Work Text:
25 minutes
Yaz moves in a haze, at first. It still doesn't feel real; the weight still hasn't settled in her chest, though she feels it descending.
She tests the words in her mind: She's gone. I will never see her again.
They ring like nonsense. It's like she can feel the Doctor, still out there, and surely she'll be back in a moment.
Surely the wheezing of the TARDIS will greet Yaz when she leaves the hall where she sits with other people the Doctor left behind (and even that reality can't quite bring it home to her).
Surely the Doctor will bounce through the doors, still herself, ramble about how her genius got her out of it all, and Yaz will laugh and call her bighead and pull her in for a hug, so tight, because half of what's rung in her head since she stood in a park and watched the blue box vanish is I didn't even hug her. I wish I'd hugged her.
Surely, surely.
You okay? Tegan asks, and it's been half an hour, maybe, the clock counting down in her head, ticking the seconds that separate them.
(Ten months. Four years. What's thirty minutes, to that? She could be back, still. Could come through the doors all beaming and smug about it, had you all fooled this time.)
Is she okay? Ace chimes in, before Yaz can begin to shape an answer.
And it's like– in that moment, it's like she can see her, in the TARDIS, that orange glow from her hand, spreading over her skin.
She'd be smiling, Yaz thinks. Through all the hurt, she'd always tried so hard to smile.
She'd be smiling, and she'd find one last beautiful thing to look at, one last adventure before she had to go.
“Of course she's okay,” Yaz says, finds that she can smile, too, for a moment. “She's the Doctor.”
Neither Ace nor Tegan notice how she doesn't answer for herself.
1 hour
“You alright, Sheffield?” Dan asks, quiet, as the others shuffle about, chat, finish cups of tea, taking a break from the reminiscing. “You've barely said anythin'.”
Yaz finds her body, remembers how to nod. “Fine.”
“C'mon,” Dan says, bumps his shoulder into hers. “We're past that.” He looks at her. “It's the same jacket, isn't it?”
Yaz glances down at her sleeves, slow, distant. She must've dressed in this decades ago. It can't've been less than twenty-four hours since she braided her hair, with no idea today would be the end of them. “Dunno what you mean.”
“It's the same as when I left you,” Dan says, pain collecting in his eyes. “That was a month ago for me. Sheffield. Tell me you just really love that jacket.”
Yaz shakes her head. “It were today, for me,” she says flatly. “Or at least, I haven't slept since then, so might as well be.” She laughs, once, humourless. “Wouldn't've hugged you if I'd known I'd be joining you so soon.”
A hand on her shoulder. She darts a glance. His gaze is laden with sad understanding. “Yaz.”
Yaz, not Sheffield.
It's absurd, isn't it, to hear it in her voice, like she hasn't been Yaz her whole life, like Yaz only existed with the Doctor at her side, but she does.
I'm calling you Yaz, 'cos we're friends now.
She shrugs off his hand. “Don't.”
“Yaz,” he says, again.
She looks at him, feels tears prickle. “Just don't, Scouse.”
She's gone, her mind laments, pathetically. I will never see her again.
It still doesn't feel real, not in this room, but the weight looms closer. Scratches at the edges. Yaz leans her weight against the door inside her mind, trying to keep it out.
She could still be back, whispers her heart, just as pitiful, like she doesn't know, deep down.
It's like she felt it. Yaz knows, she knows that's impossible. They weren't cosmically connected. She's not telepathic, not like she was. Is. Not like whoever they are now must still be.
But it's like something shifted, whilst she's sat here. Like her Doctor stopped being out there, still in reach. Like the possibility died.
Yaz knows it's only the denial cracking. Tries to keep the walls locked around her as long as she can.
She could still be back, that small thing in her chest whimpers, pleads. She could come back.
“When you're ready,” Dan says, “I'm right here.”
Yaz curls her fingers into the fabric of her jeans, digs in. When she's ready. What a joke.
The others come back to the circle, sit down.
Yaz feels half-there, half-not. Most of her got left behind, she thinks.
There's a piece that blew to dust on the surface of the cyber-planet, caught in the cracking rocks when that blast hit the Doctor head on. When she lay there, so small and still, and Yaz ran out, pulled her into her arms and tried to tell herself this was something they could fix.
