Archive of Our Own

The first time Lan Wangji wakes up with a scar that is not his own, he is six.

It looks like a bite mark, the outline of teeth marking a half-moon on the top of his hand with a matching half underneath, on his palm.

It doesn’t hurt, but it tingles when he touches it.

The mark is warm.

Frightened, and not understanding what is happening to him, Lan Wangji searches out his brother.

He will never forget the look of horror on Lan Xichen’s face when he sees the scar, even though his expression is quickly schooled into something kinder – worry instead of fear.

“It’s called a soul mark,” Lan Xichen explains, hesitating as though he’s trying to figure out how to say what he wants in a way that Lan Wangji will understand, a crease between his brows. “Did you know that everyone has a soulmate, A-Zhan?”

Lan Wangji nods, eyes wide.

He knows about soulmates.

Mother and Father were soulmates; that’s what Mother had said before she died.

“Every person is born with half of a soul, A-Zhan, and somewhere in the world, someone has the other half of yours. They’re your soulmate,” she had told him.

“Are you and Father soulmates?” he had asked in reply, wide-eyed and innocent. He did not yet know the truth of his parent’s relationship, far too young to understand why he could only see his mother once a month and could barely remember his father’s face.

“Yes, A-Zhan, we are.”

He knows about soulmates.

“Well, when your soulmate hurts themselves, you’ll get a scar in the same place,” Lan Xichen explains. He pulls down the collar of his robes to reveal his shoulder, slashed through with a silvery scar. It looks like a sword wound; it looks like it hurt. “See? I have one too.”

“Do you know who they are?” Lan Wangji asks.

Lan Xichen shakes his head.

“Not yet,” he says. “Not everyone is lucky enough to find their soulmate.”

“Will I find mine?”

Lan Xichen’s smile seems sad.

“I’m sure you will,” he says, but he doesn’t make it sound like a good thing – something to be excited about.

He sounds resigned; sorrowful.

At six years old, Lan Wangji wonders why

By the time he turns fifteen, Lan Wangji’s body is littered with small scars – and very few of them are his own. Even at such a young age, his cultivation level is high enough that very few of the injuries he has gained actually scar.

And yet, he has many of them.

There’s the one on his inner wrist, several on the soles of his feet, and a particularly strange one on the back of his neck.

But perhaps most horrific are the long lashes of a whip that scar his back – silvery and delicate, far too pretty for the amount of pain that must have come along with them. They didn’t show up all at once, and over the years the number has steadily increased.

It feels like a punishment, like the sting of the discipline whip.

Just what sort of a person is his soulmate, that he is hurt so often and so brutally?

There was a time where he had worried that his soulmate might be a criminal, or might die before he even got a chance to meet them.

But things change, and there are more important things than finding the other half of his soul. He’s done fine for the past fifteen years; he is complete without them – whoever they might be – and their world is on the brink of war. It might not come for a few years yet, but he is his brother’s confidant, and he knows that things are escalating with the Wens. It started with the death of the leader of the Nie Sect, leaving his oldest son in charge – barely older than Lan Wangji himself – and he knows that both Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen fear that it’s only the beginning.

And then there are the new students starting classes in the Cloud Recesses.

They’re Lan Wangji’s age this year, and even though he can recite all of the material in his sleep, he’s expected to take classes alongside them.

So, he does.

That’s where he meets Wei Wuxian, chaos incarnate, who walks around the Cloud Recesses with none of the respect due to Lan Wangji’s home and a constant grin on his lips. For the first time in forever, the Cloud Recesses is filled with laughter, and Lan Wangji both despises and desires more in equal measures.

The same could be said about Wei Wuxian himself, if Lan Wangji is honest with himself – which he tries to do, after all, honesty to oneself as well as others is one of the rules that he has sworn to uphold.

As much as Wei Wuxian infuriates him, with his heretical theories and constant disregard to the rules, Lan Wangji finds himself slowly falling for the boy with stars in his eyes and music in his laughter. During the long days they spend together in the library – Wei Wuxian’s punishment, though it always feels more like Lan Wangji was the one being punished – Lan Wangji can never help the way his gaze always drifts to the other boy.

From the corner of his eye, he watches Wei Wuxian as he pretends to write out the rules – barely even disguising the way he is really drawing on a separate page, or crafting animals out of paper – fixated on the way his fingers hold his brush, or the way he sticks the tip of his tongue between his lips when he is concentrating.

He is beautiful and infuriating and everything Lan Wangji shouldn’t want but wants with every fibre of his body.

Lan Wangji finds himself wondering what would happen if Wei Wuxian were his soulmate instead of the faceless person covered in whip scars – because Lan Wangji has seen Wei Wuxian shirtless, and there are no whip scars, and so he is not his soulmate, no matter how much he wishes the opposite were true – or, even more forbidden, what would happen if he were to be with Wei Wuxian regardless of who his soulmate is.

After all, how could he ever feel about a stranger the way he feels about Wei Wuxian?

And then his home burns – the Cloud Recesses going up in smoke and flames – and once again any thoughts of love must be driven from his mind and replaced with a desperate struggle to survive, and to stay out of trouble lest the few remaining members of his Sect suffering as a result.

It’s in the Xuanwu cave that Lan Wangji has to confront his feelings. The pair of them move together like they’re made for it, a single being in two bodies – but that’s impossible, because they’re not soulmates – and for a single moment Lan Wangji allows himself to simply exist in that moment, because he might never get another like it.

Because if Wei Wuxian is not his soulmate, then it means the other boy’s soulmate is still out there, and he would never dream of taking away Wei Wuxian’s chance of happiness – even if it comes at the cost of his own.

It is only when Wei Wuxian is lying delirious and half-conscious that Lan Wangji lets himself confess his feelings in a way that would never allow himself to otherwise. In a desperate attempt to keep the love of his life (because he is, soulmate or no) awake, Lan Wangji plays the song he had composed in the secret hours of the night, when he is left alone with the moon and his solitude.

