"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.
Said... quietly. But honestly. It's his own pain, the one he doesn't talk about much because it's too raw, too deep, but it's under the surface, always there. It's as much a part of their relationship as anything else.
"He hates that I took his eyes. He hates that being involved with me, opening my book, ruined his life. He wants to go home, and he can't. Because of me." A pause. "Most of the time, he loves me more than he hates me. But I'm always afraid that once he no longer relies on me for his arm and for his eyes, he'll change his mind."
Beat.
"...I'm not trying to shift the focus here, I'm just explaining why I can't really answer that properly."
"It's okay," he says easily enough. It's nothing new and Arthur's not the one jabbing at it, so it doesn't actually hurt. It just is. "You didn't know. And neither of us really talk about it much.
"But I did have a different friend where something like that happened. We're not really friends anymore, because" and a slight pause as he adjusts his language, "they don't want to be. They don't think I'm worth it. It's not the same but... yeah, I survived that. And you can survive this too."
"I know that," Jedao mutters, ungracious even though he doesn't want to be. He has, at least, not destroyed Nathaniel, not watched him -
He doesn't want to think about that. And he can't do the only things he knows will really make him stop. He feels like he's stuck on the edge of an event horizon, crushed and stretched at the same time, the moment elongated forever around him.
"Good," gruff, but not angry. Be ungracious as you want, Jedao. He doesn't really know how to be anything but what he is and honestly, he's still working that out himself.
"But if Arthur decided to leave," he says after a moment, "and used his deal to make sure I could never see him again, just to make sure... I think I'd question all the things he taught me and all the moments where I was happy with him. I'd wonder if this whole thing, being 'John', being... whatever I am... if it was real or if I was just deluding myself. If there's any point in trying if the people you love might decide they don't love you enough to stay."
"Ah," Jedao says, still softly, voice horribly dry. "Well."
Well. Yes.
"The first person I ever loved told me that he'd always hated me, the whole time, from the very beginning, in just about exactly those words, and then shot himself in the head."
Which, as a mode of ensuring they never see each other again, beats the pants off a barge deal for efficiency.
"Of course not. Mandrake doesn't even know I'm a demon, too."
Nathaniel doesn't know yet that he hates Jedao, has hated him the whole time. He'd just not cared one way or the other. Jedao was smart enough not to trust him with information. He just...let himself pretend that loving him anyway wasn't twice as stupid and vulnerable.
"We hadn't been together a full year, or anything," Jedao says softly. "But it was still pretty much my whole life, at the time." Which John will understand better than anyone.
"Which is about more than time, yes," he confirms because yes, he definitely understands. "I'm sorry someone was that awful to you. But I'm glad Mandrake doesn't know. Even if I'm sure it means-"
There's a pause as he reevaluates. Obviously not. Of course Mandrake wouldn't speak his mind the way he does with Arthur to people he was intending to poison. He wouldn't want to put them on his scent. Which means-
"...he didn't talk about the shitty way he thinks about people around you two, did he?"
"Oh, not with his full vitriol, I'm sure. But I'm perfectly well versed in how imperials think of pawns, peasants, slaves, traitors, and treacherous slave. I knew him well enough to have a clear idea. If I'd wanted to know."
His heart aches, a little, at even the mild criticism of Dhanneth. It's - strange, to be defended, and it feels a little bit wrong and unfair, when Dhanneth can't defend himself.
"He had every right to hate me," Jedao says quietly. "A million times more than Mandrake does." It's not his fault he was the second person Jedao ever met, one of only two people he'd ever known show him kindness. It's not his fault Jedao fell in love with him, or that -
This is Major Dhanneth. I thought I would make you a gift of him.
Suddenly, horribly, starting soft and then growing in volume, Jedao starts to laugh.
