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Jiang Wanyin has not been to Gusu in years, not after the bloodbath that was Búyètiān. And if his reasons for remaining far from the bustling streets of its borders begin and end with one Lan Wangji, well, that’s his business.

Really, Jiang Wanyin is well aware that it was but a matter of time before he’d find himself needed at the Lan dwelling, but gosh had he wished to hold it off for a few more years, when the bitter resentment bubbling at the bottom of his belly had maybe subsided some. But again, he is his mother’s son, too stubborn not to hold firm to grudges, and his against the righteous Hanguang-Jun is one he imagines he’ll be holding for a lifetime.

It’s a letter from Zewu-Jun that has the man swearing under his breath as he waits at the old marble gates one mid Summer’s day. And had it not been a meeting of formal business, well, he would not be willingly standing off the hillside, memories of a seminar as teenagers flashing tauntingly before his eyes. It’s almost humorous, he finds, that he had been denied admission through these same doors all those years ago. What an embarrassing ordeal it had been and still he wants for history to redeem itself. A single “no” and Jiang Wanyin will no longer beg or linger, merely return how he’d gone, down the mountain, and if he hurries, to Yunmeng by dawn. But, fitting to his fate, that fleeting desire dies as soon as it’s born as mere moments go by before a modest smiling Zewu-Jun is gesturing him inside.

And inside is more or less as he remembers it. The redone buildings, while modeled from the originals, don’t seem as worn from age or harsh winters. Some memorials stand for those who died defending the grounds against the Wen. But it’s the same stifling stillness, the same sense of rigid formalness, and that’s all Jiang Wanyin wants for it to be: something to disdain, something unworthy of missing. Really, that’s what he wants to feel about all things to do with Wei Wuxian, about Wei Wuxian himself.

So it’s a betrayal—that as he’s being led to the main hall at the dead end of the same lodgings he resided those many years ago—that a warm and familiar feeling begins to blossom from his insides, a feeling so warm and so familiar that he really begins to wonder if a grinning Wei Wuxian will suddenly materialize and sling an arm around his shoulder, leading him away as he mumbles something about Gusu’s finest wine and the two bottles he’s managed to get through the gates. But he doesn’t—materialize, nor does Jiang Wanyin feel at all foolish for indulging in the idea of him doing so.

And as if the mere reminder doesn’t fill him with a sense of longing for what is gone so immense that he refrains from getting on Sandu and flying home, “Jingyi,” as a Lan elder shouts after him, suddenly runs by and away from the meditating row of students off to the side, a bright giggle falling from his mouth, barely muffled by his hand rising to shut it. Surely, it must be the first that a laugh had rang so freely within these walls, the first after Wei Wuxian’s, that is.

But Jiang Wanyin doesn’t get a moment to dwell on it, not when his eyes return to the row of students and fall on the boy at the far end staring distantly ahead, his mind seemingly somewhere far away. Suddenly, Jiang Wanyin is also far away, not in Gusu at all but a barren, desolate land, the smell of long rotted bodies hanging from the dense as bone air. A boy, maybe four years of age, is hugging his legs with one hand, small soil laden fingers of the other stuffed in his mouth.

The boy sitting off to his side is older, by a few years. His muddied rags for robes traded for the elegant white of the Lans. But it’s him, of that Jiang Wanyin is almost sure; the boy he’d met, briefly, that fateful day—in many ways the beginning of the end—at Luànzàng Gǎng.

“Jiang-zongzhu,” says Zewu-Jun with a twinge of worry to his tone, the sound bringing Jiang Wanyin out of his maudlin musings. “Is something the matter?” And after a beat too long, “Shall we go inside?”

“Sorry, I was–it doesn’t matter. Yes, go ahead,” Jiang Wanyin mutters, finally tearing his eyes from the strangely familiar figure and to the doors of the room at his front.

The meeting, he finds, is one of formalities with the first hour wasted on refills of tea and trading of details on matters ranging from sword forms to trade routes to… Lianfang-Zun? Seriously, what is Zewu-Jun’s obsession with that sworn brother of his?

It’s only during the final twenty minutes or so that he mentions the reason Jiang Wanyin was seemingly summoned to Gusu. “A request of aid from Yunmeng Jiang regarding dealing with a small but growingly stubborn gathering of water ghouls,” as Lan-zongzhu words it. He goes on to say something about the water-adroit Jiangs being ideal allies for handling the matter and by doing so it boding well for relations between the two gentry families, but his words begin to sound muffled the longer he rambles as Jiang Wanyin’s mind wanders to other more demanding affairs. For one, the boy outside.

What’s said and agreed to during those twenty minutes is far from something that warranted his going all the way to Gusu, a sentiment that seems to be shared by the man behind the meeting as he finishes, ”I am sorry for disturbing you from your duties but it’s been so long from when we met last, and you’re seldom to be found away from Yunmeng.”

Jiang Wanyin, as frustrated as he is, feels a rush of gratefulness, seeing as someone had remembered him, his friends—if one was able to refer to them as so—few, and a day free from his obligations far between.

And if it’s due to that rare sense of amity that, as soon as it seems business is done, Jiang Wanyin boldly begins, “So, where is Lan-er-gongzi? Too busy to greet me, is he?” He sounds, to his relief, offhanded, rather than endlessly glad that he has so far managed to dodge the brother of the man to his front.

“Wang—Wangji is isolating, he has been for some time,” Zewu-Jun answers, his seemingly always smiling mouth forming a frown for a mere moment before returning to its usual bastion of good manneredness.

“Wangji is isolating.” Those words ring in Jiang Wanyin’s head as he doesn’t rush home but gets a room at a busy inn in the middle of Gusu, now seemingly freed from his fears of running in on Lan Wangji during a night hunt. Besides, it may do him good to go a day without the sweltering Summer heat of said home. It’s why, Jiang Wanyin registers, Lan Wangji had missed the many gatherings and banquets of the last two or so years. He had guessed it was the other man’s infamous detestation of human beings in general and maybe him more so that was reason for his always being absent. But, reason aside, it feels as if a weight is lifted from his shoulders, for the meantime, that is. So while Jiang Wanyin’s going to Gusu had eased some worries, it had also formed others. Lan Wangji may be gone, but a boy adoring Lan robes and a Wen by blood isn’t—gone. He isn’t dead, not that he was dead but it’s the first that Jiang Wanyin is being met with something to suggest otherwise.

He need not be a genius to find the bridge between the boy and the Lans, who would it be if not their heir? He’d heard the rumors of “Hanguang-Jun bringing a bastard son to Gusu Lan,” as a Jiang family maid had said to another a bit too gaudily. And while he admits that the boy resembles his rumored father to an eerie degree, Jiang Wanyin knows enough to know that Hanguang-Jun wouldn’t stray so far from his dear Lan rules, and well, a bastard son had to be going firmly against a minimum of fifty. But what he knows most of all—and something he muttered, if merely for his own dealings, when he first heard word of it—is that Lan Wangji wouldn’t raise a son for anyone at all, surely not some mystery maiden no one was able to attest to being more than a mere fable. The only one whom it seemed a reasonable thing for the man to do so for was Wei Wuxian. It’s absurd—frustratingly so—Jiang Wanyin finds, how right he had been.

