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“You’re absolutely insane, you know that?”
The Doctor frowned. “You’re the one who followed me here. What sort of human does that? I can’t figure out what goes on inside your tiny little brains.”
You raised an eyebrow. “You’re not human.” It wasn’t a question.
“No, I’m not.” He studied your face. His eyes-- a bright, piercing blue-- were very intense, you noticed. “Do you believe me?”
“Honest answer?” You looked up at him. “I don’t know.”
The Doctor stared at you for a moment, and then nodded, apparently satisfied. “Fair enough. Now, are you going to help me catch an Auton, or are you going to whitter on all day?”
“Is that what they’re called, then?” you asked quietly, as you followed him out into the dark hallway. “Autons, that’s their proper name?”
“Yes,” the Doctor said. He gestured for you to be quiet. “Now, shut up.”
You frowned, but said nothing. Probably didn’t want the mannequins-- the Autons, you corrected yourself-- to know the two of you were there.
So you followed the Doctor through the dark hallway in silence, feeling your way along the wall until you came to a door at the end. You tested the handle-- locked. It figured. The Doctor pulled out his blue pen thing-- sonic screwdriver, yes, that-- and looked at you, his face lit up from the glow.
“Ready?” he whispered.
“No,” you whispered back.
“That’s the spirit.”
He grinned, and unlocked the door.
The hinges squealed as he pushed it open to reveal a room beyond--it wasn’t nearly as dark in there as it had been in the hallway. Four thin windows on the farthest wall shed some light over things, though not enough for you to make out much more than just black figures in the background, which could be anything-- Autons, filing cabinets, some other sort of strange monster that the Doctor hadn’t bothered to mention yet. It was silent, too, almost too silent. The only thing you could hear was the sound of your own heartbeat and your breathing, both of which seemed far too loud.
“Don’t be thick, you understand?” The Doctor said suddenly, nearly scaring you half to death. “I can’t have you running off and getting yourself killed.”
“Got it,” you mumbled back. “Minimal stupidity.”
You started moving forward, farther into the room, careful to make as little noise as you could. It was slow and painstaking, seeing as you couldn’t make out anything that wasn’t directly in front of your face: your own body, the doctor, his hand when he motioned for you to stop and nearly hit you in the face.
“Hold on. Hush,” he muttered. “Listen.”
There was a noise, almost like a creak. Or a squeak. Same thing, really. The Doctor frowned, and then took your hand. “This way,” he said, turning to the left and tugging you along with him. “Stay behind me.”
The creaking got steadily louder as you moved forward. The Doctor stopped, again. He frowned, and reached out, feeling around for something solid in the darkness.
Nearly too fast for you to see, a plastic arm shot out and grabbed him by the neck. And-- well, you supposed there was a part of your brain that still hadn’t realized, hadn’t fully understood that this was real, until now. That part of you had just received a rather rude awakening.
You didn’t scream.
Your entire body flooded with emotions-- terror, shock, excitement, wonder-- and your heart threatened to beat out of your ribcage. There was no way in hell you’d ever get used to this, you realized dimly.
But still you acted. You did the first thing you could think of.
You grabbed the arm and pulled, as hard as you could-- there was a pop, and the hand around the Doctor’s neck went limp. You glanced down. There was the arm, completely dismembered. Torn off, right at the shoulder. You stared.
This isn’t real, you thought. This can’t be real.
The Doctor, because he was the Doctor and because he was absolutely, completely insane, didn’t look at all fazed-- by the dismemberment or by the fact that something had just attempted to strangle him. “Well done,” he said, only slightly breathless. “We still need the head. Best get on that.”
“Right…” you said distantly, still staring at the arm. “Right. Yeah.” You shook your head, trying frantically to snap yourself out of it-- whatever it was-- as the Auton lunged for you again.
