How Fortuna Saved the Universe (12/24)
Apr. 20th, 2011 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68Title - How Fortuna Saved the Universe (12/24)
Author - ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, Jack, OCs
Spoilers - Through "A Christmas Carol," just to be safe.
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids, they're all mine.)
Summary - Fortuna gets her story. And it's pretty timey-wimey.
Author's Notes - Huge thanks to Kristin, chicklet73 , and lorelaisquared , who all talked through plot points and gave early drafts once-overs. And, last but not least, everlasting thanks to chicklet73 for beta-ing, with flair.
The icon was created by swankkat , commissioned by jlrpuck for my birthday.
Prologue - Ch. 1 - Ch. 2 - Ch. 3 - Ch. 4 - Ch. 5 - Ch. 6 - Ch. 7 - Ch. 8 - Ch. 9 - Ch. 10
Chapter Eleven
There were always different people working at Torchwood, every time they visited Jack. Jack said the turnover was huge, that people wanted to have normal lives and went off to get them. Rose suspected the mortality rate was also high, too, but Jack hated to get into that and Rose didn’t press him. She imagined he felt keenly every time he couldn’t save someone, the same way that the Doctor did.
So it wasn’t really surprising that they stepped out of the TARDIS to a group of people pointing weapons at them.
Jack called down from the second-floor balcony that looked down over the Hub, “Stand down, everyone, they’re friends of the family.” His team looked dubious, but they did lower their weapons and Jack came bounding down the staircase toward them. “Sorry, they’re all new since the last time you came to visit,” he explained, and then swept Rose up in a hug. “How are you? Sexy as ever.” He gave the Doctor one of those playful kisses on his lips that he knew the Doctor hated.
The Doctor wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “We’re fine. We’ve come for a visit.”
“Delightful,” said Jack. “A visit of pleasure?” he inquired, hopefully.
“A visit of business,” corrected the Doctor.
“He’s so business-like all the time,” Jack said to Rose.
“I know, isn’t it just the hottest thing ever?” asked Rose.
“Be serious, you two,” the Doctor warned them, sternly. “The universe may be ending.”
“That’s lost all meaning, coming from you,” Jack commented, and said to his worried-looking team, “Don’t worry, he says that all the time, he doesn’t mean it.”
The Doctor sighed and rolled his eyes. “This is why we don’t come visit you more often.”
“Come on,” said Jack, ignoring him. “We’ll go to my office. Ioan, can you bring us some coffee?” he called, to one of his minions, and then he took the staircase two steps at a time.
“How’re things going, Jack?” Rose asked, as they followed behind him.
“Good,” he answered. “Been a bit quiet, really.”
“Have you noticed any anomalies centered around Paris?”
“There are always anomalies around Paris. As soon as someone is able to travel through time, they want to go back to, like, the building of the Eiffel Tower or some ridiculousness like that. That city is a maelstrom of tangled timelines.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Rose. “We did that!”
Off Jack’s curious look, she clarified, “The building of the Eiffel Tower. We did it for a date.”
“Really? Bit conventional, no?” He opened the office door for them.
“It was early days,” the Doctor defended himself. “I was still trying not to scare her off.”
Rose snorted. “Is that what you were doing?”
Jack sat behind his desk and gestured to the guest chairs in front of it and smiled at the two of them. “It’s good to see you. You should visit more often. I’ve missed you.”
Rose smiled at him.
The Doctor said, “I need some information.”
“Information from me?” Jack lifted his eyebrows. “Usually that works the other way around. What can I possibly know more about than you?”
“The Time Agency.”
“Oh, God, that?” Jack waved his hand dismissively. “Do you know how little time I spent as a Time Agent? We didn’t get along, the Agency and I. So many rules, so much bureaucracy. Who has time for that?”
“Did you know a Time Agent named San Broglio?”
Jack went still. “Which one?”
“What?” asked the Doctor, blankly.
“Which Time Agent named San Broglio?”
“There was more than one?”
There was a knock on the door, and presumably Ioan entered with coffee, which he set on Jack’s desk.
“Thanks,” Jack said, and pointedly watched him leave the office before continuing. “Yes.” He turned his attention back to the Doctor and sipped his coffee. “More than one. And which you’re discussing makes a big difference.”
“Sylvain,” the Doctor replied.
