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Lan Xichen knows the exact moment his sister’s heart shatters into a million, irreparable pieces.
Her cry of anguish echoes across the battlefield, drawing everyone’s attention up towards the cliff where Sect Leader Jiang was already walking away. His mission is complete; he has avenged his own sister and brother-in-law, and Wei Wuxian is now dead.
Lan Xichen no longer cares about the battle. Truly, he has never cared for it. Right now, his only priority is to be at his sister’s side, and he swiftly fights his way through the crowds to her.
Lan Wangji lies almost catatonic on the rock of the cliff face, hand still stretched over the edge. One of her sleeves is bloody from a cut just below her shoulder. She does not appear to have any other injuries, which is almost miraculous, considering how she fought alone, battling against the cultivators and the puppets. She does not move as Lan Xichen kneels at her side, shows no signs of acknowledging her brother’s presence. Lan Xichen wraps fingers around her wrist, checking her pulse and sending her a small amount of spiritual energy.
Her grief is already palpable, an ugly thing powered by anger and regret that is threatening to overwhelm her. Lan Xichen can feel it rising, feel the threads of energy that Lan Wangji is disrupting, the rage and fury and anguish that could destroy them all if Wangji so chose. He has never seen her like this. Wangji’s grief when their mother passed had been quiet, even as it threatened to consume her.
He has to snap her out of this.
Xichen cannot lose his sister too.
He grips his sister’s shoulder, firmly, trying to draw her back from the cliff. Wangji still does not acknowledge his presence. “Wangji,” he says, to no response. “Sister.”
Nothing.
Xichen remembers the last time they’d thought Wei Wuxian dead. How his sister had shattered under the weight of the possible grief, the confession that had forced its way out of her as to what Wei Wuxian was to her. Her partner, her soulmate, the person she had claimed with the sacred Lan ribbon. Xichen had calmed his sister’s grief then with the hope that Wei Wuxian could still be alive, and that Lan Wangji could court her properly.
That had never happened.
It makes Xichen angry to think of every time Wangji offered her hand out only for Wei Wuxian to reject it so callously.
He is angry at his sister for not claiming Wei Wuxian as she should have done, for if Wei Wuxian had been sister-in-law to the leader of the Lan Sect, Lan Xichen might have been able to speak in her defence. He is angry at the clan principles, the teaching of restraint, which was the last thing his sister needed. He is angry at their father, at the legacy of their parents, which Wangji had been so terrified of repeating.
The battle below is concluding, the puppets falling as the resentful energy of Wei Wuxian’s cultivation dies. Xichen has to get his sister out of here, before the attention falls on her. How she had not stopped the Yiling Laozu but had reached out for her. Wangji will have to face the consequences of her actions, but she will be disciplined by her sect, not by the cultivation world at large.
Xichen wraps his sister’s arm over his shoulders, and places his other around her waist. He pulls her to her feet. Wangji does not fight him. He settles her against his side, picks up their swords, and half-carries, half-drags her off the cliff.
It would be a greater indignity for him to pick her off her feet and carry her like a child.
He knows there will be stares. He knows he will be answering for this act for months to come. He does not care. This is his sister.
He finds their Uncle near the back of the battlefield, already helping tend to the injured. “I am taking Wangji back to Cloud Recesses,” he says. “Please, see to our affairs here. I will be back as soon as I can.”
Lan Qiren takes one look at Wangji, still unresponsive, and nods. He must think the worst of her for what she did today, how she took up arms against those of her own sect, in defence of a woman who was irredeemable. But Wangji is still his treasured niece, and he will not throw her to the wolves of the Jin or the lesser sects.
Lan Xichen drags his sister from the battlefield. He assesses his own strength. It is drained, but adequate. He takes Shuoyue and carries his sister onto it, tucking her into his side. She is a tall, lithe woman, comparable to most men, but Xichen can manage her weight. He will fly them as far back to Cloud Recesses as he can.
The flight itself is quiet. There are no other cultivators moving through the skies; no one to report the twin Jades fleeing from battle. Wangji’s head rests on Xichen’s shoulder, her breathing steady, but that is the only sign of life.
Xichen is relieved when the landscape below them gives way to the climbing hills and swift rivers of Gusu. He can feel the exhaustion starting to wear on him, his reserves coming close to empty. He descends onto the steps leading up to Cloud Recesses, just outside the protective wards. There is a single guard on the gate; the bulk of Gusu Lan is scattered outside their home right now, some on night hunts, some at Nightless City.
