He struggles a moment, but, "Reading? If you don't mind...?" Sounds can too easily transform into something else, on the edge of consciousness. He remembers being sick, listening to a story. A good memory, one that had never happened. He pats vaguely at a pocket, remembering.
"Missy." He should check to make sure she's okay. He can't forget.
"Missy found Scott," Jedao tells him, since he's had more than time to keep up with ongoing public announcements. "She was unhurt when she reported it to the network. She's aware that Flood's the one making trouble, and whatever she decides to do, she won't get taken by surprise. Do you still want to talk to her before you rest?"
Nico might; it's a turbulent moment. Jedao isn't pushing him to wait, only giving him all the information he has.
Nico breathes out some of his sudden tension. She has the information, her choices will be informed ones. That's the important thing. His death isn't an important factor, he can tell her later. When he can think more clearly.
"Alright." He squeezes Nico's hand again. "There's also water if you're thirsty, I should have said that at the beginning - not cold anymore, but it's there."
He has enough awareness not to shake his head. "I'll drink - later." He's pretty sure he'd be sick if he tried to move, and his chest burns at the thought.
He can't fully fall asleep, despite the exhaustion, but he can drift along the edge; occasionally snapping half-way alert when he's dragged into old memories, before being grounded in the present again.
He's got a book Quentin recommended to him, already most of the way through thanks to the long vigil. He finishes it and starts over from the beginning, sips a little of the water himself when his voice goes scratchy. But he doesn't leave, and he doesn't stop.
"You're here." He blinks, sorting through slightly less confused senses. Not an auditory hallucination, good, that would be... troubling.
"Your cabin." That makes sense too, it fits. He coughs, biting his lip to push away the nausea that comes with the movement. Very slowly, he reaches up to feel a clump of hair with his fingers. His head hurts, but - "Already dead." He's pretty sure if he'd been alive when shot in the head, it would hurt a lot more.
"Yes, just before. We were....wizards." Jedao manages to keep most of his nonplussedness out of his voice. It's not distaste, just a complete disjunction of worlds.
"Magic doesn't make sense." It gives him a vague headache to think about, outside a world where it all had made sense. And his head hurts enough as it is.
He's quiet for a bit, not asleep, but lying still apart from his shallow breathing.
"I had a few families. Before." There's always only one 'before', for him, the demarcation of his new life. "It wasn't always - good." In some cases, more of an understatement than others. He's sure it's not shocking, probably not even surprising. But he hasn't said it, before.
Not shocking, no. And Jedao was an even worse father this breach than last, and now, here -
"If you don't want me to use those terms, then I won't," he says finally, with a certain circumspect deliberation. Nico is observant enough to know that he'll think of them anyway, that the obverse of the statement is that he entirely considers Nico his family.
Nico generally reacts to the comments of family like he does anything else that suggests someone cares, mainly by appearing not to hear them. In a guilty way, it's easier to talk about now with the memories of the confused hurt and suppressed edge of resentment from the breach.
He makes a slight twitch, which could be a shake of his head. "The words... t's not a problem. But I don't know what they mean." He has memories and plenty of example, but still nothing that makes him feel like he understands.
"When you asked me whether some people are good, we mentioned resemblance clusters," he murmurs, although with far less academic enthusiasm than he did then.
"I think the words can mean very different things for different people. For me, when I say it..."
He rubs his thumb over Nico's knuckles, breathing slowly.
"I suppose I mean people I'm...more attached to than I can explain. More than I can logically understand. In ways that will always stay with me. My sister died almost four hundred years ago, and it still hurts to think about her. It still - comforts me, more than any ordinary object should be able to, that the barge gave me back a deck of cards she once gave me as a present.
"When I say it to you - you make me want to do stupid, emotional things, you make me want to tear anyone who hurts you into little pieces and feed them to the barge cats, even though it wouldn't do anyone any good at all. I won't, but I want to. I want to keep you with me forever, because I know if I live another four hundred parts, part of me will remember you with that same raw ache that never fades. I'm so fucking proud of you, and it doesn't matter what you do or where you go, because you're my son, my brilliant brave somber boy, and that means you're perfect, even when I know people aren't perfect, that's crazy."
He breathes.
