Chapter Text
“Ah,” the Doctor said.
That was all she said, and as the silence stretched on, so did the simmering tension in Yaz’s stomach.
“Is that... good?” Yaz asked finally, “or not-so-good?” She turned her head to glance at the Doctor. She couldn’t really move anything else; her heels and shoulders were pressed flat against the alley wall.
The Doctor pulled carefully back from the corner, sliding back by inches. Blonde threads of her hair caught on the rough stone as she moved. Slowly, she rolled her head against the wall to catch Yaz’s gaze. Her expression was unreadable, but something familiar sparked in her eyes.
“I haven’t decided yet,” she murmured, so low and close that Yaz felt, rather than heard, the words.
“Take your time,” Yaz murmured back. “I’m loving the suspense.”
She was rewarded with a flash of delight on the Doctor’s face, for just a moment before the Doctor locked her expression down again and turned back, tilting her head to watch the street.
Yaz squinted, but she couldn’t make out much from this position: sun-washed stone, flashes of color as pedestrians hurried through the crowd, and a wash of white noise. There, a woman in red toted a large case through the throng; there, a man with wild white hair gestured to a shopkeeper; there, three children and a puppy wove between the legs of the adults, chased by a frazzled man with a frizzy beard.
Yaz returned her gaze to the Doctor’s face, watching carefully for any hint.
Eventually, the Doctor gave up her vigil and edged back down the alley. Her shoulder bumped Yaz’s. Together, they executed a sort of scooting maneuver along the wall to pull back far enough that they couldn’t be seen from the street. The glamor of the time travel experience was never lost on her, Yaz reflected with a silent sigh.
When the Doctor deemed them far enough back, she tugged her sonic out her pocket and examined it.
“You want the good news or the bad news?” She asked, looking up at Yaz.
“Start with the good,” decided Yaz, who was determined to cultivate an optimistic mood. She’d been enjoying the 1970s so far – from the music to the graffiti to the food.
“I’ve figured out what those odd artron signals are coming from.”
Yaz didn’t bother to ask her to clarify what artron meant. The Doctor’s lengthy lecture from earlier still had her head in knots.
“And…?”
“And I might know how to sort it.”
Yaz waited. When nothing more was forthcoming, she prompted: “And the bad news?”
“That is the bad news.” The Doctor glanced back towards the mouth of the alley. Yaz wasn’t sure who she’d been hiding from. If anyone. The crowd continued to pour by, a shifting watercolor of shape and sound.
“So… you know the problem, and how to fix it?”
“Yep.” The Doctor was fiddling with her sonic again, distracted.
“Sorry, I’m not getting why that’s a bad thing.”
“Not bad,” she responded, tone a bit sharp. “Just…” She glanced up a Yaz again, smoothing the creases from her face and the corners from her tone. “Just… complicated, I guess.” She dropped the hand with her sonic to her side and sighed, tipping her head back against the brick. “Should’ve known better than to come back here.”
Yaz held tightly to her optimism. “We’re pretty good at complicated.”
The Doctor gave a tired smile. That tiredness was never far at bay, these days. Yaz frowned, but the Doctor was already moving on.
“We’ll need a few things,” she said, setting off towards the TARDIS. Yaz hurried after without a backwards glance.
*
It had all started earlier that day (or about six million Earth years; or seventeen universal-standard kilohours; or, interestingly, exactly forty-two Andexian light-seconds, in the future. Depending on how you counted). Yaz and the boys had been in the console room, arguing companionably while the Doctor, flat on her back on the floor, fiddled with something under the console.
“She weren’t!” Graham insisted. He had his elbows on the console, feet inches from the Doctor’s hip. Yaz and Ryan giggled.
“Face it, gramps. That bug lady was making eyes at you all day.”
The Doctor slid out from under the console. “Bug lady! That’s real offensive Ryan. She was Trillian, and fifth in line for the throne to boot.”
“Right…” Out of the Doctor’s line of vision, Ryan affected little antenna on his head. Yaz fought to keep her face straight.
