Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The crawl back to Yaz’s body is slow and gruelling. It takes the patience of a fighter; the heart of a lover. It takes an unerring will to survive. 

There are times when her exhausted organs come close to giving up on her. Even though Yaz isn’t conscious for most of it, there’s something embedded in the core of her being. It’s not flowers, and it’s not the serrated blade of a knife. It’s a memory. It’s two people holding hands on the billboard above a quiet highway, talking about loneliness and constellations and trading bashful smiles like two old friends who haven’t seen one another in so long. And that’s what it has always felt like to Yaz; like she’s known the Doctor before. In another lifetime. 

In all of them. 

This memory does more for Yaz than the blood transfusions, and the scalpels, and the sterile utensils and gloved fingers digging around beneath her skin. This memory is at the heart of a whole interconnected web of so many like it. It weaves around her weary heart and clings to her longing bones and she climbs it, silk thread by silk thread, until the murky surface ripples just within arm’s reach and refracts the harsh, fluorescent light of reality directly into her eyes. 

Granted, there are a few false starts. Groggy eyelids flutter but don’t open and disembodied voices echo in her ears like dreams: some familiar, some not. 

“Lucky, this one. If they hadn’t found her when they did, she’d be worm food right now.”

“Lucky? Guess you didn’t hear what they found in her lungs." 

“What did they find?”

“Flowers.”

“Flowers? Shit. How far along?”

“Far. Her family doesn’t even know yet. I think — wait, is she waking up? Go get the…”

Time swims away from her. Yaz runs from clinical apathy and chases something warmer. 

“I just don’t understand, Hakim. They all keep saying she’s going to be fine, but…”

“But what, love?”

“The way they look at her. The way they look at us. The nurses and the doctors — nobody in this whole place can look us in the eye! Something’s going on. I know it is.”

“Why would they lie? Our daughter’s going to wake up. That’s what they said. Can’t we just be happy?”

“So you choose now to deny the existence of a conspiracy?”

The voices are familiar, but no warmer. Yaz pulls the darkness over her, like a shield protecting her from the truth and its many consequences, and waits in the shadows for a different dawn. In the end, it’s a single word that draws her back into the light. 

“...family’ll probably be back soon. Had to send her whole squad home, though. Taking up too much space in the waiting room. Never known a patient so popular. Not to mention that Doctor character who’s been kipping in the hallway.” The muscles in Yaz’s hand twitch and a thin crack of intense light splinters the ceiling of darkness, like a coffin door, she’s been buried beneath for an indeterminate amount of time. “Where does she get off, calling herself that in a hospital full of actual doctors? She tried to diagnose one of my patients earlier.”

“Really? Was she right?”

“Er, well…”

“Where is she?” Yaz tries to ask, but her throat is too dry and her head too fuzzy. The only sound she makes is an incoherent wheeze. She forces her eyes open to find a doctor (not the right one) and a nurse staring at her from the end of her cot. 

“Yasmin?” The doctor hooks the chart in his hands back onto the bed and then rounds it to her side. “Yasmin, are you with me?”

“Where is she?” Yaz attempts for the second time. Still hoarse, but the words at least take shape this time. Both her doctor and her nurse are looking at her like she’s sprouting two heads. Or sprouting flowers from her lungs. “I wanna see her.”

“Miss Khan—“

“It’s PC.”

Chagrined, the doctor purses his lips and corrects himself. “PC Khan, do you know where you are?”

Yaz makes a point of looking down at herself: the wires plugged into her body, the hospital gown, the morphine drip, the thin, sterile sheets that are about as comfortable as rough paper against her bare legs. She looks up at the doctor. “Alton Towers?”

“Very funny.” He isn’t laughing. 

Yaz sighs. “I’m in hospital. Sheffield. Yorkshire. England. Earth. The Milky Way. Should I go on?”

“That’s quite enough, thank you.” The doctor nods his head at the nurse by way of dismissal. After offering Yaz a sympathetic smile she wants to wipe off his face with the back of her hand, the nurse shuffles out of the room. “Do you know why you’re here, PC Khan?”

“I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume getting stabbed didn’t do me any favours.” Yaz knows she’s being rude. She doesn’t even know why; all she knows is that she’s itching for this conversation to be over so that she can finally set sights on the woman who’s been haunting her drug-addled fever dreams with false promises of futures that don’t exist. Yaz doesn’t hold it against her. A future would be nice, but she’ll settle for one more day. One more smile. 

One last look. 

Kipping in the hallway — that’s what they said. How close is she? A matter of yards? Metres? Yaz leans forward to steal a glance around the grey blinds, which are drawn over a mostly glass wall separating her room from the corridor. The instant she moves, however, a splitting pain spears her as acutely as if she’s been stabbed again. Yaz grunts and falls back. Instinctively, she reaches for the bandaging wrapped tightly around her upper body. By the feel of it, the bastard got her right below the armpit.

“Please try to take it easy,” warns the doctor with raised palms. “You don’t want to rip your stitches.”

Frustrated, Yaz thuds the back of her head against the pillow and drags a hand down her face. “How long have I been here?” 

“It’s been almost a week. Honestly, it’s a wonder you’re still with us. Your injuries were quite severe on their own, but…” The doctor pauses. “Well, there were other complications. I’m sure you’re aware by now, PC Khan, but you appear to be suffering from a rare form of lung disease known as—“

“Yeah, I know. I’m lovesick. Terminally.” Yaz shrugs — and regrets it when another bolt of pain frazzles what feels like every nerve in her body. She swallows the need to cry out. “Didn’t need any doctors to diagnose the petals falling out of my mouth.”

“Maybe not, but we’ve had to save you from choking to death on multiple different occasions. While you were unconscious, we performed a non-invasive surgery to remove some of the larger, more life threatening, plants in your lungs. It’s only a temporary measure, of course. They will grow back. But, for now, you should find that it’s a little easier to breathe.”

Yaz can’t help but laugh. “You weeded me?”

“I don’t think you understand,” frowns the doctor. “Getting stabbed probably saved your life. You were hours from asphyxiation when you turned up here. If that.”

“You didn’t save my life. You prolonged the inevitable.”

The Doctor runs a hand through his coarse, white hair. “Unfortunately that’s true. Now, if we continue to regularly weed your lungs, as you so aptly put it, we might be able to buy you some more time. A few more months, maybe. The downside is, you’d be spending your final days here. In the hospital. And I’ll be honest, the procedures aren’t very pleasant.”

“I’m not dying here,” Yaz refuses. She doesn’t entertain the idea for a second. “How long do I have left right now? Without any more procedures?”

“I mean, it’s tricky to—“

“If you had to guess.”

“If I had to guess…” The Doctor shakes his head. For the first time, he actually looks sorry. He looks something a little closer to human. “A couple of weeks. Tops. I’m very sorry, PC Khan. I know this must be a shock.”

It is. It’s a shock.

But only because it’s far more than she’d hoped for. 

Two whole weeks to make up for the months she missed by the Doctor’s side. She didn’t think she was destined to last another day. Her resultant grin obviously perplexes her doctor, because he starts talking about services they provide to help her cope, and reiterates the whole you're-gonna-die thing to ensure it’s properly sinking in. But Yaz is overjoyed.

She’s got time.

And two weeks? Well, two weeks can last a whole lifetime if you spend it in the right company. She knows that better than anybody. 

“The Doctor, where is she?” Yaz asks, abruptly cutting the wrong doctor off mid-sentence. “You said she was here. I want to see her.”

“Well, yes, I do believe she was starting fights with vending machines, last I saw her,” he reveals, his distaste plain. Yaz hides a smile. “We’ve been limiting your visits to family only.“

“I think you’ll find she is family.”

“Unfort—“

“If you don’t let her in, I’ll bloody well rip all these tubes out of my body and go get her myself,” Yaz threatens. “Look at my face and tell me I’m lying.”

The doctor’s frown capitulates to dawning realisation with a telling glance at Yaz’s chest. “Ah.” He clasps his hands together behind his back. “I see.”

Yaz cocks a brow. “What exactly do you see?”

“You know, it’s none of my business, but if she’s the one causing all this, it might be worth talking to her. Telling her what’s going on. She’s been camping out in this hospital all week just waiting for you to wake up. Maybe she feels the same way.”

“Know what, mate? You’re right. It is none of your business.” Yaz jabs a finger towards the door. “Now go get her.”

When he leaves the room, Yaz thinks she has more time to prepare herself for seeing the Doctor again after so long. She thinks she has a few minutes, at least, to go over what she wants to say — explanations, excuses, lies — and to brace herself against the incoming flood of concern that she knows is bound to rush in upon the opening of the door and the meeting of eyes.

But then the door opens not twenty seconds later, and Yaz knows there was no way she was ever going to be able to prepare herself for seeing those eyes again. 

For so long, she only ever saw them in her dreams. In her nightmares. She even saw them as she was knocking on the Reaper’s door, when the life in them flashed before her own eyes and beseeched her to keep fighting. Merely a mirage; they had nothing on the real article.

Except, when the Doctor’s eyes finally land on Yaz for the first time in many grey months, it isn’t life Yaz sees in them. It’s not the burnished copper-gold of them that she notices. In fact, there’s a total dearth of any colour at all. No brushstrokes of joy, no curiosity streaked across her irises like watercolours; no thrill to bring the portrait alive with its usual champagne-effervescence.

All that remains, then, is horror.

The Doctor freezes in the doorway when she sees Yaz; sees the god-awful state she’s in. Yaz hasn’t looked in a mirror, but she can imagine how ghastly she looks. How sunken. How fragile. She’s not the only one looking worse for wear. The Doctor is missing her coat, and is down to just a creased white undershirt and her culottes. Braces hang from hips, shirtsleeves are rolled up to the elbow, hair is bedraggled, and dark bags are stamped into her paler-than-usual skin.

The Doctor’s lips part around a heart wrenching gasp and she covers her mouth with her hand, crouching on her haunches because, apparently, she can’t stand to see what Yaz has become in her absence. “Oh, Yaz. What have I done to you?” she trembles into her fist. 

