Work Text:
It was almost funny, wasn’t it? Her phone had been a useless brick for so long that the chime of an incoming message was almost an alien thing, foreign to her. Early on, she’d watched the battery slowly die over the too-quick course of a few days, and she’d kept it close like a talisman ever since, dead and silent and close to her heart. Putting it back in her jacket pocket when she’d changed had been more instinct than thought. The TARDIS must have charged it for her, though it had taken three stops before it had finally latched onto the network again. Karvanista and Vinder and Bel, then Claire and Kate Stewart—and Dan, finally. Safe as houses, though his was still, unfortunately, a bit small for proper living.
“Don’t worry,” he’d told her, eyes crinkling. “I can stay with the old folks for a bit.”
She missed him already. She could admit that to herself, here. Everything back to normal, in the quiet, sallow hum of the control room, as the Doctor danced with the TARDIS, flipping switches, murmuring reassurances. They hadn’t left just yet. Something about the aftershocks, something about the TARDIS still being cracked through and coated in ooze. Something about the way the Doctor’s hand kept straying nervously to her pocket. Something about the way she hadn’t said a word since they’d dropped off Dan in Liverpool, at the hole where his house had been.
Well. There would be time for all of that, yet.
And now—Yaz stared down at the notification blinking up at her innocently. Guilt pooled in her stomach. Months and months of avoiding their calls, their texts—and then three years where there had been nothing to avoid. Not even a hologram to remember them by. Not even the comfort of knowing Nani was out there, somewhere. If she’d dropped in, on the family she’d never even met, would it have been like meeting strangers? Or would she have found something of her mother’s nose in someone else’s face? An echo of her sister’s voice, or the curve of her brow?
She hadn’t gone looking. She hadn’t been brave enough to find out. Besides. There hadn’t been time.
“Doctor,” she breathed, and the Doctor ground to a halt, hands plunged into the console. When she looked up, she seemed almost glad to have been interrupted, like she’d been waiting for—well, waiting for what? The other shoe to drop, Yaz wondered, maybe a bit unkindly. Or maybe just for someone to tell her what to do next, she thought. The movement of her hands was oddly listless. The shine of her eyes was just a bit too bright. She’d changed her clothes as well, but there was still something—off. Strange. Stranger than usual, anyway. Yaz wasn’t sure what to make of it, yet.
“Alright?” the Doctor asked, eyebrows raising. She smiled, eyes crinkling, and it reminded her of Dan—happy, because somebody had to be. Happy, because what was the other option?
Happy, for her sake.
Her phone buzzed again in her hand.
“Can we make one more stop?” she asked.
The truth was, that face was as impenetrable to her now as it had been three years ago.
“Of course,” the Doctor said.
The TARDIS landed clammily where it always did, the same concrete slab outside her estate. Cool, damp air greeted her, as they emerged. Water drizzled half-heartedly from the low-lying clouds obscuring the skyline. Winter—or close enough, anyway. She hadn’t asked how near they were to the day and time she’d specified, because sometimes it was easier just not to know. Now she knew how difficult piloting the TARDIS was at the best of times, she couldn’t even be cross about it, anymore.
“Are you sure you’re alright with this?” Yaz wondered, as they walked up to the entrance. She closed her eyes, against the familiar smell, the familiar squeak of her trainers on the floor. Home was never the same as how you left it, except when it was.
“Fine,” the Doctor said, mildly incredulous, mildly offended. Yaz only stared back at her patiently, until her nose wrinkled. “Of course it’s fine,” she said, cracking. “You’re not—I mean—well, it’s—”
“It’s just a visit,” Yaz said, taking her hand impulsively, pulling her into the lift. She stumbled, and Yaz caught her by the elbow, too. Closed circuit, two hands. Two pulses, hammering under her fingertips. “I’m not going anywhere,” she promised. “I just—I just missed—”
She swallowed fiercely. She hadn’t cried once—not in Medderton in the aftermath, not in any of the dingy, lice-ridden bedsits they’d sheltered in over the years, not when she’d said goodbye to Peggy, not when she’d sliced open her thumb with a machete in Liaoning—and she wasn’t about to cry in a lift, with the Doctor, with everything finally set back to rights.
But the Doctor’s pulses pounded under her grip, and her eyes widened. Alarmed, unsure. Alien. The strange expression didn’t last long, though, before it collapsed into chagrin.
“Of course,” she said, brow wrinkling. “Of course you did. Of course you missed them, Yaz, I’m—”
“If you say you’re sorry, I might have to step on your toe,” Yaz said. “It weren’t your fault.”
The Doctor’s face twisted in a way that suggested she thought otherwise, but there wasn’t time to pursue that line any further. The lift screeched to a shuddering halt. The doors clattered open, spilling tepid daylight.
“And I’m only saying,” Yaz continued, stepping through, the Doctor’s hand still dry and cold in her own. “You don’t have to come. I wouldn’t be cross. I’d understand, I mean.”
The words tasted sour on her tongue. She hadn’t meant for them to sound like a dismissal, but couldn’t be sure what the Doctor would hear in them.
“I know,” the Doctor said, not offended in the slightest. Her fingers squeezed around Yaz’s own, once, twice, and she let go. “…but what will you tell them?”
Alien, again. Eerie. And almost prescient, the way she cut through the noise to the heart of what Yaz was really worried about. Once, she’d thought of it as a strange sort of privilege, getting to listen to the Doctor drop the act. Eventually, she’d come to understand that something wasn’t a privilege unless it was freely given.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, truthfully. “What should I tell them?”
