A/N: If you recognize it, I don't own it. This story assumes you have a good grasp of canon and there are major spoilers for seasons 2-4. Thanks go to The White Leopard and Lifelong Obsessor for being excellent beta readers!

Seriously, this has been an absolute joy to write. I keep having this mental image of Ten cuddling with a little Dalek and it makes me smile at awkward times. In class, for instance... If the same happens to you, I'd like to be sorry but I'm really not.

Dalek Geoff

The TARDIS landed roughly, knocking Rose and the Doctor to the floor. They lay laughing at the spectacle and the adrenaline for a full minute. Then, together, they leapt to their feet and ran for the door.

"Where are we?" Rose asked as they strolled, hand in hand, through the quaint village. It looked like any good English village from back home.

"No idea!" the Doctor admitted freely, unbothered. "Not Earth, the sky's the wrong shade of blue. Could be a colony, which would mean sometime in your future." He sniffed the air. "Mm. Smells like juniper. And a hint of… peaches and wine. Oh, that means we're on Julot Two. And the year is…" He sniffed again, thought for a moment, then said, "Twenty-seven thirty-nine. No… thirty-four. Yeah. Thirty-four."

"You can tell all that from smelling the air?"

"Nope, still guessing. Got you going, though, didn't I?"

Rose laughed. They walked together without a care in the world, enjoying the fresh air which did, now that she thought about it, smell a bit like juniper. Then, a terribly familiar sound cut through the gentle hustle and bustle of village life. It was a sound which made the Doctor freeze in his tracks and Rose's hand clamp on his in rising fear. It was a sound to give nightmares to those who had survived hearing it once. It was a sound they both recognized and had wished never to hear again.

It was the sound of a Dalek approaching.

"How can there be a Dalek here?" Rose demanded as the Doctor reached for his sonic screwdriver – not that it did any good against them, but he always felt better having it. Just in case. "They're all dead, aren't they? Back on the satellite, you said – "

"Yeah, I know what I said, but that's a Dalek, no mistake. And that means… we've got to stop it." His face was grim and solemn. Her hand squeezed his. They turned together to find the sound.

Half an hour later, they were still wandering village streets, completely unable to locate the Dalek. Rose heard it echo off of the buildings and glanced over her shoulder. She screamed, then, and whirled around to face the menace.

But it was… it was tiny!

"What?" the Doctor spluttered, reaching for his glasses. "That – that can't be right!"

He took a step toward it, disregarding Rose's attempts to pull him away. The Dalek, surprisingly, scooted back as he approached. It was a foot and a half tall and bright green. Its eyestalk twitched back and forth between them. On the end of its gun was a small green sphere. No one moved for a long moment.

The Dalek advanced slightly, stopped, looked at them, and then inched forward again.

"It's like it's… scared," the Doctor marveled. "Like a little… no…" His eyes widened with realization and incredulity in equal parts.

"Like it's… what?" Rose asked. The urge to back away from the pint-sized destroyer of worlds was strong, but she resisted.

"Rose, have you ever seen a stray dog begging for food?"

"Yeah? Why… oh."

The Doctor knelt down, facing the little Dalek, and spoke in the most kindly voice Rose had ever heard directed at one. "Hello there. Can you talk?"

The Dalek's speech indicators flashed an elaborate pattern, but it made no noise.

"Once for yes, twice for no?" the Doctor suggested. Its speech indicators lit up briefly. The Time Lord grinned. "Aw, who's a good little Dalek?"

"Doctor!" Horrified, Rose yanked him to his feet. "It's not a good little Dalek! Make it go away, and then let's get out of here!"

"Aw, Rose, don't. You'll hurt its feelings."

The Dalek stood there, a meter away. It looked at the Doctor, then at Rose, then at the ground. It glanced back at Rose but quickly averted its gaze. It looked like… like a little dog, really. A sad little puppy begging to be loved.

"Poor thing. C'mere, little Dalek. Who's a good Dalek?" The Doctor held out his hand like he wanted to offer it a treat. "Rose, what do Daleks eat?"

"How should I know? I thought you were the Dalek expert!"

