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The Doctor is on trial. The Doctor is on trial. The Doctor is on trial.
Run. Run. Run.
After the dawning realisation had finally hit them, Ryan, Graham and Yaz couldn’t get those thoughts out of their mind. They were running; sprinting faster than any of them had ever sprinted before through the forest. On a normal day, the leaves crunching underfoot would have sang a comforting melody to anyone who passed through this area. But with each snap of a branch and crunch of a leaf as they ran, the blood rushed further to their head. They didn’t even stop for air. Panic consumed all three of them.
The Doctor is in danger.
Yaz couldn’t even think straight; Graham and Ryan were navigating for the three of them until they reached the lake. They couldn’t see anything. All the townsfolk gathered at the water’s edge were in the way, watching something unfold. A witch trial.
All three of them knew who was being trialled, yet they still craned their necks above the crowd to make sure.
Yep. The Doctor is definitely on trial.
Pushing mercilessly through the crowd to reach the water’s edge, Yaz stared incredulously at the scene unfolding before her, unable to shout, unable to speak, unable to comprehend anything. Time stood still, and the next few moments seemed to last a lifetime.
She’s in danger.
The Doctor has a unique way of getting out of sticky situations, all three of her companions knew this by now, but Yaz was incapable of dreaming up a way she could save herself from this one. Huge chains shackled her to the tree which was acting as the ducking stool. One look at her coat on the opposite bank confirmed that the Doctor didn’t have her sonic screwdriver to hand.
She vaguely heard Ryan and Graham behind her, shouting the Doctor’s name. Sure enough, the time lord heard.
Looking straight at Yaz, the Doctor conveyed a million words into just one glance. To anyone else, the blonde woman about to be trialled would have looked calm and collected. But Yaz saw the slightest bit of panic in her eyes. She had never seen the Doctor this vulnerable before. She almost looked… scared. Yaz’s heart skipped several beats.
From what seemed like miles away, Yaz heard a voice call out.
“Duck the witch!”
Snapped back into reality, Yaz gazed in horror as the lever was pulled and the Doctor was immersed in the depths of the lake. She heard two people, supposedly Ryan and Graham, shout a concerned “Doctor!” from behind her.
The surface of the lake became still again.
It all happened so fast.
One minute, Yaz was rooted to the spot in a mixture of fear and horror with her mouth hanging open, unintelligible words emerging in strange sequences. The next minute, she was tearing off her blue denim jacket, fear pushed to the side as she jumped into action.
Shoving her jacket into Ryan’s arms and purposefully ignoring the look on his face as if to say “are you crazy?”, Yaz kicked off her boots and ran towards the water’s edge.
She’d do anything to save her.
Just as the Doctor did a few hours before, Yaz dived head-first into the freezing cold lake.
The temperature of the water hit her like a sharp knife, knocking all the breath out of her. She forced herself to open her eyes underwater, something which she never could do as a child. It stung tremendously. Coming back up to the surface for a sharp intake of panic-filled breath, she wildy looked around for bearings. Then Yaz propelled herself in the general direction of where the Doctor was last seen above the surface. She only had one thought going through her head:
Please be alive. Please be alive. Please be alive.
After what seemed like several hours (but in reality was only 30 seconds), Yaz’s hand brushed against something hard in the water. As she got closer she began to make out the shape of the ducking stool in the water and felt around frantically for the Doctor.
Yaz knew she was running out of breath. Yet she couldn’t afford another trip to the surface.
She had to save the Doctor.
Increasingly frantic now, short of breath, eyes stinging heavily from the murky water and the ice cold temperature seeping into her body like a disease, Yaz reached out and grabbed hold of one of the chains. And another. And another. And the tree. But where..? Arms flailing and her brain screaming at her to go up for air, panic she never knew possible enveloped her as she realized the worst:
The Doctor isn’t here.
And I’m running out of air.
Meanwhile, above the surface, chaos ensued. Ryan was studying the water carefully, which had gone still again, no sign of life. Graham couldn’t bear to watch. He had turned to the king, shouting at him as if his life depended on it.
“Raise the stool! Let her go! She ain’t a witch!”
But Ryan’s gasp a few seconds later tore Graham’s attention away from the king. The water was moving again. Something was coming to the surface near the other side of the lake. The crowd, including Becka Savage, King James I, Graham and Ryan stared at the bubbling water as something (or someone) emerged from it, dragging themselves up and onto dry land. A collective gasp rippled through the crowd as they all saw the short straggly hair, unmistakably blonde even though it was soaking wet. Ryan hit Graham’s arm.
She’s alive.
