Chapter Text
The box is waiting for Yaz when she gets home from work, one day, just innocently sitting on her bed, like it had never not been there. She doesn’t remember ordering anything, though. She couldn’t have, anyway: it was a Kerblam box. They don’t deliver to Earth, as far as she knows. So that box is all kinds of suspicious.
She knows there is only one person who could have sent her that box, if she is being totally honest, but she can’t afford to get her hopes up like that. The Doctor is gone. Well, not gone as in dead, but gone as in changed and traveling throughout space without her.
It’s been a few months at this point, Yaz has already grieved the loss so much – why send her a parcel now?
After a few minutes, Yaz realizes she’s been standing frozen by her door. Deciding that it’s ridiculous to be afraid of a box, she gets closer to examine it.
(She’s well aware that she’s right to fear the bubble wrap, but not the box itself. Except that whatever is inside that box might give her false hope, and would that be better than explosive bubble wrap, in the end?)
There is no address on the box, just a sticky note with “Yaz!” written on it, so it can’t have been posted. For all intents and purposes, it just appeared right there by itself – if it had been delivered to the flat, whoever received it would have texted her to let her know. Besides, the flat had been empty for a few hours now, plenty of time for a TARDIS to land unnoticed. Everyone else was still at work. Yaz had an early shift today, so she was the first one home.
A mystery delivery in a Kerblam box with her name and no address? This has to be from the Doctor. Yaz sits on the bed next to the box and finally brings herself to open it, eyes filling with tears when she realizes what’s inside: hologram pods. Lots of them. She picks up one that has a note attached to it: “Watch this first”. She sets it aside for now, no matter how much she wants to follow the instruction and see the Doctor’s face, and picks up other pods to examine them. All of them look like the one she had in the early 1900s (and that she still carries around like a good luck charm), like tiny tear-shaped bottles, but each one has a number on it, apparently written in black marker, and that’s when she thinks maybe it’s not from the Doctor after all – she has never seen the alien be this organized.
“If it’s not from her, better get through the disappointment quickly,” she ponders, clicking the top button on the one with the note.
“Hiya, Yaz!” The Doctor is suddenly there, right there with her, and she almost drops the hologram even though that is what she was hoping to see. “I know this must be confusing for you, so let me start by saying I’m sorry, but if you’re watching this, I am most certainly gone. I haven’t lived that yet, obviously,” she scrunches her nose, “since I still have this face, but I know I won’t give you this until after. So, I’m really sorry, but this face is gone by now, whenever you’re watching this,” she says gently, waving her hands around, then looks right into Yaz’s eyes. “I hope I don’t have to give this to you for a long time yet, I do like this face. I really hope we have a bit more time still.”
Yaz needs to pause it for a bit then. She knew that, of course – she’d been there to witness the regeneration – but it still hurts to think about it. Taking a deep breath, she presses the button again to continue watching.
“Anyway,” the Doctor shakes her head a little, apparently trying to focus. “I really should explain this weird parcel, right? Oh, I hope the Kerblam box didn’t scare you! I got rid of the bubble wrap ages ago, don’t worry. It’s not a risk anymore, they have really improved things over there, but I know you probably aren’t too eager to deal with Kerblam again anytime soon, right?” She laughs softly. Yaz is still confused about the point of the hologram, but the Doctor rambling and failing to explain something is so familiar that she can’t help but feel at home, watching this, even if it still hurts. The hologram Doctor startles and seems to remember she was actually in the middle of something here.
“Oh, sorry, got distracted. Explanation. Right. So. Y’know, back when I said I wanted to tell you everything? At that point, I meant telling you what I found out on Gallifrey, and about Division and Tecteun, and I did tell you all those things. Eventually. I’m really sorry I took so long,” she continues, grimacing a little, and Yaz smiles and almost tries to put a hand on her shoulder to comfort the Doctor before she remembers it’s just a hologram. “But then I started thinking of all this other stuff I would like to tell you, other adventures you’d love to hear about, or people I met who would’ve loved meeting you, and I really wanted to be able to tell you all of that too.”
“Then why not tell me while we were still together, then?” Yaz asks aloud, trying not to notice how her voice breaks a little.
