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Usually, following distress calls lands them in the middle of some kind of escalating or about-to-escalate conflict, problems on a grand scale, danger and running and all of the thoughts at once, which is good, because that keeps her mind focused on the most immediate problem, which is usually the people shooting at them and not whatever else the Doctor doesn’t want to think about.
(There is a lot of whatever else this regeneration.)
Usually, but apparently, not always.
Because this distress call had led her and Yaz to a small, secluded table at the back of a bustling café, with steaming bowls of noodles set between them and a small, fidgety person who is doing their level best to look more intimidating than they probably feel.
A bit anticlimactic, as distress signals go. Much more trap-shaped than distress-signal-shaped, but then, they’d only been here five minutes. Things change.
The Doctor watches them for a long moment, frowning a bit, doing her best to determine the reason the person who ostensibly called them here won’t meet her gaze. Yaz, of course, has a much better opening gambit.
“Hiya,” she says softly. “I’m Yaz, and this is the Doctor. We got your message. Zoras, right? You asked for our help.”
Thank the stars she’s got Yaz, she’s so much better at people than the Doctor is. Really, she’d been wasted as a police officer.
The Doctor grits her teeth and forces herself to focus on Zoras, on the way their cropped blue hair shifts when Yaz addresses them and they finally turn their large black eyes to meet the Doctor’s at Yaz’s question. Because Yaz is brilliant, and wonderful, and knows exactly how to handle a frightened person, and thinking too long about how Yaz is brilliant and wonderful is one of those things that takes up quite a lot of space in the whatever else category at the moment.
“You—you’re really the Doctor,” Zoras says, and their voice trembles in a way that makes the Doctor sit up straighter at once. They’re terrified. “You—I didn’t think you’d actually get my message. You’re the one who saved Keshan II.”
“Ah, that was an easy one,” the Doctor says brightly. “All in a day’s work, I suppose!”
“She also set the toaster on fire this morning,” Yaz adds, a mischievous smile tugging at the corner of her lips. “Don’t let it go to her head.”
“Oi!” the Doctor protests, but she sees instantly why Yaz has done it—some of the tension in Zoras’s face cracks with the joke, and they seem a little bit steadier. They nod, still very serious, and continues.
“Can you help me?” Zoras asks.
“What happened, Zoras?” the Doctor asks gently. “You didn’t say much in your message.”
Zoras looks around them, but their table is in a fairly secluded corner, half-hidden from the other diners by a gauzy swathe of pink curtains. They pull something out of their pocket, an adaptive hologram of the likes Yaz and the Doctor are both all too familiar with. The sight twists sharply in her chest, but she just watches as Zoras sets it on the table and taps it to activate it.
The hologram reveals a figure rather like Zoras, with the same blue hair and liquid-dark eyes.
“This is Thara, my—my betrothed,” Zoras says. “And I need someone to help me get her back.”
“Where has she gone?” Yaz asks. Her tone is gentle too, but she glances sideways at the Doctor, just quickly while Zoras is staring at hologram-Thara’s frozen face, and the Doctor can tell they’ve had the same thought: that they aren’t about to interfere in someone else’s breakup. Hopefully, that’s not what this is.
“She’s… been in hiding. For two years now. I—I can trust you, right? There’s not—you won’t turn us in?”
“Why would we do that?” the Doctor asks, leaning in a little. She realizes it perhaps comes across as a little threatening an instant too late, when Zoras freezes.
“I—I just—” they stammer, and then they snap up the hologram in a furious fist. “I won’t be made to feel shame. Not from you. Not from anyone, not anymore.”
“Why don’t you tell us what happened, Zoras? From the start,” Yaz coaxes. “You can trust us. She wasn’t wrong before, about being good at saving the day.”
“Thara rescued me,” Zoras says on a long, soft exhale. “She saved me from a reassignment facility. Our people don’t… they don’t like that I’m… the way that I am. Or that we’re what we are, to each other.”
“It’s hard,” Yaz says, “when your own people are the ones trying to hurt you.”
Internally, the Doctor winces, even as she can feel Yaz pointedly not looking at her, pointedly not letting her know just how many Time Lord-shaped dots she’s connected over the years. Zoras just nods.
“It is. We lost… everything. Except each other. She’s… she’s my whole world.” She strokes her thumb over the case of the hologram. And the Doctor can hear Yaz’s breath hitch just the tiniest bit at the gesture, and she knows, instantly, that she’d done something similar, all those years in the past. She wishes she didn’t know that now. “But Thara, she painted a target on her back. For me,” Zoras continues. “She saved me, and now I can’t save her.”
“Where is she now?” the Doctor asks.
“She’s… here,” Zoras says. And they twist the top of the adaptive hologram so that it displays again, but this time, it’s not showing Thara. It’s showing a map.
“Ohhh, well that’s clever,” the Doctor says, leaning in again, not caring now whether it seems intimidating, or just plain odd. She’s definitely odd, and besides, she needs to get a better look at this. She’s never seen a hologram of this sort adapted the way they’ve managed. It’s rather brilliant, she’ll have to take notes. “Have you been communicating with each other like this all this time?”
“Care to share with the class?” Yaz asks, but it’s not a reprimand. The question is warm. Fond. The Doctor wants to fold herself into the sound of Yaz’s voice, the gentle caring of her words.
She can’t do that.
“They’ve hidden Thara in time,” she explains instead. “She’s on Earth, way out of your home planet’s jurisdiction, by the way, no one should be chasing her there even in this time zone, let alone…” she squints at the display, all the shimmering lines and coordinates ordering themselves in her head, “…1897. How did you even get her there?”
“Managed to get hold of a vortex manipulator from the black market,” Zoras says, grimacing. “It wasn’t cheap.”
“Still nasty, though,” the Doctor replies, echoing their grimace. “And someone’s still pursuing her there?”
Zoras nods miserably.
“They’ve sent a bounty hunter after her. Thara thinks he’s catching up to her, and the vortex manipulator’s stopped working. I’ve been looking for another one, another way to get to her, but there’s nothing.”
“And so you reached out to me, asking for help,” the Doctor says.
“The stories about you say you travel in time, and I thought, maybe… maybe you might hear me. Maybe you might help, or know someone who can.”
Zoras is looking at her a little bit like she’s the answer to all their prayers, and the Doctor swallows hard. It’s never been something she’s gotten used to, people looking at her like that. She is always so, so terrified she’s going to let them down. Because the thing is, she will. She’s not a god. She doesn’t always win. She can’t.
“It’s been two years, Doctor,” Zoras says, their dark eyes wide and shining with tears. “Two years, I’ve not seen her once, and I just—we can’t go home, we know that. But why can’t they just let us go?”
“I’m sorry, Zoras,” Yaz says. “This must’ve been hard, for both of you.”
