Round Two Reviews - Part Thirteen
Today's Featured Stories Include:
*
Edge of Doom by orianna2000
Category: Dark, Short Story
Characters: 10th Doctor, Rose, Jack, OC
Rating: PG for angst and mild profanity
Details: Seven chaptered, complete, post-LatL.
Why It Rocks:
This was my first time reading this story, and I'm relieved that I didn't read it before I wrote my own tale of Rose's death, otherwise I might not have. I found myself thinking about this one often after I had read it, which is a sign of good writing - it sticks with you.
This is a tragic tale of lost time and missed opportunity. We meet the Doctor (still the tenth) several decades in his future with an original companion named Sinead. They've gotten into a bit of a scrape, but all in all are having fun with it, and Sinead proves herself to be as indulgent of the Doctor's eccentricities as his companions often must be.
“No! No, no, no. Of course not. Being lost assumes that we've no idea where we are,” he said with an air of authority. “And we know that we're exactly . . . where the TARDIS is not. See? Not lost. Just in the wrong place. C'mon.”
In a museum, they happen upon an ancient newspaper, and in it is a classified ad for the Doctor from Rose. The paper is dated 2070, and quickly and with manic glee, the Doctor rushes off to be reunited with his long lost love.
The Doctor smoothed the stolen newspaper page against the console with hands that trembled. This was what he'd been sensing, this opportunity. Now the timelines had settled into their chosen path, irrevocably set, and he'd done it right, apparently, for now he had the means to find Rose.
But he hasn't done it right. By choosing to use the date on the newspaper as the time to aim for, he's committed himself to finding Rose at the end of her life, when she's almost run out of time. Turns out she's run the ad in newspapers for decades, and it was simply the Doctor's bad luck that the one he found was so late. And of course, he's tempted to correct his mistake, to go earlier in her timeline, to snatch her out of the life that she built. But of course he can't. The author does a brilliant job of portraying the Doctor's time sense, of what is fixed and what isn't.
Cautiously, the Doctor tested the timeline. Supposing he snatched Rose away, sixty years in the past? The mesh of family strands faded into nothing. Nine lives, gone. Perhaps many more, as Rose's great-grandchildren would eventually have children, and their children would have children. What else? He followed Rose's life back, and watched as hundreds of other threads disappeared one by one. Not just her descendants, then. As a part of this world, Rose Tyler had left an impression. Her presence here had touched others, and their lives had touched others, moving ever outward in a ripple effect. Take away just one strand and the entire web disintegrated.
The Doctor wants to flee. He doesn't want to watch her die, but he forces himself to stay, to sit with her, to meet her family, her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He endures the pain for her sake, to allow her to have a few stolen hours with him. Because in spite of having a great life, she never stopped loving him, never stopped thinking about him.
“I missed you,” he said, finally able to admit it without choking on the words.
Jack is also a major character in this story, in a role that I don't want to give away. His immortality gives him an insight into the Doctor's suffering, and they support each other in their grief:
“How do you go on?” the Doctor asked, so softly that Jack nearly didn't hear him.
In over two hundred years, Jack had formed attachments and lost people he loved more times than he cared to count. It hurt-God, how it hurt! But if anything, it had taught him that you couldn't let the pain control you; you couldn't let the fear of being left behind prevent you from loving, from being loved. Because that unending loneliness was somehow worse than the pain of loss.
This story is heartbreaking and lovely, and I'm happy that I got the chance to discover it. It is indeed dark, there's no question about that, but it isn't without hope. It also isn't without little flashes of humor. It's definitely worthy of a vote in either of the categories for which it was nominated.
*
She Stopped Walking Away by sinecure Link goes to Teaspoon
Nominated in Category: Other Characters
Characters: John Smith, Rose
Rating: Adult
Details: One-shot, set during Human Nature/Family of Blood.
Why It Rocks:
I think I’ve discovered this fic on three separate occasions before sitting down to reread it for this review, and have loved it every time.
At first, you think it’s going to be pretty simple PWP. John Smith (of Human Nature/Family of Blood) wakes up from a dream about Rose with a raging erection, and with all the shame you’d expect of a man of his time, he does something about it. It’s written brilliantly; the description of John Smith battling with himself, and losing, is very real. Given the nature of John Smith - sexually inexperienced, timid - this seems totally in-character for him.
