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[laughitoff]

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[laughitoff]

Then...?

[strikingchords]

...

[quiet]

That Wei Ying is not a faithless person.

[laughitoff]

...

Not many people would agree with you.

[strikingchords]

They are mistaken.

[Lan Wangji always sounds so sure.]

[laughitoff]

Yet I tried to bite the throat out of someone who's been a paragon of faithfulness, you may remember.

[strikingchords]

...

I had failed as well.

And, I did not let you.

[laughitoff]

...how did you fail, exactly?

[strikingchords]

[the silence after that question stretches again, for a very long time.]

"Someone who stands with you."

...

Who to keep faith with, alone?

[laughitoff]

Where would you have stood with me? How? To what end?

You can't have faith when you're dead.

[strikingchords]

How to guess now?

You did not even know I wished it.

[laughitoff]

[swallows]

I would much rather you were alive and living well.

[strikingchords]

...

[pitiless]

What of those who wished it for Wei Ying?

[laughitoff]

That's different.

[strikingchords]

...

[soft again?]

Explain it.

[laughitoff]

You're Hanguang-Jun. You go where the chaos is. You do a lot of good for the people, for your sect.

I'm a demonic cultivator. I don't think I did most people around me much good, in the end. Even if nothing had gone wrong, the most I could ever have achieved was keeping a handful of people safe on a corpse mound longer than I did.

[strikingchords]

[...

even quieter, now]

That is why.

[laughitoff]

[closes his eyes]

Please.

[strikingchords]

[a tiny interrogative noise...?]

[laughitoff]

I...appreciate the thought.

But I'm also glad you didn't do such a thing.

[strikingchords]

...

Whatever you imagine is not what I wished for.

[just, factual, in this moment unoffended; they're too tired.]

[laughitoff]

...

No. You would have wished a better situation for us all.

[low]

I suppose this place offers such chances, if it's not a trick.

[strikingchords]

Mm.

That is where I stand.

...

"Someone you like the company of." "Who you want to spend time with."

Cannot decide these things for others.

[laughitoff]

[roughly]

Are you saying you do want to be friends?

[strikingchords]

...

[Wei Wuxian can't see him, but he actually does have to take a second and turn his hot eyes into his own shoulder. stupid, that this is the part of the conversation that makes him feel like a child.]

I have been trying.

[laughitoff]

[sits BOLT upright on the other side of the gravestone behind him, which incidentally, finally gets him looking over the top of it again]