[closed post -- training]

[onthewillowsthere]

The day after Evil Twin Magnus leaves, Galahad shows up for his training with Lan Wangji exactly as he always does (although later in the day, because Lan Wangji asked him to wait until afternoon to meet) -- if Lan Wangji were going solely on his appearance, he'd see absolutely nothing out of order. He throws himself into the sword forms with his usual focus. But he's gripping the hilt of his sword too tightly, and his movements are tense; he's never graceful, but today he's almost clumsy, and each failure or misstep only seems to pull him tighter, like an overwound watch.

Comments

[lightbearinglord]

It is on the very tip of his tongue to protest that Galahad's double was not evil, but dwelling on that is pointless. He already knows that Magnus was using the term generally. "I did," he says. "Do you remember anything?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"No. Magnus said he was really depressing."

[lightbearinglord]

That is one, somewhat blunt, way of putting it. Lan Wangji studies his tea, thinks for a moment, and then says, "He was sad. It was an untouchable sadness."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Because he wasn't allowed to die."

[lightbearinglord]

"Mn." He frowns down at his tea, rather than directing it at Galahad. The older Galahad, the melancholy king, told him how he wanted to be buried with Percival, but Claudius did not speak of Percival as someone dead. He opts to tread lightly. "Who is Percival?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Percival is--" He frowns slightly, his brows drawing together. "Percival was my best friend."

[lightbearinglord]

"You had lost him. King Galahad had lost him." It was clear how hollow he had become in answer to that loss.

[onthewillowsthere]

He imagines his life if he had never come here, and spent the next few years questing with Percival instead -- becoming more and more ashamed of his love and desire, with no other friends except the man he most wanted and most hated wanting. If God had continued to speak to him, guiding him towards his duty and warning him away from his sin, until at last he found the Grail and then was forced to live, filled with despair -- if, while he lived, Percival died. He imagines the world without Percival's light in it, without Percival's salt, and nothing else, either. He misses Percival here, and he thinks he'll always miss him, but he has Claudius and Magnus and Shen Yuan and Lan Wangji; he has other people who make the world bright and worth living in. If it had always only been Percival, and then Percival were gone-- He can understand how he became someone whose only thought and hope was death.

"I miss him," he says truthfully. "He was the first person who chose me."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji feels an echo of that same ache he felt when he spoke with that older, much sadder Galahad. It is not so acute now, because he is sitting across from his student, who is young and determined and who wants to live, but he can recall how it was to be even younger than that. He can recall the implacable sense that there was something holding him forever apart from nearly everyone else. Wei Ying chose him, as furiously as Lan Wangji fought it. He was the first person, aside from his own brother, who looked at Lan Wangji's unsmiling demeanor and wanted more of him.

"I understand," he says, meaning it. He hesitates, but not for long. "Tell me about him."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad rubs the band of his watch, his thumb moving along the soft leather of the braid. "There was a blood feud between his family and King Lot's. His mother was afraid he would be killed, so she took him and his sister into the woods when they were infants. He lived there until he was sixteen. Then he met Sir Gawain and decided to become a knight. He came to Camelot." A part of him wishes Claudius were there to tell this story beautifully. Claudius would know how to fill in the details to make the words flow better; he would use metaphors to explain what it was like to grow up in the forest without ever seeing anyone besides Dindraine and their mother. How their mother taught them faith in a way that made God more than just a disapproving voice in Percival's ear, made Christ's sacrifice so meaningful that Percival could believe and care and want to live like Him.

[lightbearinglord]

Galahad tells a story much in the way that Lan Wangji himself does, as a concise series of facts, which comes as no surprise, but which strikes some now-familiar chord of fondness within him. He listens quietly, the tea cooling in his hands, and tries to imagine Percival, a boy who lived in the woods until he was nearly grown. "You met him there?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes. I came a year before him. We met at Mass." He takes a drink of his tea, which is cool enough now, and savors the earthy taste on his tongue; he remembers Percival, with his ruddy skin and his red-gold hair, grinning and reaching for his hand. It was the first time he had been touched by anyone other than in combat since he was a child. "He decided we would be friends. I had never had a friend before. He was knighted very young because when he came he killed a man who had dishonored the Queen, and the King rewarded him for it." Galahad drinks again, lets himself be silent and gather his thoughts in the space it takes to swallow the mouthful of tea. "Before you become a knight, there is a chapel vigil. You must stay awake all night in the chapel and pray. I couldn't be with him because I was already knighted, but I waited outside for him." He remembers looking up at the stained-glass windows and wondering whether Percival was looking at them too; wondering whether Percival was saying the same prayers. He remembers wishing that they were together, because he already missed the feeling of Percival's hand in his.