Caught off guard, he stilled his movements, feeling guilt and shame flood through him. This wasn't the way a gentleman was supposed to behave.
The level of detail the author uses on the act of masturbation is gritty and base and very hot. John’s thinking about Rose, imagining things that he has never actually experienced, feeling about a woman in ways that he’s never felt, and he finds it both shameful and exciting. His inhibitions gradually drop and he loses himself in fantasy and physical release. Afterwards, though, the embarrassment settles back in.
He felt as if the entire school knew of his transgressions.
It was going to be difficult facing Joan tomorrow. Maybe he should just avoid her. What would she think if she knew he was touching himself, pleasing himself to thoughts of another woman?
'An eye for the pretty ladies' she'd teased him a few weeks ago.
If she knew what he did while alone at night in his rooms, she wouldn't tease him, she would be disgusted. And rightly so.
Sometimes things are better left to the imagination and sometimes graphic detail is what’s wanted, and this is definitely the latter. In getting the graphic detail, we can appreciate John’s shame more acutely. We feel the way he feels; turned on and dirty and a little guilty, as if we as the reader are spying on this poor man.
John was unsure where these thoughts were coming from, but he didn't want them to stop. He could almost feel her hot breath on him, almost smell the sweet soap she used in her hair, and he shuddered.
As it turns out, we aren’t the only ones spying. Because this isn’t just PWP, folks. Rose, in trying to cross from one universe to the other, has gotten trapped in a sort of limbo. She can see and hear and move around in this universe, but no one else can see or hear her or touch her. And she can’t stop herself from watching, not now that she knows he’s thinking about her while he does this.
She tossed him a wink.
He didn't return it, of course. He never did.
Because he couldn't see her, or feel her, or hear her.
Rose Tyler didn't exist in the world. Well, not the way most people did. She was incorporeal. No touch.
At the end, we get a morsel of hope that Rose is gradually becoming more real, but then the story ends without resolution, and we can only imagine how things might wind up. But this is fine - this story is a lovely, sexy snapshot of one moment, one night. It captures the character of John Smith wonderfully, and that’s why it deserves to win.
*
The Scientist by orange_crushed
Category: Ten/Rose
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Rose, Martha, Jack, the Master, Mickey, Pete
Rating: PG-13 for language
Details: Seven chapters, Ten/Rose, and very AU. This story splits from canon at The Lazarus Experiment, and assumes Martha and Ten parted ways amicably at that point. And yes, it is technically a Human Nature/Family of Blood AU.
Why It Rocks:
"The Scientist" is a Human Nature AU, which I have an extreme weakness for, I have to admit. This is a fic that really is the best of both worlds - full of brilliant, deep characterizations, and also densely plotted. We get a story about the Master that is reminiscent of "Last of the Time Lords," but is quite original and suspenseful. In all honesty, it's better than the real thing.
In this story, we are introduced to a world in which Rose is married to a somewhat eccentric scientist by the name of John Smith. The author lets us in on the fact that this is a Rose who knows the real story in the first paragraph:
They'd give him a grant if he explained it well enough: his wife is insane. There's no other possibility. She is sitting cross-legged on top of the washing machine as it hums steadily through the rinse cycle; eating a slice of burnt toast with jam. The jar is beside her. Every so often, it starts to rattle too wildly and almost slips off the edge- she catches it, and sets it back down beside her, and sticks her finger into the jar to lick the preserves off.
"It reminds me of home," she says.
From there, you're desperately wondering how this all came to be, and how she can bear to be in this position. I find myself sympathizing with her so much - how painful must it be to be going to bed with this man who is the Doctor but isn't? It must be both wonderful and horrible at the same time. But at first we don't get this stated explicitly, we only see the pain of Rose's situation in glimpses, from angles. We see the moment of their reunion, but from his perspective, and he's been programmed to think they were already married.
She'd clung to him while she sobbed, and then laughed, and everything seemed better; he'd taken her to bed and loved her slowly, carefully, like it was the first time.
Because of course it was.
The poignancy in the way orange_crushed writes is so good it hurts. With this subtlest of phrases, she can rip out your heart in the best possible way.
But still this- still love for her, luminous and elastic as a flame, still bright. It kills her to know what she meant to him, even filtered through his make-believe identity, through the hide-and-seek; even after all this time.
