Toshiko Sato

“The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn.” - David Russell

She felt him approach rather than heard him. He was trying to be quiet, but maybe she was just too attuned to how everything felt in this place. She didn’t move from her contemplation of the bay.

“Tosh?” The question was loaded with so much more than just checking she was alive and functioning. There was ‘are you okay’ there, with a hint of ‘what the hell are you doing out here, it’s freezing’ and a dash of ‘this is odd behaviour for you’. She could hear it all so clearly. “It’s late.”

She turned her head to look at her boss – her friend, perhaps? They were never sure at times how Jack felt about them. Yes, he would probably do anything to protect his team, but it always felt like it was a one way deal. Jack never gave anything of himself in return, or else it was just tiny snippets – not enough to get hold of anything substantial. No matter how much they wanted to protect him in return, they couldn’t. “I know,” she said.

“Owen was worried about you,” Jack said, coming to sit down next to her. “Especially as you haven’t been back to work in, oh, six hours?”

“I needed time to think it through,” she said, not looking at him. “A lot has happened.”

“I know,” Jack replied. “But you did the right thing.”

“Did I?” she suddenly snapped, turning on Jack. “Did I? I encouraged him to go back to what, his death? He was terrified, Jack, and it hurt. It hurt me so much to see him like that. All he wanted to do was to stop fighting. The fact that we still have wars today – it was all futile to him. It’ll never be stopped. Tommy is going to die for nothing.”

“Tosh. He wanted to go back,” Jack said softly.

“No, he didn’t. He chose to, but he didn’t want to. We didn’t exactly give him much choice, did we? Stay, and watch the whole world unravel, or go back and die. I loved him, and I sent him to his death.”

“It’s done though, Tosh. We grieve, we move on, it’s all we can do.”

“Is that what’s left, Jack? Giving everything up, everytime, so that Cardiff, the UK can carry on with their sordid little lives?”

“Yeah. It is. It’s tough for us, but you knew the risks.”

Tosh sighed, going back to her contemplations of the Bay for a moment. “Five years yesterday,” she said suddenly.

Jack blinked, thinking. “Wow. Yeah, it is. Time flies.”

“I want out, Jack.”

“What?” Jack turned and stared at her.

“I want out. I can’t take it anymore, the way Torchwood takes everything, corrupts it. Retcon me, let me get some kind of normal life back. That was the deal, wasn’t it? All that time ago, in prison. Five years. I’ve given them, and willingly. Now... I want normal.”

Jack was silent for a moment. “What about your family? Your mother. You know I can’t retcon her, and it’ll be difficult for you.”

“Plant memories. Make me think she’s dead. Have me in a coma for five years...” Tosh turned to look at Jack. “I want out, before it kills me, or worse.”

Jack looked at the ground, then slowly nodded. “Sleep on it tonight,” he said. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

“My decision won’t change.”

“We’ll talk then.”

Toshiko Sato
Torchwood
Word Count: 568
Start of an AU verse exploring if Toshiko had decided to leave Torchwood after her five years. Jack Harkness isn't binding to any muse.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. ~ Apple Computer

Tosh hated feeling like a fish out of water, but with most social situations, and she was including work in this, it was how she felt. All of the time.

She’d tried to fit in, truly, but in a crowd of fellow nerds and geeks, she might as well have been wearing the highly-polished crown.

Her supervisors had noticed her genius, of course, and exploited it. Just as any government operation would. She worked swiftly, efficiently, getting any project she worked on finished quickly and working just as it should.

It made her stand out, be the obvious one to choose when the other group to use someone to built their sonic modulator, and who knows what afterwards. Made her end up in her darkest place.

But at Torchwood, in amongst a band of misfits, dreamers, thinkers, people who dared, she found her place. Genius ran free in here, in whatever form it took – Suzie, with her knowledge of weaponry, and her ability to predict what Jack would do next; Jack, with his uncanny knack of finding just what they needed to, working their way out of situations; Owen with his amazing ability to figure out alien physiology, as well as a touch of anything else; and Ianto, who’s coffee bordered on genius.

Here, one genius amongst many, was where Toshiko finally found out where she belonged. Crazy enough to change the world? Maybe. They were certainly crazy enough to save it.

