Disclaimer: I still do not own Doctor Who and make no money from this creative playing in the BBC's sandbox.

Author's Note: I want to thank all of you who have read and reviewed despite the unusual premise of this story. Every review makes my day. Like cookies!


Amy took a deep breath, resisting the urge to close her eyes. She had always said she would live like she would die young, and she couldn't say she never went anywhere or did anything. She could still hear Rose pounding on the bulkhead behind her.

The Metaltron approached, it's weapon shifting from one position to another. "Exterminate! Exterminate!"

Seconds ticked by, and nothing happened. Amy looked the Metaltron over slowly. "Are you out of ammunition?"

"I am armed. I will kill. It is my purpose." The creature said.

"So why haven't you?" Amy asked, as the pounding stopped.

The Dalek's lights flashed wordlessly for a moment. "I feel...I feel her...she is afraid of you being harmed. She feels...grateful...she feels...something." The voice sounded lost. "Daleks do not fear. Must not fear!" The shots she was expecting and finally came, but went wide, hitting either side of the door. "I am contaminated!"

Amy swallowed hard, mouth running ahead of her mind. "What if I could fix it?"

The Dalek made a whirring, grinding noise. "You would be useful. You would be made Dalek. Used to rebuild the Empire."

Amy swallowed hard, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. "Just what I've always wanted."


"Sir!" Goddard said, from where she was watching the screens. "It's moving!"

The two men moved from confronting each other to working in tandem again surprisingly quickly. "Where's it going?" The Doctor asked, tracing it's movements down the hallway. "What's everything down there it could be interested in?"

Van Statten shook his head. "Research, mostly, the hard copies of all our discoveries, the cafeteria, the lab..."

"The lab!" The Doctor said with energy, as Goddard pulled up the schematic of the room in question. "It must be planning something."

Rose walked into the office, looking rather dejected. She turned to her Doctor, blue eyes filling with tears. "She pushed me under the bulkhead so I would make it." Rose had seen people die on her adventures before, but something about this one bothered her more than watching Cassandra explode, or even Gwyneth, killed by the Gelth she thought were angels. "It's all my fault, I just felt so bad for it."

The Doctor looked up briefly. "Rose, you have so much empathy for others, even a Dalek. Don't blame yourself." He then turned back to van Statten. "What do we have if it blows the bulkhead with something from the lab?"

Goddard shook her head. "All the guns are useless, and the alien weapons are in the vault."

Rose, eager to help undo the harm she had caused, quickly corrected them. "Amy said she had an energy rifle in her office she hadn't gotten around to cataloguing yet."

The Doctor nodded. "Rose, you go get that energy rifle, you saw where it was."

Rose nodded unable to help apologising again. "I'm sorry."

The remaining guards let her leave, but mere seconds later, an image popped up on the wall-mounted screen. "Sir!" Goddard said pointing.

The Doctor let out a laugh of surprise. "She's still alive!" He looked at van Statten. "I thought she just collected artefacts for you?"

Henry shrugged. "She asked for lab access instead of a bonus last Christmas. Said it could help her determine where things came from and what they did better."


Amy swiped her card at the lab, before stepping back and allowing the Dalek to go first. It had been an unbearably silent walk through a corridor to reach the lab. She hadn't been in a particularly talkative mood, trying to figure out some way to get herself out of this mess. Rose's emotions had affected it, and it had said that they were not meant to feel, maybe if she could alter it's brain chemistry or overload it with an emotion, it would break down, maybe even explode.

What was the worse that could happen? Oh right, it could continue with it's new plan of rebuilding a robot empire using her. She had no desire to be a Dalek Eve, thank you very much. So, she licked her lips, and pulled on her lab coat. "Right, so..." She said slowly. "How are we going to do this?"

"You will rid me of these human emotions." The Dalek bleated, lights flashing.

"Right, but I can't exactly inject you through this." Amy replied, knocking on the case, and making the Dalek's head whirl.

"No injections. Do not trust you." The Dalek said, sounding angry at the suggestion.

Well, there went Plan A, B, and C. Time to pull something out of her back pocket. "No injections it is." She moved over to the computer and began using the camera system, doing the reverse of what she had done in her office - rerouting image and sound to the main office without connecting the lab for two-way visual or audio contact.

