Chapter Text
“You alright, Doc?” Graham asked gently when they were all safely back on the TARDIS.
He always asked, once they were back on the TARDIS.
He had the feeling that the Doctor was never alright, not really; but asking was all he knew how to do.
“Top of the line,” the Doctor responded, an almost undetectable tremor in her voice.
Ryan heard it, though. Of course he did.
“It wasn’t your fault, Doctor. Them killing the mother spider like that. You did everything you could.”
“There’s always more I could do, Ryan,” she said, soft and unaccusing. Well, unaccusing to anyone but herself.
“But!” She clapped her hands, and Yasmin almost jumped from her quiet corner of the console room. “The TARDIS has been humming away, working on that video game room you two were gossiping about. I think she’s nearly done! Go on, go find it! And don’t you two fall into the swimming pool again, it’s clearly labeled.”
Ryan and Graham cast a last, worried look at the Doctor, then back at Yaz, before thanking her and scampering off on another one of their explorations.
The Doctor smiled faintly as she watched them go, before turning her attention to yet another something on the console controls that needed tinkering.
“You’re quiet, Yasmin Khan,” she mused after a long moment, her eyes fixed on her work, but her voice rich with invitation.
“Sorry,” Yaz shook her head and stretched her legs, walking over to the Doctor’s station slowly.
“Never apologize for silence. Silence is good. Well, the quiet bit, not the cult that tried to take over humanity bit.”
Yaz blinked but let it go. It made her smile, all the things in the Doctor’s head that only made sense with elaborate explanations, and even then, only just.
It made her knees a little weak, too, if truth be told.
“It’s just…” She sighed, unsure how to phrase it; if she would sound like she was accusing the Doctor of something, which was the absolute last thing she wanted to do. “If we hadn’t gone back to mine for tea, on a whim, really, then none of this would’ve happened. Well, I mean, it would have done, wouldn’t it, because the spiders were still living and growing and no one would have been able to step in and…”
The Doctor stopped her tinkering but still let herself lean down on the console as she looked up at Yaz, quiet and waiting and radiating attention.
It was intense, being this powerful being’s sole focus of attention.
It was intoxicating.
Yaz gulped and carried on. “I guess I’m just… that must happen a lot then. The coincidences of the universe, where something seemingly so benign is really not at all, and threatens the whole world, or worlds, or whatever. And it just… it makes me wonder, you know?”
“How many lives we don’t save because we didn’t happen by for tea at the right place at the right time,” the Doctor finishes gently, and Yaz nods apologetically.
The Doctor sighs and straightens up, looking Yaz up and down almost unconsciously.
“I know. I think about it all the time, too. I do. I guess I just have to trust the TARDIS to take us where she knows we need to be, and distress calls take care of the rest of it. I’ll never reconcile with not being able to be everywhere at once, you know? But for what we have, I guess it’s not bad, is it? To do what we can, when we can?”
“It’s beautiful,” Yaz whispered, realizing too late that her eyes drifted down to the Doctor’s lips as she said it.
She cleared her throat. “So. My mum thinks we’re seeing each other.”
The Doctor guffawed. “No, no, we cleared that right up, didn’t we? I said I didn’t think so, and you said we’re friends, and that was that?”
She didn’t realize she ended her sentence with a question until after she did, and immediately, her stomach squirmed.
Yaz shrugged long and somewhat dramatic, thoughts of her mother bringing out a bit of the petulance she normally controlled well.
“Not for her, apparently. She pulled me aside and said something about ‘who doesn’t know whether they’re seeing someone, what kinds of things are we two getting up to that make those boundaries unclear?’” Yaz forced a chuckle. “Bizarre, right?”
The Doctor blinked. “Is it? I mean, do you want it to be? Bizarre?”
“I – “
“Because it’s not unheard of. As many years in this universe as I’ve been around, and I… well, I’ve danced, certainly. I just don’t usually – it’s too heavy, you know what I mean, Yasmin Khan? Humans, you get old so quickly and the kind of life I lead isn’t the kind of life that – “
“It’s wonderful.”
“It’s full of death.”
“It’s full of hope.”
A long, long pause.
“For the record, I don’t usually love it when my mother’s right,” Yaz took a full step back, needing to breathe and knowing that the Doctor needed to, as well. “But I wouldn’t be averse. To seeing each other. And don’t you dare say we’re looking at each other right now, Doctor, because you know that’s not what I mean.”
Her laughter – both of their laughter – was genuine this time, and the Doctor marveled at how this new human girl could tell exactly when the tension needed to be let out of the room, when the Doctor was about to tip the scales of nervous and socially awkward and needed to retreat, retreat, retreat.
For now.
She laughed, grateful and self-deprecating, and maybe, with a little bit of hope.
“Dually noted, Yasmin Khan,” she made a sweeping, bowing gesture as Yas skipped toward the path Ryan and Graham had taken earlier.
“I’m going to kick the boys’ bums at Mario Kart. If you want to join us, Doctor, we’d all love it. In your time.”
Yaz smiled, patted the doorway once, and left the console room.
“In my time,” the Doctor whispered to herself, to the TARDIS, who hummed with knowing approval and patient anticipation.