Somebody knows, somebody's seen. Somebody knows right where you've been.

[sarkraticmethod]

Sark is in a tree.

Yes, you read that right. This would make a great deal of sense if he were a ferret and some sense if he were a tiger, but, at the present moment, he is a person. In a tree.

No, he really doesn't want to talk about it, but he suspects he's going to have to. Apparently, he was taking a walk through the park, contemplating whimsy

Comments

[nowinprint]

Logically, of course, the chances of Dmitri Lang wandering through the park at just such a moment as to catch Sark up in a tree were pretty slim, at best.

Metaphysically, though, and according to the eternal laws of irony, how could she not have happened upon him?

As it turns out, the absolute best place to get Irish Sodas and apple crepes is this tiny little food vendor somewhere around the Arts Campus, and Dmitri was just heading off with a haul of tasty snacks, possibly to hunt down Toshiko and introduce her to Chicago street food, when she noticed someone in a tree. And the way they held themselves, it seemed like they were in that tree for A Reason, probably either retrieving someone's cat or scoping out good places for snipers, and so she actually looked to see if she could help or something...

And then it turned out to be Sark.

And then she went and found a bench to duck behind and laugh as hard as she could while he hadn't noticed her.

That taken care of, she's now walking under the tree and staring up with a few crepes and drinks in one of those four-compartment drinks holders. "How's the view from up there?"

[sarkraticmethod]

Sark knew this was going to happen. He knew this was going to happen because the universe hates him and wants to punish him. He debates just standing perfectly still and making it look like he knows what he's doing and he is not, in fact, stuck, and wonders how long he can get away with that.

The branch he's standing on protests this decision and even if he doesn't weigh all that much, he's, well, significantly heavier than the average thing that perches on these branches. Right. Finding a way down now.

Oh, he should also probably awknowledge Dmitri's existence. He does so, with a slightly annoyed, "Remind me the next time you have a brilliant idea to take it with a grain of salt." It would probably sound mean if he didn't look like a discontented cat at the moment.

[nowinprint]

She will not start laughing SHE WILL NOT START LAUGHING SHE - okay, but it's hard. She tacks on a pleasant expression and shoves the first four responses out of her head, and then takes a closer look at his expression.

"Julian Sark," she says, folding her arms. It's awkward, with the food, but she manages it. "Am I correct in assuming that you saw a tree, cooly decided to do something illogical, climbed the tree, decided that it made no sense, and having decided that, started looking immediately for a way down?" Because if that's the case... oh, the boy's worse off than she realized.

Or exactly as bad off as she realized. That too.

[sarkraticmethod]

The look on Sark's face can be described in three words:

Dot. Dot. Dot.

"What is the point, Ms. Lang?" He finally blurts out, sounding more exasperated than anything. At least, she's got him emoting, even if that emotion is the emotion right before someone starts bashing their head against the trunk of a tree. "And don't tell me there isn't one and there isn't supposed to be one, because even if that's true, I'm having a hard time understanding why anyone would find this appealing."

[nowinprint]

Dmitri sighs.

Then she takes off her jacket.

"Inch back toward the trunk and hook your foot around until you can get it on the big branch there - the one that forks about two feet away from the trunk. Then hold onto the trunk while you shift your weight onto it, use the trunk to steady yourself, and then sit down," she instructs, pointing out the relevant locations as she fashions the coat into a sort of slingsack and tucks the food into it, securing it against her back. It's a bit awkward, even when she adjusts the messenger bag to provide additional support, but it does what it needs to do.

Then she walks up to the tree, reaches up and grabs one of the lower branches, and braces herself against the trunk to pull herself up.

"We'll see if we can put this in terms that make sense," she says, once she's got a grip on a branch a little higher.

[sarkraticmethod]

Sark opens his mouth to argue, decides it's not really worth the effort and does precisely what she says. The good thing about this is that he's actually fairly agile, but this is awkward and difficult and being generally very hard on him. Also, he's frustrated. It's hard to think through the haze of HATRED.

