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There are no guards outside of the room in which Lan Wangji is being kept. For anyone else in the clan, likely including himself, Lan Xichen thinks there would have been. But Lan Wangji had, of course, turned himself in without complaint. As he always had, since he was a small child. And who could guard him, regardless? As he had made clear, it did not seem likely that any Lan disciple could.
It is near curfew – Lan Xichen would have preferred to have this conversation later, when he’d have no chance of being observed on his way to his own chambers, but his brother will certainly be asleep by then – and Lan Xichen stands silently outside the door of what could have been an empty room if he didn’t already know it wasn’t. His uncle had offered to be the one to bring the news to Lan Wangji, but Lan Xichen had waved him off. He’d said it was his duty, that it had been his fault Wangji had been allowed to grow so close to the Yiling Patriarch when they were boys, that he was sect leader and this had gone on long enough. All of these things are true, but they are not why he does it.
Why he does it is that this might be the last time he gets to speak to his brother before he dies.
He knocks. There is no answer. If Lan Wangji had wanted to be left alone, there would have been. He opens the door, which hadn’t even been locked. For the briefest of moments, he pretends to hope that the silence is because Wangji had run, but of course he hasn’t.
“Xiongzhang,” Wangji acknowledges in his steady, even voice, in position on the floor as if he had been meditating, eyes not opening. What injuries he had taken at the Burial Mounds are already healing.
“Wangji,” Lan Xichen responds, and he can hear the slight shake in his own voice. Lan Wangji opens his eyes, stands, bows precisely. “Wangji,” Lan Xichen tries again. “The elders have discussed –”
“Lan Wangji accepts punishment.”
Lan Wangji never interrupts him. Lan Wangji never interrupts anyone. Now that he has moved into the flickering candlelight, he is easier to read. He is trying to save Lan Xichen the misery of having to finish that sentence. The guilt in his chest tightens. Surely, somewhere, this punishment is against some rule. Somehow. Surely he could have said something –
But he couldn’t have, of course.
Lan Xichen closes his eyes. “Do you want to know what it will be, at least?”
There is a beat of silence. This is normal; Wangji thinks before he speaks. There is another beat of silence. This is not.
Lan Xichen opens his eyes. He is not going to get an answer. “Thirty-three lashes,” he says.
Lan Wangji doesn’t flinch, because Lan Wangji is not a man who flinches. There is another beat. Eventually, a mechanical, “Xiongzhang.”
“I am sorry,” Lan Xichen says.
“It is fine,” Lan Wangji says.
“It will probably kill you.”
“It is fine.”
“Wangji, I –”
“Xiongzhang. I made the choice. I accept the punishment.”
Lan Xichen loves his brother more than anybody else in the world. More than he’d loved their mother, more than he loves his sworn brothers, certainly more than he can remember ever loving their uncle. He could stop this. He should stop this. The idea of the rest of his life without his brother is too terrible to be borne. But if he has to, he will bear it. Because to stop it would tear his clan apart. And Wangji would not want him to love him more than he loves the entirety of Gusu Lan.
So instead of another apology, he says, “I wish you had not given the Yiling Patriarch so much of your spiritual energy. I can give you mine, now, but I do not think it will be enough.”
At that, Wangji almost smiles. “It is not necessary.” After another long pause, “I gave Wei Ying less than it seemed. He is very strong.” And then, “He tried to refuse. He knows our punishments.” Another almost smile.
Lan Xichen pushes down the anger at how that refusal had sounded when they’d found the two of them together. Hating Wei Wuxian will not help Wangji now. Instead, he just says, “I see.”
They stand there looking at each other for a moment, and Lan Xichen wishes horribly that he did not make a practice of respecting Wangji’s dislike for physical contact. He would like to hug him, to feel his vitality and his strength and his pride before they take it all from him. He restrains himself.
It is clear to Lan Xichen that there is something else his brother wants to say, but he is stopping himself. This is almost as scary as any of the rest of it – it is very rare that Lan Wangji has any desire to speak at all. When they had been children, he had never needed to. Lan Xichen always knew, and Wangji always trusted him to know. It was only at age three, after being admonished for intentionally causing difficulty to others that he had, in perfect, formal sentences, begun to speak aloud.
Curfew is very soon. He can see the exhaustion in how his brother is holding himself, even though nobody else would ever be able to. So he asks, instead of waiting. “What is it?”
Wangji looks at him for a long moment, deciding. Eventually, “If you cannot do it, I understand. But I would prefer you to shufu.”
Ah. He has never administered his brother’s punishments. Not that there have been many. “You’re sure?” A stupid question.
Wangji nods.
“I– will do my best.”
“Thank you, xiongzhang,” he says, voice just as even as if they were discussing the weather, and the insane thing about Wangji is that Lan Xichen knows he means it.
∞
The next day, Lan Wangji kneels. He is there before Lan Xichen arrives, before anybody arrives. He is so still he could be a statue. His robes are removed from his upper body to prevent the cloth becoming trapped in his wounds, and it is only early spring, so he must be cold, but he only looks the ice he normally looks. Lan Xichen holds the whip and thinks he is going to be sick before they even begin. If he kills his brother –
He will not kill his brother. Wangji does not greet him, and he can’t blame him. He is likely deep in meditation, and it would be inappropriate, even though they’re alone for now. They cannot be brothers right now. They can only be sect leader and disciple in need of punishment.
