Chapter Text
First the colors.
Then the Humans.
That's how I usually see things.
Or at least, how I try.
Here's a small fact.
You are going to die.
-Death, The Book Thief
Lan Wangji grits his teeth together and promises himself that he isn’t going to scream. That’s all he can do at this point. He’s going to die. He already knows it. The sword driven through his stomach pins him to the ground. There’s no escape, no fighting back. He’s going to die. The only thing he can do now is promise himself he won’t give the Wen the satisfaction of hearing him scream.
The mission was always going to be dangerous but he never expected it to go so badly wrong. They’d known that the Wen’s forward base, filled with some of their most talented cultivators, was somewhere in this stretch of forest but not exactly where. The job Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue had tasked Lan Wangji and his scouting party with was to find it, discover their numbers, and report back. It shouldn’t have been a problem, but they had been unlucky. They had run into the Wen’s own scouting party close enough to the Wen’s forward base camp that the Wen scouts had been able to call for backup. The Wen’s forward base camp was home to maybe three or four hundred cultivators. Maybe 20 or 30 of those were noncombatants, a combination of cooks and the Wen clan’s most talented medical cultivators, but the rest… the rest were all skilled sword cultivators and no matter how powerful Lan Wangji is he was hardly a match for all of them.
Now the rest of Lan Wangji’s scouting party are dead, slaughtered all around him, and he’s going to be joining them soon, but it’s not going to be a quick death. The Wen have made that abundantly clear. They recognized him, they want to make an example out of him, and from listening to them talk, he’s gathered that many of them are Wen Xu’s former subordinates, so they want revenge as well. One of them shoves the sword pinning Lan Wangji to the ground even deeper into his stomach, twisting the blade inside him, and Lan Wangji bites down hard on his lips.
He tastes blood.
He won’t cry out.
He won’t.
Mocking laughter from above him and more loud voices arguing. “We should cut off his head and send it back to his brother,” one of them suggests but he is shouted down. “No no! We should send him onto Sect Leader Wen! I’m sure he’ll be happy to see him!” This suggestion seems to meet a good deal of approval. The commander of this group of Wen nods in agreement even as he takes a step forward to smile sneeringly down at Lan Wangji. “We can do that but we should make sure he isn’t dangerous first, don’t you think?”
Despite the sword in his stomach and the blood loss making his head spin Lan Wangji tries to push himself up, tries to rise, but then the Wen are on him, pinning his shoulders to the ground, forcing his right arm away from his side, too many of them to resist no matter how strong his core or how much he struggles. Their commander laughs mockingly. “Such a fierce sword hand you’re supposed to have, Lan Wangji. Let’s see how much trouble you can give us once it’s gone!”
The sword rises.
The sword falls.
This time Lan Wangji can do nothing to hold back his scream.
When the pain clears enough for some vague awareness to return the first thing he hears is more mocking laughter above him.
“What if we don’t send him on to Sect Leader Wen? What if we cut him apart piece by piece instead? We could do his other hand next, then his legs and then…”
“What’s all this?”
A new voice cuts through the general merriment of the group. It’s light and casual and Lan Wangji sees the feet and legs of some of his tormentors turn in the direction of the voice. From the angle his head is at, he can’t see the newcomer at all. Blood loss and shock and pain are making his body heavy and his vision hazy and even his mind feels like it’s starting to slip away, yet even as far gone as he is he knows exactly to whom that voice belongs.
He would know that voice anywhere.
“Who are you?” The commander demands. “Don’t you know you’re interrupting Wen Clan business? Show some respect or are you offering to entertain us next?”
He seems to think he’s addressing a servant or a civilian, not a fellow cultivator, but then how could he know? The man before him doesn’t wear sect colors and he isn’t carrying a sword.
Lan Wangji wants to shout a warning to him, wants to tell him that even if the party of Wen that stayed to torment Lan Wangji are only maybe 50 or so, their forward camp is too close, too dangerous, but his throat doesn’t seem to want to work, torn raw by his earlier scream. He needs to make it work though. He needs to. He…
“Maybe I am offering.” The voice is coming closer now. “Maybe I think I’ll be more fun than, let’s see, who do we have…” The words cut off abruptly as does the sound of approaching footsteps. There’s a harsh gasp and then, “Lan Zhan!?”
