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inbox | eastbound
lan wangji
missives | encounters
lan wangji
missives | encounters
( She releases, he shrivels further, an initial step back, and another for balance — until courtesy and composure both paralyse him to embrace a form of greeting. Arms bound behind his back, head flirting with minute, aborted inclinations.
He nods, for gratitude is both word and bond and indication of sentiment, a foundation. The girl is of this world and its verbosity, each word cheapened by the inflation of multitudes spewed every heartbeat. She does not understand — only one need to, between them. )
You regained yourself. ( And Wei Ying's voice, brittle wind, Would you love her less if...? Better, to see her bones sharp and her cheeks gaunt and her eyes dulled of their glint, but remembering themselves in shape. Joy withholds herself, but will return. Children have a gift of emotional elasticity that protects them from tragedy. )
No debt breathes between us. Your health?
He nods, for gratitude is both word and bond and indication of sentiment, a foundation. The girl is of this world and its verbosity, each word cheapened by the inflation of multitudes spewed every heartbeat. She does not understand — only one need to, between them. )
You regained yourself. ( And Wei Ying's voice, brittle wind, Would you love her less if...? Better, to see her bones sharp and her cheeks gaunt and her eyes dulled of their glint, but remembering themselves in shape. Joy withholds herself, but will return. Children have a gift of emotional elasticity that protects them from tragedy. )
No debt breathes between us. Your health?
[ From the way he recoils it's abundantly clear that Lan Wangji did not get very many hugs, which only makes her all the more pleased with her decision. He was a good person, he deserved hugs. ]
I did, and no, no debt.
[ Her expression softened as she tilted her head towards him. Though she had been taken out, Lily knew enough to be certain that whatever the group had been faced with had been terrible while she had been lost among the Beastmaster's horrible number. He had not needed to spend the time looking for her, but had done so anyway. ]
Just gratitude. And I'm alright.
[ Lily lifted her hands from her sides before letting them fall again, not defeated so much as very tired of being tired. ]
I'm tired. Wen Qing's seen to me, she brought salves, and Emilia too with her magic.
[ She was fortunate, she knew. ] Eleven makes sure I eat. I'll be right as rain before I know it.
[ So please don't worry. ]
I did, and no, no debt.
[ Her expression softened as she tilted her head towards him. Though she had been taken out, Lily knew enough to be certain that whatever the group had been faced with had been terrible while she had been lost among the Beastmaster's horrible number. He had not needed to spend the time looking for her, but had done so anyway. ]
Just gratitude. And I'm alright.
[ Lily lifted her hands from her sides before letting them fall again, not defeated so much as very tired of being tired. ]
I'm tired. Wen Qing's seen to me, she brought salves, and Emilia too with her magic.
[ She was fortunate, she knew. ] Eleven makes sure I eat. I'll be right as rain before I know it.
[ So please don't worry. ]
[ Wen Qing and the witch Emilia, completing their inspections. The child Eleven, sourcing her meals. In matters of body, Lily's flesh is attended, but there is a second sickness deep-rooted beneath skin, and the crepuscular line of Lan Wangji's gaze briefly coaxes to softness.
He does not hesitate — two fingers, rigid and aligned, a nail half sharded blunt in battle. They reach to hover the line of Lily's arm, flow of his qi a glistened, gelid solidity traversing skin. Strengthen. A gift of frail resource, more artifice and token than ample supply well extended.
In the blustering crowds of the palace corridors, laughter ricocheting off thin glass and crumbled stone, the silence of his shallow healing is the one gift yet permitted.
The white of his collar sits crisp and biting against each laboured breath. He heaves; it tumbles down. His hand withdraws. ]
It will never leave you.
[ Memory haunts, guilt transcends. Shape mends, but substance erodes. They gained a girl, but gave her innocence. ]
He does not hesitate — two fingers, rigid and aligned, a nail half sharded blunt in battle. They reach to hover the line of Lily's arm, flow of his qi a glistened, gelid solidity traversing skin. Strengthen. A gift of frail resource, more artifice and token than ample supply well extended.
In the blustering crowds of the palace corridors, laughter ricocheting off thin glass and crumbled stone, the silence of his shallow healing is the one gift yet permitted.
The white of his collar sits crisp and biting against each laboured breath. He heaves; it tumbles down. His hand withdraws. ]
It will never leave you.
[ Memory haunts, guilt transcends. Shape mends, but substance erodes. They gained a girl, but gave her innocence. ]
[ Her eyes fell to his hand as she watched the gentle glow from the energy passing from his fingers to her arm, mystified but touched.
Looking on in silent fascination she relaxed her arm, meeting his eye with a smile that was both warm and weary. ]
Will any of this leave any of us?
[ There's a haunted sort of sadness in her eyes when she spoke, one shoulder lifting in a weary shrug.
None of this was going to leave her. Not the thing at the bottom of the lake, or the farm burning down, or the blood rain, or any of it. Whatever any of them were walking back into when the Beacon was activated, they were by and large all walking into it with a handful more terrible memories than they started with. ]
Looking on in silent fascination she relaxed her arm, meeting his eye with a smile that was both warm and weary. ]
Will any of this leave any of us?
[ There's a haunted sort of sadness in her eyes when she spoke, one shoulder lifting in a weary shrug.
None of this was going to leave her. Not the thing at the bottom of the lake, or the farm burning down, or the blood rain, or any of it. Whatever any of them were walking back into when the Beacon was activated, they were by and large all walking into it with a handful more terrible memories than they started with. ]
[ In all things, his hand hovered above the guqin strings, ever short of tainting touch. He hesitates. ] It will awe you, what the mind forgets for preservation.
[ Wars, losses, disaster in the realm of the personal, the absolute. Wei Ying, dangling off cliff-side, hands broken, red at his mouth and the pour trickle-soft.
This is truth, unholy: a body survives, where thoughts disperse and wander. The vessel of Lily Evans need not concede the battle first. Need not even know it headed to war. ]
[ Wars, losses, disaster in the realm of the personal, the absolute. Wei Ying, dangling off cliff-side, hands broken, red at his mouth and the pour trickle-soft.
This is truth, unholy: a body survives, where thoughts disperse and wander. The vessel of Lily Evans need not concede the battle first. Need not even know it headed to war. ]
To where he tracks Lan Zhan, he of whites and collections of bones captured gracefully within the skeins of his fine-woven skin, Wei Wuxian brings simple fare: scarred and loved steel, two lengths, handles of a style unfamiliar to their homes but remarkably standard in this city of unrest and inequity and fear, holding its breath. No wooden practise blades, meant for the young and learning, but ones that have seen practise and known battle and have served many hands before; ones to serve hands that follow, careless as a lover won through coin or circumstance, whispering sweetness into ears as bodies align and find something between them, be it pleasure or officiousness.
Here, he holds the sword as offering, smile playing on his lips, eyes the narrowed consideration of a raptor spying ambitious targets through the thickly forested expanse.
Lan Zhan, handed spiritless steel, and spirit that fills the words in accompaniment:
"Spar with me."
Sword to sword, albeit not Bichen meeting Suibian as once they had; but it's the drain of spiritual steel his body can no longer tolerate, and so he offers this instead. Tempered, well loved, well honed steel, responsive to mastery, but soulless, wanting nothing of them but the attention of any halfway respectable lover.
If they were, indeed, halfway toward respectability in loving, and oh, who's to say they're even that close to the concept? Step by step, and here the dance, an offer returned and met.
Thank you.
Here, he holds the sword as offering, smile playing on his lips, eyes the narrowed consideration of a raptor spying ambitious targets through the thickly forested expanse.
Lan Zhan, handed spiritless steel, and spirit that fills the words in accompaniment:
"Spar with me."
Sword to sword, albeit not Bichen meeting Suibian as once they had; but it's the drain of spiritual steel his body can no longer tolerate, and so he offers this instead. Tempered, well loved, well honed steel, responsive to mastery, but soulless, wanting nothing of them but the attention of any halfway respectable lover.
