You take it all away, but never give it back; and this is what you say: their lives are yellow-black

[samsara_dharma]

Out on the streets of Chicago, Karunamayee is wandering in crooked oblongs near the Kashtta Tower. She's still avoiding everyone's eyes, but she has questions to ask - she's just not sure what the best way to ask them would be. As a relative newcomer to Chicago, she missed everything going on in the Conrad Hotel basement, and this business with

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[sarkraticmethod]

The good news about the basement is that Sark can actually pace when he's feeling restless without having to resort to leaving the hotel, because apparently pacing in a controlled enviroment is preferable to wandering around outside out of boredom.

The bad news is that there just so happens to be in the same place as a certain (former) Angel of Knowledge, not that he actually has any intention of giving her anything even resembling a passing glance as he walks on by. Just a local. No interest to him, really.

Have at 'em, Dmi.

[nowinprint]

Dmitri is just pulling her nose out of what appears to be a supply closet when Sark passes, and she gives an appreciative gape. "Well, put me in a pallium and call me the Pope," she says, stepping after him. "Jules! Ju-ju-Julian Sark, the most tactical mustelid on that side of the Rift. I didn't know you were knocking around here."

[sarkraticmethod]

Sark pauses, briefly wonders if he's hallucinating, decides that he hasn't gone completely batshit crazy yet and gives Dmitri a look that's trying very hard to be flat, but it's rather hard, even for someone like him, to be expressionless when someone has just gleefully called you a tactical mustelid.

"Do I know you?" It really shouldn't be a question. He knows he doesn't, but it's about the only thing he can get out, because his brain is still in Did she just vaguely insinuate that I'm a weasel? mode.

[nowinprint]

"Eh, probably not. No one seems to," she says, sticking out a hand. "Dmitri Lang, Angel of Knowledge, you used to work with Daddy Bristow back home for me." She'll get around to the "alternate universe" thing... sometime. "'course, I haven't heard that he's around, here. Let me guess - unaffiliated?"

[sarkraticmethod]

He ignores her hand- not because he's being rude and aloof, but because that is altogether strange and unsettling and he has to take a moment to process it. Pleasantries take a backseat to revelations like that. "Jack Bristow?" Like there's more than one Daddy Bristow.

He shakes his head, because there's a thought he doesn't need to spend too much time thinking about. "Unaffiliated and likely to remain that way, even if he was here, which I don't suppose he is, unless he's been cleverly hiding himself. I'm not entirely sure where you're from, but where I'm from Jack Bristow would rather see me dead than working for him."

[nowinprint]

"He gets over that surprisingly quickly for a man who never changes his opinion," Dmitri agrees. It might be agreement. It's hard to tell. She appropriates his right hand, shaking it without his volition. "Don't sell yourself short, Sarkly. Hey, at least Torchwood didn't get you. You fit in better at the zoo than the party."

[sarkraticmethod]

"...."

If there was ever any doubt whether or not a human being can actually ellipse at someone, Sark has just proven it's possible.

Words should happen here. He's just not entirely sure what they are at this second.

[nowinprint]

"Back home," she explains. Ish. "You had this condition where you occasionally turned into a ferret. Well, better than Weiss the chincilland and Daddy Bristow the pigmy hedgehog. And Flinkman the guinea pig and Vaughn the squirrel... like I said, bit of a zoo. Syd had a lovely job sorting you all out."

She's just going to look innocent now.

[sarkraticmethod]

Oh. Well, that's certainly better than anything he was coming up with, which mostly involved the fact that one of them was crazy and he wasn't entirely certain it wasn't him.

...On second thought, no, that's not better.

He blinks a few times, resigns himself to the fact that he really doesn't want to know how the hell that sort of thing even happens. "And what exactly were you to the lot of them?" He pointedly doesn't say us. He is not a ferret shapeshifter working for Jack Bristow, after all. Yet.

[nowinprint]

Dmitri shrugs. "Associate, reporter, occasional adjunct. I mostly went froum group to group and tried to make a coherent picture out of the madness. Quite. A. Job. So what are you doing, knocking around here?" The topic switch doesn't come out of anywhere, it just... happens. "Keeping busy? Know there's an April around here somewhere - Oh." She tilts her head at him. "You haven't been roped into Torchwood's insanity, have you? I mean, unaffiliated, yeah, but I really don't see you sitting down, when it comes to that."

[sarkraticmethod]

So she's Will Tippin: The Extreme and More Competent Edition. Lovely. He doesn't comment on the April bit for the sheer fact that he's not sure where that will lead and considering April's not something he discusses with just anyone, well, not commenting on that is just better.

He shrugs. "Not presently. Keeping busy is something of an issue when there's little in the way of what I'm used to in this city, but apparently I didn't have as much of a problem with that where you came from, so maybe only time will tell."

Sark just can't come out and do the I'M A SPY flail- he has to be vague about it... And, apparently not tell the whole truth. Well, it's not like he constantly has work from Dick rolling in anyway.

[nowinprint]

"Well, if you can stand the insanity being in a room with any two of them at a time tends to bring, you might yet be able to hit up the Torchwood kids for something or other. Never short on work, them. even if it is the sort of work the Doctor usually makes blow up in his face."

She pauses.

"Actually, come to think of it, I've seen hide nor hair of those kids or the Doctor for a while, which is a bit off, considering they're not exactly subtle folk. Still. Big city. Sure it's nothing."

No, she's not. Dmitri Lang sees patterns where no patterns need be, and usually pursues them. But, hey, she's allowed to be flippant, too.

[sarkraticmethod]

"Torchwood knows where to find me if they have need of me. I'm not about to beg them for something to do." No, but he's perfectly content to hit up shady members of random organizations for work. Sark has standards, dammit.

He stares at her, wondering how much of that was less her talking to him than talking at him. After a moment of utterly failing at anything useful to say (and a lot of blinking), he very calmly asks, "Forgive me for saying so-" his tone is such to suggest that he doesn't really care if she does or not, "-but are you even remotely aware that people in your position tend to get themselves killed? Although if you've survived this long, I'm going to assume you're either extremely clever or have survival instincts that would put mine to shame." Those two things are not interchangeable. You can be an idiot and have good survival instincts as far as he's concerned

[nowinprint]

Dmitri grins. "Bit of column A, bit of column B," she says. "I grew up interviewing demons, and most of them aren't as fluffy as your local Neq, here. Having more than a few secret organizations with fond feelings toward you doesn't hurt, either."

Nor does a healthy supply of mace.

"Any case, people in my position usually have a better life expectancy than people in yours, tiger."

[sarkraticmethod]

You don't have to tell him that. Sark knows intimiately how not-fluffy certain Neqa'el demons are, and somehow just to pretend that he isn't aware of that, his flat expression just gets flatter.

"I suppose that all depends. Some of the people in my position aren't burdened with an overabundance of incompetency." Or, you know, moral systems or loyalty or any of those other things Sark fails at. "That tends to keep one alive for a much longer period of time."

[nowinprint]

Dmitri answers his flat expression with a... relatively flat expression of her own. "Yeah, but you take a competent person in your job and a competent person in mine, I think the guy in my corner might still beat out yours on the life expectancy front. I mean, unless my guy is smuggling refined uranium in his voice recorder, but then I think he might be slipping over onto your side of the fence anyway."