There's a piece still in the console room, standing in the soft crystal light, a bell ringing in her ears, looking at the glow of the Doctor's hand. Knowing she was dying before she did. Being the one to tell her.
There's a piece overlooking Earth, ice cream sticky-sickly on her tongue, grief turning vanilla to acid in her stomach.
There's a piece in that park, watching the Doctor fade away.
Whatever's left here is a husk, a hollow shell, because– it's like Yaz wasn't Yaz, until she loved her.
Whatever's left of Yasmin Khan, Yaz to her friends, Yaz to the one who mattered most– whatever's left behind tunes back in to the room, in time to hear, it's just time, isn't it? It all gets easier with time.
Yaz curls her fists. Stands up. Mumbles bathroom. Flees the room, stumbles into the corridor in some bloody generic hall in the middle of wherever-they-are, swallowing the grief, the hollow ache, the sudden senseless rage.
It all gets easier with time.
Yaz thinks of the Doctor, the millennia she'd lived. The pain so raw beneath her skin.
Thinks of ten months, thinks of four years. Thinks of the rest of her life stretching, empty days marching in order, one then the next, all without her.
What is it they say? Time heals all wounds? Whoever said that, Yaz thinks, had never met a time traveller. Whoever said time heals all wounds couldn't ever have been in love.
Whoever said time heals all wounds was bloody fucking wrong.
8 hours
Najia looks so worried when she opens the door.
Distant, Yaz wonders if she should've gone to her own flat, the place she's barely spent time at all, the place the Doctor helped get for her when it got too hard, all the questions at home, all the days they landed late, all the worry it caused.
She should've gone there, she thinks, that place she's never made a home, barely slept at once. That place that's all echoing empty, just enough stuff to keep up the pretense when her family were around.
She should've gone there, but the Doctor helped her choose it. Wouldn't let on how she'd got the place, all bright grins and that doesn't matter, does it– and Yaz had frowned and suppressed her smile and said, you broke the law, didn't you– and the Doctor had shrugged and said, law's relative like that meant anything at all–
Should've gone there, but her feet took her here on autopilot, this place that was home before the TARDIS was.
Her home is gone, Yaz thinks. All the pieces of her life for the last– she doesn't know how many years, that's the thing. Her whole life's split into before her and with her.
And now this, a new fracture: after.
“Yaz. We weren't expecting you.”
“Sorry,” Yaz says, so far out of her body. Wants to scream and thrash and claw at the mundanity of it, having to speak like her heart's not torn in half, like pieces of herself aren't scattered through space and time, like she'll see her again. “Should've texted.”
“You alright, love?” Najia asks. “What's happened?”
Yaz pulls her into a hug to hide her face. Najia hugs her back, strokes her hair, still in the same braids. Yaz thinks of staying this way forever, frozen as the last version of herself the Doctor saw.
Her mother holds her tight.
Yaz thinks, was it twice, that you met her?
Thinks, I loved her and you never even knew her.
Thinks, too late now.
She's gone, the voice wails. I'll never see her again.
For the first time since the TARDIS roof, the Earth spread out beneath her feet, Yaz starts to cry.
Finds, then, that she can't stop.
“Yaz,” Najia says, tipping urgent, “sweetheart. What's wrong? Tell me what's wrong.”
“She's gone,” Yaz says, and it comes out torn and small and almost raging. “She's gone, Mum.”
And, holding tighter, fierce– “It's the Doctor, isn't it? Yaz. What did she do?”
“She's gone,” Yaz says, again, like they're the only words she has, like saying it will make it real, she doesn't want it to be real but she can't bear the awful hope– “Don't you understand? She's just gone.”
Najia sighs, strokes her hair. “It'll be alright,” she says, rocks them back and forth. “It'll be alright, you'll see.”
It's alright. It's alright, Yaz.
Yaz chokes on the words that crowd her throat. So much unsaid. So much she doesn't know how to say.
She wrenches free of Najia's arms, runs to the bathroom. Heaves bile into the sink.
I will never see her again.
5 days
The first time Yaz gets out of bed since getting home, she cries in the supermarket's biscuit aisle.
She only left at all because of how worried her family were. Because she couldn't bear the way they all looked at her, so cautious, so pitying.