Jack looked relieved. “Oh, good. He’s the best of the bunch. Where’d you run across Sylvain San Broglio? I haven’t heard his name in ages.”
“Do you know him?” Rose asked.
Jack shook his head. “Know of him. Knew his father. Chritsopher, was his father’s name.”
“Christopher?” Rose repeated.
“No, Chritsopher.”
“The name got mixed up, a few centuries from now,” the Doctor explained to her.
“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “Anyway, Chrit was a bastard and we did not get along. But, from what I’ve always heard, he didn’t get along with his sons, either. They’re both Time Agents, too. Or were. To be honest, none of us at the Time Agency even knew Chrit had any sons until Sylvain showed up. No love lost between those two, apparently, and the going theory was that Sylvain wanted to beat his father at his own game. Which, last I heard, he had. I never got a chance to work with him, primarily because Sylvain had a reputation for being one of the best, and I decidedly did not. They wanted to keep me away from their golden boy.” Jack made a whatever face that Rose recognized and took another sip of his coffee. “Anyway, then there was the whole thing with the second son, and that was right around the time that I decided I’d had enough of the whole Time Agency thing, so I never really knew if Sylvain managed to recover after that. Or Chrit, for that matter, whose career was pretty much in shambles when I left, but he’d deserved that.”
“What thing with the second son?” asked the Doctor.
“Well, Chrit had two sons. They were both Time Agents. Chrit liked the second one better, favored him, gave him the world…and he turncoated. Massive betrayal. Secrets being sold out from all over the place. It was a mess. The Agency was scrambling, trying to keep the histories of dozens of planets from falling to pieces because this one kid had had a grudge against his dad and chose this way to exercise it.”
“The second son had a grudge against the father, too?”
“He abandoned the family when they were kids. So, yeah. What was the second son named? I can’t think of it.” Jack frowned in thought. “I haven’t thought of that whole mess in forever.”
“What did Sylvain have to do with the second-son thing?”
“Nothing, as far as I know. There were suspicions at first, when the whole thing broke, but I’d heard he was cleared of that. Whether the Agency ever really trusted him again, I have no idea.” Jack shrugged. “Like I said, I didn’t know him personally, and I took off right after that.” Jack drained the rest of his coffee. “Why are you asking about Sylvain San Broglio?”
“Fortuna ran into him in Paris. Him, and a black hole.”
“A black hole?” echoed Jack. “In Paris?”
“Welllllll, might just be something that looks like a black hole. Brem seems to think it’s an illusion.”
“An illusion of a black hole in Paris? Who would do that? And why?”
“I have no idea.”
“Sylvain could be there investigating it. It sounds like the kind of thing they’d send him in for. And Sylvain’s mother was twenty-first century French, so he has an affection for Paris during this time period.”
“His mother was twenty-first-century?” Rose asked, in confusion.
“Oh, yes. Chrit fell in love with her during one of his missions and brought her forward in time with him. Then he got bored and left her. She had the kids, and she was pretty much trapped, out-of-time. I always heard she never recovered, and the kids blamed Chrit for it.”
“Poor thing,” Rose murmured. “How awful for her. How awful for those kids.”
Jack looked at the Doctor. “I can put some feelers out in Paris, if you want. Try to see what’s happening on the ground there, if there’s any Agency gossip to be gleaned.”
“Yes. Maybe. I suppose it would be helpful. But a black hole—even an illusion of a black hole—I don’t know, it could be Sylvain’s a red herring.” The Doctor tousled at his hair.
“Is Fortuna safe?”
“Yes. I think so. I mean, she is in my head right now, definitely. I don’t know, I’d tell her to get out of Paris, but she’s going to culinary school there, and then Rose thinks she’s in love with this Sylvain fellow, and I don’t want to raise an alarm if—”
“In love with him? Really? How sweet. Maybe he’ll take her back in time to see the Eiffel Tower being built.”
“That was a very romantic trip,” the Doctor defended himself, indignantly.
“It was,” Rose agreed, indulgently. “He took me for Valentine’s Day,” she told Jack.
Jack blinked at her. “That was his name.”
“What?”
“The second son. Sylvain’s brother. His name was Valentin.”
