Round Three Reviews - Part 14
Today's Featured Stories Include:
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Team Building - Reverse the Polarity Remix by iamshadow and sam_storyteller
Category: Teamfic
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Torchwood Team, without Gwen
Rating: R
Details: One shot told in several parts. Takes place prior to S1.
Why It Rocks:
To call this a remix is technically not accurate - at least, not the way I understand remixes. What I understand to be a traditional remix is this: Author A writes a Story from Character A's POV. Author B then takes the Story, and rewrites it from Character B's POV.
So, technically speaking, this isn't a remix - it's more along the lines of a seriously-influenced rewrite of a previously posted story. What makes this particular rewrite shine, however, is that it has essentially been turned on its head - hence the "Reverse the Polarity" subtitle. The order of events has been given to us in reverse order, which makes it a little like peeling back the onion layers that make up Team Torchwood at the beginning of the first season (pre-Gwen). It's an interesting device, and made more intriguing by the fact that we don't realize how much Jack needed everyone until we see him without them.
When we start, however, it's not in present day - we start at the very beginning of Jack's tenure as head of Torchwood Three - we start on New Year's Day, as Jack tries, and fails, to wash the blood from his hands.
...for the best part of two years, he isn't just the boss, he is Torchwood Three. Vigilante, alien hunter, scavenger, defender of Cardiff, and guardian of the Rift. One man trying to undo over a hundred years of wrongs, single-handed.
Jack isn't looking for a team. Jack doesn't need a team.
It makes sense, for Jack, to not want assistance. For the previous hundred years or more, he's been lumped in with other people - either ordered about by Torchwood, or part of a close-knit family on the TARDIS. He's been abandoned and left behind, killed and re-killed, lied to, experimented on, mistrusted, misjudged, and now that he's finally free - why would he want to saddle himself down with someone who might, in the end, do it all over again?
Or worse - end up doing the same to those under him.
We see the acquisition of a team in reverse order - which means we start with Ianto Jones. He's not quite the last piece of the puzzle - Gwen would be that - but he has a clear place marked for him, even from the start. And that's what makes it interesting - despite Jack's protests that he doesn't need "a teaboy" - we find as we read that it's really what he wanted all along.
From earlier in the timeline: He wishes they had been able to repair that robot that fell through the Rift, the hospitality-service droid with the built-in coffeemaker. Then they'd at least have the promise of warmth and comfort waiting for them at the Hub.
This is what Ianto provides, of course. The comfort - not just physical for Jack, but emotional for the rest of them - that pulls the team together. They return to the Hub, they find sandwiches and hot coffee waiting. They're able to sit, rest for a moment, regroup. It's a bit like family meal-time. Before Ianto - this was missing. There wasn't cohesion, except in pairs. Without Ianto, they're not a team.
The concept of missing pieces continues, the further back we go. Before Ianto is there, we see the need for cohesion. Before Owen is there, we see the need for a doctor. Before Tosh is there, we see Susie and Jack fighting for supremacy.
He's simply the last in what's probably a long line of men with power over her that she's slept with. He's been a casual shag hundreds of times, been called by other men's names more times than he can count, but he doesn't remember ever feeling so invisible before.
Suzie is using Jack for sex - but then, that is what Suzie did. Just as she's using Jack for physical release, she used Torchwood for the power it gave her, and the ability to obtain powers that had previously been denied her.
That's why the inclusion of Tosh is important to the creation of Team Torchwood - you can't have a team with two leaders, if there isn't anyone willing to follow. Tosh is willing to follow. The inclusion of Tosh into the mix is really what starts the actual creation of the idea of a team - and sure enough, we saw the three of them (Suzie, Tosh, and Jack) acting as a team shortly before Owen joins them.
And of course this is where the irony comes in - because to an extent, while Jack started out specifically planning not to create a team - this is exactly what Jack does. He doesn't intend to create a family, and yet they sit down and have meals together. He doesn't want anyone following him, and yet he is pleased when Tosh asks for her five-year-contract to be extended. He doesn't want to help anyone or be helped himself - and yet he sees Owen slowly getting over his grief for his fiancee, and is proud.
What makes this version of the story better than the other? I think it's the very nature of how we read it, and the direction we're reading in. The center, the core of Torchwood Three is Jack, and as far as we know, always will be. But Jack as fit his team around him like the layers of onion I referenced earlier, perfectly molded one to the other, to form a compact, airless whole. When you peel an onion, the layers retain their shape. Peel away Ianto, Owen, Tosh and Suzie, and they'll all still remind you of Torchwood, but Torchwood itself is lesser for not having them.
As is Jack. As are they all.
In short, vote for Team Building - Reverse the Polarity Remix. No, it's not a traditional remix - but it's a remarkable bit of rewriting all the same. It improved on the original, and it shows that thinking outside the box can be the most beneficial idea of all. For such a leap of faith - it absolutely deserves your vote.
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Only Visiting This Planet by vvj5 Link goes to Teaspoon
Category: Ficlet
Fandom: Classic Who
Characters: Third Doctor, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Jo Grant, Liz Shaw, Mike Yates, Sergeant Benton, Other characters
Rating: All Ages
Details: 6-part story, Angst, Drama, General.
Why It Rocks:
It brings together Liz Shaw and the UNIT family just over a year after she left to return to her academic life in Cambridge - via a young student and an incorporeal alien.
This story starts simply enough, with a young woman glancing up and seeing what appears to be a shooting star, but it changes her life and has the potential to change the world, maybe even the universe.
Then we meet Dr Liz Shaw, about a year after she left UNIT, attending a debate about the existence of extra-terrestrial life - and of course, she can't say that she's seen aliens (she did sign the Official Secrets Act, after all, as does anyone who joins a military organisation). After the debate a student follows Liz outside and asks to speak to her and Liz, who's feeling a bit humiliated about losing the debate, wearily agrees, taking the young woman (Janey) back to her rooms for a cup of tea and a conversation. Janey explains to Liz that she's got an alien living in her head and that it's been trying to talk to her, but can't make itself understood. All Janey can understand are its emotions, not its language, and the struggle for understanding is hurting Janey, causing her headaches and blackouts.
Liz hears her out, and then decides to ring her old friends at UNIT to tell the Doctor that she's sending Janey to him for his help. Making that phone call isn't easy - despite the promises she and her UNIT colleagues made to each other, she hasn't had any contact with them since she resigned. But Liz steels herself and rings the Doctor's extension - and is promptly thrown by the fact that the phone is answered by a young woman. She tells herself she should have expected the Brigadier to replace her as the Doctor's assistant, but somehow she hadn't really considered it, so she's disconcerted. I was reminded of Rose and Sarah Jane encountering each other for the first time - although Liz is much too worried about Janey's situation to feel any hostility towards her unknown replacement.
