Work Text:
The TARDIS, Victoria had long since decided, was something she would never understand. The Doctor and Jamie called it home, the word rolling off their tongues with ease at the end of every adventure. Let’s go home, as if they didn’t have to give it a second thought – but the word never seemed to trip out of Victoria’s mouth quite so smoothly.
It wasn’t as if the ship was unwelcoming. Her own room was quite pleasant, warm and coloured in pale greens and pinks, the bed always soft enough to sink into. And there were one or two other rooms – a neat parlour, a homely sitting room – that the Doctor always called Victoria’s, as if the TARDIS had spun them together just for her. But there was always something slightly off about them, keeping them a little to the left of home. The light was too bright, or the floral scent of spring just a little too oppressive. Like she was walking through a dream, the haze of a memory half-lost to the mists of sleep, and her own mind was trying to prod her into wakefulness. And as soon as she stepped out the door, she would find herself back in an endless labyrinth of white corridors, just as alien as any of the places they visited.
The library, though, never felt anything but right.
Drawing in a deep breath, she savoured the musty taste of the air as it passed over her tongue, tipping her head back to gaze at the tops of the bookcases. They loomed high over her, high as a second-storey window, the swirls carved into the wood along their crests vanishing in the shadow of the vaulted ceiling. In all her days, she had never seen such a grand library. But the contents of the shelves were nowhere near so ostentatious. They burst with colour, ornate boxes and specimen jars and knick-knacks she had no name for crowding alongside the books. Golden light spilled down every aisle, though there were no lamps to cast it. Every so often, the cases parted like trees around a clearing, leaving space for a plush rug and a midnight blue sofa, or perhaps a cluster of overstuffed armchairs. Once, she had even found a window, its curved top framed by yet more shelves, its glass peering out towards a rich bed of stars.
This, too, was like a dream, she knew. But it was a dream she didn’t mind lingering in.
She trailed her fingers over the spines of the books as she ambled down the aisle, skin skidding over leather and canvas and paper. One or two of the titles were familiar to her, but they were so swamped amongst the rest that she couldn’t fathom the filing system. The collected works of Shakespeare rested beside a long row of leather-bound volumes, their spines embossed with nothing but claw-prints. Just a few shelves along, her eyes caught on a birdwatcher’s guide to the British Isles. When she tugged it half-out of its spot, she found the pages well-thumbed, and the edges of the canvas cover ragged. Try as she might, she couldn’t puzzle out the connection.
It was the Doctor’s library, she supposed. Perhaps there was some system known only to him, a strange, branching logic mapping out the pathways of his brain. Or perhaps there was no system at all, and he simply picked up and returned books as he pleased. Somehow she couldn’t quite believe he had the patience for proper shelving.
Her father’s library had been quiet different. Smaller, of course – not even Maxtible’s library could compete with the Doctor’s collection, and she had spent a good hour wandering around in a daze the first time she saw it – but meticulously ordered. More than once, he had scolded her for putting a book back in the wrong position. But there had been a twinkle in his eyes that cut through his sternness, and he had never chased her away from the room, even when she carried away piles of heavy tomes on chemistry and physics and natural philosophy. For every fascination her governess tutted at, he smiled and placed another book onto her stack.
Her father would have liked the Doctor’s library. She was sure of it.
Rounding the corner of one aisle to slip into another, she blinked when she found herself surrounded by maps and charts of the stars. She had come looking for this section just last week, and found it squeezed between rows and rows of rather sensationalist volumes on sea monsters. Perhaps there were two rows of star atlases – but no, there was a book she recognised, its painted colour peeled and chipped in just the way she remembered. Shaking her head, she strode briskly between the shelves. She must have turned herself around today. The TARDIS was capable of many things, but surely rearranging the library of its own accord wasn’t one of them.
That being said -
She might only have spent a few short weeks with the Doctor, but she was beginning to wonder whether impossible things might be possible after all.