Behind them stands a junior member of the healers, keeping a careful watch. Xichen wonders if his Uncle had sent word of their arrival back to Cloud Recesses ahead of him. But the healer—Lan Xinyi, Xichen thinks—appears surprised to see him. She focuses her attentions on Wangji.
“Hanguang-jun, you must come,” she says.
“My sister has been injured,” Lan Xichen replies. “I will bring her.”
Lan Xinyi shakes her head. She does not seem concerned about Wangji’s injuries, it is something else that has brought her here. “Hanguang-jun, the boy, his fever—”
Wangji starts in Xichen’s arms. Suddenly her weight is back on her own two feet again, no longer needing Xichen’s support, her eyes blinking open and coming to focus. She pulls away from Xichen. “Take me to him,” she says, voice threaded with a fear and authority Xichen has never heard from her. “Now.”
In the healing hall, Lan Xichen follows the healer and his sister towards the back rooms, where there are a few cots laid out behind private screens for the worst injuries. The head healer, Lan Yawen, is already there, holding a cold cloth to a small child’s head. Their apprentice is holding the boy down as he thrashes with a fever.
Lan Xichen hangs back, letting them work. Wangji does not; she goes straight to the child’s bedside, taking the cold cloth and pressing it to his forehead. With her thumb, she wipes away the tears under his eyes. Lan Yawen sighs, but whispers a few words to Wangji. Wangji nods, taking them in, but her attention remains focussed solely on the boy.
“There is not much more we can do,” Lan Yawen says. “The boy will make it through the night or he won’t.”
Lan Xichen knows he will not be able to pull his sister from this child’s bedside. “Go,” he says to Lan Yawen. “I will call for you if he gets worse.”
All three healers look surprised at his words, but they have already admitted that there is little left for them to do. If no one is in imminent danger, Xichen’s word as sect leader is law.
When they have left, Xichen kneels to take up residence at the other side of the boy’s bed. The child is young; three years of age, if Xichen had to guess, but he will admit to being no expert in such matters. He is dressed in a single layer of the simple cloth robes the youngest disciples of Cloud Recesses wear.
Lan Xichen fears the answer, but he knows he must ask the question. “Sister. Who is he?”
“He is my son.”
Wangji’s voice has all the protectiveness of a parent in it. She would have fought the entire cultivation world for Wei Wuxian, Xichen saw it, and she will fight them for this child as well. She will not listen to reason on this, despite the disgrace it will bring her. For all that Wangji has risen above the rules that bind so many women in this world, there are some she is still held by.
There has always been gossip about Wangji and her choices, intensifying with her choice to sweep her hair up in a manner more accustomed to a married woman of standing than the maiden cultivator she is. Lan Xichen has been asked many times about his sister and how he intends to reign her in, criticism about her not being married yet coming in on the same breath as a declaration that no man of good standing would marry a woman of Wangji’s reputation. The gossip is kept at bay by a lack of men to link Lan Wangji to. She sticks to her brother’s side, interacting with other members of the sects only as necessary. The only man outside her family who she has spent any amount of time with is Jiang Wanyin, whilst she was looking for Wei Wuxian, and the gossip about that hadn’t lasted long at all. The young Sect Leader Jiang was too new, too insecure, to want a woman like Wangji by his side, a woman who would outshine him in every way.
There is no chance this is Wangji’s illegitimate child, born of her own body, for all that rumours will likely persist that he is. Wangji has loved one person and one person only in her life, and that person was not capable of giving her a child. She would not let another touch her in that manner.
There is the child’s age as well. Xichen may be unsure of it, but if he was not born before the Sunshot Campaign he would have been born during it. Xichen had spent much of that time missing, but Lan Wangji had been a prominent figure during the war and the lead up to it. He sincerely doubts his sister would have been able to hide a pregnancy, and doubts it even less that she would have continued to hide the child from Xichen when he returned.
However.
Wangji is not maternal. She is good with the younger disciples, but with the discipline and kindness of a teacher who is fond of their students. She is as indifferent to most children as she is to most adults around her. It is extremely unlikely that she would have picked a random child from the fray and brought them back, and even less likely that she would then claim them to be of her own blood.
