Re: [misha & jude: the capital]
[There was a gulf of difference between Oliver and Jude and the pretty-wrapped box that was The Past, capital letters and wrapped 'round with chains. Oliver had been given the tools to wring sympathy from passers-by when tiny all the way up to proper con-jobs when grown. The past was to be ransacked and rifled through, deployed at whim to create small fortress for Oliver to sit in the middle of. This much, Jude knew had begun. Oliver, lacking in protector or sympathy had squeezed the past dry of it as paint for his own canvas. And perhaps he was right to make use of it as he would. The Past had done wrong things to small boys, had formed them clearly as clay. But Jude preferred the past in its box and sympathy did not swoop in like guardian angel with flaming sword to hold the past at bay. Sympathy meant peeling off carapace, fortress built brick by brick from within. And the past-present, which was only a little bit ago was twisted, remade, shaped in Oliver's hands until Jude scarce recognized it as truth, but it had become art.
It was terribly clever. It was a deal more arch than any of Repose had to expect of them. But it didn't help matters at all. Misha clearly did not understand how it was you could lose something and leave it go, but p'raps he wasn't equipped yet. Jude idled moment in thinking about how it would be to lack comprehension and had brief flare of envy for ignorance of that kind.]
The space isn't big enough for one like this. I don't know how to play the fiddle. I don't know how to play anything but piano.
[He knew it was coming before Misha said it, and Jude listened quietly over the lilt of somebody else's jazz. Oliver as a child was convenient conceit for Oliver his ownself. It was deliberate and it was cruel both, but Jude said none of that.] It's not like old folks, sunshine. I don't think he should be like me, but I was startled that he didn't want to learn. I can't teach, sunshine. If I get in too close, he has too much of me, and my secrets and what's mine to not reel it back to how it was, and I don't trust him not to do it. And I hold him back, all the while.
[He considered it, the secrets that still stretched across the chasm between brothers, all the ones that hadn't been put in Misha's hands like cards by Oliver.] The thing of it is, sunshine, you've not seen him learn how to play people like a pack of cards. I have, I know his capacity. I know he'll play me and I know even if I know he's doing it, I'll let him. I know you see the best in him, and he needs somebody to. But he's misplaced my trust entirely, when the entire foundation of who we are together was built on only playing those games on other people. That's what he's eroded and he knew he was doing it. It isn't that he's childish and I've gotten tired of it. It's that we knew one another, and he played me for months because it was easier than to be honest and convinced me when I thought we were brothers enough to know better.
And instead of trying to find my trust again or acknowledging it, or holding a conversation he's spent months trying to run me by other people, because it's easier for him that way. I love him dearly, I think he's got capacity to learn how to be a human being, but he has to stop trying to avoid it before I can climb back in. I don't play-act, with Oliver. I won't try and rebuild things or talk through other people, it's not who I am. It's too public, somehow, for what feels personal. [It was slow and it was thoughtful and it was a touch tired.
But Misha stepped up to piano bench and Jude sat down in the nearest empty seat near to a table and listened. It was cool trickle of sound, the kind of piece that sat betwixt popular and classical, soothing as a glass of water and Jude sat and let it wash instead of thinking overmuch.]