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

[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 as nearly divine.

He is the single most important thing in the universe to me, and I forgive him for everything, for running, for fighting, even for this. Even if he destroyed Earth and everyone on it, I'd forgive him, and I'd love him, because he is me. Now, he is more me than even I've ever been.

How he has changed! No longer indefatigable, no more running, but bound together with his equal, his traitor, his criminal, his past and present and should-have-been, bound to exist without action save constant forgiving and persuasion. It's so painful to see him in the physical decrepitude he endures, but as much so to see him lose his self - Time Lord no more, not even the human frailties of John Smith, ordinary and vulnerable, but ancient, pained, powerless flesh.

Even while he still tries to give hope to Francine, who gives him comfort and finds comfort in turn, he's lost it himself, drowned in too-long torment and the knowledge of what he's lost - not only his puissance, his belief in humanity and Martha and Jack and all the rest that he's loved, but his sense of self. Who is no longer Who, because to be Doctor Who is to be almost omnipotent, and this creature that remains is almost a ghost.

Like I said, I don't read much Who fic, but this is excellent, no matter the fandom.

[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}}}