Chapter Text
The Doctor lands on a grassy surface, hard underneath, and staggers before finding her balance. Then she straightens, and looks around.
She’s standing on an asteroid, she realizes, but it’s not the asteroid they came from, the barren rock with the shabby lab perched atop it. Rather, it’s an asteroid coated in grass and flowers, barely larger than a swimming pool, and with what has to be an oxygen bubble placed around it. Flowers and bushes bloom around the edges, setting the air alight with fragrance.
It’s the hanging gardens of Rhourus, she realizes. Set into an asteroid belt between the twin Rhourus planets. With the greatest view of the galaxy in the entire system.
She’s been here before.
They’ve been here before.
“Hi, Doctor.”
She turns, and spots her immediately. There’s a bench just a few feet off the edge, set in the direction of the several swirling nebulas. Upon it Yaz swings her trainers, wearing the same button-down shirt and jeans she wore the last time the Doctor saw her.
Only she’s completely solid.
The Doctor takes a step closer, and then another. Tentative. “Hi, Yaz.”
Yaz doesn’t immediately answer. She’s staring out at the stars, and as the Doctor watches, she heaves a sigh.
The Doctor takes another step closer.
She notes with some relief that her arm is working here. She’d expected as much, for her dream-self to be whole, but it’s good to feel it anyway. When she flexes her fingers and swings her arm experimentally, she finds it free of shooting pains.
She moves closer, one foot at a time. A final step bridges the gap, and then she’s standing next to the bench, looking down at a Yaz she desperately hopes is her own.
“Yaz,” she says, in a low, rough voice. “It’s you, yeah?”
Yaz looks up at her then, just for a moment, before looking away, her gaze dropping back to the stars. Her eyes are warm, the Doctor notes, and dark, and void of the dangerous glint of the Nightmare Child.
“Yeah,” Yaz says, closer to a sigh. “It’s me.”
For a moment, the Doctor just stands there, tight, painful happiness clogging her throat. Then, because she can’t trust herself to speak, she plops down on the bench, right next to Yaz, and rocks slightly, before her fingers curl underneath the seat.
They sit for several seconds in silence. Then the Doctor clears her throat, and gestures toward the glittering expanse. “So this is your mind?”
Yaz shrugs. “I dunno. I guess so. This is where I’ve been, ever since.”
“Right.” The Doctor nods, one quick bob. “Ever since what, exactly?”
Again, Yaz simply shrugs. “Not sure. It’s a funny way of telling time, isn’t it?” she frowns, thinking. “I don’t think it’s been too long—I think it started when they opened that thing, didn’t it?”
“I think so, too,” the Doctor says, and Yaz glances to her, just for a moment, her expression unreadable. “That was when the—the—”
“Yeah,” Yaz finishes for her quietly. “I know. Only now I realize, I’ve been feeling it even longer than that. And I don’t know how to make sense of it. Like it’s been eating me from the inside out, starting with the bit at the lab, and just moving further and further back. Is that how it works?”
She must realize the Doctor is watching her as she speaks, for when she looks over, she catches the Doctor’s gaze immediately, her expression sober.
“It is.” The Doctor swallows dryly, licking her lips. “Uh, it is. It has you, Yaz, and I don’t know how to make it go away. The only thing I could think of was to come in and get you—”
Yaz smiles. “That was pretty smart, actually. I saw that.”
The Doctor stops, confused. “Saw that?”
“Oh, yeah.” Yaz is staring at her shoes, which have stopped kicking. “I saw all that, when you pushed us in, and when we were falling, and that war down there. Like, I wasn’t there, but I saw it, you know? It was downright terrifying, if I’m being honest.”
“Oh.” The Doctor doesn’t know what else to say. “You saw—”
“You tried to kill me.” She says it short and bitter, and the Doctor nearly bites her tongue off hurrying to shut up. “I saw.”
“I’m sorry, Yaz. I was—I was scared.”
“Is that why you ran?”
This question pulls the Doctor up short. “Ran?”
“With the Nightmare Child.” The kicking has started again. Back and forth, back and forth, like a child seated at a too-high table. “That you made it, then you ran away? Because you were scared?”
“I—” Lies and bluster spring to her mind, the half remembered instincts of a Doctor much more confident than she’s feeling right now. She goes with the truth. “I think so, yeah. I do that a lot, running when I’m scared. Sometimes I dress it up in other things, but it’s usually because I’m scared.”
“Oh.” If this assuages Yaz, she doesn’t show it. “Well, I guess it’s good you admit it.”
“Maybe.” Again, they lapse into silence. The Doctor studies Yaz, who stares once more at the stars, the reflected light setting her eyes a-glitter. In the dark, she looks ethereal, but entirely human.
“You know, this was my favorite place we went.”
Her comment startles the Doctor out of her reverie. “Really?”
Yaz nods. “Yeah. These gardens. I thought they were so magical. I always wanted to come back.”
“I didn’t know.”
Yaz shrugs. “I never told you. Maybe I should have.”
“Maybe I should have listened better.”
Yaz doesn’t say anything, but continues to watch the stars, as the Doctor watches her. Something is sitting heavily at the back of her mind, something pressing underneath the panic of time quickly slipping by. She knows she can’t stay forever. Sooner or later, she’ll have to go back. And she still doesn’t know how to take Yaz with her. Only now, sitting side by side in this peaceful, silent garden, she's beginning to realize that she's not sure she can.
“Yaz?” she asks suddenly, and there’s something desperate in her tone, maybe, that has Yaz looking over sharply. “I should apologize, probably. I don’t think I treated you properly. More like an experiment and not a human being, and it took me too long to realize you were my friend under all that temporal nonsense. I should have done a lot more right by you, and I know I made a promise, but—but I have to go back, pretty soon, and I don’t know how to take you with me.”
