#⊰ ` iii. relation: vi / / when all the stars align for you and i. ´ ⊱ | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

morkofday · 2 years

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Rules: Posting a list of current writing works in progress. Feel free to ask me for info on any of them, whether snippets of writing, plot details, main characters, etc. Send me a title listed below and I’ll share something related to it. ;)

tagged by my beloved brigid @s1utspeare ♥ thank you so much! i haven’t talked about my wips in ages tbh bc i haven’t been writing that much ever since my heihua saw the light of day?? i guess am focusing more on images currently. my brain just cannot do words between uni and work sigh

but here’s a list of the things i’ve been kind of working on (or hope to get back into and finish at some point when the stars align just right) so feel free to ask about anything if it interests you:

I. bad buddy drabbles. currently working on a snippet that focuses on wai and pran finding each other in high school after pran’s transfer. am not sure how long it will become or where exactly it’s going but i have a lot of thoughts about them and how they fit between all the things they don’t talk about. also wai is kind of amusing to write? i can go a bit bonkers with him

II. set on the same file is my random snippet about the bad buddy x the gifted au (a mutant au?) i have stuck in my brain. this, too, is about wai in some ways. more so about pat and wai and what their conflict could be in this universe. am not sure if i will ever write more for this au or share any parts of it really but i wanted some thoughts out of my brain so here we are (also thank you a lot to mimi @dimpledpran for allowing me to share all these plot bunnies in our dms ♥)

III. zhou youdu returns. i still wish to finish this one day. novoland remains a fond memory in my brain and i just loved zhou youdu So Much ;; he deserved better than just having to retreat into some cold winter city alone to lick his wounds smh especially when william’s character in this drama was Like That

IV. li qian falls in love. my take on what rebirth for you could’ve been if they weren’t cowards and gave us the ot3 relationship we and them deserve. they could’ve been so good and Yet (am still pissed about the ending of this drama, it was just So Bad. glad zsx soon returns to me in heroes, am so excited ;;)

V. bloodplay. my feral xiaoge au, happening during the events of the ending of tlt2 (kind of forces me to rewrite the ending and the whole bronze door situation? rip). i’ve talked about this a lot so ppl probably already know what this is about. i still try to find the courage to write anything sexy for this hhhh

VI. dreamwalker au. exploring the universe i used in In Orbit with li cu and xiaoge, this time with liu sang as i originally planned. i have so many ideas for this but this feels like a huge monster am too scared to touch. also gosh liu sang remains a character i just Cannot Write in a way that would satisfy me

and that’s basically it. i don’t currently have any insistent drive for anything i have lying around or could be starting but am casually working on something all the time. i hope i can get at least these bad buddy thoughts into something sometime soon. then maybe later this year something else will consume me and force me to write again.

(i would love it tho if anyone liked to discuss any writing or plots with me ♥ it’s been a while since i’ve been involved in any of that. i miss it, horribly.)

tagging: @humanlighthouse @jockvillagersonly @rose-of-tori @gusu-emilu @i-am-just-a-kiddo (and i realize i cannot remember many of the amazing writers i must know here? i am so sorry)

#tag game #my fic #i love you brigid ♥#watch me sob about my own inability to write again #also realized i already shared stuff about all of these #quite a lot in here but well #i doubt anyone asks anyway haha #dmbj #bad buddy #maybe??? idk

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rahorak · 2 years

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❝ Know you’re alone, maybe you should come home with me. ❞

@rosebloodiied, for Vi.

#⊰ ` iv. ic: general / / the dawn has arrived. ´ ⊱#⊰ ` ii. verse: modern i / / stand my ground‚ i won’t give in. ´ ⊱#⊰ ` iii. relation: vi / / when all the stars align for you and i. ´ ⊱#rosebloodiied #song: zolita - come home with me #lmk if i need to change anything

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4th-space-poetic-threads · 3 years

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Ethnographic Poem: ‘Re-searching the 4th Space’

This is a poem I wrote in March of 2019. It is an auto-ethnographic poem about my experience as a practice led researcher (and journey from June 2010 until early 2021).

