un: heart-fluttering hummingbird | audio (forward-dated: 24 May)

[downswing]

( A silence to his mouth, begrudging. The words, when he does speak them, gravel between teeth: )

...apologies. The blood in the northern halls will want more hands for the washing.

We made insufficient attempt.


( ooc: posted today for ooc ease, but assume this comes up after Sizhui/Eleven/Mingyu speak with the miners, around 24 May. Alina and Lan Wangji have given the miners their mercy kill, before they could fully transition, and removed the bodies from where they were kept... but clean-up. )

Comments

[paperbutterflies]

[ Sizhui doesn't try to answer.

He just shows up with cleaning cloths and a bucket. Sure, he's a little pale and quiet, but the blood really does need to be cleaned up. ]

[downswing]

[ The silent, stubborn way of Gusu Lan, cripplingly gelid. Wind breathes hard on their walls, batters them shallow and flinched, even with hours to spare of the midday, bleeding to sundown.

Done early, blood scattered each way in thin rivulets, the work of needle-cut: silvered wire of the garrotte, crowned by the spun, orbital violence of Alina's wicked skill, light emaciated, capering and carousing until it tamed itself in military discipline, like a sword's swing. He did not ask, beholding it, the nature of her sorcery. Found a part of himself brimming like overfilled cups in answer, on the cusp of hope.

There will be glory in this girl's path. If not gladness or justice, then at least triumph.

After, they remove the bodies. After, he lingers, knelt on splintered, pale wood, reduced to scanter layers — his sleeves drawn, and his own pail and rags nearby. He does not lift his gaze when his son approaches, only shivers in the anxious greeting of prey caught in the wilderness of its poor decisions. Reaches out, finally, when he is joined, to lift Sizhui's thin, wiry, brave little hands, so much grown from when he last held them, and set them on Lan Wangji's own headband, urging the tug. ]

Remove it. [ A pause, then rasped: ] Stains.

[ He would not see this much of himself vivisected. ]

[paperbutterflies]

[ Sizhui wonders, remotely, if there is something wrong with him. He understands Eleven's distress about... the conclusion of this rescue, and he wanted the miners to be all right, he really did, but he understands why this was done, too. Sometimes, you cannot save everyone. Sometimes, you cannot save anyone. Sometimes, when you can't save someone, they will turn into a danger to others.

Lessons that the scrolls that Shifu has taught them never covered, but he had to find out almost as soon as he left the Cloud Recesses on his own.

He understands. And yet... is it not wrong to understand so easily?

All of that is buried beneath the raw pain, of the story told, of the lives wasted. This, he doesn't know how to put away. He suspects it will fade in time, but it's showing no signs of that yet.

He does what he has been taught by example, by both men who raised him. He keeps moving. Doing what he thinks necessary.

His eyes flit to the man's face as the forehead ribbon is place in his hands, then he nods. ]

Yes, Hanguang-jun.

[ The care and reference with which he takes off the pale fabric are both habitual and heartfelt. He knows this means many things - and probably some that he can't correctly guess. But it all boils down to the need for action, and he will clean the stains thoroughly. A familiar task, though the stains are not always this kind.

With only the offensive edges wet, he holds it out with both hands in his father's direction. ]

un: bashful bard of the emboldened flute

[consignation]

Can't finish cleaning your own mess, Hanguang-jun?

un: xianxian of yunmeng

[downswing]

( Is this... a flex? Possibly. )

Our deed was done.

[consignation]

[ Cue the sputtering. ]

Wh— Lan Wangji, what did— What did you do to my— To— To Wei Wuxian!!

This— This 'insufficient attempt'—

Lan Wangji!

un: sweet lily of the hidden valley

[bearshermark]

[The meaning isn't completely clear, though he suspects, much as he hopes he's wrong]

You mean- the miners...?

text ; un: knelt lady of swallow and song

[sankta]

Yes.

text;

[bearshermark]

[S o m e time later]

What's being done with them?

[downswing]

( A rushed breath: )

...visit the citadel.

[bearshermark]

I can't.

[darkeststars]

What, you all too good for strangling? Neck-snapping?

Or you could've called some of the rest of us.

text ; un: knelt lady of swallow and song

[sankta]

I was going more for painless than clean.

[downswing]

Enough hands stained.

action ;

[sankta]

I don't think I could attempt to stop it if I tried. ( she answers dryly. after all, her cut isn't so refined for such a bloodless kill. )

action;

[downswing]

[ Rites would have made this trial a ridicule. The miners do not contort themselves into figments of unrepentant, bestial husks, do not hiss and claw, do not skirt humanity. They shed their human skins only in aches and fevers and the shivered sibilation of pleas foe euthanasia.

For Lan Wangji, one hold straight, the other's back coiled like a music box spring. For Alina, he suspects — they raise their gaze, exalted. Wire and light, formidable, a gust of twitched, then smoothed sorcery cracked so smooth and refined in one whip's cut that Lan Wangji betrays himself, nearly forgetting his own act. Delivers, in the end, the basics of execution. One day, mistress, you will be too beautiful to bear.

Today, she is only trembled, young.

And then, the room's lacquered in carnage reds, walls grinning down, claustrophobic — demented. They are left with rusted pitchers and mildew-soiled rags, tending the floors. His hand runs too weak, grip diffused, not as Wei Ying illustrated. No matter. It will do — later. Now, he rises, barely enough to condemn them both to the final indiscretion: one hand's swing, the sash removed. The second, his first layer of silks. Then, another, less harmed by the red contagion of blood from above. He ties the outer robe back onto himself, but extends the second to Alina, weight dead and brittle, no better than the dead below. ]

Do not wear their grief.

[ Blood, showing on her garments. Let at least one of them prove pure, even if she must walk in the whites of Lan, and he... ill and obscenely served, only by six silk layers. ]

un: first blush of tender youth | audio

[somebadnews]

[ Five isn't so terrible that he's cheering about being right. If anything, he's surprised he announced it. He doesn't have anything constructive to say, but it's due some kind of acknowledgement. ]

Was that the last them?

[ The miners, he means. Never got a chance to see how many they grabbed. ]

audio ; un: knelt lady of swallow and song

[sankta]

Nice username. ( look it's her first time seeing it. )

But yes, that was the last.

[downswing]

Some fled to the forest in the clashes.


( But he did not keep the count. )

( audio ) un: sweet sparrow under honeyed fingers

[silverneedles]

Any possibility of survivors?

[ if not, her hands will help with clean up ]

[downswing]

( A pity, to know the one voice for her mistress. )

The aim was true.

un: deft hand of little deaths [Voice]

[scrapgege]

Hm. Can I help?

[downswing]

Have you torn cloth to spare?

un: yiling patriarch

[weifinder]

... Lan Zhan! I was going to—

( Take care of that particular problem, but instead had been... attending to their son. )

[downswing]

You may.

( Cleanse. That is. )