John Smith, just as in the real "Human Nature", is dreaming of being the Doctor.
"Honestly, Rose, you'd like me in my dreams."
"I'm sure I'd love you," she'd said, a little sadly, and kissed him until his ears steamed up.
I don't want to give too much of the plot away, so I'm just going to talk about the characters for a bit. John Smith is very decidedly not the Doctor, but there are flashes of him - he's eccentric and brilliant and forgetful and he loves Rose. You can't help but care about him, but you're so very relieved when the Doctor comes back. orange_crushed writes Ten so, so well. She captures his speech patterns perfectly, and his mixture of silly and sexy and haunted and terrifying.
"Which one?" the Doctor grins. Then falls back into grim thought. "Harold Saxon. That name doesn't mean anything to me. Sounds fake, in fact. Harold Saxon." He turns to Rose. "I have to talk to Martha. Maybe not talk- maybe just see. I've got to see what she saw." He pauses. "Get it? See-saw."
Rose. The author really gets Rose, really understands her. The fact that her overpowering love for the Doctor makes her impossibly brave and also selfish. The fact that she's very clever without being learned. And the fact that she sees the Doctor, and knows him, and walks into her life with him with her eyes open.
Last night, she remembers, she sat here with him; so out of place in his still human body, in a sweatshirt and jeans, eating off a plate with human manners. And she knows now, painfully, that she doesn't love the idea of him, the fairy-tale; the possibility of picket fences and children, flowers on her birthday and a ring. She doesn't love those things. She loves him. She loves him, selfish and alien as he can be, restless and dishonest sometimes, with guilty dark eyes. She misses the tics in his hands and the dirty trainers he wore for days. She misses the pride and the righteous anger and the inexplicable kindness in him. She misses the depth of his joy, ever rising from sadness, when she saidforever.
Martha is a wonderfully complex character in this story: well-meaning, brave, misguided, sometimes selfish and sometimes self-sacrificing. Rose finds herself liking her, even when the two of them are working at cross-purposes. And everyone else is also drawn incredibly well - Mickey, Jack, Pete, Jackie, the Master.
And I would be remiss if I didn't point out those few moments of romance that make your tummy flip and leave you desperately wanting more.
"Rose, that man- that little human man, so small in the greater scheme but so fantastic, I could thank him. Because he was smart enough to love you," he murmurs. "But he only loved you because I love you."
This story really does have it all, and definitely deserves your vote.
*
Planar Flight by jinxed_wood Link goes to Teaspoon
Category: Martha Jones
Characters: Ten (as John Smith), Eight, Martha
Rating: All Ages
Details: Two parts, set during Human Nature.
Why It Rocks:
This is why writing these reviews is brilliant, because it has encouraged me to branch out in my reading and find little gems like this one. It's not one I ever would have clicked on otherwise, but this cleverly written story was definitely worth the read.
This is set during "Human Nature," a little AU sojourn for Martha which the author fits in so that it doesn't conflict with canon. It feels very much like a Doctor Who episode all its own, with a clever threat and very well-written dialogue. Working in the school as a maid, Martha discovers the presence of some mysterious ghosts, and shortly thereafter finds herself walking into the TARDIS of the Eighth Doctor. With Ten out of commission as a human, the two of them must work together to stop the threat.
The real strength of this story is the dialogue. The banter between Martha and Eight is quick and clever. Martha is very much in-character, and I often could hear her voice saying the words in my head. I'm not terribly familiar with Eight, but I liked the way he was written - very Doctory, but different from Nine or Ten.
“Tell you what, we’ll make it midnight, at the scullery door.” she said, as she stood.
“Ah, the witching hour; not one day or the next, but the ephemeral moment in between,” he said, his eyes lighting up.
“I thought that might appeal to you,” Martha said dryly. He smiled up at her and, for a moment, Martha got a glimpse of her Doctor.
“You know me rather well, don’t you, Miss Jones?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact; he’s you,” Martha said, and enjoyed the shocked expression on his face.
“Me? That’s me? But- but I’m so scrawny…and I’m wearing plaid slippers. Who wears plaid slippers?”
“John Smith does,” Martha said wryly.
The Doctor looked horrified. “But there are standards,” he said.
