Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

 x. 

There was nothing that very often bothered Marie, on this side of town, in this particular alley. It was narrow, and there was a giant rubbish bin they only ever emptied once every two weeks. No one and nothing bothered her, when she slept between it and the wall. Not even the wind. Certainly not any people, and that was the way she liked it. In the spring, at least, when it was warmer, and she could keep to herself without freezing at night.

She'd always liked spring. It reminded her of the garden. The garden was in her mind, a perfect little yard with a fence and a bird feeder, and it had been her mother's once, probably. Or maybe her daughter's. Her memories were like that, these days, all tangled up and scattered and lost to the wind, but the garden was a picture that stayed and she visited it often, when she had nowhere else to go. She thought of it now, lilacs and begonias and marigolds and beautiful tulips, bright against the blue dawn and the dripping grey of spring rain against the sterile ground. 

It was her alley, and her garden, and her dripping spring rain, and nothing bothered her here. Only—

It was a noise that had woken her with the dawn. And the noise was not a dream, like she had thought. It was like the wheeze of a very old car, only that wasn't quite it. A groaning sigh, like a great old man waking from a nap. The creak of an ancient door. All of those things at once, somehow, impossibly. The sound filled her little alley, that aching wheeze, louder, louder, until it pulled into reality what should have been impossible. 

It was strikingly blue, even against the murky gloom of early morning and her terrible vision, and it landed with a shudder between the rubbish bin and the brick wall in front of it, looking for all intents and purposes like it had never been anywhere else. Still and silent. 

She shuffled cautiously out of her sleeping bag, wrapped her wizened fingers around the hinges of the rubbish bin and stood uncertainly, knees aching. Flinched back into the wall as the doors of the blue box opened with a violent creak and a blue and yellow blur was spat loudly from its insides into Sheffield's lonely dawn. Birthed onto the pavement shouting and flailing, hands scrabbling desperately against the damp ground. The shape whirled and flailed and stood, throwing itself back against the box, which closed its doors before the shape could reach it. 

“No,” the shape wailed, hands pressing against the doors, and the hands were small and elegant and the flailing shape was a woman in a coat the same colour as the early sky. “No, please, please don't, don't do this, let me back!” The hands whitened against the doors of the box, pressing, pressing. “Let me in,” the woman begged, voice cracking, “let me in!” 

But the box was not a very good listener and the doors stayed firmly shut, though the woman shuddered and howled at it for a very long time, until the sun began its lonely creep between the buildings across the street. It landed washed out and weak between the cracks, into the alley, like it always did. Only when the sun finally hit her shoulders and caught watery gold in her hair did the woman finally stop, sagging forward and sinking to her knees, hands trailing down the front of the box. She pressed her head against it with a shuddering sigh.

“It's not my fault,” she whispered to it, still pleading. Whispering, perhaps, because she had no voice left to shout. “Please. Please.”

But the box stayed still and silent and it would not open and it would not sing.

Eventually the woman dragged herself to her feet, fingers trailing along the front of the box, coat sleeve dragging under her nose. A pale, bedraggled figure, but her eyes were dark and sharp, even though the rest of her was crumpled and stained. There was grease spread across one cheek, painted across a sleeve, great smears of black. 

“Oh,” she said, startling, as she turned reluctantly from the box. Her eyebrows knit together over a tear-stained face and somehow it was kind. “I'm so sorry, I didn’t—I didn't know anyone else was here. I didn't mean to land here, I didn’t—want to land here.” Her breath hitched. “Incidentally, where is here?”

“Sheffield.” But maybe it wasn't. She could never be too sure of things like that, these days. Marie shuffled forward. The woman was strange and loud and not very good at parking, but her face was kind. There were worse things to be afraid of. “In the spring. There's lilacs everywhere, you see.”

“Sheffield,” the woman muttered, glancing back at the box in what looked like irritation. “Of course. Where else?”

“Your box won't let you in.” 

The woman swallowed hard, grey and lonely in the weak sunlight. She was standing in a puddle that nearly reached the ankles of her boots, but she didn't seem to care. “She'll come around,” she said, sounding hoarse. “I hope.”

“Never in all my days seen a door open for hoping, love.” Marie shuffled forward a step further, leaving the shadow of the rubbish bin, hands lifting from its hinges. 

The woman's face was only sad now. Sad and kind, and not in the way that was strained and performed by strangers passing by on the street. A little deeper, a little older. 

“Me neither,” she admitted. “But the hoping part, that's still important.” Her lips pressed together, a bit grimly. “That's what I keep telling myself, anyway. Sheffield,” she muttered again, glancing back at the box. “Sheffield, it's always Sheffield, but at least that means—” Those sharp, dark eyes met her own. “Sorry. What's your name?” 

“Marie,” Marie said. Stepping closer, into the watery sunlight, skirting the puddle.

“Marie.” The woman smiled warmly, like she'd learned something important. “Do you know what year it is?” 

She did today, and that was probably lucky. “2019,” she said, remembering it smudged and inky at the top of a newspaper she'd caught a glimpse of the other week.

“Well, that'll do.” The woman was determined now, though her eyes stayed troubled. “Quick trip to the local hardware shop, detour through a steel mill, maybe I can—” She swallowed, glancing back at the box again. “Worth a go, anyway.” 

“The hoping part, you said.” 

“Exactly.” 

Marie shivered inside her well-worn jumper and looked critically across at the woman, in her sky-coloured coat. It looked as thin and dirty as its owner in the early gloom. Not warm enough at all for spring, especially at night.

“Your box won't let you in,” she said. “But there's a mission down the road that serves very good soup.”

The woman looked back at her, confused, until her face broke into a smile again, grateful and sad. 

“Big fan of soup,” she said quietly. “You'll have to have mine for me.” She sniffed and plunged her hands into the pockets of her coat, searching. A succession of impossible things joined her boots in the puddle, splashing as they fell. A ballpoint pen, a book of French verbs, a television remote, a ring of keys. An embroidered handkerchief she kept safe in her hands, the turn of her mouth slightly dismayed. “I don't have anything to give you,” she said, disappointed. “I don’t—have anything that could help, I don't have anything you people value.” 

But the handkerchief had a lovely border of flowers, purple and pink and red and green, bright and cheerful, and her eyes couldn't help but fix on it. The woman looked at her for a long moment. Watching.

“But I suppose that's not for me to say, is it,” she said, smiling again. Extending her hands in offering.

Marie took the handkerchief, felt the woman's hands, cool and smooth, against her own. The handkerchief was bright and clean and very soft. She thought of the garden, of lilacs springing from the ground, the fresh smell of rain and grass and dirt.

When she looked up again, the box loomed still and silent, like a monument, and there was only the scent of stale rubbish and metal up her nose.

And the woman was gone, like she'd never been there at all.

Chapter Text

The wind under the door.

“Jeremy,” Yaz said, meeting the solemn grey eyes of her colleague with barely suppressed frustration. “When I said to call me if you ran into anything interesting, I meant call me if you ran into anything interesting. Not foist things off on me at the end of my shift when you're trying to leave early so you can go for pints with your match of the week.”

“Well, it's not like you're going anywhere for pints, are you?”

Jeremy swallowed, frowning in regret that wasn't quite apologetic enough for her tastes.

“Really?” she asked flatly. What had been a slight tension at the back of her neck was spreading rapidly to encompass her entire skull. Her vest felt too heavy in the heat of the hallway, constrictive, pressing in around her. Her hair was still damp with rainwater, bun heavy and water-logged at the back of her head. Long day. Long week. Long month. She didn't want to help anyone—least of all him. She just wanted to go home. “That's how you're askin' for favours?”

“Didn't mean it like that,” he said, a sheepish hand reaching up to scrub the back of his neck. “Sorry, Yaz. Will you still take it, though? I'll give you the arrest, even. Put it down under your name, I haven't done the paperwork yet.”

Of course he hadn't.

“My shift's about to end,” she protested, trailing after him as he lead her down the hallway anyway. Resigned, and it was a feeling that should have been far less familiar to her. “Why don't you ever follow through, Jeremy?”

“Well, we can't all be like you,” he said, a bit sharp, and, oh, right, there it was. There was a reason he was asking her and not one of his other mates. “Come on, Yaz. Bit more exciting than slapping parking tickets down all day, innit?”

Don't talk to me like that, she felt like snapping, but it wasn't worth it. It was almost never worth it. She was better at her job than all of them, and all it meant at the end of the day was that she couldn't afford to let herself be anything like them. Her hard work would pay off. If she followed the rules, if she kept her head down. If she kept letting them step all over her. That's what they all kept saying to her at the top anyway, when she bothered to complain.

She'd stopped bothering, a while ago.

“Fine,” she said, swallowing tightly. “Who is it, anyway?”

“Some nutter. Picked her up for trespassing, theft. Wouldn't shut up the whole ride here.”

“Maybe you're just a poor conversationalist.”

He glared back at her half-heartedly over his shoulder.

“I'm just saying, she's proper weird. Right up your alley, really.”

“Hold on, hold on,” she said, ignoring the barb, striding forward to match his step. “Theft? Have you caught whoever's behind all those break-ins, then?”

“Greg thinks so. I dunno, though. Pattern doesn't make any sense. Who breaks into a shop and doesn't even have a go at the cash register? Gotta be gangs, I'd bet my marbles. This one's just a nutter.”

There was something—wiggling, at the back of her mind.

“What did she take?” she asked, as they rounded the corner towards processing. “This time.”

“Broke into that electronics shop, across the bridge, right? Went past all the phones and computers and tried to take off with a hard-drive and a set of batteries.” He shook his head. “Greg took down some of the details, and the stolen goods are in evidence. You can ask her about the rest of it.” He raised his eyebrows in her general direction. “Maybe you can get a better answer out of her. Figure out where she got loose from and send her back.”

“Don't be awful,” she protested, frowning. “People don't just commit crimes 'cos they feel like it.”

The eyebrows stayed up. “Cute,” he said. “Solid thinkin', that. Get you promoted in no time.”

“Just—” She breathed sharply. “Can we just get on with this, please? Sooner you pass it off, the sooner you can leave.” And we'll both be glad for it.

“Right. Fine.” Surprised, offended. Like he had no clue what had set her off. “Just through here. Cheers, Yaz.” It was a brittle sort of gratefulness, she thought, following him through the doors into the bowels of the station. Cold, sallow lights flickered overhead. He didn't want to owe her anything. None of them ever did. Somehow, it never seemed to stop them asking.

“Have you taken prints yet?” she asked, as they ventured through the last set of swinging doors, through to the secure area they used for questioning, processing. “Is she in the system?”

“Not yet,” he said, reaching to unlock the door. “Still have to—”

But the door swung open before his key had even met the lock. And the room, in all its stark, grey, sterile glory, was abandoned.

Jeremy faltered.

“Greg,” he called behind him, fumbling for his radio. “Greg, did you move her? Greg?”

Yaz stepped inside, relishing a bit pettily in the panic in his voice, even though she knew she shouldn't. His match of the week was going to have to wait, probably. She crouched down by the chair and table, staring intently at the handcuffs still attached firmly. Grinning, a bit, even though this mess would mean she couldn't leave just yet either.

“They haven't been unlocked, these,” she noted, though Jeremy was still calling for Greg behind her. Radioing for assistance. The place would be locked down in a moment, she was bracing herself for the sound already. Feeling that something in the back of her mind again, the barest hint of a suspicion that she wouldn't let herself indulge in, even though her heart was pounding with it, that desperate sort of ache.

She'd spent too many months, hoping. Waiting. It would only hurt too much, if she was wrong.

“How did she get out?” she wondered out loud, tilting her head to get a different angle, wincing at the harsh glare of the lights overhead. The cuffs hadn't been tampered with or unlocked in any way. “How's that possible?” She really was just talking to herself, now. But the handcuffs, now she was looking at them closer, were not free of evidence, like they'd seemed from afar. There was the barest hint of dried rust, just along the inside, catching in the light.

She recoiled, bile rising at the back of her throat. She stood, troubled.

Jeremy stumbled into the room, white with panic. “Greg didn't move her,” he said, fingers clenched around his radio. Outside, in the hall, an alarm began to buzz, high-pitched and shrieking. “They're locking us down, hopefully she didn't get far. Sergeant wants us to check evidence.” He shook his head, eyes catching on the handcuffs. “How could she have gotten out?”

“She just did it,” Yaz said. “They haven't been broken.”

Jeremy whitened further, face twisting into a frown. “That's not possible,” he protested. “People can't do that.”

“No.” Yaz turned to the door, heart pounding. Stupid, stupid, she thought. Don't go there. “People can't.”

“Oh, I'll be in it for this,” he moaned. They traipsed down the hall together, against the sudden rush of people, down towards the evidence room. “Don't suppose you'd like the credit for this part as well?”

“This bit's all yours,” she said firmly, biting her lip against the shrillness of the alarm, against the bitter flush of satisfaction rising from her gut. “In fact, I think I'll let you handle all of it.”

His shoulders slumped, but he didn't protest. Good, she thought, a bit viciously, tired down to her bones, thinking longingly of home again, where she could at least stop—pretending. Let him have their censure, for once. She might not have known where to stop, but at least she'd never let a suspect slip through her fingers inside the bloody police station. That had to take a special kind of incompetence.

Though, if the suspect was who it couldn't possibly be, then maybe she couldn't blame him—but she trapped that thought in the back of her head. There was no time for fantasies, not anymore. No time for adventure, no time for dreaming. Only life, stretched out ahead of her, a long, grey tunnel with a start and an end, and a thousand predictable milestones to hit between them. A straight line.

She had to lie to herself, sometimes, and pretend like that had ever been enough; pretend like her life before had been fulfilling, pretend like she hadn't always been full of the same kind of wanting. Pretend like she'd been ruined, instead of saved.

She needed that blame, was the thing. That spite. Some days it was the only thing that propelled her out of bed.

Most days, actually.

“Sergeant Sunder,” Jeremy said, voice thin with trepidation as they entered the evidence locker, where their superior officer loomed large and displeased. “I—”

She tuned the both of them out, though watching Jeremy getting ripped to shreds by their superiors would normally have been more than enough to hold her attention. Instead, she eyed the stack of items that had yet to be processed with mild interest. Too curious, they always told her, during reviews. Too pushy. Too many questions. Leave things be, let things go. Stop asking for more.

But she hadn't quite learned how else to be, yet. She pressed closer to the table, mindful of Sunder and Jeremy, still standing by the door, voices raised. It was what Jeremy had said. There were batteries, a hard-drive, bagged and labelled. There was a bag labelled 'pocket contents’—and another, and another. The bags were full of all sorts of eclectic things: pens, ribbons, a calculator, a striped sock, a banana, far too much to fit in any normal sort of pocket. And underneath it all, glinting dully through the flimsy plastic of an evidence bag—

The hair on the back of her neck stood up again.

Oh, she'll be wanting that back, she thought mildly, even though her lungs felt tight with something that was so close to anger, so close to hope. Something furious and desperate clawed its way up her throat.

She turned her back to the table, eyes fixed on Sunder and Jeremy, still not paying any attention to her in the slightest. Breathing steadily, she let her heart pound a silent betrayal in her throat and reached behind her, spiriting the sonic out of the evidence bag and up her sleeve before she could think about it twice.

It was the worst thing she'd ever done. If anyone ever found out she had done it, she would be worse than fired.

But the metal was cool against the skin of her forearm, against the frantic pounding of her pulse in her wrist, and the adrenaline pulsing through her veins was a thousand times better than anything she'd felt in weeks. Months. She breathed in, head clear like she'd just woken from a very long nap.

Neither of them were looking at her. Probably they'd forgotten she was even there, if they'd ever noticed her at all.

She grinned.

She didn’t dream well, that night. In her sleep, the universe beckoned wide and then swallowed her whole, and she was left stranded in the evidence locker, the doors sealed tightly, the fluorescent lights blinding and sterile. Spat out into banality. Screaming in a straight line.

She woke with the sonic still tucked up her sleeve, cold against her skin.

“You talk in your sleep, you know,” Sonya told her over breakfast, leering at her over her morning tea. “Been doin’ it for months.”

Yaz sighed. Whenever Sonya got bored, she liked to poke at things, stir things up, and she wasn’t remotely in the mood to play along today. She felt uneasy, still. Uncomfortably awake, like she’d been living half-asleep for the past few months. Deciding what jam to have for breakfast felt impossibly trivial. “Oh, really?” She pulled a jar from the fridge at random and set it on the table.

“Oh, really,” Sonya said, leaning in. ‘Doctor’,” she pouted, in a sickly sweet voice that edged on the offensive.“‘Oh, Doctor, where have you gone?’”

“Which you wouldn’t know,” Yaz pointed out, smearing marmalade onto her toast with more force than was strictly necessary, “if you weren’t always sneaking home past midnight.” She glanced up in challenge, scowling at the crumbs caught on the edge of the knife. “Or did you think you were being stealthy?” She put the knife down, feigning puzzlement, but she kept her tone sharp. “D’you think mum knows?”

Sonya’s leer dropped away into a scowl of her own.

“Just because your girlfriend abandoned you and all your mates,” she muttered, turning to toss her emptied mug into the sink with a clatter. “Don’t mean you have to go round sucking all the joy from the rest of us.”

“She’s not my—” Yaz tried.

Sonya rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

“And she didn’t abandon us, she’s just—”

“Gone.” Sonya raised her eyebrows. “Without a word. Come on. She’s ghosted you, Yaz. ‘Bout time you came round to it.”

Yaz felt her lips press together.

“She wouldn’t—”

“It’s been months.”

The sonic was still cold against her wrist.

“Yeah,” Yaz said, quieter. “I know.”

Sonya’s gaze didn’t soften, because Yaz wasn’t entirely sure it was capable of that sort of thing, but her face did grow more serious. There was a flicker of something behind her eyes. A reminder of something neither of them ever talked about.

“Mum’s worried about you. She won’t say anything to you, but I’ve heard her talkin’.” She tossed her hair over one shoulder, flippant again, just like breathing. “And there’s only room for one problem child in this house, so—sort yourself out. Before I get cross. Plenty of weird older blondes in the sea.”

“That’s not—” Yaz swallowed, closing her eyes briefly in frustration. “That’s not what it’s about.”

“Whatever.” Sonya turned to leave, evidently feeling as though she’d fulfilled her quota of concern for the day. “Don’t matter what it is, whatever it is, time to move on. Bigger dreams, yeah? Laters.”

“That’s not—” But the door slammed around the rest of her words. For a moment, Yaz just sat while her toast grew cold in front of her. Her family’s kitchen loomed, warm and empty and silent. Familiar in a way that made her skin crawl.

She glanced down at her marmalade toast. It was just the same thing every day, wasn’t it.

But the sonic was still cool on her skin, smuggled up her sleeve. New and old and wonderfully odd. And as for its wayward owner—

Well. Time would tell.

“This is the bigger dream,” she whispered.

Her toast slid into the bin with a dissatisfying thud.

“Can we have the siren on?” Ryan asked, beside her, leaning over to inspect the buttons by the radio.

“No,” she snapped, swatting his hands away. “Honestly, don't let me regret this. Neither of you should be in here. If anyone finds out I'm not actually where I'm supposed to be, let alone that I took off with the both of you in my car—”

She’d had the sonic up her sleeve for two days now. This morning had brought with it a kind of clarity, and also a sort of perspective—as well as a lead. She hadn't slept well again, hadn't dreamed well, all her thoughts were still jumbled up and tangled in the pit of her stomach. Hope and fear and excitement and a kind of burning, aching anger. Cold and sour.

It was the fear that was the worst though. Crawling up her spine, whitening her knuckles, but she couldn't place it, couldn't figure out what she was afraid of.

“Already burned that bridge a bit, haven't you?” Ryan asked, a bit critically. “Stealin' from the evidence locker?”

“I don't wanna talk about that,” she said, clenching her teeth, making the turn towards the centre of town sharply. “This is all—a big mess, I don't understand what's going on. But I couldn't just leave it there, could I?”

“Of course not, love,” Graham reassured from the back. He'd come dressed for adventure, in his nice jumper and his best hat. Optimistic. He'd probably packed a sandwich somewhere, too, she thought, and it was almost enough to make her smile. “You're doing just fine. We'll figure all this out together.”

“Bit weird, though,” Ryan turned his face to the window, contemplative. “All of this. Why wouldn’t she come find us, after everything? She’s gotta know we ain’t cross.”

“I don’t know,” she said tightly, grinding the car to a halt on the side of the road. It was Saturday, and just the thought of trying to find a spot in an actual car park made her want to pull her hair out. She didn't want to stop them here, she just—needed a second. A minute. “She didn’t—she didn't leave any clues, she didn’t—” She took a deep breath. “She just left. Escaped.”

She glanced out the window, out at Sheffield's early spring. If you could call it that. Winter had been dry as a bone, grey and parched, and it hadn't done the grass any favours. Weeds poked dully out of the pavement, brown and stifled. No flowers. It was drizzling today, but it was only a grey sort of mist that evaporated before it hit the ground, mingling in with the car fumes. Miserable.

“Like she didn't want me to see her.”

She felt Ryan's hand hover over her shoulder, tentative, but she didn't turn from the window. Her police vest was thick and impenetrable and heavy on her back, like a suit of armour. She wanted, selfishly, to avoid the look she knew she'd find in his own eyes.

He'd taken it all so much better than her, was the thing. On the surface, at least. He had his friends, he had his NVQ, he had—Graham. His father too, now, and at least the three of them could talk about it. Talk through it. But she'd kept her family in the dark, and in the end it had seemed pointless to tell them the truth, when she didn't even have the means to prove it any longer. For months she'd been stewing, stalling, suffocating, and she had—nothing to give them. No explanation. No comfort.

But at least she'd had no context for abandonment. Ryan couldn't say the same, and she couldn't stand it anymore, meeting his gaze. It was all written there. Waiting.

“Oh, come on you two,” Graham said, and when she twisted in her seat to look at him he was frowning at them all. “Don’t talk like that. She’s our friend. I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

Ryan only shook his head. “I hope so.”

Yaz kept silent. She was tired of hoping.

“Yaz?” Graham shifted, looking back at her uncertainly “Only I sort of thought you’d have a plan.”

“I do. On the radio,” she said finally, her mouth dry. “I heard them talkin’ about a potential sighting of someone matching her description. Down Bramall Lane.”

“She could be anywhere by now.” Ryan frowned.

“Not anywhere. Oh, come on,” Graham said, when neither of them jumped to immediate conclusions. He raised his eyebrows. “Think, you lot. At the end of the day, what is the Doctor?”

Ryan stared back at him blankly. “An...alien?” he tried.

“No,” Graham said, exasperated. “I mean—yes, that too. But what I meant was—”

Oh. Of course.

“A creature of habit,” Yaz said, fingers drumming across the steering wheel as she twisted back around.

“Not followin',” Ryan said. “What, are we trackin' down a custard cream factory?”

“Not a factory,” Yaz said, shifting back into drive with relish, pulse pounding. The ghost of a grin swept over her face, despite herself. “A warehouse.”

Of course. It had to be, there was nowhere else she'd go, nowhere else she knew any better. They hadn't visited it since that fateful moment they'd all been flung into space, but abandoned warehouses were hardly good real estate. Very likely, it had just sat there, waiting, all those months.

She spun them back onto the road, intent. Her heart was racing again, brightening the dullness of early morning, the grey procession of limp clouds across her windshield.

“Hold on, that warehouse?” Ryan squinted forward as they made their way, wincing as she made a sudden stop, and she bit her tongue to hold back any offense. She was a meticulous driver. The traffic down by Bramall Lane was mad enough that she did, in fact, briefly consider putting the lights and siren on, but she kept her mouth shut, silently horrified at herself. “Didn't we—didn't it get a bit—”

Blown up.

“Only one way to find out,” Graham offered, reasonable until his last breath.

“The outside still looks intact,” she said, driving past slowly. Watching intently, but there was no flash of blonde hair through the dirty windows, no sparks or flames or anything else that might indicate that the Doctor was around.

She drove past it twice more and then parked them at the end of the road, so they had a clear line of sight but would be well out of the way of anyone leaving.

“It looks abandoned, still,” Ryan pointed out.

“Don't mean she's not in there.” She settled in to wait, arms crossed across her vest. Feeling, somehow, impossibly, like they wouldn't have to wait for long. “When she does exit, we'll follow on foot. We can split up, I'll lend you two a radio.”

“What do you mean?” Graham asked, undoing his seatbelt and leaning into the front. “Aren't we going in to check if she's there?”

“No,” Yaz said tightly. “If we confront her here, she'll just lose us and run.”

“What are you talking about?” he said. “She's the Doc, she's our mate. She won't run from us, this is all—this is all some sort of mixup. Alien business. We don't need to be playing complicated games of chess with our own friends.”

“She did sort of take off, Grandad.” Ryan twisted to look at him. “Last time. And she's been in Sheffield for days. Long enough to get arrested, at least. She didn't come to see us. She's trying to give us the slip. Again.”

He was trying to play it cool, because it was how he tried to play everything, but even after all these months it was hard to hear anything but defeat in his voice, stale and resigned. Graham could hear it too. She could see it in the twist of his mouth.

Yaz swallowed, determination and spite mingling in her gut. It all tasted bitter at the back of her throat.

“We should follow at a distance,” she said. “Pursue her back to the TARDIS and confront her there. Fewer avenues of escape. Better odds for us.”

“Oh, I hate when you think like police,” Graham muttered. “This don't feel right, you two. It really don't.”

“I love it,” Ryan said, clapping her on the shoulder. “You're brilliant, Yaz.”

She smiled, feeling sharp, feeling tightly strung. Elastic.

“I know,” she said. Eyes tracking a lonesome, familiar silhouette as the distant door to the warehouse creaked open. “And d'you know what else?” She undid her seatbelt and opened the car door, blood pounding in her ears. About to abandon a police vehicle in broad daylight, about to jeopardize her job, her livelihood. Her life, very probably. She felt the sonic, cold metal against her skin, still tucked safely up her sleeve. “I was right. Follow me.”

“That was a good, solid hour of walking,” Graham gasped in a whisper as he and Ryan huddled up behind Yaz's arm. She was all but holding them physically out of the Doctor's line of sight. “How do you lot do it?” Not that she had noticed them once, or was even looking vaguely in their direction, but they'd come too far now to screw everything up. Down into Sheffield's bowels, into the abandoned, dirty parts, unloved. Not all that safe, either. Especially when you were dressed like a fed.

“Shh,” she hissed, twisting to glare at them. “Just—hold on a moment. Wait for her to get inside, then hurry, so she doesn't dematerialise without us.”

“That seems like a plan that could go very wrong.” Ryan shifted, craning his neck to try and get a better look into the alley. “Besides,” he whispered. “She's not goin' in, anyway, look.”

Yaz peered into the alley again.

“Oh, come on,” the Doctor was pleading, face smushed right up against the TARDIS doors like she'd been trying for quite a while. Arms at her side, entire body leaning morosely, stubbornly, into the front of the ship. Whatever she'd built in the warehouse, from everything she’d—acquired, lay abandoned at her feet, waiting. “I've got what I need to sort all this out, why are you still being like this? What are you waiting for?”

“That sounds as good a queue as any,” Graham whispered, and he stepped around the corner, out of Yaz's grasp, before either of them could protest. “Doc!” he shouted. “Long time no see!”

She startled, turning to face them all with a jump that ended with her arms raised defensively. “Oh,” she gasped, arms lowering. Her face circled through a complicated sequence of emotions that Yaz couldn't even begin to decipher. “Team! Gang! Fam!” Her face—thinner and dirtier and paler than Yaz had ever seen it—settled finally on a brittle kind of delight that only mostly covered up the wild-eyed panic. Her eyes were glassy with it. “Wondered when you lot were finally going to show up,” she tried. “What sort of time do you call this?”

Yaz stalked forward, mindless of the puddle she was splashing through, mindless of Ryan and Graham behind her, furious on their behalf, even if they weren't. “Try again,” she said tightly, reaching for the Doctor's right wrist, yanking up her grimy sleeve in the same fluid motion. There was a pained hiss of breath that she ignored. Bruised, mottled skin underneath that she didn't.

She felt her teeth grind together so tightly it was a wonder her jaw didn't crack.

“I could have helped you,” she hissed. “You were right under my nose, I could have helped you.”

“Ah,” the Doctor said, pulling her wrist out of Yaz's grip with a wince, tugging her sleeve back down. She tried to take a step back, but she only collided with the TARDIS. “I know, I know,” she placated, hands raising in surrender. “Didn't want you to get into trouble.”

“Bit late for that,” Yaz said, “seeing as I've stolen evidence for you, which is, for the record, a crime.” She pulled the sonic out of her sleeve. “How exactly were you intending to get on, without this? Did you not want to see us so badly that you were just going to leave it behind?” She stepped away, hurt bubbling up the back of her throat, a kind of insensible anger that couldn't be banished, even by those sorrowful eyes.

Even by the relief settling in her gut.

“I'll be having that back, if you don't mind,” the Doctor said, very carefully, hands still raised. Her eyes were fixed on the sonic almost desperately, now she knew it was there. Like she was talking down a child that had taken something they shouldn't have. The hand she could move fidgeted anxiously, fingers twisting. “Just— ”

“Doc, what have you done to yourself?” Graham stepped to Yaz's shoulder, Ryan at his heels, and all three of them were together now, huddled in a line. Grey skies above, watery daylight trickling through, but the alley was narrow and cramped. Dark, in the corners. No way out but through the three of them. “Your hand—”

“Houdini's fault,” she interrupted, smiling tightly. “Or mine, I suppose, I stuck around for the ropes but never learned his trick with the handcuffs. Silly me.” The smile faltered, in the silence that followed. “They took away my sonic!” she protested, like that was explanation enough. “And emptied out my pockets too, you know, I had a banana in there I was saving—”

“How do you go from there to breaking your hand?” Ryan asked, incredulous. Looking like he was reaching the edge of the same conclusions Yaz had found herself at and was not enjoying it at all.

The Doctor pressed her lips together, irritated, and normally it would have been a bit funny. “Wrist, actually,” she corrected. “Had to dislocate a thumb, too, but I did it all very carefully, nothing to worry about.” She waggled the fingers of the hand in question and scrunched her face into a poor approximation of a smile. “Yaz?” she asked, tightly, already moving on. “Sonic? Only I really do need it, a bit, time-sensitive situation we've got going on here. Though I suppose in a way they all are.”

“Why did you leave it behind?” Yaz tossed her it, jaw still tight. “If it's so important.”

She snatched it out of the air with her good hand. “Well, it was very much a—an escaping moment, and less of a thinking moment.”

“You panicked and ran.”

She cleared her throat, avoiding their gazes. Sheepish. “Basically, yeah.”

“Doctor,” Ryan asked, shoulders tense in Yaz's peripheral vision. Still not angry enough, if you asked her, but maybe that was a good thing. She wasn't in the mood for explanations, or excuses, or apologies, but somebody still had to ask the questions. That was how it worked. “Where have you been?”

“What d'you mean, where have I been?” the Doctor protested, still pressed up against the TARDIS, the sonic now clenched in her bruised hand, tucked protectively to her chest. The guilt—that's what it was, that cagey, awful blankness—was sliding slowly off her face. “I've been giving you space, you said you needed a weekend!”

“It's been three months.”

She paused, jaw hanging. Uncertain. “What?”

“It's April, Doctor,” Ryan said, plaintive. “Spring. Didn't you notice?”

There was a different kind of panic now, sliding in behind her eyes.

“Spring.” Her breath hitched. “Oh Ryan, I'm so sorry,” she said, face crumpling. “I didn’t—I didn't even think, I landed here by accident, I never meant to—I was always going to come back before—” She banged her head against the TARDIS again, purposefully this time, frustrated. “I was going to come back,” she insisted, without meeting any of their eyes. It was impossible to tell whether she was lying or not. “I promise. I just—you needed space, after that last adventure, and I needed—I needed—”

“Why won't she let you in?” Graham interrupted. “The TARDIS, I mean. Doc, how long has it been since you saw us last?” His face was grey in the gloom of the alleyway. Lined with a tentative mix of caution and suspicion.

“It's a long story,” the Doctor said, leaning back into the doors again. Her expression turned sour. “Or not so long, really. Just a—a slight disagreement. Lover's spat. Friendly dispute. Bit like when you come back from the neighbour's smelling like somebody else's cat, and then your own cat hates you a bit, for a while, only actually that's not what it's like at all, forget that. Nothing to worry about, though, I thought I'd fixed it— ”

Out of curiosity, Yaz pressed her hand gently to the TARDIS doors, waiting to feel the hum, that comforting, familiar warmth. They swung open at her touch, sending the Doctor sprawling backwards into the entrance, graceless, surprised. Her head impacted the grate with a resounding clang.

“Oh, well, look at that,” Graham said, brightening. A hint of wryness colouring his tone. “Good thing we showed up in the nick of time, eh, Doc?”

The three of them stepped lightly over the Doctor and into the TARDIS. Yaz glanced down, smug, as she glared up at the ceiling.

“Really?” she demanded, betrayal painted across her face. “Really?”

“You know what they always say, Doctor,” Ryan said over his shoulder. He grinned. “TARDIS knows best.”

“That's playing dirty, you cheeky—” The Doctor sprang to her feet, incensed, hands on her hips. She scowled down through the grate, into what Yaz assumed was the TARDIS' centre. Her heart. “Oh, we are havin' words!”

“Huh.” Graham strolled around the console to meet them, hands shoved casually into his pockets. His eyes wandered, still wrapped up in his own reminiscence. “Looks like the TARDIS got the kids in the divorce.”

“It's not a divorce,” the Doctor protested, veering towards the console, limbs haphazard. Her good hand trailed over the controls, searching. Out of the corner of Yaz's eye, it was achingly familiar. Not something she'd been certain she'd ever see again. “It's just a—disagreement. A difference of opinion. Like I said.” Something on the console sparked and she jerked her hand away, shaking it. “Ow.”

“Don't think the TARDIS agrees with you,” Ryan pointed out, humour warm behind his eyes. It was shallow, though. Covering up whatever he needed it to. She could see it in the working of his jaw. “Ooh,” he whispered to Yaz, eyes glinting. “Don't like it when Mum and Dad fight. Mum and Mum? Dad and—” He cut himself off. “You know, actually, I'm gonna leave that.”

Yaz shook her head and glanced up at the ceiling, taking in the ambient glow, the warmth of the walls. She trailed a hand against the console fondly. Her fingers came away grimy with oil and dirt. It was all a bit—dusty. Unloved. Her stomach turned.

The Doctor finally found what she'd been looking for and pulled. The resulting flash of sparks lit up the interior, crackling, pushing the Doctor back from the console. The ambient lights flickered once, twice.

“Uh.” Ryan glanced up at the ceiling, brows knitting together. “Was that supposed to do something?”

“Yep.” The Doctor's lips had flattened in defeat. “I'll try again in a bit. I suppose. Make yourselves comfortable!” She whirled around, pointed herself in the direction of the doors, where she'd left her odd heap of scraps waiting outside. “I've got a sort of project I'm working on.”

And that was enough, that—reminder of the outdoors, of the world beyond the TARDIS, beyond its familiar warmth and promise. Yaz felt something cold and sour spread from the centre of her chest, tingle numbly in her fingertips. Her eyebrows knit together.

“Hold on,” she said, fingers tightening into fists that she unclenched deliberately, slowly. “Hold on. 'Make yourselves comfortable'? Is that all you've got to say, after all this?”

The Doctor turned back, hair catching the light, dull and golden.

“What else would I say?” she asked, guileless. “'Don't make yourselves comfortable'? That one seems a bit rude, but I am admittedly not the authority.”

“Don't play daft,” Yaz said, hearing their boots but not watching as Ryan and Graham consolidated behind her. In support, or in trepidation, but she found she didn't much care which it was. She wasn't used to either. “You left us. Did you not even—did you not—”

And the Doctor was opening her mouth, a panicked, flippant excuse about to fill the space between them, but Yaz wouldn't let her.

“Don't you want to know how we've been?” she asked. “I thought we were—I thought we were all friends. You've missed so much,” she said. “Aaron comes round for tea with all of us on Wednesdays now, you know, and my sister got a new boyfriend. Mum found a new job, last month, finally. We had a party for Graham's birthday, and Ryan got his NVQ, and I—”

Her throat stuck. Stuck around the fact that in the absence of everything that had made her life special, it had stagnated. No friends, no promotion. No motion towards, only motion without.

“—I went to a wedding,” she covered quickly. Her mouth tightened at the muted sympathy she caught sight of in the Doctor's eyes. “Last week. Better mehndi this time, even Nani thought so.” She presented her hands to the Doctor, who paused, but took them gently. They were still stained faintly, dark and intricate, against the Doctor's, cold and mottled. “See?”

“Beautiful,” the Doctor said quietly, smiling quick. Sunlight through trees. Too brief. “I'm sorry, Yaz.”

Horribly, she felt her eyes fill with tears but she bit them back until they were sour in her chest.

“Where have you been?” she whispered, anger slipping from her grasp like soap in the bath. She reached for it clumsily, wanting it, needing it. “Where did you go?”

The Doctor tensed again, cornered. She dropped Yaz's hands and stepped back, a thin and lonely silhouette. The space between her and them was wider and more deliberate than it had ever been before, cultivated, calculated. Awkward. Like she'd grown unused to other people.

Oh.

“Did you go off on your own?” Yaz demanded, arms crossing. Her breath hitched. “Doctor. For how long?”

“You're terrible at that,” Ryan said, stepping in. “You said it yourself, you said you were no good at it. Why would you do that?”

“I'm not,” the Doctor said, too sharply. Her eyes filled with regret and she turned her back to them, fiddling absently with the console. Always moving. “I just needed—I needed you to be safe, for a while,” she said quietly. “That's all. And I'm no good at life in a straight line, either, I've tried it, you would've hated it. I'm a terrible houseguest. So I had to leave, for a little bit, and I had to leave you here. Safe.”

Graham's boots echoed softly across the grate. He knew better than to reach out and touch, but he stood close to her ear. “We knew the risks, Doc.”

“Did you?” she asked, too mildly. Shoulders hunched.

“Yeah,” Graham said. “We did. And it was our choice, knowing that, travelin' with you. And I'll tell you what, we're fine now. We're fine. See? And we'd've been even better if you hadn't gone and given us the slip. If you hadn't left for three months without a word.”

“I meant to be back sooner,” she whispered. “It's not my fault.”

Of course. Nothing ever was.

“Where did you go, then?” Yaz asked again, giving up her anger for now, giving in to her curiosity instead. The TARDIS hummed soothingly, and she felt it deep at the back of her mind. From the inside. She gave in to that, too, that feeling. Comfort. Familiarity. Excitement. Movement towards. “What have you been doin'?”

