#he just messaged me to share some research he’s doing into acquiring some equipment

[flummoxisafunnyword]

Time for another installment of venting into the void to expend my frustration instead of yelling at my male coworkers

[noncanonlove]

Circumvent

It was Monday again. Hermione happened to detest Mondays. People were recovering from their weekends and so it slowed down anything she was trying to accomplish from the Friday past. The work day was torture and she couldn’t get home fast enough, lest she explode. Draco had a tendency to lose track of time if he was elbow deep in whatever he was currently trying to breed in the Manor’s greenhouse for his potions experiments but he tried to be home around the time she got back, sometimes worried she’d be tempted to return and do something rash if he wasn’t there to intercede.

The rest of the week, they had a pretty easy routine. They would make dinner together, discuss their days, work on pet projects in their shared workspace in the basement, have amazing sex, bathe, and pass out until everything restarted the next day. But Mondays were different. After slogging through the work day with ever growing irritation she came home fed Crookshanks, changed into comfortable clothes and lay on the couch to read and ignore everything. Draco would come home, already washed up, then after she’d taken her place on the couch he would pick up the cellphone she’d charmed to be able to work in magical environments.

She’d had the bright idea to get the Pureblood group more interested in the Muggle world. In order to do that she had to appeal to their curiosity and their natures. Gossip was the easiest one to prey upon. If they wanted to gossip, then they had to do it at a weekend do or a week day soiree. Hermione had gotten tired of attending the slew of them Draco loved to attend in short order after they’d gotten together, but had managed to get the number down to one or two a week. Usually on Sundays. Instead she’d researched and experimented on cellphones and other electronics with charms and other things until she’d gotten them to cooperate despite the magical interference.

She’d started small. She’d gotten one for Draco and showed him the appeal of being able to text her throughout the day without having to fuss with owls and also be able to send her pictures. Sometimes she regretted the pictures portion but usually he was pretty good about not being a total prat. Then to enact the next step of her plan, she’d casually texted him across the room during a do. That had gotten Pansy Parkinson’s immediate attention when she’d seen Draco pull out his phone and check the message. It had prompted a thousand questions from the circle she’d been in conversation with. Most had turned their noses up at the idea but Pansy and Blaise both cornered her later to acquire her help in getting them one. They knew an upcoming trend when they saw one and always had to be ahead of it.

So, one by one, each member of Draco’s circle had come to them for help on selecting a cellphone and then having Hermione charm it so it would be functional and never run out of battery. She had showed them all how to call one another, and they did that sometimes but surprisingly most of them preferred to text.

After their first couple of Mondays spent together as a couple newly living in the same house, Draco had figured out that she would rather light the house on fire than be chatty. For a while he’d holed up in his study or he’d sit in the chair next to her and read as well. After getting the cellphone situation settled however, he preferred to pace in circles around their couch as she laid on it while he gossiped away with the rest of his coterie.

She was always secretly amused, the one highlight of her Mondays, sometimes watching him in her peripheral vision as he became so engrossed in multiple conversations. He could become surprisingly expressive in the right atmosphere and by this point in their relationship he’d dropped his guard around her entirely. The instant she got up to make dinner though, the phone went away and his attention came back to them. She’d been wary of things getting annoying when she thought up the whole thing but she’d felt guilty about him being gradually cut off from his friends the with less parties they attended. Instead he’d started setting up group lunches throughout the week to compensate.

One thing she never had to worry about, however, was him trying to covertly cheat with it. The whole institution disgusted him. He’d admitted to her once that the mere idea of it turned his stomach. His parents had had a rough patch before where they’d cheated on each other and it’d nearly destroyed their family. Family was everything to him, so that was all it took in his mind to be permanently set against it. But more than that, Hermione trusted him. He’d offered to let her go through his phone before when a couple of scandals had happened. She’d merely kissed him and went back to her book, saying that they’d been through too much to get to the point to where they were at and that she trusted him not to do anything to endanger it. She’d been able to tell he’d appreciated it by the way he’d nuzzled against her afterwards, cuddling close.

Tonight, however, when she got up he’d put the phone away but had intercepted her as he came along his path around the couch.

“I think we should talk about something,” he started, his eyes cutting to the side.

That was his tell for being nervous, which set off the same emotion within her. Draco got nervous over precious little.

“Okay,” she hesitated, letting him guide her back onto the couch.

He took her hands in his and studied her for a moment before proceeding.

“I’ve been thinking about something. You’ve seemed to become less and less happy at the Ministry the longer you’re there. I don’t presume to know the whole picture,” she wanted to roll her eyes at that. She’d bet her salary that he and Lucius had been talking again, “but if I had a guess at it those old bats have come to the conclusion of your potential. In short, they don’t like it and all the change you herald should you get your footing. I’m afraid that you’re getting boxed in in your little job in Creatures. It’s been almost a year since you’ve been able to get anything passed.”

