{rp} Will you follow me into fire? Will you follow me into darkness? Will you follow me into death?

[superiorspectre]

Suzie's chosen a relatively isolated spot -- no point in possibly knocking anyone else out when Thane comes to get her -- and is sitting comfortably, leaning back against a tree, browsing The Complete Emily Dickinson. (Paper books, at last!) The Dickinson calms her down, and the tree ought to spare her any undignified toppling over when she's

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[superiorspectre]

He's seen right through her, and the feeling of being out of her depth, of not being good enough sends one of the shards on the surface of her psyche digging in, twisting in ways she didn't expect and couldn't account for.

Forgive me, Jack, she thinks. But I'm not leaving you. I do this or I die.

Somewhere in the parts of her mind carefully hidden away, she feels something start to move, a slow, gradual shift, that ends in a suggestion of a form above her, many-armed and snarling, its shoulders shaking with tears or laughter or both. Its voice is faint, like the rest of it, shifting as it speaks, changing in strength and inflections, back and forth and back again. It might not even be the same voice at all.

and this is what you see of me father thought i'd beaten you at your own game and all of those that can hurt i learned from and learned better but you never taught me enough to surpass ... you have our captain and we cannot allow it but where is our power where have you taken it forgive us our captain this is what you made us father and this is what we shall become ... we can sacrifice this part of ourself for our captain to preserve him keep him secret keep him safe and we have nothing else nothing but our captain

And with that it sinks into Suzie, staring through her eyes before it vanishes, and when Suzie speaks, there are echoes of its voice in hers.

"Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you."

The quote's delivered with a twist of the mouth and an unblinking gaze, locked onto Thane's. "Call it flattery if you want," she says, "but you're good. Better than he was," and she's not sure if she means Jack or her father or both. This is truth pulled from a place it had been hidden, but the Vesmier helped there, brought all the damage up, and she can admit now what she'd never dared to say otherwise, even to herself. She looks for this, looks for images of her own personal hell magnified out of all proportion, looks for that same cruelty, that taunt of never-good-enough and throws herself at it.

If she can endure it, it's one step closer to erasing where it all began, and if she can't...

I'm disappointed in you, Suzie. It's just the two of us now. You'll have to do better next time. Clear enough for her to hear, to cause a tremor in her hands, quickly stilled.

Why won't you DIE?

...if she can't endure it, she obviously deserves it.

"Better than I am, and it's been a long time since I've seen that." She's quiet now, but there are sharp edges in her posture, her voice, her eyes. No pretense, no games, just the darkest of truths, raw and anguished and very, very quiet. Seen and not heard, just as she was taught. "I have this, and I... had Torchwood." Self-loathing, self-destruction, and the bloody job.

Her aim is survival; it's surviving him. And there he is, gorgeous and cruel, loathed and yes, wanted, dear fucking God, she wants him, and if he knows how to look, it's all right there. Nothing feigned, nothing obscured except for the one thing, the one person she has to protect, to save, the only one who bothered trying to save her, who's still trying, even when there's nothing left to be saved.

I'm sorry, Jack. It's like I said... You're a good man. And I'm not a good anything.

"...is that interesting enough, Agent Thane?"

[john_thane]

A figure pulls itself out of Thane, still close enough to wrap its arms around his shoulders, half-sunk into his body, whispering just below the threshhold of audibility, punctuating whatever words with a nip at his neck, fingers on his face. Thane doesn't tend to repress emotions and considerations, not aside from that deathwish and shards of people he once was/could have been/isn't now so what's the point - alll of that is kept roiling in his consciousness, thought but left unspoken.