Zoras says nothing, their head drooping as they try to hide just how close they are to crying. When they look away, the Doctor turns her head towards Yaz to find that her companion is already looking to her, her eyebrow raised in a silent question.
Can we do this?
The Doctor nods, her mouth a grim line.
“We’ll get her back, Zoras,” the Doctor says. “And the people hunting you are going to leave you alone.”
“How?” Zoras asks, their voice cracking, like they’re too afraid to hope.
“You leave that to us, yeah?” Yaz says. “We’ll sort it. We’ll get her back, safe and sound.”
“The people you left behind have hurt you both enough,” the Doctor insists. “They’re not going to get to you again, not if I’ve got anything to say about it.”
At that, Zoras loses their battle and bursts into grateful tears.
Yaz sidles up to her later, her progress across the console room almost silent. The Doctor’s engrossed enough in what she’s doing, the courses she’s charting, the preparations for this rescue mission she needs to perfect, that Yaz almost startles her. But she is almost magnetically aware of Yaz’s presence, these days. The air feels different around her. Too charged. Too promising in ways she can’t let herself contemplate.
She keeps her eyes on her work even as Yaz leans a hip all too casually against the console just beside her.
“You all right?” she asks softly.
“I’m always all right,” the Doctor replies easily. The tool in her hand sparks, and she drops it with a yelp, and a glower up at the bobbing central crystal in the console. Yaz chuckles softly, but doesn’t reach out towards the slightly singed fingers the Doctor curls into her sleeve for safety.
“Sure,” she says. “And this plan, that’s all right? You think we can do it?”
“Me and Yasmin Khan against the forces of pigheaded bigotry? Oh, absolutely, my money’s on us every time.”
At that, Yaz’s smile is soft, and lovely, and kind, a little spark of excitement flashing in her eyes.
“You don’t carry money,” she reminds her. “But for the record, I’d back us too.”
“’Course you would,” the Doctor replies, and she can feel the smile on her face getting too soft as she says it, and she tries to backtrack. “Only logical. Elementary, my dear Watson, and all that, although I think Conan Doyle stole that from me that one time, and he did not listen to what I was actually explaining as I said it, he nearly got bitten by some creatures he thought were fairies—”
“The plan, Doctor,” Yaz interrupts, chuckling. “Tell me what we’re up against.”
“It’s tricky, I’ll say that,” the Doctor admits, looking back at the gadgets she’d been working with. “Thara picked an excellent place to hide, for her, and a tricky spot to get her out of, for us. We’ll be rubbing elbows with a good bit too much history for my liking, too much potential for something to go badly wrong if this bounty hunter is particularly trigger-happy. We’re towing Zoras’ ship to the rendezvous point, and they’ve let Thara know we’re coming to get her. We’ll blend in with the crowd, meet up with her, and whisk her away before the bounty hunter spots her, or any of us. And I should be able to scramble his tech enough while we’re there that he won’t come after us.”
That ‘should’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting, she knows, but Yaz just nods, a determined set to her jaw.
“Where are we picking her up?”
“Ah, that’s the fun part,” the Doctor says, grinning. She glances back down at her work, connects a last wire, and holds up the device: a mirrored domino mask. “How do you feel about masquerade balls, Yaz?”
“I take it we’re about to find out,” she says with an answering smile.
“Yep! We’re going to Devonshire House in London in 1897, where the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire are hosting a masquerade ball for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee.”
“So when you said that we’d be rubbing elbows with history, you really weren’t kidding.”
“Not even a little. The Queen doesn’t attend, fortunately, she did sort of ban me from England the one time we met—”
“She what?”
“Slight problem with a werewolf and the Koh-I-Noor, but anyway I had quite the different face back then, she wouldn’t recognize me, it’s never been an issue yet. I think UNIT probably got me pardoned at some point or other,” she says, all in a rush even as Yaz is just gaping at her incredulously. “But, anyway, the point is, Victoria won’t be there, but an awful lot of important people will be. We’ve got to blend in, get Thara, and get out. Fortunately, probably one of the best places on Earth to hide a time traveler: a fancy-dress ball!”
“Makes sense,” Yaz says with a nod, apparently agreeing to not ask further questions about the whole banishment thing, at least for now. “I can see why she picked it. No need to get the period details exactly right when everyone else is also in costume.”
“Gold star for you, Yaz,” she says at once. She says it with the same easy enthusiasm as always. When Yaz’s cheeks heat and she can hear her heart rate speed up, though, she kicks herself over it. She’s not being fair to Yaz, she knows that. The thing is, she’s not trying to be unfair. She’s just trying to be… them, normal and good and right, and apparently she’s never known how to do normal and good and right, not really.
“So,” Yaz says casually. “Trip to the wardrobe is in order?”
“Oh, a trip to the wardrobe is very much in order,” the Doctor replies. “You go on ahead, I’m sure the TARDIS’ll have some ideas for you. I’m just going to finish up these masks, got some comms worked in here for us and some sighting tech so we can find Thara and probably some other bits and bobs too—”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Yaz hovers, just for an instant, like she wants to—what? Lean in? Reach for her? Perhaps Yaz doesn’t know either, not really, but the Doctor can’t help but freeze in anticipation, in longing she knows she shouldn’t feel, can’t help but be drawn in by millimeters towards her—
But as always, the moment breaks, and Yaz turns on her heel, and pads out of the console room again. The Doctor doesn’t watch her go, turning back to her work on the masks instead.
The TARDIS chirps at her, disapprovingly, she thinks, but she ignores the ship. She’s got work to do, and she has to concentrate. This is going to be tricky; she’s got to get these masks exactly right, program in everything they’re going to need and a few failsafes besides. She’s not risking Yaz for this.
She’s not risking Yaz for anything.
Once she finishes the masks and sets Zoras up at the rendezvous point, she makes her own trip to the wardrobe—although she has another seven ideas for things to program into the mask settings on the way. The TARDIS has helpfully picked out a fancy dress outfit for her, and it looks all right, close enough to her usual clothes that she doesn’t think it’ll distract her, which is good, because she doesn’t want to be distracted for this. There’s far too much to do. Still, she grumbles a little bit at her ship about nineteenth-century Earth gender roles and the preponderance of “men’s” costumes from the time to be military dress of some kind or another.
Then again, she’s absolutely not going to go running around in a gown. That would be horribly distracting.
She shrugs on the loose blue trousers and the sturdy, tall brown boots, bouncing on her toes to make sure she’s not going to trip before continuing with a flouncy white shirt and a blue tabard embroidered with constellations and belted at her waist—although she very pointedly does not clip the offered sword on as well. She won’t need that. Actually, if she does need that, they’ll have bigger problems.
There’s also some feathered hats, which she waffles over for a moment before plopping the slightly smaller one onto her head. A masquerade ball will be positively bursting with over-the-top costumes, but still, she needs to blend in, not stand out. Plus, the longer feather tickles the back of her neck, so that’s out.
