forgethertoo | [open post: thursday's eve]

[open post: thursday's eve]

When the predetermined day and time for the night hunt comes around, Aornis kits herself out quite reasonably, though she secretly loathes every second of it. Sensible, dark clothes and sensible black shoes with no heels. Flashlight. Notebook and pen. A few other useful and routine tools -- and an odd contraption that she's holding in her hands. The outside of it is a glass bottle that once held a beverage of some sort, washed and cleaned thoroughly. Since she didn't want to appear to be the sort to waste food, she's filled it with different colored plastic beads that she discovered in one of the lounges. The bottle is sealed, with the cap on, as she waits for Claudius and Lan Wangji.

Alternatively, if anyone would like to speak with her while she waits for them, they are also more than welcome to -- though we can't particularly guarantee a scintillating conversation, as she's still masquerading as Thursday Next.

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Claudius, for his part, can appreciate the craft here. If Thursday and Aornis are unfortunate twins -- even more unfortunate given that family history -- and not one in the same, then her warning sounds direly earnest. But for Aornis herself, it doubles as a boast and a threat. Claudius puts a hand to his chest. "My condolences," he says seriously. "I hope you understand we're committed enough to accept the risk of likewise disappearing. One of our own has died, after all."

One of their own has died, and they don't intend to rest until they've found some modicum of justice -- but they are already making that evident, cutting a path through the woods in the dark with a near-stranger. Lan Wangji also has no intention of allowing anyone else to disappear, but there's no need to boast or declare his own power. If this is Aornis, she already knows and likely considers him a trifling threat in comparison with Luo Binghe. If not, it would be a misplaced show of force.

They've come to a felled tree that blocks their path, a remnant of the storm that descended on the mansion at the end of Dark. Lan Wangji clears it in one neat little jump, then offers a hand to Thursday and Claudius in turn to help them over it. A slow-trickling stream winds through the woods from here. "Follow the water to your right," he instructs Thursday. It puts him at the rear, as he intended: his back is no longer to her, and he can watch Claudius' back, too.

Aornis crosses the felled tree easily. Though she lacks any preternatural strength that some of her siblings may have, she has kept herself in shape.

"Yes, I was very sorry to hear that," she says earnestly. "Hopefully it can all be put to right soon."

Claudius flashes Lan Wangji a quick smile, grateful for the hand up and for that clever bit of maneuvering. His heart speeds, understandably, at the thought of what threats Lan Wangji might have to guard him against -- but at least he'll be guarded through it. That knowledge keeps his mind sharp and clear. "I'm sure it will," he says, serene, "one way or another. I only wish to assuage any guilt you might be feeling about involving us. On the contrary, I'm grateful for your trust. Had things gone differently, she might've been one of our own, and we might have taken you here to lead you astray. Does she truly have no motive other than evil?"

Lan Wangji allows Thursday to lead them along the path carved by that stream; it is taking them, circuitously, back toward where the woods open up, where the stones he asked Galahad to lift for strength mark one of the many ways into the trees. Not yet, though. For now, the forest is still thick. He listens for her answer.

"If you were all taken in by her then I think it would've been too late for me the minute I got here," Aornis says, as practical as ever, as Thursday. "But I suspect you're too bright for that. -- Barring a few members, the Hades family are all that way. Evil for the sake of evil. They judge success by the number of crimes committed. It's a terrible way to live."

“People are pack animals, in my experience,” Claudius muses aloud. “It’s how we adapted to survive through generations — whether you believe we emerged naked and vulnerable from the Garden of Eden, or from the primordial chaos, the unknowable Tao. We grouped together to take down larger prey, to watch each other as we slept, to build shared homes and protect each other. There are variations among human beings, of course, just as there are variations among any natural species. Some tolerate isolation better than others … and perhaps they, too, are essential to our future survival.”

He’s thinking of Lan Wangji, of Galahad, who both possess a keen sense of personal justice, who naturally resist following the pack to circle the next scapegoat. Instead, they both defend Claudius when scapegoating him for social harmony would be far too easy. Lan Wangji kept loving Wei Wuxian, whatever the cultivation world said about him. If the future of humanity included only the sort of masked wolves at Elsinore who politely declined to make waves but grouped together to condemn acceptable targets, it would be a dismal future indeed.

“But all of us,” he continues, “feel an invisible, unspoken pressure when we aren’t behaving as the pack believes we should. For many of us, that’s the only thing keeping us moral. The sense that the pack would turn us out, if we didn’t follow the same strictures. As inexplicable and lonely as a life of evil may seem to you and I … she had her own to pack to run with. Her family. As long as they supported her, I daresay she had no reason to change. Indeed, the competition among them would only inspire her to commit more evil, to secure her place in the family hierarchy. Wolves in captivity tend to develop stronger hierarchies. In your professional opinion … what do you suggest we do with her, when we find her? Is she someone we can reason with, or contain?”

Success by the number of crimes committed leaves Lan Wangji exceptionally cold. It puts him in mind of cultivators who care to go night-hunting only to acquire as many kills as possible. Heroes and villains are not always so different, not when those hierarchies are in place and not when there is fortune and renown to be harvested. He already had little respect for Aornis. He has less, now.

He has his own thoughts on Claudius' theories, thoughts about the ways that communities can bind people, sometimes too tightly and sometimes just tightly enough to constitute a necessary comfort. About the Wall of Discipline, four thousand rules that live stamped into his mind and will stay there forever, even if he lives here twice as long as he ever lived in Gusu. About his own long years of loneliness, and what he would or would not have done to alleviate that loneliness.

But he isn't having tea or playing an idle game of weiqi with Claudius. This is a game, but they are not playing. He's quiet, Bichen a cold beacon in his hand and the forest floor soft beneath the soles of his boots.

