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After three years, Lan Wangji rejoins Lan society. He is in pain. Lan Xichen can tell, because Lan Xichen can always tell, but he knows everybody else can, too. Nobody is used to being able to read Hanguang-Jun like this, but he limps. He does not slouch where anybody can see, but he lists to his left side, and his hands shake when he holds his posture too long. He eats little. He keeps Bichen sheathed, when he carries the sword at all. His face is gaunt, eyes hollow. He looks ill. He looks as if he will be ill forever.
Lan Xichen thinks he isn’t sleeping enough but doesn’t know for sure, because Hanguang-jun talks less than ever, now. He says nothing in public but formal greetings and reminders of rules. Shufu, and Xiongzhang, and Lianfang-zun, and Lying is prohibited at Cloud Recesses, and Clamor is prohibited at Cloud Recesses, and Excessive laughter is prohibited at Cloud Recesses.
“I am worried about Wangji,” he says to his uncle, standing outside together in the early spring breeze. Cloud Recesses has made great progress on reconstruction, but it still sometimes smells of ash. The library they stand in front of is still perhaps only half as full as it had once been.
“You are always worried about Wangji.” Lan Qiren doesn’t meet his eyes. He looks much older these days.
Lan Xichen inclines his head. “Do I not have reason?”
There is very little for Lan Qiren to say to that, it seems. So instead of seeking advice, as had been his original intent, Lan Xichen says, “I intend to bring the child to see him.” It is not a request for permission. Lan Xichen is in charge, despite his youth. Long years of war and even longer years of being a jade alone, without the reliable and intimidating presence of his brother behind him, have made him firmer, if not more certain. But he does not want to somehow make Wangji worse. He wants somebody to agree that this won’t kill him.
Lan Qiren sighs. “Do what you’d like, Xichen. I do not think it would be possible for you to make it worse. If only Wei Wuxian had never…” he trails off. Lan Xichen wishes he could agree with him. The period when Wei Wuxian had been studying at Cloud Recesses had been the happiest he’d seen his brother since their mother died, even buried as that happiness had been.
Lan Xichen misses how he had been then, during the brief years that had spanned Wei Wuxian’s presence at Cloud Recesses and then the Sunshot Campaign. It had been, at first, such a relief to see him making choices of his own. Breaking rules when he needed to, as nearly everybody but him had grown up doing, silently and tacitly. Growing into himself. Demanding to be sent with Jiang Wanyin to retrieve their weapons. Visiting the Burial Mounds, which he had never spoken of, but Lan Xichen had known nonetheless. Even, and he apologizes silently to their ancestors as he thinks this, even the frantic attack on their family had been better than this. Lan Xichen knows it was not the pain that had taken that out of him again, returned him to who he had been when he had been put in charge of discipline at age thirteen.
They had killed his brother’s first and only friend, and punished him for trying to stop it.
Lan Xichen nods, bows, leaves. He will go to his brother first, make sure he is willing to receive a visitor. Lan Xichen does not know that he thinks Wangji will be good for a child, but the child, while well taken care of, has very few adults with the time to give him special attention. Lan Xichen had done his best, but ultimately the reconstruction of Cloud Recesses and the taking on of what had once been his brother’s responsibilities in addition to his own has occupied him quite thoroughly, and he has only occasionally been able to make time to take the child to feed the bunnies or explore the springs. And Wangji deserves to see him, at least. To know that he’d managed to save anyone at all.
It is morning, the period after rising when most meditate and stretch before breakfast. He goes to the jingshi, hoping his brother is asleep but knowing he is not, and knocks gently. There is a long pause and then a quiet, strained “Enter.”
Lan Xichen opens the door and steps inside, lifting his robes to step over the threshold, and is too slow to stop Wangji finishing the struggle to his feet to bow and greet him with his customary methodical, “Xiongzhang.”
“Wangji, that is not necessary –” Lan Xichen begins, and then cuts himself off as his brother’s eyes shift slightly. Ah. Perhaps it is a comfort. Wangji had refused to admit fault even as he had turned himself in, standing tall and proud as he always did. But he knows the rules, and perhaps they are some sort of scaffolding to his grief. Lan Xichen can only conjecture. He would have known completely once. He tries again, “Please sit. Would you like my help? Would the bed be better?”
Wangji shakes his head silently and lowers himself to sitting on one of the higher-off-the-ground cushions that had been brought to him once he’d returned, two weeks ago. They have not spent nearly as much time together as Lan Xichen would like, since. The healers had told Lan Xichen to be careful, not to strain him, and he does not want to push Wangji any further than he has already been pushed. But he has missed him, and is glad for the excuse. In his heart of hearts, he hopes that somehow, after everything, Wangji might feel the same.
They stare at each other for a moment and then, somewhat rudely for being in somebody else’s home, but justifiable under the present circumstances, he thinks, Lan Xichen asks simply, “Would you like me to make tea?” A fire is already lit in the hearth, despite the pleasant spring day.
Wangji shakes his head again and then sits there, just looking at him. Lan Xichen sighs. He has never needed Wangji to speak before, but now he desperately wishes he would. It has been a long three years of not hearing his brother’s voice.
Instead of pushing it, he sits across from Wangji. “I don’t intend to intrude, but I wanted to bring you news of the child. A-Yuan,” he adds, needlessly. Wangji meets his eyes and there is a flicker of interest. “He has settled in well. He gets along with the other orphans, and has one friend who he seems quite inseparable from. He is a bit…boisterous for Cloud Recesses, but not in a way that is truly abnormal for a child. He responds well to correction, and learns quickly.”
Wangji nods once to all of this as if none of it surprises him.
“He does not seem to remember anything previous to his time with us. He doesn’t call for a mother by name, or seem to be able to tell us what his family name was. He was quite sick when he arrived here, as you recall. But he is healthy now, and growing quickly.”
Wangji’s nod in response to this is slower. A slight tension appears in his shoulders – this is one of the mistakes people make when trying to read Wangji, they look at his face, when the information comes mostly from his body – but it could just as easily be pain as anything else. Before all of this, Lan Xichen would have known. Now, well, the muscles he’s grown accustomed to reading are different. The pain fogs everything.
“I would like to bring him to meet you. He can be quiet, if need be. There should not be classes for the children his age tomorrow morning after breakfast.”
There is a long pause from Wangji that is almost like he is preparing to speak. Lan Xichen lets himself get his hopes up, but Wangji does not say anything. Just another nod. Lan Xichen doesn’t let his gentle smile move even slightly, keeping it fixed and sincere. Wangji does not need his expectations.
Wangji is trembling slightly now. He will not let himself lie down until he is alone, so Lan Xichen stands, makes his thank yous, and turns toward the door. Before he opens it, he remembers something and turns back. “Wangji. Please try to sleep more. You are not well.” That last sentence is redundant, but there is very little he can figure out to say to Wangji these days that is not.
Lan Wangji, struggling to stand, looks at him with exhausted eyes. “Rest is to be taken between hai and mao,” he says, and bows his goodbye.
