a ray of light shone in my darkness

[bearshermark]

WHO: Eleven + various! YOU, if u want
WHEN: Late May
WHERE: The farm
WHAT: Catch-all for misc threads
WARNINGS: Violence, dark topics?

[ooc: prompts in comments. if you've got an idea for a thread outside of El's open thread that you think would work better here, go for it. If you'd like to work something out, pm or plurk!]

Comments

[bearshermark]

The gesture is an unexpectedly welcome one, and he lingers in it through the dull grief and hollowed uselessness that aches through both mind and soul.

"I'm okay," is the one lie Eleven finds himself making repeatedly, habitually, and he grimaces the moment it leaves his mouth. He's found it's what people need to hear when their own hope hangs by that very fragile thread, but Wei Wuxian is not a frightened Erdrean in need of an unflinching hero to believe in.

"..Not really," he admits after a moment, letting loose a sigh and relaxing into the partial hold. He's too worn to care if it seems childish to accept comfort; he needs it more than he'd known.

"I'd just.. really hoped we could help them. I hope they weren't frightened or in pain for long. I hope their souls have somewhere to rest."

He swallows, somber eyes lowering from the makeshift pyre to the frozen earth. "Then I wonder if my wishes or prayers mean anything, here."

[weifinder]

He waits out the lie, keeping his arm slung as it is, and after a moment gently prompts Eleven into a turn if he likes, where a half hug could become an actual embrace. He's more reminded of his brother's actions growing up, the kind of unfetteredness that could be that close, provide that comfort. Jiang Cheng was not so unlike Jiang Yanli in that way, for all his tongue was perpetually sharp, and he defended himself with anger, as his mother did.

Some of those hopes Eleven voices now are ones he has no answers for, and won't offer cheap reassurance over. For the rest, he can only be honest.

"They mean something as long as you give them meaning," he says. "Prayers will find their way. Souls sent properly to rest will rest, and while I don't know if this world ahs a reincarnation cycle, they'll be part of whatever whole they came from, one way or another."

In this he feels somewhat confident, having not yet detected any shattering of soul that would keep it from being able to join anything greater, or find life again, in whatever reincarnated form.

[bearshermark]

Eleven folds easily, turning into Wei Wuxian's hold and wrapping loose arms around the man. He takes in shuddering breathes, body weak where the rest of him feels vulnerable. But he's grateful beyond measure for the steady solace of quiet comfort and soft assurance.

In the moment, it feels as though he's failed everyone that's ever depended on him. He knows it isn't true, but no concrete examples of such spring to mind, leaving his failures to pile up uncontested in an insurmountable defeat. His shoulders slump beneath the weight of them.

"..I hope you're right," he mutters, the words muffled against fabric. Yet another hope- as tentative as the rest of them. "I just wish there was more I could do."

[weifinder]

Sizhui has reminded him of the shape of these things, and so his arms bend and he encloses Eleven in the kinds of hugs he'd been given as a much younger man. He even manages a less than awkward stroke of his hand over Eleven's head, borrowed from his shijie's remembered soothings, a woman slain two lifetimes too soon.

He can be steady, for Eleven's grief and horror and whatever else it is. One learns and grows. Feeling that is as natural as breathing in air.

"I think most of us have felt that way," he says, weighing how to say, or what to say. His words at times like these tend to veer too honest, even when he tempers them. "For the times when we're helpless, through no fault of our own. It doesn't mean we stop trying, or stop caring. Learning what our limits are, and how to push past them, is part of growing up. Even old as I am," he says, as if he's ever stated his age, "You're still growing."

It was a roundabout way to say life sucks, shit happens, and you learn from it or die trying to pretend nothing ever went astray, but it did sound better to say that way than directly.

"The best thing to remember is not to try and take these things on alone."

[bearshermark]

It feels like counter-intuitive advice. He's been relying on other people for most of his life, has even been sure at times, he's more burden than boon- that maybe what he needs to do is find what it is he can do on his own.

But he isn't so stupid as to try in an unknown world or one covered by darkness.

The title he's struggled under feels so far out of reach, laden with promises he's already failed or may never live up to. Not to mention he's failing his own expectations of himself. But he can feel the shape of the answer there, given form by Wei Wuxian's insight, coaxed to honesty by gentle hands. He'd known better than to make promises he wasn't sure he could keep to the miners- had only ever said they were trying. But the promises he'd made to himself were different.

"..I thought I could do it," he confesses, eyes closing. "I'm Yggdrasil's- She's Light and Life. If anyone should be able to.. but I can't, as I am now. Maybe, someday.."

[weifinder]

Reliance versus standing side by side, helping each other out: Wei Wuxian would argue a difference, but it's new to him too, not to assume other people's weight and say nothing, accept the consequences and stand alone to see them. There were things easier to accept, in protection, to let Lan Zhan be his sword when he couldn't be his own, keeping him away from asking the whys and thinking too hard on anything but what they were setting out to solve, on mutual agreement.

Not until the stairs, drawing lines to let Lan Zhan escape the associational blame repeatedly, and he stood directly, vocally, at his side.

His hand strokes over Eleven's head once more, less awkwardly than the first time. "Should matters less than what you do working to become the person who can achieve the things you want to achieve. You may be Yggdrasil's, but Light and Life exists and struggles with Dark and Death. Facing your own struggles is part of growing and tempering yourself, yeah? Letting yourself down..." he trails off. "Getting up again and again after is one more thing we learn to do, and that, that's when it's best to remember you don't need to stand alone."

[bearshermark]

Eleven breathes a shaken sigh, quieting to soak in the man's kind comfort and reassurance. Slowly steadying as Wei Wuxian's advice serves to strengthen a wavering resolve. There is, after all, a fragile part of him that does wish to give up- to lay down and accept his curse of powerlessness for what it is and watch the world crumble, assured in the knowledge that there isn't anything he can do. Remembers the feeling when setting out from the Emerald Coast; that bleak hour in which he'd truly walked alone.

But if nothing else, his title has shown him the power he craves, if not the path with which to achieve it. The gentle reminder also serves to highlight that he's brought this on himself in part, because of course it's difficult and painful. Working in direct opposition to the forces Yggdrasil had set him against on Her behalf doesn't mean it would be any easier to combat them.

It isn't that everything he's done has been futile; there are just things he needs to do that have now been made clear.

"I can do that," he decides aloud, taking in another breath and shifting back by degrees in a gradual extrication. "I told Archeval I would keep trying, and I've made a few friends here."

He imagines it goes without saying that he counts Wei Wuxian among those friends.