{rp} Will you follow me into fire? Will you follow me into darkness? Will you follow me into death?
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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And thank you.
Thane touches Suzie and she starts crying. A tear or two may have escaped before, during the long recitation about the Doctor, about her father -- she can't really remember, either way -- but this is real, earnest crying, her shoulders shaking, though she's completely silent.
That's a skill she's had to learn -- crying without making a sound.
She looks away as he speaks, the shame coming off her in palpable waves, but at those last words, she meets his eyes again. "I suppose we will," she says. Her voice is quiet, almost defeated, but her body's telling a different story, caught in a struggle between closer and away, and she's not sure what the right answer is.
After a moment, she pushes toward him, just a little, the tension evident in that motion. She's fighting herself for it, fighting for every bit of closeness she gets, but needing it at the same time.
...there is no right answer, is there? she tells him wordlessly, still crying as she looks into his eyes. I'm damned either way, and you know it, and you enjoy it. But I won't lie passive, not yet. Breaking, yes, but not broken.
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Don't thank me, Jack says, because he's got some idea of how this is going to go.
"Your father was more wrecked than you are," Thane says. "Sad and powerless and you were easy. Well, that's not the case, any more - but that's not the point any more, because you'll never be the biggest, the strongest. You grow up, get yourself Torchwood, and now there's a new class of bigger and stronger and can't-fight-off. All of a sudden there are people like me, people like the Doctor, and you're too small to stop them."
Everything he says falls in a predatorial grace, a lilt just above cruelty. Slow and steady, he'll excavate all of this, bring it up to ache against the air, and then he'll have his pickings from it.
"You think you've developed a pretty good eye for it," he says. "You have it in the sense that you can pick up a telescope and see the storm on the horizon. Oh, it'll cover you, nothing you can do to stop it, but at least you know it's coming, right?
"So here's something I'll tell you." His thumb is running over her knuckles, just enough pressure to remind her what he has. "It's too late to do you any good now, but once upon a time, it could have saved you." He lets his eyes flick away from her, behind her, just for a moment before returning. "Right behind you, there's a door. And there was a door when you were thirteen, and it wasn't the door you tried to close to stop him. There was a door, and if you thought the light of day would hurt your eyes, you should have seen how it burned him to cinders."
There's always a door when you turn back to look for one, Jack says. There's always a solution if you can step out of the timestream. But that's not an answer, it's a platitude. It solves nothing.
Systems of control, says the fainter shadow, and Jack nods in with a Keep talking. The faint one keeps talking. Help is not considered available to a subject unless the subject is capable of accessing it. A number of obstacles can be placed between the subject and any aid; the most subtle and pervasive of these are mental and physical.
That's an old trick, Jack continues for him. An old, old trick. Shame, guilt, fear, every one of these can be weaponized and deployed into that system of control until you can leave someone on the steps of their embassy and they will not walk inside. I know this. I've done it.
"Yeah. You can pick 'em out of a lineup. Then all you know is 'red sky at morning, sailors take warning,' and for all the good that does you, might as well be 'red sky at morning, sailors deeply fucked'. Look at you," he says, and on that, his voice softens. "You walked up to me and asked for this." And that's that, and his voice sharpens, and his grip tightens. "That's not how it works, Suzie."
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Strangely, the fact that he remains entirely unmoved by the tears is almost comforting. They get her nothing, they cost her nothing more than she's already giving. That's... soothing, somehow.
The rest of what he says is anything but, the casual tone of his words ripping open every festering wound, every buried truth too painful to look at. And the parallels, Thane and the Doctor, the fact that he's evoking all the right imagery...
Oh, she knows exactly what he's doing, and it's working anyway, and she knows it, the knowledge coming through in eyes and posture, an understanding levelled at Thane that would like to be accusatory, but can't quite make it. She takes Jack's words into herself, confirmation of things she already knew, but on the surface, they don't seem to penetrate. They can't seem to penetrate. And anything she'd want to say, could ever think to say, gets shoved back so hard and so deep that to her it's buried.
She's only vaguely aware of the girl-shadow, of its words, of how it might be twisting her meanings into deeper truths than she wants.
And it's working now, the shadow says. We've known for a long time there were ways out, but we were too afraid to take them then and too proud now, and he can use that. You can do that, because when this is done, you won't have this anymore. You'll have that. She nods at Thane. That's the power you'll have. Don't think we don't know. Don't think we aren't giving you this, as well, and this is the trust we're placing in you, Jack... Not that you succeed in any of this, but that you try.
