The Doctor’s attention snapped from the kitten in his hands to the borrower putting a safe distance between herself and him. “What! I didn’t say anything!” His wide grin belied his indignation.
“You KNOW how I feel about cats, Doctor!” Zepheera glared at the bundle of fur he held as it glanced around meekly. She wasn’t fazed, not even by the little pink bow around its neck. “I thought you hated cats.”
“Oh, don’t listen to ‘er, Jacks,” he cooed, lifting the kitten to his face. “She’s just being grumpy today.”
“No, don’t name it! You are NOT keeping them!”
Her protests went ignored as the Doctor looked fondly down at the other half-dozen kittens circling his feet, crying for his attention. The only solace Zepheera could find in the situation was that they were too young to jump onto the table she currently stood on; and even then, she kept as far from the edges as possible.
Beginning to feel desperate, Zepheera tried a different angle,
only slightly emboldened by the barrier of junk between them. “Doctor. If I wanted to bring a Dalek onto the TARDIS, let alone seven, you’d say no. Because the Daleks are predators and would be a threat to AT LEAST one of us!”
Still, the Doctor didn’t respond, lost in the fluffy cuteness that surrounded him.
Oh, I wouldn’t put any of that past these two. I’m positive they’ve had at least a night or two in which they may or may not have had a drop too many, and ended up making a pillow fort, swapping stories, making shadow-puppets, bitching about their exes…
Oh, definitely. It’s like they were meant for each other.
When she’s having an especially bad day and just needs to vent her decades-old pent-up frustrations, he’s always there to listen. He’ll be supportive in his own way (he still loves his humans, but he tries his best to understand the borrower’s perspective).
On the other hand, when the Doctor cuts himself shaving or stubs his toe and starts rattling off insults to humanity as a whole, she won’t get offended and will usually agree and add on.
They could go on for hours like this, getting absolutely nothing productive done. Quite a few late nights in the TARDIS debating over the pros and cons of the human race; the dangers they pose and the potential they hold. And at the end of each conversation, there’s an unspoken understanding that grows stronger between them.
god, I love my babies…
Prompted Sketch by creatorofuniverses
Fanart by elitefourstevonnie
I love how, with very little prompting, Zepheera gives people the impression of has-hands-on-hips.
The borrower in question shot the Doctor a look before ignoring him, carrying on twisting a few pieces of string into a stronger rope.
“Zepheera…” he tried again, licking his lips as though in preparation. “…I need to get up.” Despite himself, a twinge of mirth tugged at his lips.
“Funny, that,” scoffed Zepheera as she looked up from her work. “That’s not what you said two hours ago.”
“But I have to–”
“‘Zepheera, I’m bored. Sit with me, Zepheera. Keep me company.’”
The Doctor sighed, an action that blew the borrower’s already messy bob about. “I know, I know. But I’ve got to check on the experiment, it should be ready by now.”
Zepheera threw up the hand that wasn’t keeping her progress on the rope in place. “Just saying. It’s your own fault for scooping me up and putting me on the pillow on top of you.”
“I was lonely,” he shrugged, making Zepheera’s perch shift back and forth slightly.
She regarded the Doctor in contemplation, but after a moment of staring at those big brown puppy-dog eyes her shoulders slumped in defeat. Gathering her work, she slid off the small pillow that she would never ever admit was actually quite comfortable, and made her way up his chest toward his shoulder.
“One of these days, you’re gonna run out of trump cards,” she informed him, pointing an accusing finger at the Doctor’s stupid grin.
New Zepheera-Vision every Saturday! Hope you enjoyed!
why i got zepheera’s design 97% wrong and i am very sorry –
when i first discovered this AU, it was through the brothers apart contest entry. when zepheera first came on screen, there wasn’t much of a physical description, but she was wearing sunglasses and an oversized trench coat and for whatever reason my thoughts were drawn to estelle:
then, when i started reading the actual fics, i read the description of her hair, and because i could not unsee estelle instantly my mind went to marceline’s mom.
so try though i might i could not unsee zepheera as marceline’s mom (thank you, short attention span) and when finally her skin tone was described as “well-tanned,” my first thought was “Well shit, I’ve been doing this wrong.”
so here, this is how i’ve seen zepheera for most of the series until around the end of Episode 2.
Are you JOKING ME?? This is GORGEOUS! I’ve been internally screaming for the last hour and a half!