***
Since Sylvain was just blinking at her like a fuddyditfish, Fortuna said, “I’m going to make us tea, and then we can talk about this.” She walked out of the control room, into her kitchen. Her kitchen was much larger than the kitchens on any of the other TARDISes, which was not surprising.
Sylvain followed her, still looking stunned, and he was silent until she put the cup of tea into his hands. “I don’t even drink tea,” was what he said. “And Time Lords are fairy tales. Seriously. All of you went extinct ages ago.”
“Clearly not. You should know, it’s impossible to prove a negative. Do you want me to make you coffee instead?”
“No, I don’t want anything to drink. I want you to explain this to me. You’re a Time Lord, on a TARDIS. How does the Agency not know about you?”
“Because I don’t want the Agency to know about me.”
“It’s that simple?”
“When you’re a Time Lord with a TARDIS, yes.”
“So, wait, then. Is it all true?”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘all’.”
“I’ve always heard that Time Lords were basically immortal.”
“Not quite.”
“That you can regenerate, if you need to, to save your life.”
“Yes. We can do that. But we only get a limited number of regenerations.”
“Have you done it?”
“Regenerated? No. Not yet. I’m trying to avoid that for as long as possible, I kind of like my current look, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Well, yes, but…Oh, do you look different each time?”
“Yes.”
“That’s amazing!” Sylvain seemed to be warming to this now. He put his tea on the counter and asked, eagerly, “So just how old are you?”
“I’m very young, especially for a Time Lord. But my father’s over 900.”
“You have a father?”
“Well, where did you think I came from?”
“I don’t know.” Sylvain looked dazed. “I didn’t think that far. Do you have a mother, too?”
Fortuna was amused. “That’s how it works, Sylvain.”
“How many of you are there?”
Her amusement faded. “Four,” she admitted, and then thought of Athena’s baby. “Five. And my mum, who’s…unique. And then my sister’s husband, who’s quite human but we manage to love him just the same.” Fortuna smiled. She meant that to be encouraging to Sylvain.
Sylvain did not smile back. His expression was sober. “I’m sorry,” he said, softly.
“For what?”
“For asking you questions like you’re a specimen in a museum. And for the fact that there are only five of you left in the entire universe. I’m sorry.”
Fortuna shook her head. “It’s okay. I don’t know any different. There used to be only one, when there was only my father, and…” Fortuna hesitated, then said, and she didn’t know why she said it, staring at the speckled gold zimstone that was her kitchen counter, “I was born in another universe. There was an accident, and it was complicated, and for a little while my parents were separated. And I was born in another universe, where there were no other Time Lords, and we’re telepathic creatures. It was so…” She took a deep breath, searching for the word. “So cavernous, that world.” She looked at Sylvain. “I am very happy there are five of us. I don’t know how my father could bear being the only one. We may be only five in all of time and space, but we’re never alone. And you can come from a planet inhabited by 13 billion humans and still you can feel lonely.”
A tiny smile flickered across Sylvain’s face.
Fortuna decided he’d had the chance to ask enough questions. “So you recognized the psychic paper?”
“Oh, immediately. It’s why I turned back that day. You had psychic paper, in the middle of twenty-first-century Paris. I had to figure out who you were. And then you turned out to be…you, so then I didn’t care so much anymore.”
Fortuna smiled at him sunnily. “And now we’re fugitives together!” she exclaimed.
“A happy ending if ever I heard one,” he said, dryly.
“We’ll go see my dad,” she decided. “He’ll know what to do.” She walked firmly out of the kitchen, toward the control room.
“About what?” Sylvain asked, following her.
“Being on the run from the Time Agency.” She moved around the console, poking and prodding at controls. “He’s looking into the black hole, too. How did you know about the black hole, by the way?”
He was watching her with interest. “Time Agency analysis of the readings they pulled from the site. What did you do to it?”
“I imploded it. There was someone holding the controls to it, I blocked the controls.”
“You saw someone holding the controls to it?”
“Yes.” She looked up at him briefly. “Valentin, I assume. Anyway, it was while we were running away. I took a wild shot with my sonic and managed to hit him, luckily, and that got the black hole to implode. Sorry about the gravity wave, though. Couldn’t help that.”
“That’s why the gravity wave didn’t bother you,” he realized.
