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Lan Qiren hasn't experienced many things in his life. He had always believed his xiongzhang would be zongzhu and he would become a teacher. A humble scholar if you will. He doesn't know when his xiongzhang fell in love the woman, but he knew one night she killed one of their shifus. He knew that his xiongzhang took her away and married her. He knew the elders were furious. He knew she was under house arrest indefinitely and that his xiongzhang felt bad about it and resigned himself to a self imposed seclusion.
He knew his xiongzhang went to see her a couple of times. He knew that after one of the first few visits a healer went to see the woman and came back saying she was with child, months later a-Huan was born. And his xiongzhang wasn't there. But as acting zongzhu Lan Qiren went to see them. The healers said that his zhizi was perfectly healthy and let him hold the baby. He froze when they first set the infant in his arms but a-Huan wasn't bothered as he wiggled further into Lan Qiren's hold. He knew that after a couple of years they would separate a-Huan from his muqin. He knew he'd be the one taking care of the toddler since his xiongzhang still hadn't even seen the boy, not for his one hundred day celebration, nor for any of his birthdays.
He knew that his xiongzhang would still visit the woman. After some visit after his zhizi's second birthday he heard a healer had visited the woman and said she was with child once more. He heard the second labor was hard, as it was sudden and just a bit early. When he met his new zhizi the healers were still trying to help the woman so they just set the infant in Lan Qiren's arms and rushed away. He looked down at the baby who seemed discontent and tried to wiggle away from Lan Qiren. He remembers muttering about how a-Zhan must show his elders proper respect. Like last time with a-Huan, his xiongzhang did not show up for a-Zhan's one hundred day celebration, nor for his first birthday. When a-Zhan was finally old enough for the elders to have him move in with Lan Qiren the toddler stood stubbornly by his muqin's bedside. The woman gave a-Zhan a sad smile and pressed her forehead against his and whispered some words to him. A-Zhan's golden eyes glistened with un-shed tears and nodded. The boy toddled over to Lan Qiren and held onto his sleeve. Before the door closed a-Zhan looked back at the woman.
"Mama," the boy reached for her, and Lan Qiren saw the woman's golden eyes fill with tears as she whispered the boy's name. He closed the door firmly.
Over the next four years Lan Qiren would take a-Huan and a-Zhan to see their mother on the first of the month. When a-Huan was eight and a-Zhan was six the woman fell gravely ill and passed away. When Lan Qiren told them a-Huan the boy cried for a little while and mourned properly, though Lan Qiren doesn't know if he actually knew what death meant at the time. A-Zhan however went and sat outside the woman's door every month. He'd cry before bed and Lan Qiren heard him ask a-Huan why their muqin didn't want to see him anymore.
Lan Qiren felt bad for his zhizis, so he went to visit his xiongzhang and asked if he'd see the boys.
"Their good boys xiongzhang. A-Huan is smart and kind, he has made friends with the Nie heir. He has your eyes. A-Zhan is smart as well and very quiet, this loss hurts him greatly. He has his muqin's eyes." Lan Qiren
"Qiren, I feel like my world has crumbled. I watched my beloved suffer as our clan turned against her and was helpless to give her the freedom she so desired back. How can I dare to look at them? It is too painful for me to see them." The man's voice felt hollow as he spoke quietly.
"How do you expect them to understand you?" Lan Qiren couldn't help but ask and noted in his mind to write the rules about respect and talking back.
"If one day one of them falls in love, and they have a child with their beloved's eyes and smile. The day they loose their beloved and are left alone will be the day they understand me."
Years have passed since that conversation. The gest lectures had came and Lan Qiren watched as Wangji was constantly followed by Wei Wuxian. Lan Qiren didn't have a very fond opinion of the boy. He was too loud and reckless and had dangerous ideas on his mind. But he had to admit the boy was smart. Lan Qiren was not impressed when he heard that the boy had dragged Wangji outside past curfew and that his zhizi had accepted a punishment for it. He was especially angry when the reckless boy started a fight with the Jin sect heir. Wangji had a complicated look on his face when the boy was expelled and Lan Qiren didn't think much of it.
When the Wen attacked Lan Qiren felt himself scrambling both mentally and physically. He had Xichen gather as many scrolls and books he could and run. He got side tracked trying to help some of the disciples against the invading army when he saw his xiongzhang's figure making its way to the library. He hadn't thought much of it at the time and figured he was hallucinating. When the army left, Lan Qiren found out that Wangji had gotten injured protecting the library and that Qiren's xiongzhang had appeared to protect Wangji. When Lan Qiren asked Wangji what happened his zhizi blinked at him and said that the man hadn't even looked at him and told him to go.
