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Of all the things awaiting her in the underground alien labyrinth she was exploring, Yaz hadn’t expected to round a corner and see her very own Mum.
Najia Khan, who lived thousands of miles away - thousands of years away, at that - in Sheffield. Earth. Mother of two. Yaz’s Mum. Yet somehow now, on an alien planet, hidden in the underground cave system that Yaz was trying to navigate.
“Yaz, what’s going on?” The sonic screwdriver that Yaz held piped up, the voice of her friend, the Doctor, coming out in a tinny tone. For what felt like the tenth time, Yaz cursed whatever forces were keeping the TARDIS from landing on the planet. She’d done worse before, alone, but a sonic screwdriver wasn’t quite the blonde-haired alien Yaz felt both safe and terrified around.
“There’s something - it’s not letting me - it shouldn’t be this protected against - gah!” The Doctor cut off as a sudden shock nearly launched her and Yaz into the air, the huffing and puffing of the console letting them know the TARDIS’s opinion on the landing. “I know, I know, but I’m sorry. There’s a signal down there, and I don’t understand it, but-”
The Doctor was cut off again by an even more severe jolt. Yaz couldn’t stop herself from colliding with the Doctor, knocking them both to the floor in a hurry of out-of-breath sighs.
"What’s stopping her from landing?” Yaz asked, ignoring how close she was to her friend. She felt the Doctor’s shoulders sag.
“I don’t know. I don’t like it. It’s only making me more determined to get onto that planet.”
Yaz rolled her eyes and pushed herself up, rolling off the Doctor. “You don’t think it’s a sign? Big red “STOP” sign in space?”
“Course it is.”
“And we both know you just love following the highway code.”
The Doctor turned her head and gave Yaz one of the grins that made Yaz’s heart jump a couple of inches up her chest. “I’m a stickler for rules, me.”
Yaz let her eyebrows raise. “Course you are. So what’s the plan?”
A gleam sparked in the Doctor’s eyes, and the next thing she knew, Yaz was being dragged to the other side of the TARDIS console. “I’ve got an idea.”
“Yaz! Are you still there?” The Doctor’s voice sounded worried. Yaz shook her head and tried to bring herself back to reality.
“Yeah,” she said quietly, keeping her distance from the figure. “Yeah, I’m here.”
“What’s going on?” the Doctor asked, her voice dropping to match Yaz’s. “Is there something there?”
“It’s my mum.”
There was a pause, a silence of a few seconds. “Come again?”
“My mum is standing about 10 metres in front of me. Just staring at me.”
Najia - or the alien posed as Najia, as Yaz had to assume - twitched, the first movement since Yaz had put eyes on it. “Yaz.”
Yaz let out a sharp breath, and the alien smirked. It turned on its heels in a second and raced into an opening on its right, disappearing from view.
“Scan her, Yaz!” the Doctor said, spurring Yaz into action. She dashed forward, passing through the pathway and rounding the twisting corner.
In front of her were three new passages, all dark and empty. Once again, she cursed her idea to voluntarily investigate the planet, transporting herself down to the surface while the Doctor waited on the TARDIS above. Logically, she knew the Doctor couldn’t help how the planet seemed to repulse her away, but Yaz wished the Time Lord was standing beside her regardless.
“Why did she - it - look like my Mum, Doctor?”
“I don’t know.” The Doctor’s voice was uncertain.
“But you have an idea?”
A pause. “I need you to get closer to it and scan it with the sonic. But Yaz, be careful. Try not to let it see you.”
Yaz swallowed. “Okay. Mind helping me with which path to take?”
Twenty minutes (and only three wrong turns) later, Yaz found herself turning a corner into an opening to a small cavern, the walls high but the open space tight. She scanned her eyes across the floor, trying to glimpse her mum, but stopped short.
“It’s here,” Yaz said. “It’s here, Doctor, but it’s not my mum. It’s Sonya .”
“Scan it.”
The words were sharp and sudden, and Yaz had to hide behind the cavern wall, praying the sonic’s noise wouldn’t betray her location. Sonya hadn’t seen her yet, but the tone of the Doctor’s voice had scared her slightly. Whatever this creature was, the Doctor thought it was dangerous.
Yaz fumbled with the sonic, pressing down on the part she hoped would send the scan to the TARDIS.
“Brilliant,” the Doctor said, her voice wobbling as she presumably ran around the console. Her voice continued to speak, but Yaz tuned it out. There was movement from the other side of the room. A figure, shadowed by the darkness, was walking towards the chamber entrance, unable to see the alien that stood around the other side. Yaz frantically waved her arm to get the figure’s attention, but it wasn’t working.
“Yaz. Yaz! Can you still hear me?”
“Hang on a mo, Doctor,” Yaz replied, steeling herself. Her mind was already made up, her legs taking her into the open area before she had another chance to think.
“Hey!” she shouted, looking into her sister’s eyes.
“What are you doing?” the Doctor’s frantic voice called. Yaz ignored her.
“Hey, who are you, and why do you think you can steal my sister’s face like that?”
Sonya looked at her, cocking her head. Then, she began to laugh. The chuckle grew louder and more horrible than anything Yaz had ever heard from her sister. She shivered.
