Chapter Text
Two psychic paper tickets later, Yaz found herself standing atop a seemingly endless and nauseatingly ill-maintained set of stairs roughly hewn into side of the mountain. The salty breeze, which played lazily across the surface of the pellucid waters hundreds of feet below, was fierce and powerful up here; this close to the edge of the cliff, it whipped through Yaz's hair and stung her eyes.
"I don't know about this," she said, leaning over the unnervingly loose wooden barrier at the top of the staircase and contemplating the dozens of thin, crumbling switchbacks below. "How... regulated is this place?"
"Very!" the Doctor replied. "Well, I mean... we signed the waivers, which, admittedly, were quite thorough, but nobody's died yet! ...I think."
"You think?" Yaz asked, her knuckles going white against the cherry-colored wood.
"Aw, come on, Yaz!" the Doctor said, the ferocious wind billowing at her coat and turning her cheeks pink. "We've done much worse before! Remember the crane?"
Yaz's heart leapt into her throat. "Yeah... I didn't exactly enjoy the whole 'climbing up' thing."
But the Doctor was already fifty feet below her, hopping from grassy step to grassy step with astonishing ease.
Yaz took a deep breath and steadied herself. She glanced around the fjord. It was undeniably beautiful. There was the peaceful, glassy expanse of bright pink water below her, a formidable salmon-colored cliff rising from it with another set of tiny stairs carved into its rocky side. There was the meadow atop the cliff, carpeted in soft, fuchsia-colored grass that swayed invitingly, beckoning her over. In the distance, she could see a great tear drop-shaped building spiraling skyward, taller than any Earth building she'd seen, glowing in the rosy sunlight like a beacon. Behind that was a set of mountains, towering but with edges worn soft by time, each ridge cast in a different purplish hue. To the back of her was the sprawling meadow where they'd arrived-- she could see the TARDIS a ways off, its windows blazing the same fiery pink as the building across the way. In this light, the box's blue wood looked almost violet. To the right of her, just within her line of sight, was the edge of the cliff, and beyond that, the vast ocean, shining beneath bubblegum-pink clouds and a sky painted with colors that looked astonishingly like an Earth sunrise.
"Are you coming?" came a small voice from far below her. Yaz glanced down from her perch and saw the tiny form of the Doctor, already halfway through the switchbacks, looking up at her. Far below her, the dense crowd of tourists was already reaching the docks. Yaz could just make out the forms of Mr. Lemming and the other chaperone, trying unsuccessfully to corral their teeming charges.
"Coming!" Yaz yelled back, hoping her voice wouldn't get lost in the wind.
'It's now or never, Yaz. WWTDD?'
Yaz blinked. The Doctor had already resumed her nimble and impressively fast-paced journey to the bottom.
'Well... that.'
So, gripping her fists together so tightly that her nails bit into the palms of her hands, Yaz gritted her teeth and began the descent. She couldn't much focus on the abundant beauty around her; one misstep and she'd be hurtling into the water below. She cursed the Andarans for neglecting railings.
'Must be pretty well-balanced, then.'
It took a shockingly small amount of time for Yaz to reach the bottom, even with the fact that she practically butt-scooted down half the stairs. She hastily wiped the sheen of sweat from her forehead as the Doctor, hardly winded, strode toward her, followed by the female chaperone.
"You made it!" the Doctor said, a little overeagerly. Yaz grinned.
"Barely."
"Oh!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Sorry, being rude. Again."
She stepped to the side and gestured toward the woman next to her. Up close, Yaz saw how small she was, and quite round. She was built rather like a ball of yarn. Her curly blue hair was cropped closely to her scalp, and she wore a smile that showed off a row of brilliantly white teeth.
"The Doctor tells me you're called Yaz. Pleased to meet you! Miss Tingili Lemming, at your service," the woman said, wringing one of Yaz's hands with her own. "You can call me Tinni."
"Lemming?" Yaz asked. "That's sweet. Is Mr. Lemming your husband?"
"Oh no!" Tinni said hastily. "'Lemming' is a title where we're from. You inherit titles based on the job you choose. All Lemmings in hospitality, all Finchlitts in medicine, all Mullners in plumbing, and so on."
"That's gotta make things confusing. What if you want a specific plumber and there are two Tim Mullners?"
"It... er... I s'pose it does get a bit confusing," Tinni confessed. "You've gotta sort of... describe who you're looking for. But it's a centuries-old system. We make do."
