance I’m leaving you to do this alone, sunshine,” Donna snorted, and the Doctor’s hearts clenched in both fear and affection as a plan began to form in his mind.

“I do whatever you do,” River said, and the Doctor fought the urge to roll his eyes. She had displayed some good qualities, despite how annoyed he was at her, and he knew he was being harder on everyone today because of his quietly burning desperation to find out what happened to Rose.  

Lux hesitated. “I’ll leave,” he said after a long moment. “But I thought that perhaps… I ought to let you know. CAL,” he sighed, immediately grabbing the Doctor’s full attention. “It stands for Charlotte Abigail Lux.”

“The little girl,” he realized. “She’s in the data core.”

“She’s not in the computer,” Lux corrected. “In a way, she is the computer. The main command node. She’s CAL.”

“A child hooked up to the mainframe,” the Doctor exhaled in awe. “Why didn’t you just say that earlier?”

“Because she’s family!” Lux exclaimed passionately, pleading with the Doctor to understand. “My grandfather’s youngest daughter. She was dying, so he built her a library and put her living mind inside it, with a moon to watch over her and all of human history to pass the time. Any era to live in, any book to read. She loved books more than anything, and he gave her them all. He asked only that she be left in peace. A secret, not a freak show.”

“You weren’t protecting a patent,” Donna said, looking at him with kinder eyes now. “You were protecting her.”

“This is only half a life, of course,” Lux said sadly, gesturing around the library. “But it’s forever.”

The Doctor swallowed painfully at the word, offering Lux a half-smile as he nodded in Jack’s direction. 

“Thanks for telling us,” he said. “Your secret is safe here, but I think your ride is leaving soon.” He frowned for a moment, mulling over his wording. Something poked at his brain, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on what.

“Good luck,” Lux said, and walked over to join the group about to leave.

“So what does that mean for us?” River asked. “A child as the data core.” Over her shoulder, the Doctor watched in relief as Jack successfully jumped the rest of the group off of the planet.

“Don’t know yet,” the Doctor admitted. “Haven’t had much time to think on it. River, could you wait for Jack to come back? Donna, I need you to help me with something in that little shop for a moment.”

Both women looked at him, a healthy dose of confusion and suspicion coloring their gazes.

“Alright,” River said carefully, and the Doctor nodded in thanks before leading Donna into the little shop. 

“What are we doing? We shopping?” Donna asked incredulously. “Is it a good time to shop?”

“No talking, just moving. Try it,” the Doctor said rudely, and Donna rolled her eyes at him. “Right, stand there in the middle.”

“Why, what’s this?” Donna asked, following his instructions anyway.

“Let me explain,” the Doctor began, and then turned the dial to teleport her away.

When he swept out of the shop, Jack and River were both waiting for him. He paused at the doorway when he realized they were talking about him.

“You know, it’s funny. I keep wishing the Doctor was here,” River was saying. 

“He is the Doctor,” Jack replied pointedly, and River snorted.

“Yeah, someday.”

“Just because he’s regenerated doesn’t mean he’s a different man,” Jack insisted, and the Doctor swallowed hard, overcome with appreciation for his friend.

“You know when you see a photograph of someone you know, but it's from years before you knew them, and it's like they're not quite finished?” River sighed. “They're not done yet. Well, yes, the Doctor's here, but not my Doctor. Now, my Doctor, I've seen whole armies turn and run away. And he'd just swagger off back to his Tardis and open the doors with a snap of his fingers. The Doctor in the TARDIS: next stop, everywhere.”

“Are you sure that man was the Doctor?” Jack asked coolly. “Because I’ve gotta tell you, I’ve known him a long time and through some pretty drastic changes myself, and that doesn’t sound like a single him that I know.”

“You know I’m sure,” River countered. “We’ve gone over this one before,” she said, and the Doctor knew he had to intervene before he heard anything more damning.

“Both of you need to shut up,” he said, strolling back into the room. “You’re both time-travellers. You should know better than to be discussing any of our personal futures,” he scolded, though he nodded gratefully in Jack’s direction, acknowledging that he’d heard his friend stand up for him.

“Where’s Donna?” Jack asked, and the Doctor simply shoved his hands into his pockets. 

“You sent her away,” River guessed shrewdly. “Even though she wanted to stay.”

“I’m not getting my current companion killed on a personal mission,” the Doctor said with finality. 

“Oh, but Jack and I are alright?” River asked, one eyebrow cocked in amusement.

“Jack knows and loves Rose,” the Doctor began, ticking off a list on his fingers. “He’s got a vortex manipulator and the coordinates, so he’d just come back if I sent him out. And death isn’t really a problem for him. Though, to be fair, I’m not sure what you’d do without flesh,” he shivered. 

“I’m not too keen on finding out,” Jack said dryly. “So let’s try not to die, thanks.”

“That was the plan,” the Doctor agreed.

“And me?” River asked. 

