Re: [Jester's Court: Cat & Jack] Outside, and Cat bent down, hands to knees and breath coming hard. His fingers weren't torn up, though surely they should be. The night sky was too warm, and Cat wanted to forget. Alright, yes, hyperventilating and forgetting, in that order. Jack was saying something about holding his breath, and Cat didn't want to. He wanted to be difficult, to refrain, to deliberately not do as he was told. Which, alright, childish.
So, fine, Cat held his breath, and the world stopped spinning in an assemblage of stars close to the ground and where they absolutely shouldn't be.
Cat straightened then. He didn't swing, bolt or pant. He stretched his arms over his head, as if he wasn't already tall enough at six-foot-something. He lowered his arms, and he pressed his fingers against closed eyelids, which just brought the dancing stars back into abyss, and then he blinked a few times. Fine, everything was fine, and the panic was fading into oblivion, replaced by that perfectly cultivated facade of youthful I don't give a fuck. "Alright, so, places to be." And, Cat? Cat was already forgetting. The terror from moments earlier was willfully being submerged and subsumed by the need to survive. For Cat? Forgetting was survival, and, right, he pulled the pack of thin smokes from his pocket and tossed them at Jack. No triggers. No memories. He wasn't keeping the smokes.
"Later," he said, as if they'd just randomly encountered each other on the side of the street. Just that, and, yep, off Cat went. He turned his back to Jack, and he walked away. He didn't look back. Fuck, no, not looking back. He had a plane to catch. He had a plane to catch.