"After the last breach, when part of you wanted me to hold you even after you felt like you knew that you didn't deserve it - I know there isn't very much space for irrationality with you, and also that you always deserve what you want, but maybe that's a thing it could mean for you. Maybe not. But I think that's....something close to how a lot of people use it. Bonds bigger than sense. And you use the word 'family' whether it's blood or not, because the feature being described is that it's hard to explain. I'm sorry if that's....worse."
Nico's breathing is only a little uneven as he listens. He's since glimpses of four different lives, now, and he never discards resources, even when they hurt. There are words, somewhere. There's stuff he'd known how to say as a werewolf and ideas he'd understood without thinking as a wizard. They're not his, he can't use them for - this, but he thinks that remembering might help. At least a little. At least it lets him understand why he wants to speak.
"The world isn't real, doesn't feel real. I don't mean solid stuff, or not knowing what's there and where I am -" Most of the time he doesn't mean that, anyway, even if sometimes he loses track of his belief in any sort of reality, lost in pain or just the dark of the night when it can be hard to believe in anything... But that's not his point. He knows that, even if he's trying to figure out how to articulate his point as he goes. "But that's only part of the world, the big part is shared between people. They define what things mean and that makes them real, but when it falls apart and you can see from the outside, it's all just threads and it can be ripped apart and remade so easily and there's nothing -" He takes a breath, trying to match it to Jedao's, he remembers all Cate's lessons.
"Rational and irrational... I know it's just a type of control. But even if it's not much control... A good day means I can hold onto that much of an illusion of a reality where words mean anything, because otherwise there's nothing." It's the peace he can find in getting lost in code or playing a game, a small slice of reality that he doesn't have to maintain alone.
"Most of the patterns I see are - real enough. Even when people say they're crazy, it's just because they don't want to believe that it's real. So it's easier to say I'm wrong. When they're right, that's when I will be crazy. Seeing patterns that aren't there, getting lost..." He's seen what that looks like. "Emotions are... hard. Because people do stuff just because of a feeling. Because I can want things that aren't true. Because they draw connections between feelings and what happens to people that aren't true - logically. But they die and it feels real." He knows he's rambling, he doesn't know if it makes any sense outside his head (he doesn't know if it makes sense inside his head), but he still has to try. Wants to try.
Conversely, Jedao doesn't know if he understands everything Nico means by it, but he surely wants to listen.
"Maybe you should take up knitting," Jedao suggests, and it isn't totally serious but it isn't a joke, either. A metaphor that could more, spinning out from where Jedao's mind caught on the word . "Maybe it would help with feeling that things can be - fragile - and still real."
He strokes Nico's hair, not at all sure which of them he most wants to comfort.
"Emotions...you might think of them more as...outputs of hidden processing." To put it in programming terms, in computer terms. "Instead of just themselves, instead of just a feeling. Since that's essentially the truth, that's what most of a brain is doing, if that brain isn't yours. Processing that I don't have enough space in my conscious working memory to describe, which is why it's so hard to explain fully. But the feeling doesn't come from nothing. I learned that you were - brilliant and quiet and clever, that you came from an utterly stupid, brutal world, that all your suffering has only lead you to work against that world. I can't say everything that made the exact ways those things combined in you to make me love you more than - either of your peers."
He could probably have loved Ruby and maybe Clancy, in different circumstances, but it wouldn't have been in the same way he does Nico, almost certainly not as intensely.
"But parts of me I can't see did run all those calculations. And the feeling is what I've got out of it, and it's a shortcut for...some behavior. For taking care of you, however I can. There are things that processing system doesn't know, or doesn't weight very accurately, like the death toll. Or like coping mechanisms that used to work, and it's the hidden processing that never got an update. And it's possible to be logical about that. So I can be furious to hear that Iris died, and then...choose to let that feeling go, because logically she is fine. You can decide whether or not you want do anything about your freeze response.
"But sometimes emotions are telling you something true, sometimes about patterns and sometimes about concrete things and sometimes...telling you about yourself, that things matter to you even when you thought or convinced yourself you didn't. You're hurting, so I'll be furious for what was done to you even though you'll live. If you try to pull feelings apart into their threads and they're still there....it might be because they are telling you something true, in a different language from logic. And it's kind of - yelling, sometimes, to make up for the language gap, but the yelling usually calms down after a little while. It's okay that things feel real, it doesn't mean you're standing on quicksand. It means you have an alternate data stream that's occasionally unreliable, in particular ways. But you can start to identify them, and you have ways to check it, and you can put a confidence interval on the rest."
