Work Text:
It was Lan Qiren's fault.
He knew it.
He had always too been lenient with Mme Yu's behaviour towards Wei Wuxian.
He had noticed she always punished the child for every mistakes he made way too harshly.
The boy had been violently slapped before his own eyes over some spilled tea.
Spilled tea by one of his shidi.
Qiren reasoned that the Wei one should have paid much more attention to the young lad behaviour, it was his fault to not have properly teach him the best manners.
Wei Ying was nine after all.
The Lan master never questioned his own judgemental bias.
The mother's child was also a mischievous teenager in their past so there was no need to intervene when he was publicly beaten by the Jiang Madam or when Jiang Cheng insulted him loudly for basically existing too vividly for his taste. The Young Wei had surely done something earlier to provoke these punishments and hard truths.
Everyone knew the boy had to kneel regularly in the Jiang's Ancestor Hall because of some tricks he put the others through.
Mme Yu boasted over disciplining him constantly.
Like how Wei Ying was weekly subjected to the whip.
Lan Qiren convinced himself it was justified: the brat had probably upset her knowingly, one way or another. Like his mother did with him before.
And so, it went on for years.
Of course Lan Qiren had been shocked when the Lotus Piers' Lady flogged three times the barely teenager with Zidian in front of all clans at a conference.
Lan Qiren didn't seek the root of the punishment: gossips are forbidden for the Lan.
But it had to be a terribly vicious offence the Wei boy committed, for which, surprisingly, he wasn't expelled for.
It must have been a heinous crime like murder or treason as it couldn't wait their return to their territories.
Or maybe he tried to leave Lotus Piers like his father did? It was a bit harsh for lack of loyalty but that scourge was hard headed.
Without proper compensation? Maybe. It costs a lot to raise a disciple to his excellency.
It might have been a possibility, Lan Qiren remembered his mother had snatched Wei's father without any consideration for Jiang Fengmian's feelings who mourns the loss of his bestfriend until his last breath.
Well, the offender kept his position as Head Disciple in the end.
“The Jiang are far too lenient with that vile pest” he thought, confident of the rascal's culpability.
This was the root of Lan Qiren's guilt.
Today's death was on him.
Mme Yu had never been shown any boundary and now she killed in cold blood a young man.
She reaped his bright future as it was nothing!
Lan Qiren will never forget how the events had unfolded.
His nephews, Nie Huaisang and Wei Wuxian were having a stroll through the Unclean Realm, like friends do. The weather was kind so they decided to go shopping after their training session. It was a nice cool down after exerting themselves for hours with their weapons of choice.
Even Nie Huaisang had began to be serious about improving his cultivation since he discovered he could use his fans as defensive weapons.
Thanks to Wei Wuxian and his own elder brother who demonstrate him the advantage of such a niche cultivation branch, how he could create his own path...
Everything was fine until Jiang Wanying tried to forcibly grab his Head Disciple: he wanted him to follow somewhere else.
He was jealous to not have been invited to join them, more surely.
Wei Wuxian refused firmly.
Stating he was not in the mood to hang out with his Shidi after all the insults he had to endure the day before. He didn't even ask for an apology as he knew it would never happened.
So, the rebuttal had been made with a frowning pout but a calm composure and a levelled tone of voice.
Like an adult.
Jiang Wanying began to scream about the usual debts his “brother” owed the Jiang Clan for raising him...clothing him ...yadi yada...
He finished by affirming Wei Wuxian did not have any agency over his own life as he was less than a servant for the Jiang Family.
All previous brotherhood forgotten.
The ruckus brought Mme Yu and her spouse to their location.
She ordered Wei Wuxian to kneel and undress for a beating upon seeing them.
No questions were asked.
He just had to be ready for Zidian.
Lan Xichen put himself between the two of them while explaining their Head Disciple hadn't done anything wrong, on the contrary, it was Jiang Wanying that shown a shameless behaviour...
“Wei Wuxian is worth less than a dog in our clan.
I can kill it (sic!) right here, right now without any consequences!
What are you babbling about Lan Heir?
Know your place!”
Jiang Fengmian did not intervene once during the confrontation.
He simply turned his head towards the forest where something seemed to have captured his undivided attention, exactly like the coward his reputation described him to be.
Mme Yu had powered up her weapon and began to aim it in the direction of her favourite victim.
