Helping Hands — Part 2/3

Prompt from @neonthebright: The Doctor drops/misplaces his sonic somewhere he can’t reach and Zepheera goes on a mini-adventure to retrieve it for him.

BTaS Canon: No – DonnaAU

Timeline: Post-Midnight, Pre-Turn Left

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

If anyone had told Zepheera decades ago that one day she’d be able to sit comfortably in a human hand, she’d have told them to bugger off. And yet there she was, leaning tiredly against a human look-alike’s fingers as he sauntered off toward the console room. Completely at his mercy, yet with complete trust in him.

She straightened when he entered the dome-shaped room, peering over the edge of the Doctor’s hand curiously. Indeed, one of the floor panels was pulled up and set aside, leaving a gaping hole in the floor. Those compartments were still a bit of a mystery to Zepheera, even after all this time. She’d observed that a few of them were used for storage, filled with old trunks and boxes and the like, but most seemed to be dark mazes of machinery that Zepheera would rather not get lost in.

And now she was about to crawl willingly into one. Spectacular.

The Doctor climbed slowly into the hole, careful to jostle the borrower as little as possible. Crouching, he took up less than half of the space inside, but once Zepheera found herself lowered below the floor level, she saw that there was more room than the size of the panel would suggest.

“Where did it fall through?” she asked, stifling a yawn.

“Down here.” The Doctor leaned down and reached in to lay his hand next to a slight slope. Just big enough for the sonic screwdriver, and too small to fit his hand through. Zepheera slid off the Doctor’s palm at the top of the slope to carefully examine her surroundings.

Nothing in this place was smooth or flat, not even the slope. It all seemed to be made of wire or hose or angular mechanisms and couplings that Zepheera could never begin to understand. She didn’t need to, though. All she needed was a secure place to attach her hook.

The ground shook the moment she reached for the grapple hanging from her shoulder; in her fatigued state, she hadn’t thought to expect movement from the Doctor, so she stumbled a bit before she felt steady enough to shoot a glare over her shoulder. Her silent scolding had no effect, the Doctor was shifting to lay on his back and wasn’t even looking her way.

“As you can see, I was working like this, on that stuff up there,” he explained, pointing out a few wires and plugs dangling from the underside of the console. “It’s all kinda technical, and actually quite volatile without the right tools–”

“Then I guess I’d better not delay,” Zepheera snipped, securing her hook around a black cord near the top of the slope and disappeared through the gap. “Really don’t need the graphic details.”

The Doctor cocked an eyebrow at the gap. “Well, someone’s grumpy.”

“Someone is owed a cup of tea after this.”

She slid slowly down her rope at first; even knowing how quickly it would heal, she’d rather not sprain anything by jumping in too fast and hitting the floor too hard. She couldn’t even see the bottom through the shadows, much less the Doctor’s precious probe.

“A torch would be much appreciated if you’ve got one!” she called up.

“Ah! Right, yes.” Zepheera halted her descent when she felt a few vibrations through her rope indicating the Doctor was moving. Then a pale yellow light washed over her and illuminated her destination perfectly. “Better?”

“Much, thanks.” Now that a floor was in plain sight, a little less than a foot away, Zepheera dropped easily down. She frowned when she didn’t see the sonic anywhere. The immediate area was cavernous and irregular, and a glance upward told her she was about a foot and a half down from the Doctor’s level.

A massive tangle of wired machinery stood behind her, a few outlines of passageways before her.

While she took a moment to choose a direction, the Doctor’s voice echoed down to her. “See it yet?”

Zepheera rolled her eyes. “Not yet. Give me a minute.” She almost asked him to angle the torch to a better angle, but given how narrow the opening was, she doubted that would be easy. Instead, she started toward the passage right in front of her. It seemed to be wide enough to accommodate a falling screwdriver and was the only logical place for it to go. She proceeded cautiously, trailing her rope along in her hand so she wouldn’t get lost or fall down a hole with no way back. “How’d you even manage to drop it down here?”

“I dunno, it’s never really happened before. Guess I just…got lost in thought or something, and it slipped.”

“You? Lost in thought? Shock and surprise,” Zepheera murmured, a twinge of humor teasing at her lips.

“Oi! Heard that.”

This actually brought a chuckle out of Zepheera, who turned to call over her shoulder. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re starting to sound like DonNA-A-A!”

