The Fall of Icarus

Here is what they don’t tell you:

Icarus laughed as he fell.

Wei Wuxian laughed and laughed and laughed, with all the mania of a man who was doomed to fail, doomed to be seen as evil incarnate, doomed to fall and die a disgraceful death in this hypocritical world as long as he held any sort of power that this rotten world coveted for themselves without wanting to make the sacrifices needed to obtain such power.

He had laughed in Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao’s face; had taunted them and told them he’d return as a ghost to haunt them. He’s not sure he even returned to begin with. He’s not sure the creature that returned, the creature he became when he crawled out of hell on makeshift wings made of the notes of his dizi and the fury of the dead was even human to begin with. Still, his laughter had echoed through the seething air above the Burial Mounds before he’d fallen too far for Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao to hear how his laughter had turned to terrified screams.

Now, Wei Wuxian laughed, bitterly, angrily, manically, gesturing wildly at the men he sacrificed his now short lifespan and sanity to protect with his dizi. The same men who had turned on him, and then on each other for a fraction of the power he had sold his soul for.

Wei Wuxian laughed and laughed and laughed as he stepped back off the edge of the cliff, slipping through Lan Wangji’s fingers like the sunlight being snuffed out by the clouds. He fell through the air that echoed with Lan Wangji’s scream of his name.

Threw his head back and

yelled into the winds,

arms spread wide,

teeth bared to the world.

What no one mentions is that Wen Ning brought down a building when he overheard those devils mention his beloved master’s death. They don’t mention how hard he fought, how he punched through brick and mortar to claw his way to the pyre that held his sister. They don’t mention his cry of anguish, his calls for his Jiejie, for his Wei-Gonzi. They don’t mention how he’d snarled, eyes glowing red, teeth bared and bloody from ripping out the throats of those who tried to stop him.

They don’t mention how he’d shut himself down afterwards, long before the needles or that insidious song was ever used to try and control him. They don’t mention how everything they’d tried afterwards was to revive him, to turn him into the weapon they wanted him to be instead of the simple corpse he’d turned himself into.

They don’t mention how the last coherent words they’d ever heard from him was him asking to be put to rest alongside the last of his family and his beloved master. When they’d refused him even this, he’d turned his back on the world, declared it an enemy of his, and then closed his eyes. The dark veins on his neck reduced to thin tendrils, and his aura of danger abated until they were afraid they’d lost him. He never opened his eyes, even through the pain of the needles piercing his skull. He ignored their words, their songs, their resentful-energy-laced commands. They were not his master, and he would never serve them.

(There is a bitter triumph

in crashing when you should be

soaring.)

He’d fallen from grace, he knew. He’d been falling for a long time, from the moment he’d first set his eyes on the sun and moon. He was not supposed to fall in love. Not with the man who was the sun personified; not with the man who orbited the sun like a faithful moon. He was meant to be soaring the skies on the wings of his sect’s making; wings made from the rules on a stone wall, covered in the feathers of his elder’s expectations and held fast with the restraint of his forehead ribbon. He was meant to be above all this, to fly independently and not be weighed down by worldly concerns- like his name. Wangji.

He had never felt more alive than when his soaring had turned to falling; when he flew too close to that brilliant, magnificent sun and began to burn; when he crashed to earth in a flurry of broken wings and injured elders and painful words from a dying sun.

The wax scorched his skin,

ran blazing trails down his back,

his thighs, his ankles, his feet.

He would take as many lashes of the whip as he needed to. The agony of the very same elders that gave him his feathers now burning them off, one lash at a time, stole his very breath and sent molten pain throughout his body. He could not move. He would not move. He would not cry out.

“He will bear this pain, these scars, as proof that he had flown too close to the sun and melted his wings off”, they said.

No, he thought. He would bear this pain, knowing that it was nothing compared to the white-hot agony of a sun becoming a supernova that burned itself out too soon. The agony in his body keeping him locked in his bed for three years almost was enough to let him drown in his ocean of grief. The cry of the child, the child who was borne of sunshine and moonlight and the feathery wings of love and sacrifice, was the only thing tethering him to this world- to this awful, horrible world that had snuffed out the very sun that had saved it.

“Lan Wangji would never again make the mistake of soaring so high and so close to the sun,” they said.

No, he thought. He would never be foolish enough to construct his wings of the same materials again.

