"Does it hurt?"
The Doctor looked up from studying his hands, smoother and more delicate, with long, tapered fingers and sensitive pads. They'd take some getting used to, but he liked them. He shifted in the console seat, placing his feet back on the floor and leaning forward so he could see Rose better. She was sitting on the floor, legs drawn up and crossed at the ankles, an expression of concern darkening her face.
"What, the hand?" he asked, confused. While it had certainly hurt to lose it, the new one felt fine, and the initial tingling had subsided.
"No. Regeneration," she clarified. "Does it hurt?"
"Oh yes." He frowned, repressing a shudder. "Very much so."
Rose wrapped her arms around her knees and looked at the floor, brows knit together. Now he'd really upset her. Rude indeed. He was going to have to work on that.
"Aw, s'not so bad, though," he said brightly. "Only for a minute or two. Then it passes and I get to re-learn myself. It's kind of fun."
"You were on fire," she said softly.
"I'll be tripping over these gangly limbs for a while yet," he hurried on, trying to lighten her mood.
"You turned into fire," she amended, eyes vacant, staring back into her memory.
"Actually, it's not exactly fire; it's— never mind. But what an improvement," he offered. "At least my ears don't stick out quite so much. And my hair is much more exciting."
"I liked your ears."
She was being difficult about the not-cheering-up thing. Clearly, his clever and self-deprecating banter was lost on her. "Rose—"
She looked up at him, her eyes swimming with tears, and his words died in his throat.
"Doctor, you were on fire. You were in pain. My… my friend disappeared into a flash of flame and you're making jokes about your ears?"
"Hey. Hey, I'm right here; I'm fine. Look," he slapped at his chest, his thighs, pulled an earlobe, yanked his hair, "all right here. Still me. Still Doctor."
"But it hurt."
"Well," he dragged the syllable out much longer than he had the right to. Rose lifted her brows at him. "It depends. Depends on how hard I fight it, how much I want to stay. Depends on the reason, the kind of injury, how much of the energy is diverted into healing and how much into regenerating the body."
"And this time?" she pressed.
"Ah, only hurt a minute."
"Doctor."
He sobered, leveled. "It hurt, Rose. But it's done. Why does it matter?"
"It matters to me," she said softly. "I did this to you."
He didn't think she'd understood that bit. She certainly didn't seem to remember precisely how he'd taken the Bad Wolf from her. He figured she'd just assumed the TARDIS energy had refocused on him or something, triggering an energy overload.
"You didn't do it," he said, enunciating each consonant for emphasis. "I made a choice, I absorbed the energy, and I regenerated."
"You didn't have to." Her voice was very small.
The Doctor swallowed around the lump in his throat, something to which this body, most unhelpfully, seemed especially prone. He slid from the jump seat to the floor in front of her.
"You would have died," he said.
"You did."
"Rose. Rose, look at me." He tentatively reached out and took her chin between his thumb and curled forefinger, reveling as he did so at the smoothness of her skin against his new fingers. Oh, he was going to like these hands very much. He swallowed again, pushing down unhelpful thoughts about getting to know his new lips, and focused on her face. "It's okay. I'm okay."
"I hurt you."
"Stupid ape," he said without thinking, and cringed inwardly at his rudeness again. "You think it'd have hurt less to let you burn from the inside out while I had the power to stop it? One little regeneration. That, or my best friend dies a horrible death before my eyes. Decisions, decisions."
She smiled then, through the tears, and he moved his hand to brush them from her cheeks. She pulled back though, dragging her own sleeve across her face, and ducked her head. When she looked up, she was smiling in earnest, tongue peeking from between her teeth.
"I'll give you the hair," she said. "I do rather like the hair."