Her foot caught on something she couldn’t see even if she were watching where she was going, and she tumbled down a low slope of hard metal things until something cylindrical broke her fall. It buzzed briefly as she landed on it.

“Zepheera! What happened, are you alright?”

Slightly dazed from the impact, Zepheera shook her head and breathed deeply. “I’m okay!” she assured. As she got to her feet, she realized exactly what she was leaning on for support.

“I found it!”

“Brilliant!” the Doctor exulted. “Can you get it up?”

Zepheera regarded the probe at her feet. It was taller than she was, but she was stronger than she looked. “Hang on! I’ll see what I can do.”

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Zepheera-Vision — Bit Hot

Zepheera gasped sharply as the fist around
her opened and exposed her to fresh air for the first time in five minutes. She
scrambled away from the giant unknown hand, tripping over the edge of a saucer.
She was wedged awkwardly between the lip of the small plate and the cold
porcelain curve of the cup, but still she maintained eye contact with her
captor.

His lips pursed as he observed her behavior,
then reached toward her again. She threw her hands up in futile defense, but
they weren’t needed. Rather than grabbing her, those long fingers curled around
the handle of the teacup and lifted it away. Zepheera fell back in its absence,
catching herself on her elbows as she watched the man sidestep far enough away
that he no longer filled her vision, but he could easily glance over to check
on her.

Zepheera stood and seized the opportunity to
take in her surroundings. There was a large coffee maker to her right and some
other machine she didn’t recognize to her left. She was on the kitchen counter
in the human’s small flat. The dining table across from her was filled with odd
instruments and glass containers that sent an ominous chill down her spine.

She had a bad feeling about this human.

Another hand approaching broke Zepheera out
of her thoughts, and she did her best to not flinch. Again it didn’t touch her,
only hovered expectantly nearby. She glanced up at the man’s face and realized
that he wanted the saucer. As she hopped off and pressed her back against the
wall, she wondered about this sudden concern of his for her consent. He had
kidnapped her, after all.

He dragged the saucer about an inch closer to
himself and carefully set the filled teacup onto it. Automatically, he popped
two blocks of sugar into it and began stirring. After a moment, he glanced at
Zepheera again and frowned to himself. He opened a drawer out of her sight and
rummaged through it. Then he slid the cup and saucer toward Zepheera,
not-so-surreptitiously placing a few items next to it.

She hesitated before peeling herself from the
wall. The cup was now filled with what looked like tea, and by her feet lay a
package of creamer, a paper clip, a length of string, a coin, and a sizeable
torn-off corner of tinfoil. Her violet eyes flicked up to suspiciously meet the
icy blues staring down at her. Noting her trepidation, the man rolled his eyes
and picked up the teacup, taking a small sip for himself.

“Good for the nerves,” he muttered,
his deep baritone rolling over Zepheera like thunder. “And definitely not
poisoned. How dull would that be.”

With that, he replaced the teacup and
observed her closely to gauge Zepheera’s reaction. She wondered if he thought
she could even understand him; clearly he was testing her intelligence and
civility, if the materials he gave her were any indication. As much as it sickened her to play into this
game of his, she was quite thirsty. The salt from the chips she’d eaten with
the Doctor had really dried her out.

The thought of the Doctor drove her to step
forward at last. She needed to get back to him by any means necessary, and if
that meant playing along for a while…

She picked up the tinfoil, tearing off the
excess. She didn’t need much to mold into a makeshift cup. Once that was done
and she’d checked it for weak spots, she went straight to the tea. She inspected
it for a moment, inhaling its fumes. Earl gray. Not her favorite but tolerable
enough, especially with a little sugar. She leaned down with her foil cup to
retrieve some.

“Bit hot,” said the man under his
breath, giving Zepheera pause. Indeed, warmth wafted up from the liquid. It
wasn’t steaming, but it was as hot as could be expected on such short notice.
Hot enough to sting, that was for sure. Perhaps the kettle had still been
lukewarm from that morning.

Zepheera carefully lowered her cup into the
drink, ignoring the man as he observed her reaction to his warning. Despite how
much she wanted to dunk her whole hand in and give him something to observe,
she knew that having him know about her healing ability would be counter-productive.
His curiosity would only grow. So she settled on a half-filled cup and took a
measured sip.

For the Doctor.