It's a truly horribly sound, wracking wormwood bitterness and pure howling heartbreak filtered through the funhouse mirror of seizing, gasping, shrieking mirth. Jedao gulps air and cackles, his whole chest heaving, tears in his eyes. The muscle in his side hurts; he can't get enough air to push out all the rotten peals of laughter being carved out from inside him. Some of them stall out in his throat, putrefy in his mouth, and he can't stop laughing.
He drags his hand over his face, grinds his knuckles against the ridge of bone under his eyebrows.
"He was given to me," Jedao whispers between wheezes. "He was given to me to love."
Both of them were. The irony is perfect. It's so fucking funny.
There are times that John can almost forget what he was, but there are others where he is struck to the core by something that reverberates with Hastur, with madness and corruption and the broken edges of a person. With the darkness between the stars, the interstellar spaces. With the ruins of Carcosa and the dark waves of Hali.
Right now, this laughter, the noises, the way Jedao is gulping and cackling and grinding his knuckles...
He wishes it didn't feel so familiar, so- if not comfortable, if not satisfying, then at least known.
"Are you angry with yourself for loving them, despite their hatred... or for your hope that they might have learned to love you when they didn't?"
"Maybe I'm not angry with me," Jedao mutters. "Maybe I forgive myself for being lonely and stupid. Maybe I'm angry at the assholes who think people are gifts!"
I don't think people are gifts, Kujen. He'd said it out loud with his not-quite-human mouth, the first day of his life, and Kujen had brushed him off, like it was a silly, immature sort of objection.
"I didn't ask for him. I didn't - I asked for a fucking puppy." The horrible laughter drains out of him like bile from a wound; he's left hunched over, face in both hands.
"It was my very first breach," he says softly. "I had parents. But they didn't really. Care? I was lonely all the time. So I asked for a puppy. And they figured an actual human child would last longer and be better at cleaning up its own mess. So they adopted me a baby brother. They gave him to me to love, since I didn't have anyone else, and they didn't want to bother. And I just. Did it. I was so happy."
"I'm glad you forgive yourself," he says honestly. There's no hint of sarcasm or passive aggressiveness or even defensiveness. John's never really offended at being wrong. This particular kind of anger is one he has trouble understanding, not because he agrees with assholes. It's more complicated, as most things are.
Then again, thinking you're stupid feels like you might still be a little angry at yourself, but it's the kind of thing Arthur would say, so he's just going to roll with it, trust what someone says about themselves. That's the most important.
Hypothetical Arthur would be right and sort of wrong; really the person Jedao is angry at is very much still Nathaniel, but it's not Nathaniel's fault he isn't the person he was in the breach. It's easier for Jedao to be angry with himself, to insist it was his own idiocy, than it is to feel utterly helplessly angry at someone who simply doesn't care.
He drops his hands and stares at the wall.
"I was stolen by the fairies, so I suppose so. But the love wasn't fragile. He came to rescue me. When we were little I learned to crawl over our roof so I could sneak in his bedroom window and read him stories with a flashlight. I remember all his favorite bits in 1001 Nights. I taught him how to play cards and write codes. I learned to bake so I could make him gingerbread cookies at Christmas, because that was one of his only good memories from the orphanage and our parents didn't believe in pageantry. I poured every bit of love I had to give into that little boy, because he was all I had, and when I'd lost my memory and my life and my own name, he risked everything to come find me."
He gulps a few deep, quavering breaths.
"But it wasn't real. It wasn't anything. That boy didn't exist, and the whole premise of that world - when I was the human one, and not the double. Jedao Mandrake had a brother. But I don't. I never did. And the worst part is, he would have told me. He'd have told me not to - be blinded by sentiment. He'd have told me he didn't want or need family, that it was a weakness. And I didn't ask because I didn't want to hear it."
When John says the love was fragile, it isn't a judgement on the love. Love is fragile because the universe doesn't care about it. There's no mechanism to protect it, no inherent and visceral power that responds to it. The universe is cold and apathetic and so much bigger than most beings can even comprehend.
