fic: Give Up the Ghost [Doctor/Master, 4000 words]

[fromthesabrary]

Title: Give Up the Ghost
Author: Sabine iamsab
Summary: The first four months, the next four months, and the last four months.
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor/Master
Warnings: NSFW
Note: For deborah_judge, who requested this through Sweet-Charity, though the story sort of spun off from her request and I didn't quite fulfill it in the end.
Spoilers: Through "The

Comments

[txvoodoo]

ahhh, the last bit kind of broke me.

Remember I said I stopped reading Master/Doctor? I wouldn't have, it the rest were like this.

[iamsab]

You are so good to me. This was a particularly heartbreaking story to write, I tell you whut. Poor Doctor! Poor broken Doctor! Thank you so much for taking a chance and reading this... I'm so glad you liked it!

[selenak]

I have a soft spot for The Year That Wasn't stories, and this one is dark and magnificent, as such stories should be. The use of the whole John Smith intermezzo is inspired, as is the Doctor thinking of John Smith and "the Doctor" as separate entities from a third self.

Loved the interaction with Francine, too; one of the often overlooked details in LotTL that struck me was the way the Doctor stopped her from shooting, and later the long look between them as he was waiting outside, which indicated what changes that year of imprisonment together wrought.

And the question of mutual forgiveness, which that hopelessly messed up duo of Time Lords can never achieve. Oh, Doctor.

[iamsab]

I know, I love Francine too! Because she hated the Doctor, hated him right up until they were trapped on the Valiant together, and SOMETHING must have brought them together, and I figured she would tend to him because he's connected to her daughter, and I just ended up really digging Francine and the risks she takes.

As for John Smith, I'm of the opinion that the Doctor thinks about him -- about that other life -- all the TIME. What he had to sacrifice, and why he had no choice, but also how much easier it might have been to be human, and how much less exhausting it might be to get to die.

Thank you so much for the feedback; from you this is great, great praise. *blushes!*

Your icon is GORGEOUS. GOD look at Tennant's mouth and neck.

[kernezelda]

It's unimaginable to me, simply unimaginable that he would do this, that he would lock another Time Lord -- the only other Time Lord -- up this way, but I have ceased limiting my thoughts to the imaginable. And it isn't simply this creaking body -- which death keeps tugging toward the vanishing point -- that punishes me; my mind, my brilliant, resilient, ever-changing mind is slowing. It wanders for long periods at a time now, daydreaming like a human, and when I manage to catch hold of myself I've forgotten half the things I was thinking to begin with. It is breaking both my hearts.This whole paragraph sums up the Doctor's self-concept for me - he is brilliant, powerful, long-lived and hardy, and well aware of of these things. He's an alien who treasures humanity for its potential, but is always set apart not only by species/tech, but by choice, because no matter how he feels about individual humans, he's always a Time Lord, almost the last of them, and that is both incomparable and lonely and perceived by the rest of the universe

[iamsab]

Dude, thank you SO much for this amazing feedback. He totally has this love/hate feeling for his own uniqueness, where it makes him incomparably lonely but it also gives him a reason for living -- and sets him above and beyond normal humans, as an obligation. Obligated to play god.

And yeah, he's watched what was unique and Time Lordy and powerful about him get systematically stripped away, and what it left behind wasn't even significant enough to be called human, much less Gallifreyan.

Seriously, thank you so much, particularly as you don't read much Who fic; I am thrilled that you came and tried this and appreciated it. {{{HUGS KERNE}}}

[iamsab]

Yep! Exactly. Poor guy. Thanks for commenting!

Bravo

[zagethe]

Nuff said.

Re: Bravo

[iamsab]

*bows*

THANKS!