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Doctor y Doctor

John Watson didn’t stop to think. The fact that he and Sherlock were already late to meet Lestrade at a fresh, new, and conveniently nearby crime scene completely left his mind. He saw a man get blindsided by some punk kid on a skateboard and fall hard on the ground while the assailant rode on. John immediately rushed to his side.

He shoved his way through the small crowd gathering to gawk at the man with morbid curiosity. It was easy to see why; on top of the spectacle, the man was rather odd-looking in general. Mid-thirties, early forties but with a forward-sweeping spike to his hair, a brown pinstriped suit paired with white Converse of all things, and a long, tan overcoat to put it all together. It was a wonder how this strange person had escaped the skater’s notice. Luckily the chap didn’t seem too badly hurt, but he was groaning something terrible and clutching his head.

“Steady on, mate. I’m a doctor, and you’ve been hit hard.” John spoke evenly and kindly as he knelt by the man and moved his hands away from his face so he could check for signs of concussion. “Do you remember what happened?”

The chocolate-brown eye John was holding open zeroed in on him, and the brow above it furrowed. Then his hand shot to his right shoulder and scrambled around, as though he were looking for something.

He started to sit up quickly, but John stopped him with a hand to the chest.

“No, no, don’t get up too fast–”

“Get off!”

The man shoved John roughly away, knocking him on his arse. Then he got on his hands and knees, calling out some strange word that John didn’t recognize. It almost sounded like a rejected spell from Harry Potter.

Regardless, John stood and made one last attempt to calm the man down.

“Sir, you need medical attention,” John insisted.

The man shook off the hand John laid on his shoulder, then jumped up to his full height. John blinked as the man loomed over him, despite only being about half a foot taller than him. His eyes, while clear, were crazed and deadly.

“I don’t need a doctor. I am the Doctor. Now go. Away.”

John stared as the man went back to searching the ground. By then the thin crowd had been scared off by the man’s apparent madness. “Alright, man, suit yourself,” the doctor muttered as he backed off. Clearly the matter was out of his hands, and he was on his way to see Lestrade anyhow. Perhaps he could tip the detective inspector off, and send someone over to deal with the situation.

“Well, I tried,” sighed John as he approached Sherlock, who had waited for him. “Let’s go, I guess.”

“Actually, John, you go on ahead,” said Sherlock.

John frowned. “But Lestrade–”

“Something’s come up. Besides, I highly doubt he has anything you can’t handle on your own. Meet back at the flat.”

And that was it. Sherlock walked off without another word, leaving John confused and more than a little annoyed.

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Zepheera-Vision — A Hand Afoot

Prologue

Zepheera’s heart pounded, threatening to climb straight out of her throat.

This was no dumbstruck human she was facing. No, that would give her an opportunity to dash away. His countenance was perfectly calm with a touch of contemplation, his eyes cold and calculating. He wasn’t just staring at Zepheera, he was studying her. Memories of that same look from scientists peppered over the course of her long life came clawing to the forefront of her mind, and she had to actively push past them. She needed to find a way out of this, escape the man’s reach somehow and find the Doctor fast.

Before she could even glance away from him, his hand was upon her. His palm filled her vision and his fingers, each almost as long as her entire body, were curling over her head. In a split second, she was snatched up in a loose fist, her four-and-a-half-inch-tall body squished into a ball.

Humans were fast, she lamented belatedly.

Zepheera felt the movement as the hand was lowered and what little light that peeked in through the cracks between the fingers disappeared. With no warning, the pressure around her loosened and she dropped into a dark pocket. She had no time to protest; the man was immediately on the move.

He’d placed her into the outside pocket of his wool coat and it flapped with each and every step the man took, making it nearly impossible for Zepheera to climb out. To avoid hurting herself and lessen the motion sickness, she tucked herself into a corner and breathed as deeply as she could in the cramped, stuffy space. Panic threatened to overcome her, but she refused to let it. She would need a clear mind in order to find the Doctor after she got out of this.

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Zepheera-Vision Prologue — A Hand Afoot

After well over a year of traveling together, defeating monsters and rescuing alien civilizations, the Doctor and Zepheera decided to take it easy for a day. Nothing fancy, just a few hours spent in 21st century London, eating chips and seeing the sights.

Then a kid on a skateboard came speeding past the Doctor while he wasn’t paying attention and clipped him, knocking the Time Lord flat on is back in the middle of the sidewalk.

