westwhere | wit beyond measure is

[It isn't crime if it's in the spirit of justice. If anything could be considered crime, in fact, it's the merchant's disdain for human decency, and the fact that he boasts his money and his collection of beauty, the fact that he hires people to guard it while he is away, and the fact that he had a collection of skulls. Human skulls.

She doesn't care to understand how he purchased them. She doesn't want to know what he does to arrange to buy the skulls of someone who is not dead yet. It's wrong, it keeps her up at night, it's barbaric.

So it isn't crime, because she checks with Wen Qing, who would do the same. The agreement is this: to steal the skulls and give them proper burials, to check the merchant's house for invoices, to not be discovered.

Step one: she Apparates into his house in the dead of night, practically undetected. The skulls get put one by one into her enchanted bag. She searches the gallery for invoices.

Step two: exit the same way she came, and find Wen Qing at the agreed spot.

There is no bamf, zap or swoosh sound when Hermione Apparates out of Yonsan's home, her enchanted bag clutched in her hand, her wand clutched in her other bag. One second, the street is empty and dark and the night is quiet, and the next, she swirls into existence as if manifesting with a shroud of smoke.

What she doesn't expect is someone to be there.

She acts fast:]

I'm sleepwalking.

Edited 2022-05-02 17:59 (UTC)

( She spirits before him, wisps of smoke in tight silhouette, cut flesh. The road was wide, now it has choked, and he is past his sleeping hour, white haze beating his temples like a roar, like tinnitus. He did not — anticipate Hermione, suddenly revealed like a chasm or flooding.

...her arms filled, come bearing gifts.

He did not anticipate also that the discovery would find him, step staggered, struggling to navigate the awkward load of hefty stone in his hands.

Hermione may have eased a household of its morbid bearings. Lan Wangji appears to have acquitted himself of pillaging a well, or a shrine. Neither of them should possibly linger, eyes wide and moonlight a steep incrimination, at a market crossroads. Only drunkards loiter. Beggars.

And yet. )

Shall you sleepwalk elsewhere?

Ah - [It's Lan Wangji who she just Apparated in front of, which is good. Not that she's done it so far but it would be a shame to have to obliviate someone - so it's a relief that this is a fellow traveller, and not an innocent villager.]

I should. [She has a meeting point, after all, now she just needs to safely make her way to it. The hood of her cloak is pulled up to obscure her face at least, and she almost makes to leave alone, with no other explanation.

Except.

There is just something about Lan Wangji that has, from the very first meeting in the tunnels in Taravast, made her want to impress him. Impress the unimpressable.]

Won't you help a poor sleepwalker home? [It'll be an alibi for both, if anyone asks.]

( Help proffered, as asked — but for the weight of the large bundle of stone that stirs him, neatly, to nearly tip over, for how he achieves each step after long, extended negotiation. Public existence incriminates them. He drifts down lone paths, the rumble of the rubble they displace like the maws of beasts, grinding.

None of the Beastmaster's creatures dart in their path. Small, if thanked comfort. He thinks, if he were to encounter one now, the pieces of Wei Ying and Sizhui's safety in hand, there would be no start, no end to his violence. Thinks, itch like thorns in his nails' beds, that he has hungered to unleash his aggression for a very long time now.

Give him an excuse. A reason. )

Name the route.

( Only, he remembers: Five's dwellings, the woman who wait in shadow, the ghosts. The teahouse. Hermione shares these quarters. He starts them, night warm-wet on his back, licking moisture.

One man, burdened by stone. His companion, by... he stifles the groan, with the discipline of any father who has raised a small child. )

What do you carry? ( Critically: why? )

open (one thread): life of crime

.......gently claims this

claimed!

no subject

closed: silverneedles

ten thousand years later

say that in the voice of the narrator from spongebob

now all I hear is that theme song

open (multiple threads): unintentionally conscripted

no subject

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open (multiple threads): on the way to cultville

I was told there would be phoenix rides

yes indeed

no subject

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closed: key heist - libraries

no subject

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