Chapter Text
Yaz spends two weeks (or, if you want to be temporally precise about it, 14.865 days) locked in her childhood bedroom. It’s the opposite of bigger on the inside.
She sequesters herself away like a Venusian anchorite, wrapped in her favorite ratty old blanket and eating crisps, ignoring gentle knocks from her mum and dad, Sonya, Dan, and Graham. After a few days, they learn to leave after a few minutes of silence from Yaz’s side of the door.
Talking to anyone right now feels like an insurmountable task after all she’s lost: The power to save lives and planets. The adrenaline rush of barely escaping an adventure in one piece. The blue hum of nights in the Time Vortex. The chance that she’ll open a door in the TARDIS and discover a dripping rainforest, or an endless library, or a sky lit by bioluminescent frogs.
Oh, and the love of her life.
Her parents leave meals outside—the ones they know are her favorites: biryani, beef shatkora, greasy fishcakes from the chippy down the street. At least, they used to be her favorites; now, she thinks fondly of spiced blue prawns from the Zapforian night market, Baanhgajor Lagot Gahori cooked over an open fire in the Himalayan highlands, custard creams fresh from the console dispenser.
There’s the Yaz before, and the Yaz after, and she doesn’t know how to blend the two into a coherent person; she’s oil and water both. Over her years bouncing through the timestream, she’s grown in ways she never could have dreamed of. She’s been a leader, a fighter, a scholar, an explorer; she’s single-handedly saved lives, mended broken governments, and piloted a ship so complicated that only genius aliens are meant to be able to do it. And she’s learned that not only is she interested in women, but that she’s capable of falling arse-over-teakettle in love, something she never thought she’d get to experience; she spent so many years thinking she deserved to be alone.
And now who is she? An unemployed woman alone in a twin-size bed, covered in crisp crumbs and paralyzed by sadness.
It’s two days before she finally changes out of the clothes she’s been wearing since god knows when. They’re still coated in a crusty layer of moondust, sweat, and the unmistakable scent of her. In her more lucid moments, Yaz feels like a heartbroken teenager still spooning their ex’s hoodie days after the breakup.
Except there never was a breakup, was there? Because there wasn’t a relationship to begin with.
A few minutes after the TARDIS dematerialized out of her life, Yaz realized she hadn’t brought a single memento of the woman she’s spent untold years traveling with. She hadn’t even remembered to pack up her bedroom on the ship, so distracted was she by her haste and grief.
But then there are the intangibles. If she closes her eyes, Yaz can still feel the weight of an injured alien in her arms, can hear her voice as she woke up back in her own body after the Master hijacked it.
You brought me back. Yaz, you saved my life!
She curses herself again and again for not acting, for not taking a stand, for not pulling her close and whispering, I don’t care what you say; I love you, and I’m never gonna leave you, no matter what body you’re in.
“Bloody stupid idiot !” she shouts into her empty bedroom.
“Wow, you’re talking to yourself now? Knew it were time for an intervention.”
Yaz turns to see Ryan Sinclair, presumably fresh from his trip to Nepal, staring at her from the other side of her second-storey window.
“How the hell—”
“Found a ladder in the garage. You gonna let me in or what?”
Still, she drags herself out of bed, every step a chore, and reluctantly slides the screen up. “What part of leave me alone do you lot not understand?”
The moment he steps onto the carpet, Ryan wraps her in a tight bear hug. “The part where we love you and we’re all really, really worried about you.”
In spite of herself, Yaz melts into the solid bulk of her oldest friend’s chest, warm and familiar. And the moment she does, she realizes that she really, really needed this.
He pulls away after a long while, grimacing. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but when was the last time you had a shower? You smell rank. Like, outer-space rank.”
Normally, she’d have a cutting remark to toss back at him, but all she can muster is a shrug. “Somewhere between the intergalactic bullet train and Naples, I guess.”
“Mate, you are in a bad way.”
Yaz’s blood instantly starts to boil, and she’s shocked how fast the anger rises to the surface. “And what way am I meant to be?”
“I know it’s hard, but…”
“No you don’t. You don’t have a fucking clue,” she snaps. “You left that life because you chose to. I never had a choice. If I did, I’d’ve never, never …”
“Yaz…” He gives her shoulder a gentle squeeze, but she shakes him off violently.
“I’m fine, Ryan. Just leave me alone.” She turns away and busies herself with picking up the empty ramen cups and sweets wrappers that have overtaken the top of her dresser.
There’s a pregnant pause before he says, “You know who you sound like, don’t you?”
Of course I do. She’s in every part of me, every cell, every atom. I wasn’t even born until she saw me.
When she doesn’t respond, Ryan lets out a heavy sigh. She can picture it exactly: the way his shoulders slump; the hopeful look in his eyes, even in defeat. Maybe a little shake of the head, like he used to give her when they were kids and she beat him at Mario Kart. After a moment, she hears the creak of him clambering back down the ladder.
Yaz loves him, and of course she’s grateful he cares. But she can’t go back out into the world, because that means unfreezing time, moving forward in a world made of walls, limits, monotony; a world without her.
“Never a dull moment with me!” she used to announce brightly whenever something particularly daft or brave she’d done landed them in mortal peril—dangling upside-down above a lake of acid, or fleeing the wrath of a sentient isthmus.
When Yaz thinks of the future now, she sees nothing but dull moments. A linear succession of days, weeks, months, years in Sheffield. What will she even do with her time? She has no interest in being a police constable anymore; if the brutality she’s seen so-called “security forces” deploy across the galaxy didn’t do it, the murder of George Floyd certainly did.
“Never trust anyone who makes you salute or swear an oath of loyalty, Yaz,” she’d advised one day, shortly after her escape from the Judoon prison. (She’d also said to never trust anyone who tells you to pick up a gun, but so much for that.)
It’s more than a little embarrassing how loud Yaz’s family cheers when she comes downstairs one night, freshly showered and not wearing jimjams, to watch telly with them.
“Alright, keep it down, I didn’t win the Nobel Prize or anything,” she says, taking a seat on the sofa between Sonya and her dad.
Her mum reaches over to squeeze her knee with an expression so sympathetic that it almost hurts. “It’s okay to be sad, my love. But when you are, it’s important to celebrate the little things.”
If Yaz watches “Love Island” through a haze of tears after that, she doesn’t mention it.