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The engines are still wheezing and churning with their unsteady landing when Yaz dashes forward to swing the doors open.
In strong competition, alarms blare and red lights flash overhead the second Yaz ventures free from the confines of the ship. She’s calculated less than a minute until guards come storming in, so with renewed urgency she seeks out a physical form in the cold and dark.
Yaz doesn’t have to look far.
Stood, stock-still and slack-jawed in the centre of the room with hair slicked back by grease, is — “Doctor?”
Heavy footfalls echo along the corridor behind the cell door and, frenzied, Yaz extends a hand. “Doctor, come with me. We don’t have long.”
But the Doctor is like a fawn on ice; every step forward is done so with no lack of difficulty. So, sweeping forth, Yaz allows her to slump into her chest just so she can support the rest of her journey. “Just a few steps, that’s all. I’ve got you.”
The TARDIS hums its welcome greeting the instant they step through the threshold. The Doctor’s reply comes in a broken whimper which tears through Yaz’s ribs and forces a heavy swallow through her throat.
After kicking the door closed behind her to permit the ship freeflight, she adjusts her hold around her slim waist to keep the Doctor steady through the judders and jerks of a TARDIS sans its pilot.
Only once the strongest motions even out does Yaz straighten up slightly and seek out the head buried against her shoulder. She can feel the way the Doctor trembles against her, and the thumping, racing double beat pressed against her chest. It shudders through her like a freight train.
But when she pulls back to observe her in all her pale, shivering dishevelment, desperate fingers grip at her jacket before freshly securing around her waist.
“Sorry!” Yaz breathes, enclosing her within her hold again. “I’ve still got you. You’re on the TARDIS, Doctor. You’re safe. Jack managed to hunt it down and I — well, I convinced it to let me come and get you out of there.”
She chooses not to mention the weeks of pleading she’d endured at the hands of the stubborn ship, nor the potential dangers of her decision. She’s got the Doctor back, and that’s the most important thing.
“Are you okay?” seems like a stupid question, but Yaz murmurs it anyway.
Pressed against her, the Doctor simply moulds closer.
Yaz’s hand smooths down her spine. She tries not to think about how scrawny the Doctor has become in her absence; how her spine greets her palm through her red jumpsuit in jagged, prominent juts; how her jaw seems a little too sharp where it rests against her chest; how her prison clothes hang from her like a kid having raided their parents’ closet.
If she thinks too hard, the moisture coating her eyelids might tip forth and the panic bubbling in her stomach might curl around her lungs and constrict their employment.
The ship lands. Yaz’s keys jingle in her pocket when she twists to glance at the screen.
All at once, the Doctor scrambles at her; treats her like a corner she must crawl into to hide.
“No,” she croaks into her neck, cold nose nestled close. “Please.”
Without questioning, Yaz plucks the keys free and tosses them aside with a crash. “I’m not going to do anything. No one is. You’re safe. They’re gone, okay? No keys. Just me.”
But what could —
When Yaz considers the rings she’d spotted encircling the Doctor’s wrists in the telling fashion of steel cuffs, the penny drops. Of course.
Fresh anger boils just beneath the surface while Yaz gently guides the shaking blonde towards the other side of the console, each footfall a triumph until, still entangled (because the Doctor is stuck to her like glue), they sink onto the second corrugated metal step leading to the corridor.
And she’s so small , with her head ducked and her arms curled around her waist, half-draped over her lap while her hearts kick up storm after storm. Her breathing is delayed, breaths tripping over each other in a race to fall in sync with her heaving chest. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you — Doctor, you’re fine. Don’t apologise. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I’m sorry,” she repeats between staggered breaths. Her words are reticent, as though she’s been mute so long she’s forgotten how to raise her volume. “I’m so sorry.”
“Doctor —”
“I should have — I should have told you—” The Doctor sinks. Spirals. Her forehead grows clammy against Yaz’s collar. Sweat melds into her skin and seeps into locks already weighed down by grease. “I’m sorry.”
Choked repetitions of the same two words force the alien in her arms to gasp and grip ever tighter.
