He thinks John is still being rather optimistic; he knows in the pit of his stomach there is something wrong with him. But the idea of learning how to love...eases the awful grip of it, a little; John's frank admission of his own struggles is disarming, even as Jedao recognizes the tactic, all the more powerful because John doesn't realize it is one.
"I was...made," Jedao admits softly, after what feels to him like a long quiet, but is probably only twenty or thirty seconds.
"I was made to be a weapon, and a companion, for - someone who makes everyone in Mandrake's empire look like a friendly little kitten. He could change people's minds - rewrite them in all kinds of ways, to be tools or just to amuse him. And he took his favorite broken toy and rewrote a second draft, and that was me. What if he made me like this. To always be weak to - his type."
Given the King in Yellow, that kind of power isn't really startling. He could do that too, once upon a time, even if now the idea is horrifying.
"Maybe that's how he designed you, sure." He wouldn't doubt that, or deny it. "But that doesn't mean you have to stay that way. That you can't make yourself something different. That you can't grow and change beyond what he would have wanted."
A small huff.
"Fuck him. You already learned better. Hakkai's not like that. If you loved Mandrake, I'm definitely assuming you love Hakkai. And Hakkai isn't like that. I can't do anything to help Hakkai most of the time and I don't have anything to give him but he's still my friend and he likes spending time with me."
"I know he isn't," Jedao says softly, the caustic venom lifting from his voice as he does so. "He's wonderful. He cares so much." Maybe too much; maybe quite a lot of blood's worth of too much. But to Jedao, even Hakkai's worst excesses are a balm compared to Kujen's coldness.
"But he didn't mind if - it was never only him. It's just that I was his."
Loving Hakkai doesn't disprove the flaw in Jedao's base nature, no more than the disastrous crime of loving Dhanneth did.
Jedao has tried to tell himself - tried, desperately, to believe, or at least to live as though he believed, that he could grow beyond what he was made for. I'm your gun, Kujen, but that's not all I am!. Desperate, flailing defiance, flung into the face of a pitiless and vindictive man Jedao was in the process of murdering. Neither of them had been impressed by it.
"And when everything happened, when Mandrake was a fucking asshole, you were loyal to Hakkai. Not Mandrake. So even if he did put something in there, it's something you grew past. Something you don't have to listen to."
Jedao shakes his head. It was never that simple, between them.
"He couldn't make me perfectly loyal without destroying the military genius he wanted to win his war for him. He didn't like it, but he was reconciled to - managing me."
Read: manipulating, isolating, deceiving, and occasionally imprisoning Jedao whenever he went too off-script.
Submit to me, and I may yet forgive a great many things. Your predecessor, too, had a taste for treachery. Not Kujen's last words, but nearly. After he'd realized Jedao had not just the desire but the means to kill him.
Maybe Kujen would have been better off with the third draft.
"And you don't think he made it easier to 'manage' you by setting things up to make you think you were broken?"
He can't help but think of the King in Yellow, of how he'd manipulated them, how he'd tricked them, herded them, pushed them, how he'd poisoned the mind of Kellin and used the cult and how he would do terrible things trying to tear himself and Arthur apart, to get what he wanted, to be whole. He pushes it aside. That's him, not Jedao.
"Sorry. That was rude." A faint huff of self-depreciating amusement. "And you're not wrong. Sometimes, being a person sucks. It hurts and it's confusing and it feels like none of the rules make sense."
But Jedao is looking thoughtful; he drums his fingers on one kneecap.
"No, it's not rude. He would do that, if he thought it was an efficient way to control me. I don't know if it was efficient. But it's worth considering."
"The easiest way to control someone is to make them doubt themselves. Doubt what they think and feel, the instincts they have." A pause, before he admits- "That's how the King works."
"He lied to me a bit, about who was on what side. I figured it out, but...not fast enough. Really I think he was just relying on the loneliness. Everyone else hated me, except for someone he did control with psych surgery. It was just him. If I turned against him...I'd lose the only affection in the world."
Only I will never judge you. No one else will ever love you.
"Obviously it's not true. But it was very nearly true in that universe. And he did want to give me a life of infinite luxury and kinky sex, for the low price of letting him torture other people I didn't know on a galactic scale to fuel his power structures forever. That probably seemed like plenty of leverage to him."
"It's...stuff that most people don't think is hot, or even related to sex necessarily, but some people think is really hot. Usually a little more intense and elaborate. It's kind of a grab bag. Most people who like some kinky things don't like others."
