Fanfic: Four Thousand Nights of Nightmares

Wei Ying, Tonight, I dreamed about finding you, cold and broken. I should have been with you in your final hours. I will follow soon. Lan Zhan

The ink had faded a bit with the repeated creasing of the paper, clearly opened and closed over and over. He could feel his brow creasing a bit as he took the paper to his desk, ground the ink, and flipped the letter to its back side.
In neat little rows were tallies, single lines, all across the page, top to bottom, left to right. He pulled a second paper free, noting the lines again, a third, a fourth, and finally, a fifth that was mostly unmarked. He added a single tally, then hesitated for a breath before folding each sheet back up, returning them to the book, and setting the book back on the shelf.

Five months after their lives started to become domestic and perfect, Lan Wangji starts having the same nightmare he had for thirteen years.

Post-Canon MDZS Fanfiction, it’s Wangxian so of course they are fucking. Mostly just… dealing with thirteen years of trauma because poor Lan Wangji. And Wei Wuxian needs everything explained to him. Painfully explained to him.

Mind the tags and read it on AO3

Urge

This urge… 

This is a strange urge. 

I continue to bear my wrists out in front of me, to the empty screen, to the quiet room, to the expanse of road before me.

A silent offering.

An urge to beg of some unseen company

Slash at the pale skin. 

Sup from my veins. 

Take from me. 

Let it consume you because it has consumed me.

Catch fire with me

Watch the madness trickle from my eyes and flow from my lips

Let my passion scorch at the ceiling

Leave the dark marks of my lust upon the walls.

Attach a wild tuft of my hair to my stripped bones and gather up my blood.

Paint the world in my visions, my dreams, my nightmares. 

Let my words cascade into you with voracious abandon.

Catch fire with me.

Let it take hold in you,

Grow in you,

Rot in you.

Until you return to see the fading marks of my obsessions

Until the blood has dried

Until the meat is gone

Until nothing is left but the memory of someone bearing their wrists out to you

Silently begging you to partake.

The Fence Upon Which One Sits

I don’t really put a lot of time talking about my sexuality because, like many things, it’s a thing that doesn’t really concern the greater population.

I’m pretty fucking bisexual though. I go with ‘gender blind’ a lot because, well, I don’t really care? If I’m attracted to a person, I’m attracted to a person. That’s what makes up some of me, so I would… mostly prefer that people accepted and vaguely respected that?

I mostly brush off the comments about being straight because I married a man. I have horrible gut wrenching anxieties, especially when drunk, that I am a very, very bad lesbian.

…but it really hurts something extra when my dearest friends insinuate I’m not.. enough. That I don’t belong. That I really am just straight.

One of them did jump right in because I get tongue tied out of bisexual guilt and it’s an exhausting fight to keep treading on a constant basis.

Still.

Just because my legs dangle over the edge doesn’t mean I’m not here.

Eight Days

It happens in a cycle of eight days. 

On day one, he would saunter into the expansive ballroom with food resting on a silver platter. He would leave it by the side of the body on the floor, and if he was feeling extra generous, or if the sex had been that good, maybe a blanket to cover her or a new outfit for her if the old one had been torn to tatters again. 

By the second day she’s managed to choke down some of the food. Sometimes she’s truly ravenous, tearing at the tray with bloodied hands to gorge herself on her personal feast. More often than not she picks at it with the tarnished silverware. She’ll dress herself, use the water from the broken fountain to tidy her hair and face, wipe the bloodstains from the ballroom floor, and even rinse the dishes she ate from. She’ll focus on tending some of her injuries before taking a deep breath and leaving the room to find him. On day two he’s always in his ‘study’, a room made of illusions where he sits, his elbows on his desk, hands clasped together, waiting for her to return.