All of his hidden feelings are within the song, the ones he’ll never be able to say aloud, and it feels almost freeing to finally have them out there where he cannot take them back.

He is sure that Wei Wuxian does not hear the name of the song – lovingly named in hope for a future that will never be – but he has no regrets.

War is coming, after all, and there is no time for things such as regret.

---

Lotus Pier burns.

Lotus Pier burns, and Wei Wuxian goes missing.

At first, he thinks those three months he spends desperately searching for Wei Wuxian while their world goes to war are the worst he will ever experience.

He is wrong.

Even worse is when he finds Wei Wuxian, and any joy and relief he feels at seeing the other boy after so long are overshadowed by the sight of such a bright light turned to something dark.

The Wei Wuxian he finds in the waystation is not the Wei Wuxian he knows; he is broken, and there is a pain and suffering in those eyes tinged red the likes of which Lan Wangji has never seen before.

Something changed in the months Wei Wuxian was gone, he can see it in the hollow way Wei Wuxian laughs – so different to the laughter that had once filled the Cloud Recesses – and in the way he so casually controls resentful energy and dark spirits.

It’s wrong, and Lan Wangji’s heart breaks in two when he is sent away for suggesting as much.

He never stops trying, though. When he and Wei Wuxian share a battlefield, he offers to play for him – secret Lan techniques for soothing an aching soul and the other things that haunt a damaged mind – no matter how many times he is turned down. Even when he sees the sad looks his brother sends his way on the few occasions that their paths cross, even when he sees the pity in Jiang Wanyin’s eyes as he leads Wei Wuxian away.

They win the war, in the end, at great cost to both sides, and in the aftermath of battle Wei Wuxian changes even more – to a person that Lan Wangji almost doesn’t recognise.

Callous and irreverent, Wei Wuxian turns his back on their society and the rules that keep it running, and society turns their back on him in return. The things he had done during the war – desecrating the dead, practising forbidden cultivation techniques – are intolerable in times of peace, and when he defends the remnants of the Wen Sect, their world severs ties with him entirely.

Lan Wangji is one of the few people who refuses to turn from him entirely, and the day he spends in Yiling with Wei Wuxian and the small-yet-adorable Wen Yuan is one of the happiest of his life – regardless of how it ends.

But demonic cultivation is not sustainable, and despite the breakthroughs in creating an entirely new form of cultivation and bringing Wen Ning back as a sentient fierce corpse, Wei Wuxian slowly loses control. It culminates in the death of Jin Zixuan – a horrible accident, though everyone is content to pretend otherwise – and in the time that follows, Lan Wangji is forced to watch as the man he loves loses control and descends into madness.

Three thousand cultivators die in the ensuing massacre – because that’s what it is; none of them stood a chance against the grieving Yiling Patriarch and his Stygian Tiger Seal – and in the aftermath, it is Lan Wangji who scoops up his injured and delirious loved one and returns him to the Burial Mounds.

He knows he cannot keep him safe forever, knows that Wei Wuxian’s time is limited, but he also knows he’d never be able to live with himself if he didn’t at least try.

Even as Wei Wuxian tries to push him away, he stays.

Even as his brother begs for him to come home, he stays.

Even as he fights thirty-three members of his own sect, he does his best to stay.

He isn’t strong enough.

He is torn from Wei Wuxian, and dragged back to the Cloud Recesses.

There, he faces the consequences of his actions, and Lan Xichen sentences him to thirty-three lashes of the discipline whip – fatal for a normal man, near-fatal for one of Lan Wangji’s level of cultivation – and somehow, he manages to stay silent through the entire thing.

Even as his brother stands there, desperately trying to hold back tears that Lan Wangji has not seen since their home burned and their father died. It hurts more to see the pain on his face – knowing that he caused it – but he cannot bring himself to feel guilt for his actions.

It feels almost fitting; whip scars from protecting the one he loves to match the ones from his faceless soulmate.

He doesn’t even know if he’s gotten more soul marks in the past years – he has so many new ones of his own, and they all blur together – and he feels no guilt for forgetting his unwanted soulmate.

For all intents and purposes, Wei Wuxian is his soulmate – maybe not the other half of his soul, but certainly the other half of his heart – and that’s what really matters.

---

Lan Xichen is there for the siege of the Burial Mounds, is there when Wei Wuxian dies – torn apart by his own corrupted cultivation – and he is the one who brings the news to his recovering brother.

Seeing Lan Wangji so broken feels so very wrong, and it feels worse to know that he is the reason for it. Sure, he had no other choice but to punish Lan Wangji – a lesser cultivator could have been killed for such a crime – but he hates seeing his brother like this.

Lan Wangji is sitting up when he comes to the Jingshi, staring out the window with a single robe drawn over his shoulders.

“Wangji?” he asks hesitantly, though he does not expect a reply. His brother’s shoulders are stiff, and he could almost be mistaken for a statue, were it not for the red blood the seeps through the white of his robes. Lan Xichen will likely need to change the bandages before he leaves – something he could leave to a healer, but he does himself anyway, because it feels like penance. “Wangji, I have news.”

Silence.

Lan Xichen takes a deep breath, and wishes he had better news. Wishes his brother could have fallen for someone else – anyone else. Wishes he could have found his soulmate, because even someone who is constantly being whipped hard enough to scar has to be better than someone who is dead and did not love him in return.

Wishes things were different.

But wishes mean nothing in a world such as theirs.

“Wangji, Wei Wuxian is dead,” he says, sounding much calmer than he feels. His heart pounds in his chest, terrified of how Lan Wangji will react. “They say Jiang Wanyin did it, but…his power backlashed. Wangji, I’m so sorry. It tore him apart.”

Silence.

Then, so softly that Lan Xichen almost thinks he imagined it:

“I know.”

“I’m sorry?”

There is movement from where Lan Wangji sits, and with great effort Lan Wangji gets to his feet and turns around.

When Lan Xichen sees his brother, he lets out a grieved cry.

It begins as a jagged slash across his face, but as he lets the robe fall, Lan Xichen can see the extent of the scarring.

