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The jagged stone is rough beneath his cheek.
Even the smallest movement scrapes, tearing at tender flesh, heightening the sensation of each tiny blade of stone in the unforgiving slab on which he lies.
He imagines each of them like worms, biting and burrowing into his bloated skin, eating away at it until there is nothing left but bone to grind harshly against coarse rock.
This is what Wei Ying has chosen to focus on, now. He thinks there have been other such unintriguing points that have drawn the fragments of his attention, maybe some that were more important, but this seems as good a thing as any to pass the time. To keep what remains of his mind from scattering too far.
His skin is raw, withered and constantly pruned from the ever-present dampness in the barren cell, if it can even be called such a thing. There is a door, but there is never any light peaking across the floor, no shadows of footsteps or passing voices. It never opens to offer food, nor reveal a captor. It never opens at all, save to admit one person.
There is no sound beyond the innerworkings of his own body and the irregular drip of water in the far corner from his mock-bed. (He never did discover its source. He must have tried, he would have, in the beginning. He can’t remember, but he must not have found it, or it must not have offered him anything useful.) In the unending, stretched-out silence, it’s like nails driving slowly into his skull: maddening.
He has long since stopped lapping up the sparse wetness like the dogs in the street. Better that this ends sooner. He doesn’t even feel the thirst anymore, or the hunger, if he ever did.
He thinks, maybe, that he used to know why he was here, how he became trapped in this eternal prison. He thinks, probably, that he fought hard to hold onto this knowledge, to hold onto something, maybe hope of escape. But that was a long time ago. He has nothing against which to measure the passage of time, save his own decaying body, but he is certain of this.
The door never opens, save to admit one person.
Lan Zhan appears differently to him every time, that’s what makes it worse. That is what had preserved his hope those first few dozens of times that maybe this one was the real Lan Zhan, his real savior. Once, Lan Zhan had staggered in, robes torn and soaked in blood, hardly able to hold himself up with his sword, like he’d battled fiercely to come here, to find him. They were supporting each other, stumbling towards the door, Wei Ying’s spirit soaring with fevered hope, when the scene reset itself, as it always did, and once again he lay on his side, eyes filled with grey wall, stone digging into his cheek.
He doesn’t remember how many Lan Zhan’s ago that was. It feels like many.
He doesn’t always speak to them, had not acknowledged many of the Lan Zhan’s after that one, no matter how they’d pleaded. They all employed different tactics to secure his attention, to entice him to play his part in this cruel, cyclical fantasy. He’s not sure which is most similar to his real Lan Zhan.
He doesn’t remember much beyond these walls. He doesn’t know what’s waiting for him outside of them – only Lan Zhan. That Lan Zhan is there, and he thinks, he hopes, that the real Lan Zhan loves him, maybe is looking for him, maybe misses him, or at least mourned him. He isn’t sure, but it’s all he’s retained, hoarded somewhere deep inside himself, and he’s kept it close, in spite of the pain.
Lan Zhan doesn’t come every day (whatever constitutes a day in here). Wei Ying doesn’t know how often he comes – just that sometimes a new Lan Zhan appears when the old had just faded away, and sometimes it feels like endless years before he visits again, a brilliant star against a chasmic midnight sky.
The part of his mind which somehow clings to coherency, which doesn’t lay in tattered ribbons somewhere in the deepest echoes of his head, understands that this can’t be real. That it’s been too long; he hasn’t eaten, or drank, and the person who comes to him is probably nothing more than a conjuring of whoever or whatever it is that keeps him here, or maybe his own disintegrating sanity. If he looks closely at the wall, he can’t make out the ridges of stone, or see clearly where one ends and another begins. The closer he tries to inspect, the fuzzier it becomes, even shrouded in pitch black. He hasn’t slept (he thinks; he can’t tell, in the uninterrupted darkness), or hardly moved. He should be dead. Maybe he is.
