Chapter Text
"B-Brother, please protect A-Yuan and… forgive me."
Rules are meant to be followed.
Years of experience are supposedly behind every rule, ensuring each one will be solving or preventing a specific situation. Rules are meant to be followed because that will assure a cultivator walks down the right path and keeps them away from evil practices.
Rules said Wangji had to be punished because siding with evil and going against the rules of his elders was wrong, rules said his brother was going to learn from his mistakes and return to the righteous path so his reputation and life wasn’t ruined. Things were supposed to be right, they were supposed to leave all of this behind.
So why is Wangji bleeding out in his arms?
“It’s okay, Wangji, he will be fine, the healers will check on him,” Lan Xichen whispers, trying to ignore the warmth spreading on his arms supporting his brother’s back after he almost fell to the floor. “And there’s nothing to apologise for, so stay calm, okay?”
Lan Wangji shakes his head and Xichen knows why he’s doing it, but his brain refuses to accept it, refuses to accept his little brother is truly dying in his arms. “B-Brother...”
“It’s okay,” he smiles, using his own sleeves to wipe the sweat from his face, redoubling his efforts in channelling his spiritual energy into the trembling body. “They will be here in a second.”
“I apologise for making you suffer,” Wangji whispers, voice weak and devoid of the strength he’s so used to hearing on him, his golden eyes not burning with the passion so characteristic of him. “I apologise for bringing so many problems to you and… I’m sorry for leaving you.”
“You’re not leaving me, please,” his voice breaks at the end of the sentence. “And you’re not causing any problems, you’re my brother, Wangji and I regret not helping you sooner but I— I won’t fail you again, I promise.”
“You have never failed me,” His shaky, cold and pale hand holds the one channelling the energy into him, stopping him. “Thank you, brother.”
Lan Xichen was taught to not show emotions excessively, to remain calm and composed in spite of any situation. Emotions were dangerous and could be used against the individual in question… but rules also told him punishment was the right thing to do and when Lan Wangji takes his last shuddering breath.
The rules can go to hell.
He cries, screams and begs for his brother to hold on and wait for the healers that decide to take that exact same moment to appear after being called, but he gets no reaction or response. No matter how much he shakes and tries to make his brother react, nothing happens and nothing will happen ever again.
Lan Wangji, his brother, is dead and his own sect is responsible for it.
The Cloud Recesses are a mess when Lan Qiren steps out of the room he has been meditating on.
Disciples are walking hurriedly through the corridors, talking in an equally hurried tone that goes against the rules and calmness their residency is supposed to have. Lan Qiren is close to start questioning everyone about what happened so they act like this when he hears it.
The distinctive sound of desperate crying and screams of pure pain reach his ears and even when he tries to deny it, he realises he recognises the voice. It freezes him as if the blood running through his body has turned into ice. He is incapable of moving the more the voice rings in his ears, the ugly and painful sensation growing inside him until it finally snaps and allows him to move.
His hurried steps carry him through the same corridors those disciples are using, his arms even push some of them out of the way, the pressure inside his chest making him feel he’s about to suffer a qi deviation.
As he had assumed, it is Lan Xichen the one screaming and crying so desperately and the reason why is enough to make Lan Qiren think about doing it, too. “Xichen— Xichen what happened?”
His eldest nephew doesn’t reply, of course, he can’t do it. His sobs are painful and the way he hugs the limp body while asking him to wake up is enough to make everyone who has gathered there look away in pain and respect. His robes are stained with blood, red ruining the pure light-blue the leader always wore so diligently… Lan Qiren doesn’t even want to talk about the state of Lan Wangji’s robes.
“W-What happened?” he finally manages to ask a disciple who is standing there without moving a single muscle, his voice making him jump.
“H-Hanguang-Jun left, we were looking for him and then he just— he returned carrying a sick child,” the young one replies with a shaky voice, keeping his eyes on the floor. “He asked the sect leader to protect him and then he... Zewu-Jun barely managed to hold him.”
