It was a late Tuesday night. Not dark or stormy, mind you, just late. It was drizzling a bit, to be honest. It could have been a better night, maybe 70 degrees Fahrenheit, perfect for a lovely nighttime walk if one wears a cardigan. By all means, it was a Tuesday night and across the campus of Delta Green University, it was quiet. Across the posh, antebellum architecture of the university, the wind blew softly over the cement. It was getting into late fall with a cool in the air, but still very warm for an October. All across campus, things seemed to be sleeping. The lights were out in every building and every room- all except one.

On the eighth floor of Washington Hall, Resident Assistant Laney Connerly had just finished conducting her weekly rounds and sat wearily at her work desk, face down on a stack of papers. The muscles in her shoulders were tense and painful- not that she noticed anymore. Stress was a part of her life. Lack of sleep, painful tension, and deadlines were the norm. Looking around at the walls, one could see why- awards and certificates decorated the spaces that the comic book posters did not. Honors College, No. 1 Culinary Arts Student, President's List. Posters from theatrical productions, some seeming more recent, were posted on the ceiling, like a memorial to a lost time. An unfinished painting sat on the desk, surrounded by paints and paintbrushes and cups full of long-evaporated paint water.

The student in question let out a small whimper, running her hands through her short, black hair. At one point, she had kept her hair in the colors of the rainbow. but, life happened. Color takes commitment. Color takes time- not something that Laney had a lot of. Mornings were desk shifts and classes. lunches were filled with meetings and homework, before heading off to the scenic shop and more classes where she remained until dinner. After dinner is was more meetings, more homework, and RA duties.

Laney sat up to look at herself in the mirror. She was dark skinned for a Mississippi girl- her mom had once told her that it was the Choctaw blood running through her veins, but who knew. She was small, even for her young age of 19, with an innocent looking face. Even though it was her own image, she caught view of her eyes, lingering and reaching out to touch the mirror. Dark, dark eyes, almost black. Impossibly old eyes for a 19 year old- like they had seen the hurt of the world and survived.

Shaking off the melancholy, she stretched, yawning widely and swirling around in her desk chair. As she heated up water for a late night cup of tea, she sighed at her cell phone- one of her residents had called her at least three times in the past hour. Audrey never did know how to deal with men- not that Laney had much experience, beside a disastrous 2 year relationship. Since then, she simply hadn't had time- or made time- for guys. She had her theatre work, her RA job, the Honors College... and no one had asked or seemed interested, anyway.

The heat from the tea was comforting as she took a breather in what she called her "daddy chair"- a big round, rainbow papasan. Dropping in five sugars- always five- and pouring some milk in from the carton in the mini-fridge, she settled into her nest, finally off of her feet. Laney closed her eyes and breathed, fighting off frustration. The mind-numbing busy work, the meetings, the running around, the stress... it's too much. When she opened her eyes again, it was an hour later- and her sweatshirt was wet.

She was so tired of the ennui. So tired of being tired. So tired of being so wrapped up in everything that everyone required of her that she had no friends...or boyfriends...or even just one person to be able to go to.

She shook her head, sipping her tea. Something must be wrong, she thought. So many depressive thoughts today. More than usual."

When it came time to get up and finish the paper, it was too late. Laney had already fallen asleep, curled in a ball with a mug of cold, half finished tea.

THUMP. Screeeeee. Screeeeeee. Screeeeeeee

"Hello!"

The first thing Laney saw when she awoke was a bow tie, followed by the goofiest looking face she had seen in her life.

So she did the first reaction that came to her mind- she quickly threw the now arctic tea in the stranger's face.

The goofy-looking stranger simply blinked, tea dripping down his thin face.

"Are you done?"

Laney nodded, placing the empty mug carefully on the floor.

After wiping off some of the tea on his face with his finger and sticking it in his mouth, he beamed and exclaimed happily, "Good old Earl Grey! You, miss, have good taste. What would your name happen to be?"

"Laney. Laney Connerly," she answered carefully.

The stranger smiled, a dangerous-looking smile to Laney. She didn't quite know what to make of him. He hadn't tried to hurt her yet. He hadn't stolen anything. He just sat their smiling in his tan mismatching suit and suspenders, looking kind of ridiculous with tea dripping down his face.

"H-How...did you get in.." she stuttered, searching silently for her cell phone in the big chair.

The stranger looked bemusedly around the dorm room, pacing as he played with the orange dinosaur flashlight she kept on her bookshelf. "A better question is: how did you get out?"

Laney blinked confusedly, stopping her cell phone search out of frustration. Steadily, she stared at the odd gentleman. "How did I get... out? I've been here. All night." Slowly, she stood up from the papasan chair and tried to silently make her way to her nightstand where her emergency house phone was.

The gentleman smiled, pulling out a piece of what first appeared to be blank paper in a wallet. "Psychic paper. You sent me a message across all of space and time and all it says is.." He checked the blank paper quickly. "Help me." With a grin he flicked the wallet-thing closed and tucked it back into his jacket, fixing his bowtie with a single fluid motion. "Vastly unoriginal, really, but I aim to please. The Doctor at your service, here for all your helping needs. " Suddenly, he spotted the case of craft supplies she kept on the desk. "Ooh! You're crafty! You know, I once accidentally went on a date with Georgia O'Keefe. All she did was talk about the beauty of flowers. She quite fancied me, I think, but you know, she did turn out to be possessed by a strange spirit that turned out to be from a planet of pure plant life, so it would have never worked out."

