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A ripple goes through the cultivation world.
Words are shouted up and down Koi Tower. Voices tremble over words, gasping and full of red shades of rage.
Wei Wuxian, Wei Wuxian, the people spit his name like venom from their mouths.
Jiang Yanli knows they are wrong, they must be. A-Xian would never-
How cruel, how ungrateful, how dare he, Sect Leader Yao and Sect Leader Ouyang and Jin Zixun roar and turn their eyes to everyone else, trying to incite the same hatred.
Some nod, some join into the chorus of insults. Only a few avert their gaze, unsure and wondering and recalling moments they brushed aside until now.
Oh, brother what have you done, Lan Xichen thinks.
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Rain pours down, biting-cold and glistening like small drops of diamonds.
“Is this the promise that we pledged our lives to keep?” Wei Ying cries into the storm with such force, Lan Wangji feels it like a shove to his chest. He does not stagger but clutches tighter at the umbrella, at Bichen, at the feelings swirling in his chest.
Far away at the entrance to Cloud Recesses, on a wall and carved into stone in perfect calligraphy, withstanding all time, three thousand rules are displayed. Lan Wangji doesn’t remember seeing them for the first time when he was still a child with little knowledge of the world. But he remembers learning them all, repeating them out loud and in his thoughts, writing them down until his fingers hurt and shufu deemed them perfect. Over and over like the endless dance of night and day, until he knew every single one and their number. They are a reminder as much as a grounding force, a guidance as much as a cage.
Do not fight without permission. Do not wander out at night. Do not run. Do not make noise. Do not be wasteful. Do not speak ill of others. Do not act impulsively.
They are as much a part of him as his arms and legs, laced into his very bones and a consistent, insistent whisper of what is right and wrong.
But what is, Wei Ying had asked. And who says so?
Lan Wangji used to hold the answer, all the answers, he thought. Now, his hands cold from rain or fear, he is not so sure.
Eighteen years and three thousand rules and all of it undone so quickly, so thoroughly, by one person alone.
Rule 2311. Do not break promises, his mind whispers now, tugging at the memory the nighttime questions have conjured.
Then what promise am I to uphold? He wants to yell at the sky. What promise am I meant to break? The one I was born into, molded into from the day I opened my eyes by hands that dealt out more punishments than tenderness? Or the one I made, a young fool not quite aware yet of all the terrors of this world, with someone by my side who insistently clawed his way inside my heart?
In front of him, separated by a curtain of rain and unaware of his inner turmoil, Wei Ying raises his hand, his arm outstretched and holding out Chenqing like an offering, like a barrier, like a question.
“Lan Zhan, if I have to fight with them finally, I’d prefer to fight with you.”
Stop, Lan Wangji wants to say but the word is stuck at the back of his throat.
“If I am doomed to death,” and here Wei Ying smiles, sadly but visible in the corners of his mouth, as if his death is such a trivial thing. “At least, I could be killed by you. That would be worth it.”
What a ridiculous thing to say within the midst of the storm. What a ridiculous thing to ask of the one you consider your soul’s mate.
There is a breath stuck in Lan Wangji’s chest, lodged beneath his ribcage, raging to be let out and make the choice expected of him. Step aside, let them pass. Or better yet, for the good of all the sects and their leaders, raise the sword and strike.
Eradicate evil, set up laws and then goodness will be everlasting.
Yet beneath the stream of rain Lan Wangji is nothing but a leaf tossed to the wind, free of rules and expectations and guilt.
There is a path, splendorous and bright and there for the taking, ripe with glory, filled with a future he thought he wanted. But maybe, after all, it was the expectations of others that made him think so. And then there is the darker route, the one that speaks of exertion and an endless climb, the one people will curse him for and frown and spit at; the one that he would not have to walk in lifelong solitude, the road one unafraid person will lead him on.
What an impossible choice to make at such an age, in such a moment with thunder roaring and rain pouring down and eyes on him that beg for something he cannot give.
The breath inside his chest releases, dead and trampled.
