Chapter Text
Lan Huan was weary. Both physically and mentally. He longed for the simplicity of the walls of the Hanshi. It was an imprisonment of his own making, but it was a familiar imprisonment.Lan Huan was starting to be able to move on, to stand confidently on his own two feet once again; but he could still feel himself breaking away bit by bit, his heart and soul eroding away right through the fingers like grains of sand in the wind.
A-Yao, A-Yao I miss you more than words will ever be able to convey. But I’m tired. I don’t know how much longer I can yearn for something that is already gone .
“You know, there was a point in time where Binghe was presumed dead. Everyone seemed to say the same thing about this master then: that he had lost his mind in his grief,” Shen Qingqiu says to Lan Huan, as if he had been able to notice the melancholy behind the smile he was trying so hard to keep plastered on his face, “I hadn’t, of course. But you almost seem like you have.”
Lan Huan almost thinks he may be right. Though, he’s not quite sure he’s completely lost his mind, not yet. Was simply grieving the man he had loved for so long not enough?
He doesn’t have the strength to meet Shen Qingqiu’s eyes, smiling idly at the ground, “I don’t believe it’s that simple. To grieve for someone you knew for so long, one you thought knew you in return; I don’t know how to explain quite what that feeling is.”
He omits the fact that he had been the one to kill that “someone” with his own two hands. He refuses to mention that he had once thought that Meng Yao was the one who truly knew the melody of his heart.
(Or, the truth was that he had known it better than anyone else. And he knew exactly how to pull on the strings to tug at Lan Huan’s feelings.)
Shen Qingqiu cocks his head quizzically in Lan Huan’s direction, “Meaning…?”
Lan Huan opens his mouth but no words come out. He does not even know how to begin to explain his grief for Meng Yao - his feelings for Meng Yao. Did it even matter anyway? To explain all of that? Meng Yao was gone, slipped through his fingers before he even had a chance to be something more than ‘er-ge’ to him.
A-Yao, you would have flourished in the Cloud Recesses. I would have made sure you were happy there, not miserable like you were in that gilded tower that never really had a place for you. You hated the Jinlintai, even I could tell that. I would have never made you feel like you weren’t exactly where you belonged .
Lan Huan sighs, managing to let out a rather sad laugh, “No, nevermind, it doesn’t matter.”
He didn’t need to trouble poor Shen Qingqiu with all of his sorrows. He would rather keep it all confined in his heart, locked away forever with Da-ge Nie Mingjue and Meng Yao in that coffin.
(A-Yao had died, and Lan Huan’s heart had died along with him.)
“If you say so…” Shen Qingqiu mutters, fanning himself as he stared at Lan Huan with a pitying expression.
Lan Huan was tired. He didn’t care what the other cultivator thought of him anymore.
“Xiongzhang,” Lan Wangji’s gentle timbre echoes against the tunnel walls as he turns back to alert Lan Huan and Shen Qingqiu of something up ahead. (When had he begun to stride so easily ahead of Lan Huan without looking back? When had A-Zhan grown up?) “I believe Xie Lian found something.”
Lan Wangji gestures towards the god who stands ahead at an impasse in the tunnel, offering a small wave as he keeps a tense hand clamped around his cousin’s shoulder.
“Yes,” Xie Lian says politely with a smile, “It’s an armoury I think,” he pauses, looking rather excited by the idea, “there are spiritual swords here.” Lan Huan does not even wait for the god to gesture them forward before he is running, stumbling over his own feet.
He is greeted by Shouyue, Liebing laying gently by the sword’s hilt, and the sect leader nearly crumbles. Wangji takes Bichen with no problems, pulling his white clothed guqin easily over his shoulders as well.
Shen Qingqiu picks up an elegant blade that suited the image of a lofty immortal he produced, fan still held in other hand, hiding a smirk across his lips.
But Lan Huan hesitates, shaky hands wrapping unsurely around his sword. He does not draw it to check that all is well as he left it, as his brother and Qingqiu do. He already knows the blade is in as pristine condition as it had been before being taken to this place. How could it not be? He had barely been able to look at it for over a year, let alone slip it from its sheath.
Lan Huan puts the sword at his side anyway, picking up Liebing with much more resolve, though a sigh punctuates his actions.
“Xiongzhang, are you going to be alright like that?” Lan Wangji gestures at his sword, in no position to be drawn and the xiao in his hands.
“Didi, you know I can’t… you know why …” The image still runs clear in his mind, the blood of the man he loved dripping onto the pure white blade. A-Yao pushed him away when he would have been perfectly happy to die alongside him, so long as it was him, so long as it was together.
(Lan Huan had not spoken to Nie Huaisang since the Guanyin temple incident, the once strong they’d had frayed and snapped in two. Some part of him could not help but to blame Huaisang for A-Yao’s death. He was the one who had shouted out, but Lan Huan was the one who had blindly trusted for a moment. He was the one who had killed A-Yao, but Huaisang was the one who was at blame.)
“Xiongzhang, you have to try at least. Please.” Lan Wangji never begged, he never complained, but now his voice sounded desperate and worried.
Lan Huan wishes so badly that he was able to be what his little brother needed him to be right now.
“Haven’t I already told you not to worry, A-Zhan? If you worry too much about me, then you’ll only end up losing sight of your own needs,” Lan Huan sighs fondly, smiling at his brother, “You’re so selfless, Lan Zhan. It’s an honour to have been your older brother.”
“Xiongzhang…? Why…” Lan Huan meets his brother’s golden eyes as they pool with fear and worry. He reaches out a hand, gently patting his baby brother’s shoulder.
“I didn’t mean it like that, I’m not going anywhere, didi,” He says carefully, other hand clenched tightly around Liebing. At least he hopes that is the case. He doesn’t want to leave Lan Wangji alone, but if only one of them were to survive this… he would want it to be Wangji. Wangji had a husband and a boy who looked to him as a father, he had something to live for. Lan Huan had nothing left waiting for him.
If he were to die here; who would care?
“Come on, let’s go,” Lan Huan says quietly, stepping back into the dark hallway with a heavy heart. If he is to survive… what will he live for?