#what about yaz and dan and ryan and whoever else

[bronzeagepizzeria]

As a ten tragedy enjoyer I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the gut several times

[regenderate-fic]

Home at the End of the Universe

Fandom: Doctor Who Ship: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan Characters: Yasmin Khan, Thirteenth Doctor Rating: General Other: Canon Compliant, Character Study Word Count: 3,542 Crossposted from AO3. Originally posted on 6 December 2021. Link to original.

It’s not all right, of course. Everything is tremendously not all right. But the Doctor is there, and if Yaz had any doubts that the Doctor missed her, that the Doctor cared for her even when she wasn’t there, those doubts were erased the second the Doctor’s arms wrapped around her, the second she pressed her head against the Doctor’s hair. The Doctor hasn’t hugged her before— not like this, anyway.

Summary: An exploration of Yaz and her relationship with the Doctor in The Vanquishers.

NOTES: 1. do not read this if you haven't seen the vanquishers. or do, but there are spoilers. 2. i wrote this with no idea what it was going to become but i really like it. also if yaz and thirteen don't kiss On The Mouth in the specials i swear to god...

Three years.

Three years Yaz and Dan are stuck a century in their past, trying to find the end of the world.

Three years without the Doctor.

I’m sure I miss you.

Yaz misses her so much.

“You and the Doctor,” Dan asks her near the beginning, after a long day at sea. “Are you—”

“Friends,” Yaz says, too fast.

I know you do.

Three years.

I hope you said I miss you too, or else that bit's weird.

Three years with that ache in Yaz’s chest, that longing, coupled with the horrible knowledge that even if she can get the Doctor back, maybe the Doctor will be different, maybe she won’t want Yaz anymore, maybe Yaz will be different… Yaz is 25 now. She’s spent twelve percent of her life in the 1900’s, without the Doctor. Not that she’s counting, or anything.

I think you’re calling me from the control room.

Three years with nothing but that hologram. Under two minutes of the Doctor’s last-minute message. I’m sure I miss you.

The Doctor never would’ve said that to Yaz’s face.

But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because the world is ending— not the world, the universe— and Yaz needs to do whatever she can to make it stop. Which means traveling the world with Dan and Jericho, who aren’t the worst travel companions she could ask for, and trying not to think about the Doctor.

Until she’s in the tunnels below Liverpool with Dan and Jericho and Joseph Williamson and the Sontarans are there but then they’re not and the Doctor appears from thin air.

She doesn’t know what to think. The last time she saw the Doctor after a long time away, Yaz was angry. She’d spent months looking for the Doctor, trying to learn to pilot the TARDIS, with diagrams and theories tacked up against the wall. Ryan and Graham and Sonya had had to fight to get Yaz to eat or sleep or do anything that wasn’t a fruitless search for the Doctor. And then the Doctor waltzed back into Yaz’s life like nothing had happened, and Yaz didn’t know what to do.

This time, though, Yaz decides she’s relieved. She’s spent three years knowing the universe was unraveling and the Doctor is at the heart of it, and she hasn’t been able to do anything to help. She remembers being angry at the Doctor, three years ago when the Doctor wasn’t telling her anything even when it resulted in Yaz being strung above an acid lake without any inkling as to why. But… well. After three years, Yaz will take whatever she can get, as long as it’s more than a two-minute hologram. The Doctor is all over the place, taking in Yaz and Dan, then Kate Stewart— whoever that is? —but when she hugs Yaz… for a second, everything is all right.

It’s not all right, of course. Everything is tremendously not all right. But the Doctor is there, and if Yaz had any doubts that the Doctor missed her, that the Doctor cared for her even when she wasn’t there, those doubts were erased the second the Doctor’s arms wrapped around her, the second she pressed her head against the Doctor’s hair. The Doctor hasn’t hugged her before— not like this, anyway. They’ve gotten pushed together in quite a few life-or-death situations, sure, and there have been a few light touches, but no hugs. And… when the universe is in grave danger, time-sensitive danger, and the Doctor still takes a second to hug Yaz, that has to mean something, doesn’t it? The way it warms Yaz to the core— that has to mean something.

But of course there’s no time to figure it out. The hug was a too-quick moment of respite, and now they’ve got to get down to business. Not to mention the Doctor seems… really, really confused. She keeps losing her train of thought and wobbling like Yaz’s sister did when she got an ear infection and had horrible vertigo. Yaz wants to go and put a hand on her shoulder, ask if she’s all right, but there’s no time for that. No time at all. Time seems to be the problem, actually.