I undertook a doctoral research inquiry into the collaborative creative process (emergent space and subsequent transformations) between artists, people with their communities and institutions. This poem was written along the way, and reveals a process of critical, reflexive, relational and performative inquiry: that led me to re-visit and “re-search” the places, the sites of practice, the collaborative creative projects, interconnected webs of relationships, as well as spaces I thought I knew. Further, how this generated new insights in praxis.

The poem is made of a number of parts that revealed themselves over the course of the research. It includes embodied narrative with my own self discoveries and autobiography as the researcher, generating auto-ethnographic based text in relation to the research, as well as (auto)ethnographic performance with mask and photography. The poetic text and imagery reveals the dynamic overlays and interplays between them. The image sequence performed in the place where one of the significant research discoveries and interconnected narratives (of women artist/practitioners), that further led to the writing of ‘Bone Poems’ (see Prince, 2018).

Re-searching the 4th Space

Part 1: In the beginning

This story begins with a mask, at the end, she appeared

through her

the story unmasked

now re-told through me.

II.

It took me years to find her to shatter and re-search what I thought I knew and for all the pieces to come together anew.

III.

I stumbled on a messy web a tapestry of dynamic interconnections

IV.

I saw the butterfly not caught but shifting spaces of change.

I saw relationships interwoven over time, place people, projects and space connected in unexpected ways.

VI.

I was lost deep in the forest far left of centre in a “disorientating dilemma” I stumbled on the bone of munitions and radioactive waste,

VII.

Divergent narratives converged my perspective shifted and she opened a door.

VIII.

I learned the poetic and metaphoric can access dimensions that linear narratives do not.

IX.

Yet the weight of what I found I could not bear.

My body was wracked with adversity when my teacher appeared

chronic pain is a high-pitched scream that no-one else can hear

in the darkness, I found her here,

XI.

yet she was fully un-formed.

XII.

Dreaming and making her awakens something indescribable in me through her I move between worlds of researcher, practitioner and artist

(Alchemist, Storyteller, Sage, ‘Larakina’[1] or a Trickster, maybe) [2]

XIII.

Making her I found courage to speak the unspeakable to see the unseen.

Part 2 : The forgotten dark I.

I always wondered what the dark was in me the one that could not speak.

II. Dark roots take hold across my body, - who is she?

An ancestral thread in the maternal line the old ones do not speak.

III. I see her I see me I see dark deep ink eyes, that see in moonless nights.

Part 3: Raison d’etre

I. Out of the silent movement of flour and water, layers of paper and paint made upon my table she revealed herself to me.

II. Who is it, that is she?

III. Is she ‘La Loba’ [3] who sings back the shattered bones guiding me to each piece?

Is she the clue that fell from the mouth of my great Aunt the last oral trace my family barely speak?

Whine long and of no words all dirge then to us as children she would speak:

“you come from the Gypsy’s but don't tell a soul or taken you will be in the middle of night”

Woven thread of black hair others with ‘olive’ complexion Dutch migration, pathways of Sinti Romani?

My grandmother’s great aunt the Russian dancer they called “madame ruble” Is she thread of my Eastern European and Middle Eastern DNA?

An ancestral lineage who in us tremble with fear and yet not erased.

IV. Is she the life force that enters the souls of my feet?

Uncontrolled not on command not on begging but when the conditions

align the stars and moon alight from the soul to earth to my feet

is it she who rises in my belly, my chest through my eyes, and breath?

My body expands trembles and breaks her gravity pulls me closer.

Part 4: Other Ways to Be

Portrait of the author, photo by Richard Prince, 2019.

I. Is she Ataecina rising?

II. Or the wind of ‘el duende’[4] one my teacher named in me?

III. Is it she – the broken hill when I stood in-between

the ruin and mint bush?

Beneath the cedar pines not as alone as it seemed in the time I could not hear and before I had learned to speak?