As the stranger fumbled around in her stash of crafts, wiping off his face with a piece of lavender felt and throwing it neatly into the trash can across the room. He had been scanning the posters on the wall when he all of a sudden stopped his bumbling, staring at the unfinished painting sitting on the desk. "Did you paint this?" He picked it up, giving an artful twirl as he caught Laney with her hand on the phone. "I wouldn't do that if I were you. Girls harboring strange men in their dormitory rooms have never had the best of reputations."

By this time, Laney was quite overwhelmed. She had a peculiar man in her dorm that may or may not be extremely mentally disturbed who talked nonsense about Georgia O'Keefe and treated her room like it was his own and said that he heard her from across time and space and called himself the Doctor. Exasperatedly she slammed the phone down onto the receiver, standing with arms akimbo and furrowing her brow in her (what she called) "serious-RA-face."

"You never answered my question. How did you get in?" she commanded.

The So-Called-Doctor continued to stare at the painting as he answered nonchalantly, "I landed my TARDIS in your supply closet and your door was unlocked. You really should lock it at night, unwanted admirers could get in. Beautiful girl like you, I bet you have loads of fellows beating down your door. Wouldn't want some strange fellow hanging around, would you?"

The compliment caught her off guard. She had been called "pretty", yes, "cute", yes. But never beautiful. She withdrew, blushing involuntarily for a few seconds, and then tried to save face. She crossed her arms and marched over to him, taking the painting from his hands and dusting it off gently before placing it back on the desk amidst the clutter once again. "I apparently already have some strange fellow in my room. And what in the Sam Hill is a TARDIS?"

The Doctor crossed his arms and put on his best imitation of her face and voice, goodnaturedly mocking, "Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Big blue box, travels in space and time." Straightening up, he picked up the painting again defiantly and studied it once more. It was nothing too special, just a young man's face which had been finished even though the area around him had not. "This painting is fascinating. This man...how do you know him?"

Laney shrugged noncommitally. "I had a weird dream and he was in it. He was such an interesting looking guy, I wanted to remember how he looked. So I painted him in a hurry one morning and never had the time to finish. "

The Doctor slammed down the painting, a strange urgency now in his face and voice. He grabbed her by the shoulders, looking her straight in the eye as he whispered softly. "I need you to remember what the dream was about. What happened to you in the dream? It's very, very important that you remember this."

Shocked by the suddenness and strength with which he grabbed her, Laney's instincts once again kicked into high gear. Before she could stop herself, her left elbow shot up and hit the Doctor's nose square in the middle as she shoved him away with her right arm. He stumbled heavily backward, nose bleeding and crashed into her school desk, sending papers and textbooks raining down on his head. She winced at every single book that dropped, hearing THUNK THUNKTHUNKTHUNKTHUNK as her scenic carpentry book tumbled and landed...

"Oooff!"

Right into his lap.

Ten minutes later, the Doctor was sitting in the daddy chair, holding a bag of frozen pizza rolls to his nose as Laney rushed around, apologizing profusely and making tea. "Do you want milk in your tea? I put sugar in my tea, but I'm Southern and don't know if that's the proper English thing to do, put sugar in your tea...I mean, it's probably not the proper English thing to do to break someone's nose either, but I guess at this point it's negligible.."

As she sat a chipped Batman mug down on the upturned crate that acted as a coffee table, she reached up and adjusted the bag of ice she had put on his head, generally fussing about. "Really, sir, I am so sorry. It's just that here you have to be careful of men making grabs at you and when you grabbed me I panicked and went into crazy superhero survival mode and Jesus, I didn't even know I was that strong.."

The Doctor patted her cheek dazedly, still a bit stunned from his earlier ordeal. "It's fine. I'm a tough old boy, over one thousand years and I'm still taking my lumps."

Laney flopped back down onto the rug, rubbing her now-growing migraine. Frustratedly, she looked up at him, gesturing to the sky. "You keep saying the strangest things. 'I'm from a magical machine in the storage closet. I dated Georgia O'Keefe but she was possessed by plants, and now you're saying that you're over one thousand years old?"

Sipping at the tea she had brought him, he smirked and cocked an eyebrow. "What if I told you I wasn't even English?"

Groaning incredulously, she plopped her head down onto the rug, staring at the posters on the ceiling. "So you're telling me that out of all these strange things, you're going to add that you're not even from England?" Sharply, she sat back up and wagged a finger at him. "What kind of uneducated redneck do you take me for? I know that accent anywhere."

He chuckled bemusedly, good-naturedly nudging her shoulder with his shoe. "Did I say that you were an uneducated redneck? I don't believe I did. I'm telling the truth. I am not from England."

"Then where are you from?"

The Doctor suddenly became very quiet, looking into his tea as if it were the most fascinating thing he had ever seen. He stared into the tea for a while before finally, as if coming back to himself, smiled that dangerous smile that sent chills up Laney's spine. "Come with me and I'll tell you."

Confused, Laney looked back up at him, a tiny bit afraid. "Come with you where?"

He raised an eyebrow once again, gesturing with his head towards the painting. "You tell me. Now about that dream- I said it was important and I meant it. Tell me what happened in your dream, Laney, and I'll take you there."

She bit her cheek until it bled, hesitant to listen to a complete stranger. A stranger who claimed he could travel in time and space. Who could make dreams come to life. Who could take her far away from Delta Green and into all of the universe.. and so closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"It all began when I was standing in this field..."