The Doctor talked to the TARDIS sometimes, didn’t he? As if it was alive. And every so often, the ship would wheeze or groan or burble, and he would smile, as if it had been talking back. Jamie would smile, too, shrugging as if to say you know how he is. Once or twice, she’d caught him asking whether he ought to give the Doctor and the ship some space, laughter toying with the edges of his voice – but never once had he actually doubted that there was some sort of conversation going on.
Maybe the Doctor really could talk to the ship. And if that was true… Well, she might not be able to decode its noises like the Doctor could, but it was worth a try, wasn’t it?
“Um.” Her voice squeaked out into the cavernous space, rising high and thin to the tops of the shelves. “I – I don’t know if you can hear me, but -” She turned on one heel, keeping her eyes carefully fixed on the ceiling. Specks of gold were cast across the black void, almost like stars in the sky, though she couldn’t pick out a single familiar constellation. “I was looking for books on natural philosophy. I don’t suppose you could -”
The words trailed away into nothingness, and she snapped her jaw shut, embarrassment flaring through her cheeks. What had she expected? For the ship to wheeze back at her like it did for the Doctor? The scrape and whine of shelves rearranging themselves?
Shaking her head, she strode back the way she had come, out from between the thick spines of the star atlases. Instead of turning, though, she carried on straight ahead, tossing her hair over her shoulder as she marched into a new aisle. The books on these shelves looked a little more manageable, small enough that they would only need one person to lift them. Or most of them did, anyway. A shelf just above her head held only a single book, laid down and surely longer than her armspan. Pushing herself up onto her tiptoes, she squinted to make out the book’s title.
A Geographic Study of Martian Wildlife, the gold lettering glinted down at her. Rocking back onto the balls of her feet, she blinked up at the book, then at the volumes surrounding it. Encyclopedias, amateur spotters’ guides, anatomical studies. Or, in other words, the ecology section.
It was all pure coincidence, of course. If the TARDIS had moved a whole section of the library, just because she’d asked – surely she would have noticed. Something like that couldn’t happen without disturbing the library’s gentle silence.
Biting her lip, she plucked a book from the shelves at random, smoothing her palm over the cover. Its front and back were blank, tightly-woven canvas, brown turning almost gold in the warm light. Even the spine was empty of anything that might have resembled a title or an author’s name. But when she flipped the cover open, she found the first page covered in delicate swirls of ink, as intricate as any drawing in her father’s field studies and reference volumes. The black lines were locked together to form a craggy stone, shrouded by a white cloud that curled around the title. The Fauna and Flora of Mnemosyne-Three. It looked for all the world like a book she might have found on her own shelves at home, down to the thick, ornate lettering – but the creature perched atop the stone was decidedly not from Earth. Its claws were sunk into the cliff’s edge, its wings spread and its mouth agape, but it bore more resemblance to a dragon than any bat or bird she knew.
Perhaps, she thought with a smile, some natural philosopher of her own time had been whisked away, just as she had, and had written this book.
The notion was enough to make her tuck it under her arm, striding out from between the shelves. If the book lived up to its front page, it would keep her well occupied for a few days, at least.
Only when she burst out from the ecology aisle did she think to wonder where the library’s doors were. Frowning, she glanced up and down the rows of shelves – but they were all so alike, the same wood and the same carvings and the same endless, uniform light. And if the shelves really had shifted around, looking at the books wouldn’t help her find her way.
That was ridiculous, she reminded herself sternly. The shelves hadn’t moved. She’d just gotten herself lost again. It was a perfectly natural thing, in a place like this. Perhaps next time she ought to bring a ball of string to guide her back.
Lifting her chin with as much confidence as she could muster, she turned to march down the long passage between the aisles. The situation called for a little logic, nothing more. There was no need to find her way to the door directly. All she had to do was find her way to the library’s outer wall, and then work her way around.
Not that -
She stumbled to a halt.
Not that she had ever seen an outer wall, in the library. For all she knew, the place might go on forever.
She shook herself, fixing her eyes on the ceiling. There were no pillars rising from the floor to support it, just a clear view of its painted night sky. Which meant, of course, that somewhere there must be walls to hold it up.
