Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She should be the one out on the porch. In most of her other bodies, she would be. Heading out there, somber, hands in her pockets, to mutter solemnly about the nature of the universe, the way things always end up better than they seem.

But the look in Yaz’s eyes had been horrific, when she’d appeared. Dazed and dark, barely conscious. The Doctor had run to her, had pressed herself up against the glass. She’d expected a reaction. A flash of strength in her eyes, or of that lovely excitement to see her that she always seemed to get. At least anger.

She got almost nothing.

She had tried to joke about it, had tried to drag Yaz out of her funk and back into reality, because it wasn’t that bad Yaz, this wasn’t even the worst thing that’s happened to one of my friends, not by far, you aren’t even dead-

It was selfish. It was stupid. But she was frustrated. 

It had been going so well.

So when they get Ryan and Yaz moves out to sit on the porch by herself, the Doctor does not follow. She cannot make herself. 

She wants to be there for her friends, wants to make Yaz feel safe again, wants to drag them all back away from the edge of concern and back into the middle of their friendship. She wants them to stay, secure and having fun but snugly safe, tucked into bed. Children red cheeked in the front hall, sweating, wearing too many layers because their mothers worry about the cold.

So instead of talking, she shuts herself away in the TARDIS. 

Talking is scary. Speaking is brilliant, rambling is fun, throwing out her history and her knowledge and her age without actually referencing it. Tossing in a “never did this when I was a man”, but only in the funny moments, not in a way that seems serious. Speaking of decades that passed for her, a hundred years here or there, but nothing close to the truth. Never the three thousand she thought she might actually be. Never the four billion she tries to convince herself she isn’t.

Talking is scary, and real, and in this case would not make anything better. Talking, in this case, would mean airing out her dirty laundry. Yaz had not just been scared. Fear is easy; if it was simply fear the Doctor could have spoken it away in a second. But Yaz had been utterly terrified. She’d been thrown unhinged by a horror so large she hadn’t quite been able to handle it. Her eyes, staring back at the Doctor glazed over and teary from that glass box, looked like she might not have lasted much longer in that space she'd ended up. Wherever it was.

To try to comfort her would mean admitting she had been there before. The Doctor would have to acknowledge that fear and sympathize with it, and that was not what she wanted to do. Because that fear and danger and uncertainty was not what she wanted for her fam.

It had been going so well.

They’d  been engaged and excited and sometimes had faced immense danger but not in a way that made them contemplate, not the kind of danger that made them think about mortality. 

“Ryan- I thought I was dead,” Yaz says, outside on the porch, the Doctor listening in from the surveillance gear on her TARDIS. She leans against the console and hangs her head and her gut clenches with guilt but she does not move.

“I’m never going to let that happen to you.”

Her hands, squeezing her own forearms, tighten. She’s almost mad at Ryan, for just a brief moment, before she shoves it away like the useless thought it is.

She should be the one out there, she should be the one reassuring Yaz and telling her she would never let anything happen to her, except that she could not in good conscious say that anymore.

Was it better or worse, that her other reason for not comforting Yaz is that this face is so bad at lying?

She sees Bill, she sees Clara, she sees Rory collapsed on the ground and crying over Amy. She sees River, set off from Darillium to her death and the Scotsman not even able to try to stop her. 

Comforting is not a thing this face can do because to comfort is to admit, and to comfort is to lie. To walk out there and tell Yaz that the Doctor would never let anything happen to her is impossible, especially because she quite literally had let it happen. She had been the one to split them up, had been so confident in her comfort and their stability that she had sent Yaz and Ryan off without her and look what happened. And so yes, it is selfish. But, if she thinks about it long enough, it is not just selfish. 

Her comfort is shattered. She has been thrust back into the reality of what happens to humans when they travel with her, and she will not face it head on. 

But now O and Graham are talking. And O is asking all the questions she wants to avoid.

She bristles at him, at the way he’d asked if she’d been followed and then followed by what, of the way he hadn’t let her escape the blame. Of the way he had gone so far as to place the blame right on top of her new, pretty, blonde head, and with Graham standing right there. She barely knew him, and she was used to people looking her up when they'd only interacted once, was used to obsession. But who was he to drag her friends into it? And now he’s telling Graham how he's researched her, he has a whole shelf on her, and Graham is saying they know nothing about her, saying she changes the subject.

