a cute bird

... except maybe he loans LXC out a few times to curry favor with some particularly powerful nobles or to bribe their way across a border or because his throat goes dry & his dick has never gotten harder than when he saw tears in er-ge's eyes and heard him gasp & cough & beg & cry

no idea how this story ends... i guess the fucked up xiyao ending is LXC develops stockholm syndrome and it ain't necessarily a healthy relationship but it's a kind of happiness.

like, i know that countless fics have been written about how alone lxc is, post-guanyin, but he is. so, so alone.

even under “normal” circumstances, there’s this... this pressure you feel, to stop talking about them. they’re dead. we know it was difficult for you. they’re dead. we know. and even the kindest people, even when they patiently listen to yet another memory of someone who’s permanently gone — it’s so easy to feel like a burden, even when they insist that you aren’t.

for lxc especially — who wants to hear about jgy anymore, other than to spit out his name and grind it into mud? and maybe lxc wants to do that too, at some point, 

(because he’s not immune to anger and resentment and bitterness and)

but there’s. so much else. that he can’t talk about, because no one gives a shit, and he has to pretend that his feelings aren’t so so so so so complicated, still, even months, years, decades later. sure, at first, people understand because jgy was, after all, his sworn brother. but how long until they find lxc’s reluctance to unequivocally condemn jgy not only baffling but offensive?

and — and what about nmj? is he even allowed to speak of da-ge anymore? and, if he is — with whom? who is left, that he trusts enough to grieve with and who knew nmj as he did? the only one that fits the latter would be nhs — but that’s out of the question. so who? who? 

... all i can imagine is lxc having to process all of this in silence

(maybe the occasional conversation with lwj, but their relationship isn’t one that involves many words, and lwj has wwx to love and talk to and be happy with; lxc would never want to get in the way of that)