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.
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.
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.
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.
Contrary to the Doctor’s worries, she wasn’t
remotely interested in Captain Jack Harkness in any romantic sense
or…otherwise. She’d only just met the man. The only thing she was curious about
was his apparent inability to die. For as long as she could remember, Zepheera
couldn’t seem to age. So in a way she and Jack were quite similar.
As fate would have it, an opportunity arose
for Jack to make use of his ability. There was a room filled with incendiary
radiation that sat underneath a rocketship which was prepared to ferry the last
of the human race to a paradise at the end of the universe that they called
Utopia. The radiation had already killed one technician who was connecting the
couplings that would get the ship off the ground. Now it was up to Jack, the
only man who could enter that room without dying.
Zepheera had tagged along at the last second,
eager to watch this bizarre ability firsthand. But the next thing she knew,
Jack was undressing. She was most definitely not attracted to him, she was
adamant about that. But watching someone sixteen times her height move so
quickly, even doing something as simple as removing his shirt, was undenyably
fascinating to the four and a half inch tall borrower.
She jumped when the Doctor popped into her
view, checking over the radiation levels and the other readings on the control
panel. He hadn’t yet noticed Jack. It occurred to her that the radiation he
would be subjected to wouldn’t affect the clothing he was stripping off, so she
regained her composure and cleared her throat.
“Er, Jack?” she piped up, still a
little timid around this new giant.
The Doctor glanced Jack’s way, only to
double-take once it sank in.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“I’m going in,” Jack reminded him.
“But–from what I can tell, the
radiation doesn’t affect clothing, only flesh,” said the Doctor.
“I look good, though.”
With a smirk at the Doctor and a wink at
Zepheera, Jack pulled his braces back on and strode purposefully into the
radiation-ridden room. Thankfully, only his wool coat and button-down had been
removed.
Suddenly there was light, nearly blinding
Zepheera. Then she became aware of the warmth surrounding her. Highly confused
about where she was and what was happening, she shot to her feet and
immediately fell back down. She was still sobbing and hyperventilating, and her
head was spinning and her lips and fingers tingled from lack of oxygen. But as
she fumbled around desperately, feeling the boundaries of the warm, soft,
leathery space she found herself in, the small part of Zepheera’s brain that
remained functional puzzled out another reason for her loss of balance.
Hands. She was in a human’s cupped hands. And
the human was moving very fast.
Then they stopped. Voices rumbled above her,
their clarity lost in Zepheera’s dizziness and the blood roaring in her ears.
She squeezed her eyes shut and covered her head with her arms, fearful of what
these two giants were going to do to her. After a moment, the hands opened up
beneath her. Zepheera gave a startled yelp as she fell a short distance,
landing splayed onto another pair of hands.
These new hands were bigger and decidedly
more dangerous than the first pair, but rather than trapping around her, they
drew her close to the person they were attached to. And as they gently pressed
her against a familiar pinstriped suit, her situation became clear.
She was waking up from a nightmare, which had
induced a panic attack. Donna must have heard her distress and brought her
straight to the Doctor, to whom Zepheera was more responsive in this state. The
position he moved her into now was woefully familiar to Zepheera. Remembering
his instructions, she concentrated on the Doctor’s slow breaths and did her
best to copy them. It made her chest hurt at first, but with each repetition
her nervous system calmed down another hair.
As her heart rate slowed down to a healthy
level and her head cleared, the Doctor and Donna’s hushed voices came into
focus as well.
“She’s getting worse,” Donna
pointed out.
“I know,” murmured the Doctor.
Despite how quiet he was trying to be, his voice reverberated through his
chest. Zepheera couldn’t ignore it if she tried.
“I mean, first the nightmares, then the
panic attacks, and now full-on night terrors? We can’t let her shrug this off
anymore. What good is hopping around time and space saving planets when we
can’t even help our own friend?”
“Donna, I know,” the Doctor all but
growled, sending a chill up Zepheera’s spine along with the vibrations. After
another deep breath for the borrower to mimic, he went on in a whisper.
“Trust me, I haven’t been ignoring her. It’s just… She’s been through a
lot with so-called doctors poking and prodding her and worse, and I
didn’t want to make her relive that by forcing help on her. I was waiting for
her to come to me.”
A moment of silence passed between the human
and the Time Lord, and Zepheera let out a shaky sigh. She hadn’t meant to cause
her larger friends so much trouble. Nothing she did stopped the nightmares, or
quashed this completely irrational fear of abandonment deep inside her. She
wanted to deal with it herself so the Doctor and Donna wouldn’t have to worry
about it. Clearly, that was beyond her power.
“I’ll talk to her when she wakes
up,” said the Doctor, interrupting Zepheera’s thoughts. “I’ll help
her, Donna, that’s a promise. For now, get some sleep. You need it more than I
do.”
After a second of hesitation, Donna replied,
“You better make good on that, Spaceman.” Her voice teemed with
concern, and with that her footsteps retreated further into the TARDIS.
