[ 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.

Comments

[lightbearinglord]

"A cliff," Lan Wangji says, after a beat. The memory of this dream is unusually vivid. "And a tree trunk. Wei Ying, xiongzhang, my uncle, Sizhui, Magnus. And you. Saving one would doom the others to the rapids below."

[wickedwit]

That anger rises like in him like a fire catching, blazing through dry kindling. It’s such calculated cruelty — proof against whatever shallow defenses he’d once made of Luo Binghe lashing out in the moment, in the extremes of emotion. Claudius provoked his ire, and for that he claimed some credit, but Lan Wangji was asleep in his own bed. Luo Binghe had no reason to hurt him except that he wanted to hurt someone, nothing to prove or protect, only malice. And he didn’t merely inflict fear through the threat of pain — he didn’t send some impersonal vision of monsters with teeth — he used Lan Wangji’s fierce and loving heart against him. For what? For nothing. Nothing came of it, except denying a man the private peace of sleep.

“Cruelty for the sake of cruelty,” he says. “At least Aornis knew herself to be a villain.”

[lightbearinglord]

Thinking of it now, with fresh clarity, with a rising certainty that it was Luo Binghe rifling through his thoughts and memories and uprooting all the people he loves the most -- Lan Wangji has to shut his eyes again, taking one hand from around Claudius' to cover his face as he breathes. In, and then out. "I can't stand to imagine that he saw them," he says when he regains the ability to speak, when he can drop that hand back to his lap. Any of them, any of those who aren't already here for Luo Binghe's eyes, as little as he deserves that, but especially-- "A-Yuan." He can't say more than that. There are few people more precious to him than Lan Sizhui, whose likeness Luo Binghe must have taken from somewhere in his mind. Lan Wangji has a thousand or more preserved memories of A-Yuan, small and sweet and precocious, chasing butterflies and laughing amongst the rabbits of the back hills. Wei Ying requests them now and again, bartering for them with his own fragmented memories of A-Yuan as a toddler at the Burial Mounds. They're not for Luo Binghe to see.

[wickedwit]

There's the other cruelty -- Claudius has talked and laughed about Luo Binghe being too blinded by his own vice to see Lan Wangji's virtues, but there is nothing more virtuous in Claudius's mind than taking in a war-orphaned child. Luo Binghe, of all men, could've seen that. If he saw how much that child meant to Lan Wangji, enough to torment him when forced to choose between that child and his husband, his family, his first friend ... but no. There are too many if onlys with Luo Binghe. Luo Binghe told Claudius what he was, that there was no goodness left in him, and Claudius can at last believe it. There was no chance of him realizing Lan Wangji took care of a child as vulnerable and alone as Luo Binghe himself, and softening his intent. Luo Binghe saw Lan Wangji's virtues, and decided he wanted to hurt a virtuous man. A man who was no threat to him, who had done him no harm.

So Claudius says farewell to all thoughts of redeeming Luo Binghe, who has no desire to be redeemed. "My friend," he says, and he embraces Lan Wangji, there on the couch together. "My brother. I have thee still."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji folds himself into this embrace with an immediacy that would have stunned him once. He remembers the day Claudius brought him the rabbits, his own fleeting impulse to hug him then, and how quickly he dismissed it. He is glad for his own failure of self-control, the moment when his happiness about Claudius' engagement overpowered his adherence to propriety.

That all seems frivolous in hindsight. He tucks his arms around Claudius and buries his face in his shoulder again.

[wickedwit]

Claudius did it without thinking, but with Lan Wangji in his arms and Lan Wangji's wrapped around him, he wonders whether the Twin Jades ever held each other like this, Lan Xichen coming to collect him from outside their mother's empty home. "Thou art loving," he says. "And loyal. Thou always hast been. And thou know'st not every loving feeling is mild or gentle ... how thou feel'st imagining Magnus's many deaths, how thou feel'st remembering the image of A-Yuan on that branch, knowing that villain saw his face ..." He tightens his hold. "This is love, too. And there is nothing I would not do to protect that part of thee."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji is quiet a moment or two longer, too many things crowding his chest for any speech to shoulder its way out. Anger with Luo Binghe, an anger he will hold until he dies. Bitter dismay, the thought of Luo Binghe's mocking eyes on A-Yuan, on his grieving brother, on his uncle, who has been carrying so much for Lan Wangji's entire life. And that fierce, ungentle love Claudius invokes: for every one of them, for the brother who holds him so patiently now. He breathes through it. "I..." He sighs, a rare concession to the layers of his weariness in the rise and fall of it. "I would have said I needed no protection."

