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The chrysanthemums were in full bloom at this point in the year - or whatever approximations an indoor garden on an interstellar ship takes. They squatted in amongst buddleias and sunflowers and some strange, vividly purple plant with sweeping petals the size of Yaz’s palm and huge, glistening thorns.
Yaz wasn’t sure why the gardens were here, nevermind how. The Doctor never seemed to sleep, which made the immaculate nooks and impossibly tended gardens of the TARDIS somehow make perfect sense; in amongst miles of corridor was a jumpy, eccentric little woman who had eight to ten hours to pass as her friend slept. It stood to reason that she had plenty of time to develop a green thumb.
It was drizzling in the garden, which also did not make sense. How the tiny pond in the east had fish in it, how the soil was rich enough to support so many flowers, how the rain fell from a ceiling that looked like sky, how a slight breeze wafted through - none of it made sense. Especially considering that it was all frozen in a spaceship that seemed to spend most of its life suspended in space or in the swirling hurricanes in between tangible moments in time.
But it was drizzling all the same.
It was that horrible, fine rain that begins overnight but nobody notices until they step out for work in the morning. The kind of rain where, if the ground wasn’t wet and the puddles dancing, you wouldn't notice it: the kind of rain that doesn’t let you know it's there until you’re soaking.
She’d hidden under the lip of a pillar somewhere in the garden. There was a small lawn, and a set of paving stones, and immaculately cut grass that had somehow materialised between flowerbeds of god-knows-what from the planet Zorb.
Joining the raindrops as they hit the ground were soft, wordless tears.
If you asked the Doctor what the heaviest thing in the universe was, she could tell you, to some degree of accuracy, because she knew those sorts of things.
If you asked Yaz, she would say a fifty pence piece, because she knew that getting better is so much harder than letting yourself get worse.
Getting worse is easy. It’s just letting go.
Healing is harder. It’s clinging on until your fingers bleed.
On the worst night of your life - when the world is darker than it’s ever been before - all anyone ever wants to be is in the arms of their best friend.
Because, then, you don’t have to keep holding on. You can let go, and let them hold you up until you’re strong enough to retake your grip for yourself. That way, you get to rest without having to fall back down to where you were before.
Yaz was aware that she was, slowly, being soaked to the skin. She was aware that her legs had gone to sleep and that the wind was stealing the heat and feeling from her fingers as it whipped past, but she couldn’t move. Part of her was screaming to get back inside - or, at least, into a room that had the decency not to pretend like it was inside - but a larger part of her was too tired to even think in full sentences.
A larger part of her, a part of her that was slowly leeching out from a tiny corner of her mind to poison her entire brain, that was telling her that all she ever needed to do was sit in this one spot in this one garden in this one tiny, imperceptible corner of a miracle so she could slowly turn to stone.
Stone never bothered anybody. Stone wasn’t a burden.
She stared with unfocused eyes into the gathering puddles in the paving stones. The rain was gently bouncing into them, creating tiny ripples that banged into each other, merging in ways that one would not expect only to force themselves away from one another again.
The entire garden seemed to slowly be turning more green in the drizzle. Normally, Yaz would expect rain to come with its usual cloak of unwelcome, grim dark. She would expect the world to become that bit more grey as the sun was shut off and those perpetual clouds sat suspended in the sky, but something about the garden was different; something in the atmosphere was fresher, kinder - something about the rain made the entire place seemingly sigh with relief.
Apart from the small bundle of the woman perched under a pillar, who faded into the background with practised ease so that she could be alone.
Although, on the TARDIS, she was never truly alone. The ship itself was alive, and always hummed with a mechanical pulse that really did at times feel like the mechanisms breathing. But the TARDIS was also a vehicle, and not a narc, so she didn’t entirely count.
It was the Doctor Yaz was worried about. She didn’t want the Doctor to see her like this, especially not when she was ancient and deadly and hurting, with so much going on herself - that, and she didn’t think she’d be able to force enough words out of her throat to be able to explain.
A single droplet of water dipped into the puddle forming right in Yaz’s eyeline. In a large plant pot held by a garden gnome was a collection of water droplets. The rain was fine, so fine that you wouldn’t know it was even there, and yet the pot was overflowing, and the gnome struggled to hold it upright in his tiny ceramic arms.
Under a fake sky, in a garden candescentally and defiantly green, was a flash of light grey against everything else.
Seeing the exact person that you’re trying to avoid is painful, especially when you know that they’ll get you talking and you’ll release all the pain that you’re not sure you’re done with yet.
