Re: Jack + Cat: the Mean-Eyed Cat
Jack had talked at length to Newt about the formation of character. What had hammered at Newt to make him philosopher, a believer in the truth of animal nature and the cruelty of man had not shaped Jack along similar lines. Trust in animals was forged on building blocks of certainty and the only thing that was certain was how far down you could hit. Jack knew this, somewhere. He knew it blind-drunk and he knew it in the back of NA meetings, that it was easier to take all of it at once than by degrees, to cover a flank you'd bruised and expose your belly to unexpected attack. He knew that, but that Cat was exposed skin and bared bone to bruise until it couldn't catch him when thick within the mire of the week's trip - that, Jack refused to contemplate.
That it was? That this was kicking to bottom, and Newt he'd left bruised by encounter, that was bilge below not enough liquor to make self-disgust palatable. It wasn't precisely tool and utility, but the scud beneath interpretation wasn't worth digging into, not when old shades had slid free in the absence of anything approaching concentration.
"Want? You think this is what I want from you? You've given me a sick set of preferences, but I never bloody wanted to be torn apart. This," and the gesture took in the bar, Cat in sober black and the dark of a dead and empty catacomb that lacked all pretension it was anything approaching normal, "This is at least I can expect. You, Cat, don't need an invitation to slide in the knife when you feel like it, you're the woman who stood in my office and told me I was beneath your contempt. At least if you're going to dig in you can do it on my time and my bloody terms." And if truth there was raw and bloodied, then Jack had walked past precipice and over cliff-edge and the oil-wick had set alight with enough furnace that the lot of it was burned down. That he'd come looking for a bartender and a drink rather than Cat herself was beside the bloody point.
And so was bringing the whole damn lot down at once, rather than expecting any of it to stay up.