The little green Dalek inched forward cautiously, urged on by the Doctor's coaxing words. When it was close enough, he reached out and patted its head. The body piece seemed to squirm a little bit, turning a few degrees one way and then back the other. In some unfathomable way, it looked to be wagging its tail.

"This is ridiculous!" Rose burst out. The Dalek scooted back.

"Aw, don't be like that." The Doctor reached out and picked it up. "Look how cute it is. S'not gonna kill anybody, are you? Are you?"

"Are you baby-talking to the Dalek?"

"Maybe? A bit?" He grinned sheepishly at her. "But look! How can you resist that cute little eyestalk, huh?"

Rose looked. It looked like an eyestalk to her. "You're not keeping it, if that's where this is going."

Time Lord and Dalek both seemed to wilt. The Doctor looked at her with large, pleading eyes. The Dalek looked at her with – somehow – an equally pleading gaze. How did it do that?

"But… but… I'll take care of him. I'll clean up after him and everything."

"Are we really having this conversation?"

"Yes. Can I keep him?"

Rose threw up her hands in defeat. "But if you get bored with it, you can't bring it back and drop it. That thing is yours. Got it?"

"Yeah, a'course. Now then, Geoff, what's this thing on your gun?" The sonic screwdriver buzzed as he scanned the little green sphere. "Oh… that's interesting. It's like a muzzle. In case of oopsies."

"Geoff?"

"Good name for a Dalek."

"Oopsies?"

"With the little gun. All babies have oopsies." The Doctor tickled Geoff's body shell in approximately the region that would have been a puppy's belly. Geoff raised his eyestalk to look at the Doctor happily. He squinted at his sonic screwdriver as if reading from it, though Rose knew it never displayed words. "Keeps its gunfire from damaging people, pets, or property, apparently, and can be removed or reattached at any time."

"So it's… okay." Rose pressed her palms down against the air, trying to calm herself. "Right, so there's a Dalek, wearing a –a muzzle, or whatever, on an unknown planet, and it's apparently cute. Why?"

"Why is it cute?"

"No! Why the muzzle? Where did it come from?"

"No clue. For all I know, all baby Daleks have them. Like you lot with your nappies." The Doctor was so busy examining the little Dalek that he completely missed Rose's affronted expression. "I don't know the first thing about the Dalek lifecycle. It's not something we really cared about, to be honest."

He cradled Geoff in his left arm and held out his right hand for Rose to take. Hand in hand, they walked – more calmly now, though Rose couldn't claim the same level of nonchalance as the Doctor – down the street. The Doctor asked a passerby, who then pointed them to the nearest pet shop.

After some sonic interference with an ATM and half an hour in the pet shop (during which Rose point-blank refused to let the Doctor buy a dog bed for the Dalek, a collar with spikes on it, or a banana-patterned leash) they returned to the TARDIS. The Doctor chattered happily the entire way and Rose took her turn carrying Geoff, since he wasn't big enough to keep up with them on his own.

"I must be insane. This thing is starting to grow on me," she said, shaking her head and tickling Geoff's body armor. The tiny Dalek squirmed, enjoying her attention.

"I told you he was cute!"

"Yeah, fine. You win," Rose admitted finally.

The Doctor beamed and threw open the TARDIS door. "Welcome home, Geoff!"

"No! Bad Dalek!" Rose snatched a tube of lip gloss away from the foot-tall Dalek's plunger and held it up. Most of the fluid inside was gone. However, Geoff's plunger, and most of his body shell, and quite a lot of her carpet as well, were all stained bright pink.

"Bad Dalek," Rose repeated firmly as Geoff pointed his eyestalk at the ground. "Don't get into my lip gloss. Got it?"

His speech indicators flashed once. Rose looked at him suspiciously and then started moving everything in her room to higher shelves, where he couldn't reach.

"Go on and see the Doctor. He said he would clean up after you."

Geoff preformed that curious sort of shifting which Rose now equated with a wagging tail. He turned and slowly made his way out of the door, off to find the Doctor.

A moment later, Rose heard a loud snort of laughter. "Who's been playing with Rose's make-up, then, ey? Who's been a naughty boy? You have! Yes you have! Who looks like a watermelon?"

