lightbearinglord | [ closed post: the heavy is the root of the light ]

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[ closed post: the heavy is the root of the light ]

His promise has been kept. Gideon has seen Aornis' body, and the conclusive nature of her death can't be denied. When Lan Wangji drew back the covering of his own robe, there was nothing, no lingering spirit. There was only a body.

He finds his way to the game room for the third time that day, weary. It has emptied of all its occupants now. The television has been shut off. Lan Wangji suspects that he spots one of SecUnit's drones, but he doesn't have the heart to look more closely. He is not trudging -- not in reality, not when he has his body trained so impeccably to obey him -- but he feels a certain heaviness of limb as he crosses the room's threshold again. His robes are flecked with blood and there are still traces of dried blood on his face, though the glass shard wounds that bled there are scabbing over by now. Memories keep plucking at him with demanding fingers, trying for his attention, and he continues to dismiss them as best he can, with every scrap of discipline that he has.

The room has been emptied, more accurately, of all its occupants but one. Claudius, who waited to meet him just as he asked. Lan Wangji could easily make an excuse for this request -- he and Claudius worked together on this plan for so long, coordinating what felt like a thousand game pieces and meticulously documenting every move and discovery they made. It would be easy to tell himself that he merely wants to bring finality to their efforts by going over the details of the battle, nothing more. It isn't untrue. But he knows that, in fact, most of what he wants is to see his friend. He wants the comfort of his presence and of the fact that they've accomplished what they meant to accomplish, as unclean as it feels now. They're done, and no one else had to die for it.

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The story of thy self. Lan Wangji has always been telling that story to himself, polishing it with every meditation, the story of a boy who knew precisely what to do with every moment of every day until he met someone whose light flooded him and scoured all of his certainty away. He knows who he is: the second young master Lan, Hanguang-jun, Wei Ying's devoted husband, a man who mourned the Yiling Patriarch for thirteen years and who battled his way to reconciling the rules of his childhood with the betrayal of watching his world turn cruel and unreasoning. Some memories flare cold and bright, their pain slow to fade, but he has always had them. He has never forgotten like this before.

In the slow silence, he breathes, careful with it. He has to line up the words before he can speak them, like assembling a weiqi defense stone by stone. "Magnus," he says when he can. "He nearly died and I was not there. I was with Aornis. It was a mundane conversation. She was working her entropy manipulation to kill Magnus all the while."

At a greater distance, Claudius might have slowly nodded to show his understanding. Instead he tightens his hold on Lan Wangji. "Thou art someone who would do anything to protect those he loves. I could tell thee many stories to prove it; I have seen with my own eyes how tireless thou art. To know thou couldst do nothing, thou wert not there, thou couldst not predict the danger ... 'tis hard enough to reconcile for a man such as thee. But now thou rememberest how close thou wert to his attacker, who even then had fooled us all, and cruelly used thee as a cover to evade suspicion. It brings back regrets thou didst not know to have, sharper and keener than before. Am I right?"

"Yes. I--" Without warning, Lan Wangji's breath hitches, only once. No other sound accompanies the tears that spill from his eyes, hot and damp on Claudius' shoulder. He has already gotten blood on Claudius' hand and his clothing; perhaps tears will not be so offensive in comparison. In any case, he is abruptly powerless to stop them. He was ignorant of it when Wei Ying died, shut away in the jingshi and incapacitated by the discipline whip. Foolishly, fruitlessly, he believed that Wei Ying would make it, that he had bought him enough time. He knew only when the messenger came with the good news. Lancelot fetched him more quickly when Magnus was attacked, but he was still too late, and he was still ignorant, and if Magnus were not already dead, he would be gone. He curls his fingers into Claudius' jacket, holding onto him afresh, an anchor against the way his body wants to tremble with the painful frustration of all his failures.

Tears have always been Claudius’s weakness — women’s tears, more than any other, since the first time Gertrude failed to keep the tremor from her voice when she said I wouldn’t want to worry you. Truthfully, his feelings frightened him more than hers, swelling fierce and sudden in his chest, and he knew he would commit any sin to see her smile again. His instinct is to soften himself, to apologize for prying, to bear all smooth and even.