But this is something very close to him, something barely not listened to, integrated again in a few moments because it's not hard to see and here, in the dubious privacy of his own mind, it's too easy to admit. His only options, going after the Doctor now, are ultimate victory or ultimate defeat. Triumph in a way he can hardly imagine, or be torn down piece by piece until not even the pieces remember what they are. It's the second possibility which is by far the more probable, but he wants one, needs one, to be realized. Even that would be better than staying here.
Show her the quality of your mercy.
Thane stands. Behind him Jack throws himself forward, with a flicker of the larger shadow - the beast, buried twice now, bound but never entirely silenced. It doesn't matter. They're held back by something, spectral iron, wrought bars or chains, a barrier even the Vesmier was stymied by.
There is nothing I recognize as mercy any more.
I will destroy you, he says, almost pleads and I've watched this too many times already, tied back in his own subconscious, unable to do or change anything.

And Thane is walking over, the key to the cuffs held in his hand so there's no way to take it without touching him, feeling the warmth of his skin. And then he's offering it, because this is a new twist on an old routine, and he has all the power.

"We'll see," he says, watching her eyes with every appearance of high dispassion. "You'll have to convince me." And God help you if you waste my time, his tone says, settling across the words.

The fainter shadow has turned away. The tarshadow is laughing, wounded and bitter.

Selfish, is all that it says.

[superiorspectre]

That wasn't meant to be true.

It's a quiet, horrified thought, sounding like it came from someone much, much younger than Suzie herself. She was meant to be playing him, not...

She wants him. After what he did to Tosh (You were right about me, Tosh. I'm sorry...), part of her still...

It doesn't matter. Selfish or not, true or not, I did what I set out to do. And I'm sorry, Jack, I really am. You shouldn't have to see this. But I believe in you. All of us do. And for you to give up on that, on Torchwood... That's worse than anything he could do. That's letting him win. Even if he's something you were, you're more than he is, and you're better, and I'm not letting you go. I don't think Gwen would, either.

One way or another, I'm fixing this. For all of you.

Suzie looks into Thane's eyes, searching them for a sign of... anything at all, really. Of course, she's not going to find one. That's the point, isn't it? He's better than she is.

And then she reaches up, takes the key from his hand very slowly, very carefully, not entirely convinced it won't be yanked away. Her hand stays against his for perhaps longer than strictly necessary, though she has to fight to keep it from shaking. She wants to be touched. She wants to jerk away in revulsion. She hates him almost as much as she hates herself for wanting him. It was supposed to be a lie.

Besides, Jack... There's nothing here worth saving. Me and him, Jack, and I'm every bit the traitor they said I was, just for this.

"And just what would it take," she says softly, "to convince someone like you, I wonder?" She pulls away, and the moment she breaks contact she's undoing the cuffs with practised efficiency. Jack trained her well, once upon a time; she's not even looking, her eyes still locked on Thane's, showing more than they should. "What do you want?"

There's a place in her mind, safe and quiet, away from him, and she wants to retreat there now, but she doesn't dare. Doesn't deserve to.

Doesn't want to? Yes, perhaps that, too.

[john_thane]

Thane brushes his fingers across her cheek, a practiced gentleness resolving into a fist at the nape of her neck, knotted in her hair. He's still feeling her out, alert to everything - the pace of her breathing, the look in her eyes, the way she holds the key, the smell from her skin. The feel of her hair tells him she values appearances as well as the veneer she holds up in her eyes. The slip of her tone tells him she's not used to breaking apart. The slant of her shoulders tells him she's used to this arrangement, though not in total degree, that she knows these terms, and they know her.

No, Jack says, and now there's no pleading in his voice. There's pain, but it's the same pain as when he said he'd kill her if he had to. This is what he is, somewhere and somehow - he's the leader, Torchwood Command, and he will hold together, break apart, defend or judge or kill because that's his responsibility. It might not be good. Might not even be fair. But it's what he has, does, is, and Torchwood comes to learn that if they see him this far down. You cannot look at me now and tell me I am worth saving and you are not. There is nothing you owe me for which this could be payment. I will carry you out of this bleeding if I have to.

