"Okay. So. These are not in order, because I did not let myself obsess over this, but within the general area of troubleshooting: Was it the conversational proximity to the study of magic, in particular, that made it upsetting? Do you think it's not true, that you and Fives have different ideas of what's very bad, or not relevant? Was is wrong to say because of context, or because of assumptions it makes or you think it makes, or is it cruel generally? Are there similar statements you would react to the same way, or differently? Do you feel like people infantilized you by saying similar things before? Was it insulting because you're fundamentally superior to us in some way that presumably led to your selection even before expert training, and that makes it inappropriate for Fives not to be scared of things you've survived? Do you think he's a sheltered child who doesn't understand the real world? Because he is, in some ways. He's thirteen, and I'm a dirty old man. There are plenty of things about your life he doesn't understand. Which ones should we be more aware of to not fuck up like this again? Was there something I said, in particular, this morning, that set you off badly, or was it just the experience of not being able to make yourself understood to someone who was upset with you? Is there something I can do to make miscommunication easier in the future, or did we handle this okay?"
This is Jedao's idea of not obsessing over something. Thinking about it actually reminded him of troubleshooting a game in the final design stages: track the glitches back to their sources, find the pieces that don't work. The mindset wasn't as difficult to move to people as he might have expected.
"Feel free to start anywhere that sounds helpful."
He listens to this barrage, and gives in to the urge to lean back, to rest his palms on the bed and stretch his spine and get just a couple of inches of more space, like that'll make all the difference.
"Of course he's got a higher threshhold for what constitutes something horrifying than I do. Both of you do."
That isn't where this starts.
"And I'm definitely not fundamentally superior to you. The only mistake I made was getting into this argument in the first place, because there's just no way out of it. I think the things I'm talking about were very bad, and you guys think he wouldn't see them that way."
"Those are different things, though. Whether things are bad and how we see them. I mean - I don't think the Feast of Dust was very bad. Wrong, absolutely. Terrifying, specifically because of what it meant for the memetic security of the barge. Intellectually, morally, I know that should never happen to anyone. But gut reaction - not very bad, as remembrances go. And my very bad gauge is sort of broken even compared to other people from the Hexarchate."
He picks at the edges of his gloves, even though there are no frayed threads at all.
"I feel like I'm being an asshole, trying to - prove it, or something. But it's like - it feels like, to me, that you halfway agree with us and halfway don't. And if we guess wrong we hurt you. So maybe we shouldn't guess at all? But to me that seems infantilizing. To just never talk about it. And maybe there's no way out of the stupid is-this-isn't-this parts, but. Why - why is insulting, for him to disagree with you about that? Why does it imply things?"
"Because it follows that anything I've ever known just isn't ever going to be that big a deal to him."
He says, at last, and has to get off the bed, and away from him, busying himself finding a teacup, going to fill it with water.
"Not rape, not death, not mutilated souls- and shit, this is why I hate this conversation so much. I don't actually want to talk to either of you about any of that, especially not if you're just going to look at me smugly like that's nothing, cadet. Or worse, like oh, look at the little civilian, exposed to things only a soldier should see. It's just a nasty little trap where I either flay myself, or cede the argument. So please, for the love of fucking God, take the victory. I'm wrong about magic. None of it is that bad."
He shifts, just a little, at mutilated souls, a winch tightening the knots in his shoulders.
"I don't think you're wrong about magic," he says carefully, slowly. "And I don't think it - has to follow. There's - this reminds me of the thing that you hate people doing to you? Where they assume you're being condescending, just because you know things they don't. But with suffering instead of rocket science, which, yes, is fucking awful to do the scratch work on. We know some things you don't, about us. And you know things we don't about magic. And it doesn't mean the things you've been through don't matter. And it doesn't mean we think that. The dismissive things."
"Then why am I not allowed to say 'some of magic is very bad' and you just answer 'wow, okay, I respect you and I believe you, I'll be careful and listen to what you're telling me.'"
He wonders, looking at the ground.
