#antivillained

“Huh?”

He was too young to be this tired, yet through the exhaustion shone a depth of feeling he desperately attempted to cover up. It wasn't something he wanted the world to see. It reminded him of every criticism that he had ever got, the way his father had told him constantly, that he was too soft, too emotional, too much of a pacifist to lead a Sect.

Zizhen hated it.

Even more, he hated the fact he couldn’t talk about it.

How did you explain that? How did you look your friends in the face and tell them that our life at home was miserable? His friends had lost their parents, some their entire Sect, they were in the middle of blood, loss, greif, and pain. Here he was. With his mother at home, a sweet woman who deserved better, butloved her husband anyway. Enough that she wouldn’t rock the boat to defend him. A father who clearly...had come to the conclusion that Zizhen just wasn’t the type of child that he wanted.

He couldn’t. What kinda self absorbed nonsense did it sound like to complain about your family to people who had little. Zizhen had more self awareness than that, and yet, didn’t understand that his friends would be concerned anyway. “I doesn’t matter,” he finally voiced, trying to shift the conversation away from himself. The night air was still warm, it felt too close. The rooftop was an ideal place to hide and wallow in his own feelings that he wasn’t willing to share. To mull over the idea that tomorrow he would be dragged back home, to a home he particularly didn’t want to be in.

The hug was unexpected, an arm wrapped around his shoulder, brought him into a sideways hug and the touch was enough to shatter whatever damn it was he had built. It was protection in a way, from the emotional reality of what he had to deal with. Yet, sometimes, he needed protection from himself. “I don’t want to go home.” Zizhen finally admitted. Who would think such a simple gesture would bring him to struggling to hold back tears. It wasn’t like Zizhen could remember the last time someone other than this mother had granted him such a gesture.

 MEME I CAN’T FIND / @antivillained

meme.

❛ please don’t go. ❜

@antivillained​

He busies himself with the captivation of tending to those present and still living. Of course, Wei Wuxian waves him away first, a relief to the man who feels as though his heart might finally consume itself in its own immolation that Wei Wuxian stokes with every breath, every second of nearness that he haunts Lan Zhan with. He examines everyone’s wounds and scrapes a little too closely, checking their pulses for any imbalances a little too long. Anything to give him a moment’s stay before he must resign himself to Wei Wuxian’s side. 

But it is, in fact, an inevitability that he drifts to his side, called to him by the draw of his own heart. Sits upon the stairs alongside him. And waits in disheartened silence. There is a terror to endings that inhabits him to the deepest crevices of his soul. That endings are forever, and goodbyes will be, too. And even when Wei Wuxian’s pulling at his sleeves to scramble to his feet, catching him firmly by the wrist to lead him through the labyrinthine safety of the city streets to where Little Apple waits within the outskirts, Lan Zhan’s heart thunders with the foreboding of a storm’s brontide that this is all prelude to the dread that is sure to come.

And when Wei Wuxian fails to release Lan Zhan’s wrists, looks upon him with a poignant melancholy … Lan Zhan almost tells him he needn’t say a word. 

“Please don’t go,” comes the quiet plea, as unexpected as lenity often is. 

Lan Zhan’s eyes widen, question brimming in his pale eyes. 

But Wei Wuxian only laughs, looks away as one reproached. His hand reaches to scratch nervously upon the nape of his neck as his eyes focus a little too intently on Little Apple. As if he’s planning how he might escape this moment’s mortification.

So Lan Zhan reaches for him. Fingers brush the hair from his temple, caress the curve of his head until his fingertips press into the nape of Wei Wuxian’s neck and draw him close. “No. Say it again,” he demands softly, their foreheads now pressed together so closely the tips of their noses almost touch. 

Another abashed laugh from Wei Wuxian, but he answers obediently after a theatrical pause. “Don’t go,” he says, this time like a command that he knows Lan Zhan is more than happy to fulfill. 

How many times had Lan Zhan wondered how different their lives might have been, if only Wei Wuxian had asked this of him. He can think of a thousand moments that might have been ameliorated because of it. But there are musings of a man who is forced to ruminate about the ruination of possibilities. Now, he is a man who understands the honey-sweet pleasure of repletion. 

Misc Prompts for Feels | status: open

༺🌕༻ He had heard it said that a man wears many different robes in his lifetime. There were robes you were born with — the robe of a child, a son, a brother. There were robes you inherited — the robe of ones clan or sect, the robes of filial duty. There were robes you chose that signified ones path in life —the robes of a student, a warrior, an enemy, a friend; of a father, a lover, a mentor. 

