I Embrace My Inner Tarzan [open post]

[summerdude]

There's a massive old oak about fifty yards west of Magnus's favorite clearing. It has thick, sturdy branches; he can climb nearly forty feet up it before he starts to worry about them holding his weight. There's a family of squirrels that lives nearby -- good squirrels, nothing like Ratatosk -- and Magnus likes to listen to them discuss their acorn deposits. Sometimes, when they're not looking, he'll grow and stash more acorns for them to discover; he's not sure how long the winters here get.

He's pretty sure it's cold outside, but it's not cold enough to affect him, and so he's still barefoot and in a t-shirt pretty much all the time.

Today, he's been scrounging in some of the out-buildings. There's a portable outdoor fireplace. While he doesn't feel the cold, he finds (contained) fires comforting, and it'll be nice to have some hot food, so he shoulders it and a makeshift grill surface, and lugs them to the base of his oak tree. Now he'll have an easier way of preparing the fish Mothwing sometimes leaves him than trying to summon the right amount of summer into them so that they cook and don't explode, at least.

He lights a modest fire, feeding it with fallen sticks. Then he shoves an apple, picked from another nearby tree, into his mouth and a book he'd pilfered from the library into the waistband of his pants, and climbs up an easy ten feet to his favorite branch. Things don't seem so bad, living out here.

Comments

[lightbearinglord]

Thoughtful still, Lan Wangji slides the hand curled around Magnus' shoulder down to bestow a fond squeeze upon his elbow. The thought of being parted from Magnus is painful. So is the thought of never again seeing the Cloud Recesses, the impeccably-tended gardens and the bamboo and the inside of the jingshi. "That jade token grants you entry without question to the Cloud Recesses." Clearly, this is more than a little wishful thinking. If they were granted the ability to leave, it seems unlikely that every world would become open to every other. Still; he wants Magnus to know.

[summerdude]

Magnus twists his head to stare up at Lan Wangji, shocked. Absently, he brings a hand up and touches the jade pendant strung on his necklace next to Jack. "I know I'm leaving someday because it's been prophesied that I'll get to talk to my mom again, before Ragnarok," he says. "I don't know where she went when she died. All I know is it wasn't Valhalla or Helheim." He fidgets, fingers stroking over the smooth surface of the token, so touched he can't bring himself to voice his feelings about it. If it wasn't for that, and the Chase Space, and Alex, he really thinks he might prefer to stay. Or to go to Lan Wangji's world, and see his home.

[lightbearinglord]

Obviously, it is vital that Magnus see his mother again, even if only once. Lan Wangji can hardly imagine what he might do in the pursuit of speaking with his own mother a final time. He hopes that he would be able to speak at all, to tell her everything that she missed and to explain Wei Ying to her. He knows that she would love his husband.

It takes a noticeable moment for Lan Wangji to master himself after that thought, and he breathes carefully through it. "You must talk with her if you can," he agrees. "But my home is open to you if it becomes possible."

[summerdude]

"Hanguang-jun," Magnus says, blinking^*. "Thank you."

*He's the personification of :pleading_face: right now. FYI.

[lightbearinglord]

Again, there is nothing Lan Wangji can say that does not amount to slicing himself open on a tree branch in the middle of the woods. He has, for now, had enough of being bared to the world. So he looks down at Magnus, terribly and dangerously fond for a moment, and then returns to watching the small and varied movements of the forest around them.

[summerdude]

Magnus is content to let the silence settle around them, but he does have further questions, so eventually he stirs. "There's something else I've been wondering," he says, quietly.

[lightbearinglord]

Immediately attentive, Lan Wangji settles his gaze back on Magnus' face, as much as he can while they are seated like this. "What is it?"

[summerdude]

"It's my age," Magnus says. "I don't know how old I should think of myself as."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji frowns, although he makes the effort to subsequently smooth his features shortly thereafter. "What is the trouble?"

[summerdude]

"Like, I died on my sixteenth birthday," Magnus says. "And I'm always going to look like this. So maybe I'm sixteen? But that was eight years ago, and it's not like I haven't grown up in Valhalla, mentally. So maybe I'm twenty-four? Or maybe I'm just, like, an ageless being now."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji had been so entirely convinced that Magnus was roughly the same age as Sizhui that this does take a moment to sink in properly, and his face is blank during this process. He does, however, apply himself to thinking about the answer before he speaks.

"One of the aims of cultivation is immortality," he says, "and high cultivation can slow the aging process even if immortality is not attained." This is why he looks approximately ten years younger than he is, for instance. "With the passage of time, wisdom is always accrued. You may be neither sixteen nor twenty-four." Ageless being certainly isn't right, either. Magnus is no distant and aloof immortal atop a lofty peak. He is warmth and life personified. "You are yourself. It may be that you need to discover what that means as you go along."

[summerdude]

Magnus considers this carefully. He thinks it makes a lot of sense. It's nice to hear he doesn't have to decide right away. "Aziraphale told me I could be twenty-four," he says. "Sometimes I still feel sixteen, I think. Sometimes I feel like I haven't had a normal life since my mom died, and there's no good way to pin myself down."

He glances up at Lan Wangji. "How old do I seem to you? Out of curiosity."

