[Narrative] All the damage you do is so honest and true. I don't want to feel sorry for you.
Timeline: Sometime after this thread.
Characters: Julian Sark, Marshall Flinkman
Word Count: 2357 (Further proof that Sark makes word counts explode)
Summary: In which Sark has epic spatial reasoning skillz and something actually goes right for Torchwood for once in this damn plot.
Disclaimer: Sark and Marshall belong to JJ Abrams. I am not JJ Abrams. I would occasionally like to simultaneously smack him in the face and hug him though.
Notes: For the sake of saying IT HAPPENED, really, and less for... Any other reason, because slowtiming makes timelines cry and I like to organize things... Or something. Also Sark is an introspective bitch and needs to stop doing that.
-----
He hasn't changed. He will keep telling himself that right up until the end and it will still be true, because he never changes. The situation shifts or he hands himself off to a different master who changes the endgame, but he absolutely does not change. That much is obvious in that he can still go back on everything he's ever done, every murder, every torture session he observed, every vile order he ever sent out and not feel anything about any of it. Plug April into any of those scenarios, however, and he gets a sick feeling in his stomach.
It's not enough to make him stop. If he were in the situation again, he'd torture and kill, and still not feel the slightest bit of remorse, which is why he's avoiding being in that situation again. Not because he doesn't want that anymore, but because he's deeply afraid that he does, and with April...
Well. That's not what he has to worry about right now, is it?
As he makes his way towards the outskirts of Thane's stronghold, he can't help but think about Neil Caplan's son, and somehow he has an understanding now about Caplan's mindset during that time (not enough to make him regret, oh no, never that much)- having some vague idea about what could be done to his child, but not having the slightest bit of power to stop it. And here he stands, the person who threatened and kidnapped that very same child, now in Caplan's shoes. The differences are there. April isn't leverage against him, which makes her predicament even more dire. His cooperation in some event won't promise her safety, which is a problem, because he's been very little if not cooperative his whole life. The good news is he's also not exactly a mathmetician caught in a terrorist plot. He's the sort of person who executes terrorist plots, and that gives him what he'd like to hope is an advantage, but he can't be sure, hence why he's trying to stay out of range of whatever scanners Thane and Hart might have, sticking to shadows and keeping himself literally invisible for added stealth. They'd have to be unexpectedly right on top of him to know he's there.
He's smart enough not to try to rush in, but some part of him almost wants to, despite all the warnings the Vesmier gave Torchwood. An instinct he wasn't sure he had, but quiet enough to quash when it so much as threatens to rise up and overwhelm his carefully primed senses. This is you every mission, isn't it, Sydney? That emotional charge that drives you too much, too far. It's just as cumbersome as I'd imagined it being.
His life would be so much easier right now if he didn't care so damn much, but whatever April did to him, she got into his head and twisted everything around so much that leaving her to die is the farthest thing from his mind, but that doesn't mean he's going to storm the base on his own. His sense of self-preservation has always and will always override anything, even someone breaking through his emotional barriers and making him really care about something.
So this is just surveillance. Nothing more, nothing less. He's not running headlong into the danger just yet, and he wouldn't even if he wanted to considering there are other, more effective ways of attempting to get what he wants, but he doubts anyone's going to appreciate him attempting to negotiate April's safe release when he doesn't particularly care about anyone else. That's the sort of thing that sort of makes trust fall flat... Not that trust is anything he's particularly concerned with, but it helps when in situations like this.
And he should probably focus on the task at hand. This isn't actually the first time he's done this even if it's a bit below his station. He used to be too high-ranked to even think about anything as mundane as scoping out the perimeters of a target building, but considering that's a skill far more common around people he generally spends time around back in his world than it is here, he's the best person for this job... Well, other than Sydney, but he's not letting Sydney within three miles of this place.
He walks the length of the perimeter, observing the building, scrutinizing it and filing the images away even as they sort themselves into a sort of mental schematic as all the pieces fall together. This would be so much easier if Torchwood had comms that actually functioned farther than a mile, and he could give Marshall the specs as he gets them and probably have the entire schematic drawn up before he gets back, but this will just have to suffice.
He's barely aware he's been holding his breath when he comes back to where he started, as if he was almost expecting to get caught somehow. Not that he hasn't been completely careful, not that he's used to getting caught, but even he can figure out that these people are far from what he's used to, and treating them the way he treats every third-rate hack that calls himself a criminal will only get him killed. If they were anything like what he's used to- what he actually is- then he could have gotten April back by now.
