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Touch is a form of electricity, the Doctor decides. A prickly static that stings her skin, a quickening of the hearts, a shock to the system that she tends to subconsciously avoid.
She swears she can feel the particles of one’s existence on their skin. They seep in through her fingertips, weak currents of love, hate, joy, sorrow—everything, absolutely everything they have ever felt, will ever feel. They course through her veins until they slam into closed doors, banging fists, rattling locks, begging to be let in.
She’s more telepathically inclined this time around. More focused, much more in tune, but a bit less in control. She can keep the doors closed, but she can’t stop the knocking. And it’s annoying.
Touch is noisy this time around. Uncomfortable psychologically, and physically unnecessary. Easier just to keep her hands to herself.
She'd had a few hundred days to herself. In the quiet, in the dark, completely alone. No one there to grab her hand so she could pull it away. No one to touch her shoulder so she could shrivel out of reach. Lethargic hands questing for solace only ever found each other, gripping tight, a cruel impersonation of the reassurance she sought.
She'd spent a lot of time in her prison cell thinking about her friends, wondering if they were okay. So the day she was rescued, the day she saw them again, well—
Things have been a little different since then.
Touch is a reassurance, the Doctor rediscovers. When she allows for it to be.
She’s a hugger now. Or maybe she isn’t, and just tries really hard to be. It’s different from her first hug in this regeneration, her experimental hug, so to speak, when she’d met Yaz’s mum. That right there had been half self-exploration, because last time she'd despised hugs, save for the very worthy, and the very close, and she'd wanted to know if she still did. She didn’t hate them, she had deducted, they were just a bit too off-putting. More stressful than comfortable.
The other half was just her desperate want for someone’s mum to like her. She’s got a bad track record with mothers, dating further back than she can count, or even remember. Maybe her horrific childhood with Tecteun is the reason she always wants her friends’ mothers to like her. Maybe that’s why it hurts so much when they don’t.
For the longest time, during a childhood that lasted far too long, pain had been a constant companion to touch. Perhaps that’s why sometimes she abhors it, sometimes she craves it. Sometimes she’s floating somewhere in the middle, like now, which is more than a little confusing.
Because it still hurts a bit, flames dance beneath her skin and someone else’s consciousness comes knocking at the door, but the headache of blocking them out isn’t such a big deal now.
The first day she sees Yaz, Ryan, and Graham after her imprisonment, she hugs all of them individually, then all of them at once.
Touch can be a comfort, the Doctor remembers that night. Akin to a quiet moment with the TARDIS after a difficult day, or the feeling of completing a month-long repair job. That night, especially, touch feels like coming home.
And from then on, it still burns a bit. But the burning is… good? Perhaps just drastically overshadowed, because touch also becomes a grounding, necessary reminder.
Ryan and Graham’s travels with her are few and far between in the months following her return. They’d settled back into their lives for the most part. Grown accustomed to a sense of normalcy, and revisiting the harsh truth that it’s difficult to be there for the people that really need you when you’re traipsing through space.
She respects that, and knows they will inevitably stop one day soon. She'd forgotten that sometimes her friends just… stop. It’s the happiest possible ending, but still tightens her chest with a sense of loss that hits all the same.
She gives them a hug every now and then, out of nowhere, for no particular occasion, because soon she won’t have the chance to. They find that a bit weird, and honestly, so does she. It feels a tad out of character, unfamiliar, but she has a lot of missed opportunities to make up for.
Something the Doctor genuinely likes, though, is to hold Yaz’s hand, and Yaz definitely doesn’t mind. It’s mindless, like it once was, when their hands meet during a tense moment of imminent danger, or a carefree one when they’re simply walking side by side. It’s prickly, but Yaz’s touch has a less intrusive effect than others. It’s quieter, calmer, easier.
*
The first time the Doctor holds her hand without any real reason, it is contrast enough for Yaz to acknowledge the elephant in the room.
“So what’s with this, then?” Yaz’s fingers respond immediately by wrapping around hers, and she raises their joined hands to eye level pointedly. “Not complaining, but you’ve been a bit—”
“Touchy,” Ryan finishes for her, walking alongside Graham a couple paces behind the two of them. He raises his hands quickly, waving away any misconception. “But not in the bad way.”
“Yeah, didn’t take you for much of a hugger before, Doc.”
Before.
“Yeah, well, it’s not the worst way to remind yourself that your best mates are still around,” the Doctor counters mindlessly, and feels Yaz squeeze her hand a little tighter.
“Bet you say that to all the girls,” Graham teases, and they venture on.
