Fanmix: All Roads Lead Here (Thane/Suzie)

[superiorspectre]

a fanmix for beyond the rift
.zip at the bottom


(click for full-size images)

notes

This is my first fanmix ever, and hopefully it doesn't show too much, though there's more artist repetition than I'd like.

Things you should know: When I went to add both bits of cover art for "Broken", iTunes decided to not let me change it further, so it's the only song to have just the tracklist image for art. Sorry about that.

John Thane is the psychotic torturing alter ego (sort of -- it's a long story) of Jack Harkness, and is property of the amazing and talented magistrate. All excerpts that are from Thane's point of view -- or Jack's -- are hir work. Jack Harkness and Suzie Costello belong to the BBC, but the responsibility for this portrayal of Suzie falls squarely on my shoulders.

Some songs contain explicit language. Thane also contains explicit language, should not be taken internally, and is not suitable for persons of any age at all.

Oh, and listening to his side of the mix straight through may cause musical whiplash. I make no apologies -- he's insane.

disc i: suzie

nonpoint in the air tonight

"The fact that I'm horrified by what I would've done, the fact as things stand my one priority is getting our Captain back, and the fact that I have no intentions whatsoever of betraying the Doctor or any members of Torchwood and that I want Thane to fucking burn for what he did to Tosh are all irrelevant." There's a flicker in her eyes, pain and fury, quickly smoothed over. "I've got enough backing me up that's nothing but truth, not a single lie for him to sniff out, and I was good enough to have all of Torchwood, Jack Harkness included, fooled for quite some time. I've got good odds of getting his subconscious on my side, and given the very limited trust that anyone has in me, if I die..." She smiles a bit, and it's not a nice smile. "You've lost nothing you were really using anyway."

Well if you told me you were drowning
I would not lend a hand
I've seen your face before, my friend
But I dont know if you know who I am
Well I was there and I saw what you did
I saw it with my own two eyes
So you can wipe off the grin
I know where you've been
It's all been a pack of lies

...

amy winehouse some unholy war

I'm not leaving, Captain. I'm here to put things right. I know what I'm walking into, and... I'm good at this, Jack. This is what I do best, out of anything. I was good enough to have fooled you, once. Think I'm good enough to do the same to him?

I do. And if I'm wrong... Then I'm wrong.

If my man was fighting
Some unholy war
I would be behind him
Straight shook up beside him
With strength he didn't know
It's you I'm fighting for
He can't lose with me in tow
I refuse to let him go
At his side and drunk on pride
We wait for the blow

...

suzanne vega if i were a weapon

Suzie smiles a little and raises an eyebrow, her body language shifting to something born from long practice. She's good at this, at showing some vulnerability, giving the impression she's made to be used. Look, it says, look how very breakable I am. You want control? Here I am. Subtle, but there.

"Excellent question. I could give you a very long speech about how I was dear Captain Jack's second-in-command for five years, and how I've got an extensive skill set, but the truth is, I'm no Time Agent, and most of what I could do for you, you could do yourself without taking me on. I'm not going to promise what I can't deliver -- that gets me killed all the more quickly. All I can do is appeal to your sense of whimsy." She gives him a perfect copy of the crooked grin she'd used on Jack more times than she could count, the one the always seemed to find charming. "If I'm very lucky, you'll decide I'm amusing enough to keep."

If you were a weapon
A hammer's what you'd be
Blunt and heavy at the end
And coming down on me

But I've concealed a weapon
In a pocket knife attack
All folded up inside until you see the shine
And then you'll want it back

...

poe trigger happy jack (drive by a go-go)

"Better than I am, and it's been a long time since I've seen that." She's quiet now, but there are sharp edges in her posture, her voice, her eyes. No pretense, no games, just the darkest of truths, raw and anguished and very, very quiet. Seen and not heard, just as she was taught. "I have this, and I... had Torchwood." Self-loathing, self-destruction, and the bloody job.