It wasn’t even that funny – it was just nice to have the Doctor be present with them, for once. She’d been distant for weeks now: sharp, withdrawn, slow to smile. Her affable enthusiasm had become foggy absent-mindedness. Her warmth had frozen over; her words were cutting as often as they were kind. Yaz couldn't pinpoint what, exactly, had changed, but she’d come to savor moments like this, in which the Doctor seemed almost herself again.
The Doctor, oblivious, was patting the floor next to her. “Who’s got my laser awl?”
Graham silently handed it down to her, while maintaining disapproving eye contact with Ryan.
The Doctor slid back under the console. She’d shed her coat earlier, and the sleeves of her white undershirt were rolled to her elbows. Not that it had helped much; engine grease was streaked down her arms and across her cheek.
“No offense granddad,” Ryan made a valiant attempt to keep the laughter out of his voice. “But princesses are pro’bly out of your league…”
Something chirruped on the TARDIS console.
The Doctor slid back out. “What was that?”
The humans exchanged shrugs.
“I think it came from… here?” Yaz leaned over the console. As always, it was impossible to tell which instruments did what.
The Doctor hopped to her feet and circled the console, elbowing in between Yaz and Ryan. She leaned in, pulled a pair of black-rimmed spectacles out of her pocket, and set them on her face. She peered at the offending indicator.
The three humans froze, wearing identical expressions.
“Odd. That’s the paradox det-”
“Uh… Doc?”
“Since when do you wear specs?”
She glanced up. They were too big for her face, and the effect was somewhat comical. She beamed.
“Found them while I was looking for my seventh-favorite hat! Trust me when I say you can’t pull off a fez on every occasion… Don’t suppose they suit me this time ‘round?”
The spectacles slipped down a little as she talked. She used one finger to pop them back up her nose.
Yaz found herself desperately searching for a polite way to say absolutely not while Ryan got a little more practice stifling laughter. Before they could say anything, the TARDIS chirped again.
The Doctor turned her face to the console, glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose again as she looked down. Absently, she pushed them back again, using her other hand to pull the monitor around. Unreadable symbols and circles moved over it as she typed commands.
“That is odd,” she murmured to herself.
“What is, Doctor?” asked Ryan, patiently. He seemed to have his giggles under control, finally.
She placed both hands on the console. “How do you lot feel about a side trip to London?”
“I’ve been,” Graham pointed out.
“London, 1974!”
“Yeah, I’ve been.”
She grinned at him. “Not with me you haven’t.” She reached for a lever, and they were off.
The landing was rocky, even by TARDIS standards. The Doctor directed all three of them to hold down dials and levers, and Yaz held onto hers for dear life as the floor rocked and roiled beneath her. Even the Doctor had to clutch the monitor with both hands to keep her footing as they shuddered to a halt. She stared at it, intent, face inches from the screen.
“Right!” She said cheerfully, releasing it. She pulled the black-rimmed specs from her face and tucked them into a pocket. “This one’s a bit of a mystery! Who’s ready?”
Yaz and Ryan raised their hands. Graham sighed.
Ryan raised his a bit higher. The Doctor nodded at him, the corner of her mouth quirking.
“What’s the mystery, exactly?”
The Doctor clapped her hands together. “It’s mysterious, Ryan! I’ve genuinely no idea.”
“What was that alert, then?” Ryan pressed.
“That would be the paradox detector. Haven’t heard it go off in… oh, years. Decades, more like.”
“What’s a paradox detector?” Yaz elbowed into the conversation. She stared at the bit of console the Doctor had indicated.
“Does what’s on the tin,” she responded, a little impatient. Voice gone a little sharp, again.
“So why’s it gone off now?”
The Doctor gave Yaz an inpatient look, like she’d been slow. “Must be a paradox. Only, thing is, there isn’t.” She tapped the console again. “Would be a lot more alarms goin’ off if there were.”
Yaz wasn’t willing to let go. “So… what’s it detectin’ then?”
The Doctor shrugged. “Beats me. Still, the old girl brought us here. Least we can do is take a look!” She grabbed her coat and headed for the TARDIS doors.
