that the blood you bleed; open

[equivocations]

WHO: Lan Xichen + open

WHAT: event aftermath, dealing with having a temporary ceramic arm, and possible info sharing around it

WHEN: running from the end of the camping event through now

WHERE: the gym, the hotel lobby, the guest level, his room

NOTES: likely discussion of violence, limb loss, and nonconsensual medical procedures - I'll match either brackets or prose in replies!

When they'd been told that those injured would be taken away for medical attention, Lan Xichen had anticipated that may not mean anything good. He hadn't expected... this. After waking up in his quarters back at the hotel, there'd been very little pain. That alone would have been something of a marvel, considering the fact that within the last day his left arm had been completely torn off and replaced with one made of ceramic, but then there is the ceramic arm itself.

He can't figure out how it's attached. He can feel its weight, a solid presence that feels every bit like an arm should - except that it is completely nonresponsive. Even if its joints were articulated, he couldn't get it to move at all. It is... disconcerting, in a way he has no words to express, how it feels simultaneously as though he has no arm at all and one that is completely foreign.

In an attempt to learn more, he can be found in the gym - not making use of the equipment, but standing in front of one of the mirrors in the changing area or the dance studio. He is dressed, for the most part, in a long blue skirt and a long-sleeved blue overcoat, but the coat itself is loose, and currently pulled down enough on the left side to completely expose his shoulder and the upper part of the ceramic arm. His fingers smooth over the lines where it's joined to his skin, gaze split between the arm itself and its reflection in the mirror. His focus is intent enough that it may take him a moment to realize someone else has come into the room, but when he does he'll pull the fabric somewhat awkwardly back up over his shoulder.

"My apologies. I needed a reflective surface larger than what is available in my room."

He may also be found in the hotel lobby, walking among the shops set up by the traveling merchants. His long sleeves hide the ceramic arm, but it's still tucked immobile at his side as he walks. The claim of the spiritual properties of the items for sale is certainly not unheard of for him - but neither is the knowledge that claims such as these are not always truthful, and he has no access to his own spiritual power to be able to test it.

Still, he is curious, and when he spots someone else looking, he approaches them.

"Have you purchased anything?"

Or maybe he's in the hallway of the guest rooms, making his way back to his room with a tray of food balanced in one arm. Something jostles him - stepping out of the way of an opening door, perhaps, or moving to the side to accommodate a staff member or another guest - and he adjusts instinctively, intending to bring up his other arm to steady his load.

Only, of course, he cannot, and he realizes it too late to completely correct the imbalance. The tray doesn't quite slip from his grasp, but one or two dishes tumble from it before he can catch them.

At any time, for those who might go looking for him, he can be found in his room, both during the week that he has the ceramic arm and the time shortly after, when he wakes up in his room to find a flesh and bone replacement in its stead. He has taken to leaving his door unlocked when he's in the room, so he doesn't need to get up from his meditations to open it, and should anyone knock he'll call for them to enter.

Comments

[billowing]

"Then it could have taken my arm instead of yours," he answers, firmly. Wangji now has everything he could want: prestige, power, his love, his family, his son. He would gladly give up his arm to take something off of Xichen's shoulders, the way he knows Xichen would gladly give up for him if he got to choose.

He knows that Xichen is happy for him, but he should have reasons to be happy for himself, too. And he knows that, were this sixteen years ago, it was the opposite: Xichen was the brother with all the good luck, and Wangji the one with all the burden. Had that not also moved Xichen at the time?

But that hardly mattered, because they were the twin jades of Gusu. Even without their swords, even without their cores, they still had their skills, still had their discipline. And at least Lan Wangji has retained his stubbornness.

[equivocations]

Only his brother could prompt a simultaneous feeling of alarm at the very idea and exasperated fondness at the stubbornness. There is no arguing with Wangji in this, he knows - both because he knows his brother, and because he knows that there would be no arguing with Lan Xichen himself, if their situations were reversed.

There had been no arguing with him, when he had watched the pain Wangji was in and wanted nothing more than to do everything in his power to ease it. Even now, he knows he hadn't done enough. It's easy for him to be calm, he supposes, when he believes that Wangji has more need of both of his arms than he himself does. When he would prefer it to be him, rather than his brother, who made the sacrifice.

"Then I would be here holding Xuehua for you, wishing it had taken my arm instead."

It isn't intended to be dismissive of Wangji's feelings, just acknowledgement. They will likely always wish to take some of the burden away from the other, and Lan Xichen will not tell him that he shouldn't. It's only that the circumstances here are - different.

"It was not my life at risk in that moment. It was Meng Yao's. I could not - I will not try to convince you not to sacrifice for me the way that I would for you, but I could not ask you do to the same for him."

[billowing]

He supposes not. And since technically he'd already lost an arm in the first place - perhaps Xiongzhang had thought his own would be a worthy replacement so that Meng Yao would not have to bear that pain. He knows, if it would have changed anything about how the others had treated Wei Ying, if he could have lived a happy and fulfilling life afterwards, there would be no doubt in his mind he would've gladly leapt off that cliff in his stead.

These Lan boys really are both saps at heart.

He doesn't know, at this moment, that it will heal, that Xichen will get his arm back. He'd think he was unable to take up his sword again, to play his flute again. And where would he be, bereft of his ability to play qin?

