Archive of Our Own ^beta

The Doctor disappears into the TARDIS as soon as they’re back in the time vortex.

            She goes so quickly that the ship lurches beneath her feet as she storms off. Yaz opens her mouth to call out, but the Doctor catches herself on a railing and shoves off and up the stairs, her coat whipping out behind her, and Yaz grits her concern and her frustration behind her teeth and looks away. She darts around the console, eyeing it skeptically, before adjusting a few levers and rotors until the rocking evens out. Around her, the ship burbles something that feels like a thank you.

            “You’re welcome,” Yaz says out loud to no one. Well, to the ship, if she can really hear her like the Doctor says she can. “Nice that someone seems glad I’m around.”

            It’s been a hard day, the latest in a string of hard days. She thinks there have been more of those since Ryan and Graham have left, or perhaps the Doctor just isn’t as good at hiding it from just Yaz as she had been from the three of them, and she’s not sure if she should be flattered by that or worried. Mostly, she settles on worried. And a more than a bit annoyed, especially after a day like today, which had seen them searching for something—the Doctor didn’t say and got increasingly snippy when Yaz had tried to ask, even as she’d pointed out she wouldn’t be very helpful if she had no idea what to look for—on some kind of warehouse planet. Either the TARDIS had got the timing wrong (again) or the Doctor’s information had come full of holes, because the place had been stripped nearly bare of anything useful, and what was left was fiercely guarded by roving bands of trigger-happy scavengers.

            They’d scraped their way out of the fight, like always, but the Doctor had been more rattled than usual, and now she’s stormed off, again, and Yaz’ feet ache and her favorite jacket has singe marks on the shoulders and she’s pretty sure the blast burnt the ends of her hair and she still doesn’t know why.

            She does know that she’s not going to get anything out of the Doctor tonight. She’s accustomed enough to all the hallmark signs of trauma to know that pushing her just at the moment will only antagonize them both. So she rolls her shoulders and cracks her neck and pads much more quietly out of the console room herself in search of a shower and clean clothes and a snack.

            She’s getting a little tired of being patient, of setting her own frustrations aside week after week, but she can do it again for tonight. The pain she sees in every line of the Doctor’s hunched shoulders and haunted eyes is too intimately familiar for her to be properly angry about it just yet. She can wait, and in the morning, when the Doctor reappears just as bright and bouncy as ever and whisks them off to the next adventure without a thought, Yaz will try and ask a few more questions in a way that won’t send her scampering. She just needs to keep a lid on her own annoyance till then.

            Except, the Doctor doesn’t reappear in the morning.

            The console room is empty and unusually quiet. Yaz checks the controls—they’re still hovering safely somewhere in the vortex—and then continues her search. The main kitchen, closest to the console room, is empty, but that’s not a surprise. It’s the biggest and the easiest to find, and so had been a common spot for all four of them to spend time together, making dinner, having a cup of tea and a chat, teasing Graham about his sandwich preparations and the Doctor about her very weird flavor combinations. Now that it’s just the two of them, the larger space feels a bit empty, almost like it echoes around the friends they’re missing.

            The second kitchen is closer to everyone’s bedrooms and has been where the Doctor and Yaz have spent more of that downtime lately, but it too is empty, with no sign anyone has been in it since Yaz had the night before. And she would know: the Doctor has spent too long living in a sentient spaceship that puts things away to be anything other than allergic to doing the dishes.

            When Yaz also finds the third kitchen—deeper into the TARDIS’ winding honeycombed halls and nearer to the library and the game room, the ideal spot for a late-night snack break—also empty, she gives up. At least temporarily. Long enough to get herself a cup of tea and some breakfast, because she’s convinced now that she can’t find the Doctor because she’s gone off in a sulk of particularly epic proportions, and she’s annoyed about it. She’s annoyed that the Doctor won’t tell her what’s wrong, won’t explain what she had had them looking for yesterday or why she adamantly will not tell Yaz about it now.

            And if she finds the Doctor while she herself is justifiably irritated and also hangry, the conversation is not going to go at all the way she plans. She wants answers—and preferably an apology—not a fight.