And then she’s on her feet again, and she’s across the room, and Yaz still hasn’t said a word. Tenderly, the Doctor touches a hand to Yaz’s cheek. “This is all my fault.”

Dread blooms like creeping frost across every inch of Yaz’s body. Does she know? Did they tell her? Did she sneak in and take a peek at her chart when no one was watching? Yaz’s brain is still whirring incessantly, still scrambling for something to say, when the Doctor sinks onto the chair at her bedside and takes her hand.

Oh. She’s holding her hand.

Yaz’s head goes quiet again.

“I should’ve kept a better eye on you, Yaz. I knew it,” rues the Doctor. Yaz holds her breath. “I knew how reckless you’d become and I still let you go.”

Slow, Yaz blinks. “What?”

The Doctor springs out of her seat and runs her hands through her tangled hair, pacing the length of Yaz’s bedside. She can’t keep still. Can’t calm down. They’re not holding hands anymore. “All those times out there, I watched you risk your life like it was nothin’. I should’ve said somethin’ back then. Addressed it.” She stops pacing, sets her grave eyes on Yaz. “I should’ve stopped you from walkin’ out that door. This was bound to happen.”

“Wait, so you — um — this is about me getting stabbed?” 

Bewilderment sets like a cast on the Doctor’s face. “No, Yaz, this is about what you’ve done with your hair.” Yaz did get a haircut recently. She’s glad the Doctor noticed. “Gods, what were you even thinking ? Your mum said that when they found you…” The Doctor swallows what Yaz thinks might have been a sob, if she hadn’t choked it back. 

Yaz spreads her hands. “It’s my job, Doctor. I wasn’t being reckless. It’s literally my job.”

“You should’ve waited for backup.”

“I had him.”

“Clearly.” With a heavy sigh, the Doctor ducks her chin and massages her forehead. Yaz’s heart breaks for her. If this is the state she’s in after a near miss, Yaz doesn’t think she’s going to handle her death as well as she’d hoped. “I’m sorry, Yaz. This isn’t how I wanted this to go. It’s just — I’ve been waitin’ out there all week, and the amount of times I had to sit on my hands and watch a horde of doctors and nurses rush into your room to try and bring you back…”

“This isn’t your fault, Doctor. It’s just one of those things. He had a knife. It was dark. I didn’t see it ‘til it were too late. But I’m awake. I’m here.”

The tears in the Doctor’s eyes gleam in the fluorescents and Yaz resents herself for them. This is the second time she’s let the Doctor down. And she’s nowhere close to done. “You didn’t even call for help,” she croaks. “You just called me.”

“They’re the same thing.”

“You could’ve died!”

Yaz lowers her eyes. “Just needed to hear your voice before I did.”

Only the ticking of a clock and the beep of Yaz’s heart monitor accompany the ensuing stretch of silence. Yaz starts when she feels a hand on her shoulder, looking up to find that the Doctor’s face is inches from hers. Oh, the torment she finds raging behind those big, sad eyes. The Doctor leans down and presses a salty kiss to Yaz’s forehead, and the heart monitor trips over itself. If the Doctor notices, she doesn’t mention it when she peels her lips from Yaz’s clammy skin and replaces them with her own forehead until they’re both suffocating in the thick of one another’s suffering.

“I’m so glad you’re okay, Yaz,” the Doctor whispers. 

Except she isn’t. Yaz is further from okay than she’s ever been; when she looks over her shoulder, she can’t even see it as a speck on the horizon. She’s drifted too far from that shore and now she’s lost at sea, where a black, looming wave eclipses her sky. Any day now. 

Any day. 

“Doctor, can you do something for me?”

“Of course, Yaz.” The Doctor pulls marginally back but her hand still rests on Yaz’s shoulder. “Whatever you need.”

Yaz tries for a smile; her first one in ages. “Take me out of here.”

“What?”

“I wanna come back to the TARDIS. I wanna travel with you again. If I have to spend another night here, I’m gonna lose my mind.” There’s no sense in staying away from her anymore. All those days they could’ve had together, and she threw them away. For what? Only to end up right here where she was always going to. “Take me with you.”

The Doctor grins. And there is the light. There is the colour. There is the woman she loves to death. “I’d like nothin’ more in the universe, Yasmin Khan. Soon as you’re properly recovered—“

“No. It has to be today.”

“There’s no rush, Yaz. You need to get better. Your family’s on the way. And Ryan and Graham. They’re all dyin’ to see you.”

“And I’ll wait for them, but then you’ve gotta take me away.” Each of her breaths is numbered. She can’t waste them. Yaz inhales and imagines she’s breathing new life into the sunflowers in her lungs; exhales and tastes their viridescence. “Nobody even has to know. You’ve got a time machine. We can be back before they even blink.”

They won’t be, of course. Yaz doesn’t intend to make it home alive. 

“Yaz…”

“Can you honestly tell me there isn’t some miracle medicine on your TARDIS that won’t heal me up five times better than anything in this place?” challenges Yaz. 

The Doctor looks torn. “Maybe, but — I mean, what’s a couple more days of rest?”

Fifteen percent. 

“You don’t understand how much I’ve missed you, Doctor. These past few months have been the loneliest of my whole life. I need to get away from here. Please. I’m begging.” Yaz squeezes her eyes shut and takes a shuddering breath. “Two weeks. Just me and you and the universe. That’s all I’m asking.”

The Doctor chuckles. “And nobody’ll notice that you’ve made a miraculous overnight recovery when you come back?”

“I don’t care! It doesn’t matter!” Yaz is crying. She doesn’t know when that happened, but it doesn’t surprise her. Seems like crying is all she’s good for these days. 

Smile evaporating, the Doctor follows the descent of a tear from the corner of Yaz’s eye to her chin. “Well,” she mutters. “You know I’ve never been able to say no to you, Yaz. For better or for worse.”

Sniffling, Yaz searches the Doctor’s face. “You mean…”

“I mean, I’ll run by your place and grab some things. I’m not gonna stand here and let you cry. Not on my watch.” Voices outside the door prompt both of them to turn their heads. Through the small pane in the wood, Yaz can make out her mother’s profile. Her family appears to be conversing with the nurse. The Doctor squeezes Yaz’s arm and starts to back away. “Right. I’ll be back soon.”

“Don’t be too long, Doctor.”

“No chance,” she winks. “I reckon we’ve both been waiting long enough.”

Seeing her family is hard. It’s one of the hardest things Yaz has ever had to do, because she knows what they don’t: this is the last time. 

Still, her parents fuss over her like it’ll make a difference and her sister looks so relieved that Yaz’s chest physically aches. She knows she’s taking something from them by leaving. She’s taking days they could have had together; time they would have come to cherish when this is all over. And it’s selfish. It’s so, repulsively selfish of her. 

But, in the end, they’re Yaz’s days. It’s Yaz’s life. She doesn’t want it to end in a city she’d outgrown by the time she was sixteen, in a bedroom whose walls only cage her in; under a sky so unremarkable she often wishes it would just fragment and fall and impale her with a solid shard of cloud. She adores her family, but they’ve had over two decades with her. Why taint their future nostalgia with the memory of Yaz growing weaker and sicker and retching a greenhouse up onto the floor of their apartment? 

She’ll write them a letter, and she’ll leave it in the TARDIS where it’ll be found after she’s gone. The same goes for Ryan and Graham. They come in to see her, and their elation at her wellbeing is just as hard to stomach as her family’s. Yaz has never known pain like this — not even when she was choking to death and bleeding out in a filthy alleyway by herself. 

The Doctor was right; goodbyes are always sad. 

But it’s worse to be the only one aware that it’s even a goodbye. It’s worse to have to hide her heartache. As it is, she’s been doing that for a long, long time. It’s second nature, by now. 

When visiting hours draw to an end, Ryan and Graham leave with promises to return the next day. Yaz tells them she’d like that. Her parents hug her — try to, anyway. It’s awkward to get their arms around her when the slightest of movements causes her so much agony. But Yaz pushes past it and encourages her parents to hug her just a little tighter and for just a little longer. She blames her tears on being woozy; on the morphine. She tells them she loves them. She watches them go. 

“Wait, Sonya,” Yaz calls, just before her sister can follow them out. 

Sonya turns in front of the doorway. “You okay, Yaz? Need me to ask the nurse to bring you some more drugs?” At that, she offers a sly grin. “Bet they’re well good, aren’t they? Yeah, they roll out the proper shit for a stab wound.”

Yaz rolls her eyes to mask how immeasurably deep Sonya’s teasing cuts. “Just come here a sec, will you?”

Sonya tucks her hands into the front of her dungarees and nears the bed. Picking up on the sobriety running a valley through Yaz’s demeanour, her brows stitch together. “What’s the matter?”

“Look, Son, we haven't always seen eye to eye — I know that. And I know I can be a pain, and I get under your skin, and you think I only annoy you for the fun of it.” Yaz clenches her jaw. “That’s not true. I’m only ever on at you ‘cause I know how much potential you’ve got. You’re so smart, Sonya.”

Sonya scoffs. “You’ve seen my grades, right?”

“You don’t have to be good at algebra and grammar to be smart. You’re witty, you’re quick, you’re kind. You hide it well, but you are. There’s a lot to be said for kindness.”

“Um. Okay?” Sonya looks deeply uncomfortable. “Where’s this coming from? I know you almost died and everything, but—“

“I did. I almost died. I came this close,” says Yaz, holding her thumb and forefinger a hair’s breadth apart. “And it could happen again. In my line of work, it comes with the territory. Occupational hazard. But next time, I might not be this lucky. I might not make it. So if anything ever happens to me—“

“Oh, shut up, Yaz. Nothing’s gonna happen,” Sonya snaps. “You’re gonna be fine.”

For once in her life, Yaz wishes Sonya were right. She bites her lip and forces herself to keep it together. “No one knows what could happen tomorrow. None of us. But if, one day, I’m not around anymore, mum and dad are gonna need you. And it’ll be so hard, because you’ll need them too, but you’ll have to be selfless. You’ll have to put our family first and help them before you help yourself. You’ll have to take care of them. Pick up the slack when they let go.”

