TLV IC Inbox

[deuceoftears]

Comments

[howtheyshine]

You're not supposed to call again when I hang up.

[THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS IN THE MOVIES HE'S WATCHED OVER THE LAST WEEK OKAY.]

[deuceoftears]

I'm sorry.

[So contrite!!!!]

I just thought I ought to acknowledge it.

[howtheyshine]

I didn't want to warn you. [SULLEN.] I don't care if you know.

[deuceoftears]

What do you want, then?

[howtheyshine]

I don't want anything!

[deuceoftears]

Do you want to hurt Arthur more?

[howtheyshine]

I want him to-- [The words are snapped out, and then he stops, because he doesn't know. He doesn't know what he wants. But the formless rage keeps pressing against a wall of things he can't name.] Forget it.

[deuceoftears]

You want to know something awful?

[howtheyshine]

...Maybe. [It's curiosity more than the desire to know something awful.]

[deuceoftears]

There's no amount of hurting people that unhurts you. It's absolutely terrible.

Some people like it, but that's a separate thing, it still doesn't fix what happened.

Do you want him to be sorry? Do you want him to understand?

[howtheyshine]

I want him to pay. I want him to know, I want...

[ He wants Arthur to recite more poetry in that soft cadence of his, the quiet power and finality in words known by heart. He wants to learn the defiance he felt rise like sweet bile when Arthur was afraid. He wants to hear Arthur laugh like the way dust dances in the sunlight. He wants the first person he ever knew to want to know him as much.]

I hate him.

[deuceoftears]

That's fair.

[Arthur had been hateful to Yellow, after all. Jedao's voice is quiet, melancholy with understanding. He misses the first person he ever knew, too. He wishes that man had been - different.]

You can hate him. You can make him pay, a little.

But if you keep hurting him - if you can't let it be enough, that he's paid with one miserable, terrified death - then you're just going to be stuck in the feeling of how much you hate him all the time.

And I think you deserve to feel lots of other things.

[howtheyshine]

I don't want to. [That's hissed low and--under the snarl, under the scorn--fearful.]

[deuceoftears]

Why not?

[howtheyshine]

[ There are too many of them. Too many feelings, too many layers to it all, too much. Even if some of them are good feelings, even if some of the layers are wonder and warmth and curiosity and delight. ]

Because I don't want to.

[deuceoftears]

Well, you don't have to. But I still can't let you kill people just because you hate them.

What other feelings have you tried?

[howtheyshine]

...How am I supposed to know that?

[deuceoftears]

Which part?

[howtheyshine]

What emotions I've tried. I don't know. They just happen.

[deuceoftears]

Well, you could tell me a little bit about what some of them were like, and I could help you try to find words for them?

[howtheyshine]

[He makes a deeply skeptical noise, then pauses, thinking about it.

Describe them. He can describe them. Not directly, not well, but he remembers what Arthur said about poetry, about that poem making him feel strong. Maybe a poem can make Jedao feel how Yellow does.]

I am less of myself and more of the sun;
The beat of life is wearing me
To an incomplete oblivion,
Yet not to the certain dignity
Of death. They cannot even die
Who have not lived.

The hungry jaws
Of space snap at my unlearned eye,
And time tears in my flesh like claws.

If I am not life’s, if I am not death’s,
Out of chaos I must re-reap
The burden of untasted breaths.
Who has not waked may not yet sleep.

[deuceoftears]

Oh.

[Soft and punched-out. He hadn't really understood what the Andan and John and Arthur were on about, before.]

[howtheyshine]

[A tense pause.]

Does it... make sense? Did I use it properly?

[deuceoftears]

Yeah, you did it right. I know the feeling you mean.

[howtheyshine]

You do? What is it?