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.
"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.
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."
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?"
"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?"
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.
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.
"I know. I'll tell you about some of my things later. But I want you to be able to be angry on your own behalf, too. And, hey, the first time is going to be the hardest," he points out.
"I still don't really care for the idea, though," he admits. "But I suppose we'll see, given I don't really have anything to be angry about." Other than the Admiral trapping him here, but he deserved it, after all.
He comes back with traditional rice paper, brush, and inkstone. He sets them out.
"Here's the thing, Shen Wei. If you're going to let yourself feel anger, you are going to have to break the association between letting yourself even acknowledge it ever, and being forced to acknowledge it because it's become so devastating that you can't deny it anymore. Between just feeling it and acting on it, before you even worry about acting on it controlled versus uncontrolled.
"So we're going to start with you writing a letter to someone, anyone, who did something that fucked you up or fucked you over. You're going to write to them and say that they were wrong, and you're mad, and why. Just because you write it doesn't mean you ever have to send it. But you're going to think about it in your own quiet heart, and then write it down in the world. You have half an hour for this essay, your time starts now."
Shen Wei listens as xiao Jedao as he explains his... well, his assignment, his expression shifting from curiosity to bafflement, before slowly closing off into calm blankness. He understands what's expected, of course, it's not complicated, but it feels... not overwhelming, but exceedingly difficult. It also feels like something he can't refuse.
"Yes. Of course," he agrees evenly, though he sits very still for a few long, steady breaths, hands resting lightly on his knees, expression blank, before he slides gracefully to his knees in front of the coffee table, his robes pooling around him as he settles his center of gravity comfortably for writing. With the air of a familiar ritual, he pours just the right amount of water into the hollow of the stone, then grinds the ink stick into it until he's achieved the right consistency and opacity before guiding it to pool in the hollow of the stone.
It's a few more seconds before he lifts the brush, dips it into the ink, and begins to write in smooth, elegant strokes that appear completely effortless, in a way that only years of perfect practice and incredible control can achieve. He knows as he begins writing, that, while he's complying with the letter of the assignment, he is not complying with its spirit. But this is where he can find some modicum of comfort in starting.
And so he addresses a very formal letter to the long dead leader of the Rebel Army, expressing his great anger at the man for casting him off the the cliff for defending his twin, and then stealing him away and tormenting him for years,and for compounding the devastation the meteor had brought to their world by setting Dixingren against their Haixingren and Yashouren brothers. Once he begins it doesn't take long, and after a total of twenty-three minutes in total he blows gently across the paper and pushes it towards xiao Jedao. The page is almost completely filled with beautiful calligraphy... in perfect Mandarin.
"My apologies," he murmurs, head bowed. "I am most comfortable writing in Mandarin these days."
Jedao putters a bit around his quarters - he waters his plants, does a few dishes, spares Shen Wei from the relentlessness of being observed while he writes, only checking in every few minutes. He sits back down when he sees Shen Wei drying the ink, and gives him a small smile for engaging with the exercise at all.
"That's fine," he says, sliding the page back toward Shen Wei. "You'll just have to read it to me."
He looks up, startled for a moment and then resigned. He'd half thought that perhaps xiao Jedao might use the library's translating devices, but this makes a great deal more sense, he supposes. Both for convenience and for the point of the exercise.
"Of course." He seems to say that a lot to xiao Jedao. He suppresses the urge to sigh and, rather than picking the paper up, simply recites from memory.
"To the Most Despised, Cowardly, and Execrable Leader of the Rebellion Forces-"
There follows, in a steady, controlled voice, a point by point recitation of the many and varied reasons Shen Wei is still angry with the man to this day, both in his own behalf and those of his twin and his people. He does not, at the end, apologize for adhering to the letter if the exercise while perhaps flaunting its spirit, though he feels perhaps he should, he simply sits, hands on his knees, expression mild and awaits xiao Jedao's critique
"I want you to think back to the time this was happening. See his face in your mind. The pain and the fear and the horrible trapped knowledge that you couldn't say shit about it -"
Shen Wei's eyes fly open immediately at the instruction, and for a fraction of a second there's something very like panic in the widening of his eyes before his expression smooths into perfect blankness.
He's silent for a moment, and perfectly still, breathing even and heartrate steady, before he murmurs, "I would rather not, thank you," in a perfectly even and utterly inflectionless voice.
Jedao watches him very, very closely. He tilts his head, considering.
"I still think you should do it," he says softly. "Because the truth is, he can't hurt you anymore. You're not trapped. So think about it, and read your letter again."
"That, perhaps," he points out with the same level, inflectionless voice, "Is part of the problem. I did yell at him, I did order he not touch didi. I... did lose my temper and give voice to my anger." And he was hoisted into the air like so much refuse and thrown from the top of the plateau, surviving only because of the passing healing power he had already picked up by then.
