Title: Unrelated Incidents
By: hodsmal
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing: Mostly Suzie Costello/Toshiko Sato
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Everything involving Suzie.
Summary: I did the song drabble meme!
Notes: I hate writing drabbles that aren't exactly 100 words but this meme doesn't exactly allow for meticulous re-wording. So they're mostly around 120 words each. None of them are related to each other, by the way.

The Rules:
1. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.
2. Put iTunes or equivalent media player on random.
3. For each song that plays, write something related to the theme you picked inspired by the song. You have only the time frame of the song: no planning beforehand: you start when it starts, and no lingering afterward; once the song is over, you stop writing. (No fair skipping songs either; you have to take what comes by chance!)
4. Do 5 of these, then post.

Atavism – Slough Feg
Swaying blindly, under a moribund sun. Strangely, the pain has only begun.

It had been nearly two weeks. The cliché was horrible but unavoidable; it felt like a lifetime and, quite soon, it might well become one. The water was running out, and they were surviving on what was left of the emergency ration system set up some time during the Victorian era.

The screams were intermittent, echoing down the water tower from the Plass above. It was almost too much to believe – if you weren’t jaded and bitter like all of them, because if Torchwood does anything for you it makes you believe that an entire society can dissolve into violent anarchy within days.

And now the world was ending, and this time there was nothing they could do.


Victory Song – Ensiferum
Voitonlaulut soi ainiaan. (Songs of victory will sound forever.)

Victories are ugly things. They’re full of wounds, and blood, and guilt – oh, the guilt. The history books record glorious victories because they weren’t there – victors have no desire to talk of their conquests. They touch their scars, and their faces become dark, and that is the end of it.

It was the guilt, mainly. Perhaps because this case had been different; this hadn’t been monsters, with claws and tentacles and too many eyes. It had been stupid, stupid humans with technology they didn’t understand but a motive they did, and the things they had done...

Perhaps it wasn’t surprising, then, that Suzie’s hand had found Toshiko’s after a shell-shocked glass of wine; what came after was a way to forget. When it happened again, though...perhaps that meant something. But perhaps it was best not to think about it.


Abandoned – Kamelot
Once my ignorance was bliss. Nightfall came, like a serpent's kiss, to my troubled mind.

Toshiko could feel the world cracking apart at her fingertips. Suzie had betrayed them all, had betrayed her, and now she was dead. She could see the body, still, in her mind – the dark, ugly wound, the empty eyes, projected against the darkness in her apartment.

She stifled a sob, felt like she wanted to retch, or scream. She felt almost foolish, self-indulgent; worse had happened to the world, to her, even in these past few years. And yet, somehow, the loss of this almost-friend, this some-time fuck, this murderer, had sent her spiralling into despair.

Toshiko covered her face with her hands, and waited for dawn to come.


Her Alone – Amorphis
Only her will I obey; her alone I will always want to serve.

It was stupid. It was beyond stupid, and she knew it; she was an independent, rational, intelligent woman (who fought aliens for a living and was sort of in love with her colleague who barely noticed her, but still.) She had her own mind, and she knew how to use it, if she wanted to.

But, these nights, these secret (shameful) nights, she forsook all those things. She willingly, mindfully submitted herself to a woman she barely knew, if she was honest with herself; she laid her life in the hands of someone who was almost certainly being driven mad by the same stifling job she struggled with every day.

But then Suzie’s hand touched her jaw, stroked her hair, brushed over her lips, and Toshiko stopped thinking altogether.


Lama Sabachthani – Anaal Nathrakh
Elai, Elai! Lama Sabachthani? (My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?)

If she was entirely honest – and she’d always tried to be, with herself, even if no-one else got that privilege – she’d never really cared for the idea of God. One being, one single entity with all that power? No. She was in control of her own destiny, shaped her future with her own hands, and was beholden to no-one’s phantoms.

And now this. A scientist shouldn’t believe in omens but perhaps this was one. The power of life and death at – hah – her fingertips.

God is dead, she thought. Long live me.

The Glove was warm, and the Knife was cold, and Suzie Costello stepped out into the night, ready to embrace her divinity.