#whittakermastertrash

[regenderate-fic]

The Line Between Love and Despair

Fandom: Doctor Who Ship: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan Series: Fanzine Prompts Rating: General Other Tags: Emotional Baggage, Between Series, Memories, Gender Identity Word Count: 3,439 Read on AO3*

*posted to an unrevealed collection. if you're seeing this early in the day, the AO3 version may not be revealed yet and the link may not work. this is the correct link and you will be able to see it soon!

Summary: Yaz, ever curious, asks the Doctor what she used to look like. The Doctor digs out some pictures. Set between s12 and s13.

NOTES: this was written for @whittakermastertrash for the dw creators server secret doctor exchange! the things i took from their prompt are thasmin, writing about women, emotions, and trans/non-binary headcanons. i started out wanting to write about the doctor's gender and it spiraled into this! i hope you enjoy ❤

“What did you used to look like?”

The Doctor, reading in the library, jumps. It’s Yaz in the doorway, holding two mugs— it’s always Yaz, these days, now Ryan and Graham have left. It’s good: the Doctor likes Yaz. It’s always nice to share her TARDIS with someone she likes.

“What do you mean?” she asks, setting her book aside. She gestures for Yaz to come sit next to her on the sofa: the plush purple sofa they found at a shop in the far future. Even on another planet in the year 400,000, there are still purple sofas.

Yaz joins the Doctor on the sofa, dropping down next to her as easy as anything. She puts the mugs down on the coffee table— two cups of chai. Yaz likes to make it the way her nan taught her, and when Ryan and Graham were in the TARDIS she’d make it for everyone, saying there was no sense in keeping it all to herself. Now, of course, she just shares with the Doctor, showing up every so often with two mugs in hand and a bit of conversation all ready to go.

“Before I met you,” Yaz explains. “I mean, when you were a white-haired Scotsman.”

“I’ve been a lot more than a white-haired Scotsman,” the Doctor says without thinking. She instantly regrets it. She tries not to talk about her past, even with Yaz��� especially with Yaz, actually. Sometimes, when people find out more about her, they’re confused, or disturbed, or intimidated, or just plain scared, and the Doctor doesn’t want Yaz to feel any of that.

She doesn’t want Yaz to leave.

But Yaz has initiated the conversation, and the Doctor has begun to follow through. So she adds, “I’ve had lots of different faces, over the years. It’s part of my biology.”

“How does that work?” Yaz is sitting angled towards the Doctor, leaning in with interest. Her hair is nice today, the Doctor notices— up in its two little buns, like it often is. Well, her hair is nice every day, maybe. But the Doctor notices today.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” she answers honestly. “I thought I knew, but—” She pauses. She doesn’t want to get into that. That’s very firmly in the Yaz-might-leave-her-if-she-knows category. She needs to stick to the facts. The things she does understand. “There’s this energy. When I get killed, this energy comes out of me.” She holds her hand in front of her, tilting it from side to side as if it were glowing with the telltale golden energy. “It heals all my wounds, but at the cost of my identity.” She looks at Yaz. “When I met you, I was still changing, you know.”

“I remember.” Yaz is smiling. “You forgot the word for tongue. And your own name.”

The Doctor nods. “Always scrambles me a bit. One time I almost slept through an alien invasion!”

“I’d like to see that,” Yaz laughs.

The Doctor jumps up. “Hang on, I think I have a picture somewhere.” She looks at Yaz. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“I won’t.” Yaz is fully curled up on the sofa now, her head resting against the top of a cushion. The Doctor feels Yaz’s eyes on her as she leaves. She’s still not really used to traveling with Yaz and only Yaz: there’s something different about it. Good different, definitely good different, but also… weird different. Yaz walks through the TARDIS like it’s her home— which it sort of is, at this point. And where the Doctor used to come into the kitchen in the mornings and find the noisy camaraderie of Graham trying to show Ryan how to flip a pancake while Yaz needled them both, now she finds just Yaz, smiling over a cup of tea as the Doctor walks in. It’s… intimate, is what it is. Intimate, in a way the Doctor has been trying to avoid.

Except she’s not doing a very good job, is she, now she’s about to go looking for her old pictures. She knows where they are, of course, stacked in boxes underneath the console. Always under her feet, when she’s traveling. Always with her. But if she’s trying not to get too close to Yaz, showing pictures of her old adventures probably isn’t the way to go.

