This should be understandable even if you haven't seen Classic Who. All you need to know is that the Doctor was stuck on Earth for a bit and spent most of his time hanging around UNIT and getting Lethbridge-Stewart both into and out of trouble.
They'd been promised a nice day out, and somewhere in the back of her mind Yaz wondered if the Doctor honestly thought this counted.
"Not exactly the eternal shiftin' dunes of whatchmacallit, this," Graham pointed out, a tad unnecessarily.
"The Eternal Shifting Dunes of Georgia V – parallel linguistic evolution, no relation – are eternal, Graham," the Doctor retorted. "Today, on the other hand, is a Tuesday, in London, 1974, and every slippery second of it is unique." She beamed at him. Ryan and Yaz exchanged slight smiles at Graham's sigh of resignation.
"Yeah, gramps," Ryan piped up. "Just like every brick in these cell walls is unique."
The Doctor aimed a finger gun at him. "That's the spirit!"
Behind her, Graham made a face. Yaz stifled a giggle.
"Mind you," the Doctor continued, oblivious, "there is more to 1974 than these four walls." She pushed her sleeves up to her elbows and stepped back, hands on hips, eyeing the heavy cell door. It was of dark old wood, petrified practically to stone after centuries of life as a cell door. It had a little barred window in it, so they could speak to their captors should any appear.
They hadn't yet. The Doctor and her companions had been unceremoniously grabbed from the halls upstairs by three grim-faced men in olive-drab military outfits and dumped into this convenient and dubiously legal basement cell. Then they'd been left alone. For at least twenty minutes now, which was apparently the Doctor's limit on patience.
"Anyone got a magnet?" The Doctor asked after a moment of contemplation. "Oh, hang on…" She rummaged in a pocket. Her hand disappeared deeper in than Yaz thought should be technically possible. "Really miss my sonic about now," she confided conspiratorially to Yaz as her arm vanished almost to the elbow.
"That's your own fault, Doc. You said yourself sticking it in that machine would fry it." Graham reminded her irritably. He'd been promised a day with sun and without anyone trying to kill him, and so far they were 0 for 2.
The Doctor scrunched her nose. "Well you're alive, aren't you?"
"Barely," he muttered, drawing an amused glance from Ryan.
"So what'd you need a magnet for?" Asked Yaz curiously.
The Doctor retrieved her arm from her pocket and tapped her nose in a way that Yaz supposed was supposed to look mysterious. "Just you watch, Yasmin Khan."
"You can't turn a lock like that with a magnet," reasoned Ryan, who had apparently caught on faster than Yaz.
"You can't." She held up a shimmering chunk of blue stone, turning it to catch the watery beams of sunlight streaming in through the door's little barred window.
It was gorgeous, but… Yaz tilted her head. "That doesn't look like a magnet."
"It's from the south pole of a little planet in the Cygnus system. Bit more powerful than the ones you get on Earth. Er. Hope they weren't keeping any computers on this floor."
A moment's work with the magnet, and the cell door clicked smoothly open. Outside, not a single green-suited soldier was around. The Doctor harumphed under her breath. "They did things properly in my day," she muttered. Ryan glanced at her curiously, but she was already out the door. Yaz shrugged at him, and they followed the Doctor out into a large, dimly lit space.
It was clearly the cellar of an old building; maybe a small castle, or an old stone manor house. The fam hadn't had a chance to see the outside yet. The TARDIS had landed them in a storage closet on an upper floor. The Doctor had taken three steps out into the dim, wood-paneled hall and proclaimed it Earth, 1974, April the 7th, at 10:09 in the morning. Instead of her characteristic grin, though, her brow wrinkled into a quizzical frown.
"Back in the box, then?" Graham had asked, hopefully.
The Doctor smoothed the frown off her face so quick Yaz wondered if she'd imagined it. She replaced it with a bright smile, just a little forced around the edges. "Before we even know what we've walked into?" She asked, aghast.
"Thought not," Graham sighed to Yaz, who smiled at him.
They'd made it about ten yards down the hall before three soldiers with rifles appeared around the corner; one took a thoughtless pot-shot at them. The four of them ducked instinctively the moment the guns appeared, and the bullet buried itself harmlessly in the centuries-old wall down the corridor.
"Oi!" The Doctor protested. "There's no need for that!" She lifted her arms in surrender. "Take me to your… no, actually" – that odd little frown was back between her brows – "why don't I just step back in here-"
"Don't move!" barked one of the men, sighting along his rifle. They were all so young, Yaz thought. Young and nervous.
"Right, right, not moving." The Doctor wiggled the tips of her fingers in a conciliatory gesture. The man with the rifle narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed. The Doctor and her companions were ushered into a basement cell with a minimum of talking. Despite the Doctor's best efforts.
Then they'd been left entirely alone. The young soldiers were grim-faced and busy; clearly, the Doctor and her friends had stumbled into a crisis. There was no way the Doctor would walk away from a mysterious crisis, so Yaz settled into the idea of exploring 1974.
1974 became, as promised, much more interesting once they were out of the cell. It took a few minutes to locate a set of rickety wooden stairs, during which time Yaz was surprised to find that the basement was entirely deserted. No soldiers, and no other prisoners.
What they did find was… Well, Yaz wouldn't have remarked it if the Doctor hadn't paused and tilted her head just like that.
