Jin “I’m not tsundere, you're tsundere!!” Ling (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
inheritedpain) wrote2020-01-18 01:48 am
inheritedpain) wrote2020-01-18 01:48 am
IC INBOX: PRISMATICA
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Jin Ling ⬤ The Untamed
residential district ⬤ couch surfing hobo
moonblessing ⬤ iris
residential district ⬤ couch surfing hobo
moonblessing ⬤ iris
no subject
He wanted nothing of this encounter, less of what Jin of the Ling, cheeks lashed by tears, can deliver. What use is an unwanted future, shadows darkening a hard horizon? What will it give Lan Wangji but reminders of every man and turn he's failed?
No one yearns for talk of ruin. Perhaps the boy has lived too little of it to know that tell. No wars, against Wangji's two. A golden age of peace bathed and baptised in Yiling blood.
He gazes to read Jin Ling's face a moment longer, past the happy accident of his easy feeding. Lan Xichen will never begrudge a child the toll he's taken on gifts unasked for. Of all things, the loquats are Wangji's best investment yet.
Children enjoy treats. He learned this long ago, with Yuan. What difference do a handful of years make? A toddler or a Jin, the cure is the same. ]
You may.
[ Deluge: what is to come, what the child-thing makes of it, what relief his confession may yet bring him. Wangji can tolerate it all, so long as it brokers one of them some satisfaction.
And if he regrets it, he will do as he has done before, and — forget. Force himself to unlearn truths that were never his to encounter. Push cheap, easily won revelations down, in favour of riddling his mysteries alone. ]
no subject
He makes a final sniff, a final wipe of his face, and takes another bite of the loquat. He feels drained, and empty, and he doesn’t know how to take the words. He is used to being put up with, tolerated. But he hadn’t offered it only for himself. He didn’t understand how the adults around him - some barely older than he was - didn’t want to know. Didn’t yearn for every tiny scrap of truth. He felt like all he wanted were endless answers, all the mysteries committed before he was born having sprung up to unravel his life now.
But Jiang Cheng didn’t want to hear it, not really. Not the important things. Wei Wuxian was happy in his obliviousness. Even the ghosts of his parents were terrifying in their ignorance, despite how badly he yearned to be near them. To know them.
Maybe only the Juniors understood. It wouldn’t be the first time.
He considered unloading it all anyway. Dumping every last thought and feeling he’s ever had about Wei Wuxian on him. But despite feeling like Lan Wangji would understand, the gap is too great. They aren’t in Lanling. Wangji hasn’t saved him, with Wei Wuxian, twice over.
It would be like how it felt offering his feelings to his parents at the shrine. Their love set so far in the past that he can only hope they might recognize him now.
He glares at the dwindling fruit in his hand. ]
He makes terrible congee.
[ His nose scrunched in memory as he said it. ] And he told me once that I should fight everyone now, while I’m young. As if anyone would actually let me get away with it. He- you- saved my life. Twice.
[ He squeezed the fruit a little too hard, finger nails cutting into scant remaining flesh. ]
I’ve never seen him do a single thing that would let me call him evil.
[ He raised his eyes, harder now. There. Debt paid whether Wangji recognized it or not. As if he could possibly know how much that hurt to admit. As if anyone could. ]
The rest I’ll keep unless you ask.
no subject
All of these things, facets of Wei Wuxian's character — onion layers, shrouding the same, acrimonious core. There was fear within Wei Ying, before he learned charisma. Hate beside affection. Wit, misused for cruelty and cunning, to accompany creation.
There was all the wrong of the world, packaged in the red envelope of every gift of beauty and ability. Jin Ling is blind, as they all were, once upon a time, when their one duty was quiet study, when they allowed themselves to fall in the gravity thrall of Wei Wuxian.
Guilt should not add to Wei Ying's charm. And still, Lan Wangji can't bring himself to condemn Jin Ling's instinct for adoration. ]
Put aside honour, duty, pride. [ Words softened, like every blow pulled at the last moment, like the trial sword strikes mimicked so disciples might learn to parry. ] You cannot hurt him.