After it has a chance to get hot, pain burns. Yaz had a habit of holding it to her chest in her hand and watching silently as it burned out her flesh. The Doctor had an infuriating way of peeling her fingers open and taking it away, so she couldn’t let it fester. In the long run, Yaz knew, it was better for her; but, in the short run, all she wanted to do was have time to merge into the stone behind her in the perpetual drizzle of a garden that couldn’t - and, let’s face it, probably didn’t - exist.
Yaz shook her head violently once, to dispel the thoughts. Mixing a history of disassociation and a life of hardcore sci-fi was always a fun old mix.
The flashes of light grey were getting closer now: close enough for the mop of blonde hair and vividly blue trousers to be seen sticking out from both the top and bottom of the coat.
The Doctor was coming closer swiftly, even in her zig-zagging across the lawn and in between the flowerbeds. Well, ‘in between’ wasn’t an accurate description of the few times that she launched herself across them on her deceptively agile legs to run and scan at some flower or other. To look at her, you wouldn’t be able to tell that she had been bleeding out on Yaz’s kitchen table less than a month ago.
Yaz had no idea how she did it. She couldn’t wrap her head - human as it was - around how the Doctor could flip a switch and pretend that everything that happened that night never had. It made her wonder what else the Doctor had been through that she simply turned off and decided wasn’t going to affect her. If she wasn’t so impressed, she may have found the room in her mind to be scared.
As foreseen, it didn’t take much longer for the Doctor to lock eyes with Yaz across the garden and start bounding over.
“Hi, Yaz!” she called, almost ear-piercingly enthusiastic. “I was just checking on the julkaberries. They may need sonicking soon, to help produce fruit non-toxic to cats.”
Yaz almost smiled. The Doctor could always be relied on to say something completely insensible.
Blending into the stone became harder as soon as the Doctor threw herself down next to Yaz on the step underneath the eve beside the pillar. “What’s up, Yaz?” she asked quietly.
Yaz wiped an escaping tear away from her cheek. “Nothing.”
The Doctor nodded and looked straight on. “Do you want to know how the garden works?” she offered instead. Yaz sighed deeply and rested her cheek against the Doctor’s shoulder. Long, slender fingers took her own and started to twist her ring, subconsciously. “Cause I do, too.” Yaz actually laughed a little. “The TARDIS won’t tell me! I think it’s something to do with the harmonic resonance and hard-light projection, but-”
The Doctor rambled on for a while about all sorts of science-y terms that Yaz didn’t hear or remember. She kept going into detail about how each theory fit with some aspects of the garden, but not with others, and how much power they’d all zap from the Eye of Harmony - “and, seriously, Yaz, the TARDIS would never divert that much power from the engines” - if they were going on.
Despite the constant stream of unintelligible technobabble, Yaz found the Doctor’s presence entirely calming. The way that the Doctor spoke in the most animated, joyful ways with a face made of play-dough and eyes still filled with so much wonder made Yaz think that, maybe, just maybe , when you have enough time, you can get back to who you want to be and find joy once again in the smallest of things.
Plus, under her cheek, the coolness of the Doctor was a reminder of the world around them. The world they found themselves in was cold and grey, and so was the Doctor; but the Doctor was also active, and present, and explaining things to Yaz in such a way that she didn’t feel like an outsider.
It’s funny, that, isn’t it? When you spend so long with people who are determined to remind you that they don’t want you to exist in their world, having someone do the bare minimum to include you in theirs is enough to make you stop and recalibrate.
Eventually, the Doctor’s rambling slowed down. Her hands still enveloped Yaz’s, which brought both women more grounding than either was prepared to admit. Yaz wondered briefly if the Doctor was aware that her thumb was slowly and ever so gently running over the back of her hand.
“You’re cold,” the Doctor said simply. She shrugged her coat off and placed it around Yaz’s shoulders.
Yaz followed the Doctor’s movements with her eyes. “Won’t you just get cold and wet now?” she mumbled.
Ancient and omniscient, the Doctor shook her head. Immature and foolish, she cracked a massive smile.
Through fistfuls of coat pulled up to her chin, Yaz watched her go out and stand right under the rain.
“She knows not to get my clothes wet,” the Doctor said, “because she’s sick of me trailing water around the corridors. You know that rain room in Japan where if you walk slowly you don’t get wet because of the sensors in the roof?”
“No.”
“Same principle.”
The Doctor came back over and sat herself down next to Yaz, so close that their legs were touching. For a moment, they sat and listened to the rain together.