Yaz gritted her teeth in frustration. The Doctor always been… well. Enthusiastic. Impulsive. But lately, she was ready to swan dive into trouble at the drop of a hat. Taking five minutes to explain seemed, suddenly, to be vastly beyond the limits of her patience.
Still, Yaz wouldn’t be left behind. She headed after the Doctor, who’d shrugged on her coat and was heading for the doors. Reaching them, she wrenched one open, hanging half out, toes still on the black-grate floor of the TARDIS. Yaz, who’d been expecting her to continue out, almost ran right into her.
The Doctor didn’t seem to notice. She gazed a moment at London, 1974, then glanced back at the fam.
“Ground rules,” she said, uncharacteristically serious. “Graham, stay away from any neighborhoods you lived in, old friends, and anyone who looks like you did in 1974.” She listed these on her fingers, one by one.
“Got it,” Graham responded. “I’m not itching to cause any paradoxes, myself.”
“Nor me,” the Doctor murmured. She glanced at Yaz and Ryan. “Just… step lightly.”
Yaz exchanged looks with Graham and Ryan. It was a familiar warning, but delivered with a peculiar gravity for the Doctor, whose policy of non-interference was… flexible, to say the least.
But the Doctor was already moving on. She stepped out the TARDIS doors into the watery London sun. Yaz and the boys filed out behind her.
It was midmorning, judging by the sun. A light layer of clouds skidded across the sky. They’d landed on a relatively quiet side street, but nearby Yaz could hear the buzz of city life.
The Doctor was fiddling with her sonic, frowning, spinning it in her fingers.
“Weird,” she muttered. She whacked it against her palm, then lifted it again. She turned on the pavement, gaze skimming the unremarkable brick faces of the buildings. A few pedestrians passed; their eyes didn’t so much as lift at the hulking blue bulk of the TARDIS or the oddly-dressed Doctor.
“Thing is…” she lifted the sonic, then brought it to her nose, peering so close she was almost cross-eyed. “It’s not just the paradox detector. I’m also getting insane levels of artron energy. I mean, off the charts. If there were charts.”
“What energy?”
That launched a lecture that Yaz, head spinning, didn’t follow a word of. It amounted, more or less, to a problem with the fabric of spacetime. Emanating from London, 1974.
“-but the artron signals are diffuse,” she was explaining. “Hard to tell where they’re comin’ from, exactly. Best to split up.”
Yaz jerked her head up at that.
The Doctor turned, head tilted. Gaze already gone a bit distant. Distracted. “Look for aliens, spaceships, temporal disturbances…”
“Just the usual, then?” Graham piped up.
The Doctor didn’t detect his sarcasm. “Right!” She responded, cheerfully oblivious. “Meet you back here in a couple hours.”
“Is it me,” Ryan asked, watching as the Doctor’s coat disappeared down the street, “or was that really suspicious?”
“She’s trying to get rid of us alright,” Graham agreed.
“We should follow,” Yaz decided. “What if she needs help?”
“Yeah…” Graham trailed off, distracted. “But you know, there’s a shop a couple streets over if memory serves. Closed down about 1982 but they made the best pie I’ve ever had. Fancy a taste?”
Ryan lit up at the idea of trying Graham’s favorite pie from a couple decades before he’d even been born. Yaz wavered, but the blue edge of the Doctor’s coat had already vanished from sight. Graham coaxed her into giving the Doctor some time: “after all, love, she needs her space sometimes…”
It felt to Yaz that the Doctor had needed an awful lot of space lately.
Still, Graham and Ryan were good company, and the time went by fast. When they returned to the TARDIS – two hours on the dot, Yaz made sure – Ryan was sporting a new cap and Graham an extra slice of pie for the Doctor.
“For a time traveler,” he reflected, holding the to-go box in both hands, “she isn’t much good at keeping track of time.”
Yaz shifted, crossing her arms. “We shouldn’t have let her go off alone.”
“She’s not a child,” Graham reminded her patiently. “She can handle herself for a bit of midday investigating.”
He was probably right. Yaz glanced around at the London crowds. They looked just the same as in her own time, until you peered a little closer at the fashions.
Graham was probably right. But…
“I’m going to look for her,” she decided.