And if it was Wei Wuxian who suggested for the boy to be bustled away to Gusu or if Lan Wangji had done so of his own will matters little. He, a Wen, is adorning Lan robes… and with the same hollow weariness in his eyes of a Jin. Well, one Jin, one Jin Rulan to be unambiguous about it. It’s why Jiang Wanyin had been so unwillingly drawn to the boy to begin with, he deems, as an odd feeling, shame maybe, begins to settle round his breast. I mean, how dare a Wen bear a reminder of his A-Ling? Still, he’s seen those same eyes on the boy he’s raised many a times, as he’s teased by other boys his age for not being met with a mother’s red bean buns when he gets home, or as the ministers bemoan how he’ll wield a sword, or throne for that matter, absent of the guiding hand of a father. So Jiang Wanyin does both, fills both roles—the gentleness of his sister and the dignity of his brother in law, to the best of his abilities so that the son who didn’t meet his demise won’t feel the nothingness that remains behind. But regardless if the boy doesn’t say it, he does—feel it. It’s a somberness written behind his eyes if unsaid from his mouth and it seems no different an ordeal for the small Wen. That’s what losing your family will do to a young boy, he surmises. Surely that's what it’s done to Jiang Wanyin. Odd is that someone he saw as a brother is the one to blame for the loss of his family, odder still is that that brother’s loss is one he feels no less a somberness for.

It’s as Jiang Wanyin lies in bed that night—both the inn’s rugged sheets and day’s findings not letting his mind or body rest—that he realises, belatedly, that the Wen boy must mean that Lan Wangji had been to Luànzàng Gǎng as well—long before the siege. And he is left, for not the first or the tenth time, with the bitter feeling that Wei Wuxian isn’t, or wasn’t, his alone. After they’d met Lan Wangji, it seemed Jiang Wanyin was always sharing his brother with him, sharing and sharing till his share of him was so small that it seemed he had none of him at all. Worse was that it seemed Lan Wangji would rather he get the full share, the boisterous boy’s attention a burden he didn’t feel too fond of bearing. And maybe it made him a man of greed, but Jiang Wanyin had always been the baby of the family, regardless of his age when he rose to the head of it, meaning that hadn’t ever been good at sharing what was his. And Wei Wuxian was his. He was his brother, his friend, his idol, his defender and all of those things in bountiful measure until one day he merely—wasn’t, not in the way he was before. No, instead he was Lan Wangji’s; his dueling buddy, his friend and also his foe, and through it all, his zhiji. Suddenly Lan Wangji mattered more to Wei Wuxian than family. It’s why he shielded him from the Wen, disregarding Jiang Wanyin’s warnings to mind his business, to worry about himself—it’s why Jiang Wanyin’s family was murdered ruthlessly as a result. And so really his grudge had rooted itself as firm as lotuses among Summer mud long before the fall of all he held dear. It began with Wei Wuxian following Lan Wangji on a night hunt rather than returning home, and only grew and festered as his feelings of abandonment did.

The Wen boy, as Jiang Wanyin sees it, is one more bit of Wei Wuxian added to Lan Wangji’s greater share. The boy is a reminder of him, one made of flesh and blood, and more, belonging to Lan Wangji. Whereas all Jiang Wanyin has remaining of his brother is a goddamn flute surging with resentful energy—the thing that ruined it all. As always between he and the great Hanguang-Jun, Jiang Wanyin has drawn the short straw regarding the matters of Wei Wuxian.

And maybe it’s that he wants more of Wei Wuxian, what remains of the man in the mortal realm. Or maybe it’s that he’s reminded of A-Ling’s eyes and the suffering that his brother’s selfishness has brought. Or maybe it’s both of those things or none of those things at all; Jiang Wanyin doesn’t dwell on his reasons, but what he is sure of, against better reason, is that he’ll be returning to Gusu.

And so he does, ten days after his first meeting. Zewu-Jun had been more obliging to his duties and offered to brief him on the findings of the water ghoul matter—that was now being handled—by messenger, but Jiang Wanyin denied, maybe a bit too readily, and said he would be swinging by. When he does, he brings Jin Ling along. And if anyone wonders why he’s done so, Jiang Wanyin will merely say that no one had been free to tend to the boy for the day or that formal business meetings are good learning grounds for a future heir. And if anyone in turn wonders how not a single sitter was able to be found between both the Jiangs and Jins, or what a four year old may reasonably retain about Jianghu affairs, so be it. One firm glare from Jiang-zongzhu and no one will dare interrogate, or that’s what he’s betting on. And to his resumed relief, no one does. If someone finds odd the sight of Jiang Wanyin leading, almost dragging a small boy by his hand through the grounds, no one does more than stare. The only one to address his being there is Zewu-Jun.

“Jiang-zongzhu,” he says with a bow. And turning to Jin Ling, “A-Ling” followed by a hand rising to gently smooth the hair on his head. Jiang Wanyin, for reasons of his own sanity, determinedly ignores the doting name and gesture, both that he attributes to Zewu-Jun being a regular guest of Lanling and the bond he and Jin Guangyao share, matters he absolutely doesn’t want to ruminate on.

When he’s said his greetings, Jiang Wanyin mutters, more hesitantly, “A-Ling will only slow down the meeting.”

Zewu-Jun, to his relief, seems to find meaning behind his unsaid words. “Ah, indeed it isn’t fair that he sit through adult matters. Well, most of the students should be done with lessons for the day. A-Ling may get some friends out of it as well.”

“Yes, that–that is a good idea.” And seeing this as the moment he was waiting for, “Where is….” Jiang Wanyin trails off, suddenly finding he has no idea what the boy’s name is. If he heard it Luànzàng Gǎng, it’s a memory long gone, and regardless of if he did, surely it must be different from the one assigned by the Lan.

“Where is who?” Zewu-Jun answers, eyebrows raising minutely. “A student of ours?”

“Yes, th–the quiet one.” Jiang Wanyin regrets the words as soon as they fall from his mouth. He’s a Lan, or has been for long enough to assume Lan mannerisms. It goes without saying that he’s quiet, all Lans are quiet. Well, most Lans, he amends remembering the giggling fool of a boy who had bore a hurtful reminder of the biggest giggling fool he’d met in his life.

“I saw him when we met last. He’s smaller than the others, seems to be A-Ling’s age.” He isn’t, but with his stunted growth—undoubtedly a result of malnutrition and a barrage of other bodily harms from residing on a mound of bones and remains for a year—no one would assume different.

“Ah, that would be Sizhui,” Lan-zongzhu says after a moment, a fond smile tugging at his mouth. “He is on the quieter side, as you said. But I am sure he and A-Ling will get along fine.”

And so before long Jiang Wanyin and Jing Ling are being led to the far side of the mountain and to Sizhui, sitting, alone, on the grassy meadows, a rabbit resting serenely in his arms. His eyes remain on the animal as the men draw nearer, and he only relinquishes it for a moment to bow as way of greeting when Zewu-Jun says his name. But seeing a boy of similar age, one with a red dot lining his forehead rather than an embroidered ribbon, Sizhui’s gaze soon falls to Jin Ling, who seems similarly engrossed by the sight before him.

“Go on, A-Ling,” Jiang Wanyin mutters as he shoos him toward the boy. And to his astonishment, he goes. Doesn’t whine or drag his feet as he does with the other sons of gentry leaders, but goes, willingly and merrily, finding a seat beside the boy and holding out his hands as if to say, show me how to hold it.

And he did, as Jin Ling details to Jiang Wanyin while the two sit down for dinner at an inn that night.

