downswing: (五)
ʟᴀɴ ᴡᴀɴɢᴊɪ | 蓝忘机 ([personal profile] downswing) wrote in [community profile] westwhere 2023-11-06 06:33 pm (UTC)


( You will. A simple benediction, certainty like spumes when a wave's broken and the sea reshapes itself. Everything is ephemeral, only Wei Ying's righteous grudge will remain. Strong and deep like his bones' marrow, the red metal of his mouth.

He thinks, for good luck, to kiss him. Thinks, too, there are wives who send their men to war, eyes half clawed off. The feverish current of the room's attraction nearly pulls him to the shore. He feels — anger, simmered, boiling. At himself, for rotting the foundation of their trust with — sacrifice. At Wei Ying, for words yet unspoken, yet anticipated, for accusations that Lan Wangji does not trust, and it is one rule for him, and another for Wei Ying, and where is the justice in this marriage?

...where was the justice at Nightless City, Wei Ying sundered down?

He rises, first. Rises alone. Wei Ying's ankles bound as loosely as the shackles will allow, Lan Wangji's mouth pressed to one knee in passing. There, there. Step on his spine, next. Curve in his back, make of it a sickle. Protecting the gravid, swelling aches of his overly protective care. If he survives, he'll deserve it.

In passing — happy hunting — only a trinket of qi and the great, groaned gasp of the room, shivered from any demonstration of power, however withered, however faint. It is a whim and a waste and a child's plaything: he fashions a news-bearing butterfly in Lan-moonlight and leaves it to fret and fly and keep Wei Ying company in Lan Wangji's absence.

And, like every coward, he flees the room, gaze downed. )


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