∞
It is cold out when Lan Xichen brings A-Yuan to his brother the next day, the mist settling low over the mountain peaks and dampening their robes as they walk. He has spent enough time with the child for him to recognize and listen to him, but not enough for him to be fully comfortable, and so A-Yuan is quieter than the reports from his caretakers have indicated, a little bit more hesitant. Lan Xichen wishes this weren’t true, but there is little to be done about it. There is only so much special attention a sect leader can give to a child, especially one who has yet to be formally adopted into the clan; it would be wrong to separate him out from his peers in the way that would require.
When they are almost to the jingshi, the child asks, shyly, “Where are we going, Zewu-jun?”
Lan Xichen turns his smile conspiratorial. “I wanted you to meet my brother. He’s the one who brought you to Cloud Recesses.”
A-Yuan frowns. “You have a brother?”
It is a miracle that Lan Xichen manages to hide his flinch at that. It had not occurred to him that it was possible for the younger of the children to not know. It had not occurred to him, really, that it was possible for anyone to not know. “Yes, A-Yuan. A younger brother. I love him very much. You would have met him sooner, but he has been very sick.” Not a lie.
They walk in silence for another couple moments, A-Yuan processing, and then he speaks up again. “Is he okay now?”
Lan Xichen sighs, barely an exhale. A-Yao would have noticed it, probably; likely nobody else. “He is better now, but his body still hurts him sometimes. You must be careful not to hurt him more.” As almost an afterthought, in response to being reminded that someone might not know it, he adds, “He will likely be very quiet.”
“Because of being sick?”
Yes. No. Lan Xichen mostly tries, very hard, to follow the rules which he requires others to follow. In this instance, he smiles at A-Yuan and allows himself a half-truth. “He was always quiet.”
“Huh.” A-Yuan wrinkles his forehead, seemingly baffled by the idea.
Thankfully, they arrive at the jingshi before A-Yuan can ask any further questions. The door is already slightly ajar, and Lan Xichen knocks gently and then pushes it open the rest of the way. Wangji is waiting for them, already standing, hair up but not quite perfect, in fewer layers of robes than he had once worn. He bows to Lan Xichen before turning to A-Yuan. If Lan Xichen had thought that, somehow, A-Yuan would bring Wangji back to him, it is obvious from one glance that he had been mistaken. He remains tense, silent, eyes empty. Eventually, he says, “A-Yuan.”
A-Yuan looks up at Lan Xichen, who realizes he had never told the child how to refer to his brother, despite knowing that he has gotten into trouble for assigning nicknames to his elders. “Hanguang-jun,” he says gently. “Or Lan-er-gongzi.” He looks at his brother, hoping that he will express some preference, but he does not.
“Hanguang-jun,” A-Yuan says, bowing with focused politeness.
“I have made tea,” Wangji responds, and gestures to the table behind them. They all sit. Wangji gestures for A-Yuan to pour and he does, steadily.
Lan Xichen wraps his hands around his cup and takes a moment to appreciate its contrast against the cold. They drink their tea in peaceful silence. Then, because Wangji is Wangji, and A-Yuan has been coached too thoroughly to speak first, Lan Xichen looks down at A-Yuan and says, “A-Yuan, why don’t you tell Hanguang-jun about yourself?”
A-Yuan fidgets briefly, bunching the cloth of his robes into his fists, and says, “I’m six. I like music classes. And people. And the rabbits. My best friend says I’m very good when we pretend to fight and use our wooden swords. But I think he’s lyi– I mean wrong!” The child claps his hands over his mouth, horrified at accidentally accusing his friend of breaking a rule. Lan Xichen allows himself a small, genuine smile, and nods at him to continue. But A-Yuan is now staring at Wangji, something having compelled him, and instead of continuing to talk about himself, he exclaims, “I know you!”
Lan Xichen watches Wangji flinch, physically, for perhaps the first time in his life. Even as a child, even in the war, even under the whips, Wangji had not recoiled like this. The motion would be slight for anyone else, but it is big enough for A-Yuan to notice it, to flinch back in return. “I’m sorry?” he offers, seeing he has done something wrong, not knowing what.
Lan Xichen moves to reassure him, perhaps to cut the visit short, but Wangji has already recovered. “Do not claim fault that is not your own,” he responds.
Little A-Yuan clearly begins to apologize again at that, then furrows his brow in focus as he thinks and stops himself. Wangji nods to him, as if he is a cultivator of twenty and not a child of six. Tentatively, A-Yuan smiles.
“I will play,” Wangji announces decisively, a slight echo of himself of three years ago showing through, and he stands and places himself behind the guqin on the other side of the room. Lan Xichen watches his legs shake as he does so, does not allow himself to process the visible unsteadiness of his hands. As he reseats himself, he tenses, a slight gray coming across his face. None of it is audible in his voice. “Do you have favorites?”
A-Yuan claps, fear forgotten already, somehow, and jumps to his feet, rushing over. “Careful,” Xichen admonishes, and with exaggerated focus, A-Yuan slows down before he reaches the guqin, where he stands with his hands carefully behind his back, looking down.
“This is Wangji,” Wangji says, gesturing to the guqin, and A-Yuan nods seriously and bows to the guqin in greeting. Lan Xichen is very bravely not counting the number of words his brother is saying outside of the only things he’s heard him say in years, and he is focusing on their existence as if they are more of a sign than Wangji’s shaking fingers or distant eyes.
“Do you have favorites?” he asks again.
A-Yuan thinks, and then frowns. “I think so. But I don’t know its name.” Then he hums, brow furrowed and little hands back to twisting at the cloth that makes up the arms of his robe as he focuses on getting it right. Lan Xichen has never heard the tune before, which is genuinely startling – he certainly knows every song a child could possibly hear in Cloud Recesses. And every so often A-Yuan will vaguely reference something from his past life, but there is usually no detail: only a snatch of color, or a confusion about temperature, or an aversion to radishes. Never something in this much focus.
Wangji’s face is blank again too quickly for Lan Xichen to try to parse his reaction. He nods and begins playing, filling out the child’s simple melody with resonant strings and gentle harmony. The music is – rough. Wangji is obviously out of practice, a lifetime of obsessively perfect playing not enough to balance out three years of silence and recovery, nor the damaged muscles and nerves that crisscross his back. Lan Xichen can distantly acknowledge that he is still good enough that there are likely many others who would be happy to attain his level of skill, but listening to the trembling from his brother’s fingers makes his chest ache. He focuses his gaze on A-Yuan, so that Wangji doesn’t read it on him.
A-Yuan seems thrilled, wiggling and jumping about. Lan Xichen, who has known his brother his whole life, expects him to look up and tell the child to be still, but he does not. Instead, his eyes are closed, playing this mystery song from memory. When it ends, he remains like that, eyes closed and posture beginning to tilt away from his weaker right side.
“Thank you, Hanguang-jun!” A-Yuan exclaims, certainly louder than he should, but Lan Xichen does not have it in him to reprimand him. After a long moment, Wangji opens his eyes and nods again at the child.
