Archive of Our Own

It takes Lan Xichen an embarrassingly long time to realize that he’s lost. Blood drips down his hand, staining the spotless floors of Koi Tower, puddle blooming in brilliant crimson ripples. His head is murky, gold swimming across his vision, and he staggers over to a nearby bench, collapsing onto it and sealing his eyes shut. In the endless black abyss, he waits for his cultivation to heal his wound.

He’s unsure if it takes a few moments or entire eternities, but very soon Lan Xichen is no longer dripping and when he opens his eyes, his vision no longer spinning in time with the whirls of dancers’ robes. 

Light pink, as delicate as Lan Wangji’s flushed ears, peeking out from behind inky hair after Lan Xichen teased him—that is the color of the meat he’d seen placed on Nie Mingjue’s plate, all the way on the other side of the banquet hall. He grips his heavy, damp robes, and he wonders where his sworn brother has gone. And his other sworn brother…

(Behind his eyes, Lan Xichen sees Jin Guangyao tumbling down a thousand stairs, gold fading into rotten mustard, his dear A-Yao’s head spilling deep red to throw some contrast into the image—)

Jin Guanyao had smiled at him from across the banquet hall today. He’d come over, light on his feet as always, and apologetically told him that he wouldn’t be free to talk until well into the night, moon risen high and stars twinkling shards of crystal scattered across the sky.

The sun is still setting and Lan Xichen’s head hurts. He wants to find Jin Guangyao and tell him about his terrible dream, his terrible premonition, but he can’t quite summon the strength to get up from his bench.

Across from him, he spies a tapestry so large, so intricate, that he upsets himself with the knowledge that he’s never seen it before. It dwarfs him in a way that only the ostentatious decor of Koi Tower can—lakes and lotuses and grand arcs of rainbows, and in the center of it all, Jiang Yanli, serenely peeling some lotus seeds, bearing all the grace and nobility of a woman of her standing.

If Lan Xichen were born a girl, he’d have been raised on the other side of the Cloud Recesses, losing his position as Sect Heir to Lan Wangji just as Jiang Yanli had lost hers to Jiang Wanyin—but in her case, perhaps it was alright, because Jiang Yanli had never been the ambitious type.

She still isn’t, he amends to himself. Even after Jin Guangshan’s death, she hadn’t tried to undermine any of his wife’s power, as little of it she may have. Truly a kind woman.

His head feels much better now, and he realizes that he’s been away from the banquet hall for far too long—this is a discussion conference, after all, it’s unbecoming of a Sect Leader to just vanish.

If only Koi Tower wasn’t so large, its hallways so winding—virtually identical in their frivolous vases and elaborate curtains—then he’d return to his place in a heartbeat, but every turn just takes him deeper and deeper until he ends up right where he’d started, legs shaking from exhaustion and eyes threatening to roll back into his head. In desperation, he turns and walks in the other direction, nearly slipping on the puddle of blood that is still as wet as ever, deep and rich, a stark contrast to the rest of the area.

He goes the exact direction from which he’d come but he must still do something right because, soon, he finds himself standing right outside Jin Guangyao’s room, a deep sigh of relief building up from inside him. His sworn brother may be inside, and even if he isn’t, Lan Xichen can still wait in his chambers, where there is less gold and jewels clouding his vision. Jin Guangyao comprehends the needless extravagance in these things, and he has suitably foregone a good deal of them. (But. But, there is a vase sitting in that room, a thoughtless gift handed over to Jin Guangyao from his father, and as Lan Xichen’s eyes roam over the dragon whose scales curl into drifting clouds along its length, he can only think of how it could have easily paid for the replacement of the Library Pavillion, but Jin Guangyao hadn’t said a word—

And it’s selfish to think like that because the vase is a present from Jin Guangshan, who has almost definitely given him little else, and the GusuLan had managed to procure the funds easily enough, anyway, so—)

Lan Xichen’s head hurts.

Something shatters inside of Jin Guangyao’s chambers and Lan Xichen’s head snaps to the side from the impact, white flashing in front of his eyes and a deafening sound piercing his ears; the agony is so pointed but his fingers merely twitch, an aborted motion to clutch his head and slam it into the wall again and again until it all stopped.

Lan Xichen opens the door—calm, collected, smile on his face stretched so wide that it hurts but if he stops now, he fears he may never smile again.

Jin Guangyao’s room yawns in front of him, the same gaping abyss he sees whenever he closes his eyes, so Lan Xichen carefully feels around until he can pull back a curtain, and eventually he can make out the little table and sitting area and, in the far off corner, the vase, set proudly against dirty mustard walls.

In the center of the room, there is a body—incredibly small and frail, elegant robes framing it so artfully that Lan Xichen’s breath leaves his lungs. Its front is hidden, pressed against the floor tiles, but the hair atop its head spills wildly across its back and the floor, until Lan Xichen can’t tell where it ends and the endless, spreading pool of ink begins. And, yes, the ink—the previous darkness of the room has retreated into this one puddle, creeping steadily outward from the body, until the faded green robes seem deep and saturated in comparison.

This body belongs to a man Lan Xichen knows very well. He kneels in the puddle and gently shakes him. “Huaisang,” he whispers, carefully collecting every strand of the man’s hair into one fist, “wake up.”

For a moment, he gets no answer, but then Nie Huaisang’s body shakes, a deep inhale resounds through the room, and his muscles creak as he pushes himself up. His hands slip twice, sending him back to where he started, but he manages to get back up again so Lan Xichen continues to faithfully gather his hair, gently braiding it until it’s easier to manage. “There you go,” he says patiently as Nie Huaisang attempts to stand, “just like that.”

He falls, his head slamming into the tiled floors with a rumbling thump. Lan Xichen makes sure to keep the smile on his face as he waits for Nie Huaisang to get back up. He’s half sure that he won’t, but he does, and Lan Xichen feels a little more at ease. “Do you want me to help you clean up?” he asks gently. 

Nie Huaisang is still trembling, the entire top half of the front of his robes soaked black, ink splashed from his neck to his left temple, a path carved of midnight, but he shakes his head. Instead, he says, voice raspy, “Second Brother, we should leave.”

“Let’s get you some water first, okay?”

“Second Brother—” He gasps loudly, mouth letting out a high-pitched whine. “It hurts, Second Brother.”

“I know, I know—let’s sit down.”

Even sitting, Nie Huaisang’s fingers claw desperately at Jin Guangyao’s table, and Lan Xichen watches in fascination as the warm wood warps under his hands. A stunning display of strength for someone whose wrist is so thin that Lan Xichen can circle it with his thumb and index finger. He does so, too, satisfaction settling deep in his stomach when Nie Huaisang leaves the table behind and instead wrenches his arms into Lan Xichen’s robes, pulling and pulling until the priceless cloth is torn to shreds. Lan Xichen gently strokes his hair until Nie Huaisang calms.

When he pulls his fingers away from the silken locks, they’re stained dark. Some rubbing reveals it to be ink and not blood, and so an entirely new material stains his robes. “Huaisang,” he says, “do you feel better now?”

“Hurts less,” Nie Huaisang agrees, slowly pulling back. His eyes find the puddle of ink and they stay there, unmoving and unblinking, stuck in an eternity of stillness so strong that Lan Xichen suddenly fears he’s the only living thing in the room.

He grabs Nie Huaisang’s chin and forces him to look into his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

The younger man jerks away so wildly that the sleeve of his robe, heavy with ink, slaps Lan Xichen across the face, and he clutches his cheek against the blooming pain, rasping out, “Huaisang!” His own nails bite into him, slippery against the stain marring him; no longer a perfect jade—blemished for all the world to see. What would his uncle think? His nails sink in deeper.

Nie Huaisang ignores him completely in favor of crawling into the ink, hands wading through it desperately, eyes wide and frantic. The mess spills wider and wider, Lan Xichen quickly scooching backward so that the abyss doesn’t take more of him, but Nie Huaisang manages to thin the ink in some places enough to see the tiles underneath—stained, possibly never to be truly unstained, but still so definitely there . Slowly, his muscles relax, his hand peels away from his face.

Nie Huaisang finds what he’s looking for in the form of sopping wet papers, too far gone to ever be read. They fall apart in his hands, dropping to the ground together with his tears. “I had it,” he says. “I had, I—Second Brother, now it’s gone!”

“What did you have?”

“I don’t know!” The familiar phrase falls from his lips, but it’s twisted almost beyond recognition—venomous, grotesque, unfit for human ears. Nie Huaisang is dripping in fury, ink staining him with liquid sin, and he roars, “I had it, and now I don’t know!” Even through his tears, he manages to make the room cower before him—even the air seems to know to stay away, considering how desperately he’s gasping.

Lan Xichen sees Nie Huaisang’s arms and he remembers how they dented a table—but, his own arms could break it just as easily, and Nie Huaisang isn’t especially large. He can tackle him, force him to stillness, pinning him below his body—

Instead, Lan Xichen lets his eyes dance across the room, quick as silver, until he finds what he’s looking for. It takes a few moments, but eventually, Lan Xichen is handing Nie Huaisang a paper fan, mountains painted on so elegantly that Lan Xichen gets lost in them, wishing he were in Gusu, in the Cloud Recesses, in the Hanshi—anywhere but here.

Nie Huaisang denies him any further indulgence in this fantasy when he snaps it up, fanning himself so harshly that Lan Xichen, for one, hysterical moment, fears that it will break. It doesn’t, of course, but it is forever stained by both of their hands. Lan Xichen turns away. He wonders where his brother is—

(On his stomach in the Jingshi, unable to move, back little more than an ugly amalgamation of blood and flesh no matter how many times it’s cleaned—)

Lan Xichen suddenly realizes he’s leaning against a wall, clutching his own head, scream lodged in his throat. Gold is dancing again, twisting and twirling like the girls that sat by Jin Guangshan’s throne. Giggling quietly—at him, not for him. He closes his eyes to try and get away, but then he’s faced with an endless well of ink and, somehow, that’s even worse.

“Don’t think, Second Brother,” Nie Huaisang says, grabbing onto his arm. “It gets worse when you think.”

He almost asks what he means, but then it hits him: the throbbing, vicious pain in his head, screaming at him in Nie Mingjue’s voice. It’s never coherent, always making things worse rather than better, but it doesn’t leave unless Lan Xichen lets himself fall into it. I agree, he says to himself. I agree, you’re right, I agree!

The voice is silent, the pain is gone, and two amber eyes peer at him from over a ruined paper fan.

Don’t think. Lan Xichen has been thinking his entire life, but he’ll try. (And he’ll fail, and he’ll fail, and every time he tries some more, he’ll fail yet again—)

Don’t think, Lan Huan. Don’t think.

“Huaisang,” he says, “let’s find our quarters. It’s unbecoming for us to walk around in this state.” Nie Huaisang has always been so careful about his appearance, for more than one reason (for reasons Lan Xichen has respected him enough to not inquire about). If it was a mere day ago, Lan Xichen would have taken for granted that Nie Huaisang would jump at the opportunity to get cleaned up, but now, after seeing his violent rage—so familiar, so Nie—Lan Xichen half-expects for him to resist.

If he does, Lan Xichen will make him, anyway. He’ll drag Nie Huaisang down the hallways of Koi Tower, he’ll force him into his chambers, force him into a bathtub, and scrub him clean. And, when Nie Huaisang resists he will cover his mouth with his hand and keep him silent while he takes care of him because no one lets him do it, but everyone needs it, and he can at least care for Nie Huaisang, who can’t fight back even if he wants to.

(Life would be a lot simpler if people would just let him help them.)

(Don’t think.)

But, he doesn’t have to do any of that because Nie Huaisang agrees, managing to pack an entire paragraph into a dip of the head. ‘Okay,’ he says.

‘I trust you.’

‘I’ll follow your lead.’

‘I’ll spare you my disagreement.’

Since Nie Huaisang is still gripping his sleeve, Lan Xichen just stumbles out of Jin Guangyao’s chamber, leaving behind a warped desk and an abyss of ink. (Maybe, later, he’ll go back and shatter that vase, just because he can, just because seeing those priceless shards scattered on the ground—like flowers rejected by an old lover—makes the corners of his lips twitch upward ever-so-slightly—)

Lan Xichen suddenly grips Nie Huaisang’s wrist, twisting it so severely that Nie Huaisang gasps. “Huaisang,” he says, “we can’t go back. Don’t let me go back.”

