Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"The whole universe ahead of us... where to, Yasmin Khan?"

Yaz smiled at the Doctor's eager face. Her hand was already on the dematerialization lever, and she was beaming. Ever since Dan had left, the Doctor had seemed unnaturally upbeat. After traveling together for so long, Yaz knew well enough that his departure had impacted the Doctor deeply, but as was par for the course at this point, she was hiding it beneath a thick veneer of enthusiasm. Still, after their discussion on the beach, Yaz felt hesitant to pry. Even looking at the Doctor sent electricity down her spine. It was too soon for both of them to ask her to be vulnerable again. How could Yaz trust herself to respect the Doctor's boundaries if she gave her those sad, solemn hazel eyes that melted her heart? No, she needed more time to heal, to create distance, to remind herself that they were back to the beginning.

'You're friends, Yaz', she thought. 'Just friends. That's all.'

"And that's okay," she whispered to herself.

"What was that?" the Doctor asked.

"Nothin'. Nothin' at all," Yaz replied hastily.

"Right."

The Doctor's face fell a bit.

Yaz felt a pang of guilt. She'd been guarding herself around the Doctor lately. Already three weeks, four adventures, and two near-death experiences had passed since they'd spoken about their feelings. And still, an unholy mix of shame, guilt, embarrassment, and sadness stewed in Yaz's chest each time the pair talked. This was a challenge, especially because the Doctor had picked up on Yaz's evasiveness, in spite of being evasive herself. But her emotions had become a barrier to their unimpeachable connection, so they spent their time pretending. Attempting, always, to pretend their way back to normalcy. Back to what they once had. Before it went all... squiggly.

"Well then," the Doctor said, her face twisting into a mask of pleasantry again. "I s'pose we can go to that planet."

"What planet?" Yaz asked, eyebrows raised in confusion.

"Nothing! The planet called 'Nothing'."

"Right, yeah, how could I forget about the planet called 'Nothing'?" Yaz asked sarcastically.

"Just wait until you see it, Yaz," the Doctor said, ignoring Yaz's remark. She'd already begun whizzing around the console, flipping switches and setting a navigational course. "It's beautiful."

"Then why's it called 'Nothing'?"

"The locals didn't want it to become a tourist trap, really. Sort of like Greenland and Iceland. I mean, if you were an early traveler, would you really go to a place called 'Ice-land' over one called 'Green-land'? Same principal with Nothing."

"So what, it's a got a sister planet that's a real dump but it's called 'Something'?"

"Nah," the Doctor replied, pulling the dematerialization lever. "Just Nothing. It's a big universe, Yaz. Nothing is pretty far out there. They don't need any other misdirections. Even if people find out how lovely it is —which, in a few hundred years, they will— most of 'em aren't willing to make the trek. But just to be safe, we're going to the time when they first opened it to visitors."

"I like to avoid crowds," she added.

'Great,' Yaz thought, 'alone together on a stunning planet.'

A deep, drum-like sound signaled that the TARDIS had landed. The Doctor grabbed her coat from where it was hanging on one of the crystalline columns and threw open the doors with gusto.

"Welcome, Yaz," she said, "to the year thirty-two hundred and thirty-three."

Yaz followed the Doctor out and shielded her eyes from the blinding, pinkish light of a foreign sun.

"Binary suns," the Doctor said proudly.

Right, make that 'suns' then.

Now that her eyes had adjusted, Yaz took a moment to glance around. All around them were vast, rolling hills of fuchsia-colored grass, stretching for what seemed like miles. Everything had a soft, pink glow about it, including Yaz and the Doctor. She stared down at her hands, at the skin that had now taken on an unfamiliar hue.

'How strange.'

Yaz and the Doctor were standing on the edge of a great fjord, the ravine below full of rosy, crystal-clear water. "Ah," the Doctor said, scratching at the nape of her neck, "maybe should've landed on the other side of that."

"You think so?" Yaz said, nudging the Doctor playfully.

She took a step away once she remembered herself.

And there it was: that oh-so-familiar hot, roiling shame rising up in her chest as she saw the confused look on the Doctor's face.

Yaz wanted so badly for things to be the way they used to, so why was she the one preventing it?

Still, hadn't the Doctor also changed? Even before they'd dropped Dan back home, she'd refused to leave Yaz's side. Gone were the 'wait here's and 'split up's... unless it was really, really dangerous, that is. Because of how seldom this happened now, Yaz usually understood that if the Doctor said "stay back," it meant 'you following me could endanger us both, so stay and under no circumstances argue.'

That was how the Doctor had needed to say it to make Yaz finally understand. Not "it's too dangerous for you," but "you could endanger us both."

Of course, there were still the times where she slunk along in the shadows behind the Doctor anyway, hoping and praying that her freaky Time Lord hearing wouldn't detect Yaz's quiet footfalls.

"Yaz?" the Doctor asked, snapping her out of her reverie.

"What? Nothin', what?" She asked, a little more defensively than she meant to.

The Doctor looked at her quizzically. "I was just wondering if you fancied a trip across the river by snorkel or by boat."

Yaz sighed. "Sorry, yeah. By snorkel?"

The Doctor's face brightened up immediately, her smile almost as blinding as the twin sunlight beating down on them.

"By snorkel, yeah! There's a sign down there --teeny tiny, you wouldn't be able to read it--, 'ferries for five knackel, snorkels for two. Come see Merlitt Fjord, with the most biodiverse waters on Nothing.'"

"I mean, that sounds amazin', but that seems pretty touristy to me. I thought you said we were some of the first?"

"Eh... I did, but I, ehm... I seem to have gotten the date off."

The Doctor stuck her finger into the air, then thrust it into her mouth and smacked her lips loudly.

"Just by a couple hundred years, I think. Still shouldn't be too congested."

Yaz caught sight of something behind the Doctor, then rolled her eyes and walked over, putting her hands on the woman's shoulders to gently rotate her around. She didn't notice the Doctor stiffen beneath her grip.

"Then who are they?"

A mass of alien bodies, from humanoids to little green men to snake-like creatures and bipedal cats were clustered together, pushing and shoving and craning their necks to take in the vast field. Yaz could just make out a tiny little speck of a woman at the front, skin and hair a vibrant turquoise blue, wildly gesticulating and trying to yell over the hum of the sightseers.

"Ladies, gentlemen, and variations thereupon, please direct your attention this way! If the snorkel group would follow me to the right, and if the ferry-goers would please follow Mr. Lemming to the ticket booths straight ahead, we'll make it to the Pinnacle of the Tempest by noon! Please keep moving; we'll get a chance to come back and see the Fiery Fields later on, everyone!"

But the crowd gave no indication of having heard the guide, and continued their distracted stampede, even as Mr. Lemming (a very tall, sallow man with grayish skin) shoved his way to the front and began waving a large white sign that read "FERRY."

The Doctor sighed.

"Augh! Every time, Yaz, every time! I always get the dates wrong."

Yaz couldn't help but smile; there was something about the way the Doctor crinkled up her face and bared her teeth when she exaggeratedly sighed that made her want to laugh aloud, even in near-death situations.

"It's alright," Yaz said, unaware that she still had the Doctor's shoulders in her grip. "I mean, come on, it's what, sixty of them? And we know they're headed to the Pinnacle of the Temper or whatever, so we'll just avoid them, yeah?"

"Tempest," the Doctor corrected, not unkindly.

"Come again?" Yaz asked.

"It's the 'Pinnacle of the Tempest.' A memorial to those lost during the First Invasion."

Yaz suddenly became aware of how long she'd been holding onto the Doctor. Blushing, she released her and took a step back.

"What's the 'First Invasion'?" She asked hurriedly, hoping to distract from her abrupt skittishness.

The Doctor's face darkened. "An attempted colonization of the planet by the Kalsparans about four hundred years ago. The Indigenous race —Andarans, they're called— suffered enormous losses, but fought the Kalsparans off. Notorious for their cruelty, the Kalsparans are. That's why the Andarans were reluctant to open Nothing to travelers for so long. But they're tremendously technologically advanced; always have been. One of this galaxy's most ingenious races. After the First Invasion, they readied themselves. Their defenses are at their strongest now... so they finally started to allow tourism. Very hard to get in, though. Lucky for us," with a devilish grin, the Doctor flashed the psychic paper, "we have a VIP pass and a recommendation from the Minister of Security herself!"

Yaz grinned back. "I like the sound of that."

She and the Doctor made to leave, but Yaz stopped short. Something about what the Doctor had just said caught in her brain and turned her blood cold.

"Doctor," she said nervously. "Why... why did they call it the 'First' Invasion?"

To Yaz's relief, the Doctor showed no concern of her own. "The Andars have low-level prophetic abilities, and one of their most venerated seers predicted that there would come a Second Invasion. She was right, but that's centuries off, even with my overshoot."

"Good," Yaz replied. "Because if anyone was gonna get caught up in a bloody war on the most beautiful planet in this galaxy, it would be us."

"Not today, Yasmin Khan," the Doctor said, puffing out her chest. "Today, we're untouchable."

"Don't tempt fate," Yaz said. "Let's see, how many times have we tried to take a vacation day just to have it ruined by aliens, or humans, or a killer planet?"

"Just fourteen!" the Doctor replied indignantly. Yaz just barely suppressed her laughter at Time Lord's petulant stomp.

'Thousands of years old, huh?'

"Are you counting the merengue fiasco?" Yaz asked.

"Okay, fifteen..."

"And the sand worms in Florida?"

"Sixteen..."

