[identity profile] biichan.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] calufrax
Story: After Life
Author: Amy Wolf
Rating: All Ages
Word Count: ~20,000
Author's summary: Rationally speaking, you know you’re not dead. Also, there aren’t eight other people in here, and you aren’t trapped in Jean-Paul Sartre’s vision of Hell.
Characters/Pairings: Ninth Doctor, Sixth Doctor, Second Doctor, Seventh Doctor, Fourth Doctor, Third Doctor, Eighth Doctor, Fifth Doctor, First Doctor
Warnings: Spoilers for pretty much every Dalek episode or regeneration ever. Oh, and second-person narration.

Recced because: This fic is important to me, because it was the first Doctor Who fic I fell in love with and even now, months later, it's still one of my favorites. It's beautifully written and elegantly structured and it's one of the few fics that pulls off second-person narration perfectly.

There's a symmetry built into the structure of the fic, which takes place wholly inside the Doctor's mind while he's busy regenerating during The Christmas Invasion. The Ninth Doctor is sent on a quest that he doesn't quite understand at first, one that takes him back through his incarnations and then forwards again. It deals with the nature of guilt and the nature of casualty and the importance of accepting all parts of oneself, even the parts one would rather not. It's a fic I really think everyone in this fandom ought to read, it's just that good.

Here, have a short excerpt:

“But where’d the rest of you go? Aren’t you all in here, then? How come there’s only two…” You glance over, but the little one’s gone.

“I can assure you, my good fellow, we are all present and accounted for.” He waves his hand in a sweeping gesture, and you see seven figures standing in front of you, scattered around the room. They all turn for a quick glance and vanish, leaving the white-haired one standing alone. “We’re all a bit busy at the moment, helping to put the new fellow together. Was ingesting a good portion of the Time Vortex absolutely necessary? It made rather a mess. We’re having a devil of a time putting the brain back together. And we all need to keep an eye on our seventh self. He has plans, and you know how he is when he has plans.”

Date: 2008-03-09 07:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karma-kalisutah.livejournal.com
Thank you for this rec! It's the best fanfic I've read in months. The penultimate chapter made me cry.

reccity-rec-rec

[community profile] calufrax is sleeping in your mind. One day, it may be brought back in front of your eyes.

April 2018

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