"A bit chilly down here, isn't it?" Graham said perkily. He wrapped his arms around himself. Yaz did the same; it was like they'd momentarily walked into a freezer.
The Doctor still had her head tilted. She delved into her pocket before apparently remembering that her sonic was a pile of melted slag on Romulus' seventh moon.
"Doc?" Graham had caught her head tilt – a sure sign of trouble.
But she just shook herself. "Stairs!" She said cheerfully, gesturing forwards. When Yaz stepped forward, her whole body relaxed, as though she'd stepped from a winter night into a mild spring day. She filed that under 'suspicious.'
They filed up the stairs. Ryan went last, navigating carefully, a hand on the spindly rail the whole time. On the main floor, they dodged a couple of soldiers and followed the Doctor outside. She navigated the building without hesitation, weaving through corridors and darting through side doors until they reached one that led outside.
They emerged into the bright, diffuse light of a gray day and hovered in the doorway while their eyes adjusted after the dim light of indoors. They were standing at the edge of a large yard. It was packed dirt with scraggly grass and weeds growing over it, ringed with the remnants of a stone wall. Several run-down stone outbuildings were scattered around; old stables or garden sheds, Yaz figured. Soldiers were trotting across the yard in small groups, or leaning up against walls with the tense, expectant posture of men at war.
They were all avoiding, very, very carefully, an amorphous shimmering mirage in the center of the yard.
The Doctor gestured her companions to slip behind the nearest shed. Yaz darted after her, holding her breath until all four of them were tucked safely out of sight.
"Well, this looks like a party," said the Doctor. Her tone was light, but her face remained uncharacteristically grim.
"Sure does, Doc," said Graham. He and Ryan exchanged uncertain glances, which she didn't seem to notice.
The Doctor edged around the other side of the shed, peering out at the activity. After a beat of silence, she said, "oh."
That was all she said, and as the silence stretched on, so did a faint, simmering anxiety in Yaz's stomach.
"Is that a good 'oh,'" she asked finally, "or a not-good one?" She turned her head to glance at the Doctor. The stone of the shed was cool and rough, and Yaz focused on the sensation of it against her shoulders instead of on the fizzing adrenaline in her veins. The Doctor was the only one with a clear view of the yard around the edge. Pressed up close behind her, most of Yaz's vision was taken up by the pale blue shoulder of the Doctor's coat. A dark thread was coming loose at the corner of her hood, and there was a faint trickle of red at the seam on one shoulder that might have been blood or might have been red clay.
"That depends," said the Doctor finally. "On how you feel about reality."
"Um. All of it?"
"Unless I'm very much mistaken," the Doctor began, in a tone that made it clear she wasn't, "that is a transdimensional spatio-temporal interruption."
"Er…"
Yaz could hear Ryan mentally translating the Doctor's words.
"I already lived through 1974, Doc," Graham reminded them in a stage whisper. "I'd've noticed if the world stopped existing.
The Doctor glanced back, a peculiar expression on her face. "You really wouldn't have."
Before they could respond, she brough both hands together in a silent clap. "Right! It's an easy fix, more or less. I've got most of the materials in the TARDIS. Yaz, take this."
She rummaged in her coat pocket and tossed something to Yaz. Surprised by the weight, Yaz nearly dropped it. It looked almost like a compass, except it had dials and symbols she had never seen before. It also seemed to have seven points, instead of the usual four.
"Over there," she waved towards the yard "that's just a- an echo. Offshoot, like. Somewhere around here there's a hole in spacetime that's distorting reality, and it's sending out waves. Our job is to find the center and shut it down before it starts sending out tidal waves."
"What's this?" Yaz tilted the compass curiously.
"That's a thingamabob," said the Doctor helpfully.
"A 'thingamabob'?" Asked Ryan, eyebrow raised.
"Gary Thingamabob. Inventor of many useful devices in the seventy-fourth century."
"You're not serious."
The Doctor smiled in that vague, noncommittal way of hers. She seemed a little more distracted than normal; had since they'd stepped out of the TARDIS. But, as always, she pressed forward gamely before Yaz could figure out how to ask if everything was okay.
"The thingamabob" – she ignored Ryan's scoff – "reads distortions in spacetime." The Doctor placed one cool hand over Yaz's, showing her how to twist the dials. "Pink setting for the chronometer, blue for space. Spirals mean you're getting warmer. You need to be able to think in four dimensions to get any further than that. Call me when you've found it. Don't be seen. Ryan, Graham, you're with me."
With that, she turned on her heel and darted back through the door they'd come out of.
"Luck, Yaz," Ryan said with a wry grin. He clapped her on the shoulder and headed after the Doctor. Graham sighed, hanging back a moment, shaking his head.
"It's like she's allergic to explanations," he groused. "Well. See you on the other side."
Yaz grinned and Graham gave her a mock salute before he, too, headed back through the door.
Holding the thingamabob out in front of her, Yaz tried to determine which direction was "warmer." It seemed to be leading her at an angle back through the house. All those twisty hallways would be a hindrance, though. She decided to go around the house, which had the advantage of directness, but the disadvantage of leading her right by the busy groups of soldiers.
She took up the Doctor's position and peered around the shed, legs tensed to run. The tension eased slightly as long moments passed without anyone yelling 'hey you!'
She counted about a dozen soldiers, all in the same olive-drab uniforms. They were all occupied with the tasks of setting camp and keeping guard, and twice within the first five minutes she saw patrols return and replacements go out.