The Doctor was delighted when they finally figured out how to feed their new pet. He no longer spent all of his free time halfway underneath the TARDIS console, messing around with things that really didn't need to be messed with. Now, he found endless amusement sitting in the kitchen with Geoff on the table. He could spend hours patiently cutting up bits of fruit and sweets and, really, anything organic, then holding them out one at a time. Geoff would snap them up with his plunger and then turn his eyestalk to the Doctor, begging for more.

"He really likes bananas," he told Rose happily. "I told you he couldn't be evil. Can't be evil when you like bananas. Bananas are good."

One night, Rose woke up covered in sweat, shivering from her nightmares and struggling not to cry or scream. She lay there for a while, trying not to remember the terrible dream. Her heart rate had only just begun to slow when a familiar sound brought all that fear racing back: the unmistakable sound of a Dalek on the move.

Her bedroom door opened just a crack. Rose shot up in her bed, readying herself to face the merciless terror… And then she remembered that only one Dalek could get into the TARDIS.

Geoff scooted right up to her bed and looked up at her beseechingly. He waved his little gun and a bright beam of energy temporarily lit up the lime green muzzle.

Rose's lips curled into a tremulous smile. "Was that an 'oopsie'?" Geoff twitched his eyestalk. His speech indicators flashed twice quickly, a definite negative. Rose blinked at him. "You're… here to protect me?"

The speech indicators flashed brightly one time. Rose hesitated, then reached down and lifted Geoff onto her bed. Of all the absurdities in the universe, this had to be the most absurd.

Still, when she went back to sleep with a small merciless terror clutched in her arms, she found that the nightmares left her alone.

"He's been acting strange ever since we left your mother's," the Doctor said, giving Geoff another once-over with the sonic screwdriver. "I can't seem to figure out what's wrong with him…"

"He's got a stomach ache. He'll be fine in a while."

"What? How would you know that?" The Doctor blinked at Rose. Geoff shifted uncomfortably.

"Because Mickey spent the whole weekend sneaking him the food he didn't want to eat, that's why. Even a Dalek would have stomach trouble after eating so much of Mum's cooking."

"Oh… Oh, Geoff, I'm so sorry."

"Why are you sorry? It's Mickey's fault."

The Doctor coughed sheepishly. "I was sneaking him food, too. He got a double dose. Poor little Dalek."

Geoff turned and sulked off into the TARDIS, presumably looking for a place to hide until he felt better.

"Where's Geoff?"

"I thought he was with you!"

"Wha – you mean you wandered off without him? What if something had happened to you? If you're going to wander off, at least take him with you!"

"I didn't wander off without him – I just turned around and he was gone! I went to look for him. When I didn't find him, I figured he'd gone off and found you."

"So he's not with me, and he's not with you, and we're in a huge spaceship with clockwork robots with weapons made of stuff hard enough to…" The Doctor trailed off, his eyes widening in horror. "Rose, he's so little. What if something happens to him?"

Rose frowned, suddenly worried. She soon shook it off. "He is a Dalek, Doctor, even if only a little one. He can take care of himself."

"He's got a muzzle! People, pets, property, remember?"

"Oh!" Rose's eyes went wide. "We've got to find him!"

They spent hours and hours looking for him. Finally, Rose pulled up short and pointed through a mirror/window leading to a French ballroom. The party had been thrown into chaos.

"That's Madame de Pompadour," the Doctor said, confused, pointing to a pretty blonde woman held prisoner by some of the clockwork repair droids. "What're they doing with Madame de Pompadour? Wait – what is Madame de Pompadour doing on a spaceship?"

A section of the dance floor was quickly clearing and, as it widened, Rose saw why. "Forget Madame de Pompadour, what are they doing with Geoff?"

Their little Dalek spun in mad circles amidst the French courtiers, waving his little gun furiously. The lime green muzzle flashed again and again as he fired off shots, trying to dislodge it. Finally, he managed to shake free and immediately spun on the droids. Little though he was, he packed enough of a punch to disable the robots. The Doctor and Rose looked at each other.

"You get the uncrowned queen of France, I'll get the Dalek," Rose suggested.

