lightbearinglord | [ closed post: rabbit meditation power hour ]

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[ closed post: rabbit meditation power hour ]

The rabbits have been settling in. They have sweet, easygoing temperaments, which helps, and it helps, too, that the mansion has apparently noticed their presence and supplied Lan Wangji with a little wooden hutch for their keeping when he is not able to hold them. He does, on occasion, need his hands for other tasks. His preferred kitchen has also been forthcoming with hay and vegetables for their feeding. Wei Ying has already threatened to cook and eat them several times, which means he likes them and will be whittling toys for them any day now. Once winter passes, Lan Wangji will work on constructing a sturdier hutch for the outdoors as well, so that they can see the lake and the woods.¹

Because they are so sweet, and also so endearingly small, their presence is calming in itself. Lan Wangji does not exactly need help to meditate successfully -- he has been doing it daily since he was very young -- but the company does not go amiss, either. It is difficult to dwell overmuch on anything troublesome with two tiny, warm bodies in one's lap.

Lan Wangji is not actually meditating yet, but he is seated in that side room he prefers to use for the practice. There is incense burning, and he has a little brown rabbit, munching its way through a piece of watercress, perched on his knee. In his hands, he holds the equally little white rabbit, which is overall doing well, but which does have a greater tendency to startle and to want to hide itself. He is speaking to it under his breath, gently.

¹It's important for rabbits who began life in the bottom of a top hat to be exposed to nature.

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Upon hearing Claudius' voice, the little brown rabbit sits back on its hind legs, balancing on Lan Wangji's knee to peer at him. Meanwhile, Lan Wangji turns the white rabbit in his hands so that it can see Claudius as well and not be startled by the sound of another human.

As for Lan Wangji himself, he is so obviously happy to see Claudius that an actual smile would be unnecessarily excessive. "Claudius. Sit."

Claudius's heart floods with such fondness for all three faces in the room. It eases him, and he gladly takes a seat beside Lan Wangji, holding out his hand for the little brown rabbit to sniff. "I did want to be reintroduced to these two. Have you yet given them names?"

"Mn. Xiaoxue.¹" Demonstratively, Lan Wangji tucks the white rabbit in question into the crook of his arm so that he has a hand free to stroke along the back of the brown rabbit. "Danding. Shushu is here to visit."

¹I've already footnoted this name in the above thread, but for Claudius I will add that 小雪 is also the twentieth (of twenty-four) term of the Chinese lunisolar calendar.

"Xiaoxue," Claudius says with utmost wonder and delight. "Danding. At last we're properly acquainted. Some day you may have admirers from all over the mansion, so it's the best to practice making introductions now." He touches Danding's ears and smiles. "They're doing well, I see. And keeping you company?"

Presumably remembering its first caretaker, Danding contentedly nudges Claudius' hand with its head, requesting further attention. Lan Wangji watches this fondly. "They are good company," he says with sincerity. "My brother once worried that the keeping of rabbits would distract from my studies, but I believe they improve my focus." With that, he recalls that there is something he has yet to tell Claudius -- it feels nearly like a dream, now. But first, he needs to ask, to be certain: "Queen Gertrude found you, that day?" He had been afraid of taking up too much of her time, of inadvertently robbing Claudius of any single precious moment with her.

Edited 2024-01-10 00:39 (UTC)

Claudius dotes on Danding without end, as an indulgent parent ought. The mention of Gertrude makes his smile shine a little brighter, and the thought of what she'd do if faced with a small rabbit. "She did, yes. And she told me you had kind things to say about me -- she heard kind things about me from everyone she met, to hear her tell it. I think she was pleased by the caliber of my friends. It felt rather like being entrusted into your care." Like a new sibling, but that goes without saying if Claudius is shushu.

As if this is a known and indisputable fact so obvious that it hardly bears discussing aloud, Lan Wangji says, "You are under my protection." It had been easy to see why Claudius feels as he does about Gertrude, and easier still to speak kindly of him to her -- although he is, of course, holding onto the advice he was given for some future game of weiqi in which Claudius might seem to have the upper hand.

