[This has taken a turn off the original point somewhere, which would explain why he feels a little lost suddenly. It certainly isn't what was meant to come from this, but he has never been good at maneuvering a conversation and isn't sure how to avert it.]
If necessary. But Cloud Recesses lies in the past of another world to him.
[One thing Lan Wangji will not do is to worry Klaudia again by leaving her messages without response. But what is there to say, when a cold pit of dread suffocates all thought?
It takes time and restraint to manage even these words and they are, perhaps, not his best work.]
[Getting a response like that feels like a scolding, albeit a mild one. The message ticks over to "Seen", but she doesn't respond right away. Has she said something wrong? It doesn't feel like she has, but he doesn't often stop her line of questioning so abruptly like this.]
[After a few seconds of sitting with that dejection, she starts to type back. Okay. Sorry. But the words feel bad. She's not even sure what she's apologizing for. She tries a few more permutations of the same thoughts but with more words, before finally deleting all of it and sitting with the empty text box and the cursor flashing.]
[Another uncomfortable minute passes. And then another. Finally, she starts tapping at the keys again, as if she's trying to outpace any misgivings. She clicks send before she has time to second guess herself.]
[All this hesitation is lost on him, as he has already set the phone down in an attempt to put any distance between himself and this thought. But he sees the message light up the screen. And if he managed to meet A-Yuan's calls for attention on days that the deep pit of loss within him made it impossible to care for anything, then he can pick up the phone for Klaudia now.]
[That response doesn't offer any insight to the nature of the rebuff except to highlight that there's some piece she's missing in all of this. He wasn't wronged; Wei Wuxian was? Had Lan Wangji's home wronged him somehow? Was it the rules? Or Lan Wangji himself? Wei Wuxian hadn't mentioned anything like that himself--and he certainly would have if he'd felt wronged by the place, wouldn't he?]
[She sits with her bewilderment for another few moments before picking out a more careful response:]
[So he can say whatever he likes about Cloud Recesses to Klaudia or to him. He can think whatever he likes about the rules that were used to sanction it.]
[That does not clarify anything, and only increases her confusion further--while also adding a layer of concern. That sounds like... a lot of people who did... something? To Wei Wuxian? And she is racking her brain, trying to think of what he's ever mentioned anything about this.]
[There was something about his reputation being bad? She remembers that, though she hadn't imagined it on this scale, and she can't imagine for what. She'd half thought he was joking at the time.]
But it had been too deliberate for that, aired out in the court of public opinion time and time again, then a conniving ambush.
A massacre.
But official count held that Wei Ying had killed more cultivators than anyone before him. Though who could truly tell in the end, who had been slain by his puppets and who by another's greedy sword? And what of the Wens, massacred?
A murder.
But he had died at nobody's hand but his own, not even Jiang Wanyin's. And his, not strong enough to keep him one last time.]
Eradicated evil.
[And what is evil? The Dafan Wen remnants, only trying to live in peace. The Yiling Patriarch, protecting the weak. The Yin Tiger Seal, coveted by all. And no goodness came from it at all.]
Edited (i can do html at 3am) 2021-10-31 01:11 (UTC)
[Klaudia blinks upon receiving this text, like her eyes must have read it wrong. Or did she make a mistake in what she asked? Was he mistaken in what he read? She has to scroll up to read the last few messages, slowly coming back down to... this. Eradicated evil. Eradicated...?]
[With a sudden jolting horror, Klaudia remembers what he'd said about dying once before, and everything crashes into place, dropping the ground out from under her. She had thought he meant to some creature--some kind of accident, not--]
[In a small, blind panic, she mashes a key and hits send.]
????????
[There has to be another explanation. Even a terrible reputation wouldn't-- The denial roils, an ill feeling washing over her. She knows they would. Wasn't she already familiar with stories like that? She should have put the pieces together. His mentioned death, his reputation, even they way he'd spoken about mobs back then... It was all right there. Literally all of it. Right there.]
[But she still stares at the text, and she can't understand why those words are on her screen. Her whole world is still tilted sideways, hanging on the strange distorted gravity that is this text from Lan Wangji of all people. Why would he say it like that? How could he say it like that?]
[He knows... Right, of course he knows. That settles her a little. Gravity realigns. At least she can make sense of this much, despite the horror she still feels.]
Then why? I don't understand. Why would they hurt him?
[He's funny and kind and clever and charming, and all of those things should mean that he's safe from all of this... How could so many people hate him that much?]
If it was so many people, then who brought him back? Was it you?
[The realization that she must have had some knowledge of his death and resurrection, to make that connection, is one that will settle in a little later. For now, it's all he can do to find a way to verbalize any of it at all, vaguely aware that this is a horror she should not be left with, though there is little to mitigate it. Perhaps she should not know at all.]
[Once again, Klaudia is left staring at her screen and trying to make sense of this new response. It was an answer to her question, but that couldn't be what he was trying to say. Only one text comes back at first:]
No.
[She refuses. This isn't reality. He's not dead. Not here, and he wouldn't be there. That's not how magic works. Lan Wangji is simply wrong.]
He's alive. He has a body. He said it was his. He can't be here if he's not alive. That's not how it works.
[He weathers her denial without response, mostly because he has nothing to refute it with, safe for the cruel reality they all live in. Once a path back home is opened to them, they can return, or they can have Wei Ying.
They cannot have both.]
He is alive. Here.
[He is alive, in this moment, somewhere in this city and finally Lan Wangji can act again, brought to his feet and moving as surely and inevitably as any Bonding Talisman, any thread of fate.]