To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure what her skin tone was when I started out. I just didn’t think about it all that much. ‘Well-tanned’ came about when, kind of on a whim, I decided Zepheera was biracial (like me! ^-^). Her mother had fair skin and I don’t think I ever specified for her father, and if I did I’ll probably change it in revisions. This leaves her complexion a little open–kinda like my own personal Hermione, at the risk of tooting my own horn. Personally, I now see her as olive-skinned, but I think the color scheme you used is AMAZING. Really, the only things I insist upon about Zepheera physically are her hair and her eyes, and your interpretation is just fabulous to me.
Basically, Ao3 is the main place I post my writing. The problem is, I take it chapter by chapter rather than finishing a story before thinking about posting, and it turns out I’m a rather busy person. This means that my updates on Ao3 are usually really slow and irregular. I once went over a year between updates! I want to break out of this, and the only way I know how is to take a break from posting there until I have my shit together on that.
The Ao3 hiatus will officially start after the stories I currently have going are done.
I’ll still be writing, also revising some of my older stories, giving updates if you guys are interested.
The good news is, with this blog I can keep my followers updated on how writing’s going, and I can have fun with and glean inspiration from my followers. I am open to posting short stories and fun little things that deviate from the canon of my series here. (I actually have a really angsty Zepheera-Vision queued up that was so long I had to split it up into four parts! Gonna hold off on that until a few more fluffy ones are established…)
Hope that clears that up for you! Anyways, here’s your filled prompt!
Every part of Zepheera ached. Her whole body tingled with pins and needles, her head was pulsing, and when she opened her eyes her vision was blurred. That was no doubt from the flash of bright light she remembered experiencing before blacking out. Squeezing her eyes shut in attempt to banish the colorless blob in the way of her sight, she rolled over onto her back with a hiss of discomfort. Pins and needles…
Zepheera, her own voice sounded so distant in her mind. She ignored it, concentrating instead on the feeling slowly returning in her fingertips.
A small clatter from the floor behind her caught her attention, but her headache prevented her from looking. “Zepheera,” her voice called again.
She groaned, then stopped halfway through the action. That groan…didn’t sound like her own. It was deeper than she was used to, more guttural. Her hand went automatically to her throat, where she felt more than just a strange lump where before there was none. She felt a speeding and irregular pulse through the more-weathered-than-usual skin.
Gasping sharply, she bolted upright, immediately bonking her head with a yelp of surprise that wasn’t hers.
“Oi, careful! Easy on the goods there, luv!”
She turned her head toward the shrill voice a little too fast, dizziness causing the floor to approach rapidly; she just barely caught herself with a tingling forearm. Now her eyes were wide, adjusting much too slowly for her liking as she looked around for the speaker. Shapes and colors were much more clear to her now, but details were lacking and nothing seemed familiar.
“That’s it. We just all need to keep a calm head about this, okay?”
That’s when it hit her. She shifted her gaze down toward the floor and paled at the sight of herself. Like looking into a mirror, but the reflection was far too small. Everything snapped into focus in that instant, revealing details in this tiny double that looked odd on herself. Her arms were raised placatingly, brow pinched with a slight raise in the left one, mouth animatedly open as her chest heaved with unusually high breaths.
“Zepheera…” her tiny double’s tone was warning, in anticipation of some kind of negative reaction.
Suddenly it sank in. Only one person talked to her like that, and it certainly wasn’t herself.
Zepheera’s eyes darted to the hand she now owned, so much larger than the small figure before her. It was a hand she knew all too well, and as her panic rose it became impossible to ignore the thundering beat on the right side of her chest that echoed the left.
She shot to her feet in a complete knee-jerk reaction, but this only made matters worse. Now she was faced with the stark height difference between her proper body–all four and a half inches of it–and all seventy-three inches of her current body. She staggered backward, staring down at the frighteningly familiar blue suit she now wore, and tripping on converse-clad feet in her haste. She crashed roughly against the floor.
A grunt of effort rang out and she turned to look. Not six inches away from her right foot, her old body’s legs were dangling through the grate of the catwalk, a clear result of having fallen over thanks to the impact of the body Zepheera currently inhabited. She balked, aghast at how much weight she was responsible for now, and how easily influenced the small body that now housed the Doctor’s consciousness–a mind-blowing concept in itself–really was.
The Doctor quickly hauled himself out of the gap and started carefully toward Zepheera, intent on comforting her, reassuring her. She backed away from his approach.
“Go away!” she shouted in the Doctor’s voice, cringing when she saw her body wince at the volume. Her back met the cool metal of the railing around the console, and she curled herself into the tightest ball the Doctor’s body would allow. When she spoke again, it was practically in a whisper. “I’m too big. I might hurt you.”
Borrowed Time and Space 