"And I have relived that moment over and over and over." He stops for a moment to breathe calmly through the boil of emotion he doesn't wish to acknowledge. "In every possible variation. That I somehow manifested a combat power I didn't Learn until years later and bested him. That I did not lose consciousness when I fell and managed to follow him and steal didi away. Even that I managed to murder him in his sleep, and save all our peoples so much pain and loss.
"I would very much rather not insert myself into that memory again."
"The point isn't what you could or couldn't have done. The point is that you're not a child anymore. What happened then couldn't have gone happily, but it can't happen now. So. Are you going to do what I told you to do, or not?"
Or is he going to tell Jedao - who is hurting him, who knows he's playing with fire, pressing hard on an old broken bone - that it's wrong of him to demand it. He doesn't have to go back there - but he has to get angry at someone.
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"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.
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"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."
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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?"
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"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?"
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Not for him, but with him.
"With you?" he asks quietly.
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"Anger is...hard for me, too. But I'm so angry at them, for what they did to you," Jedao says quietly.
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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.
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He gives Shen Wei's wrist another squeeze, then stands.
"I'm going to grab something from my study, I'll be back in just a second."
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"Of course," he agrees.
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"Here's the thing, Shen Wei. If you're going to let yourself feel anger, you are going to have to break the association between letting yourself even acknowledge it ever, and being forced to acknowledge it because it's become so devastating that you can't deny it anymore. Between just feeling it and acting on it, before you even worry about acting on it controlled versus uncontrolled.
"So we're going to start with you writing a letter to someone, anyone, who did something that fucked you up or fucked you over. You're going to write to them and say that they were wrong, and you're mad, and why. Just because you write it doesn't mean you ever have to send it. But you're going to think about it in your own quiet heart, and then write it down in the world. You have half an hour for this essay, your time starts now."
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"Yes. Of course," he agrees evenly, though he sits very still for a few long, steady breaths, hands resting lightly on his knees, expression blank, before he slides gracefully to his knees in front of the coffee table, his robes pooling around him as he settles his center of gravity comfortably for writing. With the air of a familiar ritual, he pours just the right amount of water into the hollow of the stone, then grinds the ink stick into it until he's achieved the right consistency and opacity before guiding it to pool in the hollow of the stone.
It's a few more seconds before he lifts the brush, dips it into the ink, and begins to write in smooth, elegant strokes that appear completely effortless, in a way that only years of perfect practice and incredible control can achieve. He knows as he begins writing, that, while he's complying with the letter of the assignment, he is not complying with its spirit. But this is where he can find some modicum of comfort in starting.
And so he addresses a very formal letter to the long dead leader of the Rebel Army, expressing his great anger at the man for casting him off the the cliff for defending his twin, and then stealing him away and tormenting him for years,and for compounding the devastation the meteor had brought to their world by setting Dixingren against their Haixingren and Yashouren brothers. Once he begins it doesn't take long, and after a total of twenty-three minutes in total he blows gently across the paper and pushes it towards xiao Jedao. The page is almost completely filled with beautiful calligraphy... in perfect Mandarin.
"My apologies," he murmurs, head bowed. "I am most comfortable writing in Mandarin these days."
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"That's fine," he says, sliding the page back toward Shen Wei. "You'll just have to read it to me."
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"Of course." He seems to say that a lot to xiao Jedao. He suppresses the urge to sigh and, rather than picking the paper up, simply recites from memory.
"To the Most Despised, Cowardly, and Execrable Leader of the Rebellion Forces-"
There follows, in a steady, controlled voice, a point by point recitation of the many and varied reasons Shen Wei is still angry with the man to this day, both in his own behalf and those of his twin and his people. He does not, at the end, apologize for adhering to the letter if the exercise while perhaps flaunting its spirit, though he feels perhaps he should, he simply sits, hands on his knees, expression mild and awaits xiao Jedao's critique
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"You're welcome," he murmurs, and closes his eyes with perfect trust and no hesitation.
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He's silent for a moment, and perfectly still, breathing even and heartrate steady, before he murmurs, "I would rather not, thank you," in a perfectly even and utterly inflectionless voice.
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"I still think you should do it," he says softly. "Because the truth is, he can't hurt you anymore. You're not trapped. So think about it, and read your letter again."
He waits a beat.
"Or if you can't yell at him, yell at me."
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"And I have relived that moment over and over and over." He stops for a moment to breathe calmly through the boil of emotion he doesn't wish to acknowledge. "In every possible variation. That I somehow manifested a combat power I didn't Learn until years later and bested him. That I did not lose consciousness when I fell and managed to follow him and steal didi away. Even that I managed to murder him in his sleep, and save all our peoples so much pain and loss.
"I would very much rather not insert myself into that memory again."
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Or is he going to tell Jedao - who is hurting him, who knows he's playing with fire, pressing hard on an old broken bone - that it's wrong of him to demand it. He doesn't have to go back there - but he has to get angry at someone.
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