lightbearinglord | [ interlude/closed post: Lan Wangji, not meditating ]

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[ interlude/closed post: Lan Wangji, not meditating ]

Lan Wangji has lived through worse feelings than this. He knows this. He has lived through a grief like the night sky dropping to the earth and compressing him beneath its blackness. He lived through the recovery from the discipline whip, weeks of physical pain so searing that he could not breathe, much less walk, without agony. This week, he has lost no one. He bears no injuries to his body or his spiritual power.

He is all the more frustrated, then, that he still feels so helpless with rage and humiliation. He has meditated for so long that it feels nearly indulgent. He has run his sword forms, and he has copied the first thousand of the Cloud Recesses rules for the comfort of it, and he has pinned Wei Ying up against the wall of their quarters and taken him with such punishing force that he laughed and wept and begged all at once until it was finished. That helped, because it always helps, and because Wei Ying required singular focus and care from Lan Wangji afterward. So did cutting down countless corpses. Neither helped as much as he would have preferred.

Perhaps it is the humiliation of it. There was a time when Lan Wangji walked upright on a broken leg for days on end in a seething and desperate bid to hold onto his pride and dignity, so that no member of Qishan Wen could point at him and say see, the Cloud Recesses burned at our hands and, look, we've broken Lan-er-gongzi, too. When he shuts his eyes, before he can slip into the comfort of meditative breathing, he hears Shen Qingqiu telling him that his story, Wei Ying's story, is open to him like the pages of a book, that everything Lan Wangji has kept close and guarded and precious is known to him already. He hears himself telling Galahad about the sacrificing curse, he sees himself crushing wood beneath his bare hand in front of Claudius, he hears himself confessing aloud to his poisonous jealousy toward anyone who has ever looked too long at Wei Ying.

In that same room where he once accidentally received several visitors mid-handstand, he sits. There is a stick of sandalwood incense in the corner, but it has burned out. Lan Wangji, cross-legged, is not meditating. He is looking quietly at the floor, and he is trying to clear his stubborn mind.

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Claudius comes with thoughts about the strangeness of this place, about the purpose of it all, when he thought he'd agreed with Grantaire that he was quite through with purposes. He keeps thinking, whatever story he came from, it couldn't have had a happy ending. He used to hate whatever force snatched him away from what should've been a moment of triumph, the start of his reign, and everything he ever wanted for himself. Perhaps he was wrong -- perhaps he didn't want the right things. But who decided that for him? Once he starts asking questions, Claudius can never stop, even if he wants to focus on the ones right in front of him. The dance. Invitations. How many to make, and how --

More than anything, he could use conversation with a friend. He leans on the doorway of the the room for a while before saying anything, watching Lan Wangji in fitful meditation. Then he raps on the doorframe, an idle knock. "Lan Wangji," he says, "am I interrupting?"

The moment he hears Claudius knock, Lan Wangji glances up, otherwise unmoving. He is suspended fleetingly between several feelings: mild embarrassment to have been caught struggling with a task that typically comes as easily as breathing to him, uncomplicated happiness at seeing his friend, and subdued wariness, because he is not at his best.

"Claudius," he says anyway. He is selfish enough to want the company despite his own turmoil. "You are not." He nods, one of his understated little gestures, to indicate that Claudius should come in and sit with him.

He takes a seat on a convenient seat cushion, as comfortable now as he is in Western-style chairs. He still doesn't sit entirely properly, with Lan Wangji's composure or poise -- he sits with an arm slung over one knee, with an artful sort of carelessness¹. "I won't disturb you, if you'd like to sit in silence," he says. "But I admit I've been looking forward to another of our conversations. So much has happened, once more, in a very short time. Crowley woke up -- did you know he'd been asleep?"

¹ So exactly how he sits in Western-style chairs, when he's not sitting on tables and desks.

