Prompt: Shoulder Angel

As you can tell by the icon, this was prompted about a month ago ^^; Sorry for how late this is, but I finally got around to it! Hope you enjoy! (I assume you meant the episode with van Gogh, cuz I don’t remember an episode with da Vinci)

BTaS Canon: No
Episode: Vincent and the Doctor
Doctor(s): Eleventh Doctor
Companion(s): Zepheera, Amy Pond, Vincent Van Gogh

A shriek split the quiet of the night.

“Amy!” The Doctor jumped up out of his chair and ran out back, Vincent following closely behind.

Meeting Vincent van Gogh had been a bizarre experience, for Zepheera especially. Unlike the Doctor and Amy, she wasn’t allowed to interact with him. The Doctor had insisted on taking precaution when traveling back in time to meet the renowned painter, who had the potential to be unstable or volatile, a potential threat to the four and a half inch tall woman.

She had already been wearing a perception filter attached to a TARDIS key on their visit to the Musée d’Orsay to avoid being seen by the humans there, so she kept it on for their journey back in time. The borrower kept to the Doctor’s shoulder, observing and occasionally whispering in the Doctor’s ear when she couldn’t keep a comment or suggestion to herself. While this allowed her to see the living legend of van Gogh up close and almost personal, it did mean she had to silently endure endless van Gogh puns and flirtatious conversations between the present humans that consisted primarily of remarks about their hair color.

At first, Zepheera wondered if this precaution had been an overreaction. Vincent seemed quite level-headed, albeit eccentric. Once or twice during the initial conversation with her companions and Vincent, the borrower almost thought Vincent was looking right at her. But a second later he’d be looking elsewhere, and Zepheera reminded herself that that was impossible. He was nervous, meeting new people and used to people mocking him. His eyes shifted and jumped around whenever he wasn’t talking to Amy.

On the other hand, after the painter had his evening coffee, he became nearly manic. Not violent necessarily, but he lost all sense of volume control and said whatever came to mind. He had been ranting about colors speaking to him when they all heard Amy scream.

Zepheera flattened herself against the Doctor’s tweed jacket as he rushed into the garden out back, calling Amy’s name repeatedly. They found her in a heap on the ground, breathing hard and looking around frantically.

“What happened?” asked the Doctor, following his human companion’s gaze.

“I dunno, I didn’t see it,” Amy gasped. “I was just having a look at some of the paintings out here when something hit me from behind.”

The Doctor nodded. “It’s okay, it’s gone now. We’re here.”

Suddenly Vincent gave a shout that made Zepheera jump. The Doctor tried to calm him down, raising his own voice to be heard over Vincent’s continued cries. All the noise overwhelmed Zepheera, and she clapped her hands over her ears. This succeeded in dampening the volume a little, but also eliminated any coherency in the massive speech. So she scanned the area to try and figure out what was going on through observation.

Vincent’s eyes were wide, utterly terrified, and he held a defensive hand between him and the Doctor. But he was looking past the Doctor, Zepheera realized. She whirled around, and the sight made her heart race.

“Doctor!” she called desperately as the enormous, horrifying creature before her crept toward the Doctor and Amy. A warning about the monster caught in her throat as the Doctor moved sharply aside, and her hands flew from her ears to grip the jacket again. Her eyes widened even more when she saw that Vincent was charging the beast with some kind of pitchfork.

“Doctor, what’s happening?” Amy demanded.

“I don’t know,” said the Doctor, perplexed and concerned.

Vincent swung the pitchfork toward the creature until it backed into a wall, then bounded off into a more shadowy area of the garden. “Run!” he urged, waving for Amy and the Doctor to get away.

“Yeah, sounds like a good idea,” muttered the Doctor as he carefully approached Vincent. “Amy, get back! He’s having some kind of fit!”

Zepheera, who had lost sight of the creature at the same time as Vincent, stopped searching for it to frown at the Doctor. Had he not seen the monstrous being?

Unless he couldn’t. Borrowers like Zepheera had developed heightened senses of perception over the years; she had seen things that even the Doctor was unable to in the past. For whatever reason, Vincent had to be an exception because he definitely saw the creature.

