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The TARDIS was silent.
The TARDIS was silent but for her pilot; but for her thief. The Doctor panted heavily, boots pounding (with almost double the weight than was custom for them to bear) across the grated floor of the console room and up those glowing honeycomb steps. Only her occasional strained grunt - only her intermittent pleas for the limp woman in her arms to hold on - broke up the monotony of those blitzing footsteps.
"Almost there, Yaz," she breathed. "Just - just hold on, okay? Please hold on."
This was all her fault.
She'd noticed Yaz's growing recklessness in the months prior and it had always been an issue she was meaning to address. A talk she'd been meaning to have. But talks - real, proper talks - were not the Doctor's strongest suit.
She could prattle, she could deflect; she was great at comical anecdotes. Opening her heart did not come so easy. Whenever she'd tried to peel it in the past, she found the rind too thick. Too stubborn. Too prickly. Tired of sucking pinheads of blood from her thumbs, the Doctor had let her concerns take up residence on the back burner. To get around to, for sure. When it became a priority.
Idiot.
Guilt was an iceberg and she was the Titanic and Yaz's blood soaking through the front of her shirt was a whole ocean of subzero water rushing in through the hull. But she didn't have time to sink. Not yet. That would come later - as soon as she got Yaz safely to a lifeboat. To a raft. To any scrap of floating debris she could find.
"Come on, old girl," the Doctor urged through gritted teeth, and this time her pleas were not directed toward Yaz. "Help me. Help her!"
Salvation.
A white door.
The Doctor forgot to thank her ship; her ship was unlikely to begrudge her for that. She barrelled through the door backwards and Yaz's head lolled against her chest. White lights, white walls, white tiles. The picture of sterility. An odour of chemicals and blood filled the Doctor's nose and nested on the back of her tongue and later, she knew, she'd be at it with a toothbrush for a long time.
She carried Yaz across the sickbay to a horizontal glass chamber hovering of its own accord against the far wall and lay her down, gentle as could be, on the grey mat within it. The Doctor didn't waste time thinking about the bruises discolouring Yaz's face and arms. She didn't waste time agonising over the crimson shirt that had once been white or the deep gash above her brow or the fact that she could hardly even make out the rise and fall of her chest. No, those would have been precious seconds lost.
Instead, she closed the glass lid on the chamber and it sealed shut with a hiss. A touchscreen keypad appeared on the glass and the Doctor cursed when her bloodstained fingertips, trembling as they were, fumbled the code the first time around. Wiping them furiously on her culottes, she tried again.
Once she'd inputted the species and gender, the screen asked her to specify the area of damage. Ever so briefly, the Doctor dared herself to behold her young companion. Her jaw quivered. She looked away. Never mind that, the machine could do it for her. She selected the full body scan option and instantly, a flat circle of blue light - starting at Yaz's head - advanced through the cylindrical pod across her entire body. The screen lit up red instantly.
Critical! Loss of life imminent!
"So then fucking save her!" The Doctor's cry broke like glass in her throat and she swallowed the shards whole.
Yaz's heart rate (god, her pulse was so weak) appeared beside an option to cancel or proceed with treatment. There was also, in fine print, a long list of procedures descending by order of necessity to survival. So many bloody boxes to tick and buttons to press and-
The Doctor lost her patience. She stepped back and aimed her sonic at the screen and straight away, the chamber got to work. It worked on Yaz for a long time.
Various metal rods with myriad surgical tools attached to the ends protruded from the pod's internal casing. A pair of scissors cut clean through Yaz's shirt and the Doctor couldn't tear her horrified eyes away from the damage lying beneath. Her abdomen was black and purple and green, the bruising seeming not to ripple outwards from any singular point of impact but from several.
She was injected with various fluids and her blood was sampled, cloned rapidly, and transferred back to her in multitudes. The blood loss had come from a wound in both her head and her chest. By grace of god, her heart hadn't been nicked. But the Doctor knew - she'd known at first glance - how excruciatingly close a call that had been.
Once cleaned, surgical guns sealed her wounds, emanating light almost as bright as that from a magnesium fire. Even her more minor wounds were tended to; small tears in the skin stitched back together and defence wounds on her hands (the Doctor's gut twisted) salved and bandaged. While all of this was happening, the Doctor kept a very attentive eye on Yaz's heart rate.
It was touch and go for a while.
She couldn't be certain but, at one point, she thought the chamber may have sent a concentrated shock to Yaz's heart to kickstart it. Whatever it was, it worked. Yaz was stabilising. Still, the Doctor didn't stop watching that heart rate until stabilising became stable and stable became strong.
One by one, each of the surgical tools sterilised themselves and retreated to their respective casing until there wasn't so much as a paper cut or an ulcer left to tend to. The screen lit up.
Treatment complete.
Commence 24 hour induced rest? [Recommended.]
The Doctor pressed her palm to the glass. That was it. It was over.
She'd thought for sure - but no. Not this time. This time she got lucky; didn't have to fold another phantom into that increasingly claustrophobic space inside of her hearts. Didn't have to make a harrowing call to an unsuspecting family. Didn't have to turn to an ancient rage; her oldest companion. She didn't have to do any of that.