Therefore, the child must be Wei Wuxian’s. There is no one else who Wangji would do such a thing for.
But there lies a similar issue in the timing. Wei Wuxian might have been missing for some time during the Sunshot Campaign, but the Burial Mounds would have been no place to birth a child. And Wei Wuxian, considering her lack of regard for propriety, would have had no shame in claiming the child if she had had one. The child cannot be Wei Wuxian’s by blood.
And that leaves…
Xichen flinches.
Wei Wuxian did not have a child before she stole the Wen remnants away into the Burial Mounds. There have been no reports of children joining the community Wei Wuxian harboured there, no reports of families; just disciples, cultivators trying their luck, and Xichen doubts any of those are true. The child must have been with the Wens at the Qiongqi Path.
A child. A child was in the labour camps.
There had been Lan cultivators there; how had they not noticed? That the Jins had imprisoned a child? A child who was too young to have committed any crimes?
Lan Wangji had said that the Wens that Wei Wuxian was harbouring were of no threat to anyone; that they were made up of non-combatants, the frail and the elderly, who had spent the war hiding and just trying to survive it. She hadn’t mentioned that there had been a child, when she reported back, but she’d barely spoke of her time with Wei Wuxian at all.
Had there been just one child? Or were there more, and Wangji had only managed to save this one?
Xichen doesn’t want to think about it. He understands now, why Wangji is insistent on claiming the child as her own. Better he be a bastard child of the Lan sect than the last child of the Wen.
“What is his name?” Xichen asks.
“Lan Yuan,” Wangji answers.
Wen Yuan, as he must have been. It is a good name. If—when—the child makes it through this, Lan Xichen will ask his sister which character she wishes to use for Yuan and the child’s name will be added to the family registry.
“I am pleased to know my nephew by name.”
Wangji looks up. Her eyes are wide, almost startled. She is pale; too pale, even for her. “You—” Her voice trembles. “You will accept him?”
Did she really think her brother would deny her this? Has her opinion of him fallen so low she thinks he would reject her, reject the child? The child is innocent, and Wangji can provide him a home. It is the very least Xichen can do.
“You are my sister,” Xichen says. “He is your child, therefore he is my nephew.”
It is easy for Xichen. He suspects their Uncle will not be happy, and the elders of the Sect even less so. Their pristine, elegant maiden Jade, pure as the untouched snow, should never have been tainted in this way. It is against several sect rules. Wangji will face further punishment for this.
But the child will stay with her.
Barely an hour has passed since Wangji was still catatonic in Xichen’s arms, and he was wondering if she’d ever respond to anything again. He’d feared that she would waste away in a world that did not have Wei Wuxian in it. He wonders how long it would have been before she’d have followed Wei Wuxian over that cliff, or faded into a husk of her former self, faded just like their mother had until her spirit wasn’t strong enough to cling to this world.
Now, with Lan Yuan here, Wangji has something to live for. She has something to fight for. The child needs her; needs the protection she offers him. They will keep each other well, in their own way.
Lan Yuan whimpers, turning in the bed. Wangji turns her attentions back to her son, refreshing the damp cloth and pressing it back against his forehead. The child soothes under her attentions, but his fever has not yet broken.
Xichen prepares himself for a long night at the child’s side.
He will not let his sister bear this alone.
Lan Xichen is correct; the Sect Elders are not happy about all of what Lan Wangji has done. But still. “Thirty-three lashes of the discipline whip?”
Xichen looks at the assembled elders, incredulous at the punishment they have assigned to Lan Wangji. A series of stern, unmoving faces stares back up at him. To the side, his Uncle is resigned in acceptance of the harsh punishment his niece will face.
“And three years in seclusion,” one of the Elders adds.
That part, Lan Xichen has less objections to. His sister’s grief still threatens to overwhelm her; she needs time away from everything. Three years in seclusion will give her time to mourn Wei Wuxian in her own way, without prying eyes, without anyone placing demands on her. She has never struggled with secluded meditation, and the only time she has ever rebelled against being stuck in Cloud Recesses is when Wei Wuxian was out there, struggling, and needed her help.
Wei Wuxian is not there to need Lan Wangji anymore. Three years in seclusion will not be the punishment the elders think it is.