“Yasmin Khan,” the alien spoke, for Yaz couldn’t think of it as her sister anymore, not with that menacing look on its face. “How nice for you to show up.”
“How do you know my name? And how do you know that face?”
The creature reached a hand outward, and Yaz tried not to flinch away. She didn’t want to show any weakness. The Doctor would stand her ground.
“I know everything about you, Yaz. I’ve been in here.” The alien touched its finger to its head, a look of glee on its face. Yaz felt sick.
“Yaz, you don’t know how dangerous that creature is,” the Doctor warned, but there was nothing Yaz could do about it.
“Too late,” Yaz replied.
“This is why I don’t like leaving you alone,” she huffed, and Yaz would’ve protested had her sister not given her such an intrigued look. “Why did you leave the path?”
Involuntarily, Yaz’s eyes flickered over to where the figure had been standing. She realised her mistake a second later when the alien in front of her followed her gaze. But the figure was gone.
“I-” Yaz said before suddenly she heard a “RUN!” and a blur of a shape run back the way she’d come from.
Not having time to think, she pelted after the figure, finally making out some of their details. Male, short but lanky, with a long coat flapping behind him as he ran.
“Who are you?” Yaz called.
“Doesn’t matter, just follow me!”
They took twisting turns, losing themselves in the maze of the tunnel system as they outran the creature behind them. Yaz had always beaten Sonya in a race, and that was helping save her life here.
They finally stopped in a small area, rushing water coming from a creek at one side of the cave. Catching her breath, she turned to the sonic in her hand.
“I’m okay,” she said, hearing the Doctor’s sigh of relief. “We’ve escaped, and I think we’ve lost the alien. At least for now.”
“We?” the Doctor said, a hint of something in her voice that Yaz couldn’t quite make out.
Yaz turned to look at the man in front of her, who was now staring back. He seemed even shorer now than before, his dark hair in a tangled mess cascading past his shoulders. He looked rumpled, as if he hadn’t seen a bathtub in weeks. “Well, at least that’s a face I don’t know.”
The man huffed a laugh. “Yasmin Khan.”
Yaz froze at her name, and the man, sensing her tension, raised his hands. “No, no - I heard the creature say it.”
She nodded carefully. “Do I know you?” Something about the man in front of her seemed so vaguely familiar, in a way impossible to place.
“No, I don’t think so. At least, not really.”
Yaz frowned at the cryptic answer. “Then, do you know me?”
The man ignored her question. “What was that creature?”
“It’s an illusionist.”
Yaz looked at the sonic, almost forgetting she was carrying it and the Doctor with her. The man seemed to nod as if the answer made sense.
“Have you seen them before?” Yaz asked him.
“No. Not myself.”
“They’re dangerous,” the Doctor explained, voice fraught with tension. “Yaz, I’m not sure you should be there without me.”
Yaz ignored her. “What does it do?”
“It uses the things you love against you. Transforms into a figure of the people you care most about, both as a defense mechanism and an attack. It knows you’d never be able… to kill your sister, even if you know it’s truly an alien.”
Just the idea of that made Yaz feel nauseous. “Then what do we do? How do we defeat it?”
There was a pause. “This is why I don’t want you there alone. I can’t ask you to do this, Yaz.”
A horror fell through Yaz as she realised the true extent of the creature’s power. It was like the Doctor had said. No matter how dangerous it was, there was no way she’d ever be able to kill the alien. Not when it looked like that.
“Okay then, Doctor. What do I do? There’s got to be some other way to defeat it. Surely-” But Yaz was cut off by a noise from the entrance to the cave. “Get behind me!”
Yaz pushed the man behind her, turning to face the door. “Doctor, what do I do?”
“Yes, Doctor, what do I do? Oh, wait.”
Everything in Yaz’s body froze as a new voice spoke from where the alien was approaching. As it entered the light, Yaz felt her hands clench tight, fingernails digging into her skin.
“No,” Yaz whispered.
“Yaz,” the Doctor asked, her voice quiet. “Yaz, is that..?”
“The one you love most of all. The one you’d never be able to kill, who has saved your life so, so many times.” The Doctor. Standing before her, a terrible expression that was so out of place on the Time Lord’s face. Yaz couldn’t even breathe. “The one you can’t admit you love, barely even to yourself.”
“Yaz..?”
Pressing down on the sonic, Yaz cut off the connection between her and the Doctor in the TARDIS. If this was it - if this was how her life ended - then she wasn’t letting the Doctor hear any of it. She’d spare her that pain.
“You always knew I’d be the one to kill you,” the alien taunted, circling closer. The exit was still blocked, and Yaz couldn’t think straight or plan an escape. “You were never going to give me up by choice, after all.”
Yaz swallowed. “Yeah? Well, what are you waiting for?”
The alien laughed. “I like to play with my food. It makes it all the more satisfying when I go for the kill if-”
“Yaz, back!”
Shocked out of her momentary paralysis, Yaz turned around to see the man behind her standing forward. His face had changed - full of determination and power, and for a moment, she felt awestruck.