"And—"

"Okay, okay I get it! Maybe there've been a handful—"

"Dozens," Yaz interjected.

"Okay, dozens—"

"Or maybe it's hundreds," Yaz said impishly.

"Fine!" the Doctor said, throwing up her arms. "I might maybe get us into trouble a lot, but today, I swear to you, we will have a peaceful, relaxing day!"

"You seem pretty flustered for someone who's promising peace and relaxation."

The Doctor let out a puff of air, jostling a few of the blonde hairs that had fallen across her forehead in her exasperation. Yaz sucked in an involuntary breath.

"I pinky swear," she said, holding out her finger. Yaz wrapped her own around it, hoping desperately that the Doctor didn't notice how clammy she was.

The two smiled earnestly at each other, and for just one, fleeting moment, things felt normal. The Doctor and Yaz, exploring the universe, one planet at a time.

And then Yaz thought about how easy it would be to close the space between them. How the Doctor's pinky felt warm, too, and how her soft eyes looked even warmer, and how they were looking at each other, and how long had passed? Seconds? Minutes? Eons?

Then the Doctor dropped her hand down and, blushing a bit, said "right then! Let's snorkel, shall we?"

Yaz blinked and wiped her palms, both of which had pooled with sweat, on her pants. She put on her best impression of a confident, even-keeled grin.

"Let's snorkel."

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.

Chapter Text

Yaz only just managed to hold down her lunch during the rumbling, bumpy truck ride into the city. As it turned out, 'transport' meant shoving as many tourists as possible (roughly twenty to a load) into an open hay truck and hoping no one fell out as they drove through the meadow, leaving tire tracks of crushed grass in their wake.

Their driver, Unigarde, was a leathery, taciturn man with dark eyes and the same pale pink skin as Ferrin and Rivvick. He said little as they rode along; the trip took twenty minutes and saw them winding past farmers' fields; vast swaths of lavender and violet-colored flowers with petals that made them look like fireworks bursting to life, freshly-tilled plots with tiny red seedlings just starting to poke through the dirt, dense rows of shrubs with what appeared to be golden-colored corn cobs growing from them. The tourists did all the requisite "ooh"ing and "aah"ing, and a few tried, unsuccessfully, to ask Unigarde questions, but he merely shrugged in response. Naturally, the Doctor took over.

"Unigarde, what's that growing out of the bushes?" one woman, who looked human but for her pointed, elf-like ears said into the open cab.

"Food," Unigarde said bluntly.

The Doctor, who'd up to that point been at Yaz's side, visibly straining with the effort of not answering the questions, looked at Yaz pleadingly, as though asking for permission to jump in. Making sure it wasn't a social faux pas. Yaz smiled at the woman's shining hazel eyes, alight with knowledge and eager to share. She put her hand over the Doctor's, an innocent enough gesture --friends hold hands, right?-- and nodded.

The Doctor took a deep breath, the vein that had been pulsing in her forehead settling.

"It's redpin," the Doctor said.

"Excuse me?" asked the woman.

"Redpin; the plant that's growing out of those shrubs. You can eat it straight off the cob, though a lot of people around here prefer to turn it into a mash. Tastes sweet... although some people have a gene that makes it taste rather like metal. Lucky for me, I love metal," she added with a cheeky grin, though Yaz knew she was likely being candid.

The woman looked at her peculiarly, but apparently decided her answer was satisfactory, as she gave a terse nod of thanks and sat back, gazing at the fields of redpin.

"What about that plant we saw way back, the one that was sort of orange and oblong?" the Slitheen from earlier asked.

"Oh, that's quatrille, it's a vegetable closely related to redpin. Grows like mad, that. Has all your essential vitamins and minerals. Really great crop. Going to become one of Nothing's biggest exports in the next few years."

The Slitheen also looked at the Doctor quizzically, but she pressed on, apparently unaware that the rest of the group didn't know she was a time traveller.

"Yeah, love quatrille. Doesn't even taste like a vegetable! More like a custard cream," she said, nudging Yaz and giving her a knowing grin.

"And the purple flowers?" said Mr. Lemming. Yaz hadn't even realized he was on board; he was so much quieter than Tinni.

"Byzoniums," the Doctor said. "Beautiful. They can get almost as tall as me, if they have the space. But when they're all crowded in like that, they stay small. Live for up to eighteen years, those can."

Mr. Lemming looked impressed, as did the other passengers. Pretty soon, nearly all of them were firing off questions, not one of which the Doctor couldn't answer. Yaz looked at her proudly; she was practically glowing with joy at getting to show off and share her wealth of information.

'She'd make a great teacher,' Yaz thought.

By the time they arrived, having passed the city's security checkpoint rather slowly (Zaribones, the species to which the woman with the pointed ears belonged, apparently greatly resembled Kalsparans), most of the guests wanted to follow the Doctor around rather than their own guides. Out of the corner of her eye, Yaz could see Tinni cross her arms in frustration and begin whispering feverishly to Mr. Lemming.

"Sorry, sorry," the Doctor said to the crowd that had amassed around her and Yaz. "Urgent business Yaz and I have here. Can't have anyone wandering off with us. Besides, we're boring. Tinni and Mr. Lemming are much more fun."

"Mr. Lemming didn't know half of what you knew!" one of the tourists, who'd ridden with them, said.

Yaz saw Mr. Lemming bury his face in his hands.

"He was just letting her show off," Yaz interjected. "He definitely knows his stuff. Mr. Lemming, who founded the city?"

She hoped she'd thrown him a softball.

To her relief, Mr. Lemming looked up eagerly. "Tylific Irrisible. One of the original prophetic Andars! She had a vision of a powerful, advanced civilization with a great spire" --he gestured to the towering glass building Yaz had seen from across the fjord-- "at its heart. Of course, the spire, the Pinnacle of the Tempest, wasn't added until after the First Invasion. Why Irrisible didn't see the attacks in her vision, I'm uncertain."

"See there?" the Doctor said. "Now that's an educated fellow. I didn't know any of that!"

She cast Yaz a sidelong glance as if to say 'I absolutely knew all of that and I need you to know that I know so you can be impressed.'

Yaz rolled her eyes.

'Alright, bighead.'

"That's right," Tinni interjected. "Mr. Lemming knows his stuff, and so do I. So if you'll kindly follow us to the metro station, we can catch one of the city's --which, as I'm sure you all know, is called Tyli-- high-speed trains straight into the heart of the Pinnacle. Please be efficient here, folks; we're almost late for our tour time."

As the throng reluctantly thinned around them, following Tinni, Yaz saw Mr. Lemming throw her a grateful glance.

Once everyone was gone, the Doctor took Yaz's hand and looked up at the suns. "Sunset's in a few hours. I want to try to see it from the Pinnacle. Just spectacular from up there."

"Should we take the metro?" Yaz asked, trying not to focus too hard on the feeling of the fingers now wrapped around her own.

'She's always grabbed your hand to pull you along, Yaz. It isn't any different now.'

Then why did it feel different? Why did the Doctor's hands, which she'd held without second thought so many times before now, feel so electrified, so unfamiliar? She thought, for a moment, that she felt the Doctor give her hand a little squeeze.

"Better not," she said, bringing Yaz back to reality. "Best to avoid that lot for a while, I think."

Yaz nodded. Tyli didn't seem like a huge city, so it couldn't be that hard to get there.

"Where is this restaurant, anyway?"

"On the other side of town," the Doctor said, a bit guiltily. "But don't worry, I know a guy."

By 'know a guy,' it turned out that the Doctor just meant that she knew where there was a hover bike rental service. Unfortunately, Yaz's Earth license didn't seem to be valid halfway across the universe, so she reluctantly agreed to ride in one with a sidecar. Sitting so far below the Doctor, wearing a pink skullcap and goggles while speeding through an alien city didn't exactly help her self-image. Still, the ride helped dry out Yaz's clothes more, for which she was grateful.

Try as she might, Yaz couldn't help but gape and stare as the other tourists had; Tyli was gorgeous. She'd been right that all of the buildings were gothic, with spires and archways, all crammed together and each made of some sort of reddish, pinkish, or purplish stone. Even the petrol --or whatever they used as fuel here-- stations looked like the Notre Dame in miniature. The streets, thin, winding, and full mostly of pedestrians, were made of cobblestones in the same mismatched colors as the buildings; Yaz was grateful that they were hovering, or the ride would have been incredibly bumpy.

When they'd entered the city, Yaz had noticed that the sky looked as though it was sparkling and shimmering; like someone had just thrown a bunch of glitter hundreds of feet into the air above them. Now that they were driving into the heart, the glittering grew more bright, with little flecks of silver hanging in suspended animation all around them.

"What is that?" Yaz yelled over the hum of the bike, tugging on the Doctor's sleeve.

"Forcefield!" the Doctor called back, not taking her eyes off the road. "Like I said, very advanced race. They don't take safety lightly. It's all generated by the Pinnacle of the Tempest, which is why you can see it so much better in the middle of the city."

As they rode along, Yaz saw several oversized statues standing guard over many of the street corners; they shone peculiarly in the sunlight... almost like they were plastic. Each statue had a little plaque next to it; though Yaz couldn't read them as they sped by, she assumed them to be tributes to influential people. She'd ask the Doctor about them later.

The pair pulled into a small alleyway, which Yaz felt was a little too shrouded in darkness, especially for the time of day. A pair of pedestrians skulked past them, casting wary glances.

"Here we are!" the Doctor said happily, stepping off the bike and pulling her own TARDIS-blue goggles and helmet off.

