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Yaz doesn’t quite know what to make of Rose. She’s had a year of just her and the Doctor, traveling the world, and they established a sort of equilibrium, a steadiness. There’s something reliable about the way their eyes meet across the TARDIS console, the way the Doctor’s hand is warm in Yaz’s when they run together.
Having another person around changes the dynamic, and Yaz can’t decide whether or not she likes it.
On one hand, Yaz admires Rose from the start. Rose is kind and brave and she’s always willing to team up to badger the Doctor into taking basic care of herself. She doesn’t stand for the Doctor’s avoidance tactics, either, and she manages to wring an apology out of the Doctor for how she’s been treating Yaz, which gives Yaz the confusing experience of feeling both grateful and inadequate.
On the other hand, Rose is definitely in love with the Doctor. It’s very clear. And she has a history with the Doctor that Yaz doesn’t quite understand— Rose shows her pictures of the two of them together, her looking exactly the same, the Doctor looking entirely different, both of them looking completely in love. Since Rose has come on board the TARDIS, she and the Doctor have spent a good amount of time alone together. Sometimes Yaz will come into the library and see them on the sofa, heads close together, talking and laughing. Of course, the Doctor always waves her over to join, and usually she does, and Rose will catch Yaz up on whatever story they’ve been sharing.
And it makes sense that they’d need so much time together. As far as Yaz can gather, the Doctor and Rose have been separated for either two thousand or a hundred fifty years, depending on which one of them you ask. And the Doctor is still thrilled to see Yaz, still grabs her hand when they run, and there’s no real animosity between Yaz and Rose, it’s just—
It’s just different.
Yaz wonders, sometimes, whether the Doctor has told Rose whatever it is she won’t tell Yaz, whatever it is that happened on Gallifrey. The Doctor apologized for how she treated Yaz, and since then she’s been a lot more forthcoming, but Yaz is still on a need-to-know basis— she knows just enough to understand how each lead fits into the Doctor’s overall goal of finding out more about something called Division. She doesn’t know what happened on Gallifrey, and she doesn’t understand why the Doctor is so desperate to chase lead after lead. And after over a year of trying desperately to get the Doctor to let her in— well, it sort of stings, to think someone else could just walk right in and get the Doctor to pour out her heart.
It’s all speculation, though. Yaz doesn’t really know what the Doctor’s told Rose, and she still feels too awkward around Rose to ask. Rose is a little intimidating, actually, with her cool competence and often-impassive expression.
But life goes on, and slowly Yaz begins to adjust to the change. She and Rose are on similar sleep schedules, so they wind up eating together, often without the Doctor (whose sleep and food schedule Yaz has been trying to understand for years now, to no avail). They make stilted small talk over breakfast food, prodding for common ground.
The common ground they find, of course, is the Doctor. Rose tells Yaz about how the Doctor blew up her job, and Yaz tells Rose about the Doctor crashing through the train car while he was on an assignment. Rose makes a bit of a face when Yaz mentions that she was a police officer, and Yaz rushes to add, “I quit the force ages ago,” all the while asking herself why she’s so worried about what Rose thinks of her.
When Rose talks about the Doctor, her poker face melts away, and Yaz can see real emotion in her eyes— Rose talks about their adventures together, her time in a parallel universe, trying, desperately, to get back, and then her years with the Doctor’s human clone. There’s a familiarity to it, although it takes Yaz a little too long to realize that that familiarity is because Rose talks about the Doctor the same way Yaz talks about the Doctor. She files that information away to think about when she’s ready to face up to what it might mean.
Yaz tells Rose about her adventures with the Doctor, too, of course, the Doctor meeting her family, traveling with Ryan and Graham, meeting Rosa Parks and Nikola Tesla and Mary Shelley. She hesitates before mentioning what happened on Gallifrey. If the Doctor hasn’t told Rose about that yet, Yaz doesn’t want to get into it— she might be annoyed with the Doctor for withholding the details, but it’s still the Doctor’s story to tell, in the end. But… Rose knows the Doctor. And more importantly, Rose knows another version of the Doctor, a younger Doctor, a Doctor who, if the way he’s looking at Rose in her pictures is any indication, was a lot more willing to express emotion. So in the end, Yaz mentions it, tentatively hopeful that maybe Rose will be able to help.
She’s not prepared for the reaction she gets, though, the second she says the word “Gallifrey.” They’re sitting across from each other at the little kitchen table, Rose eating a sandwich, Yaz eating leftovers from last night’s dinner, exchanging stories about the Doctor. Yaz has just finished telling about Mary Shelley, the night they spent at Villa Diodati, and she finds herself faltering, not sure how to continue. But then Rose asks, “What about the Lone Cyberman? What happened to him?” and Yaz hesitates, teetering on the edge of explaining.
