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Mickey Smith was Rose’s oldest and most trusted friend. He’d always been there for her; even after she’d half-heartedly ended their relationship for a time travelling alien, and when they had been trapped together in a parallel world, thanks to said alien. He had even helped her through a terrifying unplanned pregnancy, wanting nothing in return except friendship. He had joined her at Torchwood, helped her defend the Earth at the worst of times. He had helped raise her daughter in a roundabout way, always a phone call away.
So when he looked at Rose that day, horror and finality threading through his expression, her blood ran cold. “Rose, this is serious. We have to use the canon.”
The mention of the dreaded machine tugged at something deep in Rose’s stomach, making her feel nauseous nearly immediately. Struggling to keep her face neutral, she scoffed. “It doesn’t work , Micks. Besides, I can’t…”
She swallowed, excuses flooding her brain. I don’t have time. I can’t leave Mia. I might not make it to tomorrow. I can’t leave Mia…
Mickey’s reply brought her back to reality. He reached across her desk, rapping his knuckles on the wood, grabbing her attention. “It works, Rose, you know it works. It’s nearly calibrated, and we have to use it. This is bigger than us, and you know it.”
“It’s not safe,” Rose argued weakly. “I can’t send anyone through it in good consciousness –”
“ You went through it!” Mickey exclaimed, eyes piercing. “C’mon, Rose, you know this is what we have to do! We need him .”
“I had to,” she said, her voice small. “How else was I supposed to…”
Painful memories persisted, and she squeezed her eyes shut, hands fisting. She had been on eleven failed missions using the canon – eleven jumps, all of them off , none of them landing her quite where she needed to be, always resulting in her seeing something horrible.
She winced as she recounted them. A universe where the Doctor had died in some kind of underground flood; another where he recognised her, and horrifyingly began running after her shouting about how she’d wronged him; another where he ruled over the Earth as some kind of overlord…
And the one time she’d ran into a version of herself that had never met the Doctor, and had continued working at Hendriks, never broke up with Mickey. That one was scary in a different way.
“Sanders and the rest of the team have found the calculation,” Mickey went on, oblivious to her distraction, “they’re sure of it. If you want to test it one last time, be my guest, Rose, but we have to figure something out fast .”
“‘M not going,” Rose said firmly. “I can’t leave Mia, Mickey. I can’t. I haven’t explained anything to her. She’s in so much danger, and I haven’t even told her about her dad…”
Rose wasn’t a stranger to regret. There were many things she wished she had done differently in the last fifteen years. Mia was at the heart of all of them. Not telling her about her father was one thing; she had spent enough time rolling in guilt over it that she had convinced herself long ago that many single mums did that. Hell, her own mum had bent the truth several times to her as a child about Pete, and it was for her own good.
Still, when Rose recalled how it felt when the Doctor took her to 1987 and she found out about her father’s shortcomings… it hadn’t been lovely, to say the least.
No, Rose had much to regret. Not telling Mia about her home universe, her universe of origin, was one of them. Another was the travel, and the aliens, and Torchwood, and…
And not telling the Doctor about Mia. Not explicitly, clearly telling him that she was pregnant that day on Bad Wolf Bay. She was fairly certain that he thought she’d been joking, maybe trying to get him to laugh with her a final time. She thought that he’d pick up on her sarcasm when she said “No, it’s Mum.” Good on her for making it… explicit.
“I don’t think you should go,” Mickey said, surprising her. “No, Rose, it’s too dangerous for Mia here. I think… I really think that you should send her to find him.”
“Are you fucking insane ?” Rose snapped, bristling. “No, no, Mickey. No. Absolutely not, no ! My God, she has no – no training whatsoever! She would have no idea what to do, she’d be going barmy, there’s no way –”
Mickey held up his hands, motioning for her to lower her voice. “Hey, stop. Hear me out, Rose.”
“ Fuck off , Mickey, we are not sending my daughter through that machine!”
“She has the best chance out of all of us!” Mickey argued. “Think about this for a second, Rose. Mia is smart . Write her a letter, explain some basics, and get her ass to safety. The Doctor would take care of her, you know he would!”
Rose laughed humorlessly, leaning against her desk, her vision going spotty. “Write her a letter… ”
“Better than nothing,” her friend said, shrugging. “She’s fierce. She would be fine . She’ll find the Doctor.”
“She’ll find the Doctor and he’ll immediately know that she's his daughter,” Rose said in a tiny voice, her head falling into her hands. She thought of how he would react to that, and what Mia would think, and how she had been a horrible mum this whole time, and oh, she had really fucked this whole thing right in the –
Mickey sighed, shifting in his chair. In a softer tone, he said, “Oh, Rose. Come on, you can’t… you can’t think he’ll be upset with you.”
“Of course he will!” Rose exclaimed, biting back stinging tears. “Christ, of course he will, Mickey. I didn’t tell him .”
“So what? What would that information have done for him? Really, what? He would still have been trapped there. He’d just be burdened with that guilt. As if he didn’t have enough already.”
“I know,” Rose replied, sighing.
She knew she had to do this.
“I’ll do it,” she said after a moment. “But I’m going to test the canon one last time. I have to know it’ll send her to the right place.”
“Rose,” Mickey said seriously, “you have to know that when she goes, we have to change the programming. One way ticket.”
“The Master has created a crack in the universe, right here in London,” Rose said in reply to that. “The Doctor will be able to get through, but… send me the calculations he’ll need to put in the Tardis. I’ll have to write it down for him.”
Rose did regret a lot about the way she’d handled her recent life. But, in retrospect, there was much that she didn’t. She could never regret the work she’d done for Torchwood, the countless times she’d saved her daughter’s life without her knowing. There wasn’t an ounce of regret in the way Mia had turned out, either; her daughter was fierce, and smart, like Mickey said. She was a whole lot smarter than Rose had been at her age, even if she snuck out of the house to see boys (which she was convinced Rose knew nothing about). Admittedly, Rose had done a lot worse, and silently resorted to picking her battles.
As she wrote two letters – one addressed to Mia, and one for the Doctor – her eyes rested on the photo on her desk. She smiled softly, remembering the day it was taken.
When she was finished, she shrugged off her yellow cardigan, draped it over her chair, and dutifully headed out to do one final test for the canon.