“Yaz, seriously, you better be tripping balls right now,” snipes Sonya, but there’s a fine dusting of panic behind her eyes. “What’s going on? You’re scaring the shit out of me.”

Yaz shakes her head. “Nothing, I just — I guess almost dying’s just put me in a sentimental mood.”

“Yeah, well it’s freaking me out.”

“Well, you’ll just have to suffer for one more minute, won’t you?” Yaz holds out her hand. After a lengthy delay, Sonya takes it. “You can do anything you want, Sonya. You really can, I’m not just saying that. You’ve no idea how many times I’ve witnessed, or been a part of, things I always thought were impossible. Incredible things. This world is so weird and big and unlikely. Why not make your dreams the same? What’ve you got to lose? You’ll have to actually try though. You’ll have to work harder than you’ve ever worked and you’ll have to want more than you’ve ever wanted. But you can do it. I promise.”

Sonya’s eyes turn glassy. Her next words are but the smallest of whispers. “You’re not thinking of leaving us again, are you?”

“Believe me, the last thing I want to do is leave any of you behind,” vows Yaz by way of skirting around the truth. “But life’s unpredictable. You’ve gotta make the most of it. We only get so much time, at the end of the day. So don’t waste it. Don’t throw it all away.”

Sonya looks at Yaz for a long, hard moment. She squeezes her hand, and then she lets it go. “Get some sleep, Yaz. It’s been a long day.”

“Tell me you heard me.”

“I heard you. Grab life by the horns, got it.” She sweeps her gaze across Yaz’s body; fatigued as it is by both blade and bloom. “But you’ve got plenty of time to keep pestering me about it when you’re feeling better, okay? For now, just rest. You look like you need it.”

Yaz puts on an affronted air. “What you tryna say?”

“Mate, there’s a reason they’ve not left any mirrors out. If you could see yourself right now, your heart’d probably give out again.”

“You say the sweetest things.”

“Least I’m honest.” Sonya shoves her hands into her pockets and returns Yaz’s smile with a fleeting one of her own. “See you tomorrow, no mark.”

Just when Yaz thinks her heart can’t be broken into pieces any smaller, the final five words Sonya will ever utter to her pulverise it into fine dust. She coughs it out into the crook of her arm. At least it isn’t a petal. 

“Later, weirdo.”

Yaz’s room is bathed in the translucent shadows of near-dusk by the time the Doctor returns. The sky outside is orange and black. Yaz is marvelling at how strange it is to know she’ll never set eyes on it again when, all at once, every sheet of loose paper in the room is picked up and hurled around on an invisible current and both her bed and all the surrounding equipment begins to tremble.

With a cacophonous groan too loud and too alien to go unnoticed, the TARDIS phases into view beside Yaz’s cot. The door swings open and out steps the Doctor, arms spread and a maniacal grin glued to her face.

“Yasmin Khan, I’m breakin’ you out of this joint!” she announces, like she’s been waiting her whole life to say it. 

“Keep it down!” Yaz hisses, but the curl of her lips betrays her glee. The Doctor showed up. Came back. There’s no reason she shouldn’t have, but that didn’t stop Yaz from worrying that she might change her mind or run into trouble on the short hop from the hospital to her flat. Certainties don’t exist around the Doctor, and promises are fickle. 

Presently, the Doctor steps out of the TARDIS, only to immediately bang her foot on the leg of a metal trolley. She yelps, hopping on one foot and clutching the other. “When did that trolley get there?”

Yaz raises her eyebrows. “Y’know, for a prison break, this isn’t very sneaky.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry,” the Doctor apologises in a stage whisper, dropping her foot and screwing her face up into a comedic cringe that only endears Yaz further. “Right, c’mon then! From one sick bed to another.” Hurried but careful, the Doctor proceeds to detach various needles and tubes from Yaz’s body. When she’s totallly wireless, the Doctor puts an arm around Yaz and helps her to her feet, pupils constantly flitting towards her face in a show of blatant worry. “You okay to walk?”

“My legs are fine, Doctor.” 

“You’re still strainin’ the injury when you move,” the Doctor argues. The crimp between her brows deepens when, upon stepping across the threshold of the TARDIS, Yaz fails to mask a wince. “All right, that’s enough. Hold on to me.”

“What do you — Doctor!” Without warning, the Doctor sweeps Yaz off her feet, scooping her up with an arm under her legs and one at her back. Yaz winds her arms around her shoulders and chases her breath, which runs away from her whenever she and the Doctor are so torturously close. 

Her breath runs a little further when the Doctor looks down at her and winks. She hooks her foot around the door and kicks it shut, and then sets off across the console room. It’s awkward for her to reach the right switches and pull the dematerialisation lever while she’s holding Yaz, but she perseveres, and she manages it, and then they’re leaving the hospital behind with a satisfying groan of the time rotor. With Yaz folded into her arms, the Doctor starts up the steps. 

“Tonight, you’re takin’ it easy,” instructs the Doctor, oblivious to the way Yaz fast becomes transfixed by the curve of her jaw and the slope of her neck. She feels solid and real and alive, and Yaz can’t help but curl her fingers into the fabric of her shirt just to feel her. To be sure she’s real. The Doctor glances at her. “I’ll have you tip top in no time, but right now I think you could do with your own bed. I left everythin’ the same for when you came back.”

Sure enough, when the Doctor manoeuvres them carefully through the doorway into Yaz’s room, she finds everything to be exactly how she left it.

On the nightstand by her double bed, which is swathed in wine-purple sheets of luxurious cotton (as well as silken blankets stolen from a 38th century queen’s laundry room), sits an alarm clock, a half-burned candle, and an open book placed face down to save the page. The room is clean, but both the desk and bookshelves are crammed with strange memorabilia from their many adventures. The lantern-esque lamplights affixed to the wall dim automatically as they approach the bed. Before the Doctor sets her down, however, Yaz notices an imprint on the mattress. Roughly the size and shape of the Doctor — like she’s been lying in her bed. Like she slumps on top of it when she misses Yaz and dreams about the day she comes back. 

Either that, or Yaz is just seeing what she wants to see.

“Here we are,” mutters the Doctor. She lies Yaz down as gently as if she might shatter otherwise. “Home away from home, eh?”

“You really never lost faith that I’d come back?” breathes Yaz. 

“You said you would,” shrugs the Doctor. She retrieves a large, menacing syringe from her coat pocket and affords Yaz a sympathetic grimace. “Now, y’were right about that miracle medicine before. Well, kind of. It’s not miraculous. It’s science. Super advanced science. Nice shot of this ought to fix your wounds up good and quick. Unfortunately, Yaz, it’s gonna hurt. Quite a bit.”

Yaz groans. “I were really hoping there’d be a pill I could swallow.”

“No such luck.” Her eyes falter over the bandaging wrapped around Yaz’s chest, which is visible enough through the paper thin gown she’s still wearing. 

Oh.

“You’re gonna have to pop that off so I can get to the wound,” states the Doctor, and is Yaz imagining the tightness to her voice? She definitely isn’t imagining the way she won’t look her in the eye — opting instead to fiddle with the syringe. 

“Um. I — I might need a hand.”

“You…? Oh! Oh, right! ‘Course. Silly me.” The Doctor sets the syringe down on the nightstand. Then, after a few seconds of dithering as she contemplates how best to proceed, she climbs onto the mattress beside Yaz. “Okay, so, um… just grab my shoulders. There you go.”

Whilst Yaz holds onto the Doctor to keep herself semi-vertical, the Doctor reaches behind her back to work loose the knot of her gown. The Doctor’s hair is in Yaz’s face and it smells, faintly, like smoke. Yaz wonders what fires she’s been putting out. Or starting. 

“Whoever tied this knot did a bloody good job,” grumbles the Doctor. 

Yaz is very conscious of the fact that their chests are pressed flush; beating heart to beating hearts. And she knows this isn’t a hug, not really, but it kind of feels like one. And it’s kind of nice. And it’s kind of all Yaz’s bones have ached for since as long as she can remember. 

“Aha! Got it.”

Upon the loosening of the knot, the Doctor delicately pulls the sleeves from Yaz’s arms and then the gown slips from her skin, where it bunches in her lap. Like that, she’s suddenly naked. Naked and in the Doctor’s arms — though the Doctor is very much the gentleman about it.

One arm still around Yaz, she reaches blindly for a blanket and pulls it up over the lower half of Yaz’s body. Next to come off are the bandages. The Doctor doesn’t so much as make any indication that she even acknowledges the existence of Yaz’s breasts as she winds the bandaging from around her chest and lays her bare. In fact, the second the bandages come free, the Doctor eases Yaz onto her back and helps to cover her with the blanket — leaving only her injured side exposed. 

Every gentle touch might as well be another knife slipped between Yaz’s ribs. 

“Let’s have a look then, shall we?” Brows creased with concentration, the Doctor slowly peels the gauze from Yaz’s skin. It’s the first time either of them have seen it. 

It’s an ugly thing, that’s for sure. Puckered skin, red and sore around the edges, has been pulled together with surgical sutures, around which clings a little dried blood. It’s about an inch long and who knows how deep. Having come prepared, the Doctor brandishes a packet of antiseptic wipes and cleans the area; Yaz can see how hard she’s trying not to apply too much pressure. Once it’s clean, she disposes of the wipes and picks up the syringe. 

“So, when you said it’s gonna hurt,” Yaz begins, eyeing the luminous purple liquid in the syringe warily, “can you give me a number on a scale of one to ten?”

“Oh, uh. Solid five? Six? Six and a half?” At Yaz’s increasingly mortified expression, the Doctor softens and lowers the syringe. “Look, it’s just a few seconds, and then it’ll be over. Have a little faith, eh? Steadiest hands in the galaxy, right here.”

“Oh, don’t sell yourself short, Doctor. I’m sure they’re the steadiest hands in the universe, at least.” 

Amusement dances on the slight upcurve of the Doctor’s lips. “Never did pay you back for that shoulder rub, did I?”

“That’s all right. Heal me and we’ll call it square.”

“I dunno if that’s a very fair trade. It were one hell of a massage, Yaz. You oughta start chargin’ people. A hundred custard creams per head, how’s that sound?”