She waited for the soldiers to settle down into work they would likely be at for a bit. Then she made her move, sliding carefully from the shelter of the shed to the shade of a leafy tree.
She didn't dart or rush – that much she'd learned from the Doctor. Look like you belong or, failing that, at least don't look like you don't belong. A quick movement draws the eye as surely as a scream. A casual movement fades into the background; visual white noise.
In this way, Yaz made her painstaking way around the edge of the building. On the other side was little shelter, but luckily also no soldiers. She followed the compass as it led her around to the back of the building.
On the way, she saw a plume of greenish-purple haze above the trees. It was obviously odd; it had the same distorted quality as the mirage in the yard behind her. As she watched, she almost seemed to see shapes swim into focus, but they fractured as quick as they came. When she raised the compass toward it, it whirred uselessly. She refocused on her path.
The house had been built facing a small pond, surrounded by overgrown gardens. It must have been elegant a hundred years ago, with its wide porches, tall windows, and sweeping views of the moor. But the house and grounds had long since fallen into disrepair, and no one had kept up with the yard work. Yaz was forced to wade through waist-high reeds as she followed the compass to the muddy edge of the little pond. She was a little nervous about stepping out around the last of the trees, which had until now mostly hid her from view of the windows.
There seemed to be something odd about the mist rising from the pond. It shimmered just a bit too bright and it seemed… shaped, almost.
Yaz tilted her head, trying to make out the figures. They were vague and undefined, but definitely there, like a reflection in a steamy mirror. A transdimensional spatio-temporal interruption, the Doctor had called it. Trans-dimensional. Could that mean…?
She risked a glance back at the house, and saw no one. She leaned further out, extending her hand… not yet… Yaz took a step out. Then three steps out, and… spirals.
The figures in the mist were no clearer, but the indicators on the device spun in odd, spiraling patterns, just as the Doctor had described. Yaz felt a stab of triumph.
She didn't get much time to savor the moment. A voice sounded from up by the house -
"Hey, you!"
Yaz sighed, slipped the compass into a pocket, and put up her hands.
OO
The room Yaz was brought to was warm and wood-paneled. It seemed to have been hastily furnished, with camping chairs and a folding-table desk piled high with paperwork. A phone sat on one corner of the desk, with a thick wire running across the floor and out a side door. Large windows on the wall looked out over fields and the flat expanse of water. From here, the pond looked normal. It glinted dully in the flat midmorning light.
A man stood behind the desk, dressed in the same olive-green color as the soldiers escorting Yaz. He looked up as they entered. He was handsome, she noted absently, though he had a harried look about him. Maybe it was the number of folders he was holding, or the phone receiver caught between his ear and shoulder.
He said a curt goodbye to the person on the line, and dropped both the phone and the folders. He came around the desk just as the man holding Yaz's elbow pushed her forward.
"This is one of 'em," he said. Yaz stumbled forward a step, then caught herself and glared.
"There's no need for that," she snapped at the man. He ignored her. The man at the desk did not; he had stepped forward with a hand outstretched as if to catch Yaz when she stumbled. When she caught herself, he dropped his hand and frowned slightly at her escort.
"Yes, thank you," he said shortly. "And the others?"
"No news yet," the soldier said, eying Yaz suspiciously. "But we'll get 'em, sir!"
"Yes, quite. As you were, gentlemen."
The soldiers hesitated. The officer sighed. "Benton is just through there, if you're concerned I can't handle one girl," he said dryly. At the sound of his name, another young soldier appeared through the side door and took up a military stance in the opening.
The soldiers who had brought Yaz saluted and left out the way they'd come. The door closed with a dull snap. Standing in the center of the floor, Yaz eyed the two remaining men, feeling herself tense for a fight. But no one moved towards her. Instead, the officer offered Yaz his hand.
"Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart. These lads are my responsibility, I'm afraid. I trust they treated you courteously?"
"'Course," Yaz said irritably. "They were very polite when they were shooting at us and throwing us in a cell."
Lethbridge-Stewart sighed. "Some of them are a bit keen. I'll have words with them. Please." He gestured to a chair. "Sit. Benton here will bring some tea." The young man by the door nodded to Yaz and Lethbridge-Stewart, and disappeared out the door.
"Aren't you worried I'll run for it?" Asked Yaz, who hadn't made a move to sit.
Lethbridge-Stewart just looked at her calmly. "I was rather hoping you'd help me sort out this mess, actually."
"Why would I do that?"
He crossed to the desk and picked up one of the pages he'd discarded earlier. "Fifteen sightings of foggy figures, strange mirages, and oddly-colored mists in the past eight days. We've tracked them to a consistent four-mile radius of this manor. Well, to a four-mile radius of a spot seventeen and a half yards that way." He nodded out the window at the picturesque countryside where they'd grabbed her. "Something tells me you and your friends know more about what's going on here than I do. Please." He gestured to the chair again. "We've been out here almost a week and to be frank, my dear, I'll take any help I can get."
"Yaz."
"Hm?"
"My name is Yaz. Not 'my dear.'"
A surprising hint of humor appeared in his brown eyes. "Do you take milk or sugar in your tea, Yaz?"
Benton had reappeared, holding a tray with a small collection of tea things. Lethbridge-Stewart cleared a spot and Benton settled the tray on the desk and offered Yaz a cup.
