A/N

I know this is a little late, but welcome everyone to Solomen Miseris Socios Habuisse Doloris! (That's a Latin quote from the amazing play Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, and means 'It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery'… a little dark but I liked it.)

I'd like to thank my first reviewer, Selene! It meant a lot that my first review was so positive, and despite the disappointment with the connections to companions… trust me, that isn't all that Ophelia's going to be good for! That's just the only link that the Daleks are aware of, there is more to come! (This update is for you!)

I'd also really love to thank crazywolf like chicken for being my first follower for this story!

Please, please review. It'll help me evolve as a writer to know where I've gone wrong (especially since I have no beta, so all editing is probably biased…) and it really encourages me!

"Well… that's an error 404 if I've ever seen one…" Ophelia joked weakly. The looks Amy and Rory gave thoroughly told her it's not the time for her questionable sense of humour.

"Because a Starliner's crashed into your Asylum, and someone's got in. And if someone can get in, then everything can get out... a tsunami of insane Daleks." The Doctor continued after his burst of negation. "Even you don't want that." He reasoned.

"The Asylum must be cleansed." Dalek Supreme deadpanned.

"Then why is it still here? You've got enough firepower on this ship, to blast it out of the sky."

"The Asylum force-field is impenetrable." The woman explained.

"Yeah, doesn't sound like you've tried that before does it?" Ophelia commented, a brief smirk gracing her face before her nerves kicked back in and it faded.

"Indeed," The Doctor nodded at Ophelia. "Turn it off." He remarked

"It can only be turned off from within the Asylum." The woman stated. The situation really was out of the Daleks'… prongs?

"A small task force could sneak through a force-field," The Doctor started, slowly heading back down the ramp from the transmitter pedestal. "Send in a couple of Daleks..." He stops abruptly, a humoured smiled curling his lips. "Oh! Oh, that's good. That's brilliant." He applauds mockingly. "You're all too scared to go down there! Not one of you will go! So tell me - what do the Daleks do when they're too scared?"

"The Predator of the Daleks will be deployed." Dalek Supreme reveals, not reacting to the Doctor's jibes. His eyestalk travels up and down the Doctor's face. The Doctor frowns.

"You don't have a predator. And even if you did, why would they turn off a force-field for you?" The Doctor asks, confused. He'd never come across this 'Dalek Predator' in all of his travels.

"Because you will have no other means of escape." The Prime Minister informs, surprisingly smugly for a Dalek. Ophelia's eyes widen and a small gasp leaves shock-parted lips. This bumbling alien, a Predator? The Doctor looks back at her, frown deepening as realisation hasn't hit him yet. They obviously hadn't seen the man that sat next to her at Christmas dinner.

"May I clarify... The Predator is the Daleks' word for you." The Dalek-woman enlightens the bamboozled Time Lord.

"Me?! Me?!" He can't believe that the Daleks take him as such a huge threat.

The woman changes the subject, that thread of conversation not getting the Daleks what they want. "You will need this. It will protect you from the Nano-cloud."

Two more of the Dalek's 'puppets' (male this time) literally appeared from no where and snapped a silver wristband with a large, spherical blue light facing outwards onto his wrist. The light turns on when the clasp closes.

"The what? The nano-what?" The Doctor hasn't ever heard of this 'Nan-cloud', but it doesn't sound particularly safe.

The two men grab the Doctor, one on each arm, and drag him reluctantly to where Amy, Rory and Ophelia stand defensively.

"The gravity beam will convey you close to the source of the transmission," The woman begins debriefing the reluctant team. "You must find a way to deactivate the force-field from there." A bright pillar of white light rushes up from the floor, very similar to the ones that brought the quartet to the Parliament of the Daleks. Ophelia squints and looks away, cursing the photosensitivity of her eyes.

"You're going to fire me at a planet?" The Doctor starts in disbelief. "That's your plan? I get fired at a planet and expected to fix it?"

"In fairness, that is slightly your MO." Rory shrugs. It felt like that's how most of their adventured went.

"Don't be fair to the Daleks when they're firing me at a planet!" The Doctor groans back, before realising something, a nodding his head to his companions. "What do you want with them?!" More bands are strapped into the wrists of Ophelia, Amy, and Rory.

"You just had to say something." Ophelia mutters, fiddling with the band as it dug into the delicate flesh of her wrist. Her wrists were incredibly small, so hers had been pulled tighter to compensate… a little too tight.

"It is known that the Doctor requires companions." Dalek Supreme stated.

"Oh, Brilliant. Good-oh!" Rory's sarcasm made Ophelia feel a little better.

"Don't worry, we'll get through this I promise. Don't be scared." The Doctor whispered, though the words didn't have the comforting effect he was going for when he was still being held in place by the Dalek-men.

"Scared? Who's scared? Geronimo." Amy answered, a familiar cocky grin tugging at her features.

"Me. A little bit." Ophelia corrected with a shrug. The Doctor only chuckled as the Dalek-men pushed him towards the beam.

"Oi!" He complained. Amy, Rory and Ophelia were soon pushed after, screaming in either exhilaration or fear. Rory was the last to go down… and had ended up upside down in the beam.

"Wrong way up! Wrong way up!" He shouted as he flapped his arms, trying desperately to turn the right way. The other three watched him go in surprise.

"RORY!" Amy screamed, reaching forward to grab his ankle but he slid past, travelling faster and faster.

Then, the four of them separated.

Ophelia quickly found herself face-first in a pile of snow.