“I know, I know, I should have told you sooner. But by now you’ve realized the great irony that is my life, right? A time machine, and I never seem to have enough time,” the Doctor says bitterly. “Honestly, I should have confronted Time about this when we met. It’s just not fair that I have so much and so little time simultaneously.” Another pause as the Doctor contemplates this.
“When did you even record these?” Yaz wonders.
“So, since I can’t really fight Time, as much as I would enjoy that, I found another way to tell you all the stories I wanted. Well, part of them.” She scrunches her nose again. “Well, as many as I could fit in the hologram pods I could find in the TARDIS. I’ve been doing this while you and Dan sleep. Humans need so much sleep, and I really can’t be still right now, brain going way too fast, but the TARDIS complains when I tinker too much, no matter how genius my engineering ideas are.”
Yaz laughs. “All right, bighead.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m a bighead, I know. I bet you would’ve liked to have a tea dispenser next to the biscuit dispenser, you cannot tell me that isn’t genius, but the TARDIS vetoed it. So,” the Doctor starts pacing and gesturing wildly, “I have 31 hologram pods. Which means you’re getting 30 stories, plus this one. I numbered them as I recorded, so you can watch in that order if you’d like, but it’s not really chronological or anything, and time is wibbly-wobbly anyway, so what does chronological order even mean at this point? Sorry, I’m rambling again.” She stops pacing and looks straight at Yaz. “I’m just… Nervous, I guess. This is the last one I’m recording. And I don’t even know if you will want to watch this, all these ramblings from a sentimental old fool, when we’re not together anymore.” She looks at her feet. “Or if you’ll even be able to watch this. The problem with recording now is that I don’t know what happens yet. I don’t know how this ends. Maybe you hate me. Maybe you’ve forgotten me.” The Doctor’s voice gets really soft, and her eyes are the saddest Yaz has ever seen.
“I couldn’t hate or forget you even if I tried. It’d be easier to forget myself,” she responds in a low voice.
“I know you believe that is impossible right now – at the time I’m recording this, at least – but I understand if you hate me. And forgetting me is an actual possibility, it has happened before. It’s in one of these holograms, you will understand when you watch it. Oh, I really hope you get to watch this. You getting this box means that you’re home, you’re safe, you get to live on after me. That’s everything I hope for, right now. That has to count for something, right? I am still the Doctor of hope, this should absolutely be my thing. The universe has to let me have that, at least.”
Yaz can’t help the tears at this point, with the Doctor looking so tired and scared.
“And I’m back to rambling,” the hologram continues, the Doctor pacing again, waving her hands all over the place. “I don’t really know how to end this one. I don’t want to say goodbye. I do wish this could go on forever.” The Doctor stops pacing and looks at Yaz again. “I hope you can forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Yaz reassures the hologram. “I also wish it could have gone on forever.”
“I know you do.” The Doctor tries to smile, but something seems to distract her and she frowns. “The TARDIS is telling me that you’re awake – I mean, my you, the you in the TARDIS right now – but you just fell asleep an hour ago, something must be wrong–” The Doctor looks concerned and Yaz feels a twinge in her heart, seeing how much she cared. “I really should check on you, maybe the nightmares are getting worse. You shouldn’t be alone if that’s the case. I guess this is goodbye,” the Doctor says, eyes bright with unshed tears, the frown line between her eyebrows deepening. “I really hope you’ll be able to watch this.” And with that the hologram stops.
Still crying and a bit dazed, Yaz realizes that she remembers that night. The nightmares had indeed gotten worse, but she didn’t know the Doctor had been aware of them in the first place. They never talked about it, so she thought it really was just a coincidence that the Doctor knocked on her bedroom door just as Yaz managed to stop crying, saying she finally found the book that had the best story about the Solitract, and that she had to read it for Yaz because it was the ideal bedtime story now that they were all friends (Yaz had to disagree with the sentiment – it was still a sad and scary story, thank you very much – but she wouldn’t turn down the company). So the Doctor sat next to her and read the story until Yaz fell asleep. She woke up hours later, alone, but with the book still next to her, proving it hadn’t been a dream.
From that night on, the Doctor always showed up with a bedtime story, saying that Yaz should know the fairy tales from other galaxies just in case they came across any other not-so-fictional beings; she was sure it was an excuse to spend time together, but Yaz never called her out on it. Now, knowing the Doctor was trying to keep her nightmares at bay, she appreciates those nights even more.
