Chapter Text
It was strange, running from TARDIS to TARDIS. The Doctor scampered across the dew-draped grass in a quiet neighborhood to burst into the camouflaged time ship, only to be entirely surprised at what it contained.
Dozens and dozens of notes. Technical discovery, experimental outcomes, all in Yaz's handwriting. The sleeping bag crumpled in the corner.
She didn't have time to feel everything the ship was blasting at her right then: fear, worry, disappointment, longing... Longing?
That emotion, at least, was mostly focused in one spot, one particular note that had been augmented with tape and more scraps of paper over time. The Doctor let it tug at her from across the console room, and she plucked it from the surrounding chaos and put it in her pocket.
The rest of the notes were less emotionally fraught, which the Doctor cataloged idly as she fired up the chameleon circuits and set her plan into motion. Yaz had been learning, had been applying rigorous scientific method to piece together technology centuries beyond her time.
And she'd been doing it alone.
The Doctor had known Yaz was special, had known she was clever and loyal and brave. The evidence of her tenacity and ingenuity scribbled all around was humbling, and the Doctor wished she had more than a moment to spend with it.
She made one last circuit of the console, then zipped away to trick the Daleks and relegate that spare TARDIS and all those fragmented thoughts to destruction.
It wasn't until many hours later, while Jack was entertaining Yaz with outlandish stories of times past and yet to come, that the Doctor fished the rescued note out of her pocket to properly read it. She could still feel the emotional imprint bleeding off the page, the desperate yearning that might have felt a lot like unrequited love. It practically bit at her fingers as she smoothed the paper across the console.
The note had been a list, of things the Doctor had apparently missed in her 10 months away (relatively speaking). It started off with a header:
things to remember
Then listed off a few shorthand references that undoubtedly had wonderful, or sad, or wonderfully sad stories behind them. As she read, she caught a few of the highlights:
1) ryan and sonya's (only, ha!) date
5) graham's tango lessons
6) nani
10) grace's birthday
12) jack visited and stole stuff????
17) that dream
23) that dream again
And a thought supernumerary, captured in the margin, emphatically underlined:
she would find you no matter what
Oh.
The Doctor tucked the note away and leaned against the TARDIS console, bracing herself on the handbrake as if it could steady her while realization swept over and threatened to pull her under.
"It's okay to be sad," Yaz said, quietly.
And in theory, the Doctor would agree with that statement. In theory, it was psychologically healthy to identify your feelings and actually feel them.
In practice, letting herself be sad meant naming everything else fizzing around in her brain, including the boundless rage, the profound betrayal from her "people," and the perpetual, overwhelming grief. Nope. Not having that, today.
She turned to Yaz. "Wanna learn to drive this thing?" At the TARDIS' bleeping objection, she rolled her eyes and addressed the console. "Yes, yes. 'Thing' is a derogatory term for a highly sentient time craft. Sorry, old girl. Keen to help Yaz find her way around?"
At that, the TARDIS trilled in what could only be trepidatious assent. The Doctor knew the feeling. She gestured to the handbrake, and gave Yaz a smile. "Ready?"
"Really?" Yaz asked.
"Really," the Doctor said, projecting certainty she absolutely did not feel.
She thought that maybe, if she could keep them moving fast enough, Yaz would stay close, like it was just gravity.
Maybe it would be enough.
It wasn't enough.
Even after days of new adventuring, being with Yaz felt jagged and anxious, like the Doctor's guts were eating themselves. She felt like they couldn't shake the dread of their parting on Gallifrey, like they were haunted by the anger of their reunion on Earth.
Yaz had been so comfortable, before. Definitely her favorite, even if she'd never (in as many words) admit as much to Graham or Ryan. The Doctor was self-aware enough to realize she'd taken that comfort for granted.
And now Yaz's presence just felt fragile, nearly nauseating. Yaz was hurt, and it was her fault. Yaz had finally cottoned on to the fragility of companionship, and despite that, wasn't leaving.
So what did she want?
"I'm not ready to let you go, yet."
That wasn't about the universe. That wasn't about traveling.
It was about her.
Despite being rather willfully clueless about such things, the Doctor wasn't blind to Yaz's affection. She'd thought it harmless, and definitely a bit flattering.
