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."
"Well." His voice glurgles a little. He didn't want John to see him like this. But. John came. And while he was on his way, Jedao got in a solid minute of huge, chest-scouring hurricane sobs, leaving him a little bit hiccupy and dazed.
"No. But I guess. If you're here. After I hung up. You know what you're in for."
The idea of not wanting to see or deal with someone because they're an emotional mess is utterly alien to him at his core because John learned how to be a person from being entwined with Arthur Lester. Thus?
"I mean, yeah. You're going through some shit. It's not pretty or fun but I'm the one who encouraged you to dive into it so it'd be pretty shitty to just bail on you."
A pause.
"For the record, though, you can always just tell me to fuck off if you need that. That's okay too." Then, just to clarify- "I won't be pissed about it. Maybe slightly frustrated but I'd get it."
He'll float a little closer.
"...you need some water or something? I know where the kitchen is from the last time I was here."
"Maybe later," Jedao mumbles. He can get water. Later.
"Don't. Don't fuck off." He isn't looking at John, just a patch on the floor, one of his hands rubbing a little at his own shin where it's pulled up to his chest, less self-soothing than just - any touch at all, holding himself together. He doesn't know if he's allowed to ask for more. But he almost never actually wants to be alone.
He will float a little closer, but he won't say much of anything. He's just here to be here, to make sure Jedao isn't alone while he's dealing with this shit.
Jedao thinks asking for help is a good and important skill. But it doesn't matter if there's no one to ask, nothing they can do.
Hemiola is the first friend Jedao ever had, and he would do almost anything for it, but it can't cuddle, and it doesn't really know how to comfort anyone - not to mention needing to limit their meetings to what they could sneak past surveillance. Their support had mostly been in the form of silent understanding, the presence of one other creature that remembered Kujen. Once he tried to work through hurt and frustration sparring with James, only for James to interrogate him about it so much that he ended up feeling more sulky and bitter than when he started.
Gonou or Eiffel or Shen Wei would hold him - Shen Wei under explicit direction - but there's only so much of this Jedao wants to put on Gonou right now. And explaining the situation to someone else feels exhausting and humiliating just to think about, quite aside from the issue of not wanting to spread Hakkai's business if he wants to keep it private.
"I...like touch. I don't know if you can do that. You could maybe see if Jeep is in the office - that's Hakkai's little dragon."
"Yeah, I wasn't really used to it either," he says quietly before he considers the problem.
He has a hand. It's a shadow of Arthur's physical hand, visually insubstantial but perfectly able to touch or hold things. But it's just a hand and a forearm, and he's not sure if that is what Jedao is looking for.
"I can do that," he says earnestly, and he'll float a little closer before deciding on Jedao's shoulder, moving to give it a little squeeze. If he gets a good reaction, he'll start running gently along the upper arm, up and down. It's a much different angle than he's used to for this, but the touch is still gentle even if it isn't 'warm', per se.
"I only have one hand. Usually when I'm with someone who's having a rough time and I'm by myself, I, um, well-" A pause. "Do you know how the thing with my mask works?"
He's posted about it on the network at least twice, one with Arthur and once without, but he's never really gone into how it feels beyond the most mechanical basics. He'll wait for the answer before going further, just in case the very idea freaks him the fuck out.
A little bit of the tension shudders out of his shoulders, and he sighs.
"I saw the warnings. I'd be your anchor." Not a word either John or Arthur ever used for it, so clearly there's something close to analogous in his own world. Jedao shivers for a moment, not flinching away but simply - carrying the wave of inexpressible feeling forward from his own past, compressed intensity and grief and wistfulness and vulnerability and intimacy, recognition like a guitar string vibrating in resonance with a pure tone.
"Generally, I take a sense and a couple of pieces of their body, I assume in a mirror of what I have from Arthur. I can usually pick the sense, that's... more normal. The parts happened by accident so I guess they always will."
That's the bog standard stuff. He's going to go on.
"It's... I guess more like how other people deal with each other. I can sort of feel the emotions going on, I can't read the thoughts or anything; we're completely different people. It's more like being able to read someone's expression, just from the inside. And they can read mine, unlike with this mask. It's... closer."
