Chapter Text
The TARDIS materialises in the corner of Yaz’s bedroom and the Doctor walks out - confused, because this wasn’t the planet with the planet with the green-blue-talking-empathic-algae that she had directed the TARDIS to go to.
Yaz is curled up in a ball in the corner of her bedroom. She looks up and greets the Doctor (whose expression changes from confused-at-the-TARDIS to bewildered, concerned, worried). The Doctor approaches Yaz and crouches down next to her, running her hands through Yaz’s hair and pressing her shoulder against Yaz’s.
“Hey, Yaz - what’s wrong?”
“I was yelled at today. I was called horrible, racist slurs — and they were being so rude about it, because I’m Pakistani and because I’m a woman and I’m queer and— ”
Yaz speaks fast, she speaks fast and tangled and the words just come out because she’s angry, so indescribably angry, and it’s so overwhelming. Things keep happening to her and it’s all so unfair. Everything is so unfair. Everything about everything —
“Yaz. Breathe. 1, 2, 3—”
She tenderly wraps her hands around Yaz’s waist and squeezes Yaz’s arm gently.
"It’s so unfair, Doctor. It’s so unfair and there’s nothing I can do about it. Why is it always that the world is against people like me, Doctor? I don’t know why I was born like this."
Yaz is sobbing and she can’t stop.
"I know, Yaz. It’s unfair. They shouldn’t have said those things to you."
They stay in silence, the Doctor holding Yaz on the floor of her bedroom, TARDIS parked in the corner.
"Can’t you do anything about it, Doctor? Can’t you… I don’t know, convince the leaders of the world to do better or change everyone’s mind through a piece of space tech or something? You could do something about it, right? Erase all the discrimination and the racism and everything?"
The Doctor looks at Yaz directly (even though she struggles with eye contact, because it’ll make Yaz feel better).
"Yaz, I’m really sorry - I can’t do that all. I’m not human. It takes more than alien tech to revolutionize the world and more than a single Time Lord. Believe me, I’ve tried. I couldn’t help my own people, either."
The Doctor pauses.
"I’m not saying that it’s not a really really twisted situation, Yaz. It really is. It’s so twisted and horrid and the world is so unfair and it’s just not right. It really truly isn’t, Yaz. It isn’t and I’m really sorry about it. I feel your anger inside me too, I feel it, Yaz. You’re not alone in feeling this.”
“What do I do though, Doctor? What do I do - I can’t keep living like this in this indescribably messed up world where I’m barely worth anything in anyone’s eyes.”
The Doctor holds Yaz’s hand, tracing her fingers and palm, looking at all the details of Yaz’s fingers - the callouses, the muscles (how well trained her grip was from police training), the delicate edges of the nails, the little bump from holding a pen.
“You live with it. Live in spite of it. Find other meaning and find people who know how much you’re worth.” She returns her gaze to Yaz’s puffy eyelids and wipes a tear from Yaz’s cheek.
“You are worth more than anything to me, Yaz. You are worth everything to me and you will always matter to me. I see the colour of your skin, but I see so much more than that too. I see your multicultural struggles and your culture and your pain, and also the beauty in how plural your existence is. I see beauty in your queerness and I see beauty in your femininity. You can empower others who are like you, and you can embrace who you are, uniquely, as a woman of colour. Yasmin Khan, you are everything to me. You are family. I love you more than anything, and don’t let anyone who doesn’t know you, who makes assumptions about you based on this body (this regeneration, in a way). You are everything to me, Yaz, and it pains me that you don’t think you are everything I think you are.”
Yaz is still crying.
The Doctor prompts her to move to her bed, and when she’s under some blankets and has wiped some tears away, the Doctor moves to boil some water and make some tea.
When the Doctor comes back, Yaz asks, “Doctor, why are you so kind to me? I don’t think I deserve you.”
And the Doctor responds, “Yaz, I am absolutely what you deserve.”
She shifts into the blankets with Yaz, with the mugs of warm tea, and strokes Yaz’s hair. Yaz smiles. The Doctor smiles. Everything will be okay. It truly will be.