*
It isn’t long after that, when the boys tell her they are ready to stop.
Everything they say, every single one of their readied justifications, apologies, she anticipates, and accepts.
“And it’s not like we’ll never see you again,” Ryan adds on a hopeful note, trying for an encouraging smile. It almost works. “That’s not how we do things, dunno about you.”
Not sure about me either, but I guess we’ll find out.
Yaz is a silent companion at the Doctor’s side, leaning comfortably against the console for the duration of Graham and Ryan’s speech. Her lack of reaction suggests she’d been in the know about this, and as easily as all the other times, her warm hand stills the Doctor’s twitching fingers.
“Gonna miss you two.” The Doctor squeezes Yaz’s hand in response because she was aware of the possibility that she would leave as well. There weren’t as many clues unless she really went looking, but the Doctor couldn’t say it would be a surprise.
“It’s been a privilege, Doc, really,” Graham says with a watery smile, eyes crinkled and warm. He knew this was difficult for her. “Don’t regret a moment of it.”
She hugs them especially tight before they leave. Hands fisted in their coats, making sure they knew just how much they’ve meant to her. Just how much they’ve done for her.
It is bittersweet, heavy on the bitter, when they walk out the TARDIS doors for the final time. The silence following the click of the latch is heavy and brooding, and her head slowly drops to her chest.
She isn’t left to mope for long, however, because Yaz’s hand gently wraps around her wrist. The Doctor doesn’t want to turn around and face her. If there are more goodbyes to be said, she simply isn’t ready.
She’s grown quite accustomed to the idea of their little family. Dependent, even. It’s brought a specific sense of security that she’s either never experienced before, or is too old to remember.
Being alone has never served her right, but especially now. She really couldn’t bear to lose all three of them.
Yaz rubs her thumb softly over the inside of the Doctor’s wrist when she tenses, not making any other moves. “Doctor—”
“—do you want to go too?” She cuts her off, shoulders stiff and fingers curling into a fist beneath Yaz’s grip.
“I—I was gonna ask you that, actually.”
And the Doctor turns around at that, because it’s well and truly baffling. “What?”
“I mean—” Yaz retracts her hand, looking a bit sheepish, unsure. “I don’t know if you’d be alright with it being… just me, you know? The gang’s broken up now. So do you… want me to go too?”
She’s holding her breath, and the look on her face is all too familiar. The fear in her eyes strikes too close to home, and it nearly takes the Doctor’s breath away. As clever as she is, she can’t comprehend why Yaz would think she wouldn’t want her to stay.
“No,” the Doctor breathes out, and it is a bit desperate, admittedly. A bit too quick, judging by Yaz’s wobbly, amused smile.
“Because I’m not ready.” Yaz’s eyes are wide, curious in slow realization. “To go back. There’s so much more to see.”
The Doctor laughs, relief almost weakening. “Yeah, there’s loads.”
Yaz cocks her head after a moment, pausing her next thought, and looks deep into the Doctor’s eyes with careful consideration. “You okay?”
She tries not to sniff, tries not to look quite as broken apart as she very nearly was for a moment there, and nods. “I am now, yeah.”
Yaz gives her a different smile then, one that might come across as pity if worn by anyone else. But Yaz’s is filled with understanding, and genuine empathy. A quiet, subtle kind, that the Doctor can accept without shriveling with guilt.
Yaz slowly pulls her into a hug, placing just the right amount of pressure against her back and her shoulder blades and the Doctor all but melts. Folding into the contact, arms encircling Yaz as her head falls to her shoulder, an easy acceptance.
Touch is a form of communication, the Doctor learns. A variation that requires no telepathy.
She’ll never forget how relaxed she feels in that specific moment, holding Yaz, letting Yaz hold her. They’d hugged plenty before in the recent past, but they seem to fit together especially well today. Yaz seems to know—Yaz always seems to know lately, just what the Doctor is feeling, just what she needs. And what she needs that night is her friend. More than anything, possibly more than ever.
*
The TARDIS doors are propped open, and the Satanic Nebula is knitting itself together beneath the Doctor’s dangling feet. She’s been sitting here for hours now, propped up against the doorway, witnessing atoms draw in more atoms and pile into clusters of red and purple and absolute beauty. It’s far more sightly than its name suggests.
She’s had a bit of a rough day for some reason. The enigma there being not the why, but the when. It’s funny how most of the time she manages not to think about it. Any of it. The Master’s revelations still sit heavy on her hearts, a constant weight, a constant knowledge she can’t escape. Some days she wishes she’d never found out.
