They Try, Honestly They Do, But The Doctor Isn't A Stationary Creature And Never Has Been, Especially

they try, honestly they do, but the doctor isn't a stationary creature and never has been, especially not when they know there's something they could help with. which is to say, it takes a week of soft quiet life before he starts begging kate for a job. kate in turn withstands three weeks of the doctor's incessant begging and big puppy dog eyes while donna noble stands right behind him and mouths don't you fucking dare before she makes a counteroffer: he can work in a lab (the 'very far away from active duty' is implied) as long as he meets with unit's therapist.

and he refuses, of course, loudly and profusely, right up until donna very gently but very firmly tells him that it really could help, actually.

so. therapy. the doctor assumes it won't do anything. the unit therapist is no nonsense and unflinching and very very bright, and twenty minutes later the doctor sits outside the room hyperventilating while kate finishes paperwork and kindly doesn't mention the way he's all but curled into her.

the second session ends much like the first, and the third, and then the fourth he walks out with dry eyes and a tremulous smile. the fifth, kate calls donna and she takes him home and they drink hot chocolate and he doesn't start talking again until the next day. it takes him seven sessions to be able to stay in the room for the full hour; kate pats him on the back and then finally allows him to build a shield for her office as a reward. she sits outside the therapist's office every time he has a session, even though she has to have better things to do. they don't talk about it.

unit only has files on things the doctor's done on earth, and even then, only sometimes, which means that when the doctor talks about some things he just. edits, a little. talks about two weeks in a confession dial and a month in prison, because maybe then he doesn't have to think about the enormity of it all. and every single time he does this, the therapist looks at him and very kindly calls bullshit. it's weird, being known. it's different with donna. he is donna and donna is him, in ways they will probably never talk about. but he sits in that cluttered little office for an hour a week (sometimes two or three times, if he's doing particularly badly) and he feels seen.

after four months, there are memories he can touch without flinching, and people he can talk about without crying. he starts spending a couple of hours just sitting in the vortex, not because he's hiding or running but just because he likes the way it feels against his skin. he cooks dinner every other night and washes up when he doesn't. he takes out the bin every week even though it's rose's job, because he loves her. and he can say that now, and he doesn't think about her short lifespan or about all the other people they've loved and lost. he can say that and just mean it.

part of his contract is an agreement to never offer a trip to a member of unit unless it's actual life or death (the small chemical leak in the lab doesn't count; he takes shirley to new mars anyway) but he finds himself toying with the idea of asking for a session in the tardis. just once, just to see. the therapist looks at him and sees him and it is monstrous and they keep looking anyway and now the doctor can sit through a family dinner without wanting to tear his skin off and he doesn't know any other way to say thank you.

it's funny, almost, how quickly he grows attached to this person who picks through his hurts and rifles through his traumas and holds direct eye contact while doing so. the doctor talks about their deaths and their crimes and their cowardice and the therapist nods and asks him how he feels and it's. it's terrifying. it's beautiful. it's the worst thing he's ever ever been through, and the best. he feels ripped apart and put back together in a way that few people have ever been able to— huh.

after his sixty eighth session (he's unable to not keep count) the doctor walks outside to where kate is annotating a schematic and says, thoughtfully, they're the master in disguise, aren't they. and kate says oh 100% and please don't let them know that you know because they will definitely go to the second stage of whatever long con they've been hatching and they're too good at this for us to let them go

More Posts from Kitsune-fox-55 and Others

kitsune-fox-55

1 year ago

This is my magnum opus

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kitsune-fox-55

1 month ago

I think clone wars dark side anakin is my favorite dark side anakin. because yeah, in the movies, you can tell he's gonna fall. maybe not in the phantom menace, but in attack of the clones and revenge of the sith, it's so obvious! everything about him just oozes both light and dark, the dark steadily winning. but clone wars anakin? clone wars anakin? oh, he's a sun. he's blindingly bright and he's happy. we can go full episodes without a trace of the dark side showing up on his face or in his actions, which makes when he does go dark even more jarring. when he snaps and attacks and the imperial march plays faintly in the background, when not even ten minutes earlier in the episode he was joking around with ahsoka. that is peak dark side anakin to me, because that is what i imagine anakin truly was. happy and fun and then snapping, terrifying. it's why no one believed it when he fell. why obi-wan and padme and ahsoka didn't see it coming.

