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Wei Wuxian had terrible handwriting.
“Lan Zhan, you are too demanding,” Wei Wuxian whined, pouting as he stared down another hundred rules to copy down before the end of the day. “Not only must I copy all this nonsense, you want me to do it neatly ?”
Lan Wangji stared down at the petulant display, glaring at how Wei Wuxian had encroached on his half of the desk in the midst of his moping. “Neatness in writing denotes clarity of thought.”
“Bah,” Wei Wuxian said, sitting up and taking his pen in his hand. “Stop saying useless things just to try to sound smart.”
“Ridiculous.”
“You’re ridiculous!”
And so it continued on for a month.
Wei Wuxian left the library pavilion none the more contrite than he’d entered it.
Lan Wangji’s gaze drifted to the pile of copied rules. He reached down and unfolded one, eyes narrowing as he recognized the unruly script. The carelessness of it.
He was glad to have his pavilion back to himself, he thought.
No one asked why he held onto those final written copies, tucked into his otherwise-empty desk. They didn’t ask because they didn’t know he’d kept them.
If you’d asked him then, he wouldn’t have been able to say why himself.
.o.
Letters came in the wake of Qingheng-Jun’s death. Condolences and well-wishes. They hardly knew where to put them with the Cloud Recesses still in disarray.
Lan Wangji had been sorting through the newest pile when he saw the characters for his given name smudged in dense cinnabar on one of the many envelopes.
Ridiculous , he thought. He gingerly separated it from the rest and pocketed it in his robes to read later.
Lan Zhan , hope you get this. I’m sneaking it in with the other mourning gifts being sent to Gusu. If it’s not Lan Zhan reading this, can you give it to him? If not just throw it away thanks
Anyway Lan Zhan, I hope you’re doing okay despite everything. Recovering and all. Hope your leg is better. I’m sorry about Sect Leader Lan. I hope Zewu-Jun shows up soon. I hope the library is fixed and neat again how you like it real soon
When it is, you ought to come visit Lotus Pier. I want to thank you for saving me in that cave. Tea and lunch on me?
The note was signed, Wei Ying , the letters running together in his usual flourish. Lan Wangji folded the letter and took a few long moments to center himself.
He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath.
An invitation to Lotus Pier was not unexpected. Wei Wuxian had been trying to get him to visit Yunmeng for months now, probably eager to see how badly Lan Wangji tolerated their cuisine.
But an invitation in writing was different somehow. Wei Wuxian could speak frivolously and his half-formed ideas and suggestions were easy to dismiss as just that in the moment: frivolous. But here was the same idea, written down. Thought about. Intentional.
He held the letter in his hands and tried to tell himself he was thinking too much. Stop hoping , said the small voice in his head that was trying to protect him from all things Wei Ying.
The better part of him tucked the letter in his desk and prized it for what it was: a little distillation of Wei Wuxian to keep to himself; his too-many, too-much words penned down for Lan Wangji to hold onto.
He should reply, he thought to himself. The library would be restored and the Jingshi would be his again by the end of the month. He’d be able to justify taking the time to write personal notes then and he’d have the privacy to think through what it was, exactly, he wanted to say.
Before the month was out, Lotus Pier had fallen. There was nowhere to send a letter to anymore. Wei Wuxian was missing, along with his siblings.
Lan Wangji put away his ink and paper. He took out the guqin instead and wove what he could of his would-be letter into the Inquiry he played instead.
I’ll find you, he strummed across the strings in lieu of a written reply. Please stay safe until I do.
.o.
The script on the talismans was familiar. The smeared blood they were written with couldn’t hide that horrible fact.
Lan Wangji pursed his lips and tucked yet another handful of the gruesome things into his robes. He had a pit at the bottom of his stomach as he mentally retraced the symbols, penned in red and smoldering with use. The thin paper held the scent of sulfur. A perversion - an inversion. This was the magic of a heretic.
He’d been taught to avoid such evil. He was supposed to report it to someone above him and immediately leave it be. Such magic was thought to have a corrupting influence on any but the most-cultivated of near-Immortals.
But he found himself collecting each morbid slip of paper; he had a sinking feeling in his chest and a suspicion he refused to truly consider. There wasn’t enough evidence yet.
