best_enemies | Rec: When There's Life, There's... (Reply)

So, I'm your reccer for this fortnight! And my first rec is a fic by the rather-obscure, not-often-on-LiveJournal author that got me into the pairing.

Title: Where There's Life, There's...
Pairing: Eight/Jacobi!Master
Length: 1,771 words
Summary: What Would the Master Do If… the Doctor Had Died in the Time War and the Master Had Lived?
Warnings: character death, but the fic is PG
Author on LJ (or Teaspoon, or Prydonian):

british_demon
Why this must be read: As I have already said

british_demon is the author that, through her fics, got me interested in Doctor/Master. Obviously, that means that her fics are brilliant and full of all the things that I adore about Doctor/Master! And obviously, this fic exemplifies all that. Like, the Master's overriding love/obsession/it's-really-fucking-complicated thing ("A cosmos without The Doctor scarcely bears thinking about.") for the Doctor. And the conflicts in their relationship... and how it can be angsty, sweet or both at the same time. Yeah...
And this fic is very beautiful! The wording's lovely and it really gets me feeling the Master's feelings!
Excerpt:
"What have you done?" was the first thing he said when he came alive.

Not: thank you. Not: oh Master, I'm so happy to see you again. Not: is this heaven? No. Because he had made the Doctor perfectly he had said the exact, practical, morally correct thing he would have said if he hadn't been dead but instead found out the Master had 'accidentally' taped over his seasons of 'Lost'.

"I shouldn't be here. I was dead!" the Doctor tried to fight him, tried to get away, but his new body was weak still.

"Do you want to go back to being dead?" the Master hissed coldly, staring into his big blue eyes and pinning him back against the stasis bed where he'd made him, from bits and pieces and spare amino acids, and yes, no small amount of love, terrible, poisonous, vicious as it was.
Link to the story: When There's Life, There's...