Lan Xichen badly wants to ask what the song had been, how this six year old child and his brother both know it so well. He almost does, is right on the verge, when Wangji stands again and says to them both, “Thank you both for your visit.”
The implication is obvious, despite the fact that they both have been here only briefly – perhaps an incense time, perhaps less. Lan Xichen looks at Wangji for a long moment, until his brother meets his eyes. What he can see in there is not reassuring, but he will not impede on his rest without clear cause, and so he says, “Come along, A-Yuan. Let’s go back to the dormitories.”
A-Yuan’s face drops, a frown tugging at his features, and Lan Xichen watches as he mentally talks himself out of complaining. As a reward for that, he says, “We can come see Hanguang-jun again in a few days. I’m sure he’d be happy to play you many other songs.” At a small nod from Wangji, who is avoiding looking at his hands, A-Yuan’s face lights up again.
“Thank you, Wangji,” Lan Xichen says as he leads the child out of the jingshi, and A-Yuan echoes him with a “Thank you, Hanguang-jun!”
At midnight, perhaps later, Lan Xichen is awoken by a single runner, knocking on his door with an excitement and volume so unacceptable as to be abjectly worrisome. Wangji has actually done it, he thinks. Left for good or killed himself. He pulls on only one layer of robe over his sleep things as he rushes to the door, hair down and flying out behind him.
Lan Yunru stands there, one of the – Lan Xichen runs through a mental roster – guards of the library tonight. The library? Perhaps it has nothing to do with his brother, after all. “What is it?” Lan Xichen asks, and he tries so hard to remain calm, tries so hard to be Zewu-jun, and he thinks he manages it, but then the messenger responds and he shatters.
“It’s – Hanguang-jun, zhongzhu, he’s – there’s something wrong with him, he’s demanding a dizi, he won’t listen to anybody –”
Lan Xichen is running. It is dark. Running is prohibited in Cloud Recesses. He is barefoot, and the pebbles of the path dig into the bottoms of his feet, not slowing him at all. The messenger is behind him, panting slightly in his efforts to keep up, and Lan Xichen sounds like a war general again when he orders back at him, “Don’t follow me! Find him a dizi and bring it!”
He gets a “Yes, Zewu-jun!” in response as the messenger peels off, and then silence besides his own racing heart. He has neither Shouyue nor Liebing with him, nothing to use if his brother is, somehow, possessed, but he does not think his brother is possessed.
He ignores the other guards and follows the trail of destruction when he reaches the library, scratches and the couple books knocked off the shelves notable only because this is Wangji, what could possibly drive him to do something like this, and stumbles into the room where they have arrayed their spoils from the war that are not powerful or useful enough to have immediately been assigned to specific cultivators. Why would Wangji be here –
As soon as he opens the door it is obvious that he is too late. It is dark, near completely lightless, but there is a smell of meat in the air, burning. “Wangji,” he says, into the darkness, voice shaking, and then again, “Wangji!”
There is no reply.
When he gestures at what he hopes is a lantern to light it and it sputters into life, throwing shadows across the room, his brother’s body is lying motionless on the ground, the brand still pressed against his chest.
∞
Nobody knows what to do with him. The healers treat the burn and when he awakens, he does not remember any of it. Lan Yunru brings a dizi to his sickbed, where Lan Xichen insists on remaining, but Wangji looks at it with bewilderment, radiating annoyance that it is not the one he had been looking for.
When Lan Xichen had carried him from the library, sobbing into the unburned side of his chest, he had smelled of alcohol underneath the burned flesh. When he’d awoken, he had vomited. Nobody had been prepared for that, and so he had had to be moved to a different bed, washed again, had his robes and bandage changed. Everyone had averted their eyes from his naked back.
Wangji has been silent. Right now, he sleeps. Lan Xichen sits. Lan Qiren sits. The healers leave them alone as much as possible. “What can we do?” Lan Xichen whispers, not even quite realizing he’s said it out loud.
“It will heal,” Lan Qiren says, but he, too, is looking at Wangji’s face instead of his chest. He’d fallen asleep with his forehead ribbon on; for all Lan Xichen knew, he always slept with it on. Discipline. Bile rises in his throat, and he forces it down.
“Will it?” Lan Xichen asks, and he taps his brother’s shoulder lightly, ghosts his hand over the worst of the scarring on his neck. “Have you heard him play, recently? Have you heard him speak?” His voice remains low and even, but he is so angry with Wei Wuxian he can hardly breathe. Wei Wuxian, who had taken his brother and then not even cared that he had him.
Lan Qiren, always more expressive than either of the children he had largely raised, blanches at the first question. “This will heal, at least. The rest – he needs time. He is strong. We’ll just have to keep a closer eye on him. Prevent him from gaining access to more alcohol.” There is a baffled question in his voice at the last part, and Lan Xichen’s face is a more restrained version of the same confusion. Wangji, obsessed with the rules but even more obsessed with his own perfect control, does not drink, not even outside of Cloud Recesses when propriety would usually demand it. Neither of the two of them had ever even considered that it might be a risk.
Later, Wangji awakens, Lan Qiren gone to manage his classes, and looks up at Lan Xichen. He looks exhausted, his hair loose and his ribbon slightly askew. He also looks like he is in pain, which is not new, but he is not trying very hard to hide it, which is. He looks at the unadorned white dizi that had been left on the table next to him, and his nostrils flare ever so slightly in what Lan Xichen knows to be disgust. At the instrument or at himself, it is impossible to say.
“I will kneel,” he says eventually, voice far away, and once the healers approve his leaving the infirmary, that is what he does.
∞
Two years later, Lan Xichen has become accustomed to his silent brother. Wangji has very slowly begun to speak more when in public, returning to some of his duties in instruction, coaching Lan Yuan and occasionally his friend on guqin, despite both Lan Xichen’s and Lan Qiren’s hesitation over him ever seeing the boy again. But Lan Yuan had begged, and Wangji had given him a nod when Lan Xichen had asked him if he would be safe if they met again. So they had. Wangji was not the child’s father, exactly, as he still struggled too much with his own care to have a small child in his house, but he had set to Lan Yuan’s education and loneliness with intent. They like each other, Lan Yuan babbling to Lan Xichen about Hanguang-jun on the occasional instances when they see each other without him and Wangji willingly playing Lan Yuan any song he requests, despite the frustration playing still brings him. Perhaps his presence helps. On good days, Lan Xichen thinks it does. On bad days, he thinks nothing ever will, even though this is not fair. He is not actually fool enough to think Wangji has broken.
“Who was he?” Lan Xichen had asked Wangji once, knowing he was not going to get a response, and he had not been surprised when he received just the expression from his brother that meant Wei Wuxian.
Lan Wangji is even, these days, returned to presiding over discipline, which mostly means supervising the assigning of lines and instructing juniors to stabilize their balance on their hands, but occasionally means more than that. Lan Xichen avoids having to hear him give his clear, emotionless “Begin.” in front of the wall but occasionally stops by his classes for a few moments to watch him teach.
