"Come on, Dean," Ella insisted, tugging on his arm, "We only have an hour left to go!"
"No." Dean pulled away from her. Ella gave him a dejected look, which pricked his heart with guilt. "It's been a hard week. I should go."
Ella stuck her tongue out at him, clearly unaware that it made her look like a six year-old. "Dean Harper, you are the biggest killjoy on the planet."
"Eleanor Chavez, you are the biggest pain in the neck on the planet," Dean teased, and she slapped his arm. Dean could hear people whispering not-so-subtly behind them: "Look at those two!" "'Just friends.' Yeah, right." But he didn't let it nag him. It wasn't like he'd be around to hear it for much longer.
Dean clambered into his car, calling over his shoulder, "I'm sorry, Ella. I really am."
"Then why are you going?!" Ella cried over the rev of the engine.
Dean hung his head so she couldn't see the tears forming in the corners of his eyes. "I wish I could tell you, Ella. But you wouldn't believe me."
Ella chased after the car as it disappeared down the lane. "December thirty-first, 1999, nearly midnight. Possibly the biggest moment of our lives, and you want to sleep through it!"
Dean watched Ella grow smaller and smaller in his rearview mirror until she was only a blur. Believe me, he thought as he turned round the corner, It isn't as big of a deal as everyone thinks.
Dean's apartment complex, a dusty little three-story building on the outskirts of town, was so ancient it seemed like it would crumble to pieces if you sneezed within a five-mile radius of it. It got extremely depressing at times, but it certainly beat the alternative. Dean had lived in an orphanage several times before. Suffice to say that it wasn't his cup of tea.
"Oh hello, Dean." Dean was so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he nearly ran into his neighbor as he plodded up the first flight of stairs. "Back so soon? I thought you were out at a party."
Dean shrugged. "My folks wanted me to come home. You know how it is."
The woman nodded. "And how have they been doing lately? Any better?"
Dean shook his head and affected a sullen tone. "Not much, I'm afraid. The doctor says it'll be at least another week until they can even get out of bed."
She sighed, as if deeply touched by Dean's undying devotion to his ever-so-ill "parents." "Well, they certainly are lucky to have such an incredible son. You take care now!" She tottered down the steps and out the door.
Dean couldn't help smirking to himself as he continued on his way. Sometimes people could be so gullible. Fortunately, that was how he had managed to scrape by all these years, feeding all the landlords some sob story about how his folks were too sick to work their jobs or even leave their rooms. Throw in an "I just want them to get better" and a pair of sad puppy eyes and everyone just rolled right over.
"Honey, I'm home!" Dean announced to his empty apartment, then chuckled to himself. Sometimes the only way to ease the pain of being so alone was to poke fun at it. He hopped about as he removed his boots and jacket, not bothering to put them away. He dropped his room key on the mat outside before shutting the door. Hopefully someone would find it. Dean didn't know exactly how things worked after he was gone, but he assumed that life continued on in a typical linear fashion for everyone else.
Dean collapsed in his bed, his eyelids heavy. At least his fib to Ella had been partially true; he had had a hard week. He'd been attempting, as he did right before all of his frequent moves, to make the most of the time he had left with whomever he'd allowed himself to get attached to. Normally, he tried to choose a different town each time, to keep himself under the radar. But for some reason, he'd grown particularly fond of Stone Feather, Arizona, this widely unheard-of little hamlet in the nineties, and he couldn't help returning to it each time around, and, if he was honest with himself, couldn't help returning to her. . .
A heavy cloak of misery draped itself across the tiny room. Dean dreaded returning to that wretched old children's home in New Jersey. 1900 seemed like the Stone Age if you'd lived through the rest of the twentieth century. If only he could figure out how to end the loop, how to change this lonely, twisted fate he'd been doomed to fulfill for the rest of his life, no matter how long that may be.
Dean drifted into a sweet dark haze, his subconscious mind preparing itself, waiting for the angel to appear. . .
A strange grinding noise roused Dean quickly. A shape, bluish and boxy, materialized in the doorway. Dean sat up straight, his chest pounding with alarm.
The door opened, and out stepped a tall young man in a dark coat and a bow tie, mostly obscured from view by the darkness. He aimed a small device at the light fixtures, and the tip glowed green and made a buzzing noise. The lights turned on instantly.
"Here we are! 1964!" The man declared in a British accent, doing an odd sort of dance on his heels. "Just in time to see the Beatles tour America! Am I brilliant or what?"
The door swung open again, and a pretty, dark-haired girl not too much older than Dean stepped out, grinning. "Finally, we're here!" She glanced around. "Wait, why are we in an apartment? Who's that? That's not Paul, is it? He looks younger in real life."
Dean couldn't help but laugh a little. "Sorry to disappoint you, but I think you're in the wrong decade. Who are you, and how did you get in my apartment?"
The man gave Dean a lopsided smile. "I'm the Doctor, and this is Clara. And you're. . ." The man pointed his device at Dean and swiped it up and down through the air once over. His expression grew grim. ". . .you're a walking time paradox! What did you say your name was?"
"Dean. Dean Harper." Dean anxiously reached for his watch on the bedside table. "What time is it right now. . . Doctor, did you say?"
The Doctor let out a little huff. "'What time is it?' What kind of moronic question is that?" He straightened his bow tie importantly. "When you've got a time machine, it can be any time you want."
"Not in my case. At midnight, I go right back to the 1900s," Dean explained, figuring a fancy British guy who had a vanishing box and called himself "The Doctor" would probably believe anything.
The Doctor looked Dean straight in the eye. In that brief moment, it was as if a window to his soul had been opened. He seemed much older and wiser than his appearance let on, as if he had lived out a thousand lifetimes. "Not if I have anything to say about it. Dean Harper, something is terribly messing up your timeline, and whatever it is, it is in big trouble, because now it has me to deal with. If you'll just come into the TARDIS with us, we can—"
"Wait." Dean motioned to the box. "You mean that little thing? Two of you seems like a tight squeeze already. I think three would be a bit of a crowd."
Clara raised an eyebrow. "That's what everyone says. Trust me, it's bigger on the inside."
The Doctor looked hurt. "That's what I always say! You don't get to say it, you're just the plucky companion!"
"'Plucky?!'" Clara repeated, her hands on her hips.
Dean ignored him and fumbled with his watch. It now read 11:59. "After living through the twentieth century so many times I lost count, I'll believe anything. Let's just get out of here, now. It's almost midnight."
"Why?" Clara asked, "What happens at midnight, exactly?"
"I don't know," Dean admitted, "I never had the guts to stay awake and find out. All I know is that I always wake up in an orphanage in New Jersey on January first, 1900."
The Doctor looked pensive. "I have a hunch what might be behind this, but if I'm right—and I usually am—then we don't want to be around to meet it." He threw open the box's door and waved. "Right. Off we go, then!"