A sick child, Wangji leaving; nothing makes sense and the desperate cries of Xichen in the background aren’t making it any easier. Wangji was supposed to be in seclusion, recovering after the punishment he had to go through, recovering from his severe injuries, there wasn’t anything out there important enough to make him leave, so why? And who was this mysterious child?
The pressure in his chest is now stronger, infecting every single part of his body with that dreadful and unwelcomed despair, but he has to do something. For years it was he who had to take charge of the sect, who had to deal with everything while his brother was too stricken by sadness and guilt to take proper care of it.
This isn’t different, right?
Turning back to his nephews, he sees two healers standing there, eyes filled with doubt as if the one in front of them is someone they don’t know and are scared he will react badly. Lan Qiren has the fleeting thought that they have tried to tell Xichen something only to have him snapping at them.
“Xichen,” he tries, kneeling in front of him, trying to not stare at the lifeless body in the arms of the other. “Xichen let go of him.”
“No!” Xichen’s scream is loud, the loudest his voice has sounded ever since he was a kid, bloodshot eyes staring at him with pain and... hatred. “Haven’t you done enough?!”
He’s a respectable man, one who is often labelled as unbreakable and unmovable in his resolutions, someone with no feelings according to some, and someone who doesn’t really get affected by anything… but when he hears that, something inside him breaks in a way he’s sure he will never be capable of repairing.
Sounds of leather hitting and breaking skin fill his ears, small and quiet gasps of pain turning into whimpers and even cries fill his heart, the picture of his two nephews is replaced by a kneeling Lan Wangji barely managing to hold himself up as his own uncle recites the rules and one of the elders bring the whip down again, Lan Xichen is there too, begging them, him , to stop.
He’s right, isn’t he?
On this day, Lan Qiren runs.
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A funeral is held in the next few days with all the preparations and formalities one would expect from the Gusu Lan Sect, but Xichen is barely conscious of what is happening around him.
He’s not aware at what moment they managed to take Wangji’s body from his arms, he just knows that night he walked to his Hanshi with his arms soaked in blood and tears still rolling down his cheeks, he only knows he cried the whole night and that it was a male disciple the one who had to help him the next day to change and function as a normal human being.
His robes are white, but they’re plain and don’t have that comforting something his Gusu Lan robes have yet, they remind him of Wangji. His brother who carried this ethereal look and perfection with every movement, who wore his white robes so perfectly it made the rest of disciples and even himself fall to the bottom of any list.
His Wangji, his little A-Zhan, his little brother.
The one he has to bury.
The main hall doesn’t have a lot of people when he steps inside; the vast majority of disciples and elders are mourning the loss of this powerful cultivator privately after paying their respects and Xichen finds himself despising every single thing, they all left Wangji alone before and they are doing it again.
Wangji’s body has been cleaned, the bloodied robes are gone, the beads of sweat cleaned and the nightmare of wounds on his back concealed from view. He’s now wearing elegant white robes Xichen remembers seeing him using so many times before, the delicate and protective incantations sewn into the fabric reminding Xichen once more that it wasn’t evilness who murdered his brother, but his own sect.
“I’m sorry, Wangji,” he whispers as he leans over the pale body, trying to replace the image of his brother shivering and in clear pain as he dies with this one where he only looks as if he’s sleeping. “I’m so sorry.”
Begging for forgiveness is useless, no matter how much he cries and begs, Wangji will remain dead and his mistakes won’t be forgiven, ever. He will have to carry with him for the rest of his life the death of his younger brother because Lan Wangji was younger, with a promising life ahead for him, free of the burdens being a sect leader meant and free to build his own story; he deserved to live and do great things, greater things. He didn’t deserve to die before him and half of the elders who condemned him to that sadistic punishment.
If it wasn’t for Wei Wuxian, if it wasn’t for that kid.
A sudden and violent jerk makes him move back and stare in horror at his brother. How dare he blame someone that isn’t himself? The young kid is still fighting the aftermath of the fever, his small body is struggling to survive the toll the sickness took on his body. They are all honestly surprised he is alive and even more that he has a small chance of recovering without lasting damage, so how can Xichen even think about blaming him? He’s just a child.
