"I'm not treating it that way," Neal says. The softness fades, but he doesn't raise his voice. "I'm treating my pain like it matters at all, which is a first for me. My brother died because someone else's pain drove them to act alone. He's not bothered. I am. That's still true. It's as true as the fact that what I did was unacceptable, that I made you suffer, that I made Jedao suffer, and that the fallout of my choices will persist even if I'm not here to see the damage. That is a reality I'm aware of, that I can't be unaware of, and that I am sorry for."
He looks at Hakkai, and stops himself from saying anything else immediately. Stops himself from indulging that small flame of irritation that briefly climbs from his gut to his chest before he stamps it out.
There's so much that feels like it's starting to make sense for the first time. About himself, about Hakkai, even about Jedao. About this ship. About the people on it.
"Your pain, the fact that I caused it, is important to me. My pain is also important to me, as is the fact that Jedao caused it, even if his pain is also what caused that. There's no relative value scale here. No... elevation of one life's tragedies over another. I'm here because what I did was wrong and I know it, and if you needed to hurt me, I was going to let you, if I couldn't talk you down."
Hakkai sets his teacup down much too hard on the counter and starts laughing. There's a wild, harsh edge to the laughter, shuddering just on the edge of becoming a scream.
Your pain is important to me, I was going to let you hurt me--
All of this, everything he's said, and they're still stuck there. Still at the idea that the only thing that matters about Hakkai's pain is whether he's going to hurt Neal about it.
And Neal thinks that constitutes equality--
He presses both hands hard over his face, forcing himself back under control bit by bit, until he trusts himself to speak again.
"As a warden told me when I'd been here for a month," he says through his hands, bitter and suddenly raw, "you're not pushing your weakness onto someone else, Neal. I have no interest in absolving you of what you did by breaking your arm about it.
"Anyway," he adds, deliberately mean, "you don't want me to hurt you. You won't even let me tell you that you did what you did without needing to throw in my face how much you aren't going to feel bad about it."
Neal closes his eyes, shoulders dropping a little as his point, what he was trying to say, glances past as a slap to Hakkai's psyche.
"That isn't what I meant to do. And I'm sorry that I didn't communicate that clearly. I was... trying to explain-- It doesn't matter, really. It doesn't."
He sets his still-half-full glass on the table. "I am sorry. I do feel bad. I don't hate myself, which is a strange enough change in me that I didn't... really register that bringing it up here would be unproductive. I'm not trying to push weakness anywhere, I'm not trying to dismiss your hurt, I'm not trying to prioritize my own."
And that's a part of why he needs to leave. Because no matter what he says, it's never the right thing, and he's tired of causing pain just trying to be understood.
"I am sorry, Hakkai. I am sorry for hurting you, for hurting him, and I'm going to do whatever I can to help... alleviate it. Including shutting the fuck up, if that's what's necessary. I thought we were having a discussion. I thought we were..."
Another deep breath, but he doesn't let it out in a rush. He doesn't want to sound like he's sighing his way through this fresh wave of anxiety and tiredness. "I misunderstood the conversation we were having. And I'm sorry for that, too."
"I wanted to have a discussion-- I'm sorry. Excuse me a moment," Hakkai says, voice veering towards blank polite autopilot for the last few sentences as he turns half away, one hand still pressed hard over his face and his shoulders hunching like a man bracing himself to take a blow.
Eventually, still mostly turned away and not looking at Neal, he murmurs, "I do want to. Have a discussion, that is. But I... can you accept that it's fair that I have never tried to hurt you, and I hate it very much when other people assume I'll be -- violent and vindictive. I don't want you to hate yourself. It's unproductive. But I also wish you wouldn't hear every word I speak with the assumption that I hate you and your only choices are -- are to fight me or to let me hurt you."
"...I feel like the conversations I have that go the worst are the ones where one person's defenses sink claws into the other person's invisible injuries." The softness is back in his voice. "I'm sorry. The-- The things I do, to protect myself, aren't judgments of you personally. Any more than a woman is judging any given man when they cross the street to stay safe instead of taking chances."
"Maybe not," Hakkai murmurs, picking up his teacup and turning it over to check the bottom: he makes a soft sound of relief to see he hadn't damaged it when he slammed it down on the counter. "But it does seem particularly unfair to be treated like a threat when I'm your victim. Invisible injuries aside."