If Lan Wangji had preferred to sit in his own silence, he would not have invited Claudius in, but that is too obvious to bear saying. He does, indeed, have several matters weighing on him, and if he can muster the fortitude to speak of them, he would like to hear what Claudius has to say in turn.

For now, he is grateful to have Claudius recall a memory that holds nothing painful in it, and one that he is entirely certain Claudius will enjoy. "Mn. I saw Crowley asleep." And attempted to check his meridians, and regretted it. But, more importantly: "Under truth compulsion, he called my eyes beautiful."

Claudius laughs aloud at that. "That is a truth. Crowley hates compliments, you know -- giving and receiving them. So I compliment him often, with precision, whenever I think it might make him squirm. I'm sure there's a dozen or more flattering words he thinks every day without saying."

This small confession draws a brief glance of slight fondness from Lan Wangji, who is otherwise continuing to sit very still, his back very straight. Wei Ying has asked him for an express warning each time he is about to say something overly romantic, so that Wei Ying may brace himself. Lan Wangji occasionally complies. Imagining Crowley similarly uncomfortable is... endearing. The demon truly is growing on him.

"I say very little of what I think," he says, slowly, "as you know." Reaching for honest words just now has the feeling of battling through a dangerously overgrown forest, where every step must be evaluated and then earned. "It was not only you I encountered while under that spell." If it had been only Claudius and Wei Ying, he thinks he could have endured the day much more easily. But it was not.

It's an interesting dance they're learning -- Claudius can't help but think of it, as he thinks of many things, as a dance. He lifts his eyes with an open, listening gaze, turns to Lan Wangji with every silent gesture to show he'll hear whatever Lan Wangji chooses to say. And the choice is Lan Wangji's. "'Twas a long spell, ay," he says companionly. "At times it did appear to fade, only to reappear in another room, for another conversation. Who else didst thou encounter, other than the flattering Crowley?"

There is, of course, a small pause as Lan Wangji gathers himself and masters the fleeting but nearly overpowering urge to simply stand up and leave. He will not do that to Claudius, nor does he think he truly wants to. It's an instinct of self-preservation. He curls his fingers into his robes, brief and deliberate, and then releases them.

"The young mistresses Tress and Nina. Both were kind. Wei Ying. I believe he enjoyed himself." Here he manages to steel himself and look at Claudius as he speaks. "Galahad. I told him too much about myself and Wei Ying. Young master Laertes." A distinct ruefulness tightens his mouth. He does not elaborate on the contents of that conversation. "And Shen Qingqiu," he finishes, with a turn to irritated coldness that will likely be familiar to Claudius now. "The way he spoke of Wei Ying was intolerable."

Claudius does Lan Wangji the favor he hopes his friends will do for him should he ever complain about someone he dislikes, and doesn't mention his growing acquaintance with Shen Qingqiu just yet¹. "What did Shen Qingqiu say? The Peak Lord is a man full of many varied and uniquely expressed opinions," he says wryly.

¹ Even if Laertes did mention his friendship with Lancelot. As Claudius explained to Laertes: Laertes can be brothers and friends with Lancelot as much as he likes, as long as he doesn't take away Claudius's right to complain. The fact that Lan Wangji initially disliked Shen Qingqiu because of Claudius is irrelevant, just like the fact that Galahad doesn't care his father struck him is irrelevant. Claudius will just care harder out of spite.

Lan Wangji musters up a very quick glance of tolerant amusement at Claudius' turn of phrase there. If it were up to him, he might have been more likely to cut right to the point, but he does admire Claudius' way with words.

An instant later, his features are hardening again, frostier with each word. "He called me a hypocrite for loving Wei Ying but hating Luo Binghe," he says with disdain, and then his voice goes colder still as he adds, "He claimed to have seen some dramatic adaptation of Wei Ying's life and of mine. He knew things he should not have known." The anger and iciness here is real, but also provides a sheen of protection over how much he loathes this idea, that the truths that were wrenched out of him so painfully to Claudius were available for Shen Qingqiu, whom he disrespects and dislikes, to consume as idle entertainment.

