sunbaked_baker: (Cold ashes)
[personal profile] sunbaked_baker
The knot into which Sunshine had bound away all of her grief so she could focus on caring for A-Yuan, to be there for the sick child who had lost so much already, began threatening to unravel the moment the door had shut with Lan Wangji and A-Yuan settled in Abe no Seimei's room. Suddenly without immediate needs driving her actions, without some immediate threat to orient herself around, Rae had found herself truly alone for the first time in... weeks.


The silence upon her return to her room was nearly deafening.

Leaning with her back against her closed door - alone with only that knot of grief for company - the thought of undoing that intricate knot felt less like a good idea and more like a failure, falling apart, losing it. Sunshine wanted to resist, to hold herself together - grieving hurt, and if she let herself fall apart, who knew how long it'd take her to come back together again? But some part of her, remembering the false comfort of burning to ash and being nothing, of distancing grief with smoke and alcohol, knew that was what Rae had been doing all through these weeks. Adding new knots with every new pang of loss, bundling away every thought that threatened to undo her. Out of necessity, yes, but untenable, in the long run. Sunshine knew as much.

So she had made herself hear the silence of her room. Rae slowly lowered herself down to sit on the floor with her back to her door, just listening to herself breathe - unwinding the tangled, painful thoughts with care and dread until her breaths had become heavier, and uneven, and the first strands of the knot unraveled.

Like progress in undoing any complicated knot, like progress in solving a puzzle, the grief came in waves. Sunshine soon dissolved into mourning, sobbing hard, breaths ragged, murmured words unintelligible, unable to stem the flow of tears for a long time. But sometimes the tide would ebb. After particularly hard waves of grief, she would sit, her uneven breathing the loudest thing in the room, her forehead pressed to her bent knees, until some new painful thought would be released and the tears would rise again. She eventually moved from the hard floor to her bed, dampening her pillow with her slightly more muffled tears, but if she slept she doesn't remember it.


It is probably the next day when she comes back to herself, not-quite-waking in not-quite-peace. The pain is still there; there are still knots waiting to be undone, but the waves are gentler, and she is... more or less functional, for now.

She doesn't want food, doesn't want to venture out, but some parts of the brain don't take orders from her. Rae makes herself get up. Makes herself wash her face, and though it wipes away the salt-tracks from her face it does little for her red-rimmed eyes. She can't quite make herself change clothes, however rumpled she looks, so she ventures downstairs via the outside bypass stairs that lead more easily to the kitchen.

There, still on auto-pilot, she puts water on to heat for tea.

Date: 2020-11-12 01:17 pm (UTC)
yinyangwizard: (Modern)
From: [personal profile] yinyangwizard
Abe no Seimei appears at the kitchen door. He looks like a man who has slept poorly, missed his alarm, and then had to get up and wash and dress in haste.

“Rae-san,” he greets her, bowing. “I informed Zenigata-keibu of Wei Wuxian’s fate, since it seemed better that he should know before his next meeting with Lan Wangji or Yuan-chan.”

So Sunshine won’t have to break the bad news to Zenigata - it has already been done.

Date: 2020-11-12 02:35 pm (UTC)
yinyangwizard: (Buddhism)
From: [personal profile] yinyangwizard
“I do not think it has entirely sunk in yet.”

With Sunshine, obviously, it has very much sunk in.

“We discussed arranging funeral rites for Wei Wuxian and the Wens. Everyone who would care to pay proper respects to them is here.”

Date: 2020-11-12 03:10 pm (UTC)
yinyangwizard: (Default)
From: [personal profile] yinyangwizard
“Yes please. I do not take anything in it.”

Seimei has learned to be up-front about this because some Westerners have an unpleasant habit of putting things like cream or sugar in tea.

“I can make memorial tablets for Wei Wuxian, Wen Ning, and Wen Qing, but I do not know the names of the other Wens. Without names or bodies it is difficult to do things properly.”

Date: 2020-11-12 03:21 pm (UTC)
yinyangwizard: (Modern)
From: [personal profile] yinyangwizard
Seimei, face stony, drums his fingers on the kitchen countertop for a few seconds and then stops himself. “If Lan Wangji does not know, there is nobody else.”

He only knows some of them by how Wen Ning referred to them - Granny and Fourth Uncle and such.