At war with the increasing urge to storm back into the prison from whence she’d escaped to give those in charge a taste of their own medicine, Yaz instead focuses on the present; on the Doctor’s scared eyes and paling features; on the way she pleads through dilated pupils alone.
The Doctor is asking her for help.
The world’s aid; the reason planets turn; the saviour of civilisations— is begging for her assistance from the demons inhabiting her brain. Brains?
Yaz’s worth in the universe depends on the actions she takes next.
“Shhh,” she whispers mutedly enough not to startle her further. Peeling back just enough to find her eyes, she brings their foreheads together with a gentle thud. “Just breathe, Doctor. You have to breathe.”
“Yaz, I’m s—”
“ Doctor . Stop talking. Just breathe with me, alright?”
The Doctor’s jaw clicks shut in chided abruptness, and, while her lips are sealed, her breaths come out loud and harsh through her nose. Even when they’re running for their lives, she doesn’t usually pant so heavily.
While the time lord’s gaze bores into her soul, Yaz raises a hand to cup her cheek. “I need you to inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Can you do that for me?”
This close up, she witnesses the true struggle between sheer panic and the need to regain control over herself behind the black of the Doctor’s pupils. Her mouth trembles before it parts and for a second, Yaz thinks she might start crying.
A slight nod is all she gets before the Doctor follows her lead. At one point she fists a hand into the material of Yaz’s burgundy blouse as if to train her anxiety through her fingers and disperse it between the strands of woven fabric. Yaz drops her own to her chest, counting each rise and fall.
“I’ve got you. You’re on the TARDIS. You just left the —” the Doctor’s eyes blossom and her hearts return to their fatal race and Yaz pauses, swallows, diverts. “You’re safe. We’re floating in the vortex. This is your TARDIS.”
While the Doctor’s ringed hazel eyes refuse to leave the open comfort of her own, she can feel her ribs easing against their onslaught. Not a lot, but enough to sense her gradual return to safer velocities.
Yaz glimpses the TARDIS’s main console; listens out for the remedying hums and low groans of its ancient, perceptive machinery. “Can you feel her? You said once that you’re connected in a way. Has she come back to you?”
The Doctor coughs and splutters on her next inhale and leans against her for stability, fingers iron-like in their grip on both Yaz’s blouse and her elbow.
In lieu of a reply, however, as soon as her lungs allow it, she ducks her face to her shoulder and hides away in the warmth of her once more.
“You’re alright,” Yaz sighs against the top of her head, uncaring of the unkempt, matted state of her dirtied hair. “I’ve got you. Just keep breathin’.”
It takes some time for the Doctor’s hearts to retreat from their lengthy crescendo and her form to slacken entirely against Yaz’s solid form.
It takes even longer to deduce the moisture building at the junction of her neck and shoulder as tears rather than sweat.
Silently, the Doctor cries. Whether through pain, turmoil, shame or relief, Yaz is none the wiser. And that’s what hurts most. Before, she could read her like a book. Now, it’s as though the slate has been wiped clean; as though the Doctor has been wiped clean, and a far more fragile, tortured dupe has been spat out and left in her place.
Perhaps she was just naive. Perhaps, before the Daleks and the year spent grieving for her, Yaz had simply chosen to ignore the cracks in her mask; any and all traces of suffering or imperfection.
The Doctor is not perfect. She knows this now.
But aboard the TARDIS with an armful of tortured time lord, she at least knows her purpose.
And that is to shield her from ever, ever having to go through something like that alone again. Even if it maims her. Kills her. Risks the downfall of the entire universe.
So long as she has the ability, she’ll be right where the Doctor needs her. Always.
Stroking back darkened locks slick with oil, Yaz lets her cry until sobs give way to hiccups and hiccups to the occasional gasp, and soon enough, gasps give way to shallow breaths on the verge of slumber.
Yaz knows when she slips through the gaps and plunges toward sleep. The hand clinging at her blouse grips tighter and she grows rigid in her retaliation.
Her fingers brush the matted midsection of the Doctor’s hair and breeze over it. Yaz takes note to encourage her friend into a long, steaming bath as soon as she’s had some much-needed sleep.
“It’s okay. I’m not leaving,” she murmurs when the Doctor jolts in refusal to give in, but the warmth of the room and the body pressed close must act as a lure.