Martha's fellow maid and friend Jenny played a role in this story as well, and she also was extremely well-written; her little good-natured arguments with Martha absolutely leapt off the page.
"I'm just saying," Jenny said. "You’d better watch that Mister Smith of yours. It's always the quiet ones you have to be careful of. One moment, it’s all apple and pears, the next, it’s the birds and the bees, if you get my drift."
Martha rolled her eyes. “How about we forget about Mister Smith,” she suggested, as she tucked her arm through Jenny’s. “And you can show me where the ghost was spotted.”
This story was mostly light, but there were a few things that also gave it depth. One was Martha's knowledge of what happened to Gallifrey, and Eight's sense that there was something major (and bad) that she knew that he couldn't ask about.
He looked at her for a moment, and Martha knew he was struggling with himself, resisting the urge to ask the question. “Personal timelines,” he said eventually.
“Yeah,” she admitted.
“I’ve always found that one of the principal problems of crossing one’s own timeline is trying to ignore the auguries,” the Doctor said, looking away as he fiddled with the settings on his screwdriver. “It’s always something foreboding, haven’t you ever noticed?”
A little bit of fun was made of the fact that Eight was the first Doctor to show any sexuality, but beyond that, the author subtly hints at the fact that Eight is attracted to Martha, and that he is aware of the bitter irony of the poor timing there, that his future self doesn’t feel the same way. Lastly, the "big bad" of the story, so to speak, is more than just a monster, and the Doctor's reaction to that is deftly handled by the author.
Martha is written to be strong and funny and brave in this story, in all the ways that are true to her character. It is certainly a worthy contender for the best Martha Jones story of this round.
*
Breathe In by chicklet73
Category: PWP
Characters: Ten, Rose
Rating: Adult
Details: One-shot, set sometime during S2.
Why It Rocks:
In short, this story rocks because it's just sexy as hell. From the very first description of the Doctor, stripped down to his shirt and trousers, in bare feet, to step out onto a planet where it rains all the time, the reader is frantically fanning herself. Also, this story has all the best components of shower sex - which pretty much boil down to picturing Ten wet - without having to deal with any awkward sexual positions.
Needless to say, Rose was enjoying the view. And the way the wet material of the clothes he did wear clung to his body was doing nothing to diminish that enjoyment.
He'd just beckoned her over to where he was currently bent over a star-shaped spray of white blossoms that were growing out of the ground. She tried not to get distracted at the way the thin material of his shirt was stretched tightly over his shoulders while he reached forward, turning a blossom to and fro while buzzing it with his sonic.
This story is written entirely from Rose's POV, and so her feelings for the Doctor are clear from the beginning, and the Doctor's are a mystery. But even though we can't see inside his head, the author makes it easy for us to read his body language, from obliviousness to discomfort to aroused. In some ways, the best thing about a first-time fic (as opposed to an established-relationship fic) is the build-up. The building and building of the sexual tension. The author uses language beautifully to convey that tension:
Then her eyes fluttered shut as she felt it - the tip of his nose, tracing a line from just behind her left ear, down her neck, then - oh - now his lips were touching her skin as well, she felt them too, slightly parted by his warm breath, which tickled against her in a heated trail across the front of her neck, and back up the right side, up to her other ear, where he nuzzled his nose and murmured her own question to her. "Do you want to know what you smell like to me, Rose?"
I love that the author doesn't lose the inherent joy and silliness of their relationship amongst the smut.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him tight to her, feeling giddy and alive. His arms moved around her waist and then she felt herself lifted off the ground. His chest rumbled beneath her and she realized he was laughing,
And the language of this story is absolutely gorgeous. It isn't enough to describe the mechanics of sex for the story to be sexy. You have to really feel it, and the author uses words that allow you to do that:
Hands that piloted the TARDIS like poetry danced and played across her skin, setting off sparks and crackles of pleasure - he was very good - and she knew she'd never be able to watch him fly the ship again without thinking of this.
Hands and bodies and want and need and she could smell him again like a heat at the back of her throat and she wanted to swallow him down until she could take no more.
All in all, this is the perfect PWP - even though there’s no plot, there’s emotion and love in it. It isn’t just sex, and it isn’t a story where you could just slap any characters’ names on it and make it work.
