Happy Medium.
The chips were too greasy, but she hadn't really noticed until she'd finished half of them and the strange hunger that had consumed her and half of the greasy chips had loosened its hold. The Doctor didn't seem to mind the oiliness, happily munching on the quickly diminishing pile in front of him. She opened her mouth to speak a few times, but thought better of it. She was still unsure of her place in this adventure she'd been swept up in. Though it felt like a lifetime had passed since the shop cellar, she could still feel his hand tugging at hers, could still hear his voice in her ear. Run.
"Go on," he said without looking up from his plate. The voice was gruff, but held a reluctant tenderness. She forced herself to remember that he'd been the one to ask her to travel with him. "Out with it."
"Just thinking," she replied carefully, eyes fixed firmly on her fingers, watching as they decimated an innocent chip. "About something someone once said to me." He was looking at her now; his eyes burned the top of her head. Vaguely she wondered if he could shoot lasers out of his eyes, like Superman or something.
"Never get into cars with strange men?" Rose looked up long enough to match his grin. She sat up in her chair and wiped the grease off her fingers as best she could with a useless napkin. She continued, more confident now that she had the blessing of his humour.
"No, but that's good advice. I'll 'ave to remember that in the future." Might save me from a lethal sun tan, she thought but didn't add. She didn't think they were ready to laugh about that yet. "Someone told me once that if you look at the big picture, nothing we do matters, that everything we do just ends up as dust in the end. And that if you look at the little picture, today, tomorrow, next week… life has no real purpose. They say that you have to look at the medium, the next century, or something like that because otherwise life seems pointless."
She took a bite of a cold chip, the grease more pronounced now. She willed him to understand her distress. He had shown her the big picture, the very big picture. How could she imagine her life mattered when she'd seen the end, the very end, of the world?
The Doctor was silent. After a few moments, Rose looked up. His eyes were unfocused, as though he was trying to see something beyond her head, beyond the wall behind her, beyond everything. She took the opportunity to study him. This strange man who grinned but never smiled; whose ship was inside her head, moving things around. She imagined she could feel it, a sort of itching that wasn't.
"There's a point," he finally said, "in the future, near the end, where time doesn't matter all that much, and all the todays, the yesterdays, the tomorrows, they all come together." His eyes still looked passed her and she could almost understand what he was saying. Then he blinked and focused on her, and the spell was broken.
He grinned again, showing all his teeth. There was something caught between two of them, which made Rose smile. It made him less god-like, more mortal, more like her.
"Ready to go?" She asked. She didn't think it was possible, but his grin widened.
He stood and offered her his hand; she took it and stood as well. The oil from the chip made their hands fit together in a new interesting way. They'd wash their hands when they got back to the TARDIS, then they'd be off. Somewhere new, exciting… and fantastic.