Her fingers are a bit cold, anxiety tingling in her back of her mind, as she whirls to a panel in the wall and thinks up the first thing that might provide comfort, yanks a pitcher out of it that sloshes what may or may not be tea across the floor because it’s too hot for the real stuff in the outback so iced will have to do. Tea is familiar. Tea is a comfort. 

Tea at Yaz's, I've never been for tea at Yaz's.

She doesn’t stop to process. She doesn’t let them think any longer. Thinking is bad, thinking leads to questions which lead to answers she doesn’t want to give.

If she’s been thrust into this situation, then fine, here she is. Here they are. She will go along with it and she will save the day like she always does, and she will keep her friends distracted. Keep them thinking, but about other things. And when they solve the problem and leave O and the light monsters behind, they will leave behind their questions.

Saving the day does not mean having to face her past. If she has to force the questions out of their minds with her stupid antics, then she will. But she will not comfort with a reality that does not exists.

The humans can handle each other. She just has to keep herself one step away. It might be a bit distant, might leave her feeling lonelier with three friends than she often had with one. But keeping them away from her past meant keeping them safe.

She sees Donna, too, just as she is about to head out and interrupt the dangerous conversation between two of her friends. Donna was perhaps the best example, because in the end she had known quite literally everything, and look what happened to her.

Yaz would not be another Donna.

The Doctor nods to herself, drags together all the manic energy that she can, and gallops from the room.

Chapter Text

"I've got you Yaz," she says, and it's like the truth, it's like an apology, it's like filling in for before. She has her, she pulls her to safety on the plane. They stand. O follows, even if he says he cannot sprint.

They are distracted, everything is going to plan, even if the plan depends on things that she is unsure of. She smiles and she breathes heavy and she leads her friends onto the plane.

Even as she babbles out her plan that isn't a plan, it flashes in the back of her mind. An alarm, but not urgent yet. Just-

Confused.

"You were a champion sprinter," she says, and the look on his face makes her stomach drop out from under her. Nothing changes, nothing really even moves except his eyes, flickering upward, his lips pulling just a little. The look of someone searching for an excuse, but not searching very hard. His eyes, once dull and soft and kind, go bright with a barely contained delight.

"Got me. Well done"

Her breath catches in her chest. His gaze is not soft or warm. It has gone manic. It is barely contained. It burns.

Dear stars, what has he done. What have I done.

Her hearts are thudding in her ears as she says she doesn’t know, and the house floating next to the plane does not even fully register. He did this, she is realizing, he put this into place, he’s a double agent-

But the reality is even worse. The reality starts as a spark in her gut and the back of her brain, she thinks she has it when she calls his name but she won’t name it, she won’t-

It can’t be.

“You can’t be.”

“Oh, I can be. I very much am.”

Everything slows.

She is not ready to face this again. To face him. She can’t do it. She has been making it work, she has been happy, even if it is forced, she has kept her friends safe. He cannot be here. He cannot ruin it this easily.

Her breath whistles in and out of her throat, too fast, too tight, completely out of her control. She’s starting to get dizzy. It is impossible. Missy just left her, and they never return this soon, this quickly. But something is flashing behind his eyes, gleeful and excited, tells her that he may not have even been Missy yet.

And despite who he has been, despite who he may become, he is there. He is her best enemy. And he stands before her again.

“So what’s going on then, he’s not really O?”

It would almost be laughable if she wasn't so completely blown away, so in shock. Everything she has done in this body, everything she strove for. Gone. Erased in a moment, with one question. She might be sick as he passes her, her head dropping to hang, shoulders hunching.

It is crumbling around her. Everything she has built. It falls with the brush of his lips, with the slightest twitch in his fingers. She avoided and lied herself into oblivion but she kept them all happy, she kept them safe. And he knocks it over with four words.

Four words. Four blows to her chest, almost knocking her over. Four knocks. Got me. Well done.

The Master stands before her. And Graham might be looking at him, confusion and shock all over his face, but Yaz and Ryan are staring at her. And their eyes are confused, afraid, and not even because of him.

