[And he's there a little more than five minutes later, dressed not in his usual robes for once, and instead donning something similarly cut but with fewer layers. He still favors his own robes and those made in similar style when on mission, but more recently he's been branching out into something a little more casual on the station.
When he gets to the door, he enters, assuming Itachi is already inside.]
（ when he enters, they are in what looks to be a training ground, numerous trees embedded with the scars of simulated combat. he's sitting on a stump, hands laced. notably, his ring is absent.
wei wuxian gets a nod, and itachi gestures him to an adjacent stump. ）
[With a slight smile in greeting, Wei Wuxian pads over to take a seat on the stump offered and then lets out a long weathered sigh, the smile slipping from his face even as he tilts his head back to look at the false sky.]
I wanted to talk to you about Kirigan again. About the conversation I had with him in Xrisora. I know I'd mentioned it, but it wasn't the right place then to go into any kind of detail.
I know why people here like him. [He starts, and then shakes his head, knowing he's skirting what he needs to say.] I said it to you before, he's very good. I felt myself falling for his act even having the advantage of knowing about him, and I...[He pauses for a moment.]
He told me more about Grisha and about how they're treated. I don't have any reason to believe it was a lie. That'd make it way too easy, wouldn't it, if it was all just fake? Easy enough to check with Mal or Alina. [He'd figured out it was Alina in Xrisora thanks to some comments made by Alina herself, and since he knows Itachi was already aware of her identity, he sees no reason to conceal it.]
People hate and fear their power. In the past they've been hunted and killed simply for what they are. [The wry smile on his lips is hollow and he knows Itachi will hear the echoes of Wei Wuxian's story in Kirigan's words, the same way Wei Wuxian had.
His eyes find the ground and for a long moment he goes quiet. Eventually, he speaks again.]
I felt like a hypocrite. You said it before, we don't know the full story and that both you and I....there are people who would feel like Alina and Mal about us. [He lifts both hands to scrub at his face, pulling them down until they cradle his chin.]
Except he told his whole story all about how they were persecuted and imprisoned and then he asked me how I felt about it. [Not in those words exactly, but close enough. He snorts and it's humorless, tired eyes finding Itachi's.]
（ he listens in silence, unmoving. his eyes do not leave wei wuxian's face, though they are without the sharingan's lethally luminous red. when he is finished — ）
Clumsy.
（ yes, that is his entire judgment on what is being said — that kirigan was clumsy to have made such a slip. ）
But he has had several hundred years to perfect his story. It is possible he has forgotten how to retain the human resonance to such a thing.
[It's amazing how much the single word response shatters his doubts, drawing a warmer smile to his expression. A single word and he feels sane again, because it's all the validation he needed to know that Itachi heard it too. That it wasn't just his own mind jumping to conclusion or finding what he expected to find.
Unable to help himself he lets out a soft chuckle and shakes his head.
He's so glad he has Itachi—that he isn't working through this alone.]
You don't know how much I needed to hear that from you. I was worried I was overthinking it. I thought I was seeing calculation where maybe it was just a poor choice of words. [His instincts had been screaming at him that it was more than that, but in the face of a story like the one he'd told, he'd known he was compromised and not at his best.]
You're right. My instincts were right. It was clumsy. He was feeling me out. He wanted to know if I'd bought in.
Yes. He tried similarly with me, but he was distracted by other matters. It frustrated him that he could not place my name to a face aboard the Ximilia. He kept circling back to it. The need for that control and knowledge... telling.
（ he had been the one to advocate for the man, to insist that there were elements to his story they were simply not privy to. that remains true, but his sense of... compassion, perhaps, is diminished in the wake of kirigan's attitude. certainly, the man is damaged, has suffered, but there is a cold calculation lurking just beneath the pathos. ）
[Laughing, Wei Wuxian shakes his head, trying to imagine Kirigan's frustration. Itachi probably wasn't even smug about it.]
That must have driven him crazy. And it is telling. He wants control and he wants people to feel for him. I think it'd bother him less to know that someone didn't empathize with him than to not know where they stand.
There was one other slip in our conversation that I noticed.
When he was telling me about the horrors his people faced and I wasn't surprised at the cruelty of mankind, he said he'd hoped other places weren't like his home. That it was just his world where people behaved like that. [Wei Wuxian rolls his eyes.]
An awfully naïve sentiment for a general to have, don't you think? Or it would be if he meant it and it wasn't just another attempt to craft an image of himself as good.
