His bounty, found in death. There's some sort of helpless jest in all of it, that the children of his blood are of the places for which he bleeds. To no regret, to no changed actions, and there's a truth buried within it, from the mess of changing diapers to the slathering of salves and the messy reality of the small and needy, selfish beyond all reason.
Lan Zhan frees him from debts not named, but intimated; from the months of Wei Wuxian's grappling guilt and slow resolutions into courses that don't require Lan Zhan's blessing to feel safe, where courting that danger of needing to try that's been tempered by wisdom and the yawning abyss of the sixteen years of darkness staining his mind has a cadence, a whimsy, a truth he can follow. All those months on the road, and he winds back to Gusu Lan, for Lan Zhan, for the children. Winds away, too, and yet returns, a heron mid migration, recalling which pools provide, which sleeping lands are safer enough to dream.
He aches, as Lan Zhan wipes one sleeve across the soft clay tablets they've been writing since Wei Wuxian found his wrist clutched by these same fingers, threaded through his now. Iron bands in warmth, an anchor, then kneeling.
To unmake a truth he'd only learned years too late, and accept what it is, to walk away. There is part of him that considers it, in the fresh terror of that unmooring. That thinks, what would that be? What would it look like, to claim children and no more, to accept that as a due and leave Lan Zhan to his mourning, tempered by the wonder of some part of that man lives yet. He could do it, he thinks. He could be that man, the one who leaves, and he might be content. Not happy but in breathes, not filled but in moments, but he could live hand to mouth, dream to dream.
His parents laughter, and the plodding of the donkey. His only childhood memory that predates the fangs and barking, the last remnant of forgotten ghosts that had loved, and lost, and left, in the proper way of things.
Thus now, he can also choose. Lower to his knees, to kneel in turn, bridging no distance but what their hands do still. Wei Wuxian reaches to his topknot, his uncrowned head, and his fingers find the ribbon wound round. Tug at it, slipping it loose, that long red length, and it slides free into his palm, cascading past his shoulders and then draping, like a delicate thing, down either side of his hand. The ribbon, red as fire, red as blood, red as passion, red as possibility; the red that has decorated his life, then drapes over their joined hands, edges pooling in the soil of Yiling beneath them even now.
"Together," he says, and it's not a Lan's promise, not a wedding of bodies, not a tradition long known. It is Wei Wuxian's promise, the red of him in all its permutations, and Wei Ying's offer, known and knowing. To know each other, there is a bond already, invisible and joining them heart to heart, never clearer than when they find their footing to fight like the brilliance of each other's twin orbits. Yet the knowing has strength in learning, must change as people change, must adapt, and can only do so now with those words, the acknowledgement.
Debts, cleared. Records, evened. Pasts, dead and mourned and honoured, but not carried forever more as the ghosts of the present, tainting the future into shadow.
"Side by side, whatever comes, whatever changes. If I wish for anything, I wish for this."
no subject
Lan Zhan frees him from debts not named, but intimated; from the months of Wei Wuxian's grappling guilt and slow resolutions into courses that don't require Lan Zhan's blessing to feel safe, where courting that danger of needing to try that's been tempered by wisdom and the yawning abyss of the sixteen years of darkness staining his mind has a cadence, a whimsy, a truth he can follow. All those months on the road, and he winds back to Gusu Lan, for Lan Zhan, for the children. Winds away, too, and yet returns, a heron mid migration, recalling which pools provide, which sleeping lands are safer enough to dream.
He aches, as Lan Zhan wipes one sleeve across the soft clay tablets they've been writing since Wei Wuxian found his wrist clutched by these same fingers, threaded through his now. Iron bands in warmth, an anchor, then kneeling.
To unmake a truth he'd only learned years too late, and accept what it is, to walk away. There is part of him that considers it, in the fresh terror of that unmooring. That thinks, what would that be? What would it look like, to claim children and no more, to accept that as a due and leave Lan Zhan to his mourning, tempered by the wonder of some part of that man lives yet. He could do it, he thinks. He could be that man, the one who leaves, and he might be content. Not happy but in breathes, not filled but in moments, but he could live hand to mouth, dream to dream.
His parents laughter, and the plodding of the donkey. His only childhood memory that predates the fangs and barking, the last remnant of forgotten ghosts that had loved, and lost, and left, in the proper way of things.
Thus now, he can also choose. Lower to his knees, to kneel in turn, bridging no distance but what their hands do still. Wei Wuxian reaches to his topknot, his uncrowned head, and his fingers find the ribbon wound round. Tug at it, slipping it loose, that long red length, and it slides free into his palm, cascading past his shoulders and then draping, like a delicate thing, down either side of his hand. The ribbon, red as fire, red as blood, red as passion, red as possibility; the red that has decorated his life, then drapes over their joined hands, edges pooling in the soil of Yiling beneath them even now.
"Together," he says, and it's not a Lan's promise, not a wedding of bodies, not a tradition long known. It is Wei Wuxian's promise, the red of him in all its permutations, and Wei Ying's offer, known and knowing. To know each other, there is a bond already, invisible and joining them heart to heart, never clearer than when they find their footing to fight like the brilliance of each other's twin orbits. Yet the knowing has strength in learning, must change as people change, must adapt, and can only do so now with those words, the acknowledgement.
Debts, cleared. Records, evened. Pasts, dead and mourned and honoured, but not carried forever more as the ghosts of the present, tainting the future into shadow.
"Side by side, whatever comes, whatever changes. If I wish for anything, I wish for this."