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Yaz gasps awake, the last tendrils of a dream slipping away into the dark. Her stomach’s unsettled and her heart is pounding with foreboding. Was it a bad dream? Is something wrong? She takes stock of her surroundings. She’s in her room on the TARDIS; it’s just her and the Doctor, since Dan not-very-subtly asked to stop home for a bit to visit his parents—
“We could drop you off and timeskip to pick you up a week later!” the Doctor said.
“No, that’s okay, you two go on and have an adventure without me,” Dan said. “Maybe even visit the beach!”
Yaz tries not to dwell on the way the Doctor’s shoulders stiffened at that.
And they haven’t gone on an adventure, or to the beach, or anywhere to talk about anything, because somehow, despite the full reset of the TARDIS, it still needs repairs. Extensive repairs.
Suddenly, it clicks. The reason she woke up suddenly, the anxious feeling in her stomach, like she’s missing something important—the TARDIS has moved.
Yaz rolls out of bed and hastily pulls on something other than pajamas, then she’s running to the console room.
The Doctor isn’t there.
“Doctor?” Yaz calls, running around the central controls to see if she’s buried in repairs somewhere, but there are only a handful of tools and a loose panel lying on the floor.
One of TARDIS doors clicks open on its own, daylight streaming in, and Yaz looks up, but the Doctor isn’t on the other side.
“She went outside?” Yaz asks, approaching the door. Outside is an alien planet with a bright sun and two moons in the sky. Various species of aliens are walking around what appears to be some kind of market, not too far from where the TARDIS is parked. The aliens manning the booths—the locals, presumably—vaguely resemble cacti.
Yaz takes a step outside, eyes hunting through the market. She easily picks out the Doctor’s voice in the crowd, and sees her haggling with a seller at a stall in the middle of the market. With a wave of relief, Yaz begins to walk toward her. The TARDIS door closes behind her.
Then the cloister bell rings.
Yaz whirls around, but the TARDIS has already begun to fade away.
“Wait!” she reaches out to grab onto the door handle, but her hands go through thin air.
The TARDIS is gone.
Yaz turns back toward the market. Is this some kind of trick? No, that’s definitely the Doctor not too far away, oblivious to the TARDIS’s disappearance. Yaz takes off toward her, weaving through the other aliens and their various purchases crowding the street.
When Yaz is just a few feet away, the Doctor notices her approach and looks surprised, just as the seller is reaching a prickly green hand out to touch the side of the Doctor’s face, at her temple.
The Doctor’s eyes widen. “No, not—not that one—” Her eyes unfocus, mouth hanging open in confusion.
“What’s wrong?” Yaz asks, looking between her and the seller nervously.
The seller withdraws their hand. “Purchase complete,” they say.
“Doctor?” Yaz asks again.
“Yaz…” says the Doctor, confused. Then, “Yaz! What—” she glances around, as if she doesn’t remember where she is. “What are you doing here?”
“Are you okay?” Yaz asks. “You were really upset a moment ago.”
“I—” the Doctor glances down at what she’s holding—some mechanical parts—then looks over at the shopkeeper. “What did I say, exactly?” she asks, in that slightly high-pitched voice Yaz recognizes as the one that indicates barely-held-off panic.
“You said no, not, not that one,” Yaz repeats.
The Doctor pales.
“Also…” Yaz hesitates for a moment, but she knows she can’t put it off any longer. “The TARDIS cloister bell went off, and then it disappeared.”
The Doctor looks over to where the TARDIS was, and pales a little bit more. She turns back to the seller. “I need that payment exchanged,” she says. “I gave you the wrong one.”
“No returns or exchanges; all sales are final,” the seller says, tapping a sign that says exactly that.
“What if I gave you two for the price of one?” the Doctor presses, leaning forward.
“All. Sales. Are. Final,” the seller repeats. “Payment cannot be returned. I will call security if you don’t leave now.”
For a moment, Yaz thinks the Doctor is going to actually snarl at the seller and fight them on it, but then she seems to think better of it and turns away, transferring her purchase to one of her endless pockets and grabbing Yaz’s wrist with her other hand, pulling her back toward where the TARDIS had been.