This time, it was the Doctor who acted-- he caught the mannequin, and stumbled back a little by the weight of it. And then he grabbed ahold of the thing’s head with both hands, and pulled once, twice, three times, until the head came off with another pop. He looked at the head, and then looked at you, standing there, completely and utterly out of your depth, still holding onto that bloody plastic arm. And he smiled.
And you smiled, too.
You smiled because it-- the entire thing-- was insane and wonderful and so many other things that you couldn’t describe. You felt more alive standing in a shop's dark basement and fighting off plastic creatures than you ever did being an average human being.
And then the lights came on.
The room lit up. It took a moment-- just a single moment-- for your eyes to adjust, and then you looked around.
Things were about to get a lot less fun, you realized.
There were Autons all over the room.
Fifty of them, maybe more, watching you and the Doctor with their perfectly blank faces. You were surrounded. Of course you were surrounded, because running in and just grabbing a mannequin's head without any sort of problem would be way too easy.
The mannequins started to advance.
The Doctor took your hand in his.
“That’s… a lot of Autons,” you mumbled, not taking your eyes off of them.
The Doctor nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes it is.”
“Should we…?”
“Run? Probably.”
So you ran.

As fast as you could, ducking around hands and legs and bodies of mannequins that threw themselves in your way to stop you. You ran, still carrying that stupid plastic arm, the Doctor already searching his pockets for his screwdriver as you neared the door to the hallway. You didn’t realize, not at first, that you were laughing-- strangely, loudly, helplessly laughing-- and so was the Doctor, as he tightened his hold on your hand.
And as your head spun and spun and spun into an inevitable, inescapable moment of clarity, you realized--
This is fantastic.
You ran through the door to the hallway, and neither you nor the Doctor stopped to close it-- you just kept going, kept running, all the way to the elevator, the Autons close behind you. And then you were there, and the Doctor was jabbing the button, trying to get the elevator to close before the mannequins could get inside. It wouldn’t close fast enough. They were getting closer. They were getting closer, the doors were almost, almost shut--
One of the mannequins stuck its head through. The doors protested, making a horrible scraping sound as they tried to slam closed. The Autons started hammering at the metal. You looked at the Doctor.
And then you remembered the plastic hand.
Now, maybe it was you all along, or maybe it was just the Doctor’s insanity rubbing off on you, but you had an idea. A horrible, stupid, idiotic, crazy idea.
You lifted the plastic arm up over your shoulder, and then you swung it as hard as you could.
It connected with the mannequin’s head with a loud, echoing crack, and the impact jarred through your entire arm. Now, the head didn’t just fall off-- it went ricocheting off the side of the elevator, and the stump of the mannequin’s neck fell back through the doors as they slammed shut.
The Doctor looked at you, as the head rolled to a stop at his feet.
You looked back.
And for the second time, you broke out in uncontrollable laughter.

----

“We’re walking through the shops carrying heads.” You laughed. “And nobody’s noticed.”
The Doctor grinned. “That’s the thing about humans. You know what they do when they see something out of the ordinary? Nothing.”
“Except me.” You smiled up at him, tucking the head under your arm. The two of you passed through the front of the shops and into the parking lot without so much as a funny look.
“Except you,” The Doctor agreed. The two of you walked side by side, past the rows of cars lined up in the lot and over to the sidewalk.
“Doctor?” you asked, after a short pause. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” He looked at you a little oddly, his eyebrow scrunching up, as if he was surprised that you’d hesitated.
“Who are you, really?”
“Ah.” He looked away, focusing intently on the sidewalk ahead of him. And then he smiled at you, Maybe you were imagining it, but it seemed almost too forced. “I told you, I’m the Doctor.”
“Well, yes, I know,” you said. “But-- what’s your name?”
The Doctor attempted to shrug nonchalantly. His shoulders were tense. “Names aren’t important.”
HIs expression had hardened. For all his light-hearted joking, he was awfully closed off. You felt a flash of pity.
“All right, just the Doctor, then?” Your voice was soft, nearly apologetic.
He nodded.
You lapsed into a shaky sort of silence as you crossed a busy street, headed for a quieter part of town.
