"What happened to 'We're just going to chill in the vortex for awhile'?" I asked as I stumbled my way to the console room while holding my stained shirt away from my skin. I'd been holding tea when the TARDIS had shaken and spilled it all over myself.
"We're being summoned," the Doctor said ominously while he pulled levers on the console.
"Summoned?" I repeated, and he nodded. "Apart from the Ood, who can do that?"
"There aren't very many people," he said, and I decided to take it upon myself to monitor the stabilizer after we tipped to the side harshly.
"Any chance that those who are summoning us are good?" I asked, and he gave me a weird half shrug in response before he frowned at me.
"Emma are you covered in tea?" He asked.
"More or less," I said with a nod. I expected him to ask more about it, but we landed just as I finished speaking and the Doctor headed for the door immediately. His curiosity was obviously winning out over everything else. I followed after him and ran into his back as he dead stopped as soon as he opened the door.
"What is it? What's the matter?" I asked as I stood up on my toes to see over his shoulder and blinked in alarm at the twenty-foot statue of a Dalek in front of us. "Oh."
"Oh," the Doctor echoed flatly between his teeth and stepped out of the TARDIS fully. I closed the door behind us and reached out to rest my hand on his shoulder.
"I thought the Daleks all died," I said, and I saw an old angry pain flash over his face and settle in his eyes.
"They did. They all died in the Time War and then they all died with Rose and the Bad Wolf fiasco and then they all died with the Reality Bomb." I swallowed and slid my hand down his arm, so I could interlace my fingers with his.
"Maybe this is just a remnant of some world the Dalek's conquered before," I said even though I didn't really believe it. It seemed to me that the Daleks were like cockroaches, just when you thought that they were dead it turned out they weren't, no matter how much poison you had dumped on them.
"Somehow I don't think so," the Doctor said, and I sighed.
"Okay different question, are the Daleks on the short list of people who could summon the TARDIS?" I asked, and he shook his head.
"No. Otherwise they would have done it by now," he said, and an idea light up behind his eyes. "Which means that there is someone else here who can."
"There we go," I said to myself with a smile as the Doctor started tugging me down the hill in front of us. He gave me a weird look.
"What does that mean?"
"It means you do better when you've got something to think about that isn't just a great big bundle of trauma," I said, and he laughed.
"The Daleks and I don't have good history," he said.
"Really? I hadn't noticed," I said sarcastically, and he rolled his eyes at me though he did give me smile after. "Is there any species that you've bumped into more than twice that you have good history with?"
"Humanity. The Ood. Draconians. A few dozen others probably if I thought about it hard enough," he said before lifting a finger up to his lip and I nodded as we ducked behind a large rock.
"SPIKE IN ARTRON ENERGY LOCATED." I felt a shudder race up my spine and the Doctor folded my hands between his comfortingly. I'd forgotten how the Daleks sounded, how it almost seemed like they were screaming instead of speaking.
"IT IS AS THE SEER FORETOLD."
"FIND THE TARDIS AND THE DOCTOR." I couldn't tell which Dalek was speaking, or if there were even multiple Daleks on the other side of the rock. The Doctor tugged on my hands and gently lead me around to another side of the rock as one of the Daleks swept up the hill and the other one continued away from us. He waited several moments before dropping my hands and cupping my face.
"You okay?" He asked and gave me a gentle shake when I didn't respond immediately.
"Fine. They're just a lot unnerving," I said. He studied me carefully before he nodded and frowned.
"Seer?! Daleks would never trust a Seer," he said. "The only Dalek that could ever see the future was Dalek Caan and he died."
"Who's Dalek Caan?" I asked and then frowned myself. "Wait I thought the Daleks don't have names?"
"They don't. Except for the Cult of Skaro," he said as he pulled us up from our crouch. I groaned.
"Just when I think I've gotten all caught up you throw some kind of information at me and suddenly there's a curveball," I said. He hummed as he whipped the sonic out of his pocket.
"I have the same issue a lot of the time," he said after he had scanned the air a bit.
"I bet you do," I said. He grinned at me and held out a hand, which I took without question and fell into step beside him when he started walking. I was not risking getting separated from him on a planet full of Daleks. "So, plan?"
"Find this seer."
"Explain Cult of Skaro and Daleks with names on the way?" I offered, and he smirked at me and shoved my shoulder with his gently.
"Maybe if you behave." I gasped in mock offense.
"I haven't broken Rule One in ages," I said, and the Doctor laughed before he relented and told me about meeting the Daleks in New York with Martha, and how Dalek Caan had somehow dragged Davros back to the present and gone a little mad in the process.
