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Wei Wuxian wakes with a muffled yell, immediately reaching out to his husband slumbering beside him. Lan Wangji is warm and alive and solid, and his erratic breathing starts to slow down as he soaks in the fact that he is in the Jingshi, with his beloved by him. He’s not in whatever hell the dream had conjured up for him - a haze of rage and grief and sorrow he’d only felt at his lowest points, on the verge of losing control of his demonic cultivation and his very self.
He’s Wei Wuxian, not Jiang Cheng.
He doesn’t even understand why he has been having these dreams lately - dreams that put him in the place of his erstwhile shidi . It’s not like they are close anymore. As much as the thought hurts, he truly thinks that maybe severing all ties and obligations was for the best. He remembers Jiang Cheng’s face as he cried to Wei Wuxian, asking him why he wasn’t allowed to hate him. The debt he’s placed on Jiang Cheng must sting for a proud man who hates his very guts.
Yet it wasn’t as if he meant it as a debt. He’d given what he had freely. Hearing how Jiang Cheng felt about him - wanting to hate him but forever unable to hate him now because of what the other felt was owed to Wei Wuxian - how could he not have said those words?
“Let's leave it all behind.”
He had Lan Wangji now, and little Sizhui. There’s so much pain and resentment bundled into his relationship with Jiang Cheng, wasn’t it better for the both of them to leave it behind? To just forget…
Wei Wuxian hasn’t forgotten. It’s been a decade since then and he still hasn’t forgotten. Even now, the empty place in his heart meant just for Jiang Cheng stays. He’s happy, truly happy, just as long as he doesn’t think of what they became.
He nuzzles into Lan Wangji’s broad chest, trying to shake off the last vestiges of the latest dream. Hmm, maybe it’s more fitting to call them nightmares. Did he somehow become cursed? Or maybe it’s just his guilt over how they left things plaguing his dreams. Perhaps he should ask about a sleeping draught. But then his Lan Zhan would doubtless be worried. He worried about Wei Wuxian too much, really. But… in a way, it was nice. Having someone worry about him. Fuss over him, like shijie did. He really is so fortunate in the end. No matter what he went through, everything led up to this moment - Lan Wangji warm and comforting in his arms. Waking every day only to see that steady, soft amber gaze resting on his face.
He has regrets, of course he has them. He regrets a lot of things, but he knows the only way to go from here is forward. And yet…
“In our next life, let’s be sworn brothers again.”
When the summons from Lotus Pier comes, Wei Wuxian almost doesn’t go. Lan Wangji is also staunchly against him going, offering only a “Wei Ying has suffered enough.”
Wei Wuxian is torn between wanting to go and not wanting to gouge the wound that has barely scabbed over. There is no indication of why Jiang Cheng wants him there, just a scroll asking - rather, demanding - his presence.
In the end, the choice is taken out of his hands when he sees the seal. The wax seal on the scroll is stamped on a rich purple wax, the nine-petaled lotus of Yunmeng Jiang. But the seal inside is Jin Ling’s peony.
Wei Wuxian might have thought it was a misguided attempt from Jin Ling to make the two of them meet and talk it out ( what is there to talk about? Didn’t they say there’s nothing to talk about anymore? ) if it wasn’t for the slight blur of a signature, as if a tear has soaked into the paper and smudged the ink.
When he arrives, it’s already too late. There’s nothing they can do, the Senior Disciple of Yunmeng Jiang - a woman with a sharp gaze reminiscent of Jiang Cheng himself - tells them. And then she politely suggests Hanguang-Jun stay in the receiving chamber while Wei Wuxian is escorted to where Jin Ling is, by his Jiujiu’s bedside. She meets Lan Wangji’s protestations with a placid face and steel in her eyes, refusing to let Wei Wuxian through if Lan Wangji is with him. And Wei Wuxian -
He brushes past her, left hand brushing his husband’s shoulder in passing in a clear indication to stay put. Lan Wangji swallows all his words, and kneels quietly at the table set up for audiences.
Jin Ling meets him right outside the door to Jiang Cheng’s personal chambers - he doesn’t use the erstwhile Sect Leader’s quarters, Wei Wuxian notes. His face is blank, but his eyes are red-rimmed and puffy.
“He’s been asking for you.” He says in lieu of a greeting, and slides the door open. None of the attendants and disciples in attendance outside the door stop him. There’s a whole contingent of them there, standing guard like sentinels, as if they would fight off the King of the Underworld himself if he came to collect their Sect Leader.
Inside, the room is dark.
“Light hurts his eyes,” says Jin Ling, before pausing. He purses his lips, and it’s apparent that he doesn’t want to say the next words. “He’s not - he’s not really in his right mind. He doesn’t remember much. He’s just been repeating himself, asking if - well, asking where you are.”