“Yeah, we don’t get bothered to the extent that humans do.” Fortuna paused and looked at him. “Do you want to help?” she asked, as it occurred to her. Normally her guests sat in the captain’s seat and watched, content to be out of her way as she piloted. But Sylvain was right near the controls, watching everything with slightly fidgety hands and avid eyes.
At the invitation, he looked almost shy. “I’ve never been in a ship like this.”
“Of course not, there are only four in the whole universe. But I’ll teach you, it’s really not hard, once you get the hang of it. They’re meant to be driven by huge teams of pilots, it’d be useful to have another pair of hands.”
Sylvain stepped forward and cautiously laid his hands on the console. “So what should I do?”
“Press that button three times,” she pointed for him, “and then ring this bell,” she pointed again, “and then turn this crank until I tell you to stop.”
She left him to it, scurrying around to the other side of the console.
“But how does it work?” Sylvain called to her, and his voice was overflowing with curiosity. “I mean, the multi-dimensionality and all that.”
“Time Lords figured out multi-dimensionality generations ago,” Fortuna said, and walked over to where he was still turning the crank.
“Put your hand in my pocket,” she said.
He looked dubious. “Is this part of piloting a TARDIS?”
“No.”
“Oh.” He looked happy. “Is this part of some seduction you’re working on?”
She laughed. “No. Just do it, will you?”
“Can I stop turning the crank?”
“Yes.”
He placed his hand cautiously in the pocket of her cardigan. And then his eyes went wide. “Wait a second…” he said.
“Yup,” she replied, pleased.
“Your pockets are bigger on the inside. Just what do you have in here?” His hand rummaged around.
“That’s enough,” she said, primly, taking a step away and grinning at him. “Oh, and she’s not an ‘it’, she’s a ‘she’.”
“What is?”
“The ship.”
“Oh. Yes, of course, technically ships are always female—”
“No, I mean she’s alive.”
His eyebrows drew together in confusion. He was very cute when he was confused. “What?”
“The ship’s alive. We have a telepathic link, the ship and I. It’s how the piloting works. You’d have a very hard time piloting it alone, for that reason.”
“Telepathic.” He looked from her to the console. “What’s that like?” He looked back at her.
“I don’t know. I don’t understand what it’s like for you not to be telepathic, so I can’t describe it.”
“Soooooooo.” Sylvain brushed a hand through his hair. “I have an idea.”
“What idea?” she asked, warily.
“I know it’s very responsible, to go see your father and, you know, worry about the Time Agency looking for us and all that, but…couldn’t we take one little side trip? Just, you know, show me how it works? Just one little, tiny trip? An in-and-out trip?” He looked at her with puppy-dog eyes. “Please?”
“There’s no such thing as an in-and-out trip when you’re a Time Lord,” Fortuna said. “We’re jeopardy-friendly.”
“What luck.” He inched closer to her. “So am I.”
“Are you trying to seduce me?” she asked, amused.
He leaned his head closer to her. “Absolutely. Is it working?” He nuzzled at her neck.
“You only want me for my ship,” she accused, playfully.
“Would you think less of me for that?”
“I might actually think more of you for that.”
“You see, Fortuna,” he sighed into her skin, “we’re so perfect for each other. I was never going to leave you behind in Paris.”
“Weren’t you?” she asked, surprised.
“Of course not.” He straightened, looking surprised that she was surprised. “That’s why I was so angry you were gone when I woke up. I was going to ask you to come with me. I thought it might work, with you. I thought you might…like time travel.” He looked pointedly at the controls of her ship.
“That puts it mildly,” she said.
“Yes. And to say that puts it mildly appears to be putting it mildly.”
She smiled, and then, because she couldn’t help it, she fisted her hands into the lapels of his coat and kissed him. “Where do you want to go?” she asked him. “All of space and time, I’ll take you anywhere.”
“It’s so funny,” he mumbled, and kissed her again.
“What is?” she managed to get out.
“Now that I can go anywhere in space and time, I’ve just realized that there’s no time or place I’d rather be than this one.”
“You’re so French,” Fortuna said, and she may have actually giggled, but she thought that was allowed, in these circumstances.
And then the TARDIS crashed, throwing them violently against the console.
“Ow,” said Sylvain, rubbing at the elbow that had hit one of the dials. “Does your ship not like me?”