"I know that your reality is unfathomably twisted, and I know his involves senseless death on a scale unheard of in my history. But I'm not going to talk to you about my life if it comes with this asterisk, footnote 'very bad in Quentin terms, not in real terms.' So yeah. I bit his nose off. I'll just shut the fuck up next time, because it's objectively true."
He means to say I believe you, or maybe, perhaps contradictory, there are no real terms, but what he says first, in a tight fast ugly burst, is, "I'm afraid of the dark."
There's a hot blush slightly blotchy across his cheeks, and his throat works for a moment, silently, as he tries to say anything else, and also tries not to throw up, which feels very abruptly possible. He takes short, careful, deliberate breaths.
"Like a fucking two-year-old," he elaborates, harshly, the verbal equivalent of digging his nails into his palms, which he is also doing. He swallows. He swallows again. This wasn't where he meant to go -
"There aren't real terms. Or even soldier's terms. I've got a weak spot the size of a white sun for children being hurt, and Fives - you can just guess how much he doesn't." He breathes through his nose.
"I believe you. That there's bad things. You're right, that I was being dismissive, I'm sorry. I really should know better. But I don't think Fives really - you told me, he said that to you, in the context of you warning him about magic. If you asked him what the context was - I mean, he might just stare and you and recite the conversation, because what even is context. But I think he heard you in the context of telling him he might be scared enough to back down and not try something. Anything. That he might not be up to the task he'd been set. And he'd go through a lot of very bad things by any standard before that, or even admitting that, which - would make it come across even more terribly, right? The 'of course it'll be fine' that doesn't even feel optional to him. I don't think you need to shut up next time. I just -"
He unclenches his hands. Breathes. He has a sense of what he would ask, but not the words for it.
"I forgot that he's one of those people who is always trying to do the right thing no matter what, always. And wouldn't know an insinuated criticism if it- well, bit his nose off."
He allows, mollified, immediately and utterly, by the apology, the concession. He comes back over, crawls up to him, into his space, to touch his fingertips, lace their hands together, sit again, knee to knee.
"I know you know more than me. I know you've seen worse than me. I know you're both hardened in a way I can't comprehend. But I feel insignificant all the time, on board the boat, not that bad, not that big a deal- like, I can't get myself to go to PTSD group any more, because people there have real problems. I can usually talk to you guys. If I'm losing my mind about this, it's because I don't want to lose that."
He squeezes Quentin's hand, and keeps breathing steadily. He still can't believe he just said -
Maybe it will be better if he doesn't think about it.
"All I really want. Is. For you to try and do a double-take the next time you think he's insinuating anything." The fingertips of his free hand trace over Quentin's captive knuckles.
"I don't think insignificant is a - meaningful word. For people. I mean - that heretic, last week, by any standards of history or impact or uniqueness, was insignificant. One of billions over a thousand years. But he was real and his loss mattered and you know that, right down in your marrow where you can't shut it out. And I would - submit to you, that an arbitrary threshold of pain is not the only ennobling quality of human life, or the only moral standard for consideration of human problems. I refuse to believe that, and I don't think you really do either. Not when it's anybody but you."
"And to be fair, the first words out of my mouth to him were 'I don't think you meant it that way, because I've never known you to be insulting, but.'"
He does know.
"Of course the 'but' with Fives, the shadow of a criticism, is like a bomb going off. So I'll figure out how to swallow it whole. I probably would have, if it weren't the shittiest week."
"To be fair," he echoes, quietly warm, which is something like agreement.
"I don't mean to be asking you to swallow it. He wants not to imply the wrong thing - he doesn't need to be always protected either. But if he gets criticism and then doesn't understand it, he frets. I did say, you'd probably had people dismiss you before, or say what you'd been through didn't matter, for all sorts of lousy reasons. I got some of the details wrong, but- I wish I could do his face for you, he was so bewildered, that people would do that. Think that. I think that's why some of this was so - hard. To get through. I can't imagine not thinking you're spectacular, even if I've got weird blind spots."
He laughs, a little, voiceless, off-kilter breaths. "I don't even know what that means."
