westwhere | ( just another day for brainwashing )

( it feels like he hasn't left gut's bind since this whole thing started. he has an idea of what's going on above them but he feels like he's been able to help more down here, busting out walls and finding ways to get people out of here.

even if those ways are marred by monsters with tentacles. he's had to cool it with that because he doesn't want to completely fuck up the structure of the area and bring everything crashing down.

so, he's taken to staring at the runes on the wall. he doesn't recognize them but he has an idea that they're important for some reason and he should at least try and memorize them. his fingers brush over the carved rock and he takes a breath, shuddering.

it feels like there's someone looking at him, staring at him from a place that he can't see but bucky knows that he's letting this place get to him. )

God, I need a drink. Or to get the hell out of here.

( but doesn't look like that's going to happen. )

( later on, he's going to regret listening to a bunch of disembodied voices. he knows that he shouldn't but they get to be so, so loud that they burrow into his head and he just wants them to stop.

and that's why he agrees to give them sanctuary. he doesn't even know what the hell that means but as soon as he says it, the voices shut off and he thinks that he's free of them until —

he's not. if you're around bucky, you're not going to be able to see the change but one minute he's himself, the next, he's not.

the next, he's curling his fingers into fists and his jaw sets so tightly that he could cracks his teeth. looking around with new eyes, the paladin within him doesn't see what he wants.

so, he starts stalking out towards the entrance of gut's bind, seeking out a fight, a war, blood. he just wants to spill blood.

and he's not going to let anything get in his way to stop him. )

( There's a grim, gravelly, crackling energy to the Gut's Bind, a sense of overflow and anticipation. Cloying, claustrophobic, filthied. He does not walk these grounds as a matter of leisure, only one of final, regretted recourse.

The paladins that rescue seals from dregs and direct the better part of their energies to same purpose mill and storm the caves and corridors, their sorcery flooding around them. He hesitates — prioritises, desperately, not to interrupt their paths, or violate the integrity of their magical balance through his presence alone.

In the midst of affording them a wide berth, he neglects to lend the same to the man he collides with, haphazardly, hand scattering invisible motes of dust and decay — before he knows the look of him, the blunt cut of his jaw, the arm — )

...Bucky. ( As Wanda named him. Not 'bucket,' but the approximation. ) The caves?

( They had — allowed the possibility to percolate into a plan, clumsy but well-intending. Lan Wangji yet wants his cutting wire, and if Bucky is already haunting these grounds, then surely he must be here, to the same purpose. )

No.

( who the hell is bucky? there's something familiar about the name but he doesn't know why and he doesn't spend anytime dwelling on it.

he looks at the man that's stepped into his path, eeyes hard, flinty, cold.

alive. it would be easy, he thinks, to cut this man open and leave him lying. satisfy that urge to just leave a mess in his wake. but this man seems to know him familiarly so it wouldn't be easy. )

Move.

( There is... a scent to the moment, metallic. Like the ugly, telltale anticipation when a man searches the teeth of his hunting hound and knows he will find them red-bound. Bucky's... irritation is not unnatural to the Gut's Bind. It appears to thicken in the grounds, with exposure.

Lan Wangji, who has spared himself the unkindness of delving into the affairs of the native paladins, has yet to poison himself with inklings and tendrils of stray malice. To choke in their net.

Better not to court that disaster. And fairer still, to keep one who has — ingested this concoction to excess away from the worst of his own temperament. )

We move. ( He concedes, right arm slinging bound behind his back, both to honour the propriety of form and to signal, he walks unreadied to attack. Lacking the ambition of brutality, the means to escalate. Unhastened. )

To what destination?

I didn't ask you to come with me.

( there's a dark note to his tone, an undercurrent of aggression that he's keeping tightly bound for the moment. he doesn't know how long that'll last.

but he starts moving anyway, tread heavy, mouth dry, hands empty. he wants. )

I don't need a babysitter.

I see no child.

( He concedes, once more agreeable, perhaps in a gentle approximation of the exact tone he might deploy on children. He has raised a son, indomitable, kind. He may rear an accomplished man through the growing pains of his temper.

As long as he retains a mild disposition and a scrupulous talent for avoiding the milling crowds that bustle alongside them, minding the endless business of their seals, the reinforcement, the magic that stokes and soars and never quite latches —

All will be well. Arguably, all is already well. )

You assisted the forges, the mines or the paladins' chamber?

( There is a helpful scarcity of alternatives in the cavernous undergrounds. )

( he doesn't answer, not sure why he's being questioned when he clearly has other things to do. he blows a breath out and turns to look at the other man, eyes cold. )

Why?

( what's the meaning of the questions? what purpose do they serve? certainly not his. )

( ...ah. Temper still stoked, flaring. Like an incautious flame, ready to bloom and burst. He nearly flinches, caught aback not by the certainty of Bucky's anger, so much as the assurance of his helplessness against it.

He is not, eyes wide, the white of them bold, a scholar of rhetoric. Not the man equipped to handle finesse in conversation. Asked why, he only murmurs: )

There are few destinations in the Gut's Bind. ( And so, surely, Bucky must have emerged from one. Sure... ly. ) Before, you worked the mines.

( ...before Lan Wangji gently detoured them towards water. )

I don't know what you're talking about.

( he hadn't worked in the mines before and he's not going to try it now. what he wants is for this man to stop bothering him and leave him alone.

he turns that empty, hard look over at wangji and glares, trying to get him to back down. )

Don't presume to know me.

