Re: [The Cat: Nishka & Cat & Jack]
She had slid on from grief to memory, laughter following the maudlin. Jack watched her fiddle with the glass, and the gutter of silence was filled pitter-pat through memories Nishka threw on the bar like a hand of coins. He didn't ask why she hadn't gone to Portland, with the brother who was the flipped face of a dollar, why she'd come to Repose instead. Answers, she'd already said and Jack didn't think Nishka required an invitation to talk.
It was a lengthy answer. And it wasn't black and white, Jack knew that. The courts could rule and people could state their innocence or their culpability but it was not always as clear as 'I did that' or 'I did not'. There were reasons and rationales, criminality wasn't cut and dried. Months and months in Second City and he knew false accusations and accusations could run alongside one another, with a good current of 'yes I did, and so what?'
"Balance in the world. One in, and one out, I suppose. You will neither of you shift the cosmic scale because you're one another's opposite. I wonder if everyone has an opposite." Jack lifted his head, looked toward Cat and directed the question at her, partly because Nishka, he very much doubted needed the question to speak.
"What do you think? Do you have an opposite out there, Cat? Undoing all the good you do in the world? Nishka here has her brother to catch criminals while she lets them out, I suppose I have Newt to do all the good I undo. What about you?"