Rec: after me comes the flood
Aug. 31st, 2011 09:21 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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best_enemiesTitle: after me comes the flood
Pairing: Tenth Doctor/Simm!Master
Length: 11,641
Summary: In which the Doctor tries very hard to save the Master, and the universe, and maybe even himself. A retelling of The End of Time.
Warnings/Rating: PG-13.
Author on LJ (or Teaspoon, or Prydonian): Aria.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ariafic on LJ. ariafic on DW. Aria at AO3.
Why this must be read:
This story is beautiful. Aria's writing is lyrical, evocative, and sometimes heart-wrenching. The characterizations of the Doctor and Master are thoughtful and engrossing. Reading this story is at once painful and uplifting. I adore it.
I really enjoy the way this story begins. It gives us glimpses of the things that the Doctor did in the time between the end of Waters of Mars and the beginning of End of Time. These are such wonderful little vignettes and they give a view into the Doctor's state of mind that I really enjoy. I feel that this story is about change, first and foremost. The Doctor spends most of the time in the story dreading his predicted regeneration, as well as fearing what he might change into if he allows himself to slip again, as he did in Waters of Mars. But with change comes hope and the possibility for something better.
He sets down in front of a wrecked building, still in London but some five years later: it was sturdy and grand once, but its brick and steel didn't survive whatever blasted it from the inside out, the whole thing carefully cordoned off from the street. HM Prison: Broadfell, reads the scorched and twisted sign under crumbling bricks and the Doctor's trainers. The air smells acrid and electric, like a copper wire with its fuse blown, and the Doctor chokes on it a little. Everything in him is screaming to run from whatever twisted and corrupt parody of a regeneration took place here, but he returns to the TARDIS and parks it properly, a few blocks distant in a residential neighborhood where its presence won't be too noticeable. He sets out on foot: the subtle queasy wrongness crackles everywhere, a signal that has earthed itself in this time and in this city, impossible to pinpoint more accurately than that. So the Doctor follows the smell of acrid copper miles on, down to the river, past skyscrapers and on to wharfs, leaving behind everything but hills of gravel, scrap metal, and great rusting ships out on the water. It's unbalancing. This wreck of a place is not what he expected.
But the Doctor stands atop one of the great gravel hills, electric wrongness catching in the back of his throat, and he hears it.
Four metallic clangs. Regular. Deliberate.
He can't help the spike of panic, but he can at least name it that: panic. Nothing more. He's been expecting it since the instant Carmen told him, feeling every moment as an uncertain countdown to this one, but somehow he still thought he'd have more time -- to prepare, to wander, to live this particular muddled life. That, when he reached this, he'd feel some kind of acceptance, a brief bright moment of calm at the inevitability.
A lifetime ago, he would have.
The Doctor sets off, the gravel disturbed by his trainers slithering and clattering down the slope, his trench coat catching the stale wind off the Thames. The four clangs come again, faster now, drawing him on. Down the hill he goes, landing with a clang of his own and racing across rusting metal half-steady under his feet. Then concrete, gravel, dirt, concrete, all of it hitting his feet with hard jolts that ground themselves in his spine, scrap metal and refuse rushing by in an unimportant blur; the Doctor can't run fast enough to keep up with the noise, and if he stops it, if he's just able to stop --
He skids and stumbles to a halt. On the dimming horizon, with the world fading to grays in an early evening around it, a lone figure is standing. It's not Harold Saxon. It's not even properly the Master; the fierce grin on his boyish haggard face, the psychic scream of mindless defiance -- they're nothing the Doctor's ever felt from him before. It dizzies him.
They stare at one another. This Master-who-is-not-the-Master, this man with Saxon's face twisted into a different sort of mania, with his unnaturally pale hair and dirty old clothes, breathes in irregular gasps, shakes with suppressed energy and it shakes the Doctor, makes the turning world an unsteady uncertain thing. The gap between them stretches a dozen yards and so many lifetimes it makes the distance unbreachable.
He still has to try.
"Please," he says, voice pitched to carry, "let me help!"
The Master tilts his head and levels the Doctor a look of disgusted disappointment. Well, the Doctor isn't going to get points on originality for that one. But what else is he supposed to say? Nice to see you again? It isn't nice. It's awful; the strange crackle of wasted energy, moving around the Master in invisible contrails at every slight movement, is making the Doctor nearly ill. He's wrong, come back in a body that looks solid and feels like decay. The Doctor hadn't bothered to consider -- had stubbornly refused to accept the Master as a possibility, to plan ahead for the inevitable, even after Carmen's words -- but he realises now that he had hoped, for the briefest of fleeting seconds, that the Master would listen this time, that the pain the Doctor had willingly shown at their last encounter would be weighed in the balance of the Master's thoughts.
Link to the story: Here
Continuing with the theme, my musical rec is also a retelling of The End of Time.
Title: The Doctor and the Master
Pairing: Gen.
Length: 4:35
Warnings: None.
Musical Artist: Dr. Noise
Why this must be heard:
Because it's a duet between the Doctor and the Master (sung by one person doing both parts). It is so many of the things I loved about End of Time in musical form, without the things that made me cringe. I'd wanted something like this song ever since seeing EoT, and was thrilled when I saw that Dr. Noise had put out this song! It's fast-paced, and really enjoyable. I think the format is well suited to telling the story.