“I don’t even know you,” the Doctor said.

“Doctor, one day I’m going to be someone that you trust completely,” River said confidently. “And I’m not sure we can afford to wait for you to find that out, so I’m going to prove it to you.”

“I thought we went over this earlier,” the Doctor said, voice hard. “If there’s any way you can solidly assure me that you do not and never will have my trust, it’s by not waiting to earn it yourself.”

River fell silent at his words, though she met his slightly cold gaze unflinchingly. 

“So, what’s the plan, then?” Jack asked, trying to break the tension. “Is there a plan?”

“Lux told us that the data core is the young girl we saw on the screen earlier,” the Doctor informed him, and Jack blinked in surprise. 

“Right, so we’re finding the data core, then?” Jack asked, and the Doctor shot him a half-smile. 

“Right in one,” the Doctor confirmed. “Let’s gather up the torches and chicken legs, could come in handy.”

Together, they worked on picking their way through the crew bags that had been left behind and consolidated everything into three of the backpacks before setting off down one of the corridors, shining their torches at every shadow they passed.

Suddenly, the Doctor stopped in his tracks.

“Doc? What is it?” Jack asked, alarmed.

“I teleported Donna back to the TARDIS,” he said. “If we don’t get back there in under five hours, Emergency Program One will activate.” Never making anyone wait five and a half again.

“It’ll take her home, yeah. We need to get a shift on,” River said impatiently, and the Doctor glared at her.

“Do you just not realize how much future information you give away with every word out of your mouth, or do you just not care?” he gritted out. “And anyway, she’s not there. I should have received a signal. The console signals me if there’s a teleport breach.”

“Well, maybe the coordinates have slipped,” River suggested testily, clearly annoyed with him. “The equipment here’s ancient.”

The Doctor shook his head thoughtfully, spotting one of the node statues and approaching it. 

“Donna Noble,” he said, loud and clear. “There’s a Donna Noble somewhere in the Library. Do you have the software to locate her position?”

The node turned its head, and all three of their jaws dropped at the sight of Donna’s face attached to the head of the node. 

“Donna Noble has left the library,” the node said. “Donna Noble has been saved.”

“Donna,” the Doctor exhaled, horror and fear and guilt swirling inside of him.

“Donna Noble has left the library. Donna Noble has been saved.”

“How can it be Donna?” River asked shakily. “How’s that possible?”

“Donna,” the Doctor repeated, voice cracking slightly, and Jack waved his hand in front of the Time Lord’s face to grab his attention.

“Snap out of it, Doctor,” he said urgently. “Listen to what the node is saying.”

“Donna Noble has left the library. Donna Noble has been saved.”

“And?” the Doctor snapped, still overwhelmed by grief and distress.

“It’s the same wording as River’s computer,” Jack said. 

“‘Four thousand and twenty three people saved. No survivors,’” River quoted, and the Doctor’s eyes went round as saucers.

Your secret is safe with us.

“Jack, you’re a genius,” he exclaimed. 

“What?” River asked. 

“‘Your secret is safe with us,’ I told Lux. You don’t say ‘saved.’ Nobody says ‘saved.’ You say ‘safe.’ The data fragment, though, the data fragment said ‘four thousand and twenty three people saved.’ Nobody says ‘saved.’ Nutters say ‘saved.’ You see, it didn’t mean safe, it meant, it literally meant saved!”

“The little girl,” River realized, and Jack nodded enthusiastically.

“She saved everyone like a computer, because she is the computer,” he said, and the Doctor grabbed the sides of his face and kissed him on the forehead. 

“And this--this means-- Rose,” the Doctor said, beaming, and Jack’s face lit up like a lantern. 

“She’s okay,” Jack said, hugging the Doctor tightly, and River pursed her lips as she watched the two of them celebrate. “They’re both okay.”

“Well, what are we waiting for, then?” the Doctor asked, feeling like a new man, like a thousand weights had been lifted from his shoulders. “Let’s find that data core.”

Donna was confused, to say the least.

She had everything she wanted. A kind, loving husband who absolutely adored her, and two beautiful, healthy children. A nice house. A good life.

So why did it feel like something was missing?

She felt it sometimes at the most random moments: when she was making breakfast, when she was curled up on the couch with Lee, when she was tucking the kids in for bed. Something that screamed that this life, while wonderful, wasn’t hers. 

She was idly wondering if she was simply just ungrateful as she walked to the park with her husband and their kids, who were eager for playtime and practically chomping at the bit to let go of her hand and dash to the play structure. Once they got close enough, she did let them go and sat on an empty bench to ponder her constant and confusing case of Imposter Syndrome. Lee continued walking with the kids, giving her the time and space to think.

She heard a slight rustling noise behind her and turned to see what it was… and was shocked at the vague familiarity that swelled within her upon seeing the mysterious blonde woman who had joined her on the bench. 

Rose was tired of the headaches.