He sets the cup back down and looks up at Neal.
"I... really was trying to help. I do understand what it's like. Thinking you aren't a violent person, and finding out - you simply hadn't been pushed far enough, yet.
"I used to teach preschool," he adds with a little quirk at the corner of his lips.
I can understand why it feels that way, Neal doesn't say. But apparently he's found the line on things he's willing to apologize for. A form of self-protection that he only now, for the first time, understands the reactions to is beyond that line.
"I wanted to be a teacher once," he says, half-smiling at the memory. Another moment, then, with sincerity, "What do you want me to do?"
Hakkai turns towards him, meeting his gaze for the first time in several minutes, and considers the question with equal sincerity.
At last, slowly, he says, "When I called you, it's because I wanted to be sure I understood why you did what you did. I wanted to be sure that you weren't going to lash out at Jedao again. And..."
A tiny shrug.
"I wanted to be sure that things were laid to rest between you and I. Because I've felt, in the past, that we tend to misunderstand each other, and Eiffel deserves to have his friends at peace.
"So, I think I understand why. And I don't think you're going to try to hurt Jedao anymore. As for the last?"
The corner of his mouth quirks a little, too tiny and rueful to be a real smile.
Neal takes a slow, deep breath, and lets out a longer exhale.
"I need to apologize to him in a way he'll hear. If you think that would help. Or stay away from him entirely if you think it wouldn't. I... Whatever my feelings about what happened to Eiffel, Jedao-- I believe absolutely that he didn't want to hurt him. That wasn't what he wanted."
He'd told Eiffel once that sometimes being kind was more important than being right. He still believes it. It wasn't at the fore during this conversation, he also realizes that, but all he can do now is apologize again.
"You can be there, if it would help. If it would help you or him. I don't know what wounds I dug my nails into and I don't have any right to know, but I don't want to make them even deeper."
"I would insist on being there if you did," Hakkai says at once. "For my own peace of mind. Because... I believe that you have good intentions, but I don't want to find, later, that something went wrong and he was hurt again."
He falls silent, looking away, and considering the rest of what Neal had said. At last, quietly, he says, "I don't think you can apologize without... understanding a little more. Mind control is common in the world Jedao comes from: they call it psych surgery. Anyone can be changed in almost any way. Sometimes they know what they have lost. Sometimes they don't. He has seen people he cared for driven to suicide because they were made to be -- compliant. To him, Eiffel changed like that, Eiffel made over in the way his superiors wanted... what he saw was Eiffel suffering to the point of death.
"He's telekinetic. He could sense the device completely and disable it using his powers without, he thought, risking Eiffel in any way. No surgery, no injury, no letting Eiffel continue to suffer.
"Imagine if you saw Eiffel shackled to a torture-machine. Screaming, convulsing, bleeding, with the key on a table right in front of him. You picked up the key, you unlocked the shackle, and the machine shot him through the head so that he fell dead into your arms.
"And then," he adds, "I showed up and said, how dare you murder my best friend, take this gun and shoot yourself just like you shot him. And you hated yourself so much for killing him that you believed I had the right to ask that, so you did. But we're on the Barge, so he came back, and you came back, and I was sorry because I understood later you didn't mean for him to die....
"What could I say to you if that happened? What would make you hear and understand my apology?"
He shakes his head, a tiny terse little gesture, still avoiding meeting Neal's gaze. "I can't speak for Jedao, only for myself. For myself, I believe you want to do better and that you're sorry. I forgive you. For Jedao, you'll have to talk to him about whether he's ready to hear you, but if not... what mostly hurt him is what happened to Eiffel. You encouraged him to hate and hurt himself about it, but he wouldn't have done what you told him to if he didn't already believe you were right.
"So if he's not yet ready to hear you say you were wrong to ask that, and you're sorry, it might be because he's not ready to believe you were wrong. Not because he doesn't believe you're sorry."
Neal closes his eyes as remorse and sympathy roll over him in a crushing tidal flow. "Fuck."
He looks out the window again, expression bleak and distant. "I... Maybe it will help if I tell him about some of the-- the people I've felt responsible for hurting. For-- if not killing, then... driving them toward death."