Half an hour later, Reinette Poisson was safe and sound, the courtiers had all been convinced that nothing too unusual had happened, and the three space travelers were back on the TARDIS.

"Who's a good Dalek, then?" Rose cooed, tickling him. "Who's a good little Dalek? Who saved the future of France from evil clockwork robots?"

"And aren't those words you never thought you'd say!"

Toby's eyes had stopped glowing red and the writing was gone from his skin. The Ood were closing in while the archaeologist curled up next to a barrel, terrified of his own shadow. The Doctor and Ida were out of touch, Zach was on the verge of panic, Danny was about to throw in the towel, and Mr. Jefferson seemed to be organizing an assassination.

And on top of all that, Geoff had disappeared again.

Cross as Rose was that the little Dalek had wandered off (honestly, now she knew how the Doctor felt), she was even more cross when she found him underneath a grating panel in the floor. Mr. Jefferson admitted that there was a network of maintenance ducts underneath the base. Really, it would have been useful to know that earlier - it could have saved them a lot of trouble. Geoff had once again blundered his way into finding the solution to their predicament.

Geoff was terrified of the ghosts and refused to leave the TARDIS after they saw the first one. The Doctor didn't even see him again until after the whole debacle at Torchwood Tower was over… after Rose was gone.

He sat in the jump seat, staring bleakly at the time rotor, not even bothering to look 'round when he heard the familiar whirr of the Dalek's approach. He reached down blindly and pulled Geoff onto the seat beside him.

"You missed all your cousins," the Doctor sighed. "Good thing, too. I'd hate to've lost both of you."

Geoff scooted into his side, backed up an inch, and swung his eyestalk in a full circle. He twisted and looked up at the Doctor curiously.

"Rose isn't here anymore," he said. Geoff looked around again and then stared at the door expectantly. "No, she's not coming back… It's just you and me now."

Geoff spent a while looking back and forth between him and the door, as if he didn't really believe it. Eventually, he seemed to wilt without physically moving at all.

"Yeah. I know."

"With this ring, I thee biodamp," the Doctor grinned, sliding the ring onto Donna's finger.

She rolled her eyes and sniped at him in return, "Not funny."

The TARDIS door creaked open and the Doctor looked over as Geoff scooted out, his speech indicators flashing patterns of two.

"No? What's wrong with you?" he asked, raising an eyebrow and beckoning.

Geoff butted against the Doctor's knee, still blinking patterns of two, then swung his eyestalk around to stare at the ring on Donna's hand. He looked pointedly at the Doctor.

"'S just a biodamper. No need to get mad," the Doctor protested. Geoff butted against his knee again, blinking twice.

"What is your freaky spaceman dog doing?" Donna demanded as the Doctor gathered the little Dalek in his arms.

"It's kind of hard to tell sometimes. But I think…" The Doctor sighed. "I think he's upset that I gave you a ring, 'specially since…"

"Since what?"

"Nah!" The Doctor patted Geoff's head and addressed him. "Cheer up, you! Gotta get Donna to her wedding, ey? Tell you what, be a good Dalek and we'll have a banana split later."

Geoff stared at him and then pointedly turned away without a response. The Doctor watched him retreat into the TARDIS and then got up, offered his hand to Donna, and followed. "C'mon, then! Where did you say this wedding was?"

It turned out that the Judoon thought Daleks were either fictional or extinct, same as Time Lords. Therefore, they disregarded the robotic human toy – didn't even bother to scan it.

That meant it was extremely easy for the frightened Dalek to flee past them at top speed… all of six miles an hour.

From there, it was just luck that he observed the plasmavore having a snack. That scared him even more than the Judoon, so he turned and ran right back to the Doctor.

"Aw, hello there!" said the Doctor in delight. "I missed you. Where you been?" He scooped Geoff up while Martha stared. The Time Lord spun on his toes. "Sorry, haven't you seen him before? This is Geoff. He's my pet. Eh, only nice one in the universe, so if you see another robot shaped like this, well…" The Doctor shrugged. "You probably won't, actually, so never mind. Anyway, Geoff, what's got you wound up? You see anything?"

Geoff blinked his speech indicators.

"Yeah? Find what the Judoon are looking for?"

