westwhere | (no subject)

... Master Lan?

[Moran honestly wasn't expecting to find Lan Wangji not only inside the palace, but also rummaging through the chests where he keeps whatever clothing he's been given in his time here.

He is about to make a light-hearted quip about Master Lan only needing to ask if he finds himself in need of a change of clothes, but then he notices the way the fabric has been wound around his midsection, and the blood seeping through it, and he immediately gets concerned.]

You're injured.

[A look at the mess made of what seems to have been a hunt for suitable fabric for this very purpose, and he sighs and shakes his head.]

We do have some actual bandages here. Sit down.

( The slow shake of his head, tempered, measured. A lifetime of night hunts — and Wei Ying's, for the tally — has taught Lan Wangji the demerits of alerting healers of weakness, of conceding the detph of one's injury. Like water, Lan Wangji gravitates towards a settled state, onwards and downwards to balance. There is no serviceable purpose to Beitang Moran's alarm. No mutually satisfying consequence.

The shake of Wangji's head invites more imbalance — the brief, hissed recognition of frail footing — than he had anticipated. He stands (of course, stands) by the pronouncement, washed warm for all his pallor by earnest candlelight. )

Your furnitures will stain.

( Grave enough of an offence to have blasphemed against master Beitang's garments. There are insults against a household that a gentleman mere steps — but not breaths — short of permanent discomfort should not see through.

Once upon a time, Lan Wangji bowed his head and his back, a quiet soldier. He remembers enough of obedience still to transact in cooperation, at times of necessity — lets one hand slip free of the injury, the other press into the meat of his wound, pressuring the fount dry. )

If it does not burden master Beitang. Your bandages.

It's not 'my' furniture, Master Lan. Sit down.

[Maybe Lan Wangji was a soldier, once. But Beitang Moran is a general, still, and a prince to boot, and when he gives a command, he expects it to be obeyed, especially when people are being foolish.

And while he is no great doctor himself, he knows enough to at least patch a battle injury on the field until it can be seen by someone with more competence.

He'll go rummage in a small supply box for actual, clean bandages, and some ointments as well.]

How did this happen? And how come you found your way here? It isn't the safest place to be at the moment.

The choice was scant.

( A man, wandering the halls like a ship struck at spuming seas during winter's most vicious storms, what port will he spit at? The first quarters that promised shelter sufficed him, and the silence of Beitang Moran's room betrayed its vulnerability to invasion. When the master is away, the rats join in play.

He has not solicited Beitang Moran's attention. Despises it, on a shallow-water level, not for its actor or delivery, but for the picture Lan Wangji must paint, each brush stroke layering weakness. What a sight he must tally to, if Beitang Moran thinks him reduced enough to fix, a trembled, squealing, ill-gotten toy, requiring fresh patching and new strings.

Obediently, Lan Wangji yet spares the furniture — not Beitang Moran's to claim, but still the work of masters craftsmen — and eases down onto both knees, holding the pose. He can linger so, sturdy, accessible, prone. A compliant patient, whispering the outer layers of his robe past the chokehold of his sash, only enough to reveal the wound in full. Modesty, above all. )

Revolution is butcher's work. ( Today, Wangji proved the meat. ) They belove chaos in the streets.

[Beitang Moran, on his side, seems entirely unconcerned with whatever moral quandary Lan Wangji might have with showing weakness to someone who, in the grand scale of things, really could not care less one way or another. Someone is injured, it requires care, that's all there is to it.

And since Lan Wangji has chosen to kneel, he'll do the same without sparing any thought to the precious silks he is wearing.

He'll examine the wound with a critical eye. He's not a specialist, but he knows enough to see it isn't very serious, but probably painful and in an inconvenient place.]

Lucky for you, your clothing seems to have staved off the worst of it, and at least the blade was sharp so the cut isn't too jagged.

[He'll start with a wet cloth to clean up the wound and then a dab of some of the ointment, cool and almost numbing, before applying a another clean cloth and keeping it secure with a bandage around the man's torso.]

You should still see an actual doctor, if you can, but this should help in the meantime. Try not to put too much pressure on it if you can until then.

[Cultivators probably have their ways with those things]

( He has learned the way of it, with medics: to be, barring breath and the rare undulation of a body shivered, when it recalls fluctuations of warmth, every part the corpse. Stiller than water, than stone.

To let them go about the craft, taking idle inventory of their measures, only to recite them obediently to the next healer who takes him in their in care and must supplement the extant work. Shallow cleansing, a coarse bandage. Beitang Moran's rag catches on the abysses of the wound, and Lan Wangji exhales with it — one and two and three and hissed — and absorbs the glittered gold before his eyes, the shapes of Taravast's soon-lost abundance. )

Frail mending suffices me.

( No need to bother the mistress Wen. The body compensates, qi circulation reshaping its circuit to favour injuries over donations of strength for offensive attacks. Flesh makes a finer attempt to stay alive than the bones it dresses.

Though some minds are more concerned with self-preservation than most. He does not waver: )

You stayed past the tarnish of battle. ( Untouched, ever beyond harm's way. )

Given the role I was supposed to be playing, it was more advantageous for me to stay here and try to gather as much information as possible while trying to save Lady Vanozza's life.

