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Song Lan was familiar, by then, with his own reaction to cultivators wearing white. He stayed far away from anywhere the Lan sect was likely to wander, as a result. The man sitting cross legged at the side of the road, eyes closed in meditation, was an unpleasant shock.
The man had a pale sword, sheathed and resting against his knee. The sight had Song Lan reaching over his shoulder to touch the hilt of Frostwork, making sure it was still there. Blood was drying rusty on one shoulder of the man’s white robes. It had come from a head wound: his hair was matted flat against his scalp above his ear. The forehead ribbon of the Lan was stained bloody on one side.
Song Lan approached him, making sure to step on dry branches and kick small stones as he went.
The man’s eyes opened. His hand went to his sword. Song Lan saw that he was beautiful.
He took in Song Lan, the twin swords, the black veins on his neck. “Song-daozhang?” he asked quietly, and rose. Song Lan put out a hand to forestall him — the man was injured — but was ignored. “It is an honor to meet you,” he continued, and bowed, smooth and genuine.
To reply, Song Lan unsheathed his sword and scratched words into the dirt. You know of me, not I you.
“Ah,” the man said. “I am Lan Huan, courtesy name Xichen.”
Song Lan stepped back crisply. He walked apart from the world of sect politics, but he was aware of Zewu-jun, the first of the Twin Jades.
“Please don’t,” said Zewu-jun, before Song Lan could move to be polite. “I would lie about my name, if my conscience allowed it. Lan Xichen is enough.”
Lan Xichen then gracefully drew his sword and drew the characters for his name in the dirt next to where Song Lan had written, startlingly thoughtful about the extra information Song Lan needed to speak.
“My brother told me about you, but I didn’t expect us to cross paths,” Lan Xichen said.
Song Lan scratched again in the dirt: do you require aid?
A gentle shake of his head. “I am largely healed. But perhaps — you could walk with me to the next town?”
___
Lan Xichen’s robes stuck to his shoulder and itched as he walked side by side with the ever-silent Song Lan. It was a little bit like traveling with Wangji, although Lan Xichen was unsure if Song Lan had been quiet before the choice was taken from him. Guilt at requesting Song Lan’s company was already plucking at him. It was taking advantage, to ask a mute man to travel with him because he wouldn’t ask questions. But Lan Xichen was beyond heartsick and it made him selfish.
The dead man beside him was less corpse-like than Wen Ning. It was unsurprising; Wen Ning had lain dead for weeks before Wei Wuxian was able to call him back, while Song Lan had been stolen back to life before his body even had time to go cold. There was color in Song Lan’s lips. Like the Ghost General, his footsteps were silent, but where Wen Ning would have made no sound at all, Song Lan breathed as he walked, and even coughed lightly a few times.
Because Lan Xichen knew how to make polite conversation and Wangji did not care to, people assumed that the contrast between them meant Lan Xichen was chatty. Like many assumptions Lan Xichen allowed, it was useful but not accurate. The lack of conversation wasn’t what chafed at him about solitude.
They reached a small village, just large enough that there was a room to rent above the wine house and Lan Xichen wouldn’t need to impose on some poor family to sleep in their hayloft. They came to a stop in front of the wine house, its doors recently opened to welcome the scant evening crowd of local folk.
“Do you need to rest tonight?” Lan Xichen asked. Wei Wuxian’s fierce corpse army had needed no sleep — he didn’t know if it was the same for Song Lan.
He nodded.
“Allow me to pay for your room.”
A shake of his head, this time.
“It’s no trouble,” Lan Xichen insisted.
Song Lan shook his head again, then scuffed his boot against the ground. They were standing on stone cobbles, no good for writing messages. Still, he clearly had something to say.
He held out a hand, palm up, and looked significantly at Lan Xichen’s free hand, silently requesting that he copy the gesture. Lan Xichen complied, which made Song Lan smile, as subtle as Wangji and just as gratifying. Slowly, Song Lan moved to hover his fingertip over Lan Xichen’s palm. He mimed drawing, tracing through the air half an inch above Lan Xichen’s skin. Then he paused, searching Lan Xichen’s face. May I?
