In Balance With This Life

Bodie/Doyle Fanfiction
Title:	In Balance With This Life
Author(s):	Mauvemaz
Date(s):	2001
Length:	8 pages
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	The Professionals
External Links:	online here
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In Balance With This Life is a Bodie/Doyle story by Mauvemaz.

It was published in The Bisto Kids and is online.

Reactions and Reviews

An operation that goes horribly wrong, a realisation made without any time, a future that it’s too late to have. There is pain and there is anguish and there is character death, but when it’s written like this – well, sometimes it’s good to be sad…

Possibly the one surprise in the zine. It's a death story--a double death story. It moves back and forth from the here and now to just before the incident. It is from Doyle's POV the whole time. It is easy to tell the time frame just by looking because the here and now is in normal type face, the back in time in italics.

It is a very simple story: Bodie is fatally injured, Doyle has one clip of ammunition and two people to save--Cowley has also been captured--and there is no hope of the seventh cavalry. He has to choose. He does so. And then he makes another choice.

The style is excellent, and in different for the two time frames. The here and now is very tightly written, very tensely written, with little conversation and is denser. The prior to the incident is more flowing, more conversation and not as dense. I am failing, I know, to depict the power of how this comes over. It might sound jolting and difficult to follow, but it isn't. It is intensely well done, and very moving and powerful. Mazzy's style is excellent for this story, and the tension is there from the first to the last page. It is compelling reading, and you really do not know what is going to happen.

There is no sex in the story; no verbal confession of feelings to one another, just one kiss but Ray is in love with Bodie. Very well written, good characterisation and very evocative.