The scars completely cover his body, with barely any skin left unmarked. Harsh and violent, jagged and cruel, they wrap around his body like choking snakes. A mix of savage bites and claw marks and ripped flesh, Lan Xichen knows that if his brother had truly experienced the wounds that left such scars, he would be dead.

He knows, because he saw those wounds.

He knows, because he saw the one who bore them die.

Torn apart by his own fierce corpses.

Wei Wuxian.

“I know,” Lan Wangji says, and he sounds truly broken, and Lan Xichen knows why.

There are tears in Lan Wangji’s golden eyes, tears he hadn’t even shed as the whip tore through the skin of his back, and Lan Xichen feels his own tears welling up in response.

He never wanted this for his brother, never wanted him to end up like their parents.

He’d wanted to protect him, like a big brother should, but it is clear he failed.

“It was him,” Lan Wangji whispers hollowly. “This whole time, it was him.”

Wei Wuxian.

Lan Wangji’s soulmate.

---

Mere days after the new of Wei Wuxian’s death, Lan Wangji drags his broken and beaten body – riddled with brand new scars proving what he had never dared to hope – to the place he had last seen his love (his soulmate, oh gods, Wei Wuxian was his soulmate), and finds only blood and death.

A massacre.

He searches every corner of the last place Wei Wuxian had called home for any trace of the one he loved – loves, because not even death could make him stop loving Wei Wuxian – he does find something.

Wen Yuan.

The young boy he had met the only time he had seen Wei Wuxian before the siege, the small ball of love and sunlight that had clung to a stranger’s leg and cried out for his parents – the parents who were gone, and the parents who had chosen him after.

Wei Wuxian had looked at that small child with such love and adoration despite knowing him such a short among of time, and after an even shorter amount of time, Lan Wangji had fallen in love too.

Wen Yuan was a light amongst so much darkness, the hope that the future could be brighter.

Lan Wangji finds Wen Yuan hiding in a hollowed-out tree, unconscious and burning up from a fever. His body feels so small in Lan Wangji’s arms, shaking and far too warm for the freezing air around them, and he carries Wen Yuan all the way back to the Cloud Recesses, ignoring all of the pain in his back and the hot blood that seeps through his robes in favour of getting there as quickly as possible.

His brother is waiting in the Jingshi when he returns, worry written all over features so similar to his own.

“Wangji,” he says, barely managing to catch Lan Wangji as he falls off his sword. “You shouldn’t be up, your injuries…” he trails off when he sees the bundle in Lan Wangji’s arms. “Wangji, who is this?”

Lan Wangji looks up his brother, wordlessly begging for him to understand.

“Keep him safe,” he manages. The world’s starting to go blurry at the edges, and his head feels light. But he can’t pass out until he knows Wen Yuan will be safe while he’s unconscious.

“Who is he?” Lan Xichen repeats, taking Wen Yuan from Lan Wangji.

“A-Yuan.”

“Wangji-”

“Xiongzhang,” Lan Wangji pleads, and it’s getting harder and harder to make out the lines of his brother’s face – though he does see the moment that Lan Xichen caves, his desire to protect innocent lives overtaking his concern and curiosity for said innocent’s origins.

“Alright,” Lan Xichen sighs. “Let’s get you back inside,” he says, hefting Lan Yuan onto one hip and helping keep Lan Wangji upright with the other. “I’ll call for a healer, and take A-Yuan to the infirmary.”

“Thank you,” Lan Wangji says weakly.

Then he passes out.

---

It takes three years for Lan Wangji to heal enough to leave the Jingshi, made longer by his trip to the Burial Mounds. Moments of insanity and clarity, and one more scar that mars his chest.

He’d asked his brother, that drunken night when he had stolen the Wen brand and marked his own chest, why he hadn’t gotten a new soul mark that night in the Xuanwu Cave. Lan Xichen had explained that it was specifically crafted not to – a twisted kind of enchantment to tear soulmates apart, to make them doubt one another by marking one but not the other.

One more way for the Wens to control people.

Sometimes, Lan Wangji wonders what would have changed if he had gotten the Wen mark at the same time as Wei Wuxian, if he’d known he was his soulmate for certain. Would it have changed anything? Or would it have changed everything?

Lan Xichen tells him that it does nothing to dwell on what could have been, but on nights when he’s alone and unable to sleep because of the pain, he cannot help it.

Lan Xichen and Wen Yuan – now named Lan Yuan in the records, after being officially adopted into the clan – are the only things that get him through his confinement, that distract him from the pain in his back and in his heart.

It still hurts, knowing his soulmate is gone from this world, but it makes it just a little bit easier to know that some part of him is still alive, still out there, still good. Lan Yuan is a bright and cheerful child, though he remembers nothing of his life before coming to the Cloud Recesses.

Perhaps one day Lan Wangji will tell him where he comes from, about the people who sacrificed themselves for him, about Wei Wuxian and the Wen remnants. One day, when the name ‘Wen’ isn’t a death sentence, though no one knows how long that will take.

But not today.

Today, he officially leaves seclusion.

“You can wait, if you want,” Lan Xichen says quietly, but Lan Wangji shakes his head.

“I can’t stay locked up forever. He wouldn’t want that,” he replies.

“Alright. I trust your judgement.”

Lan Wangji looks at his brother.

“Thank you,” he says. “For everything.”

He doesn’t say what for, but he knows Lan Xichen knows what he means.

Thank you, for taking care of him.

For taking care of Lan Yuan, for adopting into their family and giving him a future.

For not judging him for loving Wei Wuxian, or telling people about his soul marks.

The same marks that are now hidden beneath even more layers of robes than he is used to, hidden beneath paint and cloth carefully and elegantly wrapped around his hands – a condition of him being allowed to leave the Cloud Recesses, so no one would know that a Lan had been soulmates with a criminal.

“I wish I could have done more,” Lan Xichen admits, and much like Lan Wangji does not need to elaborate, neither does his brother.

