>_________> || oswin

[The Eleventh Doctor]

There were quite a few areas that just screamed trouble on Earth. After a certain time, Ukraine had become one of this. A lot of humans liked to tell stories about seeing monsters there or some craziness. The Eleventh Doctor thought it was really fun, hearing about stuff like that. As much as he respected them, humans could be really weird with their stories. But, in this case, the stories weren't exactly false. In fact, they were very true. Apparently, the beginnings of some big, wacky attack of some sorts started here... and where there were big, wacky attacks, the Doctor was usually not far behind. In fact, in this case, the TARDIS was appearing just as it started... or, at least, the Doctor could only assume that it was just starting then.

Strolling out of the TARDIS, the first thing the Doctor realized was that the place was... deserted. He had expected that, sure, but this was just plain old eerie. He really didn't like it! It was all spooky and grim... basically, it was what was to be expected from somewhere so closely associated with bad stuff. The Doctor took a few steps away from the TARDIS, with a little bit of a bounce in his steps just to lighten the mood a bit. All this doom and gloom... it just wasn't his style, most of the time. There needed to be something... lightening up the place a bit. Well, that wasn't exactly what he came for, but it would be... nice. Still, he needed to find the source of the problem and get rid of it before anyone got hurt. So, he figured, all he needed to do was walk around a bit and he'd eventually get into trouble. It usually happened that way.

So, the Doctor began his stroll, searching each and everywhere he could find for the source of the problem. The spooky atmosphere still brought him down a bit, but there wasn't much he could do about that... yet. He fully intended on making the place a little less horrible to look at later on, when it wasn't so well-known for being spooky.

[Oswin Oswald]

Phazon was too spooky.

At least, that's what most of the people at the outposts Oswin and the Doctor had come across had led them to believe. Posts in Ukraine were rare things to come by, but the ones that there were proved to be knowledgeable enough for them to gather some information about the abandoned warehouse nearby. Apparently said warehouse was home to a rather large supply of the substance known as Phazon, stuff from another planet that some weird section of the government was holding on to. There were whispers that they were affiliated with Torchwood, but one call to the Torchwood Three hub shot that rumor down pretty quickly.

Still, apparently this stuff actually did have the potential to be destructive to the Earth, which had led the Doctor and Oswin to check it out. The military facility it had been housed it was long deserted, but leaving this stuff to quite possibly spread or grow or whatever it was that it did unchecked was probably a bad idea. Unfortunately, their information was sort of limited, so it was Oswin's job to fix that, either by running a scan from inside the facility or getting a sample. Or both. Whichever was easier/less inclined to get her killed.

Whichever way Oswin went about it, though, it still required that she actually get inside the building. The TARDIS wasn't cooperating for some reason, refusing to materialize anywhere but directly outside. So, while the Doctor waited outside to take care of her, Oswin grabbed her bag, climbing up to the roof of the warehouse. Maybe the door might've been a better idea, but what was the use of an entrance without a little fun? Just walking inside was boring, and having to just go a get a sample was already dull enough without adding to it. She would have much preferred being off on some alien planet, not stuck in a warehouse in the middle of a desert on Earth.

Ah, well. If she got her job done quick enough, there was still time for that.

She dropped easily down into one of the upper rooms of the facility. Warehouse with two floors. Huh. Well, at least that made it easier for Oswin to get in without breaking her neck. "Made it," she spoke into the communicator around her wrist, keeping the Doctor posted. He did tend to not really like it when Oswin was off on her own, but honestly it wasn't like she got captured all the time. Only...some of the time. When she wandered off. Particularly in spooky places. But not all the time!

Besides, there wasn't even anyone around to capture her here. This place had been deserted for months and it showed. Oswin had been in plenty of creepy places, though, even if this one was different in that it held a potentially dangerous and radioactive substance. Really, this stuff was just...a normal whatever day it was, even if it was somewhat eerie to walk around a deserted warehouse alone. Oswin reached for her belt, pulling out the torch she had there and switching it on. Well. At least this warehouse wasn't chock full of Weeping Angels like the last one had been. That was a fun time.

Something rustled nearby and Oswin bristled, tightening her grip on her light and making it shake just a little bit. It was probably just some desert animal that'd found its way in here, but on the off chance that it wasn't...

"Someone there?" she called, her voice sounding a little more wavery than she'd liked. Well, it wasn't her fault. Wandering around in a creepy place like this and hearing a noise, anyone would be creeped out. It was like the first five minutes of a horror movie or something. Or the first five minutes of a Supernatural episode.

