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Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzzzzzzzzzz.
Yaz forgot her parents’ flat even had a buzzer. That’s probably down to the fact that she hasn’t spent longer than a weekend in Sheffield in god knows how long, just quick pit stops between trips from everywhere to everywhere. But now that she’s in Sheffield for the foreseeable, back on the slow-moving treadmill of linear time, she supposes she should remember about things like buzzers, Tesco, day jobs, mornings, bank holidays, taxes.
But not just yet. Right now, she can do little else but lie very still and wait for the crushing weight of loss to lift itself from her chest. Stuck between nowhere and nowhere.
Bzzzzzz. Bzz-bzz. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
No effing way is she going down there. Answering the door means she’ll have to get up off the sofa and make herself look like a person rather than someone who, in the three days since she watched the TARDIS dematerialize for the last time, has gone through four boxes of Kleenex, binged five seasons of “The L Word,” and taken zero showers. No one needs to see her like this, and she doesn’t need to see anyone like this. (She’s grateful, at least, that her parents are on holiday right now. No one knows that she’s back in town except Graham, and she’d like to keep it that way for now.)
Bz-bz bz-bz-bz bzzzz, bz-bz bz-bz-bz bzzzz bz bzz bzz bzzz bz-bz-bzzzzz…
What was a persistent but random rhythm seems to have evolved into something that almost sounds like, if Yaz didn’t know better, the chorus of the Buzzcocks’ “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve”).
Bz-bz bz-bz-bz bzzzz, bz-bz bz-bz-bz bzzzz…
The throw pillow she’s pressed over her head isn’t doing much to muffle the din, which has started to feel like needles poking at her eardrums. So she finally relents and peels herself off the couch, joints stiff and sore from intense exertion followed by days of disuse.
She still has flakes of fine metal from that nameless artificial planet tangled in her hair, clinging to her skin. It’s probably going to make her break out in hives, like that Kuiper belt pollen did a few years back; but it’s the purest physical proof she has that she ever cradled the Doctor in her arms, ever traveled with the Doctor at all, ever did anything more extraordinary than pass out parking tickets on Furnival Road.
Bzzzzzzz. Bzzz-bzz-bz-bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….
“I’m bloody coming!” Whoever’s ringing seems to have moved on to the second verse. Yaz doesn’t bother to make herself look presentable beyond pulling a threadbare hoodie over her sleep shirt and shoving her bare feet into her boots without bothering to tie the laces. Whoever wants to talk to her so badly will just have to deal with the wreckage.
“If that’s you, Ryan, you really picked the wrong time to fuck off to Patagonia,” she calls out to her unseen tormenter as she undoes the locks on the scuffed front door.
But the person on the other side isn’t Ryan. Or Sonya, or Graham, or Dan, or even Jack.
“Changed my mind.”
“I’m…sorry?” Yaz croaks.
The man standing on the front stoop is at least six feet tall, about eight inches of that which is just hair, sticking up from the crown of his head at all angles as if he’s just jammed his finger into an electrical socket. He’s wearing a navy-blue duster, brown checkered trousers, and white plimsolls with nary a scuff on them. The look is striking, and somehow timeless.
“Changed my mind,” he repeats, as if this will clear things right up.
The stranger looks like he’s about to burst with a held-back something—bum-rush her, punch her, hug her—she’s really not sure which. In the old days, Yaz would have been afraid of a mysterious, wild-eyed man showing up out of nowhere. She’d’ve slammed the door in his face and triple-locked it, maybe even rung the station if he refused to leave.
But she’s not that Yaz anymore. Years of hopping from planet to planet, century to century, disaster to disaster, have toughened her both physically and emotionally. Despite his height, he’s as scrawny as a stick bug; she’s certain she could take him if she needed to—probably drop him to the pavement with one leg sweep across his bony shins.