She’s never looked so exhausted, with dark rings under her eyes and otherwise ghostly white skin. But when Yaz’s fingers jump the distance between the ends of her hair and the curve of her jaw to seek out the drumbeats beneath, she finds her hearts resettling. Even her shoulders look a little less hunched and defensive than before; less of a spooked pup and more of a trusting feline.
That doesn’t mean she doesn’t stir with a pained breath each time Yaz moves, though.
Yaz counts three minutes before the Doctor slumps entirely against her, and another minute and a half to gather the exhausted blonde into her arms and slip into the corridor behind her. She’s lighter than she looks — and she looks like a neglected pet set astray after the festive season.
The instant Yaz lowers her down upon her dishevelled bed aboard the TARDIS (she hadn’t re-made the sheets after a bout of nightmares and the fitful two hours of sleep a night she’d managed for the last month or so), she can’t help but notice the way the Doctor braces herself for the contact even in sleep.
After only a second of confusion does Yaz think back to the solid concrete platform posing as a bed in the Doctor’s damp, musky prison cell and a penny clinks against the floor at her feet.
Before she has time to dwell, however, the Doctor’s hand catches at the cuff of her blouse and grasps tightly at the thin material. A muffled whimper greets her pillow and the victorious, all-powerful time lord seeks her company as if her soul depends on it.
“Yaz—”
“Shh, I’ve got you. I’m still here.”
It doesn’t take much for Yaz to kick off her boots and ease down beside her, and it takes even less time to offer up the arm the Doctor clings to and permit her to wind it around her waist.
Pounding chest to scrawny back muscles, Yaz spans her fingers over strong ribs and the noticeable cavern of the Doctor’s stomach.
“Graham and Ryan have been really worried,” she murmurs into the quiet at the same time as the TARDIS dims the lights for them. The effort at distraction works; the Doctor’s shoulders relax and her bouncing leg slows. “They’ll be proper happy t’see you, Doctor.”
The Doctor shifts, tucking her knees up and curling an arm around her pillow. She swallows; hard and loud and choked.
“Sonya’s got a new job. She’s managed to hold it down for six months already. I think it might be a new record,” Yaz adds on a lighter, diverting note, thumb gracing her rib. She ought to get her changed out of her filthy boilersuit, but for the minute, at least, sleep seems to be the most important factor of her best friend’s recovery.
“It’s a social media job,” she continues. “So of course she’d do well in it. She’s practically glued to her phone.”
The Doctor’s breaths even out into soft huffs through her nose, inches from slumber’s grasp.
“Mum’s doing well, too. She’s got a management position at a new spa place just outside of town. It’s not one of Robertson’s projects, thankfully. I didn’t think she’d want to get back into it after last time, but she’s tough as nails, my mum.
Just like— oh.”
With a knit between her brow which is telling of her underlying distress, the Doctor appears, at last, asleep.
Around her, a bassy, calming thrum rises from the depths of the ship. The Doctor’s responding sigh is one of relief; of a connection re-acquired and an unseen exchange of reassurances.
If Yaz had been doubtful of the TARDIS’s sentience in the past, it is thrown to the wind the instant she feels the Doctor’s body relax entirely against her own.
The TARDIS has its pilot back. Yaz’s responsibility is now shared.
Sending a quiet murmur of thanks to the milky way projected above, Yaz holds her until the Doctor is but a dead weight against her chest.
Unfortunately, even once slumber has claimed her entirely, the Doctor continues to suffer through a fever-like claminess to her skin.
Only once she knows the Doctor won’t register the loss of contact does Yaz peel away and slip silently into the en suite. The tap runs as quietly as possible while Yaz dampens a flannel with cool water and folds it in half.
The expression she greets in the mirror above the sink is one of exhaustion and relief, and for once she doesn’t feel the need to send it a hopeless frown.
Because she’s got the Doctor back.
And it’ll take some time, but she’s there and she’s real and the mere sight of her is enough to soothe the ten-month long weight on her shoulders and the pit of her stomach.
Flannel in hand, Yaz spots a plate of custard creams atop the bedside unit where it wasn’t sitting before. She sends a silent thank you to the ship on her way. The dimmed bedroom lights transition to a warm gold in response.
