.
.
She has contemplated getting some rest, like her human companions. The TARDIS whirs loudly, like a protest, and jerkily throws itself sideways. The Doctor groans, catching herself as she slams backwards against the far railing, hands bracing quickly and her neck snapping.
"Oi!" she frowns, yelling out.
Not that the Doctor can listen to what the TARDIS says when Ryan and Yasmin and Graham trample out into the console-room, in either pyjamas or button-up jackets, asking questions and yelling.
(Does everybody feel the need to yell when they don't know what's going on? All of the time!?)
"SHHH!" the Doctor hisses, lips stretching open and puckering.
She gestures out with her fingers slashing at a tilted angle over her mouth. Graham's eyes widen. He makes an offended, close-mouthed noise, but listens. Ryan throws up his arms, clearly irritated by the lack of answers, turning away. Yasmin only watches the Doctor, studious and calming down, offering a faint smile.
Eighty points to Yaz.
The Doctor's own lips uptilt, and she glances away from Yaz, inspecting the array of controls.
"… Where are you taking us, dear?" the Doctor murmurs to her TARDIS, gazing worriedly at the time rotor crystal pulsing erratically with dull-lit, yellowed energy. More blips and whirs answer her, as well as the hourglass fixture rotating idly. That can't be a good sign.
As soon as they've landed, the Doctor races to the TARDIS's entrance, peering out. Night air. Snowflakes gently float from the blackness, collecting onto the dead, ice-capped grass.
"Are we back home?" Graham asks with bland curiousity, joining her by the doors.
It's Earth. That much is certain.
Not far off, there are multiple electrical utility grids lined up around the biggest power grid of all. Its locked gates torn open. A humongous alien-creature bulks over, clawing directly into the wires. Sparks erupt like a display of bright-white, stellar fireworks, continuously burning and sizzling. The Doctor tries to remain still, as soon as it notices her and her friends, oozing and snarling.
"Oh. My. Days…" Ryan breathes out, awestruck and horrified.
She feels Yasmin inch further out the door. Brave and wonderful thing.
"Doctor, what is that…?"
"Right. Best you… …" Without taking her eyes off the creature now towering, the Doctor stiffly reaches out, blocking Yasmin physically with her arm. "You lot stay back and let me… do the talking, alright?"
The pale, translucent-looking ooze around the creature's torso resembles webbing. Two rows of gnashing, sharp fangs and three bulbous, milky eyes and slits for nostrils. An elongated skull and rubbery, thick neck. The webbing reeks like Slitheen vomit, the Doctor realizes, putting up a hand and ever-slowly moving towards it. "Hello there. Sorry to interrupt—" she speaks to the creature.
One of its claws unsheathes, growing bigger, ripping into another electrical-box and pulling its innards. The lights to the entire town of Wood Green below the hill flicker out of existence.
"—oh no."
They're all simultaneously, violently struck by a psychic blast, and it brings the Doctor to her knees. She moans out, gripping onto her temple and looking around for her friends. They're either rolled onto the ground or on their knees too, blinking the haze out of their vision.
"Doctor!" Yasmin cries out, her legs gone wobbly.
"Ss'alright!" The Doctor shouts towards her companions, fumbling for her sonic screwdriver and climbing back onto her feet. "S'alright! Don't start panicking—!"
The creature's tail jolts in lightning-speed, hitting the Doctor in the sternum with a powerful blow. She goes flying onto the grass, skidding and landed on her backside, wheezing for air. If lucky, all of the Doctor's ribs will not be completely and internally bruised.
Yelling. Even more yelling.
In the midst of chaos, Yasmin scrambles for the Doctor's sonic, pointing it at the creature advancing on the Doctor. To everyone's surprise, the alien-creature halts and growls, facing Yasmin. "I don't know what this does exactly, but you can bet your arse I will use it!" Yasmin says with her teeth exposed. A proper threat.
It howls at her, spitting its ooze, and then dissolves.
Melting into a pile of goopy, white-translucent webbing in the ice and snow.
The Doctor stoops over to examine it, now longer clutching over herself as the pain in her ribs lessens. Ryan laughs uneasily, scratching his head and walking in a circle. "Oi, that… what was that thing?"
Yes, that's an excellent, Doctory question. But, to tell the truth, she doesn't like how Yasmin's expression goes droopy and unfocused the longer it is, her dark-jean knees quivering.