But thirty-three lashes of the discipline whip? There is every chance that Lan Wangji may not even survive that punishment. There is every chance that even if she does, it will leave her broken, unable to fulfil the duties that will no doubt still be expected of her, when her seclusion is over.
Lan Xichen expects his sister to atone for the things she has done. He accepts that a penance is due from her, for her part in extending the battle where many Lan cultivators met their deaths. He accepts that she raised her sword to those they called allies, in defence of a woman who was their enemy.
However; be righteous.
That is the motto of their clan. There might be over three-thousand additional rules that support that proposition, laying out a framework for a righteous life, but be righteous comes above everything else.
For all Lan Wangji’s sins, she has only ever lived up to it, in a way that perhaps no one has done since Lan An. She has loved fiercely and done what she thought was right, even if it went against the rest of the cultivation world. That is not a crime that deserves what may well be a death sentence.
“No,” Xichen says. “I will not accept this.”
Murmurs go around the Clan Elders. Lan Xichen knows it is a risky proposition, defying the Elders like this. It will make his life difficult. He does not truly have the right to object; a punishment for the crimes as severe as the ones Lan Wangji is accused of is always a collective decision made between the Elders and the Sect Leader, and if they are all in agreement Xichen has no real power to stop them.
He knows he is considered a soft-touch, especially where his sister is concerned. He has frequently indulged her when, perhaps, he should have been stricter. But Wangji was always so stern in nature, and their Uncle a strict disciplinarian, that Xichen saw his softness as merely balancing that out.
“Must we remind you of her crimes?”
Xichen has read the list of rules Lan Wangji is accused of breaking. It is extensive. It does not merely relate to Wangji’s actions on the battlefield, but her entire relationship with Wei Wuxian, and her claim of Lan Yuan as her own illegitimate child. Xichen would dispute many of the charges. Even if he accepts them all, the punishment is still excessive. To his knowledge, no one has been sentence to be whipped thirty-three times with the discipline whip in Sect history.
“No. My sister has seen the list and she accepts them; it is not my place to argue in her stead.” Xichen wishes it could be, but Lan Wangji had made it clear: she would accept whatever punishment the Elders handed out. “But the punishment is disproportionate to the crime.”
“Some would have her executed for what she has done.”
“Some would say that thirty-three lashes of the discipline whip is a death sentence,” Xichen retorts.
“Lan Wangji’s cultivation level is high, and she will receive the very best medical attention.”
Xichen’s temper, a carefully controlled thing that most people think he does not have, rises. How do the elders not see how wrong they are? Lan Wangji already has to live in a world where Wei Wuxian is dead, where Wei Wuxian is hated, where Lan Wangji does not get to know the joy of claiming her fated one as her own. That will be the greatest punishment to bear, those long years spent waiting for Wei Wuxian, until her own time is up.
She is already bearing the worst punishment.
For a moment, Lan Xichen wishes the weight of responsibilities were not pressed on his shoulders so. He would threaten to take Lan Wangji and Lan Yuan away from here, the three of them forming their own little family. They could go elsewhere. Their mother had been a rogue cultivator; they could be to. Or Nie Mingjue would take them in, Xichen thinks, even after everything, if Xichen only asked.
Would that be enough to force the Elders to compromise? Lan Xichen is aware that, besides his sister, there is no one waiting to claim the mantle of Sect Leader. Loyalties amongst the younger disciples, who fought in a war besides Zewu-jun and Hanguang-jun, lie with Lan Xichen personally. It would tear the Sect apart if he left.
And who would play peacemaker amongst the Sects then? There is more at stake here than just the Lan clan.
So he does not.
He understands his father a little more in that moment. He has never claimed to know what his father’s thoughts were, when he defied the Elders to marry their mother. Lan Xichen is only grateful he did, because he would not exist if his father had not done so. But now he feels his blood singing with what he might do to ensure his sister’s safety, and it scares him.
Lan Xichen has spent his entire life holding one promise close to his chest; he will not become his father.
Before Lan Xichen can say something rash, Lan Qiren steps in. “Zewu-jun,” he says, reminding the Elders of the title Lan Xichen holds, a title earned in his own right. “It is not the strike of the discipline whip you object to, but the number of lashes?”
“Yes.”
Lan Wangji is not innocent here, and Lan Xichen cannot protect her from everything.
“What number would you propose?”
