"Let's see, Peri is next, right?"

The person to whom the question was directed mumbled a faint, incoherent response and burrowed further under the covers in hopes that the speaker would go away. Instead, the voice was raised, shouting cheerfully through the door. "I said Peri is next, right?"

"Go away!"

The sound of a pillow hitting the door brought a smile to the speaker's face. "Right, then you don't want to talk about it. Got it."

There was the sound of what might have been muffled cursing, a thud as of a body rolling off a bed and landing on the floor, more cursing, then suddenly the door was yanked open.

"Think you're bloody funny, don't you."

"I think if you want to hear Peri's story you'd best get yourself dressed and meet me for breakfast." The Doctor patted Ace's disheveled head and pulled the door shut. As he walked away, he was glad that the door muffled her rejoinder to the point of inaudibility.

oOo

"So why the change of heart?"

The Doctor, expecting a challenge of some sort, smiled to himself before turning around. He arranged an innocent expression on his face, allowing Ace to witness the arrangement and thus recognizing it for what she already knew it to be: an answer to the challenge. "Change of heart? Whatever are you talking about, Ace? Eggs?"

Ace, still befuddled not only by the Doctor's waking her far too early by her standards but also by the apparent non sequitur, merely gaped at him. "Eggs," she repeated, then, as it finally occurred to her what he was asking: "Eggs, yes, scrambled." She plopped onto the kitchen chair, yawning and rubbing her eyes.

"Toast?"

"Yeah, toast, of course, and coffee, some coffee would be lovely, and why haven't you answered my question?" Ace's voice gained in volume and belligerence as she reached the last word, and she glared at the Doctor through her fingers and unbound masses of dark brown hair. With one thrust she pushed it away from her face and over her shoulders. The chair scraped on the floor as she abruptly stood up. "Why the change of heart?" she repeated. Slowly, as if to a backwards child.

The Doctor's mischievous expression returned. "Honestly? I thought it would be nice to one-up you for a change. I knew you were going to ask again, I knew it would be soon, so I chose to take the initiative. Simple as that." He returned his attention to breakfast preparations, reaching back without looking to thrust a steaming mug of coffee into Ace's hands just as she opened her mouth to voice another grumbly objection.

The Doctor hid another grin as he heard Ace settle back into her seat and take a noisy sip of the coffee, followed by a stifled gasp as she realized belatedly that she had failed to add her usual dollop of milk. And, of course, by the realization that steam indicated a hot beverage. A very hot beverage.

They remained silent until they'd finished eating and each settled back with a second cup of coffee–Ace's properly diluted and cooled, this time. She looked much more alert, and had twisted her hair into a sort of knot which she tucked into the collar of her dressing-gown. "So you decided to take the initiative, what's that all about?" There was still a trace of belligerence in her voice, but only a trace. An expertly prepared breakfast had done a better turn than any amount of music in soothing the savage breast.

"Peri and I didn't exactly start off on good footing," the Doctor said, by way of a sideways reply. Which was to say, no reply to the immediate question but rather to the one he knew Ace really wanted answered. "I tried to kill her." He watched with a half-smile as Ace sputtered into her coffee, lowering it to the table with exaggerated slowness as she stared at him.

"Tried to kill her. And she still decided to travel with you." Ace's voice was skeptical.

"Well, it wasn't really my fault. Regenerative trauma can take all sorts of forms; my emotions were literally all over the place," he admitted with a frown. An unpleasant memory, that; regenerating was never a pleasant experience, but that one counted among his worst. "Plus I had just saved her life by sacrificing my own," he felt compelled to point out. "So an insincere and poorly executed attempt to end hers was merely an act of cosmic balance. If you're willing to look at the big picture."

Ace ignored the big picture to zero in on the important bits. "So in spite of this brilliant beginning, you and she still..." She made an exaggerated kissy-face. When the Doctor's frown darkened she glared right back at him. "You started it, Professor."

So he had. He resisted the impulse to stick his tongue out at her in gesture as childish as her words had been. "Yes, she and I still..." the Doctor allowed his voice to trail off as Ace's had, but refrained from smacking his lips in imitation of a kiss. "Once I'd, er, settled down a bit into my newest form. And not too long after I thought she was actually interested in a former companion we'd run into, along with my second self."

"A girl you fancied, fancied someone else?" Ace's interest was piqued. "Who was it?"

"Jamie McCrimmon." The syllables of his former companion's name were pronounced with relish. A Scottish name spoken in a Scottish burr had a great deal of style. "And I was mistaken in where her interest lay. Which actually turned out quite well for me..."