That fragility, the limited and temporary nature of love, that it is a part of a limited thing like a person's life... that doesn't make it less. That makes it rare and valuable and beautiful. The fact that you can't keep it in a glass jar or freeze it in stone or hold it, that through all of the layers of reality it can't even be touched-
To have the power it has, this strange creation of limited creatures, while being so fragile, so special- John loves love. He is devoted to it. He has entwined himself with it and his whole concept of being a person, of deciding to be John, is wrapped in it. It's the membrane that has slid between him and the King in Yellow. It's vital.
Maybe one day he'll tell Jedao about that. But it does take a bit of a preamble.
"Do you honestly think he wouldn't have found another way to betray you both if you hadn't loved him, Jedao? His choice not to love you is a reflection on him, not you. And your choice to love him is a reflection on you, not him. You can-
"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. And whatever he might think, he'll die without it. Whatever world he came from, whatever fucked up way it works... he's not getting back there until he figures out how to care about people properly. And if that didn't include people like you and I, I don't think the Admiral would have chosen us as wardens."
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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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Said... quietly. But honestly. It's his own pain, the one he doesn't talk about much because it's too raw, too deep, but it's under the surface, always there. It's as much a part of their relationship as anything else.
"He hates that I took his eyes. He hates that being involved with me, opening my book, ruined his life. He wants to go home, and he can't. Because of me." A pause. "Most of the time, he loves me more than he hates me. But I'm always afraid that once he no longer relies on me for his arm and for his eyes, he'll change his mind."
Beat.
"...I'm not trying to shift the focus here, I'm just explaining why I can't really answer that properly."
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He feels very selfish, and awkwardly young. At least it's hard to feel any more stupid.
"You can survive it, for the record." More or less.
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"But I did have a different friend where something like that happened. We're not really friends anymore, because" and a slight pause as he adjusts his language, "they don't want to be. They don't think I'm worth it. It's not the same but... yeah, I survived that. And you can survive this too."
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He doesn't want to think about that. And he can't do the only things he knows will really make him stop. He feels like he's stuck on the edge of an event horizon, crushed and stretched at the same time, the moment elongated forever around him.
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"But if Arthur decided to leave," he says after a moment, "and used his deal to make sure I could never see him again, just to make sure... I think I'd question all the things he taught me and all the moments where I was happy with him. I'd wonder if this whole thing, being 'John', being... whatever I am... if it was real or if I was just deluding myself. If there's any point in trying if the people you love might decide they don't love you enough to stay."
CW: suicide
Well. Yes.
"The first person I ever loved told me that he'd always hated me, the whole time, from the very beginning, in just about exactly those words, and then shot himself in the head."
Which, as a mode of ensuring they never see each other again, beats the pants off a barge deal for efficiency.
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Well. Fuck.
"That is... incredibly fucked up. Shit."
A short pause while he processes-
"...did Mandrake know about that?"
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Nathaniel doesn't know yet that he hates Jedao, has hated him the whole time. He'd just not cared one way or the other. Jedao was smart enough not to trust him with information. He just...let himself pretend that loving him anyway wasn't twice as stupid and vulnerable.
"We hadn't been together a full year, or anything," Jedao says softly. "But it was still pretty much my whole life, at the time." Which John will understand better than anyone.
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There's a pause as he reevaluates. Obviously not. Of course Mandrake wouldn't speak his mind the way he does with Arthur to people he was intending to poison. He wouldn't want to put them on his scent. Which means-
"...he didn't talk about the shitty way he thinks about people around you two, did he?"
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His heart aches, a little, at even the mild criticism of Dhanneth. It's - strange, to be defended, and it feels a little bit wrong and unfair, when Dhanneth can't defend himself.
"He had every right to hate me," Jedao says quietly. "A million times more than Mandrake does." It's not his fault he was the second person Jedao ever met, one of only two people he'd ever known show him kindness. It's not his fault Jedao fell in love with him, or that -
This is Major Dhanneth. I thought I would make you a gift of him.
