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]

"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?"

[we_bring_hell]

"I am told by those who have been here a long time and have experience in these matters that it cannot be," she says, squeezing her nails into her palms. "At the best I can create a second world where she knows, but then she will have to contend with a version of me who is ignorant. At the worst I will destroy our sanity."

[lightamidchaos]

He feels a wave of dizziness pass through him and fends it off with grim strength of will, bracing one hand against a clear spot of wall and drawing on his golden core to do so.

He is here from almost three years in Wei Ying's future. If Harrow is right, what does that mean for them?

"There must be a way," he says, flat and determined. "I do not know who you have spoken with. Have you asked them about this? If this has happened before, there must be a way to manage things. You cannot -- she will --"

[we_bring_hell]

She looks at him sharply, but she recognizes herself in his grim determination and does not interfere. She merely removes the items from the chair to the desk and turns back to the wall, not looking at it or him.

"She must go back, knowing of Milliways, and be silent, until she can catch up to me," she repeats. "As, perhaps, she always has. A continuous ribbon of events."

She gestures at the table. "I have spent this morning reviewing what I can find in this library. Nothing I find encourages me. I could perhaps erase myself to create a new timeline, but the Harrowhark in that timeline, who does not have my memories, is unlikely to listen to Griddle. Fool that I am. Was."

[lightamidchaos]

"I will help you search."

He glances toward the table, but does not step away from the wall just yet.

"If she has gone back knowing and you were not aware before - then perhaps she could keep other secrets?"

He pauses, thinking that through. Having not met Gideon Nav, he is not certain whether or not that would be likely, and gives Harrow a quizzical look, silently inquiring.

[we_bring_hell]

"I have seen the body of Jeannemary the Fourth," she says heavily.

"They are dead, Lan Wangji. She just doesn't know yet, hasn't had to experience it. It has happened."

[lightamidchaos]

"It has happened for you."

Which, he realizes, is the whole problem. Lan Wangji hisses out a harsh breath.

"... if there is a way I will help you find it."

[we_bring_hell]

She worries a thumb on her temple. "It is... unsupportable. I must go back soon and synchronize with her. I cannot live this way."

She takes a sharp breath through her nose. "I have lived with worse sins," she says a low voice. "And I should have more... resilience. But I feel like I am reaching the end of myself."

"I was going to tell her. I was ready. I was ready to die at her hands," she whispers wearily.

[lightamidchaos]

"Send her back instead," he suggests. "Tell her when to return. Wait here, until she does."

Even as he says it, he is trying to spot flaws in the idea.

"Surely she would be willing? If you told her that you were here from a different point in time?"