Chapter Text
Yaz knew the Doctor couldn't stay with her forever, of course she knew that impossible woman would disappear one day, this time for good, leaving Yaz with only the memories of distant stars and the faint taste of custard creams on her tongue. But not like this. She was not prepared for this. Yaz feels what she imagines the night sky must experience seconds before the lightning cuts it in half, and a downpour spills from the rain clouds. She's been taught since childhood that crying doesn't solve anything. The last time Yaz threw a tantrum was at age seven, when Sonya broke her favourite doll, and their mum scolded Yaz, because she's the older sister and must take care of her own things. There's no one to judge her now, no one to be the bigger person for, so she sheds twenty years, and she wails helplessly, burying her face in her knees, her body shaking with long, racked sobs, and she mourns her universe.
"Am I interrupting?" a voice suddenly says next to her, the voice, so familiar it hurts, but it can't be . This is absurd. She doesn't open her eyes, and she couldn't stop crying if she wanted to, because surely this can't be her . She saw the building collapse on her , she saw the last goodbye in her eyes as Dan was dragging the screaming Yaz away from the scene, and the Master's mad laughter still rings in her ears.
"Yaz, please. Look at me", pleads the voice. If Yaz were to look, would she find only thin air? Just a hallucination, born from her grieving mind? Or would there be a ghost, only a shadow of the person she loved and lost?
Yaz looks up, her eyes clouded with tears. Yaz blinks several times. The vision doesn't disappear. The vision looks solid, and Yaz thinks if she reached out her hand, her fingers would touch warm skin, soft sleeve. She doesn't reach out.
"How can you be here? I saw you…" she doesn't say die, or else she won't be able to keep herself from breaking down all over again.
"Eh… it's complicated," the Doctor (is this really her? Not some very cleverly done hologram, or a copy made by the Solitract?) shrugs. "I mean, I did, well, die, or at least a version of myself did. I'm here though, aren't I?"
"You're not making any sense", Yaz frowns, just like she always does when the Doctor starts rambling. Oh how badly she wants to pretend that nothing happened, and it's just one of their usual banters. "You don't get to suddenly come back from the dead and expect me to just accept it without any explanation."
She will accept it, Yaz knows it, of course. This is the easiest thing to accept. There’s been plenty of inexplicable things in her time with the Doctor, and it’s not even the first time she was presumed dead, but Yaz needs to hear it from her. She deserves to know.
"I know, sorry, let me try to explain", the newly resurrected Doctor sighs, her brows furrowed in thought. If it’s a hologram, Yaz thinks, it’s very lifelike. She lowers herself to the ground next to Yaz, nervously picking little pieces of grass.
“I’ll just… I’ll start from the beginning, yeah?”
***
“Why did your ship want us here? This place gives me the creeps,” Dan said, as the Doctor and her companions walked into an empty cathedral.
“Not sure, but she were pretty insistent about it,” muttered the Doctor, her sonic held in front of her like a weapon. “Someone might need help, and I can’t just refuse, can I? Anyway, you lot could’ve just stayed in the TARDIS.”
“We’re with you, no matter what. Right?” Yaz turned to Dan, who gave a non-commital grunt in response.
The cathedral was beautiful, the pompous marble saints lit by the daylight streaming in through the stained glass windows, the brass lectern serving as a nest for a gilded eagle. Still, the Doctor couldn’t shake the sense of unease. Last time she was in a place of worship, it was with Ruth and the Judoon, neither of which left particularly pleasant memories. And then there was also that nagging pain in her temples, like… like…
“Well well well, look who’s finally decided to grace me with their presence!”
Like the Master was here.
The Master was grinning wildly with the glee of a cat finally catching an elusive mouse.
"Good old Doctor, never able to resist a distress signal," he sighed theatrically, just as the heavy door slammed shut behind them.
"Told you I'd be back for you. I see you've brought some company, well, so have I." He gestured to the rows of cybermen, staring ahead with empty eye sockets, once powerful lords of time, now loyal soldiers.
