Brigadier-tastic!
Jul. 8th, 2008 06:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sebastienneYes, there's an awful lot of horrible stuff going on in the world at the moment. Heinz and Britain's Next Top Model are in for a particularly large amount of clue-bat hitting.
But here, in my little corner of the internet, I've had enough political wrangling for one day.
Instead, have a piece of fanfiction. The first in-any-way substantial piece of fanfiction I've finished in a very long time. It's in Doctor Who fandom, featuring the 8th and 9th Doctors and a special guest fresh from his appearance in Battlefield. It contains, I am sorry to say, no slash, smut, sex, or suggestion of any kind. It is entirely gen. It does, however, contain a large amount of angst, and hurt/comfort.
My thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
liminereid for being my human thesaurus, and to darwinianwoman for grammar nitpicking; and to both of them for generally being online all day to listen to me faff.
Comments are love - constructive criticism is good, I want to be a better writer, but to do that I will also need to sustain the little bit of faith in myself that I seem to have got going, somehow.
----------
Only when he'd set the last charge, only when he was a safe distance away in space and in time, only when he'd destroyed the stolen technology he'd used to create the time-lock, did he let himself stop moving. The stillness when he sat suddenly on the TARDIS floor, torn velvet still hanging from his shoulders, was more unnerving than any movement he could make. An oddly rigid posture, straight-backed and staring into the middle-distance; if it weren't for the grime on his shirt and the sleeve hanging off his frock coat, you might think him engaged in polite conversation at a society party, all forced dignity and composure.
This uncharacteristic stillness lasted for a very long time. A long time, even by the TARDIS' measurements that stretch through four dimensions to all corners of creation.
Eventually, the hand that had been clasping his right knee moved to sweep an errant curl of hair from in front of his eyes. It was shaking, badly, and pale to the point of translucency. Dust fell from him as he moved. His long stillness had weakened him, and he almost fell when he finally got to his feet. He staggered to the console, where the explosion was playing over and over on a screen. He remembered Romana - President Romana! - pleading with him, entreating him, showing him over and over again why he was the only one who could do this. That the destruction of their planet was a small price to pay to protect the whole universe from the evil of the Daleks. That this was a necessary consequence of following a policy of non-interference.
He remembered her face as she handed him the key.
And it was too much. Gripping the console as his legs gave way, his broken body crumpled to the floor, his black eyes empty and staring.
The regeneration energy building up in him felt like a curse. It was the Time Lords who had given him these gifts; how obscene it was that the gift should now outlive its givers! He had sat, waiting, hoping that he would fade away with his home - and now, quite the opposite, he was about to be renewed in the way that none of them would ever be again. He didn't want it, but he couldn't refuse. All he could hope for was the kind of amnesia - blissful forgetfulness! - that had affected so much of his time in this body. The warm, fizzing energy forced its way through his limbs and out to his fingers and toes, rolling him all up together like a ball of plasticine before filling him out again. Then he passed out.
----------
The man with the close-cropped dark hair could smell the stetten explosive before he opened his eyes, and it immediately put him on his guard. When he opened his eyes and saw that it was coming from his own clothes, he panicked, pulling off his residue-stained shirt and throwing it across the room. That stuff could corrode you away entirely, from the inside out! Hang on, how did he know that? He didn't even know who or where he was.. sure, he could tell that this lever was the plasmolyte dimensional enhancer, and that he'd never quite worked out what it was for; but he didn't know what his name was or what he was doing there, or what would happen if he pressed *this* button..
Ah. A three-dimensional holographic representation of an explosion, filling the room he was standing in. That's dramatic, probably why it was operated by such a big shiny button. And what a big explosion! It swallowed a whole solar system. He wondered vacantly what system it was, then shook his head. It's probably just an animation, an illusion. Then he remembered the smell of stet on his shirt and started to wonder why, exactly, he couldn't remember anything before about ten minutes ago. Could he - whoever he was - have been responsible for this? Well yes! He could have been responsible for anything! If he'd blown up an entire star system with an explosive that would reduce everything in it to its component atoms, would he not try anything to make himself forget it?
