Oswin Oswald

One-shot

"There a word for total screaming genius that sounds modest and a tad bit sexy?" I asked staring at chin boy on the monitor. He gave me a cheeky smile.

"Doctor. You call me the Doctor." He said. I was in shock for a moment but I kept up the façade.

"See what you did there." I said. This was him. The Doctor. My father. He had found me. Given other circumstances I would have thought it was mad to believe that he could look completely different, but considering I had already experienced the wonders of regeneration I could see what happened. The Doctor, on the other hand, looked not very much older than me and had a chin that could be used as a letter opener. An alarm went off on the console and broke me from my thought. "Check the floor." I began. "I'm picking up a breach at floor level, there could be a way out. See you later." I finished. I flicked the monitor off and just sat there in silence for a moment.

I had been on this planet for a year now. All due to my need for adventure. I had found that I was quite good with computers, which was a good thing. I had crashed my shuttle on Earth shortly after leaving Messaline. I got injured bad enough to cause me to regenerate. Once I escaped the shuttle I was a new person. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before. My head had previously been filled with strategies and war statistics. Not now, I was completely new.

I met a woman named River Song on earth. Apparently the Doctor's league of alien hunters were all in the past so there was no one to contact him. River told me that she was married to him, so she was in effect, my step mother. That was odd, considering I had only thought of him as a father for about twenty minutes of my life. I got to know her quite well. She couldn't take me to the Doctor though. She said that I had to find him on my own. She said that she couldn't mess with the timelines. She was my mother though. She was a motherly figure. She had to leave Earth after a while, but she told me to continue searching for my father without her. She said that when the time was right I would see her again.

Due to my thirst for adventure and the need to find my father I got onto a ship. The Alaska. It was nothing major, but it was a way to get back into space. We had crashed on the Dalek Asylum. Some how the ship managed to penetrate the force field, this was beyond me. All of the crew members were killed, save me. I managed to climb down into an escape pod and there I sealed myself in. Baking soufflés against the daleks.

I got a heat signal on the monitor and quickly pulled up a visual. There was a man in a room with about twenty Daleks. They were silent for a moment and then they began to attack him. I quickly began typing in the coding to get him out.

"Run!" I yelled over the com. "The Door at the end, they're waking up but they're slow, just run!" I yelled. The man did as I said. I opened the door and closed it behind him. Once he was inside and safe from the Daleks I began speaking to him. "So, anyway, I'm Oswin. What do I call you?" I asked. I thought it best when I left Earth not to use my real name. I didn't want the Doctor finding me until he was ready.

"Uhhhh." He began. Great, he forgot his name "Rory." He said.

"Lovely name, Rory." I said. I began remembering some of the adventures I had, had on Earth. "The first boy I ever fancied was called Rory."

"Okay." He said.

"Actually she was called Nina. I was going through a phase." I said. He looked a bit terrified of me. "Just flirting to keep you cheerful." I said. He was quiet for a moment and then he began walking down the hall. I was getting rather bored with him so I turned off the monitor and went back to observing the Doctor.

"Oswin? Can you hear me?" he asked.

"Hello the chin. I have visual on you." I said staring at him. It was still unbelievable how young he was.

"Why don't I have a visual on you? Why can't I ever see you?" he asked.

"Limited power, bad hair take your pick." I said. "There's a door to your left, open it." I ordered. "I'm going to send you a map to that screen. I put your little friend somewhere safe, I can get you to him."

"Rory? You found Rory?" he asked.

"I call him Nina. It's a personal thing." I said "Hush now." I began typing again.

"How many Daleks directly ahead of me right now?" he asked.

"Ten, twenty. Hard to say." I said. "Some of them are catatonic but they do have fire power."

"How do I get past them?" asked rounding the corner. "Amy!" he yelled and began running the other way. Straight towards them. Great. Some how the Daleks managed to shut off my visual.

"No." I said. "No!" the Doctor was locked in a room with twenty Daleks. Great. I felt the planet shake.

"Oswin, what was that? That was close." Rory said from the com. At least I still had a fix on him. I was in shock more than anything. What if the Doctor had gone and blown himself up? I was distracted by the sound of someone behind me. I turned and saw River.

"Mother." I said standing up and running over to her. "What are you doing here?"

"You are closer than you ever have been to finding your father." She said.

"I know, he's outside." I said.

"You can't let him know who you are." She said.

"What?" I asked. "Why not?"

"He still has Amy and Rory with him. My parents never knew who you are." She said.

"But I'm so close." I said.

"I know my dear, but you have to take care. I must go before the nano cloud begins converting me." She said.

"I shielded this room from it." I said.

