Featuring Bill Potts and my borrower OC Zepheera from my Twelve AU Time After Time. Bill's always happy to share with her little mate, especially on a holiday like V-day! And Zepheera...might be on a journey of self discovery.
Bit of a belated Valentine's Day/birthday present to myself, and I couldn't be more in love. I think this is actually the first commission I've had made with Zepheera and another companion! So a million thanks again to bonkalore for bringing these disasters to life 💙💙
More about the dorks who I am so totally normal about under the cut:
I've almost always known Zepheera was biromantic. She's just had a complicated history with love and partnership, so it rarely comes up. Functional immortality is a bitch like that.
Throwing her and Bill together was almost a no-brainer once the inspiration struck. They played off of each other so well, and they are both destined to have completely platonic relationships with the Doctor. Two peas in a pod, really.
Then I think it hit me sometime last year that Bill would be Zepheera's bi awakening. She's thoughtful, caring, a loyal friend, beautiful, and exudes that Big Dyke Energy™️ (affectionate) that's hard to ignore when you're so small. It's a dynamic that I don't normally explore, apart from characters that would be together already regardless of size. Honestly never expected to pair Zepheera up with anyone in canon Doctor Who, but if it were to be anyone...
Whether or not Zepheera even realizes what she's feeling, let alone acts on it...well, that's a story for another time.
AU: Alternate BTaS with Twelve, not related to the Twelve AU "Time After Time" as it predates that story. Set during s8e2 Into The Dalek.
Note: I went back and forth on making this from Clara's POV or Zepheera's, but the former lent well to this prompt so I rolled with it. Not quite a size swap, but a fun reversal to play with!
~~~
Clara had never focused on her breathing more than in that moment. All she could hear in her head was the Doctor's objectively silly, yet somehow incredibly potent warning on repeat in her head.
"Don't be lasagne."
Couple that with the mental image of her body popping like a microwave dinner with an unbroken film, and Clara had to concentrate on not just breathing normally, but to keep herself from hyperventilating.
Being crammed into a tube with four other people was a whole other matter, even if one of them was the Doctor. The brand new Doctor that she still had yet to get to know properly. Clara glanced at him as the countdown to the machine's activation began, and followed his sharp gaze to one of the soldiers outside their capsule.
Clara could just make out, through the curve of the thick glass around them, the distant silhouette of their third travel companion on the soldier's shoulder. The figure of a four and a half inch tall woman, standing well to the side of the unfamiliar human's neck in a manner quite unlike the more relaxed positions Clara was used to. Once the two women had gotten used to each other (and particularly back when the Doctor was a different, slightly more personable man), Zepheera could often be found in the crook of one of their necks for stability.
The Doctor wasn't the only one worried about leaving the borrower behind, but in the end they all agreed it was for the best. Even Zepheera's protests about her exclusion were silenced when he reminded her that they were being miniaturized to a microscopic level. He'd left nothing to the imagination as he pointed out the drastic size difference there already was between the borrower and her companions. If she were to join them, she'd be practically subcellular, and there was nothing that could save her if they were to be separated while in the chassis of the Dalek they were meant to examine from the inside.
That was almost a more sobering notion than the lasagne metaphor.
The hum of the miniaturization machine powered up, and the process began. Lost in her thoughts and her breathing, Clara almost missed that it had happened, it was over so quickly. Like they had all fallen a short distance, but experienced no impact.
The room outside their capsule had blown out into such incredible proportions that it was difficult for Clara to comprehend at first. The tremor that hit the miniaturized lot all at once felt like an earthquake, and yet Clara came to find that, based on the change in the looming shapes above, that it was one of many steps that one soldier had taken toward retrieving them from the machine. She'd only just begun to wonder why they had stopped at just one step when a new set of vibrations approached. These ones were far less intense but more rapid, and heralded a familiar shape.
Clara found her jaw dropping in awe as she stared up and up through the glass at the towering form of not one of the humans, but of the borrower, grinding to a halt after her jog to find them.