There is never any creak of the door, or the sound of feet traversing the slick stone floor. (Has he ever actually seen it open, or does he just appear there? He thinks he’s seen Lan Zhan come in before. Maybe. He isn’t sure. It doesn’t matter. He can’t even be sure he’s tried to open it himself, but he must have, at first. It doesn’t matter. He never leaves.)
There is nothing to indicate his arrival.
Just the name. Spoken in that soft, deep vibrato.
“Wei Ying.”
He shuts his dry, crusted eyes at the sound of the voice. The name, his name, he knows. He is certain that is the only reason he remembers it. Sometimes, it’s all he ever says.
He had thought, after last time (it feels like ages since last time, he can’t even recall what had been different about it), if he had to endure the sound of that name, that voice, one more time, he would scream. He feels it, caught deep inside the impossible ache of his ribs collapsing inwards against his lungs, bursting to break free but imprisoned within his grief. He wants to wail, to sob, to beg for mercy, but in the end he has strength for none of it. Can only tremble pitifully at the heralded arrival of his beautiful torturer.
He has long since been unable to cry. His desiccated body surely does not have the water to spare on his misery. But he still squeezes his eyes tightly against the phantom sensation of pressure, and when he speaks, his voice, rough with disuse, comes out with more likeness to the whimper of a wounded, particularly pitiful creature.
“Please. No more.”
“Wei Ying,” a warm hand – searingly hot, against the deep cold that has permeated his bones, frozen his skin – gently brushes at his cheek, cards tenderly through his tangled mat of hair, “I am here.”
The softness is an excruciation unlike anything he could ever have fathomed, and he does manage to choke on a gasp of agony at the touch.
“Please, no more.” I can’t bear it. I surrender. Anything, he does not have the strength to say, can only wheeze once more: “Please.”
Lan Zhan’s hand travels down to grip his shoulder, attempting to turn him to face him, rolling him onto his back.
Wei Ying does scream then. A horrible, shrieking, unhinged sound. He hasn’t screamed in ages, not since he lost that important part of himself some hundred Lan Zhan’s ago. He wouldn’t have thought he still had this, either, but maybe, if he can shatter the punctured stillness, he can shatter himself with it.
He thinks, blissfully, that he must have blacked out, because his fractured awareness seems to cut off. He is almost excited at this newfound discovery, a shadowed reflection of real, positive emotion – this is the closet he has come to progress in so long. Perhaps he is nearer to his own escape.
He hopes beyond hope that he’ll remain here, suspended in foggy oblivion. But he is dragged kicking back into the gloom of his cell, and he is forced to look upon a face as beautiful and smooth and chiseled as exquisite jade. Nothing like the stone which holds him here.
Lan Zhan seems to glow, even in the windowless darkness, like a god lowered down into hell, stark white against desolate black. To look upon him is too much, too painful, like trying to stare directly into the sun. (After not having seen it in so long, he’d rather do without it, pretend it had never existed, that he might stop drawing life from it.)
Wei Ying tries to close his eyes again, to shield himself from the brightness, but Lan Zhan’s hand comes up to cup his cheek, and the full contact of bare skin-to-to skin on his ruined flesh threatens to tear him utterly apart, until there is really nothing left of him, not even this last bit that is called Wei Ying.
He’s not sure if he makes a noise, but he can’t look away from Lan Zhan’s face – he’s upset, Wei Ying thinks, concerned, he usually is – false emotion to lure him into the false guise of relief –
“Wei Ying, I am here now, you are safe. We have to leave, can you-”
The sound he makes is not human, tearing from his throat like a haunted beast as he flails his arms to push this dream away. Lan Zhan falls back, more in surprise, he’s sure, than from any strength Wei Ying might possess.
“Wei Ying-!”
“Enough!” he cries, breath heaving harshly as he pushes himself up on his trembling arms, hiccupping through his nearly incoherent screeching. “Take him away! Enough, enough, whatever it is you want, it’s gone, there’s nothing left for you here!”
His achingly stretched eyes fall on the sword attached to Lan Zhan’s hip. Maybe he could. He’s never tried it before, he doesn’t think. Even if it’s not real, maybe it could end this not-real version of himself.
