crossoverfic | First time fic...

Title: Just One Day: A Favor

Author: Fiducia

Fandoms: Doctor Who and The Sandman

Beta: Lostwolfchats

Rating: PG

Warnings: None

Pairings: None

Disclaimer: Doctor Who is owned by the BBC, Death and other Sandman characters are owned by DC Comics and Neil Gaiman. This was written purely for entertainment purposes and no profit is being garnered from the use of these characters.

Summary: Once a century she must live one day and die. This time she chooses to live that day with the Doctor.

The Doctor had parked the TARDIS down a small alley in Manhattan’s lower west side. It seemed a likely enough place and the time of night combined with the low quality of neighborhood about guaranteed no one would venture near.

He stopped up short, however, when rounding the corner into the alley; all his thought was focused on returning to the TARDIS and flinging himself into the Vortex as soon as he could flip the appropriate leavers but this was scuppered when he spied a young woman on the ground leaning up against the front doors of his beautiful ship. Her slumped position and closed eyes indicated she was either asleep or dead but since his delicate senses could nearly taste her slow and steady heartbeat he was counting on the former.

He stared at her a moment, hands jammed into his coat pockets, unsure how to proceed. He should just wake her up and send her packing but there was a twinge, no a tingle or some sort of ingly-wingly-tingly thing, that stopped him, that kept him from leaping forth and dispatching the girl for home or wherever she came from.

He tried to put his finger on why or where this feeling was coming from; which sense he was relying on to grant him this insight, but it was elusive. Resorting to logic he decided to start with the surface facts and then go deeper. First off, she was human, clearly female and petite. Long dark hair, hard to tell if it was brown or black in the poor ambient light of nearby street lamps, framed a pale face which even relaxed in sleep seemed too pale, almost sickly, though again that could just be the bad light. She wore all black from head to foot, from her black jacket, black top, black jeans and black boots, she rather reminded him of his last incarnation and his love of the monochrome. There was one break in the matte black of her attire, though. A silver necklace hung round her neck and while he couldn’t see the pendant as it had slid down to hide behind the open flap of her jacket, he could tell by the way the chain pulled taunt that there was some weight to whatever graced the end of her one decoration.

Her legs were splayed out before her, one straight with the booted toe cocked out at a relaxed angle, the other bent at the knee and slung to the side as if she’d tried to sit akimbo for awhile but had gotten all pins and needles as she drifted off to dreamland. Her pale, too thin hands lay limply on her legs, fingers curled in sleep he could see chipped black nail polish that looked weeks old.

On the surface she looked like a regular human teenage girl, nothing special, nothing to make him tingle, nothing overt to make him hesitate, but tingle and hesitate he did so, hunkering down on his haunches, balancing on his trainer-clad toes, he gazed at her face straight on. Partially obscured by the heavy curtain of her unruly dark hair, the parts of her face he could see he would describe as pixie-like; delicate features traced on pale skin with no hint of freckles or other marring. From the manner in which her slumbering head had fallen to the side she was going to have a crick in her neck when she eventually woke up and he felt a flash of compassion for her, wondering how long she had been there. Had she been waiting for him? Why would she choose there to sleep after all? She could just be a homeless person. Maybe this was her alley? Imagine! He may have parked the TARDIS in her living room, such as it was. How rude of him. Typically rude, in fact! He would wake her up! Apologize and maybe buy her some nice coffee, or tea or whatever Americans had that passed for it at least.

Course of action decided, he moved to touch her, hand reaching out to shake her shoulder when the twingie-tingle-wingle reared its ugly head one more and brought him up short again, fingers inches from her jacket-clad arm. Oh now this was just crazy! Insane, even. What the hell was wrong with him?

Falling back again to crouch before the girl he knew he was being lured into a false sense of security by her outward appearance and apparent innocence. It was time to delve deeper, beyond the surface to see what lay beneath the benign exterior. He allowed his eyes to lose focus and stretched out with his other senses, seeking for the essence of what made this girl tick.