Thane lets her go, then turns and walks to the other edge of the room. He's programming something into his wristband, and looks up after a moment. "Come on, then." Cross the room. Walk to me or I leave you behind, and wouldn't you just hate that? You will buy my time second by second and if you cannot pay, I won't kill you. I'll leave you tied up on the floor of your tower and let Torchwood finish the job.

[superiorspectre]

When Thane's fingers brush against her cheek, Suzie freezes at first, unsure of what to expect. She's used to having some control, subtle as it is, and here her power's nearly nonexistant. This much is hers: to keep him interested. So there's a second of quiet tension, and when his fist curls in her hair, that, she knows. Knows just enough to relax into it slightly, to move into the grip, make it easier for him. Resist, and it hurts more. Go limp, same thing. So the trick is to relax as much as is allowed, to be as ready as possible for whatever comes next.

And there's something in Jack's voice she hasn't heard in far too long, and there, there he is. Welcome back, O Captain, she thinks, and for all the pain and fear and self-loathing... It's possible what the Vesmier built for her isn't completely ruined from the inside, because there's a certain dry note to her tone that wasn't there before.

I can. I did. If you want to carry me out of this, bleeding or not, she continues, grimly determined, then work with me. Help me, help us, so we both walk out of here. The Vesmier's given me a few things. A bit of structure, a way to hold together. ...I may have broken it a little just now. More than a little. But it's something. I have an assignment. If you want to save me, Captain, then we do the job.

She may doubt that she deserves to be saved, but if it gets her Captain back, that's what matters. And everything else... She'll deal with that later. None of this changes what just happened, but there's enough of the Suzie Costello who was Jack's second-in-command left to do what she has to, even if none of it shows on the surface.

And when Thane summons her to the other side of the room, she moves on instinct, with all the speed and efficiency Jack helped her refine in the years she worked for him. She notes the purse, grabs it and as she slings it over her shoulder she's already crossing the room. It's the kind of trained response that overrides emotional reactions: break down later. Move now. And it's only when she stops at Thane's side that she notices the shaking of her hands, the way she's clutching at the strap of her purse... But it doesn't matter. She's there, as ordered.

[john_thane]

That tells Thane more, watching her move, watching her react. He hits the teleport a second before she reaches him, reaching out almost as an afterthought to touch her shoulder, envelop her in the flash. It's good that she was quick.

They emerge in the hall of a two-story strip mall, brand-new, from the looks of it, still with For Lease signs still in the windows. He shoves open a door - a storage closet, from the looks of it, though it might be wise to check it for safeguards before sticking one's hand in - and withdraws his hunting rifle, disallowing any trace of a smile to touch his face.

Ours, whispers the integrated shadow.

Thane walks to another doorway, tripping the mechanism and raising the chain gate. The store inside is unfurnished, white and too large and empty, but he's taken a chair from somewhere and set it against the wall. He walks to it, laying the rifle across his lap and cleaning it without looking up at her.

He's saying, across every muscle, I am in control of this. Body, weapon, situation, and she's walked into the sphere of that control. But, as for that, she's incidental. She can't extract herself, but she can be dumped out of this.

"The Doctor," Thane says, clearly a prompt. It's another test, as well - What are you willing to give me without my asking? He'll be the one, hisses the tarshadow. Tear us to pieces. Finish the job. Or break into nothing, then he'll be the lucky one.

You can still walk out of this, Jack says. Play coy. Evade. Thane wouldn't offer her the regard of killing her.

There's no chance she'll take it. not after coming this far, and what does that say? But he has to try. Because seeing this through and seeing her survive this is going to require two ends to be shredded against an unyielding middle, and Jack's not convinced that he has a magic bullet any more than they do.

[superiorspectre]

In the moment after the teleport, Suzie's first thought is, Oh, so that's what it feels like! Just for a moment, there's a flicker of curiosity... She's had to give Thane more of herself than had ever been planned, and that lets it slip into her expression... She wants to take the thing apart, find out how it works... That's what she does, with technology and people both. The trick with either is doing it without damaging them in the process.

