Work Text:
Wei Wuxian lived in a world of roles, often determined by birth, which dictated everything from the obligations you had to the philosophies you upheld to which alliances you should or should not pursue. He knew that among the nobility of the cultivation world, he was difficult to place.
He had no bloodline tracing him back to any of the great sects, but his parents had been well-respected among them.
He had not been raised by those parents – not in any way he remembered at least – but the leader of a great sect had stepped up in their place, not his parent, exactly, but something more than a teacher.
He was accepted as a sibling by the Jiang heirs, yet was not seen as one. Attended conferences and lectures alongside sect heirs, but was not heir to one himself.
But still. He had always been resilient, creative, adaptive. He had carved out a place for himself before and could do so again. He had made a hiding spot, safe from the dogs and angry merchants who might find him on the streets. He had squeezed himself in as a middle child between two siblings, making his own space. He had taken inspiration from both the father he didn’t remember and the Gusu Lan brothers he had just met and created a future, a dream for himself, as one of the Twin Heroes of Yunmeng.
He had fashioned flute from a wasteland. Then a compass. Something like a home.
Sometimes he had help, other times all he had was himself and his own two hands.
He had even carved himself a path back to life, even though he couldn’t have predicted how the ritual would be used at the time.
Time and time again, Wei Wuxian carved a path. And he spent a lifetime and more trying to protect these little hollows from being encroached on, filled back in. Because if he got too comfortable, stopped working, stopped digging, he would always find himself once again alone, without a place to call home. Then he would have to start all over again.
But now, he mused, with Lan Zhan lying next to him in their bed, he realized: this was one place he hadn’t had to carve out for himself.
He had a place in Lan Zhan’s home, heart, life. Not because Wei Wuxian had worked for it to be so, but because they’d both wanted it to be so.
The guqin and flute, side by side on the table. The hollow space below the floor boards that Lan Zhan kept fully stocked with Emperor’s Smile. The letters that Wei Wuxian had sent during his travels, neatly arranged on a shelf. This, finally, was a place they’d carved out together. A place grown from love rather than necessity.
And that made all the difference.