Is she bride of ‘Bluebeard’ [3] blood appears

that will not let her sleep the one who will not be free until she turns the key?

IV. Is she Aletheia [5] who tears transparent holes in my skin

Is it she that can see into other worlds and ways to be?

Part 5: The un-concealed

I. Guardian of dreams and metaphor, storyteller of transformation,

II. Both that which is revealed and concealed the unexpected and interconnected lead me to abandoned train tracks and a broken trail of bones [6]

III.

I am still haunted by a single question

IV.

“Why are there men in white suits testing our soil” asked the two women who lived down the street?

I re-opened unanswered questions I bit the apple unknowingly I ate the fruit.

V. I search and (re) search a landscape and stories I thought I knew.

Barbed wire, surveilled spaces secret places questions lay in boxes versions of the truth spun in webs

breathe in breathe out, soil of life

breathe in breathe out, light of death.

VI. Why did our superiors instruct us not to speak ? VII. Why were the two women’s questions erased? Who will know the intentional ‘empty spaces’ in the final government data and reports ?

VIII. A crack is revealed stories that were concealed in their multiplicity, now bend towards the light.

IX. Amidst institutional resistance, my relationships with the artists turned impenetrable stone for it was not the community alone, but artists who worked with these communities who also carried hidden stories of the bone.

Sensory Poetic Relationship Mapping (SPRM) experiments by the author, photo by the author, 2015.

Moving, singing, making an ‘aesthetic space’[7] a theatre of relationships mapped out on my kitchen table

insights in practice interweave theory, and bleeds into practice changing me

a theatre of the 4th Space enacted and all that lays in-between.

XI.

Witness to the configurations of transformations taking place, those that cannot be seen

nor measured (by linear means) the ephemeral and that which is still yet to be.

XII. The illegitimate, erased, the undocumented buried, do not see the light

flowers in the desert that bloom in the deep of night

here in Western Sydney amidst toxic waste sites

stories from women who saw the ‘Bluebeard’[8] now speak, beneath us out of ‘sight’

the water still flows those that we do not know and have not yet come to know are all legitimate transformations.

Footnotes

[1] Hodge, B., G. Coronado, F. Duarte and G. Teal (2010). Chaos theory and the Larrikin Principle: Working with organisations in a Neo-Liberal world. Advances in Organizational Studies. Egypten, Liber, Copenhagen Business School Press.

[2] Irwin, R. (2015). "Becoming A/r/tography." Studies in Art Education 54(3): 198-215.

[3] See: Estés, C. P. (1995). Women Who Run With the Wolves. New York, Ballantine Books, The Random House Publishing Group.

[4] This references teachings I received in oral transmission and experiential exercise with Michael Meade. We went into the forest and were each given a word on wood to work with for the next 5 days, the word I received in this practice was ‘Duende”. This was followed by a profound personal experience on the 5th day that was shared with Michael and he said was the ‘duende’. This term is discussed at length by poet and writer by Fredrico Garcia Lorca in ‘the practice and theory of duende’ see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCbus6UHKD4 . It is discussed at length by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, (1992, 1995: p.20 p. 519) who refers to ‘El duende’, her work specifically is discussed further in this overarching statement in ‘Old Stories and New Eyes”.

[5] I acknowledge a conversation with Dr Fiona McAllan who introduced Aletheia “the most important Greek counterpart of our ‘truth’ “(Wolenski, 2004, p. 341) to me.

[6] Teachings on retrieving the Bone received in oral transmission in teachings “Original Voice” with Clarissa Pinkola Estes in Colorado, 2016.

[7] See: Boal, A. (1995). The Rainbow of Desire: The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy. London, Routledge.