"How did you find me?" the Doctor asked angrily, sheltering her friends with her body in a heroic, but ultimately useless gesture.
"So glad you asked," his grin spread even wider as he reached into the pocket of his waistcoat, procuring a small, round object adorned with intricate circles."This little thing is easily trackable. You should really warn your ship against letting strangers in, Doctor. Didn’t take me a lot of effort to retrieve this, and then it was only a matter of time before your TARDIS realised it was missing, and sent you on a quest to find it."
The Doctor gasped as she recognized what he was holding.
"My fob watch." She lunged for it, but the Master was quicker, holding the watch out of her reach.
"With a tiny explosive inside," the Master gleefully stage-whispered, as if sharing an exciting secret. "But don't be deceived by its size; I took all the best from our planet before annihilating it. So I'd advise against grabbing it, or you might set it off too early, and you wouldn't want your friends there to get blown to pieces, would you, Doctor?"
"You're bluffing," Yaz said, though she didn't sound very convinced in her statement.
"Am I?" the Master pretended to think for a moment, and then threw his head back, laughing as if Yaz just told the most hilarious joke. "Do you really think I'd go through all this trouble for a bluff? Really, Yasmin Khan, I expected better from you. But you're welcome to stay and find out for yourself."
"What do you want?" the Doctor growled.
"It's simple, really. I want to destroy you, burn every single one of your lives, past and future, starting with your memories, so there's no trace of you left. No trace of me, either. After all, there's no me without you. Sounds quite romantic, doesn't it?"
"Yes, very sweet, but I'm afraid I'm taken." She turned to Yaz and winked like her life wasn’t at stake. Well, wouldn't be the first time. Wouldn't be the hundredth time, either.
"Oh believe me, I know all about that. And I'll even let her and your little friend here live if you don't pull any tricks."
He pressed a button on his bracelet, a handy teleportation device, and immediately a dozen cybermen in metal time lord attire appeared from thin air, surrounding Yaz and Dan in a narrow circle. The Doctor's blood froze in her veins.
"You remember what I'm capable of, right?" The Master's smile slid from his face, the warm colour of his eyes doing nothing to soothe his steely gaze. "If you so much as raise your finger, I'm going to turn your friends into lifeless shells, and I'll make sure they're awake for the whole process. I've heard it can be quite a painful procedure."
Her mind helpfully conjured an image of Bill. Her friend, who suffered such a terrible fate because the Doctor couldn’t save her. Wasn’t quick enough to stop it from happening. Not again, she thought, gritting her teeth. Never again.
"You can blow me up if you want, just let them go," she muttered, looking the Master straight in the eyes.
"Are you crazy?" yelled Dan.
"Doctor, no!" Yaz shouted at the same time, grabbing the Doctor's hand. "Enough with your self sacrificing tendencies, we've been through this!"
"This is not up for discussion," the Doctor said sternly, pulling her hand free, even as her voice trembled and her eyes prickled with tears threatening to spill. She turned back to the Master. "Well?"
"They're free to go. Thirteen seconds."
The door unlocked with a generous click .
"Doctor, please!" Yaz cried as Dan was tugging her to the exit, throwing the Doctor the last apologetic look.
" Twelve. "
"Goodbye, Yaz. Keep being brilliant. Dan, make sure she's safe."
" Eleven. "
"I will."
The door slammed. Yaz's pleads and sobs were muffled now, barely audible.
" Ten. "
Right. With Yaz out of the harm's way, it was time to act. Chances of survival were slim, but she was going to try anyway.
“Why do you keep counting? It’s so unnecessarily dramatic. Let me guess, you want the minute hand to be on twelve, and the hour hand on one, right? Very symbolic, love that. By the way, have you ever wondered why the watch’s hands are on its face ?”
“Would you quit your babbling? You’re quite literally losing time.” The Master threw an annoyed glance at the watch, and it was all the distraction the Doctor needed. Her hand shot out of her pocket, pointing the sonic at the fob watch. There was a crackling sound like a tree branch snapping in half, and the Master dropped the precious object, hissing in pain.
