Comments | sarkraticmethod: [RP] We're not questioning God, just those he chose to carry on His cross.

sarkraticmethod

[RP] We're not questioning God, just those he chose to carry on His cross.

Apr 21, 2009 23:41

[[OOC: Backdated to right after the Silent Hall thread, circa two months ago.]]

Sark wouldn't admit it to anyone, but April's journal entry announcing the return of one Jack Harkness or John Thane or whoever the hell he was today set him so far on edge that it took every iota of control that he had within him to keep from turning into something and ( Read more... )

rp: suzie costello, verse: beyond the rift, what: rp

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superiorspectre April 22 2009, 05:09:50 UTC

Oh, there's a member of Torchwood about to run into him...

Suzie happens to be making a beeline for her room. In her bra, covered in gauze and burn ointment, vivid black and purple bruises peeking out over the gauze at her throat, the dark circles under her eyes standing out in stark relief against paler-than-usual skin...

One might say she's had a bad day.

One might also say she's about to break.

But then, that doesn't matter, as long as she can reach her room. Her jaw's set, arms tight to her body, fists clenched, but she hasn't broken yet, and if she can just get there without running into anyone, she won't break where anyone can see her. That's what matters.

sarkraticmethod April 22 2009, 05:18:23 UTC

...Not the member of Torchwood he was planning to accost, even if she'd be more likely to speak with him then, well, most people. Although with Suzie 'accost' wouldn't be the proper word anyway, and..

Oh... Well, fuck, that looks bad on so many levels.

At first he doesn't think to say anything, ponders just letting her run, because dealing with other people's emotions? Not Sark's strongest suit, but Suzie was there at his weaker moments and even as he moves closer to the wall in case she doesn't see him and just needs to get past, he grimaces and calls, "Suzie."

If she wants to get the hell out of here and not respond, then she can go and he won't stop her, but if she needs someone... Well, chances are he's not the best person, but he'll damn well try. No one can ever say that Julian Sark doesn't return favors.

superiorspectre April 22 2009, 05:34:24 UTC

Suzie jumps slightly when Sark addresses her, looking startled -- not like her, not like her at all, and she considers whether she should've taken the offered sedatives when they patched her up...

But then, sedation was a loss of control she couldn't afford, not until she was in a more controlled environment. Too much time spent trying to prove her stability to all and sundry, and she wasn't about to let it go now.

"...Sorry," she manages at last, her voice still slightly hoarse. "I was just..." There's no way she can finish that sentence, and her attempt at a smile amounts to little more than an upward jerk of the corners of her lips, lips and jaw both tight enough that one might think she was trying to freeze that one abortive movement in place. "Obvious what kind of day I've had, isn't it?"

sarkraticmethod April 22 2009, 05:48:02 UTC

Sark gets a good look at her now that she's actually stopped. To say she looked like hell would be a most grevious of understatements ( ... )

superiorspectre April 22 2009, 05:58:15 UTC

"I..." Suzie starts, and then is acutely aware that she doesn't know how to finish that sentence.

The masks are slipping, the distress surfacing in her face, too many emotions bottled up, too much pain dragged out all at once...

The masks are slipping, and all she can think is, At least it's Sark, which has whole new levels of irony... But even the most paranoid parts of her mind are able to point out that she's got plenty to use against him, if the need arises.

No reason not to, if she can get the words out.

"That... That would help. And the whiskey." Her lip curls slightly at the mention of whiskey -- not her favourite thing to drink, not in the slightest, but it's alcohol, and it's something she can control more easily than sedatives.

Right now, control is all she has, and she's holding onto it with what little strength remains.

sarkraticmethod April 22 2009, 06:10:10 UTC

Suzie has leverage against him that the CIA would have jumped through a dozen hoops to get to- he knows that, she knows that, and that's enough to keep the business side of his mind from leering and being thrilled that it might finally have achieved an eye for eye, given his breakdown on her ages ago. It's all the incentive he needs to never take advantage of her, even if he wanted to, which he doesn't. Of course, Lord knows how that could change ( ... )

superiorspectre April 22 2009, 06:35:18 UTC

Suzie nods in a way that attempts to be terse, a twitch of the head that reads more as the twitching of a broken mechanism than anything human.

