preliminary notes 000 [CW: drug withdrawl]

[ragsnbone]

voice;
[ He sounds slightly familiar to a couple people, but there's a shaky quality to it as if he is trying to cover up something and being extra perky in his attempt. ]

Sorry don't mean to make a mess of things. I dropped the tray again.

[ spam ]

[ He really isn't around much even during the mandatory times, he's the guy wrapped in a blanket looking like he is ready to either die or fall face first to the ground and then die. He's got a pale, sickly look under his tan, and his eyes are mostly glazed when they do not go just pure milky white. He looks 100000000000% ready to just toss himself on the nearest sharp object when he isn't muttering in Thai or some kind of weird hissing language, and getting him to sing just has him coughing. A lot.

When he does manage to move, he walks as if he isn't seeing anything around him, and there's moments when he just sways like he's on a ship at sea before giving a shake of his head and smiling. Often he can be found in the infirmary where he can at least get some pediatric drinks for when he can't eat anything else. But he is mostly a mess, shivering in corners and running into people, which he is sorry to do and will try his best to apologize. ]

Comments

[qingofcats]

Sorry, Zhao Yunlan, your cat can be a bit insensitive....

He gives Wu Xie a squinty-eyed glare. "No he's not," he counters. Even if maybe he looks a little older in the face, now that Da Qing really looks at him. Stupid humans. How's he supposed to tell how old they are? Once they're not kittens anymore he has no clue if they're old or not until they start getting all wrinkly and gray-haired, and this one's neither.

He stretches his neck out towards they guy and sniffs. "And he stinks of... of drugs or something. Maybe he just looks older because he's a druggy." Does he want Wu Xie to have stolen Shen laoshi's face? No. Is he going to give up on the idea so easily now that he's made a scene about it? Also no.

[ragsnbone]

He just looks at the two of them, his eyes going round and huge as his lower lip sticks out at the whole injustice of them comparing him with someone who is younger than him? He knew he looked like shit with the whole thing going on that was his mind on snake venom or whatever it is, but he can't be that terrible. So they were both getting a wagged finger at their noses with all the huffy indignity of a spoiled brat.

"I'm not that old, why does everyone think I am? Oh, how am I going to explain this to Xiao Hua he will so hold it over me even though he's the one with gray hair!" He paused for a moment, frowned to himself - well Hei Yanjing WAS kinda gray after crawling through the sand - and crossed his arms over his chest.

"Am not a druggy. Was completely natural reaction due to being very susceptible to snake bites."

[wildguardian]

"Right, right. You sure look like you're coming off a killer high, though, Mr. Not A Face Stealer -- tell me, you do have a name, don't you?"

He eyes Da Qing, and, lowering his voice for cat ears only, adds, "And you're going to behave... right?"

[qingofcats]

"He smells like it, too," Da Qing chimes in, whiskers twitching, then sneezes melodramatically for good measure before observing, "And it's because you look like ten miles of bad road," because he's feeling wrong-footed and grouchy.

But he does add a very quiet, "fiiiiine," under his breath as he squirms the rest of the way out of the blanket then climbs up to perch on lao Zhao's shoulder, tail twitching restlessly behind his neck.

[ragsnbone]

"Well... there's a type of snake in the Tibetan wilds who's venom acts like a drug to like one out of a thousand people" He shrugs, not caring if they believed him or not. "My luck I fell into a nest of them, found out that I am one of those people, got out of that and headed back to the rest of the expedition, was caught by some smugglers who did not want me to run off and find the authorities, so they just threw me off a cliff."

He sighs and rubs the back of his neck, shaking his head. "Half the community thinks that my luck is a bad rumor, but here I am. My name is Wu Xie. I said it before?"

[wildguardian]

"Right, right. My bad. Wu Xie." He's possibly a little distracted by his shrieking cat, and also -- well, also by the fact that this guy may not be a face-stealer, but he does look a hell of a lot like Shen Wei, and Zhao Yunlan misses him like fire.

He frees one hand from the cat-wrangling work, since Da Qing's settling in, and rubs it over his mouth.

"So, what, that's how you died? Drugged by snakes and thrown off a cliff by smugglers? Adventurous life you live, Wu Xie."

[qingofcats]

Da Qing's very proud of himself for not pointing out that at least it sounds like Mr. Face Stealer (nope, not letting go of that) didn't die on purpose.

"What were you even doing, falling into snake nests and peeing off smugglers?" he asks, then grumbles at the truly embarrassing censoring. You'd think he'd be used to it by now, but nope. Never.

[ragsnbone]

"I usually try to avoid adventures!" Well, not really, but Wu Xie knows that he is not the kind of person who usually looked like he adventures a lot. He's the kind that looks like a nerd, especially as he starts going into one of his very nerd-specific rambles about whatever had caught his eyes.

But he had a lot of skills that people wanted and he knew that too, so he was going to just, edit his reply to fit. As he always does.

"I just know a lot about the kind of dig we were heading for, and I know enough of the dialect that everyone thought I might as well tag along instead of staying back home. And you know how messy a rain storm can get and how sometimes you just take a wrong step and slide off the path. And then I was trying to get back on the path but there were snakes and that just really messed up my head and by the time I had some idea of anything, there were smugglers." He laughs at himself, shaking his head. "So. I guess this is just one more bit of bad luck."

