( He probably shouldn't stare, shouldn't watch his martial uncle like this, trying to learn him again. He's seen him, a span of years through A-Qing's eyes, knows how he laughs, knows his kindness, knows the blindness that has nothing to do with his eyes. Knows her concern, her horror, her protectiveness. Xiao Xingchen has been loved. He has been lost.
Wei Wuxian understands that, too, in retrospect. How one man's shattering can shatter those left behind. Xue Yang descending into a madness he can't claw out of, obsession leaving him unable to admit that it was his failings that destroyed someone he cared about, however twisted his way to finding that caring. A-Qing turned into a living ghost, blinded truly, and killed eventually in the truth of revealing where the one she'd failed to protect had been; and Song Lan, too brash, too bold, not speaking where he should, with his closest friend's eyes, turned into a puppet by the man who manipulated Xiao Xingchen's sword into sheathing itself through Song Lan's stomach.
He's seen it. Empathy leaves a sort of bitter aftertaste on his tongue, memories borrowed and lent and she had wanted so much, hadn't she? One sense of safety. One sense of family. One brave, lying girl who walked up to a sword that was lowered when she would have impaled herself for a lie, and a truce had moved forward from then on.
He shakes his head when Xiao Xingchen approaches the cloak, smiling and breathing out in a sigh. )
Once we're done here, I'll roast them for us. There's more, and the millet, that I can get going for everyone else.
( Millet that he doesn't burn, mostly because he runs the fire for a longer boiling at the hearth. He hates how tasteless it is, but it does fill. And there are more potatoes... but for now, it'd be nice just to have this, a kind of bridge between two stories that never crossed. )
Ah, that's Asgeirr. You feel the death attached to the cloak, don't you. ( Rhetorical, considering why else is he asking? ) When there'd been the, ah, heist at the bank, Xiao Five picked up various things. That cloak is one. Asgeirr was an older man of a religion I'm not familiar with, who was executed for speaking out about his firm beliefs against slavery. I'm not entirely sure if it was intention or accident that ended him bound to the cloak of his executioner, but he'd been kept in a vault for, oh, decades? Much longer? I asked if he wanted to move on, but he's more content hanging around for now.
( He says all of this like it's entirely reasonable. It's a bit odd, even for him, because so often spirits don't retain that much of coherency and agency following traumatic death. Asgeirr does, and he's an interesting conversational partner, if not really up to date on any current politics. How could he be?
If touched, the cloak is worn, but softly so, washed and mended by inexpert hands (Wei Wuxian has been practising, such as it was). It changes nothing of the feeling of death, so much steeped death, but it isn't a greedy death. Heavy, present, but not consuming. )
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Wei Wuxian understands that, too, in retrospect. How one man's shattering can shatter those left behind. Xue Yang descending into a madness he can't claw out of, obsession leaving him unable to admit that it was his failings that destroyed someone he cared about, however twisted his way to finding that caring. A-Qing turned into a living ghost, blinded truly, and killed eventually in the truth of revealing where the one she'd failed to protect had been; and Song Lan, too brash, too bold, not speaking where he should, with his closest friend's eyes, turned into a puppet by the man who manipulated Xiao Xingchen's sword into sheathing itself through Song Lan's stomach.
He's seen it. Empathy leaves a sort of bitter aftertaste on his tongue, memories borrowed and lent and she had wanted so much, hadn't she? One sense of safety. One sense of family. One brave, lying girl who walked up to a sword that was lowered when she would have impaled herself for a lie, and a truce had moved forward from then on.
He shakes his head when Xiao Xingchen approaches the cloak, smiling and breathing out in a sigh. )
Once we're done here, I'll roast them for us. There's more, and the millet, that I can get going for everyone else.
( Millet that he doesn't burn, mostly because he runs the fire for a longer boiling at the hearth. He hates how tasteless it is, but it does fill. And there are more potatoes... but for now, it'd be nice just to have this, a kind of bridge between two stories that never crossed. )
Ah, that's Asgeirr. You feel the death attached to the cloak, don't you. ( Rhetorical, considering why else is he asking? ) When there'd been the, ah, heist at the bank, Xiao Five picked up various things. That cloak is one. Asgeirr was an older man of a religion I'm not familiar with, who was executed for speaking out about his firm beliefs against slavery. I'm not entirely sure if it was intention or accident that ended him bound to the cloak of his executioner, but he'd been kept in a vault for, oh, decades? Much longer? I asked if he wanted to move on, but he's more content hanging around for now.
( He says all of this like it's entirely reasonable. It's a bit odd, even for him, because so often spirits don't retain that much of coherency and agency following traumatic death. Asgeirr does, and he's an interesting conversational partner, if not really up to date on any current politics. How could he be?
If touched, the cloak is worn, but softly so, washed and mended by inexpert hands (Wei Wuxian has been practising, such as it was). It changes nothing of the feeling of death, so much steeped death, but it isn't a greedy death. Heavy, present, but not consuming. )