She presses a fist to her mouth. Words are bubbling in her stomach, questions, pleas for mercy, angry screams. They solidify in her throat, sickening and thick and terrible, and she almost gags. She will be sick.

To face Barton was easy. To face Krasko, Tim Shaw, even standing up to Astos. It was simple. They could do nothing to her, and she was hard to get rid of, and she would solve the problem. She would keep her friends away from the true darkness of the universe. Glimpses and peeks and hints, but never a full on stare. Never a deep, long gaze into terror.

She had not run, when she had looked as a child on Gallifrey. And the Master had not run either. But the results had been very different. And his different result stands before her. He is grinning. She will be sick.

Yaz and Ryan are staring at her, scared, and they are not scared of the Master. They do not know him, they know nothing of darkness because she has not told them, she has not prepared them, she has kept them blind and helpless. No, they are not scared of him, even though they should be. They are scared of her reaction. They are scared of the way her hand shakes as it pushes the blood out of her lips. They have not seen her like this before.

She cannot help it. But she is scaring them.

So she wrenches her fist away from her face and she speaks.

“I met O.”

“I know.”

“Years ago.”

And he laughs.

It is broken, it is terrible, it is almost funny. He wheezes through the words again and it almost breaks her right there because it absolutely definitely is him. It is the Master. She knows his laugh, regardless of the body.

Her friends should be scared of him, and even though she has done everything she could for the past regeneration to keep them from being afraid, to keep them from developing the desperate self preservation sense that her other friends always had, she longs for them to grasp it now. If they are so scared of her reaction, why aren’t they turning towards the cause of it, why does the confusion flicker towards him, but the fear end up at her feet, tossed and loose and lumpy, left for her to sort through?

She cannot do it.

He tells them what he did to O. She barely listens. It’s old news. It’s a classic, and she moves forward with horror to try to take him back but the Master tosses him aside like a used tissue. 

And it settles, deep and terrible and sickening in her gut, that he has had fun while she has had fun.

Fun. 

Her adventures. Her friends. Happy and light and carefree. And the Master there the whole time, plotting. Her fun comes at an expense, always. Who was she to abandon the universe. More importantly, who was she to abandon the Earth. She was its protector. And here it stands, in danger. Compromised. Her fault.

She turns to warn Barton and when he is not there she is yelling, really yelling for the first time in front of her fam. She cannot help it. She screams her fury, lets it show real on her face. He has had fun while she has been ignoring reality.

The world is blurry, still, and slow, and she cannot manage to grasp onto it fully. Time runs by her like a river. She had imagined reality coming in and crashing on her, making her drop her fam off for a final time, making her leave them behind to keep them safe. But she had never imagined him.

This version yells, too. In a way she might have yelled if she was not always holding herself back. Because there is a bomb, of course there is, and she knows it will be sonic proof before she tries because it is him, it is the Master, of course it is sonic proof.

This version of the Master yells too, but he does it at random. He screams at her to catch on, to figure it out. If she had been a human woman, he would have worried her.

As a timelord, he horrifies her.

And she stares at the bomb, and it is ticking. It clicks away, seconds flying past, her hands trembling above it, her head spinning from hyperventilation. If she could just think, if she just had a moment to process she could do it, she could identify the wires that would detonate it, the ones that would turn it off.

But she cannot think. Her brain is swirling in terror, frantic, she needs it to stop but she does not know how-

And behind her, he is talking to them. He is going on about how he is in control, he is addressing Yaz, and her vision almost goes white with panic. 

He will warp their view of her worse than any of her actions could ever do. He will turn her into the villain in their eyes. He knows her better than anyone, he will drag her past forward like a cat with a dead bird and lay it at their feet, proud, grinning. And her past will not shine on her in a good light.

They will not like her anymore, after he is done with them.

She had thought she was in control, she had thought she had it all planned out, she had thought they would be fine.

But he is talking behind her, and the bomb is ticking away in front of her. Nothing is fine. Nothing will be okay. If she does not diffuse the bomb she will die. If she survives, she will have to explain, and that is worse.

He is still talking. Her mouth is dry. She screams, just to break her own silence, and she turns. 

