Tag: fanfic

Zepheera-Vision — Ow…

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Zepheera groaned as the dull aches all over her body slowly dwindled. The four and a half inch tall woman sat up haltingly, still dazed from the impact. The last thing she remembered, she’d been on the Doctor’s shoulder as they crept along an ominously quiet corridor. Out of nowhere, the Doctor was shoved to the ground. It had happened too quickly for Zepheera to see what had caused it, or to stop herself from being thrown off the shoulder and tumbling across the floor.

She looked up to find the Doctor still flat on his back, chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. He seemed stunned, almost affronted by the attack.

“You alright, Doctor?” she called, managing to her feet. Her healing ability had taken care of potential bruises and scrapes, but her joints still felt stiff as she stretched them.

“Oww…” he moaned. He let out a grunt of effort as he propped himself up with one elbow, running the opposite hand through his hair and rubbing the back of his head where it had hit the floor with a wince. The Time Lord may have been sturdier than a human, but he couldn’t heal as quickly as Zepheera. He muttered, “Blimey, that was a doozy.”

Zepheera tilted her head back as her friend straightened, towering over her even as he sat. But after all their time spent traveling together, it had been a long time since the borrower was afraid of her Time Lord. “We should get moving,” she advised with a nervous glance around. “Before whatever that was comes back.

The Doctor nodded, placing a hand flat on the floor for her. Ever determined, Zepheera ran up the slope of the Doctor’s arm as far as she could go, climbing the rest of the way back to his shoulder. This time, she made sure she had a firm grip on his collar.

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Zepheera-Vision Prologue — The Vanishing Box

((Bit of a detour. Since yesterday was 9/9 and I meant to do this earlier but move-in and school and aahhhh. Anyway, here’s the beginning of something new))

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

London, 2005

For the most part, Zepheera loved living in
the Tyler household. Only two humans, aside from the mother Jackie’s occasional
gentleman caller. She was much more energetic than her daughter, Rose, who
spent most of the day at her job in a shop in town. It was relatively quiet,
the humans were predictable and often distracted. No better place for a
borrower.

Yet, deep down, Zepheera longed for the days
of her youth. Not being able to physically age certainly did not mean she
didn’t feel old every now and then, though nowadays it was
quite a common feeling for her. She missed being nineteen with a boyfriend, not
knowing what the future would hold and frankly not caring. It seemed to her
that Rose Tyler had settled on the life that Zepheera would give anything to
have back. And here they were: both stuck in the Powell Estate with no
prospects whatsoever.

Zepheera supposed, if she were human-sized
rather than four and a half inches tall (or vice versa), she and Rose Tyler
might be kindred spirits. But for now, neither Tyler knew of Zepheera’s
existence and it was going to stay that way.

Then one night, her sleep was disturbed by an
unusual commotion out in the humans’ part if the house. Lots of loud talking,
telly blaring something awful, and constant vibrations betraying the giant
being’s every movement. As her head cleared, Zepheera decided that something
important and worth checking out was going on. So she trudged through her many
passages and lifts through the walls until she could enter a small vent high up
the wall in the main area of the house. She could see everything and nobody
could see her.

Rose was sitting numbly on the couch while
her mother paced the room with the telephone, calling each and every one of her
friends about what had happened to her daughter. According to her and the
television, Rose’s shop had exploded. Police were investigating and Jackie was
raving about demands for compensation.

When Rose’s boyfriend Mickey showed up,
Zepheera gathered that the worst was over. She’d heard enough to know what to
expect in the morning. Rose wouldn’t be going out tomorrow, but she might mope
around enough for Zepheera to make a short supply run. She had enough food to
last her a while if worst came to worst.

The last thing she saw or heard as she turned
to go back to bed was Rose sending Mickey off with a plastic arm.

She spent the next morning determining which
foods in her meager pantry would go bad sooner if she didn’t eat them right
away when a new male voice rang through the house. She couldn’t hear what he
was saying from inside the walls, but she immediately abandoned her chore to
investigate this newcomer,  grabbing her
borrowing equipment on the way out. She’d need to know if this man was going to
be around often or not.

He was very odd to watch, she found as she
peered down from her usual vent. While Rose made him coffee, he wandered the
entire room touching everything: he commented on a tabloid, flipped through a
book and declared it had a sad ending, and made a mess of a deck of playing
cards. Zepheera pitied Rose, who was trying to make conversation with this man
who was clearly not paying much attention to her.

Then talk of the police arose, at least from
Rose’s end, and Zepheera honed in on her speech. It was hard to tell, but it
seemed like Rose knew that the man was somehow involved with
the destruction of her job.

Everything happened so fast after that. The
mystery man was attacked by the plastic arm from then night before, and then it
turned on Rose. The man disabled it with some kind of device, a tube-like thing
with a glowing blue light on the end, and before anyone knew it, he was off.

