Chapter Text
“This paintin's creepy,” Ryan mutters, the edge to his voice curdled like milk gone off. Yaz shrugs, adjusting the worn cloth strap of her bag over her shoulder.
It's not a bad painting—they've seen worse—it's just… intense. With all the staring.
“Oi,” Graham says gruffly, tapping Ryan on the shoulder with a rolled-up leaflet. He's been standing all sombre, which means he's missing Grace, her loss felt so acutely it snatches his breath each time he sees something she'd like. “Be nice. This here is the most famous painting in all of Spain. It's the best painting from, er—”
He unrolls the glossy flyer with a flourish, smacking it straight. He scans the fine text through the bottom part of his new reading glasses.
“The Spanish Golden Age. See? What do you know 'bout the Spanish Golden Age, boy?”
“Fame don't matter,” Ryan says, shuffling out of Graham's way. “They've got creepy faces. I bet they were secretly robots. Or—or what if they're still alive in there, watching all us visitors come and stare at them every day.”
“Don’t,” Yaz warns him. “Don't put ideas like that in my head.”
Her dreams don't need more fodder.
Is she here? Yaz wonders, searching the muted browns and blacks of the canvas for secrets. If I look hard enough behind the shadows, am I going to spot her?
If I were her, where would I be?
She'd be where the painting begins, trying to make the dour little girl laugh between painting sessions.
She could never stand to see a serious child.
Yaz slides over when someone bumps into her, the new perspective illuminating the painter’s critical gaze.
What was the crisis of the day? Was it killer, sentient paint? Scheming royals collaborating with Machiavellian aliens? Ghosts that cause religious intolerance?
Something had to have been wrong—there was always something wrong.
No way something this important happened without her.
She has to be here.
Graham's hand settles heavy on her shoulder, a solid weight that both grounds and traps her.
“Anything?” he asks.
“Dunno,” Yaz answers, chewing on the inside of her cheek.
They've been at this for nearly a year now, her and Graham and Ryan. Saving every pound for traveling together.
She used to save so she could move into a flat of her own. Now everything she has goes into funding these trips.
They couldn't return to normal. Not like that. Not after Gallifrey. Not the way she'd left them. How could she tell them to live great lives as though they could do that without her?
As though her haunted face, eyes shining with unshed tears, clutching a bomb like something precious, was forgettable.
Yaz couldn't sleep for weeks once they returned, the feeling of the Doctor jerking away as though Yaz's touch hurt her playing on loop every time she closed her eyes.
She's doing better now. They're all doing better.
Traveling was Graham's idea. He said they needed to have fun and keep busy. To stay connected.
To honour her memory, although none of them quite believe she's dead.
There's a big map hung in Graham's living room now, pushpins marking where they've been, where they're going and where they want to go. His fridge is so crowded with photos and magnets that something always falls when Yaz goes for a drink.
They travel well together, even without her, even though it takes forever now. Ryan, with his social media savvy, finds them flights and Airbnbs for cheap. Graham carefully plans their itineraries, virtually touring museums and reading reviews of every coffee shop and pub in a 20-kilometer radius to maximize their time.
And Yaz? Yaz searches: reading, listening, observing. She looks for clues, looks for signs—any signs, flimsy as they might be—of the Doctor's existence.
They need proof she was real.
They're going to find her.
One she started looking, the TARDIS was everywhere. A mosaic in Rhodes has what can only be an old police box in the corner, a single yellow shard on the roof calling to Yaz like a beacon. A Mayan stela has familiar windows and doors chiselled near the base, the details of the warning placard lost to time. An otherwise boring lecture on Persian carpet restoration reveals an interlocking pattern of familiar blue rectangles.
There are other signs, too. A 10th century emakimono features a skinny man in a pinstripe suit, running from a monster with crab arms, so clearly out of place it has to be one of her old faces. At a photography exhibit on 20th century child labourers, it's Ryan who spots a slender figure in a long coat, hood pulled up, sat against a brick wall with some grim-faced oyster shuckers.