"Just black is fine." She felt a flicker of worry as she accepted the cup, but she supposed if they wanted her dead, they hardly had to go to the trouble of poisoning her. Still, she watched as Lethbridge-Stewart accepted his own cup with a smile of thanks, and took a sip.
"So, Yaz. Care to help me save England?"
Yaz studied Lethbridge-Stewart over the rim of her cup. "What makes you so sure I know something?"
He shrugged. "Four strangely-dressed people appear out of nowhere in the middle of a quarantine area after a string of inexplicable… hm, shall we say… visitations." He raised one eyebrow at Yaz. "Call it a leap of intuition."
Okay. Point to the military guy. Yaz sat, still cradling her teacup in her hands. Lethbridge-Stewart sat when she did, and she realized with a jolt that he'd been waiting for her to sit first. Mid-century manners, she reflected wryly.
"First, I want to know my friends are okay."
"They are in no danger from my men," he assured her. "They've been emphatically reminded that we do not shoot at strange apparitions."
Yaz shot him a look, but he was straight-faced; if he was joking, he hid it well.
Well. In for a penny. She leaned forward and placed her cup on the desk. "Hand me that map?" She asked. He handed it over, and fished a pen and notepad out for her as well. Yaz ignored the notepad and spread the map over the precarious landscape of files. "Can I write on this?"
"It's all yours, Miss Yaz."
"Seventeen and a half feet that way," she marked roughly the spot on the map "is a… it's a sort of… weak spot. Look, my friend could explain this better than me. I think what you're seeing is a sort of… bleed through." She glanced up at him, gauging his tolerance for the weird. He was watching her evenly. "From another dimension," she finished, her eyes on his, challenging him to contradict her.
Lethbridge-Stewart only picked up his teacup and sighed. "It would be something like that the very week my scientific advisor goes missing."
"My friend can help," Yaz said earnestly, learning forward. "Let me go find her."
"Are they dangerous?" He asked, instead of responding to her plea. "Whatever is… bleeding through."
"I don't know," Yaz shrugged. "We ended up here sort of by accident. We only just started looking into it ourselves." She eyed him, sitting back in his chair, sipping his tea. "You're taking this very calmly."
"This isn't the first odd thing I've encountered in my career, Miss Yaz."
Yaz marked a couple more spots on the map; the mirage on the yard, the weird green smoke. Then she marked the cold spot in the basement, for good measure. "These are the ones we've found so far. I'm guessing…"
"That they correspond exactly to our sightings?" He asked, leaning forward. "You'd be guessing correctly." He sat back again and took another sip of his tea.
Yaz sipped her own. The cup was small; it was already turning lukewarm and slightly bitter. She waited impatiently for Lethbridge-Stewart to refocus on her. He stared thoughtfully out the window for a long moment.
"Your friend. You say he can help?"
"She. And yes, she can help." Yaz tried to project the full depth of her confidence in the Doctor. "Weird stuff is kinda her specialty."
"Well then." He pushed back his chair and stood. "May I?" He asked, reaching for the map. Yaz nodded, and he rolled it up and tucked it under one arm. He offered her the other arm.
Yaz stood quickly and crossed her arms over her chest. He seemed like a reasonable man, but she hadn't forgiven him enough to be hanging off his arm. He didn't seem offended, just shifted to gesture towards the door.
"After you, Miss Yaz."
"It's just 'Yaz,'" she muttered irritably as she stepped past.
Once out in the corridor, she let Lethbridge-Stewart take the lead. He walked briskly, half a step ahead of her, and glanced over every so often to be sure she was keeping up.
"Where do you expect we'll find your friend?" He asked.
Yaz hesitated. Finding the Doctor was what she'd wanted, but it still felt like a betrayal to lead the man who'd locked them up right to her. She settled on the truth. "I'm not entirely sure," she said honestly. "But we've got to start somewhere. Where's the stairs in this place?"
Together, they climbed to the third floor, and Yaz found the corridor they'd arrived in with only a few wrong turns. She paused, glancing down the hall to the door concealing the TARDIS. The Doctor had once assured them that no one had breached those doors in a thousand years, but Yaz had a sneaking suspicion that some or all of that statement was exaggerated. She glanced sideways at Lethbridge-Stewart, wondering if he'd let her go on alone. Well. She had to ask, at least.
She didn't get a chance to get the words out.
"Yaz!" A bright voice echoed from the other end of the corridor. Yaz grinned involuntarily and turned around to see the Doctor, striding towards them, coat swishing around her calves. Ryan and Graham trotted behind her with armfuls of equipment. "Yaz, have you-"
Mid-sentence, the Doctor paused. Froze, actually, halfway down the hall. Ryan ran into her with a yelp; some small component tumbled from the pile in his hands.
"Oi!" He complained.
Yaz darted forward to grab the piece he'd dropped. She smiled uncertainly at the Doctor.
"Um. This is… sorry, what did you say your name was?"
"Brigadier-General Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart." He nodded politely to the Doctor. "Should I assume this is the friend who can help us with our problem?"
"He's been perfectly nice to me," Yaz explained quickly. "We were coming to find you. I told him what's been going on…"
"Yes, good," said the Doctor distractedly. "We'll take it from here, Brigadier."
"I trust you won't mind it I tag along," he said, falling into step beside her.
