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. )

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[downswing]

[ The ribbon bound, his armours raised. He nods his thanks, cascade of his hair, unkempt in the absence of his crown — tender, he knows the look of himself in polished brass. Fragile, as if he were not still styled Hanguang-Jun, Lan Wangji, the man whose strength grows out like castaway lichen.

He chooses, in this moment, to know his son under the guise of that omnipotence. To string an arm across his shoulder and draw him in, marble-like and unyielding, until the pure territory of his forehead meets Sizhui's band, and they breathe together, Wangji's exhalations hastening and shallowing to match the pace of a younger, more agitated boy — a man, growing. A man, before his eyes.

His grip on Sizhui's nape tightens. Not yet, not yet. Give him a year more. ]

Despair chooses this for men.

cw: ideas of cannibalism

[paperbutterflies]

[ Sizhui lets out a sharp breath that is this side of a gasp, but barely, at the hold, and relaxes into it without hesitation. His eyes remain lowered, before squeezing to stop the burning in them. ]

They tried to be decent people. They... when the first to died, they thought about... using their bodies to... keep on living. But they did not do it.

[ Would it have made a difference if they had? Could they have returned as ... more human than they ended up, if they had? ]

Is - is it always this difficult? When people try to be good and in the end, it only becomes worse?

[ Xiao Xingchen daozhang.

Senior Wei, too.

He doesn't think it makes any sense to ask what's the use of trying, because it still... matters. It just hurts. ]

[downswing]

[ One heartbeat's silence becomes them. Wet your eyes, if you must. Hold them large and brimming, but alive, and life is every cup's sip of agony, every hunt's anticipation, the first press of a mouth in words of gratitude, to thank the sharing of fealty or love or the receipt of favour.

Now and then, he wishes the sect had taught Sizhui this much — to fear humanity, but not his own human nature. To weep, if he must, to stoke his joys. Discipline tightened indifference like a noose around the throats of children. How can they breathe, how could any of them fill their lungs?

Lan Wangji suspects, when he dips the child in further to set his dry mouth on Sizhui's head, his hair after, affection will singe him. Blame Wei Ying, if Sizhui must point to one man, for this deluge of physicality. Yiling inspires it. ]

Men who pursue the good of the many over their own leave behind greatness.

[ And children, to fulfill that glory, should they fail. ]

[paperbutterflies]

[ Sizhui has had... very conflicting role models in that respect. Hanguang-jun hides behind ice, Zewu-jun hides behind smiles and softness, Shifu hides behind sharp words and frosty anger, Senior Wei hides behind laughter and so, so many words. All of them act and refrain from acting according to their own inner compass, and Sizhui can usually at least generally discern why.

It will probably sink in, later, that it's all right to hurt. It's too much, just now.

He lowers his head slightly. ]

If you will play for them, after all is clean, I will join you.

[ If Hanguang-jun won't, then Sizhui will play on his own. That's all right. ]

[downswing]

[ It strikes him, then, lightning splintering the husk of a barren, cored tree, You do not suit this. More pained still, Your heart is Wen.

Pure, trembled, dwindling under the strain of work a Lan assumes with the territory of teeth-chattering rivers and frozen banks. Blood stains more than it flatters Sizhui, his pallor cruelly chipped porcelain. He is not of ice, not carved, not standing. He is...

...warm, when Lan Wangji's elbow strikes Sizhui's in passing for the pail, dragging his cloth for another rinse, before brushing it aimlessly over the floor. It leaves behind the wet taint of dark, wet clamor, blood long expelled; like madmen, he has been striking the same territory again and again, hoping for a new result at each turn. ]

After all is clean. [ Let us postpone Sizhui's vivisection one heartbeat longer. They can both be so weak-willed. ] Your senior Wei will call our work poorly done.

[ Put more of the wrist in, the back, lean. The trick of toil isn't skill, Lan Wangji has learned through pained tribulation, but repetition. He lacks the sophistication of a man who has taken up the task so often he knows to abandon finesse.

But they are accomplices in this, ends of their mouths a curling filigree. Son, choose your ally well. ]

Do not give him satisfaction.

[paperbutterflies]

Yes, Hanguang-jun.

[ Heart of a Wen, most people would say, is the heart of a cur - hungry, mean, rabid, only deserving to be kicked if not killed. Sizhui had not known, before, that this was his heart, too, he has always tried to do his best, to ease the dead look in Hanguang-jun's eyes, to make Zewu-jun proud of him, to ease Shifu's anger at things he at first did not understand, then understood but a little.

Now he knows, and understands, and tries even harder.

Before, it was not difficult that he is different from the man who raised him. After all, Hanguang-jun is different from Zewu-jun, and they are both different from Shifu. If he did well enough, that would not be a problem.

Now...

He has to never stray from the path of righteousness, and never fail it. Anything else, and he would not be worthy of all that he has been granted when he was taken in. The raising and training, but mostly, the love.

It is right to cleanse the blood.

It is also right to cleanse the souls. ]

Although... I do not know if Senior Wei would be satisfied to find fault with this. He will want to make sure it is done properly, as would you.

[downswing]

[ Do not gossip. Do not lend word of violent criticism unto others. Do not excoriate a man's soul, do not infringe of his inner peace. Be patient, be kind, be forgiving.

Do not roll your eyes until they threaten to drop off like glass baubles, do not perch your brows in incredulity, do not sigh as if you speak for the mountain wind. Do not yield to the temptation of articulating and expressing frustration, for all he knows the truth of the sages — ]

Your senior Wei enjoys teasing.

[ ...there. The child, armed with the lesson of Lan Wangji's life, earned off his torture. Use this instrument well and never turn a soft, undefended cheek to that vicious beast Wei Ying without expecting it pinched.

Let it not be said, when Lan Wangji sets mind and back and the curl of his clawing hand back to the task of scavenging every last particle of red from the floors, that he has not done this one thing well. ]

Meet his words with reticence.

[ And preserve patience for when that approach is refuted. ]