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There’s no grave for him to mourn at. No plaque in an ancestral hall for him to kneel in front of, to offer incense or burn offerings to ease his way in the afterlife.
Lan Wangji is dressed in his coarsest white robes, his hair unadorned. His back has been flayed open but the pain is nothing compared to the chasm in his chest, to the knowledge that Wei Ying is gone and that Lan Wangji cannot mourn him as he deserves.
The only reason these few trappings of mourning are being allowed without overt censure and further punishment is that he’s in seclusion and there’s no one to see them except his brother and little A-Yuan who comes along most visits.
His brother simply looks at him with concern and unwanted pity, but he doesn’t try to tell Lan Wangji not to mourn the man the cultivation world has painted as their greatest enemy. He brings Wei Wuxian’s child, now Lan Wangji’s, to visit. He brings paper and ink and Wangji’s guqin and salve to help the whip marks on his back.
A-Yuan is dressed in the pure white of a Lan sect member whenever he visits and he doesn’t remember Wei Wuxian or his family to be able to give meaning to the color of his robes. He’s more subdued than he was when Lan Wangji met him on the streets of Yiling, though, so maybe he mourns as well, even in the absence of memory.
He brings smiles and laughter into Lan Wangji’s seclusion, reminds him that, even in the midst of unfathomable pain, such things exist.
Wei Ying would approve of A-Yuan’s smiles and would return them so freely, regardless of his own hurts, so Lan Wangji tries his best to do the same for their child.
He waits until the middle of the night to play Inquiry, calling out to anything that might remain of Wei Wuxian when there’s no one but wandering souls to hear or judge him.
The soul he calls for never answers.
He continues to call anyways.
Lan Wangji is supposed to use the paper and ink provided to him to copy the rules, to reflect on their righteousness and how he strayed from them.
He copies them, yes, but his thoughts are focused elsewhere, on the rigidity of the rules and how one cannot adhere to them mindlessly without questioning the intent behind them.
Do not befriend the evil.
But who determines who is good and who is evil?
Do not grieve excessively .
To Lan Wangji, his grieving doesn’t feel like enough.
He writes a letter to Wei Wuxian instead of the rules.
He writes a letter to Wei Wuxian at least once a week. He hides them away, as much for the words they contain — the spilling of his raw and bleeding and broken heart in black ink — as for the water spots where the ink runs and mars those words.
He wonders what it would be like to have a grave to mourn at, to have a physical place he could tie his grief to. Like this, without a body or a memento or a marker, his grief knows no anchor because he will not weigh down their child like that. A-Yuan is made for smiles and hope, not to carry the grief of his elders.
When the grief becomes too heavy, he allows himself to play the song he wrote for them, the one containing all of his love and his longing and his steadfast hope .
He needs the hope on the darkest days when the pain in back feels fresh and sharp, when he can’t see past the next second to a future that will not contain Wei Ying and Wei Ying’s smile and Wei Ying’s understanding and overlooked silences.
He plays and he remembers and, sometimes, lets himself put his hopes and his pain down on paper in a letter addressed to a dead man.
On the first anniversary of Wei Wuxian’s death, Lan Wangji plays Inquiry until his fingers bleed, unheeding of the blood dripping onto the dark wood of his guqin, of the tears that mingle with it. He plays and he plays and he plays, asking every question he can think of to reach Wei Ying, every question that might provoke an answer.
Are you at peace? Are you with your sister? Your parents? Are you safe? Do you remember? Do you know that I’ve been calling you? Do you know that I have A-Yuan? Do you know that he is safe and he is protected and will remain so? Wei Ying, where are you?
He plays and he plays and it eventually devolves into the song, their song, played with more sadness than he’s ever allowed before, becoming plaintive and resigned rather than hopeful.
Lan Xichen walks in as the last notes hang in the air.
“A-Yuan is waiting outside,” he says. Lan Wangji can’t read his face, doesn’t even want to know what his brother’s thinking this time. “I will not allow him to see you like this.”
“Perhaps he should return tomorrow.” His voice is a shell of itself, a mere rasp. He doesn’t remember what he did to make it so.
“No. Make yourself presentable.” His words are flat, but he kneels beside Lan Wangji without hesitation, carefully removing the guqin from his lap. “You are not the only one hurting today, Wangji.”
“A-Yuan?”
Lan Xichen finds the salve meant for his back and carefully rubs it into Lan Wangji’s fingers, ignoring his brother’s flinches from the twin discomforts of being touched like this and the sting of the medicine.
“He has been...not himself today. Withdrawn. He does not know why, but he asked to come see you.”
“Xiong-zhang,” he whispers, overcome. He did not think his heart could crack any further, but he’s forever being proved wrong.
“Gather yourself and I will bring him to you,” he says, setting the salve aside. “I think you will be able to help each other.”
Lan Wangji nods and schools his face into its normal stillness, his tears long since dried. His brother examines him for a long moment and then turns with a sigh to fetch A-Yuan.