Jo (the Doctor's current assistant) and Captain Mike Yates (of UNIT) collect Janey from the station and drive her to UNIT HQ where the Doctor listens to her story, then says he's going to run some tests. Unfortunately the tests cause Janey considerable pain, and when the Brigadier arrives to find out what's happening, he becomes very angry when the Doctor reveals that whatever he wants to do in order to find out what the alien is trying to tell them will actually kill Janey. The Brigadier wants to stop the Doctor from carrying out his plan, but the Time Lord insists it's up to Janey to make the decision:
"I need to hear what it says. I know it's important.”
"But how can you be sure of that?" asked Jo earnestly. "If it's inside your head, how do you know it's not making you feel that way?"
"A good question," observed the Brigadier.
The Doctor glanced across at her, allowing her to be the one to answer. She wasn’t sure she was grateful. Jo was right. When she put it that bluntly, how could she be sure of anything?
"There doesn’t seem to be anything else to do," she said and swallowed, suddenly wanting to cry instead of laugh. "It keeps hurting and I feel as if I might burst if it doesn't tell everyone what it came for. And it doesn't feel as if it’s evil, although I suppose you're right and I might not be able to tell by now."
So Janey makes a brave but painful choice, and the Doctor does his 'stuff' (we're not told what, and it doesn't really matter) so that the alien can talk to them. The alien explains that his race is almost formless, since they're comprised of energy and thought waves; they use physical objects, including other lifeforms, as their 'vehicles' to travel and see other worlds. The alien inside Janey's head had made a preliminary visit to Earth with another of his kind, and then they'd reported back to their homeworld. Hearing that there were no beings like themselves here, the aliens at home decided to send out a colonising force, but the alien who'd visited Earth believed that there was intelligent life in some of the physical creatures on Earth, so he'd come back to pass on a warning. Unfortunately his ship crashed, and he was forced to leap for safety into the nearest 'vehicle' - which happened to be Janey.
He explains how to prevent the colonising force from landing on Earth: a broadcast signal that will cause them pain and scare them away, which could, if necessary, be strengthened to cause his people to 'disperse' (like dispersing mist), but he asks that they not use that unless absolutely necessary.
After the alien finishes his explanation he disperses, passing out through Janey's head - but in doing so he gives her a momentary ability to understand the thoughts of those in the room with her. Although Janey survives the process of allowing the alien to speak to the Doctor and the others, she is still going to die sooner rather than later:
It was strange, she thought to herself, that it was easier to believe in aliens and other worlds than to believe in death. Of course, she knew that everyone died sooner or later, but to truly believe that it was going to happen to her in a matter of - what? - days, weeks, months, cups of tea? - that was hard to take in. She heard her heart thudding and thought: it's going to stop beating soon; I shall stop breathing… One moment I'm here and the next everything stops. Then she stopped herself, because it all seemed too morbid and still not quite real.
Despite the fact I had barely known this character for any length of time, I still felt quite choked at her realisation that she was going to die sooner rather than later. This is an original character and quite often authors create them simply to kill them off (I know I've done it) - which is what happens here: Janey is there simply to die so that she can bring Liz and the Doctor back into contact with each other, however briefly. But just because Janey's dispensable, doesn't mean she's one-dimensional - she can't be if Liz and the Doctor are to care enough about her to want to help her. Instead, she's a fully-rounded, well-written character - someone whom I could believe that the Doctor would have travelled with if his circumstances (and hers) had been different. She's got a good deal of inner strength and courage, she cares about the alien living in her head (despite the fact that he's hurting her and will kill her), she's friendly, she has a sense of humour (at one stage she and Jo collapse into a helpless fit of giggles), and she demonstrates curiosity - all qualities which the Doctor appreciates in his travelling companions.
A little later Liz rings the Doctor to find out what's happening to Janey, and he tells her that Janey's now in the hospital and that she's not going to recover. Liz immediately visits, and is angry at what's happened, but Janey is resigned, and seems glad to have had the chance to see the alien's world just for a moment before he died. She lapses into a coma shortly afterwards, and then dies soon after that, but not before telling Liz that when she was momentarily able to understand everyone's thoughts, the Brigadier's were about Liz, which embarrasses her.
Canonically, Liz left UNIT after only a short period of time working with them, and we're told after the fact (in Spearhead from Space) that it's because she was fed up of being little more than the Doctor's lackey. In vvj5's UNIT series, however, we’re told that it's partly because Liz and the Brigadier have realised they're in love with each other, but they don't think it will work out. Classic Who may be less obvious than New Who in showing the relationships between the characters, but it's there to be seen if you're paying attention (it manifests as meaningful looks and caring conversations rather than handholding or snogging, but personally I quite enjoy the subtle rather than the blatant). Vvj5's stories are pretty subtle too - although Liz and the Brigadier kiss (in the story which precedes Only Visiting this Planet), it's a goodbye kiss, just before she leaves UNIT. Until that point in her UNIT series there has only been UST between the two of them, just as there is in the show itself.
Liz is bitterly upset at Janey's death, despite acknowledging that she barely knew the young woman; fortunately, just as she leaves the hospital, the Doctor turns up in Bessie, and he takes her for a drive, allowing her to cry, not only about Janey, but also because she's confused about her feelings about walking out of UNIT. The reader senses that she will always feel some regret about making the decision not to pursue a relationship with the Brigadier, but at the same time, she feels that she made the right choice: her academic career was in limbo while she was on secondment to UNIT, and although her time there was fascinating, she was little better than a lab assistant - and therefore doing nothing for her career by remaining.
Why should you vote for this fic? Because it's thoughtful, engaging, and features an original character who's well-rounded and utterly real - I can't imagine many people will be unmoved by her death, which shows what an excellent job vvj5 does in writing Janey. Also I found myself thinking about the story a lot after I'd finished reading it - not just about Janey, but also about Liz and her relationship with the staff at UNIT. For me, thought-provoking fics are to be valued and re-read, and even (sometimes at least) interacted with in some way - this one has given me so much food for thought that I suspect I'll be provoked into writing meta soon.
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Brilliant By Degrees by wendymr
Category: Donna Noble
Fandom: New Who
Characters: The Doctor, Jack, Martha, Donna
Rating: All ages
Details: Ficlet, makes the ending of JE sting just a little less.