Zepheera flew off the Doctor’s shoulder. Ordinarily she would be hanging out near the edge of one of his pockets with this many people around, or at the very least under his collar, but she wanted a proper view of the city she’d spent so many years hiding underneath. So she sat tucked against his neck with a small perception filter attached to a TARDIS key in her lap. But after the fall, two things became apparent once she’d come out of her daze. One: The key was nowhere in sight, making her perfectly visible to anybody who bothered to look down. More importantly, two: she’d been thrown several feet away from the Doctor.

She tried to hurry back to him, but a few kind souls in the vicinity flocked to his side to offer help. That meant dozens of feet crashing down around her, some coming within inches and centimeters of crushing her. Instinct kicked in and she ran; logic inserted itself to insist that she’d need to get to safety first, then she could reunite with the Doctor.

Meanwhile, pedestrian feet were corralling Zepheera further away from her giant friend.

By the time she reached relative safety against the wall of a building, she’d lost track of her Time Lord. She could hear him calling, but it was muffled in the layers upon layers of people between them and the incessant rumble of footsteps. Zepheera was forced to climb rough brick wall behind her in search of higher ground. She was all too aware of the enormous risk she was taking, but at the moment she didn’t care about being seen as long as she could find the Doctor.

But when she reached a windowsill to look out from and she immediately met a humongous someone’s icy-blue gaze, she suddenly cared a lot.

Part 2

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Zepheera-Vision — I Look Good

Zepheera stared.

Contrary to the Doctor’s worries, she wasn’t
remotely interested in Captain Jack Harkness in any romantic sense
or…otherwise. She’d only just met the man. The only thing she was curious about
was his apparent inability to die. For as long as she could remember, Zepheera
couldn’t seem to age. So in a way she and Jack were quite similar.

As fate would have it, an opportunity arose
for Jack to make use of his ability. There was a room filled with incendiary
radiation that sat underneath a rocketship which was prepared to ferry the last
of the human race to a paradise at the end of the universe that they called
Utopia. The radiation had already killed one technician who was connecting the
couplings that would get the ship off the ground. Now it was up to Jack, the
only man who could enter that room without dying.

Zepheera had tagged along at the last second,
eager to watch this bizarre ability firsthand. But the next thing she knew,
Jack was undressing. She was most definitely not attracted to him, she was
adamant about that. But watching someone sixteen times her height move so
quickly, even doing something as simple as removing his shirt, was undenyably
fascinating to the four and a half inch tall borrower.

She jumped when the Doctor popped into her
view, checking over the radiation levels and the other readings on the control
panel. He hadn’t yet noticed Jack. It occurred to her that the radiation he
would be subjected to wouldn’t affect the clothing he was stripping off, so she
regained her composure and cleared her throat.

“Er, Jack?” she piped up, still a
little timid around this new giant.

The Doctor glanced Jack’s way, only to
double-take once it sank in.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“I’m going in,” Jack reminded him.

“But–from what I can tell, the
radiation doesn’t affect clothing, only flesh,” said the Doctor.

“I look good, though.”

With a smirk at the Doctor and a wink at
Zepheera, Jack pulled his braces back on and strode purposefully into the
radiation-ridden room. Thankfully, only his wool coat and button-down had been
removed.

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Helping Hands — Part 1/3

Prompt from @neonthebright: The Doctor drops/misplaces his sonic somewhere he can’t reach and Zepheera goes on a mini-adventure to retrieve it for him.

BTaS Canon: No – DonnaAU

Timeline: Post-Midnight, Pre-Turn Left

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Zepheera woke up feeling annoyed. She stirred under her light covers and gave a sleepy murmur as she blinked blearily, frowning at the ceiling in confusion. If the sluggish state of her mind was anything to go by, she hadn’t gotten her full eight hours. What could have possibly–?

Knock knock knock knock!

“Zepheera!”

The borrower in question heaved a sigh. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” she groaned.

The Doctor continued to knock and call her name, so Zepheera gave in and kicked off the blanket with a grumble. Rolling out of bed, she stumbled toward the exit to her hidden home.

The Time Lord had happened upon four-and-a-half-inch-tall Zepheera in the possession of scientists, trapped in a tank and pumped full of drugs. He rescued her, revived her, gave her a place on his ship and offered her the chance of a lifetime: to see the universe.

After over a century and a half of more of the same, and sometimes worse, nothing could have made Zepheera happier.

