"Time travel is damage. It's like a tear in the fabric of reality" -11th Doctor.
After two weeks of non-stop adventures, the fam needed a bit of a break. Yaz had learned to surf on the rosy pink waves of Sephalon VI, Graham placed second in a poker tournament (a 43rd century version), and Ryan rode a triceratops through a re-creation of ancient Greece. The Doctor had happily accompanied all of her friends on these adventures, sharing bits of knowledge about the time period, finding the best restaurants to eat at, and taking photos using— according to her— Marilyn Monroe's camera.
The two weeks were capped off by saving a small village from a sentient tsunami in New New Japan, after which the (sopping wet) team trudged back into the Tardis, dripping puddles of water all over the floor as the Tardis groaned in protest.
"Alright fam," the doctor declared, "we need a break."
Graham snorted. "No kidding, Doc", he said, "that tsunami wasn't your version of a vacation?"
Graham was saved from a snappy retort when the Tardis made several beeps and whirls. She spun back towards the console and started twisting knobs and pressing buttons. Yaz followed the doctor to grab her phone which she had left (unbeknownst to the doctor) on top of the console. She frowned as she unlocked her phone
"Er, doctor?"
"What's up, Yaz?"
"Do you know what day it is?"
Ryan and Graham looked at Yaz in confusion. The Doctor hit several levers and walked over to Yaz.
"What's that?"
"According to my phone, we've missed Christmas. It's January 7th," Yaz said, her voice trembling a bit, "We've been gone for two weeks. Oh my god, what's my family going to think?"
"That can't be right," Ryan objected, "don't panic, Yaz. It was Monday the 24th when we left for a quick Christmas Eve trip (he rolled his eyes). But, there's no way that it could be January 7th, I mean, the doctor said she could drop us off a minute after we left."
"Right you are, Ryan," the Doctor said, "five points to you for paying attention! Yes and no, I can drop you off a minute after we left. But Yaz's phone doesn't know that. Phones don't upgrade to those kind of capabilities until after the Woolly Rebellion, about 192 years from now. The sheep negotiations really put a dent in the production power of big tech companies.
But Yaz is sort of right as well, a phone doesn't keep track of time travel— well, not for another couple centuries— so even though her phone says it's January 7th, it's not really. I can still drop you off on the 24th."
Yaz breathed a visible sigh of relief. "So back on Earth, it's still Christmas Eve?"
"Well, yes and no," the Doctor replied, "Time has passed for your phone and time has passed for your body, but not for your excellent family back at home. You can think of them as being—" she paused to think of the right word— "frozen in time while we go on adventures. You can think of the time vortex that the Tardis travels in as a long corridor with an infinite amount of windows in can travel through a window to a certain location at a specific time, but if we're just floating through the vortex like this moment, all of time is happening at once. Pompeii is erupting, Queen Elizabeth I is waiting to elope with me, the Daleks are attacking my home planet, a dinosaur is walking around London, and Donna Noble is learning to be the best temp in Chiswick. The universe dies and is reborn, people fall in and out of love, civilizations are created and destroyed, babies are born and funerals are held, all at once."
There was a silence.
"So, all Christmases are happening all at once?" Graham asked.
The Doctor nodded, looking around at her friends who looked a bit stunned. She walked over to Yaz and put her arm around the younger woman's shoulder.
"Time travel isn't really travel. If life is meant to be lived chronologically, from start to finish with no hops or interruptions, then time travel isn't natural. It's damage. It rips a hole in the universe every place where you go."
She paused.
"I had these best friends who used to travel with me, Amy and Rory, and I showed up to their anniversary party and took them on an overnight vacation that accidentally turned into a ten week adventure. I brought them back without a minute having passed for the people at the party, but they still aged those ten weeks. They spent ten years of their lives with me, even though much less had passed for everyone else. Your phone can jump between days; you can edit the settings to jump between days without problems. But humans are much more fragile, they lose days, months, even years of their lifetimes that they could have spent on Earth when they travel with me. I told you all that you all wouldn't come back to Earth the same people that you were, which is true. I meant it literally too."
"So we could come back to Earth with ten years having passed for us and two seconds passed on Earth?" Yaz asked quietly.
The doctor nodded and turned back towards the console to hide her eyes, which seemed to have developed a leak. The rest of the team pretended not to notice her brush away a few tears with the cuff of her coat.
