deercountry | Season of Recovery and Preparation [Open]

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Season of Recovery and Preparation [Open]

Who: Shen Yuan's CR group, as well as anyone else who'd like share a prompt or start a thread!
What: Recovering from the shitstorm that was December and avoiding new trouble wherever it finds him XD
When: Throughout December, see thread headers for details
Where: Outpost Haven, the Willful Machine, and elsewhere around Trench

Content Warnings: Discussion of the Sleeper Farm and related events, other content warnings TBD.

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[peerless_hobo has logged into channel: Sword Wizards and Mike.]

[peerless_hobo has changed the channel name to The Staying Out of Trouble Club.]

Well, congratulations to all of us for surviving November! I know it was really tough, what with the city turning into a living Escher painting, rampaging Beasts in the woods and rampaging people in the streets, but with a little valor and a lot of luck we pulled it off! Go us!

Hopefully December will be significantly less crazy, yeah?

Glad you are doing better.

December will be differently crazy.

Boooooooooooss, no! I had hope that December wouldn't be crazy at all, and now it's gone! No hope at all.

(￣ε(#￣)

Let me guess, every month in Trench is crazy, am I right?

August, September, October, November -- December. Four, going on five months he'd been living in the outpost, and what did he have to show for it? A job, sure, a few friends, but...compared to what a packrat he used to be, this seemed kind of bleak. He hadn't just been living in a curtained-off section of the barracks for three months (and before that, a corner of the ruined church), he'd been living out of his backpack all that time as well. And while it was essentially just another kind of qiankun bag and could have theoretically held anything he could fit through its mouth, all he'd actually put in it were...

The robes he'd brought with him. Additional clothes that he'd purchased piecemeal, all of them appropriate for work and little else. Hygiene products, and those the bare minimum. His memory box. And stored outside the backpack, he had his omni, Xiu Ya, his fan, and exactly as much bedding as he needed to keep out the cold. And that was all.

For fuck's sake, he hadn't even put anything up on his walls. Where had all this minimalism even come from? Was it some kind of sign of maturity, that he'd grown up a little while he wasn't looking? Or had he been so busy surviving that he'd forgotten to actually live? Or how did you even confirm something like that either way without looking completely pathetic?

False hope can lead you astray.

Yes, and you can study up. It's cyclical.

Despite the walls only being cloth, Duty knocked and waited for a response before entering. Everything looked about the same. It had for some time. It continued even after the person Yuan originally feared and sought refuge from left. Duty hasn't counted the hours spent accompanying Yuan around Trench for safety, but he hasn't in some time. It's convenient to work certainly, and Duty has no difficulties fitting in checking on him.

Honestly, Duty expected Shen Yuan to find housing more to his liking by now.

"How are you?" Duty asks seriously. After the Sleeper Farm and everything they can do, after the harm that can leave with a person even if little physically happened, the question is serious. No trite morning exchange. No social nicety. He stares intently at Yuan, expecting an answer. Expecting the truth. If less comes out, if Yuan hides anything that truly matters, Duty trusts Xiu Ya to let him know.

Duty expects a certain kind of answer, and Shen Yuan does his best to provide.

"Physically, I'm fine," he says truthfully. Indeed, ever since the month rolled over he's had more energy than he knows what to do with. "Mentally...uncertain." He sits down on the edge of his bed, gesturing with one hand to indicate that Duty can sit down too or remain standing, whichever pleases him.

"I don't know what I'm doing here anymore," he says slowly, each word a struggle as he tries to articulate it to himself and Duty at the same time. "And that...I feel anxious about it, I guess? Which seems ridiculous, when everything's fine..." Isn't it? "But I...I don't know." He shakes his head, frustrated. "Does 'I just spent a week in Jin Guangyao's house and now I feel like I'm missing out' sound as stupid as it feels?"

Given Shen Yuan was abducted from performing a regular activity in his life, Duty's not surprised he has mental difficulties. He'd be warier of the situation if Shen Yuan painted a pleasant light on everything. It's not... all good.

He sits near the bed so that they can see each other. He raises one eyebrow at 'when everything's fine' but otherwise doesn't chide or rebuke the other man.

