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