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Pain felt different across different bodies. The Doctor was never sure quite why, because things such as love and loss always felt the same - she always knew when it was jealousy or anger bubbling within her, as emotions had always had the decency to remain the same. Fear was still the gripping tightness in her lower abdomen, and jealousy the rising stone in her chest, and love the feeling of falling into a warm sea on a summer’s day.
But pain could never decide how it was going to raise its head.
When she was grey-haired and a stick insect, pain had felt like a rake against her bones. It would flare under her skin and sit there for a while, always more persistent than loud. When she wore a long scarf and had the mane of a lion and the grin of a hyena, pain had always been sharper. It would spike quickly, and stay lingering for a while - whereas it was nowhere near as blunt as the aforementioned body, it always managed to loiter for a similar length of time.
It was difficult to remember, of course, and even more difficult to describe; she hadn’t been the man in a long scarf for a very long time, now.
Pain as the blonde woman felt like tearing. It felt like the moment of grim anticipation you feel when a piece of paper drags across your skin in the wrong way, and you have to wonder if blood will start beading through your fingertips. It felt like the split second when you realise that you miscalculated terribly, and the knife is cutting into your skin, but there’s nothing you can do aside from curse.
Maybe it was more intense, too.
Or maybe it had been longer than the Doctor thought ago that they had last been shot.
Someone had put a hole in their side. She wasn’t entirely sure why, because she didn’t remember talking at anyone exceptionally quickly, or making any of the local mob bosses a bit too angry for them to be useful to her. However, somehow, she had successfully managed to piss someone off enough that they had pressed the muzzle of their gun into her flank (a regular enough occurrence, as it happens) and pulled the trigger (a not so regular occurrence, as it happens).
It was all terribly, terribly familiar.
Pain as the blonde woman felt like tearing. It felt like tearing yourself off of the ground where you fell, and ripping yourself apart, piece by piece, as you hobbled across the streets of Yorkshire.
She should just regenerate. It’s just a silly little bullet, as she had once said to a friend.
But she couldn’t bear the thought of dying without saying goodbye to Yaz - she was only home on a quick respite after the trouble they’d gotten into on Clom - and she couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing her Yaz again as this version of herself.
Everything had become so messy since that night in kitchen seven. There was still too much unsaid between them. Yaz had wanted to know everything, and she had been promised everything, and she deserved everything, but the Doctor couldn’t bring herself to say it. She had thought that, after the events of that night, when the clouds over the stars had cleared and the Doctor could see the night sky again, her and Yaz would let go of the dance they’d been dancing around one another since they met and allow themselves to fall. But they’d both gone back to their respective rooms and said no more about it.
Sure, there were more stolen touches and the Doctor couldn’t be imagining the renewed fondness in Yaz’s eyes, but there still fell a chasm of deep scars between them carved by time apart and the Doctor’s stupidity.
The Doctor’s stupidity.
Here she was, alone on the streets of Yorkshire, so exhausted and so unsure, dredging herself across the tarmac to the house of a woman who would never hear all the things she needed to say.
She could die once she got to Yaz. She could die after she saw her face one last time, after she held her hand, after she muttered those words that had crawled into the back of her throat and made their home there - never spoken and always felt, never seen but always alluded to. She could let those words out with the last breath she’d ever breathe, and then she could lose herself to the fire and let another person stand in her shoes.
I love you, Yaz, she’d say, and then she’d let go.
The Doctor reached Yaz’s flat in a state of buried relief. She’d have to take the lift, there was no hope in hell that she’d make the stairs. The tearing in her side felt worse than before - angrier, and more hostile. As if the universe itself was refusing to let her get to her best friend.
To hell with the universe. She wasn’t sure if she’d said it out loud or not. She was too distracted by keeping her eyes in focus long enough to press the button which called the lift. There’s none of it left.
Her hand was digging into her side where she was trying unsuccessfully to keep the blood in her body. Where she leant against the wall of the lift, a smear of crimson was left against the chrome. She muttered an apology to the metal like it could hear her.
Her vision was swimming in and out. She would take a step forward, black out, and come to three steps from where she began; her head was a mess of cotton wool, and her brain didn’t work at all. She had become a simple LED display, with one flashing message breaking its way through bouts of impenetrable darkness: GET TO YAZ.