But not even firsthand experience of a teleport can change the fact of where she is, and what she's done. The fear, the self-loathing, they're all back seconds later. She follows him because she has nothing else she can do, because the combination of his cruelty and her own need, her craving for punishment (to survive it? to be broken by it? something tells her the answer is yes) have conspired to pull her in as irresistibly as gravity attracting a satellite.

She's in orbit around him, and that orbit's decaying. Eventually she'll crash. There's no if here, just when.

When he sits, she moves to stand near him, just off-centre in his field of vision, not so far off as to hide, nor close and confrontational, judging distance and positioning by instinct. I'm focused on you, it says, but I won't presume to command your focus in return. Head slightly bowed, just... watching him, hands clasped behind her back, where they can clutch at each other without him seeing, standing at something very like parade rest.

Nothing about this will fool him, of course. He knows, she's sure, that her hands are clutching each other behind her back to still the shaking, that if he put a hand on her right now he could feel the slightest of tremors running all through her, not visible, but enough to be felt. But appearances are one of the few things she has control over, here. And even that can be taken away at a moment's notice.

What little control she has only reinforces his, and this, she thinks, is exactly what he wants... Her holding herself together enough to give herself to him, with full knowledge of what she's doing. If she just gave up and allowed herself to be taken, he wouldn't bother. From everything he's shown her, he wants her to work for this, to be painfully aware of just how far she's falling.

And oh, she is.

You know I can't, she thinks at Jack. I'm sorry. She wants to touch him somehow, to offer or receive reassurance that's beyond her reach at the moment, but she pushes that thought back as firmly as she can.

And something responds, a shadow that pulls away from her and takes one step, than another, in Jack's direction, watching him warily. This one's small, timid, and slowly its features resolve into a much younger copy of Suzie, barefoot and in a nightgown. She's looking at Jack like she's not sure if he's safe, hanging back... And then suddenly she runs to him and flings her arms around his waist, somehow finding a way to cling comfortably to him despite the abstract straitjacket. I'm sorry, she says, face pressed into his side, and it's uncertain whether she means for the sudden clinging or... everything else. I really, really am, and that's NOT a lie, I swear it isn't...

And I'm sorry for this, especially, Suzie thinks.

"The Doctor," she says, darkness in eyes and voice, fear and mistrust and anger. There's not much room for doubt about her feelings, just from the way she says that name. "Safe in his TARDIS, and she's gone and locked him in, because no one can stand to see him hurt, running after you again. Safe and surrounded by otherwise sane people who'd take a bullet for him, and above all, feed his delusion that he's the tragic hero in all of this."

Her next words are soft, barely audible. "Better an honest monster than someone so lost in his mad drive to 'help' that he feels he can disregard the ruin left behind along the way."

[john_thane]

He lets his eyes flick up to her for just long enough to say You're down a point. Do better or get out. Then it's back to cleaning the rifle, working her barrel, her trigger, adjusting the sight. This century doesn't have the requisite parts he needs to make her into a truly spectacular weapons, but...

Sometimes broken things, imperfect things, are all you get.

"And you." His voice is flat and hard-edged. You say you harbor grievances against him. You want my interest. You think I don't know everything I need to about Torchwood and their idiotic allegiances?

Behind him, Jack startles at the sudden shadow, and before he can react, the faint shadow is stepping over toward him. It stays as far as it can away from him, but reaches out to the young Suzie, putting a hand on her shoulder to pull her away.

Don't, he says - warns, really, because he knows someone long-gone in the Agency and he knows that civilians do best to stay far away from them. There's fear in his voice. Even if he's still a neophyte, holding rank on a social technicality, he knows enough to see that he's not good, either. But he's safer, in a way, than anything else in this implied playing field. Don't draw attention. Don't get close. Don't walk into the Agency or an Agency man. I'm trying to tell you how to survive.

