alongfallfromgrace | (no subject)

Lan Zhan is tired down to his bones, but he walks, restless, among the fallen markers. But this is a place for weariness, for tired monsters to lay their heads on stone beds to rest. He feels very much like a monster, so of course, this is where he would come to rest.

Funeral white robes, arrayed with enchantments, cannot repel the bitter, caustic dirt. The hems of his robe stain ashen gray as he walks, boots sullied with every step. Still, he heads for the Demon Subdue Cave, ready to lay his bones down.

There is candle-light spilling from the mouth of the Demon Subdue Cave, warm and wavering, but leaving the shadows all the darker. There is the table, covered in half-finished talismans. There are the drawing scattered across the walls, theories of defense and attack all in sloppy shorthand and comically sketched detail. There are the array of candles, tucked into every cranny the walls provide.

There is Wei Wuxian, sitting cross-legged on his bed, Suibian unsheathed and braced across his knees as he slowly, methodically, polishes the blade that missed an entire war. His robes, black and red, are so very stark against his pale skin, as if he hasn't seen the sun for months. As if he were already dead himself.

I don't want to see this.

Lan Zhan stops at the edge of the cave, lips slightly parted despite all the words that he could speak stalling somewhere in his throat. What can he even says? They would need to ascend to immortaility together, to have all the time they need for Lan Zhan to tell his beloved zhiji everything he has in his heart.

Please. I'm not strong enough for this. I was never strong enough.

"Wei Ying."

"Lan Wangji." The smile he is favored with is thin, brittle, like the edge of an over-tempered, over-sharpened knife. Ready to shatter into pieces at the first hint of strain. "Come to fight me again? Have I not yet been punished enough?"

He finally looks up from his work, his eyes red-rimmed with the agony of loss, of abandonment, of sheer unrelenting bodily pain.

"Is there an 'enough', to satisfy you?"

I never wanted this! I never wanted any of this!

Despite the screaming happening behind his eyes, Lan Zhan finds himself still and proper before the doorway. But there is blood pouring down his back. Was he punished enough? His Uncle whipped him for all the wrong reasons, but there was a strange purity to it. He had done wrong, he had grievously sinned.

Just not against the Lan.

"No," Lan Zhan says. Bichen is in his hand, humming with a hunger that would more expected from a Nie sabre than an elegant Lan blade. "There will never be enough. Shall we do this again?"

Please, Wei Wing, please.

Just put me in the ground.

Wei Ying rises, his gaze more fitting for a battlefield - controlled, remote, focused. Suibian gleams in his hand, reflecting candlelight as Wei Ying moves away from the stone slab bed.

"I know it will always come to this. You are to be the death of me." He states it as something known and accepted, something he can no more fight than he can stop the sun from rising.

No. No no no no no...!

"Then come," Lan Zhan's mouth shapes the words as Bichen slides from its sheath, casting a blue light out, cutting the air with its chilly presence alone. "Get your justice."

Wei Ying nods, sharply, clearly expecting this call, expecting everything to end like this. But when he charges...

It is wrong.

It is the disjointed grace of a marionette, of a body broken but still forced into movement. There is still blood, weakly oozing, from the wound over his heart, where the arrow failed to kill. There is blood also on his chin, down his neck, brilliant scarlet against the ivory of his skin. But still, he comes.

Lan Zhan does not give voice to the scream he has within him, trapped in as a passenger in this parody of a duel.

Wearing his own blood like a scarlet cape behind him, unseen but felt, Lan Zhan rises to meet it. The herky-jerky motion of the puppet Wei Ying is now is nothing before his skill and grace, even if the movements are rote and mechanical. He is following inscribed forms, each step like a lesson in sword play, with no innovation or beauty to it. Step, one two, slash, one two, leap, one two, thrust, one two.

Lan Zhan is another type of puppet, with strings made of rules that tangle and contradict. What he believes, what he thinks, what he feels is immaterial. He takes the steps that the rules demand, and does not deviate.

"Lan Zhan." The sound is almost lost to the clash of steel, but it's there, the sorrow echoed on Wei Ying's drawn face. "Lan Zhan, when will you let me go?"

There's blood on his lips, blood seeping over his robes, blood dripping to the ground to be smeared by their footwork.

"Lan Zhan, when will it be enough?"

"Never," he replies, golden eyes dull like spent coins.

"Never," when Bichen chimes out with another parry.

"Not till you've had enough," he tells Wei Ying, less strength put behind his parry. Each successive clash is weaker and weaker, guiding more than parrying. As Suibian glissades along the translucent, icy Bichen, he steers it closer and closer to his frame, all but beckoning it to plunge into his heart.

Only then will it be enough.

Thump

Wei Ying is too well trained, too battle-hardened, too pain-mad to resist the lure for long. But it isn't Suibian that crashes against Lan Zhan's chest, but Chenqing, the red tassel swaying between Wei Ying's fingers. Suibian is gone without a trace, taken and returned far too late to be of use.

