By the time Lan Wangji's path has taken him to Wei Ying's door, Klaudia has still not responded to his last message. It leaves him with an ill feeling on top of the roil of emotions their exchange had caused. How had it taken such a harrowing turn? Would it have been better to say nothing at all? Who better to know the cruelty of having a person one cares for so wronged. And most of it isn't his to share regardless.
He should have been more in command of himself and the conversation, he should not have allowed himself to be so shaken by a question whose painful significance she could not have known. Or could she have? Her reaction implied she knew something of Wei Ying's death. What had he told her? Yet it hadn't been enough to soften the horror and impotent fury at his fate, clearly coming as a shock to her. A horror he still has no answer for, for Klaudia.
For himself, though, there is Wei Ying. For the bile and bitterness of recalling how their whole world had dragged his name through the dirt, had driven him up a barren graveyard mountain and then down, down to the bottom of a cliff, there is Wei Ying free of worries in this world. For the ache of knowing he will not return home so long as it is a world devoid of the one who knows him, there is Wei Ying alive and well in this one, and there is the promise he had made to cherish this every day.
And that is why Lan Wangji is knocking on his door now, heart racing in his chest and fist wrapped around a second key to his own door, clutched so tightly it will leave a mark on his palm.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2021-11-05 10:59 pm (UTC)He should have been more in command of himself and the conversation, he should not have allowed himself to be so shaken by a question whose painful significance she could not have known. Or could she have? Her reaction implied she knew something of Wei Ying's death. What had he told her? Yet it hadn't been enough to soften the horror and impotent fury at his fate, clearly coming as a shock to her. A horror he still has no answer for, for Klaudia.
For himself, though, there is Wei Ying. For the bile and bitterness of recalling how their whole world had dragged his name through the dirt, had driven him up a barren graveyard mountain and then down, down to the bottom of a cliff, there is Wei Ying free of worries in this world. For the ache of knowing he will not return home so long as it is a world devoid of the one who knows him, there is Wei Ying alive and well in this one, and there is the promise he had made to cherish this every day.
And that is why Lan Wangji is knocking on his door now, heart racing in his chest and fist wrapped around a second key to his own door, clutched so tightly it will leave a mark on his palm.