Why it Rocks:
I've talked in previous reviews about how much I didn't like the end of Donna's arch. I, like many fans, found it incredibly painful to witness the destruction of a character who had come so far over the season she spent inside the TARDIS. The Doctor stripped her of everything that she'd learned, and returned her to where she was even before The Runaway Bride.
But did he?
Wendy tells the story of the Doctor returning to London because Jack and Martha have asked him to come - although he doesn't know why. The Doctor finds himself inside an auditorium, sitting through a very boring ceremony. He's cutting up and generally being the hyperactive child that he is when something catches his eye:
Jack nudges him. “Doctor. Wake up.”
“I am awake!” he protests.
“That’ll be why everyone around us heard you snoring, then,” Martha interjects.
“Traitor,” he accuses her, and reaches for his sonic screwdriver. If he has to be trapped here for the next hour, he might as well start work on that new setting he’s been planning. It’s about time he had a means of shutting people up instantly, and it’s not as if it’s difficult. Just cut off the sound waves, and hey presto! Instant silence.
“Doctor! God, you’re like a little kid,” Jack mutters. “Put that away and pay attention.”
He debates zapping Jack with the soldering setting. He’ll resurrect within a few seconds anyway.
“...present the candidates for the Bachelor of Science in Psychology...” a voice somewhere in the background announces. Jack nudges him again. He glances up briefly, sees nothing of interest and idly flicks his gaze around the room.
Only to come to a complete halt as flame-red hair catches his eye.
Under Jack and Martha's watchful eyes, with some help from Sarah Jane Smith, Donna has returned to school to get her degree in Psychology, an area of study that suits Donna well, the Doctor thinks...
She’s the companion who got him talking when nobody else could, after all. Even though she came right out and told him that he talks and talks but never actually says anything, he told her, didn’t he? About his family. About losing them. About why he was too scared to accept Jenny.
Later, he told her about Midnight, about the shuttle and Sky and his voice being stolen. And, of course, right from the beginning he told her about Rose: about losing her, and later how much he missed her.
The weirdest thing was that at the time he never even realised how much he was telling her.
It's a simple fic - a simple tale. One of the ones that benefits from the author's concise style - she doesn't tell you anymore than she has to in order to tell the story, and lets you fill in the blanks yourself. It paints a picture of companions taking care of each other post-Doctor that I really enjoyed and has become my personal canon.
It's hard to tell you what exactly hit me hardest about the fic - the idea of Donna choosing, herself, to change her life completely, in a different way than she started searching for the Doctor; the true-to-canon characterizations of Martha and Jack, the idea of the Torchwood Institute actually helping instead of harming...
When it comes right down to it, there's a line that I remembered vividly in the week between choosing this fic and writing this review. It's a line that someone needs to say to the Doctor. It's something he needs to remember. It's something I, as a fan, want him to have.
Jack’s about to salute, but he pre-empts him by stepping forward and hugging him instead. “I know this was your doing,” he says quietly, for Jack’s ears only. “I won’t forget.”
“Remember this, then,” Jack says, his voice firm and confident, as he straightens and looks the Doctor directly in the eye. “This is what you turn us into, Doctor. Psychologists and doctors and defenders of the planet. Not murderers.”
In any case, a read of this fic is a definite must for any fan of Donna or any of the other supporting characters. I wouldn't call it fluff as it has a point and it's not shippery, but I will say that it will make your day better. It will put a smile on your face. It might heal wounds left open by JE. Or it could just transport you away for five minutes.
Brilliant by Degrees deserves a read - and your vote.
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Clinging to the Wreckage Until I Got the Message by paperclipbitch
Category: Owen Harper
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Owen, Ianto
Rating: PG-15 (primarily for salty language)
Details: Owen Harper and Ianto Jones have a very screwed up...er... friendship? Self-induced migraines, brutal potted plant murder, massive quantities of snark and finally snogging ensue.
Why it Rocks:
Remember when you were in 3rd grade (or your educational system's equivalent thereof) and there was that one boy or girl who just kept stealing your pencil box? And it wasn't until two decades later that you figured out what that actually means?
In Clinging to the Wreckage Until I Got the Message, it doesn't take Owen and Ianto quite two decades to figure it out, but it does take long enough that by the time they actually get there, the reader is absolutely cheering them on to just snog already and get it over with. I was sort of imagining Gwen and Tosh off camera high-fiving each other. The story builds the tension-largely consisting of absolutely spot-on snarky banter between our favourite passive-aggressive teaboy and aggressive-aggressive doctor-until the reader is just dying for them to do something about it.
“What if we turn the old briefing room into a greenhouse of some kind?” Ianto suggests, slowly, clearly thinking out loud. “Get some heating in there, some plant pots or something, see what happens.”
Owen kind of likes the idea; but remains suspicious.
“Is this some kind of plan to save me?” he asks, and it comes out a little more savagely than he means it to. “‘Oh, let’s get Owen to grow some things and then maybe he’ll have some kind of life-affirming epiphany and it’ll all work out fucking ok’?”
Because, of course, it's immediately post-series-one, Jack is off to parts unknown (to the Torchwood team), and they're all just kind of barely keeping it together. No one at the Hub is all right, really. And Owen is less all right than most because he was never even in the same post code as all right to begin with. When the fic opens, he is stumbling drunkenly in to the hub after yet another accidentally-on-purpose bar fight so he can patch himself up in his medical bay. Ianto, ever-present, lends a hand but also a very sharp tongue in regards to Owen's self-destructive streak. It's the start of a series of encounters between Owen in Ianto which feature both men in a complicated dance where neither is just willing to up and leave the dance floor... for some reason.
And I must confess, I love Owen Harper. I love him in the same way that I love Gregory House or Dexter Morgan. He is one screwed up individual, and I find that fascinating. The way paperclipbitch writes him, he really jumps off the page, potty-mouth and dripping sarcasm even in his inner monologue. He's not stopping to cry emo tears in private-he's exactly what it says on the tin, inside and out. I found the characterisation and voice both to be a joy throughout.
