A cup raised in turn, in the knit silence and electricity of this dusty building, careworn and careful for the tending of what public comes through, desperate or greedy or anything inbetween, anything that might be better. The wine isn't the best he's had, and yet as he raising the cup to Lan Zhan, what's on his tongue after is sweet, smooth over his tongue and down his throat, and he smiles after, as if nights and days of careless imbibing was to lead to moments like these. Where the offer of a new jar, when for once, he's not drained his dry already, and if it's tempering or moderation or distraction in the moment, he feels light enough to breathe freely.
"I look forward to finding out," he says at last, pours for himself another cup of wine, though he doesn't drink it immediately. He is himself, Wei Ying to few, Wei Wuxian to most, and the bleeding shadow of the Laozu to a public that half believed he'd never been real, and half believed he'd the cause of their worst personal nightmares. He is not that man, in what he will bleed out of Yiling, lancing the abscess of its hurts, draining so that healing can take root the way the rot had.
He is a collection of half-finished thoughts, of better intentions better considered, of actions taken and paced and still only sometimes parallel to the well trod paths they'd all learned through the dawning years of their cultivation. A constructed family, found piece by piece, and it's easier then, easier now, to lift his cup and pause, head tilted to consider Lan Zhan through this all.
Drinks from the cup with his lashes lowered as he blinks, long and slow and carefully careless, the affection of a moment and two men who knew each other once, who may yet know each other again, and not just in the weaving of their children's lives. Yet first in that weaving, and the lancing of wounds, and the bindings of fates without the axe of some outside threat hanging over their heads.
"What of you, Lan Zhan? Who will you be, in this life of yours?"
Not new, not second, not follow-up, but cleared beyond the turgid mouth of its river, flowing to sea. Clarity, a chord for the soul, and not the demand, the enforcement, of anyone else's expectation. Unless he chose. Unless he wished it, anchored as he is, inevitably, by clan, by tradition, by ties to a brother he loves and a life he'd been born into.
Father, first before many things. Wei Wuxian feels he sees more of that in Lan Zhan than the rest, out of hands on throats or bones anchoring wrists, but instead the small smile when he sees Sizhui, the curve of his arms when he holds their younger sons, the daughters he's demanded.
no subject
A cup raised in turn, in the knit silence and electricity of this dusty building, careworn and careful for the tending of what public comes through, desperate or greedy or anything inbetween, anything that might be better. The wine isn't the best he's had, and yet as he raising the cup to Lan Zhan, what's on his tongue after is sweet, smooth over his tongue and down his throat, and he smiles after, as if nights and days of careless imbibing was to lead to moments like these. Where the offer of a new jar, when for once, he's not drained his dry already, and if it's tempering or moderation or distraction in the moment, he feels light enough to breathe freely.
"I look forward to finding out," he says at last, pours for himself another cup of wine, though he doesn't drink it immediately. He is himself, Wei Ying to few, Wei Wuxian to most, and the bleeding shadow of the Laozu to a public that half believed he'd never been real, and half believed he'd the cause of their worst personal nightmares. He is not that man, in what he will bleed out of Yiling, lancing the abscess of its hurts, draining so that healing can take root the way the rot had.
He is a collection of half-finished thoughts, of better intentions better considered, of actions taken and paced and still only sometimes parallel to the well trod paths they'd all learned through the dawning years of their cultivation. A constructed family, found piece by piece, and it's easier then, easier now, to lift his cup and pause, head tilted to consider Lan Zhan through this all.
Drinks from the cup with his lashes lowered as he blinks, long and slow and carefully careless, the affection of a moment and two men who knew each other once, who may yet know each other again, and not just in the weaving of their children's lives. Yet first in that weaving, and the lancing of wounds, and the bindings of fates without the axe of some outside threat hanging over their heads.
"What of you, Lan Zhan? Who will you be, in this life of yours?"
Not new, not second, not follow-up, but cleared beyond the turgid mouth of its river, flowing to sea. Clarity, a chord for the soul, and not the demand, the enforcement, of anyone else's expectation. Unless he chose. Unless he wished it, anchored as he is, inevitably, by clan, by tradition, by ties to a brother he loves and a life he'd been born into.
Father, first before many things. Wei Wuxian feels he sees more of that in Lan Zhan than the rest, out of hands on throats or bones anchoring wrists, but instead the small smile when he sees Sizhui, the curve of his arms when he holds their younger sons, the daughters he's demanded.