For Wei Wuxian

[bring_balance]

The resentful energy of the dead, he animates the bodies to his will.

Ever since that night at East Hallow, Anakin has wondered, and he's been meaning to seek out Wei Wuxian. After what he witnessed, he has questions about how his ability to reach beyond the living Force. It makes him think of his dream the night he arrived in Darrow, and how they have persisted, even if he's not sure they could possible come to pass in this place.

Still, he must know.

It takes Anakin nearly an entire afternoon of meditation– something that has never come easily to him– but he finally knows where to find Wei Wuxian.

Somehow, it seems appropriate that it should be the graveyard where he finds him.

Comments

[yiling_laozu]

He's leaving this place soon. Lan Wangji has promised to find them a home on the river, and Wei Wuxian has promised to live there. It won't be easy - he needs the resentful energy of the burial grounds to keep his strength, and he'll need all his wits to keep that from Lan Wangji.

But these are problems for the Wei Wuxian of tomorrow. The Wei Wuxian of right now is seated atop a twelve foot tall mausoleum, upending a ceramic bottle of rice wine right into his mouth. He lowers it at the sound of footsteps, wiping his mouth with a forearm as he smiles.

"Anakin-gonxi. You honor me with a visit?"

[bring_balance]

"I suppose I'd be lying if I said I was just passing through," Anakin replies, and he thinks that it's likely not often that people wander this way, unless they're specifically coming to pay their respects to the dead.

Or to visit Wei Wuxian, apparently.

"You live all the way out here?" he asks, craning his neck to look up at him, on top of the stone structure.

[yiling_laozu]

"I sleep here," he answers, leaping gracefully to the earth. If Anakin has come here specifically for him, Wei Wuxian won't make him strain his neck to speak. "It reminds me of my home in Yiling. Few of my enemies dared to enter the haunted burial grounds."

Wei Wuxian offers Anakin the bottle. "Or I'm sure I have water somewhere, if you prefer."

[bring_balance]

"No thanks," Anakin says, though he's curious. Jedi aren't expressly forbidden from drinking alcohol, but he's made it a practice to only indulge sparingly. Though... being in Darrow makes him wonder whether he should rethink all of that a bit.

But that's a consideration for another day.

"Actually, I came here for a reason, if you're not busy."

It certainly doesn't seem like he is.

[yiling_laozu]

Wei Wuxian chuckles. "I'm afraid I must receive you here," he says, gesturing to the grounds empty of anything but flowers and graves. He has no garden nor parlor, nor even tea to offer as is polite, but Wei Wuxian is no longer used to people seeking him out.

He points to a patch of unused earth, the grass there thick, if brown. "Shall we sit?"

[bring_balance]

"Of course," Anakin replies, and takes a seat where Wei Wuxian gestures.

"I've been received in far worse places," he adds, thinking of all the planets he and Obi-Wan visited during the war. On a world in the middle of a conflict with the Separatists, sometimes you had to make due.

"Though I think this may be a first."

[yiling_laozu]

"It is for most people," Wei Wuxian agrees. He'd chosen it out of necessity, rather than his usual preference for the outrageous, so he doesn't think he need feel guilty. He seats himself, careless of his robes as they crumple beneath him.

"I've learned to use other people's hatred and resentment as a form of energy," he explains. "Where better to find lingering resentment than the house of the dead?"

[bring_balance]

The instant Wei Wuxian says the words, Anakin tenses up. Using other people's hatred and resentment... it's against everything he was ever taught as a Jedi. It sounds like a path to the Dark Side.

"Is that how you were able to do what you did in East Hallow?" Anakin asks, and even as he feels a twisting in his gut, he's glad the other man has gotten straight to the point of his visit.

[yiling_laozu]

Wei Wuxian nods, taking in the now familiar signs. "It disturbs you," he says. "It does most. Many in my homeland even hunted me, telling stories of me to frighten their children into obedience. But do you know what nearly all of them did whenever they managed to corner me?"

Wei Wuxian smiles grimly. "Demand the source of my power for themselves." The chief source of Wei Wuxian's power is not something that can be given away, of course, but the Stygian Tiger Seal he carries with him from forged pieces of Yin iron, that can be transferred, and that must not come to pass.

"There will always be evil, and there will always be those hungry for power, especially when they can use it to subjugate others. If evil is ubiquitous, why not put it to good? Why let destruction be its only legacy, when one can do otherwise?"

[bring_balance]

Use it! Call upon your fury! Rage is your weapon!

