[ i'm really laughing that our last thread was riding motorcycles and we both got moto murders
anyway
fei du is kind of enjoying shibuya? you know what he's really enjoying is a lack of pigs. he's about to greet lambda, giving her a little wave....
and then a pig runs by. ]
[ after zhou huaixin is stabbed, repeatedly, in front of you, after you speak with his brother, after you call luo wenzhou and he picks you up, after the entire debacle with him in your house, you finally, finally, get a moment to yourself and your thoughts.
and that's the thing about it - they are your thoughts. they've been drilled into you by the malicious and purposeful actions of your father, who showed his love to you by making sure you were his protege. countless lessons were taught in the basement of the home where your family spent the most of their time. countless images as you sat at a tiny, rosewood desk, and watched your father beat your mother. countless words, as fei chengyu placed a hamster as small as your palm in your tiny, tiny hand, and talked to you about what life and death were really were. countless lessons as he placed a band of iron around your neck, punished your instincts of kindness with the tightening of a band that made you choke. countless lectures on how life and death were yours to control, how they didn't matter, how if people needed to die they just needed to die. how you were going to be his perfect heir, as he tucked your hair behind your ear and you trembled strapped into a chair. a monster well developed.
but the furniture in the basement of the home has been replaced. you still own the childhood house, passed on to you. it's exactly in the condition it was when the woman who lived here died, except for this room.
now that you own it, the basement has been remodeled. in the center of the room is a chair, surrounded by floor to ceiling LED screens. a small computer sits on a table by the chair, and a small refrigerator sits beside it. the room smells faintly, just barely, of blood.
you make your way down the stairs into the basement, and you shut the door behind you. you can still see the images in your head: huaixin, dying in front of you, how you felt for a moment this was just an animal, not a human being. the blood, blood from his stab wound, blood on his shirt, on the ground under his corpse, how sick and nauseous you felt seeing it - but how numb you felt, how you didn't know what the people around you were feeling, how you should feel, the way it felt like you were split in two parts, your father's voice -
"Every moment is death. The only thing that doesn't change is the sack of skin made of carbohydrates. If you feel an emotional connection to the sack of skin, isn't it like anthropomorphizing the pork on your plate? It's a sort of delusional disorder."
that numb emotional disconnect is still there, uncomfortable in your chest, almost too comfortable. you drop into the chair, calmly, and you reach for the leather belts, and tie them. around your arm. around your chest. around your waist. strapping yourself in. you take the electrodes and put them on your chest through your open shirt. you consider the emetics in the fridge, and then decide against it.
(Clinical research says there are several disadvantages to the use of drugs: the cerebral depressant effect may interfere with the patient's ability to form responses)
you reach over your head for the headphones on the edge of the chair, mechanically, and you put them over your head. take a deep breath in the disconnect and lack of emotion. feel the lack of care. feel it pushing at the edges of your definition of self. your hands are shaking again.
you type something one handed onto the little computer and hit a button. the sound of electricity buzzes through the chair around you, and you loll your head to look at the screen, eyes open. you hit play.
the video screens flare to life as the music plays over your headphones - a hysterical scream breaks through the cutting of the music, and the screens flash on in front of you. it's a direct broadcast of a murder, the victim screaming like a dying farm animal as the man killing them stabs into them with a knife - you raise me up so i can stand on mountains -
the minute it appears, you push a button - violently, electricity pulses through your body, sends you jolting and shuddering. again. again, as the video continues - people being beheaded, executed by firing squad - every time you see the image, you electrocute yourself - it hurts, it hurts it hurts - you hate pain and pain is watching other people suffer, pain is knowing that other people hurt, people's lives shouldn't be taken violently and cruelly you won't be a monster, you will do this over and over to yourself until you can't anymore, you will throw up the contents of your stomach at the sight of blood because you won't be what fei chengyu wanted you to be, you won't
( The use of the apparatus follows classical conditioning technique. The stimulus to which aversion is to be produced is presented, and then a shock is administrated. This procedure is repeated throughout the treatment session of 20 to 30 minutes, which can be held up to six times a day. The strength of the shock should be adjusted so that it is as painful as the patient can bear. )
[ when the memory ends he is just
staring at the pig with a look that could melt glass ]
sorry to fei du who wanted a pig-free shibuya. the memory takes her aback, and it takes lambda a moment to process, to try to understand. lambda knows pain in different ways, but not like this. lambda is someone who's been called a monster by many, has accepted that she's a monster, and is fine with being a monster, but she does think it's easier for people and humans to be cruel.
it's more difficult to try to be kind, and it's the shocks that get to her, that he'd shock himself to feel for others again.
it's not what she expected.
she sees his glare and deliberates. ]
It wasn't for as weak a reason as I thought. [ ... ] We can move on, if you prefer.