(She tries not to think about the night when the Doctor fell asleep while reading – the first time she stayed until morning – and Yaz picked up the book and finished reading the story aloud for her. After that, the Doctor stayed every night, occasionally falling asleep first, and Yaz always finished reading just in case she wasn’t really asleep yet. If she thinks about it too much, she feels too lonely to sleep at night.)
Back in the present, Yaz picked up the hologram pod marked as “1” and pressed play.
“Hiya, Yaz! I’ve been thinking, and there are so many things I still want to tell you, but we never have the time. But then I found–” she gets interrupted by the TARDIS beeping, apparently, “okay, okay, the TARDIS helped me find some hologram pods.” Yaz laughs and says, “Thank you, TARDIS.”
“This way I can tell you everything now and you’ll watch it later!” Her excitement dies a little at that word. “Later, after… Well, after. When I’m… not with you anymore. Anyway,” she clears her throat, “I’ve never done this before, but I was thinking of that other hologram and maybe… maybe holograms can be our thing, if you want it to be.”
Yaz wonders if she’ll be able to stop crying before her family gets home.
“I was wondering where to start, but it occurred to me that, after I let it slip, you must be curious about my wife. So I’ll start by telling you about River. It’s a long and complicated story, one which involves multiple regenerations and absolutely none of it happens in the correct order, so I suggest you get comfortable and maybe make some tea? I have no idea where you’ll watch this, but I’m picturing you on your flat’s sofa, with tea and biscuits. You can pause it now if you want to get ready, I’ll wait.”
Yaz pauses the hologram and checks the time. She has two hours before her family gets home. That should be enough time for the whole story, right? So she gets up to make tea and then sits on the sofa to watch as the Doctor pictured it.
“Okay, so, the thing is that River was also a time traveler, which means we never met in the right order. I met River the day she died, but then became friends with her mum, Amelia, before meeting her again. Ugh, I’m explaining it all wrong, I can practically see you raising your eyebrows. Let me start again. I met River for the first time in the largest library in the universe.”
Even though she is quite confused at first, Yaz gets lost in the story in a way that she didn’t with the books the Doctor read, and she understands the choice to read from books instead of telling her these stories all those nights – she wouldn’t have fallen asleep at all listening to this. Yaz felt sorry for the Doctor in the library (not her Doctor yet, but still the Doctor), felt bad for little River growing up to be a weapon, cried when the Doctor died, even though she knew he would be okay (“Bowtie,” her Doctor called that face. Yaz thinks of the outfit the Doctor wore to Barton’s party and about how some things don’t change, after all).
The Doctor looks sad telling the story, but also excited to share that with Yaz and a bit relieved to tell someone how it all felt. By the end, she’s smiling and rambling again.
“I’m sure River would have liked you – well, after she got over the fact that you’re a police officer, at least. She did have a bit of a habit of ending up in jail, but it wasn’t all that bad, at least I knew where she was and could visit more easily, not to mention the universe got a reprieve from her chaos.” She rolled her eyes with affection. “She did escape a lot without my help too. Oooh, I should tell you more about Amy, her mum. Little Amelia Pond, the girl who waited. I can tell you about the time we met Van Gogh! It was brilliant!”
At that point, the hologram stopped, frozen in the Doctor’s smile, and Yaz was sure that if she started watching the second one to hear about Van Gogh, she would get lost in the story again and forget about the world. For a second it almost felt like having the Doctor back, listening to her talk like that. But a glance at the clock confirmed that everyone else should be home any second now, and Yaz didn’t feel like explaining the holograms yet, so she went back to her room and hid the box in her closet.
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The holograms soon became a constant part of Yaz’s life. Every time she had a few hours to herself in the flat, she would watch another of the Doctor’s stories; she considered asking for more early shifts so she could watch them more often, but decided against it so that she wouldn’t run out of them too quickly. She only ever watched when she was sure she’d be alone for a while – in part because she didn’t want to explain the holograms, in part because she didn’t want to share the Doctor with anyone, and in part because after River’s convoluted story she had found an old journal and started taking notes so she wouldn’t miss any details, as if the Doctor would show up one day and quiz her on it (Sonya would never let her live it down if she ever found out).
As the Doctor said, the holograms didn’t follow any chronological order, but they still followed some logic – even if it was only clear to someone who had spent enough time around the alien to understand her thought process. Yaz watched them in order, always, and being able to understand the logic behind the connections the Doctor traced between the stories, how she went from one story to the next, made her happier than she’d like to admit.
