Archive of Our Own ^beta

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"Could you please turn that bloody noise off?!" Yelled Graham. The quiet pulsing of an alarm had been going on for almost ten minutes now, and it was starting to drive Graham and the others insane. The Doctor slid out from underneath a control panel of the TARDIS, and took off her goggles. She had been doing some small repairs and adjustments while the others were having lunch.
"Oh, sorry, I thought I was making that noise. Let's see...hang on it's a distress call."
Both Ryan and Yaz stood up and walked over from where they were sitting, to listen to what, potentially would be their next adventure.
"From who?" Said Ryan, unable to decipher the meanings of the circular patterns that he had guessed was alien text on the TARDIS's view screens.
"Not sure, better take a look, shall we?" The doctor said, her hand already over the lever that would send the TARDIS spinning into the colourful space-time continuum.
They came to a stop after a couple minutes, and, after the Doctor had checked it was safe, everyone exited the TARDIS. They were now in a large building, on one side were gigantic windows the filtered in golden star-light, and in the centre, was rows apon rows of dark oak bookshelves. Each of these bookshelves contained hundreds of books, some looking older than the Doctor herself, others like they'd never even been touched before. Many people milled around the room collecting books to add to the piles they already had, others were sitting down in the tables on the side and reading.
"A library? We came all this way to find a…a space library!?" Exclaimed Graham. A couple dirty looks were thrown at him, and a couple people even "shh"ed him.
"Wait… I've been here before" whispered the Doctor, solumly, her heart dropping. "It was a lot darker, and there were no people… well except… anyways, let's find that distress signal!" She said, spinning around to face the group for the last part, like everything was fine and happy, hoping that it would mask the sadness in the beginning of her statement.
They walked around the hallways, the Doctor muttering "I swear it was this way…" every few minutes before taking out her sonic screwdriver, scanning the room and turning around again. She seemed oddly panicked and frantic in such a peaceful place, which threw off the group as she usually seemed so calm and happy, or at least appeared that way to them.
"Are you sure you know where we're going?" Said Yaz, who, like the rest of the group, was getting tired of walking around in circles.
"I know where we are going, just don't remember how to get there… oh wait nevermind, it's definitely through here!" They all stepped into a new room, which at first looked like almost every other room in the library, but behind a bookshelf was a large glowing pillar and some computer terminals. The rest of the room contained hundreds apon hundereds of servers, and in the corner, what looked like small robots doing repairs to some that had over-heated. The doctor stopped in front of the largest terminal, and started typing.
"This is odd. No distress signal, at least not from here, but it looks like data from the library's computer core is being uploaded somewhere."
"Can you find out where" Yaz chimed in, already knowing the answer.
"Working on it now, ah! Got it!"
"Now we just have to find our way back to the TARDIS" groaned Ryan, not looking forward to getting lost in the hallways again, but the Doctor was not listening, she was still frantically typing and occasionally scanning the computer with her sonic screwdriver.
"If you already have the location, why are you still typing, Doc? Shouldn't we be heading back already?" Graham asked. The Doctor did not reply, it was difficult to tell if she was ignoring him or just didn't hear. She was obsessive typing and pressing buttons on the machine, and if the library had been any more quiet, you may have even heard her softly cry.

There was nothing the Doctor could do, she wasn't here.

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Once they were back in the TARDIS again, the group started to sense that something was off with the Doctor. The whole way while walking back she hadn’t said a word, which was extremely unusual for her.
“Hey, Doctor, are you alright? You’ve been acting kind of odd since we left.” Said Yaz, hoping to at least try to understand what was going on in the Doctor’s brains, and maybe help out her friend.
The Doctor ignored Yaz and tried to disguise her sadness as thoughtfulness, proclaiming something about needing to go to her room to work something ou, while half running down the TARDIS’s corridors in that direction.
“Should we go after her?” Asked Ryan, unsure if she was telling the truth about needing to be in her room to think.
“You guy stay here, I’ll go and talk to her.” Yaz said, unconvinced in the Doctor’s lie.