“She’s crashed,” Fortuna said, and pushed past him, pulling the monitor over to her and staring at it. It was a room, large and grandiose and decked out entirely in French antiques.
“Where are we?” Sylvain asked her.
Fortuna was tapping through her readings. “Versailles, it says. 1745.”
“Why did it take us here? Does it do that? Take you to random places?”
“Sometimes. Never for good things. We need to find my father.”
At that moment, on the monitor, her father walked past the doorway of the room her TARDIS had landed in.
Her eyes widened in surprise. “And that was him.”
“What?”
“That’s why the TARDIS took us here, my father is here.” She turned to Sylvain. “Have you ever been to Versailles before?”
“Yes.”
“In this time period?”
“No.”
“Care to see it?”
“Of course. Aren’t you going to, you know, change into something more appropriate?”
“Oh, Sylvain. You’ll get used to it.” She pulled open the TARDIS door.
“Used to what?”
“Time traveling with a Time Lord.”
***
“We need to talk,” announced Matt, finding Brem in his TARDIS’s library.
“How did you get in here?” Brem asked, in surprise.
“Athena agreed to land our TARDIS in here, and then also agreed to let us talk by ourselves. This was necessary, you see, since you were dodging all my calls.”
“I haven’t been dodging your calls, I’ve been not answering your calls.”
“Oh, there’s a difference?”
“Maybe.”
“Can you tell me what I did? Can you at least give me the courtesy?”
Brem looked at Matt, and then said, heavily, “I saw you kissing another woman.”
Matt stared at him, for a long, silent moment, and then said, “What? Where?”
“In the French Quarter.”
Matt continued to stare. He looked stunned. “When?”
“The future. Not long from now, on the usual timeline. Maybe a few months.”
“You saw me, in a future not long from now, kissing another woman?” Matt clarified.
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s just insane, Brem. I would never do that. For God’s sake, I was practically faithful to Athena for a decade during which she never even looked at me. Why would I suddenly start cheating on her now, when we’re married and she’s about to have my child? That doesn’t even make any sense.”
“Things don’t always make sense, Matt, that’s not the standard of the world.”
“But I make sense. If I were going to start having an affair, you think I’d do it in a public place?”
“I know that you were doing it in a public place,” Brem retorted.
Matt sighed. “So, you’re going to believe some weird future-me that you glimpsed over me? When I’m telling you I would never do that?”
“The future doesn’t lie, Matt.”
“Futures don’t always come true, either. I am telling you, here, now, that the future you saw is not going to happen. I won’t let it.”
“And the thing is,” Brem continued, as if Matt had not spoken, “is that it’s not easy for me, right? I mean, to take sides here. Because, if you’re hurting her, of course I can’t forgive you for that. But if it’s because she’s making you unhappy, I wouldn’t want you to be unhappy. Maybe it’s a future where you’ve broken up. Maybe it’s a future where she’s cheated on you first. I don’t know. I can’t know all the details. The whole thing is driving me mad. And I just keep coming back to the fact that she adores you, and if you do this to her, while she’s busy adoring you, I really don’t care how unhappy you are because my sister adores you, I will never forgive you for it, I know that I won’t. And that doesn’t make me happy, because you’re my best friend, you’re really my only friend, and the truth is that you went and married my sister and now I’m in the position where I’m going to lose one of you, and that really isn’t fair.”
Matt was silent for a second. And then he said, calmly, “You do realize that you have gone and turned the possible future disintegration of my marriage into being all about you.”
“I haven’t!” Brem protested, automatically. Matt lifted his eyebrows. Brem considered. “Maybe I have. A bit. But you appreciate that you have placed me in a difficult position.”
“I haven’t done anything,” Matt pointed out. “Some future me that you claim to have seen has caused you to completely lose your mind, is what’s happened here.”
Brem opened his mouth to say more, but Matt cut him off.
“And I’ll make it easy for you. If I am wrong about this, and I somehow hurt your sister, you should, of course, absolutely take her side. I would think of less of you if you didn’t. But I’m not going to do it, Brem. Even if something terrible happened and I suddenly hated her, I wouldn’t do it for you, to save you from having to take sides in it. So. Can you stop being insane about this now?”
Brem looked reluctant. “I don’t want to be insane about it. It’s just that I know what I saw.”
