Breaking Point

Broken Things

The Doctor passed the fork he was carrying to Rose when he caught up with her.

"Ta," she said, then stabbed the fork into the stack of pancakes so that it stood up like a flagpole.

The walk to the console room was fairly short. Apparently, the TARDIS agreed with them that the fully Time Lord Doctor shouldn't be brooding alone and/or needed some food.

"Hello there Doctor," Rose greeted when they walked into the console room. "Brought you some breakfast."

They heard a bang, then a curse. At least Rose thought it was a curse, it was musical, and sounded like the Doctor's own language, so it could have been anything since the TARDIS wouldn't translate Gallifreyan or cursing. The Doctor's head popped up out of the open grate. He saw the plate of food, then dragged himself out from under his hiding sp–the console. His hair was sticking up everywhere from his habit of tugging on it, and bits of grease were on his forehead.

"Thank you," the Doctor said, taking the plate from her and sitting on the jump seat.

The Doctor that she had breakfast with climbed down under the console, then reach his hand up on it and grabbed the sonic. "Not much left to do, is there? Just a few wires...." He trailed off as he got to work.

Rose heard the sound of the sonic whirring and knew that he was using it like a soldering iron to attach the wires back together. The Doctor beside her was working steadily through the eggs on his plate, then took a bit of the pancakes with the eucalinictus syrup.

"I half expected you to spit it out like he did," she commented.

The Doctor looked up from his plate at Rose, swallowed, and questioned, "What?"

"He doesn't like the syrup now," she said in explanation.

He looked over at the hole in the floor and called down, "What? Eucalinictus syrup is good!"

"My new taste buds would beg to differ," they heard from the raised piece of grating, which caused the Doctor next to her to groan in sympathy.

She couldn't imagine what it was like to change your entire body- tastes, and everything- once, much less as many times as the Doctor had. Then the new one had a whole new wrinkle to regeneration: a body with one heart. That must feel extremely weird. Her thoughts were interrupted by the object of her thoughts poking his head out of the grating.

"Did you see the damage to the space- time locator?" he asked.

"Yeah, the last de-materialization was a bit too quick. It has been needing to be replaced. We're also going to have to pick up some more tinoplannium." The Doctor resumed eating his breakfast.

The Doctor who was in the floor smiled a thousand watt grin and said, "So, Triliaxa Three? I was telling Rose a bit about Trilaxia Three just this morning."

"Works well enough. I think Rose would like it." He looked over at Rose and asked, "Did he tell you about the trees this syrup comes from?"

"Yeah. They sound beautiful," Rose replied, smiling. "We won't have any problems getting there, will we, with that part being messed up?"

The Doctor under the console turned his gaze over to her and said, "Nah, it's still got a trip left in it before we're stuck." He then climbed out of the hole and closed the grate.

The Doctor in the brown suit finished his breakfast, stood up, and went to walk out of the console room, but before he got two steps, he turned around and informed his counterpart, "I've got to get cleaned up, and you should make yourself a screwdriver. Then, we'll be off." He then walked out of the room.