LANE CHANGE: Chapter One of a Daria/Doctor Who crossover

by: Ranger Thorne

The following is based on Yui Daoren's "Doctor Who Gives A Damn" and Lawndale Stalker's "The House On Space/Time Lane" as well as the as-of-yet unfinished sequel(s). I have seen the first season of the new series (9th Doctor) and two episodes of the second season (10th Doctor). After finally getting to watch a [i]Doctor Who[/i] series, I wondered how the Daria from the above stories would have fared. But, since my letters addressed to the "TARDIS disguised as a police call box sitting quietly on the corner in Cardiff" have not been answered, I figured I'd write this to find out for myself.

Maybe I have it spelled wrong or something.

A blue police call box was something that had been common in London, England at a time before the police had been given radios. In the year 2008 in the town of Lawndale in the United States, however, they were unheard of. Nonetheless, one had appeared next to the giant strawberry. Which would have been seen as odd in London, England during any period of time.

The man who stepped out of the box was dressed in black, from his shoes and trousers to his black leather coat and his v-necked shirt. His dark hair was trimmed close to his scalp and his gray eyes seemed haunted. At six feet tall, he was too tall for average height but not tall enough to stand out for it.

Closing the door behind him, the man made his way down the street and away from the blue box. A short while later he approached the Cranberry Commons mall, then cut down a side street to avoid the crowd. He passed by several houses until he encountered the intersection with Glen Oaks Lane. After a quick check of house numbers he turned right and continued walking.

He stopped in front of a vacant lot. The ground was neatly trimmed, with a driveway and sidewalk that stopped at nothing. A privacy fence went around three sides of the property from about where the drive ended back. Dropping his head, the man stood quietly before turning to continue on in the same direction.

When the road changed to Howard Drive, the man began to keep track of the house numbers again. When he passed 113, he stopped and looked at the next house with trepidation. Finally, he walked up to the door and knocked.

The woman who opened the door was thirty-ish, with her long black hair pulled back into a ponytail that reached to the small of her back. She was without any makeup and wearing a black running suit with a red T-shirt beneath it. "What do you want?" she demanded when she saw him.

"I'm trying to find Jane Lane," the man said with a British accent.

"Okay, I'll bite," she told him, "I'm Jane Lane. Now, like I said, what do you want?"

"Jane?" Looking confused, he blinked at her. "What year is it?"

"What?" Looking annoyed, she stepped out onto the porch and glared up at him. "What kind of idiot doesn't know the year?"

"One who just got here," he countered. "I thought it was 2007."

"Seven?" She rolled her eyes. "Boy are you gone off the reservation. It's 2014." When the man looks guilty, Jane raised an eyebrow. "You owe me money or something?"

"Um." He took a deep breath and looked her in the eye. "I'm the Doctor," he announced.

"The Doctor? Doctor Who?"

"The Doctor," he repeated. "Daria's grandfather. You remember."

"THE Doctor?"

He nodded. "Yes, you see —" his words were cut off as Jane's fist struck him in the nose, knocking him onto the yard.

"YOU TOOK DARIA AWAY AND GOT HER KILLED!" Jane screamed at him. "AND NOW YOU HAVE THE NERVE TO COME HERE LIKE NOTHING HAPPENED?"

"No!" he replied. "I came to tell you what happened." He sighed as he propped himself up onto his elbows. "I was going to tell you after I talked to the Morgendorffer's but there is nothing but an empty lot over there."

"Of course there is, you idiot!" Rolling her eyes, she explained, "Daria took the house with her when she left!"

"The entire thing?" He blinked but did not try to rise. "How could it take the entire house?"

As suddenly as she had gotten angry, Jane felt the anger evaporate. Holding out a hand, Jane said, "Daria told me that the TARDIS had been integrated with the house for so long that it finally just made it a part of itself."

"Ah, that makes sense." Taking the hand, the Doctor rose to his feet. Rubbing his nose, he told her, "I guess I had that coming, but you have a nasty right."

Jane smirked. "I take martial arts. It helps me deal with what happened." As she started to turn toward the door, she added, "I also think the instructor is cute."

"Now that," he said with a smirk of his own, "sounds like the Jane Lane I remember."

"Forgive the mess," Jane said as they came into the house. "I was grading papers and forgot to clean in here."

"Grading papers?" He looked at her in confusion. "Oh, that's right, you've graduated from university by now." Glancing around, he saw an average sized living room with a large flat-panel television on the wall opposite where a couch sat beneath a window. A telescope with a computer-aided mount rested on a tripod with wheels. The papers Jane had mentioned were on the coffee table. Idly glancing at the one on top confused him again. "That looks like a science paper," he said. "I thought you were an artist."

