"What I don't understand," Amy protested as they strolled down High Street, "is when you usually eat. The last time I saw you eat was, oh, fourteen years ago?"
"After I left you and Rory," the Doctor began with a mulish look on his face, "I sat down in the TARDIS and had a nice cup of tea. Or several. Definitely several. With jammy dodgers. After all: TEA! A super-heated infusion of free radicals and tannin, just the thing for healing the synapses after regeneration, and I can't remember the last time I had verbatim regeneration bleedthrough like that."
He glanced at Amy. She hadn't been traveling with him for long, true, but already he recognized her personal "oh, God, he's rambling again" look. Funny. He'd seen someone do almost the exact same face recently. It reminded him of Donna. No, but it wasn't Donna's look. Not that Donna ever stopped at a look. Every cell in his body might have changed since the last time the Doctor had seen Donna Noble, but his cheeks and arms instinctively cringed from the face-slaps and punches to the arm she'd administered over her time in the TARDIS.
And now the Doctor was rambling mentally as well as aloud. Oops. He made a concerted effort to pull his mind away from the familiarity of Amy's expression, and flashed a smile at her. "Anyways, tea. Me. Regeneration. Happy?"
"No," said Amy promptly, matching his sudden switch from talkative to succint. "Why are we in Peckham? I thought you said that was Winston Churchill on the phone and it was urgent."
"Well…" The Doctor scrubbed a hand through his hair. "The TARDIS doesn't always go where I want it to go. In fact, it hardly ever does. But I was hungry. Figured you might be too, so here we are. A pit stop, you could say. A—stop—to fill your, uh, pit. Stomach that is. With food. Remind me never to use that phrase again. Pit stop, rubbish phrase. Here we are."
"In Peckham."
"No," the Doctor contradicted her, grasping her elbow and steering her sharply to the left. "In a pie shop."
Amy was relieved. The reason she really couldn't understand why the Doctor seemed to eat so little was that she, Amy, had a habit of constantly eating. She ate big meals and constantly snacked between them—and it never affected her weight much, which made her a bit smug. Amy chuckled, thinking back when she and Rory had begun seriously dating. Like most people, she'd either been too nervous or too self-conscious to eat much on dates at the pub, but when she eventually began hanging out at his house eating most of what was in the fridge, Rory had freaked out, finally mustering the nerve to ask her if she'd gotten pregnant.
Rory. Wedding. Tomorrow, sort of. "When are we, Doctor?"
"July 9, 2004."
Good. No wedding for six years. He's probably having a great time at his stag party, anyways.
Banishing any guilty feelings she might be having at the though of Rory, Amy gave her head a slight shake and focused instead on the prospect of food, sniffing hopefully. The pie shop, unsurprisingly, smelled rather a lot like pies, pasties, and sausage rolls.
Amy placed an order for a large bacon-cheese pasty—and, at the Doctor's request, two sausage rolls. When their food was reheated (having already been on display at the counter) the pair retreated to a small table near the back.
True to form, the Doctor took one bite out of his sausage roll and spat it out on the waxed paper bag. "That's disgusting!" he complained. "That's—it's not even sausage! It's ground meat, more like."
"Hiv 'em 'ere," said Amy with her mouth full, reaching across the table. "Aw eat 'em."
"Honestly. The things you people eat!" the Doctor continued, dramatically wiping his mouth. "Maybe I'll just get some chips. Could go for mushy peas, though, too. I'll get the whole meal." The Doctor grinned. "You can have the cod, Amy 'bottomless pit' Pond."
"Ha ha," snorted Amy, secretly hoping he wouldn't start calling her that. "What with your pathological pickiness, I've got enough here as it...Doctor?"
Amy sighed. The Doctor wasn't paying her any attention at all. But opening her mouth to chide him, Amy abruptly noticed his face had an expression identical to that of a kicked dog.
She'd seen it when she herself had, initially, refused to trust her Raggedy Doctor. She'd seen it when they'd realized that in the far future the United Kingdom would survive by torturing a space whale and feeding it political dissenters. What on Earth (literally, she thought with a wry twist of her lips) could make him look like that here?
Amy peered curiously at the Doctor, attempting to follow his gaze. Her eyes fell upon a trio of kids—well, they don't look much younger than me, she chided herself. Besides, in real time they'd be older than her by several years.
They sat several tables away from Amy and the Doctor, talking animatedly and loudly enough to be heard outside. The three of them—two girls and a guy—seemed to be close mates. The boy, who Amy figured was African, smiled sheepishly as one girl, with dark curls, tossed her head back and laughed at something her blonde friend had said. "That is WELL funny."
"Innit though?" giggled the blonde, nuzzling the boy, who obviously didn't mind. "And I said, 'Mum, if ya always thought we were gonna end up together why didn'tcha say so sooner?'"
"You 'ad Jimmy Stone though."
The blonde rolled her eyes as though she wasn't pleased at all by her boyfriend's reminder. "Bloody Jimmy. If it wasn't for 'im I wouldn't be at Henrik's now."
"Nothing wrong with workin' in a shop though," the brunette said.
"Awright then, Sharine, you let me know when you're gonna join me," teased the blonde. Sharine made a face, shaking her head vehemently.
"It's better at the garage," the boy piped up, a wicked gleam in his eye as he watched his blonde girlfriend sit up indignantly. "You can just joke around with the blokes and it ain't so serious. Maybe Sharine oughta work with me!"
Amy swallowed her mouthful of pasty, took another bite and chewed as she looked back at the Doctor. Once again, she had to squint to figure out just who he was looking at, but she thought it was the grinning boy, quieter than his mates but obviously content in their company. "Doctor?"
The Doctor abruptly looked round at Amy. "Yes?" he prompted her, dazedly—confirming Amy's suspicions. A corner of her mouth quirked up.
Amy chose her tenses carefully, unsure what the boy meant to the Doctor. "Did you know him?" she ventured, with uncharacteristic timidity.
The Doctor looked from Rose, her face flushed with happiness, to Mickey. And back to Rose.
"I did," he murmured; then realizing Amy probably couldn't hear him, he repeated himself. "I did know him. Mickey Smith. Brilliant young man. And his—" he stumbled almost imperceptibly over the word "—his girlfriend too. Rose. Rose Tyler. She was..."
He had not mentioned the girl called Sharine, Amy noted. She chose not to press him for why he'd stopped. Amy thought she knew, now, which of the trio the Doctor had actually been staring at. "You knew Rose might be here."
The Doctor acknowledged Amy's comprehension with a grimace. "Yes."
"But she wouldn't know you, now," she guessed. "Not yet."
"No," agreed the Doctor, looking down at his empty hands as Rose glanced in their general direction. "She wouldn't."