#// but if he had any emotions they'd creep up to him and render him disfunctional

[muraenide]

For lack of a better word, Jade has a repressed depression. It's contributed by many things that were part of his life while growing up, adding to the pile of feelings that were already repressed on top of his heavy heart. One can say it's the worst combination of many little things to form something intangible, immovable, that it's become a part of Jade that can never be undone. It doesn't help that Jade was born unfeeling, he's been that way since he was a child, so it didn't help that he's never really someone who is very outspoken in the first place. About his discomfort or anything that he plays down as being simply a minor inconvenience and therefore didn't matter.

Antonio has given strong implications that he wants Jade to succeed the Leech family ever since Jade was born. While his Father didn't ask him directly to accept the offer, he's been feeding Jade the idea that he was bred to become his next successor. The Leech parents were strict with their rules, ensuring their children won't be too spoiled to handle bigger affairs. Jade always had a bit more self-discipline and self-control compared to Floyd. He sticks to their parent's rules down to the last one, becoming the child they wanted but never the child they had. Part of the reason he places himself in the situation was also due to shielding Floyd from butting heads too often with their Father. Both are equally hot-tempered, reckless, and unwilling to bend or compromise their principles, which, more often, are the exact opposites of each other.

Jade's tendency to repress unpleasant feelings didn't help. If asked whether his family was happy, instead of defining it by "What makes me happy", Jade would define it with "Nothing here makes me unhappy." and therefore tells others that he guessed his family was a happy one. But the truth is, constantly living with someone like Antonio and being a witness to many other fucked up things he saw in the sea, Jade has slowly and surely been reduced to someone who had no real ambitions, desires, or wants. He doesn't think about his past or his future. He prefers to just live in the present and enjoy whatever is in front of him, enjoy the nice little things, the small happiness. He's happy that way, and he's never felt differently.

The only person Jade ever felt the closest to love to was Floyd (and Julliet, his mother, too in earnest, but she is a more complicated character and deserves an entirely different post), but even so, very little of Jade's love for Floyd can be described to be familial or brotherly. Most of them stem from possession and don't get him wrong, he doesn't see Floyd as an item or a belonging. Floyd is his own person and Jade often leaves him to do his own thing, but Jade is absolutely territorial over any news of Floyd upset or hurt. Akin to a pack member getting bullied by an unauthorized outsider. He can't stand it. It makes him ache with fury and that's the most feeling Jade ever experienced. Outside of rp plotting.

It's common for Jade's intentions to be misunderstood. As far as canon goes he's always someone who's seen as having an ultimatum or double-sided intention when deep down Jade's someone who has trouble even thinking of something he wants to ask from a wish. One way of really tickling him the wrong way is by questioning his intentions for Floyd. Any assumptions that he'd genuinely sell Floyd out upsets him, though Jade's own behaviours and actions don't help — he would never correct any misunderstandings about himself, but the truth is Jade chose Floyd as his brother since birth, he'd die for Floyd. If Jade were to truly hate Floyd, he'd have no reason to keep him around for seventeen years. And even if things between them get a little sour sometimes, Jade was not about to discard seventeen years of companionship like it's nothing. Floyd, to him, is less like a brother and more like an intangible presence he's watched growing up since he was a fry. Always close but also out of reach, separated by something invisible. He regards Floyd as a constant in his life, and he always knew that one day they'll go to separate paths, but until that time comes you just want to enjoy what you have in the present.

These territorial feelings can be transferred to anyone he starts to care about in a plot, in a slow but sure fashion. As long as the other party knows that Jade's not really a lover by the definition of the word. That he might act and look human, but by the end of the day he's just a wild animal in human form.

As for Jade, his fate is solidified that he'll go back to the Coral Sea and succeed his Father and run the Leech family's business. While in NRC he doesn't think of anywhere else he wants to go, to him, duty comes first, and everything else is second.