He's quiet for a few moments, strokes a hand down Shen Wei's back.
"It's normal, to feel uncomfortable with being vulnerable. We both have...more of that, I think, than most people, but it's a difference of degree, not kind. But I think you're also...you have a horror of being even a small inconvenience, separate from that. And...people are inconvenient, sometimes. The whole point of loving each other is that we can lift each other up when we're feeling heavy. I can sleep more tomorrow. I'm glad to be with you now."
Shen Wei's shoulders shake slightly, and he stiffens for a moment, as if he might pull away, and then slumps more thoroughly into xiao Jedao instead.
His voice is thick when he answers, ragged at the edges with his attempt to not give in entirely to emotion. "I have been so much more than an inconvenience in this place," he points out. "I do not wish to worry or... or frighten Zhao Yunlan or didi or Taylor mei any further." And he does, in fact, have the mental connection to both of them shut down to just a trickle of presence, no emotion allowed to leak through. Which isn't that unusual for him anyway.
"I still... I do not like inconveniencing or... burdening you either," he adds, quieter, after a moment. "But I do not think anything I say or... or do or... feel will worry or hurt or frighten you."
Look at him, using his words and admitting to his feelings like a big boy!
"I'm very grateful for your faith in me. But I do worry, sometimes," he says gently.
"And...your pain, your fear, they aren't a burden to me. But even if they were...you're allowed to be heavy. You're allowed to...take up space in our hears. A burden that one chooses to carry is - a duty, an honor, a privilege."
He truly feels privileged, right now, and the quiet marvel of it is there in his voice. Honored with something terribly precious and fragile.
He hates that xiao Jedao worries, hates that anyone does, that anyone needs to. "I feel that I've been nothing but heavy in this place." Even before he'd been demoted, and he thinks back to what feels so long ago, now, curled up and sobbing like a child at Zhao Yunlan's disappearance while lao Jedao attempted to console him. He'd been a good man, in his way, but this not-son of his-
"How are you so wise, so young?" he asks him, trying to find some lightness in himself.
"And I've been letting myself say yes to all the things my good fortune seems to have to say. You included." Another soft squeeze of the hug. "You are not only heavy. It is a gift, to know you. I don't mean...abstractly. I mean for me. Do you have any idea..."
He takes a slow breath. It's off topic but it's real, and maybe - helpful.
"...how many bitter, self-centered, downright rude immortals I've managed to meet in my very short life, giving maudlin monologues about how being immortal makes you an asshole because humans seem so inconsequential, when you're old enough? Too damn many. It was such a relief to get to know you, to have living proof that you could live as long as I'm probably going to, and still care so damn much, still hold onto your principles. Still be kind, and learn, and teach. You're - a ray of hope, for me. I look up to you."
Shen Wei's breath escapes him in a shudder, and he presses his face to xiao Jedao's shoulder as he takes in the words. The inescapable warmth and sincerity of them loosens something in his chest, eases a little the tense, aching knot of fear that's always there these days--that he's clung so hard, for so long, to the form of what he's thought he should be, the mask he should present to the world, that he's molded himself to the shape of it, without any real substance underneath. That he's nothing but a mask hiding a tangle of secrets and lies and fears.
"I fear, sometimes, that... it's just habit." His voice is quiet, thick, aching with uncertainty. Vulnerable in a way he's rarely ever let himself be. "That the man who committed the atrocities the Admiral has imprisoned me for is the reality, and everything else is only a mask, hiding it from the world." It's not at all what he came here to confess, it's deeper and harder than the much more simple fear he'd sought comfort for. "It... it helps, to know you see something different." The man he wants to be, still.
"It's all real," Jedao says softly. "Killing Carol wasn't an atrocity, Shen Wei. But it was an expression of you. The pain and loneliness, the unvoiced rage, the obsession and desperation, the ultimately unsustainable self-denial - all of that is you, and everything you have chosen, over and over again. Every little kindness, your steadfastness and nurturing and loyal memory. It's all real, it's all you. We are made up of our habits. Few things are stronger. You chose to build these ones - the ones I admire most, and the ones that conspired with truly wretched circumstances into leading you one terrible moment."
He doesn't even call it a mistake. If he'd done it deliberately, tactically, in an attempt to protect the ship - Jedao doesn't know if the Admiral would have reacted the same way, but he knows that he might have chosen to kill her far more cold-bloodedly. But it was of a piece with personal fracture lines that he hopes can heal, eventually.
"Those habits, I hope, you can learn to replace with new ones that don't trap you in indefinite strain. But you still...you can be both. You don't have to be...the man who always does the right thing to also be my favorite uncle. Being a person pretty much always does mean being some of both."
