Rose opened her eyes and squinted in the sunlight that was coursing through her window. It was so quiet, it was strange. Her mind at first was nothing but an empty void, but, the longer she lay there blinking into space, the more colours and images spread onto this blank canvas, and then suddenly it hit her like a bolt from the blue.

“Doctor!” she cried, leaping out of bed and charging into the hallway.

As she tore into the lounge she shuddered to a halt, seeing her mum knelt beside Hope, who was asleep on the sofa, whilst Jack and Mickey stood just behind her. They turned in her direction as she entered the room, their faces gloomy and grey.

Rose swallowed and rushed to her daughter’s side, putting her hand to Hope’s cheek. She was very hot. “She’s burning up,” she whispered, taking the damp flannel that her mum was holding and placing it across Hope’s forehead. “What happened? Will she be okay?”

“She’ll be fine,” Jackie replied in that soothing motherly tone, the one which forewarned bad news, and thus put Rose on the alert.

She turned her eyes on her mother and stared at her. Jackie gave her a cheerless look in return, then cast her eyes down, telling Rose with this gesture all that she needed to know.

Rose shot to her feet. “Where is he?” she asked Jack, looking round the flat just in case she’d missed him. When she didn’t get an answer, she fixed the Captain with a glare and demanded, “Jack, where is he?”

Jack looked uneasy, as if he had seen things in the past few hours which had turned his world upside-down. “He’s left you a message,” he replied quietly. “It’s in the TARDIS.”

Rose didn’t need to be told twice, and she was soon running out of the flat. She spied the TARDIS out on the forecourt below, so charged down the stairs and into the blue box as quickly as she could.

And as the image faded, and Rose reached out to him, feeling the tears roll down her cheeks, she looked up to indeed see another man in the Doctor’s shoes, a stranger who wore the Doctor’s coat and the Doctor’s jeans, but who wasn‘t the Doctor she knew at all. He held her eyes with his own, and seemed imbued with an aura that was both sad and unsure, but, even more than this, forlorn. It was as if he had lost something very dear, which he knew he would never be able to find again. And in many ways, he had.

Hope stirred slowly and groaned as she opened her eyes. She was back in her own bed now, in her mother’s room, wearing her teddy bear pyjamas, and when her vision cleared, she saw that there was a man sat on the end of her bed. She quickly wiped her eyes and sat up.

Noticing movement out of the corner of his eye, the man turned to look at her and she saw that he was in her daddy’s clothes. He was younger-looking than her father, with large brown eyes and longish, floppy hair, yet something told her he was no ordinary stranger; something about him was very familiar.

She stared at him for some time before she shifted along the bed on her hands and knees and then sat next to him. “Who are you?” she asked quietly.

He smiled and fished inside his jacket for a moment before he withdrew a small, brown paper bag. Hope watched it as it rustled in his hand, and he opened it. She then glanced up to his face again and saw that he was giving her a rather nice, wide smirk. He proffered the bag to her.

Hope gave it another suspicious look.

“Jelly baby?” he asked.

She stared into his brown, unfamiliar eyes and swallowed slowly before, with a little uncertainty, she dipped her hand into the bag and plucked out a fat, yellow sweet from within. She then placed the jelly baby in her mouth and slowly began to chew. It tasted nice.

“I like the yellow ones myself,” the man said, closing his eyes and plunging his own hand into the bag. “What do you think I’ll get?”

Hope was completely thrown, but found this all quite reassuring after what she’d been through, so replied with a smile. “Black!”

“Black, you say?” the man said with a shrug. “I think it’ll be red.”

He then pulled his hand quickly from the bag and, keeping the jelly baby hidden, placed his fist between himself and Hope. “Black you say?”

Hope nodded.

“And red say I?”

Hope smiled again and they then both looked down as he opened his fingers and revealed--

“Oh no.”

Hope laughed. “You got a green one!”

She giggled another time as she then watched his face contort. “Ugh,” he moaned. “Green’s my least favourite.”

“Mine too.”

He shook his head and, with a sigh, said, “Ah well. Bottom’s up!” and threw the jelly baby into his mouth. He chewed quickly and swallowed.