There's a bronze casting of a sonic screwdriver—with the Sheffield steel imprint still—that some stuffy docent swears is a religious artifact.
She's been there. She's been there all along, for all of human history. Every shred of evidence is a stamp of validation that what they experienced together was real.
“She were prolly somewhere else,” Ryan says, shrugging back at the painting in front of them. “You know she has no patience for royals.”
Yaz grins, remembering the Doctor's irreverence running around a King Leopold's court. She wasn't even trying to taunt him at first—she'd genuinely been trying to take them to the site of the world's largest rubber band ball, but wound up crash-landing in 19th century Belgium instead.
That was an odd trip.
“What's up next? We're done with this room.” Yaz asks.
Graham shuffles his map. “Let's see… on this floor there's that temporary exhibit on Da Vinci. How's about we take a butcher's and then go to the café for lunch?”
Ryan smiles. “Sounds good, Grandad. I'm proper hungry.”
Yaz hikes her bag further onto her shoulder, leading the way across the hall toward the temporary exhibit. Even in low light, the museum is overstimulating—full to bursting, a cacophony of languages overlapping as families and friends struggle to make themselves heard.
Yaz takes Ryan’s hand, who takes Graham’s. They make their way to the opposite wall, where a large hand-drawn portrait of a tired-eyed old man is posted.
“Hey,” Ryan says, reading from a small sign outside the exhibit. He’s busy scanning the QR code for the audio tour. They take in every scrap of information like dutiful students—the smallest detail could be a clue. “It’s all on loan from the Royal Collection Trust. We didn’t need to leave Britain.”
“Puh,”Graham puffs. “Then we wouldn’t be in Spain. You seemed to like Spain last night, son. Chatting with those girls at the pub.”
Ryan grins, wide enough it tugs at his cheeks. He pulls out a set of wireless earbuds. “Yeah, they were a’right, I s’pose.”
Yaz itches to go inside. There’s something calling her—something important.
Unlike most of what they’ve seen at the museum so far, the exhibit is demure. Intimate. These are Da Vinci’s drawings and sketches, his doodles and scribbles. The famous paintings are in other museums—they’ve a trip to Paris planned in three months, Graham reminds them when Ryan expresses his disappointment.
“How’d he do it?” Graham wonders, staring at an enlarged image of a horse’s behind. “His polished pieces are so proper, but this shows his process. Look at the genius.”
“He cut people open,” Ryan says, too loud and horrified. “He cut people open and still didn’t understand how babies worked.”
Yaz drifts away from them, toward an enlargement of a town from above.
“A Map of Imola,” Yaz reads, glancing between the enlargement and the map encased in class before her. She traces the curve of a river with her finger.
“Good eye,” a smoky voice to her right says. Yaz jumps. “The map is one of his most impressive works, mathematically speaking.”
The woman is dressed in a museum uniform, curly hair caught in a bun.
“Yeah?” Yaz asks. The map is crinkled, stains marking the parchment like liver spots.
“Helicopters and satellites weren’t invented for hundreds of years,” the docent says, coming to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Yaz. “He had to invent an overhead map while stuck on the ground.”
Yaz tilts her head to look at it sideways.
“We’re positive he measured every turn in the city by degree and length,” the docent continues. “Had a few special tools to do it, like fancy compasses. See how the map is split in eighths?”
“Yeah,” Yaz says, tilting her head the other way. “How’d he get the proportions right?”
The docent chuckles. “He measured everything! Walking around the entire city, if you can believe. He may have even invented an odometer to keep track. Here, follow me. We have a manuscript of his on loan from the Biblioteca Nacional—the second codex goes into some detail on the odometer.”
Yaz follows, nearly catching her foot on the carpet.
A large screen is set up with a book encased in plexiglass in front of it.
“Here,” the docent says, gesturing to a tablet on a stand. “We can scroll through the codex, one minute...”