Except that the talismans were brilliant. Except that they were written in blood in a script he’d recognize anywhere after hours of watching it be penned down on small slips of paper, over and over again. That one month felt like more than a lifetime ago.
The talismans thrummed with exactly the kind of reckless, brilliant, dangerous magic Wei Wuxian was infamous for. He could only hope that he was wrong and that they’d find Wei Wuxian soon, nowhere near the heretic’s path that would threaten to swallow him.
“No one left alive,” a voice said. Jiang Wanyin stepped up the makeshift stairs to join Lan Wangji on the battlement he’d posted himself on. “Just like the other compounds.”
It wasn’t surprising, after they had come across nearly a dozen such sights in their initial counterattacks on the Wen encampments outside of Qishan. It was always the same: a camp left in ashes, corpses littering the bloodless ground. The bodies were either seemingly drained of their life force or had been scared to death, their hearts going still in fright.
Lan Wangji couldn’t help but notice the ferocious glint in Jiang Wanyin’s eyes as he smiled, looking over the cleanup efforts. He kept his judgement to himself, unable to criticize the too-young sect leader of Yunmeng Jiang for his appreciation of what he could only think of as karmic retribution.
“Any evidence as to who is behind it?” Lan Wangji asked, the talismans feeling as though they were burning holes in his robes.
Jiang Wanyin shook his head. “Nothing, other than the creepy charms. Whoever it is, they’re welcome to continue with their work,” he said with a wave of his hand.
Whoever it was was certainly making their job easier. Lan Wangji held his tongue and could only fear that their convenience was purchased at the cost of something much more precious.
.o.
The news out of Yiling reached Gusu before Lan Xichen returned from the siege of the Burial Mounds. Word of Wei Wuxian’s demise spread like wildfire throughout the cultivation world, consuming conversations of commoners and cultivators alike.
Lan Wangji would never remember who exactly told him. The ground had fallen out from under him and he had little memory of those days before his brother returned. He hadn’t known what to expect, waiting all these weeks in the Cloud Recesses for word of Wei Wuxian after their harried flight from Nightless City. After his confession, his punishment.
Some small part of him, he realized, had hoped Wei Wuxian would escape the fate that had been closing in on him. Like some trickster fox, he’d avoid certain destruction - again and again.
But Wei Wuxian was not the folkloric creature the commoners thought him to be. He was human, he was mortal.
And he was dead.
You knew it would end like this , that cool, pragmatic voice intoned in his heart. You were only delaying the inevitable.
His back was a weeping canvas of scars. The price he paid for Wei Wuxian’s short reprieve before it all came crashing down anyway.
It had bought him a world with Wei Wuxian in it for at least a little longer. Now that that world was gone, he didn’t regret it in the least.
Blessedly, no one would think it odd that he hadn’t risen from bed for days by the time Lan Xichen arrived back from the siege. He forced himself up for his brother’s sake but he couldn’t hide his fury, his grief.
His brother had had no choice. That cool, calm voice in heart knew this.
The untamed part of him that rallied against the injustice of it all hated his brother for participating in the event that ended Wei Wuxian.
He was beyond being able to control these two halves of himself. The brief-but-pronounced look of shock on his brother’s face made plain how miserable he must have looked. It was the first time anyone had seen him since the news had struck him like a lightning bolt and stopped his heart.
“Wangji,” Lan Xichen said carefully, his voice warm and gentle as it always was.
Lan Wangji managed to kneel himself into a perfunctory bow, earning a tsk from his brother who promptly urged him to relax.
His eyes caught on a blackened pile of papers in his brother’s robes. Lan Xichen noticed his gaze, stopping in his fussing to stand up straight again. “This is what I was able to get my hands on,” he says.
Lan Wangji struggled to stifle the rage in his heart. He tried to center himself on gratitude for his brother’s efforts, but some cruel part of his heart couldn’t put aside his hate. His heart hated the world, now that Wei Wuxian was no longer in it.
He forced himself to glance down at the charred packet of paper, held out in his brother’s hands like a wounded bird. It was such a thin stack.
“And—“ he started to ask, but ‘ the body’ got caught in his throat. The gratitude he was searching for surfaces as he finds the understanding in Lan Xichen’s soft gaze.