He crosses his arms over his chest and waits for her to join him. "I think I'm beyond all reasonable help," he mutters caustically. He doesn't really care that much, except for the part where this supposed to make him less of a stick-in-the-mud with sociopathic tendencies, but considering how murderous he's feeling, he's thinking it's a bit counterproductive.

[nowinprint]

"Well, let me be the judge of that," Dmitri says, continuing her ascent up the tree. It's difficult, but all in all not as hard as she expected - one of the Italian sodas splashes a bit, leaving her to jerk away from cold liquid in the small of her back, but it doesn't take too long to get to the branch where Sark is sitting.

"Scootch," she says, picking out a spot for herself and wedging herself in between a couple of branches, finding the most comfortable spot she can. Then she pulls out the drink carrier, giving Sark a grave look.

"Right. What we have here are two sodas and four crepes. The sodas are blackberry and mint. The crepes are, from memory: apple-cinnamon caramel, apple-cinnamon with bourbon whipped cream, apple and mild bleu cheese, and apple, ham and swiss. Pick a drink, a sweet, and a savory."

It will be ridiculous if they have to do a Happiness Color By Numbers, but the healing power of the ridiculous is more or less what Dmitri is waging this entire campaign on.

[sarkraticmethod]

Sark scootches, all right, to the point where he looks like perhaps Dmitri might be diseased. Okay, so this is easier to deal with when it's April. April says jump in circles and only hesitates for a second. Anyone else, it's like you're asking him to recreate the Sistine Chapel out of toothpicks to do something as simple as appreciate life.

He takes the blackberry soda and the apple-cinnamon with bourbon whipped cream crepe, because somehow something with bourbon in it sounds appealing. And before Dmitri can look at him as if she's expecting him to not know what to do with either, he proceeds to eat.

"If it's any consolation, I did ride a carousel with April, but I'm fairly certain the only enjoyment I took out of it was because she enjoyed it."

Which is a start, honestly, but only being happy through proxy is kind of a wrong way to go about this, especially since once he's not around April, this sort of thing becomes ridiculous and all he can think is that he'd be happier with a book and a glass of wine.

...Or brokering deals for well-renowned terrorist cells and killing people. That's enjoyable! Sometimes he really misses that. Giving that up is the hardest thing he'll ever have to do.

[nowinprint]

Dmitri quirks her head at him. "This is good, actually," she says, unwrapping the bleu cheese crepe. "I mean, vicarious enjoyment is kinda predicated on some appreciation for the life and emotional state of another person, so we can at least put that in the 'to be encouraged' category." She takes a bite of the crepe, chewing thoughtfully. "While you're up here," she says, "take a look around. And don't look for how to get down; take a look at what you never noticed from ground level. For example." She extends the crepe-bearing hand, holding the drink carrier in her lap. "There's a nest over there. Off that way," she says, gesturing in a totally different direction, "I'd wager a nice meal that someone thought they'd tromp a crop circle in the grass. You can just see where it's been flattened."

She takes another bite of the crepe, then washes it down with mint soda. This is a conversation she would not have expected to have, but it's not any weirder than Tosh's subconscious and the Tarot.

"See, the thing is," she says, "the reason for shimmying up a tree doesn't reduce to cost-benefit analyses or logical endpoints. It's a bunch of little visceral things. Like if you were the sort of kid who swung his heels under his chair when he sat down, or if you like getting a birds-eye view of the weird little patterns people walk around down there in. It's about space, you know, having a space that you've claimed and made your own and isn't prone to interruption, that 'place that's known to God alone' sort of thing, and I hope to God some of this makes sense to you. It's about placing yourself in the world in a slightly different way. For the novelty. For the lulz. Because variety is the spice of live - pick your cliché; it's not about the act of climbing the tree and saying Lo, the tree has been climbed, it's about..." She tilts her head. "Well, it's about sitting up in the branches with the wind in your hair eating crepes and talking about applied aesthetics, and I dare you to say there's no way you can at least be amused by this. I certainly am."