The voice is completely different now, the lightness the mockery, all of it gone, replaced by horror.
“You know him?” The commander and several of the other Wen begin moving toward him, hands falling to their swords. “You wouldn’t happen to be a Lan in disguise would you?”
When the voice speaks again even the horror has dropped away, replaced by a fury fit to burn the world. “You’re about to wish I was and then you’re going to wish for a faster death.”
The Wen commander takes another step forward, his tone growing angrier. He doesn’t understand his danger. “Who the fuck do you…is that a flute!?”
Gasps from among his men. “Black flute, red tassel! That’s Chenqing!”
“Wei Wuxian! It’s Wei Wuxian!”
The Wen leap for him, but it’s already too late. Wild furious music rips through the clearing and the men stumble, cry out in shock and horror, swing their swords wildly as they fall to their knees. Around Lan Wangji lie the bodies of his slain clansmen and Lan Wangji too took down many, many Wen, before he himself fell. The clearing is carpeted in corpses, corpses that reach up grasping fingers to grip the ankles of the Wen cultivators, pulling them down and down no matter how they hack and slash and fight for their freedom. Quickly their cries turned to screams, a strange counterpoint to Wei Wuxian’s wild melody and Lan Wangji realizes that the corpses aren’t going for quick kills. They aren’t tearing open throats or bashing heads against the ground, the Wen are being ripped apart limb by limb, their screams rising and rising all around Lan Wangji until they so drown out the sound of the flute that he isn’t even aware that Wei Wuxian has stopped playing until he’s suddenly there at Lan Wangji’s side, dropping to his knees and ripping off his outer robe to wrap it hastily around the bleeding stump of Lan Wangji’s right wrist.
“Lan Zhan! Lan Zhan!”
“Wei Ying…” Lan Wangji whispers the name, savoring it on his lips. He’s glad suddenly, through the pain and the haze that his mind is falling into despite the best efforts of his core. He’s glad, because Wei Ying is here. Lan Wangji is going to die, he knows that, has known that since the moment the sword rammed through his stomach, but before he thought he was going to die alone, die trying not to scream as the Wen tortured the last of the life from him, but now… Now Wei Ying’s voice will be the last thing he ever hears and Wei Ying’s hands will be the last things Lan Wangji ever feels and so he is glad. He feels a pang of regret for his brother and his uncle, for the grief they will feel at his loss. He also feels the disquiet of a job left undone, a war not yet won, but still, Wei Ying is here.
“Lan Zhan! Lan Zhan stay with me! I’m going to pull the sword out. It’s going to hurt but I need you to bear with it, ok?”
Wei Ying… So beautiful, so laughing, so perfect …and so broken now since he’s returned from wherever it is he spent the three months he was missing. He’s hurting and damaged in a way that Lan Wangji can’t understand, cultivating a dark and twisted path that can only harm him more with every day that passes and yet he refuses to let Lan Wangji help. They quarreled badly the last time they saw each other and suddenly Lan Wangji can’t bear for it to be the last thing they say to each other. There’s been so much anger between them lately. Lan Wangji needs Wei Ying to know, needs him to understand. He can’t leave this world without Wei Ying understanding, he just can’t.
With his remaining hand, he grabs the cuff of one of Wei Wuxian’s sleeves. Wei Wuxian, who had been in the process of reaching for the sword embedded in Lan Wangji, stills instantly.
“Lan Zhan?” His eyes on Lan Wangji are wild and worried, their gray a storm of emotions, and oh so beautiful.
The words are right there on the tip of Lan Wangji’s tongue just as they always are when he sees Wei Ying but this time he doesn’t swallow them back. What does he have to lose? If Wei Ying makes them into a joke, laughs them off, rejects him, it won’t matter now. He’s dying after all. He’s dying and there’s nothing to be done about it, not as far from help as they are, so all that matters right now is that Wei Ying knows.
“...Love you…”
“What?” Wei Ying’s eyes widen in incomprehension.
Lan Wangji forces himself to swallow, to try again, to get all the words out this time.
“I am in love with you.”