“There was none to be found. Sect Leader Jiang took Chenqing, and Lanling Jin Sect claimed Suibian for their efforts, as well as some other trinkets. I argued that Gusu Lan should take whatever research he’d been working on, to lock it away in the Forbidden Section of the library here.”
Lan Wangji blinked. “They denied you?”
Lan Xichen’s brow furrowed. “No? They let me take everything that had survived the battle.”
How fierce a battle had it been, that the volumes and volumes of writing he had seen on his one visit to Yiling had gone up in smoke completely? Wei Wuxian was no fool when it came to his work, either. There would have been protections in place to spare it from fire, water- any of the elements.
Lan Wangji believed his brother. He didn’t trust the other sect leaders. He wanted to drop the subject, tell his brother that this was all there probably was. It was against the rules to speak falsehoods, though, so he held his tongue instead.
Lan Xichen noticed but, graciously, said nothing. “Given that there is so little left,” he said, his voice careful. “I’ve given it a second thought and decided many of these manuscripts are too incomplete to do any real harm. I’d be willing to let you file them away as you see fit. As someone who knows the library better than even I do,” his brother said.
Lan Wangji’s eyes darted from the pathetic papers to his brother’s face, and saw only a small, sad smile. I did what I could , that smile said. I’m sorry it wasn’t more.
Lan Wangji believed his brother.
.o.
Lan Wangji believed his brother, but that angry pit in his heart was yearning for closure.
He made for Yiling without mentioning it to Lan Xichen, or Lan Qiren. No one knew he was gone until well after the barriers alerted his brother and elders that someone had just passed through the Cloud Recesses by sword. He was approaching the Burial Mounds by the time Lan Xichen erupted into the Jingshi with his heart in his throat.
Wei Ying would be proud , slipped an errant thought through his mind. He counted and -- ah. That was nearly a dozen rules broken, all at once. Wei Wuxian would laugh at him, if he were here.
The memory of that laugh drove him forward despite the hole in his heart, the agony pulsing through his body.
Nothing remained of the humble village that had once made its home at the base of the Burial Mounds beneath the Yiling Patriarch’s watchful gaze. With their guardian gone, they had been helpless as the full fury of the cultivation world took its vengeance on the Wen clan.
Massacring elders and infants, Lan Wangji thought, clenching his jaw. How noble were the Four Great Clans!
He dismounted from Bichen to survey the wreckage by foot. His progress was slow; his body was weak still, his wounds protesting every step forward, but he had no choice but to continue. He approached the Demon-Slaughtering Cave; a chill settled in his bones, the memory of Wei Wuxian’s meager life here tugging at the guilt that curled like thorns around his heart. Plagued by the memories of this place, he very nearly missed the silver-glint of a glowing talisman shining dimly in the mud at his feet.
He bent down and traced fingers over the ruined paper; his eyes caught on a small trail of the magic, leading him away from the cave. They led in a straight line towards a wretched-looking tree, bent and sickly, forever bereft of its leaves. A step forward, another, and then he finally found a talisman intact enough to examine.
His heart stopped, catching on those briars and bleeding anew; the handwriting was unmistakable.
He clutched the sliver of paper to his chest and hurriedly began picking up the remaining pieces even as the stagnant wind threatened to blow them out of his reach. He rubbed the paper between his fingers, trying to coax the magic out of them; he recognized the protection aura radiating from the small slips of paper, even torn as they were.
This is why, he realized. Lan Xichen found so little because the few talismans they’d had to protect from the elements hadn’t been used to spare Wei Wuxian, his cave, or his work.
His eyes landed again on the hollowed-out tree.
.o.
Wen Yuan was bright. It was easy to see why Wei Wuxian had taken such a liking to the child, his uncompromising love of children notwithstanding. Lan Wangji had never known himself to be partial to the unfettered silliness of children, but Wen Yuan - now Lan Yuan - had made a home in his heart when Lan Wangji had thought his heart had no more room to give.
By the time he continued his teaching duties in the Cloud Recesses, Lan Yuan had been beginning to read and write for just over a year.