She is not facing it. She presses her body against the door, hoping that if anything it kills her and not her humans.

She does not die.

Chapter Text

It hurts.

Her head is still spinning, her knees and her elbows sting from where she had fallen to them. Her friends are, even now, hurtling to their deaths and it hurts. 

But the worst part-

She straightens her back in the weird electric wood - she is reminded, suddenly and with a terrible urge to giggle, of a human television show from around her friends time. It looks like she is in the Upside Down. Something like electricity, energy, light, bursts up and down long cable trees. The air is dim and murky, but she can see that the landscape stretches until it fades into fog, never changing, never giving up.

She is saying ‘no’ out loud, can feel her lips making the movement, her tongue popping in her mouth, the air rushing through her throat. But she cannot hear it through the ringing in her ears. 

The worst part-

Her friends are falling. Perpetually, because she has a time machine, and she can probably save them. She will do anything to save them. They will fall endlessly but for only a few seconds, they will never hit the ground unless they do. But for her, in this other moment, not there yet, they fall forever. She wonders if she will make it in time.

Terror claws at her from the pit of her belly but she will not let it up her throat just yet. Or, well. She is not sure she could fully feel it if she tried. Not yet.

Because the worst part is shoving down on her, pushing her to her knees. She does not give in but she does crumble, does double over and put her hands onto her knees, her head hanging, her breath coming in shaky gasps.

It is very selfish, that it is the worst part.

But she had liked O. And she had really thought he had liked her, too. She just-

She does let out a little, bubbling giggle, broken and wet, and is startled to feel a tear sliding slowly down one cheek.

She just thought that they were friends.

It is humiliating, it is terrible. It coils in her. He had fooled her into thinking they were friends. Missy had fooled her into thinking they were friends. They used to be friends, and she still wants it, she still longs for their easy companionship from long ago. It stings and aches, a raw hole in her chest.

She thought he liked her. She thought he was a human, a friend. He was none of those things.

Her friends are still falling. And so somehow she manages to straighten. 

She has lost one friend today. She will not lose any other.

Chapter Text

Four beats. Four noises in a row that ruined her existence, that ruined his as well, and she sits, and she repeats them over and over and over. 

Whenever he is from, she knows that he cannot resist.

Opening the panels deepest under the TARDIS console is a chore, one she only gives in to in the most dire of situations. They are heavy, and they burn with heat when she lifts them, breathing sweaty air out into her face when she forces them open and leans over. Like the oven when she opens it to see what Graham is making just before he chases her away. Like the door to a wood stove back on earth, swinging heavy and hot.

His mind is a furnace blowing into hers with a gasp of boiling fury.

Old school.

It simpers across her mind, swaggering and taunting. She bares her teeth against him and is furious, again, about him sending her to her knees.

But she does not let it distract her. They do not say much. There is very little to discuss. He will meet her, and so she goes.

The walk to the tower is long and lonely, and she does not enjoy it. She is still bad at being alone, gathering Ada and then Noor like an untouched surface gathers dust. Her fam, more friends than she usually gathered at once, still somehow not always enough to satisfy the ache within her for togetherness.

She feels alone, sometimes. Without the Master. Without knowing he was what she was missing.

But she thinks about her new friends again. Two more people plucked from history and drawn under her arm. And she's quite fond of both of them. But they are too important, too significant. They have things to do. Too much of a role to play in history for her to interfere. For them to do what they must, they cannot know any of what she has shown them. She will have to-

Her steps down the empty street almost stutter. She does not let them. She does not think about that yet. It is too familiar.

She can feel it, slowly, bringing her back. Her pulse, thumping in that terrible rhythm in her chest, dragging her backwards. Every moment alone, ever since leaving her friends, she has been slipping and sliding nearer. She feels a shifting, deep in her chest. A settling. It makes her nervous, and she clenches her hands into fists as she walks.

She is becoming herself again.

Hit the ground running, run fast, laugh hard, be kind. She had escaped from her past, had been able to move forward. Just a traveller. Doing what she can. 

