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Improbably, she’s mostly elbow. That’s always the first thing you notice. Sharp and pointy, always jutting into your ribs, your stomach, your face. Even in sleep—
(even near death, you don’t think)
—she’s unwieldy against you. Fingers twitching, limbs dangling. Warm breath against your neck, cool skin against your lips. She fits in your arms like a perfect counterbalance, and you’d fit just the same. Close orbit, not collision. That’s what this is. Shared gravity. You spin together, finally, perfectly. It’s taken this long only because gravity is slow. Planetary bodies form on geologic scales, wrap around each other gently, warp the space and time around them like a very slow waltz. And then they spin, forever, sometimes.
You could spin like this, forever.
One heartbeat shudders and fails under your careful touch. The other one thuds lonely under your hand on her ribs. You trudge forward, relentless. She smells like ozone and burnt toast. She often smells like ozone and burnt toast. Her hearts have stuttered and failed and stumbled and started again, before. She’s fit in your arms this way, before. That’s the thought that carries you across the quarry into the TARDIS, one step at a time, ground crumbling behind you.
It’s fine. She’s fine. You’ve done this before.
—
For a long time, it was the only way you thought you could touch. Bruised skin to bruised skin, her fingers hideously cold, hideously casual as they press against your cheek, checking for damage. Dances with death the only waltz. The first time, early on, you’d caught the edge of a laser rifle, tumbled half-way down a cliff, like some sort of old-fashioned film heroine. You’d sworn a blue streak, then, like some sort of modern-day girl from the West Mids. And she’d tumbled down after you, boots skidding, sending gravel down to spit at your face, catch in your pigtails. Grasped your cheeks in her cold hands, looked you dead in the eye, frantic.
“Don’t worry,” you’d said, under the roar of laser-fire, Graham and Ryan shouting up the cliff. You’d never wanted to let her down, then. You still don’t. “Just a graze.”
And she’d said, “Yaz,” very seriously, pulses jumping in her throat, and your eyes had fixed there, on the hollows of her neck, smooth skin and shadow, “I don’t want to alarm you, but there’s a hole in your leg.”
“Well,” you’d said fuzzily, slapping her reassuringly on the shoulder, dazed, “I’m sure y’can fix it.”
And your eyes had shut, and you’d dreamed of the sharp, shadowed shape at the bottom of her neck, and woken up only once, nestled in her arms as she ran. Mostly elbow. Always mostly elbow, even cradled in them. Cold, through the fabric of her clothes. And you’d thought, through the pain in your leg, the nauseous adrenaline pumping through your blood: this is as close as I’ll ever get.
—
They part, as you enter: a prophet to their Red Sea. Graham and Kate, Ace and Tegan. You pass through, closer than they’ll ever get. Closer than they ever were. There’s no jealousy in their eyes. Only worry, only kindness. You’d worried, earlier, about turning into them—bitter, old. Selfishly, you’d told yourself you never would. Now, you understand. If you’re lucky, you’ll grow into them. They were lucky, to have grown into themselves.
The thought in your mind is half-traitor, half-truth. They were lucky, to have left. To have been left. Orbit spinning out, instead of colliding. You know they collide, sometimes. You’ve seen it in her face. Fear like a fish between reeds. Fear that she’ll lose you like she’s lost so many of them. Fear that gravity will work against her.
You think it must hurt her just the same—saying goodbye.
“She’s fine,” you tell them, as they gather around. It’s not a lie. It’s not a lie. You’ve done this before. You lay her down, careful. She sighs, half-awake. “She’s fine.”
“Extended fam,” she breathes, see? Awake, alive.
And Graham crouches down and quirks a smile and gently brushes the hair from her face.
“Nice to see you again, cockle.”
But she’s already asleep again, a smile on her face, breaths harsh in her throat. His smile falters. His thumb lingers on her forehead. He takes her in, solemn. Committing her to memory, you think. You miss Ryan like an ache.
Another traitorous thought slips in: how will you tell him?
“Let me take you home,” you offer, lips trembling. Awake, alive. For how long? Shut up. “Or, well, let me try, at least.”
“Well, you can’t be a worse pilot than she was,” Tegan sighs fondly. She doesn’t touch. She does smile, just faint. “Spent what felt like years trying to get me back to Heathrow. We ended up all sorts of places, along the way.”
“Yeah,” Ace says. Her grin glints in the warm light. Nothing tentative, nothing faint. “And it was brilliant.”
“Not every moment.”
“Enough of them,” she whispers. “Enough of them, right?”
“Yeah,” you say, stepping toward the controls. You smile at them over your shoulder. Awake, alive. You should be so lucky. “More than enough.”
—
It’s a law of the universe, you’d learned early on: for every ice-cream date on the top of a mountain made of crystal, there is a sinister plot to take over the universe and a load of killer robots. Beauty and wonder and danger and injustice to meet it. A balance, kept precariously. A balance, doing her best to twist out of your arms.
Killer robots, poison darts. And you’d scooped her up without a second thought, her limbs flailing in protest, elbows, breath hot against your neck. Skin hot against your own, unnatural. Frantic rambling that had started in Sontarans and ended in philosophical musings on the origins of ice-cream.
“Someone must have wanted it cold,” she’d muttered, into your neck. So utterly beyond it that she hadn’t even noticed, when the killer robot factory had blown up behind you. All in a day’s work. “Why not have it melted, Yaz? Why not drink it like a soup?”
Killer robots sorted, and the TARDIS in sight. Just the two of you. Not a bad date, all things considered. Not a date at all, except they all had been, a bit.
“It’s not a soup,” you’d protested. “Who wants cold soup? Oh,” you’d realized then, shifting her to get a better grip. “Gazpacho.”
Her head had clunked rather painfully into your collar-bone. Intimate, easy. Closer than you’d ever thought you’d get.
