Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who.

A/N: I called this story AU in the summary, I know, but I really think it's less Alternate Universe than Possible Universe. Obviously, no one who's not involved in Doctor Who knows how Jenna-Louise Coleman will return as the Doctor's (human) companion, but this is my take on it. I tried to make everything in it fit as something that could have happened, even if it turns out that it didn't.

A/N 2: I actually wrote this as an assignment for my English class. No, the assignment was not "write a piece of Doctor Who fanfiction" - actually it was just, "write a public argument" and I chose to do one in the form of Doctor Who fanfiction. Because my teacher is awesome, she let me.

Anyway, as it's an assignment which I have to turn in next Friday, it would be great if you read it critically and gave me constructively critical reviews. Also, if anyone would like to beta-read it, checking for grammar, spelling, and logical errors, that would be completely great! A few of my classmates looked at it, but - get this - no one in my class has seen this episode. And very few of them actually watch Doctor Who at all - some had never heard of it. Shocking, right? Of course, that means it didn't make any sense to them.

Note: The parts in italics are Oswin's audio journals.

I am Human

Brief summary of what happened today: got shipwrecked, destroyed a bunch of Daleks, and made a new friend – also of the Dalek variety.

Perhaps I'll start at the beginning, shall I?

Oswin shifted warily, hand trembling on the blaster in her hand. It was a standard issue weapon, given to anyone who might need to defend themselves, but she'd never used it before. It couldn't be too difficult though – just point and squeeze, right? She didn't know where she was and couldn't see anyone else from the Alaska. Maybe they were all dead. She swallowed hard, hoping this wasn't so.

The darkness pressed in all around her and the silence was complete except for her own, ragged breathing. Then something rustled to her left. Swinging the gun in that direction, she spoke shakily. "Hello?" There was no response. "Who are you? Where am I?"

"...Eggs."

She blinked. Eggs? Not exactly what she'd been expecting the creator of the rustling to say first. "Where am I?" She asked again. "Where am I?"

"Eggs."

"I don't understand! Is this place called 'Eggs?'"

"Eggs...ter...minate. Ex-ter-minate! Ex-ter-minate!"

Oh. "Dalek," Oswin felt a tear roll down her cheek. If this was a Dalek, then there was no way she was getting out of here alive. "Goodbye, Mum." She pulled the trigger and a single burst of energy was emitted from the gun. Everything she'd ever learned about the Daleks told her that it would be no good; they had defences to fight off all but the strongest weapons.

Which was why the explosion came as a complete surprise. Screaming, Oswin ducked as the Dalek's outer casing – along with bits of the creature inside – showered on her in pieces. Truly terrified now, she scrabbled at her pocket, trying to get at the torch she suddenly remembered was inside. If there was one Dalek here, maybe there were more...

There were. About thirty of them in the room around her, as far as she could see. They seemed to be catatonic – was that possible? Could Daleks even be catatonic? - but even as she shone the torch around, they started waking up, blue lights blinking into life in their eyestalks. Oswin wasted no time in raising her blaster again and starting to shoot. Each Dalek exploded as the first had and she began to feel a shred of hope for her continued existence.

Until the blaster ran out of battery. When there was still one Dalek left.

"Mer-cy."

Oswin blinked. Her now-useless gun was pointed directly at the remaining Dalek – maybe it didn't know she was out of power? Still, this was a Dalek and no Dalek would ever beg for mercy, as far as she knew. She must have heard wrong.

"Mer-cy. Show me mer-cy."

"Why?" Oswin asked, completely flummoxed by this extremely un-Dalek-like behaviour.

"Be-cause I can help you."

Oswin pretended to think about it. Help her? Sure, the Dalek could help her. Help her to be exterminated. Help her die. Unfortunately, she didn't really have a choice here. She could hold this Dalek at gunpoint here until it realized she couldn't actually shoot it...or she could accept its offer of help and hope that the un-Dalek-ness would continue.

Slowly, she lowered the gun. "How?"

According to my Dalek friend, this planet is the Asylum of the Daleks. It's where they put any Dalek that goes wrong – the insane, the injured. Those unable to defend themselves or those that are just, in any way, just a little bit different. The Dalek race must be pure, of course, but at the same time they don't like to kill any of their own.

Only place in the universe you could find a Dalek and call it your friend, I suppose. Only a Dalek that the others had labelled mad would be willing to help a human to save its own life.