“It’s complicated,” she finally says, “and a lot of it is the Doctor’s story to tell. A lot of it she hasn’t even told me. But we went off chasing him. Wound up on Gallifrey—”
Rose’s eyes widen. “Gallifrey?”
Yaz nods.
“I thought it was gone. The Doctor always said—”
“It’s gone now ,” Yaz says. “For all intents and purposes, anyway.” She shrugs. “I don’t know what it was like before that. The Doctor won’t tell me.” She tries to keep the bitterness out of her tone, but it can’t help but creep in.
Rose is silent for a moment, chewing slowly. Swallowing, she says, “This regeneration isn’t the most forthcoming, then.”
Yaz shakes her head. “Wish I knew what she’d been like before.” She can’t imagine being with any other version of the Doctor, but— well, she’s curious.
Rose has the soft smile she always gets when she talks about the Doctor she knew. “He was brilliant,” she said. “She’s still brilliant, of course. Just harder to reach.”
Yaz feels a little more like she and Rose are on the same team, after that. They both care about the Doctor, and they both want to see her happy. They both have complicated histories with being left behind. Neither of them would give up this life for anything. Yaz starts to get used to Rose’s presence, with and without the Doctor around: Rose starts to feel just as much like home as the Doctor and the TARDIS do. The Doctor is still on her mission to find out more about Division, and she still categorically refuses to give any more information about what that is, even when Yaz and Rose team up to try and get it out of her.
Until one day, after they’ve all three almost gotten killed, tied up at the stake with flames licking their feet and the Doctor won’t tell them why, Rose marches up to her in the console room and says, “You know, you’re going to lose both of us if you carry on this way.”
The Doctor flounders at that. It’s always been the implication, even before Rose was on board, that if the Doctor kept up the way she’s been going, Yaz would get frustrated and leave. But Yaz was never quite sure enough of herself to say it. It’s never hung in the air the way it’s hanging now, a boulder hovering over all of their heads.
Rose, though, Rose has told Yaz about the Doctor sending her out of danger in the TARDIS without asking her first, she’s told Yaz about the Doctor shoving her into a parallel universe twice , and she’s had a hundred fifty years since then to think about what she’d do if she met the Doctor again. And this is it: what she does is she stands up and she tells the Doctor exactly what she’s thinking while the Doctor gapes, her mouth opening and closing like a fish taking on water.
And then Rose says, softly, “I know whatever’s going on is painful for you. But, Doctor, even if we don’t walk out on you, it’s not safe for us to get into these situations without knowing why or what it is we’re doing.”
She pauses, running a hand along the Doctor’s arm. A pang of jealousy hits Yaz— she can’t touch the Doctor like that, so casually, so carefully.
“I’ve spent years of my life looking for you,” Rose continues. She glances at Yaz. “And you’ve been traveling with Yaz as long as you’ve been you , if what the two of you have told me is anything to go by, and she’s stuck by you this entire time. You owe her more than this. You owe me more than this.”
It’s been a long day. Yaz, Rose, and the Doctor have looked into each other’s eyes with all three of them completely convinced that today would be the day they all would die. Maybe that’s why there are tears in the Doctor’s eyes: maybe that’s why she pulls Rose and Yaz both into a massive hug, one arm around each of them, holding them tight.
“I don’t know what I’d do,” she breathes, more honesty in her voice than Yaz has heard in years. “If I lost you both.”
“Start talking, then,” Rose says, her voice muffled by the Doctor’s jacket, but there’s laughter in her tone.
“Not here,” the Doctor says, stepping back. “Might as well make it comfortable. Meet me in the gardens? Twenty minutes?”
Rose and Yaz exchange a glance.
“Sure,” Yaz says.
“Gardens,” Rose agrees. “Twenty minutes.” She raises her eyebrows at the Doctor. “You’d better not be avoiding the issue.”
“I’m not,” the Doctor says. “I promise. I just—” She waves a hand. “Need a moment.” She runs off, leaving Rose and Yaz alone in the console room. Yaz sets a twenty-minute timer on her phone before looking up at Rose, who’s leaning against the console, staring at the doorway through which the Doctor’s just disappeared.
“Thanks,” Yaz says.
Rose’s gaze skates across the wall to land on Yaz. “For what?” she asks, easy as anything.
“Saying all that.” Yaz ducks her head. “I haven’t had the courage to say it properly.”
Rose bumps her arm against Yaz’s. “You’ve got plenty of courage. It’s not your fault the Doctor’s thick.”