Another blink.

"Aw, you are a good Dalek! C'mon, boy, show me where!"

"Wait. That thing is your pet?" Martha interrupted. Geoff swung his eyestalk around to look at her as the Doctor turned.

"Yep! Good ol' Geoff! I found him. Well, a friend of mine did, and we kept him." The Doctor turned his gaze back to Geoff, his face suddenly solemn. "Good ol' Geoff."

Geoff looked at the ground.

"Anyway! Allons-y!" Cheerfully, the Doctor set Geoff down and followed after him.

He wouldn't have called it easy to then subdue the plasmavore and avoid the Judoons' scan, but it could have been a heck of a lot worse.

Martha was wary of Geoff, he noticed. Geoff, to be honest, wasn't too eager for her to be in the TARDIS in the first place. He kept leaving the room as soon as she entered, even doing so far as to steer himself right off the edge of the table when she came into the kitchen.

"Geoff, be nice," the Doctor admonished. "Hello, Martha. Don't mind him, he's a bit… touchy just now…"

Geoff swung his eyestalk around to the Doctor and then looked away again .The indignation was more than clear.

"You mean that thing eats? But it's just a – a little robot!"

The Doctor picked him up and fed him another piece of banana. "He's called a Dalek. Last of his kind, just like me. He's a creature inside a robotic shell. And he likes bananas."

"So you're – what? An intergalactic traveler with his… robot… hermit crab."

"Pretty much. 'S more like a little squid thing, really. Never seen the real Geoff, actually, but I've seen others. I bet Geoff's quite cute in there." He tickled the body piece, grinning. "Aren't you, ey? Cutest Dalek ever, that's you."

"A little squid thing?"

"Yep. Normally they look like nightmares." He held out another piece of banana and watched as Geoff's plunger sucked it up eagerly. "Bet Geoff's more like one of them little…" He made a vague squiggling motion with a finger. "You know. The cute ones."

"Right… yeah, of course. Yeah. The cute ones. And he likes bananas?"

"Yep."

"Can I… Can I try?"

The Doctor sat back and Martha picked up a bit of banana. She held it out tentatively and Geoff snapped it up.

Funnily, he liked her a bit more after that.

"Doctor, you realize this is black tie, ri - What have you done to Geoff?"

"What do you mean? He's adorable!"

Martha leaned down and picked up the Dalek, holding him out to the Doctor with both her eyebrows raised. "He's wearing a tailored tuxedo."

"It's adorable."

"It's really not, you know." Geoff looked at Martha and then the ground. "And he doesn't like it."

"Aw, come here, you." The Doctor reached out and took Geoff. He cuddled the Dalek close. "You really do look cute. And, hey, gotta dress up for the party. There's nibbles at parties."

That seemed to catch Geoff's interest.

"Yeah, no, he's not coming to Dr. Lazarus's showcase."

"What? Of course he's coming!"

"No. Sorry, but you're a stretch as it is. You can't expect Tish to let your pet hermit squid in, too."

No matter how much the Doctor pouted, and no matter how much Geoff squirmed entreatingly, she just wouldn't change her mind. Which was ridiculous, really, because what kind of trouble could they get into at a party?

Dalek Caan didn't care for Geoff. The Doctor never thought he could like a Dalek (other than Geoff), but Sek stopped Caan from killing the little green Dalek. The Doctor actually found himself sad that the new, human-patterned Dalek had died.

He spent the evening with his feet propped up on the console, his eyes staring vacantly at the time rotor and Geoff cuddled in his arms.

"Doctor!"

The Doctor sat up so quickly that he banged his head on the underside of the console. He muffled his not-quite-curse and slid forward, then sat up again in time to see a seething Martha Jones storm in. Geoff swung in her one-handed grip; in the other hand, she had two smoking black lumps.

"Your puppy has just shot my best shoes!" she fumed, throwing Geoff across the console room to him. The Doctor caught his Dalek and looked between Geoff and the smoking remnants of…

"Did you do that?" he asked the little Dalek. Geoff turned his eyestalk between the Doctor and the shoes and, very dimly, blinked his speech indicators once.

