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

[lightbearinglord]

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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[lightbearinglord]

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.

[wickedwit]

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?"

[lightbearinglord]

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.

[wickedwit]

"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."

[lightbearinglord]

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."

[wickedwit]

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

[lightbearinglord]

"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."

[wickedwit]

"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?"

[lightbearinglord]

"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."

[wickedwit]

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."

[lightbearinglord]

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."

[wickedwit]

"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.

[lightbearinglord]

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.

[wickedwit]

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.”

[lightbearinglord]

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."

[wickedwit]

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."

[lightbearinglord]

"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.

[wickedwit]

She is gone, and Claudius is with him. There are thoughts Claudius needs to untangle, too -- a knot of emotion he swallowed in this same room with Shen Yuan, the dawning realization that he might've caught Aornis sooner if it weren't for the obvious obstacle. But for once, he isn't afraid of the future here. Peace seems not fragile, but pulpable. He'll have other talks with Lan Wangji, more chances to share confidences, or to meditate side-by-side. He looks fully forward to it. In the present, he smiles and says, "'Tis so -- thou art no amateur at all, and yet thou art always willing to look alongside me. I welcome thy company."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji sits with that for a moment, with salt and blood dried on his face, his robes beyond saving, one robe a room apart and draped over a corpse. He is, obviously to a discerning eye, thinking, deciding whether he wants to say something. And then he does. "I'd like your opinion about something."

[wickedwit]

"Needst only ask, brother. Thou knowest mine is opinion easily gifted -- at least," he allows, thinking of countless times in his life when he's bit his tongue and kept an opinion to himself, "to thee."

[lightbearinglord]

That earns Claudius a flickering glance of fondness before Lan Wangji retreats into his thoughts again. He wants to keep Nina's confidence as much as it is possible to do so, but he is also aware of how much this matter has been gnawing at him, a termite eating slowly away at a piece of his foundation. "Nearly a year ago," he says at last, "Nina asked me to hold something for her." They hardly knew each other then; he is still not certain what led her to choose him, but he recalls the surprising treasure of her trust with warmth. "Something dangerous and addictive, and its antidote. She asked me to give it to no one, including her, no matter how they begged." He fixes his gaze on Claudius' hands in his own. "I have kept it with me since then." In fact, he has it now.

"After Shen Yuan's death, she came to me. She wanted it, believing it could enable her to bring him back. I refused."

[wickedwit]

“Ah.” The significance strikes Claudius immediately, though he takes time to turn the situation around in his head, to consider all the angles. He doesn’t know Nina well. She was the first and last woman here to discover his weakness for tears — when Tress cried in front of him, he’d taken such care to make space for her sadness, it defused any panic her tears could have caused. Nina, he kept at a concerned and careful distance, made more careful once he discovered her closeness with Luo Binghe. At the time, it was because he couldn’t let it slip how much Luo Binghe had hurt him, couldn’t handle that revelation with someone he already found unapproachably fragile. Until he found out she already knew and cared little, if at all. Enough to stop it, perhaps, and he willed himself to be grateful for that much, boxing away his feelings of betrayal.

So he can’t start from a place of knowledge of Nina. Only his knowledge of addiction, the withdrawal he didn’t realize was withdrawal, the desperation for any drug that could give him rest that brought him close to overdosing. He told Galahad — I tried to numb myself from despair using someone poorly-made remedy, and if it killed me, I don't think I would've cared. And that was all for the promise of sleep. Laudanum wouldn’t bring Laurel back from the dead, because Laurel never truly died, and if a ghost of him existed it was in the eyes of a man Claudius swore to never see again. How much easier would it be to overdose on a drug that gave him hope, even a faint hope, of not just numbing despair but having the power to undo it?

(Even here, he has to correct himself, the black-and-white words of his workbooks standing stark in his mind: despair can’t be undone, only avoided. Power can make the pain more bearable, but there it’s no different than laudanum, a numbing agent and not a cure.)

“Addiction,” he says, after he’s thought it through, “has a way of making us strangers to ourselves. We do things we aren’t proud of, say things we don’t mean, debase ourselves … and beg. She was right to warn thee of that possibility.” And remembering how quickly he caved when Nina cried, Claudius can imagine how difficult most would find it to deny her. He sees the trust she placed in Lan Wangji, not just to carry something dangerous to her, but not to be manipulated out of it — or use it to manipulate her. It would be so easy, for someone less scrupulous, to hold that antidote like a leash. “I take it that she was less than pleased with thy refusal?”

[lightbearinglord]

"Mn." The knowing note to Claudius' voice doesn't escape him, the measured the way he speaks of the properties of addiction. There are so many ways to steer oneself through pain; Lan Wangji hates too much to lose control over himself to ever have considered that variety of numbness, but how can he fail to understand its temptations? And the jurda parem has such promises within it, the promise of unfathomable power, the ability to reverse death. "She wept. She accused me of judging unfairly, because it was Shen Yuan who died."

[wickedwit]

“So thou hast seen for thyself, the way those afflicted will say things they do not mean.” But he says it with a certain unassuming gentleness — taking it as a matter of course that Nina didn’t mean it, not in her right mind, but fully aware of how hard it is to tell. For Nina and Lan Wangji both, he thinks. “Didst hold to thy purpose?”

[lightbearinglord]

"I still refused her." Now, with Shen Yuan's return all but assured, it is easier to hold onto his conviction. At the time, he was doing so by sheer force of will. "She asked, too, if I would make a different choice if Magnus had died instead."