Toshiko Sato
Torchwood
Word Count: 242

What is a talent you wish you had?

I know this is going to sound extremely self centred, but I wish I was as good at interacting with people as the others are.

I'm aware how I come across to people, reserved, maybe aloof, possibly even shy. I can't help it - it's who I am. It might be because of the way I was brought up. I was always on the move because of papa's job, and it took a while to fit in wherever we were.

I look at Gwen, with her easy smile as she tells you that everything is going to be alright, that no, what you saw couldn't possibly be an alien, the way she interacts with everyone on the team easily. And it makes me wish I had that ability.

Then there's Ianto with his dry sense of humour that everyone loves, his amazing coffee making abilities and his ready smile, making you feel totally at ease. He manages to fit in wherever her goes.

Owen, even with his womanising, pain in the arse ways. manages to have a good bedside manner when he chooses, even if he says he got out of medicine and into Torchwood to avoid dealing with people. He's got an uncanny ability to make people feel at ease.

And then there's Jack. The lazy, flirtacious smile. The way everyone automatically turns to him. The way he can charm his way out of any situation. I wish I could do that.

Instead, I feel socially awkward, scared to let myself go in front of people. I know it takes ages for people to feel even vaguely comfortable around me. That's the talent I would give anything to have, instead of having to work so hard at it.

Toshiko Sato
Torchwood
Word Count: 284

October Prompt 1 "Memory is more indelible than ink." Anita Loos

I don't remember.

Three words that terrified Toshiko. She relied on her eidetic memory, and the thought of forty eight hours just vanishing scared her more than she could express. It was unspoken, but if they had ran blood tests on themselves, they all knew they would have found evidence of the retcon pill in their system. There was no apparent reason for it, the Hub was untouched, nothing was missing, just... everything relating to the last two days had been wiped clean.

Well, not quite everything. There were the flowers on her desk, with their message of apology from Owen. Owen had denied it, saying he didn't do flowers, but it was said without with his usual caustic vehemence that usually had Toshiko mentally running for cover.

'What on earth happened here?' she asked herself, trying to work it out. They'd all woken up in the briefing room, apart from Jack, who found them there a few moments later. All confused, worried, but the rest had the attitude of it must have been the right decision. Tosh couldn't shake the feeling of fear at the loss of memory. What could have happened to make them take such a drastic step?

"Leave it, Tosh," Owen had said to her. He'd been watching her for a bit, and could obviously tell what she was thinking.

"Don't you want to know?" she asked.

He paused for a moment. "Yes and no," he said, in a rare moment of truth. "We obviously took the decision for a bloody good reason, though I'd love to know why."

"It's unlike you to be so accepting of a decision like this that Jack made," Tosh pointed out, still rattled by it.

"Maybe, but this one feels like it's the right one. Let's just leave it be, eh?"

Tosh looked at the flowers on her desk. They were beautiful. "Well there is one thing."

"What's that?" Owen said suspiciously.

"You'd never have bought me flowers any other way."

Toshiko Sato
Torchwood
Word Count: 344

Prompt: Gut feeling

I hate Emily Dickinson.

I was never a great poetry reader anyway, preferring either classics or science based books. But after being forced to listen to Dickinson’s poetry for what seemed like hours when we were in lockdown, while counting down the minutes of a friend’s life? ‘Because I could not stop for Death' is seared into my brain.

Of course, it could partially be my feelings for Suzie talking. I mean, the woman first of all killed innocent strangers to make sure she had a plentiful supply of violent death to test the glove. She had already set in place a sequence of events that would take place three months after her death, forcing us to revive her. When she came back, I avoided her. Couldn’t look at her. She called me judgemental, which I suppose I was. Wouldn’t you if someone you trusted turned out to do something horrific like taking a life? Owen just claimed that she ‘scared the fuck out of him’.

But, I knew her. Knew her well enough to work out that she would have had to have a way to get out of the lockdown already set in place. Just in case. ISBN was an odd thing to try, but it seemed logical given what we were dealing with. If you looked at what she was doing with Gwen, a complete opposite, using numbers instead of words seemed just right, logical even. But then, logic and gut feeling can be one and the same, can’t they?

Toshiko Sato
Torchwood
Word count: 253