Look Back In The Past

thing is - and hear me out - if s3 does by any minute chance incorporate any suggestion of a sex scene, it is imperative for me that they commit to the bit. i need crowley to nearly topple over trying to get out of his jeans, i need aziraphale to complain that they cant do anything downstairs because that would be scandalous, and i need them to trip over going up the stairs because they keep getting distracted. i need one of them to accidentally get an elbow to the face, i need them to have a long forgotten book digging into one of their backs, and aziraphale is horrified when crowley launches it across the room, and i need there to be hard cut to whickber street having a huge power surge, lines sparking, all the power going out, and every car alarm in a 2-mile radius start screaming, i don't need it to be explicit or overly romantic but i do need it to be fucking funny

fourteen and the toymaker making out sloppy style but fourteen is actually kissing tooth!master

Peacemaker is, in my not so humble opinion, one of the best New Series Adventures novels of the RTD1 era. I loved it immensely - and read it aloud (sitting in the kitchen at night, behind a tightly locked door, so as not to disturb anyone at home, and no one would disturb me!) The scene in the cave - if I remember the circumstances correctly - was quite powerful, to say the least.

The interesting thing is that the (for want of a better term) Martha run is pretty solid in quality of novels, compared to Rose’s and Donna’s. I can name three books off the top of my head that I consider to be top notch, at least in terms of characterisation - Peacemaker, Forever Autumn and Wishing Well (and The Frozen Wastes from the Doctor-lite The Story Of Martha is exquisite!).

I remember that from all the books with Rose as companion I found the sole Only Human (erm, it doesn’t sound as clever as I thought it would be) to be really great, and as for Donna… well, to be fair, there are only four novels with her. The Doctor Trap is fun (and a bit whumpy which is great, if you ask me), Ghosts Of India gets Donna’s character exactly right, which is no a mean feat, and In The Blood is rather patchy, but has some great moments (and whump too!).

Anyway, I think I'll give the role reading another try tonight, thanks, OP!

It's been months and I'm still recovering from this novel. It's what shifted me [quite violently] from "I enjoy TenMartha" to "Oh... I think I'm consumed with them now"

You can read it here for free if you like!

I've said this before, but being so late in the game, it feels like everyone has probably already experienced all of these things that are either new or semi-new to me... But perhaps you haven't; perhaps you're tragically unaware that such works exist, just as I was in the spring!

Warning: The story is graphically violent in ways I've never encountered in a DW novel. It's gorgeous for it, but I felt like I should say.

David is wearing an older version of a Safe Space Hoodie ($35), with Stanley Tucci Green Collection Dutch Oven Cookware ($299)

He grows tomatoes.

Well, he tries to. Crowley does not usually try to grow plants. He decides to grow them, and they obey. It's vendetta ad vengeance at once. But lately, nothing seems to obey his will. It's weak, that will, broken into smithereens just like his heart.

And he can't even take it out on his plants. That's because Crowley has mercy.

So he tries to grow tomatoes.

It's summer (the first summer without him) and he has lodged in an airbnb in the country, and behind an old ramshackle ram-shack he has made himself a little plot of land. Well - it's all God's stupidly green earth, isn't it. But this two by two piece of earth he claims for himself. He could have at least that, right? He looks up at the sky. Frowns.

Let me have at least that.

Aziraphale liked to do things the hard way. (He's still doing that, Crowley supposes, up there. Up there. He's not dead, but it feels like it. He's gone. Gone to Heaven. Not to a better place.) Aziraphale liked to do it properly, the human way, when it pleased him. Which was often, but not always. French. Nom de dieu de merde. Pardon his French.

Pardon his stupid everything.

Crowley inspects his tomato plants. He's trying to grow them the human way. Funny, that. He nurses them like he nurses his heart, and miracles won't do. He's tried.

I think I should not be encouraged to grow tomatoes, he thinks.