She flips through more drawings too fast for Yaz’s eyes to process before settling on a yellowed page.
“Voila,” she says proudly. “The odometer. It drops a little ball every—”
The world drops out from under Yaz like a sudden loss of gravity. There’s a familiar face sketched opposite an invention: arched eyebrows, frown lines, strong jaw and all.
“Doctor,” she gasps.
“Oh, good,” the docent says. “Most people can’t read his script, but even backwards dottore means doctor. No one knows why it’s so near this young boy—the face is feminine, but the hair is too short for the period…”
“No,” Yaz whispers. Her eyes burn. It’s the first time she’s seen the Doctor’s face in over a year. She looks calm there, a faint smile tugging her lips.
“If you’re interested in this figure,” the docent adds, flipping to the next page. “He’s got drawings of others—there’s debates about the translations, or if he even bothered to label them, but we think they helped map the city.”
It’s her. It’s her and Graham and Ryan, sketched plainly on the page.
They were there.
They were there, and they’ve never met Da Vinci. She’d have remembered that.
It means she’s alive. She comes back for them. It’s going to be okay. They’re going to find her—they’re going to fix this.
“Are you all right?” the docent asks, her hand hovering over Yaz’s arm. Yaz’s face and neck are sticky—
Oh.
She’s crying.
Graham, mercifully, spots her.
“Oh, yeah,” he says, stepping between Yaz and the docent. “My friend here just gets emotional about old notebooks, and, uh, wheelbarrows. T’s’all good, I’ve got it from here. Thank you for your time.”
He smiles pointedly at the woman until she takes her leave, rushing to attend to a yellow-haired child attempting to climb over a rope to touch a glass case.
“What’s got you worked up, hon?” Graham asks, pressing her face into his shoulder. He smells like worn leather and clean cotton and breath mints. Yaz lets out a shuddering breath.
“Grandad,” Ryan whispers, slipping his earbuds into his pocket. “Grandad, look. It’s us.”
The hand gently stroking her hair freezes.
Ryan turns the page and makes a wounded noise deep in his throat, like he’s trying to choke back tears.
“What does this mean?” he whispers, voice small and vulnerable.
“We never met the man,” Graham mutters, reaching for Ryan. “Ryan, we never met him, but he clearly knows us. Knows her. We helped him design a bloody map.”
Yaz hiccups, stuffing her knuckles into her mouth to muffle the sound. People are starting to notice.
“Oh, cockle,” Graham says, rubbing Yaz’s shoulder. His voice is thick. “We’ve seen what we need to see here. Let’s go collect ourselves. Let’s go back to that pub near the hotel—even the briskest of teas won’t sort me out now”
“Y-yeah,” Yaz mutters, wiping furiously at her face. Ryan grabs for her hand as they leave, clinging to her for support as they make their way through the too-bright streets of Madrid.
Back in the hotel, they watch documentaries on Da Vinci and devour every scrap of work of his that’s ever been catalogued, scouring the Internet for any further indications of the Doctor. They don’t find any.
They visit the exhibit twice more, staring pleadingly at their friend’s face until other guests ask if they can view the codex.
Their discovery changes everything, but it changes nothing.
They return to Sheffield, where Yaz half-expects a familiar blue box to be waiting for them outside her tower block. They’d solved the puzzle, right? Now she’ll come back.
Light grey skies and a wind as unsettled as her stomach greet them instead. Yaz’s disappointment tastes like rust.
Ryan's new job as a mechanic starts the day after their return. Graham confers with his secondary schoolers, having taken to volunteerism when he realized a quiet retirement wasn't for him.
Yaz graduates from her probationary period—she’s a real officer now, her promotion a bright spot in a life that otherwise feels as if the colour has been bled from it.
She’s patrolling near the main library one afternoon, having just responded to a minor bike accident, when a figure with chin-length blonde hair in a long grey jumper crosses the street in front of her.
Yaz’s blood turns to ice.
Is it?
Is it her?