            She takes her breakfast into the library (the Doctor’s not there either) and settles in for a while. Maybe the other woman’s just taking longer than usual to slink out of whatever corner she’s hid herself in like a feral cat and Yaz just has to wait her out. Honestly, she doesn’t mind the thought of a break after the last several adventures’ worth of running and nearly getting shot at. She turns some music on and wanders the shelves until she finds a book that looks interesting and flops onto the couch.

            It’s a shame that the library hasn’t yet offered any tips on dealing with closed-off Time Lords, because Yaz could really use some. Especially when an hour ticks by, and then another, and the Doctor’s still nowhere to be found. Yaz’ annoyance fizzles underneath her skin, combined more and more with worry as more time passes, and the words on the page in front of her blur into so much visual static.

            This isn’t like her.

            Is something really wrong, this time?

            Had the Doctor been hurt, the day before, and Yaz had failed to notice? Did she need help?

            Yaz sits staring at her book for a minute, and then she shuffles down further into the couch cushions, frowning. The Doctor is an adult. If she needed help, she could ask for it. It’s not like Yaz has hidden herself anywhere unusual.

            Twenty minutes later, the lights in the library dim suddenly. The lamps burn a dull orange, and they flash twice. Yaz sits up immediately.

            “What’s the matter?” she asks the ship.

            She can’t answer her with words, but the lights flash again, and then several behind her go out, leaving the remaining lights as a guideline to the doorway. Yaz follows at once. She doesn’t run, because once she’s caught on the TARDIS isn’t flashing the lights anymore, just guiding her through enough strange winding hallways that Yaz knows she’s going to need help retracing her steps. But while she’s walking purposefully, her footfalls echoing in the otherwise silent halls, she doesn’t need to run. This is a concern, but not an emergency. Not yet, anyway, at least she hopes.

            She’s finally led up to a doorway she’s never seen before. When she stops in front of it, all the other lights in the hall go out until just the door is spotlighted, and around her the ship gives a sort of soft humming burble. Yaz doesn’t understand what the tone means, but it does feel reassuring.

            “In here?” she asks. The burble sounds again. “Right. Thanks, then.”

            Yaz knocks on the door and waits thirty seconds, realizing suddenly how shaky her breathing feels, how worried she is even though she’s been trying not to be.

There’s no answer.

            Gritting her teeth, Yaz opens the door, and her mouth drops open.

            The TARDIS has led her to some kind of workshop, and if Yaz had thought the areas of the ship the Doctor tended to frequent without her other friends around were messy, this was practically a junkyard. There’s an awful sort of clanging crashing sound coming from somewhere at the center of the room, and Yaz follows it until she finds the Doctor, half-hidden behind a tower of discarded bits of tech. She’s hammering something into place on a weird device about as long as her forearm that Yaz’ rational brain can’t make sense of and her irrational brain calls a gun immediately.

            But even more concerning is that the Doctor is a mess.

            Yaz has never seen her like this before. Her coat is gone, not anywhere in sight, and she’s got her goggles pushed up into sweaty, soot-streaked hair even though the thing she’s working on is sparking right in her face. Her clothes are dirty and Yaz can see at least one burn mark, and even worse, there’s an angry red scratch across her cheek and what look like dozens more up and down her arms. She’s biting her lip so hard it’s bleeding, and Yaz thinks she catches her fingers with the hammer at least once just while she’s standing there.

            Yaz hasn’t tried to be quiet on her way in, but the Doctor clearly has no idea she’s even standing there. And Yaz is so horrified she can’t breathe, let alone announce her presence.

            Before she can collect herself enough to do so, the Doctor sets the hammer down and shoves her hair back out of her face again, knocking the goggles entirely away, and bends to twist the device in her hands until it turns on with a whine and an array of angry-looking orange lights. The Doctor twists it again until some sharp spines snap out, and without hesitation, she jabs the whole thing down onto her wrist. She grimaces, but twists another dial, and the device lights up, trembling and whining.

            The Doctor’s face contorts in pain, and Yaz can’t move at the sight.

            And then something along the device’s casing cracks, like it can’t handle the strain of whatever paces it’s being put through. The Doctor either doesn’t see it or ignores it, staring at something on the other side of it that looks like a readout. It cracks again and sparks, and that’s when Yaz finally finds her voice.

            “Doctor!” she calls out.