Standing here, staring at the building like he's looking for an excuse to run inside, isn't going to get him anywhere, and that's a foolish line of thinking anyway and should stop immediately. But you won't do it anyway, even if you convinced yourself that's what you want. You're too fond of living to jeopardize that.
A sensation of pain in his palms, shooting up the tips of his fingers, brings him back on alert and he has to look down to notice that he's clenching his fists so tightly, his knuckles are turning white and his fingernails are well on their way to breaking skin. There might be no expression on his face, but sometimes his emotions try to escape in other ways, and right now he's not sure who he's more angry at- Thane for taking April away from him or himself for being too scared to take a risk that's just a little less acceptable than the kind he's used to.
~*~
It's late when he finally gets back, having nearly had to force himself to get away from that building before he did something he'd develop a sense of regret enough to actually regret later. If he knows anything about Marshall Flinkman, however, he knows that he'll still be up and probably in that damn control room. Really, he shouldn't be so predictable. People could just sneak up on him.
Marshall's too deep in work to notice the door opening and closing again, but the movement is so subtle that only someone who was deeply paying attention to it would have probably noticed anyway. His laptop is open, running some sort of program that Sark's not interested enough to try to read over his shoulder and Marshall, himself, is currently pouring over something or other- possibly a modem or a router or that might just be what it used to be, which made the possibilities even more endless, and again, Sark doesn't care enough to bother asking.
"I was hoping you were up," he comments dryly, just at Marshall's shoulder when he makes himself visible again.
Marshall yelps and scoots his chair back so far that he hits the opposite wall with a thud. He flails his hands a bit. "Don't... Don't do that, okay? I mean, it's bad enough that Hart snatched Tosh up without any of us even knowing it and I'm trying to contact the Chula mothership or whatever, which could potentially be asking to be abducted by aliens, but I'm not really sure if the Chula function like that... Or even have a mothership, actually, but they could, and really, you shouldn't be sneaking up on people, because that's a good way to get yourself shot."
Sark tilts his head to the side, wonders if he should comment on the fact that Marshall is neither armed nor precisely dangerous, and then decides that he has better things to do than intimidate the man. "I have the specifications of Thane's stronghold."
Marshall smiles a bit and makes a small, wheezy gasping noise of relief. "Oh good. So nothing bad happened while you were out. I'm not gonna lie- I was worried..." He notes the look on Sark's face, and adds, "...That you were going to go all... Evil on us. Again."
That would normally warrant a comment, but given this is Marshall Flinkman who never means half of what he says and just says words the other half of the time, Sark doesn't give it more than an annoyed roll of his eyes. "If you are finished, Mr. Flinkman, I would love to have this finished before Instagur Thane decides to turn his attentions to April the same way he-"
"Please don't finish that sentence," Marshall cuts him off as he makes his way back to his laptop, looking a little green around the edges. Sark just flattens his expression a little more just to not let it show how much the idea sickens him, himself, to the point of violence almost.
A few rapidly typed commands on his laptop later and Marshall continues, somewhat weakly, "What're the specs?"
Sark gives them up and for a moment the only sounds in the room are Sark's monotone recitations of every detail he can recall about the building while Marshall furiously plugs numbers into a program in order to come up with a schematic with systematic clicks of the keys. It won't be perfect and both of them know it, but it will be something for Torchwood to work with.
"Sydney doesn't know about this, does she?" Sark really didn't think that Marshall would be able to keep his mouth shut, but he almost hoped that he would. They're two completely different people- Sark thrives on silence and Marshall can't function with it. Really, he should have left after he did his part, but there's nowhere else he can go. He's going to wind up prowling the halls of the Kashtta anyway, because he can't go home and he can't sleep, so he might as well make sure Marshall gets the damn specs right.
"I would have thought that you would be the one to tell her," he mutters, staring vaguely at the CCTV monitors.
"So... That's a no, right?" Marshall chuckles a little, but stops after a second, because apparently he can sense Sark's dark look directed at the back of his head. "Yeah, no. I'm kinda scared of what she might do. These people... They're bad news, but considering you were the one who insisted on getting her back into all this, I almost wondered if- if you, like, tried to-"
"Sydney Bristow is better to me, at this moment, alive, Mr. Flinkman, and I have no doubt in my mind that were she to go after Instagur Thane, she wouldn't last ten seconds," Sark cuts him off sharply. Oh, if Marshall didn't need those fingers, he would have broken them by now. He doesn't need to be having this conversation with him for no reason other than to fill a void. He doesn't need to concern himself with one more person who shouldn't matter anyway.