The first thing the Dalek did was tell her to find an intact bit of her spaceship and barricade herself – and it – inside.

"Why?"

"The nan-o-cloud. You must hur-ry."

It refused to say anything else until she did as it said. It felt an awful lot like a trap. Wouldn't it be so easy for the Dalek to wait until she let her guard down and shoot her? But it was so insistent and it almost sounded worried. "All right, all right," she muttered, motioning for the Dalek to go ahead of her down the nearest passageway.

They came to a part of the ship unexpectedly quickly and as soon as they saw it, the Dalek began screeching, "In-side! Hur-ry, hur-ry!" Oswin had no choice but to open the hatch and follow it in. Only when she'd sealed the door behind them did it appear to relax. "You are safe now."

"Safe from what though?" Oswin demanded.

"The nan-o-cloud."

"Thank you. Repeating a meaningless word to me really helps," she told it sarcastically, rolling her eyes.

"The nan-o-cloud is the pla-net's de-fence system. It will trans-form any in-tru-der in-to a Da-lek!" The Dalek explained succinctly.

"It will do what now?" Oswin gasped.

So, apparently this "nanocloud" is used to make sure nothing attacks/releases the Daleks from the Asylum. As soon as we crashed, little robots in the atmosphere started making me...think like a Dalek. And if I spent too long out there, I'd grow an eyestalk, like a Dalek? The ship automatically recognizes the nanobots as threats and threw up shields against them as soon as it crashed – apparently. Not sure how much of this I believe. For one thing, why didn't my Dalek just leave me out there to be converted if it was happening anyway?

Either this is an elaborate scheme, or it really does have mental problems.

Oswin soon discovered that this Dalek might be insane, by Dalek standards, but that was not the only reason it had been subjected to this imprisonment. Upon turning on the lights, she was able to see it properly for the first time and found that it was missing both its plunger and its ray gun. Both cowardly and weaponless - this Dalek was the epitome of uselessness to its own race.

By luck, the piece of the Alaska that they were in was actually part of the living quarters. There were enough supplies and provisions stocked there to keep her alive for years, if she were to be stuck here that long. Oswin made a face at the thought. Hopefully not.

"So, now what, Dalek?" Oswin asked. "You've saved me from the nanocloud – or say you have, anyway – but what are we supposed to do now? Don't suppose you have any convenient means of getting off the planet, or you'd have used it yourself already."

"Cor-rect," the Dalek grated. "But I can teach you."

"Teach me what?"

"To use Da-lek tech-nol-ogy."

"Oh," Oswin chewed her lower lip thoughtfully. "Might be useful. All right then. Teach me."

Day 7 of life with a Dalek. A Dalek who is not an extremely effective teacher.

To be fair, I'm sure it's hard to teach without hands...arms...whatever it is you call Dalek appendages. Beats me how they managed to develop technology at all. And now that they've got it, how do they use it? I mean, a lot of what I'm learning uses keyboards, for heaven's sake!

Have to be fair again. The Dalek isn't teaching me to really use Dalek technology; he's teaching me how to hack it so I can adapt it to what I already have here. So, yes, the keyboards were actually part of the Starship Alaska and were built by humans, for humans.

Whatever. No matter how they made this stuff, it's really intense...and kinda fun to use. Daleks are so into the whole "sameness" idea that even their tech is completely interconnected. My Dalek says that eventually I'll be able to control the whole planet, right from here.

Cool.

Chuckling, Oswin set down her recorder and let her eyes slide shut as she leaned back in the hammock. At first, she'd been nervous about sleeping with a Dalek in the room, but that had only lasted as long as she could keep herself awake the first night. It hadn't killed her then; she had to assume it wasn't planning on doing it now, either.

Time passed surprisingly fast on the Asylum. The things Oswin was learning were interesting and as she began to grasp the basics, the technology became easier to understand. She learned quickly.

Still, life was far from perfect. Aside from being stuck on a planet full of the universe's worst enemy, Oswin found that she was going through major mood swings several times a day. She would be perfectly fine one moment, then screaming about nothing the next.

"Oh, what is wrong with me?!" she yelled, channelling one burst of irrational anger into more legitimate frustration. "I'm serious – I'm never like this!" This time she actually directed the shout at the Dalek. "What's wrong with me, what's wrong, what's wrong! Tell me!"

The Dalek rolled backward into a corner, evidently intimidated. "I am not sure," it replied.