When it is just the two of them, however, Wangji remains silent. Lan Xichen knows better than to feel it as a rebuke. It is, if anything, the opposite; Wangji does not speak, and he knows that Lan Xichen will not require him to. As it has ever been between them.
So they sit quietly together and drink tea. Or they sit quietly together and reply to Lan Xichen’s correspondence when Wangji’s hands will allow it, their handwriting so nearly identical that nobody has ever noticed that this is how they handle things. Or Lan Xichen reports on the situation with Da-ge, reports on the reconstruction of Cloud Recesses, reports on their uncle’s health, reports on Jiang Wanyin’s newest insanities, stops reporting on Jiang Wanyin’s newest insanities. Wangji nods, shakes his head, bows. Lan Qiren is proud of him, glad he’s returned to his path. Lan Xichen often leaves conversations with his uncle feeling sick.
Wangji is not as empty-seeming as he had been that first horrible year after his seclusion ended, but on his bad days he reminds Lan Xichen of nothing so much as how he had been after his last real punishment as a small child. When it had been like a switch flipped suddenly and he had gone from being a willful five year old to being the person who would eventually be Lan Wangji. Nobody else seems to notice. Just like nobody else had really noticed then, save to praise him.
But – he will tolerate or even welcome Lan Xichen’s presence. He invests himself in Lan Yuan and even puts up with Lan Yuan’s friend with reasonable patience; Lan Xichen does not recall having ever witnessed him assign either of them a punishment while he is teaching them. Many of the other children in Lan Yuan’s classes seem to be fascinated by him, occasionally following him around like an extremely well behaved group of ducklings. It pleases Lan Xichen inordinately that the children do not seem to be scared of his brother, as so many children had been in the past. And his pain still seems to be great, but he will let Lan Xichen help him now, sometimes. It is inarguable, somehow, that he is recovering. Slowly, of course, glacial as the ice to which he is always compared, but recovering. From something they’d all thought would kill him.
One day, when Lan Yuan, eight years old now, has been with Wangji all day, alternating helping to clean and sketching and watching Wangji soundlessly practice finger placements, Lan Xichen arrives for dinner in time to hear him ask, “Hanguang-jun, how did you get hurt?”
Wangji makes eye contact with him on the doorstep from behind the guqin, and then turns his gaze to Lan Yuan, whose hands are stained with ink. “Defending somebody I loved from people who wished to hurt him.”
“Why did people want to hurt him?” Later, Lan Yuan will learn subtlety, forebearance. He has not yet. It has become Lan Xichen’s habit to silence speculation on the topic of Wangji’s injuries, his seclusion. His punishment has remained a secret. One of the things Gusu Lan is best for. He does not interfere here, heart in his throat.
“He did some bad things.” This is the closest to a condemnation of Wei Wuxian that Lan Xichen has ever heard from his brother’s lips. “He was trying to help people who nobody else was willing to help.”
Wangji’s posture is proud and straight, jaw set, voice firm.
He may never be the same again. But it could be worse.
∞
When Lan Xichen returns to Cloud Recesses, it is the middle of the night. Everyone is asleep. His brother, certainly, is asleep. He doesn’t care.
He lands Shouyue right at the jingshi and lets himself in. He can be silent. He just cannot return to the hanshi, what had once been his father’s house, alone. He cannot. Qingheng-jun haunts it still, the constant question of what if he just brought Nie Mingjue here, where he could play for him always? impossible to silence. He stumbles over the threshold, seats himself on the floor, does not wake Wangji but sits there and listens to his breathing, his very much alive breathing.
This is not where he should be. Probably, he should be with Huaisang, and he will be, he’ll return to Qinghe tomorrow, the day after at the latest. Already, sitting on Wangji’s floor, face pleasant still, even here, he is constructing his excuses, composing his apologies. He should not have left. It had been his fault – him who delegated the task to somebody whom he knew to have a weaker core than him, him who hadn’t been there enough, him who could not seem to figure out how to balance running his own sect with his obligations outside of it, his personal desperations. He does not expect Huaisang to hold this view, but that doesn’t matter. Lying is forbidden in the Cloud Recesses; it had been his fault.
He wishes Wangji was awake. He wishes Wangji was awake and would talk to him, even briefly. He misses being able to hide in the idea of being a twin.
Lan Xichen sits. He intends to leave before Wangji awakes, but his body won’t let him, trapping him frozen here when he should be…he doesn’t know. Surely there is something he should be doing instead of inflicting his own grief on his brother who has more than enough of his own. He is not even thirty years old. Usually, he is not allowed to remember this, and he counts that a blessing.
When Wangji rises promptly at the beginning of mao, Lan Xichen is still there, sitting noiselessly and staring emptily into the middle distance. Wangji looks at him once and makes tea, moving with the same caution he always moves with now, stiffer than usual from just having awoken. He returns with the tea, placing it in front of Lan Xichen, but allows Lan Xichen to pour it.
They sit there in silence and drink together, and then Wangji makes eye contact and tilts his head slightly.
“Mingjue,” is all Lan Xichen is able to say. And then he feels his face drop, his face which he has spent long years forcing into submission, and he covers it with his hands, looking down, away from Wangji, away from anyone. A gentle hand places itself on his shoulder, still shaking very slightly. For the first time, he genuinely understands Wangji’s silence. There is an empty pit in his chest, pulling all his words in. All his thoughts. He says again, just, “Mingjue.”
Lan Xichen has no idea if his brother knows what Mingjue had been to him, once. Has no idea if his brother knows the ways in which they share this kind of shame. He should have told him, many years ago, but he’s never managed it. Always convinced himself that it wouldn’t help him. Would make things worse, somehow. And maybe it would have. It is hard now, the image of Wangji’s ruined body seared into his every waking thought and his nightmares both, to imagine anything that could be worse. “I–” he begins to say, and then stops himself. What is the use, to say it, now? What is there to say? Can he look Wangji in the eyes and tell him he had gotten to have as a teen what Wangji had been denied? After leading his clan at the Burial Mounds, can he look Wangji in the eyes and tell him that he sometimes has it with someone else, now?
He looks Wangji in the eyes and says nothing. He doesn’t cry. Wangji hadn’t cried, either, when Lan Xichen had brought him the news. As if they’re carved from jade, is what people say about them.
There is a brief flicker of recognition in Wangji’s eyes, Lan Xichen thinks, Lan Xichen hopes. More motion than he usually gets. Then Wangji withdraws his hand and bows his head just enough to break the eye contact, faultless in his politeness. “I am sorry, xiongzhang. Any responsibilities I can assist with during this time, I would be honored to take on.”