Yaz knocked on the Doctor’s door. She had never actually been in the Doctor’s room before, no one had. Yaz wasn’t even sure that the Doctor needed sleep, or to eat for that matter, as she had hardly seen her do either.
“You can come in” Yaz heard the doctor say behind the door.
Yaz walked into the room and saw a bed, a desk covered with small trinkets and a bookshelf that covered two of the walls. It was very dark in the room, only lit by what looked like LEDs to Yaz but may have been tiny glowing crystals that lined the corner where the walls and roof met. On the floor, in the corner of the bookshelf sat the Doctor, fidgeting with something that was probably from her desk.
Yaz walked over to the doctor and sat next to her.
“Are you alright?” She asked again. The Doctor did not look up but this time started to answer.
“I don’t usually like to talk about...feelings. I...dont ever want to put you guys in a situation where you have to take care of me, where I am the...vunrable one.” The Doctor slowly stammered. She wasn’t crying but you could see the sadness in her eyes. Not just sadness, but age, the eyes of someone who has lived for almost too long, someone who has lost almost too much.
“She was...pretty much the last one, other than me. I don’t think I ever ended up taking her to Gallifrey.”
Yaz sat there with her friend, just to listen. It was very clear to her that the Doctor had not talked about her emotions in a very long time.
“Who was she? What was her name?” Asked Yaz politely.
“Just...an old friend.” The Doctor lied and avoided the second question, she had already told Yaz more than she had meant to.
“And she was in the computer?” Yaz was still confused about how this ‘old friend’ had anything to do with the library.
“She almost died, I didn’t even know her then. I uploaded her into that computer, to save her, I knew that one day I would find a way to get her out, to bring her back to life.”
“She wasn’t deleted, you don’t think?”
“No, I made sure that couldn’t happen.” The Doctor replied. She was already starting to think about that fact. If she hadn’t been deleted, then where was she?
“Thank you, Yaz, for coming and checking on me.” She said while getting up. The Doctor picked up a small blue book of the bookshelf and walked out of the room, with Yaz in tow.

“Alright, fam!” The doctor exclaimed, trying to sound excited and to get the group to ignore what had just happened. “Lets plug in these coordinates into the TARDIS, see where the distress signal was really coming from.”
The doctor pressed the buttons of the TARDIS’s console and calculated their next destination.
“Looks like a freighter-ship, parked just out of this system. Doesn’t appear to be moving.” She explained, seconds before starting the dematerialization process.

Chapter Text

The TARDIS was now parked inside the ship, and the Doctor slowly stepped outside. She was now in what looked like a market, people were walking around with baskets and coin purses. Others were behind stalls that were selling everything from fruits to robots. They were still inside the ship, however, which was glaringly obvious as the scrap-metal roof could be seen and the loud engines could be heard everywhere. The Doctor motioned for the rest of the group to join her and slowly walked away from the TARDIS.
“No one here seems panicked, or in distress.” Remarked Graham.
"Good observation, Graham!" The doctor said, not because the observation had been particularly good, just that she had worked out that everyone was happier when she offered them encouraging words now and again.
The group walked around the market, every now and then stopping to look at something interesting or to stop Ryan from almost touching some weird alien technology.
“What exactly are we looking for, Doctor?” Yaz said as they walked around following her.
“Information dealers, probably. Most likely just somewhere just looking through the system to find something they could sell, probably don't even know what they found.” She replied.
“Information dealer? I was talking to a bloke who seemed to be trying to sell me something, seemed kind of shady really.” Graham said.
“Everything being sold here seems ‘kind of shady’” said Yaz, who was looking at a stall that was selling what looked like broken spaceship parts.
“Could you take us to him, Graham?” the Doctor asked?
“Yeah, he was just over here.”
The group walked over to a small stand on the corner of the row. A short man, who to the Doctor’s companions, looked almost human, except for the fact that he had two sets of arms was yelling about his hacking skills and the various places in which he had hacked in order to ‘procure’ information.
“Good afternoon!” The Doctor said, “I was wondering if, in any of your hacking adventures, you came across a library?”
The man thought for a bit.
“Ah yes, why just last week I procured some data from a library from an old friend. They said it could be quite valuable, and I agree.”
“How many credits do you want for all the library data that was stolen.”
“Not stolen! Procured! And I don't take credits… however, that young lady does seem to have something of value, real value.” He said, pointing to Yaz. She was wearing a gold necklace that an old friend had given her. The pendant had a tiny intricate pattern of a garden filled with flowers carved in silver. She looked at the Doctor, not sure if she really wished to give away the necklace, they had no proof that this man even had information on the Doctor’s friend. But Yaz could see the pain in the Doctor’s eyes and she knew that she had to do this. And, if it didn’t work out, they had a time machine, the group could get the necklace back in the future. Yaz took the necklace off and handed it to the Doctor.
“Are you sure about this?” The Doctor asked.
“Yes,” Yaz replied.
“Ok then.” The Doctor handed the necklace to the dealer and, in exchange, received an alien flash drive.