[8] See: the story of the Bluebeard as retold by Clarissa Pinkola Estés (1992)

Further Links:

Prince, C. (2018) ""Bone Poems: Listening and Speaking from the Ground", Ethnographic Edge Vol 2

http://tee.ac.nz/index.php/TEE/article/view/33/24

Podcast reading of poem 1 from ‘Re-searching the 4th Space’

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/wildazurebutterfly/episodes/2020-09-23T04_12_48-07_00

#4thSpace ethnographicpoetry #(auto)ethnographic performance #autoethnography

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chapitre7 · 4 years

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Alexandria Chapter VI

The Untamed [陈情令] | Mo Dao Zu Shi [魔道祖师] fanfiction

Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Yīng | Wei Wuxian (Wangxian)

Time Travel/Sci-Fi AU

Chapter I | Chapter II | Chapter III | Chapter IV | Chapter V

Read on AO3

“Wei Ying.”

He starts. Fear is a resilient feeling; no matter how much you try to beat it and mask it, it always takes you, in one manner or another. It is definitely present there, in those wide, white doors.

“Are you ready?”

He’s not. He wants to take Lan Zhan’s hand, never minding Lan Xichen standing right behind them or the men that wait on the other side. They can look as they have been looking all this time, trying to read him like a book. He’s not a book, and they know. Perhaps that is worse.

He nods. Lan Zhan carries a package in one arm while the other is rigid, stretched out like a guqin string. They both need a lifeline but keep it invisible in an exchange of looks. Perhaps the same song plays inside of them as they step forward, a song of intimacy, a song of clarity. It matters not; they enter the meeting room like warriors, with unfaltering steps.

“Wangji, what is the meaning of this?”

They waste no time, and Wei Ying fights the impulse to flinch. Lan Zhan — or rather, Lan Wangji, mouth down-turned, serious and unaffected, doesn’t sit down or really move from the end of the oval desk that is closest to the door. He keeps his gaze locked with the man on the other end, and Wei Ying has been in enough battles to recognize the tension of a duel.

“I believe I have already expressed my intentions in my request for this meeting.”

“To permanently leave the facility?” A different director splutters. “Wangji, you’ve lived and studied here your entire life! What about rebuilding the Library Pavilion? We were led to believe that’s your life’s work.”

“I will continue to look for all the works that will rebuild the Library Pavilion the closest to what it once was. But I cannot stay here any longer.”

“Lan Wangji, you are a historian, trusted with the history of this city. What need would you have to roam outside? Are you not too old for this kind of rebellion?”

“History happens as we speak, and you have taught me how it constantly repeats itself. Sitting here with books brings us nothing.”

Wei Ying, a couple of steps behind him, follows the exchange with surprising ease. But even if he was still his old self and couldn’t understand the words, he’d be able to understand the disbelief in the older men and how swiftly Lan Zhan rebukes them. Had he practiced his speech, anticipated their arguments? He always proves to be greater than Wei Ying’s last perception.

“Uncle.”

The man in his direct line of vision merely blinks, slowly, maybe even narrows his eyes. His facial expressions are so minimal, so calculated, that Wei Ying isn’t surprised they’re related.

“Allow me to work as an envoy of Gusu. Our knowledge bears more meaning if it can reach farther than these walls, and teach better than virtual data. We may have the sharpest minds, but if we stay locked inside our laboratories, then for what use is our research?” He places the package down on the desk, his hand lying on top of it with importance. “Not one of us has lived outside for years, too afraid of losing this place again, but are we not losing ourselves?”

“And as you so eloquently put in your mail, you intend to make him your collaborator?”

Lan Zhan’s uncle motions to Wei Ying with his chin, making him shiver with the cold indifference of the gesture. The older man doesn’t even spare him a glance.

“He’s a subject, Wangji, and above all, he’s not one of us. Just because you’ve been indulging him with a mimicry of our time, it doesn’t mean he’s finished his adaptation. He’s uneducated and unfit for modern life, and should remain here until he’s properly civilized.”

The depth of his rejection isn’t lost on Wei Ying. He can’t help but shrivel, eyes downcast and filling with stubborn tears he cannot hold back. It’s shame that creeps up his spine, and anger and outrage, and above all, the words that he wants to say in his defense but can’t. He is a subject. And he has no idea how to live outside these walls, but doesn’t eagerness count? Doesn’t courage? People are still the same. Keeping themselves reined, and trying to rein others’ spirits. But still... Still...