I do not. ( A pause, tender. ) Know you.

( In the way in which men know one another, as true friends, bound. As comrades at war. Circumstances and duress have knitted them strange kinship. Lan Wangji, who has never shied from withdrawing himself from the scene of a social crime finds he is the accomplice of his own humiliation — tacitly begging for Bucky's tolerance, his appetite for companionship.

He cannot be allowed to continue as he is, a storm made flesh. There are options to dispel disquiet, from zither music of relaxation to walking every line of this ancient, dusky corridor. )

You are... inconvenienced?

( Perhaps best not to inquire if a man is truly angry. )

Why are you still asking me questions?

( he thought he'd been clear that he didn't want to talk and he didn't want to pause either. and yet, here he is, being made to do both. )

Step aside or I will make you move aside.

( somehow. )

( To think, he has now become the strange, barely tolerated breed of companion — the natural, gregarious conversationalist. Wangji, son of Lan, has never stood so accused. And yet, Bucky now transgresses into the assumption.

He makes a point of leaving Bucky an open path, the chance to walk undeterred. A cloying, dusty, hopeless corridor — how could Lan Wangji ever possibly deprive him of it? )

I walk to your side. Intending no disruption.

( Blandly, far too literally, the tension of his body only visible in the righting of his arm, how it hangs steeled, fingers clutching in a fist carved loose to turn, at any moment, on his hilt. His sword, if need me. )

What ails?

I'm fine.

( is he? he thinks he is but he's not. bucky, the man who's body was currently in, was physically fine but this would leave a mark when he came back.

getting harder and harder to trust anyone or anything.

he glances over at the man who's still walking with him, annoyance on his face now. )

Why are you still walking with me?

Our paths align.

( ...because Lan Wangji trails after Bucky. A petty adjustment, when truths stretch and yawn and a man burdened with thousands of learned disciplines 'cannot lie' but may gently, precariously omit.

Now, to avoid any provocation to name where they are headed. It is no simple thing, falsity. Wei Ying must be applauded his native talent to flourish and elude, in the face of perpetual challenge. )

I trouble you?

( Conversationally, as if — the tendrils of sinister energy that yet cling to Bucky are not a tentative indication. The Gut's Bind is a foul place, unimproved by the presences of undeath that cling. )

No.

( yes. he's lying. he's not troubled but he is annoyed and while he can't exactly pinpoint why, he knows that it's due to the man beside him not leaving him alone.

he could do something about that, he knows, make it stop, make him go away but he doesn't )

I don't understand why you don't have better things to do and why you insist on walking with me. You won't like where I'm going.

( a warning. )

You have yet to name it.

( Once more conversational, academic. As if he has born hundreds, thousands of similar conversations, wrestling the youth of Gusu Lan towards a logical conclusion. Ferry a child back to his senses, and he will rediscover his footing. This, Bucky is yet to learn.

...slowly, slowly. As simply and elegantly achieved as the next turn through the corridors, gently pivoting while a slew of paladins flock and fumble, swarming in. He murmurs the silhouette of excuses, nods apologetically, lets them by.

They are obstacles here, tolerated nuisances. Foreign and strange. )

Where do you flee?

It doesn't matter.

( not to him, at least. he doesn't know why this man is insistent on sticking close to him. there are plenty of other people for him to attach himself to.

he makes a face, grumbles, eyes growing darker. )

I'm not fleeing.

( They are two panthers, prowling. Growing increasingly, tirelessly irritated with the aberration of each other's behaviour. He wants, very badly, to grit his teeth and bare them. Wants to claw.

Instinct does not prevail over reason. Walk on, ignore the crowds. Ignore the cloying, blood-curdling, impetuous toxicity of the Gut's Bind and its magical volatility. )

What, then, are you doing? ( There must be a point to this, a destination. An end purpose. )

( finally, the patience of the paladin that's currently in bucky's mind snaps and he growls, shoving at wangji and keeping it up until he's back him into a wall. )

I was trying to be nice but if you're going to continue to ask stupid questions, maybe I'll do what I planned on doing to someone else to you.

( seems fitting, doesn't it? )

( And what is that? But he knows, his spleen knows, his bone marrow, the gritty and grime of him. There is a look and a scent that men bear when they intend, worse than to kill — war's practicality — to put the hurt in those around them.

To torture, to slaughter, to make sport of bloodshed. An empty, flayed quality to their engagement. And Lan Wangji, who has never been accused of an excess of conversation, must wonder, now, when and where he learned his words.

How he can use them to stall. To glean. )

Namely?

( his jaw tightens almost to a painful extreme and his hand twitches withe want of wrapping his hand around the man's neck. he could do it, squeeze and choke the life out of the other man.

the fact that the man continues to talk and talk and talk is distracting but he's not going to answer.

he shakes his head. )

Leave me alone.

( and then he let's the man go and starts walking away again. )

( once the paladin's left his body, he feels hollowed out and weak. not physically, he feels fine there but to have that happen again?

well, he doesn't want to deal with it and he doesn't want to talk about it. it takes everything in him to not just walk out of this place and keep walking.

but, doing something to keep busy might help so he follow some others down to the room and stands back while they investigate ravine that runs through the room. he doesn't get near it, standing with his arms crossed while he waits. )

( just another day for brainwashing )

( examination ; ota )

( appeasing the paladin; ota | cw: possession, violence )

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(aftermath ; ota )