( Cracked, the cage of his ribs, the cradle of his heart. The pain he knows, recognises from years aging, the headier for the vintage, for the depths to which it aches.
These are not words he can ask for. He doesn't know until that moment, when his breath catches, when his eyes burn, when he's standing in a dusty street in a city set to tear itself apart like so many poised on change do, and his hand seeks the material of his unfamiliar robes, fists over his breastbone. For a heartbeat, then five, he cannot breathe.
He can weep, but he cannot find air.
The delay is in his writing, is in the words: )
I love you.
( Is in the blooming warmth and sadness he can't quite separate, for Lan Zhan, for the few who have loved him for all he is and all he isn't, in spite of and because of everything that is his self. Yanli had always known. She'd always been right, like he knew she always had been.
There are some pains you willingly tie yourself to, no matter the journey. There are some joys worth the challenges of finding them despite the paths to them seeming all but lost.
Pale, thin fingers. Not so fragile as bird's bones, no, his life has proven that time and again. His sword grip, no less strong now, for all the blade does not bear its own soul-drunk energies, greedy and willing and loyal. )
Where will I find you?
( He should say, later. Tonight. Some time that isn't still before the heavy heat of the day, in winter not so insurmountable a challenge. Dust and dregs of death and dull symmetry of form, shadows swallowed by the light that hung heavy overhead, gasping down over all of them.
( Is there a point where their lives can have less of that? He doesn't enjoy it. Never has, can't say he ever will, because the one time he did was so deeply steeped in his own trauma and conceptualisation of revenge, he can't relate to that moment, doesn't want to linger in that pain, anymore.
Fingers twitch around nothing, hands empty. He should be used to that sensation. When did he lose those calluses? )
Minimise. Protect. Survive.
( Order of importance, this scant not quite farewell. )
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( Cracked, the cage of his ribs, the cradle of his heart. The pain he knows, recognises from years aging, the headier for the vintage, for the depths to which it aches.
These are not words he can ask for. He doesn't know until that moment, when his breath catches, when his eyes burn, when he's standing in a dusty street in a city set to tear itself apart like so many poised on change do, and his hand seeks the material of his unfamiliar robes, fists over his breastbone. For a heartbeat, then five, he cannot breathe.
He can weep, but he cannot find air.
The delay is in his writing, is in the words: )
I love you.
( Is in the blooming warmth and sadness he can't quite separate, for Lan Zhan, for the few who have loved him for all he is and all he isn't, in spite of and because of everything that is his self. Yanli had always known. She'd always been right, like he knew she always had been.
There are some pains you willingly tie yourself to, no matter the journey. There are some joys worth the challenges of finding them despite the paths to them seeming all but lost.
Pale, thin fingers. Not so fragile as bird's bones, no, his life has proven that time and again. His sword grip, no less strong now, for all the blade does not bear its own soul-drunk energies, greedy and willing and loyal. )
Where will I find you?
( He should say, later. Tonight. Some time that isn't still before the heavy heat of the day, in winter not so insurmountable a challenge. Dust and dregs of death and dull symmetry of form, shadows swallowed by the light that hung heavy overhead, gasping down over all of them.
He does not say later.
He barely keeps himself from saying right now. )
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Not tonight.
The matter of bloodshed upon us.
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Fingers twitch around nothing, hands empty. He should be used to that sensation. When did he lose those calluses? )
Minimise. Protect. Survive.
( Order of importance, this scant not quite farewell. )
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( Ah, he is too raw, then. Too worn-in, for how this stings. )
Have no concern. Mere delay.
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( Bed. Rest. )
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