She is quite fond of the cape that she buckles around her shoulders, though. There are more stars sparkling on the silky lining material, and it flutters out behind her in a very satisfying manner when she moves. All the way back to the console room, she holds one corner and swooshes it back and forth as she walks, hopping down the stairs with a mighty flourish of fabric.
The cape is momentarily forgotten in favor of getting back to those seven—no, thirteen now—ideas she’d had about the masks, but the moment she hears another set of soft footfalls coming into the room, she skips forward with another twirl.
“Yaz, look, I’ve got a cape!” she says brightly.
And then she glances up, and every word she’s ever known flies out of her head in an instant.
Yaz looks beautiful.
“I can see that,” she answers with a soft, fond smile, and then she adds “you look very dashing,” except the Doctor doesn’t think she can hear her, because she’s entirely too wonderstruck by Yaz. Yaz, who is dressed as the night sky, the deep blue of her gown shifting and darkening until it’s nearly black at the hem. Yaz, who positively glitters with little silver stars. The Doctor can’t help but trace her eyes across the glimmering patterns of jeweled stars that swirl across the bodice and down the folds of the skirt, that ring her neck and drip down across her collarbones, that wind into her dark curls and starburst across the crown of her head.
She’s staring, and she knows it, but she can’t stop. Yaz just keeps looking down at her with that kind, shy little smile that she knows, she knows is full of love, she knows is just for her.
She’s a vision. She’s the whole universe at once.
The TARDIS, she’s sure, did this on purpose, because they match, in a way. Yaz, a starry night. The Doctor, a knight of stars. It’s clever, and she’d be chuffed by the pun if the sight of her standing there at the top of the stairs didn’t ache. Because seeing her there, right in front of her, glowing in her own perfect starlight, stabs the Doctor right through the heart with wanting. She wants to reach out and take Yaz’s hand. She wants to trace her fingers over each soft curl. She wants to pull her in, hold her, and never let her go.
What’s stopping you, Doctor? the ship asks in her head.
Only everything.
“Yaz,” she finally manages, because she knows she’s been staring far too long, even as she has absolutely no idea what to say. “You look—you’re—wow.”
“Thanks,” Yaz says, brushing nervously at a nonexistent wrinkle in her skirt. “Never thought I’d see you speechless, bighead.”
And the Doctor realizes, then, that instant, that this has gone from a tricky-but-decent plan to a terrible, awful, disastrous plan. Because Yaz is blushing, uncomfortable under the weight of the Doctor’s ridiculous gaping. She’s made Yaz uncomfortable, the last thing she ever wants, because she’d said they couldn’t and now she’s the one staring and awestruck and stupid. She’d needed no distractions for this plan to work, and the very premise involves one gigantic, horrible distraction of her own making, and she’s only making it worse.
Stars, she always seems to know exactly how to make everything worse.
“I—um, masks!” she blurts out awkwardly, trying to salvage what she can of the moment. “I should’ve rigged up everything we need in here.”
She holds out Yaz’s mask, and Yaz takes her skirts in one hand and descends the stairs, graceful as a princess.
“How do you put it on?” Yaz asks, taking it from her. “There’s no ties or anything.”
“Oh, well, it should just sort of—sit on, like this—” the Doctor replies.
She reaches up, and for point two six seven seconds her fingers are stretching towards Yaz, to put the mask in place for her, when she comes to the realization that touching Yaz right now will send this rapidly-disintegrating plan straight towards catastrophic, and she pivots, shoving her hair back so that she can set her own mask on her face.
“Tada!” she says, her cheerfulness sounding tinny and forced even in her own ears. But Yaz, very kindly, does not comment, just reaches out and takes her own mask and sets it onto her face. Some of the sensors in the Doctor’s display light up as the two masks sync, just as she’d programmed them. That, at least, seemed to be working as intended.
“Are we all set, then?” Yaz asks.
“Think so,” the Doctor replies with a nod. She takes a breath, squares her shoulders. The plan, the plan, focus on the plan. “Zoras is in place. We’ve got all our intel. All that’s left to do is, well, go get her.”
“Then let’s do it.” Yaz straightens her shoulders, reaching one opera-gloved hand out towards the console. “Co-pilot?”
“’Course!”
The tension in the set of Yaz’s shoulders eases as they get to work. Because they’re ace at this, the perfect team. They circle the console in tandem, the easy one-two-three rhythm of a waltz, settling into the exact right time, the exact right landing spot. So many things are so much easier with the addition of Yaz’s careful, precise attention.
So many things, except of course the biggest ones.
You want her, you want her, you want her, rings in the Doctor’s ears with each step, with each triple heartbeat spin of their dance.
It’ll hurt, it’ll hurt, it’ll hurt, she reminds herself, trying to drown out the longing.
Because it will. She knows it will. It always has, and it always does, and she’s so, so tired of it. Of losing. Of living this endless, immortal life where she still always runs out of time.
Enough of this. She gives herself a shake when they land, tries to pull herself together. They park neatly behind a row of trees just across Piccadilly from Devonshire House and slot themselves in with the other guests disembarking from carriages and walking through the grand iron gates and through the front portico. Naturally, for an event like this, most of the guests arrive in pairs. Husbands and their wives, some of them dressed to match, some of them not. A few of the husbands look rather put out to be prancing around in old-fashioned starched collars, but the Doctor just mentally rolls her eyes at people who can’t seem to get into the spirit of a costume party. She’s more taken by the people who do seem excited to be here. Up ahead, she sees a pair in glittering Elizabethan dress who seem positively giddy as they cross the courtyard. The gentleman takes his partner by the hand and gives her a twirl, sending her skirts spinning, and she laughs brightly, smiling up at him in a way that seems soft and private.
They spot friends of theirs, waving and hurrying on ahead, and the Doctor looks away. Looks down to Yaz’s hand inches away from her own. And she wonders what it would be like, if she reached out. If she could walk arm in arm with Yaz into the party, for all the world to see.
But she can’t. She knows that.
They reach the doors, where a short queue has formed and they fall in line behind a woman who appears to be dressed as an entire rose garden. A servant in livery with a Venetian carnival mask on stands at the door checking invitations, and the Doctor whips the psychic paper out at once, holding it out for inspection. She turns towards Yaz, opening her mouth to make a joke, something silly like “first one to spot royalty wins,” but the words die on her tongue.
“Good evening, Doctor Khan, Mrs. Khan, welcome,” the servant says before she can speak, bowing and gesturing them both through the door.
Beside her, Yaz goes very still. Her breath hitches. And the Doctor’s hearts skip a treacherous beat.
She flips the psychic paper back around to stare down at it—surely, she hasn’t just done this, surely not—and yes, there it is, in all the overpompous swirly calligraphy expected of an invitation of this kind but still printed clear as day, Doctor Khan and Mrs. Yasmin Khan.
