I’ve never watched Doctor Who so I don’t know too much about the series or… This Who guy. The Who. The Who. The Who-Doctor of Whoville
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Tag: Tenth Doctor
Commissioned Art
Better late than never I suppose! A long-overdue (I just managed to scan it) doodle of Zepheera for @borrowedtimeandspace. ^^
Zepheera-Vision — Please Come Out
Zepheera’s breathing shuddered involuntarily as the ground shook beneath her.
After 158 years of living on Earth, the borrower was no stranger to what it felt like to be on the ground while humans were moving about. At least then, like most borrowers, she could sense when they were coming before the tremors got too bad.
The Doctor wasn’t human. He was a 6′1″ Time Lord who was still getting accustomed to having a four and a half inch tall companion aboard his TARDIS. And he was fast.
The red converse just flew by Zepheera, crashing into the floor inches away. She gave a shriek and hid under the nearest object with a small space underneath. The rumbling footsteps ground to a halt in the distance and slowly made their way back. Vibrations rattled Zepheera up through the floor as the Doctor dropped to his knees.
“Zepheera?”
She didn’t answer, feeling an embarrassed heat rising in her cheeks. Even though she’d spent her entire life growing accustomed to humans, even though the man out there was not only her friend but her rescuer, her time spent in captivity seemed to have reset everything that had made Zepheera who she was. All her life she had been the strong one, the one others her size could depend on. Now she felt weaker than ever, and she buried her face in her knees shamefully.
A sigh rushed out of the Doctor’s much larger lungs. “I’m so sorry,” he breathed. “I’m an idiot, I should’ve… I’ll be more careful from now on.”
More rumbles as he shifted even more. Shoulders tense, Zepheera glanced at the Doctor. What little she could see of him was pressed to the floor, his big brown eyes shining and contrite. She instantly relaxed with that soft gaze upon her. It’s just him, she reminded herself. Just the Doctor.
“Please come out,” he whispered.
With a deep steadying breath, Zepheera nodded uncurled from her tense ball, walking out of the comforting darkness and into the light.
They could work on this.
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Zepheera-Vision — Ow…
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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Helping Hands — Part 3/3
((aka Happy Belated Hug A Tiny Day!))
Prompt from @neonthebright: The Doctor drops/misplaces his sonic somewhere he can’t reach and Zepheera goes on a mini-adventure to retrieve it for him.
BTaS Canon: No – DonnaAU
Timeline: Post-Midnight, Pre-Turn Left
The Doctor couldn’t keep still as he waited for Zepheera. She was so close to retrieving his sonic screwdriver from the underbelly of his TARDIS, something he would never have been able to do without either an unthinkable amount of effort or a four-and-a-half inch tall companion.
“How’s it coming?” he called down the gap, excited and impatient in equal measure. He hadn’t heard her voice in a little over two minutes, and he was eager to know the current state of his beloved screwdriver. He wished he could see into the hole he’d dropped the device into in the first place.
A small grunt echoed down from the shadows, a little closer than the last time Zepheera had filled him in. “Had to dislodge it from between two…I don’t even know. Things. Then I had to push it up a slope – this thing is harder to roll than it looks!”
“Do you think you can manage it?” asked the Doctor, a little worry leaking through his voice. He hadn’t thought about how the borrower would be able to retrieve his sonic, a device almost longer than she was tall.
After a pause, she replied, “Don’t worry, I’ve got an idea. Give me a moment, and keep an ear out.”
The Doctor sat back and placed his chin on his folded arms, drumming his fingers restlessly. He hummed quietly to stop himself from actually counting the seconds until he heard Zepheera’s voice again. “Okay, I’ve got it attached to my rope! I’m gonna need you to ease us up!”
“Right! Gotcha!” The Doctor shot up, nearly bumping his head on the underside of the floor. He pinched the tiny rope, the size of a thread to him, in two fingers and tugged. Hearing
Zepheera’s surprised cry, he halted.
“I said ease, not wrench!” she chastised.
“Sorry,” mumbled the Doctor, this time drawing the rope back slowly. He was extra careful when Zepheera and the screwdriver were almost out; she needed to align the probe so it would come out cleanly without crashing into the sides of the long, narrow gap. Once that was achieved, it emerged easily and the Doctor slipped his free hand underneath it.