“So…” you hedged, nudging the Doctor with your elbow. “Can you tell me what the living plastic things are about?” You frowned. “I mean, it makes no sense. If they’re all alive, how come the ones in the shops don’t just try to kill us?”
The Doctor relaxed almost instantly, as the conversation steered away from him. “They’re after me, not you lot.” He looked at you. “You see, last night, in the museum, I was there, you wandered in. This morning, in the shop, I was tracking them down, they were tracking me down. It’s got nothing to do with you.”
“Right, you just needed a head, to find the transmitter thing. But-- who’s controlling them, then?” You asked.
He turned a corner, onto a small side street lined on each side with nearly identical houses. It wasn’t anywhere you recognized. “An alien. A hive mind, more like,” The Doctor said, after a moment. He looked at you. “You don’t think I’m mad?”
You laughed. “I do think you’re mad. Completely mad. But I don’t think you’re lying.”
He gave you a small smile, and then he looked away. “They want to overthrow the human race, you know. Destroy you all.” He looked down at the disembodied head he had tucked under his arm, and then back at you. “And I’m going to stop them.”
“Just you?”
He crossed an empty street and walked into a park. You followed him, of course, because he was brilliant and amazing and interesting, and hell as if you’d just let him leave you in the dust again. Not going to happen.
The Doctor stopped in front of a blue box next to a bench. A police box, you realized. From the nineteen-somethings. They used to have them on street corners.
“You could come with me, if you’d like,” he said, leaning on the box with his hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket. “You’re handy in a pinch, considering.”
“Considering that I’m human?” you said, smiling.
“Yes.” The Doctor chuckled, and fished around in his pockets. He pulled out a key, and unlocked the door to the police box, pushing it open. The hinges creaked. Somehow, you expected they would. “So… what do you say?”
“How are we going to save the world from a police box?”
“Just trust me.” He smiled, and held out his hand.
You took it without hesitating. Without even thinking.
The Doctor pulled you into his box.

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

“You’re absolutely insane, you know that?”
The Doctor frowned. “You’re the one who followed me here. What sort of human does that? I can’t figure out what goes on inside your tiny little brains.”
You raised an eyebrow. “You’re not human.” It wasn’t a question.
“No, I’m not.” He studied your face. His eyes-- a bright, piercing blue-- were very intense, you noticed. “Do you believe me?”
“Honest answer?” You looked up at him. “I don’t know.”
The Doctor stared at you for a moment, and then nodded, apparently satisfied. “Fair enough. Now, are you going to help me catch an Auton, or are you going to whitter on all day?”
“Is that what they’re called, then?” you asked quietly, as you followed him out into the dark hallway. “Autons, that’s their proper name?”
“Yes,” the Doctor said. He gestured for you to be quiet. “Now, shut up.”
You frowned, but said nothing. Probably didn’t want the mannequins-- the Autons, you corrected yourself-- to know the two of you were there.
So you followed the Doctor through the dark hallway in silence, feeling your way along the wall until you came to a door at the end. You tested the handle-- locked. It figured. The Doctor pulled out his blue pen thing-- sonic screwdriver, yes, that-- and looked at you, his face lit up from the glow.
“Ready?” he whispered.
“No,” you whispered back.
“That’s the spirit.”
He grinned, and unlocked the door.
The hinges squealed as he pushed it open to reveal a room beyond--it wasn’t nearly as dark in there as it had been in the hallway. Four thin windows on the farthest wall shed some light over things, though not enough for you to make out much more than just black figures in the background, which could be anything-- Autons, filing cabinets, some other sort of strange monster that the Doctor hadn’t bothered to mention yet. It was silent, too, almost too silent. The only thing you could hear was the sound of your own heartbeat and your breathing, both of which seemed far too loud.
“Don’t be thick, you understand?” The Doctor said suddenly, nearly scaring you half to death. “I can’t have you running off and getting yourself killed.”
“Got it,” you mumbled back. “Minimal stupidity.”
