CONVERSATIONS IN A CAR
The Doctor sat close to the car door with his gaze fixed on the whatever was passing by his window. Jackie, who was seated next to the opposite door had dozed off a few kilometers back. Rose sat between them, watching the Doctor with growing concern.
He had been so excited, almost euphoric back on the beach when he saw that Rose working to figure out just who he was. When they had reached the road, his mood had changed to a more serious one, when he explained to her how the other Doctor, the one on the Tardis, was going to deal with the events on the day. Now it looked to her as if he had entered a period of brooding, and she knew that a brooding Doctor was a difficult doctor to deal with.
"Doctor,"she said quietly. "What are you thinking?" She didn't know if asking was the right thing to do but she felt she really had to do something.
"The signs here are all Norwegian." He replied.
"Well, this is Norway." she answered back.
"Yes, the signs are all Norwegian and the people all speak Norwegian, or some form of it." He sighed and ran a hand over the back of his neck. "I speak Norwegian and all forms of it. I speak more languages than I can count, but right now I know that there are languages I don't speak and the Tardis isn't here to interpret for me. The Tardis isn't here to take care of my clothes or take me where I need to go. I don't have a screwdriver to work with, nor a psychic paper either. I don't have any of the things that made me the Doctor. All I have is the clothes that I am wearing and a small Tardis coral. I am here in the universe with none of the things that I have relied on for over 900 years. Just who am I in this world, just who or what is the Doctor and what good am I here?"
Rose shook her head. "I knew it had to be something like that. You really don't think that it was all the things that you had that made you the Doctor, do you? Cos if you do, you are so wrong. Anyone who knows you would tell you that. It's you and that big superior Timelord brain that makes you the Doctor. It's all the things you've done, all the things that you've seen and all the people you've helped. That is what makes you the Doctor"
"Alright then, if it is all those things that make me the Doctor, what is it that the Doctor is supposed to do now? I've always had all of time and space, but all I have at this moment is the here and the now. Just what do I do with this here and this now? What does this world, Pete's world need with a part human Doctor?"
"Part human for less than a day and you're having an identity crisis. That certainly reinforces the fact that you are really the new new Doctor. Look, "Rose said. "When all of us, Mickey, Mum and me, came here, each of us had to figure out who we were and what we were gonna do in this world . It was new to us, too and there was a lot that didn't come easy."
"Shouldn't be so new," Jackie's voice surprised them. "Been here before, you have, so it isn't like you are completely unfamiliar with it."
"Mum, I thought you were asleep." Rose chastised.
"Hard to sleep with the two of you going on and on. You want my advise, I say stop worrying about everything right now and just think about what you need to think about, one thing at a time."
"Jackie, we had the Cybermen to deal with. It wasn't like we were on a holiday. I really didn't look around all that much." There was a touch of sarcasm in the Doctor's voice.
"Course not she retorted. "But you managed didn't you?'
The Doctor shifted in his seat and changed the subject. "So how is Rose, the dog?"
"Had to find her a new home. Told everyone that I'd developed an allergy after escaping the Cybermen, but really it was just cos the poor little thing realized that I wasn't the Jackie Tyler that she knew. She kept barking at me and it made Pete nervous."
"And how did you explain a full grown daughter?" he asked.
"Now that," Jackie said, "That took some real doing, it did. Told everyone that when Pete and me were a young married couple we had her and couldn't afford to raise a child, with Pete only having his inventions to support us with, so we placed her with an old couple that we were friends with until we could get on our feet."
Rose picked up the story from there."Then Dad started Vitex and overnight he became extremely rich but hounded by the press and he didn't want to raise a child that way, so I was stayed with the old friends, with Mum and Pete visiting as much as they could.
To finish it up, Dad "leaked" a rumor to a reporter that the Tyler's had a big secret and he printed it in the papers that the two of them were hiding a daughter, so I came out of hiding and here we are."
"So how do you leak a secret like me?" The Doctor inquired.
"That'll be up to Pete. He'll handle all that." Jackie said comfortably.
"Doctor" Rose said. "Just take a mo to catch your breath. We'll get it all sorted. This is just a different kind of adventure for you, trying to convince a whole planet that you've always been around. We've got a little experience with adventure, yeah? " She swatted his arm lightly. "We've been through too much to let a little thing like this stop us.
The Doctor smiled a little "Yeah, I guess so. If we can't do a little thing like convince this planet I belong here, we aren't the Doctor and Rose Tyler."