            The Doctor’s head shoots up, her eyes wide with shock and her face going pale as she locks eyes with Yaz. She opens her mouth—to speak, or to shout, or something else—but whatever she would have said gets cut off with a sharp cry of pain as the device splits open, orange liquid spilling out and sizzling across the device, through the crevices and onto the Doctor’s skin.

            She jerks back, flinging her arm up, but it’s still caught in whatever the hell this thing is, and Yaz unglues her feet from the floor and charges forward, shrugging out of her jumper as she moves and wrapping it around her hands so she can wrench the burning, smoking thing away from the Doctor’s arm and onto the floor.

            “What happened?” she asks, reaching for the Doctor’s injured arm. “What was that thing?”

            But the Doctor’s not looking at her anymore. In fact, she practically shoulders her out of the way, scrabbling her sonic off the work table and aiming it, oddly with her left hand, at the cracked and broken device on the ground. She kicks aside Yaz’ jumper and tries to grab it, but the thing sparks again, and she flinches back with an incoherent growled sound of frustration and rage.

            “I can’t fix it now!” she snaps. “You should not have done that, Yaz.”

            “That thing was gonna claw your arm off!”

            “I had it under control.”

            She’s hunched over herself, hair falling into her face and teeth bared like a furious feral cat. But Yaz can still see the expanse of pale skin on her right arm where she’s holding it close to her body, can see the giant burn mark bubbling up towards her elbow and eating into her sleeve.

            “Doctor, look at your arm—let me help, is there a first aid kit in here, or—”

            “I’m fine!” the Doctor snaps. She looks up and leans forward, her eyes wild and angry and Yaz has never seen this look directed at her before now. “You can’t just barge in here and wreck things and order me around, Yaz, that’s not how this works.”

            “The TARDIS were worried about you,” she snaps back. She dares a glance away from the Doctor’s face, and speaking of the TARDIS being worried, she sees a sink and a first aid station she swears hadn’t been there a minute ago. “C’mere, you need to rinse that.”

            She reaches out and grasps the Doctor by the shoulder, steering her towards it with the kind of firmness she’d never dare if there wasn’t active bodily harm that needed handling. The Doctor tries to wrench out of her grip anyway.

            “Get off me, Yaz!” she hisses, and the words, the vehemence with which the Doctor says them, make her flinch.

            But no. Not this time. She’s not letting the Doctor destroy herself on her watch, not again.

            “Let me help you,” Yaz insists. “Stick your arm out, I’ll turn the tap on, here.”

            “I said go, Yaz, did you not hear me? Are humans always this stupid on purpose?”

            Yaz goes cold at that, and she looks the Doctor right in the eye, grabs her arm, and shoves it under the cool water. Whatever lingering substance is still on her arm bites at her fingertips too as she does it, and the Doctor cries out, crumpling into Yaz’ side.

            “I don’t know what’s going on with you, Doctor,” Yaz says once she’s gone quiet again, every word as firm and level as she can make it, “but no one gets to talk to me like that. Not even you.”

            The Doctor’s breathing is ragged from pain, but she stills when Yaz says that, and she looks up at her with an expression that is suddenly so broken that Yaz nearly drops her.

            “I… you’re right,” she says. “You’re—I’m sorry, Yaz. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t—I’m so sorry.”

            She slumps, catching herself against the edge of the sink with her free hand. Yaz can tell she’s trying not to touch her any more than she has to. The water’s colder than it should be for a human, but she has to hope the TARDIS knows best here, even as her own fingers go numb under the water, closed tight around the Doctor’s wrist.

            She can feel the Doctor’s twin pulses juddering beneath her fingers. It calms, slowly, even though it still feels so thrillingly foreign against the beat of her own singular heartbeat in her ears. Yaz brushes her thumb up along the veins in her wrist, almost like she’s just trying to make sure she’s still real, still solid beneath her hand. The Doctor shudders at the touch.

            “Sorry,” Yaz whispers. “Does it hurt?”

            The Doctor shakes her head. Her jaw’s clamped shut so tight Yaz knows she’s lying.