"You should write all this stuff down in a book," I said as we skidded our way down a particularly steep hill. He raised an eyebrow up at me. "A handbook of important backstory for future companions."
"I'll have you for that," he said, and I was so touched by his casual words that I blushed and had to quickly clear my throat to cover up the fact that my eyes had gone a bit misty.
"You just want me to do the dirty work for you," I said to cover it up just a little bit more and the Doctor laughed.
"Wouldn't dream of it." He suddenly gave me an odd look. "I've never asked, but why weren't you in London when the Daleks invaded?"
"Promise not to look at me weird?" I asked, and he nodded while his confused look deepened. "A couple days before I just got this feeling like I shouldn't be in London."
"A feeling?" The Doctor clarified with a perfectly blank face and I nodded.
"I know it doesn't make sense, but it's the truth. Lillian convinced me that we should go when I told her."
"Lillian convinced you?" The Doctor asked, and I nodded again while ducking my head in embarrassment.
"Yeah, I thought I was just being paranoid, but then she reminded me about how I hadn't trusted the ghosts when they showed up. And we both know how that ended."
"Why didn't you trust the ghosts?" It was a little weird being on the side of the conversation that was answering questions instead of asking them, but I felt like I owed him after the amount of times I'd bombarded him.
"The ghost was always one person for everyone else, but for me it changed all the time. Like one day it would remind me of my Mom, then my Dad, then my Grandpa. Even at the start it was like that. Lillian said it was her Gran on the first day and I couldn't tell who it was."
"That's odd," the Doctor said with a frown and I nodded.
"I stopped telling people when I found a few pamphlets about psychiatrists in my bag after a night out." The Doctor dead stopped at that and dragged me into a tight hug.
"Oh Emma," he said and somehow managed to squeeze me tighter.
"I keep telling you that I have no luck with people. How are you so continually surprised?" I asked.
"Because I'm supposed to be the damaged one in this relationship," he said, and I laughed.
"Based on your reaction when we got here, I'd say that you're still plenty damaged." He raised his eyebrow up at me in amusement and I realized what I'd said. "You know what I mean."
"I do know what you mean," he assured me before he pulled me to a stop. "Do you hear that?" I strained my ears against the silence before I shook my head.
"I don't hear anything," I said.
"I thought I heard a voice." We stood in silence again for several moments before he growled in frustration. "Damn it."
"That would be too easy wouldn't it?" I said idly just as I spotted a Dalek cresting a hill not far from us.
"EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE!"
"RUN!" The Doctor ordered and shoved me in front of him as we took off in the opposite direction. I bit back a sarcastic retort at the last second and decided to focus on the running away part.
"Where are we running to?" Apparently, I hadn't had as good a lid on my sarcasm as I'd thought.
"EXTERMINATE!" I couldn't tell if the Dalek was closer or not, but I didn't dare risk looking over my shoulder to check. Knowing my luck, I'd probably fall and break my neck on one of the rocks strewn across the ground.
"Away," the Doctor said with a look on his face like he was desperately trying to come up with a plan. Suddenly, I blinked, and my limbs felt odd and heavier than they should.
"Left," I said, and my voice didn't sound quite right as I awkwardly threw all my weight at the Doctor and we fell towards the hillside next to us.
"Emma!" The Doctor cried in alarm just as we passed through the hill and landed on a metallic floor behind it somehow. I rolled off the Doctor and blinked and I felt normal again.
"That was weird," I said before the Doctor rolled on top of me and pressed his finger over my lip as the Dalek glided past where we had phased through the hillside just moments ago. We stayed in that position for several minutes, even after the Dalek had left and not returned.
"How did you know that this was here?" The Doctor asked as he levered himself up off me slightly so that all his weight wasn't resting on me.
"I had absolutely no idea," I said, and my limbs went a little weird again. "I did."
"Emma?" He asked with concern laced in his voice as his eyes skimmed over me a little desperately.
"I'm sorry for borrowing your companion, but she is so much more open."
"Who are you?" The Doctor asked as he realized that I was absolutely not in control and his face went hard. "Are you hurting her?"
"The Daleks call me the Seer." I blinked and I had control again so I made eye contact with the Doctor. "I'm fine. It's just really weird. Could you give me a pen?" The Doctor fished around in his pocket before he pressed one into my hand without asking why and I blinked to give up control again.
"I'm writing my coordinates on the back of your companion's hand." I watched distantly as my hand clumsily wrote a series of longitude and latitude on the back of the other hand. "Thank you, Emma."
"That may have been the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me," I said after I had blinked and sat up off the floor. The Doctor grasped my hand gently as he cupped my face to look at me.
"That may have been the weirdest thing I've ever witnessed."
"That's a bit of a high bar don't you think?"