“Ah, my friend, thou dost not know how much thou hast my sympathy in this. Some time ago, I learned the secret I told thee in fear thou wouldst despise me for the sin of slaying my own kin … is the inciting incident of a play by a celebrated playwright, well-traveled and oft-performed.” Claudius shakes his head, waving his hand as if to wave the lingering frustration and humiliation, though he knows it’s scarcely that easy. “I despaired enough at my own reputation, but I know thy reputation does not pain thee as much as thy husband’s. Thou must be full of fury on his behalf.”

Very little could have thrown Lan Wangji off course at this moment, but Claudius has stumbled upon one of the few things that could have. He frowns, and stops, and bestows a look of concern on his friend. "I should have asked how you fared under the spell when apart from me," he says. He is momentarily ashamed not to have thought of that, of Claudius' own secret and the painstaking care with which it was handed to him.

"My friend, thou mayst not count the favors between us, but our grievances we can fairly exchange." He is, of course, teasing, but also quite sincere. "I learned of this play long ago. It plunged me into a mortified choler, then I turned careless, and took to asking newcomers what they knew of my life from the stage. Yet it matters to me that I told thee willing and unforced, before discovering how broadly known my secrets were." He offers an apologetic smile, because Lan Wangji's own unburdening may have been willing, but not exactly unforced. "This revelation is fresh to thee, and the injury it represents. I will tell thee how I fared, an thou dost wish, but it costs me nothing to hear thee first."

After another deliberate pause, Lan Wangji nods, and lets his concern ebb for the time being. It matters to him, too, that Claudius chose to trust him with specificity rather than in a moment of generalized carelessness. And although he would not have spoken so freely of his own secrets without that truth compulsion, there is no one else for whom he would have stayed long enough to see the spell come to its conclusion.

"As I told you," he says, "Wei Ying's death was celebrated by most." He considers, with an effort of calculated thought, how best to explain this. He had never intended to share Wei Ying's history, but to have Shen Qingqiu know it and not Claudius is too great an insult. "In his first life, he had a great deal of blood on his hands." Recalling Shen Qingqiu's words recalls, too, the first sight of Wei Ying after his emergence from the Burial Mounds, hollowed-out and dark-eyed and twirling a flute whose resentful energy seemed to have consumed the laughing boy Lan Wangji once knew.

Lan Wangji indulges in a grounding breath. He attempts to relax his hands where they are trying to curl into fists atop his knees. "I cannot justify everything he did or every life he took, but I agreed to share his burdens. He has regrets, and he could have walked no other path. Shen Qingqiu compared him to Luo Binghe, and with my tongue loosened by that curse, I could not stay silent. Wei Ying would never have tortured a man over a single kiss gone awry. He was occasionally cruel, but never petty. What he did was done out of love and a desire for justice for his clan, for his family, and for a group of women, children, and elderly farmers whom no one else would deign to shelter."

“The differences are evident,” Claudius says. “As evident as the differences between a man who hunts to feed his fellows, and a man who hunts to satisfy a thirst for blood and power.” But Claudius recalls what Shen Qingqiu told him about hardening his heart by refusing the reality of people he knew were destined to die. Both Luo Binghe’s reign and Lan Wangji’s life had that in common: many deaths, of many people Shen Qinqiu could not personally mourn, because they didn’t feel real to him. Claudius shakes his head at that connection — he sympathizes, but there’s still so many deeper motives at play, and conflating Luo Binghe and Wei Wuxian’s sins seems foolish.