[sarkraticmethod]

Sark listens in that general, I'm not entirely sure what you're saying, but you seem to be very passionate about it way that... Well, probably a lot of people get with Dmitri, but mostly him.

Listening to her, at least, cuts off all the little thoughts that start up in his head, indicating where he should stop her and point out the flaws or the fact that the only tactical advantage he can see to being in a tree is scoping out threats. That, of course, is the problem. He's going to be twenty-three in two months and he doesn't know how to have fun, because he's too busy cataloguing threats or knowing seven different ways to crack a cipertext, or understanding the step-by-step procedures to convince someone to take you up on an offer, or processing a hundred different ways you can isolate and eliminate a threat in any surrounding.

Yeah. Fun times all around.

At the last, he actually manages to laugh a bit. "Amusing in it's utter lack of sense." He holds up a hand before she says that he's defeating the purpose of the exercise by still trying to assign sense to it. "I'm sure it does make sense in a way, but it's a drastic shift in perception, Ms. Lang. I can't recall having a stable home in nine years, much less anything else that was wholly mine. A dog doesn't claim the house that his master lives in, after all." He studies the crepe for a moment. "And, beyond that, once upon a time, I placed myself in the world in such a way that nothing else could even compare. Why bother shifting your worldview when it was perfect the way it was."

He chuckles and shakes his head. "As I said, I'm not the most reasonable student. I'm stubborn and I contradict my own desires."

And where the hell does that leave him? Hell, if he knows...

[nowinprint]

Dmitri exhales a puff of cheese-scented air. "You're in college," she says. "We'll just pretend for a moment. Say your parents sent you to a fancy boarding prep school, you were the biggest fish in a small pond, but everything ever came on someone else's terms. The institution owned your room and board, the institution owned the way you were to think and the way you were to interact. And then you get to college, and it's a good college, and there are plenty of people who you're pretty damn smarter than, yeah, but suddenly for the first time you've got a few new environmental factors - you've got peers, you've got people who know more than you, and you've got the culture, the instructors, the advisors all saying Look, your finely-pedigreed boarding school credentials are nice and all, but you're gonna have to do better here. You're gonna have to think for yourself." She starts swinging her heels, either because she's demonstrating how to or because, hell, it's fun. "Believe it or not, it's not that uncommon."

She reaches over and puts the apple-ham-and-swiss crepe on Sark's thigh. You know, just in case he wanted it.

"You know what humor is? And I say humor, but you can extend it to whimsy, too?" She takes another draw from her soda. "It's the art of subverting expectation and breaking taboo. You know why people laugh at dead baby jokes and feel guilty afterward? Because the punchline is so antithetical to what they expect, even crossing the bounds of propriety, that it triggers a laugh response. There's a joke I heard: What's worse than finding a dead skunk under your pillow? Finding a live skunk under your pillow. What's worse than finding a live skunk under your pillow?"

She raises an eyebrow at him, suggesting that the answer really is clever.

"The Holocaust."

[sarkraticmethod]

Okay, point. He can accept that as being an accurate comparison and it's nice to know there's a real world equivelent to being someone's sometimes-disloyal-but-generally-come-home dog. His agreement comes as silence and a lack of protests, so he'll just eat his damn crepe and chew on that for a moment.

And now he's staring at the other crepe like it is something foreign. Or maybe he's just wondering why Dmitri feels the need to keep feeding him... Or maybe it's just something to stare at.

"I know what humor is," he rolls his eyes. Except that winds up being contradicted by her words, because, well, his brand of humor tends to involve a lot of snark and sarcasm.

The sound that comes out of Sark's mouth at that punchline isn't so much a laugh as it is a very, very confused noise that sounds like it's supposed to be the bastard child of a laugh and a shocked cough and didn't quite make it up to par with either of its parents' standards and comes out sounding more like a strangled heeeeh sound.