Lan Xichen thinks about it. He thinks of the times the discipline whip has been brought out previously, the weight of the crimes his sister has accepted she has committed. He still does not like it. “Ten.”
The elders splutter. Despite this being reasonable, they still think it is too low. There is a whispered discussion, and the head of them proffers a number in return. “Twenty-five.”
That is still too high for Xichen’s liking. “Not acceptable.”
Lan Qiren looks between the pair. He looks weary. “Eighteen,” he says.
Neither Xichen or the elders like it, and so it must be a compromise.
“Eighteen,” Xichen agrees. It is almost half the number originally proposed. “Eighteen, and I will not be the one to hold the whip.”
He could not do it; it would break him.
Lan Qiren nods. “I will oversee the punishment.”
Lan Wangji does not kneel before the Elders and face the discipline whip for a further two weeks.
It is long enough for Lan Yuan’s fever to break, and for the boy to start his long, slow journey to recovery. He seems to have lost much of the detail of his early life, and more fades day by day. It is very likely he will remember nothing of his time before Cloud Recesses. He recognises Lan Wangji as someone he can trust, which is good. He submits to her ministrations, her quiet teachings of the rules he needs to know to be safe here, with not a word of complaint.
The loss of his memories will make it easier to hide the boy; they need not fear him speaking of his past, bringing up memories of whatever life he lived before. But Lan Xichen still grieves for the boy. He treasures the memories he has of his mother, the few good ones he has of his father, the single one he has of them altogether, a month after Wangji’s birth. He wouldn’t give them up for anything.
Lan Wangji is dressed in a simple robe of plain white the morning her punishment looms. She eats breakfast in the Jingshi with Lan Yuan. Lan Xichen joins them afterwards, for tea. He will be taking Lan Yuan to the Hanshi when Wangji leaves, supervising the boy who’s care Lan Wangji has yet to entrust to anyone but herself and the head healer.
“He will need a period of rest,” Wangji tells her brother, “in the morning and again in the afternoon. He is still not strong. You must ensure he eats his meals, properly. He will try and offer you some of his food; take it and then replace it with something from your own bowl. If he is feverish, you must take him straight to Healer Yawen, she will know what to do. His health is very fragile.”
Lan Xichen reaches out to clasp his sister’s shoulder. She is stiff with tension, a fear about her. She is not afraid of the punishment she is about to face, the harshest delivered in two generations, but she is scared about leaving Lan Yuan alone.
“Sister,” he says. “Your son will be safe with me. I will care for him as if he were my own.”
He means it. He loves Lan Yuan already. Loves him with a simple ease than Lan Xichen has felt only a few times in his life; at four years of age, when his Uncle placed the tightly wrapped bundle of his new baby sister into his arms; at eight years old, when he was invited to a celebration at Lanling and met the already proud and stern heir to the Nie Sect; and at twenty, when the second young master of Qinghe Nie came for training and brought with him a man with a sharp smile and dark eyes who bowed to Xichen just a little too deeply.
Xichen is too busy with the Sect, with playing politics, with trying to keep the gentle peace that feels all too tenuous in the cultivation world to look for a partner. He does not expect children of his own to be part of his life for many years. He had not expected a nephew, either, but now that he has one he will care for him with all the love the young boy needs.
Lan Wangji nods. “I trust you,” she says. “I am just...” She pauses. “I am afraid of losing him too.”
Of course she is. There is nothing Lan Xichen can say to that, no promise he can make she would believe. There is no cast-iron guarantee that the boy will always be safe.
“I know,” is all Lan Xichen can offer her.
She accepts this. She moves to stack the tea-set back in its tray, clearing the table. When that is done, she calls to Lan Yuan in a low, clear voice.
Lan Yuan drops the grass butterfly he had been playing with to toddle over to Lan Wangji. “A-Yuan,” Lan Wangji says, taking the boy’s small hands in her own. He looks back up at her, quiet and just as serious. Looking at them together, Lan Xichen sees a glimmer of the child Wangji had been. Her son will take after her, it is already clear. “I have to leave for a little while, but your Uncle will be staying with you. He will look after you. If you have any problems, any worries, you must take them to him.”
“Where are you going, Mama?” he asks.
“I will not be going far,” Lan Wangji says. “But I may not be able to talk to you for a little while. I am very sorry about this. It is not what I want. But it must be done. Know that I love you, and I will be back for you.”
