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.
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.
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!”
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.
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.
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.
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.”
“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”
Borrowed Time and Space 