If Lan Xichen said yes, this would be the first time he’d been deliberately touched in — he couldn’t say. A long stretch of time.
“Of course,” he said, and lifted his palm to meet Song Lan partway, to communicate that the touch was welcome.
His fingers were cool. He raised his other hand to lightly circle Lan Xichen’s wrist to hold him in place as he traced words across Lan Xichen’s palm. A shimmer of spiritual energy accompanied the light pressure, helping to clarify the quick writing and somehow lending it inflection similar to speech.
Thank you. It’s easier this way.
Lan Xichen thought he might shake apart. The sensation of human touch ran up his arm and tingled across his scalp, electric and precious. He knew the reaction was improper, that this ought to be impersonal, but it felt unbearably good.
I was headed in this direction already. There’s no need to repay me for a few miles of pleasant company.
That wasn’t why Lan Xichen had asked; he thought Song Lan knew that, especially given the way Lan Xichen was trembling under his hand.
“Let me offer you some token nonetheless, Daozhang. Solitude is easier for some than others, and I’m grateful.”
We will eat dinner together.
___
Lan Xichen was thin. The bones of his wrist were almost sharp when Song Lan touched them. Cultivators who relied too heavily on fasting got like that sometimes. Song Lan was a firm proponent of eating a human amount, necessary or no. It was important to remember one had a body with needs, not just an immortal soul.
“Do you get hungry?” Lan Xichen asked as they sat at a table. Song Lan took the place beside him instead of across, where he would be easier to reach.
He nodded, so Lan Xichen offered his hand to hear what he’d like to order.
No meat. Soup is good if they have it.
“Of course.”
He waited to see if Lan Xichen would take his hand back. He was unsurprised when Lan Xichen didn’t.
He’d covered the bloody mess that had seeped all over his shoulder with an over-robe too warm for the season, and retied his forehead ribbon so the stained section was covered by his hair. “That will have to do,” he said before they walked into the wine house. Then, clearly still dissatisfied, he had raked his fingers through his stiff hair, wincing as it pulled at the injury underneath it.
In the evening light of the wine house, Lan Xichen didn’t look too ghoulish. To anyone not used to Lan-style tidiness, he was just another traveler in need of a bath. Song Lan looked at him and worried.
There were many questions he regretted not asking in his past.
What happened to you? Song Lan wrote on Lan Xichen’s palm.
Lan Xichen smiled, small and rueful. “I became distracted while riding the sword, then fell and struck my head.”
Cultivators such as Lan Xichen did not fall casually.
I am adept at keeping secrets, Song Lan said. Lan Xichen smiled again at the wry statement, but it didn’t reach his face beyond the turn of his lips. So: will you tell me why you were distracted?
“I would not burden you with that,” Lan Xichen said softly.
___
The absurd kindness of Song Lan’s offer to listen haunted Lan Xichen through the entirety of their meal. Why did he collapse out of the air? Because of a breeze on his skin that carried the faint redolence of flowers. Why now, and not any of the past three years of lonely wandering? Because the day before his fall he had purchased meat from a butcher and watched the man fit a cleaver into the joint of a lamb carcass, then strike the back of the blade with the heel of his hand to quarter the flesh.
It was another guilty relief when the proprietor said he only had one room. Song Lan and his firm, clean touches might stay a little longer.
“I would like very much to bathe,” Lan Xichen said, as he moved around their rented room. It was clean, plain but not threadbare, divided neatly into sections with privacy screens. Song Lan nodded and went to sit at the table, then unsheathed both swords to check for spots of rust. Snow Flick’s tip was marred with scratches from being dragged through the dirt, and Song Lan produced a leather-wrapped polishing kit, clearly well-used.
While taking care of Wangji during his recovery, Lan Xichen got into the habit of narrating his actions to the silent room, and he fell back into that pattern now.
“I’ll light some more lamps while they heat water downstairs,” he said.
“The room is still, I think I will open the windows.”
“I have a perfume sachet that will keep away the night insects, if I can only find it among my things.”
“These robes need airing out, I wonder where is best to hang them.”