“…Okay, Second Brother.”

“Good.” Lan Xichen lets go of Nie Huaisang’s wrist—eyes lingering a bit too long on the bright red skin, promising to bruise into brilliant red very soon—and continues his determined trek.

The first time Lan Xichen came to Koi Tower, Lan Wangji was too young to leave the Cloud Recesses and Lan Xichen was so terrified by everything he saw that he gripped onto his uncle’s robes, only letting go to quickly bow to important people. He still remembers the soft cloth between his fingers, the way he couldn’t breathe when he pressed his face into his uncle’s robes, the way he’d look up and always find his uncle giving him a soft smile that Lan Xichen never gets to see anymore.

He learned nothing of Koi Tower’s layout that day, but he remembered the indulgent smile he’d received when he asked to see the gardens.

He should have just looked around. What good was his uncle’s smile? He’s survived for so long without it, he could have survived then, too. Now, as gold whirls across his vision, as he falls deeper and deeper into this demented maze of thoughtless luxury, Lan Xichen realizes he should have spent more time memorizing the home of his sworn brother.

Suddenly, Nie Huaisang says, “My quarters should be to the left.”

“Oh?” Lan Xichen doesn’t recognize this hallway at all, but since Nie Huaisang apparently does, he turns leftward at the end. His eyes widen as he finds himself in the wing the Nie Sect has been housed in—and here he’d been so sure that they were on the other side of Koi Tower.

Nie Huaisang laughs, high and airy, amber eyes narrowed in interest, in caution. A single wave of his fan has cool air washing over the side of Lan Xichen’s face and he forces himself to breathe through it all, makes himself swallow the knowledge that they’ve arrived.

In the distance, Lan Xichen can hear the loud ruckus of a party—it’s not that late at all, sun still setting, but it seems that the alcohol has already been distributed. Endless chatter reaches his ears, footsteps, faint notes from the musicians playing, but above it all, he hears Wei Wuxian’s laughter, bright and clear. His mere presence takes up the entirety of Koi Tower, squeezing Lan Xichen’s lungs. The sound that used to make him quirk his lips in amusement now makes him flinch violently.

Wei Wuxian keeps laughing, his delight an endless eternity, the largest form of infinity—not even pausing to breathe.

Nie Huaisang tugs Lan Xichen into his quarters and lets the door fall shut behind them. Wei Wuxian laughs on, but it’s muffled now—like when Lan Xichen lets his head slip underwater, the presence of everything above disappearing so simply, so easily that Lan Xichen wishes he can just stay below forever.

Lan Xichen says, “I’ll head to my chambers.” He knows the way from here.

Nie Huaisang waves him away as he approaches the bath. “I have some robes for you to wear,” he says airily. “You can have a bath here.”

Lan Xichen’s eyes snap over to one of the many tables covered in various robes—unorganized yet appealing in a way only Nie Huaisang could ever seem to manage—and he finds a robe noticeably larger than the others. Its pale blue slashes neatly through the endless parades of navy and olive, drawing his attention almost immediately. He wonders aloud, “Why do you have a robe for me?”

Nie Huaisang freezes, leaning heavily against the nearest wall, a shiver surging through his entire form. Lan Xichen momentarily wonders if he’s going to fall again, if his head is going to finally crack against the floor, but Nie Huaisang just says, “Don’t think.” Then, “I don’t know, Second Brother.”

Lan Xichen bows his head in acceptance.

When Nie Huaisang heads inside the bathroom, he leaves the door creaked slightly open, so Lan Xichen can spy his form disrobing and climbing into the tub that must somehow already be full of warm water. Lan Xichen’s eyes—an odd, faded cinnamon—track him for as long as they can, until his form disappears completely, and Lan Xichen is left all alone.

He wonders why it always ends up like this, with him on the other side of the walls that people place against him. His mother, his father, his uncle, his brother, his sworn brothers—and Nie Huaisang, who wades in a tub of water, scrubbing himself clean, not a thought of Lan Xichen in his mind as the water laps at his skin, washing him away with everyone else.

Wei Wuxian’s laughter resurfaces, unchanged and yet still mocking, pitying, and accusatory all at once. It resounds in the emptiness of Nie Huaisang’s room, twisting and churning like sea whose salt can sometimes be smelled all the way up in the Cloud Recesses. And, those days, Lan Xichen enjoys it until his lips crack and blood seeps into his mouth, copper flooding his senses until it’s the only thing left.

Lan Xichen’s robes are still stained red, his arm sticky and foul, and there’s no sea salt in the air, so he knows this is not right. He stands abruptly and walks into the bathroom—silently, unwilling to make a sound.

Nie Huaisang pauses when Lan Xichen steps in, hands midway through scrubbing his hair. He opens his mouth, confusion dancing across his features—only for his eyes to widen in alarm when Lan Xichen starts to pull off his hairpiece. “Second Brother?”

Lan Xichen says, “The tub is big enough for two.” The tips of his hairpiece prick his fingers, beautiful thistles drawing red, but he carries on, letting his hair down before slowly peeling off his robes. His under robe tries to stick to his arm but one, two, three tugs has it sliding off of his body until he’s laid nearly bare—his forehead ribbon stays on.

Nie Huaisang gives his form a lazy once-over before sighing and scooting slightly leftward. An invitation. He goes back to scrubbing his hair.

The water is already dark and dirty, bits of ink swirling in the artificial currents, but Lan Xichen does not hesitate to step in, one leg at a time, seating himself down in the lukewarm liquid. Though he said that the tub was big enough for two, it’s only just, and while Lan Xichen is seated across from Nie Huaisang, their knees and calves pressing together, goosebumps flaring all over Lan Xichen’s skin.

When he was younger, Lan Xichen used to take baths with his little brother. They were too young to live in the disciple dormitories, so they stayed with their uncle, who used to listen to his nephews’ every whim back then, and if little A-Zhan wanted to take a bath with his older brother, Lan Qiren would make it happen. Lan Xichen remembers the endless joy of those days, how comfortable he always was, how loved.

Now, sitting across from Nie Huaisang, he doesn’t feel anything but the water surrounding him and the legs pressing against his own. No, that’s not true—he feels Nie Huaisang’s gaze frequently meeting his from the corners of their eyes, and every time Nie Huaisang hastily glances away, Lan Xichen feels a knife twisting in his chest, his heart trying to claw its way out through his throat, filling his ears with an ever-consistent thump, thump, thump.

Nie Huaisang is the one to shatter their silence. “Second Brother, wash yourself. Just climbing into the bath won’t do anything.” His hands are combing through his own hair, an occasional strand of hair dropping onto the water’s surface, at which point Nie Huaisang sighs and carefully plucks it out, draping it over the side of the tub.

“Oh. Of course.” Lan Xichen forces himself to start rubbing the red off of his wrist, using his nails to scrape off the parts that refuse to give. As he works his way up his arm, he sometimes scratches so hard that he leaves behind little peels of skin that flush rouge pink, tittering daintily in a field of plum blossoms.

He can tell Nie Huaisang is watching him the entire time, carefully inspecting his work, and this time when he glances up, amber meeting faded cinnamon, the younger man’s head tilting forward encouragingly. ‘Go on,’ his eyes say. ‘Keep scrubbing.’

He thinks this is the first time anyone has ever dared to imply that he can’t properly wash himself, and the thought reminds him of his uncle, who sits all the way in the banquet hall, possibly politely conversing with whatever drunkard approaches him. The sky still glows in yellow, spilling right into plum blossom pink before ending in the blues Lan Xichen saw illuminating the waters of Caiyi Town in the early evening.

Sunset is an eternity away from nine.

Wei Wuxian is still laughing.

A touch against his cheek, feather-light, draws his eyes to Nie Huaisang’s. He unconsciously leans into it, calves pressing more firmly against the other man’s legs, and can’t look away as his right cheek is washed with much gentler treatment than his arm received. Nie Huaisang is diligent, rubbing until the slide of skin against skin is absolutely unbearable but still he stays, enduring it all just so he can see his eyes narrowed in concentration, gentle assurances mumbled every now and then under his breath.

When Nie Huaisang is done, he pulls back, no longer making eye contact, and Lan Xichen asks, “Why did you do that?”

“You still had blood on your cheek.”

For a second the crescent holes in his cheek throb, and his nails burn with the phantom sensation of the give of his own skin. He’d do it again if it meant Nie Huaisang would wash his face. 

The younger man just climbs out of the tub, dripping wet and completely naked. A frail skeleton, each rib abundantly noticeable, skin pale and sickly now that he doesn’t have elegant robes and elaborate fans to hide behind. Lan Xichen wonders when he fell so ill, wants to sit him down and shove meal after meal into his mouth until he stops looking like the slightest breeze will blow him away.

He’s very sure that Nie Huaisang wouldn’t appreciate it, though. He used to think that he would, but after seeing him curse the world in Jin Guangyao’s chambers, he’s unsure of how much help he’d accept at all. Lan Xichen will give it to him, anyway. He’ll give and give and give until he can’t anymore because that’s what he always does, and against someone as frail as Nie Huaisang, he finally has the power to make sure someone accepts.

And if Nie Huaisang resists, Lan Xichen will fight back harder. He’s not as strong as Nie Mingjue or as cunning as Jin Guangyao, but he’s enough of both to deal with Nie Huaisang.

The water has cooled but it still remains lukewarm against his skin, so perhaps he’s stayed in too long, considering how much he’s shivering. Slowly, he pulls his knees up to his chest, ignoring the grease that coats his ribs, the heart whose beats he feels in the middle of his back. Through the open window, he spies the sun, as static as ever, not moving an inch upward or downward, leaving the sky blending in brilliant hues.

Wei Wuxian’s laughter whirls with the yellow and pink and blue, but it clashes with every speck of gold that enters his vision until it’s warped and discordant. He supposes that he’ll never again hear the pure sound that had made his little brother fall so smitten.

“Second Brother.” An arm is pulling him out of the waters and wrapping him in a towel. “You’ve been in the water for too long.” The tile is frigid under his feet as he steps out of the tub, pulling the towel closer around him as his teeth click delicately together against his will. If he closes his eyes and ignore the abyss, he can almost imagine it as the clinking of chopsticks in the Cloud Recesses at dinner.

“Second Brother, your forehead ribbon is wet.” Then, he feels a tug and snaps his eyes open as Nie Huaisang, whose mind is almost definitely occupied by something else entirely, starts to wring the ends of his forehead ribbon in an effort to extract all of the water.

A million words are caught in his throat, begging to be spoken, to be heard, to be screamed out into the world. His hand twitches—to shove Nie Huaisang away, to tug him closer, to hold on tightly and never let go—but all he can do is watch as the bony fingers twist around the cloth, turning and turning until he’s sure not a drop of water is left. The shivers wracking his body get more severe until the chattering of his teeth drowns out Wei Wuxian’s laughter entirely.

Nie Huaisang stops abruptly.

A moment of silence can contain a million words, and Nie Huaisang’s silence is unintelligible to everyone but himself—but Lan Xichen can see the way the forehead ribbon slips quickly from his fingers, a discarded oath, never to be fulfilled. Lan Xichen glances up, eyes following the bob of Nie Huaisang’s Adam’s apple as he swallows. “I’ll get you your robes. They’ll warm you up.”

Lan Xichen can only find it in himself to nod as he carefully sits himself down at one of the sitting areas, pulling and pulling on the towel until he can nearly hear the cloth let out whines of distress. He stares at the wall, gold floating in front of his eyes, teeth chattering, foreboding crawling up his spine as he briefly lets himself slip into the inky abyss.

(Nie Huaisang was once in his position, sitting rigid in a bathtub, eyes blank while Lan Xichen shakily scrubbed and scrubbed at the red that stained his body until he was brilliant crimson all on his own. And when Nie Huaisang sobbed, Lan Xichen only let a single tear fall from his eyes as he slipped his arms around the younger man because—)

A light pinch at the top of his foot has Lan Xichen pulling his leg back on instinct, and when he looks down, he finds tiny eyes staring back on him. Hopping from one place to another, circling his foot like a funeral pyre, is a bird. Its pale blue plumage stands in stark contrast against the rest of the room, its willowy form dancing in front of his eyes.

