Suzie Costello
From Ars Arcanum Wiki
Contents |
The Mun
- Name: Jaqui
- Contact
- Email: trollopfop@morethanmortal.com
- GChat: trollopfop@morethanmortal.com
- AIM: foppishtrollop or jreader2wire
- Yahoo: trollopfop
- LJ: http://trollopfop.livejournal.com/
The Character
- Name: Suzie Costello
- Age/Birthdate: 35/November 19, 1972
- Canon: Torchwood
- Canon Entry Point: Pre-series, before she started working with the Resurrection Gauntlet.
- Journal: http://superiorspectre.livejournal.com/
- Card: Queen of Swords (Reversed)
- Card-Related Abilities/'Card Tricks': Wind manipulation, enhanced hearing/eavesdropping (manipulating the air to carry sound waves farther).
Defining Abilities and Attributes
"She was good at computers. She was good at everything." - Toshiko Sato
Having served as second-in-command during her time in Torchwood, Suzie's become a bit of a jack of all trades -- she's very good with computers, technology both terrestrial and alien, firearms (though she's not entirely comfortable with killing people at her current point in the timeline), and possesses a brown belt in judo. In short, she has most of the skills needed to run a small covert-ops group, but she really shines when it comes to taking things apart and finding out how they work. She's also developed a keen awareness of body language and psychological cues, and is a skilled manipulator.
Personality
Suzie is, in a word, competent. Yet she never quite felt she was good enough. She's a ruthless perfectionist when it comes to herself, and that extends to a lesser degree to the people around her, leaving her with no patience at all for fools.
She's curious enough for any ten cats, and will become positively gleeful when she's got some interesting piece of technology to work on.
For all that she's good at what she does, she's amazingly insecure. She needs people to talk to, people who can listen, but she doesn't dare go to the rest of the Torchwood team... That's work. She has to be perfect, in control. Can't let them think any less of her. And, deep down, she's always been afraid that they'll turn on her one day. She loves her job, but one day, she knows, things will go wrong. They always do.
So she's learned to manipulate people, to play with their minds, to give them exactly what they want to hear from her so she gets what she wants. Not that she doesn't care... She does, she cares deeply about people (otherwise, she'd never have been able to use technology like the Resurrection Gauntlet, which runs on empathy), but that's secondary to the pursuit of knowledge, and to keeping herself safe. She is, after all, a consummate survivor.
It could be said that, for all she's a caring, if private, person, she's got a dark side that could devour suns. She won't turn on anyone unless they give her a reason, but she always has plans laid, just in case.
She's fond of poetry, especially Emily Dickinson, and has a tendency to wax philosophical at times, though she has no tolerance for pointless feel-good nonsense. Although usually serious, she does possess a wicked sense of humor, which comes out at occasionally inappropriate times.
Background
Suzie was always a quiet child. She lost her mother when she was young, and when it came to nurturing, her father was somewhat... lacking. His idea of taking care of a child was pushing her as hard as he could, demanding nothing short of perfection. And then, as she grew older, he got... other ideas. She was the woman of the house, her mother's replacement (in more ways than she'll discuss), and his perfect little overachiever.
She learned to hate him.
She could never shake the need to be better than she was, though, and this caused her to excel in university, and go on to do rather well in a series of technical jobs. The series of disastrous relationships that went with those jobs, though, she could have done without. She had a habit of falling in with complete bastards, much like her father had been, and it never, ever ended well.
And then, completely by accident, she met Jack Harkness.
She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and very nearly became Weevil food. She handled herself well, though, and Jack recruited her for Torchwood after a background check, though she knows little about the Weevil attack itself, thanks to a bit of Retcon.
Torchwood gave her a new sense of purpose, a new reason to excel... And what could be better than having the chance to save the world?
Not that it was an easy job, though. She joined the Pilgrim group just to have people to turn to outside of work, and then started disclosing parts of her life to one of the members, dosing him with Retcon shortly after. It helped make things bearable, made her feel less alone.
As things stand, she's doing well enough at Torchwood to have made it up to second-in-command. She has a completely casual affair going with Owen Harper... He's a bastard, but at least an honest one. (She may also have feelings for Toshiko Sato, but the details of that are between her and Tosh's mun.) And Jack's talking about letting her poke at an artifact that no one's yet found a purpose for: a strange metal gauntlet that fell through the Rift years ago.
She can't wait.
