Lan Xichen has a problem.

He didn't even know the Anglos knew that Masozi existed. He's been carefully managing things on the Sino side, but that relies on his reputation as a person who deals fairly with others and who would never countenance having a maleficer. His reputation on the Anglo side is... less. They don't share a language. He's vaguely aware that Annaka is in charge of NY and has somewhat positive feelings about her, but if he thought that Annaka had employed a maleficer who threatened Shanghai he would be on the verge of war.

The thing most people would do in this situation, the one the Meng Yao on his shoulder urges him to do, is to cut his losses. Tell Masozi that Shanghai would be happy to ally with him in eighteen months, if he's still alive and he hasn't pulled malia and he's fluent in Mandarin. Lan Xichen would have done that if Masozi had spellchoked, or in some way turned out not to be useful. He likes Masozi but you can't make decisions because you like someone. Lan Xichen will pay any price to keep everyone in Shanghai enclave alive, and if he has to curl up in his bed at night and hate himself-- it's not the largest price anyone in the enclave has ever had to pay. Sometimes it hurts to do the right thing.

But it's not obviously the sensible thing to do, like it would be if he spellchoked. As he'd said to Masozi, he's an investment. And without Shanghai's help, as a maleficer with no allies or resources who's already frightened one powerful enclave, with no one to teach him the social rules he's never had a chance to learn, getting spells in a language he doesn't speak and has no native speakers to practice with, and possibly having pissed off New York-- Masozi is going to die. 

There isn't an option where he keeps his options open and checks back in in eighteen months, not really, not unless Masozi is more impressive than every other wizard in the Scholomance put together. Lan Xichen can bet all his yuan or he can leave the gambling den.

Lan Xichen has a Meng Yao on his shoulder but he also has a Nie Mingjue. The Nie Mingjue on his shoulder says it's simple, Xichen. Just do good things and don't do bad things. Nie Mingjue was the first one to invite Meng Yao to sit with them at the Shanghai enclave table, to help Meng Yao with his schoolwork, to say maybe if we helped him he could do more than just fix our plumbing. And they did, and now Meng Yao speaks English like a native and makes the most useful potions and is here to tell him what he would do.

It's a waste. He wants Masozi to steward Wen Ning and Nie Huaisang through graduation, to be ruthless enough to keep them alive and kind enough to want to. And he wants to see what he could do, for Shanghai and for the entire Sinosphere, if he had enough fertilizer to grow. They're planting enclaves in the Sinosphere. They might make their own Scholomance. He has so much potential and without him it's going to be wasted.

If there were enough time, he'd want to have a meeting with Wen Qing and Meng Yao about it, to talk through all the considerations. But there isn't time. This situation has already lasted most of a weekend, if he delays then the Anglos might talk themselves even further into a war. 

Lan Xichen decides.

"...do you want me to show you my emotions so you know I'm not upset or about to stop helping you?"

All right. Focus. He needs to think and not be stupid. 

...It turns out this is a lot harder when the main source of danger is 'bafflingly complicated geopolitics involving intricate rules of politeness between rivalrous groups of teenagers competing to survive' rather than the more straightforward dangers he's used to, of mals constantly after him and his family or mundane strangers deciding that a skinny poor boy looks like an easy target. 

If Lan Xichen does want to hurt him, then there are much easier ways than this, and....well, if Lan Xichen wants to mind control him, the most likely motive is that he wants Masozi to be compliant and useful and not inconvenient? Which - sounds like a more likely strategy for getting out of the Scholomance alive than the one he was about to stumble into. 

Masozi feels like he doesn't have nearly enough working memory to think through all the considerations on the spot, but he can't exactly get a notebook and diagram it out, that would look really suspicious. 

"...I - yes - all right." 

Lan Xichen is unaware of Masozi's thoughts and so can't say either "of course you can diagram out your response" or "why would I mind control you into being compliant and useful? That doesn't sound like something a good superior would do to his inferiors."

Instead he says another rhyme in a language Masozi doesn't speak and suddenly Masozi feels a package of emotions. He can feel them the way he'd feel his own emotions, but they're clearly marked as belonging to someone else.

The overwhelming feeling is that Masozi is his, and Lan Xichen has a duty to protect him; the sheer it is my job to get you out of here alive is so intense that it bleeds through even though this spell isn't supposed to tell you thoughts at all. 

Other feelings: Lan Xichen is worried for Masozi, scared that something bad will happen to him. Lan Xichen is frustrated, but there's a sense that it's not about Masozi's behavior but at the whole situation; it feels like he's juggling sixteen plates and if he drops any of them someone who's his responsibility will be hurt, which is the worst thing he can imagine, and every time he looks away someone throws a new plate on his hands. Lan Xichen feels an odd sort of unendorsed guilt; Masozi is his responsibility and that means that, somehow, he should have picked up Masozi earlier and prevented this from happening. Lan Xichen feels a sort of compassion for Masozi as another human being, and one who has suffered a lot in his life, and Lan Xichen feels shame about that emotion; that might make him care about people who aren't his, and the only thing he's allowed to care about are the people who are his. 