Yaz's pulse was steady and her wounds were sealed and even most of the blood had been cleaned from her skin and she was alive. Yasmin Khan was alive.
Just to be sure, the Doctor let her eyes track the even rise and fall of her chest which before had been so impossible to discern. She'd have liked to open that chamber, throw her arms around Yaz, press an ear to the skin over her heart and listen to it beat all night. She didn't do that. Yaz needed to rest. The Doctor tapped a button on the screen and Yaz was injected was another clear fluid. The chamber darkened.
A broken gasp - something like relief but not quite so pure - and the Doctor crumpled to her knees.
Sank.
Yaz was alive, but the Doctor was still taking on water. She wept. Hands stained black with all her shame, the Doctor wept silently by Yaz's side and she didn't stop until morning.
"Where is the Doctor?"
"I already told you," said Yaz. "I am the Doctor."
Wrists shackled to a pipe above her head, Yaz stared down her captor with no small degree of audacity. He - she? it? - was bigger than her. Stronger. Muscles flexed beneath scaly grey skin whenever he moved and sharp talons glinted something unholy in the pulsing red emergency lights. He trailed the razor's edge of one such talon along Yaz's throat and she felt the top layer of her skin part like water; tried not to swallow. Tried not to betray how out-of-her-mind terrified she was.
"You are not the Doctor," snarled the creature. "You are human. You are nothing. Where is the Doctor?"
She and the Doctor had been separated. A distress signal that had really been a trap led them to an abandoned spacecraft in the back end of a lonely solar system. Upon arrival, they'd been ambushed by a bounty hunter looking to score the payout of a lifetime. The Doctor was priceless cargo, apparently.
Yaz had been told to stay put while the Doctor went to go and confront their assailant. Alone, she'd said. Don't move. She left Yaz in a deadlocked panic room. Untouchable.
Safe.
Yaz being Yaz, she couldn't just sit and twiddle her thumbs and hope the Doctor would work it all out on her own. With her - whatever happens. Was that not a promise she'd made? She intended to stick to it. Against all the Doctor's many cautions, Yaz opened the door. The creature had been waiting.
It knocked her out, dragged her to the engine room, and chained her up. It only wanted one thing: to know where the Doctor was. Yaz did the only thing she could think to do until the Doctor got there. She stalled. Even when it became apparent that the creature could tell by scent alone that Yaz was not a Time Lord, Yaz's answer never once changed.
I am the Doctor.
I am the Doctor.
I am the-
A rib-splintering fist to the gut expelled the wind from Yaz's lungs and left her gasping in pain, toes of her boots dragging along the floor. Had she not been chained in such a fashion, she'd have been sent hurtling towards the ground. She closed her eyes.
Come on, Doctor, she thought. You're taking your sweet bloody time.
"Where is the Doctor?"
"I am the Doctor."
Another blow and Yaz couldn't help but cry out this time. She could feel her bones breaking beneath the creatures knuckles every time he hit her; felt her arms bruising and bending unnaturally when he twisted them for his own sick amusement.
"Where is the Doctor?"
"I..." Her breath rattled around the blood in her throat. "Am. The Doctor."
Enraged, the creature slashed his taloned hand across her face and suddenly blood was streaming into one of Yaz's eyes and somehow that was worse than the actual pain. The creature gripped her harshly by her jaw, forcing her one unimpaired eye to look into his own. They were black. Lidless. Nauseating.
"Do you want to know how I know you're not the Doctor, aside from your stink?" he seethed with hot, vapid breath. "Because I've been transmitting this entire thing from every comms device on board the ship, at every frequency, and if there's one thing I know about the Doctor-"
He stepped aside. Sure enough, Yaz could just make out a familiar face peeking through the small round window in the vaulted door.
"-she always comes running to save a friend."
The buzz of a sonic and the door burst open. Yaz tried for a smile but couldn't manage one. Face too heavy. Everything too heavy. She fended off the pull of unconsciousness with every ounce of will she'd somehow retained throughout this entire ordeal. The Doctor was here for her. Everything would be okay, now. Everything would be okay.
"Yaz." The Doctor regarded her friend with eyes so wide they took up half her face.
Yaz tried for a greeting; it came out as an incoherent mumble. Not to matter. The Doctor would understand, or else the TARDIS would translate.
The Doctor arched an arm and buzzed her screwdriver at Yaz's shackles, but just before Yaz could fall to her knees, the creature caught her. Held her by her throat. Pointed a vicious talon at her heart. Yaz wasn't lucid enough to be as afraid as before. Weird, she almost felt tipsy. The pain had ebbed some, too.
Sure, things were looking a little dire and her left eye was glued shut with blood but - look. The Doctor. Nothing bad could happen while the Doctor was around. Didn't matter that she looked so afraid. Didn't matter. She'd figure it out.
"Hi, Doctor," Yaz tried again. She thought she sounded a little clearer this time.
"Let my friend go," demanded the Doctor stormily. "You can have me, yeah? You can have me. Just let her go."
"Drop your weapon," the creature growled.
"Not a weapon," the Doctor mumbled. Nonetheless, she let her sonic clatter to the ground and raised her palms outwards. A sign of surrender. Why was she surrendering? Didn't she have a plan? "Happy? Now, let her go. Let me just check she's all right and - and I'll come with you."