“You’re my best friend, y’know, Yaz. I’m sorry I snap at you so much.”
“It’s okay, Doctor. It’s been a rough time for you lately. I get it.” She recalled, without any sort of fondness, her worst times. How she would wake up every single day and pray that she would just drop dead before she reached school - if she felt empty anyway, she might as well get some proper rest in the meantime. She remembered, without any sort of fondness, the days when the only emotions strong enough to break through her cloud of mental fog were the guilt she felt for existing and the irrational rage that clawed into her voice whenever anyone asked if she was okay. She could still recognise the hatred towards herself for pushing her sister away, and sense the helplessness of being too exhausted ever to spend time with her.
The Doctor sighed and took Yaz’s hand again. “For you, too. Why are you sat in the garden in the rain?”
Yaz stared miserably out into the garden again. I couldn’t bear the thought of you seeing me like this. I wanted to hide myself from you, because then I can let myself be miserable.
“How’s your battlescar?” she asked quickly.
Gallifrey must have different cultures entirely. Gallifrey must have an entirely different culture. The difference in cultures between Earth’s England and Gallifrey’s wherever must differ in their entirety.
Because the Doctor grabbed a fistful of shirt from her midriff, yanked the hem out from where it was tucked into her trousers, and lifted it to reveal her bare stomach.
Yaz looked away quickly, startled, and trying very hard not to blush.
The Doctor pointed joyfully to a perfectly round scar in her side. “Right as rain! Thanks again for sewing me up. You’re quite good at it.”
“Secondary was rough. I got good at dressing blee-” She cut herself off and returned to staring at the flowers. “Sorry,” she muttered, instinctively.
The Doctor reached out to leave her hand resting against Yaz’s. “We’re all okay now. That’s what counts.”
Yaz’s face must have betrayed her as thinking something else.
The Doctor must have noticed. “Talk to me, Yaz,” she said softly.
Yaz let out a shaky breath and pulled at her fingers. She didn’t want to talk about it, but something about the Doctor always seemed to pull her sadness right out of her heart and blow it away on the wind like smoke. “I don’t- I don’t do that , anymore. There comes a point when you realise the world isn’t built for you.” The words didn’t feel like they were hers, and she needed to take a moment to allow them to settle before she could bear to continue. She leaned over slightly and let her forehead touch the Doctor’s for the briefest of moments. “You’re not straight, and you’re not white, so you can lump it, as long as half of the bloody British populace is concerned.” The rain started to fall heavier, in defined drops instead of a blended together mist. “And, you see - you swear to yourself, eventually, that you’re not bothered. You make an oath that you’re going to carve yourself a place in amongst a world that wasn’t built with you in mind. You’re going to carve its heart right out and sit in the centre of it and say, ‘No. No, I belong here, too.’” She collapsed over her knees. Her voice dropped lower than a whisper, but the Doctor betrayed no sign of difficulty hearing her. “And then you realise that it isn’t fair to come storming into people’s lives, hack away at them, and then thunder on off again, leaving nothing but a hole and your own twisted morals.”
“There is nothing morally wrong with loving women, Yaz.”
When she lifted her head again, Yaz was gently crying. She hoped that the rain would cover it. “I know.” She wiped the tears hastily away. "Intellectually. Emotio-” She cut herself off with a huge, sawing breath drawn in in an attempt to stop herself from sobbing. “Emotionally…”
The Doctor nodded silently.
“And when I’m with you, Doctor… It’s like breathing is the second most important thing, because all I can focus on, ever, is you.” If she kept her eyes fixed on that weird plant over there, then she wasn’t really saying these things, and she wasn’t having the anxious gnawing at her stomach to boot. “And that’s- God, I wish that that didn’t hurt me as much as it does. And the only thing that I hate more?” She looked over now to the woman she loved, and was met with those huge, sympathetic eyes that held entire star systems. She struggled to breathe as her sobs began to build. “I hate myself for hating it. How could I hate that I love you, when you’re, like, the best person in the universe?” She couldn’t finish what she was trying to say as another sob wracked her. As the Doctor wordlessly pulled her friend into her chest, Yaz finished what she meant to say in her head.
How can I hate that I love you when you saved the universe, over and over, even on the worst day of your life?
Yaz had fully let go, now. She sobbed openly into the Doctor’s chest, letting the alien trail her long fingers through her hair in such a human way. The Doctor, as alien as the flowers from light-years away, was so very human; she stayed, and she let her friend weep, and tended to her like she tended to every plant in the garden.