[ 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. ]
( 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. )
[ He is animal in this, the sterile, muted, manic quality of his gaze chasing Wei Ying's finger, singeing Wangji's mouth, penciling his own, taste of blood, his blood on another's man tongue — and he was born second only to Zewu-Jun, raised by his hand, bolstered by a sect.
He is no lamb to serve as sacrifice, to watch the wolf and know the spike bolts of his denture, and hear the hollow crackle of these fangs on his bone, suckling his marrow. He will not yield, for it is pretty to spill red and expire with noble splendor, in timid paintings.
Wangji's teeth grind first, his jaw aches in points of tension. ]
First shameless, then coy. Now coward.
[ Steps, as in sword dance: first the plunge, then the recoil, the fall back. Now, the wander. Wei Ying, fixing his balance between tugs of futile gravity, gripped by hands of guilt that thieve and hinder.
And in his grasp, Lan Wangji, the toy he will not concede or crush or consider, only coax, from roll to collapse, to empty rise, to wonder — and is Wangji to blame in this, his inertia? Uncle named the sin of it, hubris, latticed his back raw, but made of him a man repenting. Now, plaything, he simulates: catches one of the precious, voluptuously fleshed fruit, the false loquat that spins obediently on the dust-licked span of a sharp table.
His thumb dances the edge, teases the rich skin, sinks until it too bleeds, wet-golden. Lethargic, Lan Wangji's waxing gaze on Wei Ying's face stabs. ]
Decide the pledges you want.
[ And live and breathe and be as a fortress wall, stood by them. Decide: to want a resurrection. Name the indulgence, salute it for its toll. Decide: to surrender that right in recognition of another man's dignity, but speak not of grief and choice flatteries, after. Decide: to have a companion true to himself, or wish him shaped gem-like, cut to the perfection of a choice ring piece.
Decide: nothing, as is Wei Ying's way, whimsy on a rooftop, until one wrongful step, the trick of breeze, and the maws of the abyss unhinge open beneath him. Until the fall is but foregone conclusion. ]
You had an errand. [ Limpid, with the wave of a hand — the chief cultivator's flourish, sending an envoy with the parting rose light of a sunset alive in its last brushstrokes. ] I dismiss you.
( Decide: nothing, as a man who has decided and stood with conviction at every decision, to have his legs cut out from under him again and again. Who has guilts and griefs that are barely two handfuls of months dulled, and here, his time old means to address them, by shoving them off, by being fine, by being whatever it is people need him to be.
The juice of the date down Lan Zhan's hand, and he feels an intense, sudden thirst, and he laughs with it, a short, dark bark of laughter, that turns tired, a note too high. Cups his hands, turns, and makes his parting way out the window with the floating words left behind: )
As you wish.
( Wishing has made neither of them the people they are in flesh and bone. Wishing has carved from both of them their marrow, the cavities of their chests, and figuring out who it is they see, what it is they are, well. In that, he hopes Lan Zhan has the advantage.
Wei Wuxian disappears into the stretching bleedover of day into night, and he is but light steps and an empty basket and a stomach left levels below where he walks, ghost of the rooftops, to return and keep his appointment with a woman who is half of everything in politics he finds boring, and half of what he finds bearable, and for a quarter of the same reasons.
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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
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
He is no lamb to serve as sacrifice, to watch the wolf and know the spike bolts of his denture, and hear the hollow crackle of these fangs on his bone, suckling his marrow. He will not yield, for it is pretty to spill red and expire with noble splendor, in timid paintings.
Wangji's teeth grind first, his jaw aches in points of tension. ]
First shameless, then coy. Now coward.
[ Steps, as in sword dance: first the plunge, then the recoil, the fall back. Now, the wander. Wei Ying, fixing his balance between tugs of futile gravity, gripped by hands of guilt that thieve and hinder.
And in his grasp, Lan Wangji, the toy he will not concede or crush or consider, only coax, from roll to collapse, to empty rise, to wonder — and is Wangji to blame in this, his inertia? Uncle named the sin of it, hubris, latticed his back raw, but made of him a man repenting. Now, plaything, he simulates: catches one of the precious, voluptuously fleshed fruit, the false loquat that spins obediently on the dust-licked span of a sharp table.
His thumb dances the edge, teases the rich skin, sinks until it too bleeds, wet-golden. Lethargic, Lan Wangji's waxing gaze on Wei Ying's face stabs. ]
Decide the pledges you want.
[ And live and breathe and be as a fortress wall, stood by them. Decide: to want a resurrection. Name the indulgence, salute it for its toll. Decide: to surrender that right in recognition of another man's dignity, but speak not of grief and choice flatteries, after. Decide: to have a companion true to himself, or wish him shaped gem-like, cut to the perfection of a choice ring piece.
Decide: nothing, as is Wei Ying's way, whimsy on a rooftop, until one wrongful step, the trick of breeze, and the maws of the abyss unhinge open beneath him. Until the fall is but foregone conclusion. ]
You had an errand. [ Limpid, with the wave of a hand — the chief cultivator's flourish, sending an envoy with the parting rose light of a sunset alive in its last brushstrokes. ] I dismiss you.
no subject
The juice of the date down Lan Zhan's hand, and he feels an intense, sudden thirst, and he laughs with it, a short, dark bark of laughter, that turns tired, a note too high. Cups his hands, turns, and makes his parting way out the window with the floating words left behind: )
As you wish.
( Wishing has made neither of them the people they are in flesh and bone. Wishing has carved from both of them their marrow, the cavities of their chests, and figuring out who it is they see, what it is they are, well. In that, he hopes Lan Zhan has the advantage.
Wei Wuxian disappears into the stretching bleedover of day into night, and he is but light steps and an empty basket and a stomach left levels below where he walks, ghost of the rooftops, to return and keep his appointment with a woman who is half of everything in politics he finds boring, and half of what he finds bearable, and for a quarter of the same reasons.
Shadows take him. Those, at least, he knows. )