Oswin was not satisfied. She grabbed her useless blaster from the shelf where she'd put it weeks ago and raised it to point at the Dalek. "You know! You must know. I know, you know, so tell me! What's going on?"

"The...nan-o-cloud," it grated reluctantly.

"You said I was safe from it!"

"If the nan-o-cloud could get in your ship, it would have con-ver-ted you on the day you ar-rived," the Dalek said. "But you spent some time un-pro-tec-ted so you were par-tial-ly changed."

Oswin felt her fingers go numb on the gun and she hurriedly set it down before she dropped it. "But – but it's been getting worse. If this were just from that one encounter, then why would it keep getting worse?"

"It is pos-si-ble..." the Dalek answered uncertainly. "There is the pos-si-bil-i-ty that a small number of nan-o-bots followed us in when we first came here. They would be work-ing slow-ly, but eventually even a small number will be able to convert you completely."

Day 89.

This has been its plan all along! This is why it brought me here in the first place! I has just been keeping me busy all this time, teaching me all the this technology stuff so I wouldn't kill it. All the time, just waiting for the robots to do their work.

Did it think I wouldn't figure this out? Well, I did! Of course I did and I won't stand for manipulation and trickery!

So last night, I ended it.

Daleks didn't sleep, not really, not ever. Oswin had known this before crashing on this planet, which was why she had been surprised to find Daleks who were evidently catatonic when she'd first arrived. She'd now learned that they did have a sleep-like state to go into if there was nothing else to do – or perhaps more accurately, nothing for them to kill. This particular Dalek went into that state every time Oswin went to bed. It probably got bored.

The night after discerning the Dalek's apparent treachery, Oswin pretended to fall asleep when she normally did, but was in fact only waiting until she was sure the Dalek had gone catatonic.

Oswin slipped off the hammock silently and tiptoed over to the computer from which she could now pretty much control anything she wanted. Because of all the lessons over the past months, she found diverting some energy from the core of the planet into the blaster to be an easy task, refuelling it in seconds.

It began humming when it reached full charge and she hurriedly tried to muffle the sound, but it was too late. The Dalek was already waking up.

"What are you do-ing?"

"What does it look like?" Oswin replied coldly, bringing the gun up and turning to face it. "You've only lived this long because I didn't have the means or the desire to kill you. Now I do."

"No!" It screamed and its voice raised in volume and pitch as it realized she wasn't bluffing. "NO! MER-CY! MER-CY! MER-!"

Day 90

The Dalek is dead. I killed it. It felt so justifiable at the time, killing the Dalek. I wonder why it doesn't seem that way now?

I mean, it was a Dalek. Killing a Dalek isn't a crime. It's not even considered morally wrong by any society I know of – other than, of course, the Daleks themselves. In fact, it's really doing the universe a favour. Besides, I killed plenty when I first crashed. Never felt bad about that, did I?

Still, that was self-defence. I had no real reason to believe this Dalek knew the nanobots had followed us and less to believe that it had planned the whole thing. Now that I'm thinking about it, I don't even understand my own thought process...

Maybe it was the nanobots! They were clouding my judgement, making me think like a Dalek. A Dalek is defined by its ability to hate, so they must've been making me hate the Dalek so I wanted to kill it no matter what!

And now I'm myself again, so I can see that. How long will this last, I wonder.

Wish I'd never met that Dalek. I wish it had never been here. I just want to forget.

Oswin got rid of the remnants of the Dalek gradually over the next few days – the ship's effective waste disposal system meant that she didn't even have to open the door and risk letting more nanobots in to do this. Finally, it was completely gone. All evidence of the Dalek's existence was scrubbed away as though it had never been.

She even deleted her journal entries from the first three months.

Day 100.

Yes, I've been on this planet for 100 days now. I won't talk about what happened before. I don't want to. I'd rather just forget about it all. Forget it.

The Alaska crashed. I took shelter in this room and can't leave because...because there are Daleks at my door, ready to exterminate me if I do. Their technology was extremely easy to hack, so I've taught myself how to use it.

If I had my way, this is what I'd remember.

Though Oswin didn't know it, she slowly got her way over the next few months. The nanobots floating around her had never met someone like this – someone who actually wanted their memories to be changed.

They were as intrigued as tiny flying robots could manage to be. They decided to oblige her.

