( 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 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. )