“You’re pretty,” he says to it.

The bird takes two hops away before bursting into flight. He waits for it to depart through the window, disappearing into the blue sky, free from its golden cage, but it just settles atop his shoulder. Nipping lightly at his ear, it makes little chirping sounds that settle into his bones, jaw loosening and breaths smoothing. It chirps above the chattering until finally, finally, it stops. The blanket, a sultry summer day wrapping around him, has him melting like frozen sweets near a fire and he wonders how it’s taken him until now to stop shivering.

The bird chirps. Nie Huaisang’s voice reaches him. “I found an inner robe that might fit you. It’s the same color as the outer robe, too, so—”

He stops abruptly. When Lan Xichen turns, he finds Nie Huaisang staring blankly at the bird perched on his shoulder. Deep river blue is splayed in his arms, robes for Lan Xichen to wear. Nie Huaisang himself is doused in fern green, golden beam resting on his head, keeping his topknot in place, and the very sight of him has the chirping fade away.

The first time he saw Nie Huaisang, they were both young boys—Lan Xichen reveled in the breeze of Qinghe’s forests, surrounding him in their entirety until he was no longer Lan Xichen, GusuLan Heir, but just another creature lurking on the forest floor, staring up at a sky so wide that he’d never truly comprehend it. It was Nie Mingjue who had led him into the forest, smug smile spilling onto his face at Lan Xichen’s awe—and the entire time, clutching his older brother’s robes, was Nie Huaisang, too scared to so much as look Lan Xichen in the eye.

For all he’s grown up, he’s so soft and frail, and yet when he walks Lan Xichen feels like a child, still in those forests in Qinghe under a sky that he will never be able to reach, no matter how many times he tries and doesn’t give up.

He doesn’t realize he’s frowning until Nie Huaisang halts in his tracks, emotion after emotion thundering over his face and, just like that, Lan Xichen has the cards once again. He says, “Thank you.”

Nie Huaisang says, “There’s a canary on your shoulder.”

Is that what the little bluebird is? The canary bursts into action, swirling over their heads and giving Nie Huaisang the same treatment it had given Lan Xichen—a circle, a peck, and a perch. It lasts mere seconds, though, before returning right to Lan Xichen, head bowed—an obedient disciple. Lan Xichen barely gives it a nod of acknowledgment before slowly stretching out a single arm. Expectant. Waiting.

Nie Huaisang hands over the robes.

His fingers are still hooking on his over robe when Nie Huaisang says, “Second Brother, do you want to know how I got us here?”

“How?”

“If I—if we—want to be somewhere, then the only requirement is to think.” He lightly waves his fan—a new one, without the mountains forever stained a sinful black. “Not everything, of course, just—basic things. Things you know. Just think.”

“Think,” Lan Xichen says quietly. Then, “Don’t think.”

There are twenty-three rules in the Cloud Recesses that contradict another rule, and an additional seven that contradict several. As Sect Leader Lan, Lan Xichen is to be the physical embodiment of his Sect. He remembers the nights he’d broken down sobbing, wildly trying to figure out how he’s supposed to contradict himself so cleanly, so wonderfully, until he gave up altogether. He just let himself be, let himself contain multitudes.

Lan Xichen knows paradoxes, so he nods his head and reminds himself that good smiles crinkle around the eyes.

The bluebird chirps as Lan Xichen pricks himself trying to readjust his hairpiece. He pops the finger in his mouth, lightly sucking his copper digits, and asks, “Huaisang, can you help me with my hairpiece?”

Nie Huaisang’s eyes meet his in a dance of emotion that neither of them seem to truly understand. For a moment, the canary stops singing, and Lan Xichen wonders if this is the end—but then Nie Huaisang bows his head and approaches, as if Lan Xichen is the Emperor and it would be a sin to look him in the eye.

He stands in front of him and Lan Xichen waits for him to ask him to sit down, to gesture at the nearby table, to so much as glance at the floor, but instead he reaches his arms up.

The bird remains silent as Nie Huaisang presses close, amber trained on a silver thicket that jerks wildly under his touch, biting like an unruly child and refusing to stay still. He presses even closer to get both hands onto it, and he doesn’t seem to realize until afterward how close he is—how Lan Xichen’s mouth is wide open and yet it still can’t grab enough air to keep him thinking straight. 

When the hairpiece is set, their eyes finally meet once again, a manner in which they’ve done so many times before…but only now, it feels like breaking a rule, like Nie Huaisang is finally committing treason, steadily staring into the Emperor’s eyes.

No matter how much Lan Xichen begs in his head, the canary does not sing, and he realizes he’s doomed. He’s fallen so irrevocably that he can never get back up again, drowning in the fern-filled forests of Qinghe. In his ear, Wei Wuxian laughs, obnoxious and uproarious, at him—the poor Sect Leader Lan who has cut his sleeve right in the middle of Koi Tower.

And then Nie Huaisang says, “You’re very tall, Second Brother.” He pulls away, and Lan Xichen nearly pulls him right back, nearly clutches onto him like a mother would their child, nearly begs for him to sit right beside him and never leave—

He does none of this. Instead, he laughs politely at such an obvious statement.

(Good smiles crinkle around the eyes. Give him a good smile, Lan Huan.)

Peonies bloom in his vision and he can do little else. He settles for shakily making sure his forehead ribbon is tied correctly—somewhat damp but otherwise undisturbed, bearing no evidence of ever receiving Nie Huaisang’s touch—but he does not do a thing to his hairpiece. In this small way, he can give Nie Huaisang his full trust. “Thank you, Huaisang.”

“Of course, Second Brother.”

Of course. As if it’s just natural for Nie Huaisang to stand flush against him, chest-to-chest, readjust his hairpiece, look him straight in the eyes—

The idea gives him hope. He turns away. “We should head back to the banquet hall.”

Nie Huaisang agrees with a hum. The two of them leave together, side-by-side. Nie Huaisang lazily waves his fan, and they revel in the coolness of it, straying away from the uncertainty of before, from the unnamed emotion that lies between them, so severe and unquestionably there that they refuse to acknowledge it.

Lan Xichen wants to acknowledge it and demand to know if Nie Huaisang knows, too. He wants it so bad, but he can’t have it—not yet, not in the middle of a discussion conference in Koi Tower—so he keeps his mouth sealed shut.

The hallways twist and turn and Lan Xichen does not think that they’re heading in the right direction, but it’s Nie Huaisang that’s taking the lead and he’s the one who managed to bring them back to his rooms, so Lan Xichen lets him continue onward, carving a path through reality itself to arrive at the banquet hall. Every light thud of his feet against the sprawling marble floors sends a shiver up Lan Xichen’s spine, but he hides it well.

The canary stays silently perched upon his shoulder, coming to lightly nibble on a piece of hair every now and then but otherwise unnoticeable. Each wing flag is elegant, every tilt of its head has Lan Xichen in awe of its majesty. Amazing bird.

It does not sing. Poor bird.

“Will anyone notice the canary?” Lan Xichen asks quietly, glancing at it from the corner of his eyes. The way it sits atop him, one could almost think it’s a pet, and pets are forbidden in the Cloud Recesses (which is why Lan Wangji steals away to the back meadows, where no one dares disturb him, smiling down at animals that he loves but can never truly be his). Lan Xichen is unaware of any similar rules that exist in Koi Tower, but he’d like to be safe because…well, there’s something terrifying about having to look an innocent creature in the eye and tell it that its very existence is forbidden.

Nie Huaisang laughs quietly, delicate chimes echoing through the hallway. The sway of his robes is hypnotic, Lan Xichen following it back and forth until he’s sure Nie Huaisang notices, and yet the younger man doesn’t mention it. “Ah, Second Brother, Koi Tower has a lot of birds—a blue canary will fit right in.”

“I hope so,” he agrees lightly. He pulls his eyes ahead and things, Sing, canary, sing for me. The bird stays silent.

It doesn’t take long for them to return to the banquet hall. It’s the most ostentatious part of Koi Tower—bathed in so much wealth that it could fund a nation. Where gold swirled in his vision before, gold now overcomes him completely until he can’t breathe. He can’t do much of anything, really. Horror draining into his head, he staggers, unsure of what’s going on—

(Old men, old women, young men, young women—none of them having seen a lick of fighting before today. Scarred and pale, red dripping down their bodies and seeping into the earth. Lan Xichen stands in the middle, and he watches men and women in gold take satisfaction in this nightmare. He—)

“Second Brother, don’t think,” Nie Huaisang says, hand wrapping around his arm to steady him. His fingers dig into his forearm and sparks run down Lan Xichen’s spine, burning him from the inside out. Nie Huaisang continues, “You’re unwell—do you want to go to your rooms?”

Lan Xichen’s world tilts sharply, and one second he’s tumbling down a slope, crashing into a river he thought he’d never get to enter, and the next his forehead presses against the soft silk of Nie Huaisang’s robes, his shoulder bony even through all the layers. “I can’t,” he says hoarsely. “I’m a Sect Leader. I’ve already missed too much of the discussion conference. The sun is already setting.”

Nie Huaisang laughs, short and unhumorous, darkening his line of vision. “The sun is always setting. They’ll still be drinking here after you get back to your room.”

“Huaisang…”

Perhaps it’s the reproach in his own voice, crawling up their ankles like poisonous vines, but Nie Huaisang accepts, pushing on it no further.

For one, small moment, he wonders if, perhaps, he should take Nie Huaisang back to his rooms; he’s the one whose skin flakes a sickly mustard hue, he’s the one whose bones stick out like tumors when he’s not bathed in silk, and he’s the one whose under-eyes are so dark that, without the aid of his fern green robes, he seems like he might just choose to lie down and never get back up. The thought fills Lan Xichen with such violent, unspeakable horror that he forces his head up, staring deep into Nie Huaisang’s eyes. They stay eternally dull, but—he’s not about to collapse. Rather than ill, he merely looks like a dainty maiden with whom physical strain doesn’t sit well. Nie Huaisang says nothing under his gaze, and so—somewhat, assured—Lan Xichen finally lets himself take in the world.

Seeing everything through a lens of gold is disturbing. Suddenly, things that were once important no longer matter, and every little action that should not matter seems unequivocally earth-shattering. Every fumble in the musicians’ notes burns his ears, ever stain on fabric sears into his mind. He’s filled with a dizzying sort of contentment that is definitely forbidden in the Cloud Recesses, though he can’t think of any rules specifically.

“The Jin outdid themselves,” is all he can manage to say. His voice rattles out of his lungs, echoing through his head in sickening bursts, and yet his mouth stretches into a smile.

Nie Huaisang’s lips are already lifted into a grin of delight as he spies the decor. They were here less than an hour ago—the sun hasn’t gone down or gone up, the flames illuminating Koi Tower never tire, it must have been recently that they were here—but it’s hard to deny the enchanting nature of the banquet hall, enthralling all who set eyes upon it. The Jins were once wealthy merchants that deigned to start cultivating, but they’ve never managed to leave their wealth behind, and it shows in every inch of Koi Tower. 

As the world shifts in vibrant hues, Lan Xichen is pulled under the jewels and extravagance.

Nie Huaisang helps him walk through the hall, throwing half-hearted greetings to anyone who tries to talk to them. His fabrics still sway and Lan Xichen keeps his eyes on it to keep himself above the surface, treading mercilessly against the waves. 

They breeze past the seats where they’d both sat earlier in the evening, everyone’s plates still full from all the servants dashing around, desperately keeping everyone sated. At the seat where Nie Mingjue once rested, he sees a slab of meat, pretty and pink as Jin Guangshan’s mistresses…none of which he can see. The only women that enter his vision are the guests, the servants, and the maidens that still dance at the very center of the banquet hall, twirling their lives away in the eyes of the wealthy.

A sudden thought clutches at him, forcing the corners of his lips downward. “Huaisang,” he says, tone pulling Nie Huaisang into a halt, “where is your brother?”

The question hangs between them, cracking and rotting and—Lan Xichen doesn’t even have to think about anything before something claws against his skull so viciously that he staggers forward. A single off-tune note—so small that he wouldn’t have noticed at any other time—makes him whine in discomfort. At this moment, his mind makes another connection: he does not remember seeing Jin Guangyao—

(—tumbling down a thousand steps, painting brilliant streaks of red, all under an inky, endless sky—)

A voice calling a name brings him back. Not just any name, but the name of his sworn brother. Amethyst streaks against the gold, so shocking that Lan Xichen’s pupils fall into pin-pricks from the contrast. Jiang Wanyin does not notice. He asks him, “Zewu-Jun, have you seen Chifeng-Zun?”

