Torchwood Fic
Rating (15) just in case. SPOILERS for all those who haven't watched 1/13 of Torchwood yet.
Shut In The Light
It’s all-consuming.
Just like a need, that first fragile rush that takes a headlong pelt to the brain via all the synapses firing, just like a bad idea, this is the quality of power Susie feels as makes her way about her business.
Her business, and her pleasure.
From the moment that she put the rudimentary glove on, back when it was only a thin silver mesh that had been crudely adapted for a five-fingered hand, she had felt it. Some kind of latent power, a surge of almost overwhelming beauty as the force that she tapped made itself evident. That the glove then evolved was not, to her mind, surprising. It was in its own way alive, and she intended to see to it that it grew, had time to change and to adapt from the long centuries of neglect that it had endured. Its own shape and colour told a history unique to a hybrid of earth and alien technology. Pulled from a burning spaceship, charring with its original owner until some foolhardy peasant had reached in and stolen the silver bangle for his own. Long scorches of carbon remained somehow ingrained, deeper and more profound than writing.
And then, who knew? She hadn’t been a historical researcher in her previous work, but now she devoured all that she could about records research, finally tracking down the old and vague legends about a healing cult somewhere in northern England. There was something, too to tie in the dates of a meteorite fall, or a “raine of fyre” on the land of the Duke of Northumberland sometime in the days when records were kept by those privileged to literacy. But oh so little else. She almost felt cheated, in a way.
It had been stitched to cloth. It had been venerated as an unrecognised relic of God, it had been used as surety on the deed to a great house, it had been lost and found again in two decades by the same family.
It had been welded to a gauntlet.
There it remained, the power inherent in the alien artefact so worn by time that it now only responded to bare skin inside the medieval armoured glove, and it called to her like nothing else. Like the brightness of the sun against a cloudy sky, Susie began to see the world in a different way. Beside the glove, everything else lacked history, lacked understanding, a sense of place and time.
As she followed its travels through the land, read of rumours of miracles by errant healers, she began to see the definition she now had on the world. It was grey and old, and she was already tired of having to deal with yet another escaped Weevil. Sick of their sanctuary beside them, underneath them, she longed for a time when everything could be as black and white as the world of the Glove.
But only the guys at Torchwood called it that. At home, in her flat kept immaculate and bare of all the frivolities, she had found a better name. It was the Reviver.
At night, she felt the stifling presence of the city, and dreamt about the wedge-shaped faces of Weevilkind as she tried to rest. But even in sleep, she could not escape the feeling that there was a great connection that she could not yet see. Over and over she went, searching the records. Daring even to defy Jack’s orders to stop her research, and covertly running through reams of literature. Healing. Powers. Myths and legends of the time when people thought of the battle between Good and Evil in the terms of the not-so-vague: when all men were Weevil and the only good came from one’s own strength.
She looks to her own power.
She decided to cure the world of sickness before it claimed her, and woke in the mornings no happier. Instead, she looked around her, and began to see everything in the same monochrome.
Even the knife in her hand.
When the first one came round, all he spoke of was the pain. She timed it, reviving him and watching him fade like some delicate hothouse flower suddenly exposed to the black frosts of winter. The glove glowed almost white-hot with its power, her power, and she felt almost vindicated in what she had done. But not quite. After all, the nagging feeling remained.
She had sneered at what Toshiko had said, claiming that she was becoming obsessed with the glove, feeling more for the project than for anything else. She had ignored Owen when he had made his usual crude observations, nasty inferences and remarks. She was alight with her own righteousness, the idea of how she could save with one touch. Longer and longer the spell lasted, growing from mere seconds to a spell of time that gave a body minutes at a time. It was life, kindled through her, and held aflame through the glove. But Jack looked at her as though she was the one who were burning.
When she saw the policewoman on the screen yet again, she fought down an urge to cry out. Just like a dark shadow following her, like the scurrying motions of the Weevils she tracked on a seemingly daily basis, Gwen Cooper had come back. Just as son as Torchwood were sure that they had finished with her, she had come back and would not leave.
