Fic: Composite (Torchwood, R)

[hope]

Title: Composite
Author: Hope (angstslashhope@LJ, hope@Dth)
Fandom: Torchwood
Wordcount: ~4,400
Genre: Character study, pre-series
Rating: Mature
Characters(s): Suzie, Jack, Ianto (Suzie/Jack, Jack/Ianto)
Warnings: sex & violence, snuff, necrophilia
Notes: written for james, who secured my services in a help_haiti lightning round. TYVM to betas cupidsbow and rexluscus! PS Don’t let the necrophilia warning put you off, there’s only about a line of it.

Summary: The prompt was “I would love to see some Ianto and Susie interaction. Er, before Susie is dead and all. I'm fond of the idea that she knows *something* is up, that Ianto is hiding something, even if she hasn't a clue what.”

Read on the AO3.

Comments

[copracat]

She can’t help the scorn she conveys to Jack with narrowed eyes

Oh Suzie, we hardly knew you but your scathing self was awesome.

Love how you raise and maintain the pitch of her ferocious rage and then you spike her with what she doesn't know, irony on irony. And none of the sex is like sex, it's all like violence.

Does that... come across as the compliment it's meant to be?

[hope]

Does that... come across as the compliment it's meant to be?

It certainly does, because that's pretty much what I was going for.

Suzie deserves her own origins spinoff, for sure.

Cheers!

[easilymused1956.livejournal.com]

I would have loved to have seen more of Suzie onscreen. But your story makes up for her absence very, very well.

Wonderfully scary word rendering of Suzie.

Renee

[hope]

Thank you!!

[james]

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

*smishes story*

[hope]

SORRY THERE ARE NO ELVES IN IT.

[james]

Technically, since Ianto was in it, ELVES WERE IN IT.

[ritualchick]

wow. this is delicious, vicious fun.

[hope]

Thank you! Glad you liked.

[thedeadcat]

I am a messed up creature for finding this really, really hot, aren't I?

*sigh*

Oh well. It was fuckin' awesome. :D

[hope]

Haha. I won't hold it against you ;D

Thanks!

[zsazsa4168.livejournal.com]

You know, if Suzie hadn't died, Torchwood would have been a very, very different series. Can't decide if that's a good thing or not. I might want to go check the vaults to make sure she's still in her drawer.

Thanks, for this. It was great in a creepy don't-turn-your-back-on-her kind of way.

[hope]

I think it would have been a bit darker, certainly, either that or there would be some interesting hatesex tension between Suzie and Gwen *g*

Thank you for reading!

[matildabj.livejournal.com]

Wow, just wow. This is awesome. The back story fits Suzie perfectly - I love her relationship with Jack, how it expresses itself. A great idea, beautifully realised.

[hope]

Thank you! It was great fun to write, very exciting as the connections kept happening. Glad you liked it :D

[neifile7.livejournal.com]

This is, as ever, frigging amazing.

It's my personal canon that Suzie's lusts are all about power, all about saying "fuck you" to her own history, and all about having a kind of predatory agency where she always gains the upper hand (so to speak). I don't think the glove made her crazy; I think it consolidated what was already deeply awry, and you've simply made the bloodlust part of that explicit. I've seen other fics where Ianto brings the glove to her attention to get her off his back, but this is by far the most complex and coherent vision I've seen, with the widest range of resonances.

Also my fanon: that Suzie is the most perceptive denizen of the Hub and could definitely have worked out what Ianto was really up to, were it not for her own blind spots. Her interactions with Jack here are spot-on; she gets so much about him, reads him so well, yet he's also a bit opaque and elusive. The implications of his immortality are just a little bit beyond her, because she sees him primarily in relation to her own will to power.

And the email flirtation with Lisa? Oh, utterly brill; especially as she never connects the dots on Ianto. Again, she perceives so much about him, knows his TW1 background makes his behavior inappropriate -- yet, because she's so busy pinning him to the Jack of Hubs card, she fails to see that he's playing her as well.

I think Suzie is one of the hardest characters to write well, but when she works, it takes us right to the core of the collective madness that is TW.

[hope]

Thank you! I'm not sure I thought a lot about Suzie's origins before it came down to writing this - but once I made the connection of knowing about Jack with the rest of the fixation on immortality and violence... it all clicked together, and kept making more sense, drawing the comparisons between the three of them too, then.

Thanks again for the awesome feedback. You're right - a closer look at Suzie really does shine a light on how chaotic and dark team Torchwood really are.

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

Hallett and Costello. The combination of their names made Suzie laugh every fucking time, until she was kicking through the debris of the tower and wondering if this was it, this was the moment she’d get to see the inside of that woman’s body. What a fucking joke the universe was.

You are a genius. The way Jack and Suzie met, too? That's my head canon now.

Twisted. Really, really good.

[hope]

:D I was so gleeful about that. I'm glad it worked; I was worried it'd feel too shoehorned in.

Thank youuuu!

[zortified.livejournal.com]

Again yay! This is so wonderful and so completely in character for Susie while also making her so much more than we ever saw. I love it.

So much so I'm comment-bombing you. ;-)

[hope]

Yay! Explosive comments! <3

It makes me very happy that you like it :D

[phantomreviewer.livejournal.com]

I love the broken twisted way that they all interact with each other. The way that Suzie is verging on the edge of something, Jack trying to regain his self and Ianto playing them all.

Its my personal canon that Ianto gave Suzie the glove to distract her and that Suzie knew that there was something off with Ianto.

So pleased to see more Suzie fic.

[hope]

Thank you! I'm glad everything I was going for came through :D Glad you enjoyed it! I agree, more Suzie fic is needed.

[nancybrown.livejournal.com]

Another amazing story. :) Your Suzie voice is frightening and perfectly spot-on. I'm in the camp that would have loved to see the series with her as an active part, and this version of the character would have been perfect for it. Great job!

[hope]

Thank you! So many of the characters they killed off were really fucking interesting. Then again, they've killed of practically everyone, so sigh.

Cheers, though, glad you liked :D

[observer3.livejournal.com]

a most excellent look at Suzie (wish there had been more of her in TW), wicked, cunning and just down right manipulating! Your Jack is how I kind of see him...and Ianto-there really is more to him than meets the eye-excellent read

[hope]

Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it :D