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Battered white shoes, icy blue eyes, grim expression. He's not the Doctor she knows but she recognises him the second he passes her on the street. It's as if the world slows as she whips around to face him. She catches his gaze and he pretends he wasn't looking, turning away with an attempt at a neutral expression and continuing on.
"Doctor." One word. That's all she says. He freezes. The two stand alone in the street. It's getting late and the rain is starting to pick up but neither move. He still has his back to her.
It's long moments before either breaks the stalemate, and he does so reluctantly when she can't form words further than his name.
"Rose Tyler." His voice is deeper now, almost gravelly. It matches his somewhat more gruff appearance. Despite the accent - Scottish, this time - and how hardened, even distant, he seems, her name still rolls off his tongue in the same way it always had. Soft. Almost reverent. She's not sure if she's relieved or scared to find that it really is him.
"What...How...Why are you here?" Rose asks slowly, still too shocked to comprehend it all, let alone ask all the questions she was burning to. She of course still had her Doctor (the one that found beauty in everything, having the one adventure he thought impossible; the one that had been so human it was almost ironic he was now part human), but she never thought she'd see the fully Time Lord Doctor again.
He glances around and she's not sure if he's uncomfortable and stalling or genuinely concerned. "Crack in the universe. Fell through rather unintentionally, actually." She looks alarmed and he hastily adds, "Nothing to worry about. The walls between universes are still intact. The rip was an accident, it'll seal itself soon enough; no danger this time."
A faint smile tugs Rose's lips. It's bittersweet. She probably looks slightly insane, standing on the side of the street at dusk, soaking wet, with a man she's never met before, fighting the urge to grin like an idiot (because even if it hurt, she wouldn't miss seeing him again for anything). She expects him to ask "what" or simply to walk away and is shocked when he does something far more familiar: he smiles back.
There's a warmth in his eyes that brings a kind of peace to him that wasn't there a moment ago and reminds her of a snowy night, all those years ago, talking to an odd man - drunk, she'd thought at the time - who didn't seem to know the year but said she'd have a great one.
And she had; that year and every year after. Because of him.