Re: [Second City: Cat & Jack]
"No. If this was available here? Then someone would be very rich, and they wouldn't be selling it here at all," Cat assured him. Oh, the military had nothing like this. She would know if they did. They could arrest aging, stop it in its tracks, but they couldn't turn back the clock. Perhaps clocks weren't meant to be turned back. Cat wasn't sure, but she didn't really care at present, because here she was, and that was all that mattered. Now, did she expect Jack to grill her about it? Of course she did. Was she going to answer? No, not really, because she was terribly tired of people wanting to crawl inside her head. It was entirely possible she wasn't alone up there. It was entirely possible she was a clone, an AI, something altogether different, and that she just didn't know. But, she found, she didn't care. She felt like herself and, at present, that was sufficient reality for the kitten.
She watched him put the wallet away. She'd already looked at the photographs, and she tsked as he checked on them. "You know, only old men carry photographs in their wallets," said the knowledgeable little thief. "Old men carry paper memories. Young men carry memories on their phones." She'd stolen a fair number of phones, too. Hey, she'd been bored, and you couldn't blame a girl for finding fun wherever she could.
"Oh, no you can't think of better fantasies, you daft man. If you live forever, you have the time to possibly make every fantasy real. That's the reasoning. And everyone's scared of dying. You might not recognize it when you're young, but you certainly recognize the feeling at your age. Anyway, you're the last person who should want to die. After all, who knows where your little deal is going to leave you? Fine print and all that." She smiled a sweet smile at him, a deliberately false innocence beneath that headscarf, which she pushed back to her shoulders a moment later. "Anyway, this isn't living forever. At least I hope not. Aging would be a nice change of pace," shaid the girl who was now young enough not to fear laugh lines and crow's feet.
And, of course she could afford her own meal, but that wasn't the point at all, and she watched him until he returned. The hot bowl left her hands reddened, but she didn't flinch away from it. After all, she was still Cat. "When have I ever needed mellow?" She scooped the food to her mouth, enjoying the explosions of flavor on her tongue in a way that translated to ecstasy almost indecently bright on her young face. She licked her harlot lips, and she watched him give his own food away. "You should go write a piece about my charities. Oh, without naming me, of course, but maybe it would help." It was a thoughtless comment, she would never have made as easily with those years bowing her shoulders.
"It's beautiful here, isn't it?" She meant it, which was obvious in the mossy green eyes that slid along the crowd and stopped long enough to learn each face. "This reminds me of home. Where I grew up, it was like this, but aboveground. Well, some parts." It was a warm memory, a fuzzy glow, it was remembering through a pane of glass that wasn't nearly as sooty as the original had been, but that was alright. Cat still loved home, and she always would, regardless of money or bars or gaming halls. "People aren't born monsters, you know. They're born like this, people, and the world twists them, and then we forget they were ever human to begin with." She looked back at him, and the smile she gave him blossomed into trouble. "Are you going to drink it?" The potion.