Feelings, no. But there's only so much energy and attention you can bring to bear on anything at a time. I should be focused on Hakkai, on taking care of him. But...the worst part, for me, is that I loved him.
[He doesn't mean Hakkai. He means Nat. Suddenly Jedao laughs, quick and bright and harsh, like being splashed with vinegar.]
[ It's a damn good thing that he can't express things with that mask of his, and that Jedao is nowhere near him because for just a moment, John is so. fucking. angry.
Thankfully, this is a communicator talk. So he can take a moment before he answers and calm the hell down. ]
You can't love someone and expect anything from it or it's something else, so it's not stupid that you did. The only stupid one here is Mandrake, because he either didn't know or he didn't care.
[ Softer. ]
And loving someone means getting fucked up when they're hurt. You really think Hakkai would feel good if you weren't upset he was hurt?
I knew he was a self-absorbed, backstabbing, bootlicking, callous little shithead, though. I knew he was vicious, vindictive, uncaring, and particularly hateful and contemptuous of nonhumans.
[Jedao rattles this string of epithets off with seemingly perfect equanimity.]
I told myself he couldn't admit it, but deep down, he cared about me too. That was stupid. I knew better, but let myself believe it anyway.
[Jedao takes a slow, rueful breath.]
Hakkai knows I'm upset. But it shouldn't be about me, is all. He's the one who was attacked.
I was a lot of those things too. [ Spoken matter-of-factly. Then, after a pause- ] Not the 'contemptuous of non-humans' part, I was more 'ambivalent to limited beings' than anything. But it was only Arthur giving me a chance that helped me figure out I was an asshole.
And him being a fucking idiot doesn't mean you were wrong. It just means how stupid he is is bigger than how much he cares.
[ A pause. ]
...But I mean...
Are you making it about you? Or are you just... feeling things?
You can't feel what he's feeling. That's his. And you probably shouldn't feel them for him anyway, even if you can.
It would help if someone beat me until all the skin on my back was gone.
[Bluntly.]
But we don't really know each other that well, and Hakkai would smell it and be worried.
I don't. Know what else would help.
[He has not been on the receiving end of terribly much comfort in his short life. In the citadel of eyes, he couldn't even let himself scream. Not that he really thinks it would help. He'd just feel bad about scaring people who were only around him because they were assigned to be there.]
[Jedao has not ever done that. For various reasons.]
So he's an asshole. It's not his fault I was stupid about him. Certainly he never did anything to encourage me. And you can't betray someone you never cared about or promised anything to. He didn't owe it to me to conform to my delusions.
[His tone is leveling out, turning utterly reasonable. The more he can make it his own fault, the easier it is to be crisp and calm. Hating Nathaniel feels bitter and helpless and weak. Hating himself feels like a comfortable old coat, pulled out after an easy summer. It's been a little while, but it fits just like it used to. Idiot sized.]
[ There's the aborted sound of a louder word before he pauses and considers it; he's had a bad reaction from some people when he gets really loud, so he's going to at least preface this this time. ]
So I'm going to be loud and growl and curse a lot. Just to be clear, I'm not angry at you, okay? And I'm not going to worry about being accurate but who the fuck cares? This isn't about being accurate.
[ He doesn't have a throat but he does make a noise to indicate he's sort of switching gears. ]
Fuck that! It's his fault for being a shithead and it's his fault for taking your kindness for fucking granted, like you don't have so many hours in a day and you don't have better things you could have been doing than treating him nicely. He didn't promise anything? Fuck him. He didn't want anything like that, he shouldn't have spent so much fucking time with you. He shouldn't have kept engaging with you. He shouldn't have kept taking and taking and taking from you. It isn't a delusion. It's basic fucking logic: you treat people who are nice to you nice back. You appreciate them! You realize that they have value and if you ignore that value, you're a fucking asshole! Just because his head is all fucked up to where he thinks different doesn't make you delusional or stupid or any of that! It means he doesn't make any fucking sense!