“The bomb is about to go off. Your tinkering won’t change it.”
“I know,” the Doctor smiled, picking up the watch and closing her fist around it. “But if I go, I want to go on my own terms.”
There was another crackling, now louder, this time accompanied by a flash of golden light emanating from the Doctor’s hand where the skin started to tear.
“What have you done?” the Master shouted, clutching his head.
“Oh, just reversed the polarity, no big deal. I may not have been able to disarm the bomb, but you’re the one who’s about to lose all your memories, and your whole identity for that matter. I don’t know about you, but I…” she looked down at the cracked dial of the watch, the liquid gold spilling from it matching the one that was creeping up her arms. “I’d rather go as me.”
With the last glance at the object, containing all the information about her past, she threw it as far as she could. When the explosion came, shaking the walls of the old cathedral, the Doctor closed her eyes. Her body had been battle tested by countless regenerations, so it would be a couple of moments before it started deteriorating. She still had time to remember. And so the Doctor remembered. A planet with emerald green pastures and a pale sun peeking from the vermilion clouds. Her first regeneration as a confused toddler, and the kind face of a woman — her mother, her real mother — consoling her, wiping the tears off her new face. The Doctor smiled through pain, trying to focus on the precious memories instead of the aching wounds. She wondered, dropping to her knees in pain and exhaustion, if this was really it, if the Master’s plan worked and this was the end of her, the end of the Doctor. Well, she thought bitterly, at least the memories are back, eh? But amongst all the forgotten faces and lost identities, in the flood of echoing names, there was just one name that rang louder than others. Yaz . One of the first faces this face saw, the person these hearts loved the most. As her consciousness finally began to slip away, she was still stubbornly clutching at the memory of Yaz, so focused on the lingering ghost of her touch that she barely even registered the ceiling coming down.
When she next opened her eyes, everything was still. The silence, devoid of the horrible sounds of breaking glass and cracking stone, felt eerie. Strangely, she could feel no pain. No post-regeneration dizziness, either. She pushed herself into a sitting position with less effort than she would expect after having possibly been crushed by the ornate ceiling, and looked down at her hands. The skin was whole, unbroken, and, most importantly, these were still her hands. She took in her surroundings, wondering if she was the sole survivor. The sun, now free from its stained glass prison, was spreading its golden arms through the charred gaps where the windows used to be. It illuminated the broken saints, laying among the rubble and ruins like fallen soldiers on a battlefield. There was no sign of the Master or the cybermen; whether he managed to teleport or fell to the fate he wished for her, was anybody’s guess. But that silence… It was more than just the absence of sound. It felt like everything had just… stopped. Put on pause, like a movie. She looked up and, sure enough, the ceiling which was supposed to squash her, was mid-descend, hovering above her like a particularly slow aircraft.
“So… I’m not dead, am I?” she wondered aloud. She didn’t feel dead, but then again, she had very little idea of what death was supposed to feel like.
“Not quite,” came a voice from somewhere behind her. In fact, it was her own voice. “I would even say it’s the exact opposite.”
“You know, when I thought I was talking to myself, it’s not actually what I had in mind.” The Doctor turned to face the figure standing next to the remains of the altar. “And what do you mean by exact opposite ?”
The figure — Time, because who else could that be — twitched the corners of her borrowed lips in something that might have been a second cousin of a smile.
“I mean, Doctor, you were just born.”
“What? No, I wasn’t. Was I?” She quickly patted her face up and down: same nose, same ears, the teeth also appeared to not have changed.
“You didn’t regenerate,” the Time proceeded to explain patiently. “But at the same time…” she pointed to where a familiar silhouette was crouched behind a broken column, with flickers of regenerational energy around them frozen in place. “You did. Well, starting to, at least.”
“Kind of missed the feeling of a huge concentration of me per square metre, always appreciate a good company. Alright then, you stopped the time before the roof could flatten me, thanks for that by the way, but if I’m over there and I’m regenerating, then… Why am I also here ?”