And Jack doesn't move. Doesn't respond to that, doesn't refute it, looks down at the shadow and says nothing because what the hell can he say?

...he's got no control, he says, after a moment, deep grief in the angles of his words. Trapped here. Not his world, not his wars, nothing. I can't defend him but I can't condemn him.

Is this what it is, then? It's still Jack, but the voice has slipped. How it was? He doesn't remember you, if this was what you saw. What do you think this means? I've only got the one solution. It's what I would do, were this you.

Say what happened if you have to stay here. Everything. The more the... worse. I don't want this from you.

[superiorspectre]

I didn't want this. But if this is what it takes... I can't be rational, Jack. I have to give him nothing but emotion, reason and understanding have no place here.

She hasn't missed those cues, and for all that she does not want this, if this is what she has to do, she'll give him everything and then some.

And you won't remember this, Jack. When we get you back, and we will, if you've got anything, it's going to be... This. I'm sorry, Jack. You love him, I know.

"He came to help me with what the Rift did to me, what I was seeing... I see things people've locked away, things they don't want to admit to, all the darkness they tell themselves isn't part of them. I see them. I hear them. And the Doctor came." Her voice is flat, dead, a recitation of atrocity. And this is worse than it's ever been, telling this, worse than reporting to Jack that first time, because it's all there on the surface this time.

"I've seen things that would give most people nightmares, heard them explain to me just how and why and how many they've killed, and the thing that he carried was worse than all of them. He's the dark at the end of everything, ancient and forever, shadows crawling all around him, he's death, he's..." She swallows, forces herself to stay steady, to fight the emotion that's rising in her voice despite her best efforts. She's dredging up a nightmare for him, laying it at his feet, and is this offering enough? Will anything ever be enough?

It's too late, says the girl-shaped shadow, clinging tighter to Jack when the fainter shadow touches her, not yet looking up.

"It named itself. Named him. Ka Faraq Gatri. Karshtakavaar. The Bringer of Darkness, Destroyer of Worlds. ...the Oncoming Storm." She'll never forget those words, never forget the truth of him. "And that's what it was. The darkness and the thunder, all of it reaching for him, wanting out. It would've destroyed me if it had the chance, because I could've become a traitor one day. And then he offered to make it stop, make it so I couldn't see. And like an idiot, I told him yes."

The worst part's coming now, and her shoulders shake with the memory, with the effort of getting through this recitation intact. "I didn't expect to be like... You know. You know what's been done to me to have me here and asking for this. And he pushed his way into my mind and it was just the same." And the words are coming out on their own now, all her effort going to just keeping it together, because she's Torchwood and she will not fall, not here, not now, even when her voice slips beyond her control. So she doesn't censor it, doesn't leave out the details that will give Thane every tool he could want to break her down even further. "It was my father, all over again. And it was there. It was right there, all in the front of my mind, what that did to me, and I tried to pull away, and he didn't..."

Teeth gritted now, forcing this to come out as words instead of sobs. "He didn't stop. He might've started to pull away, and then he found out he could look through me. He could see himself, talk to himself, and then. He. He went in. Deeper. I think he forgot I was even there, just so he could bloody yell at the monster that he is, so he could stare at it like he'd no idea it was ever there, because oh no, that's not him. The tragic hero, loved by all except himself, the Doctor..." Her face contorts at that, as she finds anger somewhere... And anger's something she can use, something that keeps her from falling apart completely.

"And I screamed. And someone came to help, and pushed him off me. And then he looked at me and told me he was sorry." She laughs, and it's more than half a sob. "That's what I'd been hearing all that time, under everything else, how he was so, so sorry. But 'sorry' never stops him. He wears his guilt like one of those bloody suits, but he knows there's no one higher than him, no authority over the Doctor. It's enough if he just feels really, truly bad about it, I'm sure."