Yaz opens her mouth to reply, but the only sound she ends up making is a sharp cry of pain. The Doctor impresses the tip of the needle deeper and deeper into the flesh around Yaz’s scar. With her free hand, she reaches for one of Yaz’s.

“Fuck,” Yaz hisses. Her eyes water and she bares her teeth in a pained grin, while her heart drums a rager of a solo against her ribs. 

“It’s okay, Yaz. Just squeeze my hand. You’re doin’ great.”

Yaz clamps down like a vice on the Doctor’s hand. If it hurts, the Doctor doesn’t let on, but Yaz is surprised not to crush her fingers. Seconds later, the hellacious pressure in Yaz’s side alleviates. The Doctor sets the empty syringe down.

“There. See? Piece of cake! I’d give you a sticker for bein’ so good but, seein’ as you’re naked…” The Doctor trails off and realisation strikes her like a frying pan to the face. “Oh! Naked! Clothes! I do believe I left the case I packed for you back in the console room. Want me to go and fetch it? Won’t take me long.” Making as if to get up, the Doctor is stopped by Yaz’s fingers squeezing her own a fraction tighter. Her eyes fall over their interlocked hands and she stills instantly. An expression too fleeting to pinpoint crosses her face like a passing shadow: there and then gone. She licks her dry lips. “Right. No, I don’t suppose I’d want to be alone either, after everythin’ you’ve been through. No worries, y’can just have mine.”

With that, the Doctor peels off her coat and suspenders, yanks her navy top off by the back of its collar (Yaz tries to be as gentlemanly as the Doctor when her undershirt rides up and a stretch of toned stomach is bared briefly to the world — but she’s only human), and then she gives Yaz the shirt off her back. 

Following another blushing negotiation of limbs and trunks, the Doctor manages to help Yaz into her shirt. It’s impossibly soft against her skin and it smells so much like the Doctor that Yaz becomes a little bit inebriated by it. 

“Suits you,” remarks the Doctor in earnest. 

Yaz hopes she never asks for it back. Or, at the very least, holds off for a couple of weeks. 

“Thanks, Doctor.”

“Nah, it’s just a shirt.”

“No, I mean — thanks for coming when I called. Thanks for waiting for me. God knows you didn’t have to do that.”

The Doctor studies a loose thread in the sheets. “I’d have waited a lifetime if I had to,” she confesses quietly. Then, as if she doesn’t realise the weight of her words until they land, her head snaps up and her eyes widen. “I mean, I’d do the same for any of you. It’s basically my whole thing, y’know? If you’re in trouble, I’m your man. Woman. Person. Gods, gender is such a frustrating concept.”

If Yaz’s lungs hadn’t only recently been treated, she’s positive she’d be spitting petals out like loose teeth right now. 

But if this is her last night of easy breathing, she wants to make the most of it. 

“Will you stay the night?” 

The Doctor’s respondent smile is a thing that stretches in slow motion, or it only seems that way because Yaz is committing it, frame by frame, to her memory. Her memories aren’t worth much anymore — soon, they’ll have nowhere to go except oblivion — but it’s habit by now. She can’t help it. 

“Can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be than right here with you, Yaz,” lies the Doctor. Because it has to be a lie, doesn’t it? There’s a whole universe of things she’d probably rather be doing than coddling Yaz back to health like a baby bird with a broken wing, but the Doctor is kind enough and selfless enough to pretend. For Yaz’s sake. So Yaz’ll take the pity. She’ll take any scraps and morsels and seeds the Doctor tosses her way, because that’s what the lovesick do. They settle. 

The Doctor lies on top of the sheets and Yaz lies underneath them, and the lanterns dim further still as they turn to face one another in the half-light. 

“Sorry for leaving, Doctor,” Yaz says quietly. “It was a mistake. I never should have—“

“It’s all right, Yaz. I get it. It’s hard to juggle two lives; to keep lyin’ to everyone around you about what’s really goin’ on,” the Doctor empathises. She has no idea. “I’m just happy you came back. We’re gonna do so much together, me and you. I can’t wait.”

“Yeah,” whispers Yaz. More false promises of futures that don’t exist. “Me neither.”

“You’re my best friend, y’know? Don’t tell the lads — they’ll only moan — but you are. It were just wrong here without you.” 

Yaz thinks it’s high time they change the topic of conversation. Her lungs are beginning to smart and she doesn’t want to have to drag the Doctor out and slam the door in her face again. She doesn’t want to deal with her guilt, or the sands of time slipping through her fingers. Right now, Yaz just wants to look at the Doctor and pretend that everything will be okay.

“Can you tell me a story?” she asks. “Tell me about one of your recent adventures. Something good.”

The Doctor hums. “Ooh, d’you wanna hear about how I accidentally broke forty-six laws in eight minutes on my latest trip to Atlantis 12? Pretty sure I’m the most wanted person in that whole galaxy right now. Best avoid it for a while.”

Yaz laughs. If anything, she can always count on the Doctor for a decent story. “Tell me.”

“Well, it all started when I stepped on the Mayor’s foot. Mind you, his feet weren’t attached to his body at the time, so I didn’t actually see ‘em until it were too late — ah wait, I’m gettin’ ahead of myself! Did I ever tell you about the Soleless Sons of the Cosmos? That’s S-O-L-E sole. They do love a pun, that lot. Anyway…”

Cast in a warm, storyteller’s glow, the Doctor launches into an animated retelling of events, relaying her unbelievable comedy of errors with the assistance of wild gesticulation and hilariously poor impressions. Her story takes detours and misses steps and then goes back to retrace them, and she goes off on entirely unrelated tangents and weaves several jumbled anecdotes into her tale until she’s telling not one but half a dozen. Yaz hangs from her every word. 

She wraps herself in her voice like honey and gravel and home — and she forgets. 

It’s easy to do, when the Doctor is radiating so much effortless spirit; when she’s snorting at all her own jokes and boasting about her wits and wiles and daring stunts. Yaz gets swept up in it and lets the current carry her without struggling. It takes her to a better place. It turns her away from the black, black wave. If Yaz feels its shadow tapping on her shoulder, she doesn’t look back. 

Because how can anything be wrong?

How can anything in the universe be wrong when the Doctor is laughing? 

Yaz is fortunate, for those first few days. 

Her stab wound heals nicely, leaving but a raised white scar and a phantom pain Yaz finds easy to tune out. The flowers in her lungs are growing back, but they do so slowly at first, and she’s afforded a brief respite from her terminal agony.

She tells the Doctor to take her to all the most beautiful places in the universe. The Doctor happily obliges. 

Together, they picnic on a planet of perpetual dusk, tossing cherries into one another’s mouths and coexisting with bioluminescent butterflies, majestic six-winged birds, and myriad skittish creatures which poke their heads up from the tall grass and dart between the treetops. They dance in the opulent ballroom of a grand palace, which floats above a canopy of salmon pink clouds. The Doctor wears a suit and Yaz wears a gown and they glide across polished marble, hand in hand, as an orchestra plays the breathtaking symphony of Yaz’s deathless devotion. 

Through it all, the Doctor is more present than she’s ever been. She shares meals with Yaz even when she doesn’t need to eat, she postpones repairs so that they can spend more time together, and she seeks out her company when they’re both unwinding in the TARDIS, whether to read with her in the library or walk with her through the rainforest or relax with her by the pool. Yaz thinks she’s worried she might leave again; thinks she’s doing whatever she can to prevent Yaz from getting bored of her. 

As if that was ever the issue. 

However, the more attentive the Doctor becomes, the further Yaz finds herself slipping away. Yaz wakes one morning to the tune of the Doctor knocking excitedly on her bedroom door. When she opens her eyes, her sheets are littered in golden petals and there’s blood on her pillow. Again, it’s harder to breathe. She’s forced to turn the Doctor away while she cleans up her mess and throws up as much of her gruesome garden as she can before they head out. 

After that, her sunshiney haze dissipates, and she’s flung back into the skin of somebody running on borrowed time. She disappears randomly and without warning when she and the Doctor are together, so that she can retch her guts up in private. She goes to bed early and comes down for breakfast late. She retreats inside of herself, consumed as she is by terror and shame. 

And there is a great deal of shame. 

Because, one way or another, the Doctor will learn the truth. The body Yaz leaves behind will be a crime scene, and it won’t take a fraction of the Doctor’s genius to read the clues. In death, Yaz’s sins will be exposed. Her lies. Her deceit. Her unwarranted love. 

The Doctor will think herself the murderer. Of course she will. She’ll stain her hands with Yaz’s blood and refuse to wash it off. Before a jury of stars, she’ll condemn herself. No doubt her sentence will be harsh. 

One night, Yaz is hanging out of the TARDIS’ open doors. There’s a tether tied to her waist and she’s floating above a magenta nebula of glittering stardust, which gathers in almighty plumes beyond the protective bubble encircling her. Her dark eyes are mirrors to its magnificence. Something happens inside the TARDIS. Yaz isn’t sure what, but suddenly the blue box lurches, there’s a loud crash, and the cord around Yaz’s waist snaps. Instinctively, she reaches for the door. 

The Doctor shouts at her to hold on; she’s coming; just don’t let go of the door. 

But Yaz isn’t even afraid. She looks back at the awesome spacescape and marvels at how lovely a place it would be to die. And the Doctor would never have to learn of her disease; her awful, awful affection. She’d never know that Yaz’s love for her killed her. Sure, there would still be guilt, but on a far lesser scale. A freak accident is a freak accident. What can you do? 

Yaz lets one hand slip from the wood. Five fingertips. That’s all she’s holding onto life with. One by one, the vacuum tugs her fingers loose and entices her into its hostile maw. The rough grain scratches the pads of her fingertips and she’s millimetres from release, when—

“Oh, no you don’t!” 

The Doctor’s hand shoots out and closes tight around Yaz’s wrist. She yanks her inside and they topple gracelessly onto the floor, where the Doctor lands with a wince on her back and Yaz lands on top of her. 