After his companion dismounted the device, he scooped it up into his right hand, ignoring the rope still attached to it. He adjusted his grip and gave it a buzz. It was music to his ears.
“At last! My arm is complete again!” he exulted.
Zepheera’s fatigued mind had only begun to wonder if that was a reference to something when she found herself being lifted quickly to the Doctor’s face. To her chagrin, he planted an overjoyed kiss to the top of her head.
“You’re the best!” he proclaimed, beaming gratefully even as Zepheera ran her fingers through her dark bob to brush off the feeling his lips left behind.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she emphasized, scowling halfheartedly up at his stupid face. Little did she know the Doctor had only begun to display his gratitude toward his companion, and he drew her close once again.
At first, she worried that he was disregarding her wishes, so she threw her arms up to fend off another peck.
Instead, he pressed her to his cheek and thanked her over and over. Once the shock had worn off, she realized that what she’d done meant a lot more to the Doctor than she realized. She smiled and patted his cheek fondly.
“You’re welcome, big fella,” she murmured.
They stayed like this for a good while, until Zepheera broke the contented silence between them: “Now, I believe you owe me a cuppa.”
Zepheera-Vision — Watson
“I’m fine,” Zepheera insisted.
John raised an eyebrow at her, kneeling by
the kitchen counter for a closer look at the tiny woman. “Are you sure? No
offense, but if Sherlock wasn’t careful, he could have easily hurt you–”
“I was careful!” Sherlock
contended, still pouting in the corner while trying not to seem like it. John
rolled his eyes, but looked back at Zepheera for confirmation.
Zepheera sighed. If she had been hurt
by Sherlock, even just slightly bruised, any damage done would have healed by
now. But she dared not tell John that, a medical man who had already proclaimed
that she was an impossibility.
“Look, I’m okay, really. See?” She
prodded at her ribs, which had been the most vulnerable in Sherlock’s grip, and
moved on to the rest of her undamaged limbs. “No bruised or broken ribs,
arms and legs intact, joints unstrained. I’m fit as a fiddle. No need
for…”
She trailed off and gestured vaguely to the
human’s hands, hovering nearby in preparation to help. John looked down at
them, realizing how large they looked to her, and self-consciously pulled them
back to his middle. “Right. Sorry…”
Zepheera wrung her hands, glancing between
John and Sherlock. “So. You’re a doctor?” she asked John. Of all
the cruel coincidences in the universe…
John blinked at her question. “Uh, yeah.
Yes, I am Doctor John Watson.”
She regretted asking as her heart ached,
desperate once again to get back to her own Doctor. And while she thought this
Watson chap would probably help her if she asked, she still advised herself
against jumping into that too quickly. The look in his eyes told her that he
was just as curious as Sherlock. He just hid it better.
“I’m Zepheera,” she replied.
A whole new level of awe leaked through in
John’s expression, and he stared at her for a moment as his perception of
reality was twisted. Somehow, putting a name to the impossibly tiny person made
her all too real. He stood with a sharp intake of breath and wandered away from
her, toward the living room. He paced back and forth for a bit, running his
hands down his face and scratching the back of his head, until his gaze fell
back on Zepheera who was staring up at him with concern.
“Are you okay?” she asked at
length.
John froze, the shock hitting him all over
again. Then he chuckled, forcing a smile as he swung his arms back and forth to
release some of the confused tension in his shoulders.
“Just trying not to lose my mind,”
he admitted, glancing at Sherlock for some level of sanity.
Now there was a troubling thought.
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Helping Hands — Part 2/3
Prompt from @neonthebright: The Doctor drops/misplaces his sonic somewhere he can’t reach and Zepheera goes on a mini-adventure to retrieve it for him.
BTaS Canon: No – DonnaAU
Timeline: Post-Midnight, Pre-Turn Left
If anyone had told Zepheera decades ago that one day she’d be able to sit comfortably in a human hand, she’d have told them to bugger off. And yet there she was, leaning tiredly against a human look-alike’s fingers as he sauntered off toward the console room. Completely at his mercy, yet with complete trust in him.