He tried not to laugh, he really did! But Geoff was just so sheepish that the Doctor had to grin, and then the grin turned into a snicker, and then – well, it went downhill from there, really.

Martha was not nearly so amused.

It was a strange day when the Doctor stepped out of the library and nearly got bowled over by a determined Geoff as the little Dalek charged down the hallway. He disappeared around a corner. A few minutes later, he returned with a ball suctioned firmly to his plunger. Curious, the Doctor trotted after him. Geoff headed straight to the console room and went right up to Martha. He dropped the ball at her feet and looked up at her, expectant and eager.

Martha looked up from her medical textbook. "Not again," she complained. Geoff looked down at the ball, then turned his eyestalk back up to her. "Oh, fine."

She picked up the ball and chucked it blindly toward the hallway. Geoff went tearing off after it at upwards of six miles an hour.

A moment later, he was back with the ball again. He dropped it at her feet and looked up, waiting impatiently.

The cycle repeated. After a while, Martha started to enjoy herself. She set the textbook aside and began waiting for Geoff to return. She threw the ball with more enthusiasm, cheering him on when he went haring after it.

The Doctor left them to it, grinning.

The first time he saw him, Jack kicked Geoff across the console room. It wasn't surprising, as such, not considering how Jack's last encounter with them had ended. That didn't stop the Doctor shouting at him. While he was busy telling Jack off, Geoff left to hide in the depths of the TARDIS. The Doctor didn't see him again for more than a year.

The clever little Dalek had chosen the one place the Master never bothered to look. He was safe from the Toclafane and from the paradox. But he got lonely, terribly lonely, on his own for a year. As soon as the Doctor stepped into the TARDIS, Geoff was there, his speech indicators flashing at furious speed. He levitated – only the second time the Doctor had ever seen him do so – and threw himself at the Doctor, squirming as he hadn't done since before Rose… left.

"Aw, look at you, you gorgeous boy! Have you been hiding in here all that time? Good boy, good boy! Oh, I missed you so much! Martha, look! It's Geoff! He's okay!"

"Yeah. Great! Listen… Doctor…"

And with that, he knew that it was going to be just him and Geoff again.

Travelling alone had always been hard on the Doctor. He loved having company. He loved having friends alongside him. The universe could be very big, very lonely, when you were by yourself. He'd been by himself since Martha had opted to take care of the Earth she'd helped to save.

The Doctor leaned against the console, staring into the time rotor as he so often did. He sighed heavily. Then, something touched his leg; the unexpected touch made him jump.

The Doctor looked down at Geoff and smiled. "Hey, you. Come to cheer me up?" He picked up the baby Dalek and gave him a cuddle. Geoff blinked his speech indicators twice. The Doctor nodded. Geoff was right; he'd never really be alone again. They had each other now. A Time Lord and his Dalek, travelling the universe together.

Geoff liked Donna much more the second time they met. He squirmed happily as the Doctor stared at the mountain of luggage.

"C'mon, then. You gonna help or is it just me?"

Geoff turned his eyestalk toward the nearest suitcase, easily four times his size. He looked back at the Doctor.

"Just me, then. Right. Fat lot of good you are."

Geoff carried right on squirming.

If there was one thing Donna hadn't expected, living in the TARDIS, it was that she would open her eyes one morning to find a blue robotic one staring back at her from a mess of green metal and silk flowers. Once she finished shouting, she realized it was the space man's pet robot with a floppy-brimmed, flower-encrusted had on its head.

"Hello, little robot space dog," she said. The space dog squirmed in that way the Doctor insisted meant he would be wagging his tail, if he had one. "Is that my hat you're wearing?"

If a space dog with no facial features at all could look pleased with itself, this one did.

Even in a genius academy, Donna discovered, no one would question a small green robot following tamely at the Doctor's heels.

"Why don't they ask about him?" Donna wondered aloud.

"They think he's just a thing. People don't question things. They just think, 'Eh, it's a thing.'"

Later, it would turn out that seeing a Dalek and a Time Lord cuddling could confuse a Sontaron for just long enough to set the atmospheric converter on a delay and then teleport back to Earth before the mothership exploded. The Doctor resolved to cuddle Geoff much more often.

