Chapter Text
Nobody saw her eyes close and her body tense when the gunshot sounded. Nobody knew what was going on inside. Nobody could ever know.
How could her friends expect her to protect them if they knew how she really felt? The truth was that The Doctor was glad she had the distraction of her three wonderful friends; their adventures - the relaxing and the adrenaline fuelled. This allowed her to push down her feelings. About the ones she’d lost and the ones she couldn’t save.
“Doctor?” The sound of Yaz’s voice pulled her from her thoughts. “Are we going?”
She shook her head and wiped a single tear, not yet fallen.
“Um yeah, yeah. Sheffield?” Her voice sounded slightly cracked, she hoped the others wouldn’t notice.
“Doc, you alright?”
Usually, she didn’t use nicknames (that she hadn’t picked herself) but for Graham, The Doctor would allow it.
“What do you mean? Of course I’m alright!” She darted round the console, pulling levers, pressing buttons and stepping on a certain pedal, twice, stopping only to push one of the biscuits into her mouth. She launched the other at Ryan, who she knew had taken to pushing the lever when he thought no one was around.
He caught the biscuit, scoffing at her. “How did you know?”
“You forget she speaks to me Ryan.” She joked, grinning as the TARDIS hummed a note slightly louder than usual.
The offending companion held his hands up.
“Alright you got me.”
“We all know you’re only here for the free biscuits!” Yaz teased, from where she stood away from the rest of the group.
The Doctor’s hands paused on the console and her eyes fixed on Yaz. She’d been too engrossed in her own thoughts that she’d forgotten what Yaz had just witnessed her own family go through.
“Right and we all know why you’re here don’t we?” Ryan glanced from Yaz to The Doctor and back to Yaz again, raising his eyebrows. However, the blonde didn’t notice this, her eyes still trained on the young police officer.
She took her hands off the console and shoved them into her pockets, unsure of how to approach the situation. She picked silence; not something she did often, usually being the one to talk her way out of emotional situations, directing the conversation elsewhere.
The Doctor stopped directly in front of Yaz, she’d never noticed their height difference before. The other woman was only a fraction shorter than herself, but for some reason, it made her want to wrap her arms around her, bring her into her neck and hold her. She felt a strong attraction towards Yasmin Khan, something she was unused to in this body. She thought maybe it was maternal or something, considering she was a woman now and Yaz was an uncountable number of years younger than her. But looking at her, how her hair perfectly fell around her jawline, how her eyes shone, the confidence in which she held herself; maybe it was something else.
“She made it out, right? She got to Lahore. She lived.” Dark eyes searched her own, her weight shifted.
The Doctor swallowed, her lips pulled into a straight line.
“She made it.” A slight nod, hands clenched into fists inside of her pockets, her thoughts with Prem. Another person she couldn’t save.
Yaz dipped her head, her shoulders raising slightly. The pain evident on her face, no matter how much she tried to hide it.
God, she doesn’t know what makes her do it, perhaps it’s the height difference providing her with the perfect opportunity. But with hands still in her pockets, fists loosening, The Doctor leans forward and presses her lips to the forehead below her. There’s a shuffling somewhere else in the console room. Lost in a world of only two, she’d totally forgotten Graham and Ryan we’re still present.
Her eyes widen, she pulls away and her usual bouncy self is back. She clears her throat and claps her hands, pulling some glasses (with no glass) from her pocket, placing them on her face and pulling a console screen to face her.
“Sheffield, Yes! I’m really getting the hang of this, we’re here, right year and everything!” A grin plastered on her face, Yaz still stood dumbfounded a couple of metres away.
She could have sworn she saw a £10 note pass not-so-subtly from Graham to Ryan.
“What’s that?” Glasses pulled up into her hair, her face scrunched, forming lines on her forehead and around her nose.
Ryan’s eyes widened like a boy with his foot on the custard cream leaver.
Silence.
Hands fell to newly formed hips.
“Right... out the pair of you, we’ll be out in the minute. Yaz and I...need to talk.”
Yet another £10 passed between the pair.
“That is ENOUGH.” She’d known the glances and fleeting touches between the two women hadn’t gone unnoticed, but for them to actually take bets? She fought back a small smile and ushered them towards the TARDIS doors.
“Don’t take too long girls...with your
talk
, tonight it’s Tea At Graham’s!” The man himself wiggled his eyebrows, looking between the women. A playful slap on the shoulder and they were gone.
The Doctor remained facing the doors, her hands on the wood and her back to Yaz, who had been silent this whole time.
“Why did you do that...kiss..?” Dark eyebrows knitted together, a curious smile on her lips.
Hands slid down the wood and back into blue pockets. The woman turned, and met the smile with a nervous grin.
“Oh I dunno, thought I’d try it.” She shrugged, shuffling closer and closer to Yaz until their bodies were inches from each other.
“Do it again.” The power in her voice.
“What?”
“Do it again.” The younger woman did not break eye contact.
Once again, hands still in pockets, the Thirteenth Doctor leaned towards Yasmin Khan, who tilted her head at the crucial moment, causing not lips to meet forehead; but lips to meet lips.
The Time Lord’s (she was very adamant her title should not change with her gender) body tensed, every hair on her skin standing on end, screaming “holy shit, I’m kissing Yaz, my Yaz,
no-universe-without-Yaz
Yaz!”