She straightened when he entered the dome-shaped room, peering over the edge of the Doctor’s hand curiously. Indeed, one of the floor panels was pulled up and set aside, leaving a gaping hole in the floor. Those compartments were still a bit of a mystery to Zepheera, even after all this time. She’d observed that a few of them were used for storage, filled with old trunks and boxes and the like, but most seemed to be dark mazes of machinery that Zepheera would rather not get lost in.
And now she was about to crawl willingly into one. Spectacular.
The Doctor climbed slowly into the hole, careful to jostle the borrower as little as possible. Crouching, he took up less than half of the space inside, but once Zepheera found herself lowered below the floor level, she saw that there was more room than the size of the panel would suggest.
“Where did it fall through?” she asked, stifling a yawn.
“Down here.” The Doctor leaned down and reached in to lay his hand next to a slight slope. Just big enough for the sonic screwdriver, and too small to fit his hand through. Zepheera slid off the Doctor’s palm at the top of the slope to carefully examine her surroundings.
Nothing in this place was smooth or flat, not even the slope. It all seemed to be made of wire or hose or angular mechanisms and couplings that Zepheera could never begin to understand. She didn’t need to, though. All she needed was a secure place to attach her hook.
The ground shook the moment she reached for the grapple hanging from her shoulder; in her fatigued state, she hadn’t thought to expect movement from the Doctor, so she stumbled a bit before she felt steady enough to shoot a glare over her shoulder. Her silent scolding had no effect, the Doctor was shifting to lay on his back and wasn’t even looking her way.
“As you can see, I was working like this, on that stuff up there,” he explained, pointing out a few wires and plugs dangling from the underside of the console. “It’s all kinda technical, and actually quite volatile without the right tools–”
“Then I guess I’d better not delay,” Zepheera snipped, securing her hook around a black cord near the top of the slope and disappeared through the gap. “Really don’t need the graphic details.”
The Doctor cocked an eyebrow at the gap. “Well, someone’s grumpy.”
“Someone is owed a cup of tea after this.”
She slid slowly down her rope at first; even knowing how quickly it would heal, she’d rather not sprain anything by jumping in too fast and hitting the floor too hard. She couldn’t even see the bottom through the shadows, much less the Doctor’s precious probe.
“A torch would be much appreciated if you’ve got one!” she called up.
“Ah! Right, yes.” Zepheera halted her descent when she felt a few vibrations through her rope indicating the Doctor was moving. Then a pale yellow light washed over her and illuminated her destination perfectly. “Better?”
“Much, thanks.” Now that a floor was in plain sight, a little less than a foot away, Zepheera dropped easily down. She frowned when she didn’t see the sonic anywhere. The immediate area was cavernous and irregular, and a glance upward told her she was about a foot and a half down from the Doctor’s level.
A massive tangle of wired machinery stood behind her, a few outlines of passageways before her.
While she took a moment to choose a direction, the Doctor’s voice echoed down to her. “See it yet?”
Zepheera rolled her eyes. “Not yet. Give me a minute.” She almost asked him to angle the torch to a better angle, but given how narrow the opening was, she doubted that would be easy. Instead, she started toward the passage right in front of her. It seemed to be wide enough to accommodate a falling screwdriver and was the only logical place for it to go. She proceeded cautiously, trailing her rope along in her hand so she wouldn’t get lost or fall down a hole with no way back. “How’d you even manage to drop it down here?”
“I dunno, it’s never really happened before. Guess I just…got lost in thought or something, and it slipped.”
“You? Lost in thought? Shock and surprise,” Zepheera murmured, a twinge of humor teasing at her lips.
“Oi! Heard that.”
This actually brought a chuckle out of Zepheera, who turned to call over her shoulder. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re starting to sound like DonNA-A-A!”
Her foot caught on something she couldn’t see even if she were watching where she was going, and she tumbled down a low slope of hard metal things until something cylindrical broke her fall. It buzzed briefly as she landed on it.
“Zepheera! What happened, are you alright?”
Slightly dazed from the impact, Zepheera shook her head and breathed deeply. “I’m okay!” she assured. As she got to her feet, she realized exactly what she was leaning on for support.
“I found it!”