[The Eleventh Doctor]

Whatever was lurking around this place was making itself rather hard to find... Which begged the question if it even was a living thing, as opposed to some sort of malicious... object. Of course, if there were any outposts nearby he would have looked for them and asked around, but... well, he didn't expect to see any posts in Ukraine anytime soon, to put it bluntly. Not only that, but the Doctor wasn't omniscient, yet, so it would be rather difficult for him to actually find what he was looking for... Thankfully, the Sonic Screwdriver did that for him. The Doctor reached into his pocket and, after channeling his thoughts through the device, began to scan the area for anomalies.

After getting past all of the radiation, the Screwdriver picked up a rather strange signal. It was, itself, very radiation-esque, but a little more... malicious, as if it had some sort of goal of it's own. That was weird, but certainly not unheard of... especially for the Doctor. Whatever it was, it was in a vaguely North direction. The Doctor placed the Sonic Screwdriver back into his coat pocket and strolled back in the direction of the TARDIS. Wondering why he hadn't just used the sonic in the first place, the Doctor reached his TARDIS. The Doctor quickly slipped into the time machine. Taking no time to admire the familiar scenery within, the Time Lord rushed over to the console and began looking around for the right part. It was such a good decision to set the console room to a less cluttered look - it was already saving him so much time.

Without wasting a moment, the Doctor shoved the Sonic Screwdriver into a hole in the console. After a series of whirs, beeps and clicks, the TARDIS registered exactly where the screwdriver had detected the bizarre radiation. In a flash, the Doctor was pressing buttons, pulling switches and getting the TARDIS ready for dematerialization. The peculiar sound that could only come from the TARDIS blared through the console room as the entire TARDIS began to shake - a sure sign that it was traveling. Whether or not it was going to do what he wanted was a different story altogether. Thankfully, it went precisely where the Doctor wanted it to. At least sometimes the TARDIS did what he wanted.

The Doctor pulled the TARDIS' doors open, revealing that he was within a dark warehouse... it had, obviously, never been entered in a whole bunch of years. If the view from a nearby window told the Doctor anything, it was that he was at least two floors up. Which meant one of two things: Either the substance he was looking for was on that floor, or the TARDIS was just not co-operating again. Knowing the TARDIS, it was probably the latter. The Doctor strode away from the TARDIS, keeping a wary eye on his surrounding. Not wary enough, however, as he somehow managed to trip over some sort of wire. Even at that, his "wary eye" apparently didn't tell him that someone was nearby... somehow who sounded incredibly familiar.

"There is, almost certainly, someone here!" The Doctor stood up, brushing the dust off of his tweed jacket. It was getting more obvious that nobody had been around here in years by the minute. When he looked around for the other person in the room, he was met by a seemingly familiar sight - someone who looked exactly like Clara. That could only mean one thing.... he was going to need some kind of saving and she was the one to do it. "Oh, hello... I'm the Doctor."

[Oswin Oswald]

Oswin paused as the sound of the TARDIS suddenly echoed from somewhere nearby, her light shining down the corridor. Had the Doctor finally fixed her up, then, and come to join his companion inside? To be totally honest, she wouldn't have minded the company, especially in a creepy place like this. Oh, she'd been in creepy places before, sure, but they were significantly less so when there was someone with you. And besides, the Doctor's knowledge of this stuff, limited though it might be, might come in handy when she finally found the room where they had been keeping whatever amount of Phazon was waiting. Oswin had a feeling that her scanner wasn't going to be able to tell her much, no matter how far in the future it came from.

Continuing down the hall, she started as a crash and a rustle came from nearby, immediately shining her beam down...an empty hallway. The hallway next to it, then. Torch gripped tightly in her hand and ready to blind someone at a moment, she crept down the corridor, her boots soundless, even against the metal floor. Being able to move without making a sound was sort of a good thing to learn when you were traveling around the universe and poking your nose into danger. And Oswin had done nothing if not adapted quickly to having her life in peril almost 24/7. Another rustle come from the opening nearby, and whatever it was sounded way too big to be an animal.

And when Oswin called out, the response was just about the last thing she expected.

The familiar voice made her freeze, her torch still gripped tightly in her hand. Slowly, she turned down the hallway, only to find that it was rather short and had a door at the end of it. Oswin pushed it open, stopping in the doorway with nothing to do but stare. Because it wasn't her Doctor standing here, waiting for her, but another one. The first one she'd ever met, the one who promised to take her along, the one who'd...left her behind. Just...standing there. And for a moment, it made Oswin smile, just seeing him there without any screens or metal shells in the way. Like it was supposed to have been before, when he came to get her.