But there are no apologies between himself and Lan Wangji. I wouldn't ask you to feel guilty for wanting to understand me. Now even if Lan Wangji begged him not to look, not to care, not to acknowledge the pain they were able to push through when they had an objective in front of them … Claudius couldn’t bring himself to turn away. Not now. Not after all they’ve been through.

“I have thee,” he says again, as fiercely as he feels it, blood and tears and all. “I know thee.”

Once, not so long ago, decades ago, Lan Zhan knelt outside of his mother's house every month, as still as a held breath, waiting. Months passed, and he knew that she was not coming. Even then, he came to meet her. As long as he waited, he could imagine that she might slide open the door at any moment. As long as he was quiet and obedient and good, she might emerge with a smile, scolding him for staying so long in the cold and ushering him inside. If he waited faithfully enough, his mother would arrive and chase away his pain.

Then, only one person could coax him away. Lan Huan would find him, look at him with concern and trepidation, and bundle him back to their shared house before hai hour, saying, Remember, Lan Zhan? She's gone. Lan Zhan would let himself be led, but he knew that he would be back the next month, too.

There is nothing left to await here. Aornis is dead, and whatever damage she has inflicted is unchangeable. All Lan Wangji's fears and doubts and responsibilities are snapping loose, the sudden and shocking absence of several of his burdens, and he knows that satisfaction and relief are on the horizon, but that he must navigate his way through this pain first. Staying its hand has never worked. He hangs on and lets himself cry, silent and shaking and safe in his brother's arms.

"Thou hast a heart," he murmurs. It's what he wishes he told Gertrude -- no. It's what he wishes he could have told himself. He kept trying to shut his heart away, to stuff down that swelling feeling in his chest. But Lan Wangji feels everything fully, loves with abandon, would hold a man for thirteen years in his heart after being flogged for defending him. He put a brand to his chest just to share a scar with that man he thought was forever lost to him. To feel no pain, he would have to be heartless. He simply held that pain inside himself, until it was safe to let it go. That's trouble with these memories, Claudius thinks wryly. You can't let something go if you don't know where to put it.

Lan Wangji does have a heart, a heart that frequently feels too big for the fragile cage of his ribs, that often squeezes tight with feeling so powerful he might stagger. His breath hiccups, just a little, over something soft that could be the suggestion of a sob or a laugh or simply the welcome reminder of it, their shared humanity. Nearly a year ago now, he liked Claudius and wanted to be a dutiful friend to him, but he thought that they could hardly be more different, the charismatic prince and the icy, stoic cultivator. Now he feels certain that, for all their small divergences, they have the same heart.

The tears are beginning to slow, but he stays as he is for one more careful, drawn-out breath, his face tucked into the shelter of Claudius' shoulder. When he does straighten, tear-tracks cutting through the traces of blood still on his face, he looks at Claudius with something suspended between ruefulness and gratitude. He presses his hand, all the depth of his gladness for their brotherhood in the way his fingers tighten around Claudius' palm for that moment. "I--" he starts again, then, realizing what he wants, says only, "I would like to sit down."

"Of course." Claudius tugs his hand, a little. "Come sit with me."

Lan Wangji lets Claudius lead him. He feels like a child, but it isn't such a bad feeling. The game room couch is familiar territory, and he sinks onto its cushions with a distant surprise at what a relief it is merely to distribute his weight differently. The battle is, truly, over.

Both their hands and clothes still have blood on them, which might may might the sight surreal -- but sitting like this, it feels like any light-hearted evening where Claudius might steal a few hours of his friend's time to sit and talk and sip tea together. "Wouldst thou know something I am proud of thee for," he asks, "that thou mightst not think to be proud of?"

Lan Wangji, who has yet to let go of Claudius' hand, looks up at him. It might behoove him to demur. It would certainly be polite. "I would," he says. With the other hand, he reaches to detach Bichen from his waist, so that he can set it tidily on the floor beside the couch. He never resents its weight, but he is ready to be without it for a time.