Grabbing up the knife, and the glove, she thrust them into her bag. No longer could she let this go on, continually being haunted by the spectre of her own failure. From the darkness of the Hub, she rose through the dim tunnels into the starker light of sodium-lit Cardiff.
The light was nearly blinding, and she raised her hand to shield herself from it. Had she really been in the darkness all this time, then? A single line from the Shakespeare she had studied in a different place and as such a different person so long ago came back. It felt like music, but made a dreadful melody in her brain.
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun...
When compared to the sun, lamps are nothing. But in the darkness, even a tiny flame can be mistaken for real light, real warmth. She feels herself incandescent, and the darkness that surrounds her pulls in once more. She apologises, and gutters, and raises the gun.
When her superior falls like a stone, after that dreadful crack and the cry of horror that springs from what only seems like her throat, she realises that for the first time, she will not reach out a hand to the dead. What would this man say? What could he say, having his light snuffed out so quickly in this night?
She trembles. For without the power of the glove comforting her, somehow quieting her brain, she cannot rest as easily. As she reaches out to Gwen, the burning she feels does not cease. How dark must this world be before there is light? The reviver proves it: so much scum and darkness that she sees, and so much light that she will never see. As she fires that first shot, she realises that the only light she has seen is not her own. Wasn’t it in her own corollary that only scum comes to this place?
Jack rises. With no idea of how he does it, with only a single thought for her own life, she sees the darkness not behind her, but ahead, and all around.
Standing in shadow, she has forgotten what the sun looks like. Is it blinding? Is it anything like what she sees ahead of her now, in unremitting clarity as the woman begs to understand. To remember.
Darker than Jack’s eyes, brighter than the truth, the world is no longer in black and white as she sees the minute shades of grey settle about her, her actions.
She gives the bag a brief, convulsive clutch. Whatever the reviver has done, it has not brought her life. She hopes that no-one has the harsh nerve to use it on her. Those who shut in the light…they shut in nothing but darkness.
Shut In The Light
It’s all-consuming.
Just like a need, that first fragile rush that takes a headlong pelt to the brain via all the synapses firing, just like a bad idea, this is the quality of power Susie feels as makes her way about her business.
Her business, and her pleasure.
From the moment that she put the rudimentary glove on, back when it was only a thin silver mesh that had been crudely adapted for a five-fingered hand, she had felt it. Some kind of latent power, a surge of almost overwhelming beauty as the force that she tapped made itself evident. That the glove then evolved was not, to her mind, surprising. It was in its own way alive, and she intended to see to it that it grew, had time to change and to adapt from the long centuries of neglect that it had endured. Its own shape and colour told a history unique to a hybrid of earth and alien technology. Pulled from a burning spaceship, charring with its original owner until some foolhardy peasant had reached in and stolen the silver bangle for his own. Long scorches of carbon remained somehow ingrained, deeper and more profound than writing.
And then, who knew? She hadn’t been a historical researcher in her previous work, but now she devoured all that she could about records research, finally tracking down the old and vague legends about a healing cult somewhere in northern England. There was something, too to tie in the dates of a meteorite fall, or a “raine of fyre” on the land of the Duke of Northumberland sometime in the days when records were kept by those privileged to literacy. But oh so little else. She almost felt cheated, in a way.
It had been stitched to cloth. It had been venerated as an unrecognised relic of God, it had been used as surety on the deed to a great house, it had been lost and found again in two decades by the same family.
It had been welded to a gauntlet.
There it remained, the power inherent in the alien artefact so worn by time that it now only responded to bare skin inside the medieval armoured glove, and it called to her like nothing else. Like the brightness of the sun against a cloudy sky, Susie began to see the world in a different way. Beside the glove, everything else lacked history, lacked understanding, a sense of place and time.