He's a vicious little shit and I don't care if that's what he's used to. Maybe if he spent less time making up bullshit about how nice people need to get poisoned because he's annoyed that he didn't figure out all their secrets and more time pulling his head out of his ass, he'd figure out just how big of a fuck up he just made! Fucking prick!
He didn't fuck up, though. He got exactly what he wanted.
[He's not yelling. He's quiet and matter-of-fact. And underneath that, absolutely scathing. Nathaniel's desires flow from his values - his Empire's values, so whole-heartedly embraced - Nathaniel himself is correspondingly deplorable.]
[ John doesn't yell either, but he's deadly serious as he says- ]
Just because he got what he wanted doesn't mean he didn't fuck up. It just means that what he wanted is stupid.
And I know that because I've done the same fucking thing before. I've been that stupid.
[ A low huff of disdain. Again, not for Jedao. ]
When he realizes that he's a fucking idiot, when he realizes that he's not as smart as he thinks he is, when he gets it, exactly what he's lost out on, he'll have two options: ask for your forgiveness or accept that he doesn't fucking deserve it. That's if he even gets the option because his head's pretty far up his ass.
No one wants to admit that people can just be smart and evil and happy about it. It's really uncomfortable. Easier to call it stupid, because it turns out we would rather have love than all the things being ruthless can get you.
But they can. They can be gloriously, utterly pleased with themselves and their successes.
[Nathaniel is no Kujen. He doesn't have the sheer genius, or the cool magisterial perspective, or the sly wicked indulgent sadism. But Jedao has been nestled in the glittering cold wonderland of the soul of the most selfish person he's ever known, and he remembers.]
I don't think he'll ever ask Hakkai's forgiveness. Even if Arthur manages to turn him into a different person, I suspect he'll still be too proud. And I doubt he'll think of me at all. He doesn't even know I'm inhuman, too. He thinks I'm just unfortunate collateral, who sided with a demon over him, whom he's therefore better off without.
[ John's experience is very different. Which is why his perspective is different. ]
Nothing you're saying disqualifies what I'm saying. There are entities that exist beyond the reckoning of human minds that spend endless eons being powerful, answering to none, destroying whatever they want, with an understanding that can't even be understood as a concept, let alone known by lesser beings.
I'm comfortable with that, Jedao. I know that. I've been that. You've met one facet of it.
I'm calling it 'stupid' because after hundreds of millions of years of that, and one year of this? I would rather cease to exist than go back.
[ A soft huff. ]
Are there benefits to pushing it aside? Sure. Do they like them? I hope so. Otherwise they're definitely stupid. But the things you give up for it, that kind of existence, is something beyond loneliness into a realm closer to madness. That's what they're moving towards. Just because they don't know they're mad doesn't mean they aren't.
Especially if he's too proud to even try and make up for his fuckups. You and Hakkai are worth swallowing pride for.
[This is exactly the degree of acknowledgement Jedao thinks the thing in yellow merits.]
I think you're underestimating the appeal of the middle ground. When you're human enough to enjoy petty luxuries, with the power and proximity to have other people around, but only on your own terms.
You and I wouldn't like it. But the world includes all sorts.
But it has been...important. For me. To understand people like Mandrake. And people less...dedicated to the same principles, but caught in the same sort of system. I mean, yes, it's hilarious to call a little one-planet heap an Empire, but scale aside...his world and mine are similar, in many ways.
I've had to understand why those things...exist, how they perpetuate themselves when most people want to be good, want to be kind. And it doesn't feel comforting to me to dismiss the ways that breaks down, or the appeal they have for people like Mandrake. It feels...dangerous. It feels like I'm setting myself to be gutted.
[Again.]
Like I'm blinding myself, trying to pretend my desires live in other people's hearts where they most manifestly don't. I did that, thinking if I just stayed in his life, stayed kind, always couched in strategic terms he could accept, that eventually he would realize, would admit, that our brotherhood was. Worth something to him.
[He shakes his head.]