A soft exhale. "I think it'll also help that I understand now why the things he said with good intentions cut me in places I didn't know I was trying to protect. That I get why... it hurts people when I assume what I do for my own sake."
He smudges his thumb over the tabletop lightly, smearing a drop of condensation from the tea's steam. "Thank you," Neal says, softly. "For helping me understand that. You're the first person who has."
"Maybe," Hakkai grants, quietly. "But it wasn't the first time he's been responsible for the death of someone he loved, either. It's just... it just hurts. Regardless of how much anyone understands, it just hurts for a while.
"So I suppose what I'm saying is, you can ask him, but if he can't hear you yet it doesn't necessarily mean your apology wasn't good enough or he hates you in particular."
He glances up at Neal at last, letting the corner of his mouth tug wryly up in something a little like a smile. "Not any more than it means you really think I'm a murderous monster, just because you can't stop being on guard for the moment I'll lunge for your throat. Thank you for... being willing to understand why that stings. Not everyone would have listened."
He tips the used tea leaves out into their little jar, steam curling up from the tap as the sink water warms and his hands move automatically to wash the teapot clean. Over the rush of water, he adds, almost apologetically, "...When you threw up. It was because you don't like to see someone hurt, wasn't it? Not because Jedao bleeds black and won't die from a knife through his neck?"
Because it might help Jedao, to hear that Neal wasn't disgusted by his body, but Hakkai does want to make sure that's actually true, first. He's never quite sure about humans.
There's a confused moment where he has to remind himself what Hakkai is even talking about, with Jedao's blood.
"The-- Jesus, no, it wasn't because of the way he bled, it was me realizing... me seeing him do that to himself and knowing it was my fault, that I wanted it to happen, even for a minute."
"You should tell him that," Hakkai says, turns off the water, and sets the pot upside down in the sink to drip dry. The click of ceramic is loud in the sudden quiet. "He's more used to that kind of reaction to his body than that kind of reaction to violence, so I think he did... assume."
And that, unlike everything else in this mess, is straightforward enough that Hakkai thinks saying it can't do anything but help.
"I am... notoriously bad at violence. At home, anyway. And amongst my friends." A soft, ironic smile. He shakes his head.
"No, it wasn't his body. I'm mercifully well past dramatic reactions to differences in anatomy."
He pauses, starts to speak, hesitates again, and then commits. "I am sorry for hurting you. Both because of what I did to you and to Jedao, but also because of... the way our particular issues seem to align. I'll work on it. It's not you. It's going to take me time, but if something I do in conversation ever hurts for that reason--please tell me, if you can. Because I promise it's not you, and I'll say it as many times as you need to hear it."
"I guessed as much," Hakkai murmurs. "You don't have the air of someone -- comfortable with violence." Which Jedao, he's sure, can spot as well as Hakkai, but expectations get in the way of observations.
It's harder, to answer Neal's other offer, and he hesitates for a long time before he speaks. Still, even hesitating, he doesn't look away; his gaze lingers thoughtfully on Neal's face.
At last, he says, "I'll tell you. Or remind you, at least; but I think hearing it once will do for a while. I'm not so sensitive usually. It's just--" His smile is small, and a little bitter, but genuine; he shrugs. "It's been a long week."
Neal's smile is pained at best. "Had a few of those myself. I'm going to... wait, to talk to him, until I see him out and about again. Jedao. I don't want to push an apology on him when he's not ready to be around people at all. Are you usually... with him? In his cabin? If I were to stop by later?"
"Our cabin," Hakkai admits with another little hitch of one shoulder. "We've lived together these last six months. So -- yes, unless I'm working, you'll find me there."
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He looks at Hakkai, and stops himself from saying anything else immediately. Stops himself from indulging that small flame of irritation that briefly climbs from his gut to his chest before he stamps it out.
There's so much that feels like it's starting to make sense for the first time. About himself, about Hakkai, even about Jedao. About this ship. About the people on it.
"Your pain, the fact that I caused it, is important to me. My pain is also important to me, as is the fact that Jedao caused it, even if his pain is also what caused that. There's no relative value scale here. No... elevation of one life's tragedies over another. I'm here because what I did was wrong and I know it, and if you needed to hurt me, I was going to let you, if I couldn't talk you down."
