"Have you ever changed into anything not quite human before?" Rose asked. He could tell that she both wanted and didn't want a negative answer.

Giving her a look out of the corner of his eye he continued to flip switches and turn dials. Mostly unnecessarily but it made him look busy and preoccupied.

"Oh come on," she said with a laugh, "You can tell me."

"Well..." He drew out the word far longer than needed.

"Come on..."

Another side look at her before he suddenly turned his back to the console and leaned back with his arms crossed. His one foot came up to rest on the railing. "Well, there was this one time..."

"I knew it!"

Stopping he gave her a stern look. "Are you going to let me tell you this or not?"

"Yes, yes, please continue." She reminded him of a kid at Christmas and he couldn't resist smiling at her.

"Like I was saying, there was this one time when I was in the Pecor Cascade and became a Tigger."

"A what?"

"You heard right, a Tigger."

"Like that character in Winnie the Pooh?"

"Ah, you've heard of me then?"

"Everyone's heard of Tigger! That was just a character from a children's story that some man made up to entertain his son." Rose frowned and her nose curled. "Didn't the character of the bear come from an animal he seen in Winnipeg or something of the like?" She nodded. "Yeah, that's how it got it's name, Winnie."

"Well yes, that is of course true, but how do you think he came up with the character of Tigger?"

"I always just thought he'd imagined him. Maybe based him on someone he knew...?"

The Doctor just paused, waiting for the penny to drop. There it was.

"Wait! Are you saying that Tigger was based on you?"

"I wasn't a Tigger at the time of course but yes, that was me." The Doctor gave Rose a huge toothy grin.

"I don't believe it!"

"What do you mean you don't believe it?!"

"I think you're pulling my leg," she insisted.

"I'd do no such thing!" No longer amused, he was actually a bit insulted. Standing, he put his hands in his pockets and turned to face the centre console once more.

"I know how much you hate being alone," she said softly, "Tigger was the only one. Why would you change into something that was all alone?"

"I didn't know that at the time. When I regenerated into a Tigger I had thought there was going to be a whole planet of them, and what fun we would have had. They were such happy and bouncy creatures..." Growing quiet his mind began to settle on the loss of Tiggers and how now he was really all alone.

Poking him, she asked, "So, what happened then?"

"The process hadn't finalized and I changed again before it set in. Much like the hand." He waved his second hand at her and she nodded. "This was before, when I wasn't the last of the Time Lord's, but I thought that Tiggers needed to be remembered and by chance ran into Alan. I told him about Tiggers and he put them into the stories he was creating for his son."

"Aw, that's kinda sweet," she said. "Now they will always be remembered." Coming up to stand beside him she gave him a gentle hip check.

He smiled in return then was back in action flipping switches and turning dials. "Right, so now where to this time? The Den of Aluandra? The Singricerin Cascade? Oh, I know just the place..."

Word Count: 606