The Doctor stood up, water droplets falling off her skin, visibly shaking with the cold. She turned to face the silent and shocked crowd, a rather triumphant look on her face. Which didn’t last very long.
Where’s Yaz?
She saw the blue jacket in Ryan’s hand. The concerned look on her friends faces. The realisation hit her like a tonne of bricks.
“YAZ IS IN THERE!” Ryan screamed at the Doctor, pointing wildly to the lake, gesturing towards where they had last seen Yaz at the surface. Heart sinking, she didn’t even hesitate.
Yaz had tried to save her.
Less than a millisecond later, the Doctor was making her third trip into the lake that day.
She dived straight back in the water gracefully as the intense silence within the crowd sharply broke. A wave of murmurs and whispers began to fly through the crowd. Yaz had been down there for too long. If the cold didn’t kill her, she had surely drowned. Despair seemed to envelop Ryan and Graham as they stood speechless, unable to help.
The wind whistled through the leaves. The grass swayed in the breeze.
The surface of the water was motionless again.
The Doctor could hear one thing going through her head apart from the rush of piercing cold water:
Please be alive. Please be alive. Please be alive.
She swam quickly and deftly towards the bottom of the lake, where the ducking stool was. Hands scrabbling down in the depths of the piercing cold lake, she brushed against chains and… hold on… was that an arm?
Yaz’s arm! She pulled on it, her heart shattering when she realised the arm was attached to a seemingly lifeless body. Unconscious, or dead? Alive, or not?
Please be alive.
Ryan gasped shakily. In the middle of the lake, the surface of the water suddenly erupted. He could just about make out two bodies, the Doctor was swimming, carrying Yaz. Alive, or dead?
Please be alive.
Ryan, along with an out-of-breath and visibly panicked Graham, got to the other side of the lake just in time to grab the Doctor as she reached the side of the lake. They heaved her out frantically and she rolled over, seeing stars, but not letting go of Yaz. Never letting go of wonderful Yaz.
Moments passed like hours and whole life times seemed to flash by as Yaz lay still. Not breathing. Alive, or dead?
The Doctor felt her hearts beginning to break.
This isn’t happening. This couldn’t happen. It’s not possible. Yaz wasn’t supposed to die, not yet, not before-
But at the sudden exposure to fresh air and the dryness of the land, mixed with the scent of muddy earth, the sound of the crowd roaring and the Doctor leaning over her, Yaz awoke. Eyes fluttering open gently, they met the Doctor’s with a spark of recognition and an explosion of realisation.
Please be - she’s alive!
The Doctor grabbed her coat and wrapped it around Yaz. Both of them were shivering rather violently, so Ryan, sinking down to the floor in utter relief both of his friends were alive, quickly took of his jacket and passed it to the Doctor, who took it gratefully.
Graham shooed the crowd away. “Nothin’ to see here!” he yelled, as the crowd backed off, slightly disappointed they didn’t get any dramatic deaths. Now it was just them at one side of the lake with the King and Becka watching over them, open-mouthed.
Yaz was bundled up in the Doctor’s huge coat, which was a lot warmer than it looked and was slowly beginning to quell the shivers wracking through her body. She became aware of the fact she had 5 pairs of eyes boring into her and she swivelled her head to face the pair of eyes she cared about the most. The Doctor looked right back at her, and although her body was bitingly cold, she gave Yaz the warmest smile.
Graham interrupted with a loud cough, pointing behind the sopping wet Doctor. All 5 of them swung around, coming face to face with a group of the strange mud creatures filling the bodies of the supposed “witches”.
They were coming for Becka - that much was obvious. Still cautious and summoning every last bit of energy she had left in her, the Doctor helped Yaz up from the floor and shielded her Team Tardis with her whole body.
“I will be with you, in the water, in the fire, in the air..” they groaned simultaneously as Becka begged them to stop.
They stopped.
The Doctor incredulously turned to her, the questions forming on the tip of her tongue disappearing as she saw the grey teardrop fall once again from Becka’s eye.
“It’s in you, just like it’s in them.” Dawning realisation. A tree, cut down because it spoiled a view. A high-tech prison, damaged. Alien prisoners, set free. Becka Savage, transformed into the Morax queen. Demanding for the King.
A blast. The Doctor said it was just as bad as the hangover she had at the Milk Wars of Keston Five. Yaz, quieter and subdued (probably owing to the fact she’d just narrowly escaped death), smiled at that. But the king was missing and the Doctor snapped into action as she always did.
When people ask for help, she never refuses.
As she fiddled around with the tree used for ducking the witches (including herself) and figured out it was advanced alien technology, Ryan sidled closer to the silent Yaz, who was lost in thought.