When her anticipation leads to nothing but another letdown, Yaz’s immense tension unspools. She was so close; it could all have been over with. 

They both could have been free. 

Yaz lifts her head to find the Doctor watching her so strangely. “If I didn’t know any better, Yaz,” the Doctor mutters, “I’d say it almost looked like you were about to let go, just now.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Doctor,” dismisses Yaz. She climbs off the Doctor’s body and offers a hand to help her up. The Doctor takes it. Once she’s on her feet, they both hold on for a few seconds too long, and Yaz casts her doleful gaze back towards the cosmos. “Couldn’t let go if I wanted to.”

The Doctor grows increasingly suspicious of Yaz after that. It’s harder to shake her off and harder to hide her symptoms, especially when they intensify. Yaz’s coughing fits become brutal and violent and leave her winded on the floor, where she clutches her ribs and hacks up blood. It doesn’t end there. She can’t run far anymore, she’s always tired, her own body and the secrets it houses make her green with nausea, and god, does melancholia grip her. When she’s not thinking about the Doctor, she’s thinking about death. 

“What do you think it’s like?” Yaz asks the Doctor halfway through their second, and last, week. She can count on one hand the number of days she has left. With every intake of breath, she feels the rustling of stems and the rubbing of petals against her lungs. 

The Doctor slurps the last of her strawberry milkshake up noisily through her straw, and then licks the cream moustache from her lips contentedly. “What what’s like?” 

They’re at a diner on post-terraformed Mars. Beyond the wide glass window stretches red sand and dust. A few hovercrafts occupy the car park, and a little boy in a space suit plays in the dirt. It’s a stark contrast to the 50’s interior: all red booths, chessboard floors, a jukebox by the counter, and neon signs hanging from the walls.  They’re right beside the loneliest highway on Mars; this is the only pit stop for hundreds of miles. 

“Dying,” clarifies Yaz. “What d’you think it’s like?”

Nonchalant, the Doctor shrugs. “It’s like nothin’, probably. Like an eternal, dreamless sleep. Black. Empty. Void.”

Yaz furrows her brow and picks at her fries without eating any. Her appetite’s shot lately. “Pessimistic way of lookin’ at things. I mean, doesn’t that sound lonely?”

“Loneliness is for the livin’, Yaz,” murmurs the Doctor. The distant fog in her eyes clears in the blink of an eye. When she leans back, the red vinyl creaks. “‘Course, everyone’s entitled to their own beliefs. You might think there’s more to it, and who’s to say you’re wrong?”

“Don’t you like to imagine that the people you’ve lost are in a better place? Or that they’re still with you?”

The Doctor chews on Yaz’s words for a beat. “They are with me. All of ‘em. But they aren’t ghosts or spirits or what have you — they’re just memories. They’re the time we spent together, and they’re the journey we shared, and they’re all the ways in which I’ve changed for havin’ known ‘em.” She tilts her head. “Where’s this comin’ from, anyway?”

Yaz ignores the question. “If someone dies, where do you think all their love goes? All that love they have for other people. What happens to it?”

“Blimey, you’re pullin’ out all the hard hitters today,” quips the Doctor. She scratches her temple, and then folds her arms on top of the table. “I think, as long as a person loves loud enough, as long as the people in their life knew the extent of their love, then it can’t ever really die. It’s like energy, y’know? Can’t ever be destroyed, only turned into somethin’ new. Transferred. We pass, and then all the little bits of our hearts — heart, in your case — that we devoted to someone else find a new home inside of them. And the people we loved cherish that piece of our heart. Our love. And it abides inside of them.”

“But what if they kept their love secret?” Yaz strains to say. Her mouth tastes like soil. “What then?”

From opposite sides of the table, Yaz and the Doctor study one another. A slow, vintage song pours out of the jukebox and its timeless sentiments about romance get caught in the tangled web of lies between them. The Doctor looks caught and Yaz feels seen. 

The Doctor taps her index finger against the side of her milkshake glass. “Is there somethin’ you’re tryna say, Yaz?”

Under the table, Yaz’s leg bounces and she fidgets anxiously with the hem of her leather jacket. “What d’you mean?”

“All this talk about death and love, it’s not exactly typical for us.” The Doctor’s leg shifts; she nudges her boot against the one Yaz is tapping rapidly against the floor. Yaz’s nervous tension, she’s sure, is miasmic. “Something’s been on your mind for a while. I might be daft and a little bit loopy, but I’m not entirely oblivious. I can see that something’s eatin’ at you. You’re actin’ the same way you did right before you left last time. You’re distant. You’re down. You keep runnin’ off and clammin’ up all the time. I think it’s about time we talk about it, don’t you?”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

The Doctor grinds her jaw. “I’m tryna be patient, Yaz. I really am. But you worry me. You scare me. One minute you’re fine and you’re happy and you’re here with me, and then you just go somewhere. Mentally. Physically.” She rakes her eyes over Yaz and shakes her head slowly. “And now you’re sittin’ here asking me what it’s like to die. Why?”

Yaz averts her eyes. “Dunno what you—“

“Oh, just tell me what it is, Yaz!” The Doctor doesn’t acknowledge the nearby patrons who turn their heads at her raised voice. “Tell me, so we can fix it! I’m not gonna sit here and watch you slip away from me again. I can't do that; I can’t lose you for good! I refuse. Do you understand? I refuse.”

In the wake of her outburst, Yaz stares, slack-jawed, at the Doctor. She’s not the only one. For the first time, the Doctor notices the attention she’s called to herself. She clears her throat and settles back, but she isn’t the one to apologise. 

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” Yaz mumbles.

The Doctor’s eyes cut sharply towards her. “Sorry for what?”

“I —“ An agitation in Yaz’s lungs cuts her off. Her face falls and the Doctor narrows her eyes, watching her closely. Again, Yaz feels an acute discomfort stirring in her organs, and she knows this feeling well enough by now to predict what happens next. “Um. One minute.”

Yaz is out of her seat in a flash. She all but runs to the restroom, and has just about enough sense to lock the cubicle door behind her before dropping to her knees in front of the toilet and heaving up a flurry of petals and leaves. Her body practically convulses with the effort it takes to keep retching them up; her stomach is sore and her hands are shaking and this can’t be happening now. Not now. 

Then somebody’s knocking on the door. “Yaz? Yaz, what’s going on? Open the door,” urges the Doctor. She tries the handle, but it doesn’t work.

Yaz grits her bloody teeth. “I’ll be right out. Just wait outside.”

“Yaz, you need to let me in. Right now.”

“Just a minute!”

More heaving. More decapitated flowers. A stubborn head gets jammed at the back of her throat and Yaz chokes and chokes and chokes until it climbs far enough for her to reach in and yank it out. She trembles a sigh of relief, tosses it into the basin, and wipes her tears with her shoulder. 

“I’m opening the door!” announces the Doctor. Upon the familiar buzz of the sonic, Yaz spits any lingering blood into the toilet and frantically flushes it. She’s still scrambling to her feet when the Doctor pushes her way inside. 

She takes one look at the tears on Yaz’s cheeks and barrels past her to look into the toilet. But she’s too late; the evidence has been washed away.

Mostly. 

It seems Yaz missed a spot because, when the Doctor frenziedly rounds on her, her alarmed eyes fixate on Yaz’s mouth. She reaches for her lips and drags her thumb across them and Yaz doesn’t breathe once. When the Doctor pulls her hand away, there’s blood smeared on the pad of her thumb. They both stare at it. 

“Yaz…” The Doctor’s voice is low, and shaky with the magnitude of her restraint. Yaz can tell she’s warring with a thousand different emotions. “What’s happening to you?”

Divine intervention or merely perfect timing, Yaz can’t say. Either way, she’s saved from having to answer to the Doctor when the whole building begins to shake with a seismic rattle of foundations. The overhead lights flicker on and off, picture frames hanging from the walls shatter on the floor, and the Doctor wraps herself around a crouching Yaz to shield her from harm until the tremors eventually subside. 

When the calamity passes, Yaz’s head is tucked under the Doctor’s chin and they’re clinging to one another like glue. 

“Oh, what now?” grouses the Doctor. She stands upright and looks at Yaz as though she doesn’t know whether to investigate or continue her interrogation. In the end, potential immediate danger wins out. With a frustrated sigh, she helps Yaz up. “This isn’t over.”

“I know.”

The way the Doctor looks at Yaz then unsettles her. It’s like she’s angry. Furious. Except Yaz likes to believe, at this point, that she knows her a little better than that. Usually, when the Doctor gets mad, she’s really just afraid. Just as scared as everybody else, and just as unwilling to admit it. 

Spinning on her heels, the Doctor marches out of the restroom with Yaz in tow. They stop dead when they reenter the diner.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” sighs the Doctor, like it’s nothing but a minor inconvenience that the view beyond the windows has changed from the red dunes of Mars to what looks like the interior walls of a spacecraft. The rest of the civilians in the diner look understandably terrified. 

“Have we just been beamed up?” asks Yaz. 

“Looks that way.”

“The whole diner?”

“Yep.”

“Why would anybody want to abduct a diner?”

“Not a clue!” Exasperated, the Doctor throws her hands up. “But, as per usual, I guess it’s on me to figure it out. Not like I were in the middle of something!” she shouts to the ceiling, as though their captors are listening. She regards the cowering staff and patrons occupying the diner. “Right. You lot just sit down and be quiet. I dunno, have some pancakes. Choose a relaxing tune on the jukebox. Get to know each other. Just let me sort this out and I’ll have you all back home in a jiffy. And you—“ she turns to Yaz and grabs her hand— “with me. I’m not lettin’ you out of my sight.”

As it turns out, their captors are less interested in the diner than they are the Doctor. 

Yaz is hazy on a lot of the details but, from what she can gather, the Doctor made herself enemy number one to their kind when she interfered in a senseless war, which they then lost as a result. Being the vengeful type, they tracked her across time and space with the single-minded goal of making her pay. 

The diner was beamed up onto a mothership. The mothership is surrounded by a whole fleet — thousands and thousands of crafts. All here for one purpose: to witness the Doctor die. 