*
Today's reviews were written by unfolded73.
*
Edge of Doom by orianna2000
Category: Dark, Short Story
Characters: 10th Doctor, Rose, Jack, OC
Rating: PG for angst and mild profanity
Details: Seven chaptered, complete, post-LatL.
Why It Rocks:
This was my first time reading this story, and I'm relieved that I didn't read it before I wrote my own tale of Rose's death, otherwise I might not have. I found myself thinking about this one often after I had read it, which is a sign of good writing - it sticks with you.
This is a tragic tale of lost time and missed opportunity. We meet the Doctor (still the tenth) several decades in his future with an original companion named Sinead. They've gotten into a bit of a scrape, but all in all are having fun with it, and Sinead proves herself to be as indulgent of the Doctor's eccentricities as his companions often must be.
“No! No, no, no. Of course not. Being lost assumes that we've no idea where we are,” he said with an air of authority. “And we know that we're exactly . . . where the TARDIS is not. See? Not lost. Just in the wrong place. C'mon.”
In a museum, they happen upon an ancient newspaper, and in it is a classified ad for the Doctor from Rose. The paper is dated 2070, and quickly and with manic glee, the Doctor rushes off to be reunited with his long lost love.
The Doctor smoothed the stolen newspaper page against the console with hands that trembled. This was what he'd been sensing, this opportunity. Now the timelines had settled into their chosen path, irrevocably set, and he'd done it right, apparently, for now he had the means to find Rose.
But he hasn't done it right. By choosing to use the date on the newspaper as the time to aim for, he's committed himself to finding Rose at the end of her life, when she's almost run out of time. Turns out she's run the ad in newspapers for decades, and it was simply the Doctor's bad luck that the one he found was so late. And of course, he's tempted to correct his mistake, to go earlier in her timeline, to snatch her out of the life that she built. But of course he can't. The author does a brilliant job of portraying the Doctor's time sense, of what is fixed and what isn't.
Cautiously, the Doctor tested the timeline. Supposing he snatched Rose away, sixty years in the past? The mesh of family strands faded into nothing. Nine lives, gone. Perhaps many more, as Rose's great-grandchildren would eventually have children, and their children would have children. What else? He followed Rose's life back, and watched as hundreds of other threads disappeared one by one. Not just her descendants, then. As a part of this world, Rose Tyler had left an impression. Her presence here had touched others, and their lives had touched others, moving ever outward in a ripple effect. Take away just one strand and the entire web disintegrated.
The Doctor wants to flee. He doesn't want to watch her die, but he forces himself to stay, to sit with her, to meet her family, her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He endures the pain for her sake, to allow her to have a few stolen hours with him. Because in spite of having a great life, she never stopped loving him, never stopped thinking about him.
“I missed you,” he said, finally able to admit it without choking on the words.
Jack is also a major character in this story, in a role that I don't want to give away. His immortality gives him an insight into the Doctor's suffering, and they support each other in their grief:
“How do you go on?” the Doctor asked, so softly that Jack nearly didn't hear him.
In over two hundred years, Jack had formed attachments and lost people he loved more times than he cared to count. It hurt-God, how it hurt! But if anything, it had taught him that you couldn't let the pain control you; you couldn't let the fear of being left behind prevent you from loving, from being loved. Because that unending loneliness was somehow worse than the pain of loss.
This story is heartbreaking and lovely, and I'm happy that I got the chance to discover it. It is indeed dark, there's no question about that, but it isn't without hope. It also isn't without little flashes of humor. It's definitely worthy of a vote in either of the categories for which it was nominated.
*
She Stopped Walking Away by sinecure Link goes to Teaspoon
Nominated in Category: Other Characters
Characters: John Smith, Rose
Rating: Adult
Details: One-shot, set during Human Nature/Family of Blood.
Why It Rocks:
I think I’ve discovered this fic on three separate occasions before sitting down to reread it for this review, and have loved it every time.
At first, you think it’s going to be pretty simple PWP. John Smith (of Human Nature/Family of Blood) wakes up from a dream about Rose with a raging erection, and with all the shame you’d expect of a man of his time, he does something about it. It’s written brilliantly; the description of John Smith battling with himself, and losing, is very real. Given the nature of John Smith - sexually inexperienced, timid - this seems totally in-character for him.