She knew for a fact that they were going to be miniaturized to a size far smaller than Zepheera's few inches, but knowing that fact and experiencing it were two very different things. Up til now, everything Zepheera did seemed light and nimble. The way she'd climb her way around and vanish from sight with ease after decades of practice was almost magical. Like something straight out of a storybook, Clara had thought.
Now, Zepheera felt like something out of a completely different story. The capsule itself was smaller than Zepheera's boot, which ordinarily barely covered one of Clara's fingertips. Every motion she made shook the ground as she dropped to her hands and knees to peer inside the capsule, her deep violet irises more clear to Clara than they'd ever been before.
The level of detail she could make out now was incredible! Short brown hair hanging like curtains of wire around her head, creases of concern in her features that Clara could probably fit her whole hand between. Speaking of hands, Zepheera's were pressed to the ground not all that far away, to support her impressive frame. The fingers were long enough to outmatch any of them, the whole hand large enough to pick up the capsule herself as though it were a discarded soda can. The massive chest overhead expanded and contracted as Zepheera breathed a sigh of relief to see everyone safe and no one made into unbroken lasagne, a displacement that felt like a gust to the miniaturized humans. Not to the point that it shook them up from inside their sturdy little tube of metal and glass, but in that way that you sense wind against a window in a building.
Someone chastised Zepheera for getting so close and interrupting procedures. As a sheepish look crossed her billboard of a face, Clara looked to the others around her. The Doctor was fine– well, as fine as he could be while preparing to enter one of his greatest enemies– and simply shot Zepheera a stern look over his shoulder. Seeing the tense body language of the soldiers who didn't know the towering borrower made Clara recognize that she, too, felt stiff all over at the sight.
Clara wondered if Zepheera felt so intimidated around herself and the Doctor sometimes.
The tremors of Zepheera sitting back on her heels were apparently enough to distract Clara from the approaching soldier, and the next thing she knew, there was an enormous pair of tweezers on either side of the capsule. Before they could connect, Clara shot one more look upwards at the borrower overhead, and their eyes met. Concern was still evident in Zepheera's expression high above, so Clara instinctively stuck out a thumbs-up for her.
Zepheera's brow rose, but then she smiled and held up her own thumbs-up. With a thumb that very well might have been taller than Clara at that moment.
Note: For those following this story as it's progressed, this is where things start to go a little out of order. So far it's been fairly straightforward, one after another, but this jumps slightly ahead of Caught Up in Circles.
~~~
The willful ignorance of human beings was quite handy for a Time Lord gone incognito. The Doctor had lectured at St. Luke's for decades and he was still barely an anecdote, his idiosyncrasies written off under the assumption that he was simply eccentric.
Students hardly spared him a second glance when he ran across campus, Nardole trailing behind. A few looked up to witness the funny way they ran, but quickly went about their own student-life business. The Doctor paid them no mind. He was going somewhere much more important.
He'd received an intruder alert outside the Vault. Perhaps not as big an emergency as if the Vault itself were under direct attack, but still worth checking on as soon as possible. Couldn't have anyone messing with it or trying to open it (not that they could easily, but it was still a concern).
The door was sealed shut when the Doctor and Nardole arrived, and they exchanged a glance to agree to keep their guards up. With the alert deactivated, the Doctor swung the door open and crept down with his sonic at the ready to scan for what or whoever had intruded on their lab.
All seemed to be in order as they reached the bottom of the stairs. Hardly anything looked different, and nothing unusual was detected by the screwdriver. Nardole gave the occasional startled squeak as they searched behind the old junk lying about the place for any signs of humanoids, but they found none.
"Well, that's anticlimactic," muttered the Doctor. With its job done, he brandished his sonic toward Nardole in an accusatory manner. "Have you been fiddling with the security settings again?"
Nardole's hands flew up, exasperated. "Oh, yes, excuse me for not wanting rats to chew through our incredibly important work down here. Must've set it to trip off the wrong alarm."