The Doctor glanced over at him. Her face was unreadable. "Wouldn't dream of stopping you."
"So what's all this, then?" Yaz asked, taking some of the more precarious pieces out of Graham and Ryan's arms. They gave her a jumbled explanation as they made their way outside. Apparently, the Doctor was planning to cobble together a contraption which would shore up the weak spot, mending the growing rift and shutting out the trans-dimensional 'interruptions.'
The Doctor paced several steps ahead. The line of her shoulders was tense, and for once she let Graham and Ryan explain without interrupting to correct or lecture.
"Fascinating," said Lethbridge-Stewart, once Ryan paused for breath. He glanced sideways at the Doctor. "I'd be interested to know where you learned to do such things, ma'am."
"What, you believe us just like that?" Graham cut in.
He glanced back at Graham with a tight smile. "A long enough military career will give a man a great capacity for belief in the strange and mysterious," he said, a hint pompously.
The Doctor snorted. "I doubt that," she muttered.
He turned back to her. "A long enough career, and interesting enough friends."
"Sure. Where are yours, by the way? I've barely seen any of your gun-toting monkeys."
"Shoring up the perimeter, mostly," he said. He brushed past the insults as though he hadn't heard them. "We weren't expecting an invasion from within."
"Not even with a reality-warping event horizon in your midst?"
"You'll have to forgive me for not anticipating that," he said calmly, and this time Yaz could hear the twinkle of humor in his voice.
Something about him seemed to be irritating the Doctor. They had reached the back door and filed out into the watery midday sun, and she paused to glare at him before stalking off towards the pond. The others hurried to catch up.
The scraggly grass melted into soft, sandy mud around the edges of the pond. The Doctor stopped right at the border, where her boots sank just a few centimeters into the soft ground. She surveyed the area, then turned and waved a hand vaguely at Graham, Ryan, and Yaz.
"Just drop that anywhere," she said. She glanced over at Lethbridge-Stewart. "I'm sure you have better things to do, Brigadier."
"Than ensuring that the walls of reality remain solid? I really don't."
The Doctor blew an irritated breath.
"Ma'am, have I offended you somehow?"
"You are the direct sort, aren't you," she grumbled.
"Ma'am-"
"Stop that!" She snapped. "Stop ma'am-ing me and let me work in peace, Brigadier."
Lethbridge-Stewart raised an eyebrow. "I was going to offer to call some of my men to help you with your work… Miss."
The Doctor threw up her hands. Ryan ducked his head to hide an amused smile.
"I don't need help from your men," she hissed. "And may I remind you that every minute you spend badgering me is another minute closer to the total collapse of reality."
He surveyed her calmly, taking in the Doctor, her companions, and the pile of electrical equipment at their feet. "I didn't get your name," he said after a moment.
"No. You didn't."
"Sir!" The man from earlier – Benton, Yaz's mind supplied – jogged up. His cheeks were pink and he was slightly out of breath as he raised a blocky radio. "We've been trying to reach you sir. Something must be jamming our signal. There's been another sighting down the drive."
"Yes, thank you Benton," snapped the Doctor. "No one is jamming your signal Brigadier, the event horizon simply has an unpredictable effect on radio waves. Well, I say unpredictable. It's perfectly predictable, only you couldn't get your head around the maths."
"Have you met?"
"Have… what?"
Lethbridge-Stewart nodded at Benton. "Sergeant Benton here. You know his name."
Benton was looking at them curiously. "We haven't met, sir. Are these the others that were spotted on the grounds?"
The Doctor and Lethbridge-Stewart faced one another. The Brigadier had several inches in height on the Doctor, but she matched him in sheer presence, hands on her hips, spine straight, face carefully smooth.
He shook his head. "You're him, aren't you. I don't know how, but you are. No one else talks like you, Doctor. Or dresses like you, if you don't mind my saying."
She stared at him. "I do mind, Brigadier. You've always taken issue with my dress."
"That infernal scarf."
"I liked the scarf. Mind you, it did get in the way a bit."
"Hold on." Benton cut in. "The Doctor is…"
"Standing in front of you, Sergeant."
"But…"
"Do keep up, Benton," said the Doctor crossly.
"So… hang on, you lot know each other?" Graham asked, looking between them, confused. "Why don't they…"
"I looked different back then," she said shortly. She seemed to deflate a bit, and sighed. "A lot different. It's a long story."
"'Back then'?" echoed Lethbridge-Stewart. "I saw you only last week."
The corner of her mouth twisted. "It's been rather longer than that for me, I'm afraid."
He studied her. "I see."
"You really don't." She tilted her head. "You'll see me again, Brigadier, but I never expected to see you again. I…" she paused.
He waited patiently for her to continue. When nothing more was forthcoming, he nodded slowly. "You live a complicated life, Doctor."
"You don't know the half of it. Reality holes are a drop in the bucket." She smiled tentatively, and some of the tension eased out of her shoulders when he smiled back.
"I admit I am relieved to hear I am not losing my scientific advisor for good."
"Oh, I could never do that to you, Brigadier!" she said cheerfully. "You're stuck with me for a good long while, I'm afraid."
"Wait – she's your missing scientific advisor?" Yaz said, incredulous.
"Ah. Well." The Doctor rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly. "I was sort of… stranded here for a bit. That's also a long story. The Brigadier let me consult on odd cases, kept me out of trouble and the Earth in one piece, more or less. Oh!" She lit up. "I don't suppose you have Bessie here?"
