Disclaimer: Doctor Who and its characters do not and will not ever belong to me.

Author's Note: I am super, super sorry that this took so long to type up!

By my guess, the Doctor and I have been travelling together for about a week. But it's kind of hard to tell when you're travelling through time. He's taken me to amazing places; places that you can't even describe properly. I've seen purple waterfalls, blue trees, planets with three suns, and that's not saying anything about the aliens. I've met Christopher Columbus, walked through America in the 1700s, and met King Louis XVI. I've seen the death of one planet and the birth of another. I've walked on the surface of planets that are millions of light-years away, and met both friendly and unfriendly aliens. But the best part of travelling with the Doctor is how fun it is. It's dangerous as hell, but I've had more fun with the Doctor in the past few days than I have in my entire life. We did just as we planned, and forgot all about the kiss. Well, I at least act like I've moved past it.

The Doctor said that where we're going today is going to be the most dangerous place I've been to. He tried to bring me back to Earth, to keep me safe, but I wouldn't step off the TARDIS. We got into a little argument, which, needless to say, I won. The TARDIS has just landed on the planet Tucarro, and we have just stepped outside.

The ground looks solid, but my shoes sink in with a sticky squelch.

"Ugh." I mutter and jerk my foot up. The Doctor glances at me, but doesn't say anything. He starts walking down the mucky path, and each step sinks into the solid mud, leaving a footprint. I look at him as we walk, and it's easy to see the tension on his face.

"So, what exactly are we here for, Doctor?" I ask, trying to break the silence.

"Got a message." He doesn't elaborate.

"Ah, yes, thank you." I say sarcastically, which earns me the smallest of smiles.

We walk for a good half hour without speaking, until we finally reach hard ground, and I sigh in relief. The Doctor, however, frowns at the lack of muck. He stamps his foot all around the area, then kneels down and runs his finger over the ground. A dusty substance covers his index finger, which he quickly brings to his tongue.

"What the-" The Doctor holds up a hand to stop my exclamation, and smacks his lips together.

"Hmm. Strange." He mutters, so low that I can barely hear it.

"What? What's strange?" I ask, walking toward him.

"Shush, I'm thinking." I raise my eyebrows at him, but stop talking anyway.

Suddenly, he jumps up from his kneeling position and claps his hands together. I wait impatiently for him to fill me in.

"Let me just check…" He says as he runs off in the direction we had been walking. He is back before I can even follow him.

"Ah! Ah, yes! That's brilliant! Well, terrible, but brilliant!" He's grinning like a madman, which I've come to realize that he is. The Doctor runs over and grabs my arms, carefully avoiding my still wounded shoulder, and brings his face close to mine.

"Earth! They're trying to make a carbon copy of Earth, all in this one sector of this planet!" I look at him blankly.

"Don't you get it?" He asks, sounding slightly annoyed.

"No, sorry." I say. He sighs, but the grin remains.

"Okay, we walked through all that mucky stuff, right? That's supposed to be like a marsh. Terrible interpretation, but still. And this hard, dusty…. Um… dirt is like a desert. And ahead of us is a rainforest-like-setting."

"Okay," I drag it out, "I get that, but who exactly wants to make a carbon copy of Earth?" He frowns.

"Oh. I don't know." I snort. The Doctor steps back and does that cute little wiggly finger thing. You know the one I'm talking about, where he brings his hands close to his chest and wiggles his fingers and almost looks a little nervous.

"Well how do we find out?" I ask, walking around the Doctor and heading towards the rainforest part.

"How do we find out? I guess we just walk in and say, 'Hello, I'm the Doctor and this is my friend, Emma, and we'd like to know who you are and why you're making a carbon copy of Earth." I almost start to laugh, but then I see that he is serious.

"You have got to be kidding." He shakes his head. "I thought that this was our most dangerous mission! We can't just walk in there, they'll probably death ray us to… death…" The Doctor chuckles and puts his hand on my good shoulder, stopping me.