He pressed the button again, desperately wanting it to stop. But all he succeeded in doing was setting the hologram back to the beginning, watching the destruction billow out once again across the room. He pressed some more buttons, pulled some levers - nothing. Muttering to himself, he pulled the biggest handle he could see and the apparatus in the middle of the console began to move, creaking and groaning. "Fuck!" He pressed more buttons, hit them, pulled levers so violently that they came away in his hands, and still it wouldn't stop, the image of the destruction and the noise that sounded like the agonised screaming of all the people he must have killed. "Stop it! Stop fucking with me!" he screamed at the console, throwing smacks and kicks that seemed only to increase the pitch and the urgency of the squealing noise.
Fighting against the Doctor's interference, the TARDIS tried her best to take him somewhere that she knew he could get help. Sussex. England. Nineteen eighty-nine.
----------
Suddenly the hologram and the noise stopped. All the activity and noise that had been making him think that his head was closing in on him stopped, all at once. Somehow he knew that this meant he could leave. He had to leave. Suddenly he was running too-fast towards the doors, feeling that it was vitally important that he get out of there right now, feeling trapped and claustrophic in the huge ornate metal room. As he shoved the doors open, one hand on each, he tripped over his feet and fell face-first into long grass. The damp, musty tendrils brushed against his face as he slipped into unconsciousness.
Waking up, he found himself incongruously arrayed on pink chintz, covered with an equally incongruous tartan blanket. He sat up, rubbing his eyes with the balls of his hands. Perhaps he'd just had a bad dream - perhaps he'd been ill - perhaps he didn't really remember any of the things that he thought he remembered. Somehow he felt that the destruction of whole star systems couldn't possibly exist in the same universe as a room this full of cross-stitch, dog-baskets, and the ubiquitous chintz.
He was just gazing emptily at a particularly mawkish piece of cross-stitch when an elderly man entered and addressed him - "Doris, I'm afraid, has rather more of an interest in interior decoration than I have ever been able to claim myself."
"I.. I'm sorry, right now.. I'm having terrible difficulty remembering.."
The words seemed right, but the voice was wrong, somehow. He was meant to sound like the man who was addressing him, he was sure (How was he sure? He didn't know) but he sounded coarser, rougher, like the stubble on his face felt under his hands.
"My wife, Doctor. Don't worry about it, she's mostly after your time. Or perhaps you haven't met her at all? Which number are you?"
"Which number? I'm sorry, I don't quite.."
"Regeneration, Doctor. I've not met this one before. Which are you?"
"Look, I haven't got a clue what you're talking about".
The look in the Doctor's eyes wasn't as confrontational as his words suggested. In fact, it was downright vulnerable, and that worried the Brigadier more than anything else. With a slightly bashful averting of his gaze, he said, "Look, I've run you a bath. I've put some of that herbal muck that Doris swears by in it. Why don't you go and get cleaned up, not worry about a thing, and we'll work out what's going on over a nice cup of tea and some cake, yes?"
The broken look in the Doctor's eyes did not go away, but he allowed himself to be led to the bathroom, gratefully receiving a large fluffy dressing-gown. Slipping into the warm scented water as the Brigadier went to put the kettle on, he started wondering who this strange man was, and why he was harbouring war criminals such as himself.
Later, over tea and lemon drizzle cake, they began to piece everything back together. The Doctor, it turned out, was his name; strange sort of a name, if you asked him. He was some sort of outer-space special-agent, a claim which seemed all the more ridiculous because of the credulity with which the Brigadier imbued it. But it seemed that the Brigadier had known him immediately by his distinctive mode of transport, despite having never seen his face before. This face before. It was going to take him a while to get used to the fact that he was able to change his face. It made him wonder why he did it - how many times had he done something so despicable that he'd had to change his whole appearance to escape the consequences?
The man was being so nice. Telling him stories - of Sea Devils, and Silurians, and Cybermen - words that meant nothing to him, but were clearly meant to bring everything back. He really wasn't sure that he wanted everything to come back. He wanted to stay here forever, hide in this warm chintzy limbo until he forgot all thoughts of what he might have done. But he knew, eventually, that he had to confess. He didn't deserve a choice of Assam or Earl Grey, he certainly didn't deserve lemon drizzle cake. He didn't know what it was that he did deserve; but he had a feeling that it was the punishment of a mass murderer, a terrorist, a war criminal.
