Archive of Our Own

The wind up on the mountain range sung like a mourning flute. Snow never stopped falling in a gentle and terrible tide. The trees here did not bend, for they were long dead. Only their skeletal forms stood buried in frost like the ribs of a long forgotten great beast of legend. 

He conquered many of those, in his youth, never imagining quite what the dreadful future had in store for the likes of him. To be conquered and forgotten just like the beasts he slayed until not even memory remained of him. Until he sank into the snow and dissipated from existence with no one to mourn him.

Wei Wuxian, once the Yiling Patriarch, the scourge of the cultivation world, the demon in human skin, stood wrapped in a threadbare cloak on the ridge, gazing at the seemingly endless expanse of the gray sky.

There was no sun. There hadn’t been one since he arrived. In a way, there hadn’t been one that shone for him in years.

He initially came in chains, though at that point, he walked without them. The cultivators who dragged him here whispered among themselves. Too cowardly to look him in the eye but not enough to keep their mouths shut, knowing that this was likely the end for him. “Exile.” they had said. 

No one returned from this place. A mountain range farther west than any claimed land in the cultivation world, separating known lands from the vast unknown of the kingdoms of legend, and within it, a mountain with a curse. A place forever covered in eternal winter, centuries of ceaseless snowfall. It was not a place where the exiled were sent to either. No, he was just that special. So terrible that not even execution was enough to compensate for his crimes, instead he was sent to the worst possible prison one can think of.

For a time, Wei Wuxian laughed. Not out of joy, not in a long time, but the sort of laugh a man can only choke out when the weight of the world finally crushes his chest, and all he can do is exhale madness. This mountain had its work cut out for it, he thought, for he had already been falling apart at the seams for longer than he could remember.

Then came the silence.

He built a shelter, of sorts. Twigs, branches, half frozen stone and pieces of filthy fabric that he was allowed to carry up with him. It leaned against the side of a cliff, between two twin peaks that looked as if struck apart by a heavenly sword. It offered little warmth, no comfort. But at least the snow didn’t fall on his head.

He spoke to himself. At first jokes that landed flat by his feet. Then memories that dripped like icicles and carved their icy burn in tracks through his cheeks. Then apologies.

To parents he wasn’t able to remember and siblings he couldn’t protect. To friends he left behind and those that let go of his hand when he went too far. When he lost all reason and could no longer go back on his actions. He had been righteous too, once upon a time.

No one answered. Not a living soul in this cursed place. He tried not to let himself cry too much, not out of any sense of pride or resilience, but because the tears froze almost as soon as they made it out of the confines of his eyes, hardening over his cheekbones and burning the skin beneath it. If he let himself succumb to this pain, he didn’t know what would be of him. All that remained was his ability to remember, to feel. What could he do when the mere act of being human warranted such a punishment?

He held onto the memory of those that he loved most and caressed them with his thoughts as if they were the most precious jade. When it started to hurt too much, when the ceaseless drumming of his heartbeat slammed against his frozen over ribcage until it felt as if it’d break through and chew a hole in his chest, he said goodbye.

His beloved sister, who perished before she could learn of what became of him. Not by his hand but as good as.

His brother. Jiang Cheng didn't even dignify him with a goodbye, but Wei Wuxian could see that he was fighting back tears and he wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. They would never see each other again, but even still he would rather bottle everything up and keep up appearances. 

He even let himself be selfish for a change, to wish someone could have at least hugged him goodbye before he was as good as left for dead, wish that at least one person in the world would have given him a smidge of comfort, for just a few seconds out of the eternity of his punishment. He wouldn't even mind if they didn't actually mean it. 

And then he's done. Locking it all to the back of his mind and giving in to the cold. No longer the Yiling Patriarch, or Wei Wuxian of Yunmeng. Just Wei Ying, a man in the snow, alone in the world.

He screamed into the dead forest, hoping that perhaps the mountain would echo him, acknowledge him. But it didn’t. The mountain devoured all sound. A silence that was not absence, but erasure.

Even the spirits there were mute.

He didn’t keep a proper count of the days that passed, sleeping when he found himself tired and trekking aimlessly through his desolate surroundings when the light of day permitted him to. But he was certain that the sun had risen behind the clouds more than one hundred times when he found the wall. 

A thick sheet of ice in the hollow of a rock, freezing over the narrow space between the two sides of a gash in the mountainside. Something compelled him to strike it. He did, over and over, with frozen fingers and pieces of rock.

He carved at it, cracks running through it like strikes of lightning  until the wall shattered with the sound of a breath. He fell through into darkness.

The cave was not very big. Just a crack in the rock providing a little shelter from the elements. It wasn't warm but at least his breath no longer fogged up so severely when inside. Snow coated the interior, probably brought in by the ruthless wind before the entrance was frozen shut, but beneath it… there was something solid.

A statue, he thought first. Carved of the finest white jade, so lifelike it startled him.

A man, kneeling. Hair tied high, robes flowing like silk turned to stone. His face was carved into anguish, delicate, almost angelic features pinched in eternal sorrow, brows drawn, lips parted in grief or longing.

Wei Wuxian fell to his knees.

Not because he was in awe, but because he was a broken man, and the sight of someone else, anything else, hurting the same way as him undid whatever thread of solitude he had bound himself in.

“It’s you and me now.” he whispered. 