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Your pain is important to me, I was going to let you hurt me--
All of this, everything he's said, and they're still stuck there. Still at the idea that the only thing that matters about Hakkai's pain is whether he's going to hurt Neal about it.
And Neal thinks that constitutes equality--
He presses both hands hard over his face, forcing himself back under control bit by bit, until he trusts himself to speak again.
"As a warden told me when I'd been here for a month," he says through his hands, bitter and suddenly raw, "you're not pushing your weakness onto someone else, Neal. I have no interest in absolving you of what you did by breaking your arm about it.
"Anyway," he adds, deliberately mean, "you don't want me to hurt you. You won't even let me tell you that you did what you did without needing to throw in my face how much you aren't going to feel bad about it."
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"That isn't what I meant to do. And I'm sorry that I didn't communicate that clearly. I was... trying to explain-- It doesn't matter, really. It doesn't."
He sets his still-half-full glass on the table. "I am sorry. I do feel bad. I don't hate myself, which is a strange enough change in me that I didn't... really register that bringing it up here would be unproductive. I'm not trying to push weakness anywhere, I'm not trying to dismiss your hurt, I'm not trying to prioritize my own."
And that's a part of why he needs to leave. Because no matter what he says, it's never the right thing, and he's tired of causing pain just trying to be understood.
"I am sorry, Hakkai. I am sorry for hurting you, for hurting him, and I'm going to do whatever I can to help... alleviate it. Including shutting the fuck up, if that's what's necessary. I thought we were having a discussion. I thought we were..."
Another deep breath, but he doesn't let it out in a rush. He doesn't want to sound like he's sighing his way through this fresh wave of anxiety and tiredness. "I misunderstood the conversation we were having. And I'm sorry for that, too."
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Eventually, still mostly turned away and not looking at Neal, he murmurs, "I do want to. Have a discussion, that is. But I... can you accept that it's fair that I have never tried to hurt you, and I hate it very much when other people assume I'll be -- violent and vindictive. I don't want you to hate yourself. It's unproductive. But I also wish you wouldn't hear every word I speak with the assumption that I hate you and your only choices are -- are to fight me or to let me hurt you."
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That explains-- That explains a lot, actually.
"...I feel like the conversations I have that go the worst are the ones where one person's defenses sink claws into the other person's invisible injuries." The softness is back in his voice. "I'm sorry. The-- The things I do, to protect myself, aren't judgments of you personally. Any more than a woman is judging any given man when they cross the street to stay safe instead of taking chances."
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He sets the cup back down and looks up at Neal.
"I... really was trying to help. I do understand what it's like. Thinking you aren't a violent person, and finding out - you simply hadn't been pushed far enough, yet.
"I used to teach preschool," he adds with a little quirk at the corner of his lips.
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"I wanted to be a teacher once," he says, half-smiling at the memory. Another moment, then, with sincerity, "What do you want me to do?"
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At last, slowly, he says, "When I called you, it's because I wanted to be sure I understood why you did what you did. I wanted to be sure that you weren't going to lash out at Jedao again. And..."
A tiny shrug.
"I wanted to be sure that things were laid to rest between you and I. Because I've felt, in the past, that we tend to misunderstand each other, and Eiffel deserves to have his friends at peace.
"So, I think I understand why. And I don't think you're going to try to hurt Jedao anymore. As for the last?"
The corner of his mouth quirks a little, too tiny and rueful to be a real smile.
"What do you need for things to be at rest?"
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"I need to apologize to him in a way he'll hear. If you think that would help. Or stay away from him entirely if you think it wouldn't. I... Whatever my feelings about what happened to Eiffel, Jedao-- I believe absolutely that he didn't want to hurt him. That wasn't what he wanted."
He'd told Eiffel once that sometimes being kind was more important than being right. He still believes it. It wasn't at the fore during this conversation, he also realizes that, but all he can do now is apologize again.
"You can be there, if it would help. If it would help you or him. I don't know what wounds I dug my nails into and I don't have any right to know, but I don't want to make them even deeper."
cw discussion of suicide
He falls silent, looking away, and considering the rest of what Neal had said. At last, quietly, he says, "I don't think you can apologize without... understanding a little more. Mind control is common in the world Jedao comes from: they call it psych surgery. Anyone can be changed in almost any way. Sometimes they know what they have lost. Sometimes they don't. He has seen people he cared for driven to suicide because they were made to be -- compliant. To him, Eiffel changed like that, Eiffel made over in the way his superiors wanted... what he saw was Eiffel suffering to the point of death.
