text | un: wei laozu, following the protestors being escorted to jail

[weifinder]

Dear Friends,

I am presently enjailed with a number of the protestors who did not have the luck to get free of the ordered guards. Some here have been injured, and we've done what we can on limited supplies and with limited sympathy, but it wouldn't be a terrible idea to drop some fresh clean bandages in, maybe a few poultices for healing, and also:

I probably need to exit this particular stage after chatting up my cellmates for their thoughts, to the accompaniment of the odd gurgle from the semi-conscious man in the corner. Don't worry, he's actually improving.

Remember, make love! Not violence! Makes for more fertile growing grounds.

- Wei Wuxian

( this is help, only not a distressed call for help, from Wei Wuxian, Jailbird. he's so thankful zero dogs are involved in this venture. )

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[weifinder]

( At some point, bones started to ache, depending on sleeping surfaces, and that "at some point" happened when he had nothing to be aware of. )

Lan Zhan is so kind! I'll launder and return the clothing borrowed. All these warm baths not out of barrels or troughs, I almost feel civilized again.

[downswing]

A young master of Yunmeng Jiang.

[weifinder]

Once, and recently, such as Jiang Cheng names me brother again. Water as a blessing, not as a contested resource or cursing pool.

[downswing]

Once, it was of Yunmeng to name your fate.

[weifinder]

I gave what I could to Yunmeng, out of loyalty and affection.

These days, fate, destiny, such things, who needs naming? I had the road, our son, and you.

[downswing]

It is cruel to give what wants returned.

Remember only this.

[weifinder]

Life carries cruelties even in its kindnesses, I've learned. Lingering on them hasn't suited. Learning from them has.

[downswing]

May I speak freely?

[weifinder]

I prefer that you always will.

[downswing]

A man cannot lay his head to rest on one pillow at night and wake with it on another, come his morning.

[weifinder]

Introducing Wei Wuxian, of the road.

[downswing]

Fate aligned to no man.



( He needs a drink. )

[weifinder]

Invited to darken only one door, Lan Zhan. What is fate? I've heard of it, shouted up at me and down on my back because of its convenience for others.

Chosen fates, those I better understand. So choose which bed one lies down on, to know which pillow one wakes on. It isn't a choice one makes alone.

→ video

[downswing]

( What is dignity in this? Decorum, a line of flushed cowardice, too easily sundering.

They have two histories of bloodshed and but one untattered reputation between them. What good has it done them?

Very well. The reckoning: writing yields evidence but also divorces crime and perpetrator. This, allowing Wei Ying the triumph of seeing him, hands bound, back bowed, is the braver step. )

Come to my bed. Wake in my bed.

( Do not divide fealties between Gusu and Yunmeng. )

[weifinder]

( It takes him a touch, having watched this, to fumble through activating his own video; his head's turned to the side, talking with a half-sincere smile to his cellmate, or at least one of his cellmates. They're briefly on camera, a curious eye and an awkward look, before the shuffling retreats further, and he turns his attention to what counts as "facing" Lan Zhan. )

It will be my blessing.

( Not a blessing, not his gift to anything, but to be blessed in turn with: what, exactly? A home to turn toward and be certain of, when it's been years since that last was true. Not a consequence of loyalties divided between Gusu and Yunmeng.

His loyalty, then, to Lan Zhan. He's been generous before, will be so again, to those who need it. He will teach because he loves it, invent because he imagines it, fight because the world allows for no other choice, but the where, the for whoms, the hows, found side by side.

Metaphorical bed; to sleep, to wake, to sift through his thoughts and yawning affirmations that dawn has passed long before and still the morning cries for his attentions too soon. )

And my wish.

( A lifetime ago, in the room filled by incense, in the lap of a young woman in the scant dregs of her life and none yet the wiser: the heart wants what it wants, and he won't name it this or that or the other, can't, doesn't have that right in his eyes, but he does know this. If Lan Zhan will have him at his side, that's where he wishes to be.

... In the cell, someone clears their throat, and someone else softly utters, "Whooooo." )