Chapter Text
It had been several months. Yaz was deliberately trying not to count the days, but she knew it had been months. Christmas was rapidly approaching, though she was in denial about it. Graham and Ryan had invited her over for Christmas Day, yet she didn’t expect she would take them up on their offer, and would instead spend the day as she did all her others since their return.
Whilst the men had settled back into their earth lives quickly, Yaz had struggled. And continued to struggle. She worked all the hours she possibly could, volunteering for extra shifts and signing up to every extra opportunity going at work. She needed to keep busy. To not think. Outside of work, she spent every waking second in the TARDIS. She didn’t like to call it that, though. The TARDIS to her was the Doctor’s TARDIS, and this one was nothing like that. It was quiet, empty, uncommunicative. Being in the Doctor’s TARDIS felt like home. Being in this one left her yearning for the other even more. Despite this, she had effectively moved into it. As it had taken on the guise of a house, she managed to convince her family that she had found somewhere to rent. She had allowed them to see the outside, but wouldn’t let them in, claiming she was waiting to finish work inside and would throw a house-warming party when it was ready.
Of course, that would never happen, though it was true she was working inside. The console of this TARDIS was completely different to the Doctor’s, and whilst she had begun to get at least a vague and tenuous idea of the occasional function of one or two bits and bobs on the Doctor’s console, this one was a complete mystery. So Yaz had bought a notebook, and was meticulously testing out every single switch, dial and lever, making notes about every response.
When she had begun, she had been filled with terror that she’d somehow make it explode, or accidentally fly to some mystery planet she’d never be able to get back from, or cause some equally terrible fate. But she had a goal, and nothing would deter her from trying to achieve it, so she forged onwards. One day she would work out how to operate this TARDIS, and she would take it to Gallifrey and find the Doctor. Or bury her… no. She wasn’t going to let herself think of any possibility other than finding her friend alive. Her best friend. The woman who made her feel both alive and safe. Who had found a place in her heart that Yaz had never really thought would be filled.
What made the situation even more complicated was that the outcome of using any particular component seemed to vary according to what had been used before it. She’d only realised this after accidentally testing a button she’d already pressed once. The moment she pressed it again she tutted at herself, remembering using it just an hour before and discovering that it had only seemed to dim the lights. Except that this time, pressing it apparently made the door swing open. A little experimentation confirmed that it did four different things, depending on what she had used immediately before, plus a further three things if she changed what had been used two steps before. At this point she actually threw the notebook across the room in despair and anger. She knew deep down that she’d never be able to learn how to fly this thing, but at least her methodical strategy of testing made her feel like she was doing something.
So every day when she had finished work, she would go to the not-the-TARDIS, grabbing something quick and easy to eat on the way, and work into the small hours testing another portion of the console, filling her seventh notebook with her findings. And when she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer, she’d curl up in an adjacent room which contained nothing but a mattress pad on the floor and her yellow blanket which she’d brought from home. A large bag spilt clothes over the floor in a corner. Then she’d fall into oblivion and hope that dreams did not visit.
She had one night dreamed that the door to this bedroom of sorts had opened and the Doctor was standing there – every detail perfect, and Dream-Yaz had burst into tears and literally launched herself into her friend’s arms. The feeling of warm arms holding her tight was so vivid and real: hearts beating against her own, her face buried in the Doctor’s neck, her tears dampening her skin. The intoxicating scent of the Doctor filled her nose, and then the feeling of lips as the Doctor pressed a kiss into her hair. Yaz had started awake, feeling cold and alone and sobbed the rest of the night away.
Yes, nothingness was better than dreams. She’d stayed up as long as she could the night after that dream, afraid to put herself through such painful emotions once more. People at work had noticed her changed demeanour, and one or two had even commented in the early days of being back. Yaz tried to bury her feelings deep down during the day and appear as normal as she could manage, but even she knew she had changed.
Every Sunday, Graham invited her to have a Sunday roast with him and Ryan, and she did make the effort to go most weekends. It was both wonderful and painful – they were the only ones, once Ravio, Ethan and Yedlarmi had set off to build themselves a life in the 21st Century, who knew and understood what had happened. It was the only place she could talk openly about everything.
