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Chapter 26: Taking Leave
"You don't need to keep hanging back, holding yourself to fit a certain mould, you know,"
It was Doctor Johnstone. She had kept her seat next to him, as all the others had begun migrating back to the common room. She sat idly next to him, her eyes tracing Alice's movements, as she fluttered from person to person, eager and welcome in every conversation, bouncing off the walls and having fun, laughing, giggling and sending beaming smiles over in their direction, Doctor Johnstone waving back to her, giving her own smiles, over the rim of her mug.
"It's not that. It's just hard to relate to this experience. All my meals before here were silent," Jasper explained, knowing he had to be careful.
"Are you happy here?" she asked back, taking another swig of her mug, leaning back on the table, relaxed, with slow blinks.
"Yeah…"
It was all Jasper could say. He was happy here. But to make sure that these people would live, he needed to leave and spare
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The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 27: Leaving
The morning afterwards, Jasper did not get to see Emmet. Doctor Johnstone met him at breakfast, brought him to her office for his physiotherapy, and then back to his room. She did not speak to him as she ferried him back from her office.Her body was relaxed, and was unhurried, as she walked behind him back a few doors down into his room. Before she left him alone, she turned around and asked him," Would you like any books to read?"Jasper froze."Do you have any on… um, uh, colour theory," Jasper managed to get out.That was a perfectly innocent topic.She left the room as soon as that sentence left his mouth, clicking the door closed behind her.Jasper waited in silence, heart pounding. What was going on? Why was she telling him not to leave the room? Was the door going to be locked? What was happening with Emmet? What had happened while he was asleep?Nothing bad happened at breakfast. Emmet was absent, as he always was in e
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 28: A Kick to the Face
The hallway was empty.It was painfully empty.He wanted Emmet to appear out from around the corner, from one of the rooms, from the window, over fifty metres from the sea level.The corridor floor was grey. The walls were white, and there were lights on the ceiling. The windows let in streams of gold, and the awesome blue of an azure ocean.It was too quiet.Nobody met him on his hobbling, horrible trip. There was no life. Only the corridor, sun, sea, sky, and himself.He was mostly dead.The storage cupboard wasn't even that far away from the medical wing, just opposite the labs where Emmet spent his afternoons. The door was unlocked, like it had been months, but was still extremely heavy, like every steel block, two metres tall, was, no matter if it was somewhat hollow on the inside and insulated.Jasper grinded his molars, pushing the door inwards, sweating through his medical gown, and his eyes snapping shut in his animali
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 29: How to Break a Heart
The whole room flooded with burning, bright light.Jasper sealed his eyes shut away from it, and fell against the shelves, before pushing the crutches back to balance himself, skidding anyway. He whipped his head over to Emmet and saw him, stood above the man in the suit with a giant block covered over with a plastic sheet.What had Jasper done? What had he driven Emmet to do? How had he let this happen?This was his fault.He gulped and pulled himself back up to standing and watched Emmet pant and reach up to pull the time machine down. He ripped off the over and cradled it to his chest.Jasper made his way over and reached out towards the device stroking. His vision blurred and choked down a sob. The surface on the top was scratched all over, while the face remained unchanged, and the exact same, despite its delicacy.It was in Emmet's hands. Emmet, who had just battered a man for him.This was his fault.He had done this. He
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 30: Forgetting Ironing Boards
When Jasper opened his eyes, he saw he was falling. He saw the brown muddy land rise up, as the wind pulled his hair and clothes upwards. A scream was stuck in his throat, choking him. He couldn't breath.The sky was a dull, grey above him, blanketing the entire land, and the wind was cold, slapping him, and raking its sharp, whipping nails down his bones, shocking them, from the inside out. He was damp, from sweat and drizzle, letting the cold hands of the wind grab onto him further, wrapping its arms around the exposed, gaunt skin of his torso and arms.Jasper could barely hold onto the time machine, pressing its harsh edges into his soft, fleshy body, feeling more heat being sapped away from him.It was so, so cold.His fingers went numb, and he lost control of all his limbs.Jasper watched the brown walls of a gorge fly up past him, on both his left and right sides, trapping him, encasing him within this cold prison.He hit the ground.
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 31: Nothing
"So, how are you feeling? We found you lying down outside unconscious,"There was suddenly a lady in front of Jasper. She had the same pale skin and almost black hair of the little girl. Oh, the lady was the little girl's mother.Jasper blinked. "Did you see another man with me, wearing a lab coat with a shirt and tie underneath?"His voice sounded raspy, and he wasn't expecting to sound so broken, and pleading when speaking. Jasper blinked again, his vision suddenly becoming more blurry. He moved his head to the side, and back, watching the outlines, and colours of the woman stretch out, and wobble."No. You were on your own. Now, I need you to answer my question: How are you feeling?"The woman sounded concerned, and kept one arm on the little girl, who was fiddling with the edge of the pink blanket. Wait, this would be her blanket. Jasper was in her room right now, lying down on her bed.He blinked again, and felt two scorching, wet, itch
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"Things will get better. Ending your life isn't the answer. There are people who care for you, and things will get better. You can stay with us and heal. We're willing to help you."The lady held onto his cold, cold hands, wrapping them in warmth, warmth that travelled up his arms, embalming them in comfort and soothing his muscles, striking him in the chest, softly, brushing his fleshy, bloody heart with a feather.Jasper's eyes scrunched up, his brows furrowing. He wasn't trying to commit suicide. He was just trying to save Emm-, no, the people who he didn't deserve.He closed his eyes, and remembered the giant, enclosing, brown walls that rose above him, as he fell to the ground, from the grey, grey sky. Just because it may have looked like he had jumped from a height to end his life, didn't mean that he was actually jumping from a height to end his life.He wasn't suicidal.He wasn't.His face felt as if ice
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"Lebensmüde. It means tired of life. I'm going to get you some food."Jasper wanted Emmet. He wanted Emmet. But he had left Emmet behind. He had betrayed Emmet. He didn't deserve Emmet.What did Red_Two want? What did Red_Two really want?Jasper thought back to when he was Red_Two and thought back to the dead man in front of the library.He remembered back the pool of blood, reaching out to him, rolling along the grey floors towards his legs, whipping itself up to try its hardest to wrap itself around his hands. It was a crying, sobbing, pathetic mess. It was pitiful and lonely, trying to find company wherever it could.It was lonely and small, begging for any small scrap of love and acceptance and affection. That blood was a small wish. It wanted to not be alone in it's final moments. It wanted to have the comfort that it was human, in a world that treated it less than human. It needed to know that it had lived,
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It was the little girl.Jasper miserably knew that he could easily extract when and where he was from her, but he felt sick to his stomach. Her eyes maybe dark, but she looked too much like him, from her dark hair and sharp slant of her nose.It hurt his eyes and chest to look at her. If he gave her twenty years, she would look like his twin, save for the eyes. All he could do was squeeze his eyes shut, and hope that she would just leave."I've got your cornflakes," she announced from the side of the bed, defiant.The silence was deafening as he pretended to stay asleep, praying that she would go away. There were no footsteps and only the sound of breathing.Jasper fought against every instinct to stop his eyes from twitching, relishing in the latent pain of his wounds, grounding him, keeping him from floating off into the recesses of his mind and to forge
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