She pulled on the blue latex gloves, and silently hoped for her own sake that she could pull off what she was going to attempt. She carefully worked across the lab, figuring that the worst that could happen from this was her own death, or maybe Dalek roid rage, but it was her only chance.


"In that lab, the Dalek could destroy this entire complex!" Goddard said in realisation. "What is she doing? What has she done?"

The Doctor sighed slightly. "We're going to have to destroy it once and for all, if Goddard's right."

"My lab is kept fully stocked." Henry said, for once not sounding proud of his expensive toys. "How can we destroy it? It withstood my army!"

The Doctor was silent for a long moment. "I don't know yet, but I'll come up with something." He started barking orders, and it said something that no one, not even van Statten, argued. "Goddard, van Statten, you find out everything we have as an asset on this level and between us and the sealed bulkhead. Don't leave out anything, not even a teaspoon!"

Rose rushed in just as he finished saying this, carrying a large plasma rifle.

"Now that's what I'm talking about!" He said excitedly, taking the large weapon from Rose. "Rose Tyler, I could kiss you!"

Rose grinned back at him. "I'll remind you of that after this is all over."


It was odd to Amy how similar this was to her second day in a school with a chemistry lab. She had convinced Rory to sneak in with her that night, and while he waited at the door like a nervous guard parrot, she had created a very powerful stink bomb she had slipped in the auditorium and set off the next morning. That was a good memory. This was far less fun. She'd give anything to have Rory and his silly hair standing at the door instead of the homicidal robot with a deadly plunger at her back.

Taking a deep breath, she set the chemical mix on a burner, closing it and setting it to superheat. She faced one of the hidden cameras, ran a hand through her hair and smiled sadly. "I really hope this works." She swallowed hard, and went to the computer, switching the ventilation in the lab over to the quarantine subsystem settings. It would switch the ventilation to circular filters, and then she turned off the filters. "Here we go!" She took a deep breath and picked up the superheated mixture, dropping the flask on the floor, watching as oddly blueish gas quickly filled the room.

"What is this?" The Dalek bleated. "What have you done?!"

"Got to treat you somehow, if I can't do it via injection, it has to be administered through the air." Amy said with a shrug. "You have to breathe in there, right?" She felt herself getting dizzy, her mind getting clouded, but she had to hold on, just for a little bit longer.

The Dalek started making a wheezing, high-pitched noise, the case shaking and plunger flying up slightly.

Amy held on, just a little longer, until she realised that the Dalek was sobbing, and then slid down the wall to the floor, letting the gas she had created overtake her with grief. She had made a smoke bomb designed to create grief - and it had worked. She had made the Metaltron cry.


When the lab door flew open, the five people, headed by the Doctor armed with the energy rifle, found an unlikely scene. The smoke made them cough, because all the ventilation had done with the filters turn off was recirculate the gas through room over and over again. Amy was slumped against the wall, facing the harsh fluorescent lights, shoulders shaking with tears pouring down her face.

The Dalek was making that same wheezing sobs, but the shaking had stopped. Instead, it just kept saying "Skaro," "Crucible," and "Davros."

"What's it doing?" Van Statten demanded.

"I think it's crying." Rose said in disbelief.

The Doctor lowered the gun and moved over to Amy. "What did you do?"

Amy took a deep breath. "Activated the anterior cingulate cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, and vagus nerve." She let out a choked sob. "Rose made it feel. I made it grieve." She paused and looked at her bare feet. "And then I threw my shoes at it."

The Doctor hugged her tight. "Oh, you are fantastic!" He felt his own respitory bypass kick in, and saw everyone else start to tear up, Goddard lowering her head.

He moved toward his enemy again, but Rose had beat him too it.

"What did you do to me?" The Dalek sobbed at the girl, kneeling near it. "What have you turned me into?"

"I don't know." Rose said sadly. "Why did you do it? Why did you kill all those people?"

"I am a Dalek. The Daleks must kill."

The Doctor shook his head. "You're not even that. Rose did more than regenerate you. You've absorbed her DNA. You're mutating."

