( The moment feels somehow fraught, fragile, as if the thousand-fragment porcelain of Wei Ying's veneer threatens, at any moment, to break. More fool he, between breaths of earth that quivers: Lan Wangji had not anticipated that Wei Ying could yet be sundered, could slip-slide-fall. )
You will not go. ( Mantra, reassurance. Once step and, skidding on viscera, the next. You will not go. ) Not down a cliff's lip. Not into the mouth of hell.
( And has Wei Ying not done so, before? He remembers in whole what lives with Wei Ying only in part, the fissure of a heartbeat that marked the unbinding, when Wei Ying peeled himself free of his husband's hand and descended, crashed like stormed waves, into the belly of Nightless City.
They hold on to each other, to that distant flicker of remembrance. He drags Wei Ying and lets him lie and sits him down where the clutter of the Wards has thinned and there are bandages discarded to spare like the silks of a ghost — and he knows it is because no doubt they were intended for a victim of war who failed, who fell, who never woke again.
No matter. Knelt beside Wei Ying, he dips them in stale water and cleansing salts and passes the bandage, soaked, to rim Wei Ying's temples and forehead with wet, to stir him. )
Mo Xuanyu did not perish so that you might follow in his steps. Of the man you were, only memory lingers.
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( The moment feels somehow fraught, fragile, as if the thousand-fragment porcelain of Wei Ying's veneer threatens, at any moment, to break. More fool he, between breaths of earth that quivers: Lan Wangji had not anticipated that Wei Ying could yet be sundered, could slip-slide-fall. )
You will not go. ( Mantra, reassurance. Once step and, skidding on viscera, the next. You will not go. ) Not down a cliff's lip. Not into the mouth of hell.
( And has Wei Ying not done so, before? He remembers in whole what lives with Wei Ying only in part, the fissure of a heartbeat that marked the unbinding, when Wei Ying peeled himself free of his husband's hand and descended, crashed like stormed waves, into the belly of Nightless City.
They hold on to each other, to that distant flicker of remembrance. He drags Wei Ying and lets him lie and sits him down where the clutter of the Wards has thinned and there are bandages discarded to spare like the silks of a ghost — and he knows it is because no doubt they were intended for a victim of war who failed, who fell, who never woke again.
No matter. Knelt beside Wei Ying, he dips them in stale water and cleansing salts and passes the bandage, soaked, to rim Wei Ying's temples and forehead with wet, to stir him. )
Mo Xuanyu did not perish so that you might follow in his steps. Of the man you were, only memory lingers.