“Sizhui showed me how to hold the rabbits. I’m not as good at it as he is but he said I’ll get better with time. Jiujiu, one hand should always be holding the rabbit’s bottom and all four of its legs!” He’s beaming as he says it and if Jiang Wanyin had remaining qualms about the boy being of Wen origin, well, those are gone as fast as morning dew on blades of grass. He made A-Ling smile, genuine and full, his eyes small and grin wide, nose a bundle of folds. It’s the sort of smile his brother always wore. “He was born smiling,” his sister had said, and it feels wrong to want to say that A-Ling in any way resembles the man to blame for his being motherless, but he does, and it hurts all the more.

“When will we go to Gusu again?” Jin Ling says as he stuffs his mouth with a steamed bun. And now Jiang Wanyin is frowning, the words, we’re not, threatening to fill the room. He debates, momentarily, buying a rabbit from a nearby breeder but is sure that isn’t what he wants to go to Gusu for—its hoard of small, furry animals. He wants a friend, his first friend, and well, who is Jiang Wanyin to deny his A-Ling that?

And while there’s few things he’s unwilling to do for the boy he’s raised as if he was his own, that doesn’t mean he does so ungrudgingly. When Jin Ling goes to bed, Jiang Wanyin squanders two hours on a letter that is more or less a formal request for shared leisure time for the two boys.

—

And so begins as regular visits to Gusu as being leader of one of the great four families allows. It always goes the same way, Jiang Wanyin and Jin Ling getting to the gates by noon. Jing Ling heading to the far hill–Sizhui already waiting—and Jiang Wanyin and Zewu-Jun to the main hall, sometimes with Grand Master Lan if he’s finished with his duties; the former two gone before the sun goes down and Sizhui’s end of day meditation. It’s a routine that they fall into effortlessly, and one that goes undisturbed for the duration of four full visits. On the fifth, though, it isn’t only Zewu-Jun to greet them at the gates.

Lan Wangji stands beside his brother, solid, and still, and resolute, as if he really were made of stone as one of his many adoring names suggest. “Greet” is a generous seeing as he neither bows nor unfurls the firm line of his mouth. Always a man of few words, returning from isolation, he now seems wholly mute. He’s guarding the grounds, Jiang Wanyin begins to register when after many moments Lan Wangji shows no sign of budging from where he stands.

And before long Jiang Wanyin feels as small and low and unworthy as he did when he was fifteen, standing at these gates and begging to be allowed through. But he has long established that he will not beg, not again, and most definitely not of Lan Wangji.

Rage is building, simmering, in his throat and he wants to shout, so loud and shrill that it shatters stone, How dare you. How dare you ignore me. How dare you slander me. How dare you do so for someone who was mine first. These grounds may belong to you, but my brother—even in death—he is mine.

And maybe he would have—shouted his heart’s greatest but most hidden offenses before grabbing Jin Ling by the arm and striding down the mountain, swearing he wouldn’t again go within fifty miles of Gusu for as long as he lived. Maybe he really would have—had it not been for Sizhui emerging from behind Lan Wangji’s legs and bowing with all the good breeding that the man to his front seems to have forgotten.

And right, that’s why he’s here, for the boy, not Lan Wangji. And he isn’t his guest, he’s Zewu-Jun’s. If Hanguang-Jun wants to hold a grudge, fine, his is far older and better disguised. Jiang Wanyin will merely do what he has always done, bend to the whims and formalities of his fellows, and if that means swallowing down his fury, that’s what he’ll do.

“Hanguang-Jun, your greatness has been missed” he says with a sneery gentility that is a result of years of dealing with distinguished but insufferable ministers.

Lan Wangji, foreseeably, doesn’t bother answering, only boring a bigger hole in the ground with his unrelenting stare. And he remains that way till Jin Ling, growing restless from the unusual wait, barges inside and drags along Sizhui to the other side of the grounds. And Lan Wangji—he allows it. As stubborn as he is, he won’t go so low as to refuse a boy barely four years of age. When they’re long gone, Lan Wangji nods to his brother before striding off as well, seemingly admitting defeat.

Zewu-Jun’s eyes follow after him, another frown forming around his mouth.

“Jiang-zongzhu, I should say sorry on behalf of my brother. You must understand, he has been out of isolation no more than a month and has long been away from the bounds of others.” He sounds resigned but a worry underlies his words, and it’s all too familiar, the feeling of your brother dooming all he is and has and being unable to do anything but bear witness.

And, as Jiang Wanyin finds, it’s the first of many reminders of a brother long gone and longer doomed. Soon, men and women alleging to be the Yilling Laozu begin materializing on the sides of busy streets and the bottoms of remote mountains. It is, though, nothing but rumor and heresy, Jiang Wanyin has made sure, sniffing out all those who dare use the shameful name and abominable methods. Mostly, it’s men of barely adult age, those from noble but minor families, as demonstrated through ready admission of guilt and anguished beggings for his generosity. Really, he doesn’t need to draw Zidian at all, mere moments with one and he’s assured it isn’t his brother’s ghost seizing the man’s body. And Jiang Wanyin wants to say that it’s relief he feels when one more glutton for attention nobody is determined to be but a duff imitation of the man he detests most—relief that he’s dead and not returned—but it isn’t. He’s long haunted his dreams, his mind, his whole being, so why not also in flesh so he’s more than a figment of his sorrowful imagination?

The growing buzz of the Yilling Laozu being raised from the dead (if he was dead at all), regardless of how unfounded, raise too many doubts, feed the seeds of it—doubt or hope, he isn’t sure—that Jiang Wanyin had managed to drown out when all he’d found were bones where a body, no matter how mangled, should be. What if? What if he wasn’t dead? What if he returned? Matters he hadn’t before allowed himself to deliberate, maybe as it was fruitless to do so or he was afraid of what he would answer. But now the man’s every rising moment is wasted on that unfeasible, almost delusional what if. And no matter how many restless hours or days or months he deliberates on what he would do if, by some feat, he managed to find his brother among the hoards of fans and frauds, there seems only two roads forward.

To damn him to hell as his final words to him had been and others wrongly assumed he had done. To bring to fruition the lie that his brother’s death had been by his hand.

Or, to bring him home, to adorn him with lush mulberry-dyed robes, to arrange for him rooms on the sun-glistening water. To rule Yunmeng Jiang with his brother by his side, as his subordinate, as he himself had sworn he’d be all his life.

Lan Wangji, too, had had a similar idea—bringing him home—and Jiang Wanyin finds that his brother’s refusal of it doesn’t feel as satisfying as it did during a months-long reunion. If he had gone instead to Gusu, it would have been a betrayal, yes, but it surely wouldn’t be the first his brother had instilled that feeling in him, betrayal, and well, a disloyal brother is beginning to seem better than no brother at all. But the Lan had meant it as forfeiture, as a means of reform, and that’s what Jiang Wanyin desires as well. If he is to not end the dead man’s life, it is merely so that he will be there to see the suffering he’s bred for those he owes most, so that his brother will suffer as he has been suffering, alone, these many years. And what better tournament than the boundaries of Liánhuā Wù?

No matter what he does, though, murder the man or shield him from others doing the same, he would be doing it in the name of family. As retribution for his sister, her husband, and the son who was left behind, or out of remission for his brother who doesn’t share his blood but who Jiang Wanyin hasn’t for some reason been able to bring himself to disown in anything but bold statements and staged duels.