She hasn't told them what happened. Doesn't know where to start with the end when they don't know the beginning.
How does she say I met an alien, Mum. We travelled through time and space in a ship that looked like a police box. I stopped wars, Dad, five thousand years in the future. I saw Nani get married. I saw stars die. I stood at the bottom of the ocean.
How does she say I loved her. I fell in love with her, I found out who I am because of her. I only learnt it in the context of her, Sonya, I don't know how to make it mine outside of that.
How does she say I think she loved me too. She said she wanted forever.
How does she say I watched her get hit in the chest with enough force to destroy a planet. I carried her to safety. I held her dying.
How does she say she's dead but she isn't. She's somebody else now. She's the Doctor but with another face, the Doctor but she'll sound different, look different, act different. The Doctor's still alive but mine died because I couldn't get there in time.
How does she say what's the point in time travel if it couldn't save her? What's the point, if the one thing I want to undo more than anything can never be undone? What's the point, all of time in our hands and we still ran out of it? What's the point, all of time and I still wasn't fast enough?
She doesn't know how, so she's said none of it. Lain in bed for days, curled up around the hole in her chest. Watched messages flash across her screen, unanswered. Dan, Graham, Ryan, Tegan, Ace.
And today she dressed, and brushed her hair, and plastered on a smile. Today she brushed off her mum's questions again, offered to do the shopping.
And here she is, hand curled round the handle of a basket filled with milk and bread and washing powder, staring at a packet of custard creams with tears dripping down her cheeks.
(Maybe you should eat something else, Yaz said once, watched her darting round the console, goggles pushed up on her head, repair tools scattered over the floor, to press that absurd little dispenser pedal.
She scrunched her face, that way she always did. What's wrong with biscuits? I love biscuits. Well, most biscuits. Don't like bourbons. Custard creams, though. I could marry whoever invented them.
And Yaz, grinning, affection spilling endless: Bourbons and custard creams are basically the same, mate. I mean, at the very least they're cousins.
The Doctor stopped in her tracks, turned on Yaz with a horrified expression, oil smeared on her nose. Don't ever insult custard creams like that again.
And Yaz had laughed and laughed.)
“You alright there, love?” someone asks.
Yaz looks up. The speaker's elderly and bent, clutching a packet of digestives, looking at her with concern.
Yaz wipes the tears roughly off her cheeks. “Fine,” she says.
The stranger smiles gently, gestures to the biscuits. “They're not that bad, are they? Not bad enough to cry about.”
Yaz shakes her head. “Just remembering someone.”
A nod, a sad smile. “My husband loved his apple pie, you know. First time I had one after he passed, I couldn't stop crying.”
“We weren't together,” Yaz says, and turns away.
3 weeks
“I want to stop seeing you everywhere,” Yaz whispers. “The other day my dad said he were going to see the doctor and I had to run out of the room. I see a stranger in a blue coat and I want to sit down in the street and cry. Passed the train station last week and thought about you falling through that roof. I can't eat ice cream anymore. I keep turning round to tell you things but you're not there.”
She presses her thumb down, unpause.
“I know you do,” says the recording.
Yaz had left it here in this soulless flat with her things one weekend, after the Flux was over. Unable to bear the ache that swelled in her chest at the thought of all those days, four years running the recording ragged.
She presses her hand to her shoulder, digs in again, silently, please, please.
The other hologram won't appear. The one that interacted, responded, that she could almost pretend was really the Doctor if she closed her eyes.
The implant hasn't worked since she lost the Doctor. Yaz wonders if she'd found the time to turn it off somehow, in the press of arms as they stared at the amber glow of her ending. Wonders if it was only ever supposed to work for that brief interval, just long enough for Yaz to save her.
There's a bruise, faint on her upper arm where she can't stop herself trying.
Yaz watches the recording that'll never change end, the Doctor's form flickering out. Presses down again.
So, this is an adaptive hologram.
3 months
“You should get back out there,” Sonya says.
And Yaz, startled out of a reverie, a memory (a supernova, bright scattering lights, the Doctor's face, always hers): “What?”
Sonya rolls her eyes. “Dating, loser. Never got why you weren't into it before, but now you've figured out you were just looking in the wrong place, I think you should try.”
“Wrong place?” Yaz echoes.
