Oh, once you get involved, everyone will look this way - so you must maintain your charm…

[john_thane]

While, back at the Kashtta, an offensive against Thane is being planned, Thane himself is just getting back into the unfinished construction site he's made his bitch headquarters. He ordinarily prefers not to leave his projects, but the atmosphere in there is getting... strange. Stranger than usual. And, besides, while he has no intention of

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[sarkraticmethod]

Oddly enough, for the first time in his life Sark's first impulse wasn't going to be to talk, but there's few things more likely to change your mind on that front than a knife to the throat. He lifts his head and tries to keep as much distance between the knife and his throat as he possibly can, keeping his eyes moving around the room- Sato, Lang, the Doctor, someone he doesn't know... No April. That's disheartening.

He weighs his options, wonders whether talking or not talking is more likely to get him killed and decides that since Thane gave him the option, he goes with the simple answer for the moment, voice eerily calm to hide the fact that he's terrified, "Julian Sark. Nothing more than that." He doesn't bother to mention that they've spoken before- somehow that's not going to make this better in the least bit.

And then he makes the mistake of actually looking Thane in the eye and pang of realization hits him. He knew the name sounded familiar- hell, he even knew that Thane was essentially a bundle of Harkness's repressed memories, but he never made the connection before now.

John Thane. The alias Harkness gave him when he very nearly tortured him for information on Calisto.

This just goes so far past ironic, it's sickening.

[john_thane]

Sark. Julian Sark. Who is probably the Julian of April's-journal fame, and that - well.

He takes a step back, flipping the knife over his thumb and taking stock of the man. He's... young, not that it says much to an Agency man. Still vaguely familiar, and Thane would like to know why that is in an exact equal measure to liking not to have to think about it.

His lips tighten, one corner pulling back into what might be a sneer or the most fake smile ever. "Well. One of us was overly cocksure in our abilities, Mr. Sark. I'm not entirely certain it was me."

[xiaomei_mei]

April, for her part, has been huddled in the corner for a little bit. She'd shrugged into Thane's jacket after he teleported away, to keep warm, and was just starting to poke around for where he went when the psychic thingy went off.

After which she'd stayed huddled in the corner, rather frightened, for a few minutes. She's calmed down a bit, though, and notices that there's the psychic tang of a new presence in the building, in the next room.

Pretty much instantly, she's on her feet, practically flying into the room with the other hostages, wearing nothing but Thane's jacket, and throwing herself at Julian with no warning whatsoever.

[[ooc: The narration requests that everyone ignore the fact that she's smiling in her icon]]

[sarkraticmethod]

Sark gives Thane something of a defiant look. "You had me at a severe disadvantage."

Which is about when April charges in and Sark's too busy trying to stare down Thane to really notice until she's practically on top of him. Instinctively, he tries to get his arms around her, but that's greatly impeded by the cuffs, which is probably for the best, because it gives him a moment to realize that she's not restrained like the rest of the hostages... And he's just not going to think of the fact that she doesn't appear to be wearing anything other than that coat. Not right now anyway. Best he can do at this point is bury his face in her hair and breathe a sigh of relief that she's not dead, although given his situation... That's only a very small comfort.

As far as promises go, this wasn't the one I should have decided to keep, was it?

[john_thane]

...dammit. April. Not making this any easier.

Thane exhales, stepping forward to lay a hand on April's shoulder. He and I need to talk about his little psychic assassination attempt.

"Yeah. The sort of severe disadvantage you really should have factored in, shouldn't you?" He eyes him. "You're the age of a usual recruit, but something tells me you're not a new hand at this. Systems of advantage are the name of the game."

He crouches down, bringing himself more level with Sark.

"Like your little piece of alien technology."

[xiaomei_mei]

April looks up at Thane with a worried (and slightly scared) frown when he puts a hand on her shoulder. It's not that she doesn't want to cling to Julian, but she doesn't want to potentially make things worse for him. And if Thane wants her to back off and she doesn't, that might make him angry, and more likely to hurt Julian.

Not that she really thinks anyone could get out of here unscathed. Not even John.

Regardless, as much as she just wants to cling to Julian, she bites her lip and takes a couple steps back, pulling the jacket tight around her. She's not going to leave, and she's not going to look away from Julian, but she'll stand back for the moment.