Or, maybe it’s best that he lets his brother be the bearer of his own fate. That way Jiang Wanyin is freed from the burden of his own warring desires, same as he had been at Búyètiān. Oddly, for all that he’s suffered for it, most days he’s found himself feeling grateful to Wei Wuxian, for letting go, for falling to his death before his sword had lodged so far that it’d send his body hurtling down into a seemingly bottomless abyss. Feeling grateful that his brother had finished what he had begun on his behalf, that he’d spared him blood on his hands. Really, Jiang Wanyin isn’t able to say, absent of doubt, that he had it in himself to go that far, or that he wouldn’t fling himself off the same ledge if he had. But, he doesn’t delude himself with notions that his brother’s death had been for his ease of mind. After all, wasn't it to instead spare Lan Wangji, so that the great and righteous Hanguang-Jun wouldn’t be made to answer for the Yilling Laozu’s irredeemable sins? Wasn’t his letting go a bid to save the other’s life one final time no matter if it meant ending his own? Wasn’t it all for him as everything else had been? And wasn’t Jiang Wanyin the one who, at the end, suffered most for his brother’s teenage infatuation as he always had?

Really, it’s a turn of fate that as he’s finished interrogating the fourth man self-affirmed to be a member of “Yilling Wei” in two short days, grudge the most firm rooted it’s been thus far, that Lan Wangji seemingly relinquishes some of his own.

—

“For you, Sizhui!” Jin Lings says, dragging two small wooden swords from the front of his robes and holding one out to the other boy. Jin Ling had laid his eyes on the toys at a stall along Gusu’s harbor and refused to go forward unless Jiang Wanyin agreed to buy one for him and his friend.

Sizhui is shyly singing his gratitude, smiling, small but radiant as he handles the wood with a firm but fluid handedness to his motions that shows signs of a talented future swordsman. And Lan Wangji is standing some feet away, stone form unfaltering if not for the smallest softening of his stare at the sight of the two swinging the swords in unison, eyes glinting with the memory of something no one but he’s the wiser to. He still lingers by his ward, still eyes Jiang Wanyin wearily during his meetings, but from that moment onwards Lan Wangji no longer stands guard at the gates, and more, does not steal the boy away and forbid his seeing Jin Ling. He, no matter how begrudgingly, shares that final bit of Wei Wuxian that didn’t die on that ledge that day, and for that Jiang Wanyin is, admittedly, grateful. After meeting the boy a short eight months ago, A-Ling’s moods are better, his fits less frequent and more manageable. And what matters most, he smiles. He’s still a brat, sure, but more and more in the ways that Jins generally grow to be instead of the ways a boy brewing in his own lonesomeness is. And with what a well mannered boy his friend seems to be, Jiang Wanyin has no worries that that brattiness, too, will diminish some as he grows older. From what he’s heard from Zewu-Jun, meeting Jin Ling has been of similar relief for the boy and why he reasons Lan Wangji didn’t forgo the meetings altogether.

So yes, Jiang Wanyin is grateful and so does not dare demand more, what he has far greater than he imagined he or his A-Ling would get from these meetings. But as time goes on, as one year bleeds to another, Lan Wangji begins to share bits of himself as well. Small measly bits, a firm nod or bow, a “Jiang-zongzhu” if it’s a good day. Granted, it’s nothing more than that, but something about the way Lan Wangji meets his eyes during his brief greetings tells him it’s more than a mere formality, that he, too, is grateful and has no words for it.

And it—the attention—is something Jiang Wanyin had no idea he had wanted but gosh he’s finding he does. A year of being shunned and to all a sudden be addressed, and so genuinely, has made him greedy for more. And so he finds himself imagining, against better reason, he and Lan Wangji sitting down for mid day tea, of that “Jiang-zongzhu” one day maybe being a “Jiang Wanyin.” It’s foolish but he longs for familiarity, to hear the words said from someone’s mouth, an address absent of the formalities that define his day to day life. What’s funny is that the only one who had done so—said his name—was Lan Wangji as well, all those years ago. It’s a desire for a familiarity that may have bloomed had Jiang Wanyin not been ushered to the role of leader so soon, had he not been busy rebuilding his home and mourning his dead. A familiarity that he had had during the days of the war when Lan Wangji had battled by his side for months, some of the worst of his life. A familiarity he had begun to assume was able to be regained. But, alas, Jiang Wanyin has to go and ruin it as he does anything good he has.

—

It’s the Fall of Jin Ling’s sixth birthday when Jiang Wanyin allows the boy to sit for his first Lan lesson alongside Suzhui. He’s still a good many years away from being able to attend the formal seminars but after two years of insistent begging and going as far as to get Zewu-Jun on his side, Jiang Wanyin finally agrees for the boy to gain some of Hanguang-Jun’s wisdom. It’s only when said boy is running through the grounds—rules that he’d surely been reminded of during his two hour long session so soon forgone—and a rag in hand, swaying with the slight breeze, that Jiang Wanyin begins to regret his willingness.

“Jiujiu Jiujiu, I made it all by myself!” Jin Ling beams, holding the rag in front of his eyes. The rag, Jiang Wanyin finds, is not a rag at all but the banner of a flag, a lure flag, a Stygian lure flag. The motifs messily drawn and smeared from where the ink failed to fully dry; its range a mere few meters and good only for the lowest grade of ghosts, if it triggers at all, that is. But it’s a lure flag, albeit an amateur one, of that Jiang Wanyin has no doubts. And as soon as he registers it, he’s snagging the thing from the boy’s hold as if it would burn his fingers had he had it for a moment more.

“Stay at the gate, A-Ling” Jiang Wanyin grunts out before surging forward.

“But Jiujiu, where are you—” Jing Ling begins while following behind, faltering to a halt as he gets a glare his way as he does.

“I said, stay” Jiang Wanyin all but shouts with a fury behind his words that resembles his mother’s. And as if it had summoned the ghost of Yu Furen herself, Zidian suddenly flows with a bolt of magenta lightning from where it sits on his hand.

Before he’s aware of it, Jiang Wanyin is off, striding down the grounds, blinding rage filling his lungs and stammering his breath with a desire to burst free from the sheer intensity of the feeling. It’s all a haze, feet leading his way to the Lan family lodgings and right to the doors of the Jingshi, all as his mind urges restraint, warns of a Yunmeng Jiang—finally regaining its standing as one of the greats—at odds with the heads of mighty Gusu Lan. Or what he fears more, of A-Ling losing the one friend he has and regressing to the hollow-eyed boy of two short years ago.

But it’s as Jiang Wanyin stands at the doors, an unambiguous melody sounding from within—inquiry—or one side of it, that he finds himself unable to subdue the rage he feels, has been feeling for years and for as long had to reel in. No more. Before he’s able to regret it, Jiang Wanyin barges through the doors.

Lan Wangji’s hands still on the guqin to his front, the sole sign that he’s been disturbed, demeanor as indifferent and aloof as always.

It’s only when Jiang Wanyin tosses the flag on the floor with a thud that Lan Wangji sets it to the side.

He’s silent for many moments before he gets out a mild “Jiang-zongzhu,” finally assigning words, if only two, to the tension that’s been filling the room from the moment Jiang Wanyin made his sudden ingress.

“What is the meaning of this?” Jiang Wanyin demands with all the remaining restraint he has.

Lan Wangji’s eyes barely stray from his own and to the floor as he answers, slow and measured, “It is a lure flag. I assume Jiang-zongzhu has seen one before.”

And Jiang Wanyin would be relishing in the words, the most the other man has said to him in years, had it not been for the matter at hand. But Lan Wangji has the gall to demonstrate the Yilling Laozu’s methods to the boy whose father he murdered, whose mother died no less as a result of his hubris.

“It is a familiar sight on the streets of Yilling, but this is Gusu Lan. Surely Lan-er-gongzi wouldn’t resort to the same, to endorsing the unorthodox way.”