He visited the jade man every day. Swept the snow from his robes. Talked to him, told him stories, the ones that didn’t hurt as much to remember but also the ones he heard from his childhood in sun kissed lakes and lotus ponds. Sometimes the ones that hurt as well, the tears took a little longer to freeze over inside of their little room after all.

They kept each other company.

One day he made the trek lower and then the next, higher over the cliffs, until he found a dead mound of bamboo, blackened from the burn of hail and snow. He sat beside his jade friend and carved it carefully into a dizi. A few days later, he let himself play his first song since his first flute was broken, before he was even sent here.

The songs brought him a little bit of comfort, of warmth, and he hoped that whoever this statue was meant to represent could also be comforted by the warmth of his melody.

“Do you think they’ve already forgotten me?” he asked once, sitting beside the statue once again. “I hope so. If they haven’t, it means they still hate me.”

“I wish they’d keep the good memories of me, but-” He leaned against the stone shoulder. “What about you? Were you abandoned too? Cast away?”

No answer. But that time, something stirred. The green tinge of the white jade seemed to almost fade a little.

Each day, he saw it: a subtle shift. The jade slowly lost its chill. The lines of sorrow on the face softened. 

He often thought that loneliness was starting to result in hallucinations. He heard shifting sometimes, or a sigh, knowing full well that he was the only person alive on that mountain.

But he pretended. Pretended that the jade man could hear him, that his rambling and his kindness were appreciated, pretended that he could make this carved beauty feel at least a little bit of the relief that it gave him, the companionship. 

He brought the statue some of his dreary foraged food. Not because it could eat, but because the act made him feel human. He brought rocks that had curious shapes and carved flowers from dead little sticks that he left by its kneeling form like a gift. Like a thank you.

One morning, he found the statue’s head tilted ever so slightly toward him. His heart skipped a beat.

“Hello?” he whispered.

The statue did not answer and he didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

But the next day, the mouth was no longer frozen in anguish. It was sad still, but softer, as if listening.

And then.

“…Who…”

Wei Wuxian gasped. It was the faintest whisper, like wind over glass. Like the first bloom of spring after eternal winter.

“I’m Wei Ying,” he said. His voice trembled and cracked, chest jumping in aborted breaths. “Are you not- Do you have a name?”

Silence. Then a sigh.

“…Lan… Zhan…”

At first, the voice came only in fragments, pushed out like the slow droplets of lake water on the pink lotus petals, the gentle waves of a quiet night.

“...Cold….”

“...Dark…”

“...Alone…”

Wei Wuxian’s heart ached every time he heard that voice. It was weak, distant like a song remembered from childhood. But it was real. And he was the only one there to witness it, the only human voice, aside from his own, that he got to hear for a very long time.

“You're not alone anymore,” he whispered to the statue’s softening cheek. His fingers trembled as they brushed a strand of hair now loose from its frozen crown. “You’re my only friend, in a way. I won’t leave unless you want me to.”

The statue, Lan Zhan, didn’t respond for a long while. But he didn’t need to.

Wei Wuxian stayed by his side regardless, kept talking and cleaning off his increasingly less stiff robes and bringing him pitiful little trinkets. Hoping more than anything in the world that if Lan Zhan ever answered, it wouldn’t be to tell him to leave.

He talked about everything still, but with a renewed vigor and care to his words, knowing that he was being heard.

“The first time I saw snow,” he said one night, as they sat together on their spot by the back of the cave. “I must have been four or five. The first winter after my parents left. I ate a mouthful of it whenever I couldn’t find anything else to fill my stomach with, even if it did nothing.”

“When I went to Yunmeng though, it didn’t snow as much. Just enough for me and my brother to play around in it for a few weeks, when we were kids. My sister… She would laugh at our dirty faces and help us change out of our wet clothes before we could catch a cold…”

He smiled into the distance, eyes wet. “I wish I could remember that laugh more clearly. I think the mountain is eating it away from my mind.”

Then, softer. “What about you? Did you grow up with snow? Or did it follow you here too?”

Lan Zhan blinked slowly. The color in his lips was returning, like rose petals sprinkled in frost. His voice was low and slow. “...It snowed… In Gusu...”

He was from Gusu, then. 

Wei Wuxian had never been to Gusu. The history books he was taught with didn’t have much to say about that region. It once housed a great sect, from the generation of the great masters, that closed themselves off from the world centuries before he was even born. Something must have happened, but after hundreds of years there was nothing to speak of.

Wei Wuxian took a considering look at his companion. He had certainly been sitting here for a very long time. His robes were of the finest quality and his hair piece was extravagant enough for him to appear almost royal, definitely a distinguished young master. Could that ancient clan’s surname have been Lan?

“I didn’t know you were from Gusu. They had a sect there some time ago, is that where you came from?”

“Mn.”

“They must have taught you to be well mannered and kind,” He laughed. “You look like you’d have been their top student.”

A nod.

Wei Wuxian grinned. “Did you have a courtesy name?”

“...Wangji…”

Time passed strangely inside their little cave. Days blurred together with no one to count them. But inside, the cold grew weaker. Ice dripped from the ceiling like the tears of a grieving mother. 

Wei Wuxian brought Lan Wangji warm broth he brewed from bitter roots and melted snow. He pressed the bowl to the other man’s lips, coaxing him to drink even just a mouthful.

“You don’t have to do this,” Lan Wangji murmured once he could already lift his arms halfway to his face. His voice already easier to project but still cracking like frozen branches sometimes.