After a moment of bitterness, his visage then rearranged itself to be as placid as before and he again offered her the bag. Hope took another one, a pink baby this time, and met his eyes once more before she asked again “Who are you?” as the sweet went into her mouth.

“I’m the Doctor,” he said, “And who are you?”

“Hope.”

“Hope Tyler?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so.”

Hope stared at him for another moment. “Where’s daddy?”

The Doctor - or the man who claimed he was the Doctor - took another jelly baby from his bag, an orange one, and tossed it into his mouth. “He’s here,” he said, tapping himself briefly on the chest. “Or part of him is.”

Hope looked confused. “You’re not my daddy.”

He nodded and raised a finger in concurrence. “That is very true, but, then again, I am.” He then suddenly froze and rather unceremoniously thrust a finger into his maw to remove part of a jelly baby that had gotten stuck in the roof of his mouth. Succeeding to dislodge it, he then swallowed the rest. “Sorry,” he said after a cough, “It’s these new teeth - can’t seem to get the hang of them.” He then realised what he’d done and added, “And don’t you start doing that in front of your mother.”

Hope made a gesture that promised she wouldn’t.

“Well,” the Doctor continued, “I’ll try to explain. I’m a Time Lord, you see, and we have a way of cheating death. But when we do it, we have to change. Now me as I was before, the me who was your daddy, was dying, so I had to change, and here” - he pointed to himself with both hands “is the result. Have I confused you?”

Hope looked him up and down. “My daddy’s dead, then?”

“Well, no. I’m your daddy, but still not technically your daddy.”

“Are you different on the inside as well as the outside?”

The Doctor pursed his lips and studied this remarkable young girl for a moment before he gave her an affirming nod. “Yes, I rather think I am.”

“Then you’re not my daddy.”

“But I’m still the Doctor.”

“No you‘re not.”

“Yes I am.”

They stared at one another until the Doctor’s rustling bag of sweets broke the silence and he offered her another. Hope didn’t take one. She was just so bewildered. She was being told that her father had changed into this man, and he claimed to still be the Doctor, yet the elements of him that had made him her father seemed to have altered, or changed, or just gone.

“I miss him,” she whispered.

“I miss him, too, Hope,” the Doctor whispered, “but there’s nothing I can do about it. There are some things for which I can not turn back the clock.” His face twitched slightly as he remembered how Hope had turned the clock back on him, but she seemed to have forgotten about that now, a memory faded, though perhaps not gone forever.

“Where’s mummy?” Hope then asked.

The Doctor nodded behind him toward Rose’s bed. “Asleep.” He then put a finger to his lips. “Shh. Mustn’t wake her. She’s very tired.”

“What does she think of you?”

The Doctor tapped his fingers against his lips and again stared long and hard at her. “She’s confused, just like you are. It’s difficult for her.”

“Does she still love you?”

The Doctor sighed and looked away. “I don’t know. I’m not the man I was, and I never will be. But there are elements of me that will never change.” He glanced back at Hope. “You might understand this better if you were older, but listen now: there’s this thing called a triangular prism - you ever heard of it?”

She shook her head.

“Well, it’s a block of glass that can separate light into the seven colours of the spectrum - like when you see a rainbow, that’s what a prism does. You with me?”

Hope looked bemused, but the Doctor persevered before he lost the plot himself. “You see, Hope, I’m like the light, separated by a prism into a spectrum; each time I regenerate, you just see another one of my colours, and though each is different, I still come from the same beam of light. You just see another facet of my soul.”

“I don’t understand.”

He smiled and put his arm around her. “I know you don’t,” he said, giving her a quick kiss on top of her head, “but one day you will. I‘m sure of it.”

He then got to his feet and made for the door. “Now, get some sleep.”

Hope did as she was told and clambered back beneath the covers. “Goodnight, Doctor.”

The Doctor’s eyes lingered on her as she said this, his hand resting on the door handle. He couldn’t help but feel a pained twang in his hearts as he realised that this little girl failed to see any reason to call him ‘daddy’ any more. “Goodnight, little one,” he replied. He left the bag of jelly babies on the side before he slipped out the door and was gone.