There’s something warm in Yaz’s stomach, something that settles her doubts just a little bit. “She is, isn’t she?” She laughs, but it’s short-lived. Her tone turns pensive. “I suppose I just— I didn’t want to leave her. I didn’t want to have to. But you’re right that I would have eventually.”
“Yeah.” Rose shrugs. “I wouldn’t have, back when I was younger. I was so in love.” And there it is again, that soft smile. But now Yaz sees that it’s as much a smile of nostalgia for who Rose used to be as it is a smile of love for the Doctor. “Still am, of course. But I know how to be on my own now. I know what I deserve.” She looks Yaz in the eye. “And I know what I’d want to say to anyone else in that situation, which is… you deserve to be respected.”
The warm feeling in Yaz’s stomach grows, just a little. There aren’t all that many people in the universe who have said that to her— Graham did, of course, over and over, and her dad used to give her stern talkings-to about the man she would one day marry, but it’s different coming from Rose, someone so much like Yaz and yet so different, someone who understands like no one else what Yaz has gone through.
“Thanks,” she says again. She reaches for the words to articulate what she feels. “I just— I can’t give this life up, now I know it’s here. That would be—” She shakes her head. “It would be awful. But I don’t want to be a doormat, either.”
Rose is looking at her carefully, her eyes searching Yaz’s face. “I don’t think you’re a doormat,” she says. “I just think you’re in love.”
Yaz’s mouth drops open. Rose says it so casually, like it’s so easy, but— Yaz isn’t in love. Is she? Is Yaz in love with the Doctor? The revelation hits her, a slap to her face, and it’s like everything’s changed and nothing has at the same time. Her feelings are no different, except observed they gain a much greater significance. They well up in her, and it’s too much for her to contain. A tear slips from her eye.
Horror settles on Rose’s face. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I just thought— I don’t know what I thought.”
“No, it’s just—” Yaz shakes her head. “What am I going to do?”
Rose reaches out an arm and hooks it around Yaz’s waist, pulling her into a side hug. “You’ll figure it out,” she says.
Yaz stays in the hug, stunned, for a long moment. She wasn’t expecting this, but the more she thinks about it the more she realizes she should have been expecting this: she’s been saying since the first day she came on board that the Doctor was the best person she’s ever met. She’s put her life on the line for the Doctor, time and time again. When Ryan and Graham left the TARDIS, she chose to stay, knowing she would never be able to leave the Doctor. And her desperation to have the Doctor let her in is a lot more than just wanting to know what she’s risking her life for: it’s a desperate bid at getting the Doctor to return her love.
“Can she even love a human?” Yaz asks, pulling out of the hug to look at Rose. “I mean—” She’s seen the pictures of the Doctor with Rose. But she needs to hear it.
“He loved me,” Rose says with a shrug. “It’s just that he couldn’t say it. Even when we thought we were never going to see each other again, he couldn’t say it. It’s different, when you live so long and love so much.” She swallows. “I think this Doctor— she’s protecting herself. She doesn’t want to get hurt. But the way she looks at you—” Rose shakes her head. “I think it’s fair to say she can love a human.”
Yaz stares at Rose, trying to process this. “The way she looks at me?”
“Like you’re the universe to her,” Rose says.
“I thought—” Yaz frowns. “I thought you and her were—”
“We are,” Rose says simply. “Or, we were. It’s different now, with this new Doctor. She’s afraid to let me in, just like with you.”
“Yeah.” Yaz thinks about all the times she’s seen Rose and the Doctor together, laughing, close, but barely touching. Their love for each other is apparent— but there’s still a distance.
Warm skin brushes against Yaz’s hand, and she looks down to see Rose’s hand against hers. Without thinking, she intertwines their fingers, trying to express some kind of solidarity. When she looks back up to Rose’s face, she sees that Rose has become unreadable again.
They walk to the gardens together, stepping through the door into an unrecognizable mass of green. This is one of Yaz’s favorite rooms on the TARDIS: it’s modeled after an earthly botanical garden, with clouded glass walls and arched ceilings, gravel paths winding through lush flora. There’s a small river running through, and birds and butterflies abound. The TARDIS has given them sunset lighting, which is appropriate for their relative time of day, but more importantly makes everything look like it’s bathed in gold. Rose most of all, her eyes reflecting the gilded light as she and Yaz exchange a look. The Doctor is nowhere to be seen.
“Doctor?” Yaz calls, tentative.
“Yaz!” the Doctor’s voice calls back. “This way!”