Except now, Oswin had another Doctor. Her Doctor, the one who was waiting outside for her. How the universe was remaining intact right now was completely beyond her and Oswin found that she really didn't care. So long as each Doctor stayed either inside or outside, there wasn't much of a problem. The only slightly troubling thing about this was the flash of recognition in his eyes, which...really shouldn't have been a thing, since he'd never properly seen her face. Maybe he'd looked her up, after having to leave her? That made her feel sort of nice, that he might have spared her a thought now and then.

"Well, you haven't got to tell me that." Oswin grinned despite herself. "Thing is, you sort of tend to remember names of people who's lives you've saved." She couldn't bring herself to outright tell him who she was. Part of Oswin was still terrified that if he knew, if there was some inclination that she was still Dalek or some trap laid by them, that his eyes would harden and all the disgust and rage and hate would be focused on here again. And Oswin wasn't sure she could take it more than once.

[The Eleventh Doctor]

Lives she's saved...? That was... well, incredibly possible. All of Clara's echoes apparently saved his life, one way or another. The only thing that gave him a clue was that she knew his name and recognized him by his Eleventh regeneration's face. So, she was one of the ones that had saved him.... She didn't exactly look like she was wearing Victorian clothing and the way she talked was definitely different from that one. So, that left him with two options... either she was one of the ones he somehow hadn't noticed or....

No, that wasn't possible. It couldn't be Oswin, it literally could not be Oswin. She had been captured by the Daleks, tortured and turned into one of them... It was just... well, impossible.

Then again, since when was Clara not known for the impossible. The rifts were pretty intense, from what the Doctor had seen and heard, but... could they really reverse the process of Dalek transformation? The Doctor wasn't exactly familiar with the process itself, since it really wasn't something the Daleks normally did. Really, the Doctor wondered why they had done it in the first place... Oswin certainly had an amazing mind, but at the same time the Daleks viewed themselves as superior to everything... could it be that the Daleks were becoming more intelligent about their surroundings? That could definitely be a problem. Even though they did forget the Doctor, that didn't mean he wouldn't have to stop them again....

"...You...." The Doctor began, his eyes widening slightly at the revelation. He leaned forward a bit, as if he was trying to get some kind of information from looking at her closer. "...No. You were.... The Daleks..." He was stammering now, as he tended to do when he was confused. How could this be happening? More importantly, what was she doing in Ukraine, especially this part of Ukraine? She was too calm for a rift to have just opened right here... it just wasn't common to see many people around this part of Ukraine. It was probably something to do with the lack of posts. Or the radiation, that was also a factor. "You.... you're souffle girl, aren't you?"

[Oswin Oswald]

There was a long moment of tense silence between them. Or, at least, that was how it felt to Oswin, who stood, holding so tightly to her torch that the beam of light shook ever-so slightly. She switched it off quickly, for the weak sunlight coming through the boarded up windows was enough so that the hallway was visible. Oswin knew just as well as anyone else that she wasn't supposed to be alive. Or human, for that matter. And how much this looked like a possible trick or trap. One of the people the Doctor hadn't been able to save, one closely linked to the Daleks, alive and well and entirely unharmed. At the very least, there was the alternate explanation of the rifts, but Oswin wasn't entirely sure which one the Doctor would find more likely.

She watched as his eyes widened, and the fact that they didn't immediately harden as they had before was somewhat soothing to Oswin's nerves. Of course, why consider her anything but human when there was evidence to the contrary right in front of him? Oswin didn't even shy back as he leaned forward, instead tilting her head with a mysterious sort of smile. Oh, let him try and figure her out for a bit. She had a perfectly logical explanation that had happened to loads of people and didn't concern Daleks in the slightest. Or, well. Unless you counted getting changed back into a human after being one.

"Was I?" A playful glimmer appeared in her eyes. "Can't really remember too much before that rift picked me up." Untrue, of course, Oswin remembered everything in great detail, and her tone made this quite obvious. But she did like to tease, especially in situations like this where she didn't know what else to do. Besides, the Doctor, this Doctor anyway, was a wonderful target when it came to that sort of thing, she remembered that better than almost anything else. And, to top it all off, it made it so that she didn't have to directly talk about coming through. Bit of an awkward subject really, coming back from the dead, and definitely one that she wasn't too keen on talking about.

Especially now.

Souffle girl. Blimey, how long had it been since she'd heard that? Oswin smiled, tucking her torch back into the belt around her waist. Souffle girl, not 'a Dalek' or whatever else he could have called her. "Hello again, Doctor." Her voice was uncharacteristically soft and maybe even a little hesitant, but the last thing Oswin needed was to get hurt by what had happened again. She'd had quite enough of that, thanks.