“Do you suppose I would come before you if I had not discerned his capabilities myself?”

Wei Ying looks up, wide-eyed, and he isn’t sure if it’s the words or the tone that makes all of the directors lean back against their chairs as if only barely avoiding contact with a blade. His uncle remains impassive, if only for a slight narrowing of his time-worn eyes.

“I suppose you biased. As I feared you would be.”

Lan Zhan sighs, a minimal gesture, but before Wei Ying can throw caution to the wind and take a step towards him, he’s opening the package that he brought (and that Wei Ying had forgotten about) and throwing copies of a thin book to the middle of the desk where all the directors can see.

“I can assure the board of directors that I would not make baseless propositions. Wei Ying is a person,” a hiss between teeth, “and if living with him after all this time didn’t convince you, might this be the proof you need?”

They hadn’t discussed their method of convincing the board beforehand so Wei Ying is thrown off balance when he sees one of his drawings of Yunmeng’s lotus ponds on the cover of the book the directors now flip through. He’s unaware that he’s moving until Lan Zhan’s arm comes in contact with him, blocking him from bumping into the desk. The nod Lan Zhan gives him is both an answer and a reassurance, so when Lan Qiren looks up — the man supporting the dreams of every researcher in the facility, who coddles them like they’re his own children, Lan Zhan and Lan Xichen’s uncle —, Wei Ying is emboldened enough to make himself known, to stand like the honorable disciple he grew up being.

“If you’ll allow me to study in this facility’s name, I will not make you lose face. I will align my past teachings with the new and I will breakthrough and I will share that knowledge with the people, in the manners of Lan Wangji’s choosing. So please, consider our request.”

Wei Ying bows, and out of the corner of his eye, he can see Lan Zhan doing the same. The room is deadly still, only the sound of pages marking the passing of minutes, anticipation running through his veins. They only look up when Lan Qiren clears his throat, and it’s then that Wei Ying notices the far-away look in the directors’ faces, almost like a kind of spell was lifted from them and they were just starting to understand the world again, through the content of those books. Wei Ying can sympathize, but just vaguely; only if it meant he and Lan Zhan got through them. Lan Qiren looks as sharp as ever, but the lines between his brows are deep.

“We will summon you once we have made our decision. You are dismissed.”

They bow again, in perfect synchronicity, and leave the ever-white room with its elders behind closed, tall doors. The Cloud Recesses may have lost their three thousand rules but difficult men would always lead them, it seemed. Perhaps that’s true for all sects and clans and families, however they were governed now. Wei Ying exhales, long and noisy, head falling against Lan Zhan’s shoulder.

“Lan Zhan, I have newfound admiration for you. You have to deal with them all the time? You withheld your reports from them for months? And you always remain unfazed?”

Wei Ying feels an almost imperceptible move of his shoulder before he says, “I’m used to it.”

He has to chuckle at that. Lan Zhan keeps proving to be bolder than he last assumed, never ceasing to amaze him, and the thought brings him back to, “Wait, you didn’t show me that book before. Is it...?”

Lan Zhan stretches a hand out to Lan Xichen, who Wei Ying had failed to notice was still waiting for them, and the smiling brother offers the book he was carrying. Wei Ying had assumed it was one of the thick research books Xichen is always holding but sure enough, it is a copy just like the ones Lan Zhan all but threw at the directors. Lan Zhan takes it and places it in his hands and although it’s thin, although it’s white with the only exception of his drawing — his Yunmeng —, he feels the weight of it when he reads the words on the cover, traces the characters with his fingertips.

A Brief History of the Age of Cultivation, by Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian.

“I didn’t know you’d make physical copies...”

He can see some of his favorite poems as he flips through, peppered in-between the chapters they wove together, as well as a couple written by Lan Zhan, but attributed to both of them.

“Lan Zhan.”

His voice strains, and overwhelmed, he brings the book up, to cover his face and the tears that threaten to fall. Lan Zhan, kind and patient and wonderful Lan Zhan, takes hold of his wrist to bring it down, to look into his eyes with open fondness.