Nico leans a little toward Jedao's touch. At his most comfortable, he's usually still stiff when it comes to physical contact, usually he shies away or freezes up entirely. This is different.
He's aware of how it would break down if he put it in words, that the only memories he has of really feeling comforted b touch are when he was like this, trying to piece himself together again after everything is ripped apart, with the only person he could trust. It's an old pattern knotted up and reapplied even if it shouldn't be. The walls he's put up are important, but he doesn't want to think about it in logical terms. That's the whole problem, in a way.
"There's...logic, to emotion. The processing. You put in facts and the person - it's the whole reason emotional manipulation works." And he's played that game, using the truth because he's not good at it, but he's always aware.
"Feeling something doesn't have to dictate your reaction." He knows Jedao's right. "But people do react and they hurt people and say it's okay or want something and I know logic but I don't know how to make my emotions work because half of the reactions are wrong and more are unhelpful and people get hurt and they shouldn't matter." He's read books on psychology and child development and socialization. He doesn't know if he would have been taught how to deal with his emotions healthily if he'd lived a different life but he does know that he lost that chance. He can often trace the reasons for his feelings, but that hasn't made his much better at doing anything with them.
"You'll go away. You have important things to do. I have to fix things back home. I might survive, but Jude is dead and Black and Cole and Clancy will be gone, even more than he already tries to be. But that's not important." It shouldn't be important, because his ending up alone doesn't matter. And not using words won't change what he feels for Jedao, it won't make him live easier when he's alone, but at least it won't be a betrayal. And it's not logical to think that everyone he loves dies, everyone dies and their life is dangerous and he knows all about false correlations, but he knows what he feels.
"I will," he admits, because there's no getting around that. "Although since you're planning to die anyway, I would argue that even if you do live, logically, you've already admitted they don't need you to rebuild after. If we find a way for you to live, you should leave after that, and come stay with me."
It's slightly underhanded of him to introduce this argument while Nico is hurting, and leaning into his hand, but frankly Jedao needs whatever advantages he can get.
"But even if you don't...I said I'd still love you in four hundred years, and I know it's true, because I still love my sister and brother and mother and my three little nieces and my first boyfriend and my last best friend, I still love all of them, everyone I ever let myself love. And it does hurt. But I don't think it's unimportant. I think...if I were the kind of person who could stop caring about them to spare myself hurt, I wouldn't remember how to care about other people as well, either. I wouldn't see the point. It shapes you in more ways than just pain. And it gives you more than just pain, too."
He keeps his touch steady and gentle in Nico's hair, for as long as he encourages it.
"Although what else it gives you is harder to explain. But I will be kinder, I think, for remembering you. And braver. And certainly much better at pattern-stones," he adds with a soft smile.
"As for other people...well, they can say their feelings makes something okay, but that doesn't make them right. You already know that. Other people using their feelings badly doesn't mean it's wrong to have them, any more than people using their intelligence badly makes it wrong to use logic. And for yours...they're working. They're working to try to protect you. And no, you can't suddenly make them agree that, say, Fives is safe, or a dozen other things. You might be able to convince them very slowly. I hoped it might help at least a little, having you do things you otherwise enjoyed with him, playing games and not getting hurt. Or you might not, because they had a lot of data to build their assumptions on, when you were young and they were starting from scratch. You're responsible for how you react to your emotions but not for the emotions themselves. They're important to me, because they're part of you. No one has the right to hurt you to be around you, even if you don't think the emotion makes sense. You can't get away from your own feelings, and they can. So when it's one or the other, in that situation, your hurt matters more."
Jedao doesn't expect Nico to be capable of really taking that to heart, but at least the logical argument might help him to consider it.
"They don't need me." He's never really been needed. There would be some sort of plan, if he was there or not. They certainly don't want him, he'd known that without having to watch the memories, but that's not important, either. Being wanted has never been a factor. "But maybe I could be useful. I wouldn't be much help in a war." He knows that's not entirely true, there are plenty of ways he could be useful, especially in a universe with higher levels of technology, but there are other people who can do that and he'd be even more useless afterwards than he'd be back on his world.