"Thou didst never waver in thy intention. When Aornis meddled in thy mind ... from here, it seemed to happen so quickly." He tells it like one of his cocktail stories, but with the dark humor that could only be a war story. Too soon, perhaps, to tell, but it matters that Lan Wangji hears. "SecUnit caught on quickly, of course. I have to respect its insight -- even with its eyes in the room, it couldn't have seen what was in thy head, but it understood at once that thou wert manipulated. And as soon as it warned thee, I could hear Luo Binghe, shouting his unhelpful nonsense about how thou couldst not resist opposing him, because he needs everyone in the world to be as obsessed with him as he is with himself. He doesn't know thee as I do, and never will, to his own detriment. Thine intention was not to oppose him for its own, blind sake. It was to use what power thou hast to protect those more vulnerable than thyself. Even if thou wert against a stronger opponent, with an unreasoning grudge against thee. I was fiercely glad, know'st thou. Knowing that Luo Binghe could justify the pettiest of cruelties against a man who spoke so much as an unkind word to him ... I could trust him to face Aornis without swerving or distraction. He would pay for blood with blood, as he always does, and nothing she said could sway him. But he hardly cares as thou dost about using his power to protect the vulnerable, not unless those vulnerable gave him all their praise and affection. If I sent him against Aornis alone ... I would have to bear on my conscience whatever lengths he went to, to prove his own strength and superiority. Dost thou understand? Because thou wert in the advance guard with him, I knew thou wouldst bring as swift and as merciful an end as thou couldst make. 'Tis thine intention I trust completely. And whatever she did to thy memories, that intention did not change. That's why it was possible for thee to remember who thou wert protecting, who was most at risk, and find thy purpose again."

Edited (a million typo corrections) 2024-09-16 11:42 (UTC)

As Claudius surmised, Lan Wangji would never have thought to consider that a moment of pride. The imprint of her half-successful manipulation will haunt him, he already knows, phantom fingers that reached within and remapped the path of his mind for him. He brings that free hand to clasp around Claudius', too, holding on with both hands as he likes to do, so that all of his attention is on him. "I saw Thursday Next again," he says softly. Innocent and vulnerable, someone who might need him. He has never been able to refuse a call for help. "She brought forth the memory of what Luo Binghe did to you." He doesn't need to explain how easy it was for Aornis to weave a plausible tapestry, even a short-lived one, from those strands. It was a false fear, facing Luo Binghe and anticipating a bitter fight that might end in his own death, but the feeling was real, and its memory is real, too. "And then I saw you. I remembered you. You reminded me why I had come."

"I did?" Claudius's eyes momentarily widen. "Perhaps I am a good influence on you, after all."

"Mn." He musters up a glance of gentle admonishment, I could have told you that. Claudius' faith in him is a balm, though, a light to chase away the uneasy feeling of having pinned Aornis for Luo Binghe to slaughter her. "She could take things from me still," he says, a slowly-unfolding thought, "but altering my mind was not so simple. I have been often in meditation, with several people."

"So that hast," Claudius says with a laugh of fondness. "I remember when Tress first told me thou wert teaching her. She said she had a racing mind, and I knew well what she meant. Thou hast helped her, methinks. I know thou hast helped Galahad -- it seems as though there is nothing he cannot resist with meditation. And ... thou hast helped me. So had it helped thee, in turn?"

"Yes," Lan Wangji says after a moment, more and more sure of the truth of this theory. He is a cultivator, but not supernaturally gifted at resisting memory manipulation. "I have spent days in secluded meditation, and it strengthened my cultivation. But when I meditate with another person, I come to know their qi." He knows Claudius' quite well by now, in fact. "Auras expand and mingle. I could remember the people I wanted to protect, and that she was not one of them."