[What purpose would it have served for him to add one more blade to the chaos outside? None at all, in this case.]

The witches are... slightly scared of my power, it seems, which is ridiculous because they have infinitely more than I do, but they do not know that and I do not plan on informing them. Right now, it is of utmost importance to ensure there isn't a complete power vacuum at the top, or things will become much more dangerous.

... but Don Bonaccorso definitely needs to be taken down.

[His lips twitch slightly as he rises to his feet to put away the meager first aid supplies.]

Some battles you fight with different blades, Master Lan. My actual one would be of little use right now.

[ The role. Its advantage. Battles and blades, and above all, use, as if dignity and virtue bow to utility. It must be a clever man, who joins his bed sipping the wine of his own rhetoric and awakens a politician.

Whatever his failings, Beitang Moran has demonstrated no less than absolute, unwavered certainty in himself — in his purpose, conviction bordering on cruelty or right divine. Now, he presents his arguments as if he expects Lan Wangji to summon the swords of his challenge, of his objections, to rally the banners of one curse, or the other, of indignation —

And he finds himself instead absently nodding, eyes softened, head fogged as if it is the very dead of winter, and Beitang Moran's truths greet him alone in a white wasteland. For all he has witnessed and seen and bled today, Beitang Moran's defence is the one matter that has born sense. ]

They say battles start and expel hostility. [ That the melody of war soars and blooms, but collapses after cresting, inexorably. ] I do not believe sorrow ends today.

[ They have achieved nothing here but to agonise anonymous bodies, orphan children, batter furnishings. There has been no reckoning, no righting of wrongs, no justice. Morality did not prevail here.

More than Lan Wangji's deftly wrapped wound, this stings. ]

[Well, they have butted heads frequently before and honestly Moran doesn't want to have a fight now, so it seems better to explain and stave off objections so that if they come, he can say he has said his piece and he doesn't need to say more.]

It will not end even after we leave this place. They made a choice a long time ago, and they will have to live with it it, or the consequences of reneging on it.

[ There is a stiffness in him that begins at the wound and spiders, legs strong, across his shoulders, his back. That blooms and stiffens and calcifies, and he is only this, something shrivelled but resolute, a quieted nuisance. Surviving on account of habit more than Beitang Moran's dexterity.

He remembers, distantly, to pat and smoothen his bandages, to thaw them into a man's known shape. ]

To hear you, their lone choice is euthanasia.

[ No hope, no optimism, no prospects. Only a slow, mouldy demise, a poisoning. ]

This city is rotten from the top down. It might not be that bad an idea to just call it a loss and start over somewhere else.

[The city of resistance to the undead, stood upon a pile of dead and undead bodies, their illusion of freedom bought at a very dear price.]

But that is not our choice to make. Whoever succeeds Don Bonaccorso will have tough decisions to make. They might listen to counsel, or they might not. I will have done what I can.

( Name Taravast... a loss. As if lives and men are but pieces idly surrendered in a torrential hand of weiqi. As if they can simply choose not to suffer throughout the nuisance of their own trickled extinction.

Not for the first time, Lan Wangji watches Beitang Moran — sees him, his strategy, the gelid construct of his false courtesies, swallowing a steeled will whole. And he does not threaten the fortress of master Moran's polite cruelties with the tactility of his judgment. Does not spear or stab his verbal defences.

Mouth faintly agape, Lan Wangji finds he pities him. )

I wish them better than us. ( A pause, then embittered: ) And I wish us poor sleep for it.

The people who had no say in the errant choices of their leaders deserve better. But then, it is easy for us who are outsiders and came after the fact to claim we would have made better choices in their places too.

[Moran would like nothing more than to live a quiet life with his books, and his friends, and his animals, and to be kind and not have to make cruel decisions. But ruling a country, he has found, does not incline one to kindness, no matter the best intentions. There will always be some who suffer no matter the decisions you make.

You have to decide, then, what to with that weight and how to move on.]

Your concern for them honors you, Master Lan.

[But in the same way Lan Wangji might find him cruel and pitiful, Moran at times finds those who wish to save everybody naive and arrogant. But he also won't volunteer that opinion unless he feels it's needed, mostly because it's a lesson he had to learn the hard way himself, and it might not even sick coming from him.]

Were you looking to find something or someone specific in the palace? There isn't that much food left in here, but maybe if you're here, you might to take some back to the people outside?

Perhaps we may. ( Let there be no misunderstandings between them: ) Together.

( They are possessed of arms and feet, of the beastly ability to transport. Whatever his physical failings and alternative attributes, it is no hardship for a man grown — even one blemished by wounding, as is Lan Wangji, crippled inattentively — to ferry idle goods and distribute them.

But there is purpose past generosity, past kindness. Lan Wangji's eyes strain to see the concern Beitang Moran speaks of, past hint and indication. Selfishness stirs him. He catches the edge of the nearest chaise, to pillar his weight and push up. )

The witches who traded extended lives. ( At cost. It stings, how it stings, his tongue bleeds for it. He swallows down. ) I wish them consulted.