"Sure, knock yourself out."
The creature shoved Yaz in the back and she'd have fallen face first had the Doctor not swooped in to catch her in her arms. Yaz buried her face into the Doctor's shoulder; felt a strong arm around her back and a delicate hand at her cheek. Yaz winced and the Doctor withdrew as if burnt. Yaz could barely keep her eyes open. Could the Doctor hurry up and save the day already? She needed a bed. She needed to sleep.
"Don't close your eyes, Yaz," urged the Doctor. She turned to the creature. "I can't leave her, not like this. She needs medical attention! You've almost killed her!"
The creature did not look fazed in the slightest. It grimaced - grinned? - to reveal several sets of glinting, silver teeth. "Doctor, you misunderstand." It flexed one of its hands; Yaz watched closely through her good eye. "Nowhere in the conditions of your bounty did it specify that I had to bring you in alive."
Yaz, who'd been suffering the creature's torture for the better part of twenty minutes, had come to anticipate its movements - even in her confused state. The muscles in its forearm went tense. By the time it propelled a taloned hand through the air towards the Doctor, Yaz had already stepped out in front of her. Yaz's eyes snapped open and her jaw hung wide when the knife-like claw impaled her square in her chest. She coughed. Her own blood sprayed out of her mouth; speckled the cheek of her captor. Her killer? It cackled and the sound was like the grinding of metal.
The Doctor screamed. Screamed for Yaz. Screamed at the creature. He withdrew his talon and next thing Yaz knew, she was lying with her cheek pressed to the cool ground. Her hand lay in front of her face and she wondered if her index finger had always bent that way. And then she wondered why it was so warm until - ah. It was soaking in a puddle of warm blood.
Hers?
Yes.
Definitely hers.
She didn't know how long she lay there until she saw - not felt, just kind of observed - somebody grabbing her by her wrist. She couldn't make sense of anything. Images and colours all swam in and out of focus and a creeping darkness was tainting the edges of her vision. The next thing she knew was a great pressure and suddenly she was floating or falling or being dragged and she just about had enough sense to look up.
The Doctor was holding onto the railing; was holding onto Yaz. That was an image her tired mind could comprehend. She'd done something clever, obviously, and that's why they were both now suspended in the air and clinging to one another for life.
What was it the Doctor had told her about the engine powering this ship? It had something to do with magnets. Something to do with heat and gravity and something Yaz had only pretended to understand.
Yaz looked down.
The creature and his metal armour and his metal teeth were stuck fast to the glowing, fizzing engine. The engine that looked like a miniature sun with the brightness turned down. His flesh was bubbling; he was melting into it. Skin slipped off to reveal a ghastly skeleton scream and then that, too, turned to dust. Yaz didn't have any sense left to react to that.
Her body slammed into the ground.
It was bad that it didn't hurt. She knew that. Bad, too, that she couldn't decide how to feel about that.
Frantic hazel eyes became Yaz's whole world. No, that was a lie. Those eyes had always been Yaz's whole world. The Doctor crouched over Yaz.
Yaz did what she could to mimic one of the Doctor's winning smiles and hoped the blood staining her teeth didn't spoil it too much. "It - it's... okay," she stuttered.
She wanted to somehow convey to the Doctor that yeah, maybe she was about to die in her arms, but Yaz was fine with that if it meant she'd sacrificed herself for someone so worthy. She wanted to convey to her that she didn't regret a single second of their shared travels, and that even now - as she lay in a growing pool of her own blood with little hope of making it out alive - she'd still have chosen a life with the Doctor over mundanity any day.
Yaz wanted to convey to the Doctor that all of this was really okay, simply because Yaz loved her. And did she know? And did she ever feel the same? And in another life, might they have had a shot at happiness together?
All Yaz actually said was "Th... thank you."
But the Doctor, she was sure, would understand.
The Doctor scooped Yaz up into her arms, and her mouth was moving but no words were coming out, and everything canted like a listing ship, and Yaz was plunged helplessly into oblivion.
The Doctor spent all night and most of the following day in the sickbay.
She'd paced. She'd chewed her thumb, bit her lip, only rested her eyes for a few minutes at a time in one of the adjacent cots. Most of all, the Doctor watched Yaz sleep. Just to make sure she was breathing. Just to be absolutely, without-a-doubt positive, that she was out of the woods. Those woods had been really fucking thick. Really fucking dark. The Doctor never wanted to lose anybody to them again.
Especially not Yaz.
She only left the sickbay when she remembered to glance down at herself after god knows how many hours. She was caked in Yaz's blood and the last thing she wanted for Yaz to behold when she finally came to was such a horrific sight as that.
The Doctor retreated to her washroom and peeled every blood soaked article of clothing from her skin one by one. Examining them all. Puzzling over whether miracles really did exist because how could a person - a human being - lose so much and still pull through? Yaz was a fighter; that was for sure.
She stepped into the shower and let the scalding water strip her of the crimson second skin she'd adopted. As the blood swirled around the drain, the Doctor squeezed her eyes shut and heard those four words clear as a bell in her ears.
I am the Doctor.