He bathed until his hair no longer stuck to itself in crusty clumps. Loose strands wrapped themselves around his fingers as he washed himself, evidence that he’d kept his hair bound up without maintenance for too long. When he gingerly explored the wound on his scalp, he found it barely stung anymore, neatly scabbed over and unlikely to cause more trouble.
Once the water went cold, Lan Xichen rinsed the blood from the shoulder of his robe and hung it to dry along with his other laundry.
It would have been pleasant to have another excuse to speak and be touched with Song Lan, but he was absorbed in polishing the plainer of his two blades, and Lan Xichen knew better than to interrupt rituals of grief.
Besides — it was time to rest.
“I will take the bed farther from the door, if you don’t mind,” Lan Xichen said.
He left the lamps burning, as a courtesy to his companion.
___
Song Lan wasn’t sure if he retained the ability to sleep. He went through the motions most nights: lie down, breathe slowly, close his eyes. It was good to provide his body with the things it ought to need, even if it didn’t want them any longer. If he slipped into unconsciousness during those dark hours, he never noticed, but the time seemed to pass more quickly when he playacted at sleep, so perhaps he didn’t spend all of the hours wakeful.
With Lan Xichen in the room with him, Song Lan decided not to make the effort. Instead he sat upright on the empty bed and looked at the pale man lying neatly underneath the coverlet. His long-fingered hands were folded over his breast, graceful even in sleep. Clean he looked less haggard but more fragile. The translucent glow of his skin brought to mind the picture of feathers and the movement of wings.
It would take more than Song Lan could give to fix him. No matter how plainly he yearned to be touched. Song Lan’s hands could bring Zewu-jun perhaps halfway down to earth, but no farther.
Once, Song Lan had tamed the wildness out of a similarly beautiful cultivator.
He too had been ill-suited to solitude, half-mad with loneliness when Song Lan found him. He’d never been without a family before, and had failed to imagine the reality of exile before committing to his path.
It was easy to become everything to someone like that. Song Lan regarded Lan Xichen’s pinched face with eyes that weren’t his own. It was a transcendent feeling, being someone’s entire world, drunk on the presence of a twinned soul.
It would be easy. But the consequences were unkind.
___
Lan Xichen dreamt, as he did many nights, of testing the Song of Turmoil on himself. The music crawled under his skin with sticky fingers, plucking at his meridians and worming inside him to suckle at the light of his core. He’d had this dream enough times to know what came next. Nie Mingjue appeared before him, and Lan Xichen watched helplessly as he played poison into his brother.
Nie Mingjue shuddered and opened his warm brown eyes. “Why are you doing this?” he asked. “It hurts, Xichen.” Rivulets of blood followed the words, running down his chin.
“I didn’t know,” Lan Xichen swore, but his fingers played on.
“Who’s your informant in Nightless City?” Nie Mingjue asked.
“I can’t say.”
Nie Mingjue smiled. His teeth were outlined with blood. “I trust you.”
Huaisang’s disembodied voice began to scream: Da-ge, Da-ge it’s me, I’m here, Da-ge! The anguished sound filled the room, but the music was too loud to be drowned out, and Huaisang’s wails harmonized with the horrible cacophony and —
___
“I didn’t know!” Lan Xichen cried as he woke.
Song Lan left the window, where he had been staring into the dark trees and letting his thoughts wander.
“The unwitting are not guilty; the ignorant are not at fault,” Lan Xichen chanted in a low whisper. He sat upright, blanket clutched in his hands, rocking gently back and forth. “Not guilty,” he whispered one last time, then leaned over the edge of the bed and retched.
Nothing came up, although Lan Xichen dry-heaved again and again, his body trying to expel whatever horror had woken him.
“Sorry,” Lan Xichen said, when he was finished. “I disturbed you.”
He didn’t meet Song Lan’s eyes as he rose and walked to the washbasin. He rinsed his mouth and spat several times.
Then he returned to the bed and sat down heavily.
Song Lan sat next to him. Lan Xichen’s head turned to regard him with dull eyes. Slow but deliberate, Song Lan took his hand. He took the liberty of rubbing his thumb over the heel of Lan Xichen’s palm, and was answered by Lan Xichen’s eyelids sliding shut and a low, creaky exhale.