Had the shelves always been so tall above her, their tops brushing the shadows?
Swallowing, she skipped forward, clutching her book to her chest like someone might reach out from one of the aisles and snatch it away. The light was no longer warm but gloomy, deep blue shadows pooling around her with every step. Her heart had flung itself into her throat, trembling and pounding against the back of her mouth, the force of every beat rumbling like footsteps echoing behind her. She swallowed, gritting her teeth and setting her jaw to keep herself from glancing over her shoulder. There was nothing in the TARDIS that would hurt her. No monsters lurking in the darkness.
She ducked hastily away down the nearest aisle, breaking into half a jog. The heels of her shoes clipped sharply against the floorboards, but her legs were trembling too much to soften her steps. Bursting out the other side, she leaned back against the end of the shelves, tipping her head to the wood to breathe through the metallic taste that had settled in her throat. She was running from shadows, she reminded herself. There was nothing to hurt her here.
A murmur drifted through the air ahead of her, and she sprang upright, her eyes wide.
It was only the Doctor, she realised with a sigh, pressing one hand over her chest like she could hold in her racing heart. She had burst out into one of the little sitting areas, furnished with a sofa and two armchairs facing it – and there, sprawled over the sofa, were the Doctor and Jamie. Neither of them so much as stirred, as if they hadn’t even heard her harried arrival. Slouching back against the shelves, she drew in a deep, unsteady breath. The light had grown warmer again, the tops of the bookcases no longer bathed in shadows, the nightmare receding into a dream as if it had never turned dark at all. So long as the Doctor and Jamie were here, she was safe.
Straightening herself up, she tugged her skirts back into order and made to stride past the armchairs towards them -but something stilled her limbs, holding her back. The Doctor’s shoes were toed off beside the sofa, his socked feet burrowing into the plush carpet. One elbow was propped up on the sofa’s arm, supporting the book in his hand. Beside him, Jamie was stretched out across the length of the cushions, his ankles hooked over the other arm and his head planted firmly in the Doctor’s lap. He was too still to be anything but asleep, his face pressed firmly against the Doctor’s stomach. The Doctor’s free hand carded idly through his hair in smooth, familiar strokes.
Clapping her hand over her mouth to muffle her sharp intake of breath, Victoria whisked herself back between the shelves, hurrying down the aisle until the two of them were out of her sight.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t – known. Not quite so clearly, of course. They had been careful, in all the time she’d known them, skirting around the issue of just what they were to each other. But there was a familiarity between them, an ease of touch and comfort that they hadn’t managed to hide. Nor could any amount of care mask the fear in their eyes when the other was in danger, or the way they pressed close together afterwards. They’d never given her the words for it, but anyone would have wondered.
They’d never quite managed to hide the fact that they shared a bedroom, either. More often than not, they saw her off to bed before retiring themselves – but she had seen them ambling out from the same room early in the morning, bleary-eyed and yawning, not quite closing the door quickly enough to hide the double bed inside. Jamie had let it slip the first time she came aboard the TARDIS, too, pointing to a door down the main corridor and saying that’s our bedroom. He hadn’t made the same mistake twice, of course, but the words had slipped out all the same. Like he wasn’t used to hiding it, though she knew they had travelled with others before her.
So – yes, she had suspected. Assumed, even. The thought had sat in the back of her mind, a quiet certainty that she had never examined too closely. She was worldly enough to know it was there – and to know that these things usually went unspoken. They were happy, and they had been very kind. What business was it of hers, if they were a little too close for propriety?
This, though… This was different. A more intimate scene than she had ever been privy to before, shrouded in closeness by the comfort sewn through their idle poses.
Creeping back along the aisle, keeping her shoulders pressed against the shelves behind her, she threw a glance back towards the sofa. Just to check they hadn’t stirred, she told herself. The Doctor had lowered his book, now, one hand still buried in Jamie’s hair, the other clasped around one of Jamie’s wrists. His head was bowed, but Victoria could just see his mouth curled into a smile, quickly obscured when he brought the back of Jamie’s hand to his lips.