You started moving forward, farther into the room, careful to make as little noise as you could. It was slow and painstaking, seeing as you couldn’t make out anything that wasn’t directly in front of your face: your own body, the doctor, his hand when he motioned for you to stop and nearly hit you in the face.
“Hold on. Hush,” he muttered. “Listen.”
There was a noise, almost like a creak. Or a squeak. Same thing, really. The Doctor frowned, and then took your hand. “This way,” he said, turning to the left and tugging you along with him. “Stay behind me.”
The creaking got steadily louder as you moved forward. The Doctor stopped, again. He frowned, and reached out, feeling around for something solid in the darkness.
Nearly too fast for you to see, a plastic arm shot out and grabbed him by the neck. And-- well, you supposed there was a part of your brain that still hadn’t realized, hadn’t fully understood that this was real, until now. That part of you had just received a rather rude awakening.
You didn’t scream.
Your entire body flooded with emotions-- terror, shock, excitement, wonder-- and your heart threatened to beat out of your ribcage. There was no way in hell you’d ever get used to this, you realized dimly.
But still you acted. You did the first thing you could think of.
You grabbed the arm and pulled, as hard as you could-- there was a pop, and the hand around the Doctor’s neck went limp. You glanced down. There was the arm, completely dismembered. Torn off, right at the shoulder. You stared.
This isn’t real, you thought. This can’t be real.
The Doctor, because he was the Doctor and because he was absolutely, completely insane, didn’t look at all fazed-- by the dismemberment or by the fact that something had just attempted to strangle him. “Well done,” he said, only slightly breathless. “We still need the head. Best get on that.”
“Right…” you said distantly, still staring at the arm. “Right. Yeah.” You shook your head, trying frantically to snap yourself out of it-- whatever it was-- as the Auton lunged for you again.
This time, it was the Doctor who acted-- he caught the mannequin, and stumbled back a little by the weight of it. And then he grabbed ahold of the thing’s head with both hands, and pulled once, twice, three times, until the head came off with another pop. He looked at the head, and then looked at you, standing there, completely and utterly out of your depth, still holding onto that bloody plastic arm. And he smiled.
And you smiled, too.
You smiled because it-- the entire thing-- was insane and wonderful and so many other things that you couldn’t describe. You felt more alive standing in a shop's dark basement and fighting off plastic creatures than you ever did being an average human being.
And then the lights came on.
The room lit up. It took a moment-- just a single moment-- for your eyes to adjust, and then you looked around.
Things were about to get a lot less fun, you realized.
There were Autons all over the room.
Fifty of them, maybe more, watching you and the Doctor with their perfectly blank faces. You were surrounded. Of course you were surrounded, because running in and just grabbing a mannequin's head without any sort of problem would be way too easy.
The mannequins started to advance.
The Doctor took your hand in his.
“That’s… a lot of Autons,” you mumbled, not taking your eyes off of them.
The Doctor nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes it is.”
“Should we…?”
“Run? Probably.”
So you ran.

As fast as you could, ducking around hands and legs and bodies of mannequins that threw themselves in your way to stop you. You ran, still carrying that stupid plastic arm, the Doctor already searching his pockets for his screwdriver as you neared the door to the hallway. You didn’t realize, not at first, that you were laughing-- strangely, loudly, helplessly laughing-- and so was the Doctor, as he tightened his hold on your hand.
And as your head spun and spun and spun into an inevitable, inescapable moment of clarity, you realized--
This is fantastic.
You ran through the door to the hallway, and neither you nor the Doctor stopped to close it-- you just kept going, kept running, all the way to the elevator, the Autons close behind you. And then you were there, and the Doctor was jabbing the button, trying to get the elevator to close before the mannequins could get inside. It wouldn’t close fast enough. They were getting closer. They were getting closer, the doors were almost, almost shut--
One of the mannequins stuck its head through. The doors protested, making a horrible scraping sound as they tried to slam closed. The Autons started hammering at the metal. You looked at the Doctor.