If they were, indeed, halfway toward respectability in loving, and oh, who's to say they're even that close to the concept? Step by step, and here the dance, an offer returned and met.
Thank you.
Tomorrow, Wei Ying had pledged, and a second life has made him a man of his word, true. Back to the wall, the zest of morning light thinning fountain waters pellucid, he'd walked the gardens with the distant, melancholy appetite of seeking likeness to Cloud Recesses, in mote or whole or memory. Each day, Taravast's manicured beauty denies him: strange, perfectly rounded flowers graze his ankles. Waters ripple and settle, then chase each other in twinned rivulets. The stoking murmurs and violent haste of servants galloping to fresh posts is barely a bromide, spoiled imitation of Gusu's natural stillness.
Today, he searches the woodened root of a raging, riotous shrub, thinking to find a cousin of magnolias — and only raises his face, blank and easy, between long-blinked moments of anticipation, to discover Wei Ying, a stain of silken reds against the golden artifice of the waiting Taravast. Wei Ying's hand. His swords.
Bidden, he accepts unthinking, unflinching, fingers walking the tired, coarse length of the blade, where time has peeled and spumed steel through snags. He grasps the hilt of one, takes ownership — rises gently with it, awed and validated, as ever, by the twinge of hurt that stabs when he is to have and hold a sword past Bichen, affronted in her sheath. They are ever heavier, her imposters, a foreign weight. He measures the lent blade, turns her in hand, and no fabled heart answers him, only the mechanic solidity of a soul-stripped object that gravity and momentum position in his service.
Still, he nods. Accepts. There is a gentle, lackadaisical moment, when the sun seems to forget Wei Ying is meant for war now, and paints him bright and beautiful in unearned glory. Shameless. Wangji has yet to strike — mulls and meanders to the conclusion that to make Wei Ying even the sliver of a concession is to insult his expertise and experience on one unworthy hand, and Lan Wangji's choice of a soulmate on the other. No mercy. No assaults stayed.
"Until yield or first blood." One bite, no further. This, he commands, where Wei Ying's appetites and the lent starvation of the spirits that walk his bones like second skins might speak a stranger, different compulsion. "Blade alone, or alongside enhancements?"
Talismans, wards, secondary weapons, crafty tricks. Blade engagements grow skill with the sword, ready a man for the critical hour when one instrument alone can be depended upon. True combat seldom keeps to the etiquettes and gentlemen's agreements of the training grounds. They learned this in war, hands filthied and full with dirt trampled by Wen, ashes from home fires. Faces drenched in theatre-plays of pallor, to hide (and hungrily seek) in forests brewed in early-dawns mists.
Today, he searches the woodened root of a raging, riotous shrub, thinking to find a cousin of magnolias — and only raises his face, blank and easy, between long-blinked moments of anticipation, to discover Wei Ying, a stain of silken reds against the golden artifice of the waiting Taravast. Wei Ying's hand. His swords.
Bidden, he accepts unthinking, unflinching, fingers walking the tired, coarse length of the blade, where time has peeled and spumed steel through snags. He grasps the hilt of one, takes ownership — rises gently with it, awed and validated, as ever, by the twinge of hurt that stabs when he is to have and hold a sword past Bichen, affronted in her sheath. They are ever heavier, her imposters, a foreign weight. He measures the lent blade, turns her in hand, and no fabled heart answers him, only the mechanic solidity of a soul-stripped object that gravity and momentum position in his service.
Still, he nods. Accepts. There is a gentle, lackadaisical moment, when the sun seems to forget Wei Ying is meant for war now, and paints him bright and beautiful in unearned glory. Shameless. Wangji has yet to strike — mulls and meanders to the conclusion that to make Wei Ying even the sliver of a concession is to insult his expertise and experience on one unworthy hand, and Lan Wangji's choice of a soulmate on the other. No mercy. No assaults stayed.
"Until yield or first blood." One bite, no further. This, he commands, where Wei Ying's appetites and the lent starvation of the spirits that walk his bones like second skins might speak a stranger, different compulsion. "Blade alone, or alongside enhancements?"
Talismans, wards, secondary weapons, crafty tricks. Blade engagements grow skill with the sword, ready a man for the critical hour when one instrument alone can be depended upon. True combat seldom keeps to the etiquettes and gentlemen's agreements of the training grounds. They learned this in war, hands filthied and full with dirt trampled by Wen, ashes from home fires. Faces drenched in theatre-plays of pallor, to hide (and hungrily seek) in forests brewed in early-dawns mists.
There is a click of his tongue presaging what consideration might occur, on what it means, to answer a heartbeat later, with, "It's never a blade alone, Lan Zhan." Not to reach for talismans, the wards, the winding way of his own mind and creativity to reach beyond expectation and find fertile grounds. Beyond the dressings of a goddess who needn't have ever lived, Wei Wuxian walks as man, and he knows this:
It is never a blade that acts alone. People, yes, but not a blade, souled or soulless and uncomplicated. Even Suibian, in its worst fevered mourning, had still stirred to act by giving itself up to himself, to Jiang Cheng's reaching hands, and to nothing else. To reverberate with the trace of what energies had defined Wei Wuxian, and what had been cradled in his brother's chest.
"But blades only, this time."
No wards, no talismans, no drawing back from yielding blood, because they both know how this will end. Bittersweet, sour on his tongue, not because he presages the taste of defeat, but because to know this version of it will be skill alone, not artistry. The ache that leaves doesn't fade. Hasn't had the years to grow separate that so many accused him of having arrogance for, and Lan Zhan, even, is too new to the understanding to feel it, except as the worrying of an empty space between healthy teeth for the one gone missing, lost to committed violence.
Swords and men, and to say nothing of additions drawn in blood or cinnabar, this is to the tenor of their bodies, the tempering of their forms. Not art, to spar like this. This is inviting the dirt, the sweat, the blood that is part of any warrior's fate, be it his or those he faces.
He knows the forms. Remembers them with an ache in his heart that he sings as promise down the length of steel he hefts, irreverently unnamed, because the people here fancy names only for blades dedicated to individuals, to purposes. Nameless, and his form is the easy one of a man who has fought and failed and stood, again, having known the heights of his own unfortunately founded arrogance, and the broken bones of his crashing, self-elected exile, as if surprised at the hurt.
Wei Wuxian lifts his blade, curls his lips, and a narrowing of his eyes and the slightest cant of his head is the invitation to a man who had been his equal, years ago; who near twenty years later, better be his better.
Terrible, the disappointment, if he learns otherwise. (For whom?)
It is never a blade that acts alone. People, yes, but not a blade, souled or soulless and uncomplicated. Even Suibian, in its worst fevered mourning, had still stirred to act by giving itself up to himself, to Jiang Cheng's reaching hands, and to nothing else. To reverberate with the trace of what energies had defined Wei Wuxian, and what had been cradled in his brother's chest.
"But blades only, this time."
No wards, no talismans, no drawing back from yielding blood, because they both know how this will end. Bittersweet, sour on his tongue, not because he presages the taste of defeat, but because to know this version of it will be skill alone, not artistry. The ache that leaves doesn't fade. Hasn't had the years to grow separate that so many accused him of having arrogance for, and Lan Zhan, even, is too new to the understanding to feel it, except as the worrying of an empty space between healthy teeth for the one gone missing, lost to committed violence.
Swords and men, and to say nothing of additions drawn in blood or cinnabar, this is to the tenor of their bodies, the tempering of their forms. Not art, to spar like this. This is inviting the dirt, the sweat, the blood that is part of any warrior's fate, be it his or those he faces.
He knows the forms. Remembers them with an ache in his heart that he sings as promise down the length of steel he hefts, irreverently unnamed, because the people here fancy names only for blades dedicated to individuals, to purposes. Nameless, and his form is the easy one of a man who has fought and failed and stood, again, having known the heights of his own unfortunately founded arrogance, and the broken bones of his crashing, self-elected exile, as if surprised at the hurt.
Wei Wuxian lifts his blade, curls his lips, and a narrowing of his eyes and the slightest cant of his head is the invitation to a man who had been his equal, years ago; who near twenty years later, better be his better.