For whatever sadistic reason, the bounty hunter had aired every sickening second of Yaz's torture over every speaker in the spacecraft. The Doctor had been forced to listen to every scream and every slice and every hit; been forced to listen to Yaz refuse to give the creature what it wanted at the potential cost of her own life. She'd ran so hard and tried so desperately to find them sooner, but something had been scrambling with her sonic's ability to track their life signs and it wasn't until she'd disabled it that she was able to determine which room of the vast ship they were in.
And god, for a second - when she first arrived at the scene - she thought she was already too late. Yaz had been strung up like an animal for the slaughter. Indeed, the engine room looked less like an engine room and more like a killing floor by the time the Doctor got there. She'd forgotten just how much humans bled.
The infuriating thing was, Yaz could have avoided all that. She could have put a stop to her suffering at any time if only she'd surrendered that heartbreaking mantra. Why hadn't she done that? Why hadn't she just given the Doctor up? The Doctor had told Yaz her plan; she'd have known exactly where she was.
And then to jump in front of the Doctor-
It made her sick to think of it.
The stomach-turning sound of a claw driving through flesh and blood and tissue and vital organs. That choking, spluttering gasp Yaz had made - a breath the Doctor believed would be her last.
Thank you.
Why in all of hell and earth had she thanked her?
The Doctor sat on the edge of her bed in her undershirt and trousers. Clean clothes. Clean skin. Why did she feel so fucking filthy? She got to her feet and raked her hands through her hair and felt that old familiar quake in her bones before an eruption. She swept her hands across the surface of her desk, sending books and journals, trinkets and stationary, mugs and picture frames, all crashing to the floor. Not enough.
She picked up a small lamp from the bedside table and, without looking where she was aiming, hurled it towards the far wall. Only when it was already out of her hands did she see her standing there. In the doorway.
"Yaz!"
Yasmin Khan.
Alive. Still.
The lamp shattered against the wall a mere metre from where Yaz stood and she flinched at the impact, hands flying up to her face. Another surge of awful guilt. She could chew on it another time. Yaz was awake. The Doctor had crossed the room and pulled Yaz into an embrace before the lamp even hit the floor.
"Doctor," Yaz wheezed.
"Oh - sorry!" The Doctor stepped back with a rueful wince. "How are you? Y'feelin' okay? Anything still sore?"
Yaz had changed into the tee and sweats left out for her by the Doctor; had taken the liberty of removing the majority of her own bandages. Wasn't modern medicine wonderful? Or future medicine, in Yaz's case. Most of her superficial wounds - bruises and cuts alike - had all but vanished. The gash above her brow had become a thin rope of white tissue that would no doubt fade on its own eventually, or else leave a microscopic scar.
"I feel..." Yaz looked down at herself, disbelieving. "I feel great. Stiff, that's all. Guess sleeping in a tiny chamber doesn't help with that." She looked up at the Doctor; endless questions scored onto her wide brown eyes. "How? How am I alive?"
"That chamber y'were snoozing in," explained the Doctor. "May have nicked it from the chief surgeon at the General Hospital. That's the name of a planet, by the way. Whole world's a hospital. Paramedics drive all the buses. Blood bags grow on trees. Well, not literally. But they do hang from trees. Can y’imagine? Not the sweetest of fruits, believe you me.” Yes, she was rambling. Rambling to hide her latent trauma.
Yaz still looked dazed; in shock. “I thought I were dead,” she confessed in a whisper. “I really thought...”
The Doctor pressed her lips, eyes cast down. "I'll be honest, Yaz, you almost - you almost didn't make it. If we hadn't been within reach of the TARDIS, if I hadn't happened to have that chamber..." Her voice wobbled; she took a steadying breath. "Yaz, you would have died. D'you understand that?"
"But I didn't."
"But you could have!" The Doctor clenched her fists to keep her hands from shaking. She was feeling so many things, thinking so many thoughts, and her skin burned beneath the inescapable flare of them all. "You terrified me."
Yaz held the Doctor's wild eyes for a second and then glanced at the lamp. What was left of it, anyway. "Is that why you're trashing your room?"
"I don't understand," whispered the Doctor hopelessly. "Why didn't you tell him where I was?"
Yaz frowned like it was a stupid question. "I'd never do that."
"Why?" asked the Doctor incredulously. "He was torturing you, for heaven's sake. Why wouldn't you just give him what he wanted, if all he wanted was me?"
"Would you have given me up if the situation were reversed?" challenged Yaz.
"That's different."
"Why?"
"Because I'm not so bloody fragile, Yaz." The Doctor lifted a hand to Yaz's cheek; ran a thumb over miraculously healing skin. Yaz went still. "You didn't see. You didn't see what he did to you. You didn't have to sit and watch that machine repair your body cell by cell for hours on end."
The muscles in Yaz's face went taut beneath the Doctor's fingertips. "Can't have been so bad, if I'm standing here now."
"Can't have been-" The Doctor choked a bitter laugh. Shaking her head, she retreated into the adjoining restroom, retrieved the bloody mess of clothes half-stuck to the floor, and marched back into the bedroom. She thrust them into Yaz's face, a picture of fury and weariness and something a little harder to name. "Look at this. This is you. You were all over me. All your blood. All night and day - stuck to me, suffocating me. I can still smell it on me, Yaz. I can still taste it. Do you have any idea what that's like?"