The Doctor tried to talk Vincent down when the painter held his weapon at the ready, awaiting the creature’s next move. A growl to the right caught Zepheera’s ear, and she turned to find a massive tail preparing to strike the Doctor from behind.

“Doctor, duck left!” The Time Lord glanced to the right, confused when he saw nothing, but he followed Zepheera’s instructions and dodged to the left. He moved about a half second too late and got clipped on his right arm as the tail swung at him, and he was still knocked off-balance. But now he could no longer deny that there was something there.

The Doctor brandished a stick of his own and, with Zepheera’s help, he and Vincent managed to drive the creature away.

“It’s gone, Vincent confirmed.

The Doctor nodded, tossing aside his stick. “Excellent. Good work, Vincent.”

With an eyebrow raised at the Doctor, Vincent said, “You couldn’t see it, could you Doctor?”

“Yes! …Well, okay, no, but–” the Doctor sputtered.

“It’s alright,” Vincent assured, setting down his pitchfork. They started toward Amy, intent on going back inside. “In any case, you’re a lucky man. You might have been hurt were it not for your shoulder angel protecting you.”

The Doctor froze and Zepheera stiffened. “My what?” asked the Doctor.

“Your shoulder angel,” Vincent repeated, smiling at Zepheera. “I’ve been watching her guide you all night.”

Zepheera flushed. He could see me the entire time.

Vincent continued as they walked. “To be honest, she was quite a shock to see. But since I’ve never seen anything like her on the shoulders of the people in this town, and you offered to help me, I chose to take it as a sign. Perhaps your visit will do me some good after all.”

Thanks for the prompt @elitefourstevonnie!

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Zepheera-Vision — Time and a Crayon

Preface

Zepheera clung to the tweed of the Doctor’s jacket as he fell down a stranger’s chimney. As if to distract herself from the utter terror of free-falling inside a giant man’s pocket, a stray thought floated through the back of the borrower’s mind – At least it’s warm…

And seconds before the Doctor landed, it got very warm indeed. His intrusive body knocked a load of soot loose from the chimney’s shaft, and it all came down on top of the quaint fire burning in the fireplace, quenching it just as the Doctor rolled out and jumped to his feet, coughing and patting away at the black soot that covered him from head to toe.

Somewhere in the landing, Zepheera got dislodged from the Doctor’s coat, and with the security of his hand against her suddenly lost, she flew right out of his pocket onto the newly-blackened floor. She lay there dazed as the Doctor addressed the small crowd of humans – or at least, human-like people. If there was one thing traveling through time and space with an alien taught Zepheera, it was to never make assumptions.

“Ah. Yes! Blimey.” The Doctor’s hand went instantly to his pocket to check on his companion. When there was a distinct lack of a borrower there, he scoured the floor until he found her a few feet to his right. She was just recovering, pulling herself to stand. Satisfied that she was alright, he turned back to the other people in the room. “Sorry. Christmas Eve on a rooftop, saw a chimney, my whole brain just went ‘What the hell’!”

While the Doctor carried on rambling about Father Christmas and Frank Sinatra, Zepheera shook the soot out of her clothes and short, dark hair and assessed the room. There was an old, grouchy-looking man with two men standing behind him; Zepheera guessed they were guards, servants, or both. Then there stood a poor family consisting of what looked like a grandmother, a father, and two children. At least some of them were human, this she knew thanks to the slight ache in the joints of her elbows and ankles that always flared up around when humans were around. In any case, she was much too greatly outnumbered by people who were more than a dozen times her own height.

Tearing her deep violet gaze away from the gathering of giants, Zepheera’s attention was drawn to a large, almost organ-like machine in the corner. She made straight for it, digging her hook and line out of her trusty rucksack. With practiced motion, she tossed it high up and it caught on one of the many flashing buttons. She made short work of climbing up the homemade rope, risking a look over her shoulder halfway up.

The Doctor was doing what he did best, distracting and confounding the humans in the room. Only the children seemed unfazed by his antics, even amused by them. And it didn’t take them long to notice the four and a half inch tall woman dashing across the floor and climbing onto the console. But they kept quiet about her, and Zepheera had to commend them for that.