[ Ice crystallises in his eyes, the one edge of white sharpening a dark gaze. Witness, assassin, executioner. He has tolerated or implemented too much cruelty to pretend his soul is cut of the same white cloth as his robes. ]
You die before your sword falls.
[ A simple truth to whisper, a promise freely given. The boy's skill is unknown, for all his upbringing is — dubious, but privileged. Perhaps he might even hold his own ground, given the opportunity. Lan Wangji will not win for the greater merit, the finer talent
Needs must, he will erode the boy down to bone and marrow. ]
Understood?
no subject
And just as happens many times in Jin Ling's life - when he finally gets the thing he wanted in the first place - the threat, the promise - a rage flares up inside him.
He throws the remains of the loquat to the ground in a sudden fit - tender flesh smeared over pavement, pits tumbling. ]
If I wanted to kill him I would have then!
[ Snapped far too loud, in the middle of the street, but an admittance he's made to no one. Not here, not there. Even if some had already accused him of it.
Wei Wuxian had left himself completely open. Jin Ling could have killed him. If he'd been braver. Smarter. If he was the son he was supposed to be, not the failure he actually was.
But he steps back, because he's always had a healthy fear of Hanguang-jun, and he knows the man doesn't lie. This isn't an empty threat. He hadn't wanted an empty threat in the first place, he'd wanted something real, but he had never been very careful about what he wished for.
Fairy bumps his ankles, turning her head up to him, feeling his frustration even if her animal ignorance kept her from knowing the cause. ]
None of you get it! [ He snapped in frustration. He needed someone to get it. Someone to understand and explain it to him. Because he was the last person able to untangle his own mess of feelings.
He turned, abruptly, stalking back the way he came, feeling himself aggrieved beyond all others. That fallacy of youth: that no one had or ever could feel the way he did, that no empathy or understanding could possibly be given. Even if he kept practically begging for it, it would never come.
He knew he couldn't stop Hanguang-jun if the man made a point of it, but if left to his own devices, he simply fled. ]
no subject
Dog, Wangji supposes, for all it seems too adept at reading its master's temperament to be a mutt or foundling. Even now, paws scratching hard road tile, it looks more the child's shadow. Raised with Jin Ling, perhaps. Bred, if not born, to serve him — another luxury of rank, a silvered spoon cradled on the corner of an heir's mouth.
And why does Jin Ling storm? No doubt, for Jiang Cheng's example. Conflict resolution is only ever tried and true, if it is at once vocal and fragile, a patchwork of fragmented violence. Jin Guangyao should have complemented that learning, taught the boy better. Did not.
He was not Lan Wangji's to fail, this much he accepted before. But his true guardians did their harm by his upbringing.
Wei Wuxian will only poison that well further.
Mercy corrodes at the last moment, enough that Wangji watches the sun-kissed gold stain of Jin Ling's back retreat, and still raises his voice past the permissible octave: ]
Stop.
no subject
And yet he halts.
He doesn't turn around, he keeps his back to Wangji, but he turns his head sharply so that he's looking back over his shoulder. ]
What? [ Rough. ]
You've made your point.
[ Death threats, again, but at least this one expected. ]
I'm not going to hurt him. Is that what you want me to say?
no subject
The child-thing stops, rash in his boyhood, the energy of his barely restrained frustration echoing the force of Jiang Cheng. Subdued like river's course, Lan Wangji covers the distance between them, step and sorcery stubborn to fill in every nook and cranny.
He does not raise his hand to turn the boy towards him, does not request the courtesy of acknowledgement one practitioner should pay another freely — and one gentleman should reserve for his fellow man without restraint. Who is this boy to him? Not of the Lan, to discipline. And not so offensive now that Lan Wangji must strain the scope of his influence. ]
Apology. [ He offers instead, arms awkward in a tentative bow, form spoiled by the bundle of lingering loquats. ] I have no justice for you.