In that moment, Anakin's reminded of the last time he saw the Chancellor. Of Dooku and how Anakin had used his own anger and resentment. He'd tapped into it, willingly let it flow through him and used it take life.

And it hadn't been the first time.

"What you're saying is against everything I've been taught," Anakin says, trying to explain his reaction to Wei Wuxian's words, "Fear, anger, hatred and resentment... they're paths to the dark side. Jedi are taught to avoid such emotions."

[yiling_laozu]

Wei Wuxian hums, considering that. "Avoiding them seems wise," he agrees, "Or at least, where they can be avoided. I have known some to avoid feeling their anger to the point that it consumed them," he says, bright face going distant as he thinks of his brother, lost to festering resentment.

"But the path I've chosen and the one you describe aren't quite the same. It isn't my hatred I use, it is others'. It's true that each time I am tempted - how much more powerful could I be if I use everything I hate to fuel me? But what came out on the other side of that would not be Wei Wuxian."

Lan Wangji has seen such a man. He knows his end, and Wei Wuxian fears it, even without ever having lived it. "Whoever that man is, I have no desire to become him."

[bring_balance]

Anakin had thought similarly after Dooku had died by his hand. Could he still be a Jedi? A husband? The Hero With No Fear? If he was a man who would take another's life, refuse to grant mercy, who was he? Perhaps Wei Wuxian is right, and he's someone else now.

"How do you do it?" Anakin asks, "Tap into someone else's hatred? Is it something that can be taught?"

He doesn't yet ask what he really wants to know: how far the other man's control of the dead extends.

[yiling_laozu]

"To anyone, yes," says Wei Wuxian, for he's never been a person who believed that power belonged only to the rich and monied clans, "But it requires a certain foundation, I think. In my world, cultivators train from a young age to develop their golden core, and this well of energy gives them the power they need to sense spirits, kind or otherwise. I do not think many in Darrow would know resentful energy if they encountered it, at least, not until it hurt them."

He's quiet for a moment. At home, Wei Wuxian is the frightening tale told to children at night, and he's very much enjoyed not being that in Darrow, but he's done what he has done. He has his reasons, and he won't apologize. Chin upturned, Wei Wuxian continues. "What I do is considered anathema to most cultivators. If we meet a fierce corpse or vengeful spirit, we are meant to subdue and suppress its energy. I choose to use it instead. I can feel its agony and its hatred, sometimes see it, sometimes I can taste it, and it's far too powerful to waste. Has Anakin-gonxi ever experienced this? Can you feel another being's heart?"

[bring_balance]

What Wei Wuxian says sounds almost familiar to Anakin. They may use different words, but it sounds a lot like he's speaking of the Force. Anger, fear and resentment... Jedi are meant to suppress those feelings, to overcome them. To do otherwise is a path to the Dark Side.

It's crossed Anakin's mind more than once that he should be worried that he's never been particularly good at holding those feelings back.

"Jedi are taught to harness the Force from a young age. It's the energy that binds all living things," Anakin begins, and almost as a demonstration he holds out one hand, reaching into the Force to guide a small pebble to his palm as he speaks. It levitates a few inches from his outstretched hand.

"We can sense another being's thoughts and feelings... their joy, pain, strength, hatred... it sounds as if our teachings of the ways of the Force are similar to what you call cultivation."

[yiling_laozu]

Wei Wuxian watches the pebble with interest. He can't see the threads of energy that have brought it there as he might with a cultivator, but he imagines he can feel them, tendrils of potential energy, always around them.

"They must be," he reasons. "Most can learn to cultivate, but it takes lifelong discipline that many are unwilling to give themselves to. I suppose I can't sense anyone's thoughts - not without performing Empathy - but hatred and fear, these I can feel."

He pulls a pebble to his own hand, the little rock surrounded by shifting red energy. "Anakin-gonxi, I enjoy talking about what so few will let me discuss, but I must ask. Are you here because you are merely curious about what I did in East Hallow?"

[bring_balance]

Anakin watches as Wei Wuxian guides the pebble to his own hand, frowning for a moment at the red energy surrounding it. At least until he's asked about the true motivation behind his visit tonight.

The pebble slowly descends into his palm and Anakin closes his hand around it.

"I confess, that while I'm curious about it, that's not the only reason for my visit," Anakin says, and he takes a breath, "We've spoken about using the resentful energy of the dead, but... could those abilities be used in another way? To... overcome death altogether?"