            She sighs and reaches across her to turn the water off. The burn is angry and red, blistered white in places where the device had already broken the skin. It looks nasty, but somehow already smaller than it had looked when it had first happened. Hopefully the Doctor’s quick healing would kick in and take care of the rest. In other circumstances, Yaz would make a joke about it, but she’s still stinging from the stupid human comment, and the Doctor still won’t look at her.

            “I should wrap that for you,” she says instead.

Finally, Yaz lets go and takes a half step away to dig through the first aid cabinet the TARDIS had provided. She flexes her cold, wet fingers at her side, filing the tingling running through them as a reaction to the temperature and nothing else. The cabinet is very well-stocked—clearly the ship is even more concerned about her pilot than Yaz had thought—and it takes her a moment to find some burn cream and gauze and scissors. When she does, she finds the Doctor still standing exactly how she’d left her, stock still and dripping into the sink, staring at the floor and breathing like she’d just run a marathon.

Except Yaz has seen her almost literally run marathons, and she doesn’t react like this.

“Can you tell me if anything else is wrong, Doctor?” Yaz asks.

She’s calm, almost clinical, as she says it. Whatever else is going on here can wait until the immediate crisis has passed. And something in her voice seems to sink through, because the Doctor blinks, a shiver running through her whole body like she’s just coming back online and twitching to life.

The Doctor looks up, meets her eye just about, shakes her head.

“No,” she says, the word scratchy but firm enough that Yaz thinks she’s not lying—or at least, won’t let her pry into it further if she is. “Thanks.”

“Good,” Yaz replies. She holds up the gauze in her hand so the Doctor can see. “Can I wrap it?”

The Doctor nods, blinking slowly again, but before Yaz can step closer she looks down at her arm, at the white sleeve of her undershirt singed along the edge and soaked up past her elbow. She’d rolled it up for whatever the hell experiment she’d been doing, but not far enough.

“Sure, just—hang on a tic,” she says.

She grabs the edge of the sleeve in her free hand and tugs, dragging it over the wound in a way that hurts enough to make a soft whine of pain just about make it past her clenched teeth. Yaz takes a half step forward, her free hand extended to—what, offer to help?—when the Doctor wiggles her arms and shoulders in order to peel her undershirt off without disturbing her rainbow-striped t-shirt. It’s a gesture that Yaz remembers so viscerally from PE class that her chest tightens and she looks away. Partially to give the Doctor some privacy, and partly so she won’t think that the shame Yaz swallows back and wrestles down has anything to do with her.

For the first time that day, it’s a good thing that the Doctor is so distracted.

Yaz has gotten herself under control by the time she hears a wet plop of fabric and looks round to see the Doctor’s sodden undershirt has joined her charred jumper in a sad heap on the workshop floor. She turns tentatively back to find the Doctor, bare arms shockingly pale against her blue shirt and trousers, save for the angry red burn she’s now scowling down at like it’s offended her personally.

“You all right?” Yaz asks, letting a little bit of her usual teasing tone back into the room.

“Hurts,” the Doctor says with a pout.

“No kidding,” Yaz replies. “This probably’ll sting a bit, but I’ll be quick as I can, all right?”

She steps forward, and the Doctor doesn’t flee, so she sets to work, slathering on probably more burn cream than she should before wrapping it carefully.

The Doctor is so, so close. Yaz can feel the soft rise and fall of her chest just beside her as surely as she can feel her eyes on the back of her head as she works. And she’s so still, far more so than she’s ever known her to be. Any other day, any other injury, Yaz would expect her to fidget away and complain and flinch, no more capable of sitting still than a child on a sugar high. But now, she’s been caught, and she’s still, and perhaps Yaz will be able to sort out what that means.

That’s another matter for ‘after the immediate crisis has passed,’ though.

“Almost done,” she says, snipping off the ends of the gauze and starting to tie it.

“Didn’t know Hallamshire Police did first aid training,” the Doctor says.

It’s an attempt at a joke, at their usual levity, but the Doctor’s voice still sounds too wrung-out for it to fully land. And she has no idea that she’s hit at something Yaz has been keeping to herself, too.

“They don’t,” she says. “I took classes.”

“Did you?” the Doctor says. “’Course you did, that sounds like you. Always trying to help, is Yasmin Khan.”

