The Doctor and the Dalek
(In the Dalek asylum, finding Oswin.)
"Why do they hate you so much? They hate you so much. Why?" I asked, despising the mechanical rasp that had become my voice. The Doctor was breathing quickly, the front of his shirt twisted around my plunger. He glanced down, then looked up to meet my eyes. Eyestalk, I corrected myself, hating the idea.
His comical chin tightened as he whispered: "I have fought them… many, many times."
The data I had seen rushed into my brain, filling my sight with visions of the Doctor. I saw him old, older than it seemed possible; and young, donning a blue sonic probe wielded like a great weapon. I saw him destroying Daleks, their smoking shells left to rust and rot. Fleets destroyed, battles lost, terror and impossible rage filled my mind. I felt a bead of dread grow inside of me. "We have grown stronger in fear of you."
"I know. I tried to stop." His ancient voice, broken and hollow.
"Then run." Externally, I knew my features had shown no sign of activity, but internally, I had found the trigger sequence to shut down the force field surrounding this misbegotten dump.
"What did you say?"
"I've taken down the force field. The Daleks above have begun their attack. Run!" The realization that I was a Dalek had taken its toll. I felt an unfathomable depth of archaic anger bubbling beneath my human façade.
"Oswin, are you…"
"I am Oswin Oswald. I fought the Daleks and I am… human. Remember me." My mind was like a theoretical soufflé that was theoretically collapsing, but the only reason I still appeared composed was the abhorrent robot body.
"Thank you."
"Run! Run you clever boy. And remember." I whispered, watching as he disappeared through the door. The Dalek overdrive was taking over my circuits, my mind, my emotions! I was literally starting to jitter from the will required to keep the Dalek instincts from ruining the last thing I had left… my mind. At least they got away, I thought to myself.
"Oi! On second thought, you're coming with me, Oswin." He shouted, grinning as he skidded into the room. "Come on now, no time to waste." He started pushing me along, hands fearlessly fastened to my metal shell. I formed an incoherent noise halfway between a Dalek scream and a human sob, trying to warn him off. The Doctor made a quick motion I didn't catch before shining a green sonic at me. The Doctor in my memories had used a sonic to defeat Daleks before, and my body, wildly reacting to the potential threat, woke up and jerked away.
Realizing the extent of the uninhibited Dalek instincts as I started HOVERING, I screeched in one last moment of clarity, "Run! Just run!" and then felt the freakish pressure on my mind disappear as the Doctor did something with his sonic probe.
"That's just a temporary fix, but it'll have to do for now," he muttered. "If you could, Oswin, come down from there and we can get out before the planet is destroyed by thousands of angry Daleks. Come on then."
"Uh, coming." I squeaked, then winced as it came out as a repellent rasp.
"We'll have to fix your voice," he said. Eyes sparkling, he smiled at me and asked: "Want to give me a ride to the teleport?"
A minute and a handful of swearwords later we were off, hovering over the shaking ground, awkwardly dodging chunks of ceiling that seemed set on murdering the Doctor, who had decided that perching on my head would be an excellent method of travel. As the teleport appeared in my eyestalk, I saw a man and a women standing atop it, both very busy.
"Ponds!" the Doctor called. "Prepare to be teleported back up to the Parliament of the Daleks!" Not unexpectedly, they kept kissing. The Doctor cast around himself with an exasperated expression before saying, "Oh… come on Oswin lets go… separate them…" he finished disgustedly.
"Ponds." I projected my voice across the room as I floated toward the teleport. In a panic they looked up. At first their faces were laced with fear, which transformed into confusion as they spotted the gleeful Doctor.
"Doctor…" Nose boy started, but the exultant tones of the man on my head drowned him out.
"Look Rory! I found Oswin. And she's a Dalek. Well. Not really, she's a human. But a Dalek. Oh, I'll explain later. Come along, Ponds."
The teleport placed us inside some sort of ship with warm golden walls and an impressive control console stuck right in the center. Hallways led out of the room in several different directions.
"Is this the Parliament of the Daleks?" I asked, trying not to sound scary. The red headed woman and Rory jumped, obviously uncomfortable near me.
