FIC: Ink, Paper, Brush, Stone, Toshiko Sato, PG-13
Title: Ink, Paper, Brush, Stone
Author: redsnake05
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Character death
Prompt: 77) By the time I'd grown up, I naturally supposed that I'd grown up. -- Eve Babitz.
Summary: Walls hedge Toshiko Sato in. Where will she find escape?
Beta read by the lovely
used_songs.
.Tosh hasn't done this in a long time, lifting down the box from the highest shelf in her bedroom wardrobe, cradling it carefully in her arms as she steps down from the chair. It's dusty but only a little more faded than when her grandmother handed it to her. It's heavy in her arms as she walks out to her low wooden table, heavy as she lays it gently down in a warm pool of lamp light. The rest of the room is nearly dark, the windows closed against the noise outside, curtains open to catch the moonlight, pale and mixed with heavy orange streetlights. The catch snicks as she opens it, and she realises that her hands are shaking as she lifts the lid. It's all there. All there.
>>>>
My first day at Cardiff was a blur of screens and protocols. The woman, Suzie, quiet and distracted, was preoccupied with her own projects and didn't talk, and the pale shadow of a medical officer ignored me. Jack was baffling.
I scrubbed my hands over my thighs. I didn't recognise the clothes I found in the apartment Jack had arranged, waiting for me in neat rows of utilitarian colours and cuts, and had pulled on the first thing to hand. The cotton was coarse under my fingers and I pulled them away, the memory of working my hands over and over in the hem of the red coveralls until my fingers were raw suddenly hot and present. Snatching my hands away, I breathed deeply. I didn't want Jack to find me huddled under my workstation. I never wanted to go back to that cell.
When I went shopping, after work, the card Jack gave me solid in my hand, I avoided the sensible cottons of my past life, and found myself buying silk. Black. As heavy as expectations, as fluid as love.
>>>>
The brushes slot neatly into their padded niches. The wood is smooth, worn with years of fingers gripping and sliding over them. The rocks are still there, flat and smooth. Everything is so smooth, rounded, comfortable. There are no sharp edges to be found here. Even the box has soft edges, comforting lines and curves. Everything is pliant and heavy under fingertips. She can remember the soft shuffle of bamboo in a planter, rubbing against itself in a soft breeze, the heavy warmth of her grandmother's hands as she guided her through laying out all the materials.
The paper is new, though, piled high on the other half of the table. She can reach out and pull one sheet towards herself whenever she wants. Light, soft, that gentle pale cream that reminds her, incongruously, of green tea ice cream in the hot summer sun. Wrong colour, wrong smell, but somehow right, perfect when her hand rests over it, and she can almost taste it melting on her tongue.
>>>>
Cardiff was rain, always rain, streaming down my windows and battering the few ragged flowers that graced my windowbox. Sweet smelling daphne, jinchoge, grew in a pot on my kitchen bench as I cautiously eased into living there, expanded into the space available instead of being constricted in faceless red.
It rained as I ran for the bus, the pavement wet and grey and slick. I had to be at work on time, had to work late, had to tap my fingers over the keyboards there instead of twining them round themselves all alone. I was sure I could hear the rain in the Hub, sometimes, over the hum of the computers, the hiss of Suzie's blowtorch, the slow shuffle of the MO in his slippers. Jack was always happy in the rain, eyes sparkling and shaking out his greatcoat in extravagant splatters. I never asked why he loved the rain so much. Safer not to ask, not to draw attention to myself. Jack could send me back anytime.
Work hard. Be competent. Don't ask.
The MO died in the rain, slumping to the concrete of the pavement at a scene, seeming to blend in with the dark ground, melting into it as his heart gave out. I held his hand as he gasped his last. It felt like paper under my hands, skin like crepe and thin yellow squares of tissue.
Owen's hands were smooth and skillful; if they shook a little whenever he had to open a skull, I never pointed it out or asked. Better not to ask about other people's ghosts and reasons. I never wanted to talk about the nightmare again.
Don't ask.
>>>>
Kneeling down on the faded green cushion she had placed in front of the table her hands slowly lift out all the tools, dusting each one with the feathery caresses she had seen her Obachan give to them, hands lit with soft light against each plane. It's easy to fall into the old rhythms: ink, brush, paper, stone. Each one is functional, crafted to serve and support. Each laden with everything needed to make the world in lines on paper. Earth is everything, in this. A record of earth.