Caught off guard, he stilled his movements, feeling guilt and shame flood through him. This wasn't the way a gentleman was supposed to behave.
The level of detail the author uses on the act of masturbation is gritty and base and very hot. John’s thinking about Rose, imagining things that he has never actually experienced, feeling about a woman in ways that he’s never felt, and he finds it both shameful and exciting. His inhibitions gradually drop and he loses himself in fantasy and physical release. Afterwards, though, the embarrassment settles back in.
He felt as if the entire school knew of his transgressions.
It was going to be difficult facing Joan tomorrow. Maybe he should just avoid her. What would she think if she knew he was touching himself, pleasing himself to thoughts of another woman?
'An eye for the pretty ladies' she'd teased him a few weeks ago.
If she knew what he did while alone at night in his rooms, she wouldn't tease him, she would be disgusted. And rightly so.
Sometimes things are better left to the imagination and sometimes graphic detail is what’s wanted, and this is definitely the latter. In getting the graphic detail, we can appreciate John’s shame more acutely. We feel the way he feels; turned on and dirty and a little guilty, as if we as the reader are spying on this poor man.
John was unsure where these thoughts were coming from, but he didn't want them to stop. He could almost feel her hot breath on him, almost smell the sweet soap she used in her hair, and he shuddered.
As it turns out, we aren’t the only ones spying. Because this isn’t just PWP, folks. Rose, in trying to cross from one universe to the other, has gotten trapped in a sort of limbo. She can see and hear and move around in this universe, but no one else can see or hear her or touch her. And she can’t stop herself from watching, not now that she knows he’s thinking about her while he does this.
She tossed him a wink.
He didn't return it, of course. He never did.
Because he couldn't see her, or feel her, or hear her.
Rose Tyler didn't exist in the world. Well, not the way most people did. She was incorporeal. No touch.
At the end, we get a morsel of hope that Rose is gradually becoming more real, but then the story ends without resolution, and we can only imagine how things might wind up. But this is fine - this story is a lovely, sexy snapshot of one moment, one night. It captures the character of John Smith wonderfully, and that’s why it deserves to win.
*
The Scientist by orange_crushed
Category: Ten/Rose
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Rose, Martha, Jack, the Master, Mickey, Pete
Rating: PG-13 for language
Details: Seven chapters, Ten/Rose, and very AU. This story splits from canon at The Lazarus Experiment, and assumes Martha and Ten parted ways amicably at that point. And yes, it is technically a Human Nature/Family of Blood AU.
Why It Rocks:
"The Scientist" is a Human Nature AU, which I have an extreme weakness for, I have to admit. This is a fic that really is the best of both worlds - full of brilliant, deep characterizations, and also densely plotted. We get a story about the Master that is reminiscent of "Last of the Time Lords," but is quite original and suspenseful. In all honesty, it's better than the real thing.
In this story, we are introduced to a world in which Rose is married to a somewhat eccentric scientist by the name of John Smith. The author lets us in on the fact that this is a Rose who knows the real story in the first paragraph:
They'd give him a grant if he explained it well enough: his wife is insane. There's no other possibility. She is sitting cross-legged on top of the washing machine as it hums steadily through the rinse cycle; eating a slice of burnt toast with jam. The jar is beside her. Every so often, it starts to rattle too wildly and almost slips off the edge- she catches it, and sets it back down beside her, and sticks her finger into the jar to lick the preserves off.
"It reminds me of home," she says.
From there, you're desperately wondering how this all came to be, and how she can bear to be in this position. I find myself sympathizing with her so much - how painful must it be to be going to bed with this man who is the Doctor but isn't? It must be both wonderful and horrible at the same time. But at first we don't get this stated explicitly, we only see the pain of Rose's situation in glimpses, from angles. We see the moment of their reunion, but from his perspective, and he's been programmed to think they were already married.
She'd clung to him while she sobbed, and then laughed, and everything seemed better; he'd taken her to bed and loved her slowly, carefully, like it was the first time.
Because of course it was.
The poignancy in the way orange_crushed writes is so good it hurts. With this subtlest of phrases, she can rip out your heart in the best possible way.
But still this- still love for her, luminous and elastic as a flame, still bright. It kills her to know what she meant to him, even filtered through his make-believe identity, through the hide-and-seek; even after all this time.