Something warm stirred in her chest at the sight, writhing towards her throat, and she swallowed it down. Maybe it was shame at sneaking a glimpse of them like this – or maybe it was just the embarrassment of walking in on something she’d never been meant to see. It burned as she pushed it away, trailing ribbons of fire into her lungs.
They looked – happy. Peaceful, even, in a way she’d never seen them, in amongst all the monsters and the danger. Jamie’s sides rose and fell with slow, steady breaths, comfort practically dripping from his loose limbs, and the Doctor was cradling his hand like it was something precious. She had known they liked each other. Cared for each other. But she wasn’t sure she’d given them enough thought to imagine this tender sort of love.
The heat in her chest flared back to life. Looking at them like this – it didn’t seem right, that they should have to hide.
Smoothing Jamie’s hair over his forehead, the Doctor straightened, shuffling his shoulders back against the sofa. He yawned, his face scrunching up – and then his eyes flicked open again, fixing firmly on Victoria.
She stumbled backwards with a gasp, her shoulder colliding with the shelves behind her as she darted away.
“Victoria,” his voice called after her, soft and patient and just the tiniest bit amused. Shaking her head, she pressed herself against the shelves, their sharp edges digging into her back. “It’s quite alright, you know.”
She could always run. Find her way out of the library, and if the Doctor asked, pass all this off as some trick of the TARDIS.
But the Doctor knew the TARDIS better than anyone. He would surely see through a lie like that. And she still wasn’t entirely sure where the library’s door was.
Clamping her mouth carefully shut, she turned and crept down the aisle on tentative steps, craning her neck to see around the shelves. Jamie still lay as peacefully as ever, but the Doctor was watching her, a questioning smile fixed over his face.
“I -” She rolled her lips in over her teeth, biting down until the pain grew too much. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you.”
It wasn’t entirely a lie, of course. Not quite the truth, but not a whole falsehood, either. The stab of guilt that punctured her chest was entirely unwarranted.
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that.” Amusement curled around the edges of the Doctor’s voice. He was watching her with bright, wide eyes, just a little too pointed to be entirely clueless. “You wouldn’t wake him.” He lifted his hand, the one that was clasping Jamie’s. “He could sleep through anything, you know.”
That’s not what I meant, Victoria nearly said – but she bit the words back, snapping her mouth shut. What had she meant, after all?
From the way the Doctor was watching her, he knew better than she did. The thought set bile bubbling away between her ribs again.
“I was just -” She lifted the book in her hands a little weakly. It trembled in her grip, like a loose autumn leaf caught in the wind. “Going.”
“Well,” the Doctor said. His voice was full of a warm sort of finality, like he was dismissing her – but there was still that amusement, licking at the corners. “Don’t let me stop you.”
Nodding, she pressed the book against her chest and spun on her heel until she faced the other side of the aisle. One step at a time, she told herself, even and measured. Back straight, chin up, just like her governess had taught her. The floorboards clipped neatly beneath her heels as she retreated down the aisle. But the sight of the Doctor and Jamie curled on the sofa refused to grow fainter in her mind.
“He wouldn’t be upset, you know.”
The words shot through the heaviness in the air just as she was on the cusp of the aisle, and she faltered, the careful, brittle rhythm of her steps shattering in an instant. Her breath caught in her throat with alarm – but she couldn’t say it was entirely unexpected, either. Turning back to the Doctor, she found his eyes still fixed on her, piercing blue even at this distance. His hand was smoothing over Jamie’s hair, moving steadily back and forth, the gesture obvious enough that it must have been for her benefit.
Swallowing, she took one slow, careful step back towards him. “Why would Jamie be upset?”
For a moment, the Doctor simply blinked at her, like he was sizing her up. “We, ah – we never intended to hide anything,” he said at last. Victoria found herself tugged towards him, step by step, drawing back into his orbit until she stood between the last row of shelves. If she shifted to one side, the pair of them were framed perfectly between the armchairs. “Jamie simply felt that it might, ah – make it easier for you to adjust to -” He tipped his head back, as if to gesture to the ceiling. “Everything – if we weren’t quite so – so obvious as to the nature of our relationship.”