He can see the guilt in his brother’s eyes every time Lan Wangji moves too fast and winces when his scars pull, or when he has trouble sitting or standing. He doesn’t resent Lan Xichen for the punishment, he knows full well that he had no other choice. The punishment fit the crime; he had known there would be consequences for his actions, and had accepted them. Lan Xichen is free of blame.

Any fault is his own, any failings are his and his alone.

“Lan-zongzhu, Lan-gege!” Lan Yuan, clearly having grown impatient while waiting for his elders, calls out from where he’s waiting by the gate of the Jingshi, a basket of carrots and lettuce by his side. “Hurry up!”

“No yelling in the Cloud Recesses,” Lan Wangji says automatically, and Lan Yuan immediately looks guilty.

“Sorry, Lan-gege,” he says, head bowed in apology – but Lan Wangji can see the glimmer of laughter in his eyes. Even after three years in the Cloud Recesses, there’s still a part of Lan Yuan that is still Wen, that is still him, that hasn’t gone away.

Lan Wangji hopes it never does.

Lan Yuan is an excellent Lan, perfectly respectful and able to recite all of the rules by heart, but Lan Wangji hopes that he will never become a perfect Lan. He hopes that that spark will never go out, that the hint of a giggle even as he’s being admonished never goes away entirely.

Sometimes, even though he’s been in the Cloud Recesses for so much longer than he was in the Burial Mounds, Lan Yuan reminds Lan Wangji so much of Wei Wuxian, and he doesn’t want that to go away.

“We’re coming, A-Yuan,” Lan Xichen says, hiding a laugh behind his sleeve.

Then, he offers a hand to Lan Wangji, and leads his brother away from the past and into whatever future comes next.

---

The past catches up to him when he is night-hunting one night with some junior disciples, and crosses over into Yunmeng while tracking his prey.

“Hanguang-jun,” Jiang Wanyin says coolly, “you’re a long way from Gusu.”

Five years have passed, and they have been as kind to him as they have been cruel. The last time Lan Wangji saw Jiang Wanyin was at the Nightless City, the night Jiang Yanli had died, and Lan Wangji had betrayed everything he was raised to believe. He doesn’t look like a scared youth anymore; loss and pain have hardened him the same way it hardened everyone else of their generation. He knows what the other man has gone through, has heard the stories about how he rebuilt Lotus Pier and his sect while raising his infant nephew, and yet…

Lan Wangji finds he can barely stand to look at Jiang Wanyin, knowing the part he had in Wei Wuxian’s death.

Knowing how he’s been hunting and killing any demonic cultivator he can find, just like he would have killed Wei Wuxian.

Just the sight of him reminds Lan Wangji of everything he lost, everything he could have had. He looks at Jiang Wanyin and sees another man standing beside him, with a grin brighter than the sun and eyes like starlight. Can hear a voice calling Jiang Cheng and Lan Zhan, equal parts fond and exasperated.

It’s enough to make his heart ache.

“Sect Leader Jiang,” one of the Lan disciples – Lan Min – says, bowing respectfully in the void left by Lan Wangji’s silence.

Lan Wangji himself doesn’t know what to say to Jiang Wanyin, so he remains silent.

Watching.

Silently seething.

“What, you can’t speak for yourself?” Jiang Wanyin says, shooting daggers at Lan Wangji.

“Apologies to Sect Leader Jiang, we were hunting a Silver-scaled Wolf, we did not mean to cross into Yunmeng Jiang territory,” Lan Min says, apparently more than happy to speak for Lan Wangji – who is more than happy to continue letting her.

Jiang Wanyin just snorts at her derisively.

“Well, your prey has entered Yunmeng, so it is in the jurisdiction of the Jiang sect. The Gusu Lan sect is no longer needed.”

Irksome, but not unexpected.

Jiang Wanyin likes Lan Wangji about as much as Lan Wangji likes him.

“In that case, we shall leave the hunt in Sect Leader Jiang’s capable hands,” Lan Min says, bowing once more, before turning to Lan Wangji expectantly.

“Does the mighty Hanguang-jun have nothing to say to me?” Jiang Wanyin asks, derision dripping from his every pore.

“No,” Lan Wangji says simply, before turning around and leading his disciples away.

---

In the years that follow, Lan Wangji encounters Jiang Wanyin many times – both at official events and other hunts – and it never gets any easier.

The only consolation is that he can see echoes of his own suffering in Jiang Wanyin’s eyes, a reflection of his own loss.

He hopes it hurts even a fraction of the amount it hurts him.

Everything changes during a discussion conference held by the Nie Sect.

With the aid of Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao, Nie Huaisang – still struggling to hold his sect together in the wake of his brother’s untimely death – organises the entire conference within the walls of the Unclean Realm, along with several events for the disciples to participate in. Not unusual, and sure to go off without any issue with the help, and unfortunately, as much as Lan Wangji wishes he were elsewhere, he is expected to participate.

For his sect.

The only downside is that Jiang Wanyin is also there, as a leader of one of the major sects, and as a sect heir, Lan Wangji is expected to sit with him while overseeing the events.

Jin Ling is there too – eight years old and ever bit as pampered as his late father – which eases some of the pressure. The child is loud and rambunctious, but while he’s in the room, Jiang Wanyin’s attention never wanders. It’s clear how much he loves his nephew, and there’s a stabbing pain in Lan Wangji’s chest when he sees the two of them together.

He knows how badly Wei Wuxian wanted to meet his nephew, how much he loved Jiang Yanli and wanted the best for her son. How much he would have spoiled that child had he the time and means, how much he would have showered Jin Ling in love.

But Wei Wuxian is not there, and Jiang Wanyin is.

It stings, and makes him miss Lan Yuan even more than usual. His adopted son – called a ward of the Lan sect in public – had to be left back in Gusu with Lan Qiren and all the other disciples. At twelve years old, Lan Yuan isn’t old enough to accompany him, and as a perfect Lan disciple, he hadn’t even complained – though Lan Wangji could see that he wanted to go.

Such a good boy.

Wei Wuxian would be proud.

