The site is being stupid and not letting me reply to my reviews, so I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's taken the time to write one for this story! And Aietradaea, you're half right ;) The Doctor will be making an appearance in the next chapter (I think. Possibly. Maybe. At the end. -shrug-), but for now, more Dalek goodness! Btw, yes, both the Dalek and the girl are original characters. Like I said in the first chapter, I have some personal issues to work out with the Doctor and I don't think I can have any established character that I know well enough do what I want to be done. Enough talk! On with the show!

For a flicker of a second, her meager life ran through her head like an old film. That one word, said with such hate and arrogance like it had been by millions on Invasion Day, made time seem to stop in its tracks. She continued to stare even after she realized she wasn't dead. The Dalek's whisk-like arm that she knew it to be its main weapon jerked from side to side, obviously attempting to fire but unable to do so. She let out the breath she'd been holding as the Dalek also noticed what was wrong. "What is this?" it demanded. "My systems are restored. Why can I not fire? Explain! Explaaaaaain!" It began moving towards her, the loose trash moving aside like water as it moved.

"I don't know!" she shouted. "Seriously, I don't know!"

It stopped just in front of her. "You are human."

She wasn't entirely sure that was phrased as a question, but the need to fill the following silence was too strong. "Y-yes. You're a Dalek, right?"

"Correct." Its single eye peered at her closely as if trying to decipher something. "It was your DNA I absorbed?"

Now that was definitely a question. "I guess so, yeah." She touched her palm, remembering the flash of pain. "Was that what that burning was when I touched you?"

"You laid hands on a Dalek?" it screeched angrily. "A human dared to touch a Child of Skaro?" It advanced further, forcing her to walk backwards to keep some distance between them until she figured out what it was going to do.

"I didn't mean to! I just found you here and…..it was an accident!"

"You…found me…" Was that a tone of confusion in its baritone voice?

"Yeah, I found you. You were covered in rubbish, so I cleared it away." She paused, debating whether or not to share her memory. Ah, what the hell. "I've seen your kind before," she started gently. "A few years ago. You invaded Earth, like a swarm of bees. I remember being in schoo-"

"It was your DNA I absorbed," it interrupted. "Are you an associate of the Doctor?"

"Who? What doctor?"

"The DOCTOR! The greatest enemy of the Daleks!"

"Look, I have no idea who this doctor is, but I don't know him. Haven't been to a doctor since I was ten."

She could practically feel the skepticism coming from it, but it must have sensed that she told only the truth. "If you are not an associate of the Doctor, how is it you are a time traveler?"

She didn't mean to laugh. Really, she didn't. But what else could she do? It was such a ridiculous notion she couldn't help herself. "Me? A time traveler?" she choked through her laughter. "Are you mental? It's not even possible!"

"Incorrect." It rolled closer to her, slower, more controlled this time. "The Doctor and the Daleks have one common ability: we both can travel through time."

Her bout of mirth stopped. It was completely serious. "How is that possible? You…you can travel through time?" A childlike wonder crept into her voice as she thought about the possibilities this new information provided, something she would have hated hearing from herself a few years ago. But things were different now; any pride she'd once had long since gone.

"You say that you cannot do the same," it said. It seemed to be talking more to itself than to her, trying to logically put things into their rightful places. "You are a lowly human and not a companion of the Doctor." Once again, its eye zeroed in on her face as if trying to see into her very soul. She did not step back this time. "What are you? Truly?"

"I'm human," she replied honestly. "As much good as it's done me, I'm just a regular human."

A pause. And another pause. The Dalek's eyestalk slowly moved down her until it reached her feet, then traveled back up to her face just as slow. "You speak with contempt for what you are. This is new."

She shrugged a shoulder, as if her contempt for being human were as natural as the sun rising in the east every morning. "Well, life hasn't exactly been golden for me. Why do you think I'm here in the same dump as you?"

The Dalek seemed to just now realize where it was. It swiveled its head to take in the disgusting scenery around them. "This is not UNIT."

"Sorry, what's UNIT?"

The head turned back to her, the eye still penetrating, although somehow softer…slightly. "A human military organization. They are the ones who imprisoned me. Tortured me."

She gasped in shock. "That's what happened to you?" Her gaze slid down to the burnt and dented sides, sympathy for the alien evident in her eyes. She reached out a hand in an instinctive gesture to comfort, stopping just short of actually making contact with it; she didn't want it to become angry again. "How could anyone do this to something like you?"