He suspects he’s kind of coming around to not giving a shit about Jack’s Mysterious And Angst-Filled Past, which is probably not a sign that he’s, you know, growing as a person, and is more likely to be an indication that he’s just becoming apathetic to a fault. Which isn’t a comforting thought, and he sort of hates that Ianto’s ignoring him because he’d kind of like to ask the other man what he thinks. Not that he’d come straight out with I think I’m losing the ability to care about things, what the hell do I do now, but he’d possibly get there in a roundabout way in the end.
paperclipbitch writes Owen and Ianto trying to be at least passably congenial to one another, which then morphs in to a sort of grudging quasi-friendship, but once they start down that path, they can't seem to stop. In the elephant-in-the-room absence of Jack, they realise that the fact that they both spend a rather inordinate amount of time wondering things about the other, arguing with each other, Very Much Not Talking To Each Other, criticising each other, devising petty punishments for one another for perceived transgressions (especially this)-it all sort of boils down to the fact that they each spend most of their waking moments doing something in relation to the other. As much as Owen wants to convince himself that he most definitely doesn't care one jot about Ianto and thinks he's kind of a twat, his actions tell a very different story. In a way it sort of reminded me of Moonlighting: Torchwood (which, in case anyone is wondering, is a good thing).
This fic is wonderfully written and constructed, the Owen POV is snarky but never ever shallow, and Ianto is brilliantly passive-aggressive, with the world's driest wit. Both the prose and the dialogue are fluid and full of droll little turns of phrase. I found the journey both characters go on to be completely believable and in-character. I enjoyed it immensely, and give it an unqualified thumbs-up as a nominee in the Owen Harper category of the awards.
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This Is by ladychi
Category: Ficlet
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Rose, Ten
Rating: R. Very, very R.
Details: One-shot smut. Did I mention the R?
Why It Rocks:
It's not often I'll review smutfic here. Not because I have a problem with it - oh, no. I'll happily sit down and read just about any smutfic that comes my way, regardless of pairing.
But reviewing it - well, that's something else entirely. Let's face it, when it comes to smutfic, you've got Tab A and Slot B (or maybe another Tab A and a Slot C) and really the whole point is to insert one into the other.
But This Is.....well, this is different. It's been stuck in my head for most of the day. Chi tells us, very close to up front, that it's about sex. And it's absolutely correct - the story is about sex, absolutely infused with it, drenched in it, so much so that when you're done, you're going to want either a snack, a nap, or a cigarette.
This is about... oh. Letting him inside. Feeling the difference, feeling how perfect it still is. Filling her until she can feel whole again, until she stops feeling the unpleasant ache of grief and acknowledges how very much alive they both are.
And yet - it's not the actual sex that grabs me about this fic. It's the way the words flow around it. You see, smutfic - good smutfic - isn't about Tab A and Slot B. It's really about everything but.
This is about the poetic and the real.
Taking bits and pieces from the story almost seems like sacrilege, really. That first quote - "This is about...oh." It doesn't work on its own, does it? It's just a bit out of context really, because you don't have the phrases that go before, that set you up. Chi has written sexual acts, from start to finish - and I do mean start to finish. We've got your foreplay, your teasing, your consummation, your release, your blissful moments of orbiting the heavens before coming gently back down to Earth again.
"This is about...oh." You can't just jump straight into orgasm without the preamble. And I can't adequately describe how amazingly breathtaking the story is without quoting the entire thing - which is sort of beside the point.
In short, vote for This Is. There are a thousand words that can be used to describe what Chi has given us; she's picked the 250 that describe it perfectly. It's poetic and lovely and lyrical and, to borrow a phrase oft used by other reviewers, hawt. And it absolutely deserves your vote.
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Come Back and Haunt Me by find_rightbrain
Category: Toshiko Sato
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Toshiko Sato, Suzie Costello
Rating: PG
Details: Ficlet, 644 words, complete
Why It Rocks:
How does it feel to be defined by loss? To have everything you touch, everything you cherish, turn to dust in your hands over and over? What would that do to your ability to trust, to allow yourself to believe that maybe this time you could be happy?
For someone so young, Toshiko Sato has experienced a lot of loss in her life. We found out in Fragments that she lost the job she loved, and has to all intents and purposes lost her family too. The only contact she’s allowed to have with her mum is by postcard. No visits. No phone calls. No hugs. No personal contact at all.
Every time she falls in love, too, she loses the one she loves. Mary, in Greeks Bearing Gifts. Tommy, in To The Last Man. And then Owen, whom she’s been in love with all along. She has to go through the agony of losing Owen twice, in Reset and again in Exit Wounds.
It was only when I saw those glimpses of Tosh’s past from Fragments that I truly understood her intense focus on work and her withdrawal from the world around her. How hard must it be to trust that anything she wants, anything she gets enjoyment from, won’t be ripped away from her again?
And it’s with this awareness that Come Back and Haunt Me really makes me shiver. In hinting at a relationship between Tosh and Suzie that was more than colleagues, find_rightbrain shows exactly how difficult it must be for Tosh to let herself feel - or even to let herself care.
Suzie shifts a little closer - Tosh doesn't even see, she just hears the scrape of the chair, feels the weight of presence, and shifts instinctively away. If she just keeps her eyes on the computer screens, as if there's anything there to keep her occupied, if she just waits until the others return...
Is it the mere fact that she’s talking to a dead person that’s making her try to ignore Suzie’s presence? Or is it that this is yet another lost relationship, one more hurt among many, and she’s trying to insulate herself against the renewal of pain?
find_rightbrain’s summary for this story is Dead girlfriends are fairly common with Torchwood. Honesty is less common. As she desperately tries to protect what’s left of her damaged, battered emotions, Tosh weighs up the truth and chooses a lie:
"I suppose it's too much to ask if you missed me?"
...No, is what she wants to tell her. No, she didn't miss her, because she got rid of all her things, all the little things, notes and pictures and all, because she put Suzie Costello in a little box under her bed, in a closed and locked compartment in the back of her mind, and did all she could to forget about what could have been love.
"Does it matter?" is what she ends up asking, voice quiet and rough, without turning to look at her.
It does matter, of course, because this is another loss, another death in the story of Tosh’s life. Of course, Tommy and Owen are still to come, but this encounter isn’t long after Mary: a betrayal as well as another lover dead. "It's getting to be a habit with me," Tosh admits, and this reader’s heart ached for her once more.
find_rightbrain’s choice of Suzie also resonated with me because, of course, Suzie was sleeping with Owen as well; can Tosh never find someone who will put her first? And are her experiences in that regard only serving to make her insulate herself from the world around her even more?
This is a thought-provoking and achingly sad little story which, on the surface, is simply about a few moments of conversation between Tosh and dead-Suzie, but read it carefully because it’s about so much more than that. Come Back and Haunt Me actually sums up so much about Tosh, and does it in only 644 words - fewer words than I’ve used in this review. Read it, and seriously consider voting for it, because it deserves it.