“What was the payment?” Yaz asks.
“A memory,” says the Doctor. “The wrong one, apparently. Got distracted.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault,” the Doctor lets go of her wrist and takes her hand instead, giving it a little squeeze. “Tell me about the TARDIS again?”
Yaz is pretty sure it is her fault for distracting the Doctor right as she was paying with a memory, but she lets it go for now. “Well, I went looking for you, and the door opened, which I took to mean you were outside, but after I stepped outside, the door shut and the cloister bell rang and then it dematerialized, on its own,” she says, as they arrive where the TARDIS had been.
The Doctor huffs an angry sigh. She lets go of Yaz’s hand to scan the area with her sonic, and briefly grimaces at the reading, before immediately covering up the grimace with a blinding smile. “The good news is the TARDIS should come right back to this spot,” she says.
Yaz waits silently, raising an eyebrow.
“The bad news is, it might be a couple weeks.”
Yaz sighs.
“Or possibly longer.”
“What!?”
The Doctor fiddles with her sonic screwdriver, avoiding Yaz’s eyes. “See, the thing is when the TARDIS reset it turned the hostile action displacement system back on, and normally I just turn it off because, well,” she gestures toward the empty space in front of them, “this happens. It’s supposed to maneuver the TARDIS to safety whenever she lands somewhere that’s dangerous. Keeps her from falling into the wrong hands. And I turn it off because we land in dangerous places all the time. But this time I was thinking to myself, it might be really useful to have HADS on again, but I needed to adjust it so I could call her back with my sonic. Except she hates when I call her places with the sonic. So really this is just her throwing a fit and telling me, either leave HADS alone or disable it completely. Either that or I’m supposed to believe that Zeshan NX77 is dangerous.” The Doctor gives a weak laugh, glancing over at the market.
“So basically what you’re saying is,” says Yaz, “you were messing with the TARDIS and she didn’t like it, so she’s ditched us here for an unknown period of time that could be weeks or longer.”
“Basically… yeah.” The Doctor grimaces, finally meeting her eyes. “I’m really sorry, Yaz.”
Yaz sighs again. “Does this planet at least have a beach?”
“It does!” the Doctor says eagerly, but then her smile fades. “Zeshan NX77’s sand is really toxic to humans, though. You wouldn’t want to be anywhere near it.”
“Okay, well, maybe not the beach,” says Yaz, “but we can still explore other parts of the planet. And we can still talk about what we were going to talk about at the beach. Sounds like we’ll have plenty of time.”
Instead of replying, the Doctor turns and starts walking back toward the market. “We should work out a place to stay,” she says. She stops abruptly. “That’s going to take more payment. The Zildoi only accept payment in memory form.”
“I’m sure I have some memories I don’t need anymore,” Yaz offers.
The Doctor shakes her head. “No! I mean, no offense, but you’re what, twenty-something years old?”
“Twenty-six,” says Yaz. Despite the time travel, she has been keeping track.
“And I’m thousands of years old. Memories are precious, and the one of us who has thousands more of them should be the one paying.”
“If you’re sure,” Yaz says uneasily. “Just ‘cause I have less of them doesn’t mean I don’t have memories I don’t need, or want, anymore.”
The Doctor looks at her sharply, mouth opening and closing once, like she was going to say something and thought better of it. Yaz forces herself to hold the Doctor’s gaze.
With a slight shudder, the Doctor finally looks away, then briefly glances back at her. “It’s fine,” she says quickly, her voice light and non-confrontational in a way that isn’t quite convincing. She takes off again toward the market, and Yaz hurries to keep up.
The Doctor heads directly to a nearby inn to book a stay. She glances at Yaz once before telling the innkeeper, “We’d like to book a room for the night.”
Yaz is confused for a moment why she would book the stay that short if they’re going to be here for weeks. Is the Doctor anticipating that they’ll stay here for a few days before visiting other parts of the planet? Or is she really unsure when the TARDIS will be back?
