closed starters || Part 2

[makemeasong]

WHO: Clara Oswald + some closed starters
WHEN: Part two of the arc!
WHERE: frozen forests, the caravan, probably other places eventually.
WHAT: gathering the maiden veil, looking tough, and other misc. things.
WARNINGS: Will update as needed, but so far none needed.

Comments

[makemeasong]

[ The warmth, at least, keeps her moving, helps her find the energy to get up off of the ground, first by kneeling, then using a nearby tree to brace herself as she stands.

At Wangji's words, Clara looks down at the flower in her hand. ]

What do we do? What—[ Now is when she remembers Wangji's unique set of skills. ]—can you still see her? What am I supposed to do now, I've already got the flower in my hand.

[ Is something going to happen to her now? If she'd known, maybe she wouldn't have volunteered to go out on this little scavenger hunt. ]

[downswing]

She has fled.

( He knows, before confirming: the old way, to fade and disperse and make a trickling, dissolving nuisance of oneself, leaving but thought and nuisance. Such is how ghosts behave, and he has been accused before, that an exorcist is as a blade, seeing in all things that which earns stabbing. That he serves but one purpose and reduces all streams of investigation to the narrow tunnel of that which is known.

He cannot quarrel with that interpretation. There are less kindly things yet said between the world and Lan Wangji. Now, struggling to drift unto both teeth, teeth chattering on instinct while he drags a crystalline rope of snow behind him — he feels only the fit of logic unspoken, of truths righteously assumed.

The flower is not his own to claim, to decide upon. Perhaps that too is its own mercy. He turns his head to spy Clara and beneath the blinding white sun, hardly sees. )

Will you relinquish it to him? The prince.

[makemeasong]

Would you?

[ She wants to know; for once she wants to be in on what someone else is thinking. And if she's honest with herself, she doesn't want to say what Wangji may perceive to be the wrong thing. She isn't even sure why she cares.

Water drips from her hair, her eyelashes, and she looks at the flower in her hand, wondering if she's been tricked, somehow, by thinking she should do this thing she thought might be helpful. ]

[downswing]

( And would Lan Wangji?

The stormed roiling in his stomach speaks of rejection, of disaster. Of turning his back on a man of whose nature they know far too little, and late. They say the royal house culled sirens, they see the prince and his brother indifferent to talk of executing their sister, their flesh, their blood. There is little to love in the higher echelons of Alem. More to dread.

And Lan Wangji has so very tired of fear in these lands.

He lifts himself slow, with the finality of a man resigned to loathing every part of the moment and its indignity. Aware that, holding his hand out now, he will receive either the clumsy offering of Clara's hand, or the trifling one of her flower. They must return, hastening. )

It is not my gift to bear.

[makemeasong]

[ Clara has had it. She's had it. Not necessarily with Wangji but unfortunately for both of them, he's the one who's here. ]

No. Tell me an actual answer. For once, I want someone or something on this planet to tell me something I don't have to decipher. Please, just tell me what you would do, Wangji.

[ She isn't trying to be funny, in fact she looks like she might cry. ]

I'm not asking you to tell me what to do. I just want to know what you actually think. For once. [ then, softer: ]

Please.

[downswing]

( Please. An actual answer.

Please. Take position in the rift between better men and worsened sects.

Please. Do not relinquish Wei Ying's hand.

How often has he been positioned before choices that carve his bones to shape him a different, trembled man? How often has indecision failed him?

Dappled light rains on him, diffuse, flat and grey. He barely drags himself through winter's dregs, but must trawl Clara's coal-burning need beside him. It feels an unkindness, weight his shoulder prove too fragile to bear. His feet crush injured branches in slow wake.

They course the forests. Soon, the mountain's very tips. Beyond them, the fortress whole. And the man who commissioned their service. )

I would inquire if the prince fears water. ( Stormed, sickly, feverish, cold. Their dead within. ) And those who wait.

( And on the foundations of that answer, raise the house of his decision, whole. ) Then decide.

[makemeasong]

[ Clara exhales slowly, trying to let the frustration seep out of her the way warmth is. ]

Thank you.

[ She will, more than likely, ask the question. And then what? Does she walk out if she has a bad vibe. She tries to tell herself she's been in more confusing situations with the Doctor so that she can keep going. ]

I've gotta stop volunteering. I never know what the hell I'm doing, if it's the right thing or not.

[ A new feeling. It's why she was so eager to barter and make trades, sometimes even take what was needed. She was good at it, knew what the goal was, and could help others. But these things where she goes off and inevitably someone has to save her? This is the first time she's thought maybe she should take a back seat. ]

We're almost done, I think. Light at the end of the tunnel, that. [ She nods toward the fortress, hoping she's right in the sense that they can make their way back to where the others are. ]