Four times a new companion met an old companion: Chapter 4 [Doctor Who fic]

[isabrella]

Chapter 3; full work.
1127/4759 words by isabrella
Chapter: 4/4
Fandom: Doctor Who (2005)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Donna Noble & Amy Pond
Characters: Thirteenth Doctor, Twelfth Doctor, Eleventh Doctor, Yasmin Khan, Sarah Jane Smith, Bill Potts, Martha Jones, Amy Pond (Doctor Who), Donna Noble
Additional Tags: Humor, Case Fic, Canon Compliant, four times fic, Companions helping other companions, Fandom Trumps Hate 2021

On SqWA / Tumblr.

Chapter summary:

4. Sarah Jane meets Yaz while Yaz tries to find the Doctor after Season 12.
Sarah Jane is asked by UNIT to investigate a TARDIS sighting in Sheffield. For Yaz, set in between seasons 11 and 12, before the Doctor is rescued. For Sarah Jane, set sometime during the Sarah Jane Adventures.

Notes:

This is technically canon compliant, in the way that most Doctor Who fic is canon compliant if you squint.
It is implied that Yaz is romantically interested in the Doctor but it's unclear if this is reciprocated.

 

Sarah Jane accepts the call from UNIT late at night and notes down the details. "Sheffield?" she confirms, surprised.

She writes a note for the kids, leaving it pinned to the fridge – she'll call them in the morning – and jumps in her car.

A TARDIS has been detected in Sheffield.

She drives the whole four-hour journey tossing up different scenarios that could've resulted in a TARDIS in Sheffield. It's supposedly not the Doctor's usual TARDIS, which poses some interesting questions. By the time she arrives, around six in the morning, she has four viable scenarios and hundreds more unlikely ones.

She finds somewhere inconspicuous to park, then makes her way across a couple of streets, petrol station coffee in hand. The suburb is unassuming, a residential area, and it's sprouted a mysterious number 15 on a road that previously had none.

Sarah Jane approaches the house, then pauses. It's pretty early – but then, who knows what time it is inside the TARDIS. It probably doesn't matter. She steps cautiously to the front door and raps on it.

She waits patiently.

The door swings open. A young woman stands there. She looks confused, hair mussed up around her face, eyes puffy. She's wearing a cropped leather jacket that's seen better days and a stained t-shirt over jeans. Not what she expected, to be honest.

"Who are you?" the woman asks.

"I'm Sarah Jane." Sarah Jane scans the entranceway. It's an impressive copy of the interior design she suspects would be common in this area. This TARDIS must have a functional chameleon circuit.

"How did you find this place?" the woman demands.

"I was asked to come-" Sarah Jane starts, then stops as the other woman turns away, distracted.

"It should've been cloaked," the other woman says frantically, turning away, going deeper into the house. Her hands run over her shiny, dark hair, a nervous tic.

She leaves the front door wide open.

Sarah Jane sighs, then steps inside. She's usually cautious, thorough, but she's getting a very specific energy from this woman. Sarah Jane has met her fair share of people who've met and travelled with the Doctor, and she can tell from a few paces off that this person's one of them.

"What are you doing?" Sarah Jane asks, entering a room off the front foyer. Once again, the furniture is almost too perfect.

The other woman jumps. "I'm Yaz," she says abruptly, not answering Sarah Jane's question, eying her suspiciously. "Really, though, how did you find this place? Are you a friend of Jack's?"

"I-" Sarah Jane frowns. That's an odd way to put it. "I suppose you could call me that… in a way."

"Do you know the… the Doctor, too?" Yaz asks. Her hands are frantic now, running over an array of buttons and levers on what looks like a complicated coffee machine. Sarah Jane suspects it's the TARDIS's incarnation of a control deck.

"Ah. Yes."

"Do you know where she is?"

"She?" Sarah Jane says before she can stop herself. She didn't know Time Lords could do that. "I think we may know different Doctors."

"Maybe," Yaz says. "She… she went off, and she said she was going to sacrifice herself, but I'm sure she's okay, I'm sure she escaped. But she hasn't come back for us. She's got to come back for us." Her hands are still on the console for a moment, then she resumes making adjustments. That certainly sounds like the Doctor Sarah Jane knew. Sacrificing herself, disappearing. Leaving a friend stranded in her former life. "I'm trying to figure out this TARDIS, but I don't know anything about flying them. Do you?"

Sarah Jane shakes her head as she reaches over and gently lifts Yaz's hands off the dial she's twiddling with. Yaz stops her frenetic movements under Sarah Jane's touch, looking up at her with liquid eyes.

"Why don't we sit down?" Sarah Jane says.

She takes the lead in guiding Yaz to a squashy armchair and then looks around. The TARDIS has helpfully produced a real kettle, alongside some teabags and cups. This will not be easy for Yaz to hear, but Sarah Jane knows what she needs to say. "Something you should know about the Doctor is sometimes he… she," she corrects herself, wondering what the Doctor is like as a woman. "Sometimes, she has to leave. I'm sure that what she did saved you. Probably saved a planet or two as well, if I know the Doctor. But sometimes she has to leave, and forget you, and go on to do whatever else she needs to do. And you, and me, we just have to get on with our lives, knowing that there's a whole magical universe out there that we can't see anymore."

Yaz shakes her head fiercely, unkempt ponytail whipping back and forth. "Maybe it was like that for you, but it's not like that for me. The Doctor cares about me. She will come back."

Sarah Jane exhales. This one's in deep. She unfurls a teabag into each cup and hefts the kettle to pour two steamy cups of boiling water. "I'm sure the Doctor did care about you, and I'm sure–" she stutters over the pronoun again, "–she wants to come back. But the Doctor's a time traveller. It might not be for years. She might come looking for 2019 and instead land in 2089. You can't just stay in stasis forever."

Yaz's hands still from their ferocious dancing over the seams on her pants, where she had been pulling and picking at threads. Perhaps the Doctor's low accuracy rate hadn't occurred to her.

Sarah Jane presses her advantage as she extracts the teabags and sloshes a tiny bit of milk into the cups (from a pitcher she could've sworn wasn't there when she first started brewing the tea). 

"You might be waiting a lifetime; that's what I'm trying to say. And life will go on. You have to start looking for the magic in the everyday, here on Earth. Someone stops a stranger from getting hit by a bus. Someone protests an unjust law, and it gets changed. Journalists investigate unusual happenings… sometimes they find aliens, but more often than not, it's just another crappy human being." She spreads her hands, hoping that something's going in.

Yaz just nods. She looks a wee bit shell-shocked, but she still has a determined set to her brows. She'll be okay. "Thank you," Yaz says, voice shaky.

This is what Sarah Jane has learned, in the years since leaving the Doctor. "If you want to feel close to the Doctor, you have to start doing things the way she would."

Then Sarah Jane reaches over and embraces Yaz as she starts to cry.

 

Full work.