"No, they wouldn't. Of course they wouldn't! I'm sure they're very nice people. When did I say that this was going to be dangerous? I never said that. Silly, silly, Emma." I frown and chew the inside of my cheek, but don't say anything. He starts walking toward the rainforest, and I follow.

We walk for another half hour silently, and we pass the rainforest and go into some sort of beach-like area. I shudder at the water that sits to our left. We stop at the end of the sand, where a giant, metal, very square building sits. There are no windows and as far as I can tell, just one door.

"Huh. Must have materialized in the middle of the sector…" The Doctor mumbles, and I realize that he's talking about how there were only four different types of places. He walks toward the door, and I follow, trying to ready myself for something crazy. We stop in front of the door and the Doctor waves his screwdriver around, looking at the door very seriously. I almost laugh. But then the door slides open, and the Doctor freezes, looking intently into the dark building. The only light in the otherwise pitch black air is the light coming from outside. The Doctor gives me a sideways glance, and nods inside.

"Oh, no. I am not going in there first." I exclaim, stepping back. The Doctor makes a face.

"Nothing bad will happen." He mumbles, but steps inside the doorway anyway. I can just barely see his silhouette as he waits for me to follow. Reluctantly, I do, and cringe as I step into the dark room.

"See? Nothing bad-" He is shut off by the door sliding closed. I yelp as something touches my hand.

"Just me! Just me!" I hear the Doctor say, calming me down. "Take my hand. Don't want to get separated." Slowly, I reach around to find his hand, and our fingers intertwine. I have never held a friend's hand like this.

"Come on, then." He says, and begins to walk. His hand pulls me along behind him, our footsteps echoing in the silence.

"How do you know where we're going?" I whisper. It isn't necessary, but I feel like if I talked in my normal voice, it would be deafening.

"I don't." He replies quietly. "I'm just hoping that we don't run into a wall." I smile at this.

Suddenly, there is a loud crack and the Doctor stops walking. I freeze just as bright white lights flicker on, blinding us. I blink a few times, and I see the Doctor shield his eyes with his free hand. After a moment, our eyes adjust and we open them fully and look around. The room is bare and white, and it seems as though no living thing has been in here for a while. The air is musty, making me clear my throat.

I realize that I am still holding the Doctor's hand, and he is still holding mine. I don't want to make things weird by jerking my hand away, so I leave it there, acutely aware of the sweat that is beginning to form on my palm. A few seconds pass before we hear it. The growing clang of footsteps, and it sounds like an army. There is a clang of metal with each step, and as he realizes this, the Doctor's face falls.

"You need to hide somewhere." He is looking in the direction of the noise, and his hand tightens around mine.

"I need to hide? What about you? What's coming?"

"I'll be fine. You need to go back outside, to the TARDIS preferably, and wait for me. You'll be safe there." I start shaking my head before his sentence is even over.

"Doctor, what is coming?" I ask impatiently. He looks at me.

"Cybermen." I look at him blankly. "Human brains in a metal body, put there to erase all the hindrances of emotions." He quickly explains.

"Well I'm staying here." I say, and turn to face the oncoming army.

"Why doesn't anyone ever listen to me?" He asks, more to himself than me, but doesn't say anything else.

"So what are we going to do?" I ask, and the Doctor purses his lips. I take that as an 'I don't know', and turn back towards the noise. It only takes a minute or two before they start coming around the corner. Metal men, marching in perfect synchronization, in rows and rows and rows. It seems that they will never end, but they do. They stand there, staring straight at us, and none of them do anything. The Doctor's grip on my hand is almost painful.

And then another cyberman walks around from the back and steps up to the front of the formation.

"You are the Doctor. You are expected."

The Doctor squints, then whispers to me, "They're acting strange. Should've tried to kill or upgrade us by now."

"Upgrade us?" I whisper back. The Doctor nods, but says nothing else. The cyberman leader walks toward us, his feet making very metal noises as they hit the ground.