“What I'm always doing,” the Doctor said, sliding back into herself, even as the TARDIS began to shudder, rumble, unexpectedly. She pulled a lever in reaction. “Running.”

The TARDIS shook around them and they all stumbled. Ryan clutched at Yaz's arm, and she grabbed him by the elbow, holding him up as they skidded across the floor. The Doctor pulled another lever, but the console sparked and she fell backwards, stumbling to one knee. She ground one fist into the side of her head, wincing, and raised her other hand anxiously. “Oh, no, no, no, not right now—”

“Doctor,” Yaz shouted, keeping hold of Ryan as the walls shuddered around them, as she felt the universe tip and slide like it only ever did when they were travelling, but they hadn't left, they hadn’t— “What's happening?”

“It's that long story I was telling you about!” The rumbling continued, followed by a monstrous clang that echoed up from the floor, right up through Yaz's bones. She shuddered, feeling a kind of foreign dread fill her lungs. “No, no,” the Doctor pleaded at the sound, hunched over herself, lips bloodless. “Please don't spit me out again, please don't spit me out again—”

“Spit you out?”

“I said it was a long story!”

The searing, shuddering rumble tapered off, so suddenly the shock of it almost tipped her and Ryan sideways again. She clutched at his jacket before they could fall.

“Thanks,” he said, breathless, clapping her on the shoulder as they straightened.

“Always.”

“Doc, what the hell was that?” Graham asked, shakily turning from the pillar he'd been clinging to. He was white as a sheet, sallow in the warm interior glow of the TARDIS. “Did we go somewhere?”

“No,” the Doctor said, sounding irritated as she picked herself up off the ground. Pale and pinched. “It’s—ripples. Temporal disruptions. Been happening for a while. Someone wants my attention. Or to rip a hole through my past, one or the other. ”

“What does that mean, ripples?” Yaz crossed her arms, frowning.

“Just what it sounds like.” The Doctor spun around on her heels, hands flailing. Her eyebrows raised in delight at having something to explain. She was on the edge of something so familiar it ached, but there was too much fear in her voice, too much panic. “Imagine—ripples, in a pond, when you chuck a stone in. Only the pond is my entire existence, and the stone is—”

She stopped. Face unreadable.

“It's complicated. I'm being hunted down through my own timeline.” Her hands dropped to her side. “And, actually, I had some time to think about it, while I was handcuffed to a table, and—”

A swallow. She looked, inexplicably, up at the ceiling.

“Not just anyone could do that,” she whispered. “Not just anyone,” she said, getting louder, face darkening into a belligerent scowl, “could also try the TARDIS phone first, before going to all the trouble of disrupting my own personal history!”

She turned her glare to the console, the pull of her mouth tense, miserable. Waiting. The phone—Yaz had never noticed it before—began to ring. It was a lonely sound. The Doctor let it ring through to the answering machine with a stubborn, petty silence.

There was a click. A warbling tone.

“Lord President,” the answering machine said, the voice stretched and skipped across what sounded like an impossible distance. “It's time to come home.”

The message ended with an anachronistic beep that reminded Yaz of the phone they'd had when she'd been a kid, and there was silence, thick and tense. For a moment, the Doctor was only totally still. Yaz felt a thrill of fear settle at the back of her throat.

“Not every day,” the Doctor said finally, very quietly, “you get a phone call from the end of the universe.”

Chapter Text

Your shadow at evening rising to meet you.

The spell broke.

“What—” Graham started.

“Home?” Yaz asked, frowning. “Where's that, then?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Ryan said. “President?”

The Doctor smiled tightly, springing into action like she'd never stopped at all. “To answer all your questions, yes, that was home, home is called Gallifrey, no, we're not going there because it's a long story, and yes, apparently I'm still the President.” She pulled down a lever with relish. “Even though I left it a bit of a mess, last time. Broke a bunch of rules, stole a TARDIS, again, and then almost broke the whole of time and space trying to keep my best friend from being dead, also a long story, we don't have to get into it, you'd think that would be grounds for impeachment, really—”

“Doctor.”

She paused. Breaths ragged in the sudden quiet.

“If it's just home calling,” Ryan said, carefully. “Why are you so afraid?”

She looked to him, hair catching golden at the edges, hesitant. Her eyes flicked away.

“Would one of you mind retrieving the pile of stuff by the doors, actually?” she asked, switching gears. “I'm a bit worried if I step outside, she won't let me back in again. The TARDIS,” she said, circling the console, patting it gingerly, “is very sensitive to time. And I'm being—disrupted, twisted, my time-stream is being tampered with, she doesn’t—like it.” Her lips twisted. “It's hard for her to swallow.”

“What does that mean, tampered with? How can anyone do that?” Yaz frowned, as Ryan went to grab the Doctor's assortment of things with a sigh. “Why would your people do that, if they could have just phoned you?”

“You know, I ask myself that question a lot,” the Doctor said, flipping a switch at random. There was a bite to her voice that Yaz didn't understand. “Bit paranoid, my people. Especially when it comes to me.” Which raised more questions than it answered, but the Doctor was already moving on again, eyes on Ryan as he returned. He placed the odd-looking device on the floor and stood, frowning.

“What's all this for, then?”

“Brilliant,” she exclaimed, scooping it up in her arms, kicking open the panel that lead underneath the console with her boot. She leapt down without a thought, landing with a clang. Yaz watched her move, blonde head bobbing underneath the grate. “Thanks, Ryan!”

“Doctor!” He crouched down, peering beneath the floor. “What's it for? Come on, don't leave me hanging, you love explaining things.”

“Bit complicated!” she shouted back, circling the console's roots. The shadow of her moved underneath them. “You're all really clever, though,” she considered. “Okay, picture this! The Time Lords—”

“The Time Lords?” Graham hadn't crouched, his knees were too creaky, but he'd settled himself against a pillar, content to watch. “Your people are called Time Lords? That's well pretentious, innit, Doc?”

“I didn't choose it!” she protested, voice floating up. There was a distant clatter. “If you think the name's well pretentious, wait until you see their stupid hats. Anyway,” she paused briefly, and there was another clang, a shudder as she attached something. “The Time Lords have this thing called the Matrix. It's like a big—ghost computer. When we die, our consciousness becomes part of the algorithm. The Time Lords use to it predict things, study them, process them. It's a record of the past and the future, all at once.”

“Alright,” Ryan said reasonably, still crouched. “So when you die, you get uploaded to the cloud. Got it. Makes sense. Not weird at all.”

“That's not—” She paused. “Actually, that's not technically wrong, ten points, Ryan.”

“Ah,” he sat back on his heels, beaming. “Missed the points.”

“Here's the thing, though.” Another echoing clang shook the console room. “If I'm right—and I usually am, let's be honest—they're using the Matrix to track me through my past, trying to triangulate my exact position right here, right now. Punching through walls until they get to the right room. It's dangerous. It could rip me apart. The ripples mean they're getting closer.” She paused. Yaz watched her through the grate, still. Face in shadow, unreadable. “And I can't let them find me. So!” She whirled into action again. “Pulling out an old trick. Old school! Worked before.” Her voice was thin with uncertainty. “Should work again.”

“What trick?”

Her head popped out of the panel, grinning.

“Randomiser!” She pulled herself back up into the console room, dusting off her coat, which did absolutely nothing to improve it. She was covered in oil grease, mysterious stains. Most of them looked like they'd been there for a while. “The Matrix is relying on fixed points in time to predict where I'll be. We're circumventing it—hopefully—by making my future completely unpredictable.” She stumbled over to the console, peering into one of the screens. “I've routed it through the TARDIS data core and the navigation circuits. There's no way of choosing a destination, now. It's all down to a random algorithm. Should throw them off the scent, until I can figure out what to do about it permanently.”

“You're just gonna run from them,” Yaz said, a bit flatly, stepping out of the Doctor's path as she started a familiar sequence of random buttons and pulled levers that would set the TARDIS on her way. “Is that what you always do, when you have a problem?”

“It's not like I'm trying to duck out of family dinner,” the Doctor said, an edge to her voice now, that familiar bite that Yaz still didn't understand. “It's a long story. I told you, I left things a bit of a mess. If they're looking for me now, it's not because they're happy with me, 'cos they never are.” She flipped another switch, grim. “There's no pleasing them. Only running.”

“Well,” Graham said, peeling himself off the pillar. “Good thing you're not running from them alone, Doc.”

Her face pinched.

“No. When I take off,” she said, turning to them fully, consonants sharp at the tip of her tongue. “There's no telling where we might end up, even less telling than usual. As long as the randomiser is attached—and it needs to stay attached—I won't be able to bring you back here.”

“All due respect, Doc, like hell you're leavin' us behind again.” Graham's voice wasn't sharp, but it wasn't kind, either. There was a firmness to him that Yaz had forgotten he was capable of. “Give us a choice,” he said, softly. “We deserve that much.”

“You don't understand, I can't guarantee anything right now,” she said, hands clenching and unclenching at her side. “Least of all your safety, and I need—I need you to be safe.”

“And we need you, Doc.” He stood tall, unassuming. Planted firmly. “It can't be one or the other. Look, it's not always perfect, but it's better, isn't it? When we're all together?”

That face was so open, and it was always her undoing. Yaz watched a thousand things slip and slide behind her eyes—apology, regret, fear, acceptance. Mostly fear. Sharp and dark, darting like a fish between reeds.

It had always been there. It was almost the first thing you noticed about the Doctor, underneath the bubbly exterior—that tendency to panic. It had been a bit endearing, once. A funny little flaw, in a person larger than life, too good to be true.

Somehow, in their absence, it had taken her over.

“Not this time,” she said, mouth twisting unhappily. “I'm sorry. Really, I am. For leaving you here, and for leaving again. But I have to do this on my own.”

As she raised her hand to snap at the doors, the TARDIS shook again, but it wasn't the unfamiliar shudder of time being distorted. Yaz watched, eyebrows raising in surprise, as a lever on the console dragged itself down with a creak. The last step, she thought, catching herself and Ryan against the familiar shake and rattle of the the TARDIS dematerialising.

“What?” the Doctor said, betrayal skirting the edges of her face again, and Yaz found herself caught between sympathy and a sharp, spiteful kind of vindication. “No!” She spun on her heels, reeling, as the TARDIS rattled and sparked. “No, don't do this, don’t—” Both hands shook over the console, pulling levers with abandon, desperate but futile. She'd taught Yaz that much, at least, about piloting the TARDIS. You couldn't stop the dematerialisation once it had started, not without universe-ending consequences. She sank to her knees, forehead colliding against the edge of the console with a clunk, a frustrated snarl escaping between her teeth.

They landed with a heaving shudder. Quick trip. Maybe it was easier for the TARDIS, when a random algorithm was deciding where to go instead of an indecisive alien.

No going back, now, Yaz thought mildly. Feeling like she probably should have been feeling more concern than she was. But they were together. Reunited. And the promise of adventure, of excitement, of something more was singing through her veins, lurking out the door.

The Doctor breathed raggedly, crouched against the console. Frozen. It was odd and unsettling, that stillness, and Yaz could taste the unease in the air, but it was Ryan that went to her, while Yaz and Graham ventured closer to the door. Watching.

“Doctor,” he said, crouching down. He always ended up being the kindest of the four of them, somehow, even when none of them deserved it. His brow was creased in sympathy, eyes dark.

She wouldn't look at him.

“Come on,” he said, keeping his hands resting on his knees. “I know you wanna know what's out there as bad as we do.”

“Ryan,” she breathed.

“You're on the run, and now we are too. So what? We can handle it. You said it yourself, we're off their scent for now.” He shifted closer. “We'll figure out how to get home eventually. Until then, why not have an adventure?”

He stood, slowly, and she rose with him, knees shaking.

“It won't be like last time,” he promised. “We'll stick together. We'll be okay.”

“I can't promise you any of that,” she whispered. “I couldn't before. I really can't, now.”

He shrugged, moving. “Still here, aren't we? Not always up to you, you know.” He tapped the console fondly on his way to the door. “Clearly.”

She stayed planted by the console, silence mutinous. Though, really, mutiny was more applicable in their own case. Sort of. Could it be called mutiny, even, if it was your ship itself that was against you? Yaz felt another sour pang of something trying hard to be sympathy, catching in her throat. It never quite made it.

Ryan stilled, one hand on the door, Graham at his shoulder.

“Come on,” he said again. Sincere. “Doctor. You can't start making everybody's decisions for them just 'cos you got scared, you can't just—” He faltered. Swallowed. “You can't just walk out when things get hard. 'Course, some of us are used to it.”

It wasn't quite a flinch, Yaz thought, watching the Doctor close her eyes. But calling it anything else seemed a bit generous.

“I know,” she said softly, across a vast distance.

“Yeah.” There was still no venom in his voice. “I know you do. Can't figure out if that makes it better, or worse.” He clapped Graham on the shoulder. “C'mon, Gramps. Let's explore.”

The doors creaked as they exited, comforting, familiar. Graham raised his eyebrows pointedly as he followed Ryan out, but Yaz couldn't quite tell who exactly the expression was meant for. She caught a glimpse of gloom and a warm sort of green light beyond them and felt her heart pounding in her ears again, a sharp anticipation in the pit of her stomach. A kind of promise in itself.

“Better join them,” she said, taking her radio out of her vest and stepping across the grate to place it on the console. She wouldn't need it out there. Wherever there was. “Or should we take care of your hand first? The TARDIS must have things.”

“In a minute,” the Doctor said mildly, staring at the doors. She scowled half-heartedly. “Oh—I am genuinely curious. Let's go.”

“That's more like it,” Yaz said, following. “Did it at least work, then? Have you lost them?”

“Feels like it.” The Doctor pushed open the doors, a hint of light at the back of her eyes again. Despite herself, Yaz thought. “If I suddenly have never existed, or if I'm unexpectedly kidnapped by a bunch of blokes in stupid hats, we'll know for sure that it didn't.”

“That's less comforting than I wanted it to be.”

“Welcome to time-travel.” Her face twisted briefly into the happy scrunch, the one that showed up whenever she saw something she'd never seen before. Good or bad, and so Yaz had learned quickly not to use it to make value judgements before she'd assessed whatever they were looking at for herself. “And welcome to—wherever this is. Probably should have checked the scanners first, actually. Brilliant.”

Brilliant. Well, it was certainly—Yaz flinched as a drop of harsh-smelling water landed on her nose—drippy.

“We're underground,” she noted, stepping away from the TARDIS to place her hand on the wall, feeling a distant rumble under her hesitant touch. It was smooth and curved. Some kind of metal, rusted and warm, reaching over their heads like a tube. There was a door just ahead of them, closing off the space, but it was all lit by lamps. She turned her head up to look at them, towering and curved, like an odd, distant relation to the street-lamps at home. They were lit with a greenish light, warm and chemical.

“Yeah,” the Doctor said, a step away from a real grin. “Old-school, this. Good, solid engineering. Looks like at least a couple centuries into your future, but it might not be human. Ryan, Graham,” she called. “Find anything interesting?”

“Just more tunnel behind us.” They approached from behind the TARDIS, Graham a step ahead, green catching in his eyes. “Bit gloomy down here, innit. Though it's nice of you to join us. Where are we, Doc?”

“No idea,” she said, lightening with every step. There was no else she'd ever met, Yaz thought, taking in the rest of the tunnel, who managed to both despise and delight in not knowing something at the same time. “Tell you what, though, look over there.” She bounded to the other side, across from the TARDIS, boots splashing through puddles of the same murky water. The ground was dirt and metal, grimy, packed down and slippery. “This,” she said, stalking around an odd, rusted oval that Yaz hadn't noticed before, “looks like a transmat to me. This must be a station. A transmat corridor. Haven't taken a transmat in years,” she said, delighted. The oval was taller and wider than her. At first glance, it only looked like rusted metal, bent into shape, but Yaz could see flashing lights on its side now she was closer, grimy with dust and dirt. “Bit like taking the tube, only there's no tube, it's just a quick and dirty teleport. Long distances would burn you lot up, so they set up corridors like this. Funnel people through with shorter hops. This isn't a destination, I don't think, just a—” She trailed off. Her eyes flicked to the ceiling. There was a distant rumble again, far off. Barely audible. “Just a rest stop.”

“Looks sort of abandoned, Doctor,” Ryan said, stepping closer to inspect the transmat. He trailed a finger along it, frowning. “Dusty. Is it still workin'?”

“Not sure. Lights are flashing green, still.” She walked around it again, eyes catching on a board beside it, dull and blank. It was blocked and rectangular. It reminded Yaz a bit of those kiosks you saw in malls, the ones with directories or customer assistance. The Doctor whacked it solidly, once, twice, on its side with her good hand, grinning as it shorted back to life. “There we go! Information.” She peered into it, brow creasing. “Now—is it touch or voice-activated?”

“Uh, Doc.”

“Hold on, must be touch-activated. I'm gonna touch it.”

“Doc.”

She glanced up. “Hmm? Oh.”

Rusted, spindly—spiders wasn't quite the right word for them. They looked half cobbled together out of circuits, too metal to be alive, but regardless of that particular semantic difficulty they were still crawling rapidly out of the kiosk towards all four of them.

Ryan's voice had gone high and panicked. “Doctor.”

“Don't panic,” she said tightly, reeling away from the kiosk, kicking one off her boot, wobbling on one foot. “Don't panic, just—just don't let them get on you until we know what they are! ”

“Or how about not at all, yeah?” Graham stomped on one before it could skitter its way up Ryan's leg. It was like a mountain of them, spilling from the kiosk's bottom frame. “Doc!”

Yaz stomped on one by her own foot, feeling a thrill of fear up her throat, an irrational, spider-based panic. “There's more of them than there are of us,” she observed grimly, kicking at another one. She felt disturbingly vulnerable, which didn't usually happen, when she was smothered under the protection of her uniform. “Where did they come from? What are they for?”

The Doctor flung one off her arm, mouth twisted in disgust, but she paused. Face settling grimly. “Well. Good news and bad news.” Her eyes tracked, resigned, to where one had successfully crawled up her neck. “Think we're about to find out?”

“Oh,” Yaz moaned, rising up onto her elbows. The tunnel blurred into view, still coppery warm and grimy. It was silent, except for the dripping. Another distant rumble. “What—”

Her hand slapped to her neck, a flash of remembered pain driving through her head like a spike, and she felt something metal and cold under her fingers, felt her vision flash white with panic—

“It's okay,” the Doctor said, somewhere above her. She swivelled her head painfully to find her peering into the kiosk, knuckles white where she gripped its edges. The bottom of her coat was wet and dripping. Yaz caught the edge of a memory, of her collapsing with a panicked shout into the puddle at her feet. That had been all the distraction those—things had needed to snatch at the rest of them. “Well, it's not great, admittedly, but you're in no danger. Well, no danger from the nanobites, anyway—”

“Nano-what?” Yaz pushed herself to her feet, neck stinging. She could feel metal cold and foreign and wrong against her skin, but she didn't dare try to rip it out, didn't dare touch it. Her gut was sour with the faint thought that its grip went further than just skin deep. She shuddered and tried to ignore the imagined sensation of metal tendrils reaching beyond, into her brain. Her spine.

“Nanobites,” the Doctor said, absently reaching to pull away the hair from her own neck. Copper gleamed dully underneath. There was a light at the centre of it too, a cold sort of amber glow. “See? I've got one too. Don't know what they're called, actually, this booth is a bit short on useful details, but I thought—‘cos they're nanotech, see? And they bite?”

“Doctor—”

“I know, I know, don't worry.” Though she'd bitten her own lip to shreds already, Yaz couldn't help but note. She leaned into the kiosk, scrolling with her fingers. “Don't try to take it out, it's embedded itself in your nervous system.”

“My—Doctor—”

She wasn't normally given to panic herself, but none of that sounded especially good. She glanced back at Ryan and Graham, sprawled beside her. They were shifting. Waking, slowly.

“It's okay, the TARDIS can remove them. I'm pretty sure.” The Doctor scowled at the kiosk screen. She glanced up as another rumble sounded. Closer, this time. The ground shook, just briefly, under their feet. Vibrations travelled up and through the ceiling, dissonant. “We'll leave in a mo'. I think this place might not be for us.”

“What is this place, though?” Yaz demanded, though she found herself in reluctant agreement. That sat a bit sour, too, actually. Proving the Doctor right on the first go didn't bode well for whatever was going to follow. “Why have they got—spiders comin' out their information booths?”

“I told you we were in a transmat corridor.” The Doctor looked up again, mouth tightening. “I wasn't wrong, exactly but—” She met Yaz's gaze reluctantly, looking tired. Afraid. “Kiosk says this planet is called Tropos. And I think, for whatever reason, they've put a transmat corridor—” The tunnel shook again, the source closer than it had been before. The sound more familiar than it had been, before. Yaz had seen enough movies, been in enough adjacent situations herself, now, to be able to recognize the sound of weapons firing. Large vehicles. Distant screams.

The Doctor's eyes darkened. “—in a trench.”

Chapter Text

Cactus land.

“A trench?” Okay, now her heart had dropped into her stomach, proper. “Doctor, a trench?”

“Yes.” Her mouth was tight. Breaths sharp. “Sorry?” she offered. “Just our luck.” Her fists clenched and unclenched at her side again. “We should leave.”

“If there's a war on,” Yaz said, as Ryan and Graham struggled to their feet behind her, “shouldn't we try to help?”

“That's the thought I'm having too, actually,” she admitted, but her face was very pale. Eyes dark. “But a war-zone is a dangerous place to be. And also we've been invaded by intrusive nanotechnology, so I think we can't make any assumptions about what's really going on here yet. Let's get back to the TARDIS, remove the nanobites, then take a better look around.”

Which, as a plan, made—perfect sense.

“That's very cautious,” Yaz said, feeling, again, like she was missing something. Somehow. Where have you been, she wanted to ask. How long have you been by yourself? “Since when are you this cautious?”

The Doctor swallowed, peering over Yaz to catch the eyes of their other friends. Their own bits of metal were a dull blue, faint. “Call it a New Year's resolution. Ryan! Graham! Get up carefully, don't touch what's in your neck, it's running through your nervous system, at least up into your brain. No, I don't know what they are, no, I don't know why we've all got different colours. Also, we're underneath some sort of deadly armed conflict.” Her face scrunched. “Sorry.”

“What—”

“Doc—”

“I know!” she protested. “Don’t go on about it, I’m sorry! It's okay, TARDIS can remove them. I think. I hope. Speaking of, let's get a shift on, yeah?”

There was another rumble over their heads. The metal the tunnels were made of was thin, somehow. Resonant. The vibrations that echoed down to them were high-pitched and melodic. Like a very deadly song.

“Is it just me,” Ryan said, helping Graham to his feet, “or is that noise getting closer?”

“Not just you, hence the getting a shift on,” the Doctor said, voice tight. “We'll be safer in the TARDIS. Come on, team, let's go.” She began to usher them back, keeping a worried eye on the ceiling. Yaz glanced up too, frowning. She was finding it hard to be too concerned. The trenches had to be metal for a reason. And it wasn't like rock, or brick, or stone—metal couldn't cave in.

In fact, a bigger concern was probably the growing, ringing clang of boots across the floor. She turned and stopped, grabbing for the edge of Ryan's leather jacket. He stumbled to a halt, too.

The door that had been closed before was open now, and there was a figure, rounding the corner of the tunnel, beyond the kiosk, beyond the transmat. Dark, spiky hair, unkept. Grimy and dusty, olive-skinned, swimming in a grey uniform that was at least two sizes too big for him. It was some sort of fatigues, haphazard, hand-me-down. Like a guerrilla fighter. Armed, she noted, hair raising, before all the rest had even registered. He was carrying a kind of gun she didn't recognize, strapped to his hip, banging against his knee.

“Stop!” he cried, hands in front of him, palms up. “Please! Back towards me, if you don't mind, quickly.” He urged them towards him with a hand, in what was apparently a universal gesture. There was something clenched in his other fist, brick-like, flashing. A sensor, maybe. “Quickly! The front's moved, we're not safe here.”

“Hello!” The Doctor had turned at his approach. She took him in, assessing, like Yaz had done, but she kept her face mild. “Sorry, happy to come with you, just got some business back on our ship first.”

He stepped closer with clear reluctance, face strained. “Did you say ship? How'd you land a ship down here?” His dark eyes narrowed as he approached, taking the four of them in. Eyeing the bits of metal in their necks. There was one in his, too, glowing faintly green. As his eyes caught on the Doctor's, he balked, growing sallow and throwing himself into a salute on what looked like instinct. “How is that possible?” he breathed, more to himself. Voice shaking. “Please, you all have to come with me.”

“What's your name?” the Doctor asked, stepping forward, ignoring him. Ignoring Yaz, who put a hand out in deference to the Doctor's alarming tendency to ignore basic common sense when it came to dealing with people who were insecure and armed. Clearly, the newfound caution only applied when it came to people that weren't her, then.

“S-sergeant Yose.”

“Name, not title.”

He gulped. “Petz. Petz Yose, sir. Please—”

She beamed, suddenly. “Sir! Haven't had that in a while.” Her face fell. “Forgot that I don't actually like it that much. You can lose the salute, Yose, calm down. I'm very sorry, but we've got to fetch something before we can come with you.”

The singing rumble shook the walls again. Yaz felt it in her feet this time.

He lost the salute, as instructed, but his hands were shaking. “I'm sorry, but I have to insist that you accompany me. Any second now—”

The ground shook. There was a great, screaming tear that slid across Yaz's eardrums, left a streak of white across her vision, threw her heart back up into her throat. Heat, in an instant, but she couldn't tell where it was coming from, couldn't sort through what was happening—

“We have to go!” Yose insisted, over the screeching roar and the singing quake of the ground. “Right now! Follow me!”

Yaz moved to follow him, instincts screaming that whatever was behind them now was only heat and danger and death, but she thought of the TARDIS, so close, so nearly within reach—and thought of the Doctor, who wouldn't be able to care in the slightest about any of those things. Not where the TARDIS was concerned.

She turned instead, back in the direction they were meant to be running from, searing heat baking her face, her heavy uniform, grabbed a sky-soaked arm with both her hands and pulled, against the strained, wiry struggle of someone beyond rationality. She caught a glimpse of wild, panicked eyes that brought her back to Sheffield, to the Tsuranga, caged and desperate. Ryan grabbed hold of the other arm, Graham at their heels, and all four of them pulled and ran and stumbled down the tunnel, a cacophony of heat and smoke and sound and terrible light behind them, singing and vibrating down the tunnel ahead.

They stumbled around the corner with Yose, smoke and heat trailing behind them, skidding to an ungraceful halt when he did. He pressed a button on the sensor, slammed his free hand into a grimy panel on the wall, and the door shuttered closed behind them, final, with a pneumatic hiss.

He bent forward, catching his breath.

“There,” he said, hands still shaking where they braced on his knees. He pressed a button on the sensor and raised it to his mouth. “This is Yose. Section Nine sealed. Topside breech contained. New recruits incoming. Over.” There was no reply, but he didn't seem to expect one. The sensor—or maybe it was some sort of radio, actually—was placed carefully in the front pocket of his shirt. He straightened to look at them. “Sorry about all that. This part of the trenches is older, the structure's deteriorating. I suppose that transmat corridor's no use to us now.” He scratched the back of his head. “Probably should send a note to engineering, if the Computer hasn't already. Are you all alright?”

“Yose,” the Doctor said tightly, still tense and straining against Yaz and Ryan's grip. “Tell me you can open that door again.”

He frowned. “What? No. Um, sir. It's an emergency door, that's a pneumatic seal.”

“But you could open it, if you wanted.”

“I don’t—” He shook his head. “I don't think you understand, that's the front behind there now. There won't be anything left.”

The Doctor exhaled sharply and shrugged free of Yaz and Ryan with a desperate twist, stumbled three steps to the left and into a crouch, knuckles white in her hair. Breathing great, sucking gasps of air.

“Doc,” Graham tried, stepping towards her but she waved him off, frantic.

“Shut up,” she hissed, between breaths, hiding her face in her hands, “just—sorry that was rude, just—I’ve—stranded you all in a war-zone and I need a minute, I’m—”

Panicking, Yaz thought, suddenly very tired. Her cheek burned sharply. Something—shrapnel, a spark, a stray laser—had carved its way across as they ran.

“Don't listen to this bloke, we'll get back through,” Ryan said, though he glanced back at the emergency doors with dark, nervous eyes. “It's okay, Doctor. Right?”

But for the moment, she was beyond sense. It was always like that, when it came to the TARDIS. It was more than a ship, somehow, in ways the Doctor had never bothered to come out and explain. Yaz bit her lip, clamping down on her own tide of worry, rising up her throat. Tactically speaking, they were safe for the moment. Yose posed a potential threat, but he was young and gangly and nervous and in a pinch, she was almost certain she could disarm him. The rest of it—

Well. She'd wanted this, hadn't she? A bit of adventure, a bit of adrenaline, a problem to solve. One thing at a time. Assess, reassess, as needed. She breathed through her nose, deliberately slow, in dissonant harmony with the hiss and shriek of the Doctor's own breaths. They were muffled through her hands but still fast and loud. Not stopping.

“No,” Yaz heard her snap, as Graham tried again to reach a comforting hand down. He sighed, disgruntled—he liked inaction about as much as the rest of them, really, no matter how much he protested—and took a moment to press his lips together and cross his arms. He breathed in slowly, like he was having a proper think.

“Well, alright,” he said eventually, settling down in the dirt beside her with a wince and muffled groan.

Ryan met Yaz's gaze and shrugged. They sat down on the Doctor's other side, closer together. Knees touching. Waiting.

Yose stepped forward, hesitantly, after a moment of silence and gasping, hissing breaths.

“Uh,” he said. “I'm sorry, but I really must insist—”

“Shut up,” Ryan and Yaz said, in tandem.

 Yose shut up. Despite their circumstances, and the gun at his hip, Yaz was finding him difficult to dislike.

“Sit down,” she told him eventually, taking pity. “We've lost our ship. We're taking a moment.”

“I'm supposed to escort you to headquarters,” he said, shifting nervously. “All new recruits have to be taken and processed there, especially because of—because of—well, because you're—” His gaze turned to the Doctor, unease flooding his eyes.

“Just say you got held up,” Ryan said. “Had to take the long way round.”

“No, no,” he replied, shifting again, eyes flickering up to the tunnel's walls. Afraid. “I can’t—I can’t—the Computer will be able to tell, it's got eyes on everything, it's probably telling them about this right now, I really have to insist—”

For some reason, that was enough to break through. “Computer?” the Doctor asked, still breathing harsh and shallow. She stayed crouched down, but peeled her hands from her eyes. “What sort of computer, what are you talkin' about?”

“You keep breathing like that, you're gonna pass out,” Ryan said, finally, exasperated. “I'm just tellin' you, it's personal experience.”

“I've got a respiratory bypass system, I could breathe like this all day if I wanted to,” she countered, gasping, looking up at Yose. “Computer?”

“Well, don't.”

“Sergeant Yose,” she ignored him, “computer?”

“It’s—” Yose looked down at them, confused. “It's just the Computer.”

“That's not especially helpful.”

“Could do with some context there, mate.”

He shrugged, still confused. “It's just—there. Always has been. In charge of war operations, infrastructure, education. The government. It helped us build these trenches, it's embedded itself in the walls. Watching us right now, probably.” He swallowed, throat bobbing. “Please—”

The Doctor wobbled to her feet, eyes on the ceiling, gleaming. Breaths still hitching, but she was distracted, now. “Big computer,” she whispered. “Love a big computer. Or hate a big computer, I can never remember which. Big old computer, big old underground surveillance state, big old war being fought with technology, that's very—”

She looked down at the rest of them.

“Orwellian?” Graham suggested.

Her mouth set grimly. “Timely.”

“Yose,” Yaz said, picking herself and Ryan up off the ground, swiping the dirt off her trousers. “Is there any way back through the emergency doors? Can you open them again?”

His face went sallow, blood leeching from it slowly. “And expose us to Topside? This close to the front? That would be—extraordinarily dangerous, it's against regulation. I can't. I'm not even sure it's possible.” His fingers twitched nervously, elbow jerking back. About a second, Yaz noted coldly, from reaching for his gun again. “Please, General, I have to take you to headquarters. I'm so sorry about your transport, I'm sorry you've had a shock, but you have to come with me, right now.” His voice had gone high-pitched. Frantic.

Yaz kept her hands visible, palms open by her side.

“Okay,” she said calmly. Time was up, apparently. “Okay. Doctor?”

Not that she had proven herself to be especially useful, so far, in this particular crisis, but it was habit, wasn't it. Flat team structure aside, she was still the last word. The one they turned to.

The Doctor swallowed hard, eyes darting to the cold expanse of the emergency door, Graham struggling to his feet behind her. She took one last shuddering breath. Allowed herself a brief, twisting scowl that left as soon as it arrived. Her good hand ghosted past the pocket Yaz knew the sonic was kept in, but for now, she refrained.

“Alright, Yose,” she said, resigned. Eyes glittering. “Take us to your leader.”

They filed ahead of Yose, the Doctor in the lead, hands up by their ears without him having to ask. Mostly to make him feel better about the whole thing, if Yaz was being honest with herself. He wasn't especially intimidating. Probably it would look better for him, though, if they arrived looking as though he'd done his job properly.

“Here's what I don't understand, Yose,” the Doctor said as they were marched, voice raised. It was stronger, now she was properly distracted, now she was planning, thinking, behind her eyes. It echoed off the curve of the metal walls, over the dripping and the clang of their own feet across the ground. “Well. The first of many things. This is very clearly a trench. But that back there was unmistakably a transmat corridor. How can it be both? You'd have to be mad to plan a route through a war-zone.”

“Well, it hasn't always been a war-zone,” Yose protested, from behind them. “Or—so they tell me, anyway. From what I understand, we've always been a convenient stop along a lot of popular routes. No reason that should change, just because there's a war on. Besides, it's good for us, isn't it? New recruits every time people travel through.”

“What?” The Doctor came to a screeching halt, boots slipping on the grimy metal. She turned her head, arms still raised. “Yose, you aren't tellin' me—”

“General, I'm going to have to insist that you keep—”

“Stop calling me that!” she snapped. Paused. “Why are you calling me that?”

“Well, it's,” he fumbled at his side, reaching near his gun again. Yaz tracked the movement of his hands, heart thumping in her ears. She felt Ryan and Graham tense beside her. “It's what the Computer's designated you. It—when it embeds itself, it performs an analysis of your capabilities. Puts you where it thinks you should be. Your rank chip is what tells you. Look, see?” He strained his own neck, displaying his own piece of coppery metal, embedded into his skin, glowing faintly green. “Sergeant.” He nodded in Yaz's direction. “Just like you. And your friends are privates.”

“And the Doctor?” Yaz demanded, though she didn't dare turn her head away from him. “General? Isn't that higher than you? Why are we following you around?”

“That's just the thing, though,” he said, adjusting his stance. “I've never—this has never happened before, I don’t—I don't know what to do. Might be a glitch. So I'm taking you to high command. Headquarters.”

“That's what your Computer does to visitors?” The Doctor asked, breath sharp in her throat again. Yaz felt the hiss of air against the back of her neck, but, again, she didn't dare turn away from Yose and his weapon. “Conscripts them into your little army? Yose, that's against every civilized law in the known universe.”

He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t—it's the War,” he said, like that explained everything. “No one cares about Tropos. We need all the help we can get. We'll be very grateful for your contribution, I promise.”

“Yose,” she said again. Yaz could practically hear her brow creasing. “We aren't soldiers.” Out of the corner of her eye, Yaz watched as she dropped her arms, oblivious to the way his fingers flew to his side. “And I'm not sure you are, either, really. Not a proper one, anyway. I've been saluted at a lot, over the years, and yours is—sloppy. No offense.” She stepped forward, heedless of Yaz's fingers tugging at her sleeve. “How old are you?” she asked.

He paused, caught off guard. Mouth hanging open slightly. “Uh. Seventeen.”

Her mouth twisted unhappily, but she raised her eyebrows, encouraging. Kind. “And how long you been fighting? How long you been a soldier, Yose?”

“I don't.” His brow creased. “I don't understand the question.”

The Doctor's lips tightened further, like she was on the cusp of an unpleasant revelation.

“And why's that?” She tore herself free from Yaz's grasp, ignoring her glare.

He looked back at them, still confused. “I've been a soldier as long as I've been alive,” he said, matter-of-fact. “We all have. Tropos has no civilians. Everyone knows that.” He straightened, lips thinning nervously. “Now, please. Please, we have to go, I'm in such trouble as it is—”

“Universal conscription,” the Doctor breathed, as horrified as the rest of them. “Yose—”

“Please,” he said, shaking. Hands moving, and Yaz yanked on the Doctor's sleeve again, manhandled her back to the front of the line. “Eyes forward, hands where I can see them. No sudden movements. Keep straight until you reach the centre block.”

“This place is barbaric,” Graham whispered, trailing behind, a buffer between Yose and Ryan. “Doctor, we can’t—”

“Working on it,” she hissed behind her, eyes meeting Yaz's only briefly. “We're not done learning yet, I need to know more. But I'm very good at peace processes, historically. Just have to get people past the blowing up part, get them sitting down and talking. I'm very hopeful about the whole thing.” She faced front again, lips pressed thinly. She eyed the walls and the apparently ubiquitous computer lurking beneath their seams with trepidation. “We'll deal with that first, and get to the inevitable dystopia of a besieged state under constant surveillance by an omnipresent artificial intelligence after. And then we'll get the TARDIS back. Normal Saturday for us.” Her voice was tight. Strained. “Right?”

Well, it had been, once. And the Doctor certainly sounded terribly sure of herself for someone who had spent the last ten minutes hyperventilating on the ground about the whole thing. No one seemed particularly inclined to point that out at the moment, though, so Yaz kept the thought to herself, hugged it bittersweet to her chest.

“Yeah,” Ryan said, stepping carefully behind her. Navigating delicately around the thin facade of normalcy that had been drawn up all around them, like he didn't want to break it. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“Oh, I hate it when we have to topple regimes,” Graham complained. Contributing. “Can't they just topple themselves, for once?”

“Keep moving,” Yose barked, shrill. Graham pressed his lips together, irritated. “And please stop talking loudly about toppling our regime. You could be tried for treason—please. You've only just got here.”

“I'm not a citizen of Tropos, am I?” Graham shot back. “How can I be tried for treason?”

“Tropos has no citizens. Only soldiers. You're subject to military law, now. Private.”

“Oh, lovely.”

“Don't argue with him, Graham,” Yaz said quietly, over her shoulder, past Ryan. He stared back at her, cross. Grandfatherly, and it didn't suit the setting whatsoever. But there was fear lurking behind him, too. “He's nervous. Let's do what he says for now, yeah?”

“Fine,” he allowed. “Suppose you're right. But we've gotta talk about something, or I'm liable to go the way of the Doctor and set up shop on the ground.”