What can I tell them, how can I tell them?
There was a scar on her thumb, and three stubborn grey hairs encroaching on her temple. The distance between her and Sonya before had sometimes felt mountainous. Now, it felt unclimbable. She could barely remember the sound of her voice, the curve of her brow, and admitting it felt like some hideous crime. The Doctor’s face, the Doctor’s voice, the feel of the Doctor’s cool hand in her own, stamped onto her brain for years and years, unfailing. Did she love her more than them? Was it possible, was it right? If it was right, then what sort of person did that make her?
“It’s not zero-sum,” the Doctor said quietly, not answering the question she’d asked aloud. The hair on the back of Yaz’s neck prickled, but she didn’t point it out. Was this a privilege? Was this a gift? “And remembrance isn’t love. Or it’s not the only mark of it, anyway. I’ve loved thousands of people, so many I’ve lost count. I couldn’t keep them all in my mind’s eye, because memory is finite. But love isn’t.” She settled back into herself, shifting uncomfortably, like she’d perhaps said more than she intended. “Tell them however much you’d like. But don’t feel bad for forgetting them. You’re only human, after all.”
“Alright, big-head,” Yaz said quietly, and watched her smile, brief, brilliant. “Thanks, Doctor.”
Back to business as usual, all raised eyebrows and a face smoothed free of guile. The door to her flat loomed before them, Sheffield sky lurking at their backs.
The Doctor’s nose wrinkled. “Am I gonna have to do small-talk?”
“Oh, yeah. Loads.”
“D’you think I’ve improved?”
“I’m sure Mum’ll tell you.”
The Doctor shuddered.
“I didn’t say before,” she said furtively. “The first time, I was too excited to be invited ‘round, but I’m not good with mothers, historically.”
“You like my mum.”
“She’s fantastic! She doesn’t like me, though. I overcompensated, first time we met, classic mistake.”
“She likes you fine,” Yaz protested. Her key was cold in her pocket. Was it right, to open the door herself? Was she a stranger, now? Did she owe them a knock on the door, time to straighten up, time to prepare? “You’re just a bit—odd.”
A flash of hurt, out of the corner of her eye.
“Not to me,” she said, exasperated. “But they’re—“
Before she could make a decision—stranger, or sister?—the doorknob began to twist from the other side.
“—smaller,” she finished quietly, as Sonya flung open the door.
For a moment, they only stared at each other.
“Were you gonna stand here talking for hours?” she asked eventually. “Or were you planning on letting yourself in at some point?”
The irritation on her face blossomed into something stranger, sadder. And her voice was infinitely familiar, and Yaz knew the curve of her brow like she knew the curve of the earth, and when she fit into her arms the shape of her was the same as it had always been, and the same as it always would be. How silly of her. There was no decision to make, she realized, tears prickling behind her eyes. She was a sister, not a stranger.
“Hey, no-mark,” she whispered into her shoulder.
“Where’ve you been, loser?” Sonya demanded quietly.
And that was the question, and it was written in everything she couldn’t explain—the scar on her thumb, the grey in her hair. Three years, and the months and months before. She pulled away, chilled. She wasn’t a stranger, but how could she bridge the distance between them? How could she crawl back down to Earth from the stratosphere? She’d never quite understood it, before—why the Doctor had ran from her home, why she’d nearly ran from them, too. She understood, now, she thought. And she realized, with a strange, guilty start, that she wasn’t sure what to do next.
“Are Mum and Dad home?” she asked, dodging the question.
Sonya looked back at her warily. “Yeah,” she said, the snotty veneer she lived in creeping back inch by inch across her face. It never quite made it. “No guarantee, though. You messaged me three days ago.” She swallowed. “I waited.”
“I’m sorry,” Yaz tried.
“My fault,” the Doctor intervened, a light hand on Yaz’s forearm, smooth like she only ever managed by accident. “Never been a very good pilot.”
At the word ‘pilot’, Sonya frowned, but she said nothing. Only tilted her head behind her, earrings glinting.
“Come on, then,” she said, and turned her back.
“Sonya?” her father called, and his voice was the same mix of familiar and not, beloved and strange. Like listening to a ghost. “Was that the postman again?”
The warmth of their flat beckoned, where the quiet hum of kitchen conversation had stilled in anticipation, where the roiling boil of the kettle had overtaken it. The modern world was so loud. She could hear every train behind them, the hum of every street light. Everything foreign, even the things that ought to have felt familiar. If she stepped through the door, would it feel right? Would it still feel like home? Was she brave enough to find out?
Sister, she reminded herself. Sister, daughter.
The Doctor took her hand.
“Nothing wrong,” she said quietly, into Yaz’s ear, “with taking the long way ‘round.”
“You’ve gotta stop doin’ that,” Yaz whispered.
“Doing what?”
“Reading my mind.”
The Doctor smiled, out of the corner of her eye. “I’m not,” she said, and pulled her through the door with no ceremony.
Clearly, Sonya hadn’t bothered to announce her arrival. As she and the Doctor cleared the entrance, her father glanced up from his newspaper and blanched. Her mum dropped the mug she’d been holding. Empty, thankfully. It didn’t break, but it clattered noisily against the kitchen tile. The Doctor flinched, beside her. Sonya stared stubbornly out the window, away from them all.
“Er….hi,” Yaz said, swallowing.
“Oh,” her father said, rising from the kitchen table. His newspaper fluttered gently to the ground, and the shape of him was familiar, too, when he wrapped her in his arms. “Much better than the postman.”