"Of course not…" the Doctor griped, looking offended. "This is my ship, the T.A.R.D.I.S. The Dalek Parliament is out those portals." He motioned to two small windowed doors. "It would be rude not to pay them a visit," he grinned. As he bounded out the doors, I noticed the redhead approaching me. Swiveling my domed head to better observe her, I felt a small bit of pressure leak into my mind. Angry thoughts; Dalek thoughts, boiled from the breach and I struggled to hold them in check.
"What are you?" the women said, oblivious to my internal torment.
"I …am Oswin." I managed. Whatever the Doctor had done, it was wearing off.
"I know, the Doctor said. Only, he didn't really explain why he let a Dalek on the T.A.R.D.I.S. He hates Daleks."
She was Scottish, I could hear it in her voice and I hung onto that fact, that simple little fact that proved I was still human. Still human! The Dalek consciousness chipping at the edges of my mind recoiled as I hosed it with thoughts of humanness. And the fact I was trapped in this can of hate, settled in, blanketing me like snow. My eyestalk clicked and moved jerkily down to look at my twisted little arms through the blue lens; the blue lens that was my eyes. I tried to blink, but the eye nerve just kept recording as I shifted my stunted limbs. Worst of all, perhaps, was the lack of feeling that comes with the absence of skin. The hard metal shell I possessed was a prison…
"Well…?" The girl asked. "What makes you so special?"
"I…I…am… human." I hissed in my broken, horrible voice. I wanted get away from her, from myself, from everything…
"Oswin, you beauty." The Doctor sang, face jubilantly happy as he danced into the room and hit several different gadgets on the console. "Doctor Who! Doctor Who! Amy, what's wrong with Oswin?"
"I don't know. It went quiet."
"Amelia Pond," he said with the mien of one disciplining a child, "Oswin Oswald is a perfectly normal HUMAN girl who had the misfortune of being transfigured into a Dalek. She is not an it. Right now, she is coming to terms with that fact, so I hope you didn't upset her."
"I just asked her some questions…" Amy muttered.
"Oswin? You OK?" The Doctor, most of his bravado abated, strode over and touched my icy casing. It hurt too much to hear the clicks and whirrs of machinery that used to be me. It hurt too much to think about me. It hurt it hurt it hurt! Periphrastically, I realized he was holding my head piece and looking into my eyestalk. "Oswin." He stated the word, peering down into my miserable mind. "OK, look Oswin, everything might seem really bad and well -just really bad-but there's a chance, a tiny chance I can fix you. Just focus on that."
He looked up and fastened his cold eyes on the redhead. "Amy! What did you say to her?"
"Doctor, I just asked what she was..." Amy tried to explain, painfully aware of her mistake.
"Do you even know, do you have any idea what you've done? Here is this girl, this wonderful girl and she is just SOBBING but you can't even see that because Daleks can't cry. Daleks don't cry. And she is stuck in that dratted shell, possibly for the rest of her life, and all she can do about it is cry with no one to hear her. Daleks aren't supposed to be heartbroken, they have no sound for misery."
"I'm sorry." She whispered.
"Is that all? Amelia Pond, I am disappointed in you."
The doctor looked like he wanted to say more, but I interrupted, "You should have left me… I was ready to die. But, If you think you can save me, then I want to escape this…" I cast around for the right word and decided. "…This hell."
"I'm sorry." Amy said again, her voice trembling. Once more, I swiveled my head around to look at her, forcing the Doctor to release me. The watery lens of my eyestalk cast a sad shadow on her, and with a slight shock I realized she was crying. Feeling more than a little bitter as Rory came up and hugged her, I pretended not to hear. They hadn't heard me crying…
As Rory drew Amy away with him through one of the hallways, I rolled up to the console.
"Want to see if we can change that voice of yours?" The Doctor asked in lighter tones.
"Yes." I breathed.
"Focus on what your voice used to sound like, any memory that involves you chattering, anything that reminds you of the tone you used to have. If I splice those memories with your translator unit, it should default to your own voice. Probably."
"Better than nothing." I screeched. God, I made myself flinch.