Lan Xichen is too busy supporting Nie Huaisang alongside Jin Guangyao to pay mind to Lan Wangji – though he shoots him the occasional look to make sure he’s okay – so he is left to his own devices and wishing he were anywhere but here. There are better places he could be, people he could be helping, but instead, he is stuck here engaging in pointless pleasantries with people he cannot stand.

He’s always hated being around people, never really understood them or even wanted to – not until Wei Wuxian, who had shattered every boundary he’d set up around himself to keep himself safe – and events like these have always been barely tolerable.

They’re far worse now.

Thankfully, everyone knows that the Second Jade of Lan is quiet and unapproachable (at least by the gentry; the common people have never had a problem with him, and they never will) and no one expects him to be anything else.

The saving grace of the entire conference is the hunt on the night before everyone is due to return to their respective homes, set in the dense woods that line the outskirts of Qinghe.

All participants are locked inside the grounds until all the prey has been killed – for the protection of the surrounding civilian villages – but the area is large and the prey plenty. Different prey to what Lan Wangji is used to, but it is a good distraction.

So long as he can stay away from Jiang Wanyin for the duration.

---

Lan Wangji is fighting a serpentine beast on the edge of a cliff beside a lake when it happens.

It’s an amateur mistake, something a junior disciple might make, not Lan Wangji, who has spent so many years fighting and hunting. Who has spent most of his life studying, practising, until every movement of his sword, every chord of his guqin is perfect.

There were two of them.

The species, one Lan Wangji had only read about in books and unique to Qinghe’s fauna, always travel in pairs.

So, while he is fighting one of them, desperately trying to parry the sharp stinger at the end of its tail, the other sneaks up behind him – silent, and deadly.

He doesn’t even realise what’s happening until there’s a stabbing pain in his back, burning as the stinger is withdrawn and the creature hisses in satisfaction.

With a cry, he spins around and manages to catch the end of the tail, slicing it clean off with Bichen, but the damage is already done. He can feel numbness spreading from the burning, and knows that without treatment it will burn through his entire body – searing his meridians and then his organs.

Poison.

Knowing he’s poisoned and prepared to defend its mate, the first beast makes to attack from the front, but there is the sound of a bow snapping and the creature rears back – roaring in pain from the arrow sticking out of its chest.

Lan Wangji tries to turn around to thank the archer, but he’s so very dizzy and he trips.

Tumbles.

Tries to regain his footing.

Fails.

Falls.

Then he hits the water and he’s drowning, unable to catch the breath that was knocked from him on impact. If he weren’t poisoned it would be so very easy to hold his breath and swim to the surface, but his limbs feels so heavy and his qi is sluggish and uncooperative.

Is he going to die here?

Not at the hands of a beast on a real night-hunt, protecting innocents, but during a game?

Wei Ying would laugh.

Wei Ying.

If he dies here, will he see Wei Ying?

He’s spent so long searching for him, playing Inquiry until his fingers bled without a single reply; is this how he finally finds his lost soulmate?

Is that all it takes?

He just has to leave everything else behind.

His sect, his uncle, his brother.

A-Yuan.

No.

That’s not what Wei Ying would want.

He’d want Lan Wangji to live.

But it’s so hard, his body is so heavy, and it would be so easy to just sink to into the bottomless depths of the lake. No more fighting, no more grieving, no more quiet and bitter rage.

Peace.

The poison weighs him down, the wound on his back seeping blood into the water, and Lan Wangji resigns himself to his fate.

But before it can fully consume him, there is an arm around his waist and a body pressed against his own, pulling him towards the surface. Vision blurry and lungs burning, Lan Wangji cannot tell who it is, not even when they break through the water and he finds himself gasping for fresh air.

Air does not come, not without resistance.

He’s no longer drowning, but he’s still poisoned.

Still dying.

“Oh, no you fucking don’t,” his rescuer curses. “You’re not fucking dying on me now.”

It’s too late.

Everything turns to black.

---

He wakes up to violet eyes and a scowl – and the last person he wants to see.

“Jiang Wanyin,” he croaks, his throat aching and scratchy, and he must be imaging the relief that briefly cancels out the scowl.

“Of course, it’s me,” Jiang Wanyin scoffs. “You fucking idiot, you’re damned lucky I was in the area, or you’d be fucking dead.”

It’s more words than Jiang Wanyin has said to him in years.

“You saved me,” he says.

A statement, not a question. Not quite.

“Of course, I did,” Jiang Wanyin replies, sounding offended. “How could I not, not when…” he trails off, and moves out of Lan Wangji’s line of sight.

Lan Wangji tries to get up, to follow him, but a hand on his chest keeps him lying down, while another wraps around his wrist and starts feeding him qi.

“Don’t move, you’ll just hurt yourself,” Jiang Wanyin says. “Fucking idiot, what were you thinking, taking on two Scorpion Lizards alone? It took six of my disciples to take a mated pair down back in Yunmeng, how the fuck were you supposed to defeat them by yourself?”

Jiang Wanyin’s voice is higher, getting higher with every admonishment. He sounds almost…hysterical.

“Jiang…zongzhu…”

“What!?” Jiang Wanyin almost roars.

Lan Wangji knows Jiang Wanyin has a temper as fierce as his mother’s, but he has never seen this side of him before, so panicked and…afraid? He hates the man, a feeling that will probably never go away, and he wishes for him to feel an ounce of the pain he’s felt all of these years but this…this feels wrong.

Wei Wuxian wouldn’t want this for his shidi.

Once more, Lan Wangji tries to sit up, and this time Jiang Wanyin lets him, with only an annoyed sigh. The pain in his back has faded to a dull throb – sore, but a million times better than that horrible numbness that promised only death. This pain promises healing, the same way his lashes had hurt before they faded to scars and a painful memory.

He’s sitting in a hastily made campsite, with a small fire and a series of talismans set up on the ground, in the middle of a clearing. Jiang Wanyin sits beside him but…he isn’t facing him. He’s looking away, even as he sends healing qi into his meridians.

Refusing to look at him.

“Jiang-zongzhu?” Lan Wangji asks hesitantly.