But something changed, on Gallifrey. She let herself boggle about that for a moment - Yaz had followed her to Gallifrey.
Their farewell had been painful. Their reunion, somehow even more painful.
It felt like she'd swallowed a rock, and not in the fun 'for science' way. She hurt, inside. And she figured Yaz did, too.
Today they were drifting, a few light years out from a particularly vibrant nebula lit by exploding stars. Yaz was at the TARDIS' door, staring out into the abyss. The Doctor sidled up to take a look as well, but instead found her gaze drawn to Yaz's profile, and the delicate play of ancient light across her skin.
The Doctor reached up, and used gentle fingertips to smooth away a lock of dark hair that had escaped Yaz's careful plait.
Yaz startled a bit, and looked over, startling the Doctor back in turn.
"Ah, sorry," the Doctor murmured. She smiled, awkward and tight. "And I just realized I never said sorry for crunching that other TARDIS, either."
Yaz frowned at her.
"It seemed like you spent a lot of time there," the Doctor added.
"It wasn't important," Yaz said with a sigh. "I thought I could use it to find you." She ducked her head, and the Doctor studied her profile, finding herself itching to reach out and touch her again.
"Rather remarkable, you are," the Doctor said. "Another couple months, you would've solved it."
It was the exact wrong thing to say.
Yaz spun on her, eyes sparking in anger. "Do you even know why?"
The Doctor could sense the new danger in the air. The anxiety in her belly bloomed anew. "Why what?" she asked, quietly.
"Why I slept there? Why I spent weeks cataloging every switch and gauge? Why I was so hurt when you came back like it was nothing?"
The sick feeling growing inside her said she probably did know why. The Doctor couldn't trust her voice, so she shook her head.
"Because I was in love with you," Yaz concluded, swiping angrily at tears that slipped past her control.
The words and the past tense made both the Doctor's hearts skip. Even if she half expected the sentiment, and always anticipated its loss, the feeling was unexpectedly catastrophic this time. "Was?" she croaked.
Yaz shrugged, tossing a hand out in futility. "I thought I was. Thought I was the one who had to go save you. Thought you were waiting for me." She shrugged again, for lack of anything better to do. "I know it was stupid," she concluded.
"Not stupid," the Doctor countered.
"A little stupid," Yaz argued, with a touch of her usual wry humor. "Not like I can drive a time machine, or like I knew where to look for you. Or that I could have actually helped if I'd managed to find you in space jail."
"You might not have been able to get there, but you did help," the Doctor insisted. "I thought about you every day. And I missed you, so much." She hesitated when Yaz turned pained eyes up at her. "And I really hated how we said goodbye."
She surprised herself with that admission. She hadn't meant to dig that up, (relative) decades after the fact.
"So did I," Yaz agreed, hanging her head. "I dunno why I even tried to stop you, you know? You're you. You were going to save everybody, because you're the Doctor. Thought maybe I could be enough of a reason for you to stay." She shook her head. "Schoolgirl rubbish," she concluded. "Think you feel things, think they're real. But they're not."
The sheer ache captured in the note the Doctor still had stashed in her pocket said otherwise.
"Can't be in love with someone I hardly know, can I?"
Oof. The unintended spite of that statement hit like a punch to the gut. The Doctor rocked on her feet. "I can fix that part," she replied. "Not the love part. That's not up to me." That stuck in her mouth, like something dry and bitter. She swallowed and rallied past it. "I'll tell you anything you want to know, about me. About my life. You deserve that. And more, but we can start with that."
"What happened on Gallifrey?" Yaz asked immediately. "Not Ko Sharmus. Before that. With the Master."
The Doctor nodded. "Saw that one coming. Long story, best told over tea and biscuits. Can we go to the galley?"
She took a few steps away, hoping to use the short journey to regain her composure, hoping to coax Yaz along. It didn't work, and she sighed. "I told Ryan most of the story. Absolutely unrepeatable without biscuits."
Yaz just stared, unmoved.
The Doctor leaned back in, and dropped her voice. "You were halfway through teaching yourself to use technology three millennia ahead of your time - and I have some questions for you about that, by the way. 'Least I can do is tell you who you were doing that for." She held out her hand. "Please?"