Lan Xichen’s head is still cradled in his arm, Nie Huaisang staring blankly at the far corner of the room—pale, frozen—but Jiang Wanyin mentions none of it. In fact, Lan Xichen wonders if he’s even noticed. His gaze is unnaturally still, proving he has his full attention, but Lan Xichen suspects that’s not entirely the case. He wonders if Jiang Wanyin is still far away, somewhere no one else can reach, running from horrors that no one can see. Still, he says, “I haven’t. My apologies Sect Leader Jiang. Is there a message I can give him in your stead if I do find him?” 

If, if, if.

Jiang Wanyin sighs. “No, I was just wishing to discuss rights to a few waterways with him.” He doesn’t elaborate any further, instead turning and walking away, approaching the next person he sees and asking if they’ve seen Nie Mingjue. His form stands out against the entirety of the room, outlined so thickly in ink that he looks like a piece of art, unrepentant in its presentation but requiring such careful handling.

Nie Huaisang is clutching Lan Xichen’s sleeve so hard that he fears this robe, too, will tear. He places a soothing arm on his right cheek. “Huaisang,” he coaxes. “Come, let’s sit down.” 

It takes some effort to lead him over to a seat, but when they do get there, Nie Huaisang lets go of his robes and picks up a pair of dainty chopsticks. Brand new, despite Nie Huaisang having used them earlier today. They glint and clink delicately as Nie Huaisang rapidly pulls and pulls at a piece of meat until it gives, fully cooked and stringy.

He eats it like a man who’s been starving his whole life, and Lan Xichen barely restrains himself from taking the chopsticks and feeding him more himself—he wants Nie Huaisang fed and happy, never wanting for a thing in his life, and the Nie Huaisang of right now doesn’t look at all like that. Lan Xichen settles for silence, letting the scrapes of the bowls against cold wood talk for him as he scooches them forward.

‘Eat this,’ he says without uttering a word. 

‘Eat what I tell you to.’ 

‘Eat how much I tell you to.’ 

‘Eat everything I ask you to.’

And Nie Huaisang obliges, letting Lan Xichen slowly uncoil from whatever he’d become. Nie Huaisang, too, flourishes like this, eating and eating until he’s swallowing down air with each bite, breaking so many of the GusuLan’s rules, but all Lan Xichen can feel is satisfaction curling deep in his stomach.

He is Lan Xichen, Sect Leader of the GusuLan, the embodiment of every rule standing in front of the Cloud Recesses, but he is also Lan Xichen, a mere man on two feet, who has transcended the rules in a desperate bid to not be overtaken by them. He contains multitude, and so, too, does the man he can’t take his eyes off of.

For all of a few moments, they are at peace—smiles shared, eyes locking, an Emperor and his suitor, seeking each other through only their gazes.

Then someone lightly puts a hand on Lan Xichen’s shoulder. “Second Brother,” a voice says, so soft and sweet that Lan Xichen’s lips pull instantly into a smile, “are you alright?”

Lan Xichen glances back and finds Jin Guangyao. His smile is as beautiful as ever, capturing Lan Xichen’s gaze, squeezing his heart for the seventeen-year-old who listened attentively while he ran his mouth about the stars streaking the night sky above a small, forgotten bookshop. 

“A-Yao,” he says, “I’m fine. Are you well?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

(—Jin Guangyao looks away, pulling the collar of his robe until he’s once again blemishless, blooming peonies instead of bruises. “I can handle it, Second Brother.”

“A-Yao—”

“Leave it be.”)

“I wouldn’t know,” Lan Xichen says, lie folding smoothly off of his tongue. He must know, but that requires thinking, and he must not do that. It is a rule he chooses to follow, picked up and held gently, but ready to be discarded at a moment’s notice just like all the others; he does what needs to be done to stay who he is.

He glances backward and finds Nie Huaisang staring at Jin Guangyao with wide, horrified eyes, possibly seeing all too much at once, possibly seeing something else entirely. Jin Guangyao spies it, too, for he goes to set his hand on Nie Huaisang’s shoulder as well, but the younger man slaps it away so hard that Lan Xichen’s ears ring. 

For a second, all he can hear is Wei Wuxian’s laughter. His head is still spinning, eyes dancing to and fro, completely out of his control, but he manages to say, “Huaisang, apologize to A-Yao.”

For a moment, silence hangs between them, frigid and unyielding, but then Nie Huaisang smiles, daintier than any maiden Lan Xichen has ever seen, and he says, “Ah, sorry, Third Brother—I was just a little spooked.” His laugh pulls at Lan Xichen’s heart—he hasn’t heard Nie Huaisang laugh like this before, clear and bright but falling to an end much too abruptly, off-tune with the twang of the guzheng.

If Jin Guangyao notices, he doesn’t comment, blooming into a smile that the plum blossoms would spy with envy. “I apologize for scaring you, Huaisang.”

Hauisang waves him away. “I’m just easily startled!”

But—he’s not. He’s not and Lan Xichen knows it, remembers Nie Huaisang bending reality to lead them to his room, remembers his violence in Jin Guangyao’s chambers—warding the air itself away from his being, as if it had done something wrong—and so many little things since then. Nie Huaisang is not a delicate maiden—bony and frail as he is—but he lightly fans himself as if he were one; mindlessly, mouth continuing to chatter on and on until Lan Xichen isn’t sure as to what they’re talking about anymore—

He feels like an outsider, another wall placed in between him and someone he loves. He’s never felt more alive than when Nie Huaisang was pressed flush against him, arm adjusting the thicket of his hairpiece that still digs into his scalp. He hasn’t touched it once, because Nie Huaisang has given it to him and he wants to cherish it…but now he’s losing Nie Huaisang, too.

The canary nips lightly at his ear, and it’s only then that he recognizes the great quakes that make their way through his hands—no other part of him, he’s too well trained to show such weakness in a public setting. It’s enough, though, for him to stand abruptly, eyes spinning from whiplash.

Jin Guangyao and Nie Huaisang startle out of their conversation. “Second Brother?” they ask, nearly in unison. Two dolls staring at him, smiles obscuring their faces.

Wei Wuxian laughs and laughs and the bluebird nips at his ear once again. 

“I just need to go do something.” It’s the flimsiest excuse he’s ever given and he knows both Nie Huaisang and Jin Guangyao can tell, but he cares not, gliding past them with as much of the Lan elegance as he can muster, and he…he runs away without ever picking up pace; away from the twirling dancers and off-tune musicians and the slab of blushing meat at Nie Mingjue’s seat, still untouched, never having met Nie Mingjue’s lips.

He thinks he wants to go to someplace secluded, and the hallway obeys, bending reality before his very eyes until he’s far away from anyone he doesn’t want to see, and only then does he scream into his palm, biting so hard that he nearly draws blood all over again.

What is he doing? He’s looked too much into Nie Huaisang’s actions—he hasn’t been barely restraining his amorous emotions, he’s been helping this poor, pathetic sworn brother of his brother, just in his own manner. Lan Xichen is a fool to think it’s anything else—to think the moments they’ve shared are what he wants them to be, tinted with the breeze of Qinghe’s forests. Wei Wuxian laughs and this time, Lan Xichen knows without a doubt that the man is laughing at him.

He leans his head against the wall, feeling heavy and so full of emotion he may burst, leaden eyes struggling against the pressure building up behind them. He needs—someone. Someone who isn’t Jin Guangyao and his blank smiles, or Nie Huaisang and his lips molding around “Second Brother” so perfectly, nor Lan Qiren who tries to understand but just never seems able to—not since he stopped being a little boy in his quarters, asking for a story with wide eyes. And that leaves someone who he knows will stand by him—

(—moonlit robes receding into the distance, leaving Lan Xichen confused and hurt because come back, I can’t move, what are you doing, come back —)

“Wangji, where are you?” He has no one else to turn to.

At this, the canary nips him so hard that Lan Xichen’s earlobe spindles with pain. He turns, eyes wide, to face the bird, and sees its inky eyes staring back at him with unfathomable sorrow.

Peculiarly, it does nothing but fill him with rage, pure and potent. Moving so suddenly that the bird takes flight, Lan Xichen rips the hairpiece off of his head—drawing blood, bringing pain—and throws it far down the hallway, thinking, Don’t come back.

Nie Huaisang reaches him before the metal clatters to the ground, wrapping an arm around his bicep and pulling until they’re side-by-side. “Second Brother,” he says, eyes wide, breaths coming out in desperate pants, “what happened?”

He’s weak, that’s what happened. He’s so weak and so angry and he doesn’t even understand why. And it’s not until now that he understands what he’s done: thrown away the one piece of Nie Huaisang that he’d still had. Horror sinks into his bones, churning and storming until he desperately goes down the hall, looking for the hairpiece. “It was here,” he explains frantically. “It was right here. I threw it and—where is it? I can’t find it.” Qinghe’s forests slip neatly out of his fingers so quickly that they tingle with fright.

Nie Huaisang bites a cherry lip until he looks like he can’t stand it, sinking to his knees in an inelegant flurry of robes, crawling over the ground like a child, helping his pathetic excuse of a friend. Finally, after so long that Lan Xichen’s ears ache and his arms shake, Nie Huaisang whispers, “It’s gone. It’s just a hairpiece, it doesn’t matter.”

He wants to explain that it hurts to be reminded that the only things left on his head are a band keeping his top knot in place and single hairpin, silver moonbeams in solid form. His head feels so utterly empty, and the canary that settles atop it doesn’t help, leaving Lan Xichen feeling as if the bird were to lift off, it would take him with it. He manages to whisper, “You adjusted it for me, Huaisang. It’s important.”

Nie Huaisang’s hand pulls back abruptly, and Lan Xichen is sure that he’s ruined everything irrevocably, doomed himself so thoroughly that he can never be saved—

But then Nie Huaisang says, “Second Brother,” and his voice is full of such awe that Lan Xichen nearly collapses and weeps, the weight of it pressing onto his shoulders grounding him until he can feel the marble beneath his limbs once again. Nie Huaisang says, “You care about me that much?”

“Of course,” he says. “Of course.”

There is a small chance that this will be when everything goes wrong—when Nie Huaisang finally rebukes him, leaving Lan Xichen dying in a desert, alone and isolated, scared beyond belief, but Nie Huaisang smiles, and it’s not the one he gave Jin Guangyao. It’s so infinitesimally small when compared to that one, but it’s still so…real, not painted onto a blank face to entertain little children.

The ground is solid beneath Lan Xichen’s body, and he finally, truly feels it.

Nie Huaisang reaches over and squeezes his hand—a gentle, steady pressure, thin and bony but still so definitely there. And, when his sleeve curls away from the action, Lan Xichen spies the bruise that he’d left there, faint and hypnotic.

“Second Brother,” he says, “you really are too good for me.”

Lan Xichen dreams, and his dreams, he sees Nie Huaisang always looking at him like that—content, peaceful, right there next to him, for Lan Xichen to hold and hug and never let go of. Nie Huaisang is his, and he is Nie Huaisang’s. Nie Huaisang feels it, too—he must—because their eyes sync in such perfect harmony, and in unison, they both lean forward…just a bit. But, they don’t stop. Their world spins back and forth, never-ending, on its axes—

“Zewu-Jun? Sect Leader Nie?”

The high-pitch voice has both Nie Huaisang and Lan Xichen immediately pulling away, rising to their feet and ensuring that their robes are still in proper order. 

It’s an odd sort of shame, and Lan Xichen supposes that this is what secret lovers feel like, desperately covering their trysts from prying eyes. He wants to whisk Nie Huaisang away, shielding him from anyone who dares try to stop them, and he would have, too, if not for the fact that the voice belongs to a very certain someone.

Jin Rulan, technically, does not yet have a courtesy name, but Jin Guangyao still whispered it into Lan Xichen’s ear when the young boy was out of sight. A little secret, defying the Young Master Jin’s wish, so intensely uninteresting that it made Lan Xichen giggle.