Zepheera raced down the wall to her entrance
to the room as fast as she could. Jackie was busy blowing her hair and getting
ready for the day, so the borrower had an ever-shortening window of time to
make it to the window. By the time she’d climbed up, Rose and the man were
walking swiftly away. She lost them behind the garages for a few minutes, but
she watched the man stride away from Rose toward a blue box. Zepheera
recognized it as a police public call box, but she hadn’t seen one since the
sixties.

Before she could even wonder about it, the
man shut the door and the box disappeared. Vanished into thin air. Zepheera
stood gaping open-mouthed at the empty spot where it used to be until she saw
Rose returning to the Powell Estate and she knew her time was up.

Zepheera high-tailed it back to her humble
home in the walls and immediately began packing. For years she’d dreamed of
something different, something to take her away from everything that reminded
her of her mistakes and regrets. She never belonged, she only stayed. Maybe the
mysterious man could be the answer to the prayers she never dared to say.

Things didn’t just vanish into thin air, so
that man and his vanishing box had to be somewhere. And if it was the last
thing she ever did, if it took a hundred years, Zepheera was going to find it.

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Commissioned Art

creatorofuniverses:

Commission for @borrowedtimeandspace of her characters Zepheera and Quaxo. I adore their outfits, they were such fun to draw. ^^

Only one day left for the Flash Sale! Get yours before it’s too late!

Look at my sons!

Edit: This is a sneak peek of a fantasy-style story I have planned further along the line in BTaS, in which Zepheera not only gets a new outfit, but she also gets a companion of her own!

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

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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Stuck in the Middle

BTaS Canon: No
Episode: Day of the Doctor
Doctor(s): Tenth, Eleventh, and War Doctors
Companions: Zepheera

Previously

Zepheera had resigned herself to keep quiet while the two most recent incarnations of the Doctor rode out the novelty of being together with their four and a half inch tall companion. Ten, who hadn’t met Zepheera yet in his timeline, kept trying to surreptitiously learn about what was in store for him and the borrower. She or Eleven, depending on who spoke first, would always answer these types of questions with the word “Spoilers,” and Ten would moan about how the timelines were “too wibbly and I won’t remember anyway!” This only earned him a shrug and elicited a short-lived pout.

Zepheera hadn’t realized how much she had missed that pout.

Eventually the youngest incarnation of the Doctor insisted that they should be making some progress with the whole Zygon-invasion-and-painting-of-Gallifrey problem. The other two conceded and stood in unison. Zepheera got to her feet as well, throwing her single-strapped rucksack over her shoulder.

She turned to find two upturned hands in front of her, both acting as platform for her to climb on. When she looked up, the Doctors were staring each other down.

“Back off, Sandshoes!” hissed the Eleventh Doctor, nudging his counterpart away. “She’s not your companion yet!”

“Exactly! You can spend all the time you like with her, and I wanna know what I have to look forward to! I’m dying for a sneak peek.” Ten exclaimed.

Zepheera bit back a cringe at his phrasing.

Eleven shot back, “You haven’t met her yet. She hasn’t had time to properly train you up.”

“Oh, come on, you know she’s not the first life form her size I’ve encountered!”

“Well it’s different when you live with one, and take it from me who took it from her, you are a shrugger!”

This took the Tenth Doctor aback. He glanced between his future self and his future companion. “I am?” he asked, sounding subdued.

Eleven nodded emphatically. “And a fidgeter.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” sighed the War Doctor, waiting semi-patiently as the other two squabbled. “You fools are arguing over the lady as though she isn’t here! If anyone’s going to decide who she goes along with, it should be her.”

Ten and Eleven shared a sheepish look and nodded, mumbling apologies to Zepheera. They stood quietly, waiting for the borrower to make her choice.

Zepheera smiled gratefully at the War Doctor, who nodded once in return. He was an enigmatic one, that much was certain, but he seemed just as sweet and caring as the Doctors she knew and loved. She made a mental note to find some time alone with him later, sit down and get to know the Doctor before she knew him.

But for now, she had a decision to make. After a short moment of deliberation, she took a deep breath and approached Eleven. He clapped his hands triumphantly before offering her one to climb onto. Ten sighed but accepted Zepheera’s choice. As Eleven lifted her to his shoulder, she shot Ten an apologetic look.

“You are fidgety. And a shrugger,” she admitted. Ten nodded, barely suppressing a pout at Eleven’s smug look.

A small smirk tugged at Zepheera’s lip. “To your credit, though, you did train up faster than this one.”

Ten snorted and Eleven’s jaw dropped in indignation. “Oh, thanks a lot there, pipsqueak! Let’s just go already.”

“Finally,” muttered the War Doctor.

As they were leaving, Ten crept up behind Eleven and softly asked Zepheera, “How on Earth do you even stay up there with, y’know…” He rubbed his chin, raising a questioning eyebrow at the small woman.

“He slouches,” hissed Zepheera in reply, twisting around to wink conspiratorially at Ten.

“Oh, leave off, you two!” grumbled Eleven.

Ten smirked. “I have a feeling I like you, Zepheera.”

“I should hope so,” she said, facing front again before he could catch the hint of sadness that made it into her smile and eyes.

I’ve missed you.

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