The words flow off her brush, fingers dancing in the light. The muscles move in patterns she thought she had long ago forgotten. Back, before Torchwood, before the think tank, before the nightmare, she had done this. She had sat next to her grandmother, learning and watching and shaping the words.
When she had lived in a messy flat with harsh lights and towering stacks of books with that hard, coarse smell of industrial paper, though, then the box remained untouched. Now, in the smoky lights of Cardiff, the box rests on the table, open, contents making the pattern of her past.
>>>>
It had been easy for Mary to captivate me. I knew Jack could see that truth in my eyes after we watched her disappear into the sun. I had no excuses; could nearly feel the weight of red cotton on my shoulders. As heavy as the weight of Gwen and Owen's eyes burning into me. I didn't want to disappear again, onto the concrete floor of my cell. I let the eyes focus on me, let them think the shaking in my hands was fear of the knife at my throat. Maybe Jack was fooled. Maybe.
I escaped home as soon as I could, and spent the night pacing, waiting for the door to burst open, waiting for my ears to split with the noise and the silence. Waiting for the coarse red overalls and the harsh cradle of concrete, the mechanical clip of the voice from the ceiling.
The night brought Jack. Alone. What was there to say? If he sent me, I would go. He claimed me, I would stay. I made green tea in tiny cups and we sipped it and silently watched the lights glare orange and white in the city. The tea warmed my hands.
>>>>
It took the open spaces and light of her flat in Cardiff - not too many walls, no strip lighting, all warm and open and light and free - to remind her of the low tables and soft cushions of her youth. Perhaps there she had not absently tweaked a flawed design into a lethal machine, and traded her captivity for captivity. Perhaps, in the rhythm of ink, brush and stone, she could forget that nightmare. Perhaps she could feel at home, not on trial, safe, warm, loved.
Characters stalked the paper, hard and edgy at first, soaking softly into the paper in seconds. There was peril, caught, ensnared, lost and bereft. Later, days, months, maybe, when the paper drifts had risen round her like autumn leaves and ginger tea, there might have been hope.
>>>>
I fumble for a pen, shirt soft under my fingers, knowing I've got one somewhere. Knowing that this is it. Knowing that I'm escaping the cell for good. This is it. Over. No more, Jack. No more. Closing my fingers round the plastic, I tug the lid off and drag the tip over my arm. Escape. Free. Done.
Author: redsnake05
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Character death
Prompt: 77) By the time I'd grown up, I naturally supposed that I'd grown up. -- Eve Babitz.
Summary: Walls hedge Toshiko Sato in. Where will she find escape?
Beta read by the lovely
used_songs.
.Tosh hasn't done this in a long time, lifting down the box from the highest shelf in her bedroom wardrobe, cradling it carefully in her arms as she steps down from the chair. It's dusty but only a little more faded than when her grandmother handed it to her. It's heavy in her arms as she walks out to her low wooden table, heavy as she lays it gently down in a warm pool of lamp light. The rest of the room is nearly dark, the windows closed against the noise outside, curtains open to catch the moonlight, pale and mixed with heavy orange streetlights. The catch snicks as she opens it, and she realises that her hands are shaking as she lifts the lid. It's all there. All there.
>>>>
My first day at Cardiff was a blur of screens and protocols. The woman, Suzie, quiet and distracted, was preoccupied with her own projects and didn't talk, and the pale shadow of a medical officer ignored me. Jack was baffling.
I scrubbed my hands over my thighs. I didn't recognise the clothes I found in the apartment Jack had arranged, waiting for me in neat rows of utilitarian colours and cuts, and had pulled on the first thing to hand. The cotton was coarse under my fingers and I pulled them away, the memory of working my hands over and over in the hem of the red coveralls until my fingers were raw suddenly hot and present. Snatching my hands away, I breathed deeply. I didn't want Jack to find me huddled under my workstation. I never wanted to go back to that cell.
When I went shopping, after work, the card Jack gave me solid in my hand, I avoided the sensible cottons of my past life, and found myself buying silk. Black. As heavy as expectations, as fluid as love.
>>>>
The brushes slot neatly into their padded niches. The wood is smooth, worn with years of fingers gripping and sliding over them. The rocks are still there, flat and smooth. Everything is so smooth, rounded, comfortable. There are no sharp edges to be found here. Even the box has soft edges, comforting lines and curves. Everything is pliant and heavy under fingertips. She can remember the soft shuffle of bamboo in a planter, rubbing against itself in a soft breeze, the heavy warmth of her grandmother's hands as she guided her through laying out all the materials.
