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Clint nods. “Yeah, I gotta talk to Wes here in a bit. I haven’t told him yet that I got one of them old engines running while he was gone.” He grins proudly. “Maybe I’ll actually learn a thing or two after all.”


Jason makes it to his bunk, and gestures for Katie to come in too, obviously with something he wants to talk about. He sits down on his bed and scoots back to lean against the wall, sighing as he’s able to stretch out his leg. “Thanks for all your help, Katie. I really appreciate it. You’ve been a real trooper, even when I’ve been a jerk.” He grabs a pillow to fold in front of him, thinking hard. “Ya know… yesterday I said something and you asked me about it, and I avoided it because I wasn’t quite sure of an answer. But…I got to thinking about it…”
He thinks for another moment, used to opening up with Katie now, though still slightly hesitant. “When…when I got taken, and they kept me in the basement… the one guy would come down and beat on me, trying to get me to talk. At first I was angry and I was fighting all sorts of memories of Alex. First off, I couldn’t believe I’d been taken from the mall again, so that was interesting to think about, then I was helpless once again…at the mercy of an adversary.” He pauses and swallows hard. “And then I came to realization that no matter what they did to me…no matter what they said…there was one thing they couldn’t touch – and that was my own mind. So I made it almost into a game. I’d egg them on and jeer right back at them, all the while just trying to ignore the pain. They got so mad that I really thought they were going to kill me a couple times. …After a while I began to see that I had gained control over my own mind…I wasn’t ignoring my circumstances or blocking anything out…I’d simply conquered the fears that would have caused panic.”
He shrugs lamely. “So…I guess at one point, I added two and two together… if I could do that, then why couldn’t I overcome the memories of my past in the same way? So I started thinking about Alex, and I walked myself through a bunch of stuff all over again…and it worked. I really started to see that Alex no longer had to have control over me…I had control over my own mind, and I could choose to react however I wanted, without shutting down. Yeah, there’s still pain there in some areas…but overall…I finally discovered that the control I was looking for all this time wasn’t something to control my memories, but rather it was something to control myself as I faced those memories. And… I feel like I’ve finally got a real handle on things…even better than when I first came here.”
He looks her in the eye, just staring at her for several seconds. “You’ve had a lot to do with that…and I don’t know if I would have made it this far if it hadn’t been for you…Hotshot Jason is back, and it feels good.”