Damn it all, he has no idea what to do in a situation like this. It would be bad enough with anyone else, but this is Jiang Wanyin, the one who cost him everything.

“Why did you never say?” Jiang Wanyin asks softly, voice barely above a whisper. “You never said…”

“Never said what?”

Silence, for a moment, then movement.

Jiang Wanyin turns around, and for a moment, under the firelight, Lan Wangji thinks it looks like his face is melting.

But it isn’t.

It’s paint, just like on his own skin, partially washed off by the lake water.

And beneath it, like staring into a mirror, are patterns he knows by heart.

Scars.

Scars like he’s been torn apart then sewn back together, wounds that no human could survive. Wounds that he survived because he wasn’t the one who suffered them, just like Lan Wangji hadn’t suffered them.

Soul marks.

Absently, Lan Wangji reaches up to his face, and when he pulls his hand away paint is smeared on it. Jiang Wanyin can see everything, same as Lan Wangji.

Soul mates.

They were both…Wei Wuxian’s soul mates?

Two?

“Impossible,” Lan Wangji whispers, and Jiang Wanyin gives him a bitter look.

“Why? Because you were the only one allowed to love him?” he spits the words like venom, but Lan Wangji can see the uncertainty in his eyes.

“You knew,” Lan Wangji accuses.

“Of course, I knew! Right from the start, when my father brought him home with his hand still bleeding from a dog bite that matched the brand new scar on my hand,” Jiang Wanyin says. “But you! You never said a thing!”

“I didn’t know,” Lan Wangji answers, still reeling from the discovery.

Two soul mates.

Rare, but not unheard of.

Lan Xichen, his brother…he’d had two.

He’d lost one.

Lan Wangji never realised how much they had in common.

“How could you not know?!”

“The lashings,” Lan Wangji says. “They didn’t match.”

Jiang Wanyin blinks, and it’s so strange to see his soul marks reflected back to him like this. Wrong, but also…right.

Fitting.

“The lashings…” Jiang Wanyin murmurs, then his eyes widen. “No,” he gasps softly.

“Jiang-zongzhu?”

“Your back,” Jiang Wanyin says. “Show me your back. Now.”

Too surprised to not comply, Lan Wangji slips his ruined robes off of his shoulders and turns around.

“No,” Jiang Wanyin repeats. “Not you. Not you.”

Lan Wangji turns back to him, beginning to worry that maybe he’d been poisoned too, and that he’s delirious.

But Jiang Wanyin doesn’t look delirious. He looks lost, aggrieved, upset, disbelieving, and a million other things – but he looks perfectly sane.

“Eight years ago,” Jiang Wanyin says quietly, so quietly Lan Wangji almost doesn’t hear him. “Eight years ago, I woke up with new soul marks. He was already gone, but they still appeared.” He takes a deep breath, and Lan Wangji knows what he’s going to say, and he still wishes he were wrong, but- “Lashes. Thirty-three of them.”

Lan Wangji’s heart stutters.

“No,” he whispers, echoing Jiang Wanyin’s earlier denial.

A plea.

But nobody outside of the Lan sect knows about the lashes, all they know is that he’d gone into seclusion for three years. No one knows why.

Except for Jiang Wanyin.

Jiang Wanyin, who turns and slides down one side of his robes, revealing his shoulder and scars upon scars – newer, and oh-so-familiar.

His lashes.

The discipline whip.

“Show me your right wrist,” Jiang Wanyin orders, and once more – still unquestioning, still in shock – Lan Wangji holds out his wrist.

Jiang Wanyin grabs it forcefully and brings it towards his face, studying it for a moment before letting out a cry.

“This one,” he says, pointing to a tiny slash across Lan Wangji’s palm. He doesn’t even remember when it appeared, just one amongst many. Honestly, he’d thought it might actually be one of his own, from before his golden core had developed enough to help him heal without scarring.

Jiang Wanyin raises his own palm, and points to the exact same scar.

“I was eleven when I got this. I accidentally sliced it open on a sword, thinking it was a practice sword. I was too embarrassed to admit it, so it never healed right.”

“Two soulmates,” Lan Wangji says softly, disbelieving.

“How is that even possible?” Jiang Wanyin exclaims. “And why did it have to be you?”

Frustrated, he throws Lan Wangji’s hand aside, turning to face the fire.

Lan Wangji can see the way his shoulders shake.

He doesn’t know what to do.

He hates Jiang Wanyin, but now he knows…he’s not the only one who loved Wei Wuxian, is not the only one who had him as a soulmate.

And, somehow, he’s Lan Wangji’s soulmate too.

He has just one question, one he needs to know the answer to.

“Did he know?”

No need to say who ‘he’ is, they both know who it is; how could it be anyone else?

“No,” Jiang Wanyin says after a long pause.

“You never told him?”

“No,” A sigh. “He didn’t think of me like that.”

“You don’t know that.”

Lan Wangji saw the way Wei Wuxian was with Jiang Wanyin; permanently attached to his side when he wasn’t pestering Lan Wangji himself. Anyone with eyes could tell that Wei Wuxian loved Jiang Wanyin – anyone except for Jiang Wanyin apparently. When he was younger, Lan Wangji had been so jealous of the easy relationship the two had had, wishing things were as easy between himself and Wei Wuxian, he’d never expected that Jiang Wanyin couldn’t see how lucky he was.

It feels so very unfair.

Jiang Wanyin laughs, a hollow and bitter noise.

“I do,” he says. “He never believed that soulmate crap, said he wanted to choose who he fell in love with.” A pause, “He chose you, you know. Fucking idiot, didn’t realise he’d chosen his soulmate without even noticing.”

He chose you, you know.

“Go to sleep, Lan Wangji,” Jiang Wanyin says with a heavy sigh. “You still need to heal, and none of us are getting out of here till morning. I’ll keep watch.”

He falls silent, and Lan Wangji doesn’t mind.

He has a lot to think about.

---

---

Jiang Cheng spent his childhood hiding his soul marks.