And Sonya, almost careful: “You know. Guys, not girls?”
(Yaz had told them, finally, two weeks ago.
Tell us what's going on, love, Hakim had said, the thousandth time. What happened with the Doctor?
And Yaz, so tired of lying, so tired of all the questions, all the keeping it inside: I loved her, alright? I was in love with her, and now she's gone. Is that enough? Can you stop asking?
They'd held her, then, all of them in a tight squeeze, and Yaz's heart had almost lightened, for a moment.)
“Never said it were only girls,” Yaz says, can't deal with the rest of it, can't shoulder the possibility, the weight.
“But you never were into blokes, though,” Sonya replies. “Least as far as it seemed. After Danny Biswas, you looked so sick, Yaz. And then there was never really anyone else.”
“Tell me who I am, then,” Yaz says, and she wants it to be angry but it comes out so hollow. “Since you think you know so well. Tell me, 'cos I never– it were never anyone but her.”
Her voice echoes in Yaz's head. If it was gonna be anyone, it'd be you.
“Oh, Yaz,” Sonya says, soft. Squeezes her arm. “I'm really sorry. I'd whack her if I could.”
Yaz snorts. Closes her eyes against the tears. “Don't. It wasn't her fault.”
“Sounds like it was,” Sonya argues. “No one breaks my sister's heart.”
(And wasn't it, really, some of it? Not dying but all the hurt, a thousand cuts. Not dying but the beach, shattering the thing between them before it ever began.
Except that she's gone. She's gone, and she was so hurt, all those years. So hurt and afraid. Yaz sees her face every time she gets angry about it, so heavy with ancient pain.
It'd be so much easier if she didn't understand; so much easier if she could just be angry.)
“It was complicated,” Yaz whispers, and– “I'm nowhere near ready for anyone else, Son.”
Sonya hugs her. “Might help, though,” she says. “Let me know. I can help. If you ever want to try.”
“'Cos you're a romance expert?” Yaz asks.
“More than you,” Sonya says. “You've only ever had Danny and– her.”
Yaz shakes her head. “I never had her, Sonya. Not that way.”
Sonya pulls back. Looks her in the face. “What, you're saying she didn't feel the same? Didn't know her well, but how she looked at you– I could've sworn.”
Yaz closes her eyes. “No, she did. She said she did. It just didn't matter.”
“What d'you mean?”
“Doesn't matter now, does it?” Yaz snaps. “She's gone.”
8 months
“You know what makes it harder?” Yaz asks. “Somewhere out there, I'm still with her.”
Martha pours more tea. Listens. They've become friends, in the ten weeks since Martha first showed up at the support group, talked openly and unabashed, I loved him, and he– it was like he looked at me and couldn't really see me at all. It got too hard, and, the Doctor's brilliant, but he hurts people. We're not really talking about him if we don't talk about that, too.
It's easier, here, just the two of them. Easier to say it without so many eyes on her, without Dan and Graham and Ryan, all concerned, all too knowing, because they were there, they knew Yaz's Doctor too.
Martha knows in the ways that matter. Knows what it is to love the Doctor, to be hurt by them. But she doesn't know the Doctor Yaz knew, didn't see who Yaz was with her, and that makes it easier, somehow, to talk about.
“It's like... we crash-landed in Manila, once,” Yaz says. “August 2023. That's, what, five weeks away? And what kills me is that I could go there, if I had the money. I could get a flight and find us. I could see her.”
“Yaz,” Martha says, all sympathetic warning.
“I know,” Yaz says. “I won't, but what kills me is I could. What kills me is that she's still out there. I'm still out there, the me that's still with her. We were in Paris in 2029. I could wait six years and find her investigating a clone factory under the Eiffel Tower. I could make it to Belém in 2040 and stop her falling in the river investigating bloody psychic fish. Half the years I'll live will be ones where we're out there, somewhere. I'll be haunting myself my whole bloody life.”
“Time travel,” Martha says. “It does fuck with the moving on process.”
Yaz tries to laugh.
“I think your sister's right, really,” Martha says. “Your mates, too. I hate to say it, but when I got back out there, I got over him so much faster.” A shrug, a rueful grin. “It'll always be with me, but you wouldn't catch me dead pining, not now. I deserved better than him. And being with Tom, after– it didn't work out, but it reminded me of that. That I could have better. That I was more than just this bloody wild experience that happened to me once upon a time.”