She was fairly certain that she’d been forced into some sort of alternate reality, but details beyond that had been hard to come by. There were all sorts of tells: every single child in this reality was a carbon copy of a template, every couple had exactly one girl and one boy, the streets all looked the same. It was as though someone had hit the copy-paste button a bunch of times until they’d created enough of a world to begin populating.

The adults were not fake, to Rose’s knowledge—everyone she’d met had been unique, and she couldn’t figure out why one generation seemed to be real while another did not. And by far the most unsettling thing was that she was the only one who noticed, and that she was most definitely not supposed to notice.

When she’d first arrived, she’d been set up with a “Dr. Moon” for an appointment. Rose had been keyed up with adrenaline still, desperately asking about the teleports in the library and the shadows that ate people, but each question only earned her a frown before she was somehow knocked out. Then she’d wake up again to find Dr. Moon staring down at her, and the cycle would begin again.

Eventually, she’d faked losing her memories just to break free of the loop, and from then on she’d been able to investigate on her own. 

Every day came with a dull throbbing at the edges of her skull, almost like something was knocking at the edges of her brain. She suspected that that force was the same as whatever had wiped the minds of the rest of the populations, allowing them to wake up every day, go through the motions of real life, and then sleep and repeat. It was difficult to mark the passage of time when consciousness seemed to be controlled by the flick of a switch (by whom, Rose wasn’t sure), but she would’ve wagered that she’d been stuck there for months. 

Months, god, Mickey and her parents were probably losing their minds. She wondered if they’d assumed her dead yet, or if they would keep searching and searching until the end of time.

She wasn’t sure which option sounded worse.

She’d considered the fact that she could very well be dead and living in the afterlife, but… well, she’d never exactly been religious, but this place didn’t seem like an accurate fit for heaven or hell, or any other version she’d ever heard about. It was like living in the foundations of a story setting, where some aspects were carefully defined and crafted together and others were lazily glossed over, generic and bland. 

The turning point came when she started going out of her way to see others.

It started small. She ran into someone at a shopping center that she swore she’d passed in the reception on that very first day she’d hopped into the universe, but when Rose had asked the woman, she claimed to have no recollection of ever visiting a library. Then she saw a pair of twin brothers that she’d met after something had teleported her right out of the entrance hall and deeper into the building. 

She’d materialized smack in the middle of a group of people, some of whom looked astonished to see her, and others which looked equally if not more surprised and confused as she felt. People were screaming and panicking as others fizzled in and out of existence, and without even thinking, Captain Tyler had taken over. 

Time seemed to blur from there; Rose knew that she should’ve jumped out. She was on a mission to find the Doctor, and the problem Torchwood was trying to solve was bigger than just her being separated from him. The stars were going out, and every single universe out there was relying on one man to save them. But she couldn’t leave people behind, either; not while they were in danger, and not while she could still help. She’d figured out, after a few traumatizing losses and a hell of a lot of running, that the darkness was eating people and that the victims were “marked” by extra shadows. She’d also realized that the library itself was trying to help them, somehow; it was teleporting people to different areas of the library that weren’t as dangerous. 

She suspected, somehow, that some of the people were not always reappearing. There were multiple occasions in which she’d been teleported with a group of people and reappeared with only a fraction of them, and it terrified her. Were they safe? Had they been teleported out? Were they dead? 

She’d finally managed to locate some strange helper-bot to leave a message for the Doctor (every time there was trouble, one of his incarnations ended up there eventually; she figured he’d make it over there eventually and could only hope it wasn’t too late), but she’d barely even touched upon the danger of the shadows before she’d been teleported once more, and ended up in the limbo reality. 

Rose continued walking, lost in her thoughts, and eventually found herself in a park. The copies of children decorated every play structure, and she shivered at the eerie picture the scene before her made. As she continued her walk, she noticed a familiar red-haired figure sitting on a park bench.

She debated it for barely a few seconds before striding over and taking a seat. Torchwood had long since trained her to trust her instincts, and every corner of her brain was screaming that she’d seen this woman before.

“Hello?” she asked tentatively, and the woman turned to her.

“Hi,” the ginger woman said cautiously. “Did you need something?”

“I just thought you looked familiar,” Rose said carefully. “I thought maybe we have a mutual friend.”

“You do look a bit familiar,” the woman admitted. “But I still can’t place you.”

“I’d guess not,” Rose said. “I’m Rose, Rose Tyler.”

The woman blinked a few times, as though memories were attempting to fight their way to the surface. “Donna McAvoy,” she said at last, pausing again. “It’s just… your name. It sounds so familiar.”

“What about our friend?” Rose prodded, finally remembering where she’d seen this woman: in London, 2009, when she’d so clearly hopped in and just-missed an alien invasion. This woman had desperately thrust car keys at her and taken off, almost as if she…

“What friend? Who’re you talking about?”