John Smith, just as in the real "Human Nature", is dreaming of being the Doctor.
"Honestly, Rose, you'd like me in my dreams."
"I'm sure I'd love you," she'd said, a little sadly, and kissed him until his ears steamed up.
I don't want to give too much of the plot away, so I'm just going to talk about the characters for a bit. John Smith is very decidedly not the Doctor, but there are flashes of him - he's eccentric and brilliant and forgetful and he loves Rose. You can't help but care about him, but you're so very relieved when the Doctor comes back. orange_crushed writes Ten so, so well. She captures his speech patterns perfectly, and his mixture of silly and sexy and haunted and terrifying.
"Which one?" the Doctor grins. Then falls back into grim thought. "Harold Saxon. That name doesn't mean anything to me. Sounds fake, in fact. Harold Saxon." He turns to Rose. "I have to talk to Martha. Maybe not talk- maybe just see. I've got to see what she saw." He pauses. "Get it? See-saw."
Rose. The author really gets Rose, really understands her. The fact that her overpowering love for the Doctor makes her impossibly brave and also selfish. The fact that she's very clever without being learned. And the fact that she sees the Doctor, and knows him, and walks into her life with him with her eyes open.
Last night, she remembers, she sat here with him; so out of place in his still human body, in a sweatshirt and jeans, eating off a plate with human manners. And she knows now, painfully, that she doesn't love the idea of him, the fairy-tale; the possibility of picket fences and children, flowers on her birthday and a ring. She doesn't love those things. She loves him. She loves him, selfish and alien as he can be, restless and dishonest sometimes, with guilty dark eyes. She misses the tics in his hands and the dirty trainers he wore for days. She misses the pride and the righteous anger and the inexplicable kindness in him. She misses the depth of his joy, ever rising from sadness, when she saidforever.
Martha is a wonderfully complex character in this story: well-meaning, brave, misguided, sometimes selfish and sometimes self-sacrificing. Rose finds herself liking her, even when the two of them are working at cross-purposes. And everyone else is also drawn incredibly well - Mickey, Jack, Pete, Jackie, the Master.
And I would be remiss if I didn't point out those few moments of romance that make your tummy flip and leave you desperately wanting more.
"Rose, that man- that little human man, so small in the greater scheme but so fantastic, I could thank him. Because he was smart enough to love you," he murmurs. "But he only loved you because I love you."
This story really does have it all, and definitely deserves your vote.
*
Planar Flight by jinxed_wood Link goes to Teaspoon
Category: Martha Jones
Characters: Ten (as John Smith), Eight, Martha
Rating: All Ages
Details: Two parts, set during Human Nature.
Why It Rocks:
This is why writing these reviews is brilliant, because it has encouraged me to branch out in my reading and find little gems like this one. It's not one I ever would have clicked on otherwise, but this cleverly written story was definitely worth the read.
This is set during "Human Nature," a little AU sojourn for Martha which the author fits in so that it doesn't conflict with canon. It feels very much like a Doctor Who episode all its own, with a clever threat and very well-written dialogue. Working in the school as a maid, Martha discovers the presence of some mysterious ghosts, and shortly thereafter finds herself walking into the TARDIS of the Eighth Doctor. With Ten out of commission as a human, the two of them must work together to stop the threat.
The real strength of this story is the dialogue. The banter between Martha and Eight is quick and clever. Martha is very much in-character, and I often could hear her voice saying the words in my head. I'm not terribly familiar with Eight, but I liked the way he was written - very Doctory, but different from Nine or Ten.
“Tell you what, we’ll make it midnight, at the scullery door.” she said, as she stood.
“Ah, the witching hour; not one day or the next, but the ephemeral moment in between,” he said, his eyes lighting up.
“I thought that might appeal to you,” Martha said dryly. He smiled up at her and, for a moment, Martha got a glimpse of her Doctor.
“You know me rather well, don’t you, Miss Jones?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact; he’s you,” Martha said, and enjoyed the shocked expression on his face.
“Me? That’s me? But- but I’m so scrawny…and I’m wearing plaid slippers. Who wears plaid slippers?”
“John Smith does,” Martha said wryly.
The Doctor looked horrified. “But there are standards,” he said.
