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Names are powerful. Passengers, capable of clutching entire lives, and more besides: all emotion, and circumstance, bundled in. None too large to resist being moulded into shape, by the push of a sound through a throat, by the contours of teeth and lips.
Or, standing proud and to attention, scrawled on censuses, stamped in the history books; other times stationed against will, burned into infamy, letters once innocent shamed by the person behind it. Pen strokes or print require more to coax to life the owner, the key to beckoning life.
In prose, or print, or copy; pronounced, cried, conjured. However they exist, they carry power.
Names are lifted by the winds of time, life perfect spawning. It is a dandelion seed, buffeted. The sun, having shone just enough; the rain that soaked the soil not a single time too many. And chance meetings, between two people, repeated twice before and quadruple times before that, to bring to life that dandelion seed, meant for that very wind.
And the dandelion seed, afloat. Sometimes light cotton white, just important enough to caress the fingertips of a passerby. Sometimes so arresting, so undeniable, so central to the experience. Sometimes, a wish.
In that, names carry power.
Some are more noticeable than others. Some more inescapable. Great and terrible, or selfless, lending sentiment to letters forevermore. These names now permanent etchings, into skin and heart and history books: demanding, or demanded of it, acknowledgement, a continuous force.
Permanent association is not the same as continuous evocation. The most fearful warriors will be mentioned far into their futures, names bathed in blood and anger. They can live as long as fear allows them to. But these fears can be wedded to their worlds, too, essences of the people they were: living, and dying, and undone, by it.
Some names are cried, whispered, breathed: brought to the wind for longer, and buffeted; immortalised, not for the intention of it, but out of kindness. Gratitude. For simple acknowledgement.
Some names take on others, polish them like trophies, to bring out at choice moments. Those names, displayed, still serve their purpose under the wing of their owner. Some, collected and coveted, speak to the many faces of their power. Others are just a specific immortalisation; one face none are to forget so easily. Some names are blessed upon a person: bestowed badges of honour, to be taken off at convenience; given in thanks, or clarification, or reparation.
These, too, can be swallowed up encompased by the original; cradling all purpose, all emotion and evocation: a dandelion seed caught in careful hands.
In the end, it is the winds of time that determine how one lands, how many volumes one name is bestowed. All life surrounding, onlooking, determining.
It is in others' minds that names hold their power. Whispered, cursed, repeated. Given life to stay afloat another day.
As long as your name is loved, so life can love you.
Theirs is a jagged journey. The seeds twist this way and that, not always buffeted, but gripped, thrown into a new place completely. Confusing, a blurred beginning and end. Their evocations muddle, too.
Two sides of the coin: it weighs on the name, chained cinderblocks. Fear and respect and pure, undiluted hatred. The name, then, not a bestowing, but hurled, snarled, a prayer for help uttered after its utterance.
In most places, the name is the prayer itself. The last resort, the hope against hope; triumph immortalised, the breathlessness of victory given breath. There is much to this name: so many volumes, so many lifetimes.
And the other, the oft-whispered gratitude. Heart of compassion and courage; hope against hope, too, in held-out hands and a gaze of affirmation. This name of promise, of praise, casting no shadow and having no shadow to shade it - pure resolution, compassion personified. The name most evoked by the ordinary; the young; the helpless - those left behind, except for the times a name was powerful enough to believe in them, to look out for them, to return to them their own importance.
These names, compassion and promise and power, are scattered amongst the billions of the past, and the billions in the future. Names printed once in the censuses of Earth, but brought to life on alien shores and black ink skies. They reverberate into night, into possibility, echoed again back to them: in thought, in song, in stories.
For however long time has given them, so their names are loved for them.
'What're you thinking?'
Yaz looks at her. Golden glow behind the Doctor, fading into the endless of the night in front. In this still moment she can touch both sides of the coin, feel the ebb and flow of names on the wind. In her wide eyes she cradles it all; reveals her unending.
Not an unending for her, Yaz knows. Never hers. She has to make do with her time. But the unending has her thinking of her time, and the times they have visited, and the very notion of it: of what it means to have touched it, in all the ways they dared.
All the ways they made themselves known to the universe. All the ways the universe knows them. It brings a thrill, a keen thud from her heart desperate to make itself known. Pride, she recognises. And gratitude, endless gratitude.
'It's still... weird, sometimes,' she muses, 'to know we've travelled into the future, and to have done our bit - but that's the past for them, and we've become the past. We've become stories. For Earth, for my family, for my time, that's all to come. And we're already just... names in stories.'
She watches the Doctor smile. It's the smile that says everything; the rare one, the cherished one. Moments like this are few and far between, and all the more precious for it. She feels like she cracked the code, got the words right. Stumbled upon a sacred truth seldom spoken, and the Doctor delights in it.
'What a name you've made for yourself, Yasmin Khan.' Said with that same smile, cherished and cherishing; hushed voice like a cradling.
Yaz's cheeks warm; she returns her gaze to the black of night, the emptiness that will always feel so alive to her.
The compliment feels incomplete; citation needed. 'What a name we've made together,' she replies. Still not quite right; she won't claim time belonging only to the Doctor. 'In the time we've had.' And quieter now, 'All I've done with you. Because of you...'
'Nah.' It is no doubt accompanied by some dramatic expression, if Yaz were to turn and look. She is too late; instead, the Doctor regards her with calm conviction, with pride suffused through bright eyes and the remnants of that honest smile, that cherished smile. 'It's down to you. You always had this in you. Never doubt that.'
This time, she keeps the Doctor's gaze: stays connected to the pride meant for her, only for her.
'I'm glad,' Yaz says eventually, 'that we got stories together.'
A palm on hers, golden glow shining iridescent in the infinite. 'So am I, Yasmin Khan. So am I.'
Their gazes go out to the night now. Looking out to the universe, where there is power in their names - and heart, and hope, and love for those around them. Dandelion seeds will collide for that brief moment on the winds, and someone, somewhere, in some future time, will think of them.