Rolling his eyes at Nardole's excuse, the Doctor's gaze landed on something out of place. Some bit of copper piping that had been on one of the work tables the last he saw it, and had found its way to the floor where it rolled several feet away. Following its trajectory to its original spot, the Doctor's near constant frown quirked in thought.
"Not rats…" Leaning in for a closer look, he found some very interesting footprints in the thin layer of dust toward the back of the work table.
Boot prints, to be more specific.
"Sir?" Nardole crossed the room to see what the Doctor had spotted, only to find him grinning from ear to ear. A rare, rather off-putting sight these days. "What is it?"
"There's a thief among us," the Doctor whispered almost conspiratorially, but with a touch too much glee.
"A thief?" Nardole echoed, concerned. He began to turn on a swivel once again, as though he'd suddenly find a cat burglar making off with their things.
The Doctor huffed out a sigh. "Figure of speech, Nardole, figure of speech. Here's your intruder," he said as he redirected Nardole's attention to the marks in the dust he'd found. Pointing with a finger, he mapped out what must have happened according to the way those tiny boots left their marks. "Snuck in through this gap, took one look 'round before knocking into that pipe. Pipe tumbles, hits the ground with a loud clang, alarm bells go off, and off they go. Back into the shadows."
Nardole adjusted his spectacles as he observed. He’d never seen anything of this kind, and assumed they ought to figure out what was behind this intrusion. "Definitely humanoid. Teeny one, mind. Could it be alien, sir?"
"If it were an alien, their tech would have raised alarms by now," the Doctor said dismissively, waving off the very idea. "Obviously it's a borrower."
"You what?"
The Doctor looked to Nardole with genuine confusion. "Have we not gone over borrowers? Secret race of tiny people living hidden under the floors and in the walls all over Earth? Surely I've brought it up before.”
"News to me," Nardole shook his head, glancing back at the little footprints. As if humans weren't enough to worry about sneaking about. "Why come down here, d'you reckon?"
With a shrug, the Doctor pocketed his sonic and absently began brushing away the dust and the prints left in it. "Probably shelter, or supplies and materials. Could’ve been after food, but lucky for me they didn’t make it to my hideaway snacks–"
"Could they still be here?" asked Nardole with a bitten-back shudder at the thought. This whole thing gave him the lingering feeling of being watched.
"Doubtful," the Doctor scoffed. "All that noise, and two giants blundering in? If they are still here, they won't be for long. Particularly if they've overheard us."
Evidently deciding that was that, the Doctor's hands got shoved into pockets and he strolled out of the room and toward the exit. Nardole, briefly caught up thinking about the implications of all the Doctor had casually revealed to him, hurried to catch up after a moment.
"Now, when you say 'in the walls', are they in all the walls?" he fussed.
"Not every wall," the Doctor assured him, then turned abruptly to fix Nardole in a sharp stare. "But any wall.”
Nardole frowned as the Doctor turned his back to continue up the stairs. "How do you know all this, anyhow?"
"Personal experience," said the Time Lord after the briefest of pauses.
AU: Time After Time; a Twelve AU in which Zepheera had once traveled with the Doctor and got separated long ago, and may have finally found him again.
Note: So... spoiler alert, this year's GT July inspired a lot more of this scenario to expand into a proper AU. I've slightly revised one of the previous chapters, and there is now a separate AU story listed on my Ao3 called Time After Time, where all other related prompts and shorts will be posted together!
~~~
Zepheera waited with bated breath as Bill was led into the office of the lecturer who went by 'the Doctor'. Any movement Bill made, even as it seemed she was moving to sit down, was irrelevant as long as that other giant was still around.
That wasn't for long, to Zepheera's relief. After some off noises outside the pocket, she heard the sound of the door closing and thudding footsteps receding into the distance.
"He's gone," Bill confirmed under her breath just before Zepheera felt the lurch in gravity once again as the bag moved. Very slowly and carefully, Bill set it down on the floor, slightly leaning it against some sort of vertical surface to keep it upright. The borrower's heart leapt into her throat to finally feel solid ground beneath her feet, and she wasted no time in leaping out.