"You know, it's funny. That almost sounds like you care about he-" Marshall cuts himself off this time, sensing Sark starting to move towards him, and that never ends well for anyone. "Never mind." He finishes off the last set of code and taps the last key with a flourish. "There. Done."
Sark steps a little closer- close enough to make Marshall flinch a bit instinctively and examines the end result. Not perfect as was expected, but, considering what they were working with, it's a nice piece of work. "Excellent," he says, which is the closest he'll get to an actual thank you and Marshall's too afraid of what a Sark very clearly walking a knife's edge between perfectly reasonable and perfectly violent might do to him if he suggests that an actual thank you would be a nice. Of course, if it's one more step in getting Tosh and everyone back, simple things like thanks can be forgotten.
With no real reason to stay any longer, Sark makes his way to the door. All they need now is a plan of action and he'll have April back and this will all be nothing more than an unpleasant memory, but plans can take a great deal of time to come into fruition and what could happen to April in the meantime haunts him. He pauses just at the door, digging his journal out of his pocket and flipping to April's last entry, just staring at it like he's been doing ever since she made it, wondering if he should say something and wondering if there's anything he really can say.
"You really love her, don't you? April, I mean. That's why you're doing this." Once again Marshall speaks when he should stay quiet, but if Sark actually had much of anything left to him with all the unfortunate anguish welling up inside of him that tends to come whenever he thinks of April these days to turn around and glare at him, he would have been shocked to see that Marshall didn't look the least bit apologetic about his observation.
Enough to feel like I should be doing something more than what I'm doing, with or without a plan. Enough that it hurts. Enough that I don't even feel like myself anymore. In a word, yes. He's not going to admit that to Marshall Flinkman, however. Rather than even muster up the strength to deny what's too obvious right now, he just slams the journal shut, and pulls open the door with a bit more force than his natural sense of restraint generally makes him capable of and is gone from the room and from all sight a few seconds later.
In the control room, Marshall swivels his chair to stare at the monitors for a second (empty, even though he knows Sark's there somewhere), tapping his fingers against the box he was toying with. "It's okay. I really love Tosh too," he says out loud, once again not really caring that there's no one around to hear him. Probably better that way, honestly.
Characters: Julian Sark, Marshall Flinkman
Word Count: 2357 (Further proof that Sark makes word counts explode)
Summary: In which Sark has epic spatial reasoning skillz and something actually goes right for Torchwood for once in this damn plot.
Disclaimer: Sark and Marshall belong to JJ Abrams. I am not JJ Abrams. I would occasionally like to simultaneously smack him in the face and hug him though.
Notes: For the sake of saying IT HAPPENED, really, and less for... Any other reason, because slowtiming makes timelines cry and I like to organize things... Or something. Also Sark is an introspective bitch and needs to stop doing that.
-----
He hasn't changed. He will keep telling himself that right up until the end and it will still be true, because he never changes. The situation shifts or he hands himself off to a different master who changes the endgame, but he absolutely does not change. That much is obvious in that he can still go back on everything he's ever done, every murder, every torture session he observed, every vile order he ever sent out and not feel anything about any of it. Plug April into any of those scenarios, however, and he gets a sick feeling in his stomach.
It's not enough to make him stop. If he were in the situation again, he'd torture and kill, and still not feel the slightest bit of remorse, which is why he's avoiding being in that situation again. Not because he doesn't want that anymore, but because he's deeply afraid that he does, and with April...
Well. That's not what he has to worry about right now, is it?
As he makes his way towards the outskirts of Thane's stronghold, he can't help but think about Neil Caplan's son, and somehow he has an understanding now about Caplan's mindset during that time (not enough to make him regret, oh no, never that much)- having some vague idea about what could be done to his child, but not having the slightest bit of power to stop it. And here he stands, the person who threatened and kidnapped that very same child, now in Caplan's shoes. The differences are there. April isn't leverage against him, which makes her predicament even more dire. His cooperation in some event won't promise her safety, which is a problem, because he's been very little if not cooperative his whole life. The good news is he's also not exactly a mathmetician caught in a terrorist plot. He's the sort of person who executes terrorist plots, and that gives him what he'd like to hope is an advantage, but he can't be sure, hence why he's trying to stay out of range of whatever scanners Thane and Hart might have, sticking to shadows and keeping himself literally invisible for added stealth. They'd have to be unexpectedly right on top of him to know he's there.