Lan Wangji hovered over his first proper inscriptions, gently correcting his posture or righting his brush when his little hand let it tilt to the side. He watched and taught and praised, and all the while could only think, If only you could see how much he writes like you.
.o.
It wasn’t the first time the errant notes of a flute had stopped him in his tracks. How many times had he been caught out and left reeling? All because someone somewhere nearby had taken up a dizi and played a few notes, ignorant of the hope they flared and just as quickly dashed with each measure of music.
But this time, as the lilting notes of the flute continued on for a measure, then two, and then continued and continued on in a melody that he knew better than his own heartbeat…
He’d never known it was possible to be terrified and overjoyed, all at once. His heart was a thimble being asked to contain the ocean; it was only the knowledge that revealing Wei Wuxian to the rest of the world would bring danger upon him that helped him to keep the thimble closed.
And now, that same feeling washed over him again.
He’d watched as Wei Wuxian had drawn the Spirit Lure Array on his own body, as though doing so was as simple as writing any other talisman. “Best not make a mistake with this one,” he said, though his voice was reedy with nerves.
Good, Lan Wangji had thought. A little fear for his own life was not unwelcome.
But the joy came in that they were doing this together this time. He was there to stand by Wei Wuxian’s side and he would let himself be destroyed before he’d let a single harm come to Wei Wuxian, whether from ghosts or mortals. It mattered not.
And when it was the ghosts that came to their aid - the spirits of those Wei Wuxian had lived and died for a lifetime ago - he felt the joy again.
These are the seeds you sowed in this place where nothing else would grow, Lan Wangji thought, watching as Wei Wuxian’s brilliance gleamed through the charms he penned, the magic he wielded.
.o.
“I don’t remember what’s in those,” Wei Wuxian said, turning his nose up at the thick manuscripts. “I don’t really want to know.”
Lan Wangji couldn’t begrudge him that. These were the tomes Jin Guangshan had stolen from the Burial Mounds, his unearned bounty. The tomes Wei Wuxian had thought destroyed.
“Do with them what you will,” Lan Xichen had told him, his voice tight with unspent tears.
“Might as well make sure there’s nothing useful in them, though,” Wei Wuxian said, trying and failing to hide the tension in his voice. “Before we get rid of them.”
He reached for the manuscript, but Lan Wangji carefully kept it from his reach. At the confused glare he received, he replied, “I will do it. Would you help me with marking the juniors’ work instead?”
Relief radiated from Wei Wuxian’s smile. “Of course, Hanguang-Jun. I’ll keep you company while you read.”
And so they sat: Wei Wuxian pressed against Lan Wangji’s side, perched over the desk with a quill pen in hand. Lan Wangji laid the manuscript out carefully on his desk, out of the way of his husband’s work, and began to read.
With the uncomfortable confidence of hindsight, it was easy to see the walls closing in on the person who had penned these notes. Handwriting that was once effusive in its expression - wild strokes, flourishes of ink - became suddenly truncated. Uncertainty bled through not just the words, but the way they were written.
A concern for whether there’d be enough ink to get everything down. Characters becoming smaller and smaller to squeeze onto a finite amount of paper. Dialectical notes that once made the intelligence of the author obvious were forsaken for the sake of recording only what was absolutely necessary in the little time he knew he had remaining.
And then, the end. The script becomes almost illegible. Penned by shaking, starving hands. The ink becomes pale, fading into barely-there scratches in the paper. The final line trails off, unfinished.
Lan Wangji closed the manuscript. He cared not to know if the author had been interrupted, or if he had simply run out coherent thoughts to record.
He cared not because the very same author sat opposite of him now at his reading table in the Jingshi . In the time it took him to finish reading, the juniors’ work had been graded and set aside. New talismans were scattered across the desk, half-finished and waiting for junior disciples to complete them in class.
“There,” Wei Wuxian said, quickly hugging the sheets of paper together and arranging them into as neat of a pile as he could manage. “See, the work goes faster when we do it together. Now we both can be free after supper,” he said with a grin.
“Mm,” Lan Wangji agreed, moving the manuscript from his lap. He looked up and paused, his eyes catching on something. He leaned over and reached for Wei Wuxian, his hand cupping his jaw gently as he swiped a thumb across his cheek.
“Lan Zhan?”
