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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"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."

"Mn. I would like to investigate, as though this were a night-hunt." Here, Lan Wangji offers a sprig of watercress to Claudius as well, since it would clearly be unfair to feed one rabbit and not the other. "If Galahad's dreams are Luo Binghe's doing, then we will carve whatever path is necessary. But I want to be certain."

"As do I. Thank you." With Dangding taking crunching bites of watercress from his hand, he releases a breath, and he smiles. "I feel better, you know, when I have a plan. Where will you start investigating? Can I be of assistance?"

Lan Wangji takes a beat to order his thoughts. Typically, he is called to a night-hunt by a family or a village in need, because some spirit or yao is troubling them. No one has called him to this, and the mansion is at once larger and smaller than his usual hunting grounds, but he can start as he usually does. "I will need to ask questions. The abilities, and the rules that govern them, vary widely here." Speaking extensively to others is, obviously, not his favorite task, but when he comes at it with a purpose, it is not so bad. "Master Asmodean has considerable power," he says, masking his personal distaste for the man. "I may begin with him. You may ask your own questions of others. It's common for one person to give two different answers depending on the cultivator asking."

“I've no doubt of that," Claudius says, wry and knowing. "Another reason, I suppose, for why you and Wei Wuxian make an effective team — you'll garner quite different reactions from the people you encounter. I can't sense the flow of qi or any such thing, but I can at least speak to people and assess their motives. And I’m on cordial terms with Asmodean, despite his disinvitation to the dance. In their own ways, both the dance and the zombie attack were rare opportunities — since people arrive one at a time here, and seldom gather in groups, there are few chances for me to observe everyone at once. At the dance, I could take note of who spoke with whom, who showed signs of friendly rapport or romantic connection, and who was tellingly absent. The zombie attack brought out everyone with martial or magical abilities, and some interest in defending themselves. I saw most of them with Crowley who, of course, was at a window where he wouldn’t be seen doling out assistance. I have a fair idea who has significant powers and who they’re connected to, excepting the newest arrivals.” It’s revealing quite a bit about how calculating Claudius can be, how much he watches and assesses, even when he’s meant to be enjoying a dance he put on or hiding from people-eating corpses. But he doesn’t expect it will disturb Lan Wangji, or the depth of trust between them.

Indeed, Lan Wangji only nods calmly in answer to this. He has always been an observer, too, primarily by necessity; for nearly his entire life, he has stood apart from his peers, from the cultivation world, and watched silently. He notices most things, but Claudius has a much defter ability to maneuver amongst those things and pluck information that way. "Then we will make our own inquiries and observations and look for inconsistencies."

It truly does feel better, to have a plan, and a plan that has more than his own hand to steer and guide it. That waiting, fearful feeling still flutters in his chest, but it doesn't push so painfully against it that he can't breathe. There's a rabbit eating watercress in his lap. "Thank you," he repeats. "I've wanted so long to live in peace, you know -- there are few sacrifices I wouldn't make for it. When Enjolras gave his oration at the talent show, and shared his dream of a place where man might not be brought down to kill his fellow, I admit it touched me ... even as I thought ah, then I'd best not tell him about the business with the blood parasites." He gives a small, scoffing laugh. "I hope whatever results our investigations yield, there may be a peaceful resolution. But thank you for not advising I ignore it, or simply bite my tongue."

The still outlines of Lan Wangji's expression soften at that insincere little laugh. "Peace is my hope, too," he says. He thinks he has yearned for peace since the day Qishan Wen came to the Cloud Recesses, pounding on Qingheng-jun's door and smashing Lan Wangji's leg with the hilt of a sword. If not then, it must have been the first day of the Sunshot Campaign, the first time another cultivator fell to Bichen's blade. "But I have lived through peace that was a folding screen concealing violence and atrocity. I would like to hope for better."

