Since the boy without a name had sat on the edge of the desk, swung his legs and proclaimed his boredom with the man behind it, Jack had itched. The familiar had sidled in, elbowed unsettled out of the way but for all the trips to the Capital and the fresh-faced youth that now turned the newspaper office into a turmoil of activity - it didn't scratch anything other than his own bloody pride that the Repose daily was now more than a staff of one and there were no empties in the newspaper's refuse. That wasn't anything at all. He hadn't spoken to Newt. He hadn't opened up a metaphorical vein for the blood-letting, there was only so much self-examination you could do in basements filled with other drunks and still have room over for picking at scabs with an audience.
He itched instead, and the prickle was as familiar as it was unsettling and wasn't that the truth? Second City wasn't a bar-fight or a brawl but it wasn't sat at a desk trying to inch a way in to the news that sat barely beneath the surface normality that was small town Repose. It wasn't sitting anywhere. The weather had lightened considerably to the point where he'd shed woollen peacoat for battered leather over black cotton, with a gray scarf slung as a nod to winter, and a bag slung sideways over his back which looked like it had been to as many countries as Jack himself. The jacket reminded him of months on a bike around Paris, which had been a death-trap, but if the Capital was going to be weekly sessions of fucking interminable purgatory, getting there had to change from something out of Dante that was the bus trip. But AA wasn't in session, it wasn't penance, even if he was expecting to do time.
Cat was hardly warm and fuzzy forgiveness. She wasn't Newt with his capacity to be gently disappointed. But he had the nameless kid in mind rather than Newt when he had trawled past the forgotten people toward the entrance to the underground, the kid who had looked for leavening of boredom in a town bar and Repose was god knows how far away when Jack saw print, bloody worlds of it and ranged toward a stall that sold meters of news, and reached for the nearest screed, small print, fresh ink and his fingers blackened as he leafed through.