Erasing the the Dalek was the easiest part, since Oswin had already done most of the work herself by destroying all physical evidence. All that was left was to get rid of the memories. Something nanobots excelled at. The next step was to alter her perception ever so slightly to make her think there were active Daleks just outside, even though there weren't. Not too difficult either.

The only thing that gave them any trouble was getting Oswin to believe she'd learned to use the technology here all by herself. This couldn't be done only by deleting memories; they actually had to create new ones for her. Just moments of remembering herself working on something or figuring something out. They eventually even added to her knowledge, making her a veritable expert in Dalek tech – probably the first such who wasn't a Dalek and certainly the first human one.

They succeeded in everything. By the time Oswin was making her 200th audio journal, she was completely convinced that her made up story was true. The nanobots' self-assigned work was done and they'd forgotten that their original instructions had actually been to turn her into a Dalek puppet.

There were side effects to the changes though. Oswin became confused and forgetful a lot, but she didn't even notice it was happening. She made soufflé after burnt soufflé, never figuring out that the problem was her lack of proper ingredients. She boarded up the door with pieces of wood and nails, when she should've realized that Daleks would've been able to get through that as easily as they would a door without reinforcement. She also never wondered where the materials came from – in fact, they were as imaginary as the Daleks who were trying to get in.

Day 363. The terror continues.

Also, made another soufflé. Very nearly. Check defences...they came again last night. Still always at night. Maybe they're vampires. Oh, and it's my mum's birthday. Happy birthday, Mum. I did make you a soufflé, but it was too beautiful to live.

"Hello? Hello, Carmen!" For the first time in a year, Oswin heard a human voice that wasn't her own. She turned to the speaker where the voice had come from, shocked, "Hello!"

"Hello?" She answered, hardly daring to believe her ears.

"Come in, come in. Come in, Carmen."

"Hello! Yes, yes, sorry!" She cried, running over to answer the microphone. Switching off the music, she continued breathlessly. "Do you read me?"

"Yes, reading you loud and clear. Identify yourself and report your status."

Oswin was still trying to process the fact that someone was actually talking to her. "Hello. Are you real? Are you actually, properly real?"

"Yep, confirmed," the voice replied, chuckling a little. "Actually, properly real."

Oswin grinned and quickly gave him the information he'd asked for. The conversation went smoothly until he wanted to know what she'd been doing to fight off the Daleks for an entire year by herself. "Making soufflés?" She said uncertainly. It wasn't the right answer. It felt wrong in her mouth, but she didn't know what else to say. Nothing else would make sense; not that that had, of course.

"Soufflés?" Her unknown correspondent repeated, laughing a little. "Against the Daleks?" Then he suddenly went serious. "Where'd you get the milk?"

That was the question, wasn't it? The important question that she'd never thought to ask. She didn't have milk, of course she didn't. She knew the recipe called for it, so why would she try without? She didn't think about it now either, because the connection was suddenly cut off.

"No!" she cried, frantically trying to get it back. "Hello! Hello?" But it was gone.

Helping the Doctor, as Oswin's new correspondent called himself, and his friends navigate their way through the Asylum was not all that difficult. In fact, it was the most exciting thing she'd got to do in a year and was loving every minute of it.

She worried, though, when the Doctor gave up the wristband that the Daleks had given him. It had been for protection against the nanocloud, so what would happen to him now? It had been a long time since she'd thought about the nanocloud. She told him she was shielded when he asked why she hadn't been converted, and that she'd made the shield herself...but she didn't actually remember doing that. She must've, because otherwise she wouldn't still be herself, but when and how?

Now, as the Doctor stood right outside her door, he was also questioning her ability to use Dalek technology.

"Tell me what you did!"

"The Daleks, they have a hive mind, well they don't, but they have a sort of...telepathic web," Oswin answered, words rolling off her tongue easily. Where had she learned them though?

"The Pathweb, yes," The Doctor said weakly.

"I hacked into it, did a master delete on all the information connected with 'The Doctor.'"

"But you made them forget me?" The idea seemed like a completely new one to him. Or maybe he was just shocked that she'd been able to do it. "I've tried hacking into the Pathweb," he continued as she opened the door for him. "Even I couldn't do it."

"Come and meet the girl who can," Oswin replied cheekily and he turned around to finally see her.

The next few minutes seemed to pass as a blur. At the same time each moment, every word the Doctor was saying, sounded clear and individual. She was having trouble understanding what he meant no matter how many times he repeated it.

