It was actually pretty easy to fall asleep. Part of the reason he brought Mula along, aside from making sure she could stretch her legs, was that she made an excellent alarm clock. She had a better sense of time than Wan did. Which was important on the occasion he slipped into sleep or meditation and lost track of when and where he needed to be.
Wan let the silence settle for a bit before he spoke again. Just softly enough that he didn't actually break the silence, rather he added to the stillness the way the birdsong breaking through did, "The man who raised me came back changed in the span of a day. I was eight. He'd gone out in the morning and I'd gone out, too. And when I got back to where we were staying, he was different. Like you, but not like you, too. He had a run in with bad magic. It... when he was lucid, he would say it scrambled up his mind. I always thought that was a terrible way to put it, but it was true. The man he used to be was scrambled up in there with what he'd been through."
Wan sat up, sighing heavily. He'd never really talked about Yao. Not even to Jaya, save to reassure his friend that Yao would be fine. He'd thought about it a lot, but there weren't a lot of people who would understand the kind of thing Yao had gone through and the kind of things that Wan was forced to go through to take care of the man.
"I was mad at him at first," he continued. He felt he needed to explain why he was saying what he was. So James didn't think he was making shit up. "Scared. The way they are, only worse. I was eight. I didn't understand and I hated him for a while, too. Once he was like that, he couldn't take care of me. Not really. I had to do more work because of him. I thought he was stupid and that he should just get over it and go back to the way things were."
Wan frowned, not really mad at himself or even sad anymore. He'd long since moved past those emotions. But it was still difficult to speak of them aloud. "I learned as they will learn, that there is no going back. Things change and you must change with them. They must change with them. Because there's nothing you or Yao can do to put things back how they were and trying to make you do what you are incapable of is selfish. To try and change you when you are still figuring out who you will be now is selfish. They don't have the right to be selfish like that. Not when it is not them that is paying the price."
He lifted his head and smiled at James, "You're different than you were. They'll learn."