“Oi, don't go on about it!” The Doctor protested. “The TARDIS is our ticket out of here, might I remind you. And also my best and oldest friend. And my home.” She was veering dangerously close to high-pitched and frantic again. “Probably her shields will be enough to keep her safe from everything in the meantime, but—”

“Okay, new subject,” Yaz interjected, before it all deteriorated again. “No TARDIS, no regime toppling.” She paused, taking in more of the trenches as they were marched forward. Deserted and grim, this bit, all the shine rubbed away from the metal by time and wear. It was sterile, but not clean. Cables littered the ground, running long and scattered. “Why'd Big Brother make you a general, then?”

But by the tension in the Doctor's shoulders, maybe that was poor conversational territory as well.

“I'm old,” she said finally. “That's all. More life experience than you lot, probably. I can't be too sure how the Computer measures everything, without taking a proper look at it.”

“Hold on,” Ryan said. “What's reality telly got to do with any of this?”

“The book,” Yaz said, horrified. “I'm talking about the book. 1984. Ryan. Don't tell me—”

“How d'you go about making a book out of reality telly?” But there was a grin in his voice.

“You're having us on.”

“Of course I'm havin' you on, I went to school, didn’t I?”

She shook her head. Fond. “And went on to become a mechanic.”

She imagined him shrugging, behind her. “Better money. You didn't stay in school, either,” he pointed out.

Which—right. Fair. Though her eye had been less on the idea of money, and more on the idea of justice. Or it had been once, at least. 

“Is your doctorate real, Doc?” Graham asked, voice floating forward. “Did you go to uni?”

“Several times!” she said brightly. She sounded happy to move on, more like herself than she had since they'd reunited. “Have to live up to the title, you know. Mind you, I think the last medical degree I got conferred was in the 1800s, so it might be time for a bit of a refresher, if I'm honest. I seem to remember a rather alarming amount of leeches.”

“Please,” Yose interrupted, as they approached an intersecting corridor. This one struck Yaz as more heavily trafficked than the ones they'd been travelling through before. Grimy, but not with dust. The scent was heavier, but less stale. She could hear more reverberations, people's voices, their footsteps, felt them sing under her feet, under the chemical warmth of the lamps. “Please, we're almost there. Don’t—no more talking. Please.” Now he did reach for his gun, cocked it loudly and held it in front of him. Gingerly. He prodded them forward. “I'm so sorry, it's just regulation. Keep going until the next intersection. High command will take over, there.”

“Are your superiors as thoughtful as you are, Yose?” the Doctor asked, eyes trailing across the ceiling, over the increasingly interesting landscape.

“I don't know what you mean, sir.”

“I'm gonna take that as a no.”

People were passing them by now, dressed like Yose was. Dusty and worn and straggled together, the full spectrum of humanoid diversity. The only thing constant was the metal in their necks, a spectrum of its own. Yaz swallowed against the reminder of discomfort. It didn’t—hurt. Not like it had going in, at least. But it was very much there, especially if she thought about it too much. Cold, against her skin.

Yose pressed them forward, against the crowd, who seemed unalarmed by their presence. Unalarmed by the presence of loaded weapons in a tight space too, and, really, that told her everything she needed to know about the sort of place they were visiting. The corridor narrowed until they reached a cramped intersection, darker, cooler. The air was tinged green by lights that were embedded into the walls instead, barred, like the inside of a submarine.

She felt her mouth twist at the sight. She'd preferred the homeyness of the lamps.

“This way.” Yose directed them to the right, down into a set of stairs carved into the ground, slippery and narrow. Dripping, damp. Yaz felt Ryan grab hold on her wrist, briefly, against the nervous shift of Yose's gun, heard the hiss of breath as he nearly slipped. She hoped Graham would catch him, if he fell. Hoped Yose had slightly more common sense than she suspected he did, when it came to sudden movements. There were more soldiers at the bottom of the steps, a woman and man, broader than Yose, armed just like him. Dressed darkly in battered shirts and heavy boots.

“Ooh, welcoming committee,” the Doctor said, hands raised, fingers twitching in a half-hearted wave. “Or was that meant to be Sergeant Yose? Either way, lovely to meet you. Big fan of your hospitality. Who's in charge here?”

“I'm afraid you'll find that's the trouble, sir.” The woman, blonde and broad, stepped forward, eyeing the Doctor with an unreadable face. She looked up at Yose. “They were in Section Nine?”

“Yes, Major,” he said, thinly. “Computer processed them, but we had to leave, there was a breech. I sealed it. Are—are you aware of the situation?”

“Good lad,” she said, eyes softening, but only just. “And yes. I'd let you go, but General Corcorax will want you, I should think.”

He swallowed audibly. “Right.”

She nodded to her companion, who took up the rear. “Search them.”

Ah. This would be the trouble, then. Yaz kept her arms up sourly, unresisting as her vest was patted down, her trousers, pockets. They were empty, except for her phone, which they let her keep. Besides that, she was weaponless. Graham and Ryan were, too.

But the Doctor—

“I only just got that back,” she protested, as the sonic was removed from her pocket. “Please, it's not a weapon, it's just a tool. Never know when you're going to have to do a little home improvement, please—” 

“I'll take very good care of it. Follow me,” the Major said to the rest of them, turning to lead them deeper into the corridor. She placed the sonic in her front pocket, oblivious to the Doctor's desperate glare.  “I'm Major Stet. What are you called?”

“The Doctor,” the Doctor said. Reluctantly. “These are my best mates, Ryan, Graham, and Yaz.”

“A doctor of what, sir?”

“Oh, all sorts of things. Jellybabies. Medicine. Hope.” She paused. “Peace.”

Stet snorted.

“You'll find all of those in short supply here. Welcome to Headquarters.”

She pressed her palm to another panel, like the one Yose had slammed earlier, and the wall in front of them slid open with a creak. She entered and stood to the side, waiting. Standing stiffly, while they filed in behind her.

No squares to be found, on Tropos, Yaz found herself thinking, pressing close to Graham and Ryan as they entered. Not in their architecture, at least. The room was small and circular, dark and cramped but lit by hundreds of small flashing lights, wheezing computers, desks, pushed and cobbled together. A giant screen united it all at the front, numbers flashing across it, smaller displays of what looked like radar. It smelled musty and hot with static. Like her school's old computer lab.

There were enough rolling chairs and desks for at least twenty people, but right now, there was only one man, standing alone at the screen. Shadowed. He turned as they entered.

“Major Stet,” he acknowledged. His face was bare and clean-shaven, paler than Yose, but with the same shock of hair, greying. He was Graham's age or younger, she thought. War made people look older than they were. You didn't have to have fought in a war to know that. “Sergeant Yose.”

Stet hesitated, though she saluted smartly. “Lieutenant-general,” she said finally. Carefully.

“Yes,” he said, turning all the way. Revealing the metal implanted in his neck, a red she hadn't seen before. “Yes, so it appears. At ease.” He stepped forward. “So you're the new arrivals.”

“Just visiting,” the Doctor said, sizing him up. Yaz stepped to the side, subtly, Ryan and Graham shifting with her. Closer to the wall. “I'm afraid there's been some sort of mixup. We don't have designs to get involved in anyone's war. Especially not against our will.” She breathed in sharply. “You and your computer have been forcibly conscripting anyone that comes through that transmat corridor. For how long? Why hasn't the local transportation authority cut off access?”

“The Computer handles all of that.” He waved a hand. His voice was pleasantly deep. “I've no idea, to be perfectly honest. I'm no engineer. I assume it hacks into their systems somehow, keeps the route open.”

“There's nothing about that arrangement that strikes you as wrong?”

“Wrong,” he said, moving slowly towards them, “would be doing anything less than everything I could to ensure victory. Our numbers are lesser every day. No one is coming to save us. We take the help that we receive.”

“That's not help.” Her voice had gone very quiet. “That's monstrous.”

“Hmm,” he said. Considering. “What are you called?”

“The Doctor,” she said, belligerent. “Yourself?”

“Well, I was General Corcorax, of the Tropos Standing Army.” He crossed his arms, expression mild with the same quiet sort of dignity that Yaz had always imagined on the faces of the imperialists she'd learned about in school. Upper-class, civilized, convinced of their own righteousness. It sat as sour in her gut now as it had then. “Now it appears that title has fallen to you.”

“I'm not a soldier.”

“The Computer seems to think otherwise.”

“Well, it made a mistake.” The Doctor swallowed tightly. Her pulses jumped in her neck.

“The Computer doesn't make mistakes.” Though he didn't seem especially happy about that declaration. Yaz shifted, eyeing Major Stet, Yose. Corcorax. All armed. Confined space, at least two levels underground. No hope of an easy escape, even without the TARDIS behind a sealed door, in the midst of a war's front line.

She hoped the Doctor was planning on pretending to cooperate.

Corcorax placed his hands behind his back, dignified. Like this whole mess was, in fact, some sort of easily remedied mix-up. “It can't be overridden, even by myself. As such, I'm afraid command of the army has fallen into your hands. General. I must insist that you take it, though I'd quite like to know what exactly it is that makes you so qualified.”

The Doctor looked pale in the gloom, in the faint ambient light. Cast green and sickly.

“Let us go, Corcorax,” she said, over the static and the quiet hum. “We're not here to fight your war for you. In fact, why not give peace a try? I'd be happy to facilitate, I've had my hands in loads of peace negotiations. I was there at Versailles, you know.” Her face grew chagrined. “That's a poor example, actually, forget that, I was only there because there was a Zygon disguised as the French prime minister, how about Arcturus, 2089? That one went better. Or the Mars Peace Accords? Tri-partisan Ceasefire of Poosh's Second Moon?”

Corcorax only stared back at her, unreadable.

“Major,” he said. “Why don't you go back to the entrance and ensure we aren't disturbed?”

Out of the corner of Yaz's eye, Stet swallowed. Nodded, once, smartly. She left with a brief hand to Yose's shoulder and not a word.

“Oh, I'm not liking this,” Ryan whispered, wincing back into silence as she swatted his arm.

“The Computer's will is absolute,” Corcorax said, once Stet had left. She'd closed the door behind her, left them encircled, trapped. “It is programmed for war, General. I have to believe it chose you to lead us for a reason, though this situation is—distinctly unprecedented.”

“Unprecedented?” she exclaimed, stepping towards him. “It's wrong! All of this is wrong! I'm sorry about your situation, really, I am, but this is no way to go about it. I won't leave you in need, but I don't believe in war. I won't fight for you, Corcorax, and neither will my mates. We need to get back to our ship.”

“Yes,” he said, still so mild. Yaz swallowed in anticipation. “I've been watching you. I rather expected you might say something like that. Unfortunately, General, I have no need for doctors or civilians. I need soldiers.” He leaned over to press a button on the display beside him, frowning. “Please understand. Your assistance is greatly appreciated, but it is also non-negotiable. I do apologize.”

It wasn't visible, but whatever it was drove the Doctor to her knees, brought her hands up to her ears. The rank chip, Yaz thought, heart pounding, arms slamming out to stop Ryan and Graham rushing forward.

“Back,” she hissed, “stay back!” Though the words were sour in her mouth. They were too confined here, too isolated, too out of sight. The wrong move would end poorly for all of them, not just the Doctor.

“How is it possible,” the Doctor spat out through gritted teeth, face pained, “that you're all so terrible and yet so terribly polite at the same time? There's no considerate way to fry someone's nervous system, Corcorax!”

He was still staring at her, finger on the button. “Incredible,” he breathed. “What's coursing through your veins right now would flatten an ordinary man twice your size. Yet you're hardly inconvenienced.”

“Well, I wouldn't say I'm havin' a great time!” she protested, struggling to her feet. “Really, do you mind? No one's ever got anything they wanted from me like this, I promise you.”

His finger lifted, and she sagged, gasping. Scowled up at him, irritated.

“Oh, I can already tell you're going to be annoying. How'd you get your Computer to do that?” she asked. “You said you couldn't override it, but I can't imagine it's all that fond of you trying to fry its greatest asset to death.”

“Over the years, we've found ways around certain limits. Not all of them, but enough to suit our means when we have need." Corcorax swallowed. “It's man against machine, here, General. In all ways but some.” He looked to her intently. “But you aren't from here, so I'll forgive your ignorance. I have no intention of killing you, believe me. I was intending to communicate what I might do to your friends, if you do not do what is right and step into your position, as requested.”

Her face grew strained.

“Not a hand on them,” she said quietly, shooting a look in their direction, to curtail any protest. “Physical or otherwise.”

“It's entirely up to you. I am subject to the Computer's will, but I have been in this fight for far too long to give it up so easily. I have to believe you have been sent as a blessing to us. I implore you to prove me right.” Though his plea sounded far more like a threat. The Doctor's face darkened, but she swung her arms, wandering closer to the screen. Giving in—or at least putting up appearances.

“Fine,” she said shortly. “You know what? General it is. I think I'd like a cease-fire, effective immediately. Full retreat. Back underground, into your trenches, until you've calmed down enough you can sit down and talk to each other. Come on,” she said, sharper, when there was no immediate response. “Or am I not in charge after all?”

“You know nothing about us,” Corcorax said, and Yaz caught the hint of something beyond the forced dignity of him, something sharper and far more dangerous. “Nothing of our struggle. Nothing of our loss.”

“I know plenty about war,” she said, without thinking. Yaz watched her eyes dart to them, hesitant. Back to him, pleading. “I'm telling you, Corcorax, there's no winning like this. Put me in charge? Fine. But I'm suing for peace.”

“There is no making peace with them, General,” he insisted, stepping toward her, eyeing the screen, a kind of pain darting across his face before he scrubbed it away. “Don't you think we've tried? We have been fighting this war for longer than I have been alive. They have no hearts. They know only hate.”

Man against machine, he had said. Yaz frowned. Beside her, Ryan tensed.

The Doctor had gone very still.

“You said war,” she said, carefully. “War, not invasion. Are you fighting your own people, Corcorax? Does Tropos have states? Nations?”

“Only one,” he said, quietly. Turning away from the screen to face her. “Tropos is small. We only have each other.”

“It's just,” Yose piped up, from behind. Nervous. “Well. They've been here so long, there's not much point calling it an invasion anymore. They came and did the actual invading a long time ago, the Daleks.”

“Ah.” The Doctor breathed in thinly, the weight of the other shoe as it dropped settling across her shoulders. Face utterly blank. “And here's me thinking the day couldn't get any worse.”

“Oh, god,” Ryan breathed against Yaz's neck. She grabbed his hand and squeezed, feeling cold sweat gather on her forehead. Adventure. That's what she'd wanted. That's what she'd missed. She pushed breaths in and out through her nose, deliberate. Tried to ignore the feeling at the back of her head, half-smug, half-terrified, like she'd jumped back into water that was far too deep. 

One Dalek. One had been enough. She couldn't imagine a whole fleet of them, an entire invasion force. That much concentrated hate— 

“You know of them,” Corcorax said, more intent, now. His eyes were very green, Yaz noticed. Even more when they caught the light. She still didn't like him, couldn't stand the mildness, the cruelty—but there was pity now, too, lurking at the back of her throat. “Then you know we have no hope of peace.”

The Doctor raised her hands, eyeing the screen. Breaths hitching, again. Recalculating wildly. Yaz saw the fear surface from behind her eyes. “I am reconsidering my stance, admittedly,” she said, fast, sharp. But she took a larger breath and steeled herself. Face cooling into something far more controlled. Far sterner. “You don't want me in charge of you, Corcorax. Let us go.”

“You will help us fight them,” he said, fingers wandering near the button again. “You must. We are losing, General, stagnating. Our defences are deteriorating, you almost fell victim to them yourself. You were sent to us for a reason, in our eleventh hour. You must be qualified for a reason. I can't let you leave. I won't.”

“A reason,” she said, sharpening. “A reason?” A sharp bark of laughter escaped her, unexpected. Joyless. Behind her eyes, she was trapped, and she knew it. Yaz watched, resigned. Uneasy. “You want a reason. Oh, go on,” she said, twirling, arms out. Smiling, but it wasn't kind and it didn't reach her eyes. “Have a scan, then. You must have the technology, you're only mostly primitive.”

Corcorax frowned, like he was sure he was being insulted, but couldn't figure out exactly how. Yaz settled back against the wall. The other shoe was in the Doctor's hand now, for some reason, and she wasn't quite sure how it had got there. When it had got there. She'd turned sharp, all of a sudden. He'd threatened a hair too far, Corcorax. Pushed her into a corner, and she was reacting in kind. But however satisfying it was to watch her run circles around horrible people, Yaz thought, still watching, sometimes it all felt a bit—unnecessary. Like watching a cat play with its food. This was just a change in tactics, though, she reassured herself. A new strategy.

And maybe he deserved it.

“Yose,” he ordered, snapping his fingers. “Scan her.”

Yose jumped to attention, fingers trembling as he moved from behind them to a piece of equipment mounted on one of the desks. It was industrial green, like the rest of it. Rusted. Everything here was so old it was falling apart. It reminded Yaz a bit of museums she'd visited on Earth, remnants of bunkers from the Cold War. Full of giant, staticky computers mounted on walls, bolted into floors. Peeling paint and lead pipes and the musty smell of decay. Only they hadn't abandoned their war, here.

“Uh,” Yose said, the red glare of the scanner's screen reflecting pink in the whites of his eyes. “Sir.”

“What?”

“Two hearts, sir.”

Corcorax took a steadying breath, eyes gleaming. He stepped forward. “Truly, we have been blessed,” he said.

“Sir?”

“Oh, great,” the Doctor said. “A fan.” She glared back at him flatly, clearly not having received the reaction she'd been hoping for.

“She's a Time Lord, Yose,” he said, snapping his fingers again. Yose jumped and abandoned the scanner, coming to stand at attention at his side. Eyeing the Doctor worriedly. “The great enemy of the Daleks.”

“What?” Ryan hissed, pressing closer. Yaz grabbed the sleeve of his jacket in warning. “Doctor, you never said—”

“Shh,” the Doctor hissed back, over her shoulder, grimacing. Like she'd forgotten they were there. “Later, I promise.” She looked back to Corcorax, expression flattening again. A familiar gleam in her eye that Yaz was never sure what to make of. “You know about the Time War, then.”

“Of course. The entire universe knows of it.”

“Not every corner. You'd be surprised.”

“Well, we know of it here. The Computer knows more than any of us, about everything.” He rubbed a hand down his clean-shaven chin. “That's why it knew to rank you as it did. I understand, now. This is a great gift, for us. You will bring us great fortune, General.”

She smiled again, and Yaz felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

“Great fortune,” she said mildly, spinning herself around and sprawling casually in one of the abandoned rolling chairs. “Well, it's not like you're giving us much choice, are you.”

“You will help us,” he insisted. “Surely you must relish this chance to battle your most hated foe, General. Help us. Help us fight them.”

“Help you.” She rolled the chair to an unoccupied desk and sprang to her feet. Moving again, and it should have been better than the stillness from before, but somehow it was worse. “Help you? Love to, if that's what you're asking. You're right about the peace process being a flop, but I could still evacuate this planet. Get everybody off, women, children, little dogs, even you lot. I could find a place for you. Somewhere better, somewhere safe. You could see the sun again, Corcorax. If that's what you want, I'll do it for you.” She leapt up onto the desk and crouched, papers sent flying under her boots, meeting his gaze. Eye to eye. “Please,” she said, and the look in her eyes was a warning, not a plea. “Let me do that for you.”

“We will not evacuate,” he said darkly, stalking forward. He seemed offended at the mere suggestion, and Yaz had to fight not to close her eyes, disgust rising in her throat. Fear, too. There was no easy way to help people that didn't want it. “We will not stand down. We have been here for a hundred years. Help us fight them, General. Help us win,” he said, quieter. “And I will let you go.”

The Doctor shook her head, so slightly. Her eyes narrowed. “You don't get it, do you.” It wasn't a question. “You really don't get it.” She shook her head again, mouth twisting unpleasantly. Yaz shivered. “You really have been blessed, Corcorax,” the Doctor said, eyes sharp and dark. “Well and truly blessed, and you don't even know it.” She took another deliberate breath, but her hands were shaking at her sides. She was, very carefully, Yaz thought, not looking at them at all. “I didn't just fight in the War, you see.” Her teeth gleamed white in the sickly gloom. “I ended it. Ask me how.”

Corcorax backed up a step, frowning. The Doctor stood, towering over him, mindless of the papers under her heel, the ominous wobble of the rusted desk.

“Ask me how,” she said flatly.

“How?” he asked.

She smiled gently.

“Blew it all up. Every last Dalek, every last Time Lord. My whole planet. Everything.” She tilted her head. “I suppose someone like you might call that winning. So, what do you think? Shall I have a go here, with your planet?” The smile dropped from her face. She jumped down from the desk, the metal under her feet vibrating with the impact, and stood very still. “You don't want me to fight your war for you, Corcorax,” she said, softly. “I'm a pacifist, you see.”

Chapter Text

Ultimatum game.

The quiet that followed was thin and pulled as taught as a string.

Yaz could hear her own heartbeat in her ears, pounding a violent staccato. Her hand tightened over Ryan's. A reassurance and a warning. They couldn't afford to fall apart here, they couldn't afford to fall apart yet. Maybe they couldn't afford to fall apart at all, but that was a question for later, that hinged on the answers to questions they would only be able to ask—later.

“Excellent,” Corcorax said, unexpectedly, and if before he had looked on the edge of fear, now he was far from it. He looked as pleased as he would allow himself to be. “Yes, you'll do nicely, I should think.”

“What?” The gleam of cheerful malice drained from the Doctor's eyes. Without it, she was left only with a kind of flat desperation. The end of a rope, the edge of a cliff. She'd banked their freedom on that threat, Yaz thought queasily, watching her come to that same realization. She had nothing left to bargain with. “Corcorax,” she warned, swallowing. “Please.”

She'd banked their trust, too, Yaz thought, feeling cold. Now she had neither.

“I have no use for pacifists, but I have a great need for those who understand what it is to fight the Daleks.” His teeth glinted. “A great need for those who understand sacrifice.”

She shook her head, dismayed. “I do understand sacrifice, and I'm telling you, Corcorax, it's not worth it. Not like this, not when other people's lives are on the line, there's nothing noble in fighting a war you could end!”

“There is nothing noble,” he spat, incensed, his dignified armour cracking spectacularly, “in abandoning our home!” He took a deep breath and smoothed himself over, fists unclenching at his side. He clasped them behind him again. “No. No, there will be no retreating. This war is taking its last breaths. Under your guidance, General, we will ensure that it dies gasping in our favour.”

“You have no hope of winning.” Her lip curled, half-disgusted, half-horrified. “Not like this. Not against them. Not in any way that will matter.”

“Victory is all that matters.”

“Victory means nothing!” She took a shuddering breath. “Especially when you're the last one standing, and I'll tell you that from experience. Corcorax.” She was pleading, now. “Haven't your people done enough? Don't they deserve peace?”

“There can be no peace without justice. There can be no justice without victory. The people of Tropos deserve their home, General.” His lips flattened. “They deserve the sun of their own planet on their faces. I have a duty to secure that for them, or die trying.”

“You will die trying, Corcorax.”

He shrugged. “Perhaps. My father did. So did his father. In the meantime, you will assist us, on pain of torture and death. Not yours, of course. Your friends'.”

“I told you what I've done,” she tried, face strained. Breathing quick again, shallow. “What's to stop me following through? You think you could stop me, if I really tried? You think you're smart enough for that, you think you're quick enough for that?”

He smiled. Gently amused. “No.”

“Then why take that risk?” she demanded. “Why take it?”

“Call it a judgement of character.”

She only breathed for a moment, eyes glittering, bedraggled and half-shadow. Tense. For the briefest, impossible second, Yaz thought that she might prove him wrong. But she only sagged, like a puppet with its strings cut. Yaz caught fear in her gaze again, that fish darting through reeds. Relief, but she didn't understand why. Resignation.

“They stay away from the front,” she said hollowly, when the moment had passed. “My friends. Away from the fighting, away from the danger. Those are my conditions.”

He shook his head, green shadows passing over the contours of his face. “You're in no position to negotiate.”

“If you really want my help, then prove to me you're somebody that deserves it.” Earnest, even in defeat, though Yaz could see the disgust at the corner of her lip, begging to curl. “Just be a bit kind. Just a bit, come on.”

“If you're looking for kindness, you'll find that it's something we are sorely lacking, General.” His eyes didn't soften. But he nodded, once. “Fine. Yose?”

Yose, who had been standing at attention by his side, clearly petrified by the whole encounter, shuddered. “Yes, sir?”

“Assign the other three recruits to non-collateral categories. You have my permission to disregard rank. I'll give it a thumbprint if the Computer doesn't like it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Assign all four of them quarters, too. Bring the General back to me in the morning.”

“Yes, sir.”

His eyes still didn't soften. “Good lad,” he said.

Yose's did. He soaked up praise like a sponge, face brightening. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Uh, sir.”

“Yose.”

“Are they, uh. Well, that is to say, their designation, sir—”

“Uncooperatives, Yose.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Doctor interjected tersely. “Uncooperatives? And what's that mean when it's at home?”

Corcorax smiled, teeth glinting. “Uncooperative is a designation above prisoner of war, General. It means you'll all still get fed.”

She nodded, resigned. “Great. Lovely. Let me guess—us and all the other transmat corridor tourists you've dragged into your little conflict?”

“Precisely.”

“I'm also guessing it involves a series of locked doors? Curfews? An excess of rules and punishments?”

“Remarkably prescient.”

“Well, I do try.” She tried her best to take a deep, slow, breath and failed completely. “Come on, gang,” she said thinly, through gritted teeth. Glancing at the three of them for what felt like the first time in minutes, but not long enough to look any of them in the eye. “Let's see the sights, shall we? Lead on, Yose.”

“I've got to go behind you again, actually, sir,” he said apologetically, hand on his gun. “Sorry.”

Her face tightened. “Of course.”

He didn't insist on their hands in the air this time, at least. Yaz kept her fingers clenched around Ryan's as they exited, following behind, Graham at her heels. The Doctor took the lead again, shoulders slumped, a grimy silhouette. Major Stet was waiting for them at the stairs.

“You've got a handle, Yose?” she asked as they passed. “Need any help?”

“I'll be okay, thank you, Major.”

“No trouble,” she warned them, brow creasing. “Or you'll have me to deal with.”

“Really, I've got it, Major, thank you.”

“I'll see you at mess, then.” Her face warmed in his direction. “Say hello to Anzi for me.”

“I will.” He sounded like he was smiling too. He pressed them forward without another word, though, back up the stairs, into the wider intersection. He turned them left this time, away from the centre and down a series of twisting corridors that Yaz knew she'd never be able to keep track of. It was a miracle anyone could get anywhere here, she couldn't help but think, ducking under a dangling cable. Each hallway looked identical to the last, warm metal, drenched in gleaming green from the lamps, gloomy and dripping. There were corridors that shot off to the side, as they passed, but Yose shuffled them by too quickly for her to get a good look inside. Neighbourhoods, she wondered, catching the faint smell of laundry, cooking. Or maybe just homes. People's voices echoed up from them, sometimes.

Yose wouldn't let them talk at all, this time, but maybe that was for the better. The Doctor's shoulders were still slumped in front of her, and Ryan's hand stayed clenched in her own. Still tethered, all four of them, but only just.

“Just up here,” Yose said finally, gingerly stepping in front of them to press another panel in the wall. The door they'd just encountered slid open with a creak, revealing another identical corridor, smaller doors spread out along it until it reached an end that was purely rock. The edge of a trench, Yaz thought, mouth dry. No question, then, about the nature of their expendability.

“Yose, how do these locks work?” the Doctor dared to ask, peering at him with curiosity as he pressed his hand to another panel, beside one of the smaller doors. Third from the end. “Do they respond to your DNA?”

“Sir,” he said, aghast, as the door folded open with a hiss. “You know I can't tell you that.”

“Well, it was worth a try,” she sighed, stepping through with a grimace. The three of them followed. The room was sparse. Damp, cold, dark. Two bunk-beds hanging from the wall in the corner, narrow and thin and dusty. “How does all this work then? My friends need food, washing up.”

Yose eyed her hesitantly, eyes catching on the smudge of oil still scraped across her cheek.

“Uh. Well, you'll all be assigned shifts, sir. That includes mess and sanitation. I’m—I'm afraid I wasn't given orders to—it won't be possible, tonight, sir—”

She waved a hand, exasperated. “Okay, okay. Fine. Got it.”

“I'll come back to fetch all of you tomorrow, sir. Before first bell, but you might not hear it back here, actually. Um. Well, I'll—”

“It's fine, Yose.”

“Sir.”

“And I assume once that door closes, we're trapped in here for the night?”

“Sorry about that, sir.”

“Yose—”

“Sir.”

“Yose,” she exploded, “if you call me sir one more time, I'll—” She paused. “Well, I won't do anything, actually, because your face makes me want to cry. But please stop.”

“Uh.” His mouth gaped like a fish. He frowned.

“You know what, just don't say anything for now. Night, Yose! See you bright and early. Lock us up tight.” Her smile grew strained.

In the absence of words he saluted miserably and left. The door folded closed behind him, sealing with a hiss, locking with the scrape of metal against metal.

The Doctor didn't turn from the door, but she raised her hands. “I can explain,” she blurted out, before any of them could get a word in. “Really, I can, but I just need a moment—”

Graham stepped forward, away from the wall. He'd been silent all the way there, Yaz realized, growing cold. He hadn't even tried to talk. And it had struck her as odd, but she hadn't followed that thought all the way through, had she, she hadn’t—

“Doc,” he said, pained. “You said—you said if I killed him, that made me the same as him. You said I couldn't travel with you. You—”

“Oh, Graham, leave it be.” She'd finally caught up, too. Her face was white as bone. Her lips were pressed as thinly as the edge of a knife.

“I'm just trying to understand,” he pressed, looking drawn and hollowed out in the gloom of the lamps. “You say we don't do revenge, you say we don't kill, but you do, don't you? You threw that Dalek into a sun, wasn't that revenge, all bow-wrapped like it were justice instead? And you, begging us for absolution, for permission? You didn't tell us it had—you didn't tell us you had—”

“Graham,” the Doctor whispered, but it carried sharp and fast like the crack of a whip. A warning.

“Why is it alright for you, but not for us?” There were tears in his eyes, Yaz realized, a resigned sort of unease settling in her gut. “Why are you allowed, and we aren't? Why have any rules at all if you're just going to—”

“Graham,” she whispered again, and this time she turned and stalked until she was an inch from his nose, terrifyingly still. She clasped his trembling hands in her own, mottled and bruised. Yaz watched, petrified. She never touched them. Not like that, hardly ever. Skin to skin.

“Help me understand,” he begged. “Help me understand why I let that monster go, Doc, help me—” His voice cracked. “Help me not to hate you. 'Cos I thought I was doing what you would do, but you were lyin' to me, all this time.”

“You were doing the right thing,” she said gently, still barely above a whisper. “You were the better man, Graham O'Brian, and not all of us get that chance, not all of us make that choice. I was proud of you.” Her voice shook. Graham's hands stayed clenched in her own, trapped. “I won't apologize for wanting you to be better than me. I won't apologize for trying to keep you safe.”

“Safe—”

“Yes. Safe.” Her knuckles whitened over his own. “Safe can mean all sorts of things, it's not just physical. Taking a life changes you. One life, a million lives, it's still blood on your hands and screams in your head.”

“And you'd know,” he said, trembling. “Wouldn't you, Doc.”

“Yes. I do know. And do you know what I think?” She leaned in, still so horrifically gentle. “No one else,” she whispered, “should ever have to live like this.”

He tore his hands free and backed away, further down the wall.

“You think you have the right to make that choice, for me? For anyone?” He was shaking. “I don't know you,” he whispered. “I don't know who you think you are. But you scared the hell out of me, back there, and my friend, the Doctor, would never do that.”

“I was just trying to keep you safe.” But her eyes were dark with regret and she didn't step any closer. She glanced back at Yaz and Ryan. “All of you. And for what it's worth, I didn't do what I said I did, I only—” Her breath caught. “—thought I did.”

“You were bluffing,” Ryan said in a rasp, sagging against the wall. The first thing he'd said since the command room, and he still wasn't looking any of them in the eye. “Oh, god. You were bluffing. Right, Doctor?”

“What? Yes,” she said, frowning. Looking—hurt. Confused, suddenly, and it was all a bit much, all of this was a bit—much. “Of course I was bluffing. I'm still—”

Me. But she didn't finish the sentence.

“It's complicated. But I really was just trying to scare him into letting us go,” she said, quieter. “Didn't quite work like I thought it would. I'm sorry you had to watch. I'm sorry you're findin' out about all this like this, it's not—” She swallowed. “And I'm sorry it failed. Possible I may have went straight to my last bargaining chip,” she admitted, sheepish.

“Threatening to blow up their entire planet was your last bargaining chip?” Ryan demanded. “Doctor.”

“It wasn't a threat, it was an implication!”

“Sure sounded like a threat to me!”

“I'm sorry! I'm not at my best!”

Ryan shook his head, shoulders slumping. “God. Don't have to apologize. Just—”

Where have you been? Yaz wanted to ask, but she didn't.

“What did you mean, you only thought you'd done it?” she asked instead, ignoring Ryan. “How much of what you said was true, then?” She felt a bit far away from herself, still. Far from the rest of them, too, far from the Doctor. Far from Tropos. A few hours ago, she'd had her feet on solid Sheffield pavement, watery sun at her back, and she could feel the remnant of it, the reminder, all of a sudden. As the magnitude of their situation unravelled itself. The reminder of what it had felt like to want to be anywhere else, everywhere else.

Now she was as far away from Sheffield as she could be, and the person that had brought her there was far from the person she thought she'd known.

She couldn't decide whether that scared her or not.

“I—” The Doctor's mouth twisted into a familiar scrunch. “Can we talk about this later?”

“We're all trapped in a room the size of a London studio flat,” Ryan said. “Not like we got anything else to do, unless you've got a brilliant escape plan that you've been waitin' to share with us. When's gonna be a better time to talk about it?”

Her lips pressed together.

“C'mon, Doctor. We're mates, yeah?” Ryan leaned himself against the wall more casually, arms folding across his chest, eyes flicking briefly to Graham, across from them. Dark and gleaming sallow green, worried. “You never tell us anythin'. Don't you think it's about time? Gramps is right, that was proper scary back there.”

“I've never lied to you!” she protested. “I just—”

Yaz stepped closer. “I'm with him.”

“It's complicated.” A snap, but it was half-hearted. The Doctor's face fell as the words left her mouth, at the involuntary tone. “That's all.” She softened.” And I never wanted any of you mixed up in it at all, I'm so sorry. I thought—I thought New Year's could be the end of it.” She slid down the wall opposite them, hands coming to rest on her knees. Eyes darkening. “Should've known better. It's always the Daleks. Always been the Daleks.”

“Why?” Ryan asked. “How does that happen? What does that even mean?”

Her gaze flicked away.

“I was there, at the moment of their creation,” she admitted finally, after a moment of silence, thick, expectant. “Long time ago. I could've stopped it.”

“Why didn't you?”

“It would've been wrong,” she said simply. “Or maybe it would've been right. I didn't know, then. I still don't. I didn't think I had the right. But it—” Her voice caught again. “It didn't end well. For either of us. There was a war, eventually, between my people and theirs. Big as the universe. Across time and space. And I had to end it.”

“End it.” Yaz felt her stomach churn, felt her fingers grow cold. Heard Ryan take a shuddering breath at her side. She hadn't quite believed it, before. She felt the ground solidify underneath her, felt the air, metal, in her mouth. Sharp. “You weren't lying to him, then. You really—you really—”

“No.” Green cast the Doctor half in shadow, threw her hair and face into sickly light. Her hands twisted together in her lap, the grip tight, even against the broken parts. If there was pain, it didn't show on her face. But then, maybe there was no pain. She wasn't people, after all. No matter how easy she usually made it for them to forget. “And yes. I remember being the person who did it,” she whispered. “And I remember being the person who never could.”

Ryan shivered again, beside her. “How is that possible?” he asked quietly. “How can that be true?”

“Complicated.” Three times, like a curse, like a spell. “Call it a very literal instance of self-help. Please.” Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, the gesture somehow nervous. “It was a long time ago. It needs to stay there.”

“I can't picture you fighting a war,” Ryan whispered. “I can't picture you—”

“Good,” she said, firmly. “That's not me anymore. That man is behind me. Leave him be. None of it matters anymore, not really. I'm done talkin' about it. I'll get us all out of this, I promise.” She stood abruptly to face the door, arms swinging. Free of her own grip, her face still blank, free of pain. Alien. “Just have to think. If I can get the sonic back, if we can get to the TARDIS—”

“Doc.”

She turned, reluctant.

Graham faced her, still opposite all of them, leaned against the wall like he wanted it to swallow him. His face was grey. “How do you go from being the sort of person that saves a race of monsters,” he asked, quiet, “to the sort of person that kills every last one of them? How does that fit with your rules? Or are they that flexible?”

For a moment, Yaz was sure she wouldn't answer.

“I said I was done,” she said, deceptively mild, as grey and tense as he was. Her eyes were wide and dark in a bloodless face. “I really did mean it. I'm so sorry, Graham. I'm sorry you're here. I'm sorry you're scared. I'm sorry I couldn't keep you safe.”

“I don't care about none of that.” He stayed where he was. Still. “None of that's your fault. You said right at the start that it might not be safe, so why do you keep forgetting it was our choice? If you had it your way, you'd have dumped us on the sidewalk back home, again, just like before. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, you know.”

She bowed her head in what Yaz thought might be shame, but he wasn't finished yet.

“I said maybe you'd got lost, or maybe it was an accident, or maybe you'd got in trouble, but you just dumped us and ran. And I—” His voice caught. “I wanted you to be better than that. I needed you to be better than that. Not for me, for them. Didn't they deserve better, after everything?”

“Graham—”

“I'm not done,” he said quietly. Firmly. “I might be scared, Doc, but I ain't as scared as you are. And it's turned you all selfish, it's made you forget that we're all people with choices to make, too. So tell me,” he begged. “Tell me you won't take my choice away from me again. Tell me you're the person I wanted you to be. Tell me your rules actually mean something.”

She closed her eyes. “I can't,” she said, in a whisper that carried. “I can't do that.”

“Then,” he said, breathing thinly, fragile. “I don't suppose we have anything else to say to one another.”

And he turned from them all and settled on the lowest bunk without another word. Shoes on, his back to them.

The Doctor stared at the place that he'd been, perfectly still. Blinking slowly, like she wasn't entirely sure what had just happened. She was too used to the last word, Yaz thought, stepping closer, Ryan still and troubled at her shoulder, against the wall. Or maybe that was unkind.