[ A debt owed, claimed, unanswered. None of them will rush to bring the balance Jin Ling deserves, not with Wei Wuxian's happiness at risk. ]
no subject
No. The last thing he expected from Lan Wangji was for him to dole out justice to Wei Wuxian. He believed the man’s sense of justice to be nearly flawless in ever other respect, but not that one. He swallowed, wanting to walk away still, but instead he turned, face warm from frustration and shame. His eyes kept to the floor, his back stiff, his grip tight. ]
No one does.
[ Roughly. Quietly. ]
Because it’s all wrong and I don’t know how yet. Even Wen Ning—
[ He clicked his tongue in frustration and looked away. ]
I’m not a complete idiot. Either you are completely hopeless, or you knew something I didn’t. But I can’t get justice here and that has nothing to do with you.
The only one that could have given me - given me anything - [ Justice, an explanation, an absolution— ] - never lived any of it. What’s the point in taking something hollow now?
no subject
He keeps the bow longer than a child deserves, less than a future scion has inherited with his name claim. Tension rides his shoulders, eats at his ribs. A small eternity later, when the back of his mouth tastes of iron and sea salt, of blood from where he's hooked the tender inside of his own cheek — he rises.
Among them two, it is not Lin Jing who is found wanting. Wangji will not presume to forget that much. ]
Gratitude.
[ For Jin Ling's patience, if not his kindness or his foresight. Each one of of Wei Wuxian's borrowed days is made more precious by the confusion and misunderstandings that broker them. Lan Wangji will not question the mercy that bides them more of that frail time. ]
He will not know to thank you. I do it on his behalf.
no subject
I don't want his thanks. [ And yet, his voice is rough with the emotion he tries not to let seep into his face. He might be wearing the colours of the Jin, but his face has always born the hallmarks of the Jiang. ]
If he doesn't owe me justice, he can't owe me thanks, either. All I want--
[ But he cut himself off, clenching teeth hard. An uncle. A family. A place.
A child's wish, and he knew it.
No more losing face in front of Hanguang-jun.
Belatedly - as if he recalled his manners a century too late, he put his arms out in front of himself, clasping his hands. Bowed. Stiff. Not low enough. The duration too short. But an attempt.
He rises, and immediately ruins it.]
Just don't let it all happen again, here.
[ He says it without meaning to, and it's hardly an order. It's a plea. His parents, newly revived, alive and well, and he's as terrified of losing them as he is of getting to know them. ]
It has to be different, here. I'll make sure it's different.
[ He'll save them all from themselves, if he has to. If it means that for once in his life, he isn't shadowed solely by death and grief: child of a hundred murders. ]
no subject
Wei Wuxian's actions have rippled through the universe of their entwined fates, writing out start and end points that cannot be grasped, let alone avoided. Yanli of the Jiang might not die of his creation's hand, but she will still, somehow, be lost to him. There is no hope for the Jin. Tragedy rounds its own circle.
But this is not talk for a child who is slow to negotiate the basics of diplomacy across multiple timelines. They are not even words that Wangji speaks to his own face in the mirror.
So, he rises, rights himself, sheds layers of raw honesty, only to become the statue once more, the watcher. ]
Until we meet again.
[ Until Wangji fails in his duties, and the boy-king of the Jin crosses paths with Wei Ying. He will want for a master, he supposes — a keeper of his chain. Jiang Cheng has been too long bereft of duty here. ]
no subject
Fairy lingers for a moment, black eyes staring up at white-cast stone, tilting her head as she considers. She wags her tail - once, twice - and then turns to follow her lost master, bereft of a port he can safely call home.
Things have to be different here. It is a belief struck so firmly in him that it will not waver. If all the respected seniors and masters of his past have failed time and time again to avert the tragedy, it doesn't matter. He will not fail. He will stop Wei Ying from recommitting his crimes and he will stop Wen Ning from becoming the knife and he will stop his parents from ever leaving him again.
Hubris and folly and youth wrapped in one, but he is as determined as he is heart broken.
And then he is gone. ]