Terrible, the disappointment, if he learns otherwise. (For whom?)
A learned dance, carved beneath gristle, etched on bone. He remembers: he faces the forms of Yunmeng, perverted and internecine. The easy, carefree steps that transform the momentum of flight into fight, the swivels into surgical stabs, the arcs wide and movements broad and their aim never to strike against strategic targets — for this, they have the bow, the arrow, the contingent of nomad hunters scattered across Lotus Pier like locusts swarming in late spring — but to cut away at the enemy, the skin of him, the fat, the thin strip of his meats. Until, through attrition, he surrenders.
He remembers too: not to exert himself, not to waste of his strength. To keep the anemic breadth of Bichen as his advantage, to eclipse her from sight until her silvered, wayward length can interject to deflect a blow. But he does not have her here, now — only a soulless blade, weighted, formal. His hissed chuckle rattles the grounds like summer storm, step fast when he closes the distance between them, then loosens it, like thread finding its place in a manicured pattern. A callous thing, to woo a partner into empty motions, as if it were tepid seduction to a marriage bed. Do not insult the better swordsman with taunts. It is unseemly. But Wei Ying favours speed, and he most be scratched like an itch, worn down. In full and proper form, he is unparalleled; to survive him is to reduce him.
Sweat beads the back of Wangji's nape like an ice sheet in midday swelter. The stirrings of his body build and thrum, persistent. An eighth of a shichen's wait has barely won Lan Wangji trickling warmth in his limbs, his belly, forged him alive. He holds a hand out and curls his fingers in, once and again, catching and calling.
"Come here." As if it is Wei Ying who has toyed and tortured. And Lan Wangji forgets the name of it, the crackled, deep fissure his mouth makes now, edges northbound. Ah. Smile, then.
He remembers too: not to exert himself, not to waste of his strength. To keep the anemic breadth of Bichen as his advantage, to eclipse her from sight until her silvered, wayward length can interject to deflect a blow. But he does not have her here, now — only a soulless blade, weighted, formal. His hissed chuckle rattles the grounds like summer storm, step fast when he closes the distance between them, then loosens it, like thread finding its place in a manicured pattern. A callous thing, to woo a partner into empty motions, as if it were tepid seduction to a marriage bed. Do not insult the better swordsman with taunts. It is unseemly. But Wei Ying favours speed, and he most be scratched like an itch, worn down. In full and proper form, he is unparalleled; to survive him is to reduce him.
Sweat beads the back of Wangji's nape like an ice sheet in midday swelter. The stirrings of his body build and thrum, persistent. An eighth of a shichen's wait has barely won Lan Wangji trickling warmth in his limbs, his belly, forged him alive. He holds a hand out and curls his fingers in, once and again, catching and calling.
"Come here." As if it is Wei Ying who has toyed and tortured. And Lan Wangji forgets the name of it, the crackled, deep fissure his mouth makes now, edges northbound. Ah. Smile, then.
Slash of one smile, meeting the sly awareness of another smile, from the now that knew of a prior then.
His body remembers, muscles taught in years and yearning that said he never forgot what he set down for the sake of sacrifices asked and unwelcomed. There's no greater betrayal than each time Suibian sat in his hands, blade freed rarely, swiftly handed to one who could feed its beautiful greed, and Wen Ning was his choice, one he trusted.
Jiang Cheng held on in despair and denial, until he broke to rebuild himself, claiming that loving heartbreak that family was, within a generation or outside of one. Not resolution, but how, fragile and bloody.
Here, he moves with grace, swift in invitation, no indulgences for the flash he once breathed within if it didn't also serve for more than beauty within steel. To rise and greet in the singing strike of metal against like, deflections into parry, a shift and leap on stone or off the same, his blood hums with it.
Lan Zhan says come here, and he smiles, blade lifted, honest in the sweat of a body that still knows cultivation, that fine tuned it's energies to minimal loss, so that water and heat and energy spent is not burning spiritual at both ends.
"If only you said please."
Yet he comes, and it's to turn with speed from attack to delay, defense, sure footed, because this sword demands nothing of him but the respect to use it well.
Treacherous to the last, like spumed river water. Expect hostilities of him, invite them, and Wei Ying snaps and strikes like a viper, retreating in defence. Reaction would have given Lan Wangji the advantage of honing the territory and his inertia. Action forces him too close to Wei Ying to weaponise aught but the snare of Wangji's rained-down, brute strength.
Gasped breath singes the inside of him in pulsed echoes, shaped for the Wen brand, shaped for missed blinks and heartbeats. Wei Ying flickers before him, slips to the right, far gone after. Distantly, another man who wears Wangji's skins and his sword remembers to raise his weapon and catch one strike, but miss the second. More fool the man who harms himself in his own parry. A bruise will loom stark and long like winter twilight on his flank, when he wakes tomorrow.
He stirs. Wipes the blood from his mouth with the back of hand, red quick and heated for where his teeth crowned and riled and sawed dots of bite on the soft flesh of his mouth's insides.
"Not yours," he murmurs, because this will not be named first blood, Wei Ying should not so much as dare. "Please come here."
And then —
Lan Wangji is of Yunmeng also, for a moment, sword dropped of his hand, and Wangji in close chase, arc of his fall landing him to the side, barely breaking to catch the blade before she kisses ground — and turn the sword, hilt sweeping at Wei Ying's ankles.
What has he learned in sixteen years? This. The way of filth between fingertips, the saccharine print of abbreviated paths. Efficiency in slaughter, an unctuous, slick playfulness.
If a man's game ill suits you, change it.
Gasped breath singes the inside of him in pulsed echoes, shaped for the Wen brand, shaped for missed blinks and heartbeats. Wei Ying flickers before him, slips to the right, far gone after. Distantly, another man who wears Wangji's skins and his sword remembers to raise his weapon and catch one strike, but miss the second. More fool the man who harms himself in his own parry. A bruise will loom stark and long like winter twilight on his flank, when he wakes tomorrow.
He stirs. Wipes the blood from his mouth with the back of hand, red quick and heated for where his teeth crowned and riled and sawed dots of bite on the soft flesh of his mouth's insides.
"Not yours," he murmurs, because this will not be named first blood, Wei Ying should not so much as dare. "Please come here."
And then —
Lan Wangji is of Yunmeng also, for a moment, sword dropped of his hand, and Wangji in close chase, arc of his fall landing him to the side, barely breaking to catch the blade before she kisses ground — and turn the sword, hilt sweeping at Wei Ying's ankles.
What has he learned in sixteen years? This. The way of filth between fingertips, the saccharine print of abbreviated paths. Efficiency in slaughter, an unctuous, slick playfulness.
If a man's game ill suits you, change it.
Wei Wuxian does not seek early beds. Not without exhaustion chasing at his heels, spiritually or physically, and it has been a different sort of dance that's become their nightly rituals, even when they're locked in daytime arguments. Laying head to pillows, side by side, whatever the bed is or isn't, whatever ground or platform or stuffed mattress is found underneath. He sprawls across surfaces he knows, and while the city runs itself to ruins and hope, himself helping on both sides to different extents, there is still a room with a hearth that burns, not to keep out the cold, lacking that strength, but to keep a light there even when the light-orb lit lanterns falter.
Magic of light, rather than fire. Steadier, those lights, but he flickers as the flames do, banked and tamed, not the weapons they are in his hands or the hands of witches or Lan Zhan, flames beckoned and cast and curtailed and consuming, like curiosity and silence.
Wei Wuxian sits upon the bed, draped in robes, cleanshaven. Papers in hand, quill that never writes as properly as he wishes even when the ink is smooth as silk and endless as regrets. Cloth folded bundle under the crook of one propped up knee, while he sketches through considerations, waiting.
Magic of light, rather than fire. Steadier, those lights, but he flickers as the flames do, banked and tamed, not the weapons they are in his hands or the hands of witches or Lan Zhan, flames beckoned and cast and curtailed and consuming, like curiosity and silence.