“Hi,” she breathed again, into his shoulder, eyes squeezing shut, the wool of his jumper scratchy against her cheek. For a moment, all she could think of was Professor Jericho, who had been the closest thing to a father-figure she’d had for years—and it wasn’t quite a betrayal, but the thought stuttered guiltily at the back of her head, until the feeling dissipated. Her dad was only her dad. She’d missed him for himself, not for the space he had left. When she opened her eyes again, her mum was still staring at her from the kitchen, lips pressed together.
Stranger, sister, daughter—ghost.
“A text would’ve been nice,” her mum said mildly. Yaz’s cheeks burned, as she gently extricated herself from her father’s arms.
“Email,” her dad said, squeezing her elbows so she knew he wasn’t cross. “A letter under the door. Telegram, messenger pigeon—”
“Alright,” Yaz said. She had thought about it, funnily enough—the telegram, at least. A letter, left waiting for the right moment. If she’d truly been trapped—well, if she’d really gotten stuck—if she’d known there was no hope—but there had always been hope. Just a little bit, at least. And the mission, which had swallowed everything else. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, that fixes everything, don’t it,” Sonya said breezily. “Waltz back in, apologize, then waltz back out.”
Out of the corner of her eye, the Doctor was looking faintly green, and she wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“I’m not waltzing out,” she protested. “I—I came back. I’m here.”
“That’s what you said last time,” Sonya said. “And the time before that.”
“I can explain,” Yaz said. “Really, I can. I just—can I—can we—?”
The situation was unravelling—she was holding the thread in her hand, but the seam wasn’t holding. Another sorely-missed modern convenience she could add to the list, electric sewing machines. And what exactly, she wondered sickly, had she expected? After all, she thought next—she’d reacted just the same, once. At least so far, no one had shoved her. She glanced sideways at the Doctor, whose lips were pressed together so tightly they’d practically disappeared. She still looked faintly ill. At Yaz’s look, her nose wrinkled sympathetically, with less judgement than she probably deserved.
Point taken, she didn’t say.
“I’ll make some tea,” her dad said, which had been his instinct at the first hint of conflict since she’d been a little girl. Some things really didn’t change. “More tea. Sonya—?”
Sonya rolled her eyes and stalked to the kitchen, though she paused to pick up the mug on the floor carefully, eyeing their mother.
“Yeah,” Yaz breathed. “Tea. Great. Uh—Doctor—?”
“Hi.” The Doctor waved uncertainly, still looking like she’d have preferred to melt into the floor, or disappear into the wall or something, but was gamely pretending otherwise.
“Hello, Doctor,” Yaz’s dad said, from behind the kitchen counter. He sounded genuinely happy to see her, which had to count for something. “Tea?”
“Love some,” the Doctor said. “Tea at Yaz’s. Love tea at Yaz’s. Hi, Yaz’s mum.”
“Najia,” her mum corrected, still far too mild, coming slowly around the kitchen island. The back of Yaz’s neck prickled. “And you’ve got some explaining to do.”
“Right,” the Doctor breathed, tensing. She didn’t quite brace herself. “Right, yeah. ‘Course.”
“It’s not her fault,” Yaz protested. “Mum—”
“You’ve been putting this all off for years,” her mum said thinly, glancing at her. “You never did explain any of it.”
“Trust me, it’s a long story. It were a long story then, and it’s even longer now.”
“We were worried. Even before you disappeared off the face of the earth for months, we were worried.”
“Well, you never said.” The words bubbled out of her mouth before she could stop them. Old hurts shouldn’t have felt as sharp as they did, but that’s what she got, she supposed, for keeping them in the cupboard for so long.
Sonya’s strangely watery gaze met her own over the island. She glanced away.
“You never let me in,” her mum said. “You never have.”
You never cared enough to push, she didn’t say, because she knew in her heart that it wasn’t quite the truth.
“I know,” she said instead. She wouldn’t apologize. An acknowledgement was close enough. Fingers reaching down from the stratosphere. They would never quite meet—and maybe that was alright.
“I want answers,” her mum continued, breathing shallowly. “We deserve that much. And you—” She turned her glare on the Doctor, who tensed and braced herself again.
“Best just get it over with,” she said nonsensically, squeezing her eyes shut.
The glare on her mum’s face twisted into a frown.
“What?” she asked.
The Doctor opened one eye, skeptically.
“What?” The open eye darted to Yaz in askance. “I thought—sorry, are you not gonna slap me?”
“She’s not gonna slap you,” Yaz said incredulously. “Where’d you get that idea from?”
“Of course I’m not,” her mum said, sounding faintly horrified by the idea.
The Doctor blinked, pleasantly surprised. “Oh,” she said, shoulders relaxing. “Good. Nice. Well, I mean, I would’ve understood.”
Yaz’s stomach flipped unpleasantly. “Doctor—”
“I’m just saying, there’s precedence.”
“Precedence for—?” Yaz’s mum shook her head. Then, she paused. “Are you alright?”
The Doctor blinked again in surprise. For one terrible moment, Yaz almost thought she was going to laugh, but she swallowed it back. There was still a strange, impenetrable look on her face. Since the TARDIS, it hadn’t quite disappeared.
“Yes,” she strangled out, eventually. “Yeah, fine. I’m just—I’m sorry.”
Her mum was relentless. “About what?”
The Doctor’s mouth gaped like a fish. “W-well,” she tried. “Would you like a list?”
