Zepheera-Vision — The Companion

“Doctor?”

Both the borrower and the Time Lord turned to look at the human standing in the entrance to the TARDIS console room. The
red-haired woman was shrugging on a jacket as she stepped in. “Who are you talking to?”

“I’m in the middle of something, Donna,” said the Doctor pointedly

Donna rolled her eyes and approached with purpose in her steps. “No use keeping secrets from me, Spaceman, I live here too.”

Her gaze quickly fell on Zepheera, whose heartbeat quickened at the contact with a completely new human – Donna, the Doctor had called her.

“Blimey, get a load of that!” the human exclaimed. Zepheera flinched at the volume and backed up into the screen behind her, pulling her knees close again. She squeezed her eyes shut, overwhelmed by the sight of two giants looming over her.

The Doctor looked appalled by his companion’s behavior. “Donna, lower your voice,” he rebuked. “She’s been through a lot, no need to frighten her all over again by gawking!”

Without waiting for a response, he turned back to the four and a half inch tall woman huddled on the sill of his monitor. “Zepheera… C’mon, look at me,” he coaxed.

Considering she was outnumbered, Zepheera had no choice but to obey. She lifted her head to look up at the Doctor and Donna, who had come around to stand behind the Doctor’s right shoulder. The Doctor smiled encouragingly.

“That’s it. See? No harm done. This is just my friend, Donna. She travels with me.”

“She’s so teeny,” Donna cooed, leaning over the Doctor to stretch a finger toward Zepheera, as if touching her would somehow prove her existence further. Zepheera backed away from the sudden approach before the Doctor stopped the human.

“No no, don’t do that,” he warned firmly. “Really. Don’t.”

Looking a bit sheepish, Donna withdrew her hand. “Was she always this small?”

Now it was the Doctor’s turn to roll his eyes. “Yes, now would you back off for a minute and let me get on with this?”

Much to Zepheera’s surprise, the human stepped away with a muttered apology. Once she was out of sight, the Doctor addressed Zepheera again. “Sorry about that. She’s harmless, I promise.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Anyway, what I meant to say was, I’d like you to stay. At least for a while, just so I can make sure all those drugs didn’t leave you with any permanent damage. If you could bear with me for a few days, I’ll take you wherever you want to go. Does that sound alright to you?”

Zepheera supposed that was fair. At least it didn’t sound like she’d be locked in a cage anymore. She nodded her approval.

The Doctor smiled. “Brilliant. Welcome aboard, then. Er, is there anything you want to do now?”

It took some digging, but Zepheera realized there was a lot she wanted to do. She wanted to sleep in a bed, she wanted to eat a meal that consisted of more than old cheese and bread, she wanted to drink an entire thimbleful of some kind of alcoholic drink. She looked down at herself; she wanted to wear clothes that made her feel like a person again. Then she touched a lock of her dark hair. It had already been getting long at the time of her capture, and it had grown past her shoulders over the months.

“I want to cut my hair,” she told him. She was certain she wouldn’t feel
anything like her old self until she did. And she had a feeling she could ask for the rest at any time.

Thanks again for the prompts @wingedkuriboh27!

Ao3 | Tumblr | Ask me questions! Send me prompts!

Zepheera-Vision Preface — The Companion

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 2.5 | Part 3

Zepheera moaned softly as she sluggishly came to. The events of the last few hours replayed choppily in her mind. The man…he had picked her up and held her close to his chest as he fought his way through all of the metal men in his path. She remembered gripping the brown pinstriped fabric of his suit just to keep steady. He took her somewhere and tried to get her to talk, but her drug-addled mind refused to let her respond. Then he made her drink something, and everything after that was fuzzy.

The more conscious she became, the more she noticed about her surroundings. The surface on which she lay was strangely leathery and warm…and if she listened closely, she could hear a muted thrum coming from deep within, pressing up against her body in a one-two-three-four.

It was alive. It was a hand!

She shot up with a startled exclamation, falling back on her hands and knees as the uneven ground twitched in surprise. As the hand flattened beneath her, she huddled into a frightened ball, awaiting the inevitable harm to befall her.

“It’s okay!” the man from before whispered, though it was still more than loud enough to make the borrower flinch. “You’re safe. I’m so sorry, I didn’t think you’d be awake for another few hours.”