“Thought you were dead, y’know,” he started, snapping Yaz back into reality. She smiled slightly.
“Good job am not then,” and then her eyes darted over to the Doctor, who had literally just saved her life while she was trying to save hers. Yaz forced herself not to look at her. They hadn’t brought up the subject yet. Words left unspoken were hanging in the air over them like mist on a winter’s morning.
Almost as if she could read Yaz’s mind, the Doctor looked up.
“Oh yeah, that situation,” she said, gazing at Yaz. “Me almost drowning. You almost drowning,” she grinned. “We’ll talk about that later. First, though, we have a prison to find, and a king to rescue! Let’s go, team! Wait, gang? Fam? No..” she tailed off, but strode with meaning towards Pendle Hill, leaving the rest of them to follow in her wake.
They did indeed find the king. They did indeed manage to lock the Morax army back where they belonged in the prison of Pendle Hill. All events here were to be erased from history, forever. Yaz couldn’t stop thinking about the 36 innocent women who had been tried for witchcraft, murdered in cold blood in front of their own townsfolk and families.
The Tardis was quiet that night.
Yaz was alone in the console room. She liked being here, it was peaceful. She looked around and saw the ghost of herself, running around the console with the Doctor right behind her, both laughing uncontrollably as they piloted the ship to unknown destinations. She saw the ghost of herself standing in the doorway for the very first time, as the Doctor discovered everything that was new about her beautiful ghost monument. She saw the ghost of herself walking into the Tardis, committing to this life, wanting adventures and wanting more. More time with her.
She didn’t regret any of it.
Incredibly deep in thought, Yaz didn’t notice when the Doctor walked into the room softly, approaching Yaz but making a quick detour to the custard cream dispenser. She looked up and a ghost of a smile appeared on her face as the Doctor pressed the lever twice and offered Yaz a biscuit. Taking it gratefully, they munched away in silence until a single tear started streaming down Yaz’s face, much to her embarrassment.
The Doctor seemed to have noticed. She swallowed and carefully wiped the tear from Yaz’s cheek, her hand resting on her face a little too long.
It was silent apart from the occasional whirr of the Tardis in the background. Neither of them noticed.
“You tried to save me,” the Doctor smiled down at her but had a puzzled look on her face.
“And failed. And nearly died. And then you saved me,” Yaz was quick to point out.
“Well, I had to steal your thunder, didn’t I? Can’t have my friends saving me all the time,” the Doctor joked.
Yaz laughed at that; the Doctor was relieved to see her whole face light up again.
“Thought you were dead,” the Doctor said, in a barely audible voice, as quiet and as timid as a mouse.
Remembering back to when Ryan had said the same thing to her, she opened her mouth to give the exact same reply, but stopped herself.
The truth is, the Doctor couldn’t quite comprehend that Yaz had risked her life for her. She’d heard from Graham that Yaz jumped in the lake without any hesitation, with the utmost panic and fear for the Doctor’s life. But why? She thought hard. She thought of all the time she’d spent with Yaz. The way she said “I want more. More of the universe.” The way she paused before she said “More time with you.” The way she laughed up at the Doctor when she made a joke. The way her mother said “are you two seeing each other?” The way Yaz had panicked at that. The way they could look at each other and communicate a million words without saying a single one. The way she cared.
She was everything the Doctor loved about the human race.
In the present, Yaz smiled up at the Doctor. Her eyes were brighter than any of the stars.
The Doctor suddenly knew why.
Neither of them were entirely sure how it happened exactly, but all of a sudden soft arms were wrapped around each other. They pulled themselves into a hug: a warm embrace that both of them never wanted to end. Two hearts beat fast against one. Somehow they weren’t close enough. The Doctor’s hands naturally fell into Yaz’s hair, stroking it gently. They closed their eyes and escaped into their own universe, just the two of them against the whole world.
The Tardis whirred and clicked in the background. But the noises of the Tardis couldn’t drown out Yaz’s soft murmur in the Doctor’s ear, quiet and shaky and nervous and full of relief.
“I love you.”
The Doctor opened her eyes. Her smile stretched from ear to ear. She leant back from the hug and broke contact, enraptured by Yaz’s tear stained eyes, looking even happier than the time when the president of India had awarded her the Bharat Ratna medal.
“Oh, Yaz,” she said, and her smile spread even further.
The Doctor took both of Yaz’s hands in hers. She paused for a second. This was very strange for her. An unknown feeling. But she liked it. A lot.
She took a deep breath.
“I love you too, Yasmin Khan.”