The Calm Before the Storm (Chapter Seventeen)

Oh, the creative mind is all a flitter this fantastic weekend.  It is absolutely gorgeous outside and between running around wildly outside and staring in delighted happiness at blooming azaleas (blooming azaleas! it is spring), I have been writing like mad. 

Your comments and the subsequent discussion keep me writing.  For example, nostariel had a comment that got me thinking, again, of the end of this story and then the stories to follow.   All the discussions about Jacob's character got me thinking about the stories he still has to tell, most specifically, his interaction with Nine immediately following the Time War, which has been a subject of continued discussion in this story.  With love from dark_aegis and sensiblecat (and several others), there's more about the trans-dimensional pockets in this chatper as well.

I don't have a beta for this story -- I write quickly, and truthfully, I can't handle waiting! -- but if you have any criticism or Britpicking or grammar issues to point out, I absolutely will go back and change them, and the feedback is much appreciated.

Previous chapters (also archived at Teaspoon).

( Chapter Seventeen )

"Uncle," she says

Damn it.  If I didn't have to go to work tomorrow, I'd keep writing and finish the story tonight.  TONIGHT.  But I can't.  I have a poor person just out of training who would truly and utterly freak the hell out if I wasn't there for moral support tomorrow, four meetings, and a draft proposal to finish.  Anyway.  The muse has been put on pause, but I do have an update on what's coming next.

I actually just have the one more chapter to write, and the outline is pretty well fleshed out.  The epilogue is DONE.  Chapters 18 and 19 are DONE.  Yeah, I know, I said, two more chapters, but if you've learned nothing, you've learned not to trust any prediction that I make on how long something will be.  Now, unless something truly bizarre happens (and I simply can't rule that out, but I don't think so), then Chapter 20 will be the end of it, and then the epilogue.  Chapter 18 deals with the rest of the evening, including a lot of Jacob, Chapter 19 is the night itself, and Chapter 20 is the next morning, and their departure.

I am incredibly proud of the epilogue.  I'm proud of the whole damn thing, really, but I am really really really proud of the epilogue.  I wanted to leave this story of hope and love and redemption with exactly that -- hope and love and redemption, and I've done that, I think.  Yes, Doomsday is there.  The inevitability of that fact is woven all throughout the story I've told, regardless of the fact that I hate like hell that it happened in the first place.  I can ignore canon, but this is for me beyond canon -- it is simply how this tale ends.  But even with Doomsday, there is hope, for Rose and for the Doctor.

I still have loads more to write, and I can't imagine going cold turkey after the writing binge I've been on of late, so never fear that there is more from me on the matter of the Doctor and Jacob, and also, of Rose.  Heck, I've written the first two chapters of the sequel already.  Did I say writing binge?  I think it's a manic writing episode.  When I crash, I may be in bed for a week.