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Today's reviews were written by:
persiflage_1: Only Visiting This Planet
ladychi: Brilliant By Degrees
papilio_luna: Clinging to the Wreckage...
azriona: Team Building...; This Is
wendymr: Come Back and Haunt Me
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Team Building - Reverse the Polarity Remix by iamshadow and sam_storyteller
Category: Teamfic
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Torchwood Team, without Gwen
Rating: R
Details: One shot told in several parts. Takes place prior to S1.
Why It Rocks:
To call this a remix is technically not accurate - at least, not the way I understand remixes. What I understand to be a traditional remix is this: Author A writes a Story from Character A's POV. Author B then takes the Story, and rewrites it from Character B's POV.
So, technically speaking, this isn't a remix - it's more along the lines of a seriously-influenced rewrite of a previously posted story. What makes this particular rewrite shine, however, is that it has essentially been turned on its head - hence the "Reverse the Polarity" subtitle. The order of events has been given to us in reverse order, which makes it a little like peeling back the onion layers that make up Team Torchwood at the beginning of the first season (pre-Gwen). It's an interesting device, and made more intriguing by the fact that we don't realize how much Jack needed everyone until we see him without them.
When we start, however, it's not in present day - we start at the very beginning of Jack's tenure as head of Torchwood Three - we start on New Year's Day, as Jack tries, and fails, to wash the blood from his hands.
...for the best part of two years, he isn't just the boss, he is Torchwood Three. Vigilante, alien hunter, scavenger, defender of Cardiff, and guardian of the Rift. One man trying to undo over a hundred years of wrongs, single-handed.
Jack isn't looking for a team. Jack doesn't need a team.
It makes sense, for Jack, to not want assistance. For the previous hundred years or more, he's been lumped in with other people - either ordered about by Torchwood, or part of a close-knit family on the TARDIS. He's been abandoned and left behind, killed and re-killed, lied to, experimented on, mistrusted, misjudged, and now that he's finally free - why would he want to saddle himself down with someone who might, in the end, do it all over again?
Or worse - end up doing the same to those under him.
We see the acquisition of a team in reverse order - which means we start with Ianto Jones. He's not quite the last piece of the puzzle - Gwen would be that - but he has a clear place marked for him, even from the start. And that's what makes it interesting - despite Jack's protests that he doesn't need "a teaboy" - we find as we read that it's really what he wanted all along.
From earlier in the timeline: He wishes they had been able to repair that robot that fell through the Rift, the hospitality-service droid with the built-in coffeemaker. Then they'd at least have the promise of warmth and comfort waiting for them at the Hub.
This is what Ianto provides, of course. The comfort - not just physical for Jack, but emotional for the rest of them - that pulls the team together. They return to the Hub, they find sandwiches and hot coffee waiting. They're able to sit, rest for a moment, regroup. It's a bit like family meal-time. Before Ianto - this was missing. There wasn't cohesion, except in pairs. Without Ianto, they're not a team.
The concept of missing pieces continues, the further back we go. Before Ianto is there, we see the need for cohesion. Before Owen is there, we see the need for a doctor. Before Tosh is there, we see Susie and Jack fighting for supremacy.
He's simply the last in what's probably a long line of men with power over her that she's slept with. He's been a casual shag hundreds of times, been called by other men's names more times than he can count, but he doesn't remember ever feeling so invisible before.
Suzie is using Jack for sex - but then, that is what Suzie did. Just as she's using Jack for physical release, she used Torchwood for the power it gave her, and the ability to obtain powers that had previously been denied her.
That's why the inclusion of Tosh is important to the creation of Team Torchwood - you can't have a team with two leaders, if there isn't anyone willing to follow. Tosh is willing to follow. The inclusion of Tosh into the mix is really what starts the actual creation of the idea of a team - and sure enough, we saw the three of them (Suzie, Tosh, and Jack) acting as a team shortly before Owen joins them.
And of course this is where the irony comes in - because to an extent, while Jack started out specifically planning not to create a team - this is exactly what Jack does. He doesn't intend to create a family, and yet they sit down and have meals together. He doesn't want anyone following him, and yet he is pleased when Tosh asks for her five-year-contract to be extended. He doesn't want to help anyone or be helped himself - and yet he sees Owen slowly getting over his grief for his fiancee, and is proud.
What makes this version of the story better than the other? I think it's the very nature of how we read it, and the direction we're reading in. The center, the core of Torchwood Three is Jack, and as far as we know, always will be. But Jack as fit his team around him like the layers of onion I referenced earlier, perfectly molded one to the other, to form a compact, airless whole. When you peel an onion, the layers retain their shape. Peel away Ianto, Owen, Tosh and Suzie, and they'll all still remind you of Torchwood, but Torchwood itself is lesser for not having them.
As is Jack. As are they all.
In short, vote for Team Building - Reverse the Polarity Remix. No, it's not a traditional remix - but it's a remarkable bit of rewriting all the same. It improved on the original, and it shows that thinking outside the box can be the most beneficial idea of all. For such a leap of faith - it absolutely deserves your vote.
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Only Visiting This Planet by vvj5 Link goes to Teaspoon
Category: Ficlet
Fandom: Classic Who
Characters: Third Doctor, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Jo Grant, Liz Shaw, Mike Yates, Sergeant Benton, Other characters
Rating: All Ages
Details: 6-part story, Angst, Drama, General.
Why It Rocks:
It brings together Liz Shaw and the UNIT family just over a year after she left to return to her academic life in Cambridge - via a young student and an incorporeal alien.
This story starts simply enough, with a young woman glancing up and seeing what appears to be a shooting star, but it changes her life and has the potential to change the world, maybe even the universe.
Then we meet Dr Liz Shaw, about a year after she left UNIT, attending a debate about the existence of extra-terrestrial life - and of course, she can't say that she's seen aliens (she did sign the Official Secrets Act, after all, as does anyone who joins a military organisation). After the debate a student follows Liz outside and asks to speak to her and Liz, who's feeling a bit humiliated about losing the debate, wearily agrees, taking the young woman (Janey) back to her rooms for a cup of tea and a conversation. Janey explains to Liz that she's got an alien living in her head and that it's been trying to talk to her, but can't make itself understood. All Janey can understand are its emotions, not its language, and the struggle for understanding is hurting Janey, causing her headaches and blackouts.
Liz hears her out, and then decides to ring her old friends at UNIT to tell the Doctor that she's sending Janey to him for his help. Making that phone call isn't easy - despite the promises she and her UNIT colleagues made to each other, she hasn't had any contact with them since she resigned. But Liz steels herself and rings the Doctor's extension - and is promptly thrown by the fact that the phone is answered by a young woman. She tells herself she should have expected the Brigadier to replace her as the Doctor's assistant, but somehow she hadn't really considered it, so she's disconcerted. I was reminded of Rose and Sarah Jane encountering each other for the first time - although Liz is much too worried about Janey's situation to feel any hostility towards her unknown replacement.
