The Girl with the Red Balloon
In the pub on the south side of town, Rose Tyler sat with a cold blanket that just came out of the attic wrapped around her. A cup of tea was forced into her hands by the old man who ran the sad little pub. It was a rinky-dink kind of place, but it allowed for business to exist.
When she had knocked on the door of his place, he immediately let her in. She had looked like some sort of sad lost puppy, the way she stared into his soul with her big brown eyes. She asked for a place to stay in English, and he had humbly obliged. But now that she was as settled as she could be, it was time for questions.
"So, lass," he began in his thick Norwegian accent, "What has got you here?" He was lucky he knew English. He had to, if any tourists came.
She sighed, and gave him another puppy look, a few stray blond hairs in her face. He nodded, understanding she didn't want to speak. So instead, he tried to take a different route. "Since I let you in, I should at least know your name, lass."
"Rose. Rose Tyler," she muttered under her breath.
"Well then, Rose Tyler, you have anybody? Perhaps some folks? Some friends? A beau?"
Rose gulped, trying to keep her cool in front of the stranger. She had to fight back those tears. But after this afternoon, it was getting harder.
But after a long while of thinking and a sip of tea, she finally asked, "Do you have anything stronger?"
He smiled, rather surprised, "You don't take me as a drinker Ms. Tyler."
She tried to return the grin, but faltered. "You must not be good with first appearances then," was all she could manage.
He went to his cupboard, and picked up the first bottle he found. When he returned, he found her sitting just as she was before, staring into space. As he opened the bottle, to look down and realize that it was that cheap champagne that he had gotten for a Christmas present last year. He sighed, and poured her a glass. "Sorry I don't have anything nicer," he told her.
She took the glass without a change of expression. "Thank you," she told him, taking a sip of the alcohol. Her sip turned into a gulp, her gulp into a chug. He gawked at the pretty girl over his own glass, which only had one sip taken out of it by that point. He really was bad with first appearances.
When she set down her glass, he offered her the bottle again, and she gladly accepted. After pouring another glass for herself, she sat back in the chair, as if she was starting to get comfortable.
He watched her as she finished off her second, third, fourth glass, and realized that he was probably doing a lot more bad than good. He was so used to seeing men trying to drink away their sorrows; he hadn't even flinched at this girl's drinking.
He moved the bottle away from her, but she didn't seem to notice, since she was now on her fifth. Finally, he decided to maybe get answers about this mysterious Rose Tyler. "Tell me, Ms. Tyler, is it the folks?"
She shook her head while draining her fifth glass. "Not exactly. I mean, I'm here because I wanted to get away from them. But it's because they just seem too… normal."
He looked at her, rather curiously, but then asked, "Well, what's wrong with being normal?"
She laughed, letting a hiccup accidentally erupt from her. She grabbed for the champagne bottle, but was really grabbing for mid-air. Seeing her struggle to find the bottle pained him, so he handed it back. She quickly said thank you before taking a sixth drink. Finally, she answered, "Everything. What's the point of living if you're normal? There's nothing exciting. Nothing in the least. But I tell you, there is a man out there, a man who is the most abnormal that you will ever meet… and he took me places… took me places…" She stopped, and the pub-owner suddenly understood. This was about a boy. He had known all along, he had told himself. But now she had admitted it. "And what places did he take you to miss?" he couldn't help but ask.
She gave a half-drunken smile. "Oh, places nobody believes. Different countries, different times, different galaxies…"
He looked at her funny, but only supposed that she was only talking the language of drunkenness. He usually knew it quite well, owning a pub, but this seemed to be different. "And what was this traveller's name?"
She shook her head. "I suppose the Doctor, but really he has none. And he prefers it that way. No one knows who he is, but yet… you do know him. Or at least…I do." Rose sighed, and then remembered the man who had changed her life. She couldn't tell this old man what she had gone through. She could never tell him. He wouldn't understand. But yet she did tell him. She told that poor innocent man of all the wonders and horrors she and that man had faced. And she even told him of how his face had changed, yet she still loved that face. She loves that face. She always would.
And when she had left the Doctor, he had sent her to a different dimension. And how she had had last seen him, that very afternoon, and how he had caused a supernova just to speak to her, and how he couldn't tell her "I love you". And in mid-sentence of explaining "Bad Wolf," she passed out, right in that very armchair.
And as the old man carried her up to the guest room, like a father carrying his child, he couldn't help but look at that face, that face. It was so lovely, yet so lonely. And he tried to decipher her story. Of course none of that could have really happened, could it? No, impossible. That Doctor…he must've tricked her. Deceived her with smoke and mirrors. But yet, perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps it had been her decision. Perhaps she had let him go, or maybe he could've been taken away from her.
But he tried to push those things out of his mind as he had gotten into his own bed, and fell asleep, unaware of all she had spoken was true.
A dimension away, a tall skinny man stood in an alley. His red converse were soaked from the rain water, and his coat seemed to be dragging in the wind behind him as he stared at the graffiti art. It was a girl, with a balloon shaped in a heart floating away from her. He sighed, but didn't let any water escape from his eyes. But as he turned away back to the TARDIS, he took out one photo, his only photo; of Rose Tyler; the girl with the red balloon.