"Kathryn, don't blink. Whatever you do, don't blink, don't look away from the statues. I'm on my way."

Katie froze, following the Doctor's orders. He had sounded…scared. Honestly scared. But of what? They were just statues.

She felt the Doctor walk up behind her. He inhaled sharply. "There's so many of them. Kathryn, I want you to slowly walk backwards. Don't blink, and don't turn your back on them."

"Doctor, what—"

"MOVE."

Katie did as the Doctor asked, starting to get scared. It was torture walking back to TARDIS. The Doctor fumbled for the handle, opening the doors and stepping inside. He carefully guided Katie into TARDIS, then slammed the door behind her, rapidly locking it, then sonicing the lock. He ran straight to the view screen, turning it on. His face paled.

Katie hurriedly joined him. She gasped. "How did they get outside TARDIS?"

"They aren't statues," the Doctor said, his voice hollow. "They're a race called the Weeping Angels. They feed off potential energy. One touch and they send you back in time, let you live to death, and then eat all the days you could have had. They're incredibly fast. If you look away, if you even blink, they'll get you."

"But they're just stone."

"That the hellish brilliance of it. It's the perfect defense. Whenever someone's looking at them, they turn to stone, and you can't kill stone. But it also means they can't look at each other. Loneliest creatures in the universe."

Katie looked at the screen with a new expression of compassion. "Lonely Assassins." She sighed. "But we still have to get those parts. Is there any way we can move just a little ways to find the pieces somewhere else?"

"No. The manipulator is completely fried. We're stuck unless we find a way past the Angels."

Katie clicked her teeth together, thinking. She glanced up at the Doctor and froze, her mouth wide open. She broke into a grin and pulled his goggles off his head.

"It's so stupid that it'll work! Doctor, do you have another pair of these?"

"Yes…"

"Good, go get them, and any mirrors you might have. Bring them to your workshop. We have so much to do."

An hour later, the Doctor and Katie were staring dubiously at each other.

"It's a little confusing."

"I know. I can hardly tell which way I'm going. But if they petrify whenever something looks at them, then that will include their own reflection."

"It makes sense in theory."

Katie and the Doctor had worked together to create one of the most bizarre outfits either of them had ever worn. Using every mirror they could find, they had used bits of wire to create side mirrors on the goggles. They had also turned four large mirrors into sandwich board style outfits, bearing the weight on their shoulders so that they had a mirror on their front and back, with extra ones on their sides. It limited movement some, and was rather heavy, but they didn't have much choice.

"I feel like a fat disco ball," Katie said.

"It was your idea."

"Doesn't help my personal pride."

"Ready to test this?" the Doctor asked.

"No."

"Same here. Let's go."

Katie volunteered to go first. Actually, she insisted, saying that if it didn't work and the angels vanished her away to somewhere, the Doctor still had a chance to fix TARDIS and find her.

Katie cautiously opened the door, keeping her eyes wide open so the angels couldn't get into TARDIS. They still looked like statues. Some were staring at her. Others were covering their faces. Most were at a point in between. Katie closed the door behind her, still not taking her eyes off the angels.

Once the door was closed, Katie nodded, steadying her nerves. Knowing the Doctor could hear her through the door, she spoke out loud.

"So far so good. I'm going to count down from four, and on zero I'll close my eyes for two seconds. If I disappear, you come find me."

Katie took another deep breath. "Okay. Four, three, two, one…zero."

She closed her eyes and gasped. The angles were…heavenly.

Katie could see energy. Light, heat, sound, mental. They were all just colors to her when her eyes were closed. She thought she had seen everything energy could be. Now she learned differently.

The angels were moving with a slowness that would almost be excruciating, were it not for the fact they did it so gracefully. Sparks of every energy type fell off them in showers, energy dying to be released in a burst of speed, instead kept near the creatures in a glowing haze. Around them swirled a thick mist of silver and purple, the colors intertwining until Katie was nearly dizzy at the sight of it. It was gorgeous.

One near her started to lower its hand from its eyes in a liquid movement, turning it like a beckoning hand towards Katie. Soon, every other angel did the same, the glorious creatures calling for her to join them. Her arms ached to reach out to them.

Katie finally remembered to open her eyes. She did so, and became depressed at the lack of color in the tunnel. Glancing at the angel near her, she saw it hadn't moved in the slightest. None of them had. She sighed.

"Well, I'm still here. I think you can join me."

The door instantly opened and the Doctor stepped out, worry on his face.

"What happened?" he demanded. "You haven't said anything for five minutes."

Katie was perplexed. "It can't have been that long."

"It was. I thought that they'd taken you."

The worry and relief in his face was plain to see, but she shrugged in response. Katie stared with longing at the angels again. The sight had been incredibly captivating. She wanted to go back to it. She wanted to accept the invitation, and sway with the angles in the silver mist.

Katie jumped at the Doctor's fingers snapping in front of her face. She saw the concern in his face.

"Kathryn, are you alright?"

"Of course I am. I'm always alright. Now come on. We have to find that city and get out of here. That is, if the angels didn't finish them all off."

The Doctor watched Katie as they carefully walked through the hordes of angels. He wished to go faster, but the mirrors, though affective, were of little help in the tricky maneuvers required to move around the angels. It didn't help his concern for Kathryn either.

Something was wrong. He wasn't sure what it was, but something had affected her thinking. Despite his warnings, she looked to have no real fear of the angels. And then there was the absence of conversation. It wasn't as though they talked all the time. There were stretches were neither friend said a thing to each other for days. Granted, those events usually meant Katie was slowly losing her sanity from inactivity, but the periods were still there.

But on walks she was constantly talking, asking questions about where they had landed, what they were seeing, sometimes who they were fighting or a math and/or science and/or linguistics problem she had been having. However, now she was silent, and her eyes, when he could see them, had a strange, faraway longing look, as though she wanted to go somewhere.

That was another thing that made the Doctor worried about his friend. There was so much about her design he couldn't begin to guess at, so much about her clone roots that neither of them knew. What if this was the onset of a new stage she was entering? If so, did it bode well or not?

"Ha ha! A sign from above!"

The Doctor paused, his thoughts interrupted. "What?"

Katie pointed up, her cloudy look missing for the moment. The Doctor's followed her direction and saw the stone sign hanging from the tunnel ceiling, telling the two travelers that the city was only a quarter mile away.

"You know, ordinarily, I'd be there in a minute and a half, but since I'm wearing enough mirrors to outfit a Hollywood dressing room, it'll take a tad longer."

The Doctor smiled lightly, some of his worry dissipating. That sounded more like Kathryn.

*Constructive critisisim welcome, praise happily accepted, flames not wanted*