Wei Wuxian tilted his head, “Do what? Take care of you? Be your friend?”

“I am… not worthy.”

That struck something deep.

Wei Wuxian set the bowl down. “Neither am I. That’s the thing. That’s why I’m here, remember? Because I’m ‘immoral and deeply corrupted’ as they said. So grotesque that they couldn’t even bear to kill me.”

He leaned closer, fingers brushing the hem of Lan Wangji’s sleeves. “So even if you were some villain, especially if you were, I’d still sit beside you every day. Because you were kind to me, you didn’t tell me to leave. Not when everyone else did.”

“You were hurting,” Lan Wangji whispered.

“We both were,” Wei Wuxian laughed quietly. “You were alone with your ghosts for longer than I was.”

There were moments of stillness so quiet, so deep, that they almost felt like peace.

They would sit side by side for hours, saying nothing. The sound of dripping water, the hum of their breath, the occasional flutter of wings in the distance.

Wei Wuxian started carving things into the stone walls, little figures and symbols.

“This is a rabbit,” he said, pointing to an especially round attempt at a drawing. “Don’t laugh, I know it’s terrible. But I thought you might like them. You feel like someone who’d be kind to rabbits.”

Lan Wangji reached out slowly, fingertips already warm and skin soft. He touched the carving with reverence. “Thank you.”

Wei Wuxian blinked. “You’re welcome. You don’t have to thank me for every little thing.”

“I do,” Lan Wangji said simply. “No one... has spoken to me in a long time. No one spoke freely, or showed me kindness.”

Wei Wuxian lowered his gaze. “I understand that. I really do.”

One night, when the wind outside howled like the screams of a ghost, Wei Wuxian spoke again.

“Why must we be punished?” he asked. “All I ever wanted was to not be alone in the world.”

Lan Wangji turned toward him, the lines of his face softening more and more each day. “Not punishment,” he said. “A… reprieve. From the world. Away from those who want to bend us to their will. To be human again.”

Wei Wuxian shook his head. “I don’t know if I was ever human to them. Just a burden. Then a weapon. And then a shadow, a monster.”

He couldn’t help but remember just how hard he had tried to stand as an equal to his peers, always a step behind, made to grovel and beg for scraps of humanity.

He took Lan Wangji’s hand then. It was fully warm now, almost entirely flesh.

“At least with you, I don't have to pretend.”

As the time passed, Lan Wangji grew strong enough to stand. Wei Wuxian helped him walk, one trembling step at a time.

“I never asked,” Wei Wuxian murmured as they sat against the wall beside the mouth of their cave, where he used to keep his makeshift shelter in the earlier days of his discovery. “Why were you on the mountain? Who did this to you?”

Lan Wangji closed his eyes. “I don’t know. There are only fragments. Kneeling for days, and then running. I remember being angry, feeling shackled. Wanting to disappear and never return.”

Wei Wuxian touched his shoulder gently. “You don’t have to remember if it hurts too much.”

“…But I remember you. After a lifetime of nothing but cold.”

Wei Wuxian blinked. “You do?”

Lan Wangji nodded. “Your voice. When I was frozen. It was the only warmth, the only comfort.”

Wei Wuxian’s mouth trembled. He reached forward and rested his forehead against Lan Wangji’s shoulder. “I don’t think anyone has ever cared to listen to my voice. To see me as I really am.”

“I see you,” Lan Wangji whispered. His arms wrapped around him. “And I will remember, forever.”

They began venturing outside.

Wei Wuxian led them slowly down the slopes just below the cave’s mouth, where the snow was a little thinner and the stones still remembered the sun. He talked the whole way, eyes taking in a world that he had almost forgotten, that Lan Wangji did forget.

“See those peaks?” he pointed. “Split clean in two, like a god tried to practice swordsmanship on it. You think you would have done something like that? When you first came here with nothing but rage? I definitely would have, had I still had a sword.”

Lan Wangji tilted his head, thoughtful. “Possible.”

Wei Wuxian laughed warmly. “Should I be worried? Is there a temper under all that calm?”

A pause. Then a quiet breath, like a laugh. “Not for you.”

Wei Wuxian stumbled slightly in the snow. “Oh,” he said, voice barely a breath and quickly turning into a whine. “You can’t just say that! You’re going to kill me with kindness, won’t you?”

Lan Wangji said nothing in response, the smallest quirk of his lips indicating a pleased smile, but when their hands brushed together as they walked, he didn't pull away.

Lan Wangji seldom remembered parts of his past, and when he did, the memories were vague and fragmented. A melody, a scent, somebody’s laugh. Wei Wuxian encouraged him to tell him about them anyway, almost as if assembling the pieces of who his Lan Zhan used to be, of the parts of him that followed him to their eternal winter.

They didn’t dwell on them much, however, as it seemed that Lan Wangji hadn’t lived a very happy life. All the memories tinged with melancholy. And so on their colder days, Wei Wuxian brought warmth to their hideout with his own memories of sweltering summers, of shooting kites under the sun and swimming in the lake.

“Jiang Cheng always said I was childish, but he always followed me to the lake afterwards.” He laughed on one such day. “Always kept his heart so guarded… I wish he could have been more free. I hope he’s doing well…”

“I had a brother once, I believe.” Lan Wangji responded, tracing the lotus flower that Wei Wuxian carved onto the wall. Besides remembering his mother’s laugh, he had never remembered anyone else until that point. “I think… He played the xiao.”