Thankfully, the audience will not be large. They have kept word of the situation as quiet as possible, and Lan Wangji may not have many friends, but he does not have many enemies, either. Certainly nobody of Gusu Lan who wishes to see him suffer like this. Certainly nobody of Gusu Lan who wishes him dead.
Lan Xichen holds the whip. It is heavier than it looks. As if somebody else is speaking for him, he greets his uncle when he arrives, and then the other few elders who are coming out of obligation to ensure the punishment is seen out. Everybody knows Lan Wangji will not fight back. Everybody knows Lan Xichen will do his duty.
Unbidden, his mind flickers to Nie Mingjue. What would he have done if it had been Mingjue to finally snap? If it had been Mingjue’s morals to bring them here? How can he let his brother be punished for something when he knows full well that he would have done the same if he had been in that position?
Well. That’s not true, is it? Wangji has always been braver than him.
Everyone has now arrived. It is silent as the dead. He closes his eyes, centers himself, and then leans down to Wangji, so that he can speak quietly. “Are you ready?”
The barest flutter of his eyelids before a calm, “Yes, Zewu-jun.”
Lan Xichen breathes. Centers himself. Realizes he’s waiting for something and then, as soon as he realizes it, hears the voice of his brother, clear and steady. “Begin,” says Lan Wangji, who has been in charge of punishment in Cloud Recesses since he was 13 years old.
Lan Xichen begins. The first strike is the easiest, because he knows what to do with it. For Wangji to have the best chance at surviving this, the lashes need to not overlap as much as possible. Ultimately, that is an impossible goal, but he can do his best. And he can avoid his brother’s arms and his brother’s face. In this way, it is better him than somebody else. He aims for as far to the top as he can get it while still ensuring the lash is strong enough and connects horizontally in enough places that the elders watching cannot object.
Wangji’s body rocks forward, but it is in response to the force and not the pain. Wangji counts, “One.”
Lan Xichen is struck suddenly and overwhelmingly with how greatly he and his uncle and his father have wronged Lan Wangji to turn him into this. He is struck suddenly and overwhelmingly with how greatly he fears that they all have wronged Wei Wuxian, to insist he is evil when his brother is willing to suffer this for him.
The second lash is also, relatively, easy. He places it well. He is moving as quickly as he can without taking undue extra risk; every extra second is more blood loss. Wangji counts, “Two.” Wangji counts, “Three.” Wangji counts, “Four.” Wangji counts, “Five”, and a single droplet of blood spatters far enough to stain Xichen’s white robe at the cuff.
There is, already, a lot of blood.
Perhaps Wangji should have been clan leader. It would have been an intolerable cruelty to him, to bend him into what Xichen has had to become, but he has seized control of his own punishment so efficiently that Lan Xichen can’t help but wonder if perhaps he was more suited to it than they’d thought. He fights to keep his pride in his brother off his face; he doesn’t dare look at his uncle for certainty that Lan Qiren will be able to read it there.
Wangji keeps count.
His voice begins to weaken slightly at thirteen.
Lan Xichen makes his first error at seventeen. Not a significant one, if they were almost done and a healer could come and staunch the bleeding. He had fallen into a rhythmic sort of focus, his movements as precise as anybody could ever wish for, but he is not practiced with the discipline whip, and even if he were, well. Thirty-three lashes is thirty-three lashes. Lash number seventeen crosses another bleeding line, toward the bottom of Wangji’s back. It doesn’t tear into any muscle that Xichen can see, but it does something horrible to the flesh where they overlap, pulling away skin and fascia and leaving blood running down into his robe, onto the cobbles. The whip, by this point, is drenched in it.
Lan Wangji counts, “Seventeen.” He sways. Everyone can see it. Nobody here but Xichen has ever seen Wangji react to pain before. Xichen thinks probably Wei Wuxian has. Xichen thinks probably if Wei Wuxian was here, none of this would be happening.
Eighteen is a disaster. Lan Xichen’s hand has started to shake, not even enough that it would impact his calligraphy, but enough to make a difference on this. He hits harder than he’d intended and he can feel the slice into the muscle. He doesn’t think anything is severed. He doesn’t think – he doesn’t think Wangji will recover from this.
Lan Wangji counts, “Eighteen.” It sounds more like a grunt. He falls to one hand, forces himself back up to just his knees, falls again. Holds himself there, one-handed. Surrounding them, there is silence. Lan Xichen thinks that maybe the rest of the clan had thought Hanguang-jun was immortal. He has always known Wangji is not.
Most of the rest is a blur. He focuses on speed now, trying to get it over with before he bleeds out; muscle can be repaired, pain can be lived with, but blood loss will kill a man, has killed plenty of Lan Xichen’s disciples in the years of war. Wangji is still counting, but he falls to both hands eventually, gets quieter and quieter until at twenty-eight he starts screaming.
“Thirty-two!” tears from Lan Wangji’s throat in a howl that sounds more like a dying dog than a living man, and he collapses forward, face slamming into the pavement.
Lan Xichen freezes. The whip falls from his hand. It’s only one more. His brother was alive a second ago, it’s only one more, all he has to do is finish this and then he can run to him. But he can’t do it. Wangji asking this of him is the only thing Wangji has ever asked of him, really. And he can’t do it.
Wangji has always been braver than him. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.
Next to him, Lan Qiren steps forward, takes the whip, finishes it.