I'm not setting myself up for that same fall again.
[ He's listening the whole time. Genuinely. Rapt. ]
Right.
[ He is not patronizing him. He doesn't really do that unless Arthur is doing something very very stupid and not listening to him. But normally? No. ]
That's good. That's important. And not doing things that hurt you, or trying not to, is important.
...but you're allowed to have ten minutes or twenty minutes or, fuck, a whole day where you just go "that guy was a dick and he fucked me over and hurt someone I care about and he fucked up and I hate that and his- I don't know, his face is stupid", or whatever.
And twenty minutes or a day later, you can go back to thinking about all that and being fair to him. Think about it. Be accurate and consider all the factors.
[I can't, Jedao thinks, automatically. Even though on the barge they so often have nothing but time. He didn't have time to just be upset about Dhanneth almost dying, or his failure to save the Isteia mothlings, or discovering that he isn't human. He was in the middle of a war.
And then, in the Citadel of Eyes - he had time, but not the space, not the safety. He cried once. But nothing with words. Nothing with anger. Who was even left to be angry at? By then, Kujen was already dead, and Revenant - used even worse than Jedao - long gone. The only thing to do was to move forward. To try to be productive with the task Shuos-zho offered him.
But. There's nothing productive he urgently needs to do here, and no therapy team sizing him up for weaknesses they can exploit to uncover the secrets of the moths. He can just...be upset.]
He's a worthless slave driving little cretin who makes the entire world worse by existing in it. If he had lived in my world or I lived in his, with no bullshit barge resurrection, I'd have eaten his cold brittle hollow little heart like an ice chip on my way to ripping his entire beloved horrorshow of an Empire open from stem to stern, and never lost a second of sleep over it.
It was stupid of me to imagine he had anything beyond the superficial in common with the boy from the breach, because the one that's really here is incapable of the affection usually mustered by the testier sort of cockroach, and he certainly has no qualities worth loving in return. I hate him and I hope he rots here until he dies.
[Jedao still doesn't yell. It comes out in a fierce, cold, flat voice. Jedao isn't sure how he feels after. A little - stuffed full, satisfied and uncomfortable at the same time. He feels tangled-up and exposed and on the wrong foot, like Nat was just here, was able to wound him one more time, with the knife of how much Jedao cares, even if it's negative, when Nat doesn't. He feels like -
He feels like he's lost a brother, even though he's mourning a dream child that didn't exist. He opens his mouth to say did I do it right and gasps out a wordless, gulping, ugly sob.]
Sorry - sorry, I'm just -
[Utterly mortified at John seeing him break down, over fucking Nathaniel, Jedao fumbles with his communicator, trying to hang up.]
[He doesn't want Nathaniel to be sorry. He wants Nathaniel to be the brother who loved him back, the first family he ever had, which is just about the most pathetic thing Jedao can think of.
Well, you asked and an absurd you're welcome get tangled in his throat; he makes a horrible noise as he half-laughs, wheezes through an awful heave of a sob he can't seem to stop. He manages to find the right button to hang up, then buries his face in a pillow that doesn't feel nearly deep enough to hide his shame.]
[ Thankfully, John knows where he's going because he brought the soup. Hence being able to knock on the door when he gets there. After a moment, he sends a fresh message. ]
I'll leave if you want me to. But you looked like you were having a rough time.
The door sends him the ping that someone is knocking, identity attached.
Jedao, who expected - he's not sure what he expected. Not this. He tells the door access granted, and it slides open for John. Jedao is on the couch, huddled small with his legs pulled up, a cushion clutched to his chest, hair messy and eyes red, face streaky with tears.
"...can. Can I help you?" he asks in a sticky, shaky voice.
"...not really why I'm here," he says as he floats in. He'll wait till the door closes behind him before coming in further.
"You got upset and hung up. I wanted to make sure you were okay." A pause. "I figured if you didn't want me to see you like this, you just wouldn't open the door."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: after the poisoning
It's not like there's only so many feelings and you're taking a bunch from Hakkai.