Her landing was cushioned by an ornate rug. To her left was the sheer cliff of a wooden desk that cast a soft shadow on her from a window far ahead of her. To her right sat Bill, towering overhead even from her chair. Zepheera caught her eye, ignoring the gawping she'd come to expect from humans, and threw a thumbs-up in her direction. They'd made it to this step, whatever number it was. No adjustment needed, no being trapped in Bill's bag the whole time.
Then it caught her eye, right there in the corner. It was hard to miss, standing much taller than any human and filling up the corner beside the door. Something that Zepheera should have expected to see, and yet it caught her breath anyway.
~~~
Bill was just about to give Zepheera her own thumbs-up in return, but before she could, the tiny woman took off sprinting across the hardwood floor. She wondered briefly what was going on with her. She seemed quite determined, crossing the floor surprisingly quickly considering her little legs. Probably best not to ask, though. If the lecturer was here like he was supposed to be, he might overhear and wonder who Bill was talking to. That'd blow their cover.
It was still quite weird, being near someone so small. Bill considered herself fairly average height and not the clumsiest of individuals, but with Zepheera around she suddenly felt all big and bumbling. Like anything she did could shake Zepheera up. That thought was the main thing keeping her in her seat, especially while Zepheera was walking along the floor. As much as Bill's curiosity itched at her, nagging her to get up and look around the office, she resisted.
It was a bit of an odd office, though. More like a study or library, straight out of an old manor that Scooby and the gang would explore. Minus the dust and (hopefully) ghosts. It was spacious, had a bunch of statuettes around and paintings on some walls, massive shelves full of books, and what looked like a reading nook set up in the window.
What was really odd, though, was the big wood box adjacent to that nook. Hard to miss its wood siding, the distinctive look of those old police telephone boxes. Leaning over, Bill noticed it even had a sign on the handle that read "Out Of Order". And for whatever reason, Zepheera was heading straight for it. Didn't even bother looking around at anything else.
Briefly, Bill wondered what made Zepheera so captivated by the box, but soon enough more questions about it overpowered that thought. It looked a bit too sturdy to have been made from a kit, and it was too big to have ever fit through the windows or the door. How much trouble was it to get that thing in here?
The clock on the mantelpiece behind Bill gently chimed four times, announcing the hour. Bill remembered why she was here in the first place, and settled back in her chair. With an internal shrug, she resigned herself to wait around for a bit. That didn't stop her wondering, or glancing around the curious knick knacks on the desk that sat before her. A couple of picture frames were surrounded by oddities, facing away from Bill. What really caught her eye, ultimately, was a pen cup that was full of…definitely not pens. They were bizarre sort of tubes, some with shapes or what looked like lights on the end. The cup was right in her reach.
She stared. She thought about it. Eventually, her hand moved of its own accord.
~~~
Zepheera's sprint slowed down as she approached the looming box. She'd had so many dreams just like this that she could hardly believe it was happening. Her lips tried to smile, beyond elated to lay eyes on it once again, but it twitched back down, mitigating her joy for the moment. A trembling hand reached out to touch the bluest blue wood side of the police box, just to prove to herself that it was there, that it was real . That she wasn't just dreaming all this up.
Before she could, an ear-splitting noise shattered the silence of the office, and Zepheera was startled into running once again. By the time she slipped between the box and the wall, safe in its shadow, it sank in what that near deafening sound was.
An electric guitar, playing Beethoven's Fifth in power chords.
Bill gave a pointed cough, and the noise stopped. Then, a much more distant warbling noise rang out from a side room further on. That sound brought so many memories flooding back for Zepheera, and she sneaked back to the edge of the police box to take a peek.
The man who came out to greet Bill was certainly not the Doctor that Zepheera knew. He looked older, but she knew that meant very little when it came to his actual age. The Doctor was a man of so many faces, and Zepheera wasn't familiar with each and every one of them.
