whelp... i can't get a second job to save my skin. can't get a higher paying job to pay save my skin. I have literally over 1000 in interest in my loans and shit even with the deferment which is still more than i make in a month and my rent has gone up. Not to mention my tendinitis got so bad my hands gave out at work. literally can't feel my left hand sometimes and tried to kill myself eight times since my last update. But Thanatos is hot as balls and Dusa is best girl so Hades has been the only reason to live and now I've beaten it so back to square one
The tiger is there again holding a black rabbit up to Lan Wangji's lips. The smile on its face so wide and cruel. A dream- a nightmare that has returned and mocks him as he looks at his arms and the parts of his body that had grown foreign and cruelly familiar over thirteen years.
From his skin turning white as milk with stripes of pitch to a point the peach tones stood out as ugly. To the texture of skin and not peach fuzz and thick hide feeling uncomfortable when would run his hands casually over his body. He feels so mocked now seeing his old body because the sight is so distant and old compared to the current him.
"You still won't eat?"
Lan Wangji would spit in this monster's face if he could but his body holds taught and still. He can't move his body. Just the eyes and his mouth that the dead rabbit is currently pressing against. The symbolism and sentiment of the gesture is not lost on him. "I don't eat meat unless I have to."
"And who says you don't? Who says that body of yours will hold together if you don't keep well fed?"
He only glares at the tiger and focuses all senses away from the feeling of his gums bleeding and a hunger roiling in his stomach. This version that's a beast just mocks him with laughter and given he laughs so little and not like that it unnerves him to his core. "Your valor is commendable but if you want advice from the part of you that already knows how this all ends kill your companion and eat him whole. Or better yet someone stronger and filling."
"I will not lower myself to something so disgusting."
"Why? You already eat Rabbits? That's no different really once you discount the shape and taste."
He wants to vomit at the notion- he's not some monster- he's not so foul and disgusting. Lan Wangji- he's not- he's in no way like-
"Wei Ying? You really would be so cruel as to think something so heartless about Wei Ying even after everything." The rabbit drops without care on the table between them. "Even grieving and claiming to be better- that you accepted all flaws and faults with your love you still can't deny the fact that a part of you saw a monster. You loved him but he was a monster all the same and you'll be one soon just wait."
Lan Wangji's mind flashes to the hollow ribbed Nie creatures and the tiger laughs hollowly, "Oh, for you it will be so much worse. They at least get to be locked away where everyone can forget them and they can fade like a bad dream. Do you really think brother will let that happen to us? We'll be a sad display people look at like the Warren or better yet hunted and skinned because we are so lost that we kill everything we care about in rage. A pelt hanging on the wall in one of the halls as a reminder."
He can see it. A pelt on a wall hanging in the hallways as disciples whisper and mutter and his brother's forlorn face as his touches the fur and smiles with tears welling behind it. He can feel how the knife will slide and cut him open and the pain as he bleeds out and his flesh torn away. The way he'll flounder as blood pours from his neck and he chokes.
"So awful. But, it doesn't have to be that way," The tiger's clawed hands reach and grab his face now. "If you listen to me you can stop this. We can even have Wei Ying again. I can give you everything you want. Everything you crave."
The lips touch the tip of his ear claws digging in and drawing red onto his robes. The pain sharp and digging in as he's swallowed by the tiger's frame as he pushed down further to the ground his back bending at an angle that makes those scars scream. His ears are ringing and his vision blurs with tears-blood- who knows even. Just make it stop.
"You already know how."
"Hey Rabbit, hurry up or we'll leave you behind." One of the fellow disciples in the group yells and Lan Sizhui takes in a deep breath as he contemplates just splitting off entirely and then dealing with the consequences later. He won't because he's too careful about that but gosh does he consider it.
He's there along with three other Rabbits because they essentially were told that they needed to expand their horizons and also he assumes it's because everyone else wanted to have fun outside of home as much as he does. Cloud Recesses may be home but at the end of the day they still had other things in mind.
They still wanted to explore and like him most the other Rabbits seldom get to leave. Lan Jingyi is being just as slow as they tail behind, but nobody yells at him. He's not bitter. Not in the slightest.
No, really!
He's long since gotten over being bitter over Lan Jingyi being able simply be and act as he does without the same level of scrutiny because he's realized that it's simply the nature of their circumstances. Lan Jingyi is from the bloodline of the main family even if distant and is also human born and decent in his skills.