Date: 2020-11-12 04:14 pm (UTC)
yinyangwizard: (Seimei's Magic Seal)
From: [personal profile] yinyangwizard
Seimei takes a handkerchief from one of his inner coat pockets and offers it to Rae.

“It is the least I can do for Wen Ning’s sake.” His eyes grow hot and his vision blurs. He, too, has been holding down his grief, and now the seal has cracked. “Poor Wen Ning! He was so cheerful and good-natured even in terrible circumstances. Most other people would have been despondent or even bitter, but not him...”

The words dissolve into quiet sobbing. Fortunately Seimei has more than one handkerchief: he takes a second from his coat to wipe his streaming eyes and nose.

Date: 2020-11-13 04:19 pm (UTC)
yinyangwizard: (Torii)
From: [personal profile] yinyangwizard
Seimei is not a touchy-feely person, but he accepts the offer. After all they have gone through to take care of A-Yuan and now Lan Zhan as well, they are practically comrades.

Date: 2020-11-14 07:38 pm (UTC)
yinyangwizard: (Onmyodo)
From: [personal profile] yinyangwizard
“It is customary in China to burn spirit money in a brazier for the dead.” It is a practice somewhat frowned upon by strict Buddhists, but in China it is a funeral rite that predates Buddhism. “I will ensure that we have an ample supply of the correct sort of spirit money, but someone needs to distribute it to the mourners in attendance.”

Date: 2020-11-15 01:15 am (UTC)
yinyangwizard: (Modern)
From: [personal profile] yinyangwizard
“It is a difficult thing, indeed! It felt very strange the first time I attended a funeral that was not Buddhist. It was Muslim. It was so strange I wondered how much I had known the deceased in life at all.”

At least in Christian funerals, as in Buddhist funerals, there are recitations of prayers. Muslim funerals are very quiet affairs.

Date: 2020-11-15 07:14 pm (UTC)
yinyangwizard: (Buddhism)
From: [personal profile] yinyangwizard
“The important thing is that you are there, Rae-san.” After a moment’s consideration, he adds, “Although I advise you to dress in white or plain grey, following the Buddhist custom.”

Date: 2020-11-15 09:00 pm (UTC)
yinyangwizard: (Default)
From: [personal profile] yinyangwizard
Seimei really does not understand doing something like that, even if one is sick of mourning, but Sunshine probably has her reasons.

“I can provide you with something, if that makes it any easier...”

(Although they both know that’s not the issue here.)

Date: 2020-11-15 09:15 pm (UTC)
yinyangwizard: (Default)
From: [personal profile] yinyangwizard
Seimei nods, and tries to get things back on more familiar ground. “I have not yet informed Lan Wangji of these arrangements. Partly because I did not want him to think he should take sole responsibility for them. While I do not know him terribly well, he definitely seems to be that sort of person.”

Date: 2020-11-15 11:46 pm (UTC)
yinyangwizard: (Modern)
From: [personal profile] yinyangwizard
“Yes, exactly. But I must tell him soon: there really is no excuse to keep it from him any longer.”

Date: 2020-11-13 03:15 am (UTC)
zenigatcha: (Grim Noir)
From: [personal profile] zenigatcha
When he came in the evening to speak to Sunshine of the things Abe had asked him to, all he could hear was keening. Despite the heavy door and the wards and the door, Zenigata knew the sounds of grief when he heard it.

He stood there, still dry eyed after all this time. The shock was lingering, or maybe the fact he had begun to let his mind wander to things better left unthought left him with a sense of purpose. Maybe he'd cracked.

In the end, he did not raise a hand. He did not ask to share her grief with her. That was an ugly wail, the type you made when no one else was listening, no one was there to watch you break down. He'd made that sound the first time Lupin faked his death, so he knew it when he heard it.

Zenigata went back down the hall, mind wrapped up with plans. He didn't want Sunshine to cry, for Abe to grieve. He didn't want those things for himself, either. Which meant something had to change. There had to be a way to fix this. He was in Milliways, after all. Anything could happen here. Anything. One didn't need to be Lupin to attain the impossible. It was here, anybody could find it.

Which meant Zenigata had to go looking.

...after some drinking and other bad choices. Once he'd cleared the taste from his emotional palate. Then, he'd find a way to do the impossible. After he let himself get sloppy shitfaced.

After.
Edited Date: 2020-11-13 04:13 am (UTC)

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Rae "Sunshine" Seddon

December 2021

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