Yaz took her hand. "Why are you doing this now?" she whispered.
"Because I make a lot of friends," the Doctor said, with a deprecating look. "Loads of 'em. More than you can count. Don't tend to keep them very long. Would very much like to keep you." She smiled, and held Yaz's hand all the way to the galley.
Unlike the abbreviated version she told Ryan, the revelations from Gallifrey took a couple hours to spell out in detail to Yaz. The tea went cold as she talked.
"So you're not actually a time lord?" Yaz asked, once she reached the part where the fam had caught up to her again.
"In a manner of speaking," the Doctor said. "In another manner of speaking, I'm the time lord. OG." She squinted. "OG? Yeah."
"And Ruth, from the Judoon lockdown in Gloucester... was actually you?"
"An earlier regeneration of me, yeah."
That part was still confusing - how do you somehow not know yourself when you bump into her in Gloucester? Yaz decided to leave that alone for the moment. "I thought you weren't supposed to cross over your own timeline," she said instead.
"Definitely not. Highly discouraged, possibly disastrous. Managed to dodge the worst of it, that time."
Yaz thought about that with a scowl. "But the Master could have been lying about everything."
The Doctor took a deep breath, and nodded. "Possibly. But I don't think he was. He... filled in a lot of blanks, for me. And his hatred, for his dependence on me for his very existence... that was very genuine." She shuddered.
"Are you going to try to find your real people?" Yaz pressed.
"Maybe. If they're out there to be found."
"And the Division? What's that bit?"
The Division does not exist. The Division does not have 'operatives.' We are not even here.
"Dunno," the Doctor admitted, letting those half-formed fragments of memory tickle the edges of mind.
"Do we need to find it?"
The Doctor's head lifted as she snapped back to the present. "'We?'"
Yaz immediately leaned away from the table and looked elsewhere.
Rather than chase that flicker of some shared future together, the Doctor swung back toward disclosure and honesty. "Someday, yeah. I'll try to find it. It has answers I need. That can wait, though. Not important."
"What's more important than learning who you really are?"
"Being with you," the Doctor said, flatly. "And I know who I am."
"'The Doctor. The one who stops the Daleks,'" Yaz quoted, mimicking the Doctor's fierce declaration.
The Doctor nodded. "Sometimes," she agreed. She took a breath, studying Yaz. "Your turn for catching up, I think. How's your family?"
Yaz blinked. "Uh, fine, I guess," she said, hesitant. "Sonya started uni in the fall. Mum splits her time fretting about her or thinking I'm a lost cause." She shrugged.
"And your nani?"
"Oh. She got sick, over the summer," Yaz said. Her voice went small and quiet. "She got better again, but I'm not sure how long she's got."
The Doctor sagged. "Oh. I'm so sorry."
Yaz focused on something out of sight. "During the worst of it, we all took turns, sitting with her," she murmured, as she folded her arms around her middle, curling into herself. "I held onto Prem's watch, and just... listened to her breathing. Didn't know if it was going to stop, didn't know what to do if it did."
The Doctor watched her with wide eyes.
"I was so scared," Yaz whispered. "But I knew - at least she wasn't alone, you know? After she got better... that's when I went back to the TARDIS. If you were out there, somewhere - you were alone. I couldn't stand that."
"Ah, Yaz," the Doctor murmured.
"Then you come back, like it was nothing. Like how I felt was nothing."
"It was everything," the Doctor insisted. "You were why I came back. You were the one I locked onto. Across space, and time, and Graham's sitting room."
(That realization startled her, and it explained the amused look on Jack's face as she whirled around the TARDIS and proclaimed that she had to "get back to her Yaz.")
She leaned away from the table and shoved her hands into her coat pockets. Her fingers curled around the crumpled note she'd lifted from that other TARDIS. She sighed, barely able to meet Yaz's miserable gaze.
"So what now?" Yaz asked.
"Well," the Doctor began. "I spent decades locked up in space jail, and a lot of that time regretting that I didn't hug you when we said goodbye on Gallifrey." She gave Yaz a sad smile. "Maybe I could hug you now?"