Jin Rulan stares up at them, imperious, all his six years of life resting lightly on his head—a golden crown fit for a Jin. Nie Huaisang smiles brightly, fan already resting idly in front of his face. “Young Master Jin,” he says.

Jin Rulan bows to him—clumsy and unpracticed, but he manages not to topple over so neither Lan Xichen nor Nie Huaisang move to help him—but then turns to address Lan Xichen, eyes set in determination. “Zewu-Jun,” he repeats, “you’re…the strongest?”

Lan Xichen stares for a moment, confused. Then, slowly, something clicks. Tilting his head to the side, Lan Xichen says, “Well, I’m the first-ranked cultivator of my generation.”

“So you’re the strongest.” Jin Rulan is but a bud, yet to bloom into the peonies of Koi Tower. He is allowed to misunderstand things, Lan Xichen reminds himself.

“No,” he denies. How to explain that the rankings have nothing to do with strength? If they did, Nie Mingjue would almost certainly be ranked first instead of wallowing in seventh. No, the rankings are based on marriageability…which is simultaneously flattering and disturbing. He does not dwell on it often.

“You’re not strong?”

“He is,” Nie Huaisang assures languidly. Lan Xichen’s lips turn upward under his coy gaze, spying the spill of his inky hair as it swoops down his back and the delicate curl of his mouth.

Jin Rulan sees nothing, deigning to nod in acceptance. “Good. Zewu-Jun, help me fix it.”

“…it?” This child looks him so plainly in the eyes as if it’s obvious, as if Lan Xichen should know, and it’s an uncomfortable feeling. It’s the same look his teachers would give him when he was young and still unused to studying. His shoulders tense in the same manner that they used to and, feeling too much like a chastised child, he waits for Jin Rulan to continue.

“You know—” the boy waves his arm around a bit, gesturing to the world at large— “all of this.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“Everyone’s acting…weird!” He struggles to come up with the word. “Uncle is acting weird. Other Uncle is also acting weird. And…and everyone says things they shouldn’t!”

Nie Huaisang’s shoulders hunch up, lips wobbling and face turning red from trying to keep his mouth shut, and it takes a moment for Lan Xichen to make the connection: everyone in the banquet hall is drunk. Of course Jin Rulan thinks they’re acting weird. He puts on his kindest smile. “Young Master Jin, adults are like that sometimes. Come, how about I lead you to your rooms? They’ll be better in the morning.”

“It’s only sunset,” Nie Huaisang points out idly, and Lan Xichen once again notes the brilliant summer hues swirling through the windows.

“It’s always sunset!” Jin Rulan protests. “It can’t be sunset! It’s too long.”

(Don’t think, Lan Huan, don’t think.)

“That’s just how it is,” Lan Xichen promises.

When Jin Rulan curls in on himself, eyes intensely wary and uncomfortable, ticking over him and then the walls, Lan Xichen realizes that he’s approached this the wrong way. Before he can figure out how to proceed, though, Jin Rulan asks, “Then…help with something else.”

“Anything,” Lan Xichen promises, and then regrets it. If there is one thing he has learned, it’s that promises are hard to keep. All he can do now is hope that Jin Rulan’s request isn’t anything too extreme.

Jin Rulan’s hands bunch up in his own robes, squeezing the golden fabric taut and decreasing its values by several jewels by the second. “I want to find A-Song.”

Jin Rusong, his cousin, who everyone calls by his courtesy name even though he’s all of five years old. It’s charming to know that Jin Rulan cares so much about his cousin. “We’ll help.”

That’s how Lan Xichen finds himself and Nie Huaisang following Jin Rulan’s lead back to the banquet hall. The hallways seem…different now. They’re still bathed in silk and gold, but they have more character, real ways to tell when they’ve entered a new one. Jin Rulan blazes a path with his presence alone, walking with the same confidence that it took Lan Xichen into his teens to learn. Some would say it’s unbecoming of a mere child to act like it, but Jin Rulan, pride of the LanlingJin, wields it so well that Lan Xichen is unsure of how he would act if he were to stop using it altogether.

Pride is only a folly until it’s justified, and Jin Rulan’s very existence justifies it.

The canary has flown off of his shoulder circling his head again and again until Lan Xichen’s mind rolls with the flaps of its wings. Then, right as they’re about to enter the banquet hall again, tension coiling tight inside Lan Xichen, gripping his heart with enough strength to downright dizzy him, the canary swoops forward and lands on one of Jin Rulan’s arms, pecking lightly at his robes.

Its beak is not so sharp but Lan Xichen still winces, fearing the priceless golden robes will fall to threads under its treatment, but Jin Rulan pays it no mind. The boy stares intensely at the bird for all of a few seconds before screeching, “Hanguang-Jun!”

He’s loud enough to cause the entirety of the banquet hall to freeze, various sets of eyes trickling in their direction. Nie Huaisang breezes rightward, unwilling to bear the weight of everyone’s stares, but Lan Xichen stands his ground, if only to help the inevitable embarrassment that is sure to swallow Jin Rulan whole.

The boy does not look the least bit embarrassed. Instead, he whirls around, a flurry of silken robes, triumph held plainly on his face. He presents the canary proudly to Lan Xichen. “Hanguang-Jun!” he repeats.

The bird hops over to him once again, tugging insistently on a strand of his hair. It’s much too close for Lan Xichen to get a proper look at it, but it nuzzles against his skin in a manner that has him flinching away. “Young Master Jin, please elaborate.”

The smile slips off of his face, expression twisting into furrowed brows and a scrunched nose. “What is ‘elaborate’?”

“To explain.”

“Oh. Um. The bird is Hanguang-Jun.”

He states it so plainly that Lan Xichen almost laughs. The canary pecks at him again, and Lan Xichen powers through the little chuckles that flow through the room, everyone there returning to their previous activities, paying them no mind. The musicians play their awful notes, the dancers twirl and twirl—little dolls spinning into eternity—people talk inanely, and Wei Wuxian keeps right on laughing. Lan Xichen doesn’t know what he finds so funny.

“Young Master Jin,” Lan Xichen says, “why would my brother be a bird?”

“I don’t know. You need to fix him.”

Lan Xichen doesn’t know what to say to that—to Jin Rulan’s earnest declarations. Carefully, he brings up a single finger to stroke the bird’s head. It leans into it, and Lan Xichen can’t imagine his brother doing such a thing—maybe once upon a time, when they were both mere children who couldn’t comprehend the weight of the world resting on their shoulders, but not now. Such affection is not something they share anymore. Lan Wangji, too, now sits on the other side of an impenetrable wall that Lan Xichen had let him build.

He retracts his hand, lips glued together as if under the silencing spell, unable to part no matter how hard he tries to make them, gripping his own hair and yanking until pain sparks across his scalp, and yet he still can’t say a word.

That’s when Nie Huaisang takes action. Gliding back into the frame, flicking his fan to and fro so consistently that Lan Xichen finds himself hypnotized, he asks, “Young Master Jin, why do you think Hanguang-Jun is this bird?”

“He…he is!” Jin Rulan insists. “He needs help! Zewu-Jun, Sect Leader Nie! Fix him!”

Nie Huaisang jerks backward, phantom hands striking him across his face. “I’m not Sect Leader Nie,” he says, voice high, faraway. “That’s my older brother.”

“You’re Sect Leader Nie!” Jin Rulan disputes.

“I am not.” The words slice through flesh and bone, fierce and savage, enraged with little precedence. A child made a mistake, and Nie Huaisang’s fury is utterly unreasonable.

Lan Xichen wants to seal his mouth shut—in various different manners. The silencing spell is the most convenient, but he can’t quite bring himself to do it. Instead, he resigns himself to spying the tremor that runs through Jin Rulan’s small frame. He might be the Jin Heir, but he’s also a child, all of six years old, and Nie Huaisang’s rage is enough to start the tears in his eyes.

With great self-control, he blinks them away. “You think I’m lying.” He’s small, unsure—hurt. Then his face twists, rage searing its way across his features, and he practically snarls, “I’ll find A-Song! By myself!” Then he swirls around and darts away, parting the crowd around him effortlessly with his mere presence.

Lan Xichen is…off-kilter in a way that drags him back to Jin Guangyao’s room, staring at Nie Huaisang’s form as it lies, unmoving, on the tiled floors. Nie Huaisang, Nie Huaisang—what has he done? (Is this how the brilliant boy hiding behind his brother’s robes has ended up?)

Nie Huaisang seems to be thinking the same thing, because just as quickly as it arrives, the rage melts off of his features, but Jin Rulan has already sped away, and Nie Huaisang is left behind, skin ashen and desaturated when surrounded by all the golden hues. Lan Xichen stands with him, marinating in the silence.

He sees the world in wretched yellow, and it makes him want to puke. He thinks he might, even with Nie Huaisang steadily by his side, because Jin Rulan’s “You’re Sect Leader Nie!” echos through his head again and again, a relentless storm that’s dragging him under— don’t think —

Violent erupts violently across his vision, tearing the gold into smithereens. The canary burrows closer to his face as Lan Xichen’s eyes zero in on Jiang Wanyin, Sandu drawn in his arm, eyes darting frantically to and fro. For all of a moment, Lan Xichen thinks that there’s an enemy lost in the sea of the crowd, but then Jiang Wanyin swings a mighty arc in the air, precise and fluid in a way that most could only ever dream of, and Lan Xichen spots…a bird. 

It’s larger than the canary, and brown in color, reminding him of the sand on beaches, battered with ceaseless waves. Jiang Wanyin swings at it with a vengeance, and instead of fleeing, the bird swoops away before trying to reach him again and again, the flap of its wings scarily frantic.

Lan Xichen is frozen, watching Jiang Wanyin dance from strike to strike, amethyst flowing hypnotically around him. The brighter the color, the more dangerous the animal, and right now, all the gold in Koi Tower dims when compared to Jiang Wanyin.

Lan Xichen can’t move—

(— why can’t I move? When he can, it’s too late. When he can, there’s blood on the ground and Nie Huaisang screams in agony into a sky that’s inky and endless, ignorant of his suffering, and—)

“Stop!” This time, when Nie Huaisang screams, it’s not in terror, but with such authority that Jiang Wanyin’s eyes turn sharply to his. The bird, too, is still in the air, but then it whirls and speeds straight into Nie Huaisang’s arms, uncaring of everything else. 

He makes a stunning image like this: face contorted beyond belief, eyes swimming with fire, dark circles underneath doing nothing but accentuating them. He should be dwarfed by his own robes, dwarfed by all of Koi Tower, but Lan Xichen thinks that he’s never seen Nie Huaisang be any larger.

Jiang Wanyin seems to lose all interest in the bird, but his eyes stay trained on Nie Huaisang. “Second Young Master Nie,” he says. “Is that bird yours?” His tongue drips with vitriol, condescension, barely-restrained fury. Sandu is sheathed, the sharp cut of the blade through the air slicing straight into Lan Xichen’s head. He may not have any weapons drawn, but he’s ready for a fight.

Nie Huaisang says, “It is now. Birds are really cute little things, you see? This one—it’s a shrike, very intimidating. I like it.”

The only intimidating thing Nie Huaisang has ever liked is his brother, and Jiang Wanyin knows it. He scoffs, ready to sneer, spill more words. His eyes are blood-shot, he looks somewhat frantic, and the twitch of his hand makes Lan Xichen realize that he’s in pain. He thinks something is about to go very wrong, but then…but then—

It happens in an instant—Wei Wuxian blooms into existence, a brilliant bruise on blemishless skin. His arms wrap around Jiang Wanyin’s shoulder, smiling as if there’s nowhere he’d rather be. In his hand is the wine of Gusu, Emperor’s Smile saturating the room. “Jiang Cheng,” he says, still laughing, never stopping, “leave the poor thing alone. You can’t just go around killing everything you hate, you know?”

Jiang Wanyin’s hands twitch yet again and, for a moment, Zidian flashes brighter than he’s ever seen it go before, limitless bolts ripping through the room like a ceaseless storm—but it’s gone just as fast as it came. Jiang Wanyin’s eyes stay endless pools of violet, more a scar than a thing of beauty without Zidian’s glow. He shrugs Wei Wuxian’s arm off of his shoulders, staring at the corner of the room.

“I need to find Chifeng-Zun,” he murmurs. “He’s let those border disputes carry on for too long.” And he walks away, not so much as glancing back.

