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The Doctor's hands were full of wires. Of course they were. The Tardis phone never rang at the opportune moment. Earth never seemed to find itself under attack when the Doctor and her team were sat around the Tardis, well-rested and casually pondering where to head next.
"Sor'ah," the Doctor attempted to apologise to the ship as she dropped the tangle of wires and pulled her sonic out of her mouth. "I swear I'll get those all back in place later. Well, all but one, you know there's always that one that loses its place. It's a law of physics, totally not my fault."
The Doctor huffed as she reached for her phone where she'd left it charging on the console, but her irritation was replaced with panic when she saw the caller ID.
"RYAN!" she shouted as she swiped to take the call. "What's wrong? Where are you? When are you? We'll be there..." She broke off, her knitted eyebrows arching up towards the ceiling as a broad smile lit up her face.
"We wouldn't miss it for the world, Ryan, we'll be there before you can say Team Tardis three times fast." She didn't even take the time to put the phone back in its place as she took off sprinting down the hallway shouting, "YAAAAAZZZ! Wake up YAZ!"
The Doctor nearly barrelled directly into Yaz who just managed to slide deftly to the side when she heard the pounding footsteps rounding the corner.
"Doctor, what is it? What's wrong?"
"Oh hey Yaz, you're up?"
"Yeah, before your banshee scream could wake me the Tardis turned on all the lights in my room. What's going on?" Her eyes weren't quite open all the way, she'd only been asleep for a few hours after a particularly long few days righting some wrongs in a distant galaxy. But any irritation at the disruption of her much-needed sleep evaporated when she saw the joyful sparkle in the Doctor's eyes.
"We're heading back to Sheffield, Ryan called..."
Before the Doctor could finish her sentence Yaz's eyes grew wide and she cut her off. "No way, it's already been..." She paused as she estimated how much time had passed since their last pit stop back in England to see him and Graham. Fatigue slowed her mental calculation, but when she got there she let out a joyful cry and raced the Doctor to the control room. The two began spinning around the controls of the Tardis, working in a practised tandem as the Doctor set the destination and Yaz guided the ship into flight. The landing was rockier than it had been in a while, since the Doctor had started letting her girlfriend do more of the flying. Yaz figured the machine would understand, she was probably just as excited as they were. It'd been some time since Ryan had travelled with them, but Yaz was sure he still had a special place in the Tardis's memory.
"You had us land on the roof?" Yaz questioned the Doctor as she stepped out the doors to find herself with a steam vent blowing in her face.
"Maternity is on the second to last floor, this was as close as we could get," the Doctor replied already pulling out her sonic to let them in through the fire escape. "I thought about landing in the room, but didn't want to give some poor nurse a heart attack."
The Doctor pulled the rooftop door open and jumped back into Yasmin with a yelp.
"Hiya, Doc, for once you're right on time," Graham said with a grin, then looked past her to Yaz. "Suppose we've got you to thank for that, you've probably been a good influence."
He stepped back to let them in and they each stopped to give him a hug.
"How did you know where to find us?" Yaz asked him.
"Ryan told me you'd be here and I figured you'd park as close as you could. We were worried for a moment you might just materialise in the delivery room and one of the nurses would go the way of my chair. C'mon now, just downstairs and 'round the corner."
They entered a waiting area where orange plastic chairs lined the walls around a long coffee table covered in out-dated magazines. Yaz and Graham sat while the Doctor began to pace with her hands in her pockets.
"Last update was that she's about fully dilated," Graham explained. "I reckon it'll come as quick as Alex can make it, she's a few days overdue as it is and she's not one to wait around on things."
Yaz filled Graham in on a bit of their latest adventure and he began to tell her about his work as a volunteer mentor when the Doctor cut him off mid-sentence.
"Sorry Graham, but shouldn't we be a bit worried? It doesn't usually take this long, does it? You aren't Laig'orians with a 64 hour birthing ritual or something."
"Doc, it hasn't even been ten minutes since you got here. She's only been in labour for about six hours, could take a couple more."
The Doctor looked incredulous. "There's no way it's only been ten minutes. It's felt like ten hours!" she declared throwing her hands in the air. "Honestly, do you think there's a rip in time forming here in the hospital?"
Just then, a door down the hallway flew open with such force that the Doctor spun around gripping her sonic in front of her. She dropped it back to her side as Ryan flew past her like he hadn't even seen her and wrapped Graham in a hug that lifted him off his feet.
"She's here! Alex did it! She's here!" he shouted into Graham's back. "She's cryin' like they're s'posed to! I'm cryin'! Alex is cryin' too, but she's alright!"