It seems insults to the man’s nobleness, though, get no rise out of the Lan heir. He remains as still as stone, and so filled with rage at this is Jiang Wanyin that he does not stall a moment before disregarding the one, albeit unstated rule of their long running meetings: do not mention the ghost who is behind them.

“Unless, that is, you miss the traitor.”

And that is the moment Jiang Wanyin should have figured that he had handed Lan Wangji a double edged sword, and that he more than anyone had reason to draw blood.

Indeed, soon the man is rising to his feet and standing before him, guarding his most intimate feelings same as he did the ground’s gates during those first few meetings.

“Is that not why you hunt those who use his methods?” Lan Wangji says, how sedate he sounds betrayed by the wild glare of his eyes. “There are stories of you torturing men and women who follow the same ways. Is it not with the wish that you will find him? That one of those wielders of gui dao will be him?” “Is it not,” he mutters, “that you miss him?”

And suddenly his brother’s death isn’t an old wound that’s had years to heal or mend as best as the memory allows. No, it is raw and bleeding as if Jiang Wanyin is seeing the man dangling from his doom, hanging on only by Lan Wangji’s hold, his own sword missing flesh and hitting the edge.

The sutures, sewn hastily to begin with, go undone.

“Who said I missed him?” Jiang Wanyin retorts, and doesn’t miss the tremble of his words as he does.

“You did not harm him that day at Búyètiān. You were not able to bring yourself to do it, and you would not be able to do so if you found him today. So why bother wanting to if you do not intend to end his life?”

You may be able to fool the others, but I witnessed it, standing off that ledge on the worst day of both of our lives. The words go unsaid but hang from the air between them, dense and smothering.

It bares the wound and the resulting sting brings a wetness to his eyes and the sense of something lodged at the bottom of his throat. It’s those things Jiang Wanyin feels before he registers it—that he’s sobbing. And maybe he would be more embarrassed at what an undignified sight he—a grown man, a gentry leader—doing so must be. That is if he didn’t find Lan Wangji’s own eyes so glossy and red rimmed from the tears he refuses to shed. As one of those tears falls, as stubborn as the man whose eye it belongs, Lan Wangji flees, gone with a flurry of mourning robes and Jiang Wanyin left alone with a grief no one before had seen, it buried below mountains of other, harsher feelings for a brother who has long been besieged.

For reasons he fails to fully fathom, Jiang Wanyin’s outburst doesn’t mean the end of his and Jin Ling’s going to Gusu. Meetings resume as usual, as if he didn’t wholly and fundamentally damage the already fragile bond between he and Lan Wangji. He waits for a letter from Zewu-Jun relaying his brother’s desire to end the agreement, all ruefully said regardless of the finality of his words. But days and soon months go by and no letter of the sort gets to his doors, and Jiang Wanyin, for not the first time, feels he owes a great deal to the Lans. As hurtful as the man’s words had been, there’s no he would rather hear them from, not when Lan Wangji is one of the few who remembers his brother for who he was and not the feared, greater than myth Yilling Laozu he’s infamous for being.

Jiang Wanyin has always been strangely bound to Lan Wangji and their duel of words had been a reminder of that bond. A reminder: he’s the only one, besides myself, mourning my brother. If not for him, I would be alone in my grief. And maybe Jiang Wanyin’s grief is more muddied, not as gentle or wistful; bearing the weight of his brother’s betrayal, the fall of his home, the loss of his family, and yes, of raising his dead sister’s son—a suffering he will maybe always blame his brother for. And maybe he doesn’t blame him, not really. But blame is all he has; it’s always been easier to hide behind it, to disguise his harder to say feelings as it. So fitting is it that Jiang Wanyin’s grief manifests as harsh words and harsher fists at the mere mention of that brother, and Lan Wangji’s as gentle songs sung from gentle fingers, daily efforts to find what shreds may remain of his gentle soul. But that muddied grief is for Wei Wuxian and Wei Wuxian alone, as is Lan Wangji’s.

Maybe it’s a similar sense of gratitude of someone feeling as he does, of mourning as he does, that ends with Lan Wangji greeting with a “Jiang Wanyin” at the first meeting that follows the one that somehow didn’t end it all. A “Jiang Wanyin” as if his brother isn’t dead at all but merely missing at the hands of the Wen dogs, and will be found by he and Lan Wangji any day now.

—

Jin-Ling is eight when he sees his first snow. It’s the beginning of an unusually brutal winter when a sudden storm befalls Gusu, stranding the boy and his guardian at the Lan abode.

Zewu Jun had offered the two a guest room—or two, for that matter—but it seemed A-Ling and his dear friend had other ideas.

Jiang Wanyin wants to refuse for no reason other than Jin Ling’s being a brat, a hole already beginning to form through the material of his shawl from how he’s been hanging off of it for ten minutes. He’s being a brat and that’s no way to get what he wants—a lesson he should learn now should he wish to be an admirable leader one day. It seems Lan Wangji, though, holds no similar reservations on indulging his ward, a few bats of Sizhui’s lashes and he’s soon relenting to the boys’ demands.

That’s how Jiang Wanyin finds himself being begrudgingly led to the Jingshi, a mountain of bedding beneath his arms already moist from the steady fall of flurries.

As soon as they’re out of the bitter snow, Sizhui and Jin-Ling rush to settle down on the bed—the single bed in the room—meaning both he and the noble Lan-er-gongzi will be the one’s going the night on the floor.

And Jiang Wanyin finds that he wants to laugh—a dry, mirthless laugh, but a laugh all the same—at the shared ordeal of he and Lan Wangji: two single, what still feels to be barely adult men, left to raise boys not their own. And as with most of his life’s misfortunes, his brother, not to his astonishment, is to blame.

As odd as it seems, it’s a familiar arrangement, he and Lan Wangji sharing a room. During the Sunshot days, they had shared many a room of shabby inns or some minor family’s Wen-demolished home when no two had been free. And maybe it would be reason for offense to demand that a zongzhu and the brother of one share a lodging, but they merely rested there for a few hours before setting off to find Wei Wuxian again. It seems as if those days had been a lifetime ago. All is different and simultaneously nothing is. If there’s stories of Sandu Shengshou following signs of resentful energies and seizing, or doing worse, to its wielders; well, there’s no shortage of ones of Hanguang-Jun gallantly aiding with disturbed burial sites, restless souls—as well as those steering the bodies of the undead. Both men are still looking for him, same as all those years ago, but now neither dares breathe a word of it, most definitely not to the other, afraid that he’ll find him first and steal him away. As if the Yilling Laozu is able to be brought somewhere he didn’t wish to go and be made to stay. They, better than anyone, shouldn’t be so foolish as to assume so, their failures what brought about the end of his first life.

Sizhui has his own rooms and rarely shares with the man who is both a brother and father for the boy, besides days similar to this one, that is, with the grounds frosted through. On those days, he heads to the Jingshi, Lan Wangji dressing the boy with wool bed robes before burying his body under four more sheets, out of fear that he’ll fall ill from the wetness and wind gusts that follow with the shifting season.

It’s far from long before the boys are slumbering away, surely feeling worn from the long day and the twenty minutes of snow gazing Lan Wangji had allowed beyond hai shi. But it seems the man feels it was twenty minutes too many as his eyes linger on a dreaming Sizhui, listening for the faintest sign of a sniffle. And Jiang Wanyin finds it all too amusing, the sight of the stolid Lan-er-gongzi so needlessly worried.

“Lan Wangji, you’ve grown soft from raising that Wen boy.”

