superiorspectre | {rp} Will you defeat them, your demons and all the nonbelievers, the plans that they have made?

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{rp} Will you defeat them, your demons and all the nonbelievers, the plans that they have made?

Suzie hasn't been to see Tosh. She hasn't even tried. If Tosh needs anyone around her right now, it's people she can trust. And Suzie's got no illusions there.

Instead, she's working at being useful, working out her story. She's got something no one else has when it comes to infiltration and deception -- her cover story, if she plays it right, is the absolute truth.

In her own timeline, she'd have betrayed Torchwood. It was only a matter of time. And, sickening as that thought is, it's her armour here and now. He can't spot a lie when there isn't one.

Gwen might've said she wanted to save that for when there were no other options, but right now, the best efforts of geniuses and aliens haven't brought her Captain back. Maybe a manipulative, backstabbing little bitch might have a chance.

After all, she thinks, she was good enough to fool Jack Harkness, in the future everyone else remembers. Maybe, just maybe, she's good enough to play Thane as well.

She knows a few things about what she's walking into; the kind of man she's dealing with, the way he likes having power over others... And her facade has cracks in it, places the old scars still show. She'd be stupid if she didn't think he'd exploit them. And again, she's better-suited than anyone else to go in -- she's been there before, after all.

And maybe, just maybe, this will count as penance, somehow, for the things she did that led to the things she didn't.

She's doing this. She won't be argued with. However, she does have a concept of chain of command, informal as that's always been around Torchwood. Ideally, she needs to speak to Gwen Cooper, but she's not keen on going right over Sam's head. And given what she's about to do...

Well. It might help if there's someone she can't lie to, to reassure (Tosh) everyone of her intentions.

So this is the plan: find Sam, then talk to Gwen, then... Do what else she needs to do. She's going to want a word with the Vesmier, but first, to talk things through with her commanders.

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That earns... something like a raised eyebrow from the Vesmier. :: Circumstance has a great effect on us, :: he says. :: The portrait painted of me, had certain circumstances been different, is hardly a flattering one. But it is the reality of our choices, and not some hypothetical other path of events, which we must hold ourselves accountable for. ::

The Vesmier doesn't place much stock in might-have-beens. Focus on them too long and he'd go insane, abandon the Senate, abandon everything he fought for.

He steadies himself. :: I can explain, as I work, :: he offers. Were he lucid enough when they were rebuilding his mind, he would have liked to have known. And she doesn't need someone having control over her in a way which entails secrets. :: If you would like to begin. ::

I came closer than I'd like, Suzie thinks, and leaves it at that.

She settles herself a bit more comfortably in the chair, steadies herself as best she can, and nods.

Yes, please, she thinks. To both.

She's making an effort to relax, but it's not easy, and every bit of damage is ringed with traps and defences which she's trying very, very hard to keep inactive.

What's more, if the Vesmier looks deep enough, there's a certain place in Suzie's mind, surrounded by layers of psychic scar tissue, that's blocked away. A day and a night of memories, nothing more, but the structure that conceals them is covered with psychic fingerprints that scream Time Lord to anyone who knows what to look for. The Vesmier might find that structure familiar, in a crazed and distorted way, should he happen to come across it.

And the Vesmier begins. Slowly, steadily, with the same care and concentration he applied to rebuilding April's mind, explaining as he goes along. It's a dangerous proposition, this, but better to give her some edge than to not.

Everything has to be categorized, examined in how it works in conjunction with the rest of her mind. Certain things are pulled down, into the structure he's making – an edifice of resistances, of controls, of certain things bound too sternly to escape to a conscious level without conscious support. Other things are left near the surface of her mind, tied together into a convincing portrait of a broken and bitter woman, with just enough strength not to arouse suspicion.

And then, as he works, he comes across... something.

And pauses, because that mental feel, that pattern, is more familiar than he'd like to admit.

:: ...what is this? ::

And Suzie's not sure how to answer that, considering that, until the Vesmier pointed it out, she had no idea there was anything there at all.