Lan Xichen almost flinches in surprise. As much as he has wished for it, he has almost forgotten that Wangji had talked to him in full sentences, once. The next moment, though, he is recovered. It is no different from how he talks to their uncle, or the disciples when they come to him for advice. “Thank you, Wangji,” he responds, proud of how steady his voice is. He had not known, really, what he had expected of his brother when he ran to him; it is not, after all, as if Wangji is particularly adept at comfort, as somebody who equally dislikes touch and speech. But he has gotten what he needed, regardless; twenty minutes with his steady, unbreakable brother makes it impossible to imagine falling apart. He will keep himself together when he returns to support Huaisang and he will keep himself together in front of their uncle and he will wear white for the appropriate period of time for a childhood friend and not a day longer.
For a brief, shameful flash, he envies Wangji’s three years of peace, during which he could not be asked to do anything but mourn. He ignores it. “I should be going,” he says instead, and Wangji nods, back to silence, Lan Xichen’s mind filling in an “Mn.” that he has not heard in years.
Lan Xichen stands. Wangji stands with him, and Lan Xichen almost asks if he is actually in less pain or if he has just gotten better at hiding it. But he doesn’t. It is not a question to which he wants to know the answer. They walk together to the door, and Wangji bows as he always does. Before Lan Xichen goes, though, Wangji pauses, a slight tension appearing in his shoulders which is more visible than it would have been when he had been able to wear all of his layers of robes. Lan Xichen pauses, waits for him. After nearly a full minute, Wangji looks away and manages a “Xiongzhang. Good luck.” that sounds more like there is an actual person trying to say something than he has sounded like since they had caught up to him in that cave begging Wei Wuxian to come back to him.
“Thank you,” Lan Xichen says again, pushing all the weight of sincerity he has to offer into his voice, and Wangji continues to look away, off into some invisible distance, so Lan Xichen leaves.
As morning dawns and he walks away from the jingshi, the sound of Wangji’s guqin echoes out towards him, strings humming the song Lan Xichen still does not know.
∞
Mingjue’s death is not a turning point for Wangji, except that it marks the start of Wangji returning to night hunting. Lan Xichen had not expected it to be. He had accepted his brother’s effort for the gift it had been, and after the weeks he spends afterward in Qinghe helping Huiasang settle in as much as he was ever going to, he returns to his near-nightly silent visits whenever they are both in Cloud Recesses. They find some kind of peace together in this, he thinks, and Lan Yuan joins them occasionally for lessons, during which his brother does speak, but still far more sparingly than he had even in his impressively silent youth. Lan Xichen does paperwork and reviews agreements and responds to petitions and Wangji gently corrects Lan Yuan’s hand positioning and nods approvingly and demonstrates what would be perfectly coming from anybody else, the unsteadiness in his fingers perhaps imperceptible to Lan Yuan but impossible to ignore for Lan Xichen, who has been listening to him play since he was five years old.
Once, after Lan Yuan leaves for the night, Lan Xichen gathers the courage to ask Wangji if the healers are aware that the muscles in his shoulders are still giving him such trouble. Wangji does not respond out loud, of course, but there is no physical reaction, either, not even a blink for Lan Xichen to try to interpret. Eventually, Lan Xichen inclines his head and they return to re-copying manuscripts that had been burned in the war together until curfew, when Lan Xichen leaves.
Wangji starts playing scales as soon as the door is closed, and he is, seemingly, still playing them when Lan Xichen returns in the morning to notify him of an urgent call from Qinghe Nie which he must leave for. Lan Xichen resolves not to ask him any more questions about his recovery. When he arrives home after helping Huaisang, Wangji is still playing scales, over and over and over, a cloth scattered with dried brown stains resting at his side.
∞
There is no parent available to name Lan Yuan, and so Wangji takes the role, much to the confusion of many. He offers Lan Yuan the name he has chosen, and Lan Sizhui accepts. Lan Xichen and his uncle make the briefest of eye contacts when they hear it, but neither says a word.
∞
They have dinner in Lan Qiren’s residences, the food identical to what would have been served in the dining hall. Lan Qiren’s rooms are spare, but not as spare as Wangji’s. Small, but not as small as Qingheng-jun’s had been. Lan Xichen does not know how frequently the other two have seen each other since Wangji’s freedom. Wangji does not speak, and so he hears only from his uncle, a very occasional mutter about how he’s glad Wangji is teaching again, or about how he’s too lenient on the juniors. Nobody else in the world would describe Wangji as lenient, and Lan Xichen does not think his uncle even really means it. He’s just scared.
Meals are to be taken in silence has always been one of Wangji’s favorite rules and right now, Lan Xichen certainly understands why. They are able to move and eat around each other without having to fill the silence, pretending almost that there is nothing wrong, that the years since the burning of Cloud Recesses had never happened.
Except, of course, that Wangji eats more slowly, focused precision necessary to keep his chopsticks steady. Except, of course, that their uncle is old now. Except, of course, for how accustomed Lan Xichen has become to being sect leader.
When they conclude, Wangji cleans up, still in silence, a tension in his lips that Lan Xichen has learned to read as pain. His eyes flick toward Lan Qiren’s guqin, on its stand on the other side of the room. It is odd for him now to sit with his brother without him playing and, as he thinks it, Wangji returns to them, bows to Lan Qiren, and with a small gesture to the guqin asks, “Shufu, may I?”
Lan Qiren nods, and Wangji seats himself behind it, checks the tension of the strings, runs through scales to warm up his fingers. Lan Xichen releases his breath when Wangji moves on from scales and begins playing an old, familiar ballad. It feels, somehow, as if his new obsessions should be kept secret.
As Wangji plays, Lan Qiren leans forward, and says quietly to Lan Xichen, “He should not still be wearing white.”
Lan Xichen, privately, agrees. Even more privately, he wishes he had the courage to do it, too. Every time he visits Qinghe, every time he meets A-Yao, he is overcome with it. He does not say that. What he says, politely, face as open and friendly as ever, is, “I do not think there is anything anybody could do to stop him.”
“You could demand it. You could impose punishment.”
Lan Xichen is well aware of what he can demand of his brother. It is more than anybody should ever be able to demand of anyone, he knows; it is far more than Lan Qiren had been able to expect of Qingheng-jun, in the end, and far more than Jiang Wanyin had been able to rely upon Wei Wuxian for. With one exception, Wangji has always been steady in his obedience. He would not obey this. Lan Xichen says simply, “I could.”
“Why do you not?” Lan Qiren is not a quiet man. He, like many others now, forgets briefly that Lan Wangji’s muteness is not deafness, too. His voice rises slightly.
Wangji’s playing stops. He does not look at either of them, gaze remaining focused on sheet music that is not there. “Shufu, what punishment would you suggest?” he asks, quietly. Everything is suddenly somehow much more silent than it had been while they ate, the nighttime insects not yet out to fill the empty space with buzz.
Lan Qiren recovers. Unlike his brother and his nephew, he has never had much difficulty with his words. “Another year of seclusion, perhaps, if you disobeyed your sect leader again,” he replies, and Lan Xichen physically flinches, opens his mouth to respond but is too slow.
