Calufrax

Story: Digita1 Gir1
Author: nancybrown
Rating: All ages
Word Count: 6,679
Author's Summary: Lisa is human. Mostly.
Characters/Pairings: Ianto Jones, Jack Harkness, Lisa Hallett, Suzie Costello, Ianto/Lisa, Ianto/Jack
Warnings: None
Recced because: When I realized that this has not, as far as  I can tell, been recommended, despite the author's well-deserved Calufrax ubiquity, I couldn’t help a little chortle of glee, because it falls to me to tell you how remarkable a story nancybrown has written in Digita1 Gir1. As does much of her fiction, this centers around Torchwood, and as much of the best Torchwood fiction does, it extracts the sublime from the ridiculous, and posits a world in which the plots of too much Torchwood, generally an unholy blend of insane and inane, are abandoned in favor of what Torchwood could actually be on rare but glorious occasions; sublime, terrifying, and heartbreaking (with a tiny flame of hope somewhere, almost guttering out, but not quite.) This is an AU which does that for one of the Torchwood episodes that most horrifyingly blends insane and inane: Cyberwoman. It finds Lisa Hallet alive, in love, battling the last ghosts of her cyber-programming, and dealing with an unexpected danger to Ianto and others she may possibly care for. nancybrown’s technical prowess shines through in the tiniest scenes — Lisa walking through a meadow, Lisa feeling the pull of electronic machinery and what it could mean for her, the descriptions of the antagonist’s laughter. The author’s emotionally mature vision of Lisa’s mind, and her description of Lisa’s distant, but still very human, view into the minds of others, have made this a story  I return to again and again.

A taste:
( The man who does stop )