He's also just ungodly fun to be around so it makes sense why everyone treats him this way.
Meanwhile… Lan Sizhui is treated as a pest that won't go away. People like him when he's simply docile and smiles while showing off talents. They like him when he lightly flatters back or bows away before he up-shows someone human. They like him if they can pretend he's not there.
Well the humans do.
The Rabbits meanwhile have a different attitude towards him.
They revere him and love when he's bold enough to show his talents and when he stands up against the other disciples that mock and bully them. They respect him and treat him like the leader and a genuine child of a sect leader and not an animal that made it past learning a few tricks to pass off as normal.
Lan Sizhui think about how when they were younger he'd actually resented his best friend for his normalcy. For the fact that despite how unlike the other Lan's Jingyi is nobody thought him wrong. Nobody saw a child trying to pretend to be one of them.
Nobody said as much if Lan Jingyi messed up on simple tasks than him when he'd get something as simple as a brush stroke wrong.
If Lan Jingyi broke down into tears after scrapping his knees people didn't tell him to shut up. It had made Lan Sizhui understand envy and jealousy in a way that was so different then how animals felt it. It wasn't just not being accepted into the group. It was that longing to not have to struggle so much just for someone to say, "You did well."
He'd been so full of jealousy and rage and by the time he was eight he was convinced that Lan Jingyi was doing it on purpose. He was mocking him every moment and so in class he would do his best to snub him back. To show off in front of everyone else and all it got back was comments about arrogance and students telling him to back off.
"You're just a Rabbit! Why even try so hard?"
"Yeah. Just shut up!"
"You're so annoying."
"What? Think if you get enough questions right we'll just let a freak like you in?"
And if his father wanted to ask why he came running home and buried his face in his robes then he never did. Just stroked his hair and told him that great uncle told him he did well.
Each time he'd catch a glimpse of Lan Jingyi a distance away looking back at him. Never saying anything and yet he felt so much in the silence.
"Hey, Rabbit my mom says your Dad's also gonna be an animal. Guess it runs in the blood."
"Pfft. He's adopted. That doesn't make sense!"
"Well, I heard Hanguang-Jun doesn't show himself because he's gonna turn into a monster."
"I guess it makes sense. Animals stick with animals."
"My mom says the only reason we bother making any of you human is so you make better medicine."
"Oh, I heard that too!"
"Well, I guess that makes Rabbit prime meat."
They liked to laugh at that a lot. That he was a choice cut. That he was just making it so he was better material.
"Hey if you're so great Rabbit then why don't you hop all the way up here to get it back."
"That's what you get for showing off all the time."
He was so angry. He was so angry and resentful and he wanted to hurt something back for all of the hatred pushed at him so when that hand reached out to him as he sat in the dirt looking at his dusty robes and trampled scrolls he couldn't help but bite back and scream.
"I hate you!" He'd pulled Lan Jingyi under him and screamed, "I hate you! I hate you!"
"Why?"
Fat tears welled at the corners of his eyes as he stared at this person who honestly had never done anything to him. Who had only ever stood in the distance and ignored him. Who… probably didn't even know he existed most the time. It made a different emotion well inside him that he couldn't explain.
Something like both loneliness and envy but also that resentment as well with a hint of longing. He's not sure what it's called. But he felt it. He felt it and he didn't know what to say so he ran away and hid under his father's arms and pretended it was just what it usually was.
He couldn't look Lan Jingyi in the eye after that. No, not in the least. He was embarrassed at the thought of it. He was regretful and not in the simple way he understood but he still wanted to be friends. He still wanted to just reach out…
So hesitantly he followed him for a distance after lessons swallowing deeply and trying not to panic. "What do you want?"
"I'm sorry," Lan Sizhui had tried not to make it sound desperate but it came out sad and soft.
"Why?"
All he could do was blink in frustration, "What do you mean why?"
"I mean, if you hate me you hate me. I can't change that for the most part."
"But, I was mean to you without reason."
"That's stupid. Of course you have a reason. That's how people are," a statement that to this day is probably the most astute that Lan Jingyi has ever been. "But just so you know, I don't mind if you do but I hope you one day won't."
"Why?"
"Because I'd love to be your friend some day."
