Life in Stardust (a One Shot Collection)

I Always Know

"There!" the Doctor sighed with relief, her puzzle finally complete. "How long did that take?"

Yaz answered, "About two and a half hours, I think. Maybe three?" The Doctor groaned, causing her to laugh. She'd watched the Time Lord work tirelessly at that puzzle for the last few hours in an attempt to pass the time while Graham and Ryan were away.

The Doctor sat on the floor of the lounge, internally whining about how long they had to wait.

"Wait, Yaz, when did they say they'd be back?" she asked. She hoped that it would be soon.

"Well, Graham did say that he and Ryan were visiting some of Grace's family today. I heard they live over by Manchester." Yaz told the Doctor. "God knows why Graham insisted on driving himself and Ryan instead of taking the TARDIS." she giggled. "Did you have anything else in mind other than that puzzle?" she pointed at the image on the floor, giving the Doctor a you're-literally-a-child look.

The Doctor became offended.

"Oi!" she huffed. After a moment she relaxed and said, "I mean, yeah, I have other stuff. How about a movie?"

Yaz smiled at the Doctor.

"Yeah, sure. A movie sounds nice, but don't ask me to pick because I'll spend all day deciding." she laughed. Seeing the Time Lord excited always made her happy. She knew that she had deeper feelings for the woman, but also knew what she wanted would never be possible. After all, here was this ancient alien who knew just about everything one could imagine and had lived through so many historical events with so many other people. Then there was Yaz, a nearly 20-year-old junior police officer travelling the universe in hopes of living a more interesting life. There was hardly a comparison between the two. Yaz had hopped on board the TARDIS with a woman with more history than her secondary school textbooks. A woman she felt she barely knew.

"Alright, then," the Doctor said, bringing Yaz back from her thoughts. "I went to look for movies but for some reason this was all I could find." She looked expectantly at Yaz, waiting for some sort of reply.

It was some kind of romantic comedy Yaz had never seen, so she just nodded her head to answer the Doctor. She wondered if maybe the TARDIS had purposefully hid all of the other movies. She was reading too far into the situation. Besides, it wasn't like she'd recently been hooked up to the ship's telepathic circuits. She tried to shove her thoughts and feelings to the back of her mind and moved from the floor to the couch.

The TARDIS had a cool built-in T.V. in one of the walls of the lounge, and the screen appeared when a disc was put into a standard-looking DVD player to the side. Yaz was always a little confused by it, but had grown mostly used to it. Usually, the ship somehow matched some ambient lighting to the theme or category of the movie. In this case, though, Yaz was a bit nervous for the lights and movie.

The Doctor popped the movie disc into its slot, the screen showing up soon after. She used her sonic to "press" play, which cued up the room's lights. Uh oh, Yaz thought. They were a soft red with some violet peeking through. They weren't inherently romantic colors, but given the context of the movie, Yaz knew it was going to be hard to think otherwise.

While the Time Lord watched and paid attention to the film, all Yaz could do was think about what it would be like if she and the Doctor were the characters in it. They began, in typical rom-com fashion, as strangers. They had a coincidental introduction, kind of like Yaz had had with the woman sitting next to her. That night on the train was the beginning of a life that she would never have thought possible before she met the Doctor. The events leading up to it all linked together, eventually bringing the close-knit group together. All of those small coincidences that put her at the base of the hill with Ryan, or that had put her on duty that day in the first place. Had any of these things not occurred, she might not have met the most influential woman she'd ever know.