Run of the mill stuff, really. Nothing they’re not used to. If anything, the Doctor seems bored by it all. She toys with them. Mocks them. There are no efforts to negotiate or pacify; no attempts to reason with them or implore them to choose a better path. The Doctor is not in a forgiving mood. They interrupted her. 

Big mistake.

The Doctor gains the upper hand quickly. For a while, it looks like everything’s going to work out without much of a hitch. They reverse the polarity of the transport beam that abducted the diner so that, when they make their way back, they’ll be able to return everybody safely to Mars. They swiftly escape the cells their hostage-takers try to imprison them in. The Doctor even manages to send a message to the authorities of the local galaxy, who have been hunting this fleet for years, and make them aware of its current location. Their brand of justice is brutal. The Doctor is content to leave them to it. 

In point of fact, after disabling their engines and stranding them in deep space, she and Yaz attempt to do just that. They’re in the control room mapping a route back to the diner (it’s a huge ship; it’d take them countless hours without a map) when Yaz feels a strong, scaly arm wind around her throat and tear her from the Doctor’s side. 

“Doctor!” she cries. 

“Yaz?” The Doctor whirls around and blanches when she registers the gun pointed at Yaz’s head. Yaz twists her neck to find that she’s in the arms of the commander they thought they’d trapped in the boiler room. Clearly, they were mistaken. His forked tongue darts out to clean a yellow eye and Yaz cringes. 

“Hello, again,” he snickers. 

“Oh, mate,” the Doctor says. “You really, really don’t want to be doin’ that.”

The commander smirks. Yaz can tell because it makes a wet, stomach-churning sound in her ear. “When the Wrathborns seek revenge, Doctor, we never fail,” he hisses. 

“Neither do I,” asserts the Doctor. 

“This one is interesting.” The commander digs his claws into Yaz’s throat and she grunts. The Doctor clenches her fists at her sides. “I’ve been paying attention, you see. In the face of peril, you put yourself between the human and the danger. You would die for her, wouldn’t you?”

Yaz squirms in his hold. When she does, she can feel the hilt of his knife nudge her hip. She recalls seeing it sheathed at his belt. 

“Answer me!” roars the commander. 

The muscles in the Doctor’s cheek flex and, dark beneath the shadow of her brow, her eyes are a thousand shades of fury. “Yes,” she mutters. “But I don’t intend to die today.”

The commander’s body shakes with quiet laughter. “Maybe you don’t need to, Doctor. Maybe I’ll take this one instead.” Reflexively, the Doctor takes a step forward. The second she does, the commander cocks his gun, bringing her advance to an abrupt halt. “Ah, ah, ah. You stay right there.”

The Doctor’s gaze slides from the commander to Yaz. “Don’t worry. Nothing’s gonna happen to you, Yaz. You’re gonna be fine. Trust me. I’ve got you.”

Yaz hardly thinks it matters either way. Maybe this is better than the alternative. There’s a rustling in her lungs and a discomfort in her throat and she knows, if the commander doesn’t kill her soon, the sunflowers certainly will. She didn’t quite get her two weeks with the Doctor, but they had a good run. A good farewell. She’s thankful for that. 

“I think you’ll find it’s me that has her,” sneers the commander. “You stole our glory from us, Doctor. It’s the only thing that matters to us. It’s what we live and die for. Now I’m going to take what you would live and die for, and there’s nothing you can do.”

“Mmm, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” says the Doctor. And then she does something that prompts goosebumps to rise across every inch of Yaz’s skin: she grins. “Go on, ask me why.”

The commander snarls. “Why?” 

“‘Cause I have an apple!” The Doctor reaches into her coat pocket and, sure enough, pulls out a bright red apple. She tosses it up into the air and catches it. “That old myth about doctors and apples doesn’t have much weight behind it, truth be told. I love a good apple. Pretty hefty, aren’t they? Pretty solid. I like that about ‘em. Comes in handy.”

“You’re stalling, Doctor. It’s no use.”

“Am I?” She shines the apple on the lapel of her coat and takes a small bite. “Mm. Tasty. Want some?” The Doctor holds it out towards him. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t react. “No? Suit yourself. Now y’see, as much as I’d like to eat this apple, it happens to be the only weapon I have on me.”

At that, the commander begins to cackle. “You’re going to kill me with an apple?”

“Nah, mate,” says the Doctor. Her forced air of cheer disintegrates in half a heartbeat and her face turns impossibly, terrifyingly cold. “I’m gonna kill your entire fleet with an apple.”

Yaz frowns. “Doctor, what’re you on about?”

“My thoughts precisely,” seconds the commander. The barrel of his gun presses harder against Yaz’s temple. “Now is not the time for jokes.”

“Who’s joking?” The Doctor tosses the apple back and forth between her hands. Yaz tries to find a sliver of warmth behind her eyes and fails. She must be bluffing. She must. “Interesting thing about all these warships — well, I say interesting, but I really mean primitive — they all come decked out with their own remote control warheads. Now, I made it impossible for anyone down there to activate theirs when I killed their engines. But the mothership, which is what we’re standin’ on, has remote access to all of them. Doesn’t it?”

The commander is breathing heavily in Yaz’s ear. Yaz chokes on a series of coughs which go unnoticed amidst the stifling tension taking up residence in the room.

The Doctor quirks a brow. “Now I’ve got your attention, eh? I bet you’re thinkin’ to yourself, ‘but there’s no way she can access all those warheads and detonate them before I pull the trigger’. Which might’ve been the case, before I broke onto your virtual command centre, hacked through your lousy defence system, and rewired every single warhead activation trigger to respond to one single command. The press of a button. The press of a big, fat, red, irresistible button. And would you look at that?” The Doctor points at the wall. Equidistant from both herself and the commander, there’s a button. Big and red and irresistible. “Probably wouldn’t be able to get to it in time to keep you from turnin’ that gun on both of us, of course. But that’s what the apple’s for. Have I mentioned that I have really good aim? Ask Yaz. I’m always thrashin’ her at darts.”

“Doctor, have you lost your mind?” shouts Yaz. “There’s thousands of ships out there! And there are people on all of them!”

“Savages.”

“People!”

“Listen to your friend, Doctor,” urges the commander. He sounds worried. “You wouldn’t eradicate the last of a dying species for some girl. Some human.”

“She’s not just some human,” glowers the Doctor. “That’s Yasmin Khan you’re pointin’ your gun at, and I would burn all three-hundred-and-sixty-seven thousand of you to keep her heart beating. You know what I’m capable of. You’ve studied me, you’ve watched me; you’ve brushed up on my history. Do you really think I wouldn’t do it? Are you willing to take that chance?”

Yaz gasps for breath. The flowers climbing her throat are helped none by the commander sinking his claws in. “Doctor,” wheezes Yaz. “Don’t do this. Don’t kill them. Not in my name. I don’t want that!”

The Doctor won’t look her in the eye; merely continues to stare off with the commander. “Let her go.”

Yaz has never, ever seen the Doctor like this. 

On one hand, she’s petrified of the woman standing in front of her — the woman who went, in a matter of hours, from slurping sugary milkshakes and musing about love in a Martian diner, to threatening genocide with all the alarming conviction of somebody who has danced this dance before. 

On the other hand, Yaz has to wonder why. Why did she flick that switch? What would make somebody as steadfast in their morals as the Doctor abandon them so recklessly? 

Yaz remembers that she once remarked at how she would willingly surrender every single one of her principles for the Doctor, but that’s because Yaz is in love with her. The Doctor isn’t in love with Yaz. Can’t be. Yaz would have known, or the Doctor would have said something. She’d have said something to keep Yaz from leaving the TARDIS, or she’d have said something when she got stabbed, or she’d have said something when she came back to her and they spent all that time together, dancing and laughing and existing side by side. 

Besides, this doesn’t look like love. This looks like wrath. It doesn’t look like love; it looks like possession. It doesn’t look like love; it looks like hatred. 

It doesn’t look like love.

Does it?

No. 

And Yaz isn’t about to watch the Doctor make a martyr of the code she lives by in the name of a dead woman. It’s time, anyway. The sands have run out. The clock has stopped ticking. Yaz is coughing. 

It starts like it always does. A couple of dry coughs. An itch she can’t reach. A flutter in her lungs. “Doctor, listen to me,” croaks Yaz. Another cough. “I’m sorry — I’m really, really sorry — but I can't let you do this. It’s not worth it. I’m not worth it. It’s too late for me, but it isn’t too late for you. You haven’t hit that button yet. And you don’t need to.”

The Doctor frowns at her. True panic doesn’t set in until, following another round of rib-toughening coughs, Yaz pulls her hand from her mouth to reveal a few specks of blood staining her chin. The Doctor’s callous facade crumbles. “Yaz—“

“No. It’s okay. Let him have me. Please just let him have me,” entreats Yaz. She can feel the petals, now; feel that whole sunflower field she swallowed in her nightmares threatening to climb back out of her one by one. Her eyes blur with tears. “I didn’t want you to find out like this. I didn’t want you to find out at all, but…”

“What’s wrong with the human?” the commander growls when Yaz is seized by another, more severe episode. 

“Yaz?” The Doctor’s lower lip quivers. “Yaz, what’s goin’ on?”

“I’m dying, Doctor,” Yaz sobs. The words are an enormous relief to finally speak out loud. “I think… I think I might be dying right now.” When Yaz submits to a paroxysmal choking fit, the commander shoves her to the ground in disgust but keeps his weapon trained squarely on her head. Yaz hardly registers a thing. The next time she heaves, she brings up a handful of petals in one go. 

Soaked in blood, they splatter to the floor. 

They spell out her secrets and all of her sins. 

The Doctor’s next breath comes out broken and wrong. She’s looking at the petals like they have to be something else; like her eyes have to be deceiving her. But she keeps looking, and they don’t stop being what they are, which leaves only one sane conclusion. 

“Are those…” 

“Petals,” finishes Yaz. Clutching her side, she forces herself to sit back until she’s kneeling beside the commander. “They’re petals. Sunflowers, if you were wondering. I think that’s pretty fitting, don’t you?”