"Oh, don't be daft," Yaz muttered, as she got up and immediately circled the table, barely giving the Doctor time to stand before pulling her into a profound, deeply-overdue embrace.
The Doctor sighed and held her back, treasuring the moment as a particularly precious and rare thing across many, many lifetimes.
Days later, they were still walking on eggshells around each other. Even after another mild adventure involving a freighter, some loose cargo, and a comically absurd number of soap bubbles.
"Doctor?" Yaz asked, as she watched the other woman wielding a very precise laser to refine a bit of TARDIS machinery.
The Doctor grunted, squinting from behind her welding goggles.
"Jack mentioned someone named Rose?"
The Doctor paused, completely unable to stop the reflexive smile that crossed her face. "Yeah. He always had a soft spot for Rose. Despite or because she made him immortal - I'll never know."
"But now she's trapped in a parallel universe?"
"Well," the Doctor muttered. "'Trapped' is pretty subjective. I burn up a sun from time to time to check on her. She's working in an alternate UNIT with human-me. Seems to be all right, all things considered."
Yaz folded her arms and waited in her new "I fully expect an explanation for that" pose.
The Doctor failed to notice for half a minute while she poked at a gauge measuring neutron mass in the tertiary reactor, until she stood upright and pushed the welding goggles up her forehead, blithely ready to chase the next interesting thing in her brain, then saw Yaz's face.
It took her another few seconds to backtrack to what they'd been talking about. "Oh, that story. Right. Lost a hand, then grew a spare person from it. Complicated. Did I ever tell you about my friend Donna?"
"No," Yaz said, drawing out the syllable. "More biscuits for this one?"
The Doctor sighed. "Cocoa, I think, this time."
"An 'instantaneous biological metacrisis' made another of... you," Yaz quoted, very slowly.
"A biologically distinct time lord-human hybrid," the Doctor clarified. "Part me, part Donna Noble, part timey-wimey. Unique bloke. Good hair."
"And you left him in a parallel universe," Yaz said.
The Doctor grabbed a marshmallow and nodded as she chewed it.
"With Rose."
The Doctor sighed and nodded again.
"Why?"
"He needed a place to be, people who could keep him safe. Can't drop a half-human, half-time lord, half-timey-wimey being just anywhere."
Yaz ignored the dodgy math. "Did he... you... love her?"
"He did, because he was me. And I still do," the Doctor replied, mildly. "Always will. Never manage to lose that part. Just eventually discover new people to love." She picked up another marshmallow, but couldn't eat it. Instead she poked the surface and squished it gently between her fingertips, waiting out Yaz's next question.
"I'm sorry," Yaz murmured instead.
"What for?"
"Making you sad."
"Ah, well. A wise woman said it's okay to be sad," the Doctor replied. "She was right. Especially if it's for a good reason. Keeping amazing people with you by missing them... that's one of the best reasons."
Yaz shifted, uncomfortable. "No, that's not it. I've been all pushy, like you owe me these things about you. You don't."
The Doctor tilted her head. "Well. Probably a good thing to share, once in a while," she murmured. "You're the first person I've told a lot of these things, yannow? And not because you were pushy. Because I wanted you to know."
After finishing their cocoa, they parted on that ponderous note, and the Doctor spent a few hours puttering at random maintenance tasks.
Later, she found herself walking laps of the console room, quite bored, and wondering if Yaz might be up for another chat, since they seemed to be slowly growing closer again. The thought made her bouncy inside, which then made her scold herself as she wandered by Yaz's room, aiming for "casual" even as she awkwardly patted down her hair and practiced smiling. Casually.
The door was open a crack, and she peeked in to see Yaz curled up in bed, looking particularly small under a pile of blankets. She faltered, and immediately drew to mind the sleeping bag and the tiny hot plate pathetically tucked into a corner of the other TARDIS.
"Hey, Yaz," she called, quietly.
As expected, Yaz wasn't actually asleep, and she shifted to turn dark eyes toward the Doctor's silhouette.
She might have had a casual plan to be casual and friendly, in a casual way, but it fled her mind the second she met Yaz's gaze. She froze, her brain stuck in an odd loop. "Tomorrow," she finally managed. "Wanna go on a picnic?"
Yaz smiled. "Sure," she replied.