"I think that I may have done something very bad indeed." As well as coarse, it seemed that his new voice could be soft, vulnerable.
Concern creasing every corner of his face, the Brigadier replied, "My dear chap, whatever do you mean?"
"In the room - the, the TARDIS - there was a recording. A recording of an explosion. So big, it destroyed a whole star system." His eyes fixed in the middle distance, refusing to look at the Brigadier, or the cross-stitch, or anything in this room that he did not deserve to be in. "And my clothes - when I woke up, my clothes smelt of stetten. The base product of a chain reaction that would lead to that kind of explosion. I did it. And I don't know why, or even really how, but I think that I might be a very dangerous person and I'm not sure that it's safe for you to be around me."
The look of concern lifted, as the Brigadier replied, "Nonsense, old chap - I clearly remember you much better than you remember yourself, right now. And there is no way that the Doctor I know would do something like that without good reason. None."
The unshakeableness of his conviction - of his gaze - quite humbled the Doctor. What had he been, what had he done, to prove himself so completely to this man? This man, who could look into a face he had never seen before, and tell it, "I know, Doctor, that it had to be done. That it was necessary, that you had explored every other option, and that it was not a choice that you made lightly."
And he wanted so much to believe him. But he couldn't. He knew, somehow, that evil people could have the power to control minds. And that, if he were evil, he could have bewitched this wonderful kind old man to tell him that he was good. It didn't mean that he was good. It couldn't. He had killed a star system. He still couldn't take that in, not fully, the breadth and completeness of the destruction that would come from plunging stetten explosive compound into the heart of a star. Ah, so that was how he'd done it! He remembered, now, setting inter-planetary missile after inter-planetary missile with the same toxic load, all to collide with the sun at the same time. The act of a psychopath, or someone in the grip of a powerful psychosis; not of someone who drank Earl Grey from mugs with roses painted on them.
The Doctor lurched suddenly to his feet, needing to leave, to go who-knows-where, but just to get out. As he started for the door, the Brigadier was there, suddenly folding him into a fierce and unexpected hug.
"Doctor - I know you. I trust you. I forgive you."
And as he stepped away, and looked into the face of a man he didn't remember, he knew that it was not mind control. Couldn't be. There was not a flicker of rebellion or resistance in this man's face; only love. Whatever he had done, been responsible for - after all that he now knew he had destroyed - he was the kind of person who could inspire this much faith. Who could be this loved, by a man who had statuettes of shepherdesses and cushions embroidered with lop-sided cats.
And that gave him just enough faith in himself to say, softly, "Thank you."
"Alright then," said the Brigadier, straightening his shirt and sitting back down. "Another piece of cake?"
But here, in my little corner of the internet, I've had enough political wrangling for one day.
Instead, have a piece of fanfiction. The first in-any-way substantial piece of fanfiction I've finished in a very long time. It's in Doctor Who fandom, featuring the 8th and 9th Doctors and a special guest fresh from his appearance in Battlefield. It contains, I am sorry to say, no slash, smut, sex, or suggestion of any kind. It is entirely gen. It does, however, contain a large amount of angst, and hurt/comfort.
My thanks to
liminereid for being my human thesaurus, and to darwinianwoman for grammar nitpicking; and to both of them for generally being online all day to listen to me faff.Comments are love - constructive criticism is good, I want to be a better writer, but to do that I will also need to sustain the little bit of faith in myself that I seem to have got going, somehow.
----------
Only when he'd set the last charge, only when he was a safe distance away in space and in time, only when he'd destroyed the stolen technology he'd used to create the time-lock, did he let himself stop moving. The stillness when he sat suddenly on the TARDIS floor, torn velvet still hanging from his shoulders, was more unnerving than any movement he could make. An oddly rigid posture, straight-backed and staring into the middle-distance; if it weren't for the grime on his shirt and the sleeve hanging off his frock coat, you might think him engaged in polite conversation at a society party, all forced dignity and composure.
This uncharacteristic stillness lasted for a very long time. A long time, even by the TARDIS' measurements that stretch through four dimensions to all corners of creation.
