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To call the past few weeks of Yaz’s life completely bonkers would be the understatement of all time; and considering she’s actually met Time, that’s saying something.
First, there were the days spent crying in bed, crisp crumbs clinging to her sheets like old memories. Then came the morning when she stumbled downstairs to make a cuppa, only to find Sonya and her mum wrestling on the kitchen floor, screaming at each other about which restaurant in Tinsley does the best chilli paneer.
After Yaz had broken up the fight (and agreed with Sonya that the correct answer was, in fact, Ghorka Square), she discovered that it wasn’t only her family who were affected, but the whole world, with the exception of Graham, Ryan, and Dan. The two weeks the four of them spent breaking up fights and trying to get to the bottom of the mystery—which was, they immediately agreed, definitely something to do with aliens—made Yaz feel alive for the first time since she’d watched the TARDIS doors swing closed for the last time.
When the global population came back to itself, her first reaction was anger. Why wasn’t she the one to solve it? Why couldn’t she be useful anymore? But that feeling was quickly supplanted by a heavy sort of lightness: If the human race was pulled back from the brink, that meant the Doctor was still out there somewhere, alive and well, saving the world like always.
It’s been less than a week since then, which Yaz has devoted to helping Sheffield repair itself in any way she can. Right now, that means meandering through Meesbrook Park with a bin bag in one hand and a trash picker in the other, clearing out the detritus left behind by all the people who’d decided they had the right to litter like it was 1955 and Earth Day hadn’t been invented yet. Volunteer work doesn’t soothe the ache of the Doctor’s departure as much as trying to solve a planet-annihilating mystery did, but it helps.
All of her attention is focused on a particularly stubborn shard of beer bottle that’s wedged itself into the mud when a long shadow blots out the noonday sun. Her eyes move from the broken glass to the gray plimsolls planted in the grass a few feet in front of her.
Then, the voice belonging to those plimsolls says, “I love you.”
The words tumble out all at once, as if they’ve been held back for a very long time and simply couldn’t wait any longer. Yaz looks up—and then, up higher—until she meets the eyes of a very tall man with hair like the crest of a disheveled cockatiel.
“You…wut?”
“I love you,” he repeats, more feelingly this time.
And before Yaz has the chance to react, the man lunges at her and pulls her into an abrupt embrace.
Yaz has always picked fight over flight, and this moment is no different. “Get off me!” she shouts, and breaks his hold on her with a move she learned back in police training. She puts some distance between them, brandishing her trash picker like a sword. It’s not much of a weapon, but she’s defended herself with less—and in far dicier situations than this. “I don’t know who you think I am, mate, but you’d best be on your way.”
His expression goes from bewildered to wounded as he raises his hands in the air. “You’ve every right to be angry with me,” he says in a measured tone. “Bloody well gave you a time of it. But hear me out?”
Maybe he’s not dangerous, just barmy. “What the hell are you on about?”
She sees her own bewildered expression mirrored on his face. They stare at each other for a long moment, until his eyes go wide. “Oh. Oh! Of course. Sorry. I’d lose my neck if it wasn’t attached to my head. …Wait. Strike that, reverse it.”
Something about his babbling hits a chord deep inside her.
“Yaz. It’s me,” he says. “Well, one of the me’s. There’s two of us now! Long story. I can fill you in later, if you li—”
His words vanish into a little cry of surprise when Yaz throws herself against him, letting the trash picker fall to the ground. When his arms wrap around her, hands clutching the back of her jacket, she lets out a proper breath for the first time in weeks.
She means to say something profound, or at the very least, tender. But what comes out instead is, “Two of you sounds exhausting.”
The Doctor’s bright laugh rings through his scrawny chest and vibrates against the shell of her ear. Then he plants a soft kiss against the crown of her head and says, “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
They sit on the ground a safe distance away from the broken glass. For once, they’re face to face instead of sat side by side, looking anywhere but at each other. As their knees knock together, Yaz reflects that this beer-soaked grass is a hell of a lot more comfortable than that rocky beach.
“So…you love me?” she prompts.
“Yep,” the Doctor says easily. “Loved you for ages. But I was too much of a melodramatic prat to say it.”
“You? Melodramatic? Never.”
“Oi! I’m pouring out my hearts here, Khan!”
She presses a hand to his chest, feeling that familiar double pulse beneath her palm. She meets his eye, and says, with all the mavity the declaration merits, “I love you, too, obviously.”
A massive grin breaks across his face, all teeth and sunshine, as he lays his hand over hers. “Obviously.”
It should feel like more of a revelation, this shared confession. But it doesn’t; it feels like the most natural thing in the world.
“I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner,” the Doctor continues, crushing a blade of grass between his fingers. “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t say it to anyone before…well, before this regeneration, I suppose.”
A wave of sympathy washes over her. “In all those centuries? Not once?”
His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m a right coward, Yaz. Mind you, I’ve gotten awfully good at covering it up with a lot of swagger; but I’ve never really been brave when it counts.”
“Are you kidding? ’Course you have.”
He scoffs and shakes his head—not at her, but at himself. “It’s easy to be brave when it isn’t personal. And saving a planet or two? Not usually very personal.”
“Sure, sure. Saving a planet. Piece of piss.”
What he says next does feel like a revelation. “I should’ve kissed you. On New Year’s Eve, or that day at the beach, or…at any moment, really. All the time. I should’ve kissed you all the time.”
Yaz is too flabbergasted to speak, so the Doctor does what the Doctor does best: fills the silence with eloquence.
