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The day before her wedding, a woman falls from the sky.
Yasmin is out in the fields, trying to get out of another fitting with her beast of a future mother in law, when the bluest box she has ever seen materialises mid-air and then, as if as surprised by its sudden materialisation as Yasmin is, it immediately takes a sharp dive into the ground, tumbles and falls on its side.
Yasmin hikes up her skirts in an entirely unladylike fashion and runs towards it. It is this exact spirit of adventure that her future husband has critizised her for on more than one occasion, and maybe the memory of that is part of the reason that she doesn’t even think twice about not investigating the strange box.
The box is about as tall as her on its short side, and about two times that long. It has somehow, incredibly, not splintered, simply fallen on its side in one fell swoop.
Yasmin reaches out and touches the wood, still having trouble accepting that the whole thing is real and not just a figment of her overly active imagination. The paint is chipped in some places, creates funny little patterns that her fingers follow instinctively. She realises that she is looking at a door, even though she has no idea where such a door could possibly lead, since the box doesn’t seem big enough to accommodate more than one person just kind of standing in there, which doesn’t seem like the most interesting of pastimes.
A moment later, she shrieks and jumps back when the door she had just been fondling opens with a force and a woman sticks her head out. She is dressed in the weirdest clothes, this impossible woman, with skin as pale as milk and an unruly head of golden hair.
“So sorry for the disturbance”, she says and then closes the door again. Yasmin stands and stares for a moment, then moves forward as if possessed and knocks on the door. The door opens once more and the woman leans out again.
“I’m really sorry if I’m in your yard or something”, she says, making a face. “I’ll be out of your hair in a moment.”
“You’re in a field”, Yasmin corrects automatically.
“Oh, am I?” She looks past Yasmin for a second and then nods. “Good time of year for it.”
Yasmin, who has been using this time to look inside of the box, opens her mouth and closes it again, lost for words.
“What year is it, by the way?”, the stranger asks.
“You have a room inside of your box”, Yasmin says, since that is the only thing she can focus on. “A big room. In a small box.”
“I have a multitude of them, actually. Do you like the interior design?”
“I- what?”
“The interior design”, the stranger repeats as if they’re normal people having a normal conversation, when in fact Yasmin is pretty sure that at least one of them has passed the territory of quirky without taking a second look and gone straight into full on insane.
“I guess”, she responds. The stranger beams.
“She just got done redecorating, you know. Love a good redecoration, me.” She sticks out her hand and Yasmin shakes it mechanically. “I’m the Doctor.”
Yasmin knows only one doctor, an old and friendly man who travels between the villages on horseback with his saddlebags full of weird instruments and would definitely never do anything half as ludicrous as falling out of the sky in a blue box.
“I’m Yaz”, she says, because that seems simpler than questioning any of this.
“Nice to meet you, Yaz”, the Doctor says. “Now would you terribly mind telling me-” Something inside of the box makes an unfortunate-sounding noise and the Doctor whirls. “Sorry, gotta take care of that”, she says apologetically, and then she is gone into the dephts of the room that should not be there, and the door swings shut behind her.
Yasmin stands and stares for a moment longer, then becomes quite suddenly aware of the continued passing of time, curses in an entirely unladylike manner and takes off running towards her parent’s home.
“You’re late”, her mother admonishes when she comes bursting into the house.
“I know, I’m sorry!” Yasmin takes off for her room where the dress she is to wear is already laid out on the bed. She shrugs her daydress off and the new one on, finds that breathing in has suddenly become much more difficult than it should be, groans in annoyance and then sprints back to the front door where her parents are already waiting for her.
“Your hair is a mess”, her mother says and immediately sets upon making her presentable. Yasmin suffers through it by throwing her father a conspirational look. He smiles in return.
The rehearsal dinner is a mess and a half, and Yasmin makes it through only because her mother sits next to her and subtly pinches her thigh whenever she opens her mouth to say something unkind. Her fiance, seated on her other side, tucks into his food with abandon and doesn’t bother exchanging a single word with her.
It’s not that she hates him, Yasmin thinks, it’s simply that she doesn’t know him and has absolutely no desire to remedy that fact. A feeling that seems to be mutual, if the stony look on his face is any indication. It is not how she imagined getting married to go, but there’s no helping that.