The most obvious realization was this girl was ill; terribly and terminally ill. While this fact went a long way towards explaining her gaunt and pale appearance it didn’t satisfy the crux of his problem. People were ill all the time. Why this girl? Why sleeping against his TARDIS? Why was she setting off senses inside him that pinged to proceed with caution?

He pushed deeper, stretching out with his mind, the telepathic connection tentative and strained due to his distance from the subject but manageable if only for a short while. He was viewing her surface thoughts and dreams, which were unremarkable really, when the answer to his problem, his tingle-wingle, fluttered into his knowing.

A stark duality existed about this girl. She was who she was but at the same time she was something else entirely and that something else was ancient; more ancient than even he.

This realization hit him like chill water to the face and he jerked back, overbalancing as the telepathic link winked out of existence. He landed on his bum with a startled, biting gasp, one of his feet kicking out to collide with the outstretched foot of the sleeping girl.

He felt like he should run, whatever this girl was she wasn’t something he was prepared to face and she was waking up. He couldn’t get his body to respond to his brain’s frantic commands, though, as instinct to flee warred with higher brain common sense that to run from this defenseless child would be not only silly but cowardly.

So the Doctor, the Time Lord, The Oncoming Storm, The Destroyer of Worlds sat on a dirty Manhattan side walk and watched, horrified, as the mysterious girl inhaled deeply, wrinkled her pert nose, rotated her head to the side to ease the crick he surmised would be there and, pushing her hair away from her face with a slight hand, opened her dark eyes to look at him.

She jumped a bit and made a startled ‘OH’ sound when she took in the Doctor’s stance and closeness. She didn’t move, though, and since the Doctor didn’t know quite what to expect from this girl/not-girl/ thing he took her surprise at seeing him there as a good sign.

A slow smile spread across her face in the ensuing moments as they stared at one another. Her eyes filled with a spark of mischief and her brows furrowed slightly. She leaned forward just a bit and said, “Boo!”

The Doctor jumped and then looked offended when the girl collapsed into giggles at his reaction.

“Oh come on! There’s no need for all that,” he pouted.

“I’m sorry,” the girl gasped between giggles. “Sorry it’s just…you looked so freaked out. I couldn’t help it.”

“Well it’s not every day you find strange women taking a nap on your…,” he gestured futilely at the TARDIS not sure how much to give away, “…your box.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him and crossed her arms, “It’s more than just a box and you know it. You’re the Doctor, right?”

He boggled at her a moment before struggling to collect himself, “Well I might be or I might not. It depends on who I’m talking to.”

Her smile slid away from her face as she considered what to say. For a moment her eyes held the experience of a millennia and her stare was a weight crushing his chest, constricting his hearts. Then she blinked and it was gone, “You can call me Dee. That’ll make things easier.”

Shaken, the Doctor made a great show of standing up and brushing off of long coat and trousers. “Call you?” he queried, voice up an octave, “That’s not your name, then?”

“It’s a name I’ve gone by in the past. It’ll do,” she responded, taking his movements as a cue to rise as well, back sliding along the aged wood of the TARDIS to give her leverage, her movements slow and pained once she got her feet under her.

Despite himself the Doctor moved quickly to assist the girl, Dee, as she stood, mindful to hold her carefully so as not to bruise with his grip. The movement caused her necklace, hidden until now, to swing into view and the Doctor found he was unable to tear his eyes from it.

“Thanks,” Dee sighed out, even that small exertion causing a light sweat to break out on her brow. Her hand reached to grip the Doctor’s forearm but he jumped away quickly as though her touch would burn, eyes still fixed on her pendant.

“What?” Dee asked before looking down to where the Doctor’s eyes rested. The heavy silver ankh swung between her spare breasts, glinting dully in the ambient light.

“Oh…that,” Dee said, “Don’t let it freak you out. It’s just…a symbol.”

“What are you?” the Doctor bit out, stance once again wary, ready to fight or run at a moments notice, “What are you doing here?”

Dee grunted in frustrated, lips pulling into a frown, “I knew this wouldn’t be easy but I’m really screwing it up, aren’t I?”

“Look,” she began, taking a step forward but faltering as the Doctor danced a step back to keep the space between them, “I’m not here for you or anything. I mean you’ve avoided me nine times already. If I didn’t know better I’d start to think you didn’t like me or something,” Her grin tried to be disarming but failed utterly.