She listened to the story of how the Doctor (and Amy) met Van Gogh and how she showed him that people in the future remembered and appreciated his work; then, in the same hologram, she detoured to tell the story of the Ponds and the Pandorica, stressing how “we’re all stories in the end – so make it a good one!” (and Yaz saw that it was another version of “live great lives”); then, in the next hologram, the Doctor grabbed onto the “end of the universe” theme she started with the Pandorica and told her about the time she was at the literal end of the universe (“I say me, but I was a man with spiky hair, gangly limbs and 3D glasses” – which made Yaz laugh and answer “Yeah, like you don’t have gangly limbs now”, and the hologram said “Oi! I’ll have you know I’m not gangly, this body is not tall enough to be gangly!”).
That last story made Yaz smile at first, when she realized Jack had been there, but, as soon as the hologram mentioned the Master, she had to pause it, get another cup of tea and take a deep, calming breath. Possibly the only good thing about no longer traveling with the Doctor is that she won’t risk seeing the Master ever again. Then the Doctor told her about Martha Jones and how she practically single-handedly saved the Earth (by traveling alone without the Doctor’s help – the parallel wasn’t lost on her), and Yaz wrote down her name to see if she could find more information later.
That was another thing she had been doing more and more, as the stories continued. When the Doctor mentioned Amy, Yaz looked her up and found out that she had written children’s books. She actually read a couple of them (although the publication dates don’t add up with the year the Doctor mentioned she met Amy – she supposes Amy also spent some time trapped in the past); the books were very clearly inspired by her travels in the TARDIS, although Yaz supposes that nobody in publishing would notice that.
She couldn’t really find anything on River – either as River Song or Melody Pond –, except for a couple of mystery books that reminded her of some things in River’s story and seemed sort of Doctory, but she didn’t find any information about the author, so her best guess is that it was a pen name (for the Doctor or River, she isn’t sure).
When she looks up Martha, she finds plenty of information. She soon realizes that it’s because, unlike River and Amy, Martha is still alive and on Earth right now – it probably has been just over a decade since she traveled with the Doctor, and Martha didn’t get stuck in the past. It makes her pause a little, and for the first time she wonders if it’s wrong to be researching the people mentioned in the stories, but all the information she finds is public, and it’s not like she’d try to find Martha and talk to her about traveling in the blue box, right? So she isn’t doing anything wrong.
(Should she try to meet others who used to travel with the Doctor? Maybe they need a support group. She does still have Jack’s phone number, she’s sure he could get in contact with others. Texting Jack is probably a bad idea, right?)
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Halfway through the holograms, the stories start getting wilder and less obviously full of hidden messages about moving on. Yaz guesses that after talking about how some of her friends left her, the Doctor needed some happy stories to cheer up and then she just started thinking of more and more ridiculous events.
“Have I ever told you about the time I played guitar on top of a tank?” The hologram asked, pausing a little, as if waiting for an actual answer.
“A tank? What happened to ‘no guns, ever’, huh?” Yaz replied, smirking a little.
“Look, I didn’t fire the tank, I was just using it as… a stage. To play electric guitar. In the Middle Ages.” The Doctor scrunches her nose further as she adds more and more absurd information to the story (including the fact that she brought a guitar to an axe fight because she couldn’t resist the pun), and Yaz can’t help but laugh at the image. “Mind you, I was the white-haired Scotsman at the time, so it must’ve looked pretty cool!” The Doctor tries to keep a straight face, but bursts out laughing too, so Yaz pauses the hologram there. She looks so happy right at that moment, maybe she doesn’t need the rest of the story right now. She wonders if that means this story was recorded on a good day.
She can usually tell when a story was recorded on a bad day. That’s when the Doctor recorded Donna’s story. “Remember when I told you about Agatha Christie?” The Doctor starts, her voice low, a sad look in her eyes. “My friend who was with me then, Donna… She was so much more important than she ever knew. Saved the universe, she did. And she doesn’t remember. Can’t remember, or she’ll die. I’m sorry this isn’t a happy one, Yaz, but I think you need to know about Donna. Not because you need to understand the risks of traveling with me or anything like that – way too late for warnings now, anyway – but because Donna shouldn’t ever be forgotten. She was absolutely brilliant.”