"And where exactly is 'here'?" Yaz asked. "This place seems a little sketchy, to be honest."

"We're in Gimmal Alley. Not the best place to be caught at night, but during the day, it's fine. Besides, you're with m-"

The Doctor was interrupted by a man, much taller than Yaz and herself and human-looking save for his sage-green skin. He bowled past them, nearly knocking Yaz over in the process.

"Sorry!" the man yelled over his shoulder. Yaz was, for a moment, taken by him; he was very good-looking, with steely gray eyes and emerald-colored hair that had undoubtedly once been tidy, but now fell across his forehead as he ran.

She blinked rapidly then spun around to face the Doctor, who was looking both furious and affronted.

"He almost shoved you over!" she said, outraged, her hazel eyes flashing. She met Yaz's gaze and her expression softened. "Are you alright?" she asked gently.

"I'm fine, Doctor," Yaz said, laughing at the Time Lord's abundance of concern. "But I don't think he is," she said, nodding in the direction the man had gone.

"I don't think so, either," the Doctor said. "Whaddaya think, should we run after him or toward whatever he's running from?"

"No dinner then?" Yaz asked jokingly, already knowing the answer.

"Cafe Carillon can wait for a few minutes, just while we investigate... right?"

The Doctor searched Yaz's eyes, and some small part of her seemed to be begging Yaz to say no, that Cafe Carillon could not wait, that they'd finally have some peaceful time to themselves, damnit. But Yaz knew better.

"Cafe Carillon can wait."

The Doctor let out a puff of air, half relieved and half disappointed, then threw her arms out, gesturing to both ends of the alley.

"Which way?"

Yaz thought, trying her hardest not to be distracted by the adventurous glimmer that had appeared in the Doctor's eyes.

She loved that glimmer.

"Let's follow him," she finally said, and before she knew it, she was hand-in-hand with the Doctor again, barreling after the mysterious man.

Chapter Text

It didn't take long to catch up to the man; Yaz and the Doctor found him doubled over, breathing heavily, just two streets away. Instinctively, Yaz looked up and down the street, but they were alone. With a jolt, she noticed that they were on one of the roads that was guarded by a plastic statue; something about it made her ill-at-ease. It was incredibly realistic, down to the lines on its shining pink face and the creases in its purple tunic, but the eyes... they were off somehow. Yaz just couldn't quite put her finger on why. She turned her attention back to the man.

"So," the Doctor was saying, kneeling beside him. "What's going on? What're you running from?"

The man was still attempting to catch his breath, but he managed to splutter out "I'm innocent, I swear. Need... need to hide. Fast."

The Doctor straightened up. "Innocent? Of what?"

"N-not important," he said, "please. Need to hide."

"Oh, we're not hiding you anywhere until you tell us what's going on, mate," Yaz said.

The man looked up then, and when he met Yaz's eyes his cheeks flushed a deep green. "I-- er, I..." he stammered, but Yaz suspected that this time, it wasn't because he was out of breath.

"In your own time," the Doctor said impatiently.

The man looked away from Yaz and sat down on the cobblestones, abruptly regaining his power of speech.

"I found a device in the Pinnacle of the Tempest," he confessed. "But it wasn't supposed to be there. I'm just a student at the university in Hol. Graduate, mind you. I study architecture. The Pinnacle of the Tempest is the object of my dissertation. I was just visiting, but I noticed something... odd. A box stashed in the place of one of the stones around the central archway. Painted to match; you wouldn't notice unless you'd spent a lot of time studying that arch. I pried it out, and as soon as I did, a timer started. Forty-five minute countdown. A bomb. Security saw me, assumed I was the one behind it, so I chucked it and shifted. They've been tailing me for the last fifteen minutes."

"A bomb?" the Doctor asked breathlessly. "You're sure it's a bomb?"

"I heard people yelling for a bomb squad, so yeah, pretty sure. They started an evacuation right after I left."

"How could someone sneak a bomb into the Pinnacle of the Tempest? They have some of the best security in the galaxy."

"Well, this idiot got out," Yaz said, nodding toward the man.

"Oi!" he exclaimed.

Suddenly, the sound of heavy footfalls began echoing down the alleyway.

"It's them," the man whispered. "Please, you've got to hide me."

The Doctor and Yaz looked at each other anxiously.

"The cafe can wait," Yaz whispered.

"Right then," the Doctor said, eyes apologetic. "We've got to stop that bomb."

She stuck her hand out to the man, who looked up at it, eyes wide. "Are you insane?" he asked, careful not to make eye contact with Yaz. "We could die! Anyway, they have a bomb squad that's probably already defused it!"

"Do you want to get out of here or not?" Yaz asked, her voice tight with frustration. "Because I reckon those security blokes are about thirty seconds from catching us all."

The man sighed, but took the Doctor's hand anyway and pulled himself into a standing position.

"Brilliant," the Doctor said, her familiar 'we've finally found trouble' grin plastered across her face. "What's your name?"

"Tapaxi," the man said.

"Nice to meet you, Tapaxi. Now run!"

The trio tore off just as the security rounded the bend to their street.

'Great, now we're accomplices,' Yaz thought.

"Stop, stop!" yelled a woman from behind them, and Yaz was relieved to hear that she sounded out of breath.

"You... you're... under arrest!" shouted a man, also wheezing a little.

Yaz, Tapaxi, and the Doctor wove through the streets, the Doctor in the lead, and Yaz was surprised when the Doctor had led them right back to the cafe.

"Get on," the Doctor said, pulling her goggles and helmet out of her cavernous pocket and swinging her leg over the seat.

Yaz practically threw herself into the sidecar, cramming her own goggles back onto her head.

"Where the hell am I supposed to go?" Tapaxi said, a growing note of panic in his voice.

"On the back, of course," the Doctor said. "Come on!" She patted the seat behind her.

"Wait... you mean I could've been sitting there the whole time?" Yaz asked, feeling even stupider as she looked up at the Doctor through her pink goggles.

"The sidecar is way cooler," the Doctor said. "Now, helmet on!"

Yaz fought to keep from rolling her eyes as she smashed the skullcap onto her head.

Tapaxi hesitated for a moment, but upon seeing the heads of two security guards as they sprinted into the street, he hopped on, wrapping his arms around the Doctor's waist. Yaz felt a stab of envy at how close he was... it should be her up there, pressed against the Doctor, getting to breathe in her scent, linking her arms in front of her stomach...

'Stop it, Yaz. You're friends. That's all; just friends.'

As soon as Tapaxi was on the bike, the Doctor kicked off, traveling at breakneck speed toward the Pinnacle. Yaz gripped the edges of the sidecar anxiously; the Doctor was driving with an erratic sort of precision, just barely missing pedestrians who threw them dirty looks, yelled, or offered what she could only assume were profane alien gestures.

Yaz hazarded a glance at Tapaxi, who somehow looked even greener than he already was. It was almost comical. He looked every bit the traditional machismo sort, with broad shoulders and a black leather jacket on, but his eyes were squeezed shut and his jaw clenched. He looked, for lack of a better word, terrified.

"Are we almost there?" he asked through gritted teeth.

"Nearly!" the Doctor yelled. "Have we lost the security?"

"Think so," Yaz called back, twisting around so she could see the road behind them. No one but frazzled pedestrians lay in their wake.

"Good!" Tapaxi yelled. "They won't exactly be expecting me to go back to the Pinnacle, will they? Though I have a feeling they'll recognize me..."

They arrived quickly at the Pinnacle, with the Doctor stowing the bike against an intricately-carved library with tall, pointed archways and flying buttresses spiderwebbing above them.

Outside of the Pinnacle, hundreds of people, including Tinni, Mr. Lemming, and the rest of the tour group, were milling about, many looking perturbed. Tinni was pacing back and forth, speaking animatedly to someone on the phone.

"Still working on the bomb, I suspect," the Doctor said. "Although I think they'll find this to be far out of even their wheelhouse."

"Whadja mean?" Tapaxi asked. "They're some of the most skilled defusers in the galaxy. I've heard they've been dispatched to other planets before, just to deal with specialized bombs."

"Not this kind," the Doctor said. "Only three in existence."

"How on Earth do you know what sort of bomb it is?" Yaz asked. "You've not even seen it yet."

"Easy," the Doctor said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Undetected by advanced screenings, able to withstand the pressure of the other bricks in the arch... and, Tapaxi, if you don't mind me saying, your hands stink of Sandarian blasting powder. If I'm right, this is a Friggolini Incendiary Device. 'FIDs,' they're called. I've never seen one in person, but I've done a lot of reading. Not well-known, FIDs. It was tricky to even get my hands on books about them. They're impossible to stop once the countdown has started. I reckon we've got about ten minutes 'til she blows."

"Oh great," Yaz said. "Five minutes to get past security get the bomb far enough away that we're not blasted into smithereens."

"Better get a shift on," the Doctor said, sprinting into the building and fishing in her pocket for psychic paper.

"What about me?" Tapaxi asked nervously. "I can't go in there!"

"You clear out all these people!" the Doctor yelled over her shoulder.

"How?"

"You'll figure it out!"

Yaz gave Tapaxi a sympathetic glance, then tore after the Doctor, who was already halfway through security, psychic paper held aloft. Two guards made to block Yaz from entering, but the Doctor flashed the paper again and shouted "she's with me!"

Yaz shoved her way past the guards, weaving her way through the myriad scanners, metal detectors, and what appeared to be robot arms meant for mechanized pat-downs, and finally caught up with the Doctor. The machinery beeped angrily behind them; it seemed the pair had set nearly all of them off.