Her aim is survival; it's surviving him. And there he is, gorgeous and cruel, loathed and yes, wanted, dear fucking God, she wants him, and if he knows how to look, it's all right there. Nothing feigned, nothing obscured except for the one thing, the one person she has to protect, to save, the only one who bothered trying to save her, who's still trying, even when there's nothing left to be saved.

And I hate myself
Just enough to want him
But I hate him just enough to get off
But I understand him
Maybe I'm just crazy enough
To love him
Why not? (Why not?)
You can't talk to a psycho like a normal human being...

...

vienna teng drought

"And just what would it take," she says softly, "to convince someone like you, I wonder?" She pulls away, and the moment she breaks contact she's undoing the cuffs with practised efficiency. Jack trained her well, once upon a time; she's not even looking, her eyes still locked on Thane's, showing more than they should. "What do you want?"

There's a place in her mind, safe and quiet, away from him, and she wants to retreat there now, but she doesn't dare. Doesn't deserve to.

Doesn't want to? Yes, perhaps that, too.

Summer move forward and stitch me the fabric of fall
Wrap life in the brilliance of death to humble us all
How sweet is the day
I'm craving a darkness
As I sit tucked away with my back to the wall

...

placebo running up that hill

If you want to carry me out of this, bleeding or not, she continues, grimly determined, then work with me. Help me, help us, so we both walk out of here. The Vesmier's given me a few things. A bit of structure, a way to hold together. ...I may have broken it a little just now. More than a little. But it's something. I have an assignment. If you want to save me, Captain, then we do the job.

She may doubt that she deserves to be saved, but if it gets her Captain back, that's what matters. And everything else... She'll deal with that later. None of this changes what just happened, but there's enough of the Suzie Costello who was Jack's second-in-command left to do what she has to, even if none of it shows on the surface.

You don't wanna hurt me
But see how deep the bullet lies
Unaware that I'm tearing you asunder
There's a thunder in our hearts, baby
There's so much hate for the ones we love?
Tell me, we both matter, don't we?
You, you and me
You and me won't be unhappy

...

orgy blue monday

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.

After a moment, she pushes toward him, just a little, the tension evident in that motion. She's fighting herself for it, fighting for every bit of closeness she gets, but needing it at the same time.

...there is no right answer, is there? she tells him wordlessly, still crying as she looks into his eyes. I'm damned either way, and you know it, and you enjoy it. But I won't lie passive, not yet. Breaking, yes, but not broken.

And I still find it so hard
To say what I need to say
But I'm quite sure that you'll tell me
Just how I should feel today

I see ship in the harbor
I can and shall obey
But if it wasn't for your misfortunes
I'd be a heavenly person today

...

the bravery split me wide open

They want her broken? They'll get it. They'll bloody well get all of it. She's aware there's a time and a place for half measures, and this isn't it.

Everything buried, everything forgotten. Drag it up. Let it break, let it take her down to the point where the defenses shatter, and there's only her.

And then she'll shatter. A process, a decision, made in seconds, an eternity inside her own mind. Jack's right. Do it or die, and she may well be already dead, but if she is... If she is, she really does have nothing left to lose, and what's she protecting, anyway?

And if this isn't enough...? No, the two of you, you magnificent bastards, you won't let it not be enough. I know just how far I can trust you, Jack.

Is nothing sacred, is nothing saved?
Your gentle eyes like a razor blade
They cut me open, you look right through
I give it all to you

Split me wide open, and cut it at all
My hands on your body like a blind man's on a wall
Oh you always show me, you're the only one who shows me

...

depeche mode in your room

Now, everything's down to action and reaction, the pressure of his hands, and the way she's leaning into every touch, shifting as much as he'll allow to press even closer against him, letting the angles of contact and subtle movements say all the things she's never had to find words for.

Her hands are on his shoulders, not to pull closer or away -- either is more control than she'd feel comfortable taking -- but just to feel him, muscle and bone and heat.

She's not sure how that happened.

His eyes are very, very blue.

I'm hanging on your words
living on your breath
feeling with your skin
Will I always be here?

...

poe angry johnny

"You're..." Words, yes, she can do this. Words. "You're nothing like him." It comes out as the softest of murmurs, but there's both admiration and loathing in her expression as she looks up at him.