In any case, distrusting strangers out of hand isn’t really her thing. The vast majority of people she’s met in her travels have been benign at worst, and absolutely wonderful at best. And despite the grief and despair that’s eating at her bones, natural curiosity makes her want to give this weirdo half a chance to explain himself.
“Pretty sure you’ve got the wrong person, mate,” she says to the weirdo, who’s openly staring at her. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
“What? But…” His expression goes from expectant to confused; but after a moment, comprehension dawns on his face.
“Oh! Of course! Sorry. Silly me. Still a bit addled. Really, extremely addled, actually. Can’t believe I even found my way here, what with all the…” He flaps his hands in the air, his long, expressive fingers seeming to search for the word that’s escaped him. “Doesn’t matter. I just… It was weird, being alone. Didn’t like it much.”
It’s the face he makes on that last sentence that does it: his mouth twisted into a benign snarl, eyes scrunched up as if he’s just tasted milk that’s gone off. She’d know that face anywhere—even on, well, a whole different face.
“...Doctor?”
His expression explodes into sunshine. “Ten points to Yaz! No, fifty!”
And oh, Yaz’s poor body wasn’t built to experience this many emotions at once, to rocket from the deepest pit to the thermosphere in a matter of seconds. She can barely move, much less speak. Tears stream down her face of their own accord.
“Oh, bollocks. I broke you. Can’t have a broken Yaz. Should’ve gone about this differently. I cocked up the TARDIS a bit when I…y’know…” His hands describe an exploding motion. “But! But! But! I think the infirmary should be intact, if you need a…I don’t know. Thingy? Still getting my words back. Point is, I can fix you! If you’re broken. Which I am, again, very sorry about.”
Wild laughter bubbles up from somewhere deep inside her, and the Doctor (the Doctor!!!) eyes her with concern. But apparently madness is catching, because he soon joins in, the pair of them breathless and hysterical, egging each other on just like they always have—a self-sustaining feedback loop of…what? Relief? Joy? Or perhaps some new emotion that has no name, because in the whole wide universe, it only exists between Yaz and the Doctor.
When the laughing fit subsides and she’s got back control of her limbs, she launches herself at him with abandon. The Doctor catches her in his brand-new arms, lifting her a foot off the ground, the two of them holding each other tight enough to bruise.
“You’re a bloke,” she mutters into the fabric of his overcoat, his stubble brushing her cheek. (The Doctor! Has stubble!)
“Toldja I might be.”
After the longest hug in the universe, Yaz wastes no time pulling him inside and up the stairs to her flat. The Doctor stumbles a few times on the way, clearly unsteady on his new legs.
It’s only when they’re in her living room that she realizes how destroyed the place looks—and how destroyed she looks.
“Sorry, it’s a complete disaster in here, and also that I probably, uh, reek, because I, erm…”
Yaz expects him to interrupt, but he simply gazes at her, his brown eyes full of such profound affection that she can’t believe it took her so long to realize who he was.
“...because, because I was, y’know, mourning the loss of…well, you,” she finishes lamely.
“Yasmin Khan,” he says, beaming. “You never need to apologize for anything, ever.”
Finally, her shocked brain catches up with the events of the last ten minutes. “You came back. You said you wouldn’t. You’d said you’d be too different to…” She trails off before returning to: “You came back.”
“Yeahhhh,” he drawls, shucking off his coat, revealing a crisp white shirt and checkered waistcoat beneath. “About that—the whole ‘I can’t fix myself to anyone,’ ‘I need to do this alone’ thing.” He twists his features into the most uncanny configuration. “All a bit melodramatic, don’t you think?”
Yaz is flabbergasted. “Um. Yes? Extremely? But you seemed so set on a clean break, and I…” She takes a steadying breath. “I didn’t want to make your life any harder than it already was.”
His expressive face (somehow, even more expressive than it used to be) turns devastated. “Oh, Yaz. I never meant you to take all that on yourself, all my centuries of mess. I think that I thought I was doing it to save you pain. But on reflection, I was doing it to save myself pain. Which—” he gestures to himself, in the Khans’ flat. “—obviously backfired. So.”
“Best-laid plans,” Yaz says.
“Please. When have you ever known me to make plans, much less lay them best?”
She sweeps the snotty Kleenexs off the sofa and plonks down, patting the cushion beside her. She’s relieved when he sits close enough that she can lean into his side. She needs to feel his warmth, needs to know that the Doctor is, against all odds, alive and right beside her.
Up close, Yaz can see the lines and wrinkles on his face—he’s a bit older than her Doctor, insofar as age means anything when it comes to them. It’s strange to see someone brand-new who looks like he’s seen so much. She thinks back to that day on the train when she first met the Doctor immediately post-regeneration. She was all sunshine, all glowing skin and bright smiles, as if she’d gotten a new lease on life. But this Doctor looks haunted, and Yaz wonders if he’s showing on his face what his last body had kept so carefully concealed.
And freckles. The Doctor has freckles now.
But despite all that, there’s an essential Doctorness about him that hasn’t changed: a spark of quick intelligence, easy kindness, bright humor, with godlike power simmering under it all. And he’s looking at her the same way she used to: with absolute trust and, even though she waited till the very end to say it out loud, profound love.
“The way you talked about regeneration, I thought you’d be a totally different person,” she says finally. “Well, I mean, obviously you are literally a different person. But on the inside, I mean. I thought maybe you wouldn’t want me around anymore, or that you might even not remember me.”
“You kidding? I’d never forget you, Yasmin Khan. Not in a billion years. You’re my fam!” He knocks shoulders with her and smiles. “But as for the ‘new Doctor packaging, same great Doctor taste’ factor—it’s complicated. I am the same person on the inside, but I’m also not.”
“How d’ye mean?”
“Well, for example, when I called you my ‘fam’ just now, it felt…weird in this mouth. Mealy. Not my language anymore. Oh! And speaking of my mouth, I popped a custard cream on my way here, and, d’ye know what? Absolutely repulsive. Hated it.”
Yaz laughs. “But you put so much work into that custard cream dispenser. Shame to lose it.”
“Ohhh, well, I can certainly repurpose it. Make it a banana dispenser, maybe. Waste not, want not.”
“A banana dispenser?”
“Bananas are good!” He says it like it’s a campaign slogan he’s been workshopping. “D’ye know, I had one regeneration whose favorite nosh was fish fingers dipped in custard.”
“You’re joking.”
“Wish I was. Real sick twist, that one. Left a bad taste in my mouth. And not just because of the fish fingers.”
“Yeah, you said I might not like the person you became next.”
“S’all right if you don’t. …Do you, though?”
This new Doctor wears his insecurity on his sleeve. “Don’t be daft,” she says, leaning farther into his arm.
“But obviously it’s more than fish fingers. Some of my regenerations have been…erm…not the best. But I really liked the one I was, with you. Being a woman for the first time—at least that I can remember—was a truly enlightening experience. Saw a side to the world I’d never seen before. It taught me humility, and kindness. And if I became someone…not so nice next, I didn’t want you around to have to deal with it.”
“You seem nice to me,” Yaz says. (Nice is, of course, far too simple a word to describe the Doctor. Yaz has certainly seen her be not nice, but nearly always to people who deserved it.)
“Haven’t committed any genocides yet this go-’round, but. You know. Early days.”
“Genocides?”
“A joke! Doing jokes,” he covers frantically. Yaz chooses not to probe deeper into that, lest he close himself off like she always used to. “Buuuuut to throw a real spanner into the works, there’s something very, very wrong with this body.”
Yaz leans back to study him, then presses a palm to either side of his chest. Two healthy heartbeats, the syncopated double thump she knows as well as her own human iambs. “I mean, you seem alright? Or d’ye mean there’s, like, internal bleeding or something?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. I mean that I’ve been this me before. Four regenerations ago.”
“Sort of like…recycling?”
