REVELATIONS
TWO
It turned out The Doctor never did return to watch the penguins. He kept an eye on Rose via the display monitor, but otherwise was unable to find an appropriate hat.
Previous regenerations had worn plenty of hats, and of course he still had them all, but none suited his current sense of fashion; nor his rather unique hairstyle.
He couldn't help it; he was vain about his appearance and especially his hair. That's why a hooded parka wouldn't have worked for him either – one never knew when Captain Jack Harkness, 'Jack-with-the-always-perfect-hair', might show up unexpectedly. Having hat-hair or hood-hair just wouldn't do.
The Time Lord also found himself preoccupied with picking up and examining his old headwear. He rarely, if ever, ruminated about the past; he never had the time. But the touch, the feel of them brought back memories. Neither good nor bad, just memories… The old wide-brimmed felt hat made him think of how long it'd been since he'd had a jelly baby – 'guess I don't have much of a sweet tooth these days' he said to himself; the white fedora with the red hatband – 'suppose I'm not a big fan of celery anymore either'; and then there was the straw boater…
None of which were a suitable match against the bone-deep Antarctic cold.
And that's how Rose found him when she returned an hour or so later: Sitting cross-legged on the floor, wearing an old multi-color knit scarf around his neck and surrounded by a veritable sea of hats.
She walked over to him, unzipping her parka. "Doctor," she spoke quietly. "What are you doing?"
He looked up at her and smiled; an old deerstalker cap in his hands. "I'm looking for a hat that maybe, if I'm really lucky, I no longer need?"
Although he was smiling, to her his eyes looked inexplicably sad. She crouched down beside him and picked up an old brown felt fedora, studied it for a moment and then grinned.
"And what are you smiling at?" he asked her.
"What are you doing with this?" She laughed softly and put it on her head – it was way too large so she removed it and scrutinized the hat further as she brushed the dust off from its brim. "It reminds me of Indiana Jones. Do you have a leather jacket and bullwhip to go with it?"
He put down the deerstalker and took the fedora from her. "Well, I do have a leather coat, as you already know, but it's not brown and it's not a regulation flight jacket. I don't think there's a bullwhip anywhere on this ship. Nor am I ophidiophobic…"
"Huh?" Rose shook her head and then laughed again as she removed her parka and slipped the boots off her half-frozen feet. She shivered, "Makes me think, though, it'd be nice to go somewhere warm, maybe tropical? Humid would be lovely, too, and, well, anywhere not frozen."
The Doctor nodded slowly, still stroking the fedora and obviously lost in thought.
"Unless," said Rose, looking down at the hat, "the two of you want to be alone?"
After a long pause he answered her. "No… it's just, it's just from a different regeneration, a different life." Almost too unimaginably different to believe possible…
"Do you want to talk about it?" Rose had asked him that same question a million times. Each time she got the same response. It was no different this time.
"Maybe later."
The wall had gone up once again. She looked down at the floor.
The Doctor abruptly stood, tossing the hat through the air onto the coat tree, where it miraculously came to a perfect landing.
"Let's go somewhere warm!" He offered her his hand and smiled.
"Preferably without snakes," she laughed.
The heads of several thousand penguins turned as one when the TARDIS left Antarctica.