But it was him, that much was certain. She couldn't explain why, other than he felt like the Doctor.
Bill took up his attention, giving Zepheera ample opportunities to sneak more looks at him as though it would fill in any of the gaps. She couldn't tell if this was the Doctor from before or after her time with him, and it was risky to just approach him when she had no idea how he would react.
Zepheera had found him, though, at long last. If there was one thing she had that brought her to that point, it was patience. A few more days of hiding out in his office and observing him would be worth it, just to be on the safe side.
AU: Time After Time (Twelve AU); set after The Drum Beats Out of Time
Note: Starting to get caught up! This actually works out because there are a few prompts (particularly for this AU) that I would rather post out of order for continuity.
If anyone's familiar with the BBC's The Borrowers from 2011, it was a big inspiration for this part ^^
~~~
Zepheera tossed a brightly colored foil-wrapped chocolate onto the pile. A good section of her home under the floorboards of the Doctor's office was now dedicated to three or four of them so far, each about the size of the borrower's torso.
The cellophane and foil glinted at her in an unusual manner, and Zepheera glanced up towards her ceiling. She'd grown accustomed to the dark after she purposely settled directly under the TARDIS. Now, for the first time in all the months she'd been there, the box was gone and a little light was able to slip in through the cracks.
She didn't know what brought it on. Only yesterday, Bill had come to visit the Doctor for an informal Christmas get-together with just the two of them, no tutoring involved. A simple affair; crackers, snacks, and Bill had even brought the Doctor a gift, a cheap but thoughtful one.
Zepheera really did try not to spy on them too often, especially now that Bill knew for certain that she could be around, but the human's unscheduled appearance had made her curious enough to at least sneak a peek at what they were up to. The holiday had nearly slipped her mind since borrowers were not the type to celebrate it. Not in the same manner as humans. For them, the holidays were more about the abundance of food and supplies to be picked through for weeks on end.
Watching the pair from hiding, it was obvious to Zepheera that they'd grown so close over the months, and were quite candid with one another. Bill spoke casually about her late mother, and the Doctor expressed regret that he hadn't gotten Bill anything when she'd gone out of her way for his gift. It didn't take long for Zepheera to feel that she was intruding on them.
Then Bill abruptly began asking the Doctor about some quantum physics concept that they'd discussed previously. He reminded her they were on holiday, and he wasn't tutoring her today, but Bill insisted that she was legitimately interested. It was apparently something they'd only touched on briefly, because she struggled to properly describe what she was looking for, but insisted he had a book on it somewhere around the place.
The Doctor got up to humor her, trying to puzzle out what book she could be talking about. Zepheera lost sight of him, but Bill lingered in the main section of his office. Their back and forth about neutrinos or some such continued, with the Doctor's voice growing more distant as he searched deeper and deeper into the office. When he was far enough away, Zepheera watched Bill move with a swiftness. She reached into her pocket and bent down to shove something small under a piece of furniture. Then her long legs carried her out of Zepheera's line of sight, presumably to continue hiding things while the Doctor was distracted. All the while, she continued to slightly shift the concept she was interested in to keep him looking while she hurried back and forth, passing by Zepheera a few times along the way.
The last place she hit up was the tiny space behind the TARDIS, and that's when it hit Zepheera. Bill was hiding something for her to find. She hadn't let Bill see where she usually hides around the office, but she knew one place that Zepheera had taken an interest in. By the time the Doctor returned with a book, Bill was back in her seat like nothing had happened.
Touched and amused in equal measure, Zepheera retreated to the walls and made her way back home. She was in no hurry to see what Bill had left for her, since they were hidden around the place and would likely stay where they were put. She and the Doctor were still having a good party, as well. Zepheera reckoned she could turn in early, and start to sweep the place in the morning when Bill had long since gone home and the Doctor was busy elsewhere.
Her sleep was swiftly broken many hours later by a breeze ruffling her hair– under the floorboards– and an all too familiar groaning noise all around.