“Do you think he was a good brother?”

“...Mn.” Lan Wangji answered, seemingly trying hard to remember. “He was kind, but too trusting. He was still young, I suppose. When I left.”

“He must have missed you.” Wei Wuxian whispered, hoping that there was someone out there to miss him as well.

“I think I missed him as well.”

They kissed for the first time that night.

There was no ceremony, no great proclamation. Lan Wangji smiled at him in front of their makeshift fire, that smile that was nothing but the slight upturn of his lips. He was Wei Wuxian’s everything in this new life he found himself in, and he looked beautiful by firelight.

“Lan Zhan…”

Their lips were unsure but not cold, not anymore. Lan Wangji cradled his face in between his hands and Wei Wuxian pressed into him like the answer to a prayer.

When they parted, they didn’t speak, for there was nothing to be said. All of their words already written out on hands that held each other close, that wiped away happy tears, that hoped to protect the only thing they had in life, the most precious of their treasure.

They had already been sleeping close together, turning a few of Lan Wangji’s many layers of robes and all of Wei Wuxian’s pieces of fabric into a bed for themselves on the cave floor that they cleaned out of all the snow. 

It started off as a necessity. Sharing body heat to ward off the piercing cold mountain night. But necessity soon turned into habit and on that night, habit had turned into choice.

Wei Wuxian laid down with his head tucked beneath Lan Wangji’s chin, an arm around his waist, murmuring thoughts and half-dreams into the hollow of his throat, receiving  the vibrations of the other’s chest as a response.

“I don’t think I would have made it this long if I hadn’t found you.”

“I am glad you did.” A hand snaked into his hair, caressing the strands away from his face. “Otherwise I too would have remained in despair.”

“If I died alone out there, do you think you would have lived forever?”

“I am thankful for a commoner’s death as it means my time in life is spent beside Wei Ying.”

Everyone who would have known Lan Wangji’s name would have died centuries ago and likewise, no one who knew Wei Wuxian’s would ever come looking for him. In a way, they were no longer who they were out in the wide world, but new people born from the snow and the ice. With the years, the cold became less of a prison and more of an old acquaintance. 

“I’m glad they threw me here.” Wei Wuxian decided on another late night, placing a kiss on Lan Wangji’s neck. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have found you. You’re better than anything my old life had to offer.”

He wasn’t awake to hear it, but Lan Wangji responded in a whisper. “I am glad to have suffered for so long, as I stayed alive long enough to meet you.”

And the mountain started to change with them.

Snow still coated its flanks like a thick white blanket, but beneath the surface, something was stirring. Roots shifted. Ice softened. A world forever frozen had, against all odds, begun to breathe.

As with most things in nature it started with small things. A patch of moss on a cliff too steep for snow to settle in, where the faint sunlight sometimes shone through on the stones. The drip of meltwater falling steadily from the ice that once covered the cave entrance. The first bird call Wei Wuxian had heard in years, a sound so faint in the distance that he thought himself to be hallucinating. 

Lan Wangji had long started walking. Not very far, and seldom without Wei Wuxian there to accompany him, but enough. Enough to matter.

They built things. It was a slow and clumsy process as they were both weakened in body and sometimes in memory, but it served the purpose of their days shape, of making their prison into a home. Something to see besides the infinite whites and grays.

A garden first, with small stones arranged around a patch of soil they managed to clear up, where stubborn little shoots began to emerge from the thawing earth. Wei Wuxian insisted on planting random seeds he scavenged from the wind-swept ridges.

“I don’t even know what this is,” he laughed once, tossing a knobby little pod into the dirt. “Could be poisonous. Or! It could be a radish! Isn’t that exciting?”

Lan Wangji crouched beside him, hands cupped to shield another tiny sprout from the biting wind. “Mn. A discovery worth looking forward to.”

“Though I think I'd rather it be poisonous than a radish.”

Lan Wangji laughed. Almost inaudible, the slightest turn of his lips, and Wei Wuxian could swear that the sun shone brighter from behind the thick clouds.

Months later, when their little garden had produced its first real fruits, in the form of small vegetables and some windburnt herbs, they climbed the ridge together, higher than they’d ever dared. Wind slashed at their cloaks but the sky behind the clouds was visible in a pale blue smudge.

Below, the forest was shifting. Ice was melting into pools, green was spreading through the trees. Birds fluttering their wings up through the slopes. Wei Wuxian swore he saw a fox.

They sat on a flat stone overlooking it all and Wei Wuxian leaned into Lan Wangji’s side.

“Do you think they’d believe us?” he whispered. “If we told them this place could thaw? That something dead for centuries just needed some love?”

Lan Wangji’s voice was steady when he answered “They never believed in gentleness.”

And he was right. The cultivation world would find no joy in such a development, preferring fear over love, content to have a place so inhospitable in which to throw away their worst villain and forget about him.

Enough time had passed for people to forget his name, for those who once knew him to remember him by a blurry image, a faceless ghost, an afterthought.

Just as Wei Wuxian was the only person in the world alive to speak Lan Wangji’s name, in just a few more years his own wretched name would suffer the same fate.

Wei Wuxian’s face had already begun developing smile lines when he sat down on the grass outside of their little cave and started wondering.

