"Don't tell me you'll drink," he says, but the worry is there in his eyes, at the low growl of a sound that was, he supposed, a moan, but a different sort of animal than the man who'd chased him through this room, out to the threshold of the woods and into their prison of shadow and swallowed starlight. He breathes out, the cage of his lungs holding his heart in all its prickled, light bleeding finery, and he moves, looking for yes, one jar, though it does not remain here. The wash rag drapes again over the tub's lip, streaked in water and grime and polished with something like hope, but less acrid to the taste.

He heads for the door, glancing back before he reaches to open it, to step past sliding frame for anything else. Dampness beads on his fingertips, sliding down, pulled by gravity and happenstance to the boards underfoot, still holding strength despite the many millions of mouths chewing their way through them, one single breath at a time.

"You're my husband," as simple declaration. "If you're not decided on me yet, get around to it. The wine's downstairs, Lan Zhan, you really want it?"

Not he, who drinks more when he hides away from what he feels is beyond his grasping fingers to change, when his mind is too loud, his thoughts too inescapable, and he needs that freedom from the weight of himself. Drinking as he walks, as he sits, as he slips closer and closer to slumber, but doesn't quite tumble over into the sea of sleep. No words yet, on the why. Words that will follow with less reluctance than Little Apple under only his guiding hand on the pathways across the country spanning far beyond the realm of five clans fractured down into four, to where everything is not clan and birthing and birthright, where people remain as beautiful and crass as they've been here, as incredible and horrible as people might be in any mortal place, tied deeply to mortal concerns.