Suzie Costello

There's something I need to talk to you about, when you're free.

So, if I were to present two options, one being allowing Julian Sark into the Tower, and the other being my absence from the Tower for... however much time we end up taking for wine and conversation, which would be the least problematic from your perspective?

Oh, good, my journal finally caught up with me.

I haven't talked to you in a while, and I'm sorry... Things with Thane have eaten up my attention, but I thought I'd say hello, see how you were doing.

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. ( ... )

Jack, I read Elashte's journal post about the archangels. Can I help in any way?

Captain:

I'd let this go, but you came to me for information that you need. I deal in archetypes. Memories themselves wouldn't cause me to see anything, but I have the feeling this isn't as simple. If I had to take a guess, I'd say those memories have built up a personality around themselves. Like the shadow archetype, yet unlike; a sort of snapshot of who you were when your memories were wiped.

He's very different from the version of you I know. I saw him when you mentioned that not even you could see everything hidden away. Just a shadow, in the far back corner of the room, barely able to move or perceive me, vaguely manshaped. I tried to say hello, and I think he heard me, but only distantly. I saw his head lift, as if looking for me, but it seemed like he couldn't find me, and then you left.

When you came by again, he was more defined. Still featureless, but able to see me, talk to me, displaying a much greater level of awareness. He's still largely blocked off, I think. One of his most frequent complaints was that he couldn't see, though I'm fairly certain he saw/perceived me, if nothing else. He talked to me about how he had to get away, that "they" would kill him. The same "they" that took his name, then his life, then himself.

He knows about you, and from what he said, I'd wager he hates you a great deal. Most of my conversation with him involved arguing as he insulted you repeatedly. I won't repeat what he had to say, unless you really want the details.

He said you stopped him from the one thing he had to do, the one thing he could ever do. Said he was always going to die, but not yet, and that until he did, nothing would stop him. And he wants out. He wants that very badly. Told me that if he did get out, I wasn't his problem, not the one he was after. I shouldn't need to point out the disturbing implications.

I did try to get more information from him, but he didn't care to discuss it further, and just repeated that no one could help him, or no one would, and I wasn't supposed to know. Those secrets were his to keep. "This was the war beyond human comprehension; let it stay there." I hope that means something to you, because I've got no idea.

You've got something very angry floating around in your subconscious with an agenda of its own and a death wish. Not that the last part should worry you very much, but the rest should. And it seems to be getting stronger.

BE CAREFUL, JACK.

I know you won't leave this alone, especially not after what I've told you, but be careful. Please.

And I'm sorry for... just about everything that happened when we spoke.

This is more or less a test of just how specific one can get with these locks. Psychic journal system and all. I'm still getting used to this. And if nothing else, I wanted to have this here, just for myself.

Shattered Head

A life hauls itself uphill
through hoar-mist steaming
the sun's tongue licking
leaf upon leaf into stricken liquid
When? When? cry the soothseekers
but time is a bloodshot eye
seeing its last of beauty its own
foreclosure
a bloodshot mind
finding itself unspeakable
What is the last thought?
Now I will let you know?
or, Now I know?
(porridge of skull-splinters, brain tissue
mouth and throat membrane, cranial fluid)

Shattered head on the breast
of a wooded hill
Laid down there endlessly so
tendrils soaked into matted compost
became a root
torqued over the faint springhead
groin whence illegible
matter leaches: worm-borings, spurts of silt
volumes of sporic changes
hair long blown into far follicles
blasted into a chosen place

Revenge on the head (genitals, breast, untouched)
revenge on the mouth
packed with its inarticulate confessions
revenge on the eyes
green-gray and restless
revenge on the big and searching lips
the tender tongue
revenge on the sensual, on the nose the
carrier of history
revenge on the life devoured
in another incineration

You can walk by such a place, the earth is
made of them
where the stretched tissue of a field or woods
is humid
with beloved matter
the soothseekers have withdrawn
you feel no ghost, only a sporic chorus
when that place utters its worn sigh
let us have peace

And the shattered head answers back

And I believed I was loved, I believed I loved
Who did this to us?

-- Adrienne Rich, from Midnight Salvage: Poems 1995-1998 (1999)