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

[lightbearinglord]

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.

Comments

[wickedwit]

Claudius all but squirms in his seat -- it's a small seat, and he's barely using it, so there wouldn't be much room for it. If it were a nice, plush armchair he might sink into it. "Well, my stay here has already been longer than some of my longest diplomatic engagements. It's very easy to make yourself a charming guest when you're briefed on local customs and you'll be leaving before the ink on the treaty is dry, so this is a challenge. I'm used to being a guest -- never a host. Could you tell?"

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji has always been a terrible diplomat, and moreover, has always hated diplomacy, but he enjoys, for a moment here, thinking of Claudius on his various forays into international relations. "You greeted me effectively enough," he says, and then stops again to think. "I don't consider any of us here hosts or guests any longer. This is the longest that I, too, have stayed anywhere aside from the Cloud Recesses." It is also the only other place he has, even passingly, thought of as home.

[wickedwit]

"Another strange thing this place has accomplished," Claudius says. "Forcing two perpetual travelers stay in one place and form lasting friendships." He says it lightly, but it's a thing he's used to thinking a great deal about. Back when he fretted over centralized leadership, it was the question of what it would take to make this place feel like a civilization. Not a random cycle of hosts greeting guests plucked from disparate worlds, but a community with common goals. Now the community feels no less random or disparate, but it does feel like it could be a home to someone.

[lightbearinglord]

Indeed, for the first several of Lan Wangji's nights here, he thought of the mansion the way he might think of any of the countless inns he has patronized, with the slim advantage that there were no eager proprietors ready to weigh his purse before determining the cost of a bed. Now he sits in a familiar room, with a familiar face, and finds himself close to smiling again at that word, lasting. When he draws in one of his customary slow breaths, he registers that he feels lighter than he did when Claudius appeared in the doorway, his lingering shame and anger waning. Time will take care of the rest, as it nearly always does. There will be no rushing it.

Lan Wangji is not ready to be finished with Claudius' company, but he is ready to be finished with dredging up words. He has handed over more of his secrets than he ever thought he might -- voluntarily, this time, and still without regret, but he is tired. He weighs that feeling, then tips his head a little, looking at Claudius, and says, "If you have the time, will you demonstrate your progress at weiqi to me now?"

[wickedwit]

Claudius briefly regrets whatever came up that prevented him from practicing weiqi with Qi Yan and learning tricks to surprise Lan Wangji. The zombie attack might've been what came up -- but that's something else time can take care of. Claudius has the expectation of enough time ahead, and enough weiqi matches, to find a better strategy than wildly overconfident bluffing. He can still try the bluffing strategy a few more times before seeing Qi Yan. "With pleasure. I hope you're prepared to be surprised," Claudius says, with no surprises in store.

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji lifts his eyebrows, an elegantly cutting expression of pure skepticism, but says nothing. As he has already said, they will play as many times as it takes for Claudius to come out the victor. He gets to his feet, smoothing down his robes, so that he can retrieve the board and the pieces, and so that he can pass a pleasant afternoon in meditative contemplation of strategy and the workings of fate that have brought the two of them to this point.