“You said, you took me as your soulmate in this life, the one who understands you,” Lan Wangji says, barely audible above the storm. But something, as lightning flashes, lights up in Wei Ying's eyes too, understanding dawning. It is only because Lan Wangji’s gaze is so fixed on him that he sees his lips tremble.
I still do.
Lan Wangji takes a step, then another, slow and deliberate and calculated. One of the horses huffs, soothed by the hum of one Wen Clan survivor. Lan Wangji remembers their faces distantly, some of them at least, from Dafan mountain. He will have time to learn them anew now.
Wei Ying lowers his arm, the hand clenched around Chenqing trembling, his eyes wide as moons.
“Lan Zhan,” he whispers – or maybe he doesn’t say anything at all.
Lan Wangji swallows and stares up at him and tries to put all of the sincerity he holds within the cage of his body into his words. “I still am.”
Lightning crackles, illuminating for just a second, the surprise on Wei Ying's features, carved into them like rules into stone. His throat works against a reply that never comes. There is no need for one.
There is no order without rules, Lan Qiren had said.
Eradicate evil, set up laws and then goodness will be everlasting, he had made Lan Wangji read and memorize and write and repeat.
What is the 52nd rule of the Lan Clan? he had asked again and again.
Do not associate with evil, Lan Wangji had replied dutifully every time.
But within the darkness of night, beneath showers of rain, he sees no evil. Only a man trying to save the innocent, only a promise that ties them together and an understanding that binds their souls to one another irrevocably.
The umbrella meets the ground with a thud, dull and swallowed by another crack of the sky. With a lift of his feet, more elegantly than should be possible with the shock of ice-cold rain soaking his clothes and skin and hair, Lan Wangji sits upon the horse behind Wei Ying.
It protests with a huff, lifting his forelegs slightly and shakes as if it wants to throw them both off. A gentle hand soothes through its dark mane, breathing a whisper to make it settle down again. Like this, it barely fits them both, pressed so closely together they can feel each other’s body heat, the wetness of the other’s clothes. The rim of Wei Ying's hat brushes Lan Wangji’s hairline as he twists around as much as the limited space allows, his eyes flitting over Lan Wangji’s face as if to memorize each pore.
“Lan Zhan…. Lan Zhan, no. They despise me already but you—... your Clan, your uncle, your reputation…”
He keeps uttering words without sense as if he wants Lan Wangji to change his mind, turn around and leave or take the offer of a fight and end it all right here in the wet dirt of this earth. Words that prick at Lan Wangji’s heart with guilt – although he knows it would be tenfold if he turned around now to lead the easy life that is waiting for him just beyond this path, just beyond the crossroad intersecting their lives.
So, he reaches out to where Wei Ying's hand rests on the horse’s mane and lets his fingers slip in between the spaces.
“Wei Ying,” Wei Ying tenses, at the touch or the sound of his name, brushed right below his ear but he does not turn away.
“We made a promise,” Lan Wangji says, so easily as if this is all the explanation anyone would need. “And you promised you would let me help you. So, let us fulfill them side by side.”
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The umbrella is what they bring back to Koi Tower, wet with rain and caked with mud and half-broken.
Wei Wuxian, how cruel, killing all those innocent people!
Wei Wuxian, traitor of the Jiang Clan! How low he must stoop to rescue the people that killed Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan! How little respect he must have for Clan Leader Jiang!
Wei Wuxian, how dare he! Choosing the crooked path and running from the law and kidnapping Hanguang-Jun, who only tried to do right and stop him!
An act of rebellion, an act of war!
Voices rise across Koi Tower, spreading farther to cities and towns and villages, words laced with the slow poison of tarnishing a reputation already crumbling.
Lan Qiren collapses in his chair, blood dripping from his nose.
Jin Guangshan huffs and adds a few well-placed words, oil to an already simmering fire.
Jiang Cheng grinds his teeth and balls his hands into fists until his knuckles crack.
Lan Xichen meets Jiang Yanli’s eyes and sees the same prayer written in them, the plea to some deity above to protect a younger brother on his path.
Jin Guangyao offers calming words and expressions of concern, then smiles into his sleeve.
Leagues away, the Burial Mounds bloom into a home.