And Jiang Wanyin isn’t sure why he says it, or with the words that he does. It isn’t deliberate and far from an admission of something he should be none the wiser to, merely a foolish blunder of both mouth and mind. He blames it on the hour. On the warmth of the room, a fine relief from the blizzard raging beyond its walls. On the smell of sandalwood that floods it. But how does he begin to defend himself to Lan Wangji? Lan Wangji whose eyes grow suddenly wide and bewildered at the mention of the should be dead surname. Lan Wangji whose usually stone features wear a looming sense of dread, as if with a mere gesture of his hand Jiang Wanyin will raise a furious mob to burst through the doors and slaughter the final of the Wen remnants as his small body lies on the far too big bed.

And maybe he would, if he was a lesser man. If he was still a boy, barely of age, reeling from a war won but whose loss was unbearably and disastrously great. A boy who dreamed of a sun swallowing whole his home, ash and ruin all that remained of the blaze, one who arose to the sounds of his own anguished wailing far before daylight had been laid. A boy who wanted blood with no regard for who it was from, so long as it was Wen.

But Jiang Wanyin isn’t the boy he was all those years ago. He has no desire for blood, and far from it for war, not when he has a boy of his own. And he owes it to the man before him to reassure of that.

But, he had always been awful with words—a result of a father who used them meagerly and a mother who did mostly with a malignant rage—and so as he goes to amend his wrongdoings, all he manages is, “What, you think you’re the only one who went to that hellhole to reason with that idiot, Wei Wuxian?”

Jiang Wanyin is shutting his eyes, releasing a ragged breath so as not to worsen matters with the usual bite of his words.

More slowly he begins, “I led the siege of Luànzàng Gǎng, that I don’t deny nor regret, but as Wei Wuxian’s bro—” he finds he isn’t able to bring himself to finish, a long and frustrated sigh fleeing from his mouth instead.

“As leader to where Wei Wuxian was formally aligned, I won’t hurt the boy he had a hand in raising.”

Lan Wangji doesn’t seem reassured by his guarantees of Sizhui’s wellbeing. He’s still on edge, hand in fists at his sides, lingering by the waistband of his sword should he find a reason for it.

So for good measure, Jiang Wanyin adds, firmly but with a genuineness to his words that staggers himself as well, “He—Sizhui, for all it matters, is family.”

At that the worry lining Lan Wangji’s furrowed brow finally eases, and he nods, an “mn” all he says in answer. It’s small but as near an affirmation as he would wish to get from the other man.

Sure enough, the following morning Suzhui is running a fever, body shivering even with the beads of sweat lining his forehead.

And Jiang Wanyin feels he’s to blame, seeing as Jin Ling is the reason the boy was outside during a snowstorm to begin with. “We should build a man with the snow!” he had said. And Sizhui—being the darling boy he is—had gladly followed his lead. That feeling of guilt is what has Jiang Wanyin ordering someone down the mountain to get a bag of lotus roots as soon as the sun has risen. He’d demand ribs too but it’s a Lan he’s feeding and, well, a meat-free dish seems safest.

“How is Sizhui doing?” he says while setting foot inside the Jingshi and to a Lan Wangji who’s in the middle of running a bath for the boy.

“Better,” he mutters, eyes falling on the steaming bowl in Jiang Wanyin’s hands.

“It’s for Sizhui. That bland Lan food isn’t going to do the boy any good. He needs something strong to drain the bug from his system.”

And again, Lan Wangji is nodding his head in lew of an answer. And that’s fine, really, it is. Jiang Wanyin doesn’t need his gratitude, not when he's the one showing gratitude with the offering of food. If someone had demonstrated to him the slightest idea that they’d hurt A-Ling, he doubts he would be as forbearing.

Reassured that the boy’s fine, and the storm mostly subsided, Jiang Wanyin is heading out of the room and off for home when he hears Lan Wangji from behind him.

“A-Yuan”

“What?”

“His name is A-Yuan. You may refer to him as so—if you wish.”

On the way, Jiang Wanyin, oddly, finds that he isn’t as bothered by the bitterness of winter as he tends to be. His hands may be as blue as his robes but there’s a steady warmth beginning to burrow from his gut, and against the gusts of frost-bitten wind, he smiles for what is the first time in far, far too many seasons.

—

During the seasons that follow, Jiang Wanyin learns that Sizhui is obedient and sensible but timid and generous. That he has a gift for guqin and a fondness for foods that resemble animal fodder… That’s what raising a boy among a hoard of rabbits will do, Jiang Wanyin reasons. He begins bringing Sizhui a red envelope every Lunar New Year and Yunmeng style desserts every Mid Autumn Festival. And it’s not only holidays Jiang Wanyin shares alongside the boy, but as it seems, also teenage squabbles. He meditates what is, fortunately, Jin Ling and Sizhui’s first and sole argument in their eight years as friends. Sizhui had made a new friend, who to Jiang Wanyin’s dismay, was the most un-Lan Lan, Lan Jingyi. And Jin Ling, being nothing if not the boy he raised, had been but a bundle of bitterness and rage. But, Jiang Wanyin had seen beyond his whinny refusals to go to Gusu and his glossy eyed assertions that Sizhui was longer his friend. He has seen a fear of being abandoned, and as fate would deem it, of a Lan stealing away his one real friend, a fear that Jiang Wanyin shared, one that he was intimately familiar. It dragged on for a good two months but ended with the boys’ bond the most solid it had been, Jin Ling saying sorry through an embarrassing amount of tears and Sizhui gently drying at every one of them, reassuring that A-Ling would always be his first and most dearest friend. And if Jiang Wanyin’s own eyes felt a bit wet at the end of it, well, that was no one’s business but his own.

—

Jiang Wanyin didn’t get a formal swearing in, what with a war brewing, and when it had been won, he was mourning the family it had slain. And when his home had finally been rebuilt, he was being handed a baby barely one month of age. He still is, mourning, and beginning to be of the mind that he always will be. But A-Ling is fourteen years old now, and with the anniversary of the fall of Liánhuā Wù looming, everyone wants something to busy themselves with. That, after a fair deal of swaying from his shidis, turns out to be a gathering for Jiang Wanyin, honoring all he has done for Yunmeng Jiang—how he has restored it to its former glory, from ruin to great wonders—held, also after some not so gently nudging, at Jīnlín Tái. Gone are the days of bending to the other better off families who dismissed and degraded on the basis of age and losses suffered. Now, “offend anyone but Yunmeng Jiang” are the words that flow through the land.

The gathering and feast that follows is a grand affair, meaning all former, minor, and standing ministers, rulers, and other gentries will be attending. The Lan brothers and Grand Master, for one, bring a mid-sized delegation, among whom is Suzhui. It’s the first that Jiang Wanyin is seeing the boy outside of Gusu, and if the Lans are as rigid as he remembers, it’s the first that the boy has been allowed outside of its borders at all. It being for his feast does something funny to his insides.

Jin Ling is missing for most of it, surely showing off the grandeur of Jīnlín Tái or his dog, Fairy, to his friends. Oddly, Lan Wangji is gone for the tail bit of it as well, not that Jiang Wanyin has a good guess as to why. Things are only beginning to settle down—guests who had journeyed for afar being shown to rooms and the others bidding their farewells before mounting swords and horses—when Jin Ling finally re-emerges with Sizhui, Jingyi, and Ouyang Zizhen following behind.

The former two boys are mumbling about something Jiang Wanyin only barely manages to glean.

