Title: M is for Meaning(less)
By: stellaluna_
Pairing: Tosh/Suzie
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: character death, angst
Summary: Suzie had tasted like apples.

***

Tosh doesn't ask for the job of writing up Suzie's file; it gets assigned to her. Jack is casual about it when he asks -- no, tells -- her to do it, but nothing in his calm gaze leaves room for her to ask why she has to be the one: why he thinks this could possibly be a good idea, or why she might have any insight into Suzie that the rest of them lack.

She doesn't, and when she sees how personal she's let the write-up become, how much private pain and fear bleeds through what should be neutral words, she wants to erase it and start over. She sits for a long time with her finger poised over the delete key, but in the end she lets it stand. Maybe, when Jack reads it, he'll be forced to act, forced to do something before another one of them takes Suzie's escape route.

But he doesn't say a word, and Tosh thinks she should have known that.

She's glad, then, that for all its raw hurt and confusion, there are still some things she left out of her report. Like how she'd seen Suzie standing at the far end of the car park one night over a year ago. Suzie had been smoking and tears had been running down her face, and she wasn't bothering to wipe them away, and Tosh had pretended she hadn't seen her and just walked on. Or how Suzie had come up to her at the pub, months later, and how her eyes had been hard and desperate, her mouth twisted in a too-bright smile. She'd kissed Tosh in a dark corner, but they had both gone home alone. She hadn't written about any of that, and now, she thinks that's for the best.

Suzie had tasted like apples. Tosh didn't write about that, either.

***