In the end, being a man of few words pays off. Duty gets away with only, "No." It's not a stupid feeling. Jin Guangyao is not from the same world but something of a similar culture. He's likely set up house the way Shen Yuan would have, were everything else fine. He's done what Yuan wishes he'd done. Of course he feels as though he's missing out. He is.

Thanks boss, that's very helpful. /s but Shen Yuan has had four months to get used to the other man's taciturnity, so he just hopefully confirms, "It doesn't sound stupid?" before grinning wryly and rubbing his face. "Well, that's good, I guess...no, it's good," he corrects himself, and then, frustrated, adds, "I just don't know what I should do about it."

Because here is the difficulty: Shen Yuan does not want to move into, steal, or copy Jin Guangyao's house. He loves that place for how peaceful it is and how much it feels like his friend, and he's grateful to Jin Guangyao's generosity in letting him stay there while he recovered...but he doesn't want to live there. The same qualities that make it feel like "Jin Guangyao's space" preclude it from feeling like "Shen Yuan's." And hard on that heel came the thought that Shen Yuan deserves a space that feels like his own, but...he... He doesn't know what that would look like.

So, the deeper issue: Shen Yuan doesn't know who Shen Yuan is anymore. And this had been building for a while before the Sleeper Farm: it was there in Shen Yuan's refusal to make long-term plans, the ambiguous way he'd refer to his own cultivation, his hot and cold relationship with Xiu Ya. The way he suddenly threw himself back into cultivator mannerisms as soon as Jin Guangyao turned up, befriended him and then Lan Xichen, and then turned into a massive basket case of insecurities about it. The way he tried to put himself into seclusion less than a month after agreeing with Duty that it wouldn't be practical, because he'd suddenly changed the metric by which he measured himself and found himself wanting.

Who is Shen Yuan, when he's not comparing himself to other people and inventing judgements on their behalf? He just doesn't know! And he's been struggling to articulate that to himself, in the privacy of his own head, so it'll be no wonder if the message gets garbled as he attempts to convey it to Duty, in fits and starts and with more than a little contradictory or just plain inaccurate information. Like Shen Yuan's earlier insistence that everything is fine, he's just plain bad at dealing with his own problems. It's so much easier to take on other people's.

Duty watches Shen Yuan, knowing that they differ greatly, that the questions whose answers by which Duty lives are not necessarily the correct questions (much less answers) for Yuan. Jin Guangyao, Lan Xichen, and Nie Huaisang's arrivals help Shen Yuan embrace cultivation, the goal he stated devotion to after their fight with the draugr. However, whoever he is must come from within or it will not last.

"What do you need to know?" Duty asks. It's an old trick for a teacher, a mentor, a spymaster, anyone really. "To answer that." Due to their close relation, he gives Shen Yuan three additional words, to be sure it's understood.

His opinions he keeps to himself. They are not the answer.

"I don't --" Know, is what Shen Yuan was going to say. An easy answer, an opt-out from responsibility. But he already knows Duty won't let him get away with that, so he shuts his mouth instead and tries to think about it. Seriously. In depth.

(Don't judge him for continuing to make choices based on what he thinks will get him someone else's approval, okay? Everyone has to start somewhere.)

"I guess...I need to figure out what would please me," he finally says, reluctantly. He taps the fingers of one hand on his knee for a moment before continuing, "Figure out what it is I'm lacking, that has me so dissatisfied, and reach for that. But that's such a petty thing to worry about," he sighs, once again diving off the rails. Self-awareness, ugh. So cringe. "There are people around here with real problems, and I'm sitting here whining because I want my own house? How embarrassing."

Duty watches Shen Yuan closely. His face is as inexpressive as it usually is, but the silence and waiting shows that taking more time is the right answer. He doesn't mind Shen Yuan wants his approval. It's not easy to get or to keep. It means continually doing the right thing, where the right thing depends on what you truly and honestly believe. No wishy washy answers, no repeated words that come from someone else. The only way, in the end, to live up to his expectations is to live up to one's own.

"Tch," Duty objects to Shen Yuan's insults to himself. "Someone always has it worse." It's not a contest, he says. The world's amount of real problems isn't limited, and once they're handed out, everything else is fake. No. Housing is a basic need. It's something people have fought for tooth and nail, whether that's in war or work or anything else. They built this building together. Nothing stood here when they began.