Zepheera turned her head in the slightest to peek through the gap in the arm covering her head. He was so remarkably large, a small part of her wondered if he could even detect such a small movement.

“Look, er… I don’t mean to scare you. Would it help if I set you down?”

Zepheera frowned in confusion. She knew better than to trust this behemoth of a man after everything she’d been through. Still, he did rescue her from that lab, and he hadn’t made a move to hurt her yet. Hell, he’d had her in his hands while she was asleep! He could have easily done her in then. But he didn’t, and something about those enormous brown orbs insisted that he could be trustworthy.

Slowly lowering her arms from her head, she clutched them close to her chest as she mustered up all of her courage and nodded.

The man smiled, pleased by her response. “Alright. Here we go.”

His fingers curled back up, stretching over Zepheera’s head as he slowly leaned forward and reached out toward a flat but narrow silver surface. She practically scrambled out of his hand, grateful for the solid ground.

Without the giant man filling her vision, Zepheera took in the rest of her surroundings. He sat back in a faded yellow seat, full of holes and duct-tape patches. The room was enormous and dome-like, covered in dim, round lights. Nothing else made sense beyond that; whatever she was standing on hovered above an endless sea of strange-looking levers and dials and cranks.

“What’s your name?” The question made Zepheera’s attention snap up to the man. She pressed her back against the wall behind her and eyed him warily. He sighed, an action that ruffled Zepheera’s shoulder-length hair even at a distance. “I’m trying to help you. I need to know that you’re alright.”

She bit her lip, then swallowed thickly past the lump in her throat. It had been a while since she’d spoken to anyone.

“Zepheera,” she answered, her voice hoarse from disuse.

The man smiled again. “Beautiful name,” he remarked. “I’m the Doctor.” Her eyes flared up with terror again, and he quickly added, “No no no no, not that kind of doctor. Please listen, whatever they did to you, I’m not like them, I promise. Trust me, I only want to help.”

Unsure if she believed him or not, Zepheera forced herself to relax a little and nodded to show she understood.

“I’m going to ask you a few more questions, Zepheera,” the Doctor informed her. “Just to make sure you’re okay now that that nasty drug’s out of your system.”

Zepheera slid her back against the wall until she sat with her knees hugged to her chest. “Okay,” she murmured. She resigned herself to his care as long as he simply seemed concerned for her. That wasn’t a feeling she’d ever expected from someone his size.

As her fear slowly dissipated, curiosity began to take its place. Zepheera began to ask the Doctor questions of her own, and before long they had a back and forth going. Zepheera told the Doctor how she ended up in that lab (leaving out the details about her hidden village) and what exactly they had done to her and the few others like her. She explained that she was the only one left in that place. In return, she learned where exactly she was: inside the Doctor’s TARDIS, which apparently could travel through time and space with ease.

It was the Doctor’s turn to ask a question. “How old are you?”

Zepheera frowned, realizing that she wasn’t sure. “What day is it?” She had been captured a couple months before her birthday, but she wasn’t entirely sure how much time she’d spent in that lab.

The Doctor leaned forward and pressed a button on the console, causing the wall behind Zepheera to light up. She jumped and whirl around to stare at the massive screen behind her as it displayed a series of concentric circles. “May seventh, year twenty eighty-five,” he recited.

Six months, she thought despondently.

“I, erm. I guess that makes me a hundred and fifty-eight.” Happy birthday to me.

The Doctor’s brow rose as he sat back. “Wow. Older than you look,” he mused. “Do you all age so slowly?”

A sad smile tugged at her lips. “Nah, it’s…just me, I think.” She took a steadying breath before asking, “How old are you?”

“Nine hundred and five,” he replied without hesitation.

Now it was Zepheera’s turn to be surprised. “So, way older than you look.”

The Doctor smirked, then adopted a more thoughtful expression. “Zepheera… Is there anything for you to go back to? A home, family, friends?”

Her heart stuttered at the question. As surprisingly pleasant as this man seemed, she was definitely not comfortable leading him to her people. She still had a duty to protect them until she had a full grasp of this new situation. “No,” she answered evenly. “Nothing.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said the Doctor earnestly. He rubbed the back of his neck as he seemed to carefully consider his next words. “Well, if you’d like, you could – I mean, it would be entirely up to you, of course, but… I was wondering if you wanted to–”

“Doctor?”

Zepheera’s entire body tensed at this new voice.