Wei Wuxian follows a similar train of thought. The young man is dead, gone after falling from a cliff despite Wangji’s efforts to save him. He had left the world while still being very young and his last months on this world had been horrible, to say the least… Lan Xichen doesn’t even want to think about it because he’s sure he will have even more things to regret.
Ultimately, it is the same, he was dead, the kid was sick and it wasn’t their fault.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers as the shame burns stronger. “I-I, it won’t happen again.”
He still doesn’t know how it will be possible for him to continue, can’t even tell if it will be possible, but he feels it’s the very least he can do for his little brother after failing to protect him.
“I promise he will be safe and… I promise things will be different,” he whispers, resting his hand on his brother's, ignoring the coldness that seems to go deep into his bones. “Please rest Wangji.”
It isn’t easy to go on with the funeral, it isn’t easy to bury his brother and then realise that was the last time he saw him, that he won’t come back ever again because he’s dead, he really is dead and no matter what he does it won’t change. He hates the elders, hates the fact that his uncle isn’t there and hates that people give him a look that seems to scream in his face how much they pity him.
They are all as guilty as he is. They agreed on punishing Wangji when he came back from Yiling and went on with the punishment when they found out he had kept the forces of the other sects from entering that palace in the Burial Mounds. No one stopped, not even when Wangji spat blood and had to use his hands to keep himself from falling all the way to the floor.
They all let him die, they’re all guilty.
For someone who has repressed his feelings for more than twenty years, he can now feel everything violently moving inside of him. He can taste the venom in his tongue and the bitter and horrible sense of grief coursing through his veins. The nights become a blur filled with nightmares and pain, the memory of his brother giving his last breath in his arms makes him wake up panting and crying and forces him to stumble through the Cloud Recesses to reach the Jingshi where reality once more hits him in the face because it is dark, empty and cold.
“The kid—”
“A-Yuan,” Xichen interrupts the elder. “His name is A-Yuan.”
“A-Yuan,” he corrects, “has recovered from the infection, he will go back to being a healthy little kid.”
The people in there seem to collectively sigh in relief, glances are exchanged and faint words of I’m glad fill Xichen’s ears and has to admit he’s glad. It didn’t take him long to understand where the kid came from and where Wangji had been before— they accepted him saves him from going mad at them.
“He will be taken as a disciple,” another one says, receiving slow nods from the rest.
“Not only a disciple,” Lan Qiren says. “Wangji brought him back and gave his life to keep him safe… he is basically his son.”
The silence that follows is heavy as the old men ponder if they can go that far, if they can bend the rules to that degree. Xichen feels the hatred stabbing him in the chest once more, though, this time is capable of putting his uncle aside because he is who suggested it.
“Our rules killed Wangji,” he says bluntly, holding his ground when they all gasp and look scandalised. “I do not wish to see a little kid suffer because of them, too.”
It’s the first time that he brings this up, despite wanting to scream it on their faces every time it was mentioned how unfortunate it had been to lose their second young master, it is the first time he brings it up and that is fine. Wangji’s death wasn’t an unfortunate accident, it was something deliberate and if Xichen has dealt with his guilt, then they should do it as well.
“Sect Leader, I think that’s too severe,” the one to his right says. “Lan Wangji’s death was caused by a series of unfortunate events.”
“That is not true,” he whispers, digging his fingers on his palms. “Wangji… loved Wei Wuxian and his death hurt him deeply, he wanted to preserve the memory of him, was that wrong?”
He asks, they look uncomfortable at the mention of Wei Wuxian and even more at the idea of having who was their brightest disciple connected to him. “I understand, but actions have consequences.”
“If someone came here to burn the jingshi would we let it happen just because it is the right thing?” he asks, his tone more demanding and taking that tint of a sect leader. “Our rules said Wangji deserved to be punished but did the rules also say he had to die?”
“Of course not!”