“A-Yuan will wait,” Lan Yuan responds, in the earnest nature of a child. “A-Yuan will miss Mama very much.”
“I will miss you too.”
The child’s hands linger in hers, her own fingers wrapped around them tightly. Lan Xichen wonders whether his sister will let go. Eventually she does, only to lean forward and wrap Lan Yuan up in a hug. The boy’s arms wrap around her neck, little fingers clutching ahold of the hair that is bound low at the nape of her neck. Lan Wangji buries her face in her son’s shoulder and holds him as close as she can.
“I love you, A-Yuan.”
Lan Wangji stands up, scooping Lan Yuan up with her. She walks to the door of the Jingshi, looking out across the porch, hand cupped round the back of Lan Yuan’s head. Xichen wishes he could give her more time, more time to settle into motherhood, more time to acclimatise to the way her life is going to look now.
He can’t. He’s done as much as he can, to get her a punishment that won’t kill her, or leave her so injured she may never recover from it.
“It’s time,” he says. He goes to his sister and holds out his arms, and Lan Wangji transfers Lan Yuan to him. Xichen settles the boy on his hip, noting how one of Lan Yuan’s little hands clutches securely in the back of his robes.
“Be good for your Uncle, A-Yuan,” Lan Wangji says.
“I will!”
Lan Wangji steps out the door, off the porch and slowly makes her way into the rest of Cloud Recesses, where the Elders await her. She walks tall and proud, with a dignity that she should not have to muster. Lan Xichen turns to the back path, that leads round towards the Hanshi, where Lan Yuan will stay under Xichen’s care.
His sister has accepted her duty; he will do his best to fulfil the one she has asked of him.
Lan Xichen wakes in the middle of the night because of the small child tossing and turning in his bed. A cot had been set up in the Hanshi for Lan Yuan, but the boy hadn’t been sleeping in it. It took only one night of no sleep for Yuan or Xichen because of the boy’s screaming nightmares for Lan Xichen to scoop the boy up and place him in bed with him, and it seems that the presence of another human besides him is comforting.
Tonight, though, the boy is whimpering, clinging to Xichen’s robe one moment and flinging himself away the next. Xichen shakes Yuan’s shoulder to wake him. When he does, Yuan curls into the warmth of Xichen’s chest and starts crying.
“Mama,” Yuan says, between sobs. “Want Mama.”
Xichen smooths a hand through the boy’s hair. He is thrown back almost twenty years, to another young child crying in his bed for their mother. There had been a single night where Lan Zhan had finally let her emotions show, her want for their mother seeping through. It was all he could do to hold her, knowing there was nothing he could do to bring their mother back to them.
Yuan’s hands clutch at Xichen’s robe, scared and vulnerable, and Xichen knows that he can bring this little boy’s mother to him.
Yuan’s sobs continue, and Xichen makes a decision. He scoops the boy up, shrugs on an outer robe and his boots—precariously balancing Yuan on his hip as he does so—and heads out of the Hanshi and over to the Jingshi in defiance of the Lan curfew.
His sister’s home being on the edge of Cloud Recesses, he passes no one on his way there. He slides the door to the Jingshi open. Even here, there is just a single healer on duty in case Lan Wangji takes a turn for the worse in the night. She doesn’t startle as Lan Xichen takes Lan Yuan into his sister’s bedroom and lays the boy onto her bed.
Lan Wangji is flat on her stomach, her back covered in bandages. The wounds are clean and so far, there is no sign of infection. She will be left with eighteen scars on her back to mark her crimes, but Lan Wangji has accepted that as the price to pay for loving Wei Wuxian. She stayed conscious through the entire thing, but since then has been in-and-out, the pain overwhelming her much of the time.
“Careful,” Xichen says to Yuan. “Your mother is hurt very badly, so you musn’t touch her, but she’s here, see?”
Yuan stops crying. He settles into the bed by Wangji’s side. “Hurt?” he asks.
“She will get better, but it’ll take a long time,” Xichen replies. “That’s why you have to stay with me. But she is still here for you, A-Yuan.”
Yuan nods. He seems content now, now that he knows his mother is close. Lan Xichen fetches a blanket and tucks Lan Yuan in. They will stay here for the night. Yuan is happy, and that’s the only thing that really matters. It must be bringing Wangji comfort as well, for she settles, leaning into her son.
