Chapter Text
On the whole, yao of Zhu Yan's rank don't generally sleep. Such a human thing, to lie still for so long, to need to bundle warm and hidden for safety. A prey behavior, when he has long ascended to predator.
So this halting emergence from the dark, piecing together consciousness from its loss, is odd. Unaccustomed. Mildly concerning.
The accompanying headache is just insulting. As he cracks his eyes to the light, it intensifies; and the habitual seal he throws at most minor hurts, that should quell it, fails.
Interesting.
The air is thick with the smell of huanling powder, and he can hear the presence of one person, calm and waiting, before his vision comes into focus. Before he bothers to lift his head from the stone floor, unhurried.
"Wen Xiao," he begins, swiping hair from his face with one hand, then pausing to inspect that hand, perplexed, to try and understand what exactly is wrapped around his fingers. Red rope, charmed and knotted, hatches his palm - both palms, dammit, by the feel of things - hooked around the base of his thumb and laced between each finger. The pattern continues up past the cuff of his sleeve, as far as he can push it to his elbow, and beyond that. He mouths a command - 断 - and the whole dammed thing, far from snapping, stays resolutely in place and itches.
"Did you lose interest in stabbing me into obedience?" He tosses the accusation at Wen Xiao, punctuated by a disbelieving pout.
She's seated cross-legged at a desk beyond the cell's bars, annotating a document. She glances at him, takes in the artful arch to his body, and returns to her work. "Too much effort."
He knows - he knows! - that he won't be able to reach the edges of the knotwork, buried under his clothes as it is, but that doesn't stop him from contorting awkwardly in the attempt, shoving the fingertips of one hand as far as they can go down the back of his collar to feel for loose ends. At least the range of motion in his arms is close to normal. "And this is what, exactly?"
"A theory," she answers serenely.
He gives it a go for a few more seconds, then stops, sighs, and brings both hands forward for a better look. He can nearly make a fist before the pressure on the bones of his fingers becomes uncomfortable. He can likely grip utensils or dishes, this way, but most hand sigils are out of the question.
"What kind of theory? If you would just ask me I could enlighten you." With an effort he draws forth his talons, to slice through the rope, but bare moments after their summoning they've flickered back into nonexistence, leaving him picking at it, ineffectually, with short human nails.
Wen Xiao snorts softly. "After all the lying you've done, until now? I don't think so."
He looks at her sidelong and lets his voice drop. "Only to protect you."
A statement which, disconcertingly, gets no reaction from Wen Xiao.
After a beat, he tries again: "Wen-daren, you have my blood oath, doesn't that give you confidence in me?"
She puts her pen down and faces Zhu Yan with the hard, tight smile that forms her most exasperated expression. "No. It doesn't. Because despite everything you purportedly swore to, you waltzed off to scheme on your own at every. Single. Opportunity." She stands, hands tucked into her sleeves. "You're a terrible gift, Zhao Yuanzhou, and I've made the case to Father that you should be monitored. For the good of the Bureau's future."
It's only a momentary effort to move from sitting to standing, to cross the cell and reach toward her through the bars. But his motion is rudely checked by those bars' refusal to allow him to glide through - remaining stubbornly solid and impassible. Particularly the one that strikes Zhu Yan directly in the face.
While he's rubbing his forehead and trying to scrape back together some of his dignity, Wen Xiao smirks at him. "And my theory is progressing just fine without your input."
She leaves him alone, with nothing but the censer burning poison into the air. After she leaves, he kicks the thing over into the water, but that only serves to make the smell of huanling powder worse.