“This is so unlike you. You know me better than this. You know time better than this. Nothing’s written in stone.”
Brem closed his hands into fistfuls of his hair. “I have the most terrible feeling, Matt.”
Matt studied him closely. “About what? About the baby?”
“No. I don’t think so. I don’t know. Something awful is about to happen.” Brem took a deep breath and looked over at Matt. “A storm’s approaching.”
Next Chapter
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-04-21 03:35 am (UTC)I can't believe we're halfway through. What are we going to do without this story to cheer up our Wednesday nights?
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Date: 2011-04-22 02:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-21 04:22 am (UTC)For whatever reason, that gave me the biggest laugh in the whole chapter. I think it was the bell-ringing.
Yay Jack! And Fortuna and Sylvain being all sweet. And are we visiting Girl in the Fireplace next?!
no subject
Date: 2011-04-22 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-21 04:31 am (UTC)You know I always had this idea in the back of my head that you meant Jack to be with Fortuna. Oh well, I guess I was close.
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Date: 2011-04-22 02:27 am (UTC)A lot of people envisioned Fortuna with Jack!
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Date: 2011-04-21 04:57 am (UTC)Hehehe. Jack certainly is chipper this chapter.
I enjoyed Matt's and Brem's conversation the most, I think.
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Date: 2011-04-22 02:35 am (UTC)Glad you liked the Matt/Brem conversation, I really enjoy writing the two of them.
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Date: 2011-04-21 05:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-22 02:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-21 05:53 am (UTC)The way Jack was talking about the two brothers, I'm assuming they're twin right? Perhaps identical twins...just saying.
Also Matt wouldn't kiss another woman, unless she was the same woman with a different face...Oh bad bad bad, I'm sorry I have to go think of cute kittens now.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-22 02:36 am (UTC)re: How Fortuna Saved the Universe (12/24)
Date: 2011-04-21 05:54 am (UTC)Interesting, very interesting.
I think Fort's TARDIS is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and this is where everything starts going pear-shaped. :(
Glad that Brem and Matt had the talk.
Will the Doctor mention another set of adventures that he once had in Paris with Romana?
Re: How Fortuna Saved the Universe (12/24)
Date: 2011-04-22 02:37 am (UTC)Matt is a good best friend for Brem, because he forces him to talk sometimes.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-21 06:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-22 02:38 am (UTC)Brem is kind of hilarious to have as a best friend. If you stop and think about it. ;-) Until he says dire things about storms, that is.
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Date: 2011-04-21 09:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-22 02:52 am (UTC)I had so much fun writing the timey-wimeyness of this.
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Date: 2011-04-21 11:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-22 02:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-21 06:47 pm (UTC)I could also add in Jack's missing two years, since you've brought the Time Agency into it. He seems to think he didn't know Sylvain. I have to wonder if Sylvain would agree. I've always had the sneaking suspicion that Jack's missing two years are missing for a very good reason, and that reason had something to do with the Doctor. If Jack were involved in Sylvain and Valentin's superiority struggle, as well as whatever mischief Fortuna gets into while in Paris in 1745 with a Doctor who isn't aware that she's supposed to be alive - and while I'm on that subject, have you ever done GitF in the Chaosverse? I don't think you have, which makes me really wonder what's going on and may possibly destroy my theory as I'm forming it - anyway, as I was saying, I bet Jack's missing memories could come into play here.
Then, that could also take a much longer story. Hmm.
Okay, going back in my hole now, carry on.
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Date: 2011-04-22 02:53 am (UTC)Even though it's such a great comment, though, I'm still not giving you any hints. ;-)
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Date: 2011-04-21 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-22 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-21 08:13 pm (UTC)i hope fortuna knows about daddy's affair. otherwise things could get awkward and maybe universe threatening
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Date: 2011-04-22 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-22 03:54 am (UTC)Matt was silent for a second. And then he said, calmly, “You do realize that you have gone and turned the possible future disintegration of my marriage into being all about you.”
BEST.....LINE.....EVER!!! :)
no subject
Date: 2011-04-26 02:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-22 04:12 am (UTC)Honestly, the best chapter so far. There are so many amazing bits in this - Fortuna and Sylvain, Jack and the Time Agency, Ten in Versailles, Brem and Matt having their manly little one on one (and dear God is Brem like his father).
