“No.” Cedric shot a glare at Dyllan, his tone far sharper than usual, but only slightly louder. “You don’t get to say that. Not here, not now. Not…!” He paused, his face softening again. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have raised my voice. I know you meant well, that you weren’t trying to be condescending or dismissive. You were just trying to do what Andie does - to break the tension with a witty comeback and snap me out of it.” His gaze slowly drifted back down, his expression sinking into an emotion Dyllan didn’t recognize. “But you aren’t Andie, and this isn’t something I can just be ‘snapped out of’. You don’t get it, Dyllan - you weren’t there.” Tears started to well up in Cedric’s eyes, but only started. “I used to practice making facial expressions in the mirror, just so I could make the same faces the other kids did! That’s not normal! It’s weird! It’s…” Cedric paused and sniffled, wiping the sorrowful fury from his face before it even finished beginning. “It’s creepy.”

“Snrk.” Dyllan desperately tried and failed to stifle a snicker, clearly more than a little guilty he’d let it slip - but unable to stop it from leaking further. “Pfhht.”

“……” Cedric slowly turned to look at Dyllan. His expression was tensely blank, trust holding him back from taking offense in a similar manner to how discipline held a soldier back from pulling the trigger until given the order to fire. “…is something funny?” His voice wavered slightly, but held mostly steady with a tone that was just waiting to shift to relief - or to fury.

“Cnk, HA!” As soon as a fully fledged laugh broke free of Dyllan’s lips he managed to mostly reclaim his composure. “Sorry, I - heh - I don’t know what I was thinking when I said that. It was stupid, and rude, and I really - pft - really shouldn’t be laughing right now.” With a deep breath, Dyllan finally managed to fully regain his composure. “I just… I wasn’t ready for the mental image of little Cedric in front of the mirror, switching between expressive and expressionless, and consulting a photo album like a confused engineer with a user manual…” Dyllan smiled nostalgically. “It’s just so… you. And it came in the middle of such a tense moment…” The smile faded. “It caught me off guard is all, I’ll let you finish now.”

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“I…" Cedric started to uncurl slightly. He had been prepared for a lot of things he didn’t want to hear. For disgust, for pity. For a dismissive wave, and an insistence he was exaggerating. He never could have prepared for this, though. He didn’t even know what “this” was. “I was finished.”

“…I guess I really don’t get it, then.” Dyllan sighed and rubbed his shoulder. “I just don’t get what’s so bad.” He froze in place, and hurriedly clarified himself. “I mean, I get the bullying part. That was obviously bad, being excluded sucks - and as someone who’s never struggled to ‘fit in’ I don’t think I’ll ever really know how that felt…” He started to smile again. “But I know you. Maybe not as much as I’d like to, but more than you think. I know you know that I was there when you needed someone who’d stand up for you… but I don’t think you realize that you were there when I needed someone, too.” Dyllan’s gaze started to drift downward, as his smile wrinkled with bitter memories and scars that weren’t quite done healing. “When I was alone and scared of myself, a lot of people tried to help - but only you tried to understand. Only you slowed down and really listened, asking questions before trying to give answers. Sometimes it felt like everyone else only cared about how my pain made them uncomfortable. But you? you dove right into it to find the source. You talked to me, not just at me, and by the end of it you knew me better than I knew myself.” Dyllan took a deep, slow, and deliberate breath. “I don’t think the piece of you that did that is in your ego, Cedric.”

Cedric was silent for a moment. “...what’s that mean?”

“It means I think you were just a scared little kid who wanted friends. A kid that didn’t know something you were supposed to know, something everyone else knew. So you studied, you learned. You worked hard, and when you finally figured it out? You discovered you were supposed to know, but you were never supposed to understand. Too late you discovered all that hard work only made you even more of an outcast.” Dyllan stood up. “But more importantly, it means that I might like you because of your Kindness…” He reached his hand out to his best friend. “…but I trust you because of your Cunning.”