Her eyes closed and hands slid from her pockets and up onto slender hips. She was aware of Yaz’s hands in her hair, pulling softly, pulling her closer. Their bodies pressed together, no way of telling where one woman started and the other ended.
It was so much, so much at once. Something she had wanted to do since they met, but something she’d kept herself from doing for so many reasons.
She had a history of losing people, so much she had lost. She’d made a vow, to herself, to those she’d left behind; never again will she let herself get too close, people always get hurt when they are around her. Pulled into her orbit. Her stars, beautiful, unique, bright. But one day, all stars die, all stars cease to exist, all stars are wiped from the universe. Light years away, too late to save. Not Yaz, not this time. Not again.
“Doctor?” hands were on either side of her face now. “Are you okay?”
She wasn’t even aware the kiss had ended, her eyes were blurry, but clear enough to the concern on Yaz’s face.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Her eyes closed and she pulled the other woman into herself yet again, only to have the kiss broken and their bodies parted once more.
“Fine? Fine is crying while you’re kissing me yeah?” The hands were still on her face, thumbs wiping away tears she didn’t even know had fallen.
“Yaz...please.” She tried desperately to bring their lips back together, her voice now nothing but a cracked whisper.
“I’m going to ask you one more time and I don’t want any of your Time Lord
‘I have to be strong, I carry the weight of the universe on my shoulders, how am I supposed to protect you if I show emotion?’
bullshit, because that doesn’t fool me. Are you okay?”
Tears were really falling now, she brought her shoulders up to her neck, curling in on herself.
“No.” It was barely a whisper, but that’s all it took. Her shoulders dropped slowly, and loud, uncontrollable sobs made her whole body convulse. Everything, years of unspoken emotion, came pouring out in that moment. She was embarrassed, embarrassed that she was crying like this, crying in front of her friend...girlfriend...perhaps a matter to be discussed at a later date.
Yaz let out a sigh, the corners of her mouth turned down, her eyes glazed like she was holding back tears too. She pulled the Doctor against her body, nestling her own head against the blondes neck.
“You’re allowed to be emotional. You might not be human, but you’ve got a heart, two in fact. I’ve seen you, you’re full of compassion, full of love. You love so hard and so fast. Even that giant mutant spider, I saw how you looked at her when you realised you couldn’t save her-“
A strangled sob escaped the blondes lips.
“You’re a protector, but who protects you? Who looks after you? Who listens to you when you need them?”
“They’re..all g-gone-” The Doctor balled her fists into Yaz’s shirt as if clinging to it like it was the only thing keeping her there, keeping her grounded.
“Who is?” Yaz became aware they were still stood in the middle of the TARDIS and shifted slightly, reaching down to sit cross legged on the floor, pulling the Doctor with her. Still hugging her into her chest.
“Well, literally everyone..everyone I get close to. Donna, Martha, River...” She paused to allow a tear to roll down her face and soak into Yaz’s shirt. “Rose... everyone I care about. They either get hurt beyond saving, trapped.. and I- I don’t want that for you Yaz, I can’t. I won’t. If you stay with me, I’ll lose you. I’d rather let you go, than have you taken from me.”
“I saw you today, when you knew what was going to happen to Prem, it was the same look as when we were on that bus with Rosa. You can’t help everyone. You said it yourself, time is fixed. Some things you just can’t change. And that’s not your fault.”
A long pause, silence now the majority of the Doctor’s sobs had subsided, her now staring at nothing in particular, eyes still glossy and unblinking.
“I saw you tense, when that gunshot went off. I might have been behind you, but your whole body went rigid. I just wanted to hold you like this, and tell you it was okay.”
The Doctor sat up now. “It goes against everything, everything I stand for, every fibre of my being. I help people. I don’t stand by and watch when somebody needs me. My whole body was screaming,
Do something, Do something!
It hurt Yaz.”
Yaz reached up around her face and tucked blonde hair behind a small ear, grazing her chained earring. The hands interlinked.
“I understand, it’s what you’ve always done. You carry so much pain, the pain of yourself and of others, and that's too much for one person to bear. You can’t win every battle, you can’t fight everybody’s fight. I promise you, I can fight for myself, so you don’t have to. I’ll fight for the both of us. For as long as I live Doctor, I promise I’ll never leave you. And my promises are like your promises; somehow, I always manage to keep them, by the skin of my teeth, even if for a second I doubt myself.”
“I never doubted-“
“For a second there I think you really thought we were setting up camp on that rock in the middle of Desolation.”
The Doctor pouted, that is until Yaz’s hands found her face again, bringing their faces closer, their lips meeting for the second time. Fireworks seemed to alight in every direction, and Yaz could have sworn the TARDIS was humming louder than usual.
When their lips parted, their hands linked as they stood up.
“I promise.” Yaz squeezed pale hands in her own. “And you need to promise me you’ll talk to me, whenever you need yeah?”
The Doctor let one of Yaz’s hands drop as she wiped remnants of tears from her under eyes.
“Promise.” she smiled, a real smile this time. Linking their hands once more.
“Now, let’s see if Tea At Graham’s is as good as Tea At Yaz’s.” The younger woman raised her eyebrows playfully, leading her Time Lord from the TARDIS.