"...maybe sometime." He might like to try being close like that, but.
"You don't want to feel what I'm feeling right now." Jedao doesn't want anyone else to feel what he's feeling. Maybe especially not John, who has his own reasons to dislike Nathaniel.
But Jedao reaches, catches, just - holds the spectral hand for a minute. Squeezes a little, breath hitching.
He can squeeze that hand back, and he will, careful and gentle. He doesn't mind leaving his hand there. And at least this close, Jedao can feel the edges of his robes, another physical touch.
In better circumstances, he might have huffed a small laugh. Poetry is the province of the Andan, and as ancient rivals to the Shuos, their arts were not particularly appreciated or encouraged in the Citadel of Eyes.
"I'll do a short one, then. If you don't like it, I'll stop. But I know it helps sometimes."
A pause before-
"When a friend calls to me from the road And slows his horse to a meaning walk, I don’t stand still and look around On all the hills I haven’t hoed, And shout from where I am, What is it? No, not as there is a time to talk. I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground, Blade-end up and five feet tall, And plod: I go up to the stone wall For a friendly visit."
He waits in silence for a little while, not sure at first if that's the end. He doesn't hate it. He doesn't know if he likes it, either. More than anything, it feels like - a lot of work, to figure out how to feel something about it at all. He doesn't know what a hoe is, for one thing, but is imagining some kind of long sword. He can feel the steadiness of the cadence but has no reference for the context of simple rural life. His time with his only friend, before the barge, had to be very carefully stolen, every time.
And it's not - relevant, he thinks, with a little burst of frustration in his chest. Because Nathaniel was never his friend.
"Thanks," he says eventually, quietly. He means thank you for trying, but it's hard to make that sound not sarcastic, and he isn't.
He wasn't referencing Nathaniel. There's no more to say there. Instead, he'd been trying to tell Jedao why he'd come. Why he was here.
That some people would make an effort to be his friend. For trying.
But for John, the response isn't something he's going to hold against Jedao. Whether he likes poetry or not, Jedao is still someone he cares about. And he'll give him a squeeze, a gentle one, on the shoulder.
Jedao still has a lot to say about Nathaniel. But it's all too embarrassing, and it feels like an imposition, besides. John is - reacting to this sanely. Correctly. Like a good friend to Hakkai. He's just angry. He's not wasting his precious revelations about love and loneliness on Nathaniel.
"What would you do," Jedao asks slowly, very quietly. "If in another year you found out that actually, Arthur hated you. That he'd always hated you, and the times it felt like he didn't, he was - drugged. And other times just faking it. And, like, you'd seen the drugs, and just hadn't wanted to ask what they were for. But then you found out anyway. What would you do with that."
The hypothetical is half Nathaniel, half Dhanneth. Jedao is so tired of regretting people he's loved.
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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.
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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.
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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.]
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[ 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.
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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.]
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I'll leave if you want me to. But you looked like you were having a rough time.
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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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"No. But I guess. If you're here. After I hung up. You know what you're in for."
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"I mean, yeah. You're going through some shit. It's not pretty or fun but I'm the one who encouraged you to dive into it so it'd be pretty shitty to just bail on you."
A pause.
"For the record, though, you can always just tell me to fuck off if you need that. That's okay too." Then, just to clarify- "I won't be pissed about it. Maybe slightly frustrated but I'd get it."
He'll float a little closer.
"...you need some water or something? I know where the kitchen is from the last time I was here."
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"Don't. Don't fuck off." He isn't looking at John, just a patch on the floor, one of his hands rubbing a little at his own shin where it's pulled up to his chest, less self-soothing than just - any touch at all, holding himself together. He doesn't know if he's allowed to ask for more. But he almost never actually wants to be alone.
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And that's that.
He will float a little closer, but he won't say much of anything. He's just here to be here, to make sure Jedao isn't alone while he's dealing with this shit.
Finally, though-
"...anything else that would help?"
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Jedao thinks asking for help is a good and important skill. But it doesn't matter if there's no one to ask, nothing they can do.