The innkeeper reaches out to touch the Doctor’s temple, and the Doctor screws up her face in concentration, and then it hits Yaz.
The Doctor doesn’t want to pay for a longer stay in one go.
The innkeeper hands a key to the Doctor and the Doctor beams at Yaz. “I’ve never stayed in an inn on Zeshan NX77 before!” she says.
Yaz smiles back and follows her down the hall to their room. It’s very basic, with what appears to be a wooden floor, a mirror, a window, and some kind of storage container for their belongings. And there’s one bed. Of course. Yaz looks at her watch. Although it feels like afternoon here, her watch confirms that it’s still the middle of the night for her, and she is pretty tired. She sits on the floor beside the Doctor, who is pulling her purchase out of her pocket again.
“What is that?” Yaz asks.
“Well, it was going to modify the HADS contraption, but now I’m going to repurpose it…”
Yaz waits, but the Doctor doesn’t explain any further. She looks entirely focused on what she’s doing. “So after you’re done with that,” Yaz begins, pausing until the Doctor glances up at her, “can we talk? Catch up on everything that happened for each of us?”
The Doctor nods. “Absolutely. I’d love to hear everything you’ve been up to for the past couple of years. I just need to finish this. Oh! And,” she pauses to reach into her pockets, all the way up to her elbow. Carefully, she pulls out half a package of custard creams, and a banana. “Food for you.” She slides them across the floor to Yaz.
“So you don’t need to sleep or eat?” Yaz asks doubtfully.
“Well I sort of have this self-healing ability,” says the Doctor, shrugging. “So I’ll be fine. At least for the first week.”
“I’m not sure this will last me a week.” Yaz opens the custard creams package to see how many are inside.
“Well, maybe the TARDIS will come back early.” The Doctor’s focus returns to her engineering.
“Is that what your device will do? Call the TARDIS back early?”
The Doctor pauses. “Might do. After I use it for its other function.”
“Which is?” Yaz asks, but the Doctor doesn’t respond.
With a sigh, Yaz gets up, slips her shoes off, and lies on the bed. Maybe after she’s slept, she’ll be able to tackle this situation better. She closes her eyes and lets the familiar sound of tinkering lull her to sleep.
—
When Yaz wakes up, no light is coming through the window, and the sound of tinkering has stopped. Anxiously, she sits up in bed, but the Doctor is still there. She’s sitting on the floor, leaning against the foot of the bed, her project discarded on the ground. The banana and the custard creams have all been eaten.
“Doctor?” Yaz asks softly.
The Doctor sighs.
Yaz climbs out of bed and squats in front of the Doctor, whose eyes are unfocused.
“I’m so tired, Yaz,” she says.
Yaz’s brows furrow in concern. “Come lie on the bed,” she says, and the Doctor doesn’t resist as Yaz gently pulls her to bed by her upper arm.
The Doctor lies on the bed, boots still on, staring at the ceiling with a vacant expression on her face.
Yaz considers asking if she’s okay, the forbidden question, but she knows both of them can feel it hanging in the air between them already. She walks around to the other side of the bed and gets in, lying on her side to watch the Doctor.
“Only a few hours until sunrise,” says the Doctor. “And then we need to…” Another sigh. “Get more food for you.”
For both of us, Yaz thinks, but doesn’t say out loud. “Okay,” she says. She watches the Doctor’s eyes drift closed first, then lets herself fall asleep.
—
When Yaz wakes up a second time, the first rays of sunrise are finally shining through the window. She feels rested.
The Doctor is still asleep. Yaz watches her for a long moment, trying to verify that she’s breathing. She is breathing, but she looks very pale in the morning light.
“Doctor?” asks Yaz, gently shaking her shoulder. “I’ll go get us some breakfast, yeah?”
The Doctor breathes in suddenly, her eyes cracking open. “Wait,” she says, reaching for Yaz’s face. “Let me give you a memory.”
Yaz’s curiosity to see one of the Doctor’s memories wins out over her desire to spare the Doctor from having to part with another memory.