（ the reason kirigan thinks he can behave as such is because it has worked for him in the past. is he unaccustomed to facing men who are accustomed to such duplicity, or is his power and title enough to discourage people digging beneath the charming façade?
he reaches up, drags his fingers along the sharp line of his jaw, and then: ）
He is accustomed to being powerful. Not always — but long enough that he has grown to expect the stage it sets. You and I understand power in a way that permits us to look past the veil. That is all.
[Wei Wuxian nods in agreement at that assessment. It makes sense given what they know of him and how he's behaved with both of them. While there must be others here who've seen through his façade and have their suspicions about the man, he and Itachi also have the benefit of Mal and Alina's knowledge.]
I'm like him. [He admits, soft and quiet.] Not entirely, I know, but the anger he felt for his people...I know that feeling. I thought maybe that's why he slipped. Maybe the things he'd done had been in a moment of unthinking bitter anger and resentment and that's...I understand it.
I know what it is to live with mistakes that cost people their lives. But if he regretted what he did in creating the Fold...I couldn't see it. Not if his aim was my sympathy. [Not when Wei Wuxian would actively spurn sympathy for his mistakes and Kirigan courted it.]
The creation of the Fold was also some time ago, yes? It's entirely possible that in that time, he's buried the guilt and chosen to see it only as a necessary evil in his own mind. He is not so far removed from human that his emotions are indecipherable. People justify their own actions as a self-protective measure.
（ speaking from experience? haha, no, he would never try to justify himself in that way, nor has he ever shied away from the horrors wrought beneath his hands.
but he understands why one might be tempted to try. ）
Mmmm. [It's definitely a consideration, but not one that makes him feel any sympathy for the man.]
Maybe. [He's silent for a moment after that, lost in thought.]
I work better when I have someone to talk to. I think better. Especially about things like this. [Complicated and too close to home.] When it comes to him, I get too inside of my head. It's all too familiar.
[And there's a part of him now that he knows more of Kirigan's story, that wants to believe he's really like them. Someone with a past full of terrible choices. Someone with regret and pain, who would take it back if he could. Someone who was forced into those choices by terrible circumstances.]
（ he gives wei wuxian a sideways glance, head canted to one side. his eyes are dark, his expression fully neutral, yet there is an edge of tolerant fondness there few others have ever seen. ）
If that were the case, we would not be having this discussion. You are aware of where your own biases lay and are working through them with the tools available to you. If he were truly in your blindspot, we would not be having this discussion. You simply think he is, because you have the compassion and decency to hope there is another, rational reason to explain his behaviour. But you are not naive, Wei Wuxian.
[He lets out a soft snort, more a huff of breath than anything else, and looks away. There were several compliments in those words and his stomach swoops uncomfortably, unease gnawing at him that has nothing to do with the discussion and everything to do with the praise.
But if he makes a joke of it or denies it outright, he already knows Itachi will call it out, so he only shrugs in response and does his best to move past it.]
Maybe. I'm glad for the second opinion either way. [He lifts his eyes finally, smiling again.] Makes me sharper.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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I actually do have something important to talk to you about. Do you have a few minutes?
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In person?
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We can lock exterior access for up to three hours.
->Action
[And he's there a little more than five minutes later, dressed not in his usual robes for once, and instead donning something similarly cut but with fewer layers. He still favors his own robes and those made in similar style when on mission, but more recently he's been branching out into something a little more casual on the station.
When he gets to the door, he enters, assuming Itachi is already inside.]
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wei wuxian gets a nod, and itachi gestures him to an adjacent stump. ）
Speak.
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I wanted to talk to you about Kirigan again. About the conversation I had with him in Xrisora. I know I'd mentioned it, but it wasn't the right place then to go into any kind of detail.
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He told me more about Grisha and about how they're treated. I don't have any reason to believe it was a lie. That'd make it way too easy, wouldn't it, if it was all just fake? Easy enough to check with Mal or Alina. [He'd figured out it was Alina in Xrisora thanks to some comments made by Alina herself, and since he knows Itachi was already aware of her identity, he sees no reason to conceal it.]
People hate and fear their power. In the past they've been hunted and killed simply for what they are. [The wry smile on his lips is hollow and he knows Itachi will hear the echoes of Wei Wuxian's story in Kirigan's words, the same way Wei Wuxian had.
His eyes find the ground and for a long moment he goes quiet. Eventually, he speaks again.]