Colour flitted over his cheeks, too bright and warm to be a human’s blush.
The Doctor was almost four-hundred and fifty years old, Victoria thought faintly. He’d made that quite clear only moments after she had stepped across the ship’s threshold for the first time. He skipped from year to year like a pioneer sailing between islands, he lived in a box with a whole world inside – and whatever he was, he certainly wasn’t human.
Seeing him like this, with Jamie curled up in his lap, was almost a relief, no matter how improper it might have been. Like this, she could almost believe he was a man like any other.
Striding forward, she pressed her hands against the high back of one of the armchairs, leaning her weight on it. A hundred thoughts were crowding towards her tongue. Why, what did you imagine I would think, what am I supposed to think now?
None of them made it past her lips. Pushing herself forward against the armchair, she tipped her chin up to rest it against the fraying fabric.
“You make it sound like -” A low, uneasy laugh rumbled through her chest, too quickly for her to swallow it down. “Well, like you don’t normally have to hide. Like – like you’re not used to it.”
The words tripped blindly off her tongue, and she frowned, her mouth opening and closing like she could catch them all and swallow them down again.
Of all the things she could have said – why that?
But the Doctor was just giving her that look again, fond and firm and terribly knowing. It was grating at her, now, and she gritted her teeth, slipping around the armchair to sit down in it instead. Crossing one knee over the other, she folded her hands in her lap and met his gaze as steadily as she could manage.
“I’ve found,” he said gently, “that in every place, and every time – people think they have it right. Some places more so than others, perhaps – but it’s all too easy to think we know best.” He settled himself back against the sofa, scratching idly through Jamie’s hair. A smile toyed with the corner of his mouth. “I’m, ah – I’m not excluding myself from this, you know. I’m certainly guilty of making all sorts of assumptions.” His eyes fell back to Jamie’s sleeping form in his lap, and Victoria could just make out their corners crinkling in soft affection. The ache in her chest flared anew at the sight. “It’s only when we meet people different to ourselves that we start to realise all the things we’re missing.”
His eyes flicked up again, settling expectantly on her, but Victoria could only blink back at him. “I – I don’t think I follow.”
Leaning forward, the Doctor untangled his hand from Jamie’s hair, clasping his fingers together beneath his own chin instead. “Where I come from,” he said, as smoothly as if he’d never stopped speaking, “the concepts of – of men and women, I suppose, as many humans understand them – they simply don’t exist.” He barked out a short laugh, his eyes glittering with reminiscence. “I found it rather confusing, encountering the idea for the first time.”
All she could do was stare. The world was slipping, tilting sideways like he had pulled the floor out from beneath her feet. “But -”
The outburst made the Doctor fall silent, sitting up again and raising his eyebrows ever so slightly.
“I – I see,” she managed to choke out, her voice thin and strained.
Her thoughts drifted back to her first few moments aboard the TARDIS, bobbing around the memory like she was caught in its gravitational pull. The Doctor had announced that he was four-hundred and fifty years old as if it was the sort of thing one heard every day, and Jamie had exchanged a glance with her, just as baffled as she was herself. Jamie, who had swept her into her locked room in Maxtible’s house like a breath of air from another world, who had spoken of the Doctor with such familiarity while they were in the Dalek city, even as his voice was weighed down by sparkling anger and bitter grief – he hadn’t known. Not until she had asked, and the Doctor had spilled it all cheerfully out.
Did he ever say that sort of thing to Jamie, when they were alone? Or did he save these sorts of dizzying revelations for Victoria herself, storing them up and dropping them into conversation with a careless smile?
There was still something appraising in his eyes, like he was waiting for her to say more – but whatever he was looking for, he must have been satisfied that he wasn’t going to get it. “You can imagine my surprise,” he went on, “when I found out that some humans made such a fuss, over – over the thought of love between two men, or two women.”