On the other hand, whilst they clearly still worried about the Doctor, they had managed to settle back into their old lives. Ryan thrived on getting back together with his mates, and Graham seemed comfortable to have a bit of peace, whilst also regularly meeting up with friends for cards, walks, lunches out and so on. Ryan had fired up his old You Tube channel once more, and Graham went on coach trips for the day. Yaz knew their relationship with the Doctor had been different to hers – they saw her as family, the annoying older sibling or trying-to-be-cool single aunt who might be a bit embarrassing but you loved and made you laugh nonetheless.
To Yaz, though, the Doctor was more. She was a friend. A best friend. More even than that, somehow, though it frightened Yaz to even contemplate what that meant. What she did know was that it felt like her heart was missing without the Doctor there. The world was diminished without her presence, nothing felt quite right – somehow incomplete.
Although she didn’t speak of this, Graham knew there was more going on than Yaz would talk about. As Ryan tried for the thousandth time to convince her to stop working on the not-the-TARDIS, that it was not good for her, Graham could see the grief and loss in her eyes, even if she wouldn’t admit it, shrugging off Ryan’s concerns with a half-smile. Knowing there was nothing he could say, he put his hand over hers, long enough to make her look at him. He smiled and gave her hand a gentle squeeze, then got up from the table to go and fetch the apple crumble from the kitchen, leaving Yaz to look vacantly out of the window as Ryan chattered on about the three hoops he shot in his last basketball game.
And so the days passed. Too slowly and to fast at the same time. Yaz found herself sitting in Graham’s front room a week before Christmas as he and Ryan were listing the many reasons she needed to come to them on Christmas Day.
“And you’ll never view Ryan as a grown adult again when you’ve seen him opening the presents in his stocking on Christmas morning,” Graham chuckled, reaching over to poke Ryan’s arm on the edge of the sofa affectionately.
“Yeah, and then someone puts the stocking on one leg and hops around the house saying he’s Santa and has anyone seen his missing sock,” Ryan responded, literally rolling his eyes.
“It’s a tradition!” Graham cried in defence. “I do it every year – it wouldn’t be Christmas without the missing sock gag!” Yaz smiled into her cup of tea. She could at least bank on these two to make her laugh.
“Anyway, Yaz, I’m sure your mum and dad wouldn’t mind you coming here for the day, would they?” Graham asked, getting up from his chair in the corner to take the biscuit tin back into the kitchen before Ryan emptied it completely.
Yaz was sure her family wouldn’t mind. Although they obviously did not celebrate Christmas, they still used it as an opportunity for a family gathering, and the flat was usually filled with as many local relatives as they could cram in whilst her dad spent the day in the kitchen providing them all with dubious foods. “I am sure they wouldn’t mind, it’s just that I was hoping to use the day to begin testing a new section of the console.”
Ryan turned to her from the other end of the sofa. “Yaz, you’ve got to give it a break, you’re gonna drive yourself mental if you keep this up much longer.” There was genuine concern in his eyes.
“He’s right,” Graham called from the kitchen, where the sound of the kettle beginning to boil could be heard. “You’ve got to start living again.”
Yaz looked down into her cup of tea. She knew how she was existing at the moment was not sustainable, but the thought of just giving up on the Doctor was unthinkable. How could she not do everything in her power to find her? The Doctor would never give up, and neither would she. If only she could get the other two to understand this.
Graham reappeared in the doorway. “Do you want a top up, cockle?” he asked, waving the teapot he was holding. Yaz was about to answer when there was a flash and explosion, as if lightning had struck inside the living room, and Graham’s chair in the corner shattered in a shower of splinters and sparks as something crashed there out of nowhere. Their mouths dropped open in stunned shock as a figure staggered to its feet, brushed itself off, and turned around to give them all a broad smile.
“Gotcha!” he announced, giving them all a wink and finger guns.
Yaz was the only one left with the power of speech, and all she could manage was: “Captain Jack?”
“It’s me, baby!”