Wei Wuxian stares after him, confused, possibly hurt, but eventually resigned. He doesn’t spare Lan Xichen another look as he tips the jar in his hands toward his lips, drinking and swallowing long past the point that it should have been empty. Throughout it all, the laughter continues to ring in his ears.

Nie Huaisang clutches the brown bird close, but the bluebird abandons Lan Xichen, flying circles around Wei Wuxian’s body, pausing to poke and prod with its beak whenever it can. Wei Wuxian eyes it with exasperation, barely held irritation, and gently swats it away with a single hand. “Stop that.”

Lan Xichen doesn’t quite understand the indignation that swells up inside him, the way his fingers dig crescents into his own palms, the way such a familiar anger sweeps him away until he can only barely clutch onto land. Instead of doing anything he’d regret, he reaches out and gently grasps the canary right out of the air, guiding it away. It lets out one, single chirp, before falling back to silence.

(Poor bird—it, too, is doomed.)

Wei Wuxian gives him a nod—brief, succinct—and then turns to Nie Huaisang. “That bird,” he says. “Take care of it, okay?”

Nie Huaisang stares at him, amber gaze calculating, unreadable, rigid as the great trees of Qinghe. Then his lips twist into a pleasant smile and he says, “Yes, Brother Wei.”

Wei Wuxian nods once again and then Lan Xichen’s vision bends and swirls in a way that it shouldn’t, until he’s clawing at his own forehead to get his eyes to cooperate, and when they finally do, Wei Wuxian is no longer in front of him. He’s still there, of course, a stowaway in the sea of cultivators—close enough that Lan Xichen can hear his laughter like he’s right next to his ears. 

The birds wiggle out of their grips and Lan Xichen faintly recognizes that they’re circling each other, staring and staring, pecking and poking, before finally returning to their respective humans. 

Lan Xichen clutches the canary, and he feels distinctly—unsettled. It crawls up his spine on its spindly little legs, and Lan Xichen shivers again and again, ready to leave.

Out of the crowd emerge two matching peonies, one significantly taller than the other. Beside Jin Rulan, Jin Rusong seems tiny and insignificant, even drenched in as much finery as his cousin. He’s all of five years old and he stands, chin up, right beside Jin Rulan, who stares at Lan Xichen and Nie Huaisang with barely disguised contempt swimming in his eyes.

“I found him. Let’s go,” he snaps, then marches off with his cousin in a swirl of gold…but it’s not as blatantly garish as the rest, easier on the eyes but no less vibrant. Lan Xichen’s world is too bright, so spots like Nie Huaisang’s forests and the Jin boys’ peonies are welcome. 

(His own robes sear his eyes—too pale, too blue, too silky against his skin, wrapping and wrapping until there’s more of it left than Lan Xichen. But he does not dare be ungrateful.)

Nie Huaisang and Lan Xichen follow dutifully. It takes one hundred steps, simmering with silence, before the shrike breaks from Nie Huaisang’s grasp, soaring in violent arcs through the hallway. Lan Xichen is sure it’s going to leave, sure it’s going to drift into the evening air and never come back, but it proves to be every bit as loyal as the brilliant blue canary on Lan Xichen’s shoulder, for it barely gets that far before whirling right into Jin Rusong’s arms.

The boy snatches the bird up with ungentle hands, and Lan Xichen considers stopping him but the bird doesn’t seem to particularly care. Jin Rusong observes it curiously before breathing with wide eyes, “Chifeng-Zun?”

Lan Xichen and Nie Huaisang both freeze. Two boys, both referring to a bird as a missing brother of theirs separately. “Hanguang-Jun” Jin Rulan called the canary. “Chifeng-Zun” Jin Rusong called the shrike. The two birds leap into action swirling and swirling before the canary breaks free, landing back on Lan Xichen’s shoulder. He stares, uncomprehending. Surely not, surely—

(There is a house at the edge of the Cloud Recesses, and a small boy of eight years old stares at it and knows it’s a prison, knows it trapped a woman he cared so deeply for. He knows that no one else seems to see everything wrong with her while she wasted away, none of the adults batted an eye. And Lan Xichen dutifully kept his mouth shut like an obedient child, and now the house is empty and a little boy kneels in front of it every day and Lan Xichen can’t quite suppress the tears and—)

Don’t think.

Hands shaking, Lan Xichen carefully picks the canary off of his shoulder. Its plumage is an echo of Lan Wangji’s robes, pale blue and brilliant in a way that has his eyes watering. He asks, “Wangji?”

The bird gives a single chirp and—

Wei Wuxian is laughing at him.

Nie Huaisang bursts into motion, snatching up the shrike, quick and violent, demanding, “Brother?” His robes billow around him through the action, framing him like a fallen deity here to drag all his enemies down to damnation.

The shrike, too, gives its answer, and Nie Huaisang hugs Nie Mingjue close to himself, wrapping him so tightly that Lan Xichen is sure he must not be able to breathe, but Nie Mingjue does nothing in protest. His robes slacken until Nie Huaisang is but a frail little boy, far from home, no longer able to seek the protection of his older brother.

Lan Xichen is drowning in gold, waning away with the setting sun, clawing desperately to keep hold of himself, but none of it is working and he doesn’t quite understand. What he does understand is that there is a certain humor to Nie Mingjue becoming a shrike—the butcher of birds. If that is not Nie Mingjue’s nature, then what is?

And then he looks down at Lan Wangji, still curled in his hands, brilliant plumage invading his vision. His poor brother, a canary that doesn’t sing, sacrificed (in front of thirty-three men, bearing thirty-three whips— don’t think, don’t think) for others. (For one, specific other.)

The rage that grips Lan Xichen is real, and he stumbles forward, unable to truly see anything but the gold, unable to hear anything but Wei Wuxian’s incessant laughter (how dare he, how dare he—) , unable to so much as take a single breath that doesn’t fill him with rusty blood that never leaves.

He doesn’t know where he’s going until he bursts out of gold, staring up at a beautiful blended sky.

The terrace sits high up in Koi Tower, promising a fall so long that one would die before hitting the ground. Right in the middle, next to the edge, grow two plum trees. The plum blossoms are long gone—long ago having withered away at the end of spring—and the plums have already been picked and consumed, but the leaves remain, perched on branches so dark and curling that—

(Wei Wuxian stormed out of the hall, robes a flurry of smoke and obsidian, dancing behind him, as he ran to kill seven men in gold, to save thirty in rags. To storm a mountain of madness and dare to call it his home, dare to drag Lan Wangji in, dare to make him fall more and more in love, so irrevocably that he’d leave everything behind just for him—

To blaze his way into history as a man everyone fears, to laugh and laugh as he became the man that made Lan Wangji cry at night—)

Don’t think, Lan Huan. Don’t think.

…and so he acts. He curls his hands into jade fists over a branch from each tree, stripping it of its leaves, leaving behind the solid curls of smoke and ink, which he wants to break, wants to throw down the terrace, wants to watch disappear into the evening light.

An arm tugs at the bottom of his robes. “Zewu-Jun!” Jin Rulan says. “Zewu-Jun, stop that! They’re Uncle’s favorite trees!” His fingers curl into the pale blue cloth, gripping so tight that Lan Xichen wonders if it will tear.

He peels his hands away in horror, staring at the bare branches that he nearly snapped. Jin Rusong hides behind his cousin’s robes, glancing up at him in barely-restrained fear, and so, when Nie Huaisang tugs him away, he allows it. He allows his arms to wrap around Nie Huaisang and hold him close, just like he’s wanted to for so long. He barely recognizes it when Lan Wangji and Nie Mingjue perch on the branches, watching over them.

Instead he pulls back and says, “I’m sorry.” He’s not talking to Jin Rulan. Jin Rulan must understand, because he does not respond, instead turning and calming Jin Rusong, hushing little murmurs drifting off of him.

Nie Huaisang smiles at Lan Xichen—no hesitance, just acceptance. His skin seems healthier in the evening light. “Nothing to be sorry about,” he promises, letting each word sink into the depths of Lan Xichen’s mind. “No matter what Young Master Jin has to say.”

Lan Xichen manages his own smile, soft and content, even as his stomach churns and churns in an endless storm of hurt and hate. “I didn’t think.”

“I told you not to, didn’t I? Thinking makes things even worse.”

Lan Xichen thinks of Nie Mingjue’s voice screaming in his head, pulling and pulling until Lan Xichen sobs that he agrees, begs for all of it to stop—but Nie Mingjue is not in his head. He’s perched on a branch above Nie Huaisang, and he’s not upset. Lan Xichen trembles.

“Second Brother?”

“Thinking makes things worse?” he whispers, voice barely registering over Wei Wuxian’s laughter. “Then I won’t think.”

He swoops in.

His brother’s first kiss was lost to Wei Wuxian during a discussion conference very much like this one. But back then, Wei Wuxian had no way of knowing who Lan Wangji was—could never truly reciprocate in any way that meant something. Nie Huaisang knows, though. His eyes slip shut without hesitation as he sinks into Lan Xichen’s arms, lips pressed together in a way that feels right.

Poets say a kiss feels like two halves finally slotting into a whole, but Lan Xichen disagrees. This kiss feels like two wholes swirling together, blending and brewing until they become something else entirely—not better, not really, but good. Something great, that fills his chest and crashes into his mind.

He never wants to let go.

Nie Huaisang pulls back, eyes wide. One, bony hand comes up to caress Lan Xichen’s cheek, warm and feather-light. “Second Brother,” he whispers, “you’re crying.”

He is. He is and he can’t get himself to stop, to will the tears away. 

Excessive grief is forbidden in the Cloud Recesses, but Lan Xichen contains multitudes, paradoxes, contradiction after contradiction, so he deigns not to punish himself when he sobs, when he lets all his heartbreak out.

In his head swirls the cold winter mornings his brother spent outside an empty house, thirty-three lashes Lan Wangji received for daring to love (a madman, a monster, a murderer—but it’s still love, nonetheless), Jin Guangyao falling down a thousand steps until his head cracks and drips brilliant red, Nie Mingjue staggering to the ground (too far for Lan Xichen to ever reach, no matter how hard he tries), and a sky above his head, so vast and inconceivable that two boys in a bookshop can spend hours staring into it without ever losing their smiles.

Nie Huaisang holds him through it all, Lan Wangji and Nie Mingjue standing guard overhead, Jin Rulan and Jin Rusong staring with wide eyes, all under the rich glow of a setting sun.

This is how Lan Xichen awakens.

It happens so quickly that he almost doesn’t realize it. For one instant, he feels healed in a way that he never had before, tentative warmth growing bright inside him, and the next he remembers so violently that he nearly vomits, scrambling tightly against Nie Huaisang to feel through the contradictions, comprehend the horrors. Nie Huaisang does the same, fingers clawing into his back as he gasps such pretty little sounds that Lan Xichen wishes he could appreciate.

The sky is static as ever and suddenly, Lan Xichen realizes that, perhaps, it’s not supposed to be that way. This time, when the hues of the sky cloud his vision, he fights. He pushes and pulls and screams in his head, but the sky is too strong and Lan Xichen is overtaken, drowning and drowning, dragged out of Qinghe’s forests and straight into the unforgiving ocean.

Voice wet and hoarse, Nie Huaisang whispers into his ear, “Second Brother, do you remember?” His breath tickles against Lan Xichen’s earlobe and sends shivers up his spine as he tugs his body closer. 

He commands himself to stay where he is, above the surface with Nie Huaisang. “I do.” He doesn’t want to. It’s so horribly selfish but he wants to fold back time and go to when he was happy, when it was easy, when everything was so simple, but he can’t.

Nie Huaisang nods into his shoulder and then pulls back with one, shuddering breath. Lan Wangji and Nie Mingjue have descended at their declaration, hopping earnestly from side to side, and Jin Rulan and Jin Rusong observe them with blatant curiosity. Still, silence remains, unfaltering, only to be shattered by Nie Huaisang. “Brother,” he asks dully, not looking at Nie Mingjue, “did Jin Guangyao—”

Nie Mingjue lets out a mighty screech, and the voice in Lan Xichen’s head once again screams and screams until Lan Xichen is dizzy. He holds Nie Huaisang tighter. “What about A-Yao?”

