Night Comes To Tallahassee

[we_bring_hell]

The Bar does her best to mother the underage patrons of the Bar, nudging them gently towards self-care and withholding harmful things, but she is not omniscient. She couldn't have known not to give Harrowhark Nonagesimus pushpins and index cards and colorful string.

Harrow has secured a small sideroom in the library, the equivalent of a grad student cubicle, and something awful is taking shape there; the crazy conspiracist murder board equivalent of the bone construct lurking in the depths of Canaan House. There is color-coding. There are crossreferences. There are Tarot cards mixed in. There's a map of Canaan House. There are accidental yarn pentagrams that have somehow not yet summoned the soul of Pepe Silvia.

Harrowhark is dressed way down, and yet somehow at her most feral and goblin-like, sockfooted and gloveless in soft pants and black hoodie, as she shifts the cards around and examines new configurations. Ever so often she refers to her journal. She is humming something under her breath.

Comments

[lightamidchaos]

It is the humming that draws his attention, soft though it may be.

Wei Ying is downstairs seeking additional medicine from Ford-daifu -- and, he suspects, expressing additional thanks for her help. For his own part, Lan Wangji had decided to seek out the library he has been told of to see if it holds any music that might be appropriate for guqin or dizi, or preferably both.

(He is moving a little stiffly as yet, which increases his determination to make his next stop the lake shore, to practice sword forms and test his flexibility. Music comes first, however.)

Not wishing to intrude, he glances only briefly into the small space to see who the musician might be - and stops in surprise at the sight that greets him.

"Harrow?"

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow's eyes widen, and she sets down the card in her hand very carefully on the table.

"Today is a day for shocking entrances, I see," she says; she is not as flabbergasted as she was when Gideon surprised her, but she's definitely surprised, and pleased.

[lightamidchaos]

"Wei Ying mentioned my absence," he realizes. Of course he would have, and Lan Wangji is glad that he had someone to speak with, given how worried he now knows that he had been.

"I am sorry to have ... shocked you. It was unintentional."

He glances over the collection of cards and string and papers with some bemusement, then looks back at Harrow.

"Entrances?"

[we_bring_hell]

"He did indeed," Harrow says, with profound understatement. "And I noted it as well."

"You have seen him, I presume? Before coming here."

[lightamidchaos]

"Yes."

His ears flush light pink with the single word, and something about his expression softens.

"He was downstairs when I arrived."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow grew up on a planet where most people's faces were covered with paint; she can read an ear like a book. Her smile deepens, just briefly. "Yes, I believe there was a matter he desired to discuss with you, unless I am mistaken."

[lightamidchaos]

"More than one."

The look he gives Harrow is a little quizzical, then shades to a dawning awareness.

"You did not--"

[we_bring_hell]

"I knew all," she says. Smugly, I'm sorry to say. "You both spoke plainly to me instead of each other, and of course I was forbidden as a matter of honor to simply lock you both in a room. And then you disappeared."

"But you have returned, and unless I miss my guess, felicitations are in order?"

[lightamidchaos]

"I apologize for disappearing. I did not intend to."

He is still eyeing her a little closely, at first, but then lets out a slight breath and nods.

"If the cave did not make matters clear, a room would not have," he tells her, and his tone as he says that is dry as dust. "But yes."

He cannot prevent the small, warm smile from appearing, and in truth he does not even try.

"Wei Ying loves me, and I him. We understand each other clearly now."

[we_bring_hell]

"Then it is very well," she says, both pleased and, as always, embarrassed by any kind of real human intimacy.

She gestures at a chair which is only mildly heaped with papers and cards.

"But you are injured. Should you sit?"

[lightamidchaos]

"Very well indeed."

He does not wish to show weakness, but glances at the chair all the same before looking back to Harrow.

"Is it so obvious?"

He will definitely have to do additional recovery work, if so.

"Do not worry. I am all right."