"It was... so many more than one terrible moment," he points out softly. He might have been demoted for that first murder, but then there'd been the massacre on the galley, the attack on Zhao Yunlan's inmate, on his own twin when he stepped in, and the aftermath, most of which is still a blur of pain and confusion and fear and despair in his memory, the long months after not much better.
And yet, Zhao Yunlan has forgiven him, and loves him still. Didi and Taylor mei have forgiven him. Xiao Jedao has read everything in his file, knows all of it, and still chooses to call him family. Still looks up to him.
He pulls away from xiao Jedao's embrace and curls into himself a little. His head is bowed, long hair falling to half conceal the way his face is pressed into his hands. He just... he needs a little distance as his shoulders shake and his breath hitches and he tries very hard to reconcile his image of himself, with everything that's happened to him and everything he's done, and what the people he loves still see in him despite it all.
"Being a person is, I think, a great deal harder than I had imagined," he manages to choke out.
"It's definitely more complicated," Jedao muses, taking the time to float the tea in from the kitchen, since Shen Wei has pulled away a little bit. He pours a cup for each of them and sips his, leaving everything else on the little coffee table.
"And unfamiliar things are often difficult. But I think...you talk about the the mask. It's so much effort, constantly, for centuries, to force yourself into being the tool you thought you had to be. I think, once you get the hang of it, being person might also be easier, in some ways."
He can hear the quiet sounds of xiao Jedao pouring tea over his own ragged breaths, feel the warmth of his presence and the familiarity of his energy close by, and he lets himself focus on that, on his calm, soothing voice. And doesn't tell himself that he's behaving like a child, that his weakness is humiliating, or a burden. He just lets himself... sit. With xiao Jedao's words, with his own thoughts, for a long, quiet moment as he masters his breathing.
"It's been so long-" He has to stop and steady his breathing before he starts again- "It's been so long that... that it doesn't feel like effort anymore," he admits. "And if I let it go... what will I be without it." It's not really a question, just the knee-jerk fear that squirms in his chest as he begins to truly accept the reality that he can change. Should change. Not just as an intellectual exercise, not just to escape this place, but because he deserves better, and so do the people he loves. And it's terrifying.
"Someone lighter," Jedao answers, with a quiet certainty. "Someone more free, who can feel the wind and tears equally on his face."
Because even if it doesn't feel like effort - it is, because it's not who Shen Wei really is, and it never has been. Jedao is certain of that, in the same deep place in his breastbone that Crowned-With-Eyes lives.
He scrubs his hands over his face and finally lifts his head, the only sign there might have been tears some redness around his eyes.
"Someone lighter... who's allowed to be heavy." It's meant to be a tease, but it comes out a little too ragged and a little too real.
He blinks a few times and finds a wan smile for xiao Jedao. "Thank you, zhizi, for your wisdom. And... and for your... your care." He'd almost said love, but that feels too presumptuous even now. "I think... perhaps that I should go speak with Zhao Yunlan." Because maybe xiao Jedao is right, and he should let his beloved be a support to him, rather than hiding his fears and weaknesses from him.
"Yes," he answers, decisively. "If you put down a burden you've been carrying so long you don't remember what it feels like, and you get to lean on the people around you."
Be heavy. Feel light.
"You can come back any time," Jedao promises him, leaning in for another tight hug.
"Yes," he agrees on a breath, and feels like it shudders right to his core. Of course."
He squeezes xiao Jedao back without hesitation this time. "My apologies for wasting your good tea," he murmurs as he lets go and stands. "But I'll try very hard not to waste your good advice." And then he's stepping backwards into a hole in reality, before he has a chance to talk himself out of it.
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"I feel the same way, sometimes. Often. But what does that have to do with whether I was asleep before or not?"
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He's quiet for a few moments, strokes a hand down Shen Wei's back.
"It's normal, to feel uncomfortable with being vulnerable. We both have...more of that, I think, than most people, but it's a difference of degree, not kind. But I think you're also...you have a horror of being even a small inconvenience, separate from that. And...people are inconvenient, sometimes. The whole point of loving each other is that we can lift each other up when we're feeling heavy. I can sleep more tomorrow. I'm glad to be with you now."
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His voice is thick when he answers, ragged at the edges with his attempt to not give in entirely to emotion. "I have been so much more than an inconvenience in this place," he points out. "I do not wish to worry or... or frighten Zhao Yunlan or didi or Taylor mei any further." And he does, in fact, have the mental connection to both of them shut down to just a trickle of presence, no emotion allowed to leak through. Which isn't that unusual for him anyway.