Eventually, the hand that had been clasping his right knee moved to sweep an errant curl of hair from in front of his eyes. It was shaking, badly, and pale to the point of translucency. Dust fell from him as he moved. His long stillness had weakened him, and he almost fell when he finally got to his feet. He staggered to the console, where the explosion was playing over and over on a screen. He remembered Romana - President Romana! - pleading with him, entreating him, showing him over and over again why he was the only one who could do this. That the destruction of their planet was a small price to pay to protect the whole universe from the evil of the Daleks. That this was a necessary consequence of following a policy of non-interference.
He remembered her face as she handed him the key.
And it was too much. Gripping the console as his legs gave way, his broken body crumpled to the floor, his black eyes empty and staring.
The regeneration energy building up in him felt like a curse. It was the Time Lords who had given him these gifts; how obscene it was that the gift should now outlive its givers! He had sat, waiting, hoping that he would fade away with his home - and now, quite the opposite, he was about to be renewed in the way that none of them would ever be again. He didn't want it, but he couldn't refuse. All he could hope for was the kind of amnesia - blissful forgetfulness! - that had affected so much of his time in this body. The warm, fizzing energy forced its way through his limbs and out to his fingers and toes, rolling him all up together like a ball of plasticine before filling him out again. Then he passed out.
----------
The man with the close-cropped dark hair could smell the stetten explosive before he opened his eyes, and it immediately put him on his guard. When he opened his eyes and saw that it was coming from his own clothes, he panicked, pulling off his residue-stained shirt and throwing it across the room. That stuff could corrode you away entirely, from the inside out! Hang on, how did he know that? He didn't even know who or where he was.. sure, he could tell that this lever was the plasmolyte dimensional enhancer, and that he'd never quite worked out what it was for; but he didn't know what his name was or what he was doing there, or what would happen if he pressed *this* button..
Ah. A three-dimensional holographic representation of an explosion, filling the room he was standing in. That's dramatic, probably why it was operated by such a big shiny button. And what a big explosion! It swallowed a whole solar system. He wondered vacantly what system it was, then shook his head. It's probably just an animation, an illusion. Then he remembered the smell of stet on his shirt and started to wonder why, exactly, he couldn't remember anything before about ten minutes ago. Could he - whoever he was - have been responsible for this? Well yes! He could have been responsible for anything! If he'd blown up an entire star system with an explosive that would reduce everything in it to its component atoms, would he not try anything to make himself forget it?
He pressed the button again, desperately wanting it to stop. But all he succeeded in doing was setting the hologram back to the beginning, watching the destruction billow out once again across the room. He pressed some more buttons, pulled some levers - nothing. Muttering to himself, he pulled the biggest handle he could see and the apparatus in the middle of the console began to move, creaking and groaning. "Fuck!" He pressed more buttons, hit them, pulled levers so violently that they came away in his hands, and still it wouldn't stop, the image of the destruction and the noise that sounded like the agonised screaming of all the people he must have killed. "Stop it! Stop fucking with me!" he screamed at the console, throwing smacks and kicks that seemed only to increase the pitch and the urgency of the squealing noise.
Fighting against the Doctor's interference, the TARDIS tried her best to take him somewhere that she knew he could get help. Sussex. England. Nineteen eighty-nine.
----------
Suddenly the hologram and the noise stopped. All the activity and noise that had been making him think that his head was closing in on him stopped, all at once. Somehow he knew that this meant he could leave. He had to leave. Suddenly he was running too-fast towards the doors, feeling that it was vitally important that he get out of there right now, feeling trapped and claustrophic in the huge ornate metal room. As he shoved the doors open, one hand on each, he tripped over his feet and fell face-first into long grass. The damp, musty tendrils brushed against his face as he slipped into unconsciousness.
Waking up, he found himself incongruously arrayed on pink chintz, covered with an equally incongruous tartan blanket. He sat up, rubbing his eyes with the balls of his hands. Perhaps he'd just had a bad dream - perhaps he'd been ill - perhaps he didn't really remember any of the things that he thought he remembered. Somehow he felt that the destruction of whole star systems couldn't possibly exist in the same universe as a room this full of cross-stitch, dog-baskets, and the ubiquitous chintz.
He was just gazing emptily at a particularly mawkish piece of cross-stitch when an elderly man entered and addressed him - "Doris, I'm afraid, has rather more of an interest in interior decoration than I have ever been able to claim myself."
