Chapter Text
Dan Lewis knew that look. He felt it. Every time he looked at Diane, that same small expression crept into the creases by his eyes and settled there, the feeling that hovered between anxiety and excitement, the way his heart liked to bound right along with the thrill of it, and the way his stomach bottomed out when he did nothing about it all. It was all there on her face, that pained delight that could only mean one thing. Hope for something, or someone, perceived to be already far out of reach.
He shouldn’t be seeing this; it was a breach of the easy rapport he had with Yaz. A crack in the tacit code that they didn’t discuss the Doctor, just the events of the Flux and how to stop them, and how to get back to their own time.
Once they'd had a change of clothes, it surprised Dan how easily the transition to 1901 went, but then, Jericho knew this part of history well enough and Yaz took charge planning their routes and overall objectives. She wasn’t about to take being stranded a century and some change earlier lying down. Dan joked that he was just around for muscle, but he meant it when he saw his friend in action and privately thought amazing: she was astonishing in the way she was all steely business after watching the Doctor turn to stone, how she didn’t bat an eye at the sudden lack of technology or how long travel took without good airplanes or the TARDIS, how she could wheedle information out of anyone with a little kindness and the right questions. You could drop her in the ocean, and she’d figure out how to breathe underwater. Put her in a volcano and she’d know how not to burn.
It felt dirty, somehow, to see Yasmin Khan this vulnerable.
And yet.
Dan knew it was a hologram, even if he didn’t have the word for it when he glimpsed the Doctor amble out of sight. There was no other way to place the little flecks of golden light that made her shimmer at the edges. She didn’t usually shimmer, and this was the closest thing to the inside of the TARDIS he’d seen in a year. Nothing in this time was that advanced. Nothing they’d done could have brought her back so quietly.
He hovered behind the doorframe, but Yaz hadn’t seen him pivot when he set foot on the threshold. It didn’t exactly matter; in that moment, her brimming eyes were only for the Doctor. She sniffled. Dan imagined she was drying her tears. He waited a whole minute. Then another. Then telling her he’d bought their tickets to Indonesia didn’t seem so important. He caught Jericho down the hall and took him for a drink before he could approach Yaz’s room. Something told Dan she needed this time to herself. Yaz deserved it, at the very least.
He asked her about it the second time, after following Yaz to the alley beside the Cheapside inn where they’d decided to lay low for a weekend. Skirting patches of ice, Dan padded after her until Yaz crouched by a barrel and drew something out of her pocket. Her breath fogged in a thin stream.
“Just what’ve you got there, la’?” he asked, a little too loudly. Yaz jumped to her feet, shoving whatever it was back. The bright, fuzzy image of the Doctor dissipated into the night. He’d meant to sound casual, but his voice, though light, sounded like an accusation, and Yaz was looking at him like a cornered animal.
“It’s nothing,” she lied, backing into a brick wall, which puzzled Dan. This frightened person was not the Yasmin Khan who led their treks through jungles with a machete, who had leapt into action finding them resources and transport, who had taught herself how to tie proper knots and start fires from a handful of leaves for the nights they needed to camp in the woods. This Yaz seemed smaller, more delicate and frayed, as though the slightest breath of wind or slip on the ice would shatter her. Dan could see how hollow her cheeks had become, the circles under her eyes. Yasmin Khan was fearless, he decided, but even she could be fragile. Had the right to be fragile, he admonished himself.
“As if,” said Dan, trying to keep his tone playful. Yaz didn’t take the banter. Try again alright, Dan. He changed tack. “I thought something was wrong wi’ me eyes or was that the Doc out here in the Baltic wi’ you?” Yaz bit her lip. Dan pushed on. “Was thinking it’s too early to be bevvied, you know warra mean?” If there was something Yaz couldn’t resist, it was correcting him.
Her face crumpled in that conflicted way when she was debating with herself how best to proceed. He waited. Finally, she heaved a sigh and opened her palm for Dan to see the tiny egg-shaped device nestled in a metal claw. She smoothed the pad of her thumb over the top. The holo-Doctor glitched into view, and Dan started; seeing her this close was unnerving somehow. Perhaps he’d forgotten just how sad she looked, despite her confident mask. Perhaps seeing her vulnerable was another violation he hadn’t known.