[He's alive here. But not there. She knows how to read between the lines, but if he wasn't in their world, then where did he come from? It doesn't make sense, and moreover--it's just wrong. Viscerally. Wei Wuxian is good and heroic and generous and all those things that Lan Wangji had called him and more. She didn't want to think about a world so awful, so unjust and corrupted and wrong, that he wasn't in it.]
That's not how it works!!! What would you even know about it?? You don't know the magic here! You don't know anything!
[He knows Klaudia well enough now to know her passionate nature and her urge to shut out anything too awful to contemplate. But having it turned on him is a little startling still. Who better than him to know just how empty of Wei Ying his world truly is? And isn't she right to be furious? Isn't an anger so bitter and helpless and disbelieving that it drives tears into your eyes, bile and blood into your mouth, the most natural reaction? The only right reaction?
He finds he does not know what to do when this injustice is no longer his to carry alone. He has no guidance for this. Only affirmation.]
[It's not unfamiliar, this feeling that her emotions are a wave washing over her and yet meeting with the steadfast stone of his responses. It's not as much of a cage as it was before--but neither does he offer a path for her to escape. His words are stated as facts. Unyielding. And she can't stomach it.
The message flips to Seen, but no response is forthcoming, not even an attempt at one. Klaudia turns her phone off in anger and shoves it into her pocket. There's a restlessness in her chest now that won't settle, and she grabs her jacket and storms out the door. She doesn't have a destination; she hasn't thought that far ahead. She just needs to move. To be in motion, away from this.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
If necessary. But Cloud Recesses lies in the past of another world to him.
no subject
And besides, it's your home. He shouldn't make you think that he dislikes it if he actually doesn't.
no subject
It takes time and restraint to manage even these words and they are, perhaps, not his best work.]
Klaudia. Let it go.
no subject
[After a few seconds of sitting with that dejection, she starts to type back. Okay. Sorry. But the words feel bad. She's not even sure what she's apologizing for. She tries a few more permutations of the same thoughts but with more words, before finally deleting all of it and sitting with the empty text box and the cursor flashing.]
[Another uncomfortable minute passes. And then another. Finally, she starts tapping at the keys again, as if she's trying to outpace any misgivings. She clicks send before she has time to second guess herself.]
It's not fair. I just want him to be fair to you.
no subject
I was not wronged.
He was.
no subject
[She sits with her bewilderment for another few moments before picking out a more careful response:]
I don't understand.
Who wronged him? What happened?
no subject
[So he can say whatever he likes about Cloud Recesses to Klaudia or to him. He can think whatever he likes about the rules that were used to sanction it.]
no subject
[There was something about his reputation being bad? She remembers that, though she hadn't imagined it on this scale, and she can't imagine for what. She'd half thought he was joking at the time.]
What did they do?
no subject
But it had been too deliberate for that, aired out in the court of public opinion time and time again, then a conniving ambush.
A massacre.
But official count held that Wei Ying had killed more cultivators than anyone before him. Though who could truly tell in the end, who had been slain by his puppets and who by another's greedy sword? And what of the Wens, massacred?
A murder.
But he had died at nobody's hand but his own, not even Jiang Wanyin's. And his, not strong enough to keep him one last time.]
Eradicated evil.
[And what is evil? The Dafan Wen remnants, only trying to live in peace. The Yiling Patriarch, protecting the weak. The Yin Tiger Seal, coveted by all. And no goodness came from it at all.]
no subject
[With a sudden jolting horror, Klaudia remembers what he'd said about dying once before, and everything crashes into place, dropping the ground out from under her. She had thought he meant to some creature--some kind of accident, not--]
[In a small, blind panic, she mashes a key and hits send.]
????????
[There has to be another explanation. Even a terrible reputation wouldn't-- The denial roils, an ill feeling washing over her. She knows they would. Wasn't she already familiar with stories like that? She should have put the pieces together. His mentioned death, his reputation, even they way he'd spoken about mobs back then... It was all right there. Literally all of it. Right there.]
[But she still stares at the text, and she can't understand why those words are on her screen. Her whole world is still tilted sideways, hanging on the strange distorted gravity that is this text from Lan Wangji of all people. Why would he say it like that? How could he say it like that?]
He's not evil.
no subject
no subject
Then why? I don't understand. Why would they hurt him?
[He's funny and kind and clever and charming, and all of those things should mean that he's safe from all of this... How could so many people hate him that much?]
If it was so many people, then who brought him back? Was it you?
no subject
This world.
no subject
No.
[She refuses. This isn't reality. He's not dead. Not here, and he wouldn't be there. That's not how magic works. Lan Wangji is simply wrong.]
He's alive. He has a body. He said it was his. He can't be here if he's not alive. That's not how it works.
no subject
They cannot have both.]
He is alive. Here.
[He is alive, in this moment, somewhere in this city and finally Lan Wangji can act again, brought to his feet and moving as surely and inevitably as any Bonding Talisman, any thread of fate.]
no subject
That's not how it works!!! What would you even know about it?? You don't know the magic here! You don't know anything!
no subject
He finds he does not know what to do when this injustice is no longer his to carry alone. He has no guidance for this. Only affirmation.]
I know he was gone. I know it is impossible.
no subject
The message flips to Seen, but no response is forthcoming, not even an attempt at one. Klaudia turns her phone off in anger and shoves it into her pocket. There's a restlessness in her chest now that won't settle, and she grabs her jacket and storms out the door. She doesn't have a destination; she hasn't thought that far ahead. She just needs to move. To be in motion, away from this.]