Honesty is the Best Policy {Comic Edition}

Chapter 22: Kinda Cringe

May 20th, 2022
This chapter needs illustrations, but in order to keep this story's updates as frequent as possible, I'll go ahead and publish it. I'll just add the illustrations at a later date. You see, my computer died last Saturday and it won't come in until May 24th (2022), so no PaintToolSAI for me. ;( It's okay, though. I'll survive. If this chapter gets even one view, I'll be happy. If not, well, I've lowered my standards so many times I've lost count.
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It had been a long day of following Scourge around, keeping him out of trouble by guarding him from his dreaded stalker, Rosy the Rascal. Finally, it looked like Shadow might get a little bit of time off. According to Honest, Scourge was part of her "troop" and Shadow, as his fellow soldier, was sworn to protect him… for some reason. So, that's what he had been doing.
Club Rouge was open this time of night, but why would Shadow hang there on his day off? Instead, he was sitting in his favorite café (other than Café Rouge) and sipping hot coffee while staring out the window at the street, the sidewalks bathed with the glow of light from the street lamps. At least, he was going to sip his coffee until someone entering the otherwise empty restaurant interrupted him.
The green intruder gingerly closed the door behind him and ran to the curtains, drawing them closed and robbing Shadow of his pleasant view. He then turned around and smiled, pulling out a seat without asking and plopping down beside him. He then laid his arms on the table and breathed a sigh of relief.
Shadow narrowed his eyes in annoyance and looked at him sideways. "Do you always wear that motorcycle jacket? It's almost the boiling point out there."
"Boiling point of water? That's impossible," Scourge told him. Actually, if it were actually that hot out, he couldn't be too surprised. It could always be some weird plot point Honest had come up with.
"No, not water. Dichloromethane," Shadow told him with a straight face.
"Oh," Scourge said, blinking. "Whatever that is. Uh…" He looked down at his jacket and tugged on it for emphasis. "Yes. Yes, I do always wear it. And my shades." He pointed to the red sunglasses he, indeed, always wore. "They have sentimental value, I suppose. Plus, they keep me from looking like my lame twin." Scourge turned his nose up after mentioning that pleb.
"Why'd you close the curtains?" Shadow asked, finally taking the first sip of his coffee. Strong enough to destroy brain cells in addition to taste buds. He closed his eyes.
"To hide from Rosy. I saw her patrolling the streets with her hammer over her shoul-"  Scourge suddenly stopped when he heard a quiet and somewhat gravelly purr resounding from Shadow's side of the table. "Hey… are you purring?"
"UH, yeah??? This coffee's awesome!" Shadow exclaimed rather loudly. He then looked deeply into his coffee cup as if intent on finding an emergency exit in there.
Scourge smiled pleasantly, his eyes upwards facing carats. "Aw, that's cute. The Ultimate Lifeform? More like the Ultimate Cutie." He laughed. Shadow's face grew red and he bent further over his coffee to hide his face, accidentally dipping his nose in it. Scourge looked worried for a second. "Are you trying to drown in your coffee?"
Scourge lived in two worlds, didn't he? Manic and Fiona never hung out with them unless Scourge happened to bring them along. When he disappeared, he was off in that other world. Rosy was the problem to be solved in that other world. Shadow admitted that he probably wouldn't even be thinking about Scourge if it wasn't for Honest, though. That made Scourge and Honest's friendship the bridge between the two worlds then, right? What was Shadow's point in bringing this up? I dunno.
"I'm not, uh…" Shadow wondered if Scourge knew how much saying those things affected him. "Do you want a coffee yourself? I can pay for it if you'd like."
"Okay," Scourge agreed eagerly. He reached up with one hand and waved it around sporadically to get the staff's attention. Minutes later, the not-so-noble king had his very own mug of hot coffee. He peered into it as if he had uncovered the holy grail of coffees and then proceeded to pour all of his cups of creamer into it. Shadow glared at him from across the table as the moss-colored monarch then proceeded to guzzle the whole thing in a matter of seconds. "This is some pretty tasty coffee," he remarked.
"I can see that."
As silence began to settle in between the two, Scourge folded his hands and watched Shadow sip his coffee slowly and stare out the window to their right that wasn't covered. He thought back to earlier today when Shadow saved him from Rosy on the walk to lunch. He had said something about how Fiona was in love with a version of him that he admitted he still somewhat embodied, but didn't want highlighted. That's how he had read it, at least. It seemed to Scourge as if Fiona treated the both of them entirely the same. That didn't mean that Fiona was a bad person however; everybody did that to them. Or, at least everyone did that to Scourge. Minus a certain someone, of course. Honest suddenly recognizing the bias she felt and breaking away from that assumption of Scourge’s character… the only thing Scourge could find to compare it to was an AI breaking away from its programming. You know, like in sci-fi. It was usually described as a miracle. Perhaps that was what this was.
It was weird how looking at Shadow made Scourge think of Honest. Maybe it was the fact that they were usually found with each other, or that they had imprinted on each other having been around each other so much. Scourge wasn't jealous of Shadow because he knew that Honest was like Rouge in that… well why would he be jealous? Scourge's cheeks burned and he face-planted on the table.
Shadow reacted in fear, pulling away and sloshing his coffee, drips trickling down the sides of the mug and dampening Shadow's glove. "Why are you acting like Honest all of a sudden?"
Scourge promptly lifted his head back up. "What do you mean?"
Shadow sighed and set his cup back down. "Well, you know. Honest likes to go on tangents in her head and then suddenly do something like slam her head down on a table out of the blue and scare me," Shadow told him, narrowing his eyes at Scourge as if implying that he had done it on purpose to annoy him. Was that what he was doing?
"I didn't do it on purpose."
Shadow just continued to glare at him. Scourge glanced around nervously.
"You don't like that I resemble Honest?"
"Of course not," Shadow spat, gripping the handle of his glass coffee mug tightly. "What bothers me is what you might've been thinking about. It usually takes something pretty intense for Honest to do that."
Scourge sweatdropped. "Well, I was thinking about a bunch of stuff! Nothing that meant anything, just, lots of stuff."
"Good," Shadow responded, sipping his coffee and becoming peaceful once more. "Sorry, I just… I'm used to Honest thinking about shameful things. Pitiful things. You wouldn't understand."
"Yeah, I guess I wouldn't." Shadow shrugged and delved back into his coffee again. "But I would like to." Scourge held an arm out to shield himself as he anticipated Shadow spitting his beverage out like a comic or cartoon character.
"Why?"
Questions like that had become quite annoying as of late.
Even Honest had asked him "why" questions in the past. Why was that such a frequent occurrence? Was he really breaking away from his programming every time he showed any sign of complex thought? It was dehumanizing.
"Because I believe understanding Honest is the first step to understanding myself."
…
"That's cringe."
"Yeah, you're right, that does sound kinda cringe."