Jo (the Doctor's current assistant) and Captain Mike Yates (of UNIT) collect Janey from the station and drive her to UNIT HQ where the Doctor listens to her story, then says he's going to run some tests. Unfortunately the tests cause Janey considerable pain, and when the Brigadier arrives to find out what's happening, he becomes very angry when the Doctor reveals that whatever he wants to do in order to find out what the alien is trying to tell them will actually kill Janey. The Brigadier wants to stop the Doctor from carrying out his plan, but the Time Lord insists it's up to Janey to make the decision:
"I need to hear what it says. I know it's important.”
"But how can you be sure of that?" asked Jo earnestly. "If it's inside your head, how do you know it's not making you feel that way?"
"A good question," observed the Brigadier.
The Doctor glanced across at her, allowing her to be the one to answer. She wasn’t sure she was grateful. Jo was right. When she put it that bluntly, how could she be sure of anything?
"There doesn’t seem to be anything else to do," she said and swallowed, suddenly wanting to cry instead of laugh. "It keeps hurting and I feel as if I might burst if it doesn't tell everyone what it came for. And it doesn't feel as if it’s evil, although I suppose you're right and I might not be able to tell by now."
So Janey makes a brave but painful choice, and the Doctor does his 'stuff' (we're not told what, and it doesn't really matter) so that the alien can talk to them. The alien explains that his race is almost formless, since they're comprised of energy and thought waves; they use physical objects, including other lifeforms, as their 'vehicles' to travel and see other worlds. The alien inside Janey's head had made a preliminary visit to Earth with another of his kind, and then they'd reported back to their homeworld. Hearing that there were no beings like themselves here, the aliens at home decided to send out a colonising force, but the alien who'd visited Earth believed that there was intelligent life in some of the physical creatures on Earth, so he'd come back to pass on a warning. Unfortunately his ship crashed, and he was forced to leap for safety into the nearest 'vehicle' - which happened to be Janey.
He explains how to prevent the colonising force from landing on Earth: a broadcast signal that will cause them pain and scare them away, which could, if necessary, be strengthened to cause his people to 'disperse' (like dispersing mist), but he asks that they not use that unless absolutely necessary.
After the alien finishes his explanation he disperses, passing out through Janey's head - but in doing so he gives her a momentary ability to understand the thoughts of those in the room with her. Although Janey survives the process of allowing the alien to speak to the Doctor and the others, she is still going to die sooner rather than later:
It was strange, she thought to herself, that it was easier to believe in aliens and other worlds than to believe in death. Of course, she knew that everyone died sooner or later, but to truly believe that it was going to happen to her in a matter of - what? - days, weeks, months, cups of tea? - that was hard to take in. She heard her heart thudding and thought: it's going to stop beating soon; I shall stop breathing… One moment I'm here and the next everything stops. Then she stopped herself, because it all seemed too morbid and still not quite real.
Despite the fact I had barely known this character for any length of time, I still felt quite choked at her realisation that she was going to die sooner rather than later. This is an original character and quite often authors create them simply to kill them off (I know I've done it) - which is what happens here: Janey is there simply to die so that she can bring Liz and the Doctor back into contact with each other, however briefly. But just because Janey's dispensable, doesn't mean she's one-dimensional - she can't be if Liz and the Doctor are to care enough about her to want to help her. Instead, she's a fully-rounded, well-written character - someone whom I could believe that the Doctor would have travelled with if his circumstances (and hers) had been different. She's got a good deal of inner strength and courage, she cares about the alien living in her head (despite the fact that he's hurting her and will kill her), she's friendly, she has a sense of humour (at one stage she and Jo collapse into a helpless fit of giggles), and she demonstrates curiosity - all qualities which the Doctor appreciates in his travelling companions.
A little later Liz rings the Doctor to find out what's happening to Janey, and he tells her that Janey's now in the hospital and that she's not going to recover. Liz immediately visits, and is angry at what's happened, but Janey is resigned, and seems glad to have had the chance to see the alien's world just for a moment before he died. She lapses into a coma shortly afterwards, and then dies soon after that, but not before telling Liz that when she was momentarily able to understand everyone's thoughts, the Brigadier's were about Liz, which embarrasses her.
Canonically, Liz left UNIT after only a short period of time working with them, and we're told after the fact (in Spearhead from Space) that it's because she was fed up of being little more than the Doctor's lackey. In vvj5's UNIT series, however, we’re told that it's partly because Liz and the Brigadier have realised they're in love with each other, but they don't think it will work out. Classic Who may be less obvious than New Who in showing the relationships between the characters, but it's there to be seen if you're paying attention (it manifests as meaningful looks and caring conversations rather than handholding or snogging, but personally I quite enjoy the subtle rather than the blatant). Vvj5's stories are pretty subtle too - although Liz and the Brigadier kiss (in the story which precedes Only Visiting this Planet), it's a goodbye kiss, just before she leaves UNIT. Until that point in her UNIT series there has only been UST between the two of them, just as there is in the show itself.
Liz is bitterly upset at Janey's death, despite acknowledging that she barely knew the young woman; fortunately, just as she leaves the hospital, the Doctor turns up in Bessie, and he takes her for a drive, allowing her to cry, not only about Janey, but also because she's confused about her feelings about walking out of UNIT. The reader senses that she will always feel some regret about making the decision not to pursue a relationship with the Brigadier, but at the same time, she feels that she made the right choice: her academic career was in limbo while she was on secondment to UNIT, and although her time there was fascinating, she was little better than a lab assistant - and therefore doing nothing for her career by remaining.
Why should you vote for this fic? Because it's thoughtful, engaging, and features an original character who's well-rounded and utterly real - I can't imagine many people will be unmoved by her death, which shows what an excellent job vvj5 does in writing Janey. Also I found myself thinking about the story a lot after I'd finished reading it - not just about Janey, but also about Liz and her relationship with the staff at UNIT. For me, thought-provoking fics are to be valued and re-read, and even (sometimes at least) interacted with in some way - this one has given me so much food for thought that I suspect I'll be provoked into writing meta soon.
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Brilliant By Degrees by wendymr
Category: Donna Noble
Fandom: New Who
Characters: The Doctor, Jack, Martha, Donna
Rating: All ages
Details: Ficlet, makes the ending of JE sting just a little less.