"I.. I'm sorry, right now.. I'm having terrible difficulty remembering.."
The words seemed right, but the voice was wrong, somehow. He was meant to sound like the man who was addressing him, he was sure (How was he sure? He didn't know) but he sounded coarser, rougher, like the stubble on his face felt under his hands.
"My wife, Doctor. Don't worry about it, she's mostly after your time. Or perhaps you haven't met her at all? Which number are you?"
"Which number? I'm sorry, I don't quite.."
"Regeneration, Doctor. I've not met this one before. Which are you?"
"Look, I haven't got a clue what you're talking about".
The look in the Doctor's eyes wasn't as confrontational as his words suggested. In fact, it was downright vulnerable, and that worried the Brigadier more than anything else. With a slightly bashful averting of his gaze, he said, "Look, I've run you a bath. I've put some of that herbal muck that Doris swears by in it. Why don't you go and get cleaned up, not worry about a thing, and we'll work out what's going on over a nice cup of tea and some cake, yes?"
The broken look in the Doctor's eyes did not go away, but he allowed himself to be led to the bathroom, gratefully receiving a large fluffy dressing-gown. Slipping into the warm scented water as the Brigadier went to put the kettle on, he started wondering who this strange man was, and why he was harbouring war criminals such as himself.
Later, over tea and lemon drizzle cake, they began to piece everything back together. The Doctor, it turned out, was his name; strange sort of a name, if you asked him. He was some sort of outer-space special-agent, a claim which seemed all the more ridiculous because of the credulity with which the Brigadier imbued it. But it seemed that the Brigadier had known him immediately by his distinctive mode of transport, despite having never seen his face before. This face before. It was going to take him a while to get used to the fact that he was able to change his face. It made him wonder why he did it - how many times had he done something so despicable that he'd had to change his whole appearance to escape the consequences?
The man was being so nice. Telling him stories - of Sea Devils, and Silurians, and Cybermen - words that meant nothing to him, but were clearly meant to bring everything back. He really wasn't sure that he wanted everything to come back. He wanted to stay here forever, hide in this warm chintzy limbo until he forgot all thoughts of what he might have done. But he knew, eventually, that he had to confess. He didn't deserve a choice of Assam or Earl Grey, he certainly didn't deserve lemon drizzle cake. He didn't know what it was that he did deserve; but he had a feeling that it was the punishment of a mass murderer, a terrorist, a war criminal.
"I think that I may have done something very bad indeed." As well as coarse, it seemed that his new voice could be soft, vulnerable.
Concern creasing every corner of his face, the Brigadier replied, "My dear chap, whatever do you mean?"
"In the room - the, the TARDIS - there was a recording. A recording of an explosion. So big, it destroyed a whole star system." His eyes fixed in the middle distance, refusing to look at the Brigadier, or the cross-stitch, or anything in this room that he did not deserve to be in. "And my clothes - when I woke up, my clothes smelt of stetten. The base product of a chain reaction that would lead to that kind of explosion. I did it. And I don't know why, or even really how, but I think that I might be a very dangerous person and I'm not sure that it's safe for you to be around me."
The look of concern lifted, as the Brigadier replied, "Nonsense, old chap - I clearly remember you much better than you remember yourself, right now. And there is no way that the Doctor I know would do something like that without good reason. None."
The unshakeableness of his conviction - of his gaze - quite humbled the Doctor. What had he been, what had he done, to prove himself so completely to this man? This man, who could look into a face he had never seen before, and tell it, "I know, Doctor, that it had to be done. That it was necessary, that you had explored every other option, and that it was not a choice that you made lightly."
And he wanted so much to believe him. But he couldn't. He knew, somehow, that evil people could have the power to control minds. And that, if he were evil, he could have bewitched this wonderful kind old man to tell him that he was good. It didn't mean that he was good. It couldn't. He had killed a star system. He still couldn't take that in, not fully, the breadth and completeness of the destruction that would come from plunging stetten explosive compound into the heart of a star. Ah, so that was how he'd done it! He remembered, now, setting inter-planetary missile after inter-planetary missile with the same toxic load, all to collide with the sun at the same time. The act of a psychopath, or someone in the grip of a powerful psychosis; not of someone who drank Earl Grey from mugs with roses painted on them.