He leaves them alone together and it’s a mercy and a gift. A-Yuan doesn’t question the way Lan Wangji hugs him tighter than normal and lets him sit in his lap for his whole visit.
“Baba,” A-Yuan says, his voice serious. (And oh, doesn’t Lan Wangji’s heart do something complicated, doesn’t it ache when A-Yuan calls him that.) “It’s okay to be sad.”
“Mn, A-Yuan is already wise,” Lan Wangji says. He wishes this child didn’t even know what sadness was. “Where did you learn this?”
“Someone told me,” A-Yuan answers. “I don’t remember who, but he usually pretended not to be sad, I think.”
Lan Wangji’s breath catches. There’s only one person in A-Yuan’s life that he knows of who was adept at pretending not to be sad, but would acknowledge it all the same. He holds A-Yuan tighter and breathes through the pain of Wei Ying’s memory.
“I think he was right,” Lan Wangji says after a moment. “It is okay to be sad.”
“Even if I don’t know why I’m sad?”
“Even then,” Lan Wangji says.
They talk softly about the outside world through A-Yuan’s eyes and his lessons and all the questions A-Yuan saves to ask Lan Wangji since his baba always answers them without scolding. Eventually, Lan Xichen returns and it is time for A-Yuan to leave.
He drags his feet on the way out and Lan Wangji can’t help but to tell him to come back in a few days, earlier than what his usual visits are. That earns him a bright smile from his son and a soft one from his brother on their way out.
Lan Wangji writes a letter to Wei Wuxian once he’s alone. He tells him about A-Yuan and his sadness and his smile and how much he’s grown and the little ways that he remembers his other father even though the fever stole his memories.
He wishes he could tell Wei Ying in person, wishes he was here to see the boy he so adored flourishing and safe.
A few months more of unanswered Inquiries and Lan Wangji finds himself rereading the letters he’s written to Wei Wuxian. Some are nigh on illegible, a far cry from his usually pristine calligraphy and ordered thoughts. Some contain the feelings that he folded up next to his heart for too long, not wanting to risk the friendship he treasured and then too afraid that he’d missed his chance altogether.
He closes his eyes and the memory of Wei Wuxian escaping his grip and falling to his end, the barest hint of a smile on his face haunts him.
He wishes he could show Wei Ying these letters full of everything he couldn’t say so he would know how much he was missed by at least one person in this world.
There’s a funeral in Cloud Recesses. Lan Xichen tells him about it. An elder passed on after a full and long life and the sect is marking the occasion with respect and honor.
A-Yuan chatters on about the traditions, having never attended a full funeral like this. Lan Wangji tries not to think too much about A-Yuan’s family, all dead and gone and not properly mourned.
When they have left, Lan Wangji can’t help but dwell on the lack of a grave, the lack of anything for Wei Ying. He has considered burning paper money for him, but never taken the step of making or acquiring any.
He lays out his guqin and goes through his routine of playing Inquiry until his fingers start to ache. (Not bleed, not again. He agrees with his brother than A-Yuan should not see that.) There is still no response, no answer from whatever may remain of Wei Ying’s soul.
Lan Wangji can’t help but wonder if Wei Ying just doesn’t want to talk to him . Maybe he doesn’t want to talk to anyone after the way the world treated him in his last months and years. Lan Wangji wouldn’t blame him if that was the case.
He stows his guqin for the night and his eyes fall upon the stack of letters he’s written.
Perhaps Wei Ying would be willing to listen, to read a letter, where he is not willing to speak. He doesn’t know if a letter burnt in offering to the deceased would be delivered, but it’s an idea at least.
There’s still no grave, no ancestral hall in which to burn his offerings, but Wei Ying never was one for strict tradition.
When it comes down to it, Lan Wangji is not quite willing to let go of his letters. He rereads them too often, relies on them to remind him of the passage of time. But still, he wants to send them to their intended recipient.
So he copies them down, painstakingly recreating them with neater calligraphy and fewer tear stains.
When he has made it halfway through the stack, he burns the copies one by one. He doesn’t wish to overwhelm Wei Wuxian by sending them all at once. He often didn’t have the patience to read long texts, after all.
He continues writing and burning letters for the rest of his seclusion. When he leaves, he transfers the stack of letters to a box he keeps on a shelf in the jingshi, filled with the scant mementos Wei Wuxian left behind, detritus from a too-short life.
He has a bed moved in for A-Yuan and trades his coarse robes for ones of silk, taking care to still dress only in white, eschewing the multitude of light blue options in his wardrobe. Lan Wangji is careful as he puts up his hair for the first time in years. There’s a new guan conspicuously set out that he knows must be from his brother. He uses it, unsure where his old one is anyways.
When he is dressed, he takes a moment to compose himself, forces his hands to stop shaking and his breath to even out. The scars on his back pull and ache as he straightens his spine and sets his shoulders. He steps out of the jingshi, sure that he looks every inch the Second Jade everyone remembers and expects as he makes his way into the public areas of the Cloud Recesses for the first time in three years.
