"Explain this to me again," Dean whispered to The Doctor from his crouching position behind the apartment building. "Why are we hiding from nothing?"
"Shh!" The Doctor hushed. "We don't want it to hear us!"
"But—" Dean started to argue, but The Doctor clamped a hand over his mouth and pointed across the street, to a statue positioned in a garden. The statue looked lonely and desolate, with its face in its hands and a pair of wings drooping at its sides.
"See?" The Doctor said knowingly.
Dean shook his head. "No."
"It's a Weeping Angel!" The Doctor clarified, sounding exasperated. Dean must have still looked perplexed, because The Doctor continued, "They're creatures who're made of stone, but only when you look at them. As soon as you blink or turn away, they come to life and they move. And they move fast. You don't want them to touch you, so keep looking at them."
"What happens if they touch you?" Dean asked.
The Doctor looked Dean square in the eye. "They send you back in time."
A wave of understanding dawned on Dean. "So you think that the thing that's been screwing up my timeline for centuries has been just across the street?"
"Looks that way, doesn't it? But what gets me is why it only attacks you, and at the one specific point in time." The Doctor stood, brushed off his coat, and grinned eccentrically. "Let's go ask it!"
Clara grabbed The Doctor before he could go. "Are you mad?!"
"Yes, of course." The Doctor arched his brow. "We've been over this before."
"What are you doing?! You can't talk to it! It doesn't even talk!"
"I can hear it," The Doctor assured her, "I speak every language. And besides, I have a feeling it'll talk to Dean."
Dean held up his hands. "I'm not going anywhere near that thing!"
"It can't kill you," The Doctor pointed out.
Dean eyed the statue warily, mulling it over. Finally, he decided The Doctor was right and trotted behind him across the street.
From up close, the statue seemed more sinister than lonely, like at any moment it would come to life and spring up out of its pose on the pedestal. Spellbound, Dean felt the overwhelming urge to reach up and stroke its wings, to hold its motionless hands in his...
The Doctor snatched Dean's hand before he could touch it. "Stop. It's the angel that's making you do that."
"And why would it do that?"
"Because it loves you, Dean, and because it needs you. There's a reason the Weeping Angels are called the Lonely Assassins. They're only stone when you look at them, which means most of the time they're locked in their own lifeless world. They can't even look at each other. This one, though..." The Doctor turned his gaze to the angel and back to Dean again. "This one's grown rather attached to you, Dean."
"So on December thirty-first, 1999, this thing comes alive and sends me back to the beginning of the century. But why? I mean, why then?"
"The Weeping Angels survive by feeding off of temporal energy. They send you back in time, then take the amount of years you had left to live. Think about it, Dean. You can't die, so sending you back in time would give it an infinite amount of energy. So it chooses to send you back at exactly the same point every time you go through the loop."
"So the question is," Clara deduced, "Why do you keep coming back here every time you go through the loop?"
Dean sighed. "It's complicated."
"Oh, I'm sure it is," The Doctor chuckled to himself. "There's a girl involved, isn't there, Dean? There's always a girl involved."
"Yeah, kind of," Dean admitted.
"That's so sweet!" Clara squealed, "But also terrible, 'cause of, you know, the whole evil alien statue bit, and—"
"Clara!" The Doctor snapped suddenly, "Aren't you supposed to be watching the angel?"
"No, you never said to," Clara pointed out sourly.
The Doctor flinched. "Well, I meant to, and now we're all in big trouble. Look for it, quickly!"
They all whipped back around, but to Dean's astonishment, the angel had gone, vanished as quickly as if it had been an apparition all along. Fear surged up in Dean's chest, and he bit his lip nervously.
"Doctor?" Clara asked a bit too shrilly, "Where did it go?"
The Doctor grimaced, revealing that even he was no longer all too sure of himself. "I don't know, but it's not anywhere nearby, because I can't hear it. It may have sensed us and gone for reinforcements, or..."
"Hi!" A voice chirped. Dean whirled around to find Ella, of all people, standing behind him, her hands folded behind her back and a jubilant smile on her face.
"I haven't seen any of you around here before," Ella commented, oblivious to the sea of turmoil she'd just stepped into. "If you don't mind me asking, can you help me move the phone box that just appeared down the road?"