I deserved better. It echoes in her head, sharp on her tongue. She thinks of the Doctor, of how much it hurt. But thinks, too, of how no one else will ever be able to give her the universe. Thinks, too, of the miracle that in all of time and space, the Doctor chose her. Thinks of her hurt and her walls and her fear, and everything she gave Yaz all the same.
“There's not better than her,” Yaz says, the words spilling shameful past her lips. “Whoever it is, they won't be her, Martha.”
Martha sighs. Squeezes her hand. “That's the point. And you don't know there's not better. Not until you try.”
“She were like a miracle,” Yaz says. “Never met anyone else like that.”
Martha shakes her head. “The Doctor's amazing, mate. Not denying that. But ordinary people... they can be too, you know. He'd say that, if nothing else. He was always obsessed with us.” She smiles. “She'd say that too, Yaz. If she was anything like the one I knew.”
I think you're one of the greatest people I've ever known.
Yaz swallows. Tries again to smile. “I'll try,” she says. “One day. I promise. But it's only been eight months. And it's still...” She presses a hand to her ribs. “It's in here, you know?”
That cut, that wrench, that excruciating pain. It's not lessened, since she sat in the hall on that first day and felt the weight settle over her. It shifts shape, sometimes, turns to something easier to carry, something she can hide, something she can tuck in behind her sternum, let it cut her to pieces just to keep it from showing on her face.
It shifts, but it never lessens, never goes, the wound of it: I will never see her again.
11 months
“I've never done this before,” Yaz admits. She's striving for honesty, wants them to understand why her hands are shaking.
“What, been on a date?” the woman asks.
Her name's Eleanor. She seemed nice online, funny, quick. Told Yaz all about the thesis she's writing in a way that meant Yaz wasn't even bored. She seems nice in person, too, but Yaz feels white-knuckled, fighting the wave of feelings trying to drag her under. The anxiety, the fear, the shame that still creeps at the edges. The longing, always, for someone who isn't the person in front of her.
Yaz shakes her head. “I mean, with a woman.”
And it's half-true. Not a bad date, am I– but it wasn't really one. (What would it've been like, to have a date with the Doctor that wasn't the ocean floor in the middle of a crisis?) And the Doctor wasn't exactly a woman, either. (It's fluid, she'd said, and well, ish. I dunno. I don't mind it. You humans and your genders–)
Eleanor nods, smiles, understanding. “That's okay. I realised late, too. Only a few years ago.” She sips her coffee, fidgets. “You don't have to answer, but... how did you realise? I've always felt odd saying it took me so long, like it should've clicked earlier.”
Yaz swallows. “I fell for someone,” she says, short, eyes on the tabletop. “It didn't work out, but...”
“Straight girl?” Eleanor guesses. “Been there.”
And Yaz almost laughs, through the bile and grief in her throat. She's not sure what's funnier, really: the idea of the Doctor and straight girl in the same sentence, or the thought of how much simpler it might be, if that were the explanation.
She shakes her head. “She just... couldn't.”
“Commitment issues,” Eleanor surmises, and Yaz sort of wants to shove her, sort of wants to get to her feet and run and run, like it could be summarised so easily, all that pain and time and her heart breaking on a beach– “I get it. My ex was like that. Stuck around too long because the sex was great. Sorry. Maybe shouldn't've said that. Got no filter.”
Yaz swallows, heat burning her cheeks, shame clawing its way through her. She can't deal with this, not all in the same conversation. Not the idea that that's why she could've stayed, as if they ever really touched– not that thought, not the half-formed wishes she was ashamed of in the first place, not now the Doctor's gone–
“It weren't like that,” she says, half-strangled. “Not for us.”
“What was it like?”
What was it like?
Yaz thinks of galaxies and supernovas, running and danger and saving people and watching worlds shatter. Thinks of a hug, a message, fireworks, a hand in hers, eyes full of ancient sadness, a beach, a skimming stone.
Thinks of saying, she was everything. She was the whole world and now she's gone.
Thinks of trying, again, to explain what gone means, when it's not dead, not exactly, not completely.