In the year that followed, she grew close to the Doctor and his human companion, Donna. They traveled together, ran together, and fought to rescue alien civilizations together. Despite their size difference, the three of them actually made a brilliant team. For instance, the Doctor carried knowledge from across the universe, Donna’s cleverness cropped up in unexpected places, and Zepheera could always find her way into places they couldn’t reach. In their downtime, the larger of the travelers were perfectly comfortable with Zepheera carrying on the lifestyle of her people.

She borrowed from them, scavenging materials from the virtually infinite number of rooms in the TARDIS, and over time she’d put together a humble home hidden behind the wall panels.

She liked to believe that she’d come across the loose panel that was now the entrance to her house entirely on her own, but sometimes she suspected that the Doctor had loosened it for her to find when she wasn’t looking. Either way, he and Donna were both aware of her base’s location in case they needed to find her in an emergency.

Rude awakenings like the one Zepheera was recovering from made her regret that decision.

“Alright, alright, I’m coming!” she called. That silenced the Doctor’s knocks at least. Careful to avoid the few borrowings she left lying around, she squeezed through the gap that led to the corridor and squinted up at her giant friend.

“I. Was. Asleep,” she pronounced, shading her eyes as she tilted her head back to meet his gaze. Luckily, he was kneeling, so she didn’t have to look far. Zepheera’s annoyance softened when she noticed the Doctor wringing his hands and looking quite distressed. “What’s wrong?”

The Doctor blinked. “Ah. Yes, well, y’see, the thing is… Well, what happened was, I was, er, I guess you could say tuning up things in the console room; it’s a bit more complicated than that – okay, much more complicated than that – but anyway, I digress–”

“If you could get to the point, please,” Zepheera pressed, quickly losing patience.

“Right, of course,” the Doctor nodded with a steadying breath. “Long story short, I kinda, sort of…dropped my sonic.”

Zepheera shot him a flat look. “And you woke me up because…?”

“Well, I need your help to get it back.”

She scowled. “Why me? Can’t you bother Donna to–”

“I was working in the space underneath the console,” clarified the Doctor. “It slipped out of my grasp and fell into a nook I can’t reach into. I’m, heh, a bit too big.” He chuckled sheepishly, scratching the back of his head.

As irritated as she was, Zepheera could never stay mad at the Doctor for long. With an exaggerated eye roll, she sighed in defeat. “Fine. Just give me a minute.”

Without waiting for the Doctor’s response, she went back inside to change from her sleep clothes into an outfit more suitable for borrowing. She slipped on her boots and almost grabbed her bag before remembering she wouldn’t be needing it. Instead, she tossed her grappling hook and coiled rope over her shoulder, giving her dark, sleep-tousled bob a quick comb-through with her fingers before returning to the corridor. The Doctor’s upturned hand was waiting for her, along with his grateful smile.

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Zepheera-Vision Epilogue — Abandoned

This is part 2 of a Zepheera-Vision based on numbers 4 and 14 from this list of one-word prompts. Feel free to send in one!

Part 1

Then came the sensory overload.

Suddenly there was light, nearly blinding
Zepheera. Then she became aware of the warmth surrounding her. Highly confused
about where she was and what was happening, she shot to her feet and
immediately fell back down. She was still sobbing and hyperventilating, and her
head was spinning and her lips and fingers tingled from lack of oxygen. But as
she fumbled around desperately, feeling the boundaries of the warm, soft,
leathery space she found herself in, the small part of Zepheera’s brain that
remained functional puzzled out another reason for her loss of balance.

Hands. She was in a human’s cupped hands. And
the human was moving very fast.

Then they stopped. Voices rumbled above her,
their clarity lost in Zepheera’s dizziness and the blood roaring in her ears.
She squeezed her eyes shut and covered her head with her arms, fearful of what
these two giants were going to do to her. After a moment, the hands opened up
beneath her. Zepheera gave a startled yelp as she fell a short distance,
landing splayed onto another pair of hands.

These new hands were bigger and decidedly
more dangerous than the first pair, but rather than trapping around her, they
drew her close to the person they were attached to. And as they gently pressed
her against a familiar pinstriped suit, her situation became clear.

She was waking up from a nightmare, which had
induced a panic attack. Donna must have heard her distress and brought her
straight to the Doctor, to whom Zepheera was more responsive in this state. The
position he moved her into now was woefully familiar to Zepheera. Remembering
his instructions, she concentrated on the Doctor’s slow breaths and did her
best to copy them. It made her chest hurt at first, but with each repetition
her nervous system calmed down another hair.