Even now, she wants very much to not think about it, her focus slipping away the moment she wavers in examining the structure.

And she considers that fact with a growing sense of anger, until, with a mental snarl she starts bringing up and cataloguing everything around it. Even if she doesn't want to look at it, she can learn its shape. Once she's learnt its shape, she'll work out a next step. This is what she does, in or out of her own mind.

Details surrounding: she'd met a man. She knows that much, even if his face escapes her. A very charming man. They talked -- they must have talked, though she can't remember about what. Her focus slides away when she looks at it. Right. She's sure they had sex. The pleasure, she remembers, at least a moment of it, pleasure and a loss of control that terrified her in retrospect. The next morning, bruised and hurting, with no real knowledge of how she got that way, wondering if she'd uncharacteristically had too much to drink, and feeling strangely disinclined to question further. Taking off work for a few days, letting herself heal, showering compulsively, as though she could never get herself completely clean. Feeling sick. Crying, for no good rea--

Wait.

She won't let this get away from her.

Triggers for crying: Songs that she heard, a certain rhythm that filled her with dread... A certain cut of suit... The word Saxon on some historical drama or another, which was enough to send her into a state approaching an hysterical fit.

And then it had passed, and she didn't think anything of it.

And it was, perhaps, three weeks before she'd come through the Rift.

...she's getting angrier by the moment, but she locks it down, shoves it back, for the sake of the guest in her mind, if nothing else.

But there's something there, something she's missing.

...and the Vesmier recognizes that. Simple but pervasive, all the more insidious for being so subtle. And that, for what it entails, for the origin he's ever more sure of now, starts a deep-burning anger he only barely tries to shove down.

Simple. A few reinforced commands. Don't look at me, speaking to all levels of consciousness, even the ones which should be able to see that strategem and block it. The overrides have been preemptively overridden.

And it's a sloppy job. ...well. Deceptively sloppy or deceptively intricate, it's hard to tell. Unorthodox. There's a reasoning to the underpinning, but it's a reasoning which defies explanation or expectation. Knots and reinforcers which seem to make no sense, but make untangling any part an exercise in tangling another.

It shouldn't be there. It should not exist, especially not in a mind which is broken apart already.

His instinct is to reach for it, overwhelm it by sheer focus if nothing else, dissolve the restraints and crack the package apart, but – this isn't his mind. And he has no idea what sort of internal safeguards might be lying in there, anyway.

He gets a tight grip on his anger, shoving it down and binding it tight. :: I can unwork this, :: he says, and for a moment there's a flicker of exactly how much he could do. He could bring the judgement of pre-Rassilonate gods down upon this. Then he takes control again. :: I believe I'm familiar with one iteration of the creature which did this. ::

There's a moment when Suzie wants, more than anything, to let him undo it, to find out what's been hiding from her. She's let her body be compromised more times than she cares to think about, but her mind... That was always hers and hers alone, and how dare anyone do this to her? How DARE they?

She throttles the instinctive YesyesYES, undo it NOW and forces herself to consider her options. She's gotten as far as she has by being cautious, paranoid, and very, very pragmatic, and if there was ever a time she couldn't afford the distraction, another revelation that might break her...

You said you could give me triggers to wake parts of myself as needed. Can you give me one for this, as well, so that I can examine it when I'm not about to walk into an already-volatile situation?

She's picked up on the shift in the Vesmier, the anger, that little flicker, and... She might be afraid, if she hadn't already passed her own personal point of no retrn.

The Vesmier tamps down on everything, bringing himself strictly under control. Only once in the last half-millennia has he lost that control entirely, and he doesn't intend to make it twice.

:: I'd be wary of leaving it under a trigger, :: he says. :: Not knowing what it is or whether it's programmed to react, however acutely or chronically, to manipulation. As loathe as I am to suggest it, the best course of action might be to place your memories of discovering it under a trigger and leave it alone for the duration of your interaction with Thane. ::

...And oh, Suzie does not like that idea. She doesn't like it one bit.