The Doctor can feel her entire face heat up and hopes desperately that the mask is enough to hide her blush. No one is sparing them a second glace—they will if she doesn’t get them both moving again, stars, she can’t let them both just stand here and doom the whole plan before it starts—but then, no one else matters except Yaz, frozen and upset at her side.
Yaz, who her own treacherous thoughts apparently decided to announce as her wife.
Stars, she’s in so much trouble.
It’s Yaz who recovers first. She curtseys slightly to the servant in a too-polite thank you, and in turn the Doctor bows to Yaz, sweeping her arm out in an exaggerated after you gesture that has the added benefit of letting her duck her face away. She doesn’t look up again until she sees the sweep of Yaz’s skirts brush past her and through the doors. The train of her skirt gives her a good, polite excuse to keep her distance as they ascend the famous crystal staircase. Inside, it’s an explosion of colors—guests mill about the grand entryway and spill into the ballroom in glittering finery. Gilded plasterwork scrolls up the walls and onto the ceiling, a stunning and almost overwhelming display of wealth. The Doctor keeps her head on a swivel—anything to avoid looking Yaz in the eye again—and the display in her mask begins to populate with names, none of them the one she’s looking for, but it’s enough for her to grasp back at the plan again.
“Right,” she says, her voice pitched low, so only Yaz can hear. “No sign of her yet. Next part of the plan. Split up, have a look round, keep in touch. The bounty hunter’s likely here somewhere, but he won’t know we’re looking for him. Shouldn’t be any trouble as long as we find Thara first, yeah?”
“Right,” Yaz agrees.
Her voice is quiet in a way that makes the Doctor finally turn to look at her. Yaz is watching her, and the mask obscures her features enough that the Doctor can’t read her expression, can only really see her own distorted figure in the mirrored surface of the mask. But the corners of Yaz’s lips quirk up in a smile when she turns to her, and then she reaches out and ever so carefully adjusts the hat that had been slipping precariously backwards off the Doctor’s head.
“Be careful out there, yeah?” Yaz tells her.
She smiles, a real smile now, bright and warm, and her fingers slide off the brim of the Doctor’s hat. And then she turns and walks away, swallowed by the crowd of guests. The Doctor manages to hold in a trembling, shuddery breath until she’s gone, she hopes, out of earshot. Yaz hadn’t even touched her, not really, and yet here she is, practically undone by that simple, kind gesture.
She’s in so, so much fucking trouble.
She needs to pull herself back together now. Right now. Before she messes everything up.
What she wants doesn’t matter. Lives at stake. A rescue mission in progress.
“Enough of this,” she mutters to herself. “Get a shift on.”
And she turns away from Yaz and heads the opposite direction, deeper into the party.
She spots the bounty hunter first.
She’s milling around in the back corner, scanning guests’ faces for intel and watching the third gentleman in a row dance with Yaz when she finds him. She is, in fact, trying very hard not to stare daggers into Yaz’s dance partners, particularly not since she can see Yaz carefully turning her head this way and that as they go and knows that she’s searching the crowd too, and from a particularly useful central vantage point, and it’s not like she can go and dance with Yaz herself, for several reasons. Still, the seething jealousy flaring to life in her chest is not appeased by logic, which is just about as frustrating as the jealousy itself is. She has no right to it. No claim on Yaz. In fact she’s very clearly set that aside herself, if anything.
So when she sees the man in the Robin Hood costume whose boots somehow have rubber soles, she is very tempted to confront him. To catch his attention and lure him away from the rest of the party and unleash some of this pent-up frustration on someone. She’s so tempted that she finds she’s actually taken three steps towards him before a servant with a tray of drinks interrupts her path and she snaps out of it. They’re not here for a confrontation. They’re here for Thara. Get in, get the girl, get out. That’s the plan here.
She scans the man from a distance instead—it’s a good Robin Hood costume, apart from the boots, but perhaps a bit risky in a room filled with this many rich people. In other circumstances, she’d probably admire the gutsy move. The data she picks up from the mask reveals a bit more about the firm that employed him and shows her just how many weapons he’s got hidden away under various layers of his costume—six really feels like overkill—as well as showing her the vortex manipulator hidden beneath his arm guards.
Now that, she can work with.
“Yaz,” she mutters quietly, even as she fishes out her sonic and points it subtly at the bounty hunter with a determined buzz.
“You all right?” Yaz replies at once through the paired comm in her mask.
“Fine,” the Doctor says. “Got eyes on our bounty hunter friend.”
She sends Yaz a quick data packet with all the relevant intel she’s just picked up. Across the ballroom, she sees Yaz nod as it comes through, sees her turn her head subtly but just clearly enough towards their Robin Hood until she spots him too.
“Any sign of Thara?” Yaz asks.
“Not yet,” she says. “Just giving Robin Hood here a bit of a software virus… should stop him coming after us but it’ll take a bit of time to do its work. Still best we find her and get out of here before he spots us.”
“Copy that,” Yaz replies. “I’ll have a look upstairs, I keep seeing people disappearing up there.”
“Good idea. Be careful.”
“You too.”
The Doctor once again turns in the opposite direction, continuing to carefully search the party for any sign of Thara while doing her best to keep both the bounty hunter and any members of royalty safely at arms’ length. She nearly walks into Tsar Nicholas II, whose costume, her mask helpfully informs her, is Russian court dress from approximately two centuries prior to this particular party, excusing herself with a bow and keeping the “sorry about the murders” to herself. She spots the Prince of Wales, several dukes and duchesses, and probably millions of pounds worth of jewels and gilt embroidery dripping from costumes that will never see wear again. It grates at her, suddenly. She’s all for a good costume party, but this feels… wasteful. All this, to celebrate a queen who isn’t even here?
“Starting to think maybe our Robin Hood has the right idea, Yaz,” she mutters to herself. “Any sign of her?”
“We can rob the rich to feed the poor on the way out, if you like,” Yaz replies with a soft chuckle. “And not—wait. Hang on, I think I’ve got her.”
The Doctor perks up, slinking away from the main ballroom and towards the stairs Yaz had disappeared up half an hour before. As she does, a similar data packet to the one she’d sent Yaz pings in her vision, and she grins. There she is: Thara’s dressed in a full-skirted gown with a pair of fairy wings, a little noticeably plainer than the rest of the guests around them, but probably the best she could put together in order to use this as her hiding spot. Also unlike the other guests, there’s a hollow quality to her eyes where they show through her mask, like she’s utterly wrung out.
“Brilliant, Yaz,” the Doctor whispers, a grin spreading out across her face. Finally, something was going right. “Talk to her, I’m on my way upstairs to you.”
“Got it.”
