Chapter Text
"So, remind me what we're doing again?" Dan calls out.
The Doctor leans around the trunk of the tree that she's currently perched in. "We're creating a pulley system to pull the TARDIS upright," she replies.
"And why do we need to do this? Can't you just turn her upright when you get the power back on?"
"Ah. See, there's a problem with that." The Doctor tugs at a thick rope to ensure it's securely tied around the tree. "The TARDIS doesn't like it when things like this happen. She won't cooperate with me. So, I'm hoping if we can get her back on her feet, so to speak, she might be a little more cooperative."
"We're doing this because your ship is having a sulk."
The Doctor pouts at him. As annoyed as she gets with the TARDIS, she's still protective of her ship.
Dan shakes his head as he finishes tying the rope around the TARDIS.
"Don't mind him," Yaz calls out from another tree. "He's had a few bad experiences with pulley systems." She grins when Dan scowls at her.
The Doctor looks at her, then at Dan. There's an inside joke going on there, but she knows it has to come from the years they spent trapped in the past. The thought of that hurts too much for her to want in on the joke. If only she'd stayed with them, if she hadn't left them alone to fend off a Weeping Angel…
She shakes her head to clear it and clambers out of the tree to the ground. "Right," she says as she grabs another rope. "Hopefully, this gets her back on her feet so I have something to work with. Ready?"
"Ready," Yaz and Dan answer in unison.
"Three…two…one!"
The three of them pull. At first, the TARDIS remains stubbornly in place. But then, slowly, the ship lifts off the ground and settles back on her base.
"Result!" the Doctor cries out, dropping the rope to clap her hands together. "That's that sorted. Dan, get the ropes off of her. She'll probably be upset about that, too. Yaz, come with me."
Yaz nods and follows her into the TARDIS. "What do you need me to do?"
"I need you at the console," the Doctor says. She sheds her ruined tux jacket, unties her bowtie, and unfastens the top buttons of her shirt. She points to a lever on the console. "When I say now, I want you to pull that lever and then start turning the crank."
Yaz nods. "Got it."
The Doctor grabs her welding apron, goggles, and gloves, tucking the latter under her arm as she pulls up a floor panel and sets it aside. She drops down into the hole and pulls on her gloves before prying open a main panel. There, she sees her patchwork job from this morning—she can't believe it's been less than a day since their crash-landing—and sighs. She pulls a headlamp out of her apron pocket and fastens it around her head. She grimaces as she hears her hair crunch. She really needs a shower.
She quickly undoes her morning's work and the TARDIS goes dark.
"Was that supposed to happen?" Yaz calls out.
"Yes!" the Doctor replies. She replaces all of the wires and shines the light inside. There should be signs of damage, signs that the main engines overloaded, something.
She doesn't see anything, and she has a sneaking suspicion that she knows what happened. "Yaz? Now."
The power comes back on, with no sign that anything was wrong before.
The Doctor frowns, climbs back out of the hole, and kicks the floor panel back into place. She leans over the console to check the displays.
"Full power's back?"
"Full power's back."
"What are you doing?"
"Checking the flight data for any abnormalities."
"Do you think he could have done something?" Yaz asks. "Sent some sort of signal to disrupt the TARDIS?"
"It's possible," the Doctor replies. "He did say he'd been after me for a while. And if that's the case, I want to find out what he did so I can program the TARDIS to avoid or counter it in the future."
"You don't think he's dead."
"The last time I thought one of my enemies was dead, I nearly lost you lot in a plane crash and had my entire world turned on its head," the Doctor mutters. "I'll not be making that mistake again." She finally finds the data that she's looking for. It takes her a moment to process it, but when she does, she lets out a sigh so heavy that it feels like she's deflating.
"What?"
The Doctor shakes her head. "She hit something after you and I fell asleep last night and shut everything down to have a sulk about it."
The TARDIS responds with a very rude sound.
Yaz looks torn between laughing and echoing the Doctor's aggrieved sigh.
"Is it safe to come in?" Dan calls from the door.
"Yes, it is." The Doctor steps back from the console and plants her hands on her hips. "So. Where to next?" Any ideas?"
Yaz checks her phone. "Actually," she says, almost hesitantly. "I were wondering if you could take me home? Family vacation's coming up, and I promised I'd go. To make up for not bein' around that much."
The Doctor's hearts sink, as they always do when she's faced with the idea of being apart from Yaz for any length of time. She gives herself a good mental slap for that one; how could she not have realized how far gone she was for her? "Of course," she says. "What about you, Dan? Anything you want to get up to on Earth?"
"I wouldn't mind a stop back home," Dan says. "Visit my parents, let them know I haven't been killed by aliens. Yet."
The Doctor scronches her nose. "I promise I'm working on a way to unshrink your house," she says. She can't help feeling guilty about that one. After all, if she hadn't been so obsessed with tracking down Karvanista, Dan would still have a house. "So. Stop off in Liverpool for Dan, then back to Sheffield for Yaz."
The other two nod in agreement.
The Doctor sets their flight path and yanks the dematerialization lever. "On our way. In the meantime, I could do with a shower." She gives the TARDIS a look. "Try not to hit anything else while I'm gone?"
The TARDIS makes that same rude sound.
Exhaustion hits her as soon as she's out of sight of the others. She slips her braces off of her shoulders as she trudges down the corridor, already dreading the long walk to her bedroom, buried deep in the TARDIS.