“Like you!” squeaked the Doctor still ready to run. “How can I like you? I don’t even know you!”

“Yes,” Dee said, suddenly solemn, “you do. You know me very well. You’ve walked hand in hand with me for all nine hundred plus years of your life, even going to far as to send your own people into my embrace, though it devastated you to survive. I’ve been a near constant companion though you’ve cursed me in one breath and called me to you in the next. You know what I am, Doctor. You know you’re one of mine just as you belong to the rest of my family. You are well regarded, but I’m not here for any of that. I’m here for a favor, if you’ll hear it.”

As she spoke, Dee walked forward, her low voice echoing in the Doctor’s head while she closed the distance between them, reaching out to rest her hand on his forearm before slipping her hand down to entangle her fingers with his. The Doctor permitted this but still looked at her as though she’d lash out and nip his head off at any moment, despite her kind smile.

“Favor?” his mind latching onto the most important bit of her dialogue, “What kind of favor?”

Dee’s grin widened, “Nothing major! Seriously. If we’re lucky this’ll be fun.”

“Fun?” he mimicked, “You have fun?”

Dee rolled her eyes, “Of course!”

“You didn’t answer my other question,” the Doctor stated.

“Which other question,” Dee replied, brows knitting as she tried to recall the last few minutes of conversation.

“What are you doing here?” the Doctor clarified, “I mean, you’re not technically corporeal yet…here you are.” He squeezed her thin hand briefly as evidence of his statement.

“Oh that!” Dee said as she grasped his meaning, “Yes well this happens to me, every few decades or so. It’s part of the deal, being what I am. I have to experience what I take away, you know so I appreciate it and all.”

The Doctor swallowed painfully, “And how do you do that?”

Dee’s smile never faltered, “Well it’s easy. I live…then I die. But you figured out some of that already, didn’t you?”

“You’re sick,” the Doctor stated blandly.

Dee nodded sagely, “Oh yes…very. I’ve got….” She narrowed her eyes, looking off into the distance and smacking her lips a bit, tongue rolling between her lips as if trying to catch the essence of her illness via her sense of taste, “…tuberculosis, I think. That would explain the weakness and fatigue at least. Not sure of the other symptoms…that’s my brother’s realm more than mine and he’s not around to ask.”

“Where is he?” the Doctor asked opting for the genial conversation approach to getting the situation back into some sort of control.

Dee shrugged, dropping the Doctor’s hand and wandering away a few steps, gesturing up and away with her hand, “Out there somewhere. He left and now he travels. All the time traveling. Always on the move,” she paused, “Which brings me to my point, my favor to ask.” She turned to look at him pointedly.

“What?” the Doctor said slowly, “You want to travel with me?”

Dee nodded eagerly, clasping her hands before her with child-like glee, “Oh yes, please!” she gushed. “More than anything! I mean you’re one of my favorite people and I’ve experienced so many things during these times but I’ve never been one of you before.”

“One of me?” the Doctor nearly shouted. “What do you mean one of me?”

Dee rushed to correct him, “Oh no no no! Not one of YOU you specifically but one of your people you. A Time Lord…a Gallifreian. And now I can’t be cuz they’re gone but I CAN do the next best thing which is travel with one…if you’ll let me.”

“I could say no?” the Doctor queried, eyes narrowed.

“Of course you can say no,” Dee shot back, “What am I gonna do….kill you?”

The Doctor flinched at that even as Dee gave him a cheeky grin, “Sorry,” she said lamely, “I couldn’t help it again. Irony and all.”

“You’ve really got to stop doing that if you’re to tag along,” the Doctor sighed.

“You mean I can!” Dee exclaimed.

“Now now no…no I didn’t say that. Not yet, anyway,” the Doctor held up a placating hand, “I’ve got a few questions first.”

“Okay…shoot,” Dee quipped causing the Doctor to groan, “What?!” she cried, “It wasn’t a direct reference!”