But it's the best option, and she knows it.

Go on, then. A bit terse, but it's the best she can do.

Oh, the Vesmier is no more a fan of that idea than you are, Suzie. For very different reasons.

He seals that away, lays a trigger, and moves back into armoring her for the mission she's about to go on. The triggers are simple – activated by conscious will, resistant to attempts without an element of concerted will. He puts all thought of the Master and the suspicious package out of his mind with the same resolution he dedicates to his concentration on the Senate floor.

In the end, it's... serviceable. Which is all he's willing to say for it. It will serve its purpose. It won't protect her, not beyond what they've agreed upon, and it certainly isn't a permanent arrangement, but it's thorough.

He withdraws, still watching to make sure the barriers have integrated, will hold. Then he exhales, trying to gague the level of headache he should expect from this.

Suzie just sits for a moment, getting a feel for the changes in her own mind. It's strange, different... But more than she's ever had before. It'll do.

"...Are you all right?" Torchwood 3 might not have had the most thorough of psi training, but she knows enough to realise that, after the sort of work he's been doing, he probably won't be feeling his best, assuming Time Lords are anything like humans in that regard.

The Vesmier nods, making a gesture at the tips of his fingers which is probably meant to indicate that he has it under control. "I'll go into a trance when we're finished," he says. Aside from the Master thing, it wasn't... too taxing. Though it may be that his standards for "too taxing" have changed dramatically since coming here, where he routinely gives himself these sorts of headaches. "And yourself?"

As all right as one can be with all one's raw patches arrayed at the top of one's psyche. As all right as one an be when one plans to walk into a situation one cannot control and which one expects to destroy one. Nothing about this has Ves comfortable at all.

"I'll manage," Suzie says, with a smile that's... pretty far from genuine, but would fool a casual observer. Not that the Vesmier's observation is even remotely approaching casual, and she knows that. It's more a test, making sure the shell of unflappable competence is in place... Still riddled with cracks, weaknesses to be found and exploited, but if it's too easy, she has the feeling Thane will lose interest. "I always do."

She takes a deep breath, and continues. "Is there anything you can tell me about Thane's mental state that might be helpful?"

The Vesmier considers that, hand moving automatically to activate the holographic display. Not that it will mean anything to her, not that it will be anything but colors and movement, but...

"I can tell you a great deal," he says. "How much of it will be helpful, I can't say.

"Thane's mind is damaged." And oh, if that isn't an understatement. "It was damaged before he came through the Rift. Rational exposure to a temporal paradox – a brute physical and mental trauma which was never addressed, simply buried. This is, so far as I can tell, the originating point for a great deal of his current violence, though by no means all of it.

"That trauma was buried with enough memory, at a high enough level of consciousness, that it formed a relatively cohesive whole – interconnections, internalized reasonings, without the actual impulse consciousness to grant it will. Because it was so clearly partitioned, it formed an exclusion against other data – while its separated history and the personality which developed in its absence are not foreign psychic material, it reacts as though they are. Thane, as he exists now, cannot easily process information which comes from outside of that structure. This makes him both inaccessible and vulnerable."

He paused, tweaking the display, re-reading, re-interpreting the patterns there.

"Thane's mind, the last I had any mental contact with him, had been..." He spends a moment looking for a polite term. He doesn't find one. "Severely and irrationally damaged. This damaged the mechanism by which the formerly dominant personality was being kept suppressed, though I still can't say how, precisely, this will manifest. I do know it would be much harder for me to trigger a reversal the likes of which brought him to the fore in the first place.

"More important is the effect it likely had on his rationality... if one can call it that," he appends at a mutter. "Thane is capricious. This will have made him more so. I do not believe he has any form of unified plan, or the capacity to create or enact one. ...I do believe, however, that he is aware of the damage done to his mind, and likely of strategies to work past it."

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{rp} Will you defeat them, your demons and all the nonbelievers, the plans that they have made?

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