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Yaz tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she looks out across the exposed landscape. There is a murkiness to the air, the colours have faded to the extent that the scene seems to consist of only shades of grey. Beyond the waves, the horizon blurs into an unclear haze of sea and sky.
A stray tear rolls down her cheek and she sighs wearily, exhausted by the weight of it all.
It has been a year since she has seen the Doctor, her person , for the last time. 365 days since she’d watched the Tardis dematerialise, her eyes glassy with tears, lips uttering a goodbye she never wanted to say.
She carried all of time in her hands, until the time ran out.
And now she is standing alone on the rocks, watching the wind roll across the beach. Out of all of the places they had explored together, this is where she feels closest to her. On the edge of something so vast, looking out into the North Sea as it stretches out as far as she can see, so near, yet so far. When Yaz closes her eyes she can almost feel the Universe turning.
She chose the beach because she has no other place to mourn, no other place to be alone with her memories. She isn’t even sure she can mourn, mourning doesn’t feel like enough, her loss is so great she can't put it into words. Some days she fears the weight of her grief may crush her, but she doesn’t want to let it go. She can’t let it go because in the grief she remembers. Letting go of the grief would feel like saying goodbye and she’s not ready to do that yet.
She was the universe, and now the universe just feels hollow.
It has been 525,600 minutes since she lost the best person she had ever met, and yes, maybe she is keeping count. Yaz feels time differently now, the minutes, the seconds, they seem to drag on for what seems like an eternity, the grains of sand falling in a painfully slow trickle she can’t not count them.
Keep going, your story isn’t over yet.
Those were the last words that she heard, but for so long Yaz didn’t know how to continue, in losing the Doctor her story had lost its direction. The hope that had once burnt like a fury inside her began to fade, leaving only a heavy and persistent ache that intensified with every passing day.
She had lost part of herself too, that day. It feels as if part of her soul, the very fibre of her being, has been torn away, ripped into shreds and tossed into the wind.
I wish I'd never met her because having known the Doctor, having travelled with her, then being without her, that's worse.
In the months afterwards, Yaz didn’t know where to place her grief, so she carried it with her, as a sorrow settled deep into her heart. Eventually, she found a place in travelling, because despite all she had lost, she had gained so, so much more, the Doctor had given her so much more. So Yaz carried her grief with her as she travelled and when she saw people that needed help, well, she did what she could.
Her fingers reach down and gently trace over the letters tattooed on her wrist. WWTDD? A simple message, her way of trying to remind herself to carry on.
Darkness never sustains, even though sometimes it feels like it might…
It never sustains, but it keeps coming back. Yaz looks up to find the sky has turned an ominous shade of grey, the clouds are heavy and threatening rain. An icy wind is blowing across the sand, the waves crash and roar towards the shore, spraying salt into the air.
She watches as the tide creeps ever closer, crawling up the beach, eating away at the shoreline and as it did, the few remaining dog walkers scattered. And when the first thunderclap rolls, Yaz is left completely alone. There’s not another soul in sight, others choosing, perhaps more wisely, to shelter from the approaching storm. The beach is empty but it feels right.
Some days empty is good, empty is what she needs, but other days, days like today, it feels like the emptiness might crush her. Confined by the weight of the silence, Yaz feels nothing and everything all at once. Her heart just doesn’t know how to cope with all the hurt and feelings that are trapped inside, the words she can't get out.
The silence is deafening.
A damp and dreary cold fills the air and the first drops of rain begin to fall. The sky darkens and the thunder rumbles closer, but Yaz doesn’t move. Instead, she sinks down onto the rocks, she shivers instinctively, but she scarcely feels the cold.
Still, she hugs her knees and pulls her jacket that bit tighter and then rummages in her pocket for a moment until her fingers brush against the pebble. She turns it over slowly in her hand, the stone is smooth and well-worn from a year of seeking comfort. As she holds it tight she feels the familiar ache of loss settle into her heart, the ache of holding onto memories can’t let go of.
Make a wish.
Her sigh is weary and carries the weight of a year of fighting against a soul-crushing sorrow.
I wish this could go on forever.
Yaz always knew that the day would come when she’d be without the Doctor, as much as she wanted more, more Universe, more time with the person she loved, in the depths of her heart she knew.
Nothing is forever.
As much as she tried to push the thought away, she knew that there would be a day when she’d get left behind.
I can’t fix myself to anything… anywhere or anyone. I’ve never been able to. That’s what my life is.
Always moving, never able to settle, that’s what travelling with the Doctor was. A whirlwind adventure across the stars, until one day, just as everything does, it ends.
I wish this would go on forever.
But all the wishing in the Universe can’t change the inevitable, time always runs out in the end.
So there had always been a small part of her that was ready, a tiny part of her heart that had prepared herself for life after the Doctor, in the hope that it wouldn’t hurt so much.
And in some ways it worked, she still had all the memories, all of the stories from the stars. She held onto those in the times when she felt her heart may burst, in the times when she felt the most alone, as a patch over the empty hole in her soul. Moments saved in her memories. Each day the Doctor lived on, in her memories.
The rain quickly soaks through her jacket and out at sea lightning flashes and cracks, setting the sky alight. The thunder roars, crashing across the beach with a deafening fury and as the storm rages around her Yaz screams along with it, because the memories aren’t always enough. Sometimes they hurt too much, reminding her of all she had lost.
She can’t look at a pack of custard creams without her heart feeling like it may break into a thousand pieces.
That's the thing about being left behind, however good the reason, you lose a part of yourself, that you can never get back.
The storm rages on, the waves crash high and the shoreline disappears and in that moment Yaz realises that although she might have been ready to lose the Doctor, what she could never have prepared herself for was the silence. The stillness, the nothingness, the empty spaces and the too-long pauses. The expectancy that the silence will be filled and the heart-breaking moment when it isn’t.
In the silence she discovered just how quiet the universe around you feels when your person isn’t there anymore. Every day, you see all the spaces they filled, with all their words and excited chatter, to go from that to nothing, well, it's unbearable.
It’s only in the silence, in the time afterwards, when you realise just how much you miss someone. You can prepare yourself for losing someone, you know that it is going to hurt and that things won’t be the same anymore. But you can never prepare yourself for the silence, the harrowing empty spaces and the agonisingly too-long pauses.
Because no matter how hard you try to fill those spaces, they always feel empty. It's an emptiness that sits deep in your heart and with every beat, you feel it, the hollow that can’t be filled. Out of it all, it’s the silence that hurts the most.
Yaz isn't ready to let go, but she knows that she has to, the silence must be filled, she can’t live on in silence. The silence would destroy her more than losing the Doctor ever could.
She gently turns the pebble over in her hand a few times before pressing it to her lips.
It is time.
Thick, salty tears roll down her cheeks, as she whispers a final goodbye.
“Doctor, wherever you are, please know, I love you.”
Her words are caught by the sea air and strewn across the empty beach. She takes a deep breath and tosses the pebble as hard and as far as she can, make a wish. It skims across the waves a few times before disappearing from view. I wish we’d had more time. With glassy eyes, Yaz turns away and climbs back up the cliffs. The pebble and a piece of her heart already sinking to the ocean floor.