[wickedwit]

Claudius laughs, fondly. "In some ways, thou dost not. I want to preserve that part of thee, too, but there is in risk of thee of falling to a cruel world's pressures -- thou art too constant for that, too set in thy ways to change how thou lovest now. But still, the world can wear on such hearts. I would guard thy heart from all unkindness, an I could ..." With a soft smile against Lan Wangji's shoulder, he says, "It must be because I love thee as well."

[lightbearinglord]

The sentiment isn't any kind of surprise. Lan Wangji has already felt the truth of Claudius' love in a thousand ways: every game of weiqi, a gift of their time to one another; the kind and gentle way he can walk Lan Wangji through the maze of saying aloud when something is troubling him; the impossible honor of the word brother, when Claudius could just as well never have trusted anyone to hold that responsibility again. Hearing it aloud affects him nonetheless, pulls his heart open with tenderness. These words have never come easily to him. Even with Wei Ying, he says them rarely. There lives in him some fierce, unreasoning instinct to protect such a vulnerability from the light of day.

Claudius, in another declaration of disarming kindness, has already stated his intent to guard Lan Wangji's heart. He's handed the words to him; he must know by now that it is often simpler for Lan Wangji to merely hand words back to people, polished anew with his own meaning.

Lan Wangji leans his forehead, ribbon and all, on Claudius' shoulder. "I love you," he says, and he can't be anything but deeply serious about it. "I would thank you if I had not already forbidden that between us."

[wickedwit]

Claudius knows Lan Wangji well, but there's more yet to learn -- that incidental touch of a head ribbon feels significant, if only because Claudius has never felt invited to touch it before. He's fussed with Lan Wangji's clothing, casually stolen into his personal space, brushed back his hair but avoided that ribbon, so carefully tied that Claudius couldn't even pretend to fix it. Now the bump of Lan Wangji's forehead feels rather like the bump of a cat's, and Claudius smiles at it. He pets Lan Wangji's hair just as he would a cat's fur, a few fingers smoothing out the long ribbon laid over it, and his heart fills to the brim with fondness. "'Tis well," he says. "I've retreated to manners too many times, and said thank you when I meant I love you. I know thou mean'st both."

[lightbearinglord]

"Mn." Lan Wangji finds himself, just for a flickering moment, smiling, hidden from Claudius' view where he is resting his head. He is weary to the bone, in countless ways, but he remembers now that it is over. They completed their work; Aornis is gone. Luo Binghe will soon lose the power of fear over them. Claudius will walk into his wedding day unburdened, and Lan Wangji will walk beside him. Claudius' fingers are soothing as they pet his hair and forehead ribbon, and Lan Wangji considers telling the weight of the tiny gesture he has just made, but he keeps it to himself for now. Claudius likes slowly uncovering information. "You have known how much I care for you since that truth spell."

[wickedwit]

"Ay, I have. 'Tis how I muted my shock in finding out I was on that tree branch, and thou couldst not easily let me fall. I suppose I knew 't for a while."

[lightbearinglord]

"It was not a secret." He might not have chosen to speak of it when he did, to make it so clear so early that Claudius had become irrevocably vital to him, but it was not a secret then, unlike so much of what was compelled from him. It certainly isn't one now, and knowing all the little ways Claudius can doubt himself and his worthiness, he is glad it has been known for as long as it has. "I want to let no one fall." With his face tucked against Claudius' shoulder, it's not so difficult to coax the words from himself. "I want the strength to hold everyone and to need no one's sympathy." The silence that follows is laden with his slightly mulish acknowledgement of the impossibility of that desire.

[wickedwit]

"Strong as thou art, there are times when thou wilt need to be held, too," he says. He says it with the steadiness of his arms, too, a gentle squeeze of confirmation for what mulish tone already admits. It's not possible to hold one's self up and everyone else forever. "'Tis difficult to accept, is't not? As though any moment for thyself is a moment stolen."

[lightbearinglord]

"It is," Lan Wangji says, allowing the faintest hint of petulance into his voice. With Claudius, he can be childish and tired and irritable. Claudius won't mind it.

[wickedwit]

Claudius finds it utterly endearing, in fact. “If there were two of thee, thou might’st have managed by switching off whene’er thou art in need of a rest. But thy other self is among the stars, I hear.”

[lightbearinglord]

"Mn." Lan Wangji frowns a little, that expression, too, hidden in Claudius' shoulder. "I hardly understood what I was told about him."