Lan Wangji was down by the forest, foraging for fruits and seeds, looking for the odd squirrel or fox, while he sat by their little home on the ridge and cleaned up some pelts for their bed and clothes.

The last few years had seen the resurgence of bigger animals like goats and sometimes deer low on the mountain, bigger than the birds they used to roast over the fire. Their pelts were good for blankets and with feathers from bigger birds they were able to make pillows. 

Their cave looked like a proper home, and they no longer ate only the broth of bitter roots cooked with the snow on the ground. 

He smiled at a butterfly perched on one of the wildflowers by their little garden and looked down the slope where Lan Wangji could be seen making his way up from far away. And Wei Wuxian dared to wonder about his family.

Did Jiang Cheng’s heart soften with age? Or did he grow bitter and jaded? Had he married? Had children? Did Wei Wuxian have other nephews and nieces that he would never get to meet? 

And little Jin Ling, did he grow up well? Was he well loved by the few relatives he still had? 

Had Jiang Cheng told him about Wei Wuxian? Or did his name get swallowed by the ice all those years ago, left to rot in the minds of those of his generation?

“The ice has broken further.”

The waterfall nearby was still freezing cold, but the sheet of thick ice had been breaking little by little, letting it connect with the thawing lake below.

Wei Wuxian smiled. Lan Wangji brought back a fish.

High on the ridge, on the flat edge by the cliff face where they’d watched the mountain start to thaw all those years ago, flowers started to bloom.

It was their place, overlooking the expanse of the prison that, like a stubborn root breaking through the ice, had become their whole world.

Wei Wuxian played a melody on his handmade flute, and Lan Wangji weaved straw into a basket. They often washed their clothes and bedding by the lake and left them out to dry by the cliff where the sun shone brighter.

“Wei Ying,”

A caress to his arm. A crown woven from wildflowers gently placed on his head. Lan Wangji’s hair was graying very slightly on the edges, perhaps earlier than it would have, had he lived his full life as a cultivator. But to Wei Wuxian he was just as beautiful as when the snow had been wiped off his anguished face of white jade. 

More beautiful even, with lips that curled up and eyes that crinkled with little smiles that shone brighter than the first rays of sunlight that first melted their frozen over world, with a subtle laugh like the caress of a spring breeze to a flower petal.

“It suits you,” He said with that very smile etched onto his face.

“Me?” Wei Wuxian laughed airily, “You think I look better with a splash of color?”

“Not better.” He whispered, “Different.”

“So I was already handsome?”

“Always beautiful.”

“Lan Zhan…” He whined, hiding his face behind his hands. “You’re bolder in your old age.”

“Only truthful.”

“It’s strange isn’t it?” He murmured, looking down the cliff face and into the forest. “I used to stare down there and wonder if there was another life waiting for us.”

Lan Wangji hummed.

“When the snow melted down there, by the lake,” He continued. “I thought about climbing down and walking away to the west. Getting out of here.

“And now?”

“Now I don’t wonder much anymore.” Wei Wuxian smiled faintly. “For a long time I thought freedom would look different.”

“Mn.” Lan Wangji was looking at him instead of at the mountain. “It looks like this.”

“I look like freedom?”

“Like home.”

“You’re impossible…”

“You taught me.”

“I did not!” He said with a smile. “When did I ever do that?”

“When I couldn’t move, when you talked to me.” Lan Wangji whispered. “When you did not look away”

Wei Wuxian blinked. They didn’t talk much about the earliest years anymore. He reached over and threaded their fingers together.

“I’ve never regretted staying.”

“Neither did I.”

Wei Wuxian rested his head against Lan Wangji’s shoulder.

“When we’re gone,” He said softly, “Do you think flowers will keep blooming here?”

“Mn. I hope so.”

“If so, someone else might come up. They won’t even know.”

“They do not need to.” Lan Wangji turned his hand over, intertwining their fingers more securely. “It is enough that you know.”

Wei Wuxian smiled, eyes damp despite himself.

“Lan Zhan?”

“Mn?”

“I love you.”

“I know.”

Wei Wuxian nudged him with his shoulder, a laugh at the tip of his tongue. “You’re supposed to say it back.”

Lan Wangji looked at him with the same unwavering gaze that had carried them through the years of frost.

“Of course I love you.”

The words were quiet like the first ray of sunshine piercing through the clouds on a winter morning. Said with the certainty of something that had always been meant to be, only waiting for spring to reveal it.

One day, they climbed up to their spot by the cliff. 

“What are those?” 

A splash of deep blue peeking through the grass on the edge. When approached, it became clear. Shrubs of little trumpet shaped flowers dotting the landscape and swaying in the wind.

Wei Wuxian had never seen a plant with such a vibrant color, and couldn't quite wrap his head around how they were real.

He took several more steps before realizing.

Lan Wangji was staring. Not at the horizon but at the little flowers. Mouth twisted in recognition.

“Lan Zhan?” 

“Mn?” He almost startled, as if lost in thought.

“Is something wrong?”

Lan Wangji shook his head, catching up with Wei Wuxian near the top.

“It’s only been a few days since we last came up here, these little ones must have grown really fast…” He cupped one of the blossoms, still wet with dew.

“Gentians.” Lan Wangji whispered, low enough that he almost missed it.

“Have you seen these before?”

“Mn. My mother… She liked them.” His eyebrows scrunched.