Zepheera was out of bed in an instant, sprinting for the subtle gap she'd put in the wall behind the TARDIS. All these months, and as far as she was aware, the Doctor had hardly set foot in his time-and-space machine. What had changed?
No answers were there to meet Zepheera when she burst into the office. Only an empty space in the floor where the TARDIS used to be, a freshly unrolled rug, and of all things, a green triangle tucked against the wall.
Not wanting to be in the way when the TARDIS inevitably rematerialized, Zepheera hefted the chocolate into her arms and took it home. Might as well spend the day finding the others Bill had left for her.
A good portion of the morning was devoted to this task, and after a few hours, Zepheera's bare floor was overtaken by the triangle, an orange crunch, a strawberry créme, a milk choc block, and an orange créme. Zepheera was almost certain this was all of them, and it amused her all over again to think of how long it would take her to make a dent in it all. Still, she reckoned it would be better to be safe than sorry, so she set out for one last thorough sweep of the office.
She was in the middle of climbing between two levels of a bookshelf across the room from the TARDIS' usual spot, hanging on a hook and line when the air started to displace and that noise rang out once again.
Zepheera hurriedly swung herself to the lower shelf and shook her hook free, diving into the books just in time for those wooden doors to become solid and creak open. With held breath, she listened for the Doctor's resonating steps through the office. He lingered for a moment in the middle of the main space, and something thudded against the surface of his desk before he walked off.
Chancing a peek, Zepheera spotted the new addition to the desk. An old camera, set down right between the two photographs.
AU: Time After Time (Twelve AU); set after Caught Up in Circles, before The Drum Beats Out of Time
Note: Am I ever going to stop using lyrics for these titles? lol nope
~~~
Gloomy days tended to make Zepheera introspective, especially when she had the opportunity to spend them in a window. Resting her head against the cool glass, she could feel the distant impact of each and every raindrop.
She didn’t worry too much about being seen through the window. It was at such an angle that no one could look directly inside, and any neighboring buildings were too far away to make out the four and a half inch tall borrower sitting curled up in a windowsill in any significant detail. Zepheera, in the meantime, could watch the clouds roll by, the waves of rain battering against all the roofs and umbrellas below them.
Anyone Zepheera’s size would be washed away in even a light storm. She wondered briefly if she would be the type of human who would enjoy being out in the rain, with that very real and frightening hazard out of the way.
“Do you know him?”
Bill’s blurted question snatched Zepheera out of her wandering thoughts. She turned away from the window to look up at the seated human with whom she’d resigned herself to stay for the weekend.
All things considered, Bill had been very respectful of the borrower. She hadn’t gone looking for Zepheera when she vanished from sight, trusting that at the very least she would show up again before Bill left for St. Luke’s come Monday, per their agreement. Until now, she hadn’t asked one prying question, which was an impressively long time considering her curious nature.
“Sorry?” Zepheera gave herself a small shake to allow her brain to catch up to the present.
Bill shrugged and set down her pen, through taking notes for the moment. “The Doctor. I’ve been wondering why you were so keen on seeing him. Do you know him?”
Zepheera had thought about how she would answer these questions when Bill inevitably asked them. When she'd asked for the favor of a lift to the Doctor's office, she hadn't quite counted on him taking Bill under his wing and bringing her around so often. She was nice enough, for a human, but that didn’t automatically make Zepheera feel like sharing. Especially when her history was quite complicated and long.
“Not really,” she said after a moment, deciding on stretching the truth. “He just reminds me of someone I used to know, that’s all.”
“You knew what he was called, though,” Bill countered.
“Saw it on flyers,” said Zepheera without hesitation.
“Here’s what I don’t get.” Bill leaned forward on her forearms, a small grin forming as she tried to puzzle Zepheera out. “Which is it? If you wanted to see him so badly, why not let him see you? If you’d rather hide, then why find him at all?”