Yaz just nods and concentrates on the knot. What she doesn’t say is that she took the EMT classes because she was trying to be more like the Doctor. That she’d done half a dozen online courses while holed up in that spare TARDIS, after she’d lost her job and decided she didn’t really want to go back to parking disputes anyway, after her family and Ryan and Graham had nearly stopped checking on her. She’d done it because she’d needed something, anything, and even then she’d never managed to drag herself away from the ship for the in-person exam portions of the classes. She’d never really finished them.

Turns out the knowledge stuck in her head anyway.

“There,” she says. “All set.”

“Thanks, Yaz,” the Doctor says softly. “That’s… I’ll just… clean up in here, then, I suppose.”

“No chance, Doctor,” Yaz says. She turns to put the supplies away and then faces her, arms folded across her chest, tilting her chin up in a challenge. “The TARDIS sent me to check on you. I think she needs you to take a break, and I think she’s right.”

“I’m fine,” the Doctor protests. “See, all patched up, good to go.”

Yaz opens her mouth to argue—she’s not really sure what she’s going to say—when the lights go out. The door to the room pops open, leaving the only illumination to come from the hallway.

“Think she’s kicking you out,” Yaz says. “C’mon. At least long enough for a cuppa?”

The Doctor deflates again, and somehow that’s more worrying than an argument would’ve been. She just nods, and follows Yaz out of the room. The door shuts with a very definitive click behind them; Yaz wouldn’t be surprised if the TARDIS has locked the Doctor out, for now.

Yaz isn’t familiar with this part of the ship, but half a hallway to the right, there’s another door open, and when she pokes her head in, she finds a study. It’s small but cozy, with bookshelves all around the walls, a desk covered in books and papers and gadgets crammed in one corner and a squashy purple sofa facing a crackling fireplace. Above them, a vaulted ceiling is painted a dark blue and patterned with stars in constellations Yaz doesn’t recognize. And in front of the sofa, there’s a coffee table that’s already sporting a tray with two steaming mugs of tea and a plate heaped high with custard creams.

Yaz leads the Doctor inside, shutting the door behind them and thinking a quiet ‘thanks’ to the ship as she does.

The Doctor sits. She takes a cup of tea and almost matter-of-factly stuffs a custard cream in her mouth, but doesn’t touch the rest of them. She doesn’t say a word. It’s like she’s folded in on herself again, her shoulders curled inward, her feet tucked up under her on the sofa, suddenly so small and vulnerable in fewer layers of armor than she usually has.

And Yaz doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t have enough to go on, not really. She doesn’t know what it is that’s haunting at the Doctor, nipping at her heels wherever they go. She doesn’t know why she’s been shutting herself away. All she knows is that right now, saying the wrong thing could hurt more than it could help. Yaz never, ever wants to get it wrong.

What she does want is to help. The Doctor was right, before. She is always trying to help. It’s all she’s ever wanted, she thinks, looking at the shadows under the Doctor’s eyes. She wants to help, and she wants to help her. She wants it with an ache that goes beyond empathy, that winds through every part of her in ways she can’t explain. All she knows is that she has to get this right.

So she waits.

She sips her tea and snacks on a few biscuits and tries not to look like she’s staring at the woman on the other end of the sofa. The silence is thick and heavy between them, far too much left unsaid hanging in the balance.

The Doctor finally sets her empty mug on the side table, tucking her knees up to her chest as she does.

“Want another one?” Yaz asks softly. She speaks quietly so she won’t startle the Doctor by breaking the silence of more than an hour, but the other woman just shakes her head.

Yaz almost expects that’s it, wonders if she ought to just keep sitting with her or give her some privacy, when the Doctor finally speaks.

“I really am sorry, Yaz,” she says.

She’s not looking at her. Yaz nods anyway.

“You scared me,” she admits. When the Doctor just curls further in on herself instead of replying, she presses very carefully forward. “What was that thing?”

“DNA test,” the Doctor answered flatly. “Couldn’t get it working right.”

Yaz frowns; the answer’s only given her more questions.

“But why?” she asks. “And why’d it… what was it doing that hurt you so much?”

“I was trying… it didn’t work. Doesn’t matter.”

This is it. Yaz has reached another wall. She blows out a long breath through her nose, fear and frustration warring in her chest.