Do you really think your story is such a tragedy compared to mine that I won’t be able to bear it? Song Lan asked. I know about ignorance and fault.
“Can you feel the taint on my soul?” Lan Xichen asked eventually.
Song Lan pressed two fingers to Lan Xichen’s wrist, and indeed there was a kernel of black wrongness embedded like a canker in Lan Xichen’s core. It was difficult to sense at first, surrounded as it was by the brightness of Zewu-jun’s spiritual vigor, like an oyster creating a pearl around an intrusive piece of grit.
“I’ve tried everything, but it won’t burn clean. I worry that the only way to eliminate it would be to crush my core entirely, and that art died with its last practitioner during the Sunshot campaign.”
Who did this to you? Song Lan wrote.
Lan Xichen tipped his head back, exposing his neck. He swallowed before speaking. “I did it to myself.”
The vision of a pale throat yawning redly open struck Song Lan with such force that he moved without thinking, clapping a hand around Lan Xichen’s neck to stop the flow of blood from the terrible gash. He squeezed, trying to hold the split flesh together.
It wasn’t clean, the way a man with his throat cut died. His last breaths would foam pink as his lifeblood soaked the ground. He would convulse and choke in pain and despair, at the end.
But a dying man couldn’t have burst into motion the way Lan Xichen did, whipping away in a swirl of white robes, sword appearing with blue sparks and a jangle of bells.
Lan Xichen’s throat had been whole under Song Lan’s palm. He wasn’t drowning in his own fluids while Song Lan stood witless over his body.
“Why?” Lan Xichen gasped, sword half-drawn from its sheath. “Why would you —”
Song Lan gestured helplessly at his mute tongue and raised his empty palms.
There was a reason he avoided graceful cultivators who wore white. His mind was apt to tangle the past with the present. Was it a consequence of the nails Xue Yang drove into his head or the years of wandering with only his grief for company? Difficult to say.
Warily, Lan Xichen laid his sword on the ground and offered his hand to Song Lan.
I thought you were someone else. It has passed.
___
“Xue Yang?” Lan Xichen asked, making a guess. He understood flashbacks, phantom opportunities to take down the predator before it was too late.
He was surprised when Song Lan shook his head.
Xingchen.
Lan Xichen flinched. Had things between Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen been more complex and ugly than Wangji had made them seem? Lan Xichen wasn’t used to his little brother sugarcoating the past, but perhaps — Wangji yearned so badly to be part of a pair like the two wandering cultivators, one black and one white. For them to truly turn against each other would cut him deeply.
Song Lan’s grip on Lan Xichen’s neck hadn’t been a caress. The touch had been efficient, uncompromising. Neither violent nor tender. Purposeful.
He hoped — he’d assumed — that Song Lan forgave Xiao Xingchen for blindly killing him.
Lan Xichen feared that if he spoke what came out of his mouth would be an entreaty. Forgive Xiao Xingchen. Forgive the unknowing. Forgive me.
He let silence hang for a long time, waiting for Song Lan to explain, hand cradled palm-up in Song Lan’s, fingers curled slightly inwards over the lingering feeling of Xiao Xingchen’s name written on his skin.
At last Song Lan moved again. He cut his own throat in front of me, Song Lan wrote carefully.
Oh. Lan Xichen was caught unprepared for a second time. It wasn’t revenge at all.
“You could not have saved him,” Lan Xichen said softly.
I know.
“I’m sorry you didn’t have a chance to try.”
Song Lan nodded, then tugged on Lan Xichen’s wrist until he joined him sitting side-by-side on the bed.
Did you?
Lan Xichen blinked, and found himself caught by Song Lan’s still, flat gaze. Song Lan had asked three times to hear what Lan Xichen had suffered. It would not be too selfish to tell him. A shiver ran through him, at odds with the comfortable temperature of the room.
“Have a chance?” Lan Xichen asked. “I — “ How could he explain how he’d had so many, if he’d been willing to see them? Song Lan watched, ever-placid, and Lan Xichen saw his jaw clench, some decision made. Then he moved his hand from Lan Xichen’s wrist to his thigh, just above the knee, and let it lie there heavy and comforting.