And…Nie Huaisang tells him. Every word that flows from his mouth wraps tighter and tighter around him until he can’t breathe. Lungs aflame with horror, his grip on Nie Huaisang’s wrist hardens until both his hands have matching splays of red. Nie Huaisang does comment; instead, he falls deeper and deeper into thoughtless rage, eyes piercing, tongue lashing, vitriol flooding through his veins.

In Lan Xichen’s head, there lives a boy in rough, cheap robes, stars in his eyes, who dragged Lan Xichen out of a river when Lan Xichen couldn’t muster the will to do it on his own. This boy smiled at him kindly when Lan Xichen couldn’t smile for himself, and he pulled him atop a book shop to show him the sky. This boy healed him when Lan Xichen thought he was broken, never to be fixed. This boy has a special place in his heart, and his name is Meng Yao.

There is also a man who thought he reached his dreams, only to bloom black and blue, and yet he still smiled at Lan Xichen, the same smile that dragged him back from the edge of an inky abyss. This man helped him rebuild his home, this man tried so hard, this man smiled so brilliantly at the woman he loved, at the son in his arms. This man also has a special place in his heart, and he is a man called Jin Guangyao, a man Lan Xichen calls brother.

But—in his head, there is also a vase, the very same one that sits in the corner of Jin Guangyao’s bed chambers, and every time he shatters it, something nastier spills out, sin after sin after sin, staining the boy and the man and…and Lan Xichen.

He wonders if the Meng Yao and Jin Guangyao he cared so much for—still cares about—were ever real. He wonders if the sky they shared was real.

Wei Wuxian keeps on laughing.

“Huaisang, you’ve carried this for a while.” His voice dips and curves and warps in his ears, but he knows that, to everyone else, it sounds the same. No one can tell that he is cracking, splitting at the seams, shattering a little more with every sin that drips out of the vase.

“I figured out after Brother’s death,” Nie Huaisang concedes with merely a tilt of his head. 

Lan Xichen brushes his fingers over the length of Nie Huaisang’s cheek, feeling the bone and remembering how it rang against the floor of Jin Guangyao’s room. Then, he felt empty. Now, he feels rage, churning so potently that it nearly makes him nauseous. Nie Huaisang’s pupils dilate and Lan Xichen’s respond in kind. He knows what he must do.

He pulls his fingers back, lets them brush across his own lips, then slowly rises. Nie Huaisang looks up at him, still red and dripping with rage, tempered as it has been by Lan Xichen’s touch. “What are you doing, Second Brother?”

Lan Xichen gives him a light smile, gently tugging him up. The weight of it pulls down on him, and the crack grows down the crown of his head, traveling down his back. “I’ll talk to A-Yao.”

Nie Huaisang’s expression contorts further into something entirely recognizable. “You still don’t believe me and my brother? Second Brother, don’t you—”

“Huaisang,” Lan Xichen reprimands lightly, even though the phantom Nie Mingjue is screaming at him in his head, right alongside Wei Wuxian’s laughter, “I never said I don’t believe you. This is something I should talk to A-Yao about, isn’t it?”

Every protest falls off Nie Huaisang’s tongue. Perhaps he sees something in Lan Xichen, perhaps he is as worried as Nie Mingjue and Lan Wangji, that swoop around him and desperately try to peck at his hair, Lan Wangji going so far as to tug on his forehead ribbon, but Lan Xichen does not falter, not even against the growing tremor in his heart. Nie Huaisang peers at him with surprise before his face whirls through a myriad of emotions, flickering so quickly that Lan Xichen doesn’t quite catch them, before landing on one in particular: fondness.

His fingers creak in protest when he curls them rapid-fire three, four, five times, and he offers Lan Xichen a smile that’s all teeth. “Second Brother, I’m working on a plan.”

“Wouldn’t it be simpler to confront him?”

“With what evidence?” Nie Huaisang asks. “He’ll weasel his way out of everything unless I set up the perfect trap.” He says it with bitterness, and Lan Xichen gets the distinct impression that Nie Huaisang has thought this through with great detail, going over and over how to bring Jin Guangyao down—and he feels pity that Nie Huaisang had to go through all that.

Now, he sets a hand upon Nie Huaisang’s shoulder, steady and determined. “That was before,” he explains. “Now you have me. He won’t go anywhere I don’t want him to.” He squeezes hard enough to bruise, so completely taken with the image of purple dotting Nie Huaisang’s shoulders, and Nie Huaisang doesn’t so much as wince, taking it all with an open mouth and a sharp inhale.

“Okay,” he says, voice faraway. “We’ll do it your way, Second Brother.”

It should have been sealed, but then a voice pipes up from the corner of the terrace. “You can’t!” it yells. “You—Father is good!”

Jin Rusong fights his way out of Jin Rulan’s grip, running up to Lan Xichen and clutching his robes. This time, they may very well have torn, but neither he nor the child care, both stuck in a stalemate. Jin Rusong trembles, but he continues, “Don’t hurt Father! Or—or Brother’s Uncle will break your legs!” He turns. “Right, Brother?”

Jin Rulan eyes the two adults warily, hands clenching, knuckles white, and he lets his gaze follow Nie Mingjue and Lan Wangji that crowd around Lan Xichen. Then he looks back at his cousin and takes a shuddering breath. Determination thrums through his very being. “Uncle will break your legs,” he agrees.

It’s such a childish sentiment but Lan Xichen’s heart goes out to the two boys nonetheless. He strokes Jin Rusong’s hair, and says, “I said I’m going to talk to your father, didn’t I? You have nothing to worry about.” Jin Rusong doesn’t need to know.

Those two eyes look up at him, brimming with hope, and he asks, “Really?”

“Really.”

Jin Rusong lets go with hesitance, a small smile on his face as he makes his way back over to his cousin who grips his arm, also smiling. They’re two peas in a pod, so proud of themselves for what they have done, even as the crack spreads across Lan Xichen’s chest and curls over his jaw.

Nie Huaisang observes it all idly with lazy flaps of his fan, and Nie Mingjue and Lan Wangji finally give up on whatever they were trying to do. When he speaks again, his voice is only quiet enough for him to hear. “He has nothing to worry about? Are you going to keep that promise?” There’s something softly dangerous in his voice, with all the innocence of poisoned tea, undetectable in its fragrance but somewhat odd in its taste. Lan Xichen smiles at the implications and wonders if, perhaps, he should point out that he never promised anything.

He decides against it, saying, “I’ll do what must be done.”

Nie Huaisang softens almost immediately, turning away with a little sigh. “I’ll hold you to it, Second Brother.”

In that moment, Lan Xichen is so completely sure that he can do it—that he can end this all. In fact, he’s the one who leads them back to the banquet hall, lips curling downward at every misplayed note, eyes latching onto the blemishes of the dancers’ skins. He sees it all, nothing left to privacy, but he does not see Jin Guangyao. And when he spies the table where Nie Mingjue supposedly sat—a lie, the seat belongs to Nie Huaisang who eats just as much as his brother used to—he asks Nie Huaisang if he wants something to eat beforehand.

“Second Brother,” Nie Huaisang says, a teasing lilt in his voice, “do you think our conversation with Third Brother will really take that long?” It drips off of his tongue, sweetened honey, and Lan Xichen isn’t entirely sure as to what Nie Huaisang is alluding, but it makes the crack crawl down his torso.

They find him in a pavilion on the far side of Koi Tower—gorgeous, open to the air above and caged in by golden walls on all four sides. Jin Guangyao sits on a simple stone bench, every bit as elegant as a Sect Leader ought to be, but he’s staring up at the night sky and the crack makes its way down Lan Xichen’s thighs.

Oh. He’d come here with such confidence, but now—Jin Guangyao is looking at their sky, and Lan Xichen doesn’t know what to do. Nie Huaisang smiles at his side, soft cherry lips mouthing words that Lan Xichen can’t hear, and he knows that it’s supposed to be reassuring, but all it does is make the phantom Nie Mingjue scream louder and louder in his head—still somehow quieter than Wei Wuxian’s laughter—even while the real Nie Mingjue rests quietly on Nie Huaisang’s left shoulder, claws digging into priceless robes.

Lan Xichen steals himself as best as he can manage and says, “A-Yao.”

Jin Guangyao turns, blinking, before his face breaks into a dimpled smile. “Second Brother, Huaisang—I didn’t expect to see you here.” Jin Rulan and Jin Rusong stay hidden, keeping watch from just out of sight. “Come—the weather’s quite pleasant today, isn’t it?”

Nie Huaisang glides past him, fan waving lightly in front of his face, doll’s smile pasted onto his lips, a wall for Jin Guangyao and Jin Guangyao alone. His robes rustle as he sits on one side of him, voice smoothly saying, “It is, Third Brother. Ah—this scene is the kind I would paint. What do you think, Second Brother?”

Lan Xichen takes his cue, walking forward steadily and settling on the other side of Jin Guangyao, even as the crack makes its way down to his ankles, circling them again and again until he can no longer feel them at all. “I agree, Huaisang—it’s so picturesque.”

Jin Guangyao hums, and when it becomes apparent that none of them have anything else to say, he changes topics. Lan Xichen listens as he talks about watchtowers and pastries and vicious ghosts alike, all with the same easy smile and airy voice that makes Lan Xichen’s head spin and spin with horror and…and rage. This man sitting next to him, golden and immaculate, is a murderer, a committer of fratricide. This man’s small, delicate fingers played the tune that killed their sworn brother. This man, whose dimples used to be seared into his head—still are, always will be—is a monster.

“Second Brother,” Jin Guangyao says softly after a moment of silence, “you’re upset.” The ‘with me’ is unsaid but clearly heard.

Lan Xichen doesn’t quite look him in the eye, realizing that he was nowhere near as good of an actor as he’d previously thought. He drags his palm against his own wrist, working out the unceasing pain that resides there. “What makes you think that?”

“I can tell when you’re upset. I’ve always been able to.” Ever since the first time they met, when Meng Yao dragged him out of a river under a sky stretching to infinity, healing Lan Xichen when he hadn’t even realized he was truly hurt in the first place. With every smile, every star—Lan Xichen felt a little bit more whole.

Now, he just feels empty. “Do you really want to know why I’m upset?”

Jin Guangyao inclines his head. “I will do my best to right whatever I’ve done to disquiet you.”

“I doubt it will work.”

“Why?”

“Because you killed Eldest Brother,” Lan Xichen whispers.

Jin Guangyao pulls his arm back, face twisting as if he’s been burned. “What?” The contours of his voice break and sear the space between them, contorting the air until Lan Xichen can no longer see a thing.

“You—you said you’d play the Song of Clarity. A-Yao, how could you?” His voice rises. He’s done playing this—this game that Jin Guangyao has been hosting, this horror show that he’s running. His mind is bobbing precariously on the edge of fear and fury, tilting and tilting out of his own control, and he’s cracking and cracking and— “You killed him.”

“Second Brother, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jin Guangyao says, eyes wide. He reaches forward with the same hand he did that first day, when Lan Xichen tumbled into the river and couldn’t muster the energy to climb out. He reaches for Lan Xichen—to hold, to save, to cherish—but Lan Xichen slaps him away, sick.

Jin Guangyao stares at his hand, seared red under the flame of Lan Xichen’s strength, and retracts it. Swallows. Then, head bowed, whispers, “I didn’t kill Eldest Brother. He’s still in the banquet hall.”

“Don’t lie!” Fury overwhelms him, and Lan Xichen finally shatters. He draws his blade, ready to harm, ready to cut away until his vision has cleared and the evening sun disappears. Jin Guangyao, a veteran of war just like him, does the same.

Hensheng rests plainly in Jin Guangyao’s hand, but he does not move. He can—Lan Xichen has sparred with him, he knows he can—but he doesn’t move, not to defend himself, not to attack. He just says, “Second Brother, please.” Lan Xichen doesn’t listen. (He does not dare listen to him anymore, not after what he’s already done.) So, Lan Xichen swings his sword and—

It’s easier than he expects, because in that moment, he does not see Jin Guangyao—the man who sits in a tower of peonies, covering blooms of black and blue with robes so elegant that royalty feels poor looking at them—and he certainly does not see Meng Yao—the boy with a soft smile, floating in a river, staring up at a sky that they would both love with all their hearts, but never be able to reach, no matter how hard they tried. Instead, he sees a vase, delicate dragon scales coiling around its length, sitting in the corner of an ostentatious room. All he can think, all he can do—

Nothing gold can stay.

