When she registered the difference in his voice, she turned all her attention back to him. The grimness in his expression belonged to her first Doctor, not the one with the marvelous hair and slender build. It was strange to hear him confess that he wasn't sure exactly who... So often, lately, she'd had the same thought about him. He was so very much like her own Doctor, but then sometimes there were moments where he seemed like the one before. Even rarer came moments where she didn't recognize him at all. There was a hesitation in him that she'd not seen before, and a despair that he'd failed at hiding. There was always ever hope in her Doctor. Hope, in this one, seemed a more fragile thing.
Rose looked down at her plate. Nothing tasted good, these days, and her stomach was too twisted up to take anymore, anyway. She pushed her barely touched plate aside and wrapped her hands around the cold glass of milk instead.
The Daleks. She'd seen his hate for them before, on Satellite 5. It was impossible to justify genocide, but they would have killed countless others if they'd been left to their own devices. Was there a better answer? She couldn't think of one. Perhaps the Doctor could. And perhaps that's why his eyes were dark now; perhaps now, he was seeing the alternatives. It must have been a wretched view, that retrospection.
She wanted to reach across the table for his hand. She even pushed the milk aside to do it. But there was... What if she made it worse? What if he didn't want her to touch him? She knew she'd been awful. She knew she'd been so much more than unkind.
"I'd like to know," she said into the silence around the table. But the more words came, the slower and more hesitant. "We... I dunno. Maybe we could find out together... who you are."