 Lan Wangji had never spoken at length about his mother, the memories he recovered of her seemed painful for him and so Wei Wuxian never pried. He too had memories that were too much for him.

And so he did not push Lan Wangji to speak, huddling closer to him on their spot. 

The gentians never stopped blooming, filling the little ledge with a field of deep blue. They were beautiful, brighter than anything Wei Wuxian had seen in his years on the ridge. At first, he thought Lan Wangji wouldn’t want to go back up to the clifftop, that the reminder of his past would be too painful.

But that was not the case. They sat surrounded by the blanket of flowers almost everyday, and Lan Wangji told him little snippets of a story as he remembered it.

Of a woman caged in a house surrounded by gentians. Of lies and secrets and people who kept him in the dark. Of seeing sadness spreading like a shadow along the lines on her face until there was nothing left. Of a heart left waiting on the snow outside until it was all stiff and frozen over.

And Wei Wuxian listened. Listened as if the words spoken were the most fragile of flower petals. Listened like he had been listened to in a frozen crack in the rock years ago.

And after that, Lan Wangji fell sick.

It started with little muscle aches, a persistent fatigue that was slow to settle. He tired easily and his joints were stiff.

Wei Wuxian worried. He could make medicinal broth but he was no healer, they only had the things they could forage.

Lan Wangji insisted that they continue just as they had before, for he did not feel feverish or sick, that his pains could simply be a sign of his aging body.

They hadn’t been keeping close track of time, Wei Wuxian did not know how old he was anymore, yet he knew that, by the time the gentians started blooming, he couldn’t have been older than thirty five, appearance a little weathered by the elements and the harsh conditions of their earlier years.

At least in body, Lan Wangji should have been of a similar age.

“Don’t you get it?” Wei Wuxian yelled. 

Lan Wangji carried on with his usual activities, hunting and foraging, climbing up and down. Dealing with the cramping of his joints and stiffness in his muscles that would leave him in pain for days afterwards.

“You can’t work yourself to death!” He cried at the mouth of their little home. “It’s just me and you here, what do you get out of this?”

“Wei Ying,” Wei Wuxian simply threw his hands up. “It is manageable.”

“Manageable?” He choked out. A desperate little mirthless laugh squeezing out of his lungs. “Today you can’t stretch your arms, will you keep ignoring it until you can’t even hold your own chopsticks?”

“I do not wish to worry you.” Lan Wangji lowered his gaze.

“You cannot be serious!” Wei Wuxian felt insane, raising his voice to the limit while Lan Wangji remained his usual calm. “What the hell do you think I’ve been doing all this time?”

Lan Wangji looked away. At the very least he looked apologetic. “I shouldn’t stay idle. There is work to be done.”

“Then I’ll do it!”

“We always do it together.”

“Then we won’t!” Wei Wuxian screamed, loud enough for the sound to bounce off the rock wall and echo several times. They both fell silent.

Wei Wuxian drew a shaky breath.

“Lan Zhan.” He then said in almost a whisper. “It’s just you and me here. This cave is our home, this mountain is all there is to our lives. You are my life. Don’t you get it?” His voice trembled, “If you work yourself to death, you kill me too.”

A sharp intake of breath.

“I… do not wish to burden you.”

“Burden me?” A sadness so deep shook his voice, Lan Wangji’s eyes widened. “Lan Zhan, I would follow you into hell if you asked me to.”

“Wei Ying-”

“No!” A tear dripped down from his chin. “The day you first spoke to me. Right there on the floor. You said you were cold.”

Lan Wangji pursed his lips, eyebrows drawn in. He had murky memories of his first few moments of consciousness.

“You said you were cold.” He repeated. “That moment, it took away all the burdens I carried with me. Your company, in whichever way I can have it, is the reason I can live unburdened.”

Lan Wangji’s eyelashes shone with a sheen of tears.

“So please. Please. Stay with me for as long as possible.” Wei Wuxian was crying in earnest at this point. “Even if it means I provide for the both of us for the rest of our lives.”

Lan Wangji looked as if he was about to protest, getting up from their makeshift bed and taking a step closer to Wei Wuxian’s trembling form.

“I was a cultivator too, I’m still strong!” He rambled out. “It’s not a sacrifice, I’m capable!”

“Wei Ying, I am sorry.” Lan Wangji reached him by the entrance, covering him in an embrace that was a little clunky due to the cramps on his arms. “I made you think that I see you as weak.”

“Lan Zhan, no-”

“It makes me happy,” Lan Wangji wiped the tear tracks running down Wei Wuxian’s face, “To care for you.”

“You don’t have to stop.” He sighed, melting into the embrace, mouth to Lan Wangji’s neck. “Do the chores that don’t hurt you and I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Mn.”

“There was a firework festival.” 

Wei Wuxian kneeled by the blue blossoms and ran the comb through Lan Wangji’s hair. It had been a gift, carved when the wood they found stopped being drenched in snow all the time.

Lan Wangji’s arms couldn’t properly reach the crown of his head anymore.

“Every summer. From the gates to Lotus Pier all the way down to the other lakes.”

His touch was soft, reverent. Brushing back the strands like the wind brushed the grass on the clifftop.

“Jiang Cheng would lead the way around the stalls and I’d follow. They had all kinds of delicious things.”

His hand lingered by Lan Wangji’s chin and he grasped it on his own, pressing a kiss to the palm.