She was at the door before she’d really realised she would be. Half of her journey there, she realised, was a complete blank. In fact, the Doctor couldn’t even remember deciding to come here at all. The first thing she remembered after the ringing in her ears was peeling herself off of asphalt and heading in the direction that was, in her head, the only option at all.
The direction that would bring her here, exhausted, leaning against a door frame and hoping that it would swing open if she could just knock-
“Doctor!” Yaz said, cheerily, as she opened the door. “I wasn’t expecting you back for a few hours. Everyone’s gone out, but- Doctor?”
The Doctor’s head was still full of loft insulation. She could barely see Yaz, and had to squint through the light. Why was it so bright? Had the entire planet fallen out of orbit and half an AU closer to the sun? “I’m okay,” the Doctor forced out, although her words were minced and she wasn’t sure if she heard Yaz well enough to have answered the right question. But she meant it. Ish. On seeing Yaz’s face again, she was suddenly filled with the most determination that had ever set into her bones in all of her three thousand years. She would survive this, because the thought of Yaz being different from how she was in any way whatsoever made her want to undo the universe in revenge. She couldn’t see her through different eyes, she couldn’t, because that was far too close to Yaz changing for the Doctor to ever let it happen.
She lifted a hand up and let it rest gently on the human’s face. When it dropped again, there were streaks of blood on Yaz’s cheek.
“Doctor,” Yaz asked, suddenly severe - like the Doctor could tell - in her tone. “What happened?”
She moved her hand away from her side to reveal the perfectly round, burnt hole left in her jumper and the layers of blood that had dried and coated her fingers. “I think,” she said, drowsily, now swinging violently on her feet, “that I got shot.”
She looked up from her hand and directly into the eyes of Yaz, who’s face, contorted with sudden grief, was the last thing she could remember before the nothingness dragged her in.
-
Doormats hold a surprising amount of blood.
Grey carpets show up the stains far too vividly.
The expensive vase on the table doesn’t seem so important anymore when you knock it off to lay down your best friend.
The Doctor’s body lay exactly where Yaz had left it on the table. The streaks of blood stiffened on Yaz’s cheeks where the Doctor’s fingers had painted them.
She refused to let her become a dead body. She’d checked for head injury, and there seemed to be a mild concussion - but fuck knows what ‘mild’ is for a Time Lord, right? It’s not like there were Gallifreyan anatomy books laid about - and grazes on her temple where she’d kissed the asphalt, but nothing else.
Blood transfusion was out of the question, and so was any hospital, as the body of an extra terrestrial was probably exactly the excuse America and North Korea needed for all the itchy fingers to finally meet the buttons they’d been edging for God knows how long, but she was losing far too much blood. It didn’t help that the Doctor’s blood pressure seemed to be so exceptionally high that Yaz could probably use her jugular as a power washer. She only had so many towels in the house, and, already, most of them were sodden on the floor.
Get the bleeding under control. Get the bullet out. Sew her shut. Not in that order.
She couldn’t stop the bleeding. That’s what she’d spent the last however long trying - unsuccessfully - to do. There was nothing she could do except remove the bullet and stitch up the wound.
Because sticking her fingers into her alien friend was exactly what the plan had been for this Saturday.
She hated it, with all her being. She hated having to press her fingers into her best friend’s side and feel around for the object that might become that which separated them forever. The more that she had to dig, and the paler the Doctor’s unconscious face became - the more it resembled a corpse - the harder Yaz had to fight to stop herself from throwing up.
The Doctor wasn’t going to die, but Yaz just might. Even if the Doctor survived this - regenerated, or whatever - she wouldn’t come out the other side of it as Yaz’s Doctor. She’d be a whole different person, and it would be a loss just the same.
The thought spurred Yaz on. She started looking harder for the damn bullet, magically finding that she could push the torrid nature of what she was doing out of her mind with the even greater ugliness of the thought of having to exist without her.
In amongst the glistening flesh and unfamiliar surroundings of the inside of the Doctor’s abdomen was a small, silver object. It was hatefully warm against Yaz’s skin as she dropped it into a cereal bowl. It sat there for a very long time, staring back up at the terrified woman as if daring her to contemplate the very loss she was trying to prevent for long enough to let it occur.