She doesn't pull in on herself any further at the proximity, though, and after a moment, she leads him to her room.

As usual, it's meticulously tidy, with the only sign of disorder being a few mechanical bits and bobs strewn across the desk, next to a stack of handwritten notes. The bed's perfectly made, looking as though it hasn't been slept in for some time.

She should say something. "Well. Thank you." She glances sidelong at Sark, notices absently that her fists are still clenched. It keeps her hands from shaking, now that it's over, just steady, constant tension.

sarkraticmethod April 22 2009, 06:47:35 UTC

He nods at her politely in response to her thanks, figuring the fewer words that come out of his mouth, the better off everything will be. Somehow, he's pretty sure nothing good ever came out of him talking for lengthy periods of time about things he knows, much less things he doesn't ( ... )

superiorspectre April 22 2009, 07:00:12 UTC

When Sark returns, Suzie's changed into a simple, midnight-blue robe, something light and silky enough to cover her without putting pressure on the gauze. The remains of her clothes lie on the floor in a pile that's admittedly neat, but incongruous with the rest of the room, gore-encrusted boots discarded carelessly at the foot of the bed.

Her journal's in her lap, displaying a certain entry, though she shuts it, hands trembling, when Sark lets himself back in -- not in an effort to hide it, but perhaps just because she has more important things to worry about.

She accepts the glass with another attempt at a nod, returning the toast with surprising smoothness (move now, panic later, that's what long Torchwood training tells her). "Here's hoping," she agrees, and knocks the whiskey back in a practised motion that suggests that, her chosen drink or not, she's not stranger to hard liquor. She might grimace slightly as it burns going down her throat, but a moment later she's... as composed as she can be ( ... )

sarkraticmethod April 22 2009, 07:11:00 UTC

Sark sips his a little more delicately, having just attempted to knock it back and finding himself choking on it some time before this meeting, keeping his eyes on her the whole time. As much as it looks like he's cataloguing weaknesses, finding an opening, a crack in the armor, might get him somewhere in sussing out the problem... And what then? He's a master of not being able to fix anyone. Well, at least if all else fails, he brought the booze.

He drops his eyes to the glass, staring at the contents, his expression unreadable before he finally bites down on his lip and nodding. "I take it April never made it..." He hasn't seen her since. He didn't want to...

He didn't want to intrude.He shakes his head. Not important. "Never mind," he whispers, the words only just barely audible. Louder, he adds, "It was that hallway, wasn't it ( ... )

superiorspectre April 22 2009, 07:31:48 UTC

She can feel him watching her, and as the first wave of alcohol goes to her head (when did she last eat?), she finds she doesn't care. She doubts Sark could do worse, and part of her almost welcomes any attempt on his part to do so.

"She didn't," she says. "He... left." A pause, then, as she stares at the empty glass.

"It was," she says, in answer to the second question. "It was the hallway, and it was the Master -- a Time Lord, another fucking Time Lord, from before I ever came here -- and it was my father, and it was... It was me. The things in there bleed acid; did you know?" The words are coming out a bit too quickly, and she can't be bothered to stop them. "And then it was Jack -- no, then it was Judas, Eletor Judas Reyc, just bits and pieces and everything in his mind trying to cannibalize itself, and it was the things from his subconscious, torturing him, trying to stop us from retrieving him, and..."

Something in the back of her mind is screaming at her to stop talking, stop talking NOW, because this isn't just her anymore ( ... )

sarkraticmethod April 22 2009, 07:49:55 UTC

A year ago that was the sort of information, he would have extracted from someone after long, arduous hours of torture and it would have given him a sick little thrill. Hearing it willingly, just out of complete emotional drain from someone he considers a friend and ally seems perverse and wrong and for something to seem wrong to someone like him... Well.