"Well-put," Claudius says with a small, appreciative smile. "I've been an unsuccessful soldier, and a successful mediator, but many times my mediation was only to move the folding screen. Whatever hid behind was still waiting, but it was all I knew how to do. I'd rather learn another way." He hesitates to say more, to break even this fragile peace, this shared hope spoken out loud. "That's my other concern, I suppose. I told you I had one or two. I don't wish to go back to what I was before ... or be forced back."

Lan Wangji sobers anew, setting a gentle hand atop Xiaoxue's back. He has, by now, considerably mixed feelings about this prospect, but he knows that this is something that troubles Magnus, too. The nature of the mansion is unpredictable. "When I met with Queen Gertrude," he says, "I had come directly from seeing my own brother." That is another question of monsterhood, the question of Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen's sword through his gut. "The passage to this room had been replaced by a passage to the hanshi. Wei Ying was still abed. I was glad that he was, because I did not have to choose between leaving this place and going home."

Claudius looks at Lan Wangji with new, intent interest -- he has a tendency to avoid eye contact, to gaze into the middle distance, when speaking of his fears and hopes. "The other Twin Jade," he says with a laugh. "What I would've given to meet him. Selfishly, I suppose I'm glad you didn't have to make the choice, either. How did it go? Was he well?"

One of Lan Wangji's characteristic silences ensues, but not a terribly long one. He glances down at the rabbit under his hand, then back up to meet Claudius' gaze again. "Xiongzhang is recovering." He imagines Claudius will remember what he said about Jin Guangyao at the burn book gathering, that Lan Xichen is in seclusion for a reason. "All our lives, he has wanted me to make friends."

Claudius understands enough to paint a picture in broad strokes, colored by the painful circumstances of Lan Wangji's own seclusion, and a knowledge of the hurts that make a man retreat from the world. He also understands Lan Wangji long loved a mother kept behind closed doors -- a mother who teased him, who smiled even when he bit at her, because he felt so much and she knew how much her son's heart could hold.

Lan Xichen must have seen his brother's devotion every day Lan Wangji waited outside that closed door. It must've been a dear hope of his, not to let Lan Wangji’s devotion go to waste. I think I've spent most of my life worrying about you.

"It must've been a comfort to him," Claudius says, with a softer smile, “to see thee well-befriended. Such selfless people never stop worrying about the ones they love, even when they’ve their own sorrows to bear.”

Claudius is right, he thinks. Lan Xichen has enough of his own worries and troubles, the toil of running a sect from seclusion and the everyday pain of his memories of Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao. Lan Wangji knows his brother. Lan Xichen's face isn't so subtle as his own, but its gentle smiles can hold their own puzzles to unravel. He could see that Lan Xichen was, with all his grief and weariness, truly eased to see his cold and distant younger brother finding a place somewhere outside the regimented Cloud Recesses.

He's quiet again as he remembers his brother's arms around him, the clean smell of the Cloud Recesses and Gusu tea, his name in Lan Xichen's warm voice. It may be that he can never show Claudius the back mountain dotted with soft white rabbits or watch with amusement as he looks in disbelief at the four thousand and counting rules carved into the Wall of Discipline. There is, however, a request he has been meaning to make since Claudius passingly called him by his title the month prior.

"Claudius," he says, perhaps a little abruptly. "You may address me as Wangji, if you would prefer."

"Wangji," Claudius repeats, and his smile broadens around it. When they were strangers to each other, he remembers copying Lan Wangji's courtesies, correcting himself through observation, sliding Lan back into his greetings as though he'd never let it slip. He wanted all his adaptations to look effortless, to prove his cosmopolitanism, which was absurd when they weren't even from the same world. To his surprise, Wangji doesn't feel like a step backwards, returning to his first clumsy tests with terms of address. It feels lighter on his tongue, lighter than even Lan Wangji with the title. Simply put, "I like the sound of it. You’ll be hearing it until you’re sick of it, I’m sure. Wangji, I’ve such a story tell thee. Wangji, I need thy counsel. Wangji, what does cut-sleeve mean? The last comes from meeting your unfortunate in-law.”

Edited 2024-01-12 19:01 (UTC)

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