Yaz swatted her elbow. “Not helping,” she hissed. “Mum—”
“Sit down,” her mum said, fingers raising to pinch the bridge of her nose. She flapped her hand in the direction of the sofa, irritably, avoiding her gaze. “Both of you. Please. I need tea for this. Something tells me you do as well.” She caught Yaz’s eye through her fingers. “But I’m serious, Yaz. About the answers.”
“I know,” Yaz said quietly. “That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
“Is that why you’ve been gone?”
The back of her neck prickled again. The Doctor’s face was bloodless in her peripheral vision.
“Of course not,” she breathed. “I just—I’ve been—”
“Tea,” her dad announced, over the calamitous roil of the kettle reaching its peak. “Milk and sugar, Doctor?”
“Please,” the Doctor said, thinly.
“Seven,” Yaz said on her behalf.
“Seven sugars?” She didn’t have to look to hear the frown in his voice. “That’s not tea, that’s treacle.”
“It’s the only way she’ll drink it.”
“Seven?”
“It’s fine,” the Doctor said, shifting uncomfortably. “Really—”
“She’s an alien,” Yaz said, ripping the bandaid off in what was probably the worst possible way, “with incredibly sensitive taste-buds, and it’s the only way she’ll drink it. Okay?”
The boil petered off with a click. The Doctor swallowed loudly.
“Well,” she said. “Right. Yes. Tannins. Alien taste-buds. That’s me. Also two hearts, an ecto-spleen, and a respiratory bypass system. And a time-sense. And the ability to regenerate my entire body. And an extra nerve-cluster at the base of my skull, but that’s probably more information than you needed or wanted, so I’ll just—”
“Not helping,” Yaz said.
The Doctor glanced at her again, this time with slightly more judgement.
Yaz shrugged. “Not like there was gonna be a better moment.”
Sonya leaned over the island counter with interest. “Wait, like a proper alien?” She glanced between the two of them, squinting. “Yaz, have you—?”
“Shut up,” Yaz said. “Shut up, shut up.”
“Is that why you’ve got no job?” her mum wondered, fingers pulling away from the bridge of her nose. “Is being an alien your job? But why are you friends with Yaz, then? And Ryan, and his grandfather?”
“Seven sugars it is,” said her dad, gamely, turning back to the tea.
“Really?” Yaz demanded, pulling the Doctor by the sleeve over to the sofa. “That’s what you’re focusing on? Why does she need a job?”
“Well, she’s middle-aged, we’ve all got jobs.”
“She’s not middle-aged,” Yaz protested.
“Oh, I haven’t been middle-aged for centuries,” the Doctor said, unhelpfully, as Yaz pulled her down beside her on the sofa. She settled stiffly, hands in her lap. “And I had a job, it didn’t take. Well, two jobs, but I only remember the one. Well, and I suppose what we do is sort of my job, only I don’t get paid for it. I should retire, honestly. Only I tried that, and I hated it. Tried death, too. It also didn’t take. Not sure it ever will take, if I’m honest.” She blinked, looking surprised, and then mildly perturbed. “Only I’ve never admitted that out loud before, and I’m starting to wonder if this was really the right moment. Is this how small-talk works?”
Yaz closed her eyes, just for a moment. “Doin’ great,” she said. “We’ll unpack that later.”
Her mum was settling gingerly into the chair across from the sofa, brows knitted together. “That’s how you knew what to do about the spiders,” she said, wonderingly. “And why you’re so strange.”
“Well—”
“You don’t look like an alien.”
“Mum,” Yaz said incredulously.
“You are really weird,” Sonya agreed, taking a kitchen chair for herself and settling her legs across the opposite one. She took a long sip of tea. “Makes sense, though, if you’re Yaz’s friend. We all thought she’d paid you, first time she brought you home.”
“Oi,” Yaz protested again.
“Ryan, I get,” Sonya continued, a bit too dreamily for her taste. “But his grandad, too? And her,” she tilted her head towards the Doctor. “Weird. Like I said.”
“Best not tell them about the plasterer from Liverpool,” the Doctor muttered. “Or the dog-man.”
“Dog-man?” Her dad made his way carefully from the kitchen, the rest of their mugs balanced in his arms. “I knew it. I read all about them in last week’s newspaper.”
“Fortean Times is not a newspaper,” Yaz said. “Neither is the conspiracy-theory forum, or the YouTube comment section.”
“No,” her dad said, bristling slightly. He pressed a perfect mug of tea into her waiting hands regardless. “The newspaper. There’s all sorts in it, these days. About those potato-men, and the shield around the Earth. Strange energy readings from space. Honestly, your strange, middle-aged friend with no job and weird clothes being an alien is one of the least surprising things I’ve heard this week. And I did start to wonder, when your third secondment went through.” He passed the Doctor her tea and straightened, looking at her seriously. “I thought of you,” he said. “I felt you were involved, somehow. My daughter, always being pulled away. Tapped on the shoulder, we all thought, until we didn’t. But I knew you would be helping.” He swallowed. “You were, weren’t you? Helping.”
Her throat was dry, suddenly. Her tea was warm in her hands. Perfectly made, just how she liked it, when it hadn’t been for years and years. “Yeah,” she breathed. “I hope so, anyway.”
He looked at her steadily. “Then I’m proud of you,” he said.
“She saved the world,” the Doctor said simply. “The universe, too, really.”
“It weren’t just me.”
“But it is just you,” Sonya said, from the kitchen table. She wouldn’t look at her, still. “You and her. Ryan and Graham are back home. I see them, sometimes.”
