[PALACE GAME - LAN WANGJI RUN]

[laughitoff]

Everything is red. You are dying, somewhere far beyond pain, the very essence of yourself going to pieces. You’re shattering so badly you don’t know if you’ll ever find all of yourself again, if you’ll ever put yourself back together. There are teeth on you, ripping, tearing, devouring. There are teeth inside you, carving their way out, and those are worse.

This is a memory, happening at a remove. It is not yours. This is not happening now.

Everything is grey. You wake up in a prison cell, eyes wide, the ceiling flat and blank and unfamiliar above you. For a moment you simply think, no. You think, Please, wasn’t it over? Wasn’t it enough? You consider closing your eyes again and refusing to get up, until oblivion reclaims you. Even if you’re no longer dying, everything hurts.

This is a memory, happening at a remove. It is not yours. This is not happening now.

What is happening, then?

You–

–sit up.

Comments

[strikingchords]

How?

[laughitoff]

As you used the powers.

You don't need them here.

[strikingchords]

[...]

Then, would you willingly accept one?

[he's so careful; still not really sure Wei Wuxian wants to see.]

[laughitoff]

Yes.

[strikingchords]

[nods and squeezes his hand, thinking of a memory.

...

It's late at night, and you're exhausted after four straight days of secluded meditation. It was hard work -- more than anyone really asks of a teenager's cultivation -- but you did it anyway, and you're satisfied with your own progress. You feel strange and dizzied to be unmoored from contemplation of your golden core, rootless and drifting in the sweet night air. You could get food, or rest, or even wander without purpose, but you choose not to do those things. The night patrol is there to be completed, and you'd said you would do it once you were finished your experiment. It has to be done now for you to meet your expectations of yourself.

Your existence is defined by high standards -- ones you know, with a bone-deep pride that keeps your head held high, that you are capable of meeting. Your uncle will be pleased at your diligence. Your brother will smile and ask you if you there isn't any time you'd like to take for yourself, Wangji?, but he will understand. Your father will make a low approving hmmm in his throat when you report your efforts to him, in your painfully correct once-a-month meetings. You love these things fiercely. They are what make up your world, and if it's a hard world to live in sometimes, you would never ask anyone for it to be different. Outsiders to your private reality might think otherwise, but you know yourself -- the awkward ferocity of your desires, the way your family's seeming-cool gazes warm you to your core when you see pride in them, the serious sincerity of your drive towards the milestones you've set for your life. You know you will spend the intensity of yourself on this narrow measure, and it will be worth it to you.

You are fifteen years old, and everything in your life is exactly as you have come to expect.

Night patrol isn't as quiet as you hoped it would be, and you're forced to irritably rouse yourself from your own half-daze as you round a corner and hear a scuffling noise from the wall. There's a leg -- not clad in white -- scrabbling to find purchase on the top of the wall. Those new disciples for your uncle were due to arrive while you were in seclusion, weren't they? It's already like this. Pathetic. You jump (and you're young enough that there's still a little thrill, to feel your feet so light) to the top of the wall and land next to it. "Put it back!"

There's a pause, then a sunny reply-- "And how would I do that?" The truant disciple sits up, holding a jar under each arm, and you see his face.

...

It's hard to desire something new so suddenly. All your goals were formed in you when you were young, your eyes still looking up to search the faces of your parents, to the strangers who came to the Lan sect leaders but never really mattered. You know that this one matters, somehow. The truth of it is vivid enough to light the night in new colors, to wrench your world wider. He is bright and happy when he shouldn't be, breaking the rules as he is. There is something else in his face beneath that smile, something you need to know better, and for the first time in your life you do not know at all what to do about what you want.

It hurts. It scares you. You're reflexively furious, panicked, Bichen leaping to your hand despite the banality of the conversation. What is this? What is this? You still don't know. Maybe you never will.

(You'll name it love, someday. But that's a word you don't know to think just yet.)]

[laughitoff]

[Wei Wuxian gulps hard at recieving the memory, his eyes filling with tears; fuck, fuck]

Ah...

[strikingchords]

[it's a memory bright with promise, of a person he doesn't always recognize as himself any more

but Lan Wangji is hugging the him of right now fiercely, in response to those tears, so maybe it doesn't seem so far from him, after all]

[laughitoff]

[THANKS HE HAS WEI WUXIAN'S SHADOW CRYING IN HIS ARMS NOW I GUESS. TERRIBLE]

[strikingchords]

[he is being squeezed so tightly, a low vibration in Lan Wangji's chest marking a near-purr of possessive, protective concern...]

[laughitoff]

[the landscape begins to gently dim around him, as that crying jag finally starts to peter out...]

[strikingchords]

[still wrapping him up in his arms, unwilling to let go]

Wei Ying.

[laughitoff]

L-Lan Zhan...

[he doesn't have much time left.]

[strikingchords]

...

Do you regret accepting?

[laughitoff]

No.

[and, as the scene fades to black and he's taken to endgame, he can feel that it's the truth.]