The nod of his head, acceptance of a sword in the future, one with a name because blades deserve names, even when they're not spiritual weapons. Jiang Yanli had named Chenqing, but the reasoning for it stays with him even now, without Suibian, the blade he could not use to its fullest extent.
Here, he could wield another blade. The secrets he'd once been keeping didn't apply; the way of dealing death in defense here was simpler in some ways, easily delivered even if he was out of practise by two years, three years, and sixteen of darkness inbetween.
He closes his eyes, opens them again to watch Lan Zhan, the one who knows him. The one who expects him, sometimes, to be the man he was a lifetime ago, and who to blame for it? That's the man he lost, and the years that spanned between them were filled with phantoms that Wei Wuxian hadn't known, in his dark existence of passing time and nothing, nothing else.
Selfishness, censure. Not brought on by one man's wish, but the wishing changes the feel of it, and that's a story he knows.
"I wouldn't." Even unasked, the heart of what it said, that a father preferred to know his son, to stand by him, with him, even in this situation, that he could be safe and not left walking the salt caverns... it's not as simple as a wish, or a deliverance. Were Lan Zhan not here, Lan Sizhui might still have been. Were Wei Wuxian not here, any one of them might still have been. "... Foundations rebuild, Lan Zhan. You're his rock; I wouldn't change that."
Not in Sizhui's eyes, though with those words, he deflates, turning into the tired husk he's been that fills again with the pale sips of slumber padding out the flesh stretched over his bones. Night after night, with the winds...
"This is a very bothersome sanctuary," he says, "And I forced Yiling to yield to the living."
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Here, he could wield another blade. The secrets he'd once been keeping didn't apply; the way of dealing death in defense here was simpler in some ways, easily delivered even if he was out of practise by two years, three years, and sixteen of darkness inbetween.
He closes his eyes, opens them again to watch Lan Zhan, the one who knows him. The one who expects him, sometimes, to be the man he was a lifetime ago, and who to blame for it? That's the man he lost, and the years that spanned between them were filled with phantoms that Wei Wuxian hadn't known, in his dark existence of passing time and nothing, nothing else.
Selfishness, censure. Not brought on by one man's wish, but the wishing changes the feel of it, and that's a story he knows.
"I wouldn't." Even unasked, the heart of what it said, that a father preferred to know his son, to stand by him, with him, even in this situation, that he could be safe and not left walking the salt caverns... it's not as simple as a wish, or a deliverance. Were Lan Zhan not here, Lan Sizhui might still have been. Were Wei Wuxian not here, any one of them might still have been. "... Foundations rebuild, Lan Zhan. You're his rock; I wouldn't change that."
Not in Sizhui's eyes, though with those words, he deflates, turning into the tired husk he's been that fills again with the pale sips of slumber padding out the flesh stretched over his bones. Night after night, with the winds...
"This is a very bothersome sanctuary," he says, "And I forced Yiling to yield to the living."