Um. Unless it is. Is that how it works for you?
[ This is a 100% earnest question. He has no idea. ]
Re: after the poisoning
[He doesn't mean Hakkai. He means Nat. Suddenly Jedao laughs, quick and bright and harsh, like being splashed with vinegar.]
How stupid is that?
Re: after the poisoning
Thankfully, this is a communicator talk. So he can take a moment before he answers and calm the hell down. ]
You can't love someone and expect anything from it or it's something else, so it's not stupid that you did. The only stupid one here is Mandrake, because he either didn't know or he didn't care.
[ Softer. ]
And loving someone means getting fucked up when they're hurt. You really think Hakkai would feel good if you weren't upset he was hurt?
Re: after the poisoning
[Jedao rattles this string of epithets off with seemingly perfect equanimity.]
I told myself he couldn't admit it, but deep down, he cared about me too. That was stupid. I knew better, but let myself believe it anyway.
[Jedao takes a slow, rueful breath.]
Hakkai knows I'm upset. But it shouldn't be about me, is all. He's the one who was attacked.
Re: after the poisoning
And him being a fucking idiot doesn't mean you were wrong. It just means how stupid he is is bigger than how much he cares.
[ A pause. ]
...But I mean...
Are you making it about you? Or are you just... feeling things?
You can't feel what he's feeling. That's his. And you probably shouldn't feel them for him anyway, even if you can.
Re: after the poisoning
[Flatly.]
We both gave him a chance for over a year, and he was not interested. Like offering cabbage to a cat.
[Jedao takes a deep breath.]
Sorry. I'm sorry. You're just being nice, I don't want to argue with you. I don't. I don't know what I'm doing.
[And isn't that the truth.]
Re: after the poisoning
[ This is offered in complete earnest. ]
Seriously. If you want to be pissed off and yell at someone. Sometimes it helps. Especially when you don't know what the fuck you're doing.
CW: ...extremely blurry line between kink and self-harm
[Bluntly.]
But we don't really know each other that well, and Hakkai would smell it and be worried.
I don't. Know what else would help.
[He has not been on the receiving end of terribly much comfort in his short life. In the citadel of eyes, he couldn't even let himself scream. Not that he really thinks it would help. He'd just feel bad about scaring people who were only around him because they were assigned to be there.]
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...have you ever tried shouting and growling and cursing and talking about how big of an asshole someone is until you're kind of exhausted?
Don't worry about being fair to him. He wasn't fair. Fuck him right now.
Just... get it outside of your own head.
I can show you if you haven't.
[ Again, entirely in earnest. ]
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[Jedao has not ever done that. For various reasons.]
So he's an asshole. It's not his fault I was stupid about him. Certainly he never did anything to encourage me. And you can't betray someone you never cared about or promised anything to. He didn't owe it to me to conform to my delusions.
[His tone is leveling out, turning utterly reasonable. The more he can make it his own fault, the easier it is to be crisp and calm. Hating Nathaniel feels bitter and helpless and weak. Hating himself feels like a comfortable old coat, pulled out after an easy summer. It's been a little while, but it fits just like it used to. Idiot sized.]
But I'd love to hear how you do it.
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So I'm going to be loud and growl and curse a lot. Just to be clear, I'm not angry at you, okay? And I'm not going to worry about being accurate but who the fuck cares? This isn't about being accurate.
[ He doesn't have a throat but he does make a noise to indicate he's sort of switching gears. ]
Fuck that! It's his fault for being a shithead and it's his fault for taking your kindness for fucking granted, like you don't have so many hours in a day and you don't have better things you could have been doing than treating him nicely. He didn't promise anything? Fuck him. He didn't want anything like that, he shouldn't have spent so much fucking time with you. He shouldn't have kept engaging with you. He shouldn't have kept taking and taking and taking from you. It isn't a delusion. It's basic fucking logic: you treat people who are nice to you nice back. You appreciate them! You realize that they have value and if you ignore that value, you're a fucking asshole! Just because his head is all fucked up to where he thinks different doesn't make you delusional or stupid or any of that! It means he doesn't make any fucking sense!
