[justprompts] The broken locks were a warning; you got inside my head.

[certainproclivity]

justprompts : Do you believe in Psychics? Why or why not? (OOC: I couldn't get the idea out of my head... And then it started to piss me off, but I wanted to write it, so... I wrote it. I really fail at coherency today.)

i. Calisto

Long before the sound of her name could send shivers down his spine, she intrigued him, but that didn't last for very long. What probably started bothering him the most about her, long before he realized that she had no real endgame and that he wasn't her asset so much as her a pet- one that she might get bored with and add to her collection of victims should the mood strike her- was the fact that he couldn't hide anything from her. If his thoughts didn't betray him, his emotions would and those she could play with to her heart's content.

He'd never had a reason to believe in psychics beyond the obvious- Rambaldi could allegedly see the future, but this was hardly the same thing. Having the safety of his thoughts desecrated gave him nowhere to retreat to, leaving him to spend as much time as possible away from her. He often considered that a folly and suspected that she knew exactly what he was doing.

The fact that she let him sometimes kept him up at night long after her death, wondering why.

ii. Kara

Kara was an enigma. He was never really certain whether she hated him or adored him and just had a funny way of showing it, but he wouldn't place money on it being the latter. Hatred didn't seem right either... Maybe she just found him to be an interesting toy.

Or maybe she just liked that she scared him.

The fear was irrational even as it wasn't. Kara moved like a hunter and his own instincts perceived her as a potential threat even without the psychic powers. If Calisto made him wary of psychics, then Kara tipped the scales towards fear, and he'd be loathe to try to explain how exactly that worked, when she didn't seem nearly as likey to gut him as Calisto might have been. Maybe it was the fact that Calisto wore her threats out in the open and Kara was just stealthily threatening. She never told him all the things she could do to him if he angered her, but somehow he had an idea.

And despite everything, despite how uncomfortable she made him, despite how he was always certain that she could kill him with her brain.... When she died, he actually missed her for some reason.

iii. The Vesmier

The fact that he fixed April endeared Sark to the Vesmier, while simultaneously terrifying him. Up until that point, psychics could read minds (and maybe kill with their brains- he was never really clear on how that would actually work) and that was it. The thought of someone being able to restructure a broken little girl's fragile psyche was just unheard of. If a man (Time Lord, whatever) could do that, what else could he do?

Fear, however, gave into respect and admiration. April adored him like a paternal figure and Sark, without really knowing he was looking for one to start with, found himself latching onto him similarly, albeit in a subtle way that even he didn't quite realize. Sometimes he wished that the Vesmier wasn't so much of a career politician. If he were the sort of person who could play the leader, he'd probably be the one person he really felt he could respect enough to work under.

But for all that the Vesmier felt like one of the few people he could trust, the thought of letting him in his head if only just to see if there was a way to fix him properly was a thought he refused to entertain. It might work better than anything he'd tried thus far, but it also might work far too well. He remembered how different April had been when the broken parts of her mind had been smoothed over and while he was hardly in the same boat as she was, the fear of losing everything he knew about himself in an attempt to become whatever might pass as a better person haunted him every time the thought crossed his mind. Maybe the fear wasn't legitimate. He really never intended to find out for certain.

iv. Cy

Cy was more of an annoyance than anything, at first. By the time he met her, Sark was so used to people picking up on his surface thoughts and emotional projection that her doing it didn't phase him... And anyway, he was a bit distracted the first time they met trying to disentangle her from him to really care much about her being psychic.

It wasn't until that encounter on the street when he made the mistake of touching that damn sparkplug of hers that he really felt that same twinge of fear he felt the first time he ever met someone who could look into his mind and see everything he hides. Hearing her ramble off details from his past, things he hadn't shared with anyone, things even April didn't ask about, like it was common knowledge hit him like a punch to the stomach.

Cy may have remained something of an annoyance after that, but she was one he walked with caution around.

v. Suzie

Suzie might not have been a proper psychic, but she was psychic enough, he supposed. She saw what the other psychics might gloss over, the darkest parts of the hearts of men, but she had the choice of whether or not she looked at them or not. It wasn't something he thought about much through their first meetings- she was a kindred spirit, someone he could trust, and in a lot of ways... He adored her. Not the same way he adored April, but enough that it didn't seem like such a perversion to let her in.