He launches for it before he can give Lan Zhan time to glean what he’s thinking, before he can brace for an assault, scrambling and hollering like mad, nails flying to scratch and gash as he makes for the sword.
He doesn’t even get it out of the scabbard. He supposes he hadn’t really expected to. Lan Zhan is quicker and so, so much stronger than him. He grabs hold of Wei Ying’s arms and pushes him back, forcing him back onto his miserable plank of stone and holding him against the identical stone wall.
“Wei Ying!” He’s too close to Wei Ying now, his hot breath coming faster against his cheek and his scalding-hot hands burning through his withered sleeves.
Wei Ying struggles, thrashes, shouts, throws his head back, tries to smash it open against the wall, but Lan Zhan finds a way to cushion the blow, then holds his body flushed against Wei Ying’s, restraining him too tightly for him to manage enough movement to injure himself.
The press of his body is too much, too impossibly overwhelming, he must black out again. That, or his own body just depletes its already sparse reserves and gives out, until Lan Zhan is holding him up, rather than pinning him down.
Lan Zhan waits for him to exhaust himself, to give up the fight. Whatever. Whatever it takes to make this Lan Zhan go away, to go back to the silence, the cold that doesn’t burn. Anything is better than this – this hurt that he can’t describe, this horrible wretchedness.
“Wei Ying,” Wei Ying gets the impression that this is not the first time Lan Zhan has called his name, or even spoken to him during his impromptu attack, if only from the despair in his voice. The artificial sorrow causes another poorly-imitated emotion to rise up in him – vindictiveness, at this small victory in wounding his basely-glamoured captor, or his own despair reflected back – he isn’t sure. It doesn’t matter.
“Wei Ying, please, be calm.” He can feel the heat of Lan Zhan’s lips too close to his ear as he speaks quietly to him. He keeps his gaze firmly stuck on the ceiling, but nothing can distract from Lan Zhan’s solid form pressed to his, his thumb that has begun rubbing a gentle pattern into his wrist. “I have come to take you from here. To take you home.”
“You’re not him.” He’s said it before, and it’s never made a difference. But he has to remind himself. Remember that this comfort – this temptation to slip into that which he so desperately yearns, to be cared for, to be freed, is only a further source of torment. There is no salvation here. Only the deepening of bleakness by dangling hope in front of it and snatching it away once more.
“You’re not…I know you’re not him.” He can’t remember much about who Lan Zhan was, actually. What he liked to eat. Where he liked to go. What he believed in. But he knows Lan Zhan was good, was important, and this fiend wearing his face is neither of those things.
But if these Lan Zhan’s hadn’t kept coming to him, hadn’t served to remind him of who he is, or had been, what would become of him? Would he still be at all, trapped in this stone? Would he feel, or think? Would he die?
He’s not grateful, but neither can he find it in himself to be spiteful. Just weary.
“Wei Ying…” He doesn’t know what that tone means, what this version of that name hanging in the air says about the man who speaks it. Maybe he used to.
His left arm is released, and he briefly entertains using it to accomplish something, to go for the sword again, or gouge out an eye, but the intent fizzles out with almost no fuel behind it. He doesn’t have the strength, and it won’t make a difference anyway.
The hand which had previously restrained him comes to rest along the side of his jaw, and Wei Ying doesn’t cry out again, can’t, but he fades out somewhat as his face is turned back to look into the blinding sight of this bearer of light.
There is a furrow in his brow, and his lips have fallen softly open as though they are searching for words to fill them. His eyes are wide, and there is something deeply troubled reflected in them. Some terrible grief at whatever it is he is seeing when he looks at Wei Ying.
Wei Ying sees it all from a distance, from wherever he has retreated.
“Wei Ying,” he says it again. It’s like it’s all he can say. Any other words are selected carefully – Wei Ying watches as he forms them in his head and tastes them on his tongue before meticulously arranging them in breath. “It is me. I am here, with you.”
For a man adorned in such luxurious garments, it certainly seems like Lan Zhan should be more eloquently spoken, should be able to portray his meaning more artfully. But his words usefully come similarly stunted like this – like he’s never had to speak to be understood.