Ahkjganf,a. More soon pls?
no subject
Date: 2011-04-26 02:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-23 12:07 am (UTC)Don't leave the TARDIS Fortuna. Just...don't.
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Date: 2011-04-26 02:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-23 09:48 pm (UTC)Loved their visit with Jack. Jack banter is always fun. LOL, it would be kind of funny if they had just a rotating door of Welsh men with names that start with I who always serve the coffee.
Versailles -- Reneitte? I forget what year that all happened in, but how cool would it be if Fortuna stumbled upon the Doctor during that whole thing.
I also loved how Fortuna was explaining all about the TARDIS, and also Sylvain's sympathy that there's only five Time Lords left in the universe.
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Date: 2011-04-26 02:55 am (UTC)Jack is so fun, and I love to write him into stories. And I admit I went with an "I" Welsh name for precisely that reason. ;-)
Sylvain and Fortuna can be very sweet together.
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Date: 2011-04-24 02:00 am (UTC)WTF!? are they doing in that place that shall not be named and I pretend never happened!? (Can you tell I don't like that ep?) I suspect this is where the storm is about to hit the fan:\
I was wary when Sylvain said he wanted to go somewhere. My danger radar pinged but then they crashed and I forgot all about that cause why would her TARDIS take her to that horrid place?! Sort of dreading and anticipating the next chapter.
Lovely long chapter to read when I'm sick. :)
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Date: 2011-04-26 02:56 am (UTC)"Storm about to hit the fan," I love that.
Sorry to hear you were sick! Hope you're feeling better!
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Date: 2011-04-24 02:58 am (UTC)Oh, Doctor.
No! No storms approaching!
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Date: 2011-04-26 02:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-30 01:46 am (UTC)So now we know who Valentin was. And I wonder if Mme. San Broglio eventually attended the culinary school, now that the governors know the escargot recipe?
I want to like Sylvain, but people who have Baggage are never simple. And the San Broglio boys have a whole freight car full of baggage. I'm not sure I believe that he's really in love with Fortuna. It can't be that simple.
But, maybe it is. He has Agency business, his father, and his rogue brother to contend with. (Just because Crit San Broglio's career ended doesn't mean that he can't still be traveling in time, screwing things up.) In the face of all that, those double- and triple-crosses and so many conflicted agendas and impulses, Fortuna might seem like a magical door into another world.
(It's funny that I was in favor of a Master/Fortuna connection of some kind, and now I'm worrying that she's being too naive in dealing with a Time Agent. But at least the Master pretty much telegraphs his moves: he'd betray her mid-sentence, but he wouldn't expect her to be surprised.)
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Date: 2011-04-30 01:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2011-05-06 04:00 am (UTC)“That puts it mildly,” she said.
“Yes. And to say that puts it mildly appears to be putting it mildly.” *snickers* I really enjoy reading these two together.
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Date: 2011-05-09 02:09 am (UTC)Sylvain and Fortuna have the witty repartee thing down.
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Date: 2011-05-08 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-09 02:35 am (UTC)I really wanted to get across that, although I don't write often about Jack, the Doctor and Rose are still very close to him and visit him fairly often, enough that they have a nice, easy, teasing relationship with him.
And yes, Sylvain is kind of the reverse of Fortuna, the child of a mother taken out-of-time who didn't thrive on the experience but wilted.
This is a chapter that explains a lot, isn't it?
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Date: 2011-05-12 03:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-24 02:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-19 10:50 pm (UTC)“He’s so business-like all the time,” Jack said to Rose.
“I know, isn’t it just the hottest thing ever?” asked Rose.
One thing about being a mom, is that it can simultaneously feel like my own sense of identity has been eclipsed by mom-hood, subsumed by mom-hood, and expanded, improved by, swelled into (like the triumphant portion of an orchestral price) mom-hood. Yet I still feel, deep inside, like the same girl who went off to college decades ago. So that above conversation really resonates with me, because decades after the episode, "Boom Town," you show how Rose is still Rose, and the witty, whimsical, playful, aggravating, fun dynamic that is Jack-Rose-Doctor, is still Jack-Rose-Doctor.
And while I could go on about all the character-defining scenes you crammed in here, this is already absurdly long for a story you wrote a lifetime ago. ;-)
Thank you!