Now that the conversation overhead was done,
Zepheera allowed herself to relax a little more. She had some deeply-rooted
apprehensions about what kind of help she was going to receive, but stronger
than them was the trust she had in the Doctor. If anybody could make her
better, it was him. No matter how long it took.
The Doctor leaned back, probably in the seat
in the console room if the dim lighting was anything to go by. With his chest
slightly more horizontal, Zepheera adjusted herself more comfortably. The
Doctor lifted his hand about a centimeter to give her more room, but didn’t
otherwise react to her shifting. She finally settled down laying on her side,
nestled in the space between his tie and the lapel of his suit.
The hand came back down to rest gently over
her lower half like a blanket, while his thumb absently stroked her arm and
part of her back. It was a small but comforting gesture that brought a faint
smile to Zepheera’s lips. The sound of his breathing paired with the muffled
thuds of his hearts in their strange one-two-three-four rhythm easily lulled
Zepheera to sleep.
If she dreamt at all, she didn’t recall it in
the morning.
Zepheera frowned in confusion. The TARDIS had
landed and the doors were open, but she couldn’t see anything beyond them. Only
darkness. She looked up at the Doctor; being four and a half inches tall, she
had to tilt her head back quite a bit just to meet his gaze from her spot on
the floor. A sudden pang of insignificance shot through her gut like a cold
hand.
“Where…” Her throat had gone dry
and her voice came out quieter than usual, so she swallowed her fear and tried
again. “Where are we?”
The Doctor nodded toward the door. “Only
one way to find out.
Hesitant, Zepheera turned the other way to
lock eyes with Donna. The human offered a faint smile of encouragement. Even
so, something felt off to Zepheera. But her friends were waiting on her, so she
carefully approached the wide-open doors.
The space outside was pitch-black, the dim
light of the console room didn’t seem to touch it. Even after she’d taken a few
steps into this dark place, Zepheera could hardly believe she was walking on
something solid. She blinked hard and looked around with wide eyes, wandering
about a foot further away from the doors. The absence of light, the absolute
nothingness was beginning to hurt her eyes.
A sudden wave of dread hit her as she noticed
the absence of something else. Vibrations in the floor that indicated her
relatively giant friends following her.
She whirled around, squinting through the
light in the TARDIS that seemed blaring to her dark-accustomed eyes.
"What’s going on?” she called,
holding a hand up as a visor as her vision adjusted. Her pulse quickened when
two immense blurs came into focus.
The Doctor and Donna were exactly where she
left them. They stared down at Zepheera with stone faces. Her anxiety mounted.
She had a feeling about what exactly those expressions meant. She had frequent
nightmares about them. And as the Doctor lifted a hand, fingers pressed close
together in preparation to click, Zepheera’s fears were all at once realized.
Zepheera was being left behind.
“I don’t understand!” She stumbled
forward, still partially disoriented, in the hope that she could make them
second-guess this decision long enough for her to make it back inside.
“Did I do something wrong? Please tell me, I’ll never do whatever it is
again!”
Click.
Zepheera’s blood ran cold at the sound of the
Doctor snapping his fingers, freezing her in place. In reaction to the Doctor,
the TARDIS doors closed on their own. The sound of the blue box taking off
broke Zepheera out of her shocked state.
“No! Please!” she shouted over the
growing noise and rising winds as the TARDIS began to dematerialize.
Vwoorp
She broke into a run, desperately throwing
herself against the wooden doors. “Don’t do this! Doctor! Donna!”
VWOORP
“Come back!!”
Tears flowed freely down Zepheera’s cheeks as
she beat her tiny fists futilely on the door. As the ship that had not only
been the vehicle for the best few weeks of traveling that Zepheera had ever
experienced but her home disappeared completely, she crumbled into a
heap on the ground. Her entire body shook, her sobs the only sound.
She felt the darkness close in on her, all
but suffocating her as she started hyperventilating. All alone. Abandoned by
her only friends in the world. Trapped once again with no way out. For a
moment, she convinced herself that the surface on which she lay felt just like
the acrylic kennel she’d spent six months in before she met the Doctor.
Once that thought invaded her head, her
screaming began in earnest.
Then came the sensory overload.
Dark or Trapped? Oh golly gosh gee, I thought you said and!
Zepheera smiled faintly as she watched the
Doctor make conversation with the woman he’d thought would never return to his
life again, who had been locked away in a parallel universe for years. The
woman that, though he never told her or the borrower he’d confessed all this
to, he’d loved.
Needless to say, neither of them ever
expected Rose Tyler to show up. Then, of course, the Earth was stolen and the
sky rained down with Daleks, and she showed up in the nick of time to join in
the fight.
So many familiar faces returned that night,
but hers was the one that captured the Doctor’s undivided attention.
Not that Zepheera was complaining, but she
was beginning to feel a little forgotten sitting on the monitor on the TARDIS
console while the two of them got caught up. She cleared her throat.
