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[deuceoftears]

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Re: Early morning after he awakens from his latest coma

[deuceoftears]

"You deserve to be your full self," Jedao agrees, with a warm smile. "I'll ask right now. What else?"

Re: Early morning after he awakens from his latest coma

[brotherblack]

He breathes through the sharp spike of relief and gratitude, and blinks rapidly against an embarrassing rush of warmth behind his eyes.

"Thank you," he almost whispers, and takes another careful, ritualistic sip of tea while he recovers himself.

"I think that I need to work on being a... on being a person." Which is beyond vague, but it's the best he can manage right now when he thinks of changing himself. A person, not an office or an icon. "I think that is what you were trying to urge me towards, with your holiday gift," he adds in acknowledgment of the long ago list of challenges. "I will make a good faith effort at accomplishing the assignments going forward, but... I wound be grateful for any other suggestions you might offer."

[deuceoftears]

"While you were asleep I started making you pins."

He passes over a little pin that says Ask me if I want a hug, and another that says I want to make friends I'm just shy. But he also sits back, looking at Shen Wei steadily.

"But also...we talked a little about anger, before you went into stasis. I know you have a lot of reasons not to - indulge anger. I don't like to indulge my anger either. But anger is part of being a person."

[brotherblack]

He looks down at the buttons and he can't quite keep the brief flicker of horror at actually wearing them if his face. But then he reaches out and takes them: he promised himself he would do whatever xiao Jedao suggested.

It's easier, though not easy, to address xiao Jedao's next observation. "I... I do not know how to be angry," he admits. "Not just angry. Not for myself." The cold anger of the Envoy, or the deep disappointment of Professor Shen are almost completely divorced from anything he considers himself.

[deuceoftears]

"I did make them before you asked me for your abilities back," Jedao points out, smiling just a tiny bit. "If you can ask for things you'd like without them, so much the better."

He rubs his thumb on the edge of his saucer.

"Tell me more about that."

[brotherblack]

"There was never... time, and it was never safe. To be angry for myself. What would it accomplish?"

His eyes unfocus as he looks at Jedao without really seeing him, thinking back to the chaos and calamity of his childhood and youth. Of a barren cliff, two small boys and a man with blood on his hands. "The one time I gave in to anger... I lost everything." And it's been no better since. Given rein, it seems, his anger consumes him, and only burns those around him. Sometimes to ash.

[deuceoftears]

Jedao nods. He understands, in his own way, the terrible consequences of rashness. He doesn't let himself act in anger, almost ever. And there are times he simply cannot afford to feel it. But he does feel it, does find - some ways, some times, where he can allow it, even if they're not what John would wish for him.

"What does it feel like, when...there's something you could have been angry about? If it can't be anger, what happens instead, for you? Inside. You can pick just one time to start with, if that's easier."

[brotherblack]

Shen Wei thinks of the cold stillness he feels every time he has to interact with the Regent. Not the low, steady thrum of righteous anger at the knowledge the man works only for his own interest rather than for the good of his people, or the almost tooth-grinding frustration that he can see no way to remove him without making matters worse, but the almost arctic chill at his core that's been there since he first awoke and the same man, younger then, but no less self-serving and conniving, had manipulated him into becoming, once again, both a figurehead and a bogeyman.

Of the tight ache, buried so deep he rarely has to acknowledge it, of facing Zhao Xinci's thinly veiled scorn, his insults so carefully couched in 'diplomatic' language. And oh, Heipaoshi could, and did, make his displeasure with his actions clear, but always equally diplomatically. Always on behalf of his people, with the power of his office behind him. The personal insults were swallowed down and buried away.

He does not think of his brief, erratic flash of anger and hurt at Zhao Yunlan, or the fear that had accompanied it.

"I... put it away," he answers, his voice achingly steady and tight. "Where it can do no harm."

[deuceoftears]

Jedao nods.

"That makes sense," he agrees. He does something not dissimilar. "But what does it feel like?"

[brotherblack]

"Cold," he answers quietly. "Cold and tight and... still." Frozen.

[deuceoftears]

"For me, sometimes, it feels like - glass."

A separation; a rigidity.

