Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Suzie, Jack

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 1,637 words

Content notes: Major Spoilers for Big Finish audioplay "Moving Target"

Author notes: Written for Challenge 285 - Amnesty, Challenge 82 - Flight & Challenge 83 - Fight

Summary: Suzie had to make a choice to keep fighting a losing battle or to give in and live to fight another day.

'What the hell happened to you?' Jack asked, seeing Suzie trudge into the hub, soaking wet.

'It's raining outside or haven't you heard?' she sniped back, too tired to put up with any of Jack's pointed humour.

'Did your car break down or something?' He came across and stood just a few feet away, hands shoved in his pockets. 'You know, they have these things called taxis for when that happens so you don't have to walk five miles. Or maybe just an umbrella would do the job.'

Suzie couldn't even be bothered rolling her eyes at him. 'Har bloody har.'

Jack cleared his throat and moved on. 'Anyway, big news to tell you. Can't believe you missed it, actually.'

'Oh? And what's that?' she asked, dropping down into her chair and grabbing a handful of her hair, squeezing the rainwater out of it. It had been enjoyable for the first five minutes, just to feel the rain actually falling once more, and not just trapped in a state of suspended animation where she would walk straight into it. She must have left little passageways all over Wales that were now rain free on account of her already having trodden through them, clearing a path for the next person to walk through completely dry. She'd gotten so sick of having to swat the suspended raindrops put of her face these past few weeks. Of all the days it had to happen, it had to be a day when it was raining, didn't it?

'Well,' Jack began, leaning against the edge of her desk and avoiding the puddle she'd made by wringout out her hair, 'we've been trapped in a time bubble for the past three weeks.'

'Uh huh.'

'Only I'm guessing you won't even know about it. Down here in the hub we seemed to have been protected from it, still able to go about our lives despite time outside coming to a standstill. However, it also meant we couldn't get out. The entire hub went into lock down. Owen wasn't here, of course. Still hungover and in bed most likely, but after three weeks, I can safely say I know more about Tosh and Ianto than I ever thought I would.' He frowned, looking disappointed. 'Still couldn't convince either of them to play naked twister with me, and let me tell you, we got bored really quickly. On the plus side, Ianto's tidying up of the archives is coming along nicely. I think he wishes we had more weeks where the world just stopped turning. Of course he did moan a lot about wearing the same two suits for the entire time we were down here. Didn't take my suggestion to go naked too well. A few more days and I might have worn Tosh down on that one.' He grinned for a moment before turning serious again. 'I only wish I knew what triggered it. It takes something pretty powerful to generate a time lock that far reaching. Tosh ran absolutely every kind of analysis on it but we got nothing.'

'Oh, I know all about your bloody time bubble,' Suzie replied, tugging off her wet sneakers.

'What?' Jack frowned. 'But how? In theory everything should have stopped. It did stop, didn't it?'

'Oh yeah. The world came to a compete halt, right down to the very last raindrop. It was fascinating for all of about half an hour.'

Jack's eyebrows knitted together as he looked at her. 'I'm confused. If you were out there, then how come you know about it? A time lock freezes everything, and I mean everything. It's not suspended animation, there's no conscience awareness that anything is happening. Time just literally stops.'

'Because,' Suzie began, 'unlike basically everything else, I wasn't frozen.' She didn't want to admit it was because she'd knicked a piece of equipment from the hub and taken it home to tinker with it. At least she was pretty sure that was why she didn't get caught up along with everyone else. Might have been a blessing if she had been. Jack would be apoplectic if he found out about the stolen tech. She shrugged. 'I dunno. Must just have been because I'm surrounded by all this rifty stuff all day long. None of us knows what the long term effects of being exposed to it are. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I tried getting to the hub, but like you say, it was locked down.'

Jack's expression was a mixture of confusion and fascination. 'So, what did you do? I mean, if you were the only one not affected?'

'Shoplifted. Got drunk. Drove stolen cars. Killed a few people I didn't like.'

