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chocolatequeennk · 7 years

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Eternity in Her Eyes Commentary Track

Between my birthday on February 2 and my blogiversary on Feburary 15, I’m going to be posting commentary tracks on various selections from my fics. It’s a follower gift to you, but the catch is, you need to send me passages to make up commentary for. To give you an idea of what they’ll be like, I decided to do one early. Check out the full explanation here.

Eternity in Her Eyes | AO3 | FF.NET | TSP

I never intended to write a prequel to To Make Much of Time. In fact, when I was asked what a prequel would be like shortly after I finished the story, I said, “I wouldn’t. Because the prequel is S1-Tooth and Claw, and that’s been written. I suppose I could write the Bad Wolf scene from Rose’s POV, but I don’t think it would add to the story at all.”

But writing the scene from the Doctor’s POV did add to the story. One week, the drabble prompt for @timepetalsprompts was “eternity,” and I knew it was perfect for the Bad Wolf scene.

“I think you need a Doctor.” Rose went willingly into his arms, and the Doctor bent his head pressed a tender kiss to her lips.

For a moment, he felt the sheer pleasure of her soft lips against his. He used the contact to form a telepathic link, going into Rose’s mind and hiding everything that had happened since she’d looked into the Vortex. The gold-tinged pink of her mental signature concerned him, reminding him too much of how she’d looked when she’d stepped out of the TARDIS, haloed by the light of Time.

Then the Vortex passed from Rose to him, and he lost sight of everything but Time.

Why don’t we ever think about what the Doctor might have seen when he held the Vortex? Maybe because we’re used to the idea of the Doctor seeing timelines, so we don’t think this would have been any different. But if you look at what Rose saw and was able to do, this kind of ability to see and manipulate time has to go beyond what a Time Lord could typically do.

With Rose in his arms and the ability to see everything that could ever be, he peeked at her potential timelines. Looking ahead, he saw the most likely timeline, where she was separated from him by the Void.

Throughout this series, the various ways the TARDIS and Rose manipulated events as Bad Wolf have been revealed. The TARDIS even made sure Rose saw what happened to Margaret Slitheen, so Rose would know to open her heart when the time came. This story is the moment the Doctor has a chance to change their future--but why would he?

Only because he’d seen their future and it was too unbearably bleak to be left alone.

No!

The Doctor turned away from that future and searched for a way to keep Rose. In so many of her potential timelines, their time together ended abruptly, but one was entwined with his in a way that seemed… but how could he bond with her, when she’d wither and die?

The major arc of To Make Much of Time was the Doctor letting go of this fear. I didn’t even let him find out about Rose’s expanded life until after he’d decided that being with her now was worth the pain he’d face in the future.

But this Doctor hasn’t gone though those months of struggling. To him, the idea of forming an unbreakable telepathic bond with someone who will only live another 60-70 years is unthinkable.

He studied that timeline and sucked in a breath at its perfection. The Doctor and Rose Tyler, forever. Rose, as the Bad Wolf, with a lifespan that matched his. She would even do something to extend his life to match hers.

Thankfully, he’s got those timelines he can look at! He couldn’t just stay there in disbelief, because I needed him to do something, and he wouldn’t if stayed caught up in his fear of losing Rose. But he saw this, and it gave him hope:

The glimpse he caught of his future self, the man he would soon regenerate into, tickled at his memory. He’d seen that face before, on the day he’d pushed the button and ended it all. Rose and his future self had been there, but how?

Behold, foreshadowing! Yes, this story will eventually include Day of the Doctor, with an entirely different set of characters. (Eight, Nine, Ten and Rose, and possibly Nine’s Rose and/or Jack)

The Vortex burned through his veins, and he pushed that question aside. He’d forget about it after he let go of the Vortex anyway—he wouldn’t remember anything he’d seen, actually.

That thought made him frown. He wanted that future with Rose, but he knew himself. He’d never open up enough to her to make it happen, unless he didn’t have a choice.

