( he laughs, in the quiet, rumbling way that ensures the sound won't carry beyond them, beyond the wind that swallows their words as they eddy past, a shoal in the middle of this sea. checks his leaning, shifts his balance, in subtle degrees.
testing boundaries, forever testing. only sleep truly strips him of all pretense, leads to the totality of collapse, the full awareness of impinging and the failure to rein himself in. he'd known the shape of the people around him once.
he learns their shapes now, this shifted landscape. Lan Zhan wins this dare, even before he lets go, leaves Wei Wuxian's hand clutching the railing without the heat pressed down above it, callouses across his knuckles, remembering. )
It's... not an enjoyable sensation.
( said softly, eyes trailed down, away, to the ghost of a hand over his own. not literal, thankful as he is in passing for that truth, but the ghosts conjured by the pathways they're conversing down ache in his chest. a heartbeat gone heavy, gone wrong. )
For the aches in his heart even before this, he'll have the joy of your reunion, and you the same.
( he does not let go of the railing, does not lift a hand to brush against a sleeve, to offer that as consolation, as truth that changes nothing but the way of returning to a familial whole later on. whatever their differences, lan zhan and lan xichen will walk their paths in view of each other, reaching across to each other.
there's a beauty in that, a strength, and a depth of affection not yet shattered by the world. one he hopes never shall be.
he clears his throat, edges away from the oncoming storm, and allows his eyes to close even as he smiles, thinks of the half finished conversations with jiang cheng, thinks of two foxes curled up in the mud under the rain-laden leaves, of a golden core and an emptiness that would have been guaranteed even without the sacrifice that left his vessel empty before the war found a way to break it twice. )
Anyway, I remember, there was something I was going to do.
( whatever it was, but not recalled, time to go, to move, to... open his eyes and stare across a leaden sea, with its roiling death tucked neatly beneath the waves. )
Would you like more on the morrow? I thought to bring some to Sizhui, too.
( the orange juice. liquid offering, sunshine held where the clouds hold captive the one that burned. )
( ...and will he have that joy, breathe the same air as his blood brother in reunion? He thinks, at times — now, vantage distorted — he remembers white-blinding glimpses of Zewu-Jun, but not the brush strokes of him in his totality. That treacherous rabbiting thing, his heart, quakes and limps and thunders over the possibility that one day, soon, oh so soon, close — he will shutter his eyes and his brother will be strange, snow-buried ambiguity.
What was the look of his mother, her features, her nature?
She comes to him, a gift of fading inks, watered. Her silhouette, rain and spatters and the chalk of her footsteps, the haze that consumed them. What would he give, to gain her again? A child's hands barely fit the rim of her robes. A man's, grown —
Gaze trailed after Wei Ying, before he drifts two fingers bound to his mouth, then sets them on the mounds and crevices of Wei Ying's knuckles, in passing. )
I beg your hands' ruin. Sketch him for me. As you remember him.
( Distant, diffuse, blurred lines untethered and dissolved beneath the lens of Wei Ying's fogged memory. Lan Wangji knows the risks, the scope of his request: Wei Ying, who never knew his brother past title or gain of sanctuary at Cloud Recesses, Wei Ying whose memory runs pale, Wei Ying whose goodness so often stretches his resources. Wei Ying, who won't refuse him now, with his mouth small and downturned and unkissed bruised, and so Lan Wangji dismisses him before he must accept: )
( Adrift, but in the certainty of one with a rudder and means to direct the boat set upon the waves. Wei Wuxian studies Lan Zhan, for a moment asking himself to see... and seeing, in turn, what leads him to a momentary pause.
No jest in this moment, the peculiarity of his memory one that is ruthlessly logical, excising what doesn't matter to him because there's too much on his mind that does matter, that he wishes to focus on. Slicing away the worst of times so only the dregs of his unconscious recall them, because lingering in dark spaces has happened enough in his life through circumstances beyond his immediate fixing that he doesn't care to carve any more shadows into his heart or mind.
Dismissed, and there, his fingers anointed linger, a tug at Lan Zhan's sleeve, just the once. I will, he doesn't need to say, and he smiles with a softer edge of years long exhaustive understanding, for things he'd never allowed himself, images too caught in his own head. Sketching forward, not sketching memories of what remained, or what had been. )
Until later, Lan Zhan.