Raindrops fall on red and green: the plants and the vines and the tomatoes and his hair. It's August, it shouldn't be raining this much. It's been a shitty August. It's been a shitty year. Thirteen months and two weeks and one day, to be exact. Not like he's keeping count. Why bother?

There's a spot on one of the leaves, and Crowley's heart sinks beore it even had the chance to ever rise. It's only one tiny, dark, black spot, but he knows what it means. It means it's too late.

A horrible month. A horrible life. Not the right conditions to thrive. Disease, showing its ugly head, grinning. It's already too late. It's always too late. It would multiply and spread.

His soul is a tomato leaf.

Black as grief.

He's tended these seedlings, he's raised them, and planted them, too, and here they are before him tall and proud and still alive, and Crowley knows they are already dying. He can relate.

The sensible thing to do is to discard it all, be done with them. It's not worth the effort, technically, to keep them alive, but to Crowley it's worth it. It has to be. They are worh it. He is worth it. Stupid stubborn perseverance, stupid stubborn hopeful heart.

He isn't immune to foreshadowing. He looks up again. Angry, this time, bitter. A bit of surrender, too.

The rain drips and drops on his face.

He looks back down, snaps the sickly leaf off with expert fingers. Continues to tend to the plants, as he will until they inevitably die. He plucks a tiny tomato. It's so small, fragile, one of the first of a doomed harvest: but it tastes sweet.

Determined, Crowley continues his labor of love, patient as with all living things.

He is responsible for these vines.

Maybe, despite everything, just this once, he can nurture his heart back to health. (And maybe, just maybe, he is not human and does not do things the human way. When it pleases him. He's always been a rebel. Just a little miracle, a little bit of life-giving defiance. So small no one notices, not even us.) Crowley smiles.

He grows tomatoes.

.

This ficlet was inspired by Louise Glück's Vespers. May she rest in peace. "In your extended absence, you permit me use of earth, anticipating some return on investment. I must report failure in my assignment, principally regarding the tomato plants." read the full poem here

Funny (and kinda revealing) thing is that for years I’ve stuck to that moody picture of the Doctor walking through the clouds/smoke to the TARDIS as my lock screen wallpaper. Then I went through a couple of official posters for GO S1, then reverted to my trusted and almost monochrome Ten… and now this.

I see some parallels, so to say.

(Yom Kippur is a Jewish holiday in which god is judging everyone based on their actions the past year, and decide how they shall live for the next year. Very intense. It's common to ask for forgiveness from those you hurt before Yom Kippur)

Me on Yom Kippur: if I hurt you in any way, please know that I'm sorry.

Friend: I forgive you.

Me: noooooo!!!

All praise to DT – the patron saint and/or totemic being of us all, Who Cannot Sit Normally. 

I, for one, find this exact arrangement of lower extremities quite comfortable. Years of reading crouched in various crooks and nannies + breaststroke swimming have got my joints used to being put in positions that are not conventionally normal for the average human. Having knees that do… well, turn outwards, I guess is the right way to put it –  is pretty useful. 

Full credit for tag furniture_abuse goes to the incredible @mizgnomer, of course. (I'm awfully sorry if I'm breaching the Tumblr etiquette there, tagging non-mutual, but that blog is a bona fide treasure trove of all things DT-related, especially visual stuff.  It was the reason I came to Tumblr at all, for what it's worth.)

Tell me you said no.

Tell me we were on the same page, that you know Heaven is just as terrible as Hell, that there is no good side, no right people, that both sides are happy to destroy all life on Earth if they come out on top.

Tell me you said no.

Tell me you remember how terrified they made you every time you did something good that wasn’t Good by the laws of Heaven. Tell me you value yourself more than that.

Tell me you said no.

Tell me I wasn’t alone in seeing all that cruelty done to humans and wanting no part in it. Tell me you’re not going back to help those people.

Tell me you said no.

Tell me you’re not going back to the people who hurt me first, the oldest, deepest wound. Tell me you understand why I can never go back there. Tell me you know I didn’t deserve it.

Tell me you said no.