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kitsune-fox-55

1 year ago

Shakarian 🌌

art-trade with @armentarius

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kitsune-fox-55

1 year ago

a list of 100+ buildings to put in your fantasy town

academy

adventurer's guild

alchemist

apiary

apothecary

aquarium

armory

art gallery

bakery

bank

barber

barracks

bathhouse

blacksmith

boathouse

book store

bookbinder

botanical garden

brothel

butcher

carpenter

cartographer

casino

castle

cobbler

coffee shop

council chamber

court house

crypt for the noble family

dentist

distillery

docks

dovecot

dyer

embassy

farmer's market

fighting pit

fishmonger

fortune teller

gallows

gatehouse

general store

graveyard

greenhouses

guard post

guildhall

gymnasium

haberdashery

haunted house

hedge maze

herbalist

hospice

hospital

house for sale

inn

jail

jeweller

leatherworker

library

locksmith

mail courier

manor house

market

mayor's house

monastery

morgue

museum

music shop

observatory

orchard

orphanage

outhouse

paper maker

pawn shop

pet shop

potion shop

potter

printmaker

quest board

residence

restricted zone

sawmill

school

scribe

sewer entrance

sheriff's office

shrine

silversmith

spa

speakeasy

spice merchant

sports stadium

stables

street market

tailor

tannery

tavern

tax collector

tea house

temple

textile shop

theatre

thieves guild

thrift store

tinker's workshop

town crier post

town square

townhall

toy store

trinket shop

warehouse

watchtower

water mill

weaver

well

wind mill

wishing well

wizard tower

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kitsune-fox-55

1 year ago

glad that im not popular enough to have an evil shadow version of my blog that exists just to make contradictions on my posts

239K notes View Post

kitsune-fox-55

1 year ago

I made a mistake

This. This is storytelling done right.

The thing is, if Shepard acts all paragon-y throughout the series then you don't get that admission from Mordin because he can just fall in line behind Shepard. Don't get me wrong, Mordin sacrificing himself in order to spread the cure is still an amazing act of repentence and a fantastic, if tragic, ending of his arc.

BUT the thing is, he doesn't have to admit that he was wrong, he can just agree with Shepard while still maintaining that his initial decision to modify the genophage was correct.

Doing the right thing, the heroic thing, the noble thing is something different entirely than admitting your were wrong and fixing your mistake.

His modification of the genophage was the one thing that defined Mordin's career like nothing else. Amazing work, from a scientific point of view, but morally questionable even when seeing "the big picture", Morally reprehensible and ultimately inexcusable when seeing "the little pictures".

It's clear that after his loyalty mission in ME2 and meeting Eve, he's already changed his mind. But he can't admit it, not really. It's easier to keep making excuses, to explain himself, to rationalize. The great Mordin Solus does not make mistakes.

And it's only when Shepard takes the other route that Mordin has to step up. If Shepard won't be paragon, then Mordin has to. And that's much harder and it's the most amazing, the most heartbreaking thing. And when Mordin yells at a Shepard who takes the pragmatist appprach - which is what Mordin did for most of his life - he's actually yelling at himself.

Mass Effect did a lot of things brilliantly. This was one of them.

If only Shepard's ultimate ending decision had come with the same depth and weight, characterization-wise.

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kitsune-fox-55

1 year ago

She hasn’t responded to you yet because she’s busy being openly pathetic on Tumblr. Give it some time

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kitsune-fox-55

1 year ago

my chemical romance is the funniest and weirdest band ever. They’re all fucking losers who would genuinely rather play dnd than hook up with groupies. The singer used to work at Cartoon Network. The bassist is on the fbi watchlist for crimes against disney. One guitarist is a guitar god but he also used to keep a little action figure of spiderman in his pocket all the time, the other is like a little lap dog of a man, but he’s also on the fbi watchlist for death threats against a us president. They refused to be on the twilight soundtrack, one of the most popular franchises at the time but then they preformed on yo gabba gabba and re-recorded one of their songs in simlish.

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kitsune-fox-55

10 months ago

It occurs to me that there are people who weren’t on this website in 2012 and therefore never saw the magical gif that you can actually hear: