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First, she lost the universe. Then, she lost the world.
Or, at least, that’s what it felt like — the way everything seemed to shrink around her.
Headlights drifted through the murky streets on the night she returned to Earth. Yaz stood on the sidewalk, still as marble, watching them pass her by.
And pass they did.
She never understood it, how they kept going — shriveling into specks in the shadows as they grew closer to where they needed to be.
Need.
It’s a funny thought, needing to be somewhere.
Especially when that somewhere is a distant, smoldering planet that may or may not still be around, with an infinite someone who may or may not still be alive.
Especially when somewhere is a place that is very much not here.
Yaz’s days on Earth have since passed in equal minutes and in the right order, which is even more agonizing than she originally thought; just one of the many impossible feats proven possible over the past two years. Well— two years in linear time, that is. She gave up tallying her time with the Doctor long, long ago.
Now, part of her wishes she hadn’t stopped counting.
Whatever the total, it’s still not enough.
If Yaz had a time machine, she’d go back and scream at herself. Then, she’d go back and save the Doctor so she wouldn’t have to scream at herself in the first place.
Much to her dismay, Yaz does have a time machine, but it sits disguised as a neighboring house, cemented in place and collecting dust. Just like her.
She resents herself for wondering why everything didn’t stop the day she returned.
Return.
It’s a funny thought, returning.
Returning to work. Returning to normal. As if normal comes back.
As if people come back.
As if any of it ever existed at all.
✧ ✧ ✧
She greets the sun each morning with hollow eyes, sinks into her uniform, and makes her way to the station bearing the same enthusiasm as a puppy on its way to the vet.
At work, Yaz racks up tardies like tempting shells washing up on shore, tucking them away and moving on, knowing full well there’s not much room left in her pocket.
“Thin ice,” is how Ramesh put it as she slumped into his office chair one morning. “First the secondments, and now this? Do you even want to be here, Khan?”
PC Khan assures him she does.
PC Khan isn’t very convincing.
✧ ✧ ✧
She can feel Sonya’s eyes on her, dissecting her like they always do in February. Except, it’s not February—
It’s not February, right?
She digs her phone out of her pocket, then glances at the date and lets out an internal sigh of relief.
Right. It’s warm outside. She’d forgotten.
The wool jumper might explain why her sister is looking at her like she’s a puzzle, then.
“So, you’re finally back? Like, back back?” Sonya asks as she sets the table. “No more secondments?”
“No more secondments. I’m back for good, as far as I know,” Yaz answers, and she wishes she was lying.
Wishing and lying. That’s all she ever seems to do these days.
So, she powers through dinner the way she always does: by trudging through the truths she wishes were lies and the lies she wishes were truths, wearing a smile that’s happy enough to not look sad but sad enough to still look normal.
After the washing up is done, she gives Sonya a hug and slips away for her night shift — which isn’t quite the truth but also isn’t exactly a lie.
When she steps into the empty ship, it still feels like someone is watching.
✧ ✧ ✧
The TARDIS is hard to read. Suspended in a strange state, somewhere between a heartbeat and a corpse. It never moves, but the door always clicks open, and the lights are always on.
Sometimes, Yaz swears she can feel it breathe.
She never felt that in the phone box. The Doctor had always acted like it was alive; bickering with it and loving it, going about as if it possessed a heart and a soul and a mind of its own. Sometimes, she was so convincing that Yaz almost believed it, too.
She’s starting to wonder if there was something to that after all.
✧ ✧ ✧
If the ship is alive, Yaz reckons she hates it.
She hates it because the door always clicks open and the lights are always on, but the damned thing doesn’t. ever. move.
“Oh, come ON!” she screams at it one day, because she hasn’t slept since, well— she can’t remember exactly, but that doesn’t matter because she’s so close to decoding this lock on the controls if this bloody thing would just work with her for once.
Her fist crashes into the console, and everything goes dark.
Shit.
She scrambles to check that she hasn’t broken anything important, but stops in her tracks when a strong, bitter taste of metal fills her mouth.
Yaz looks down at the dim outlines of the console and caresses the ship. She doesn’t know how, but she feels it wince under her touch.
“I’m sorry— I didn’t realize,” she whispers, pulling back. Then, she stays quiet for a long moment, considering it all. “You don’t want to be stuck here either, do you? You’re just doing your best with what she gave you . . .”
Like me, she thinks.
Tears blur her vision in the darkness, and they only half-feel like her own. Yaz returns a reluctant hand to the controls. “I’m gonna find her, and I’m gonna fix this,” she promises, urging her voice steady. “We’ll figure it out together, yeah?”
The lights return, slowly, and something deep inside of her tells her she’s forgiven.
✧ ✧ ✧
They don’t talk much, because they don’t need to, and there’s no time, and what’s there to even talk about, anyway?
Everything feels so cluttered these days. It’s hard to keep up with her restless mind. Hard to notice the mess it leaves.
She wakes every morning inching closer, and returns to the floor each night feeling further than ever before.
Morning and night mean something different inside her TARDIS, though. In truth, Yaz hardly ever knows which light waits on the other side of its doors. But she pushes on, because the Doctor’s life depends on it. And, somewhere in translation, that makes Yaz feel like her life depends on it, too.
Which is a lot to feel, for quite a few reasons.
It’s getting harder to ignore. The way that feeling bubbles and burns inside. The way that want winds her muscles so tight she can hardly catch her breath.
She doesn’t want to see it. Doesn’t want to feel it. And even if she did, she couldn’t afford to. Not until she knows the Doctor is alive and safe and by her side again.
So, Yaz stops feeling and starts writing faster.
But every so often, right when it all becomes too much, warm air wraps around her. It’s a bit like a hug, though she can’t explain how or why. And Yaz slows down without meaning to — just a little, just enough.
✧ ✧ ✧
One day, Yaz walks inside her TARDIS, and it feels less like running away and more like coming home.
One day, Yaz walks inside her TARDIS and doesn’t know it’s the last day she ever will.
✧ ✧ ✧
They never talk about it.
They never talk about the heaps of notes or the makeshift bed on the floor or the mess that was more than just a mess. They never talk about it even though the Doctor saw every trace of it and Yaz knows, somewhere, in spite of herself, that she did.
They never talk about watching it crumble and collapse in on itself.
They never talk about what any of it meant, or still means.
Sometimes, Yaz wonders if the Doctor even realizes the gravity of it all.
She’s not entirely sure she understands it herself.
✧ ✧ ✧
Yaz visits in her dreams sometimes. On nights where she tries to remember how old she is and loses count. On nights where the Doctor feels lightyears away, even though she’s just down the hall, mucking about like always. On nights when the blooming vines in her chest are so tight and tangled, it feels like she’s drowning.
On those nights, Yaz finds herself needing to return in the same way she used to need her favorite stuffed rabbit after a long day of torment at school.
On those nights, she holds Mister Hoppy a little closer, shuts her eyes, and finds a house cemented to a world where cars and time pass her by, in equal minutes and in the right order.
On those nights, when everything feels unreachably far or alarmingly close, Yaz sheds her broken promise and comes home.
And the door clicks open.
And the lights are still on.