ukan | IC CONTACT

"Now what does a nice archivist like you do to piss people off?" Lark grins. They're at the elevator, he bumps the button and waits, Jon still comfortably in his arms.

"Ha. ha. ha." Very funny. "...you know, I haven't actually upset anyone in some time. I'm starting to wonder if there's something wrong with me."

"You haven't been shaking enough cages," Lark agrees, grinning and maneuvering them inside the car. "I can't do it all by myself, you know. Can you hit the floor button for me?"

He reaches over and does just that.

"Yes, well," he huffs out, "you end the world and then un-end the world and you need a bit of a rest up before you're ready to bother people."

"What brought you back here after saving the world, anyway?" He's never asked. Jon's world is worse than hell, as far as Lark knows, and he hasn't wanted to dig at any wounds that might have a chance to heal.

“Because I’m going to need another deal to defuse the bomb that went off,” he explains. “Namely me. At the moment, I could go back and have the same bloody thing happen all over again. A more… decisive solution needs to be implemented.”

He knows how complicated Jon's world is. There are some worlds he knows he needs to just sit down and map out, make flow charts of: Jon's and Archer's specifically. But this is a problem he wants to understand better now.

"What, specifically, will your deal be?"

"Close the Entities off from my world," he says quietly, "off from every world. Restore all of the avatars to their humanity. However awful it might be...

"At least they'll have a choice as to whether be that awful. And even if it builds back up again, happens again..."

He rubs at the back of his neck.

"Hopefully it'll be centuries after I'm long gone before it happens."

"And if it does, you can at least leave a road map for someone to follow then," Lark says, always seeing the long game before he sees the details.

"Will it change anything in you?"

"...theoretically, I'd be human again. I'm, uh," he glances towards the door as his mind goes elsewhere, "I'm exploring options for that, just in case, however. I'd much rather not die if I don't have to."

Lark tries not to let his relief show, tries not to let on that he'd been feeling that subject out. He doesn't want Jon dead, and perhaps more importantly he doesn't want Jon to want to die.

"A human with a very impressive werewolf scar," he muses. "I think if the Admiral can save worlds, he should be able to grant you a safe world and a human body."

"One should hope," he says with a small huff. "Martin's going to take care of those I was originally covering with my deal. Well, those who haven't managed to graduate themselves, anyway."

That's a smile to Lark.

His head tips ever so slightly. "Wait- what was your deal going to cover? Or should I say, who? People here?"

He huffs a little, mostly in amusement.

"The way I worded my deal was to include anyone who acted as an archival assistant or who assisted an Archivist in their work. At the time, you had been here for ages and didn't seem to see any end in sight. So I... admit I was hoping that you would be considered on that list, as my assistant on the archive for the Barge."

He tilts his head towards the door.

"At this point, though, it would technically include Gerry, who's here now. In my wildest dreams, I never thought he'd show up here."

Lark opens the cabin door, shuts it with his foot, and looks for the best place to set Jon down. "You know, I'd still like to assist you. However, and wherever, I can. This," the biting, "isn't all I'm good at."

"But you are very good at this," he says as he points towards the couch, which is only a few feet from the door. He relaxes as he realizes that Martin won't be bothering them about this. At least for the moment.

"The fact is that I'm not... all that sure collecting stories is a good idea for me at the moment."

"You've mentioned it a bit before," Lark says, settling Jon down and then sitting on the floor beside him. "I got the impression it's a compulsion of sorts?"

How does he put this?

"...I'm fine. I want that clear. I am fine," because he doesn't want Lark to panic. "But there's something said among the avatars of my world: 'feed your patron, or he will feed on you'."

He look over from his spot on the couch.

"I choose not to 'feed' the way it would like. Meaning many of my powers are... wobbly. Difficult to control. And given the sort of people who come here, there's entirely too much chance of me, er... 'biting in' if I'm not too careful."

Lark just listens, not interrupting even to ask questions, paying close attention to Jon's tone and his body language and the bits he knows about Jon's history.

"Are you afraid of what will happen if you feed your patron here? That it might show up here?"

He blinks at the question, but after a moment, he shakes his head.

"There's a way to bring him here, but that's something I've made sure to take care of."

That particular 'statement' is hidden away, locked in a box, the key frozen in his freezer in a thick block of ice. Someone learned from coffin guy.

"The danger is in undoing someone's progress. What I do... it can tear open the scars of someone's trauma. For some, that... can be good. Especially if something- well, to use the metaphor, if something hasn't properly healed yet, or it healed poorly. But for someone who's worked through their pain, its making them experience it all over again, fresh, and it can do-" he swallows, hard, "quite a lot of damage."

Lark nods as he pictures what that could do. "I think I've told you some of what it takes to change a person into a wolf. It means we get to leave so much of our human trauma behind," even though no person survives a change without having suffered as a human. "I can't imagine the damage the wrong person with the wrong wound opened could do."

Blood baths, if it was a wolf. Massacres.

"Precisely," he says with a low nod. "Besides the fact that it's deeeeeeeply unethical and, well, I've found I rather hate myself when I, er, indulge in that manner."

Lark isn't prone to guilt. He has exactly two instances in his whole life where he can honestly say he's experienced it. But that doesn't mean he has no sympathy for friends who do live with it.

"Even when it does help someone?"

"The problem is," he says, leaning back against the couch a little more as Sasha the cat decides to take up his lap, "that I've no way of knowing whether it'll hurt or harm. Meaning: I made that decision for me not for them. Any help I provided was purely happenstance."

He breathes out and lets his hand settle on the back of the cat.

"I can use my abilities in small ways, little doses, without much trouble. But anything like taking a proper statement... I would rather wait until I've figured something out than risk someone's health or sanity."

He nods. He can accept that, support it, even if he has no frame of reference for it in his own life. He's offered changes to people who would otherwise be trapped, and he's done it for himself first and their benefit second. But it's not the same as what Jon is describing.

"If you ever do figure something out..." A slow, careful breath. He's not even sure he should say this, but Jon is his friend, and he trusts him, and he wants him to know it. "I have things I've never resolved. Not much; I know myself and my path very well. But the things I can't reconcile about how I've behaved, I don't know how to shake."

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