Xichen settles himself at the side of his sister’s bed, smoothing a hand over Yuan’s hair, and then stroking gently through Wangji’s. Her hair is loose, the first time Xichen has seen it as such in many years.
Wangji had loved Wei Wuxian so fiercely. She’d loved with a devotion unmatched by their peers, loved Wei Wuxian so plainly and completely that Xichen cannot understand why others hadn’t seen it, how Wei Wuxian had not seen it. Wangji had offered her heart and soul, holding herself to the commitment she’d made to Wei Wuxian at the tender age of fifteen and Wei Wuxian had thrown every ounce of that devotion away.
Xichen had known that Wei Wuxian did not understand, had failed to grasp what Wangji was offering. He’d attempted to make it clear to her, that Wangji was spending night and day studying musical cultivation in a way that had not been done since the time of Lan Yi to discover something that would soothe Wei Wuxian, but that had not worked either. Wangji hadn’t wanted to tell her about the binding, the promise of the marriage that should have been, and Xichen had respected that, but he cannot help but wonder if this pain could have been avoided if Wangji had stood up in front of the entire cultivation world and claimed Wei Wuxian as her own.
Could the Wens have been saved? Could Wei Wuxian? Or was Wei Wuxian always doomed, a cultivator who would always have been drawn from orthodoxy to a heretical path, darkness rising up to claim her soul and dragging all those she loved into the darkness with her.
As Lan Xichen strokes his sister’s hair, she mutters “Wei Ying,” under her breath. It makes Xichen’s heart stop with the love she imbues it with, speaking Wei Ying’s name as if it will prove the key to Wangji’s salvation, an end to all her pain. Wei Wuxian should be here, should be the one to wipe Wangji’s pain away.
But Wei Wuxian is also the cause of that pain, and Lan Xichen does not know if he has it in his heart to forgive her that.
It is a moot point, now that Wei Wuxian is dead.
The courtship proposal that Lan Xichen has had prepared since Wangji’s confession during the Sunshot Campaign will go unsent. The gifts that were carefully gathered—a heritage tea set, with lotus flowers delicately painted on in violet, edged in gold, to replace the one Lan Xichen knew had been lost in the fall of Lotus Pier for Jiang Wanyin, a gold filigree hairpiece with a lotus motif made by the finest Lan craftsman for Jiang Yanli, as well as scrolls of knowledge to expand the Jiang library and the promise of gold and craftsmen to restore Lotus Pier to its former glory; later, when Wei Wuxian had taken up residence in the Burial Mounds, it had been books on medical healing unique to the Lans, medicinal herbs and a bow carved and strung by the finest craftsman in Gusu—they would never reach their recipients. There is a bolt of red silk that Lan Xichen has amongst his things in the Hanshi and it will likely not be used until Yuan is of age to wed, and under it is a small carved box containing a white ribbon and a carved wooden hairpiece that had been their mother’s, gifts that Wei Wuxian will now never wear.
Lan Xichen will not see his sister wed.
But he will see her raise a child, the child who is hers and Wei Wuxian’s. There will be joy ahead, even if it seems far off now. Wangji will recover, and she will find her way out from her grief, and they will form a little family of their own, the twin Jades united once more.
“Sleep, sister,” Lan Xichen says, keeping his voice low. “A-Yuan is here. Everything is okay.” It is not Wei Wuxian, but this is better, in its own way. “I am here.” He will always be here for her. He made that promise long ago.
Lan Wangji’s three years in seclusion pass quietly, and largely peacefully. Xichen does not think it has been the punishment for her the Elders intended. Wangji is bound to the back hill and the Jingshi, not permitted to move beyond them, but within those confines she is broadly allowed to do as she chooses.
The first year is spent in recovery. The wounds on her back take time to heal, and then it takes more time for her to build her strength back up to what it was. Quiet meditation and time in the cold springs aids her recovery. Lan Xichen keeps A-Yuan for her, and brings the boy to visit at least once a week.
Lan Yuan grows stronger too, shaking off his illness. Lan Xichen cares for the boy as if Yuan was his own, to the surprising acceptance of Lan Qiren and the disapproval of the elders. The child sleeps in the Hanshi and spends his days in the nursery with the other young children of the Sect.