Lan Sizhui had been so confused, "But… why?"
"Cause you seem really fun." For the life of him he's never been able to figure out what Lan Jingyi meant in that sentence. What part of him had seemed fun when he was doing his best to be a model Lan disciple?
Especially to a child as mischievous as Lan Jingyi.
"You know I'm a Rabbit, right?"
"Yeah, and it's so cool!"
From then on it spiraled into him gently trying to run away from Lan Jingyi and his absurd number of questions about what being a Rabbit was like. About his interested and himself along with the absurd ideas he had about superpowers he thought Lan Sizhui might have.
"Well, can't you jump like super high and stuff and talk to animals?" Lan Jingyi had held up one of the rabbits father kept as a pet to him, "Like, what's this guy saying?"
It had made him giggle at the absurdity and he's not sure but he thinks it might have been the first time he laughed or at least the one he remembers clearest. He just remembers thinking Lan Jingyi holding a rabbit trying it's best to kicks it's legs in his face and run away and the sincere look on his face was so silly. So absurd. That the idea he had superpowers like that was ridiculous and he'd laughed so hard that he'd ruined the flower crown he was making.
"What's so funny?"
"It's just silly. I just… I think it's silly. Besides I don't need to know what they're saying to know that one hates you."
"But what about the super jump? I've seen you do it!"
"Jingyi, I'm a Rabbit so my core is closer to a senior disciple; jumping distances that normal people can't is standard for us."
"Still you jump so high it's like you're flying. Like a bird!"
That struck a chord in him that made him feel uneasy and nostalgic at the same time. He got that a lot when he was little and he thinks it's just a remnant of his old animal life peaking in. A reminder of the reprieve of the wild life of something not bound in the rules and politics of man. "So you can't understand them at all?"
Lan Sizhui shook his head, "Honestly I don't really remember what being a rabbit was like."
"At all?"
"When I try it's really fuzzy. I know… I know it was peaceful and I didn't really have any stress."
"Sounds nice." Lan Jingyi said lying back in the grass.
"It was lonely," It just slips out and curls up into his knees as his hand strokes a rabbit idly. It had been warm and often full of sun and contentment. Never a thought in his head more complicated than when is food? Never anything more than simple pleasures and sleep. "I was surrounded by others, but nobody ever talked to each other."
It was all idle breeding, grooming, the most basic forms of socialization.
He doesn't even think he learned the language of rabbits. He thinks he spent his life isolated and waiting to be more because it had been maddening in there in a way he can't put to words. A life as a rabbit would have been content and peaceful till death took him. A life as a rabbit was simple and all he could think is how once he learned how to speak; he'd asked if he'd have to go back to the Warren soon.
"Do you want to?" Hanguang-Jun had asked and he shook his head desperately.
He had cried enough to leave tear stains on those layers and layers of robes, "I don't wanna! I don't wanna ever leave Papa."
"You don't have to. I won't let you." At the time it had done a lot to calm him down but now he understood to a degree it was a honey coated lie; well, perhaps a mere half-truth if he stopped to debate semantics.
All the same it didn't change much.
Of course, currently as they were going out as a group it was a simple outing to see what they could find and what the world offered. He thinks that's why when they bumped into Jin Ling and he demanded he get to travel with them as he offered insults about him being a Rabbit he kept his mouth shut.
Especially because he saw the way the skin around his hands kept changing from flesh to bronze or stone. Or any number of things.
If the normal disciples saw it they said nothing as for him and the other Rabbits they all had a knowing look in their eyes. Something was very wrong with Jin Ling and it became most apparent when the corpse of the cat had been found outside his door and Lan Sizhui had watched Jin Ling lick at the blood nervously before screaming of the horror. Trying to appear normal to everyone even as it was clear he was drooling at the sight moments prior.
He knows Jin Ling kept choosing to dispose of the corpses himself and given the look in his eyes it was clear what that entailed.
Just outside the inn right as Jin Ling was biting into to cat carcass blood on his lips and hands and the liver in his mouth Lan Sizhui had given a light cough, "If you needed to there are a fair amount of more civil ways to eat that."
He expected a fair amount of responses but what he didn't expect was for prideful and overall bratty Jin Ling to look him in the eyes and start to sob, "I can't stop it. I can't stop it and I'm scared."
the bright side for me having a depressive episode is that I write fanfic
