Tag: tiny

Prompt: Shoulder Angel

image

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!

Asks and Prompts are open! | Submissions too!

Zepheera-Vision — I Know That Face

image

Previously: [1] [2]

After reuniting with Clara, Zepheera opted to ride on her shoulder to avoid further conflict with her Doctors. Her shoulder was slimmer than either of theirs, but as long as she kept still and steady it wasn’t so bad. If she ever moved around too much, there was plenty of Clara’s hair within Zepheera’s reach. A little yank would do Clara less harm than a fall would do the borrower. 

It was bizarre for Zepheera to bear witness to the wedding of the Tenth Doctor and Queen Elizabeth I, but it wasn’t nearly as awkward for her as it was for his other incarnations. Clara was enthusiastically supportive, a feeling that Zepheera just couldn’t replicate. She didn’t know that version of the Doctor like Zepheera did. 

The second it was over, Ten rushed to his TARDIS and the others followed suit. Zepheera was hit with a pang of nostalgia at the sight of his desktop theme, but with three Doctors in one TARDIS, it didn’t last. The theme kept glitching between their personal versions, finally settling on Eleven’s. 

“Right then!” he clapped his hands together. “London Tower, here we come!”

“No!” Clara interjected, making Zepheera flinch in surprise. She tugged on one of Clara’s brown locks to remind the human of her proximity to the noise she made. Biting back a wince, Clara continued in a lower tone. 

“UNIT HQ,” she insisted. She’d been there with the Zygons as they took over the facility, using an old Vortex Manipulator to travel back in time to meet up with the Doctors. “They followed us there in the Black Archive.” 

All three Doctors stopped what they were doing to turn toward Clara with grave expressions. 

“Uh-oh,” Zepheera murmured. “I know that face. Triple that face can’t be good.”

Asks and Prompts are open! | Submissions too!

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.

Asks and Prompts are open! | Submissions too!

Zepheera-Vision — Seeing Double

image

It was dizzying, being in the presence of two incarnations of the Doctor – three if you counted the one in the corner by himself, who looked the oldest but was chronologically the youngest. The one they’d plucked from the Last Great Time War. Zepheera was glad she was sitting down on the table in front of them, because she’d certainly have fallen over just trying to process what she was looking at and listening to.

She knew both of these men at different points in her life. They were so different, yet they were the same person, and Zepheera had traveled with them both (although, the tenth hadn’t yet met her in his timeline). And what was worse, they were getting chummy.

“I’ll be honest,” said the younger Doctor whom Zepheera had decided to call Ten in her head. She’d settled on Eleven with her current Doctor, and the third was confusing to say the least, so she held off on nicknaming him. “When you first showed up, I thought for a second that you’d taken on a Tertatian for a companion.”

“Oh, I remember the Tertatians!” exclaimed Eleven. “Little purpley people with their little farms and mills and things!”

Ten smirked reminiscently, then glanced back at Zepheera as she sat there quietly. He took her silence as discomfort, and quickly amended, “I mean, obviously you’re not. Same size, basically, but significantly less…purple. …Sorry?” He scratched the back of his neck.

Zepheera nodded politely in acknowledgement, still not quite sure if she trusted herself enough to speak. What do you say to a person you saw die and become the person he’s talking to?

“Do you remember that little Tertatian lad?” Eleven cut in, allowing Zepheera’s shoulders to relax a hair. “The ten-year-old who kept stowing away on your shoelaces!”

Ten broke into a fit of giggles. “Speedy little thing, wasn’t he?”

“Running around with that crossbow of his!” snickered Eleven.

“Oh, what was his name? Started with…M? M…Mar–no no, not ‘Mar’. Moh, Meh, Mih…Mickey-Mick-Mickey–no, that’s wrong!” Ten’s frown deepened as he racked his brain.

Eleven clapped his hands together. “Matz!”

Ten’s eyes lit up. “That’s it! Good ol’ Matzy.”

Zepheera allowed herself to smile at their antics. At least they were getting along.

Asks and Prompts are open! | Submissions too!

Zepheera-Vision — Time and a Crayon

image

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.

Asks and Prompts are open! | Submissions, too!

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.

Asks and Prompts are open! | Submissions too!

Zepheera-Vision — Basically Just A Rabbit

image

“Doctor!”

The Time Lord’s head snapped up from his dinging machine at the sound of Zepheera’s cry. He berated himself for getting talked into splitting up to look for the Zygon as he ran off toward the voice. Sure, his four and a half inch tall companion could take care of herself in ways that still surprised him, but could she hold her own against a Zygon? A big, red, rubbery thing covered in suckers that was at least a foot taller than the average human? The thought pushed him to run faster.

He almost blew straight past Zepheera, skidding to a halt when she called out, “Over here!” Simultaneously, a signal on his machine flared up, and he turned sharply to look down at a moss-covered stump. Zepheera stood in the shadow of what looked like a floppy-eared rabbit. The Doctor noticed her arms were raised, he assumed in defense, but failed to catch sight of the wide grin across her lips.

“Oh, very clever,” he mused, collapsing the machine’s antenna and approaching slowly to loom over the rabbit which he was now convinced was a Zygon.

“Whatever you’ve got planned, forget it,” he warned darkly. “I’m the Doctor. I’m nine hundred and four years old.”

Catching on to the Doctor’s train of thought and realizing her mistake, Zepheera tried to interrupt him. “Doctor–”

But he barreled right along: “I’m from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous.” The rabbit briefly turned its head to look up at the Time Lord as he neared before returning to nuzzling its little pink nose into a clump of moss next to Zepheera. “I am the oncoming storm, the bringer of darkness, and if you hurt so much as a hair on my friend’s head I will–”

“Doctor, shut up!” Zepheera shouted, and the Doctor did just that, staring incredulously at her. Her cheeks were hot from the embarrassment of the misunderstanding that she’d partially caused. “It’s not a Zygon,” she explained. “I checked. He just sort of bounded right up to me and…I dunno, at the moment it was cute.”

The Doctor crouched next to the stump. “So…basically just a rabbit, then?”

“Yup.”

“I thought you were in trouble!” he groused.

Zepheera gave a false gasp. “My deepest apologies, your majesty!”

“Oh, don’t start that again!” She had already given him enough grief for accidentally getting engaged to Queen Elizabeth not an hour ago, he wasn’t sure how much more he could take.

For @neonthebright​.

GIF cred: this post by @frekkenbok​

So now the option for Zepheera-Visions to be set in existing DW episodes, as well as featuring other companions, is officially a thing!

Asks and Prompts are open! | Submissions, too!

seems like she and donna don’t quite get along. GEE I WONDER WHY?? IT IS A MYSTERY

XD I imagine Zepheera and Donna would have a roller-coaster of a relationship. Donna’s a rather intimidating human for a borrower, being so loudspoken and robust in personality, so Zepheera would be wary of her at first. After a rocky start, Zepheera would warm up to Donna, but the Doctor would be quicker to adjust to having such a small person around all the time (i.e. keeping his voice lower and gentle handling). She and Donna would definitely butt heads every now and then, just like Donna does with the Doctor on occasion. It’s practically how the three of them show affection.

While they have their differences, at the end of the day Zepheera and Donna get along fine because they know exactly what they have in common. They’re both strong-willed and passionate, relish in all the traveling, and they both truly care about the Doctor, a man they want nothing to do with romantically and everything to do with in all other respects. 

And I’m sure Doc loves his gals just the same.

Zepheera-Vision — A Tight Fit

image

“See anything yet, Zepheera?”

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.