( He wants to; wants to say, don't exhaust yourself, and also, this has never worked. He's broken in that emptiness, and the filling of it with resentment ebbs and flows with nothing but Chenqing to call it. He doesn't travel with resentment tied to his body, though he could. He could turn every bag of holding for some spiritual malevolence into a source of strength, as he's done before. Carries touches of borrowed ills and knows how to contain them as pearls within his body, blood-dark and puss-filled, lanced to heal again and again in ceaseless circles.
He wants to say what he knows Lan Zhan already knows, so instead he says nothing, just offers the ghost of a smile, that says, he understands this, too. It was his choice. Digging this out, replanting, seeding someone else's soil.
Some things will not be better come morning. He chooses to only think of those that will, and so that smile, on his lips, and the nod of his head, shifting his hair, is all the answer he gives under Lan Zhan's hand. )
Come morning.
( And he does not sleep, not for longer than he pretends to at first, eyes closed, surrounded more by the warmth that is unimpeded breathing, so many sighs and signs of life around him he feels fully encased in the opposite of the nightmares that still look to take hold. Curbed by living sounds, until he's lulled past the bemoaning of midnight winds, the witched hours of a night that he welcomed once, as easier to move within, as a haunting of his own.
He wakes, slow, to warmth and noise and light, and wants to linger in that lasting illusion of everything perhaps for a moment being somewhat closer to okay.
Tap.Tap tap tap. Is he being tapped out, and he mumbles something as his eyes slit open, sleep hazed and unfocussed, staring then at Lan Zhan uncomprehendingly. Awareness spills past the lingering warmth, and he starts to stretch, coming alive and alert to Lan Zhan's statements and a stretch of limbs that leaves toes curling and arms pressing down against the slate that's likewise left back and joints aching, but the better kind. The aches that wear off with a warmed up body and a series of stretches, which he'll engage in as soon as he stands up, instead stifling a yawn.
Lan Zhan is nothing if not efficient. He smiles, lopsided, and brushes at the shifting mass of his hair down his back from his seated position. )
Leaving him with a tracking talisman?
( Not for her, this well credentialed young lady. Not for Qingshan, exactly. More for both of them, a sort of alarm to set them in motion, if it comes flying to find them. Tracking them down as warning that something unpleasant this way came, and a callback to find him.
Wei Wuxian, paranoid? Let it be known between the two of them that his fears in loss run deeper than he ever lets show. There was a greater careless trust in A-Yuan's life that does not rest with A-Shan, and long years run short imagining children's graves leave shadows against his heart.
All of them with these shadows of losses; basking better in the sunlight, aware of what might chill the marrow.
He near fumbles his way off the not-bed they'd made a make-shift sleeping surface, rubs at his hip with a grimace as ends up with: a rabbit, large, cautiously nosing after him, and Qingshan, avidly walking here and there. He only seems to remember Wei Wuxian once Wei Wuxian remembers water, and there comes he who toddles, latching onto his leg to stare up and mouth the words again and again, up, up, up, and then the basin and washcloth for one man's face turns into morning ablutions with man and child, water dripping down Wuxian's front, child in his arms once they're both patted dry.
It's swift, as much as anything with children can be. The rabbit has watched, has at one point stretched out a furred arm that ended in a human hand to tug on robes; Wei Wuxian tamping down a shudder at the strangeness in order to smile down at the long eared face that settled back into only rabbit form after, twitching a sweet nose up at him, eyes dark as tar. The rabbit moves, then, in search of Lan Zhan; and Wei Wuxian carries A-Shan forward, seeks to meet this Lian Hua, offers her sweet words and apologies for waiting, and sharper eyed catalogues, but he has her blushing even without meaning to, and her youthful belief in good deeds paying in good merits and good coin enough of a reassurance that she will mind, for the sake and hope of what else comes after: what more coin, with so many younger siblings, at least two also girls.
Qingshan is entrusted to the domesticity of this life, while the rabbit is gathered in loaned robes, and Wei Wuxian carries him forth at his hip as if he's hiding yet another child from a world too vast to be lost within. Ill he says all of once, his own features pulled into a tired, grave sort of understanding met by the old woman who asks.
Poor little thing, she says, and with her blessings, they continue down the road.
He doesn't ask if Lan Zhan's arranged for any word to fly toward Jiang Cheng. He holds off for the day, after a night of ache and hollow. Word tomorrow, after this progresses, will be enough. The lightning needn't strike when he who travels for the chaos has already arrived; and Wei Wuxian is he who takes the resentful, commands, contains, redirects; Jiang Cheng is one more blade and one more blunder, one more division of attention and affection.
He's divided twice as it is. Trice, when by Qingshan, and more, as the donkey rejoins, but those two are for later, and he thinks again on the problem of time. )
Mm, Lan Zhan. Tracking the time, linked talismans might help to function. Like with message papers, only the talisman carries the instruction to send each marking of time as it passes.
