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Jack was many things. Egotistical, clever, vindictive… Foolish was not one of them.

[quote] [color=silver]“Nothing troubles me, Jack. I apologize for earlier. To be blunt, teleportation never sat well with me. I think that I’m simply just a bit old fashioned in that regard,”[/color][/quote]

[color=6644ff]”Your apology is accepted, but I don’t believe you,”[/color] he said, blunt as a hammer.

Jack watched her unravel Jasper’s painting. It had an abstract charm to it, putting him in the mind of better, albeit more dangerous days. Those two had always had a hard time getting along, and apparently he made something for her? Strange. 

[quote] [color=silver]“Jasper made this piece for me. Can you believe it? Anyway, I love art. When I was a little girl I wanted to become an artist of some kind. It didn’t matter what, as long as it was creative. Only I was no good at it. My father said I just wasn’t born with the knack for art. My mother was more honest about it. She told me I just didn’t have any talent and that I should stop wasting everybody’s time. In retrospect, it was a pretty harsh thing to say to a seven-year-old.”[/color]
[/quote]

Jack took a seat on the boxes beside her. [color=6644ff]”My memory is frayed. But if I recall, your parents live in a fantasy world of delusions and bitter feelings. I wouldn’t trust their opinion to hold water in a thunderstorm,”[/color] he joked.

[quote]

[color=silver]“I wonder if Jasper’s mother told him the same. I don’t have the talent, it’s true, but I still have an eye for good art. He should’ve listened to his mother instead of wasting paint on this derivative piece of shit.”[/color][/quote]

He could understand why, from her point of view, the painting seemed like an insult. But to him, Jack saw it as statement. Sloane was an outsider, on the periphery of a circle that should’ve been home. She was an outcast, and exile among her own people. Art had a way of saying what words could not, did there exist a world in which this piece of art reflected something deeper than spite?

Apparently not, as she erased it all into a puddle that splashed across the ground. She was freezing, and there was a fire outside her reach.

[quote] [color=silver]“I hope you really didn’t come here because you were worried that I might be upset at you, Jack. You shouldn’t obsess so much about what other people think about you. It is so terribly unhealthy. As long as you’re doing the right thing it doesn’t matter what they think, say, or create. Got it?" [/color]

[color=silver]“An-y-way, since you’re here, could you transfer that piece to my apartment for me? I don’t want to have to carry it around for the rest of the night. Oh, actually, you know what? Perhaps you should take it instead. Consider it a gift. Hang it up across from your bed. That way you can wake up every morning, see [i]Nothing[/i], and think of me. Then you'll be able to remember exactly what else, besides precisely what I may have already asked for, that I need from you.”[/color]
[/quote]

She tried to dismiss him. Maybe in another time or place, he would have been gone in the blink of an eye. But while Sloane thought she projected an uncaring attitude, Jack saw something different. He saw the same woman who he stood up for at the Dairy Queen, on the night of Alizee’s death. He saw the same woman who had held up St. Portwell so others could not, only to be struck across the face by someone she trusted.

So he did what he should’ve done ten years ago. He stayed.

[color=6644ff]”Needs and wants are very different things, Sloane,”[/color] he countered, looking her right in the eyes. [color=6644ff]”You need us to work together, because our lives depend on it. You may not [i]need[/i] to be thanked for what you have tried to save us all, but you deserve it. And… You have every right to [i]want[/i] more than a derisive painting as thanks.”[/color]

[color=6644ff]”I followed you because [i]something[/i] is on your mind. Everyone else is enjoying themselves without a care in the world. But you feel that you don’t have a place in all of that, don’t you?”[/color] He fully expected Sloane to get defensive, so he continued. [color=6644ff]”And before you tell me that what you want or feel does not matter compared everything else we face- I want you to understand that it matters to [i]me.”[/i][/color]

Because he felt very much the same way, returning after being a stranger for so long.

[color=6644ff]”You deserve to be more than a small blue drop, untouched by all the roots you [i]helped[/i] to grow. Talk to me, I worry for you.”[/color] He wanted to say that Anya worried as well, but that would’ve defeated the purpose of what he was trying to get across: [i]I am your friend.[/i]