Nodding, standing smoothly, Wangji responds as if it takes no thought: “Then I will wear white in seclusion.” He bows to them both when he reaches the door, offers his formal farewells, and leaves. Lan Qiren is too affronted to notice what Lan Xichen notices, which is that, for the first time in eight years, for that one sentence, the full presence of Hanguang-jun had been in the room with them.
Later, days later, when the two of them are alone, Lan Xichen says, “I would not order it.”
Again, Wangji pauses his playing, but this time he makes eye contact, and once again Lan Xichen is subject to the entire weight of his regard. “I know,” he says, and his fingers move again.
∞
Things start to improve more clearly after that, although only in small increments. Most people, Lan Xichen thinks, wouldn’t notice at all: either because they think he is already recovered, or because they do not know him well enough to notice a difference.
He does not stop wearing white.
Yunmeng Jiang announces that they will be hosting a gathering to celebrate some milestone in their rebuilding, and Lan Xichen all but begs Wangji to attend with him. His seclusion has long been over, but he does not leave Gusu except to lead his juniors on night hunts and to go on hunts of his own. He does not think his brother has spoken directly to somebody not from Cloud Recesses in eight years.
Wangji breaks his silence to say, “I do not think that is a good idea.”
Lan Xichen responds, “Sizhui?”
“Sizhui does not need me to accompany him.”
“Wangji, I think you should come. Your absence in the past years has been remarked upon.” He does not say, do you not want a chance to see Lotus Pier, finally? and he also does not say, I do not particularly want to see Jiang Wanyin, either and he also does not say, Please, Wangji, do not make me force you.
Wangji meets his eyes, looking for something there, and then bows. When he rises, he looks exhausted, as if two sentences outside of his usual scripts have wrung him out entirely.
The gathering is not for several weeks, and when they prepare to set out, maybe twenty Lan disciples arrayed in whites and light blues, Wangji is as calm and still as if he had never made objection. He watches the youngest of the disciples which accompany them – Sizhui’s age group, eleven and twelve, not coming to compete but simply to observe – as they prepare to mount their swords, many traveling outside of Gusu for the first time. They gather around him, showing off while trying not to look like they are showing off, and he offers monosyllabic compliments to the ones who deserve it, showing Sizhui no discernible favoritism outside of what he has clearly earned.
“Been mourning all this time, Hanguang-jun? That’s why you haven’t graced us with our presence?” Jiang Wanyin says in resplendent purple to Wangji when they arrive, barely allowing him time to bow, but Wangji bows anyway, and looks through him as if he isn’t there. Jiang Wanyin laughs, mean, and then welcomes Lan Xichen and his disciples. Lan Xichen does not think Wangji and Jiang Wanyin exchange another word in the three days they are there.
The first night, Lan Xichen finds Wangji standing at the edge of a pier, looking out into the dark. There is faint light from the stars and the moon and the distant lanterns, but only enough to pick out outlines. Wangji’s posture is straight as Lan Xichen approaches from behind but, well, it always is. “Xiongzhang,” he acknowledges right before Lan Xichen steps into place beside him, and abandons whatever he is searching for to turn and bow as he always does.
“It is past curfew,” Lan Xichen says, making sure the statement carries curiosity and not judgment. Wangji abides by the curfew as strictly as he abides by everything: even at war, he had woken at mao precisely; even while healing, he had not slept until hai.
Returning his gaze to the darkness over the lotus pond, Wangji responds, “We are not in Cloud Recesses.”
It’s true. They aren’t. Which had been the point.
Lan Xichen allows the silence for perhaps an incense time, standing next to his brother, only distinguishable from behind by the shapes of their headpieces. When it occurs to him as a possibility, he asks, “I had not realized relations between you and Jiang Wanyin were like that, now. Will you leave tomorrow?”
“No.”
“You will have to see him at the tournaments.”
“I,” Wangji says, with no satisfaction, only cold certainty, “am still better than Jiang Wanyin.”
∞
One night, several months after, Lan Xichen is awoken by a gentle knock on the door of the hanshi. It is, again, late, but Lan Xichen measures the gentleness of the knock against the franticness when Wangji had been branding himself, and calms his own panic, breathes, ties a robe closed over his sleeping clothes.
When he opens the door, hair down, Wangji stands there, fully dressed, nearly glowing in the moonlight. A cold breeze blows and Wangji sways, catching himself on the doorframe. He doesn’t say a word, but his face is drawn with exhaustion and the kind of misery he hasn’t let Lan Xichen see since he’d brought him the word of Wei Wuxian’s death. Lan Xichen steps outside in a daze, ducks under his brother’s arm, and half-carries him inside, placing him down gently on the bed. After a few moments, he shifts, fixes his posture. Lan Xichen kneels in front of him, looking up into his eyes, both of them illuminated only by starlight through the windows. “Wangji?” he asks, gently. “Weren’t you on a hunt?”
Wangji’s voice is barely a whisper. “Jiang Wanyin got there first.” He sways again, adjusts.
Lan Xichen, resolutely not panicking, presses the tips of his fingers against Wangji’s inner wrists. Wangji starts to pull away, and Lan Xichen would have let him, but their eyes meet and Wangji settles, allows it. Lan Xichen reaches out into him and finds – nothing. Or, no, not nothing. There are some spiritual reserves left, when he really searches for them deep in Wangji’s meridians, but not many. Closing his eyes, focusing on the many times he had done this for Wangji as a child and not the most recent necessity, he channels energy into him, letting go of it gently, easily.
Eventually, in a voice of almost surprise, “Xiongzhang, did I wake you?”
“Yes,” Lan Xichen says. “But I am glad you did. What happened? What did this to you? Not Jiang Wanyin.” The last bit is said with certainty.
“Too many. At the Qishan border. Restless. Released them all.” Wangji pauses. Lan Xichen keeps his eyes closed, his touch as gentle as possible. As a child, Wangji had hated to be stared at, hated to be touched. He tolerates both now, but he is so weak; Lan Xichen falls into old habits. He waits. They breathe together. Wangji sways again.
When he next speaks, his voice is stronger, but still distant, confused. “I needed to rest. My–” he cuts himself off. Behind Lan Xichen’s closed eyes, blood flashes, torn muscle, collapse. “But there was someone controlling them. Jiang Wanyin got there first.”
The pieces click together in Lan Xichen’s mind. His jaw tightens. Wangji’s infected wounds dance before his eyes, merge with the hatred writ across Wei Wuxian’s face. “You fought him?”
He feels Wangji move in what he thinks must be a shake of his head. “Had to put down the puppets. Only saw him leave.” Another pause, and then with a sort of grudging acknowledgment, “He saw me behind him.” Or he wouldn’t have just left the puppets remain loose, Lan Xichen fills in.
“Lie down, Wangji.” Gently, gently. Xiongzhang, not Lan-zhongzhu.
Wangji obeys. Of course. He still doesn’t sound like himself, any version of himself. His brother is not known for speaking overmuch, but neither is he known for a lack of eloquence. It rarely takes him more than a sentence or two to convey his meaning. He is never fragmented.