The Doctor opens and closes her mouth, struggling for something to say. Yaz can’t blame her. It’s a lot. It’s really quite a lot. She knows this better than anybody. But it’s okay, she thinks, because this is all moments from being over — and then she won’t have to suffer anymore. 

Just like that, the Doctor’s previous ideas about death don’t seem so daunting. In fact, eternal nothing sounds kind of peaceful. It sounds like the rest Yaz needs. Because she’s tired now. She’s tired of getting hurt and she’s tired of hurting everybody else. Most of all, she’s tired of making the Doctor cry. But she is. She’s crying, and all Yaz wants is to make it stop. 

“Who are they fitting for, Yaz?” the Doctor whispers. Her every word is so fragile. “Tell me. Tell me who the flowers are for.”

“Enough of this!” screeches the commander. He lifts his gun and the Doctor lifts her apple and Yaz sees this coming. She won’t let it happen. Her final act before she dies will be to protect the Doctor from herself. If it’s the last thing she ever does, she will save the Doctor's soul. 

Surging to her feet, though her pain is blinding, Yaz yanks the commander’s knife from his belt and brings the hilt down so hard against his skull that he’s knocked unconscious before he hits the floor. His gun never goes off. The apple never leaves the Doctor‘s hand. Three-hundred-and-sixty-seven-thousand lives are spared. Weighed up against the single heart that’s about to give out, Yaz thinks that’s a pretty nice result. Numbers to be proud of. No monsters will be made here today. 

The knife falls from Yaz’s hand and clatters on the floor. She’s next. Slumping to her knees, she chokes up another series of petals and blooms. It’s getting harder to breathe. Her lungs are over capacity. That black wave is crashing down around her. 

She’s sorry the Doctor has to witness this.

Exhaustion kicks in and Yaz, dizzy and nauseous and ready to go, topples onto her side. The Doctor’s hands slip under her head before it can hit the ground. Kneeling over her, the Doctor cradles her face; one of her tears lands warm on Yaz’s cheek. 

“The flowers, Yaz, who are they for?” 

“We had a good run, Doctor, didn’t we? I had… I had the best time with you,” sputters Yaz. “And I was okay being your best friend. Really. It was the best thing I ever did.”

“Tell me! Just say it!” The Doctor shakes Yaz desperately to keep her eyes from closing. “Don’t give up. Just tell me!”

Weak, Yaz lifts a hand to the Doctor’s cheek. Wipes her tears. That’s better. “I don’t want my love to die when I do, Doctor. Take a piece of my heart with you when I go. In fact, take all of it. ‘Cause it’s yours anyway.” Yaz turns her head to spit up another petal. Her breathing comes out in short, painful gasps. A selfish part of her is glad not to be alone at the end. Glad the Doctor will hold her through it. “I love you, Doctor. Always have. Always will. I’m sorry.”

The Doctor chokes a heartbroken, weepy laugh. “Yaz, you’re not dying. You’re not. Ask me why, go on.”

Yaz’s lips are turning blue. “Why?”

“Because I love you, too. I love you, Yaz!” cries the Doctor. She presses her forehead to Yaz’s. “Always have. Always will.”

“No you don’t,” coughs Yaz. “You’ll… you’ll say anything to save me. But it’s not your fault. I don’t blame you.”

“Yaz, you have to believe me. I’m not lying. I promise I’m not,” the Doctor swears, and she looks sick with fear. Yaz’s eyelids are growing heavy. The Doctor doesn’t love her. “Yaz? Yaz! Don’t fall asleep. Don’t you hear me? I love you! Don’t fall asleep. Please. Please!”

“Let me go,” croaks Yaz.

“Never.”

Then the Doctor kisses Yaz. Urgently, she crashes her soft, smooth lips to Yaz’s cold, bloody ones. The kiss tastes like iron and salt, grief and rebirth, earth and stars. 

It really is a valiant effort. 

But the Doctor doesn’t love her. 

Maybe the Doctor reads her mind, because then she’s making a frustrated sound against Yaz’s mouth, and her thumbs are at Yaz’s temples, and something is pushing into her mind with overwhelming presence. It’s a memory. 

And it goes like this. 

By the time the Doctor has finished recounting her wild, mostly-true retelling of the unfortunate series of events which took place on Atlantis 12, Yaz is asleep. Lying on her side, the Doctor permits herself a few minutes to drink her in. To appreciate the heartbeat jumping at her throat, the dreaming flutter of her eyelids (she hopes she’s having good dreams), and the steady rise and fall of her chest. All sure signs of life. 

Yasmin Khan is alive. 

The Doctor breathes a sigh of relief she’s been holding onto for a week. For months, even. Not only is she alive, but she’s right back where she belongs, and that’s with the Doctor. She should have fought harder for her last time; should have fought to keep her safe. 

But she’s here now. That’s what matters. She’s here, and she’s under the Doctor’s care, and the Doctor will be damned if she’s going to allow harm to befall a single hair on her head. 

Gentle as can be, she lifts one of Yaz’s wrists and presses her fingers to her pulse. It’s strong. Yaz has always been strong. 

She’s so many things. 

She’s smart, capable, stubborn, brave, kind, selfless. Beautiful. Yaz is so beautiful. She’s beautiful when she’s charging headfirst into danger with the Doctor’s hand in hers, and she’s beautiful here, now, while she snoozes softly in the warm glow of the lanterns wearing the Doctor’s shirt. The idea that Yaz will wake up smelling like the Doctor does something lovely and painful to her chest. 

But that’s not allowed, is it? 

Looking at Yaz the way she’s looking at her right now isn’t allowed. Yaz doesn’t want that. The Doctor is sure that’s why she ran away last time, because she looked at her and she saw the tragic truth of her desire written all over her adoring face, and it scared her. 

It tears the Doctor apart. She has Yaz, but not really. They’re together again, but not in the way she’d die for. 

Nevertheless, if Yaz is happy, she’ll try to be happy, too. It’s no use trying to stop feeling the way she does, because Yaz long ago got her hands on the Doctor’s hearts. Even when they’re apart, those handprints branded upon her soft, red tissue sear like twin flames, and the Doctor smells her pitiful hearts sizzling in the undying heat of them. So no, she can’t turn it off. She can’t turn away. But she can keep it quiet. In times such as this, the Doctor can confess it to the room, where it will go unheard by the gently dreaming and hurt just the one of them. 

The Doctor strokes Yaz’s cheek and leans in. Lips grazing the shell of her ear, she whispers what she wants to scream. 

The words soak into Yaz’s skin.

She smiles without waking: tender, sleepy, gutting. 

Come morning, the Doctor is still picking shattered fragments of herself up off the floor.

Light and colour and sound all merge together into one endless stream, which slips over Yaz like a rushing river slides over a boulder. She tries to hold onto things as they pass her by, but she might as well be reaching with the hands of a ghost. 

Yaz glimpses a head of blonde hair, anxious amber eyes; a glowing neon sign; black and white tiles; red sand; a blue door. 

She’s floating.

That great and final wave, she supposes, is carrying her body out to the place where sky meets horizon. The edge of the world. The end of the world. What awaits her over that plunge, she can’t say, but the journey is confusing. Is this her life unfolding in blurry snapshots before her eyes, or is this her spirit finding its way? 

Neither, as it turns out. She doesn’t know how long it takes her to wash up on the shore, but when she does, it isn’t an eternal nothing she wakes to find. 

It’s an infirmary. 

Not like the ones back home. No, this one has more of a wartime feel to it. The walls are tiled dark green and the high ceilings arc impressively overhead. It’s a long room with at least a dozen empty cots lined against the walls, each beside their own nightstand and shaded lamp. Only Yaz’s is switched on. Beneath a cone of orange light, she lifts her hands to her groggy eyes and rubs them with her palms.

She takes a breath.

Wait.

She takes another breath. She’s breathing. No flowers in her lungs; no petals in her mouth. Do ghosts breathe? Is it just a habit? What kind of afterlife is this anyway?

A quiet sigh to her left makes her jump. She turns her head. There, slumped in an armchair right beside her cot, is the Doctor. Her eyes are closed and the muscles in her face are twitching like she’s having a bad dream. And then Yaz remembers. 

She can’t be dead.

She can’t be dead, because the Doctor loves her. 

The Doctor’s body tenses and she gasps herself awake. For a moment, she looks perplexed and out of place. She looks like a lost child. But then she blinks, and she sits up, and her eyes find Yaz’s. The nightmare ends there. 

“Yaz!” She’s on her feet in an instant. “Yaz, hey. How are you feelin’?”

“I—“ Yaz’s voice is hoarse. She can still taste blood; can still feel it caking her throat. When she looks down at herself, she finds she’s still in the filthy clothes she almost died in. 

“Sorry, sorry. I were gonna wash you up and everythin’ but I didn’t wanna risk wakin’ you. You’ve been sleepin’ all day.” The Doctor is fidgeting with her hands like she doesn’t know where to put them. “You’re okay though, right? You should be okay. I ran about a thousand different tests. Not an exaggeration. The flowers are gone, Yaz. They’re all gone.”

“Doctor,” Yaz wheezes. Her fingers lift from the sheets and the Doctor reaches for them. 

“Yeah?”

“Please get me out of these clothes,” she pleads. The reek of blood is making her nauseous and she feels the dirty fabric clinging to her skin like grime. She’s suffocating in them. “Please.”

Sympathy presses the Doctor’s lips together. “Of course. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up, eh?”

The Doctor leads Yaz out of the TARDIS’ infirmary and into one of its many bathrooms. She might be cured of her disease, but it leaves an awful fatigue in its wake. Yaz undresses slowly while the Doctor, with her back to her, runs her a warm bubble bath. 

Neither of them say anything. Only Yaz’s shallow breathing, and the sound the water makes when it trickles from Yaz’s body where the Doctor washes her, fills the freighted silence between them. The water smells like buttercream and Yaz is so thankful the Doctor didn’t opt for anything floral. She lets the sweet sugariness of it cleanse her. Sugar always makes her think of the Doctor. 

Knees pulled up to her chest, Yaz drops her forehead against them as the Doctor works the soap into a lather at her back. She trembles a sigh. Lightly, the Doctor gives her a reassuring squeeze on her shoulder.

