—seems to him that it's not something that happened to him, it's something he did—for no good reason at all, just because he was impatient and reckless and short-sighted, too caught up in the fantasy of power to see the reality of a world where actions have consequences and you can't get everything you want just by throwing enough magic at it—the worst thing, well, no, the worst thing about it was the sheer scale of destruction he caused, but the second worst thing was standing in the crater where his capital city used to be and realizing, too late to do anything about it, that he wouldn't even have liked having an empire—

He buries his face in the puffy jacket and squeezes Zash with mildly inhuman strength.

That's okay, Zash has substantially more than mildly inhuman resistance to injury. He'll hug Siran as long as Siran wants, and there's an offer to properly talk about it if Siran wants to talk about it but Zash can be just a reassuring presence if Siran wants him to be.

He's not sure he could talk about it if he tried; he's not sure he could put words to the memories or feelings. He thinks, looking back, that he walked into that cursed city half hoping to not come out, and he has no idea what to do with that realization—and—really, the thing is, he's just so fucking tired of destroying things. He has destroyed so much and none of it did him any good and he doesn't know what to do in order to not do more of it, all the patterns and habits of his being are oriented toward destruction, he's a fire ready to burn whatever crosses his path.

...it's a very good and cozy hug, though. He has not really been hugged very much in his life and he is beginning to suspect he was really missing out.

Yeah... If it helps, Zash hasn't hugged anyone in a long time either and does also really appreciate this.

What, exactly, causes him to destroy things, such that he doesn't know what to do to stop?

A tangled mess of impressions all flash through his mind at once. He gets angry, and then lights things on fire, because he's very well-practiced at lighting things on fire and not very well-practiced at refraining—and refraining feels bad, viscerally, it feels bad to want to hurt someone or destroy something and have the power to do it and choose not to, it feels like weakness and failure and ignobility, a crime against the nature of his being—and he has other reasons to want to hurt people, if they're attractive and he's interested, though just at this exact moment he feels pretty alienated from that mental state, but he has the same problem there with mercy-as-crime—but, on the other hand, he is generally pretty upset right now, and when he's generally pretty upset a lot of things begin to look like problems best solved by lighting something on fire—he killed a bunch of monsters on his way into the cursed city that wrecked him, just because he was generally pretty upset and they were there and bothering him—he has just spent so much of his life building toward rage and power and violence, all these little habits of thought and action, all these ways of relating to the world, and now he is sort of helplessly flailing in the direction of Not That without much idea of what Not That looks like or how to get there from here—

—anyway he's glad Zash is also appreciating this hug. Zash is cozy and should have nice things.

And yet... Zash notices he is not, currently, on fire. Even though he is the second most likely person on this planet to be fine if set on fire. ...third, now that Siran himself is here, probably. So Siran is in fact taking steps towards his goal, here.

He doesn't think 'not having lost his temper yet with this guy who's been really nice to him' counts for much! Because—he can't figure out how to not be so destructive just by staying away from anything that might make him angry or horny. Things that might make him angry or horny can happen outside his control, so if he wants to not be destructive he has to learn how to not be destructive even when something is making him angry or horny; he has to learn how to be better at it, and learn how to be more comfortable with it, so that when it inevitably comes up he'll do something different from the habits he's been building all his life.

...well, would it help to have a designated target for his anger and/or horniness? At least as a stepping stone towards figuring out how to not need one? Like Zash said, he is the third most likely person on this planet to be okay after being set on fire.

...proooooobably not but that's very sweet of him. Bizarre, but sweet. He is game to try this strategy if it comes up, but he mostly expects that he won't actually be able to redirect himself like that. On the other hand maybe he'll be distracted enough by trying that he'll have time to get hold of himself?? Hard to say.

Alternative idea: would Siran like to be shot if it looks like he's about to do something he'll regret?

[...and do let me know if I'm overstepping, here, we don't need to figure this out right here in the middle of the desert]

...well, that'll sure help with the redirecting! He's... not sure??? He likes this thing where Zash is being nice to him and giving him clothes and hugs, and is wary of complicating their relationship with violence. It might make the hugs worse.