And then you remembered the plastic hand.
Now, maybe it was you all along, or maybe it was just the Doctor’s insanity rubbing off on you, but you had an idea. A horrible, stupid, idiotic, crazy idea.
You lifted the plastic arm up over your shoulder, and then you swung it as hard as you could.
It connected with the mannequin’s head with a loud, echoing crack, and the impact jarred through your entire arm. Now, the head didn’t just fall off-- it went ricocheting off the side of the elevator, and the stump of the mannequin’s neck fell back through the doors as they slammed shut.
The Doctor looked at you, as the head rolled to a stop at his feet.
You looked back.
And for the second time, you broke out in uncontrollable laughter.

----

“We’re walking through the shops carrying heads.” You laughed. “And nobody’s noticed.”
The Doctor grinned. “That’s the thing about humans. You know what they do when they see something out of the ordinary? Nothing.”
“Except me.” You smiled up at him, tucking the head under your arm. The two of you passed through the front of the shops and into the parking lot without so much as a funny look.
“Except you,” The Doctor agreed. The two of you walked side by side, past the rows of cars lined up in the lot and over to the sidewalk.
“Doctor?” you asked, after a short pause. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” He looked at you a little oddly, his eyebrow scrunching up, as if he was surprised that you’d hesitated.
“Who are you, really?”
“Ah.” He looked away, focusing intently on the sidewalk ahead of him. And then he smiled at you, Maybe you were imagining it, but it seemed almost too forced. “I told you, I’m the Doctor.”
“Well, yes, I know,” you said. “But-- what’s your name?”
The Doctor attempted to shrug nonchalantly. His shoulders were tense. “Names aren’t important.”
HIs expression had hardened. For all his light-hearted joking, he was awfully closed off. You felt a flash of pity.
“All right, just the Doctor, then?” Your voice was soft, nearly apologetic.
He nodded.
You lapsed into a shaky sort of silence as you crossed a busy street, headed for a quieter part of town.
“So…” you hedged, nudging the Doctor with your elbow. “Can you tell me what the living plastic things are about?” You frowned. “I mean, it makes no sense. If they’re all alive, how come the ones in the shops don’t just try to kill us?”
The Doctor relaxed almost instantly, as the conversation steered away from him. “They’re after me, not you lot.” He looked at you. “You see, last night, in the museum, I was there, you wandered in. This morning, in the shop, I was tracking them down, they were tracking me down. It’s got nothing to do with you.”
“Right, you just needed a head, to find the transmitter thing. But-- who’s controlling them, then?” You asked.
He turned a corner, onto a small side street lined on each side with nearly identical houses. It wasn’t anywhere you recognized. “An alien. A hive mind, more like,” The Doctor said, after a moment. He looked at you. “You don’t think I’m mad?”
You laughed. “I do think you’re mad. Completely mad. But I don’t think you’re lying.”
He gave you a small smile, and then he looked away. “They want to overthrow the human race, you know. Destroy you all.” He looked down at the disembodied head he had tucked under his arm, and then back at you. “And I’m going to stop them.”
“Just you?”
He crossed an empty street and walked into a park. You followed him, of course, because he was brilliant and amazing and interesting, and hell as if you’d just let him leave you in the dust again. Not going to happen.
The Doctor stopped in front of a blue box next to a bench. A police box, you realized. From the nineteen-somethings. They used to have them on street corners.
“You could come with me, if you’d like,” he said, leaning on the box with his hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket. “You’re handy in a pinch, considering.”
“Considering that I’m human?” you said, smiling.
“Yes.” The Doctor chuckled, and fished around in his pockets. He pulled out a key, and unlocked the door to the police box, pushing it open. The hinges creaked. Somehow, you expected they would. “So… what do you say?”
“How are we going to save the world from a police box?”
“Just trust me.” He smiled, and held out his hand.
You took it without hesitating. Without even thinking.
The Doctor pulled you into his box.