“Close enough,” the Doctor ground out before clearing his throat and collecting himself. “Anyway…right. Questions. ONE!” He held up one finger, arm flung out near to Dee’s eyes and paused for dramatic effect, “How long will you be…wanting to…um…travel with me?”

Dee’s previous mirth gentled into a calm, almost serene smile, “One day,” she answered, grasping his outstretched hand and lowering it away from her face.

“What?” the Doctor looked at her disbelieving, “Only one?”

“That’s all I’ve got,” Dee explained, pushing up her jacket sleeve to take a quick glance at her wrist watch, “Actually I’ve got roughly twenty hours left give or take a minute or two.”

“No…it can’t be!” the Doctor exclaimed, striding forward to grasp her wrist and look upon the watch himself, “Oh…what you arrived here at midnight, then?”

“Just before,” Dee said. “I was aiming for midnight on the dot but I don’t have perfect control over these things.”

“Sounds like me and regenerating,” the Doctor mused.

“Don’t I know it,” Dee snorted, making the Doctor shoot her a look from under a cocked eyebrow.

“Well it’s not like I haven’t been there to see them!” Dee exclaimed, taking her wrist back from the Doctor’s grip and righting her jacket sleeve.

“You watch me!” the Doctor said.

“Of course I watch you!” Dee shot back, “You’re dying! I’m there! I’m waiting to see what happens. I’m ready to take your hand if you need me to. So far you haven’t but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to keep showing up.”

“Oh,” the Doctor said dumbly.

“Yeah…oh,” Dee mimicked, mild annoyance flashing across her face.

An uncomfortable silence descended briefly before Dee broke it.

“So,” she started, “Do you have any more questions?”

The Doctor started out of his reverie, his mind wandering back through every time he’d switched bodies, cheated Death, trying to recall if he’d seen or sensed anything remotely similar to the girl before him, but he had to admit he hadn’t.

“Yes, yes, of course,” he stalled. “TWO! Question two, yes? We’re on two?”

Dee nodded briefly and the Doctor carried on. “Seems like it should be more than two. Ah well! Question two. Two two twoey two…RIGHT! Where…would you want to go if you were to travel with me…and I’m not saying you are?”

Dee bent her head to the side, stretching out her still-cricked neck and considering his question. “I don’t know, really,” she admitted, “The whole point of this is to see the universe as YOU see it…so I guess I’d want to go wherever you want to go.”

“Huh,” the Doctor grunted moving to lean against the TARDIS, crossing his arms as he considered her answer, “That’s a switch. Usually I ask people along so I can see the universe through their eyes, not the other way round.”

“Well it’ll be a new experience for both of us,” Dee replied, moving to lean against the TARDIS next to him, crossing her arms in a similar fashion, “I’ve never sought someone out specifically so I can spend my one day with them.”

The Doctor peered down his nose at her, mirth starting to spark alive in his gaze. “Soooooo, what now?”

“What do you mean?” Dee glanced up at him from under her lashes.

“Well usually there’s some sort or arcane right, isn’t there?” the Doctor questioned, “A contract signed in blood or some such nonsense to seal our deal?”

“We have a deal to seal?” Dee teased. “I thought you’d have more questions.”

“Nah!” the Doctor said making his face contort around the word, “I think things are obvious enough, don’t you?”

Dee looked at him skeptically, “You’re agreeing to this awfully quick after being so skittish just awhile ago.”

The Doctor had launched himself off the TARDIS door and pulled out his keys, fumbling a bit before finding the correct one and inserting it into the lock. He glanced over at Dee as he spoke next, “Yeah sorry about that, I just didn’t expect you to be so nice.”

“Thank you!” Dee grinned turning to watch the Doctor open the door, “I wasn’t always like this, though. You should have seen me nearer the beginning. I really took myself too seriously.” She paused as he swung the TARDIS’ door open inward and she peered into the circular room, large and lit greenish by the time rotor. “You didn’t answer my question, though. Why the sudden yes?”

The Doctor answered Dee’s grin as he ushered her inside, “Now who else can say they’ve traveled with Death and lived to tell about it?”

A booming noise erupted from deep inside the TARDIS just before the sounds of dematerialization ground out and the ship disappeared in its usual fits and starts.