"I am no patriarch." He smiles with that, a careless shrug of his shoulders; a name never lived up to, but granted, yes, as such things are, by people. The way of every name, chosen by others to define the ones around them, and there's no ill will within it in the end. "So you're doubly right, I suppose."
It would have bothered him once, either out of spite and acceptance of a name he didn't ask for, simply because he could turn it around on those who yoked him with it. Another time to feel there was anywhere carved out in the landscape of this vast world for himself and those he cared for, only to know now, it was only he who lacked the roots. The rest of those in his heart were established, had places, and if they loved them or resented them, it was a certainty he didn't need to provide.
So brittle laughter of his closest friend, a man who loved the man he once was, and it's easy to smile. No weighted pain, in this moment, or the ones that follow.
He raises his cup high, to Lan Zhan, to whatever the future is or isn't, and to the children they share. Misunderstandings will continue, he knows, because they both are who they are, and they haven't learned how to work smoothly outside of the battlefield. Maybe they never will, but he has faith, and faith is more than he's had in a long time.
"Lan Zhan, my soulmate, whatever claims you felt I once had, the ones I never would have made would be in organising your wants. Allow me only to respect what you decide, and to hope for your happiness, when and where it finds you."
A drink of tea and warmth and second chances, in a world so fond of giving few.
'Soulmate.' A man who knows him, mote to whole, part to system, the bindings. If he is flesh, Wei Ying runs red and raw and rust, blood thick. Poison.
He thinks, once upon a time, he lived under a pale, watchful sky, and he bathed growing limbs in cold waters, and he took his sword and his name and is uncle's path.
He thinks, he died at cliff's edge, a restless collision of electric frictions — a storm that never waged itself, stifled with Wei Ying's fall.
He thinks, he has been haze and dreams and steps bridged one after the next, since.
He thinks —
But he says, "Thank you."
And he drinks his stale tea, much as Wei Ying consumes his watered wine, and they comport themselves, loose on their strings, like the puppet show the hour commands, under the weathered, greyed eyes, like morose inertia and sleet, of their curious spectators. What a spectacle they make, two gentlemen in their blood-drenched fineries, negotiating words with the skill of children, gravitating gracelessly towards each other's (absent) cores.
Incomplete, but forcing connection — searching. Lan Wangji's hand trickles on Wei Ying's, on the wine cup. Finding.
Slow, unmoored, but stitching back together through inertia. Place is a function of time. 'Belonging' merely expresses the mathematics. He has the patience to become scholarly, in this.
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It would have bothered him once, either out of spite and acceptance of a name he didn't ask for, simply because he could turn it around on those who yoked him with it. Another time to feel there was anywhere carved out in the landscape of this vast world for himself and those he cared for, only to know now, it was only he who lacked the roots. The rest of those in his heart were established, had places, and if they loved them or resented them, it was a certainty he didn't need to provide.
So brittle laughter of his closest friend, a man who loved the man he once was, and it's easy to smile. No weighted pain, in this moment, or the ones that follow.
He raises his cup high, to Lan Zhan, to whatever the future is or isn't, and to the children they share. Misunderstandings will continue, he knows, because they both are who they are, and they haven't learned how to work smoothly outside of the battlefield. Maybe they never will, but he has faith, and faith is more than he's had in a long time.
"Lan Zhan, my soulmate, whatever claims you felt I once had, the ones I never would have made would be in organising your wants. Allow me only to respect what you decide, and to hope for your happiness, when and where it finds you."
A drink of tea and warmth and second chances, in a world so fond of giving few.
no subject
He thinks, once upon a time, he lived under a pale, watchful sky, and he bathed growing limbs in cold waters, and he took his sword and his name and is uncle's path.
He thinks, he died at cliff's edge, a restless collision of electric frictions — a storm that never waged itself, stifled with Wei Ying's fall.
He thinks, he has been haze and dreams and steps bridged one after the next, since.
He thinks —
But he says, "Thank you."
And he drinks his stale tea, much as Wei Ying consumes his watered wine, and they comport themselves, loose on their strings, like the puppet show the hour commands, under the weathered, greyed eyes, like morose inertia and sleet, of their curious spectators. What a spectacle they make, two gentlemen in their blood-drenched fineries, negotiating words with the skill of children, gravitating gracelessly towards each other's (absent) cores.
Incomplete, but forcing connection — searching. Lan Wangji's hand trickles on Wei Ying's, on the wine cup. Finding.
Slow, unmoored, but stitching back together through inertia. Place is a function of time. 'Belonging' merely expresses the mathematics. He has the patience to become scholarly, in this.