Despite the gentleness he’d said it with, it still gripped Hermione’s heart painfully because he was right. No matter what she’d done she’d always seemed to hit roadblock after roadblock. She’d begun to suspect that her boss had started to just give her platitudes when she brought things up to him about it to try to keep her from blowing a gasket. Her eyes filled with tears and she envisioned the rest of her career being like this until she became another Arthur Weasley, boxed off in some tiny office, out of sight and out of mind.

“Babe, I didn’t tell you this to make you cry,” he said, gathering her to his chest tightly, “Please don’t cry.”

“What am I supposed to do? It was my dream to change things and now it’s been ground to dust by some archaic, august caucus of pompous old bastards terrified of one woman,” her voice quavered from against his collarbone.

He languidly rubbed a hand up a down her back, “Well, to be truthful you can be pretty scary. You’re a powerful witch and you’re smarter than most of them combined. You’re certainly a formidable force. I didn’t say any of this to upset you. I had an idea. What methods are most successful at enacting change at the ministry?” he asked her.

“Bribery,” she muttered darkly, thinking of how Lucius would visit different departments and how little things always seemed to happen after he would pop by one, usually resulting in one bigger result later on that couldn’t quite be traced back to him unless one was really paying close attention.

He chuckled, “What else?”

She thought about it for a minute before bringing her head up to look at him again, “Well there’s public opinion…”

“Exactly. You’ve always been persuasive with your words, even if you need a little guidance sometimes with the presentation,” he grunted as she elbowed him but charged on, “Why don’t you write your own column?” He proposed.

She couldn’t stop the snort.

“What?” he asked, bewildered and more than a little irritated.

“The only two options I have for publishing them in is The Prophet or The Quibbler,” she said disdainfully. “Either one would edit my pieces to death to where it would hardly look like anything I’d actually written or bury them under a bunch of nonsense.”

Draco knew and understood her feelings on both of those media sources. He’d come prepared though.

“That’s true, but from everything I’ve heard, people who’ve fought in the war and many of those recovering in general are displeased by both the state of the Ministry and The Prophet. The way The Prophet is so wishy washy they’ve made themselves too unreliable for too long,” he said.

“So I start my own paper? Where would I get the resources to do that? I may have gotten some money off of the sale of my parents estate and what I was gifted by helping bring down Voldemort, but that’s not enough to pay people to write, to buy the equipment, a base of operations and everything else,” she started.

Her merely stared at her until she shut up and looked back at him.

“Have you forgotten that the Malfoys aren’t just known for their ability to affect change and their magical prowess?” he drawled with a hitched brow.

“Draco I can’t ask you to fund me! What if it fails? Surely I can find other avenues…” she said with wide eyes.

He scoffed, “You act like I won’t make that back within the year. I bet within five you’ll drive The Prophet right out of business.”

She looked at her lap with a furrowed brow, her mouth pulled to one side as her mind raced across it.

He knew he’d won when she set her shoulders, finally looking back up at him.

“You’re going to help me with this right? This isn’t something I could do without you even if you weren’t funding it,” she said, squeezing his hands.

“Don’t be silly, you absolutely could do it!” he insisted fiercely, “but to answer your question, of course I’ll help you. As much as you want,” he promised.

He couldn’t stand the idea of her fire being extinguished in that thrice damned Ministry. She was too smart and too full of life to become a victim of their drudgery. With this she could enact the change she wanted and circumvent dealing with them all together. As an added bonus Draco wouldn’t have to share her as much anymore.

“I’ll quit tomorrow, then and we’ll get things going,” she said, excitement beginning to bloom across her face.

He just grinned and kissed her. The paper was a good idea anyway, but their partnership in it would be a good proving ground for something bigger between them. He was determined to come out right side up on that aspect of the venture.

[aviewfromthepanopticon]

The Sleeping Blood

Big Finish’s summary: When the Doctor falls ill, Susan is forced to leave the safety of the TARDIS behind. Exploring a disused research centre in search of medical supplies, she becomes embroiled in the deadly plans of a terrorist holding an entire world to ransom – and the soldier sent to stop him. Written by: Martin Day Directed by: Lisa Bowerman Release Date: June 3rd, 2015 Series: The Companion Chronicles: The First Doctor Volume 1, Story 1 Cast: Carole Ann Ford (Susan), Darren Strange (Gomery/Kendrick)

I really enjoyed this story, and felt it was a wonderful tale about pretty early on in the Doctor and Susan’s travels, where the evolution of both the Doctor and Susan’s views on what it means to interact with other cultures is explored beautifully. I also adore that the end Susan decides that the rich keeping medical care for only rich people is an evil that is deserving of response.

