Chapter Text
Lan Xichen, at nineteen, had been crowned most eligible bachelor of his generation, a desirable match for anyone looking to marry off their child. It was not an undeserved title. His face was elegant, his silhouette graceful but full of virile strength thanks to wide shoulders. Aside from his looks, he was a reputed scholar in spite of his youth, a cultivator of outstanding skill, a musician whose only equal was his own brother, and a swordsman beyond compare. Not only that, but his pleasant personality made it easy for him to get along with anyone, and he was renowned for being a most respectful youth who always deferred to his elders, and who put his duty before his personal pleasure.
For all these reasons and more, it was widely accepted that he would marry well, and that he would marry soon.
It would have come as a surprise to many to know that by the age of thirty-two Lan Xichen was still unmarried, if only anyone had bothered to think about him anymore. These thirteen years however had not been kind to him, and he had slowly faded into as much obscurity as could be achieved for the heir of a great sect. While his younger brother made a name for himself in war, Lan Xichen had all but retired from the world, refusing any contact with others save his uncle whom he helped with administrative duties, since his own father had entered a far more severe seclusion and couldn’t deal with daily affairs.
In thirteen years, Lan Xichen had only twice left the Cloud Recesses. The first was when Wei Wuxian had been believed lost during the war between Qinghe Nie and Qishan Wen, and Lan Xichen had gone to console his heartbroken brother. When Wei Wuxian had returned, changed but very much alive, Lan Xichen had understood his presence to be unnecessary and retreated to his home.
Then, some years later, as that war drew to an end, Lan Xichen had again returned into public life for an instant, this time to defend his brother's choice to move to Yiling with the man he had chosen to marry, even though the rest of the Lan sect greatly disapproved. When his uncle and father had given in to Lan Wangji's caprice, Lan Xichen again returned to his lonely meditation, and was little missed, except by his brother who frequently invited him to visit his family.
Those invitations were politely rejected one after the other for the two years that followed. Lan Xichen, though isolated from the world, was too busy to leave the Cloud Recesses, his uncle couldn't be left to deal alone with their sect. Besides, with the war between the Nie and the Wen still raging, with Lan Xichen now the sole possible heir to Gusu Lan, it would have been impossible for him to go so near the conflict, or to give the impression that Gusu was anything but neutral, as his father had declared they should be.
But the war eventually ended, with Qinghe Nie triumphantly overcoming their old enemies. Lan Xichen, who in private had never been as neutral as his father wished they all should be, and who would have gladly ran away alongside his brother to fight for a just cause, secretly rejoiced of that outcome. Still when yet another letter of invitation came from Yiling, Lan Xichen would have declined again, had his uncle not argued in favour of him going. Although they had to condemn Lan Wangji in public, and had even claimed that he had been excluded from Gusu Lan, he was still a beloved brother and nephew, and it was time for a public reconciliation.
Lan Xichen still hesitated to go. Not out of lack of affection for his brother, but because it had been so long since he was among strangers. To this Lan Qiren offered a simple solution, and assigned a few juniors to go with him. Besides, he said, he would only see Lan Wangji, who loved him so well, and Wei Wuxian, who would fill the conversation so much that Lan Xichen wouldn't need to say a word. Everyone else who lived in Yiling would only greet him once upon his arrival, then leave him alone out of respect for his rank. It would be Lan Xichen's own choice whether to approach those people or not, and Lan Qiren appeared quite certain that he knew what his nephew would choose.
Lan Xichen had always prided himself on being courteous and polite even towards those some might have deemed his inferiors, precisely because he didn’t like to think in terms of superiors and inferiors.