He thinks about the rest of it, breathing as steadily as he can. "The people I care about - I know I've gotten good things from knowing them. But it hurts more. I would cut out the hope that people won't be the worst that they can be if it would bring Jude back but it won't and all it means is that that hope hurts more because he died because it wasn't true." Maybe someday he could embrace everything he gained from having a friend, right now it makes him want to walk into his worst nightmare, knowing that he's unlikely to ever come out.
The easiest way to respond to emotions is to shut down, to try to shut them out. Because they don't matter. Because every time he's been stupid and reacted to them more than he should, people get hurt. He's never wanted to hurt anyone.
"I'm sorry that I can't understand what you mean." He can understand the words. He can understand the logic. But he knows that's not the same as understanding. He wishes he could give Jedao more, but he tries at least to offer some honesty.
"Oh, N'ika. You don't have to be sorry. I mean, it's your topic. I'm just sorry I can't seem to help you with it more."
He drops a soft, brief kiss on Nico's forehead.
"Sometimes feelings are like that. I wanted - I wanted to be dead for so long, just so I could stop feeling. I'm not saying...that the place I am now is somehow worth all those years, just - the awful and unbearable parts, it's not. It's the fault of emotions, not at the end of the line. It's the fault of your life being fucking awful, and part of you knowing that, knowing it's worth changing even though you didn't know anything else. You deserve a life you could have good feelings about. It's not your fault, not the fault of any part of you, that you didn't."
He takes one of Nico's hands in his, rubbing a thumb gently over Nico's knuckles.
"I think you could have it, with us. We have so many things we need to do besides the war. There's no point winning if we can't build a nation where they can live in peace. There's going to be so many logistics and I'll have computers, but you still know how I am. And none of the clones has any experience with it outside of war. You could be useful planning a million other things, population settlement, food production, transport schedules, anything. And there'll be clones young enough not to scare you - little kids who only know being scared and hurt and obedient. You could be a really useful big brother. You could tell them it's okay not to want to fight. Not many of their other brothers really know how to say that, and mean it."
He wants that. He wants to be able to believe Jedao. He suspects that's why he has such a hard time actually believing him. He'd known that his life was wrong, that it should be changed, because he hadn't been alone. The kids hadn't deserved to die like that, the definitely hadn't deserved to live like that. So he had wanted to change things, he could want that, without having to think about himself. It's easier to care about his own well-being when it's as an abstract cog in a machine.
A piece alone, one so easily broken, is far harder to defend. But he wants to try, and that makes the guilt hang even heavier.
"I don't have experience with - outside. I can't remember ever being in a place with more than a hundred people, not since I've been...like this. I lived in closed environment with limited people, people with files I could go through and from a world I mostly understood and a lot of the time I could barely manage that." The barge provides plenty of hints about how much worse it can be.
"I've managed propaganda and kept track of schedules and looked over some infrastructure stuff, but that's nothing. I haven't been outside, as myself, in over a decade. Almost three quarters of my life. I don't know how to do stuff. I don't want to fight. I don't think I'm any example of anything good."
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2018-07-25 09:05 pm (UTC)"Missy." He should check to make sure she's okay. He can't forget.
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Date: 2018-07-25 09:20 pm (UTC)Nico might; it's a turbulent moment. Jedao isn't pushing him to wait, only giving him all the information he has.
"Or I could check in with her, or remind you."
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Date: 2018-07-25 09:24 pm (UTC)"I'll remember. Thank you."
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Date: 2018-07-25 09:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-25 09:57 pm (UTC)He can't fully fall asleep, despite the exhaustion, but he can drift along the edge; occasionally snapping half-way alert when he's dragged into old memories, before being grounded in the present again.
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Date: 2018-07-25 10:02 pm (UTC)He's got a book Quentin recommended to him, already most of the way through thanks to the long vigil. He finishes it and starts over from the beginning, sips a little of the water himself when his voice goes scratchy. But he doesn't leave, and he doesn't stop.
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Date: 2018-07-26 02:55 pm (UTC)"...Where am I?"
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Date: 2018-07-26 05:28 pm (UTC)"You're in my cabin, on the barge. I'm real."
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Date: 2018-07-26 05:43 pm (UTC)"Your cabin." That makes sense too, it fits. He coughs, biting his lip to push away the nausea that comes with the movement. Very slowly, he reaches up to feel a clump of hair with his fingers. His head hurts, but - "Already dead." He's pretty sure if he'd been alive when shot in the head, it would hurt a lot more.