Lan Xichen releases his wrists, stands and turns to have his back against the bed, opens his eyes. His brother breathes unsteadily behind him. He stands there like that for a long time, listening, and eventually, when Wangji’s breathing evens out, he turns and, with great focus and precision, arranges Wangji’s limbs into his preferred position. He needs to sleep comfortably. For a moment, Lan Xichen’s hand ghosts over his ribbon, but he leaves it be, ultimately, opting instead to take down Wangji’s hair as carefully as he can. He places his headpiece on the floor beside the bed when he’s done, and is about to turn and leave Wangji to his sleep, when he opens his eyes, just barely slits.
“Go to sleep,” Lan Xichen whispers.
Wangji closes his eyes again, but he’s not asleep yet. “Wei Ying,” he says, so softly, so far from the tone with which he’d used to say that name, what feels like a lifetime ago.
“He’s not here, Wangji.” Lan Xichen tries very hard to be firm.
Wangji’s face doesn’t change, perhaps still too weak even for expression. “If he comes back, he’ll need me.” His voice is still quiet, but much firmer now. Lan Xichen allows himself to clench his jaw and close his eyes. Has his brother not protected Wei Wuxian enough? He is so weak now, in so much pain. Not really capable of protecting anyone, as tonight seems to evidence. But he will not argue with Wangji now.
Instead, he repeats, “Go to sleep,” and this time it seems like Wangji listens, regulating his breathing and slightly adjusting himself from how Lan Xichen had positioned him.
Lan Xichen leaves him, then, goes to the other side of the privacy screen and sits against a wall. He does not think he will sleep again tonight, so he drops into meditation, surfacing intermittently to listen for Wangji’s breathing and confirm to himself that he is still asleep, still alive.
At the beginning of mao precisely, he hears Wangji stir, and sighs to himself as he rises and goes to him. Wangji is sitting up most of the way in the bed, hair loose, fully-robed, looking confused.
“Xiongzhang?” he asks, and moves to leave the bed. The slight movement alone must be enough to make him realize that something is wrong, though, because instead of rising to bow he closes his eyes for a moment and remains still. Nausea, probably. And pain, of course.
“Why am I here?” he asks, opening his eyes after a moment and looking around blearily, before Lan Xichen watches remembrance flicker across his face. “Oh. Xiongzhang, I apologize for the disturbance.”
Lan Xichen is mad, suddenly. He doesn’t show it. “Wangji, you should not have been out so far alone.”
Wangji doesn’t respond. Expected, of course. For perhaps the first time ever, Lan Xichen understands why his silence always seems to encourage people to push against it. “The healers don’t think you should be out at all,” he adds.
At that, Wangji tenses ever so slightly. “It has been eight years. I am healed.”
Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji do not argue. Lan Xichen does not argue in general, really, not if he can help it. He can help it here. The anger is not actually at Wangji. He does not know how to be angry at Wangji. “I worry about you,” he says instead of reminding him that lying is forbidden.
“There is no need.” Wangji coughs, horribly. Tight and weak. When he finishes, his face is tight with pain.
“Wangji, if you cannot control yourself –” Wangji makes steady eye contact with him and is completely unreadable and Lan Xichen cuts himself off. It is, of course, ridiculous to accuse Lan Wangji of not being able to control himself. “I worry about you,” he says, again. “I know you seek Wei Wuxian. But getting yourself killed looking for him will not bring him back.”
Lan Xichen watches him put his words together, before he responds, “Wei Ying is dead.”
“And yet you and Jiang Wanyin continue to hunt him.”
Wangji repeats, “Wei Ying is dead,” and then continues, “And so somebody else must assist the civilians of Qishan.” Last night, Wangji had said, Jiang Wanyin got there first. But it is probably true that racing him for another demonic cultivator that they both would have known was not Wei Wuxian had not been his original intent. It is his goal, sometimes. If the rumors are to be believed, Wangji has not made it first to a single one.
“Then I will send somebody else. Somebody healthy.”
“Xiongzhang.” Wangji looks at him, and does not have to say more. Does not have to say that, when it comes to cultivation, none of their healthy people who can be spared from the seemingly eternal reconstruction efforts are half as powerful as he is, even now, or half as willing to venture in Qishan. Does not have to say that people without his injuries are needed for rebuilding, while he is able to contribute very little to those efforts, requiring as they do raw strength and not just a skill for settling ghosts.
Lan Xichen makes one more effort, doomed as it is, but he speaks as brother and not as sect leader. “You have to stop. I have not seen you in as bad of a shape as you were in last night in years. Please.”
Lan Wangji bows his head and gives him the gift of not passing judgment. Their priorities differ now, and Lan Xichen is not stupid – he knows that Wangji’s moral certainty leaves his wanting. Wangji’s voice is soft when he speaks, responding not with an argument but with a simple statement about the truth of the world. “Xiongzhang, I am sorry. I cannot.”
And that is that.
∞
Seven years after he emerges from seclusion, he moves on from obsessively playing scales and begins obsessively playing the alphabet of Inquiry. It is absurd. Lan Xichen visits less frequently than he once had, but still at least weekly he sits in the jingshi as his brother plays the same chords over and over, hundreds of times for each letter, hundreds of times for each possible question in each possible tone in each possible context. Wangji had been probably the foremost expert in Inquiry the Lan had ever produced, before the wars, and he certainly is now, in both knowledge and practical application. Whatever imperfections he seeks to cleanse have long since become faint enough that even Lan Xichen can only pick one out perhaps once a night, but nevertheless, he plays.
Every so often, in between repetitions, a “Can you hear me?” will slip its way into the music, but when Lan Xichen looks up from the classwork he is grading, there is never any indication that Wangji is expecting an answer from anyone at all. It is instead as if the melody is so built into him now that it weaves itself in without him even thinking.
“Did you practice in your seclusion?” Lan Xichen asks, at some point, very carefully not asking what he is actually trying to ask. They had not taken Wangji from him.
Wangji looks up at him, headpiece having been taken down, an odd expression somewhere in the vicinity of his jaw. Quietly and with no rebuke he says, “Xiongzhang, I could not sit upright.”
∞
Nine years after he emerges from seclusion, the flashes of what in Wangji could be considered normalcy are almost frequent. He is still like an overdrawn bowstring, but he no longer feels to Lan Xichen quite as if he is on the verge of snapping.
He takes the juniors out night hunting, and they clamor for him to accompany them when others take the role instead. He goes on his own quests, leaving silently and returning silently, never seeming to have found what he is looking for, but also never again returning as ill as he had that one night. He spends less and less time at Cloud Recesses, traveling, searching, going where the chaos is.