Wei Wuxian sits upon the bed, draped in robes, cleanshaven. Papers in hand, quill that never writes as properly as he wishes even when the ink is smooth as silk and endless as regrets. Cloth folded bundle under the crook of one propped up knee, while he sketches through considerations, waiting.
A smile, more teeth, eyes fierce in vivaciousness when he scoffs out the laugh, "No," blood not claimed, and perhaps Lan Zhan should wonder at a man who has denied pain as convincingly as Lan Zhan has, has suffered in the same chosen silences, has deflected and foregone, for if first blood is a convincing end, or if to the pain and to the satisfaction might have been better claims.
Please thrums through him, galvanizing when Lan Zhan comes, forward and sweeping in a graceful, tricky fall of a blade and a hilt that chases laughter in a brief, bitten off statement. An exhalation of surprised, enthralled amusement, Wei Wuxian barely sweeping himself away, and not fully free of impact. Bone will remind him, when he pauses to take stock, later. Not now, when a glancing brush means feet still for standing, and no flash to his following dash in, again pressing Lan Zhan's reach, rendering blades things of crossed natures and not the art of a blade, but the weight of it. Brute strength on a fulcrum, but not to endless press and pressure.
A ghosting grin, the jest in his words, "Like this?" Close enough to reach past themselves and bleed on swords, kiss of flesh and metal, blessing to presage the fight that follows, when they breathe into spaces between them, expanding like lungs. A circulatory system of echoed times, where Lan Zhan has learned the crass, the filth one can fight the world with, and Wei Wuxian, resurrected pebble by pebble, has hosted malevolence in his core.
Death be not proud. If only to be as prideless as that; but a lion knows little of grace in surrender, and Wei Wuxian slides into place, fall of his not-quite robes an extension of each movement, flowing, exaggerating. Flirtation with pain, because there is not, has not been intent to kill, and that dulls every blade. They know, having killed, what it is to fight for anything less than cessation; of a heart, a cause, a calamity. For now, his body responds as a song played through his empty core, filling him with air, light.
Please thrums through him, galvanizing when Lan Zhan comes, forward and sweeping in a graceful, tricky fall of a blade and a hilt that chases laughter in a brief, bitten off statement. An exhalation of surprised, enthralled amusement, Wei Wuxian barely sweeping himself away, and not fully free of impact. Bone will remind him, when he pauses to take stock, later. Not now, when a glancing brush means feet still for standing, and no flash to his following dash in, again pressing Lan Zhan's reach, rendering blades things of crossed natures and not the art of a blade, but the weight of it. Brute strength on a fulcrum, but not to endless press and pressure.
A ghosting grin, the jest in his words, "Like this?" Close enough to reach past themselves and bleed on swords, kiss of flesh and metal, blessing to presage the fight that follows, when they breathe into spaces between them, expanding like lungs. A circulatory system of echoed times, where Lan Zhan has learned the crass, the filth one can fight the world with, and Wei Wuxian, resurrected pebble by pebble, has hosted malevolence in his core.
Death be not proud. If only to be as prideless as that; but a lion knows little of grace in surrender, and Wei Wuxian slides into place, fall of his not-quite robes an extension of each movement, flowing, exaggerating. Flirtation with pain, because there is not, has not been intent to kill, and that dulls every blade. They know, having killed, what it is to fight for anything less than cessation; of a heart, a cause, a calamity. For now, his body responds as a song played through his empty core, filling him with air, light.
Before, blood and wine. He wets his lips, loosens his tongue, declines the second sip and the slow-trickled lethargy that honeys his bones leaves him syrupy, slow, distanced from himself. Alert, in the way of animals that recognise the critical loss of their senses and must compensate with slow, tactile, strategic precision.
He thinks, I could yet stumble to sleep, one more day gained. Thinks, It is not so cravenly a thing, to withdraw and seize a better battle. Thinks, I have asked nothing of you since your return. I ask now not to speak of this.
Haunts, pale silhouette chased by sickly, wan candlelight across corridors and the snares and snags of hounds, outside, of men turned beasts and hunting their freedom. The bleeding has done. The slaughter. Sticky-sweet, his fingertips reek of red, even now he's thrice removed their viscera, salting the remains. There is a gutting of him, as if he is husked and set to dry, and he stares before him at his known, pulsing heart.
There. That. Wei Ying's quarters, so seldom entered fairly, formally, without the subterfuge of docile roof tile and yielding eaves. The door squeals rust and heft, like an anguished pig before the blade. Do not cut, but inside, Wei Ying's cradled in his darks and the many fine foibles that paint a man tame, swept in sleepy majesty. He wonders how many talismans sleep purchase Wei Ying's relaxation. Thaws and bristles, and turns his face when the diffused beam of his gaze lands on Wei Ying's cheek, like barren land unspoiled. Ah. I bound you when you looked just so.
The door whispers shut before him. He does not prowl. Click, then clank, when one knee hits the floor, strength and lacquer misjudged. On old wood, scratches spider and lent light dapple bite wounds. The second knee, muted. The ghost of wine ashes his mouth. His fingers spoil the arrangements of his hair, before they free his headband, pulled taut and straight for display in both hands, and he kneels with it as he did with the discipline whips once, holds the pose and feels heat lick the bones of his back.
"Close family may touch this ribbon."
You knew. You above all read and wrote the rules once and again and nearly in perpetuity. His brow is too languid to crisp, to wrinkle. Let this moment pass by him, through him, river water. He is not privy to it, only meat and crumbling bone before Wei Ying's assessing gaze, found wanting. An object.
"Once, in our ancestral cave. The rite of your rescue borrowed the forms of wedded claim." Sneering, snarling, the animal that lairs in him shows its teeth. He cannot sate and appease it, only contain, conceal, bury. Stone, gravel. He is. Breathe, survive. What is right, and what is wrong?
"You did not knowingly consent. It does not bind." He wants the wine returned, to gulp it, to sear his tongue. "What difference, now?"
Take the ribbon. Put it to fire. What difference? A city burns.
He thinks, I could yet stumble to sleep, one more day gained. Thinks, It is not so cravenly a thing, to withdraw and seize a better battle. Thinks, I have asked nothing of you since your return. I ask now not to speak of this.
Haunts, pale silhouette chased by sickly, wan candlelight across corridors and the snares and snags of hounds, outside, of men turned beasts and hunting their freedom. The bleeding has done. The slaughter. Sticky-sweet, his fingertips reek of red, even now he's thrice removed their viscera, salting the remains. There is a gutting of him, as if he is husked and set to dry, and he stares before him at his known, pulsing heart.
There. That. Wei Ying's quarters, so seldom entered fairly, formally, without the subterfuge of docile roof tile and yielding eaves. The door squeals rust and heft, like an anguished pig before the blade. Do not cut, but inside, Wei Ying's cradled in his darks and the many fine foibles that paint a man tame, swept in sleepy majesty. He wonders how many talismans sleep purchase Wei Ying's relaxation. Thaws and bristles, and turns his face when the diffused beam of his gaze lands on Wei Ying's cheek, like barren land unspoiled. Ah. I bound you when you looked just so.
The door whispers shut before him. He does not prowl. Click, then clank, when one knee hits the floor, strength and lacquer misjudged. On old wood, scratches spider and lent light dapple bite wounds. The second knee, muted. The ghost of wine ashes his mouth. His fingers spoil the arrangements of his hair, before they free his headband, pulled taut and straight for display in both hands, and he kneels with it as he did with the discipline whips once, holds the pose and feels heat lick the bones of his back.
"Close family may touch this ribbon."
You knew. You above all read and wrote the rules once and again and nearly in perpetuity. His brow is too languid to crisp, to wrinkle. Let this moment pass by him, through him, river water. He is not privy to it, only meat and crumbling bone before Wei Ying's assessing gaze, found wanting. An object.
"Once, in our ancestral cave. The rite of your rescue borrowed the forms of wedded claim." Sneering, snarling, the animal that lairs in him shows its teeth. He cannot sate and appease it, only contain, conceal, bury. Stone, gravel. He is. Breathe, survive. What is right, and what is wrong?