"Yeah? But it's like. A sliding scale. And what's expected to be hot is different in different cultures. So - gloves are kinky, to me, but maybe not to someone from Earth. Humans don't normally have the possibility of having sex with tentacles, though, so it's like - kinky automatically, even if it's, uh, pretty common compared to some other kinks."
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"I was...made," Jedao admits softly, after what feels to him like a long quiet, but is probably only twenty or thirty seconds.
"I was made to be a weapon, and a companion, for - someone who makes everyone in Mandrake's empire look like a friendly little kitten. He could change people's minds - rewrite them in all kinds of ways, to be tools or just to amuse him. And he took his favorite broken toy and rewrote a second draft, and that was me. What if he made me like this. To always be weak to - his type."
no subject
"Maybe that's how he designed you, sure." He wouldn't doubt that, or deny it. "But that doesn't mean you have to stay that way. That you can't make yourself something different. That you can't grow and change beyond what he would have wanted."
A small huff.
"Fuck him. You already learned better. Hakkai's not like that. If you loved Mandrake, I'm definitely assuming you love Hakkai. And Hakkai isn't like that. I can't do anything to help Hakkai most of the time and I don't have anything to give him but he's still my friend and he likes spending time with me."
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"But he didn't mind if - it was never only him. It's just that I was his."
Loving Hakkai doesn't disprove the flaw in Jedao's base nature, no more than the disastrous crime of loving Dhanneth did.
Jedao has tried to tell himself - tried, desperately, to believe, or at least to live as though he believed, that he could grow beyond what he was made for. I'm your gun, Kujen, but that's not all I am!. Desperate, flailing defiance, flung into the face of a pitiless and vindictive man Jedao was in the process of murdering. Neither of them had been impressed by it.
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He clamps on like a terrier.
"And when everything happened, when Mandrake was a fucking asshole, you were loyal to Hakkai. Not Mandrake. So even if he did put something in there, it's something you grew past. Something you don't have to listen to."
A soft grumble.
"You're not his. You're yours."
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"He couldn't make me perfectly loyal without destroying the military genius he wanted to win his war for him. He didn't like it, but he was reconciled to - managing me."
Read: manipulating, isolating, deceiving, and occasionally imprisoning Jedao whenever he went too off-script.
Submit to me, and I may yet forgive a great many things. Your predecessor, too, had a taste for treachery. Not Kujen's last words, but nearly. After he'd realized Jedao had not just the desire but the means to kill him.
Maybe Kujen would have been better off with the third draft.
"Sometimes I don't want to be mine," he admits.
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He can't help but think of the King in Yellow, of how he'd manipulated them, how he'd tricked them, herded them, pushed them, how he'd poisoned the mind of Kellin and used the cult and how he would do terrible things trying to tear himself and Arthur apart, to get what he wanted, to be whole. He pushes it aside. That's him, not Jedao.
"Sorry. That was rude." A faint huff of self-depreciating amusement. "And you're not wrong. Sometimes, being a person sucks. It hurts and it's confusing and it feels like none of the rules make sense."
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"No, it's not rude. He would do that, if he thought it was an efficient way to control me. I don't know if it was efficient. But it's worth considering."
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"The easiest way to control someone is to make them doubt themselves. Doubt what they think and feel, the instincts they have." A pause, before he admits- "That's how the King works."
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He fidgets a little with his pant cuff.
"I didn't even have anything to doubt, at first. I just woke up on his station. I had about two and half memories and a name. He was the whole world."
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He listens to Jedao talk about his first moments, waking up. That, he gets.
"But he wanted you to think for him, no? So... he had to have leverage."
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Only I will never judge you. No one else will ever love you.
"Obviously it's not true. But it was very nearly true in that universe. And he did want to give me a life of infinite luxury and kinky sex, for the low price of letting him torture other people I didn't know on a galactic scale to fuel his power structures forever. That probably seemed like plenty of leverage to him."
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"...what's 'kinky' sex?"
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"It's...stuff that most people don't think is hot, or even related to sex necessarily, but some people think is really hot. Usually a little more intense and elaborate. It's kind of a grab bag. Most people who like some kinky things don't like others."
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"Huh." A pause. Well, he might as well ask since it seems like a simple enough thing for Jedao. "Are tentacles considered kinky?"
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Jedao has seen a non-zero amount of Space Hentai.
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That's a new one. Huh. He never would have thought it. He's learning so much today.
"It's the only way I've ever done it. Not that I've done it like this."