Her fingers fumbled through her mother’s sewing needle and the medical thread that had somehow materialised. She didn’t know they had it, but the apartment had been torn apart whilst she looked for it, so it better be worth it.
As Yaz pulled needle and thread through soft flesh, she was haunted by the possibility of the Doctor coming to at the exactly wrong moment and seeing all of the work that Yaz was doing just to keep her alive. She dreaded the Doctor seeing the flannel across her own forehead, and the stitches in her own side, and the way that she couldn’t sit up unassisted if she tried and decided that she hated it all. That she hated Yaz for doing it.
Her hands shook as she tied the knot in the end of the thread. Her legs gave out before she could sink to the floor. Her lips trembled as she pressed them to the back of the Doctor’s blood-soaked hand.
-
The world is never as dark when you wake up after a nightmare.
The shadows are longer, and the world seems slightly more hostile, but your mind, being on edge, searches for one thing - light. Never are you more aware of the light around you than when taking shelter from the encroaching darkness.
The Doctor was in a bed that wasn’t hers.
She wasn’t entirely sure where she was, but it was warm enough and friendly enough that she decided to stay. In the back of her mind, the Doctor was vaguely aware that she was in no state at all to move, so, even if it wasn’t wise to stay where she was - an entirely plausible situation - she probably would anyway. Her one side was gaspingly painful and sat in a quiet smirk of maliciousness, and there was a weight pressing down on the other.
As it turned out, when the Doctor could move her head enough to check, that extra weight was Yasmin Khan.
Most of the night before had been lost in the Doctor’s memory to a gathering and dismissive folder of thought that, when she checked, was simply labelled as “Not Fun.” She had no recollection of how she ended up in Yaz’s bed, and she certainly had no memory of how her friend came to be on top of her in Yaz’s bed, but she was almost certain that those memories wouldn’t end up in that folder. She must have been further out for longer than she realised.
The Doctor shifted slightly under Yaz and winced. When Yaz responded by moving a little out of her way, the Doctor winced harder. Her friend was meant to be asleep for this bit.
“Two questions,” Yaz’s voice said, with the grainy quality of someone who hadn’t quite managed to sleep for a single second. “First question: are you okay?”
“Yeah, Yaz, I’m fine. Thank you for stitching me up.”
“No problem. Second question: what the fuck ?”
The Doctor grimaced. She didn’t want to explain, and nausea gripped her stomach in a vice-like claw. Did they have to do this now?
Although, she supposed, Yaz deserved answers.
“I’m so sorry, Yaz,” the Doctor said. “I don’t know what happened… I was doing my usual, and then-”
“Why come here?”
The Doctor stared straight up at the ceiling. She had been wondering that, too.
“It couldn’t have been a hospital.” Yaz would know why the Doctor tried to avoid being in hospitals as much as possible. Too many questions, too many excited scientists with knives and rogue plasmavores. Plus, she never went anywhere that was just initials. “I panicked.” The words seemed to sit awkwardly on her tongue. This tone of conversation - open, honest, with nothing left hidden and no way to make things seem like less of a big deal - was like having all of the wounds she’d ever had on every inch of her body ripped freshly open again. The feel of the words were wrong in her mouth as she continued, “I didn’t know where else to go.” A deep breath. A leap of faith. “I couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing your face again through these eyes.”
Without a word passing her lips, Yaz brought herself closer to the smoking ashes of the Doctor that had been tipped on her life.
“I want to tell you everything.” Those same words that had punctuated the longest moment of her life, said the same way, with the same unfulfilled promise dripping off of them and into the time vortex swirling at the women’s feet. “But everything, in my case, is quite a lot. So… For now… Can we settle for me saying that I meant it?”
“Meant what?” Was it anger or suspicion that darkened the corners of Yaz’s words? Or was she scared?
Fear was still the gripping tightness in her lower abdomen.
“The kiss.”
Jealousy, the rising stone in her chest.
“I want to know that you’ll be with me for eternity, Yaz.”
And love the feeling of falling into a warm sea on a summer’s day.
“I don’t ever want to leave you, Doctor.”