"Who are we this time?" Yaz yelled as they ran.

"Intergalactic explosives experts," the Doctor replied breathlessly.

"Where are we going?"

"Third floor; that's the central archway. Lifts'll be shut down by now, so we'll take the stairs."

Yaz cursed the universe for preventing them from having a proper evening in here; the building was astonishing, its glassy windows letting in cascading beams of sunlight, which was somehow being filtered back into a familiar gold. The ceiling above them soared; a stunning fresco adorned its surface, depicting the legend of Caldor. A great rose window sat in the middle of it, and through the intricate stained pink-and-purple glass, Yaz could just make out that each floor --and there had to be dozens of floors-- had a similar window in the middle, allowing guests to stare straight up into the top of the Pinnacle, hundreds of feet above.

All around them were tall screens hovering in the air, some talking about the history of Nothing, including a set of them memorializing the First Invasion, some discussing Andaran cuisine, others boasting of the Andars' technological achievements, including the "fastest metro system within one-hundred lightyears."

Their footsteps echoed on the brightly-tiled floor as they darted through the maze of screens, shooting for the stairs, which were tucked away into the far left side of the building. Though out-of-the-way and unobtrusive from afar, as they approached, Yaz saw that the stairs were just as ornate as the rest of the building, rounded at the corners so they fit neatly with the curve of the building and painted in the same mural that the ceiling was, continuing the legend in greater detail. The Doctor, paying no heed to the remarkable architecture around them, took the stairs three at a time, outpacing Yaz easily. When they finally reached the second floor, Yaz was again taken by its beauty: this time, the ceilings were even taller, with rib vaults made of the same pink, purple, and orange stone from which the rest of the city was made.

"How... are... we... gonna... reach... in... time?" Yaz gasped.

The Doctor looked around frantically, then her eyes alighted on something and she grinned. "Anti-gravs," she replied.

Yaz wanted to ask more, like why they didn't use this apparently faster mode of transportation on the first floor, but she merely followed the Doctor to a set of four rounded pads on the ground, each with a crystalline metal tube around them. Yaz followed the tubes and saw that they extended to the next floor.

"Turned off for the evacuation, but not for long," the Doctor said, brandishing her sonic screwdriver. A quick sweep of the device and the pads whirred to life, lighting up bright blue and sending a beam of the same color up the tube.

"Impressed?" she asked Yaz with a cocky smile.

"Dazzled, bighead," Yaz said sarcastically.

The Doctor beamed cheekily, then pushed Yaz unceremoniously into the tube.

"Oi-" she began, but immediately found herself rocketing up toward the next floor. In five seconds flat, she was there, and another soft pad had materialized below her. She stepped out of the tube and glanced around. This floor had a flat ceiling like the first, but in the center, straddling the rose window, was what she could only assume was the central arch. As with everything else, it was marvelous: each brick was carved with an image of a different Andaran leader, from ancient folk heroes to contemporary politicians. The massive keystone was made of orange glass, frosted with the words "The People of Nothing are the People of Something."

'Sort of a weak slogan,' Yaz thought, but she supposed that technological prowess didn't necessarily translate to the written word.

As she studied the arch, she noticed that a brick was undoubtedly missing from the side, and a group of people all clad in black, with the words 'BOMB SQUAD' emblazoned in yellow on their jackets, were crowded around something on the floor.

The Doctor appeared moments later and tore across the floor in the direction of the group.

"You won't be able to stop it!" she shouted. The group all whipped their heads around and stared, frozen in shock, at Yaz and the Doctor.

Finally, one of them stood up and crossed to them.

"You have to get out of here." she said authoritatively. "This building is under quarantine. How did you even get in?"

The Doctor handed her the psychic paper. "We were called in. Lucky for you, we were on holiday nearby. Now, listen to me. You don't know what you're messing with. That's a Friggolini Incendiary Device. You can't stop it."

There was a strictness in the Doctor's voice, a barely-controlled, nervous sense of urgency. The woman looked at them, and Yaz thought she detected the faintest glimmer of fear in her eyes.

"We have to," she said solemnly. "We must protect our people, and we must protect the Pinnacle of the Tempest."

"I'm sorry," the Doctor replied, a little kinder, a little less stern. "But if you don't take that bomb somewhere far away from other people, we'll all die. The blast radius is easily a kilometer. It'll wipe us all out. The people on the street, the buildings, the Pinnacle... all gone."

"Where are we even supposed to take it?" the woman asked. "There are three minutes left on the timer!"

"I need time to think," the Doctor said, beginning her telltale pacing, racking her brain for a plan. "Is there anything in here like a safe? Or a panic room? Or, I dunno, a really, really thick metal box?"

"No!" the woman exclaimed.

"Right, figured that was a long shot," the Doctor muttered, running her hands through her hair nervously.

Yaz's heart fluttered.

'Really? Three minutes 'til you're blown to bits and you're all caught up about her hair?'

"You don't have anything blast-resistant here?" Yaz asked, knowing that her question was embarrassingly obvious, because of course they've checked that, but needing to pull herself out of her own thoughts and into the harrowing reality. "Not even bulletproof glass?"

"No, of course not..." the woman began, but then her eyes went wide. "Wait a minute," she said. "The tubes! How could we miss that?"

The Doctor's eyes lit up. "Brilliant," she said. "How could I have missed that?"

Yaz fought the urge to laugh at the Doctor's poorly-concealed undertone of disappointment.

"Bring it here!" the woman was shouting, turned toward her colleagues. "The tubes! Put it in the tubes!"

"Is anyone going to explain what's going on?" Yaz asked, a little irritated.

The Doctor turned to her and gestured toward the anti-gravs. "Those tubes are made of Pyrannian crystal. It's resistant to nearly all guns, blasters, explosives, you name it. If we throw the bomb in there, it'll be contained."

"Except it'll shoot to the roof and still kill us and destroy the Pinnacle!" one of the bomb squad members shouted.

"Not if I have anything to do with it," the Doctor said, running to the anti-grav pad.

"If I can tap into the gravity matrix and raise it just enough, I should be able to hold the bomb in place."

With a flourish, she swept the sonic up part of the tube, which began to emit a loud whooshing sound. Yaz covered her ears.

"Gravity matrices!" the Doctor shouted. "Not very forgiving, and not very quiet either. Bring the bomb!"

"One minute left!" the woman shouted, and alongside three of her team, hoisted the bomb off the ground and carried it slowly to the tube.

"Go on!" the Doctor said, still holding her sonic against the crystal, "shunt it in!"

Together, the members tossed the bomb into the tube, where it hung, suspended in the air, ticking threateningly.

"Seal it!" another woman yelled, and Yaz instinctively punched a red button on the side of the tube. A glassy door slid up from the floor and fell into place against the tube, closing it off and muffling the intolerable whooshing.

Then, in a flash, the bomb was gone, as though it had popped out of existence.

Yaz looked at the Doctor, confused.

"Just wait," the Doctor replied, face gritted in concentration as she continued holding the sonic.

All at once, the entire tube lit up a blinding orange, and powerful shockwaves reverberated through the building, nearly toppling Yaz over. Thick black smoke followed, billowing up and down the tube in waves. The building shuddered and Yaz heard the sound of glass breaking and what sounded like the ground splitting beneath them.

As quickly as it had come, the orange flames and smoke vanished and the tube was clear again. The Doctor released the sonic, panting.

"Clever," the Doctor said. "Vanishes itself right up. Untraceable."

A few shards of glass fell down the tube then, and the Doctor turned to the bomb squad, who were all staring at her, mouths agape.

"I think your roof might be a bit... broken," she said. "And the floor. Sorry about that."

"We've done it. You've saved us all," one of the bomb squad members said quietly. "Thank you."

"The Pinnacle will be fine," the woman said. "And we are forever indebted to you both," she added, smiling warmly at Yaz and the Doctor.

"It was a team effort," the Doctor replied graciously. "Couldn't have done it without you."

Yaz fought the urge to wrap the Doctor in a hug. She looked so proud, yet so human. Her hair was all amiss, beads of sweat had formed on her forehead, and she was panting slightly.

"What?" the Doctor asked, noticing the intensity of Yaz's gaze.

"Nothing," Yaz replied quickly.

The woman looked at the two of them curiously for a moment, then shook her head and held out her hand to them both.

"I'm Lieutenant Elyria Raspa," she said. "And for whom might I be thanking my lucky stars for the rest of my life?"

"That's the Doctor, and I'm Yaz," Yaz said, shaking the Lieutenant's hand. "And it's our pleasure."

"Right, we'd best be off," the Doctor said, making for the stairs.

"No, no," Elyria said hastily. "You have to stay. We'll need to file reports. Witness testimony, procedural accounts, the works."

"Not much for forms, me," the Doctor replied. "Sorry, Lieutenant."

"Nice to meet you!" Yaz called, then, before the Lieutenant could protest, the Doctor grabbed Yaz's arm and quickly steered her down the two flights of stairs and out of the building.

Chapter Text

"Cafe?" Yaz asked as soon as they stepped out into the pink sunlight. Police and military personnel were all crowded around the building, some interviewing people, others trying to keep the masses of rubbernecking tourists at bay.

"Cafe," the Doctor said with a smile. "Although something's still nagging me."

"What is it?"

"Who planted that bomb?"

Tapaxi stepped out in front of them then, a slightly-too-large smile plastered across his face.

