#I wrote down so many notes my hand hurts and im so fucking exhausted lol

[dogcollarpunk]

the fact ingesting information can be so exhausting. 0/10

[tenroseforeverandever]

Dear Father Christmas... December 24, 2023

MASTERPOST

Characters:  Tentoo; Rose Tyler; Jackie Tyler; Pete Tyler; Tony Tyler; OC Hope Tyler-Noble; OC Charlotte Tyler-Noble; OC Wilfred Tyler-Noble

Rated: Teen

Tags: Family!Fic; Kid!Fic; Pete’s World; Letters to Santa; Christmas Fic; Family; Fluff; Hurt/Comfort; Angst; Romance; Love

Summary: When Rose Tyler was little, she always wrote a Christmas wish list to Father Christmas. As she grew older, the wish list became more of a letter to someone she could confide in once a year, but she fell out of the habit somewhere along the way. Now, as a new mum, celebrating her daughter’s first Christmas, Rose takes up writing her Christmas letter to Father Christmas once again.

Rose’s Christmas letters are excerpts from her life with her beloved Tentoo and their children in Pete’s World, written once a year, for each of 31 years.

Chapter Summary: Rose and the Doctor’s children have been campaigning their parents to get them a pet.

Notes: This one was pure fun. I was trying to come up with a critter name for the creature I was picturing when writing this. But in my mind, it looked just the way I imagined a creature briefly mentioned in one of my earlier stories (The Cupid’s Arrow - revised edition) to be like… So why not reintroduce it here? Say hello to the Geruhundian Greehog!

Forever and always, I am so grateful for my talented and dedicated betas, Rose_Nebula and mrsbertucci. Crack that whip, ladies! I’m starting to fall behind! LOL

Thanks to @doctorroseprompts for their 31 Days of Ficmas prompts. A reminder that I am using the prompts very much out of order, but I intend to use them all. The prompt I used today was Snowflake.

Also read at: AO3; FF.net; Teaspoon

December 24th, 2023

Dear Father Christmas,

My children all have different strengths and abilities, and unique, bigger-than-life personalities. It’s funny how you sometimes get glimpses of what they’ll be like as adults as you watch them grow and mature.

Hope (she’s seven years old now. Actually seven and a half!) is the relatively quiet, thoughtful one; she’s the negotiator; the healer; the musician. Once she learned she wasn’t better than the rest of the universe just because she was intelligent, she just wanted to use her intelligence to make the universe better.

Charlie has just started school this year. In addition to being every bit as intelligent as her sister, she’s clever with her hands, clever with gadgets, an engineer, an inventor, an athlete. She is fierce and strong-willed, a passionate activist who wants to save the universe, one being at a time. She’s determined to make the universe bend to her will.

Wilfred is only three and a half, but has as strong a personality as either of the girls, and a logical brain. He’s the opportunist, the puzzler; he loves nothing more than to figure things out. For such a little boy, he has a strong sense of justice: everyone and everything in their correct place. He’s not out so much to change the world as to make sure everything is working the way it’s supposed to, and that everyone gets the chance they deserve.

Alone, each is a force to be reckoned with, but when all three work together, they are indomitable, as me and the Doctor have frequently discovered in the few short years we have been blessed with their presences in our lives.

Recently, their joint effort has been to convince us to get them a pet. Now, most parents would have caved ages ago. But not us. Nope! We’re made of sterner stuff than that, yeah. And trust me, these kids have pulled out all the stops.

Their latest attempt was on Geruhundia. They spotted a baby greehog bleating in the middle of a busy avenue. All of the natives, and most of the non-natives were giving this animal a good, wide berth, yeah, and for all of the best reasons. I mean, you just had to look at this bloke to know that, even as a baby, he just isn’t pet material. But not our kids. Oh, no! They were over there kneeling down and fawning over it before I could say Raxacoricofallapatorius (and I’m getting quicker at saying that, by the way, as the years goes by!)

Now I’ve never seen a greehog before, but the Doctor has told me a bit about them. They are vicious animals, with razor sharp teeth, whose mouths are almost half the size of their bodies. They are highly territorial and fiercely protective of their young. Oh, there’s the Doctor now, with my cuppa. (Ta!) He just said the greehog sounds a bit like my Mum! (I’ll tell her you said that. And I’ve just told Father Christmas. You’ll get a lump of coal in your stocking this year, you will!)