As her heart rate slowed down to a healthy
level and her head cleared, the Doctor and Donna’s hushed voices came into
focus as well.

“She’s getting worse,” Donna
pointed out.

“I know,” murmured the Doctor.
Despite how quiet he was trying to be, his voice reverberated through his
chest. Zepheera couldn’t ignore it if she tried.

“I mean, first the nightmares, then the
panic attacks, and now full-on night terrors? We can’t let her shrug this off
anymore. What good is hopping around time and space saving planets when we
can’t even help our own friend?”

“Donna, I know,” the Doctor all but
growled, sending a chill up Zepheera’s spine along with the vibrations. After
another deep breath for the borrower to mimic, he went on in a whisper.
“Trust me, I haven’t been ignoring her. It’s just… She’s been through a
lot with so-called doctors poking and prodding her and worse, and I
didn’t want to make her relive that by forcing help on her. I was waiting for
her to come to me.”

A moment of silence passed between the human
and the Time Lord, and Zepheera let out a shaky sigh. She hadn’t meant to cause
her larger friends so much trouble. Nothing she did stopped the nightmares, or
quashed this completely irrational fear of abandonment deep inside her. She
wanted to deal with it herself so the Doctor and Donna wouldn’t have to worry
about it. Clearly, that was beyond her power.

“I’ll talk to her when she wakes
up,” said the Doctor, interrupting Zepheera’s thoughts. “I’ll help
her, Donna, that’s a promise. For now, get some sleep. You need it more than I
do.”

After a second of hesitation, Donna replied,
“You better make good on that, Spaceman.” Her voice teemed with
concern, and with that her footsteps retreated further into the TARDIS.

Now that the conversation overhead was done,
Zepheera allowed herself to relax a little more. She had some deeply-rooted
apprehensions about what kind of help she was going to receive, but stronger
than them was the trust she had in the Doctor. If anybody could make her
better, it was him. No matter how long it took.

The Doctor leaned back, probably in the seat
in the console room if the dim lighting was anything to go by. With his chest
slightly more horizontal, Zepheera adjusted herself more comfortably. The
Doctor lifted his hand about a centimeter to give her more room, but didn’t
otherwise react to her shifting. She finally settled down laying on her side,
nestled in the space between his tie and the lapel of his suit.

The hand came back down to rest gently over
her lower half like a blanket, while his thumb absently stroked her arm and
part of her back. It was a small but comforting gesture that brought a faint
smile to Zepheera’s lips. The sound of his breathing paired with the muffled
thuds of his hearts in their strange one-two-three-four rhythm easily lulled
Zepheera to sleep.

If she dreamt at all, she didn’t recall it in
the morning.

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Zepheera-Vision –Abandoned

“Go on.”

Zepheera frowned in confusion. The TARDIS had
landed and the doors were open, but she couldn’t see anything beyond them. Only
darkness. She looked up at the Doctor; being four and a half inches tall, she
had to tilt her head back quite a bit just to meet his gaze from her spot on
the floor. A sudden pang of insignificance shot through her gut like a cold
hand.

“Where…” Her throat had gone dry
and her voice came out quieter than usual, so she swallowed her fear and tried
again. “Where are we?”

The Doctor nodded toward the door. “Only
one way to find out.

Hesitant, Zepheera turned the other way to
lock eyes with Donna. The human offered a faint smile of encouragement. Even
so, something felt off to Zepheera. But her friends were waiting on her, so she
carefully approached the wide-open doors.

The space outside was pitch-black, the dim
light of the console room didn’t seem to touch it. Even after she’d taken a few
steps into this dark place, Zepheera could hardly believe she was walking on
something solid. She blinked hard and looked around with wide eyes, wandering
about a foot further away from the doors. The absence of light, the absolute
nothingness was beginning to hurt her eyes.

A sudden wave of dread hit her as she noticed
the absence of something else. Vibrations in the floor that indicated her
relatively giant friends following her.

She whirled around, squinting through the
light in the TARDIS that seemed blaring to her dark-accustomed eyes.

"What’s going on?” she called,
holding a hand up as a visor as her vision adjusted. Her pulse quickened when
two immense blurs came into focus.

