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More than he knows.

He is not adverse to you.

One more thing we have in common!

I'm not adverse to him either, Lan Zhan. You should know that. I don't hold back from telling those I have no respect for that I have none.

( and while historically there have been points of contention between them, he does not wish him ill, and does not disparage the things lan qiren has managed, stepping up to lead a sect he had never thought he would have to, raising his nephews in lieu of any children he might have once had of his own. a scholar, who became what he had to, for the sake of those he loved. )

You have offered him scant kindness.

Is that true? Think not of our youth, ah. Is that true.

...no. You gave him his nephew.

And is that all?

Shall I make his apologies?

We don't need to make apologies for our elders, Lan Zhan, and I'm not asking for any. I think your idea of what I have or haven't done for your uncle is very different from mine, and much more weighted. He's your uncle, he's a master of his scholarship, and we're always going to press against each other's forbidden scales, but not with hatred.

And will Jiang Wanyin come to love his relations?

Faster than he'll come to love himself.

You make him sound small, pitiful.

We embrace our brothers with their faults and strengths.

In this, he is small, a baby kitten, fierce with claws to try and survive around tigers in his mind.

Excuse him as you wish.

Of course I will, we all do for family. But just in that.

( and several other things, okay, he knows his husband is no better with his family, they're both like that )

And yet we see no need to make Zewu-Jun excuses.

Zewu-jun suffers enough in the reflection of his mistakes. Would you enjoy the kindness of the truth of his own ineptitude, hand in hand with the rest of the righteous cultivation world?

His heart is large. His trust, likewise. That I was not the one to betray him, or you as you'd perhaps imagined, doesn't make the hurt less for the one who did. Your uncle is wiser in how he parcels out his heart, the lions share to you and your brother. He holds the world in greater suspicion. He is, in many ways, the wisest of us all, and the most willingly blind in others.

Is that bad? Or is it human?