It had worked. She had changed. She had been loose and kind and friendly, sympathetic. The old man before her may have ended his life more fond of hugs than she would ever be, but he had created someone who was friendly. He had let her go, had let the title of the Doctor, with its history and its pain, fall from her. He had given her freedom in a way she had not had it since the war.

But now-

Now, her past has followed her. It has spent years scheming against her. Thinking back now, it is shocking that she did not expect it. He is always there to ruin her. Of course the Master would come back.

She wonders, vaguely, if it was really possible for her to ever change. Could she had actually stayed the way she thought she was? Could she have moved on, and left it all behind?

“I thought Missy changed too,” she mutters, speaking out loud without thinking. Breaking the air, not quiet but more still than it had been earlier. They almost stood together. It’s all they ever wanted. And so now they walk to meet at the top of the tower. It is bitter in her throat, painful behind her eyes. She still misses him.

At least if he has followed her into the past, he cannot be turning her friends against her.

They fall, they fall perpetually, because unless she catches them no one will, until she catches them they will fall, until she saves them they will not be saved, they just keep falling-

Her fingers dig into her palms hard, painful. Her friends are falling. And she is slipping.

She does not want to become herself again. It shudders in her brain, the idea that she will turn back into what she was, but it feels so easy. Her past is easy. It is suffering and it is dark, and brightness is hard, and she has been so bright. To imagine going back feels comforting, familiar. But to imagine actually becoming that again is horrifying. The Oncoming Storm, the Beast of Trenzalore. 

Ka Faraq Gatri.

Her fingers draw blood against her palms. She flexes them and they drip until she balls them up again. If her friends heard the things she had been called, they may not believe it at first. Or, well. They would not have believed them yesterday. But she supposes, with a sickening clench in her chest, that if the Master had gotten to them, they might believe anything he says about her.

Ada would not believe the names. Ada had asked her who she was and the answer had spilled from her lips like the blood slips to the ground as she walks. It was a half truth, she did not say her name, but it was a summary rushed for time, not for hiding. She had let the details fly, loose and carefree, and it was like removing a weight from her shoulders as she did. It felt good, to not be hiding. To have a friend who would soon leave, someone she did not intend on keeping around but only needed to keep impressed for a few hours, was simple, was something she had done a million times.

Showing up in some place, seeing a pretty face and wanting to impress it, wanting it to know immediately how amazing she was. Traveller in space and time. Fighting a madman. 

Madman in a box. That one, her friends would believe without provocation. 

But Ada had asked and she had told. She had explained, and because of that Ada trusted her when the Master stormed in, she thought fast enough to act when the Doctor was-

While love and excitement may come quick in this body, so does anger. It rushes, cold and furious, from the pit of her stomach, winding and clenching. He had made her kneel. And he had done it just because she looked like a woman this time around.

Bad enough, misgendering herself to an audience, but it did not matter. She was not really a woman, had never really been a man, but spent so much time around humans she slid into their gender roles with relative ease, only the lightest discomfort. And he used that against her.

Missy had embraced the human’s stereotypical female form. The Doctor had taken it and held it at arm's length, shrugged and accepted it but never really confined herself to it. Until the Master made her kneel.

It was all for show. He did not even really want to stand above her. The second she complied he knelt, too, so that they could speak on equal terms. But first he made her kneel, made her say his name out loud.

They were ancient, they were from another world. None of it meant anything to them. But the humans around just saw a woman kneel before a man, call him “master”.

There were implications, and they did not matter to them, but they mattered to their audience. And he used it to humiliate her. Out of everything he could have done, he decides on manipulation, humiliation, some stupid, semi-sexual-

She rounds a corner and notices two things at once. The first is that she has let her anger rush outwards, and she is almost sprinting, her footfalls heavy and loud as she stalks through the streets. The second is that she has arrived. She is at the edge of the clearing in the middle of the buildings, and in the center, the tower stands.

She forces herself to stop squeezing her hands into fists and shakes them out, feels the cold air sting against the indents in her palms but does not look down to acknowledge them.

It is not that she thinks that she and her friends can go back to normal. But they are falling, and she will save them, maybe she can tell them just enough to appease them and maybe she will stop slipping back into herself.