"You did not knowingly consent. It does not bind." He wants the wine returned, to gulp it, to sear his tongue. "What difference, now?"
Take the ribbon. Put it to fire. What difference? A city burns.
Lan Zhan comes, and he is as undone as Wei Wuxian can remember him, sharp edges and frayed nerves, when he enters to kneel without a request made, a confession before a conversation. He knows the shape of that movement, what it is to see and accuse and be accused without the words exchanged, what defense is, what surrender feels like.
Fingers fumble through hair, untying a ribbon that leaves its mark across Lan Zhan's forehead, held out as if to ask for some meaning returned, some acknowledgement of supplication. No apologies offered, but cut words, presumptive of one man to state and claim one side as meaningful, to cut two men and declare them both free. Wei Wuxian knows the shape of that story, rises a man not happy, not angered in the way he had been earlier. Quiet, exposed with his layers, and sets the papers, the quill aside. Spreads fingers to catch at the bundled cloth, carries it forward on quieter feet, to stare down for less than half a heartbeat before he sinks down too, knees hitting the floor.
There is an anger born of distress that he knows well, clawing at his heart. Wei Wuxian sets the bundle down between them, reaches for the ribbon weighed down by meanings he had known in side associations, and he who breaks rules, who bends them, who flirts with pushing hard and harder to learn what boundaries he can survive crossing or coming close to, says nothing at first.
Let it settle for heartbeats joined, that silence. While fingers miraculously undyed by ink are delicate with silk, stroking over it, over Lan Zhan's hand without touching.
"Twice," he says, "Scant weeks ago. We slept in reds, and before my adopted ancestors, you tied ribbon to wrist." He can draw the conclusions, as he lifts Lan Zhan's ribbon free, as he shifts to toss one end over his shoulder, to keep the length of it from trailing down to flirt with dust and dirt and stone. "You've used silence to deny me family twice, Lan Zhan. You make decisions the way I did before I died. Without discussion, bearing consequences alone."
He smooths the ribbon, moves to loop it around Lan Zhan's wrist, fingers deft so long as he doesn't fight, doesn't pull back, isn't more the alcohol laced creature who bears teeth and wounds scarred over into whites starker than his mourning. Another loop, then. Securing, before he shifts and the ribbon spools back over his shoulder, leaves a swooping length between them, metal and stylised clouds floating soft. Wei Wuxian binds his wrist meditatively, eyes darker, expression difficult to read for his own difficulties.
After, he reaches for the cloth between them, ribbon dancing along with one hand's motion, not tight enough to tug as tether, but to suggest nonetheless. Light catches from fire and lantern, dances bright along a form wrought in silvers, impression of mountains embraced by clouds, a sun that rises over, piercing through. Gusu, on some mornings, and the light one of them is named for.
He lifts the crown, such as it is, holds it up, high enough as suggestion. Gifts that had nothing to do with these bindings, but with the ones that Wei Wuxian knew, and he cares, fumbling and angry and breaking and sweet and sour and whatever else he is, flawed, to use inopportune moment to gift.
"May I?"
Fingers fumble through hair, untying a ribbon that leaves its mark across Lan Zhan's forehead, held out as if to ask for some meaning returned, some acknowledgement of supplication. No apologies offered, but cut words, presumptive of one man to state and claim one side as meaningful, to cut two men and declare them both free. Wei Wuxian knows the shape of that story, rises a man not happy, not angered in the way he had been earlier. Quiet, exposed with his layers, and sets the papers, the quill aside. Spreads fingers to catch at the bundled cloth, carries it forward on quieter feet, to stare down for less than half a heartbeat before he sinks down too, knees hitting the floor.
There is an anger born of distress that he knows well, clawing at his heart. Wei Wuxian sets the bundle down between them, reaches for the ribbon weighed down by meanings he had known in side associations, and he who breaks rules, who bends them, who flirts with pushing hard and harder to learn what boundaries he can survive crossing or coming close to, says nothing at first.
Let it settle for heartbeats joined, that silence. While fingers miraculously undyed by ink are delicate with silk, stroking over it, over Lan Zhan's hand without touching.
"Twice," he says, "Scant weeks ago. We slept in reds, and before my adopted ancestors, you tied ribbon to wrist." He can draw the conclusions, as he lifts Lan Zhan's ribbon free, as he shifts to toss one end over his shoulder, to keep the length of it from trailing down to flirt with dust and dirt and stone. "You've used silence to deny me family twice, Lan Zhan. You make decisions the way I did before I died. Without discussion, bearing consequences alone."
He smooths the ribbon, moves to loop it around Lan Zhan's wrist, fingers deft so long as he doesn't fight, doesn't pull back, isn't more the alcohol laced creature who bears teeth and wounds scarred over into whites starker than his mourning. Another loop, then. Securing, before he shifts and the ribbon spools back over his shoulder, leaves a swooping length between them, metal and stylised clouds floating soft. Wei Wuxian binds his wrist meditatively, eyes darker, expression difficult to read for his own difficulties.
After, he reaches for the cloth between them, ribbon dancing along with one hand's motion, not tight enough to tug as tether, but to suggest nonetheless. Light catches from fire and lantern, dances bright along a form wrought in silvers, impression of mountains embraced by clouds, a sun that rises over, piercing through. Gusu, on some mornings, and the light one of them is named for.
He lifts the crown, such as it is, holds it up, high enough as suggestion. Gifts that had nothing to do with these bindings, but with the ones that Wei Wuxian knew, and he cares, fumbling and angry and breaking and sweet and sour and whatever else he is, flawed, to use inopportune moment to gift.
"May I?"
Twice, and it stings him, chafes the sharp knob of his wrist when his ribbon corsets tight, the tip of his tongue where he strains to build, brick-by-brick, his silence his fortress, its walls crumbled down. A night passed in reds, and this once you did not bleed it, and what was I to do?
But breathe and be, man and monster, and he searches his hand, where Wei Ying's already braided fate to his own wrist, hunts Wei Ying's face for shadow, for the lived-in, stale marks of disdaining wonder, like wet-rot mould. Once, you turned red eyes on me, just so, and you might have spat, but for there was a drought, and you wanted for all things in Yiling, the waters, the bones, the stone, and still you would not choose Gusu instead of it. And Wangji tasted that frenzy, like wild hunt during summer storm, ions itching and prickling his skin, lungs speared be petrichor.
He tugs his arm now, only to try the ribbon's bind — relents, when it holds, and Wei Ying presides over the last of the rites, to bring out...
"No," leaves him once he knows his gift, harsher at the edges. A crown. Not his crown, not the heirloom of Gusu Lan, not the auxiliary piece that once served him, honoured in war, to become known, Hanguang-Jun. Those remain lost, sold off, irretrievable. And this new pretty trinket — the empty gift of a concubine — he has not earned, past salting the wounds of the same man who summoned him here to slap his cheek in one heartbeat, and salve it the next.
If not for Sizhui, they would have torn each other apart by now, limb by limb. There is gristle in him already tearing, organs easing unstitched. And Wei Ying means to give him gold.
"Do not use me to punish yourself." Stop, oh stop. "To indulge me is not to make amends with the world."
Suffering Lan Wangji's indignities will not reimburse Jiang Yanli her life or her widowhood, it will not retrieve Wen Qing's breath, or Jiang Cheng's faith. Hundreds, thousands who watered battlefields with the last of their innards, their blood, their decay, will not rise again, unhurried.
"I did not steal a marriage that died at your unmarked grave."
But breathe and be, man and monster, and he searches his hand, where Wei Ying's already braided fate to his own wrist, hunts Wei Ying's face for shadow, for the lived-in, stale marks of disdaining wonder, like wet-rot mould. Once, you turned red eyes on me, just so, and you might have spat, but for there was a drought, and you wanted for all things in Yiling, the waters, the bones, the stone, and still you would not choose Gusu instead of it. And Wangji tasted that frenzy, like wild hunt during summer storm, ions itching and prickling his skin, lungs speared be petrichor.
He tugs his arm now, only to try the ribbon's bind — relents, when it holds, and Wei Ying presides over the last of the rites, to bring out...