"You did it!" he said, "you actually did it."

"Don't sound so surprised," Yaz said teasingly. Tapaxi blushed again, but didn't look away.

"You're incredible," he said, staring directly at her.

Yaz shifted uncomfortably. She could practically feel the heat from the Doctor's burning gaze, which she quickly turned on Tapaxi.

"She really is," the Doctor said, a little too forcefully. Then, to Yaz's surprise, the Doctor looped her arm through her own.

Tapaxi looked confused, but pressed on anyway.

"Yaz, if you don't mind... could I... would you wanna... I think it could be fun if you let me take you to dinner."

She must've looked affronted, because Tapaxi nervously added, "I mean, we can talk more about what happened. Unpack, you know. That's a lot of trauma." He cast a glance toward the Doctor, who Yaz was trying very hard --and failing-- to ignore.

"You'd be welcome too, of course."

"Oh would I?" she said, venom dripping from her voice. "Nice of you to think of me. He's a real gentleman, Yaz. What do you say?"

Yaz knew she shouldn't meet the Doctor's eye, knew that her gaze would instantly disarm her, knew that the Doctor's ill-concealed jealousy --and it had to be jealousy, right?-- was already making her lose some of her resolve. How was she supposed to keep telling herself that they were 'just friends' when the Doctor was reacting like this?

Still, Yaz was caught in the Doctor's gravitational pull. As always. And, as if magnetized, her head swiveled to look at the Time Lord.

As soon as their eyes met, the Doctor's gaze softened. As though her original question had been a challenge, a way to push Yaz away again by being cold. As though she regretted that immediately. As though Yaz was a supernova that she couldn't pull her attention away from.

Yaz thought the entire planet must've heard her heart pounding. And, try as she might, she couldn't help but flick her eyes down, just for a moment, to the Doctor's lips. She felt her own mouth hanging slightly open, trying to catch the rapid breaths that were forcing their way down her throat. Like the Doctor was oxygen and the rest of the world was water... and she needed nothing more than to breathe.

"So..." Tapaxi said, still astonishingly oblivious. "Is your friend going to let you come, or what?"

Yaz tore herself away from the Doctor. "I'll come," she said, and she heard the Doctor's sharp intake of breath. She pulled her arm out of Yaz's.

"But only if she can, too," Yaz finished.

The Doctor grinned broadly at her.

Tapaxi didn't try to conceal his disappointed sigh. "Great," he said. "How about the Pinkleaf? It's close by."

"Ten points to Yaz," the Doctor whispered as the trio began walking in the direction of the restaurant.

"So, Tapaxi," Yaz said politely. "Where are you fro-"

Bang.

And then she was on the ground, her ears ringing and her vision blurry.

And then people were screaming all around her, their yelps muffled.

And then they were running and jumping over her, and some were tripping and trampling, and someone green grabbed her arm, and there was blood all over it, and her shoulder was cut, and her green sweater wasn't green anymore, and it was soaked, and her head was spinning, and the hand holding hers wasn't pale; it was green, and she was running fast, and her white trainers were covered in soot, and she was weaving through bodies and kicking hands and muttering "sorry, I'm sorry," as loudly as she could, but she could hardly speak; smoke was filling her throat and lungs, and as the throbbing in her head subsided and she was still running the screams became more and more clear; they were deafening, and there was so much blood and children were kneeling beside the still bodies of their parents, and someone was buried in the rubble of the library, and still Yaz stumbled along, the green hand her lifeline, and then she was pulled into the shelter of a crumbling cathedral.

"Yaz, Yaz are you alright?" Tapaxi asked, his voice hoarse. "You're bleeding-- oh God, you're really bleeding..."

"M'fine," she said, rubbing her head. "I... I'm not sure it's all my blood."

"Still..." Tapaxi took off his rubble-dusted jacket and pressed it haphazardly to Yaz's right shoulder. "Oh, and your head..." he whispered, raising a dirty finger to the graze just beside her right eye.

"I'm fine," she snapped, shrugging him off, which sent a searing pain through her shoulder. She looked at him apologetically. "Sorry. Thank you, but I'm fine. Really."

Then, with a chill, she realized that even with their talking, it had been too quiet.

"Where is the Doctor?"

"I..." Tapaxi began. "I'm sorry, Yaz."

"What do you mean, you're 'sorry'?"

"I don't think she made it."

"What? No, what? What?" Yaz stood there, open-mouthed, like a fish.

"She... she's dead, Yaz. I'm so sorry."

"Can't be," Yaz said, standing up, which made her head start spinning anew, and stumbling toward the door. "Impossible. You're wrong."

She slumped against the ruined doorway, gazing out at the shattered glass and rubble, scanning for regenerative glow, barely registering anything else.

Tapaxi walked over to her and put his hand on her uninjured shoulder. "I saw it with my own eyes. She was there, next to you, trying to pull you up, and then the Pinnacle... there was so much glass, and part of the steel frame was dangling, and she was in the way... I tried to push her away, but it all happened so fast... it fell, and it landed on her and two other people. It was so heavy, I couldn't move it; I couldn't even see anything under there but her hand..."

But Yaz couldn't hear him. She caught words here and there, but when he finished, she still didn't quite know what he'd said.

"Did it glow?" she asked.

"Did what glow?" Tapaxi questioned gently.

"The hand. Her hand."

"N... no, I don't think so."

Yaz turned to face him, and found his stormy eyes wide with concern. Like he thought she was insane. His condescension, interspersed with tenderness, infuriated her. She rounded on him.

"Did it glow or not? Not you do or don't think so. Did it, or didn't it?"

"It didn't," Tapaxi replied, holding his hands up defensively.

"You didn't get a good look at it then," she whispered, her voice catching. Tapaxi gently placed a hand on her arm.

"I'm so-"

Yaz shrugged him off again.

"You didn't get a good look at it."

Tapaxi stared at her. Yaz's deep brown eyes were ablaze, and their intensity made him shiver.

"I'm going out there," she said simply.

"You can't!" Tapaxi said anxiously. "What if they're out there?"

"What if who's out there?" Yaz asked impatiently. "People? Hurt, dying people? Because all I can hear is screamin', and cryin', and people callin' for their loved ones. And beyond that, Tapaxi, she's out there. And I don't care if it's Daleks, or Cybermen, or the bloody Master... if she's out there, there is no power in the universe that can stop me."

"There might be terrorists..." Tapaxi began, but then he dropped his gaze. "You must really love her," he muttered.

And in spite of it all, the crumbling, broken buildings around her, the rubble in the street, the unyielding din of voices, seeking and searching desperately for each other, this disjointed cacophony of pain and fear and loss, Yaz blushed.

"She's my best friend," she whispered. "I'm going out there."

Tapaxi made a halfhearted attempt to block her, but Yaz slipped past him and stepped out into the street, where the smoke and dust still hadn't settled. She stepped through the debris, glass crunching underfoot and people weeping beside piles of rubble, her limbs numb and her ears unhearing. She had one singular mission, and that was to find the Doctor. She only stopped when a young woman, younger than her, even, grabbed her arm.

"Please," the woman whispered. "My son, he's underneath the wall. I can't do it by myself."

Yaz gazed at her, this dust-stained girl, hair matted to the side of her head with dark blue blood. Though she was alien, the desperation in her eyes was universal. She didn't have to be human for Yaz to recognize that sort of fear.

"I'll help you."

Wordlessly, the woman grabbed Yaz's hand and gently guided her to a collapsed stone wall. Yaz saw a tiny blue hand sticking out from underneath, unmoving. Pale.

But they had to try.

It didn't take long for the two of them to pry enough stones loose to pull him out. Yaz held her breath the whole time. He couldn't have been much older than four, and as his mother pulled him into her lap, his head lolled to the side.

Both Yaz and his mother stared, unbelieving, at the boy's slackened face.

"I think..." Yaz began, but then the boy took a great, shuddering breath, and began coughing and spluttering.

Yaz couldn't help herself; she looked at his mother, smiling broadly, and laughed. To her relief, so did the woman.

"Thank you!" she exclaimed, holding her son closely. "Thank you!"

Yaz smiled, then stood up and resumed her search. As she picked her way through, she saw other mothers, fathers, and children gazing, shellshocked, at the corpses of their loved ones. Then she saw the steel frame, with broken stone and crumpled bits of metal all heaped up around it, and it was as though she was looking through a tunnel; nothing else existed but her, the beam, and the path she was taking to reach it.

But when she got to it, walked up and down the length of it, and even shifted the rocks (well, the ones she could lift anyway) piled around it, there was no sign of the Doctor. No sign, indeed, of anyone that had been crushed under its gargantuan weight. No glowing, no limbs, no gasps from people trapped beneath the surrounding rubble.

For a moment, she was relieved. If the Doctor was gone, then she had to have escaped, surely...

Then, as she surveyed the area around her, the people coated from head-to-toe in powdery white dust, the thick smoke choking the air, the yelling and screaming, her heart sunk again. How could she possibly hope to find the Doctor in all of this mess?

"Yaz!" Tapaxi yelled from somewhere behind her. His face was pale and he seemed out of breath. "Did you find her?"

"No," Yaz replied. "She must've gotten away."

Tapaxi sucked in a breath. "Good, good," he whispered. "Maybe she got taken away by paramedics."

"Then we've got to go to the hospital!" Yaz exclaimed.

"No!" Tapaxi said, just a bit too forcefully. Yaz raised her eyebrows.

"'No?'"

