Chapter Text
If Yaz had hoped that Graham and Ryan deciding to remain on earth would gift her more quality time with the Doctor, she was very much mistaken. The first journey the TARDIS had taken them on after saying heartfelt goodbyes in Graham’s front room had resulted in an incident on a distant planet involving approximately 40 elderly and incontinent slug-like creatures. By the time Yaz had finally managed to shower long enough to get the slime out of her hair and feel clean once more, the Doctor had decided it was time to recalibrate some major systems underneath the console, discarding her coat, rolling up her sleeves and disappearing down a hatch in the floor. When Yaz walked back into the console room in a fresh set of unslimed clothes, she immediately tripped over the disconcerting array of cables strewn around the floor, almost dropping her phone and sloshing half the tea out of the mug she was carrying. The Doctor could be heard but not seen hitting something metallic with a series of loud clangs. Yaz sat on the steps to sip the surviving tea, in theory checking her phone, but really chuckling at the exclamations that were drifting up from the hole.
Like: “Oh that’s why the quantum particle exacerbator wasn’t connecting properly. Who plugged it in there?”
And: “Stop hanging on to that spindle valve, I need to replace the temporal coupling before you blow it out completely!”
And following a particularly impressive shower of sparks which erupted up from the hatch: “Well don’t blame ME for the energy overlay on that stream, I wasn’t the one who made a short cut from the main hosing!”
Yaz drained her mug when without warning, an alarm began to wail, causing her to choke on the tea. The console lit up with flashing red lights. And amber lights. And even some twinkly pink ones. A thud echoed from under the floor and the Doctor’s head popped up like a meerkat, hair in disarray, begoggled eyes.
“That’s a problem,” she said in typical understatement.
“That’s not reassuring to hear,” Yaz responded as the Doctor clambered up from the hole and engaged in a terse debate with the TARDIS console.
“You were doing just fine without a sonic dampener before I plugged it into the resonating chamber,” she stated with firmness. “Why are you upset about it now?” A trill from the TARDIS prompted a scronch and a head shake.
“What? No! I don’t think so!” She gave a few dials firm twists and flicked a switch which caused a furious spark followed by a small plume of smoke.
“Come on, Old Girl, you don’t really need everything plugged back in to tell me, do you?” she almost pleaded into the air, but the TARDIS remained resolutely elusive about the details. Yaz approached, standing next to the Doctor and watching the Time Lord’s hands as she attempted to line up several small wheels.
“You can’t find out what the problem is?” Yaz asked in mild concern. After all this time, she trusted the Doctor and the TARDIS with her life, despite the interesting scrapes they not infrequently ended up in, but it didn’t stop her adrenaline from rising in situations like this.
“The ‘what’ is not the issue, it’s the ‘where’. There seems to be a serious rift distortion somewhere that the TARDIS has homed in on.” Yaz recognised her ‘patient but annoyed with the TARDIS’ voice, combined with a somewhat frustrated expression.
“And that’s bad, right?” She followed the Doctor, who was moving around the console and operating things with the firmness of a parent whose child who was pushing the boundaries.
“No. Not really. Not that bad. OK quite bad. When I say ‘quite bad’ I mean incredibly serious, threatening the balance of reality.” Another switch flicked, another spark and poof of smoke.
“But you can’t find out where?”
“She is a bit cross about all the cables I unplugged and says that it’s my fault she can’t tell me where the rift is. But she’s locked on to its energy readings and is going to take us as close as we can safely get.” She looked over at Yaz, a familiar spark of excitement in her hazel eyes.
“Hold on…”
Yaz just about had time to clutch onto the console before the Doctor yanked one of the levers and the everything lurched sideways. It was all she could do to maintain her desperate grip on whatever bits of the console she had grabbed, fervently hoping she wasn’t changing any settings or pressing things she shouldn’t. The Doctor, as was characteristic in moments like this, was meticulously making her way around each panel, working feverishly.
At one point she needed to reach across Yaz, and the younger woman found a warm body pressed against her arms and hands and soft blonde hair in her face. Relinquishing her grip on the console to move out of the way would have meant certain injury from being flung around the violently heaving room, but she could feel the Doctor’s hearts beating against her arms and found her own heart racing in return, well aware that it was not merely a response to the stressful situation. She told herself that now was not the time for these sorts of thoughts to pop into her mind, and thankfully just seconds later the Doctor had moved on. Yaz instantly missed the warmth on her hands and arms, embarrassed to notice it had apparently travelled straight to her face. She was grateful the Doctor was too busy to see.
Without Ryan and Graham in the equation, it had begun to dawn on Yaz that it would be increasingly difficult to ignore certain feelings she had been desperately trying to repress. Other people around meant other people to talk to, other things to think about, and Yaz worried that the first time there was any kind of lull leaving her and the Doctor standing still for a moment, she would go into a complete panic and die on the spot. Of course, this being travel with the Doctor, there had been no such lull, and nor did it seem there would be one forthcoming if the current state of action was anything to go by.