His expression flickers briefly, only because he's been thinking about the price of protecting someone, but also about what it takes to think one's self worthy of protection. Claudius didn't have anything of the latter. In small ways, he thinks he must have denied ever needing it¹, downplaying his fears because if he were in true trouble, he would never have asked Lan Wangji for help. It always had to be some small, trifling thing, nothing important, just his life. "I know that well," he says, and laughs. "I didn't even tell her of the attack of the undead -- though that would've been quite the story. I would always tell her stories, when I went abroad, and I missed telling her as much as she missed hearing them. You'll be pleased to know that I did tell her the truth of my feelings." It's a bit teasing, but with sincerity behind it. Lan Wangji's earnest advice to Crowley reminded Claudius -- he would always regret and wonder what may have been, if he hadn't told Gertrude that moment in the greenhouse. None of Claudius's confessions of love had ever come easily, but they were all necessary.

¹ Small ways? Claudius, please, it's every time.

Lan Wangji notes the element of teasing, but dismisses it. He can only be glad that Claudius told Gertrude, just as he can only be glad that Wei Ying spoke when he did. There is loss enough in this world, in all the worlds, without fear that stops tongues from revealing love. "Good," he says, a little softer but with emphasis. "She asked for a story from me as well, to take back to Denmark with her." It nearly goes without saying, but it is eminently clear from the banked warmth in his own expression that he liked Gertrude very, very much.

"Oh? And what did you tell her?" asks Claudius, eyes brightly curious as he gathers Danding closer for doting.

Claudius will probably recognize this little huff of an exhale as the Lan Wangji version of a laugh. He had not known Gertrude well enough to select a story to her tastes, so he chose one because he had imagined it would amuse Claudius if he had been present. "A recent night-hunt with Sizhui and Wei Ying both in attendance. We left the exorcism to Sizhui, and he performed well, but a small amount of resentful energy followed us to our inn. This became apparent at an inopportune time, after Wei Ying and I had gone to our bed."

Claudius has come to greatly anticipate and enjoy Lan Wangji’s stories when they’re two or three sentences laden with significance. This story has set up, and piques Claudius’s interest all the more. “In what way did it reveal itself?” he asks, ready to play the prompting audience.

"It possessed Sizhui's qin." Lan Wangji catches Claudius' eye with simultaneous amusement and chagrin. "It was necessary for him to interrupt us to request assistance." Poor, sweet A-Yuan. There has never been a better or more diligent disciple, nor one more stoic in the face of watching a half-disrobed Hanguang-jun and his shamefully disheveled husband playing a spirit to rest.

Claudius laughs now, already having a fair guess at what Wei Wuxian’s and Lan Wangji’s bedtime routine might be — the look in Lan Wangji’s eye confirms it. “And you can never refuse a request for assistance, least of all from your disciple. Was it swiftly dealt with, at least?”

"Easily," Lan Wangji confirms. He would not bring Sizhui along on a night-hunt if he believed there was serious danger possible, although these things are not always possible to predict. In fact, that thought reminds him of yet another matter, one certainly more important than any idle conversation.

He sets Xiaoxue down on his lap so that he can unfasten his qiankun pouch from his waist and, without too much delay, pull a small cylindrical object, wrapped in red paper, from it. This in hand, he reaches to press it into Claudius' palm. "Carry this. If you are in danger, shake it and take care of your fingers. There will be sparks. I will come for you."

Claudius looks at the little wrapped charm with some surprise, though it takes some time to untangle why -- alchemical reactions of various kinds can create sparks to for flare, and that's without the subtler magics Lan Wangji knows. He's curious how it works, but not doubtful of the claim that Lan Wangji will come wherever it's used. It surprises Claudius how such a gesture can still humble him. "Quite a significant gift," he says, and closes his hand around it. "I'll hold it close. And perhaps ... I ought to warn you, if I believe I may be courting danger. I'd hate to catch you at an inopportune moment." The last, he says with a flickering smile.

There's a look almost of fond exasperation on Lan Wangji's face, in the barely-there curl of his mouth. "I will come regardless." Claudius has seen his scars, his brand, the worst of his drunken misbehavior. Another measure of humiliation would be bracing, but a worthy tradeoff for his safety. "As you said. Queen Gertrude entrusted me with your care."