"I still... I do not like inconveniencing or... burdening you either," he adds, quieter, after a moment. "But I do not think anything I say or... or do or... feel will worry or hurt or frighten you."
Look at him, using his words and admitting to his feelings like a big boy!
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"And...your pain, your fear, they aren't a burden to me. But even if they were...you're allowed to be heavy. You're allowed to...take up space in our hears. A burden that one chooses to carry is - a duty, an honor, a privilege."
He truly feels privileged, right now, and the quiet marvel of it is there in his voice. Honored with something terribly precious and fragile.
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"How are you so wise, so young?" he asks him, trying to find some lightness in himself.
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Hakkai. Eiffel. Edwin and John. Shen Wei himself.
"And I've been letting myself say yes to all the things my good fortune seems to have to say. You included." Another soft squeeze of the hug. "You are not only heavy. It is a gift, to know you. I don't mean...abstractly. I mean for me. Do you have any idea..."
He takes a slow breath. It's off topic but it's real, and maybe - helpful.
"...how many bitter, self-centered, downright rude immortals I've managed to meet in my very short life, giving maudlin monologues about how being immortal makes you an asshole because humans seem so inconsequential, when you're old enough? Too damn many. It was such a relief to get to know you, to have living proof that you could live as long as I'm probably going to, and still care so damn much, still hold onto your principles. Still be kind, and learn, and teach. You're - a ray of hope, for me. I look up to you."
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"I fear, sometimes, that... it's just habit." His voice is quiet, thick, aching with uncertainty. Vulnerable in a way he's rarely ever let himself be. "That the man who committed the atrocities the Admiral has imprisoned me for is the reality, and everything else is only a mask, hiding it from the world." It's not at all what he came here to confess, it's deeper and harder than the much more simple fear he'd sought comfort for. "It... it helps, to know you see something different." The man he wants to be, still.
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He doesn't even call it a mistake. If he'd done it deliberately, tactically, in an attempt to protect the ship - Jedao doesn't know if the Admiral would have reacted the same way, but he knows that he might have chosen to kill her far more cold-bloodedly. But it was of a piece with personal fracture lines that he hopes can heal, eventually.
"Those habits, I hope, you can learn to replace with new ones that don't trap you in indefinite strain. But you still...you can be both. You don't have to be...the man who always does the right thing to also be my favorite uncle. Being a person pretty much always does mean being some of both."
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And yet, Zhao Yunlan has forgiven him, and loves him still. Didi and Taylor mei have forgiven him. Xiao Jedao has read everything in his file, knows all of it, and still chooses to call him family. Still looks up to him.
He pulls away from xiao Jedao's embrace and curls into himself a little. His head is bowed, long hair falling to half conceal the way his face is pressed into his hands. He just... he needs a little distance as his shoulders shake and his breath hitches and he tries very hard to reconcile his image of himself, with everything that's happened to him and everything he's done, and what the people he loves still see in him despite it all.
"Being a person is, I think, a great deal harder than I had imagined," he manages to choke out.
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"And unfamiliar things are often difficult. But I think...you talk about the the mask. It's so much effort, constantly, for centuries, to force yourself into being the tool you thought you had to be. I think, once you get the hang of it, being person might also be easier, in some ways."
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"It's been so long-" He has to stop and steady his breathing before he starts again- "It's been so long that... that it doesn't feel like effort anymore," he admits. "And if I let it go... what will I be without it." It's not really a question, just the knee-jerk fear that squirms in his chest as he begins to truly accept the reality that he can change. Should change. Not just as an intellectual exercise, not just to escape this place, but because he deserves better, and so do the people he loves. And it's terrifying.
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Because even if it doesn't feel like effort - it is, because it's not who Shen Wei really is, and it never has been. Jedao is certain of that, in the same deep place in his breastbone that Crowned-With-Eyes lives.
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"Someone lighter... who's allowed to be heavy." It's meant to be a tease, but it comes out a little too ragged and a little too real.
He blinks a few times and finds a wan smile for xiao Jedao. "Thank you, zhizi, for your wisdom. And... and for your... your care." He'd almost said love, but that feels too presumptuous even now. "I think... perhaps that I should go speak with Zhao Yunlan." Because maybe xiao Jedao is right, and he should let his beloved be a support to him, rather than hiding his fears and weaknesses from him.
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Be heavy. Feel light.
"You can come back any time," Jedao promises him, leaning in for another tight hug.
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He squeezes xiao Jedao back without hesitation this time. "My apologies for wasting your good tea," he murmurs as he lets go and stands. "But I'll try very hard not to waste your good advice." And then he's stepping backwards into a hole in reality, before he has a chance to talk himself out of it.