The Doctor and Donna were exactly where she
left them. They stared down at Zepheera with stone faces. Her anxiety mounted.
She had a feeling about what exactly those expressions meant. She had frequent
nightmares about them. And as the Doctor lifted a hand, fingers pressed close
together in preparation to click, Zepheera’s fears were all at once realized.

Zepheera was being left behind.

“I don’t understand!” She stumbled
forward, still partially disoriented, in the hope that she could make them
second-guess this decision long enough for her to make it back inside.
“Did I do something wrong? Please tell me, I’ll never do whatever it is
again!”

Click.

Zepheera’s blood ran cold at the sound of the
Doctor snapping his fingers, freezing her in place. In reaction to the Doctor,
the TARDIS doors closed on their own. The sound of the blue box taking off
broke Zepheera out of her shocked state.

“No! Please!” she shouted over the
growing noise and rising winds as the TARDIS began to dematerialize.

Vwoorp

She broke into a run, desperately throwing
herself against the wooden doors. “Don’t do this! Doctor! Donna!”

VWOORP

“Come back!!”

Tears flowed freely down Zepheera’s cheeks as
she beat her tiny fists futilely on the door. As the ship that had not only
been the vehicle for the best few weeks of traveling that Zepheera had ever
experienced but her home disappeared completely, she crumbled into a
heap on the ground. Her entire body shook, her sobs the only sound.

She felt the darkness close in on her, all
but suffocating her as she started hyperventilating. All alone. Abandoned by
her only friends in the world. Trapped once again with no way out. For a
moment, she convinced herself that the surface on which she lay felt just like
the acrylic kennel she’d spent six months in before she met the Doctor.

Once that thought invaded her head, her
screaming began in earnest.

Then came the sensory overload.

Dark or Trapped? Oh golly gosh gee, I thought you said and!

Continued in an Epilogue.

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Midnight – Epilogue

Midnight | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Four hours there and four hours back. Like a school trip, Donna had called it. Such a duration was the main reason Donna had chosen to sunbathe in the Midnight Leisure Palace rather than accompany the Doctor and Zepheera on their little field trip to the Sapphire Waterfall.

Only two months since the borrower had joined their travels in the TARDIS, after the Doctor rescued her from a terrible circumstance, and Zepheera was already willing to spend the next eight hours locked in a box with several unknown humans. All for what would probably amount to fifteen minutes of a pretty view. Donna had to admit it was a rather brave decision for someone less than five inches tall.

Then again, she supposed Zepheera could have agreed to go because the Doctor would be there, and he was going because

Zepheera was gonna keep him company. Go figure.

Four hours later, the pool was still empty, apart from Donna in her robe and long chair. A few people had come and gone, but she paid them no mind. In fact, she didn’t think much of it when another set of footsteps echoed from the entrance hallway. Then she remembered that all the others who visited the pool had either been rowdy family groups or extra-friendly individuals chatting up the quiet staff. The silence of this person’s approach piqued Donna’s interest enough to open her eyes and turn to look.

She gasped and sat bolt upright at the sight of the Doctor rounding the corner, his long overcoat draped over one arm. It was much too early for their return. Something was wrong, she just knew it; everything about him threw up red flags in Donna’s mind, from his stony expression to his somber gait. Full of concern, she got up and approached him slowly.

When she got close enough, her breath caught at Zepheera’s notable absence from his shoulder. The Doctor shook his head when he saw the worry in Donna’s eyes, and he nodded toward his left shoulder. Now that she was closer, Donna could detect the slightest raise in the Doctor’s loosened collar on that side. Miniscule fingers curled around the edge of the fabric as the borrower underneath, partially illuminated by the potent x-tonic light, peeked warily out at Donna.

Donna’s heart sank. Zepheera hadn’t acted like this around her since before they’d gotten to know each other as close friends, and she’d never known the Doctor to be so quiet.

Something happened.

Finding out what would have to wait. For now, Donna’s friends were hurting and needed her comfort. Without a word, she pulled the Doctor into a tight hug, careful to avoid his left shoulder.

It took a moment, but the Doctor eventually hugged her back. A minute later, Donna felt the tiniest of weights dropping onto her own shoulder. A wave of relief swept over her as Zepheera nestled into the soft fabric of the robe near her neck. Whatever happened out there, it hadn’t affected any of the progress between the odd pair of women.

“Alright,” she mumbled into the Doctor’s shoulder, warning them both that she was about to pull away. Meeting his dark gaze only filled Donna with determination. “Tell me everything.”

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