Housing is something.

"Help yourself to help others," Duty says. His eyes look more intently now. What are you lacking? Why are you dissatisfied? What do you need in a home? Shen Yuan doesn't have all the answers now, but he hasn't shown the commitment ever in all the months they have worked together. Even now, they've helped those around the community, seen more houses. There's plenty of information to work with.

Shen Yuan scoffs quietly, but doesn't argue. Those good ideas for other people, but they don't apply to him. He hasn't really been struggling, he's just self-pitying. (Somewhere Shen Yuan's biological brothers have just started laughing hysterically and they don't know why.) But he can see quite clearly that trying to argue that to Duty's face will just open a conversational can of worms that he does not want to deal with, and worse yet potentially make Duty look at him with disapproval, which would be terrible. So instead he takes a deep breath and doubles down on the other, marginally safer, layer of this conversation.

"In that case," he says quietly, "I want my own space, with real walls and a door that locks. I don't want --" he gestures around to the barracks, "to live somewhere that people are coming and going all the time." Only a few people live here permanently, and Shen Yuan picked the spot furthest from the main door, but he can still hear them and they can hear him. And there's always the chance that more Sleepers could show up at any time.

(A while back Lan Xichen offered to play for him, when he was sick and upset, and Shen Yuan had to turn him down. It bothers him still.)

"I want to have nice things to put on my walls," he says, a trifle reluctantly because he isn't sure what form those 'nice things' would take. Posters, like in his Beijing apartment? Fans and calligraphy, like the bamboo house in Qing Jing? How does he pick?

At this point Xiu Ya chimes in to mention that she at least would like a sword rack with a good view of the entryway, so that...that gives him a place to start, at least. He mentions this to Duty and then finishes, with an embarrassed little laugh, "I want to try cooking for myself, which is weird considering I hated cooking when I was a fresh-out-of-college twenty-something. But...that kid died, didn't he? And then maybe he grew up a little. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, maybe."

So much for staying out of trouble. Is it a three strikes and you're out kind of deal, or am I going to get kicked immediately?

[jokes make it all better, yes?]

Hey. I'm sorry I couldn't get to you in time. My head wasn't on straight, and that's a bit of a shit excuse coming from me, but it's just what it says on the tin, no bullshit.

You're okay, right? Because surviving November? That's one way to put it.

All Shen Yuan says are the basics. How they manifest, how they can be handled in a way that satisfies Yuan, is where the details will come in. Someplace personal and private, some place he can have company that's his and his alone except with anyone he chooses to share the information or experience with. Something personal. Something... nice. A more vague word perhaps not in existence, but Duty is sure Shen Yuan has something in mind, even if that changes.

While Duty understand the desire for a private space, one sacred and lockable, he greatly appreciates living with other people. Silence, solace, he's had enough lifetimes of that. There's other places to go, depending on mood. Still, for those closer to home, for those used to sharing space, it often goes the other way.

"We've worked across Trench," Duty says, "Which neighborhood?" The answer can change, but they all have their purposes and their styles. Their vibes. Even within a neighborhood, options vary. However, what Yuan wants to be close to, who, and what kind of dwelling. Well. It won't be Waver's basement apartment in Cellar Door with a tiny kitchen.

He crouches, looking seriously at Shen Yuan. "We carry the dead with us," he says. Even when they are gone, whether that be others or themselves. Here he is after all, a bridge between two people while only, in the end, being one of them. Gideon carried Pyrrha. Duty carries Gideon, even as he's let his husband be. It's in his mannerisms, his choice of words. It's his very being. Shen Yuan isn't the kid who died anymore. He isn't young man who took over another life in a world set by a system. He's someone else, the way they only can be when coming somewhere else entirely.

Even though it was far from the first time it had happened, a part of Shen Yuan was still taken aback by Duty's intensity, as if on some level he doesn't really expect anyone to care that much about his inner life (Shen Yuan what even is going on with your self-esteem). But he tries to rally, blurting out, "Gaze!" And awkwardly explaining further, "I'd like to be closer to the library..."