Time especially seems to be the problem when the Doctor asks Yaz how long it’s been and she has to say it’s been three years. She tries to play it off like it’s no big deal, just a few years, but… well. The Doctor knows that’s not the case, and it’s written all over her face. (Yaz feels warm, though, just thinking about the way the Doctor stopped her whole investigation again to make sure Yaz was okay. And Yaz is okay. She survived the three years, and now the Doctor is back. She’ll deal with the rest later.)

It’s amazing, too, after all this time, to see the Doctor back in action, just like always. Nothing has changed— nothing has changed for the Doctor, who probably only missed a few days at most. She’s still running around the space, waving her sonic everywhere, as if Yaz hasn’t had days over the last few years where she’s been half-convinced the Doctor was just a weird dream she had, something she’d concocted to deal with the monotonous reality of living in a world where it took weeks to get from one continent to another. But no, the Doctor is real. Yaz can’t stop staring at her just in case she blinks and the Doctor disappears.

(Of course it doesn’t help when the Doctor actually starts to disappear. Yaz lunges for her, grabbing at her hands, desperate for her to be real. And she is real! She’s just— trisected— in danger— dealing with yet another thing that’s gone wrong with time and space.)

Everything after that is a bit of a blur for Yaz. They’re in and out of the TARDIS, on the Sontaran ship, in the tunnels, on Earth, and so on and so forth until Yaz can barely catch her breath. There are two Doctors, which is… beyond strange, really, but Yaz has seen so much strange at this point that this doesn’t really do much. In fact, she’d find it entertaining if it weren’t for the undercurrent of fear that two Doctors could be a sign that the Doctor is about to die.

There are two Doctors, and Dan, and Karvanista, and Bel, who Yaz hasn’t met but who seems nice. And then Vinder and Diane are there, and the TARDIS is bursting at the seams. Yaz loves being around so many people, especially people who know her century, but also… it feels like she’s come back home after a long time away and there are guests in the living room who just won’t leave. What Yaz really wants is a long warm bath and a good night’s sleep in the bedroom she knows is waiting for her just down the hall, but of course she can’t have that. There’s things to do, a universe to save, everything Yaz has missed in the last three years intensified to the max.

And then they do it. They save the universe. The Passenger form sucks in the rest of the Flux, and everything is quiet. The Doctor is back to just being one person, and she’s still not making a lot of sense, but— when has the Doctor made any sense? She’s here , that’s what matters, she’s here and breathing and running around the TARDIS just like Yaz remembers. They make a stop back in the tunnels to dispose of the Grand Serpent— Vinder and Kate Stewart have that honor. They explicitly request it, actually. Yaz stays back in the TARDIS, watching the Doctor fiddle with the console, somehow too afraid to approach.

“How’re you holding up?” Dan’s come up next to her when she wasn’t looking. He nudges her in the side. They’ve gotten to know each other pretty well, in the last three years. He turned out to be excellent company. And he doesn’t know the Doctor all that well, but he knows how much she means to Yaz.

“I’m fine,” Yaz says, still watching the Doctor. “You?”

“Just taking things as they come,” Dan says cheerfully. Yaz glances around the TARDIS. Dan’s friend is here— Diane? —but she’s across the room, pointedly not looking at Dan. But that’s Dan— always manages a smile, no matter what’s going on around him.

Vinder and Kate come back, a quiet triumph on their faces, and the Doctor doesn’t skip a beat. She launches the TARDIS again, and then they’re on a Lupari ship, seeing off Karvanista and Bel and Vinder all at once. Karvanista is swearing he’ll dump Bel and Vinder as soon as he can, but the way Bel and Vinder are talking, Yaz knows they’ll wear him down.

And then they drop off Claire and Kate back on Earth, and finally Dan, and it’s just Yaz and the Doctor again, alone in the TARDIS. The guests are gone— Yaz is finally at home. But it’s still awkward. She and the Doctor— well, there was always something between them, ever since the start. Or, Yaz always wanted there to be, anyway. But she could always ignore it, convince herself it wasn’t there, the Doctor didn’t see it.

It’s been three years. Three years with that hologram that said I miss you too , with more emotion than Yaz had ever seen the Doctor direct at her. Whenever she convinced herself the Doctor wasn’t real, or the Doctor didn’t care about her, or anything else, she pulled out that hologram and watched the look in the Doctor’s eyes. And then when the Doctor hugged her— well, it just reinforced everything. But now the threat is over, with the Doctor there in front of her, tangible, real , Yaz doesn’t know what to say.

And the strangest thing is, the Doctor doesn’t seem to know what to say either. She’s leaning over the console, her hair falling in her face, saying nothing. It’s unnerving. The Doctor always has something to say, even if there’s no substance to it, even if she’s deflecting from the conversation she’s actually being asked.