"No," leaves him once he knows his gift, harsher at the edges. A crown. Not his crown, not the heirloom of Gusu Lan, not the auxiliary piece that once served him, honoured in war, to become known, Hanguang-Jun. Those remain lost, sold off, irretrievable. And this new pretty trinket — the empty gift of a concubine — he has not earned, past salting the wounds of the same man who summoned him here to slap his cheek in one heartbeat, and salve it the next.
If not for Sizhui, they would have torn each other apart by now, limb by limb. There is gristle in him already tearing, organs easing unstitched. And Wei Ying means to give him gold.
"Do not use me to punish yourself." Stop, oh stop. "To indulge me is not to make amends with the world."
Suffering Lan Wangji's indignities will not reimburse Jiang Yanli her life or her widowhood, it will not retrieve Wen Qing's breath, or Jiang Cheng's faith. Hundreds, thousands who watered battlefields with the last of their innards, their blood, their decay, will not rise again, unhurried.
"I did not steal a marriage that died at your unmarked grave."
Fool's gambit: what Wei Ying has weaponised for decades, he can deflect. It strikes him, with forlorn inevitability, that this is why a master's tricks should not be turned against him, until they have been altered by innovation. Recognisable, they can only serve him. Lan Wangji rolls more than retreats, half worm and half man, and wholly, torturously clear-eyed that the next strike might well taste skin.
Wei Ying's sword cleaves beside him, too close to neck and shoulder and deep in the stab wound it deals waiting ground, thudded and slow, too weighted. This is not Qinghe, but Wei Ying has turned butcher, and he will pay for it — the weight he can never recover a disservice, when he must collect his sword again. It bides Lan Wangji breath, time.
Smear of flush on his cheeks, he comes to stand, dust swirled and heated at his feet, and he heaves, animalistic and vain, and next Wei Ying passes by him — close, too close — he does not parry, or seize, but simply catches Wei Ying, arms rounded and strapped over his chest and back.
He does not intend to slam them both against the nearest wall — barely remembers, at the last moment, to rotate them, so Wangji's core-defended body can absorb the better part of the offensive momentum. Hissing, he relinquishes Wei Ying to slam into the marble for the last of the impact.
...when he laughs, it's a strange, acrid thing, lung-splitting. He coughs too knife-like around it to curb the sound.
"Like... that."
Claim the kill. Slipping down the wall, mouth infected with mute laughter, he's too amused with his own wit to fight it.
Wei Ying's sword cleaves beside him, too close to neck and shoulder and deep in the stab wound it deals waiting ground, thudded and slow, too weighted. This is not Qinghe, but Wei Ying has turned butcher, and he will pay for it — the weight he can never recover a disservice, when he must collect his sword again. It bides Lan Wangji breath, time.
Smear of flush on his cheeks, he comes to stand, dust swirled and heated at his feet, and he heaves, animalistic and vain, and next Wei Ying passes by him — close, too close — he does not parry, or seize, but simply catches Wei Ying, arms rounded and strapped over his chest and back.
He does not intend to slam them both against the nearest wall — barely remembers, at the last moment, to rotate them, so Wangji's core-defended body can absorb the better part of the offensive momentum. Hissing, he relinquishes Wei Ying to slam into the marble for the last of the impact.
...when he laughs, it's a strange, acrid thing, lung-splitting. He coughs too knife-like around it to curb the sound.
"Like... that."
Claim the kill. Slipping down the wall, mouth infected with mute laughter, he's too amused with his own wit to fight it.
Held in hands, and he watches Lan Zhan's face. Hears him, and knows they don't always speak of the same things, but they can, at times, understand the divides.
Imperfect, those understandings, the nascent selves they became independently, and then in what stumbling, etched heartbreak endured from two vastly different perspectives, from two different understanding and knowledges found within themselves and the world.
He settles the crown into the lap made by his legs as he kneels, not supplicant. It's not his mood, banked to embers, nor the binding true in the ribbon, the umbilicus connecting them both. Wei Ying would not choose to abandon without himself being the collateral cost.
He asked, and did not press, and stripped himself and the world together.
Here, he strips voice to murmur, knowing Lan Zhan can hear, even if he decides not to.
"I hear you. Your words for your fears, or the feeling of your beliefs. Will you hear mine, before deciding you know them, ah?" A pause, lingering, and velvet clad steel of an extended response:
"Because you don't know."
The marriage of grappling is one he knows from childhood to adulthood, not to pleasant gains at all times, but often enough as a child at least to improving ones. He doesn't expect it of Lan Zhan, the surprise in his eyes and the curl of his lips even as he would move, to disengage after the crash, but it's dizzying, sword still held and angled away, and then there's the wall.
The wall that Lan Zhan makes himself cushion for in his own outlandish move, and he can't find it in himself to be insulted, treated fragile, when it's as true that he's gained a specific tendency to collapse into Lan Zhan's arms for no particularly flattering reason. Only a host of silly to slighting to dangerous ones, and this, this is silly.
It's delight, warm sunlight raining down when the courtyard remains strewn with cool shadow, echoes of smoke, further out muffled cries of the ongoing revolution, such as it is, such as it was doomed to be from before they arrived.
Air squeezes from his lungs, and he sinks down, stumbled and by Lan Zhan's wheezing, silent mirthful form. Sword present, silent witness, as he sinks down too, drives shoulder into shoulder.
"I don't believe," he says, grinning, eyes bright and voice laced with laughter birthed out of surprise, "I've ever had anyone say that for the purpose of giving me a very enthusiastic hug!"
Nothing of what's happened, but it's a different bleeding, a different scoring. He is, frankly, still stunned. What wit, striking him witless.
"You wrestle now."
"I do not know," he concedes, gravelly and loose, overspilling. You took your truths to the abyss.
Black weed of his hair wracked by ribbon silk and mourning sadness, Wei Ying is owlish beauty, crude and untamed. His fingers between graze of teeth would feel raw, his skins green, unbroken. Young, for the sixteen years that spared him. Caged and gilded in gold and borrowed fineries, Lan Wangji yearns to bite.
Does not lean. Starts, under licked strips of dying honey-light, to scatter loose the binds and pins of his own hair, Wei Ying's hang dragged and pulled when Wangji tugs at a stubborn snag. Admonished and corrected, but not yet denied. Still welcome in Wei Ying's quarters, lodged before his bed, sleep tickling the edges of his wine-drenched awareness. Until he is repelled, he will ready his body for deep sleep and the kindness of rest earned.
"Master Wei may teach me." One sting, and Wangji's bite done.
Black weed of his hair wracked by ribbon silk and mourning sadness, Wei Ying is owlish beauty, crude and untamed. His fingers between graze of teeth would feel raw, his skins green, unbroken. Young, for the sixteen years that spared him. Caged and gilded in gold and borrowed fineries, Lan Wangji yearns to bite.
Does not lean. Starts, under licked strips of dying honey-light, to scatter loose the binds and pins of his own hair, Wei Ying's hang dragged and pulled when Wangji tugs at a stubborn snag. Admonished and corrected, but not yet denied. Still welcome in Wei Ying's quarters, lodged before his bed, sleep tickling the edges of his wine-drenched awareness. Until he is repelled, he will ready his body for deep sleep and the kindness of rest earned.
"Master Wei may teach me." One sting, and Wangji's bite done.
His heart, hear it, the beat seismic, the rumble of his chest like quaking, rotten slabs of wood on the deck of a vessel stormed. He quiets himself, one and two and breathing, and laughter rippling through the strained stream of controlled exhalations.
"You tease now." And defend his flank and gravitate, organically, movements slated to preserve strength now that its fount has thinned down to rivulets. Trees grow, with time, to reinforce themselves, to fill out the negative space that surrounds them in strategic bindings of bridge and bone, so they might build on and onwards, to the sky and beyond. So too, Wei Ying.
We shot the sun down —
Their shoulders knock and slip in peaceful congress. Beside him, Wei Ying emanates warmth, the musk of a body exercised and his natural, grievous restlessness. Neglected, Lan Wangji's borrowed sword is raised to sit flat and greedy in wait on his thighs.