Yaz shrank back, a terrible realisation rolling like a dark cloud over her eyes. "I'm sorry," she croaked. "I didn't think-"
"No, you didn't think." The Doctor tossed the clothes to one side. "You figured you'd just play fast and loose with your life and bank on me to swoop in and save you 'cos that's how it usually goes down, right? I hate to break it to you, Yaz, but I don't always save everyone. I don't always get there on time. I need you to understand that."
"Yeah, no, I - I understand that," Yaz assured her, pale beneath the Doctor's unimpeded intensity. "That's not why I..." She fidgeted with the drawstring on her sweats. "Never mind."
The Doctor regarded Yaz, how small she looked all of a sudden, and her tense shoulders gave a little. She released a long exhale and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to lose my temper," she said, voice softening around the edges. "I was just so worried. If I were to lose you, Yaz - I think I might just die."
Yaz's sad smile didn't reach her eyes. Not even close. "You wouldn't."
"Oh? How do you know?"
A beat.
Yaz looked up at the Doctor and she watched her pupils flit between each of her unblinking eyes. Maybe she found what she was searching for in them. Maybe she didn't. Next thing, Yaz was looking down at herself. "Um, did you - did you wash me?"
"Oh - no, the chamber will have taken care of all that."
"Right. Just woke up naked and smelling like soap and-"
"As I said: chamber." The Doctor smiled tightly. "I know how you lot like your privacy, so."
Yaz nodded.
"Now that you're awake, though, d'you mind if I do give you a quick exam?" asked the Doctor. "Excellent machine, that thing, but still a machine at the end of the day. Like to be sure."
"No problem," said Yaz. "I'd trust you over a machine any day. Do we need to go back to the sickbay, or-?"
"Nah." The thought of returning to that room so soon made the Doctor's stomach turn uneasily. If she had to choke back the lingering miasma of iron and chemicals one more time she'd probably throw up. "We can do it right here. Sit."
Yaz perched on the edge of the Doctor's bed while the Doctor pulled a swivel chair out from beneath her desk. Sitting in front of Yaz, she reached into one of the drawers at her bedside and retrieved a stethoscope. The Doctor very actively avoiding looking directly into Yaz's eyes as Yaz lowered the hem of her top to allow for easier access. She pressed the drum to Yaz's chest and listened.
"No tightness in the chest or anythin'?" she inquired, mostly just for something to fill the quiet that had fallen over them.
"No," said Yaz. She watched the Doctor closely.
The Doctor glanced up and then immediately away. She fidgeted in her seat and relocated the drum by a couple of millimetres. Did she imagine that slight falter in her heartbeat? "Sorry, if I could just-" The Doctor came to sit beside Yaz on the bed and pressed the drum to her back, hand beneath the fabric of her shirt. She focused not on the bob of Yaz's throat or the microscopic hairs on the nape of her neck standing on end but on the steady tick of her pulse. Mostly.
Only once the Doctor withdrew the stethoscope did Yaz finally speak. "Doctor, I have something I need to say."
"Hm?" She wrapped the stethoscope around her neck and returned to her seat, rolling it closer to the bed until she was positioned practically between Yaz's thighs. She hooked a finger over the hem of her top that she might get a better look at the scar underneath it.
This one was thicker than the one on her head; might never fully heal. She traced a finger along its length and Yaz shivered. The Doctor wondered if Yaz was cold. She was only in a thin t-shirt, after all, and she wasn't wearing a bra. Oh. Right. The Doctor hadn't left out a bra. Mouth dry, she very deliberately did not allow her focus to shift for even a fraction of a second from the scar on her chest.
"I didn't risk my life back there on the off chance that you'd just swoop in and save it," said Yaz.
"Could've fooled me. Lift your shirt?"
"What?"
"There was a lot of damage to your abdomen," elaborated the Doctor. "Just wanna make sure everything's in tip top shape. Won't take long."
"Oh - okay." Yaz lifted her shirt, stopping just shy of her sternum.
"You were saying?" The Doctor pressed a tentative finger to Yaz's ribs. Several of them had been fractured, even broken, and now the only sign that they'd ever been damaged was a yellowish, fast-fading shadow of a bruise.
"I was saying... uh, I was saying I didn't risk my life just on a whim like that. I mean, it's not like I get into dangerous situations just for the fun of it."
"That so?" The Doctor did not sound convinced. "I told you to stay put, Yaz, remember?"
"You left me behind with nothing to do but worry about you," defended Yaz. "What did you honestly expect me to do?"
"I expected you to do what I told you to do." The Doctor sat up. "I left you somewhere you'd be safe, Yaz; thought you were smart enough to heed my advice by now. If I'm tellin' you to do something, I'm not doing it 'cos I like the sound of my own voice. I'm doing it because I want to keep you out of harm's way. Any pain here?" She pressed her fingers softly between Yaz's third and fourth rib.
"Wh - no," said Yaz, distracted. "Doctor, I came after you for the same reasons you left me behind. I didn't wanna see you get hurt."
"I can take care of myself," the Doctor disputed.
"Always?"