His voice sounds cold and distant. Even when he was convinced that he wanted to avenge his parents by killing Wei Wuxian, he hadn’t sounded quite like that.
Wei Wuxian gulps and steps forward. Jiang Cheng’s room is so simple it might as well be a room from the Cloud Recesses. But what it lacks in ornateness, it makes up for in the sheer number of small, useless trinkets strewn around on the various bookshelves and the lone table. In fact, there are far more trinkets on the shelves than there are books.
His bed has no gauze curtains shielding it from view, like Jiang-shushu’s had. It’s behind a simple screen, with a rather amateurish painting of a boat on a lake.
Jiang Cheng appears to be asleep, but when Wei Wuxian leans over him he opens his eyes, glassy and unfocused.
“Wei Wuxian,” he calls, though there’s a faraway quality to his gaze that makes it seem he’s actually seeing someone else and not the Wei Wuxian by his side, “Did you make it?”
Wei Wuxian swallows down the stone lodged in his throat, and takes the hand Jiang Cheng holds out towards him. As their hands touch, a shudder seems to go through Jiang Cheng and his eyes clear a little as he jerks himself up to a half-sitting position. His voice is frantic.
“Wei Wuxian, did you get away? There’s a Wen patrol, I told you it was a stupid idea to split up.”
“I don’t - Jiang Cheng -”
They’d only split up once with the threat of a Wen patrol on the horizon, the time when Wei Wuxian had gone to buy food and Jiang Cheng had gone back to Lotus Pier for his parents’ bodies. But there had been no patrol then, even if he had anticipated having to evade one after overhearing about a Wen camp nearby while at the stall.
“Jiang Cheng,” he says slowly, a black and horrible suspicion starting to form in the back of his mind, “What do you mean, Wen patrol? When did we split up?”
Maybe Jiang Cheng had also overheard someone talking about the Wens (in the remote back alley, where Wei Wuxian had left him alone and out of sight? ). Maybe the illness had dredged those memories up, driving him frantic with worry -
Jiang Cheng grabs the front of his robes, shaking him. His eyes are wide and distant again, but when he speaks it’s no longer worry that permeates his voice, but something darker.
“How dare you, Wei Wuxian? I went willingly, I knew they would kill me and I still went. I knew Yunmeng Jiang would die with me and I still went . Just so you could have continued living. Are you that much of an idiot? Do you hate me so much that you can’t even live for me when I would die for you?”
A sob wracks through his body, and Wei Wuxian finds his own eyes are wet. It’s just the ramblings of an ill (not dying, never dying) man, that’s all it is. Yet the nightmares of something being torn from him unwillingly, of his insides erupting into a fire worse than the ones Wei Wuxian had suffered first-hand when Wen Qing had performed the surgery, haunt him. Is this just another nightmare?
Jiang Cheng lets go of him abruptly, just as Jin Ling moves towards them from where he had been waiting patiently behind the screen to try and give them some privacy - probably on hearing Jiang Cheng’s agitated yells. He stares at them with dark, wide eyes that remind Wei Wuxian of the look in Jiang Cheng’s own eyes when he had found the other again with Wen Ning’s help, dull and listless like his entire world has just shattered.
In a way, perhaps it has. Jin Ling is still reeling from Jin Guangyao’s betrayal even if he doesn’t show it and carries on with a straight back and head held high. He gets it from his jiujiu , Wei Wuxian thinks, eyes feeling suspiciously wet. He gets a lot from his jiujiu , his temper and prickliness and obstinacy, his loyalty and love and sheer determination. Even not knowing either of them very well, Wei Wuxian can see that Jiang Cheng is the one pillar Jin Ling has always relied on.
Jiang Cheng has fallen silent, his breathing laboured. For a moment, Wei Wuxian thinks Jin Ling is going to ask him to leave. He almost wants to leave. He’s still reeling from all the implications. There’s a ringing in his ears that won’t go away, and his senses feel dulled. As if he’s drowning, and can’t find the shore.
He sees Jin Ling straighten from where he’s been tucking the sheets in around Jiang Cheng, and follows the boy - man, now, by all accounts that matter - out of the room and into the hallway. They pass by the Jiang disciples who seem to watch them with bated breath, as if Wei Wuxian somehow holds the power to cure their leader. He almost misses the near imperceptible shake of Jin Ling’s head directed at them, but the collective sigh it garners from the disciples is hard to miss.
Lost in his thoughts as his mind whirs trying to make sense of what he’s just heard, he doesn’t realise where Jin Ling is taking him until they enter the room.
