Chapter Text
Two months of normality. Yaz had had two months of this, and that was more than enough.
She didn’t realise how good being away from Sonya had been for her general disposition. Traffic disputes were even harder to bear than before. Sheffield, the city she had always loved, looked more grey as each day passed.
Two months of boring. Back to her life before seeing the universe. No alien planets, no time travel, no TARDIS. The biggest loss of all- no Doctor.
Here she was, at the station zoning out of the morning briefing, taking notes on auto-pilot and wishing she was somewhere else. Preferably in the company of a Time Lord.
“Uhh…” the sergeant read through his list and fell on one item that made his face drop. “Oh. Yes, I need a volunteer. Redlands Secondary School is having career talks next week and they want someone from the station to go in and talk about the police. There’s a pint in it for whoever makes sure that person isn’t me.”
There was silence in the room as Yaz processed his words and realised what he said.
“...if you’re at all interested, let me know by-”
“I’ll do it!” Yaz practically yelled across the room. Everyone was staring at her. She swallowed. “Sorry, sir. I can do the talk, if you’d like, I mean if that’s okay, I know I’m a junior-”
“Yaz,” the sergeant stopped her. “The job’s yours.”
“Great! Thank you, sir!”
“Hmm, sure, Yaz,” he said, scanning the list once more before looking up. “I think that’s it, you’re all dismissed.”
Yaz knew this was breaking the Doctor’s rules. No contact. Much safer for them both that way, she said, in the letter she wrote to Yaz before she used the Chameleon Arch to turn herself human. She had to see her though, despite the Doctor’s written insistence that everything was going to be fine, Yaz worried.
She hadn’t seen the Doctor since she dropped her off in Sheffield for a ’quick visit’ the day before she received the letter.
She needed to know that she was okay and, rather selfishly, Yaz had to do something to ease her sense of loss. Even just for a little while.
***
Yaz stood at the front desk of Redlands Secondary.
“PC Khan I presume?” the secretary said, looking pointedly at her uniform. “You’re a bit early…”
“Am I?” Yaz feigned innocence. She couldn’t help her excitement over seeing the Doctor again. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no, it’s alright. You can go wait in the staff room.” She caught something over Yaz’s shoulder and smiled. “Jenny!”
Yaz turned and her breath caught in her throat. A blonde head turned to face them, sticking out above stacks of glass lab containers from a tray in their hands.
Yaz did this to get close to the Doctor but she wasn’t expecting to see her so soon. She missed her so much and two months of yearning for her company hit Yaz all at once.
The Doctor ambled over to the front desk, just about balancing everything.
“Hi!”
“Jenny, love, can you please show PC Khan to the staff room?”
“Of course!” The Doctor smiled at Yaz over the graduated cylinders. A warm, but polite smile. The sort that came without the glow of recognition.
“Pleasure to meet you, PC Khan! I’d shake your hand but, you know…”
“D’you want a hand there?”
“Oh no, I’m fine, I've got this.”
Yaz tried to take some of the load and the Doctor swung the tray away, amazingly not knocking anything off as she went.
“Staff room! Let’s go!”
She took off with the sound of shaking glass in her wake.
“Thank you,” Yaz told the secretary before jogging after the Doctor. She slowed and they fell into step beside each other.
“So,” the Doctor said, “here for the career talks?”
“Yep, that’s right.”
Yaz looked down at the Doctor’s clothes, straight jeans that looked well-worn and a navy blue shirt under her lab coat. Not far off from the clothes she wore as her old self, comfortable and practical, just missing her signature eccentricities. It was a bit odd seeing the Doctor without her rainbows and lilac coat.
She looked so human and average. Yaz supposed that was what the TARDIS intended when she created an identity, so the Doctor wouldn’t stand out like she usually did, but at least it wasn’t too far from the Doctor’s comfort zone. Yaz looked at her feet and checked, brown boots. The TARDIS definitely took care there.
