Notes: This was written for Round 1 of torchwood_las.

The prompt was: In the dark, with an additional element/word/object of music, and a 400 word limit.

Be careful if, um, dead things make you squimish.

Jack thought the glove was used to see the last memories of the dead. Suzie knew he was wrong. She'd known after her first time with it. The energy, buried deep in the sharp metal, was like the echoes of life itself.

Jack also said using the glove was like "reaching into darkness," but Suzie had long ago figured out just how often he was wrong. It was similar to jumping in and letting it envelop her like an old lover. That first time she dove in, no regard for her own safety or how to get back, and nearly drowned in the dark. It was everywhere, and she couldn't scream, but she could still feel.

She could still hear and every time she heard… something. Like a song from another room that was impossible to make out. She heard it singing to her, pleading with her to find it, and she couldn't. The little fish and rats she experimented with were too weak for her to follow their song, but that didn't stop her from trying.

Then Ianto brought her the dead cat he'd found that morning, and dropped its plastic-wrapped corpse on her desk like it was part of the mail. Suzie was intrigued, and disturbed, but before she could articulate how to say thanks for the decomposing pet, Ianto was gone.

Suzie took the glove and her prize to the bare storage room that served for her experiments. There, she unwrapped the cat and dropped its bloodied remains onto the floor. She knelt, slipped on the glove, shivering at the cold energy that ran up her arm, and clenched the scruff of the cat's neck.

Instantly, she gasped in pain as her mind was jerked into the void, and the blackness crashed against her senses. She reeled, disorientated, until she heard that familiar weak song - like from a mistuned radio. Emboldened, Suzie latched on to it, using all her might to drag it back to the light with her. Her eyes flew open. Below her, pinned between the glove and the floor, the cat growled.

It looked at her for a long moment, mewing piteously and thrashing, and then went limp again.

Suzie, shocked and breathless, fell backwards. She'd done it. Even if it had just been for a moment, she'd managed to pull life out of the dark.

And it had been terrified to go back.