"Thank you." For the indulgence. The game of it, when Wei Ying draws no further benefit from practising the sword, beyond stretching his bones. "I accept Wei Ying's surrender."
"You tease now." And defend his flank and gravitate, organically, movements slated to preserve strength now that its fount has thinned down to rivulets. Trees grow, with time, to reinforce themselves, to fill out the negative space that surrounds them in strategic bindings of bridge and bone, so they might build on and onwards, to the sky and beyond. So too, Wei Ying.
We shot the sun down —
Their shoulders knock and slip in peaceful congress. Beside him, Wei Ying emanates warmth, the musk of a body exercised and his natural, grievous restlessness. Neglected, Lan Wangji's borrowed sword is raised to sit flat and greedy in wait on his thighs.
"Thank you." For the indulgence. The game of it, when Wei Ying draws no further benefit from practising the sword, beyond stretching his bones. "I accept Wei Ying's surrender."
"Tease with purpose," he agrees, mild enough, lips curled up and remembering the lightness of when this was something else, some other test. Not Lan Zhan, with a sword to his throat. Not Lan Zhan, asking what they all did, why do you not carry your sword? Not Lan Zhan, handing to him Suibian, carved sheathe a heartache in his hands, blade beautiful, singing when pulled, and silenced again as the scars tightened their invisible lines across his heart.
Suibian was an easy way to feel a shift. The dead steel now, the sword that lay at his side, while he leans against Lan Zhan, let himself cool off in brisk air and watching the puff of clouds birthed with his exhalations, cannot make the same pleas. Cannot call out to him.
He's used to the silence. He's not used to it at all, and yet, like with all scabbed over things, the flesh beneath is not the same each time the scab comes pries free.
"Oh? Hah! So I'm the one who surrenders, ah, and you're the one who bleeds? Very strange," he says, smiling and summoning a look of mock outrage he aims at Lan Zhan, followed by the brush of his wrist against his forehead, smearing salt and water and effort below his hairline. "Very strange interpretation of first blood we have now, Lan Zhan."
Another tease, and what once would have been competitive in the way of bared teeth and glinting blood on bone has softened, steadied into something tempered.
"You're welcome." The considered pause after, and his own words, fingers stroking idly over the pommel of the borrowed sword, eyes slipping down to linger on the steel across Lan Zhan's thighs. "Thank you."
For accepting the offering of peace, for leaving Bichen in her sheath, for consenting to something that can draw them more as equals for greater than the five minutes he might last, and the wreck of himself to come after if he pushed further, drained himself fully, and failed to remember Lan Zhan would already know the truth when night fell and his exhaustion, his depletion, had nowhere else left to hide but at his side, disgruntled and in bed. Rather like a grumpy cat, he thinks, or the fat rabbits that...
Truly, where in the world were Lan Zhan's fat rabbits at present? A mystery. The chickens, at least, were oddly accounted for.
Suibian was an easy way to feel a shift. The dead steel now, the sword that lay at his side, while he leans against Lan Zhan, let himself cool off in brisk air and watching the puff of clouds birthed with his exhalations, cannot make the same pleas. Cannot call out to him.
He's used to the silence. He's not used to it at all, and yet, like with all scabbed over things, the flesh beneath is not the same each time the scab comes pries free.
"Oh? Hah! So I'm the one who surrenders, ah, and you're the one who bleeds? Very strange," he says, smiling and summoning a look of mock outrage he aims at Lan Zhan, followed by the brush of his wrist against his forehead, smearing salt and water and effort below his hairline. "Very strange interpretation of first blood we have now, Lan Zhan."
Another tease, and what once would have been competitive in the way of bared teeth and glinting blood on bone has softened, steadied into something tempered.
"You're welcome." The considered pause after, and his own words, fingers stroking idly over the pommel of the borrowed sword, eyes slipping down to linger on the steel across Lan Zhan's thighs. "Thank you."
For accepting the offering of peace, for leaving Bichen in her sheath, for consenting to something that can draw them more as equals for greater than the five minutes he might last, and the wreck of himself to come after if he pushed further, drained himself fully, and failed to remember Lan Zhan would already know the truth when night fell and his exhaustion, his depletion, had nowhere else left to hide but at his side, disgruntled and in bed. Rather like a grumpy cat, he thinks, or the fat rabbits that...
Truly, where in the world were Lan Zhan's fat rabbits at present? A mystery. The chickens, at least, were oddly accounted for.
"Willing students," he says softly, moving his hand in concert with Lan Zhan's, a strange sort of mimicry that ends with his fingers, once, brushing against Lan Zhan's scalp and through the weight of his dark hair, heavy as all their hair falls. "Are always to be taught. So I learned, growing up in Yunmeng Jiang."
So he doesn't offer now, Master of fields Lan Zhan does not move through, and stumbling as he does with his own ability to handle emotion, a riot of birds kept caged in his chest and soothed with unheard lullabies. He speaks, the story written in the air between them, but that is all it is.
Air from lungs, formed by wound-wet tongues, slipped past bone-white teeth.
"Months ago, I might have considered this penance. Or owed, from guilt or helplessness. Or exhaustion," he says, admitting to that too, before a man whose air tastes of alcohol and exhaustion of the physical and spiritual kind. "I didn't want you to feel guilt, you know. It was never your fault, engaged or married or whatever it is you knew that I didn't, it wasn't your fault we were too young and stubborn to know how to stand by each other. I didn't learn to ask for help until afterward."
After he died. For a knelt conversation, Lan Zhan readying himself for sleep, wrists bound, and rejected crown in his lap, it's a beginning of words, of trying to find explanations, of knowing the horrible fondness and ache and sorrow in his chest was biting at his eyes now. Two rapid blinks that become five, and he breathes in sharp, and smiles.
Rejection, that he's used to. People presuming on his motives and thoughts, that he bears scars from, like any person might.
"I didn't learn how to ask anyone for help, to ask anyone to stay, before it was too late." Too late for him to be heartless; too late for him to have waited for an escort that was never coming; too late to undo his desire to see his sister, to witness his martial nephew, to be part of the circles he'd grown up within as the second class, brilliant citizen he'd been, ostracised and made to live outside to save what he thought was worth saving. To protect and live by the kind of justice that felt more important than innocents killed to appease the bloodlust of those who'd won.
Too late. He wouldn't be too late ever again.
So he doesn't offer now, Master of fields Lan Zhan does not move through, and stumbling as he does with his own ability to handle emotion, a riot of birds kept caged in his chest and soothed with unheard lullabies. He speaks, the story written in the air between them, but that is all it is.
Air from lungs, formed by wound-wet tongues, slipped past bone-white teeth.
"Months ago, I might have considered this penance. Or owed, from guilt or helplessness. Or exhaustion," he says, admitting to that too, before a man whose air tastes of alcohol and exhaustion of the physical and spiritual kind. "I didn't want you to feel guilt, you know. It was never your fault, engaged or married or whatever it is you knew that I didn't, it wasn't your fault we were too young and stubborn to know how to stand by each other. I didn't learn to ask for help until afterward."
After he died. For a knelt conversation, Lan Zhan readying himself for sleep, wrists bound, and rejected crown in his lap, it's a beginning of words, of trying to find explanations, of knowing the horrible fondness and ache and sorrow in his chest was biting at his eyes now. Two rapid blinks that become five, and he breathes in sharp, and smiles.
Rejection, that he's used to. People presuming on his motives and thoughts, that he bears scars from, like any person might.
"I didn't learn how to ask anyone for help, to ask anyone to stay, before it was too late." Too late for him to be heartless; too late for him to have waited for an escort that was never coming; too late to undo his desire to see his sister, to witness his martial nephew, to be part of the circles he'd grown up within as the second class, brilliant citizen he'd been, ostracised and made to live outside to save what he thought was worth saving. To protect and live by the kind of justice that felt more important than innocents killed to appease the bloodlust of those who'd won.
Too late. He wouldn't be too late ever again.
