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It’s an offhand comment someone at UNIT makes. “Spend too long in the Doctor’s presence, and you get sunburn.”
Yaz scoffs, at the time. The Doctor is no sun. She’s brilliant. She’s compassionate. She’s one of the most amazing people Yaz has ever met. But she’s not a sun. She taste-tests dirt and gets distracted by funny hats and asks Yaz awkwardly for social cues, and Yaz loves her all the more for it.
“You can’t help but fall in love with them,” Martha tells her, once. “That’s why I had to leave.”
Oh, but it’s not like falling. It starts slow and it ends slow, and it doesn’t burn, doesn’t blaze. Just envelops Yaz in a wonderful sense of warmth. It’s not love, at first. No, it’s friendship and a bit of a crush that grows deeper and deeper as the Doctor gradually slips away.
“We orbit them,” Mel says, matter-of-factly at one of their monthly ‘support group’ meetings.
Sure, but the Doctor orbits their companions right back. They push and pull on each other in a great celestial dance. They’re not a squad or a team, but a family. Give and take, like the tides.
“She’s like a sun, isn’t she?” O says in a quiet moment, before it all goes down in flames. “You will get burnt.”
At the time, Yaz doesn’t understand. The Doctor is alight like a firefly; bioluminescence evolved to draw others in, but never to hunt. Just to find a friend. Her light can’t burn Yaz, can’t hurt her.
And yes, Yaz is aware, sometimes, that she isn’t the Doctor’s priority. She’s aware that the Doctor leaves every-so-often to do her own thing and pretends she wasn’t gone for that long. (Time machine—Yaz isn’t stupid.) She’s even aware that the Doctor, if she wanted, could be dangerous.
But the Doctor isn’t a sun and she isn’t a fire and Yaz isn’t freefalling in her gravity.
“You don’t expect the stars to love you back.” Yaz isn’t sure where the phrase originated, but it’s been passed around the companion circle for quite a while. It’s always said with a sort of bitter awe that makes Yaz want to scream.
And maybe that’s the problem. The Doctor isn’t above them. She may not be a human, but she’s a person, still, flawed and hungry and real. When the Doctor withdraws, it isn’t the natural order of things—it’s wrong, and Yaz fights against it, sinking her claws into the Doctor’s humanity and holding fast.
The Doctor is no star, and Yaz knows that. You don’t expect the stars to love you back. But when it’s a person, a person who’s brimming with care and compassion and love. Well. Yaz never expected anything. But she let herself hope.
If Yaz had believed that the Doctor was the sun, it would’ve been easy to let go. But she doesn’t. And she isn’t. And it isn’t. And she doesn’t.
See, Yaz would stay with the Doctor until the end, but that isn’t enough. The Doctor doesn’t die; she’s reborn. And Yaz would stay after the end, too, but the Doctor doesn’t want that.
Yaz understands. It’s easier to be needed than to need, to be worshipped than to worship. Being the stars is a lot of pressure, but it sure hurts a lot less than being just one of billions crawling around on a chunk of rock. It hurts less than caring, than joining the story and feeling every moment of pain deep within your hearts.
“And if I was going to, believe me, it would be with you.”
You don’t expect the stars to love you back.
We orbit them.
You will get burnt.
The Doctor isn’t a sun, and Yaz doesn’t get sunburn. She just cries, and cries, and cries. The tears leave behind a glow deep in Yaz’s chest. She walks onwards. Never trudges, never skips, never falters. Just walks.
The sun sets, but even the wind can’t chase away the warmth.
“Sure,” Yaz says. She’s sitting on the beach alone, talking to no one, and there’s a skipping stone in her hand.
“I wish this would go on forever.”
And Yaz smiles.