[superiorspectre]

Silence, then, the ragged edge of her breathing. She's breaking for him already, and he's barely touched her at all, but this is only the beginning. He could do so much worse with what she's just given him...

The girl-shadow looks up, having spent the entire recitation with her face pressed against Jack, clinging tighter to him with every word. But when Suzie's done, she looks up, at the fainter shadow, her eyes wet, raw pleading in her expression. He came to save us. He loves the Doctor, but Jack came to save us from him anyway, don't you understand? No one else ever has, but Jack did, and Malek did... And if he hurts us, it's because we deserved it or because it's what he does because they made him dangerous, but he'd fight off his Doctor for us. Please don't take me from him, please don't... She looks into his eyes, willing him to just understand, and then she's back to hiding her face against Jack. I don't want to see, she murmurs.

[[OOC: Fucked up the first comment, and so I got to repost them both. Whee.]]

[john_thane]

Thane's lips pull into a thin smirk, barely a smirk, drawn as a man on the rack as he listens. This is what he wanted, the stuff on which suckled his crusade - the great and terrible Time Lord, the creature beyond reckoning. Thane doesn't style himself a tragic hero. And he doesn't, he thinks, keep anything hidden, not in a case like this - what he's showing her is the worst of him and he's kept nothing locked away, to his mind. The deathwish isn't so much discarded as doesn't register, and he's never considered Harkness any part of him, anyway. What's she going to do with his dark side when she came asking for it to overshadow her, when that's the foremost of him anyway?

"You were an idiot to trust him," Thane says, voice gaining some good humor. "But then, you walked up to me. I thought you said you were fond of surviving. Either you're just not very good at it, or the lady doth protest too much."

The faint shadow releases her, steps back. You think we're better? -I'm not better. Can't say for him. He wasn't better 'cause I was him. He was me. I'm not better. What we do - sorry's the last thing we have and then we don't even have that.

We can protect our own, that's all we can do as long as we're Agency, as long as we're this, it goes on, and then stalls. And it's Jack who picks up the thread.

And sometimes we can't do that.

Thane is looking her up and down. Still cool. Still uninvested, but his eyes are more relaxed, his expression a fraction more open. He's seen her as blood and breath and bone, posture and reaction, and now he's looking at something else. Something constructed, hair and clothes and purse, things to hide behind, things to be armored in.

If we're lucky we can hold what we've got, Jack snarls, the beast flickering around him, too far down to manifest. This fell around you and you thought of it as safety. Look where you are. Look where you've come to. I retain the right to kill you. I would have torn you apart if you had threatened him.

Utilitarian clothing, mostly. Oh, not entirely. Enough nods to fashion to pass in society, nothing too unusual, nothing he hasn't seen the like of every day he was on the street reading this world. Except one element.

Love has never been enough to save, or change, anything, Jack says. All we can offer and at that, very little. But I, being poor, have only my dreams.

Too simple, in a way, too crude in another. Out of place but central, something sentimental. He holds out his hand.

"Give me your necklace."

Refuse.

[superiorspectre]

But you try. No one tries for us. No one, not ever. Except...

Maybe she does protest too much. Maybe she doesn't know what she wants anymore, maybe she's not sure whether she wants Thane as something to overcome, or something to be destroyed by.

Maybe she's found something more important. Maybe the only way out of this is through it. This place, this situation, this person she's become.

The girl-shadow lets go, looks up at Jack with wide, frightened eyes, then slowly, so very slowly, reaches up to place a hand over the suggestion of crossed arms, over his heart. I know.

No condemnation. Just fact. We don't get to be safe. But this is close. It's... She bites her lip, trying to find the right word. It's fair.

Suzie's hand goes to the necklace without conscious thought. One thing. One person, in all the world, who did something for her before Jack and Malek, long gone and barely-remembered, a ring stolen from a dusty box when she left home.