The form's still that of a little girl, Suzie before she was shattered, but there's too much knowledge in her eyes, and too much age in her voice. These are the things it's up to her to say, because no one else can. Not the Kali-shadow, which has too much violence, too much pain behind it. Not Suzie herself, who forgot how to trust and is trying to learn. Just her.
And that, in itself, is another sacrifice.
It's Thane's tenderness, just before the end, that wounds most, and it pulls a noise from her, somewhere between gasp and whimper, a sound that screams prey to anyone who knows how to interpret it.
You're the monster under the bed, Jack, the thing in the closet. You're the nightmare that eats nightmares. And you've been leashed but never tame. Not even your friends are safe, because sometimes, you still get hungry, don't you? Sometimes there aren't any nightmares left except the ones inside you. She leans up on tiptoe, searching the suggestion of a face, looking for eyes that she can meet.
It's okay. There's quiet conviction in those two words. Loving people doesn't have to make sense. And I think... Sometimes... Maybe... People just hurt without meaning to? That last is uncertain, a concept only dimly grasped, but Suzie and Jack have both left wounds on each other, and neither of them can afford pretence here, not in this place.
It is, perhaps, a beginning.
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If we're not evil, neither are you. Every monster has a reason. And there's more to being good than holding yourself to a standard not even the Doctor can meet. You said something about making your own salvation. Even monsters can. And right now you are. You're eating yourself alive just so you can see us through this, so you can destroy us in a way that we're still walking at the end. Don't think we don't know. We learned to take people apart, too. But we don't want to hurt you. Not you. We will anyway, and we're sorry. And you'll hurt us, and you'll be sorry even when you think you can't afford to be. She leans up further, whispering. We'll try to do better if you will. Promise. No lies here, Jack.
Thane's grip tightens, and Suzie goes rigid, breath freezing in her throat... There's the fear, deep and primal, and there's nothing intentional in the way the walls behind her eyes crack open to reveal it, not this time.
No no nonononoNO! something wails, and it's not Suzie. It flickers inside her, towering over her for a moment and then shrinking down smaller than she is, caught easily in Thane's grip.
Suzie forces herself to breathe, forces the walls back up, something hard in eyes and posture. It's brittle iron pretending to be steel, but it's there, coming just as quickly as the fear, and just as unexpectedly.
She speaks, and her voice comes out like it was dragged over broken glass and rusted razors. "And just how. Does it. Work?"
For all the harshness of her tone, it sounds like a plea.
The girlshadow gasps, the appearance of age abandoned, and she bolts, running behind Jack, hands on him, looking for anything to grab on to, forehead pressed to the small of his back, hiding. Jack...
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I'm human, Jack pleads.
Only human? The faint shadow steps toward Jack, hesitating and then sidling half a step away. That's all and what I was. Only human. But you're something different, something that scares me more that Mr. How Far I Fell, and whatever you started as, you're not human, and you're not me. Can't you just look at yourself and see that?
And Jack shifts. Doesn't step back, not with the girlshadow there behind him, but he surrenders ground.
...I wasn't supposed to be this way.
No, the faint shadow yells, you weren't, none of us were ever supposed to be this way! Not me, not you, not the bastard tearing apart someone who deserves it less than we do, and every chance we had-
Now the tarshadow is laughing, viscous as cold blood. So stop your heart. Cut your breath. Dash yourself against the rocks.
...that isn't the person I am, the younger one says.
Tear yourself apart. It's not hard. It's on the tip of your fingers. You say this isn't the person you are but you have NOWHERE to run to, idiot, coward, and time closes down on you like duranium teeth and YOU REFUSE TO DIE. whatdoyouthink, youthinkyoucansurvivethis? We. We. We died long ago.
Stop, Jack says, and both the other shadows stop to look at him. He's looking to the ground, midway between himself and Thane, still but for breathing. But what can he be breathing, here and now?
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... ... ...what I am. This. This doesn't matter. You think that this matters? He drags his head up, looking at one, looking at the other. I remember that anger, he says, to the fainter one. We don't think. We don't reason. No memory. No will. We're just here, sunk under the surface, until she comes to realize us. So you think it matters what you say here, what you call me?
The younger shadow steps back, then back again.
You're the shadow of a man who failed a long time ago, Jarec, Jack says. You turned into him. I met him and destroyed him and the Doctor turned him into me. You're so far back I don't think of you any more, but I guess that he does. And I know that you hate me, and I'm sorry. But we never knew what to do.
Jarec takes another step back, rubbing a hand up his arm. ...I don't want to hate you, he says. But I don't want you. We were supposed to be better than any of this.
Yeah, Jack says, we were.