anyway it's tiny but i live with my shame. he turns his head after a brief glower at said pig, and then - when lambda speaks, fei du pauses. a single spark flickers lightly over his knuckles. ]
... Ha. Well. If I hadn't, I'd be the opposite. [ enjoying the blood, maybe. enjoying the suffering. the way she handles it - harsh and sharp, instead of soft and cloying, is actually nice. it's how he'd prefer it to be handled, because it is a cruel, violent thing. it's a behavior he's done to himself, and the only part of it that he really hates is the part where he keeps hearing fei chengyu's voice, at all.
after a moment, he rubs at his throat, almost absently. ]
[ lambda is harsh and sharp because that's the only way she knows how to be. much like how he shocks himself to feel, it's through other's pain that she can feel something for herself in her own awful way.
lambda doesn't hold any weight to morals. she's too far removed for it to apply to her and her place in her world. ]
What kind of person do you want to be?
[ between what his father wanted to be and what he's like now or otherwise? ]
[ that's a good question. he's not sure what he was expecting - maybe more along the lines of what the actual fuck is wrong with you, but it's lambda, so, maybe not.
who does fei du want to be? who is he, really? most of the time, he's not even sure. he has so carefully constructed every part of his personality that it feels like there's no person, underneath. each layer he puts between his core and the rest of the world gets thicker and thicker with each passing year, until the curtains close and obscure him entirely. fei du can be anyone he wants to be, at any time. a kind, gentle benefactor to an old woman who lost everything. a cheeky little brother to tao ran. a flirtatious party boy to donglai. a cruel, ruthless businessman to every ceo in yan city. he's a transformer, a chameleon, terrified to face what he is on the inside just in case it turns out the way his father wanted it to.
... and that's something he can stick to. there's a long pause, before he answers, because fei du is always thoughtful. ]
...There are too many people in that circle who were taught that same way of life. I want to become the kind of person who uses that teaching to bring every single one of them down when they're least expecting it. [ for someone who has often been kind, there's a vicious edge to the way he says it, a sort of ominous cold. when you look into the abyss, the abyss gazes back at you, nietzche once said. fei du is the abyss. ]
I'll figure out who I am when that's done. [ if he survives. ]
[ she views things through such a weird lens. does she understand how he feels or why he did that so he could feel? not exactly. death and murder and violence are something that's normal enough for her that she doesn't feel bad about most of the time, and she's fine with it. she doesn't see a necessity to change it or to not be any kind of monster.
she's someone who's sure about who she is, so that's where she can't relate or resonate with fei du.
she doesn't think it's wrong for him to want to do that or be that, but... ]
I thought you wanted to be different than what you were taught.
[ that's what she gleaned from his memories. isn't using the methods he was taught, to attack the people who embody those methods, not that different? ]
Edited (I WASN'T DONE YET HOW DID THAT HAPPEN) 2023-07-19 06:46 (UTC)
[ he gives a little shake of his head, to that, expression shifting a little to something more familiar. calm, thoughtful. it's a little freeing to talk about it all - but he's dead. why not? ]
... It's the same reason why I didn't fight back, on Thursday. I'd known that he killed Shenhe, and I guessed that their team killed you, too. And I knew - at least, I hoped - that I could get Gerard caught at trial, instead of just killing him myself in vengeance. That's what my father would have done - he would have orchestrated an assassination with a car accident.
[ obviously the circumstances here are different, considering you cannot just orchestrate a car accident, only a bike accident where you go flying off the top of the rainbow waterfall for giggles, but thats besides the point. ]
...I want to take what I was taught and turn it back on them. Every piece of dirty money he earned, I've used either frivolously or to support people who need it. Every unsolved, cold case crime his people have their hands in, I've worked with the Yan City police to solve, and I'll keep working with the new ones if I survive here, too. I'll keep providing financial assistance to the widows and the children that their greed has let behind, and I'll let them keep thinking I'm too blinkered to know that I can see every single ministration they're sinking their fingers into. I'll even keep paying for my father's life support in a sanatorium, even if I wish he was dead.
[ even if all he'd have to do was reach in and grab his oxygen tubes, and pull them off. disconnect his life support. it'd be so easy. fei chengyu the monster, slain. and every year, on his own birthday, fei du visits him in that sanatorium, and every year, he stares at those oxygen tubes, and how easy it would be to simply pay someone to do it, or to avoid the cameras in the room and knock out the plug when no one was looking, pay off the hospital.
but he doesn't do it. and that's the difference between fei du and fei chengyu: he makes the conscious choice, every single day, to do the right thing. ]
I've started taking that organization apart from the inside, bit by bit. And I intend to find the ringleader of it all and put him away for good.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
w4 sunday!! POSES
anyway
fei du is kind of enjoying shibuya? you know what he's really enjoying is a lack of pigs. he's about to greet lambda, giving her a little wave....
and then a pig runs by. ]
no subject
sorry to fei du who wanted a pig-free shibuya. the memory takes her aback, and it takes lambda a moment to process, to try to understand. lambda knows pain in different ways, but not like this. lambda is someone who's been called a monster by many, has accepted that she's a monster, and is fine with being a monster, but she does think it's easier for people and humans to be cruel.
it's more difficult to try to be kind, and it's the shocks that get to her, that he'd shock himself to feel for others again.
it's not what she expected.
she sees his glare and deliberates. ]
It wasn't for as weak a reason as I thought. [ ... ] We can move on, if you prefer.