"At HQ, I'm afraid."
"Bessie?" Ryan whispered to Benton.
"The Doctor's car," he whispered back, leaning in. "An electric yellow monstrosity."
"Oi!"
"Sorry Doctor." Benton shrugged. He seemed less comfortable than Lethbridge-Stewart with the idea that the woman in front of them was the Doctor they knew, but willing to go along with it. Yaz figured 'going along with it' was a requirement for anyone the Doctor spent any length of time around.
The Doctor clapped her hands. "No matter. Shall we save reality now?"
Lethbridge-Stewart clasped his hands behind his back. "How can we help?"
"My dear man, you can start by getting out of my way." Yaz and Ryan both had to cover giggles at Lethbridge-Stewart's eye roll. The Doctor kept on as though she hadn't seen. She dove into the piles of things they'd brought down, sorting out copper wires and multi-faceted plastic bits and fragments of metal and circuitry. "You don't have my… no, you wouldn't, the dinosaurs got it… hm…"
"Is that a piece of my backup generator, Doctor?" Asked Lethbridge-Stewart, peering over her shoulder.
"You weren't using it."
Lethbridge-Stewart exchanged long-suffering looks with the Doctor's companions.
"She said the same about my toaster," confided Graham in an undertone.
"Benton-" the Doctor began.
"Ma'am." Benton snapped to attention, complete with a little salute.
The Doctor glared at him for a moment. She turned to Lethbridge-Stewart. "I will have quiet assistants or none at all.
Lethbridge-Stewart nodded once. "You heard the lady, Benton. Hop to it."
Benton busied himself with untangling the tangle of wires the Doctor thrust at him; on her other side, Yaz busied herself with her own tangle of wires. Out the corner of her eye, she watched Benton sneaking glances at the Doctor. He kept his face carefully blank under the sharp gazes of the Doctor and the Brigadier, but Yaz could feel the uncertainty radiate from him.
The Brigadier, on the other hand, radiated nothing but the same eternal calm he'd worn all day. He stood unruffled in the mud, giving orders over a handheld radio the size of a loaf of bread. Yaz thought about the way he'd handled her appearance – gracious, and utterly unperturbed. He'd offered her tea like she was a neighbor who had stopped in, and not a complete stranger in anachronistic clothes materializing in the middle of a secret military operation. He seemed unaffected by the day's strange events or the Doctor's sharp tongue.
Yaz could see why the Doctor liked him.
For her part, the Doctor got right down to ignoring the humans in favor of her machinery. She squatted beside her pile of components, heedless of the mud, and began fitting bits together.
Yaz and the boys balanced on their heels in the mud beside her, passing along untangled lengths of wire, bits of metal, and small tools upon her terse requests. The Doctor could focus with a single-minded intensity when it suited her, and she did so now, squinting down at her device as it slowly came together, seeming not even to hear the barking of the Brigadier's radio.
Eventually, Lethbridge-Stewart silenced his radio and knelt beside them. He watched the Doctor intently. His gaze caught on the blonde crown of her head, her quick, efficient hands, the blue edges of her coat dragging in the mud.
"It's sonic," she said, in answer to a question he hadn't asked. "It uses sound waves to. Er. Disrupt the disruption, as it were."
"We'd be lost without you, Doctor."
She looked up. So did Yaz, quickly enough to see a thousand things play over the Doctor's face in a split second before she locked her expression down to a calm blankness.
She wasn't fooling Lethbridge-Stewart, but he didn't call her on it. His boots squelched as he leaned in to peer at her device. She paused in her work, staring down at the top of his head with the same fascination as he'd stared at her.
"Sonic, hm? You're sure this thing will close a hole in space-time? It rather looks like my backup generator had an unfortunate encounter with a tank," he said after a moment's thought.
The Doctor's expression flipped from affectionate to outraged.
"This is precisely why I let you stick to the military business, Brigadier." She sniffed. She plugged two more wires into the device. They sparked and she snatched her hand back, wincing.
Lethbridge-Stewart raised one eloquent eyebrow.
The Doctor scowled.
"Don't think you're getting out of this, at any rate. I'm going to need all of you to pull this off."
Beside Yaz, Ryan shifted in the mud. It was splattered up his calves, which looked uncomfortable. Yaz had managed to perch herself on a slightly more stable patch of weeds, but she suspected by the Doctor's self-satisfied expression that she wasn't going to be staying dry much longer.
"What, you got a job for us besides fetching and carrying?" Graham had given up trying to stay dry, and was simply kneeling in the mud. He had one hand around his knee, too, heedless of the mud, and Yaz spared a moment to sympathize with the ache that must be coming on in the cool, damp weather.
"Well… if we're bein' honest, it does involve carrying."
"Lay it on me, Doc."
She smiled ruefully at him. "Right. Listen up you lot…"
She laid out the plan in plain language. Basically, they'd need to surround the source of the disruption, which was, inconveniently, in the middle of a pond. The Brigadier offered to acquire a boat, but the Doctor waved that idea off. They needed to trace a formation around it with the makeshift copper-wire rods that were currently wired into the Doctor's device, and it would be easier to do from the banks of the pond than via canoe. Once the device was set, the Doctor could send a signal from the TARDIS that would resolve the disruption. It all sounded easy enough but the catch, she explained, was the timing.