It felt so good to simply be touched in a second place that Lan Xichen was light-headed. He realized he was cataloging every contact, like Song Lan’s hands were leaving ink on his skin. This year Lan Xichen had been touched on the wrist, the back of his hand, his palm, his knee. He would remember.
Lan Xichen was greedy for skin on skin, he could admit that. The space between his legs felt dead, but the rest of him sang for more, begged him to cling to something, press himself to someone clean whose touch could leach away all the poison eating Lan Xichen’s insides.
“I can’t say it like this,” Lan Xichen admitted. He meant: while you look at me. While his face was on display.
Song Lan touched the ties of Lan Xichen’s sleep shirt with steady hands, paused, then undid them. He didn’t help Lan Xichen shrug out of the sleeves, just waited quietly. The pants he left as they were. Lan Xichen was very aware that he was barefoot, which was absurd since he had gone to sleep with bare feet, and they were no more naked now than they had been before.
He let Song Lan tip him onto his side, felt his weight shift as he too stripped down to simple pants. Then Song Lan lay down behind him and pressed his chest against Lan Xichen’s bare back.
If he had steeled himself more fully, maybe Lan Xichen could have retained his composure. As it was he could only barely swallow down the hitch of his breath.
The embrace was cool, like being held by someone who had just climbed out of the cold spring and was still carrying its chill. Lan Xichen melted back into it, giving in, letting his body take what it wanted. Song Lan patted his rib cage a few times. The touch thudded through the hollow spaces in Lan Xichen’s chest like the deep sound of distant thunder.
They lay in silence while Lan Xichen adjusted to being held. Eventually, Song Lan lifted his hand and touched his fingertips to Lan Xichen’s lips, then made a little outwards flick; it was a clear direction that it was time for Lan Xichen to speak.
His tongue felt thick.
“You asked why I fell,” Lan Xichen said. “I don’t believe I meant to lose my balance. If I did take any action to jeopardize myself, I can’t remember deciding to do so. But also — you have noticed I am not well, Song-daozhang.”
Song Lan’s breath was even against Lan Xichen’s spine. Was it a habit of the mind that kept the dead body breathing when it didn’t need air? Or was Song Lan doing so for Lan Xichen’s comfort, to give him a closer facsimile of a living traveling companion? Too generous by far. When he heard what Lan Xichen was guilty of, Song Lan would be within his rights to shove him away.
In his heart, Lan Xichen didn’t believe that Song Lan would. It didn’t make the words easier.
“I will start from my worst crime,” Lan Xichen said. “The cruelest thing I’ve ever done was spend ten years happy and in love.”
It sounded absurd on its own. Lan Xichen laughed a little at himself; it came out of his throat small and wet.
“I spent those years aware I loved a murderer, or at least that he had orchestrated deaths, but I loved him too much to look deeper. I thought I had suffered enough with one sworn brother already dead and my younger brother made a wraith by grief. He had his reasons. I put it from my mind.”
Lan Xichen felt Song Lan stiffen behind him and tensed as well. He curled forward and away, bringing his knees up to relieve Song Lan from the onus of touching him. Song Lan breathed out loudly in annoyance and grabbed Lan Xichen by the waist, pulling him back flush with him again. A leg landed over Lan Xichen’s knees to keep him still.
“Ten years I was happy. And for ten years he had my sworn brother’s head on a shelf.”
When he looked back on this moment, Lan Xichen would mark this as the point where he started to cry.
“By my actions I helped him kill my first love, my dearest friend, then I protected him from the consequences,” he continued. “And then when it all came to light, I put a sword through his chest and killed him as well.”
Silent tears rolled down Lan Xichen’s face. He let them flow without blinking them away and thought of snow-melt trickling through the moss that grew thick and green over the cliff faces of Cloud Recesses.
You could not have saved him, Song Lan wrote on Lan Xichen’s bare shoulderblade, echoing Lan Xichen’s words back with ruthless precision.
“Saved which one?” Lan Xichen asked bitterly, then turned his face into the pillow to smother the horrible sob that followed.