Why it Rocks:
I've talked in previous reviews about how much I didn't like the end of Donna's arch. I, like many fans, found it incredibly painful to witness the destruction of a character who had come so far over the season she spent inside the TARDIS. The Doctor stripped her of everything that she'd learned, and returned her to where she was even before The Runaway Bride.
But did he?
Wendy tells the story of the Doctor returning to London because Jack and Martha have asked him to come - although he doesn't know why. The Doctor finds himself inside an auditorium, sitting through a very boring ceremony. He's cutting up and generally being the hyperactive child that he is when something catches his eye:
Jack nudges him. “Doctor. Wake up.”
“I am awake!” he protests.
“That’ll be why everyone around us heard you snoring, then,” Martha interjects.
“Traitor,” he accuses her, and reaches for his sonic screwdriver. If he has to be trapped here for the next hour, he might as well start work on that new setting he’s been planning. It’s about time he had a means of shutting people up instantly, and it’s not as if it’s difficult. Just cut off the sound waves, and hey presto! Instant silence.
“Doctor! God, you’re like a little kid,” Jack mutters. “Put that away and pay attention.”
He debates zapping Jack with the soldering setting. He’ll resurrect within a few seconds anyway.
“...present the candidates for the Bachelor of Science in Psychology...” a voice somewhere in the background announces. Jack nudges him again. He glances up briefly, sees nothing of interest and idly flicks his gaze around the room.
Only to come to a complete halt as flame-red hair catches his eye.
Under Jack and Martha's watchful eyes, with some help from Sarah Jane Smith, Donna has returned to school to get her degree in Psychology, an area of study that suits Donna well, the Doctor thinks...
She’s the companion who got him talking when nobody else could, after all. Even though she came right out and told him that he talks and talks but never actually says anything, he told her, didn’t he? About his family. About losing them. About why he was too scared to accept Jenny.
Later, he told her about Midnight, about the shuttle and Sky and his voice being stolen. And, of course, right from the beginning he told her about Rose: about losing her, and later how much he missed her.
The weirdest thing was that at the time he never even realised how much he was telling her.
It's a simple fic - a simple tale. One of the ones that benefits from the author's concise style - she doesn't tell you anymore than she has to in order to tell the story, and lets you fill in the blanks yourself. It paints a picture of companions taking care of each other post-Doctor that I really enjoyed and has become my personal canon.
It's hard to tell you what exactly hit me hardest about the fic - the idea of Donna choosing, herself, to change her life completely, in a different way than she started searching for the Doctor; the true-to-canon characterizations of Martha and Jack, the idea of the Torchwood Institute actually helping instead of harming...
When it comes right down to it, there's a line that I remembered vividly in the week between choosing this fic and writing this review. It's a line that someone needs to say to the Doctor. It's something he needs to remember. It's something I, as a fan, want him to have.
Jack’s about to salute, but he pre-empts him by stepping forward and hugging him instead. “I know this was your doing,” he says quietly, for Jack’s ears only. “I won’t forget.”
“Remember this, then,” Jack says, his voice firm and confident, as he straightens and looks the Doctor directly in the eye. “This is what you turn us into, Doctor. Psychologists and doctors and defenders of the planet. Not murderers.”
In any case, a read of this fic is a definite must for any fan of Donna or any of the other supporting characters. I wouldn't call it fluff as it has a point and it's not shippery, but I will say that it will make your day better. It will put a smile on your face. It might heal wounds left open by JE. Or it could just transport you away for five minutes.
Brilliant by Degrees deserves a read - and your vote.
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Clinging to the Wreckage Until I Got the Message by paperclipbitch
Category: Owen Harper
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Owen, Ianto
Rating: PG-15 (primarily for salty language)
Details: Owen Harper and Ianto Jones have a very screwed up...er... friendship? Self-induced migraines, brutal potted plant murder, massive quantities of snark and finally snogging ensue.
Why it Rocks:
Remember when you were in 3rd grade (or your educational system's equivalent thereof) and there was that one boy or girl who just kept stealing your pencil box? And it wasn't until two decades later that you figured out what that actually means?
In Clinging to the Wreckage Until I Got the Message, it doesn't take Owen and Ianto quite two decades to figure it out, but it does take long enough that by the time they actually get there, the reader is absolutely cheering them on to just snog already and get it over with. I was sort of imagining Gwen and Tosh off camera high-fiving each other. The story builds the tension-largely consisting of absolutely spot-on snarky banter between our favourite passive-aggressive teaboy and aggressive-aggressive doctor-until the reader is just dying for them to do something about it.
“What if we turn the old briefing room into a greenhouse of some kind?” Ianto suggests, slowly, clearly thinking out loud. “Get some heating in there, some plant pots or something, see what happens.”
Owen kind of likes the idea; but remains suspicious.
“Is this some kind of plan to save me?” he asks, and it comes out a little more savagely than he means it to. “‘Oh, let’s get Owen to grow some things and then maybe he’ll have some kind of life-affirming epiphany and it’ll all work out fucking ok’?”
Because, of course, it's immediately post-series-one, Jack is off to parts unknown (to the Torchwood team), and they're all just kind of barely keeping it together. No one at the Hub is all right, really. And Owen is less all right than most because he was never even in the same post code as all right to begin with. When the fic opens, he is stumbling drunkenly in to the hub after yet another accidentally-on-purpose bar fight so he can patch himself up in his medical bay. Ianto, ever-present, lends a hand but also a very sharp tongue in regards to Owen's self-destructive streak. It's the start of a series of encounters between Owen in Ianto which feature both men in a complicated dance where neither is just willing to up and leave the dance floor... for some reason.
And I must confess, I love Owen Harper. I love him in the same way that I love Gregory House or Dexter Morgan. He is one screwed up individual, and I find that fascinating. The way paperclipbitch writes him, he really jumps off the page, potty-mouth and dripping sarcasm even in his inner monologue. He's not stopping to cry emo tears in private-he's exactly what it says on the tin, inside and out. I found the characterisation and voice both to be a joy throughout.
He suspects he’s kind of coming around to not giving a shit about Jack’s Mysterious And Angst-Filled Past, which is probably not a sign that he’s, you know, growing as a person, and is more likely to be an indication that he’s just becoming apathetic to a fault. Which isn’t a comforting thought, and he sort of hates that Ianto’s ignoring him because he’d kind of like to ask the other man what he thinks. Not that he’d come straight out with I think I’m losing the ability to care about things, what the hell do I do now, but he’d possibly get there in a roundabout way in the end.
paperclipbitch writes Owen and Ianto trying to be at least passably congenial to one another, which then morphs in to a sort of grudging quasi-friendship, but once they start down that path, they can't seem to stop. In the elephant-in-the-room absence of Jack, they realise that the fact that they both spend a rather inordinate amount of time wondering things about the other, arguing with each other, Very Much Not Talking To Each Other, criticising each other, devising petty punishments for one another for perceived transgressions (especially this)-it all sort of boils down to the fact that they each spend most of their waking moments doing something in relation to the other. As much as Owen wants to convince himself that he most definitely doesn't care one jot about Ianto and thinks he's kind of a twat, his actions tell a very different story. In a way it sort of reminded me of Moonlighting: Torchwood (which, in case anyone is wondering, is a good thing).
