It wasn’t up to others to cure another’s troubles or make all in the world right for them. It wasn’t Micah’s job to make Jasper happy or somehow cure his past. Jasper spoke this often but he knew that his brother never really listened to it. It was difficult for anyone that cared to believe that it was okay that they could do nothing. Jasper understood that but still…it wasn’t Micah’s fault. It meant something that he’d managed to make Jasper smile at all after they got away. That he’d learned how to laugh and how to be happy…even if it was only for brief moments.
Still he’d learned all of that from Micah. He’d experienced it because of his brother. That meant something to Jasper and though it wasn’t easy, he hoped Micah could learn to see things from at least that perspective…
But it was a distance between them. It was a worry point that neither could so fully get over. Micah put it as the past and Jasper was glad for that but it wasn’t so easy for him to do it. Really he felt bad that his own inability to get passed it brought Micah back into it as well. One of those double edged swords that no matter how they did it, was going to cut them both.
A light smirk and a faint nod of the head. “Maybe” though he doubted it as he rarely ever spoke up in his classes. He sat in the back with his nose in a book often chapters and chapters ahead of wherever the rest of the class was. When called on he answered without hesitation and then fell right back into whatever it was he had been doing. Most teachers just left him be anyways, maybe they wouldn’t even realize he wasn’t in his classes.
Micah’s question made Jasper turn his gaze back to his brother. “I’m always learning something.” And he was, through books, through talking with teachers. “But it’s not like it was when we first got here.” It wasn’t so…consuming. Before it was just…something he could completely immerse himself in and now classes were of little use and books could only take him so far. “Now it’s just…” he made a slight face, trying to think of the way to put it. “Like a stream rather then being tossed in the whole ocean”
That sort of worked.
“Better out here sometimes.” Jasper remarked around the cigarette at his lips. “Quieter, more like how it used to be.” When it was just them and they crashed or hung out wherever they wanted or could find a place. Walls were only there when they wanted them to be.