[ And its stain only lingers, deepens, darkens. There are drips and trickles of Lan Wangji's wounds that manifest as stream, streams that cojoin, rivers that drag into lake. He feels the wet beneath him, an expansive universe of evidence that man is the sum and nuance of his failures, and Lan Wangji has won nothing off a night's revelries, past the shame that flushes the thin spread of cheek like a lamp's skins, brightened.
He would have sundered this child-elder from the ranks of the living. Wei Ying, before him. Himself, after. That they survived is testimony less to Lan Wangji's skill of discipline than to Wei Ying's starting ingenuity to imprison his strength, and Five's arduous, resilient chase.
One heartbeat. The next. The young fevers of his guilt compel him, animalistic. He tastes the connotations of his fault, acrid on tongue. Scratches line wood, half moons, rounded like timid exhalations — his nails fit the indentations, and he knows with the intimacy of men who have walked such quarters that this is where guests of poor nobility might have been received, where they sat their cups and drag-drag-dragged, and marks spilled broad.
Small hands, even for the boy's age. He sees this, raising like waters that crest, to shift to his knees, gaze pinned ahead like a flustered arrow. He breathes at Five's largesse. ]
A compulsion of the night. [ No beats, no pauses, no excuses. ] How do we proceed?
[ Cracked voice like weathered porcelain, for he knows the risks, knows the costs now, how they weigh his hands: a ruin sprawls bloodied between them. They cannot erase Lan Wangji's transgression, but must yet travel together, cooperate to sustain the whole of their contingent. ]
no subject
He would have sundered this child-elder from the ranks of the living. Wei Ying, before him. Himself, after. That they survived is testimony less to Lan Wangji's skill of discipline than to Wei Ying's starting ingenuity to imprison his strength, and Five's arduous, resilient chase.
One heartbeat. The next. The young fevers of his guilt compel him, animalistic. He tastes the connotations of his fault, acrid on tongue. Scratches line wood, half moons, rounded like timid exhalations — his nails fit the indentations, and he knows with the intimacy of men who have walked such quarters that this is where guests of poor nobility might have been received, where they sat their cups and drag-drag-dragged, and marks spilled broad.
Small hands, even for the boy's age. He sees this, raising like waters that crest, to shift to his knees, gaze pinned ahead like a flustered arrow. He breathes at Five's largesse. ]
A compulsion of the night. [ No beats, no pauses, no excuses. ] How do we proceed?
[ Cracked voice like weathered porcelain, for he knows the risks, knows the costs now, how they weigh his hands: a ruin sprawls bloodied between them. They cannot erase Lan Wangji's transgression, but must yet travel together, cooperate to sustain the whole of their contingent. ]