"I- I mean," Tapaxi stammered. "We can't. I... listen, Yaz. I don't know how to explain how I know this, because you'll never believe me anyway, but I promise I'm not a bad guy. I have..." he scrunched up his face like he was in pain, "...friends. Well, more like associates. Who have knowledge of an activist group that might've been behind this. I didn't believe them, when they told me not to go to the Pinnacle. But then there was the bomb there, and now this. And they said the next spot they planned to hit was..."

"The hospital," Yaz finished for him. "We have to get over there."

"Why do you two always want to run toward the explosives?" Tapaxi groaned.

"Stay here if you like," Yaz snapped, the fire back in her eyes, "but I have to find her."

"No," came another voice; a weird, warbled, deep one. It came from nowhere and everywhere, and Yaz recognized it immediately as a telepathic signal. People around them were looking up toward the sky, rubbing their eyes and cocking their heads, distracted, for a moment, from their grief, trying to puzzle out who was speaking.

It didn't take long for the speaker to reveal itself. From behind the ruined Pinnacle stepped one of the plastic statues that Yaz had seen before. It moved eerily; its limbs jerking stiffly and propelling it forward in an awkward, lurching sort of dance that would, in any other situation, have been comical. It was easily eight feet tall, and it was modeled after a man in a smart-looking suit with a long coat, forever stuck curled round his ankles. The man wore an intense but not unkind expression, but again Yaz was disturbed by the eyes. Vacant, smooth, and unmoving, just like the rest of him, but somehow colder, more soulless.

"Yasmin Khan," the statue said, continuing its twisted, uncoordinated journey, its voice echoing through her head. Somehow, the statue traversed through the maze of destruction without falling, and stopped in front of Tapaxi and Yaz. Tapaxi grabbed Yaz's hand and made to run.

"Stop, Tapaxi Kinn," it said authoritatively. Tapaxi froze and Yaz felt his sweat pooling between their palms. She fought the urge to wipe her hand off on her pants.

"You will come with me. Both of you." It was looking down at them now, its head tilted forward ever so slightly on a little plastic joint that Yaz hadn't noticed before.

"Why?" Yaz asked defiantly, finally relieving herself of Tapaxi's damp grip.

"Because if you don't, we will detonate the next bomb. And the next. And the next, until all of Nothing is dust. We have placed others, smaller, but still deadly, across the city."

"Okay then," Tapaxi said, glancing at Yaz nervously. "S'pose that's reason enough to follow him."

Yaz sighed.

"Before we go with you," she said, as authoritatively as she could, "answer me this. I have a friend here with me. She's got pale skin and she's blonde and she wears-"

"The Doctor is dead," the statue intoned calmly, its mouth unmoving. Yaz put a hand on Tapaxi's shoulder to steady herself, then swallowed to suppress her tears. She couldn't believe it. She wouldn't believe it. Tapaxi tensed at her touch.

"We have bombs across the city," it repeated. "If you wish the peoples of this planet to live, you will come with me."

"Then there's nothing else for it," Yaz said, and without hesitating, she walked toward the statue.

Chapter Text

The statue led the pair of them practically to the other end of the city. It seemed the bomb at the Pinnacle wasn't the only one to have gone off; they picked their way through block after block of ruined streets, with scenes much the same as the one they'd just left.

How much more destruction could the statues do?

The crunch of rubble underfoot and the cacophonous screaming, praying, and sobbing faded in and out of Yaz's consciousness. Eventually, she'd gotten so used to it that, by the time they'd entered one of the crumbled buildings and the statue had shut the door behind them, her ears rang with the silence.

It was dark inside, and as they fumbled through, desperately trying to follow the sounds of the statue's echoing footsteps, Yaz was surprised that she didn't trip on rubble or choke on dust. This building had looked only slightly less decimated than the rest-- shouldn't they be afraid that it might cave in at any second?

Then, just as she was wondering how much longer she and Tapaxi could bungle through the dark without falling over or getting lost, there was a great cracking sound and torches came to life all around the walls. They sat in intricate, golden brackets of a fine filigree, and the walls, Yaz noticed, appeared to be some sort of deep green velvet. The floors and ceiling were made of the same warm mahogany, unevenly worn into a smooth patina. A vast blue ornamental rug sat in the middle of the room under a large glass chandelier, which, alongside the torches, cast a comforting, homey glow over everything.

The statue turned to face them, suddenly looking cheaply-made and very out of place here.

"This is the Illia. We are safe from the destruction here."

"Great," Yaz replied savagely. "Safe in the hands of a great plastic dummy."

The statue ignored them and continued walking through a wooden archway at the end of the room that neither Yaz nor Tapaxi had seen a moment ago. They followed it, and suddenly they were in a boiling-hot room thick with steam and humidity. An enormous vat stood in the center, and Yaz could see an angry-looking orange liquid bubbling and sloshing around inside. It stunk of melted plastic.

"This is the Consciousness," the statue said. "She will see you now."

Without meaning to, Yaz found herself and Tapaxi taking slow, wobbling steps toward the vat.

"What is this?" Yaz asked, her voice growing infuriatingly desperate. "Where's the Doctor?"

As she said this, something within Yaz constricted.

'She's alive,' she told herself. 'They're bluffing. Even if this thing says she's gone, it's bluffing.'

"Fool," came a deeper, more terrible voice from within the vat. "The Doctor is lost. Dead."

"You're wrong!" Yaz exclaimed, still unable to stop herself from moving forward. "I saw it, she escaped, she..."

"She is gone, is she not, my child?" the Consciousness said.

Yaz blinked. She wasn't sure what to say.

Then Tapaxi spoke, his voice shaking a little.

"She's gone."

Yaz's mouth hung open as she turned to stare at Tapaxi. He continued looking straight ahead, walking forward with her.

"What did you do?" she asked numbly.

Tapaxi said nothing, but continued walking forward.

"You've done well," the Consciousness said. "You will be rewarded with your life. Yasmin Khan, however..."

"No, no, no," Tapaxi said, stopping in his tracks. "That wasn't part of the deal. You said I plant the bombs and that's it. There was nothing about bringing me here, and nothing about killing her or the Doctor. 'Kill the Doctor,' and right before the bomb went off, too. I did my best. I could've been killed then and there!"

"Tapaxi, what-" Yaz began.

"Did your best?" the Consciousness said, its voice still chillingly calm, but dripping with malice. "You mean to say that the Doctor lives?"

"No," Tapaxi replied. "I mean... I don't believe her to have done. I pushed her under a beam as it fell from the Pinnacle... it was the most I could do on such short notice! I swear, it at least hit part of her. Probably buried underneath it, she is. Maybe under the rubble."

The way he was so casual, so nonchalant about the whole thing set Yaz ablaze.

"You betrayed us?" she asked venomously.

"No, no, that's not it," he said hastily.

"Silence! This is children's folly. You are both here, willingly or unwillingly, serving a higher calling. The Nestene have suffered at the hands of this planet, and we now ally ourselves with those who can help us destroy it. Tapaxi, you are ready to call the Kalsparans?"

Yaz looked at Tapaxi, livid.

"You're... you're one of them?"

Tapaxi looked at Yaz sheepishly.

"No. I'm from Jyfrus. But my family were killed by Andarans, and the only ones who fought for us were the Kalspars. Two of them adopted me."

"But I thought..."

The Consciousness interrupted her. "Yasmin Khan, see how the Andarans destroy! They are not innocent. Watch as we avenge those who have died at the hands of their terroristic campaign."

"I don't understand," Yaz said. "Why would Andarans attack your home planet?"

"We're the sister planet to Ranak, where the Kalsparans live. After the First Invasion, the Andarans wanted to get even, but knew that Ranak would be armed to the teeth. So they took it out on us instead. My parents were killed right in front of me, Yaz."

Yaz exhaled.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered.

Then she addressed the vat of roiling liquid before her. "But this still isn't right. You can't just kill innocent Andarans; then you're no better than them. And I don't see what they've done to you, you big soup."

"SILENCE!" the Consciousness exclaimed. "You will be punished for your insolence. The citizens of Nothing are the harbingers of Death himself. We seek only to enact justice."

"I'd like to see you try," came another voice from just behind Yaz.

Her breath caught in her throat as she whirled around. And there she was, the Doctor, standing beside what remained of the now half-melted statue beside her.

"Doctor!" Yaz exclaimed. The Doctor grinned, then strode confidently toward them. She pulled Yaz into an embrace, and when she pulled away, she slid her hand down Yaz's arm and held fast.

Yaz thought she might faint.

"Well done, Yaz," the Doctor said, still holding her forearm but now addressing the Consciousness. She stepped out a little in front as she did this.

"What's the meaning of this?" the Consciousness shouted. "Tapaxi, you have failed!"

"I choose my companions well," the Doctor continued, winking at Yaz. "But you don't. Mine kept you talking, yours..." she gestured to Tapaxi, feigning disappointment. "Yours tried to crush me, but didn't even check to see if I was dead! Some assassin," she spat.

Tapaxi stared at the ground.

"Doctor," the Consciousness said, trying on a tone of what it no doubt thought was reason but came off as velvety pomp. "You, of all species, surely understand justice and morality more than most. We're simply trying to even the score."

"Don't preach morality to me," the Doctor sneered, her features hardening. She let go of Yaz's arm and stepped to the edge of the vat. "I've stopped the Nestene from slaughter more times than I can count. You and I both know you're here to mine this planet. You don't give a damn about Tapaxi or Jyfrus or Ranak either."

Tapaxi stiffened. "Is that true?"