Feathers floated like prayers

past his fingers,

close enough to snatch back.

He played a song over and over and over again, a desperate prayer to the heavens to rebirth the sun and shine light onto him once again. Birthing a star takes long, they silently answered. Rebirthing one takes even longer. Especially when it burned itself out to nothingness. Your patience and devotion will be rewarded. The sun will shine on you once again.

Thirteen years later, the sun was reborn; hesitantly, reluctantly, believing it to be alone with no one to fly up to greet him like a long-lost friend, like a lover willing to burn for his warmth the same way he burned himself up to give them his light.

The sun rose, and the ever-faithful moon followed the rays of sunshine like a moth to the flame. Lan Wangji had never realised how much he missed the flames engulfing him as he’d fallen out of the sky until he was soaring too close to the sun once again; but this time he welcomed the flames, knowing that the very sun itself would weep to see him engulfed by the ocean and that the moon would catch him to prevent this.

He turned in midair and looked at the sun as he fell backwards into the strong, cold arms of Wen Ning as Wei Wuxian’s laugh once again echoed through the skies between them.

Death breathed burning kisses

against his shoulders,

where the wings joined the harness.

The moon was dead. Cold hands, black veins and black eyes. The moon was dead but no less luminous, illuminated by the reflection of the brilliant sun that once again filled the skies with life-giving warmth and sunshine. The moon stole both the sun and his Lan Zhan’s breath. They surged forward and-

The sun met the moon in a dazzling eclipse that was almost too beautiful to look at.

Cold hands lightly brushed over the patchwork of scars on Lan Wangji’s back. Wen Ning pressed a kiss on each one, a reverent and gentle acknowledgement of his devotion to the sun they both worshipped. The sun they both had fallen for. The sun they both had burned for. Wei Wuxian pressed a gentle kiss to the burn in the shape of the sun over Lan Wangji’s heart. Sandwiched between the two celestial bodies, he soared in a different way and allowed himself once again to burn, burn, burn.

This time the sun and the moon caught him before he could fall.

The sun painted everything

in shades of gold.

He stood tall and proud against the purple whip fuelled by what was once his own golden core. Let his brother scream and be mad at him. Let him rage and destroy. He was the sun that arose out of the mountain and shot the previous sun out of the sky. It was only right for him to take the place of the previous sun, for people to try and shoot him out of the sky like they’d done with the previous one.

The moon and the man who’d burn for the sun with a smile in his eyes caught the sun as he was whipped out of the sky.

And then Wen Ning stood tall and proud and spoke of the golden rays of the sun that he’d held in his very hands, the same sun that he’d transplanted into the body of the man in front of him. He spoke of the burning warmth of the core he’d gently protected between his palms, as precious as the man who’d donated it, before sliding it into a sunless cavity as his sister directed the rays to where they’d needed to be. He spoke of the mighty sun shot down not once, publically, but how the sun personified had been an empty husk of a person even while drawing the bow. He spoke of the bright golden light that he still sometimes saw behind closed eyes; the shine in the sun’s eyes slowly fading as his core faded; the screams of a sun at the start of its supernova phase that still echoed in his ears.

The man who flew too close to the sun he so loved and the man who touched the very core of that same sun stood tall and proud, protecting their beloved sun, the one who brought light and life into their world, and refused to let anyone snuff out the sunshine again.

(There is a certain beauty

in setting the world on fire

and watching from the centre

of the flames.)

Wen Ning. Lan Wangji. Wei Wuxian. The two men who flew too close to the sun and crashed and burned because of it, and the sun they both would gladly burn for. One man turned into the moon to be with his sun for all of eternity, and the other built wings strong enough that no matter how bright, how brilliant, how scorching hot the sun ever shone or how close to the sun he flew, his new wings would never start to melt and fall apart.

Around them, the world burned. The flames never bothered either of them. They stood atop the mountain of death, hand in hand, and shone brightly enough to set fire to the world; powerfully enough that not a single person dared to even attempt to shoot the sun down again. Two celestial beings and the star they’d adopted, pushing aside the clouds to let their sunshine fall onto the darkest parts of the world, the parts that the clouds wished would remain hidden. One by one, the rays of sunshine illuminating the world’s shadows one by one until the rot and hypocrisy were burned out as harshly as the wax wings of Icarus had once melted.

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