Yaz and Rose make their way along the path, curving around brightly colored bushes and trees that almost touch the ceiling until they see the Doctor, sitting on a grassy bit at the end of the path leaning back on her elbows with her legs crossed at the ankles, a picnic blanket spread underneath her. There’s a little basket, too, and if Yaz knows anything about the Doctor she knows that basket will be bigger on the inside, full of food that would’ve been conveniently sitting in the TARDIS fridge. She breaks into a smile.
“You didn’t have to do all this,” she calls out, picking up the pace and ignoring the nervous fluttering in her stomach.
“‘Course I did,” the Doctor says. “Every hard conversation is better with a picnic. Well, except—”
“You’re rambling,” Rose says with a smile. She and Yaz have reached the blanket now, and they sit on either side of the Doctor. Rose pulls the basket towards her, pulling out a plate, a sandwich wrapped in dark blue gingham, a bowl of fruit, and what looks like a tinfoil-wrapped potato.
“You’d be amazed, what the TARDIS can do on short notice,” the Doctor says with a grin. She passes the basket to Yaz, who peers inside to see that it is, in fact, bigger on the inside, stacked full of enough food to feed at least ten people. Yaz pulls out a bag of crisps, then a wrap of some kind, obscured by more foil, and then a little bag of pakora, which she’s at least ninety percent sure she made a week ago and stuck in the freezer for later.
The Doctor pulls another sandwich out of the basket and moves it behind her before unwrapping one end of her sandwich and shoving way too much of it in her mouth.
“Avoiding again,” Yaz says.
“I’m not avoiding!” the Doctor protests, but with the food in her mouth it comes out more like, “Mm nn ahoh-dn!”
“If you say so,” Rose says, grinning at Yaz. Somehow, Yaz is sure all of this would’ve been much less funny if Rose weren’t here.
The Doctor swallows, miraculously managing not to choke. She looks from Rose to Yaz, and all the humor has gone out of her eyes. She’s deadly serious. “Right. I suppose I owe you a story.”
Yaz bites into her wrap as the Doctor starts talking. Immediately, she becomes distant, staring at something Yaz can’t see, her hands mapping out her words. She tells about the Timeless Child, the legend from Gallifrey, as if it’s a fairy tale, something that never happened to anyone, much less her. But by the time she mentions regeneration, Yaz understands that it’s not a fairy tale at all, it’s horrifying, mundane, truth, and she has the rest of the story for the true implication of all that to sink in. She looks at the Doctor, her Doctor, who manages to be so old and so young at the same time, who after thousands of years still strives to be kind, who runs around the TARDIS console with an exhilarated grin, and she thinks, How could anyone do that to her?
And if Yaz didn’t know she was in love before, it really hits her now. She feels for the Doctor, feels rage and sorrow and affection all in one breath. She’s uncovered a bottomless well inside of herself. And when she looks at Rose, whose eyes are trained on the Doctor, she sees that same well, she thinks.
“I don’t actually know all that much,” the Doctor finishes. She’s trying to keep her tone light, but Yaz can see the tears in her eyes. “They wiped my memories. I know I worked for an organization called Division. Or the Division. It’s not really clear. I just— I haven’t been able to put words to it. Spent that whole twenty minutes trying to figure out how to frame it.” She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “But that’s how the Master told me. He told it like a bedtime story. My childhood—” And she does start crying now, wiping her face with her hands. Rose is there is a second, one arm around the Doctor’s shoulders, one next to her thigh, blonde hair falling across the Doctor’s face. Yaz inches closer, trying to figure out what to do.
“That’s awful,” she says.
“Well,” the Doctor says with a sniffle, “life goes on. Everything changes.” Her tone takes a bitter twist. “Including my understanding of my past, apparently.”
“That never should’ve happened to you,” Yaz says fiercely.
“I have— I have to figure out why,” the Doctor says. “Why they did that. Why they lied about it.”
“There’s no way to know,” Rose says, her hand smoothing down the Doctor’s hair. “Doctor, you’re going to get killed if you keep going on like this.”
“I’ll just come back!” There’s a worryingly desperate edge to the Doctor’s voice. “That’s what I do, don’t I? Come back? Again and again and again? Maybe my life is worth it.”
“Mine isn’t,” Yaz says, with more confidence than she’s been able to muster in a while. “Come on, Doctor. You can’t keep doing this.”
The Doctor sighs, throwing her head back to the ceiling. “It’s self-destructive. I know. See? I’m self-aware.” She takes in a deep breath. “It just hurts. So much.” Yaz can hear the pain in her voice, the sharp, ragged, ache.