There were fireworks going off behind the Doctor's eyes, and she realized she'd waited literal decades to see that smile again. She tried not to bounce in place. "Good then," she said. "G'night."
"Good night, Doctor," Yaz murmured.
The Doctor skipped back to the console room, then pulled the crumpled note out of her pocket and smoothed it carefully. She studied the emphasized things to remember at the top of the note, then produced a pen from yet another pocket and added her own numbered item.
24) Yaz's smile
Definitely something she'd never forget.
The botanical gardens of Uurliq Major had always been a favorite spot to go for a walk, but it had been a few centuries since her last visit, and the TARDIS had materialized well beyond the posted warnings that would have alerted them to a seasonal overgrowth of supermassive brambleweed.
The Doctor knocked Yaz out of the way just as a seed pod the size of her head dropped from a nearby branch, its spikes dripping with juice that would paralyze anything smaller than a rhinoceros (of which there were several dozen kinds roaming the gardens).
The pod grazed Yaz with barely a scratch. The Doctor, however, got a full dose right in her shoulder.
"Oh, not good," the Doctor hissed, as she brushed the seed pod away. "Back to the TARDIS, double-time." She reeled as the poison coursed through her system. "Maybe half-time. Just keep moving."
They made it, just as Yaz noticed her legs were turning to rubber. "Don't feel so good," she slurred.
"Yeah," the Doctor agreed. "The plant paralyzes you, in the hopes that local megafauna find you and carry you off to be a snack with the seed pod still attached. Imagine a tyrannosaurus rex as a pollinator species." Even as her brain swirled in lethargic fog, that image amused her, and she snorted. Then she realized Yaz was looking at her, unfocused and really scared.
"You'll be okay, we're safe in here," the Doctor added quickly. "Just need to sleep it off." She summoned the last of her strength to haul Yaz to bed and tuck her in, then promptly faceplanted on the floor nearby.
Yaz woke eighteen hours later, feeling like she'd been hit by a truck, then backed over and hit again. She groaned, and worked her tongue in her dry mouth as she looked around, inordinately relieved to be in a place she recognized. When she turned and saw the Doctor sprawled on the floor, she quickly hauled herself out of bed only to stumble down next to her.
"Doctor," she croaked. She pressed two fingers to the Doctor's neck and sighed in relief when she felt the steady but slow quadruple thumps of her two hearts.
She rallied a bit, and struggled to push the Doctor into a recovery position. Her entire body still felt wildly weak and sluggish, and she wondered briefly how she could summon help, alone in a time ship on a strange planet.
... alone in a sentient time ship on a strange planet.
"Um, TARDIS?" she asked, looking up and hoping she was addressing the ship properly. "Think you could help with the gravity in here for a bit?"
The lurch in her belly told her the question had been answered, and she swallowed hard as she got to her feet, now barely burdened by her own mass. She bent and scooped the Doctor into her arms, studiously ignoring the sensation of holding her as she deposited her into bed, and returned the favor of tucking her in safely.
"Thank you," she murmured, grateful as the shift in gravity gently receded and her insides settled. She sat on the edge of the bed, and brushed unruly blonde hair out of the Doctor's eyes. Suddenly, words she'd been holding inside for weeks came spilling out in an anguished whisper.
"You said I deserved to know you," Yaz said. "But I do know you. You're the Doctor. The one who stops the Daleks. The one who sorts out fair play across the universe. The one who shows me amazing things and tries to protect me from the bad bits. The one who spends decades in space jail. I know all that about you."
She sighed and shut her eyes. "And that's brilliant, you know? Amazing. But I guess I'm selfish, because sometimes I wish you were actually less than that. That the universe didn't need you, and that maybe it could be enough for you to stay with me."
She shook her head at herself. It somehow sounded even more awful out loud than it did contained in her head.
"Which is terrible," she continued. "Because I know the universe is complicated, and that there are lots of people who need you. I just wish it could be easier. That the stakes could be smaller. And not just for me. For you. I think you could use that... life on a smaller scale. Just for once. Just for a while." She took a deep breath. "Anyway. That's what I wish for you. A life like that. One I could spend with you, if you wanted."