Martha's fellow maid and friend Jenny played a role in this story as well, and she also was extremely well-written; her little good-natured arguments with Martha absolutely leapt off the page.
"I'm just saying," Jenny said. "You’d better watch that Mister Smith of yours. It's always the quiet ones you have to be careful of. One moment, it’s all apple and pears, the next, it’s the birds and the bees, if you get my drift."
Martha rolled her eyes. “How about we forget about Mister Smith,” she suggested, as she tucked her arm through Jenny’s. “And you can show me where the ghost was spotted.”
This story was mostly light, but there were a few things that also gave it depth. One was Martha's knowledge of what happened to Gallifrey, and Eight's sense that there was something major (and bad) that she knew that he couldn't ask about.
He looked at her for a moment, and Martha knew he was struggling with himself, resisting the urge to ask the question. “Personal timelines,” he said eventually.
“Yeah,” she admitted.
“I’ve always found that one of the principal problems of crossing one’s own timeline is trying to ignore the auguries,” the Doctor said, looking away as he fiddled with the settings on his screwdriver. “It’s always something foreboding, haven’t you ever noticed?”
A little bit of fun was made of the fact that Eight was the first Doctor to show any sexuality, but beyond that, the author subtly hints at the fact that Eight is attracted to Martha, and that he is aware of the bitter irony of the poor timing there, that his future self doesn’t feel the same way. Lastly, the "big bad" of the story, so to speak, is more than just a monster, and the Doctor's reaction to that is deftly handled by the author.
Martha is written to be strong and funny and brave in this story, in all the ways that are true to her character. It is certainly a worthy contender for the best Martha Jones story of this round.
*
Breathe In by chicklet73
Category: PWP
Characters: Ten, Rose
Rating: Adult
Details: One-shot, set sometime during S2.
Why It Rocks:
In short, this story rocks because it's just sexy as hell. From the very first description of the Doctor, stripped down to his shirt and trousers, in bare feet, to step out onto a planet where it rains all the time, the reader is frantically fanning herself. Also, this story has all the best components of shower sex - which pretty much boil down to picturing Ten wet - without having to deal with any awkward sexual positions.
Needless to say, Rose was enjoying the view. And the way the wet material of the clothes he did wear clung to his body was doing nothing to diminish that enjoyment.
He'd just beckoned her over to where he was currently bent over a star-shaped spray of white blossoms that were growing out of the ground. She tried not to get distracted at the way the thin material of his shirt was stretched tightly over his shoulders while he reached forward, turning a blossom to and fro while buzzing it with his sonic.
This story is written entirely from Rose's POV, and so her feelings for the Doctor are clear from the beginning, and the Doctor's are a mystery. But even though we can't see inside his head, the author makes it easy for us to read his body language, from obliviousness to discomfort to aroused. In some ways, the best thing about a first-time fic (as opposed to an established-relationship fic) is the build-up. The building and building of the sexual tension. The author uses language beautifully to convey that tension:
Then her eyes fluttered shut as she felt it - the tip of his nose, tracing a line from just behind her left ear, down her neck, then - oh - now his lips were touching her skin as well, she felt them too, slightly parted by his warm breath, which tickled against her in a heated trail across the front of her neck, and back up the right side, up to her other ear, where he nuzzled his nose and murmured her own question to her. "Do you want to know what you smell like to me, Rose?"
I love that the author doesn't lose the inherent joy and silliness of their relationship amongst the smut.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him tight to her, feeling giddy and alive. His arms moved around her waist and then she felt herself lifted off the ground. His chest rumbled beneath her and she realized he was laughing,
And the language of this story is absolutely gorgeous. It isn't enough to describe the mechanics of sex for the story to be sexy. You have to really feel it, and the author uses words that allow you to do that:
Hands that piloted the TARDIS like poetry danced and played across her skin, setting off sparks and crackles of pleasure - he was very good - and she knew she'd never be able to watch him fly the ship again without thinking of this.
Hands and bodies and want and need and she could smell him again like a heat at the back of her throat and she wanted to swallow him down until she could take no more.
All in all, this is the perfect PWP - even though there’s no plot, there’s emotion and love in it. It isn’t just sex, and it isn’t a story where you could just slap any characters’ names on it and make it work.
*
Today's reviews were written by unfolded73.