“You’re welcome,” she’d murmured. Warm breath on the skin of your chest. You’d shuddered, then. Swallowed. Prayed she hadn’t noticed.
“You never invented gazpacho.”
“Did, too.”
“No way. Prove it.”
“Easy,” she’d slurred, cheek mashing into your shoulder. Arm dangling, though it had reached up in a half-hearted attempt at booping you on the nose. Burning, but not for long. Antidotes in the third kitchen cupboard, no, Yaz, don’t ask why they’re there, you don’t want to know. “I’ll make us some. Then you’ll see.”
On second thought, you’d realized exactly why the antidotes were kept in the kitchen. And you’d smiled, relieved. Killer robots and gazpacho and all the secrets between you had sunk away, for a moment. Stable orbit. If it could always have been like this, you’d thought—if it could always have been like this—
—well. Maybe it had been, enough.
—
Graham leaves last.
“Well done, love,” he whispers in your ear, eyes shining, the same thumb across your forehead as he grabs you lightly by the cheek. “Well done. Keep going, yeah? Take care of her.”
“See you around,” you whisper back. It’s all you can manage. Croydon was all you could manage. A trembling smile is all you can manage, as you close the doors after them.
You turn. The grain of the wood is soft under your hands, firm behind your shoulders as you press yourself against the doors. She’s so still. She’s so beautiful. Asleep, alive. Are you brave enough for this?
“Please,” you whisper, and the Cloister Bell rings only once, and the sound echoes up through your feet to your heart. You begin to dematerialize without touching a thing. The TARDIS, taking you where you need to go. You shake your head. “Don’t—don’t tell me that. It could still be alright. Couldn’t it?”
You stumble closer, unbalanced. Fingers trembling. You step over her carefully. You can’t look at her again until you know. You don’t want to know. You have to know. Are you brave enough? Are you brave enough? The TARDIS throws the date-line on the screen. Coordinates for empty space. Purgatory, Jahannam. A waiting place.
“Please,” you say again. You could look behind you but you don’t. The coordinates twist into a scan. When it completes, the TARDIS translates mournfully—beautiful winding circles that shift and tilt into ugliness. Catastrophic organ damage, internal bleeding, renal failure—
You turn, breathless. Hair on the back of your neck on end. Orbit collapsing. In sleep, she sighs, and gold slips out of her mouth. Breath on a cold day. It must be so strange, you think: dying the same way you’re born. Bleeding light, burning from the inside out.
Barely a scratch, on the outside. That’s always been her, hasn’t it.
You switch the screen off.
“I’ve never done this before,” you whisper to the TARDIS. “Please. Tell me what to do. Tell me how to help.”
A compartment slides open helpfully beside you. A skin-soluble patch of industrial-strength painkiller gleams in plastic. Your grandfather had died the same way, you remember suddenly, traitorously. Morphine dripping, sun setting. Barely a scratch, on the outside. The thought clambers hideously inside your chest, if only because you’ve been trying so very hard not to think it.
“There must be something else,” you breathe. “Come on, don’t give up. Give me something else.” The skin of your knuckles breaks on the console. Your voice breaks in your throat. “Give me something else!”
The TARDIS only hums. Singing, or talking. You don’t know. Now, you never will. You sink, hands trembling. Post-it notes catch on your fingers. Freefall. What gravity? She can’t see you like this. You don’t want her to see you like this.
“It’s not fair,” you hiss, palms pounding against metal. You haven’t thrown a tantrum for years. You’d forgotten: eyes puffy, cheeks red, throat tearing. “It’s not fair, I saved her, I saved her!”
Cool air on your face. The TARDIS hums again, at a frequency that sits in your bones, stills your frantic breath in your chest. Calm down, you imagine it singing. Help her.
You breathe in cold, breathe out calm. Your thumb rubs circles where your blood has painted the console, apologetically. You gather every post-it note and tenderly place them in your pocket. You dart up the stairs and around the corner, where the mattress stows away like something not quite a secret. Dart back, a pillow in hand. No blanket. She can’t stand getting tangled. She’s burning, from the inside. You press your thumb to her cheek, as you slide the pillow under her head. Her face turns to your hand, even in sleep, like a sunflower tracks the sun, just like you knew it would.
You press the skin-soluble industrial-strength painkiller to the side of her neck the movement exposes. She sighs in quiet relief, breath warm on your palm.
It will be painful, Yaz, he’d told you.
“No, it won’t,” you whisper.
Some planetary bodies, you know, don’t orbit each other forever. Eventually, their orbits decay. Other masses pull them away from each other. Two-body problems become three, become n. But it’s not decay, you don’t think. Two objects in perfect motion, however briefly, spinning slowly off into the universe, that’s not decay. It’s only physics at work. It’s only beautiful. If the only two choices, you think, are to collide or simply part—well, that’s easy, isn’t it. It should be easy. You’ll make it easy. No goodbyes. The universe is vast and time is infinite. You know that much. One dance ends, and another begins, and sometimes—sometimes orbits find each other again.
Maybe it’s enough, for now, that for a while your spin was perfect.
“Rest while you can,” you say softly. Her cheek is warm in your palm. Eyelids flicker, fingers twitch. Waking, slowly. You move your hand from her face, gently. You press your knuckles to her brow, as chaste as a kiss. “Skies are burning, out there. Rivers dreamin’. People made of smoke, cities made of song. Danger and injustice. Tea getting cold. Work to do,” you breathe, and stand, and close your eyes. You can do this.
You can do this.
You turn back to the console, where you’ll wait, for however long it takes. No pain. No goodbyes. You can do this. For her, you can do anything.
Even leave.
“Work to do,” you breathe again. You smile. It’s almost good, it’s almost right. “Work to do.”