He asks, arrested by this, charmed- he shouldn't hinge his self-worth on what other people say, but it's just- nice, to not have to do inner-strength-despite-what-people-think-of-you for a minute. To be spectacular in the eyes of someone whose opinion means the world to him.
It's too self-indulgent to contemplate for long, so he shakes it off, and squeezes his hand tighter.
"I mean you're allowed to be scared of the dark. And I might kiss you, if that's okay? Because you are."
"I do, really," he says softly, like he's not entirely sure how it happened himself. Quiet wonder.
His hand squeezes Quentin's back when he mention's Jedao's particular confession, tight enough to hurt a little, if only for a moment. It's not warning, just a sharp, reflexive clutch as he swallows, as his eyes dart away, and then skitter back.
"It probably felt like not being able to escape from one of the group meetings," Jedao observes, even if Quentin wasn't obsessively watching on purpose like he was.
"How would you learn to stop doing something you know you shouldn't do, but that people invite you to do all the time? Without advertising all over the place that you have a problem."
Jedao hasn't tended toward those particular kinds of problems, but he certainly understands not being able to advertise a problem.
"...well, historically, I would run away and join the army." Not precisely convenient at the moment. "If you want to avoid talking about anything, you want to have alternatives ready to deflect onto."
He asks, lifting his head back up to watch him. Absent guile, this just wouldn't have occurred to Quentin as an option. Jedao is the right person to ask.
Jedao gazes around. They really do have a shortage of convenient alternative social options on the ship.
"It doesn't really matter. The point is to have something you practice to say 'yes this other thing,' instead of 'no, not that' - like on the simple side, 'I really want to see the sky, can we go to the enclosure instead?' Or say you start decorating your room. You decide what you might like, you pick some colors, whatever. Stock up some equipment in a corner, trays and rollers. But you don't actually work on it much. And then when someone invites you to the pub, you say, 'oh, actually, I was going to work on fixing up my room tonight - but I'd love to see you, want to come help?' And maybe, if it's just been a disaster and that sounds like a weird plan, you throw in some flavor, 'it's just really soothing to work with my hands sometimes.' And they say 'oh, okay, what kind of stuff are you doing?' And when they show up you have something to do that doesn't take very much concentration but also keeps you sort of socially occupied while you talk, that takes the same place that drinks would. And if someone says 'hey, haven't you been painting your room for like a year now, what's up with that?' You say 'fuck you, we're not on a timetable in space prison, and it needs three coats,' and while they're distracted I stab them a lot. Something like that."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 01:58 am (UTC)"So, my impulse is to let you go first, but if going first is hard, I also have questions."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 02:02 am (UTC)He wonders, sitting down on the bed too, cross legged and facing him, hands going to rest on his knees. He seems prepared, actually, to face them.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 02:21 am (UTC)This is Jedao's idea of not obsessing over something. Thinking about it actually reminded him of troubleshooting a game in the final design stages: track the glitches back to their sources, find the pieces that don't work. The mindset wasn't as difficult to move to people as he might have expected.
"Feel free to start anywhere that sounds helpful."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 02:35 am (UTC)"Of course he's got a higher threshhold for what constitutes something horrifying than I do. Both of you do."
That isn't where this starts.
"And I'm definitely not fundamentally superior to you. The only mistake I made was getting into this argument in the first place, because there's just no way out of it. I think the things I'm talking about were very bad, and you guys think he wouldn't see them that way."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 02:55 am (UTC)"Those are different things, though. Whether things are bad and how we see them. I mean - I don't think the Feast of Dust was very bad. Wrong, absolutely. Terrifying, specifically because of what it meant for the memetic security of the barge. Intellectually, morally, I know that should never happen to anyone. But gut reaction - not very bad, as remembrances go. And my very bad gauge is sort of broken even compared to other people from the Hexarchate."
He picks at the edges of his gloves, even though there are no frayed threads at all.
