I Have GOT To Pick Better Habits [semi-closed post]

[summerdude]

The zombies are gone, the bodies are healed, the Magnus is exhausted. He's had an extremely strange few days. First, everyone else seems to start unloading their entire hearts at him -- unexpected! But pretty cool! -- and then he wakes up to zombies.

It really gets him thinking, is the thing. He's been practicing swordplay daily since arriving, sparring with people or against Jack, trying to keep a hand in and not let his mediocre skills atrophy. He's also been exercising in new-to-him invigorating ways, learning new stuff, meeting new people...

He likes it here. He really, really likes it here. He misses his friends back home more than words can possibly express, but if he went back to Valhalla right now, he'd miss the people here, too, some of them even equally as bad. And he doesn't want to subject these people all to Valhalla -- it's really not for everyone -- but he also can't figure out how to bring all his people here. Jack still can't rip through the barriers between worlds here like he can anywhere else in the Nine.

He likes it here... and it's becoming abundantly clear to him that he doesn't want to fight all the time anymore. The zombies have made it really, stunningly clear how much he doesn't miss Battle Practice or dying all the time. The rest has clued him into how much he likes learning new things, and talking to different kinds of people, and figuring out who he is when he's not constantly in crisis all the time, zombies aside.

But liking it here so much feels kind of like a betrayal? Especially after all the specific, deliberate choices he's made to stay in Valhalla with his people. And this sobers him, a little, blunting the rough edge of the adrenaline that's still coursing through his body.

His thoughts are distracting and, thusly preoccupied as he walks through the halls in the vague direction of his room, a shower, and a nap, he absently reaches out and returns Jack to pendant form...

And immediately passes out.

[Post intended for anyone who will be particularly upset by Magnus passing out xoxo]]

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[lightbearinglord]

Immediately, Lan Wangji recalls what Magnus told him the second time they met about how this works, the way that Jack can drain him. He frowns, but at least this is a situation with understandable precedent. He lets the passage of qi between them slow and stop, but continues holding onto Magnus' hand. "How do you feel now?"

[summerdude]

"Drained," Magnus says, with a rueful smile. "Between the energy drain of Jack flying me through the window and mowing down thousands of zombies on his own, plus all the sunlight and healing and fighting I did... It's been a while since I've fought like that." His smile dims. "Hanguang-jun?"

[lightbearinglord]

"I'm here." Convinced finally that Magnus will come through this, Lan Wangji lets the tiniest amount of his tension fade away.

[summerdude]

"I think," Magnus says, slowly, testing out both the thought and the act of sharing it aloud, "I don't like it."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji is silent in answer to this, his hand around Magnus' gentle but unyielding. He gazes at Magnus' face, the untidy fall of his hair and how tired he looks, too tired for a teenager. A teenager who died, and whose reward for that brave death was to die again and again, to fight again and again. Surely he has given enough.

"Then rest," he says finally, "and don't fight again. I can fight for you if it is necessary."

[summerdude]

Magnus sniffles at that, which is so embarrassing -- why does he keep crying in front of Lan Wangji! "I'm already, like, Peace Guy," he says. "Moderation Dude. The healer of the party. My friends usually pick up my slack in, like, battles, and I get to have the creative wins. Like a fight of insults instead of swords, or trying to come up with, like, any different path to achieving a goal that most einherjar would respond to with violence." He doesn't even mind standing out in Valhalla for this reason, because his friends like him and that's what matters. "But even though I've been training, I haven't had to really fight since I got here. I'm glad that I can hold my own now, I guess."

[lightbearinglord]

Again, Lan Wangji is quiet for a time. He was seventeen when the Sunshot Campaign began, seventeen the first time he found himself wading across a battlefield with bodies falling left and right. It is impossible to imagine the person he might have become otherwise, but he has always wanted Sizhui and Jingyi and their classmates to have the chance to find out.

"I am glad that you can hold your own," he says carefully, "but you should not have to."

[summerdude]

"No," Magnus agrees, somewhat miserably. "But I've got to."

[lightbearinglord]

"No." This answer requires no pause or thought. Lan Wangji's voice is calm but brooks no argument. "You are here now, not in Valhalla. And I'm here, too."

[summerdude]

For now, Magnus doesn't say. He knows he'll end up back in Valhalla. It's foretold. He can't die in Ragnarok if he's not in Valhalla. "Okay, Hanguang-jun," he says, voice trembling a little. And then, bravely: "Would you, um. Maybe. Stroke my hair? ...Is that weird?"

[lightbearinglord]

There is a tiny pause, but only because Lan Wangji is so surprised by the request. Not because it is, as Magnus says, weird, but only because casual physical intimacy of this kind of is so rarely requested of him from anyone but his husband. Sizhui has mostly grown out of it, although not entirely. Lan Wangji hopes he never does entirely.

If it will help Magnus, he will do it. Weirdness is irrelevant. With the hand that isn't holding Magnus', he brushes the hair back from Magnus' forehead and does as he is asked. He is, as with most things, methodical and measured but far from cold about it as he smooths Magnus' hair as gently as he has ever stroked the fur of the Cloud Recesses' many rabbits.

[summerdude]

Magnus sniffles again, and a tear (or two) leaks out. "Sorry I keep crying in front of you, Hanguang-jun," he says.

[lightbearinglord]

"Do not apologize to me," Lan Wangji answers, and it is, technically, an order, but he means it gently, and that is how he says it. He diverts very briefly and wipes Magnus' cheek for him with the soft edge of his sleeve before returning to his task.