He never wanted a soulmate, never asked for one, and he certainly had no interest in finding out who they were. He never believed in the idea that soulmates would be happy simply because they were soulmates; his parents were soul mates and they despised each other.

He never wanted to end up in a relationship like theirs.

And then he found his soulmate, and things changed.

Wei Wuxian was like sunlight; bright and glowing and utterly infuriating. He brought chaos and trouble with him wherever he went, and when he entered a room no one could look away. Jiang Cheng hated him and loved in equal parts, with a burning ferocity that had no rival. He would do anything for Wei Wuxian, and Wei Wuxian would do anything for him.

And when Wei Wuxian received his first lashing from Zidian, Jiang Cheng realised Wei Wuxian was his.

But Wei Wuxian didn’t want him.

Not like Jiang Cheng did.

Wei Wuxian wanted to choose his life partner for love, not because they were his soul mate. He’d seen Jiang Fengmian and Madam Yu, same as Jiang Cheng had, and came to the same conclusion. Except, unlike Jiang Cheng, he never changed his mind.

He saw his soul marks, and ignored them.

He didn’t want to know who they came from, because it wouldn’t change anything.

So, Jiang Cheng never told him.

He hid his marks; hid the lashings and the dog bite and every other little scar Wei Wuxian earned as he grew older. It wasn’t easy, but at least Wei Wuxian just accepted that Jiang Cheng was private about his body. He never looked too closely, anyway – that would involve him actually paying attention.

Especially once they went to the Cloud Recesses, and Wei Wuxian met Lan Wangji.

Lan Wangji.

The one Wei Wuxian chose.

Jiang Cheng thought he could be okay with that, thought that maybe it would be enough to know that the boy he loved would be happy – even if the frigid Lan Wangji didn’t seem to feel the same way in the beginning.

Then Lotus Pier burned, and they lost everything.

His parents were murdered, his sect fell, and Wei Wuxian went missing.

Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji had both searched for him, and when they finally found him – broken and lost and so much crueller – Jiang Cheng had felt a twisted sense of satisfaction that Wei Wuxian chose him over Lan Wangji, sending the other man away.

He took pleasure in the hurt look on Lan Wangji’s face – even as he felt the slightest bit of guilt and sympathy.

He knew what it was like to be the one turned away.

They won the war, but before they could even celebrate, everything went wrong.

Wei Wuxian chose the Wens over Jiang Cheng, and Jiang Cheng was left in the impossible position of desperately wanting to protect the man he loved from himself and from the consequences of his actions, while having absolutely no power to do so. Their sect was so small, still rebuilding, and he didn’t have the allies or standing needed to be able to stand with Wei Wuxian.

He never had the option; he had to think of the bigger picture.

As much as he loved Wei Wuxian, what was one man in the face of their entire sect?

He did what he could, he brought Jiang Yanli to Yiling so Wei Wuxian could see his shijie in her wedding dress – they’d all been planning her wedding since they were little, and it felt so very wrong for him to not be there on the day – and didn’t make a fuss when the name Wei Wuxian chose for their nephew was Rulan of all things.

Jiang Cheng did his best.

As always, it wasn’t enough.

Jin Zixuan died, murdered by the Ghost General (Jiang Cheng couldn’t think of him as Wen Ning, the gentle boy who he knew had helped save him life. If he did, it would change too much, and he didn’t know if he could live with it).

Jiang Yanli died in his arms, caught on a blade meant to Wei Wuxian.

Thousands of cultivators died, killed by an insane Yiling Patriarch, Wei Wuxian’s mind twisted into something unrecognisable by the resentful energy he had lost control of.

Wei Wuxian died, torn apart by his own fierce corpses while Jiang Cheng watched – every bite, every gash mirrored perfectly in his own skin.

Jiang Cheng was left alone, with only Jin Ling by his side. He rebuilt his home, and made sure his nephew would grow up every bit as loved and spoiled as his sister would have wanted.

It never hurt any less, living in a world without his soulmate. Living in a world where his soulmate had chosen everything except him, and died without even knowing how Jiang Cheng felt.

But life must go on.

It’s what Wei Wuxian would want, and if that’s the only thing Jiang Cheng can give him, then he will give him this.

He hopes that wherever he is, Wei Wuxian is, at the very least, at peace.

He’d been so angry at him in those first few years, his bitterness and anger all he had, but he got so very tired of it. He couldn’t raise A-Ling if he were too busy being angry at a ghost, at a man no longer there to hear his feelings. Couldn’t run a sect, couldn’t defend the people, if he was chasing after a dead man.

The anger never goes away, nor does the pain or grief, but he learns to live with it.

Especially when he realises that Lan Wangji is suffering as much as he is. Lan Wangji should be suffering, for everything he did. For taking Wei Wuxian away from him, for being so perfect that Jiang Cheng never even had a chance. Wei Wuxian had sacrificed their entire sect to defend Lan Wangji, and Lan Wangji is the only one left alive for Jiang Cheng to resent for it.

He should suffer.

But then, everything changes.

Because Wei Wuxian had two soulmates.

As does Jiang Cheng.

That initial shock, of seeing the same scars crossing Lan Wangji’s skin – both Wei Wuxian’s scars and his own – doesn’t wear off at all for the first week. Lan Wangji falls asleep after their conversation, still needing to heal after his attack, and Jiang Cheng makes sure he is gone long before he wakes up.

He doesn’t quite flee after the discussion conference is over, but it’s a close thing.

He cannot bear to be in the same room as him, still reeling from the revelation and terrified of what he might do, and so he runs.

Runs all the way back to Lotus Pier, Jin Ling in tow – much to Jin Guangyao’s annoyance – where he can have some space to think.

It’s not until he’s in the safety of his home, sitting on the edge of one of the furthest piers where everyone knows better than to go, that he allows himself to silently panic.

Lan Wangji was Wei Wuxian’s soulmate.

Lan Wangji is his soulmate.

He doesn’t know what to do.

No one even told him that this was a possibility.

He wishes Jiang Yanli was here, she’d know what to do. She always did, she’d sit him down and tell him it was all going to be okay.

