Touch The Sky: Doctor Who/Studio C [Book 3]

Potions and Libraries

Potions and Libraries

(Interlude—Recognizable dialogue from 'Silence in the Library' and 'Forest of the Dead')

A/N: Okay, so let's have some words here. For time's sake and because y'all care a lot more about Matt and Mallory's arc than the Doctor and Donna's, we're skipping three whole episodes here (gasp!) If you're worried about what happens in The Unicorn and the Wasp, Silence in the Library, and Forest of the Dead, you can rest easy knowing they happen almost exactly as they do in canon, with the exception of perhaps a few throwaway lines (for instance, in TUatW, Donna references the events of The Runaway Bride, which she did not experience in the CTW universe). These episodes will be referenced and SitL and FotD have a few scenes featured in this chapter, but I'm not doing whole rewrites of them, rather like The Lazarus Experiment or 42. That means very shortly we'll be off to Midnight!

Aside from a request to be part of the upcoming and sure to be fascinating conversation with Cyndi, Matt and Mallory had fallen into uneasy silence. He fell in step beside her when she was finally cleared to leave, and it wasn't long before Cyndi met them at the edge of the crowd.

"You're really alive," Matt said quietly.

"Last I checked," she replied coolly.

"But how are you here?" Mallory put in. "I mean, twenty-first century here?"

"A very long story," Cyndi replied. Her mouth tightened. "It's been some three years since I've seen you last, by one way of reckoning. Quite a bit longer than that by another."

"Time travel," Matt groaned, not for the first time.

"Exactly," she said with a wry grin. "Is there somewhere we can go? Somewhere more private than this?"

"Wester Drumlins?" Mark suggested smoothly. He handed Matt his phone back and got a nod of thanks in reply.

To her credit, Cyndi didn't jump, though he'd come up directly behind her. Instead, she took half a step to the side and pivoted, peering up at him. Side-by-side, he was about three inches taller than her, a slightly larger gap than the two he had on Matt.

"My apartment's closer," Mallory suggested.

"And there's a few things there I need to pick up," Matt agreed.

"It's settled, then," Cyndi said. "Are you coming, Mark?"

"I would very much like to, yes," he replied. "This is a tale I've never heard."

Had any of the three known his true identity, they might have recognized the significance of those words. As it was, Cyndi simply gestured to Mallory and said, "Lead the way."

Unfortunately, another large chunk of time passed before they could finally take a short, cramped cab ride to their destination. Cyndi managed to stay almost entirely out of the way of the questions they were being peppered with, to Mark's obvious chagrin. By the time they made it through Mallory's front door, the sun was steadily sinking toward the horizon.

"So how in the universe are you in the twenty-first century?" Mallory asked, cutting straight to the point.

Cyndi raised a brow, propping her hip up on the kitchen counter. "Time travel," she said flatly.

"Well, duh," Mallory replied under her breath, moving to settle into one of the living room chairs.

The redhead didn't rise to the bait, instead nodding toward Mark. "How much does he know?"