Ficlet: Monster
Title: Monster
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Suzie Costello.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Everything Changes.
Summary: Sometimes Suzie wonders when she became the monster she is now.
Word Count: 480
Written For: My own prompt ‘Torchwood, Suzie Costello wasn't always a monster,’ at fic_promptly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.
Sometimes, in odd moments of lucidity, Suzie is horrified by what she’s doing, what she’s become. She’s a murderer, a serial killer, picking off convenient victims with no regard to whether or not they’re leaving loved ones behind, people who depend on them. How can she justify taking such extreme measures on the off chance that she might increase her knowledge of the glove and how it works? That somewhere down the line she might learn enough that she’ll be able to save lives instead of taking them?
Even if she does master the glove through her ‘research’, the people she’s killing now will still be just as dead, too far gone to ever be resurrected. She’s cheating them of their lives and potentially cheating the world out of whatever contributions they might have made to society. Is she working towards making the world a better, fairer place, or is she just making it worse by killing people whose descendants might have made a crucial difference? She can’t see into the future, nobody can, so there’s no way for her to know, but some nights, alone in her flat, she wonders if she even has a choice in what she’s doing anymore. Maybe she never did.
In her worst moments of self-doubt, she realises that killing people gets easier every time. The first time had been both terrifying and exhilarating, but now it’s just routine. It doesn’t thrill her, or scare her, or disgust her; she just does it without thinking because all that matters to her now is the time right after her victim’s death, when she drags the essence of them back from the abyss and into their body for two short minutes.
‘Does that make me a monster?’ She’s sure she wasn’t always that way. Once upon a time, what seems like forever ago, she was a normal woman, capable of friendship, compassion, and even love. Now she simply feels numb inside; there’s no joy, no sadness, no honest emotion beyond frustration at not being able to extend the length of time she can reanimate a body for. Progress is practically at a standstill and her only response is to kill again. Maybe the next one will give her what she needs.
Sometimes she wishes she could stop, go back to being the person she was before, but deep down she knows it’s too late. She can’t undo all the terrible things she’s done; her soul can never be washed clean of the stains her actions have left on it.
‘I wasn’t always this way, but this is all I am now, and I have to keep trying because if I don’t then everything I’ve done was for nothing.’
So she puts on her coat, picks up the bag containing the glove and the knife, and steps out into the darkness. Time to find another research subject.
The End
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Suzie Costello.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Everything Changes.
Summary: Sometimes Suzie wonders when she became the monster she is now.
Word Count: 480
Written For: My own prompt ‘Torchwood, Suzie Costello wasn't always a monster,’ at fic_promptly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.
Sometimes, in odd moments of lucidity, Suzie is horrified by what she’s doing, what she’s become. She’s a murderer, a serial killer, picking off convenient victims with no regard to whether or not they’re leaving loved ones behind, people who depend on them. How can she justify taking such extreme measures on the off chance that she might increase her knowledge of the glove and how it works? That somewhere down the line she might learn enough that she’ll be able to save lives instead of taking them?
Even if she does master the glove through her ‘research’, the people she’s killing now will still be just as dead, too far gone to ever be resurrected. She’s cheating them of their lives and potentially cheating the world out of whatever contributions they might have made to society. Is she working towards making the world a better, fairer place, or is she just making it worse by killing people whose descendants might have made a crucial difference? She can’t see into the future, nobody can, so there’s no way for her to know, but some nights, alone in her flat, she wonders if she even has a choice in what she’s doing anymore. Maybe she never did.
In her worst moments of self-doubt, she realises that killing people gets easier every time. The first time had been both terrifying and exhilarating, but now it’s just routine. It doesn’t thrill her, or scare her, or disgust her; she just does it without thinking because all that matters to her now is the time right after her victim’s death, when she drags the essence of them back from the abyss and into their body for two short minutes.
‘Does that make me a monster?’ She’s sure she wasn’t always that way. Once upon a time, what seems like forever ago, she was a normal woman, capable of friendship, compassion, and even love. Now she simply feels numb inside; there’s no joy, no sadness, no honest emotion beyond frustration at not being able to extend the length of time she can reanimate a body for. Progress is practically at a standstill and her only response is to kill again. Maybe the next one will give her what she needs.
Sometimes she wishes she could stop, go back to being the person she was before, but deep down she knows it’s too late. She can’t undo all the terrible things she’s done; her soul can never be washed clean of the stains her actions have left on it.
‘I wasn’t always this way, but this is all I am now, and I have to keep trying because if I don’t then everything I’ve done was for nothing.’
So she puts on her coat, picks up the bag containing the glove and the knife, and steps out into the darkness. Time to find another research subject.
The End