"Oswin, I am so sorry. But you are a Dalek."

"I am not a Dalek."

It wasn't true, it couldn't be true! She'd know if she were a Dalek. How could she not know? But those gaping holes in her memories that she was only now realizing were there. The flaws in the reasoning, the soufflés... "The milk, Oswin," he brought up that subject just as she was thinking of it. "The milk and the eggs for the soufflés, where, where did it all come from?"

"Eggs..." Oswin murmured, still trying to wrap her mind around what he was saying. "Eggs..." Flashes of scenes crossed her mind, scenes of being converted into a Dalek. Memories that she'd never had before.

"It wasn't real. It was never real," the Doctor repeated in the background. She was barely listening.

"Eggs...term...i...nate..." the word finished without her permission.

"Oswin...?"

"Ex-ter-min-ate. Ex-ter-min-ate! Ex-ter-min-ate! EX-TER-MIN-ATE!"

Oswin opened her eyes to see two tall, brick walls, with blue sky in between them.

That didn't matter though, because she'd never expected to open her eyes ever again. The Doctor had said she was a Dalek and she had believed him, so she shouldn't really have any eyes. Just an eyestalk. But she did have eyes, because she'd just opened them, which meant the Doctor had been wrong. Oh so very, happily, wrong!

Not really caring what the walls were, beyond the knowledge that they meant she was outside and no longer on the Dalek Asylum, Oswin closed her eyes again to try and figure out what had happened. The Doctor had convinced her that she was a Dalek, yes, and like a proper Dalek she had then attempted to exterminate him. She hadn't done it though. She'd fought the Dalek instinct and let him go unharmed. She wouldn't have been able to kill him anyway, right? She wasn't a Dalek. She smiled, savouring the wonderful thought.

How come he'd thought she was then? Her smile disappeared as she worked on this problem. He'd evidently seen her as a Dalek and been so convinced by the appearance that he'd managed to convince her, as well. But why would he see that...?

Oh! The nanocloud. He hadn't had any protection. Why the nanocloud would want the Doctor to perceive her as a Dalek rather than a human, she couldn't fathom, but it had obviously done just that. And what protection did she know that she'd had? There may have been some, built in with the ship, but maybe she'd been affected too. Enough for her to be susceptible to the Doctor's awful suggestion that she may have been turned into a Dalek.

The Daleks who had sent the Doctor had been planning on blowing up the planet and as far as she could remember, they had done so. So next question was, how was she still alive? She should've been killed in the explosion. Squeezing her eyes shut tighter, she tried to picture what had happened after the explosions had begun. She'd been typing fast on the keyboard, but like when she was talking about the Pathweb, she'd only subconsciously known was she was doing. Activating some sort of emergency Dalek technology?

Yes, that was it. She smiled once more, having figured it out. An Emergency Temporal Shift, that's what it was. Something the Daleks used only in the most extreme of emergencies because it would send the user anywhere, to any time, and leave them completely drained after the trip. Even as she realized this, she felt the dead weight of her arms and legs and wondered how she'd ever managed to open the dense pieces of lead that were her eyelids the first time around.

Oswin felt herself drifting asleep. The last thought that crossed her mind before utter oblivion was a very comforting one:

I am human.

A/N: I'm sorry about the last section. I had no idea how to work in the rest of my explanation other than to just have Oswin think through it in much the same way that I did when I was first forming this theory. If you have any ideas as to how else I could do this, I'd love to hear them!

As I said above, this is for an assignment, so anything you have to critique, please please do so. In particular, I need to know if I got any facts wrong or if there are any logical inconsistencies. Also, as I'm American trying to use British words and spelling, if you noticed any problems there, please point those out.

Really, anything at all that you think I could do better, let me know! Please review!

(Reply to mavic chen's review: I know there's very little chance you'll read this, but I very much dislike questions that can't be answered, so I'm putting the answer here on the off chance. It's all about perceptions and how perceptions are portrayed on screen. When Amy saw dancing people, we saw dancing people, but when the Doctor saw them as spinning Daleks, we saw spinning Daleks. When Oswin saw herself as human, we saw her as human, but when the Doctor saw her as a Dalek, we saw her as a Dalek. The idea here (not correct with the Name of the Doctor now, of course, but this was written long before then) is that both the Doctor and Oswin had had their perceptions altered by the Daleks - so who knows who was right. We certainly can't say it was the Doctor, just because we saw what he thought he saw.)