He'd have a response to that, but he's going to focus on his soda and sweet right now. The food makes sense. Dmitri generally doesn't.

[nowinprint]

That's okay. Talking with Dmitri doesn't actually require two participants. One of these days she's going to wind up as a college professor and that'll be pretty much her native milieu.

"Look," she says, after Sark is done choking, "your old job had enough doublecross that I know you've had to put some things over some people. And while ultimately joy means a lot more than pride in a job well done, I don't object to things having a common root. Telling a good joke, pulling off a surprise party, stealing up and making someone's day - it's all a matter of subverted expectations, and in a way, it's all a matter of proving that you're clever. It's a nice, nondestructive battle of wits. A mutually-beneficial battle of wits. A symbiosis of wits. Where does this get back to whimsy? It's subverting your own expectations, finding a way to win over yourself, and then you get to be both the victor and the guy who's pleasantly surprised."

She tilts her head at him, taking another draw on the soda.

"Sark," she says after a moment. "Have you ever had an actual moment of unadulterated joy? I don't mean pride, I don't mean schadenfreude, I mean happiness in all its pure parthenogenic irrationality. Have you ever just for a second caught yourself enjoying life, regardless of whether or not you told yourself not to half a second later?"

[sarkraticmethod]

Listen. Sigh. Chew. Sip. Repeat as necessary. At this point it's not that Dmitri's not making sense, it's that she's making so much sense that he can't actually find a flaw in this line of thinking and he has no idea what to say to that.

At her question, he tilts his head right back at her. "Before I came here or after?" There's an important distinction to be made here, especially since if she means before, then the answer is a complete and utter no. If she means after... Well, the answer is a bit different.

[nowinprint]

"In the natural progression of your life," Dmitri says. "And I don't need to know details, just - sometimes it's a matter of figuring out the magic spark there and figuring out how to call it up more frequently, and preferably in a way that includes or benefits others. Transposition. There's this old line about how living a fulfilling life is a matter of finding where 'your greatest joy intersects the world's deepest need.' Right now, finding out what joy is would be a nice first step for you."

She picks up the crepe.

"So far we've determined that it's probably not forestry, but we've still got some possibilities to work through."

That said, she takes a few moments to scarf down the crepe and lick the smudges of cheese off her fingertips. She's kinda got to eat between paragraphs, here.

[sarkraticmethod]

Sark leans back and thinks about this. His childhood? Well, there was the constant neglect tinged with occasional abuse, leading into the eventual abandonment. School? He was that really smart kid who didn't speak much English at first and kept quiet and spent most of his time getting picked on the older students, because he was younger than everyone there. His adolescent years were spent being broken and then rebuilt anew, only to be put to use as someone's unexpected weapon.

And yet...

Everything that's ever made him happy, everything that's ever made him feel like he was worth something, everything that ever seemed to matter existed when he worked for Irina. It was the thrill, the risk, and, oh, he could get that from some organization as morally clean as the driven snow, but that wouldn't give him nearly as much joy. He likes the thrill of pushing the limits, working in an area that's more grey than anything. He never liked the killing aspect of an assassination job- he liked the feeling of power, the adrenaline rush, the belief that someone is going to remember him. That he might not be as forgotten in the shadows as he once was.

If he wants to have utter happiness, that's what he has to get back. That risk, that thrill of danger, that ability to put his mind to a task and come out on top, rather than falling on his face every time he tries to do something. He wants orders, tasks to perform- he wants his life back without sacrificing what he's gained.

"You know what I used to do," he murmurs. She knew a version of him in that other universe, so clearly she probably knows more than he's even common knowledge, gleaned from one source or another. "That's the only thing that's ever really made me happy."

April and Suzie, aside, of course, but they're people who make him happy and that's entirely dependant on the two of them staying with him. And as much as he adores both of them... He's never really been the sort to trust people enough to assume they won't leave him.