“There was a man,” Rose began hesitantly. She’d never had to speak to someone with amnesia, which was the best way to sum up Donna's current condition--she wasn’t sure what information she should give out herself, and what she should be holding back for Donna to remember. 

“This… wonderful man,” Rose continued. “He traveled a lot. Saved the world so many times, and no one ever really even thanked him for it.”

Donna frowned, staring off into the middle distance as jumbled pieces of a puzzle started to fit themselves together in her brain. “A doctor?”

“Yeah,” Rose confirmed, excited and relieved. “The Doctor. I’m not sure, but I… I think you knew him.”

“Did I? When?”

Rose shrugged helplessly; there was no easy to way tell someone that they’d likely been time-travelling before they’d lost their memories, but when you run into someone in early 21st Century London and then next in a mysterious and seemingly sentient futuristic library with active teleports…. 

“He’s a man in a suit,” she said instead, hoping a physical description might help. “Tall, thin man. Great hair. Some really great hair.”

“And who are you?” Donna asked, face twisted in confusion. “You knew him? Us?”

“I was like you,” Rose replied hesitantly. “I used to be you. You… I think you travelled with him, Donna. You travelled with him through time and space.”

Rose knew she made a mistake the second the last words left her mouth; Donna scoffed and shook her head with a light smile. 

“Don’t be ridiculous. Travelling in time and space,” she snorted.

“I’m serious, Donna, he--”

“How could he travel in time and space, then? I’d love to hear this one,” Donna said with a roll of her eyes.

“He was an alien. A Time Lord. Last of his kind,” Rose told her softly.

“Alright. If he was so special, what was he doing with me?” Donna asked. “Don’t you try to tell me that I’m an alien.”

Rose chuckled, shaking her head. “He thought you were brilliant.”

“Oh, don’t be stupid,” Donna said, and Rose frowned. 

“But you are,” she insisted. “He only takes the best, even if you don’t realize it when you first join. You’re brilliant, Donna, and it probably just took the Doctor to show you that, simply by bein’ with him. He did the same to me. To everyone he touches.”

“Then where is he now?” Donna asked. “If we’re such great friends and he believes in me, and he believes in you, why can’t I remember him? Why don’t I see him anywhere?”

“Because the reality we’re in is… is some sort of simulation,” Rose began delicately, and Donna’s open expression immediately shuttered closed.

“Stop it,” Donna snapped. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Leave me alone!”

“This world isn’t real, Donna,” Rose exclaimed, frustrated. She ran a hand absent-mindedly through her hair, trying to figure out what to say, and blinked in surprise when Donna’s eyes tracked the movement with faint recognition. 

“Nothing is real here,” Rose continued carefully. “Your mind will have noticed it sub-consciously even if you haven’t really realized it yet. The houses are all the same. The streets, the trees, the cars. The children--”

“Well, what about the children?” Donna asked sharply, eyes fixed on two of the kids on the playground, running and laughing with a handsome, dark-haired man that was chasing them, and Rose’s heart broke.

“That your… husband?” she asked tentatively, and Donna nodded. 

“Lee McAvoy,” she said, and Rose hated herself for what she had to do.

“Look at your children,” Rose instructed gently. “Look at all of them, really look.” She watched sadly as Donna’s eyes frantically roamed the playground, seeing nothing but the same two kids in each area of the park. “They're not real. 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 said, a single tear rolling down her cheek. “Just… just stay away from me, okay? Lee! Grab Joshua and Ella, we’re going home now!” she yelled, and Rose watched as Lee ushered their two of the fake children from the swings and led Donna hand-in-hand away from her.

"Rose," she heard from behind her, and turned with a sigh to see Dr. Moon standing and watching her. "I think we should have another talk."

“Okay, we've got a clear spot,” River panted as the three of them burst through the gaping hole that her squareness gun had left in the wall. “In, in, in! Right in the center. In the middle of the light, quickly. Don't let your shadows cross. Doctor,” she added questioningly as she looked around for shadows.

“Maybe. It’s getting harder to tell,” the Doctor admitted, frustrated. “What’s wrong with you?”

“We’re going to need a chicken leg. Anyone got one left?” she asked, shooting Jack a grateful smile as he fished one out of his bag and tossed it to her. “Thanks, Jack.”

She tossed the chicken leg into one of the nearest shadows, and all three of them flinched as they watched the meat vanish before their eyes.

“Okay, we’ve got another hot one,” River sighed unnecessarily. “Watch your feet.”

“They won’t attack unless there’s enough of them,” the Doctor said. “But they’ve got our scent now. They’re coming.” 

“Well, thanks for that reassuring input,” Jack said sarcastically. “Never a dull day with you.”

The Doctor simply shook his head and ignored him, edging closer to the infected shadow and scanning it carefully with the sonic. The readings came back scrambled, and he frowned as he re-adjusted his settings and tried again.

“What’s wrong with it?” River asked.

“There’s a signal coming from somewhere, interfering with it,” the Doctor explained.

“Then use the red settings,” River said impatiently.

