Re: [Jester's Court: Cat & Jack]
Cat's sense of self had been built carefully, brick by brick, until a wall had been erected. We build the wall to keep us free, as Hades said, and Cat had done just that. He'd survived. She'd survived. But, what now? What happened when all the survival instincts changed? Cat, now, here, feet scuffing in the dirt and a pack of slim cigarettes in his pocket, didn't want to just survive. Fuck just surviving, and everything was different. Cat might still flit, but he wasn't sure, and that was the thing... Cat wasn't sure. Everything was a work-in-progress, and Cat didn't feel like he was progressing, and Eddie leaving had been like a floor sucked out from under where he was standing.
And, now, now, was here, and here was a funhouse and dust and kicks and loose clothes. No Bruce, and No Eddie, and Cat had fought with Reece. The only certainty right now was Jersey. Jersey and Helena and Damian, and Cat felt simultaneously too young and too old for this shit.
"Being heard is..." The pause, the trailing, it was a train track and there was a deviation of the path approaching. Left, right, left, right, and Cat lifted a narrow shoulder. "Being heard is heady, and heady shit is dangerous. You get to liking it, and then you get to needing it, and then it's gone, and you're left not knowing what to fucking do. Better to never become addicted." It was a jaded reply, but it was an honest one, and then they were inside the library with its lack of door.
"Yep-" That misery bit, because Jack had it right, and Cat was touching long-boned fingers to the wall and trying to find an out. "You always take orders." Cat jumped onto a desk, one that was too dusty and lacking in telling footprints, and he started poking at books up higher. "This entire place is too dusty. Notice that? If everyone in that line tromped through here? There should be finger or foot..." But Jack found a book and pulled it out, and there was the opening, low and needing to be crawled through. "Well done, Watson," Cat said, jumping off the desk and wasting no time dropping and crawling into the crawlspace.
Youth made the tiny space easy to traverse, as did Cat's lithe frame. Piece of cake, and after crawling forever, he exited into a long maze of mirrors. The entire room was black, and there was no light save some unearthly glow behind the mirrors themselves. Black walls, a black ceiling, a black floor, and the sound of screams up ahead and just like before. "A maze. Goody."