“The bomb planted in the fob watch was meant to erase every last bit of artron energy in you, and the explosion was enough to tear you apart so there would be nothing left of you to regenerate. But destroying the first of time lords would've damaged the very fabric of time and space, and I couldn’t possibly let that happen, now could I?” The Time was pacing around the nave, broken glass and stone crunching under her boots. “So obviously I had to interfere. What I did was redirect the blast, so instead of obliterating you, it split you into two people, one human, one time lord. The artron energy was taken from you — this you — but it was returned to the time lord part of you, giving them just enough of it for the regeneration process to begin and leaving a small portion for you, to kickstart your heart. You have strong ties to humanity, so it was quite easy. Were you any less attached to this planet and its species, this little operation might have failed, but there was always a spark of humanity within you, and now this spark has grown into a flame.”
The Doctor hauled herself upright, mulling it over as she brushed the ash off her clothes.
“So, what you’re telling me… time does heal after all?” she blurted out, trying her best to not think too hard about her heart , singular, and the whole human thing just yet.
“I suppose it does,” her reflection smiled at her with her own mouth. “Now, I think it would be best for you to go. I can’t hold this roof forever.”
“Wait, but what happens to…” she gestured to the figure frozen mid-regeneration.
As if to answer her question, there was a familiar sound: the wheezing, groaning noise of her TARDIS. Her TARDIS, that was materialising around the crouched form of someone who was once her, and now their own person. She felt a pang of betrayal; her most loyal companion, her home , was leaving her. The reality of what had been done to her was starting to sink in, a dull ache settling in her chest where the second heart used to be.
“I am sorry,” the Time said in response to her thoughts that were probably written all over her face. “The Doctor will regenerate in their TARDIS, as it’s supposed to be.”
“But what does that make me ?” she asked desperately.
“This is up for you to decide. They — your past self — are going to look for their place in the universe. Now you need to find yours.”
As she watched the smoke rise above the old church, painting the blank canvas of the sky with rough brushstrokes, the Doctor — if that’s who she even was — thought about the Time’s words. You need to find your place in the universe. She smiled to herself, thinking about a certain pair of night-coloured eyes. Maybe she already has.
***
“And I thought my day was wild,” Yaz murmurs, stunned. She’s heard about regeneration from the Doctor before, about her body and personality changing, and she saw two versions of her Doctor in one place (and no, she will not think about how that made her feel, thank you very much), but this was… different. What do you even say to someone who got their entire identity and home taken from them?
Yaz squints at the warm September sun, before glancing at the woman next to her. She still looks exactly the same, down to the gleaming stars on her earring that Yaz bought for her what feels like a lifetime ago.
“How did you know where to find me?” she finally asks. An innocent enough question, she decides, an abstract topic.
“You mean, aside from my special time lord powers? I still have those, you know, well, probably. Well, maybe.” Yaz fixes her with a pointed glare. “Alright, the location on your phone was on, and I still had mine in my pocket. No sonic though,” she adds sadly.
"Welcome to the human race,” chuckles Yaz, but quickly catches herself, seeing the Doctor’s face fall.
“Right, about that. I think I need a human name now. How about… Jane Smith?"
"Jane Smith," Yaz repeats sceptically.
"Yeah! Had a friend with this name, brilliant woman. I used to go by John Smith actually, but humans are weird about gender, and I’ve grown tired of that name anyway.”
Yaz contemplates this for a moment.
“You know what? I think I’d rather keep calling you Doctor. Is that alright?”
“I… I suppose. But how can I still be the Doctor?” she frowns, inspecting a flower she plucked. “ The Doctor will regenerate in their TARDIS , that’s what the Time said. Who am I without my TARDIS?”
“You’re still you, no matter how many hearts you have, with or without your ship. You chose that name in spite of being a time lord, not because of it, right?” Yaz grabs the other woman’s hand, entwining their fingers. “And since when does the Doctor listen to Time? As far as I can remember, you’ve always contradicted it at every turn.”
The Doctor smiles, a familiar radiant smile that Yaz fell in love with. There are galaxies swirling in her eyes, Yaz’s own universe.