"We'll have eighty-seven seconds once I set it off," she said, catching each of their eyes in turn. "These rods can't be detached until they're set, but once they are we'll have eighty-seven seconds to plant them in formation before we lose the window."
"What happens if we lose the window?" Ryan asked, in the voice of someone who isn't sure they want to know.
The Doctor leveled a look at him. "We're playing with temporal physics here, Ryan," she said reprovingly. "There's no way to make that entirely safe."
"I'll call in my men," Lethbridge-Stewart said, standing.
"Don't bother," the Doctor said. "The fewer people in the area, the better. You get your people out of here. This lot" – she gestured at the fam and Benton – "can each take a rod to set. I'll take the device. It has to go to the TARDIS."
"I see." He ran a thoughtful finger along his moustache. "The TARDIS being where, exactly?"
"Third floor cupboard."
"I could have it fetched down."
"Nonsense. It wouldn't fit through the halls, nevermind the doorways. We'll all just have to be quick."
He snorted. "I see your penchant for dashing needlessly about hasn't changed with your face."
"You sound just like your daughter," the Doctor grumbled… and froze.
The Brigadier froze too. He glanced in the Doctor's direction, carefully casual. "My… daughter?"
So he knew she was time traveler.
The Doctor sighed and settled back on her heels. "You well know, Brigadier, that there are things I cannot say."
"Seems you do little but say things, Doctor," he said sharply. It was the most emotion Yaz had heard from him yet.
"Carefully, Brigadier. As carefully as I can manage, when it comes to my friends."
The tension held for a moment. Then the Brigadier sighed. "I won't pretend to understand, Doctor."
She smiled slightly. "I don't believe that for a second, my dear man."
"How far are you?" He asked. His tone was mild, but his eyes were sharp and clear. "From… last week. When I saw you."
The Doctor looked down at her work. Her hands paused in their movement. "Too far, I think."
For a moment it seemed like she would say more. She tilted her head, brought her hands to her lap, shifted on her heels. The moment stretched on until she shook her head and swallowed the words. "That reminds me." She looked back up at him, making eye contact. "You'll see me again. The version of me that you know. This…" she waved a hand to encompass herself, her companions, the situation. "You can't tell him. Me. You can't… He can't know."
"May I ask why?"
"Because the laws of time decree it. Or because I feel like it. Does it matter?"
"You're asking me to keep quite a secret," Lethbridge-Stewart pointed out.
"You keep many secrets, Brigadier. What's one more?"
He frowned slightly. "The laws of time are a bit above my pay grade, Doctor," he said with a hint of reproach.
The Doctor considered him. Yaz couldn't decipher the expression behind her eyes. "Fair enough. For friendship's sake, then."
Lethbridge-Stewart knelt down again next to the Doctor and her contraption, so that they were eye-to-eye. "You'll leave, after this."
"Yes."
"Will I see you again? This you."
Something bright kindled inside her. The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled at him. "There's always hope, Brigadier."
"For friendship, then." He held out a hand. She regarded it for a moment, then clasped it gravely in her own. They shook once, firmly.
He stood and backed away, brought the radio to his mouth, and gave the order for his men to evacuate the area. His voice was calm and crisp; a consummate professional.
"That's that," the Doctor said as if to herself, snapping one last piece together. She stood and glanced around at her companions. "When I turn this on, you'll have eighty-seven seconds to do our bit and get to the TARDIS. You," she glanced at Benton and the Brigadier, "will have eighty-seven seconds to do your bit and get out of here. Forty yards should do it."
Lethbridge-Stewart nodded crisply. "Get to it then. Time stops for no man, Doctor." He saluted once, crisp and clean. Then he turned and headed at a jog towards the house.
"Don't I know it," she whispered, so low only Yaz, at her elbow, could hear. "Right then! Eighty-seven seconds, on the clock." She put a hand into the center of the device. Yaz, Benton, and the boys each put a hand on their piece, ready to grab and run.
The Doctor clicked the final component smoothly into place. In that same instant, each corner of the device lit with a dim orange glow.
Yaz yanked the copper-wire rod out of the device and darted off in her assigned direction. Behind her, she heard the boys and the Doctor doing the same, the Doctor with her heavy device hitched against her hip.
Yaz was the strongest runner, so she had the farthest to go. The makeshift rod was warm against her palm. Her lungs burned as she counted down the seconds in her head, making for the far side of the little pond. She didn't try to detour around obstructions; she simply bounded over fallen branches and splashed through the pond's muddy shallows.
By the time she planted her rod and turned back, the others had already vanished into the house. Forty-two seconds left.
She set off towards the house, splashing yet more mud up the waterlogged legs of her jeans. Somewhere to her left came the roar of a jeep engine; Benton and the Brigadier getting out.
Thirty-four seconds. The house wasn't close enough. She tried to breathe evenly with the movement of her legs and the count in her head.
She slammed through the door at twenty-one seconds. Two flights of stairs later she was back in the corridor where they'd arrived; she could see the splintered wood panel at the far end from the soldier's bullet.
Three seconds. Two seconds. She yanked open the cupboard door; behind it, the police box doors were open, waiting for her.
A familiar wheezing, groaning sound filled the TARDIS the moment Yaz slammed the door behind herself. Three big steps took her up to the console where the Doctor stood, feet set wide for balance, her hands busily twisting dials and flipping switches.
