Re: Capital Police Station, quicklog: Jack and Newt P
[Jack didn't, if this were an exercise in sharing experience instead of the flicker through comparative memory banks for comparator to the unusual embrace, have much if any memory of his mother, alone. When he had been young, truly small, he had been clay the way Newt had been shaped by an environment of chaotic anger, anguish and retreat, like a stone turned over on a seabed. Except his hadn't been an environment in which there was any suggestion the tidal-churn of anger was abnormal, no volleying force sent back across the terse, tense atmosphere of a house that was not too large if it had so many awful sentiments to contain.
Jack had after all, grown up with a father who'd had opportunity to carve him into what he fancied was his own image. He had lacked sympathy and he had grown into it the way a child learns another language, more elastic for seeing the good in his mother but with an accent of having been taught to see it as tiresome long before he had words. He had assumed defence as his means of communicating anything softer, smaller, more well-intentioned.
Which was to say Jack had no experience at all with true delicacy, a gentleness of manner that was not led by awkwardness or unfamiliarity. He looked into Newt's face, at the eddies of something scudding just beneath the surface and then Newt broke away into motion and Jack caught up in a few long, hard strides that pulled sharply at the tape underneath his jeans and slowed him back down again.
He didn't know what exactly was in Newt's case. But he was too tired to be circumspect and spoke honestly:]
Three. Two I caught, one I missed. I'm not hungry, if I ate I'd probably be sick and I have no idea what's in your case but if you think it'll help? [The wind ate his words and Jack was not keeping up with Newt's stride.]