Annaka leaves.
...Masozi watches her go, dully, still sitting on his bed. He notices, vaguely, that he seems to be shaking again and that his chest still feels tight and locked-up. It doesn't seem very important, though.
What is he supposed to do now? Is he still a prisoner under guard?
Masozi looks pleadingly over at Lan Xichen.
That's very confusing. It doesn't feel like there's a thought to have in response to it, much less anything to say, that would be meaningfully true or false?
He looks down at his hands. Forces out words, with great effort. "It would - be more strategic - for Shanghai. If I weren't your ally."
"But I make promise, so I keep promise. Maybe it is better if I don't make promise before, but I do. So I keep it."
Something is wrong about that, but thinking through it, let alone turning the thought into words, is way too hard with the truth potion still affecting him. Masozi just shakes his head, helplessly.
He has no idea what it would even...mean...to forgive Lan Xichen? He's not angry. What would be the point. (Also, he is still mostly not experiencing emotions. He's just shaking, which is sort of like being afraid, but his mind has been so overloaded with fear in the last few minutes that it's almost stopped parsing.)
"...do you want hug? I don't want to offer, if you--"
"It wear off soon," he says gently. He sits next to Masozi and wraps an arm gently around his shoulder. "Move away if you want to."
...He doesn't think he wants to move away?
He thinks that probably he wants to lean against Lan Xichen, actually, because he's very tired. His shoulders and neck hurt from holding himself tense.
"Tell me when it has worn off," he says gently again, and holds Masozi close.
When it wears off, it does so gradually over a minute. It…feels like the horizon opening again. He can see past just what’s true or not-true here and now. To a future that…might, actually, exist for him.
He wants to see the stars again. He hadn’t felt claustrophobic in the Scholomance before, but he does now.
…….and suddenly he’s crying, again, and he would be screaming if he could get enough air into his lungs.
Something hurts, in a way that nothing, exactly, has ever hurt before, and he has no words for it but it drives out all thought.
He murmurs soothing syllables and cradles Masozi in his arms. After a while he starts to sing softly in Mandarin. (He has a very beautiful voice.)
It takes an indeterminate length of time before Masozi is able to keep himself at the surface of the mysterious agonizing misery enough to think, and remember where he is.
“I - sorry - it wore off.” It does not exactly seem like he’s any more able to think clearly.
"I guess," Lan Xichen says quietly. "My mom sings this song to me when I am little."
“…What does it mean. The words.”
Masozi’s mother didn’t sing very often. He’s forgotten the words to everything she used to sing.
"Something like--
The moon is bright, the wind is quiet,
The tree leaves hang over the window.
My little baby, go to sleep quickly,
Sleep, dreaming sweet dreams.
The moon is bright, the wind is quiet,
The cradle moves softly.
My little one, close your eyes,
Sleep, sleep, dreaming sweet dreams."
Everything hurts so much.
“I want to see the stars again. I - don’t know - how to be better at plans that work here? …And I don’t want you to try to save me if it’s going to make there be a war. Because then - even more people will be dead - like Sophie, Sophie’s dead…”
"No war. We think a maleficer frames you to provoke war between New York and Shanghai. New York doesn't like us but they dislike this maleficer more and don't want to let them win."
“But there was almost a war. It was - I know it was close.”
He squeezes his eyes shut, wrestling with an emotion that feels darker and muddier than grief. “…I wish you hadn’t promised.”
Masozi didn’t realize until the words were out that this is what he’s been thinking, and it’s the part that hurts the most, even more than a dead girl who made him clothes and was kind to him.
He could say it wasn't that close or really, the almost-war was all my fault, but that isn't the point. Instead, he says, "yes. It's horrible."
“…I think maybe Shanghai trying to keep me safe isn’t the thing that will keep the most people safe. Because New York is mad and I - I don’t understand why they want me dead by they do, and that’s -“ Shudder. “Makes it not a very good idea for me to be the one trying to keep Nie Huaisang and Wen Ning safe. Maybe just makes New York want them dead too…”
"--But you're Shanghai's now so we keep you safe too."
“I’m not, though. You can’t - make it be true just by saying it. New York doesn’t think I’m really one of you. I could tell.”
"In politics you make things true by insisting on them hard enough that they become true. Kind of like magic, in a way."
“- I think if it’s going to cost you and Shanghai more than what I can give back, then I’m not a good investment and…I wish you wouldn’t. If it makes things worse instead of better and I - if it’s too late for me to fix that…”
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