[sarkraticmethod]

A careless mistake. It wouldn't have happened if he were working for Irina right now, but he's well aware that his innate fixation with following orders means that he'll follow whoever gives them if they see fit to put a leash on him, whether they're to his competency level or not. Never mind the fact that he handed Torchwood his leash personally and volunteered himself. Well. This is why no one should ever let him go at it alone and that first botched assassination attempt should have taught him a lesson about this. He got involved, he got emotionally attached, and this is exactly what happens when you let that happen.

He keeps his eyes on Thane, vaguely aware that he can hear his pulse pounding in his ears, but he isn't going to make it blatantly obvious that he's scared out of his mind. "Not in the slightest. Nine years, in fact," he remarks drly, responding to the fact that he is very much not new at this, which doesn't help the situation and makes him look like a staggering incompetent, but at this point little he says or does isn't going to yield that result. "Either way, I suspect I'll be paying for my mistake."

Once upon a time, you could threaten him and he'd talk until his throat bled, and it wasn't even that long ago. He's not sure what the hell he's doing at this point, except for possibly buying time, but all things considering, that could just make Thane want to kill him faster. He's gambling. Everything worth doing has an element of risk involved.

This is... Not the kind of risk he really wants to take right now.

He glances over at April. She just listened to him. Just like that and that bothers him, because it's too familiar- break them until all they can do is do whatever you say. That would explain why she's not cuffed, and maybe there's more to it than that, but if he examines that too closely, he's going to make himself sick. You don't need to see this, April. Get out.

Because either Thane's going to slit his throat here and now or he's going to torture it out of him, and either way, he doesn't want April to see it.

[john_thane]

Thane sighs, dropping into a seated position from his crouch, considering the angles. Oh, he could hurt Sark, deeply and extensively, but he has to consider the effect that would have on his lovely young companion. She might not turn against him, but she might turn away from him, and that leaves him to try to break her again - and, to be honest, a fully broken April is less interesting to him than a moderately broken and compliant April.

He can work with either version, though. ...and a fully-broken April might just serve to twist the knife in the Doctor, and really, shouldn't that have been his first thought? Goddamnit.

At the same time...

"Torchwood thinks that they can wrangle a good result out of this if they interfere long enough. That's not working out too well for them, and to be honest it's beginning to annoy me," he says. "So. To my mind, I can either eliminate them entirely - which is an investment of more time than I really want to put in - or I can send them a message which will hopefully lead them to think twice before throwing whoever they've got at me."

He raises the knife, sketching out lines in the air between them.

At the moment I'm thinking the front half of your skull with your face pinned on, and maybe your two hands made into ashtrays, but I'm open to suggestions."

[sarkraticmethod]

That's a convincing argument if he's ever heard one, and the ensuing panic that rises up within him can't even be remotely hidden, so it's right there now. He's scared. He's desperate. He does not want to die.

"I don't claim to know anything about psychic engineering, Mr. Thane," he says, his voice only moderately shaking. "I was charged with delivering the package and nothing more." It's not entirely a lie- hell if he understands any of this. One more reason he shouldn't have even come. "To be honest, it's all a bit out of my league... Obviously."

And as far as presenting himself as an asset to be left alive for whatever reason, that was probably not the best thing he could possibly have said. He's low on options.

[john_thane]

"Bad business for the underprepared," Thane says. He doesn't need to check his wrist monitor to tell that Sark's not lying - not about knowing nothing about psychic engineering. This kid, in his current state, isn't a threat. The fact that he's remaining as calm as he is stands to his credit - the fact that he's failing at being as calm as he'd obviously like tells Thane he's got some experience with these situations. Enough to anticipate.

It'd be a good position to be in, if he thought the man was useful.

"Why did Torchwood think you were the man for the job?" Aside from the fact that, if Thane's done his job right, the vast majority of them should be about ready to piss their pants at the prospect of going up against him. You know. Details.

[sarkraticmethod]

Sark doesn't drop his gaze, but God how he wants to. He takes a breath and gets his voice to stop shaking and manages to answer completely calmly again, "I volunteered, which was foolish on my part, but given the general skillset of Torchwood's employees, I thought this played more to my strengths than theirs. I thought I would succeed where they would fail." He shifts a bit, uncomfortably. "As my current state of affairs indicates, I was mistaken, as we've already covered."

It doesn't cover the most important part of this... That he wouldn't have even looked Torchwood's way if April hadn't been captured, but he's not about to admit that.

