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

[sarkraticmethod]

[[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

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[sarkraticmethod]

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.

And observing her too much gives off an air of violation, it seems- like his cataloguing weaknesses- so he keeps his gaze down, which is how he notices the clenched fists and has to avert his eyes from them too, and then walks back out again. His room isn't that far away- not intentionally so, it just so happened to be one of the empty ones he slipped into when he had to move in- and his back with a rather decent-sized bottle of whiskey that looks like it's barely been touched.

...He got through about two shots and had to stop. It just seemed maudlin to drink whiskey alone just because he was feeling sulky.

There's also two glasses, so as soon as he's back inside, he sets to work filling them and then offers Suzie the first one before taking the second and holding up in a somewhat sarcastic toast, "Here's to hoping that this takes the edge off as well as they say it does."

[superiorspectre]

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.

"So you know he came back," she says, with no preamble.

[sarkraticmethod]

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?"

That would explain a lot and he'd love to think that Harkness/Thane/Whoever wouldn't have put up so much of a fight that it left Suzie this torn to pieces, but that would be underestimating him, wouldn't it?

[superiorspectre]

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 -- it's Torchwood business, and Sark isn't Torchwood, but the wound's been opened and it's draining, whether she likes it or not.

She stops, and when she continues again her voice is soft, hesitant. "We thought if he died, the things from out of his head might vanish, but they didn't. There's something in that hallway that takes shadows and animates them. Twists them. Sam shot him in the head, and the parts of that thing that were him vanished, but it... wasn't enough. What was left was... teeth. And darkness." She takes the bottle, pouring herself another glass with shaking hands, knocking it back just like the one before.

"Thing is, he was still dangerous, unstable. I could see Jack, but everything was at war with everything else, and. We couldn't let him revive. And Sam was low on bullets. He recovers from a head-shot in under forty seconds, so I... Stomped on his head. With my boots. Every forty seconds, again and again. It's not as though I'm familiar with the recovery time for massive cranial trauma, and no... No room for error. Not there. It got me by the throat."

After that, there's nothing more she can think of to say.

[sarkraticmethod]

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.

He's still standing, not because he doesn't feel comfortable finding a place to sit, but because he just feels more comfortable standing, like maybe Suzie will realize this is a mistake and throw him out at any moment and he'd rather not have gotten too comfortable beforehand.

"And now he's gone," he adds, staring blankly into his glass. It's not so much a question as a surmation of everything she's told him- what the whole fucking mess amounts to. Anyone would be twisted and broken after something like that, especially when it didn't even end in a victory. "After all that..."

[superiorspectre]

"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 fucking well, but if there was a way to just fucking well kill him and just get my Captain back..." She swallows.

She hasn't told Sark anything besides Reyc's name that he couldn't already get from April's entry, not anything he can use, at any rate, and she won't start now.

"Jack Harkness was a man who would've protected a backstabbing bitch he might have had to kill himself from someone he'd loved for over a century," she says. "I don't know who Judas Reyc is."

And then all she can do is cry, until she can't be certain whether she's crying for herself or for him.

[sarkraticmethod]

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.

And that's when Suzie starts really and truly crying and he almost drops his glass in shock. He's caught like a deer in the headlights, not sure what to do now. Would touch be too personal? Were comforting words from halfway across the room seem like he wasn't even trying? He's trying to react to this situation like a person and not some analytical creature of vulgar habit, looking for weaknesses to exploit, taking in every little tic and filing it away to turn against her, while playing the false sympathy card like a seasoned actor. It's hard reacting normally when you've never had to before.

He sets his jaw and puts the glass down. He was always a tactile person and if he let people in enough to get that close to him, touch was his best means of expressing affection when words were meaningless- it wasn't as if he really knew the right words anyway or, hell, half the time the right emotions. He bridges the gap between them and joins her on the bed, drawing his legs up partially underneath him before reaching over and wrapping his arms around her shoulders and trying his hardest not to be awkward about it.

The worst she can do is throw him off the bloody bed, at this point. He can handle that risk.

[superiorspectre]

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.

The sobs die down after a while, and there's just silence and breath and her face against a damp spot on his shirt.

If there's any further meaning to be ascribed to this tableau, Suzie's unaware and uncaring.

[sarkraticmethod]

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.

But he is solid and he is human, as much as he seems to fail at normal human emotional responses, and this much he can do. It's not complicated or difficult now that he's in the moment- it's just holding her and letting her cry and not thinking about how strange it is that he keeps letting this woman in past barriers and walls that only April ever really managed to tear down before.

When the sobs die down, he doesn't say anything for a moment, as if expecting her to break the silence first, but when she doesn't, all he can think to say with a noise that's neither a sob nor a small, pained laugh, but some bastardized combination of both, "I wish I could honestly promise you that it will get better, but that's something I doubt I could convincingly lie about."

Cynical, yes. Gallows humor, of course. But God knows he wouldn't want optimism in a time like this.