Yaz frowned. “See them—hold on, see them where?”
“It’s just you and her,” Sonya said, ignoring her. “So, where do you go? Where have you been?”
“I—” Yaz swallowed. “The Doctor has a ship. The TARDIS. It—it travels everywhere. Space, and time. That’s what we do. Travel around, seeing things. Helping.”
“That sounds dangerous,” her mum said, shifting uneasily.
“It sounds incredible,” her dad said, jumping slightly as her mum put a judgemental hand on his arm. “And dangerous,” he amended. “Very dangerous.” But he looked to the Doctor in wonder. “Is all of it true?” he asked. “The rhinos in Gloucester, the birds falling out of the sky. Those potatoes—”
The Doctor smiled. “Ask Yaz. She was there.”
“For all of it?” Her mum shifted again, fingers knitting together anxiously in her lap. “But—what happens?” she asked breathlessly. “What happens if things go wrong? Is there—is there insurance? What happens if you get hurt? What happens if you get stuck somewhere? On the moon, or—or—?”
Beside her, the Doctor swallowed. Yaz nudged her ankle with her foot in warning.
“Don’t be silly,” she lied, easily, perfectly. The scar on her thumb itched. “It’s perfectly safe.”
The Doctor sucked in a breath of protest, so she kicked her a little harder.
Her mum’s eyes narrowed. “Then why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“Because I knew you’d take it like this,” she said, exasperated. “And I weren’t sure how to explain it, without—“ Without you thinking I’d gone ‘round the bend, she didn’t say. Sonya’s eyes burned at the back of her head. “I wasn’t sure you’d believe me,” she said. “Used to be, the only aliens dropping out of the sky were the Doctor.”
“And who is the Doctor?” Her mum turned her gaze away from Yaz, pinning the Doctor under her glare. “After all this time, we deserve to know. Where are you from? Why are you here? Why Yaz?”
“Mum,” she protested, irritation bubbling up, a strange protective urge she wasn’t sure the Doctor even needed, let alone deserved. But the Doctor’s hands, she noticed, were trembling ever so slightly. When she caught Yaz looking, she clasped them nonchalantly and placed them in her lap.
“Er,” she said. “It’s okay. Big question. Not quite the small talk I was thinkin’ of. I—“ She swallowed. “I’m from a planet called Gallifrey, but it’s—it’s gone. I’m here because I like your planet. I like your planet because I like the people. And I like Yaz because she’s the best person I’ve ever met.” She glanced at Yaz, eyebrows raised hopefully.
Yaz nodded, swallowing tightly. For a moment, she was back on the Cyber-carrier, looking back at Graham in the gloom, tears gathering hot and embarrassing behind her eyes. It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. She wasn’t sure he’d believed her. She wasn’t sure he’d understood. Did the Doctor know? Did the Doctor understand? There wasn’t anyone on Earth who spoke about her like that—not her sister, not her parents, and certainly never her friends. She hadn’t had any, really. She could admit that to herself, here, home.
The truth was, there wasn’t a single person on this planet who looked at her like that, or believed in her like that, and it was a burden, and a gift, and a thousand other things she would never be able to describe.
And freely given. Maybe that was the difference.
“Thanks,” she breathed, swallowing hard again.
But her mum frowned. “What does that even mean?” she protested. “None of that was an answer.”
“You can’t just go prying, Mum,” Yaz said, suddenly irritated. Engulfed by the space between them, by the magnitude of all the things she’d never shared. “She don’t have to tell you everything, some of it’s personal.”
Well, that’s a different tune, she waited for the Doctor to say snarkily, but of course she didn’t. She only shifted again, uncomfortably, boot knocking against her ankle.
“It’s alright,” she said quietly. “I’d be worried, too,” she said, eyebrows raising good-naturedly, only she still hadn’t quite got the hang of it, fingers stiff and unnatural in her lap. “If it were me. Perfectly normal, worrying. Only you don’t have to, of course. Except for sometimes, probably, only really it almost always ends up going okay, I’m quite good at getting us out of trouble. And into it. But mostly out of it. So is Yaz! At getting out of trouble. Well, and into trouble, sometimes—a few—a few notable times, but really on the whole—very safe. Very, very safe.” She pressed her lips together, likely in the hope of shutting herself up. She glanced sideways at Yaz in mild despair.
“Are you a mother, then?”
The Doctor stiffened, and the mild despair in her eyes morphed into something strange and impenetrable. She blinked, the way she always did when she was trying to decide whether to lie or not.
“Not anymore,” she settled on gingerly, looking faintly ill. “Well, and not—technically a mother—” She swallowed. “I—”
Yaz’s mum frowned, but some of the accusatory edge had fled her voice. “I don’t think it’s something you can ever really stop being,” she said, quietly.
“No, I suppose not,” the Doctor said thinly. “Yaz, is—can I use the bathroom? Is that a thing people do?”
“Of course,” Yaz said, resisting the urge to touch her on the arm, resisting the siren call of a thousand questions bubbling in the back of her throat. If there was ever a moment, it definitely wasn’t right now. “Down the hall, first left. Are you—?”
“Thanks,” she breathed, “be right back, don’t wait up.” And fled, coat trailing behind. The back of Yaz’s neck prickled.
Sonya hummed in sarcastic appreciation, from her spot at the table. “Well-handled, Mum,” she said, not even bothering to look up from her phone. “Gold star for you.”
“I—” Her mum shook her head, exasperated. “I’m just asking questions.”
“You don’t understand,” Yaz said.