(It’s too late, of course. She already is close to Yaz, no matter how much she tries to deny it. But she doesn’t want Yaz to leave her, and she doesn’t want Yaz to get hurt, and those are two things that always happen when she gets close to someone. So she's avoiding it.)

In the console room, she kicks open a panel in the floor and drops into the space underneath, landing with bent knees on a metal floor. There’s a ladder she could’ve used, but where’s the fun in that? The space is lit with a warm orange glow, just like most of the TARDIS is these days. It’s cluttered— the Doctor thinks of it as her equivalent of a human’s basement. A large space underneath her home, full of memories.

Of course, she has a lot more memories than an average human, and this space is much bigger than the average basement. It goes on as far as she can see, with boxes haphazardly stacked on top of one another, piles of clothes, books, bits of equipment, all scattered around the space. There’s barely room to walk. To an outside viewer, the space would look completely disorganized, but the Doctor knows exactly where everything is. And if she forgets, well, she’s always liked a good surprise. And she keeps the pictures near the front, in twelve shoeboxes: one for each version of herself. Well, each version she remembers.

She picks up the one marked “sand shoes,” then hesitates. If she’s going to show Yaz what she used to look like, she should probably bring the one marked “eyebrows.” And then if she’s going to bring that one, she should add “bow tie” to the list— and if she’s going to tell Yaz about regenerating into Sand Shoes, she should also bring “ears.” She glances at the other boxes. She doesn’t need to go further back than that, does she? Yaz doesn’t need to hear about the Time War, destroying Gallifrey— and it will hurt too much to talk about the old Gallifrey, the Time Lords, the people who used her pain and her childhood for their own benefit.

She doesn’t need to go there. She takes the four boxes she’s chosen and tosses them up onto the console room floor, pulling herself up after. Kicking the floor panel closed, she balances the boxes in her arms. She can barely see over them, but that’s all right: she could navigate the TARDIS in her sleep. She has navigated the TARDIS in her sleep, actually— Bow Tie had a nasty sleepwalking habit, back in the day. It helps that the TARDIS tends to be so very amenable to being navigated, shifting corridors around for the sake of convenience. The Doctor finds the library quickly and easily.

When she gets there, she finds Yaz in the same position on the sofa, scrolling through her phone. The Doctor enters, and Yaz looks up with the same half-smile she uses in the mornings when the Doctor comes in the kitchen— the one that says, Hello, I’m glad you’re here. The Doctor ignores the warm feeling she gets in her chest when she sees it.

“Brought my picture boxes,” she says.

“Do you need help with those?” Yaz asks, already standing up.

“I’m all right,” the Doctor says, but Yaz is already taking the two off the top and walking them over to the coffee table. The Doctor follows, dropping her two boxes onto the coffee table and taking her seat again next to Yaz. She picks up the mug Yaz brought her and takes a sip. It’s delicious, as always— Yaz knows her spices. And then the Doctor sets the mug back on the table, picks up the box marked “sand shoes,” and pulls off the lid. She’s immediately hit with a picture of Donna on her second wedding day, decked out in white and waving at the camera with a smile. This isn’t a good start: she’s already holding back tears.

She pushes the wedding picture to the side, revealing a Polaroid of her past self with Martha, both of them grinning at the camera. They were in the 70’s, the Doctor remembers, lost on their way to the 90’s, and they met a seventeen-year-old who was a little overexcited about her new camera.

She pushes that aside, and her hand touches cool metal: the cell phone she’d carried around in those days. It’s a flip phone, but it still has a camera on the front. She wraps her hand around it and closes her eyes. If she has pictures of herself right after regeneration, they’ll be on this phone— but there’s so much she doesn’t know if she’s ready to touch yet.

But Yaz asked, and the Doctor said she’d answer. One picture won’t hurt.

She pulls the phone out of the box. “My old phone,” she explains, waving it at Yaz. It’s just a silver flip phone, nothing special— she flips it open, taps in the passcode, half-surprised she still remembers it after all this time. Opens the photo album. An array of tiny thumbnails greets her, all pictures of her old adventures, her friends, her old self. She scrolls down to the very bottom and selects the first picture. A picture of her past self and Rose fills the screen. It’s after the alien invasion, the two of them eating Christmas dinner together— Jackie insisted on getting a picture on the Doctor’s phone, and two thousand years later the Doctor is glad of it, even with the lump in her throat. Her old self is pressed right next to Rose, her arm around him. Rose is smiling at the camera, and the Doctor is looking at her, an extremely silly grin on his face. The Doctor stares at it for a second, then looks at Yaz, who’s waiting patiently, her mug in hand.

