( ...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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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. )