[wickedwit]

“I only heard it from Galahad, who knows I like romantic stories,” Claudius says fondly, fond of them both, “and has an ear for them himself — ‘tis all his reading. He likes historical romances, with codified societies whose structures and strictures are familiar to him, and whose passions are more striking stood against them. But I like those tales from far-flang futures, which stir my imagination. A man made by science, crafted for a purpose, who found his own purpose sailing the stars, studying strange worlds alongside his lover … thou can’st see how it speaks to my sentimental soul. We’re sentimental men, thou and I.”

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji can see it; he can see how he often feels like a man who was crafted for one purpose and then, painfully, chose another with the changes wrought by time. Of course Wei Ying would always be at the center of that. Whether that version of Wei Ying lives again, and Lan Wangji wants him to, wants so badly for every Wei Ying in every universe to live in whatever way is possible, the Lan Zhan who loved him will never be the same for having known him.

"Your other self told me a story of love," he says. It amounts to an agreement. They are both sentimental, and as painful as that can be, surely they would want to be no other way.

[wickedwit]

Claudius rolls his eyes, in indulgent fondness for his other self. Of course Claudius's relationship him to himself is always complicated. "He should've told me more of his love stories. Mostly he boasted about his children, something I can never imagine myself doing. But neither can I imagine myself surrounded by a gaggle of orphans everywhere I go." Except, of course, for all the teenagers he befriends throughout the mansion. Those don't count. "What did he tell thee? Was it more thrilling than a long account of assembling fabrics to make his daughter Rielle a doll?" It's an invitation to sit trading stories for as long as Lan Wangji likes. Their time no longer borrowed, Claudius is perfectly happy to hold Lan Wangji, to dote on him, to stroke his hair and hair-ribbon.

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji could nearly smile again, because he knows the name Rielle, and he is thinking of Alphinaud, too, with that borrowed fondness of his. He is unreasonably glad to be here, with his best friend, this specific incarnation of Claudius who is so dear to him. That gladness spurs him to tighten his arms around Claudius for a moment, an outpouring of affection, before he allows himself to relax again. "Mn. It was about a knight named Haurchefant. He loved Claudius. He sacrificed himself for Claudius' safety."

[wickedwit]

"Is't e'en so?" Claudius laughs, face softening further. "I suppose he would have a weakness for knights, wouldn't he? Though I found the ones in Elsinore failed to live up to youthful dreams of some foreign cavalier who would swear himself to me and protect me." It makes him feel slightly less irritated and envious towards that other Claudius who seemed too perfectly tall and confident -- he should know himself well enough by now to realize their sentiments formed around the same vulnerabilities. He used to think the romantic knight was a comforting fantasy, after realizing how many knights in his own court would openly disavow him for favor with the king. But perhaps it's not so remote a possibility. After all, he's about to marry a former knight who no longer serves any king or god, and who would challenge emperors for him. Perhaps there's more than a single fascinating but unlikely world where Claudius can find people who care enough to protect him, no matter his status -- knight or no. Lan Wangji protected Claudius, protected the mansion in its entirety, not as a knight who's sworn to a monarch but as a man acting of his own conviction. Claudius rests easier, holding Lan Wangji close.

This other Claudius, apparently, was loved and protected and instead of feeling bitterly envious, Claudius feels a bittersweet sense of kinship. And, of course, he wants to know more. He wants to know everything. "What was this Haurchefant like? An equestrian?"

[lightbearinglord]

It suffuses Lan Wangji with fresh fondness to recall that other Claudius, both because he liked him very much and because he likes his own chosen brother even better. He shifts a little and sits up, only so that he can see Claudius' face as they talk -- and so that he can reach up with one hand and adjust his forehead ribbon, which has gone slightly askew with all the activity.

"Haurchefant was," he says, and although as usual he does not even bother to try recapturing Claudius' expressiveness, he pulls off the timing, the pause laden with exasperated affection, "loud." His eyes soften with the memory of hearing about him. "You met your alternate self. Did you also meet Hebona?"

[wickedwit]

Lan Wangji is already such a master of meaningful pauses; it speaks volumes. It lets Claudius's imagination run rampant within three words, and though he may never know the sound of Haurchefant's voice, he can envision its unabashed volume. "I know what hebona is," Claudius confesses, with a small smile, "but not who."

[lightbearinglord]

"Your double's mount," Lan Wangji clarifies. He pauses again, but this is a pause devoted solely to an effort to describe said mount. "A very large bird. A chocobo. When I bowed to her, she returned the gesture."