She turns the corner into the bedroom corridor and tries very hard not to notice that Graham and Ryan's rooms are still there, as if they've just gone back home for the weekend. The TARDIS misses them almost as much as she does, and refuses to admit that they're not coming back.
She passes Dan's room, first door on the left-hand side. Then Yaz's room. And then—
"Cheeky," she mutters to her ship, because her bedroom is now right beside Yaz's.
Once inside her bedroom, she quickly sheds the rest of her ruined tux and heads for the shower. It takes three rounds of shampoo to get the mud out of her hair, and her skin is an angry red by the time she's done scrubbing it from her body.
We've seen it. Gallifrey. Burning. Crumbling.
No more home. No family. No future. Just you, left to wander the cosmos, alone, for eternity.
How long until you lose her?
How long until your next regeneration? Until you lose yourself again and have to start all over?
The Doctor steadies herself against the shower wall as a different sort of exhaustion sets in. The same kind of exhaustion that riddled her mind in her previous regeneration and so nearly made her give up.
The worst part is, Hiruk was right. One wrong step and she loses Yaz. One wrong step and the universe tears Yaz from her arms the same way it did Rose and River. One wrong step and she loses herself. One wrong step and everything that she is now dies.
She feels her confidence, the confidence that made her walk across that ballroom to ask Yaz to dance, ebbing away. She feels herself retreating back behind her walls. How can she do this? How can she open herself up to love again when she knows it's doomed?
"What's the point?" she whispers, her voice barely audible over the shower.
What's the point in them being happy now, if they're going to be sad later?
Her breath catches as a different voice, one of her own, rings out in her mind.
The answer is, of course, because they're going to be sad later.
The Doctor shuts off the water and wraps herself in a fluffy towel. Even though the room is warm, thanks to the TARDIS being back at full power, she can't stop shivering.
There's a knock at her bedroom door and she opens it to find Yaz on the other side. "Hi."
Yaz covers her mouth to muffle her strangled yelp and quickly looks away.
The Doctor frowns. "Everything all right?"
"You just opened the door wearing literally nothing but a towel and you're asking me if I'm all right?" Yaz retorts. She shakes her head. "Anyway, I just thought…with everything that happened today, you might want something a bit more comfy to sleep in."
"Are those…"
"The pyjamas you borrowed from me once and then spent half the night talking about how comfortable they were? Yeah."
The Doctor takes them from her. "Thank you."
Yaz nods in that not sure what else to say sort of way. She slides her hands into her pockets and hunches her shoulders. "I know this probably isn't a good time," she says. "But I…I think I want to talk about what happened tonight. What we said to each other before things went bad."
The Doctor stares intently at a button on the pyjama top. "Meet me by the main doors," she says, because if she doesn't take this chance, she'll never take it.
Yaz nods.
The Doctor sets the pyjamas on the bed and changes into one of her usual outfits instead. She ties her still-damp hair back, pulls on her boots, and grabs her coat on her way out the door, stepping outside just in time to say goodnight to Dan.
Yaz waits by the open doors. The TARDIS has made to Earth, hovering above the planet. The sun is somewhere off to the side, and the glow casts Yaz is a beautiful light.
If there were any doubt that the Doctor is in love with her, this is what chases that doubt away. Now she just has to hold her nerve and follow through.
Yaz glances at her as she approaches. "I don't think I'll ever get tired of views like this," she says with a small smile on her face.
There's not much room in the doorway, but the Doctor doesn't mind as she moves to stand beside her.
Yaz looks out at her home planet, her eyes wet with tears. "I know there can't be a happily ever after," she says. "I know I'm not going to settle down, get married, have a family, and grow old with you."
The heartbreak in her voice nearly brings the Doctor to tears.
Yaz turns to face her. "And that hurts. It hurts so much. But I don't care. I love you, and whatever time I have left with you, I want to make the most of it."
The Doctor can't think of anything to say. The words won't come. The lump in her throat doesn't make things any easier. So she does the only thing she can think to do. She pulls Yaz close, sliding one hand up to cradle the back of her neck, and kisses her.
Yaz melts into the kiss, her hands gripping the lapels of the Doctor's coat. She's breathless when they finally pull apart. "That's more like it," she whispers.
The Doctor laughs as she touches their foreheads together. She cradles Yaz's face in her hands, softly stroking her cheeks with her thumbs. They stay like that for a long time.
"Come with me."
The Doctor opens her eyes. "What?"
"On vacation," Yaz says. "I know you just get to skip ahead to next week to pick me up, but I don't. And I don't like being away from you."
"I don't want to intrude, Yaz," the Doctor says. "That's your time with your family."
Yaz shakes her head. "He was wrong, when he said you had no family, Doctor," she says. "Because you're part of mine. My dad adores you. My mum thinks we're dating anyway. And Sonya is going to be insufferable when she finds out we're together."
Those words really do bring her to tears. "I suppose I could use some proper rest and relaxation."
Yaz's smile could easily compete with any star in the sky. "I love you, Doctor."
"And I love you, Yasmin Khan."
The two of them stay there for a while, gazing out into space. The Doctor's hearts still ache with the knowledge that they're living on borrowed time, with the knowledge that one day soon, she'll have to say goodbye, with the knowledge that one day, Yasmin Khan will be just a memory. But this time, she won't let it become another regret. This time, she will love openly and fearlessly and make every single moment count.
Let the future come. All she cares about right now is making the most of her present, side-by-side with the woman she loves.