There's silence, and Jack looks away.
I know enough to know I'm not myself. Say things too easily. Know things I don't know. And I know we can't get close enough to change him, not much, not like we'd need. But there's something else. He looks up, eyeless face tracking for Suzie, slow and blind. One of us can get out, if she survives.
Monster. Yeah, maybe. Probably. Or I'm the whirlpool that sucks you in or the gravity blackwell that you can't see until you're too close and it's tearing you apart. I can only hold you together until I destroy you, but I can hold you that long.
And you. Both of you. You want an end to this. You want peace. So while you still have thoughts, you might as well help me, because Thane'll keep going until something tears him apart, and the last time, he looks to the faint one, only brought us you.
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"I'm Rome in this metaphor. The Doctor is Rome. Everything you run after with your heart in your throat and a tug in your groin is Rome. And you may win over something, out there, but I guarantee you it will undo you."
He's holding her hand steady, holding her gaze, no moving forward, no moving back. I have you on the ropes and twisting. Isn't that lovely. Isn't that sweet. I could read you the history of the Scarlet Empire and you'd listen like it was all the secrets in the world.
"You know why Pyrrus sacked Eryx? Because it wasn't full of stinking Romans. You know why Macedon thought he could break the Gauls? Because the Gauls weren't stinking Romans. Were the Romans still there? Of course there were. One of the things you learn if you study enough time is that there'll always be Romans.
"You look for losing battles," Thane says. "You memorized the terms you lost on and you engage on those terms, again, and again, and again. Is that finding no way to win or is that looking for a way to lose?"
He smiles, wide and young, and slips his hand from her hand.
He sweeps a step back and around her orbit, ambling backward until his back bumps the wall, watching to see how she'll do in the absence of that closeness, that warmth. Look. I've given you structure and taken it away. I've built you a bridge and taken it from you. What do you think you're standing on, chasm? What do you have to hold onto?
I could hold you down while you struggled, but that's a hammer where I want to use a needle. You'll look back at this and remember that every step was one you took to me.
I want you. But I don't want sex and screams and salt tears, I want you, and that's something no one but your father ever had. I'll have it if I have to build it in you.
"You change the game."
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"I really don't know anymore," she says. Takes a step towards him, and it feels like leaving a piece of her behind when she does.
A twist of her mouth.
"And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
"Poets tend to have a better idea than most what they're talking about."
Another step. Another piece of her falling away, and she wipes her eyes, forces herself to stand straighter, to look at him.
Here, Thane. Have a bit of Suzie, gift-wrapped. Tiny offerings from someone with no idea what else to give.
Meanwhile, shadow-hands make their way onto Jack's shoulders. She can't offer much, but she can touch him, and she will. Nosce te ipsum, Jack. You're only halfway there, and you're more than you think you are. I just wish I knew how to show you that.
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"'Good and evil and joy and sorrow and I and you - colored smoke before creative eyes it seemed to me. The creator wanted to look away from himself, - so he created the world. Drunken joy it is for the sufferer to look away from his suffering.'
"And there's something perfect about poetry," Thane says. "Something exact. Perfect little lines with perfect little metres, a perfect little structure that use and reuse and reuse can't wear down."
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Her voice soft as she finishes, just out of reach.
This is ours! the girl-shadow hisses, peeking around from behind Jack. Don't!
"Keats said that beauty is truth, truth beauty. I never did believe him, but it was a nice sentiment." Her eyes acknowledge the truth of his last statement, acknowledge what he'll use them for. But there's a spark in her eyes that wasn't there a few minutes ago.
For now, she is this close, no nearer. For now, she's stopped.
I may be in trouble, Jack. As if that wasn't yet abundantly clear.
It's the first time Suzie's addressed him directly for a while, now.
It's probably not a good sign.
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I know, he says. Suzie. I'm so sorry.
Thane makes no sudden moves, but just beneath his skin a muscle has tensed, a breath become more measured, and as subliminal as all this reinforcement may have been, it's no less effective. Suzie knows what she sees. She knows how to read people. And he's been open, receptive, pulling her, reassuring her with shoulders and hips and the quirk of his chin and that's gone now into something quick and animal. I am a weapon, his posture whispers, My body is a weapon, my mind is a weapon, this room is a weapon and I am the sharp part of it. Whether I want my fangs in you or your flesh laid out on this floor, this is what I am built for. After this moment you cannot run away.
"Was your mother much for poetry?" he says.
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Every control against reaction that the Vesmier gave Suzie is invoked at once, to keep her from showing on the surface just what that one sentence did. And something tears itself away from Suzie, sharp and defined and dark and very angry.