“You all right?” Yaz blurts out. She’s asked the Doctor this at least three times today, but now everyone’s gone— maybe she’ll answer honestly this time.

The Doctor lifts her head. “Been better,” she says. “Then again, been worse too. Not a bad day today.” She looks at Yaz with an intensity Yaz has been dreaming of for three years now. “What about you? How are you adjusting?”

“I’m good,” Yaz says, honestly. She grins. “Glad to be back.”

“And I’m glad to have you back, Yasmin Khan.” Before Yaz knows it, the Doctor’s striding across the room to her, pulling her into another hug. “Missed you,” she mumbles into Yaz’s shoulder.

Yaz wants to make a joke, tease the Doctor for making her wait six years just for a hug, but emotion wells up in her and she just buries her face in the Doctor’s shoulder, trying not to cry. She’s just so relieved— relieved that the Doctor still seems to want her around, relieved that she hasn’t changed so much that she doesn’t want the Doctor. Or maybe she has, and the Doctor’s changed too. A lot has happened.

They stand in the hug for a long time, fulfilling their desperation to be together again, surrounded by the TARDIS. Yaz holds the Doctor tight, afraid that if she lets go, the Doctor will fade away again, and she revels in the fact that the Doctor is holding her just as close. And when they finally pull away, the Doctor doesn’t fade away: she’s still there, standing right in front of Yaz, with her blonde hair and the same jacket and suspenders Yaz bought her way back at the start. Yaz can’t stop looking at her.

Until she remembers she’s still wearing her clothes from 1904, and that she has a whole closet on the TARDIS full of her favorite clothes from 2021. She’s enjoyed 1900’s fashion, but she misses who she used to be, someone who wore leather jackets and trousers. She hasn’t even charged her phone in three years— it’s been in her pocket this whole time, a useless slab of metal and glass, just in case something happened.

“I’d better go change,” she says, gesturing at her dress. “Can’t be stuck in the 1900’s forever, can I?”

“Definitely not,” the Doctor says with a grin. “Unless you want to, of course, but clearly you don’t.”

“Definitely not,” Yaz echoes. She gives the Doctor another quick hug, partially because she can and partially to remind herself that the Doctor is still real and tangible and there, and leaves the console room. First left, ninth right, third left. Even after all this time, navigating the winding corridors is second nature, and when she comes into her room she breathes a sigh of relief. It looks exactly how she left it: her nice big bed with its purple bedspread, her plush blue rug, her bookshelf, her neatly organized desk and chair, the posters she’s been collecting from different adventures she’s been on. Nothing feels more like home than this room, at this point— not even her actual home in Sheffield, where she technically still lives with her sister and parents.

She pulls the closet open and sees all her old clothes, lined up in a row. It’s almost surreal, after three years, to see all her old fashion. In so many ways, she’s a different person now. She picks out a floral button up and black jeans and lays them out on the bed before going into the bathroom. This, too, is exactly as she remembered it: the walls are the same copper chrome as the rest of the TARDIS, with a fuzzy purple bath mat laid in front of the tub and a matching towel hanging off a rod.

Yaz takes her time in the bath. One of the perks of the TARDIS is that the water is always the exact right temperature, and never seems to go cold— someday she’ll have to ask the Doctor about that, but for now she’s content to just enjoy it. It feels like she’s washing away everything: three years in the 1900’s, searching for the end of the world, missing the Doctor; all the time she spent worrying and wondering what the Doctor thought of her; the soul-churning fear that the entire universe was about to die, that she was going to be unmade. Everything is all right now: she’s in the TARDIS, and the universe seemed all right, and she was safe. Well, as safe as anyone is inside the TARDIS, but Yaz has always chased danger.

She gets out of the tub and wraps herself in the fluffy purple towel. She looks at herself in the mirror. She almost expects some big change, to look fundamentally different somehow, but she looks the same as ever, her wet hair hanging to her chest, her face relaxed. She dries her hair and instinctively pulls it into the braided bun she learned in 1901. She’s been doing this braid every morning for the last three years; it’s part of her daily routine at this point. She’ll experiment later, figure out which 21st-century hairstyles still actually fit her, but for now she’s happy with this. And then she goes out and puts on the button up and jeans she picked out earlier, and she’s starting to feel more like herself. She hasn’t realized how much the long dresses and hats chafed against her preferred presentation— it wasn’t like she had much else with her in the 1900’s, except maybe the outfit she’d come in with. She got used to it because she had to, but now she’s back in her own clothes she realizes how much better she feels. She adds a maroon leather jacket to the mix, and then she’s ready to go. She takes a deep breath, gives herself an encouraging smile in the mirror, and goes back out to the console room.