"I feel like I'm being an asshole, trying to - prove it, or something. But it's like - it feels like, to me, that you halfway agree with us and halfway don't. And if we guess wrong we hurt you. So maybe we shouldn't guess at all? But to me that seems infantilizing. To just never talk about it. And maybe there's no way out of the stupid is-this-isn't-this parts, but. Why - why is insulting, for him to disagree with you about that? Why does it imply things?"
cw reference to sexual assault
Date: 2018-03-24 03:14 am (UTC)He says, at last, and has to get off the bed, and away from him, busying himself finding a teacup, going to fill it with water.
"Not rape, not death, not mutilated souls- and shit, this is why I hate this conversation so much. I don't actually want to talk to either of you about any of that, especially not if you're just going to look at me smugly like that's nothing, cadet. Or worse, like oh, look at the little civilian, exposed to things only a soldier should see. It's just a nasty little trap where I either flay myself, or cede the argument. So please, for the love of fucking God, take the victory. I'm wrong about magic. None of it is that bad."
cw reference to sexual assault
Date: 2018-03-24 03:37 am (UTC)"I don't think you're wrong about magic," he says carefully, slowly. "And I don't think it - has to follow. There's - this reminds me of the thing that you hate people doing to you? Where they assume you're being condescending, just because you know things they don't. But with suffering instead of rocket science, which, yes, is fucking awful to do the scratch work on. We know some things you don't, about us. And you know things we don't about magic. And it doesn't mean the things you've been through don't matter. And it doesn't mean we think that. The dismissive things."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 03:50 am (UTC)He wonders, looking at the ground.
"I know that your reality is unfathomably twisted, and I know his involves senseless death on a scale unheard of in my history. But I'm not going to talk to you about my life if it comes with this asterisk, footnote 'very bad in Quentin terms, not in real terms.' So yeah. I bit his nose off. I'll just shut the fuck up next time, because it's objectively true."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 04:21 am (UTC)There's a hot blush slightly blotchy across his cheeks, and his throat works for a moment, silently, as he tries to say anything else, and also tries not to throw up, which feels very abruptly possible. He takes short, careful, deliberate breaths.
"Like a fucking two-year-old," he elaborates, harshly, the verbal equivalent of digging his nails into his palms, which he is also doing. He swallows. He swallows again. This wasn't where he meant to go -
"There aren't real terms. Or even soldier's terms. I've got a weak spot the size of a white sun for children being hurt, and Fives - you can just guess how much he doesn't." He breathes through his nose.
"I believe you. That there's bad things. You're right, that I was being dismissive, I'm sorry. I really should know better. But I don't think Fives really - you told me, he said that to you, in the context of you warning him about magic. If you asked him what the context was - I mean, he might just stare and you and recite the conversation, because what even is context. But I think he heard you in the context of telling him he might be scared enough to back down and not try something. Anything. That he might not be up to the task he'd been set. And he'd go through a lot of very bad things by any standard before that, or even admitting that, which - would make it come across even more terribly, right? The 'of course it'll be fine' that doesn't even feel optional to him. I don't think you need to shut up next time. I just -"
He unclenches his hands. Breathes. He has a sense of what he would ask, but not the words for it.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 04:39 am (UTC)He allows, mollified, immediately and utterly, by the apology, the concession. He comes back over, crawls up to him, into his space, to touch his fingertips, lace their hands together, sit again, knee to knee.
"I know you know more than me. I know you've seen worse than me. I know you're both hardened in a way I can't comprehend. But I feel insignificant all the time, on board the boat, not that bad, not that big a deal- like, I can't get myself to go to PTSD group any more, because people there have real problems. I can usually talk to you guys. If I'm losing my mind about this, it's because I don't want to lose that."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 05:01 am (UTC)Maybe it will be better if he doesn't think about it.
"All I really want. Is. For you to try and do a double-take the next time you think he's insinuating anything." The fingertips of his free hand trace over Quentin's captive knuckles.
"I don't think insignificant is a - meaningful word. For people. I mean - that heretic, last week, by any standards of history or impact or uniqueness, was insignificant. One of billions over a thousand years. But he was real and his loss mattered and you know that, right down in your marrow where you can't shut it out. And I would - submit to you, that an arbitrary threshold of pain is not the only ennobling quality of human life, or the only moral standard for consideration of human problems. I refuse to believe that, and I don't think you really do either. Not when it's anybody but you."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 05:12 am (UTC)He does know.