"Anyway," the Doctor said hastily, interjecting as though Yaz had said something rude, "we'd better get to the snorkels, eh?"
"Of course, of course!" Tinni replied. "I'd better corral the group. Fourteen different planets represented on this trip; can you believe it? The biggest group our company has had in a decade."
She leaned in and stage-whispered toward Yaz and the Doctor. "My first trip as a leader. Mr. Lemming's got twelve under his belt, so he's here to give us a hand if I need it. Here's hoping it goes off without a hitch!"
And with that, she disappeared into the throng and began attempting, yet again, to out-yell a group of sixty.
Just as she disappeared, a pair of identical short men with pale pink skin emerged from a ramshackle building made of cherrywood with a sign reading 'INFORMATION.'
"Hullo!" one of the men said with an unexpectedly booming voice. As though he'd cast a spell, the tourists fell silent immediately.
"My name is Ferrin, and this is my brother, Rivvick."
Rivvick grunted in response.
"Not a big talker, him," Ferrin said, somewhat apologetically. "Anyway, I'll be with the snorkelers and he'll be driving the ferry across. The ferry's a short go; about twenty minutes, but there'll be a swim stop in the middle for those who'd like it. Snorkeling's a bit longer; around forty-five minutes to get across using our hydro-packs, which I'll explain how to use in a bit. Anyway, if the ferry group will follow Rivvick to our docks, just a ten-minute walk from here, I'll start briefing our snorkelers."
Surprisingly, the group managed to divide itself with little commotion. Yaz cast a sidelong glance at Mr. Lemming and Tinni; they both looked a complicated mix of relieved and irritated at Ferrin's ability to so easily control their groups.
Naturally, the Doctor dragged Yaz to the front for the demonstration, and whispered little corrections to Ferrin's instructions as he spoke.
"These hydro-packs will help us cross the water in half the time that it would normally take us, and they'll support those who can't swim quite as well. They've been modified not to go beyond ten pl though, so don't expect to be zipping around and causing a ruckus."
"'Pl' is porometers per length. Ten is about sixteen kilometers per hour," the Doctor whispered.
"Anyway, you'll put your arms into the holes here and hold it out in front of you. The jets work underwater, so you have to lay flat on your stomach to avoid impeding the flow. If you decide to tread water, switch it off."
"Technically," the Doctor whispered, "there's a secondary propulsion system that channels air above the water, so you don't really want to lift your head or you'll get blasted with a jet of air."
"We'll provide you with snorkel masks. Please avoid diving down, as it can break the hydro-packs. They're meant for surface use only."
"Well..." the Doctor said in Yaz's ear, "not really. They can be used for scuba diving, up to two hundred meters below the surface even, you just have to put them into 'dive mode.'"
"We'll also be offering everyone a complimentary hydrophobic spray, which I strongly encourage you make use of if you don't want to ruin your clothing. The water does, unfortunately, stain."
"That bit is true," the Doctor whispered. "Better take the spray."
"Now that the boring bit's done, let me tell you what we're about to do," Ferrin said, a smile spreading across his face.
"Welcome to the most biodiverse place on Nothing. These waters are home to over fifty species of fish, two-hundred species of plants, and countless species of coral and cephalopods. The water temperature is a comfortable four degrees--"
Yaz's eyes went wide, but the Doctor hurriedly whispered that four degrees here was really twenty-six Celsius.
"--the ocean that feeds the fjord is the oldest of the nearly fifty seas on Nothing. Legend has it that this ocean was formed when the god Caldor --the ocean's namesake-- became furious with the first Andarans. Caldor was a vengeful god who had threatened countless times to plunge the Andarans into darkness if they failed to worship him appropriately. The Andars, fed up with Caldor's threats, sent their strongest warriors to remove one of his eyes and put it in sky, giving us our second sun. The warriors succeeded, and in retaliation, Caldor attempted to split the planet in two, but was stopped by the goddess Calgira, his true love. Calgira conjured Caldor a new eye out of stone, but cast him away, claiming that she was unable to be with one so fickle and cruel. Regretful, Caldor wept, his new eye filling the chasm he'd created with pink tears, until it became the ocean we see today."
"Cheerful bunch," Yaz whispered to the Doctor.
"Yeah... forgot that bit. Most of their legends are pretty dark," the Doctor whispered back.