Not those words, it snarls. Were you looking for Me, Captain, that you would use his words? Serpents snap in her hair, and yes, this is anger specifically directed at Jack, not at Thane.
And then there's just one, the conscious Suzie and nothing more, standing in front of Thane, reeling from Jack's words and putting every mental defense into not showing it.
"Baudelaire," she says softly. "I never knew it when she was alive, but..." Stolen things, things from dusty boxes, and it was Baudelaire that gave her something beautiful when she thought beauty was gone.
And there they are, the teeth behind the smile, but she can't be angry at Thane, not when Jack... Jack. There's recognition, but little else.
Whatever was engaged before, it's retreated now, hidden away, shocked and frightened.
Just tell me that I'm right in trusting you... comes a last thought, and then silence.
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"You got a lousy inheritance," Thane says. "Baudelaire and your father's attentions. Forget poetry for a while. What has it ever done for you? Pretty pictures on your bedroom wall. But no, everything you do, everything you bury yourself in, has to be perfect. Perfect, Suzie. Are you your mother or your father these days?"
I wonder what Torchwood was, for you, Jack continues in that same edged monotone. A diversion or an arena? You showed yourself off as eagerly as I did. All that intelligence. All that competence. String of jobs behind you; you left everything suddenly, but you wanted to be remembered. I don't know that you were afraid of death, so much, but that the world might go on along without you.
"You made yourself a framework. It's a lovely one, I'll admit. Every woman adores a fascist. Justification, explanation. That's your remote probe, your hazard gloves, clean and safe and never changing."
And I guess it did. Long before I got to you. Except that your mother died, and life went on, but worse; and then you died, he killed you, ruined the person you thought you used to be, and life went on and no one did a thing.
"I don't think you could tell me," Thane says, "where we are, in plain terms. Well. I think you could tell me geography, psychology, sociology; I think you could give me beautiful descriptions of where we stand and the whats and the whys from eighty different angles, but you fade to abstracts. If I broke your arm I believe you could tell me what bones. I don't think I'd believe you if you screamed."
Torchwood finds ways to make people not human. Why be human when you can be us? You had a head start. You were the wunderkind. And I didn't care because I never looked, and no one else looked or they didn't know what they were seeing. I know that was enough for Owen, but Owen doesn't ask much. But I notice Owen wasn't enough for you.
"But there's a person around there, somewhere." Thane jabs a finger at her. "Somewhere way past the moment your father decided you weren't to be human any more. Somewhere under the thing that tried to feed me that perfect couquettery, the thing that's watching me now and waiting to see if my hands on your skin are as good as my words in your mind."
And that's the problem. You're human, Suzie, and you've got those human wants and human weaknesses. You sharpen one and beat the other numb. You'll cut apart everyone you touch and everyone you touch turns a little bit into you because you fight off your humanity with claws and teeth. Survival isn't invulnerability. It isn't a perfect and ultimate victory. It's life, living on with what you've got, even when you've got four pints of blood out and you're hanging onto the ice in the air.
"The funny thing is, I can see it. Not sure you can. Bits, a moment, where you know where you are and the implications hit you and you realize that you're here, now, and if you survive this you'll have been here for the rest of your life. But this thing, this thing that's quoting me poetry, that isn't you. ...but I think I'd like to meet you."
It's not safe. Not remotely. It means getting hurt because people are idiots, but some of them don't deserve to get torn apart because of something they did and didn't know. And then some of them do know. And sometimes you're the one who doesn't. Your world was forced on you by an idiot, a broken man, and you've lived in it for two decades. Is that your revenge?
"So it's your move, Suzie." Thane raises his eyebrows. "I can give you something real, if you're real enough to take it. Or we can play these games, over and over, until I'm bored and you get a bullet in your head. We can talk until the city caves in or you can stop pretending. The choice is yours."
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You knew, the girl-shadow says, accusation in her voice. You knew. You can't take it back now, when he's doing what he said he would.
We should have DESTROYED him. We should--
Stop, says the girl-shadow, and the larger goes silent. D'you think we could have? Really? Or is he just another thing for you to throw us against until we're dead? She looks up at the larger shadow. ...Aren't you tired? I am.
The larger shadow says nothing. Slowly. it lets the weapons fall from its hands. They're gone before they hit the ground.
Suzie's curling in on herself, hands over her face. Yes, she's breaking down, that's true enough, shaking again, hiding for just a moment -- but that moment gives her time to ransack the structure the Vesmier built in her mind, going through each and every trigger, releasing them all.
