Rose never was the same after the Doctor left. Standing on the beach in Bad Wolf Bay that day changed her, I think. It was if someone had died. And in a way, someone had. My Rose was gone. This new, changed woman who went to bazaars on asteriods and shot down Daleks, that was the woman left standing on the beach that day.
She had Pete buy a house on the cliffs in Norway so she could mind the beach, just in case he ever came back. She left after the baby was born, took Mickey and ran off to the house on the beach, still crying in her sleep for the man who'd left her. Left us.
I never was able to forgive him for what he did, sending us to this other planet. I was thankful for saving us, but in some ways, it'd have been better if we'd all died that day. Rose made her choice, and I made mine. We'd have been all right. We always were.
But this is something I don't think can be fixed. Rose isn't Rose anymore. The woman left on the beach that day was not my daughter. She was war-torn and hard, a woman who shot down missiles and threatened aliens without a second thought. She took over our version of Torchwood, she and Mickey did. They'd been selected for their 'experience'. She had the whole of our England under her thumb.
And for twenty years, that's how it stayed. But one day, she decided she'd had enough. She left, went back to Norway, set up another facility there. Smaller, even. Twenty blokes under her command, the chief of alien police for the whole of Europe. She didn't talk much, not to us, not to Mickey, not even to her people.
The woman left on that beach that day, that wasn't my daughter.
That wasn't even Rose Tyler.
Mrs. Smith, she is now. Mickey wouldn't let her say no, and fifteen years ago, they got married. He's with her in that house now, policing our airspace for the good of mankind.
If only it'd do them some good.
