Some men are the byproducts of collective hallucination, mass hysteria, the convenience of political designs, moral outrage and panic. Some men will never be anything but, ground down and riven by the time any objective truth might bear down on the claims and motivations ascribed; some men will rise above, or twist away, from the confines of others labels. Of presumptive thoughts, of misdirected culpability.
They are, in the end, men both played toward ends by two manipulators from the shadows. For Lan Xichen, Zewu-jun, perhaps the worst of it in close ties, in shared hearts and memories, where a sworn brother and a sworn younger brother are the masterminds of his own undermining. Were the masterminds of Wei Wuxian's destruction, and his arrival from the darkness he'd nestled within for years, stretched too long and too short in turns.
Now, Wei Wuxian is more than he ever had been in the crying fears of the clans, dancing already to deeper greed and arrogance than his own arrogance had ever boasted, in youth and sincere belief that justice, true righteousness, would be recognised in spite of its inconvenience. That a man could, or should, stand alone, to bear the weight of a world and its censure so that those he loved did not need to.
It ever was not the way things were meant to be, and here, he is a man part of this group, part of the defense of village and citadel and fortress, and he is strong in the exact ways that struck fear into every greedy, grasping soul in their vaulted righteous clans. He is the Yiling Patriarch, by their naming and their mockery, and the truth of his own path, the one that was not demonic cultivation, no matter the accusations. No matter the title, granted, the same way that Zewu-jun and Hanguang-jun were granted their own. The same way his brother was yoked with Sandu Shengshou, a man in whom grief distilled to festered hope and bitter regret.
Here, Chenqing in hand, at lips, he plays. To curb and coax and guide where Clarity has no sway against the sting of the curse, the driving pulse of the twice dead who claw out of the waters, coated in tar without yet having been formed out of it. A cleansing that might benefit, Wei Wuxian thinks, but the moons rose fat and red, and the village seethes in death and the want of blood, and so he plays.
He turns dead from their intent, redirected away from the village houses, temporary at least. They lumber back into the water, tumbling off the dock into others reaching up, for a moment reducing the load of cathartic death scything that Zewu-jun embraces, as any good Lan, any tempered Lan, should.
(Or as the Twin Jades do, for their own reasons, their own cutting purposes, their own keen edges. It no more surprises him to see it with Zewu-jun than he's surprised in the quick draw that Lan Zhan rarely spares.)
ill met by moonlight
They are, in the end, men both played toward ends by two manipulators from the shadows. For Lan Xichen, Zewu-jun, perhaps the worst of it in close ties, in shared hearts and memories, where a sworn brother and a sworn younger brother are the masterminds of his own undermining. Were the masterminds of Wei Wuxian's destruction, and his arrival from the darkness he'd nestled within for years, stretched too long and too short in turns.
Now, Wei Wuxian is more than he ever had been in the crying fears of the clans, dancing already to deeper greed and arrogance than his own arrogance had ever boasted, in youth and sincere belief that justice, true righteousness, would be recognised in spite of its inconvenience. That a man could, or should, stand alone, to bear the weight of a world and its censure so that those he loved did not need to.
It ever was not the way things were meant to be, and here, he is a man part of this group, part of the defense of village and citadel and fortress, and he is strong in the exact ways that struck fear into every greedy, grasping soul in their vaulted righteous clans. He is the Yiling Patriarch, by their naming and their mockery, and the truth of his own path, the one that was not demonic cultivation, no matter the accusations. No matter the title, granted, the same way that Zewu-jun and Hanguang-jun were granted their own. The same way his brother was yoked with Sandu Shengshou, a man in whom grief distilled to festered hope and bitter regret.
Here, Chenqing in hand, at lips, he plays. To curb and coax and guide where Clarity has no sway against the sting of the curse, the driving pulse of the twice dead who claw out of the waters, coated in tar without yet having been formed out of it. A cleansing that might benefit, Wei Wuxian thinks, but the moons rose fat and red, and the village seethes in death and the want of blood, and so he plays.
He turns dead from their intent, redirected away from the village houses, temporary at least. They lumber back into the water, tumbling off the dock into others reaching up, for a moment reducing the load of cathartic death scything that Zewu-jun embraces, as any good Lan, any tempered Lan, should.
(Or as the Twin Jades do, for their own reasons, their own cutting purposes, their own keen edges. It no more surprises him to see it with Zewu-jun than he's surprised in the quick draw that Lan Zhan rarely spares.)