The team left the console room still dripping wet but now silent, each occupied with their own thoughts. Several hours later, having showered off various types of saltwater and gotten dressed in comfier clothing, Yaz and Graham found a newly furnished living room with the requisite purple couch, video games, television, bookshelves, lavishly decorated for Christmas and complete with a large Christmas tree in the corner. Ryan had a habit of napping after long adventures, so they didn't go looking for him. Graham settled himself onto the couch
and began an episode of Call the Midwife. Yaz tried to watch the episode for about five minutes before getting lost in her churning thoughts again.
Why hadn't they heard about Amy and Rory before? Why weren't there any pictures of these so-called best friends anywhere in the Tardis? What had happened to them? Why did the Doctor get so upset when she talked about them?
Graham yelped as a particularly squeamish bit came onto the screen and averted his eyes, only to see Yaz clearly miles away.
"Yaz, you alright there?" he asked.
She raised her head, startled. "Yeah, course. Sorry Graham, I'm not really into Call the Midwife."
He chuckled. "I meant what the doc told us earlier. You still seem pretty shaken up."
"And you aren't?" Yaz asked, making eye contact with Graham for the first time, "You aren't scared of us stepping out of the Tardis one day only to find that five years have passed? Knowing that we'd have missed birthdays and Christmases and work?"
She took a deep breath.
"I love traveling in the Tardis and my mind is blown everyday by the things we see. But I can't get that fear of my mind. What happened to the Doctor's friends Amy and Rory? Did they get so old that they had to stop traveling with her?"
Yaz realized she'd raised her voice a bit and was also out of breath. Then she realized her eyes were rather watery. She broke eye contact with Graham and looked down at the purple velvet beneath her, suddenly very interested in a pillow seam.
Graham turned the TV off and got up to sit on the couch cushion next to Yaz. He pulled a packet of tissues out of his pocket and offered them to her. She accepted a few with an audible sniff.
"Do you want to know why you're scared of growing old with the Doctor, Yaz?" he asked. He didn't receive a response but went ahead anyways. "Because you could. You're a rational person, after all, you're a police officer. This is bothering you so much because there's a possibility, however small, that it could happen to you. Even though you love the Doctor and love traveling with her, you wouldn't want to step out of the box tomorrow the same age as your gran."
"And you're not bothered by it?" Yaz asked, too upset to notice that Graham had pointed out that she was in love with the Doctor.
"I'm already close to the same age as your gran," Graham said with a grin, "but I'm not bothered because I'm thinking about stopping. Don't tell Ryan or the Doc yet, I haven't quite figured out when to bring it up to them. Not all adventures, of course, I'd still like to tag along on the occasional jaunt, but I got what I came for. I wanted to escape from my grief, but I've done that now. The idea of growing old with the doc doesn't scare me because it's not possible for me once I bow out of daily adventures. But for you, it is."
Graham patted Yaz on the back and left her with the tissue packet. As he turned right out of the door, he collided with something blonde and guilty.
"Ouch doc!" Graham exclaimed as she trod on his toes.
"Sorry, Graham," the Doctor said, blushing a deep red.
"You heard all of that, then?" he asked.
"Accidentally, I swear," she said, pulling a face, "I was just looking for my favorite utility closet— the anti-grav one— and I heard Yaz's raised voice. Are you really leaving, Graham? Sure I can't change your mind?"
Graham frowned at the Doctor. "That's the least of your concerns right now. Yaz is the most upset I've ever seen her, more than when we met her gran in the Punjab and more than the death-eye turtle army. You need to talk to her. Tell her the truth about Amy and Rory. Tell her she's going to be okay. Ryan and I both know you care about each other very deeply, so prove it to her."
"If I tell her the truth about Amy and Rory, she won't feel safe," the Doctor admitted.
"But you can tell her how you feel about her," Graham persisted, "and tell her how you'd never let her miss years of her— or her family's— life.
The Doctor took a step back as the memory of a panicked Jackie Tyler slapping her in the face uncontrollably filled her mind.
"Thanks, Graham. I appreciate it."
"You're welcome, Doc," he fished in his pocket and pulled out another pack of tissues, "maybe give her these."
He turned from the Doctor walked down the corridor of the Tardis, intent on telling Ryan what he had been avoiding.
The doctor knocked and entered into the living room in the same movement, almost immediately regretting having done so. Not only did Yaz look puffy-eyed and extremely upset, a picture of Amy and Rory glared on the television screen. She barely stopped to think a couple of Gallifreyan curse words at the Tardis before striding towards the TV screen to examine the picture closer. Her eleventh body, clad in a tuxedo, stood in between the couple in their wedding finery, all three grinning out at Yaz, who had turned to look at the Doctor, her eyes full of sadness.