“It doesn’t have a red setting,” the Doctor gritted out, wondering if she would ever learn.

“Well, use the dampeners,” she continued on, oblivious to his anger.

“It doesn’t have dampeners.”

“Well, it will do one day,” she scoffed, and the Doctor stood to face her as she held out a familiar-yet-not sonic screwdriver.

“So, some time in the future, I just give you my screwdriver,” the Doctor said flatly, hackles rising. 

“Yeah,” River said.

“Why would I do that?” 

“I didn’t pluck it from your cold, dead hands, if that’s what you’re worried about,” River snapped. 

“And I know that because?” the Doctor asked pointedly.

River rolled her eyes. “Listen to me. You’ve just lost your friends. You’re angry. I understand. But you need to be less emotional, Doctor, right now.”

“You haven’t seen the Doctor angry if you think this is emotional,” Jack interjected. The Doctor met his eyes seriously, shared memories of their darkest days together flashing through each of their minds. Rose, getting shot down by the Anne Droid. Realizing that the delta wave was their only option on Satellite Five. Being trapped together on the Valiant for an entire year while the Master killed millions, wondering if Martha was still alive, if she would manage to save them.

“He’s right,” the Doctor said coolly. “The more you say--which you shouldn’t, by the way, since I thought I’d made it perfectly clear that information about my future is not welcome--the more you say, the more you make me doubt that you know me at all.” Or that I remain me at all, he thought darkly. 

River stuffed her version of the sonic screwdriver into her pocket, glaring harshly at the Doctor, but he continued on, not giving her a chance to speak.

“Know what's interesting about my screwdriver?” he noted. “Very hard to interfere with. Practically nothing's strong enough--well, some hairdryers, but I'm working on that. So there is a very strong signal coming from somewhere, and it wasn't there before. So what's new? What's changed? Come on! What's new? What's different?” He buzzed the sonic again, eyes flitting over the new information that began to display. “Well, still active. It's signaling. Look. Someone, somewhere in this library is alive and communicating with the moon. Or, possibly alive and drying their hair. No, the signal is definitely coming from the moon. I'm blocking it, but it's trying to break through.”

Suddenly, Jack gasped, and the Doctor shot up to see what had startled him.

“Doctor,” River said, eyes wide, but he barely even heard her.

“Rose,” he choked out, but she didn’t seem to see him before fading back into nothing.

“That was her,” River said, slightly bitter. “That was your friend. Can you get her back? What was that?”

“Hold on, hold on, hold on,” the Doctor said frantically, buzzing his screwdriver repeatedly and rapidly flipping through the settings in between. “I’m trying to find the wavelength, but it’s being blocked. No, no, no!”

“That’s proof, though,” Jack said hopefully. “She’s still here. Our theory about the core is still holding strong.”

“I’ve got something, but it’s different this time,” the Doctor frowned, eyes still locked on his sonic. “I think it’s… I tried to lock onto a telepathic frequency,” he said. “And I locked onto one, but it’s not Rose. It’s…” He looked up, eyes wide and dark, before taking another step towards the shadows.

“Easy, Doctor,” Jack warned, just as River snapped, “Be careful, Doctor!”

“Talk to me,” the Doctor urged. “It’s easy. It’s like the neural relay in the suits. Just point and think. Use the connection to talk to me. The Vashta Nerada live on all the worlds in this system, but you hunt in forests. What are you doing in a library?” he asked, alternating between staring into the shadows and eyeing the sonic.

Jack kept his eyes fixed firmly on the Doctor’s shadow.

“You came to the Library to hunt. Why? Just tell me why?” the Doctor demanded.

“I don’t like this,” River interjected, but the Doctor ignored her.

“'We did not,'” he read aloud from his screwdriver. “Did not what?... ‘We did not come here.'  Well, of course you did. Of course you came here.”

“I trust you, Doc, and you know that, but is this really a good idea?” Jack asked tensely.

“‘We come from here,’ ” the Doctor read. “From here?” His eyes flitted back and forth as more text appeared. “‘We hatched here.’ But you hatch from trees. From spores in trees.”

His frown deepened as the Vashta Nerada continued to communicate with him. “You’re nowhere near a forest. Look around you. You’re not in a forest, you’re in a library, the Library, there are no trees in a…” his eyes widened just as Jack grabbed his arm and yanked him backwards. 

“Yeah, okay, time to go,” Jack said, nodding at a shadow that had begun reaching out towards the Doctor’s.

“Books. Of course, they came in the books,” the Doctor realized, staggering backwards as he allowed Jack to tow him out of danger. “Microspores in a million million books.”

“Doctor, we’re leaving,” River said angrily, blasting another square hole in the wall and jumping through it. 

“Oh, look at that. The forests of the Vashta Nerada, pulped and printed and bound,” the Doctor exclaimed as he took off after her. “A million million books, all hatching shadows.”