Atop the bed, the Doctor shifts. A slightly grubby hand reaches out as she rolls onto her back, blind fingers extending onto Yaz’s side of the mattress.
Before the lack of contact forces her to stir, Yaz eases back onto the bed and breathes a gentle hush to her sleeping friend. On her knees beside her, Yaz leans forward to grace the Doctor’s sweating forehead with a cool, damp cloth.
The measured movement thankfully doesn’t rouse her further, but it doesn’t stop those searching fingers finding Yaz’s knee and latching onto the seam.
“Sorry if it’s a little too cold for you,” Yaz whispers in the low light, letting the flannel come to rest against her creased forehead. “But it should help. I hope.”
The hand at her knee finds a replacement in the form of Yaz’s cooler palm while she sits back to observe.
“My mum always used to do the same when I was ill. She’d stay home and we’d watch Bend It Like Beckham or Notting Hill and gorge out on crisps and chocolate. Sonya would join in as soon as she got home from school.”
Yaz’s thumb follows the rise of a bony knuckle before it slips and falls to her wrist. Seeking out her pulse, a calm, steady double beat quells her anxiety a degree further. She locks onto it like a lifebuoy in a storm, anchoring herself to its stubborn strength.
“She thinks I’ve got my own flat; they all do. That’s where they think I’m staying right now.” A self-deprecating whisper of laughter meets the room, bounces off the planets above, and disappears into the abyss. Yaz is emboldened by the Doctor’s unconsciousness and comforted by her presence; the perfect potion to spill her guts out to.
“They don’t know I’ve lost my job,” she continues in near-silence. “So, when you’re ready, you better let me travel with you full time,” she teases, expertly posing the plea as a jibe. Almost. “Think about it; I could be some badass space police officer, taking out baddies with you. It’d be ace.”
Whether in response to the moist material against her skin or the turmoil at war with her system, the Doctor breathes sharply through a whole-body shiver. Her fingers tighten between Yaz’s in a natural reflex, but it doesn’t stop her worrying.
A single tear seeps from the corner of a closed eye. Yaz swallows hard as she tracks it along the Doctor’s ever-prominent cheekbone towards her hairline, and takes solace in its lone existence.
No more follow.
She can’t quite discern if that’s a good thing or not.
“What have they done to you, Doctor?” she sighs, closing her free hand atop their already entangled fingers and drawing them north. Her lips greet the back of her hand before she hunches forward and presses her forehead to the warm skin.
In the quiet of a sentient ship overlooking its unconscious inhabitant, Yaz prays under her breath.
She prays that the creases gracing the corners of the Doctor’s eyes from so much giddy grinning quickly overtake the frown lines which presently mar her forehead. She prays for forgiveness; after all, the Doctor’s hair has grown too long for her to have only been there for ten months; her eyes too tired for the same reasons.
She prays that, when she wakes, the Doctor can last more than a sentence before giving in to panic once more.
Moreso, Yaz prays that nothing like this will ever happen again.
She doesn’t think she’d survive it.
The Doctor’s hand is still in hers when Yaz lays down beside her, uncaring of her state of dress in favour of indulging her need for rest. Until then, at least she has a bird’s eye view of the Doctor’s sleeping features.
If she looks close enough, Yaz can spot a scabbed graze just under her chin and another freshly-healed scuff on her cheekbone, and when she brushes her thumb over her knuckles, the middle one feels somewhat rougher.
Yaz doesn’t remember falling asleep.
She curses herself when she wakes an unknown length of time later.
But — what sort of sound —
A distinctive crunch is what rouses her entirely from her sleep. Blinking through sleep-fogged vision, Yaz awakens to see the Doctor sat up with a guilty expression and half a custard cream hovering in front of her mouth.
When Yaz nods, baring a pleasantly surprised smile, the Doctor continues chewing. There are crumbs in her lap and gathered in the folds of the sheets and half the plate has disappeared but Yaz doesn’t care to warn her of indigestion. She’s just grateful she has an appetite.
The Doctor helps herself to another biscuit in the time it takes Yaz to pull herself up and rub the remnants of sleep from her eyes.