“Doctor,” she said quietly, after a minute. Aiming for sympathy, and landing somewhere near it. Soft enough that it would have to do, for now. “Sorry, but—the plan?”

“The plan,” she said, taking in a sharp breath. Tearing her gaze away from the wall. “Right. Well—uh. There is no plan, there's never a plan. You do know that, right? Plan as we go, that's the—that's the—” She trailed off, scattered. “If we can get back to the TARDIS,” she continued quietly, pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “We can troubleshoot from there. But I need to know more, about these people, about this war, about the Computer. I need to see what we're up against, and you lot—” She paused, naked guilt flooding across her face. “I''m sorry. I'm so sorry I brought you here.”

“Move past it, mate,” Ryan interjected, peeling himself off the wall. He put his hands around her upper arms, ignoring the subtle flinch. “We're here now. Nothing any of us can do about it. Might as well put us to work getting out of here.”

She looked up at him tiredly.

“Ten points,” she said, mustering up a smile when he did. “You'll be in with all the laypeople, which is an excellent spot to be if you're trying to learn anything about a place. Find out about what people are like, listen to them. Wherever there's war, wherever there's tyranny, people resist.”

“You want us to find some friends?”

“Never hurts,” she said. “At least it might give us a better picture of what's going on here. And in the meantime—”

She whirled out of his grip to face the wall, coat twisting with her, grimy and oil-splattered. “Okay,” she whispered, more to herself. “Lots of things happening at once, can't afford to lose track of anything. Time Lords, TARDIS, Tropos, Daleks, big old computer, sonic screwdriver—you lot are the priority, of course. But at the end of the day our escape probably really depends on—”

Yaz watched her gaze narrow.

“The Computer,” she said, lips barely moving. “How does it work? How does it watch everything, how does it track everything? It's gotta be—”

She raised a hand to her neck, absently, but didn't touch. Thinking. And before they could stop her, she reeled back a fist and slammed it into the wall, repeatedly.

“Oh,” Ryan shouted in alarm, against the sudden racket, rushing forward with Yaz to grab her, but she didn't resist. Only grinned triumphantly at the dent she'd made in the seam of the wall, heedless of the new tears in the knuckles of her already mangled hand.

“What the hell,” Ryan hissed, distressed, “what did the wall ever do to you?”

“It's not the wall, it's what's behind it!” She shrugged free of them, reaching, and wrenched the soft metal away from the seam with a terrible screech. A forest of wires glistened behind it. “Oh, that's terribly clever.”

“What—”

“Look!” She put a hand to it, curious, but Yaz flinched as something jolted at her neck, travelled up her spine, made her fingers twitch. Ryan and the Doctor flinched too.

“Hah!” the Doctor shouted at the wall, jumping in delight. “Knew you were watching! How d'you like that? Built in surveillance, no cameras necessary. It's running through everything, it's connected everywhere, but it sees and experiences the world through the nanotechnology embedded in the people its surveilling.” She was breathing hard, eyes glittering with excitement. “It must be massive. I wonder where they keep its motherboard.”

“D'you wanna try that again in English?” Ryan asked, stepping closer to the wall, curious despite himself, Yaz knew. She could see it in his eyes, fighting against the worry. “A little less manic, this time?”

She frowned impatiently, but smoothed it over when she caught his face. Like she was remembering how much she actually enjoyed explaining things.

“If I'm a burgeoning surveillance state, what's my first step gonna be?” she asked rhetorically. “Regardless of purpose, regardless of why I'm surveilling people. Cameras. And lots of them. Ways of triangulating data—figuring out where people are, and what they're doing. But they don't need that here, because every single person on the whole planet comes equipped with their very own rank chip, running right through their nervous system. That could be all the data you need right there, if you're just watching, but the Computer doesn't just keep track of people, it's practically running this whole place, at least if what Yose says is true. It's embedded in the people, embedded in the walls, embedded in all their technology, their infrastructure—and talking to itself, constantly. It's got a finger in every pie. It's amazing.” Her brow creased, finally. “Also deeply troubling.”

“Took you a moment to get there.”

“I did get there, though. You don't understand, this thing is old. Old technology, supplemented with new, built overtop of itself, it could have been here for a hundred years or more. Very likely it's all but got a mind of its own by now. That's deeply fascinating, and also—incredibly dangerous.” Her breath caught. “I wonder how in charge Corcorax really is.”

She raised a hand, the mangled one, like she was going to reach for the wires again, transfixed, but Yaz caught it gently in her own grasp before she could.

“Last time you did that, it shocked all four of us,” she protested.

The Doctor frowned. “I'll give it fair warning this time, I think I just surprised it. My nervous system's more complex than yours, it might not be able to see very well through me.”

“Or it just doesn't want anyone at all touching it,” she said, firm. “Especially people talking loudly about how to escape around it.”

Her lips pressed together and Yaz knew she'd won. For now, at least.

“Just—slow down,” she said, as softly as she could manage. “Just for a moment. We all need rest.”

Another sharp intake of breath that she knew would only lead to further protest.

“You too,” she insisted, grip tightening. The Doctor winced, but Yaz didn't let go. “It does hurt, doesn't it,” she said quietly. Frowning.

“Well, now you're touching it—”

“You keep using it!”

“It's my hand!”

“You have another one!”

“Oi!” Ryan interjected, stepping between them. He put a hand on each of their shoulders. “Can we—can we not? Please?” His eyes flicked once towards Graham, before he could stop himself. He swallowed. “Look,” he said, gently extricating the Doctor's hand from Yaz's grip. He tucked it carefully against her chest and trapped it with a suspender. “There. Keep it still at least, yeah? Easy fix.”

Yaz let out the breath she'd been holding. Shame tried to bubble up from the back of her throat, in the face of his distress, but she swallowed it back. They were all a little bit right. There wasn't anything any of them could do about it, right now.

“Good thinkin',” was all she said, looking at him gratefully. He nodded, stiff. Worried. “He's right, you know. No more punching metal walls,” she told the Doctor, who seemed stuck somewhere between grateful and irritated at her sudden lack of mobility.

“Punched through much worse,” she muttered, distracted, twitching her fingers experimentally. “It'll fix itself on its own, you know, you don't have to worry.”

“Well, it'll fix itself much better if you stop being stupid about it,” Ryan said, but his tone wasn't harsh enough for the criticism to land. “Can we—can we tuck in, now? I'm knackered.”

The Doctor looked at him sympathetically, though her gaze flicked back to the mangled wall, a bit longingly.

“No,” Yaz warned, nudging all of them toward the bunks. “Leave it be, Doctor. Not like it's going anywhere. Don't mess with it without us, okay?”

“I really think we might be friends now,” she protested. “It's old, it's interesting! Surprisingly less hostile than I first imagined a surveillance-based supercomputer programmed to wage a never-ending war to be, if I'm honest, and I'd really like to know how it works.”

“You can find out tomorrow,” Yaz said, swinging herself up onto the top left bunk, wincing as the impact of her boots kicked up a cloud of dust. Ryan took the one on the opposite side, sat hunched with his legs swinging off the edge. “It's not going anywhere. Neither are we.”

Ryan frowned, though in this corner of the room the gloom was more concentrated. It made making out facial expression more difficult. “Never-ending war?” he asked. “You really think—how are you going to stop it, then?”

“I'm not sure that's possible,” the Doctor admitted, seating herself reluctantly on the bunk underneath Yaz, head disappearing. Yaz could just see her fingers twitch, held against her chest. “They've been fighting for too long. These trenches—they've dug themselves into a hole, in more ways than one. Think World War One. Know your history?”

“Not as good as Grandad,” Ryan said, glancing down. But Graham, if he was even awake anymore, remained stonily silent.

“Well, the problem with trenches,” the Doctor said, legs kicking the ground, “is they slow everything down. Cause movement to stagnate, get everyone stuck in the mud. This is that, but a hundred times worse, they've set up shop in them, they live their lives out of them. Wars like this only end when one side agrees to give it all up, and that will never happen here.”

Ryan sighed, swinging his legs up and over, collapsing back onto the bunk with a thud. He settled his head under his arms, elbows bent. “What are we gonna do, then?” he asked quietly. “If these people don't want to escape. If they won't evacuate.”

“Corcorax might not speak for all of them,” the Doctor said, mild. Hopeful, in that way of hers, reasonable. Against the rest of it, against that beating tide of fear. You could always count on her to have faith in people, Yaz thought, leaning back gingerly against the thin mattress, eyes catching on the ceiling. Even when they didn't deserve it. “All we can do is hope that there's more than a few people here that know a losing battle when they see one.”

Metal seams and panels ran across the ceiling laterally, thousands of wires and cables apparently concealed behind them. Not that it mattered. She swallowed at the reminder of cool metal against her neck. They were being watched from within, all of them.

“That's comforting,” Ryan sighed, closing his eyes. “Well. Job for tomorrow. Night, you two.”

“Goodnight,” Yaz said quietly, into the gloom, so exhausted she was sure she could sleep, despite the thrumming of her pulse in her ears. Despite the questions she had, the uncertainty and unease that had taken up living quarters in the pit of her stomach. She closed her eyes, mindless of the constant dripping, the discomfort of her uniform, her bun digging into the back of her head. And she listened, for a while, for the scrape of boots, for the shift and rustle of thin, cheap fabric, but it never came. When she woke, she thought absently, on the edge of sleep, the Doctor would still be there, wouldn't she. Sat there on the bottom bunk, hunched over, still and silent as waking stone.

Watching.

Chapter Text

Futile game.

She wasn't dreaming of home, and that was odd, probably.

Instead, it was the same dream she'd been having for weeks. Just—void, out in front of her. The expanse of the universe, gleaming, in sight but out of reach. Distant stars and gases and planets, a silent cacophony of light and colour and spectacle.

She breathed, improbably. Floated. Watched. Familiar want strangled her from within, like it always did, gut-wrenching, and it didn't make any sense, she had got what she wanted, she had found the universe again, everything she saw was in her reach—

But her easy breaths were a lie, and for the first time in all the weeks she'd been dreaming, she found that whatever improbable air she'd been breathing was gone. She gasped, straining, what should have been hissing, choking breaths eerily silent, but there was no air, no breath to be had, and the universe blackened around the edges, blurred until it was nothing at all, until she was nothing at all—

Yaz woke, gasping, to the hiss and squeal of the door and nearly banged her head on the panelled ceiling.

“Morning!” Yose called, and she could hear faintly, from behind him, a thin, buzzing chime that barely reached them. “Not that it's easy to tell, I suppose. No sun down here. You're from off-world, have you ever seen it?”

Yaz scrubbed at her eyes, swinging her legs off the side of the bed. Her hands were shaking, so she clenched them until they stopped. “Seen the—sun? You're not telling me you've never seen it, Yose.”

“Well, I—I’ve heard of it,” he said, coming into focus where he stood waiting in the door. He was wearing a different shirt, but the rest of him was still mostly bedraggled and grimy. Still uncomfortably earnest. “But I, uh. Well, they don't send me Topside, I'm non-collateral. Like you. Come down, all of you, and I'll take you to mess. Show you around.”

Ryan and Graham were groaning awake on the other bunk, but there was something—

“Where's the Doctor?” she asked, jumping down, feet clanging. She adjusted her bun, slicking back the hairs that had escaped while she was sleeping, feeling stiff and grimy. Unsettled, but she could ignore that, for now. She wondered vaguely if a clean set of clothes was ever going to be a part of the equation.

“Unexpected troop movements in Zone Eight,” Yose said, nervously. Like he wasn't entirely sure he was allowed to tell them. “General—um, well, Lieutenant-general Corcorax called an operations meeting. I think Major Stet came for her earlier.”

“Great,” Ryan said flatly, before she could. She bit her lip worriedly as he jumped down from his bunk and stood. Graham struggled to his feet behind him. It would have made her feel better if they all could have touched base before the day began, but—

Well. Nothing here was especially optimal. She supposed she had better get used to it.

“Will we be able to see her at all?” she asked as they followed Yose out of their quarters. Well, their cell, really, seeing as how it locked behind them. “What does being a general even mean, here?”

Yose shook his head. “High command don't really mix, with the rest of us,” he said, worrying at his lower lip. “Their schedules are different. I don’t—I don't really know what Lieutenant-general Corcorax has planned, but—I assume he's getting her input on troop operations? Battle strategy? I really couldn't say, I'm sorry.”

So she was away from the action, Yaz thought, feeling her neck relax, just a hair. Hopefully. That was something, at least.

“You sure do seem like you know a lot about this, though, son,” Graham pointed out, at Ryan's shoulder. His face was still grey with exhaustion, when she glanced briefly behind her. The thin cot hadn't done anything for his back, she didn't think. Or his mood. “You got a source, or what?”

“No, no.” Yose was in front of them now, leading, but his shoulders clenched. “It's just—Lieutenant-general Corcorax is my uncle, you see.”

“Oh,” Ryan said, realizing. “That's why you're not getting blown up upstairs, then.”

Graceless. Yaz bit back a sigh.

Yose tensed further, which she hadn't thought was actually possible. “I'm not proud of it,” he said softly, though his voice still reverberated off the soft metal of the walls, in this empty section of the trenches. “But—I’m the only family he's got left. Me and Anzi.”

“Anzi?”

“Little sister. She's five. Loves him to pieces, he's the only one that'll toss her in the air.” He swallowed audibly. “I suppose she can't remember anyone else.”

God.

“Sorry, mate,” Ryan said quietly. “That's terrible.”

“Well, I suppose it's just life, isn't it,” Yose said, mild, and that was also terrible. “Don't worry about it.” But they marched along the rest of the way in silence, past the tunnels full of neighbourhoods, past the sound of people's voices, even past the junction that lead down to high command. They kept it all spread out, she realized as she walked. Which made sense, she supposed. A breech in one section would be far less catastrophic if it didn't take all of their industry, all of their rations, all of their weapons with it. But it was nothing short of a maze, poorly lit, poorly signed. Without Yose to lead, they would have all been lost in a short minute.

Also to deter potential invaders, then, she thought, pulling vague, long-forgotten facts about the Blitz from the back of her head. People under siege. Nothing ever really changed, did it.

They only stopped once, on their way to breakfast, when that odd buzzing chime sounded again and a smooth woman's voice rang out from nowhere. Echoing off the walls—or coming from within them, Yaz realized, frowning.

“Good morning, Tropos,” the woman's voice said, loud and clear as a bell. “The Glorious Defense continues. Our soldiers are even as we speak clearing Zone Eight from invaders. We are also so very pleased to announce that total civilian casualties for the week amount to zero. Thank you for your continued effort and cooperation in defending your home. Tropos Stands.”

No mention of the Doctor, Yaz thought, mind reeling. No mention of the breech in Section Nine.

“Tropos stands,” Yose muttered absently, the hint of a smile pulling at the side of his mouth. “That was List, she loves doing announcements. It's a lottery every week, you see.”

“Total civilian casualties?” Graham said, ignoring him. There was tension in his voice, wound tightly, thinly. “Yose, you said there were no civilians on Tropos.”

“There's not.”

“So of course there's no civilian casualties!”

“Well, of course.” Yose scratched the back of his head, confused. “It's just—y’know. Morale, I expect. It is, technically speaking, the truth.” He turned back around and began walking again, boots ringing out on the floor, dirt shaking across the metal.

Graham ran a tired hand down his face and shot her and Ryan a look.

“I know,” Yaz said quietly. “The Doctor's working on it.”

“Right,” he said tiredly, souring. “'Course.”

They trudged after Yose to mess, which was one of the largest rooms she'd caught a glimpse of yet, shining and tall, crowded full of people and tables and the smell of food. The air was a bit too damp to render any of it especially appetizing, but it was different enough, at least, that it captured her attention. But breakfast, as it tended to be more often than not, was some kind of tasteless porridge that sat sticky at the back of her throat, and though they ate together, the atmosphere was less than genial. Maybe if there had been croissants instead, she comforted herself, when they finally left.

It was always easier to blame the porridge.

Yose split them up, after that, left Ryan with the workers behind the mess preparations and took her and Graham deeper into the trenches. The industrial section, but Yose took Graham down a different corridor than her. It had to be deliberate, she thought, fuming as it happened but powerless to stop it. They didn't want them talking together. Planning together.

She was taken last and dropped off in a side hall full of tables lined with grungy, unfamiliar weapons that a woman old enough to be Nani, small and nimble-fingered, showed her how to disassemble and clean.

Non-collateral categories, she realized with a dull jolt. Gun-cleaners, and food servers, and God only knew what else. The sick, the elderly, the protected—and the subversive. With any luck, they wouldn't be the only ones.

But the environment, she understood quickly, wasn't exactly well-suited for conversation. The work, even though it was repetitive, was fairly constant. There was a rhythm to it, and people were loath to be interrupted, though the old woman that had shown her how to do it was kind enough to give a name, at least.

“Major Roz,” she said, eyes crinkling as she smiled, watching Yaz attempt a go of her own. “And you're quite a natural.”

“I've done it before,” Yaz said, squinting down at the gun through the dim, green light, trying to understand how it worked. It didn't fire bullets, she didn't think, but you filled it with cartridges of—something. And it was bigger than the guns she'd encountered before, more unwieldy. Far more likely to be used, too, and maybe that was what was troubling her. She was trained in weapons because she had to be, but she'd never walked around with anything more dangerous than a baton on her hip. “Sort of. I'm Yaz.”

“Sergeant. But you don't care about rank,” Roz noted, eyes still crinkled. “And your clothes are very strange. You're a guest from off-world, then.”

“Is that what you call us?” she asked, nose wrinkling. She pulled the clean rag she'd been handed carefully through the gun's front nozzle. “I'd say I'm more of a prisoner.”

“Well, you're welcome to say it,” Roz said kindly, “but maybe not too loudly.”

And she went back to her own work, content to glance over Yaz's shoulder occasionally and offer the odd bit of gently-worded advice.

She tried to keep herself busy, after that. With no one to talk to, and no way to learn more about anything, it would be far too easy to get lost in her own head, and that was the last thing she wanted. This was temporary, she reminded herself, stripping the casing off, setting it to her left. Polish, reset, repeat. It wasn't forever, the Doctor would get them all out. And they'd help. Just another Saturday.

Just another Saturday.

Lunch was only a fifteen minute break for water and a distributed handful of what seemed like dried fruits, but dinner was in the mess. People ate in shifts, washed themselves in shifts, did laundry in shifts. Real life, militarized. Because it had to be, she supposed, waiting in line with a cracked, grimy plate, hands and fingers aching. Major Roz's hands had been covered in callouses, and she could see why.

She was half-worried Graham and Ryan had been assigned shifts before her and she was going to have to find a table by herself, like some sort of terrible, dystopian rehash of primary school, but in the end it was Ryan who ended up dropping scoops of mashed vegetable and some sort of unidentifiable meat onto her plate.

“Sorry,” he said from behind the counter, wincing in sympathy at the face she pulled. “Better than nothing, right? Least you haven't had to smell it cooking all afternoon.”

“This is makin' me miss primary school lunch,” she said, nose wrinkling. “I never thought I'd say that.”

“Even soggy chips is better than this,” he agreed, stepping off to the side. “I’m almost done, though. I'll meet you somewhere, yeah?”

“Sure.”

In an ideal world, she would have liked to have found a table in the corner, without any slimy, rusted puddles underneath it, far from other people and from the sound of dripping, but whatever dinner shift they were in, it was crowded. She ended up with a table for four, pressed between a side wall and the rest of the hall. The paint was peeling off it. She picked at it while she waited, flecks of sea-foam coloured paint gathering under her fingernails.

“Miserable lot, aren't they,” Ryan said quietly, under the din, sliding in across from her. He dropped his plate with a clatter.

“Were your lot miserable?” she asked, abandoning the paint. She took a careful sip of metallic-tasting water she'd gotten from a rolling, wandering cart. “They're quiet, I suppose.”

“Couldn't get a word out of anyone, even when I dropped stuff.” He crossed his arms, foot tapping. Incongruous, in his leather jacket, against the sea of people in grungy browns and greens behind him. She supposed her police uniform must have stood out just as badly, judging by Roz. But no one stopped and stared. “Even when I dropped stuff on purpose. It's like they're on autopilot. Or just really suspicious, maybe. We do stick out a bit. Where'd you end up, then?”

“Gun cleaning. Have you heard from Graham?”

“Ran into him on break, I think his shift ends soon. They put him in laundry. Told him to find us, if it worked out.”

“Good.” Yaz picked up her only utensil—a fork, sort of—and looked down at her plate, brow creased. It was hard to think, hard to listen, over the echoing voices, the scrape of chairs, the constant dripping. “I think the people here just don't know that life can be anything other than this,” she considered, grimness settling over her like a thin, ratty blanket. “They're stuck in it. Trapped. Even though most of them are so—far away from it. That must be sort of terrible, too, I suppose.”

Ryan chewed thoughtfully, foot still tapping.

“Don't mean they're past it,” he said. “They've gotta have—what, stories and stuff, right? Yose knows what the sun is, even if he's never seen it.”

“All the good that will do us,” Yaz muttered, pushing around the substance with her fork absently. “How are you meant to help people that don't know they need helpin'?”

“Nah,” he replied, “the Doctor always says stories are what give people hope. We’ve just gotta—are you not eating?” He leaned forward, concerned. Distracted.

“No, it's just—” She felt heat rise in her cheeks despite herself. Spite and homesickness and something stubborn and steadfast mingling at the back of her throat. “I don’t—I don't know how it's been prepared. Or what it is, even, or—” She trailed off, feeling a spark of embarrassment that she smothered tiredly. She'd spent so long wanting to get away from home, maybe it was silly to hold onto pieces of it like this, maybe it was—hypocritical, even. Impractical. But she couldn't find it in herself to care. They were so far away from anything recognizable, but things could still—things could still matter. If you decided that they did.

For a moment, Ryan didn't say anything, face blank, and she bit back the embarrassment again, rising like a tide. Preparing to defend herself, like she always had to, though not usually against her—friends. But he only turned determinedly to his own plate and scooped his portion of mashed vegetable onto hers without a word.

“You don’t—” she protested.

“No arguin',” he said firmly, claiming her untouched mystery meat, admirably stone-faced as it dripped sadly down the side of his plate. “No one's dyin' of malnutrition, not on my watch.”

“And how do you think you're gonna fare, without a vegetable?” she demanded, half-laughing. Grateful, but he'd never take a straightforward thank-you. She kicked him gently under the table instead.

“I had some,” he insisted. “Tastes like turnips. I'll pass, thanks very much.” He smiled, eyes crinkling. Chagrined, but only if you were looking. “Sorry, Yaz. Didn't even think.”

“It's alright.” She poked at her pile of mashed vegetable thoughtfully. It did look a bit like turnips, unfortunately. Maybe that was all they could grow, here. “Don't usually have to think that much about it either, honestly. The Doctor just—knows. Somehow. Like a halal sixth sense.”

“She is good at that,” he considered. “Kept us all from being poisoned loads of times too, come to think of it.”

“Poisoned is relative.”

“I never said she was good at telling you whether it was gonna taste good or not.” He shuddered. “Near as I can tell, she lives off dirt and custard creams. Only thing I've ever heard her badmouth is pears.”

She sighed. “Face it,” she said. “We've been having a culinary tour of the universe with a soil connoisseur.”

“It really is a bit like that, isn't it.”

She snorted, and that broke the floodgates. It was how Graham found them, five minutes later, still laughing hopelessly, hunched over their plates. Ribs aching, but in another way, it felt a bit like someone had lifted their boot from her chest.

She hadn't laughed properly like that in weeks, she realized, swiping tears of mirth from under her eyes.

Graham scooted in beside Ryan, plate clattering on the table, brow furrowed. He smelled faintly of detergent. “Did I miss something?” he ventured.

“The Gordon Ramsey of dirt,” Ryan gasped out, which only set them off again.

“Like if Mary Berry could carbon-date your dessert—”

They collapsed onto their elbows, cackling.

“You know what, I give up, I don't want or need any context,” Graham decided, mystified. “What's got into you two?”

“Oh, my days,” Ryan sighed, straightening, swiping his hands down his face. He sniffed. “How was the laundry, Graham?”

“Not big on fabric softener, this lot,” Graham said, between bites of vegetable. The fact that it was essentially turnips didn't seem to bother him, much. “What about you two? Where did you end up, Yaz?”

“Cleaning guns,” she replied. “It were quiet, though.”

“Quiet everywhere,” Graham said, nodding. “I heard there was some sort of trouble upstairs, Topside, but they all shut up as soon as they see me coming. Couldn't get any details. People are nice enough, here, but they're not keen on fomenting revolution, near as I can tell.”

“Who would?” Ryan spun his fork in his hand, thinking. “They're being watched all the time. We're being watched all the time.”

“They don't really act like it though,” Yaz pointed out. “No one’s—no one's all that worried about it. I was watching people all day, they're working hard, but it's not because they're afraid of punishment, it's just 'cos they believe they're doing something important. Besides, it's a bit different, isn't it? Not like there's necessarily some bloke at the other end, listening in. It's all just data. The Computer has to interpret it.”

“Yeah,” Graham said, still frowning. “And what if it chooses to interpret people planning on messing all this up as exactly that? What if the reason no one's revolting is because they've all been—I dunno, tossed down a maintenance hatch or something?”

Ryan frowned. “Why hasn't it done that to us already, then? I mean, you think about it, all the really awful stuff goin' on here is because of real people. The Computer just wants people to fight for it. It didn't threaten to kill us, Corcorax did.”

“Ugh.” Yaz leaned forward, elbows on the table, head in her hands, laughter forgotten. This was all far too complicated, still. “This place is confusin'.”

They finished their meal in troubled silence, but it was more companionable than it had been before, at least. They'd been shaken loose, somehow, sort of. She was glad—they were better together, even if they were still missing the Doctor. She was at the heart of it all. Surely she had some of the answers they were missing.

But when Yose finally came and returned them to their cell, she was still nowhere to be found, and he refused to speculate on when she might be returned to them.

“Really couldn't say,” he said, apologetic, far too rushed to be the truth. “Don't know where she is.”

“Yose,” Yaz said flatly, arms crossed. “We know you know more than you're letting on. Why not just let out with it? We're trying to help.”

“I—I can't,” he said, nervous. He was a bit afraid of her, she thought, feeling slightly vindicated. But he was more afraid of his uncle, and that was the trouble, wasn't it. “Sorry. It's all classified, you're not cleared. I could get in trouble. I've already said too much today, honestly. I'm sorry.”

“Will she be back, at least?” she demanded, but he was already ducking out of the cell. “Yose!” she hollered, but he was closing the door, ringing it shut and sealing it as she scrambled to him, and she caught a glimpse of his terrified gaze as it slid finally shut, dark and wet and helpless. Useless. Hate tangled in her throat, overpowering the pity, the sympathy, whatever understanding she'd cultivated, watching him live. Watching them all live. Her hand slammed against the door, palm flat, and the sound sang all the way down to the floor to vibrate at her feet.

“Just—just—”

She exhaled shakily and leaned her forehead against the door.

“Oh, this place is rubbish,” she whispered. Missing home like an ache, and that was rubbish, too.

You wanted this, she thought sharply. You wanted this, and now you've got it.

“Leave it be, love,” Graham said kindly, sitting down on his bunk with a smothered groan. “He's just a kid, he don't know any better. He's scared. All these people, they're scared and they don't know how else to be.”

She turned from the door, frustration bubbling in her throat, trapped.

“I know,” she protested. “I just—I just—I know.” She sighed, sinking down the side of the wall, propping her arms up on her knees tiredly. Afraid, but she couldn't let herself admit it. Homesick, but she couldn't admit that either. Guilty, but that was only because she was feeling homesick.

Trapped, but that wasn't really a new feeling, was it.

This place really did make no sense. The gaping hole in the wall sat there, across from her, contradictory, mocking. Glistening wires underneath.

There was so much they still didn't know. So much they were missing, but the Doctor, most of all. The trick to winning, Yaz had heard her say once, was just to not allow yourself to believe you could lose. But believing that, she thought, sagging against the wall, dirt and metal mixing under her nose, was much easier when the Doctor was actually there to help you believe it. No matter what doubts they may have had, no matter what she'd been hiding from them.

“My question is, how are we meant to get out of here,” Ryan asked eventually, articulating what she wouldn't, scrawling a haphazard board for noughts and crosses into the dirt across from her, “if we're never allowed to see each other? If we're all separated during the day, and the Doctor's who knows where—”

“She'll turn up,” Graham said, reassuring, from his spot on the bunk. “She'll have been planning this whole time, just you wait.”

“Thought you were cross with her,” Ryan said, face twisting into a frown.

“I am!” His voice carried, vehement.

“But you still think she can get us out of this.”

“Well, I can't sleep well thinkin' anything else, can I?” Yaz heard him shift. “It's complicated. I don’t—I don’t—all of this is quite a lot.”

“Understatement,” Ryan muttered, winning, for the third time. Yaz rolled her eyes and erased the board, resigned.

“I want Os this time,” she insisted.

“Like that's gonna help you,” he said, redrawing the lines. “Look, Gramps, I don't blame you being angry. I am too, I was—scared. Proper scared. I'm still proper scared, if I'm honest. But—but we're stuck here, aren't we?”

“For now,” he allowed.

“And we've only got each other.”

There was a long pause. “You're a better man than all of us,” Graham muttered eventually. “Must have got that from your nan. I'll think about it,” he considered. “Of course I will. Not like there's much else to do, here, in the meantime.”

“Yeah. If the Daleks don't get us first, the boredom will.” Ryan yawned, scraping his last move into the dirt. “What do you think, Yaz?”

“I think,” she said, tracing a careful X into the ground, into the only square she could, “that it's a draw.”

“Huh.” Ryan glared down at the board, betrayed.

“Well,” he shrugged, after a moment. “Can't win every time.”

Chapter Text

Death's dream kingdom.

In the morning, she was there.

Yaz thought she might still be dreaming at first, as she gasped awake, the phantom scent of ozone dissipating under her nose. But that lonely silhouette didn't disappear as her vision cleared, stayed solid and blue and impossibly still, gaze fixed on the hole in the wall.

Still like she never was when she knew they were watching.

“Doctor,” Yaz croaked, hunching over as she sat up, this time, so her head didn't hit the ceiling. Relief pounding in her ears. “Oh, god.”

The Doctor turned, face brightening. Like a switch turning on. “Yaz!”

“You're back.” She stayed where she was, fingers cramped and aching, feeling impossibly tired still. It should have felt like morning, but the lights never changed. They stayed dim and sallow and she wasn't sure how anyone could stand it. She'd been a morning person, once, but she needed the sun. “Are you alright?”

“Long day at the office, that's all.” The Doctor smiled, a bit wistfully. Half-shadowed, in the gloom. “I should have a briefcase. I've never had a briefcase, I think I'd like one. I could put—stuff in it. Files. That's what people put in briefcases, right?”

“I—I’ve never had a briefcase, either,” she said, despite herself, still too fuzzy with sleep to derail the evasion tactic. She rubbed the back of her neck. “Are you really—yesterday, Yose mentioned Zone Eight. I heard it had been secured, was that you?”

“Might have been,” the Doctor said quietly, swinging her arms. “The Daleks have built automated sentries. Robot fodder for the front lines, but—well, I’ve seen it before.” Her eyes wandered back to the hole in the wall, distracted. “Took out the neural mainframe. But they’ll be back, I suppose. Persistent lot, Daleks.”

“Have you slept at all since we got here?” Yaz lifted her arms behind her, trying in vain to stretch out her back. There was shuffling, beside her, as Ryan shifted. He was a light sleeper. Him and Graham both. She lowered her voice. “When did you get back?”

“Don't need to,” she muttered. “And I'm not sure, exactly. Well, I am, actually, it was fourteen hours, forty-two minutes, twenty-five seconds after I left yesterday morning, but I don’t—well, I think they use a twenty-four hour clock here. Close to it, at least, the planetary rotation isn't quite the same. This was an Earth colony, a long-time ago.”

Yaz dropped her arms. “Really? But it's so—” She frowned. “Different. There's nothing familiar.”

“Isn't there?”

But she didn't elaborate. Only glanced toward the door, reacting to some noise that Yaz couldn't hear, not half-addled with sleep still, stiff and confused.

“That'll be for me,” she said, face unreadable.

“What—”

“Listen, Yaz, the people here—we're going to help them.” A whisper, but it rang with determination. Certainty. “We're going to help ourselves too. Just hold on. I need you to hold on.”

“I'll do whatever you need me to,” Yaz whispered back, confused. She scrubbed a fist across her eyes. “But—Doctor, when will I see you again? How do we—how are we gonna do this, if they're keeping us apart?”

“Working on it.” Her eyes flicked to the door again. “I have to go.”

“But—”

“Brave heart, Yaz.”

And the squeal and hiss of the door pierced the gloomy silence and the Doctor was gone, like breath on the wind. Yaz drifted off again, uneasy, unsure if maybe she'd imagined the whole thing.

Another day passed, and it was getting harder and harder to deny that maybe this was more than just a typical Saturday. That it had been more than a typical Saturday, right from the start, because of course it had.

She slept, because she had to, because it wasn't like there was anything else to do, but the void was always there, the universe, airless and beautiful and deadly and unavoidable. Want, burning in her chest, and she couldn't tell anymore, whether it was homesickness or wanderlust. Maybe they'd been the same thing all along.

Either way, she kept waking up, gasping.

“You were dreamin',” the Doctor said quietly, face caught in the gloom. She was leaned up against the bunk, looming. Hands shoved into her pockets, like they'd been at Grace's funeral.

Yaz swallowed back a shudder, still half-asleep. She'd collapsed onto the bottom bunk, earlier, too exhausted to bother hauling herself up to the top.

“I keep thinking maybe I dreamt you up, too,” she whispered eventually. “But you are really here. Right?”

The Doctor stepped forward, crouched, carefully. Close enough Yaz could see the lines around her eyes.

“I'm here,” she promised.

“Is it hard?” Yaz asked. Because she was so close. Because it all might still have been a dream. “Killing Daleks.”

“No.” But it sounded like an apology. “It's the easiest thing in the world. I hate them,” she admitted, but it wasn't vehement, wasn't spiteful. “I've tried—so hard not to, I really have. Hate is foolish,” she whispered. “Love is much wiser. That's rule number one, you know.”

“I thought rule number one was 'don't wander off'. Or—‘don't touch anything'.”

“Yasmin Khan,” the Doctor said, savouring her name like no one else ever did, smiling like the world was breaking. “They're all rule number one.”

And she pressed a cool, trembling hand to Yaz's forehead, before she could say another word.

When Yaz woke from a dreamless sleep, she was gone again.

Another day. Polish, reset, repeat, until it felt like her fingers were going to fall off. Her rank chip itched against her neck, the skin reddened and irritated, but she still didn't dare touch it. The other people on Tropos never seemed bothered by them. Their skin had healed long ago, she supposed, trying not to think too hard about it, about tiny children running around with nanotechnology running through their spines, ranked and numbered and enlisted. Non-collateral, with hands too small for cleaning guns. But they would be somewhere, she thought grimly. Doing something that was useful, far from the sun, from the open air.

“Do you tell stories, here?” she asked Roz on their lunch break, dried fruit sticky and tough in the palm of her hand. She had no appetite for it. She considered briefly the potential pitfalls of putting it into her front uniform pocket for later. “Do you—do you sing? Pray? There must be something more to Tropos than war, Major.”

There was a guttural, screeching moan, far above them. The rounded, shiny walls shuddered briefly. It had been happening all day, and no one seemed especially concerned about it, though it likely meant the front had shifted again. Right overtop of them. They were just underneath Zone Six, she'd learned through bald-faced eavesdropping. They were correlated, somehow. Zones for above ground, Sections for below. Different than the no man's land she'd learned about in school—but then, she supposed, it would have to be. The Daleks were like an army of tanks. If you couldn't innovate, you'd have no hope against them.

Even still.

“Of course we tell stories,” Roz said, eyes crinkling into a smile. “That's how we remember what we're trying to save.”

“What if it can't be?” Yaz said quietly. “I've been listening. You've been fighting this war for hundreds of years. What if you could just—escape it? Leave?”

Roz looked at her curiously, around a mouthful of fruit, though she didn't have a spectacular amount of teeth left with which to chew.

“Could you leave your home?” she asked, gaze piercing. Her eyes were a deep brown, beady, the lashes dark. “Could you abandon it, if there were even the smallest chance it could be saved? I was young, once, you know. Collateral. I've been Topside, I've seen the sun. We're underneath what used to be our city. Forced underground by invaders with no hearts and no mercy, but that city was still ours, once. This planet was ours, once, not just what's underneath it.”

Yaz sank back against the wall, frowning.

“The Daleks.”

“Yes.”

“How did they even get here? The Doc—my friend said they'd been wiped from the universe, basically.”

Roz shook her head. “I don't know where they came from. They just fell from the sky, one day. The Computer held them off for years, when they were just a few. But they grew in strength and number, until they got too smart for it.” Her face crinkled. “You ask far too many questions. Where are you from, Sergeant?”

Yaz felt herself smile, distant. “You wouldn't believe me.”

The ancient woman considered her, gaze still piercing and sharp. The walls shuddered again. “This friend of yours. Is she the new management I'm hearing about?”

So they did gossip, still, on Tropos. You just had to work at it, a bit. Her smile deepened.

“She might be,” she said.

Roz looked up at the ceiling. “Then she's right overtop of us,” she said, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. Green caught brightly in her hair as her head moved, glinted in the translucent grey, pulled loosely behind her ears. “Corcorax must be furious. He's always been a traditionalist, just like his father. And now he's got a girl without a gun, charging into battle with the foot soldiers.” Roz shook her head, too distracted to catch the hitch in Yaz's breath. Her smile, as it slid from her face. “Strangest thing I've ever heard. Like something out of a myth. You want stories, Sergeant Yaz, I think you just might be living in one.”

Her whole hand was sticky, now, she realized distantly, feeling cold. The dried fruit was crushed between her fingers, in a fist at her side.

“She's not a myth,” she whispered. “Or a story. She's my best friend.”

Those beady eyes turned back from the ceiling to face her. Warming, crinkling with sympathy.

“Everyone says she's going to help us win,” she said.

“You can't win this war, Roz.” Yaz met her gaze, heart thready, fast, sharp in her neck. Her rank chip was cold metal against hot, irritated skin. “Even with her. Tropos can't be saved.”

Roz coaxed her fist open with gentle, wizened fingers.

“Then we'll die defending it,” she said simply. Kindly. “Come on. We'll get your hand clean. There's no wasting rations, here. I don't want you to get marked up.” She smiled. “Something's always watching.”

Chapter Text

Between the motion and the act.

When she gasped awake this time, she wasn't sure if it was because of the dream, or because of the distant shudder she could feel shaking the walls, the bunk. Even close to the ground, the vibrations travelled up, up, into the frame of the cot, into her bones.

