He falls thundered under the thrall of three talismans, the fourth waging war with the resurging turbulence of his qi, before it may coagulate. There is a risk in casting spells on creatures that defy normal parameters, and Lan Wangji — stripped unnaturally of his energy to levels beneath even those recorded by pedestrians who can never hope to graduate to cultivation — is a cinnabar notch on that ledger. He wears defeat well, the instinctive struggle quickly simmering sedate, tight set of his jaw a feral clench, each breath hissed like water heating before it wilts tea leaves.
Fight deserts him like a war banner, downed. He will bide his time: he is Lan, he will wait. Pain and tragedy wash over him, drenches the talismans, ebbs and flows. Retreats before their mandate. Body stilling. Frozen. Stopped.
In the dead of rustling night, Wei Ying deserts him. After, when the spells yield and Lan Wangji wakes, more prowling animal and close to coaxing howls, chasing glances of the moon that aren't confused, hazy blindness — when he dashes after Five, a slanted line of vicious dark — when he fails and fails and fails to catch, and he bleeds for it, and leaves creatures of the woods collapsed in his wake.
After, he is not himself. Recovers that man with dawns tickling pale blemishes of warmth on his nape, come morning, itching his wounds. A body absent qi barely remembers healing. He understands now, the waste of qi when he cornered Wei Ying prior, to funnel his supplies.
He knows to crawl, dragging himself like a rag, to Wei Ying's old abode, a creaky, ill-standing thing, husked. It opens for him. It opens, he knows bitterly, for anyone. The termites that sleep within every lining and fitting of wound all but masticate as he passes. And then, he is for stairs, for Wei Ying's quarters, for slipping, one knee, and then the next, by Wei Ying's bed and coercing the line of his boot-fettered foot out.
Breath a dappled path of condensation that breaks lacquer on mite-grazed floors, he bows himself to an arc that flattens, until his shoulders collapse, and his head is a long dip, and the prostration is pure — sentiment leading form. He must do this, he knows, for Five, also, for eight days. In his hands, Wei Ying's foot feels a trembled line; with a sigh that vivisects him, he presses his mouth to the tip of Wei Ying's boot.
"This unworthy one begs your forgiveness."
He does not need to behold the bruises, to know where and how deeply they sleep on Wei Ying's throat.
no subject
Fight deserts him like a war banner, downed. He will bide his time: he is Lan, he will wait. Pain and tragedy wash over him, drenches the talismans, ebbs and flows. Retreats before their mandate. Body stilling. Frozen. Stopped.
In the dead of rustling night, Wei Ying deserts him. After, when the spells yield and Lan Wangji wakes, more prowling animal and close to coaxing howls, chasing glances of the moon that aren't confused, hazy blindness — when he dashes after Five, a slanted line of vicious dark — when he fails and fails and fails to catch, and he bleeds for it, and leaves creatures of the woods collapsed in his wake.
After, he is not himself. Recovers that man with dawns tickling pale blemishes of warmth on his nape, come morning, itching his wounds. A body absent qi barely remembers healing. He understands now, the waste of qi when he cornered Wei Ying prior, to funnel his supplies.
He knows to crawl, dragging himself like a rag, to Wei Ying's old abode, a creaky, ill-standing thing, husked. It opens for him. It opens, he knows bitterly, for anyone. The termites that sleep within every lining and fitting of wound all but masticate as he passes. And then, he is for stairs, for Wei Ying's quarters, for slipping, one knee, and then the next, by Wei Ying's bed and coercing the line of his boot-fettered foot out.
Breath a dappled path of condensation that breaks lacquer on mite-grazed floors, he bows himself to an arc that flattens, until his shoulders collapse, and his head is a long dip, and the prostration is pure — sentiment leading form. He must do this, he knows, for Five, also, for eight days. In his hands, Wei Ying's foot feels a trembled line; with a sigh that vivisects him, he presses his mouth to the tip of Wei Ying's boot.
"This unworthy one begs your forgiveness."
He does not need to behold the bruises, to know where and how deeply they sleep on Wei Ying's throat.