[john_thane]

Thane raises his eyebrows at that, but takes it at face value. "Well, then let's not belabor the point, shall we?" Thane knows he's won. Sark knows Thane's won. They're free to move on at any point. "How did Torchwood get its hands on a mechanical psychic inverter? An intuitive one, at that. Well, that or it wasn't mechanical. I'll take an explanation for that, now."

[sarkraticmethod]

Now that's a bit of a problem. Answering that question means selling out the Vesmier, and if there's one person who is going to be able to make this right, it's him, and if Thane develops an interest in him... Well, he doesn't want to consider the option that Ves might lose and wind up one more trophy on Thane's sick little mantle.

Normally, Sark doesn't have that much loyalty to anything, but there are several factors to be considered. April adores the Vesmier and at this point Thane already has two of the people she cares deeply for- he doesn't need a third. And for another, he doesn't want to be the one responsible for destroying their only hope for ever getting out of here, potentially.

And part of him is just really, really sick of being the cowed little weasel that he so usually is, and despite the fact that there's part of him screaming that his lack of cooperation will just mean an unpleasant death, he says, "I suppose they know a few powerful psychics. Amazing the sort of allies one can obtain when they aren't completely dedicated to the irrational pursuit of some petty, violent vendetta."

[john_thane]

And he'd been so cooperative, up until now.

Well. It happens. People have their sticking points and their breaking points, and the good thing is that the one tends to make the other a lot less problematic. Thane hooks his bag of tools and upends it, with a clatter, on the floor beside him - knives of various sorts, cords and wires, a corkscrew, tacks and nails, pliers and clamps, more in that vein and a few things which serve no obvious purpose except to possibly make someone wonder - the eyedropper, without any apparent liquid to deliver, is one of them, the slide rule is another. Thane selects a long metal skewer, and leans forward.

He undoes the first four buttons on Sark's shirt, sliding his hand against the skin and over his heart, feeling for the heartbeat against the skin of the chest. He puts the skewer against the skin off to one side, keeping it steady with his index finger, and looks up at Sark's eyes again.

"This is fun," he says. "When I push this through you, it'll go between the ribs, brush the caridal wall, and stop against your scapula. It will hurt. It will hurt a lot. That's all three classis of pain, there - cutaneous, deep somatic, and visceral. There'll be a usual constriction in the muscles of the chest - slight spasm. You'll probably scream - a forced exhalation, if nothing else. You may vomit. You may even pass out though the level of damage won't be enough to keep you unconscious. Even if you do, when you return to consciousness, you're going to feel it in you. It won't quite move the way you move. It'll be rigid where your muscles really aren't. It will press against your heart, your nerves... you'll be able to feel its tip scrape your bone every time you take a breath or attempt to move that arm. It'll be... unpleasant, for you."

He digs it forward, just a bit, enough to start the first stabs of pain, not enough to break the skin.

"And then I'll ask you the question again. I have control over all of this, Mr. Sark. All of these little toys of mine. But you have control over how I use them - that's our contract, and you know it as well as I do. Cooperate, and pain goes down. Resist, and pain goes up."

The skewer advanced, just another fraction of a millimetre.

"So. Shall we begin, or do you have something you'd like to say?"

[sarkraticmethod]

That was spectacularly stupid, and this is precisely why his loyalties have always been flexible- to avoid this sort of situation. He doesn't spare much of a glance at the kit on the floor- nothing he hasn't seen before (well, okay, the slide rule is a bit disconcerting, but that's not what concerns him). Funny thing about being on the opposite end of the torture is you already know what most everything can be used for and you know what it can do, and you just pray you never have to be the unlucky sod who gets to experience them.

He winces, the panic setting in again, gritting his teeth as if he's expecting Thane to unexpectedly drive that thing in further if he doesn't come up with a decision soon enough. He whimpers a little and then finally any resolve he might have had to try to sit this out and brave the inevitable pain crumbles as he might have known it would. He always evaded being caught for this reason- torture wasn't something he could stand up to for any length of time, not on this level anyway.

"The Vesmier," he gasps, barely whispering. "And the other Doctor. It was their idea."

[john_thane]

Thane nods, and takes the skewer away from Sark's skin. His hand remains on Sark's chest, but it's just holding his place. Not doing mush of anything.

"'The Doctor in the Watch,'" he identifies. He's putting together pieces, but he has no idea how they add up to a cohesive picture. "I understand they're Time Lords. Tell me about the Vesmier."