Jack kept his arm in a firm grip just in case the alien idiot decided to turn back around and have another conversation with the thing trying to kill them. “Right, lovely,” he gritted out, and the Doctor turned to him apologetically as they kept running.

“Thank you,” he said, and Jack nodded.

“Saved your ass again, though. Think you owe me dinner at this point,” he said with a wink, before grunting as they both ran straight into River. 

“Watch it,” she said, voice hard. “Big room, multiple exits again. Anyone have any idea about how to access the core?”

“Computer right over there,” Jack said, nodding at one still mostly bathed in light, and the Doctor strode over with his torch.

“Let’s see what I can pull up this time,” he muttered, typing furiously. He nodded as pages of information began popping up ahead of him. “See, there it is, right there. A hundred years ago, massive power surges. All the teleports going at once. As soon as the Vashta Nerada hit their hatching cycle, they attack. Someone hits the alarm. The computer tries to teleport everyone out.”

“It tried to teleport four thousand and twenty three people? All at once?” River frowned. “Can it do that?”

“It succeeded,” the Doctor pointed out. “Several surges, look. Must’ve taken some time, might’ve had to work in waves. Saving to a hard drive is a process, right? But eventually, it pulled them all out, and then what? Nowhere to send them. Nowhere safe in the whole library. Vashta Nerada growing in every shadow. Four thousand and twenty three people all beamed up and nowhere to go. They’re stuck in the system, waiting to be sent, like e-mails. The Library--a whole world of books, and right at the core, the biggest hard drive in history. The mind of one miraculous little girl.” He exhaled in wonder, eternally grateful for Charlotte Abigail Lux, who had single-handedly saved an entire population with just her mind. 

“How do we get them out?” Jack asked, and the Doctor continued typing. All of a sudden, an alarm sounded. 

“What’s that?” River asked.

“Autodestruct in twenty minutes,” the Doctor cursed. 

“What’s ‘maximum erasure’?” River asked, reading over his shoulder.

“In twenty minutes, this planet’s going to crack like an egg,” the Doctor said grimly. 

“Well, it was starting to feel too easy,” Jack quipped dryly. “Nothing to make the day more fun than a timer.” 

“No, no, no, no, no, no!” the Doctor yelled in frustration as the screen went blank. “Should be able to access the core from this room, but it went offline before I could figure out where.”

River yanked her own screwdriver back out and pointed it at the compass rose in the center of the floor. She fiddled with the settings, buzzed it once, and the floor began to open up. 

“Gravity platform,” she said smoothly. “Thought I recognized it.”

“Guess I do like you for something,” the Doctor commented, walking over as they waited for the platform to finish rising. 

“Oh, you do,” River smiled, and he almost returned it as the three of them stepped onto the platform and hurtled down towards the core. 

“Autodestruct in fifteen minutes,” a computerized voice said the moment they stepped off the platform. Up ahead, a globe filled with swirling energy stood in the center of the room.

“The data core,” the Doctor said, awestruck at the outward simplicity of the incredible device before them. “Over four thousand living minds trapped inside it.”

“Yeah, well, they won’t be living much longer,” River reminded him grimly. “We’re running out of time.”

“Optimistic as always,” Jack muttered as the Doctor found an access terminal and began to fiddle with it.

“The computer’s in sleep mode,” the Doctor said, frustrated. “I’m trying to wake it, but I don’t want to hurt her.” 

“These readings,” River began, and he nodded. 

“I know. She’s dreaming,” he confirmed. 

“Please help me,” a young girl’s voice said, and all three of them jumped and spun around to see a node behind them. A node with a painfully young, female face on it.

“CAL,” the Doctor exhaled sorrowfully. “Charlotte Abigail Lux.”

“Oh, my god,” River said, looking horrified. “What do we do?”

“Autodestruct in ten minutes,” the computerized voice chimed.

“Easy,” the Doctor said, whipping into action. “We beam all the people out of the data core. The computer will reset and stop the countdown. Wait, no, difficult,” he frowned. “Charlotte doesn’t have enough memory space left to make the transfer. No, hang on, easy! We can hook one of us up to the computer. She can borrow memory space.”

“Difficult,” River cut in. “It’d kill any of us stone dead.”

“Yeah, it’s easy to criticize,” the Doctor said with a roll of his eyes. “However--”

“It’ll burn out both your hearts and don’t think you’ll regenerate,” River said angrily.

“Look, I always try my hardest not to die,” the Doctor said defensively. “Honestly, it’s my main thing. But I actually--”

“Let me do it,” River said, and the Doctor furrowed his brow. 

Jack sighed and began hooking himself up to the core, hoping that he had enough time to get everything right since his two… comrades, apparently, could bicker until the end of time. 