He's smart enough not to try to rush in, but some part of him almost wants to, despite all the warnings the Vesmier gave Torchwood. An instinct he wasn't sure he had, but quiet enough to quash when it so much as threatens to rise up and overwhelm his carefully primed senses. This is you every mission, isn't it, Sydney? That emotional charge that drives you too much, too far. It's just as cumbersome as I'd imagined it being.
His life would be so much easier right now if he didn't care so damn much, but whatever April did to him, she got into his head and twisted everything around so much that leaving her to die is the farthest thing from his mind, but that doesn't mean he's going to storm the base on his own. His sense of self-preservation has always and will always override anything, even someone breaking through his emotional barriers and making him really care about something.
So this is just surveillance. Nothing more, nothing less. He's not running headlong into the danger just yet, and he wouldn't even if he wanted to considering there are other, more effective ways of attempting to get what he wants, but he doubts anyone's going to appreciate him attempting to negotiate April's safe release when he doesn't particularly care about anyone else. That's the sort of thing that sort of makes trust fall flat... Not that trust is anything he's particularly concerned with, but it helps when in situations like this.
And he should probably focus on the task at hand. This isn't actually the first time he's done this even if it's a bit below his station. He used to be too high-ranked to even think about anything as mundane as scoping out the perimeters of a target building, but considering that's a skill far more common around people he generally spends time around back in his world than it is here, he's the best person for this job... Well, other than Sydney, but he's not letting Sydney within three miles of this place.
He walks the length of the perimeter, observing the building, scrutinizing it and filing the images away even as they sort themselves into a sort of mental schematic as all the pieces fall together. This would be so much easier if Torchwood had comms that actually functioned farther than a mile, and he could give Marshall the specs as he gets them and probably have the entire schematic drawn up before he gets back, but this will just have to suffice.
He's barely aware he's been holding his breath when he comes back to where he started, as if he was almost expecting to get caught somehow. Not that he hasn't been completely careful, not that he's used to getting caught, but even he can figure out that these people are far from what he's used to, and treating them the way he treats every third-rate hack that calls himself a criminal will only get him killed. If they were anything like what he's used to- what he actually is- then he could have gotten April back by now.
Standing here, staring at the building like he's looking for an excuse to run inside, isn't going to get him anywhere, and that's a foolish line of thinking anyway and should stop immediately. But you won't do it anyway, even if you convinced yourself that's what you want. You're too fond of living to jeopardize that.
A sensation of pain in his palms, shooting up the tips of his fingers, brings him back on alert and he has to look down to notice that he's clenching his fists so tightly, his knuckles are turning white and his fingernails are well on their way to breaking skin. There might be no expression on his face, but sometimes his emotions try to escape in other ways, and right now he's not sure who he's more angry at- Thane for taking April away from him or himself for being too scared to take a risk that's just a little less acceptable than the kind he's used to.
~*~
It's late when he finally gets back, having nearly had to force himself to get away from that building before he did something he'd develop a sense of regret enough to actually regret later. If he knows anything about Marshall Flinkman, however, he knows that he'll still be up and probably in that damn control room. Really, he shouldn't be so predictable. People could just sneak up on him.
Marshall's too deep in work to notice the door opening and closing again, but the movement is so subtle that only someone who was deeply paying attention to it would have probably noticed anyway. His laptop is open, running some sort of program that Sark's not interested enough to try to read over his shoulder and Marshall, himself, is currently pouring over something or other- possibly a modem or a router or that might just be what it used to be, which made the possibilities even more endless, and again, Sark doesn't care enough to bother asking.
"I was hoping you were up," he comments dryly, just at Marshall's shoulder when he makes himself visible again.
Marshall yelps and scoots his chair back so far that he hits the opposite wall with a thud. He flails his hands a bit. "Don't... Don't do that, okay? I mean, it's bad enough that Hart snatched Tosh up without any of us even knowing it and I'm trying to contact the Chula mothership or whatever, which could potentially be asking to be abducted by aliens, but I'm not really sure if the Chula function like that... Or even have a mothership, actually, but they could, and really, you shouldn't be sneaking up on people, because that's a good way to get yourself shot."
Sark tilts his head to the side, wonders if he should comment on the fact that Marshall is neither armed nor precisely dangerous, and then decides that he has better things to do than intimidate the man. "I have the specifications of Thane's stronghold."