[lightbearinglord]

He thinks of Galahad, even younger than he is now, waiting for his friend, the first person to claim him. Percival sat vigil for his knighthood; Galahad did the same for Percival. He swallows his own sip of tea. "You loved him," he says -- quiet, almost hushed with it, but not a question. To love someone is to wait for them.

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods and takes another drink of tea. "When we left Camelot we went together. Everybody liked him. He's easy to talk to. He makes people feel important. People were kind to me when I was with him, when they hadn't been kind before." People opened their homes and inns and churches, fed them, gave them supplies. People looked at Percival and clapped his shoulder or ruffled his hair or urged him to eat another helping. People said he looked like their son, their brother, their cousin. It was like traveling with Christ from town to town, and everywhere people wanted to hear him speak; if he was able to make bread from stone it was because his warmth and brightness always brought out other people's generosity. Galahad doesn't know how to explain it, but he thinks Lan Wangji might understand.

"He loves animals. They trust him. He chose my horse. Eirlys."

[lightbearinglord]

He makes people feel important. With inevitability, Lan Wangji thinks again of Wei Ying, whose warmth can flood a room like the sun framed perfectly in a wide and open window. He thinks of Wei Ying winking at the women of Caiyi, catching loquats, nudging Lan Wangji with his shoulder and saying, Ladies, isn't this young master terribly handsome? He thinks of Wei Ying in the Burial Mounds, the lean and terrible Yiling Patriarch smiling at the old women and the farmers with their patchy beards, planting A-Yuan in the ground like a radish and laughing. He thinks of Wei Ying with Wen Qionglin, refusing to accept the Ghost General's subservience.

He takes the first sip of his own cup of tea. "You had no choice but to love a boy like that."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I was ashamed of it," quietly. "I wanted to kiss him. But he was holy, and-- precious. I was afraid I would defile him with my love."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji looks up from his tea, directly at Galahad. His back is straight, his face serious. "I understand," he says again, tight with the sincerity of that understanding.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Were you afraid of loving Wei Wuxian?"

[lightbearinglord]

The tea is cool enough for drinking, but still warm in Lan Wangji's hands. "I was."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Why?" He knows Lan Wangji doesn't believe in God or sin.

[lightbearinglord]

A little silence stretches between them, but only a little. "It wasn't only love. It was desire. I couldn't control it. I could barely control myself. Before him, I had not imagined myself capable of feeling that way."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad nods again. Before Percival, he had never wanted anyone, and he didn't believe that he would ever want anyone after him. He didn't believe it was possible to love anyone besides Percival. He hadn't expected Claudius, well-spoken and droll, the sort of person he would have expected to laugh at him or not care about him at all, to fill him with so much longing -- and a part of him wonders if it was just a coincidence. If he had come earlier or later, would Claudius not have mattered to him at all? It's strange that his life should have been altered so entirely by one chance meeting, and yet after living so long in the light of prophecy there's something equally soothing about the idea that the love of his life might have been haphazard and unplanned by anyone. It's as he told Claudius once -- there had been a time when he only lusted for him, a time when he might still have fallen in love with someone else. But that time has passed, and now Claudius is the person who is most important to him. He still loves Percival, but he thinks if Percival came he would be able to be with him without feeling ground to flour by his desire. They could be still be friends.

[lightbearinglord]

Before Wei Ying, each day was regimented. Each day was the same. Lan Wangji always knew what to do, where to go, how to work and study in the ways that were expected of him. Uncle was proud of him. Xiongzhang worried about him. All of it seemed instantly, terrifyingly fragile, undone in a single night.

He drinks another mouthful of tea and says, "That came first. And then he was clever and kind, too." Those words are inadequate. Wei Ying's mind worked in a way Lan Wangji had never seen before. He could see around problems, under and through them; if the text gave four answers to a proposed dilemma, Wei Ying would invariably propose a fifth, something no one had ever thought to propose before. He wanted to help fix every problem, even the ones that didn't exist. He wanted to talk with everyone he met. "I wanted not to love him. I knew that loving him would reorder everything."

[onthewillowsthere]

"It was frightening. And I couldn't tell anyone." There was no one to tell.

[lightbearinglord]

"No," Lan Wangji agrees. He knows now that his brother knew, and it is retrospectively obvious, but Lan Wangji never wanted to speak of it then. He never wanted to speak of it until Lan Xichen no longer wanted to hear it. "It is an overwhelming feeling to carry alone."