"Anyway, who's for swimming in a sea of tears then?" Ferrin asked. A ripple of polite laughter went through the crowd.
"We are!" the Doctor exclaimed loudly, grabbing Yaz's hand and pulling them to the front of the line.
An hour later, Yaz was standing on the opposite bank, sopping wet. She looked askance at the Doctor, who gazed back at her sheepishly.
"Sorry... didn't realize that the hydrophobic spray they gave us wouldn't work on extragalactic fabrics."
Yaz looked enviously at the thirty or so tourists who were emerging from the water, their clothing dry as a bone. But her anger softened when she met the Doctor's eye; the woman looked not unlike a puppy who had gotten into something it wasn't supposed to. Her sodden, pink-stained overcoat suddenly looked overlarge, and her clothing clung to her like a second skin. Yaz sighed and shrugged off her ruined leather jacket, tying it around her waist. The Doctor stooped down to dump what might've been half the ocean out of her boot.
Yaz walked over to the Doctor and put a hand on her shoulder. The river wasn't cold, —actually, it had been rather pleasantly warm— but the air was cool and she was shivering... a shivering that seemed only to increase at Yaz's touch.
She searched for something to say. Though she was extremely uncomfortable, with jeans and sweater cold, dripping, and claustrophobically tight, the experience had been incredible.
"It were beautiful though weren't it?" Yaz asked with a warm smile.
The Doctor straightened up at that.
"It really was," she said, unable to stop the excited grin from spreading its way across her cheeks.
"Did you see that really big fish? What did the Ferrin call it?"
"The one with the spots?" the Doctor asked, eyes alight with childlike whimsy. "A blue graybel, that was. Magnificent species. They're like jellyfish back on Earth; they can regenerate their cells and live for centuries."
"Sort of like you, then?"
"Yep," she grinned. "Sort of like me. Except, you know, without the glowy bits and total physiological changes."
"Yeah," Yaz replied, suddenly unable to meet the Doctor's eyes.
'Total physiological changes.'
Another reminder that the Doctor --her Doctor-- was running out of time. That, inevitably, she'd change, just as Time had told her on Atropos. How much longer did they have together? And could she really keep traveling with someone whose entire personality had changed, someone who had once been her closest friend in the world, someone who she...
Never mind.
Yaz looked up and, once again, saw that the Doctor looked confused and concerned. She wondered how long she'd been lost in thought. She forced herself to straighten up and tried to put an adventurous glint into her eye.
"Really, though, that was amazin'. Thank you, Doctor. I don't care if I feel like a wet rag. Who else gets to snorkel and learn about alien species with their best friend?"
A cherry flush colored the Doctor's cheeks at that, but Yaz managed to convince herself that it was from the cold.
Ferrin clapped his hands together and made Yaz and the Doctor jump. The group all began to crowd around him, and soon all Yaz could see was the curly, baby-pink hair atop his head. People here were rather short, it seemed.
"Well done, well done everyone! And gold star to the Doctor for asking the most questions... and knowing almost as many facts as me!"
The Doctor beamed, and to the right of her, Yaz heard Tinni let out a little puff of frustration.
"That's my time with you up, but I did enjoy myself. You can link back up with the ferry crowd at the top of the stairs. Though you could of course take the lift if you'd prefer."
Yaz looked at the Doctor, her mouth falling open a little.
"We could've taken a lift down?" she hissed.
"Tell me the walk wasn't MUCH better," the Doctor replied. "Lifts are boring! What's fun about a lift?"
"Alright, alright," she said. "Though I didn't much fancy nearly falling to my death about four times. And you try keeping your dignity when you have to go down a staircase on your bum in front of a million strangers."
But the Doctor had stopped listening and was pulling Yaz toward the stairs.
"You'd better go up ahead of me," Yaz said, nervously eyeballing the hundreds of stairs above her. "I'll just slow you down. See you in an hour."
The Doctor rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. "Fine," she groaned, "we'll take the lift!"
She grabbed Yaz's hand and pulled her toward the single rickety lift, where a bottleneck of tourists was already forming. It seemed no one except the Doctor wanted to make the harrowing cliffside trek for a second time.
Upon closer inspection, the lift seemed to be in worse shape than the stairs. Once the crowd had thinned and the Doctor and Yaz were closer to the front, they could see that it appeared to be little more than a repurposed wooden mining elevator, raised by a single cable up the cliffside without a shaft. It lurched and shuddered as it rose, and each group of tourists that packed in shared the same anxious expression.