___
As Lan Xichen shook in his arms, Song Lan told himself that Zewu-jun was a stranger. He was far-off as a star, even if his body was warm and vulnerable against Song Lan’s chest, still faintly tacky and sickly-smelling with fear-sweat from his nightmare.
Xiao Xingchen never cried for Song Lan like this. He destroyed himself too quickly for grief to turn into mourning. This was not him.
Nonetheless, Song Lan allowed Lan Xichen to weep, and indulged himself in memory. In Song Lan’s mind, the murderer Lan Xichen loved had Xue Yang’s face.
“I miss them,” Lan Xichen choked out between sobs. “Both — I miss both of them.”
Song Lan recoiled. Xingchen would not have — could not have — Song Lan’s memories of being freshly dead were veiled by the black haze of the Tiger Amulet’s baleful energy, but he remembered Xue Yang’s fingers going loose around the grocery basket as Xingchen’s sword slid into his side. Xingchen hadn’t hesitated. He would not have missed Xue Yang, had he lived.
“I’m sorry,” Lan Xichen said. “That wasn’t what you wanted to hear.”
No, Song Lan wrote.
He paused.
But I asked you to tell me.
Lan Xichen shuddered hard one last time, then wiped his eyes with the back of one elegant hand. Even though Song Lan had drawn away, their bodies still overlapped in a handful of places, and he could feel Lan Xichen’s muscles tense, clearly steeling himself to rise.
If Song Lan gave any indication, Lan Xichen would vanish from his arms in an instant. It seemed like an unsatisfying ending.
Why? he asked, instead of pushing Lan Xichen away.
“Oh,” Lan Xichen said, soft and unsteady. “I suppose — he was good to me. He was very good to me, day-to-day. And I was never lonely.”
Xue Yang must have been good to Xingchen at times. Xingchen hadn’t been a man who stayed in places he didn’t wish to be kept. Song Lan did hope Xingchen had been happy, those last three years of his life. Even, perhaps, if the person who made him so was a blight on the face of the earth.
Song Lan re-curled himself around Lan Xichen’s stiff spine and tried to imagine what Zewu-jun had looked like without the heavy cloak of sorrow bending his shoulders. Where his current beauty was heartrending, it must have been radiant while he flourished.
What a waste, Song Lan thought. There were already enough ruined things in the world. He spread one hand flat across Lan Xichen’s bare sternum, feeling the heartbeat there. Lan Xichen let out a small, miserable sigh and pressed back into Song Lan’s chest. His body relaxed, easy and trusting even in a stranger’s embrace — or maybe simply too used-up by injury and emotion to stay vigilant.
As Lan Xichen’s breathing evened out into sleep, Song Lan drummed this thumb against Lan Xichen’s chest a few times, thinking. At last he scraped together the words he wanted, and pressed them into Lan Xichen’s skin with a light touch.
It’s not your fault you couldn’t see.
___
Lan Xichen woke at the prescribed time, eyes gritty and feeling unrested. He wasn’t used to having a partner in bed, especially not one as still and wakeful as Song Lan, and he’d lost the knack of it. At some point during the wee hours of the morning he’d untangled himself and returned to the proper posture on his back with his hands folded over his chest. He was still naked down to the waist, but Song Lan had pulled the coverlet up to his shoulders.
The amount of undeserved kindness Lan Xichen had received since encountering Song Lan was both painfully welcome and uncomfortable. Too easily, Lan Xichen could become used to it until he relied on it the same way he had relied on music, or the grounding power of his sect’s restraint. Too easily, it could be taken away.
Song Lan quietly left while Lan Xichen was packing away his aired-out clothing. Briefly, Lan Xichen wondered if he was moving on without a goodbye. Then he saw that Song Lan had left one of his swords resting on the table, and Lan Xichen had to sit down in the middle of his task.
He returned with breakfast: warm sticky rice with date and walnut filling, wrapped in bamboo leaves.
After the meal was finished and Lan Xichen had washed his hands, he offered his palm to Song Lan.
“I am turning east,” he said.
Song Lan took his hand in both of his, his strong, blunt fingers making Lan Xichen’s own feel like they were made from the bones of birds.
I as well.
___