As soon as she drops her hand to her lap, the Doctor’s gaze seeks it out like a lizard spying an insect.
Yaz doesn’t say anything when she interlocks their fingers the exact second she offers them up for the taking. Nor does she say anything when the Doctor’s stomach grumbles (likely in protest of all that sugar in one go).
When she does want to say something, however, she finds her mind blank. All she can think of is the warmth in her hand and the timid look on the Doctor’s pale face.
“Missed these,” the Doctor croaks in motion to her favourite sweet treats, and it breaks the spell.
“Thank the TARDIS. I guess she thought you might need them.” Yaz eyes the full glass of water on the nightstand; another magic trick by the ship. “Make sure y’have some water with them, though. You’ll give yourself a stomach ache.”
“Thanks, mate,” the Doctor murmurs to the ceiling as she plucks the drink up. Her voice screams misuse; as if they’re the first words she’s spoken in years, not months.
“How —” Yaz clears her throat when tears prick her vision; the Doctor flinches at the slightest raise in her volume and it sets her back a handful of muted seconds. “How are you feeling?”
The Doctor’s quiet shrug feels acceptable — Yaz would probably react the same knowing what she’s gone through. Still, it leaves her thoughts to wander and her gut to worry. How bad was must it have been to leave her in such a fragile state upon her rescue?
“It’s good to have you back,” Yaz offers when the Doctor looks a little lost in her own head. At least she’s not the only one. “Really good.”
She taps her knuckles with her thumb, giving her a smile. “Hope y’missed me.”
That brings the Doctor around. Three surprised blinks later — as though she’s belatedly remembering Yaz’s presence or, worse, thinking she might’ve disappeared by now — the Doctor glimpses their clasped hands with a telling, “Yasmin Khan.”
She doesn’t need to confirm it. Yaz can tell by the knit to her brow and the way her lips purse that she’s full of thanks and praise and conversation, they’re just not connecting from brain to tongue yet.
The Doctor is just not ready yet.
And that’s okay, because soon she will be. If the pleading look in her eyes says anything, it’s please wait. Please be patient with me. I just need time.
So, with butterflies in her stomach which have been hibernating for the last ten months, Yaz changes her plan of action. If waiting and caring is all she can do for now, she’s going to do so properly.
“D’you think you could take a bath? I think it would help,” she suggests, nodding over her shoulder to the open door to the en suite. “Plus, t’be honest, you could really do with getting out of those clothes.”
As if remembering their existence, the Doctor’s face falls. She looks down in distain, so Yaz bargains with her attention span.
“I have some for you to change into. And I can run you a bath now, if y’like?”
Still, the Doctor takes in the dirtied maroon jumpsuit, face crumpling, so Yaz tries again.
“I’ve still got those bath bombs you like. The ones which smell like peppermint and always seem to overflow the bath with bubbles?” she prompts, squeezing her hand. “I saved them ‘specially for you because I know you love causing a flood just to wind Graham up.”
“S’not my fault there’s a step down into his room opposite. ‘Course it’ll flood,” the Doctor argues weakly, taking the bait. It draws a laugh from Yaz which helps tug a small smile from the Doctor’s lips, and Yaz takes that as a mini victory.
Yaz shuffles to the end of the bed, arm outstretched to keep their hands entwined. “D’you think you’re up for it?”
The Doctor nods. With Bambi-like legs, she stands to follow closely behind.
And ten minutes later, while Yaz unknots the ends of her damp hair and the Doctor lounges like royalty in the deep, overflowing tub, she doesn’t care about the water flooding the bathroom floor nor her soaking knees, or the fact it’ll take a good ten minutes to peel her jeans off after this, because the Doctor is laughing with success.
She smells like peppermint and lavender and Yaz thinks she might’ve just dropped a custard cream into the tub, scooped it up in all it’s mushy glory and eaten it — and she’s perfect.
Really, only time will tell, and Yaz might have to tiptoe around certain topics for the coming few days, weeks, months , but she’ll be patient with her. Always.
Yaz is not going to lose her again.
And the Doctor is not going anywhere. Not unless Yaz is right there beside her, cleaning up soapy suds and biscuit crumbs in her wake.