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

[summerdude]

"My valkyrie," Magnus clarifies. "And best friend, outside of Galahad. Wait, do you know what that is?"

[lightbearinglord]

"Mn," Lan Wangji confirms. "I sought a book on the gods and myths of your world." He is quite grateful that he did; he has stood a slightly better chance of understanding Magnus' words as a result of his reading. "Samirah took you to Valhalla?"

[summerdude]

"Yeah," Magnus says. "It was a really controversial decision. She almost got fired from being a valkyrie for it, since I dropped my sword and nobody believed the fire-giant I was fighting was Surt. Even though it was. Every new einherji gets their story told during their first feast in Valhalla, you see. The story of how they died. And then their future is read. There are these seers who will determine what their future in Valhalla is, and if they have a godly parent or if they're just someone with a specific sort of belief in honor. Literally no one else in Valhalla has a Vanir god for a parent, except me. It's all Aesir... I don't know if your book said this, but the Aesir are mostly gods of war and the Vanir are gods of nature? But instead of the regular seers coming to read my future, the Norns came. The Norns," he explains, "Are these giant women who control fate. And they gave me a prophecy."

He closes his eyes, and quotes: "'Wrongly chosen, wrongly slain; a hero Valhalla cannot contain. Nine days hence the sun must go east, ere Sword of Summer unbinds the beast.' The Sword of Summer is Jack; he's destined to set Fenris Wolf loose at the start of Ragnarok. Everyone thought that the prophecy meant Sam chose me wrongly, but it turned out it meant that Loki marked me for death wrongly. He thought that I could be controlled into retrieving Jack, who had been lost for centuries, and then letting it go so that he could be freed. I couldn't." He thinks for a moment, then adds: "Because Sam actually did such a good job, though, Odin basically made her his special projects right-hand valkyrie."

Something occurs to Magnus, mid-stream. "I wonder if, if me and Jack just stay here, Ragnarok won't start?"

[lightbearinglord]

As ever, Lan Wangji listens attentively, and does his utmost to understand. It goes much better than it typically might, both due to his own reading and due to the fact that Magnus is making a slightly more consistent effort to explain his terminology than he typically does.

A small frown tugs at his face in answer to the last question. It is tempting, to some degree, to imagine that Magnus may simply never return to his world, never face any of what is supposedly in store for him. "Would you stay?"

[summerdude]

"I," Magnus says, and stops. He wants to say that, if it stopped Ragnarok, he'd never go back. That he would make that choice even if it meant never seeing another friend from home again. Or if he could hide Jack here, at least, so that what was prophesied could never come to pass. "I have responsibilities that are hard to turn away from. Even if they mean eventually I'll need to fight and die."

[lightbearinglord]

That is the answer Lan Wangji anticipated. If Magnus were not so diligent and dedicated, Lan Wangji would not have grown to care for him so deeply, but now he wants nothing more than to keep him from all potential harm for as long as he can. The arm around Magnus' shoulder tightens, just a little. "I understand," he says, and he does.

[summerdude]

"It's the Chase Space," Magnus explains. "That's -- my reward for defeating Loki was that the gods granted me the resources to turn my uncle's horrible old mansion into a shelter for homeless kids, like I used to be. Me and Alex run it together. Hearthstone and Blitzen help. I feel... I can't just drop it because it's easier to stay here." He frowns. "But if I knew for certain that I could stop Ragnarok forever by just staying here..." He rests his head against Lan Wangji's shoulder. "What about you?" he asks.

[lightbearinglord]

A shelter for homeless kids, naturally. Children like the child Wei Ying once was, fighting dogs in the streets for rancid scraps of leftover food. Lan Wangji experiences that familiar ache in his chest, another tripping step forward into loving someone new. He cannot pretend at surprise. He said it himself to Claudius, not long ago: this mansion will be a turning point for everyone who walks through its doors.

As is his way, he thinks on the question before he answers it, watching as, three trees away from them, a squirrel darts its way up into the thick autumn leaves. The mansion has its own beauty. "I miss the Cloud Recesses," he says. "I worry for my brother and my uncle. My disciples will get by without me, but I miss them, too."

[summerdude]

Magnus nods. "That's how I feel about my friends, too," he says.

[lightbearinglord]

The next silence is longer, Lan Wangji's thoughts stretching out slowly so that he is certain of them before he speaks them aloud. "I would return if I could," he says, "but I believe I would regret leaving this place as well." That is the first time he has expressed this aloud to anyone but Wei Ying. It is troubling, because there is no solution to it. He cannot have both.

[summerdude]

"It's hard," Magnus agrees. "There are people I love in both places." He shifts a little, so he can curl up harder against Lan Wangji's side. The branch barely sways. He sighs. "Even if I wanted to -- even if I tried -- I know I can't be here forever, though."

[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."