Without facing him, the Doctor answered.

"Yes. And I'm sorry for what happened to your family, to your people, but this isn't the way. Kalspars aren't all responsible for the First Invasion just as Andars aren't all responsible for the Jyfrus Massacre. Collective punishment is never the answer."

She leaned forward and began whispering fervently to the Consciousness.

Yaz took this opportunity to take hold of Tapaxi as the Doctor had just taken hold of her. With her hand on his arm, she looked at him earnestly. When she met his eyes, she saw he was crying a little.

"Think of how many are already dead, Tapaxi. This isn't right. You can put a stop to this. You can make this right."

Tapaxi shook his head. "I have to do this, don't you understand? Everyone waiting for me, waiting for my signal, lost someone to the Massacre. Some of them were tortured to death. To death, Yaz. Can you imagine?"

"No," she replied truthfully. "I can't. And I know if I was in your place, I'd be out for blood. I'd want every last person who had hurt my family to suffer. But we have to be better than that. You can go back home, help rebuild, help people cope with what they've seen. You can be a force for good. I see it in you. If we fight only for revenge, where does it stop?"

"Enough talking!" the Consciousness yelled, so inflamed that it threatened to slosh over the sides of the vat. The Doctor jumped back.

Tapaxi took a deep breath, then reached for a device in his pocket. He looked at Yaz one more time, his gray eyes swimming with tears.

"I'm sorry. It stops today," he said, then pressed the button.

Chapter Text

A high-pitched whining sound not unlike a dog whistle filled the room, and Yaz flinched.

"What is this?" the Consciousness raged. "What have you done?"

The Doctor bounded over to Yaz and stood protectively in front of her.

"Radio signal," she said proudly. "Like I said before, shouldn't be kept talking. While you whispered --or prattled on, more like-- to me about all your delusions of grandeur, I fiddled with your system." She held up her sonic screwdriver. "That thing you've been transmitting to all those statues? Twiddled with it a bit. Now it's a mind wipe. Everyone in this building will forget everything about themselves in, oh, eight minutes?"

"WHAT?!"

The Consciousness now began moving around in earnest, spilling itself over the floor in a furious tsunami.

"And Tapaxi," the Doctor added, "you and I both know that your friends won't make it past the planet's defenses in time. I've directed the radio signal to come over their intercoms, too. Better send them home, eh? This is your chance; make the right decision."

"Call it off, call it off!" Tapaxi then shouted into a separate device that looked something like a walkie-talkie. "There's peace. Please, there's peace."

"There's peace," came another voice through the speaker. Tapaxi sighed, then looked at Yaz and smiled. She gave him a small nod.

The Consciousness, however, had begun to flow toward him, and as he turned to join Yaz and the Doctor, it caught hold of his shoe, rapidly rising to his ankle.

"No!" Yaz yelled, and grabbed his hand. The Doctor immediately rushed over and began scanning the Consciousness with her screwdriver.

"I'm sorry," she said sadly, looking up at Tapaxi. "I can't help you. It's got a hold on you now, and it's linking with your central nervous system. It's trying to turn you into plastic."

"Can't... I dunno, can't you just cut my leg off or something?" Tapaxi asked, looking around in a wild panic. "There has to be something!"

"Please, Doctor," Yaz begged.

The Consciousness had already reached Tapaxi's knees, and seemed to be molding itself around his body.

"Tapaxi, it wants to use you as a vessel to escape. It knows you have a teleport on you. It wants to use you to go back to Ranak."

Tears fell from Tapaxi's cheeks. He looked at Yaz and squeezed her hand while the molten liquid reached his waist. "Please," he whispered. "I don't want to die."

"I know," Yaz said. "It'll be okay, the Doctor will think of something..."

The Doctor was still frantically scanning at Tapaxi's feet, but the Consciousness had already begun to cover his chest. Something changed in his eyes, then. They hardened. His arms were still untouched, and he gently removed Yaz's grip.

"No, she won't," Tapaxi said, his voice shaking. "And I can't let it get to my people."

He glanced at the Doctor.

"I'm sorry, Doctor. I didn't think... I didn't mean for innocent people to die. I thought it was okay, side effects of war, but it's not. It's only fair that I protect others, and that I pay the price for what I've done."

"No!" Yaz exclaimed, tears now falling from her eyes, too. "You called them off, you did the right thing! You don't deserve to die!"

"Thank you," the Doctor said to him. "You did do the right thing."

Tapaxi smiled, then just managed to pull a capsule from a pendant around his neck that Yaz hadn't seen before. Had he been a second later, the Consciousness would've covered it.

He gave Yaz one last smile then popped it into his mouth. Immediately, the light left from his eyes and he slumped over, held up only by the flowing orange Consciousness.

Yaz's heart clenched and her stomach twisted.

"We have to leave," the Doctor said gently. "The mind wipe is still active. The Consciousness won't make it out in time, but we can."

Yaz nodded tensely and accepted the Doctor's hand. Together, they ran from the room.

"The radius extends just outside of this building," the Doctor said. "We only have about three minutes left."

As they sprinted through the gilded room, Yaz felt the air around her grow thick, like she was running through water. With each step, they slowed down, and the air seemed to cling to them, until it felt as though they were running through jelly. Just before the door, they could run no further.

"No!" the Doctor muttered. "It's trapped us here! Activated some sort of forcefield."

"Does that mean-" Yaz began.

"Yes," the Doctor said. "We'll have our minds wiped. Two minutes."

"Then I need to tell you something," Yaz said. She took a laborious step toward her, but the Doctor wasn't listening.

"If I can just get back-" she began, then tried stepping backward and found herself pushing against an invisible wall.

"We're trapped," she said simply.

"Yes, and you'll listen to me since we are," Yaz replied, trying to ignore the panic rising in her chest. She didn't want to forget who she was. What would happen if she found herself here, in what looked like a war zone, stuck with an unfamiliar woman who may not even recall how to fly the TARDIS? What if they were stuck here forever? What if she never saw her family again, what if... what if she and the Doctor parted ways?

Though she'd stilled, the Doctor's eyes continued flicking around the room, looking for a solution. An out.

Yaz lost her patience.

"If I'm about to forget who you are, who I am, then you're going to honor my last wish as me. Doctor, you're going to listen."

The Doctor took a deep breath and allowed her eyes to settle on Yaz's face. If it hadn't been for the glue-like hold the forcefield had on her legs, Yaz may have staggered backward. The intensity, the guilt, the... was that longing? in the Doctor's gaze was overwhelming.

"You talked on that beach, Doctor, and I've honored what you said to me. But it's time I honor myself and say what I want to say to you."

The Doctor stiffened slightly, a movement imperceptible to anyone else... except Yaz.

"Relax," Yaz said, though her own heart was throbbing painfully in her chest. "I'm not gonna tell you I love you if that's what you're worried about."

The Doctor flinched a little at that.

"I do, though. I mean, in the same way I love Ryan and Graham and Dan. But... also... well, I mean, I can't imagine a world without you. You've given me so much, and I thought I'd lost you again, and the only thing that would've kept me going is making you proud. I want you to be proud of me, Doctor."

"I am," the Doctor breathed. "Of course I am."

"But I also want you to like me. In the way I like you. Which is to say, well, I want to be with you Doctor. Not just traveling, but to... be... with you. If you catch my meaning."

A low buzzing noise made the two of them --very slowly-- turn their heads.

"The signal," they breathed in unison.

"I think the forcefield is slowing it down, somehow," the Doctor remarked.

Time was running out, and they both knew it. But how was Yaz supposed to say what she'd so desperately longed to for weeks, months... years?

"Then keep listening," Yaz replied, a little faster. She felt gummed up, like the forcefield was starting to inhibit her speech. Her thoughts whirled around in a maelstrom. It took everything she had not to lose it right then and there, to scream all of her frustrations at the woman before her for giving her the universe and then snatching it away because of, what, time? Wasn't everyone, everywhere, running out of time? Wasn't that the plight of all life? Yaz's anger melted away, though, when she saw the Doctor's eyes shining. A tear dripped down the her pale cheek, and she left it. She let Yaz see it. One tiny, minuscule crack in the facade. Vulnerability, for the first time since the beach. It wasn't much, but it was enough. The words suddenly came tumbling out before Yaz could even think.

"You told me you'd be with me if you could. Well, you can. You'd closed yourself off to so much, and then you started to finally open up, and I know... well, I think I've done a good job listening. And I think it's done you some good. I'm sorry if I'm hurting you, or if I'm making this complicated, or if I'm misreading, but I don't think I am. You've treated me differently ever since you found out that I... that I liked you." She paused, but the Doctor said nothing. Just continued staring at Yaz, her breaths labored. Yaz felt a little woozy. "You're the bravest person I've ever met," she whispered. "So why can't you be brave for me? With me? Am..." with great effort, she tore her gaze away from the Doctor's wide eyes and flushed cheeks. "Am I not worth it to you?"

"No," the Doctor said immediately. "No, that's not it at all, Yaz." She, very slowly, reached out a hand and put it on Yaz's shoulder. Yaz could feel the heat burning through her sweater, and wondered, absently, if there'd be any fabric left when the Doctor withdrew.

"You're worth too much to me. When I... when I lose someone I... well, when I lose someone... special... I can become dangerous. I mean," she chuckled a little, "I've practically torn the universe in two before."

At once, she became serious again, her eyes steely. "I've killed people. Many people. I've done things I should regret more than anything else."

"Then why don't you?" Yaz asked. "Regret them more than anything else, I mean?"