It stopped, and there was only dripping and the sound of fast, shallow breaths.

“Doctor,” she said, struggling up onto her elbows, shadows and blurs clearing into shapes as her vision slowly sharpened. Not a looming silhouette this time, but a crumpled, lonesome shape in the corner by the door. Blue like the early sky. “Oh, god,” she said quietly. “Doctor, is that—are you—”

The Doctor lifted her head, hood falling behind her. Her tangled hair caught green and she was bone white in the gloom, eyes wide and dark. She blinked, slowly.

“Yaz,” she said, after a long moment. Like she'd had to dig herself out of her own head. She smiled delicately, and it stretched thinly over whatever was underneath. “Dreamin' again?”

That was the question, wasn't it.

“Yeah,” she said. “It's alright, though. Are you—d’you want a bunk?”

“Wasn't sleeping,” the Doctor said mildly, struggling to her feet. Warm, green light fell across her in haphazard stripes and illuminated the fine layer of dust settled across her coat, caught in her hair. Windswept.

“What were you doing, then?”

“Oh. Thinking. I suppose.” She trailed her fingers absently across the wall, approaching quietly. They didn't move quite right. Her wrist was still broken. She'd freed it from Ryan's makeshift sling. Out of necessity, maybe, but—it made Yaz wince to think about. “You know,” she breathed, stopping at the hole in the wall, still fixated. “In my head, I got us all out of this two days ago. Everything just—fell into place, like it always does, and we—” Her hand dropped from the wall. “I'm so sorry, Yaz. I'm still workin' on it. Promise.”

She looked stretched thin, though. Defeated. So dripping in guilt she was wearing it like a cape. It drenched everything else away from her, scalded away the optimism and the hope and the belligerence. All the things they relied on her for.

“It's okay,” Yaz said, as bright as she could manage, quiet in deference to Ryan and Graham. Trying to recapture some of what was missing, but it wasn't as convincing, coming from her. “We're—we're trying, too. Talking to people. There's gotta be some way the four of us can—”

But she trailed off, unsure.

“What do you dream about?” the Doctor asked, evading, dodging. Switching subjects, because that was what she did best, but it was less chaotic in the dark, when it was just the two of them alone.

“The universe.” Yaz indulged her, after a moment of consideration. The Doctor was hard to lie to, even when probably it would have been kinder. “Whole galaxies, stretched out in front of me. It's beautiful. But I’m—drowning in it.”

“I'm sorry,” she whispered. She stepped closer, until her face was in the gloom again.

“Why?” Yaz sat up carefully, sheets rustling. “It's not your fault.”

The Doctor crouched beside her, coat fluttering, worn and singed like its owner.

“Isn't it?”

No, she wanted to say. Of course it's not. But the words wouldn't leave her throat.

“Are you alright?” she asked instead, staring into those eyes. “Really?”

“I should be asking you that.”

“I don’t—” Yaz frowned. “I'm fine. We all are. We're non-collateral, just like you asked for.”

“Not—not like that, that's not—”

“What do you mean, then?” she asked, frustrated.

“Your face,” she tried, mouth twisting, hands hovering around Yaz's cheekbones like she might reach out and touch but couldn't quite manage it. Awkward and hesitant. Just like always. “It's all—flat. Even before we came here, it was—you were—did I do that?” she asked breathlessly, brow creased. Her eyes were shining, dark and glassy against the sickly pallor of her face, but she was confused. Like she knew it was her fault but couldn't figure out how. “I've been thinking. I've been—watching. You were so bright,” she whispered, tapping her on the nose gently, pained. “You've gone all—flat and sharp and—sad. Is that what that is?” Those eyes searched her own. “Sad?”

“Of course I was sad,” Yaz said. “You left.”

I was gonna come back. She waited for that familiar refrain, even though it became less believable every time she spouted it. Less believable to her, as well, and maybe that was what made it so hard to swallow. But she didn't bother, this time.

And maybe that was even worse, then.

“You have a life,” the Doctor whispered. “A family, a job, a sofa, a—a place in the universe. You were gonna be fine. You were gonna be magnificent.”

“Is that really what you thought?” Her voice was cracking, but for once she didn't care. It wasn't like she could stop it. And the Doctor was right, wasn't she, it was all sharp and flat and sad, dragged up her throat like gravel, but she couldn't stop that either. “You showed us the entire universe, and then you dumped us back in South Yorkshire. How could that ever be enough, after all that? For anyone? I love my family, I miss my family, I—believed in my job, in what I was doing, but it's all so small,” she said, awful pressure building behind her eyes, terrible, embarrassing, unexpected. “It's so small. And you left me trapped there,” she said through tears. “You left me trapped there and you didn't even say goodbye and I missed you—”

But she bit back the rest of the words, cornered them in the back of her mouth, behind her teeth.

“How could I not want more?” she whispered. “How could I? How could anyone?”

“Yaz,” the Doctor said, carefully, dismayed. But none of it mattered.

“And I got more, didn't I,” she said bitterly. Homesickness, sour at the back of her throat. Guilt. “I got more. And now we're going to die here, millions of miles from home, and I still can’t—can't decide if I regret it or not. I think it might be worth it,” she breathed. “The universe. You. I think it might be worth all this.”

The Doctor only looked at her dully, dismayed.

“When I asked you to believe in me,” she said. “That's not what I meant.”

Yaz gazed back at her, eyes feeling puffy, mouth tense. “Isn't it?” she asked quietly. “I don’t—that's not a judgement. It's not for me to judge, it won't ever be for me. But what do you expect? You're amazin',” she said. “You're like a miracle. You're not at all what I thought you were, once, but it still doesn't matter to me, not really. You talk in circles and you think you know better than everyone else. You hide yourself from yourself and from us. You break your own rules, but you expect everyone else to uphold them. You abandoned us the second you got a bit scared. And it hurt, and I'm cross, but I don't care.” She breathed shallowly, feeling far away from herself. Untethered. “I don't care. And I think that should probably scare me, but it doesn't.”

“It's not that I think I'm any better than you,” the Doctor said, pained, trying, trying. “Or that I think I'm somehow exempt, that's not—that's not—who do you think the rules are for?” she demanded, unexpected, and her eyes were wet now too, shining damply in the gloom. “I'm not what you think I am, I don't want faith that's unconditional, I need—”

She swallowed, recalculating.

“People like you and Ryan and Graham don't need rules,” she tried again, gesturing, “you just need guidance. You don't have,” her breath hitched, horrible, “the experience that I do, that means you have an excuse. It means you still have a chance.”

“A chance for what?” Yaz asked, and in the silent breath between them she could have reached out, could have touched. She didn't.

“A chance to—a chance to avoid—” The Doctor swallowed, looking strained. “Taking a life is not—” she tried, scattered. She took a shuddering breath. “I tried to explain, earlier. It's not something that goes away.” She snatched at Yaz's right hand without warning, fumbled it into a fist and pressed it against Yaz's own heart. “It sits,” she said, her eyes still damp and insistent, her grip cool against Yaz's own. “Right there. Forever. Death doesn't take it away. Nothing does. And I would do anything to spare you that. If I could spare the whole universe of it, I would.”

“But that's not your job,” Yaz said, dismayed. She felt her heart pound hollowly through the bones of her ribcage. Distant and far away, like maybe it was someone else's heartbeat. But even detached from it all, even against the untethered thought that they were having two separate conversations, somehow, she could still understand. This was what made the Doctor dangerous. Wasn't it? Not any of the rest of it, not her fear, or her anger, or her hypocrisy, or whatever else had tangled together and made Graham cross. It was her guilt. The leftovers of it, anyway. No one else should ever have to feel like this, and what did that mean, in practice? Where did it lead? Where did it stop?

If all the rest of them could still be saved, then where did that leave her, at the end of it?

Yaz felt the back of her neck chill, felt cold fill her lungs. Already lost, she thought, distant, answering the question for herself. Understanding things she hadn't understood before, context sliding in with a final, sickening thump. And with her finger on the button.

“Isn't it? I tried counting them all, you know,” the Doctor said, bruised fingers still gripped around Yaz's fist, pressed up against her chest. “All those lives. All those children. It turned me into a monster. And then I tried to forget them and it did just the same.” A tear traced a thin line down the curve of her cheek, but she didn't move, not a muscle. “And then it had never happened at all, but I still remember it and it all still just—sits. And I can't forget, but I can't sit and count them all, and so all I can do is—is—”

Run, she didn't say, but it was written there, behind her eyes. Darting like a fish between reeds.

“That's why I had to go. I thought maybe I could be what you thought I was, but I kept getting it wrong. And then there was the Dalek, and then—and then I put you in danger, real danger, and I nearly—I nearly lost you. All of you.” Her voice cracked. “And you would have sat there, with all the rest. But I never meant to hurt you,” she whispered, red-eyed and sincere and terrible. “I never meant to lie to you, I was just trying to live up to a promise I made to myself. To you, even if you didn't know it. I was just trying to keep you safe. That's all I ever mean to do. Can you—can you—”

But she couldn't even bring herself to ask.

“There's nothing to forgive,” Yaz whispered. “Don't be stupid,” she begged, even though it wasn't quite exact enough, wasn't quite what she knew she needed to say. It was too dark, here. They were all too tired. “We're best friends, all of us. Graham's right, we made a choice to travel with you, we knew what we were getting into. Have you ever stopped to think maybe we're looking out for you as well? That we want you safe just as badly as you want us to be?”

She was so, so close to getting it. Yaz could see it in her eyes. But there was a distant clang at the door and her head turned, away.

“No, please, please don't leave.” She tangled her fingers open, clasped the Doctor's hands in her own. And it edged too close to begging, again, selfish, childish, but she couldn't stop herself. “Please. I don't want to have dreamed you, I just want you to be here.”

“I am here,” the Doctor whispered. Desperation leaked out from behind her eyes, but resignation smothered it. Exhaustion. “I promise.”

“Then stay. Let us help.”

“You're not gonna die here, Yasmin Khan.” She withdrew from Yaz's grip and stood from her crouch, wincing. “Just—just give me a little more time. I’ve got an idea.”

“Doctor, please,” she said, but those cold fingers were at her temple again, and she felt calm slip over her like a cool sheet, unnatural. Felt the tears cool on her cheeks, felt her hands still on her lap. Sleep weighing her down like a blanket, and she couldn't fight it, couldn't stop it. “Please,” she whispered, eyelids heavy. “Be careful.”

Bony hands caught her as she went limp and helped her back onto the mattress. They gingerly smoothed away the hair from her face, tugged the sheet up to her neck. “It's alright. Brave heart,” she heard as she drifted away. “Brave heart.”

“We've got to do something,” she told Ryan and Graham over breakfast, sticking her fork emphatically into her pile of mush, fingers aching. “We can't just keep waiting.”

“Isn't that what the Doctor basically told you to do, though?” Ryan asked, skeptical. Worried. “This is just what she does, isn't it, she ducks in and out without telling you anything, and then it all comes together when you least expect it. You said she said she had an idea.”

“She doesn't plan,” she protested, worry kicking at her heart, thrumming at the base of her throat. Inaction, unease, settled there, sour. “She told us herself, she's just—making this up. She shouldn't have to do it alone. It's not—”

She swallowed, knuckles whitening around her fork.

“It's not good for her to be here,” she said, which sounded ridiculous out loud. It wasn't good for any of them to be here. It wasn't good for the people that lived here to be here.

“Of course it's not,” Ryan said, face still twisted with worry. “If she's Topside, she's in more danger than all of us. I don't know about what your old ladies are saying, Yaz, but the blokes behind the counter seem to think we're a few days away from being blown off the face of the earth. Of the—Tropos. Of the planet. We're in trouble, basically. There's been loads more breeches they're coverin' up.”

Yaz looked to him miserably. “I know,” she said. Though the danger felt muffled, in the trenches. It was all shakes and rumbles from above, and very little in the way of present threat, even though the idea of it lingered.

He looked back at her. “So, what are we gonna do?”

“I don’t—” She took in an unsteady breath. “I’m not in charge. And we can’t—”

Her hand went to her neck, unbidden. The three of them glanced up, into the walls, into the wires just beyond, but the Computer remained silent.

“I’m not sure what we can do,” she whispered, waiting for a warning jolt that never came.

“We’ll just have to keep on, love,” Graham said, reaching across to cover her hands with his own. “Nothing we can accomplish over breakfast, anyhow.”

He wasn’t wrong. But it stung all the same.

“I feel useless,” she said, knowing it was a pointless, obvious complaint. There was worry lodged permanently under her throat now, the echo of cold hands on her cheekbones.

“You’re far from useless,” Yose pointed out, having crept up behind her shoulder. “You’re assisting in the war effort, after all.”

All three of them jumped in their seats.

“For god’s sake,” Graham protested, expression souring. “There’s no need to sneak up like that.”

Yose, to his credit, did look rather sheepish. A hand scraped absently at the back of his unkept hair. “Yes, well.” He cleared his throat. “I’m here to escort you all to your posts again.”

“Is your great, omniscient babysitter not up to the task of enforcement?” Graham muttered, standing with a muffled groan. Yose winced at the term, but the Computer didn’t react.

“Not programmed for insults, maybe,” Ryan said to her quietly as they stood to join him, filing in behind Yose as he lead them through the mess hall. Their discussion had been interrupted, but it was clearly far from over. “Don’t worry, Yaz,” he said, turning to the kitchens with grim resignation. “We’ll sort it.”

“Everyone keeps saying that,” she muttered in reply, raising a hand in acknowledgment. The back of Yose’s nervous shoulders beckoned. “See you at dinner.”

Polish, reset, repeat. Roz’s eyes burned into her back as she worked, worry lodged under her throat, until her fingers were cramped and burning. The silence was even more thick today, tense with something no one would talk about, until it came to a horrific boil a few minutes before dinner.

There was a painful screeching, a rolling shudder that shook the entire trench. In the distance, Yaz heard a mournful alarm begin to wail.

“Another section breech,” Roz murmured to her, nudging her gently with a bony elbow when she paused. She went back to work numbly, mind spinning. “Closer every day.”

“Those alarms—” Yaz ventured quietly.

“Mean there were people involved in the breech. They’ll have been salvaged, hopefully.” Roz sighed. “Dear me.”

Yaz finished the rest of her shift in silence, hands tingling numbly, worry sick in the pit of her stomach. The mess hall, when she stumbled blearily in, was thrumming with a nervous energy. Word of the breech had spread, evidently. But the truth was hard to come by when you were an outsider.

“We need to move faster,” she told the others over dinner, scrubbing her hands down her face. “We need to know more, we need to do somethin'. We're no good like this, all split up, we're trapped, like the rest of them.”

“You said the Doctor told you to give her more time, though.” Ryan frowned. “If you even saw her. You're sure you didn't just imagine it all? Why didn't she talk to the rest of us?”

“You were sleeping,” she protested. “It was just—coincidence. I think. Besides, I would have dreamed her different. Better. She was,” she tried, fingers twisting into a fist, white-knuckled. “She's not—”

“She was off even before we got here, love,” Graham pointed out, washed out in the gloom, exhausted. “And I'm sure it's not easy, but you've got to remember, it's the Doc. She's more than she's been letting on, clearly. And I don't have to like all of it, but one thing I'm sure of is that she's much tougher than she looks.”

“Not by herself,” Yaz insisted. “Not when she's alone.”

“She's not alone. We're right here.” Graham set down his fork. “We're doing all we can, which is just holdin' on, for now. Just like she asked.”

“Okay, but,” Ryan said, a hand scraping the back of his head, almost sheepishly. Frowning, like he was considering something. “Can't believe I'm sayin' this, actually,” he muttered. “Not to flip on you, Gramps, but—what if Yaz is right? What if—what if you were right? A bit. Don't think too much of it. Isn't the point of all this maybe that our days of doing what the Doctor says without questioning any of it are over?”

He had no immediate reply to that. He picked his fork up and dragged it through his own pile of mush, thinking. “Maybe that is the lesson,” he muttered, after a moment. “Don't worry, I won't let it go to my head. Right, then. I'm all ears.” He looked up at the two of them, worn and kind and complicated.

“Gramps,” Ryan said, frowning.

“Oh, don't,” he protested. “I'm tired and I don't know what I think. All I can think, is that I'm worried about the two of you. And the Doc. And that your nan would want me to keep you safe, no matter what, and I—well, I haven't done a very good job of that, now have I.”

“You've done the best you could.”

“Have I? Some days I wonder.” He shook his head. “It were right of us to go off on an adventure. I don't regret that one bit. Grace would have wanted that for you, I know she would have. But it's all turned out a bit more complicated than that, hasn't it. She wouldn't have wanted you here. She wouldn't have wanted you in danger. And the Doctor—well, it's complicated. Right?” He pushed his plate away, still piled high with sludge. The chip in his neck glinted as he moved. “It's complicated, and that's alright. Maybe we should have asked more questions, right from the start.”

“She would have answered them, I think,” Ryan said quietly. “But she were just as happy not to.”

They'd all been a bit too happy not to dig too deeply, Yaz thought, slumping in her chair, arms crossed. Tuning out the mix of voices and the constant dripping tiredly, feeling an ache start to blossom behind her eyes. A bit too happy to ride along, a bit too happy to play the part of tourists, to let the Doctor settle into the part of tour guide, when really she was something else. Something more, something—indefinable. Something complicated. She understood a bit better now, she thought.

It hadn't been a dream. That conversation. It had woven and shook a bit like a dream had, but it had felt real. Tangible. Terrible. And somehow—private. A secret. She'd kept its contents for herself, but she wasn't sure whether it was to protect herself or the Doctor.

“We're all a bit right,” she whispered, straightening with a concentrated effort. Jaw clenching. “And we're all we've got, here. It's not just your job, Graham, or just the Doctor's. We have to look out for each other.”

“That means the Doctor, too.” Ryan drummed his fingers against the table. She could hear his foot tapping, underneath. “So what are we gonna do? Graham?”

“I told you, I'm all ears,” he said. “Don't defer to me 'cos I'm old. I'm perfectly happy to be told what to do, so long as it involves a lunch break.”

Yaz smiled, though the corners of her mouth felt dry and uncomfortable.

“I think—” she started, tension coiled tightly at the back of her throat, worry that was burrowed deep, sour, but a shadow fell across their table, still. For a moment, her heart jumped to her throat, the treacherous thought that they'd been caught after all crossing her mind before she could stop it, that the Computer had suddenly taken exception to them after all. She looked up, pulse pounding loudly in her ears. Over the din, over the dripping, over the distant shudder of the front's encroach.

“I think,” Major Stet said, white-faced, eyes wide and dark. “That you had better come.” 

Chapter Text

The violet hour.

“Hope,” the Doctor said, legs swinging into the universe below them, unbothered and entranced by the expanse of stars and dust, “is a lot like faith, I think. They both happen in the dark. Without reward, without witness.” Something in her voice was almost wistful. Stars reflected in her eyes, captivated by the universe in front of them. “I don't know what's out there,” she said softly, grasping Yaz's hand where it rested on the edge of the floor. Her touch was cool and comforting. “Not really. None of us do, that's what's so wonderful about it all. But I do know this. Faith and hope, they happen inside. That's why they're so hard to lose.” She smiled, as the dream began to dissolve. “Keep your faith,” she said, hushed, warm, her image and the TARDIS shifting and shimmering until all the edges were soft, until Yaz was left floating, alone. “We'll be home soon.” Adrift, in a sea of dust and stars and empty nothing, but there was plenty of air. She was safe, here. Had been safe, here. She closed her eyes, drifting comfortably, feeling warmth at her core that she hadn't felt in weeks. A kind of peace.

Yaz woke with a start.

The cold dampness of the air was like a bucket of water to the face, a visceral awakening that scoured away the warmth she'd conjured up until she was left shivering in the gloom. They turned off the lights in Section Three at night, left the infirmary dim and shadowed and empty of everyone but its patients. There was no sound but laboured breaths, the creak and hiss of the metal walls around them, the distant, constant dripping of leaking pipes.

No one else was awake.

Shuddering, she pressed herself deeper into the uncomfortable chair they'd grudgingly provided, knuckles whitening. She closed her eyes against the dimness, feeling cold inside her like an aching abyss, reaching further with every breath. Just for a moment, she thought, empty, stretched thin inside, she'd remembered. But it was already gone, that warmth. Chased away.

We are all going to die here.

She looked down at the Doctor in the cot beside her, restless in sleep. Vulnerable, somehow, without her coat. Yaz had it in her lap, carefully folded, but it was less of a comfort than she'd thought it would be. It smelled like engine oil and burning. Unfamiliar.

Breath escaped her, harsh and sharp. Things just kept piling up, things going wrong, things going horribly sideways. She shouldn't have been surprised by this particular development at all, but it was a bad habit they all had, wasn't it. Imagining the Doctor was somehow indestructible, invulnerable to harm, even when they knew better. Even when they'd known better from the start.

A cold, trembling hand groped blindly for her own, worked clumsily to open her fingers.

“Brave heart,” she heard the whisper of, a ragged croak that barely travelled. “We're not done here yet.”

“Oh, god,” she whispered into the gloom, clutching the Doctor's hand tightly as she lifted her head. Her touch was cool and comforting. “You're awake. They wouldn't say—are you okay?”

“Right as rain,” the Doctor lied. She shifted gingerly against the threadbare cot, face bloodless in the gloom, grimy and singed. Bloodied, at her temple. “Mostly. Could use a bit of a nap, still.” Her breaths were harsh in between the words, gently spoken. She squeezed Yaz's hand tightly. “Still. Beggars can't be choosers. All my other ideas fell through, this is Plan H. What do you think?” She raised her eyebrows, grinning.

“Doctor,” Yaz said quietly, feeling her expression sour. The blood pooled back into her face for what felt like the first time in hours. A confusing mixture of irritation and fear and hope scrambled to fill the void in her chest. “Please don't tell me you got blown up on purpose just so we could talk.”

“Well, alright, I won't tell you, then,” she said, offended. Confused. “What? It worked, didn't it? Sort of. To be fair, it wasn't so much an act of deliberate intent so much as it was an opportunity grabbed, but—”

Yaz took a tight, calm breath through her nose. “An opportunity to almost die?”

She blinked again, shifting. “I didn't die. I'm fine, look—”

“Don't get up,” Yaz hissed, indignant. “I heard the nurse, you're a pincushion of shrapnel.”

“That's a total exaggeration, Nurse Metz is a fatalist,” The Doctor said, face scrunching indignantly. “A nap'll sort me, I kept tellin' her.” She paused again, still confused. Jaw ajar. “Were you worried? Oh Yaz, I'm so sorry.”

“Was I—” Yaz took another breath in through her nose, sharp. She kept her hand in the Doctor's gentle but felt her other fist tighten in the fabric of the coat in her lap. “Do you ever actually listen when we talk to you,” she hissed, “or is it all just noise?”

“Of course I listen.” She was so earnest, too, so terribly, horribly sincere.

“But do you hear?” Yaz asked, insistent, feeling her jaw clench, feeling her teeth grind together. She breathed out carefully, trying to smooth the tension from her face. She was relieved, she reminded herself. Not angry, not irritated, not afraid, anymore. Relieved. “Of course I was worried,” she tried, gentler. Mostly. There was a bite to it that she couldn't quite soften. “Stet said the front all but collapsed on top of you all. Yose is fine, by the way.” Because you threw yourself on top of him, but that knowledge was too bitter and fragile to make it past her throat.

“Good. I like Yose, he's good people. He's the only other one around here sensible enough to be nervous. These structures are old,” the Doctor said, frowning as she remembered. “They're not stable anymore, they're rusting, disintegrating. The people of Tropos are losing, Yaz,” she said, more seriously. “It's a matter of days. Maybe even hours.”

Yaz shook her head, neck aching. Unsurprised, but not happy about it. “What are we going to do? We can’t—the people here, they won't listen, Doctor.”

“Not at the top, either.” Her face turned grim. Bloodless, still. She looked exhausted. Bruised and singed and walking wounded, no matter what she said. “I'm not sure what we're going to do, that's why I need the three of you. I can’t—I can't think, like this, I can’t—”

“They only let one of us come.” Yaz swallowed, squeezing her hand carefully. “God. Ryan and Graham must be worried sick.”

“I'm so sorry. It's really okay, though. I'll be fine.” She winced, despite herself. Her breaths still sounded ragged to Yaz’s ear. “Had to do somethin', and this seemed like it could work. Tomorrow, we'll get me sent back to the cell with the three of you. I just need—I need—”

She swallowed sharply, pulses jumping in her wrist, as another rumble shuddered from the ceiling to the floor. Closed her eyes in a flinch she would deny.

Yaz looked down at her. “Rest,” she said, feeling something in the pit of her stomach that had been settling for days, some incompatible mix of relief and resentment and pity and fear. “You need to rest.”

The truth was, she didn't like the Doctor fallible. Didn't like her scared, didn't like her scattered, there was a childish part of her pounding at the door that desperately wanted her to jump to her feet, intact, sure and capable and beaming, at her best. A part that wanted so badly for her just to fix everything, to swoop in and save them and prove herself right for giving them no other choice but to be rescued. A part—a stupid, selfish, ridiculous part—that half resented her for failing, for panicking, for becoming trapped like the rest of them.

But Graham had said it best. It was all too complicated. The Doctor was too complicated, too compromised by all of this to be what she was at her best, and so it fell to the rest of them. Because it had to, because they owed it to her, because they were—friends. A team.

Maybe even a family of sorts.

I put you up too high, she thought but didn't say, the realization finally solidifying. She was no better than the rest of them, really. I made you a myth in my head, and then blamed you for being a person, instead.

An impossible person, to be sure. An old, impossible, incredible person, with a thousand secrets and a thousand lives. But still a person.

“I'm not sure I want to rest,” the Doctor muttered, pasting over the fear in her voice with arbitrary contrariness. “Got a good couple of hours in already. We could do some good old-fashioned sneakin' around instead?” She raised her eyebrows hopefully.

“Sneakin' around the war-zone surveilled by an all-seeing supercomputer,” Yaz said dryly. “Is that really part of your plan?”

The Doctor swallowed, hanging onto the fantasy stubbornly. “No,” she admitted finally, head rolling to look up at the ceiling, listless. “That would—probably totally ruin it, actually, I'm still playing like we're playing along.”

Yaz shook her head, feeling a smile tug at the dry corners of her mouth.

“Besides,” she said. “Being unconscious doesn't count as actual sleep. I know you need it, if you're gonna fix yourself. I've seen it.”

“I know,” she said, quieter. Stilling. “I'll be trapped in it, though,” she confessed, after a long beat of silence. “That sort of sleep, it’s—deep.”

Yaz frowned. “Do you dream?”

“Always.”

“What do you dream about?”

“The same thing everybody dreams about. Where I'm going.” A pause. “Where I've been.”

Of course, Yaz thought. Of course. That would be the problem.

She stayed quiet for a minute, letting the gloom engulf them. The distant, leaking pipes. The dreamy, distant drone of violence, far above their heads. She adjusted her grip on the Doctor's hand.

“I'm here,” she said finally, helplessly, because it was all she could say. “Doctor. I'm here.”

She watched a smile spread slowly across the Doctor's face; something more real, more kind, more sad than what she usually stretched across to hide behind.

“Yasmin Khan,” she said quietly, like she had in the not-dream, like it was something special, something important. Yaz had to close her eyes against the startling, visceral reminder of her own realness. Of her existence outside of Yaz, outside of Sergeant, outside of PC Khan. Outside of where she was. “I'm sorry this has all gone so wrong,” the Doctor whispered. “But I wasn't lyin' to you before. I won't let you die here. I promise.”

Yaz opened her eyes. “I know,” she said. Believing it, finally. “But you won't have to do it alone. I'm sorry I—I’m sorry we made you more than you were. That wasn't fair to you, not any of it. We're a team.”

“I shouldn't have lied to you. I shouldn't have left.” The hand squeezed back. “And we are a team.” The smile deepened with genuine delight. “But I have a duty of care,” the Doctor said softly, something unknowable and strange still lurking behind her eyes.

Yaz had the feeling she wasn't going to win that particular battle, tonight. Maybe not ever.

She sighed, head aching, exhaustion cottony behind her eyes. Green light crept in through the door at the end of the hall, throwing shadows at the wall, at the patients nearest to the end. The Doctor had been sequestered to the back, curtained away from curious eyes, alone. Until they'd come for Yaz. It had been almost kind of them, she thought, feeling the Doctor's thready, impossible pulses beat under her grip.

Night stretched out beyond them, beckoning.

“I can't believe you had to go all the way to Plan H,” she said finally, softly. Letting it be, for now. “What was Plan I going to be, if this didn't work out? And how is this going to work out, by the way?”

The Doctor was still smiling, but she'd let her eyes slip closed. “Tell you what,” she said fuzzily, drifting off, still gripping Yaz's hand with her own. “If you're very lucky—I might tell you in the morning.”

Chapter Text

The name of honour.

Yaz woke, not to eerie, silent gloom, but to harsh, sallow light and the sound of arguing voices.

She looked down at the Doctor instinctively, but she was still trapped in sleep. Her breaths seemed impossibly slow, pulses dragged down to a beat or two per minute, still under Yaz’s grip. Pale and grimy, but even in the scant hours since she'd seen her last, the assortment of scrapes and incisions near and on her face had healed over completely.

“—this is completely inappropriate! Sir.”

Nurse Metz, Yaz thought, scrubbing the sleep from her eyes and blinking herself awake more fully. She recognized the shrill voice and the edge of insubordination she'd encountered yesterday.

And Corcorax. He loomed, out of place amidst the harsh lights, out of the shadows. Under their stark purview he looked distressingly ordinary. Tired. If it hadn't been for the uniform, he could have passed for someone's overworked father. Their grandad. Their uncle.

“I understand, Metz,” he said, gravelly with exhaustion, hands clasped behind his back. “But you understand the circumstances, I'm sure.”

“Circumstances!” Metz stood aghast, hands moving to her hips. “Sir, I really can’t—”

“I need her awake, Metz.”

“I don't understand her physiology, sir, I couldn't even begin to tell you how to wake her up.”

Yaz cleared her throat, straightening in her chair with a wince. The Doctor's coat, carefully folded, nearly slid off her lap. She snatched at it.

“Good morning,” she interjected hoarsely.

Metz clapped her hands together, in surprise and—well. Delight wasn't quite the right word for it, but she'd seen a similar gleam in the Doctor's eyes, whenever she was about to learn something new.

“You're awake!” she exclaimed. “Wonderful. You must know something about her, at least. I came in to check on the both of you this morning and nearly gave myself a heart attack, I thought she'd died. But she's only sleeping. Right?”

Yaz blinked at the whirlwind pace of information. “Uh, yeah,” she said, clearing her throat again. She swallowed back a yawn. “It's like a coma. Hibernation.” She stifled another yawn behind her fingers, flushing. “She's fine. Or she will be.” If we can get the hell out of here. Corcorax was rapidly proving to be a fly in that particular ointment, but she wasn't sure what she could do about it, yet.

“Oh, good.” Metz sagged, slightly, peering up at the primitive screen fixed above the cot. Yaz had glanced at it yesterday, but hadn't been able to even begin to decipher it. “Everything else looks okay. Improved function, actually, you're right. That's remarkable.”

“Metz,” Corcorax said. She sighed, eyes rolling, since she was faced away from him.

“Sir, this is against protocol. I'm already poorly equipped to deal with non-human patients, seeing as we've never had one before, and I—”

“Metz,” he said again, sharper. “I don't want to have you written up for the fifth time this cycle, but I will.”

“Well, someone has to care about these people!” she snapped. “Sir. Sorry, sir.” Her arms crossed in front of her, obscuring the haphazardly painted cross splashed against her chest, red and unmistakeable. A makeshift uniform, a million miles and maybe even a million years from its origin. “I know we're low in numbers, but dragging people out of the infirmary before they're recovered isn't going to fix that problem, it's only going to make it worse.”

“I'm well aware, Metz.” He glared down at her, but it was half-hearted, tired. “These circumstances are particular.”

“Why, because she's the one in charge now? Sorry, or is that meant to be a big secret? One look at your neck, and it's obvious, is that why you've been sequestered away with high command for days? Sir.”

“Metz—”

“They must know, then. Why haven't you told the rest of us? I know information has always been top down, but even you've got to admit, things have been cagey as hell around here lately—”

“Metz,” he whispered, eyes closing, exasperated. “That's an order, not a request.”

She pursed her lips. Yaz watched, frozen, from her chair.

“Fine. Sir,” she said finally, brittle. Her eyes flicked to Yaz. “Can you do it?”

“Uh.” Yaz blinked again. “Wake her, you mean? I don’t—”

“I could do it with drugs, but I could end up killing her by accident.”

“I—I can try.”

Yaz swallowed, frowning. She didn't know much about how the Doctor—worked, exactly, except that she had two hearts. She knew that she was psychic; that she could survive impossible falls; that she could hold her breath for minutes instead of seconds; that she could eat dirt with no ill effects, but claimed a tablet of aspirin would kill her dead. She'd always woken up on her own, before. When she was ready.

But she leaned down anyway, slipping her hand out of the Doctor's grasp to clasp at her wrist. “Doctor?” she whispered, uncertain, unsure.

But there was one thing, wasn't there. One thing she could always be sure of, one thing that anyone, anywhere, could always be sure of.

“Help me,” she whispered, on a hunch.

“Sontarans,” the Doctor gasped, slamming upwards violently, narrowly avoiding Yaz's face, “perverting the course of human history—”

Her mouth slammed shut.

“Oh,” she said, frowning up at Corcorax. “Oi! I wasn't done yet!”

“General,” he said, brow lined with a mixture of worry and irritation. Yaz hated to admit it, but it wasn't exactly an unfamiliar mix of expressions, when it came to the Doctor. “I'm pleased to see you're well.”

“I was in the middle of fixing a kidney,” she told him, scowling, as Metz nudged her way closer, frowning, on the verge of interrupting. “Delicate work! Can’t really afford to muck it up! Is Yose alright?” she asked, switching tacks dizzily, throwing the sheet off her legs.

“Yose is fine,” Corcorax confirmed, a glint of something Yaz couldn't get a read on passing through his eyes. “Thanks to you. I’m—grateful.”

“Of course.”

“Really, I am. But I have need of you, General. You know why. The sentries are back online.” He swallowed, looking pinched. “The front is the closest it’s ever been. We can’t hold them off like this.”

The Doctor glared up at him, resigned. Not panicking, for once, but maybe Yaz was doing enough for the both of them. This wasn't part of the plan, it was all for nothing, if she was only going to be spirited away again, thrown back into danger without them—

“Fine,” the Doctor said, chip glinting in the light as she moved. She swung her legs over the cot, knuckles white at the edges. Looked to Yaz, face frustrated and pinched, and—winked.

Yaz frowned, but there was no time to be confused, and even less time to be reassured. The Doctor pushed herself to her feet, elbows shaking with the effort, took a tentative step forwards and crashed to the ground spectacularly, a pained gasp escaping her lips. Yaz yelped and caught hold of an elbow as she fell, but she was only dragged down with her, knees slamming into the metal with a resonant clang.

“Is that what you call a catch?” the Doctor hissed under her breath, eyes watering behind bedraggled strands of hair. Yaz helped her upright gingerly, wincing.

“Sorry,” she mouthed, still frowning. “What are you—”

“That's quite enough! General—I mean, Lieutenant-general,” Nurse Metz said, elbowing in closer, brow pinched, “I really must insist—”

“Metz, this is a matter of utmost importance.”

“I'm well aware,” she said, glaring up at him with exasperation. “News travels, mostly despite you. Surely you can spare her for a few hours, at least. She's clearly in no fit state—”

“We're far beyond that now, Metz.”

“Sir, with all due respect, I must insist,” she said, bull-headed. “This isn't right. A few hours, please. We must have as long as that. Besides, she's no good to you if she can barely stand.”

His teeth gritted. He also looked sallow and ill in the harsh lighting, face lined with exhaustion. Bruised. He must have been in the tunnel as well, Yaz realized, though sympathy was hard to find. He looked down at the Doctor, propped up against Yaz on the ground, breathing harshly. Yaz couldn't tell whether she was pretending or not.

“Fine,” Corcorax said, tightly. “A few hours. They're all I can afford to give.”

“Thank you,” Yaz said, fingers tightening around the Doctor's elbow.

He shook his head. “Tropos must come first. Rest well, General. We still have need of you.” He turned to leave, back unbearably straight, singed at the shoulders of his uniform. “I am—grateful,” he said quietly. He left.

“Oh, dear,” Metz sighed, shoulders slumping. She bent down and helped Yaz hoist the Doctor back onto the cot, legs slipping underneath her, shaking, and Yaz still wasn't entirely sure it was all an act. “What a mess.” She looked up, dark eyes warm and worried. “We're losing, aren't we. Sir.”

The Doctor tightened her lips. “He's right to be worried,” was all she said. “I'm so sorry, Metz. And I'm sorry I can't be more help.”

She only shook her head, braids twisting with the motion.

“If what I hear is true, you've already done more than enough. And what you did for Yose—” She breathed out, relieved. “It's not unexpected, all this. Some people don't want to see it, but—” Her lips twisted miserably, only for a moment. “I've had a feeling for a long time, now.”

“Well, don't give up yet,” the Doctor said, warmly. “It's not over until it's over. Keep your faith, Metz. That's how we make impossible things happen.”

Metz smiled, a bit wistfully, and reached for her wrist almost without thought. “I'm very glad you're here to help us.” She waited for a moment, listening, Yaz thought, to that impossible pulse. Shook her head again, frowning. “I have no idea what your pulse should be like. Do you feel like you're going to die?”

“No.” The Doctor shook her head, grinning.

“Good,” Metz said, dropping her grip. “Because I certainly can't tell. Sir,” she added as an afterthought. “But you should rest. I'll—”

“About that!” The Doctor didn't move, but Yaz could feel the tension coiled in her, feel her suppressing the urge to fidget, to pace, like it was something painful, something tangible. She was a second away from springing to her feet, Yaz could see it in her face. “Just need rest, like you said. I could do that anywhere. You need this bed, I'm sure. I've seen your resources, they're not limitless.”

“Well—” Metz's teeth caught her lip. Yaz caught admiration in the back of her gaze, and felt a twinge of guilt. “Sir, I really shouldn’t—”

“A cot's a cot! It's really no trouble,” the Doctor insisted, charm turned up to full blast, eyes wide and martyred. “I couldn't live with myself, taking up space when someone else could use it, I really couldn't.”

“I could get an orderly to take you back, I suppose,” Metz said, swayed at the practicality of the suggestion, still biting her lip. “But are you sure—”

“We all have to do our part,” the Doctor said, eyes shining with false sincerity. “It's the least I could do.” Metz fell for it. Yaz watched her think, reconsider. Give in.

