she misses Shen Wei and so do I
Aug. 21st, 2021 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomiI seem to be posting lots of bits of fic lately, sorry. My version of stress relief.
This is from the Zhao Xinci fic that I am not actually writing; mostly it's bits of cobbled-together headcanon, especially from a great discussion with elenothar here last week.
“Did you know, or suspect? That he was Dixingren?”
Xinyan has known Zhao Xinci long enough now to recognize that this is neither empathy with her nor idle curiosity. The onetime SID chief is checking up on his past self (selves?), using her own past self as an informant to confirm how well the false identity had worked.
Not that it matters now, but she knows that he can’t turn off that part of his mind, and is long past trying to. His mental habits and defenses are, by necessity, cast in iron.
“Not that he was Dixingren,” she says, returning to the question. “Not specifically. You know how it was, we didn’t think of Dixing or Dixingren so much back then. But I knew...there was something. When I first met him—”
Her lab partner in freshman biology had been slight and compact, reserved and taciturn, with the most beautiful amber-brown eyes and the ugliest plaid shirts she’d ever seen. When he did speak, it was with a slight accent that was not Dragon City’s. Small talk about family and high school was met with a quick shy smile and ducked head, an embarrassed deflection. Xinyan, whose adopted brother was also sensitive in unexpected places, learned how to back off just far enough, to switch to topics like their coursework that turned his smile real.
By the time they were in grad school, that trace of accent was long gone and he had mastered, she observed, the skill of guiding conversations so adroitly that the awkward questions never came up at all. They met less often when she was a resident, sleeping about one night a week, and he was a post-doc; she almost didn’t recognize him the first time she saw him in one of those exquisite suits. “I don’t wish to be mistaken for an undergraduate,” he said self-deprecatingly, and Xinyan laughed and tugged gently on the rolled edge of his gorgeous silk cravat and teased him about dressing to extremes.
“I didn’t know,” she says, now, to the silently waiting Zhao Xinci. “I wish he’d told me. I wouldn’t have...” turned him in to you and the SID, was the obvious conclusion.
Zhao Xinci says “He worked very, very hard to keep up that identity. When we enrolled him in DCU, I was sure he wouldn’t make it through the first semester without giving up or being found out. He lasted fifteen years.” He makes a sound like a failed laugh, a painful noise. “Without my son showing up, he might have kept it up for longer still.”
Be safe and well.
This is from the Zhao Xinci fic that I am not actually writing; mostly it's bits of cobbled-together headcanon, especially from a great discussion with elenothar here last week.
“Did you know, or suspect? That he was Dixingren?”
Xinyan has known Zhao Xinci long enough now to recognize that this is neither empathy with her nor idle curiosity. The onetime SID chief is checking up on his past self (selves?), using her own past self as an informant to confirm how well the false identity had worked.
Not that it matters now, but she knows that he can’t turn off that part of his mind, and is long past trying to. His mental habits and defenses are, by necessity, cast in iron.
“Not that he was Dixingren,” she says, returning to the question. “Not specifically. You know how it was, we didn’t think of Dixing or Dixingren so much back then. But I knew...there was something. When I first met him—”
Her lab partner in freshman biology had been slight and compact, reserved and taciturn, with the most beautiful amber-brown eyes and the ugliest plaid shirts she’d ever seen. When he did speak, it was with a slight accent that was not Dragon City’s. Small talk about family and high school was met with a quick shy smile and ducked head, an embarrassed deflection. Xinyan, whose adopted brother was also sensitive in unexpected places, learned how to back off just far enough, to switch to topics like their coursework that turned his smile real.
By the time they were in grad school, that trace of accent was long gone and he had mastered, she observed, the skill of guiding conversations so adroitly that the awkward questions never came up at all. They met less often when she was a resident, sleeping about one night a week, and he was a post-doc; she almost didn’t recognize him the first time she saw him in one of those exquisite suits. “I don’t wish to be mistaken for an undergraduate,” he said self-deprecatingly, and Xinyan laughed and tugged gently on the rolled edge of his gorgeous silk cravat and teased him about dressing to extremes.
“I didn’t know,” she says, now, to the silently waiting Zhao Xinci. “I wish he’d told me. I wouldn’t have...” turned him in to you and the SID, was the obvious conclusion.
Zhao Xinci says “He worked very, very hard to keep up that identity. When we enrolled him in DCU, I was sure he wouldn’t make it through the first semester without giving up or being found out. He lasted fifteen years.” He makes a sound like a failed laugh, a painful noise. “Without my son showing up, he might have kept it up for longer still.”
Be safe and well.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-21 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-22 11:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-21 11:26 pm (UTC)Such a lovely friendship moment! I wish we saw more of them.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-22 11:22 am (UTC)I wish we saw more of them.
Me too. It's one of the things I love most about Guardian, that amazing as Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan are the focus is not just on their relationship, there's a whole interconnecting web of people.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-22 04:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-22 11:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-22 02:26 pm (UTC)(Also, personally, I'm always delighted when you post snippets, so it's really a win-win situation :D)
no subject
Date: 2021-08-22 10:30 pm (UTC)(And then again who knows, the fact of Kunlun come back in itself might well have been enough to change Shen Wei's existence fundamentally. Maybe ZXC was right in a sense)
no subject
Date: 2021-08-23 07:47 pm (UTC)A good point. We'll see if my brain comes up with something at some point :D
I'm writing a tangentially related piece for the wishlist event, but nothing concrete yet beyond that.
Zhao Yunlan alone might not have been enough to disrupt Shen Wei's Professor Shen life
Not to the point of Shen Wei exposing himself publically, necessarily, I agree. Because Zhao Yunlan was pretty happy to keep Shen Wei's identity secret himself - but I do think Shen Wei wouldn't have been able to keep it secret from Zhao Yunlan forever, even if less stuff had happened, not if he couldn't stop himself from spending time with him.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-23 11:54 pm (UTC)yay!
Shen Wei wouldn't have been able to keep it secret from Zhao Yunlan forever, even if less stuff had happened, not if he couldn't stop himself from spending time with him.
Yes, on reflection I agree completely.