He is unsatisfied with the result but unable to tell his brother anything else on the matter. He just has to settle this as brothers do: pettily. "Mn," he says, because he doesn't wish to argue it further but mostly because Xichen deserves peace and quiet. And rabbits.

He holds out Xuehua, if Xichen would like to receive him.

[equivocations]

His mouth presses in a little, hiding the way his lips want to curl up in a tiny smile. He knows very well that Wangji is being petty, and he shouldn't smile fondly at it when his brother has successfully dismissed the argument without conceding any points. But he is fond, exceedingly so.

And he doesn't want his brother to be unhappy. "Next time, I will stay by your side."

There will always be a next time, and he can't promise the times after that, but he can agree to stay close to Wangji the next time they find themselves in a dangerous situation.

He takes the newly named rabbit back, cradling him gently against his chest, and just as carefully changes the subject.

"Wuxian has offered to come with me again, if they return as they said they would." Which Wangji may already know, but he doesn't bring it up just to inform him of it. Wuxian had brushed off Lan Xichen's concerns about the danger. Wangji will not.

"His own safety does not often seem to factor much into his plans." It isn't a criticism. It's worry.

[billowing]

"He often does," he responds, lips tightening, because he knows that's just how it is and trying to convince Wei Ying to do anything else but put himself in danger is just a good way to get him to do it but faster.

But what can he do when his heart likes to seek out the most dangerous thing? He just suffers in silence. Or, in this case, he suffers under the watchful eye of his Xiongzhang who wishes the best for him.

"I will try to speak with him." Because if he will listen to anyone, it's Lan Wangji. Or he will just stalk off and go be Yiling Laozu anyway, but he supposes if he's gained any rights since proposing to him, it'd be the one to make decisions as a family unit, and not just as an individual.

He goes to pick up the other rabbit, so they can both be holding one, and so they won't feel left out by being embraced by one of their humans. Clearly that is something rabbits worry about.

[equivocations]

There's the tiniest wince when Wangji says he'll try to speak to him.

"I've already agreed to his plan. It's a good idea, and it seemed unlikely I could talk him out of it."

His fingers curl up, burying themselves in Xuehua's fur.

"It's not the risk of this plan specifically that concerns me. We all must take actions that come with risk, both to ourselves and to others, and ultimately we have to be the judge of whether that risk is acceptable."

It's not the first time that someone he cares about has made a plan with considerable risk to themselves, weighed it against the possible outcomes, and found it to be acceptable. It won't be the last. It's only that Lan Xichen fears that for Wuxian, the answer to the question is this worth the potential harm it could cause me will almost always be yes.

"Is there a way that I can help, to convince him his life, his needs, his wants, are not less than anyone else's? That there is more than one person who cares about what happens to him?"

He had tried unsuccessfully, once, in Yiling, to ask Wuxian to come to Gusu, to tell him that there were people who cared about him and were hurt when he acted recklessly. He knows more now than he did then, but there will never be anyone who knows Wei Wuxian better than Wangji.

[billowing]

"No," he answers, truthfully. "Even when I proposed to him, he hadn't thought that I had done so out of love," he answers. And, to be fair, he kind of did it at a very strangely inopportune moment, but he'd thought it quite clear in that case that love had come first and everything else had followed. He was a Lan, after all.

But that means that Xiongzhang couldn't even prove that he cared for Wei Ying for Wei Ying and not as a proxy for Lan Wangji even after proposing, which Wangji suggests that he does not do for very obvious reasons.

He shoots him a look that says, can you blame him? After all, his own family had forsaken him, and those who had professed to admire him growing up had all turned on him. He'd even thought that Lan Wangji had turned on him, in those days, when he'd been concerned over the corruption of his soul. It was hard for him to build up that trust, that people cared for him, that they wouldn't just cast him out again immediately. Wei Ying had not witnessed Lan Xichen doing so much for him, sticking his neck out for him, willing to listen to him levy accusations against Jin Guangyao.

And so, he fears, it would not be something so easily gained. And therefore, Wei Ying was subject to forgetting his worth in the interim.

[equivocations]

Lan Xichen looks down, briefly, hiding both the curve of a smile and the faint edge of exasperation. Of course he hadn't. He supposes he should consider himself lucky that Wuxian had accepted at all, and he hadn't had to start hinting increasingly obviously at him again.

He tips his head a little in acknowledgement, a tiny nod. Lan Xichen spares a moment for regret, at his own contributions to that, and then sets it aside. He cannot change his actions in the past, and wallowing in guilt will do nothing to help now.

He is already motivated to help make things different.

"Then I will learn how. Until he will never have to wonder who will stand behind him, just as you will not."

[billowing]

No, he cannot change the actions of the past, but he knows that Lan Xichen will try to change the future, and change the events of the past when he sees an opportunity.

Wangji does not want to let this play out when Wei Ying's life is at stake, but he cannot bet or barter with it, as it belongs to Wei Ying alone.

So, he will only continue to try and convince him, as his heart steals out of his chest and walks away wearing a red ribbon.

"Mm. We must. Thank you, Xiongzhang." Because he could just as easily call this Wangji's problems. He has enough to shoulder, after all. But now they are all family, he supposes. And so they must all share the same burdens.