She hauled herself up and made straight for the center of the console. Some of the buttons and switches were labelled, but nothing directly indicated which one would either shut the whole thing down or coax the skies into saving the ship that Amy and Rory were crashing in. She made an educated guess and pushed down on one of the buttons.

It gave a non-committal buzz, but nothing happened otherwise. She tried again, to no avail.

“Doctor!” she called, hoping he could make sense of this baffling machine.

The Time Lord whirled around and gravitated toward the controls immediately. “Ooh! Now, what’s this then? I love this! Big flashy lighty thing, that’s what brought me here!” He ran his fingers along the buttons around and above Zepheera, teeming with excitement. “Big flashy lighty things have got me written all over them! Not actually. Give me time and a crayon.”

“Do not give him a crayon!” Zepheerea emphasized as the Doctor sat down in the nearby chair and spun it around until his back was facing her. She took the opportunity to jump back onto his shoulder, feeling slightly more confident now that she was in her usual place. Here, the Doctor would make sure that no harm came to her.

As it turned out, the controls reacted to the Doctor in the exact same way. No amount of sonicing the interface would change the fact that Zepheera and the Doctor’s only hope of saving the Ponds was for a very bad man, the only person who could manipulate the controls and the clouds, to suddenly turn nice just in time for Christmas day.

This was all sounding a little…familiar to Zepheera.

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Zepheera-Vision Preface — Time and a Crayon

The chilly, misty night air blew into the TARDIS as the Doctor threw open the doors and stepped out into it. On his shoulder, four and a half inch tall Zepheera hugged herself tightly against the cold, holding in her fleeting body heat.

“So the Ponds are in a cruise-starship crashing toward this planet, and we are on a roof why, exactly?” she griped through gritted teeth in attempt to keep them from chattering.

“There’s something controlling these clouds, preventing that ship from landing. I’d say it was that there,” the Doctor explained, treading carefully across the snowy tile along the rooftop. He pointed up at a large dome further on, connected to a spire shooting a brilliant magenta light into the clouds. “Something on that scale’s gotta have a control hub of some kind, and that’s what the TARDIS was tracking. It’s gotta be around here somewhere.”

Zepheera nestled in closer to the Doctor’s neck to keep warm, glancing around and behind him for an escape ladder or staircase. “We’ve gotta get down from here, first,” she murmured.

As she said this, something caught the Time Lord’s eye. His grin went unseen by the borrower and she was used to him randomly picking up speed as he walked, just as he was doing now.

“Gotta get down and get inside,” he corrected as he approached the smoking chimney stack and braced his hands against the brim. “I say we kill two birds with one stone.”

The Doctor’s sudden stop jostled Zepheera enough to catch her attention, and she turned to take in the chimney and let the Doctor’s plan sink in.

“Don’t you dare,” she warned, “ that is a terrible idea! You could get hurt and I could–Mmph!” Her protests were muffled by the Doctor’s hand scooping her up unexpectedly.

“Oh, c’mon Zepheera, it’s Christmas Eve!” he exulted, dropping her into the pocket on the outside of his coat, the one over his left heart. He cupped a hand gently over it to hold his precious passenger in place. “Hold on tight and have a little holiday spiri-i-i-it!”

With that, he went tumbling down the chimney.

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Zepheera-Vision — I’m So Sorry!

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.

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Zepheera-Vision — Miss?

Against her better instincts and training, she shrieked at the stark realization of how close she’d come to being flattened. A yelp rang out far above her in return and the human jumped in surprise as Zepheera scrambled to turn back to the shelf. Before she could get far, she was engulfed in darkness and pinned down by something soft and fluffy.

Dazed but unhurt by the impact, it slowly dawned on Zepheera that the human had dropped a box of stuffed animals on top of her, probably a knee-jerk reaction in his shock. Thank goodness it had landed top down rather than dropping straight down. Zepheera definitely wouldn’t have survived that alternative.

Zepheera squirmed and struggled to free herself from her fuzzy prison when the ground shook beneath her and light flooded her senses. The stuffed animal, now noticeably a bear, was lifted away and set aside, revealing a wide set of green eyes that met Zepheera’s startled violets. She heaved an exhausted sigh. Of course, as fate would have it, she’d been seen by John Smith.