"He's telekinetic. He could sense the device completely and disable it using his powers without, he thought, risking Eiffel in any way. No surgery, no injury, no letting Eiffel continue to suffer.
"Imagine if you saw Eiffel shackled to a torture-machine. Screaming, convulsing, bleeding, with the key on a table right in front of him. You picked up the key, you unlocked the shackle, and the machine shot him through the head so that he fell dead into your arms.
"And then," he adds, "I showed up and said, how dare you murder my best friend, take this gun and shoot yourself just like you shot him. And you hated yourself so much for killing him that you believed I had the right to ask that, so you did. But we're on the Barge, so he came back, and you came back, and I was sorry because I understood later you didn't mean for him to die....
"What could I say to you if that happened? What would make you hear and understand my apology?"
He shakes his head, a tiny terse little gesture, still avoiding meeting Neal's gaze. "I can't speak for Jedao, only for myself. For myself, I believe you want to do better and that you're sorry. I forgive you. For Jedao, you'll have to talk to him about whether he's ready to hear you, but if not... what mostly hurt him is what happened to Eiffel. You encouraged him to hate and hurt himself about it, but he wouldn't have done what you told him to if he didn't already believe you were right.
"So if he's not yet ready to hear you say you were wrong to ask that, and you're sorry, it might be because he's not ready to believe you were wrong. Not because he doesn't believe you're sorry."
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He looks out the window again, expression bleak and distant. "I... Maybe it will help if I tell him about some of the-- the people I've felt responsible for hurting. For-- if not killing, then... driving them toward death."
A soft exhale. "I think it'll also help that I understand now why the things he said with good intentions cut me in places I didn't know I was trying to protect. That I get why... it hurts people when I assume what I do for my own sake."
He smudges his thumb over the tabletop lightly, smearing a drop of condensation from the tea's steam. "Thank you," Neal says, softly. "For helping me understand that. You're the first person who has."
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"So I suppose what I'm saying is, you can ask him, but if he can't hear you yet it doesn't necessarily mean your apology wasn't good enough or he hates you in particular."
He glances up at Neal at last, letting the corner of his mouth tug wryly up in something a little like a smile. "Not any more than it means you really think I'm a murderous monster, just because you can't stop being on guard for the moment I'll lunge for your throat. Thank you for... being willing to understand why that stings. Not everyone would have listened."
He tips the used tea leaves out into their little jar, steam curling up from the tap as the sink water warms and his hands move automatically to wash the teapot clean. Over the rush of water, he adds, almost apologetically, "...When you threw up. It was because you don't like to see someone hurt, wasn't it? Not because Jedao bleeds black and won't die from a knife through his neck?"
Because it might help Jedao, to hear that Neal wasn't disgusted by his body, but Hakkai does want to make sure that's actually true, first. He's never quite sure about humans.
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"The-- Jesus, no, it wasn't because of the way he bled, it was me realizing... me seeing him do that to himself and knowing it was my fault, that I wanted it to happen, even for a minute."
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And that, unlike everything else in this mess, is straightforward enough that Hakkai thinks saying it can't do anything but help.
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"No, it wasn't his body. I'm mercifully well past dramatic reactions to differences in anatomy."
He pauses, starts to speak, hesitates again, and then commits. "I am sorry for hurting you. Both because of what I did to you and to Jedao, but also because of... the way our particular issues seem to align. I'll work on it. It's not you. It's going to take me time, but if something I do in conversation ever hurts for that reason--please tell me, if you can. Because I promise it's not you, and I'll say it as many times as you need to hear it."
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It's harder, to answer Neal's other offer, and he hesitates for a long time before he speaks. Still, even hesitating, he doesn't look away; his gaze lingers thoughtfully on Neal's face.
At last, he says, "I'll tell you. Or remind you, at least; but I think hearing it once will do for a while. I'm not so sensitive usually. It's just--" His smile is small, and a little bitter, but genuine; he shrugs. "It's been a long week."
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