He's a vicious little shit and I don't care if that's what he's used to. Maybe if he spent less time making up bullshit about how nice people need to get poisoned because he's annoyed that he didn't figure out all their secrets and more time pulling his head out of his ass, he'd figure out just how big of a fuck up he just made! Fucking prick!
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[Softly. Jedao absolutely means it.]
He didn't fuck up, though. He got exactly what he wanted.
[He's not yelling. He's quiet and matter-of-fact. And underneath that, absolutely scathing. Nathaniel's desires flow from his values - his Empire's values, so whole-heartedly embraced - Nathaniel himself is correspondingly deplorable.]
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Just because he got what he wanted doesn't mean he didn't fuck up. It just means that what he wanted is stupid.
And I know that because I've done the same fucking thing before. I've been that stupid.
[ A low huff of disdain. Again, not for Jedao. ]
When he realizes that he's a fucking idiot, when he realizes that he's not as smart as he thinks he is, when he gets it, exactly what he's lost out on, he'll have two options: ask for your forgiveness or accept that he doesn't fucking deserve it. That's if he even gets the option because his head's pretty far up his ass.
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No one wants to admit that people can just be smart and evil and happy about it. It's really uncomfortable. Easier to call it stupid, because it turns out we would rather have love than all the things being ruthless can get you.
But they can. They can be gloriously, utterly pleased with themselves and their successes.
[Nathaniel is no Kujen. He doesn't have the sheer genius, or the cool magisterial perspective, or the sly wicked indulgent sadism. But Jedao has been nestled in the glittering cold wonderland of the soul of the most selfish person he's ever known, and he remembers.]
I don't think he'll ever ask Hakkai's forgiveness. Even if Arthur manages to turn him into a different person, I suspect he'll still be too proud. And I doubt he'll think of me at all. He doesn't even know I'm inhuman, too. He thinks I'm just unfortunate collateral, who sided with a demon over him, whom he's therefore better off without.
no subject
Nothing you're saying disqualifies what I'm saying. There are entities that exist beyond the reckoning of human minds that spend endless eons being powerful, answering to none, destroying whatever they want, with an understanding that can't even be understood as a concept, let alone known by lesser beings.
I'm comfortable with that, Jedao. I know that. I've been that. You've met one facet of it.
I'm calling it 'stupid' because after hundreds of millions of years of that, and one year of this? I would rather cease to exist than go back.
[ A soft huff. ]
Are there benefits to pushing it aside? Sure. Do they like them? I hope so. Otherwise they're definitely stupid. But the things you give up for it, that kind of existence, is something beyond loneliness into a realm closer to madness. That's what they're moving towards. Just because they don't know they're mad doesn't mean they aren't.
Especially if he's too proud to even try and make up for his fuckups. You and Hakkai are worth swallowing pride for.
no subject
[This is exactly the degree of acknowledgement Jedao thinks the thing in yellow merits.]
I think you're underestimating the appeal of the middle ground. When you're human enough to enjoy petty luxuries, with the power and proximity to have other people around, but only on your own terms.
You and I wouldn't like it. But the world includes all sorts.
no subject
[ Not denying that either. ]
Like I said: I'm sure they like it. But I'm allowed to think they're stupid. And say so.
Especially when it's about Mandrake, cause I'm mad at him for being a dick to you and Hakkai and Arthur.
no subject
But it has been...important. For me. To understand people like Mandrake. And people less...dedicated to the same principles, but caught in the same sort of system. I mean, yes, it's hilarious to call a little one-planet heap an Empire, but scale aside...his world and mine are similar, in many ways.
I've had to understand why those things...exist, how they perpetuate themselves when most people want to be good, want to be kind. And it doesn't feel comforting to me to dismiss the ways that breaks down, or the appeal they have for people like Mandrake. It feels...dangerous. It feels like I'm setting myself to be gutted.