The Doctor is lying on a hard surface in a cell, staring at a wall of tally marks. A lot of them, but nowhere near how many there will be in the end. She ’s thinking about— thinking about something— the something is just out of reach—
“Wait,” says the Doctor. “That one won’t work, sorry. My mind is just… fuzzy. Let me grab a different one.”
The Doctor is walking through the decimated Citadel of Gallifrey. Red dust is everywhere—in her clothes, under her fingernails—she’ll have to clean them off before she goes back to the TARDIS, before she goes to see the fam again—a flash of guilt—but for now she walks slowly, taking it in, letting the waves of agony crash over her. She’s counted these children before. She knows how many. But she counts them again anyway.
The Doctor withdraws her hand. “Sorry,” she says again. “Not a good one to have, but… should get you some food.”
Yaz nods. It makes her uneasy how willing the Doctor is to let her go out on her own. Usually the Doctor would be the first one out the door. “Any tips on what’s safe for humans to eat?” she asks.
The Doctor blinks, slowly. “Avoid the seafood,” she says, and then her eyes close again, hand dropping to the bed.
Yaz reaches out to take her pulse. Hearts still beating. She doesn’t know what speed they’re supposed to beat at. But the Doctor’s still breathing. She’s just tired, right? Probably exhausted from how long she’s been going nonstop. She’ll be fine soon.
Yaz heads out to the market, locking the door behind her and slipping the room key into her pocket. Even though it’s early morning, it’s already busy outside. She wanders through the market they were in yesterday and follows the smell of food to another market only a couple streets away. Carefully avoiding anything that looks remotely seafood-ish, Yaz finds a stall selling what appear to be biscuits made out of plants. She realizes the Doctor didn’t give her any instructions on how to actually make a payment, but she focuses on recalling a memory, and after the seller has touched the side of her face with their prickly fingers, she doesn’t remember what memory the Doctor gave her after the prison memory, so she assumes it worked.
When Yaz returns to their room, the Doctor is still asleep. She feels a wave of disappointment, realizing that she was still holding onto hope that somehow, the Doctor would improve in the short time that she was gone.
Yaz sits on the bed and shakes the Doctor’s shoulder again. “Hey,” she says. “I got biscuits.”
Slowly, the Doctor’s eyes open again. “Biscui…?”
“Biscuits,” Yaz repeats, showing her the purchase.
The Doctor’s eyes widen. “Yaz! You can’t—you didn’t use a memory, did you?”
“I used one of yours,” Yaz says. “Remember?”
“Oh…” the Doctor deflates slightly. “Good. Please don’t… don’t use any of your memories here.”
“It’s really not—” Yaz starts, but she realizes with a jolt that the Doctor looks like she might cry. “Okay,” she amends. “I promise I won’t, unless it’s an emergency.”
The Doctor’s eyes close again.
“Wait,” says Yaz. “Are you going to have a biscuit?”
“Not hungry,” the Doctor mumbles.
“Okay, wake up,” Yaz says, shaking her shoulder again. “Something is wrong with you. Do a scan.”
The Doctor sighs. “Pocket,” she mumbles into the pillow.
Yaz reaches into the Doctor’s coat pocket. Luckily, the sonic is at the top of whatever miscellaneous objects are in the Doctor’s interdimensional pockets.
The Doctor doesn’t look like she’s going to do the scan herself, so Yaz concentrates on, what is wrong with the Doctor? and scans. She still can’t read the circular language on the readings screen, so she holds it in front of the Doctor’s face. “What does it say?” she asks.
The Doctor’s eyes open slightly and she looks irritated by the readings. “Try again,” she says, “with what’s making me sick.”
Quickly, Yaz scans the Doctor again, thinking, what’s making the Doctor sick? This time when she holds the sonic out for the Doctor to read, her eyebrows shoot up.
“It’s the planet,” she says. “I didn’t… know…”
“Do we need to get you off this planet?” Yaz asks.
There’s a beat of uncertain silence. Then the Doctor screws up her face into one of her usual dismissive expressions. “Nah,” she says. “Think I just need some sleep.”
