( Profound stillness hollows him, renders him inert, in first his husband's arms, then the shattered screams of war, all around them. He had said, he knows, he did say, let us fly. Let us, sometime, try, for the joy of it, for the brightness, and it coats his tongue with acrid bitterness that it is now, it is in this horror of stench and decay and death coating them both, that necessity declares now.
Now, and not in the joys of their decisions. Now, in the fetid corpse of this fortress, crumbling and sickened, hell stirring far below, a different hell gasping and grasping from above.
Interminably silence stretches two seconds, a blink, his heart's beat, and he smiles, smiles soft and sweet and sad, for Lan Zhan. Eye to eye, and watches him, watches nothing below, not even Bichen, not the sword and her length and the blood she's shed as surely as Suibian ever did.
Says nothing, but steps in, eyes flashing fierce and tired with a frustration he doesn't give words to. Latches fingers in Lan Zhan's robes, splattered and torn and oh but they'd been whole and hale and clean, once, two lifetimes, nine eons ago, and kisses him, fast and fleeting and needing the absurdity, the wholeness of a moment so broken out of the pattern of their pasts, to ground him before he takes flight. To send him soaring, before it's the air that flies past them both, and harpies, arrows, death on wings, but death comes in all forms.
Life takes more to grasp, more to grapple. Thus his parched lips leave his husband's, and he says: )
I trust you.
( In this, and in many other things, if not absolutely. Too much of him is aware that he calculates, weighs, balances, but not in this. Not for Lan Zhan or his steadiness in all things battle, his willingness to try as they navigate the moving domesticity two years and change have cultivated between them.
He steps to Bichen, the stance familiar, the length of her certain underfoot. He does not look down as if to see where he stands; he does not wait before he lifts Chenqing, balanced as if he's spent lifetimes perched upon other cultivator's swords, and not scant times where it has ended in tragedy and heartache.
Demons, the dead, the scant living who persist. Most are gone. To death or to escape, and still, it's until the last of them breathe free or breathe to cessation that they stand, best they can. No Wen Ruohan to strangle him in the aftermath, for Meng Yao to thrust sword through back, and oh, but what were they once, if not all these things in tandem? )
no subject
( Profound stillness hollows him, renders him inert, in first his husband's arms, then the shattered screams of war, all around them. He had said, he knows, he did say, let us fly. Let us, sometime, try, for the joy of it, for the brightness, and it coats his tongue with acrid bitterness that it is now, it is in this horror of stench and decay and death coating them both, that necessity declares now.
Now, and not in the joys of their decisions. Now, in the fetid corpse of this fortress, crumbling and sickened, hell stirring far below, a different hell gasping and grasping from above.
Interminably silence stretches two seconds, a blink, his heart's beat, and he smiles, smiles soft and sweet and sad, for Lan Zhan. Eye to eye, and watches him, watches nothing below, not even Bichen, not the sword and her length and the blood she's shed as surely as Suibian ever did.
Says nothing, but steps in, eyes flashing fierce and tired with a frustration he doesn't give words to. Latches fingers in Lan Zhan's robes, splattered and torn and oh but they'd been whole and hale and clean, once, two lifetimes, nine eons ago, and kisses him, fast and fleeting and needing the absurdity, the wholeness of a moment so broken out of the pattern of their pasts, to ground him before he takes flight. To send him soaring, before it's the air that flies past them both, and harpies, arrows, death on wings, but death comes in all forms.
Life takes more to grasp, more to grapple. Thus his parched lips leave his husband's, and he says: )
I trust you.
( In this, and in many other things, if not absolutely. Too much of him is aware that he calculates, weighs, balances, but not in this. Not for Lan Zhan or his steadiness in all things battle, his willingness to try as they navigate the moving domesticity two years and change have cultivated between them.
He steps to Bichen, the stance familiar, the length of her certain underfoot. He does not look down as if to see where he stands; he does not wait before he lifts Chenqing, balanced as if he's spent lifetimes perched upon other cultivator's swords, and not scant times where it has ended in tragedy and heartache.
Demons, the dead, the scant living who persist. Most are gone. To death or to escape, and still, it's until the last of them breathe free or breathe to cessation that they stand, best they can. No Wen Ruohan to strangle him in the aftermath, for Meng Yao to thrust sword through back, and oh, but what were they once, if not all these things in tandem? )