"You will come with us for upgrading."

"Ah! There we are!" The Doctor yells just as the cyberman grabs his arm. The Doctor pushes me away, then pulls out his sonic screwdriver and aims it at the cyberman's hand, which falls away with a spark.

"Alright, then, anyone else like to try?" He asks. The first row of cybermen step forward.

"Ah, yes, well. That's unfortunate. Run!" He yells and grabs my hand again. We run around the cybermen, dodging their grasping hands. The Doctor pulls me around a corner and suddenly stops. I can hear the metal clangs echoing down the hall as the Cybermen slowly follow us.

"Hold on… I was expected?" He asks the air, one eyebrow raised and looking very confused. He looks around at the walls, then jerks me back out in front of the Cybermen.

"You were expecting me? How were you expecting me? I had no plans to come here, so why were you expecting me?" The Cybermen have stopped in front of us.

"We were told by our Cyber Leader." One of them says.

"And who, exactly, is your leader. I want to meet him… Or her, I guess."

"Aw, you missed the perfect chance to say 'Take me to your leader.'! I'm officially mad." I mumble, and the Doctor smiles.

"You have no need to meet our Cyber Leader. You will be upgraded." The metal man says, and the army starts marching toward us again.

"Okay, I guess we'll have to find your Cyber Leader by ourselves." This comes out as a grumble.

Before I can process it, we are running again, past boring walls and boring floors and boring ceilings. This building is really very boring. The Doctor and I run through the building until we reach a dead end.

"What? Who has a dead end in a hallway with no doors?" I ask rhetorically. We haven't run into any more groups of Cybermen, so we will have at least a few minutes to backtrack and go a different way. I start walking back the direction we came, but the Doctor pulls me back.

"That's it! Ah, you're so clever, how did I not see it?!" He grabs both of my hands and leans close to me, a broad smile filling his face.

"Um, thanks?" I mutter, confused. "What exactly am I so clever about?" I add a second later.

"You're right. No one has dead ends in a hallway with no doors." He says, looking at me expectantly. I shake my head at him, signaling that I don't understand.

"There are doors. Just not doors that we can see."

"Oh!" I nod excitedly, then frown. "What good are these doors if we can't see them? I mean, how do you plan to use a door you can't see?" The Doctor drops my hands and steps toward a wall, pulling out his sonic screwdriver as he does. He changes the screwdriver's setting and then wave it around at the wall. He starts walking toward the dead end, but stops when the screwdriver starts making a higher pitched noise.

"Here." He mumbles, then puts the screwdriver away and starts running his hands over the wall.

"There's got to be some sort of switch or something." He says. "Come help me." I step to the wall and skeptically start feeling around.

I stop when I hear it. The clanging. Cybermen. They're getting close.

"Doctor?" I warn, looking nervously toward the hallway entry.

"Yeah?" He asks, still trying to find a switch.

"Listen." I grab his arm to stop him.

"Ah. Best hurry, then." He says with a grin. I look at him incredulously, but he ignores it and motions for me to start helping. I let out a breath and put my hands to the wall again.

As we search for a switch, the clanging gets louder and louder.

"Doctor!" I say frantically.

"We're fine, we're fine." He says, holding his tongue between his teeth in concentration. I pull away from the wall and step back.

Just as the first Cyberman steps around the corner, the Doctor lets out a triumphant laugh and jerks me inside of a room. The door slides shut behind us and we are plunged into darkness for the second time in thirty minutes.

"Hand." I hear the Doctor say, and automatically start searching for him. He grasps my hand tightly, intertwining our fingers again.

We stand for a moment in silence, before a woman's voice speaks up from in front of us.

"Very good, Doctor. You responded to my little cry for help quickly."

Author's Note: Sorry this took so long. I am absolutely terrible at keeping on schedule with these sorts of things. Have to be in the mood and all that.

Special shout-out to Japanaimefan for being my very first reviewer! Thank you so much! :)