The second year, Lan Wangji tackles her grief. Xichen sits with her and A-Yuan on the anniversary of Wei Wuxian’s death, and it passes quietly and otherwise unmarked in Cloud Recesses. Elsewhere, Xichen knows, there are celebrations happening, banquets marking a full year of peace and prosperity now that the Yiling Laozu is no more. He does not mention this to Wangji. Wangji merely holds her son in her lap and whispers stories to him, tales of Wei Wuxian when she’d shone bright and promising and had captured the attention and admiration of so many.
That night is good, but many of the ones that follow it are not. Wangji still seems to blame herself for Wei Wuxian’s fall, Wei Wuxian’s untimely death, Wei Wuxian’s descent into someone entirely recognisable. Lan Xichen brings her work, handing off as many of the administrative duties of Cloud Recesses as can be done from her confines, brings her texts to study and new music scores. He hears Inquiry ring out from the Jingshi one night, and it is plain that this is not the first time Lan Wangji has played it.
In the third year, Lan Yuan’s bed moves from the Hanshi to the Jingshi, and he settles into his mother’s care. He moves from the nursery to the classes for the youngest initiates, and immediately shows promise. He is a fine addition to the Sect. He flourishes under Lan Wangji’s attention, as she spends her afternoons teaching him of things the other young disciples will not learn for years.
Xichen sees his sister growing restless as her seclusion draws to a close. She is more settled now than she was, happier and healthier than Xichen thought she would be, but something still pulls at her. There are questions that remain unanswered. Wei Wuxian’s body has never been recovered, and her soul has not been found either. Xichen knows Wangji will go looking for both.
There will always be part of her that longs for Wei Wuxian. There will always be a part of Wangji that fell from the cliff too that day. They were soulmates, Wangji had said, and Xichen knows his sister would not make such a statement lightly.
“What will you do now?” Xichen asks Wangji, on the very last night of her seclusion. Wangji sits behind her guqin, A-Yuan in her lap as she plays a soft lullaby to soothe the boy.
A-Yuan’s head leans against Wangji’s arm, almost falling into sleep. He’s already clean and in his sleeping robe, all ready for bed, but he’d wanted to stay up and hear Wangji play, and Wangji had just gathered him into her arms and sat him down and done just that.
“Will do whatever brother needs,” Lan Wangji answers, simple in her honesty.
Xichen smiles at her. He’s grateful for that offer; there is much he has for her to do. Things do not feel as stable as they should be, even as Cloud Recesses begins to thrive again. Nie Mingjue’s cultivation is falling away from him, struggling on the edge of Qi deviation, and even with Xichen and A-Yao’s help, Xichen worries that he will not make it past the next few years. Sect Leader Jiang still brims with the anger he has always carried, but it’s now heightened by exhaustion as he takes the burden of raising the Jin Sect heir to himself. A-Yao pretends that he is fine, and refuses Xichen’s help, but all is not well in the Jin Sect, with Sect Leader Jin worse than ever. Xichen has tried to do what he can, but he has responsibilities in Cloud Recesses, in Gusu, as well as his task in playing peacemaker amongst the Sects.
“There is much to be done,” Xichen acknowledges, “but that does not mean you cannot seek out a path for yourself, amongst it.”
“Mn.” Wangji considers for a moment. “Will raise A-Yuan. Nighthunt. Seek justice for those who cannot seek it themselves. Support brother.”
All of those things are fine tasks. Wangji will excel, as she always does, at all of them.
“I will be glad to have you alongside me once more, sister.”
When Lan Wangji leaves her seclusion she dons robes in pure elegant white. White has always been her preference, the soft blues woven into her wardrobe only on occasion. Xichen is the one who embraces the colour, finding beauty in rich elegant fabrics. He suspects his sister will only wear white from this day forward, her own way of continuing to mourn Wei Wuxian.
It is unorthodox, but no less so than Wangji’s decision to pin her hair up—and then keep pinning it up—during the Sunshot Campaign. Like then, there will likely be talk of her choices. Here, at least, her white mourning clothes blend in with the junior disciples’ uniforms. She does not look out of place, even if her position as the sister of the Sect Leader, the heir to the Lan Sect, would allow her to also embrace the deep rich blues Xichen prefers.
It takes Xichen three days to notice the single spot of colour in his sister’s dress, and it comes in the form of a bright red ribbon, just like the one Wei Wuxian used to wear, twisted into her upswept hair.