The Doctor lingers at the foot of the stairs only for a moment longer to check on their bounty hunter one more time. He hasn’t appeared to notice her at all, and according to her sonic, the little virus she gifted him is steadily doing its work. She’s in the process of wiping all record of Thara from both his personal database and his employers’ database. She can’t, of course, make him forget her or the fact that he’d been sent to apprehend her (if only she could). But she can make it so that he’s got no record of her and therefore no incentive to bring her in, and certainly no incentive to keep chasing after them once they’re safely out of this time zone again. No record, no reward, after all.
She’s also drained the battery on his vortex manipulator so that it’s got only one jump left in it. If he’s smart, which she hopes he will be, he’ll take himself home, rather than chase them. Still, the process isn’t quite complete yet. Better to avoid his notice entirely. She leaves him stalking around the party in the opposite direction and follows Yaz upstairs.
Up here, it is mercifully quieter, although this is still a public area of the house. Groups of people—predominantly groups of ladies—sit together to talk more privately, or just to rest their feet after all the dancing. The Doctor strides past them as purposefully as she can without raising alarm—she wants to run back to Yaz, to finish this and get out of here, but running would be far too suspicious. At least it’s not long before she finds them sitting together and talking quietly in the corner of an abandoned library. Thara seems to be crying, curling in towards Yaz, who is patting her gently on the shoulder. The Doctor falters at the sight, slowing so that Yaz can reassure the other girl a little more before she breaks in. Yaz has always been better at being comforting than she has. This face has just never seemed to know how to pull together the right words at the right time.
Yaz can do it, though. It’s one of a thousand things she admires about her companion. And this, at least, is easy enough to admit.
A floorboard squeaks beneath her feet as she steps closer, and Thara jerks her head up in alarm, shifting back from Yaz like she’s preparing to run. But Yaz just smiles warmly at the sight of her.
“Hiya, Doctor,” she says. “This is Thara.”
“Nice to meet you,” the Doctor tells her with a wave and a nod.
“Hello,” Thara replies, sniffling a little but pulling herself back together.
“Any trouble?” Yaz asks.
“Don’t think so. No one else has spotted us, as far as I can tell.”
“Good,” Yaz replies. “Time for the escaping part of the plan, then?”
“Oh yeah,” the Doctor says with a grin. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”
Thara looks alarmed, and Yaz just groans softly, rolling her eyes.
“What?” the Doctor asks. “Do people not say that anymore?”
“Did people ever say that, Doctor?”
“Humphrey Bogart did,” she replies with a pout. “Next time I see him I’ll have to tell him off for unrealistic dialogue.”
“You do that,” Yaz says, shaking her head, although that fond little smile is back on her face, the one that twists the Doctor’s hearts far more sharply than it should. “First: getting out of here?”
“Right,” the Doctor agrees, striding for the bookshelves, her mask scanning over the titles until she finds the one she needs. “One escape plan in three… two… one… bingo!”
She reaches up and pulls one particular book forward. There’s a pop, and a secret doorway in the shelf springs free.
“After you!” she says, gesturing towards the newly-revealed passageway.
But Thara hesitates. She looks warily at the secret doorway, and then back at the Doctor, folding her arms across her chest and leaning away from her and Yaz.
“This… How do I know I can trust you? You can really help me?” she says, her voice wavering. “You can really get me back to Zoras?”
“We can,” Yaz insists. “We’re good at doing stuff like that. Zoras is waiting for you, and we’ll get you straight back to them, promise.”
“And… we have to go this way?” she asks.
“Ah,” the Doctor jumps in. Her wariness is understandable, if a bit worrying because moving would be much, much better. “Not as suspicious as it looks, Thara, trust me. See, the one thing you can always count on in elaborate parties at rich people’s houses: secret passageways to facilitate doing things you’re not supposed to be doing. There’s at least… three gentleman downstairs who have used this secret door to meet up with their mistresses in the past,” she adds, counting off various misbehaving members of the nobility in her head.
“Not the point,” Yaz mumbles.
“Which is, strictly speaking, not the point,” the Doctor agrees hurriedly. “In our case, we’ll just sneak down to the servants’ quarters and a less conspicuous entrance. It’s too early to leave the party just yet without someone commenting on it, this lot’ll be here till three in the morning, I reckon. But we can just march straight out the side door, into our ship that’s parked outside, and get you back to Zoras.”
“Really?” Thara says. She looks so, so tired. She looks like she’s about to burst into tears again.
“Really,” the Doctor replies, rocking back on her heels and trying to look as reassuring as she can.
“You can trust us, Thara,” Yaz adds, her voice soft and kind. Of course she knows exactly the right thing to say. “I know you’ve been running a long time, but you’re almost done. Just this one last push, yeah?”
Thara lingers another moment, a long moment in which the Doctor is itching to go, but finally she nods.
“All right,” Thara says. She gets to her feet and smooths out her skirts, lifting her chin. “Let’s go.”
They slip through the doorway and into what reveals itself as a narrow maze of passages through different public and private areas of the house, making their way back towards the ground floor. They’re so close the Doctor can taste it. And then they step into the next alcove only to find the bounty hunter arriving at the opposite end of the hallway. It seems he, too, is well aware of the uses of secret passageways in a house like this.
“This way!” the Doctor hisses, leading them on an abrupt turn and into another room.
It is, fortunately, deserted, some kind of private sitting area, perhaps, quiet and dark. Unfortunately, the door at the other end is locked. The Doctor points the sonic at it, but it won’t give. She groans at it, rattling the knob, but it’s no use. If she had more time, she could probably crack it—but she hasn’t got time. Footsteps are closing in on the door they just came through.
“Is this your idea of a rescue?” Thara snaps, but the Doctor can tell she’s terrified.
She scans the room, and then—result!
“Closet,” the Doctor hisses, pointing. “Go!”
They dart towards the only other door in the room, but when they open it, they find it’s the sort of closet fitted with shelves. It would be impossible to fit three people in there.
“Hide!” Yaz insists, helping Thara stuff herself and her dress into the space without a second thought, shutting the door the moment she’s inside.
The knob on the door they’d come through begins to turn.
“What now?” Yaz whispers, her eyes wide as she blocks the closet door with her body.
Think, Doctor, think, seconds to spare—
The bounty hunter has no idea who they are. He’s looking for Thara. His instruments should be scrambled by now, so if they can just throw him off long enough to get past him—
He won’t be looking for them.
He will be expecting people doing things they’re not supposed to be doing, if he knows about these back passageways.
“Yaz,” the Doctor murmurs. “I’m so sorry.”
The door opens.
And the Doctor sweeps Yaz into a kiss.
Yaz gasps against her lips, but she doesn’t pull away. She wraps her arms around the Doctor’s neck. She pulls her closer.
She kisses her back.