“Ink,” he replied. He held his hand out to prove it, a smudge of black on the pad of his thumb. “Wait here,” he said, rising from his seat to find a wet cloth.
“You’re too good to me,” Wei Wuxian cooed as the warm cloth wiped away at the ink.
“Not at all.”
“Even when I make messes like this, you always clean them up.” The momentary distraction didn’t dim his curiosity for long. “By the way did you… was there anything useful in it?” He gestured broadly to the closed manuscript.
He couldn’t tell if Wei Wuxian would rather there be nothing of note - and therefore nothing of danger - or if he’d rather there be something useful - and therefore not a waste of the last days of his first life.
“Most of it is… lost on me,” Lan Wangji paused in his work, looking at Wei Wuxian with a careful gaze. “The books are yours to do with as you will.”
“What do you think I should do with it?” Wei Wuxan looked at him with owlish eyes. “As the resident one who is good with books.”
“They are yours,” Lan Wangji states again. “I think you should do whatever you think is best.”
Wei Wuxian frowned. It wasn’t the answer he was hoping for but Lan Wangji wasn't in the habit of saying what he wanted to hear just because he wanted to hear it.
This was a part of Wei Wuxian that Lan Wangji had never approved of in his first life. It was his dearest regret, letting the unorthodox nature of the magicks contained in these books get between them, all those years ago. He had no right to have an opinion on what should be done with them now.
Wei Wuxian hummed in thought. It didn’t take him long at all to say, “I tried to burn them once and didn’t end up having the time. Might as well try burning them again.”
Lan Wangji must have looked shocked because Wei Wuxian grinned at him with a teasing glint in his grey eyes. “The world’s better off without creepy stuff like this in it! If any of it was useful, I’ll think of it again,” he said with a confidence Lan Wangji knew better than to question at this point.
“If that is what Wei Ying wants,” he said, nodding to himself. He started to think of who he’d have to ask about having books burned when he noticed that Wei Wuxian had stood up and started collecting his old manuscripts in his arms. “What--”
“No time like the present,” Wei Wuxian said, gathering the remnants of his past life’s work in an unseemly pile on the floor. He started moving the pile across the floor with his feet, towards the sliding door that led to the forest path below.
Lan Wangji sat up from his desk, pacing to the door and stopping the manuscripts’ march towards the grass with his foot. “Wei Ying,” he said, a gentle admonishment. He bent down to gather the books and scrolls in his arms, nodding to the wall where their winter cloaks were hung. “We’ll need talisman paper for the flames,” he said, unable to help a small smile.
Wei Wuxian blinked and then smiled wide, the sight of it making Lan Wangji warmer than any cloak ever could. “Lan Zhan! Should we invite the juniors to the bonfire?”
Lan Wangji made a noncommittal sound; Wei Wuxian’s smile became a small smirk. “Ah, a private affair? Maybe we can go down to Caiyi Town for dinner after we’re done,” he said, sidling up to Lan Wangji with both their cloaks and the talisman paper in hand.
“That sounds nice,” Lan Wangji said, nodding. “It’s a good idea.”
“Well,” Wei Wuxian said, draping Lan Wangji’s cloak around his shoulders before donning his own. “Let’s get going then. Maybe we ought to buy some more blank scrolls so I can start redoing some of that work that’s worth remembering…” he said, trailing off in thought. He reached up and gently grasped for Lan Wangji’s arm, looping them together at the elbow. “What do you think?”
Lan Wangji hummed. “I doubt the shops will be open this late but there are plenty of blank scrolls we could pick up from the Orchid Room on our way back,” he said, sliding the door open. The chill of the evening air was no match for the warmth of their bodies pressed together beneath their heavy cloaks.
“Perfect! Ah, Lan Zhan. If only I’d had such a good assistant back then,” Wei Wuxian said, gesturing to the messy pile in Lan Wangji’s arms. “Good riddance to this stuff. The second edition will be much better,” he said, nodding confidently.
Lan Wangji had no doubt that would be the case. Any conflict he’d felt about destroying these remnants of a life that had been Wei Ying’s went up in flames with the paper and ink. The smoke dispersed in wafting clouds beneath the pines, blown down the mountain in thin, freewheeling wisps.