Ao3 | Tumblr | Ask me questions! Send me prompts!

The Stranger

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 2.5 | Part 3

Zepheera leaned wearily against the clear acrylic that made up the opening of her kennel. She, the other borrowers, and the rats had all been kept in this large structure made up of dozens of small cubby-like containers, each about the size of a shoebox.

Though, Zepheera supposed now it was just her and the rats.

Each had a secure lock system, and the front hatches thankfully had a few air holes drilled into them. The rest of the walls were opaque, isolating each specimen thoroughly. She couldn’t see the rats she heard scratching futilely at their own walls. Even clean of drugs, Zepheera had given up on escape long ago.

The room was empty, so Zepheera had nothing to look at other than her own hand as it traced the tiny air hole nearby. It was too small for her to reach through, though she’d tried. She’d nearly broken her hand in the process, she recalled distantly. Even the memory of pain couldn’t evoke any emotion in her.

With a loud smash of the door, several human scientists burst into the room. Zepheera blinked slowly as she lifted her head to look at them. They were frantic, screaming and yelling things that couldn’t quite make it into her prison at such a distance.

They were followed by what Zepheera could only describe as metal men. Five entered, one for each scientist, stomping in time. Their soulless black eyes completely disregarded the unit that held Zepheera and the rats.

The metal men spoke in deep, cold voices, but she couldn’t process what they were saying. In short order, they cornered the scientists and touched them with outstretched silver hands. The humans’ bodies succumbed to the electricity shooting through them, and they fell dead the instant they were let go.

Zepheera didn’t even have the capacity to react.

The silver intruders spoke among themselves, but Zepheera couldn’t hear what they were saying. She numbly crawled closer to the air holes, some deep part of her aware that it was important to know what exactly was going on.

“Oi, metalheads!” roared a new voice from the direction of the door. Zepheera calmly turned her head to look, finding a strange-looking man filling the doorway. He wore a brown pinstriped suit with red converse, a style of shoe Zepheera had thought to be long out of style. He was thin as a matchstick and had hair so unruly it could almost be dubbed rebellious. His eyes were wild with adrenaline, aimed solidly at the intruders. “Have you had your shots? Seems to me like you’re due for a booster!”

He hurled a small cylindrical device at the metal men, and it stuck fast right dab in the middle of one’s chest. They all screamed as a massive field of energy surrounded them, and just like the humans before them, they collapsed one by one.

Without missing a beat, the man crossed the room quickly, examining the bodies of the scientists. He sighed when they all turned up dead. Then he stepped over to one of the metal creatures, prying his device off of its chest. He raised a small tool – a probe, it looked like – and activated the charge once again.

His eyes scanned the room as he pocketed the device, passing right over Zepheera before returning in a double take.

“What?” he frowned and walked carefully over.

The most Zepheera was able to react was a slight raise of her eyebrows. By all accounts, she should be scared out of her wits. She’d just watched this man presumably kill a bunch of silver nightmares who had murdered humans moments before. She couldn’t even begin to think what this man could have in store for someone like her, even if she were in a right state of mind.

To her nonexistent surprise, he simply leaned down and peered in at the borrower, concern etched in his features.

“Oh, you poor soul, what have they done to you?”

Zepheera blinked slowly at him.

He clenched his jaw in determination and attempted to open the hatch by hand. She knew he couldn’t do it that way, there were higher levels of security for the test subjects to eliminate chance of escape. Even so, his proximity to her awoke the instincts that had been drilled into her since childhood, and she backed away from him at a sluggish pace.

Abandoning that strategy, the stranger whipped out his probe, buzzing it at the lock. It released and the door swung open. She froze when he reached a hand in, laying it palm-up next to Zepheera.

“Come with me,” he urged, pleading with those big brown eyes.

She stared at his hand for a second, but made no move toward or away from it. The man blinked in confusion at her non-reaction and tried again. “Don’t be afraid, I’m not gonna hurt–”

Before he could finish, more ominous stomping could be heard in the hallway outside. The man glanced between the borrower and the door, conflicted for a moment. Finally, he turned an apologetic look to Zepheera.

“I’m so sorry, there’s no time.” That said, the hand shifted to scoop up the four and a half inch tall woman into its cupped palm.

Ao3 | Tumblr | Ask me questions! Send me prompts!