“Jin Ling, are you sure? What if I transgress some boundary or rule or—”

“Agh, you Lans and your formalness,” he says, rolling his eyes. “ I swear he won’t mind! He’s been there for your whole life, after all.”

Sizhui nods solemnly but the beet red flush he’s wearing remains. He’s fidgeting with his hands when Jiang Wanyin strides toward the boys.

“A-Ling, A-Yuan. What’s the matter?” he demands worriedly. “Should I get Hanguang-Jun?”

“No No, that won’t be needed!” Sizhui mutters all in a rush, the words sounding a bit mangled. “Only that, may your reign be long and Yunmeng Jiang always glorious,” he finishes with a bow.

Jin Ling elbows Sizhui at that. A message.

Sizhui breathes, steeling, “Jiang-Shushu.”

And surely Jiang Wanyin had misheard, but before he’s able to affirm what the boy had said, he’s fleeing, not fast enough to be defying his family rules but enough that its sight is worrisome.

All Jiang Wanyin manages through the sudden fog of his brain is, “A-Ling, you better refrain from rubbing off on that boy before I get an earful from your Hanguang-Jun.”

“Why would he be mad? It was his idea. You’re always blaming me for things I didn’t do,” the boy mutters under his breath before realising what he’s said and hurriedly following after his friend.

Jiang-Shushu. The last Jiang Wanyin had heard those words was from his brother’s mouth and addressed to his father. But Wei Wuxian wasn’t his brother, not by blood, no matter how greatly father wished for the other to be, wished for Wei Wuxian to be his son, his heir. Hearing those words now, Jiang Wanyin doesn’t feel the rush of bitterness he did those many years ago. It’s what his brother had always said to his father, and what the son his brother guardianed had said to him—mere moments before. The meaning of the words may be missed by the boys but not Jiang Wanyin. He and Lan Wangji may be on good grounds—dare he say, friends—but they’re far from brothers, not in the way his and Wei Wuxian’s fathers were brothers, the way he and Wei Wuxian were brothers. And that they were not brothers in a way that mattered by the standards of most was something Jiang Wanyin was always being reminded of—first by mother and then by the gentries who blamed him for not being able to manage one of his lowly, rebellious followers. But he and Wei Wuxian’s bond was far more than that of master and subordinate. No, it was not something able to be defined by things as worldly as by blood and status. Lan Wangji, it seems, agrees.

The ring of the words from Sizhui’s mouth, while not said with the shamelessness of his brother’s, is one Jiang Wanyin finds he wants to get used to. Jiang-Shushu. It’s the best gift he gets that day, worth more than the dozen embroidered fans from Nie Huaisang, or really, all the gold of the tower he stands.

—

Yunmeng is always most beautiful during Spring, the final strains of February’s showers lending to the lotuses riding a full bloom, the dizzying aroma alone bringing wanderers from far and wide. That it is when the Lans first see it—and while returning from business along the border so that Jiang Wanyin does not seem too eager—is by rigorous design. Alas, had Jin Ling had it his way, he would not be a full sixteen when his greatest friend first sets foot inside his home, or the one he likes best, that is. Jiang Wanyin dallies away the morning fussing with maids about rooms and dishes, ensuring that all is to his standards for his guests. It’s only the two—Sizhui and Lan Wangji, but with the arrangements being made one would assume Liánhuā Wù was holding a grand wedding, or that’s what one of the maids says. If my idiot brother didn’t go and die, maybe we would be, Jiang Wanyin refrains from brooding.

The moment the boy and his guardian are beyond the gates, A-Ling is leading Sizhui away, saying something about a boat ride to see the sights while the other mutters, regrettably, about feeling nauseous at the idea.

Jiang Wanyin, similarly, shows Lan Wangji to the Sword Hall, jasmine tea already brewed and set for two.

“Xiongzhang regrets that he is not able to be here,” Lan Wangji begins as they sit.

“Zewu-Jun is a busy man, there are no hard feelings. That reminds me, how is getting ready for the seminars going? I hear you’re going to be heading this year’s alongside your shufu.”

“Mn. It is going well. We should be able to house delegations soon.”

Jiang Wanyin feels a rush of nostalgia settle at his gut. “It’s funny, isn’t it? A-Ling will be heading to Gusu half a year from now, same as I did when I was his age. He’s already as old as we were at that time.” His “we” means his brother as well, the memories of the three of them battling a waterborne abyss and being beaten for getting wasted off of Gusu wine—albeit Lan Wangji unwillingly—still lingering in his mind.

And Jiang Wanyin is trying to strangle the desire to share it—the memories and the longing that they bring—with the man to his front when one of the shidis, to his relief or dismay—Jiang Wanyin hasn’t made his mind—enters the room.

“Zongzhu, Hanguang-Jun,” he says before bowing low to the both of them. The man bends forward toward Jiang Wanyin and brings his hand to his mouth to hide the words to follow. And really, it’s standard for messengers of the gentries. If it was the sleazy Yao-Zongzhu sitting on the other side of him, Jiang Wanyin would be grateful for it. But it’s Lan Wangji who’s seated there, and—being the gentleman he is—lowering his eyes so as not to intrude on matters he has no business with. And, really, it won’t do, not after all the two had been through.

“If you wish to say something, you will say it in front of our guest.”

The man’s eyes go wide for a moment before he stands straight and stammers, “Su-surely, Zongzhu. We—We finished examining both the base of the mountain at Búyètiān and the den at Luànzàng Gǎng. Yilling Laozu, soul or remains, is nowhere to be found.”

And as busy as Jiang Wanyin has been, he’d forgotten that he ordered some twenty of his men to see if his brother had been seen at those sites when he’d gotten word of a summoning ritual—the fourth this year. One more failure, it seems.

Jiang Wanyin nods. “You may go,” he says, dismissing the man while trying, and largely failing, to hide the sorrow of his words.

It’s far from the first time that he’s been told that his brother is dead, that his hope that he may not be has been shattered. But when it’s this sort of brief he’s met with, it gets harder and harder to hold onto what glimmer remains of it. When a messenger hangs his head or Zidian shows that the woman flaunting that she is the Yilling Laozu reborn is nothing but a liar, it is as if his brother has died again. And if that is so, Jiang Wanyin has attended dozens of funerals during the years. And this is not the first but it is the first that he has not been alone for. Lan Wangji sits on the other side of the table, silent but anguished. Another mourner. This, too, is not his first funeral.

“Shall I get us more tea? I’m sure it’s gone stale by n—”

“I am sorry,” Lan Wangji says before Jiang Wanyin is able to finish, as if he had read his mind. It is not an ambiguous statement, the for your loss is not said but meant all the same. And Jiang Wanyin, for the first time in sixteen years, or longer, really, finds he is at a loss for words. No one has said sorry to Jiang-zongzhu before. For the loss of his sister, yes, but it was both of his siblings who died that day. And no one says sorry to the dead man’s murderer. In the matter of Yilling Laozu, they flatter him for a job well done, forget that he did not do it nor want it done.

Lan Wangji’s “sorry,” too, is the most genuine he has gotten. It is not the stiff and meaningless “sorry” of Jin Guangshan when his mother and father had died, or the magnified tearful “sorry” of the town-goers when it had been his sister to meet her demise. No, it is the “sorry” of a man who has mourned as he has, who is being haunted by the same ghost as he is. It is a “sorry” filled to the brim and bursting at the seams with grief and said from the mouth of the man to whom it is most familiar.