“If you’re sure,” says Yaz uneasily, but the Doctor doesn’t respond. Asleep already.
Yaz feels antsy, like she wants to go out and explore, but at the same time, she’s afraid to leave the Doctor’s side. What if she gets worse?
She looks around the room for something to do. The Doctor’s device is still lying on the floor. When she picks it up, it seems like a cohesive item, making her think the Doctor finished whatever she was building with it last night. But Yaz still doesn’t know what the point of it was.
She’s still holding the device, tracing her eyes over all the intricate parts, about a half hour later, when she hears the Doctor starting to stir.
Yaz stands up to look over, expecting to see the Doctor waking up, all back to normal. But instead, she’s twitching, eyes screwed shut.
“Doctor? You awake?” asks Yaz.
“Don’t… I don’t…” the Doctor mutters.
“Doctor.” Yaz shakes her shoulders again. “Wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”
The Doctor gasps awake, half sitting up with her eyes opening and filling the room with a golden glow for a moment before, with great effort, she blinks the glow away. “Yaz, I think I’m dying,” she breathes, and then she falls back onto the pillows, unconscious.
Yaz stares at her in shock for a long moment.
Dying?
This planet is killing her.
Okay. Plan. Yaz needs a plan. She has to get them off this planet, somehow. (And hope that the damage is reversible.) What does she have? She has half a memory from the Doctor, and a promise that she won’t use her own memories, except in an emergency. This is an emergency, right?
Yaz’s eyes fall on the tech on the floor. The Doctor’s project. She picks it up and tucks it into her jacket, just in case. Maybe it’ll be worth something.
Then she heads back out to the market.
—
Yaz has to ask around for directions to where she can find a spaceship. There aren’t any leaving the planet today, so she’ll have to buy one and pilot it herself. She finds the seller with the smallest, least-fancy spaceship, and hopes it’s safe. The seller seems doubtful she’ll be able to pay for it.
“You’re too young to have enough memories to pay for something like this,” they say.
“I have something better than memories,” Yaz says, feigning confidence.
The shopkeeper leans back slightly, unimpressed but waiting.
Dramatically, Yaz pulls the Doctor’s contraption out of her pocket and gently places it on the booth in front of her.
The seller picks it up and looks it over, eyebrows rising. “Impressive,” they say. “I haven’t seen a memory-thieving gun like this in ages.”
Yaz feels a trickle of dread. She was more okay with pawning off the Doctor’s belongings when thought this item was worthless. Having her plan work is making her feel uneasy. Hopefully the Doctor would still rather she do this than use her own memories. But a memory-thieving gun?
The seller looks back up at Yaz. “I think this covers the ship. It’s yours.” She hands Yaz a key.
Yaz nods, wondering if she could have gotten a better ship. “I need to go get my friend before I can take off,” she says.
“I’ll be here another hour,” says the seller. “I’ll have the ship moved to the launch area.”
Yaz nods again, then hurries back to the Doctor.
—
“Doctor, wake up,” Yaz says, shaking the Doctor’s shoulder again.
“Sstop,” the Doctor mutters.
Yaz lets go of her shoulder and bites her lip. Too much physical contact? “I got us a way off-planet, but we have to go now.”
The Doctor cracks an eye open, and Yaz sees that golden glow again, for a moment, before it’s gone again.
“Are you with me?” Yaz asks.
The Doctor takes a deep breath, and with great effort, leverages herself up into a sitting position. She swings her legs over the side of the bed, then puts a hand out against the wall.
“Can I help?” asks Yaz, offering an arm.
The Doctor glances up at her, then takes the arm, pulling herself up to standing and immediately falling into Yaz. “Dizzy,” she says.
“No problem,” says Yaz. “It’s not too far from here.”
Carefully, Yaz leads the Doctor out of the inn and toward the spaceship. Halfway there, the Doctor doubles over unexpectedly. “Not yet,” she mutters, and pushes herself back up. She reaches for Yaz’s arm again, but Yaz wraps her right arm around the Doctor’s waist and directs the Doctor’s left arm around her shoulders.