This fic is wonderfully written and constructed, the Owen POV is snarky but never ever shallow, and Ianto is brilliantly passive-aggressive, with the world's driest wit. Both the prose and the dialogue are fluid and full of droll little turns of phrase. I found the journey both characters go on to be completely believable and in-character. I enjoyed it immensely, and give it an unqualified thumbs-up as a nominee in the Owen Harper category of the awards.
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This Is by ladychi
Category: Ficlet
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Rose, Ten
Rating: R. Very, very R.
Details: One-shot smut. Did I mention the R?
Why It Rocks:
It's not often I'll review smutfic here. Not because I have a problem with it - oh, no. I'll happily sit down and read just about any smutfic that comes my way, regardless of pairing.
But reviewing it - well, that's something else entirely. Let's face it, when it comes to smutfic, you've got Tab A and Slot B (or maybe another Tab A and a Slot C) and really the whole point is to insert one into the other.
But This Is.....well, this is different. It's been stuck in my head for most of the day. Chi tells us, very close to up front, that it's about sex. And it's absolutely correct - the story is about sex, absolutely infused with it, drenched in it, so much so that when you're done, you're going to want either a snack, a nap, or a cigarette.
This is about... oh. Letting him inside. Feeling the difference, feeling how perfect it still is. Filling her until she can feel whole again, until she stops feeling the unpleasant ache of grief and acknowledges how very much alive they both are.
And yet - it's not the actual sex that grabs me about this fic. It's the way the words flow around it. You see, smutfic - good smutfic - isn't about Tab A and Slot B. It's really about everything but.
This is about the poetic and the real.
Taking bits and pieces from the story almost seems like sacrilege, really. That first quote - "This is about...oh." It doesn't work on its own, does it? It's just a bit out of context really, because you don't have the phrases that go before, that set you up. Chi has written sexual acts, from start to finish - and I do mean start to finish. We've got your foreplay, your teasing, your consummation, your release, your blissful moments of orbiting the heavens before coming gently back down to Earth again.
"This is about...oh." You can't just jump straight into orgasm without the preamble. And I can't adequately describe how amazingly breathtaking the story is without quoting the entire thing - which is sort of beside the point.
In short, vote for This Is. There are a thousand words that can be used to describe what Chi has given us; she's picked the 250 that describe it perfectly. It's poetic and lovely and lyrical and, to borrow a phrase oft used by other reviewers, hawt. And it absolutely deserves your vote.
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Come Back and Haunt Me by find_rightbrain
Category: Toshiko Sato
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Toshiko Sato, Suzie Costello
Rating: PG
Details: Ficlet, 644 words, complete
Why It Rocks:
How does it feel to be defined by loss? To have everything you touch, everything you cherish, turn to dust in your hands over and over? What would that do to your ability to trust, to allow yourself to believe that maybe this time you could be happy?
For someone so young, Toshiko Sato has experienced a lot of loss in her life. We found out in Fragments that she lost the job she loved, and has to all intents and purposes lost her family too. The only contact she’s allowed to have with her mum is by postcard. No visits. No phone calls. No hugs. No personal contact at all.
Every time she falls in love, too, she loses the one she loves. Mary, in Greeks Bearing Gifts. Tommy, in To The Last Man. And then Owen, whom she’s been in love with all along. She has to go through the agony of losing Owen twice, in Reset and again in Exit Wounds.
It was only when I saw those glimpses of Tosh’s past from Fragments that I truly understood her intense focus on work and her withdrawal from the world around her. How hard must it be to trust that anything she wants, anything she gets enjoyment from, won’t be ripped away from her again?
And it’s with this awareness that Come Back and Haunt Me really makes me shiver. In hinting at a relationship between Tosh and Suzie that was more than colleagues, find_rightbrain shows exactly how difficult it must be for Tosh to let herself feel - or even to let herself care.
Suzie shifts a little closer - Tosh doesn't even see, she just hears the scrape of the chair, feels the weight of presence, and shifts instinctively away. If she just keeps her eyes on the computer screens, as if there's anything there to keep her occupied, if she just waits until the others return...
Is it the mere fact that she’s talking to a dead person that’s making her try to ignore Suzie’s presence? Or is it that this is yet another lost relationship, one more hurt among many, and she’s trying to insulate herself against the renewal of pain?
find_rightbrain’s summary for this story is Dead girlfriends are fairly common with Torchwood. Honesty is less common. As she desperately tries to protect what’s left of her damaged, battered emotions, Tosh weighs up the truth and chooses a lie:
"I suppose it's too much to ask if you missed me?"
...No, is what she wants to tell her. No, she didn't miss her, because she got rid of all her things, all the little things, notes and pictures and all, because she put Suzie Costello in a little box under her bed, in a closed and locked compartment in the back of her mind, and did all she could to forget about what could have been love.
"Does it matter?" is what she ends up asking, voice quiet and rough, without turning to look at her.
It does matter, of course, because this is another loss, another death in the story of Tosh’s life. Of course, Tommy and Owen are still to come, but this encounter isn’t long after Mary: a betrayal as well as another lover dead. "It's getting to be a habit with me," Tosh admits, and this reader’s heart ached for her once more.
find_rightbrain’s choice of Suzie also resonated with me because, of course, Suzie was sleeping with Owen as well; can Tosh never find someone who will put her first? And are her experiences in that regard only serving to make her insulate herself from the world around her even more?
This is a thought-provoking and achingly sad little story which, on the surface, is simply about a few moments of conversation between Tosh and dead-Suzie, but read it carefully because it’s about so much more than that. Come Back and Haunt Me actually sums up so much about Tosh, and does it in only 644 words - fewer words than I’ve used in this review. Read it, and seriously consider voting for it, because it deserves it.
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Today's reviews were written by:
persiflage_1: Only Visiting This Planet
ladychi: Brilliant By Degrees
papilio_luna: Clinging to the Wreckage...
azriona: Team Building...; This Is
wendymr: Come Back and Haunt Me