Dean was dumbfounded. Wave after wave of emotion competed for control over his brain: confusion, panic, and an odd sense of relief, as if he'd finally found his oasis amidst all the madness.
The Doctor, however, did not seem as joyful. He turned to Ella and said, uncharacteristically stern, "You need to leave. It isn't safe here."
Ella laughed, somewhat nervously. She looked at Dean quizzically. "Is this your dad or something? He's kind of bizarre."
"Look." Dean instinctively reached out to put his hands on Ella's shoulders, then remembered that they hadn't met yet and awkwardly pulled back. "He's telling you the truth. Promise me you'll—"
"There it is!" Clara shrieked. She pointed over to the opposite side of the street.
"What?" Ella began to follow Clara's finger, but it was too late. The angel materialized right behind her.
Time slowed drastically. Everything seemed to happen all at once. Dean threw himself over Ella just as The Doctor reached for Dean, and Clara for The Doctor. The world dissolved into a white light so blinding Dean had to shut his eyes tight.
When Dean dared to open his eyes again, it took a moment for what he was seeing to fully sink in. The world was an endless black chasm stretching in all directions, dotted with pinpricks of light and splashes of color that faded if you looked right at them. Though there was nothing under his feet, Dean wasn't drifting. Instead, everything seemed to be rotating around him.
Ella squirmed, and it was just then that Dean realized his arms were still draped around her shoulders. Embarrassed, he let go, and she drank in the sight with boundless wonder.
"Where are we?" Her voice quivered, barely above a whisper. Dean wished he could soothe her, but unfortunately, he was quite unclear about their surroundings as well.
"Ah! I can answer that!" The Doctor piped up, making Dean jump. He hadn't realized that he was still behind him. "You see, we're in between the threads of time, a limbo, if you will. Nothing is really solid or tangible here. Being a time-lord and an intelligent one at that, I have just enough energy to keep us from disintegrating."
"That still doesn't really explain it." Ella's eyes were as wide as tennis balls. "Who are you people? And if we're really inside a..."
"A limbo," The Doctor supplied.
"...Then how did we end up here?"
"Well," The Doctor tapped his chin. "I'm an alien time-traveler and this is my plucky companion, but the one you really need to know is Dean. You did know him, and you have known him for years now, but that just hasn't happened yet."
Ella frowned. "I still don't understand."
Dean stepped in. "If things had gone normally, I would have arrived in your town in another few months. We would have been friends. Now I'm not so sure."
"So we ended up here... How?"
"When the angel touched Dean at the same time it grabbed you," The Doctor explained, "It created a paradox. The angel wasn't supposed to have sent him back in time until December, so it cancelled out the entire timeline where Dean met you. In addition, Dean wasn't even supposed to have met you until August, so touching you created another paradox. At this point his timeline is so incredibly tangled and twisted that time has just decided to dump him here until..."
"Until what?" Dean demanded.
"Until it decides what to do." The Doctor folded his arms. "And I may be a time-lord, and I may influence time, but I can't control it. I've tried before, and it didn't turn out pretty." The Doctor patted Dean's shoulder, his brown eyes full of sorrow. "I'm sorry, Dean, but this matter is beyond my control. Whatever happens, happens."
"Does that mean..." Dean cast a glance at Ella, who returned it with worry and puzzlement. Dean's heart swelled, and he swallowed hard. He wanted to argue, but he knew as well as The Doctor that it was pointless. Fate could not be altered, no matter what.
"Hey." Ella took his hand. The gesture was sweet and genuine, despite how little she knew about him. "I'm sorry, really. I wish I could have known you."
Dean could do no more than stare out into the void.
"If it means anything to you," Ella said, tracing his palm with her index finger, "I think you deserve a second chance, to live your life the way it should have been."
"But I was happy with my life," Dean murmured, making the revelation much too late. "I was happy with you."
Ella put her lips to his cheek. They were soft and cool, and they sent an invigorating sensation fluttering through every nerve in his body at once. Then she lifted her head and whispered into his ear, "You can find me again."
The Doctor began to speak, but just then the light returned. Dean knew what was coming. He felt peaceful and relaxed, as if a large burden had been lifted off of his shoulders. He closed his eyes and waited for time to fold itself around him.