As she followed its travels through the land, read of rumours of miracles by errant healers, she began to see the definition she now had on the world. It was grey and old, and she was already tired of having to deal with yet another escaped Weevil. Sick of their sanctuary beside them, underneath them, she longed for a time when everything could be as black and white as the world of the Glove.
But only the guys at Torchwood called it that. At home, in her flat kept immaculate and bare of all the frivolities, she had found a better name. It was the Reviver.
At night, she felt the stifling presence of the city, and dreamt about the wedge-shaped faces of Weevilkind as she tried to rest. But even in sleep, she could not escape the feeling that there was a great connection that she could not yet see. Over and over she went, searching the records. Daring even to defy Jack’s orders to stop her research, and covertly running through reams of literature. Healing. Powers. Myths and legends of the time when people thought of the battle between Good and Evil in the terms of the not-so-vague: when all men were Weevil and the only good came from one’s own strength.
She looks to her own power.
She decided to cure the world of sickness before it claimed her, and woke in the mornings no happier. Instead, she looked around her, and began to see everything in the same monochrome.
Even the knife in her hand.
When the first one came round, all he spoke of was the pain. She timed it, reviving him and watching him fade like some delicate hothouse flower suddenly exposed to the black frosts of winter. The glove glowed almost white-hot with its power, her power, and she felt almost vindicated in what she had done. But not quite. After all, the nagging feeling remained.
She had sneered at what Toshiko had said, claiming that she was becoming obsessed with the glove, feeling more for the project than for anything else. She had ignored Owen when he had made his usual crude observations, nasty inferences and remarks. She was alight with her own righteousness, the idea of how she could save with one touch. Longer and longer the spell lasted, growing from mere seconds to a spell of time that gave a body minutes at a time. It was life, kindled through her, and held aflame through the glove. But Jack looked at her as though she was the one who were burning.
When she saw the policewoman on the screen yet again, she fought down an urge to cry out. Just like a dark shadow following her, like the scurrying motions of the Weevils she tracked on a seemingly daily basis, Gwen Cooper had come back. Just as son as Torchwood were sure that they had finished with her, she had come back and would not leave.
Grabbing up the knife, and the glove, she thrust them into her bag. No longer could she let this go on, continually being haunted by the spectre of her own failure. From the darkness of the Hub, she rose through the dim tunnels into the starker light of sodium-lit Cardiff.
The light was nearly blinding, and she raised her hand to shield herself from it. Had she really been in the darkness all this time, then? A single line from the Shakespeare she had studied in a different place and as such a different person so long ago came back. It felt like music, but made a dreadful melody in her brain.
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun...
When compared to the sun, lamps are nothing. But in the darkness, even a tiny flame can be mistaken for real light, real warmth. She feels herself incandescent, and the darkness that surrounds her pulls in once more. She apologises, and gutters, and raises the gun.
When her superior falls like a stone, after that dreadful crack and the cry of horror that springs from what only seems like her throat, she realises that for the first time, she will not reach out a hand to the dead. What would this man say? What could he say, having his light snuffed out so quickly in this night?
She trembles. For without the power of the glove comforting her, somehow quieting her brain, she cannot rest as easily. As she reaches out to Gwen, the burning she feels does not cease. How dark must this world be before there is light? The reviver proves it: so much scum and darkness that she sees, and so much light that she will never see. As she fires that first shot, she realises that the only light she has seen is not her own. Wasn’t it in her own corollary that only scum comes to this place?
Jack rises. With no idea of how he does it, with only a single thought for her own life, she sees the darkness not behind her, but ahead, and all around.
Standing in shadow, she has forgotten what the sun looks like. Is it blinding? Is it anything like what she sees ahead of her now, in unremitting clarity as the woman begs to understand. To remember.
Darker than Jack’s eyes, brighter than the truth, the world is no longer in black and white as she sees the minute shades of grey settle about her, her actions.
She gives the bag a brief, convulsive clutch. Whatever the reviver has done, it has not brought her life. She hopes that no-one has the harsh nerve to use it on her. Those who shut in the light…they shut in nothing but darkness.