She jerked her hand back for the second time that night when it spoke, a hint of the anger she'd been trying to avoid in its voice. "Daleks have no need for pity!"

"It's not pity," she explained. "It's sympathy. There's a difference."

"Explain."

Her eyes grew hard as she obeyed its order, but not at the Dalek. "You've seen what humans do to other species. They tear them apart, rip them open to get to the squishy innards. See what makes them tick. That's what they did to you, wasn't it?"

Silence.

"They…attempted to learn about Daleks. Through me." There was a hoarse almost-sadness in its tone. Did it realize that?

"Well, look at what they do to their own kind." She spread her arms out in a gesture to herself. "My father was killed by human trash. Humans would rather turn a child out onto the streets than protect her from the harshness of the world. They maim and butcher each other over money or land or pride. They kill their own home with pollution and deforestation." She sighed in resignation as she spoke aloud of the disgust for her species she'd felt and tried to conceal for years. "I'm not exactly proud to be human anymore, especially now that I know there's life outside of our little blue dot at the corner of the galaxy. I can't change what I am, but there you have it." She glanced up at the Dalek, still as a statue as it listened to her mini tirade. A small laugh escaped her lips at the ludicrousness of it all. "I've never said that out loud to anyone, not even myself. How strange I should admit it to an alien."

"I was…incorrect," the Dalek said finally. "You are not an ordinary human."

"Thanks, but I wasn't exactly fishing for compliments," she said, avoiding its stare. The silence that followed was stifling. "So…what happens now?"

"Explain."

"Aren't you going to kill me or something? That's what Daleks do, right?"

Its deadly arm (the one without the suction cup) wiggled a bit in response. "I…cannot. My weapons are too damaged. They are irreparable without aid from the others."

"Others? There are more of you?" That childlike tone had returned much to her chagrin.

"Only four others survived the Doctor's interference that day," it clarified. "The Cult of Skaro. I must contact Dalek Sec."

"Is he your leader? Dalek Sec?"

"Yes."

"Do you have a name, too?"

Another pause. It's like a soap with all these dramatic silences. "I am Dalek Trel."

"Dalek Trel," she repeated, familiarizing herself with its name. "I'm Helena."

"I have no need for your name."

"Well, you may not need it, but I'm giving it to you anyway." She smiled at him, the first real smile she'd shown in a very long time. "And I'll give you my help, too…if you want it."

"What 'help' could you possibly offer a Dalek?"

"You want this planet, don't you? And I have no love for its inhabitants anymore. In a way, we're the same. Perhaps we could work together?" A risky move, but she really had nothing else to try for to get out of the hell she'd been thrown into. Everything came down to two choices: this insane idea of aiding a Dalek in trying to eradicate the human race from the face of the Earth, or to continue digging through garbage in the hopes of earning a few pounds for clean socks. At least with the former she wouldn't be alone.

Trel appeared to think it over; that gave her a tiny bit of hope. "What help could you offer to me? You have no power. No control over the human population."

"No, but I can tell you things about how humanity works that you can use to your advantage. While you wait for your leader to answer your hail or whatever, you can start another invasion, this time with a bit more subtlety; too much at once and the army would find you in a heartbeat. I can also show you things about our ways of warfare that you can use since your weapons don't work." And she could: the Internet was full of tutorials on how to make bombs out of household chemicals and numerous studies on the psychology of war and its effects on both the warriors and the victims. She'd spent a lot of time at public libraries over the years; various links and random searches had yielded some interesting results. Thankfully she'd learned long ago how to delete her history and hide her questionable trail.

"And what would you gain from such an alliance? Explain. Explaaaain!"

"Something to believe in."

"Elaborate."

"I want to belong to something. I never fit in as a kid, even worse when I was a teenager. Then the only person who showed me any kind of affection and love was taken from me. But when I saw your invasion, I saw the unity. I wanted to belong to something that had that kind of precision and cohesiveness. I still do. So, there you have it. We can help each other, or you can kill me now. Because I'm not just going to let this opportunity walk away from me."

Trel seemed stunned. Even she was a bit. Did she really just offer to help start World War III/Intergalactic War II with a creature that despised her very species? "You would have made a good Dalek," Trel finally replied.

She felt her eyes brighten with the smallest amount of hope. "Then, do we have an accord?" She held her hand out to it, her breath caught in her chest as she waited for his answer.

Trel's eye moved to her hand. He looked back up to her face after a long moment of contemplation. "We do."

TBC…