"Because somehow, even those terrible things I've done... they don't feel half as bad as losing my friends. It hurts... so, so much. When something like that happens, I can't trust myself, Yaz."

"Doctor," Yaz said. "You're a good person. You have the ability to choose to do the right thing. You don't have to hurt others just because you're hurt. You know who you are. Isn't that what you've just learned? You're not only your past, you're not only your mistakes. You decide, every day, who to be. You save people. I trust you. Graham, Ryan, Dan... they all trust you. The universe trusts you. You need to trust yourself, too."

"But-"

"And I know it hurts badly with people you..." Yaz interjected. She paused, recalling the Doctor's own inability to finish that sentence.

She decided to start again.

"But they're not 'just' your friends, and we both know it, Doctor. And just because we're both exercising... restraint... that doesn't mean that we're 'just' friends, either. Won't it still hurt, in the end?"

"Of course. But it seems like..." the Doctor trailed off. "As soon as something happens, or right before, you’re all lost to me. And it isn't fair to you, and it isn't fair to the people who get caught in the aftermath."

Her eyes refilled with watery tears.

She looked at Yaz, as though asking for permission to continue. Yaz pressed her lips together and nodded a little.

"And it isn't fair to me," the Doctor confessed.

"No," Yaz conceded. "It isn't fair to you."

She paused.

"But what if you aren't the judge of what's fair to us, the ones you lose? What if we know what we're getting into, and you're taking the choice away from us?"

"You don't know what you're choosing," the Doctor replied in a voice barely above a whisper. She was, Yaz could tell, doing everything in her power to continue meeting her gaze. But every now and again, just for a second, her eyes would move elsewhere. To other parts of Yaz's body, as though she was trying to commit her form to memory.

Hoping to time it right, Yaz then allowed herself a moment to glance down at the Doctor's lips. She hoped she wouldn't notice. They were parted ever so slightly, and her breathing was growing more ragged by the second, like a wild animal about to pounce.

Yaz straightened up and took a deep breath, trying to steady her own uneven inhalations.

"I made my decision a long time ago."

Another buzzing sounded, this time one that seemed to rattle Yaz's very bones.

"Mind wipe sure is taking its time, isn't it?" she added with a grin, trying to lighten the mood.

"Yeah," the Doctor replied thickly.

"I'm not leaving you," Yaz said, taking another slow, cautious step toward the Doctor. They were so close now that she could feel the Doctor's breath on her face.

"If only you knew how many times I've heard that before."

They were both whispering now, and as though pulled to the Doctor by gravity, Yaz leaned closer with each word. Though still tensed, the Doctor didn't move away.

"However this happens, Doctor, it'll hurt."

"I know... but I don't want it to hurt you more than it has to."

"I'm stronger than you think."

"I know."

Buzz.

"We're running out of time," Yaz murmured. Perhaps it was the forcefield, but everything around her seemed to have gone fuzzy.

"I know," the Doctor whispered back, searching Yaz's eyes as though they held the answers to all of the questions in the universe.

Now it was the Doctor’s turn to allow her gaze to flicker down to Yaz's lips.

"Since we'll forget..." Yaz began, her voice barely audible and her heart in her throat.

She hadn't noticed the Doctor doing it, likely because of how slow it had been, but suddenly, Yaz felt a hand on hers. At the same time, her own hand connected with the small of the Doctor's back. They both jumped a little, seemingly unaware of what the other had been doing.

Yaz smiled.

"We will forget, won't we?"

"We'll forget," the Doctor said breathlessly. They were so close now that Yaz could practically feel the heat radiating off of the Doctor's flushed pink cheeks.

"We'll forget," Yaz repeated for no reason at all. Or perhaps to force herself to do what she so desperately longed for.

Another buzz sounded, but neither of them seemed to hear it. Instead, Yaz closed her eyes and finally, finally met the Doctor's lips with her own.

The Doctor was rigid at first; afraid, maybe. Perhaps it was only when it sunk in that they would indeed forget, that the stakes would never, ever be lower, that she settled. Then the Doctor kissed Yaz softly, kindly, like she was a god bestowing the kiss of life on a gentle universe. Like she loved nothing more than the woman before her.

Yaz returned the favor, but when her eyes fluttered open just for a moment and she glimpsed the Doctor, she lost her self-control. The Doctor looked so peaceful, so beautiful, so happy. Her brow was furrowed slightly, like she was trying desperately to focus, to drink all of Yaz in and never, ever forget this moment. Her hands took in fistfuls of Yaz's sweater, then released them, then grabbed all over again, like she was trying --and failing-- to keep herself from going too far, trying to allow Yaz to set the tone. So, naturally, Yaz pulled the Doctor closer, grasping at the back of her neck and kissing her hungrily, greedily. The Doctor gasped a little, then, freed from her restraint, she pressed their bodies together, knotting her fingers in Yaz's tangled black hair.

She tasted like mint and custard creams, Yaz noted. She tasted like home.

They broke only for milliseconds to breathe, then crashed together again, Yaz grabbing at the Doctor's jacket and the Doctor pulling at Yaz's sweater. A breathy noise escaped from the back of Yaz's throat as the Doctor parted her lips and kissed her still more deeply.

She didn't know how long they kissed for, just that they stayed that way for what felt like an eternity, alternating between fierce, desperate, longing kisses and tender, loving, grateful ones.

Buzz.

And then it hit them, and the forcefield seemed to melt away, and they broke apart as wave after wave of deafening buzzing washed over their bodies. They looked at each other fearfully. The Doctor held out her hand and Yaz took it, but the noise grew too loud and she clapped her hands over her ears, grimacing. She wasn't sure if she was screaming or not; even if she had, she wouldn't have been able to hear it for the sound seemed almost to rupture her eardrums. She turned to look at the Doctor, whose face was also contorted in agony.

It was over as quickly as it had started, and the pair found themselves on hands and knees, breathing hard.

Yaz looked over at the Doctor and saw that her face was beet red, then felt a flush in her own cheeks, which she attributed to the noise.

Their eyes met, just for a moment, and something seemed to pass between them that neither quite understood.

"What was that?" Yaz asked, standing up and extending a hand to the Doctor.

"No idea," the Doctor replied, then scanned the air with her screwdriver. "Readings are funny though... better go check it out."

The pair jogged to the other room to find the Consciousness solidified into a hard glob of plastic and Tapaxi's pale body on the floor.

"Whatever it was, looks like this bloke stopped it," the Doctor said. "Nestene. I think that may have been the Consciousness itself."

She gestured to the orange lump on the floor, then scanned the vat in the center of the room.

"Brilliant! He's done a mind wipe. That's what took it out, or at least made it run away. Better give our friend the Minister of Security a heads-up, though."

"Yeah," Yaz muttered.

"Yaz?" the Doctor asked, a look of concern on her face. She put her hand on Yaz's shoulder. "Are you alright?"

"I dunno," Yaz replied. "I…” she breathed, trying to still the spinning in her head. “I think something big happened to us, and I just… can't quite reach it. It's there, on the periphery... but… it's like I don't know me own head."

"I've got the same feeling," the Doctor said. "Probably the mind wipe. I suspect we were in here trying to do the same thing he was. Based on the readings from the sonic, though, we got caught in a forcefield, one that the Nestene either put in to keep people from getting in, or..." she gestured to Tapaxi, "to keep them from getting out. It's what stopped us from getting wiped completely blank."

"What's the last thing you remember?" Yaz asked.

The Doctor blushed. "Er, I... I remember the cafe. You?"

Yaz felt her face getting hot. "Y-yeah, me too."

"Right then," the Doctor said, flashing a toothy grin. "Maybe we can finally go. Cafe?"

"Cafe," Yaz replied with a smile.

Chapter Text

Naturally, when Yaz and the Doctor had stepped outside, it was to a street full of cinders and ash, which distracted them from reaching the Cafe Carillon.

The Minister of Security, who turned out to be an old friend of the Doctor's ("she helped me find my way around on my first three visits," the Doctor had said, only to be corrected when the Minister said "more like ten,"), filled them in on what had happened. They only left when the Minister assured them that the danger was over, and that they could rebuild and perform search and rescue on their own...

"You'll just get in the way with your awful sense of direction," she'd said pointedly, staring daggers at the Doctor.

"And clumsiness," she'd added a moment later.

"Besides," she said at seeing the look on the Doctor and Yaz's faces, "we have two off-worlders that have already volunteered their time and made fifteen rescues. Mr. and Mrs. Lemming, they're called. Said they know you two."

Yaz turned to the Doctor and beamed at her.

"Tinni and Mr. Lemming! They survived!"

"Oh," the Doctor said happily, "you go, Lemmings!"

After several more back-and-forths, and despite their protests, the Doctor and Yaz eventually made their way back to the TARDIS and stepped inside, bathed in the warm orange glow of the console.

"So it goes the way of the sand worms," Yaz said playfully as the Doctor stationed herself beside the dematerialization lever.

"Oi! I tried," the Doctor replied defensively. Yaz walked over and found herself feeling bolder than usual. She took the Doctor's hand and interlaced their fingers, just long enough to give it a comforting squeeze.

The Doctor's cheeks turned pink for what may have been the eighteenth time that day.

"Where to, then?" she asked.

"A cafe," Yaz replied. "Just try not to get us blown up on the way."

They grinned at each other, then Yaz put her hand beside her Doctor's on the dematerialization lever, their pinkies just barely touching. Heart in her throat, Yaz pulled down the lever, and away they flew.