[wildguardian]

"Sure you do," Yunlan says, giving Mr. Totally Not An Adventurer a deeply dubious look. You don't just accidentally tumble down hillsides into that level of hazardous situation unless you're also deeply stupid.

He'll cut the guy a little slack and assume he's just a liar.

"So what is it you do for a living that people want to bring you along on their Tibetan expeditions?"

[ragsnbone]

He just widens his eyes even more, his expression just so absolutely hurt and sad that someone isn't believing him at all. Even his lower lip was sticking out a small amount, and looking like he's maybe only ten despite the whole worn, well-traveled tan he had.

"I do! I just want to go home with my friends." Which is the truth, he just had to wait until it was safe to go home in the first place.

"Well... I've got a degree in architecture actually, but truth be told, my whole family is pretty famous for their skills in antiques, and I run the family shop in Hangzhou. And I used to go with my Sanshu and Ershu on a lot of their digs as a kid and kinda have a reputation for figuring out ancient languages. So Ershu thought I might as well put that to good use and help his friend out on his dig."

[qingofcats]

Da Qing snorts loudly. "You're really overdoing that innocent damsel nonsense," he points out. "The wobbly-lip pout thing put it right over the top."

[wildguardian]

"I hate to say it, my friend, but the cat's got a point. So what are you, a grave robber or something? Smuggler? Fence?"

Yunlan shrugs easily, his smile turning sharp. "No point in faking it, I'm just a patient here myself."

[ragsnbone]

He blinks for a moment, eyebrows scrunching before he laughs and shakes his head. Well, in his defense he was rusty with playing at innocent.

"Honestly I'm not. I am Wu Ye of the Jiumen, but the current Jiumen isn't into grave robbing as it was before the Republic. Lao Jiumen were robbers and warlords but in the end those skills transferred over to the preserving and reacquiring antiques lost back then. I inherited the position from my grandfather by sheer accident since my uncles are always trying to keep me out of the whole mess."

He spreads his hands out as if helpless about the way fate has played with him. Which it has; he would have never gone after any of what he did if the Wang and the traitorous Jiumen had not pushed him.

"I still have shitty luck. I can walk into a well-documented empty tomb that's been turned into a tourist trap and still trigger a broken trap and fall head first into danger. My uncles thought I'd be safe taking a walk to a temple in Tibet where I'd be translating books. Yet here I am."

[qingofcats]

Da Qing narrows his eyes consideringly. He's still not sure he believes the guy. "Never heard of this Jiumen, what about you, lao Zhao?" he asks, gently kneading his claws into Zhao Yunlan's shoulder.

[wildguardian]

Yunlan, who's dodged a fair number of history classes in his time, scowls in thought. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe some kind of door guard thing? Rings the faintest of bells."

[ragsnbone]

"They did evolve from that. Nine gates guard the city in the Warring States, each gate was run by a managing family, and each family known to allow goods through if the price is right," he said and waves it off. History was a fun thing that he was really good with. It sometimes made people ponder his whole degree talk since he just knows a whole lot of stuff.

"So really, I'm innocent of wrong doing; it's even my name. Well nickname, but still."

[qingofcats]

"You're sure spending a lot of time and effort trying to convince us how innocent you are, Mr. Face Stealer." Nope, never letting that go, even if he's mostly accepted that the guy probably didn't steal Shen laoshi's face. Mostly.

[wildguardian]

"Especially considering the cat and I are both patients," Yunlan notes, giving Wu Xie a dry glance. "What do you think we're going to do, bring you up on charges? With who?"

[ragsnbone]

"This is not my ship." He shrugs. "Originally."

Look he may have been really out of it, but he remembers the other ship with the room that had the layout like his shop did, way back before he decided that Wang Meng could have it and run it better than him. Which meant the guy just redecorated and cleaned up the yard. Also did something with the ship chair which was so unfair. Wu Xie loved that ship chair.

"Frankly I don't think this Nurse thing really knows what is good for mental health. They sound more like a very forked up version of a villainous day care provider than an actual helper."

[qingofcats]

"Duh," Da Qing mutters. Because really, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

[wildguardian]

"It's not?" Yunlan's eyebrows shoot up. "You mean you were one of the ones on the Barge? You don't happen to remember a creepy-ash white room and a voice out of nowhere talking to you about getting picked by a new ship, do you?"

[ragsnbone]

"I guess?" He shrugged yet again, rubbing his mouth and then laughed. "I really have no clear memory of the whole thing. Kinda that problem with sometimes thinking I'm a snake or living like thousands of years ago. I do remember telling the white room voices that they are just another trick of a dying mind. Not sure if they liked that."

[qingofcats]

"Maybe not a face stealer, definitely a nutjob," Da Qing pronounces with a huff, and an amazing impression of an eyeroll given his eyes aren't actually capable of that in this form.

[wildguardian]

"I assume all of this thinking you're a snake bit comes with the hallucinogenic venom, yeah?" Yunlan adds, dryly.

[ragsnbone]

He knew that flavor of an eye roll. Xiaoge often did that at him and Pangzi both, but that thought brought with it a rolling feeling of loss that he needed to stamp down on.

"Yeah. Someone on it sees the world like a snake - funky vision, weird scents and all. There's documents on it but since they are copies of heresy from local tribes no one felt they were accurate."

He rolls his eyes at that because he has found that it lays well to heed the locals and their tall tales. Like with the sand seas or the nine-headed hydra tree.