It is very possible that Harrow will recognize the tenor of this particular 'all right' as rooted more in stubbornness than anything else.

[we_bring_hell]

"Only to one who senses the life and death energies within your body," she says calmly. "And who was expecting it."

"Accident, or penance?"

[lightamidchaos]

"Penance implies regret for the action that required it."

There is something very carefully level about his observation - and not a hint of regret.

"Punishment. Or discipline, if you prefer."

[we_bring_hell]

She nods. "I concluded you were almost certainly injured or discovered, to have not returned, and that if you were discovered it was likely to include... physical discipline."

If it was a punishment, he can't be healed or it will be worse for him, of course.


"We need not speak of it again, if that is your wish." She is curious; but Wei Wuxian will be livid, and Lan Wangji does not need to contend with that and her.

[lightamidchaos]

He nods confirmation of her conclusion.

"Discovered," he says. "My uncle and my brother - Gusu Lan's most respected teacher and its sect leader - had come to speak with me and found me gone."

He hesitates there, considering.

"The energies you sense. Do they... reveal the extent?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Roughly," she says. "I was responsible for such things on the Ninth, but detail requires closer examination and perhaps a pendulum." She does look more closely, though. "Scar tissue I was familiar with in your thalogram has been disturbed, and your blood is flush with toxins--stress, fatigue."

Hormones, too, but she doesn't need to mention that.

"Inedia, I believe? Your fat stores, such as they are, have been activated. Did they return you to seclusion? Or have you found another door?"

[lightamidchaos]

"I have just under three weeks remaining in seclusion. Cold Pond Cave."

The healers and doctors he knows would have all needed to read his meridians, not discerned him so clearly without even touching him.

"You see correctly."

I think it will make me hate them, Wei Ying had said.

If she were to mention this to him--

"I do not want you to think ill of my family, or of Gusu Lan, for this. Or for Wei Ying to."

[we_bring_hell]

She inclines her head. "Lan Wangji, the Ninth practices physical discipline as well. Not so much now as in my father's day, but it happens. I have sentenced people to a certain number of strokes, or digging ditches, or inedia."

Mostly Gideon, truthfully, but not only Gideon.

"My opinion of Gusu Lan is not changed by this, I promise you. And I will not distress Wei Wuxian. That, too, I promise."

She turns her black eyes away and back to her diagram. "All else aside, I have so much happening right now that I do not have the time to help him mount a war in another dimension at the moment."

[lightamidchaos]

He winces very slightly at the mention of Wei Ying and war, but says nothing. He is grateful for her promise, however.

Leaving it at that, he crosses the small space to stand beside her and look at her work.

"What are you doing?"

[we_bring_hell]

"I am trying to tie together everything I have learned in Canaan House to the places, individuals, and Houses relevant to each. With Palamedes Sextus' notes, I have six of eight theorems and a picture is beginning to emerge."

Without looking away from the tangle, she adds, "It is a valuable distraction from the fact that now that your farce has ended, the universe has cast me in the sequel." Chagrin is evident in her voice and in her profile.

[lightamidchaos]

His attention shifts immediately from the string-and-card diagram to Harrow. He ignores her choice of words, focusing instead on the frustration evident beneath them.

"What has happened?"

[we_bring_hell]

Inhale. Exhales.

"Gideon Nav is here."

A long beat.

"And Lady Ingress kissed me."

[lightamidchaos]

Lan Wangji opens his mouth to respond, but it takes a moment for him to find words.



"I have missed a great deal in three days," he manages, finally.

[we_bring_hell]

She stares at a particular card.

"Gideon is from my past. I cannot tell her what I have steeled myself to say, because I know she did not know it then."

"I must let her catch up to me, although it means allowing," she grits her teeth, "unforgivable mistakes to happen. Again."

[lightamidchaos]

Now he looks visibly alarmed.

"Harrow. No. Can you not tell her? Can the mistakes not be corrected?"