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The end of the war is much tidier than Lan Wangji could ever have dreamed. Watching peacetime alliances between the great and small sects fall into place one after another breaks his heart slowly, and then all at once.
The keys lock into place one at a time: the future of the Jiang Sect and the rebuilding of Lotus Pier have been secured through a marriage alliance. Jiang Yanli looks happy, and Jiang Wanyin resigned. Jin Zixuan looks almost unbecomingly ecstatic, unpolitic in his emotional display. Wei Wuxian is not present for the announcement, though Lan Wangji searches for his face. His absence is perhaps explained when Lan Wangji runs into him in Yiling, and again when the ambush occurs at Qiongqi Way.
Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren have been negotiating skillfully and unceasingly for the rebuilding of the Cloud Recesses, promising knowledge, trading unprecedented levels of access to the thankfully-preserved library. Jin Guangyao has argued in their favor, calling on his sworn brotherhood with Lan Xichen to sway Jin Guangshan.
The Nie, who lost fighting men and trained steeds, have negotiated to establish continued alliances with all the major sects. Lan Wangji has noticed, as he does pile after pile of meticulous paperwork while his brother and uncle talk and drink and socialize, that the Nie have fought hard to preserve their use of several very minor trade routes.
The Jin are preeminent, having lost almost nothing. Only after the ambush, after Wei Wuxian’s flustered muttering about a second person at the pass, after Wen Ning’s forced testimony under Inquiry, do more pieces drop into place, faster and faster. Only then does the picture become messier, less complimentary towards the Chief Cultivator, the Jin Sect as a whole.
Wheels spin faster and faster. The Wen Remnants are exonerated, declared free to leave the Burial Mounds. They are not cultivators, not soldiers, not rebels: they are farmers, the elderly, civilians, the survivors of a torture camp who were rescued by Wei Wuxian on pure chance, whose lives were preserved by his sheer stubbornness and unwillingness to bend in the face of the entire cultivation world’s disapproval.
Hearing what he does, Lan Wangji burns with affection, with regret, with a thousand conflicting feelings. How could he have judged his Wei Ying so wrong, when his motives were so pure? But at the same time how could Wei Wuxian have relied on demonic cultivation, such evil tricks, when his goals were so true? Meditation does little to clear Lan Wangji’s mind.
The council’s ensuing debate over what to do with the Wen Remnants is tiresome, all the more so because no one wants to admit to having done wrong, or even admit to having overlooked a wrong being done. After several hours the other clan heads seem ready to give in to Jin Guangshan’s renewed claim of custody just to make the issue go away.
Lan Wangji thinks of Wei Ying, determined and hollow-cheeked on a muddy horse, dark-eyed in the rain. He thinks of a little boy with knobby, thin wrists and fat cheeks, whose smile was sunny and undimmed despite the obvious poverty surrounding him. He thinks about Wen Qing and how her gaze follows Wen Ning and Wei Ying whenever they are in the same space, how obviously, how desperately she wants to keep them safe.
Jin Guangshan offers sanctuary, again. No one speaks up, this time, in even token protest, and Lan Wangji glances at Wen Qing: she does not flinch, but he sees her breath pause, just for a moment. Lan Wangji realizes he has never seen her flinch, not once, not even before her lethally-mad uncle. He has never seen her look so hopeless as right now. He has never seen her look so brave.
Lan Wangji stands. He looks the other sect heads in the eyes one at a time.
“The Nie need no farmers; the Jiang need no more hungry mouths. The Jin—” here he pauses for effect and adjusts his sleeves. When Lan Wangji continues, he looks directly at Jin Guangshan. He knows he is wearing his iciest expression, the one his features settled into when Wei Ying was dead, when he and Jiang Wanyin searched fruitlessly.
“The Jin have already demonstrated their understanding of sanctuary. The Lan formally propose to take the Wen Remnants under our care.”
Lan Xichen makes no sound beside him. Lan Qiren makes the very slight sigh that means Lan Wangji has just made an enormous amount of trouble for him, but not the added almost-subvocal noise that means he disapproves. Lan Wangji is glad, because he would not have backed down even if his uncle had disapproved. This will make it easier to handle later.