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Date: 2018-07-26 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-26 06:28 pm (UTC)"Anything happen?"
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Date: 2018-07-26 07:16 pm (UTC)Jedao doesn't know what's going to be done with him. He doesn't want to care.
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Date: 2018-07-26 07:32 pm (UTC)He hesitates a few moments, as more memories settle into place. They don't feel right, patches of floating unreality that he can't pin down.
"...Was there a breach?"
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Date: 2018-07-26 07:35 pm (UTC)Except.
"We were family there, too."
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Date: 2018-07-27 04:24 pm (UTC)He's quiet for a bit, not asleep, but lying still apart from his shallow breathing.
"I had a few families. Before." There's always only one 'before', for him, the demarcation of his new life. "It wasn't always - good." In some cases, more of an understatement than others. He's sure it's not shocking, probably not even surprising. But he hasn't said it, before.
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Date: 2018-07-27 06:18 pm (UTC)"If you don't want me to use those terms, then I won't," he says finally, with a certain circumspect deliberation. Nico is observant enough to know that he'll think of them anyway, that the obverse of the statement is that he entirely considers Nico his family.
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Date: 2018-07-27 06:25 pm (UTC)He makes a slight twitch, which could be a shake of his head. "The words... t's not a problem. But I don't know what they mean." He has memories and plenty of example, but still nothing that makes him feel like he understands.
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Date: 2018-08-01 09:35 am (UTC)"I think the words can mean very different things for different people. For me, when I say it..."
He rubs his thumb over Nico's knuckles, breathing slowly.
"I suppose I mean people I'm...more attached to than I can explain. More than I can logically understand. In ways that will always stay with me. My sister died almost four hundred years ago, and it still hurts to think about her. It still - comforts me, more than any ordinary object should be able to, that the barge gave me back a deck of cards she once gave me as a present.
"When I say it to you - you make me want to do stupid, emotional things, you make me want to tear anyone who hurts you into little pieces and feed them to the barge cats, even though it wouldn't do anyone any good at all. I won't, but I want to. I want to keep you with me forever, because I know if I live another four hundred parts, part of me will remember you with that same raw ache that never fades. I'm so fucking proud of you, and it doesn't matter what you do or where you go, because you're my son, my brilliant brave somber boy, and that means you're perfect, even when I know people aren't perfect, that's crazy."
He breathes.
"After the last breach, when part of you wanted me to hold you even after you felt like you knew that you didn't deserve it - I know there isn't very much space for irrationality with you, and also that you always deserve what you want, but maybe that's a thing it could mean for you. Maybe not. But I think that's....something close to how a lot of people use it. Bonds bigger than sense. And you use the word 'family' whether it's blood or not, because the feature being described is that it's hard to explain. I'm sorry if that's....worse."
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Date: 2018-08-02 11:08 pm (UTC)"The world isn't real, doesn't feel real. I don't mean solid stuff, or not knowing what's there and where I am -" Most of the time he doesn't mean that, anyway, even if sometimes he loses track of his belief in any sort of reality, lost in pain or just the dark of the night when it can be hard to believe in anything... But that's not his point. He knows that, even if he's trying to figure out how to articulate his point as he goes. "But that's only part of the world, the big part is shared between people. They define what things mean and that makes them real, but when it falls apart and you can see from the outside, it's all just threads and it can be ripped apart and remade so easily and there's nothing -" He takes a breath, trying to match it to Jedao's, he remembers all Cate's lessons.
"Rational and irrational... I know it's just a type of control. But even if it's not much control... A good day means I can hold onto that much of an illusion of a reality where words mean anything, because otherwise there's nothing." It's the peace he can find in getting lost in code or playing a game, a small slice of reality that he doesn't have to maintain alone.
"Most of the patterns I see are - real enough. Even when people say they're crazy, it's just because they don't want to believe that it's real. So it's easier to say I'm wrong. When they're right, that's when I will be crazy. Seeing patterns that aren't there, getting lost..." He's seen what that looks like. "Emotions are... hard. Because people do stuff just because of a feeling. Because I can want things that aren't true. Because they draw connections between feelings and what happens to people that aren't true - logically. But they die and it feels real." He knows he's rambling, he doesn't know if it makes any sense outside his head (he doesn't know if it makes sense inside his head), but he still has to try. Wants to try.