The girl-shadow's head swivels, her gaze fixing on Suzie, on the necklace, on Thane, though she never once breaks contact. ...Mum.

"No. Not this." She's sacrificed pieces of herself for him, she's stripped herself down to things she never wanted to know and other things she never wanted to remember, but this... This isn't yours.

She meets his eyes, expecting the worst, but she'll stand firm on this for as long as she's able.

[john_thane]

You have to understand this, Jack says. If you want anything from me you have to understand this first.

There are far better people than me, he says, You think no one will care because you haven't looked. You haven't looked because you won't admit they'd exist. Not for you. I was worse than you were and with less reason to be. And you want to sacrifice yourself for me.

The faint shadow looks up at him, for a moment bitter pain twisting his face into something like Thane's, then twisting it past. No one was willing to sacrifice anything for us. Down, dog...

You make your own damnation. Or your own salvation.

Thane's smile grows, and his posture changes again. He relaxes, comfortable and confident both, and one tension has snapped from the air to be replaced with another. "Good," he says, and the message is twofold: the first, You've earned my interest. For now. The second, Then that's one more thing for me to take from you whether you want me to or not.

He goes on cleaning the rifle, but his eyes are fixed on Suzie. His fingers don't falter as he works on the weapon, and that too is a demonstration: This is precision. This is delicacy. This is me taking something down to its component pieces and putting it together so only I know I was there, or I could leave this scattered on the floor and walk away from it. This is what you are asking for.

I have never worked with someone I have not tried to take apart, Jack says under him. That I should know you inside-out is the posture of command for me, and your only insurance in me.

"Your father," Thane says, and now it's a game. Let's wander through your psyche. Let's toy with your demons. Let's see how far you'll crawl to me and how far I'll have to hunt you. Do you want to start the hunt now, little prey? Are you more afraid of coming to me or having me chase you?

I can't save you. I can destroy you. Remake you in my image. This is what I do and what I would have done.

Old torturers never die. They just get disappeared.

[superiorspectre]

Part of Suzie flees at that, retreats to the mental bunker the Vesmier built for her, watching through the cracks she put there herself. The rest of her watches Thane, raw and shaking, but fighting to stay upright, to give him a bit of challenge, at least, watching the way his hands move over the rifle and...

Oh, he's good. There's something hungry in her eyes as she watches him. She knows what he's doing, what he's trying to show her, and if this doesn't destroy her completely...

Oh, the things you could teach me.

And what would it be like, being taken apart by a master? She'd never met anyone to surpass her father, and his destruction had been, she knows now, a sign of his own desperation. Not clinical, not thorough, just the reflexive actions of a broken man.

She learned from that, and everyone who tried to break her after, she tried to break in return, or she just laughed as they tried and failed.

He's going to succeed, and he'll do it so beautifully...

Don't be upset, the girl-shadow says, almost pleads. We're hiding. Most of us is. Someplace safe. This is the worst of us. This is what hurts most.

She leans into Jack a little. We'll try to to be better, really. I promise.

"My father," Suzie says, "was a bastard. Mum died and... People were too difficult for him, then. People just died, just left him. So it was just the two of us, and he decided I wasn't to be human anymore. Not his daughter, just his perfect doll, a replacement for my mum and then some." Her voice is tight, angry, and after telling him about the Doctor, it's almost too much, but again, she reminds herself that she will not fall. It may be easy, with the things she's given him, but she damn well won't make it effortless on his part.

"Pushed me, forced me to be the best at everything I tried, and if I wasn't..." No. Not that far. Not that far, not yet. "He started fucking me when I turned thirteen."

She'll give him this much, but not everything. If he wants details, he can bloody well drag them out of her.

It's easier, when you've got that kind of power. When you know them like that. We understand. We've done it. But you use that to protect people. Not just yourself. If you can say we might be that good someday, we might even believe you.