“Why would you do it?” the Doctor asked, confused. “I was going to suggest--”

“Because my whole timeline is changing!” River yelled, tears springing to her eyes. “I wasn’t going to tell you. It happened the moment I stepped foot in the Library, but it started small. Just a few shifts, but that’s happened before. You get used to it when your entire life is one half of a time loop. But then the changes started getting bigger. You said things, you did things, your friends did things, and I don’t even--” she cut herself off, hastily wiping away some of her tears. “Just let me do it. My life as I knew it doesn’t even exist anymore, and you--you don’t care about me,” she said, voice cracking. “I always knew that this day would come, but I still never expected it to hurt like this. And even so, it needs to be me. Because it can’t be you.”

“River,” the Doctor said gently, stepping towards her. “Neither of us need to do it.”

“What?” she asked, and he nodded towards Jack, who was mostly hooked to the machine, and her eyes widened in horror. “No, he can’t--”

“I can’t die,” Jack said simply, and River blinked at him. 

“You might’ve mentioned that,” she said, voice strangled. 

“I was trying to, but you were rather convinced I was trying to die,” the Doctor said, amused.

“In her defense,” Jack began, lifting two of the cables in each hand and settling in to wait. “You do tend to drift towards unnecessarily self-sacrifice a lot of the time.”

“Given your current predicament, I’m not sure you’ve got a leg to stand on,” the Doctor noted. “But fair point.”

“What about the Vashta Nerada, though?” River frowned, and the Doctor made a face. “You think they’ll just let everyone go once Jack gets them out?”

“Best offer they’re going to get,” the Doctor murmured, fiddling with his sonic again and walking over to some of the shadows in the corner of the room. “And they’d better take it. Oh, lovely, still hooked on to the right frequency. You hear that? I’m speaking to you,” he addressed the shadow. “I’m giving you back your forests, but you are giving me them. You’re letting them go.”

“‘These are our forests. They are our meat, ’” the Doctor read aloud, and shook his head. “Don’t play games with me. Earlier today, you killed someone that we all liked. Because of you, someone I… Rose, my Rose has been trapped in a computer hard drive for one hundred years. You’re not in any position to make a deal. I’m the Doctor. That girl, Rose, that I said was trapped? She’s the Bad Wolf. You’re in the biggest library in the universe. Look us up. We're the stuff of legend.”

He waited, eyes hard, and sighed in relief as the shadows withdrew. 

“‘You have one day,’” he read. “There. Plenty of time.”

“Autodestruct in two minutes,” the computer said, and River and the Doctor both turned to Jack.

“Jack,” the Doctor began, and Jack saluted, making him scowl for a moment before his face went serious again. “Are you… if you don’t want to do this--”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jack said. “We both know who has the best shot at surviving this. And if I let you die saving her, Rose will kill me.”

“I will, too,” River muttered. 

“Although, if anyone could figure out a way to make it permanent,” Jack mused, and the Doctor shook his head and smiled at his friend. 

“Thank you,” he said, throat tight.

“Don’t mention it,” Jack said lightly. “I mean, really, don’t, because I have a feeling I won’t want to remember this one,” he added as the computer began counting down.

“Are you certain he’ll survive this?” River asked nervously.

“It’s a bit late for that,” the Doctor said, tense, and instinctively he wrapped an arm around her as the countdown finished and Jack joined the cables together, causing a blinding white light to fill the room. 

They closed their eyes, Jack’s screams echoing in their ears, until silence fell and the bright light dimmed. 

“Is he…” River began, glancing at Jack’s still form.

“Give it a few minutes,” the Doctor said, also looking sadly at Jack. “It takes some time and then he resets, typically.”

“How is he--”

“Rose,” the Doctor said simply. “She had the power of a goddess, once. She made him immortal.”

River seemed to process that, a thousand questions flitting through her eyes, but when she looked up at the Doctor again they all died on her lips. 

“I was supposed to die here,” she confessed instead, and the Doctor’s brows raised. 

“I would never have told you your future,” he denied, but she only shook her head sadly. 

“You didn’t need to. You never needed to,” River told him. “That’s how it goes with us. We don’t talk. But we both understand. All of the signs… everything you didn’t say… I was supposed to die here, and I didn’t. Jack did. My whole life, I’ve known what was coming, and now it didn’t even happen,” she laughed brokenly, another few tears escaping. “Do you know what that feels like?”

“Freedom,” the Doctor told her, eyes serious. “What you’re feeling now, that’s what freedom feels like.”

She snorted in denial, shaking her head. “Doctor--”

“I’m serious,” he told her, gently wiping a tear from her cheek. “You said it yourself. Your past is changing or has changed already, presumably because your whole life you’ve been tied to events that aren’t fully in your control. And if you’re right, if you were supposed to die here, in your original timeline, then those events are all past for you. You can do whatever you want, now,” he said, urging her to understand. “Just because things didn’t happen like you thought they were supposed to doesn’t mean you need to die. It means that now, you get to live.”

River nodded, processing that, before throwing her arms around him. He stiffened but wrapped his arms around her anyway, mixed emotions swirling in his chest. 

