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“One! Two! One! Two!”
As his sword cuts through the air, Lan Zhan knows every pair of eyes in the courtyard is on him. Rows and rows of disciples practice combat. Their teachers have doubtlessly told them to follow the example of Lan Wangji, one of the Twin Jades, one who seems as cold as the Wall of Discipline itself.
“One! Two!”
Lan Zhan moves from one pose to the next. The other members of his clan follow. He is the text they copy. He holds every clear-cut rule in his mind and lets them guide his sword with perfect form. In the library he has written every word in ink; here, his sword carves the characters in the air.
He remains in the courtyard after the exercise. He stands still, knowing that even after the cultivators have dispersed, there are eyes. His father might watch from this or that window, his brother from an open doorway over there. There’s always someone.
The chatter of men headed from one lesson to another rises and fades in the halls and covered walkways.
Causing noise is prohibited, Lan Zhan thinks. Do not use frivolous words.
A bird takes flight, scared by a loud laugh. The sky is a fragile light blue. There are still many hours left in the day, hours as empty as the courtyard around him.
In Gusu the days blend together: Each morning finds Lan Zhan in the same way and each evening dies at the prescribed hour. Between these two chimes of a distant bell there is nothing but a white expanse that is sometimes the sky above, sometimes a piece of paper, a blank page. Time is measured in laws written, read and followed.
Eating more than three bowls is prohibited. Organize work properly. Diligence is the root. Do not give up on learning.
And though different hours bring different eyes, there is always someone watching.
Lan Zhan stands still. The tip of his sword rests on the ground as an idea comes to him: It would be easy to cut the bamboo by the walkway with just one stroke. He’d leave a deep mark, and for a moment he is tempted even as he sheathes his sword. He feels almost betrayed by the thought. Where did it come from? Before he can consider it, a better question to ask is why there is footsteps and laughter so close by. The answer comes soon enough: A group of too loud to be his own clan’s cultivators arrive. Newcomers that the Cloud Recesses has not yet shaped.
“No, no!” someone says, laughing, “I don’t want to go that way. That Lan Wangji is there. He’s scary!”
Another, more familiar voice insists “He’s not, he’s not!”
That voice almost makes Lan Zhan turn around. He does not, of course. He is disciplined, unlike the group on the covered walkway, those cheerful friends from Lotus Cove. He is unlike Wei Ying – and Lan Zhan admits to himself there is a strange enjoyment to be found in using that intimate name even just in his thoughts - who runs into the garden without a care in the world for the stones he disturbs. The same white robes that look like stiff folded paper on Lan Zhan are billowing freely around him, and Wei Ying’s eyes widen as he smiles, mouth shaping an oh.
“There you are!” he says, coming to a stop right in front of an expressionless Lan Zhan.
Lan Zhan says nothing, does nothing, stands there thinking of the watchful gaze of his father and brother and the very buildings of Gusu with their window-eyes and open doors.
Stones click-clack under Wei Yings shoes as he takes a step forward. He is always undaunted. He waits for a moment as if he thinks that Lan Zhan is going to speak. He never really lets go of that misplaced optimism, but Lan Zhan also finds that it never becomes a demand. Lan Zhan does not have to speak. There is just the knowledge that if he did speak, he’d see Wei Ying smile no matter what he said.
Wei Ying turns to his friend with the fan and yells: “Lan Zhan isn’t scary! He’s not a ghost or anything.”
Nie Huaisang does not look convinced.
“Not a ghost,” Wei Ying repeats. “Just a person. Lan Zhan, you should meet me in the woods later. There's something you've got to see. That's a yes, right? See you there in two hours, okay?”
They linger, those words, after Wei Ying has run off with his friends again.
Oh, there you are.
Just a person.
Lan Zhan’s body feels like a stone too heavy to move from the courtyard, but everything inside him definitely does not. His thoughts are quick, returning, again and again, to those words, because Wei Ying said just a person and Lan Zhan was a person then - which he might also have been up until this now, but before he did not know it, nobody had told him he could be. Nobody had seen him that way. That Lan Zhan could be someone who would want to walk away from the libraries and the Wall of Discipline.
Lan Zhan breathes out an oh, he didn’t know someone could look at him and see a person. Still, Wei Ying must have done just that.
So when they meet in the bamboo thicket and Wei Ying hands Lan Zhan a rabbit, he knows Wei Ying's gaze is unlike any other in Gusu. Wei Ying asks questions that are not meant to be answered by reciting what someone else wrote.
“Do you like the rabbits, Lan Zhan?”
There is another question asked not through words, but by the way his hands brush against Lan Zhan’s as if by accident and the way he tilts his head:
Do you like me, Lan Zhan?
It takes a while for Lan Zhan to find the answers. He stands there, tentatively stroking the white fur, and yes, it’s soft. It is pleasing to touch. He knows that his father and brother and all his clan’s ancestor-ghosts would like to answer for him. (Do not forget the grace of the forefathers, that's another rule). They would say that of course Lan Zhan does not like rabbits that break the rules and of course Lan Zhan thinks only virtuous thoughts, if he thinks anything at all, statue in the garden that he is. He should want to return to his duties, but he can admit to himself that he wants to remain in the grove until the last bell-chime and hold this rabbit for as long as it lets him while Wei Ying smiles.
