ukan | IC CONTACT

I'm not surprised that it bothers you. You should be. I would be.

I'm asking you if there's a reason why you're frustrated right now, specifically.

Do you really think it's going to make anything better to tell a warden why I'm frustrated, knowing full well it won't make any difference?

I thought it might help to tell a friend, but suit yourself.

I'll share if you will.

[He's too stressed to bother manipulating the conversation, not with Tommy. He needs tit for tat when sharing any part of him that matters.]

And what do you want me to share?

Helplessness.

[Because that's what this is, or what it almost feels like sometimes. If Lark were any less stubborn, any less adaptive, that's what it would be.]

You saw me at my lowest already, Lark. What else could you want from me?

[This is not, immediately, a refusal- it's just that he can't imagine anything beyond the shivering wreck he was when he was detoxing.]

I know. But you weren't helpless, Tommy. [He isn't arguing. Rather, he says it with a certain reverence. Respect. It is not an easy thing to earn from Lark Tennant, and if he and Tommy become enemies someday, he will never stop respecting him for the things he saw that week.] You were facing yourself then.

Here on the Barge people paint it like that's all we have to do: look in the mirror and decide if we like what we see but that's not it.

If that's what it took, half the wardens here wouldn't be wardens anymore.

What, exactly, are you asking? A story of when I felt helpless? Helplessness, here and now?

[He doesn't know. Tommy, thankfully, can't see the frustration and the sense of drowning. And Lark, thankfully, is pretty good at keeping it out of his voice.]

Maybe that is my point. You aren't truly helpless here. And whatever helplessness you felt before, you survived.

But I'm dead. So obviously, there's no equal footing there, either.

[He doesn't know, but talking and laughing and shouting and railing against Tommy have always helped before. It isn't now, but that's not Tommy's fault--that's the Admiral's.]

I'm not who I was when I got here, Tommy. And who I am- I don't think I'm adapting in a way that will ever let me out of here. Can you begin to imagine being here for eternity?

I can't, Lark.

[It seems they've gotten to the bottom of it, or at least close to it, without Tommy having done anything. It's odd, having Lark speak so honestly to him like this, which is why he treads carefully.]

I can't begin to understand what that must be like.

Neither can the other inmates.

[There. That's what digs at him: the sense of isolation, the sense that the others--even the ones he likes--have a way out that he just doesn't.

It's a relief to identify it, but only in the way that looking down and seeing a knife has missed an artery is a relief.]

Did you know Furiosa asked me to come to her world?

I didn't. [he sounds surprised, but only faintly- it sounds like something she would do.]

What caused her to ask that?

I'm a lawyer. I run an underground society, as tiny as it is. Maybe--probably--other reasons; I have a hard time reading her, sometimes.

She might think you'd thrive in the environment.

Lycanthropes as a whole could do very well there. And they could help her cause.

[But he's not sure Furiosa knows what Lark's version of thriving is, that he is not content to simply hold a place safely, that he must always be pushing forward for more.]

But me, personally? I think she'd get tired of me quickly, don't you?

She has practically infinite patience. Why d'you think she'd tire of you- and would it matter?

Because I doubt she wants to gather up the neighboring towns like I would.

[Lark would bring more war and more death, if he were there leading the pack.]

She's assuming you'd be rid of that habit. [He lets a bit of humor creep back into his voice, trying to soften the conversation. It's nothing they'll solve here- Tommy doesn't think this conversation will help him any closer to graduation. In fact, he'll accept Lark's idea that he won't, ever. Not because he thinks he really won't, but because he respects Lark too much to treat him like he doesn't know himself.]

[It works; he laughs softly and the tension in him vanishes] She's good at believing in people who shouldn't be believed in, isn't she. How am I going to break that habit when I still can't stop shedding on the couch?

Ah- but you see, that's a biological impulse. Think she's tried to make me stop smoking?

[But she's made him a better man in many other ways.]

Oh but that's for your own good. I don't think anyone could even recognize you without a cigarette in your hand. You'd get left at some port by mistake because no one could find you.

I think it's half the reason the Admiral asked me to join- that ember in the night, just calling out to a prison space ship.

I wouldn't doubt it. But he probably mistook you for a firefly. Welcome to the jar, buddy.

Well, I'm here now.

[Gentle, ribbing a little before he softens again.]

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