There was a tall, skinny man in the TARDIS kitchenette making a pot of banana tea, sopping up a minor spill with a series of colorful handkerchiefs from his suit pocket. His long coat draped over the table, dipping dangerously into the sugar bowl. His sneakers made an occasional squeak sound as he walked around the unusually small space with a giddy nervous energy. Occasionally, he would take out a pair of specs and examine the half-dozen types of banana tea he'd gotten out, having yet to actually decide on which one he was going to make. One of them floated around the kitchen in a bubble, tea leaves suspended in clear yellow goo.
Watching him from the doorway, Rose was finding it hard to mentally put this man together with being the Doctor. The Doctor - her Doctor, the one who blew up her work and showed her the universe and died in front of her like a brilliantly burning stream of stardust - had a deep, reserved energy about him. When he paced, it was with intent. His default facial expression was a frown, not the forever shining smile that lit up this other man's face day in and day out. Her Doctor didn't ramble on about everything or walk around in sneakers or make promises he couldn't keep. Her Doctor was somewhere in the man now bouncing around in the kitchen, finally decided on which specific banana tea he wanted to make, but it was hard to put the two together, to call him Doctor even after spending Christmas night with him and her family back home.
She thought she was over this feeling, that her Doctor was somewhere she could never be and this new Doctor was someone else entirely. She wasn't. The new face, the new persona, it was a lot to take in in such a short time. It was so (and even Rose thought this sounded idiotic in her head, all things considered) alien. It was one of those rare moments when the truth really hit her where it hurt: he was a 900-year-old wanderer from a place called Gallifrey and he was the last of his kind and he could change bodies on the cusp of death from quiet smarmy Northerner to bouncy child-like Converse fan boy.
"Good morning, sleepyhead! Look at you, all yellow and pink and healthy so early in the morning!" The Doctor looked over his shoulder as if noticing Rose's presence for the first time. At the sight of her, his eyes began to sparkle like he was in the presence of Queen Victoria herself. Rose stifled a giggle badly and wondered what she'd done to deserve such a look. "Mind, when I say imorning/i I mean morning according to the TARDIS circadian rhythm that she keeps timing to your human sleep schedule. Funny thing, that! Naturally, once Jack came on board he threw the poor girl all askew-"
"Jack?" Rose could hear her heart stop for one cold second. "What happened to him?"
The Doctor's face fell momentarily, and it actually made Rose feel bad for asking. "Yes, well, after that whole scenario with the Daleks . . ." He shrugged, his face slowly recovering from Rose's question. "He couldn't say good-bye to you. It'd be too sad and you know how proud ol' Jack is. But he promised he'd see us again, so there's that then."
"Doctor?" She couldn't understand how he could tell her such a thing so easily. Jack was gone and he didn't even say good-bye. How was this better? "Can we see him now?"
"Well," he said, drawing out the single word as if his latest life depended on it, "I'm sure he's busy making sure Satellite Four is up and running and reality TV free for all the humans that survived the Daleks. That and working on some new pick-up lines for the next time he sees you. 'Sides, I'm sure he'd want us to have a bit of fun before we go and visit him, yeah?"
"Yeah-" The word had barely left Rose's lips before the Doctor was standing in front of her, beaming down at her with one hand ruffling up her already slept-on-looking hair. Despite herself, she smiled back.
"There ya go, right as rain!" He bounced back on his heels to look at Rose properly. "Now then, about that tea! You still like tea, don't you, proper English young lady that you are?" With that, the Doctor was back to bouncing about amid the cabinets, pulling down several kettles from the wall and setting them down as if intent on using them all at once. "Here we go, two cups of tea coming up! And then it's off to - well, wherever I suppose! We could land in the middle of a tropical desert or an ice storm or a cloud of intelligent gases so just pop on into the wardrobe and come up with something nice, okay?"
"Sure thing." Rose was not even sure if the Doctor heard her, he was so intensely involved with his small collection of kettles. With a shrug, she walked out of the kitchen and left the Time Lord to his own devices as she went to the wardrobe, trying to imagine an outfit that would fit all three scenarios. Or none. Knowing the TARDIS, they'd land in the middle of a French Hellfire Club and she'd be all bundled up as if she'd been scaling Mount Everest, boots and all.
She was halfway to the wardrobe when she heard what was becoming a familiar sound: rubber Converse soles squeaking across the floor. "Rose! Wait!" The sound of his voice, troubled and high, had her heart thudding in her chest. Rose immediately assumed the worse in the two seconds it took her to turn around. The kettle exploded. There was a Dalek in the tea chest. Or he ate a poisonous leaf and was regenerating - again. That was the worst of all.
The Doctor was slightly winded and holding up two mugs, both of them chipped in the same place on the rim. One was bright yellow and bore across it in thick black letters "Shadow ProclamaCon '75"; the other was light pink and covered in baby chicks that were somehow flapping around and pecking at the background like one of those animated portraits from Harry Potter. He was holding these two mugs in his hands like he was trying to figure out which was the real Holy Grail and which one was poison.
"Rose." He was still somewhat out of breath as he spoke. "Which mug would you prefer?"
Rose blinked. She faintly registered the slack angle at which her jaw was hanging open. "Wha?" she elegantly managed to get out.
"The mugs, Rose, the mugs!" The Doctor held them up in front of him, extended for Rose's benefit. "Clearly, one is for me and one is for you but which one do you want? I can't have you drink out of just any mug, you know! Not if you don't like it! I just happened to pick these ones out because these are the ones that didn't fall out and break into pieces when I opened that particular cabinet. Which, note to self, buy more crockery. And fix that cabinet. Right?" He grinned cheekily as if he'd just figured out something very clever and looked at Rose, eyes eagerly awaiting her response.
For a second, she stared straight at him, letting the absurdness of it all sink in. And then she laughed.
"Rose, really!" Good Lord, the man was pouting now; he resembled a downtrodden puppy who had been kicked out into the rain.
"All right then, Doctor. I'll have the one with the baby chicks. Well, if they don't bite me." She took the mug from the Doctor's hand; he surprisingly let it go without a bit of protest. "So, tea?"
He grinned broadly, a familiar bright smile that sent all the usual feelings of happiness through her chest, as if nothing had really changed. "All right then, Rose Tyler. First things first! A cup of tea and then the universe, next stop anywhere you like."
When he took her hand, it was cool as she remembered it, a quirk of his alien biology that was once off-putting and has become comforting. Not long ago his particular Time Lord quirks were standing between Rose and her Doctor as an uncrossable barrier, as if he was gone forever behind a new face and body.
But his smile, his voice, the feel of his hand in hers - those proved to Rose that the Doctor hadn't gone away, just changed a little. As she watched the Doctor bound about through the corridors and in the kitchen, she thought of how Mickey saw her when she had dropped back into his life a year later. She was still the same person, but she had clearly changed; travelling with the Doctor had done that. Still, Mickey was able to accept her as the Rose Tyler he'd always known. Now she needed some of Mickey's strength and unshakeable faith with this new version of the Doctor. He still needed her, and she was not going to let him down.
Rose fell back with a soft thump into a colorful soft kitchen chair, animated cup in hand, and listened to the Doctor go on about their next destination, something about another Earth and the future. Whatever it was, it sounded good. It sounded fantastic.