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It is sometime in the middle of the night and the Doctor is elbow-deep in the TARDIS’ insides, fiddling. Well. They think it’s the middle of the night. They’re making an educated guess based on the fact that Yaz isn’t around. She’s probably asleep. Yaz is big on getting enough sleep.
“Sorry, gorgeous,” the Doctor whispers, when the TARDIS lets out an unexpected low whine. They slide a stray wire back into its place, frowning when the whining continues.
It’s morphing slightly, into a clanging sort of alarm the Doctor vaguely recognises, when Yaz appears. She looks so soft, barefoot and bed-headed in shorts and a big white t-shirt that might once have belonged to Jack.
“What have you done to her?” Yaz asks blearily, rubbing her eyes.
“Nothing!” the Doctor protests, even as the TARDIS continues to blare at top volume. “I’m perfect, me! It’s not even an alarm really anyway, it’s more of a doorbell.”
They look down at their hands, mildly unsurprised when they find them already beginning to fade. Yaz notices too, whatever retort she’d been about to make dying on her lips as her eyes go wide.
“Don’t worry,” says the Doctor hurriedly. “When I’m back neither of us will remember this.”
They blink, and they’re in a brighter, whiter TARDIS, all rail-lined walkways and bright lights. It seems to fit the new version of them, his pinstripe blue skirt, the way he rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet.
“Let’s be honest, I was the best,” he’s saying, smirking to himself. The Doctor thinks that just can’t stand. Time to make themselves known.
“Let’s say best male, shall we? If that’s what we’re identifying as this time around,” they chirp, skipping down the walkway they’ve found themselves on. “Also, I hate the redecoration. It really didn’t have to be bigger. And personally I think it’s a lot less atmospheric now.”
The new - or maybe current? - one’s mouth hangs open for a moment before he collects himself. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“No!” the Doctor exclaims. “I’ve been popped. Very inconvenient, I can tell you. There’s a great big time schism on the way, caused by you.” They jab the new one in the chest. His vest’s denim; a little bit incredible and a little bit awful. They wish they’d be able to remember that to use against Yaz next time she harps on about their fashion choices.
“Time needs to be shifted!” the new one protests. His bright, crinkle-edged eyes turn dark and thoughtful for a moment. “Are you here to stop me, Doctor?”
The two of them lock eyes for a moment. Doctor to Doctor. The moment is the sort of thing gods write about before the universe ends. The two of them together is the universe’s glitch.
The Doctor caves. They have a tendency to, in this thirteenth reincarnation. “What do you think?”
The new one smiles, just slightly. He’s got creases around his mouth that suggest he spends most of his time smiling. The Doctor sort of aches to be him now instead of having to wait.
“Let’s get to work, Doctor.” he grins.
They feel their blond bob bouncing when they nod. “Certainly, Doctor.”
And they do, moving together like two instruments playing soli. And he is so pretty, and he looks so happy. He looks like he loves without abandon.
“Are you scared?”
“I’m terrified.” He says it with such honesty. The Doctor can see the fear deep in his brown eyes because they know where to look. They see it in their own, after all. Maybe reincarnation doesn’t change everything.
“Don’t go with fear,” they whisper. “Smile.”
And he nods. And he does. And he stares deep in their eyes and talks about how he wishes they had more time to spend together.
The Doctor smiles at him sadly. “We always wish that.” Already they can feel their timeline tugging at them, pulling them back where they belong like an elastic snapping back into place. “I’ve got to go.” They squeeze his hand. “Good luck.”
The new one pulls them, stumbling, into a bone-crushing hug. He feels like a dying man; breathes like one, too. “I love you, Doctor” he breathes, and maybe the Doctor is wrong. Maybe they do change inside themselves.
They pull away from him. “I never say things like that. We never say things like that.”
The new one’s fear is replaced with sadness. “That’s what I’m here for.”
The Doctor swallows. “I should say that to Yaz.” Their voice rises at the end like it’s a question. They feel like a cell exposed on a microscope. They don’t know why they’re looking at this dying, older Doctor like they’re desperate for reassurance.
He delivers on it anyway. The Doctor thinks maybe this one knows how people tick better than the rest of them ever have. They wonder if he has ever loved like they love Yaz.
“You never do. But she knows. I promise you, she knows.”
The Doctor nods. He darts away from them, his long skirt twirling about his ankles. They suppose if they have to go, it’s good that they’ll become him.
“Goodbye, Doctor,” they call. The universe, ever the bratty toddler, does not let them wait around for his reply. They blink in and out, and, and, and.
And the Doctor is sprawled atop their duvet, staring up at the navy blue ceiling sprinkled with light-up plastic stars, glowing faintly neon in the dim lamplight. They’ve got this feeling that they were doing something but can’t quite remember what. Like when you move a piece of furniture and it leaves an indent in the carpet.
They’re still thinking about it, the empty room feeling, when Yaz pokes her head around the door. She’s out of pyjamas, now, dressed in one of the fluffy jumpers she’s taken to favouring around here. Her hair’s bound back in her usual French braids and she’s done her make up so that she looks at the Doctor with outlined, shiny eyes.