"And what happens, after you put it away?"

[brotherblack]

"Happens?" He just sounds perplexed. "Nothing happens, it's... put away. I don't think about it."

[deuceoftears]

Jedao considers how to put what he means.

"The things you were angry about. Do they change? Do you do things about them, but calmly? Do you not? Do they change because of other forces? How so? It's probably different for different situations. You can speak on whatever examples come to mind."

[brotherblack]

"They just... are." He considers for a moment, then adds, "I could often ignore or sidestep the Regent's scheming and manipulations, or stand between my people and Zhao Xinci's bigotry and hatred. But I could not change them." Could not change the position they'd put him in, or the ways in which they'd impacted his life

[deuceoftears]

"And...no one ever knew what you endured, or understood, or comforted you," Jedao adds, softly. "Is that right?"

[brotherblack]

He lifts his chin slightly. "No." At least he'd sped himself from answering of course not, or why would there have been? Though he does still add, "It was not necessary."

[deuceoftears]

"It is necessary, if you're a person. You would never say that was acceptable about another person," Jedao points out.

[brotherblack]

The expression that flickers briefly across his face is complicated, sorrow and resignation, and possibly a shadow of wistfulness, all there and gone again in a heartbeat. "But I was never a person, zhizi," he murmurs. "Not to anyone, not even to myself. And so I... endured."

He dips his chin, gaze fixed on his teacup. "Until Kunlun, and after him."

[deuceoftears]

"So you don't have any practice. But I hear you're a quick learner," Jedao points out, with soft warmth.

"But you don't let yourself be angry, even with him." It's not an accusation, just a quiet, inexorable observation.

[brotherblack]

His shoulders twitch slightly. "What purpose does anger serve?"

[deuceoftears]

"It can have a few different purposes. But does everything about you need to serve a purpose?" Jedao counters, softly.

[brotherblack]

That look of faint resignation and sortie settles over his features again, and this time it lingers.

"It always has," he points out softly. "I... am trying. But, after so long, I do not know any other way to be. And-" He swallow before continuing- "I do not like the feeling of anger. I do not like the... the person it makes me." He's seen first hand how it consumed his didi warping him beyond all recognition, and he very much fears that for himself.

[deuceoftears]

"Tell me more about that," Jedao says, gently, safely.

[brotherblack]

"It's... it's an ugly feeling. Hot and bitter and dangerous," he murmurs. It's hesitant and his voice is a little strained, but he's trying, no matter how difficult it is for him to put words to such feelings--most feelings, really, but especially the dark ones that he wishes to simply push away and not acknowledge. "It feels like... I could lose control of it and burn everything I care about down around me." Like he almost has each time he's given rein to it.

[deuceoftears]

He nods, then sets his tea cup down, reaches across the small table to touch Shen Wei's wrist, to squeeze gently.

"Sometimes, the things that have happened to us are ugly and bitter," Jedao says softly. "Anger can be dangerous. But...part of its purpose is for us. Anger is the part of us that insists, sometimes uselessly, often stridently, that something wrong that happened to us is wrong, is not alright. Even if we cannot fight back in too many times, too many moments, anger helps protect us against accepting the lies and excuses and justifications of those who would exploit us, dismiss us, abuse us."

He takes a slow breath, and doesn't pull his hand back unless Shen Wei does it first.

"I know you don't like or agree with the regent. But too often you think of yourself the way he thinks of you - as a tool for the people, and nothing more. You don't like or agree with Zhao Xinci, but you've let him get into your head, too. You worry so much about being a danger to Zhao Yunlan, about hurting him, that you sacrificed yourself to heal him without telling him or trusting him. You've treated yourself like a monster to be kept at bay from vulnerable people, and a dutiful power to be used up, not like a person whose pain matters, who should be considered. You've forced yourself, so slowly, over time, to accept the unacceptable rather than let yourself just be fucking angry about it. Before you even worry about acting on it. Just to feel it. Let it be hot and bitter and awful, it if could burn some of that poison away in your own mind. They were wrong."

His hand tightens again. Jedao is angry, for him.

"How they treated you was wrong. What they believed about you was wrong. All of it was wrong."