“Dumplings and mooncakes with lotus seed paste, tanghulu, egg tarts, dragon’s beard candy, tea eggs and the like.” He sighed. “It’s almost like it happened in another life.”

“I wish you could have shown me.”

“Me too Lan Zhan,” He laughed airily, fixing all of the inky black strands in his beloved’s usual simple updo. “Maybe we’ll have another life together, after this one.” 

“Mn. I will look for you” He responded with the certainty of a man who knows where his heart is. “In every life.”

“Every one of them?”

“Mn.”

“You won’t forget? Not even once?”

“Never.”

Wei Wuxian laughed without a care in the world. When he looked back, the blue sky reflected its shine on Lan Wangji’s eyes, his golden irises framing the canvas like his own personal sun.

“Then, if we’re together forever I wonder what kind of adventures we’ll get up to. What kind of people we’ll be.”

“I do not care what kind. As long as it is you.”

Lan Wangji’s illness progressed slowly but surely. 

The stiffening of the joints and limbs prevented him from most kinds of movement. Even Wei Wuxian knew that any self respecting healer would have put him to bed rest, but he couldn’t bear to let Lan Wangji spend the rest of his life laying down.

So every day Wei Wuxian helped him along the now grueling climb to their spot among the gentians on the clifftop. They could have found another spot, by then most parts of the slopes surrounding their home were evergreen. But Lan Wangji insisted, and Wei Wuxian would do anything for the man he loved.

One day, it rained.

“I could go down and west, someone has to live nearby, a town or a village.”

They sat by their bed. Lan Wangji rested and Wei Wuxian worked and reworked all of their woven baskets, just to have something to do with his hands.

“I could even go back east, I’m sure enough time has passed that no one will remember me.”

“There is no need.”

“It’s just… I worry, Lan Zhan. What if there’s a healer out there that can help you, while I keep you suffering on this mountain? Isn’t it selfish?”

“I do not suffer, Wei Ying.”

His hands stopped their movement.

“You can barely walk…”

“My body fails, but ours is a happy life. I do not suffer.”

Wei Wuxian did not answer, lowering his gaze. He had spent quite a few nights tossing and turning.

Ever since the paths down the mountains thawed out, staying was a choice. Their prison had long since become a home. But with Lan Wangji’s worsening condition, he started to wonder if he had kept them from leaving, and kept them from a life elsewhere. 

It was selfish, in a way. Wondering how far away the nearest town was, if he could just walk there and back, just once, and have an actual doctor take a look at Lan Wangji, who insisted that his body had stopped hurting a long time ago, while the stiffening of his limbs progressed painlessly.

“Wei Ying,”

Lan Wangji lifted his arm as far as he still could to reach Wei Wuxian's hands on his lap. He looked away. It reminded him too much of days past. Of spending his days in his prison with a jade statue of a kneeling man who could do little more than blink.

“Wei Ying, You were right. Before.”

“Before?”

“You said the mountain is our life. That it is only you and me here.” His fingers flexed, squeezing the hand in his grasp. “That is my happiness. I do not wish to share our world with anyone else.”

And they stayed. 

Until one day, after an arduous climb to their sunlit cliffside. Lan Wangji laid down by the edge with Wei Wuxian, head pillowed on the swaying gentians.

When Wei Wuxian stood back up, Lan Wangji did not.

He could not move at all, frozen as the day he was found. Wei Wuxian could only breathe when he spoke.

“Do not cry, I am fine.”

Wei Wuxian was more than strong enough to lift Lan Wangji in his arms, but he found that, as much as he tried, he could not move him. As if the earth was holding onto him, rooting him in place and refusing to let go.

Lan Wangji told him not to cry, but he couldn’t help himself. Tears raining down and splashing into the delicate blue petals beneath him.

Hours passed like that. Lan Wangji’s unwavering voice was the only thing keeping him from losing himself as he tried to understand what was happening.

“Are you still there?”

“Mn.”

“Are you sure it doesn’t hurt?”

“It does not.”

“I’m sorry, Lan Zhan I’m so sorry-”

“Not your fault.”

“Can you still hear me?”

“Mn.”

“Don’t leave, please don’t leave, I can’t bear it Lan Zhan, I can’t!”

“Wei Ying please do not cry, I am still here. I love you.”

The sun went down behind the surrounding peaks and rose back up in a pink splash of color over the mountain range before Wei Wuxian saw it.

Lan Wangji did not stop responding to him, reassuring him that although he could not move his body, he was still there, still human. 

The light of dawn caressed his face in pale light and Wei Wuxian, even in his desperation, stopped to admire the beautiful face that held his entire world in its golden eyes.

And he saw them. The roots.

Thin little twisted branches gently breaking the soil in between the shrubs of blue, holding onto Lan Wangji almost as if lovingly, in a simile of the embrace of Wei Wuxian’s loving hands.

A week later, he sat by Lan Wangji on the clifftop and held his hand.

Every few days he had to be persuaded to climb down from their spot to eat and drink, their home on the ridge below abandoned in favor of the little ledge as every time, Wei Wuxian brought more and more of their little handmade belongings up to where they sat.

It was a tree. Growing out of the man on the ground with such reverence that Wei Wuxian could almost forgive it for the pain it inflicted to his heart. At the very least, Lan Wangji constantly reassured him that it didn’t hurt.

“I just… Don’t understand, Lan Zhan.”