"Into what?" The Dalek demanded. "I can feel so many ideas. So much darkness. So much pain...I feel...sadness. I feel...too much. Rose, give me orders. Order me to die."

Rose shook her head, even now unwilling to see anyone else die. "I can't do that!"

The Dalek shook in it's case. "This is not life. This is sickness. I shall not be like you. Order my destruction! Obey! Obey! Obey!"

Rose swallowed as the Doctor put a hand on her shoulder, and summoned up what strength she had, noticing out of the corner of her eye as Goddard and van Statten moved out of the lab. "Do it."

The Dalek paused, and if the Doctor felt something, it was not exactly helpful. "Are you afraid, Rose Tyler?" The creature asked, lights somehow dimmer than before.

"Yes." Rose admitted.

"So am I." The Dalek admitted.

The Doctor shielded his eyes slightly, holding Rose to him as the Dalek surrounded itself with a forcefield, and safely imploded.

The Doctor quickly set to turning the filters back on, turning on the fans to circulate the gassed air out of the room, letting out a click as his respiratory bypass turned itself off. He comforted Rose with an arm around her shoulders, and before long they found themselves face to face with a group of guards holding van Statten hostage, and Diana Goddard looking like an avenging angel.

"What the hell are you doing?!" van Statten demanded.

Diana Goddard didn't even pause. "Two hundred personnel dead, and all because of you, sir. Take him away, wipe his memory, and leave him by the road someplace."

Henry showed real fear for the fifth time that day. "You can't do this to me. I am Henry van Statten!"

"And by tonight, Henry van Statten will be a homeless, brainless junkie living on the streets of San Diego, Seattle, Sacramento. Someplace beginning with S."

The Doctor shook his head, and led Rose back down to the museum floor where they had stored the TARDIS.

Only to find the ginger girl wrapped in a warm blanket to guard against shock, circling the police box.

The Doctor had to grin. "Remind you of home?"

"A bit." Amy answered, smiled at them. "Are you too off to see the stars now."

"Yep." The Doctor said, walking past her to open the doors, Rose popping in behind him.

Amy couldn't help it, she dropped the grey wool blanket and stepped in behind them, amazed at the size and scope of it all. The great coral struts, and the room which was so much bigger on the inside.

Rose looked at her suspiciously, and then at the Doctor, who didn't seem bothered by the fact that someone else was in their TARDIS. "Doctor..." She said, gesturing slightly.

The Doctor turned slightly and smiled. "Well? What do you think?"

Amy looked around, gently touching one of the coral struts. "It reminds me of coral."

The Doctor laughed. "You told me to say hello to the stars. How would you like to do it yourself?"

"Doctor?" Rose said, voice rising. "You and I travel together."

"Plenty of extra room." The Doctor said easily.

"Plus she's quite pretty." Rose observed jealously.

"I hadn't noticed." The Doctor said easily.

Amy watched the two, shaking her head at them. "You are so sure that I'm coming."

"Yep." The Doctor replied.

Amy tilted her head. "Why?"

"Because you're the lone Scottish girl in an American complex, and I know how that feels." The doctor said sadly. "In fact, the only Dalek died, partly thanks to you - I'm the only one left. I win. How about that?"

Rose frowned, not liking the look on Amy's face. "The Dalek survived. Maybe some of your people did too."

The Doctor shook his head, reaching out for Rose, and putting an arm around her shoulder. " I'd know. In here." He tapped his head, and looked exceedingly lonely. "Feels like there's no one."

"One more such victory." Amy said softly.

Rose looked at her oddly, not understanding the quote. "Well then, good thing I'm not going anywhere."

Amy gave her a look, but didn't comment. "I'm going, if you'll still have me."

The Doctor's face exploded in a wide smile. "Fantastic!" He gestured down one of the corridors. "Down that way, off you pop. I'm sure the TARDIS will have made a room up for you by now."He grinned at Rose. "You'll show Amy the ropes, won't you, Rose?"

Rose smiled, but it was definitely plastic. "Of course, come on Amy." As Rose led the girl who saved her life down the twisting corridors of the TARDIS she found herself wondering when her adventure with the Doctor suddenly had room for three.