Rose takes one of the Doctor’s hands in hers. “Doctor,” she says. “Finding out what happened or why won’t stop it from hurting.” She hesitates, her eyes finding Yaz’s. “You have to move forward. Isn’t that what you always say? We have to keep moving forward?”
“Maybe,” the Doctor says. She looks at Rose, then at Yaz. “I don’t want to put you in danger anymore.”
“I don’t mind a little danger,” Yaz says, because she doesn’t. “I just want to know what to expect before we leave the TARDIS in the mornings, yeah?”
“All right, then.” The Doctor’s defenses have come down, and behind them she looks so very tired, her eyes dull, her body limp.
“Doctor,” Yaz says. “When was the last time you slept?”
The Doctor’s responding eye roll is as much of a response as anything.
“All right, then.” Yaz stands up, pulling at the Doctor’s arm. “Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”
“Don’t want to,” the Doctor mumbles, but she lets Yaz pull her to her feet. She doesn’t let go of Yaz’s arm, and a jolt goes through Yaz’s body— this is what the Doctor’s hand feels like on her arm. This is what the Doctor’s hand feels like on her arm when she could’ve let go already and instead she’s curled her arm more solidly around Yaz’s, her body pressed against Yaz’s side. Telling her story really must have taken a lot out of her, if she’s brought her defenses down this far.
Rose gets up too, and the three of them troop through the TARDIS corridors. Yaz knows the Doctor has a room around here somewhere, but she doesn’t know where— goodness knows the Doctor never uses it. But it’s impossible to get lost in the TARDIS, at least when the TARDIS herself is on your side, and it’s not long before a door slides open to reveal the messiest space Yaz has ever seen. The floor is covered in clothes and books and bits of strange-looking technology. The nightstand is stacked with even more books and lined with empty cans of some far-future space soda. The dresser is covered in what looks like crafting supplies, and the desk at one end of the room looks unapproachable through the mess but is somehow still covered in papers and trinkets from various tourist attractions. The only slightly cleared-off part is the queen-size bed, and even that has five or six books strewn across. Three of them are facedown to mark a place.
“Blimey, you’re a mess this time round,” Rose says.
The Doctor doesn’t answer. She just holds on tighter to Yaz’s arm and steps across the floor with seemingly no consideration for the well-being of her belongings. Yaz has no choice but to follow, trying to tiptoe around the more breakable bits of metal and glass, and Rose comes after, sitting at the end of the bed. The Doctor sits down, pulling Yaz with her.
“D’you have pajamas?” Rose asks.
The Doctor shakes her head, gesturing to her outfit. “This is comfy enough, don’t you think?”
“Really?” Yaz asks. “Those trousers?”
The Doctor nods.
“Next chance we get,” Rose says, “We’re getting you a nice soft pair of pajamas.”
“Maybe that way you’ll sleep a little more often,” Yaz adds. The Doctor looks like she’s about to argue, but when Yaz raises her eyebrows the Doctor seems to decide it’s a better idea to keep her mouth shut. She scoots towards the middle of the bed, pulling off her shoes, taking off her jacket and braces. Yaz pulls back the covers while Rose clears the books off the bed, and the Doctor slips herself underneath the blankets, curling in on herself. She’s more delicate now than Yaz has ever seen her— more delicate than she’s ever allowed Yaz to see, maybe.
Yaz steps away, about to leave, give the Doctor some privacy. Rose is doing the same when the Doctor says, “Wait.”
Yaz freezes.
“Stay.” The Doctor waves an arm vaguely towards them.
“You’re sure?” Rose asks.
Yaz swallows, willing her words to come back to her. “Both of us?” she tries.
“I don’t want to be alone anymore,” the Doctor says, mostly into her pillow.
Yaz kicks off her shoes. Thin flames are coursing through her veins at the mere thought of sharing a bed with the Doctor— she doesn’t even have the mental space to care that she’s wearing jeans. Cautiously, she sits on the edge of the bed, testing the waters. The Doctor reaches a floppy arm and tugs at Yaz’s hand until she lies down. She feels the bed dip as Rose crawls across it to the Doctor’s other side, and then they’re all three lying there, together, the Doctor still curled in on herself, Rose wrapped around her from behind, and one of the Doctor’s arms clinging tightly enough to Yaz’s waist that Yaz is reasonably sure she wouldn’t be able to get out of this hug if she wanted to.
She doesn’t want to.
She curls around the Doctor, mirroring Rose’s position. Her feet knock into Rose’s, and she meets Rose’s eyes above the Doctor’s head. Rose gives her a reassuring smile, and Yaz smiles back.
It’s definitely the most confusing first date she’s ever been on. But she wouldn’t trade it for anything.