He finally put Graham back on the floor and took a step back.
"Congratulations, son," Graham said, wiping a tear from his own eye. "I'm sure she's perfect."
"They let me cut the umbilical chord, can you believe it? Told 'em I had experience."
"Let me guess, she's going to have the world's biggest outtie because you were afraid to cut too close?" Yaz teased and Ryan turned, realising for the first time that Yaz and the Doctor were there.
"Yaz!" he shouted, wrapping her in a hug and twirling her around a bit. "I'm a dad!"
"You'll be a great one, I'm sure," she replied sincerely as he set her back on the ground.
He wrapped the Doctor in a hug next. "I'm so glad you made it. I was afraid you'd be off saving a world somewhere and miss my call."
"It sounds like if the she'd come on the due date we might've," Yaz answered.
"Guess the universe was looking out for ya," Graham grinned. "Just don't tell Alex that it's your fault she had to wait, yeah?"
Graham, Yaz, and the Doctor went to get sandwiches to leave the new family some first moments alone and to give mom and daughter some time to clean up and rest. Ryan found them in the hospital cafeteria.
"Ready to meet your granddaughter?" he asked with the widest smile they'd ever seen on his face.
"She's...." Graham became so choked up, he couldn't finish his thought as he stared down at the sleeping newborn in his arms.
"So," Yaz asked. "What's her name?"
Ryan and his wife shared a glance and a grin.
"Well, actually... I wanted a name that would let her carry on the legacy of our travels, ya know? But something unique, so she'll stand out like a star. And we decided on..." he turned once again to his wife with a glowing smile.
"Avocado pear!" Alex finished, with shining eyes.
Yaz, Graham, and the Doctor froze, nervous half-grins plastered on their faces as they glanced back and forth at each other.
"In honour of the first baby I ever helped deliver," Ryan continued, delighting in the nervous twitching of his extended family.
"We're going to call her 'guac' though, ya know, as a nickname," Alex deadpanned. The stunned silence that followed only lasted a moment, before a wiggle of Ryan's eyebrows sent the entire group into a fit of laughter as they released the tension that Ryan and Alex's joke had carefully built.
Their laughter led the newborn to start fussing and Graham gently passed her back to her mum.
"Honestly though, " Ryan began once he'd caught his breath. "I really did want to give her a name that would carry some of my history. I wanted to name her after two of the bravest, most caring women I've known, besides my wife. And Alex agreed on the names as long as she could choose the order. So... Gramps, Doc, Yaz, meet Yasmin Grace Sinclair."
Yaz's mouth dropped open. "You named her after... me?"
"Well, to be honest, I would've named her Grace Yasmin. But like I said, Alex got to pick the order."
"You didn't want to name her after your mum?"
"I always called me mum 'mum', that's a terrible name for a child," he glanced at the Doctor. "Sorry, Doc, couldn't name her after you either. That's a name she'd have to earn here on Earth."
"Yasmin Grace Sinclair is perfect, Ryan," the Doctor smiled gently, glancing at Yaz who continued to stare in slack-jawed disbelief. "I don't think you could have found a better name anywhere in the universe."
"I dunno," Graham said nudging Yaz in the shoulder. "Graham could be a girl's name. It's the 21st century after all. Honestly, I can't believe you're all so hung-up on gender."
He let out an exaggerated huff before winking at Alex. "But I suppose if she was called Graham Grace she might get nicknamed Gigi, and that's just really not the same, is it?"
Yaz and the Doctor accepted Graham's invitation to stay at his house. They planned to visit Yaz's family the next day and give Ryan's new family some space. Alex said her family were on their way down from Leeds. Graham showed them around the garage that Ryan used as a workshop.
"Come 'ere and look at this, Doc, you won't believe it," Graham said gently pulling back the sheet that was covering one of the work benches and revealing a miniature Tardis about half a meter tall. "He started drawing up plans for this just about as soon as Alex told him they were expecting. Watch."
Graham slid a tiny key into the door and stood back so that Yaz and the Doctor would have a clear view. The gentle clinking of tiny gears shifting echoed in the silence of the garage as they watched the walls of the Tardis fold out in all directions revealing dozens of tiny rooms including bedrooms, a kitchen, a library, and in the centre a bright orange crystal surrounded by tiny buttons and levers.
"No way!" Yaz exclaimed. "He built a Tardis dollhouse?!"
The Doctor's smile went from ear to ear. "It's bigger on the inside! That clever boy."