“Is this okay?” Yaz asks.
The Doctor nods, then immediately scrunches up her face in what Yaz assumes is another wave of dizziness. After a long moment, the Doctor says, “Okay. Let’s go.”
They make it almost entirely to the spaceship without another incident, until the Doctor falls to her knees just outside the ship, and Yaz has to half-carry her the rest of the way in.
Once inside the tiny spaceship, Yaz buckles the barely-conscious Doctor into the co-pilot seat, then buckles herself into the pilot seat. “Alright Yasmin Khan,” she says to herself. “Time to fly a spaceship. You can do this.”
Blearily, the Doctor reaches forward and points toward a button. Yaz leans forward to read it. Automated Liftoff. “Thanks,” she says, and pushes the button.
Yaz watches the Doctor as the ship takes off. The increased G-force is obviously difficult on her, as much as she tries not to show it, and Yaz tells herself this is still better than staying on the planet. As they leave the atmosphere, the ship’s artificial gravity sputters on.
They’ve barely left the atmosphere when the Doctor gasps, her eyes opening wide and blinding golden light from both her eyes and her hands filling the small ship. “Yaz I’m—I’m going to change bodies,” she says.
“It’s okay,” Yaz reassures her. “I’ll stay with you. You’ll be okay.”
“It’s not okay!” the Doctor’s voice rises in pitch. “I’m not done with this one yet! I barely got to live in it, and it had to be better than last time, when I almost didn’t—” Suddenly the Doctor looks around them. “Where are we?”
“Outer space,” says Yaz. “You walked to the spaceship, remember? I had to get you off-planet because it was making you sick.”
The Doctor’s eyes widen. “You got a spaceship? Yaz, how did you pay for this?”
Yaz grimaces. “I didn’t use my memories, like you said, but I had to trade in your memory-thieving gun.”
The Doctor flinches. “I didn’t—I just wanted that one back. That’s going to change their entire civilization, a piece of tech like that—” she interrupts herself by doubling over again with a groan, the golden glow intensifying.
“What do you need?” asks Yaz.
The Doctor sits back up and blinks furiously, slightly dampening the glow in her eyes. “I can’t regenerate in this ship; it’ll kill you and destroy the ship,” she says. “But it’s already started, and I can’t stop—”
“Can we land somewhere?” asks Yaz.
“No time,” the Doctor shakes her head. “The only way I’ve stopped a regeneration before, I once siphoned off regeneration energy into my own cut-off hand but I don’t have that now; it has to be something living.” She looks around their tiny ship, but it’s almost completely bare.
“I’m here,” says Yaz.
The Doctor stares at her, eyes wide. “I don’t know what this would do to you,” she says. “Or if you would even survive it.”
“Out of options though, aren’t we?” asks Yaz. She takes a deep breath and tries to accept her impending death with composure. “It’s not your fault. I’m the one who put you in a tiny spaceship when you were about to regenerate.”
“But you didn’t know—”
“—and you didn’t know about the planet. It’s okay.”
Tears form in the corners of the Doctor’s eyes as the glow intensifies again. “Yaz…”
Yaz reaches for the Doctor’s hand and places it on her chest, above her heart, and holds it there. “I’m choosing this,” she says, “no matter what happens. No regrets. And I love you.”
The Doctor looks like she might say something, or she might cry—and then her head tilts back and golden light streams from her face.
Yaz doesn’t know how to describe what she feels as the energy seeps into her—warm and sparkling and burning as it creeps into every corner of her being. Her field of vision explodes into glowing embers. She feels the universe expanding around her, new possibilities opening like flowers.
When the glowing finally stops, the Doctor—her Doctor—is standing over her, concerned but otherwise looking back to normal.
“Hi,” says Yaz. “Looks like I didn’t die, after all.”
The Doctor smiles and wipes a stray tear away. “Just going to do a quick scan, to be safe,” she says, waving her sonic in front of Yaz. “Hmm…” It’s that something-is-off tone that Yaz doesn’t like.
“What is it?” asks Yaz.