“The Lan are the obvious choice.” Lan Wangji continues.
He consciously softens his features as he looks around the room, seeking allies, seeking soft points, trying to emulate his brother’s lessons, his brother’s behavior. He is not good at this, but he will try for the people Wei Ying saved, for the people who saved Wei Ying.
“Who else lost so many disciples at the hands of the Wen? Who else needs the labor to rebuild, who else already has a system of inner and outer disciples that can be adapted for non-cultivators, who else already has a strict system of discipline to prevent abuses against the Wen Remnants? No one else can take them. No one else can keep them whole.”
He pauses, and looks Nie Mingjue in the eye, remembering being a laughing child in da-ge’s arms, then looks at Jiang Yanli, knowing she is a new mother herself.
“No one else can ensure the child grows up safe and happy.”
He has the beginnings of a plan for that child’s future, if this works. The other person he would want to consult for that plan is not here at the moment, but no matter. This is the first step, no matter what.
“The Lan will take in the Wen Remnants,” Lan Wangji says again, and then looks straight at Wen Qing and bows, deeply, respectfully. “If Wen-guniang so agrees.”
She blinks at him, surprised. No one else has thought to ask her approval, has treated her as anything other than a piece of property, chattel, a burden. Lan Wangji knows her to be the best doctor of their generation, a brilliant mind, and a formidable ally, as well as a friend to Wei Ying.
She smiles, so faint it might not be noticeable if he were not used to seeking out his uncle’s approval.
“With the permission of the council,” she says, and her manners are impeccable, her words chosen so very carefully. “This solution proposed by Hanguang-Jun would suit us very well and we would be honored and gratified to accept the sanctuary offered by the Lan.”
The assembled sect heads murmur in agreement, seemingly relieved to have the decision made for them by Lan Wangji’s forceful speech.
The next day the Yiling Patriarch is all but put on trial, leads them on a hunt into the depths of Koi Tower, locates a cleverly concealed demonic cultivator — Xue Yang — and destroys his amulet before the council’s eyes.
Wei Ying, no! Lan Wangji wants to yell, but they are not alone.
Strategy is part of any Lan’s education, and Lan Wanji excelled in all of his studies. He knows that Wei Wuxian has just destroyed his only leverage before his own safety was secured. He knows that Wei Ying may have just ensured his own demise.
The next day, they meet on a balcony, and they are still not alone, though the guard pretends she is not watching.
Wei Wuxian is whistling the song Lan Wangji wrote, the one he played in the xuanwu cave, the one whose name Wei Wuxian still doesn’t know. He looks thin and fey.
Wei Wuxian stands at the railing, and he looks as if the sight of the mountains is almost painful, as if the touch of the breeze against his skin is a priceless gift.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji hears himself say. Come back to Gusu, he wants to say, but that didn’t work before. I love you, he thinks, desperate with it, and can’t imagine saying it out loud. “They have decided.”
Wei Wuxian takes a breath and lifts his hands from the balcony.
“Very well,” he says, and follows Lan Wangji in without another word.
Those are the last words they exchange in public.
Lan Wangji expects them to be the last words he ever hears from Wei Wuxian before his exile to Qinghe Nie. But that evening, his brother drags him to the Nie Sect rooms.
Lan Wangji sits across a table from Wei Wuxian, who looks smaller, somehow, carefully polite but almost absent from his own body. He sits, and drinks tea, and looks at the Nie brothers, such opposites to each other, so different from himself and Xichen, and tries, tries, tries to understand what is happening.
Wei Wuxian takes a sip of tea.
“I will be perfectly well,” he says. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I can follow rules when I have to.”
Nie Huaisang coughs.
Lan Wangji thinks through the rules: Wei Ying may no longer cultivate. He may not not take action to betray the Nie, or by inaction allow such betrayals to take place. He may not seek out the Yin Iron. He may not teach disciples demonic cultivation. He may not leave the Unclean Realm without the explicit, advance, written consent of all four great Sect Leaders, and then only under guard. He may have no children to carry on his name; he may not marry. He is still cast out of the Jiang Sect; he may not join another.