“Here it is,” the Doctor says, tilting the phone towards Yaz. Yaz puts down her mug and nods, sliding closer on the sofa until her shoulder is pressed against the Doctor’s, her hair brushing against the Doctor’s shirt. The Doctor tries to pretend it doesn’t have an effect on her.

“Is that you?” Yaz asks, pointing to the Doctor’s old self.

“Right after regeneration,” the Doctor says. “After I woke up, of course. That was quite a day. Poor Rose, she had to try and fend off an alien invasion all by herself. Of course, she did brilliantly, and I woke up in the end.”

“Hold on, Jack mentioned a Rose,” Yaz says. She points to Rose in the picture, her smile frozen beneath her pink paper crown. “Is that her?”

There are tears in the Doctor’s eyes again. She nods. “Brilliant,” she says again. “One of my favorite humans.” She tries a smile, but it only makes the urge to cry worse. “She’s in a parallel universe now. Got a copy of me. Now that was a day and a half. Almost got myself killed by a Dalek!” She’s rambling now, trying to distract. “And then we all had to tow the Earth halfway across the universe, just in my little TARDIS. Absolutely brilliant.”

“The way you’re looking at her.” Yaz has gotten used to ignoring the Doctor’s rambles. She’s started cutting through the piles of meaningless stories and getting at what the Doctor is really saying. It’s dangerous, if you ask the Doctor. “You must miss her.”

“‘Course I miss her,” the Doctor says. She’s trying for breezy, but it’s coming out a little choked up. “I miss loads of people.” She glances back at the tiny phone screen. It hurts her hearts.

Yaz is still looking at the picture.

“It’s strange, too, seeing you as a man,” she says. “You’re so— you. Hard to imagine you being like anyone else.”

“Hard for me, too,” the Doctor says. “Until I actually become someone else, of course. That’s the tricky thing about regeneration. It doesn’t change your core, doesn’t change your memories or your values or anything, but it makes you different in so many other ways. People treat you differently, you like different foods…” She pauses. “And of course, sometimes who you become is influenced by people you knew before.” She nods at the phone. “That version of me got Rose’s accent. And before I met you, I had the same face as someone I’d met ages back, in Pompeii— a subconscious reminder to myself, I think.”

She pushes the “sand shoes” box to the side and grabs the one labeled “eyebrows.” She wasn’t really a photography kind of person, in this regeneration, but a few pictures still made their way in: there’s a very impressive shot of her past self onstage with that guitar and sunglasses, and another of the ID photo from the university where she lectured. But that’s not what the Doctor is looking for. She pulls out an iPhone— she got it after Clara insisted she needed a way to keep in touch, and then she dropped it deep in the pockets of her coat and forgot about it until, years later, Bill asked if she had a mobile. The phone feels bigger in her hands than she remembers. Instinctively, she tries to open it with her fingerprint, but it doesn’t work— of course. Her hands are smaller now, and her fingerprint has changed. She’s lucky she remembers the passcode. Navigating to her camera roll, she pulls up a selfie with Bill. Bill is smiling; the Doctor’s old self is looking at the camera suspiciously, like he doesn’t trust it. Well, to be fair, she didn’t, at the time.

“Here it is,” she says again. “What I looked like just before I met you.”

Yaz leans in to look. “Wow, your hair was no joke.” She points at Bill. “Is that another friend of yours, then?”

“Bill,” the Doctor says. “Brilliant friend. She’s made of water now. Or something. Didn’t really understand it, to be honest, but that’s all right. I love not understanding things. So did Bill, actually. And she seems happy.”

“She looks nice,” Yaz says.

“She was brilliant,” the Doctor repeats.

Yaz is looking at the Doctor’s old self again. “You look older here than you are now,” she says. “How’s that work?”

“Don’t know.” The Doctor stares at her old self: the lined face, the white hair. “Never know how I’m going to come out, from one body to the next. Sometimes I think I’m trying to tell myself something. Sometimes it’s just random chance. Could be any gender, any size, any age. Although actually, this is my first time as a woman.” The Doctor looks at Yaz and realizes that their faces are much closer than she realizes— she’s only a couple inches from Yaz’s cheek. “It’s about time, though,” she says, quieter. “Had enough of being a man.”

