Summary: Set directly after The End of the World (1x02). "Don't you ever get it wrong?" Rose and the 9th Doctor get to know each other a little better on the way to the chip shop.
Disclaimer: If I was rich enough to be the BBC and own any of this, I would be rich enough to buy the DVDs (and possibly the Doctor himself) straight out instead of having to get a job to find the money :P
"A little change, miss? Any spare change?" A skeletally thin old man, wrapped in dirty grey and brown shrouds of tattered material, wandered up to the Doctor and Rose as they passed down the street. "Please, miss?" He extended his hands – nothing but bone, unless you counted the shrivelled, wrinkled skin hanging off the bone – and gave them what the Doctor deemed to be a very shifty look. He was about to pull Rose away, across to the other side of the street (not all beggars are friendly, he reminded himself), when she started rummaging in her pockets.
"Hang on a sec…" She dropped his hand, still going through her pockets, and he folded his arms.
"Rose, what're you doing?"
"Givin' him some money silly, what's it look like? Gotcha!" She pulled a £2 coin out of her jacket triumphantly and pressed it into the hand of the man. "There ya go." She smiled and walked off, the Doctor taking a few seconds to catch up.
"He's just going to run off and buy beer with your money, you know that?" He told her, frowning slightly and marvelling at her trust in someone as suspicious as that beggar had been.
She shrugged non-committally, bouncing slightly as she walked. "Maybe he will, maybe he won't." She really didn't seem to mind. "Why, is one of your many superior talents seein' into the future or somethin'?"
"Or something," he muttered as they walked, side-by-side, up the street. Rose pondered this, taking to leaning on his shoulder again. He grinned down at her.
"If you could see into the future, what would you try and see?" She asked, genuinely curious, head titled up in his direction, face slightly screwed up in concentration. He almost laughed.
"Rose. I've got a time machine. I don't need to see into the future." A woman who had been walking towards them gave them a very odd look, as though she were worried for their mental health, and crossed over to the other side of the street. Rose's face settled into a comical 'whoops' expression, eyebrows raised and mouth twisted slightly to the side.
"Oh yeah! S'a good point, that. I'm not normally this ditzy, you know," she added, for good measure.
"Nice to know. And everything I say is a good point."
"Is that right?" She asked playfully, smiling with her tongue between her teeth.
He pretended to be deadly serious. "Everything I say is right, too."
They walked on in companionable silence for a few minutes past various stores, a pink jacket in a shop called 'Bad Wolf Clothing' catching Rose's eye. Her gaze lingered on it for a moment before she seemed to remember that she didn't even have a job anymore and therefore couldn't afford it. Well, she did have a job, if you could call being a professional plus one a job, but it certainly didn't pay. Not in money, anyway. They passed a fair few people, catching snippets of their conversations; two-second insights into their lives. As Rose considered the comfortable weirdness of her own life, the Doctor's thoughts dwelled on Gallifrey.
"Don't you ever get it wrong? Y'know, muck things up, change history or whatever?" Her voice startled him out of his rather morbid reverie.
At first not sure what to say, he countered with, "Nope. Brilliant, me," and tapped his head with his forefinger.
She tugged on his arm, laughing. "Full of yourself, that's what you are. Aww, c'mon. Never ever ever?"
He looked at her for a long moment, suddenly truly serious again. "All the time." His eyes bored into her just like they had after she'd told him he wasn't alone – there was her, and she wasn't going anywhere.
Rose was silent for a minute, and even her feet ceased to clatter along the pavement as she processed the enormity of what he had just confided in her. People tutted, pushing impatiently past them. Then she grinned. "Good. C'mon you. We've got some chips to buy." And she pulled him by the arm across the street in the direction of the chip shop. The Doctor let her, wondering whether she was completely trusting or completely naïve. He hoped it was the former.
As they sat on the disgustingly orange plastic seats, throwing words and chips back and forth, the beggar-man wandered slowly into a café and bought himself the first meal he'd eaten in three days.