“So, this is an adaptive hologram. Right now, we’re in the TARDIS, having just left the planet Time… Which should not exist. Still bugging me. I’ve just pulled you out of your own time stream cos I’m good at stuff like that!” Yaz paused the recording, and the Doctor’s face froze in that bright smile.
“There’s not much here that helps with the search,” said Yaz, looking hard at her shoes, so different from the competent young woman who had rescued him from a Lupari craft. “Sounds like she’s as clueless as we are about the Flux. Well. She’d have a lot of clues, but maybe not quite the right ones.” Silence expanded between them, but for the muffled bustling of other inn dwellers and the lodgers next door, and the tinkling crack of a falling icicle. The night air felt sharp and thin. Dan’s hat made his scalp itch.
“Didn’t mean to geg in,” he said, his throat tight and his voice now too soft. The Doctor had meant the hologram for Yaz, and maybe only for Yaz. His whole body felt hot, like that time he’d walked into the same café where Diane was on a date, as though he’d seen something he shouldn’t have. “But maybe it does help with the search. She obviously thought it would help or she wouldn’t have left it for you.”
“Yeah. Yeah, maybe you’re right,” said Yaz, her damp eyes shining with the reflection of the Doctor. Her fingers fidgeted with the projector. Something in her tone sounded defeated, which was not a word Dan thought to associate with Yasmin Khan. Yaz was not one to accept defeat; she was always the one leading the charge to reclaim victory. So why was she so quiet now, so downtrodden when she always did her best to urge him and Jericho to the next destination, the next clue? Why had she conceded to grief? It clicked.
“She’s done this before hasn’t she,” said Dan, a small bubble of anger rumbling to life in his chest. “Gone off like this. Left you behind.” Yaz flinched, which he took as confirmation. She took a shaky breath.
“We—I thought she was dead last time. I didn’t want to believe it, but… Months without a trace, no signs, not even an alien invasion for her to pop in and sort like always. It was luck, her coming back ten months later, when she did. All the research I did, and I had nothing to do with it, she just reappeared like nothing happened when almost a year had gone.” Yaz scrubbed at her eyes. “It weren’t fair of me, blaming her. She didn’t have control over disappearing, but…”
“But she left you alone?” asked Dan, tilting his head, hugging himself.
Yaz nodded. “And when she got back, I was just angry. Said some things I probably shouldn’t’ve. But I was right. She did disappear again.” The Doctor flickered out of existence as Yaz pocketed the projector. “Didn’t think being right would hurt this much,” she muttered, kicking a pebble. “Anyway,” she said, forcibly brightening her tone, “best we get in out of the Baltic, as you say. Bloody freezing out, innit?”
“Heard the innkeep say something about snow,” said Dan, returning to small talk with her. “S’posed to be soup for scran. Should be gear.” They avoided a frozen puddle, stepping into the warm glow of lamps and firelit windows on the main street. Ice glazed the paving stones in a gleaming layer, and icicles hung in jagged lines from roofs.
“Jericho said he smelled summat ghastly downstairs. Sure hope it’s not that.” He let Yaz lead, instinctively thinking she might like to hide her face a while.
“You alright?” he blurted before she could pull the inn door open.
“’M fine,” said Yaz, already rebuilding her walls. She didn't flinch when Dan took her arm as gently as he could. Something of an epiphany was forming a lump on his tongue, remembering the way she unraveled when he called her out.
“Maybe she left it to you so you wouldn’t feel abandoned this time,” he said. It had just occurred to him, and he was never keen to keep his mouth shut when something felt so important. Not for long, anyway.
“She did,” whispered Yaz, her back still to him. “Said it was in case we got separated.”
“Perhaps she’s learned something, then,” he said.
Yaz chuckled mirthlessly. “Took her long enough,” she said, and she pushed the door open to a bloom of rosy warmth.
The next time Dan found Yaz talking the Doctor’s ghost, he let them be, through their exchange of I miss you and the Doctor trailing off to attend the Yaz of that time. Yaz’s routine would become familiar enough that Dan could recognize the right time to approach her with business or travel plans. She always perked up after her spare minutes alone with the projection. Who was he to interrupt the one thing he knew kept her going?
“We’ll see her again, Sheffield,” he murmured, smiling to himself at the genuine joy in Yaz’s voice when she called the Doctor bighead.
Even the Flux could wait for love.