Zepheera could tell that Bill didn’t mean to grill her, that her curiosity was simply getting the better of her now that she’d allowed herself to ask questions. Even so, she’d gotten to the part that Zepheera couldn’t explain away. She could barely explain it to herself. Her shoulders tensed and her gaze wandered back in the direction of the window to avoid meeting Bill's.
Realizing she was overdoing it, Bill leaned back. “Fair play,” she conceded, flipping the page in her book.
Silence fell between the two women once again, split only by the occasional rustling of pages being turned, the scratch of Bill's pen, and patter of raindrops on the glass.
“Why leave?”
This question drew Zepheera’s attention once again. Bill wasn’t prying like before; in fact, she seemed concerned more than anything.
Once teeny violet eyes met hers, Bill went on: “Guessing that you’ve been sticking around the place all this time. Hiding or not, you must've stayed for a reason. What made you jump ship?”
Zepheera pondered this one. It was just as hard to explain as the others, but considering it led her and Bill here, it felt only fair to try and come up with a reason.
"Suppose I just needed…space."
Bill nodded slowly, but with a thoughtful tilt to her head. "Then…why come here? I mean, you had the whole campus if you just wanted to get away."
Zepheera actually had an answer ready for that one, but a sharp rap at Bill's door stole the opportunity from her. Before she could think twice, she'd slid off the windowsill and ducked behind the stack of books on Bill's desk.
"I do hope you're not chatting up any boys in there!" Moira, Bill's foster mother, chided through the door.
Rolling her eyes, Bill called back, "I'm not!" She added under her breath, "Never will…"
"I'll find where they live if you are," said Moira as she continued down the hall, seemingly satisfied.
Bill gave a huff and let herself flop onto the desk, head resting on her forearm. She really did love her foster mother, but she could be exhausting at times.
"That's why." Zepheera's voice piped up rather close to Bill's ear, and she rolled her head over to look. There she was, leaning against the stack of books like a wall, standing closer than Bill had seen her since they met. "You kept my secret all this time, and you're still keeping it.”
Bill smiled, shifting to fold her arm under her head for better support. “Yeah, well, wouldn’t do either of us much good if I out ya.”
Zepheera shook her head, quietly amused, as she turned to glance up at the window once more. She could only see the clouds from this new angle, and for a moment thought she spotted an area where the clouds began to thin and a bit of blue sky began to peek through.
“I can’t lie and say it isn’t a bit nice to have someone to chat to,” she admitted.
As it turned out, patience and self control wore thin more quickly than Zepheera had expected.
The first few weeks were alright. She'd busied herself with setting up a home base, collecting things from various classrooms and offices that weren't the Doctor's (couldn't have him noticing things going missing and catching on before Zepheera was ready) and made comfortable enough accommodations under the floorboards. Right beneath the TARDIS. If it went anywhere, she wanted to know about it right away.
Observing the Doctor from afar was easy enough for a seasoned borrower. She kept to the shadows, always had one eye on his movements until she had a decent handle on his habits and schedule. He did have lectures to attend, and while he was there, she took the opportunity to explore his office, search through his things for any indication of when in his timeline this was, anything familiar to her.
She'd quickly found his pen cup full of sonic screwdrivers on his desk, a pair of which were the exact ones she remembered her Doctor using all those years ago. There were a few older models as well that she'd caught glimpses of before, and some that weren't familiar at all. If she weren't trying to keep her presence a complete secret, she'd give in and reach up to touch the devices for even a second of nostalgic comfort. This meant he had met her before, but how long ago was that?
She also took note of the pictures that he kept there. One of a woman with an abundance of curly hair, and another of a young girl, both of whom were unfamiliar to Zepheera. The girl's photo looked older, black and white and all, while the other one seemed more recent. A faint memory tickled in the back of Zepheera's mind, of the Doctor mentioning a granddaughter. Perhaps that was who the girl was. She had nothing to go on about the other woman, but he must have cared a lot for her to have her picture up near that of his long lost family.