"So she did." Claudius tucks the charm in with his pocket square, neatly folded, and braces himself a moment with his hand in Danding's soft fur. "I'd say my days have been too full of frivolous entertainments, dances and literary discussions, to be dangerous. I'm becoming more and more of an indolent prince without cares or responsibilities, these two sweet children excepted." Wryly, "But I admit I have one or two cares weighing on me, besides the care of rabbits. They're still the center of my world, of course."

Lan Wangji watches with relief as Claudius tucks away the signal flare. He will spare his friend's pride and keep to himself that the last time he answered the call of one of these, it was because his teenaged students had found themselves in over their heads at Mo Manor.

"Naturally," he agrees. To demonstrate his own commitment to their shared responsibility of rabbit care, he resituates Xiaoxue in his lap, tucking the rabbit closer to his ribcage and resting it on his thigh. Then he looks at Claudius with an open and prompting expression, awaiting further elaboration about whatever is weighing on him.

"Galahad challenged Luo Binghe on my behalf," he says, at last. "It was noble-hearted -- I'm grateful to him, and grateful he came to no harm. The only consequence seems to be the recurrence of cruel dreams. Knowing Luo Binghe, the nightmares will cease as soon as he grows bored, or Shen Yuan smiles and says something flattering at him ... but it sits uneasily with me. I was rather more flippant, I think, when it was my dreams he meddled with. I may've taken your warning beforehand more flippantly, too. Sometimes I can scarcely think of the man as a threat, he's so consumed by his every insecurity -- if I ever wanted to hurt him, I'd only have to look at him once, and tell him what I honestly think. But lately ..." He looks at Lan Wangji, and his eyes are tired.

"I've told you of my brother, and said nothing kind. But he wasn't a monster every day. Even monsters are beloved by someone; that's why murder has such a heavy weight. After I resolved to kill him, my resolve would falter whenever enough time passed between outrages. Whenever he and Gertrude looked happy, I'd spare him everything I'd planned. I'd take batches of poison and destroy them, so that there'd be no temptation, and I'd only have to bear sins of the heart. Whatever he did to me in childhood ... he was a younger man. I'd hope that he'd changed. And then another outrage would occur, one I could not ignore or forgive. I could put behind my childhood, but I could never countenance what he did to Gertrude, or consign it to the past. And though I knew that was the truth of it, I also knew it would take another year to grow the poisons I needed and distill them. I grew used to such cycles. And I'm used to the feeling of waiting for another man's mercy to run out."

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."

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."

¹ The gentlest dramatic ping.

The matter of fiction, of whether Lan Wangji himself comes from some fantastical story, is not one he likes to entertain, even after his unsettling conversation with Shang Qinghua, but for this, he will attend to the conceit. If Luo Binghe is, indeed, a character plucked from the mind of a storyteller who gave no consideration to his possible impact on others, that explains a great deal. Claudius once promised to come to Lan Wangji before embroiling himself in political squabbles or doing something dreadfully self-obliterating. He is relieved, almost unaccountably so, to hear that Claudius did not set anything unstoppable in motion without asking his opinion, and unfazed at the word villain. He has seen too many unflattering portraits of the evil, child-devouring Yiling Patriarch to care about that.

He is quiet, taking a fresh sprig of watercress from his still-open qiankun pouch and feeding it to Xiaoxue to fill the silence with the small sounds of that. "I have met Aornis," he says, then. He hesitates again. "There is no love in my heart for Luo Binghe, and I believe he has influenced my own dreams, too. But before Wei Ying's death, he was accused of something, because he was the Yiling Patriarch. A curse. That accusation led to his death, but the curse was not his doing."

"Rather like a witch hunt." It's a droll observation, but witch hunts weren't outside the realm of his childhood fears, when he clutched a book of alchemy to his chest and swore it contained nothing heretical. "Every once in a while there will be a witch trial in Denmark, and a string of burnings afterward. They're never pleasant, and often confessions are induced by torture. I take your point. I'd like to avoid starting that sort of business here."

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