Day three is spent in memories. They touch tenderly, shyly, exploring one another with gently encouraged fingertips and deep breaths. He is very fond of washing her hair. His fingers carded through the damp, red locks that would bring a gentle contented hum into the quiet. She sat still and satiated when he ran the oil slicked comb through her hair 

Continue reading “Eight Days”

The Most Intimate?

Follow up to “I know you.”

A transformation. The most intimate, revealing of all the skills at one’s disposal. A mere familiar should not have been able to cast it. It wasn’t just her essence that perfumed the air, it was her very soul that turned the quiet space of the room into a wail.

The transformation was both beautiful and painful. From her fingertips birthed long claws that bled in bleeding white. Her skin turned to fine white porcelain, glued together with rivers of gold that bloomed into haphazard flowers. Those clawed hands came up to cover the eyes that all color had bled from as golden halos rested skewed on her hips, one becoming a collar tight to her neck. 

As she stood tall, no longer a mortal, no longer a familiar, wisp, or prankful shade, she lowered her hands from her eyes. Now blinded, a delicate, red haze settled over her face. It was hardly holding together, the outline barely a shape. 

Azem, the Fourteenth.

There was no denying who she was anymore. No more pretending not to notice her laugh was the same as the friend they saw off for a long trip only a few hours ago. No more ignoring the tilt of her head, the hesitant curl of her fingers.

Azem.

Azem from the future.

Continue reading “The Most Intimate?”

I know you.

How can you retell a tale you only so faintly know the beginning of? 

Under your intense stare, how am I meant to tell you what you become?

I’m from page 500 of your story, while you’re only on page 30. This shouldn’t have happened. We’re not meant to meet here. 

Not like this.

“You do not know me.”

His finger pointed across the table. 

His yellow eyes glowed with rage. 

I do not know you?

Something deep inside my chest shatters so violently I’m afraid the three people in the room can hear it. 

I can hardly breathe. 

You flooded my shattered soul with anesthetic. 

You painted the color back into my eyes.

“Now, now, let’s calm down a bit here.” 

“I have had my fill of your fiction!” 

You turned me into a beast to tear out the heart too broken to beat!

File this under: Rewriting bits of Forgiven Lilies to make Endwalker make sense. Fuck me I love you stinky rat man.

A Year in Review : 2021

Wow it’s been a while since I made an actual boring blog post about my life.

Mostly because everything’s gone to shit and keeps getting worse every time I dare think there’s a upswing….

Anyway.

Here I am, writing a stupid little update about my stupid little life just to get it out of my brain case. And for the bots coming by to scan this for keywords, hello you darling little things. You’re not bad you’re just programmed to do this.

Things have been… Difficult. For most of the past year I’ve felt even more adrift in the chaos than than ever before. I thought about exiting more times than I’d like to admit. (Relax, I’m past it for now.)

I was afraid I’d be losing one of, if not, the biggest anchors to my life. While that seems to be at least on hold through March for now, the idea of losing a multi year constant like that when I feel at my lowest is honestly pretty nightmareish.

I find zero fulfillment in my job. It’s ‘good’ work, I help and interact with lots of people but its filled with too much drama, too many people who focus on the trees instead of the forest. As of literally today I’ve clawed my way into being so ‘needed’ that I can actually pay my rent with one check which doesn’t feel as good as my thirty minutes of weakly sobbing wanted to.

My health is also in shambles, aside from my borked brain. I’ve been on some new medicine for six months and I’m seeing results which again, doesn’t feel as good as I want it to. For a while I kept having what I can only call dysphoria because I just didn’t feel like me. The flesh unit I’m piloting isn’t mine and it still isn’t. And then there’s the monthly drop of hormones that send me right back to teetering on the edge.

In positive news, I started ‘caretaking’, glorified tech support, for The Satanic Estate and that’s actually really fun. They also let me lead the writers group which, is also really fun. I like being a Satanist, was that the free space on the Meilin bingo card?

