Claudius nods through Lan Wangji's every word, accepting it, trying to smile even as he tastes the bitterness of it. If he can't have safety, he can at least have understanding. The act of holding something so small and fragile as a rabbit reminds him to gentle himself, to focus on what lives he can preserve and care for, when his fears loom larger than his body can contain. He was happy at the dance, happy sharing this world with the ones he loved and the ones who loved them, and he hadn't felt threatened that Luo Binghe was in it. And perhaps, with time, Claudius can learn to live through the feeling of waiting, live that day to day with Lan Wangji.
"I almost made a move I don't believe I could take back," he admits, forcing himself to laugh. "It would've been on the level of growing and distilling a poison. I have an arrangement with someone here. Aornis1. I don't know how much you know about Shen Yuan's and Luo Binghe's history, but in Shen Yuan's world, Luo Binghe's life was a work of fiction. I met the author of that fiction, and another character from it ... but those are background details only. What's relevant is that Aornis is from a world where books contain places one can visit, inhabited by fictional characters. At times agencies police these books to maintain plots and consistency. And I began to think ... Luo Binghe's powers are ultimately only things granted to him by his authors. He's a character from a lurid fantasy who wasn't created to play well with others, and if there are powers that can police characters in books, perhaps there are powers that can edit him out of our lives once and for all."
He began to think like Shen Yuan said he did, when Shen Yuan couldn't afford to think about the people around him as real people. But even monsters are beloved, and if Claudius simply edited Luo Binghe out -- a nice little euphemism, now that's spoken it -- then Shen Yuan would feel that loss. "I'm a fictional character in these worlds, too, by the way," he adds, acknowledging that hypocrisy. "And I'm a villain. So I'm not one to judge between men and monsters, or how much it matters whether we were created to play nice. But I wanted to use my arrangement with Aornis to plan something against Luo Binghe, and ... that would've been a danger worth warning you about. In the end, I only told her to protect herself, gave her information, and left."
no subject
"I almost made a move I don't believe I could take back," he admits, forcing himself to laugh. "It would've been on the level of growing and distilling a poison. I have an arrangement with someone here. Aornis1. I don't know how much you know about Shen Yuan's and Luo Binghe's history, but in Shen Yuan's world, Luo Binghe's life was a work of fiction. I met the author of that fiction, and another character from it ... but those are background details only. What's relevant is that Aornis is from a world where books contain places one can visit, inhabited by fictional characters. At times agencies police these books to maintain plots and consistency. And I began to think ... Luo Binghe's powers are ultimately only things granted to him by his authors. He's a character from a lurid fantasy who wasn't created to play well with others, and if there are powers that can police characters in books, perhaps there are powers that can edit him out of our lives once and for all."
He began to think like Shen Yuan said he did, when Shen Yuan couldn't afford to think about the people around him as real people. But even monsters are beloved, and if Claudius simply edited Luo Binghe out -- a nice little euphemism, now that's spoken it -- then Shen Yuan would feel that loss. "I'm a fictional character in these worlds, too, by the way," he adds, acknowledging that hypocrisy. "And I'm a villain. So I'm not one to judge between men and monsters, or how much it matters whether we were created to play nice. But I wanted to use my arrangement with Aornis to plan something against Luo Binghe, and ... that would've been a danger worth warning you about. In the end, I only told her to protect herself, gave her information, and left."
1 The gentlest dramatic ping.