"…though I have a feeling if I were to ask said cat, it would provide a very disgruntled reply."
“Funny, fine lad, I was just going to say the same thing about yourself.”
Oh, irony and its amusing ways. Ways of words and meanings, and come to think of it—disgruntled was a funny word, wasn’t it? Yes, it was, in Ripley’s fine opinion. Disgruntled, gruntled and dis, like gnarly and Gnarls and Barkley. Does that make him crazy?
Crazy is as crazy does and two sat at a table drinking drinks of one kind, one just as mad as the other, arguably the same, arguably different. Men of different ways but men of similar ways and though they’re destinations were different, their means of travel were the same—no, not the same, just equally different. While the world drove cars and trucks and bikes with motors, Cain and Stark drove Rubix Cubes and Dull Daggers and things not meant to be driven. Different from each other, but equally different from the world.
And in that way, they were the same.
“Do you want to paint me like one of your French girls, Jack? I’d say I’m flattered, but that would be a lie.”
Laughter interrupted his tongue that had begun a swipe across dry lips, and it instead sat against his teeth in his moment of jubilance. He tilted back to polish of the liquid cold but burning from his second glass, and he waved for a third and likely final before replying.
"Ah, pop culture has a way of making amusing things more so, wouldn’t you say? Though your reference will last infinitely more time than mine will. Grumpy cat will likely not go down in history the way the Titanic did."
He sobered, though the fuzz around the edges of his brain long lost of marbles suggested the opposite. “But being lied to is inevitable, isn’t it, Damien? And one might find that the more they lie, the more they are lied to, so you, a man of many lies I expect, do you fear the web of ones you face yourself? Difficult to tell truth from lies after a while, isn’t it? Not unlike your plans for this boy, Locke. Your suggested gimmickry of what goes on in his head is like weaving him a lie in favor of… what? What do you hope to achieve with this specific kind of probing? Understanding? Or is it a matter of making him endure sufferance in order to further your own knowledge—a hunt for answers to the impossible that may eventually lead full circle to a power to heal dear Angus and those like him.
"Suffering. In a matter of balance it can be weighted against the end outcomes and be worthwhile, can’t it? How much are we willing to allow, in order to benefit medicine and science and lives down the road? How much is too much, how much not enough? These are questions I ask myself every day, Sir Stark, because I make choices not unlike yours in my own manners of medicine. I’m working on a few projects that require such balance. I wonder if you might be interested in joining forces with me."
A sip of this drink, colder than the last as the ice was fresh and the condensation new and untouched. Frozen water clinked against his teeth. “Would I be too bold to ask that you bring me back a report of your progress with Angus? I’m interested to know how your choices work out for you.”