I got over myself somewhere in late 2020 and pushed some fanfiction out onto the internet. Getting an email about a ‘kudo’ actually brings me close to tears every time because it’s my words that someone did the bare minimum for. I can’t even get people who know me to do that.

And I am eternally grossly in love with my husband. He deals with all my shit. I don’t get it, I get sick of myself.

Somewhere between Endwalker – best summarized as ‘Nothing in life really matters and that’s FINE’, and MDZS – walking the single plank path in the dark instead of the broad lit path is also FINE, I felt something stirring again. Something long lost and missing and so much me.

This year I want to keep losing myself in these things again. I want to shamelessly construct a world around my very soul filled with disgusting what happened if’s. I want to chase down obscure lore bits for a head canon nobody’s going to be as into as I will. I want to re-read the tender romances until my heart aches when I don’t. I want to rewatch the anime, the movies, the cutscenes, until I can call up the words of imaginary friends without so much as a second thought.

And with all that swirling around me I want to create. I want to pour all these feelings into something with my fingers and my words and every inch of it shamelessly Meilin regardless of what anyone else thinks of me.

This is not going to be of course a perfect path. I will lay on my side, alone, wishing I had my puppy back. I will cry at the thought of not having my friends close by. I will mourn friendships that have gone. My anxieties will grasp me even though I’m fine and safe and loved.

And if all of this shatters, if this momentary calm in my mind turns back to endless stormy seas, god dammit let this be a reminder that I existed again for five fucking minutes, that this empty space was for one second used again.

With love, Meilin.

Nightmares

Not gonna lie, I started seeing the CUTEST anime boy on my twitter timeline earlier this year and eventually tracked it down to the animated telling of Mo Dao Xu Shi, which…

Look, that anime was consumed in two days. I was hooked.

Then I made the mistake of finding the fan translation of the novel. Consumed. I watched The Untamed. I literally cannot get enough of this fucking story because it yanks on my heart in every which way.

Here’s some horrible domestic tooth rotting fluff because I’m writing the smut but the smut needs to simmer like pork rib and lotus root soup. Wouldn’t want there not to be enough seasoning, would you?

Lan WanJi barely hears his own footsteps as he drags himself slowly across the familiar path. His ears are ringing, the whole world just a buzz, a hiss, the endless sting of his wounds screaming out at him. Screaming at him that he was wrong. That this is wrong. 

Wei Ying.

Closing his eyes he can dull the buzzing just a bit, but the only thing that replaces the noise is his brother’s voice. Lan XiChen had come to dress his wounds, he whispered in his most gentle of voices. 

“Wanji… they raided the burial mounds. Wei WuXian… Young Master Wei is gone.”

Continue reading “Nightmares”

A Song of a Distant World

Holy shit I both updated my blog AND it’s original fiction. Who knew?

Each and every night I take to the stage, it is to tell the same story with my voice. It’s to call up a world too real to only be a dream, pain too harsh to only be fantasy. The hundreds of eyes that watch me upon the stage never know I’m fading away as I recall the memories that bring out my voice.

 My hands always shake when I reach out to grab the microphone. 

Will he hear me tonight?

My hands, gloved in white satin, clutch the cold metal stand as the intro plays. My dress swishes as I step forward. I close my eyes and return to the only place I was truly alive.

A Hero’s Threadbare Cloth

Who can act when the Warrior of Light cannot?

[Highly recommend completing the Dark Knight job quests through to lv80 and taking a gander through the Firmament. Otherwise, this isn’t gonna make a lot of sense.]

I thought our heart was quelled of this anger, yet here we are again. 

Though, it seems you have been busy in this time of peace. While our hands tremble, the snow is gently blanketing the many homes you yourself helped to construct. They are home to the many needy of Ishgard. People like me. People like you. People like us. 

But, you did not expect to see him in the infirmary, did you? You did not expect him to survive.