Feelings that are more in the background but are coloring everything: Lan Xichen admires Masozi greatly for his endurance in the face of suffering and his cleverness and his determination and his willingness to save others. Lan Xichen is intensely charmed by Masozi's excitement about math and Mandarin. Lan Xichen enjoys Masozi's company a good deal. Lan Xichen feels a sort of collector's pride, the kind of feeling you get when you find a mint-condition collectible for sale for a dollar at a garage sale; a sort of smugness about your own taste and your ability to pick up a good deal. 

And carefully separated off from all the other feelings is one about how Masozi is very nice to look at and it would be very desirable to kiss him.  .

Masozi is shaking and wrapping his arms around himself and has absolutely no idea what his feelings in response to this are. They aren't feelings he's familiar with or has words for. 

He's....never had anyone looking out for him. Not like that. Not even his parents, really - looking back, they...were living, each day, but they weren't fighting? They were resigned to a world that was the way it was, a world of vast forces beyond their control and sometimes those forces were monsters that took their children in the night, and they would weep quietly and dry their tears and move on, quietly resigned that either they would live or they would die and which of those it would be had never been in their power to decide... 

...and there are other notes in the packet of emotions that are confusing, even disconcerting. Why the shame - with just emotions, no thought-content, it's hard to parse what he's ashamed of, but it feels like it's - ashamed of noticing that people matter -? 

And - he's not sure that it's...strategically correct, for Lan Xichen to pick him? That once he's picked someone as one of his enclave he stands by them, THAT makes sense, the expectations of others it builds, the equilibrium it leads to... But Masozi hadn't thought he had...passed those tests, not yet. He's pretty sure that if it were his enclave, with limited resources to protect others, there would have been more tests, and Masozi would have risked automatically failing them with his recent problems-causing. And - he doesn't want to be Shanghai's mistake, he doesn't want to be the reason they lose other alliances and fewer of their people survive, that wouldn't be worth it even if it got him personally out - 

"Sorry," he manages, barely. There's no reason for this to make it impossible to talk right now, and yet. 

"I don't ally this early normally. My plan before you say that is to give you enough resources to see what you can make of yourself, and then decide whether to ally with you. But now either we throw our resources behind you or you are very likely to die, and it is a waste for you to die, so you are our ally."

A day ago he...would have said that he thought he had not-terrible chances? But, well, a lot of WHY he thought that were because of - exactly the things Lan Xichen pointed out. Because he can learn fast, and he's kept himself alive this long, and he has a valuable affinity and that makes him worth teaming up with. And, well, also he was in fact missing so much context about - well, just about everything. He's already doing better than just about anyone he ever knew before a few days ago, and that wouldn't have been good enough. 

"Thank you," he whispers into his folded knees. 

Lan Xichen kneels beside him and hugs him. "I'm certain we can get this misunderstanding sorted out."

Masozi is not sure if he's literally ever been hugged in this particular way before. Presumably his parents...picked him up, ever, when he was small...but he doesn't really remember much before he was six, and by then he was close to on his own, and certainly SINCE then it's never come up. The last time anyone touched him in a way that was even a bit voluntary on his part, aside from very small things, was....his mother on her deathbed, probably. 

It's a little bit scary - and it would be a lot scarier if he hadn't just felt Lan Xichen's emotions directly, and even with that it's a bit uncomfortably salient that Lan Xichen is much bigger and stronger than him and could physically stop him from leaving if he felt like it - but mostly it's...nice? 

"Okay," he says, still a little shaky but less so. "Okay. I'll - be more careful - I'll be so careful..." 

"I want to send you around with freshman Shanghai enclaver to teach you, but my options aren't good. If Song Lan is still alive he is ideal, but now I have Nie Huaisang who breaks into tears in the cafeteria, Wei Wuxian who never hears of a rule he doesn't break, Jiang Cheng who has a temper, Wen Ning who has no temper at all and anyway is surrounded by enclavers you can offend, and Lan Wangji who answers all questions with 'Mn.'"

"...I don't mind if someone cries. He seemed like he - maybe needed someone to look out for him, anyway? ...And I like Wei Wuxian but maybe I should just learn math and Mandarin from him, and not anything about rules." 

"--Actually I shouldn't assume you want to ally with Shanghai. Do you?"

“- I think that allying with Shanghai is the best way for me to not die and learn useful things like Mandarin and math?” Which is approximately the same thing as wanting, at least according to Masozi. 

"Welcome to the enclave. I'd say something nicer but I have to send Meng Yao to kowtow at whomever the New York second in command is."

"Oh. Okay." 

Shiver. 

"...I'm sorry?" Masozi adds again, pointlessly.