[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.

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[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."

[onthewillowsthere]

He takes another drink of tea and thinks about being afraid even to think about what he felt for Percival, because God was present in his mind. How at night he would count Percival's heartbeats and long for his own to stop. He thinks about the loneliness of not being able to tell Percival, of having to hold it all in his heart, a shameful weight always on his shoulders. He nods again.

[lightbearinglord]

"Thank you for telling me about him," Lan Wangji says, quietly sincere. He will remember everything Galahad said about Percival.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Thank you for listening." He runs his thumb along the rim of the cup. "I miss him. I hope that God allows him to be happy."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji wants to say that he hopes Percival can be happy regardless of whether their god wills it or not. But he has already seen how directly that god meddled with Galahad. Their world is not their own. "I do, too," he says instead, and he is powerfully glad that he sits here with a young man who will never be the king of anything more than his own fate.

[onthewillowsthere]

He's quiet again, as he finishes the cup, and then he says, "I liked Lan Zhan. Your evil twin."

[lightbearinglord]

It isn't exactly unpleasant to hear that name from Galahad's mouth, but it is startling enough for the surprise to register on his face a little. "He went by my birth name?" Almost automatically, he refills Galahad's tea.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes. Serial number LAN-012333. He is a Class 2 Gusu Lan android."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji manages an exceptionally, unusually blank look. "I don't know what that means."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I don't either," Galahad admits. "But he placed his hands in the soil and took compositional readings for me."

[lightbearinglord]

Even that is hard to imagine, but Lan Wangji can understand it enough to know that it means his double was helpful, that he provided something of value for Galahad and, indirectly, for Claudius, too. "He was not so different that it no longer felt like me, then." Unlike Magnus, he doesn't say.

[onthewillowsthere]

"No. He was very like you. He helped me prepare a habitat in the laboratory."

[lightbearinglord]

Good. He would do that now, if asked, although perhaps less helpfully. Putting his hands in the soil would do nothing but make his hands dirty. Lan Wangji refills his own tea, then. "I took the other Galahad to see the rabbits."