(They call pyrite “fools’ gold” because it glitters and glitters until you think you’re truly holding a fortune. The fool realizes too late that every bit of hope they’ve managed to squirrel away is more worthless than the piece of rock in their hands.)

Jin Guangyao falls to the gleam of a blade held in his sworn brother’s grasp. He falls on his back, staring up at the sky, and the sun finally sets, the new moon bathing them in an inky eternity.

Wei Wuxian stops laughing.

It’s Jin Rusong’s scream of, “Father!” that has Shuoyue slipping from Lan Xichen’s fingers as his world tilts and tumbles and whirls away until his head strikes the very ground Jin Guangyao’s lying on, the crack consuming him entirely, all of his shards. Through it all, he can hear. He hears his sworn brother, his A-Yao, whisper, “Don’t look, A-Song. Don’t look.”

Jin Rusong was never an obedient child. His wails echo over and over again in his mind—

His head hurts.

Nie Huaisang clutches onto him, eyes wide and frantic, and Lan Wangji and Nie Mingjue circle above him, swooping down to peck at his face, to try and rouse him, but Lan Xichen can’t summon the urge to do anything but stare blankly at his own hand in front of his face, stained an eternal red.

“Second Brother, get up,” Nie Huaisang begs. He places both his hands of Lan Xichen’s head—tenderly, lovingly—and Lan Xichen tries to pretend, tries to lift his head up, even when he knows he’s bound to fail yet again, but he can’t. Nie Huaisang floods him with spiritual energy as best as he can manage, but it’s not enough. He’s never been a good cultivator.

Lan Xichen will die in the arms of the man he loves.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spies Jin Rulan dragging Jin Rusong away from the corpse of his father. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the dark, ceaseless sky above, not a star in sight. This is all he is allowed to have after his failure: consequences and disappointment. Nie Huaisang’s form trembles over him.

And then—he sees something else. Feet stumble into the pavilion, a hand holding a jar of Emperor’s Smile, robes so dark they disappear into the night sky, ribbon the shade of Lan Xichen’s hands. Wei Wuxian gazes upon Lan Xichen, eyes narrowed in distaste, before taking another impossibly long swing from his jar.

“Oh, Zewu-Jun,” he says, “even in this perfect world I’ve made, you still manage to ruin it for yourself.” His gaze shifts, silver glinting in the night. “But wait, I suppose a good deal of the blame lies with Brother Nie.”

Nie Huaisang’s fingers curl into the locks of Lan Xichen’s hair, nails piercing his scalp until he’s sure his own blood is smearing them, but he can’t gather the energy to do anything about it. Nie Huaisang says, “Wei Wuxian—”

“Brother Wei,” Wei Wuxian corrects.

“You—you let this happen.”

Wei Wuxian scowls, drinking and drinking from his jar, mouth so wide that Lan Xichen’s stomach clenches, a half-hearted effort to throw up that his body no longer has the energy for. Even while he drinks, Wei Wuxian’s voice can be heard loud and clear. “Brother Nie, what are you talking about? You let this happen. I made things better.” He stops drinking, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, eyes steel daggers piercing right through them. “You and your dear Second Brother made things worse.”

Lan Xichen made things worse.

Nie Huaisang does not listen. “Jin Guangyao was a criminal,” he says. “He deserved to die.”

“Lianfang-Zun had no idea what was going on. This is a perfect world, Brother Nie. He was his best self. The Lianfang-Zun you had Zewu-Jun kill never laid a hand on Chifeng-Zun. He could not for the life of him understand why his dear sworn brother thought the things he did.”

Nie Huaisang stills, and Lan Xichen feels like he’s floating away, adrift on an endless sea of haze. “Even if he doesn’t remember, he did it.”

“Did he? Couldn’t you say that he was an entirely different man, with different experiences? If that’s the case, you’ve condemned an innocent.”

Nie Huaisang grips Lan Xichen tighter, the flow of spiritual energy ebbing and ceasing before desperately starting again, as erratic as its owner’s emotions. “What point are you trying to make?”

Wei Wuxian barks out a laugh—cold, condescending—and for a moment, Lan Xichen can easily picture him and Jiang Wanyin as siblings. “I’m not making any point, I’m just trying to understand how even after everything I did, you two still managed to ruin everything.”

“And what did you do?”

“I fixed it!” Wei Wuxian hisses. “I—I made things worse when I was alive, so now I fixed everything! I wasn’t dead! The Wen never went to war! My shijie is alive!”

“Really? I haven’t seen her.” The words are poison flowing off of Nie Huaisang’s tongue.

Wei Wuxian flinches before screaming, “She’s here! She’s—she’s like Chifeng-Zun and Hanguang-Jun! She’s here!”

“Why did you make her a bird?”

“I can’t just drag a soul back from the dead that cleanly!” Wei Wuxian answers. “That’s not how it works! This is the best I could do!”

“Hanguang-Jun isn’t dead!”

“Please—he’s as dead as he can be!”

At first Lan Xichen doesn’t understand, but then he’s dragged under by the vision of Lan Wangji, belly down in bed in the Jingshi, eyes staring dully into the distance, not hearing a single word that Lan Xichen says, desperate to get his brother back—

A single tear slips out of his eye, slithering down his cheek before shattering onto the floor. It pulls Nie Huaisang’s attention back to him so quickly that Wei Wuxian’s eyebrows scrunch in confusion. “Second Brother,” Nie Huaisang says hastily, “don’t worry! Don’t—I’m here, everything will be fine.”

Lan Xichen hasn’t gone far enough to believe him. 

Wei Wuxian stakes a single step forward, the very earth thundering up with him, but a dash of gold hits in front of them. It’s Jin Rulan, standing in between, shaking and terrified, but determination etched into his features. “S-Stop!” he yells. “Don’t hurt Zewu-Jun! Or I’ll get Uncle!”

Wei Wuxian scowls, and the sky above them churns and churns until Lan Xichen is dizzy. “I am your uncle!”

Jin Rusong tries desperately to drag his cousin away. “You’re not! I don’t know you! Don’t hurt Zewu-Jun! Make him better!”

“Don’t, Brother, don’t,” Jin Rusong begs, eyes darting frantically between his cousin, Wei Wuxian, and the cooling corpse of his father.

Wei Wuxian scowls—vicious, unyielding. “How can I make him better if you don’t let me go to him, huh?”

“F-Fix Hanguang-Jun!”

“Hanguang-Jun is dead! Do you have any idea how hard it is to manifest a lost soul—”

“Hanguang-Jun isn’t dead!” Jin Rulan yells, ripping his arm from his cousin’s grip. “Hanguang-Jun isn’t dead! Make him human!” Jin Rusong sobs and sobs for him to stop, but Jin Rulan stands his ground—clearly terrified out of his mind but bathed in gold, blood of the Jin running through his veins, assuring him that if he wants something enough, he can make it happen.

Wei Wuxian stares at him, eyes glowing the same shade of crimson that burned down Lan Xichen’s home, and he’s sure that if Jin Rulan were anyone else, he would have already suffered. “Fine!” Wei Wuxian roars, and then hurls his jar of Emperor’s Smile downward…only for it to disappear before it hits the ground.

It’s the sky that shatters, liquid shards falling all around them, wetting the pavilion. There’s a brilliant flash, the purple of Zidian, but Jiang Wanyin is nowhere in sight. Instead, in place of the little canary, stands Lan Wangji. It takes him less than a second to collapse to his knees and scramble over to Lan Xichen, desperately filling him with spiritual energy—and doing a much better job of it than Nie Huaisang.

With the two of them combined like this, Lan Xichen thinks he might survive a little longer. Nie Mingjue still circles overhead. Jin Rusong finally pulls Jin Rulan away, dragging him to the edge of the pavilion.

Wei Wuxian, face still curled into a snarl, says to Lan Wangji, “That won’t help!”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says. “Please, I—”

“Your precious brother won’t die!” Wei Wuxian snaps. “No one dies here unless I want them to! He won’t die so stop wasting your spiritual energy like idiots!”

The flows both stop abruptly. “…what?” Then, Nie Huaisang laughs, voice brittle and unconvinced as he once again begins administering the spiritual energy. “And why should we believe you?”

Wei Wuxian’s form flickers with rage. “Have I lied to you? My word is my word!”

“You—” Nie Huaisang cuts himself off, and Lan Xichen wants to pull him close, drag the pain and frustration off his face, but he can do nothing. “Hanguang-Jun, give Second Brother more spiritual energy.”

Lan Wangji doesn’t move, his eyes trained on Wei Wuxian. “Wei Ying said Brother will be fine.”

“And you believe him?” Nie Huaisang demands. “Hanguang-Jun, you’re deluding yourself! He’s a vengeful ghost!”

“Vengeful?” Wei Wuxian hisses. “How dare you! I did this to make things better! I did this for all of you!”

“You held us hostage, erased our memories, changed my brother’s form—”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, cutting Nie Huaisang off. “Wei Ying—please stop.”

Wei Wuxian sneers, “You think I’ll stop just because you ask me to? I’ll—I’ll just start over. I’ll do it better this time. I’ll fix things. You’re mad now but I’ll make things better! Then you won’t have anything to say!”

“Wei Ying, please. This is not right.”

“When have any of you cared about being right?” Wei Wuxian screams. “None of you know what’s right! All of you kill the innocent and then go after the man who tries to save them! I know what’s best for you! I helped Jiang Cheng and I’ll help all of you! So just shut up and—”

“You did this?” The voice is small and instantly recognizable. Lan Xichen’s eyes slide over, thick and viscous, to Lan Sizhui, who stands trembling off to the side. “You cursed everyone?”

“It’s a blessing!” Wei Wuxian screams, turning—only to freeze when his eyes land on the ten-year-old. “A-Yuan?” He steps forward.

Lan Sizhui steps back, fear held plainly on his face. “I-I don’t know who you are, but please let them go.”

The silence twists and turns between them, and Nie Huaisang clutches to Lan Xichen tighter, trembling, fingers digging harshly into him, breaths wheezed out in pain. Then, Wei Wuxian says, “A-Yuan, I’m helping them.”

“You’re hurting them. Please, Sir, let them go and leave us alone.”

Wei Wuxian’s form lurches, contorting this way and that until he burns Lan Xichen’s eyes with his brilliance, before finally settling down, resignation set deep into his features. “Okay,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry, A-Yuan. I’ll leave you all alone.” And then, he gives a single wave of his hand.

The last thing Lan Xichen hears before his vision whirls away into black and gold is his brother’s agonized cry of, “Wei Ying!”

For a few moments, there is endless eternity swimming all around him. There is no sky for two young boys to look at, nor forests for three to get lost in, just the swirling nothingness. Lan Xichen feels nothing.

He asks, “Huaisang?” He hopes, desperately and completely, and tries to suppress the part of his mind that whispers that no one will answer, he’s not that lucky—

Then, a voice says back, “Second Brother!”

If Lan Xichen could, he would cry. “Huaisang! Huaisang!” He’s scared. He must, he must… “Huaisang, I love y—”

.

.

.

The cultivation world will never remember the most peculiar discussion conference that it had ever experienced where, at once, the entirety of the banquet hall fell to silence. They all blinked blearily, as if waking up from a dream, but went back to their conversations soon enough.

As peculiar as it was, no one especially cared—not when the guards burst in and stared frantically into Jin Guangyao’s eyes. “Sect Leader Jin,” one said loudly, “Second Young Master Jin has been captured by Sect Leader Chu!”

Poor Jin Guangyao, whose own son was killed by a political rival, they thought.

Poor Nie Mingjue, who was killed by his own sworn brother, they later thought.

Poor Lan Xichen, who let it all happen without lifting a single finger.

(No one thought of Nie Huaisang, who simply told Lan Xichen, “I don’t know!” when asked if Jin Guangyao had moved. No one thought too much of Wei Wuxian, who seemed so utterly certain that Lan Wangji wouldn’t love him back.

And certainly no one thought of a little dead boy, once draped in gold, who flinched so violently away from Lan Xichen’s reaching hand that Sect Leader Chu could kill him cleanly.

No one thinks of the little things.)