{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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[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

[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

[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

[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

[john_thane]

He'll never give you what you want, Jack says. Any access, any inroads, he'll take those and twist them and set them against you until you don't know where you stand any more. Feed him that line and he'll show you how to win before he rips it all away, and that'll be your moment. To do... whatever we know of to do.

And what will that be? asks the fainter shadow, and Jack quiets. When he speaks again, it's to Suzie, not the echo of the person he was.

You want to survive. I can help you survive this. You want to resolve this. I can help you resolve this.

You want to save me. If I knew of any way-

If there is no other way, I can help you find a way to kill me. And if there is no other way, you must surrender to that reality.
I would kill any of you, if I had to.Thane steps forward, narrowing the distance, a heavy physical presence in his every step. Leans down, just a bit, to take her hand and raise it almost to his lips, and it's control as well as concession. Here he's come to her, larger and stronger; he's reached to

[superiorspectre]

The girl-shadow smiles up at Jack for a moment, and then reaches up to wrap her arms around him again. We'll do what we have to. But only if there's no other way. We don't want to lose you, Captain. Not us, not Gwen, not any of them.

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

[john_thane]

Either Thane's been smiling since the beginning or he is now, and it doesn't matter that much, in all honesty. And, when he brushes a kiss onto the back of Suzie's hand, it's either an indication of understanding or control, and the two aren't nearly so different as one might like to expect. The tears gain no reaction, and that in itself is an affirmation: This arouses in me neither pity nor scorn. I do not change, have already judged, will not stop for tears or anything.

Don't thank me, Jack says, because he's got some idea of how this is going to go

[superiorspectre]

Oh, Suzie understands the links between understanding and control. It's been her subject of study for years, though Thane makes her seem like a rank amateur in comparison. His lips touch her skin and her eyes close, a shudder passing through her, slow and long, and when she opens her eyes again, there's a painful clarity there. Message heard and understood.

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

[superiorspectre]

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

[john_thane]

Monsters, the faint shadow mutters, looking from the girl to the tied-up suggestion of a man to the tarshadow, blood dripping from a ruined face, to Thane. There aren't supposed to be monsters. There are supposed to be aliens and accidents and people with their own agenda. I don't know what I am - what we are - what any of us are - but that's it, isn't it? His voice is hollowed-out, bitter as old bruises. That sums us up. He turns to Jack. Sums you up. And him. Anything I could have become.

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

[john_thane]

Maybe the younger one recognizes something like a superior. Maybe the tarshadow recognizes something that can't cave to it, no matter how much it and he might try. Maybe not. But they're silent for a while, when one or either could have spoken, until Jack speaks again.

... ... ...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

[john_thane]

"You were Pyrrus at Asculum," Thane says. "You survived. It wrecked you, but you survived. The difference here is that Pyrrus didn't spend his free time looking up fresh Asculums. He was a conqueror in Sicily, and when he ran into the Romans again, he went back to Epirus.

"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

[superiorspectre]

Suzie just watches him for a moment, silent, thoughtful, hurting, half-turning to follow him with her eyes.

"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.

[john_thane]

Thane's mouth pulls up at one corner, or the rest of his face relaxes into it, a wry smile that's the last dreg of anything to go. "Poets don't have to know what they're taking about," he says. "Just how to talk about it. Just how to make something beautiful.

"'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."

[superiorspectre]

Oh, of course, he would know Nietzsche. And that gets her another few steps closer, a slight tilt of her head, considering him. "'Drunken joy and losing-of-oneself the world once seemed to me. This world, eternally imperfect, the image of an eternal contradiction and an imperfect image thereof -- the drunken joy of an imperfect creator: -- thus the world once seemed to me.'" Closer now, closer, wary, afraid, and hurting, but this is another hook into her, and stronger than most. "'Thus I too once cast my fancy beyond man, like all afterworlders. But was it in fact beyond man? Alas, brothers, this God I created was of man's making and madness, like all gods!'"

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

[john_thane]

Jack looks toward her, unfeeling of the shadow clutched to him, ignoring the shadows around him. For a moment, just a moment, a heavy stillness presses the air.

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.