“You’re not him,” Wei Ying feels his mouth say again, though he never decided to do so. It’s a little better, like this, not being so fully present. Lan Zhan’s touch feels hazier now, like a prod through many layers of cloth, and his frame is a little fuzzier to make out in front of him, his voice a little muted.
“Stop…please stop…” If he was ever above begging, he’s not now. There is absolutely nothing he wouldn’t say or do to end this. Nothing he wouldn’t give or tell or betray.
He doesn’t even need to be saved. He just needs to be free.
“Wei Ying…” Lan Zhan’s eyebrows pitch higher, and his lips come back together, tucked slightly in, as though fighting the urge to bite them. Lan Zhan doesn’t seem like the kind of man who bites his lips.
He’s thinking again, that much Wei Ying can see, like the wheels of a grinding mill churning as he processes his next approach.
Floating distantly as he is, he’s not sure how much time passes before Lan Zhan raises up off of his knees, onto the jut of stone, pulling Wei Ying off the wall and into his arms. Wei Ying’s body is limp and pliable, unable to fight or protest such treatment as he is pulled securely against Lan Zhan’s chest, arms coming up to wrap ardently around him.
His fingers begin working through his mangled hair again. Wei Ying’s face is pressed to a warm neck, where life beats through veins in a pounding rhythm, hypnotic in its consistency.
“What can I do,” Wei Ying has to take a moment to hear and understand the words that are murmured above his head, “how can I convince you?”
Wei Ying can’t remember if Lan Zhan has ever asked him this. Has ever been this gentle with him.
He cannot even begin to entertain this question. Can’t even try to think about it. He can’t think, because if he thinks, he will be forced to confront how the blazing heat has faded to a sweltering warmth, melting the chill from his insides. How the fingers in his hair soothe and settle his warring heart, how safe he could let himself feel in Lan Zhan’s embrace, how the regular pulse of his heart is the sweetest melody he can ever recall.
This is dangerous. He knows he is encroaching on dangerous territory. He thinks, maybe, he struggles, somewhat – a jerk of a shoulder or feeble toss of the head. Lan Zhan only holds him through it, not restraining but anchoring, continuing in his ministrations.
He waits for Lan Zhan to press him, to insist they flea, but he doesn’t. Lan Zhan is patient, and it feels like they sit there for a long time.
Maybe if he never answers, Lan Zhan will just hold him forever. No more Lan Zhan’s will come, and he can stay like this, for the rest of always. That…might not be so bad. Wei Ying thinks he could accept this, and not regret. If he could just stay here, and be warm, and listen to Lan Zhan’s heartbeat, and feel him…he would be alright.
Just as he’s starting to slip again, into his usual haze of half-being, the rhythm of Lan Zhan’s fingers changes – they slow in his hair, and Wei Ying thinks he might sob, might even plead, but he returns with his full hand, pressed intently to Wei Ying’s head.
“Wei Ying,” he says again. He must feel Wei Ying’s quickening, stuttered breath, because his arms tighten, and Wei Ying is weak, can’t help but crave this with every bit of what’s left of him.
Maybe he’ll never learn.
“Wei Ying, let me help you, please.” He pulls back, and Wei Ying’s hand flies up to tangle in his robe, to hold on, clutching at the fine silk and shoving his face back into the source of heat, life.
“Wei Ying…” and then that same scorching heat returns, pressed to his temple, soft and slow and barely wet and so so warm.
Wei Ying’s mind summons the word kiss. And he gives in.
The tension melts from his body, and his shivering ceases to give way to stillness, going languid once again against the strong form which encases him.
“…Lan Zhan…”
He can’t remember the last time he said the name out loud. It feels good in his mouth. He slips a little deeper into this new surrender.
Lan Zhan stiffens beneath him at the sound of his name, and he seems to be holding his breath, waiting for some declaration, some decision.
He doesn’t need to wait. He already owns Wei Ying.