This is what she's gambling on -- the split between mind and body, that one vital disconnect that Thane gave her, and the hope that it'll be enough that Thane won't gather that the admiration isn't his. Her body's carrying the message, still, that she belongs to him. Let him think the loathing's for Jack, for the Doctor, for anyone but him, and she'll be content.

Johnny, angry Johnny
This is Jezebel in Hell

I wanna kill you
I wanna blow you away
I wanna kill you
I wanna blow you away

...

tori amos that guy

Yes, she enjoyed it. And that, she won't forgive herself for. At the time, all she could think was It should've been anyone but him.

It wasn't until much later that she realised what she meant was It should've been Jack.

By then, it was too late.

That guy swears he will walk
And carries a chip as big as New York
That guy
Cannot seem to see
There are no other guys
But the one he used to be

...

disc ii: thane

depeche mode puppets

Thane doesn't need to keep close tabs on the wrist device. It'll tell him something, but she's telling him more, and what she's telling him–

He's a torturer. She's an agent of something, even it it is a backwater little space-age special ops group a properly-equipped Time Agent could walk in and dismantle. And she's trying to play him.

It's the tone. The offer. The flash of fear. Textbook-perfect, and if he hadn't been watching for everything, he even would have bought it.

Watch your action, close reaction
And everything you're thinking babe inside your head
Conversation, my creation
Nothing that you do you do unless I said

And you don't know the consequences
Of the things you say
I'll be your operator baby
I'm in control

...

matt caplan broken

He goes on cleaning the rifle, but his eyes are fixed on Suzie. His fingers don't falter as he works on the weapon, and that too is a demonstration: This is precision. This is delicacy. This is me taking something down to its component pieces and putting it together so only I know I was there, or I could leave this scattered on the floor and walk away from it. This is what you are asking for.

[...]

"Your father," Thane says, and now it's a game. Let's wander through your psyche. Let's toy with your demons. Let's see how far you'll crawl to me and how far I'll have to hunt you. Do you want to start the hunt now, little prey? Are you more afraid of coming to me or having me chase you?

And the things you tell me don't mean a thing if you're not scared
And turning your back on me won't leave me weak or unprepared

Oh, but I could break you if I wanted to
Be cruel to you and I could show the world your song
Oh, I could break you if I wanted to
Be cruel to you, 'cause I was broken all along

...

disturbed intoxication

He sweeps a step back and around her orbit, ambling backward until his back bumps the wall, watching to see how she'll do in the absence of that closeness, that warmth. Look. I've given you structure and taken it away. I've built you a bridge and taken it from you. What do you think you're standing on, chasm? What do you have to hold onto?

I could hold you down while you struggled, but that's a hammer where I want to use a needle. You'll look back at this and remember that every step was one you took to me.

I want you. But I don't want sex and screams and salt tears, I want you, and that's something no one but your father ever had. I'll have it if I have to build it in you.

Now you tell me you like it
You tell me you want it
You're mine
And you don't need another one
Come on and tell me you like it
Tell me you want it
You're mine
And another one to me

...

sr-71 they all fall down

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.

I can make you see the beauty of a new sun
Or I can be the source of your desperation
I could be every nasty thing you ever dreamt a man could be

Cause they all fall down (down)
Cause they all fall down (down)

...

ed harcourt i am the drug

"I don't think you could tell me," Thane says, "where we are, in plain terms. Well. I think you could tell me geography, psychology, sociology; I think you could give me beautiful descriptions of where we stand and the whats and the whys from eighty different angles, but you fade to abstracts. If I broke your arm I believe you could tell me what bones. I don't think I'd believe you if you screamed."

[...]

"But there's a person around there, somewhere." Thane jabs a finger at her. "Somewhere way past the moment your father decided you weren't to be human anymore. Somewhere under the thing that tried to feed me that perfect couquettery, the thing that's watching me now and waiting to see if my hands on your skin are as good as my words in your mind."