"After all the crap Daria and Quinn were going on about I thought I needed to do something a little more weighty," she told him. Shrugging, she went on, "Besides, I've always been interested in astronomy. So I transferred from BFAC to Raft, since they have a really good astronomy program."

"But how did you end up back in Lawndale?"

"Daria and Quinn were in a Time War," Jane reminded him. "So I figured if they were ever going to show up again it would be here." She took a deep breath before concluding, "By the time it really sunk in that neither of them were coming back I'd already bought the house from my folks and got use to teaching science at Lawndale State."

"So what happened to your brother, uh," he paused as he tried to remember the name.

"Trent?" Jane asked with a smirk. "He still lives here. He even pays for half the mortgage. Of course," the smirk faded slightly, "to do that he had to get a real job. He's working over at the coffee cup factory."

"Daria told me he was a musician."

"They never made it big. Or even medium-sized for that matter." Gesturing toward the kitchen, she asked, "Would you like some coffee?"

"Tea, if you have it," the Doctor replied. A few minutes later they were sitting in the kitchen at a tall table with a marble top in chairs that were like modified stools. "I like this," he told Jane.

"Thanks. I build the frames myself then bought the marble and cushions. Being an artist as a youth comes in handy sometimes." Setting the cup in front of him, she asked, "I know this might be rough, but what happened out there?"

The Doctor looked down into his tea for over a minute before lifting it to his lips. Finally, he lowered the cup back to the table. "Over the course of the war we came across intelligence that showed us the Daleks were planning on going back in time to the beginning of the universe itself and establishing themselves as the supreme order."

"Wait, you mean the Big Bang?" Jane's eyes widened. "That far back?"

"'Big Bang'?" He smiled at her. "It was a lot more complicated than that, but it does get the point across. Yes, that far back. I convinced the council that we should attack them at that point in time. Now," he paused to take a sip of tea, "a lot of our fleet, surprisingly enough, are not time machines. And we took all of them, from Bowships to Black Hole Carriers to the N-Forms." Looking embarrassed for some reason, he added, "We even armed some of our TARDIS fleet."

"You had an armed TARDIS?"

"No," he corrected, "you see, my TARDIS model can't be armed like that. I was part of the group that created the time field to take the other ships back with us."

"I see."

"When we arrived, the Daleks were waiting for us. Believe me, between the Daleks attacking and the massive amounts of radiation and antimatter flying around it was a nasty place to be." He held up his hand with his finger and thumb barely apart. "If you had this much of a gap in your defenses the radiation alone would kill you."

"So I take it you won?"

"We were losing," the Doctor admitted. "But, lucky me, I had an idea. If we could surround the Dalek fleet with our TARDISes we could use the time field generators to drive them back to the actual point of the, as you called it, 'Big Bang' itself."

"That," she stopped and stared at him. "Nothing could exist them. If, if our theories are correct, there would be no room for so much as an atom to exist."

"Well, that much is true." He looked away as he spoke again, "We used the warships as a distraction to gather the Daleks in one place as we surrounded them. When we generated the time field around them they turned on us. That was when Daria and Quinn had their proudest moments." With a sad smile he said, "They were fantastic."

"They had both survived until then?"

"Yeah." He swallowed as he looked at her. "Quinn's job was to protect Daria. And she did it wonderfully."

"Why Daria?" Jane absently lifted her cool coffee to her lips and drank without tasting it.

"She was in the SuperTARDIS," he reminded her. "Her time engines had been the anchor for the time field. We knew we'd need them to drive the Daleks the final distance, so Quinn and a couple of others were assigned to protect her." A smirk appeared. "Not that she seemed to need it much. That TARDIS had been armed to the teeth. I think it did more damage to the fleet than most of our other ships."

"Daria never does anything halfway," Jane reminded him.

"No kidding," he said, a grin appearing for a long second. "Well, the Daleks figured out that it was Daria who would have to force them backward in time, so they came after her. The other ships protecting her had been destroyed by then, leaving only Quinn in their way. And she certainly did. She took out almost a third of the attacking ships when I saw her TARDIS hit hard. There was an explosion a few seconds later."

"Oh." Jane tried to swallow the lump that had appeared in her throat. "And, and Daria?"

"My TARDIS was hit just as they started the final push to the beginning of time," he explained. "I never saw what happened. But I do know the result."

"She's gone."

"They're all gone." When she looked at him in confusion, he explained, "I'm the last of the Time Lords. My entire people are dead. My home planet is nothing but dust and rock."