“It’s not bad, exactly, well…” the Doctor grimaces slightly. “You’re not completely, entirely, human anymore.”
“Meaning, specifically?”
“Slowed aging, I think, still only one heart, possible time sense, and higher psychic activity than what’s normal for humans.”
“Oh,” says Yaz, letting it sink in. “Is that all of it?”
“All I can tell so far.” The Doctor sits back in her seat, watching Yaz carefully.
“That seems okay,” says Yaz. “Not sure what time sense entails, but slowed aging is probably a plus, even, balancing life as a time traveler and with a family back home.”
The Doctor’s face betrays her relief.
“You’re looking a lot better,” Yaz notes.
The Doctor beams. “Thanks to you,” she says. “I had no idea the planet was so toxic to Time Lo—to whatever I am. I’ve never stayed longer than a few minutes before. The TARDIS was probably never going to even come back.”
Letting the ‘whatever I am’ comment slide for now, Yaz feels a chill, thinking about how close she came to not getting the Doctor out of there. What if they’d waited for the TARDIS and it hadn’t come? “What would have happened if you stayed?” she asks out loud.
A shadow passes over the Doctor’s face. “I don’t know,” she says.
Yaz isn’t sure she believes her. She lets that slide for now as well.
“And you’re feeling okay?” the Doctor asks.
“I feel amazing,” Yaz says honestly. “And while we’re on the subject of how we feel,” she pushes through a wave of anxiety, because this is important and she’s been putting it off for too long, “I mean it even when I’m not possibly about to die. I love you.”
The Doctor doesn’t make eye contact with her for a moment, mouth moving like she has something to say but isn’t sure how to say it.
Yaz waits patiently, as the silence stretches on.
“Thank you,” the Doctor says finally, looking up at her, and Yaz feels another twist of anxiety in her gut, but she shoves it down. This is fine. She knew this might happen, and it doesn’t change how she feels about the Doctor. They’re going to be okay. They can still be friends.
“Yaz, I—” the Doctor hesitates, looking away again, but Yaz just barely keeps herself from interrupting. If she interrupts now to say it’s all fine and don’t worry about it, she knows she’ll always wonder what the Doctor would have said next. The Doctor stands up and starts to pace in the tiny space. Yaz waits.
“I have really strong feelings about you,” the Doctor blurts out suddenly, complete with hand gestures. “Huge feelings. Massive. Galaxies across. Feelings like I can’t put them into words. But I don’t know if they’re the same kind of feelings you’re expecting, or that you might have.” She pauses to look at Yaz for a reaction.
Yaz nods, trying to school her facial expression into something open and understanding.
“And I don’t mean like, when humans say ‘just friends’ or when they say ‘romantic,’” the Doctor continues, pacing slightly faster. “I mean that I’m not a human and my experience of feelings is generally not what humans expect. In all my relationships. With all my friends.”
Yaz nods again, trying to make sense of this information. The Doctor seems to be waiting for her to respond. “So you’re… Are you saying that your feelings for me in particular are unique?”
“Well,” the Doctor sits down again, fidgeting with the straps on the chair. “In one sense, all my feelings for all my friends are unique. I never love two people the same way. But my feelings for you are, like I said, galaxies.”
Yaz smiles. “Thank you for telling me.”
Tentatively, the Doctor smiles back. “I’m telling you all of this so when I say,” she pauses to take a breath, “I love you, you know that it means something very, very real to me, but it might not mean exactly the same thing as what you’re thinking.”
She loves me, Yaz thinks. Of course, she knew this already. She had to know, because they were friends who cared about each other. Close friends. And they’re still friends. So this declaration changes nothing. Except it changes everything.
“I hope that was okay,” says the Doctor, when Yaz doesn’t immediately respond. “Dan… said something to me, back in the time loops and… I’ve been practicing.”
“That was good,” says Yaz. “I really appreciate you telling me. Not sure how I feel about Dan interfering.” She laughs nervously.
“He said that,” the Doctor pauses, pushing some dust around on the ground with her boot, “I was pretending to be oblivious to how you felt about me. Which was cruel of me.”
