[ Burned and branded, where Wei Ying's touch lingers, nettles and pricks and rescinds itself dogged. And beneath it, the husked and alien and terrible thing, Lan Wangji's body, possessed by the ancestors — Gusu Lan. His sword hand, owned by the sect. South-bound and sweetened, his fingers coiling on empty air, music beholden to brother's will.
What is resurrection but theft from his grand masters? He thinks of uncle's blanched palms, brutalised by pull. Thinks of the physical, violent extrication of the debris, his skin, and the rabble, his flesh, and how they should all contort and commingle as graceless pavement blend beneath brother's feet.
I am not my own to give.
If all they do is save each other at expense —
...Wei Ying, what have you built, with your two hands? Only empires, toppled. The phoenix bird of Lanling, rising, only to fall, and fire yielding the final ablution. He mouths, Wei Ying, but twilight blooms and the red of the world drenches Wei Ying's back again, and it might have stood an arrow once, might have emptied him like fractured porcelain. Wangji is worn, suddenly, inexorably, unsurprisingly. Sixteen years, a rag twisted each way, spilling mildew. Wei Ying's hands would fray him.
When he calls, she listed — the old trick, Bichen hissed to reveal herself, a maiden shy: first the hilt, then the length, and Lan Wangji's palm greeting her in slide slickened with thin rivulets of blood his qi rushes to strangle in the flow's cradle. Then, Bichen releases, drips down on paltry floor, returns to her sheath. Before Wangji, his flesh slit seems a barren cavern, emptily sacrificial. He passes it over his lips. 歃血為盟. Blood's smear on a mouth of truth, forging alliance. Once, tribes might have sworn themselves so.
( And he knows, they both know, the ache of it: that, to offer the guarantee of blood, to invite the heavens' repercussions, is to distrust a man would honour his word, freely given. ) ]
Patriarch. [ Blood stripes his teeth, stains deep when his tongue cascades in a slow sweep, catches metal, shrivels. ] Name the vow, and I shall make it.
[ Permission won now, forgiveness brokered later. What difference does it make? Once, upon a rooftop, Wei Ying asked murder. Now, he begs life. And what has he learned? That, in all things, he will have his way. ]
no subject
What is resurrection but theft from his grand masters? He thinks of uncle's blanched palms, brutalised by pull. Thinks of the physical, violent extrication of the debris, his skin, and the rabble, his flesh, and how they should all contort and commingle as graceless pavement blend beneath brother's feet.
I am not my own to give.
If all they do is save each other at expense —
...Wei Ying, what have you built, with your two hands? Only empires, toppled. The phoenix bird of Lanling, rising, only to fall, and fire yielding the final ablution. He mouths, Wei Ying, but twilight blooms and the red of the world drenches Wei Ying's back again, and it might have stood an arrow once, might have emptied him like fractured porcelain. Wangji is worn, suddenly, inexorably, unsurprisingly. Sixteen years, a rag twisted each way, spilling mildew. Wei Ying's hands would fray him.
When he calls, she listed — the old trick, Bichen hissed to reveal herself, a maiden shy: first the hilt, then the length, and Lan Wangji's palm greeting her in slide slickened with thin rivulets of blood his qi rushes to strangle in the flow's cradle. Then, Bichen releases, drips down on paltry floor, returns to her sheath. Before Wangji, his flesh slit seems a barren cavern, emptily sacrificial. He passes it over his lips. 歃血為盟. Blood's smear on a mouth of truth, forging alliance. Once, tribes might have sworn themselves so.
( And he knows, they both know, the ache of it: that, to offer the guarantee of blood, to invite the heavens' repercussions, is to distrust a man would honour his word, freely given. ) ]
Patriarch. [ Blood stripes his teeth, stains deep when his tongue cascades in a slow sweep, catches metal, shrivels. ] Name the vow, and I shall make it.
[ Permission won now, forgiveness brokered later. What difference does it make? Once, upon a rooftop, Wei Ying asked murder. Now, he begs life. And what has he learned? That, in all things, he will have his way. ]