All that she found in her search led to more questions than answers. Even though it seemed that it would cause no harm to her personal timeline to approach this Doctor here and now, there were still so many uncertain factors. After months, the TARDIS still hadn't moved, and it seemed as though Bill's account of the Doctor's decades-long tenure at the university would indicate that perhaps he had retired from all the traveling. Maybe he'd finally settled down somewhere, a feat that her Doctor would have never managed. If that were true, then having Zepheera pop up out of nowhere might bring up memories of a time he'd rather forget.
Or fond ones.
Zepheera would obviously hope for the latter, but there was simply no way for her to know. She needed more information, and not just facts. She had to get to know the Doctor, this Doctor, without actually interacting with him at all.
So she continued to wait and watch, for months on end. Watching him foster a student-tutor relationship with Bill Potts, waiting for…something. Zepheera didn't quite know what she was looking for, but she was certain she'd know it when she saw it.
Despite her lack of communication being a completely voluntary choice on her part, it started to take a toll on Zepheera. Part of her wanted nothing more than to pop out of hiding and tell the old man that she had found him, that she had missed him and his box and the amazing adventures they'd had, and that her life could never be the same after meeting him.
Another part, in equal measure to the first, was terrified by that same idea.
One day, while one of Bill's tutoring sessions was wrapping up, Zepheera couldn't take it any longer. She watched the Doctor drag Bill around the shelves to collect a handful of books on whatever subject he was on now, one eye on them and the other on Bill's satchel on the floor by the Doctor's desk. When both of their backs were turned, she broke into a dead sprint and didn't stop until she'd climbed into an all-too-familiar pocket.
Before Zepheera could put a second thought into this spur-of-the-moment decision, the human snagged the bag and left the Doctor's office behind.
~~~
Bill had not a single notion that anything was different as she made her way home. Most of her mental bandwidth was taken up processing all the information the Doctor had presented to her, and wondering about the passages he'd indicated in the books he'd leant her. She had the whole weekend to go over it all and take a few notes before her next session.
For now, she aimed to have a relaxing night in.
She called out for her foster mum when she got home, partly relieved to be answered with a silent flat. Moira wasn't so bad most of the time, but Bill was hardly in the mood for another lecture about how much time she was spending with her tutor.
Heading right for the kitchen for a cuppa, she set down the small pile of books in her arms and dropped her satchel onto a stool without much thought.
Until she caught the slightest "Oomph!" coming from it.
Bill froze and stared at the bag while her brain caught up with what she'd just heard. "Uh…hello?"
After only a beat, the side pocket of her satchel squirmed, and a familiar bob of brown hair popped out of it.
"Zepheera?" Bill's eyes widened. It had been months since she last saw the borrower, and she'd had no contact from her since Bill smuggled her into the Doctor's office.
Tiny violet eyes met Bill's after Zepheera brushed her mussed hair out of the way. "Heya, Bill," she sighed, like this were any other day and they were passing by one another.
Bill had so many questions, she didn't even know where to begin. Had Zepheera been living in that office? Was she spying on the Doctor, and Bill by extension? Once in a while, she thought she'd noticed something moving out of the corner of her eye during her tutoring sessions, but there wasn't anything there by the time she looked. Was that her all this time?
Eventually, she settled on, "Are you alright?"
A tiny hand waved off Bill's concerns. Obviously she would have been more careful if she knew her bag had a passenger. "Barely bruised," Zepheera murmured.
Bill was relieved that that seemed to be true as Zepheera climbed out of the pocket and onto the seat of the stool with no issue. Still, Bill noticed something off about the woman. They hadn't exactly gotten to know each other well when they met last, but there was something sheepish about Zepheera's manner. Bill hadn't exactly banked on seeing her again after they'd parted ways. Maybe Zepheera hadn't exactly expected to come here, either.
"Do you want a cuppa?" Bill offered.
Even at her significant height advantage over Zepheera, she could see tense little shoulders slump. "Tea would be lovely, thanks."