"Of course the 'but' with Fives, the shadow of a criticism, is like a bomb going off. So I'll figure out how to swallow it whole. I probably would have, if it weren't the shittiest week."
And the but for now;
"I'm glad you're human, you know."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 05:37 am (UTC)"I don't mean to be asking you to swallow it. He wants not to imply the wrong thing - he doesn't need to be always protected either. But if he gets criticism and then doesn't understand it, he frets. I did say, you'd probably had people dismiss you before, or say what you'd been through didn't matter, for all sorts of lousy reasons. I got some of the details wrong, but- I wish I could do his face for you, he was so bewildered, that people would do that. Think that. I think that's why some of this was so - hard. To get through. I can't imagine not thinking you're spectacular, even if I've got weird blind spots."
He laughs, a little, voiceless, off-kilter breaths. "I don't even know what that means."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 05:50 am (UTC)He asks, arrested by this, charmed- he shouldn't hinge his self-worth on what other people say, but it's just- nice, to not have to do inner-strength-despite-what-people-think-of-you for a minute. To be spectacular in the eyes of someone whose opinion means the world to him.
It's too self-indulgent to contemplate for long, so he shakes it off, and squeezes his hand tighter.
"I mean you're allowed to be scared of the dark. And I might kiss you, if that's okay? Because you are."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 06:21 am (UTC)His hand squeezes Quentin's back when he mention's Jedao's particular confession, tight enough to hurt a little, if only for a moment. It's not warning, just a sharp, reflexive clutch as he swallows, as his eyes dart away, and then skitter back.
"Okay."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 06:33 am (UTC)"Thank you for talking to me. Even when I really didn't want to."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 06:36 am (UTC)"I don't want to just...manage you. I want to actually get things right."
Partly because Quentin is worth that; partly because Jedao is just so very tired of the former.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 06:41 am (UTC)He says, tilting down, resting his forehead on Jedao's shoulder, shutting his eyes.
"Can I ask for your advice about something that does have to do with people management, and with the whole thing this week?"
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 06:48 am (UTC)"As a Shuos, I'm professionally obliged to be terrible about privacy. The more eyes the better. But I'll try, if you want?"
cw alcoholism
Date: 2018-03-24 06:50 am (UTC)He says, with a snort.
"Like all the people I know. And then at the end of it, a friend of mine who I like a lot, asked if I'd like to meet in the bar for a drink."
cw alcoholism
Date: 2018-03-24 06:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 07:04 am (UTC)Because just up and saying it is out.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 07:10 am (UTC)"...well, historically, I would run away and join the army." Not precisely convenient at the moment. "If you want to avoid talking about anything, you want to have alternatives ready to deflect onto."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 09:57 am (UTC)He asks, lifting his head back up to watch him. Absent guile, this just wouldn't have occurred to Quentin as an option. Jedao is the right person to ask.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 10:14 am (UTC)"It doesn't really matter. The point is to have something you practice to say 'yes this other thing,' instead of 'no, not that' - like on the simple side, 'I really want to see the sky, can we go to the enclosure instead?' Or say you start decorating your room. You decide what you might like, you pick some colors, whatever. Stock up some equipment in a corner, trays and rollers. But you don't actually work on it much. And then when someone invites you to the pub, you say, 'oh, actually, I was going to work on fixing up my room tonight - but I'd love to see you, want to come help?' And maybe, if it's just been a disaster and that sounds like a weird plan, you throw in some flavor, 'it's just really soothing to work with my hands sometimes.' And they say 'oh, okay, what kind of stuff are you doing?' And when they show up you have something to do that doesn't take very much concentration but also keeps you sort of socially occupied while you talk, that takes the same place that drinks would. And if someone says 'hey, haven't you been painting your room for like a year now, what's up with that?' You say 'fuck you, we're not on a timetable in space prison, and it needs three coats,' and while they're distracted I stab them a lot. Something like that."
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