“What’s it like?” Yaz asks. She’s still looking at the phone. “Changing into a woman, I mean. After so many years.”

It’s the Doctor’s turn to fall silent now. She hasn’t thought much about it, but then again she has— it’s permeated every interaction she’s had since crashing into that train.

“I don’t really think of myself as having a gender,” she says finally. “In theory, anyway. Time Lords don’t really do gender in the same way humans do— well, it’s more complicated than that, but when your body’s always changing, gender seems a little more fluid, doesn’t it?” She shrugs. “But in practice, I wind up spending a whole lot of time with humans, so I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t sort of gotten used to people thinking of me as a man. I think that’s why I came out with this body, actually. Was telling myself it was time for a change.” She pauses. “If I didn’t want to be a woman, I suppose I’d just keep on being a man,” she adds, glancing back at the phone. “Not about to let a body stop me, am I? So I must’ve wanted to be a woman, somewhere deep down. I’m certainly not complaining now.” She chances a look at Yaz, who’s looking at the Doctor again with that half smile back on her face.

“I’m not complaining either,” she says, bumping the Doctor’s shoulder. “I mean, I like you this way.”

“And it’s fun being a woman!” the Doctor adds. “I get to experience the whole universe from a different angle. And isn’t that the fun of being alive? Getting to experience so many different things?”

“Like the mehndi at my nan’s wedding,” Yaz points out.

“Exactly!” The Doctor grins. “Just like that. No one ever invited me to do mehndi before! And even when people are treating me badly, it gives me a whole new perspective. It’s just brilliant, really.”

“Brilliant,” Yaz echoes. There’s a moment of silence, and then she asks, “Do you just keep changing, then? Forever?” Can you die? she doesn’t ask, but the Doctor hears it in her question.

“I don’t know,” she says honestly. “Used to think I could only do it twelve times, and then the Time Lords did something to give me twelve more tries, but now—” She pauses. This is getting into the territory of Things She Does Not Want To Talk About. “I might go on forever. Who knows? Maybe I’ll run out of new things to experience.” She stops short. That’s one of her deepest, darkest, fears. Not really something she meant to bring up to Yaz right now.

“Wow.” Yaz looks away. “Even if I lived to be a hundred, my life would be like nothing to you.”

The Doctor turns herself fully towards Yaz, pulling her legs up onto the sofa. On impulse, she grabs Yaz’s hands with both of hers, pulling them towards her. Yaz turns her head, her eyes only inches from the Doctor’s.

“Yasmin Khan,” the Doctor breathes. “Your life is everything to me.” There’s silence, for a moment, as Yaz stares at the Doctor with wide eyes, her breath warm on the Doctor’s skin, and the Doctor realizes she’s been too honest, too forthcoming. “Humans are amazing,” she tacks on, breaking eye contact. “Never underestimate the value of a human life. You’re not here very long, but you touch each other, you pass things on, you keep communities going over thousands of years.” She glances at the mugs on the coffee table, the chai Yaz learned from her nan. “There’s so much that humans do every day that I’ll never be capable of.” It’s the truth: the Doctor will never again get to have a home, a community, a family. She’ll never get to pass on her recipes to grandchildren, never grow old with anyone. She’s the only one of her kind, as far as she knows. No matter how much she reaches out, how many humans she befriends, travels with, falls in love with, she will always lose them.

She doesn’t want to lose Yaz.

Just like she didn’t want to lose Rose, or Bill, or Clara, or even Ryan and Graham, for that matter. But humans have their own lives to tend to. Even when they’re parallel lives, or water lives, or lives suspended between heartbeats. No one can travel with the Doctor forever.

She doesn’t want to look back to Yaz; she feels like she’s chickened out of something with her tangent, as earnest as it was. She doesn’t want to see the disappointment in Yaz’s eyes. But when she looks back, there’s no disappointment. Yaz is looking at her with some kind of understanding, and the Doctor’s heart sinks as she realizes Yaz understands her words a little too well. She’s never been as good at hiding as she wants to be, in this body. She can’t help it— this face reacts to everything. Tears well up for no reason. It’s a miracle she manages to hide as well as she does.

But Yaz doesn’t say anything. She just wraps an arm around the Doctor’s waist and squeezes.

“Must be lonely, being you,” she says. “Knowing you’ll always lose the people you love.”

“Yeah,” the Doctor breathes, tilting her head back. “Yeah, it is.”

Yeah. She's definitely getting too close to Yaz. But maybe it'll be worth it.