[ Once, as a boy, he might have asked what exorcism felt like. To split the soul in many parts, then extirpate them? Painful work. A howling. And then, Uncle Jiang said, look at the lake, that one there, now throw your pebble in, and another, and a third. You too, Jiang Cheng. Watch the ruin of ripples, watch the waters turn, the balance shift to sickness. Watch the tumult.
Now, think if every rock could be fished, every dust stain removed, every lick of violence depleted. How would the lake feel, no longer tainted?
Like this: Wei Wuxian, deflating with each breath he feels foolishly compelled to time to the rumble of Lan Zhan's heartbeat, under the bridge of knuckle bone. He fights Lan Zhan's grasp for a moment; shakes free, only to splay his hand whole, to turn the slick warmth of his palm on Lan Zhan's chest and listen. Sixteen years, never straying, never shunning Yuan, or his fealty, or his fated love.
Fate...? Men write their fortunes. Braid and bind each red string to their life's purpose with honest hands. Whatever histories will write of Jin Guangyao, he worked his end. Whatever Wei Wuxian brokered, mouth dry with crumbled dirt, writhing between stone and stiffened corpses — that was his own design.
And this fool of a man, who plants himself so readily beside the Yiling patriarch, who keeps the pace even as mother night's chills swathe him... Lan Zhan chose Wei Wuxian as his poison. ]
Lan Wangji.
[ The subject of this fairy tale that started sixteen years ago in blood, carried on in mourning whites, and lives his grand finale here, pecked by Wei Wuxian's hawkish cruelty. Hanguang-Jun. Better yet: ]
Lan Zhan. [ Cotton-soft, between them. Every sorry he's not allowed to say. ] I overstepped.
no subject
Now, think if every rock could be fished, every dust stain removed, every lick of violence depleted. How would the lake feel, no longer tainted?
Like this: Wei Wuxian, deflating with each breath he feels foolishly compelled to time to the rumble of Lan Zhan's heartbeat, under the bridge of knuckle bone. He fights Lan Zhan's grasp for a moment; shakes free, only to splay his hand whole, to turn the slick warmth of his palm on Lan Zhan's chest and listen. Sixteen years, never straying, never shunning Yuan, or his fealty, or his fated love.
Fate...? Men write their fortunes. Braid and bind each red string to their life's purpose with honest hands. Whatever histories will write of Jin Guangyao, he worked his end. Whatever Wei Wuxian brokered, mouth dry with crumbled dirt, writhing between stone and stiffened corpses — that was his own design.
And this fool of a man, who plants himself so readily beside the Yiling patriarch, who keeps the pace even as mother night's chills swathe him... Lan Zhan chose Wei Wuxian as his poison. ]
Lan Wangji.
[ The subject of this fairy tale that started sixteen years ago in blood, carried on in mourning whites, and lives his grand finale here, pecked by Wei Wuxian's hawkish cruelty. Hanguang-Jun. Better yet: ]
Lan Zhan. [ Cotton-soft, between them. Every sorry he's not allowed to say. ] I overstepped.