Honestly, it could be worse. She’d rather him than a perfect stranger. But he might as well be a stranger to her. Unlike the Doctor, he’d never met anybody less than six inches high.

John stared openly at the tiny woman on the floor, wondering if she was hurt. He wasn’t entirely sure if she was real, but her lack of movement concerned him. It struck him that ‘she’ was actually a highly detailed toy, a doll he hadn’t noticed and that he’d simply imagined had screamed. To be sure, he reached a hand toward her; for a moment he thought he saw her flinch, the tiniest of motions from the tiniest of people, but he’d never find out for certain.

“John?”

The voice pulled John’s attention away from Zepheera as he straightened and turned toward the speaker. She took the opportunity to disappear, dashing toward the shelf closer to the corner she’d seen the cybermat disappear behind.

“Craig!” John exclaimed excitedly, not even questioning why his friend and temporary housemate was there at his work. “You’re never gonna believe this! C’mere! Carefully, though, don’t want to frighten–”

He cut himself short as he looked back to the spot where he’d left the small woman and she was gone. He frowned. “Miss?” he whispered, leaning over the mess of stuffed animals to scan the floor for the tiny, possibly injured person. “Where’d you go? I won’t hurt you, I promise. Cross my heart.” Zepheera risked a peek, freezing when his head and shoulders nearly filled her view.

“Who are you talking to, John?” Craig pressed, bringing the stroller closer.

John glanced back at Craig and Zepheera popped back into hiding. After a moment, she heard John quietly reply, “No one…sorry, must be seeing things.”

“Maybe you need a break,” said Craig, “Let me buy you lunch.” His voice was closer, and a rustling sound could be heard. They must be cleaning up the stuffed animals, she guessed, and soon enough she felt their footsteps rumble away. Once she was sure she was alone, Zepheera made her way toward the end of the shelf. Hopefully that cybermat hadn’t gotten far in all the confusion.

And hopefully, she hadn’t ruined her chances of getting through this with as little drama as possible.

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Zepheera-Vision Preface — Miss?

Zepheera should have known following John Smith to his job at the toy store was a bad idea.

The Doctor had only been human for a week and a half, lodging with his old friend Craig and his wife and baby. They were fully aware of Zepheera’s presence and the reason the Doctor didn’t remember who he was and why he was concerned with saving enough money to find his own apartment rather than saving the universe. It was a complicated situation, that much they understood, and they were more than happy to accommodate the former Time Lord and the borrower.

But a few days ago, Zepheera overheard John telling them about customers complaining about silver rat-like toys zipping around the aisles where they shouldn’t be. John was surprised how many people saw them while he insisted he’d never encountered such things. He wasn’t even aware that the store sold toys like that. The thought of what he was describing could be sent a chill up Zepheera’s spine. She had seen cybermats in action and, especially for people like her, they were not good news. Unfortunately, she was the only one who could identify them for sure, so she convinced Craig to help Zepheera, all four and a half inches of her, make it safely to the store without being seen. He agreed immediately but since Sophie was going to be out all day, the baby had to come as well.

Zepheera split up with Craig shortly after arrival, hoping that covering more ground at once would double their chances of getting to the bottom of this as fast as possible. While he and Alfie scoped out one half of the store, Zepheera combed the shelves of the other half armed with a makeshift magnetic charge. She kept close to the back of the bottom shelves, senses heightened and alert and ready for danger. It was extremely risky for her to be around so many humans, especially children. But it was worth it if she could find a way to be one step ahead of the Cybermen.

Like it wasn’t bad enough that the Doctor was being pursued by another evil entirely, now they had soulless metal monsters to deal with.

Peeking through a pair of stuffed animals, Zepheera tensed at the sight of a silver blur rounding the corner. Her vision narrowed to a tunnel and she dashed out into the aisle before it could get away. Nothing could stop her from chasing down the cybermat.

Nothing except a massive boot crashing down right in front of her.

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Zepheera-Vision — Whoa

The Doctor’s green eyes were large as his four and a half inch tall companion stepped willingly onto his upturned palm. For the first time since he’d regenerated.