It's a concept Claudius could never have grasped before coming to the mansion, before meeting Lan Wangji. He thought himself quite well-traveled, the sort of man Montaigne spoke of who made a study of life outside of schooling, but now he thinks how impoverished his worldview would've been if he never met Lan Wangji and learned about the connecting flow of qi, or of the immanent and nameless Tao. "I see. In meditation alone, thou couldst make use of thy loneliness, and focus on the subtle ways thy breath connects with every living thing around thee. That's what strengthens thy cultivation: that sense of unity thou canst find outside thyself, even when thou art alone. But sharing breaths with loved ones, with thoughts of love towards them ... in a way, it almost brings thy focus back to thyself. Towards how thou art feeling in a room with someone thou dost love, and trust, and desire to protect, and how their aura touches thine. So thou canst recognize those feelings when they are present within thee, and when they are absent. Emptiness and fulfillment, yin and yang." After all that analysis, he says smilingly, "I'm flattered, Wangji. And I thought all my restlessness and fidgeting was distracting you during meditation. Thou dost always seem to know exactly when to begin reciting something until I settle down again."

Claudius' immediate understanding touches Lan Wangji -- with a little pride, for how easily Claudius picked up on the foundation of the philosophy he has been studying in pleasant repetition all his life, and with tenderness, for how easily Claudius sees the depths of his love and protectiveness. When he draws his next breath and sets it loose, it takes some of his agitation away with it. "I don't mind it." He resettles his grip on Claudius' hand, a grip that's gentle but firm, inexorable in the way it declares this particular connection between two pieces of the universe. "I like to be there to guide you. I know how loud your mind can be."

"Glad I am thou art still here to guide me," Claudius, a smile lighting his face as he looks up at Lan Wangji. "Thou knowest me. I can only consider so many catastrophes at once -- evaluating every angle, I hardly had time to consider what I would do if I had lost thee." Technically speaking, he had several contingencies in play for what would happen if Lan Wangji fell during the fighting. It isn't the same. He doesn't know what he'd do.

Lan Wangji is the one who lives, the one who grieves, the one who is left behind. His hold on Claudius tightens almost involuntarily. "You will not need to consider it," he says, fiercely decisive. There was a time when he wished that he wanted to die, because the burden of life felt heavier than he could withstand. That bitter feeling is another memory, something else that cannot and will not be taken from him.

That firm hold and fierce conviction are enough to assure Claudius — and he’s too exhausted, he thinks, for any more worst case scenarios. It sinks into him, too. “Know’st thou what relieves me the most?” he says tiredly. “We can finally end all this frustrating secrecy surrounding the Sun Moon Dew Mushroom. The discoveries I’ve made — the fact that I can’t share them in detail with every person I meet because of an ill-advised pact between two traumatized youths and a self-centered emperor is a daily irritation. And the last experiments in breeding a stronger resistance were promising, in that they were a productive dead end. The plant is fragile to a purpose, like Wei Wuxian’s paper talismans, burning in the presence of malicious energy. Its strength is in its receptivity. It yields, rather than resists, and survives.”

Lan Wangji feels it when Claudius lets go of that scenario, the one that never materialized and never will. He intends never to ask anyone he loves to mourn him. Claudius' experiments are a far more pleasant topic, and he likes every update; he has liked helping with them, too, both the usefulness of it and the fascination he feels every time he fits his eye to the microscope. "What you have done," he says in agreement, "deserves to be known." For the obvious reasons, because anyone who wants protection from Luo Binghe deserves to have it. But that isn't the only reason. "In my world, your work would be in high demand. New cultivation theory comes rarely."

It surprises him more than it should. "I would've said amateur cultivation theory. But," he allows, "I suppose new ideas often come from amateurs."

"Those who are willing to look beyond what is already known. Amateur or not." Lan Wangji looks at him, not smiling, not yet, but soft around the eyes, glad for all the things they can now anticipate without fear. Little coils of memory are still nagging at him, small things, the way Wei Ying smiled at him during one lost afternoon -- he imagines they will keep coming, because he was sent in circles so many times, because Aornis made such a fool of him. But she is gone.

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