The Doctor chuckles, his laugh warm and unruly. “I guess you could call it that. Except Time Lords aren’t meant to, y’know, recycle, reduce, reuse. No repeats. New menu every night of the week, as it were. If a week was, you know, several millennia long, and was actually two weeks, since this is technically my fourteenth regeneration. Well…fifteenth. Unless you count…” He raises his eyes toward the ceiling as if he’s trying to solve a complex equation. “Blimey, this metaphor really fell apart, didn’t it?”
“I like your rubbish metaphors,” she says.
“Oh, and, hang on—I’m thick! I’ve gone thick!” He turns to her, suddenly frantic. “Yaz, I’ve gone stupid!” He leaps to his feet, takes a deep breath, and announces: “I’m not a Time Lord.”
“You’re…what? But…you are. We went to Gallifrey and all.”
“Bloody hell, I never told you, did I?”
“There’s a lot of things you never told me.” She doesn’t bother to conceal the bitterness in her voice.
“Right. Very secretive, I was. Close to the vest. But I don’t think I’m fussed about that anymore. Or maybe I am? Who knows! Still figuring out who this new me is—well, new-old me, which is very new—so new-new-old-new me.” His speech rate is rising rapidly with each new thought. “And that’s not even counting the… Yaz, I told you about the half-human clone version of me who grew out of my spare hand, right? The one I dropped off in another universe? That’s me! Well, he’s specifically not me, actually; but I mean, that’s this body! His! Mine!”
Yaz’s head is spinning. Clone? Spare hand? Another universe? “Blimey, and I thought your stream-of-consciousness was out of control before. ”
“Ohhhh, yeah. One thing that’s the same about new-new-old-new me and old-old-old me is that I’ve got the biggest gob in the cosmos. I mean, not literally, because actually, Star Whales have massive gobs, not to mention that planet in the Pinwheel Galaxy that’s actually a giant manatee… Though she’s never woken up, at least not to my knowledge, so I don’t really know how big her gob is. Ooh! Ooh!” He starts jumping up and down like a child who’s had too many Curly Wurly bars. “Yaz, let’s go wake up the manatee!”
“Right now?!”
“Yes! Or…no. Definitely not. Utter nonsense. Lots to do, miles to go before I sleep. Think, think, think. But soon! If you want.”
She narrows her eyes at him. “Doctor, did you by any chance happen to accidentally or on purpose snort a bunch of cocaine?”
“Nope! This is one hundred percent, all-natural Doctor.” He waggles his eyebrows. “Exhausting, isn’t it?”
“I mean…”
“Though there was one time I did ingest cocaine, in this body version 1.0. New York City…1973, I want to say? I stayed out all night with Bowie and Lou Reed, and… well, by the time Iggy Pop showed up, I was flying. As in, actually flying. The ceiling at Lou’s apartment was absolutely disgusting, by the way. What a night.” He turns his laser-light-show attention on her. “Yaz, did I ever tell you about the time I had a four-way with David Bowie and Lou Reed and Iggy Pop?”
Before he goes even more supersonic (or shares anymore anecdotes that Yaz definitely, definitely doesn’t need to hear), she seizes him by the arms and looks him in the eyes—which are much higher up now. “Doctor,” she says. “Slow down. Breathe.”
He looks down at her, jaw tense, his pupils are pinpricks despite the dimness of the room. He blinks rapidly, and she feels the rigidity flow out of his muscles after a few seconds. “Oh, Yaz. This is what I didn’t want you to have to see.”
She tries to lighten the mood. “What, you jumping up and down like popping corn and babbling like a loon? Believe me, after everything we’ve been through together, s’nothing I can’t handle.”
“No, I mean because I’m—” He grips his chest and groans, doubling over.
“Doctor! What’s wrong?” She eases him down to the floor as gently as she can manage.
When he lets out a dry cough, a puff of golden energy comes with it, glittering before dissipating into the room.