"I really didn't dress for this weather…" She muttered as she sat up, cursing that the only time the weather was decent in England she had to end up on frozen tundra. The lace blazer she wore would literally do nothing to keep her warm, especially as she only wore a thin cream blouse underneath, tucked into high-waisted black skinny jeans that weren't massive on flexibility. Her brown, pointed toe leather ankle boots would keep the damp snow from her toes but the slight heel and solid, slippery sole would not help her lacking balance. Overall, Ophelia was fucked. Last time fashion came first.

Ophelia wiped snow from her face, taking care around her eyes so as not to accidentally smudge her gel eyeliner wings. Shaking her hair, she hoped that the grey-dyed ends of her bob didn't leak colour onto her blouse. She'd barely got the natural brown ends re-bleached and dip dyed this colour the day before.

Looking around, she realised she was on top of one of the ledges that lead to slippery slopes. She went to the edge and looked down, she was around half way up the incline, and she could see two dark figures pacing around the bottom. The flash of ginger that accompanied one of them told Ophelia it was her companions... but where was the third? She watched as they went down into some sort of hatch, with another figure shrouded in white.

The youngest Oswald knew she needed to find a way down, but walking would be too slow and too risky in her boots. Her eyes flickered back and forth over the ledge, before finding a long slat of rock (as wide as two of her and about half a foot longer – not hard to achieve at her height of 5"4') on the edge, smooth on one side with a little bit of a notch at the front, too small to hold onto but…

Ophelia strode towards it, removing fashion scarf from where it sat draped over her shoulders, a spark of inspiration lighting blue eyes.

"HOLY SHIIIIIIIT" Ophelia screamed as she slid down the snowy slope on the top of the rock, her scarf looped and tied over the notch to provide a handhold.

Her screams paved her way down the slope, and were so loud even the Doctor and Amy (just about to realise the danger of the dead bodies in the pod) could hear her.

"What's that?" Amy asked, side glancing at the Doctor. Without another word, the alien sprung up the ladder, and climbed out of the hatch. Moving forward, he turned with every step, attempting to find the source of the scream.

"WATCH OUT!" A feminine voice warned, just before a small body was flung at the Doctor's back, crashing them both into the snow.

The body on top of the Doctor's shifted slightly, before rolling to the side.

"Sorry, Doctor…" Ophelia apologized. "Turns out rocks don't have very good steering…" She muttered as she laid spread-eagled, panting from exertion and adrenaline.

"Rock..?" The Doctor wonders, raising onto his hands and looks behind, finding Ophelia's transportation with added scarf. "Ha! That's brilliant! That's actually brilliant!" The Doctor jumps to his feet and wanders towards it, admiring the 'vehicle' "Oh Amy was right." He exclaimed, turning back around to where Ophelia still lay, running forward and extending a large hand.

"Right about what?" She asked, grasping the offered hand in her own chilled one.

"That I am going to love you," He told her, tugging on their joint limbs and pulling her up into his arms, setting both (now free) hands on her shoulders. "Desdemona Ophelia Oswald." The Doctor leaned forward, lips gently pressing against her fringe-covered forehead. He closed his eyes as the scent of shampoo invaded his nostrils. She didn't smell like annoying perfumed shampoos that came in every type of flower or fruit, but like clean salon shampoo (TRESemme, he believed it was) with a faint undertone of hair dye. Ophelia leaned into the warmth the Doctor exuded like a heater, feeling ever so chilled…

"DOCTOR." A Scottish call to attention rang from inside the pod, and the two quickly separated. The hurried into the hatch, moving quickly to find out what Amy was calling them for.

Both faces flushed, but only one could excuse it really as windburn.

"Doctor, you said living or dead didn't you?" The ginger worried, eyes flickering over the desiccated bodies that sat in the pod. She smiled lightly at Ophelia and rubbed her hand on the other girl's shoulder in greeting, before turning back to the Time Lord with the answers.

"What happened here, what is Amy talking about, 'living or dead'?" Ophelia asked.

"Well, the reason for these charming bracelets," The Doctor gestured to band that still cut into Ophelia's wrist. "Is to protect us from the nano-cloud. Without them, any organic matter will be converted into a Dalek puppet, living or… dead…" The Doctor trailed off, finally understanding what Amy was getting at. "Oh dear."

The Doctor jumps into action, jumping across the seats and kicking at the bodies to clear a safe path for his companions. Ophelia stood, frozen in horror, only following due to Amy's bruising grip on the wrist that held the Dalek bracelet. Amy quickly pushed Ophelia through the door ahead of her, but one body manages to grab Amy by the arm as they pass through the door.

"AMY!" Ophelia shouts, worried for her friend. The Doctor pulls her free and slams the door shut, locking it. The trio lean against it, panting heavily. Amy grins.

"Is it bad that I've really missed this?" She wonders aloud.

"Yes." The Doctor answers, his own grin lighting his features.

"Good."

"I know."

"Erm, sorry to interrupt this lovely moment…" Ophelia starts shakily. "But is this a bad time to mention I have really bad kinemortophobia?"

The pair turn towards her, noting the shaking of the shorter woman and the blood that seemed to have drained from previously flushed cheeks.

"Well, that's inconvenient." The Doctor mutters, placing a hand on her shoulder and drawing the scared woman closer. "But we can work on it." He reassured, rubbing his hand up and down her shoulder, his arm looped around her back.

Amy watches, her grin melting into a smug smile. She loved it when she was right.