The boys were already around the console with her; as they took off, tilting crazily, the Doctor reached out absently and grasped Ryan's wrist, drawing it to the correct lever. He pulled it down and grinned at Yaz as she reached out to brace herself against the console just in time to keep her feet underneath her. Graham had both hands on the console and one foot steadying the Doctor's device, which had been awkwardly wired into the underside of the console doing who-knew-what.
The heaving settled slowly, in the way it did when they hadn't landed anywhere in particular. Yaz knew if she opened those police box doors she would see nothing but dark and silent space all around her.
Ryan and Graham pulled their hands away from the levers they'd been holding. The Doctor flipped one last switch. She stepped back from the console and rucked a hand up the back of her hair, leaving a smudge by one ear. She was spattered all over with mud even worse than Yaz, somehow; it was caked around her heavy boots, tracked up her shins, and dripping slowly off the corner of her coat. There was a heavy smudge of it on her hip where she'd hoisted the machine, and a lighter one across her cheekbone.
"That was awesome timing," Ryan said, grinning at Yaz. "Awesome."
The Doctor smiled too, but it was crooked and a little distracted; distracted like she'd been all day.
Unbidden, Yaz's mouth opened.
"You alright?" So there they were. The words were not so hard to find after all.
The Doctor looked surprised. "Alright? Course I'm alright! Never better, me." She touched her hair again, leaving another muddy smudge. In the bright blonde of her hair, it took on a reddish hue.
"It's just…" Yaz glanced at Graham. He gave a little nod, patient and approving, as she fumbled her way through. "Well. It's just that. You seem… sort of… out of sorts. Er." That wasn't what she wanted to say at all.
But the Doctor was looking at her and she couldn't think, with the Doctor looking at her like that. A little fond. A little sad. Her eyes were unfathomably old and dark, the way they'd been sometimes, lately.
At first Yaz thought she'd just walk away, but instead the Doctor sighed. She placed her palms back onto the console. She was always holding onto her ship, Yaz had noticed, holding on for balance like the rest of them.
"Lethbridge-Stewart," she said, choosing her words carefully, "is an old friend. One I haven't seen in… in a very long time. Not someone I expected to see again." She paused, and she should have been sad but instead she looked up and smiled. Some of the darkness cleared from her eyes.
"It was an impossible thing, seeing him. Sometimes impossible things happen, you know." She tapped the side of her nose again, smiled, and somehow this time the gesture didn't look silly. "'s a good reminder, that."
Silence stretched, but it was a little softer, a little less full of shadows than silence in the TARDIS had been recently.
"Right then." The Doctor brought her hands together. "Anyone for tea at the palace on Cheem? Lovely people, the Cheem. Well, I say people…"
"Uh, Doc?" Graham raised one mud-covered arm. A drop fell onto the console. The Doctor, who had apparently forgotten her own muddy state, paused mid-speech, eyes following the drop of mud down.
"Right," she muttered. "Er. Cheem in an hour, then?" She reached out a sleeve to brush it fretfully off the console, only to leave a much larger smear of mud. She lifted her sleeve and stared at it in surprise and betrayal.
"Two hours," Graham bargained firmly.
The Doctor gave a long-suffering sigh. "Yes yes, off you go. Wardrobe is by the blue garden today. Possibly."
Ryan and Graham headed off into the TARDIS. Yaz started to follow, but paused at the Doctor's side.
She was staring, mesmerized, down at the trail of red-brown mud her sleeve had left on the console.
"Are you…" something about the day made Yaz brave. "Are you really alright?"
In response, the Doctor jerked into motion. She pulled away from Yaz and strode towards the TARDIS doors, stomping mud into the metal grates of the floor. When she reached the doors, she reached her hands out and threw them open.
Yaz followed in her muddy footprints, hovering a few steps behind.
The Doctor stood in the doorway, staring out at the nothingness of space.
"There." She spoke quietly, without turning around, so that Yaz almost wasn't sure she'd heard her. She stepped up next to the Doctor anyways, edging her toes out over the empty black.
The view wasn't entirely blank.
"That's Earth," she said, surprised.
"Earth. 1974. Half past noon on April the 7th."
"Right when we left," Yaz murmured.
The Doctor stuck her hands in her pockets and leaned one shoulder against the door frame. When she tilted to rest her head against it, Yaz could see more mud drying under the curve of her chin. "Had to be sure it worked," she said, staring out at Earth. "It did, if you want to know. Success on all fronts."
"That's… good." Yaz surveyed the Earth, wondering how she could tell. "We don't usually hang around. To make sure."
"No," the Doctor agreed amiably.
Silence fell between them for a moment while Yaz tried to think of what to say. What to ask.
Before she could, the Doctor turned fully to face her. Her eyes were shadowed, but a slight smile touched her lips, more real than any that Yaz had seen on her in awhile. "Go get cleaned up, Yaz," she said softly. "Lots of universe out there, and it's more comfortable seein' it with dry clothes."
Yaz nodded. She glanced back at Earth, 1974, and wondered what the Doctor saw when she looked at it. The swirling clouds and vivid patches of blue were familiar and comforting; even twenty years before her own birth it looked like home. She glanced once more at the Doctor, but she'd already turned her eyes away, out towards the universe.
Title from Home (leave the lights on) by Field Report