“So, this is Rose,” she remarked
after the enormous pair went quiet and looked at her.
The Doctor’s brow shot up. “Yes! Of
course, introductions! Rose, meet Zepheera,” he grinned widely.
“Zepheera,” Rose repeated, looking
to the borrower to confirm she’d pronounced the unfamiliar name correctly.
After a nod of approval from the four and a half inch tall woman, Rose beamed.
“Good to meet you then, Zepheera.”
“Likewise.”
“She travels with me now,” the Doctor explained for Rose’s benefit. “Been
a while since I’ve had a non-human on board. She’s a–”
"Borrower, yeah, we have ‘em on my
world, too,” interrupted Rose, making Zepheera blink in surprise. Noticing
caution bloom in the smaller woman’s expression, she added, “Don’t worry,
it’s not anything public just yet. Torchwood’s keeping everything completely
confidential.”
“Oh, how brilliant is that!” Seeing his
diminutive companion’s relief, he and Rose turned to each other. “See,
like I was saying about great minds…” From there, they seemed to carry out
a condensed conversation that consisted of half-complete sentences, smiles, and
a small hand gesture from the Doctor.
Something inside Zepheera melted as she
watched them. The Doctor looked so happy, happier than she’d ever seen
him. He had a certain energy now, a gleam in his eye that Zepheera recognized
all too well. She’d once had a sparkle like that. A long time ago.
“You two are adorable,” she cut in,
crossing her arms in a manner that would normally seem accusatory if not for the
ear-to-ear grin splitting her features. The Doctor and Rose turned their smiles
to the borrower. "My teeth
ache, you’re so sweet.“
The screen behind Zepheera beeped, ending
introductions. Between all the reports and correspondents between their other allies,
Zepheera couldn’t help but glance back at the Doctor every now and then. Even
with all the danger and devastation out there, he maintained that gleam in his
eye. And she knew they had a certain blonde to thank for that.
Zepheera couldn’t be more proud of her old
Time Lord.
Both the borrower and the Time Lord turned to look at the human standing in the entrance to the TARDIS console room. The red-haired woman was shrugging on a jacket as she stepped in. “Who are you talking to?”
“I’m in the middle of something, Donna,” said the Doctor pointedly
Donna rolled her eyes and approached with purpose in her steps. “No use keeping secrets from me, Spaceman, I live here too.”
Her gaze quickly fell on Zepheera, whose heartbeat quickened at the contact with a completely new human – Donna, the Doctor had called her.
“Blimey, get a load of that!” the human exclaimed. Zepheera flinched at the volume and backed up into the screen behind her, pulling her knees close again. She squeezed her eyes shut, overwhelmed by the sight of two giants looming over her.
The Doctor looked appalled by his companion’s behavior. “Donna, lower your voice,” he rebuked. “She’s been through a lot, no need to frighten her all over again by gawking!”
Without waiting for a response, he turned back to the four and a half inch tall woman huddled on the sill of his monitor. “Zepheera… C’mon, look at me,” he coaxed.
Considering she was outnumbered, Zepheera had no choice but to obey. She lifted her head to look up at the Doctor and Donna, who had come around to stand behind the Doctor’s right shoulder. The Doctor smiled encouragingly.
“That’s it. See? No harm done. This is just my friend, Donna. She travels with me.”
“She’s so teeny,” Donna cooed, leaning over the Doctor to stretch a finger toward Zepheera, as if touching her would somehow prove her existence further. Zepheera backed away from the sudden approach before the Doctor stopped the human.
“No no, don’t do that,” he warned firmly. “Really. Don’t.”
Looking a bit sheepish, Donna withdrew her hand. “Was she always this small?”
Now it was the Doctor’s turn to roll his eyes. “Yes, now would you back off for a minute and let me get on with this?”
Much to Zepheera’s surprise, the human stepped away with a muttered apology. Once she was out of sight, the Doctor addressed Zepheera again. “Sorry about that. She’s harmless, I promise.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Anyway, what I meant to say was, I’d like you to stay. At least for a while, just so I can make sure all those drugs didn’t leave you with any permanent damage. If you could bear with me for a few days, I’ll take you wherever you want to go. Does that sound alright to you?”
Zepheera supposed that was fair. At least it didn’t sound like she’d be locked in a cage anymore. She nodded her approval.
The Doctor smiled. “Brilliant. Welcome aboard, then. Er, is there anything you want to do now?”
It took some digging, but Zepheera realized there was a lot she wanted to do. She wanted to sleep in a bed, she wanted to eat a meal that consisted of more than old cheese and bread, she wanted to drink an entire thimbleful of some kind of alcoholic drink. She looked down at herself; she wanted to wear clothes that made her feel like a person again. Then she touched a lock of her dark hair. It had already been getting long at the time of her capture, and it had grown past her shoulders over the months.
“I want to cut my hair,” she told him. She was certain she wouldn’t feel anything like her old self until she did. And she had a feeling she could ask for the rest at any time.
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.”
Borrowed Time and Space 