Engineering by Waspeater
Disclaimer: HalfLife is owned by Valve and the Whoniverse belongs to the almighty Beeb, at least until I get this godsdamnned flux capacitor working ...
11th Doctor / Half-life 1&2 + episodes X-over, previsionally set after s06e12 "Closing Time" for Whoniverse elements. FEEDBACK URGENTLY NEEDED - the G-man voice is ridiculously hard to write, is this even close?
This is an experiment, it'll turn into a before-the-opening-credits flash forward prologue if I can make this work. My plotting diagram looks like the Gordian knot ATM, stooopid time travel.
As always feedback please, even if it's negative, in this case I specifically plead for comments on my G-Man, is my way of representing his speech accurate? readable? annoying? It's the only way I'll learn.
Ancient eyes, wet with shock and sorrow stared out of a youthful face. Soon they would blaze with a rage that had brought down tyrants and empires across the length and breadth of the universe, but even the quicksilver intellect behind those eyes would need time to process these events. For now those eyes focused on nothing in particular in the middle distance, shining in the directionless light of this between-place. Unable to look away from that cadaverous face the best he could manage was to look through it. Held immobile, he could not speak, and though any interruption of that morose and stilted voice would have been a blessed relief he knew nothing he could say would stop it. In one corner of his mind the small and frightened boy who had to be dragged before the Untempered Schism screamed at him to stick his fingers in his ears, if he couldn't hear it, it wouldn't be true.
That voice had always put the Doctor in mind of a spider walking with an odd number of missing legs or the feeling of expecting one more step at the bottom of a flight of stairs but hitting the floor instead.
The voice of a mind temporally estranged from its physical body by madness and energies beyond the understanding of Men and Timelords alike.
The voice of The Engineer.
"Your reac-tion iss not ... unexsspected although many would consssider. it somewhat hypocritic-al. I have only m-ade usssse of your own … te-chniquess againsst you Doc-tor, viol-ating. the timestream to protect your… own innteresstss. Frussstrating thosse who would usse time travel for…. purposes you disssap-rove of by meanss of limited per-sonal intervent-ionss and ... mortal pawns. It wasss after all, your exa-mple that taught … me that the right man in the … wrong p-lace can make all the di-ffer-ence."