So Lan Xichen left for Yiling, accompanied by some handpicked young cousins who would be most certain to behave well. How Lan Jingyi could be counted in that category was something of a mystery to Lan Xichen, but he did like the young man immensely, and knew Lan Jingyi to have an easier time getting along with strangers than was typical in their sect. If one needed an ice breaker, then Lan Jingyi was the person to go to. He had been visiting Lan Xichen for years during his seclusion, having discovered his house by accident after attempting to run away due to an argument with his parents, and in spite of their age difference, Lan Xichen had grown to see him as a friend. It was difficult not to see Lan Jingyi as a friend. He tended to leave people very little choice.
The journey to Yiling was a short flight, but a pleasant one. After so long without much occasion to go anywhere, Lan Xichen enjoyed the chance to stand on his sword again, to feel the wind on his skin, to see landscapes extend under his feet. It was something he hadn’t even realised he’d missed, and Lan Jingyi soon remarked that he’d never seen his older cousin smile in such a manner.
Yiling, when they arrived there, was a rather desolated place. It had suffered much from the recent war, having changed hands several times in the decade-long conflict, and any civilians who could leave had fled long ago, leaving behind only those who had nowhere else to go. It certainly wasn't where Lan Xichen would have wished to establish himself and build a family, but Wei Wuxian had apparently made a vow to see that city and the dreaded Burial Mounds nearby returned to a better state, and Lan Wangji was too besotted to oppose that plan.
In their defence, Lan Xichen had to admit that some progress had been achieved toward that goal, more so than he would have expected. Two years earlier, when he had come to Yiling to defend his brother's choice, he had stayed with the young couple near the Burial Mounds where nothing grew and every inch of dirt stank of rot. While still far from a healthy place, there were a few fields now, and as they waited for their hosts to greet them at the foot of the mountain, Lan Xichen noticed, among the decomposition and fertiliser, the fresh notes of a few wild flowers.
Just like their home, Lan Wangji and his husband had improved in health during those two years. Wei Wuxian no longer looked so gaunt as he had done once, Lan Wangji had never seemed so relaxed in his entire life. They were both delighted to have guests, and more so for one of those guests to be Lan Xichen, whom his brother had missed a great deal.
"And the children will be so happy to meet their uncle!" Wei Wuxian exclaimed while guiding the Lans toward their home on the mountain. "You might remember A-Yuan, he was there last time. He's grown a lot since then, a real little gentleman… he doesn't get to see a lot of people his age, he'll be thrilled to meet his cousins. And we also have little A-Qiu now. We adopted her just a few months back. Her health isn't the best, but she's a sweet baby, you'll love her."
"What's wrong with her health?" Lan Xichen asked.
"Less than what used to be wrong," Wei Wuxian replied with a slight grimace. "She'd been abandoned in the Burial Mounds in the last weeks of the war. Our poor little A-Qiu was cursed at birth, but we've managed to lift that, and now it's just a matter of helping her heal from the lingering effects. In a few years, nobody will even know there was something wrong with her, but until then she needs a lot of care."
"Wen Qing lives here with you, does she not? I am sure your daughter is in very good hands."
How Wen Qing, a great favourite of Wen Ruohan, had come to live with one of the men who had brought down her uncle, Lan Xichen did not know. It had been hinted to him that the matter could not be discussed through letters, and his last visit had been too short. But it was his understanding that Qinghe Nie had given its blessing to this arrangement, and Lan Xichen suspected she must have done them a great service once.
Upon arriving to his brother’s home in the mountain, Lan Xichen got to properly meet Wen Qing, as well as a few others. There was her brother Wen Ning, a sweet young man who had suffered great injuries during the war, the people of her clan who were mostly older people, and most importantly there was Wen Yuan and Lan Qiu, the children Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian had adopted. Although it was perhaps a little unfair to call Wen Yuan a child when he was already sixteen, just the same as Lan Jingyi. And while the adults were busy cooing over little Lan Qiu, Lan Jingyi had grabbed Wen Yuan, declared him his cousin by alliance, and proceeded to make friends with him and to ensure the other Lan juniors who had come treated him as one of them.