Just what she usually told but had not given to them. The bare bones. The species, the planet, the fact that the TARDIS was stolen. She could handle that. It was not sliding back to herself, and it was not giving in entirely to the bright moving-on she longed for either. A middle ground. She thinks they may understand. If she makes them.

But first, she lets her anger coil. If he is determined to force her into her past, into her darkness and her rage and her revenge, then fine. If he wants to use her being a woman against her, that is fine too. She lets her teeth stretch into what she knows is not quite a grin on this face. It is too feral, too angry, and it snarls. 

If he wants her back, then fine. She is back. She will do what she has to do to stop him.

Ada and Noor working for her behind her back, she approaches the tower.

Chapter Text

“What do we need a wardrobe for?” Graham asked, and the Doctor only grinned at him before turning on her heel and stalking through the console, up her wonky stairs, down the hall. They followed her and she was buzzing with it, anticipation feeding into her. O was with them too and that swirled in her chest, made her feel almost manic, her soul pouding at the edges of her skin.

It was so exciting when they were new, and this was a new part of the ship for her fam and this was a new thing entirely for O and her fingers trembled with it. She loved this bit.

She knew Yaz would love it, too, and that added to her mood. The poor girl had been thrown into another dimension and maybe she wasn’t exactly thriving with it, but she had not let it stop her, either. She still had those big eyes, shining up at the Doctor like she knew all the secrets of the universe, and if Yaz smiled prettily enough, the Doctor might share.

Really, the Doctor only knew some of them. There were very few she’d burden Yaz with.

A chance to dress up, to go to a party, figure some things out along the way. It would be fun, and it would be new and she had a new friend and her best mates. 

The wardrobe was not her most visited place. Her last body had stuck to a dress code, but had changed around the specifics of it often; different shoes, shirts, ties, coats. Sometimes switching it up entirely, if he felt like it, perusing through their endless options and enjoying it. She had no time for such things.

She wondered idly, swinging the door open and flicking the lights on with as much bravado as she can muster, what outfit she’d be wearing if she’d had access to her closet when she regenerated.

“Doctor!” Yaz gasped, right over her shoulder because of course she was the closest one behind her. She flinched away, then rocked back on her heels, denying it. “You’ve had all of this the whole time and you’ve been hiding it?”

She tried not to think about whose things they were touching as they went, memories and faces flooding past. Grasping at the sweet in bitter sweet, trying and mostly failing to let the really painful bits fall past her fingers. 

Bill had loved it, the couple of times she’d been in there.

"Haven't been hiding it, we just haven't quite needed it yet."

Yaz scoffed. “I need this every day. I’m never leaving.”

Clothes held scents and faded memories, in the real world. The Doctor made sure her TARDIS wardrobe stayed suspended. Dust did not gather, nothing smelled familiar, nothing was distinctly one persons’. But memories pounded at her nonetheless.

She wandered, her eyes darting between garments and bouncing to the next the moment any familiarity appeared. Hovering, waiting, just above the surface, hanging her toes over the edge but not quite hitting the surface. She could do this. She could. Clara may have worn that dress, those may have been a previous Doctor’s favorite shoes, but she hovered.

“Look at this,” Ryan said. He was holding up an old sweater vest, yellow and red and green and- “why is it covered in question marks?”

He was grinning, and Yaz laughed, pulling a face. “Those colors, my God.”

Ace. Mel. Stop it.

The Doctor straightened and almost opened her mouth, almost protesting. But she swallowed it back. No time, they’d taken too long already. No need to get into that.

“I like it,” O said softly, and she turned to grin at him. He was still standing behind her, his hands in his pockets, his mouth doing that curly thing it did right before he smiled so hard his eyes shut. She was a bit surprised she knew, already, what he looked like when he smiled.

She took a step back and leaned towards him, conspiratorial. “In my defense, when I wore that thing it was part of a whole ensemble.”

He raised an eyebrow and snorted, grinning at her, his eyes a little wild. “You wore that?”

“You said you liked it!”

He shrugged, stepping past her and leaning in a bit as he went. “Guess maybe I needed to see the ensemble. But I bet you could make anything look good.”

She pressed her lips together. Hmm. That wouldn’t do. 

“Not in that body, I couldn’t’ve.”