“I find it telling what men do with power,” he continues, “and how they use it for themselves or others. Thy husband used his power the way a benevolent king should, but never does. For the care of the people under his protection. Thou art a similar man, so devoted to those in your care, so ‘tis no surprise he and thee are devoted to each other.” Claudius says this with incredible fondness for them both and the love they bear. “Luo Binghe, on the other hand, is a miserably lonely man. He uses his power expanding his empire as a means to end to his loneliness, or lashing out in choler.” In a way that’s piteous, at times, but must be easier to accept for Shen Qingqiu. He and Lan Wangji both suit their partners, but that’s the end of their similarities.

Edited 2023-11-24 23:07 (UTC)

Because Lan Wangji trusts Claudius, he trusted him to understand, but the depth of his understanding loosens something tightly-wrapped in his chest. It grants him a fresh breath, easier this time, and the ability to look directly at Claudius as he continues. "Wei Ying had no empire. He had a group of exiles, erecting houses and tending crops on soil so poisoned with corpses it could hardly grow anything." Here he frowns, a tiny and quickly-passing expression, and makes another silent decision to place his trust in Claudius. "Do you know what a golden core is?"

"If thou wilt test my knowledge from thy writings, 'tis where thy spiritual energy is stored. 'Tis cultivated in thy body like ore within a crucible. It sounds like schools of alchemy that claim the gold produced by the Philosopher's Stone isn't an ore or earthly material, but the means to immortality. But I've never heard of true immortals in my world, and there are immortals who've cultivated golden cores in thine." Claudius keeps a light tone explaining it, but he's also sparing Lan Wangji the effort of explaining it over again. If what Lan Wangji has to say weighs heavy, Claudius won't have him weighing more words than necessary.

Lan Wangji is lightly, pleasantly surprised, and grateful for Claudius' attentiveness. He gives him a little nod. "Mn. Here." He touches his abdomen, over his lower dantian. "Meaningful cultivation is impossible without one."

It takes him slightly less time than he thought it might to gather the words for this part. "When we were younger, Wei Ying and I were matched in cultivation. Then the Wen clan began its bid for greater power." This led to the Sunshot Campaign, the war that forged him into Hanguang-jun rather than the second young master Lan.

"Qishan Wen began with a show of force." That was, too, when they forced the Lan clan to burn the Cloud Recesses, and when Lan Wangji's leg was broken in his effort to defend the library, but he is mercifully no longer compelled to speak of his own suffering. It is trivial in comparison with Wei Ying's. "They came to Lotus Pier, Wei Ying's home and the seat of Yunmeng Jiang, and a massacre commenced. In the process, Wei Ying's shidi¹ had his golden core destroyed by Wen Zhuliu, a man better known as Core-Melting Hand." Here he stops, both to ensure Claudius is following and to grant himself respite.

¹Younger martial brother.

"It sounds a devastating loss," Claudius murmurs. "The loss of a lifetime's work, when thy work was lodged within thyself." It must feel like the loss of one's self, too. The tactician in Claudius recognizes the strategy of it -- there's a way that empires invade that's as much theater as warfare. The show of force, then crushing the means and the will to resist. The Core-Melting Hand reached out first, because a people who've seen their strongest cultivators broken would surrender themselves more easily. Claudius can imagine how Wei Wuxian felt to witness it, to have his own home razed around him.

There is one reason, among many, that Lotus Pier was targeted with such crushing force, but that would take even longer to explain, and involve the existence of a gargantuan demigodly beast in the shape of a tortoise, which would no doubt be distracting. Lan Wangji is entirely committed to not lying to Claudius again, but surely these details can wait.

Instead, he gives Claudius a grim little look, a yes, precisely. "Wei Ying was devoted to his shidi." He does admirably, for this part of the story, at cloaking his own feelings about the man. "He has always been brilliant, daring, and unconcerned with his own wellbeing."

Claudius may have begun to guess where this is going, but Lan Wangji has to look away again, focusing his gaze on his own hands. "It had never been done before, and it should not have been. The procedure was lengthy, and no anesthesia was permitted. Wei Ying was awake for days enduring the pain of having his own core removed so that Jiang Wanyin could continue to cultivate."