   One would don and doff these robes throughout ones life, sometimes discarding, sometimes layering, sometimes trading for a more complimentary color. Some of them one would grow out of. Some of them, one might never quite grow into. But from the moment a man was born he was was never truly naked; when all else was stripped away something still remained.

  The world had stripped Wei Wuxian of so much. All that was left to do was to figure out what was left; what was to become.

  “Wei Ying is Wei Ying,” he spoke at last after much silent deliberation, his gaze drifting from the tea cup clutched gingerly between his fingertips to the cultivator sitting across the table from him. A man of more words might have said something akin to the fact that he was an accumulation of a lifetime of robes, so to speak. Layers upon layers of meaning, purpose, and self. That the most ill-fit of robes were those of others; those of expectation, which should not be donned lightly.

The question took a moment to filter through his brain. He was preoccupied. Thinking about things, too many things to be honest. About the night hunt that they had been on, sure, they were dangerous. It was a dangerous occupation but it was a risk that Zizhen understood. They had a certain power, with that came a responsibility to use it to protect others, be that protecting communities was important work that should be done.

None of those things made it easier to watch people in pain.

Sometimes you couldn’t fix it easily, you couldn’t magically bring back someones daughter back from the dead. You couldn’t repair a broken family with a sword. You could only neutralise what threat remained. Try and make the world a little bit safer and make sure that it didn’t happen again to someone else, then try to move on. Easier said than done.

“Huh?” The fact someone was talking to him seemed to register, a blink. “Yeah,” he figured that was a thing he should do, eat, sleep, the normal things that seemed to escape him when he was wrapped up in his own thoughts.

@antivillained​ sent: “All this time in here and you still won’t talk to me?” ( lan zhan )

          Contrary to what Wei Wuxian might think Lan Wangji has heard every single thing he’s said since they came to the library. Most of it an irrelevant stream of consciousness designed to entertain one person alone - the one it originates in - Wangji truly wishes he could just block it out, but for some reason it drills into his head as if he’s screaming at him. Food and liquor, music, Lotus Pier, the endless rules of the Gusu Lan Sect, it all comes and goes, creating VIVID IMAGES in Wangji’s head that he never asked for.

The words written on the page before him begin to blur and jumble but he refuses to give in to Wei Wuxian’s HARASSMENT. Sooner or later he will grow tired from all the talking and resign to his fate - certainly.. he must. Just as that thought crosses Wangji’s mind Wei Wuxian gets up from where he’s seated and starts wandering about, looking at the books in their shelves and presumably reading the titles. Only now Lan Wangji dares to look up and let his gaze follow him around the room. He has a distinct sway to his steps that he noticed earlier on and a habit of putting his HANDS where they shouldn’t be when he’s observing something, like a child. His blatant disregard of the rules and his obvious reluctance to do as he’s told at any given time is irritating - and yet Wangji finds himself less annoyed and more intrigued by his behavior the longer he endures it.

His eyes quickly fall back to the book in front of him and he turns the page for good measure, despite not having grasped a single thing from the previous page. Instead he knows now that the Jiang Sect serves spicy roasted water chestnuts at their winter solstice celebrations. Not even Wei Wuxian’s ENTHUSIASM could wake the desire to try them in Lan Wangji, who despises spicy food. The question Wei Wuxian poses is ignored like all those that came before it, but he seems to have reached the point where he’s no longer content with talking to himself. Turning away from the books he comes over to where Wangji is sitting, who tenses barely noticeably in his seat.

     “You’re not done. Go back to your task,” he says, granting Wei Wuxian’s wish to be spoken to and denying it at the same time. He hopes that he will finish soon, for both their sake.

    HIS OWN MEMORY BLURS around trauma and pain but he does not say this. It is not what needs to be said. He is the one that remembers. He is always the one that remembers, the one with more ghosts than he’s ever had friends. Wei Ying is the only one that’s ever returned to him ( though, the rest never really leave, do they ? ) but that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten. Both of them bleeding out in some dark and quite place tucked away from the world, pouring energy into him in the hopes that if only one of them were to live it would be him. Sprouting confessionals like spring flowers. Taking every rejection in stride, refusing to leave the home he had made at his side, as he should have done from the beginning. Even though it distorts under the weight of time and pain, the memory does not fade.

@antivillained  / 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒．

❛ i'd  never  lie  to  you. ❜   his  response  comes  out  in  monotone  voice,  very  matter  of  fact.  disbelief  is  to  be  expected,  this  is  a  bit  of  a  big  exception  after  all.  at  this  point,   however,   lan  wangji  is  known  for  making  exceptions  for  his  person.