Duty Owed
| Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Duty Owed |
| Author(s): | Elizabeth Holden |
| Date(s): | 1998 |
| Length: | |
| Genre(s): | Bodie/Doyle, Bodie/Cowley |
| Fandom(s): | |
| Relationship(s): | |
| External Links: | |
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Duty Owed is a Professionals story by Elizabeth Holden.
It was published in Night Music in B and D.
It won the 1998 STIFfie Award for best Professionals novella.
Fan Comments
1998
"Duty Owed" is a startling shocker, the longest and the pivotal (though final) story of the zine, the one that makes me put the zine down with a gasp. If the zine had contained only this story and ten purple-prose monstrosities I would probably still feel that I'd made a good buy.
Perceptive readers may have noticed that I've avoided calling this zine a "B/D" zine, although all the stories I've discussed so far are B/D stories. Well, Bodie and Doyle are lovers in this one too. Bodie and Cowley never even touch but twice: a brief, almost surreptitious brush of fingers in the hospital, and Bodie's arm offered to help an injured Cowley limp a few steps, and then withdrawn again as soon as possible. And yet this story is a Bodie/Cowley story at least as much as it is a Bodie/Doyle story. And it is more than either of those, more than the sum of those parts.
Other stories have tried to combine the two relationships. The archetypal ones that I can think of just now are Meg Lewtan's story (whose title I can't remember, damn it! Is is "A Beach to Walk On"?) [1] in which Bodie is forced to choose between Doyle and Cowley (and the reader is never told what choice he makes), and Madelein Lee's "Carnal Interests" and "The Selling Hours" (and the third story in the sequence, "The Good Morning Soldiers," written a few years later; Christine also wrote an independent third story for the trilogy), [2] in which Bodie juggles, somewhat frantically, the two conflicting relationships. "Duty Owed" follows neither path, but blazes its own directly into trackless emotional wilderness.
Bodie loves Doyle: unshakably, passionately, and devotedly, to the grave and beyond. And Bodie loves Cowley. Differently, to be sure; Elizabeth adds to his background in a way that motivates a loyalty as unshakable as his love for Doyle. There is nothing he would not do for Doyle, and there is nothing he would not do for Cowley, because to each he owes everything that he is, and everything that he loves, and everything that he knows. His strength, in this story, is both awesome and touching.
And Cowley loves Bodie. Cowley is in love with Bodie. Hopelessly; he knows it is hopeless, for far too many reasons that he can rap out with bitter calm. "If I am cold-blooded," he tells Bodie, refusing yet again Bodie's desperate offer of sex, Bodie's need to do something, to *be* something for him, "it is because I know my own heart, and how to be ruthless with it." Bodie and Cowley do talk in this story (as do Bodie and Doyle), but though their words are stark, even brutal in their honesty, they can never quite reach each other as they would like to. Through the space that holds them apart, through the sex that happens and does not happen, the nerves are stripped bare. Courage is the courage to be defenseless, and they -- Cowley, especially -- are brave enough that it hurts my heart to read this story. And in the end, there are no words. This is a stunning story, one that I would press on every B/C fan who avoided this zine because it's so heavily B/D. But I'd be prepared with kleenex, and for them to clout me one because the story has filled them with horror, and frustration, and pity.
(Jane Carnall is visiting me next month. I can't wait to watch her read this.) </ref>
2006
Duty Owed, by Elizabeth Holden: Sort of the first Cowley pov "pairing" that I read, and I didn't really mean to - it was in a zine that I was reading. Normally at Circuit I filter for C/whoever pairings - but with zines... well with zines there is no filter and I am ambushed! Except that with this one there was a twist that I could totally go with. I wish this was online so that I could link to it and then feel free to talk about it, but it isn't... (there's one Elizabeth Holden, who I now totally adore, via The Hatstand) But this C/- one is in Night Music In B&D, and I totally recommend it. And I don't think that you need to be scared of the non-B/D bit. Can't say why without spoilering it, but it'll be okay. [3]
References
- ^ No, it's not "A Beach to Walk On" but instead Ritual Cleansing.
- ^ That story is Measure for Measure.
- ^ from Cowley/- fic, Kate McLean, Larton and of course - the weather., byslantedlight (February 5, 2006)