“Alright,” she said, finally. “I'll send someone around to check on you, though. Bring some water around at least. You're sure it's only sleep that you need? I really don't understand—”

“A proper nap will fix everything,” she reassured, smile growing tighter. “I promise. No need to take up space here when it's unnecessary.”

“Yes,” Metz said, scattered, a hand reaching for the back of her head, the other already reaching for her clipboard on the end of the cot. “Oh, but—yes, I suppose you're right, sir. I'll send for someone immediately. You'll be alright for a moment?”

“Perfectly,” the Doctor said as she sped away, into the adjoining ward, sagging forward until her elbows touched her knees. The smile slipped off her face. “Humans,” she said, exasperated. “I'm referring, of course, to humans who aren't you, you're wonderful.”

Yaz shook her head, exasperated in turn. “That could have gone horribly wrong,” she protested. “All of this could have.”

“But it didn't,” she said, raising her head, indignant. “And now we're perfectly positioned to come up with a plan. I've bought us a few hours, at least. And believe me, we need them. Still need to get the sonic back, of course,” she muttered, straightening, “and the TARDIS, and—”

“One thing at a time,” Yaz interrupted, taking the Doctor's hands in her own, mostly just to shut her up. But she paused, feeling skin under her touch that was still marred and ripped. Warm, to the touch. “It's still all mangled,” she said, frowning, turning the hand in question over gently. The mendhi on her own hands was sallow and dull in turn, under the harsh light. A fading reminder of home, slowly washing from her skin. “I thought when you slept like that, it fixed everything.”

“Bigger priorities,” the Doctor said, wincing at her grasp. “Kidneys come first! It's fine, it'll keep. Let's go.” She stood abruptly with none of the unsteadiness from before, though when she took a step, it was still limping. “Meet them at the doors. The quicker we're out of here, the better.”

“Lean on me, at least,” Yaz said, frowning, holding out the Doctor's coat in offering. “Or do you not want to sell this?”

“I did sell it!” She slipped into it gratefully, some indefinable tension slipping off her shoulders. The universe righted itself, momentarily. “I've got the extra bruises to show for it, no thanks to you.”

“I apologized for that.”

“You did. To be fair, I didn't give you a lot of warning.” The Doctor let Yaz wedge her shoulder underneath her arm, and they shuffled forward experimentally. Yaz breathed in, reassured by her solidness. Reassured by that edge of familiarity, singed and burned but still recognizable. Slow, solid breaths, and a body that was just a bit too cold, pressed against her own ribs. Even insulated by the layers of her uniform, thick like an armour, she could still feel it. “Now you'll know for next time.”

“Oh, there's not gonna be a next time.”

“Always a next time, for everything,” she protested, face scrunching. “That's just how life is. Trust me, I've lived a lot of it. Life.”

Yaz shook her head, as they neared the door, but swallowed back her retort in favour of looking suitably worried. There were more people up here, more patients, more nurses. More eyes. Most were too busy working to pay them much attention, mind, but it still wouldn't hurt to be diligent.

She felt the Doctor lean into her, selling it. When Metz's orderly finally came to fetch them, they traipsed after her in silence, tense. It was a long trek, all the way from Section Three to their cell, and the detours, she thought, shivering. They were getting longer, too. Sections she was sure they'd been taken through just the other day were avoided like they'd never existed, barred and sealed. The Daleks, closing in. Everyone knew it, she thought, catching passing glimpses of people's faces, grim and tight-lipped. But no one was saying it.

No one knew it as well as the Doctor, but she seemed determined that their imminent doom was somehow less imminent the closer they got to it, and that, at least, felt vaguely reassuring. Or maybe she was just glad they were all finally reunited. As soon as they were dropped off, the door locked behind them, she ducked out from under Yaz's grip and straightened, beaming. “Hah!” she exclaimed. “Brilliant!”

“Doctor!” Ryan sprang to his feet and skidded towards her, wrapping her in his arms, mindless of her cry of surprise, her awkwardly flailing arms. She patted him on the back gingerly, face obscured by his chest.

“Be gentle,” Yaz warned, finding herself distantly relieved to be back under the familiar gloom of their cell and horrified by it. “She's been blown up!”

“It's fine!” she protested, muffled, but Ryan was already stepping back, holding her out at arms length, more carefully.

“Oh, mate,” he said, sagging in relief. “Oh, my days. You're a sight for sore eyes.”

“Ta da!” she said, smiling, blackened and singed, wiggling her fingers in a tragic attempt at jazz hands. “Good as new.”

“Bit worse for wear, actually, if I'm honest. Did you really get blown up?”

“Only a tiny bit,” she said, indignant, hands moving to her hips. “Everyone's a critic. I thought it was a great plan, I only slightly regret it.” She wavered, knees on the verge of buckling. Yaz stepped closer with a sigh and grabbed hold of her elbow. “Now, we haven't got much time. Tropos is losing, badly. Corcorax will be back here as soon as he decides he's waited long enough.”

“How long are we talking, here?” Graham stepped forward, out of the gloom. “Doc. Glad you're alright.”

She smiled, weakly.

“Hold on, though,” Yaz said, frowning. “How are you two here? It's well past breakfast.”

“Different shifts today,” Ryan explained. “They switch them round, we're working through the evening today.”

“Good.” The Doctor snapped her fingers, working her way out of Yaz's grasp, coat twisting around her legs as she turned. She grinned, and it was brighter every time. “You know what that is? Lucky. Don't usually believe in luck, but—sometimes the universe surprises you.” Her hands moved in front of her as she thought, and the gesture was so familiar Yaz felt something in her chest slot back into place, warm. “Alright, team. I need your brains.”

Needed people to talk at, more like, Yaz thought fondly, meeting Ryan's gaze, swallowing back a laugh.

“Doc,” Graham said, brow pinching. “How long?”

“Right.” She snapped her fingers again. “Here's the thing—ooh, how much do you know?”

“Cobbled-together Daleks fell from the sky hundreds of years ago, the Computer fought them off, but eventually it failed and everyone hid underground,” Yaz said. “We're underneath an old city. The capital. The front's been moving closer for years, it used to be miles out, but now it's right on top.”

The Doctor's eyes gleamed. “Exactly. Daleks, falling from the sky, rebuilt over centuries. They fell out of the Time War, or the destruction of Skaro, or a thousand other times and places, they're like—cockroaches, they're hard to get rid of. It doesn't matter, really. They haven't seen me, they don't know I'm here, and that's another lucky thing. But you're right, they are getting closer. And these trenches are too old, they're collapsing.”

“Time, Doc,” Graham said again. “How much time?”

“Days,” she said, more grimly. “I hope. Hours, more likely. We need a way out, for us and all these people, and we need it fast.”

“They don't have spaceships, though,” Ryan said, frowning. “They've lost all their technology, it's like you said before, they've—gotten stuck. Trapped.”

“Exactly.” But the Doctor's gaze was pulled, inevitably, to the tear she'd made in the wall. “But not all their technology,” she muttered. “You know, there’s—there's still the transmat. And—”

She peeled herself away from the wall, limped her way over to the other side, where the exposed wires gleamed.

“—the Computer,” she breathed. “Which no one, you or them, will let me touch. I know that motherboard must be somewhere. That, and their nuclear reactors, there's all sorts of secrets under here that I'm still not privy to. Useful secrets.” She pressed a hand to the wall, nose wrinkling in frustration. “Love a good secret. And hate a good secret.”

Yaz shook her head. “What is it about the Computer that's so interesting? We've been thinking about it, while you were away, we don’t—it doesn't work the way you would expect it to.”

“No,” the Doctor said quietly, gazing at it. “It doesn't.”

“Is that the mystery, then?” Ryan stepped closer, peering at it with her.

“Well, maybe. I'm confused,” she admitted, hand raising absently to scratch at the back of her head. “Big computer like this, hooked up for surveillance, constantly eating up loads of people's data, the point is security. But there's a tension, isn't there. Between security in terms of people, and security in terms of states, or nations, or—or whole entire planets.” She shook her head. “You fight a war to secure your country, or city, or planet, but when you do that you jeopardize the individual safety of everyone within it. Computers aren't good with that sort of logic, it gives them a headache. They make for terrible philosophers, really. You need humans to try to reconcile something that contradictory, and even then—” Her face scrunched. “Well. It's usually rubbish. War never makes any sense. Not if you care at all about people. Children.”

“But General Corcorax said it was programmed to fight,” Ryan said, frowning. “He said it was programmed for war.”

“Yeah, but he's a liar, and also terrible,” she protested. “Well, maybe not a liar on purpose, but he's bought the myth, just like the rest of them. This computer is older than their war, it's older than anyone remembers. So what was it for, originally? What's its original purpose? How's it getting around that gap in the logic?”

“You said it was old.” Yaz crossed her arms, considering. “Maybe it thought its way through it.”

“Computers can't think,” Ryan said. “Not like—not like people do. Machine learnin', it's different.”

“That's what makes it so dangerous,” the Doctor mused, hand raising hesitantly to her neck. “Potentially. I wonder—”

But she was interrupted by a noise at the door, the twist and squeal of metal. Her shoulders slumped.

“Great,” she hissed through her teeth. “That'll be one of Corcorax's errand runners. Way ahead of schedule, of course.” She spun around, a frustrated snarl scratching its way across her face. “Oh, come on, universe!”

“We can stall 'em,” Ryan said, at her shoulder. He looked down at her, a frown chasing the worry in his eyes. “Right?”

“Doctor,” Yaz said, gathering behind her other side, the back of her neck prickling. “That—that sound. It doesn't sound like the door when it's unlocking.”

The Doctor's mouth opened, as if in protest, but she paused, listening. The familiar hiss and creak, usually over in an instant, was nowhere to be found. This grinding of metal was unrecognizable. Alien. If there had been any blood to leech out of her face, it would have, Yaz thought, chilled.

“Ten points,” she whispered, frozen. “You're right, it's not being unlocked. The lock is being picked. Care to place your bets?”

“Daleks don't have fingers,” Ryan whispered, eyes wide. “Or lock picks.”

“They'd just blast it down,” Yaz hissed back. “Who even has technology capable of picking the lock for a door that's pneumatically sealed?”

Yaz looked from the door to the Doctor and found her face settled into a scowl that was half-irritated, half-frightened, and utterly resigned.

“Oh, just our luck.” A gust of breath escaped her, eyes flattening. “Behind me,” she hissed as the door screeched open, waving her arms insistently. “Behind! Graham, you too!”

The three of them obliged, reluctantly, as a tall, dark figure filled the archway.

She was beautiful, Yaz thought at first, frozen like the rest of them, mouth dry.

Oh, she thought next. The Doctor was right about the hats.

“Doctor,” the tall woman said, her voice deep and rich and utterly no-nonsense. Another Time Lord, clearly, somehow, impossibly. She was clad in deep red, a gun at her hip.

They'd finally caught up.

“General!” The Doctor's voice was glad but her face was terrified. “Long time no see. Hard feelings?”

“If you're referring to the incident in the extraction chamber, you're forgiven.”

Yaz stared up, feeling her mouth gaping but unsure how to make it stop.

“What incident was that?” Ryan asked, beside her, looking similarly agape.

“Murder,” the General obliged, though she looked very calm about the whole thing, all things considered.

“What?”

“Doctor.”

“Oh, add it to the list and move on,” she hissed, flapping an arm at them behind her. “We're Time Lords, getting murdered is different! I was very careful, I didn't hit any organs!” She flipped back around to the General, still frantic, voice high and tight. “And look at you, you turned out great! You're doin' fine! You'll see I got the upgrade, too. That's a—fun bit of human gender essentialism for you, that’s—we don't really do that at home, I still find it all a bit confusing if I’m—if I'm honest. How is home?” Her breath hitched into a squeak. “Still—homey?”

The General stepped forward gracefully and shut the door behind her. “That's why I'm here.”

“Speaking of home,” the Doctor said through her teeth, face still frozen in a terrified smile, ignoring her, “how did you find me? Exactly?”

The General sighed. “That's not important.”

“Is this a rescue attempt? Are you here to help us?”

“We don't have much time, Doctor.”

“We're Time Lords,” she said, tightly, “we have all the time in the universe! Coincidentally, in that vein, how are you here?”

“I am here,” the General said, finally deigning to look as irritated as Yaz thought she probably should be, “to talk to you about Gallifrey's head of state.”

“Oh,” the Doctor said, bright with false cheer, “brilliant. You've come to the right spot. How'd you do it?”

“Doctor—”

“And just for the record, I'd like it noted that I want to be impeached, thank you very much—”

“You have been!” The General drew a long breath in and reeled her composure back centimetre by centimetre. “You have been, Doctor. I tried to warn you, before. That was me on the phone. After you left, after you dissolved the High Council, we—” Her jaw tightened. “We couldn't put a stop to it. You left a power vacuum. Reactionary ideologies began popping up. Old sects, factions. Cults of Omega.”

The Doctor's face dimmed. “What?”

“We did our best to suppress them, but—but we failed. I sometimes think—well.” The General moved so slowly, so deliberately. Watching her frown was like watching a pebble disturb the surface of a very still pool. “It's not for me to say. But we did what we've always done and it wasn't enough. They consolidated under a leader, you see, all those sects. He's from the Prydonian chapter. He calls himself the Rebel.”

“The Rebel?” The Doctor's face scrunched derisively. “That's just pretentious. And disingenuous, honestly. Can't be a rebel and try to run the establishment. At least with the Master, you get what you expect.”

“Do none of you have actual names?” Ryan asked, confused. “Is that not a thing on Gallifrey?”

“Doctor, he demanded an election and they gave it to him,” the General said, ignoring them both. “He ran on a platform of revolutionary change.”

“And?” The Doctor asked, a bit darkly, swinging her arms. “You think I'm unsympathetic? Rassilon was a monster and a warmonger running a whole cabinet of monsters and warmongers, oh, and, did you forget about that bit with the dial and the billion years of torture and imprisonment?” Yaz watched the Doctor's pulses jump in her neck. “I didn't. For the record. Well due for a bit of regime change, if you ask me. Happy to hand it over.”

“A platform,” the General continued through gritted teeth, “predicated on interference and preemptive action. Reclamation. Revenge. Justice, for Gallifrey. Banished to the end of the universe, the losers of the greatest war in history—”

“That war was not great,” the Doctor interrupted in what was not quite a hiss. She'd gone even paler than before, eyes dark, pupils wide. “Nobody won or lost, don’t—twist it—”

“I'm not the one twisting it!” The General swallowed, delicately.  She looked down at the Doctor with a tired, exasperated gaze. “It's him. The Rebel. The President. The regime changes, and the army follows it, but I am trying to get to you before they do, don't you understand? Haven't you understood, yet?”

The Doctor stilled. When she spoke, her voice was very quiet.

“You're not here to help me,” she said, after a moment. She looked up at the General, eyes sharp and calculating. “Are you.”

“You've become a scapegoat,” the General confirmed, and there was a glint in her eye that might have been sorrow, if you were looking at it from the right angle. “Not everyone bought in. You're a war hero, even after everything you—” She looked down, only briefly. “But there were enough.”

“I saved you.” Plaintive.

“Yes.”

“And you—” The Doctor swallowed harshly. She looked—hurt, Yaz thought, feeling a tide of offense on her behalf, a reaching sort of anger that began in the pit of her stomach. “You all—”

“I don't play politics, Doctor.” The General smiled sadly. “I only do what I'm told. But I am sorry.”

“You always were a good soldier.” It wasn't a compliment. The General knew it. Her smile disappeared. “And you were certainly happy enough to put Rassilon on the next shuttle out. What,” the Doctor continued, a hint of something ugly and sharp glinting behind her eyes. “You didn't have it in you for another little coup d'etat? A bit of military revolution? More of you than there are of him, aren't there?”

“You were a good soldier, once.”

“Yeah,” the Doctor said, tilting her head up. She bared her teeth in a grin that Yaz had come to fear, but the General didn't even blink. “That's not me anymore, though.”

“No. Now you're a renegade, again. A thief. Don't you realize how easy you made it for them to slander you? Everywhere you go, you show up, break the rules, and leave. You left us, Doctor. You broke us, and you left us.”

“I do not—” The Doctor stopped. “I know what I'm doing,” she revised. “And I know I went too far, I made amends, I promise you. The Time Lords—”

“—were trapped. Imprisoned. Banished. And you were free to go.”

“Saved,” the Doctor insisted, spinning on her heels and stalking backwards. “The Time Lords were saved, I saved you! This doesn't make any sense, they can't possibly—there must have been some people left who aren't stupid, what about Braxiatel? No, that's a poor example, actually—Romana's people? The Sisterhood of Karn?”

“Tides change, Doctor. Times, too. The President believes that we have subjugated ourselves to the universe by remaining on Gallifrey. By refusing to interfere, by remaining sequestered away, while our great enemies are left to roam free.”

That halted her in her tracks. The Doctor spun around and stalked back, coat trailing, until she was right under the nose of the General again. Her face was very still.

“You're not here to help me,” she said quietly, eyes narrowed. And her breaths were fast and shallow, not the normal gulping gasps of air that accompanied her longer speeches, the gloating ones, the ones where she had finally figured everything out and couldn't wait to share it. This was quiet and slow and Yaz couldn't stand it, could barely watch it, felt her own pulse throb in the back of her throat. “In fact,” the Doctor went on, tense and horribly still, on the cusp of something devastating, “you're not even here to find me, you just happened to scan for lifeforms. Lucky coincidence, was it? After I'd lost you all with the randomiser? A bit of extra, to feed the propaganda machines back home? Bring the renegade back in chains?”

“I came here first to warn you, Doctor,” the General said lowly. “To talk to you. I tried to reach you, before, I tried to contact you before they drove a hole in your past and dragged you home themselves. Things have been turning for such a long time. If you'd been there to defend yourself, if you'd been there to convince them—”

“First.” Her lips barely moved. In the silence between words, she took no breaths. “You said first. So there's more coming. But not for me.” Her voice was flat. Barely a question. Barely a whisper. “Why are you here, General?”

They were having a whole conversation with their eyes that Yaz didn't understand.

The General's voice didn't crack at all, and nor did her face, but she didn't seem like the sort of person that was given to extremes like that.

“We've come to offer reinforcements,” she said, very calmly, even as the Doctor shattered in front of her. “We've come to fight the Daleks.”

Chapter Text

The hollow men.

“You can't,” she whispered, sharp like shattered glass. “You can't, they can't know you're here, they can't know I'm here – ”

“These Daleks are far removed from wherever they came from,” the General said calmly. “The War Council is confident that we can wipe them out entirely.”

“You think the news won't travel?” The Doctor scowled, breaths tight in her throat, words falling out of her mouth desperately. “The universe has no idea that you survived, and that was by design! There are still Daleks in every pocket of this dimension, crawling out of the cracks, fallen out of time, and you want to give them a reason to get the band back together?”

“Our isolation is a cruelty, Doctor.” The General exhaled. “Or at least, that's how many feel. You're right. The Daleks survived. Not all, but some. They roam the universe freely, while we remain exiled.”

“Exiled for your own safety!” The Doctor's hands rose to her face, scrubbed down her mouth, frantic. “The universe hates you! What do you think it's gonna do, when it finds out you're back? Throw you a welcoming party? You were there at Trenzalore, I know you were watching through that crack, that was not a party!” Her voice scratched and caught. “It was a war.”

“We were stagnating, Doctor. Fracturing from within. Trapped.” The General's brow creased, but the rest of her remained unnervingly still. An antithesis to the Doctor, hands shaking at her sides, visibly swallowing back the urge to pace. “Now we have movement, again. Movement towards. Unity. I may not agree with all we've chosen to do, but I can at least understand it. I think you can, too. More than anyone.”

The Doctor shook her head, the line of her mouth sharp. “I didn't save you for this!” she spat. “You've broken every code we live by!”

“Do you hear yourself?” The General turned on her, eyes flashing. Her face smoothed in the moment after, mouth tightening. Refraining from further emotion out of what struck Yaz as a tense, strangled sense of dignity. “Who broke them first, Doctor?”

“Not like this!” The Doctor's face was strained, white, pained. Everything the General's wasn't, panic scribbled all over her, now, undisguised. “I was scared, I was escaping, I went exploring! I wanted to help!”

“If the rules don't apply to you, how can you argue that they should apply to anyone?”

“That's not—”

But it was. Even Yaz could see it, even if she hated it, even if it sat sour in the back of her mouth.

The Doctor sagged.

“You're just like them,” she said, giving up the argument. Changing tactics, and her voice was choked and ugly. “The Master. There's a whole universe out there, waiting, and it's beautiful and impossible and amazin', and all you can think to do is burn it.”

“This is not destruction, Doctor.” The General frowned. “It's a reclamation. A reclamation of our place in the universe, a redefinition.”

“Don't spout propaganda at me!” Yaz and Ryan parted quickly as the Doctor flung herself around and paced in a circle, boots clanging against the metal, ending up back under the General's nose, furious. She was sallow under the green light, teeth glinting, the whites of her eyes bright. “You were there,” she insisted. “You know what this means, you know what it will bring about.”

“Don't be dramatic.”

“Dramatic—”

“We far outnumber the Daleks, now. And Gallifrey itself is safe. Tactically secure at the end of the universe, it's virtually unreachable.”

“You think that will stop them, once they know you're back?” She backed away, head shaking. “And in the meantime, you'll scorch half the universe away.”

The General's face was all but unreadable. Her eyes were only dark and unexpressive. Carefully reeled in, but the corners of her lips were tight.

“It won't be like last time,” she said firmly.

“Yes, it will,” the Doctor said. “All wars are the same. I used to think you were smart enough to understand that.”

“This is not a war.”

“Yes it is!” Her voice was a hiss. “Or it will be, soon enough.” In an instant, her gaze was flat again. “Don't do this. It's insanity. You can't, I won’t—”

“Won't let us?” The General's voice was pitying. “Doctor,” she said, brushing the edge of compassion, but Yaz bristled at it. Not because it was patronizing, but because it wasn't, and somehow that was worse. “Please.”

“I guarded you for 900 years.” The Doctor's voice cracked. More secrets were spilling from her lips than Yaz had ever been lucky enough to hear before, more pieces of the past she kept tucked away so carefully, but it was all jagged glass and stone, dredged from the sea, and she didn't feel very lucky at all. “I fought a war for you, more than once. I've killed you and I've killed for you. You think I can just stand by and watch this? Watch you destroy yourselves again? Well, I won't do it,” she breathed. “I won't lose you. Not again. Don't make me—”

Her mouth snapped closed. She breathed for a moment, shallowly. Blinking, like she was dredging something up from the depths of her memory.

“The darkest path, into the deepest hell,” she said eventually. The phrase sounded plucked out of nowhere, out of time, and Yaz had no reference for it, no context except for the desperate gleam in the Doctor's eyes.

But she laughed, breathless, mirthless.

“Oh, but that's not even the best part,” she gasped absurdly, still laughing, but there were tears in her eyes. “Do you know who told me that? Do you know who told me to hang onto you with everything I had, to protect you however I could?”

The General stayed impassive.

“Davros himself,” the Doctor finished, still shaking with laughter, breaths wheezing. She was bent over, hands on her knees. “He was lying, probably, maybe, but still. Come on, that has to—or are you still too posh to appreciate dramatic irony? On that note, Skaro's back, by the way. I suppose you'd like to add it to your list. Already took care of the Daleks on it, though, ages ago.” She straightened with a sneer. “Consider it a favour to the new regime, courtesy of Doctor Disco.”

The General closed her eyes, just for a second.

“Doctor,” she said, measured. Compassionate, barely.

The Doctor reeled herself back in with effort. She took another step back, hands stilling at her sides. “I'm disappointed, General,” she said, thinly, finally. Cold and still and cracked around the edges. “Why are you here?”

“I've told you.”

“Don't play the idiot, I'm not in the mood. Why come for me first? Are you really going to bring me back home? I won't go without a fight.”

“I was ordered to make contact with Tropos High Command.” The General's lips tightened imperceptibly. “I picked up your signature by chance.”

The Doctor huffed another breath of laughter, arms swinging. “Well,” she said, smiling, though it was far from reassuring. The gleam behind her eyes had yet to leave. “I think you'll find that the current commander of the Tropos Standing Army is me. Lucky you. That's two birds with one stone.” She met the General's eyes, gaze flattened and jagged with a host of things that Yaz didn't understand. “Or maybe just one hell of a bird.”

The General glanced down, shamed, just for an instant, but Yaz still didn't understand.

“If you think for one second I've forgotten what you did, then you're wrong,” the Doctor whispered. “If you think for one second that I'm going to cooperate with any of you, then you're gravely mistaken. If you think I'm going to help you—”

“I don't expect your help, Doctor,” the General said tightly. “I didn't even expect to find you here, believe me. I tried to warn you, I tried to stop all of this. But I have my orders. I need you to come with me.”

“Come with you where?” Ryan demanded, inching forward. “How'd you lot even get here?”

“TARDISes from the war.” The Doctor answered him grimly. “Great big ships, dusted off and dragged here from the end of the universe. Cloaked around the upper atmosphere of Tropos. Am I right?”

“I was transported down. We haven't much time. Doctor, please.” The General paused. “I can't delay them forever. Your presence here is a distraction.” She took a breath. “You should take advantage of it.”

The Doctor looked up at her curiously, eyes narrowing. “General, whose side are you on?”

“Gallifrey's.” Her face went stern again. Impassable. “Always. But I'm not a renegade, Doctor, I'm a soldier. I—there's only so much I can do.”

“Are you asking,” the Doctor said, the consonants sharp at the tip of her tongue, “for my help?”

A shake of the head. “No.” The General looked down at her, impassive, eyes dark and shining. “In fact, I cautioned the President against disturbing you at all. The only allegiance you have is to yourself. That makes you dangerous. The last time you came home, you nearly broke the universe apart for one girl.” Her eyes flicked to Yaz, scrutinizing, sharp. Yaz straightened her neck, glaring back. A flush crept up her cheeks. “Have you changed?”

“If any harm comes to any one of them, you'll find out,” the Doctor promised, scowling, and Yaz felt herself shudder, even against the surge of warmth the protective statement wrought. Reassurance and confusion and fear scrambled together at the back of her head, though she kept her face fixed in a glare on principle.

The General exhaled through her nose, frustrated. “I can't in good conscience ask for your help,” she said matter-of-factly. “I can't even demand it, even though I would be well within my rights. All I can do,” she said, voice thinning, though it was thick with implication, “is bring you aboard, as per my orders.”

“You want me to fix what I broke,” the Doctor said flatly. “But you want your hands clean in case I just make it worse. Someone's studied up.”

“Someone,” the General said firmly, eyes flashing, “is always watching.”

“Ooh, I get it. Someone back home is watching Matrix telly, is that right? Wonderful. Lovely. Well, in that case,” the Doctor scowled. “Take me to your leader. So I can tell him what an idiot he is to his face.”

She turned back to face the three of them fully, coat shifting with the movement, unsteady. “Don't worry,” she said to them, hands raising, smoothing the sharp edges from her tone. “I'll be back for you. I need you to believe that. I'll be back, I promise.”

“No,” the General said, unexpectedly. “Bring one.”

The Doctor frowned, twisting back towards her. “What?”

“Bring one.”

“I won't have them used as leverage,” she insisted.

“You almost destroyed the universe for one girl, Doctor,” the General said calmly, hands gathering at her back. “But you forget, I saw what you were like without her. It's not leverage. Call it an incentive to behave.”

The Doctor's mouth dropped open, hands moving to her hips. “You almost break the universe one time,” she muttered, offended. “Well, okay, lots of times, but the universe is still here, I should like to point out! Until you lot throw it all back into a state of open-ended temporal conflict!”

The General only waited.

“Ugh.” The Doctor turned her face to the ceiling, arms dropping, exasperated. “Fine.”

She looked to the three of them, lips pressed thinly, eyes dark.

“I'll come,” Yaz said sharply, before any of them could protest, before the Doctor could apologize. Ryan and Graham were family. The thought of them being separated from each other made her feel ill, even if the thought of being brought aboard a warship was equally terrifying. “I'm with you. Remember?”

The Doctor only stood there, resigned.

“I remember,” she said quietly. She breathed in sharply. “Okay. Okay, the General,” and she twisted back around to glare at the woman in question, “is going to leave the door to this cell open.” Her gaze returned to Graham and Ryan, cast in shadows. Ryan's arms were crossed worriedly. “Three things. Sonic, motherboard, nuclear reactors. Can you do it?”

“Of course we can,” Ryan said, smothering his panic, back straightening. “I've been practicing my sneaking around. And Gramps is already a pro, 'cos he likes a bit of midnight sandwich, but he always had to do it without waking up Nan.”

“Oi,” Graham protested, a bit of colour washing away the greyness of his face. “I get peckish!”

The Doctor smiled, but it was watery. “Be careful.”

“Be careful yourself, Doc.” Graham's brow creased. “And—and as for your blokes at home—”

He paused, eyes flickering to the General, the turn of his mouth growing sharper.

“Well. Family's more than just blood, ain't it.” He looked to her firmly, sallow in the gloom. “So you'd better come back to yours. Or we'll be havin' words again. ”

She blinked at him, surprised. Touched, Yaz thought, by the bobbing of her throat. Her lips pressed together and she clasped him awkwardly on his upper arm, just briefly, the arm falling back to swing at her side. Clumsily affectionate.

He smiled anyway. Message received.

“We're running out of time,” the General said, too dignified to be openly impatient. She was poised to leave, angled towards the door. “Are you ready?”

It wasn't really a question, though.

The Doctor gave Ryan and Graham one last look and turned reluctantly to follow, limping after her as she left their quarters. Yaz hurried to grab her elbow, ignoring the irritated scrunch she got for her trouble.

“Be careful,” she echoed over her shoulder as they exited, meeting Ryan's gaze more frantically than she cared to admit.

“Always,” he said, throwing her an ironic salute, a slim, green-tinged silhouette. Disappearing as she rounded the corner on the Doctor's arm, and they were separated again, split apart in a war-zone that was rapidly crumbling to pieces around them, on the brink of—something. Something terrible.

Home whispered at the back of her head, an instinctive longing for the sun.

“Oh, god,” she muttered to herself, knuckles whitening around the Doctor's elbow. Get it together. Not over yet, is it? “Okay. How do we get up there, then—?”

Oh, god, she had time to think, before her particles were separated and reformed in a flash of light and sound and heat, before she was spat back together, whole, knees buckling towards a metal floor. She smelled ozone, under her nose, felt nausea climbing slowly up her throat. Oh, god.

“Ugh,” the Doctor groaned, clearing her throat painfully. “Good old teleportation. Sorry, Yaz. Should've warned you.”

Yaz felt tentative fingers at her shoulder, cold, as she struggled to her feet. She opened her eyes reluctantly, and found the General looming over them both, annoyingly unruffled.

“Quickly,” she said. “I've informed him of your presence.”

“You're taking us straight to him?” The Doctor straightened with a wince. She looked down at herself with the first hint of self-awareness Yaz had ever seen her display, honestly, taking in the oil and blood and grime coating her clothes and skin. The burned, blackened edges of her coat. “Well, there's not much for all this, is there,” she muttered, scratching at the back of her head. She licked a thumb and tried in vain to scrub away some of the ash from her face, eyeing Yaz pointedly. “Do I look sort of rugged? Intimidating?”

“You look like the ceiling fell in on you,” Yaz told her flatly, offering up her elbow with exasperation. “And honestly, you smell a bit like burnt toast.”

“Well, of course I do,” she said, feigning offense. She grabbed hold of Yaz's elbow with reluctance, relishing in the General's unvoiced impatience. “The ceiling fell in on me, y'know. It was on fire at the time.”

“If you're quite finished,” the General said tightly.

The Doctor smiled, eyes glinting. A bit meanly, if Yaz was honest, but she supposed in circumstances like these, you had to win where you could.

“Shall we?” the Doctor asked.

“I think we shall,” she replied.

They limped down the short corridor they'd arrived in together, trailing after the General to the door ahead. The change of scenery should have been refreshing, after the claustrophobic trenches Yaz had been inhabiting over the past few days, but the Time Lord ship—so different and not from the Doctor's TARDIS, so much less warm, so much less—alive—was just as suffocating. It was rich in colour and texture, old like a museum felt, almost tangible, but there was no personality to it. It had an air of the traditional. A kind of stodginess.

“Through here,” the General directed, opening the door for them. She gestured. “He's waiting in the war room.”

“War room.” The Doctor's face scrunched. She disentangled herself from Yaz's grasp and straightened her back, striding forward with cultivated belligerence. “We'll see about that.”

“Doctor.”

She paused, but didn't turn, listening.

“I can't make any guarantees,” the General said softly. “Do you understand?”

“Oh, I understand perfectly,” she said, quiet in turn, unkind. “He knows we're coming? Am I going to get shot at if I barge in there?”

“He's expecting you. I expect he's told them not to shoot at you until you give them a reason.”

“Well, that I can work with. Come on, Yaz.” She fixed a smile to her face, unnervingly bright. “Don't do anything to get shot at. You're much less durable than the rest of us.”

“You only get blunt when you get scared,” she hissed back.

“So take the hint,” the Doctor said, still smiling. “And don't get shot.” She marched forward, limp crushed between her tightly clenched teeth. No weakness, Yaz thought, feeling unease flood the space between her ribs. She followed, passing a long, empty table, coming to a standstill at the Doctor's side, swallowing nervously.

The General followed last and closed the door behind her. Armed guards filed around them, lining the sides of the space, stone-faced and still. A man turned as they came to a halt, a large collar obscuring his face, three pointless steps separating him from the rest at the front of the room.

“Hello, cousin!” The Doctor waved cheerily as he turned, but her eyes were cold. “Prydonius, represent. Don't recognize you, actually. 'Course, you're just a baby, aren't you? What regeneration are you on? Second? Third?” She stepped forward, still smiling pleasantly. “Did you even watch it burn?”

“Doctor,” the Rebel said, well-groomed and distinguished in the warm light of the war room. Stars glinted serenely behind him, through a grand, gold-lined window that stretched all the way to the ceiling. He was handsome, in a sort of middle-aged, rugged way, Yaz supposed. Greying at the edges. Piercing eyes, pale and sharp. Though the Doctor was right, the hats were still quite stupid. “What an honour. We lost track of you quite a while ago, so you can imagine my surprise when I heard that you'd been designated the commander of this planet's army. Fate,” he said, something almost fervent colouring his voice, “sometimes intervenes magnificently. Wouldn't you say?”

“You must have been a child,” she said, ignoring him, stalking forward, eyes narrowing. “High-born, so you would have lived in the city. Which one? Arcadia? Were you there, when it burnt?”

His face grew colder at her failure to acknowledge him.

“I was there,” he allowed, gravelly. “I caught a glimpse of you, you know, when it fell. Of your TARDIS.”

“Oh, brilliant,” she said, smile widening. “Hah! Or fantastic, maybe. Haven't used that one in a while. See, I wondered before if maybe you were just too young, if maybe you were ignorant. I have to give allowance for youth, or I'd just be miserly, and no one wants that, least of all me.” The smile stayed fixed, but it was becoming less convincing by the second. “But you really are an idiot. Not even a harmless one, a dangerous one, you're a dangerous idiot, Lord President. Because you were there. You remember. And you're still doing what you're doing. You know what that is?” She stared up at him. “Unforgivable.”

“You've been away from us for quite some time,” the President said, unconcerned. If her words touched him at all, he didn't show it.

“Yeah, I have,” she said, face scrunching in feigned chagrin. She stepped forward again, arms swinging nonchalantly. “Not so long you've forgotten what I did to the last Time Lord that dragged us all into war, I hope.”

“Rassilon.” He dragged the 'r' out, rolled it along his tongue. “Yes, that was quite the favour you did for us. He was a bit—well. Old-fashioned. Wasn't he?” The skin around his eyes crinkled when he smiled, just like Graham. There was nothing grandfatherly about him, though, Yaz thought, shuddering. Nothing in the slightest. “I think you'll find that my contingent are much more inclined towards loyalty, Doctor. If you were thinking of trying that particular trick again, you may be out of luck.”

“Oh,” the Doctor breathed out through her teeth, face tight, still frozen in a rictus of false cheer. Her eyes flicked briefly to the guards surrounding him, glassy with suppressed panic. “Good point. Look at all these baby faces. What have you done with all the old soldiers, Lord President?”

“New blood,” he said. “For a new regime.”

More air hissed out through her teeth. “Okay, ominous,” she stage-whispered to Yaz. “Did you get a bit of ominous from that? I got a lot of ominous.”

“Super ominous,” Yaz confirmed, inching closer to her. “What did he mean, trick?”

“Last time I was home I may have capitalized a bit on some latent hero worship and overthrown the old regime by talking at them,” she hissed back. “Not sure that's gonna fly this time, these kids are all too young. Also I've been scapegoated. Scapegoat trumps war hero, happens all the time. Plus, this face is terrible at bluffing, it's way too expressive.”

“So what are we gonna do?”

“Working on it.”

The Rebel cleared his throat, looking irritated. “If you don't mind.”

“I do mind!” She tore her gaze away from Yaz and scowled up at him. “Honestly, what do you really think you're going to accomplish here? You're just some young punk in a silly hat who never had to pay the price for the cost of war! Do you think people will come to thank you for what you're doing? They might like you just fine now, but once the bodies are all counted, you'll just be someone else to hate.”

He strode forward, towards her, robes sifting against the metal steps. Brow heavy, his pale eyes narrowed.

“Like me? The people of Gallifrey revere me, Doctor. They see me as a saviour.” He fixed his gaze on her, intent. “After you left, everything imploded. Rassilon exiled, the High Council dissolved, and a President on the run. You didn't just break the universe, Doctor, you broke the government. What sort of legitimate authority can be scrambled together out of a mess like that? I saw an opportunity to repair what had been destroyed, but I needed people's faith. And there was no faith left in the system that had failed us, in the people that had failed us.” His lip curled. “So I reformed it. I gave us purpose, I gave us a new myth. We fractured under your touch, but I made us whole, and now we are made new.”

“This is not who we are,” she said, teeth bared in disgust. “We're meant to be watchers, not warmongers. We all learned that lesson in blood, so why didn't you?”

“How can you defend a system that you defied? That you destroyed?”

“I made amends! I've been trying—”

Her voice caught. She steeled herself, teeth gritting.

“I've been trying,” she said, “to stand back. To follow the rules, to let things happen. And do you know what? It's hard. It's terrible. It's the worst. More than that, I think it might be wrong. Because how can it be right? How can it be right to let people die, to let people suffer? How can it be right to stand back and watch?” She stepped forward, breathing shakily. “But it's still what has to happen. I understand now, I learned that lesson a long time ago, you can’t—you can't stop, once you start. It doesn't have an end, and that's what's dangerous. If you interfere here, if you start this all again, where will you stop?”