Prompt: Hollow

Part one of a three-part story which combines two prompts from @wingedkuriboh27, one of which is shown below. The second prompt will be revealed tomorrow in the third part, which is a Zepheera-Vision.

This is in reference to this list of one-word prompts. Feel free to send me one!

Earth, 2085 A.D.

No matter how adaptable borrowers could be to their environments, they couldn’t escape the rise of technology for long. They weren’t a worldwide phenomenon yet, but a few poor souls had fallen into the hands of human scientists. The lucky ones were studied humanely. Others were experimented on.

Zepheera supposed her luck would have had to run out eventually.

She didn’t regret it, not for a second. Her sacrifice distracted the searchers from a hidden colony she’d established long ago. Rather than lose all those lives and their hard work, Zepheera led the humans far away and allowed herself to be captured.

For the good of her people.

As a result, Zepheera ended up in the custody of scientists whose main role was to test new drugs. Until the recent discovery of borrowers, they’d had to resort to testing on rodents. In their minds, borrowers were close enough in physiology to humans that they made perfect test subjects. However, they’d only managed to scrounge up a handful of the tiny people along with Zepheera, so they kept the rodents around as a fallback.

This turned out to be a smart move as all of the other borrower test subjects died under the scientists’…care. Either they overdosed or starved themselves out or passed away from some other incidental circumstance. The humans did little to prevent their deaths, happy to perform autopsies and postmortems on the miniature cadavers.

Zepheera, on the other hand, they fought to keep her alive. She wasn’t like the others. They found out quickly that she could heal wounds momentarily; she’d been nicked by the pair of scissors they’d used to snip off the clothes she’d been wearing. They gave her a simple frock and decided she was their most valuable specimen, to be kept alive at any cost. They even force fed her when she participated in the hunger strike with the few friends she’d been able to make in that hell.

Now, she could barely remember any of their names, her brain was so addled with drugs.

They had her on a rotation. They’d give her one drug one day, give her two days to recover, and then start again with a different drug. She never learned the names of these drugs, but she recognized them from how they made her feel. One made her hyper and restless, another filled her with manic rage, and yet another made her unreasonably happy.

Today’s drug simply made her feel hollow.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 2.5 | Part 3

Ao3 | Tumblr | Ask me questions! Send me prompts!

Zepheera-Vision — Midnight 4/4

[Spoilers for the climax of ‘Midnight’. Prepare for angst. You’ve been warned.]

Shock hit every single passenger at once as the shielded doors slammed shut. Val Cane sat down heavily in a nearby chair, her grip on Zepheera suddenly loosened. The borrower fell three feet and hit the floor hard. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t do her much damage, but she was already bruised and sensitive from the human’s tight grip. Her entire right side felt on fire. Anytime she tried to move, her whole body would ache in protest.

Less than a second after she landed, a greater impact shook the floor just ahead of her. Ignoring how much it hurt, she lifted her head to look. The Doctor had been released and fell forward, barely catching himself. His eyes and mouth were still wide from the scream he’d been mimicking, and he gasped at the sudden return of control over his own actions.

“It’s gone,” he breathed. “It’s gone, it’s gone…” He repeated the words over and over as he rolled onto his back, panting all the while.

Zepheera pushed herself to her feet with her good arm and limped closer to the Doctor in spite of her pain. At best, she was badly bruised, but none of that mattered. Her injuries would amount to nothing in a minute thanks to her healing factor. Right now the Doctor needed a friend, and none of these humans could come even close to fitting the bill.

She leaned her good side against his upper cheek, the only part of his face she could reach the way his back was arched and his body tensed. The muscles beneath her flinched faintly at her touch and the Doctor gave a surprised hiss.

“It’s okay. It’s just me,” she whispered into his nearby ear, laying a tender hand near his sideburn. “I’m here, you’re gonna be alright.”

“It’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone…”

“You’re damn right, it’s gone,” she agreed, jaw clenched in emotion and slowly fading pain. “It can’t get you anymore. I won’t let it. As long as I have anything to say about it, no one will touch you. That’s a promise, Doctor.”

Haltingly, the Doctor turned his head toward Zepheera, who pulled back so his wide eye could find her. Not knowing what else to do, she pressed herself against his cheekbone just below his eye, good arm extended in the best hug she could give. With a shaky sigh, the eye closed and he leaned into her tiny embrace, curling his trembling hand behind her in return. His eyelashes mingled with her short hair, and if she noticed she didn’t react. Slowly but surely, his body relaxed and he began to control his heavy breathing, wary of Zepheera as always.