And the Doctor’s hearts soar, her whole body sings as they kiss, at the feel of Yaz’s body pressed to hers, of her fingers tangling in Yaz’s soft curls. How could she have ever denied them this? How could she have wasted so much time, because this, surely, this is worth the heartbreak that will come for them both eventually, this might possibly break her open and heal her again all at once—
She thinks she hears a soft chuckle from behind her, the creak of a door closing again, but it doesn’t matter, she doesn’t care, all she can think about is Yaz, all she wants is to keep kissing Yaz, because this is the most glorious way she has ever been proven wrong in all her lives, because she was an idiot and now she just has to make up for lost time, now she just has to lose herself forever in Yaz’s touch. She thinks that maybe the feel of Yaz’s skin beneath her fingertips, the taste of her, the quiet, breathy little sigh she lets out when she presses in closer, might just alter her down to the atoms, because how could it not, how could she not react to this kind of touch and care and love—
Yaz breaks the kiss. She’s out of breath, her eyes wide and dark and each soft huff of air that escapes her lips traces the Doctor’s cheek like a caress, and she shudders. She finds she can’t speak, finds that she is moments away from falling to her knees at Yaz’s feet and trying to find some way to apologize to her for ever daring to push her away, trying to worship her the way she ought to have been all this time.
Yaz steadies herself, and her eyes flick away from the Doctor’s face, over her shoulder, and she asks, “is he gone?”
The Doctor’s hearts stop.
Right. Yes. Of course. This was a distraction. The only one she’d had available, and of course Yaz would think it’s only a distraction, Yaz won’t know that she’s just shattered every wall the Doctor has ever built up with that kiss, how could she, and the Doctor hasn’t got the breath or the words or the time to tell her otherwise.
“Think so,” she croaks instead, and she hates herself for it.
Yaz steps back, out of her embrace, and the Doctor’s hearts splinter to pieces in the cold that rushes into her in her place.
“Yaz—” she rasps out, but she’s not sure what to say, not sure what she can say, and Yaz has turned away from her now anyway, opening the closet door and helping Thara unfold herself from her hiding place.
Yaz won’t look at her.
The Doctor can’t really read her expression like this, not around the mask, not when she’s turned away, but she won’t look at her and she feels like she’s going to come utterly undone.
“Yaz—” she says again.
She can see Thara glancing between them, but whatever conclusion she’s drawing doesn’t matter. All that matters is Yaz.
“Good distraction,” Yaz says, her voice rock solid and steady. She still won’t look at the Doctor. “Let’s get out of here before he comes back, yeah?”
“Right,” the Doctor replies.
Yaz opens the door of the room a crack, carefully checking the coast is clear before leading them out into the hallway again. And it should be her doing that, not Yaz, her checking for danger, her shielding the others from anything waiting outside for them. But she can’t think, and she can’t breathe, and Yaz is—Yaz is brilliant enough to keep doing what needs to be done even as the Doctor’s falling into useless pieces in her wake.
So the Doctor follows behind her, just for a moment as she collects herself. She feels the seconds swimming around her like tides as she tries hard not to drown in feelings she’s been doing everything in her power to ignore for years, as she tries to shore up the walls that kiss had sent crumbling to dust with the mission in front of them, with her fury at herself for endangering that mission, endangering Yaz, with her own foolhardy distractions. Her hearts beat wild and reckless in her ears—not fair, not fair, not fair—and she does her best to set it aside. It’s her own fault that things are like this. It’s her own fault that she was once again too slow, that she’s once again too late to have what she wants.
It doesn’t matter. They’ve got Thara. They just need to get her out safely. Job done.
So get it done, Doctor.
She catches up to Yaz and Thara and takes the lead again. Back to business as usual. The hallways around them are mostly empty save for one or two confused servants, but they just keep on going like they’re meant to be there, and nobody stops them. The plan is working better than she’d thought it would.
Well, except for the part where she had to kiss Yaz. Apart from that terrible imposition that’s going to destroy her, this is a resounding success.
So far.
They’re nearly out, they’re nearly safe, when they turn one last corner and the bounty hunter walks directly into her. She stumbles back several paces, staring up at him—he stares back, looking just as startled. And then his eyes settle on Thara, doing her best to hide herself behind Yaz, and something clicks in his face.
“You there,” he says. “You’re under arrest.”
“Better check your records again, mate,” the Doctor says, rocking forward on her heels. “Think you’ve got the wrong person.”
“We’ll see about that,” he says, scowling down at her.
She leans into his space with a snarl, and oh how she wants him to start something, just so she can lay the blame for this horrible day at his feet, so she can do something useful with the frustration and misery and rage bubbling under her skin, so she can direct it at him instead of where it belongs: at herself. But she can’t do that. She can’t risk Yaz and Thara like that.
“You might, anyway,” the Doctor. “We’re going to get out of here. See ya!”
And she whips the hat off her head and tosses it into his face. He flinches back, scrambling to catch the oddly-shaped thing, getting a face full of feather as he does.
“Run!” the Doctor shouts to her little group.
She grabs Yaz by the hand, and Yaz grabs Thara, and they run. They take one last detour, out through the kitchens and past several alarmed servants and kitchen staff who all jump out of their way with expressions of both alarm and clear decisions that whatever is going on here is well above their pay grade.
And then they’re at the door, and out, and running down the lamp-lit cobbled street towards the waiting warmth of the TARDIS.
“We’re all supposed to get in there?” Thara shouts as she sees where they’re going. “I thought you said you had a ship!”
“Everybody always disses the box!” the Doctor grumbles, but she shoves through the doors.
“Just go on!” Yaz shouts, practically stuffing Thara through the doors after her.
The Doctor stumbles up to the console, ripping off her mask and tossing it aside before gripping the controls so hard her knuckles turn white. She vaguely hears Yaz explaining that yes, it’s bigger on the inside and leaves her to it. Yaz can handle that. Yaz can handle everything, apparently; she’s the one who’s breaking.
Maybe it’s better that Yaz doesn’t think the kiss meant anything. She deserves better than this. She deserves better than someone who can’t make up her mind, who can’t give either of them what they want, not really.
She hears the ship hum softly around them, and she grits her teeth and ignores it. She doesn’t need the TARDIS to pity her. She needs to finish this, now, before Yaz catches on that something is wrong.
The thing is, though, she can feel eyes on her as she sets up their flight path and takes off. Yaz probably already knows something is wrong. She probably knows, and just hasn’t said anything because they still have things that need doing. Of course she knows, because Yaz is far too smart for her tricks. It makes the Doctor want to run, to sprint somewhere into the depths of the TARDIS and never come out. It makes her want to scream until she’s hoarse, until the horrible, jittery feeling roiling under her skin is gone.
It makes her want to reach out and kiss Yaz again.
She’s always going to want that now, isn’t she? Now that she knows just how wonderful it is? Now that she knows exactly what she’s told herself she can’t have?
Focus, Doctor. Focus now, fall apart later.
“Yaz,” she calls softly, “copilot?”
“’Course,” Yaz answers at once.
This time, it’s the Doctor who won’t meet Yaz’s eye, but that doesn’t matter as much right now, because they’ve got flying to do. They sink back into their familiar rhythm around the console as they work, that same waltz one-two-three as before.