Thinks of telling a stranger anything about the Doctor, about everything she was, everything they were to each other, all half-spoken– Thinks of saying I loved her, those words she's said more than once since she lost the Doctor, those words she never said to her at all–
She sits there, wordless, worldless, choking on it. She can't cry in the middle of a café, cry sat at this table with this woman she hardly knows.
Like salvation, her phone pings. Yaz pulls it from her pocket.
It's nothing, some news article from her uncle, but she makes her eyes wide, apologetic, heart drumming against her ribs. She just has to get out of here. She has to leave, run away, hide till the memories stop locking their hands around her throat.
“Sorry,” she says. “I'm so sorry, it's my mum, something's come up. I've got to go.”
She stands up, shoves back the chair, drops a tenner on the table.
“Sorry,” again. “I had fun, really. Another time?”
Eleanor nods, non-plussed.
Yaz half-runs from the café.
They never see each other again.
1 year, 2 months
“Last weekend,” Mel says. “At Donna's– you wouldn't believe what the Doctor said–”
Yaz's head snaps up, so fast and hard it hurts her neck. She's been staring at the scratchy blue nylon of the carpet.
It's the first Support Group meeting she's been to in a while, too busy throwing herself into work. Not officially UNIT, for all Kate's tried, but freelancing in collaboration with them, going round the world like Graham and Ryan have been all this time.
It's half-helpful. Running from danger, solving problems, all of it occupies her mind. Drags her away from a beach, a console room, the surface of a dying planet.
It hurts too, though. Running from danger without the Doctor beside her, babbling out half a plan at top speed. Solving problems without the Doctor's proud smile, ten points to Yasmin Khan–
It helps and it hurts, but Yaz is glad to be doing it, already waiting for the next time. Has zoned out, really, half this meeting, still jet-lagged and dazed from a week spent in Chile, trying to solve the appearance of a giant egg in the middle of Santiago. She's been half-listening until now, until this moment, until reality wrenches her down into the room with shattering force.
“What d'you mean?” she asks, shaking, curling her hands into the hem of her jacket. “'The Doctor said'?”
Mel winces. “Sorry. I forgot you didn't know.”
“Didn't know what?”
“He regenerated,” Mel says, slow.
“Obviously,” Yaz snaps. “I was there when it started, remember? I saw her–” She cuts off, swallows. “But you're saying you've seen her. Since.”
Mel nods. Starts explaining. The words blur over Yaz, a wash of noise, half of it meaningless to her: the Toymaker, Stooky Bill, Donna Noble, bigeneration.
And then– “He's settled down at Donna's, now. In Camden. Said he needed time to heal. I've been having dinner there at weekends.” A smile. “It's funny, seeing him try to live like a normal person. But he says he's never been so happy in his life.”
She keeps talking. Yaz knows she does, can see her lips moving, but she can't hear it. It's all static, fuzzing through everything.
She can see her, on the beach, so earnest and sad: I can't fix myself to anything, anywhere, or anyone. I've never been able to. That's what my life is.
Sees her fingers curl round the stone, stroking over the place where Yaz touched. Sees it skip out across the water. I wish this would go on forever.
Forever, but she came back. The person she became came back, and he didn't even look for Yaz. Didn't even try.
Forever, but she couldn't fix herself. Forever, but he did. He came back and he fixed himself.
So maybe it was never her life, then. Maybe she could always have fixed herself. Maybe it was Yaz she couldn't fix herself to.
Maybe it was Yaz who just wasn't enough.
She stands, again, feels her chair tip back through a fog. Can't look at any of them as she turns and stumbles for the door, leaves the room like that's all she does lately, run away, run and run and run because it never stops hurting.
It had been a fucked-up solace, sort of, through all the pain. A twisted kind of comfort, the idea that maybe the Doctor was hurting this way too.
He says he's never been so happy in his life.
And Yaz sees her, all the pain in her eyes, and wishes she could be glad. Thinks she should be glad, really, that the Doctor's not hurting so much anymore. If she were better, maybe she'd be glad, but–
But it isn't fair, to be so fractured by someone. To be broken and scattered throughout time and haunting her own life, to replay every night all the ways she could've saved her, all the ways she could've been better and stronger. It isn't fair, to spend all her time drowning in the memories, haunted by someone who's moved on so completely. Someone who broke her heart because they couldn't settle down, only to do it so soon after her.