“Because you haven’t told me anything! You just show up, no warning—”
“I texted!”
“Three days ago,” Sonya pointed out.
“—no communication for months—”
“I text,” she protested. “Sometimes. I didn’t just leave with no notice.”
“Cryptic messages and weird selfies don’t count,” Sonya said.
“But it was even worse,” her mum said, chin trembling, “when they stopped. ”
Her dad placed a careful hand on her mum’s shoulder. “I’m going to make pakora,” he announced.
“No,” the three of them protested, in perfect, ironic harmony, but he only smiled weakly, following the script, disappearing as best he could into the open confines of the kitchen. Same as always. Nothing changed, but it did.
“I wasn’t gonna stay for dinner,” she said, watching the line of her mum’s jaw tense even further. “I was just—I just wanted to—”
“Drop in, drop out,” Sonya said lightly, still not looking up from her phone. It was a delicate act she was balancing, same as always—between caring too much and not caring at all. Making you guess, making you cross. “Have it both ways. You don’t want to say anything, but you don’t want anyone asking, either. That’s always been you, though, hasn’t it?”
“Sonya,” she breathed.
“I texted you for months, idiot.” She dropped her phone onto the table, emphatically. “What d’you think it was like, waiting? Not knowing whether you were even—” Her breath caught. The truth tangled in the undertow of what wasn’t quite a secret.
Guilt sank gloomily into the pit of her stomach. “I didn’t think—”
And what did that say about her, at the end of it all? She was fingers grasping down from the stratosphere, and missing.
“Whatever,” Sonya said, swallowing.
“That’s not fair.” Yaz stood, one knee lodged in the soft fabric of the sofa. Weak afternoon light was failing out the window, gloom slowly overtaking what was left, leaving Sonya a milky silhouette at the table, more form than shape. “You—I thought—“ Her mum was still and silent beside her, and so there was a mountain’s worth of things she couldn’t say. “I thought you’d understand. I had to go. I mean something, out there,” she breathed. “And I need—I need to mean something.”
Sonya gazed back at her, watery, furious. “You mean something here, too,” she hissed. “Maybe if you’d ever cared to notice, instead of just running away—”
“If I ever cared to notice?”
“I’m not talking,” she breathed, nearly incandescent, words clipped close to her teeth, “about them. Whatever, forget them.” Her lips twisted. Yaz recognized her expression, because it had been the same since they were kids—on the verge of tears, and hideously angry about it. “But what about me?” She scowled, so she wouldn’t cry. “I couldn’t—there was no one to call.”
“I didn’t need rescuing,” Yaz whispered. “I chose this.”
Sonya only stared at her, face bloodless. “You don’t always choose right.”
Her dad’s fruitless clattering in the kitchen had stopped. Out of the corner of her eye, he was frozen at the stove, listening. Her mum leaned forward in the armchair, frowning.
“What,” she demanded, “are you two talking about?”
Yaz ignored them. Sonya was right, for a moment—forget them. She loved them, but forget them. She had forgotten them, for a time, because she’d had no other choice. Remembering them would have cost her too much. Remembering Sonya would have cost her everything. And remembrance wasn’t love, anyway. How could she tell them, without hurting them?
“I’m sorry,” she said evenly. “I’m sorry I didn’t keep in touch. I was avoiding you, for a while. I didn’t know what to say. I don’t know—“ She swallowed. “I don’t know how to do this, anymore. But I wasn’t gonna avoid you forever, I just—but then I got somewhere I couldn’t contact you. Couldn’t contact anyone. But I’m here now, so can we just—?”
Sonya gazed back at her, fury melting out bit by bit, centimetre by centimetre. Reeled back where it would wait, probably, because Sonya nurtured grudges and hurts like children, sharpened them like sticks. But she nodded, finally. Then, she gestured to the hall. An olive branch, a distraction, a gift.
“Long time to take a waz,” she pointed out. “Even for an alien.”
There was no reply when she rapped her knuckles against the door.
“Doctor?” she tried, and didn’t bother waiting for a reply. The knob gave way easily under her hand, before the door caught on the Doctor’s raised knee. She glanced up in surprise, from where she’d wedged herself in awkwardly between the toilet and the bathtub, knees up by her shoulders, hands clasped tremblingly between. Her face was a shade away from green.
“Not really a big enough bathroom to have a crisis in,” Yaz said, squeezing herself in on an angle. “And believe me, I know from personal experience.” She crouched, as best she could, so they were eye-level-ish. Assessing. “Are you alright?”
The Doctor looked up at her bleakly.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Yaz said, tired. “It’s a fair question. You were trisected across three dimensions earlier today. And bein’ tortured in one.”
“Two,” the Doctor corrected, and then wrinkled her nose in regret.
“Two?”
“I don’t really—” The Doctor caught her breath, and leaned her head against the bathtub. “It’s a long story. Maybe better for not bein’ told on the floor of your bathroom.”
“Why the floor?” Yaz wondered.
Her lips pressed together thinly. “Bit of a wobble.”
Yaz shook her head. “You should have said something. This could’ve waited, I could’ve gone on my own.”
She waited for the dismissal, the brush-off, but it never came. “You’re right,” the Doctor said quietly, dodging her gaze. “I’m sorry. But I didn’t want you to have to go alone. And I’m fine, just—” She swallowed, sinking another inch towards the floor. “Just tired.”
“Why?” she asked, oddly touched. “I mean, I—I’m grateful, but you’ve seen my family. They drive me insane. And this whole visit has been a huge mess, even worse than I thought it would be. I wouldn’t have blamed you, y’know, if you hadn’t come. I don’t even want to be here.”
