DOCTOR WHO:
THE FANTASTIC LIFE
WRITTEN BY ZARIUS
Rose steadily clambered out of bed, weary and groggy from an emotional bender the night before, staying up to around two o'clock in the morning binging a new speculative fiction drama covering years of a family's life as the world changes around them, and not for the better.
Rose felt she could relate.
She wandered down the staircase and headed towards the kitchen. There was only a faint sign of light greeting her as she pulled back the blinders; a misty greyish hue coated the sky, obstructing the faint beams of sunshine as they tried to penetrate the heavens.
She looked at the state of the kitchen floor, loose luggage was everywhere, some bags had been left open. Some items still needed to be packed.
She pushed aside some of the plastic bags, each costing a pound from her local branch of Tesco, to find a toaster neatly placed next to the cupboard connected to the sink. She took it, plugged it in, and threw two slices of white bread into it.
Once the toast was ready, she headed into the living room and switched on the television.
Just what was needed, a bit of Jeremy Kyle.
She wondered what he'd make of her own life.
Not that she'd ever go on it, she had little else, but she had some sense of moral dignity. Her problems weren't fit for the world to see, even if they saw everything else.
She looked at the medals on the mantelpiece, a photograph of her and one other with S Club Seven, still a pop sensation to be reckoned with in this world, and the mayor of London. It had been a day specially arranged to commemorate the anniversary of the demise of the Cybus imperium's grip on the civilised world, a day made possible by the valiant efforts of all involved.
Rose Tyler's first defence of the Earth.
Certainly not the last.
The doorbell rang just as the first slice of toasted bread slipped into Rose's mouth; she sprang upwards from the chair and opened it.
"It's just me love" Jackie Tyler said, pushing her way through the assorted bags and making her way into the living room, where she proceeded to position her keister where Rose had been sitting.
"You don't mind do you? It's a long stretch of walking without your dad's car" Jackie replied.
"No, no I don't mind much mum, I'll need all the help I can get when you're fit enough" Rose said.
"Oy, I thought they'd pulled that off the air" Jackie said, commenting on the Jeremy Kyle Show.
"Only for a couple of weeks...ITV held an inquiry on the Friday, the show got reviewed, plus the Sun had that big campaign for it remembers? Largest petition since the one that overturned Brexit"
"Well I can't say I'm glad it's still on...that show poisons people. Just imagine if the same thing could happen on our Earth" Jackie insisted.
"The death of reality TV? I think you need a reality check there mum, nothing's that simple" Rose replied.
"Things used to be" Jackie replied.
"How's the kid?" Rose asked.
"Oh, learning new words, can't say they're all pleasant ones, your father's always leaving his office door open, gets into real fits of frustration with his partners sometimes over the phone, the nurseries within earshot. I try to quiet him down, I try locking the nursery door, but that voice, it's an echo in a chasm"
Rose finished off the bits of toast and stared out at the back garden through the window at the far right of the house, she spotted the still blackness of a shed suddenly light up from the inside.
"He's up" she said.
"Do we really have to help him shift?" Jackie replied.
"None of its staying here, I told you" Rose argued.
"It's not even anything important; everything you lot ever collected or developed together is in the hands of the government. All he did around you was hoard"
"It was how he coped with the lack of attention" Rose explained.
"Don't start using yourself as an excuse" Jackie replied.
The back door of the kitchen opened, Rose dashed over to confront the rather haggard and dishevelled man coming in.
He took one look at Rose and his face, already ridged with the all too telling marks of anguish and things said and then swiftly regretted, struggled to maintain composure. He would not let anger in, nor would he break down.
He would simply be.
"Left the place a pigsty haven't I?" he said.
Rose nodded.
"My mum's here, she'll help you pack the rest"
"I've called in Lewis at the factory, he said he could spare a couple of hours, he's coming with a van at around three to gather everything up"
"You want some breakfast?" Rose asked.
"No, no I shouldn't think so"
"You used to ask a lot more from me...not even this?"
"It's just toast isn't it?"
Rose brushed past him, took two bits of bread out of the packaging, and placed them on the table.
"Yeah" she said.
Rose proceeded to storm back upstairs.
Jackie looked at the man with an ice-cold demeanour.
"Toast. The simplest kindness and you deny her even that"
"Jackie, I don't have time for this..." the man replied, looking at himself in the mirror.
"How did he do it?" he asked.
"Who?" Jackie asked.
"Me. The real me. The one who let Rose go...walks through eternity for hundreds of years, not a trace of fatigue on his face. I could barely grin and bear it after a couple of years"
"You're not him. I tried telling her that, I'd even catch her telling herself that sometimes. You don't make any of your best decisions on spur of the moment"
"I told her all she needed to hear Jackie, I gave her the promise of a lifetime together, the things he couldn't"
"And that's not why she fell in love with him. That selflessness, that resistance of reward, all that noble bollocks, that's the kind of thing you don't see in everyday life. You? You're everyday"
"Did she ever feel for him Jackie? Really? Or did she just fall in love with the idea of him?"
"He's the best idea she ever had" Jackie replied.
"Yes, yes he was...and somehow I don't even think he was her ideal, no, prior to our genesis there was another version, one that was distant when he wanted to be, yet was so close to what she could understood about life...that it needed mending. That's what she was in love with. A wounded soldier who led her through the most unearthly of fields...someone truly fantastic. When he became someone else, she did too, someone too possessive, too desperate to cling on to what made those days special, and I think it led her to ruin"
Rose could hear them argue, so she shut the door and locked it, she pulled open a small compartment under her bed and took out a small oval shaped compact; she opened it and out sprang a holographic representation of a man long confined to the winds of history.
The only man who could have every truly measured up in her eyes
This is Emergency Programme One. Rose, now listen, this is important. If this message is activated, then it can only mean one thing. We must be in danger. And I mean fatal. I'm dead or about to die any second with no chance of escape.
And that's okay. Hope it's a good death. But I promised to look after you, and that's what I'm doing. The Tardis is taking you home.
I bet you're fussing and moaning now. Typical. But hold on and just listen a bit more. The Tardis can never return for me. Emergency Programme One means I'm facing an enemy that should never get their hands on this machine. So this is what you should do. Let the Tardis die. Just let this old box gather dust. No one can open it. No one'll even notice it. Let it become a strange little thing standing on a street corner. And over the years, the world'll move on and the box will be buried. And if you want to remember me, then you can do one thing. That's all, one thing. Have a good life.
Do that for me, Rose. Have a fantastic life.
Rose closed the compact and buried her tearful face in the pillow, praying the cruel fates would send her drifting back to sleep so she could live this life again with him in her dreams.