"Let me go, Lan Zhan." Wei Ying repeats, still in full extension, his form graceful in stillness.

"Never," he repeats yet again. "I cannot. I will not."

Bichen clatters to the stone, useless, both hands coming to Chenqing to hold the blacked instrument to his chest, as Lan Zhan might somehow plunge it through his heart by force of will. Somehow the screaming inside him has finally aligned with the now, as he keens in grief.

"I can no more tear my heart from my own chest," he cries out, "then let you go, Wei Ying."

"You cannot hold us both, Lan Zhan." Wei Ying sighs, as across the cave comes the sound of a crying child, tucked away somewhere by the Blood Pool. "I have failed, Lan Zhan. I failed both clans I sought to protect. I failed my shijie. I failed a-Yuan. I failed you." The sentence is passed down without emotion - stating the facts, as cleanly as he ever answered a test question as a teenager back in the Cloud Recesses.

"No," the denial just keeps coming as Lan Zhan slides his hands up Chenqing's length, to grab for a hand, an arm-- for whatever he can have. Tears have welled up, only to break the damn of his lash and sluice over his cheeks. "Please, Wei Ying. Please don't make me carry this weight alone. I couldn't stand by you. I couldn't even stand for the punishment. All I've done is fall, Wei Ying. Fall short of everything I needed to be."

It's not fair. None of it was ever fair; starting from the moments of their birth, sins of fathers passed down to sons, to the moment they clashed over ink and copied rules. War wasn't fair. Loss wasn't fair. None of this has been fair.

"I should have stood by you," he says, voice as cold and dry as Bichen. "What if I can't stand again? What if I fold to the Code of Lan again?"

"Lan Zhan." The earlier harsh snap is gone, replaced by a faintly exasperated fondness - a tone Lan Zhan hasn't heard except for one golden afternoon in Yiling, and fainter once upon a time in the Cloud Recesses. A gentle hand rests against Lan Zhan's cheek, thumb slowly wiping away tears. "You wouldn't even let me deny a-Yuan a grass butterfly. Are you telling me you wouldn't move heaven and earth to care for him now?"

Turning his face to hide his face in Wei Ying's palm, Lan Zhan doesn't answer at first. He's too busy tasting the iron and salt that clings the air of the Demon Subdue cave, made all the bitter thanks to the flavor his tears impart.

"Lan Yuan," he murmurs, because he's already done. He's signed and sealed, bound by the words he whispered to the boy before he left him in the care of others, and bound my promises he made when he told him his new name. "Lan Yuan. He should have been ours, Wei Ying."

"Lan Yuan." Wei Ying repeats, his voice shaped by the curl of a smile. "Teach him the promise we made, and he'll be ours regardless." The sleeve brushing against Lan Zhan's face is white, edged in Yunmeng Jiang purple.

Lan Zhan doesn't want to look at that face; doesn't want to see it gently cajole him, nudge him, tease him. He already feels like everything is pouring out of him. First it was blood and all his guilt, but now it's all his love, rushing out of him in a torrent of grief. What is grief, after all, but love with no place to go?

"I will," Lan Zhan gives another oath, another one he doesn't want to break. "But it won't be the same, Wei Ying. You won't be there to teach him things I can't."

"Things are never the same, Lan Zhan." Lotus Pier burned down to its pilings, the Cloud Recesses took permanent scars. Families have been torn apart, traditions lost.

The child's cries continue, softly miserable.

"But you will be steadfast."

"I should have been steadfast for you," Lan Zha says, but it's less jagged at the edges. Not so broken. He is not whole or untrammeled, but there are less sharp edges to all his breaks.

There is a child crying, and it's his son.

Lan Zhan cups the hand pressed to his cheek in his calloused palm, breath still curling hot into its valleys. "I love you so much, Wei Ying."

Wei Ying's thumb strokes gently across Lan Zhan's face, calming, soothing.

"You will be well, Lan Zhan, and a-Yuan will be happy. That is more than I hoped for. For me, Lan Zhan, can you please not feed the poor child any radishes? Surely he has had enough."

Lan Zhan does not sob or weep because there is no echo to his love. Even his mind does not lie to him, no matter how pleasant the illusion is. Wei Ying did not love him. All the same, he took Lan Zhan's heart with him, leaving just enough to love his newfound son.

Instead of giving his promise, he laughs at the request, even if it's breaking apart in his mouth. When he sucks in his next breath, he is aware of another weight-- his son slumbering at his side, breathing still rough and his rest still fitful.

Lan Zhan takes his little hand in his own, watching him. He does not fall back into slumber, and instead murmurs promises to the dead: he will be loved, Wei Ying, he will be cherished, he will be safe.

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Oooooh, glissades is a good word

it is one of my FAVORITE words i just love the sound of it. GLISSADE.

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