[ No eruption of anger, no gates open to flood of rancour. He watches Five retreat, first into the borrowed flesh of a child, then into his learned, well-practised forms of derision, and he does not ask if they are improved by an armistice they privately, intensely, inexorably misunderstand. If this were weiqi, he might say, he has whittled down his liberties. Loose-limbed, Five chokes him.
Yet they do not trade glances and entendres of malice and compromise above a board. He watches Five recede and collects himself, first in the form of Wei Ying's dark linens, called back to himself like shadows come twilight — then, gently, slipping back to stand, knowing when his shame has been paraded like the wares of an aged prostitute, bereft the favour of her clients, past the embarrassed indulgence of veteran patrons who shame themselves with guilt for no longer tasting her appeal.
This jail of a house, damp and plaster. In the space of it, he breathes and senses the displacement of air, the transgression against currents — the act of violence that is his presence, inflicted even through minor change. Houses survive in constancy. They outlive their makers, their keepers, their masters. Scorn keeps them alive. Then, dignity.
Five is a home to his distrust. And Lan Wangji knows, all at once, what to give him for amends. ]
I visited harm on the better half of my soul.
[ This is what Five wants, what men like him want: leverage. Reminders, however unstuble, that the world is as dire and merciless and perverted a place as the one their mind's eye imagines. Validation of their deepest, darkest fears. ]
no subject
Yet they do not trade glances and entendres of malice and compromise above a board. He watches Five recede and collects himself, first in the form of Wei Ying's dark linens, called back to himself like shadows come twilight — then, gently, slipping back to stand, knowing when his shame has been paraded like the wares of an aged prostitute, bereft the favour of her clients, past the embarrassed indulgence of veteran patrons who shame themselves with guilt for no longer tasting her appeal.
This jail of a house, damp and plaster. In the space of it, he breathes and senses the displacement of air, the transgression against currents — the act of violence that is his presence, inflicted even through minor change. Houses survive in constancy. They outlive their makers, their keepers, their masters. Scorn keeps them alive. Then, dignity.
Five is a home to his distrust. And Lan Wangji knows, all at once, what to give him for amends. ]
I visited harm on the better half of my soul.
[ This is what Five wants, what men like him want: leverage. Reminders, however unstuble, that the world is as dire and merciless and perverted a place as the one their mind's eye imagines. Validation of their deepest, darkest fears. ]