Bring out the dead, I'll show them how to live
Free their souls, watch them slowly drift
Like feathers of a wounded bird
I was wrapped up in a wooden box
Ball and chain, head out on the block
Oh, I wonder if you could say the final word?

And I am the drug that you've been waiting for
An urgent craving you cannot ignore
I am the fix that you come back for more
I am the drug

...

saul williams raw

Thane wouldn't be much of a torturer if he didn't know how to be safe, or gentle. At the moment he wants to see this part of her collapse, see twenty years and fear and anger and a tactical mistrust vanish like fog. Breaking her down completely would get him nothing but his own satisfaction, and that can wait. For now, being so far inside her that those most base emotional reactions will form themselves around him...

That's as good.

For now, that might be better.

I want to touch you on the other side
Where all your anger, fear, and hurt reside
I want to get to know the part of you
That I can crawl inside, the heart of you

Raw

...

vnv nation cold

The pace of his own breathing's increased in sympathy with hers, adjusting to her pattern as if they're one organism moving against itself. There are no people here; people are threatening. And this is what he's good at – pull the person out of the body, leave the body and just enough will to run on.

You wanted to be a rational creature. All that time rationalizing, investigating, and this isn't rational. This isn't you. It's all me, animal instinct, no looking back.

He nips at the neck, licks over the nip, noses her chin up and back – gestures stolen from a deliberately inhuman ethology. Uses those pressures to finish bearing them to the ground, half on their sides, him only just seeming above her.

Feel this, he thinks, hands moving like they're smoothing out her limbs (never holding her down), mouth trailing along her chest (never berating), pushing her until she's receptive, pushing the same demands. You come to me. Until this is over, you come to me.

No tomorrows
Just submittance
No remorse of self indulgence

Just your body on my body
Want your thoughts of me inside
Let your hands run on my skin

...

kings of leon sex on fire

He's just moving, redefining himself as an independent creature. There was one of them, now there are two again, washing over each other like breaker waves. Thane has the advantage, of course, in that he remembers what control is and can move at any moment to take it, but why should he spoil this? He's got a warm wide-open body laid out here beneath him, and if there's one thing he enjoys, it's bodies. One thing he's good at, it's bodies and the twists of the mind.

Sooner or later she'll come back to herself and see this as charity, Thane satirizing his own largess. Or if she's very clever she might see this as self-serving, a game he plays with himself which just happens to need two players. Whatever. Either way, it costs him nothing.

You
Your sex is on fire
Consumed
With what's just transpired

Hot as a fever
Rattling bones
I could just taste it
Taste it

But it's not forever
But it's just tonight
Oh we're still the greatest
The greatest

...

snow patrol somewhere a clock is ticking

It's beautiful, Thane decides, a wide and crooked smile spreading across his face, that she's not quite cognizant of the danger in the air around her. Good for her, in a way – keeps her interesting, and that keeps him from closing her throat just yet. but he's not going to fall for this pleasant safety, this illusion that he's created something that belongs to him. He believed that with April. Look how that turned out.

Better to take them, have them, destroy them before they reach that point.

I've got this feeling that there's something that I missed
(I could do most anything to you...)
Don't you breathe
Something happened, that I never understood
You can't leave

...

the cure disintegration

Torchwood is beautiful, in their way. So convinced they're strong, so laced through with fault lines. Walking around with their chins up and so angrily demanding to be broken.

He chuckles, the imagined taste of blood welling like saliva at the back of his tongue. They keep fancying themselves a match for him and he's got one of their precious laid out yearning for him, ready to impale herself to the heart on him, and when he noses her chin up again and closes his teeth on the soft skin under it–

Oh, he could kill her so easily.

He brings himself down over her, crouching low like a stalking dog, chest to chest, stomach to stomach, pelvis to pelvis with his knees to either side of her. High as he's rigged the heat in this building humans are still warmer, and she's lying there hot and human and his (for the moment, always for the moment), and it keeps turning him back to playful from savage. Though sooner or later the one will flood into the other, and he wants that with an intensity he doesn't mirror in much.