“He shouldn’t have said that,” Yaz says quickly. “I didn’t even realize how I felt, until the time loop.”
“He might be right, though,” says the Doctor. “That is something I do—have done—because I’ve—” she sucks in a breath, steadying her voice “—lost everyone I’ve ever loved. Because I’m old. I’m so old. And also, sometimes humans have feelings for me and they get upset when I don’t have the same feelings back.” She looks up at Yaz. “I’ve never really talked about this with someone before; I’ve just had a lot of time to think about it, how I would explain it to you if you—”
Yaz waits, but the Doctor doesn’t finish her sentence. So Yaz tries to pull together something that she hopes will make the Doctor look less terrified. “Well, I’m your friend,” she starts, hoping it’s reassuring. “The thing about loving you is that I love you for who you are, not who I might want you to be. All I really need in return is for you to…” Yaz pauses, trying to think of how to put it in the gentlest possible way. “I get worried about you, because you’re my friend, and things happen and I can tell you’re hurting”—the Doctor looks away again, back to the dust on the floor—“and it’s not like you have to tell me everything, but if you could just tell me some of what’s going on, what’s going through your head… That would help a lot.”
The Doctor nods at the ground. “I know I promised I’d tell you everything, and I haven’t.”
“It doesn’t have to be everything,” says Yaz. “Just some of it.”
The Doctor glances over at the ship controls and freezes. “That’s not good,” she mutters.
“What?” Yaz leans over the controls and sees that the fuel is almost empty.
The Doctor disengages the automatic controls and begins piloting the ship. “Let’s land this before we run out of fuel,” she says. “There’s another planet nearby that should be relatively safe.”
—
The Doctor manages to land the ship on another planet without crashing, and just barely before the ship would have run out of fuel.
Miraculously, they’ve landed on a beach where the sand doesn’t seem to be toxic to Yaz. She glances at the Doctor to see if she’s noticed.
“I’m going to try to call the TARDIS here,” says the Doctor, pointing her sonic screwdriver at the sky. Almost immediately, the TARDIS materializes on the beach and the Doctor runs to her, putting her face against the door. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ll turn HADS off. Promise.”
Yaz smiles as she feels the TARDIS’s affections toward her and the Doctor. It feels good to know that the TARDIS didn’t ditch them on a toxic planet intentionally.
The Doctor walks back over to Yaz. “Did you feel that?” she asks.
Yaz blinks. “The TARDIS…” she realizes.
“Let’s sit,” says the Doctor, gesturing toward the warm sand.
“Do I have telepathic abilities now?” Yaz asks eagerly, sitting beside the Doctor.
The Doctor offers a hand and Yaz takes it. Immediately, she feels a wash of both love and terror.
“What am I thinking about?” the Doctor asks softly.
Yaz focuses on the feelings. The terror is becoming stronger. “You’re afraid of something,” she says. “Like, really afraid.”
The Doctor lets go of her hand and the feeling fades. “Looks like with just my shields lowered, you can sense emotions, but not specific thoughts. I was thinking about the biscuit dispenser on the TARDIS.”
“You’re afraid of biscuits now?”
The Doctor almost smiles. She looks out at the ocean. “It’s too late now, for you, but I usually try not to get too attached to anyone anymore, because I always lose the people I love, and often it’s because of me that they get put in danger.”
Yaz isn’t sure what to say to that. “You know it’s my choice, right?” she asks. “To go into dangerous situations, I mean.”
“I know,” says the Doctor. “And if you’d never met me—”
“Then I would still go into dangerous situations to help people. On Earth.”
“Maybe,” says the Doctor.
“Do you think I’m… safer now?” Yaz asks. “From the regeneration energy.”
The Doctor looks at her. “I don’t know yet,” she says. “What we did shouldn’t have been possible for a Time Lord, but…”
“You’re not a Time Lord,” Yaz finishes, trying to put the pieces together.
The Doctor looks out at the ocean again. The wind sweeps her hair back and waves crash into the shore.
“Let me tell you a story.”