And it dawns on Jiang Wanyin that he has known Lan Wangji longer than he had known Wei Wuxian. That his brother has been dead for longer than he had been his brother. For longer than he had been at Liánhuā Wù and a thorn at his side. And he’s been gone for so long, Jiang Wanyin barely remembers a time when he wasn’t, barely remembers the tilt of his laugh or the glint of his eyes. When goes to imagine it, the memories blur, and he fears what images or sounds he is able to muster are merely his brain filling in the many, age worsening holes of his longing.

And Jiang Wanyin really should say something, the moments of stillness between he and Lan Wangji dragging on for so long it feels stifling. But what do you say to the “sorry” of someone who means it, who feels the grief that that “sorry” holds as greatly as you yourself do?

When words do finally flee from his mouth, they are merely, “Do you remember the sound of his laugh?”

But before Jiang Wanyin is able to get an answer, if the other man had one at all, the sound of a shriek followed by a shouted “Sizhui!” rings out from beyond the doorway.

Jiang Wanyin and Lan Wangji share a single, wide-eyed stare before rushing out of the room, swords out and drawn.

Outside, they find Sizhui and Jin Ling submerged to their shoulders in water. Jin Ling, after some flailing, manages to hold onto the wharf with one hand and onto his friend’s waist with the other, and soon the boys are again standing on steady ground.

Jiang Wanyin and Lan Wangji, who when realising there was no real danger, had remained at the front of the Sword Hall’s doors, begin to stride towards the boys.

“Are you both alright?” Jiang Wanyin says to a Jin Ling who’s wringing out his hair and a Sizhui who seems embarrassed by the whole ordeal more than anything.

“We are sorry for worrying you,” Sizhui begins. “I was admiring the lotuses along the wharf. They feel familiar, for some reason. As if I had seen these flowers somewhere before, an old memory, maybe. And when I went to get a better look, I bent too far forward, and uh… fell in. But I am fine, really! The water was shallow and Jin Ling got me out within moments.” Sizhui is smiling shyly at the boy to his side as he says those final words.

“It is good no one was hurt,” Lan Wangji offers while eyeing the rows of lotuses behind Sizhui. He has inferred what Jiang Wanyin did when Sizhui first said it.

“Well, what are you waiting for, A-Ling? Go get out of those soggy robes. And get fresh ones from the maids for A-Yuan as well.”

“But it’s nearly Summer,” the boy argues, “they’ll dry on their own.”

“I don’t need you getting ill. Don’t be stubborn and do as I say.”

“Go on,” Jiang Wanyin warns when the boy remains standing still, “or I’ll break your legs.”

And as if it’s the funniest thing he’s heard to date, Sizhui bursts suddenly out laughing. It’s almost an odd sound from his mouth, not at all as restrained and dignified as the boy usually is. No, it is loud and boisterous, teetering on a teasing roguishness. It feels warm, familiar.

Jin Ling leads the boy away and Jiang Wanyin stares on, fond.

“That,” Lan Wangji mutters off to his side.

“That?” Jiang Wanyin mirrors the words, not sure what the other man means by it.

“That is the sound of Wei Ying’s laugh.”

—

“Bring this with you,” says Jiang Wanyin, holding out a glass bottle of marinated fish fresh from the morning’s haul to Lan Wangji. He and Sizhui are gathering their belongings, their two days stay already at an end.

“I am grateful for the offering, but we will not be heading home for a few more days. I fear it will go bad by the time we do.”

Jiang Wanyin hands one of the maids the bottle and gesturing for her to bring a bag of grilled, dried bass instead. “Oh, is that so? A night hunt, I assume.”

“Mn. Mò Jiāzhuāng has seen a restless ghost. Sizhui will meet the others from Gusu to handle it, seeing as it is on the way.”

Jin Ling huffs at the words, either mad that he’ll be missing out or disgusted at the reminder of the deranged Mo Xuanyu.

Sizhui, who had been folding the Jiang robes he borrowed after he had ruined his own, suddenly eyes Jiang Wanyin, as if wanting to say something.

“With regard to Mò Jiāzhuāng, I was wondering, would it be alright if Jin Ling goes as well?” Sizhui’s eyes are far too big and round as he says it; he sees now why Lan Wangji is so indulging of his wishes.

If Jiang Wanyin agreed, it would be only Jin Ling’s eighth night hunt and the first that he wouldn't be following along for. He doesn’t want to admit it, but his sheltering of the boy has done more harm than good. Rather than be more guarded from and wary of danger, it’s made him rash and determined to seek it out. To refuse A-Ling now would merely worsen matters; deal more damage to his struggling abilities, and—in a way only a boy of his family name is able to manage—further boost his ego, all when he’s seldom able to liberate a measly ghost. That aside, Jiang Wanyin isn’t sure he’s able to say no to the begging eyes of the boy’s friend.

“Fine, he may go. If you are home within two days,” he says to Jin Ling who is already dashing off to his rooms to grab his bags. “Don’t worry, jiujiu, I will be!”

“Thank you, Jiang-shushu, thank you!” Sizhui says, absolutely beaming. “I assure you Jin Ling will be in good hands.” And before Jiang Wanyin is able to register it, Sizhui is on the ground, barely more than a meter tall and grabbing the bottoms of his robes same as he did all those years ago. But when he does hug his legs, Jiang Wanyin does not shout at the boy to get off or refuse his regard same as he did all those years ago. No, he brings a hand to his head and begins to ruffle his hair as he had done to A-Ling when he was small. And Sizhui is laughing that brilliant laugh of his, albeit one more resembling the ones his brother had for no one but their sister, gentle and ingenuous, almost infant-like. And Jiang Wanyin finds that the reminder doesn’t bring with it the hurt that it has so many times before. It feels good—the familiar sound and weight at his feet, that is till he realises, suddenly and forebodingly, that it belongs to a Lan. It is a Lan whose hair he is ruffling. It is a forehead ribbon he feels his fingers beneath.

“The Lan forehead ribbon is only for a Lan’s family and the one whom they marry” Jin Ling had informed Jiang Wanyin one day returning from Gusu, his ears going bright red at the mention of marriage. With the shy smiles Sizhui has been shining his way and sheer glee at getting to night hunt by his side, Jiang Wanyin really does feel a fool for failing to realise sooner. But, seeing as he had gone and disregarded one of the greatest Lan family rules as if it was nothing, fears firstly that he’s ruined any betrothal A-Ling had in his future.

His hand has stilled on Sizhui’s head, his eyes wide and not wanting to meet Lan Wangji’s. Lan Wangji who is surely fastening him an offended glare. Lan Wangji who will surely admonish him for wholly abandoning all regard for rules and boundaries and good breeding and gentility. But when Jiang Wanyin dares to raise his head, it is not a glare he sees, but—if his eyes do not fool him—a smile, small but undoubtedly there.

“You are, for all it matters, family,” he says, the smile still framing his mouth. “And you had a hand in raising him as well.”

Jiang Wanyin feels as if he is a lotus tilted toward the gentle rays of the setting sun.

And Jiang Wanyin—with a boy hanging off his legs and fellow guardian smiling by his side—suddenly finds he finally has his answer of what he would do when, not if, his brother returns: share him. He would share his family as Lan Wangji has shared his own. Share his brother as he has shared his grief for him, at first begrudgingly but with a growing gratitude all the same. And Lan Wangji, he had shown to be worthy of it; he had regained Jiang Wanyin's regard, bore his loss and shouldered his share. To be greedy when that mirrored grief one day abates, would be to betray a dear friend. Besides, that idiot brother of his was always more than he was able to handle by his lonesome.

The warmth returns and Jiang Wanyin has a feeling it won't go away so soon.