And—it's not that Zash is overstepping at all, he's flailing enough that any help is welcome, even weird possibly unhelpful help—but being asked prompts him to observe that he is having the beginnings of a dilemma here, specifically a dilemma about the fact that he does not want to stop having this touch-enabled mental conversation and does not want to stop having hugs but his body is getting restless about the amount of standing still they're doing. He tries to think of ways to keep walking while also hugging, but can't find one that doesn't turn out silly and weird when he imagines it with his body.

...uh... would he be okay being bridal carried? Zash has very good senses and can drop him onto his feet if he sees or hears anyone coming long before they'd be able to see him, if Siran doesn't want to be seen that way. He's not sure that'd solve Siran's restlessness, though, being carried.

You know what, it'll be better than standing still. —though, now that the thought is in his head, he is considering scooping up Zash and carrying him and he cannot think of any reason why that wouldn't work.

Sure, Zash is fine going that way around. Hyup?

Scoop! He keeps walking in approximately the direction they were headed. Zash may need to help navigate.

Anyway, what were they talk/thinking about. His problems? Right. He is wondering, actually, if Zash (being a mind-reading sort of person) has encountered anybody with similar problems, whose solutions Siran might be able to borrow? Or even just, has examples from his own life, of being someone who doesn't have Siran's problems? An awful lot of what's in his way here seems to be just... sheer lack of any idea how to be other than the way he is... and maybe if he had an example to compare to, a thought process for handling potentially violent situations that is different from the one he's used to, that could be a good start.

...well... he does have some experience handling potentially violent situations that... might...

Siran feels like a very sensorially motivated person, so the mental afterimages he projects are mostly focused on his bodily sensations at the time.

(Spoilers for this thread, you might want to read it first.)

There are four people in the middle of a street surrounding an armoured car, with guns. They're trying to steal money from it, and one of them is pretending to be Zash, himself, projecting bravado he doesn't really feel. And something interesting about this town is that lots of people in it have old guns that don't really work. But the important thing is: they all have guns, and how well they work, exactly, isn't that widely-known.

"Now, I know you've heard rumours about Frank Marlon guns over the years, but tell me..."

And he knew they were coming, not only because he heard them but because he set them up: many people, many of that town's people, all of them holding guns and emerging from behind crates and around corners and through windows, pointing their guns at the four would-be robbers. "Do you think you're lucky enough that if the whole town shoots you'll survive?"

One of the robbers tries to call Zash's bluff. Zash sees it in a fraction of a second and—

—here he focuses on his own body, on the feeling of exhilaration that he can't deny he feels, the knowledge that if he fucks up something really bad might happen but he knows he won't fuck up, the muscle memory of it, the lightning-quick calculations in his head—

—his gun is in his hand and he shoots the gun out of the robber's hand.

"That would have ended really badly for you, Human Typhoon. Thank me for saving your life."

And afterwards, when the robbers are all gone and the city is safe, the feeling of a job well-done. The feeling of gratitude, of all the people being so happy and relieved that they're safe, the warmth and love and, even, admiration. Once again, he cannot deny that he enjoys it, being admired. It's not why he does what he does but it... feels nice.

He loves being Zash the Stampede.

Does that help, any?

...huh.

Huh.

Yeah, it does.

He's thoughtful for a while, walking through the desert with Zash in his arms, turning those memories over and over in his mind. Feeling the difference between how it feels for him to be in a conflict like that (the thirst for violence, the thrill in his blood demanding to hurt or kill) and how it feels for Zash (a different kind of thrill, a different kind of—power? There's something recognizable as power, in the way he uses his skill to get what he wants, even though it's not a kind of power Siran has thought much about before) and, especially, feeling the way it felt for Zash to have all that warmth and love and gratitude. Feeling the way it felt for Zash to reach into all those people's lives and change them for the better and bask in their happiness afterward. There's something to that, definitely. Something related to the way it feels to be hugged? He's not sure what the connection is but he feels that there is one.

...Zash apparently forgot to tell Siran about plants and he should do that at some point before they get where they're going because plants are incredibly important to this planet's culture but also because the way Siran just had thoughts there was, uh. Incredibly plantlike. And Zash is very good at talking to plants, so maybe he can improve the way he talks to Siran by leaning into that.