The Doctor didn't answer. Silently, she allowed her fingers to roam towards another faint scar - this one just above Yaz's bellybutton. The Doctor hadn't realised just how many licks Yaz had taken. When her cool fingertips traced the raised tissue, Yaz tensed.
The Doctor furrowed her brow. "Did that hurt?"
"No, it's just..." Yaz trailed off.
The Doctor looked expectantly up at Yaz and Yaz only stared back at her. The Doctor saw something in her, then. Something she recognised. Something she dreaded if only for how much she had, on occasion, found herself craving it. And running from it. And discouraging it. And thoughtlessly fuelling it. Yaz swallowed and the Doctor couldn't stop watching her neck.
"I thought I was dying," Yaz breathed. "And I couldn't say it then. Couldn't get the words out even though I genuinely thought it were my last chance to do it. But now I have another one. So I might as well try again. While I can."
The Doctor knew what was coming. "Yaz-"
"Doctor, I love you."
Too late.
Yaz said the words and they fell onto the Doctor's lap and she looked down at them, watched them hop onto her palm like baby birds, wondered how on earth she was going to care for them. What did she know about baby birds and their tiny fluttering hearts?
"That's why I came after you and it's why I couldn't give you up and it's why I jumped in front of you," Yaz pressed on. "Not because I'm reckless but - but because I'm in love with you."
One of the Doctor's fingers drummed ever-so-lightly against Yaz's hip. She'd known. On some level, the Doctor had always known. But then to hear Yaz actually say it out loud and break that unspoken agreement she thought they shared... Because they both had their reasons, didn't they? They both had their reasons for wanting to keep their affections buried. And all those reasons had seemed so valid the day before. So important.
But then Yaz had almost died in the Doctor's arms.
If that hadn't happened, the Doctor would have shut this whole thing down. She'd have lied - said she didn't return Yaz's feelings - and done so under the guise of protecting her.
The taste of Yaz's blood in her mouth stopped her from doing that. Reminded her that no matter what efforts she went to, no matter the precautions she took, the worst could still happen. The people she loved could still be taken from her in a heartbeat. This time around, the Doctor had been so fortunate as to be granted a second chance with Yaz. Maybe this was an opportunity to do things right for once.
The Doctor readjusted her hand, placed it a little lower. "Any tenderness here?"
Yaz looked exasperated; desperate. "Doctor-"
"How about right here?" This time, the Doctor's fingertips skirted the area of skin just above the hem of Yaz's waistband.
Yaz fell silent. She looked down at the Doctor's hand, and then up into her eyes. The Doctor - in spite of everything, in spite of how close her entire universe had come to imploding and how petrified she still was of what it meant to let herself love somebody so fearlessly - felt a small smile dance upon her lips. Yaz's respondent smile was a precarious thing. Hopeful and afraid at the same time.
The Doctor kissed it from her. Yaz gasped against her mouth but almost instantly kissed her back and the Doctor's skin burned fiercer still. That eruption still lay dormant in her gut and her every nerve trembled with the desire to explode at long last. Maybe, thought the Doctor, this was the way. Maybe it wasn't trashing her room and succumbing to another paroxysm of anger, but succumbing instead to every repressed desire and every unbearable urge she'd ever quelled in Yaz's presence.
Not least of which was the urge to love her back.
Unapologetically.
They kissed their lips raw and swollen and somehow Yaz ended up straddling the Doctor and the Doctor couldn't decide whether to focus more on Yaz's thighs pressed against her own or on the way her twin hearts lurched whenever their tongues brushed over one another. Twenty four hours prior, Yaz's lip had been split wide open. The Doctor ran her tongue across it. Seamless. Soft. Impeccable.
"That machine really is a miracle worker," she mumbled, thumbing at Yaz's bottom lip with genuine amazement.
Yaz grinned; kissed the pad of the Doctor's thumb. "Maybe we can praise the machine later, yeah? Kind of feel like we were in the middle of something, there."
"Yeah, I know, just-" The Doctor's hand fell from Yaz's mouth. "Mind if I finish my exam first?"
Yaz knitted her brows together, a hybrid of amused and perplexed. "Seriously?"
The Doctor lifted a seriously flushed Yaz off her and got to her feet. "Y'see, there was a proper nasty bruise right here," she started, voice even. The Doctor skimmed her fingers along the tip of Yaz's hipbone. "Might not have healed right. Any tenderness there?"
Just like that, Yaz understood. The Doctor's own present appetite for mischief was mirrored in the tug of a smile pulling at the corners her mouth. Yaz shook her head, allowing the Doctor to back her up slowly against the bedpost as her fingers traced small circles on her skin. Her back hit the frame and the Doctor pressed into her.
"No? How about here?" The Doctor's fingers walked a little further south. She heard Yaz's breath hitch; watched her tease her lip between her teeth. Their mouths were an infinitesimal distance apart.
"I don't think you're remembering right," said Yaz and her words left a warm impression on the Doctor's cheek.
"That so?" The Doctor tilted her head.
"I think it was a little lower than that."
"Show me."
Yaz wrapped a hand around the Doctor's fingers and escorted them under the fabric of her trousers. The Doctor was initially surprised - no underwear - until she remembered she'd forgotten to leave those out along with the bra. Whoops. Maybe she'd known what she was doing, after all. They stared darkly, hungrily, silently at one another as Yaz guided the Doctor's fingers.
