better for your head | alaric

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pixel by tricky

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[div style="width: 300px; max-height: 100px; height: overflow; overflow: scroll; padding-bottom: 5px; margin-top: -5px; font-family: georgia; font-size: 8pt; color: #152232; letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: justify;"]He kept fancying that Ivan was absorbed in something — something inward and important — that he was striving toward some goal, perhaps very hard to attain.

— Бра́тья Карама́зовы

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There is only so much that medicine can do. It can't bring the dead back to life, and it can't heal Simon's seizures or Alice's leg. It was one of the reasons Ivan disliked medicine. He can't imagine being holed up with sick and dying cats, stuffing them with herbs and lying to their faces that they will be okay.

Then he sees his father in the profession, and it seems to him that Selby treats it as a way to care for others when they can't take care of him. Ivan has no such empathy. He loves the idea of people, but actual interaction proves to be harder than it looks and so he falls in with the more reason-based kind. Alaric is one of those people too, though it's strange that they are so alike yet so different.

He grips a few leaves of thyme to take with him later and turns to Alaric. "Were you a medic in the group you lived in before? You've probably already concluded that despite being the son of medics, I have no interest in it. It's not exactly because I'm scared, but I just don't think I can look a dying cat in the eyes while my medicine fails. It just can't fix everything." Maybe it's weak, it's cowardly, a sign of utter distaste for life, but Ivan didn't care. He would just sit along in this dark absurd world searching for something to grasp.