“Wow,” he breathed, a fascinated grin slowly blooming across his face.

Zepheera’s feet shifted awkwardly under his gaze, and the feeling of her changing weight made his smile widen. “’Wow’ what? Not like this is the first time we’ve done this.”

“Well, technically, it is for me,” he pointed out. “It’s all new for these hands.”

As if to emphasize, he stretched and wiggled his fingers, experimenting with how it felt with a person in his hand and how that person was affected. Zepheera felt the muscles shift beneath her, and she lifted her arms to keep balance. Before she could shoot him a scolding look, he began to revolve around his own hand, supposedly another experiment. Zepheera sat down hard to keep from being thrown off.

“Whoa,” he uttered, some of that fascination turning to concern as he slowed to a stop. “Sorry,” he chuckled sheepishly. “Carried away again. You alright?”

Zepheera nodded, swallowing down a dizzy groan as she leaned back against the Doctor’s curled fingers. “Just…don’t do that again. I just might be sick.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

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Zepheera-Vision — In the Meantime

“Ah! There we are, finally stopped smoking!” the Doctor grinned. “Now to five minutes!” He darted to the other side of the console, gingerly working the hot controls.

“Doctor, wait a minute!” interjected the borrower on his shoulder. He jumped slightly at her voice, and again when she hopped down from his shoulder onto the warm console to face him. Ever since he had regenerated, everything happened so fast. From hanging out of a crashing TARDIS to nearly drowning in the library’s swimming pool, nothing made sense and Zepheera was reaching her limit.

“Wait? We can’t wait! We’ve got to get back to Amelia!” the Doctor protested.

“It’s a time machine, you can afford to wait one minute and bloody listen to me for once!”

The Doctor blinked, backing up a few steps and crossing his arms. The way he used to before he changed. “What’s wrong? Why are you being so grumpy?”

Zepheera sighed, choosing her words carefully. “I don’t mean to be, it’s just…you’re so different. And I-I know it’s still you. But everything you do is different. It’s-It’s like we’ve hit reset or something, except you’ve got the energy of a ten-year-old hopped up on too much ice cream. It’s like you keep…”

It’s like you keep forgetting about me…

With a frown, the Doctor broke eye contact with Zepheera to study his raggedy shoes. He couldn’t deny that he’d been distracted at best. “I know it’s gonna be hard,” he said at length. “Brand-new me, brand-new behavior, I can’t always help myself.” Those hazel-greens flicked back up to meet her deep violet gaze. “But I promise you that I will get better, if you’ll be willing to help me.”

Zepheera searched his face and found nothing but the truth. After a moment, she nodded.

“Okay,” she said quietly, shifting her feet. “And, er, thanks again. For saving me from the inexplicable pool.”

“You’re still grumpy!” the Doctor pouted.

“I’m not!” Zepheera insisted. “I just…need to get used to you like this, that’s all.”

A small, knowing grin tugged at the Doctor’s lips. “Okay…In the meantime, I am determined to make you smile.” He waggled his thin eyebrows at her and gesticulated wildly, pointing and shooting a finger gun at the borrower on his console.

Zepheera scoffed to cover up the chuckle fighting to escape her, just as the console began to smoke beneath her feet again.

“Alrighty, I think it’s time to go back and save that little Scottish girl of yours”

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Zepheera-Vision — Geronimo!

The power of the Doctor’s regeneration knocked Zepheera over, her back hitting the console hard. The heat was incredibly intense, and she scrambled away before she could be too badly burnt. Then the console beneath her sparked forcefully, throwing Zepheera off completely. She landed on the catwalk floor, all the air shoved out of her lungs from the blow.

Her eyes darted around anxiously as she caught her breath. Everything was on fire. Hot, molten sparks poured from the ceiling, tongues of flame erupted from the floor. A particularly large burst of fire destroyed the integrity of one of the coral supports surrounding the console and, with its connections to both the ceiling and the floor gone, it began to tip inward.

Right toward Zepheera.