Most days she runs, fairly successfully, away from any opportunity to drag herself under, but she can’t resist a good nebula birth. At least her brooding internal monologue has a nice backdrop.
It’s been a year since she was freed from her prison, and a half since Ryan and Graham left. Yaz is still here, sticking to the Doctor’s side with a loyalty she doesn’t deserve, but doesn’t turn away.
She misses her, actually, now that she thinks about it. Yaz has been sick for a few days, something human and boring and nonthreatening, and Yaz apparently has some issue with being taken care of unless she’s got no other option. She’d insisted, quite seriously, that the flu wasn’t a good enough reason to have someone hovering at her bedside.
Which is a shame, really, because the Doctor would have much preferred that over the lifelessness of the past few days. Yaz insisted on riding it out in isolation, but the Doctor still never left the TARDIS. It was the best she could do.
The sound of Yaz’s coughing makes her presence in the console room known and the Doctor twists around, grinning excitedly.
“Yaz!” She’s looking better, maybe, probably. Hard to tell really, she always looks the same. “Welcome to the land of the living.”
“Barely,” Yaz mutters hoarsely, a blanket draped around her shoulder as she shuffles over to the Doctor and drops to sit at her side. “That is… beautiful.”
“Isn’t it?” The Doctor's smile broadens, and she leans close to Yaz to point beneath their hanging feet. “That’s the Satanic Nebula in its beginning. An infinity of atoms clumping together into huge gas clouds, and all that matter and material eventually collapsing in on itself, crushing it all together, and all that mass and gravity starts a nuclear reaction, hydrogen fusing to make helium, and—” She lifts the sonic and points it to the console behind her, and space whirls by in front of them like a spinning globe. When it settles, the nebula is at half completion, colors and gasses accumulated together to form sheer art.
Yaz’s jaw drops in wonder, the complexities of space reflected in her dark eyes. “That’s incredible.”
“And put on a fast forward for your viewing pleasure.” The Doctor beams, pocketing her sonic and only giving Yaz a moment to appreciate the sight before bending over, trying to get a closer look at her face. “You feeling better?”
“Getting there.” Yaz wrinkles her nose as she sniffs, curling the blanket tighter around herself. “But I got too bored on my own, so I broke a rule.”
“I can relate to that,” The Doctor chuckles, and easily drapes an arm around Yaz’s shoulders when her head comes to rest on the Doctor’s shoulder.
“You’ve probably been sitting here for ages, haven’t you?” Yaz tilts her head to look up, challenging in her intent but too tired to deliver.
The Doctor scrunches her face. “Oi, it’s fun to look at, and you won’t hear me say that about a lot of things.”
“You’ve got me there.” Yaz lets her eyes drift back to the stars and settles more comfortably against the Doctor’s side. “What have you been thinking about?”
“Personal question, that is.” The Doctor tries to deflect, but Yaz’s quiet, sad sigh brushing against her shoulder says that it wasn’t a success.
Yaz doesn’t say anything for a moment, and briefly the air is filled with teases of a much more distant time between them. Yaz has always been a bit irritated with her secrecy, which is justified, she supposes, because the Doctor still hasn’t put much effort into changing that.
Yaz’s hand comes to rest on top of hers, and the Doctor looks down, suddenly more interested in her touch than the wonders stretching out ahead.
There’s a hint of a plea in the contact, sitting quietly outside closed mental doors.
“Are you ever gonna tell me what happened?”
The Doctor breathes out slowly and turns her hand over so that their palms meet, fingers interlocking, and the touch is especially tender. It’s less prickly now, like she’s built up a tolerance, and a nearly constant craving.
She feels particularly safe right now. Vulnerability doesn’t squeeze her hearts, but instead settles comfortably somewhere deep in her chest. Maybe it wouldn’t be so terrible to share the truth with someone.
“Yeah,” She says quietly, letting the stars carry her voice away, and feels Yaz smile against her shoulder.
“Soon?” Yaz presses, hopeful and light, and the Doctor sighs.
“Soon.” She squeezes Yaz’s hand to back up her promise, and feels every muscle in Yaz’s body relax.
Eyes still transfixed on their joined hands, the Doctor realizes:
Touch is safety.
With Yaz, specifically, her touch has the ability to chip away at defenses, and bring emotionally shielding walls tumbling to the ground. That feeling of vulnerability fused with an overpowering sense of security is a tad unfamiliar, yet somehow not unwelcome. She’ll have to unpack all that another time.
The Doctor allows her head to rest atop Yaz’s, content and at ease once again. She may not quite fit into the universe properly, but in these precious moments, the Doctor feels correct.