'Three weeks of Coronation Street reruns will have that effect,' Jack joked.

'No, seriously. And I wasn't the only one not affected.'

Jack's head turned at the admission, his body tensing as his arms remained firmly folded across his chest. 'Explain.'

'The time lock was done on purpose. Aliens from another planet. It was a bounty hunt, and Earth was the designated hunting ground.'

Jack's eyes went wide as saucers. 'What, don't tell me you-'

'No, no,' she said, waving off Jack's sudden concern for her welfare. 'I wasn't their target. It was this girl, Alex. She was the only one not supposed to be impacted by the time lock. I was trying to help keep her alive.'

'Why were they targeting her? What did she do?'

'Nothing!' Suzie threw her hands up, her old frustration and indignation returning. 'Apparently aliens think it's good sport to come here and kill us! Pay us a stack of money and we'll arrange for some big game hunting on planet Earth. Forget the eco safari tours. No one's interested in observing the natives in their natural habitat. Just bring your gun, and we'll provide the rest!'

'So, you were being pursued by this bounty hunter?'

Suzie let out a chuckle full of mirth. 'Not just one. Kill the hunter and that's just the end of round one.'

'You seem to be suggesting that this hunt doesn't end until they get what they want.'

'Yep.' Suzie leaned back in her chair, convinced she could go right off to sleep just sitting there. 'They just keep bringing in new hunters. You kill one and they just teleport in another. The hunt doesn't end until Alex is dead. And then everybody gets to go back to their normal lives, as if nothing has happened. After all, it's just one lousy human.'

'You said you were helping this girl Alex evade the bounty hunters? That it was possible to kill them?'

'Oh, I lost count of how many we killed,' Suzie replied, making it sound as pedestrian as losing count of how many cups of tea she'd drunk. 'But it was all perfectly civilised otherwise. We had a rule book and everything.'

Jack leaned closer, his blue-eyed gaze intense. 'And?'

'And?' Suzie slapped the desk with her hand. 'And I failed, okay?' She leaned her elbow on the desk and rested her head in her hand. 'I couldn't keep her alive, Jack. They were just going to keep coming and coming and coming. There was barely time for sleeping, let alone worrying about taking a shower or eating something that didn't come out of a can. It's amazing we survived as long as we did.'

Jack rested a hand on her shoulder. 'I'm sure you did everything you could. You weren't even supposed to be there. She might have been dead long before that if you hadn't been there.'

She let out a cynical sound at that. She really had done everything, and then when it became apparent that it was never going to end, she'd ended it. Alex's brains were spattered all over a wall in a grubby flat in Radyr. She'd been right - Suzie really did need to save her last bullet for when they really needed it. In hindsight, perhaps she should have shot Alex weeks ago. Had that stupid robot thought to mention to her the reason Alex had been singled out, it would have saved her a lot of time. What was that point in trying to get herself killed half a hundred times just to try and save the life of one girl who was going to end up dead anyway? Stupid cow. Even after everything they'd been through, she was going to top herself because that scumbag boyfriend who got her pregnant had been cheating on her with her best friend. Not that Suzie blamed him. Alex was whiney and not overly bright, totally lacking in ambition and a little on the chubby side of attractive. Not to mention she'd lose the baby anyway. Suzie supposed if her life were that shitty she might off herself as well. Lucky for her she loved what she did. She sure as hell wasn't going to die here now. She still had plenty left she wanted to do and no amount of bounty hunters was going to stop her.

'Listen, why don't you take a couple of days off?' Jack suggested. 'It sounds like you've been through hell. We can handle things here.'

What? Like they'd handled the planet being taken over by intergalactic game hunters? Fat lot of help Torchwood had been then, she thought. If it happened again, she was going to stay inside her flat and not come out until it was over. Whoever it was that had been singled out was done for anyway. No sense in her trying to save the condemned. 'I'm fine,' Suzie insisted, feeling any last remnants of guilt over her actions melting away as if they'd never existed. 'A shower and a few hours sleep is all I need.' And then her life could go back to being normal.