Her wits snapped into place at the sight of the massive falling structure, and she shot to her feet and darted toward the underside of the console. The controls themselves would act as a (woefully shallow) awning to hopefully protect her from being crushed, but just in case she ran along the bottom edge in an attempt to get as far away from the danger as possible.

The support crashed into the floor loudly, the actual impact landing far from Zepheera. But it immediately crumbled into pieces, which tumbled next to the console. The tremors caused by the fragments cost Zepheera her balance once again, only this time she was able to catch herself before her face could smash into the harsh metal. Opting to not risk another fall, Zepheera crawled away from the debris.

A voice broke through the rumbling chaos, a scream coming from the Doctor’s direction. Zepheera looked up to find that she was behind the Time Lord, so close that she had to flip onto her back just to make out his head. She watched as his hair suddenly became longer and the scream gave way into an entirely new man’s voice. The regeneration energy dissipated and he went quiet.

But the TARDIS was still falling apart, and a loud crash prompted the Doctor to turn around. Whether it was because he was not used to his new body or if it was simply in his nature to be out-of-balance now, he stumbled around from the momentum of the simple action. Zepheera hadn’t even had time to register what he looked like now, because her focus was entirely on those aimless feet that were a little too close for her liking. Don’t step on me don’t step on me please don’t, she thought frantically as she backed away from him.

“Legs!” the new voice cried as one of the feet lifted into the air. “I’ve still got legs!” She looked up to find the Doctor grasping his knee and kissing it gratefully. “Good!” He let his leg fall back into place.

“Doctor!” Zepheera called up, but he was preoccupied. His gaze wandered about his body, checking to make sure everything was in order, all with wide and curious eyes.

“Arms!” he exclaimed. “Hands! Ooh, fingers! Lots of fingers!” He wiggled them in front of his face, further distracting him from the borrower trying to get his attention.

Looking around, Zepheera found that one of her ladders to the console had somehow survived the destruction mostly unscathed; it was missing a few rungs and was slightly singed, but Zepheera had climbed worse. She hurried over and ascended the ladder as fast as she could while the Doctor carried on: “Ears: yes. Eyes: two. Nose…mm, I’ve had worse. Chin…blimey! Hair…I’m a girl!”

Zepheera automatically rolled her eyes at the notion that longer hair indicated he was female, but as she pulled herself up onto the console he found his Adam’s apple and decided that he was not a girl. Before she could start to wave her arms or call his name again, he turned away to inspect his hair closer, pulling it in front of his eyes to the best of his ability.

“And still not ginger!”

“Doctor!” Zepheera shouted, but it seemed that he was consumed in his own thoughts.

“There’s something else,” he realized, turning to look around without focus. “Something important, I’m…I’m, I’m–”

“DOC–!” An enormous BANG cut Zepheera short and threw her as well as the Time Lord off-balance. The Doctor caught himself on the console right next to Zepheera, laughing ecstatically.

“Crashing!”

Losing patience, Zepheera jumped to her feet and yelled, “Would you look at me, you giant idiot?!”

That finally drew the Doctor’s wide, now-hazel eyes toward her. He looked at her for a drawn-out moment before his already massive grin grew.

“Zepheera!” he exclaimed, pulling himself along the console until his brand-new face was inches from where she stood. It was all she could do to hold her ground at the enormous man’s approach. “Oh, look at you! I hardly recognized you, you look so different! But the same! Or maybe that’s just my eyes, same but different!”

Another crash cut his ramble short, and Zepheera wavered in the tremors. Suddenly her feet were pushed out from under her and she landed on something soft, warm, and rising in the air. The Doctor had scooped her up and lifted her to his shoulder. Before she could scold him for not warning her, he was circling the console toward the monitor and she needed to hang on tight.

Same old suit, she thought absently as she gripped the familiar fabric with white knuckles, then looked up at the Doctor’s profile. Brand new man.

The Doctor was whooping enthusiastically, all the rumbles and the image of the planet spiraling on the screen exciting him even more. The TARDIS was falling to Earth, and the Doctor couldn’t be happier.

“GERONIMOOOO!” bellowed the Doctor.

On top of trying not to panic, Zepheera made a mental note to retrain the Doctor’s volume control.

Part 1 | Part 2

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