( It's one thought, with more percolating, ready to drip into a cup of possibility at any particular time. )
no subject
He wants to say what he knows Lan Zhan already knows, so instead he says nothing, just offers the ghost of a smile, that says, he understands this, too. It was his choice. Digging this out, replanting, seeding someone else's soil.
Some things will not be better come morning. He chooses to only think of those that will, and so that smile, on his lips, and the nod of his head, shifting his hair, is all the answer he gives under Lan Zhan's hand. )
Come morning.
( And he does not sleep, not for longer than he pretends to at first, eyes closed, surrounded more by the warmth that is unimpeded breathing, so many sighs and signs of life around him he feels fully encased in the opposite of the nightmares that still look to take hold. Curbed by living sounds, until he's lulled past the bemoaning of midnight winds, the witched hours of a night that he welcomed once, as easier to move within, as a haunting of his own.
He wakes, slow, to warmth and noise and light, and wants to linger in that lasting illusion of everything perhaps for a moment being somewhat closer to okay.
Tap. Tap tap tap. Is he being tapped out, and he mumbles something as his eyes slit open, sleep hazed and unfocussed, staring then at Lan Zhan uncomprehendingly. Awareness spills past the lingering warmth, and he starts to stretch, coming alive and alert to Lan Zhan's statements and a stretch of limbs that leaves toes curling and arms pressing down against the slate that's likewise left back and joints aching, but the better kind. The aches that wear off with a warmed up body and a series of stretches, which he'll engage in as soon as he stands up, instead stifling a yawn.
Lan Zhan is nothing if not efficient. He smiles, lopsided, and brushes at the shifting mass of his hair down his back from his seated position. )
Leaving him with a tracking talisman?
( Not for her, this well credentialed young lady. Not for Qingshan, exactly. More for both of them, a sort of alarm to set them in motion, if it comes flying to find them. Tracking them down as warning that something unpleasant this way came, and a callback to find him.
Wei Wuxian, paranoid? Let it be known between the two of them that his fears in loss run deeper than he ever lets show. There was a greater careless trust in A-Yuan's life that does not rest with A-Shan, and long years run short imagining children's graves leave shadows against his heart.
All of them with these shadows of losses; basking better in the sunlight, aware of what might chill the marrow.
He near fumbles his way off the not-bed they'd made a make-shift sleeping surface, rubs at his hip with a grimace as ends up with: a rabbit, large, cautiously nosing after him, and Qingshan, avidly walking here and there. He only seems to remember Wei Wuxian once Wei Wuxian remembers water, and there comes he who toddles, latching onto his leg to stare up and mouth the words again and again, up, up, up, and then the basin and washcloth for one man's face turns into morning ablutions with man and child, water dripping down Wuxian's front, child in his arms once they're both patted dry.
It's swift, as much as anything with children can be. The rabbit has watched, has at one point stretched out a furred arm that ended in a human hand to tug on robes; Wei Wuxian tamping down a shudder at the strangeness in order to smile down at the long eared face that settled back into only rabbit form after, twitching a sweet nose up at him, eyes dark as tar. The rabbit moves, then, in search of Lan Zhan; and Wei Wuxian carries A-Shan forward, seeks to meet this Lian Hua, offers her sweet words and apologies for waiting, and sharper eyed catalogues, but he has her blushing even without meaning to, and her youthful belief in good deeds paying in good merits and good coin enough of a reassurance that she will mind, for the sake and hope of what else comes after: what more coin, with so many younger siblings, at least two also girls.
Qingshan is entrusted to the domesticity of this life, while the rabbit is gathered in loaned robes, and Wei Wuxian carries him forth at his hip as if he's hiding yet another child from a world too vast to be lost within. Ill he says all of once, his own features pulled into a tired, grave sort of understanding met by the old woman who asks.
Poor little thing, she says, and with her blessings, they continue down the road.
He doesn't ask if Lan Zhan's arranged for any word to fly toward Jiang Cheng. He holds off for the day, after a night of ache and hollow. Word tomorrow, after this progresses, will be enough. The lightning needn't strike when he who travels for the chaos has already arrived; and Wei Wuxian is he who takes the resentful, commands, contains, redirects; Jiang Cheng is one more blade and one more blunder, one more division of attention and affection.
He's divided twice as it is. Trice, when by Qingshan, and more, as the donkey rejoins, but those two are for later, and he thinks again on the problem of time. )
Mm, Lan Zhan. Tracking the time, linked talismans might help to function. Like with message papers, only the talisman carries the instruction to send each marking of time as it passes.
( It's one thought, with more percolating, ready to drip into a cup of possibility at any particular time. )