"Here, it'll be ready in a bit… Don't be like that! She's not a real Dalek, dear." The T.A.R.D.I.S. seemed to convulse, lights flickering and sparks flying. I looked up at the Doctor with a questioning expression. Oh. I didn't have one. "She doesn't like Daleks! We fought them in the Time War, and well, she's a bit prejudiced. Actually, I am too. Just not toward you, Ossy." As he said this last part, he grabbed a hammer from who knows where and rammed it into the console. "She was having a temper tantrum," he explained. Spinning around and gripping my eyestalk, he grubbed his sonic probe out of his coat and used it to pop some restraints keeping my head attached.
"H-Hey." I said sharply. "What are you…?" My speech gave out as he pulled a chip out of my translator unit, then slid another back in. "…Doing?" I shrieked in considerable distress. Wait. "Getting a little friendly there, aren't you." I quipped in my beautiful, deceptively human voice.
"What?" the Doctor demanded as he swung my head back on, smacking into my main Dalek body piece. Picking himself up with my eye stalk, he promptly went red.
"Down boy." I laughed. The ostentatious noise translated perfectly, and I felt my spirits lift. "So tell me," I asked, keen to hear my own voice, "how'd you do that with a sonic probe?"
"It's a sonic screwdriver, not a probe…" the Doctor corrected, still a bit pink. " If you're going to be staying here for any length of time, you'll need to know that. Screwdriver, not probe. Also, if you didn't already notice, my T.A.R.D.I.S. is alive, and she doesn't like you. Be nice to her and she shouldn't be too mean."
"Got it." I said cheerily, clapping my plunger and gun thingy together.
"Anything else you want to know?" he asked.
"Will I be overcome by evil Dalekness and try to kill any of you?"
"That's a very good question…" the Doctor said. " Do you feel like doing any of those types of things? He looked at me curiously. I tried to look less like a deadly mutant robot.
"I did, when you left the T.A.R.D.I.S. earlier, but then Amy started chatting with me and my, uh, temper tantrum sorta scared it away."
"What do you mean 'it'?" he wondered.
"Well, it's like a separate consciousness trying to get into mine, like a creature. Daleks have a hive mind, right? That might be it."
"Yeah, the path web. Tell you what, we can expand on this inquest tomorrow. We've had enough Daleks for one night." His smile faded as he realized what he had said. "Um, sorry… let me walk you to your room, I had the T.A.R.D.I.S. build one for you, only, she might try to lead you astray." I didn't reply, letting my silence create its own ambiguities as we headed toward my room. It was remarkably easy, the Doctor had commented to get to the inconspicuous door that was my chamber. I realized why as I rolled into the room. Gray concrete speared with iron bars leered up and enclosed the walls. The Doctor was right. The T.A.R.D.I.S. definitely did not like me.
After sitting in my little cage for a substantial amount of time, I deduced I wouldn't be able to fall sleep utilizing any normal method. Using some innate Dalek software, I shut off my consciousness and lost sensation.
A knocking noise resonated through my subconscious, and I slowly became aware of the world again. Amy stood in the threshold of my room, dressed in blue flannel pajamas, gaze darting around me. Centering my eyestalk to rest on her face (she was rather pretty), I felt a strange muttering tickling around my awareness.
"I just wanted to say I'm sorry. Again." Amy said haltingly, her countenance reflecting her words as she uttered them. "I don't think I've ever seen the Doctor as mad at me as last night, not that that's the reason I wanted to apologize." She looked directly into my eyestalk and gave me a sad smile. "I was hoping we could start over." Holding out her hand, Amy said teasingly: "Hi, I'm Amy! Who're you?"
Playing along, I brightened the light blooming from my eyestalk and replied, "Oswin Oswald, at your service." I rolled forward and pretended not to notice her reaction to my speaking voice. Stopping just before her, I tentatively held out my plunger arm. It seemed somewhat less threatening then the whisk gun. In a gesture of good faith, she gripped the plunger and made to start a handshake.
I locked up, the whispering in my mind becoming angry shouting, urging me to exterminate, exterminate, EXTERMINATE. The plunger, no, the manipulator arm tightened around the girl's hand preparing to crush her appendage and I saw the fear in her fragile, disgustingly alien face. Wait. No… She was human. I was human. I was human!
"Sorry 'bout that." I chirped, while conspicuously releasing the suction on her hand. Retracting the plunger, I rolled past her, feeling brittle. I needed to get the Doctor to help with this insane urge to murder… everything.