The Doctor lurched suddenly to his feet, needing to leave, to go who-knows-where, but just to get out. As he started for the door, the Brigadier was there, suddenly folding him into a fierce and unexpected hug.
"Doctor - I know you. I trust you. I forgive you."
And as he stepped away, and looked into the face of a man he didn't remember, he knew that it was not mind control. Couldn't be. There was not a flicker of rebellion or resistance in this man's face; only love. Whatever he had done, been responsible for - after all that he now knew he had destroyed - he was the kind of person who could inspire this much faith. Who could be this loved, by a man who had statuettes of shepherdesses and cushions embroidered with lop-sided cats.
And that gave him just enough faith in himself to say, softly, "Thank you."
"Alright then," said the Brigadier, straightening his shirt and sitting back down. "Another piece of cake?"
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 07:49 pm (UTC)*coffs*
So yeah, I really rather enjoyed this :D I'm such a *sucker* for the horrors of the Time War being set against the quiet and peace of all the people who never knew they were being fought for, and you've conveyed that beautifully. I actually found the scenes with poor Eighth particularly painful - because he's suffered *so much*, this is the *second time* he's had to destroy his own world, and *God knows* what's happened to poor Fitz and argh >_< And the regeneration happening, not because of violent accident or misadventure, but because he can't bear to keep himself alive any longer. Ow ow ow. Jeez, it's no wonder Ninth has issues. Well played, ma'am, well played.
The TARDIS taking him to somewhere he can find help, someone who can help him = eeeee. (I love me some 'TARDIS and the Doctor, BFF 4 evar'.) And that person being the Brigadier = double eeeee. (Doctor/Brigadier/TARDIS, OT3 / ultimate TARDIS team.) The Brigadier's no-nonsense, practical, absolute faith in the Doctor was wonderful. Coupled with the Doctor's total lack of faith in himself = YES.
And, tangentally, I adored the details of the Brigadier's home-life - pink chintz sofas and tartan blankets and lemon drizzle-cake, *so* perfect. You just know he's got a shed at the bottom of the garden with a big window so he can look out at his kingdom, with an over-stuffed armchair and regimental photographs and some really well-cared for guns, and that he leaves Doris to get on with the house because really, anything for peace and harmony in the home ^__^
So...yeah. BRIGADIER FIC YAY YAY YAY :D
Man, I really, really need a Brigadier icon. Surely an oversight on my part.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 08:12 pm (UTC)Nice work, love. The description of the house in particular, and the bewildered!Doctor characterisation, too. I likes.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 08:49 pm (UTC)And he wanted so much to believe him. But he couldn't. He knew, somehow, that evil people could have the power to control minds. And that, if he were evil, he could have bewitched this wonderful kind old man to tell him that he was good. It didn't mean that he was good. It couldn't.
Thinks of self...
Also I like the idea of the Doctor setting the Timelock, having caused so much destruction and then the tragedy of sealing things so you could never go back and fix things.
Thinks of self...
no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 10:55 pm (UTC)Perfectly captures the risigned acceptance that the Brig had by this stage of dealing with the Doctor, that nothing surprised him anymore and that makes his shock when he sees the vulnerability all the more poignant.
I swear I heard the text go from Queen's Engligh to Nothern after the regeneration. I'm not quite sure how you did that. But the very text and rythm seemed to change between 8th and 9th.
Wonderful.
:O)
no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 01:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 08:38 am (UTC)I don't have a problem with the Doctor swearing, but I'm from t'north myself (not that you'd guess from my accent), and this isn't a use of "fucking" I'd encountered before I started reading predominantly US-English forums - I can't imagine it being said in anything other than an American accent.
Well done for not falling into the trap of attempting to write the accent phonetically, though.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 08:37 pm (UTC)Wonderful interaction between the Doctor and the Brig, particularly this line Nonsense, old chap - I clearly remember you much better than you remember yourself, right now. I can't really articulate why, just that it rings true. Also, it's a nice mirror to the scene in Mawdryn Undead.
The Brig's house sounds, well, hideous, but fitting. Homely and reassuring. Tea and lemon drizzle cake! Poor Doctor, of course he deserves cake. I wouldn't mind some myself.
Excellent :)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-23 12:06 am (UTC)