[lightbearinglord]

Some very subtle sheepishness crosses Lan Wangji's expression for a fraction of a moment. This is difficult for him to answer objectively. The first time he saw Magnus, he saw the echo of his own memories, of the first time Sizhui held a sword and Lan Wangji talked him through the first steps of the Lan clan's most basic sword forms.

He considers him, the fall of his freshly-neatened hair and the grey of his eyes, the impression of ghosts within them. There is something of a gravity to Magnus, something that Sizhui and Jingyi and their peers do not have most days. Maybe it is the additional years or maybe it is the bloodshed that Magnus has seen, the unchecked violence that Lan Wangji has been so relieved to spare his students from witnessing. They all performed beautifully during the second siege of the Burial Mounds, and he is proud -- but he wishes they had not needed to.

"Neither sixteen nor twenty-four," he says again, with a fresh measure of deliberation, but he has to admit, soft with that precipitous fondness, "but I see my disciples when I look at you."

[summerdude]

Magnus's hand comes up and he touches the jade token again, reflexively. He remembers what Lan Wangji said about a particularly special disciple, back when Magnus accused Lan Wangji of being a deadbeat dad. His heart thuds. "Okay," he says, smiling down at his lap. "I can take that."

[lightbearinglord]

When Lan Wangji emerged from his seclusion, scars tight and still painful on his back, he felt as though he had forgotten every carefully-gathered scrap of knowledge about how to be a part of the world. He was encased in a sheet of ice, brittle with grief and too aware that his life was a gift handed to him by his uncle, who loved him too much to punish him as harshly as he deserved. It was a gift he was only barely certain he wanted. He had meditated for days on end, time enough that the yawning wound of his grief had just begun to scab over with the understanding that Wei Ying was gone. The loss was permanent, and nothing would ever again be as it was.

A-Yuan had grown in his absence, and his fever had washed away his memory of the Burial Mounds and the Wen remnants. Lan Qiren handed the child to Lan Wangji with tempered irritation, as though to say Here, you wanted him, and Lan Wangji was frozen. He was in Yiling again, A-Yuan's tears soaking through his robes and all the passersby laughing about Lan Wangji's stiffness, his unsuitability to caring for a child.

The two of them had to learn one another. By then, A-Yuan recognized Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren more readily, and would cry and ask for them. Lan Wangji, who wanted to give him everything he asked for, complied, until the first time that A-Yuan drifted to sleep in his arms instead. Lan Wangji stared down at him in shock. There was a stirring in him, new life green and tender through the coating of frost. A-Yuan was warm, heavier than Lan Wangji could have imagined for a child so small and sweet. Lan Wangji held him until he awoke, the skin and bones of his chest feeling so thin that a breeze could have carried his heart away if it so wished.

Here, now, with Magnus a steady warmth on his side, he is immensely grateful for every slow change that time has visited upon him. He knows now how to be gentle, how to watch a young person grow with pride and love, how to accept the gift of trust that comes with another person relaxing into his hold and believing without fear that Lan Wangji will allow no harm to come to them.

He smiles, quick, just a hint of it like sunlight catching on a white jade token at the perfect angle. Magnus may leave. They may be parted, and Lan Wangji may know a new kind of grief. Still: he is glad for this day, this tree, and this boy.

[summerdude]

"I've been practicing my handstands," Magnus offers, since it seems to be topical.

[lightbearinglord]

The smile is gone, but its warmth does remain as Lan Wangji looks at Magnus. "And?"

[summerdude]

"I'm getting pretty good at them," Magnus says. He hesitates a moment, then says, "Would you teach me something else?"

[lightbearinglord]

Of course Magnus is getting good at handstands. Lan Wangji is unsurprised, but pleased nonetheless. "We discussed painting," he recalls. "Or is there something else in particular?"

[summerdude]

"I do want to learn to paint," Magnus says. He shrugs. Very casually, he asks, "What do your disciples learn?"

[lightbearinglord]

With alarming clarity, Lan Wangji pictures Magnus Chase wearing a forehead ribbon. The image is so charming that it comes shockingly close to making him smile again.

"Lan clan sword techniques," he recites, taking the question at face value even as he understands that there is something else beneath it. "Musical cultivation; some play the qin, as I do, but others play the xiao. As I said before: painting, calligraphy, and weiqi. There is a great deal of theory to study as well. When I deem them ready, they can apply it in practice and embark on night-hunts. Initially, I supervise. With time, I allow them to go alone, as long as they carry the signal flare that can alert me immediately if they need my assistance."

[summerdude]

Even more exceedingly casually, Magnus says, "Do you think I could learn any of that stuff? Maybe not the sword techniques right now. Unless you can just teach them to Jack, I guess; he isn't taking a break from fighting to try and figure out other options."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji pauses, although he is certain of his answer. He tucks Magnus a little more firmly against his side. "Any of the gentlemanly arts, yes, with time. I'm not certain if you can learn to cultivate, with your demigodly nature already in evidence, but I will teach you to meditate, too, if you like. Whatever you wish to try, you may."

[summerdude]

"Okay, Hanguang-jun," Magnus says, satisfied. "It turns out I really like learning things when I'm not forced to learn them to escape certain death. I haven't really had the opportunity to do anything school-y since my mom died."

[lightbearinglord]

"It is rewarding," Lan Wangji agrees. Magnus always deserved better than the fate he was dealt, time on the streets and a mother torn from him by violence. There is no going back, but Lan Wangji can give him something softer now.