She rushes it, feels sand slipping through her fingers, time falling away, and knows that she can’t stay long. Her saving throw, and all she’s done is talk. And it’s not even good, clever talking.
Though it might be what Yaz needs to hear.
Yaz’s eyes roam over her face for several long moments, before she smiles. And it’s an open smile, not a trace of bitterness or ill-spirit. It’s just sad.
“Thanks, Doctor. And I don’t think I wanted much. I just wanted you to see me, you know? But I think you do, now.”
“Oh.” The Doctor feels this as a dull thud, directly to her chest. Failure, once more, washes over her, and she wants to cry. “I do see you, Yaz. I saw you long ago. I think you’re brilliant, absolutely ace.”
“Really?” Yaz asks, and smiles, a big, hopeful smile that makes the Doctor’s hearts crack in half.
“Course I do,” she replies, and tries unsuccessfully to blink back tears. “I don’t—god, I’ve bungled this completely, haven’t I? From the moment we met, I—”
She gestures uselessly between them. “I messed it up, and I keep messing up, and I’m too late to save you. I can’t even save the bloody Nightmare Child, not that I even knew I could’ve in the first place.”
“You could’ve?” Yaz blinks in surprise, and the Doctor’s hearts sink, because now it’s not Yaz, anymore. Her eyes glitter dimly, and they’re not her own. The Doctor purses her lips into a thin line.
“Have you been here the whole time?” she asks, and prays the answer isn’t what she thinks. “Just now, when we were talking. Was it—was it you, and not Yaz?”
The Nightmare Child looks taken aback for a moment. Then, surprisingly, she drops her gaze to the bench, and shakes her head, like a kid caught lying.
“No. I was just listening in.”
“Oh.” The Doctor has no idea what to do with this information. “I have to leave soon, you know. I have to wake up.”
This doesn’t invoke the reaction she expects. The Nightmare Child looks up at her, and tilts her head, frowning. Contemplating.
“Did you mean that, what you said?”
“What did I say?”
“That you could have saved me. That you would have.” The Nightmare Child is eying her carefully, expression unreadable. The Doctor stares, mouth slightly ajar, then snaps it shut and gives a slight nod.
“I would, if I’d’ve known that I could have.”
“You didn’t, though. You should have known.”
“I should have.” The Doctor tilts her head in acknowledgment, eyes still on the Nightmare Child. “I made a lot of mistakes. I have a lot of excuses, too. But sometimes it doesn’t matter, does it? The reasons you did things. It’s the hurt that matters.”
The Nightmare Child’s jaw tightens. “It does.”
“Then I’m sorry.”
“Okay.”
She turns to the stars and studies them for a moment, then lets out a sigh, barely a whisper of sound. Then Yaz is back, so quickly the Doctor barely realizes the switch. She’s looking at the Doctor, in exactly the same way the Nightmare Child had stared at her moments before.
“You have to go, don’t you?”
The Doctor winces, because even as she sits, still as she can, she can feel consciousness dragging at her, digging its claws into her back. “I do. Yaz, please—can’t you come with me?”
It’s stupid, and desperate, because she’s seen enough to know that the Nightmare Child is completely entrenched in Yaz’s subconscious, There’s no dragging her back without the Nightmare Child leaving, and she’s no idea how to do that. But she tries anyway.
“Yaz—” she takes her hand, pulls it close to her chest, clasping it in both fists. “Please, come with me, I—”
But Yaz is shaking her head, a sad smile upon her face. “I can’t. You know I can’t. It’s not up to me.”
“Then who is it—” the Doctor asks, but she doesn’t get to finish, for in that moment the entire world dissolves around her, and she plunges into blackness.
“No!” she cries, reaching out uselessly towards nothing. “No, no, no!”
But even her own cries fade into nothing, followed quickly by the Doctor herself.
————
She’s falling.
She’s falling, plummeting towards the earth, regeneration energy coursing in her veins, hotter than the atmosphere she’s burning through, and she wants to scream, but the wind has long since pushed the air from her lungs—
She crashes straight through the roof of a train, and stands up to see five people standing there. Not three, five. She stares confusedly at the three originals, then spins around to face the other two, cowering underneath that giant floating ball of tentacles. Quickly, she grabs a sparking cable and shoves it straight into the writhing mass, forcing it back.
“That should buy us some time,” she says, brushing the dirt off her suit, then looks to the two standing there, the man, or boy, and the police wo—
Oh.
The Doctor staggers, nearly falling to her knees under the weight of so many memories. Of a girl who shouldn’t exist and a monster that ate her, and an apology that maybe, must have, sent the universe spinning in the right direction, because Yasmin Khan is here, and confused, and very much real.
“Yaz,” she gasps, and watches her take a step back in apprehension, flashlight shining directly into her face.
“How do you know my name?” she asks, blustering as if she’s trying to be authoritative, but doesn’t know how.
“Yasmin Khan,” the Doctor pronounces it proudly. “Yaz to your friends.”
“Yeah…?” Yaz stares at her, fear and uncertainty flip-flopping. She looks up to the hole in the roof, then to the Doctor. “Um, excuse me madam, but I don't know you. Why’re you calling me Yaz?”
The Doctor just grins, and sticks her hand out, waiting for an embarrassingly long second until Yaz tentatively takes it. Then she pumps it up and down, grinning like an absolute loon, but too happy to care. “To your friends, yeah?”
Yaz nods once, nonplussed. The Doctor’s grin widens.
“Well, guess what? I’m calling you Yaz, cos we’re friends now.”