There's definitely a [~] feeling, there, Siran is not wrong, being hugged and being loved/admired are pretty similar. Not identical, though, and this telepathy method is very very good at sussing out that relation. He can project the comparison between "being hugged" and "being admired/loved" pretty directly and with many details, more details than he's been able to project anything so far: on the likeness side, there's being the target of someone's positive attention, there's the primal feeling of being a social animal doing a social thing they're primed to do, there's the feeling of safety, of being in your pack, being part of a greater whole; and on the unlikeness side, there's the difference between the physical and the emotional, there's the social status-related things (that are also related to the power thing from earlier) that are mostly absent from hugs, there's the sort of inherent self-centeredness of wanting to "show off" versus just sharing in a moment together...

It's a very dense comparison, but that's the atomic unit of Zash's brand of telepathy, and Zash can hold it still in front of Siran's mind's eye for as long as Siran wants him to, to be processed and poked at and understood.

!!

Oh that's—that's really something, is what that is. That's so much of a something. Yeah, these two feelings are like each other in these ways, and different in those ways, and he can look at them where Zash is holding them up for him and feel out the similarities and differences—and, at the same time, feel out the similarities and differences between the ways Zash feels these things and the ways Siran does, how they're different kinds of lonely and those flavours are expressed in the ways they react to comfort and affection, how they process and experience the world differently and that affects how they experience their emotions and which parts of a scenario they focus on, like, Siran very much lives in his body and a lot of the way he sees social things is as the sight of someone making a certain face or movement or posture that echoes in his own body a faint reflection of how it feels to make that face or movement or posture and then translates to a feeling in his mind of how they're feeling and what that means, but Zash of course sees social things in other people's heads and in the ways he's learned to translate what he sees into what someone must be feeling, so it's a whole different thing—but there's still sameness there, still a fundamental connection between feeling this way as one person and feeling this way as a different person even though the feelings themselves aren't literally the same—what a good telepathy Zash has.

Zash is feeling inordinately pleased right now, and even a bit smug, though he recognises being smug about being part of a species that has a certain kind of telepathy is a little bit silly. It'd be like being smug for having toes. ......well, he made his toes, plants don't have them and he didn't have them when he was born, but still, you get the picture.

Now going back to another thing Siran thought—Zash wants to contrast the way Siran feels about thrill and about power with the way he himself does. He doesn't know that much about the way Siran does it but he felt like there was something there they could look at, and maybe they can just show each other themselves and then contrast? He'll go first.

There is a thrill and a power there, Siran is absolutely right. Zash doesn't often focus on it or lean into it but it's... it's a bit like...

Side comparison: it's a little bit like his hair. His ridiculous fluffy bright-yellow hair, which is so attention-grabbing, and which coordinates with his orange shades and his red jacket and his boots and his gun. He feels a bit embarrassed to admit this but he is an aesthete. He's a little bit vain. There's a certain aesthetic that he plays up, plays into, embodies. He's an incredibly skilled gunslinger, he can literally shoot a single wing off a wormfly from fifty yards away, and he loves the aesthetic of using that skill to never, ever kill anyone. To, in fact, prevent people from being killed. He understands that his pacifism comes from a position of privilege, that he can afford to be pacifistic because if he decides a conflict isn't happening then it doesn't happen full stop. That's part of why he doesn't, really, judge others for not being as pacifistic as he is, doesn't demand it of them.

And that, of course, circles back to the power thing. He is incredibly powerful. He is incredibly skilled, and deadly if he wants to be (which he never does). And there is a thrill there, there's an ego thing there. He is that person, that powerful superhuman creature who could kill dozens of people a second and who instead chooses not to, and chooses to help them. The ego thing and the power thing and the thrill thing aren't the reason why he does this but they do help.

And there's another thing that attaches to the tail of that: much of his power and skill was earned. He was nowhere near this good, a century and a half ago. And... people suffered because of it, people died. The central motivation here, of not wanting people to die, that core is probably unshared between him and Siran, but here, Zash can show him how everything else he is fits around that one thing like a jigsaw puzzle. He cultivated his skill and his power and his image around that core, and he became better, and stronger.