Pushing his way in front of Yaz, he seemed a foot taller than two seconds ago. “You want to see who I love? Then take a look, because there’s no end to the unbelievable people I’ve met in the thousands of years I’ve been in this universe.”
Yaz watched in fascinated horror as the creature and the man stood off against each other. The monster’s face began to morph, flicking through features of people - long hair, dark hair, tall men, small children. A flash of freckles and orange hair; a black bomber jacket with many patches sewn on; an all too familiar set of dark brown space buns. With a blood-curdling scream from multiple voices, the monster disappeared right before her.
The man fell to the floor.
“Woah, hey there,” Yaz said, running over to catch him before he fell. “You’re okay; you did good.”
The man looked at her, out of breath but grinning. “Yaz?”
Yaz inhaled and took a moment to prepare, finally having caught on. “It’s you, isn't it? Doctor?”
The man closed his eyes. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you, Yasmin Khan. You’re every bit as brilliant as I remember.”
Struggling with the enormous number of questions she wanted to ask, Yaz could barely find her voice. “How long has it been?”
“Ah, I couldn’t tell you. Even if I wanted to, that is,” he laughed.
“That long, eh?” Yaz’s smile turned rueful. “And you - you still remember me?”
“How could I forget?” Yaz felt a laugh bubble up as her eyes started to wet. “You saw all those faces. I’ve lived so long, and loved so many.”
Yaz didn’t know how to reply. The Doctor sat up, and as he pulled himself forward, Yaz leaned in to wrap her arms around his back and drag him into a hug.
“Oh, I’ve missed you.” There was a wistful note in his voice. “You know we can’t stay here too long.”
“Yeah. Timelines and… stuff.” Yaz laughed. “What happened to the illusionist? Is it gone?”
The Doctor leant away, standing up and offering his hand to Yaz. “Don’t worry about it. I got rid of it. Too much of a good thing…”
Yaz caught his eyes. “Whatever you want to ask,” the Doctor began warningly, “I can’t answer.”
“Of course.”
The Doctor regarded her for a moment. “You and I know she doesn’t show it, but,” he smiled. “She does, Yaz.”
Yaz’s heart was beating loudly in her chest. The Doctor said nothing more but reached out to clasp Yaz’s hand in his own.
***
“And you’re really sure there’s nothing else? You definitely got rid of it?”
Yaz rolled her eyes up to look at the ceiling of the TARDIS. “Yes, Doctor. We checked - he had a scanner that could detect life. He made sure the illusionist was gone.”
Yaz didn’t admit that the scanner had been on the TARDIS itself. The future Doctor hadn’t let her in, though Yaz wasn’t even sure if she would’ve wanted to see what the future TARDIS looked like. Just the Doctor had been excitement enough.
“And you promise me you’re alright? Illusionists are nasty pieces of work.”
Yaz grabbed the Doctor’s arm, staring straight at her. “Doctor. I’m here, I’m fine, and everything got sorted. Okay?”
The crease on the Doctor’s forehead persisted. Yaz really, really hoped she wasn’t thinking too hard about who the illusionist had imitated.
“When you faced off the illusionist earlier, Yaz. Right at the end, I was… I was terrified .” Yaz felt heat rise in her face in embarrassment. “I told you it was dangerous, but you ignored me. And then, with the illusionist… when it spoke...”
“I’m sorry,” Yaz blurted out, not wanting to look up at the Doctor. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for… I didn’t know that it would happen or be you -”
“What are you apologising for?” The Doctor reached with the hand that wasn’t on Yaz’s arm, putting two fingers under her chin and tilting her head upwards.
“I…” Yaz said, but couldn’t find the words. The Doctor was hypnotising, with a look on her face that Yaz had never seen before.
“It was my voice down there, Yaz,” the Doctor said, and Yaz wished she could shy away. But the Doctor didn’t look disgusted - no. She looked as far away from disgusted as possible. “My voice, taunting you, threatening horrible things. And then the connection cut, and I had no idea what was happening to you, Yaz, and-”
Yaz bridged the gap between them, reaching a hand to put on the Doctor’s cheek. “It’s okay. I’m here now.”
The last bit of tension in the Doctor’s body seemed to seep out of her, and before she knew what she was doing, Yaz was leaning in.
Yaz had imagined kissing the Doctor would be more awkward - she was kissing an alien, for God’s sake! But the Doctor’s lips were soft, and the hand that tightened around her waist felt natural. Yaz angled her head, leaving it to the Doctor to pull away or deepen the kiss.
“I thought… I thought I would lose you, and the last thing you’d see was me, like that .” Yaz tried to quiet her, but the Doctor shook her head. “When I heard my voice, I was terrified, but at the same time, when I realised… Yaz.”
“I know,” Yaz said bashfully.
“Losing you then, thinking I’d never get a chance to say it back…”
And the Doctor was kissing her again, her eyes tearful but the kiss hungry.
“I’m here, Doctor,” Yaz managed in between kisses. “You’re alright.”
The Doctor pulled back, leaning their foreheads together. “You’re alright, Yaz.”
“More than alright,” Yaz laughed, knowing, at last, that it was true.