[Again.]
Like I'm blinding myself, trying to pretend my desires live in other people's hearts where they most manifestly don't. I did that, thinking if I just stayed in his life, stayed kind, always couched in strategic terms he could accept, that eventually he would realize, would admit, that our brotherhood was. Worth something to him.
[He shakes his head.]
I'm not setting myself up for that same fall again.
no subject
Right.
[ He is not patronizing him. He doesn't really do that unless Arthur is doing something very very stupid and not listening to him. But normally? No. ]
That's good. That's important. And not doing things that hurt you, or trying not to, is important.
...but you're allowed to have ten minutes or twenty minutes or, fuck, a whole day where you just go "that guy was a dick and he fucked me over and hurt someone I care about and he fucked up and I hate that and his- I don't know, his face is stupid", or whatever.
And twenty minutes or a day later, you can go back to thinking about all that and being fair to him. Think about it. Be accurate and consider all the factors.
But give yourself the time to just be upset.
no subject
And then, in the Citadel of Eyes - he had time, but not the space, not the safety. He cried once. But nothing with words. Nothing with anger. Who was even left to be angry at? By then, Kujen was already dead, and Revenant - used even worse than Jedao - long gone. The only thing to do was to move forward. To try to be productive with the task Shuos-zho offered him.
But. There's nothing productive he urgently needs to do here, and no therapy team sizing him up for weaknesses they can exploit to uncover the secrets of the moths. He can just...be upset.]
He's a worthless slave driving little cretin who makes the entire world worse by existing in it. If he had lived in my world or I lived in his, with no bullshit barge resurrection, I'd have eaten his cold brittle hollow little heart like an ice chip on my way to ripping his entire beloved horrorshow of an Empire open from stem to stern, and never lost a second of sleep over it.
It was stupid of me to imagine he had anything beyond the superficial in common with the boy from the breach, because the one that's really here is incapable of the affection usually mustered by the testier sort of cockroach, and he certainly has no qualities worth loving in return. I hate him and I hope he rots here until he dies.
[Jedao still doesn't yell. It comes out in a fierce, cold, flat voice. Jedao isn't sure how he feels after. A little - stuffed full, satisfied and uncomfortable at the same time. He feels tangled-up and exposed and on the wrong foot, like Nat was just here, was able to wound him one more time, with the knife of how much Jedao cares, even if it's negative, when Nat doesn't. He feels like -
He feels like he's lost a brother, even though he's mourning a dream child that didn't exist. He opens his mouth to say did I do it right and gasps out a wordless, gulping, ugly sob.]
Sorry - sorry, I'm just -
[Utterly mortified at John seeing him break down, over fucking Nathaniel, Jedao fumbles with his communicator, trying to hang up.]
no subject
[ Quiet, but steady. And full of nothing but empathy. He doesn't have a heart but he's aching for him. ]
Oh Jedao... I'm so sorry he hurt you.
[ Nathaniel might not be able to apologize to him, possibly ever. His words are worth so much less, he knows. But he'll offer them all the same. ]
And...
Thank you for trusting me with your anger.
I'm still sorry.
no subject
Well, you asked and an absurd you're welcome get tangled in his throat; he makes a horrible noise as he half-laughs, wheezes through an awful heave of a sob he can't seem to stop. He manages to find the right button to hang up, then buries his face in a pillow that doesn't feel nearly deep enough to hide his shame.]
no subject
I'll leave if you want me to. But you looked like you were having a rough time.
no subject
Jedao, who expected - he's not sure what he expected. Not this. He tells the door access granted, and it slides open for John. Jedao is on the couch, huddled small with his legs pulled up, a cushion clutched to his chest, hair messy and eyes red, face streaky with tears.
"...can. Can I help you?" he asks in a sticky, shaky voice.
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"You got upset and hung up. I wanted to make sure you were okay." A pause. "I figured if you didn't want me to see you like this, you just wouldn't open the door."
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CW: suicide
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