Chapter Text
Sheffield, England, the Earth 2022
As Yaz said goodbye to Graham and Dan, wishing well to Ryan, she walked out of the Sheffield town hall. She turned down a few streets before checking th time on her phone and then the text she'd sent her sister over an hour ago confirming the time they were supposed to meet back at the flat. She still had a good hour before she had to be back so she veered herself off down a side street and headed into Starbucks.
The girl behind the counter took her order politely, spelling her name completely wrong as usual and then handed her the lidded cup of iced coffee with a red stripey straw sticking out of the top. Yaz stared at the handwriting for a few minutes as she sat herself down in one of the bar stools lined against a high-top table. She pulled out her phone and began to aimlessly scroll through Instagram, wondering what she'd missed of the world whilst being away. Something felt very final, like her time with the Doctor truly was over.
She felt the ice cream lay flat in her stomach, it felt like closure, like that part of her life was finished and she was ok with that. It had been years, years of wondering the Earth, taking the long route back to the Doctor. She felt like she'd lived 30 seconds of it, not four years. When you're looking for someone and it takes that long to find them, when you watch people come and go, somehow that time disappears from under you and you're not left with much at the end. She'd always remember what the Doctor taught her, and their time together. But there was something else now, there was this itch inside her that not all of her was discovered yet. There was a piece of her identity she had yet to explore. And in a way the Doctor was never going to be able to help her with that. The Doctor knew who she was, she'd already had years to process herself, her identity and what that meant, she was a fixed point. She didn't really have labels but she had the confidence to know how she felt, and not to question it. Yaz supposed Gallifreyans didn't really have much prejudice about the whole 'gender and sexuality' thing.
The handwriting on the cup spelled out 'Taz' in blunt capital letters, not quite right, but not quite wrong either. Two out of three letters wasn't too bad for Starbucks. She looked back at the girl behind the counter, shaking her head and sipping her coffee. Then a thought popped into Yaz's head, not a thought she would've ever had a few years ago, but perhaps she'd changed, perhaps she allowed herself such thoughts now. That girl is kind of cute.