[ closed post: the sun shines brightly ]

[lightbearinglord]

It has been a strange handful of weeks, but Lan Wangji can accept strange far more easily than he could accept the pain that rippled inexorably outward from Shen Yuan's death, seeming to leave no one untouched. The parade of visitors was unusual, and thought-provoking, but not painful. Lan Wangji enjoyed meeting most of them. Even Galahad, whose empty politeness made him feel hollow in turn -- there was a quiet satisfaction in bringing him to the rabbits and watching his stunned expression at the simple joy of holding something small and vulnerable and trusting.

As for himself, the memories are so abstract as to be incomprehensible. There is something there, enough something to assure him that Aornis had no hand in this specific strangeness. But he can barely grasp at the details. He remembers embracing Magnus, but that signifies nothing out of the ordinary. He remembers sparring with Gideon; he remembers that he needs to ask Sagramore for fresh poetry. He remembers the loss of Wei Ying, newer and crueler than it typically is these days, but when he came back to himself the next morning, Wei Ying was there, his head tucked beneath Lan Wangji's chin and his ankle hooked around Lan Wangji's hip.

The least enjoyable of his encounters, at the least, provided him with something important. He has not removed the locket from his qiankun pouch. He wants to waste no time in bringing it to its intended recipient. He performs the first of his morning routines -- his meditation, his patrol, Wei Ying's breakfast -- and then goes to look for Magnus at the camp.

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[lightbearinglord]

Another lengthy silence follows, then. Lan Wangji is taking it in: the hushed atmosphere, the gentle morning breeze as it moves the grass and the flowers, the persistent impression beneath it all of Magnus' qi, a feeling like sitting on the jingshi porch with Wei Ying at the height of summer, reaching to brush back a lock of his hair, and finding it warmed through by the sun.

"That other Magnus was surprised when I told him you had given up fighting," he says eventually. "He claimed that fighting, and dying again and again, is the only way for einherjar to remain connected." He directs a little smile at Magnus. "I knew he was wrong. There are other ways."

[summerdude]

"Like," Magnus says, a little apologetically, curling a hand around some buttercups. "He's not wrong for, like, Valhalla or whatever? I didn't know I could do all this until I got here and, like, did all this. It was--" he cuts himself off. Hanguang-jun doesn't know about his surprise yet, but it was learning to make dried out bamboo sprout that really started him on exploring what all he could do. "Like, Dark, I guess?"

[lightbearinglord]

Retrospectively, there were worse things to spark concern, but Lan Wangji still remembers how long and grim Dark felt -- the feeling that there was some lurking coil of resentful energy around every corner, how quickly and dramatically Sagramore's hair greyed, how little he slept. It makes him fonder still of Magnus to think that, during the lowest point of winter, he reached within himself and found this well of light and growth. He wants to say something about it, and about how glad he is that Magnus is here, but the swell of feeling stops his tongue. He's quiet, looking at Magnus with love caught in this throat.

[summerdude]

Magnus looks up and catches sight of the look in Lan Wangji's eyes. "Hanguang-jun?"

[lightbearinglord]

Almost surprising himself with it, he says, quietly, "There was a war when I was seventeen. We fought for three years. It ended, but it didn't end." Officially, the Wen clan was defeated, and they were in a time of peace. What happened at Qiongqi Path, what was happening at the hands of the Jin clan all around the cultivation world, belied that claim. "I want yours to end and stay that way."

[summerdude]

"Oh," says Magnus, a little surprised. "It ended but it didn't end?"

[lightbearinglord]

"We won. But the violence persisted out of sight."

[summerdude]

"Like... guerilla fighting?"

[lightbearinglord]

"No. Another clan rose to claim the power left for the taking by the clan we had defeated. Their leaders thought it best to exterminate any remaining members of that defeated clan."

[summerdude]

"Oh." Magnus shivers and makes a face. "Genocide."

[lightbearinglord]

"Wei Ying sheltered and defended them." Even Lan Wangji, measured and calm externally, sounds a little bitter as he says this. "He was cast out."

[summerdude]

"That's so messed up."

[lightbearinglord]

"Mn." He lets himself have a longer pause here, alongside a grounding breath of fresh air. The flowers are indifferent to the past. He's slightly hesitant as he continues; he knows that Magnus doesn't like it when he mentions Sizhui, but Sizhui is impossible to extricate from the sentiment he is trying to convey. "I told you that Sizhui's first family is gone and that I gave him my family name. He is the only remaining member of that clan."

[summerdude]

Magnus twists to look at Lan Wangji. None of his trademark Sizhui-shaped jealousy is apparent in this moment. "How big was it before the war?"

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji meets Magnus' gaze, then. "Qishan Wen was the largest and most powerful clan in the cultivation world."

[summerdude]

"Jeez," Magnus says, quietly.

[lightbearinglord]

"He was still Wen Yuan when I found him. But it was unsafe for him to keep that name."

[summerdude]

"Yeah, I'll bet."

[lightbearinglord]

He is silent again, at least for the time being. By now, he knows how foolish it is that he still protects Sizhui's identity so staunchly here. There is no one around who knows to hate him for his family's deeds. It feels like weighty information to hand over regardless. Sizhui is good with his blade, a capable young cultivator; he knows how to fight and how to defend himself. The world is not so kind that he could go wholly without those skills, nor would Lan Wangji want him to. He does, however, want Sizhui to use them only in the pursuit of helping others, of being a noble and upright cultivator who feels free to roam as he pleases, to explore his past as he likes, and to come home to Gusu anytime. As long as no war has broken out in Lan Wangji's absence, Sizhui has already made it longer with his innocence intact than Lan Wangji and his peers did.

[summerdude]

Magnus is quiet for a long few minutes, and then he says, "You know that, like, Battle Practice and Ragnarok aren't, like, wars. Right?"

[lightbearinglord]

"I know. I still consider it cruel to ask you to die over and over."

[summerdude]

"Not to sound like Koolaid Guy," Magnus says, with real regret -- he knows Hanguang-jun won't like hearing this -- "but it's not, like, that bad for einherjar."

[lightbearinglord]

"What does not that bad mean?"

[summerdude]

It doesn't stick and you get used to the pain, Magnus thinks, and then he pictures the look on Lan Wangji's face as he says it, winces, and switches tactics. "Like. This isn't the body I had when I was alive."

[lightbearinglord]

"Mn," Lan Wangji says, without any particular inflection. He touches another of the bells, thinking of Yunmeng and the massacred disciples of Lotus Pier. "It is yours now." He looks back to Magnus, letting a little frown crease his brow, and tries to choose his own words carefully. This entails a pause, and then it entails the words emerging slowly, with deliberation. "I am not trying to convince you to feel your pain more keenly than you already do. If Valhalla was not that bad, then I am glad it was not worse. But I want better for you than not that bad. You told me that you don't like battle. We are surrounded by the evidence of what happens when you are free to pursue kinder things."