Eventually the Doctor sat up and leaned on the side of a seat with the borrower nestled against his neck. They were across the aisle from Val Cane who, like everybody else in the van, was staring at them. While the Doctor continued to catch his breath and regain his composure, Zepheera looked Val up and down. This was the woman who had grabbed Zepheera without her consent, treated her like a child at best and a pet at worst, and had seemed intent on keeping her after the company had disposed of the Doctor. Even so, the look on the woman’s face gave Zepheera pause. She seemed repentant, and for one naive second Zepheera thought she’d gotten through to these humans. They all knew now that they had been wrong about the Doctor, and now perhaps Zepheera had proved that they were wrong about her. The Time Lord took care of her, yes, but she took care of him, too.

And in five words, Val Cane tore down every mite of hope in Zepheera.

“I said it was her,” she insisted, in reference to Sky.

Zepheera shot to her feet angrily because she most certainly had not–in fact, she had been the most vocal about getting rid of the Doctor! But before she could tell the enormous woman off the Doctor angled his head so his chin partially blocked her view of the human. Zepheera almost turned her wrath to him, but after seeing his clenched jaw and the way Val seemed to wither under his gaze, she realized the Doctor had made her point for her, only more poignantly without words.

Deciding to follow suit, Zepheera strode purposefully across the Doctor’s clavicle, pulled up his loosened collar and ducked underneath, pulling it down pointedly over herself. She curled up in the comforting dimness, allowing herself to pretend that the humans weren’t out there. Their silence made it easy. She could forget about them until they were all rescued from this broken-down wreck.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Epilogue

Ao3 | Tumblr | Ask me questions! Send me prompts!

Zepheera-Vision — Midnight 3/4

[Spoilers for the climax of ‘Midnight’. Prepare for angst. You’ve been warned.]

For a moment, everything but the Doctor faded. Even the humans’ voices were dulled in Zepheera’s perception. But reality came crashing back in when flesh suddenly surrounded her, lifted her away, and she realized people were now calling with confidence and finality to throw the Doctor out.

“No, you can’t!” Zepheera struggled against the fingers of the human who held her.

The human–Jethro’s mother, Val–held the borrower firmly in a fist and shushed her like one would a small animal, stroking the back of Zepheera’s head and neck with the pad of her thumb. “Don’t worry, sweet thing, it’ll all be over soon.” This was the only thing she said softly; seconds later, she was barking at her husband to “get him out! I want him out! Throw him out!!”

Zepheera craned her neck to see what they were doing to the Doctor. The father had his arms crooked under the Doctor’s shoulders, and the only resistance he met with was the Doctor’s foot hooked around the bottom of a seat. A tiny bubble of hope rose in the borrower’s chest at the thought of the Time Lord fighting back. But one of the other humans, the professor, started to help the father, wrenching the foot from its hold. Zepheera struggled again, but the mother’s grip on her tightened.

Young Deedee was terribly overwhelmed, eyes darting from the mother to Zepheera and then the Doctor and back, covering her ears from all the shouting going on; with her arms pinned to her sides, Zepheera envied her that luxury. Jethro seemed emotionally conflicted at first, but eventually pitched in to carry the Doctor out after his parents had chastised him harshly. The hostess, who initially protested, was torn. And all the while, Sky cheered them on and the Doctor copied every word.

“Molto bene!” she cried triumphantly, catching both the hostess and Zepheera’s attention. The Doctor parroted his own catchphrase.

“You see!” Zepheera called in hopes she’d be heard in all the noise. “It’s not him, it’s her! That’s his voice she’s using!” This earned Zepheera a brief glance from the hostess, who turned her diligent attention to Sky.

“Allons-y!” “Allons-y!”

Now there was no mistaking it. The hostess understood the truth, and that was all Zepheera needed.

“SHE’S TAKEN HIS VOICE!”

With determination, the woman tackled Sky against the emergency exit, smashing down the glass-shielded button without hesitation.

Six seconds of screaming and brilliant X-tonic light later, Sky and the hostess were sucked out of the vehicle, disappearing into Midnight forever.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Epilogue

Ao3 | Tumblr | Ask me questions! Send me prompts!