“Yasmin Khan, gold star for inspiring!” she beams. “Right, when have I ever been limited by who I was? Still feeling a bit weird though. Probably will take me some time to get used to having only one heart.”
This gives Yaz an idea. She rises to her feet, pulling the Doctor with her.
“Well, that’s easy to fix,” she smirks, seeing the blonde’s confused expression, and envelopes her into a tight hug.
"Feel that?" Yaz whispers in her ear as twin heartbeats echo in her chest. "You've still got two hearts."
The Doctor is silent for a moment, her arms are wrapped securely around Yaz’s waist. She still smells of Earl grey and engine oil. Still her Doctor.
“Thank you, Yaz,” she breathes out, her voice muffled by Yaz’s shoulder.
“Happy to help. I can do this anytime, so-”
“It’s not just that. Thank you for… well, for saving my life. When I was… dying, or I thought I was, the only thing I could think about was you. How you made everything better by being here for me. How we had to part without even saying proper goodbye. And I guess…” she falls silent for a moment, her index finger tracing little circles on Yaz’s back. “I guess you were the anchor that pulled me toward humanity. Toward living. I don’t know where I would be without you, Yaz.”
Yaz is, to put it lightly, dazed. She feels her throat closing up as her eyes fill with tears, ready to break the dam all over again. Just a few hours ago she thought she’d lost the Doctor forever, and now she’s back, alive, so warm in her arms, and apparently Yaz is the one who saved her? She disentangles herself from the Doctor just enough to look her in the eyes.
“I don’t- I don’t even know what to say,” she laughs, half-crying, with hiccups escaping her throat instead of words, suddenly hit by the realisation that the Doctor is here, that she came back for her, because of her. There are tears streaming down the Doctor’s cheeks too, and now they’re both blubbering and giggling, no doubt looking like fools to the occasional passers-by. Gradually, the giggles subside, leaving the two women with tear streaked faces, standing so close they share the same breath, like they’ve just reunited after years of being apart. They hold on to one another like a lifeline, afraid to drown in the absence of the other.
Yaz lifts a trembling hand to the Doctor’s face, cupping her cheek. She traces the moles that she always thought looked like a constellation. Sure, she’s going to miss travelling in space and time, but there’s a cosmos worth exploring right here.
When she touches the Doctor’s lips with hers, Yaz tastes salt, and she is reminded of their day on the beach. How curious it is, that every time people cry, they taste the ocean, she thinks, smiling into the kiss.
After a few seconds or an eternity, the Doctor pulls away, still clinging to the collar of Yaz’s shirt.
“Can we get a purple sofa?” she asks, her face serious, and Yaz bursts out laughing.
“What?”
“A sofa! I always thought, if I were to settle down — you know, there’s usually not a ton of quiet moments in my life — but if that were ever to happen, I’d get a purple sofa. And a cat. Not necessarily purple.”
“That is, of course, if you’d want to, well, live with me. Together,” she hurriedly adds, her eyes widening.
“Don’t be daft, of course I want to,” Yaz smiles, her heart pounding in her chest at the prospect of that. “I suppose we could stay at my flat for awhile, and then see what we can do about sofas and cats. Graham says he’s got a mansion in Essex, so…”
“Brilliant!” the Doctor exclaims, blissfully unaware of human housing problems.
A warm wind caresses the crowns of trees, nudging the clouds forward, and it feels like hope. It feels like a promise of tomorrow.
As they walk, hand in hand, to the train station — after all, there’s no blue box to get them home in time for tea now — Yaz thinks about the future. It’s going to take them both some time to adjust to their new lives, Yaz knows: she has spent the majority of the past decade flying in the TARDIS, helping the Doctor defeat alien monsters and preserve history. All that to escape routine, to run from the world that hasn’t been kind to her. But if the past years have taught her anything, it’s that she’s perfectly capable of fighting back. She has faced daleks and cybermen, and now she’s ready to face the mundane. Besides, she won’t be doing it alone. Together, she’s sure, they can do anything.
They have all the time in the world.