Once she’s towelled off and scrubbed her teeth and tongue raw with a toothbrush, Yaz changes into a soft, oversized jumper and a pair of plaid pyjama shorts, and lets the Doctor guide her towards her favourite lounge. The walls are all dark wood, there are bookshelves with ancient but well-kept first editions lining the shelves, and a warm fire is always burning in front of the camelback sofa. 

The Doctor sits her down and drapes a shawl over her lap. She leaves the room, but not for long. When she returns, there are two warm mugs of hot chocolate in her hands — topped with whipped cream, marshmallows, chocolate sprinkles, and a Flake. Yaz accepts hers with a faint smile whilst the Doctor settles in beside her. 

“Feelin’ better?” asks the Doctor. She scoops a marshmallow up onto her tongue and chews it. 

“Much,” says Yaz. She runs her thumb along the handle of her mug and nibbles anxiously on the inside of her lip. “Feels weird, to be sitting here right now. I thought… I mean, I didn’t think…”

“You didn’t think you were gonna make it,” surmises the Doctor. 

Yaz shakes her head, staring at her mountain of whipped cream and watching her Flake slowly sink into it. 

The Doctor sets her own mug down on the coffee table and turns so that she’s facing Yaz. She’s been patient so far, but they both know it’s time they finally talked about it. “Yaz, you must have been aware that you were dyin’ for months. Constantly sufferin’, week after week after week, all on your own…” Her voice begins to take on the strain of somebody holding back tears. “You’ve gotta help me understand, here, because I’m at a loss. Why on Earth wouldn’t you say anythin’ to me? Why wouldn’t you tell me? I could’ve put an end to all of this in a second.”

Yaz’s Flake disappears completely. She puts her mug down next to the Doctor’s, and finally braves her face. Her intense eyes are magmatic in the firelight. “Can I ask you something, Doctor? Can I ask you to just imagine, for one second, that you’re me? You’re a nobody kid from Sheffield doing nothing with your nobody life—“

“Yaz…”

“No, listen. So you’re a nobody, right? And then one day, by some bizarre, astronomically unlikely stroke of luck, an alien falls out of the sky and lands in your life. And she’s brilliant, this alien. She’s dynamite. She’s fearless. She’s bloody untouchable. For some reason, she lets you tag along with her while she saves the world. Over and over again. She gives you a glimpse of the universe, and it’s always so incredible, but it never even holds a candle to her. Not the way she comes running when somebody calls for help, not the way she grins at you when you say the right thing; not even the way she can scarf down an entire packet of biscuits in thirty seconds flat.”

“Twenty-six,” the Doctor corrects under her breath. 

Yaz rolls her eyes. “Point is, Doctor, how is that boring human from South Yorkshire supposed to believe that someone like that — someone who embodies every wonder of the whole bloody universe just by existing — could ever look at them with anything even remotely resembling love? It doesn’t compute. It makes no sense!”

The Doctor considers Yaz’s point with downturned lips. “Okay, Yaz. I want you to imagine somethin’ for me. I want you to imagine you’ve just lost every single thing, every last person, that matters to you. I want you to imagine that, just when you were happy to finally get some rest and leave the universe to its own devices for once, you’re reborn. And you fall. And you crash onto this little world you’ve been saving since it first began, and then it asks you to save it again. You don’t get to take a breath, you don’t get to mourn, because you have to be the Doctor — even though that’s the last thing you wanna be right now.

When you get to your feet, you find yourself on a train with a few ordinary people from Sheffield. Except they’re not ordinary. Not even a little bit. There’s a woman on this train who’s never dealt with anythin’ like this in her entire life, and she’s not backin’ down for a second, because there are people who need her help. And that fierce determination in her eyes reminds you of why you keep fightin’. It’s for people like her. People with hearts so big they overshadow even their fear. So you grab her and you run with her and she follows you into the terrifyin’ unknown time and time again. 

This copper from Sheffield, by all accounts, should be scared to death of you. You kidnap her, you fling her into danger; you turn everythin’ she think she knows on its head with a snap of your fingers. But d’you know what she does instead of run and hide? She trusts you. Gods, Yaz, she asks for more. More of the universe. More of you. 

She’s a friend when you thought you’d never have another. She’s your common sense when you’re forgettin’ to sleep and eat and breathe. She’s the hand you reach for when you’re too stubborn to admit how afraid you are. She’s not just a human — she’s what it means to be human.

Now tell me, Yaz, how could you not fall totally, madly in love with her?”

Speechless, Yaz stares at the Doctor. The fire crackles and spits. A veneer of tears coats her eyes and makes a blurry portrait of the Doctor’s earnest features, until she wipes them on the sleeve of her sweater and swallows with a quivering jaw. 

“So why didn’t you ever tell me?” she whispers. “Why did you wait until I was dying? Would you ever even have told me otherwise?”

The Doctor casts her eyes down. “I thought you knew already. When you left… Yaz, I thought you were scared of the way I felt about you. That you saw how huge and overwhelming it all was and so you packed your things and ran as far away from me as possible.”

“I… God.” Yaz lowers her head and pinches the bridge of her nose. Oh, the ways they hurt each other in the name of love. “It killed me to leave. I mean, really, it almost did. I could never be scared of you, Doctor. I hope you know that.”

“Really? Looked pretty scared of me up there on that mothership,” the Doctor mutters. Her shame is palpable. 

Yaz pauses. She’d almost forgotten: the Doctor’s calm rage, her sinister sneer, the premeditation it took to have that fallback in place. “Would you really have done it? Would you really have killed all those people?”

“I don’t know,” answers the Doctor. “I really don’t. I wish I could say no. I want more than anythin’ to be able to say no, but I don’t wanna lie to you anymore. I can't stand another lie. Even if that means… even if it mean this is all over before it begins.”

Yaz remembers the allusion the Doctor made to the commander about her dark past; to choices she made before they knew each other. It settled uneasy in her stomach then and it comes back up to haunt her now. “Have you ever done anything like that before?” 

The Doctor’s silence speaks ten thousand things. It speaks a dusty volume of harrowing history that Yaz has not yet cracked the spine of. 

“Oh.”

“Are you frightened of me?” the Doctor asks in a voice so small it almost doesn’t make it across the short distance between them. 

“I think I would be if you were still that person. If you were alone.” Yaz peels the shawl from her lap and shuffles closer to the Doctor. She takes her hands and holds on tight. “But you’re not alone, Doctor. You don’t ever have to be alone again for as long as I’m alive. I think I’ve proved by now that I’m gonna love you ‘til the last breath I take, but that doesn’t mean anything if I don’t love all of you. Who you are, who you’ve been, who you could become. There’s so much I don’t know, but I want to. I wanna learn it all. So let me see you.”

“Yaz…” The Doctor lifts her palm to Yaz’s neck and strokes her thumb along her jaw. “There’s no guarantee you’ll wanna stay if I give you what you want.”

“No, there aren’t any guarantees, Doctor. Not in life. Not in love. I’ve had to learn that the ugly way.” She squeezes the Doctor’s hand. “But there’s trust. There’s always trust. I think it’s about time we start puttin’ a little more in each other, don’t you?”

The Doctor’s smile is watery and relieved. The Doctor’s smile is true. “I really do love you, Yasmin Khan.”

Yaz grins through her own joyful tears. “So kiss me about it, will you?”

“Oh, I thought you’d never ask.”

In an eager collision, their mouths meet for the second time, but it might as well be the hundredth. Yaz divines a familial comfort in the firm press of the Doctor’s cool lips, and finds warmth unknown in the gasping breath that passes from one to another. Kissing the Doctor is like returning to a childhood home she knows the bones of like the back of her hand and, paradoxically, like stepping into the blazing sun of a brand new world about which she knows nothing but its name. 

Yaz’s slow unravelling of the Doctor’s complex identity begins with the exploration of her body. She learns of the impossible softness of her hair between her fingers and discovers the way her breath hitches when Yaz’s teeth graze the lobe of her ear. Her hands chart an all-encompassing route across the Doctor’s expanse of pale skin, noting every groove of her ribs, every curve of her hips; every peak and valley and all the ways she can use them to manipulate soft moans and heavenly groans from the back of the Doctor’s throat. In the thrall of ecstasy, the Doctor transcends her body and comes, invited, into Yaz’s.

And when the Doctor, curious adventurer that she is, seeks to unfurl the map of Yaz’s body in kind, Yaz finds that she has never known such devastating heights. She learns a lot about the way the Doctor loves in the way the Doctor touches her. She’s tender and she’s patient, she takes her time; she cherishes. 

The Doctor shows Yaz stars and galaxies she’s never even dreamed of; the kind that exist only in a universe of two — and this universe isn’t born of science, but carefully crafted by doting hands, and tended to with heart.  

Yaz is still adrift in their brand new nebula some time later. She and the Doctor swap the lounge and the hearth for the open doors of the TARDIS, with a blanket draped over their shoulders and a steaming cup of tea each. They’re looking out over the Milky Way. Earth and all her neighbours are but marbles in the black, but it doesn’t make Yaz feel small to see her home from such great distance. On the contrary, she feels larger than life itself to be looking out over everything in the Doctor’s easy company. 

“So,” begins Yaz, resting her head on the Doctor’s shoulder, “I believe you’ve got a story to tell me.”

The Doctor winds her arm around Yaz’s waist and presses her lips to the top of her head. “I must warn you, it’s a long’un. And it’s not always pretty. Sometimes it’s sad, sometimes it’s dark; sometimes it feels like it’s never gonna end.”

“Do you want it to end?”

“I’d take a million more pages if you were on every single one of ‘em, Yaz.”

Yaz looks up and the Doctor looks down, and they smile into a brief kiss. When Yaz is settled comfortably against her once more, the Doctor takes a deep breath and gazes out at infinity. “I’m not sure where to start.”

Seeking out one of the Doctor’s hands, between the knuckles of which her love first bloomed so long ago, Yaz brings it to her lips and then doesn't let it go. 

“Just start with something good,” she says, “and we’ll take the rest from there.”