Victoria’s head dipped into a nod, the sharp motion doing nothing to calm the swirling of her mind. The Doctor being so old was one thing – and a strange thing at that, even now – but this was something else entirely. Like he had taken the whole universe in his hands, turned it a few degrees sideways, and handed it back to her in a whole new shape.
He hadn’t, of course. This changed nothing. What was it to her, that his people thought of things differently?
The Doctor and Jamie were her friends. As odd as the whole business was, as much as it sent a funny prickle of heat running down her spine – she’d never had a problem with it. With them. A lump sprang into her throat as she swept her eyes over Jamie’s sleeping form, his face still pressed against the Doctor’s stomach, and she swallowed it away. They were her friends, and she wanted nothing more than for them to be happy.
“So there’s -” Her voice was thick. Damp. The lump in her throat was still pressing against her every breath. “There’s places where people don’t – mind?”
Something had come loose in her chest, jangling against her ribs. Every breath she drew in whistled past the gap. If it had made any sort of sense, she might have called it hope, or even – if she was feeling brave – relief.
What was it to her?
“Oh, yes.” Stretching out his legs, the Doctor propped his heels up against the floor. A twinkle was growing in his eyes, now, and she couldn’t help but smile back at him, even through the swirling pit in her gut. “Plenty of places. In fact – even on your Earth. A great deal changes after your time, you know. Give it – oh, say, a hundred and fifty years – and things will be rather different.”
Something about his words made her throat tighten further. Things will be rather different. As if she was still back in her own century, watching time trickle by in the right order, as it should. As if she might have lived to see those changes with her own eyes.
If she’d stayed on Earth – lived out the life she was meant to – her bones would have been dust long before the Doctor’s changes came to pass.
The thought shouldn’t have meant anything. None of this should have meant anything to her. But the swirling in her stomach was growing more frantic, frothing itself into a breathless panic. And the Doctor was just sitting there, his head bowed over Jamie, tucking a curl of hair behind his ear. There was a slow sort of reverence to the motion, like neatening him up was the most important thing the Doctor would ever do – and Victoria didn’t have a problem with it, she didn’t care what they did so long as they were happy – but somehow, the easy tenderness in the movement of the Doctor’s hand made her want to scream.
When she finally managed to speak, though, she almost had to choke the words out. “Why are you telling me this?”
Her own hands burnt as if with a blush, hanging limp and frozen at her sides. Like she was carrying all the shame he didn’t seem to feel.
Sitting back, the Doctor fixed her with another careful look. His lips were pursed, his eyes ever so slightly narrowed. Slipping his hands out of Jamie’s hair, he folded them carefully together. This time, though, he didn’t look so much like he was searching for something in her. Maybe he had to search for the answer in himself.
“I, ah -” He cleared his throat. “I thought you might appreciate knowing. That things get better.” A soft smile crept along the corners of his mouth, and just like that his eyes were falling back to Jamie, his palm ghosting over Jamie’s cheek. “I know it brought him a great deal of comfort, at the beginning.”
What is it to me? she wanted to cry out. It makes no difference.
And then realisation flooded through her, cold and stinging like all her blood had turned to ice. The Doctor thought she was – like Jamie. Like them.
She wasn’t. She couldn’t be.
Her mouth fell open, poised to cry out her denial, but there were no words waiting on her tongue.
Mumbling something unintelligible, Jamie rolled over so his face was turned towards her, though his eyes didn’t slip open. The few syllables she had managed to cobble together died in her throat, and she gazed down at him instead, blinking away the humming static echoing through her skull. His face was ever so slightly scrunched up, his nose wrinkled and his mouth pressed closed. The Doctor bowed a little further over him, the pad of his thumb smoothing out the furrow between Jamie’s eyebrows, like he could chase away whatever had made Jamie frown.
For all her turmoil, a pang of sympathy shot through Victoria, and she swallowed, turning her head just far enough away that the two of them blurred in the corner of her vision. Jamie’s time must have been rather similar to her own, in its opinions on such things. To know that the world would change - that one day there would be a place for him, and his love – yes, she could understand how that would be a comfort.
