Rose looks completely horrified, just staring silently for nearly a minute. The Doctor would love to step out of the TARDIS to see what on earth she's staring at, but Rose is blocking the way out and he's sort of afraid to approach her right now. When she turns suddenly accusing eyes to the Doctor, he knows just why he feels that out-of-place sort of fear.
He wonders if he should take a step back, actually, to get out of slapping range, just in case. He can't imagine that Rose's palm would feel any less staggeringly painful than Jackie's as it impacts his face.
Well, maybe one day, if he's lucky, it'll be very gentle against his cheek. He'd like that. Quite a lot. But not now. Not with that thunderous expression on Rose's face.
"You hit it!" she accuses.
"What?"
"You hit a kangaroo!"
The Doctor cranes his head and, yes, there it is. He can see a very long tail from here. And that slowly-expanding trail of wet dirt on otherwise bone-dry soil is probably blood.
"Oh," the Doctor says. "Are we in Australia, then?"
Rose now looks like she's definitely ready to rear back and give him that slap he's already fearing.
Just inch back slowly, he thinks to himself. No sudden movements.
"Hello?" she says angrily. "Very cute and very dead animal under the TARDIS. Not so much carin' about the location right now, thanks."
The Doctor bites his lip, not really sure what to say. He somehow doesn't think it's the right sort of response to inform her that kangaroos are considered to be pests and it's almost a favour to the local population to have added to their culling efforts. Rose is a bit too tender-hearted to care about that.
"And how'd you hit a kangaroo in a spaceship that doesn't even really fly, anyways? What, did you miss the 'kangaroos cross here' sign in the Time Vortex, or somethin'?"
There's movement over her shoulder. The Doctor's hearts feel abruptly like they're competing against each other for space in his throat.
"Rose," the Doctor begins, his voice eminently reasonable. "I'm very sorry about the kangaroo. Really. I am. It shouldn't have happened. The TARDIS' proximity avoidance technology must be playing up. But for right now, I need you to leave the kangaroo and step back into the TARDIS."
"What?" Rose asked. "Why?"
"Because I'm getting the feeling that this isn't 21st century Australia, and I'm getting an even surer feeling that we're not exactly welcome here right now."
A spear hurtling towards them only misses Rose because she moves so she can look behind her. The spear imbeds in one of the front panels of the TARDIS, and the Doctor leaps out to grab Rose and pull her back into the safety of his ship, shoving the doors shut after them. He flicks the latch for good measure.
Rose turns back around to look at him, eyes wide. He tightens the hand clutching her arm slightly, though whether it's from relief or the echoes of fear and adrenaline, he isn't certain.
"Next time, how about I step out first, okay?" the Doctor says. "That way I can check for angry-enough-to-kill-us natives before we start worrying about the road kill. What d'you say?"
It's a mark of how stunned she clearly feels after her near death experience that Rose doesn't give him that slap after all for making light of it.
The Doctor pulls Rose into his arms, then, and just holds onto her until her breathing calms, ignoring the sounds of Aborigines surrounding the TARDIS. If the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn't get in, he's pretty damn certain that they can't either.
And nothing is going to pull him away from the feeling of Rose curling into him just now.
~FIN~