Hemiola is the first friend Jedao ever had, and he would do almost anything for it, but it can't cuddle, and it doesn't really know how to comfort anyone - not to mention needing to limit their meetings to what they could sneak past surveillance. Their support had mostly been in the form of silent understanding, the presence of one other creature that remembered Kujen. Once he tried to work through hurt and frustration sparring with James, only for James to interrogate him about it so much that he ended up feeling more sulky and bitter than when he started.
Gonou or Eiffel or Shen Wei would hold him - Shen Wei under explicit direction - but there's only so much of this Jedao wants to put on Gonou right now. And explaining the situation to someone else feels exhausting and humiliating just to think about, quite aside from the issue of not wanting to spread Hakkai's business if he wants to keep it private.
"I...like touch. I don't know if you can do that. You could maybe see if Jeep is in the office - that's Hakkai's little dragon."
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He has a hand. It's a shadow of Arthur's physical hand, visually insubstantial but perfectly able to touch or hold things. But it's just a hand and a forearm, and he's not sure if that is what Jedao is looking for.
"I can do that," he says earnestly, and he'll float a little closer before deciding on Jedao's shoulder, moving to give it a little squeeze. If he gets a good reaction, he'll start running gently along the upper arm, up and down. It's a much different angle than he's used to for this, but the touch is still gentle even if it isn't 'warm', per se.
"I only have one hand. Usually when I'm with someone who's having a rough time and I'm by myself, I, um, well-" A pause. "Do you know how the thing with my mask works?"
He's posted about it on the network at least twice, one with Arthur and once without, but he's never really gone into how it feels beyond the most mechanical basics. He'll wait for the answer before going further, just in case the very idea freaks him the fuck out.
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"I saw the warnings. I'd be your anchor." Not a word either John or Arthur ever used for it, so clearly there's something close to analogous in his own world. Jedao shivers for a moment, not flinching away but simply - carrying the wave of inexpressible feeling forward from his own past, compressed intensity and grief and wistfulness and vulnerability and intimacy, recognition like a guitar string vibrating in resonance with a pure tone.
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Given the whole 'I don't usually get help' thing, he's going to specify.
"I like being like that with people I like. It feels... more real. But I also know it can freak people out."
Another pause.
"I like you. Just so we're clear."
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That's the bog standard stuff. He's going to go on.
"It's... I guess more like how other people deal with each other. I can sort of feel the emotions going on, I can't read the thoughts or anything; we're completely different people. It's more like being able to read someone's expression, just from the inside. And they can read mine, unlike with this mask. It's... closer."
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"You don't want to feel what I'm feeling right now." Jedao doesn't want anyone else to feel what he's feeling. Maybe especially not John, who has his own reasons to dislike Nathaniel.
But Jedao reaches, catches, just - holds the spectral hand for a minute. Squeezes a little, breath hitching.
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"Probably not. I'm sorry you're feeling it."
A pause.
"Do you like poetry?"
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"I don't know," he answers honestly.
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"I'll do a short one, then. If you don't like it, I'll stop. But I know it helps sometimes."
A pause before-
"When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit."
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And it's not - relevant, he thinks, with a little burst of frustration in his chest. Because Nathaniel was never his friend.
"Thanks," he says eventually, quietly. He means thank you for trying, but it's hard to make that sound not sarcastic, and he isn't.
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That some people would make an effort to be his friend. For trying.
But for John, the response isn't something he's going to hold against Jedao. Whether he likes poetry or not, Jedao is still someone he cares about. And he'll give him a squeeze, a gentle one, on the shoulder.
"Any time."
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"What would you do," Jedao asks slowly, very quietly. "If in another year you found out that actually, Arthur hated you. That he'd always hated you, and the times it felt like he didn't, he was - drugged. And other times just faking it. And, like, you'd seen the drugs, and just hadn't wanted to ask what they were for. But then you found out anyway. What would you do with that."
The hypothetical is half Nathaniel, half Dhanneth. Jedao is so tired of regretting people he's loved.
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CW: suicide
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