The veneer of any lingering ease peels away from him slowly, Wei Wuxian going from halting motion to a stillness that aches with uncertainties.
"I'd almost forgive you for the implication I went around trying to touch every Lan's headband," he says, aiming late for levity he doesn't quite catch, "But I'll have you know I only tugged on any of them once, and really, that was Lan Zhan's fault for letting it twist about like that in the wind."
A half smile, and then he glances to the tea, cupping it in his hands so the warmth leeches from the cup into the cold that's lingering there.
"He was, though I had no idea. That or the second. In retrospect, maybe I could have guessed, if I knew anything about the seriousness of Lan traditions, but I thought it was a convenient help in the moment, and he never said anything." A pause, and a wry addition. "Lan Zhan decides not to say more than I realised. Even the things he should."
Lifting his cup and his hands, to keep himself from gesturing too much, his eyebrows quirked and Wen Qing subjected to a look of familiar woefulness, "I've apparently been married to a man who didn't bother telling me we were married since we were all in Gusu."
She may know, in ways Lan Zhan simply can't, on what other levels that can unsteady him, can hurt in surprising, unwelcome ways. To fail in yet one more manner, to have not known he was failing. For a man who had cut himself to ribbons to spare family, yes, he might have done it again, might have confronted Lan Zhan and forced a choice beyond the heartbreak of that windswept, raining night where the Wens were pulled out of labour camps of death and aimed toward Yiling, might have had other reasons to believe he could turn and ask for help instead of define himself as the sacrificial mountain, isolated and quiet, reviled and never forgiven for being frightening in his capabilities, labeled as malicious, deviant, horrific...
There's no way to know, in the end. He has to forgive himself that, too, and forgive the anger and sadness and the confusion it draws out of him, because it feels unpleasant, being both enough and nothing close to enough, worthwhile but not enough to tell, held in contempt of the unknown, and still: wait, what the hell was that song called, anyway?
"I never knew." Quiet, that admission, skipping past so many other knowns and unknowns. "Then he tied my arm up in knots when he was drunk, after running off in my spare robes I had to put him in because he was drunk and in the water and he dragged in five chickens and an undead soldier, what was I going to do? Have you seen him drunk, Wen Qing, it's distressing, and also mildly unfair because he can still fight like it's nothing, but has no sense of when to stop."
He rambles, because he doesn't know how to say, there are things here that matter.
no subject
"I'd almost forgive you for the implication I went around trying to touch every Lan's headband," he says, aiming late for levity he doesn't quite catch, "But I'll have you know I only tugged on any of them once, and really, that was Lan Zhan's fault for letting it twist about like that in the wind."
A half smile, and then he glances to the tea, cupping it in his hands so the warmth leeches from the cup into the cold that's lingering there.
"He was, though I had no idea. That or the second. In retrospect, maybe I could have guessed, if I knew anything about the seriousness of Lan traditions, but I thought it was a convenient help in the moment, and he never said anything." A pause, and a wry addition. "Lan Zhan decides not to say more than I realised. Even the things he should."
Lifting his cup and his hands, to keep himself from gesturing too much, his eyebrows quirked and Wen Qing subjected to a look of familiar woefulness, "I've apparently been married to a man who didn't bother telling me we were married since we were all in Gusu."
She may know, in ways Lan Zhan simply can't, on what other levels that can unsteady him, can hurt in surprising, unwelcome ways. To fail in yet one more manner, to have not known he was failing. For a man who had cut himself to ribbons to spare family, yes, he might have done it again, might have confronted Lan Zhan and forced a choice beyond the heartbreak of that windswept, raining night where the Wens were pulled out of labour camps of death and aimed toward Yiling, might have had other reasons to believe he could turn and ask for help instead of define himself as the sacrificial mountain, isolated and quiet, reviled and never forgiven for being frightening in his capabilities, labeled as malicious, deviant, horrific...
There's no way to know, in the end. He has to forgive himself that, too, and forgive the anger and sadness and the confusion it draws out of him, because it feels unpleasant, being both enough and nothing close to enough, worthwhile but not enough to tell, held in contempt of the unknown, and still: wait, what the hell was that song called, anyway?
"I never knew." Quiet, that admission, skipping past so many other knowns and unknowns. "Then he tied my arm up in knots when he was drunk, after running off in my spare robes I had to put him in because he was drunk and in the water and he dragged in five chickens and an undead soldier, what was I going to do? Have you seen him drunk, Wen Qing, it's distressing, and also mildly unfair because he can still fight like it's nothing, but has no sense of when to stop."
He rambles, because he doesn't know how to say, there are things here that matter.