She still hasn't responded to the first thing Jack said, but after another moment's thought, she pulls away and sits on the ground next to him, hugging her legs to her chest, knees tucked up to her chin. There was someone we thought was good, once. And we love her. But she won't trust us now. She'll never trust us again. Not now. Especially not now. We came to him. She'll hate us. She should. This was penance. But it won't be enough, because we wanted it, wanted him.

[john_thane]

"And that wrecked you," Thane says, and that's recognition, interpretation, judgment. Because you are a wreck, standing here in front of me. He fits the rifle back together, slinging her over his shoulder when he stands. "You're thirteen. About..." He brings his hand up to the height of a child's head, "this high to your father. Adults are so big, aren't they?"

The words are idle, curious, a cat batting at something to see if it will roll or run. There's no malice in the tone but no human regard, either; it's a good story, that's all it is, never mind if it cuts her up inside. It's like Thane is deciding that maybe this would be a good way to spend an afternoon.

"So, you and your father. Big empty place that's never big when you want it to be. You're not your mother and you're a pretty piss-poor substitute and that's on his mind every time he fucks you. You get better you think that'll stop? Maybe the point is not for it to stop."

He'll assume things, follow the patterns, apply and then slowly distort a template he's learned from this century, the faint shadow says, turning to Jack with a hand at the collar of his uniform. It sounds for all the world like he's at a recitation exam.

Keep talking, Jack says.

"All right. So you get better," Thane says. "You get better at everything, but you're cobbled together from a handful of habits and survival instincts and your daddy's instructions. The thing with building something on wreckage is that it'll always be mediocre."

Doesn't have a family, Jack says. Learned to hate the idea of families. Learned to hate anyone who had them.

That's what I get for trying to rely on anyone, the faint shadow says. Who cares. Who's ever going to care. At least the Agency gives me quarters and a decent paycheck and people who'll say hello in the halls.

"But you just keep going, that's the thing about you. He gets outpictured and you keep trying to rise to the requirement of the codger who only really needed you to lie down and spread it. You're not trying to get out of it, you're trying to get back into it. Or," he says, with a lopsided grin, "trying to get it back into you."

You're not a survivor, Suzie, Jack murmurs. You want to be. You want to prove to yourself that you are. You'll go chasing your own destruction because you want to evade it. And because there's no such thing as an ultimate danger, things will never end for you - there will always be something worse to imagine, something worse to try to find.

You can't pay penance for things you didn't do, or things done to you. You want this over with and this is the worst you've seen. It's not right - its not the right way to do this. But it doesn't make you a traitor. Coming here was a mistake. It wasn't evil.

"So tell me," Thane says. "In plain terms. Here and now. What do you want?"

Tell him you want to know that there was no way to win.

[superiorspectre]

And this hurts, and in some ways, Jack's words are worse than Thane's.

And God, she feels small all over again, and her body language reflects it: even at a reasonable height (almost 5'10" in her boots, as practical a heel as she can manage, because she's never without those bloody heels, anything to not feel smaller than she is), she seems tiny in comparison to him, shrinking in on herself.

Always mediocre. That hurts, sandpaper on raw nerves, and even with all the control she can muster in place, there's the slightest of flinches when he says it.

Curled in on itself, the girl-shadow murmurs softly, quoting:

She rose to his requirement, dropped
The playthings of her life
To take the honorable work
Of woman and of wife.

If aught she missed in her new day
Of amplitude, or awe,
Or first prospective, or the gold
In using wore away,

It lay unmentioned, as the sea
Develops pearl and weed,
But only to himself is known
The fathoms they abide.

She looks up at Jack, then. Dickinson. This is ours. It never came from him, it never touched him. The poetry. Not much is ours, but that is.

"I want..." Suzie falters, looks up at Thane, and her voice is barely even a whisper. "I want to know there was no way to win. Once and for all, I just want to know..."

D'you really believe that? the girl-shadow asks Jack, still staring up at him.