Reflections (Professionals story)

The Professionals Fanfiction
Title:	Reflections
Author(s):	Brenda K.
Date(s):	September 29, 2004
Length:	171K
Genre:	het
Fandom:	The Professionals
External Links:	*Story Link on The Circuit Archive *Author on The Circuit Archive *Author on The Hatstand
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"Reflections" is a The Professionals story by Brenda K. It is a het story with the pairing of Doyle/Kate Ross. It was posted to The Circuit Archive on September 29, 2004.

Reviews/Reactions

This story was reviewed by Francis Kerst on Crack Van on November 8, 2010:

Sorry for reccing two gen stories in a row; a slash one was intended but a technical incident with my printer went in the way and, since I'm not able to read a long text on screen because of my very bad sight, I was obliged to resort to one I had already printed for a while.

Another and better reason for my choice is that Brenda K. is one of my favourite authors of “Pros” fanfiction, and one whose work is not widely represented in crack_van, especially the gen part of it. Actually, this story is not just gen but het! I could have never guessed there would be a time when I would recommend a het story! But a talented writer has the power to make you believe in whatever she sets out to.

And it's not a light task to make acceptable and even touching a love story between Doyle and, not some convenient (and compliant) original character, but a well-known, clear-cut, sharp edged and, to say the least, not precisely popular canon figure such as Kate Ross. Personally I doesn't dislike her; she is, like Cowley, duty-bound, strong-willed, clear-headed and solitary: all qualities that aren't usually associated with passion and tender feelings. Yet, like with Cowley, it's possible to detect in them undercurrents of ...weakness they would say, and to assume there is a human face under the mask. As for Doyle, it's not too difficult to see him attracted by strong women; when you have fallen (hard) for somebody like Ann Holly, Kate Ross would rather appear as an improvement. The author draws of her a nuanced and thoughtful portrait that reveals her sympathy for a too often reviled character.

Before all my potential readers had started to run away at light speed, I must add that the main interest of the story is not there. Still more central than the relationship between Doyle and Ross, there is the friendship between the partners, their mutual commitment, Doyle's trust and understanding, Bodie's loyalty and protectiveness in spite of well hidden bouts of jealousy, the deep-rooted, ever-lasting bond that make them able to overcome the most cruel plights because they stand together. This is love too and maybe of a higher value than the sexual kind, as Doyle is well aware of. This is a significant excerpt:

Bodie had become his strength and his rock. He had come to dread a return to the loneliness he'd known before the partnership, and a loneliness that was also partly the result of his own stubborn, fiery nature, he admitted to himself. Girls came and went, and with few exceptions they couldn't cope with his odd hours or his lack of commitment to anything but his job. Not that they'd have really understood what he did anyway, even if he'd been able to tell them about it. Girls added a little distraction and a fair amount of physical relief, and he didn't have time for much more. Bodie, though, was his partner, the other half of a whole, and for some reason their relationship worked on every level.

This is not just a psychological study though; there's lot of action in it, a well woven plot and an interesting view of a post-Cowley CI5 (Murphy as the new Controller, Cowley in the back stage).

The title, “Reflections”, must be taken with a double meaning: the development, through the on-going action, of the characters' inner thought's but also, the “reflection” of each one in the mirror of the others' points of view, all of which are presented in turn, with a clever use of vivid, evocative flash-backs.