Considering there didn’t appear to be anyone his age among the people of the Burial Mounds, Wen Yuan appeared very pleased to be so welcomed by the others. Lan Xichen, who knew well how it felt to be lonely at that age, decided that for this reason alone it had been the right choice to come there. He thought, also, that he would have to talk to his uncle about inviting this nephew of theirs to come to the Cloud Recesses sometimes. Some in Gusu Lan had never quite forgiven Lan Wangji’s choice to abandon their sect, but meeting his son, a polite and soft spoken young man who embodied so many Lan virtues in spite of being raised so far from Gusu, would surely be a good step toward a reconciliation.
That first day, Wei Wuxian insisted on showing everyone the progress he had already managed in his efforts to rehabilitate the Burial Mounds. Most of his effort was focused on getting plants to grow on that barren land, as Wei Wuxian was convinced it was the best way to purify the ground. He was trying different methods, different types of plants, from wild flowers to mushrooms to crops, and kept detailed notes on the results he was seeing so far, though by his own admission it would be many more years before any of this made a real difference.
When the various fields were not in need of immediate attention, everyone was also working on gathering the many human remains that littered the Burial Mounds and give them what this place, in spite of its name, had never granted them: a decent burial. Usually it was enough to calm their spirits, at least once a proper ceremony for it had been performed. Sometimes they encountered stronger, more resentful souls, and more forceful methods had to be used to suppress those. Recently they’d found a part of the mountain where a particularly difficult group of fierce corpses resided, and those they hadn’t yet managed to deal with, though they were expecting help to come to them soon.
“We’re not so cut off from the world as it looks,” Wei Wuxian explained. “Jiang Cheng comes visiting sometimes, and Shijie too, with her son. A-Yuan and Jin Ling get along fine, right?” Wen Yuan smiled and nodded, his cheeks a little pinker. Wei Wuxian grinned, and leaned closer to Lan Xichen, whispering: “They more than get along. I think they’re a little sweet on each other. Well, they’re the right age for it. Not that you ever went through all that, right?”
Lan Xichen smiled, and merely agreed that youth was a good time to fall in love. As to whether or not he personally ever did, it did not surprise him that Wei Wuxian would be mistaken.
They had barely interacted when they were younger, even though Wei Wuxian had spent a few months in the Cloud Recesses, thirteen years earlier. But most of that time had been spent teasing Lan Wangji, thus accidentally seducing him, before the war had broken out between Qinghe Nie and Qishan Wen. Wei Wuxian had been close friends with Nie Huaisang whose brother led the Nie, and offered to accompany him home, only to stay in Qinghe and help with the war. He’d apparently been outraged that none of the other sects would stand against Wen Ruohan.
Even without all this, it was unlikely that Wei Wuxian would have noticed the events of Lan Xichen’s private life. His own brother had not been informed of what had unfolded at that time. Aside from Lan Xichen and the other party involved, only Qingheng-Jun and Lan Qiren had ever been told of a certain marriage offer, and it was one they had both firmly opposed, though for different reasons. The first had thought the connection beneath them. The second had feared that Lan Xichen was too young, that the union would be unbalanced, that he was rushing into things and would only end up as unhappy as his father. Lan Xichen, deeply in love but just as deeply terrified of being a disappointment to his family, had turned down the proposal.
Whenever his thoughts strayed that way, Lan Xichen told himself that it had been for the best. If he hadn’t been determined enough to fight against his family’s expectations, the way his brother had, then it couldn’t have been true love. Besides, with the tense political situation that had followed, with the war, with everything else, it would have brought on too many problems, for too many people. It was just better that he had remained a bachelor. It was how he could best serve his sect, in the end.
So Lan Xichen, with practised ease, pushed away the pain that always came with that reminder of his youthful failure, and asked Wei Wuxian more questions about his experiments. It was a topic on which his brother-in-law could talk on and on for hours. Soon enough, Lan Xichen was too busy trying to understand the theories being tested to cry over his broken heart.