By Your Side - A Thasmin Fanfiction

-- 10 --

A/N: This adventure takes place between Spyfall and Orphan 55 in series 12

Yaz's POV

The Doctor pulled the flight lever, joy alight in her eyes. She was always excited when she pulled that lever – she never knew where the fam would end up.

They all enjoyed the suspense. Except maybe Ryan. He had never forgiven the Doctor after they ended up on an underwater planet where they all nearly drowned.

"Okay, fam! Let's step out that door and greet the unknown!" beamed the Doctor, a skip in her step, as per usual. She grabbed Yaz's hand as she passed and the pair exited the TARDIS together, just before the boys.

What greeted them was a quaint English village, presumably from the Middle Ages.

"Doctor, where are we?" Yaz asked, looking around at the people bustling around running their errands.

"Don' know, that's the fun of it Yaz!" the Doctor exclaimed, striding down the hay path, stopping at the river. "Why... why is there no one near the water?"

"It is freezing cold, why do you think?" Graham pointed out.

"But people need water," Ryan pointed out, crouching down, and going to touch the water before a villager ran to him, pulling him back quickly.

"Don't touch the water," he warned sternly, Ryan breathing hard at the shock of being pulled back.

"Why, what's wrong with the water?" asked the Doctor, using her sonic to take a quick scan. She took a quick look at the run-down and shrugged. "Sonic says it's fine."

"Say that to Beth," said the villager. "Who... who are you strange people? I've never seen you before."

"We're just passing through," the Doctor said. "Um, who's Beth?"

The villager stood there, face hard with what Yaz presumed to be grief. "Just... step away from the water before it gets you too."

The Doctor pulled Yaz away from the water's edge, moving back into the centre of the village, Ryan and Graham close behind as well as the villager.

The Doctor's POV

"Now, what's your name?" the Doctor asked the villager, not letting go of Yaz's hand.

"My name is Harold, Harold Richard's son," the villager said. "Who... are you strange people? Your weird clothes and weird... whatever that is," he said, gesturing to the Doctor's sonic screwdriver in her left hand.

"I'm the Doctor and these are my friends, Graham, Ryan..." the Doctor met Yaz's eyes with a warm smile. "And Yaz."

Then the Doctor snapped her gaze back to Harold, "Whatever happened with the water, with Beth, we're here to help."

The Doctor was confused as to what could have possibly happened, as the sonic showed no signs of anything weird or alien in the water and the sonic never lied. But something was off – she could tell by the way that no one was going near the water.

"Beth, my little daughter..." Harold's gaze became distant, grief evident in his facial expression. "She said she saw her mother in the river... and she went in after her and... drowned..."

The Doctor let go of Yaz's hand and gave him a sympathetic pat.

"The thing is her mother's been dead for years... and we never found Beth's body."

The Doctor frowned, wracking her brain for a possible explanation.

"Doctor?" Yaz asked. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, fine," she said, rereading the diagnostics she took from the water mere minutes ago. There was nothing out of the ordinary... "Has this happened any other times?"

"Yes. The same thing happened to a lovely lad named Aled. He saw his dead sister, Carys and went after her. Again, no body. And then an old lady named Anne. Saw her late husband."

The Doctor tried to make sense of it. But she was stuck for an explanation... an explanation that didn't include ghosts... which obviously didn't exist; that had been made quite clear in her childhood on Gallifrey.

"Doctor... there are ghosts in the water."