She bent and pressed a kiss to the Doctor's forehead before wandering out to attend to food, a shower, and a good cry.
The Doctor pried her eyes open just in time to watch Yaz leave, still unable to move or speak.
She might as well have been in space jail, again. All she could do was think, and regret, and worry about her beloved fam. About her beloved Yaz, who both knew her and didn't.
Rather than wallow, she let herself contemplate something different. Maybe the future wasn't as written as it appeared.
She was the Doctor. The one who stops the Daleks. The one who shapes space and time. The one who never accepts defeat, who always came up with a plan.
And for the first time, she let herself realize: She was the woman who loved Yasmin Khan.
Weeks later, when paralyzing seeds were recovered from and nearly forgotten, they were sampling festival-food-on-sticks in some distant galaxy, where the locals were celebrating the end of an enormously successful growing season. The farmers welcomed anyone across space to come celebrate with them, since they believed true gratitude was a treasure to be shared.
The air was warm, and carried the universally delicious scent of baked goods, and they strolled up a hill to overlook the festival and the binary suns setting over the distant horizon.
"Did I ever tell you about my wife?" the Doctor said, well aware it was the first time she'd willingly offered up a bit of herself, rather than just responding to Yaz's questions.
"No," Yaz said quietly.
"I have her journal, in my study. You could read it, if you want. She put all our adventures in there, right up to the end. Which was the first time we met." The Doctor shook her head, with a distant look. "Never did care for that particular irony of time travel."
Yaz stayed silent, watching her.
The Doctor smiled. "She would have liked this," she said, gesturing to the festival with a neatly skewered sweet roll. "Always one for a good sticky bun," she added, as she dispatched her remainder of her treat. "We were all out of order," she added after a long moment. "Never knew when I'd see her. Never knew when it would be the last time, until it suddenly it was."
"That's a hard way to love somebody," Yaz murmured.
The Doctor turned sharp eyes over to her. "It is," she agreed.
There was more she wanted to say, about how Yaz deserved better, and how these months of experiencing linear time at her side had been the best she could remember.
"Doctor, I think... Would you take me home?"
The Doctor nodded. "Yeah, 'course," she murmured, even as she ached from it. "Now?"
Yaz shook her head. "When the festival's done."
She was extra careful this time, and might have psychically begged the TARDIS to help her deliver Yaz back to Sheffield a mere hour after their departure.
Yaz waited at the door, hesitant to leave, somehow knowing it would be her last time in the blue box. "Will I see you again?" she asked.
"I think so," the Doctor said. "But it'll be different, yeah?"
"Yeah. Guess it always is."
The Doctor stepped boldly from behind the shelter of the console, and crossed over, then stopped short. "Yasmin Khan," she said, in a whisper. She reached up to cradle Yaz's face in gentle hands. "Two hearts aren't enough to hold what I feel for you. Please believe that."
Yaz shut her eyes, trying to hold back tears.
The Doctor ducked her head, planting the lightest kiss against Yaz's lips. "Be amazing," she murmured.
"Goodbye," Yaz choked out, before pulling away and leaving the TARDIS for good.
The Doctor stood there for a long minute, calculating all the ways she could rewrite the course of time and change this moment to be something different. In the end, there was no other way it could have gone.
She turned, and walked slowly back to the console, then pulled that treasured note from her pocket to add one last item:
63) Goodbye
She tucked the note away, and wiped a stray tear from her cheek. "Right then. Work to do," she declared.
"PC Khan," Yaz reported to the nurse at the reception area in the hospital. "Dispatch requested I report here."
A woman approached and flashed a badge that Yaz didn't recognize. "That was from me," she announced, with a tilt of her head to draw Yaz away from the reception desk. "Gwen Cooper, formerly of Torchwood," she explained, by way of introduction.
Yaz felt a surge of alarm in her chest. "Jack's friend?" she said.
Gwen nodded, and led her down a hallway. "He sends his regards. Said this one belongs to you." She pointed to the door of a private room.
"This one..." Yaz took the extra step to peer into the door's narrow window, and nearly tripped.
Inside, the Doctor sat on a hospital bed, wielding a reflex hammer. She whacked herself in the knee, and watched in delight as her leg twitched upward.