Panic wraps around her throat, cutting off her air supply. “No, no, no. Please, no. This can’t be happening again. Not when I’ve only just met you!” (She meant to say Not when I’ve just gotten you back, but she’s starting to understand what he meant by “different, but also not.”)
He meets her eyes, his skin sickly pale. “I’m not regenerating again, don’t worry. It’s just that I’m…not done baking yet. Still half-raw Doctor batter. Can’t let the cake fall in the oven. No soggy bottoms.”
Yaz begins to connect the dots. “This new body is still settling. Like you were the day we met, when you had to have a lie-down in Ryan’s flat. You were all glow-y that day, too. I’d forgotten.”
“Exactly,” he says. “Every regen is a bit different, but it’s never a smooth ride. And this one is, as I said, super extra weird.”
She helps him to the sofa and eases him down onto the cushions. His long legs dangle comically over the armrest.
“We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” he mutters, watching his own knees knock together.
As Yaz rolls up his shirtsleeves and loosens the knot on his tie, her mind travels back to the charity shoppe she took the old Doctor to when they first met, eager to find a replacement for that singed, baggy suit she was wearing. The stark contrast between this shining, fresh-faced woman and her clothes, which looked like they’d been pulled from a grave.
“Where’d this outfit come from? Very natty.”
“That’s the million-quid question,” he says. “Just showed up on my body when I regenerated. Another brand-new experience for the ol’ Doctor.”
“Well, d’ye like it?”
He lifts his head to look down the length of himself. “I do, actually.”
She smoothes out his nubbly gray necktie. “Well, that’s something.”
She hasn’t the foggiest what Time Lords need to heal, but she reckons a glass of water can’t hurt. (But he said he’s not a Time Lord. Just how much was the Doctor keeping from Yaz?) Just in case, she wets a dishcloth with warm water and budges in beside him on the couch, draping it across his forehead. He sighs contentedly, and another wisp of gold escapes his nostrils.
“Not sure if this helps, but…”
“Yasmin Khan. You’re helping just by being here.” He catches her hand in his. It’s awkward at first—their fingers don’t slot together like they used to. But they still fit; just needs breaking in.
“S’lucky you’re so scrawny—plenty of room for me to squeeze in,” she jokes.
He manages a weak smile. “Taking the mickey already. Molto bene. ”
“You shouldn’t’ve been traveling about while you’re still recovering. Couldn’t you have rested in the TARDIS for a few more days?”
“Nope.”
Same old Doctor, running himself ragged for no good reason. “Why the hell not?”
His deep brown eyes meet Yaz’s, and they’re the windows of a haunted house, ghosts drifting past his irises; that ancient, that lonely.
“Because I missed you,” he says simply.
She bites her lip to try to stop the tears coming, but it’s no good. “I missed you too.”
They hold each other’s gaze for a long moment, and Yaz feels the gentle tug of the string that’s always connected them—the one she thought the Doctor had severed forever.
“S’lonely out there in space-time. You need a hand to hold. And frankly, I’m not interested in finding a new one.” He lifts hers to his lips and kisses it, feather-light.
“I had so many things I wanted to say to you,” Yaz says tremulously.
“You can say them now, if you like.”
She thinks about it for a long moment—all the words she was keeping dammed up inside as they sat on the roof of the TARDIS a few days ago, eating ice cream as if this wasn’t the last chance they’d have to say all they never said. But she looks down at this new Doctor and knows that moment can never come back.
“Thanks, but… They were meant for her,” she says finally.
The Doctor looks so sad for a moment, an expression of bittersweet regret that she’s seen cross the old Doctor’s face so many times. She wonders if he’s also thinking back to that chilly afternoon on the edge of the South China Sea. “I am her," he says finally. “But...I understand.”
Yaz tightens her grip on his hand. “But that doesn’t mean I… I’m so, so happy you came back! S’just…”
“…different now,” he finishes for her, eyes traveling somewhere far away. “Story of my life. Lives.”
Because the mood needs lightening immediately, she lobs a crusty Kleenex at his head. He cries out in surprise.
