Officially, Time Lords are fairly immune to the affects of alcohol, and can only get drunk if they want to. In addition, they can very easily snap themselves out of it.
The Doctor, in his Tenth incarnation, is both a silly drunk and a sad drunk, depending on the circumstances and the level of drunk he allows himself to be. There is no in between.
Imagine Zepheera stumbling upon her Time Lord after he’s had way more than a few. He’s either singing loudly and off-key and laughing at/with inanimate objects, or he’s curled up in a ball of despair shaking with silent sobs. Either way, the borrower will eventually get noticed and he’ll suddenly become very still, all effects of inebriation leaving him at once.
Zepheera will comfort him without even questioning what drove him to get so drunk in the first place, especially in the latter situation. She’ll remind him that what’s done is in the past, and he’s not alone anymore.
Zepheera’s heart raced as it attempted to crawl out of her throat. She stared wide-eyed at the boot that had nearly crushed her seconds ago.
“Oh, my goodness! I’m so sorry!” an all-too-familiar voice tore through the air from above, and the boot shifted away. Zepheera’s head snapped back to lock eyes with the enormous pair of greens she had waited years to see again.
“I didn’t see you there,” the Doctor continued, entirely flustered and concerned for the borrower at his feet that he clearly didn’t recognize yet. The woman behind him remained silent, looking down at Zepheera with a bemused expression. “Are you hurt? I-I can help! I’m the Doctor.”
“Y-yeah…I know,” Zepheera managed between panicked breaths as they began to slow.
The Doctor frowned, leaning in for a closer look at the four and a half inch tall woman before him. “Zepheera? Is…is that you?”
Zepheera brushed her hair from her face; it had grown out several times since he’d seen her last and was currently shoulder-length. No wonder he didn’t recognize her, he remembered her with short hair. But the violet of her eyes hadn’t changed, and a cautious smile tugged at his lips at the sight of them.
“Hey, old man,” she confirmed. The Doctor’s grin widened until it threatened to overtake his face. “Long time, no see.”
“I…” A sadness crept into the Doctor’s eyes. “I thought I’d lost you.”
Getting to her feet, Zepheera nodded slowly. “Me, too.” She glanced at the woman again and allowed herself a playful smirk. “Looks like you’re doing well for yourself, though.”
His brow shot up. “What? Oh! Yes, right! Zepheera, this is Clara. Clara, meet Zepheera. She travels with me!”
Clara blinked, but smiled politely and said, “Hello.”
Zepheera gave her a wave, but her mind was spinning. After all this time, to hear the Doctor automatically refer to her as someone who travels with him–present tense–was thrilling. She hoped he meant it.
She hoped she could come back and travel with him again.
[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.
[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.
[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…”
[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.
The borrower in question rolled her eyes as the felt a series of rumbles through the hardwood floor that seemed to indicate the Doctor was crouching down to check on her already. It had only been a few seconds since she’d been sent down into this small gap to investigate for clues. A glance over her shoulder gave her a narrow view of her Time Lord flattened on the ground with one eye shut tight and the opposite eyebrow raised high, as though it would give him a greater insight on Zepheera’s perspective.
“Doctor, we’ve been over this, you can’t fit down here.”
“Yeah, but I can’t help being curious!” he declared defensively. “Last place anybody sees the big old mysterious being is disappearing through this tiny little gap, which should be impossible given its size!”
Depending on how it had been done, such a change might have left behind some sort of residue that would assist the pair of time travelers in knowing what exactly they were up against. On the other hand, if the person or creature had simply made themselves smaller, then Zepheera could be at risk where she now stood.
Well, more like crouched. Even for her, standing at four and a half inches tall, it was a bit of a tight fit. In any case, the Doctor had to be ready to help her despite the fact that his hand wouldn’t be able to reach more than a few inches into such a small space.
Zepheera bit back a huff, placing her hands on her hips as she backed away from the Doctor. They’d been together for months doing this exact kind of thing on a near daily basis, and she’d thought the Doctor trusted her more than what he seemed to be demonstrating. But just as she was about to tell him exactly what she thought, she felt and heard her foot sink into some gelatinous mystery fluid with a sickening squelch. She jumped away from it with a cry of disgust, shaking as much of it off her foot as possible.
