"Have you taught before?" Higgs asked. Personally, he didn't really get the appeal of teaching. Not kids, anyway. He'd done training for soldiers and that had been alright, but that was very different from teaching them maths. Not that Higgs could've even if he had wanted to, his awareness of how maths worked was incredibly limited. Higgs could teach someone how to shoot a gun, or prepare them for the right mindset for a battle, but maths? That was very alien to Higgs. "It seems like a great deal of work," he commented not adding 'for very little satisfaction', since presumably those who did teach children found a great deal of satisfaction in such a job.
Caitlin's question made Higgs pause. A few months back, he would have told her that he had fancied a change of scenery, or that being away from home had finally become too much, or something. Something that wouldn't have been true. But she was a stranger, mostly, so Higgs wasn't sure whether he was meant to tell her the truth. Or if there even was a 'meant to'. But maybe, her being a stranger, somehow would make it easier. "I almost died," he settled on finally. "It made it impossible to carry on the way I had," Higgs noted. It was, by majority, accurate. And saying it out loud hadn't made all of Higgs' insides ache, so that was definitely progress, right?