“Yeah, you do.”
She swallowed. “…Yeah. I suppose I do. I’m sorry about all the questions, though. My mum means well, she’s just annoying.”
The Doctor smiled, terribly. “She’s not annoying,” she said. “She loves you.”
“She loves me,” Yaz conceded, “and she’s really, really annoying.”
“You have a nice mum, Yaz,” the Doctor breathed, strange. “I—I know it must be hard, sometimes, but—she loves you.” Her foot skidded an inch forward on the tile. “She loves you,” she whispered.
Something twisted in Yaz’s stomach. She was missing something. She was always missing something, even after everything. Right now, maybe it didn’t matter.
“I know,” she said quietly, reaching down, offering her hand. The Doctor took it, freezing fingers clamping over her own, wincing as she was hauled unsteadily to her feet. “Come on,” she said, swallowing. Her grip shifted to the Doctor’s elbow, where the pounding of her hearts was less noticeable, where the chill of her skin was muted through layers of fabric. “Dad’s making pakora, my mum’s nowhere near finished with me, and you’re not fit to drive. I think we’re staying, whether we like it or not. Alright?”
“Tea at Yaz’s?” The Doctor smiled at her, looking drawn in the sallow bathroom light. Still, somehow, a comfort. “That’s always alright.”
“You don’t have to do any more small-talk,” she promised.
“I thought I was finally getting the hang of it.”
“Despite my mum’s best efforts.”
“I will say, between her and being interrogated by the Grand Serpent—”
“Were you really a parent?” She winced, even as the words left her mouth. “Sorry. I’m as bad as she is. You don’t have to answer.”
Her eyes were still so strange.
“Long time ago,” she said carefully, not moving away, not creating any more space. Not lying.
“Do you remember them?” Yaz asked quietly. “Your family.”
“No.” The Doctor smiled again, a little sadder. “Not always.”
“But you love them.”
“Of course.”
Her pulses pounded under Yaz’s grip. Strong and steady, despite the exhaustion in her face. Maybe she was alright, after all. Maybe she would be.
“Come on,” Yaz said, tugging her gently out of the bathroom, shifting her grip back to her hand. The Doctor didn’t shake out of it, so she kept holding on. It could be hit or miss, sometimes—hand-holding. The Doctor liked to hold her hand, but wasn’t always so fond of being grabbed herself. There had been some subtle seismic shift, though, ever since she’d returned from the past. Something different. More room to manoeuvre, more room to get close. The degree of their orbit was narrowing. Would they collide, she wondered, briefly, traitorously? Or would they spin out of each other’s gravity, before they could?
“Worryin’ about the future,” the Doctor said, yawning, “is only gonna make your neck stiff.”
“So is falling asleep on the sofa,” Yaz said, leading her across the hall, to where the door to her room had been left slightly ajar. “Which is what’s inevitably gonna happen to you.” She glanced at the Doctor, who, tellingly, wasn’t even bothering to protest. “I’ll handle my family. You,” she said, “can take a nap.”
She shouldered her way in. The smell hit her, first. The same, familiar smell—rose soap and the faintest hint of window cleaner. Her mum had been in, then. Besides that, nothing had been touched. Even in the gloom, she could see the outline of a shirt she’d left on the floor, a magazine partially read and abandoned on her nightstand. How many months ago, now? How many months, tacked onto those secret, unspeakable years, had she been away?
Her mouth dried up.
The Doctor’s cold fingers squeezed around her own.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I didn’t miss it,” Yaz said, swallowing around the strange, frustrating lump in her throat. “I missed you. I didn’t miss this.”
“Maybe,” the Doctor said quietly, “you just didn’t remember it.”
And she drifted off into exhausted silence, as Yaz walked her over to her unmade bed, as she undid the laces of her boots with fumbling hands. Yaz tucked them away where she wouldn’t trip. Then, she reached over the bed to draw the blinds, cut off the streaky city lights from encroaching on the peaceful dark of her room.
“Blanket?” she asked softly, but when she had maneuvered herself away from the window, the Doctor was already half-asleep, slumped sideways, face squished into one of her decorative pillows. Yaz smiled, and shook her head.
“Whole point of this was bein’ comfortable,” she muttered, hoisting the Doctor’s legs onto her bed so she was at least aligned properly. “But it’s not a great skill of yours, is it.”
The Doctor roused, slightly. “I can do comfy,” she muttered in protest. “Well. Sort of. Sometimes. And I really am sorry,” she breathed. “About what happened to you. Getting’ stuck. I never meant—” She swallowed. “If I could have stopped it from happening—”
Yaz interrupted her. “If you think for a moment that I blame you for any of it, you’re wrong. And also I’m vaguely insulted.”
That earned her a chuckle, at least.
“Besides,” she said quietly. “You weren’t exactly in a position to help.”
The sudden tension creeping in wasn’t as intense as it had been. They were too tired—too old, now, she thought. But the questions Yaz wasn’t asking were a chasm between them, and the Doctor was holding the answers tight to her chest, across the gap.
And that was the thing, wasn’t it. Not quite like looking in a mirror, but close enough to be alarming. Close enough she couldn’t look away. All that time spent asking what the Doctor would do, and when push came to shove, she knew, better than most and not where it counted. Orbit narrowing, impact imminent. With nothing between them, they’d collide and break apart. It was just a matter of time. It was always a matter of time.