“He was a righteous cultivator to the very end, saving a sick child, staying true to his values and even apologising for causing problems,” he says, the emotions tight in his chest. “That should have given him a long and happy life according to the rules, but he’s gone. It is clear things need to change.”
Lan Xichen doesn’t care if it isn’t easy, doesn’t care if it takes him ages to do it, but he will use this pain to make things change.
Lan Qiren is not the same person. He can’t quite point out exactly what it is because he can’t find the right words that fit what he is experiencing.
It isn’t the kind of a disappointment that filled him when he realised Wei Wuxian was bound to be another guest disciple he couldn’t shove into the right path just like his mother, it is not the kind of disappointment he felt when Wangji, of all people, seemed to fall in love with him and it’s not just grief because he feels it goes beyond that.
He is no stranger to death, none of them are. His sister-in-law died when her children were still too young, his brother died after years of consuming his everything in seclusion and a lot of people died right in front of him as the Sunshot Campaign progressed and while it is obvious they all affected him in one way or another, Wangji’s death is consuming him.
He remembers the little baby with pale skin and shining gold eyes looking silently at him after he had stopped crying, remembers a little toddler struggling to copy what his brother did and remembers the pride that filled him when Wangji grew up to be the man he always wished he would be, but what he remembers more is his pale and livid face with bloodied lips that demanded to know what was right and what was wrong.
How could he do that?
Despite what others might think, he loves his nephews and every single thing he did was done because he was sure they were the right thing to do. Their rules have raised countless generations and it was thanks to them that their sect became one of the four big ones, who could blame him for thinking he was saving him? Who can push the blame to him?
He doesn’t need anyone to do it, he already does.
The punishment was too much, no matter how strong a cultivator is they are still humans and he should have known it was too much for his nephew despite his level of cultivation, he should have been capable of seeing that no transgression was worth his life… What's the point of thinking about it, though? What’s done is done, nothing will bring Wangji back, nothing will help Xichen with the pain that is tearing him apart.
He was right in blaming him for it.
Lan Qiren took both to keep them safe, to guide them so they didn’t commit the same mistakes their father did and to spare them from getting a life similar to the one their mother had. He promised his brother and himself that they were going to have a good life, that they were always going to be in the righteous path, so how can one be dead? What would his brother say? Nothing good, he can tell, but he deserves all of it.
“The punishment was too severe,” he says, cutting whatever an elder had been saying until then. “Wangji never did anything that made him deserve death.”
“He survived his punishment,” one says as if that made it so much better. “He sadly got an infection that consumed him for going out.”
“To save a dying child and protect what was left of the man he loved,” Xichen says, the hatred burning stronger on those eyes that used to be so kind and gentle. “If he wasn’t hit three hundred times he wouldn’t have succumbed to that infection.”
In other circumstances he would be scandalised to hear his nephew talking to the elders like that, he would immediately scold him for being so blatantly disrespectful, but in his current state he can’t. He agrees with Xichen, agrees that it is their fault Wangji was so weak he couldn’t fight off an infection, for the first time he’s doubting the rules he defended so much and if the death of his nephew is bringing his world down, this doubt is destroying the small pieces left behind.
“This can’t happen again,” he says, his voice sounding too quiet. “Something needs to be done.”
There are people who agree and people who disagree, the room fills with voices that can barely keep themselves from rising in volume but Lan Qiren can’t hear any of them. These days haven’t been easy but being reminded of Wangji’s death like this has made everything completely unbearable.
Quietly, he stands up and waits until the voices have quieted down and everyone is looking at him before speaking, “I will be going into seclusion.”
This time the voices do reach a new level, panicked questions and words are thrown at him but he can’t reply, not now, so he just excuses himself and heads for the door. Xichen is looking at him when he throws back one last glance, but Lan Qiren notices his nephew is not looking at him with the same hatred he has been throwing at him ever since that day where Wangji— instead he finds pain, guilt and the smallest spark of disappointment that burns stronger, but he understands why.
He failed Wangji and now he’s failing him, too, but for the first time in years, Lan Qiren is incapable of doing something about it.