My 100th story up at this site. I'd like to think I am better at writing now. And still, most of it is bad...

Disclaimer - Not mine. They are the BBC's.

Sunrise

"The skies from my home planet were orange," the Doctor states as if out of nowhere to her, as she sat next to him on the balcony, the sun not yet risen and casting the world into a grey twilight, a lack of colour.

"Oh," she said, looking at him as he stared at the bit of the horizon they could only just see through gaps in the other buildings of the Powell Estate.

"I've been avoiding this. Sunrise, sunset. I didn't want to think that it would mean anything."

"Does it?" she asked, handing him over a cup of tea she had got up to make when he had woke her up with the closing of the flat's main door. She sipped at her own, wondering why he would seem to want to talk to her of this. He hadn't been in the happiest of moods the night before. Yet again, maybe it was this version of him, which does seem to be a lot more talkative then his last self.

"More than I'd like. I couldn't before."

She knew what he meant by before. The day he had went and changed his body, seven days ago now. New Years Day so far was just as plain and gray as any other day before it, but in so many other ways, it was utterly different. She knew instinctively that later that day the Doctor would leave again, well and strong.

For a few days, he had been rather sick. Not vomiting sick, but loss of appetite, fever, he had suffered from lapses in memory and judgement. He had been resting a lot. When he got better, he got more active and had begun trying to figure out his new self.

He had nothing more to learn from staying here.

He would be taking Rose with him.

Light, brilliant and red and fading to a bright golden orange colour began to make its way through the gaps, and he looked at it, watched as it rose and shone above the buildings, was upset when other colours joined it before the sun had fully risen into the sky, and it had turned its normal shade of blue.

"It's disappointing. How short it lasts."

Sighing, Jackie rests her head on his shoulder, and pats the knee nearest to her in a comforting gesture. They stayed like that, in companionable silence, until they heard the stirring of Rose from inside.

They rose and walked inside, him to sit on the couch he had been using as a bed the past few days, and her to go start on breakfast.

The day started out just like any other, almost. It was the almost that made the few minutes of peace between the two of them all the more better.

In the silence of the morning, as the sun rose on Planet Earth, Jackie and the Doctor had reached an understanding without really needing to say a word.