"The vortex manipulator cancels it out." she said. "here." She handed me a small wrist band.

"What's this?" I asked.

"You'll need that to escape." She said. "I stole it from Captain Jack, it's good for one go."

"But what about the Doctor?" I asked.

"You have to make sure he escapes." She said.

"Thank you." I said.

"You'll be with him soon enough." She said before disappearing. I wrapped the leather band around my wrist. I wasn't going to let them die. I sat back down at the computer and tried to locate them. I picked them up and with a smile a keyed in on the coms.

"Do you think sleeping will slow down the process?" Rory asked as he leaned over an unconscious Amy. Apparently she had been affected by the nano cloud. Since in theory she was my grandmother, I felt as though I should help. Which meant getting the Doctor off of the planet.

"You better hope so. Because pretty soon, she's going to try to kill you." I said. Amy began to stir and the Doctor and Rory bother hovered over her.

"Still with us?" the Doctor said.

"Amy, it's me. Do you remember me?" Rory asked. Amy slapped him. "She remembers me."

"Same old Amy." The Doctor said standing up.

"Do you know how you make someone into a dalek?" I asked. "Subtract love, add anger. Doesn't she seem a bit too angry to you?"

"Well, somebodies never been to Scotland." Amy said. I actually had. I met some rather nice people there.

"What about you Oswin, how are you okay? Why hasn't the nano cloud converted you?" the Doctor asked.

"I mentioned the genius thing, yeah?" I said. "Shielded in here."

"Clever of you." He said. "Now, this place, the Daleks said that it was fully automated. But look at it, it's a wreck."

"Well, I've had nearly a year to mess with them and not a lot else to do." I said.

"A junior entertainment manager hiding in a wrecked ship. Hacking the security systems of the most advanced warrior race the universe has ever seen, but you know what really gets me about you, Owsin? The soufflés. Where do you get the milk for the soufflés?" he said. he turned away, "Seriously, is no one else wondering about that?" In reality, there was a food generator on the ship for survival situations. It didn't taste the best, but it was something.

"No, frankly, no." Rory said. "Twice."

"So." I said. "Doctor, I've been looking you up. You're all over the Dalek database. Why do they call you the predator?"

"I'm not a predator, just a man with a plan." He said.

"You've got a plan?" I asked.

"We're all ears." Rory said.

"There's a nose job going if some one wants to pick that one off." Amy said.

"In no particular order, we need to neutralize all of the daleks in this asylum, rescue Oswin from the wreckage, escape from this planet, and fix Amy and Rory's marriage." The Doctor said.

"Okay, I'm counting three lost causes, anyone else?" Amy said.

"Oswin, there's a dalek ship in orbit." The Doctor said.

"Yeah, I got it on sensors." I said.

"The asylum has a force field, the daleks upstairs are waiting for me to turn It off, as soon as I do they'll burn this whole world and us with it." He said. "So Oswin, my question is this. How fast can you drop a force field?"

"Pretty fast." I said running the variables through my head. "But why would I?"

"Because this is a teleport, am I right Oswin?" the Doctor said.

"Yeah, internal use only." I said.

"I can boost the power, and once the force field is down, we can use it to beam us off of the planet." The Doctor said. They continued talking but I didn't listen to them. He wouldn't leave without me. I knew him well enough from the stories River had told me to know that he would not just leave me on this planet to die. I had to think of something. "Oswn." The Doctor said and I was jerked back into reality. "How fast can you drop the force field?" he asked.

"I can do it from here." I said. A plan had formed in my head. "As soon as you come and get me."

"No, just drop the force field and come to us." He said.

"There's enough power in that teleport for one go, why would you wait for me?" I asked. I had to make it believable.

"Why wouldn't I?" he asked.

"No idea, never met you." I said. "I'm sending you a map so you can come get me." I sent him the fake map. This was how it had to be.

"This place is crawling with daleks." Rory said.

"Yeah, kind of why I'm anxious to leave." I said. "Come up and see me sometime." I leant back in my chair and smiled. I would get the Doctor, Amy, and Rory off of this planet.

"Oswin, I think I'm close." The Doctor said.

"You are." I said looking around the corner. I walked over to my chair, which was the only thing I had managed to salvage from the shuttle on earth. "Less than twenty feet away. Which is the good news." I said.

"Okay, and the bad which I suddenly feel is coming." He said.

"You're about to pass through intensive care." I said.

"What's so special about this lot then?" he asked.

"Don't know." I said. "Survivors of particular wars. Spiradon, Cambell, Aridius, Vulcan, Excilon." I said. "Ringing any bells?"

"All of them." He said.