The thought burnt more brightly in her chest than she quite knew what to do with. She still couldn’t summon the words to deny the Doctor’s assumption.
Had Jamie known what he was, she wondered, when he had stepped on board the TARDIS for the first time? Or had it come to him afterwards, the world unfurling like a flower into a hundred different possibilities?
What was it to her?
“Well, I’m -” The words caught in her chest, skittering amongst the embers of her scalded lungs. She cleared her throat, just a little too sharply.
A voice deep in her head scolded her for it. Impolite. Unladylike. The voice of her governess as she tapped her across the knuckles, keeping her in line. But it was too late, now. The sound was out – and there was nobody here to disapprove. The Doctor hadn’t even seemed to spare it a second thought.
“I’m glad for you,” she said. “Truly, I am.”
When the Doctor smiled, there was something warmer about it. He wasn’t probing for more, or waiting for an answer she didn’t know how to give. Just smiling at her in easy gratitude, his thumb stroking idly across Jamie’s cheek. “Thank you, Victoria.”
She rose on unsteady legs, clutching her book back against her chest. The Doctor opened his mouth, as if to protest against her leaving – but she was already glancing around, studying the shelves behind her. She could swear they had moved just a little to the left, since she’d last looked at them. But their shape was more familiar now, the shadows falling in easy patterns.
If she leaned to one side, and tipped her head just so – she could even see the door that would take her back into the ship’s corridors. Out of this world of dreams, where bookcases shuffled themselves around, and impossible futures seemed within reach.
“I really don’t mind, you know,” she said, turning back to the Doctor. His eyes flickered over to hers, like he too had been looking towards the doors. “That the two of you – are -”
She gestured rather weakly at the pair of them. There wasn’t a word for it – or none that could choke past her lips just now, at least. But even if there was, she wasn’t sure anything could capture the idea as precisely as the sight of them.
“That I’m in love with him,” the Doctor finished gently.
Her heart stilled in her chest, just for a moment. The words rolled themselves back and forth through her mind, rattling around until their edges were smoothed down. In love with him, spoken in the Doctor’s low, warm voice. In love with him.
It should have jarred against her ears – but she couldn’t shake the bone-deep certainty that it was right. That those words were meant to be spoken in the Doctor’s voice.
Would her own voice sound so assuredly at ease, if she -
No, she told herself firmly. She wasn’t going to allow her thoughts to wander in that direction. Not today.
Swallowing, she forced herself to nod, smoothing one hand over the front of her skirts. “Yes,” she said. Again, her chest was burning, but the sting of it buoyed her up until the words spilled out. “And that he’s in love with you. You can tell him that, if you like.” Her wave of bravery was fading already, ebbing away as quickly as it had come, and the rest of her words tumbled out to catch the edge of it. “I wouldn’t like him to feel you have to hide for my sake.”
The Doctor dipped his head, firm and steady, his eyes never leaving her own. “I’ll make sure he knows.”
She nodded again, staring back at him as steadily as she could. There was still something expectant written across his face, like he was waiting for something – more. Like he thought she was carrying words in her chest, just waiting for them to escape, when all she had was a twisted sort of blankness. If there was more she ought to be saying, he seemed to have a better idea of it than she did.
Or perhaps not – because a moment later his eyes were softening, crinkling around the edges, and she couldn’t help but feel as if he’d given up. Whether or not she was pleased that he hadn’t resorted to prompting her, she couldn’t say.
“Ah – would you like me to walk you out, Victoria?” he asked at last, his voice gentle, his gaze flickering back towards the door.
He would have to push Jamie out of his lap, to get up and walk with her. Eyes widening, she shook her head frantically. To think of disturbing them, breaking them out of their little bubble of peace – it burned in her chest, stinging more fiercely than anything else. They ought to stay just where they were, cocooned in the library. And she shouldn’t disturb them any longer.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “But I’m sure I can find my own way.”
A smile flickered over his lips, small and shrewd. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’m sure you can.”