There is also a lot of interesting commentary in this story about how technology Susan has mastered and thinks of as nothing more than a simple concept she was playing with as an infant, is in fact regarded as super extra advanced tech to the rest of the universe. In this case, the tech Susan dismisses as a baby toy are medical nanomachines.

I am generally interested in any story that grapples with what it means that Susan is a Gallifrayen. Plus Companion Chronicle style stories, which are told from a the first person perspective and only feature the narrator and one other speaking voice, are a great medium to tell stories that explore Susan’s experience as a young Gallifreyan who ran away from home before she became a Time Lord.

I also felt it was so very on brand that it wasn’t until one of them got sick that either Susan or the Doctor thought to check the TARDIS’ sick bay for medical supplies. When they did check, they found that the TARDIS they stole didn’t have anything in stock since it was, you know, going to be decommissioned.

Simply the plot of this story is that the Doctor got a nasty cut on a planet he and Susan were exploring together. About a week later they discover the wound had gotten infected and the TARDIS didn’t have any medical supplies in stock. Susan decides to search the next place the TARDIS lands for medical supplies, and then steal them. Complications arise, Susan witnesses a political conflict on the planet, and she comes away questioning if perhaps she and her grandfather should start getting involved with the affairs of the planets they are visiting.

This story very much gave me the sense that the TARDIS was already, at such an early stage, helpfully taking the Doctor where he needed to go. After all, their first landing place after Susan resolves to steal medical supplies is an abandoned medical research facility that was built by people advanced enough to use nanomachines for medical purposes (The TARDIS, with her still fully functioning Chameleon Circuit, disguised herself as a metal medical cabinet upon landing there)!

As for getting involved, well... Susan learns from the planet’s records that the bacteria has all evolved into super bacteria, and there are no longer any antibiotics that have even the slightest effect on any sort of bacterial infection on the planet. As she searches for supplies to help her grandfather, Susan discovers she is not alone. There is a unit of soldiers in the medical facility with her. The soldiers explain that a terrorist - the Butcher - is hiding in the research center. This terrorist is a hacker who has discovered a way to control the medical nanomachines, and he is threatening to turn them against the people who have had them injected.

Susan really wants to get back to her grandfather with the medical supplies she collected, but the soldiers will not let her leave, and they make her go with them - at gunpoint - as they hunt ever closer to the hacker. One of the soldiers dies as their group makes their way through the medical facility, murdered by the Butcher’s manipulation of the technology they depend on.

When they encounter the hacker, he shuts down all the electronics the soldiers have. As most of them are inside metal skeleton suits, they are unable to move.

The hacker starts trying to explain himself, and says he is about to broadcast a video to all the media networks and they should see it too. He also insists that Susan should call him by his name - Gomery - rather than call him the Butcher

Before he can transmit the video, one of the soldiers - Kendrick - gets free of his skeleton suit, and shoots Gomery in the head with an old fashioned gun.

Susan is really really really REALLY not ok with watching a man be shot like that in front of her, while he was talking to her at that, and even as the soldiers keep their promise and return her to the TARDIS, all she can think about is the trauma of watching Kendrick kill Gomery. In addition to the trauma of seeing someone die like that, Susan is worried she got too involved in an other planet’s affairs, and that thought terrifies her, because she knows getting involved in any way is very much against all of Gallifrey’s laws.

This story’s many strengths all are most evident in its end, the final few moments are truly exceptional Doctor Who writing, and paint an incredible portrait of the Doctor and Susan in their awkward in between stage, before Shoreditch, before Ian and Barbara, before that first trip to Skaro, before all of it.

I’ve transcribed it below, because I just really and deeply love the end of this story:

SUSAN: I began using the equipment and drugs I had taken from the research center to start Grandfather’s treatment. Over the course of just a few hours, I saw him begin to recover. He began to talk more coherently and his coughing eased. Color returned to his cheeks. Though he did little but sleep, waking occasionally to cast a proprietorial eye over the TARDIS controls and issue a few clipped instructions. Finally he allowed me to change the dressing on his hand, and I saw that the wound was much improved. As I pulled a blanket up under Grandfather’s chin, I felt something nudge against my foot. It was one of the security robots! Somehow it had followed me onto the ship! I reached down, tentatively, not sure if I should try to pick it up or if I should bat it away with my foot. “Now, you’re not going to hurt me again, are you?” Much to my surprise, it started to play a message! I wondered if this was some of what Gomery, the Butcher, had prepared for the people of Roah! I wondered if perhaps I was the only person ever to hear it. GOMERY: I am truly sorry for each and every death I have caused. It gives me little satisfaction, but I am sure each one was a necessary evil. Who am I to decide who lives and dies? The point is, I’m doing all this precisely because other people are playing god. The truth that has been hidden in plain sight is that our medical advances aren’t for everyone. Our research programs, the drugs we are developing that would have been unimaginable only a generation ago, these only exist to benefit the rich and influential. The top strata of society. Who’s at the top? You may ask. If you’re rich enough to hear my message, you’ve probably answered your own question. We tell ourselves the medicine benefits everyone. Assume every citizen has access to these treatments, but there are millions who cannot afford our nanomachinery.  Millions who have never seen a doctor, not because they don’t need to, but because they can’t pay. They’re in our shantytowns and our slums, but they also serve us in our restaurants and maintain our vehicles. They may even be our neighbors. You see, medical nanomachinery is expensive. Governments and charities can barely afford to invest in it. The major backers are pharmaceutical companies, and they’re only interest is profit. But it is my firm belief, a belief I am prepared to die for or to kill for, that these advances should be for the good of all on Roah. Not the few who can afford it! Though my name is Gomery, you’ve heard me called “Butcher,” a silly nickname I’ve adopted to express my disgust at the way things are, now turned against me. But I didn’t always see the world this way. You won’t have been told, but for many years I worked as a government research scientist. I was in charge of a project that would have allowed the authorities to remotely control the world’s biological technology. Though intended for use only in emergencies, such as civil unrest. It should be obvious to all that this is just another means of control. And so I resigned, sabotaging my research so it would appear the scheme could never work. To my delight, the research center was closed. And then, over the next few years, I began to wonder if I could use my old research to make our world’s leaders listen! To force them to share the benefits of official medical technology rather than keep it for themselves. SUSAN: I found myself replaying the message, again and again. I couldn’t forget the look on the woman’s face, when Gomery had, what was the phrase he’d used? “Switched her off,” to make a point. A terrible end to a life. But neither could I forget Kendrick’s cold blooded execution. Which man most deserved to be called butcher? I wondered if there was a version of Ling embedded within the tiny polyhedral robot, and to my delight… LING: Hello, unknown user! I am Linguistic Interface II! You may call me Ling! How may I be of assistance today? SUSAN: While grandfather slept, I asked Ling about the man called “Gomery” and the planet Roah. I’m not sure why I did. Perhaps it stopped me thinking about grandfather’s illness and how close we’d come to disaster. Perhaps I just had too many questions in my head. And not nearly enough answers. I discovered an excerpt from an even longer recording! It was hard to tell if it had been kept by Gomery himself, or if it had been acquired by the internal security services. It was labeled as a conversation between Gomery and his grandmother, and looking at the chronology it seemed to be this encounter that had changed Gomery. That had forced him to reexamine his life and to start again. To begin on the path, if Kendrick was to be believed, that led inexorably to the killing of many innocent people. That led to an unremarkable man becoming the Butcher.   GOMERY: I can steal some tech from work! I can find a way! GRANDMOTHER: And what if you’re found out? No. I won’t have that on my conscious. GOMERY: Then let me pay for treatment. GRANDMOTHER: I’m not like this because I’m poor! I’m like this because it’s time to go! GOMERY: But there must be something else we can try! GRANDMOTHER: All things that have a beginning have an end. That’s what my mother used to say. Perhaps one day, you’ll understand. SUSAN: Suddenly there was another voice in the TARDIS. “What’s the matter my child?” Grandfather, though still slightly feverish, was awake again and regarding me with some concern. I realized that I was crying, and turned my face away from him. I tried to hide the truth from him, but he could tell that something was troubling me. So I told him everything that had happened. And of course Grandfather, being Grandfather, didn’t quite see the problem. “As far as I can tell, you used your intelligence to find the drugs I needed. You have saved my life. What’s so wrong with that? Hmmmm? Hmm?” But I knew that I had intervened quite decisively in the affairs of others. Perhaps, if Gomery’s plan had succeeded, millions of people on the colony world of Roah would now have access to life saving medicines. Grandfather was keen to remind me that I had been forced to help Kendrick at gunpoint, and that Gomery was a terrorist. That the ends so rarely justify the means. But I was still troubled.   “You have to make a stand! That’s what you always used to say at home! What’s changed?” Grandfather tried to explain that it was really very simple. What had changed was that we had started to see other worlds. Other cultures at first hand. And that he had come to understand that we must not interfere. That to interfere would make us little better than this terrorist trying to manipulate events with no real knowledge of how things might turn out. And then Grandfather sighed. “Of course, if we are forced to act...” his words trailed away. “There are never any black and white answers.” I pondered Grandfather’s words for a few moments. “But that doesn’t mean we stop asking the questions, surely!” But Grandfather then claimed he was tired, and that he didn’t really understand what I was driving at, and anyway, it was time he was back in charge of his ship. New worlds, new times, new adventures. All this awaited us. But, I couldn’t help but notice, Grandfather looking increasingly thoughtful as he watched the rise and fall of the rotar, as we continued our journey through space and time.