"But that happened in the past," she began.

"Gallifrey doesn't exist in the normal time continuum," the Doctor told her. "When the two fleets crashed into the beginning of the universe the shock wave down the time line blew my planet apart and hurled it into the regular time stream as debris."

"Oh." Jane started to drink her coffee but frowned at it and set it aside. "So you're the last then?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"So am I," said as he tried to smile and failed. "But, you know, I'll go on."

"You're the Doctor," she stated, "you'll survive. You always have. Even if you keep changing your face."

"Only a few more to go and then I'm out of new ones," he muttered.

"You lose the last one because of what happened?"

"Yeah." Again he looked away. The haunted look on his face was echoed in his voice as he spoke, "There's a planet, called Decelaraptinguildintshtad. I woke up there after my TARDIS was hit. I was the only living person on the planet."

"You were alone?"

"Yeah. Except," his eyes took on a haunted look, "except for all the others."

"Others? I thought you said you were alone."

"I was the only person, not the only thing. You see, Decelaraptinguildintshtad has the wrecked remains of thousands of TARDISes. It's like a TARDIS Graveyard. By the beach where I woke up to the mountains to the depths of the oceans. They've come there to wait for masters who will never return . . . or to die." He looked away for a while before saying, "Some of the TARDISes have been there for a century, waiting. Most of them, though, were just empty ships. Their hearts died with their pilots." Leaning back he closed his eyes. "Some of those that were still alive were so desperate for a pilot that the ones along the beach imitated my own."

"A planet of blue boxes." Jane smirked then said, "Sorry, but even with the circumstances that's kind of amusing."

After a moment, the Doctor smirked slightly. "Yeah, I guess it is." He drained his tea then slipped off the chair and stood. "Well, I've taken up enough of your time. I'll be on my way."

"You sure you're okay?" Jane asked as she stood as well.

"As I'm going to be. Besides," he added, "the TARDIS picked up a signal from 2005 as I was coming in." Looking thoughtful, he told Jane, "That's probably why I got the year wrong."

"So don't get distracted next time," she scolded him with a smirk. The smirk faded though as they walked out into the yard. Jane looked up and said, "With time travel and all, I'd like to think Daria and Quinn are still out there somewhere. Or," she corrected, "somewhen."

The Doctor looked at her for a long moment. She, like Daria, had been impossible for him to read from the moment they had met. Most people he could catch at least a glimpse of their future or destiny, but not those two. He had heard from Daria how important their friendship had been, and how it had hurt her to leave Jane behind. "She wanted you safe," he told her. "You were what she was fighting for. She wanted me to be sure to remember that in case she . . ." Now he looked up into the sky. "I'm not really sure how I survived," he admitted. "Maybe it was something different about my old TARDIS that they changed in later models. Maybe it's how I'm half-Human or just the right place at the right time. But at least I could pass on that one message." Looking at Jane again, he repeated, "She wanted you to live, Jane. You were the most important person in her life and she fought and died so you could live."

"I appreciate that," Jane said. "But I'd rather have her here so I could kick her fanny for going off and dying on me."

"So would I," the Doctor said, grinning. "I'd like to kick the fanny of a lot of people."

"A regular fanny-kicking party," Jane went on, grinning back.

"Yeah."

The grins faded as they looked again toward the heavens. Finally she looked at him. "Come back and see me," she requested.

"Why don't you come with me?" was the response.

"Too old," she told him. "I'm too old to start adventuring now and I have too many responsibilities here."

"You're only thirty," he argued.

"Which, compared to your nine hundred and whatever is nothing, but it's a little late for me to go from lowly science professor to Indiana Jones."

"I promise I won't make you wear a hat."

"But what about the whip?" she asked with a wicked gleam in her eye. "Really, though, I'd rather stay here. Besides, I'll slow you down with the younger chicks." Nudging him with her elbow, she said, "And you know how the chicks like a man with his own police box."

"You are strange," he stated. The smile was a sad one as he held out his hand. "Be seeing you around, Jane Lane."

Shaking his hand, Jane said, "You, too, Doctor insert-unknown-last-name-here." She watched him until he was out of sight before sighing and turning to go back inside. Stopping in the doorway, she looked back in the direction he'd gone with a confused look on her face.

I would have gone, she thought, but it would keep him from meeting someone he's supposed to meet. But how do I know that?

London, 2005.

He heard her before he saw her. Her corn stalk colored hair and full lips and her attempt at bravery had the autons distracted. Too bad it couldn't last.

"Derek, is this you?" she asked hopefully.

Reaching out, he took her hand in his. "Run," he told her.