“I—you’re really taking me to see Zoras?” Thara asks after a long moment. “This is—we’re really going to be safe?”
“Really,” Yaz says. “The Doctor made it so that the bounty hunter can’t follow us.”
“And I erased all record of you and your supposed ‘crimes’ from his database, and his employers’. And—” she adds, fiddling with a few extra levers. Now that Yaz is handling most of the flying and the immediate extraction is done, there’s one more thing to take care of. “—I’ve sent a notification to the people who hired our friend Robin in the first place, which says that the job’s done, and you’ve been… eliminated.”
“So I’m… dead. Officially,” Thara says, looking crestfallen.
“Yes. I’m sorry,” the Doctor replies, glancing up for a moment to offer a sympathetic wince. “It seemed like the simplest way to be certain no one would ever come after you again. From their end, the whole job’s been completed, including payment, which should process right about…” she pauses, glancing at the displays she’s worked up until there’s a soft ping, “now.”
“They still paid off the bounty hunter?” Thara asks. “But I thought you said there was no record of me in their system anymore.”
“There isn’t,” the Doctor replies, and she lets herself grin just a little, because really, this is the good part of the plan. “They did send payment, and they think it’s to the bounty hunter, only, I just so happen to have intercepted it myself.”
She reaches out, and the TARDIS console spits a small credit stamp into her hand, which she then holds out to Thara. She takes it, staring at it in confusion, even as hope is just starting to dawn on her face.
“Seems like giving this to you and Zoras to help get you started somewhere safe is a much better use of that money, don’t you think?” she says.
“Talk about robbing the rich,” Yaz says.
The Doctor can hear the smile in her voice, and so she dares to look up, dares to offer a soft smile of her own. Yaz has set her mask aside too, at some point while they were flying, and the look on her face is so warm, so fond, that her hearts break all over again.
“Something like that,” she manages quietly before she has to look away again. She clears her throat and turns back to the console. “Right. Let’s get you back to Zoras, then!”
The TARDIS groans and wheezes its descent, and then there’s a soft thump as they land. For a moment, everyone freezes.
“Zoras is really here?” Thara finally asks, her voice very small.
“They’re here,” Yaz tells her. “Wanna go find them?”
Thara bolts for the door.
Yaz and the Doctor follow her more slowly, stepping out to their rendezvous point—Earth’s moon, with an atmosphere shield stretched in the space between Zoras’ ship and the TARDIS’ landing spot. They don’t have to step far out for Zoras to see them, and they launch themselves out of their own ship to pull Thara into their arms.
Zoras bursts into tears as they cling to each other, wrapping each other in an embrace so tight they seem to merge into one creature. The Doctor’s hearts twist at the sight, another reunion and another hug all too sharp in her mind. She’d only lost Yaz for a few hours, but Yaz had lost years, and she hadn’t held her tightly enough when she’d gotten her back. Nor nearly long enough. And then Thara kisses Zoras, and the Doctor tears her eyes away, trying to give them a bit of privacy, tripping right into Yaz’s gaze instead.
“This is quite the rendezvous spot,” she says, gesturing at the dusty grey lunar landscape around them and the soft blue glow of the Earth hanging in the sky.
The Doctor just shrugs.
“Hard to forget where you parked, here.”
“If you say so,” Yaz replies, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips, her eyes bright in a way that suggests she knows exactly what the Doctor is playing at by giving these two a moment of a spectacular sight after everything they’ve been through.
Not that she thinks they notice the view at all. Quite right, really.
“Doctor, Yaz,” Thara says finally, tugging Zoras by the hand a few steps closer to them. “This is… it’s really over? We’re safe?”
“You’re safe,” the Doctor says with a nod. “Well, as safe as anyone can be, in this life. But you’re free. Really.”
“How can we ever thank you?” Zoras asks, their voice shivery with tears as they cling tight to Thara’s hand. “You can’t know what this means.”
“We do, a little,” Yaz replies, and all the air rushes from the Doctor’s lungs. “We’re just glad you’re together again.”
“Live great lives, yeah?” the Doctor tells them with a grin and a cheery bounce. “Whole universe is your oyster now!”
Thara and Zoras both thank them again, and again, even shouting thank you and goodbye over their shoulders again until they disappear into their own ship, into each other. The craft powers up and flies off, zipping away into the black sky in a burst of brilliant blue light.
“Think they’ll be all right?” Yaz asks, watching the spot where they’ve disappeared.
“I hope so,” the Doctor murmurs back. “They’ve got a real chance, now, at least. They can be together.”
Silence settles around them, then. The moon’s surface is empty and quiet, dim in only the light of the Earth glow. With even the stars hidden from view, it feels like they’re the only two people in the entire universe, and for a moment, one long, trembling, precious moment, the Doctor doesn’t even dare breathe for risk of interrupting this rare peace at Yaz’s side.
They did it. They saved the day, again. They won. And just for this one moment, neither of them have to decide what to do next. They can just… be, here. Which is good, because she’s got no idea how to move on from here.
The Doctor doesn’t dare look at Yaz—she watches the swirls of clouds shifting across Earth’s surface instead, like perhaps those winds have the answers she’s seeking—but she can feel Yaz’s gaze on her, patient and steady, and she knows she has to say something. She just doesn’t know what. She doesn’t know how to say anything right, not when all that’s left of her is the crumbled dust of those walls she’d spent so many lives building up.
Well, she supposes there’s one way she could start.
“Yaz,” she whispers, still not daring to look at her. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?” Yaz asks.
“I…”
She pauses, the words, the right words, any words at all, sticking in her throat again. She’s sorry for so many things.
“I…” she tries again. “For… before. For not finding a distraction that would… hurt less. And…” she swallows, hard, forces herself to keep going. “…for not being braver, now.”
It’s hardly an adequate apology. It’s hardly everything Yaz deserves to know. But the rest of it, the way that kiss had broken her open, the way she wishes she’d given in to this a long, long time ago, everything she’s still so desperately afraid of, won’t form into words, refuses to march past her teeth. She drops her gaze from the Earth in front of her to the soft grey dirt at her feet, the dusty imprint of her boots beside Yaz’s on the lunar soil, the trail that Thara and Zoras left. No wind will ever disturb these marks, she knows. They’ll be here, crossing over each other like this, forever.
It feels terribly unfair that these footprints will have what she can’t. She’s not sure whether she wants to laugh or cry over the absurdity and the impossibility of it all.
For a long moment, Yaz says nothing. The Doctor can feel her gaze on her, the steady weight of consideration, and she tries to bear it without flinching for all she can’t bring herself to look back.
“You know,” Yaz says after a long while, with more steadiness than the Doctor had expected, “it were a pretty good party. Missing one thing, though, I think.”