This story is what I like to call, “Could be canon if you squint,” and this bit right here is what keeps it from being completely UA. All the thought processes, all the seeing of the future and the inkling that there’s a possibility they could bond, he’s going to forget it all.

Following the timeline with their forever back to where it split off from the prime timeline, the Doctor found the moment that connected him with Rose. An accidental empathic connection that couldn’t be blocked or broken, of course. How could he pretend he didn’t love her when she knew he did?

Oh, but you tried, Doctor. You really, really tried.

He scanned the surrounding timelines, looking for a way to make sure that happened, but Rose’s timeline fractured with the slightest manipulation.

In the end, he could only plant a clue. Reaching through Time, the Doctor found the werewolf and gave him a brief glimpse of Rose’s true nature.

“The Wolf. There is something of the Wolf about you.”

Arrrrrgh this line!! This moment!! Why would you put that in there and then not follow up on it?? That’s the line the entire series is built upon, so here I took it a step farther and had Nine manipulate time just enough that it happened. He couldn’t do anything more, but he could do that much.

Now, it was up to Rose to remember that curious statement and ask his future self about it. Their forever hinged on that moment, and as he sent the Vortex back into the heart of the TARDIS and caught Rose in his arms, he hoped the hint had been enough.

And this is how I can call this “canon if you squint.” All he’s done is make sure that line is spoken. From there, it’s completely up to chance if Rose forgets, and the timeline follows canon, or if she remembers, and sets them off towards their forever.

Here’s the last few paragraphs of Chapter 1 of To Make Much of Time, if you’ve forgotten how exactly she does remember:

Twelve hours later, having defeated the werewolf and been knighted (and banished), Rose and the Doctor jumped off the back of a wagon and started up the hill toward the TARDIS. “No, but the funny thing is, Queen Victoria did actually suffer a mutation of the blood,” he said, his arm brushing against hers as they walked. “It’s historical record. She was haemophiliac. They used to call it the Royal Disease. But it’s always been a mystery because she didn’t inherit it. Her mum didn’t have it, her dad didn’t have it. It came from nowhere.”

“What, and you’re saying that’s a wolf bite?” Rose asked skeptically, squinting up at him.

A flash of gold filled Rose’s vision when she accidentally stared right into the sun. You burn like the sun… She shook her head and the spots disappeared.

“You all right, Rose?”

“Yeah, fine. Just got the sun in my eyes is all.” He raised an eyebrow, but she shook her head and pointed up the hill. “Race you to the TARDIS?”

The Doctor took off running before Rose had the sentence out of her mouth, and she looked back at the sun before chasing after him. I am the Bad Wolf…

So much changes just by having her remember what the werewolf said, and ask the Doctor about it. That was one of the underlying premises when I wrote TMMOT: first, that there was something to the werewolf’s comment, and second, that if they’d actually confronted that fact, it would have Changed Things.

And that’s it for this commentary track. Depending on the section you choose to send me, there might be funny jokes, deleted scenes, stories of how I almost took the story in a different direction, or any combination of the above. You’re also welcome to ask questions to guide the commentary, so if there’s something in my writing you’ve always wondered about, now is the time to ask.

“Okay, but how can I participate in this?”

Pick any passage of 500 words or less from any fanfic I’ve written, and use submit to stick that selection in my inbox. I will then give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what’s going on in the character’s heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you’d expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

I’ve gotten a question about how many passage you can send in. Let’s start with a limit of 2, unless I’ve written fic specifically for you, either as a gift or for a prompt. If I have, you can send a passage from each gift/prompt fic, plus one from one of my other works.

Important links

My stories: AO3 | TSP

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Tag for the project: Nancy’s birthday extravaganza

Send me fic passages to add commentary to!

#nancy's birthday extravaganza #eternity in her eyes #being to timelessness #nine x rose #ten x rose

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