“Wei Ying is one of us. It’s only right that he’s part of our history.”

He throws his arms around Lan Zhan’s neck. He may not be a renowned monarch or a timeless figure, but in Lan Zhan’s arms, under his care, he feels important. Wei Ying vaguely registers Lan Xichen chuckling and the sound of his heels walking away, and still he holds Lan Zhan, sighs content into his shoulder. Anxiety melts away until there’s only them, their firm hold onto each other, and the relentless future.

With his name engraved by Lan Zhan’s, Wei Ying feels both of them immortal.

“Can I sleep and wake beside you everyday?”

They are.

They do.

***

He’s with him again. Brother has often encouraged him to make friends, share correspondence with Gusu’s contacts across the land, beyond the notes of lost books, but instead of a friend his age, he acquaintances himself with the man inside the ice. As if they could converse inside his head, talk about the things they’ve both seen. Were the skies once clearer, the stars so bright you could trick yourself into thinking you could touch them, if you reached high enough? Was the ocean bluer, did the birds sing different songs? Logic dictated no, but mother used to say time once flew at a different pace, and Lan Wangji preferred to see the past with her eyes. In the library he lived his duty, every book speaking with uncle’s voice and trust. There, in that laboratory with that unnamed man, mother was all around him. He surrendered to a wonder that was more than his own, and ached with longing for a time that would never happen again.

“Were you happy?”

The man, perceived dead, cannot answer him. Wangji, who likes to think he’s asleep, wonders if he’s still dreaming in his own frequency, away from the inexplicable present.

“Do you think I can be, too?”

The words, fragile, barely whispered, turn into fog against the glass protecting the ice. Where they came from, not once thought, Wangji wouldn’t be able to answer. But once spoken, they’re real, and he thinks that maybe he’s the one caged, while the other is free.

Lan Wangji walks away, leaving his doubts and fears and questions with the man on the ice. Outside that lab, he back is straight, composed, and made to be relied upon. Not at all cracking, not at all lacking.

He’ll come again.

***

When Wei Ying reaches the entrance hall of the Qishan Observatory, he sees Lan Zhan surrounded by dazzled kids. They all speak at once, excited voices coming together in a shrill cacophony, yet Lan Zhan raises a hand and addresses one of them at a time. Wei Ying crosses his arms, leans against a pillar and watches, his ever-present smile feeling full of too many emotions to name. Lan Zhan, for all his quiet demeanor, inspires the imagination and eagerness of children with his lectures, and there’s not a single day where he’s not at a different school in Qishan, or even Yiling, speaking of the romantic history of noble sects that helped the poor, following into a present where science and thought help uncover a wondrous future. So many tools have changed in this world where people’s essence remain the same and yet, there’s still light. Wei Ying had lost sight of it in his last life, but he doesn’t look away now. He can’t.

With a lopsided smirk, he pulls a paper from the inner pocket of his jacket. Pulling at his spiritual energy, his core now just a calm lake barely stirred, he conjures dozens of golden butterflies that dance around the children who scream with surprised delight, jumping and attempting to catch the wings of Wei Ying’s cultivator heart.

The gold reflects on Lan Zhan’s eyes when he looks up at him, but they’re not strong enough to make the brown of his irises shine like a fire on an autumn night. Ah, Lan Zhan surely must have a dormant core too, Wei Ying thinks not for the first time, and his strength shows in his gaze, sometimes too strong that others have to look away, overwhelmed, but Wei Ying always meets him half-away, himself weak, enraptured. That must be what it is, but not only that, there’s more. Wei Ying wouldn’t insult him by being ignorant of it, ever-present in all of his gestures, in how he offers his hand as Wei Ying runs and bumps into him, gladly taking it.

“Teacher Wei!” The kids call him, no matter how many times he’s told them he’s no teacher.

“Now, now, I’m afraid I have to steal Lan Zhan from you, we’re both really hungry! Behave yourselves and don’t monopolize him after lecture!”