Zepheera-Vision — Midnight 2/4

[Spoilers for the climax of ‘Midnight’. Prepare for angst. You’ve been warned.]

All eyes turned to Zepheera. She had been relatively quiet the entire trip, taking all the Doctor’s warnings to heart. Unless she had something that needed saying she simply observed, and when she did speak it was either to or in defense of the Doctor. Now, with her cheeks streaked with angry tears, it was finally her turn to shout.

“No one is throwing anybody off this truck, especially not him! Can’t you see he’s the victim in all this? I guess not, since the last thing you want to do is help him when he needs it the most! The charity of the human race!”

“The little one…” Sky mused, cutting off Zepheera’s tirade.
“The little one…” the Doctor repeated beyond his own control.

“She’s like his pet.” “She’s like his pet.” “So loyal…and foolish.” “So loyal…and foolish.” “Poor dear, thinks the Doctor is a good man…” “Poor dear, thinks the Doctor is a good man…” “And can’t understand what’s happened to him.” “And can’t understand what’s happened to him.”

“That’s it, he’s brainwashed the little thing!” Biff Cane asserted.

“She’s not a thing!” cried Dee Dee, the student, in Zepheera’s defense.

“That’s enough, Dee Dee,” the professor barked at his assistant. “It’s only a logical assumption. With a brain mass such as hers, she’s bound to be, shall we say, impressionable,” he surmised, addressing the whole company.

“I reckon she’s working with him,” Cane intoned, pointing at Zepheera accusingly. “He’s probably trained her up to believe him, do whatever he says! They’ve been in cahoots the whole time!”

“Don’t be stupid, I am not brainwashed! I am four times your age and perfectly capable of thinking on my own! Unlike some!”

“You listen here, you little–!”

“Dad, leave her alone!” Jethro Cane interjected, the dark broody teenager staring down his father.

“That’s how he does it.” “That’s how he does it.” “He makes you fight…” “He makes you fight…” “Creeps into your head…” “Creeps into your head…” “And whispers…” “And whispers…” “Listen…” “Listen…” “Just listen…” “Just listen…”

Zepheera was listening, and each word Sky made the Doctor say broke her heart a little more.

“That’s him.” “That’s him.”

With each repetition, the Time Lord’s jaw clenched a little harder, the tremors that seized his body worsened and his eyes brimmed with tears. The Doctor was fighting it, but he was losing.

“Inside.” “Inside.”

The hopelessness of the situation hit Zepheera like a train and she fell to her knees, tears welling up in her eyes. Why do I have to be so damn USELESS??

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed, praying the Doctor could still hear her. “I tried, they won’t listen, I’m sorry. Sorry, sorry…”

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Epilogue

Ao3 | Tumblr | Ask me questions! Send me prompts!

Zepheera-Vision — Midnight 1/4

[This is an alternate ‘Midnight’. Due to the intensity, I wanted to give this one closure. Spoilers for the climax of the episode. Prepare for angst. You’ve been warned.]

Taking a big space truck full of strangers across a diamond planet called Midnight? What could possibly go wrong?

Everything.

“Doctor!” Zepheera cried, climbing along the bottom of an uprooted seat to look him in the eye. But he couldn’t look back. He sat on the floor trembling, unseeing eyes more full of fear than Zepheera had ever seen in them before.

If there was one thing you learn when you sit on a man’s shoulder, it’s how much that man moves. The Doctor was always moving–always–and now he was terrifyingly still. If he could have budged, like his eyes told her he desperately wanted to, he would have. She clutched at her hair in frustration. She wanted to help, needed to, but what could she do? She couldn’t move him on her own or save him from physical harm, she was four and a half inches tall!

For once, she wished Donna were around. The loud, boisterous human would make quick work of slapping sense into the other six, who were still arguing about what they were going to do to the Doctor. All they had done the entire time was bicker and yell, giving the borrower the worst headache. And the seventh, that Sky woman…As though she could read her mind, she stared coldly down at Zepheera with the faintest of smirks.

Now the yelling was so loud it blocked out Zepheera’s thoughts. At the very least, a couple of the humans were sticking up for the Doctor, but they were quickly shut down. One more look into the Doctor’s eyes–utterly petrified, begging for help the only way he could–and Zepheera’d had enough of these humans.

“Would you all just SHUT UP!!” she shrieked.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Epilogue

Ao3 | Tumblr | Ask me questions! Send me prompts!