He moves on from obsessively playing Inquiry to obsessively playing Cleansing, Rest, his own old compositions. He writes nothing new. He never again quite reaches the perfect precision he had had as a youth, when his body had been undamaged, and Lan Xichen knows he knows it. But what is there to be done? He has his routine. If, sometimes, he still races Jiang Wanyin to reach demonic cultivators who never turn out to have any power at all; if, sometimes, his “Can you hear me?” still finds its way into his playing; if, sometimes, Lan Xichen finds him at night standing motionless on the back mountain, a rabbit held close to his chest, looking out in the direction of Yiling; well, if that, what is there to be done?
Lan Xichen visits a-Yao in Lanling and says, “Wangji is well, thank you for your concern,” with enough sincerity that a-Yao smiles and extends an invitation. Lan Xichen visits Yunmeng to solidify trade agreements, and Jiang Wanyin manages not to mention Wangji at all, and Lan Xichen does not either. Lan Xichen visits Huaisang in Qinghe and says, “You are doing well with little, your brother would be proud of you,” and Huaisang does not comment on the distance in his eyes.
The secret has been kept. Hanguang-jun’s reputation is flawless. Wei Wuxian is dead, and Lan Xichen’s brother is returning to him, and his brother has a life again, even if he remains solitary in white.
∞
Thirteen years after Wei Wuxian’s death, Lan Xichen knows the moment he sees his brother’s face.
∞
Wangji visits him in seclusion once a week when he is at Cloud Recesses, like clockwork. Lan Xichen, whose sense of time and self and world is drifting, appreciates, as always, his brother’s reliability. He knows Wangji would come more frequently if he asked. He does not ask. He does not wish to rob him of any more time in the world that suddenly, after over thirty years, has decided to give him happiness.
They do not talk much. Wangji, after everything, is still Wangji. But he cooks simple meals for Lan Xichen, and they drink tea together, and Wangji very carefully does not mention Wei Wuxian without being asked. Lan Xichen doesn’t hate Wei Wuxian anymore – he never had, really, had only hated what his loss had done to his brother – but he appreciates the thought, nonetheless. It is, ultimately, unsurprising that Wangji had chosen correctly and he had chosen wrong. A small voice sometimes asks him if he is sure of that, if perhaps there had been more he could have done to help A-Yao, if Wangji can have been so sure for so long –
But he is not Wangji. He is not sure. For the sake of his clan, he had said he would kill Jin Guangyao if he so much as moved, and then he had done it.
One day, sunshine streaming through the windows, Wangji cleaning away their dishes, Xichen stares at his back and thinks and thinks and thinks and eventually manages to make himself ask, “Had you known?”
Wangji stiffens slightly, turns around. Bows his head in an affirmative so slight as to be nearly invisible. It is impossible, now, to know what to say. Wangji does not say the things in response that somebody else would say. It is entirely possible that Wangji is not thinking the things other people would think. Lan Xichen, absurdly, wishes that Wei Wuxian were here.
“I am sorry,” is all he can think of, and Wangji bows his head again, accepting it.
“I am sorry you have lost him,” Wangji adds eventually, making him the first and only person to say anything of the kind.
Wangji rejoins him at the table. They sip their tea. The sun sets, slowly. They play together, one of Wangji’s new compositions – there is always a space for a flute harmony in his work, now, and a xiao works almost as well as a dizi.
Then Wangji leaves and he is alone again, watching the sun move across another day.
∞
Lan Xichen emerges, eventually. He tries not to think about how long it had taken him. Eventually, Lan Qiren had visited him, gray visible in his beard, and Lan Xichen had made his choice. The same choice he always made.
Now he stands out in the back mountain, balancing easily on a large boulder. In front of him and below him is a river, crashing over rocks as it rushes downhill. The spray as it hits him is cold. The water itself must be colder still. He is not in nearly all of his usual layers of robes, and he shivers, slightly. His golden core could keep him warm if he wanted it to, but he does not. It is dark, moon and stars barely managing to form a reflection in the white water.
He closes his eyes and listens. Imagines a world where he could.
When he hears the “Xiongzhang?” from below and behind him, it is barely a surprise.
He does not want to respond. He wants to live in that other world a moment longer. “Wangji.”
Lan Xichen’s eyes remain closed as Wangji jumps up and lands beside him, half a step behind. When he opens them eventually, it is to a silhouette of Wangji with hair down, looking up at the moon. He is silent. Lan Xichen is good at silence, too, has become even better at it over the last years, but he knows he cannot outlast Lan Wangji, so he doesn’t try. “Why have you come?”
Wangji doesn’t move. Lan Xichen realizes their poses are near-identical, one arm bent behind. He says, “Wei Ying was concerned.” Of course. Wangji would have been asleep, but Wei Ying could have been anywhere, wandering, restless.
“He does not have reason to be.”
Another long moment of silence. Lan Xichen follows his brother’s gaze, watches clouds drift across the moon. Now that he is trying to hear and be heard, the river is loud. It echoes.
“He does, I think.” Wangji’s gaze turns to him. Lan Xichen meets it, tries to look reassuring, and looks away again.
In the dark, looking at the stars, he and Wangji both bereft of most of their usual shields, Lan Xichen can ask, “You never considered it?”
“No.”
Lan Xichen sighs. Wangji has always been braver than him. “I will not jump. I do not intend to become Qingheng-jun.”
“I know.” Wangji sounds almost sad.
Lan Xichen looks back at him. “You are happy, now?”
Wangji does not smile, but his features soften; he looks back in the direction of the jingshi, where Wei Wuxian must be waiting up for him. They will leave tomorrow to visit Lanling and then to wander as the world takes them, if Lan Xichen remembers correctly. “Yes.”
Something falls into the river with a loud splash. A tree branch, perhaps. Lan Xichen remembers when it had seemed like Wangji would never be happy again. But he remembers, also, that that had changed before Wei Wuxian had come back. He had not been what he obviously is now, but for a few years before Wei Wuxian had returned, he had been functional, aware, proud, sometimes calm. Lan Xichen still doesn’t really know what the catalyst had been. And it has been years now, with no life-destroying injuries to figure out how to survive, and yet still he finds himself drawn to overlook this river, to draw Shouyue at night and stare at it, to return to Guanyin Temple and open the coffin, apologize to them both and let them take him. All foolish, of course. He cannot do that to Gusu Lan, nor to Wangji. And nothing of his sworn brothers remains at Guanyin Temple.
He runs through in his mind what else he could have done, over and over. Even in those thought exercises, he cannot bring himself to abandon A-Yao early. All of the horrible things he had done, and yet. Lan Xichen had killed. He had not protested the hunting of the remaining Wens. He had joined the Siege of the Burial Mounds. He had whipped his brother. In the name of his clan, of course. All in the name of his clan. And yet.
He hates himself for all of it, and cannot find a way to have avoided any of it.
There are questions he wants to ask his brother. He does not ask them.
“I am glad,” he says instead.
They stand together through the rest of the night in silence, the language perhaps most familiar to both of them. The moon moves its way across the sky, clouds obscuring it entirely long before the sun rises. The river continues its endless journey, long and loud and leaving for somewhere else. Lan Xichen and his brother do not touch.
The sun begins to rise. Lan Xichen returns to his work.