Aornis appears to process Claudius' words for a moment. "Are you saying that many of us have the capacity to be evil -- but it's society that keeps the peace, so to speak? That you or I would ...strictly hypothetically speaking, of course, have that same capacity?" She notedly keeps Lan Wangji out of this you and I, perhaps because he's been silent for a long while, perhaps for other reasons.

She frowns, as if considering this idea, before moving onto the question. "I think her older brother might be the key to unlocking her psyche. Acheron Hades. She's single-mindedly looking for revenge for his death."

“They were close, then,” Claudius reflects. He looks ahead, where the trees block more and more of the moonlight, but Bichen is still a beacon behind them. “Revenge speaks to a sense of justice — but it also speaks of loyalty to one’s pack. A warning that harm to you and yours will be returned hundredfold. It’s sympathetic, certainly, common to societies evil and good. Our little society isn’t exempt.” As though still unknotting a thorny problem, looking for the lock that goes to this key, he lets out a sigh. “May I ask how he died?”

Of course, with thanks to Claudius' notes, they already knew that Aornis had lost a brother. It comes with another chill to recall the aside where Claudius wondered whether he might fill that role, whether he might use it to know more of Aornis. In the interim, she became unknown in her entirety, reaching into all of their minds and plucking herself cleanly from them.

Perhaps at some point one of them already knew how Acheron Hades died. If so, it is just as gone as every memory of Aornis herself. This woman may or may not be telling the truth when she answers, but she is at least following the path Lan Wangji asked her to, the talisman in her hand, the thin water of the stream to their left occasionally gleaming when the light catches it. A few moths have come near, dancing at the edges of the sphere of illumination that surrounds them.

Aornis looks back at them, her gaze that's only half-lit by the glow of the talisman surprisingly steely for Thursday. "I took him down."

"My," Claudius says, deliberately mild. "That's unfortunate. For our possibilities of negotiation, I mean. I assume he'd done something to deserve it?"

Lan Wangji meets that hard gaze with his own, flat and unreadable with Claudius between them. There is something telling in the glint of her eyes, but perhaps it is only a trick of the light. "Something evil for the sake of evil," he suggests.

"Of course," Aornis says, tone equally mild. Thursday Next would never take down someone who didn't thoroughly deserve it. "Evil for the sake of being evil. Manuscript theft, multiple murders, kidnapping the titular character of Jane Eyre, and arson. It's almost impressive how much he got away with, really -- until the end, of course."

"And how did that end come about?" It's only natural to ask. Useful, for dealing with a similarly-powered, similarly-evil sister. But Claudius wonders how she'll tell it.

Edited 2024-08-14 16:20 (UTC)

Lan Wangji lets his eyes settle on her face again, taking the ready excuse of interest in her answer. She could tell the truth. She has, so far, in the most roundabout of ways -- at least so far as he knows, so far as he can remember. But she could as easily flip Claudius' question on its head and hand them some false strategy that would have them walking directly into harm's way.

"A silver bullet was the only thing that could kill him."

Claudius raises an eyebrow. "Dramatic," he says. "How did you outsmart him? A man like him must be fairly intelligent, to get away with so much."

The crushed bullet that killed Shen Yuan is in Lan Wangji's possession, hidden neatly away at the back of a cabinet in his bedroom. It also contains the sword that nearly killed Magnus. He doesn't particularly like the idea that a bullet might be the only way to eliminate Aornis, as if evil can be neutralized only with evil. He also isn't certain he believes it.

The trees are thinning again, the moons brighter through the sparser treetops. They aren't close to the mansion, but they are closer than they were.

"Extremely intelligent. He was my English professor," Aornis says, with a touch of irony -- but then she smiles, just slightly. "I could not have done it without Mr. Rochester."

Claudius sketches two portraits in his mind's eye: one of a woman with a firm sense of justice, fond enough of an old professor to add superlatives to his intelligence, but with no doubts about whether he deserved to die. The other is a woman who lost her brother, masquerading as her brother's killer, mocking her inflexibility and dull dedication to her job, letting her mask drop more the longer they walk together.

It's a matter of perspective. Assessing threats has always been Claudius's most relied-upon skill, and he turns over these two studies, wondering which one is most dangerous. He's never been more glad to have Lan Wangji at his back.

For now, he says in his usual, cheerful tone, "There's a story there, I can tell. Someone more clever than Acheron? A close friend? An old flame?"

Because he knows Claudius well, Lan Wangji feels the depth of his thoughts beneath his amiable manner. Something is coiling up in his mind, or multiple somethings. He has no doubt that he will hear every woven branch of it later -- so long as they emerge from this evening with their memories and bodies intact. He watches Claudius as he walks, his bright affability in contrast with the way he picks his way through the woods with sure steps, never faltering in his heeled boots. Thursday, or Aornis, walks just as confidently. It would be an interesting matchup if not for the death of Shen Yuan hanging over them and if not for Lan Wangji's simmering anger at the attempt on Magnus' life.

"Oh, no, not an old flame," Aornis says, perhaps a touch too hurriedly. "He's the male romantic lead of the novel we were in, Jane Eyre. Every year, he's in contention for Most Troubled Romantic Lead at the BookWorld Awards, though Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights wins the award almost annually. Either Mr. Rochester or--" She pauses for a meaningful beat and would, perhaps, shoot a sidelong glance at Claudius here were she not in front of him. "--or Hamlet, Prince of Denmark places second, typically. It's quite contentious."

The eyeroll is automatic. "Troubled I'll accept. Gertrude did her best with the boy, but genetics and his ghostly apparition of a father won out in the end." To be fair, Claudius shares some of those genetics. He's done his research.

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