( Now, for his son: now, for the subtle sweep of searching out a space and time to put to paper the images of what Lan Xichen is in his mind, built past the shattering of his faith in the temple, in the moment where Lan Xichen would have died as readily as Wei Wuxian once had, for a loss he couldn't quantify. )
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no subject
testing boundaries, forever testing. only sleep truly strips him of all pretense, leads to the totality of collapse, the full awareness of impinging and the failure to rein himself in. he'd known the shape of the people around him once.
he learns their shapes now, this shifted landscape. Lan Zhan wins this dare, even before he lets go, leaves Wei Wuxian's hand clutching the railing without the heat pressed down above it, callouses across his knuckles, remembering. )
It's... not an enjoyable sensation.
( said softly, eyes trailed down, away, to the ghost of a hand over his own. not literal, thankful as he is in passing for that truth, but the ghosts conjured by the pathways they're conversing down ache in his chest. a heartbeat gone heavy, gone wrong. )
For the aches in his heart even before this, he'll have the joy of your reunion, and you the same.
( he does not let go of the railing, does not lift a hand to brush against a sleeve, to offer that as consolation, as truth that changes nothing but the way of returning to a familial whole later on. whatever their differences, lan zhan and lan xichen will walk their paths in view of each other, reaching across to each other.
there's a beauty in that, a strength, and a depth of affection not yet shattered by the world. one he hopes never shall be.
he clears his throat, edges away from the oncoming storm, and allows his eyes to close even as he smiles, thinks of the half finished conversations with jiang cheng, thinks of two foxes curled up in the mud under the rain-laden leaves, of a golden core and an emptiness that would have been guaranteed even without the sacrifice that left his vessel empty before the war found a way to break it twice. )
Anyway, I remember, there was something I was going to do.
( whatever it was, but not recalled, time to go, to move, to... open his eyes and stare across a leaden sea, with its roiling death tucked neatly beneath the waves. )
Would you like more on the morrow? I thought to bring some to Sizhui, too.
( the orange juice. liquid offering, sunshine held where the clouds hold captive the one that burned. )
no subject
What was the look of his mother, her features, her nature?
She comes to him, a gift of fading inks, watered. Her silhouette, rain and spatters and the chalk of her footsteps, the haze that consumed them. What would he give, to gain her again? A child's hands barely fit the rim of her robes. A man's, grown —
Gaze trailed after Wei Ying, before he drifts two fingers bound to his mouth, then sets them on the mounds and crevices of Wei Ying's knuckles, in passing. )
I beg your hands' ruin. Sketch him for me. As you remember him.
( Distant, diffuse, blurred lines untethered and dissolved beneath the lens of Wei Ying's fogged memory. Lan Wangji knows the risks, the scope of his request: Wei Ying, who never knew his brother past title or gain of sanctuary at Cloud Recesses, Wei Ying whose memory runs pale, Wei Ying whose goodness so often stretches his resources. Wei Ying, who won't refuse him now, with his mouth small and downturned and unkissed bruised, and so Lan Wangji dismisses him before he must accept: )
Go. To Sizhui. Go.
no subject
No jest in this moment, the peculiarity of his memory one that is ruthlessly logical, excising what doesn't matter to him because there's too much on his mind that does matter, that he wishes to focus on. Slicing away the worst of times so only the dregs of his unconscious recall them, because lingering in dark spaces has happened enough in his life through circumstances beyond his immediate fixing that he doesn't care to carve any more shadows into his heart or mind.
Dismissed, and there, his fingers anointed linger, a tug at Lan Zhan's sleeve, just the once. I will, he doesn't need to say, and he smiles with a softer edge of years long exhaustive understanding, for things he'd never allowed himself, images too caught in his own head. Sketching forward, not sketching memories of what remained, or what had been. )
Until later, Lan Zhan.
( Now, for his son: now, for the subtle sweep of searching out a space and time to put to paper the images of what Lan Xichen is in his mind, built past the shattering of his faith in the temple, in the moment where Lan Xichen would have died as readily as Wei Wuxian once had, for a loss he couldn't quantify. )