“You alright?” Yaz asks. “You’ve been asleep for a while. Thought you said Time Lords didn’t need sleep.”
“We don’t!” The Doctor protests, scrabbling out of the duvet and fishing around in the pile of clothes beside their bed for a cardigan. They find a blue one with the buttons done up in the wrong order and yank it over their head, muttering, “I wasn’t sleeping, I was just…”
They pause, the cardie still halfway over their head. “Well. I can’t remember what I was doing. Something important, obviously. But it wasn’t sleeping.”
Yaz laughs her windchime laugh. “Of course you weren’t. Hurry up, I’m starving. I cooked but I’ve been waiting for you to show your sorry face.”
The Doctor yanks their arms through the cardigan sleeves and follows Yaz into the corridor. They have this brief impression of a sleek, airy white chamber and sci-fi walkways where their own sunset gold walls should be, but they rub their eyes fiercely and the image is gone.
They can’t stop pondering it as Yaz chucks two plates of chips into the microwave to reheat. They feel… not melancholy, exactly, but sort of nostalgic for a moment they can’t remember. It puts them off their food.
Yaz notices. Of course. A lot of people think they have seen them for who they really are, but nobody makes the Doctor feel quite so stripped-down as Yaz.
“Are the chips too soggy? I keep telling you we should get an airfryer next time we’re back on Earth. My mum’s potty about hers.”
“No, it’s not that,” the Doctor reassures them, picking at the - actually quite soggy - chips. “I just feel... I don’t know.”
Yaz hums and presses her knee against the Doctor’s in a way that drives any thoughts of the chips from their head entirely. The silence is comfortable, but the Doctor thinks they’re incapable of not filling a silence. It’s been a feature of many of their previous selves.
It’s hard, sometimes, to separate out what’s unique to each incarnation and what’s universal, but the Doctor would put money on an inability to stand silence being a core thing.
“Have I ever shown you pictures of me before? My previous regenerations?”
Yaz grins. “I don’t think so. Kind of want to see the one where you wore a stick of celery all the time though. For completely innocent and non-blackmailey reasons.”
They end up sprawled right back where they started, on the Doctor’s bed. Yaz’s body is pressed all the way up against the Doctor’s. It makes their whole body fizz hotly.
It’s kind of nice, digging through all the old pictures, watching Yaz snicker and point out old snaps of Jack, watching the way her eyes drink in the past Doctors like she’s parched. It somewhat soothes the strange thing that’s been niggling at the back of the Doctor’s brain since they woke up in bed.
“God, you’ve always made awful fashion choices. Terrible to know that’s a genetic thing and not just you,” Yaz comments, pulling out a picture of the twelfth them, all greying hair and long red-lined coat.
“I liked that coat! I’ll have you know I’ve always been very distinguished.”
“Who’s that with you?” Yaz points to the curly-haired woman smirking up at them. River. It’s like a punch the way she still knocks the air out of the Doctor’s chest.
“That’s River. My wife. Remember I told you about her?”
The Doctor remembers. The day they’d dealt with the Sea Devils. The sea air whipping back their hair, the crunch of the rocks as they sat down beside Yaz. The way their throat burned as they forced the words out.
Yaz’s chin dips. “Yeah. Kind of wish I could meet her, actually.”
The Doctor looks across at her. She’s like an oil portrait the way she’s framed in the soft orange lamplight the Doctor favours. It captures every soft contour, every wisp of hair escaping from her braids. She’s so perfect, she makes the Doctor remember that the universe is both cruel and lovely.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I mean, you said she’s the greatest person you’ve ever known aside from me, so. She’ll obviously be great company.”
The Doctor laughs despite themselves. They keep their gaze fixed on their blue sheets, almost black in the dim, not really seeing the pictures scattered across it. They feel Yaz’s gaze poker-hot on their face.
“Yaz.”
Out of the corner of their eye, they see Yaz’s mouth twitch upwards, just a little. “Doc.”
The Doctor wants to say they love her so badly, it makes their whole body ache. It makes them feel like the end of the universe. They know they can’t get the words out but it’s nice to pretend. Like hiding medicine in sweet things to trick a child into drinking it.
“Yaz, I really do -”
Yaz cuts her off with a kiss, tiny and butterfly-light, on the Doctor’s cheek. The Doctor looks up and she’s smiling softly, almost to herself. Like she can’t believe she’s done it. She’s staring at the Doctor like there was a locked gate between them and she’s opened it.
The Doctor only pauses to make sure they commit it all perfectly to memory. So that the future thems can look back on it for millenia like a film reel.
Yaz is lying on her stomach when the Doctor kisses her on the lips. She’s propped up on her elbows, the galaxy’s edge point of her chin casting shadows on the duvet. She makes this noise when she kisses back and it’s like the sighing sound of a star before it explodes into a supernova, rolling onto her side and pulling the Doctor in closer.