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Rose pulled her knees up to her chest on the tattered TARDIS console chair. She didn’t even know where to begin with her thoughts.
All her life she’d longed to meet her dad, Peter Allen Tyler. The one she’d lost as a baby. Then she met a time travelling alien called the Doctor. She never wanted to take advantage, but one day she asked if she could go back in time to see what he was like when he was alive. Then, she asked be with him the moment he died.
That’s all she wanted at first. To see him and then to make sure he wasn’t alone when he died. But then, when she watched the car coming for him, she couldn’t help but jump in and pull him out of the way. She had some idea wasn’t supposed to, but she didn’t know the paradox would very nearly bring about the end of the world. She’d never seen the Doctor so angry, but he nearly gave up his life trying to let her keep her dad. She couldn’t keep him though. Pete had to jump back out in front of the car to save her life and everyone else’s.
“Rose. Talk to me”. the Doctor’s voice cut through her replay of the events.
When Rose looked up, she looked up, she could really see in his eyes that all the anger was gone. “I don’t know what to say. It’s not like I even got to know him.”
“You didn’t need to, Rose. Every little girl wants a proper dad. And they don’t stop just because they’re all grown up.”
The Doctor suddenly sprang to life. The way he did when he knew he had some sort of idea.
“Write him a letter!”
“He’ll never see it”. Rose sniffled
“No. He won’t. But you can put it in a little envelope by his photo back at your flat. And I’ll stay with you. As long as you need I’ll stay with you and Jackie at the Powell Estate.”
“You’d do that?”
“You’re worth it. Now, go write to him, Rose Tyler.”
The Doctor lent out a hand to get Rose up. And she headed off by herself to her room aboard the TARDIS. She gathered some pen, paper, earbuds, and an old iPod.
It didn’t take long for her to find the first song she was after. “Father’s and Daughters” by Micheal Bolton. It was released in 2015, but release dates didn’t matter in the TARDIS. She just found it one day and knew that it made her think of her dad. It didn’t make sense because she never got to grow up with him. But she knew that’s how he felt about her. She listened to it all the way through before playing “I learned from you” by Miley Cyrus. This one she imagined would be how she’d feel about him had he survived.
Dear Dad,
Where do I even start? I barely know you. And yet, I know you so well. I know that you’d steal every star in the universe to make my dreams come true. You knew a thing or two about dreams. I know that.
I’ve never told anyone this. But when I was little, every time gran would come over and give me one of her religious lectures, I’d suddenly believe in God for a moment. I’d bargain with him. I never felt like I could just ask for you to be my dad for my whole life. But I would ask him to bring you back to life and make you my teacher when I turned 15. I told him he could take you away again as soon as I finished my A levels and turned 18. Sometimes I’d even tell him he could start my life over and give me a really horrible drunken dad to grow up with if he’d just give you to me as someone I could know for a few years as my teacher or summat. Because the exchange was worth it to me. Never did finish those A levels, by the way. Sorry Dad.
I know that just like the song, you’d want me to find the one to call my home. And I think that’s the Doctor. Or maybe I just hope it is. But either way, it doesn’t feel complete without you. You should be here, scolding me about our age difference and asking me when I’m gonna pop back for a visit.
Gran also said you loved curly wurlies. So, I eat those all the time just to think of you. Every time I eat them I think of how you would’ve taught me that strength is something for me to choose. That I don’t crumble. Yeah, I think of that line every time there’s crumbs!
I know that I’d have been a stubborn daughter to you. Fighting you on every turn while I was secretly just glad that you cared. And then of course I’d always be grateful. Even for everything I was obstinate about. You’d tell me you were like a papa bird who had to kick the birdie out of the nest sometimes. And I know I’d never want to leave.
I don’t know how to close this off, but the thing I loved most about that Micheal Bolton song is the line ‘like moonlight on the water, and sunlight in the sky, fathers and daughters never say goodbye.’
Love,
Rose
At first, Rose did put the letter near a photo of her dad in her flat. But, she struggled to leave it behind when she travelled in the TARDIS, so she started bringing it with her. Sometimes putting it in her pocket when she wore a jumper.
As fate would have it, Rose would go on to absorb the Time Vortex and briefly become Godlike herself. She has no memories of it, but that’s how the Doctor explained it to her. She often wondered if her irrational childhood bargaining wishes could’ve seeped through at that moment and impacted the multiverse. But she never asked. Even as an adult she did still believe in her bargain. It would’ve been worth it to be raised by a callous drunk if she got even a few years with Pete.
Rose happened to be carrying the letter on the day she fell into the void between two universes. The alternate universe version of her dad jumped in to save her. In this new universe, he survived. And even through grief from being in a new universe and torn from the Doctor, Rose still remembered to give that letter to her dad.