( She moves too smoothly, Bichen, to be stopped as would be Wei Wuxian's will. Lan Zhan, ever the extension of his blade, she of him, the two inextricable from each other as each cultivator was meant to be from the sword that is of themselves, the spirit paired to their lifetime, and their service. Some becoming heirlooms, passed between generations. Others spoils of war, locked and silent in their grief, sixteen years and counting.
Lan Zhan bleeds, and Wei Wuxian finds air in short supply, the intake of it stoppered and shocked into his own sense of wrongness. One which blooms, when he's addressed by a title he never worse in personal honesty; the name he least earned, but for the mockery of all who used it.
Laozu.
Trembled fingers, and then the thin, dark smile of someone who doesn't know when apologies are enough. Reaching out, dragging a finger at the blood on Lan Zhan's lips. )
I never styled myself laozu, but that's the reality, isn't it? We don't choose our names.
( Not titles, not birth names, not courtesy names. He brings that finger to his mouth, tongue slipping out to taste red and metal in copper and cooling warmth, unpleasant. Blood that binds, and he does not want this. He swallows: he does not want this. Or does he, in some way the thrill of being whatever dark creature someone needs him to be, as balance, as conqueror, as the one so feared by the cultivation world they would murder farmers and call them disciples of a craft none of them wished to see in anything but their own power-hungry hands. )
Be true to yourself, frustrating as it makes you.
( Nothing else. No blood vows, no bindings like this, no. If Hanguang-jun wishes it, he can keep wishing.
The Yiling Patriarch smiles, and there's nothing of mirth in that expression, just the twist of his lips and the eyes that are too shadowed to be seen as anything other than a glint in shadow. His teeth catch like white pearls flashed from dark velvet before the eyes of one unused to light, and he turns for the window. To give in to his worst instincts is to swallow more than a finger-tip's worth of blood and binding, and it would be easy, part of him knows. Easy now, and hideous later, in the squirming way of these things, pupating into some disastrous, horrific butterfly. Death borne on gossamer wings. )
no subject
Lan Zhan bleeds, and Wei Wuxian finds air in short supply, the intake of it stoppered and shocked into his own sense of wrongness. One which blooms, when he's addressed by a title he never worse in personal honesty; the name he least earned, but for the mockery of all who used it.
Laozu.
Trembled fingers, and then the thin, dark smile of someone who doesn't know when apologies are enough. Reaching out, dragging a finger at the blood on Lan Zhan's lips. )
I never styled myself laozu, but that's the reality, isn't it? We don't choose our names.
( Not titles, not birth names, not courtesy names. He brings that finger to his mouth, tongue slipping out to taste red and metal in copper and cooling warmth, unpleasant. Blood that binds, and he does not want this. He swallows: he does not want this. Or does he, in some way the thrill of being whatever dark creature someone needs him to be, as balance, as conqueror, as the one so feared by the cultivation world they would murder farmers and call them disciples of a craft none of them wished to see in anything but their own power-hungry hands. )
Be true to yourself, frustrating as it makes you.
( Nothing else. No blood vows, no bindings like this, no. If Hanguang-jun wishes it, he can keep wishing.
The Yiling Patriarch smiles, and there's nothing of mirth in that expression, just the twist of his lips and the eyes that are too shadowed to be seen as anything other than a glint in shadow. His teeth catch like white pearls flashed from dark velvet before the eyes of one unused to light, and he turns for the window. To give in to his worst instincts is to swallow more than a finger-tip's worth of blood and binding, and it would be easy, part of him knows. Easy now, and hideous later, in the squirming way of these things, pupating into some disastrous, horrific butterfly. Death borne on gossamer wings. )