( And how farther does he rise above the tremulous, decrepit form of the lord, Bonaccorso Spina? Seeking the same selfish gain. )

[It's not very safe for Moran to show his face outside of the palace, but it's not thoughts of his personal safety that has kept him inside and more thoughts of not inciting another riot if he were spotted. He has little care for what the people of Taravast think of him personally, but he knows what they think of their nobility right now, not without good reason. And he has stepped out a few times, although mostly under cover of night. He can help, for sure.

And he can also help with that other request.]

I can gain you audience with them, if you'd like to do the asking yourself, or I can pass on your questions if you'd rather not.

( He startles, again. It is the hour for it, Lan Wangji rattled in the way of animals removed from the safety of their shelter, exposed to the hunting grounds — and Beitang Moran a veteran of the bow and arrow favoured by convolutions of politics.

This man can secure an audience. Can ask prettily, wittily, possessed of every grace Zewu-Jun flaunted by right of birth and his own diligent, mannered cultivation. The righteous path is but one bridge for diplomats to walk, and Lan Wangji's step ever comes too heavy.

He gazes at Beitang Moran long, and sees him, for the first time, less as an inconvenience, or the whimsical thief of Wei Ying's likeness — more as an opportunity. )

Ask... ( For Wangji would spoil the encounter, would hiss and threaten a blade, he knows himself so uncontainable. ) If they survived the day, ask of their means to extend a life.

... Would you not want to hear the answer yourself, then? You might be more apt to comprehend it than I would, even if I'll make every effort to transcribe it faithfully.

Of course, that's assuming they'll be willing to answer. Or that the answer is something different from simply a magical power they've developed and cultivated in themselves than can be wielded by no other.

[Let him go and pout some more tea as he ponders, and offer Lan Wangji a cup, because he has manners.]

From what we have gathered at the very least, the process is quite long, since it involves stripping a living body of their soul, but without it dying until it can be replaced with the other one. So they seem to strip it little by little. There has to be a benefit to doing it that way, too, or else, they' just ask their necromancers to reanimate the Doxe as soon as he dies... but of course that would put him under their thrall as well, so not a good solution.

What answer are you expecting, Master Lan, if any?

( Selfish answers, foolish. Gossamer transparent and raw under midday sun. Illusory, transient and dishonest.

Whatever sorcery these witches have mustered has served them not. Many spread vanquished in the hallrooms, defeated. Others, having conceded their lives. If they wielded such monstrous power that could steer the course of life, then their own welfare should not have eluded them.

And if Lan Wangji were any better than a flustered, pale and weak-willed child, he would know too that to receive one's desire is so often to tarnish the dream of it, whole. )

Ones that win a companion days further.

... Does your companion know you are asking on their behalf?

[He's going to wager 'no', but honestly, does it matter. Lan Wangji is the type to try and solve problems on his own without asking for anyone's help.]

I will ask your question, Master Lan. I advise you to be careful with whatever answer I bring back.

( You know as I know that he is unaware. That ignorance crowns Wei Ying's frailty like glistened jewels rim the bridal veil. No ache will live in him and sprawl for impossible truths deprived of plausible deniability, if he did not taste their stubborn, acrid seed, to start.

Let him wander, but never wonder. Set a warm, shimmer-wet hand on his belly and drag the blood of every war he's won, coreless and strange. Let him drift, loosened of anchors.

And let Beitang Moran speak nothing, to no one.

The bow of Wangji's back is a calculated concession, deeper than etiquette or the hour or the depth of his bristling wound suggest or allow. He holds it — one and tow and three, dripped and trickling, and acid beneath the tongue — and how the grandmaster, his uncle, would be pleased by it, how, beneath the weave of his silks and that of his scars, the stairs of Lan Wangji's spine strain to suggest bone. )

Gratitude for master Beitang's discretion.

Do not thank me just yet, Master Lan. You have yet to give me a good reason for my... discretion.

[He absolutely agreed to ask the questions, but he hasn't agreed not to say anything about it yet. ]

Lack of consent from the target is a huge part of why this endeavor was so detestable in the first place. I assume you won't be making that mistake, but I dislike making assumptions with only partial information at my disposal.

If you find the answer workable enough for your needs, will you tell him?

( He has not paid, Beitang Moran does not say, but there are tells to a man, to his impatience. Lan Wangji has stumbled upon cooperation before, ill won. He does not think this is the sand that pours desperately between his fingers now, no better than he'd know how to tease the edges and skins of Beitang Moran and slip his nails in, broker anchor.

Their gazes, crossed, are dark and baleful things, lakes at midnight — still, reflective. He stands quietly, lax, like every feline that has beheld prey and understood the spill of its blood is one sinuous twist away from his palms and grateful teeth.

Gold washes him in obscene, lavish reflection. His rotten heart feels unctuous and Jin. )

There is nothing to say.

( For now. Forever. What difference will it make? Beitang Moran has yet to deliver answers. Speak after. )

... Suit yourself, Master Lan.

[But know he feels himself not beholden to any secrecy as far as he is concerned.]

I will let you know once I have whatever answer I am given.