Rose re-entered the console room, taking the time to take in the sight on the high vaulted domed ceiling studded with lights. Her gaze travelled down the central column that was glowing a peaceful blue, then onto the console covering in mismatched instruments.
Eventually, through some invisible lines or trick of the mind and eye, her gaze came to rest on the Doctor, spread-eagled on the console, his limbs stretched as far as they would go to reach some control or other.
He was always moving, and yet he was always in the center of it all. She would look away to another part of the ship, and her wandering gaze flowed back to the Time Lord ensconced in the controls of his TARDIS. It was as if he were a part of the ship, albeit a fully independent one.
"Feel better?" he asked, still concentrating on what he was doing, looking everything and nothing at the same time.
"Yeah, thanks." Rose responded, she'd felt the tell-tale shuddered of take-off, that what had brought her out of her room.
"I'm taking us to Sicily, figured that coffee and ice-cream on the Plaza of Syracuse was a better idea for relaxation." He shot her a beaming smile before returning to his flying, she laughed.
He was right. Rose could not stop watching him, the way he ran around the console, doing everything at once. Sometimes he was just a blur of motion, flowing liquidly this way and that on an invisible current that spiralled up the console.
Then all at once he stopped, his hand pressed on a lever, breathing deeply. He turned towards her, "There." He stared up at nothing for a moment before turning towards her. "We're on course, and on autopilot." He informed her.
"Okay." she nodded. Rose was leaning on the railing, watching him still.
He watched her watching him, and smiled, "Penny for your thoughts?"
"I know for a fact you don't have a single pound in those pockets of yours." She joked
"Okay, fair enough." He conceded, "There's still something bothering you though."
"It's silly…" she hesitated.
"It can't be that trivial if it's bothering you that much." He argued
"I-I guess I'm just wondering how you knew what I was talking about." She gaged his reaction, "I asked you to open eyes you don't have and you did… how?" she asked though she felt she didn't exactly want to know the answer.
The Doctor did not answer, only looked at her with a deep, impenetrable gaze and smiled knowingly. The eye contact made her uncomfortable; these were not the expressive brown eyes she was used to seeing. Now his eyes were deep, too deep, like the deepest, darkest, abyss, and it was staring back at her. There was something big here, big and dangerous, and it was being very careful not to crush her.
"Doctor?" she asked to break the silence that was playing on her mind like a master pianist.
"All good lies hold an element of truth." He finally said, his voice soft like silk and as cool as a river stone, "I pilot a Time ship, Rose. I can't do that if I can't see where I'm going." The implications of that statement pushed Rose on a train of thought she would rather have not found.
When they finally landed, the Doctor was all too eager to jump outside with his coat only half on. But despite the promise of sweet, icy goodness, Rose was left with a bitter taste in her mouth.
The Doctor seemed so human, yes he had a time machine, yes he had two hearts, yes he was a bit weird. But he was very human none-the-less. But what if he wasn't what he seemed at all? What if her favourite alien was more alien than she suspected?
Rose was not under the delusion that she was the only person he had ever travelled with; he just seemed to have too much familiarity with the concept. But all this made her wonder for the first time what had happened to the others. To the other people that had answered the Doctor's siren call of adventure. That had mistakenly thought him to be like them, with his deceptively human, yet irresistible charm, and human-like emotions and human-like needs. Where were they now?
Rose shuddered at the thought and resolved herself to simply bury the images of drowning sailors and beguiling harpies under a continent's worth of sugar and brain-freeze.