So he asked her to see what was hiding in his mind. It was a moment of weakness that followed a moment of utter darkness, and it didn't really succeed. As much as the thought of letting someone that far in seemed obscene, he didn't feel as exposed as he thought he might, even when it didn't yield any results. It was... Strangely comfortable, actually. Almost as comfortable as he was with April.

Maybe it was because, of all the people he had come to know in this universe, Suzie was the one who really and truly understood him. Where he and April diverged from their similar traumas and treatments, he and Suzie were joined. It was the last thing he had to offer of himself. Maybe she could make something of it and maybe she couldn't. At that point, the risk seemed worth it.

vi. April

He could meet a hundred psychics and he'd always be able to pick her out without much thought. Her little psychic pings as specific to her as a thumbprint, the almost overwhelming way she could project emotions onto him until he forgot that he was the sort of person who repressed everything to the point that his emotions just ceased to exist. April was the first psychic who didn't intimidate him. She was comfortable, she was safe in ways that he hadn't been in a long time. He could hide everything from her, but it always seemed pointless because he knew that every secret he had wouldn't scare her a bit. She could see everything he was and understand how it led to him becoming everything he is.

She made him feel, for the first time in his life, that maybe he could be someone else, someone just as capable, just as competent, but more inclined to do the right thing and care about someone other than himself. And this all because she could get inside of his head and see everything behind the facades that no one else bothered to look through.

And after a year with her, it seemed like every wall he'd ever built to have some place to hide from her if he ever needed to had fallen down until there was nothing left. With the exception of Suzie sometime after that, he'd never felt that compelled to let anyone that far in before. Even if he finally did manage to change somehow, he doubted that anyone other than those two would ever get that far again.

Especially not in the same way April managed to get inside of his head. He doubted anyone could ever do what she did again and actually get away with it.

Comments

[sittinontrains.livejournal.com]

*flails* Oh, Sark.

This was really well written and emotional and there was so much flailing on this end of things. I'm happy to see Chris!writing.

And the bit about April was just really painful and ... SWEET and wah. Amazing character introspection. Just perfect really.

I fail at coherency, but I loved this if that wasn't already abundantly clear.

<33

[sarkraticmethod.livejournal.com]

HEE. Rizzy-comments make me a happy Chris! And thank you. I was wanting to give up halfway through this, because it wasn't... Working the way I wanted it to, but I'm glad it didn't totally suck. XD

[superiorspectre]

Oh, Sark.

I love this. I love this SO HARD. ♥ I haven't seen enough Alias to meet Sark yet (need to fix that), but I love yours to bits.

[sarkraticmethod.livejournal.com]

Thank you! ♥

(Hee. Yes, you do. He's such a smarmy little ass. It always makes me sad that he's in so few Season One episodes. Bah.) And hee! I'm glad to hear people love him, as I love writing him even as he gives me trouble and I always flail about characterization, because... Well, it's like Suzie. Canon gives me SO LITTLE and this is so far out of his comfort zone, that I just have to go with my instinct and let that carry my characterization forward and hope I don't... Fall on my face... BABBLE, CHRIS, BABBLE.

[the-vesmier.livejournal.com]

Aww, Sark. He's... he's really not going to have a good time if he meets the Master, is he?

Sark, Ves and April need to have more time together to be their own little blonde emotionally-fucked-up family. They're always so adorable. (And Sark may be interested in knowing that... Ves might or might not be able to do anything for him. He works in structures, not personalities. He couldn't fix Suzie, either :<.)

[sarkraticmethod.livejournal.com]

Ahahahahaha... No. It would probably be a lot worse if he didn't know/adore Suzie who is going to be twitchy as fuck, but either way it's going to SUCK.

Yeees. They do. They really are adorable. *scritches them* (Yeah, I keep telling him that. :< For all that Sark's really intelligent, he really doesn't grasp the limits of psychics... Then again, with good reason- every one he's met can do something a little different.)