"Alright there, Yaz?" the Doctor asks softly.
As if baffled by this response, Yasmin frowns at her, squinting her gorgeous and luminously brown eyes. "Yeah…" She doesn't lower her arm holding out the activated sonic screwdriver.
"Because you look like you're going to faint."
Yasmin's words gradually slur together. "No, I'm not…" she argues, falling forward and cushioned against the Doctor's front as she gathers a deeply unconscious Yasmin with both arms, keeping them both upright. Graham hurries to them, grunting, picking up the Doctor's screwdriver.
A tutting, exasperated noise.
"Of course not, Yaz," the Doctor murmurs, ignoring Ryan and Graham's offer to take her. She lifts Yasmin gently under the hips, cradling her and strolling into the TARDIS.
.
.
It's barely twenty minutes before Yasmin wakes up, able to walk and talk, and tap-dance to Sinatra.
(Yasmin doesn't. But it feels like the Doctor's own hearts could, as soon as the relief sinks in.)
"What happened…?"
"Psychic attack," the Doctor replies, putting her hands together in her lap. Her heather-blue coat neatly folded, left on the small, cozy-looking bed for Yasmin's makeshift pillow. Her spaceship doesn't have many rooms to them, so the Doctor asks politely for this one. Something more healing than an ordinary, chaotic bedroom. "Nothing to be ashamed of. We all react differently to them." Her rosy-pink lips twist thoughtfully. "It's New Year's Eve, 1999. London."
Yasmin blinks. "Isn't that when the Y2K panic happened?"
"Rightfully so. We found the creature responsible for an actual crisis in London." The Doctor hears the TARDIS humming pleasantly, satisfied with the outcome. She can be such a dodgy little love. "It wasn't equipped for surviving in the cold and passed on. I've made sure it won't be able to materialize again if it tries. Don't look so worried! Everybody's safe—just in time to celebrate! C'mon!"
She tugs on Yasmin's bare, warm hand, and the Doctor understands now anything is truly possible.
.
.
Night-shadows vanish against the glow of fairylights decorating the park's trees and streetlamps. The London Eye flashes and silhouettes in a white-gold, as humans mill around without regarding the Doctor, gleefully clapping and screaming and running to greet each other.
She bundles up with an additional scarf, rainbow-bright and fleecy. Graham observes from a foodstand, amused, as Ryan immerses himself into a conversation with a handsome and obviously flirting boy.
Yasmin… well, the Doctor has caught on to how Yasmin shrugs her mittens into her jacket-pockets and peers out of the corners of her eyes to her. As if she's not sure what to say. Which in a way it is rubbish. Yasmin can always say whatever she wants to her. She's the Doctor's best friend.
"Doctor…"
A hot, encouraging tingle goes up the Doctor's sternum. "Yaz," she says back, grinning until her mouth aches, unable to pretend to be disinterested about what is on Yasmin's mind.
"There's this… tradition on Earth. Right when midnight hits on New Year's Eve, uhm," Yasmin stumbles for an explanation, as the people around them chant, lowering her eyes to the frost-covered road. "It's not a big deal—well, it is a big deal to everyone during their New Years parties, but, when you and someone you fancy," the Doctor tilts her head and keeps grinning, listening, staring admiringly at Yasmin's face, "Or a friend—not a platonic friend, I'm not explaining this right—"
A split-second before midnight, the Doctor leans in, planting a brief, moist kiss to Yasmin's lips.
"Yaz."
Hollers and cheers and stomping. People crowding them embrace and kiss longingly. Yasmin tastes like a hint of melon lip-balm, when the Doctor leans in again and shuts her eyes, meeting halfway for another grinning and much slower, longer kiss. Yasmin's hands clasp onto the Doctor's sides.
"This is barmy," Yasmin mutters, smiling and giggling, feeling the other woman touch her back.
Maybe it is.
Maybe that's the kind of Doctor she needs to be.
"Let's get you somewhere warm…" she tells Yasmin, raising her eyebrows playfully, yanking her puffed-up sleeve and leading her. Their fingers entwining.
.
.
Doctor Who isn't mine. Guuuuuuys. My heart is so full for Thasmin. So full of loooooooove. I hope all of my lovely Thasmin shippers get a chance to see this and like it too! I'm participating in the Thasmin Holiday Gift Exchange on Tumblr! Eee! Any thoughts/comments are so very welcomed!