I stayed. Like weed and poisoned ivy, climbing the crevices of Wei Ying, the fever of his rebel youth, where the heat of the Wen sun burned roots before their latching. Look at Wei Ying, the imprint Lan Wangji has made on the universe, a man so beautiful, so hunted, touch could only whet him, stones could only sharpen his hurts.
"They made you anew, with hands so soft," and he whispers it, fearful to speak, loud and joyful for the heavens — a secret like incisions of a razor blade, lines dimmed and thin and barely strong through their addition, Wei Ying's secret to own and hone. Bite by bite, bleed a man whole.
Wangji is an animal pacing himself, his convictions. The white, bright slab of his fangs hounds bated breath. Beneath the blunt ledge of his knees, Wei Ying's floor groans and strains, creaks traded between heartbeats. A forest breathes just so, in increments of rustle. He feels himself a snake, laired, burrowing, striking only now as he catches Wei Ying's wrists and opens the bloom of his palms, as if it is a precious thing. He rounds the petal of his fingertips against Wangji's cheeks, pressed in. Breathing, the swell of his cheek fills out the gauntness of Wei Ying's grasp, pushes against his bird bones.
"I did not know," he rasps, the humanity of his body so little lived in. "Your hands could be so gentle. You did not teach me."
Only want and grief, sixteen years taut on their string, how he'd spill the beads bubbling in his grasp. What was Wei Ying's to give? A widow might have had his war stipend, his name, a child to warm her belly, her arms. A paramour of mere association would have earned at least a claim to the flagrant suffering that soubrettes and mistresses of history have worn as a shroud of dignity. We, who were not wives, pity us.
And Lan Wangji? Friend, adversary, tremulous soulmate shielded by anonymity. He has inherited only this, the whimsy of his pulse trapped beneath Wei Ying's fingertips, danced and honeyed, but strong. "I cared for a man with hands so coarse." I wed him, failed him. "He gave me my son. He died. And you are not bound for him."
He looks at Wei Ying now, and there is an emptiness that means Lan Wangji has rallied the banners of his strength, but his soldiers deserted him. He has been so, on the battlefield, remembers his brother at his back, and their disciples a fury white and distant, held at arm's length by the disparity in their skill. Now, he kneels to worship his equal, and Wei Ying's hands slip his, he sets both down.
"When you find a wife," it scratches him to speak so, burns. Knows it right. "I shall give you the bride price."
Of Wangji's own estate, of the stretches of silver his clan and his mother forfeited him gladly. So bear this, until then. Survive the indignity of nights spent in chased warmth, like animals huddled against the quiet shape of their mourning for the same man who was and will not be again. Bear the thought of a marriage in name, absent obligation, easily unspooled. Bear shared custody of their son, beautiful jewel who shares kinship with half the cultivation world, but is theirs alone for the keeping.
"They made you anew, with hands so soft," and he whispers it, fearful to speak, loud and joyful for the heavens — a secret like incisions of a razor blade, lines dimmed and thin and barely strong through their addition, Wei Ying's secret to own and hone. Bite by bite, bleed a man whole.
Wangji is an animal pacing himself, his convictions. The white, bright slab of his fangs hounds bated breath. Beneath the blunt ledge of his knees, Wei Ying's floor groans and strains, creaks traded between heartbeats. A forest breathes just so, in increments of rustle. He feels himself a snake, laired, burrowing, striking only now as he catches Wei Ying's wrists and opens the bloom of his palms, as if it is a precious thing. He rounds the petal of his fingertips against Wangji's cheeks, pressed in. Breathing, the swell of his cheek fills out the gauntness of Wei Ying's grasp, pushes against his bird bones.
"I did not know," he rasps, the humanity of his body so little lived in. "Your hands could be so gentle. You did not teach me."
Only want and grief, sixteen years taut on their string, how he'd spill the beads bubbling in his grasp. What was Wei Ying's to give? A widow might have had his war stipend, his name, a child to warm her belly, her arms. A paramour of mere association would have earned at least a claim to the flagrant suffering that soubrettes and mistresses of history have worn as a shroud of dignity. We, who were not wives, pity us.
And Lan Wangji? Friend, adversary, tremulous soulmate shielded by anonymity. He has inherited only this, the whimsy of his pulse trapped beneath Wei Ying's fingertips, danced and honeyed, but strong. "I cared for a man with hands so coarse." I wed him, failed him. "He gave me my son. He died. And you are not bound for him."
He looks at Wei Ying now, and there is an emptiness that means Lan Wangji has rallied the banners of his strength, but his soldiers deserted him. He has been so, on the battlefield, remembers his brother at his back, and their disciples a fury white and distant, held at arm's length by the disparity in their skill. Now, he kneels to worship his equal, and Wei Ying's hands slip his, he sets both down.
"When you find a wife," it scratches him to speak so, burns. Knows it right. "I shall give you the bride price."
Of Wangji's own estate, of the stretches of silver his clan and his mother forfeited him gladly. So bear this, until then. Survive the indignity of nights spent in chased warmth, like animals huddled against the quiet shape of their mourning for the same man who was and will not be again. Bear the thought of a marriage in name, absent obligation, easily unspooled. Bear shared custody of their son, beautiful jewel who shares kinship with half the cultivation world, but is theirs alone for the keeping.
Mmmmm, he agrees studiously, as if he is kin and kind to the countless archivists and librarians of Gusu Lan, who study the histories of the sects and fuss forcibly over the overstated relevance of the dryness of hay served to steeds, and how it changed the tides of war. "Much changed in error in the sixteen years spent without the Patriarch to guide us."
Yielding and first blood have become matter of whim. The peanuts have grown stale and ill salted. The packaging of robes and the mani-folded press of sashes has weakened and wars with precedent. The cost of inn fares has surged, thrice the going rate Wei Ying could not have scrambled to afford across ten days of begged alms, in the last of his days. Villages and nations have all eroded, without the Yiling Patriarch to steer them.
...so says the amiable, subtle perch of Wangji's brow, considering as Wei Ying insults Lan Wangji's fair and just conquest, for what is victory if not winning the final and definitive awe of your adversary?
Sweat beading his forehead, prickling the back of his robes, and the pleasant, sugar-watered lethargy of bones finding their place again, after sudden exertion. Treacherously, he wants to never move again, Wei Ying content beside him.
Must. He does not ask, fingers knotting with Wei Ying's, tugging up. "Come. Again."
They have a day of this, of tricks old and methods new, of orbiting each other like stars unwilling to accept subordination, begging the equal binds of a constellation. "You have not earned your feeding."
Again, until Wei Ying remembers himself, until the sword is an instrument cast aside because he deems it slow, inefficient and unworthy — but not estranged. They have time: a day, theirs to waste. And if it is selfish to claim hours of solace in the midst of revolution, he has never been kind, seldom caring.
Yielding and first blood have become matter of whim. The peanuts have grown stale and ill salted. The packaging of robes and the mani-folded press of sashes has weakened and wars with precedent. The cost of inn fares has surged, thrice the going rate Wei Ying could not have scrambled to afford across ten days of begged alms, in the last of his days. Villages and nations have all eroded, without the Yiling Patriarch to steer them.
...so says the amiable, subtle perch of Wangji's brow, considering as Wei Ying insults Lan Wangji's fair and just conquest, for what is victory if not winning the final and definitive awe of your adversary?
Sweat beading his forehead, prickling the back of his robes, and the pleasant, sugar-watered lethargy of bones finding their place again, after sudden exertion. Treacherously, he wants to never move again, Wei Ying content beside him.
Must. He does not ask, fingers knotting with Wei Ying's, tugging up. "Come. Again."
They have a day of this, of tricks old and methods new, of orbiting each other like stars unwilling to accept subordination, begging the equal binds of a constellation. "You have not earned your feeding."
Again, until Wei Ying remembers himself, until the sword is an instrument cast aside because he deems it slow, inefficient and unworthy — but not estranged. They have time: a day, theirs to waste. And if it is selfish to claim hours of solace in the midst of revolution, he has never been kind, seldom caring.
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