Her face was covered by the sweep of hair the Doctor was constantly battling with. Yaz wanted to reach over and tuck it behind her ear for her and she had to stop herself from automatically helping her friend while her hands were full.
It was odd as well to walk with the Doctor like this in silence, she usually filled it with her meandering thoughts, speaking them as they came to her. Perhaps it was another built-in feature to keep the Doctor from drawing too much attention to herself. Maybe she couldn't be recognised for her face but those long excited explanations would give her away in an instant. Something Yaz recalled fondly many times since she last saw her- how the Doctor spoke about all the wonders of the universe, colouring them even more than reality with her enthusiasm.
“It’s just down here,” the Doctor said, leading them down a long corridor.
At the end they came to a door and before Yaz could reach for it the Doctor went ahead and pushed it open with her back. She leaned against it, holding the door open and nodding to Yaz to go through.
“Thank you,” Yaz said, smiling at her as she passed.
The Doctor grinned back, her face distorted through the glass containers. “You’re welcome!” she said. “Margaret!” she called out to a woman by the sink. “This is PC Khan, here for the talks!”
Margaret turned around and saw Yaz. “Thank you, Jenny!”
When Yaz looked back again, the door was swinging shut. The Doctor was gone. She faced Margaret, who stepped forward to shake her hand.
“Hi, I’m Margaret Thorne. Guidance counsellor. Thank you so much for coming in, PC Khan.”
“It’s nice to meet you! Call me Yaz if you’d like.”
“Yaz. Care for a cup of tea?”
“I’d love one, thank you!”
Margaret hummed as she filled the kettle. “I spoke to your sergeant on the phone, I hope he told you what to expect. Are you all set for the presentation?”
Yaz sat down at the table. “Yeah, should be pretty straightforward I reckon.”
“Great, that’s fabulous.”
Yaz tried to think of a casual way to ask about the Doctor. She wanted to know how she was getting on at the school.
“The teacher who showed me in here, what was her name?”
“Ms. Song! Our new biology teacher, she’s absolutely wonderful. Came to us a couple of months ago.”
Oh good, Yaz thought, she’s chatty. Margaret was interrupted by the door opening again and an older woman stepping through.
“This is Sarah, our other biology teacher. Sarah, PC Khan- Yaz, sorry.”
Sarah gave Yaz a tired wave and fell into a chair across from her.
“Oh she’s brilliant!” Margaret continued. “I’ve had so many girls coming in to me saying they want to do science in university, three for medicine, just in the past few weeks she’s been teaching! Usually only get a handful asking after those courses.”
“This Jenny you’re talking about?” asked Sarah. “So enthusiastic. I came up there once to borrow a beaker and the whole class was sitting on the benches, Ms. Song in the middle of it all, with a frame holding a flayed sheep’s heart, pumping dye through it with this great big tube contraption she’d made. The kids were completely entranced, no one even noticed me walk in. When I did the heart dissections, I had two fainters and half the class couldn’t find the aorta.”
Yaz smiled at the image Sarah described, matching the Doctor's expression to her memories. “She sounds amazing.”
“Tell you what, I wish I had a fraction of her energy,” Sarah said, slumping over the table to lean her head on her hand. “She’s always bopping around the place. Keeps to herself mostly, though. Actually pretty quiet outside class.”
Margaret set down a carton of milk. “We’re very lucky to have her. She came at just the right time.”
Yaz dumped her tea bag into a bowl. “Maternity leave or something was it?”
“The job was open for a long while,” Margaret answered, opening a cupboard and peering inside. “Our old biology teacher, Ms. Cassidy, she was diagnosed with breast cancer last year and took leave unexpectedly. She’s a wonderful teacher too, it seemed impossible to find someone to take her place. We’ve had lots of temps in to cover the classes. Seems like Jenny is settling down quite well here though, hopefully she’ll stay for as long as we need her.”
Something pulled in Yaz’s chest at that. She nodded, and took a sip of tea to hide her face.
Slamming another cupboard closed, Margaret turned around with her hands on her hips.
“Sarah, have you seen the custard creams?”
