Title: Between The Silence And The Storm
By: Cardboard Moose
Pairings: Suzie/Toshiko
Rating: PG
DISCLAIMER: Torchwood and its characters belong to Russell T. Davis and the BBC. No infringement intended.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Written before 'They Keep Killing Suzie', please forgive any canon inaccuracies.
Summary: Soon, there will be the knife, and the glove. For now, there is Toshiko.

***

Suzie has always wanted power. Fought for it, lusted after it, been consumed by it. For it she has worked insane hours, suffered innumerable cuts and bruises and burns, spent so many years searching for the next toehold on the sheer cliff-face of ambition.

It had started innocuously enough; killing insects, vermin, the miniscule spiders that made their way into her bathroom. The tiny thrill, that hollow-stomached feeling she got when she held them by one leg, seeing them struggle desperately just above the flow of water – it was addictive. It progressed from there, slowly but surely. The feeling of a knife – not the knife, not yet, although it was only a matter of time – in her hand; her finger tightening against the trigger of a gun (Jack behind her, all encouragement and technique and almost-disguised unease); the look on Owen's face when she put on her Command Voice and sent him scuttling.

If there was a price, it was worth it.

The real power, of course, came with the Glove. All bright steel and strange glow, it had fit her hand like nothing else, and she had known that it was powerful; used to it or not, that kind of power fed its way into the subconscious, wormed black tendrils of thought into the hindbrain. When she'd first seen what it could do - when the gates of death had opened before her, when she'd brought the first fish back to squirming, fleeting life – she had known true power. Power as yet untapped, power at her disposal, power that none of them had to know about.

Of course there were questions, reports, budgets (and Ianto's apologetic smile as he handed her another copy of Form F87-C. Even Torchwood wasn't immune to paperwork), but she fielded them with ease, retreating to her workstation time and time again. I could really do with some extra glove time....needs further study...this is going to take some time.

This has been going on for weeks (months, maybe? It's so hard to keep track of time, underneath the world of day and night), and the dream of an idea is beginning to bloom in Suzie's mind. Resurrection is so easy but so erratic, all she needs is a suitable test subject. Fresh meat. The knife – left back at the hub, but always there in her thoughts - stares at her, blades glinting in the light of her mind's eye.

But not yet.

For now, there is Toshiko. Soft, slight, perfect Toshiko, kneeling before her, skin almost glowing against the dark carpet. Her head is bowed, hair brushing bare shoulders, moving slightly with the shallow rising and falling of her chest.

Suzie raises a hand, fingertips ghosting across Toshiko's collarbone, and she whimpers – a tiny sound in the back of her throat, loud as a gunshot in the silent room.

Suzie smiles. Power.

Later, and Toshiko is sleeping peacefully, Suzie's arm curled around her side. Like this, she looks almost dead, and Suzie wonders briefly if the Glove could resurrect her, make her the vibrant, passionate creature she had been such a short time ago. The thought slips through her fingers like every other, in the pre-dawn darkness. All others save one.

In the end, it is the power that kills her.

Toshiko does not understand what went on in Suzie's mind. She does not grieve, does not mourn, does not do anything but get on with what she must do. She does not go to the morgue, does not look when Ianto clicks the lock into place, does not respond to Jack's silent but knowing hand on her shoulder (how does he know? how does he always know? ), does not cry when she changes the designation of Suzie's personnel file to 'deceased'.

But she does not forget, either.

***