Marshall smiles a bit and makes a small, wheezy gasping noise of relief. "Oh good. So nothing bad happened while you were out. I'm not gonna lie- I was worried..." He notes the look on Sark's face, and adds, "...That you were going to go all... Evil on us. Again."
That would normally warrant a comment, but given this is Marshall Flinkman who never means half of what he says and just says words the other half of the time, Sark doesn't give it more than an annoyed roll of his eyes. "If you are finished, Mr. Flinkman, I would love to have this finished before Instagur Thane decides to turn his attentions to April the same way he-"
"Please don't finish that sentence," Marshall cuts him off as he makes his way back to his laptop, looking a little green around the edges. Sark just flattens his expression a little more just to not let it show how much the idea sickens him, himself, to the point of violence almost.
A few rapidly typed commands on his laptop later and Marshall continues, somewhat weakly, "What're the specs?"
Sark gives them up and for a moment the only sounds in the room are Sark's monotone recitations of every detail he can recall about the building while Marshall furiously plugs numbers into a program in order to come up with a schematic with systematic clicks of the keys. It won't be perfect and both of them know it, but it will be something for Torchwood to work with.
"Sydney doesn't know about this, does she?" Sark really didn't think that Marshall would be able to keep his mouth shut, but he almost hoped that he would. They're two completely different people- Sark thrives on silence and Marshall can't function with it. Really, he should have left after he did his part, but there's nowhere else he can go. He's going to wind up prowling the halls of the Kashtta anyway, because he can't go home and he can't sleep, so he might as well make sure Marshall gets the damn specs right.
"I would have thought that you would be the one to tell her," he mutters, staring vaguely at the CCTV monitors.
"So... That's a no, right?" Marshall chuckles a little, but stops after a second, because apparently he can sense Sark's dark look directed at the back of his head. "Yeah, no. I'm kinda scared of what she might do. These people... They're bad news, but considering you were the one who insisted on getting her back into all this, I almost wondered if- if you, like, tried to-"
"Sydney Bristow is better to me, at this moment, alive, Mr. Flinkman, and I have no doubt in my mind that were she to go after Instagur Thane, she wouldn't last ten seconds," Sark cuts him off sharply. Oh, if Marshall didn't need those fingers, he would have broken them by now. He doesn't need to be having this conversation with him for no reason other than to fill a void. He doesn't need to concern himself with one more person who shouldn't matter anyway.
"You know, it's funny. That almost sounds like you care about he-" Marshall cuts himself off this time, sensing Sark starting to move towards him, and that never ends well for anyone. "Never mind." He finishes off the last set of code and taps the last key with a flourish. "There. Done."
Sark steps a little closer- close enough to make Marshall flinch a bit instinctively and examines the end result. Not perfect as was expected, but, considering what they were working with, it's a nice piece of work. "Excellent," he says, which is the closest he'll get to an actual thank you and Marshall's too afraid of what a Sark very clearly walking a knife's edge between perfectly reasonable and perfectly violent might do to him if he suggests that an actual thank you would be a nice. Of course, if it's one more step in getting Tosh and everyone back, simple things like thanks can be forgotten.
With no real reason to stay any longer, Sark makes his way to the door. All they need now is a plan of action and he'll have April back and this will all be nothing more than an unpleasant memory, but plans can take a great deal of time to come into fruition and what could happen to April in the meantime haunts him. He pauses just at the door, digging his journal out of his pocket and flipping to April's last entry, just staring at it like he's been doing ever since she made it, wondering if he should say something and wondering if there's anything he really can say.
"You really love her, don't you? April, I mean. That's why you're doing this." Once again Marshall speaks when he should stay quiet, but if Sark actually had much of anything left to him with all the unfortunate anguish welling up inside of him that tends to come whenever he thinks of April these days to turn around and glare at him, he would have been shocked to see that Marshall didn't look the least bit apologetic about his observation.
Enough to feel like I should be doing something more than what I'm doing, with or without a plan. Enough that it hurts. Enough that I don't even feel like myself anymore. In a word, yes. He's not going to admit that to Marshall Flinkman, however. Rather than even muster up the strength to deny what's too obvious right now, he just slams the journal shut, and pulls open the door with a bit more force than his natural sense of restraint generally makes him capable of and is gone from the room and from all sight a few seconds later.
In the control room, Marshall swivels his chair to stare at the monitors for a second (empty, even though he knows Sark's there somewhere), tapping his fingers against the box he was toying with. "It's okay. I really love Tosh too," he says out loud, once again not really caring that there's no one around to hear him. Probably better that way, honestly.