That was all it took to make Yaz smile again.
“I bought a huge pack this morning for today and I left them right here,” Margaret said, pointing to the counter and looking around in puzzlement.
Yaz imagined the Doctor quietly taking the biscuits to fuel her weird addiction and she couldn’t suppress a laugh. The two women looked at her.
“Sorry,” Yaz said, swallowing the last laugh. “Sorry, I just remembered something funny.”
“Care to share with the class?”
Yaz shook her head. “You kind of had to be there.”
***
“I thought this was more of a classroom presentation sort of thing?”
Yaz looked over the heads of an assembly hall full of students from her spot standing in the wings of the stage.
“So did I,” said the man on her left, dressed in a suit with the name tag ‘Derek, Accountant’. He looked a bit green.
Margaret bustled through holding a list. “Yeah, we do it every year and usually it’s just the Year 11’s but we thought this time we’d get some of the younger students in, you know, to get them thinking about the future. So, Derek, you’re up first. I’ll introduce you, just wait for your cue.”
With that, Margaret strode onstage. She began speaking, talking about career paths, university and alternative routes to getting where you want to be.
Yaz looked over at Derek. He was grey now.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine once you get out there.”
“I really don’t think I can do this,” he said, staring blankly ahead.
Yaz was about to deliver another generic encouragement but she realised he meant it.
“How about I go on before you? It’ll be easier if you’re not the first, I’m sure.”
Derek looked at her like she’d just plucked him from a ledge. “Would you? That would be great, thank you so much.”
“Sure, no problem at all!”
Then Margaret was looking their way. “And now I’m happy to introduce you to our accountant…” she trailed off, spotting Yaz at the very edge of the stage with her eyebrows raised and ready to step out, implying she was going on first.
“Change of plan!” Margaret said, addressing the audience once more as Yaz walked onstage. “I’d like to introduce you to PC Yasmin Khan of Hallamshire Police, here to speak to you about keeping law and order on the streets of Sheffield. Give her a nice warm welcome!”
There was sporadic clapping amongst the students and a stronger response from the back of the room where some staff were standing.
Yaz instantly spotted the Doctor watching and clapping happily. Still, as if she didn’t know Yaz at all, not the comforting familiarity she usually found in the Doctor’s gaze.
Of course not, Yaz finally affirmed for herself. This wasn’t the Doctor who watched her now. It was Jenny Song.
Yaz almost forgot she was supposed to be speaking.
“Hi everyone! So, I’m going to talk to you about being in the police, how you get into this job, what you need to do if it’s something you’d like to pursue…”
Yaz couldn’t take her eyes off Ms. Song and she focused on a ginger boy in the audience instead, “... the day-to-day tasks, some of the more exciting stuff, and how you might advance within the police.” Now this ginger kid looked nervous, Yaz moved her gaze. Public speaking didn’t usually catch her out, but this was difficult.
She pushed on, worked through her notes, she even made the students laugh once or twice and soon it was over. She hadn’t looked at Ms. Song once since the beginning.
As she walked off the stage to a stronger applause than what greeted her, Yaz allowed herself a quick glance at her best friend’s face.
The second she looked, Ms. Song was looking at her too and their eyes met. The beginnings of a smile appeared on the Doctor’s face before contact was broken by a curtain at the edge of the stage.
A hollow feeling hit her and she walked right into Margaret.
“Oh! I’m so sorry!”
“That was great, Yaz, well done!”
“Thank you,” Yaz said, “and thanks for having me. I have to get back to the station-“
“No! I thought you’d stay for tea afterwards!”
“Margaret I-”
“Please, stay, Yaz! Just for a bit, we’d like to thank you for your time.”
Yaz really didn’t want to see the Doctor again. Not right away, not with the way she felt at that moment. She missed her Doctor, Jenny was a stranger with her face.
“I… okay.” But when would she see her again? "Sure, I’ll stay.”
“Lovely.” Margaret turned away and gave Derek a pat on the back before pushing him onstage. “Good luck.”