The second they found home, Yaz's neck muscles tensed. The Doctor could see her thrumming pulse against her skin; rapid and strong. That sure sign of life - nothing better. Nothing better at all.
"Now that," whispered Yaz, thudding the back of her head against the wood. "That's a little tender."
The Doctor stretched her lips into a slow grin. She trailed the tip of one finger along Yaz's heat and her wetness and felt a budding arousal in the base of her gut. "Guess I'll have to go easy on you, then," she spoke into her ear.
"You know me, Doctor," said Yaz, wriggling against her just a little. "I can take the licks."
The Doctor arched a brow. "We'll see."
She pressed her forehead against Yaz's as she slid her finger in and Yaz gasped into her parted lips and then the Doctor kissed her quiet.
She fucked her slow, at first, and maybe part of her was still thinking about all that blood and all those bruises and the scars still littering her body. But then Yaz bit the Doctor's lip and it ignited something inside of her. She forgot to be gentle. Curled another finger inside of her. Picked up the pace. There came another rush of slick heat around her fingers and it evoked a pleasant heat between the Doctor's legs, too.
Yaz, she could tell, was trying so hard not to moan.
Wanting nothing more than for her to fail, the Doctor relocated her lips to Yaz's neck and pressed a series of kisses to her flesh until she located the sensitive spot right below her ear. She attached herself to it - lips and tongue and teeth.
Yaz panted, her breathing jagged and frenzied and so fucking divine. When the Doctor pressed her thumb against Yaz's clit, finally Yaz elicited the smallest of whimpers. Teasing, the Doctor let her thumb dance circles around it, skimming over it but not quite granting Yaz the pressure she so needed.
"Doctor." The word was nothing short of a beg.
"Maybe when you start doing what I say," said the Doctor in a low, black tone. "You'll reap the rewards."
"When I start-?" Yaz, mind clearly foggy with lust and pleasure, frowned at the Doctor.
"Y'might not always do as you're told out there," she murmured against Yaz's ear, fingers pumping steadily inside of her. "But in here, it's Doctor's orders. Now take off your top. You're wearing way too many clothes." If the Doctor couldn't get Yaz to obey her outside the TARDIS, she'd certainly seek her compensation in the bedroom. If not her revenge.
Yaz raised her eyebrows but complied. "Yes, ma'am."
She granted Yaz just enough breathing room to pull her top off over her head and fling it to one side. The Doctor paused. That white scar on her chest looked so stark against her dark brown skin that she couldn't help but fixate on it. Her fingers inside of Yaz slowed perceptibly. Yaz seemed to read the Doctor's mind.
"I'm not gonna break," she assured the Doctor sincerely. She rested her hand on her cheek. "Promise." Yaz kissed her deeply; an earnest encouragement.
By the time they broke apart, the Doctor had shelved her concerns. She was nothing if not an expert compartmentaliser. "Okay. Pants off." She stepped back and reclaimed her hand, much to Yaz's dismay. "Get on the bed."
While Yaz stepped out of her pants, the Doctor kicked off her boots and waited until Yaz was on her back atop the duvet to climb on top of her. Before touching her, she allowed her eyes to roam very deliberately over every inch of her body. Every curve, every goose bump, every peak and every valley (she let her eyes slide over the damaged parts for now. Probably, she'd spend an untold amount of time pressing soft kisses to them later).
What the Doctor wanted to say was: god, you really are gorgeous.
When she wanted to say was: I love you. So much.
What she settled on instead was "Ready?"
Yaz nodded.
The Doctor straddled Yaz's thigh and splayed a hand out flat across her stomach, driving her knee up between her legs as she leaned down to kiss her again. Yaz grunted at the pressure, and that grunt became a moan when the Doctor's hand roamed towards one of her breasts, taking an erect nipple between her thumb and forefinger and twisting just so.
She kissed Yaz's jaw, her throat, her chest. She pressed her knee in deeper and took a nipple into her mouth. Yaz wove her fingers through the Doctor's hair, eyes closed, as the Doctor sucked on her supple skin and grazed the nipple with her teeth. Yaz was grinding against her leg, obviously urging for that very specific pressure the Doctor was withholding from her. The Doctor pinned her down by her waist.
"Who's in control here?" she all but purred directly into Yaz's mouth. Yaz, panting and debauched and downright staggering, glared up at her and that spark of defiance in her eyes just would not do. Hand curling around her neck, knee withdrawing, the Doctor asked again. "I said... who?"
She had all the time in the world.
Yaz's pulse hammered at the Doctor's fingertips. She knew she was had. Through gritted teeth, she said "You."
"Didn't quite catch that one, Yaz," the Doctor goaded.
Yaz rolled her eyes; a motion cut short when the Doctor once more twisted her nipple abruptly between two knuckles. Yaz's sharp intake of breath was muffled by the Doctor's mouth; her tongue sliding past surprised lips. She kissed Yaz with open eyes, cherishing the way she screwed her eyes shut; savouring the tremble of her brows as she tried so hard to contain all that arousal rolling off her in waves.
"Tell me," breathed the Doctor.