He keeps his gaze forward even as passing disciples greet him and trip over themselves at the unexpected sight. He hears whispers start up behind him and thinks about how no one ever follows the rule forbidding gossip.
He doesn’t slow until he reaches the children’s hall. Lan Wangji pauses for a breath, knowing that he’s likely about to cause a small uproar. Lan Yuan is in the sect records as his son, but that information has been kept quiet by his uncle and brother. Lan Wangji will not allow that to remain the case.
He opens the doors and steps inside, eyes immediately finding A-Yuan and offering him a small smile when the boy looks at him with surprise and delight before he turns to the disciple in charge. “I am here to collect my son.”
He doesn’t stop writing letters now that he has returned to the world. He also doesn’t stop playing Inquiry. Perhaps, one day, Wei Wuxian will be ready to speak to him. All he can do is wait and write and keep leaving the door open.
He writes about the day-to-day of life in the Cloud Recesses, of life without Wei Wuxian. He writes about A-Yuan, about the way people gossiped about his origins to start with only to be silenced by Lan Wangji’s glare and A-Yuan’s sweetness. He writes about all of his cherished dreams for a future that’s no longer possible — the dreams he’d never managed to speak aloud to the man he wanted to share that future with. He writes every piece of news he hears about Jin Ling and about the rabbits and the nighthunts he’s been on recently.
He fills page after page with everything he wishes he could tell Wei Ying in person, that he wishes he could experience for himself.
Lan Wangji still makes two copies of every letter, one to keep and one to burn, faithfully storing his copy in the large box he commissioned in Caiyi town a couple years after leaving seclusion. It’s made of a dark sturdy wood and intricately carved with lotus flowers. His brother sees it once and Lan Wangji had not been able to decipher the complicated expression it put on his face.
He keeps it tucked out of sight after that, but not hidden. He likes to think he’s learned better than to truly hide the depth and existence of his affection for Wei Wuxian, regardless of how the world insists on remembering him.
He hopes that the letters reach Wei Wuxian, wherever he is. Lan Wangji wants him to know that A-Yuan is safe and loved. He wants Wei Ying to know that Lan Wangji misses him.
He hopes that knowing what’s going on in the world, knowing about their son, knowing that Lan Wangji doesn’t hate him, could never hate him, might make him willing to have one more conversation. Lan Wangji wants that more than anything, even if the conversation is through the stings of his guqin and devoid of the smile he loved — loves — so much.
When it comes time to give A-Yuan his courtesy name, Lan Wangji spends an entire day trying to reach Wei Wuxian, hoping that he will appear for their son’s sake, to give an opinion on the name he’ll carry the rest of his life.
He receives no answer.
He bestows the name of his choice on their son with tired eyes and a proud smile.
Sizhui. To recollect and long for .
He does not want their child to carry his grief, but he does wish for him to remember the family he had before he came to the Cloud Recesses that loved him more than anything. This child carries his hopes, as always.
He writes and burns a letter that night, wanting Wei Wuxian to know and share in the joyous occasion.
He doesn’t mention how much Lan Wangji still longs for him, how much he longs for things to be different .
Only once does A-Yuan — Lan Sizhui now — ask about Lan Wangji’s nightly Inquiry, about the lotus box, and the unrelieved white of Lan Wangji’s robes.
His voice is tentative as he asks who his father grieves for and has mourned for all of his life. Sizhui calls him Hanguang-jun in public now, but here on this quiet night in the jingshi with no one else around to hear him ask the question that’s been eating at him for so long, he calls him baba again.
“He was your father before I was,” Lan Wangji says after some consideration. “He was not related to you by blood, but he loved you like he was.”
“And you loved him.” It’s not a question. His son can read him too well for it to be a question now.
Lan Wangji bows his head. “He was my soulmate.” Speaking of him in the past tense is still painful. Wei Ying is still so present to him, an intangible presence at his side and a teasing voice in the back of his mind for all that his soul has never made contact.
There is no grave to anchor his grief, so it simply exists wherever Lan Wangji is.
Sizhui doesn’t ask any more questions. Lan Wangji suspects that his son does not wish to cause him pain.
Lan Wangji writes a letter full of everything he wishes he could tell Sizhui about Wei Wuxian and tucks it away in the box without making a copy to burn. Maybe one day he’ll give it to his son so he understands where he came from and who the man who always tried to hide his sadness was.
After sixteen years of living and writing and mourning, the box is nearly full. Lan Wangji notes this as he tucks the most recent letter — one detailing Jingyi’s latest exploits and his worries over the nighthunt Sizhui would be leading even though their son is more than prepared — and wonders if the same craftsman will be willing to make a twin box for when this one will hold no more.
It’s a question for another day as he plans on staying close to the juniors going with Sizhui in case they need assistance. The case in Mo Village seems safe enough for the juniors to handle without him, but it’s only the second time they’ve hunted without a senior disciple supervising and he will not take chances with his child.
He puts the box away and secures his sword and guqin and sets out towards Mo Village.