Eastbound Contact

[weifinder]

Wei Wuxian
missives | encounters

Comments

[weifinder]

I won't seek to aggravate it.

1/2

[downswing]

He speaks... as a sect leader. Of unions political.

[downswing]

But our marriage is our own.

[weifinder]

I know. It's harder for him to think in a way contrary. Same for my brother.

It's what we're going to have thrown in our faces back home. I've considered it before. I've dismissed it before.

[downswing]

Dismiss it again.

He intended no harm. I pledge knelt.

[weifinder]

Lan Zhan.

There is no day where I would not take your spoken word first.

Rest easy.

[downswing]

Not while you bleed.

[weifinder]

Sometimes you must rest even so.

[downswing]

Shield teeth. I come in peace.

[weifinder]

Who's the biter, ah? I'm the innocent one here!

( sounding, at last, amused, rather than neutral. a shallow amusement, but amusement nonetheless. )

[downswing]

Innocent. ( The most doubtful. )

Spare my brother patient kindness. Please.

[weifinder]

Innocent.

I've been trying.

[downswing]

He is not... as he was. As I remember him.

( Softened, slower: ) Jin Guangyao bled, and two men died.

[weifinder]

( said... low, and slowly. too aware of the pains they've both faced in their lives, how personally things can strike. they have exposed bellies, and oh, they're still soft to knives and clawing fingers. )

Grief and betrayal change us. It's hard witnessing that in those we care for. Harder still when we cannot simply make it better.

[downswing]

And if he... does not recover?

[weifinder]

He will. With what time, or with what changes, remains to know.

Care for who he is. Even when your heart breaks. Let him heal. Bring him the small joys. I don't know if that'll matter to him the way it did to me, but... it seems like something my shijie would do.

You know him better than I do. If he's soothed by speaking, try. If in music, play. You have my dizi too. Remind him he's not alone. Not even in being betrayed, and not even in loss. Those rarely simply stop haunting us, though perhaps, gratitude to the ghost king who helped ensure his haunting here slackened in thirst.

[downswing]

I am impatient, wishing his hurt done.

[weifinder]

Yes. Yet you've been learning patience these past two years. You're steady, Lan Zhan. Aim that impatience elsewhere, ah?

[downswing]

...I cannot pledge.

[weifinder]

Why?

[downswing]

Because you and he and Sizhui are fragile, beautiful things.

And I tear those down.

[weifinder]

Lan Zhan. Your support is a good part of why I stand today. It's why Sizhui grew up. It's the unshakeable faith your brother has in you.

We are strong, beautiful things. You don't tear us down. You give us ground on which to build.

[downswing]

( A moment's silence, fully drawn. )

May I steal from you?

[weifinder]

( most times, he would tease here. going against the precepts, in any sense? a smile for the departure from endless layered rules that lack nuance or deeper consideration, with taken as absolute, and not as guidelines.

not now. now, without hesitation, he simply says: )

Yes.

[downswing]

May I have the rabbits for brother to enjoy an evening?