Lan Qiren acknowledged to himself that he came to terms with the fact that his xiongzhang had died years before his physical death while Wangji was a camp held by the Wens and Xichen was missing. The following war after the destruction of Lotus Pier had Lan Qiren completely distracted to his younger zhizi's troubles. When Wei Wuxian came onto the field with modao Lan Qiren felt sick and tried to assure himself that Wangji would stay far away from the boy now.
When Wei Wuxian freed the Wen cultivators the Jin had captive Lan Qiren was fed up. Wangji looked incredibly stressed and tried to talk to Xichen who would sighed after each talk.
"He says that the Wens Wei Wuxian took aren't really cultivators. But a-Yao saw them shufu, he thinks Wei Wuxian is messing with Wangji's mind." Xichen told him once.
Lan Qiren heard that Wei Wuxian attacked Jin Zixuan and took his life Qiren decided it was best to take action before anyone else lost their lives. He watched Wen Qing and Wen Qionglin burned at the stakes. He watched Wei Wuxian appear on the roof and he watched as someone from the crowd fired a shot at the man and hit him in the chest just above his heart. He lost track of things in the chaos that followed but at some point he heard someone scream out and what must have been Jiang Wanyin's cry. The sound startled Lan Qiren and he looked over to see Jiang Wanyin on the ground holding Jiang Yanli who was bleeding out, Wei Wuxian must have once stood by them but he had began backing up until he fell over the edge. Wei Wuxian would have met his end there if Wangji hadn't immediately flown after him.
Lan Qiren gathered thirty-three elders and Xichen and went to follow the duo. When they arrived at a cave to see Wangji on his knees at Wei Wuxian's feet. Lan Qiren could hear Wangji's voice pleading as he confessed his love to the other.
"Get lost." Was Wei Wuxian's cold and empty response.
Lan Qiren figured it'd be easy to get Wangji to hand the other over after that but instead Wangji unsheathed Bichen and fought them. Each of the elders were injured by the time they finished their back and forth and Wangji said he'd go back to Gusu after he brought Wei Wuxian back to the Burial Mounds. Xichen gave him the go ahead and Lan Qiren watched as Wangji picked Wei Wuxian up so gently and do his best to make the trip as comfortable as he possibly could for the other man. Lan Qiren frowned, how could his zhizi look at that demon child so softly? When they entered the mountains he kept his gaze on the two in front of him, he refused to look away in case Wangji tried to run away. Lan Qiren watched as Wangji lowered Wei Wuxian down on a slab of stone and took off his outer robe to lay over the other's body.
If Lan Qiren was honest with himself looking back on this moment then he would tell himself he wasn't hearing things when a soft patter of footsteps went to where Wei Wuxian laid with a softer 'a-niang'. (And when he'd think about this moment later in life he'd stare at the floor and wonder when he lost himself.)
When they got back to the Cloud Recesses the wounded elders demanded Wangji be punished for what occurred. With a furrow of his brow Xichen gave the okay for Wangji's punishment. Thirty-three strikes with the discipline whip. Lan Qiren watched as Wangji furrowed his brow and bore each and every whip in silence. The sound of his flesh tearing made Lan Qiren nauseous. After two dozen strikes he caught sight of Wangji coughing blood and remembered when Wangji left the archery competition, that was held before the war, with red tipped ears and coughing into his fist as if trying to shoo away some thoughts. As Lan Qiren reflects on the times he saw Wangji after his interactions with Wei Wuxian and Qiren frowned when he realized how similar it was to his xiongzhang when he had fallen for that woman.
Lan Qiren had avoided going to the jingshi after they moved Wangji there and had instead prepared for the siege. He met an army of walking corpses and ignored how weak they were, how it wouldn't be possible for them to be so weak if they had been there before the events at Nightless City. He caught a glance of Wei Wuxian at one point. Wei Wuxian looked worse than when he last saw the boy, his eyes were wide and desperate. Lan Qiren assumed it was for him to escape (he would later learn that it wasn't Wuxian's own escape he had been so desperate to buy time for). He lost the boy when a Jin cultivator went wildly swinging in front of him. Lan Qiren wouldn't see Wei Wuxian again as shortly after he felt a wild and violent wave of resentment shoot out of the Demon Quelling Cave. The corpses went absolutely feral and Lan Qiren had the Lans retreat.