Lan Zhan had tried to interpose his body between the two and received a slash that had thrown him to the ground. His clothes were pierced, letting show his wounded flesh.
Upon witnessing this, Lan Xichen flew in front of this younger brother, his tone turned glacial when he yelled: “Are you insane? How could you whip my brother?”
The culprit had laughed loudly and stroked the first Jade, drunk on her own power, while barking: “Who do YOU thing you are to oppose my authority over that piece of trash?
He is mine to dispose of!
If your brother hadn't tried to protect him from his retribution, he wouldn't have been touched.
Just like you...” as she had whipped him all along her rant.
“That son of a bitch should be dead by now!” she had added in her enraged state.
Lan Xichen's body was curled on the dirt, only moving when Zidian made contact with him. There had been more than fifteen blows at this point and she wasn't stopping...
The Jiang Leader kept his head toward the forest as if nothing of importance was happening next to him.
He had ignored Lan Zhan immobilising his own son while his own rotten flesh and blood was putting all his efforts on preventing Wei Ying to rush to protect the Lan Heir with Nie Huaisang's help.
That was what Nie Mingjue and Lan Qiren saw when they finally arrived after some disciples alerted them.
The second Lan heir was helping Wei Wuxian from being taken away by Jiang Wanying who ordered him to kneel before his mother, which Wuxian was trying to do as a way to replace Lan Xichen as the main target from the fury.
Fengmian still impassible by their side, still avoiding the gory scene that had developed. Looking stoically in the distance.
Mme Yu had not noticed the pair's arrival and kept on inflecting Zidian onto the bloodied blob that laid at her feet while taking a break once in while to throw Zidian to the others without looking who she successfully hurt...
Nie Mingjue's sabre had decapitated her in one swoop move the moment he registered the injury on his didi's face.
No question asked either.
Lan Xichen did not move when Lan Qiren called him.
He was already dead.
It was Lan Qiren's fault.
For years he had been complacent.
His guilt can never be erased from his soul.
No amount atonement will revive the child he raised and had let be killed by a person he thought was his equal.
Unlike Wei Wuxian whose only real crime was Qiren hated his late mother.
There was still a trial over the Lan heir assassination.
Jiang Fengmian was dispossessed from his position as clan leader and had his Golden Core sealed for life.
He staid in Lotus Piers with his daughter in a two bedroom installation by the river. None of them had a good life and they were massacred by their previous disciples during the war.
No-one was ever charged for their murders.
The heir was sent to the Wen to be kept in a strict seclusion, it was widely believed he wouldn't survvive his five years sentence.
Wen Zhuliu was known to be in need of target practise.
Lotus Piers was given to Cloud Recesses but it was destroyed completely during the Sun war. It was abandoned.
No-one lives there any-more.
His second nephew became a living ghost.
He hasn't talked since the day Lan Qiren let his older brother died.
Lan Wangi never said that. Out loud.
Wei Wuxian was given to them as a compensation.
On what legal ground? No-one could find it.
Wangi just nodded, for the last time, in agreement.
Wei Wuxian followed him without a word of acknowledgement.
Wherever his remaining nephew appears, witnesses report he is followed by a silent shadow.
Wei Wuxian only speak when it'sneeded.
His sentences are short.
He doesn't smile anymore.
No new talisman has been presented throughout the years.
No theory has irritated the established scholars too.
They kept together to this day: a white mute knight and his dark follower.
When the Sun war was declared the Lan fought.
If some-one witnessed a scar on the Lan heir, they knew Wei Wuxian was on the verge of death.
He was his shadow, his shield and his servant all at once.
They fought together as master and servant by Wei's choice.
They might had some attraction to each other at one point but not any-more.
The pair is linked by death and despair, it does not lead to love.
Only to Wei Wuxian's devotion and Lan Wangi's acceptance of it.
For both their own sake.
The Wen won the war but let the both of them be.
Their tragedy was to intense and, if not provoked, they weren't really dangerous.
They had fought without any conviction.
The cultivation world declined rapidly under the Wen's tutelage.
In the end, Qiren knows he had condemned the whole world to chaos because he hadn't been able to find within himself enough compassion for the son of a formidable woman he had hated as he couldn't control her.
Nor could he control her son either.
Even now.
Lan Qiren's dies at 137 years old.
Alone.