“Brilliant!” the Doctor exulted. “Can you get it up?”
Zepheera regarded the probe at her feet. It was taller than she was, but she was stronger than she looked. “Hang on! I’ll see what I can do.”
Doctor y Doctor
John Watson didn’t stop to think. The fact that he and Sherlock were already late to meet Lestrade at a fresh, new, and conveniently nearby crime scene completely left his mind. He saw a man get blindsided by some punk kid on a skateboard and fall hard on the ground while the assailant rode on. John immediately rushed to his side.
He shoved his way through the small crowd gathering to gawk at the man with morbid curiosity. It was easy to see why; on top of the spectacle, the man was rather odd-looking in general. Mid-thirties, early forties but with a forward-sweeping spike to his hair, a brown pinstriped suit paired with white Converse of all things, and a long, tan overcoat to put it all together. It was a wonder how this strange person had escaped the skater’s notice. Luckily the chap didn’t seem too badly hurt, but he was groaning something terrible and clutching his head.
“Steady on, mate. I’m a doctor, and you’ve been hit hard.” John spoke evenly and kindly as he knelt by the man and moved his hands away from his face so he could check for signs of concussion. “Do you remember what happened?”
The chocolate-brown eye John was holding open zeroed in on him, and the brow above it furrowed. Then his hand shot to his right shoulder and scrambled around, as though he were looking for something.
He started to sit up quickly, but John stopped him with a hand to the chest.
“No, no, don’t get up too fast–”
“Get off!”
The man shoved John roughly away, knocking him on his arse. Then he got on his hands and knees, calling out some strange word that John didn’t recognize. It almost sounded like a rejected spell from Harry Potter.
Regardless, John stood and made one last attempt to calm the man down.
“Sir, you need medical attention,” John insisted.
The man shook off the hand John laid on his shoulder, then jumped up to his full height. John blinked as the man loomed over him, despite only being about half a foot taller than him. His eyes, while clear, were crazed and deadly.
“I don’t need a doctor. I am the Doctor. Now go. Away.”
John stared as the man went back to searching the ground. By then the thin crowd had been scared off by the man’s apparent madness. “Alright, man, suit yourself,” the doctor muttered as he backed off. Clearly the matter was out of his hands, and he was on his way to see Lestrade anyhow. Perhaps he could tip the detective inspector off, and send someone over to deal with the situation.
“Well, I tried,” sighed John as he approached Sherlock, who had waited for him. “Let’s go, I guess.”
“Actually, John, you go on ahead,” said Sherlock.
John frowned. “But Lestrade–”
“Something’s come up. Besides, I highly doubt he has anything you can’t handle on your own. Meet back at the flat.”
And that was it. Sherlock walked off without another word, leaving John confused and more than a little annoyed.
Zepheera-Vision — A Hand Afoot
Zepheera’s heart pounded, threatening to climb straight out of her throat.
This was no dumbstruck human she was facing. No, that would give her an opportunity to dash away. His countenance was perfectly calm with a touch of contemplation, his eyes cold and calculating. He wasn’t just staring at Zepheera, he was studying her. Memories of that same look from scientists peppered over the course of her long life came clawing to the forefront of her mind, and she had to actively push past them. She needed to find a way out of this, escape the man’s reach somehow and find the Doctor fast.
Before she could even glance away from him, his hand was upon her. His palm filled her vision and his fingers, each almost as long as her entire body, were curling over her head. In a split second, she was snatched up in a loose fist, her four-and-a-half-inch-tall body squished into a ball.
Humans were fast, she lamented belatedly.
Zepheera felt the movement as the hand was lowered and what little light that peeked in through the cracks between the fingers disappeared. With no warning, the pressure around her loosened and she dropped into a dark pocket. She had no time to protest; the man was immediately on the move.
He’d placed her into the outside pocket of his wool coat and it flapped with each and every step the man took, making it nearly impossible for Zepheera to climb out. To avoid hurting herself and lessen the motion sickness, she tucked herself into a corner and breathed as deeply as she could in the cramped, stuffy space. Panic threatened to overcome her, but she refused to let it. She would need a clear mind in order to find the Doctor after she got out of this.
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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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Borrowed Time and Space 