“Found something,” she muttered to the Doctor through a clenched jaw.
“But what is she?” asked one of the scientists to the Doctor in an aside.
The Time Lord looked up from the sample he was examining through a microscope at the woman in a white coat addressing him, glancing at the shelf on the other side of the room where his four-inch-tall companion stood scrutinizing racks of test tubes. They knew one of them was wrong, and she volunteered to find out which out of the 75 tubes it was since her eyes wouldn’t tire as easily as any of the human scientists’ would looking at the miniscule labels.
Turning back to the scientist, he gave a sniff and replied, “I rather think that’s her business to share, not mine. Although,” he added as he focused back on the microscope, “to be fair, if you asked she probably wouldn’t tell you.”
“And why’s that?” the scientist hissed, sounding affronted.
“Cause you’re human!” exclaimed the Doctor, not bothering to look up from the microscope this time. “Would you trust somebody who looks as big as you do to her right off?”
Her gaze wandered over to the impossibly tiny woman still searching tirelessly through the test tubes, and she heaved a resigned sigh. She supposed she wouldn’t. Rather than admit that, however, she pressed on. “But she trusts you, and you’re taller than I am!”
“Well, you’ve got me there.” The Doctor straightened to his full height–a full head taller than the female scientist–adjusting his crisp royal blue suit. “Little over sixteen times her height, I’m surely terrifying. In’t that right, Zepheera?”
His tiny companion’s head snapped up at the mention of her name, only to find the Doctor crossing the room right toward the shelf she was standing on. After all this time, it still blew her mind how fast someone so large could move.
“I’m just as scary as any mean ol’ human, eh?” he smirked, pulling a teasingly startling ‘rawr’ face close to the eye-level shelf as he passed the borrower and moved on to fetch whatever he was after.
Zepheera flinched at the sudden lack of space, but shot an exasperated look through the back of her friend’s head. She went about her business, muttering about what a giant ten-year-old her Time Lord was as she worked.
“Must you drive with your feet?” complained Zepheera as she clung to a hopefully useless doodad on the console, eyeing the red Chuck Taylor that had landed a little too close for comfort. “Not to be rude or anything, I just can’t help but feel slightly at risk here!”
“Oh, always the backseat drivers…” the Doctor muttered through clenched teeth. But he peered through the loops of cable at Zepheera, careful to know where she was at all times in order to avoid…incidents, he thought with a glance at his shoe. “For your information, it takes six pilots to fly this ship properly, and considering I failed my test, I think I manage quite well, thanks very–!”
He was cut off when a rumble of turbulence shook the TARDIS. With the extra leverage of his propped-up foot, the Doctor managed to keep his balance. Zepheera was not quite so lucky, as the tremor was much greater to her. Her feet were thrown out from under her and she slipped over the edge of the raised section of the console that she had thought for sure would be safer. As her grip tightened on her handhold to prevent her from being thrown off the console altogether, she reconsidered her chain of logic.
“Zepheera?” called the Doctor after losing sight of his four-inch-tall companion. He hurried around to the panel where he’d last seen her, letting out a relieved breath when she appeared unhurt. Even so, while his left hand turned a crank and several dials, his right scooped up Zepheera and lifted her to his shoulder. “How ‘bout we try this?” It was still early days for the pair of them, and neither had ever lived so closely with someone of such a dramatic size difference before.
But they were learning. Zepheera didn’t have time to be cross about being picked up without warning because the Doctor was already on the move. She clung to his collar as the Time Lord dashed about, and through trial and error she found a stable position in shoving her legs under his lapel and anchoring her feet against his neck.
Once she felt secure, Zepheera actually thought this wasn’t so bad. Sure, riding on a giant’s shoulder was nerve-wracking, not to mention he moved at a borderline dizzying rate. But at least up here, she wouldn’t have to worry about any flying converse.
Borrowed Time and Space 