“Doctor,” he said, thunderous. Virulent. A fanatic to his own cause, Yaz thought uneasily, finding in him traces of a thousand people just the same, who'd come before him, who would come after him. “I have no intention of stopping.”

The war room was so well-insulated that the silence that followed was truly quiet. Yaz's eyes caught on the stars again, beyond the sloping arc of the Rebel's collar. Watching.

The Doctor breathed in thinly. Something was being slowly written across her face, but Yaz couldn't decipher it.

“Then you're already lost,” she told him, face dropping into a belligerent scowl. “And more than that,” she said, raising her chin, gaze flattening. “You're not even worth talking to. You say you're something altogether new, but you're wearing the clothes of the man who came before you. You're no better. You're no different. And I won't let you do this,” she said, eyes glittering. “If you won't be helped, then you will be stopped.”

His lips tightened.

“I'll be sure to get you a cell with a view,” he said, sharp and dry. “If you're so determined to watch, then you can watch this planet burn. Your human pet can watch with you. And then, after we're done here, I think we'll be returning home. I have plans for you, at the end of the universe, Doctor. For once in your life, you might find yourself politically useful. It will be a novel experience for the both of us, I'm sure.” He snapped his fingers. “General. Take these two to a holding cell and then reconvene the War Council.” He eyed the Doctor with irritation. “We'll have to make contact with the next-in-line.”

“Yes, sir.” The General's voice came from behind them, unflappable, unreadable. “Doctor.”

The Doctor glared up at the Rebel for a final, scathing second.

“Fine,” she said, aggressively. “Yaz? Let's go.” She flung herself back around, coat flailing behind her, and stalked back towards the General. “Laters!” she threw over her shoulder, somehow managing to make it sound like a threat.

The General escorted them out of the war room grimly.

“Doctor,” Yaz hissed urgently, into her ear. “What are we going to do?”

“Working on it,” she hissed back, a flash that same indecipherable expression slipping across her face. “In a bit of a jam at the moment, I need to—I need to think. Thought maybe I could talk my way out of that, but I was terribly wrong.” Her mouth twisted back into a glare. “Oh, but he's really irritating,” she said, stalking forward, limpless, buoyed by indignation. “Really irritating, I thought Tim Shaw was irritating, but he's beat him at the top, that is proper irritating, a whole new category of irritating—”

“You've said that about every head of state we've ever had,” the General said patiently. “Including yourself. This is your stop, Doctor.” She brought them to a halt outside a label-less door, stark metal, cold. “Thank you for not trying to escape on the way.”

“You're just doing your job,” the Doctor said, the heat seeping from her expression, though it was still tinged slightly bitter. Resigned, again. Trapped. “I killed you for it once. Twice seemed like—well. Overkill.”

The General's eyes closed briefly in what Yaz assumed was exasperation.

“Considerate,” she said dryly. “But appreciated.” She gestured them through again, holding open the door politely.

“Besides,” the Doctor said, limping over the threshold, voice thinning. “There's nowhere to run, this time.”

Yaz followed, taking in the stark, seamless metal. The window, gaping out into the universe, Tropos tantalizing at its periphery. From the outside, it was sterile, brown. A wasteland.

“I'm sorry, Doctor.” The General moved to close the door behind her.

“You said that before.” The Doctor shoved her hands into her pockets and slid down the wall irritably, landing with a painful-sounding thump. “You know it doesn't actually mean anything unless you do something about it.”

The General only met her gaze, eyes dark and unreadable. “I'm sorry,” she said again, intent. The door slid shut behind her, almost soundless. Everything here worked seamlessly. Perfectly. There was no rust, no noise, no—colour. Yaz hated it.

She looked down at the Doctor, loud and bright and singed, slumped against the sterile wall, scowling.

“Doctor,” she said, in the quiet that followed. “I don't understand.”

The Doctor glanced up at her, brow creasing. “Don't understand what?”

Yaz could have asked a thousand things. She felt them bubble up inside her chest, building, building. Why haven't we escaped? How much time do we have left? How can you have so much hope but give up so quickly, every time?

How did any part of you come from these people?

How can they be home?

“What did they do?” she asked, glancing up at the ceiling, smooth and clean and free of drips. A prison, all the same. “Your people. You—I’m sorry, but I'm so confused. You said you saved them. You were the President, apparently. You fought with them. For them. But you hate them, too. Don't you? I can see it in your face, a bit. It scares me.”

The Doctor ducked her head, looking away.

“Never got on all that well, me and home,” she said finally, shifting, on the verge of fidgeting. “That's all.”

Yaz frowned.

The Doctor sighed and budged over to make room with a wince, tapping the piece of floor beside her in invitation. Yaz tore herself away from the window and sat, knees to her chest.

“I was always a bit in trouble, right from the start,” the Doctor said, on the edge of wistful. She smiled, just a bit. “I stole the moon and the President's wife and they didn't like that much. Stole the TARDIS and my granddaughter and ran, and they didn't like that much, either. All that travel. All that messing about, helping, we had—rules, back then. I was put on trial, you know. Executed. Exiled to Earth, that was fun. Long time ago.” The smile dimmed. “But then I'd swoop in and help, when they needed me to. Put things right. Do a bit of their bidding, but only when I felt like it. I had friends in the High Council, sometimes. People I liked.”

She trailed off.

“And then?”

Her voice stayed mild. “And then the war happened. And I destroyed it all. Or I thought I did. Turns out I didn't, actually, thanks to—well, me, but that's all—complicated. Timey-wimey. Hard to explain. But I thought it was lost, for a very long time, and I thought I was alone. And I missed it. Isn't that funny? I'd spent nearly my whole life running from it, but it was always there to run from. And then it wasn't.” She shrugged. Swallowed, tightly. “And then it was again. Not quite sure how they managed that, still. Don't ask, it'll only make them feel clever.”

“It's complicated, then,” Yaz said, thinking of her own home. How she could hate it and love it in the same breath, how it bored her to death, how she'd give her left foot to be there right now, right this minute, watching daytime telly while her dad made terrible pakora in the kitchen behind her. You had to love a place to want to escape it, sometimes. You had to love it so dearly that it hurt to leave, because then it made the leaving worth something.

You didn't run from nothing.

Oh.

“Yeah,” the Doctor sighed, missing her quiet intake of breath. “Complicated. But I saved them. I saved them because I love them, and I—missed them.” She scrubbed a hand down her face to hide her eyes. “I suppose the feeling has never been very mutual. Or maybe it was, once, but I've—I’ve gone too far, too many times. Threw out the book too often.”

“What happened?” Yaz shifted closer, tentative. “The last time you went home, what did you do, that was so terrible? What did they do?”

“I—”

The Doctor stopped. Raised her hands, as if to explain, but dropped them into her lap with a wince.

“It’s—complicated. Like you said.”

“We're not goin' anywhere.”

The Doctor pressed the back of her head into the wall, exhaling. Tense in that strangled way she got when she wanted to move but couldn't, when she was trapped, hemmed in. Yaz watched her close her eyes in a scrunch, resigned.

“When I was little,” she said, quietly. “Younger. Back on Gallifrey. I did something I shouldn't have. I went somewhere I was never meant to go. I saw something—I saw something I was never meant to see. A story. Just a story, but it scared me so badly that I started running and I never stopped.”

Yaz wound her fingers in the edge of the Doctor's coat, feeling the fabric silky and cool and grimy under her touch. Wanting desperately to reach for her hand instead, but it was better when she came to you first, somehow.

“What story?” she asked.

“Myths and legends,” her mouth moved very carefully, eyes distant, “are just stories about things that already happened. Prophecies are stories about things that haven't happened yet. But we're Time Lords, you see, and so they're really one and the same. The Matrix spits them out like candies, it can't tell the difference between the past and the future. And I went where I was never supposed to, I snuck down into the Cloisters, and I saw—”

“The future,” Yaz breathed, knuckles whitening. “You saw a prophecy.”

Her face didn't move. “I saw a story. About the past, and about the future.”

“I don't understand, how—” Yaz felt her face twist, felt her fingers tighten around the fabric in her grasp. “What did you see?”

“It doesn't matter what I saw.” Gentle, now. This was part of the lesson, somehow, but Yaz couldn't see the whole of it yet, she didn't understand. “It only matters what the rest of them thought I saw. What they believed I saw.”

“What did they believe you saw, then?”

“Gallifrey's destruction.” She smiled, small and terrible. “And a creature of myth, called the Hybrid. I thought they'd forgotten about it, honestly, but after the war, they had nothing to keep themselves occupied with, I suppose. They needed a common enemy. Something to worry about. That's what happens, you know. That's what's happening now.”

“They thought you had information about this—creature.”

“Not just thought, believed. That's a thousand times more powerful.” She looked down into her lap, away. Picked aimlessly at a loose thread in her coat with elegant, grimy fingers. “They became convinced it was a threat. So they—they trapped me. Tricked me. Killed my best friend and threw me into a little personalized interrogation for years, all for some information that I didn't even have. I mean, I did eventually pretend to have it for some leverage, to be fair, but—”

Yaz felt her heart drop into her stomach. “What?”

“They could have just phoned,” she muttered. “I still wouldn't have told them, probably, but it would have been more polite. Paranoid lot, though, my people. I suppose they were a bit right to be, 'cos I did take over the government and then almost break the entire universe apart, but—”

“How many years?” Yaz heard herself ask, voice cracking. Feeling, suddenly, very far away. Conversations from earlier were slowly being put into context that was stark and jagged and unwelcome, cold up her spine. “Doctor, how many years?”

The Doctor turned to face her, finally. The stark light sharpened her, made her eyes look darker than they were. “Oh, not you, too,” she said, dismayed, patting her awkwardly on the arm. “It's alright, it happened a while ago. Spilt milk. Totally over it.”

“How many?” She could hear her pulse in the back of her head again, feel it throbbing hotly in her ears.

“Well, maybe not totally over it. Mostly over it. Bit cross, still, and you can see why the decisions I made following that particular incident were not, perhaps, the most well thought out and reasonable, but—”

“How many?”

The Doctor sighed and leaned her head back against the metal wall. “Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head contemplatively and crossed her arms. “Four billion,” she admitted finally, eyes flattening. “Give or take a few million.”

It was an odd sensation, Yaz thought absently, the feeling of all the blood leaving your face.

“Doctor,” she said, but it was barely a whisper. There was no air in her lungs. No blood in her head. “Doctor, what—I can’t—”

She didn't even have the ability to comprehend the scale of numbers like that.

“Had to punch my way through a substance harder than diamond,” the Doctor said, far too mild. “Took a while, that's all, 'cos I kept—dyin'. Over and over. Can we—can we talk about something else?”

She stood abruptly, arms pinwheeling.

Yaz stayed where she was. If she moved, she thought she might be ill. “How could they do that?” She thought of the General, who she hadn't been able to truly dislike, not really. Who she had at least been able to sort of understand. Until now. “How could they—”

The people of Tropos were so small, in comparison. Even Corcorax, with his deeply embedded beliefs. He was driven by myth too, by a kind of faith in inevitability, driven into the ground, away from the sun, but even the kind of cruelty that came about at his hand was somehow insignificant, in the face of it all.

When you could all but live forever, she supposed, the magnitude of everything you did stretched out like the line of the ocean. It all became a horizon you might never reach, expansive, unimaginable. Deep and wide and timeless. Their cruelty was like that, she thought, feeling cold up her spine. The Doctor's kindness was like that, too, and so was her wonder, her delight, the breadth of her hope, it all stretched far and across a time and space that people like Yaz didn't even have the context for.

But that meant she had the capacity for things far worse than wonder and delight, as well. Didn't she?

The capacity for things far beyond anything that Yaz could imagine.

“That's just what they're like,” the Doctor said. She was working herself into a limping pace, and Yaz closed her eyes so it didn't make her dizzy, feeling pressure behind them, the threat of tears. She was afraid, she realized, hearing blood rush in her ears, feeling her heart pounding at the base of her throat. Afraid like she never was, afraid like a child awake in the middle of the night, afraid like someone drowning at sea. Her fingers scraped across the metal grate, curling into fists.

“That's honestly not the worst thing they've ever done, even,” the Doctor continued, still pacing. “It's just the freshest. I thought maybe once I booted old Rassilon out that they might—but I was wrong. Again. And I can’t—I can't change who they are, I can't even fault them for it, but I had to leave, you see. I love them, but they're so very often wrong, and I couldn't stay, I had to run, every time.” Her feet scraped against the ground as she moved, faster, faster. “But I can't run today, Yaz. I can't let them do this. I won't let them do this again.” The scraping stopped. Yaz opened her eyes. The Doctor was staring at the door, eyes distant.

“Doctor,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

She glanced down, resigned, and Yaz felt the pit of her stomach flood with the fear that had been lodged in her throat, cold and sharp.

“I don't know,” she whispered. Lying.

Chapter Text

What the thunder said.

“Doctor,” Yaz tried again, something pulling at the pit of her chest, some terrible, thickening dread. “What are you going to do?”

And she waited for the flood, for the I don't know again, for the panic and the solution and the words that would fix everything, somehow, because they had to—

But they didn't come.

The Doctor only looked down at her, glassy eyed, resigned. Shut far away.

With her finger on the button.

“No more,” she whispered, once, like it meant something, and it felt to Yaz like a prayer, maybe. A promise. It had that sort of weight to it. The air took it from her, scattered the words like breath on the wind. She turned back to the door and limped to it. She considered it blankly.

Yaz stumbled to her feet, heart pounding, the back of her mouth sour. Her palms scraped across the grate as she stood. “You said you were in a jam,” she said, hearing her voice high and tight in her ears, hating it, but she couldn't stop it. “You said we had to wait, you said you had to think—Doctor, what are you going to do?” She took a steadying breath. “We can't get out, anyway, you don't have—”

But the Doctor only frowned, deeply, and put her palm flat against the door. She pushed. It opened.

The General, Yaz thought, mouth hanging open. It had to have been. But—

“Okay,” she breathed, following the Doctor out of the cell, the burnt ends of her coat trailing behind her. “Okay, but we're still trapped up here, we're surrounded, we're—what are you going to do? Doctor,” she demanded, suspicion curdling in the pit of her stomach. “Doctor, you've—have you just been stalling?”

There was no reply, still, but that was an answer in itself.

“You knew the door was open,” she breathed, struggling to keep up with the Doctor's fast-paced, haphazard limp, eyes peeled for any stray Time Lords that might not be too happy at their lack of imprisonment. “You knew the General would take us up here, you knew all of this was going to happen, what—what's really going on here?”

Only silence, and the slam of their boots across the grated floor. Yaz's breath rasped in her throat, and she felt her face twist into a glare.
“You can't just—” she spat, still trailing behind, and all she had to read was the back of the Doctor's head, bobbing and weaving unevenly. “I'm not some tag-along! Tell me what's goin' on!”

She heard a frustrated exhale, and the Doctor veered to a halt abruptly, spinning on her heels to grab Yaz by her upper arms. Her fingers were trembling. Her face was impossibly pale.

“I'm afraid,” Yaz admitted, more quietly, watching those eyes. It was almost an apology. “Please, tell me what's happenin'.”

The Doctor only breathed for a moment, face tight like a mask. Nothing in, nothing out. But eventually she let go of Yaz's arms and dove a hand into her coat pocket, fishing around until she emerged with the psychic paper. How she'd managed to keep it from the Yorkshire Police, and then from Major Stet, was a question Yaz couldn't answer, but its touch was familiar under her fingers as the Doctor pressed it into her hand.

She opened it, frowning. I can give you until dawn, it read. Don't trip any alarms.

She opened her mouth. “Is this from the General? How can that be? Is it—”

Oh, but—psychic paper. Right. She closed her mouth around the ten thousand other questions she had.

“She really was sorry,” she said quietly instead.

You didn't really answer my question, she didn't say. But there was a sourness at the back of her throat, a cold pit in her stomach, a cool suspicion growing that she didn't really want to know.

The Doctor took the paper back and turned away again, back down the hall, mottled hand trailing absently along the wall for balance. The light of the Time Lord ship was warm and stale and sterile, caught hard and golden in her hair, and Yaz followed reluctantly, still not quite sure what was going on. Not quite sure what to make of it all. The General had been more than she'd seemed, then—and the Doctor had known it. Or suspected it, at least. What did it all mean? How much of her floundering was genuine, then, and how much was sheer calculation? Or was it genuine as far as she'd been lying to herself?

I keep thinking I finally know you, Yaz thought, rounding a corner with her lips pressed together mutinously, fear without a source still hammering away in her throat. She trailed after the Doctor into a room off the corridor and stepped back in surprise as two guards blocked their path. The Doctor didn't even try to out-talk them, only jabbed two fingers under the both of their necks before either of them (or Yaz) could blink, moving past them before they could even hit the ground. Yaz stepped over them gingerly, red cloaks spilling out onto the polished floor, closing the door behind her in the vain hope of deterring further attention. They'd avoided the alarms the General had mentioned so far, at least.

The Doctor all but ignored her, fingers flying over the keys of a console across from the door that only looked sort of like it might be related to the TARDIS. There was a window behind it, as tall as the ceiling, stars twinkling serenely behind the sheets of glass. This ship wasn't like anything she'd ever seen before. There was the odd organic-looking piece that reminded her of the TARDIS, that looked as though it might have been somehow grown, but the rest was incomprehensibly different. Grand, traditional—alien. Aching, swooping curves and windows, like a mosque, like a cathedral. Like an ark.

It was all new to Yaz, but intimately familiar to the Doctor. She could tell by the twist of her mouth, half-scrunched in absent distaste as she stared intently into a screen of the same swirls and circles that the TARDIS never translated.

Yaz wandered closer, gaze still half-fixed on the view.

“I assume we're here for a reason?” she ventured, resigned to a non-answer, even though she had to try, still. “Or—”

The Doctor balled her hand into a fist and gave the console a solid whack, precise and deliberate in its delivery, and suddenly Yaz could see far more relation to the TARDIS. A concealed compartment sprung open, but the Doctor's hands were moving too quickly for her to see what was inside it exactly, and even as she frowned, automatically suspicious, the Doctor grabbed hold of her wrist and the world dissolved around them both—

—and reconstituted them back on Tropos, spitting their atoms back together with haphazard vehemence.

Yaz bent over at the waist, catching her hands on her knees, shuddering.

“Oh,” she moaned, ill-prepared for the sudden transport. Her head pounded sickly. It didn't fade as she waited, only grew staticky and sharp at the base of her skull, and she realized it had been far too long since she'd had anything to eat or drink. “Bit of warning next time, yeah?”

Radio silence. Not even breathing, actually, which was more than a bit odd, though it took her a moment to notice. There was some sort of announcement on repeat, a female voice echoing tinnily out of the walls, distant, calmly warning her not to approach any breeches to the trench. When she raised her head she found that the Doctor had already taken off, a stumbling, single-minded silhouette, veering wildly down a dripping, gloomy corridor.

Good old Tropos, she thought, even as she straightened with a frustrated wince. “Oi!” She hadn't missed it one bit. “Doctor!”

She broke into a reluctant jog to catch up, head pounding with every impact of her boots on the grimy metal ground, feeling very much the tag-along that she had insisted she wasn't, fear spiking up her throat again at the sheer oddness of it all. She didn't know where they'd been teleported to. All the hallways on Tropos looked the same. The air was tinged with something a little bit desperate, though, and it all felt a bit abandoned, somehow. The announcement's voice echoed, lonely. There was a near constant ringing that filled the air, too, vibrations from above, a once distant threat manifested permanently on top of them. Tropos' time had finally run out, she presumed grimly, sinking into a fast-paced walk as she caught up to the edge of the Doctor's coat.

“Where are we going?” she demanded, accepting finally that it was a fruitless question and asking it anyway. Her hands were freezing, but under the bulk of her vest she was sweating. “What were you doing up there, do they have—what, maps and things? Do you know where Ryan and Graham are?”

“Speak of the devil,” she heard from round a corner, and they both emerged out of the shadows, looking worn and bedraggled.

“Oh my days,” Ryan breathed, wrapping her in his arms gratefully. She pressed her forehead into the leather shoulder of his jacket, ignoring the layer of dust and grime, relishing the relative coolness. “You two are a sight for sore eyes.”

“It's been busy down here while you two were upstairs playing politics,” Graham said, sounding exhausted. There was relief in his voice, though. “We were gettin' worried they'd done away with you both.”

“Not sure I'd call it playing politics,” Yaz mumbled, words muffled into Ryan's shoulder. She pulled back reluctantly, his hands tightening around her arms briefly before he released her. “Though I suppose the Doctor did yell at the President. Does that count?”

“Don't know if it counts, but it sounds about right. Speaking of,” Ryan slapped his pockets, frowning in concentration as he dove a hand into the left one. It emerged with the sonic, which glinted dully in the familiar sallow gleam of the trenches. “Sonic,” he said, pressing it into the Doctor's hands, relief softening his face. A hint of something troubled marking his brow as he took in her expression. “Don't ask how we got it back, it were like something off Monty Python. Major Stet may or may not be trapped in a storage closet somewhere.”

Yaz tilted her head. “Is it may or may not?”

“I said not to ask.”

“You really have been busy,” she remarked, watching the Doctor out of the corner of her eye, a more familiar figure, somehow, with the sonic in hand. Was it relief on her face, too? She couldn't tell in the gloom.

“You gave us a job,” Graham said, a hair tetchy. “We followed through, best we could. It's been tricky, getting around here, they've evacuated most of the people to the central sections where there's better reinforcement. This whole thing's bound to collapse on itself any moment now, if you ask me.”

“Yeah, it's proper chaos,” Ryan agreed, crossing his arms. “No one's paying attention to anything, almost all the outer sections have been breeched. They've been sending everyone they can out to repel the final attack.” Even as he spoke, the walls shook and rattled. He shuddered, face twisting in worry. “We're runnin' out of time.”

“Is there a plan, then?” Graham asked. “Did you sort your lot out, Doc?”

The Doctor looked up from the sonic, expressionless. She regarded them all for a moment like she'd forgotten they were there. Tilted her head to the left in as close to an invitation to follow as Yaz thought they would likely get, and took off down the corridor again, sonic raised in front of her like a beacon, buzzing reassuringly.

“Gonna take that as a tentative no,” Ryan said hesitantly, turning to follow. “How did it go up there?”

“Not good,” Yaz replied, keeping pace. “She's decided something, but she won't tell me what.” She swallowed back her frustration, focused on the steady beat of the clang of their feet on the floor. The walls shuddered again. “What about you? You got the sonic, did you find the nuclear source?”

“It's not far from here,” Graham answered for him, shoulders slumped, breaths ragged in his throat as he struggled to keep up. “We were on our way to it when we ran into you. Suppose that were more than just luck, the Doctor's making a beeline for where we were heading.”

“There was a computer on the Time Lord ship,” Yaz said. “She got into it before we left. I think they've tapped into the records here, maybe. It would explain how they know so much.” She frowned. “Has the Computer done anything?”

“Not a peep from it, except for the safety warnings. I think it's been sealing off some of the breeches autonomously, too, but honestly it's been pretty quiet.”

“Weird.” They followed the Doctor around another sharp curve, flinched away from a trio of sparking, flailing cables that hung desolately from the ceiling. “Still don't know how it works, really, I suppose. We never got the Doctor down to see the motherboard.”

“Still got time,” Ryan remarked, chip glinting as he turned his head. “Once we sort everything out.”

Yaz felt unease prickle at the back of her neck but only nodded, absently. They continued forward, into the gloom, the walls ringing around them. Into the outer reach of the trenches.

“Don't feel very safe, but I think right now it might be, actually,” Graham said as the approached the paradoxical end of the tunnel. “All the fighting's intensified right over top of high command. Structures are less sturdy out here, but all the people have fled it, so there's no point in spreading the fighting out all the way here.”

“Which is good,” Ryan said, resigned. He'd finally caught sight of the ladder the Doctor had reached, rusted and streaked with grime, nailed precariously to the metal wall. A circular hatch awaited them at the top. “'Cos it looks like we're going for a stroll through dead man's land.”

“Their power source is above ground?” Yaz frowned as she approached, watching the Doctor scale the ladder with determined ease, despite the fact that she was two limbs out of action by now. The sonic whirred, and she heard the tell-tale click and hiss of a pneumatic lock being broken. “That don't make any sense.”

“It's not above ground,” Ryan explained, eyeing the ladder with trepidation that he trapped under his jaw. “It's just separate from the main trenches. A couple hundred metres of dirt and metal and concrete between it and where people live. To be safe, I suppose.”

Reasonable. Though if something were to go really wrong, Yaz wasn't entirely sure a couple metres of concrete would really do much to save them all. Her skin prickled again, but she steeled herself against the unease and clambered up the ladder after the Doctor, catching a glimpse of precious sky through the hatch opening. She climbed steadily but not hastily, knowing better than to look down after Ryan, but keeping an ear out just in case. When she reached the surface, she offered a hand down and ended up pulling him and Graham out of the ground.

Tropos was dry and arid and scorched. The air was cool, but in a noncommittal way, like it got hot during the day. But it wasn't desert around them, she could see that even in the gloom of late evening. The washed-out moonlight threw their surroundings into weak relief, and it was all cracked earth and bent trees, twisted by the wind and by the war. Structures long abandoned and reduced to rubble. Nothing green, nothing growing.

She took a step and it felt like walking over a grave.

“It's night,” she said. The General's message ached at the back of her head. I can give you until dawn. Until dawn to do what?

She tracked the moon across the sky with her eyes, noted its foreign shape, its unfamiliar distance with a sour pang of homesickness. She might have been completely wrong, but if their cycle was really close to Earth's, like the Doctor had said, then they had a few hours yet.

“Come on,” she said, trekking after the Doctor, who hadn't stopped to wait. She was bent ever so slightly against the wind, coat trailing behind her, scorched like the air. “I can hear artillery fire, we shouldn't hang about.”

They straggled together into the wind for the few hundred metres it took to get from one hatch to the other. Artillery and distant laser fire punctuated the mournful howl of the wind. Tropos really was an inhospitable wasteland, Yaz thought, feeling something like sympathy clamber for space in her chest. But if the stories were true, then it hadn't always been. It could have been green, once, lush and vibrant. She tried to picture it, tried to picture the city free from its bones, and couldn't. That was all it was now. Just the skeleton of a home that these people were clinging to, a dream and a story that most of them had never even seen with their own two eyes.

Forced underground by war, kept mobilized by myth, kept safe by something they didn't question and didn't understand, and Yaz didn't understand it either, she didn't understand any of it, not one bit—

They'd been lucky so far. But even out here, battered by the wind, the structures worn away for centuries, something was always watching. The Doctor stumbled as she reached the opening hatch, tilted and collapsed onto one knee, a hand slapping to the side of her neck, though she remained eerily silent. The wind whipped her coat behind her, blasted her hair away from her face, twisted in pain and annoyance.

Yaz crouched without touching, hesitant.

“Computer doesn't want you here,” Ryan said, frowning in concern, circling the other side of the hatch. “It’s—it's left us alone until now. Why would it—Doctor—”

Yaz could hear the question in his voice, unspoken. What are you going to do? But he trailed off, looking pinched and ill under the grey gloom of night. Like he already had some idea.

The Doctor's fingers trembled where her rank chip met her neck, incapacitated. Yaz caught flint in her eye, a brief flash of something coolly pragmatic. She stepped back unconsciously, revulsion tunnelling up her throat—

“No,” she said faintly as she stood, hands still raised, “no, don’t—”

The Doctor's fingers, bone white and spindly, closed around the chip and tore.

Yaz forced herself to look and wished she hadn't.

It ripped from the Doctor's neck with a sound she would never be able to forget, something sharp and sucking that went on for far too long, eerie under the roar of the wind and the Doctor's silence, and when it was done there was blood trailing delicately from the Doctor's right ear, smeared across her neck and into her hair, pooling into rust on the dirty, dusty ground where the chip and its trailing, gory tendrils met the heel of the Doctor's boot. Crushed into the ground with a sharp, satisfying crunch.

“Oh, god,” she heard Ryan whisper, washed away under the howl of the wind. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Graham take his elbow, his face grey and bloodless under the watery moon.

The Doctor looked up from the remains of the chip, gaze sharp, and for a moment Yaz wondered traitorously, insensibly, if she was about to do the same to the rest of them. But she only waited, watching, the wind tearing at her rust-streaked hair. Waited to see if the Computer would move on to the rest of them.

Yaz breathed harshly, forcing her hands to her side, away from her neck, anticipating a pain that never came.

“Machine learnin',” Ryan gasped quietly, voice eaten by the wind. Yaz could see his hands shaking. “That’s—that's one hell of a precedent, Doctor. Are you—are you—”

“Doc,” Graham said, mild concern pinching his face that had far deeper roots. “You never said. What are we—what are we doing here, exactly?”

The Doctor only pointed the sonic at the hatch and waited for the lock to break.

“Doctor,” he protested, as she jumped down the opening, boots crashing to the floor with a ringing clang that echoed up to the surface. “Oh, I don't love where this is going.”

“You're only saying that now?” Ryan said incredulously, still seeming half in shock, gingerly making his way down the ladder. “Get with the program, Gramps.” His head disappeared.

Graham shook his head, resigned. “I've been with the program the whole time,” he muttered, folding himself with a wince and clambering down after Ryan, into the eerie green. Yaz took one last look at the lonely, violet sky and followed, hands catching on the rusted pieces of the ladder, eyes aching as they adjusted to the different light. Underground again. Trapped.

The reactor plant was bigger than she'd thought, but compared to the trenches it was piddly. As she staggered off the ladder she caught sight of monolithic concrete and metal, smooth and geometric, barred by a series of glass tunnels and flashing lights. Blinking controls, on the outside, a rusted, metal table with a main computer. All contained by a hole in the ground.

It had all been abandoned, just like the rest of the trenches.

“Okay,” Yaz said, as the Doctor took the sonic to the reactor controls, raising her hand in a familiar arc. She felt fear again, thin at her throat. Felt the tension in the air like a static, like the moment after lightning. “We're here. Are you finally gonna tell us what's going on?”

But the Doctor was already moving on, making her way around the space with single-minded focus. A series of wires and cables were pulled from behind the controls, abandoned tools, metal scraps, piled onto the table with haphazard abandon, thrown with little care for delicacy or deliberation.

Yaz had watched the Doctor build things before, and it had never felt like this. This was random, frantic, careless. Laser-focused, and maybe that was the same, at least, but there was no joy in it.

No joy in it at all.

I can give you until dawn.

“Ryan,” she demanded, tightly. Watching with her heart in her throat. “What's she doing?”

They were tipping over a cliff, sailing over the edge. She had the sudden sense that she was watching some indefinable breaking point play out in front of her like an accident she was powerless to stop.

“I think—” He moved closer to her, closer to Graham and the table, and she watched him observe, watched his eyes narrow, watched them gleam with sudden horror. “I don't understand. Doctor.”

She tossed another cable onto the table, connected it to a hub with a flash of sparks and a fizzing pop without a flinch.

“Doctor,” Ryan said again, but she wouldn't turn around. “You—you aren't doing this. Are you?”

“Doing what?” Graham demanded, stepping back with a look.

“Nuclear plant,” Ryan said, throwing the pieces together into horrific clarity. His eyes fluttered closed, just briefly. “That's why we're here, she’s—she's rigging it to overload. The whole thing.” He swallowed. “Not bluffing anymore.”

“What?” The look on Graham's face would face been comical in any other situation. “No. No way. I—but that would do this whole place in. This whole planet in.” His mouth shuddered closed as he realized. Shock drew the blood from his face.

Yaz wasn't shocked. In fact, she realized suddenly, she wasn't even surprised.

“You can't do this,” she said sharply, and it didn't even feel like protest in her mouth, it was just fact. “Doctor! You can't, you—you couldn't do it then either!”

And the Doctor paused, shoulders hunched around her ears, a terrible, fraught silhouette. Paused, frozen, and for a moment Yaz thought she might finally speak. But she only took her arms and scraped everything off the table with a loud, disarming clatter, a crash that rang out and sang against the metal floor, echoing. Violent.

“Doc,” Graham said, a shaking hand outstretched. She wouldn't turn around. He reached for her gently, took her heaving shoulders in his hands and coaxed her back towards them, to face them. She let him.

“You're afraid,” he ventured, hands still trembling around her arms. “You're afraid they'll go to war with each other again. Your people and the Daleks. Only it won't stop here, will it, that's why you're—” He trailed off, grey. “They'll keep going. One of them, or both of them, neither will stop. And you think—you think they might plunge themselves back into the same war that you ended. That war, you said it spread across half the universe. Is that—” He exhaled sharply, stricken. “Is that what happens? If you don’t—?”

But he couldn't finish.

“Graham,” she said, thinly, and that was answer enough. She reached into her pocket for the sonic and held it out to him, hand shaking. Bloodless and grey and trapped behind herself. “Take everyone back to the TARDIS. That part of the trenches has been abandoned, she should be fine. Setting 27 will unseal the pneumatic lock. Just point and think.” Her eyes were very wide, but her face was unsettlingly blank. “Ryan can help you remove the randomiser, just—just tear it off the base of the console, that should do it. Emergency Protocol One will take you home.”

He looked at her. Yaz watched his eyes soften, watched the curve of his lip harden with some quiet decision. “No.”

The sonic trembled in her hand. She shook it insistently, breaths hitching.

“No,” he said again, taking it from her gently. He slipped it back into her pocket. “If you do this,” he said quietly, “you don't do it on your own.”

Her voice was thin and wispy, like she'd used what was left of it up telling them how to get home. “I don't need a conscience, Graham,” she whispered. “Not this time.”

“I know,” he said, taking her stiffly, gently, by the arms again. “I'm not trying to be your conscience. I'm just trying to be your friend. Haven't been doin' a plum job of that, lately. Didn't even see this coming, though I probably should have done.”

She closed her eyes miserably, trapped by his careful grasp.

“Why's it always gotta be you, Doc?” he asked, face crumpling. “Why's it—why's it gotta be you? Is it—is it other people, who've done this to you? Or have you done it to yourself?”

“Graham,” Ryan said, stepping forward, brow pinched.

“No, no,” he said, still gentle, waving a hand to stave him off. “That's not – I forgive you, Doc. I forgive you.” He lifted his hands, grasped her tighter. Chin trembling. “I forgive you, and I'm sorry. But sending us away, that's too easy. For you.” He swallowed. The shine of his eyes caught the light. “And for us. I can't rightly do it.” He breathed in, sharp, rattling, jaw still shaking. His eyes flicked to Ryan, wide and damp. “I can't rightly do it. Oh, and your nan would never forgive me for this, she never would, but she'd never be able to leave, either. I know she wouldn't. It ain't right.”

Ryan shook his head minutely, half frozen in shock, still. “There's gotta be some better way than this,” he insisted quietly.

“Graham's right,” Yaz said, fixing that last glimpse of the moon at the back of her head. “You can't just send us away.”

“Please,” the Doctor said, livid, voice cracking, and it was like watching a thread, unspooled. Like getting caught in the frayed edges of a storm, and Yaz felt that fear again, in the pit of her chest. “Please, leave! I've done this before! I've done it before. You don’t—you don't have to be here. You shouldn't even be here, only I needed the sonic. I would have taken you to the TARDIS myself. Please. You could be safe.” Her eyes were wild and damp. “You could give me that.”

“Doctor,” Ryan said. Hands at his side, listless. “You didn't do it, though.” His throat bobbed. “That's what you said, yeah? It never happened. There's no blood on your hands.”

“Oh, there is plenty,” she snapped, miserable.

“That's not—that's not my point,” he insisted, stepping forward. “You never did it. So you haven't done this before. You saved them.” His throat bobbed again, desperately hopeful. “You could do it again.”

“That was a miracle,” she said flatly. “It took all thirteen of me, and a miracle on top of it. This is small,” she said. But there was no twist of bitterness to her, even still. Only firm, devastating belief. “It's small and insignificant and pointless, but if I let it happen, the whole universe gets put at risk. That's all time is, really, you know. Just a bunch of small, pointless, insignificant things, and they all pile on top of each other until something breaks.” She took a sharp, shallow breath. “I don't want you here.”

Trying for sharp, mean, but she was terrible at it. She liked them too much. And she didn't even believe what she was saying, Yaz was sure of it. It didn't sound like anything that had ever come out of her mouth before.

It was all a bit small and pointless, she supposed, cold filling the spaces between her ribs. The sensation was almost familiar by now. Small and pointless, but she thought the Doctor was probably wrong about the rest of it, whether she really believed it or not. Time was just—the ocean. Wide and restless, pressing forward, unrelenting. Just a force of nature, violent and calm in turn, full of wonder and tragedy in equal measure. You couldn't be cross with it. It just was.

It was almost a privilege to finally understand that, she thought. Even when she likely wouldn't understand it for long.

And anyway, this was small and pointless, but at the same time it wasn't. She'd imagined dying before, only sometimes. Not very often. But dying for something had always seemed better than dying for nothing. And this was small and pointless and nothing, but it was also big and important and something, and if it meant the universe wasn't destroyed—well. There were worse things to die for, probably. Worse people to die with.

Sonya would finally have the bathroom all to herself. Maybe they'd all think that was very funny, eventually.

Or maybe they wouldn't. There would be no body, she realized morbidly. She would just—disappear. They'd be left hoping.

But they'd be left safe. So maybe it was all worth it, then.

Oh, but it was awfully late to finally start to understand.

“We're with you,” Yaz said, her voice a rasp. “Remember?”

“No,” Ryan said, before the Doctor could answer. “No, I'm not—I’m not sure I'm up for committing suicide by war crime, actually.”

Yaz tilted her head to look at him, surprised. Shaken out of stale acceptance by the anger in his voice. It cut sharply through the static buzzing in her ears, the numbness of her fingers. The coldness between her ribs.

“And I'm a bit tired of bein' told what I think, to be perfectly honest.” He strode forward, eyes wide and damp, sincere, but his jaw jumped in frustration. “Yaz is right,” he said to the Doctor, turning his solemn gaze on her ragged, bloody silhouette without flinching. “We are with you, 'cos you're brilliant and kind and—and special. 'Cos you're our best mate.” He swallowed. “But this isn't you. Or maybe it is, but I don't think it's who you want to be. I know it isn't. We don’t—we don't do this. We go places and we make them better.”

“Ryan,” the Doctor said, very quietly. Her gaze softened, but it only made her look very old. Very tired. Of all three of them, he was the first she'd let down, really, Yaz thought absently. The first she'd let down, but the last to realize it.