Wei Ying is too old to play with children, the elders from the Gusu mountains would surely throw at him if they saw him now, but he runs and waves and laughs with them anyway. Lan Zhan joins him, or indulges him, same difference no matter which way he looks, their hands clasped, fingers intertwined, the two of them stepping in the same frequency on the road home.

Nights in Qishan are still bright with an orange hue, almost like the sun refuses to set and the stars refuse to be outshined. Wei Ying inhales deeply in the new world, head held high, never looking down, trusting Lan Zhan to keep him on the right path and catch him if he falls.

“Lan Zhan,” he calls, voice always melodic with his name. “Are you happy?”

“Yes.”

Not even skipping a beat. Wei Ying huffs a laugh, a little breathless from his own antics.

“Me too. Let’s make sure to tell uncle all about it.”

“Mn.”

They’re just two more in the Qishan crowd, but Wei Ying feels big, elated like he hasn’t been in...

Well. It’s time he stops counting.

***

“They’re going to defrost him?”

There’s a complicated whirlpool of emotions in his middle when his brother nods. He clenches his hands into fists, looking at the man safe inside his chamber of ice and glass. It’s a violence against his peace, and a violence against his own sanctuary with the stranger who’s not so strange anymore. Powerless against the decisions of the board, he lingers in the gallery at the side of the laboratory when the first buttons are pressed, but leaves before the procedure is over. It was a foolish thought to cling to the subject like he once clung to the rabbits that roamed the woods outside of the facility when he was young and cared for. Mother and the rabbits are gone now, and he’s too old to play replacements.

Foolish. He’s desperately foolish.

The news that the man is alive don’t hit him as hard as the screams do, or as the sight of him being pinned down and sedated. He bites down on his tongue to fight the need to yell at them all, these men who studied all their lives and still thought it would be a good idea to bombard him with sensory overload just because they were too curious to be properly thoughtful. A subject. What a tasteless joke.

“I’ll do it,” he tells his brother when he holds a handkerchief to the blood that drips down his chin, the pain in his tongue not registering. Brother is the most concerned he’s ever looked since Wangji was seven and they were both orphaned, but he also hasn’t felt a purpose like this ever since he stood before the ashes of what was once his home. “I’ll take care of him.”

“Wangji, they might not deem you fit for the job.”

Where others might see cold hostility, Xichen sees a kind of hurt that is recognizable in animals. So he sighs, raising his hands in a sign of patience and peace.

“I’ll talk to them. I’ll do what I can.”

So Xichen takes the subject — the man — into his own hands. Out of his own suggestion, as a way to placate the board and his brother both. And when Xichen is sure he’s safe, after they confirm that mother’s lessons will allow Wangji to communicate better with him than any other person in the facility, he enters that room with a restless heart. He can’t project any of his own feelings onto the man, that desperate need to belong, to be needed, so when he sits in front of him, he vows to listen.

The man’s eyes glow hazel against the whiteness of the room, still a little wide after weeks under his brother’s care. His lips are parted, after he left out a small “Ah” at the sight of Wangji. Are they taking good care of him? Are they doing everything they can? Can’t they see how lost he is, after he’s lost everything he’s ever known?

“How do you feel?” Wangji asks, instantly off the script the board had given him.

The man’s eyes widen more still, a smile gracing his features for the first time as he leans forward.

Wangji leans back against the natural brightness of him. He looks more beautiful than the first time Wangji laid eyes on him, and all the times he practiced a conversation with him inside his head.

“I can understand you!”

He nods, crossing his legs and looking down at his notes, intent not on writing anything down but on fighting the urge to smile back. Now there’s a voice that can talk back to him, clear, accented, and memorable. Mother would have been fascinated. Wangji feels warm and resolute.

I’ll take care of you.

#The Untamed #Mo Dao Zu Shi #Fanfiction #Wangxian #Lan Wangji #Wei Wuxian #Alternate Universe: Science-fiction #alternate universe: time travel

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