( A momentary laughter, hooked and dragged and smiling for it, brief and breaking the grim set of his sincerity of seriousness. The flash of life back into the depths of a great, deep pool within himself, and it's true, shining, and for that moment, Lan Zhan's alone.
He doesn't so much free himself as lean into Lan Zhan for a moment, duck out of grasp with a sliding brush of hand over sleeved arm, the check of one jutting, thin hip against another. No generosity there, not for either one.
Damp and dust and unsettled not quite tombs surround, and he hitches shoulders, makes blithe reply. )
Nothing. The only thing that screamed within that place came out with me, and you heard it, didn't you? Or maybe you didn't. I didn't want you to.
( Softer in the end, a confession that was as much the reason behind the unremitting strength of his hold through fever and unconsciousness as was another truth: Wei Wuxian would a thousand times and more invite the danger on himself that he would wish to spare others. )
It was death inside. Some of the dead yet wrapped like these.
( Less secure, than the cocoons now behind them, but he nods back toward them, a flick of fingers that follows before he uses cloth to swiftly, nonchalantly clean his temporary blade. He creates distance for himself again, a matter of habit, only pausing when the thought catches up with him.
He pauses, in step and manner. Breathes out, not quite as a sigh. Looks askance at Lan Zhan, at Lan Wangji. )
To this day, why was it I heard the same cries in the Burial Mounds as I did inside that shell? ( He knows why. The gossamer truth of it catches the scant light around them and reflects it, turning, turning. ) Turns out the dead can teach, if the living are desperate enough.
( Do not ask, never ask, what it took to survive. That darkness clings to Wei Wuxian as memory, sloughing off him as a reptile sheds an old skin. He steps forward again, shakes himself, dog like, and strides forward with quiet footfalls disturbing dust: forward, not backward. He will never enjoy looking to the past. Better to forget, and if the forgetting has not yet been total, then pretend it has been so. )
no subject
( A momentary laughter, hooked and dragged and smiling for it, brief and breaking the grim set of his sincerity of seriousness. The flash of life back into the depths of a great, deep pool within himself, and it's true, shining, and for that moment, Lan Zhan's alone.
He doesn't so much free himself as lean into Lan Zhan for a moment, duck out of grasp with a sliding brush of hand over sleeved arm, the check of one jutting, thin hip against another. No generosity there, not for either one.
Damp and dust and unsettled not quite tombs surround, and he hitches shoulders, makes blithe reply. )
Nothing. The only thing that screamed within that place came out with me, and you heard it, didn't you? Or maybe you didn't. I didn't want you to.
( Softer in the end, a confession that was as much the reason behind the unremitting strength of his hold through fever and unconsciousness as was another truth: Wei Wuxian would a thousand times and more invite the danger on himself that he would wish to spare others. )
It was death inside. Some of the dead yet wrapped like these.
( Less secure, than the cocoons now behind them, but he nods back toward them, a flick of fingers that follows before he uses cloth to swiftly, nonchalantly clean his temporary blade. He creates distance for himself again, a matter of habit, only pausing when the thought catches up with him.
He pauses, in step and manner. Breathes out, not quite as a sigh. Looks askance at Lan Zhan, at Lan Wangji. )
To this day, why was it I heard the same cries in the Burial Mounds as I did inside that shell? ( He knows why. The gossamer truth of it catches the scant light around them and reflects it, turning, turning. ) Turns out the dead can teach, if the living are desperate enough.
( Do not ask, never ask, what it took to survive. That darkness clings to Wei Wuxian as memory, sloughing off him as a reptile sheds an old skin. He steps forward again, shakes himself, dog like, and strides forward with quiet footfalls disturbing dust: forward, not backward. He will never enjoy looking to the past. Better to forget, and if the forgetting has not yet been total, then pretend it has been so. )