“I know you think you've got no other choice, but—but I can't just—” His voice cracked. “And you taught me that,” he said, quietly wounded, betrayal finally seeping out through all the cracks he'd tried to plaster over. “You taught me we don't hurt people, you taught me we always try to help them, even when they don't know they need it. You taught me we don't destroy what can't be rebuilt, you taught me that we always give people more chances than they deserve. Well, this can't be rebuilt,” he said, desperate. “And this isn't gonna help these people, it's gonna end them, and I—I can’t—”

He shuddered, eyes dark and wet and shiny in the gloom. “What do these people deserve, Doctor?”

“More than this,” she whispered.

“So give them another chance,” he pleaded. “Give 'em as many as they need for you to help them. I know that's who you are.”

“You know it's not,” she said. “And if you don't by now, then I'm sorry. Ryan, I don't have much time. The whole universe is at stake.”

“So save it,” he said stubbornly. Around them all, the walls shook, sang with destruction far above their heads. “You don't need a miracle. You just need to win.”

“I can't win every time!” she snapped, exhausted. Her chin trembled. “My people won't be stopped, the Daleks won't be stopped, it's only me! Don't you get it? Don't you see? It's only me. It's only ever been me. If I don't do this now, half the universe on fire is my fault. I won't live through that again. I won't die through that again. And I certainly won't have you anywhere near it.” She took a sharp, shrieking breath. “I have to do this. And you have to leave.”

“I know you believe that,” he said, stepping closer, hands raising carefully. His knees buckled slightly as another shudder shook the plant. Like a storm, overhead. If Yaz closed her eyes, she could almost believe it was only thunder. “I know you really do, otherwise you couldn't do this, I know you couldn't. But I'm asking you to stop. Just for a moment, just stop and think. Please. Look around you, mate. It's not only you. We're right here, if you'd just stop pushing us away. If you'd quit tryin' to save us.”

She shook her head, the barest twitch, meeting his eyes miserably, but Yaz caught the slightest hint of doubt, a sharp, shining glint that cut through the reeds. Oh god, she found herself thinking, hands beginning to tremble.

“Please,” Ryan begged, seeing the same thing she did. “Because I'm tellin' you, I can't live with this. I can't live with any of it. And it's not 'cos I don't know what's at stake, it's not 'cos I don't understand what happens if we fail, it's 'cos I know you can do better than this. Please. Please, you're my family. And I love you,” he said, taking her by the arms, eyes pleading. “But you're not always right.”

It was a lesson long in the making. They were all still learning it, Yaz thought, watching, feeling alarmingly weak in the knees, pulse pounding thin and sharp in her throat, at the surface of her skin.

I almost followed you off the edge of a cliff, Yaz thought to herself, but didn't say, biting her tongue hard enough to taste blood in her mouth. She clenched her shaking hands into fists at her side, terrified of herself. Because there was doubt, now, unmistakeable, surfacing in the Doctor's wide-eyed gaze, doubt and uncertainty and the submerged, half-drowned cousin of all of those things—

Hope.

“Oh,” the Doctor whispered shakily, shoulders caving, face crumpling into something abjectly human. “Well, alright.”

Chapter Text

The wasteland.

The tension in the air didn't snap—it scattered apart slowly, halting, breaking off piece by piece, drawing them all in closer to each other, no longer stretched apart by circumstance and horrible, gut-wrenching strain. It had been holding them up, and holding them apart. Without it, Yaz could feel her knees beginning to shake, feel a cold sweat breaking out at the back of her neck, adrenaline and fear seeping from her blood, leaving her sick and chilled.

The Doctor trembled where she stood for an admirably long moment, but the steeliness had fled her eyes and the blood had long fled her face. Her knees buckled in a fit and start, the movement jerky, and she sank to the ground, blinking in faint surprise.

“Woah, woah,” Ryan said, sinking with her, hands wrapping around her arms. His expression crumpled in relief. “You okay? Can I—” He wavered for a second, something warring in his face. The Doctor was strained and tense, awkward in his careful grasp, white with horror, and there was always such a distance that she kept, always such a careful space, an inherent unwillingness to be touched—

She tipped forward miserably, burying her nose in his shoulder, shuddering.

His arms closed around her gratefully, with far more grace. She tensed, but only for a moment. Yaz sighed, tentatively relieved. If she'd been anyone else she might have burst into tears. Instead, she only stepped closer, a hand reaching for Ryan's shoulder. Graham closed in from the other side.

“Okay,” Ryan sighed, eyes shuttering briefly. “Okay.”

They stayed that way, the four of them, huddled. Sharing a moment at what had almost been the end of the world. Eventually, the Doctor raised her face from Ryan's shoulder, blood still caked and dried along the side of her neck, matted in her hair. There was no flint left in her gaze. Only water and darkness and a hundred things that Yaz still didn't understand.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered.

“Don't apologize,” Ryan said, concern stretching across his face, already darkened with worry. “Time for that later. What are we gonna do, Doctor?”

She inhaled sharply, straightening her shoulders. “I have to—I have to think,” she breathed. “I have to—I have to—you know, thinking—” She scrubbed a hand down the lower part of her face, looking tired, sick with belated horror. “It's just a fancy word for changin' your mind.”

“And?” Graham clasped Ryan's other shoulder briefly, firmly.

“And—I—”

Her mouth trembled. She closed it sharply and swallowed.

“I don't know,” she said, exhausted. “Plans A to Z have all gone to pieces and I—” She ducked her head in shame. “I've run so far from who I am that I ran straight back around, I think. What's the point in learning anything,” she asked to no one, the words sharp and spitting at the front of her mouth, “if it never sticks? I—” She buried her face in her hands. “Sorry,” she whispered again, muffled. “Sorry, I'll—I’ll get there. Just need a moment.”

“We might not have a moment,” Graham pointed out, worried. “Doc—”

“I know, I know—”

“Doctor,” Yaz interrupted. “I was—I’ve been havin' these terrible dreams, lately.”

The Doctor glanced up, dark, worried. Her hair glinted green with the movement.

“I know,” she said quietly, hands lowering. “I'm sorry.”

Yaz shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, that's not—I’ve been havin' these dreams, but they're not all I see. I dream of you sometimes. I dreamt of you, the other night. When I needed you. You told me to keep my faith.”

She stayed impossibly still, face unreadable. “And what do you have faith in, Yasmin Khan?”

“All sorts of things,” Yaz said, smelling freshly-cut grass and sunlight, the pine-shaped scent freshener that swung at the front of her police cruiser, the familiar, musty air of the mosque. Engine oil and chamomile and blood. She smiled faintly. “But mostly you.”

The Doctor's gaze flicked away, shame creeping in to tense her jaw. Guilt, but that wasn't the point of this. That wasn't what was important, it was only a distraction, an impediment, something sad, something selfish. There wasn't time for it.

“Doctor,” Yaz said, firmly, sharply, warmly. “Keep your faith.”

“Faith in what?”

She crouched down, breath like steel in her lungs. “You told me belief was more powerful than anything. Don't tell me you've forgotten, Doctor. Don't tell me all this was enough to make you forget. What do you believe in?”

She could see it, strangled and half-drowned in those old, impossible eyes.

“Hope.” A whisper. “I believe in hope.” The Doctor rose, halting, unsteady. “I believe in—hope. And in miracles, and in people, and in six impossible things before breakfast.”

She extended her hands down in offering.

“And you believe in me?” she asked. Uncertain. “Even though I'm not always right?”

“Especially because you're not always right,” Ryan said warmly, grasping hold of her hand. Yaz took the other gently. The Doctor pulled them both to their feet.

“Alright,” she said quietly, stepping back, hands raising. “I've spent so long running from myself that I forgot everything I've learned.” She took a shuddering breath. “Can't run forever. Sometimes you have to fall where you—stand.” She trailed off, eyes refocusing. “That was always the lesson, before. Oh. Oh.” And there was that grin again, sunlight through trees. “Oh, but that's just it, isn't it?”

“What's just it?” Ryan asked, frowning. “You're done changing your mind? We're definitely not doin' a war crime, then?”

“I know that look,” Yaz said, pressure building behind her eyes, relief gusting through, something familiar and comforting slotting neatly into place. This was what she'd been missing. Wasn't it? “You've got an idea.”

“Yes, I have.” The Doctor grinned again, fiercely, delighted. “I'm going to fix everything,” she said. “Ask me how.”

“How?” Yaz asked, feeling her blood thrumming in her veins again, pounding at the base of her skull. Exhilarating and terrifying in the same breath, but fear was only natural, when it was tempered by belief. “How, Doctor?”

The Doctor glanced briefly up at the hatch, still grinning madly. Her gaze returned to them, glinting.

“Take my hand,” she said, reaching. “And run.”

“Doctor!” Graham hollered, his feet pounding against the metal from behind them. Above, the trenches shook and shuddered and sang. “Where exactly are we running to?”

“Motherboard!” she shouted behind her. “I need full access to their communications network!”

“You're gonna talk at them,” Ryan said, skidding around a corner, nearly barrelling into Yaz by the skin of both their teeth. He paused, frowning, but only for a second before Yaz dragged him along with her. “You're gonna talk at them?”

“Don't say it like that!” she protested.“Talking's what I'm best at! And I've had time to think, I have a plan!”

“Is it gonna work?”

“No clue!” she tossed over her shoulder. “Very likely not, but I'm hopeful! And you know what? We're gonna try anyway, because that's the kind of people we are!”

“But they wouldn't listen to you before!”

“This is two minutes to midnight! If they won't listen now, then they never will. And besides,” she said, sonicking open a door, glancing upwards as the ceiling rumbled. “Who said I was gonna talk at the people of Tropos? Come on!” she yelled behind her, before they could react, flinging herself through the door, her limping pace still somehow faster than the rest of them. “Motherboard! Where is it?”

Ryan barrelled after her, shrugging. “Plans Gramps and I found earlier said to head towards HQ and turn left instead!”

“Brilliant!”

“Is it though?” he asked, as they traipsed after her down the familiar, terrifying steps into the depths of the trenches. Darker and damper and greener, but Yaz supposed that given the current position of the front it was probably the safest place they could be, for the moment.

The Doctor stumbled down the stairs and veered left, sonic raised in front of her like an extension of her arm, and they trailed after her as she opened door after interlocking door, finally skidding to a halt in the entrance to the central operations room.

“Oh, look at you,” she said, awed. “Finally. That is beautiful!”

The Computer's motherboard stretched to the ceiling, alive with blinking lights and a thousand switches and wires, radiating heat that Yaz could feel all the way from where they'd stopped in the doorway. It looked like it might have easily stretched for hundreds of metres behind what they could see. An odd-looking marble stared down at them from the top of it, cloudy glass, lit from within. Like a strange sort of eye.

“Good lord,” Graham said, as they stepped inside, wincing at the heat and static. “That thing's straight out of Bletchley. Have they got it working on cracking Enigma in its spare time?”

“The Computer here is a hundred thousand times more powerful than anything you've ever seen, Graham,” the Doctor said, captivated. “It looks clunky, but it's powering a whole planet. Watching every person, collecting data constantly, storing it, disaggregating it. Protecting it.”

In the corner of the room, two silhouettes moved. The General's high collar caught the light first. She stood and turned to them gracefully, expressionless.

“General!” The Doctor waved cheerily, moving inwards, towards the motherboard. “I thought I might find you here, it's the place least likely to be imminently ripped apart. Oh, look, and you've found Corcorax, too. Hello, Corcorax. How's the final incursion going? Terribly?”

“Where have you been?” he demanded, standing. “We're being decimated up there.”

“And good old Gallifrey has swept in at the last second to offer you a fighting chance.” The Doctor smiled thinly. “Isn't that right, General?”

“The sun's about to rise,” she said, impassively. Yaz looked for a hint of relief in her eyes, a hint of—something, anything, and didn't find it.

“Yeah,” the Doctor said, arms swinging, nose wrinkling. “Lucky for you, I've got a plan. Or I will have, in a minute. In the meantime, patch me through to the War Council. No, actually, forget that, patch me through to the whole fleet. Audio-visual channels.” She looked to the General, grim and exhausted, blood dried in her hair, up her neck, darkening her clothes like paint. “I want them to see my face.”

“What about our agreement?” Corcorax protested, looking to the General in dismay. In the low, grimy lighting he looked dishevelled, beaten. Streaked liberally with blood and dirt. “We were just about to—”

The General didn't even bother looking at him. She regarded the Doctor coolly. Unruffled, untouched by the chaos around her, by the dirt and the dust.

“I understand what's at stake,” she said finally, carefully, quietly. “You know what you're doing?”

The Doctor stepped closer, into the light. It caught green in her hair, in the whites of her eyes. She lifted her chin. “When don't I?”

The General reached behind her and flicked a switch on the motherboard. There was a squealing hiss, just for a moment, and the strange, cloudy orb fixed to the top of the motherboard flashed green and trained its gaze on the Doctor.

“Channel open,” the General said. “Receiving and transmitting.”

The Doctor grinned.

“Hello!” She bounded towards the motherboard, arms swinging, limp forgotten. “Lord President, are you listening? Come on, don't leave me hanging. We don't have all day.”

“Doctor.” The Rebel's voice crackled through the motherboard's speakers, irritated. “I should have had you thrown out the airlock when I had the chance, I see.”

She cackled at that, a sharp burst of laughter, still grinning, teeth glinting in the light.

“All that lovely Matrix data to aggregate and it never occurred to you that I would escape? When don't I?”

“I assume you had help.”

“Only from the very best. I told you not everyone would be on board with your plan to plunge us all back into hell.”

“Your skill at convincing others to commit treason is, as always, unparalleled.”

Yaz watched her grin deepen as she tilted her head in feigned appreciation. There was still a desperate edge to her, an alarming glint to the back of her eyes, but there was familiarity, too. Something that had been missing, before, even if Yaz couldn't quite put a name to  what it was.

“Treason? That's all well and good, but between you and me, I was hoping for something more along the lines of a military coup.” She blinked innocently up at the orb. “Seeing as how you're currently surrounded by the entire fleet. You said you got rid of all the old soldiers, and you've obviously trampled all over my previously spotless reputation, but I happen to be a dab hand at regime change.”

Yaz could almost picture him, the curl of his lip, the dull exasperation lining his eyes. When he spoke, there was no fear in his voice. Not the slightest hint of apprehension.

“I've worked hard to engender loyalty among my troops, Doctor.” The consonants spat staticky, grainy, across the distance. “You won't find a soldier among them capable of being twisted by your lies.”

The Doctor rolled her eyes, hands coming to rest on her hips.

“Your own General is the one who helped me escape your ship, Lord President!” She scrunched her face briefly in apology as the General leveraged an exasperated scowl in her direction. “She understands that this is wrong. She understands what this will bring about. And you know what?” She swallowed, any nervousness shoved to the back of her eyes. “I have faith,” she said, settling into herself, “that your soldiers are capable of understanding the same.”

Static and noise. “Your faith is misplaced.”

“It was, before. I didn't believe in you.” Her hands rested limply at her sides. “To be honest, I never really have,” she admitted. “But there must be some part of me that came from you. I think it's time I stopped trying to run from that. I believe in you. And I am telling you, there's not always a choice, but right now we have one. No one has to die today!” She took a wavering breath. “But I need all of you to listen to me. I need you to let me tell you how.”

“No one will listen to the words of a traitor.”

“They're trying to disrupt the signal,” the General murmured, flipping switches, turning to the communications table at her left. Ryan lunged for it as well, hands flying frantically over the controls.

“Never quite like in my video games,” he muttered. “It's okay, Doctor, we'll hold the channel open. Keep talkin'!”

The Doctor straightened, hands balling into fists. “I am not a traitor,” she insisted. “I might have run from you, once, but I saved you. I fought for you, I killed and died for you.” Her fists weakened with her voice. “I almost did again, just now. You don't know it, but you've already escaped a far more terrible fate, today, and that's because of my friends, not because of me. Not because of you. We're all cut from the same cloth, you see,” she said, voice shaking. “We're too old to learn, all of us. Our lives are too long. Our memories are too short. But humans—” Her breath caught. “Humans live so fast, they have no choice but to learn. They have no choice but to choose compassion, they have no choice but to choose hope, they understand life more profoundly than any other species, because more than any other they understand that it is over far too quickly. They understand that it is precious.” Her eyes flicked to Corcorax, just briefly. “Even if they sometimes need reminding.” She stepped closer, breathing sharp and fast. “This planet is so small. This conflict is so small, these people are so small, but they're so—big. Don't you see? If you start a war here, you will lose more than you or I could ever understand.”

The President's cragged voice filled the air, cut through the static. “You would let them fall to the Daleks, instead?” he demanded. “You would let the universe fall to the Daleks?”

“No,” she protested. “The Daleks still don't know you're here. Don't let them know, don't let them find out! Help me evacuate these people, and I can rig the Computer to their nuclear power and blow the whole lot sky high. No more Daleks. No people caught in the crossfire. Still a bit of a war crime, technically, but who's counting? A win for the whole family.” Her voice had turned desperate, thin. “Please. Please, just think. Change your mind. I almost destroyed us all because I believed that you were incapable, I am begging you, prove me wrong!” The words caught ragged, hoarse in her throat. “Prove me wrong,” she pleaded.

Stillness.

“Don't you see?” she said, still trying, chest heaving, and sallow light caught wetly on her cheeks, in her eyes. “I've thought it through! You can interfere, you can do what you promised, but you don't have to hurt anyone! Isn't that still victory? Help them instead. Don't stand here and fight,” she begged, arm reaching in front of her, palm up. A mangled hand, in offering. “Don't stand here and fall! Run away with me. Just this once. Run away,” she said, “and take these people with you.”

There was only crackling silence in reply, growing to fill the entire room, and Yaz could feel her despair as it grew with it, taste it in the air like ozone, feel it creep across her gaze to curl around her neck and down her spine.

The Doctor's hand shook, still extended. Frozen in offering. Her chin trembled, eyes wet.

“Please,” she whispered.

A light began to flash on the motherboard.

“What is that?” Yaz hissed, ducking towards Ryan, eyes still glued to the Doctor.

“It's a reply,” he said in surprise. “From a—from a TARDIS, I think. Another one. Another.” The communications table lit up, beeping frantically. “Too many to count,” Ryan exclaimed. “Two of those big ships, too. Doctor—”

“What's the message?” she demanded.

Ryan shook his head. “Can't read it, it's written in fancy circles.”

The General looked up, eyes bright. “Standing by,” she said.

The Doctor breathed in a smile, despair leeching from her eyes.

“Right!” she shouted, launching herself into a haphazard spin. “Brilliant! Fantastic! Stand by for instructions, everyone, and prepare to receive! Hah! How d'you like that, Lord President?”

His voice still crackled through the speakers, more strained than before.

“The War Council is unmoved by you, Doctor.”

She smiled. “And yet, the ark you're convening on seems to have just transmitted an agreement to evacuate. Funny, that. Well. You know what they say. Regime today, gone tomorrow.” She fluttered the fingers of her broken hand in a macabre wave, still grinning. “Your people chose to be decent today, Lord President. That makes your government obsolete. I'd enjoy your political legitimacy while it lasts. Laters!”

She made the hand signal to cut with such an awkward sincerity that Yaz was sure it was a movement she'd picked up from Ryan, who closed the channel with another hissing squeal and the flip of a switch.

“Brilliant,” she said again, turning from the motherboard towards them, looking frantic, relieved, close to tears. Still somehow miles away from the ragged, frantic silhouette that had almost blown them all to pieces. “Well done, everyone, but we're not done yet! I have to link the transmat with the teleport network, and I have to rig this entire place to explode—again —and we have to get it done before the Daleks rip a hole in the ceiling and kill everyone! Let's get a shift on, move, move!”

“No,” came a voice from the corner, and she jumped, startled.

“You promised you would help us,” Corcorax said, peeling himself out of the shadows, where he'd been watching, forgotten. He held his weapon loosely in his hand, some kind of side-arm that had been hanging from his belt when they'd come in. Yaz bit her tongue around a curse, unable to intervene from her position.

Of course.

He looked between the General and the Doctor, white-lipped, glassy eyed. “You promised me they would be fought. You promised us aid. All those ships, hidden in the sky.”

“Corcorax,” the Doctor said, hands raising belatedly. The General lifted hers as well, begrudgingly. “This is aid.”

He shook his head, breathing heavily. “To what end?”

“To an end where you survive. All those ships, they'll take your people somewhere safe.”

“The Computer won't allow it,” he insisted desperately. “It won't!”

“The Computer! The Computer,” the Doctor said, shifting wildly, careening over to the giant motherboard, mindless of the weapon in his hand, “is old.” She put her hand to it gently. “So old.”

“It won't allow us to leave, it won't allow us to stop, it's programmed for war, Doctor!”

“No,” she said, staring up at it. Something like wonder, something like sympathy, meeting at the curve of her mouth. “It's programmed to protect you. That's all.” She took a breath in, excited, on the cusp of discovery, on the cusp of a revelation. “I think I understand now. That's why it's been conscripting visitors, that's why it's reclassified you all as combatants, that's why it left us alone until I tried to tamper with your nuclear reactor, it was programmed to protect the civilians of this planet! All it wants is to keep all of you safe, and it—”

The tips of her fingers whitened against the motherboard.

“It failed,” Yaz said, when she couldn't. “It failed, Doctor.”

“Yeah,” the Doctor said, sinking to her knees. She kept her hand on the board. “A long time ago.” She looked up, up, into its visual receptor, that strange, glassy marble. “I know you can hear me,” she whispered. “I know you can see me, too, I know you know everything that happens here. You surveil it, you record it, because that's what you were programmed to do.” She paused. Swallowed once, hard. “How many combatant deaths today?”

Yaz glanced to one of the screens on the table, breaths tight in her mouth. “Seven-hundred and three,” she said quietly, when the numbers flashed green and bright and fast and fatal.

“How many of those were combatants under the age of twenty?” the Doctor asked, the words sounding sharp in her mouth, though her touch stayed gentle. “How many?”

The numbers flashed again as the Computer recalculated.

Yaz swallowed. “Two-hundred and seventy.”

“But they're not combatants, then,” the Doctor whispered, turning her attention back to the Computer, gazing up at it intently. “They're civilians. Children. The people you're supposed to be protecting.” Her voice cracked. “Come on. I know you're smart enough for this, I know you can figure it out, how does any of this reconcile with your original programming? How can you be fighting a war for people that you reclassified out of existence? How can you be fighting a war with the children you're supposed to be saving? Please, how is that possible, how is that right? Just for a moment, just think! They're not safe! No one is ever safe!” The Doctor stilled, hand trembling. “No one is ever safe.”

It couldn't possibly work, Yaz found herself thinking, pressing up against an empty desk, breathing in the stale, musty air and the static. You couldn't plead with a computer. You couldn't beg.

But the ever-present whirring of its motors was growing louder, the grind and snap of circuits, the smell of hot metal and plastic. An inquisitive beeping that grew faster with every second, more distressed.

“Oh, that's it,” the Doctor said, pressing her forehead against it in relief, “there you go! It's alright,” she whispered to it softly. “You're very old. You had to reparametrize, you had to forget so you could sleep at night, but don't you see?” She lifted her head to gaze into its eye. “It's all right here,” she said. “Your soldiers are not soldiers, but you don't have to worry. I am gonna fix this.”

She stood at a tilt, abruptly.

“Corcorax,” she said. “Recall your people. All of them.”

“And do what?” he demanded, though he'd set his weapon on the table. “Doctor, I don't understand. Even with the Computer's blessing, there is no way to leave this place from down here. I won't have us buried, I will not die in retreat.”

“You won't.” Her eyes glinted. “The Daleks don't know we're here, they'll only think you're in retreat. Get your people organized, start funnelling them through to Section Nine. I can evacuate some in my ship, and the rest can be teleported in shifts up to the willing arks through the transmat system. We should be able to pick up any stragglers on the battlefield afterwards.” She glanced up. “General?”

The General sighed, resigned.

“We have room,” she said evenly. “I'll facilitate the transport and coordinate on our end. But the Daleks, Doctor—”

“Leave that to me. It'll take me half a minute to set it all up, and less than that to set it off. In the meantime, get these people out. Get my friends out. Fly my TARDIS yourself, if you have to.”

“Doctor—” Yaz said sharply, shaken out of the exhilaration of their momentary win. Cold filled the space between her ribs again, a kind of betrayal. “How do you mean?”

Ryan shook his head. “No, no way, we just had this talk, mate—”

She flapped a hand at them, irritated, distracted.

“General,” she said thinly, ignoring them. “We're runnin' out of time.”

The General nodded. “Alright.”

“I've had more time to think. I can set it up so that the reactor will blow along with the motherboard itself. The whole system. It's routed through the entire trench, through the whole city, above it and below it. It's big, you see. When it goes, it will take out half the planet. Half the planet, and the Daleks.” And me, she didn't say, though the words echoed in Yaz's own head, sharp enough to draw blood. “You and all these people need to be gone before that happens.”

“I'll ensure it.” The General gazed at her intently. “Doctor.”

“Thank you,” she said, something unreadable passing over her face.

“No,” the General said. The barest hint of warmth filled her eyes. Respect and understanding. A sort of kinship, maybe, Yaz thought. “Thank you.”

Yaz watched the Doctor as the General left. Some of the tension left her shoulders. But her gaze stayed soft and unreadable, and she only stayed still for a moment.

“Right,” she said quietly, as the General's footsteps faded. She spun on her heel and stalked back over to the Computer's motherboard, focused. “Not much time. I'm so sorry,” she whispered to it, hand pressed to it gently. Kindly. “Really, I am. If there was another way—” She swallowed. “But this is the best I've got, and it's better than what I had before, believe me. It'll be sharper, coming from you, instead of routed through the reactor. Quicker. Cleaner. A mercy.” Her forehead pressed against it, eyes closing. “Or maybe not. Maybe it doesn't matter, either way. It's gonna save the universe. You're gonna save the universe.” She stepped back with a sniff, looking up into its visual receptor. “And I'm gonna save your people. Every last one of them, on my life. I promise.”

She lifted the sonic towards it, and it buzzed sharply, cutting through the staticky air, the muffled shake and rattle of the whole world collapsing around them.

“Wired in,” she said quietly. “Much easier from this end. All it needs now is for someone to press the button. Or flip the switch, I should say. It's too bad. I do love a button.” She turned to them, solemn, unafraid. “The screen's keeping track of heat signatures. I'll be able to see when everyone's been evacuated. Time to go, you three. You too, Corcorax.”

Yaz felt her blood turn cold.

“No,” she said. “No, you can't do this. Not twice in one day, it's not fair, it's not—”

“Doctor, you can’t—” Ryan swallowed. “You—”

Graham's chin was trembling. “How are we supposed to get home without you, you daft alien?”

She smiled faintly, worn thin and bloodied and sallow and green, and it was sinking in now, horribly, that this was going to be the last image of her that Yaz would ever have, soaked into the back of her mind, shadowy and dim and ripped apart. Entirely herself, but far from whole. Far from who she was in the sun, and it was such a cruelty, to have this wrapped over the other memories in her head, of white teeth glinting in bright light, of that sky-soaked coat unbattered and untarnished.

Yaz took a shallow breath, but it caught in her throat.

This is not how myths are meant to die, she thought. But then, she supposed, feeling numb again. The Doctor wasn't a myth. She was only their best friend. All too fallible and all too mortal and all too kind.

Maybe this was how people like her died.

“Emergency Protocol One, I told you,” the Doctor said gently. “Or the General will take you. Probably. If you ask nicely. No one's as good a pilot as me, but—” Her smile broke, but she ducked her face before they could see. “Take care of each other,” she said, steeling herself. She raised her head, and her eyes were damp, but the curve of her mouth was kind and genuine. “You've been brilliant. You are—brilliant.”

She extended the sonic once more, in a hand that didn't tremble.

“Point and think,” she reminded them. “Get back to Section Nine. The General can help you hook the transmat up to the teleport. Help these people.” 

Yaz shook her head, feeling pressure behind her eyes, terrible, unrelenting. “Not without you,” she said, knowing it was selfish, not caring in the slightest, even after everything, even with everything she knew.

She was only human.

Corcorax stepped forward, placing a warm, calloused hand on her forearm.

“I agree,” he said quietly. “You should go with them.”

The Doctor's lips pressed together in sympathy.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I can't let you do that.”

“This is not your war.”

“Isn't it?” She smiled sadly. “I've made the amends that I can, Corcorax. I made a choice that I can live with, and I am happy to die for it. Go to your family. Go to Anzi and Yose.”

He matched her smile. It made him look much younger.

“I brought you here,” he said mildly. “I trapped us here, like my father did, like his father did before him.”

“You came around.”

“Because of you. Because of you and your family.” He pressed the hand with the sonic back into her chest, gently, and turned her away from the motherboard. “I trapped us here. Let me set us free. Which switch?”

“Corcorax—”

She shook her head, unwilling.

“Doctor,” he said firmly, stepping back into the shadow of the Computer. For the first time, Yaz found herself able to imagine a time when he had been kind. “It is my choice, and my honour. Which switch?”

“Corcorax,” the Doctor whispered, eyes shining. “Please.”

There would be no moving him. Yaz could see it in the set of his shoulders. She supposed the Doctor could see it, too.

“The big red one on the right,” she whispered finally, voice cracking.

He smiled and saluted elegantly. “Fair travels,” he said hoarsely. “Fair weather. Fair stars.” He looked to them, finally, Yaz and Ryan and Graham, crowded together at the Doctor's side. “And please,” he said.

“Run.”

Chapter Text

The long way round.

Yaz watched Yose a few metres before them, throwing Anzi into the air and catching her, a small gaggle of other children gathering in his wake, waiting their turn. Delighted shrieks filled the cool air, a welcome respite from the musty dampness of Tropos. There was real grass under her palms, green and vibrant. Alive. Children who had never seen the sun before milled about with the adults they'd rescued, awed and delighted.

“I forgot about this bit,” she said, smiling. “The helping bit. The hoping bit.”

“It's the best bit,” the Doctor said with a grin of her own. She was sat in the grass too, wedged in between her and Ryan, who was very patiently holding her forearm to the TARDIS' dermal regenerator. They'd had to restart it three times already, because she kept forgetting to keep her hand still. “I mean, the running bit is classic, but this—”

She looked out at the clearing they'd landed in, beaming.

“Nothing like it,” she said, quietly. “Well done, team. Gang.” She paused. “Fam?”

Far more cautious a pronouncement than it usually was.

Ryan rolled his eyes and bashed her very gently with his shoulder. “Oh my days, you aren't half daft sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Graham protested. “More like all the time. And I'm allowed to say that, on account of us being family.”

The dermal regenerator beeped before she could say anything in reply, but Yaz watched her shoulders loosen and that was answer enough.

“Aha!” She snatched her hand out of it with delight, wiggling her fingers. Deflecting, as usual, but the sun was warm and they were all together and alive and Yaz found that she couldn't be too annoyed. Not everything always had to be said to be understood. And what she understood now, after everything—

She grabbed hold of the Doctor's hand to inspect for herself, and the skin was smooth and cool under her grip. Unmarred. A bit grimy, still, but so were her own hands. Underneath the dust and dirt, there was still the faintest hint of mehndi. A faded reminder of home, a million miles and maybe a million years from its origin.

“What do you think?” the Doctor asked, still smiling.

“Good as new,” she said, freeing the hand with a careful squeeze. “As for the rest of you—”

“Oh, I'll keep.” She yawned, flinging herself back onto the grass with a thump, mindless of the blood still dried up her neck, the singed edges of her coat. She gazed up at the sky wistfully. “Let's just—sit in the moment, for now. Smell the roses. You all did something good, today.”

Yaz couldn't see any roses in the clearing they'd landed in, on whatever planet this was—the Doctor had told them the name, but it had been a long string of numbers and not much else—but there were flowers aplenty. Untouched, before now. Unseen. This was a smaller planet, far away from where Tropos had been. Uninhabited, except for the wildlife and the plants, but it was temperate and Earth-like and beautiful. Ideal for agriculture and for settlement, according to the Doctor. There was a freshwater lake a few kilometres away that spanned a good chunk of the continent they'd landed on. Already, she'd watched a group of people set off in search of it, heads tilted up at the sun in wonder, while the other inhabitants of Tropos milled about, settling in. Surviving.

The Time Lords had left.

“They've got my phone number,” the Doctor had said, when Yaz had asked. “If they need me, they'll call. And if I need them—”

She'd paused, and gone very still.

“Well, I know where to find them,” she'd said, and then she'd smiled.

Yaz breathed in spring, enjoying the warmth on her face. Smelling the roses, against the faint pounding of her head, the heaviness of her vest, the dust coating every inch of her. Smiling, despite herself, despite everything.

Something good. Well—

“Doc,” Graham ventured. Frowning, faintly. “You still blew up all those Daleks.”

A pause.

She sighed, finally, face to the sky, looking very old and very tired. Just for a moment, just for a breath. “Yeah,” she said. “I did.”

Yaz tipped backwards beside her, gazing up at the same patch of sky. The question didn't feel as jagged, this time around. They had all fumbled together through something difficult, through something impossible. Through something without answer. There was no judgement in Graham's voice anymore, and there was none in hers. “Was it hard?” she asked.

“No.” The Doctor stayed where she was, still. “It was very easy.”

“Will it ever be hard?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Yaz watched a faint, wistful smile stretch across her mouth. “I hope so.”

The sky blazed above them, blue and bright and clear.

“Sorry,” she whispered, under the breath of the wind, the chirping of unrecognisable birds, the laughter of children in the distance. “For—well, everything. For trying to hide from you, for trying to—run. Won't happen again.”

Ryan leaned back to join them on the ground, dragging Graham down with him. “Yeah, it will,” he said fondly. “That's alright, though. We'll always catch up.”

“You will,” she said quietly. “Won't you.”

“Ah, Doc, don't overthink it,” Graham said, nose to the sky, the most relaxed Yaz had seen him in days. “It's like I said before. Not always perfect, not always safe, but it's better, isn't it? When we're all together.”

“Yeah,” she admitted, and the leftover worry drained from her face. “You were right, Graham. Don't let it get to your head though.”

“He won't, it only happens once every few months—”

“Oh, ta, thanks very much—”

Yaz tuned out the sound of familiar bickering fondly, keeping her head pillowed on the grass. Perfectly content, she realized, for the first time in—well. Weeks. Months.

“Will they be alright, do you think?” she asked, tilting her head towards the Doctor. “The people here.”

The Doctor considered. “It won't be easy for them,” she said thoughtfully. “They've left everything they know behind. They've left their home, or at least that's what it will feel like, to start. But they'll figure it out. You always do.” She grinned and rose up on her elbows at the sound of muffled footsteps. Yaz turned to catch Yose approaching, Anzi tucked under his arm, dangling delighted from his hip. “In fact, I think they'll be absolutely brilliant.”

“Doctor!” he hailed, grimy with soot, exhausted. There was grief mingling with the relief in his eyes.

“Yose!” She sprang to her feet. “Settling in? What do you think?”

He smiled at her. “It's beautiful. Thank you, again.”

She saluted, chin tilting in acknowledgement. “No need. We're happy to help.” Her gaze softened. “I'm sorry.”

“Me too,” he said. “But—” Anzi wiggled, and he let her down, watched fondly as she took off down the hill, shrieking with laughter. “What he did for us—what all of you did for us—we have a chance, now. A choice.”

The sun glinted off the chip still embedded in his neck. Connected to nothing, now. Yaz had heard Nurse Metz talking about how best to remove them, though the Doctor maintained that the TARDIS would be able to get their own out without any problems.

“A choice is all you need,” the Doctor said, putting her hands in her pockets. “But it can be a bit overwhelming, when you're not used to it. Your people are gonna need guidance, Yose.”

He blinked at her, uncertain. “Are you talking about—”

“You know exactly what I'm talking about.”

“I'd be a terrible leader,” he protested. “I can't stand being in charge, I've never – that is, nobody would ever—”

The Doctor cut him off. “You're wrong. You'd make an excellent leader, for precisely that reason. No one who wants to be in charge should ever be in charge. But you care about these people. You love them. More than that, you know them. They need someone like you, Yose.”

He shifted uncomfortably, dark eyes full of doubt, but after a moment he squared his jaw.

“I'll think about it,” he said. “Will you—are you going to stay?”

She shook her head, smiling. “We're just travellers. Passing through. What comes next here has to be all you.”

The wind ruffled his hair. He looked brighter in the sun, Yaz thought. Less washed out, less nervous.

“Okay,” he said, something wistful and resigned and hopeful flitting across his face. “We'll remember you. All of you.”

“We'll remember you too,” the Doctor said. “Keep tellin' stories, Yose. Remember where you're from, and what you've done. That's how you keep the past behind you and not in front. That's how you keep home in your mind's eye.”

He looked at her for a long moment, before nodding.

“I'll remember.” He saluted her one last time, a bit cheekily. “Fair stars, you lot. Fair travels.”

“Fair stars,” Yaz said, getting to her feet, and they waved at him, all four of them, as he headed back down the hill.

Graham sighed. “Well, that's that then, I suppose. Left them enough supplies to get themselves started again, have we?”

“They've got everything they need.” The Doctor turned to face the TARDIS, and Yaz caught a hint of familiar longing in her eyes, a reassuring restlessness. Her hair in the sun caught golden, and there was no more stifled fear in her eyes, no alarming stillness. “Now. Shall we?”

“So long as it involves a bit of lunch,” Graham said, leading the charge. “And maybe a wash, too, now I think about it.”

“I'm gonna nap for a whole week first,” Ryan yawned. “You said the TARDIS can get the chips out?”

“Of course she can! Painless and quick, I promise. It'll be like they were never there.”

Which was no guarantee, Yaz knew, hiding a smile behind her hand. But reassuring nonetheless.

Ryan paused outside the doors, a hand pressed gratefully to familiar blue. “And then what?” he asked.

“Well,” the Doctor said, smiling. “Anything you'd like. Where to? Home?”

Yaz felt her face twist. Felt wanderlust and homesickness tangle in her gut, and for a moment she'd forgotten. But there was still mehndi on her hands, wasn't there. Still a police vest, heavy on her shoulders. The spectre of real life, a slow-moving shadow in front of her, stretching out, mingling with that lingering taste of abandonment in her mouth.

“How about everywhere else?” she tried.

The Doctor's eyes grew more knowing. A little sadder.

“Can't run forever,” she said softly.

Yaz supposed she knew better than all of them.

And maybe that was the lesson, then. Home always catches up, she thought, unbidden. 

“Fine, then,” she said, to everyone's surprise. She ignored the tilt of Graham's eyebrows, Ryan's skeptical scoff.

The Doctor's brow creased. “Really? Just like that?”

“Sure,” she said. “You're right, after all. Back to Sheffield it is.”

She let their suspicious silence sit there a moment, feeling light, feeling the sun at her back, warm. Children shrieked with delight behind her, and she heard Yose laughing, carried by the breeze. 

“Only—Doctor?”

“Hmm?”

Home was only what you carried with you. Home was only what you left behind.

She grinned.

“Let's take the long way round.”