( Between them, the night's culprit slackens — the same stillness as before now softened within him. He collapses into himself, molten, back and shoulders sagged, as if defeat is a print of physicality, and he has tattered his bones with submission.
Lan Wangji prepares, at first, to escort him. But then, there is a jitter to the man, a sudden animalistic exhalation, as if fear prepares to propel him for a final dash — and perhaps it is Wangji who retaliates prematurely, who should know better, but who simply surrenders himself to instinct stoked to the cusp of paranoia, and slaps his hand once on the man's back to cascade on the length of his spine and its pressure points. Qi blooms across the infiltrator's bones, drives him down to fold into himself — fleetingly succumbed to a wheezing, funerary catatonia.
On reflex, Lan Wangji intercedes to capture him on one arm, before he shatters down on the deck. He remembers, sheepishly, to gaze up where rain's dancing slow footsteps yonder, where Emilia had perhaps hoped for better than the abrupt finale Lan Wangji has whispered to their negotiations. )
He intended flight. ( A rookie error, all but saddling them with dead weight they must now carry. He does not apologise for the inexcusable. )
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Lan Wangji prepares, at first, to escort him. But then, there is a jitter to the man, a sudden animalistic exhalation, as if fear prepares to propel him for a final dash — and perhaps it is Wangji who retaliates prematurely, who should know better, but who simply surrenders himself to instinct stoked to the cusp of paranoia, and slaps his hand once on the man's back to cascade on the length of his spine and its pressure points. Qi blooms across the infiltrator's bones, drives him down to fold into himself — fleetingly succumbed to a wheezing, funerary catatonia.
On reflex, Lan Wangji intercedes to capture him on one arm, before he shatters down on the deck. He remembers, sheepishly, to gaze up where rain's dancing slow footsteps yonder, where Emilia had perhaps hoped for better than the abrupt finale Lan Wangji has whispered to their negotiations. )
He intended flight. ( A rookie error, all but saddling them with dead weight they must now carry. He does not apologise for the inexcusable. )