And Yaz was apparently done resisting. "You're in bloody control, all right?" she yielded, her bare chest heaving against the Doctor's. "You're the one in charge."
The Doctor's eyes gleamed something victorious. "And don't you go forgettin' that again, Yasmin Khan."
At that, the Doctor sat up and took a hair tie from around her wrist, tying her blonde bob back into a loose pony. Delight lit up Yaz's features. She backed herself up against the headboard and the Doctor couldn't help but smile at her keenness as she crawled over to her.
"One more thing," she said, running her hands across Yaz's thighs and curling her arms around them to position her just right. She yanked her further down the bed. "Don't be so bloody quiet. I wanna hear you, yeah?"
"You're the boss," quipped Yaz.
"Too right I am," the Doctor said. She pressed a series of gradually nearing kisses to the inside of Yaz's thigh. When she at last ran her tongue in one swift motion along the length of her hot cunt, she was not surprised in the slightest at just how wet she still was. Yaz shuddered. The Doctor dipped her head; dove in.
Yaz tasted like musk and religion and salt and sin. That grim aftertaste of blood was soon overwhelmed by all the limitless flavours of Yaz's ecstasy and the Doctor relished every morsel.
The Doctor didn't rush.
She thrust her tongue inside of Yaz; lapped at her like she was the impossible oasis in an endless desert and the Doctor had been thirsty for days. True to her word, Yaz didn't stifle her soft whines. When the Doctor circled Yaz's clit with her tongue, she could physically feel her growing desperation and derived no small measure of satisfaction from that. Least of all when Yaz took to pleading once more.
"Please," she urged and her voice was hoarse with unfettered want. "Doctor. Plea- oh!"
The Doctor fastened her lips to Yaz's clit and started sucking. Her lips and tongue moved with the expert efficiency of someone well versed in the art of giving head; a skill apparently requiring no muscle memory to perform. She was glad she still had it in this body. Gladder still when Yaz's quiet whining became full on moaning - heavenly sounds that coursed through her entire body; vibrations the Doctor could feel on the tip of her tongue.
She fingered her while she ate her out and Yaz's head fell back, face skyward, one hand gripping the Doctor's ponytail. Another moan - her loudest yet - only spurred the Doctor's feverish worship on.
She ate Yaz like she'd been hungry for weeks and fingered her like she was mining for diamonds. Yaz stretched around her third finger with ease and it wasn't long at all before she began to rock her hips, arch her back, tense her stomach.
"Fuck. Fuck, Doctor, I'm gonna- I'm gonna-" She was panting too heavily to finish.
Thankfully, the Doctor could translate.
She was unrelenting. The Doctor fucked Yaz fast and hard, palming one of her breasts with her free hand and watching Yaz's face the whole time. When that climax finally came for her, Yaz jerked her hips violently forwards and the Doctor felt her clench and convulse around her.
Yaz's euphoria was an unparalleled thing to behold. Yaz's euphoria rivalled every constellation and every celestial wonder and all the innumerable sunsets the Doctor had ever beheld.
This was certainly one such little death the Doctor could abide.
Yaz’s mouth hung open and a long, enraptured moan poured out of it like holy light and the Doctor kept going and going and going until Yaz shook no more; until she collapsed heavy on the bed above her. The Doctor lifted her head. Yaz lay with her eyes on the ceiling, face flushed and breathing exceptionally slow to even out. Once Yaz had semi-recovered, she peered down at the Doctor.
"Woah," she managed.
"Right?" The Doctor got to her knees with a lopsided grin. "One of my many skills, that."
Yaz pulled her in by the collar of her t-shirt and kissed the taste of herself from the Doctor's mouth. The Doctor served her that delicacy willingly. So much better when shared.
"D'you see now," said the Doctor, cupping Yaz's chin. "Why it pays to do what I say?"
"Doctor, I can honestly say I don't think I'm ever gonna disobey you again," Yaz said around a light laugh. Her hand lingered on the Doctor's waist and her eyes flickered downwards. "D'you want me to-"
"Another time," vowed the Doctor. She sat beside Yaz and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Been up the most part'a two days lookin' after you, haven't I?"
Yaz smiled apologetically and leaned her head against the Doctor's shoulder. "Tired?"
"Knackered," she confessed. It hadn't really hit her how tired she actually was until she got that volcanic eruption out of her system - and who'd have known? Release hadn't come from her own pleasure but Yaz's.
It made sense, though, that the utter trauma of seeing Yaz in death's anorexic embrace could only be cured by witnessing her at her most bewitching. At the height of ecstasy and in the thrall of realised love.
There was still a talk to be had.
A great big talk about rules and boundaries; about the future and what all of this meant for them going forward. This one was not for the back burner. But at present, the Doctor’s lids were growing heavy and all of that seemed very far away, indeed.
Yaz pulled the blanket up over them and looked to the Doctor. "Can I stay?"
"Always," said the Doctor. She kissed Yaz on her temple and pulled her in close as they settled comfortably side by side, smelling like sex and content and relief. As a tidal wave of total exhaustion encroached on the shore of the Doctor's consciousness, she just about had enough sense to mutter one last thing to Yaz before it submerged her completely.
"I love you, too, by the way."