That must mean that yes, he likes rabbits.
He nods.
“Do you want to share some liquor on the roof sometime, too?” Wei Ying teases. “What do you think, Lan Zhan?”
Wei Ying is standing on the roof in black robes. Below the world is burning and gasping with ashen winds while men of all clans kill each other. Lan Zhan has found hell and it is not on the palace steps where his people fight and die, but inside him when he looks at Wei Ying. Shadows coalesce around the Yiling Patriarch. He threatens to fade into the night sky’s dark backdrop until he is nothing but writhing smoke.
Lan Zhan, in contrast, is white against the black. Everyone could see him if they looked up between their attacks and desperate defences. And people have been looking at him for months. Some have even approached him to ask why he cares about the dangerous Wei Wuxian. Why he cares too much. After all, the rules say steer away from bad men, reject the crooked path, uphold the value of justice. They ask expecting calm dismissals, reassurance and silence. They get only the latter.
Lan Zhan knows they will never understand.
Why would he reach for Wei Ying? His hand outstretched becomes a white, blurry shape. Lan Zhan blinks away tears and cannot tell if they are from anger or something else. He reaches out because the choice is between Wei Ying and ceasing to be the person who found breath that day in Gusu. The alternative is nonexistence, a return to a ghost of a life. That is no choice at all. He’d rather have Wei Ying and every howling spirit that comes with him.
Look at me, Lan Zhan would have said, if there was not so much noise and music and so many cries and screams of agony. I see you now like you saw me then. You are more than the sum of what has been done to you and the sum of laws you have broken. Not the evil Yiling Patriarch, not a ghost, a person.
Wei Ying is his other half and he is Wei Ying’s. Not reaching him is death, and so Lan Zhan runs along the spine of the palace with his heart beating madly. This is the only thing he can do for Wei Ying at this point. Everyone else has done so much to inflict pain and cause regret and fear until finally this righteous, frightening anger shows on Wei Ying’s face. All of it flows into the music from his flute. It would make the bravest warrior want to turn around and run away.
Lan Zhan, of course, does not turn around.
There is a law on the Wall in Gusu: Believe sincerely.
He believes in Wei Ying when he leaps from the roof into the midst of the battle as it all descends into chaos, Wei Ying tries and fails to find his brother and sister. Lan Zhan tries and fails to find the right laws to follow. His sword finds bodies and shadows and cuts clean through both.
There is a law on the Wall in Gusu: Love all beings.
Up until the final moment of Wei Ying’s life Lan Zhan still believes, deep down, in what he was taught. Some part of him can not let go of the idea that balance will always be restored. It must be enough, he thinks, running to the cliff, to be two halves of a whole.
It turns out being two halves of a whole just makes one hand reaching and one hand slipping.
One voice begging and one voice asking the impossible.
One drop of blood following a body into the abyss.
One scream, echoing.
Silence.
Lan Zhan is nothing but the pain in his chest and the knowledge that he is just one person who cannot make up for the fact that entire armies cannot see Wei Ying, only the Yiling Patriarch in all his evil and wickedness.
So, the Patriarch must die.
The clans rejoice.
There is a law on the Wall in Gusu: Be mighty, and others will die for you.
Lan Zhan finds himself in the aftermath where everything is blurry again. He fights his way to a semblance of peace with his clan, a place of solitude where he can tend to his wounds. In the silent bamboo groves he keeps recalling past conversations, enjoying them more, and more bitterly, now that Wei Ying is gone. How wonderful it was to hear someone saying in so many ways you have a perspective worth hearing, so let’s have it; I bet you are more than they say you are, so let’s see it. What do you think?
There is a law: Do not grieve in excess.
Sitting in seclusion in a quiet house, Lan Zhan finds that no amount of grief is excessive. There can never be enough and thus never too much. It is as if he has become a ghost reliving a former life through memory to recall who he was. He does that without a Wall of Discipline to guide him.
He remembers Wei Ying's attempts at smuggling alcohol and his laughter when discovered. He sees such things different now. Of course alcohol is prohibited and another rule says do not laugh for no reason, but Lan Zhan himself had been Wei Ying's reason.
Time passes measured in days. Then months. Then years.
Honor good people. Uphold the value of justice. Believe sincerely.
Take care of the rabbits. Remember his song. Raise Wen Yuan.
One morning in the Dafan mountains, Lan Zhan is pierced by a sound. He hears a familiar voice from behind a stone mask. Not the same vocal chords, sure, but the same tone and the same warmth.
Lan Zhan knows exactly what he is looking at. This isn’t Mo Xuanyu, though it may be his body.
(He himself is once again completely Lan Zhan, not just his body's dull aching, the pain in his chest gone, his heart whole again -).
The stranger in the mask lowers his flute for a moment. Lan Zhan seizes his wrist.
He knows exactly what to say.
Oh. There you are.