[As before, as with every time he mentions the story of Grisha. Of his people and the suffering they were forced to bare, he watching Wuxian's face - for empathy, for sympathy or for the emotions he's waiting for, revulsion.

The same nameless feeling that bubbled out of him when Daisy mentioned being 'inhuman', the dull rage in the Arc and the impotent despair that filled him at watching history repeat itself - over and over.

It was-- better. Here. On the station and surrounded almost entirely by people like him. By men and women who knew, intimately, the fear and the guarded conversations that happened between those who are murdered simply for being different.

The wisp of smoke almost goes unnoticed, because Wuxian's face holds too many feelings for him to look away, and Aleksander's eyebrows draws together in a frown.]

I am what my people need me to be. [Teacher, general, confidant. The demon in the woods. Though, less as the years went on, as the pain and suffering continued.

As he would have told Alina, if she had waited - if she hadn't run and taken the only light in the world with her- it hurts more if you like them.

And everyone dies in the end.] Should anything happen to the tzar, his son will take the throne and we would be used for things worse than war and the occasional spectacle at court.

[His smile is sharp] Does any of this seem familiar?