I felt like a hypocrite. You said it before, we don't know the full story and that both you and I....there are people who would feel like Alina and Mal about us. [He lifts both hands to scrub at his face, pulling them down until they cradle his chin.]
Except he told his whole story all about how they were persecuted and imprisoned and then he asked me how I felt about it. [Not in those words exactly, but close enough. He snorts and it's humorless, tired eyes finding Itachi's.]
He almost had me and then he went and asked that.
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Clumsy.
（ yes, that is his entire judgment on what is being said — that kirigan was clumsy to have made such a slip. ）
But he has had several hundred years to perfect his story. It is possible he has forgotten how to retain the human resonance to such a thing.
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Unable to help himself he lets out a soft chuckle and shakes his head.
He's so glad he has Itachi—that he isn't working through this alone.]
You don't know how much I needed to hear that from you. I was worried I was overthinking it. I thought I was seeing calculation where maybe it was just a poor choice of words. [His instincts had been screaming at him that it was more than that, but in the face of a story like the one he'd told, he'd known he was compromised and not at his best.]
You're right. My instincts were right. It was clumsy. He was feeling me out. He wanted to know if I'd bought in.
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（ he had been the one to advocate for the man, to insist that there were elements to his story they were simply not privy to. that remains true, but his sense of... compassion, perhaps, is diminished in the wake of kirigan's attitude. certainly, the man is damaged, has suffered, but there is a cold calculation lurking just beneath the pathos. ）
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That must have driven him crazy. And it is telling. He wants control and he wants people to feel for him. I think it'd bother him less to know that someone didn't empathize with him than to not know where they stand.
There was one other slip in our conversation that I noticed.
When he was telling me about the horrors his people faced and I wasn't surprised at the cruelty of mankind, he said he'd hoped other places weren't like his home. That it was just his world where people behaved like that. [Wei Wuxian rolls his eyes.]
An awfully naïve sentiment for a general to have, don't you think? Or it would be if he meant it and it wasn't just another attempt to craft an image of himself as good.
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he reaches up, drags his fingers along the sharp line of his jaw, and then: ）
He is accustomed to being powerful. Not always — but long enough that he has grown to expect the stage it sets. You and I understand power in a way that permits us to look past the veil. That is all.
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I'm like him. [He admits, soft and quiet.] Not entirely, I know, but the anger he felt for his people...I know that feeling. I thought maybe that's why he slipped. Maybe the things he'd done had been in a moment of unthinking bitter anger and resentment and that's...I understand it.
I know what it is to live with mistakes that cost people their lives. But if he regretted what he did in creating the Fold...I couldn't see it. Not if his aim was my sympathy. [Not when Wei Wuxian would actively spurn sympathy for his mistakes and Kirigan courted it.]
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（ speaking from experience? haha, no, he would never try to justify himself in that way, nor has he ever shied away from the horrors wrought beneath his hands.
but he understands why one might be tempted to try. ）
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Maybe. [He's silent for a moment after that, lost in thought.]
I work better when I have someone to talk to. I think better. Especially about things like this. [Complicated and too close to home.] When it comes to him, I get too inside of my head. It's all too familiar.
[And there's a part of him now that he knows more of Kirigan's story, that wants to believe he's really like them. Someone with a past full of terrible choices. Someone with regret and pain, who would take it back if he could. Someone who was forced into those choices by terrible circumstances.]
...I think he's in my blind spot.
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（ he gives wei wuxian a sideways glance, head canted to one side. his eyes are dark, his expression fully neutral, yet there is an edge of tolerant fondness there few others have ever seen. ）
If that were the case, we would not be having this discussion. You are aware of where your own biases lay and are working through them with the tools available to you. If he were truly in your blindspot, we would not be having this discussion. You simply think he is, because you have the compassion and decency to hope there is another, rational reason to explain his behaviour. But you are not naive, Wei Wuxian.
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But if he makes a joke of it or denies it outright, he already knows Itachi will call it out, so he only shrugs in response and does his best to move past it.]
Maybe. I'm glad for the second opinion either way. [He lifts his eyes finally, smiling again.] Makes me sharper.
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You're welcome.
（ he's hilarious. ）
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You're so annoying! [Grinning and shaking his head]
Alright, I don't want to think about that guy anymore. Spar with me?
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（ but he stands in one fluid gesture, and opens the program's control panel to summon a suite of weapons, obligingly. take your pick, wei wuxian. ）