After a little more negotiation, they split up, with Graham reminding her that London wasn’t known for its safety in the ‘70s. Yaz waved him off; it was the middle of the day and the area was nice enough; anyways, she doubted she was any less safe on the streets of London than she had been in the sands of Desolation or the depths of Ranskoor Av Kolos.
*
Surprisingly, the Doctor hadn’t actually been hard to find. Yaz had found her only a handful of streets over, people-watching in an alley. Despite her mild irritation at the Doctor giving them the slip, she couldn’t help the familiar adrenaline rush as she surveyed the crowd over the Doctor’s shoulder. To Yaz’s eyes, things looked normal; the Doctor obviously didn’t think so, but her cryptic statements on “good news and bad news” didn’t help Yaz decipher the problem.
By the time they made it back to the TARDIS, Graham and Ryan were already there. They were seated on the pavement in the warm midafternoon sun, backs to the TARDIS doors, the box of pie cradled in Graham’s lap.
“Will you look at you two?” The Doctor tutted, sweeping towards them. “Sittin’ on the job.”
“It would help,” Graham said, making no move to get up, “if you’d tell us what the ‘job’ is instead of takin’ off on your own.”
The Doctor waved a dismissive hand, reaching over their heads to push the TARDIS doors open. Ryan dropped a palm behind himself onto the TARDIS floor, tilting his head to grin up at her as she shuffled past. His new cap slipped with the motion; he had to grab it to keep it from falling off.
The Doctor seemed distracted, again. She headed through the TARDIS, past the console, and was up the stairs before Graham had even unfolded his creaky knees.
They caught up with her down the hall, on her hands and knees in the doorway of a closet, tossing things out over her shoulder.
At least, Yaz figured it was a closet. Or… storage space? Storage… hall? When she glanced inside, the space was cavernous, barely lit, and absolutely cluttered with broken furniture, electrical gadgets, angular shards of old machinery, piles of old clothing, cracked kitchenware, towers of battered boxes… Yaz wondered how the Doctor was going to find anything in there and concluded, as a heavy textbook hit the wall behind her with a thunk, that she wasn’t.
“Er.” Ryan tilted his head and squinted down at the cover. It had landed with its spine cracked open and pages folded. “I don’t think quantum physics has… invented that… yet…”
“Doc? Hey, Doc?” Graham took his life in his hands as he stepped into the doorway, ducking a flying candlestick, to tap the Doctor on the shoulder.
She started, then sat up on her knees. A hand came up to rub at her eyes. “I just had it…” she muttered, pressing her palm to her forehead.
“Had what, cockle?” He balanced on his heels beside her, patient.
She waved a hand. “I had it… I had… oh, blast it. He has it.”
“You gonna tell us what’s going on, Doc?” Asked Graham. His forehead had wrinkled into concern.
The Doctor stood with a sigh. “What’s going on,” she said, dusting her knees off, “is that our sort-of complicated trip is about to get very complicated.”
She turned back down the hall, leaving the door to the closet open and the TARDIS corridor strewn with junk. The humans trailed her back to the console room, peppering her with questions. She spun to face them, leaning back against her ship.
“Time,” she began, “isn’t a straight line. It’s… well. More complicated than that. We don’t have time – hah – to get into it…” She had her hands up, tracing shapes in the air. The ghost of real enthusiasm roughened her voice. “But, basically, there’s a… pinch? Warp? Fold? In time.”
“Okay…” Ryan rubbed his neck with one hand. “Er. What does that mean, exactly?”
The Doctor shrugged, the loose folds of her coat shifting with the motion. She put her hands behind her, bracing herself against the console. “The more important question,” she informed him, “is what caused it?”
“Okay…” Ryan just barely suppressed a bemused eye roll. “So… what caused it?”
“Great question! Ten points Ryan.” She rocked on her heels a moment, pushing off the console like a child. “Er. That’s the tricky part. If I’m bein’ honest.”
They all three stared at her.
“Could be a couple things. Honestly it doesn’t matter – it sounds bad, but it’s actually not so hard to fix.”
“A fold in time? You can sort that, Doc?”