“I know it’s not the same between us anymore. And not just because I’m a bloke now. Different body, different life, different circumstances. It’s always like this when I regenerate. S’why I’ve always been so afraid to let anyone stick around for the big light show—especially the people who really mattered to me. So I’m not saying we should kiss now, but. I just thought you should know that, back then, I wanted to so bloody much, it was all I could do not to throw you against the TARDIS console and snog you rotten.”
When he’s finished, all Yaz can manage is, “Well, fuck me.”
“That too!” he adds. “Would’ve loved to fuck you.”
“Doctor!”
“What? Are you scandalized, Yasmin Khan?” He actually has the nerve to waggle his eyebrows.
“No! I’m just…” Incredibly horny now, and I’ve got nowhere to put it. “I just really, really wish you had.”
The Doctor rests a hand against her knee, his long fingers splayed out like the tendrils of a Gallifreyan sea anemone. “I’ve got more regrets than probably anyone in the whole universe. Comes with being functionally immortal. But not acting on my feelings for you? That easily cracks the top five.”
Yaz sighs. “Well, I’m glad you told me. Even if it is too late to do anything about it.”
“Did you also want to, erm—”
“Of course I did, you idiot! Do you have any idea how many times I wanked off to your hologram when I were stranded in 1903?”
The Doctor grins and pokes his tongue between his teeth in a way that Yaz can only describe as obscene. “Wow. Yasmin Khan, bashing one out for little old me.”
“You’re impossible,” she says, in a feeble attempt to cover her embarrassment at the fact that she just yelled about masturbation in the middle of a public park.
“That’s what they tell me.”
They talk for hours on end about everything and nothing—topics ranging from the Toymaker to chilli paneer to the other Doctor who’s run off somewhere in a second TARDIS. Yaz doesn’t realize how long they’ve been there until the setting sun paints crimson light across the sharp angles of his face.
“…And now I can’t seem to stop telling people I love them!” the Doctor is saying. “My best mate, my best mate’s grandad, my best mate’s daughter, the other fella who’s also me…who has killer thighs, by the way.”
“Do you fancy men now?” There isn’t any jealousy in Yaz’s question—just curiosity.
“Ohhhh, the whole gender spectrum, really. Had a bit of a bisexual awakening after I met Isaac Newton recently.”
“Isaac Newton? Seriously? Of all the blokes in history? We met frickin’ Lord Byron, Doctor!”
“Trust me on this, Yaz—Isaac Newton is a snack. And I’m very certain he’d be a far more generous lover than Byron. I’d say we should pop back to the 1660s so you can see for yourself, but I don’t want to cock up the human history of scientific discovery anymore than I already have.”
She laughs. “Says the person who meddled in the lives of Ada Lovelace and Nikola Tesla.”
“Exactly: Anymore than I already have.”
A gust of wind sweeps up the hillside just then, and Yaz tries and fails to suppress a shiver.
“You cold?” the Doctor asks, reaching out both hands to rub warmth into her arms. Unlike the old Doctor, who tended to get lost in the winding corridors of her own brain, this one is too perceptive for his own good.
“A little.” She’s been afraid to say anything, because she has a feeling that whenever they stand up, he’ll leave, and she’ll never see him again.
“I’ve got a coat back in the TARDIS. Probably be a bit big on you, but it’s warm. I can’t wait for you to see the old girl’s new fit. Would you believe she’s even bigger on the inside now?”
There’s a tightness in Yaz’s chest that makes it difficult to speak, but she says, “Yeah, alright. It’d be nice to have one last look ’round.”
The Doctor cocks his head like a confused puppy. “One last look?”
“Yeah, I mean, ’cause. Like you said, ‘Different body, different life,’ right?”
He trips over his words in a rush to get them out. “Oh! Oh, Yaz, no. That’s not what I meant. Just because we’re not mooning over each other anymore doesn’t mean I don’t want you in my life! Sort of the whole reason I came to find you, actually, apart from the professing-my-love thing. Did I not say the bit about how you should come with me?”
Yaz is so relieved that she immediately starts to weep.
“Bloody hell, now I made you cry? I’m a right piece of work.”
“Happy tears, I promise.”
“Good,” he says softly, wiping them away with his thumbs. “Can’t have an unhappy Yaz.”
“You sound just like her,” Yaz says wonderingly. “Er, just like…you?”
The Doctor grins. "I am large. I contain multitudes.”
“Alright, then, Whitman.” She rises to her feet and holds out a hand to help him up. “Let’s go home.”
And the TARDIS is home. Even with the new console room, white as freshly fallen snow—not to mention the new Doctor—it’s home. The controls have all moved around, but Yaz will work it out. She’s good at that.
She looks up from the Relativity Differentiator to see the Doctor leaning against the railing a few feet away, regarding her with what she now knows is, without a doubt, pure love.
“I missed her,” Yaz says, running her fingers along the Time Rotor.
“She missed you, too.”
The TARDIS cuts in with a contented little vwoorp.
“Yes, dear. Didn’t mean to put words in your mouth,” the Doctor says with a cartoonish eye roll.
The ship’s happiness must be catching, because Yaz feels it, too, filling her up until she’s positively vibrating with all the potential energy inside her. She’d almost forgotten how good it feels to be excited about what’s ahead of her.
She bounces over to the railing and knocks her shoulder against the Doctor’s. “So. Where to next?”
When he scrunches up his face in thought, he looks so much like the woman he used to be that Yaz has to swallow back a lump.
“How do you feel about Chiswick?” he says finally.
She snorts. “What’s in Chiswick?”
He twirls over to the console, a millennia-old little boy in a waistcoat and shirtsleeves, lighter than he’s ever been before, and says, “My family.”