“I cannot say that I do either. But I do not feel despair.”

“I can’t think of an explanation, I just want to know why. Why us? Why you?”

They could no longer walk around the ridges and valleys, could no longer visit the forest or the lake. And so they talked, day and night.

“I was once made of jade. Perhaps this is the same.”

“Do you really not remember? Back then, what could have happened to you? If it’s something from your sect that was lost to time?”

“I do not remember. My life before, my sect, it was ordinary.”

But that didn’t mean much. Wei Wuxian’s life was once ordinary as well, and even then, many similarly unique – and terrible – things happened to him. 

But this wasn’t resentful energy. The tree grew out almost as if lovingly, painlessly. Wei Wuxian’s challenge had been anything but.

“A curse then? Something from your time that was long gone by the time I was around.”

“Perhaps.”

One day, when the tree already had a trunk, a thin little thing starting to sprout branches, Wei Wuxian picked up one of the leaves that were starting to grow by the edges.

The day before, Lan Wangji had told him about the gentian flowers.

Mountain flowers, resistant to harsh winds and low temperatures. Living in Yunmeng, Wei Wuxian had never seen them before. According to Lan Wangji, the residence of the Lan sect was the very peak of the mountains of Gusu, to the east, where such flora was common.

For their resilience, thriving on rocky cliffs and blooming intensely even in harsh conditions, the vivid blue flowers were taken as a symbol of victory over adversity. As a gift,  a symbol of dignity, of recognizing someone’s intrinsic worth, their inner value. 

Their wild nature and deep blue meant a profound trust, the deepest romantic devotion. A loyalty forever strong, trust never to be broken. 

He thought they were a sign. Blooming bright and blue on that abandoned land, with only the two of them to rest their eyes upon their striking beauty. Lan Wangji thought that they were meant for them, born from the warmth of their love, after all, they were the representation of loving someone unconditionally, despite their grief or sadness.

As they grew, the leaves on Lan Wangji’s tree were delicate, in the shape of little fans. It quickly grew taller, while the trunk thickened only slightly, slowly. 

Wei Wuxian had once been a well read young master. He recognized it as a ginkgo tree. Unlike the gentians, he had seen them before.

They were large, ancient trees. With a somewhat angular crown and erratic branches. Like the flowers, they were deep rooted and resistant to both harsh winds and the snow. 

They grew tall and lived for thousands of years. During autumn, they flourished in a gorgeous cloud of yellow.

Wei Wuxian had been blessed with the opportunity to see one in its golden glory in his youth, among the ruins of an old temple, nestled in the plains of Yunmeng. Though the temple had been long gone, the tree remained.

They were special. Able to survive catastrophic events and adapt to changes in the environment, to regenerate after suffering devastating damage. They represented hope.

Their long life and golden beauty were a symbol of balance. Life and death, yin and yang. Eternal life.

He thought it was fitting. Just as Lan Wangji had once been a jade statue, he would soon become a fully grown ginkgo tree. Would get to live on for thousands of years in the form of a beautiful symbol of their history in that once desolate place that they made into a home.

Wei Wuxian only resented that it would cut their time short. Grieved for the full life they could have had together. But it wasn’t over.

“I think I’ll head west. Over the ridge and out through the other side, I wonder what’s in there.”

“You won’t go back east? What about your brother?”

There were days where they discussed life after the mountain. Wei Wuxian’s plans for after the transformation was complete and Lan Wangji could no longer respond to him. 

“That’s in the past. There’s nothing for me in there. I do hope he’s doing well though…”

Lan Wangji insisted that he abandon their home on the mountain, travel out into the unknown and live out the rest of his years as a free man. 

But Wei Wuxian was already free.

“Will you think of me?”

“Of course Lan Zhan. Always.”

“Wei Ying?”

“Mn?”

“With you, I am the happiest man in the world.”

The next time Wei Wuxian said ‘I love you’, Lan Wangji could no longer respond.

The tree was almost fully grown. Tall, imposing and majestic. It was even more beautiful than the one in Yunmeng. 

Lan Wangji’s body was disappearing beneath the roots and soon, it would be done. Complete.

He climbed down. Over the ridge and to their cave, where everything was disposed of, every trace of their life together save for the carvings in the wall erased from view. He even managed to close the mouth of their cave with a boulder, sealing it from the outside.

He wanted it to be private. For the life they  lived to be a secret they both took to their graves.

It was as Lan Wangji had told him, after all. As long as he knew, it was enough.

Tears then soaked the earth where the roots met the ocean of gentians gently swaying in the wind. And Wei Wuxian apologized.

After everything they shared, every late night, every blizzard and every thunderstorm. After all their years of love and tender care, of freedom. Of happiness.

Wei Wuxian had lied.

He laid down, squeezing in between the roots until he was face to face with his life, head to his chest, and closed his eyes.

“I love you.” 

He would not travel west. Had never even considered it.

It wasn’t the same as joining Lan Wangji in what was happening to him but, like this, he knew they would be together forever. To make each other company, provide each other with warmth, for all of eternity.

Lan Wangji’s arms, at that point made entirely of unwielding wood, cracked and stretched just enough to hold him by the waist, until they embraced his body back.

Wei Wuxian took his last breath there, and the roots of the golden ginkgo tree grew over and around their bodies, forming a cast over their embraced forms, immortalizing their love.

Throwing their home into a new era.

Eternal spring.