"Yeah?" I said. "How?"

"These are the Daleks who survived me." He said. The Daleks began to say his name.

"That's weird. Those one's usually don't wake up for anything." I said.

"Yeah, well. Special visitor." He said. "Door." He said he had reached the door which I had led him to. "It won't open."

"Hang on." I said kneeling down and flipping switched. "Release code, let me just. Hang on I'm trying to think." I said getting a bit anxious. What if I had led him to his death?

"Oswin, get this door open." He said. "Oswin open this door!" he yelled.

"I can't." I said. I continued to furiously look for a solution.

"Oswin, please get this door open!" he yelled. I smiled remembering what I had figured out how to do very early on. The Daleks turned and left

"That is cool." I said as the went back to their stalls. "Tell me I'm cool chin boy."

"What did you do?" he asked.

"Hold on, I think I found the door thingy." I said.

"No, tell me what you did." He said.

"The Daleks have a hive mind. Well they don't, they have this sort of telepathic web." I said.

"The path web, yes." He said.

"I hacked into it, did a master delete on all of the information connected to the Doctor." I said smiling. I was feeling quite proud of myself.

"But you made them forget me." He said.

"Good huh?" I said. "And here comes the door." I flipped the switch and the door came open. This was going to be hard. I ran over to the back of the shuttle that was really across the planet from where the Doctor was. I began to pack up all of the things that were valuable to me and pushed the suitcase shut.

"I've tried hacking into the path web, even I couldn't do it." The Doctor said stepping inside.

"Come and meet the girl who can." I said. I was trying to block the sadness in my voice. I saw the look of fear on his face. "You're right outside. Come on in." I lied.

"Oswin, we have a problem." He said.

"No we don't." I said. "Don't even say that. I joined the Alaska to see the universe and ended up in a ship wreck first time out. Rescue me chin boy and show me the stars."

"Does it look real to you?" he asked. He was beginning to piece it together as I knew he would.

"Does what look real?" I asked.

"Where you are right now." He said "Does it seem real?"

"It is real." I said.

"It's a dream, Oswin." He said. "You dreamed it for yourself because the truth was too unbearable."

"Where am I?" I asked trying to act scared. I quickly messed with the switches to make the Dalek bate say the same thing. The living organism inside of the metal suit had long since gone mad and died but the suit was fully automated. I could control it easily. That's exactly what I had to do.

"Because you are a dalek." He said.

"I am not a dalek." I said. "I am not a dalek." I repeated into the microphone making the dalek say the same. "I'm human." Lie number two.

"You were human when you crashed here." He said. "It was you who climbed out of the pod, that was your ladder."

"I'm human." I said.

"Not anymore, because you're right. You're a genius." He said. I blushed a little but remembered to keep in character. "And the daleks need genius. They didn't just make you a puppet. They did a full conversion." He said. He actually bought it? I thought that he of all people would know that the daleks believe in purity. That they would never use a timelord, or a human for that matter. "Oswin, I am so sorry." He said. "But you are a dalek. The milk Oswin. The milk and the eggs for the soufflés where where did they come from?"

"Eggs." I said. I thought that I could at least freak him out a bit. A little bit of fun before I beam off of the planet after having brilliantly saved his hide.

"It wasn't real, it was never real." He said.

"Ex-ter-min-ate." I said slowly making the gun on the dalek move slowly.

"Oswin?" the Doctor said. The Dalek easily brok through the chains.

"Ex-tir-min-ate." I repeated. "Exterminate, exterminate, exterminate!"

"No, Oswin." The Doctor said backing away "Listen, Oswin, you don't have to do this." He said. I began making sob noises to the microphone.

"Why do they hate you so much?" I asked. "They hate you so much?" I said. "Why?"

"I fought them, many many times." He said.

"We have grown stronger in fear of you." I said.

"I know, I tried to stop." He said.

"Then run." I said.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"I'm taking down the forcefield, the daleks have begun their attack. Run." I said.

"Oswin…are you?" he asked.

"I am Oswin Oswald I fought the Daleks and I am human." I said. "Remember me." I said. I felt real tears welling in my eyes. I had to let him go.

"Thankyou." He said.

"Run!" I yelled. He left. "Run you clever boy." I mumbled. "And remember." I had time for one last thing before I left. I wiped the name, Doctor, from every dalek's mind. I smiled quite proud with myself and then I activated the vortex manipulator. Earth, 2012.

It was a bit odd using one for the first time. It was very sickening using it without a capsule. I found myself in the middle of a street nearly being hit by a carriage. Great, the manipulator went all wibbly. Where was I now?

To be continued Christmas 2012