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“You know,” The Doctor paused, fiddling with the expanse of different colored pens on Rose’s desk. She had so many art supplies they almost seemed to multiply in her presence. There was still blue glitter on the console room floor. Most of it had been swept up but every once in a while he’d find one, just glinting up at him, mocking him.
“I was a woman for a while.” He said at last. “And before that, I looked like a Scottish grandad.”
He glanced at her, still laying on her stomach across her bed, her face hidden behind her arms and a mass of pillows in varying shapes, sizes, and colors.
The Doctor frowned, turning his attention back to the legion of art supplies strewn across the desk. He'd rather hoped that last bit would at least get a derisive snort. He picked up the glue gun off of her desk and nervously began picking at the dried glue and familiar blue glitter clinging to the side of the barrel.
“Not everyone,” The Doctor paused, twisting the glue gun in his hands to examine the other side. This was a difficult topic, and thus, was not a topic that he usually spoke to people about. It was not a topic that most people were able to grasp.
Donna had said that there were some boys at school that picked on Rose for having the nerve to change her appearance, to change her name. She’d said it irked her but that Rose seemed to take it in stride- most of the time.
It seemed that today wasn’t that kind of day.
Donna had tried to talk to her, but she’d just thrown herself onto her bed, locked the door, and asked to be left alone.
The Doctor had only come into the house to talk about their science project.
Rose’s science project, that if Donna asked, the Doctor was only helping with the way a tutor would and did not involve anything alien. In reality, the Doctor was very involved (and there truly was quite a bit of alien stuff going on) but it didn’t look like there was and that was basically the same.
He took a deep breath and gently cleared his throat. “Not everyone always understands,” He began again, this time pushing through the discomfort. “Sometimes, they can’t handle it and those people leave, and sometimes they struggle for a long time but try their best. But I think,”
He paused, saying his next sentence in his head to himself first before speaking it out loud. This was a new thing, he usually said whatever he wanted in the moment and worried about the reaction later, but this body was much more thoughtful about its approach to people, and seemed to understand a few things he’d never really grasped before. At the very least, he was more willing to try, especially for his niece.
“I think we’re just a bit lucky, in a lot of ways, because it makes it way easier to find the people who love us for us no matter what the outside bits are doing. Some people never find that- and some people find it way too late.”
He sighed, glancing out her window, he could see the TARDIS still parked in the back garden. The flowers Sylvia had planted just after the holidays were beginning to sprout.
“And who says you have to look the same forever anyway, you know what that sounds to me?” He didn't wait for her to answer. “Boring, that's what it sounds to me!”
“-But I promise you, Rose Noble, there will come a day in the not so distant future where you will meet someone- possibly more than one someone- who will look at you and see your soul and it will be so terrifying you’ll want to glue gun them in the face and run in the opposite direction- but you won't- or maybe you will, I don’t know- but they won't leave because they will see all the gooey bits inside you and they’ll love you and see you for exactly who you are. The way I do, the way your Mum and Dad and Gran do and they’ll become part of your family too. And they’ll be much better than some,” He waved the glue gun around, gesturing it in vague circles, representative of the bullies from her school.
“Pre-pubescents with the emotional capacity of a pickled pepper. You’re Rose Noble and you picked that name and you are smart enough to know you can be anyone you want- and you know what that makes you?”
“What?”
The Doctor startled, he knew she’d been listening but he hadn’t expected her to answer. He turned back toward the bed to find her sitting up, her cheeks a bit red and her eyes a bit puffy, but her face dry and her expression quite a bit more fierce than when he first entered.
“Brilliant," he said softly, a fondness aching in his chest and he wished- not for the first time- he could show her his world, a world with people who changed appearance twelve times in their life and never thought of it as anything but average. He’d never met a human who could regenerate, or transition as she called it, but it was nice to be around someone who understood. Someone who knew that there was a you before you were the you that you were right now and that that person was still you but different and complicated and sometimes a whole tangle of emotions that didn't quite make sense in any human-y languages.
He placed the glue gun he’d been fiddling with into her hands; he’d seen her fix just about anything with that thing.
“Just, Brilliant.”