“Don’t get all self-pitying on me, you numpty,” Yaz says. “You’re still stuck with me, so the TARDIS better not’ve redecorated my room.”
The crooked grin returns. “Stuck with Yaz. How terrible for me.”
“I’m absolutely ruined for a regular old life on Earth, y’know. Not when I know what’s out there in the universe. There’ll be no getting rid of me now.”
“So stubborn. Even more stubborn than me.” He says it with something like wonder in his voice. “Might be what I love most about you.”
When he says it, it’s obvious that he means it in a different way than the old Doctor did. This love is simpler because there’s no heat to it—just a steady warmth.
“So!” He rubs his hands together rapidly. “A day of recovery, and then back to the TARDIS.”
Yaz presses a hand to his chest. “Steady on, mate. More than a day. I’m not letting you off this couch till you’re fully baked. Doctor cookies, no raw bits on the inside.”
“But my legs are already cramping up,” he whines.
“Too bad.”
“Will you bring me bananas? And tell me stories?”
She snorts. “You’re older than you used to be, but you’re like a little kid.”
“Eternal youth, me. Part of what makes me so fantastic.”
“Big head,” she says fondly.
“See? Same old Doctor.”
“Exactly the same in every way. Right down to five o’clock shadow and the random bits of Italian.”
“ Allons-y, Alonso,” he murmurs sleepily.
“Well, that’s French, I think. But—who’s Alonso?”
“Oh, lovely chap. Stopped the Titanic from crashing.”
Yaz isn’t even gonna touch that one.
His eyes are beginning to drift shut, the water glass slipping out of his hand until she catches it and sets it down on the coffee table. They’ve got a lot to talk about, especially now that he’s gone from lockbox to infodump. But for now, the Doctor is here. He’s safe. He came back to her. And that’s so much more than she ever thought possible. So she stretches out beside him on the sofa and lays her head on his chest, and he pulls her closer, pressing a quick peck to the crown of her head.
This Doctor is so much easier with physical affection than the old Doctor was. Ironic, considering Yaz was extremely attracted to her. This one, not so much, which is largely down to the fact he’s a bloke now; not his fault, but it does put a damper on things. Maybe it’ll be better this way, in the long run; she and the Doctor were friends long before Yaz fell in love with her, and that was always the most important thing. Maybe without all that sexual tension clogging up the air, everything won’t hurt quite so much.
Still, Yaz will always regret not just saying to hell with it and kissing the her in those final, precious few hours they spent on the roof of the TARDIS. Even with him here, she still misses her like a limb—her gorgeous, kind, funny, evasive, infuriating, wonderful Doctor.
What a strange thing it is, to love and lose someone, but also get to keep them. Yaz knows she’s one of very few people in the universe to know what that feels like. It hurts more than words can express, but it’s also the greatest privilege: to bear witness to a life crumble, then rebuild itself from the ground up. If the many-faced entity that calls themselves the Doctor isn’t a Time Lord, then perhaps they’re a phoenix, burning bright in both the flare and the fade.
Yaz’s thoughts scatter into abstraction as she drifts off to the slow thu-thump-thump-thump of the Doctor’s dextral heart. And in the moments before sleep, the two Doctors blur together in her mind’s eye—her face morphing into his and back, and finally to something in between: one green iris, one brown; his angular jaw sloping into her softer one; a neat brunette bob, a messy blond pompadour; and a smile and a pair of hands that belong to both and neither, maybe other regenerations she never got the chance to meet.
No matter. They’re all Yaz’s Doctors, and she’s all the Doctors’ Yaz. And she’s so thankful he figured that out in the end—even if it did take him three whole days to get his head out of his arse and come home to her.
Home, of course, not being this sad little flat in Castlegate, nor whatever planet or era they happen to be visiting at any given moment—not even the TARDIS. No, home is anywhere the pair of them are together—two minds, three hearts, and all the finite days in the infinite universe.