“To take a loss like that willingly, and for someone else’s sake …” Claudius had always thought highly of Wei Wuxian, of his easygoing charm and warmth, his curiosity and kindness. But every new thing he learns, he learns there’s a goodness in Wei Wuxian that’s hard to come by. He feels even more keenly the deep unfairness that must rankle Lan Wangji, when a man who should be praised by the world is despised by it — or compared to an unapologetic despot who jealously guards his power, rather than painfully and lovingly giving it away. “Not many could make such a choice,” Claudius says softly, “even for a brother.”

"No," Lan Wangji answers, equally soft. Sometimes, still, he must skirt around the edges of his own awareness of the way that he feels about Wei Ying. It is too much, too big, too likely to overwhelm. He breathes out through his nose, very slowly, and continues.

"He told no one. Jiang Wanyin believed himself the recipient of some great work performed by Wei Ying's mother's teacher, an immortal cultivator." Lan Wangji lowers his gaze a little further still. "I only learned of what he had done nearly twenty years later, from Wei Ying's Ghost General¹." This memory is searingly vivid: Wei Ying's unconscious body in his arms, Wen Qionglin's absolute inexorability, Jiang Wanyin's face and eyes turning redder and redder with disbelieving rage. The revelation had the feeling of having a mirror held up to several years of history, everything that Lan Wangji had believed he understood cast in smudges of bronze.

Allowing himself to sound just faintly bitter, he says, "Shen Qingqiu knew." Shen Qingqiu, or Shen Yuan, or whomever, living inside an immortal body with a core he did not cultivate himself.

¹This is probably another unreasonably hefty can of worms for this specific conversation, but Lan Wangji would be more than willing to explain Wen Qionglin's existence later. The Ghost General is, he must admit despite some of his own petulant drunken actions, a very good man.

Claudius feels a fresh flare of fury — he knows his own secrets were selfishly kept. However he told himself it was for Gertrude’s sake, to guard her from the knowledge of what he’d do to free her, he didn’t want to be caught. He wanted to get away with a murder, and reap the rewards of it. His own dismay and anger at the play has faded. But Wei Wuxian kept a secret nobly, kept the secret of his own self-sacrifice, kept it even from Lan Wangji for twenty years. And someone else gleaned it without effort, someone outside their lives, with no personal stake in the matter.

“Did he learn it from his dramatic adaptations?” asks Claudius, more to confirm than anything else. He lets bitterness color his own voice — not so much at Shen Qingqiu for watching an entertainment, but at how fragile and exposed their secrets are once they’re on the stage.

"Mn." There is no other reason Shen Qingqiu could have known to speak Wen Qing's name in that context. It is difficult to picture exactly how this information came to Shen Qingqiu's awareness¹, but it did, with no pain or heartache on his part.

There is a beat, and then Lan Wangji asks, "Did you tell him that I am dominant?" This question comes in the most neutral tone possible, with the most unreadable facial expression possible. He manages no giveaway at all as to his feelings on the matter aside from, as ever, the prickle of heat beginning at the tips of his ears.

¹Lan Wangji doesn't know about television, but Shen Qingqiu's fixation on some actor's "beautiful" lip mole seems improbable for an adaptation viewed on a stage.

For Claudius's part, the heat of fury shifts to something less righteous, with a flush creeping up the back of his neck. "Yes, well," he says with a resigned sigh. "Thou shouldst know, for me, there are herbal remedies as effective as a truth spell. They make a man more relaxed and voluble. I saw Shen Qingqiu partaking in a remedy for relaxation -- an experiment, to see if it changed how he behaved around others¹. He was quite different from when we saw him. I joined him, and told him ..." He thinks this over. "One or two facts about every man I know and how they behave in love affairs. I spoke of thee as one example." And he's certain he's correct about Lan Wangji, but perhaps that's less than relevant.

¹ Was that what it was for ...?

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