[ she won't press. ]
no subject
anyway it's tiny but i live with my shame. he turns his head after a brief glower at said pig, and then - when lambda speaks, fei du pauses. a single spark flickers lightly over his knuckles. ]
... Ha. Well. If I hadn't, I'd be the opposite. [ enjoying the blood, maybe. enjoying the suffering. the way she handles it - harsh and sharp, instead of soft and cloying, is actually nice. it's how he'd prefer it to be handled, because it is a cruel, violent thing. it's a behavior he's done to himself, and the only part of it that he really hates is the part where he keeps hearing fei chengyu's voice, at all.
after a moment, he rubs at his throat, almost absently. ]
You can ask.
no subject
lambda doesn't hold any weight to morals. she's too far removed for it to apply to her and her place in her world. ]
What kind of person do you want to be?
[ between what his father wanted to be and what he's like now or otherwise? ]
no subject
who does fei du want to be? who is he, really? most of the time, he's not even sure. he has so carefully constructed every part of his personality that it feels like there's no person, underneath. each layer he puts between his core and the rest of the world gets thicker and thicker with each passing year, until the curtains close and obscure him entirely. fei du can be anyone he wants to be, at any time. a kind, gentle benefactor to an old woman who lost everything. a cheeky little brother to tao ran. a flirtatious party boy to donglai. a cruel, ruthless businessman to every ceo in yan city. he's a transformer, a chameleon, terrified to face what he is on the inside just in case it turns out the way his father wanted it to.
... and that's something he can stick to. there's a long pause, before he answers, because fei du is always thoughtful. ]
...There are too many people in that circle who were taught that same way of life. I want to become the kind of person who uses that teaching to bring every single one of them down when they're least expecting it. [ for someone who has often been kind, there's a vicious edge to the way he says it, a sort of ominous cold. when you look into the abyss, the abyss gazes back at you, nietzche once said. fei du is the abyss. ]
I'll figure out who I am when that's done. [ if he survives. ]
no subject
she's someone who's sure about who she is, so that's where she can't relate or resonate with fei du.
she doesn't think it's wrong for him to want to do that or be that, but... ]
I thought you wanted to be different than what you were taught.
[ that's what she gleaned from his memories. isn't using the methods he was taught, to attack the people who embody those methods, not that different? ]
no subject
[ he gives a little shake of his head, to that, expression shifting a little to something more familiar. calm, thoughtful. it's a little freeing to talk about it all - but he's dead. why not? ]
... It's the same reason why I didn't fight back, on Thursday. I'd known that he killed Shenhe, and I guessed that their team killed you, too. And I knew - at least, I hoped - that I could get Gerard caught at trial, instead of just killing him myself in vengeance. That's what my father would have done - he would have orchestrated an assassination with a car accident.
[ obviously the circumstances here are different, considering you cannot just orchestrate a car accident, only a bike accident where you go flying off the top of the rainbow waterfall for giggles, but thats besides the point. ]
...I want to take what I was taught and turn it back on them. Every piece of dirty money he earned, I've used either frivolously or to support people who need it. Every unsolved, cold case crime his people have their hands in, I've worked with the Yan City police to solve, and I'll keep working with the new ones if I survive here, too. I'll keep providing financial assistance to the widows and the children that their greed has let behind, and I'll let them keep thinking I'm too blinkered to know that I can see every single ministration they're sinking their fingers into. I'll even keep paying for my father's life support in a sanatorium, even if I wish he was dead.
[ even if all he'd have to do was reach in and grab his oxygen tubes, and pull them off. disconnect his life support. it'd be so easy. fei chengyu the monster, slain. and every year, on his own birthday, fei du visits him in that sanatorium, and every year, he stares at those oxygen tubes, and how easy it would be to simply pay someone to do it, or to avoid the cameras in the room and knock out the plug when no one was looking, pay off the hospital.
but he doesn't do it. and that's the difference between fei du and fei chengyu: he makes the conscious choice, every single day, to do the right thing. ]
I've started taking that organization apart from the inside, bit by bit. And I intend to find the ringleader of it all and put him away for good.