“Lan Zhan…please…please be real.” A tremor racks through him, and a spike of fear poisons his newfound tranquility, but he presses onward. “Please be you. I…I can’t-”
Lan Zhan pulls back to look him in the eye, and Wei Ying reaches out again, but Lan Zhan stares determinedly at him, catches his flailing hands and presses another burning kiss to his spindly knuckles.
Wei Ying is utterly entranced by this otherworldly emperor that has descended into his dismal dungeon.
“Wei Ying, I swear to you,” he releases his grip to cup Wei Ying’s face in both of his hands. “This is over now. I will take you from here, and you will never return. You will be cared for, and safe, and loved.” Another kiss to his forehead. If Lan Zhan were not holding him up, Wei Ying would collapse beneath the devastating pleasure.
It is not something he would have thought himself able to experience.
“Please, Wei Ying,” his sluggish eyes find Lan Zhan’s own steadfast gaze again, and Wei Ying knows he’ll give him anything he asks. Anything, to please him, to stay with him. “Trust me one last time. Put your faith in me. Let me take you home.”
Wei Ying feels himself nodding listlessly before he can even register the sensation of his movement, sight fixed on Lan Zhan. His blinks are slow and droopy, but his eyes always open once again to meet Lan Zhan’s unwavering stare.
“…Okay, Lan Zhan…” the words are hesitant, and he wonders if Lan Zhan can even hear them, or if he just discerns the timid shape of them through the dark.
He still doesn’t let go, doesn’t look away, and Wei Ying wants him, wants him more powerfully than he can ever recall wanting anything, wants him more than his next breath, or the next thousand. He has nothing, and yet would still give up anything – his limbs, his heart – to be with him, as he says.
“Lan Zhan,” Lan Zhan’s hand swoops through his hair again – he’s managed to work out the worst of the tangles.
“Lan Zhan…take me home.”
The transition from sitting to standing passes in a blur. He knows he never leaves Lan Zhan’s arms, but then he is on his emaciated legs, and he definitely wouldn’t remain so if Lan Zhan was not supporting him. One of his arms has been brought around a broad shoulder, and he leans fully into Lan Zhan, the constant feel of his build a blessed surety that he is really, actually, finally here.
“Hold on, Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says firmly but not unkindly to him – Wei Ying’s head lolls forward, but the voice is close to him, and soft lips just barely tease the shell of his ear with their warmth. He would obey any command. “Just a little longer. Hold on.”
Wei Ying tries to nod again, and manages to raise his head to look at the door. They take a step, and another. Closer, closer to being free, closer to Lan Zhan, closer to what is beyond –
His fall forward is so abrupt that his stomach seems to lag behind, and his chin smacks sharply into the merciless floor, jostling his brain in his skull.
It’s at least a few moments before he’s up on his palms, one elbow giving way beneath his weight, barely more than flat-on-his-face off the ground.
He looks to his side, where Lan Zhan is, where he’s dropped him, “Lan Z-”
But Lan Zhan is not by his side. He’s not there at all.
There is no light, no voice, no silk, no skin, no warmth –
There is no one.
He is gone, faded to nothing, and Wei Ying is, once again, alone.
He screams into the hard, cold floor for a very, very long time. The sound doesn’t bounce off the walls but seems to sink into the dank stone. Still, he screams, and screams, and screams, and time passes endlessly or does not pass at all, and he still screams – doesn’t speak but begs, doesn’t cry but sobs – and he screams.
There is the shape of a name in his mouth, but when he reaches for it, he finds nothing. He finds only a hollow space in his chest, like a grave dug up, empty now but for dirt. Not even the bones remain.
He reaches, and searches, and finds nothing, and so when his screams finally stop, maybe an eternity later, and he collapses against the cool ground, which is always here, never leaves him, he is no more than one of the stone – dark, cold, formless, unending.
Stone has no cause to breathe, has no heart to beat, and if his does, he takes no notice of it, has no care for it, has nothing, is nothing.
So when the door opens and the voice comes carrying a strange name, he takes no notice of it, has no care for it, has nothing, is nothing.
He is only stone, and stone has no name.