Link to the song: Here
Pairing: Tenth Doctor/Simm!Master
Length: 11,641
Summary: In which the Doctor tries very hard to save the Master, and the universe, and maybe even himself. A retelling of The End of Time.
Warnings/Rating: PG-13.
Author on LJ (or Teaspoon, or Prydonian): Aria.
ariafic on LJ. ariafic on DW. Aria at AO3.Why this must be read:
This story is beautiful. Aria's writing is lyrical, evocative, and sometimes heart-wrenching. The characterizations of the Doctor and Master are thoughtful and engrossing. Reading this story is at once painful and uplifting. I adore it.
I really enjoy the way this story begins. It gives us glimpses of the things that the Doctor did in the time between the end of Waters of Mars and the beginning of End of Time. These are such wonderful little vignettes and they give a view into the Doctor's state of mind that I really enjoy. I feel that this story is about change, first and foremost. The Doctor spends most of the time in the story dreading his predicted regeneration, as well as fearing what he might change into if he allows himself to slip again, as he did in Waters of Mars. But with change comes hope and the possibility for something better.
He sets down in front of a wrecked building, still in London but some five years later: it was sturdy and grand once, but its brick and steel didn't survive whatever blasted it from the inside out, the whole thing carefully cordoned off from the street. HM Prison: Broadfell, reads the scorched and twisted sign under crumbling bricks and the Doctor's trainers. The air smells acrid and electric, like a copper wire with its fuse blown, and the Doctor chokes on it a little. Everything in him is screaming to run from whatever twisted and corrupt parody of a regeneration took place here, but he returns to the TARDIS and parks it properly, a few blocks distant in a residential neighborhood where its presence won't be too noticeable. He sets out on foot: the subtle queasy wrongness crackles everywhere, a signal that has earthed itself in this time and in this city, impossible to pinpoint more accurately than that. So the Doctor follows the smell of acrid copper miles on, down to the river, past skyscrapers and on to wharfs, leaving behind everything but hills of gravel, scrap metal, and great rusting ships out on the water. It's unbalancing. This wreck of a place is not what he expected.
But the Doctor stands atop one of the great gravel hills, electric wrongness catching in the back of his throat, and he hears it.
Four metallic clangs. Regular. Deliberate.
He can't help the spike of panic, but he can at least name it that: panic. Nothing more. He's been expecting it since the instant Carmen told him, feeling every moment as an uncertain countdown to this one, but somehow he still thought he'd have more time -- to prepare, to wander, to live this particular muddled life. That, when he reached this, he'd feel some kind of acceptance, a brief bright moment of calm at the inevitability.
A lifetime ago, he would have.
The Doctor sets off, the gravel disturbed by his trainers slithering and clattering down the slope, his trench coat catching the stale wind off the Thames. The four clangs come again, faster now, drawing him on. Down the hill he goes, landing with a clang of his own and racing across rusting metal half-steady under his feet. Then concrete, gravel, dirt, concrete, all of it hitting his feet with hard jolts that ground themselves in his spine, scrap metal and refuse rushing by in an unimportant blur; the Doctor can't run fast enough to keep up with the noise, and if he stops it, if he's just able to stop --
He skids and stumbles to a halt. On the dimming horizon, with the world fading to grays in an early evening around it, a lone figure is standing. It's not Harold Saxon. It's not even properly the Master; the fierce grin on his boyish haggard face, the psychic scream of mindless defiance -- they're nothing the Doctor's ever felt from him before. It dizzies him.
They stare at one another. This Master-who-is-not-the-Master, this man with Saxon's face twisted into a different sort of mania, with his unnaturally pale hair and dirty old clothes, breathes in irregular gasps, shakes with suppressed energy and it shakes the Doctor, makes the turning world an unsteady uncertain thing. The gap between them stretches a dozen yards and so many lifetimes it makes the distance unbreachable.
He still has to try.
"Please," he says, voice pitched to carry, "let me help!"
The Master tilts his head and levels the Doctor a look of disgusted disappointment. Well, the Doctor isn't going to get points on originality for that one. But what else is he supposed to say? Nice to see you again? It isn't nice. It's awful; the strange crackle of wasted energy, moving around the Master in invisible contrails at every slight movement, is making the Doctor nearly ill. He's wrong, come back in a body that looks solid and feels like decay. The Doctor hadn't bothered to consider -- had stubbornly refused to accept the Master as a possibility, to plan ahead for the inevitable, even after Carmen's words -- but he realises now that he had hoped, for the briefest of fleeting seconds, that the Master would listen this time, that the pain the Doctor had willingly shown at their last encounter would be weighed in the balance of the Master's thoughts.
Link to the story: Here
Continuing with the theme, my musical rec is also a retelling of The End of Time.
Title: The Doctor and the Master
Pairing: Gen.
Length: 4:35
Warnings: None.
Musical Artist: Dr. Noise
Why this must be heard:
Because it's a duet between the Doctor and the Master (sung by one person doing both parts). It is so many of the things I loved about End of Time in musical form, without the things that made me cringe. I'd wanted something like this song ever since seeing EoT, and was thrilled when I saw that Dr. Noise had put out this song! It's fast-paced, and really enjoyable. I think the format is well suited to telling the story.
Link to the song: Here
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