"Doesn't really seem ready for tourists, does it?" Yaz asked the Doctor. "Everything is so... slapped together. I thought they were technological geniuses."
"Out there, yes," the Doctor replied patiently, gesturing toward the top of the cliff. "Most people fly into the heart of the city. Great spaceport there. Out here, it's still unregulated. Just a few small businesses vying for the attention of tourists."
"Most people hike around here by themselves," interjected Tinni, who had materialized just below Yaz's left shoulder. "The fjord isn't too far from the city, so it isn't really necessary to have tour guides if you've got a map. Unless you have a group of sixty, that is."
She twisted her hands together nervously.
"You're doing a great job, Tinni," the Doctor said, clapping her on the back.
"Yeah," Yaz added with a smile. "Everyone seems to be having a lot of fun. Give yourself some credit!"
Tinni smiled at them. "You're too kind, the both of you. What brings you to Nothing, then? Honeymoon?"
The Doctor and Yaz practically leapt apart at that, refusing to look anywhere but at the ground. Yaz hoped the pink sunlight concealed the beet-red blush that was undoubtedly rising in her cheeks.
"No no no no no," the Doctor said immediately. Yaz hazarded a glance at her, then wished she hadn't. The discomfort in her face was plain to see.
"We're, no, uh, we're..." she trailed off.
"Just visiting," Yaz said quickly. "She's, mm, she's my... sister?"
The Doctor looked over at Yaz, her eyebrows knitted together in confusion and her mouth hanging open.
It was clear that she wasn't going to help Yaz out of this lie.
"In-law," Yaz added, hoping Tinni would believe her. "Sorry, still getting used to that bit. Just married my, er... brother. Last month. Thought we'd go on a sister bonding trip, you know."
"Yep, that's us!" the Doctor said, stepping toward Yaz and wrapping her arm around her shoulders in a familial hug. Yaz could feel the heat of the Doctor's embarrassment through her clothes.
"Still getting used to it," Yaz added, hoping her own mix of both situational awkwardness and nervousness at the Doctor's proximity wasn't burning through her skin as well. To have her this close, touching Yaz's shoulders...
She was sure the Doctor could feel her heart pounding.
Tinni looked at them skeptically, but nodded. "Right... took me a while to get used to my sister-in-law. Though she wasn't half as bad as my father-in-law; right old git, that one."
Yaz smiled and tried to casually wrench herself out the Time Lord's grip. The Doctor looked at the ground and kicked at a peach-colored rock with her shoe.
"Looks like it's time for us," Tinni said, gesturing toward the empty lift.
The three of them piled in, followed by four more tourists --clearly far more than the lift was meant to carry-- and Yaz squeezed her eyes shut as it slowly trundled upward. Somehow, they made it to the top without incident, though the tall, green, fleshy-looking alien with beetle-black eyes (the Doctor called it a "Slitheen") had to lean over the side and vomit twice.
When they reached the top, Yaz saw a thin dirt trail weaving its way through the meadow, heading in the direction of the spire. Now that she was closer, she could make out several other buildings standing in its shadow; a small city cobbled together with cathedral-like structures in varying shapes and sizes dotting the landscape. They were still a little ways off, but another small ticket booth to the side advertised transport for those who didn't want to make the hike.
"S'pose we might as well take them up on a ride, eh?" the Doctor asked Yaz. "That walk's easily an hour long. I want to take you to my favorite restaurant here before we go to the Pinnacle of the Tempest. Hopefully this lot'll be cleared out by then," she said, waving her hand toward the tourists who were already overwhelming the young woman manning the ticket booth.
"Yeah, not a bad idea," Yaz replied. "What restaurant?"
"You'll have to wait and see," the Doctor said, waggling her eyebrows mischievously. "You'll love it though. Imagine the Rainforest Cafe, only full of real plants and wildlife. So fun."
Yaz swallowed nervously. She knew the Doctor's idea of 'fun' usually involved almost losing a limb, and she didn't much care to meet any carnivorous plants or ferocious animals. Still, she and the Doctor were far more competent than the gawking group of tourists, so if the city was safe enough for them, she was certain that it had to be safe enough for her.
"Lead the way," Yaz said, and the Doctor took her hand and eagerly towed her to the ticket booth.