The Odd Trinket Daughter
Author's note: I had a vision of this after I saw "Waters of Mars". I think this would be the universe after it. Just my little bit of story. Hope you like it though.
I loved mother's stories of the great man that she traveled with for a long time. She told me of the times when he seemed so whacky that even she couldn't believe it was true. I remember the first story she told me of the great doctor, I was three years old. His traveling was complicated she said and he had rules to follow but he was a joy. The first thing I ever remember hearing about him though was the story of Renette. She was beautiful from the way mother described Miss Renette and he had taken a liking to her. He always to a liking to girls she said, smiling at me. He would have loved you very much she said. She told me all the story with great detail about France at the time and what it was like for her. The fact that technically they weren't even in France when it happened, they were on a great big ship, much larger than the TARDiS. She told me the story and that's all I thought it was for a long time. It was just a story. Just a made up man out of my mother's clever imagination. Time went on and she always told the stories of the Doctor. She even tried writing some of them down. When she did, she always ended up crying and dropping the pen and ripping up the paper, like there was something there blocking her from ever writing them down.
I grew up with her and my father, John Smith. We were happy when we grew up. It seemed like a normal life. I was a brunette and had straight hair. My father was the same way. They never bothered to tell me that this was not the way my life was supposed to go. I wasn't even supposed to be alive. This whole dimension wasn't supposed to be here but it was for some reason. My mother told me when I was eighteen. She supposed after my father was dead, it was well enough to tell me that this whole thing had been fabricated and sealed off from the rest of where she came from. The doctor did this to her. I accepted it. I accepted that she suffered from these delusions and went on with my regular life even got a job. I would never expect what happened to me on my first day at the bookshop. Something incredible. I was on my way to the bookshop and I was in my car and I distinctly remember seeing my first job in sight, my first day of work and then I poofed. Poofed somewhere else and I was scared. No one was around and I never saw my mother again after that day. She sent me with things on my person though as if she knew it was going to happen.
She insisted on me keeping them with me or her wherever we went. I thought they were rather silly. Just a couple of things that meant nothing to me. They consisted of a picture she drew of a face, a man she described as being the Doctor, a fogwatch that never opened or worked, a peice of paper with her name on it, and a letter that seemed rather heavy. She said that if we were to ever see him in the slightest chance we were to give these things back to him. She said she loved him and that it was very important he get these things. I knew my mother well enough to know when she wasn't joking. Rose Tyler was a lovely spirit in health and beauty but even she knew when to be serious. She knew that he was the only hope that they had. I obeyed her wishes like a good daughter. I knew that my mother was ill and getting much worse by the day, but when I poofed out of my car, I didn't know what to do. I never even thought about the stuff lodged in the lining of my jacket. I just thought about trying to be saved. I thought I was gonna die there.
I landed in the future on a world that seemed like Earth. I didn't have any papers to prove that I was a citizen of anywhere. I hadn't even thought about them. I shivered on the pavement wondering where I was and what I would do. I just hoped to survive. It was bloody cold wherever the poof had decided to bring me. I saw my mother though. She was much younger and even more gorgeous than I thought and then I saw him, and I tried running to him, but the poof would have nothing of it. The poof did not want me to meet the doctor that day. It still had bigger plans for me. I didn't know what was going to happen. Me, I was nothing special. I was a normal girl and she was too. Why did he pick her? Why was she any different than any other girl that he had met? Something whispered in my ear that I would know in time and I didn't even question it. My bum was freezing and I heard strange voices and I wasn't questioning my sanity. Guess, that's what he did though. He made people special. That was just the beginning of it though. He didn't just make random people special, he made girls special. He made people companions who wanted to see the stars and new worlds and old worlds and times past.
I saw when he had to leave her behind. I saw the universe just zip up and he could do nothing about it. He had done so much and I got this poof who showed me how much he had done and he couldn't even help her. It showed me something I would never forget though. It showed me my mother and father meeting for the first time with the intervention of the Doctor. John Smith, a man my mother had told me was nothing special but he was the image I had. The image in my coat lining was of John Smith. And the Doctor. It didn't make quite any sense. He was human but he was the doctor. It didn't make any sense but I had a sneaky suspicion that things weren't about to become a whole lot clearer. And then just like that I was poofed again. This time not to a place where my mother was. I had seen the ending of her history but what I was looking at was his. I was looking at his history and how I played into it. He was an anomoly, like the poof. It was showing me something so that I could have a better understanding of my place in the world and how I was supposed to change it. I was reminded of all the stories my mother had told me growing up and I was to never forget them having seen them first hand. She had told me the rules that he had and then I understood. I was supposed to stop him or help him or something. I didn't even know but just like that I got poofed into somewhere cold again. What I was about to hear was the beginning of my journey.
"But you said we die. For the future. For the human race."
"Yes, because there are laws. There are laws of upon of time there were people in charge of those laws but they died. They all died. Do you know who that leaves? Me! It's taken me all these years to realize that the laws of time are mine and they will obey me!"