When they finally, finally leave her future in-laws house and make their way to their humble abode at the other end of the small village, Yasmin feels like throwing up and going to bed and running away all at once, but none of that is the reason that she stops short when they are about to enter their house. What she is really thinking of is a weird stranger in a field and the sudden realisation that this will be her last night as a woman who has no husband to answer to.
“I think I’ll take a quick walk”, she says. Her mother frowns disapprovingly.
“It’s late, and you must be up early tomorrow”, she starts, but her father puts a hand on her arm.
“Stay on the path”, he says, and Yasmin nods and is off, very much not staying on anything that could be qualified as a path by even the widest range of criteria.
The blue box is still where it was when she left, stuck sideways in the field, and the Doctor is scrouched outside of it, doing some tinkering and much more than some cursing.
“Oh, you’re back”, she says when Yasmin approaches. “Hi Yaz.”
“Having troubles?”, Yasmin asks while kneeling down next to her, relishing the knowledge that her skirt will be thoroughly ruined by it.
“A bit.” The Doctor pulls a face and scratches her nose in a way that should not be attractive, but somehow is.
“What’s it supposed to do, anyway?”
“Travel time and space.” The Doctor turns to her, eyes twinkling. “Fancy a ride?”
“I thought it wasn’t working”, Yasmin says, which happens to be the first of the many, many objections her brain has to the concept.
“Oh, it always sorts itself out sooner or later.”
The box makes a deep rumbling noise that Yasmin has never heard anything, box or not, make before, but it seems to mean something to the Doctor, since she claps her hands together and huzzahs.
“There we go, old lady! Told you, she always comes back around.” The Doctor jumps to her feet and dusts off her pants. Yasmin eyes the garment with more than a bit of jealously.
“I’m supposed to be getting married tomorrow”, she mentions by the by.
“Do you want to?”
“Not particularly.” She hasn’t told anyone that before - they all know, of course, and feel varying levels of sympathy and/or annoyance for her, but saying the words out loud makes them suddenly real in a way that aches in her chest.
“I really, really don’t want to”, Yasmin says experimentally, and the ache in her chest increases, but her breaths seem to come easier than before.
“Well, you don’t have to.”
Yasmin shakes her head. “My parents-”
“Time machine, remember? You can go off and live your entire life, and if you ever decide you want to come back and get married after all, I can just drop you off in your backyard at the exact time that you left.” She scrunches her nose. “Although apparently I can no longer guarantee that we’ll arrive vertically.”
Yasmin laughs, but shakes her head again. “I don’t even have a backyard. And I can’t just run away from this.”
“Oh, you very much can. I should know, running away is my specialty.” There is nothing to say to that, really, so Yasmin doesn’t.
“I mean it.” The Doctor holds out her hands, and Yasmin lets herself be pulled to her feet. “All of the universe to see, isn’t that too exciting to say no to?”
“I’ve always wanted to see Britain”, Yasmin volunteers.
“Ah, don’t bother. Been there too many times, and it’s always something with them. Horrible weather, too.”
Yasmin laughs again and then looks down at her hands.
“I don’t think I’d want to come back”, she says finally, quietly, tentatively. “If I left. I don’t think I’d ever be able to come back.”
The Doctor nods, like she understands the feeling, suddenly looking a lot older than her appearance would suggest she actually is.
“Once you start running, it’s difficult to know when to stop”, she murmurs cryptically.
“Or even if to stop at all”, Yasmin adds, because she doesn’t know what the Doctor means, but it still makes her heart sing in an absolute sort of way, like she is listening to someone speak in a foreign language and yet understands every word of it, because she understands them and is understood in turn. The certainty of it is exhilarating.
“You wouldn’t have to. If you ever felt like coming back, it’ll still be here, waiting for you. And if not…” The smile turns her face reckless, almost feral, and Yasmin finds herself leaning in instead of away against her better judgement. “The universe is a very big place to get lost in.”
She offers up her hand again, a pale, hopeful invitation in the moonlight, and Yasmin doesn’t think twice about grabbing it. The Doctor’s smile widens.
“Let’s go on an adventure”, she says, and pulls Yasmin into her weird blue box.