[superiorspectre]

"It's all right." Suzie shifts slightly, not completely pulling away, just enough that her face isn't pressed into his shirt anymore. "If you did say that, I might have to kill you in your sleep, and then I'd never hear the end of it from Ianto after he had to clean it up."

Gallows humour? Oh yes. They know all about that in Torchwood.

A moment later, she says, very, very softly, "Thank you."

[sarkraticmethod]

Sark makes a soft heh sound. Threats to kill him in his sleep... He's heard those before and from people who probably weren't kidding. Before, an overly cocksure attitude dictated that he not react, because he'd love to see them try. Now, well, it's Suzie. She's a friend.

Novel concept, that. For all that he seems so resistant to change, there's so much that has.

He sighs, shifting his head just a bit, but not enough that he's stopped resting his head on hers. It's comfortable. "I can't say I'm really that much good at this, but... You're welcome."

[superiorspectre]

"You're still here," she says. "It's more than I've come to expect from most people."

...That means you did well, Sark. And holding her while she cried was more than she'd expected from anyone, though she's not sure she can put that into words. It's there by implication. That'll have to do.

It occurs to her that she should have serious issues with the fact that she's vulnerable and scantily-clad, but the robe's comfortable, and Sark is comfortable, and she doesn't have the energy required to care about anything further.

Besides, friendship is a novel concept for her, as well. She didn't have friends in Torchwood; she had people she got along reasonably well with, people she was wary of, and Tosh, who she hid herself from.

Here... things are different, and the idea that people care about her is still somewhat unnerving. The idea that she can lean against a friend like this and not have him try to take advantage is even more so, but not in any unpleasant sense.

Besides, she very much doubts that she's anyone's idea of attractive right now, between the dark circles under her eyes, the bruises, and fact that she's covered in gauze.

[sarkraticmethod]

Sark bites his lip. He's probably gotten way more comfortable with this situation than he has any right to be, but... Well, where compassion and mercy and friendship were novel concepts and where lust was more common than love, this always appealed to him. More than the sex (of course, he enjoyed it and learned to from a questionably young age), but a lack of tenderness leaves the body craving it even when everything else is cold and unfeeling.

There's a reason why a hardass like Sark could spend long hours just cuddling with someone if they'd take him up on the offer. There's nothing sexual about it, even if it often goes hand in hand with sex. It's just... Being close. Before he came here, it was the one bit of weakness he felt capable of indulging and given that it came on the tail end of the perverse sexual acts he tended to engage in, it almost never seemed like it acted in contradiction to what he was.

This... This is a bit different, but the whole bloody universe is different.

"I don't have to go..." For what feels like the first time, he's afraid to overstep somewhere. A year ago, he would have been bold, daring, attempting to kiss her and risk her reaction. Now that idea just makes him sick, especially since he doesn't want that... Well, he'd be lying if he said he didn't completely want that, but that's not important and it never has been. Sometimes he really just misses sleeping next to someone.

"I mean," he doubles back on his words, "If you'd prefer I'd stay..."

[superiorspectre]

That gets Suzie to pull away enough to meet his eyes, one eyebrow raised. The benignly skeptical expression doesn't quite mask the wary look in her eyes.

"And just what are you offering?" Her voice is still soft, and the wording itself isn't quite what it might be if she didn't have some small confidence in the fact that this wasn't a proposition. Offering, not proposing. She's very carefully not implying anything, but she's been paranoid for far too long to tell him he can stay without knowing exactly what she's getting into.

The temptation to switch back into shadow-sight is almost overwhelming, but she decides against it. She's seen enough for one day, for one lifetime, and she's far too tired to go prying any deeper than she has to.

Besides, under other, better circumstances, if he'd offered more than company, she might have considered it, though right now she knows quite well she's in no condition to make decisions one way or the other.

[sarkraticmethod]

Sark swallows. Right. He had a feeling that might be construed as something... Not wholly innocent. He doesn't blame Suzie for that, of course. He's not exactly anyone's idea of a cuddlebuddy.

He stumbles over the way to start this, because it's not something he's ever had to ask for in so many words before. "That is to say, if you'd rather not sleep alone... Well. I have no problem with staying here for the night."

He carefully puts emphasis on sleeping. Not sex. Just sleeping together. Spooning, as the kids call it. Comfort in closeness. She looks like she could use it and he enjoys that sort of thing. It's good for both of them.

Hell, there's a mild insinuation that if she wants him to stay, but doesn't feel comfortable with him in the same bed with her, he'll even sleep on the floor.

[superiorspectre]

And now it's Suzie's turn to bite her lip as she considers the matter. Part of her's still screaming that he's not safe, that no one's safe, but it's not quite as loud as it used to be.

And he asked. Didn't try anything when she was clinging desperately. Just asked.

"I haven't had a good night's sleep in... a long time," she admits. "The company can't be worse than staring at the ceiling for hours and then getting up to make coffee, anyway." She shrugs a little.