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Date: 2018-08-13 05:26 am (UTC)"Maybe you should take up knitting," Jedao suggests, and it isn't totally serious but it isn't a joke, either. A metaphor that could more, spinning out from where Jedao's mind caught on the word . "Maybe it would help with feeling that things can be - fragile - and still real."
He strokes Nico's hair, not at all sure which of them he most wants to comfort.
"Emotions...you might think of them more as...outputs of hidden processing." To put it in programming terms, in computer terms. "Instead of just themselves, instead of just a feeling. Since that's essentially the truth, that's what most of a brain is doing, if that brain isn't yours. Processing that I don't have enough space in my conscious working memory to describe, which is why it's so hard to explain fully. But the feeling doesn't come from nothing. I learned that you were - brilliant and quiet and clever, that you came from an utterly stupid, brutal world, that all your suffering has only lead you to work against that world. I can't say everything that made the exact ways those things combined in you to make me love you more than - either of your peers."
He could probably have loved Ruby and maybe Clancy, in different circumstances, but it wouldn't have been in the same way he does Nico, almost certainly not as intensely.
"But parts of me I can't see did run all those calculations. And the feeling is what I've got out of it, and it's a shortcut for...some behavior. For taking care of you, however I can. There are things that processing system doesn't know, or doesn't weight very accurately, like the death toll. Or like coping mechanisms that used to work, and it's the hidden processing that never got an update. And it's possible to be logical about that. So I can be furious to hear that Iris died, and then...choose to let that feeling go, because logically she is fine. You can decide whether or not you want do anything about your freeze response.
"But sometimes emotions are telling you something true, sometimes about patterns and sometimes about concrete things and sometimes...telling you about yourself, that things matter to you even when you thought or convinced yourself you didn't. You're hurting, so I'll be furious for what was done to you even though you'll live. If you try to pull feelings apart into their threads and they're still there....it might be because they are telling you something true, in a different language from logic. And it's kind of - yelling, sometimes, to make up for the language gap, but the yelling usually calms down after a little while. It's okay that things feel real, it doesn't mean you're standing on quicksand. It means you have an alternate data stream that's occasionally unreliable, in particular ways. But you can start to identify them, and you have ways to check it, and you can put a confidence interval on the rest."
He swallows.
"Does that...help at all?"
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Date: 2018-08-13 04:12 pm (UTC)He's aware of how it would break down if he put it in words, that the only memories he has of really feeling comforted b touch are when he was like this, trying to piece himself together again after everything is ripped apart, with the only person he could trust. It's an old pattern knotted up and reapplied even if it shouldn't be. The walls he's put up are important, but he doesn't want to think about it in logical terms. That's the whole problem, in a way.
"There's...logic, to emotion. The processing. You put in facts and the person - it's the whole reason emotional manipulation works." And he's played that game, using the truth because he's not good at it, but he's always aware.
"Feeling something doesn't have to dictate your reaction." He knows Jedao's right. "But people do react and they hurt people and say it's okay or want something and I know logic but I don't know how to make my emotions work because half of the reactions are wrong and more are unhelpful and people get hurt and they shouldn't matter." He's read books on psychology and child development and socialization. He doesn't know if he would have been taught how to deal with his emotions healthily if he'd lived a different life but he does know that he lost that chance. He can often trace the reasons for his feelings, but that hasn't made his much better at doing anything with them.
"You'll go away. You have important things to do. I have to fix things back home. I might survive, but Jude is dead and Black and Cole and Clancy will be gone, even more than he already tries to be. But that's not important." It shouldn't be important, because his ending up alone doesn't matter. And not using words won't change what he feels for Jedao, it won't make him live easier when he's alone, but at least it won't be a betrayal. And it's not logical to think that everyone he loves dies, everyone dies and their life is dangerous and he knows all about false correlations, but he knows what he feels.
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Date: 2018-08-13 06:12 pm (UTC)It's slightly underhanded of him to introduce this argument while Nico is hurting, and leaning into his hand, but frankly Jedao needs whatever advantages he can get.
