20: The Girl who Can - pt.2

(WARNING: This story contains Doctor Who season 7 spoilers, specifically from the first episode, Asylum of the Daleks. Read at your own risk. Unless you don't care. Then don't read at any risk.)

   Oswin spun on her heel, thrusting her whisk forward.

   There was no one there. She could have sworn it was the Doctor. 

   She gripped her whisk tighter, dismayed. She knew what kind of forest this was, and the revelation filled her with dread. 

   Every step she took pressed the ground, releasing vapors into the air - vapors that, when breathed in, caused lifelike hallucinations.

   Just as this thought crossed her mind, a dalek sprung up in front of her. In its harsh, cold voice, it said, "I am not a daaa-lek!"

   Oswin backed up. "No!" she screamed at it. "I know you're not real!" 
   Her back jolted against something hard and cold. She whirled around. Another dalek turned slowly toward her. "Egg-egg-egg-egg-"
   "NO!" shrieked Oswin, and she turned and fled, but daleks continued appearing all around her. She was being hemmed in. There was nowhere to go, nowhere but through the thickening forces of the terrible daleks. She could hear their voices all around her, raised to an desperate, eardrum-bursting pitch. 
   "Save us! Save the daaa-leks!"
   "I am not a daaa-lek!"
   "Exterminate! Exterminaaate!"
   "Rescue me, chin boy, and show me the stars!"
   "I AM HUMAN!" screamed Oswin at the top of her lungs. Her voice broke, and she tasted blood. She kneeled to the ground as the daleks closed in around her, and she braced her arms over her head, sobbing and rocking back and forth, her whisk forgotten on the ground.
   Silence pervaded the forest.
   Oswin let out a sob and looked up. The daleks were gone. Entirely gone.
   She shut her eyes tightly and stayed curled on the ground, trying to find her grasp on reality, on her sanity. She lay there until her sobs were reduced to hiccups. That single phrase continued racing through her head - I am human. I am human. I am not a dalek, I am human.
   But how did she know this was not all a dream?
   And as the thought passed through her mind, the entire forest faded around her.
   "NO!" she screamed, clawing at the earth as it disappeared and she found herself curled up pathetically on her hammock.
   In her spaceship that didn't exist.
   In her head that didn't exist. 
   She was a dalek.
   She screamed and screamed, her voice tearing out of her throat, breaking her. She grabbed the nearest souffle bowl and smashed it on the ground. The pieces skittered across the floor. They weren't real. This wasn't real. She wasn't real. Everything the Doctor said had been true, and he had left her here, left her here to drown and to die in her own insanity. All that was real was the cold shell outside of her, the chains that held her down, the alien hardware and wires that were now where her body and soul used to be. 
   "I HATE YOU!" she roared at the ceiling, at the Daleks, at The Doctor, at herself. She pounded her fists desperately against the wall, creating a dull reverberating sound that hurt her ears. "I AM NOT A DALEK!" Her throat hurt, and the slick taste of blood touched her tongue. 
   She slid down against the wall and lay curled against it, tears running down her face. "I am not a Dalek. . ." she whispered. "I'm Oswin." 
   She found her eyes focused on the shattered pieces of souffle dish on the ground. One small piece had buried itself in her thumb, and she stared at it, barely seeing. Pain. Blood. Wasn't that proof that she was human, that she existed? But it wasn't. She was in a dream world, a place that her mind had created, and her own subconscious had made it as realistic as possible. That was why she had never suspected that nothing was real. Not until The Doctor came, of course.
   Why hadn't he taken her with him?
   Why had he broken her heart, shattered her world, and left her to die?