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[deuceoftears]

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[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."

[brotherblack]

Shen Wei makes no effort to pull away at any point. In fact, as siao Jedao goes on, his gaze drops to that touch, some part of his mind focusing on the warmth of xiao Jedao's hand against his cool skin as xiao Jedao's words dig into every chink and crevice in the armor he's built for himself over decades and centuries and millennia.

By the end, his eyes have gone unfocused, his expression tight, and there's the faintest, barely there tremble in his muscles as he tries to process it... perhaps to still reject it. Except he can't. Not really. He's known... perhaps not since the beginning, when he was a boy who knew nothing but duty and privation and fear and desperation, perhaps not even when he first awakened, though the Regent's actions and words had hurt, but for a very long time, now. He's known it was wrong. Known that he would not have tolerated anyone else to be treated as he had been, but could not, ever, acknowledge as much. Not even to himself. Because-

"But... if I had allowed myself to be angry," he whispers, gaze still cast down and eyes still unfocused. "If... if I had acknowledged that it was wrong-" He looks up, finally, his expression agonizingly tight and still, because- "How could I have continued on, and done what was needed?"

[deuceoftears]

"I don't know," Jedao says honestly. That's how almost everyone lived, in the Hexarchate, for eight hundred years. Or they didn't. Anger didn't change anything for millions, maybe billions of heretics. It only put them on the Remembrance slab.

"Maybe not all of those things were needed," Like the panicked way he healed Zhao Yunlan's eyes - "But maybe they were. I don't need you to...renounce your survival, Shen Wei. And I will fight the Admiral myself if he thinks you need to. But I want you to...be able to believe, that you don't need to believe those things to survive now. I know it's hard to trust things that weren't safe before. But will you try, with me?"

[brotherblack]

It's on the tip of his tongue to agree, because he knows xiao Jedao's right. Knows that this is at least some of what he probably needs to fix before the Admiral will allow him to graduate. On the tip of his tongue, but the words never make it out, because xiao Jedao's phrasing stops him in his tracks.

Not for him, but with him.
"With you?" he asks quietly.

[deuceoftears]

He blinks, for just a moment. Most of what Jedao says is very calculated - but that hadn't been.

"Anger is...hard for me, too. But I'm so angry at them, for what they did to you," Jedao says quietly.

[brotherblack]

Shen Wei dips his chin, gaze fixed on his hands where they're folded on his lap. "It's always easier-" Safer= "To be angry on behalf of others," he observes quietly.

He keeps his gaze lowered for a moment longer before looking back up at xiao Jedao, expression solemn and eyes a little too bright. "Thank you. For caring." Not just because he has to as his warden, but for actually caring.