(Untitled)

[steedtoherpeel]

It'd been a very long time since he'd had the luxury of sleeping in late or lazing about, and his body was out of the habit. He sat up with a jerk and took stock of the scene while he tried to work the twinge out of his back. He was surrounded by dark wood, tall shelves, ancient books. He had clearly fallen asleep over his work

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[nobledonna]

Donna hadn't exactly been getting out of the Compound much lately, what with her tropical vacation (which was how she was forcing herself to think of it lest she decide she was insane instead) suddenly turned rather soggy. Still, there came a point when a little bit of rain was preferable to another moment in that stuffy concrete fortress, and so she'd tromped outside into the mud, holding a copy of Cosmopolitan, which she planned to hold over her head if it started beating down too hard.

She hadn't gotten terribly far when she saw the man with the flaming laptop. And here she thought she was one of those people that always tended to break computers just by touching them.

"Oi," she said, "I think that voids the warranty."

[steedtoherpeel]

"Good," he said, quite honestly. "I never liked that machine anyway." Well, at least he was still apparently in England, or at least near enough that there were English folk about.

He kicked a little extra sand over top of the machine to make sure it was out for good and bent over to pick it up and brush it off. The scorch marks were satisfying to see. He offered a brief smile to the woman. "Could you tell me where I am?"

[nobledonna]

Oh, bugger. "You're new, then," she sighed. "Sorry, mate, I'm so not the one to be giving you the run-down, as I'm still half convinced I'm just going mad myself. You didn't turn up in a blue box did you?"

[steedtoherpeel]

Ah, well then. That makes some sense at least -- at least the sort of sense that being tossed to another dimension always made. "I'm afraid not. What you see is what I have."

[nobledonna]

"Well kudos on handling it a sight better than I did," Donna snorted. "Or do you still think you're dreaming? Because you're not, I can promise you that. Unless dreams last a really sodding long time these days. And when you're dreaming, can you even stop to think that you might be dreaming?" She tapped a finger to her temple. "I've had a lot of time to get philos...ifical lately."

[steedtoherpeel]

"Well, no. I could be unconscious, but I feel certain my mind would find far better ways to torment me than this." He shook his head. "I've dealt with alternate dimensions and apocalypses before. Which isn't to say this is old hat, but it is to say it's not especially shocking."

More irritating, really. He had an eleven o'clock appointment, for pities sake.

[nobledonna]

Donna gave him a somewhat suspicious look, but still just said, "Strangely enough, you're not the first person who's said something like that to me." She wondered if he knew Jack.

She crinkled up her nose and added, "Isn't the whole point of an apocalypse that there's only one?"

[steedtoherpeel]

"Who else has said it?" Perhaps he had friends here; perhaps it was hell and one of the Wolfram & Hart attorneys was around. Either way, he should know.

"There can only be one successful apocalypse, but sadly that rule goes out the window if you stop one. There are plenty of ways to end the world -- from the sublime to the ridiculous -- and once you stop one you just open the door for the next. I highly recommend that you never get in the business," he advised, looking a bit tired. "It starts to become a habit."

[nobledonna]

"Well, there's this bloke who calls himself Captain Jack," Donna said. "Don't know what he's a captain of. I thought that he might be involved in some sort of cult, but actually he seems all right so far." Except for the staring at her tits, which, let's face it, wasn't really all that bad. He was awfully cute, after all.

"So you've saved the world," she added, sounding a little skeptical. "No offense, but I think I would have pegged you for a librarian. Maybe a bannister."

[steedtoherpeel]

"I am a librarian," he said, with some mild affront and stuffy British dignity. "But there is a great deal to be said for careful study and cautious consideration. One can't interrupt a ritual, for instance if one can't find it."

He paused for a minute, and took of his glasses to polish them. "I also had some considerable physical back-up, I admit. But that doesn't make my part less."

[nobledonna]

Donna was actually a little chuffed that she'd hit the nail on the head, but she didn't say that. "No offense intended. I'm sure that saving the world is very, uh, scholarly. Hey! Like, the Bible. The apocalypse is all about the Bible, right? Well that's pretty sodding hard to understand. All those thees and thous and who wants to squint at all that red text in the New Testament? No wonder there's so many Jews."

[steedtoherpeel]

If he hadn't spent time in California he'd think her quite mad. As it was, he simply thought her rather young. "Yes, well, quite. The Bible is actually one of the more readable texts."

[nobledonna]

"I actually have a lot of respect for librarians," Donna added. She'd really just stopped for air after the Bible bit. "I worked in a library. I'm an expert on the dewey decimal system."

Suddenly her eyes widened and she blurted, "Mate, you are going to go bonkers over the bookshelf here."

[steedtoherpeel]

He had a lot of disdain for the Dewey Decimal system, but any glimmer of sanity was to be clung to. "What bookshelf is that?"