Yaz's heart leapt. "I don't understand," she said to Gwen.
"She was picked up on the M1, walking north," Gwen said. "Has identification as a 'Jane Smith,' but no mobile. Threw around enough key words to trigger dormant Torchwood protocols, which is how I got here."
"Where's the TARDIS?"
"If you're referring to a time ship that the government definitely doesn't know about, it's not here," Gwen said dryly. "She says she hitchhiked on a Sontaran frigate. They couldn't be bothered to do a precise scan of Earth's metropolitan centers, so they just dropped her in London, and she started walking. The Met found her and decided she needed some observation."
Yaz wasn't really listening. She pushed the door open and stepped inside.
"Ah, Yaz! They found you. Was worried I might've been too late, again," the Doctor said, happily.
"You've only been gone two days."
"Oh. A few months, on my end. Had some research to do. Remember the Division?"
Yaz nodded.
"Right, so. As it turns out, not a shadow organization or a some cabal of extra double secret time lords. Just... science. 'The Division' was the process they used to split regenerations, how they spawned the original time lords from me... the OG-me. That's why it didn't have any operatives. It was all me, all along. Anyway, I used it to divide from myself. Now I'm here."
Yaz was looking past her, at the heart monitor on the wall. At the single heartbeat it displayed.
The Doctor followed her eyes, and held up the hand with the pulse monitor attached to her finger. "Ah yeah. So, that's new. Left some bits behind. Little simpler on the inside, now. Kept the important parts."
"You're human," Yaz breathed.
"Near enough as makes no difference," the Doctor replied, twirling the reflex hammer before dropping it behind the hospital bed. "Oops," she muttered, and nearly took a header off the bed to lean over and chase it.
Yaz reached for her, pulled her upright, and for a moment the Doctor thought she might be on the receiving end of another shove. Instead, Yaz let her hands wander across her shoulders, her arms, as if frantic to feel the realness of her. Her hands settled, fisted in the rainbow lapels of that ridiculous thriftstore coat. "You came back human."
"Yeah," the Doctor said, with a smile.
"Why?!"
"Because being with you, in order - even if it was just for a while... I loved that, Yaz. I wanted more of that. I wanted forever of that. Only one way to do it."
"But... you're the Doctor - the one who stops the Daleks."
"Actually, I'm Jane Smith," the Doctor replied, as she dug out a passport from her pocket, conveniently manufactured by the TARDIS before she'd managed to break lots of things. "Named after an old friend," she said, with a nostalgic smile. "And I can still stop Daleks, if that's a thing that needs doing. But... that's not who I am, that's just something I do. Somewhat frequently, usually around the first of the year, and always with my fam."
"You gave up everything..."
"Nah, not hardly," the Doctor scoffed. "Didn't have that much to give up. Never been lonelier than when we first met, you know? Then, suddenly, I had an entire fam. Just poof, right in front of me on a broken down train. You lot were a gift. And I almost squandered it. Did lose Grace, before I got smart about things. Still so sorry about that."
Yaz was starting to feel dizzy, absorbing the magnitude of the choice the Doctor had made. "So you 'divided' from yourself?"
"Yeah. The rest of me's still out there. Regenerating in a fried TARDIS on the other end of the universe, by now. Metacrises are a messy business. I just sliced off enough to be me. So... I'm not 'the Doctor.' I'm just a woman who has a fam in Sheffield. Who wants to live in order, for once. Who wants to be with the people she loves." She smiled, a bit cautious, unsure how to read Yaz's reaction. When Yaz didn't say anything in response, she coughed and rambled on a bit. "Though I'm probably pretty dull now, hope that's okay. Can't be takin' you across space and time..."
"That's never what I wanted," Yaz interrupted, finally finding her wits. "I wanted more of you."
"Could have a lifetime of me," Jane whispered. "If you want."
"Oh, don't be daft," Yaz whispered, before closing in and kissing her, soft and sweet.
From the hallway, Gwen chuckled a bit, then shut the door to give them some privacy.
Many, many years later, after another lifetime or two, the being still known as the Doctor took a faded, crumpled note out of a coat pocket and set it carefully next to a treasured blue book on a shelf in the TARDIS' library.
The Doctor smiled, and vowed to remember.