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Dancing
Fic: Dancing
Well, I blame community.livejournal.com/calufrax/ for stoking up my innate Four/Romana shippiness with their reckless and inflammatory recommendations of various fine examples of said ship during the course of the past week. I also have had this idea about Four/Romana "dancing" together (either literally or in the Stephen Moffat sense) for some time now, from where I came by it I could not say. So, even though I have WIPs in progress, I wrote this instead. It maybe gets a bit racy, but rest assured I bottled out when it came to portraying, er...actual physical relations. Feedback etc. always welcome. As always, while it would certainly be nice and possibly financially rewarding were I to own Doctor Who and its associated properties, alas I do not; they very definitely belong to the BBC:
www.whofic.com/viewstory.php
Chapters 17 and 18
That comes across, to me, as minimizing Lydia's legitimate feelings. I don't know if that's how you meant it to sound.
I'm glad Jack and Jimmy shared a kiss, despite how the men there were feeling.
Somehow, I don't think Jimmy would be at all happy with Jack, if he ever found out that the German prisoners were 'dealt with'.
I like this bit:
"I’ll talk to Lydia and Charles,” said Harkness. “I’ll explain it to them.” And quite possibly he would; he seemed to be able to persuade the pair of them of practically anything. Sometimes Gerald wondered why he himself seemed to be immune to Harkness’s alleged charisma. “We could dose them with Compound R,” Harkness suddenly suggested.
“Lydia and Charles?” Gerald asked, a little horrified at the idea.
“No,” Harkness sighed. “The prisoners. A massive dose, wipe out eight years’ worth of memories.”
“It wouldn’t work,” Gerald told him, trying to remember the directions for use. “It’s for short-term memories only, and it is rather toxic, you know; it works by selectively killing brain cells. A dose that size would kill them.” He realised that somewhere or other he had ended up tacitly conceding the point, without really being aware of it; he had become drawn into Harkness’s conspiracy and was now helping him work out the details. Maybe he was not immune after all. “So,” he asked, fixing Harkness with a steely gaze of his own, because they both knew what they were talking about here, even if neither of them seemed willing to come out and just say it. “What do you propose we do?”
Gerald thinking he's immune to Jack's charisma, then realizing that possibly, he's not. I also like how Jack pushed Gerald into what Jack wanted, like he did with Jimmy earlier.
“I’ll do it,” said Harkness, suddenly. “Alone. I forced you to this, I should — ”
“No,” Gerald replied, with cast-iron decisiveness that he did not feel inside. Inwardly, he wanted to make Harkness do it, to forcibly march him into the holding cells and stand over him until the task was complete, rubbing his face in every moment of it. But he could not do that; that was not how a commanding officer conducted himself, and they all recognised the necessity of this even if none of them liked it. “We all do it,” he said. “That is my final decision, and I am in command here.”
I'm glad Gerald didn't give in to his baser impulse. He really is rather nasty, isn't he.
Very painful end to Chapter 17, with each prisoner murdered by Gerald, Jack and Charles.
Chapter 18:
On the occasions when he was at home of an evening,
'of an evening' sounds awkwardly phrased to me. Maybe, in the evening?
Good conversations between Harriet and Gerald and not coming to any real conclusion, other than perhaps being too good a man to be doing what he's doing (sounds to me like that would be the same about Jack).
Thanks for writing and finishing it and posting it.
Re: Chapters 17 and 18
I don't think Jimmy would be happy at all if he found out about the prisoners; he took Gerald's vague non-explanation a bit too trustingly, I thought, but no, I think he'd have something to say to Jack if he ever did find out. And yes, Gerald does have nasty thoughts sometimes, doesn't he? I think I wanted to suggest that you don't work for the sort of organisation he works for, doing the job he does, without it rubbing off on you a bit. At least he is vaguely aware that some of the things he does are wrong; I think Torchwood probably has some real monsters working for it overall.
The "of an evening thing" is just me lapsing into my native dialect, I think! :) Horrible turn of phrase, and I don't think the kind of thing an expensively-educated chap like Gerald would say...
I don't know what the last chapter achieves other than that I didn't want to just end it on Gerald blowing some poor guy's brains out, there were still some loose plot points to be explained away, and I just wanted some more Gerald/Harriet, if I'm honest.
Still, thanks for reading and feeding back, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Re: Chapters 17 and 18
I brought it up since it was written from Lydia's perspective. Just something to think about.
I don't think Jimmy would be happy at all if he found out about the prisoners; he took Gerald's vague non-explanation a bit too trustingly, I thought, but no, I think he'd have something to say to Jack if he ever did find out. And yes, Gerald does have nasty thoughts sometimes, doesn't he? I think I wanted to suggest that you don't work for the sort of organisation he works for, doing the job he does, without it rubbing off on you a bit. At least he is vaguely aware that some of the things he does are wrong; I think Torchwood probably has some real monsters working for it overall.
Are you going to write a follow-up with Jimmy finding out?
That's a beef I have about Jack, is that he just does these nasty, questionable things and doesn't think twice about it. I really hate that side of him. I was happy we got a 'We're going to save the alien and send it home!' moment in "Meat" (but how much of that was posturing because Rhys was there?) and I'm a bit ticked off that Jack didn't think twice about wanting Rhys RetConned. I would have liked it a lot better if Jack had decided on his own against using the drug, rather than because of Gwen's haranguing and 'Then RetCon me too because I'll quit if you do!'
Isn't Jack a 51st century kind of guy? So let's see it reflected in his thinking, his feelings about aliens and not just be all aliens are evil, evil, EVIL! Yet another area TW falls down, for me. *sigh*
The "of an evening thing" is just me lapsing into my native dialect, I think! :) Horrible turn of phrase, and I don't think the kind of thing an expensively-educated chap like Gerald would say...
So whereabouts are you from in the U.K., if you don't mind me asking?
I don't know what the last chapter achieves other than that I didn't want to just end it on Gerald blowing some poor guy's brains out, there were still some loose plot points to be explained away, and I just wanted some more Gerald/Harriet, if I'm honest.
Still, thanks for reading and feeding back, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Drive home how TW can warp you? Another solution they could have used was to cryogenically freeze them from 1908 and then thaw them out after WWI ended and send them home. That's what happened with Jack, after he was dug up in "Exit Wounds". Unfortunately, I do think it's in character that they would have just killed the prisoners.
Re: Chapters 17 and 18
Yeah, they could have frozen them, couldn't they? Well, maybe they weren't thinking straight in the circumstances, and as you say Torchwood seems to be the kind of organisation that shoots first and asks questions later.
Jack does have this very dark, ruthless streak. It's the other side of his character, I suppose, and it even comes out in the Who stories as well as TWood; I'm thinking of that bit in Sound of Drums when he suggests just walking up behind the Master and breaking his neck. So, yes, he's a professional, and he'll do things people like the Doctor would never do; I think the thing is he does have a sense of humanity that holds him back from becoming a total monster. As you say, though, sometimes he does seem a bit too quick to resort to the most extreme methods, almost enthusiastic in doing so.