The Doctor is still there, almost exactly where Yaz left her, fiddling with the console. She looks up when Yaz comes in, a huge grin on her face.

“Yaz! You’re back!”

“You miss me?” Yaz teases.

“Course I did.” The Doctor grins. “What do you say, are you up for another adventure?”

Yaz feels a smile spread across her face before she even has a chance to think about it. “Of course I am.” She pauses. “But I was thinking— can we invite Dan along for a bit? After all we put him through, I think he ought to have some fun.”

The Doctor immediately jumps into action. She runs towards Yaz— “Yes! Brilliant! Gold star for Yaz!” —then away— “Just got to set the location to Liverpool...” —and she’s doing her dance around the console, and Yaz joins her, a little rusty after three years, but the Doctor gives her pointers, and it’s like nothing’s changed. They pick Dan up; he seems only too glad to come on board. The Doctor points him to the bedrooms, and Yaz is about to follow, but then the Doctor says her name— and she turns— and—

The Doctor finally admits she’s been shutting Yaz out. Well, she has , and it’s about time. It’s been three years. Three years traveling together, and three years in the past, dissecting every bit of their relationship over and over again. The way she’s talking, Yaz thinks she’s starting to understand why the Doctor shut her out, but that doesn’t make it okay. That doesn’t make it fair. And to add insult to injury, the minute she’s finally getting somewhere, Dan comes back in having gotten lost on the way to the bedrooms. Yaz can’t hide her disappointment.

Later, though, after Dan’s found himself a room and gotten settled, after Yaz wanders the halls for a bit, revisiting all her favorite old rooms, the Doctor finds her in the library. Yaz is sitting on the sofa, reading some far future romance novel, and the Doctor comes and sits down right next to her.

“You all right?” she asks. She’s already asked Yaz twice, but Yaz can see in her eyes how nervous she is. The Doctor tries to hide her emotions, but her eyes always betray her.

“I’m good,” Yaz says. “Really.”

“I just—” The Doctor looks up at the ceiling. “I was worried about you, lost in the past like that.”

“I was worried about you!” Yaz exclaims. “Stuck as an angel with the world ending.”

“Wasn’t actually an angel that long,” the Doctor corrects, tilting her head to the side. “Anyway, it was only a few hours for me. I think. Hard to tell. Time got all weird.”

Yaz turns this over in her mind. “If it was just a few hours, how come you said you missed me like that?”

“I did miss you!” the Doctor exclaims. “It was a tough few hours, I’ll tell you that much.”

Yaz laughs. She can’t help it: being around the Doctor always makes her smile.

“Well, I missed you too,” she says. “For a lot more than a few hours.”

“How long, exactly?”

“1901 to 1904.” Yaz counts it in her head. “Three years, give or take.”

The Doctor scrunches her mouth. “I never meant for that to happen. I’m sorry, Yaz.”

“I knew the risks of traveling with you.” Yaz shrugs. “I’m lucky I’m not dead.” Of course there’s more to it than that— Yaz doesn’t know what she’ll say to her family when she gets back— but Yaz means it when she says she knew the risks. “Anyway, I learned a lot. How to dress vintage. How to sneak into old tombs.” How to dispose of a body, she doesn’t say.

“Yasmin Khan.” The Doctor is looking at her with sheer appreciation. “You figured it out.”

“Suppose I did.” Yaz’s cheeks feel hot. She’s lucky her brown skin doesn’t show a blush. “Wasn’t half bad, really. I was worried about you the whole time, though.” She nods to the Doctor. “Anyway, what about you? What happened in those three hours?”

The Doctor inhales, then stops short. “It won’t make sense out of context.”

“So tell me the context,” Yaz prods.

“Tonight?” the Doctor asks, searching Yaz’s face.

Yaz raises her eyebrows, holding the Doctor’s gaze. Usually, this is where the Doctor would look away, deflect, find something else to talk about.

But not this time. The Doctor keeps her eyes on Yaz’s.

“What do you want to know first?”

Yaz thinks for a moment. What does she want to know first? Of everything the Doctor’s hidden from her, everything she’s risked her life for, what does she want to know? “Just start from the beginning,” she decides, even though that’s a ridiculous thing to ask of a time traveler.

But the Doctor just nods. “All right, then. The beginning.” She takes a deep breath. “It starts on Gallifrey, I suppose.”

And Yaz rests her head against the sofa cushion, letting the Doctor’s voice wash over her. It’s been three years— but she’s glad to be home.