“Doctor,” she ventured, gut twisting at the look on her face, at even the hint of further questions. She perched on the side of the bed, partially to avoid her gaze. “Can we go back for Dan? In the morning, I mean. Spent a lot of time with him, and—well, I feel bad, leaving him where he left off. He never talked about it much, but his life wasn’t going so well, before. Maybe he could use a bit more adventure. Some friends.”
The tension bled out of her shoulders. Yaz watched her relax back into the pillow, face softening.
“Of course,” she said, with a tired smile. “He’s a good lad. And you’d know, I suppose.”
“I miss him,” she admitted. “He’s a good friend. So was Professor Jericho.”
Her smile fell into something more solemn.
“Three years is a long time,” the Doctor said quietly.
“Not so long.”
“Long enough.”
“You’d know, I think.” She’d never said, how long she’d been away in the ten months she’d been lost to them. Yaz had never thought to ask, then. She’d had a long time to wonder, since. “I’m sorry.”
The Doctor’s brow pinched. “What for?”
Yaz took her hand, and said nothing. Did she want the answers she was looking for? Was she even looking for them, anymore? All she’d really ever wanted was the Doctor, the full picture of her, the whole piece of her—and she was here, quiet in the dark, as whole as she would ever be.
She understood better now, maybe. It had never been about trust, she thought quietly, all those secrets. It had been about love. It had been about what you could bear to say, and what you couldn’t bear to lose.
If it wasn’t freely given, she decided, she didn’t want it.
“Nothing,” she breathed. “It don’t matter. We have time.”
But the Doctor’s hand was slack in her own, and she was so fast asleep that when Yaz rose from the bed, she didn’t even flinch. It was one of the strangest things she’d ever seen—the Doctor sprawled in her terribly ordinary bedsheets, drooling into a pink fringe pillow.
Yaz carefully swept a raggedy piece of hair from her brow.
“I’ll be back,” she said, quietly. “I’ll be back.”
The Doctor only snored in response. Yaz left the door ajar, when she left, so the light of the hallway would still leak through. The Doctor didn’t like the dark. That was one of the most important things you could know about her, but it was also, Yaz thought sadly, a little bit of a secret.
When she slipped back into the living room, her mum was still sitting stiffly in the armchair, and the entire room was filled with the scent of faintly burnt pakora. Familiar. Her heart pounded in her chest, traitorously. Burnt pakora shouldn’t have brought tears to her eyes. She hadn’t missed them. She hadn’t missed this.
Her thumb throbbed.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly to her mum, under the sound of her father and Sonya banging about in the kitchen. “I’ve gone about this all wrong.”
Her mum looked at her, exhausted, sad. Happy. In the corners of her lips, in the shine of her eyes, she was happy to see her. Relieved to see her. How silly of her, not to have noticed.
“Do it right, then,” she said. “You have time.” She stood, and drew her into her arms, perfume lingering under Yaz’s nose. “I’m sorry, too,” she breathed. “I—I get so worried. And I never know what to say. I never knew what to say when you were younger, either.”
“You’ve got time,” Yaz said, into her shoulder. She buried her nose, and sighed. Above them, the smoke alarm began to chirp warningly.
“That’ll be dinner done,” her mum said. “Where’s the Doctor?”
“Sleeping.”
Her mum pulled away, smoothing a hand down the back of her head. “Is she alright?”
Yaz shrugged. “Sort of. Been a long day.” She swallowed. “Tell you about it?”
“From the start?”
“The short version,” Yaz offered. Minus the turtle armies, the near-death experiences, the end of the universe. The three years she’d spent trapped in the early twentieth century. There was plenty she could give. And the rest, she thought, settling. The rest could wait. Not forever, but it could wait. Just until she’d wrapped her own head around it. “We’d be here a long time, otherwise.”
“So you’re really not staying, then.”
Yaz smiled, carefully. “Lots more to see,” she said quietly. “More to do. More to learn. I’m not ready to let her go, Mum. But I’ll be back. Promise.”
Her mum gazed at her quietly. Uncertain, afraid. But she nodded, eventually.
“Okay,” she said.
“Come on,” Yaz said. “Let’s eat. I’m starving. You wouldn’t believe it, but it’s been a few centuries since I had a home-cooked meal.”
“It really travels in time, then?” her dad asked, bringing two steaming plates through from the kitchen. He set them on the table carefully. “The Doctor’s….ship?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, chair scraping underneath as she claimed her favourite spot. Sonya slid in across from her, eyes catching. “Time, space. Graham’s back garden. Liverpool, sometimes.”
Sonya passed her a fork, silently. Yaz took it.
“I’m sorry,” Yaz said quietly.
“I know,” Sonya said. “Idiot.”
“Liverpool?” Her mum’s face twisted, as she took her place at the table. Her dad slid in last, his back to the kitchen.
“Yeah,” Yaz said, taking a deep breath. “Where all this started. Well,” she reconsidered. “Actually, it started while we were being dangled over an acid ocean, but—” She laughed, at the looks on their faces. “I’m gettin’ ahead of myself. None of it started there, not really. It started here.” She leaned back in her chair, a home-cooked meal steaming up into her face, burnt on the bottom. Only salvaged, she thought, because of Sonya, which was mildly hilarious, and a little bit sad. She was missing things. Every time she came home, they’d be a little bit different, and so would she.
But maybe that was how it was meant to be. Maybe that was something you couldn’t escape, no matter what you were running from. No matter how long you were away from home.
“It started,” she said quietly, smiling, “with a monster on a train.”