Suzie's life is a tangle of signs and signals and symbols it would take a cryptographer to pull apart.
It's no surprise. Growing up, she learned to read between the lines when an adult told her mum would be gone for a week, a month; they never said the word hospital, not in front of her, but she heard it. They never said suicide either, but she knew the meaning behind all their words was that Suzie hadn't been reason enough to stay.
Understanding was as easy as slipping between the lines in mum's careworn books of poetry, only the words weren't as pretty in reality.
We noticed smallest things, --
Things overlooked before...
Later, she began to search for meaning in different things. No more words, just the weight of night, the lines in her father's face, the sound of a footstep down the hall, the creak of a door somewhere too near. Innocent by themselves, but heavy with meaning, fear, dread, hate--
Daddy, daddy, you bastard...
Torchwood is easier in some ways. All the codes are formalized. Jack teaches her the numbered and coded maneuvers, the usual formation, the hand signals he may or may not have made up himself: one gesture for danger, stop (you're about to step on an explosive you bloody idiot), one for assistance required (before this Weevil tears my throat out), one for everything's gone to hell, so in three seconds we're gonna make a break for the SUV and regroup somewhere safer, and a hundred other things.
It's Jack she struggles to read. He's an enigma - his changing expressions, his fluid grace, all too calculated to tell her much at all. Suzie's always been good at reading beneath the surface, but Jack is a still, dark pool, impossible to guess what lies beneath.
Here Captain! dear father...
There are signs posted around the Hub, and Suzie thinks that, like the dragon mural, they must be left over from a time before it was just Jack. Coughs and sneezes spread diseases and do not touch under pain of death!! and one particularly baffling sign that reads simply:
NOTICE
THANK YOU FOR NOTICING THIS NEW NOTICE.
YOUR NOTICING IT HAS BEEN NOTED
AND WILL BE REPORTED TO THE AUTHORITIES.
Suzie noticed Jack watching her, the first time she read it; she'd turned, asked him half-jokingly what authorities that would be. He'd smiled, slow and catlike, and said simply, "Just me. You really think it would be anyone else?" She thinks that might have told her more about Jack, in a few words, than all the signs and coded signals ever would.
Suzie reads all the signs Jack will give her, the things he won't tell her but lets slip in a smile, a gesture, a predatory look. Suzie collects all the silent signals, keeps them in the back of her mind like a book of wordless poetry. One day, she thinks, it may save her life.
Silence can be a plan
rigorously executed...