Suddenly, horribly, starting soft and then growing in volume, Jedao starts to laugh.
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Which is when the laughter cuts him off. He doesn't say anything, doesn't move away, won't let go...
But he is listening to make sure it doesn't go too far.
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He drags his hand over his face, grinds his knuckles against the ridge of bone under his eyebrows.
"He was given to me," Jedao whispers between wheezes. "He was given to me to love."
Both of them were. The irony is perfect. It's so fucking funny.
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Right now, this laughter, the noises, the way Jedao is gulping and cackling and grinding his knuckles...
He wishes it didn't feel so familiar, so- if not comfortable, if not satisfying, then at least known.
"Are you angry with yourself for loving them, despite their hatred... or for your hope that they might have learned to love you when they didn't?"
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I don't think people are gifts, Kujen. He'd said it out loud with his not-quite-human mouth, the first day of his life, and Kujen had brushed him off, like it was a silly, immature sort of objection.
"I didn't ask for him. I didn't - I asked for a fucking puppy." The horrible laughter drains out of him like bile from a wound; he's left hunched over, face in both hands.
"It was my very first breach," he says softly. "I had parents. But they didn't really. Care? I was lonely all the time. So I asked for a puppy. And they figured an actual human child would last longer and be better at cleaning up its own mess. So they adopted me a baby brother. They gave him to me to love, since I didn't have anyone else, and they didn't want to bother. And I just. Did it. I was so happy."
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Then again, thinking you're stupid feels like you might still be a little angry at yourself, but it's the kind of thing Arthur would say, so he's just going to roll with it, trust what someone says about themselves. That's the most important.
"Happiness... happiness is... fragile."
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He drops his hands and stares at the wall.
"I was stolen by the fairies, so I suppose so. But the love wasn't fragile. He came to rescue me. When we were little I learned to crawl over our roof so I could sneak in his bedroom window and read him stories with a flashlight. I remember all his favorite bits in 1001 Nights. I taught him how to play cards and write codes. I learned to bake so I could make him gingerbread cookies at Christmas, because that was one of his only good memories from the orphanage and our parents didn't believe in pageantry. I poured every bit of love I had to give into that little boy, because he was all I had, and when I'd lost my memory and my life and my own name, he risked everything to come find me."
He gulps a few deep, quavering breaths.
"But it wasn't real. It wasn't anything. That boy didn't exist, and the whole premise of that world - when I was the human one, and not the double. Jedao Mandrake had a brother. But I don't. I never did. And the worst part is, he would have told me. He'd have told me not to - be blinded by sentiment. He'd have told me he didn't want or need family, that it was a weakness. And I didn't ask because I didn't want to hear it."
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That fragility, the limited and temporary nature of love, that it is a part of a limited thing like a person's life... that doesn't make it less. That makes it rare and valuable and beautiful. The fact that you can't keep it in a glass jar or freeze it in stone or hold it, that through all of the layers of reality it can't even be touched-
To have the power it has, this strange creation of limited creatures, while being so fragile, so special- John loves love. He is devoted to it. He has entwined himself with it and his whole concept of being a person, of deciding to be John, is wrapped in it. It's the membrane that has slid between him and the King in Yellow. It's vital.
Maybe one day he'll tell Jedao about that. But it does take a bit of a preamble.
"Do you honestly think he wouldn't have found another way to betray you both if you hadn't loved him, Jedao? His choice not to love you is a reflection on him, not you. And your choice to love him is a reflection on you, not him. You can-
"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. And whatever he might think, he'll die without it. Whatever world he came from, whatever fucked up way it works... he's not getting back there until he figures out how to care about people properly. And if that didn't include people like you and I, I don't think the Admiral would have chosen us as wardens."
A pause.
"...that love sounds beautiful, though."
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