[summerdude]

"Yessir," Magnus says, with a shaky breath. For reasons he can't fully divine, through the ache in his chest and the lump in his throat and the slow leak of another tear, something about this makes him realize: "I really miss my mom."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji knows his answer to this immediately, but it takes him some time to dredge the words up from within the depths of himself. It should be a simple sentiment, but it is, in fact, one of the handful he keeps buried the deepest, one that colors nearly everything else, one of the most precious and fundamental. It was only the other day that he spoke, without meaning to, of kneeling outside the jingshi, waiting and waiting for someone he knew was not coming, surrounded by gentians and falling snow.

"I miss my mother as well." He shuts his eyes, but only for the time it takes to exhale, once. Then he returns to watching Magnus' face.

[summerdude]

"Yeah?" Magnus asks. A tiny voice in the back of his mind says, dead mom club!; he ignores it. "I bet yours was as nice as you." He closes his eyes, too, but mostly so he can lose himself in the feeling of Lan Wangji's hand on his hair. "Mine would take me camping every weekend. So we could sense my dad, she said, but also because I... struggled, being inside. We lived in an apartment over a really good Korean barbecue restaurant. I think she knew something was going to happen, the day she died? She knew the truth about my dad. And..." His voice wavers, and he sniffles. More tears trickle out even though he's squeezed his eyes even tighter shut, trying not to remember the blue glow of the wolves' eyes as they crashed into their apartment. "She didn't make me fight, either. She told me to run when the wolves came, that she would find me later. But they murdered her. The building exploded. The police thought I did it."

[lightbearinglord]

Some of the details of this story are lost on Lan Wangji, but he doesn't consider it important to question or pursue them. He can understand the meaning. Gently, he continues to dry Magnus' tears where necessary, but otherwise keeps the hand in his hair where it is, its movements unceasing. Magnus' mother wanted to protect him, and she succeeded, to some extent -- but she gave her life for it. Lan Wangji has a golden core and a sword and a qin that responds to the slightest touch of his qi. He can take up this mantle on her behalf. He is quiet as he says, "Your mother wanted you to live in peace. So do I."

[summerdude]

Magnus sobs at that. He turns his head into Lan Wangji's touch, his tears sinking into Lan Wangji's robes (again), where they spread slowly. "I don't want you to die," he says. For me, he means. Because Ragnarok is my future, he means. Because people I love get hurt when they try to help me, he means. He is fourteen again, hiding in a dumpster, given no time to process his mother's death; he is fifteen, alone but for two weird also-homeless guys (Hearthstone and Blitzen) who have an unexplainable interest in his well-being and who the other street kids laughingly call his mom and dad; he is sixteen and dying for strangers as a fire giant targeting him is hurting everyone else in the area, too; he is sixteen forever and his uncle is trying to sacrifice him to bring his own children back and nearly destroying both Samirah and Alex in the process. He is sixteen and twenty-four and alone in a strange place; he is sixteen and twenty-four and none of the people who make him feel less alone truly understand what it takes to be an einherji. He doesn't want them to know. It's not their burden. It shouldn't be their burden. He should have done more today. He wishes he didn't have to do anything.

[lightbearinglord]

There is nothing Lan Wangji can do but pull Magnus up, easily enough with their hands still linked, and fold him into a proper embrace, Magnus' head tucked into his shoulder and both of Lan Wangji's arms around him. It's a little less tidy than those first two, outside on the grass, because Magnus' face is so damp already and because of the way they're sitting, but Lan Wangji doesn't allow that to deter him. He cannot promise not to die. Magnus has seen him in battle now, and knows that he would be very difficult to kill -- but that is no guarantee, and Lan Wangji would prefer not to make promises he can't be sure of keeping. So he only holds onto him, steady.

[summerdude]

Magnus clings. He barely has the presence of mind to moderate his strength. "Do you think it's because my dad is the god of peace?" he asks, muffled against Lan Wangji's chest. "That I don't like it?"

[lightbearinglord]

The force with which Magnus holds onto him is surprising, but not unwelcome. Lan Wangji tightens his hold in turn. "No. You are your own person." Magnus is not his father, just as Lan Wangji is not his.

[summerdude]

"I feel guilty," Magnus tells him then. "I shouldn't... I chose this."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji has to consider this, because he suspects his answer might matter, and because Magnus is worth the time and thought. He doesn't release or loosen his arms around him. It would seem that Magnus, too, can withstand him. "You are permitted to choose something new."

[summerdude]

"I was the only one who got a choice," Magnus says. "Everyone I love is in Valhalla." He shakes his head, hiding another flush of tears against Lan Wangji's front, and corrects himself: "Everyone I love from before I came here, I mean. I -- I'm the last hope. The harbinger of the last gasp of summer before the final winter. I keep it, the world, alive for longer. Frey... Dad... he said... I can't just ignore that, Hanguang-jun."

[lightbearinglord]

Now Lan Wangji does, again, hold Magnus to him with slightly greater force. He could modulate himself, could keep his strength further at bay, but it doesn't seem necessary. What Magnus describes is an undue burden to put on a child, particularly one as sensitive and kind-hearted as Magnus. He lifts a hand back to Magnus' head, just cradling it for a moment before he resumes stroking his hair, working out its tangles.

If what Magnus says is truly foretold, Lan Wangji cannot stop it for him. He would like to. He is no longer so interested in these visitor's passes. He would like to storm his way into Valhalla regardless and demand that whatever powers govern Magnus' world release him. But he has not even managed to leave this tiny world. And he is not a god after all.

All he can offer, then, his voice still steady, is, "So be it. Then you will not be alone when it comes time to face it."