"Where are we?" Rose's fingers brushed the crest of the cold, stone wall lightly, pulling herself up to sit on it with her arms. She could still feel the chill of the brick through the fabric of her dress and shivered, grateful for the cloak that twisted about her in the seaside winds. The Doctor looked about with curious eyes, hands dug deep into his pockets.
"Somewhere between Madeira and…" he glanced around, twisting his entire torso around before smiling, "ah, here we go. Come along, Rose," he called, starting in a new direction. Rose laughed, hopping off the stone wall and turning to follow him. She froze at the sight of a distant light on the horizon, blinking weakly through the fog of the night. It was an eerie green and drove a shudder down her spine when she looked directly at it.
"Rose?" she heard a distant call, it was the Doctor, noticing she wasn't close behind. She tried to answer, tried to tear her eyes from the faint, muted light on the horizon, but came up with neither. She felt his presence behind her, and his soft "ah" of acknowledgement as he saw what held her attention.
"Almost sinister, innit?" he murmured thoughtfully, and for the first time, Rose made the connection between the lighthouse he'd mentioned earlier and the light on the horizon.
"What happened there?" she could practically hear his face darken.
"It was in another life," he replied evasively. The light seemed to blink in response, shadowed by a quickly passing cloud.
"But you remember." He hesitated.
"Yeah, I do," he sighed. "Ohhh… 4th regeneration. One with a penchant for candy and long scarves," a soft laugh, "I had a brilliant companion. None so brilliant as you, of course," Rose heart made a weak, but determined flutter, hating how he could do that to her, "but brilliant all the same." He'd rested his chin on her shoulder by that point, overcome by a strange, uncharacteristic weariness. Rose was silent for a long moment, waiting for him to continue his story. He sighed, "Dreadfully savage, that Leela. But she was bright." His cheeks cut with a smile, one side pressing into her hair. "Now, where was I?"
"The lighthouse," she said quietly. It couldn't be helped that she felt a little jealous when he brought up his previous companions. Especially the women.
"Oh, yes. Fang Rock. Ghastly event, really. Leela and I barely escaped with our lives," he grimaced, "everyone else was killed." Rose inhaled sharply. She hated those times. It brought her back shortly, to a happier event, when the Doctor still had wiggly ears and a hard edge in his stare; World War II Britain and the little boy in the gas mask. He'd been the happiest, saying those words "everybody lives". She never wanted him to have to say anything different. "But, it hasn't even happened yet, I suppose."
"She lived, then?" she asked finally, voicing the unsaid concern that had been in her head since he'd embarked on the story. It was not one of those stories of his past companions' deaths; on of the ones that brought out that cheerless part of the Doctor's personality that chilled Rose to the bone. He laughed a short, ironic laugh.
"Yes, that day she did. Although she's dead by now. She went to live on Gallifrey, you know," his laugh was a bit less stressed at the thought of this. "Fell in love." There seemed to be something left unsaid in this, a weight on the conversation that Rose often felt while talking to him. And then the chin on her shoulder was gone, taking his familiar warmth with it. "Anyhow, places to go, people to see, that sort of thing," he redirected with an enlivened hop. Rose smiled and wrenched her eyes from the fading light on the horizon with a feeling almost akin to regret.
"Who, exactly, are we going to see?" she asked, following him across the street.
"Why, The Prince Regent, of course!"
"Who?"
"You may know him as King George the… fourth, was it? Mind you, I've no head for all your human dictators and their unimaginative names."
"Hold on a bit; King George? The fat one, with all the wives?"
"Well, that'd be just about every king you've had since the start of the monarchy, but yeah, let's go with that." The Doctor kicked a stray rock, his hands deep in his pockets, and Rose smiled. "He's a bit younger now, a bit stupider, too. In love with a lady named Mrs. Fitzherbert. Lovely woman. Unfortunate last name." The palace lights twinkled up ahead and Rose felt a strangely anxious pull to the beautiful building.