It’s just as it was, fifteen years and a lifetime ago. Suibian lies in a stand remarkably similar to what he had used before - before he left. There’s even a stand for a flute that lies empty.
Dazedly, Wei Wuxian follows Jin Ling back to where Lan Wangji is sitting, neat and prim and perfect. He takes one look at his husband and immediately crumbles, nearly falling into him.
They’re left alone - not even a servant enters the room while Wei Wuxian sobs. Lan Wangji pulls him firmly into his arms, rubbing soothing circles on his back but otherwise silent. He never pushes Wei Wuxian, always waiting until the other is ready to talk. Yet this is something Wei Wuxian feels he can’t talk about. Ever since he left Lotus Pier, he’s been so certain Jiang Cheng hated him. And the truth is - he thought he understood . When he had decided to continue sheltering the Wens, he had done so knowing that meant turning his back on Yunmeng Jiang. He had known he was abandoning Jiang Cheng and their promise, and he had done it anyway.
He hadn’t considered anything else when he stormed to Qiongqi Path cloaked in righteous fury, and once the Jin disciples had died there was no turning back no matter what Jiang Cheng may have said or done. And even if there was, he couldn’t abandon the Wens either. In the end, the choice had been taken out of his hands.
When Jiang Cheng brought shijie to see him or suggest he choose their nephew’s courtesy name, he’d thought the other was merely trying to appease her. Because Jiang Yanli had always been someone Jiang Cheng adored to the point of tolerating even Wei Wuxian for her sake.
With Wei Wuxian’s core in Jiang Cheng, he’d thought it was as good as their promise. In a way, he’d always be with Jiang Cheng after all, no matter where they were. Resentment from some buried well had curled it’s tendrils against his rational mind, telling him that this was more than paying back what he had promised to Jiang Cheng as bright-eyed youths still untouched by tragedy.
What had gone wrong between them, he wonders now, leaning into Lan Wangji’s chest. Even with the path losing his core eventually led him down, Wei Wuxian doesn’t regret it. He knows that he’d do it again in a heartbeat if Jiang Cheng needed him to. And Jiang Cheng? Would he still give up his life for Wei Wuxian without regrets? He’d always thought Jiang Cheng’s first priority was his family and people. Of course he knew Jiang Cheng would die for shijie or Jin Ling or his parents - he still remembers Jiang Cheng pleading with Madame Yu to let him die together with his family if they couldn’t live together. That doesn’t come as a surprise.
But to think Jiang Cheng valued him enough at some point to die for him as well?
He wants to throw up. He hasn’t thought of what he left behind for a long, long time. Trying to reconcile Jiang Cheng’s tear-stained words at the Guanyin Temple with what he had thought they meant and Chenqing, kept polished and clean for thirteen long years and his own quarters that look exactly like the day he had left them.
“Can’t I even hate you?”
He had taken those words to mean Jiang Cheng was reeling under a debt of unexpected gratitude to him which conflicted with his hate for the man who had taken away the last vestiges of his family save one from him. He has always been able to read Jiang Cheng with ease, after all.
Now, he wonders if he had ever truly known Jiang Cheng at all.
Lotuses sway gently on the placid lake, covering almost the entirety of it’s mirror-like surface. Lan Xichen finds it somewhat ironic that after decades, this is where he has ended up - far from Gusu and its high, cold mountains.
Both shufu and Lan Wangji had been staunchly against it. Despite his three decades of seclusion, some people still bore grudges against Jin Guangyao and, by association, him. It had taken Lan Xichen himself a long, long time to come to terms with the fact that Jin Guangyao’s actions were not his responsibility, but he still could not completely shake off the guilt. After all, he had indirectly enabled Jin Guangyao to take those actions and in doing so had ruined both Nie Mingjue and the man Meng Yao had been.
For months after the incident, he hadn’t even been able to look his brother in the eye. Meng Yao’s part in Wei Wuxian’s death and the subsequent thirteen long years Wangji has spent mourning his lost love had felt like an insurmountable barrier between the two of them, though Wangji had never said so. He had left with Wei Wuxian after that night without a single word to Xichen, though, and hadn’t returned to Gusu for almost a month afterwards so Lan Xichen was no longer sure where they stood. It had taken time to realise Wangji did not blame him, but Xichen himself hadn’t been so forgiving towards himself.
As for Lan Qiren, he had not even had the courage to face him at first. When he had finally seen his uncle, Xichen had been taken aback at how tired and drawn the older man looked.