In the years since Ryan had left the Tardis, he hadn't returned to his past life as a warehouse worker. With the Doctor's help studying and tinkering, he'd passed all of his mechanics qualifications with flying colours. But he wasn't able to put the wonders he had discovered on his travels with the Doctor out of mind. He started spending his time after work tinkering with spare materials from the shop, building fantastic mechanical creatures and machines. At first he'd simply shared his creations on YouTube or gifted them to kids he knew. But then, he met Alex. She knocked on his door after her nephew had shown her one of Ryan's creations he'd proudly won in a bet at school. She'd convinced Ryan to let her take some of his works to the publishing company she worked for and the next thing he knew he was being commissioned to design everything from mechanical marketing displays and toys for children's fantasy books to individual pieces to be displayed in galleries (even if he didn't entirely consider his works to be art). He'd even collaborated with a French company create a two-story tall sea monster that was currently touring the world.
"Where do you get such unique ideas? I've never seen anything like this," Alex marvelled, examining his latest mechanical creature.
"Honestly," Ryan looked at his feet, suddenly shy. "It's not that creative really. Just a sort of mash-up of things."
"What sort of things?"
She'd thought he was pulling her leg when their eyes met and he felt an irresistible compulsion to tell her the truth. What Alex couldn't figure out was how he had possibly convinced his Grandad to go along with the joke for months.
On their six month anniversary, Ryan called in a special request.
"Should I book us an Uber?" Alex asked as they walked out of the too-fancy restaurant Ryan hadn't felt entirely at ease in.
"No need, I've arranged a better ride."
Alex eyed him and laughed as she followed him around the side of the restaurant and into an alley. "Let me guess, horse-drawn carriage?"
"Better," Ryan said with his signature grin, the one that had led Alex to humour his running gag about travelling in time and space for the last half a year.
"But you're going to want to step back," he added drawing her into his arms and pushing his back against the wall as a soft whirring and whooshing began to fill the air. He could feel her heartbeat begin to race as the blue police box flickered into view not even a meter in front of them. Before he could say anything else, the door swung open and the Doctor sprang out.
"Heya, Ryan! Are we on time? She's been a bit finicky lately, still upset about what happened on New Texas number 9 which is ridiculous because she knows I never go to any of the Texases willingly anyway..."
Alex had yet to move, or close her mouth for that matter, and the Doctor would have kept rambling for the foreseeable future if Yaz hadn't followed the Doctor out of the Tardis a moment later, putting a hand on her shoulder to quiet her.
"Doctor, that's probably a story for another time, don't ya think?" she said to the Time Lord before turning to Alex. "You must be Alex. I'm Yasmin Khan, and this is the Doctor. You can call me Yaz."
Alex recovered her senses enough to shake Yaz's outstretched hand.
"It's a pleasure to meet you," Yaz added before giving Ryan a punch in the shoulder. "You two must be serious. Ryan didn't even dress up this nice when the Doctor took us to a Sinatra concert for Graham's birthday."
They decided not to take the risk of visiting a distant planet and accidentally finding trouble. But a few hours floating outside of the Tardis among the stars was enough to convince Alex that Ryan wasn't mad after all. Though she couldn't honestly say she'd reached the same conclusion about the Doctor.
"She's definitely a madwoman with a box," Ryan agreed. "But she's proper amazin'. And she's family."
Yaz didn't flinch when the first teardrop fell. Perhaps in her dream she had reached up and wiped a bead of sweat off her neck. But as a second tear slid down to her shoulder, she slowly blinked her eyes open.
"Doctor?" Yaz felt her girlfriend's blond hair tickle her cheek. "Are you alright?"
"Fantastic," came the muffled response.
Yaz reached up and gently pushed the Doctor's hair back before bringing her thumb down to dry her cheek.
"You're crying."
"Am I?"
The Doctor pushed herself up and brought a hand to her face.
"S'pose I am."
Yaz was surprised to see a genuine smile shining down at her as she watched her girlfriend dry her eyes.
"I didn't think you'd stay in bed this long. Figured once I was asleep you'd slip out to tinker in Ryan's workshop without his permission."
The Doctor flopped back down on the pillow next to Yaz.
"I do want to make a bit of a gift for baby Yaz. But I've got better tools in the Tardis. Probably oughta give Ryan a few of my spares. Or we could pop over to the shops of Rezantes, they've got all the latest... "
"Doctor," Yaz caught the hand the Doctor had begun to flail about as she spoke. She wouldn't let the Time Lord deflect with a ten-minute ramble. Not at this hour. "Why were you crying?"
The Doctor shifted herself so she was facing Yaz, her hand reaching out to idly trace the seam of her girlfriend's shirt. She took a shallow breath before meeting her worried brown eyes.
