"The first time I went out to see the stars I was a grumpy old man who just wanted to teach those pesky humans of Susan's a lesson. She had to practically beg me to do the right thing in the end," he teased, although it wasn't exactly a lie. He supposed the real point was that he had done the right thing eventually, even if it had taken a nagging from Susan to make him wake up and do it.
He gave her a sort of sad smile as he tried to make sense of what she was telling him. "Well, I certainly don't feel like a superhero," he admitted. In fact, at that precise moment he felt like a petulant childe who wanted to go home and hide away from the big bad world out there.
"I wasn't planning on sending her out alone. I just told her to run, if she saw the Master. Just... I don't know. It started out as a sort of mild warning about his insanity and somehow escalated into this mess," he said, dropping his head so his cheek was against the top of Romana's head. He grew silent, not really knowing what he was meant to do. It seemed as if he was going to take Rose from him no matter what he tried to do. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but it wasn't really working. He'd really buggered things up this time, and every time he tried to resolve it he just made things a lot worse.