On another of those bad days, she explains regenerations in a bit more detail, including that sometimes it’s possible to kind of send messages to their future self. “So, you see, last time, the white-haired Scotsman put a lot of emphasis on being kind, and I really do try never to be cruel. I think I even manage to be nice, at least more often than he did. But I just remembered another thing he insisted on – never tell anyone your name. ‘Never again’, he said. And obviously you don’t know why that matters, but…” She looks distracted, seemingly trying to decide how to word this. “You see, names are important for Time Lords. They don’t like sharing their names with everyone. Names have power. And the last person who knew mine… The last person was River. So you see, it’s not really my fault that I cannot deal well with feelings, it’s his fault, really!”
Yaz raises an eyebrow skeptically and says, “You’re trying to put the blame on your past self? You do realize that makes it still your fault, right?”
“I can almost hear what you’re going to answer to that,” she says in a low voice, “but look, it’s still not my fault!”
“Sure, you keep telling yourself that.” Yaz smiles at the hologram’s face. The Doctor clearly knew she wouldn’t be convinced.
“Anyway,” the Doctor says, and Yaz feels a change of subject coming, “have I ever told you about the time a T. rex ate the TARDIS?”
She must be feeling better after all the regeneration talk, then.
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Slowly, Yaz starts to note on her journal which stories would be nice to watch with Ryan, Graham or Dan. Ryan would love the story about the guitar and the tank (she can almost see his surprised expression already), while Graham would probably enjoy hearing about Shakespeare and the “witches” and Dan would think the creepy little kid asking for his mummy was a nice little scary story (but would insist it isn’t scarier than what they lived through). That’s when she realizes how long it’s been since she saw any of them.
Before she got the holograms, she wasn’t really in the mood to hang out with anyone; now she sees that, except for work, she barely left the house since she’d been back. And she really thought she was dealing well with losing the Doctor before the holograms.
(Maybe she should start that support group after all – the four of them plus Jack would already be a nice reunion. Maybe they could get Kate Stewart to join.)
Trying not to overthink it, she starts a group chat with the three boys and tells them about the holograms, making plans to show them some of the stories (they were addressed to her, after all, she gets to choose which are too personal to share).
After that, she starts spacing out the remaining holograms, watching new ones less frequently. She tells herself it’s because she’s busier now, she’s seeing Graham and Ryan a couple of times a week (sometimes to watch a hologram, sometimes just to talk), hanging out more with her family (who have noticed she seems happier, but haven’t asked why, thankfully), visiting Dan (and getting yet another tour of Liverpool – she is starting to think he wants to put off watching the holograms, maybe afraid she’ll stop coming by if she doesn’t have that excuse anymore. As if she would ever abandon the Scouse). Deep down, Yaz knows she’s worried about how she will feel when there are no new stories left. What if it feels like losing the Doctor all over again?
But, in a weird way, the more stories she listens to, the more peaceful she feels about them ending. Now she knows so much more about the Doctor; she knows about others who traveled just like her, others who loved the Doctor, each in their own way, and she knows that she will be okay. She knows that she is strong enough, just like Martha was strong enough to realize when it was time to go, just like Amy was strong enough to follow Rory into the unknown even if it meant leaving the Doctor behind, just like River was strong enough to love the Doctor even if you don’t expect a sunset to love you back.
She will be okay.
So she presses play on the last hologram.
“Hiya, Yaz!” The Doctor says, but it feels more forced than the other holograms. Maybe it’s a sad one, Yaz thinks. Please don’t let this end in a sad one. Maybe I shouldn’t have watched in order.
“I now only have two more hologram pods,” the hologram continues, still looking less energetic than usual. “And I want to use one of them to explain this whole thing to you, so… I’m afraid this is the last story, if you’ve watched in order. If you haven’t, maybe stop now and come back after you watch the others?” She looks straight into Yaz’s eyes then, as if they were in the same room. “I think this one would be better as the last one, even if the others don’t really have a set order. All right? You back with me? Oh, I’m pretty sure you watched them in order, but had to warn you just in case.” And she finally gives a genuine smile, like she knows she’s right.
“Since it’s the last story, I had to make it a good one. This is the story of Yasmin Khan.”
And there’s something in the way the Doctor says her name that makes her know this is one hologram she will never show anyone else.