"It's just... Seeing Ryan and his wife and their little Yasmin... and Graham becoming a great-granddad. Our Tardis fam, back in here in Sheffield, living a happy, normal life. Having a new family of their own... That never happens. The people who get close to me never..." This time the Doctor was cut off by her own shaky breath catching in her throat.
"Hey," Yaz reached over and pulled her closer.
"I'm so happy for them," the Doctor whispered into her shoulder and Yaz could feel her smile even as her body shook.
"So am I," Yaz answered and she felt the Doctor hold her tighter.
Yaz waited until the Doctor's breathing had evened out a bit before she pulled back to face her again.
"Ryan and Graham, the choice they made, the lives they've built... it's beautiful. But Doctor..." Yaz brought her hand up to gently force the Doctor's gaze back to her eyes. Even in the dim light of the bedroom, she could see the fear in her girlfriend's green eyes. "You know that this is not a life that I want, right? It never was."
"If you hadn't met me, you might be a police chief with a family of your own. Happy and..."
Yaz pressed their lips together, partly as a means of stopping the Doctor's train of thought and partly as an attempt to try to communicate what she needed the Doctor to understand and finally accept.
"I am happy. And I have family. I have you. And my family here in Sheffield. And Ryan and Graham."
The Doctor opened her mouth to speak but Yaz continued before she could get a word in.
"I know you still worry that being with you is making a sacrifice that you're not worthy of, but it's not. I'm not giving up anything. I've found everything I ever wanted with you. More even. And don't tell me for the three millionth time that it's not safe. It's not like time travellers are the only ones who face danger, ya know? I could've stayed here and been killed on duty or just driving my car."
"You are giving up time with your family," the Doctor protested, though Yaz could see that the fear in her eyes had been replaced by a soft sparkle.
Yaz laughed. "You know, we come back to visit them so often that some months we see them more than Sonya, at least from their perspective of time. And she only lives across town."
The Doctor cracked a smile and pulled Yaz's hand up to her lips.
"Just promise me that if it's ever not enough, if you ever need to slow down... that you'll tell me."
Yaz shook her head. "I won't leave you."
The Doctor smiled softly. She knew Yaz was sincere, even if she still didn't feel like she deserved it.
"You wouldn't have to... it wouldn't be the first time I've spent more than a few days on Earth, ya know. If that's what you need one day..." she took a deep breath, gazing into dark eyes. "We're in this together, Yasmin Khan. I know you'd follow me anywhere, but... we don't always have to run."
Yaz kissed the Doctor gently before leaning their foreheads together.
"You're sweet... but it's not like the universe is going to stop needing you just because I've grown old and lost my teeth."
"Well then," the Doctor sighed. "I suppose it's a good thing the Tardis makes excellent jelly."
They both laughed as Yaz scooted over, tucking herself into the Doctor's side. She knew the truth of their relationship would always be heavier than she wanted to admit and more difficult for the Doctor than she could truly comprehend. The Time Lord would watch her grow old - if they were ever so lucky - and would be left to continue on her own, carrying the love they shared as one more memory, one more story, one more loss...
But Yaz had learnt years ago that the universe was unpredictable and time was as uncertain as anything else. Dwelling on the future was as futile as living in the past. So she let herself get lost in the moment instead, the steady rhythm of the Doctor's heartbeats lulling her to sleep.
After spending the day with Yaz's family, they stopped by Ryan and Alex's apartment to say goodbye.
"Should we have brought food?" the Doctor asked suddenly as they sat down together in the living room. "Is that a thing you do when there's a new baby? Or is it when people are sick? Or..."
"Don't worry, Doctor," Alex assured her. "My mum brought over four trays of homemade meals and I am pretty sure she is at home right now making us more."
"And once she left, my Dad stopped by the chip shop down the street and brought Alex what she was really craving," Ryan laughed. "And enough frozen lasagna to last until little Yaz turns three."
After they shared several stories, took a few photos, and at the Doctor's insistence immediately printed a copy of the photo of Yaz holding baby Yaz - "Two Yazes in one photo! And both brilliant! Amazing." - they said their goodbyes and headed back to the Tardis. Getting back up to the roof turned out to be a bit of an adventure after visiting hours, until the Doctor finally managed to find the right pocket and pull out her psychic paper.
"I really should finish fixing those circuits, I can barely believe the Tardis let us fly her here in this state," the Doctor said leaning against the console. "Why don't you get some rest and I'll have her back in shape by the time you wake up? Where do you want to go next?"
"Same as always, Doctor," Yaz said, wrapping her arms around her girlfriend's neck and smiling up at her. "Everywhere."