Oh I miss the kiss of treachery
The aching kiss before I feed
The stench of a love for a younger meat
And the sound that it makes
When it cuts in deep
The holding up on bended knees
The addiction of duplicities
As bit by bit it starts the need
To just let go
My party piece

...

vast pretty when you cry

"Here's the thing about people like us," Thane says, and his eyes are cold but edged with sadness, edged with anger. "We win if we're clever, but clever only gets you so far. One thing we don't tend to do is make friends."

He shifts the rifle on his back. She's good, at least, cold and metal with no will of her own, an instrument, a tool, a companion. He's tried the flesh variety and found them inconsistent and lacking. And out of that he's built up his religion.

"People are bastards. We get a partner, maybe, for a while; a good fuck, a stooge, a master, whatever. Mostly what we get is people who are going to stab us in the back after a week, accident or design."

[...]

Thane's drawn his pistol, looking over the barrel, checking the trigger, the safety, feeling its weight in his hands, and then the gun snaps up to train on the spot between navel and pelvis.

Then he shatters the air with a bullet.

"If there's two things I can't stand," he says, slipping it back into its holster, crossing the floor, "it's accidents and other people's designs."

I didn't want to hurt you baby
I didn't want to hurt you
I didn't want to hurt you but you're pretty when you cry
I didn't want to fuck you baby
I didn't want to fuck you
I didn't want to fuck you but you're pretty when you're mine
I didn't really love you baby
I didn't really love you
I didn't really love you but I'm pretty when I lie
You hurt me baby
I hurt you baby

...

bonus tracks

jack

depeche mode a question of time

Jack pulls his head up, tracking featurelessly until he's looking in Suzie's direction. Being trapped in one's own subconscious doesn't mean much, experientially – there's no will, no action, just a state of being and registering, influencing by implication if at all. But something about Suzie's presence–

Suddenly the world widens from black to achrome and the capacity to think, to reason, to react returns – and all the memories he couldn't examine before settle into him, and there's such a thing as thought again. And with all that...

Berlin, 1961, he mutters. You're on the wrong side; you need to get out get out NOW

[...]

Thane stands. Behind him Jack throws himself forward, with a flicker of the larger shadow – the beast, buried twice now, bound but never entirely silenced. It doesn't matter. They're held back by something, spectral iron, wrought bars or chains, a barrier even the Vesmier was stymied by.
[Sneaky whitetext cut due to lack of relevance.]
I will destroy you, he says, almost pleads and I've watched this too many times already, tied back in his own subconscious, unable to do or change anything.

Sometimes I don't blame them
For wanting you
You look good
And they need something to do
Until I look at you
And then I condemn them
I know my kind
What goes on in our minds

It's just a question of time

...

matt caplan wither

There's silence, and Jack looks away.

I know enough to know I'm not myself. Say things too easily. Know things I don't know. And I know we can't get close enough to change him, not much, not like we'd need. But there's something else. He looks up, eyeless face tracking for Suzie, slow and blind. One of us can get out, if she survives.

Monster. Yeah, maybe. Probably. Or I'm the whirlpool that sucks you in or the gravity blackwell that you can't see until you're too close and it's tearing you apart. I can only hold you together until I destroy you, but I can hold you that long.

Hit me harder now
Make believe my face is numb
I can't feel but I can sense you in the air
Now lean in farther now
Make believe you're unafraid
I can't speak but I can whisper in your ear

...

thane + suzie

angels & agony heart & soul (traumatic mix)

Thane brushes his fingers across her cheek, a practiced gentleness resolving into a fist at the nape of her neck, knotted in her hair. He's still feeling her out, alert to everything – the pace of her breathing, the look in her eyes, the way she holds the key, the smell from her skin. The feel of her hair tells him she values appearances as well as the veneer she holds up in her eyes. The slip of her tone tells him she's not used to breaking apart. The slant of her shoulders tells him she's used to this arrangement, though not in total degree, that she knows these terms, and they know her.

[...]

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.

I play the game by your rules
Because I know you've got the tools
I'm not crying

You watch my steps
My every move
Because you're looking for some proof

...

.zip
all songs + album art