It wasn't that she was jealous, exactly. How could you be jealous of someone you'd never met? It was more that she was… not the only one. It bothered her that there had been others before her, and that she had to share the Doctor with them.

Rose was an only child. Sharing was not a concept she was familiar with, and other girls not something she'd had to deal with. It annoyed her that the Doctor knew other people, annoyed her that he was so clever, that he held the entire universe inside his head.

She wasn't selfish. She hoped not, anyway. But the word "companion", the word that he used for her, that implied she was the only one. It assigned importance to her. Yet he told her stories of all the other companions, all the other people that had been important to him once. Not that she was jealous, but…

Rose sighed, and tried to concentrate on her eyeliner, but an involuntary picture of Sarah Jane flashed into her mind and she ended up poking herself in the eye. She cursed, ripped a tissue from the box sitting on the basin and pressed it to her eye, wondering as she did so why she was getting so worked up over… stuff that had happened so long ago. And some stuff that hadn't even happened yet. Or had it? The time issue had always confused her. Maths wasn't her strong point, never had been.

Risking a look at her red, watering eye, Rose decided it would clear up soon enough, and had just picked up the pencil and aimed it at her face again when the Doctor knocked on the bathroom door and stuck his head around it without waiting for a response, as he was wont to do. Rose had long ago learnt to put on a towel as soon as she stepped out of the shower. She briefly wondered how many of the others he'd seen naked, but pushed that though out of her mind before she went insane.

"I thought we'd stop off at Elizabeth's coronation," the Doctor said brightly, totally oblivious to the fact that Rose was dressed in only a towel, and not a very long one at that. "What do you think?"

"Which Elizabeth?" Rose managed, blinking furiously as she managed to poke herself in the other eye. Honestly, the Doctor happened to have an absent-minded professor moment and started to fly the TARDIS with his shirt only half done up, and she lost all self-control. What was wrong with her?

"Third," the Doctor replied cheerfully. "Twenty-second century."

"Okay," Rose smiled, and the Doctor beamed, heading back the console room.

Rose studied her face in the mirror and tried hard not to compare it to any of the vague descriptions of the other companions she'd managed to elicit from the Doctor. The weepy eyes were slightly unfortunate, but she supposed they would clear up in time. They usually did.

She sighed and ran a hand through her hair, which passed for combing it these days. She'd given up trying to keep it tidy once she'd learnt that running away from aliens all the time wasn't the most perfect way to keep herself looking respectable.

He won't notice anyway, she thought, and left the bathroom in search of some clothes. He never does.

…

The Doctor paused outside the bathroom for a moment before continuing back to the console room, trying very hard not to dwell on the recent memory of Rose wearing a towel. Nine hundred years of memories, he scolded himself, and he had to pick that one to be lodged immovably in his brain. He knew it was ridiculous to even think of getting involved with a companion, and he would certainly never even begin to consider it, but… Rose was different. The Doctor shook his head to clear his thoughts and checked that the TARDIS was still headed in the right direction. He leaned on the console and stared unseeingly at a screen, attempting not to entertain the thoughts of Rose skipping through his head.

Rose entered the room a few minutes later, and smiled at the Doctor's vacant expression. "What are you thinking about?"

The Doctor looked up, and smiled back, a little vaguely. "Oh, nothing. Nothing."