It shouldn't hurt this much, she thinks, confirming what she already knew, what she's always known. Of course she wasn't good enough.
She's not sure how long she stands outside the room, trying to get air in her lungs, trying to stop the awful tearing in her chest, the pain beating at her ribs, demanding to be let out.
Dan comes to find her, because of course he does.
C'mon, Sheffield, he says. Deep breaths.
“I can't go back in there,” she manages, choking. “I can't– did you hear–”
“I heard,” he says. “I know. Let's go.”
Somehow, in the blur, they end up back at the flat he shares with Di, now. The meeting's in Liverpool this time around, something about the venue it was easiest to get and Dan pointing out they couldn't always be in London.
She's glad of it, in some vague, distant way, when she's sitting on the sofa in his living room, hands curled round a cup of tea she can't even think about drinking.
The sofa's a soft purple. Yaz thinks of the Doctor, rambling in her flat. Thinks of the Doctor, settled down now, maybe with his own purple sofa, and wants to cry, wants to scream until her throat bleeds, until something in her cracks.
“Talk to me, Sheffield,” Dan says.
Yaz almost snaps no. Almost screams wordless in his face. But the words spill instead, unwanted: “You know what this means?”
You know what this means, right?
“What does it mean?” he asks.
“It means–” Yaz chokes, swallows. “I managed to kid myself, you know. That she wanted to. With me. I really– I believed it. At the beach. That she were so sad that she couldn't. That she really would fix herself to me if she could.” She grips the mug in her hands tighter, tighter, till it feels as if the china could crack, shatter into pieces like her pathetic heart. “I really thought, Dan– I bloody thought she loved me.”
“She loved you,” he says, without hesitating. “She did love you, Yaz. I saw it the moment I met the pair of youse.”
“She said she couldn't fix herself,” Yaz says, bitter and small. “And then they went and did it anyway. To someone else. What does that tell you?”
“That things change,” Dan says. “That she should've treated you better. That I wish I could go and smack her, him, whichever of them, because you deserved better, Sheffield. But that doesn't mean she didn't love you. I heard the way she talked about you. The way she looked at you– you were the whole world to her.”
Yaz shakes her head. “Not enough.”
“She taught you to fly the TARDIS,” he says. “Remember when you talked about that, at the meeting, and every other one of them looked at you like what do you mean, 'cos she never taught any of them how to do that. And on the beach, Yaz, you told me she wanted forever. How long'd she lived? Thousands of years at least, right? She knew what forever means better than any of us, and she wished she could have that with you.”
Yaz wants to scream at him, to cry and shove and plead the case, argue again and again, against the truth, against her own heart.
She's not sure what hurts more, really. The Doctor not loving her, or the Doctor loving her and it not changing anything at all, in the end.
“I'll think about her every day for the rest of my life,” she says. “And wherever they are, they won't be thinking about me.”
Dan sits beside her. Puts an arm around her shoulders. “You don't know that, Sheffield. I think you'd be hard to forget.”
“I loved her so much, Dan,” Yaz whispers. “And I never even told her.”
“I know,” he says. “I know.”
He holds her tight. Yaz cries and cries.
(And deep down, she knows, really, that the Doctor did love her.
It doesn't make it hurt any less.)
1 year, 10 months
“Let's see her, then,” Ryan says. “This woman you're seeing.”
Yaz hunches, turns her phone facedown. “Why?”
“So I know who to look for if you wind up murdered.”
Yaz swats his arm. “You're bloody nosy. And I'm not seeing her. It's only been a few dates.”
“Just show me, Yaz.”
She rolls her eyes. Pulls out her phone. Skims through her camera roll.
In the photo, Mara's smiling wide, her eyes half-shut, head tipped back, arms spread out in the sun. It's from their third date, which started as a picnic and turned into her leading Yaz on a wild goose chase looking for this rare bird.
Yaz looks at it and smiles. They had fun. Are still having it. She cares about Mara, she does. (And she's not the Doctor. No one's the Doctor. But the Doctor's gone, and Yaz is trying to find her way to some kind of happiness.)
Ryan looks down at the photo. Laughs when Yaz explains the context. Shakes his head a little. “Mate, you really do have a type.”
