( he breathes under that touch, under the heat of a thumb stroking over skin and muscle and thin membranes of pretense that bone be not exposed to air, that he lives, and prospers, and he does in so many ways. he's not well rested, no, but few of them are, and the weight doesn't all slough off him now as it had before, the first year here a flirtation with ongoing disaster. he's sturdier now, and his eyes close under the sweeping, ticklish sweep of lan zhan's sleeve. breathes in the scent of him, and it's there, less by sleeve and more by chosen burrowing in his lap, with the scent of rabbit, of damp, of metal, of illness that clings to wei wuxian himself.

so much death. he's not a man meant for healing, not the way he's been forced to help, by the necessity of hands to be ordered here or there, for anatomy to be restructured, of each weight laid down before a soul that prefers its investigations and its obsessions come more natural.

he's no natural, not at this. it shows in the shudder of laughter at the rabbit's struggle, his hunching shoulders and tightened hold of his hands on his husband, who states, who simplifies, who... )

We all must, Lan Zhan.

( not now. not soon. it's a reminder, mortality the fright that haunts them both, in their own heavy, heartsick ways. )

Just... let them have the strength of her, until they can evacuate.

( until reality, cruel and cold and consuming and horrible, will catch up, as it must. let him toil and trouble and protect and shield, for the days, the weeks, until her loss must become what it will be, in this world cursed by the deathless lords.

if only this were a different world. if only this were a land freed of ellethia's curdled death spilling past its dark mirrors, crossing boundaries, slick curses and crumbling truths. ah, but he should check in on their living relic of that land: poor curmudgeonly zenobius, trapped as surely as they are in master scorpion's sap-sticky paths. )

Let us ask of her the choice of when she dies, and not the choosing for her.