“Well, in the old timeline, I bought the vortex manipulator off the wrist of a handsome time agent,” River commented lightly as she released him and walked over to Jack. “This time, it looks like I’ll get to take it off him myself.”

“He’ll kill me for this,” the Doctor groaned, but made no move to stop her.

“True, but I do know you, or I did once, even if you’d rather not believe me,” River said with a sad smile. “And you’d much rather give him a lift home than me.”

The Doctor said nothing, watching as she strapped the manipulator to her own wrist and fiddled with the settings before looking up and meeting his eyes. 

“Goodbye, Doctor,” she said, heartbreak flashing quickly across her face before she pushed it away.

“Goodbye, River Song,” he said, nodding his head. “Go live.”

She smiled painfully at him one last time before hitting the button, disappearing just seconds before Jack snapped back to life in the chair.

“Now that one sucked,” Jack complained. “How long was I out?”

“Just a few minutes,” the Doctor said, stepping forward to free him from the chair. “‘Bout average.”

“Tell that to the pounding in my skull,” Jack moaned before frowning. “Where’s River?” He looked down at his bare wrist, before groaning again. “Oh my god. I could kill you both.”

“A threat that’s a lot less believable after you just figuratively took a bullet for the both of us,” the Doctor quipped, and Jack rolled his eyes. 

“Dinner with you and Rose, now,” Jack said sulkily as the Doctor removed the last of the cords hooking him up to the data core. 

“I kinda figured that was a given, last time you demanded it,” the Doctor said, though he couldn’t quite stop the smile that had begun to blossom at Rose’s name. “Since I don’t intend on letting her out of my sight ever again.”

Jack grinned at his friend’s words. “C’mon, Doc,” he said, stretching exaggeratedly as he stood and winked. “Let’s go get our girl.”

“Not ours,” the Doctor yelped in protest, and Jack just laughed.

Rose looked desperately through the crowd of people milling around the teleports. The Doctor had to be here, she just knew it, and he’d gotten them all out. She’d met Donna in that other world and knew that she must be travelling with him at the moment and was frantically on the lookout for long, swishy coats or bright red hair. 

She only prayed that Donna remembered meeting her and would wait or tell the Doctor.

“Oh, s-s-sorry,” a man said as he stumbled into her on his way to the teleport line, and Rose began to apologize in return when she caught sight of his face.

“Hang on,” she said, struggling to remember. “Are you… you’re not… Lee, are you? The one who I saw with Donna?” 

The man’s eyes widened. “Y-y-yeah,” he stuttered. “D-do you… know Donna?” he asked hopefully, and Rose smiled reassuringly. 

“It’s a bit of a long story,” she said, laughing at the understatement. “But I’m looking for her, too. She’s with my friend. We can wait together.”

“Rose?” the Doctor called, Jack hot on his heels. “Donna? Rose!”

“Doctor!” he heard a familiar voice shout, and he stumbled backward as he found himself with a face-full of fiery ginger hair.

“Donna!” he exclaimed in relief, hugging his friend tightly.

“Yeah, I could smack you for what you did,” she said, eyes narrowing, and he winced as he suddenly remembered that he’d tricked her into the teleport. “But first, I’m looking for someone. Did you find Rose?”

“Not yet,” Jack said, still looking around, and Donna’s face fell slightly as she looked at the Doctor’s worried expression.

“Right, let’s look together, then,” she said firmly. “Mine’s a handsome bloke, dark hair, named ‘Lee.’ He’s got a stutter, if you talk to him.”

“Sounds just like my type,” Jack grinned, and laughed when Donna swatted his shoulder.

“Mine, thank you very much,” she said. “Well, if he’s available--I guess I don’t know if…” she trailed off when the Doctor suddenly dashed away. “Doctor!”

“Rose!” he shouted, and Jack’s face lit up as he saw where--who--he was running to. 

“Doctor!” Rose shouted gleefully, pushing hastily by people as she began to sprint towards them. Donna’s eyes landed on the man she’d been talking to, and she gasped. 

“Lee!”

Across the room, Rose flung herself into the Doctor’s arms, tears of disbelief blurring her vision as she buried her face into his neck. Instantly, she was enveloped by his familiar scent, the feel of his whole body wrapped around hers, and she nearly sobbed as years of tension drained out of her in an instant.

“Doctor,” she repeated helplessly, clutching at his coat, and she gasped and laughed when she met Jack Harkness’ beaming gaze over his shoulder. “Jack--how--shit, wait, Mickey, my parents,” she realized frantically, pulling back, but the Doctor cupped her cheek before she could pull at her communicator. 

“We’ll take care of it,” he said dismissively, eyes round and tearful as he tracked over every detail of her face. “Oh, Rose Tyler,” he said in wonder, leaning forward and touching their foreheads together, and all of the panic and worry that was clawing at her went silent as they just smiled at each other, overjoyed at being able to hold each other close. 

For the first time in years, Rose Tyler was home.