But Duty's comment about the dead brings up another issue. "I'm not just carrying around the person I used to," he suddenly realizes out loud. "I'm also carrying around traces of...that other person. The cultivator I replaced. Even though I stopped using his name." He stares at his hands. "I hated being that guy," he says slowly. "But if I'd never been him, I wouldn't have Xiu Ya now." The sword stirs uncomfortably in his mind; good, that makes two of them. "And Jin Guangyao...I doubt he would've wanted anything to do with me, if I weren't a cultivator..."

That cannot be true, Xiu Ya quietly chides him. Does he not value Mike-xiansheng's friendship as well as yours? And did he not approach you to discuss music before he learned you'd studied cultivation? Shen Yuan should not think so lowly of his friends.

But that was different. He wasn't sure how, it was just...it was different.

[Aw, Mike-bro. Of course they're not going to kick you out, what kind of a question is that? Even a joke it's not very funny. Shen Yuan gets why he made it though, so he tries to respond in kind --]

For his transgressions, Mike-xiansheng must spend at least two weeks taking especially good care of himself, eating well, and keeping his head down. He won't be further penalized as long as he's making an honest effort to stay out of trouble, but failure to comply will result in punitive measures. Level One is receiving tea from Jin Guangyao while he looks at you sadly. Mike-xiansheng doesn't want to know what about Level Two.

In all seriousness though, I'm doing fine, so don't worry about it anymore, okay? You went through something way worse than me, I wasn't even conscious the entire time Xiu Ya and I were in that place. So really I should be asking you, are you okay? I know Jin-ge and Lan Xichen went to check on you, but...is there anything I can do?

Edited 2022-12-06 17:35 (UTC)

Duty raises his eyebrows slightly, just enough to show that he's done so. He lives in Gaze. The archives are in Gaze, but there are other sources of books for entertainment. To be near the archives is to focus on Trench. Perhaps, Duty hopes, to cultivate his abilities and planning, so they avoid another draugr situation. It's Yuan's choice, and Duty certainly is aware of much of the unoccupied buildings in the neighborhood, as a safety precaution.

Duty looks around the room, the setting, the titular lack of privacy. He reaches out to the curtains and freezes them. Ice bridges the small gaps between walls and curtains. An ice ceiling stretches across Shen Yuan's space, below the level of the curtain, until they are muffled from most others. Some, like D, could likely listen in if they tried. For all the ability it takes, it's not that showy. The curtains are stiff, and the ice clear. No one else can see the new ceiling from a regular position.

He sits on Shen Yuan's bed because nothing undermines the fact that using elemental powers to great degrees drains one's energy. "Ignoring your blinders about Jin Guangyao..." Duty pauses intently. He's not getting into that can of worms. It's enough Yuan knows he disagrees. The man's smart enough to figure out why.

He closes his eyes for a moment. "This isn't my original body," Duty says. "It was my husband's. I lived a myriad in his mind, a myriad as him, a myriad together like that and alone—"

The pause is heavy. It never stops hurting, no matter how many times Duty lets him go, no matter how many times Duty talks about it.

"Until I watched him die." There's no Duty without his husband, without that experience. The few words. The silences. So many of his mannerisms, so much of what Shen Yuan has grown used to, are the parts of him that come from his husband, the pieces so tightly braided in his identity that they cannot be separated, that would fray him entirely.

Shen Yuan sits quietly and observes, impressed but unalarmed by the display of Duty's power. What does he have to be worried for? Even if Duty wanted to seal them both in, he'd probably have a good reason for it. Admittedly a frank discussion of identity and dead husbands wasn't a topic Shen Yuan would ever have anticipated coming up, but he could definitely understand the desire for privacy while discussing it!

As for the rest...now, it must be said that he hadn't been thinking of proximity to Duty when he mentioned wanting to live in Gaze; actually, he'd momentarily forgotten that Duty lived anywhere near that district. He really had just been thinking of the archives -- and yes, he wanted to use the resources there to improve his cultivation and knowledge of Trench. So that was fine, so far as it went, and thinking that Duty would probably approve almost made up for the scolding he'd just recieved re: Jin Guangyao.

It really wasn't fair. If both Xiu Ya and Duty thought he was wrong, then did that mean he'd really definitely made a mistake? But where? It wasn't like he was a terribly appealing person on his own merits!

