When Claudius speaks, Lan Wangji listens. He listens habitually, of course, because he likes listening to Claudius, but also because he will never forget kneeling in the garden and receiving Claudius' confession of the fate of his brother, words like tainted water poured into the deep vessel of Lan Wangji's attention. He received that conversation as a fragile gift, one to be handled with care. He will do the same now. He doesn't look away from Claudius, and his face is still, but they know one another better now, and he considers it likely that Claudius can read the understanding in his own eyes, along with the fear, the anger, the helplessness.
Even monsters are beloved by someone. Lan Wangji knows that; he knows it in the way he strode across Nightless City with his core nearly depleted and bundled a broken, blood-soaked Yiling Patriarch into his arms. He knows it in the way that he cried, silent and powerless to stop himself, when his father died, the way that his mother's face twisted with indecisive affection and fear when she spoke the title Qingheng-jun. It would be easy to say that there are two kinds of monsters, those who can be forgiven, and thereafter trusted, and those who cannot, but Lan Wangji knows better than to slip into that sort of easiness. I once longed for the comfort of always knowing the right thing, he told Crowley on the day of his arrival. Crowley, a demon and yet not a monster. Wei Ying, a murderer a thousand times over and yet the man whose life makes almost every one of Lan Wangji's happinesses possible. He has glimpsed, in passing, the way that Shen Yuan and Luo Binghe look at one another. He recognizes love when he sees it.
He is grateful for the small, solid presence of the little rabbit pressed to him, something that reminds him to direct tension out of his body along with his breath. "I wish that I could promise you safety here," he says. His voice remains level enough, but there's a blade's-edge dragging along its tenor. "In my own world, I could. But I do not make promises I can't keep." It's a bitter admission to make under these circumstances. "Any man may become a monster, and any monster may turn back into a man when its cruelty is finished. It pains me, too, to live day to day with nothing but the hope that Luo Binghe's mercy does not run dry after all."
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Even monsters are beloved by someone. Lan Wangji knows that; he knows it in the way he strode across Nightless City with his core nearly depleted and bundled a broken, blood-soaked Yiling Patriarch into his arms. He knows it in the way that he cried, silent and powerless to stop himself, when his father died, the way that his mother's face twisted with indecisive affection and fear when she spoke the title Qingheng-jun. It would be easy to say that there are two kinds of monsters, those who can be forgiven, and thereafter trusted, and those who cannot, but Lan Wangji knows better than to slip into that sort of easiness. I once longed for the comfort of always knowing the right thing, he told Crowley on the day of his arrival. Crowley, a demon and yet not a monster. Wei Ying, a murderer a thousand times over and yet the man whose life makes almost every one of Lan Wangji's happinesses possible. He has glimpsed, in passing, the way that Shen Yuan and Luo Binghe look at one another. He recognizes love when he sees it.
He is grateful for the small, solid presence of the little rabbit pressed to him, something that reminds him to direct tension out of his body along with his breath. "I wish that I could promise you safety here," he says. His voice remains level enough, but there's a blade's-edge dragging along its tenor. "In my own world, I could. But I do not make promises I can't keep." It's a bitter admission to make under these circumstances. "Any man may become a monster, and any monster may turn back into a man when its cruelty is finished. It pains me, too, to live day to day with nothing but the hope that Luo Binghe's mercy does not run dry after all."