Geoff had his first oopsie when faced with a giant wasp. Not even wasps are immune to Dalek gunfire.

"Hello, sweetie. Thanks for coming. And you've brought Geoff with you! Come here, you cute little thing."

Women, the Doctor reflected, were always extremely confusing, but none more so than Professor Riversong. She'd called him to The Library and acted like she knew him – and she certainly knew Geoff.

Geoff hid behind his leg, peering out at the astronaut with curly blonde hair.

"What's wrong with him? Ahh – have you fed him something strange and made him ill again?" Riversong fished a banana out of her spacesuit and offered it to him.

"What? No, he's not ill!" The Doctor snatched Geoff off the ground as he started moving forward. "Look, I don't know who you are, but get back in your rocket and – Geoff!" The traitorous Dalek had squirmed out of his grasp and was happily accepting bits of banana from the stranger. She tickled his head. The Doctor huffed.

"Time Lord's best friend, is he? You've been sold out for a banana, space man. That's loyalty for you!"

"Not helping, Donna!"

Only a few hours later, the Doctor lost another person close to his hearts. Geoff spent that night nestled in the Doctor's arms while he reflected on love, loss, and bitter irony.

Even at nine hundred and more years old, there are still many things to be learned.

For example, Daleks do not like baths, and the TARDIS could get quite touchy about puddles on her floor.

Donna thought this was hilarious. The Doctor, not so much.

Easily the best moment of the Doctor's life was the one in which he first saw Rose again. As he turned, he was vaguely aware of Donna snatching Geoff out of the air and shoving him into the TARDIS so that he and Rose could have their moment alone.

Perhaps the worst moment of the Doctor's life happened only an hour later, watching Geoff turn his eyestalk between the Doctor and his Dalek cousins aboard the Crucible. And then… And then watching as Geoff turned and left with the Daleks. It didn't matter how tightly Rose held his hand. Even with her beside him, it didn't hurt any less to watch Geoff leave and know that the next time they met, they would be… enemies.

"See the Doctor!" crooned Dalek Caan. "See the soul of him!" He laughed, insane and writhing on his life support platform.

Dalek gunfire whined through the air. Caan shrieked as he died. Everyone in the Vault whipped around – and there he was, tiny and green and determined as he emerged from behind the control panel.

"Doc-tor and Rose are my friends." The Doctor goggled at the squeaky little voice that spoke as Geoff's speech indicators blinked. "Da-lek Caan called me an a-bo-min-a-tion. The Da-leks fixed my speech in-ter-face but they are not my friends." He swung his eyestalk up to the Doctor, looking between him and Rose as if shyly seeking their approval.

"Geoff!" Rose laughed in delight. "You are a good little Dalek, aren't you? Best of the lot, the very best! See, Doctor, I told you he wouldn't really join them!"

The eyestalk went back to the Doctor, who smiled. "That's my Geoff. Always did say you're brilliant!" It was forgiveness and pride and relief and affection all tied up in one, and everything became right again.

Geoff squirmed happily. He said (and the Doctor hoped the talking wasn't temporary, because, really, that tiny little voice was almost pathetically adorable), "Hol-ding cells de-act-i-vat-ed. Plan-ets have been re-turned to their or-i-gin-al po-si-tions. The Da-lek for-ces are a-pproach-ing. Run?"

What followed could be described as chaos. It would be rather like describing a Sontaron as 'a bit competitive' but it could be described that way nonetheless. Still, in the end, the Daleks were destroyed, Sarah Jane returned to her son, Martha and Jack and Mickey set off together, Rose and the half-human Doctor left with Jackie for their new life, and Donna was laughing with her old friends, blissfully unaware of the heartbroken Time Lord who returned to his TARDIS.

Geoff was waiting for him just inside, eyestalk turned up in sympathy. He picked up the little Dalek and held him close. "Just you and me again, Geoff," he said, sighing. "Be nice to relax. Go wherever we want for once…"

Geoff swung his eyestalk around to look at the Time Lord. He squirmed, just a little bit, and suggested, "First stop ba-na-na split?"

"First stop, banana split." The Doctor laughed in spite of himself. "Sounds like a good plan to me!"