The structure itself, or what remains of it, she'll need -- the Vesmier will be in contact, and she needs a place to retreat to, a place she can contact him. But all the things that this particular mental construct was built to protect, she's releasing, bringing up into herself.
Nothing's exempt, not even the knowledge of a place in her mind she's been told not to think of, the thing she can't look at directly... But she doesn't have the energy or the focus to deal with it right now. It can wait, if she survives.
This isn't enough, bringing everything to the surface. But maybe, she thinks, if she gathers it all up, maybe when it cracks, it'll be what they're looking for, Thane and Jack both.
Help me, the girl-shadow says. It's time.
It won't hold, says the larger. Not for long.
...Maybe we won't need long. Do you think we've got anything to lose, other than him? She nods at Jack.
Perhaps he's best lost, it growls in response.
You know that's not true.
...I know. It looks at Jack. All the same, hope We do not see you again as Ourself, Captain. If you're right, there will be no need.
The girl-shadow looks back at Jack for moment, then turns away. Are you ready?
No. But it doesn't matter. The larger shadow embraces her, the two shadows blurring, shifting, until they're indistinguishable, just a moving mass of darkness that curls in on itself, condensing, and, after agonizing moments, settling into a humanoid form, a shadow-Suzie that picks herself up off the floor and moves towards Jack, her expression unreadable.
A step towards him and her face blurs, flickers. For a moment, it seems she'll pull apart. She shakes her head, features reduced to dim streaks, and then she moves towards him again, takes his head in her hands, and speaks quietly, urgently.
Listen. There isn't much time. You'll forget so much, but something's going to remain, flickers from your subconscious, things you can't quite make sense of. Hold onto this.
She leans close, a blur of lips against what would be Jack's. It's not quite a kiss.
I forgive you. She lets the words fill the space between them, lets him hear the love and the anger in her voice, and then she's gone.
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He'll be dealt with, murmurs the shadow, turning to look at something that only she can see. And then, Time. Quick.
There's a trick Suzie's seen Jack do. Pull the subconscious into consciousness.
They want her broken? They'll get it. They'll bloody well get all of it. She's aware there's a time and a place for half measures, and this isn't it.
Everything buried, everything forgotten. Drag it up. Let it break, let it take her down to the point where the defenses shatter, and there's only her.
And then she'll shatter. A process, a decision, made in seconds, an eternity inside her own mind. Jack's right. Do it or die, and she may well be already dead, but if she is... If she is, she really does have nothing left to lose, and what's she protecting, anyway?
And if this isn't enough...? No, the two of you, you magnificent bastards, you won't let it not not be enough. I know just how far I can trust you, Jack.
The shadow sinks into her, vanishes.
Suzie takes her hands from her face, looks up, and starts talking. Broken things, fragments. Their words started this. Hers have to finish it. Chip away the defenses one at a time.
"As good as your words... That's saying something. I don't... I don't know how to define good anymore. The first time someone tried to make the sex anything more than pain..." She shakes her head. "That wrecked me all over again. How dare he? And everything my father said to me, every fucking word, 'I'm so very disappointed in you, Suzie, you'll just have to do better next time,' I used to to take him apart because he wouldn't do as much to me. And you ask me who I am? I already know. Hated myself after, but it didn't really matter. Did it? Beat the bastard at his own game. No matter what it cost me. Years, it took me, to feel anything except sick, hurting, when anyone touched me."
She takes that one last step towards him, coming in at an angle, still curled in, protective, clutching her arms tight enough that she can feel the nails digging into the skin, but she's in his reach now, shaking and crying, but there, God, she's right there with him.
"I don't know what to expect from you. What to hope for, except... Yes. Something real. I don't know what... I don't know what to do. Just... Just this." She reaches for him, fitting herself into the empty spaces, directly into the centre of the threat, knowing so many things it could be, and reaching anyway. And inches from him, she freezes, looks up, her eyes asking permission, asking for help, just asking. "Please..."
Help me. Please. Jack... anyone.
Help me.
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Jarec, Jack says. Go. Now. You can do something I can't. He's not thinking of us right now.
You said she could have been Lis, but she couldn't have been, Jarec whispers, half-accusing. Not except for us. I used to think things always ruined our lives but, seeing you? I know we ruin it for us. And you already knew that.
I'll do this, but not for you.
The shadow turns, walking to Thane like a guillotine and reaching out, hand on his shoulder. Then it steps closer, broadening contact, then in, saying nothing, until he's lost to sight with nary a whisper.
Jack turns to look at the tarshadow, who glares at him balefully. Then he turns back to watch Suzie in silence.
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