At that, the Doctor finally looks up, puzzled. She’s done an abjectly terrible job of it, but she is trying to give Yaz some sort of honesty; she hadn’t expected Yaz to be the one to talk around things. That’s usually her specialty.
“Oh yeah?” she asks, trying to catch up. “What might that be?”
“I didn’t get a chance to dance with you,” Yaz replies.
“Oh,” the Doctor says.
Yaz is watching her carefully, and the Doctor can’t quite make out the expression on her face. The mask is gone, true, but there are too many layers of emotions happening at once for her to parse, not like this, not when her own hearts have started racing again. But there’s something soft and shy in her smile, something almost hopeful in her eyes.
Does she know? Does she realize that the kiss had meant something, and she’s trying to shift them back to it now, slowly and carefully?
And if she knows, is the Doctor brave enough to meet her halfway?
She wants to try. She’s so, so tired of pushing Yaz away, of holding herself apart. She’s not sure she can anymore, even if she wanted to, and how could she want to, after that kiss? But the thing is, she has no idea how to be anything different.
“We could… go back,” she says hesitantly. “If you wanted, that is.”
“We could,” Yaz says. Her smile twitches wider, for a second, and she lets out a slow breath, like she’s steeling herself for something. “I’ve got a better idea, though.”
“Yeah?” the Doctor asks. “What is it?”
And Yaz reaches into the pocket of her ballgown skirts and pulls out her phone. She thumbs through it for a moment, and then, before long, music pours out from the phone’s speakers. A soft, lilting waltz filters across the silent, dusty surface of the moon, and Yaz looks up at her with a hesitant smile, like she’s a little afraid the Doctor will think this is silly, or worse, run away from this—from her—again.
“May I have this dance?” she asks, putting her phone back in her pocket and reaching her hand out to the Doctor instead.
And the Doctor looks from Yaz’s outstretched hand to her face and back again. Too many seconds tick by, the decision caught along with her breath in her throat, because this is such a small thing, and yet it means everything. Can she really just… reach out? Can she really just open them both up to the hurt she knows is coming if it will mean they can have this, right now? Every option seems like the wrong choice, the selfish one.
Except when she hesitates a few seconds too long, and something tightens in Yaz’s eyes.
Everything feels wrong, but actively letting Yaz down? That’s something she absolutely cannot do. Not if she can help it.
“Of course you can,” she replies, and she reaches out and takes Yaz’s hand in one of her own, settling the other on the curve of Yaz’s waist.
They dance, that same one-two-three beat they’ve been circling for a long time now. It’s just them, whirling round and round in the little square of amber light from the open TARDIS doors, and it feels like something clicks into place, like this is exactly where she’s meant to be. Yaz certainly looks like she belongs here, in her glittering ballgown with all of Earth at her back.
She belongs here, in the Doctor’s arms.
“You know,” Yaz says quietly after they dance their way through a few songs. She ducks her head as her cheeks flush; the Doctor can hear her heartbeat pick up. “Before… the thing is, that’s not… not how I would have wanted to kiss you, for the first time.”
“I’m so sorry—” the Doctor apologizes at once.
“But,” Yaz cuts her off. “It were… a good kiss. Just, er, just so you know.”
“Oh,” the Doctor says, and she thinks now her face is probably bright red, and she’s not sure she remembers exactly how breathing is meant to work.
“And if… if that were something you might… want to try again…” She pauses for an eternity of seconds, clears her throat. “Then I’d like that. If you would, that is.”
“I would,” the Doctor answers, surprising herself. Her voice seems to echo in her ears, hoarse and haunted in this dead space filled only with the two of them. She feels like she’s surrounded by ghosts, all the same. “But, Yaz, I… I can’t be everything you deserve. I don’t know how. I don’t know how long I have left. And you, Yasmin Khan… you deserve so much more than me. You deserve the universe.”
“I don’t need the universe, Doctor,” Yaz murmurs back. “I just need you.”
“Yaz,” she replies, like her companion’s name is a prayer, a promise she can keep. “I’m not… I’m not worth that.”
And Yaz just smiles up at her, love and sadness in equal measure on her face. They’ve stopped dancing now, at least properly, anyway, shuffling in slow circles rather than continuing their waltz, and Yaz lifts her hand from its place on the Doctor’s shoulder, reaching up to cup her cheek instead. The Doctor lets out a slow, shaky breath at the touch, at the gentle stroke of Yaz’s thumb beneath the soft skin of her eye.
“You are to me,” she tells her.
It’s the simplest and the most complicated thing in the universe at once. And the Doctor still doesn’t know what to do with this, how to navigate this without hurting her. But she does know that she can’t run from her, not anymore. It’s too late for that. It’s been too late for that since the beginning.
She lets herself smile back, and lets herself tug Yaz in closer by the hand on her waist, and she lets herself memorize the nervous, hopeful look in her beautiful dark eyes.
And she lets herself kiss Yaz again.
And it’s perfect. It’s better than it had been, this time round, because this time, it’s real, and they both know it. This time, it’s just them, safe and tucked away from the whole universe, from every force that will try and tear them apart. It’s just them, and they have as long as they want, as long as they need, to savor this moment. To savor each other.
Yaz sighs into the kiss, and pulls her closer, tangling her fingers in the Doctor’s hair. And the Doctor never wants to stop touching her again, wants to live here, in this kiss, this moment, forever. She can’t. They can’t. They won’t have forever, and already the weight of it threatens to break the Doctor’s hearts wide open all over again.
But for now, they have this. For now, they have each other. It’s not enough, and it never will be, but it still matters. It is still, while she can have it, everything.
Eventually, Yaz breaks the kiss so she can breathe, but she stays close, leaning her forehead against the Doctor’s. She feels strangely giddy, like she could just launch herself straight up into the moon’s low gravity and fly, and she lets out a soft huff of a laugh, trailing her fingertips down the curve of Yaz’s neck. She shivers at the touch, and suddenly the Doctor needs to know what would happen if she followed her fingertips with her lips.
“All right, bighead?” Yaz asks.
“I… Yaz, I—Yaz—” she stammers, and Yaz laughs, fondly, shifting back just far enough to look her in the eye.
“You’re speechless twice in one day?” she says. “I think that means the world is ending.”
At that, the Doctor laughs too. She doesn’t know what to do with this lightheaded feeling, this joy coursing through her. She doesn’t know how to tell Yaz that of course she’s speechless twice in one day, faced with how beautiful she is, how world-alteringly perfect it feels to kiss her. She thinks, then, that she’ll run out of time before she finds the words, the right words. But she also knows that she’s going to try to find them with every second she’s got left.
“Well then,” she says with a grin, “if the world’s ending, it’s a good thing we’re together. The Doctor and Yasmin Khan? We’re unstoppable.”
“Oh yeah,” Yaz replies with an echoing smile, tightening her fingers in the Doctor’s hair. “I’d back us every time.”
And at that, she tugs the Doctor into her and kisses her again.