“Doctor,” she says, as gently as she can, “what’s going on with you? Really?”

The Doctor says nothing, and Yaz expects that she’s reached the end of this conversation. But then she shifts her head, and the firelight catches on tear tracks streaming down her face, and the sight of it hits Yaz so strongly that she can’t breathe for the second time that day.

“I don’t…” the other woman says, her voice cracking. “I don’t know, Yaz.”

And Yaz’ heart breaks.

Because the Doctor knows everything, just about. She’s a bubbling fountain of knowledge, of wonder, filled with facts and experience going back farther than Yaz can fathom. And even when she does encounter something new, she has context for it, the joy of new discoveries always shining in her eyes. This, though—Yaz can tell this is different. For someone like the Doctor, someone who always knows, to not have an answer here… for whatever is going on to be so painful, so confusing, in whatever way that she can’t answer Yaz’ questions instead of not wanting to…

It's devastating. It explains so much.

“Doctor…” Yaz breathes.

The Doctor flinches, like she expects an argument, or a reprimand, and Yaz wants to fight whatever or whoever made her feel this way. Instead, she just does the only thing she can think to do in this moment: she shifts on the sofa and opens her arms.

“C’mere?” she asks.

The Doctor doesn’t move for a moment. When she turns to her, it’s tentative, and she looks up at Yaz through a curtain of messy blonde hair. Yaz doesn’t move or say anything else; she just tilts her head and raises an eyebrow and smiles in a way she hopes looks inviting, like she won’t mind the Doctor’s choice either way.

Still, when the Doctor sinks into her arms after a minute of tense, awkward silence, Yaz can’t help but be relieved. She holds the other woman as tight as she dares—she doesn’t want to risk aggravating her burnt arm or any other injuries she might be hiding, for one, and she doesn’t want the Doctor to feel trapped. But she does want the Doctor to feel the full force of her care pressed into her body, and with the way she burrows into the embrace, tucking her nose against her neck and going nearly boneless against her, she thinks maybe it works.

“You don’t have to know everything, Doctor,” Yaz murmurs against her hair. She’s tempted to press a kiss to the crown of her head, but she bats the thought aside. “Just let me in. Let me help. We can figure anything out together.”

“I’m sorry, Yaz,” the Doctor murmurs again, the words shivery across Yaz’ skin.

Yaz sighs. She suspects the apology means that the Doctor won’t be taking her advice, won’t be telling her more. But she curls closer into Yaz, and for now, the apology she does have, the hug, it’s enough. In the face of all the hurt she’s holding in her arms, it’ll have to be.

If whatever’s haunting the Doctor now is a mystery, even to her, then maybe that’s something Yaz can’t help with, as much as she wants to. As much as she needs more information as they both throw themselves into the pursuit of whatever this is. But if the Doctor’s chasing an enigma, Yaz can be the opposite. She can be steady. She can be there, ready to catch the Doctor when she needs it.

When, not if. Because if today is any indication, she’ll be needed again. This might get so much worse before it gets better.

It might not, she realizes with a pang, get better at all. The Doctor might never find answers; she couldn’t make her device work, resorted to hurting herself, lashing out at Yaz.

How long can she wait?

The Doctor sighs softly in her arms. She seems so strangely at home there, and Yaz knows that she’ll wait forever if that’s what she needs. Maybe that’s what she’d needed, all those years ago. Someone who was there. Someone who understood the hurt, even if they couldn’t understand the specifics.

They sit in the study for a long, long time, not moving except for Yaz tracing soothing circles between the Doctor’s shoulder blades. The TARDIS dims the lights around them, wrapping them both in a cocoon of safety, a momentary pause in everything. They don’t talk. Yaz isn’t sure she knows how to put what she’s feeling into words anyway, not sure they would help. But she’s making a promise to her, there on that sofa, even if just in her own head.

She’s going to be there. For everything. For all of it. She’ll help the Doctor figure this out one way or another, however she can. Because Yaz might not be the Doctor. She might not have as many answers as she wants, might not be able to save the day on her own. But this she can do. She can hold the best person she’s ever met through the dark. She can stand by her while she muddles her way through, for as long as it takes for her universe to get back on her own feet.

As long as the Doctor will have her, Yaz will be right there for her. No matter what happens next.