“Sure! Take me five minutes and a toaster. Well. And a few other things…”
Graham sighed. “What do you need?”
“I can cobble most of the equipment together from what’s in the TARDIS.”
“Okay.” Graham crossed his arms, picking up on what she wasn’t saying. “And where do we get the rest of it?”
“I, uh, I know a guy,” she said cagily.
“You… know a guy.” Graham eyed her.
She nodded.
“In 1974?”
“Oh sure.” She waved a flippant hand. “I know a lot of guys in 1974. That’s part of the problem actually: see, when you start crossing timelines it’s like throwing a stone into a pond, except the ripples are sometimes ripples and sometimes they’re tidal waves. Quantum tidal waves.”
“Can I have that in English, Doc?”
She met his gaze. “You can do all the maths you like, but you never know exactly what the consequences will be.”
Yaz crossed her arms. “So how do we avoid making waves?”
“Easy enough!” The Doctor brightened. “Just avoid crossing anyone’s personal timeline.”
“Meaning…”
“Meaning, we have to avoid coming into contact with ourselves” – she glanced pointedly at Graham – “or anyone we know, or knew, or who might recognize us…”
Ryan leaned into Yaz’s ear. “Could have used that warning before the pie,” he muttered. Then he straightened and raised a hand. The Doctor nodded at him, amused.
“So, what about, like, the butterfly effect? Doesn’t everything we do here affect the timeline?”
“Another good question! Ten more points!” She spun, pulling a few levers on the TARDIS. Nothing seemed to happen, and Yaz wondered as she often did if the Doctor was really doing something, or if she just needed an excuse to move.
“Fact is,” she continued, not really looking at Ryan, “spacetime is quite resilient, actually. It’s complicated, I won’t get into it, but as long as we avoid major paradoxes we should be alright. It’s kind of my job, actually.”
“What, avoiding paradoxes?”
“Among other things.” She flipped another switch.
“Well…” Graham shrugged. “Doubt we’ll run into me. This ain’t the side of London I grew up in.”
Ryan shrugged. “My family’s from Sheffield.”
“Mine too,” Yaz volunteered. “The whole Khan clan, since Nani settled there.”
“How ‘bout you, Doc?”
The Doctor glanced up at Graham. “I have no relations from either Sheffield or London,” she pointed out, amused.
“No, but you said you’d been here before. How do we know you’re not out there, runnin’ around, savin’ the city from aliens?”
“Because if I was, the city would already be saved,” she explained patiently. “Hardly need two of me to manage that!” She turned away from Graham as she spoke, returning her attention to the console. Her hands fidgeted against its surface.
There was something she wasn’t telling them. The thought crystalized in Yaz’s mind as she watched the Doctor. Her confused empathy evaporated, replaced by frustration; where had she gone earlier? Why didn’t she ever let them in?
“Right!” the Doctor declared. She grabbed the monitor, swinging it around. “Here’s the plan…”
She outlined schematics for a device which would somehow untangle, unwarp, unfold, or whatever the timelines. Yaz nodded along and tried to look like she understood more than one out of every ten words.
“Hang on, Doc.” Graham tapped the console, cutting off her lecture. “What about the paradox?”
“There is no paradox.”
“You said there were! That’s why we came in the first place, isn’t it?”
“Oh.” She eyed the console. “Yeah. Actually, I don’t know.” She tilted her head. “Could just be feedback? Wires crossed, that sort of thing. The TARDIS doesn’t like it when time is all wonky. Gets a little sick.” She patted her belly, face twisting in exaggerated sympathy.
“Okay…” Graham frowned. “So, then, what caused the, er…”
“Time Fold?” She frowned. “Nope, not that. Time… Warp? No, that’s something else…”
“Doc…”
She refocused on Graham. Lifted her shoulders; another shrug. “Honestly. I’ve no idea. But this is one of those times where we don’t need to know. We just need to fix it.”
Graham looked a little uncomfortable at that. Yaz felt a thread of nervousness twine down her spine, but it was drowned out by the call of adventure. She leaned in. The Doctor leaned in too, palm on the console.
“I just need a few things.”