"But even if you don't...I said I'd still love you in four hundred years, and I know it's true, because I still love my sister and brother and mother and my three little nieces and my first boyfriend and my last best friend, I still love all of them, everyone I ever let myself love. And it does hurt. But I don't think it's unimportant. I think...if I were the kind of person who could stop caring about them to spare myself hurt, I wouldn't remember how to care about other people as well, either. I wouldn't see the point. It shapes you in more ways than just pain. And it gives you more than just pain, too."
He keeps his touch steady and gentle in Nico's hair, for as long as he encourages it.
"Although what else it gives you is harder to explain. But I will be kinder, I think, for remembering you. And braver. And certainly much better at pattern-stones," he adds with a soft smile.
"As for other people...well, they can say their feelings makes something okay, but that doesn't make them right. You already know that. Other people using their feelings badly doesn't mean it's wrong to have them, any more than people using their intelligence badly makes it wrong to use logic. And for yours...they're working. They're working to try to protect you. And no, you can't suddenly make them agree that, say, Fives is safe, or a dozen other things. You might be able to convince them very slowly. I hoped it might help at least a little, having you do things you otherwise enjoyed with him, playing games and not getting hurt. Or you might not, because they had a lot of data to build their assumptions on, when you were young and they were starting from scratch. You're responsible for how you react to your emotions but not for the emotions themselves. They're important to me, because they're part of you. No one has the right to hurt you to be around you, even if you don't think the emotion makes sense. You can't get away from your own feelings, and they can. So when it's one or the other, in that situation, your hurt matters more."
Jedao doesn't expect Nico to be capable of really taking that to heart, but at least the logical argument might help him to consider it.
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Date: 2018-08-13 08:08 pm (UTC)He thinks about the rest of it, breathing as steadily as he can. "The people I care about - I know I've gotten good things from knowing them. But it hurts more. I would cut out the hope that people won't be the worst that they can be if it would bring Jude back but it won't and all it means is that that hope hurts more because he died because it wasn't true." Maybe someday he could embrace everything he gained from having a friend, right now it makes him want to walk into his worst nightmare, knowing that he's unlikely to ever come out.
The easiest way to respond to emotions is to shut down, to try to shut them out. Because they don't matter. Because every time he's been stupid and reacted to them more than he should, people get hurt. He's never wanted to hurt anyone.
"I'm sorry that I can't understand what you mean." He can understand the words. He can understand the logic. But he knows that's not the same as understanding. He wishes he could give Jedao more, but he tries at least to offer some honesty.
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Date: 2018-08-13 08:27 pm (UTC)He drops a soft, brief kiss on Nico's forehead.
"Sometimes feelings are like that. I wanted - I wanted to be dead for so long, just so I could stop feeling. I'm not saying...that the place I am now is somehow worth all those years, just - the awful and unbearable parts, it's not. It's the fault of emotions, not at the end of the line. It's the fault of your life being fucking awful, and part of you knowing that, knowing it's worth changing even though you didn't know anything else. You deserve a life you could have good feelings about. It's not your fault, not the fault of any part of you, that you didn't."
He takes one of Nico's hands in his, rubbing a thumb gently over Nico's knuckles.
"I think you could have it, with us. We have so many things we need to do besides the war. There's no point winning if we can't build a nation where they can live in peace. There's going to be so many logistics and I'll have computers, but you still know how I am. And none of the clones has any experience with it outside of war. You could be useful planning a million other things, population settlement, food production, transport schedules, anything. And there'll be clones young enough not to scare you - little kids who only know being scared and hurt and obedient. You could be a really useful big brother. You could tell them it's okay not to want to fight. Not many of their other brothers really know how to say that, and mean it."
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Date: 2018-08-13 10:14 pm (UTC)A piece alone, one so easily broken, is far harder to defend. But he wants to try, and that makes the guilt hang even heavier.
"I don't have experience with - outside. I can't remember ever being in a place with more than a hundred people, not since I've been...like this. I lived in closed environment with limited people, people with files I could go through and from a world I mostly understood and a lot of the time I could barely manage that." The barge provides plenty of hints about how much worse it can be.
"I've managed propaganda and kept track of schedules and looked over some infrastructure stuff, but that's nothing. I haven't been outside, as myself, in over a decade. Almost three quarters of my life. I don't know how to do stuff. I don't want to fight. I don't think I'm any example of anything good."
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