He just smiled again, and then turned away. His smile made her smile, she realized, letting the grin droop just a bit on her face. It wouldn’t do to have him complimenting her, looking at her like that. It wouldn’t do, unless it would. She frowned, unease curdling with something that felt almost like longing in her stomach, twisting. He was already talking to the fam, already moving on. No curiosity, no endless questions, no asking for more. She already knew how he smiled.

She thought of River, and the outfits she’d worn.

Enough of that. She shook her head and lurched forward. “Yaz! You like shiny things, come over here-”

——

And then it burned.

——

“...be the best of humanity. Or-”

None of them were looking as she cut herself off and turned, wrenching her gaze from their stunned faces.

Anger was pounding at her, hopeless, helpless rage because they looked so sad, they looked blown over and if they had just listened-

If they had done what she asked and moved on they wouldn’t know. She wanted to chastise them for it, to prove to them that she knew best, to shove their noses in it. But she stopped herself. Anxious guilt settled in her. Gallifrey burned, Earth burned, life ceased, nothing remained except monsters-

“Sorry,” she managed, forcing it out through her teeth like a blocked pipe. Turning away, she grabbed the nearest lever. No reason, no destination programmed beneath it, it would do nothing other than fall with a satisfying thud if she threw it. Her fingers drummed on it, one two three four contact-

got me well done

“Sorry, I- I meant to put more hope into that speech. I try to, most of the time. Didn’t mean to sound so bleak. I’m usually-”

“Usually in a better mood?” Yaz asked, cold and slippery like ice under fingers. “Usually better at lying?”

The Doctor’s shoulders stiffened but she did not turn around. Her fingers stopped drumming and clenched, the anger roaring, drowning out the guilt and coming alive in a new way.

“Combination of the two, I guess,” Yaz said, her voice going soft, and something in the Doctor’s chest shattered.

She would not let them question her, but she longed for them to know the truth. Her world, burning, ached in her chest, She wanted them to know her so badly. But she did not want to tell.

Yaz sounded like Clara. All open and annoyed and sad and caring. Just wanting her to say something, just wanting her to slow down and be okay.

“I’m not lying,” the Doctor said finally, still not turning. “I only knew right before you did. I didn’t want you to see because I knew it would upset you and I wanted to protect you from that.”

In the quiet, even the TARDIS sounds gone muffled, she thought about him again. Curly smile, wrinkled eyes. The way she had liked him, plain and simple. How things might have changed, if she had not seen.

Champion sprinter.

“Historically,” she said, before her brain had quite caught up. She blinked. “You always seem like you’re in a bad place, and then-”

She whirled, too fast and almost tripped off of the ledge she stood on. “There’s endless times in human history where everything was going wrong, the whole world in shambles, and then you change things. That’s all you have to do this time, too.”

They still looked at her, their eyes dark, Yaz’s watery and a little angry. The Doctor pressed her lips together and did not think about the way O’s face had changed.

Change. “Go get changed. Get dressed,” she said, hopping up to the console, flicking switches and dragging a lever into place, “and I’ll show you.”

A few moments ticked by, slow and terrible. She wondered, briefly, letting herself part the swirling in her brain that came with piloting the TARDIS just long enough to worry, if they would keep talking about the Dregs.

come on doctor catch up you can do it

Yaz saved her, after a moment. “Changed into what?”

her best enemy

“Something appropriate for 1903 in America,” she said, squinting distracted at the nearest monitor as something began to light up. “Right in the middle of the second industrial revolution, where- oh!”

She gasped and leapt to the side, dragging the monitor closer to her. “Where I’m getting some very strange readings that I was not expecting.”

“You gonna come with us, then?” Ryan asked, and she did not dare look at him. One hand moved to clutch at her coat without thinking.

“Nah, not this time, not with these readings,” she said, sticking her tongue through her teeth. “I’ll be too busy, no need.”

She still did not look, because she knew her excuse was flimsy. But she kept it held between them still, even as it wilted, because the idea of looking at all of those clothes, standing around her, an army of ghosts at attention just waiting for her to look and then they would strike-

“Come on, hurry up,” she said, her tone too biting. She felt the sting through them. “Get a shift on, and come back here when you’re done.”