“The conditions are very strict,” Lan Wangji says. “You—“ he stops himself, because he can’t put it into words, how unfair it is that they are caging someone so free, so fair.
“Wei Ying usually argues,” he tries, trying to convey his confusion, his inability to understand why Wei Wuxian would give up on himself so easily.
“Ah, well,” Wei Wuxian says.
He’s spinning a teacup in his hands, delicate and light, as if it were the flute he’s used to raise the dead, to strike fear in the hearts of their enemies, graceful as the Yiling Patriarch, light-hearted as the boy who painted rabbit lanterns with Lan Wangji.
“It’s no difficulty,” he says, but he looks away, and so Lan Wangji knows it to be a lie.
His tone is almost light enough to hide his dread, but Lan Wangji heard the same strain when they hid from the xuanwu. And Wei Wuxian looked away in the same way in that cave, back when they were so much younger and so sure they were staring down their deaths.
They are dismissed before Lan Wangji finds a reply, and he and Xichen stand, bow, and depart.
If Lan Wangji’s left hand itches to grasp Wei Wuxian’s sleeve, to demand the truth of him, any truth, it does not matter: he knows better. He will not impose. He will not overstep his bounds, or tread where he is not wanted.
Perhaps, Lan Wangji thinks, as he and his brother walk silently back to the Lan rooms, it would have been better if their last words had been on that balcony, if his last sight of Wei Wuxian had been of him looking at the mountains, watching the wind kiss his hair.
Perhaps then Lan Wangji could have remembered him leaning against a balcony, looking out into the sky. Perhaps then he would not be seeing Wei Ying shrinking into a locked room, would not be wondering what could have prompted Wei Ying to try to make light of an endless imprisonment whose terms he had not protested.
They return to the Lan rooms, which now house the Wen Remnants, as well as the Lan delegates. Lan Wangji finds he can’t be melancholy for too long with A-Yuan hanging off his robes, with Wen Ning hovering quietly in the corner, watchful but seemingly unworried, now dressed in dark blue and gray.
Lan Wangji talks A-Yuan to bed, telling him a disjointed bedtime story about a rabbit and the moon that he half-remembers from visits to his mother, and when he emerges from the alcove in which the boy will be sleeping, sees that Wen Ning is sitting before the curtain.
“I don’t really sleep,” Wen Ning says, and he sounds apologetic. “So I’ll keep watch?”
“Thank you,” Lan Wangji says.
For a moment he wonders how many people have tried to kill the Yiling Patriarch and the Ghost General, that Wen Ning assumes a watch schedule is necessary inside a major sect’s rooms in Koi Tower. Then he remembers Nie Mingjue’s worry, the dual layers of wards on Wei Wuxian’s door: from inside and from outside, the discovery of Xue Yang in the dungeons, and wonders if they are all at more risk within the tower than they would be elsewhere.
He bows, and goes to find Wen Qing and his uncle, to find out how much trouble he has gotten himself into.
The answer, as it turns out, is quite a lot.
In the end, it is settled to his satisfaction. Lan Wangji adopts A-Yuan and gives him the ribbon of an inner disciple. This makes the sect’s punishment for rule-breaking worse than simply harboring the Ghost General and Wen Qing would have been. When they return to Gusu Lan Wangji is whipped within an inch of his life for suspicion of siring an illegitimate child.
But Wen Qing is there to tend him on his sickbed, Wen Ning and Xichen make time each day to play with A-Yuan, and the aunts and uncles are better than any of the Lan disciples dared hope to help rebuild. And Lan Wangji knows that Wei Ying is alive in the Unclean Realm, even if he has yet to write back.
When he is well enough, Lan Wangji promises himself, sitting in the rabbit meadow and watching A-Yuan play gently with another boy. When the rebuilding has progressed far enough, perhaps he will pay a visit to Qinghe.
Perhaps, someday, he will see Wei Ying smiling in the sunshine again.
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