Count Edmont is happy to see you, though worried as you came knocking in the dead of night, during a snowstorm. With Emmanellain overseeing Camp Dragonhead, the house is quiet. Artoirel’s worry mimics his father’s as you apologize for the intrusion and ask only for the key to your room – a room on the lower floor, a floor servants and bastard children. 

Artoriel protests, insisting you stay in the guest room where it’s warm, and that he’ll have food and a doctor by before the hour passes, but you decline. All you want is sleep, and with Edmont putting a gentle hand on your shoulder, he dismisses the oldest son of House Fortemps to allow you your repose on your terms. 

Everything is just as you left it as you crash into the burlap sack filled with little more than straw and discarded wool. The sheets are still cold from him, though the moonlight catches a single silver-blue strand of hair on the pillow. 

You cannot steady yourself from this, can you? You have conquered over man and god, yet a single bloody stray hair has cracked you in two. Wipe your face.

The unsteady gait of Edmont grabs your attention and you open your door to him, a tray of leftovers. He dotes on you like a father does a sick child as he settles your food on the poor excuse of a table. He brushes back your hair and asks you if there is anything he can do, but you insist you’re alright, weary from your trials, and painfully homesick. He tells you to come home more often, you try to protest, but he insists, and then wishes you a restful sleep as he dries the tears on your face with his fingertips.

What would he say if you revealed what you saw earlier today? What would he say if he knew in our heart what you wanted to do?


The snow has subsided. The Firmament is bright, cheery even. Today you are lending some of your time to the infirmary, being one of the only white mages to leave the Twelveswood, your skills are a blessing upon these people. 

If only they knew that you were only here to watch the elezen groaning on his cot, his head bandaged, limbs weakly trembling for succor. You watch for hours, wanting the facade to drop, but everyone only suspects it is a man injured, left to die in the snow, and lucky to be found and brought here. 

Before you depart for the evening, you stand over his bed. You watch his pained breaths as he clutches his chest. His lips do not smirk as they did when they peered upon you as an outcast to the world. His voice, which now cries out while locked in nightmares, does not echo with the malice tempered by a primal. 

Are you going to murder Ser Zephirin de Valhourdin, who lays in a stupor, gravely wounded, in the firmament infirmary? Is that why you called out to me again? Do you need the strength to draw your blade across his neck? Or should it be a spear to the gut? Your hands would tremble at the blood that drips from the wound. Perhaps it should be poison. You could even be the one to pass it over his lips with a smile, then watch the blackened sick cross his lips and you stand over him, watching the dregs of his life cast away. 

Are you looking for justice or vengeance?

Don’t you remember that vengeance is what got us here in the first place?

I will do this for us. Decide on his fate, gather the tools of his execution, then cast yourself to the night. I will do the rest. 

Count Edmont has come to the Firmament to fetch you. People are calling out our name. Best not be seen lingering here. 


Our favorite little fool is back. She hesitates your hand as you reach for the door of the infirmary. She begs us – return to Fortemps Manor. Summon Emmanellain to mock. Reveal the truth of Captain Carvallain to House Durendaire. Leave Ishgard! Anything!

Still, as you lay in the bed you shared, take meals in the home he opened to you, and hear his voice in the words of his father, you cannot stop thinking about it, can you? 

You need me, now, more than ever. 

I will end this. 


Good morning. The sun is rising over Ishgard. We truly thought of everything. You left a change of clothes nearby.  Careful as you stand, you would surely live to regret if you painted his gravestone with blood.  Or perhaps, you want to? But, alas, I feel myself finally starting to fade. Our breath has finally calmed, our heart no longer threatens to burst from our chest. 

Cast your bloody robes into the yearning chasm along with the sword clutched tight in your hand. Wash yourself clean with the snow, then pitch it over as well. Now, we shall be entwined forever more. I won’t be able to stop you next time. 

He knew. He cried out for mercy, Warrior of Light. He knew, and we did not care as we took his life. We did it with a smile, for a smile suits a hero. 

Isn’t that right?