They did not protest any more.

——

“Frankenstein,” she said again, muttering to herself as she clapped Ryan on the shoulder and rose, her hand buzzing from the contact. “Can’t believe I’ve never thought of it before, can’t believe I’ve never been. You’re in for a treat,” she said, speaking to them again, throwing her voice.

“No offense, Doc,” Graham said, and her head thudded as she turned. His lips were pressed together. She recognized her own expression on his face and she winced, her nose wrinkling. “But you look knackered. Are you sure we shouldn’t take a break before the next one?”

Her mouth fell open and she stepped back, terribly offended, clutching at the edges of her face and yanking closer. Her eyelids felt gritty, her thoughts muffled; maybe she could not quite remember the last time she had closed her eyes for more than a blink. 

But it was nothing, none of his business- no, nicer, nothing he needed to worry about. She drew herself in. Be nicer. Try harder.

“We were just sleeping. We need new clothes!” she said, letting a grin split her face and knowing it was an obvious dodge. Ducking under one blow and jumping right into the path of another, because that meant-

“You remember where the wardrobe is,” she said, hoping beyond reason that they will wander off without her.

They do not. 

“Come... come on, I’ll remind you. Need something myself, anyways,” she said, spinning on her heel to stride down the hall. Their footsteps followed her without much hesitation, and some of the tension fell from her shoulders.

It would be fine, it would be, she could manage. The TARDIS clicked and groaned in the back of her mind.

It was dark and warm, past the door but before throwing the lights on. She imagined the ghost army again, all of her old friends but not them, just their outfits, just things they had worn, standing there.

She pictured her past selves. They stood, too, in the dark. Strangers. She did not know them anymore.

Her fear of the dark clutched at the edges of the doorway, fingers sliding in the darkness. But the light did not make it any better.

Bill asked her if she was a murderer and she said yes. 

In and out. Find something that would fit, anything, and get out. She shuffled through stacks, her ears roaring and her eyes blurry, the fam talking around her but no words really making it into her brain. Her hands trembled as she shoved them into the nearest closet, grabbed the smallest waistcoat she saw and ripped it from its hanger.

“I like the pattern,” Yaz’s voice said right next to her, and the Doctor jumped, shrinking away. But Yaz was still smiling, her eyes were still hopeful. She was trying, trying almost as hard as the Doctor but so much more successful. “Want me to help you find a matching coat?”

She hadn’t been the worst dresser, in her eleventh body. Eccentric, but nothing too out of the ordinary. That had not stopped Amy from trying to style her.

She plastered a tight smile on her face. “Nah, good with this!” And with a whirl, she fled the room. She almost did it fast enough to miss Yaz’s smile dropping away.

The waistcoat did not quite fit, and the sleeves of her white t-shirt, the only thing she could find without retreating back to the wardrobe, stuck out awkwardly. In the mirror, her reflection shivered, and she draped her coat around her like a cape.

She yanked down on its hem, adjusting, trying, sticking her chest out and then sucking it in. Nothing worked. It looked even more out of place than her rainbow jumper. Anxious nausea rolled deep in her throat.

She could feel O standing behind her in the wardrobe, smiling, eyes crinkling and mouth curling. She could feel the Master’s breath on her face. 

I can be. I very much am.

She considered, very briefly, walking back. Apologizing. Finding a real outfit, maybe holding her elbow out for Yaz to take. But it was too late for that. Yaz would look at her with disappointment in her eyes and they would walk, far apart from each other, not touching. 

It was better that way, she supposed. Keep the ghosts in the closet. Keep herself looking like herself, a different patterned shirt but still her, if herself was all she actually knew.

Maybe, if she ignored hard enough, she would never find him no matter how hard she tried. Maybe she would never see Ruth again. Maybe, finally, things would settle for her. 

She would leave the armies at her back. Mismatched outfits & ill-fitting waistcoats would be her armor in her retreat. Her desertion.

She screwed her eyes shut and rubbed at them, giving herself one loud, suffering sigh before straightening back up. Maybe this time she would get to actually leave.

But for the moment, she straightened. She yanked once more at her coat. And then she set their coordinates.