But she isn’t here.

Eventually, he realises that this isn’t something he should be doing alone. He doesn’t want Lan Wangji, has no desire to be in a relationship with the man that Wei Wuxian chose over their entire sect, over Jiang Cheng, but Lan Wangji deserves to know that at the very least.

And people will eventually notice that their scars. They’ve both been lucky so far, but paint and robes with high collars and tight sleeves will only take them so far. One day, someone will find out and then everyone will know.

They need a plan for what they’ll do when that happens.

So, he writes a letter, and sends it to Gusu.

Three days later, Lan Wangji arrives.

Jiang Cheng invites him into his office, serves them both tea (his second best, because Lan Wangji doesn’t deserve his best), and sits down.

“We need to talk,” he says.

Disrespectful, no formalities, but Jiang Cheng’s insides are a mess and it’s all the fault of the man sitting in front of him, so he cannot bring himself to be ashamed of his behaviour.

“About?” Lan Wangji asks, blinking at him.

He looks so perfect and serene sitting there, like he’s feeling nothing like the storm of emotions that’s been raging inside Jiang Cheng for days. Like none of this is important to him, just another annoyance that he’d like to get over and done with as soon as possible.

Jiang Cheng grits his teeth to stop from saying something stupid, or yelling.

“Wei Wuxian,” he says. “The soul marks.”

“What is there to say?”

Jiang Cheng has never wanted to punch another person more in his life.

“People are eventually going to find out, you know,” Jiang Cheng says. “The marks are too extensive, we can’t hide them forever. We…” he trails off, letting out a frustrated sigh. He’s never been good at talking about his feelings, about the things he cares about, and it’s made worse by the fact that Lan Wangji is there. “I don’t like you,” he says, finally.

“I do not like you either,” Lan Wangji says, elegantly shrugging with one shoulder.

It’s aggravating, how such an attractive person can be such an asshole.

“At least we’re on the same page,” Jiang Cheng grumbles.

“But Wei Ying did,” Lan Wangji adds, and Jiang Cheng’s head snaps up, eyes searching Lan Wangji’s as if he could figure out what he meant through his blank expression alone.

“What do you mean?”

“That night. You said that he didn’t care about you, that he didn’t choose you.”

Jiang Cheng scoffs.

“He didn’t. Why would he, when he had you? You, for whom he would put our entire sect in danger for.”

At least Lan Wangji has the decency to look slightly guilty.

“He loved you,” Lan Wangji says, and Jiang Cheng snorts disbelievingly. Lan Wangji shakes his head. “Anyone could see it.”

Jiang Cheng doesn’t believe him, and in the end, it doesn’t matter either way.

“Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Wei Wuxian was a fool,” he says vehemently. “A fool to believe he could save everyone, and like a fool, he died for it. He’s gone.”

Lan Wangji lurches back like he’s been slapped.

Good.

“It would hurt him, to see you like this,” he says, hesitantly.

“Good! He should hurt! He left us alone, Lan Wangji! In the end, neither of us was good enough for him. Wei Wuxian, far too noble to do anything selfish, except he did the most selfish thing possible! He left! He died, and left us alone!”

He refuses to acknowledge the sting of tears.

“Wei Ying made many great sacrifices,” Lan Wangji says softly, voice gentle. “And many more bad choices. In the end…he was not himself.”

“You think I don’t know that!? You think I didn’t tell him, a hundred times, to stop? You think you’re the only one who worried enough to go to Yiling to try to bring him home?!”

Jiang Cheng is angry, and he relishes in that anger, because anger is easier than sadness and grief.

Maybe this is why his mother was always so angry; because it was easier than grieving her failed marriage, her lost love, and a husband that didn’t love her.

Lan Wangji just looks at him, sympathy clear in his eyes.

“It wasn’t his fault,” he says.

“And that’s the difference between us, isn’t it? You won’t blame him for anything! Even the things that were his choice!”

“When we were younger,” Lan Wangji begins, faltering a moment before continuing. “Wei Ying and I made an oath. An oath to always do what was right, to stand up for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves.” He pauses, “Wei Ying kept that oath right up until he died. How could I fault him for that?”

“What about what was right for his sect? What was right for the people who took him in and raised him? They needed him too! I needed him! I was his soulmate, and I needed him!”

He’s actively crying now, angry tears that he wipes away with a growl and only serve to make him angrier. What right does Wei Wuxian have to his tears now? It’s been eight years, he should be over this, but instead it’s all coming back, and he’ll be damned if it doesn’t feel as fresh as it did back then.

Eight years of resentment and pain, all bottled up and hidden away where he couldn’t reach it, come bubbling to the surface.

“I miss him too,” Lan Wangji says, voice gentle and understanding.

There’s the shine of tears in his eyes, too.

Because that’s what it all comes down to, isn’t it?

He misses Wei Wuxian.

Life without him is like living missing a limb, like a part of him was carved out when his soulmate died.

Jiang Cheng has so many regrets, has so much anger, but really…he just misses him.

“He was so stupid,” Jiang Cheng mutters. “Fucking idiot.”

“Mhn,” Lan Wangji agrees, and is that a smile, soft and sad but a smile nonetheless? Lan Wangji knows how to smile?

“And now he’s dead.”

“He is.”

Jiang Cheng sighs.

“And we are alive. We’re the ones who have to go on.”

“We are.”

“How do you do it? How do you live without him?” Jiang Cheng hates the way his voice cracks at the end.

“One day at a time,” Lan Wangji says simply. “And hope that one day, it might not hurt anymore. It’s what Wei Ying would want.”

“I know,” Jiang Cheng says. “I still don’t like you, you know. I don’t care if we’re soulmates. I don’t love you, and I don’t think that’s going to change. We’re not going to be married, and there’s no future for us like that. But…for him…” he trails off, words left unsaid and their meaning hanging in the air between them.

For him, for Wei Wuxian, they could at least try not to hate each other anymore.

It’s what he’d want.

Lan Wangji nods.

“For him.”