"You saved us?" She asked him, clearly perplexed about the doctor's mentality and it was in that single moment, I knew. I knew that he broke one of the rules. I was supposed to help him see that and I was supposed to travel with him to. I didn't know exactly why, but that was what the poof was showing me. I was getting to him and each time we poofed we got a little closer until this was it. I knew. I had to wait though. The conversation had to play out. I had rules too.
"Just think, though. Your daughter and your daughter's daughter, you can see them again. Family reunion." He seemed so happy to try and give her back her life. I hadn't seen it all, but I could tell that this was one of those fixed events that she was always talking about. My mother had tried to get away from a fixed event but the universe wouldn't have it and so she got a parallel dimension.
She shook her head no. She accepted her fate to die and then he had taken that away from her. She still shook her head, no. "But I'm supposed to be dead."
"Not anymore." He smiled.
"But... Susie... my granddaughter... wasn't she supposed to become... we'll never exist now." She perhaps understood better than anyone. You can't screw up the time curve. It's not meant to happen that way. That's what gives time it's shape, otherwise, it's not even got the way to turn. You don't know which way to go. She was brave.
"Nah, Captain Adelaide can inspire her face-to-face. Different details, but the story's the same." He said as if it would convince her.
She was upset and angry and had every right to be. He had destroyed the timeline that the universe created. He had convinced her back there wherever they were and now he had taken it away. The Doctor wasn't supposed to do this. "You can't know that! And if my family changes... the whole of history could change! The future of the human race! No one should have that much power! "
The worst thing was he didn't seem to care as he spit out "tough."
She backed away from him. Probably the smartest thing she ever did. This doctor had to be stopped. This was not the one of my dreams. My dreams were of the stories that my mother told me and whatever it was, the poof, the poof as I affectionately called it showed me. He was real, but this wasn't him. This was a new man. Same body, new man. "You should have left us there."
"Adelaide, I've done this sort of thing before. In small ways, saved some little people. But never someone as important as you. Ooh, I'm good!" He said as he marveled at his own power. That's what it was. He wanted power and he had it. He saved her. That's what I was doing. I was saving him, before it was too late. But it was still cold. My hands were freezing as I put them in my jacket and felt the lining. Then I felt soemthing hard. I reached for it. To my surprise, it was the cold metal of the fogwatch and I was reminded of all the stuff I had that I needed to give to him in due time. After this. Something told me this had to play out and I was supposed to go after him. It was funny how I knew him without looking at the picture, granted I probably had looked at it a thousand times.
"Little people? What, like Mia and Yuri? Who decides they're so unimportant? You?" She asked, spitting venom at him.
And with the words that next appeared in his mouth. I was sure of everything. I had had this dream a million times before. It was the only one I hadn't thought about in a long time. The only one I wasn't shown. The one I was now experiencing. "For a long time now, I thought I was just a survivor, but I'm not. I'm the winner. That's who I am. A Time Lord victorious."
She was angry, scared, hell-bent on making things right. He had too much power. He had changed a fixed event. He wasn't a god, but he was playing the cards like he was one. The tricky thing about that though was that no matter what, some events always happened. "And there's no one to stop you?"
"No."
"this is wrong. I don't care who you are, doctor. The time lord victorious is wrong." She said. I could see the fire in her eyes and he seemed not to care.
"That's for me to decide." He said. The Doctor was a changed man. I was supposed to help him through something. "Now, you'd better get home. Oh, it's all locked up. You've been away. Still, that's easy... " He pulled out the screwdriver I had seen countless of times before and unlocked her house and then simple as that, put it away.
"Is there nothing you can't do?" She asked with some sadness in her eyes.
"Not anymore." He changed into something that was deep and dark and she left him to his misery. I saw the bright blue flash of light that indicated she had killed herself in her home. She had changed things back, just different details. She took the honorable route and show him the way. She showed him that he wasn't what he thought he was and it was my job to finish what she started. Then the strange creature came and the Doctor realized what he had done. He had broken a cardinal rule. "I've gone too far! Is this it? My death? Is it time?" The Ood, the strange creature, just looked at him and the disappeared the bell started ringing. He went back into the TARDiS and I followed him. "No." He knew what he had done.
"This is why you need a companion." I looked at him. He needed to hear the words. He needed the trinkets.
He looked at me with confused look "Well who in the daft hell are you?"
"Alexandra Elizabeth Rose Smith-Tyler"
"Smith-Tyler?" He asked.
I gave him the stuff I had. The letter that was oddly heavy, the picture of his face, the fogwatch that never worked or opened. "My mother, Rose Tyler, said that if I ever met you, if we ever met you, these things were supposed to be given to you." He looked at all the stuff and then looked at me. My complexion was my mother's. Her white face and attitude was what I inherited from her. "That wasn't supposed to happen. Out there. You knew it and you still saved her. That's why you need your companions. They provide another judgement. Not just yours."