Yaz drew a small amount of comfort from this as the TARDIS thundered to a halt and she finally felt safe enough to release her death grip on the console, thinking that her fingers might just have left imprints where they had been gripping. The Doctor was already heading to the door, coat over one arm, wiping her oily hands on a cloth which she discarded over her shoulder.
“Come on, Yaz, let’s find out where we’ve ended up,” she called out, sounding far more enthusiastic than Yaz felt appropriate, having been summoned by an alarm to an unknown location which could potentially be dangerous. Which, let’s be honest, it probably was, given the Doctor’s track record, Yaz mused as she grabbed her leather jacket off the stair rail and followed her to the door.
To be fair, the Doctor opened the door relatively gingerly and did not instantly stride out into the unknown. She sniffed a few times before deeming it safe enough for them to exit and stepped out, closely followed by Yaz. They found themselves in a large, grassy space, a few trees dotted around, a pathway meandering lazily to the right.
“This looks very familiar,” Yaz commented, racking her brains. Had they been here before? The Doctor crouched and was picking individual blades of grass, chewing each one like they were expensive delicacies. The tendency to taste unusual things in order to ascertain certain details about a place or a thing was something Yaz had somehow gotten used to, and she was completely unsurprised by the actions. She was also really distracted by that nagging sense of familiarity, until the penny dropped right at the same time as the Doctor stood up. They looked at each other and spoke at the same time:
“It’s Sheffield!”
“I used to play in this park when I were a child,” Yaz pondered, whilst the Doctor sucked on another blade of grass thoughtfully.
“Twenty first century, too. Maybe 2019 or 2020? Too sweet to be any later,” she added for completeness.
“I’m home, then,” Yaz said, looking around and trying to get her bearings.
“Yes. We could go to your place for tea!” the Doctor suggested, a bright smile lighting up her face at the thought.
Yaz looked at her pointedly. “But didn’t we come here because there is a problem?”
“Oh, yes. Forgot that bit. No tea for now, then, maybe later.” The Doctor activated her sonic and scanned in a wide circle then squinting at the readings.
“It’s not very far that way,” she declared pointing towards a more heavily wooded area slightly uphill from where they had landed, and had set off at a jog before Yaz had even noticed. She had been trying to work out which direction home was in and wondering about the chances of seeing Graham and Ryan out for a stroll in the park. She turned and abruptly realised the Doctor was already halfway across the expanse of neatly trimmed grass and was disappearing off at a fair old lick. Yaz sprinted after her, well aware of the dangers of letting the alien out of her sight when she was focused on something.
By the time she caught up, they were near the edge of the trees and the Doctor suddenly stopped, Yaz barrelling into her back, unable to stop in time.
“Sorry,” she puffed. “It’s just, Park Hill is not far over there,” she pointed. “And Graham and Ryan will be that way, too,” she added, before noticing the Doctor was looking in concern at the readings on the sonic, her face solemn, brows furrowed accentuating the line between them. She didn’t need to say anything for Yaz to realise things were not good.
“Doctor, I don’t like it when you go quiet,” she said apprehensively, but the Doctor merely put a finger to her lips and beckoned, setting off into the trees considerably more slowly and cautiously than she had been moving before. Yaz followed suit, stepping in line behind her as they moved gradually further into the tree cover.
Now she was being quiet, Yaz realised there was a noise ahead of them – or rather, an absence of noise. It was as if there was something there absorbing all sound, which was disconcerting to say the least. The Doctor paused, alternating between scanning and examining the readings on her sonic. Yaz found herself peering over the Doctor’s shoulder at the silver instrument, though she had no idea what the readings meant, no matter how many times the Doctor had tried to explain it to her.
They looked at each other in silence, the Doctor communicating with just a look that things were really rather serious all of a sudden, and Yaz hoped her eyes conveyed back a sense of understanding the importance of this information, rather than the unsettling sense of unease which was creeping up her back.
The trees had become much denser at this point, with added low-lying shrubs covering a lot of the ground and making their progress more challenging. And whilst it was definitely daytime, beneath the trees it was becoming darker and darker, as if night was upon them, as if the rest of the world had been cut off. It felt like being in a cave, Yaz thought.
And then, cutting through the disturbing absence of sound, there was a thud, like something heavy had just hit the ground not far ahead of them, and when the Doctor pulled back the branches of the bush in front of them, two things were revealed.
First was a… something in the air. When Yaz tried to look at it, she couldn’t focus on it, couldn’t actually see what it was. Her eyes kept rolling off it like water on feathers, and she was left with an after-impression of redness hovering in her vision. But there was something wrong in the air.
And in front of the wrongness was a figure – shorter than she was, squat and solid, blue-grey armour and a round, bald head with fury in its eyes. In its hands was, unmistakeably, a gun.