He realises now the toll it must have taken on his uncle to see him follow in his father’s footstep and retreat into seclusion, punishing himself for someone else’s crimes. When Xichen had left Cloud Recesses behind, shufu ’s last words to him had been “Take care”. Hidden in those simple words was a love that had brought tears to Xichen’s eyes. Shufu had never been good with words and surely he had been too strict at times. But he had also loved Xichen and Wangji as fiercely as he could, and even his discipline had been guided by the firm if mistaken belief that it was what would serve them the best.
He knows that shufu and Wangji love him still, despite the sin of ignorance that weighs heavy on him even now. He knows that if any blame was assigned from their end, it has been forgiven long ago. Yet since he has left Cloud Recesses he has never felt the need to return.
It’s different, here in Yunmeng. The little cottage he lives in is smaller and cozier than the Hanshi, which felt too large and empty and hollow the longer he spent in it. It overlooks the lake which brings him peace like the lofty mountain peaks haven’t since his mother passed. It fills him with a serenity he hasn’t felt for a long, long time.
And the lotuses remind him of someone else he has lost. Or rather, can he say that he has lost them if they had never belonged to him in the first place? Truthfully, when Sect Leader Jiang still breathed, they hadn’t even been friends. Close acquaintances, perhaps, with a mutual respect for each other. And yet, seeing the man who had lost even more than he had forge forwards without pause or hesitation had brought him courage and an unnamed sense of awe and admiration he had shied away from examining. For years, he had watched Jiang Wanyin carve out a place for himself and his sect in the world. Yet the story of his parents was ever-present in the back of his mind, reminding him of the sort of disaster love could bring upon their sects. They were both sect leaders, even if his admiration had been requited they would have been required to marry for the sake of heirs. And Lan Xichen hadn’t been brave enough - not when he thought of his mother locked away in solitude or his father who had seen them even less frequently than their other, not when Wangji had fallen in love and paid a steep price of blood and loss, especially not when he had learnt what his ignorance had allowed Meng Yao to take away from Jiang Wanyin.
He wonders now if Jiang Wanyin had ever blamed him. All their correspondence had been handled with the utmost politeness and grace, as if nothing had changed. And then one day Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji had come back to the Cloud Recesses after a visit to Yunmeng. Wei Wuxian had looked like his world was ending, and Wangji had seemed especially troubled for the next few months until he had finally spilled the truth about how Jiang Wanyin came to have Wei Wuxian’s golden core.
Would he have been able to do it for Wangji? Would Wangji have done it for him? He had run away when the Cloud Recesses had burnt, after all, even if he was only trying to protect the legacy of their sect. Even if he hadn’t wanted to.
In the end, perhaps it was for the best that he had never had the courage to talk to Jiang Wanyin. Yet, he hopes he had been by his side as the core poisoned him slowly. Perhaps he could have seen the signs, having watched da-ge -
Lan Xichen sighs, putting the cup of tea he has been holding in his hands down by his side. He likes to kneel on the porch in the evenings, enjoying the view and his tea. He had been getting better at managing the guilt, at accepting his role in Meng Yao’s plans as well as the fact that the choices Meng Yao had made were not his responsibility or fault. But lately his mind has been wandering again, weighed down with all the what ifs.
The sound of barking pierces the late afternoon tranquility, making Lan Xichen startle and look up. His cottage isn’t very far from the nearest village and within hearing distance of a paved road - perhaps shufu had hoped the hustle and bustle of people on the road would make him feel less lonely. There really is a dog running towards his house from the direction of the road, followed by a youthful figure. Their back is to the setting sun, so all Lan Xichen can see is two dark silhouettes. The image makes him smile a little. There’s something charming about the little huffs the young man lets out as he chases after the dog, asking it to stop in a voice slightly breathless from running.
And then they come closer to him, where Lan Xichen can see their faces. The dog runs straight at the lake, seemingly intent on jumping into it. The young man is wearing non-descript robes meant for commoners, and as they approach the house he slows down and meets his eyes.
“I apologise for the commotion,” he says, plopping down into a bow much less fine than what Lan Xichen is used to from that face. To his right, there’s a loud splash as the dog apparently achieves its goal.
“It’s quite alright.” Lan Xichen says evenly, even though his heart is beating so loudly he’s sure the man can hear it. He has missed those features as dearly as he has missed shufu ’s and Wangji’s. Except unlike Wangji who stops by from time to time and shufu who doesn’t visit but would always welcome Xichen back for a visit, Xichen had thought this man lost to time.
“I am Xiao Cheng.” Sect Leader Jiang murmurs, looking a little overwhelmed by the intense gaze fixed upon him and Xichen smiles, relishing the slight flush that spreads over the other man’s face.
“Please, call me Lan Huan.” He says. The last rays of the setting sun paint them both in streaks of red and gold and set fire to the lake. For the first time in three long decades hope stirs again in Lan Xichen’s heart.