It’s not like she hasn’t caught sight of look-alikes before, only to have her thin hope torn like tissue paper.
“Doctor,” Yaz whispers, breaking into a run. She darts across the road without looking, thoughts of oncoming traffic forgotten.
She bursts into the library, ducking behind an alcove to calm her racing heart. As a police officer, Yaz can’t go bursting into a place all sweaty and wide-eyed. It sets a bad example and causes unnecessary panic.
Focus on your breathing. Five seconds in… hold it. Five seconds out.
Curling her fingers around the coarse edge of the wall, Yaz pulls herself up, peeking around the corner in a move that’s pure muscle memory.
The blonde is there, behind a desk, her head turned as she talks to a patron. Yaz can’t see her face.
But when she turns.
It’s her.
Yaz can’t breathe again.
She fumbles for her phone to text Ryan, but decides against it and shoves it back in her pocket.
That’s wrong, she tells herself. Can’t just tell him it’s the Doctor—she’d tell me that’s answering the question ‘fore I’ve asked it. Who’s this person, really? What are they doing here?
The Doctor wouldn’t return without coming back for them, right?
After a steadying breath, Yaz marches up to the counter. The woman smiles broadly when she sees her, eyes lit up in an achingly familiar way.
“Hiya,” she chirps, leaning forward on her arms. It’s her voice: clear and bright, smart and kind. Yaz wants to barrel over the desk to hug her, to hit her, to feel her solid in her arms—she needs to make sure she’s real. “What can I do you for?”
They’re strangers now. Why is the Doctor treating her like a stranger?
Yaz works her throat, her heart beating too fast to get words out.
“Don’t know what we offer? That’s okay! The library is a great resource,” the librarian says, grinning. “We’ve a computer room, a readin’ room, a section for kids, CDs, DVDs, and tons of online resources. We offer classes and have two… no, three book clubs right now. The one on Tuesdays has coffee, if you like coffee. We’re hosting a local production of Love Labour’s Lost if you like a bit of Shakespeare. Oh! We also have books! Loads of ‘em.”
She laughs, gesturing to the walls of books around them.
What’s she playing at?
“Do you need a library card?” the librarian asks, lowering her voice as she leans closer to Yaz. “It’s okay if you don’t have one yet—I won’t tell anyone. You can trust me. I’m quite trustworthy. Best secret-keeper north of Nottingham.”
She even prattles on like her. It’s too much of a coincidence, her showing up like this—it’s connected, somehow.
When Yaz nods, the librarian presents her the form with a flourish. Yaz fills out her information on autopilot, searching for any signal that the librarian knows who Yaz is. If she does, Yaz can’t tell.
She needs more information.
But she can’t just ask a stranger how many hearts she has or whether she lives in a spaceship.
“Have you been working here long?”
It’s a neutral question. Safe.
“Oh, no, just transferred a month ago,” the librarian answers. “I were living out west… before. You know how bureaucracy is…”
Her eyes glaze over, unfocused. A brief look of anger, so familiar, flickers over her face. After the quickest of moments, she turns her attention back to Yaz.
“What sorts of books do you like?” she asks as she pulls the form back. “I can give you a recommendation while I get your card processed.”
“Sci-fi,” Yaz blurts out. “History.”
The librarian blinks in confusion.
“Historical sci-fi?” Her nose scrunches in a familiar way that hurts. “I’d’ve taken you for a mystery girl myself, officer.”
Yaz’s heart constricts, seizing to a halt. This is too much, too confusing. She needs air. The officer hands her a library card and when their fingers brush it feels like an electric shock.
‘I’ve got to go’, Yaz blurts out, pushing herself off the desk with enough force that she stumbles backwards. ‘Just remembered about a meetin’—a training—sommat important.’
‘Oh’, the librarian says, her eyebrows drawing together in concern, a deep furrow etched between them. ‘Be well, then. Good meeting you! My name is June, by the way. June Smith. Come back if you have any questions!'
Yaz runs.