And Yaz blinks, stares at him, defensiveness rising. “I don't!” She glances back at the photo, Mara's smile, the sunlight warming her brown skin, the short curls of her hair. “She doesn't look anything like the–” She swallows, trips over the name. “Mara doesn't look anything like her.”
And she doesn't. Yaz had choked up at every blonde bob she came across, always swiped away. She'd seen a woman with hazel eyes and thought about looking into them, thought about only noticing the ways they weren't quite like the Doctor's. She'd been careful, really, only to talk to people who she wouldn't look at and instantly think of her.
“Not looks,” Ryan says, looking at her, trying not to smile. “But I mean– she's all long coats and muddy boots. She smiles like the Doctor did. You said she took you on a date that was just her running around chasing birds and telling you all about them. And didn't she break your fridge trying to fix it last week?”
“It's not–” Yaz inhales. Her chest feels tight. “It's not like that. I'm not just– I'm not tryin' to look for her, Ryan. It's not– I'm not choosing people like they're shadows of her. I wouldn't do that to someone.”
He looks at her, eyes softening. “I know, Yaz. That's not what I'm saying. And I don't think there's anything wrong with loving someone partly 'cos of the pieces of someone else you see in them. Makes sense you'd fall in love with the same things in different people, right?”
“I'm not in love with her,” Yaz admits. “I mean, it's early. Maybe one day I could be, I dunno. But not yet.”
“You know what I mean, though,” he says. “I'm not trying to mess up your moving on, Yaz. I just– you know. We're mates. I'm meant to be honest with you. You have a type.”
Yaz swats his arm. Tells him to shut up.
There's something tight in her chest, something half-ashamed.
She didn't choose Mara for that. Not consciously.
The pieces of someone else you see in them.
It'll always be in me, Yaz thinks. Loving her. I'll never be able to get it out.
But she's trying so hard to let herself hope that maybe, maybe, one day, there'll be room to love someone else too.
Somewhere, far away: Love is a form of hope.
3 years
Yaz goes back to the park, for the anniversary. Stands where she last saw her. Ties flowers to the bandstand like she'd leave them at a grave.
“Hey, bighead,” she whispers to the empty air, the place the TARDIS vanished.
She sits on the bandstand steps, pulls her phone from her pocket. Scrolls back through the years. Finds a photo of the Doctor standing at the console, explaining something, a grin on her face as her hands flew all over the place. Smiles and feels it ache, low in her heart. Knows, really, that it'll never stop aching.
The park's empty. Yaz keeps speaking. Whispers the words. “Miss you,” she says, traces her thumb over the photo, the Doctor's bright face on the screen. “Always will. Hard to believe it's been three years.”
She exhales. “I'm seeing someone else. Well. Someone. I weren't ever seeing you, not really.” Swallows, recalibrates. “Her name's Mara. It's been a while, now. Ryan says she's like you.” Makes a grab at honesty, even now, to empty air. “She is like you, in some ways. Not in others. She doesn't hide like you did. She tells me she loves me. She doesn't settle down with her mate and never come to see me again.”
She tries, once more, to smile. “But that's 'cos she's not you. And I know you had so much on your shoulders. I wish you'd told me sooner. I wish you'd let me in. I wish a lot of things. I wish I'd told you I loved you, 'cos I do love you. I always will. And it's hard to believe it, sometimes, but I know you loved me, too. Didn't work out how we wanted, but– I'll always be glad we had it. I wouldn't undo knowing you, no matter how much it hurt. And it didn't all hurt, Doctor. Knowing you was– I had some of the best times of my life.
“I still think about you every day. I don't think I'll ever stop. It's a lie that time heals everythin'. There'll always be this space where you should be. But I can't stay stuck there, you know. In the TARDIS, on that beach, on the surface of that planet. This past year, I've been tryin' to let it rest. To remember you but still keep movin'. To learn to survive without you. I have to start again.”
Yaz stands. Wipes tears from her cheeks. Adjusts the flowers. “I'd leave you a biscuit, but the birds'd get it, and I know how precious your bloody custard creams were to you.”
She presses her fingers to her lips. Turns them to the empty air. “Bye, bighead. Think about me sometimes, yeah?”
Yaz walks away from the park. Cries. Remembers. Sets her feet on the road, and tries to begin again.