Luckily Duty didn't seem to have any interest in discussing that further, and even more luckily, Shen Yuan was too surprised to say anything really stupid that would have embarrassed them both. He did stare a little, but his mind was working the entire time, and eventually he said, carefully, "A myriad...that's ten thousand years, right?" Palamedes had defined it for him once.

That was such a long time... "I only had to be Shen Qingqiu for three years, almost four," he says out loud, sympathetic but mostly shocked. "And having that all bound up with the loss of a husband, I don't know...Even calling it horrible seems like such an understatement. I'm sorry," he says, because somebody should be.

Duty inclines his head to confirm the definition of a myriad. Rounding is... simpler. At those time periods, a little less accuracy doesn't undermine the point. That is the point, to a degree.

"I don't recommend it," Duty says. After a pause, he adds, "I don't regret it." It's possible for it to be both. It hurt far more than most anyone, at best, can understand. He understands the appeal and the power of it, but the cost that cannot be undone... it's not a decision readily made. It wasn't even the decision he made originally, before he was Duty. His existence is a consequence of his husband's love for him and his love, in return, for his husband. To choose to live like this over and over and over for his sake and for the sake of helping others.

"It's not a dick measuring contest," Duty says, something of the Cohort coming through, "Different means, different reasons. Point is... I get it." Yuan isn't who he was when he died and became Shen Qingqiu. He isn't Shen Qingqiu either. He's something not readily or easily explained to most people, something harder to grasp if you haven't been through something similar.

He doesn't press further on Shen Yuan's identity. He doesn't immediately offer or shut down more information about himself. There's no 'System' guiding Shen Yuan's decision. What happens next is truly up to him.

[aw, shit. it's a trap. he'd opened his mouth (fingers) and typed right into it. how is he going to argue this? the part about the tea gets a laugh, and the part about the sad look gets another. tea wouldn't be a punishment, but he's not sure he could go more than one round with that level ten spell: look of concern.]

It's easy to say 'don't worry', but a lot harder in practice. Especially when I've seen the insides of that place now. You were better off 'out', maybe.

I wouldn't say okay, but I'm better than I was. I don't know if I owe that to my friends, my Omen, or a little bit of sweet revenge, so I'll go with all three.

I know we don't know each other well, but I don't know how serious they take things around here when it comes to work, and I want to make a good impression. Show them I mean business, and that I'm the man for the job. Do you think you could write a couple sentences as a sort of character reference? It's fine if you can't, it's probably stupid.

What's Level Two?

"Thank you," Shen Yuan says softly. For...being there. For sharing that with him. It's hard to sit and listen to this, he feels so embarrassed that Duty felt like he needed to, but. It does help. The help outweighs the embarrassment.

"I guess...if I'm going to do this, the only way to figure out what pleases me is to try things," he says reluctantly, beginning to fidget again with the hem of his shirt, the flap of his robe that covers his lap. "Experiment. Which means sometimes getting things wrong." He sighs heavily. There is nothing Shen Yuan hates more than being seen to be wrong, and this at least he does know about himself -- so he smiles wryly at Duty and says, "You know that, if I go through with this, I'm probably going to be unspeakably annoying about the entire process, right? Are you sure you want to encourage this?"

He's not consciously aware of it, would in fact object vehemently if it was spelled out to him, but this is a test. Duty likes Shen Yuan fine when he's useful and follows instructions, right? And he tolerates Shen Yuan when he pretends to whine and makes stupid jokes. But there's got to be a limit on that, somewhere. Shen Yuan just hasn't found it yet.

"You're welcome," Duty spares the words because proper manners matter to Yuan, where D would be satisfied with the slightest head tilt.

"In adulthood, you make yourself do what you must," Duty says. "How you manage it"—he shrugs—"makes no difference to me."

Some people never want others to hear them complain or admit how much effort something takes or how hard it is. Shen Yuan, in the end, isn't one of them. Not most of the time. That's fine too.

"I encourage you to do what you need," Duty declares. It refuses any argument and accepts Shen Yuan as 'unspeakably annoying' as much as an overstatement as that may be.

I believe I have lost the challenge, but as compensation (and dues) to the club, I offer Nie Huaisang three cardinals.

[just pretend there is a small rat photobombing the second picture.]

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Season of Recovery and Preparation [Open]

Group Chat - December

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First Week of December

Outpost [closed to Duty]

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