As intimately familiar with pain as the Doctor was, he would not need to remember Rose Tyler to know she was hurting. Nothing sharp, nothing new; the circles under her eyes were old and she was pale in that way humans had when they were very, very tired.
“I’m Rose,” she answered, and there was an ache in her voice. “Rose Tyler. We’re friends. I need you to…
“If you don’t remember anything, yet, just give it a minute; your head should clear up enough for you to remember, you know, the basics.” Not me, she swallowed down, though she searched him for some flicker of anything, anyway. “Your name, that sort of thing. The TARDIS.
“It’s the time loop; it’s making a mess of your head. That, or else… I dunno. We can’t -Something went wrong. …Goes wrong. … I don’t know, Doctor, it just…
“But it clears up a lot, this bit, I promise. Here.” She reached behind her and offered him a mug; tea; steaming hot. “We’ve got a little while, before anything happens.” Tears stung her eyes: she took a sip from her own mug to help herself ignore them. Cleared her throat and offered, cheerfully, “As a bonus,” she laughed, “broke the code for the food replicator! Order anything you like!”
She paused her busy-making, at last, because she knew – with all the confidence of someone who’d been through it time and time and time again – that he’d be coming out of his fog now, and well enough to offer some reply. “Wouldn’t mind getting this sorted, today,” she told him, conversationally. The grin she offered him did not quite reach her eyes. “If you don’t mind. How d’you feel?”
And if he /had/ known Rose Tyler at all, he’d’ve known she’d been going on and on for his benefit, not hers. She didn’t have to imagine how scared he’d be.
It was a bit of a fuzz, when he came to. Like a bowl of mixed salads that didn’t know its true colors apart from the dressing. Oddly, he realised he was more familiar to that feeling of confusion than to his current surroundings.
Slowly, as though he just woke up from a deep, long slumber, he listened to the woman who was talking to him. He figured that since he couldn’t find anyone else in the room. Not the brightest of observations, but an observation nonetheless. The room was a kitchen---rather a domestic one, at that. Supplies and electronics hinted to that, as well as the whiteware that seemed to be used in pairs; spoons, mugs, dishes, the like. There was a faint humming in the back of his head and---
“Oh!” He gasped, not all intentionally, as his hand flew to the back of his head, to where the sound seemed to bounce from. The TARDIS, his ship, that’s the humming! Hello, he smiled to himself. The machine replied, but as dimly as he felt himself to be. What had almost shown as a surprised smile on his face now dropped to a deep-musing expression, hand going back to hold his chin, and again he voiced it out unconsciously. “Hm...” Something must’ve happened, he reckoned.
Before he could concentrate on that for long, however, his eyes discovered yet another thing. The woman that had been talking to him, she was still there. And she did not look well. Clear signs of exhaustion and emotional distress were written all over her, despite what he now truly processed as encouraging words. Sadly, as she’d pointed out, he had no idea who she was.
But, even if that were the case, he didn’t exactly enjoy leaving people to be upset. No, no, that needed to be fixed.
With a deep breath, his demeanor changed with the same seamless flow, with the ease of someone who might’ve misplaced a shoe. “Feel? Well. Feeling is a broad spectre. But it’s safe to say I don’t feel bad. Anything more than that, though, I’m drawing blanks. Which, to be perfectly honest, I’m more used to than most people would say, and I should know better than to sound proud about it, or so I’ve been told. Being this old gets to you. There was a period two lifetimes ago where I lost my memory once a week! Drove everyone bonkers, especially me.”
He waited to see if his joke lightened up the mood, holding his gaze on hers with one brow high to make the joke even more obvious.
“Luckily, this time I do remember those ‘basics’. I am the Doctor, I am over a thousand years old---lost count well over that, actually---, and this is my TARDIS. Am I correct?”
Still going on as if this weren’t something more than an exceptionally minor issue, the Doctor found the tea the woman had given him and took a few sips. It was sweet and had a very strong scent, nevermind that it was in a mug instead of a propper cup, but his tastebuds seemed to really enjoy it. He made note of it, but nothing more.
“So, what’s happening, exactly?” He said as he blew on the tea a bit, looking at her from over the mug. “And why do you remember everything? You look like you could use a kip.”