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, the baby greehog. Of course, the Doctor had disappeared on me, gone off to check out a little shop (he still loves a little shop), and we were wandering ahead on the lookout for a good place to stop for lunch, when we come across this baby greehog. I’m frantically trying to get the kids back to my side, where they bloody should be, and, at the same time, keeping an eye open for Mummy-greehog, who honestly, can’t be far behind with her baby blubbering away the way he is.

“But Mummy,” Charlie points out, “he’s orphaned. He needs someone to take care of him. We have to save him!”

I have the counter-argument all ready to go: he’s just lost. No doubt his Mummy will be along, very, very shortly.

“She may never come, Mummy,” pipes up Hope with big doe eyes. “She may be sick or injured, herself. We can’t let this little chap come to harm. I mean, look at him, how sweet he is.”

Let me tell you, Santa, there was nothing, and I mean nothing, sweet about the “little chap”. He may have been enjoying cuddles at the moment, but I was pretty certain I knew the kind of creature he was going to grow into, and I told them as much.

“We juth need to gif ‘im a chanthe, Mama, to pwove he can be a good pet,” Wilfred lisped with a concerned frown crinkling his serious little face.

At this point, I admit, I’d had enough. I stepped forward, and one by one, took my babies by the hand, pulled them away from the greehog (who started whinging again as soon as the cuddles stopped), and tucked each of them behind me. Sure enough, just then, there was a huge commotion from the brush by the side of the road, and this enormous, slathering creature, easily the size of a small car, came bounding into the middle of the road, roaring at us and opening its enormous toothed mouth wide enough to swallow Wilfred whole.

I stood my ground, fully aware of the three astonished and excited little faces peeking out from behind me, and spread my arms wide, making myself look as big and threatening as possible. That greehog may have been protective of her young, but I am Jackie Tyler’s daughter and I come by that same trait honestly, myself. She also passed along to me her stubborn, pig-headedness: I was not going to back down from this threat or any other.

I was aware of the crowd we were attracting, and I suddenly catch a glimpse of pinstripes and great hair from the corner of my eye. He starts in with the “Honestly, Rose…” and then you could hear the gears grinding as he takes in the scene playing out in front of him. Then: “Oh, aren’t you gorgeous! Rose, that’s a Geruhundian greehog! She’s magnificent!”

I might have used some strong language at that point, but the gist was that I fucking knew what the fucking thing was, and did he fucking think he could do something about the fucking fact that it was about to eat his whole fucking family for lunch.

“Oh, easy peasy!” And with typical Doctorish nonchalance, he pulls out his sonic and sets it to emit an ultrahigh frequency that knocks both greehogs out cold. Then he has the nerve to suggest I watch my language in front of the kids.

Anyway, the crowd dispersed, and someone from the Geruhundian equivalent of the SPCA eventually came along to relocate the mum and baby away from the public. I decided we would get lunch to go. I’d had enough of Geruhundia to last a lifetime.

That happened over a month ago now, and while they’ve been campaigning hard, I’m proud to say the kids have yet to break down our resolve to get them a pet.

Life’s funny though, and comes back to bite you in the arse sometimes.

Like I said before, you often get glimpses of what your kids will be like as adults as you watch them play and learn, but sometimes you even catch glimpses of yourself in them. I shared my compassion with Hope, and my headstrong convictions about right and wrong with Charlie. (I’ve also been known to bend the universe to my will, once in a while.) In Wilfred, I see my passionate belief that everyone should get a proper chance in life.

So when I saw that scrawny white kitten floundering through the snow at the end of our drive today, nearly collapsing with exhaustion and starvation, I just couldn’t let her suffer. It wasn’t right, when I could do something to help the sweet baby. After all, she deserved a chance to be a part of a good, loving family, just like anyone else.

Her name is Snowflake, because she’s so delicate and pretty and white, and she’s Mummy’s cuddly little girl, (aren’t you, my love?)

The Doctor’s had a thing or two to say about Snowflake, but among the many traits I’ve passed on to my children, the most powerful of all is knowing how to keep their daddy wrapped around their little fingers. With all four of us working on him, he never stood a chance.

Snowflake is here to stay, a Christmas gift for us all.

Happy Christmas to you, Santa, and Mrs. Claus, and all the elves and reindeer too!

love, Rose