What's Torchwood's business isn't his. At the mention of Hark- Reyc's name, he tenses visibly. Thane or not, this was the man who broke him. This is the man that makes him afraid of the one person he truly loves sometimes. He can't say anything, of course, because Suzie adores him, respects him, whatever. His petty fears and disdain can be kept to himself.

"It wasn't nearly so horrific before," he murmurs absently, practically under his breath. It wasn't, really. Just Thane and shadows, nothing like that, and if he hadn't gotten more than enough incentive to never go back down that hallway, then he has plenty now ( ... )

superiorspectre April 22 2009, 08:21:19 UTC

"Only makes sense," she murmurs. "It feeds off what you bring in, targets where you're weakest. But the more people, the more it can feed off, the more it can do."

She tucks bare legs up to her chin, pulling the robe tighter around herself, delaying her response to the second statement, delaying the tears which she knows are coming.

"Yeah," she says. "After all that..." And there's more that needs to be said, if only here, where there's some safety in shared leverage, where there's room for friendship between traitors.

"...I hate Thane," she says, feeling her face twist around the words, feeling the tears come at last. He has to hear this much, has to understand, even if no one else does, just where whatever twisted devotion she has for her Captain ends. "I hate everything he was and everything he did, and most of all I hate that the bastard won't just be content to bloody well die and leave us all alone..." It's an us that includes Jack, though she'd be hard pressed to admit as much. "And oh, I understand him. I understand him too ( ... )

sarkraticmethod April 22 2009, 08:42:56 UTC

And somewhere in there, Sark feels like a fucking asshole. It takes a lot to get him to hate himself, even just moderately- it's not so hard as it used to be these days, but somehow that hits him and even if he never voiced those thoughts in his head, the fact that there mention of a name makes him want to twitch or growl or cower or all three at once shows precisely how little he cares about that man.

But, then again, what was Irina Derevko? The woman who betrayed her husband and daughter or the woman who took a child in and turned him into someone worth... Something. Anything. It wasn't the same thing, but there are parts of the two of them where the paths don't quite mesh up and it's close enough to make him feel like a hypocrite.

And if Irina had went through even half the transformation that Suzie's dear Captain had went through, he'd be just as lost. So maybe he's fumbling for something, anything, to bring a shred of empathy to the surface. It suits its purpose ( ... )

superiorspectre April 22 2009, 09:46:49 UTC

Suzie doesn't pull away at the touch -- That's one thing Thane was good for, whispers a vicious little part of her mind, and she ignores it.

Thane was both an end in himself and the means to an entirely different end, but he would never have been the one to do so much for her if it hadn't been for Jack's guidance.

He couldn't fix her, she knows, only break her in a slightly different way, but it's more progress than she ever could have made on her own. It's a place to start from.

And it's what allows her to lean into Sark's embrace, to curl her fingers in his shirtfront and cry into his shoulder in a display that, for once, is completely uncalculated. It's enough that he's solid and real and human (we are two humans, and I am holding you), that he's that rarest of all creatures, an honest friend... Insomuch as either of them can be considered honest ( ... )

sarkraticmethod April 22 2009, 10:03:38 UTC

Sark swallows hard and goes tense just briefly when she starts to cry into his shirt, but he relaxes, figuring this is about all he can do at the moment. He rests his cheek against her hair, his expression unreadable, trying to press as much contact as he possibly can in the hopes that it might make some bit of difference. One of his hands moves away from her back to thread itself in her hair and it seems almost too personal, too much, but he doesn't pull it away.

Sark's not Jack nor Thane, in the long run. He's not enough of a sadist to take pleasure in breaking someone and probably only barely capable of doing it properly and he can't even fix himself, least of all another person. God, it took a great force of will to even convince himself to reach out to another person in a meaningful way like he's doing now ( ... )

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