"Children do." When the world is cold, when small bodies might survive a chill or a fever that would slay an adult, when left to one man's unknowing arms, and to that of his brother, and his uncle, and the clemency of a clan that had not known it was to host so many orphans, and yet had done so. Its own and those of others, as Sizhui was raised, as Wei Wuxian visited, as little needs saying in a world that has known and will know war.
Yiling knew war, and still could not breathe free of its reminders, but Wei Wuxian has seen a world beyond it. One of small kindnesses, and larger ones, and while Lan Zhan tugs his hand back, brings his chilled hand to his wrist, Wei Wuxian steps in, to pull again, toward himself.
"He had you to find. Zewu-jun as well, I can imagine, and enough braizers, enough blankets, clothing not worn thin." A tug of hands, again, to bring them back to him. "Affection held host here, and we had fires, banked, and he had the best of us, for that time past a year where we lived. You raised A-Yuan alone," and that name, because it thickens in his throat, "With a clan behind you, and it was a good thing, being in the cold, alive enough to hunt warmth, and to find it. Lan Zhan," he says, and tucks folded hands not to his chest, not to his throat, not to anywhere poignant, but instead to the fold of his arm. Tucking them up under his armpit for the time-old truth: warmth that comes, in the folds of the body, because a core does not define the world around them. Does not define this, or Yiling, hollow at its core like he is, and cold, yes, but capable of more.
In the settled dust and stone, capable of more.
"I welcome the warmth, but I don't hunt it. I don't have a core," he says with a half smile, holding on to that hand. "But I am not less for being different from you, and the same as so many people we've defended in our lives."
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Yiling knew war, and still could not breathe free of its reminders, but Wei Wuxian has seen a world beyond it. One of small kindnesses, and larger ones, and while Lan Zhan tugs his hand back, brings his chilled hand to his wrist, Wei Wuxian steps in, to pull again, toward himself.
"He had you to find. Zewu-jun as well, I can imagine, and enough braizers, enough blankets, clothing not worn thin." A tug of hands, again, to bring them back to him. "Affection held host here, and we had fires, banked, and he had the best of us, for that time past a year where we lived. You raised A-Yuan alone," and that name, because it thickens in his throat, "With a clan behind you, and it was a good thing, being in the cold, alive enough to hunt warmth, and to find it. Lan Zhan," he says, and tucks folded hands not to his chest, not to his throat, not to anywhere poignant, but instead to the fold of his arm. Tucking them up under his armpit for the time-old truth: warmth that comes, in the folds of the body, because a core does not define the world around them. Does not define this, or Yiling, hollow at its core like he is, and cold, yes, but capable of more.
In the settled dust and stone, capable of more.
"I welcome the warmth, but I don't hunt it. I don't have a core," he says with a half smile, holding on to that hand. "But I am not less for being different from you, and the same as so many people we've defended in our lives."