The paper is new, though, piled high on the other half of the table. She can reach out and pull one sheet towards herself whenever she wants. Light, soft, that gentle pale cream that reminds her, incongruously, of green tea ice cream in the hot summer sun. Wrong colour, wrong smell, but somehow right, perfect when her hand rests over it, and she can almost taste it melting on her tongue.
>>>>
Cardiff was rain, always rain, streaming down my windows and battering the few ragged flowers that graced my windowbox. Sweet smelling daphne, jinchoge, grew in a pot on my kitchen bench as I cautiously eased into living there, expanded into the space available instead of being constricted in faceless red.
It rained as I ran for the bus, the pavement wet and grey and slick. I had to be at work on time, had to work late, had to tap my fingers over the keyboards there instead of twining them round themselves all alone. I was sure I could hear the rain in the Hub, sometimes, over the hum of the computers, the hiss of Suzie's blowtorch, the slow shuffle of the MO in his slippers. Jack was always happy in the rain, eyes sparkling and shaking out his greatcoat in extravagant splatters. I never asked why he loved the rain so much. Safer not to ask, not to draw attention to myself. Jack could send me back anytime.
Work hard. Be competent. Don't ask.
The MO died in the rain, slumping to the concrete of the pavement at a scene, seeming to blend in with the dark ground, melting into it as his heart gave out. I held his hand as he gasped his last. It felt like paper under my hands, skin like crepe and thin yellow squares of tissue.
Owen's hands were smooth and skillful; if they shook a little whenever he had to open a skull, I never pointed it out or asked. Better not to ask about other people's ghosts and reasons. I never wanted to talk about the nightmare again.
Don't ask.
>>>>
Kneeling down on the faded green cushion she had placed in front of the table her hands slowly lift out all the tools, dusting each one with the feathery caresses she had seen her Obachan give to them, hands lit with soft light against each plane. It's easy to fall into the old rhythms: ink, brush, paper, stone. Each one is functional, crafted to serve and support. Each laden with everything needed to make the world in lines on paper. Earth is everything, in this. A record of earth.
The words flow off her brush, fingers dancing in the light. The muscles move in patterns she thought she had long ago forgotten. Back, before Torchwood, before the think tank, before the nightmare, she had done this. She had sat next to her grandmother, learning and watching and shaping the words.
When she had lived in a messy flat with harsh lights and towering stacks of books with that hard, coarse smell of industrial paper, though, then the box remained untouched. Now, in the smoky lights of Cardiff, the box rests on the table, open, contents making the pattern of her past.
>>>>
It had been easy for Mary to captivate me. I knew Jack could see that truth in my eyes after we watched her disappear into the sun. I had no excuses; could nearly feel the weight of red cotton on my shoulders. As heavy as the weight of Gwen and Owen's eyes burning into me. I didn't want to disappear again, onto the concrete floor of my cell. I let the eyes focus on me, let them think the shaking in my hands was fear of the knife at my throat. Maybe Jack was fooled. Maybe.
I escaped home as soon as I could, and spent the night pacing, waiting for the door to burst open, waiting for my ears to split with the noise and the silence. Waiting for the coarse red overalls and the harsh cradle of concrete, the mechanical clip of the voice from the ceiling.
The night brought Jack. Alone. What was there to say? If he sent me, I would go. He claimed me, I would stay. I made green tea in tiny cups and we sipped it and silently watched the lights glare orange and white in the city. The tea warmed my hands.
>>>>
It took the open spaces and light of her flat in Cardiff - not too many walls, no strip lighting, all warm and open and light and free - to remind her of the low tables and soft cushions of her youth. Perhaps there she had not absently tweaked a flawed design into a lethal machine, and traded her captivity for captivity. Perhaps, in the rhythm of ink, brush and stone, she could forget that nightmare. Perhaps she could feel at home, not on trial, safe, warm, loved.
Characters stalked the paper, hard and edgy at first, soaking softly into the paper in seconds. There was peril, caught, ensnared, lost and bereft. Later, days, months, maybe, when the paper drifts had risen round her like autumn leaves and ginger tea, there might have been hope.
>>>>
I fumble for a pen, shirt soft under my fingers, knowing I've got one somewhere. Knowing that this is it. Knowing that I'm escaping the cell for good. This is it. Over. No more, Jack. No more. Closing my fingers round the plastic, I tug the lid off and drag the tip over my arm. Escape. Free. Done.