Xichen agreed that he'd tell Wangji of Wei Wuxian's demise and Lan Qiren let him. Xichen had come back exhausted and told him that Wangji had screamed at him and had still been sobbing almost hysterically when he left. Some healers that had been there with Xichen and left around a ke after Xichen did had informed Lan Qiren that Wangji had been saying people's names. Apparently he had been calling for Wei Wuxian and someone by the name of Yuan. Lan Qiren shrugged it off.
When Xichen went to visit Wangji the next day he ended up swinging Lan Qiren's door to the side and informed him that Wangji was missing. Wangji had still been too injured to sit up let alone travel and he was no where in the Cloud Recesses, he was no where in Gusu. After nearly a week Wangji returned. Wangji returned with a fever and his wounds opened. Wangji returned with a small child cradled close to his chest ridden with a raging fever. Wangji had collapsed and held the child as close as he could. Lan Qiren was sure that if it was possible Wangji would have cracked open his ribs and put the child there where even Wangji's bones would protect them.
Lan Qiren couldn't see the child's face, but the child had a very large dark gray fabric wrapped around them. The fabric was covered in soot and dirt and if he looked closely there were some red embroidered designs. The child's hair was matted and tangled and filthy and Lan Qiren wanted Wangji to let got of it. But Wangji bared his teeth when anyone tried to take the child. He bared his teeth and he screamed and he even bit someone. For a moment Lan Qiren thinks he recognizes this desperation but he shakes the thought away (how is he supposed to feel about the similar desperation in silver eyes).
Eventually Xichen is able to bring Wangji back to the jingshi and has the healers care for the child and Wangji side by side. After Wangji's fever subsided Lan Qiren went to talk to him.
"Wangji. What do you think you're doing with this?" Lan Qiren questioned.
"He is my son Shufu." Wangji replied with a look in his eyes that remind Qiren of when that woman insisted that she had a right to see her son when she was first separated from Xichen. "His name is Yuan."
Lan Qiren felt his eye twitch and his qi stir.
"Says who? Who under the heaven official's birthed this child?!" Lan Qiren raised his voice and Xichen had entered the jingshi.
"Shufu please-" Xichen took note of a sudden devastation that washed over Wangji's face at Qiren's questions and tried to step in but was cut off.
"A-niang…" The boy shifted away from Lan Qiren, his brows furrowed as his little hand reached out.
Wangji's face paled and tears gathered in his eyes and Lan Qiren froze. When was th last time he saw his zhizi cry?
"Oh baobei, I'm sorry," Wangji rested his face next to the boy's face as he whispered so low that Lan Qiren took step forward so he could hear, "diedie is so sorry Yuan-er."
Lan Qiren tensed as the little boy opened his eyes. The silver colors of his eyes felt haunting as he swallowed.
"A-niang leave a-Yuan?" Lan Qiren felt like he was watching Wangji kneel in the snow outside that woman's house at the broken question.
Wangji's quiet cries and soft whispers that he was sorry and that he was there for the boy were the only things that filled the room as the boy looked up. It was as if the boy was looking at someone who was knelt in front of them. The boy blinked and huffed and Lan Qiren just chalked up what happened next to the boy's fever.
"It's okay a-niang, a-Yuan will be good for diedie."
The healers would later tell Lan Qiren that they had been preparing to tell Wangji that the boy wouldn't make it, his fever was just too high, and then he was suddenly recovering rapidly. It was an impossible outcome, but it had happened so Lan Qiren ignored the echo of a boy saying he'd attempt the impossible.
A year later Lan Qiren watched from a pathway as Wangji knelt in a meadow with his son playing with the bunnies. The pit that had grown in his stomach threaten to reach over to his memories of his xiongzhang. Lan Qiren went over to Wangji and kept his voice low so the boy wouldn't try to hear their conversation.
"Isn't it painful?" He asked.
"What?" Wangji asked with a furrow of his brow.
"Watching the boy all of the time." Lan Qiren cringed at his phrasing.
"You mean raising my son?" Wangji sounded like he couldn't understand his own words he used to rephrase Qiren's question.
"It is not hard?" Qiren question with a huff. "Even I sometimes see that demon in the boy."
Wangji's fist clenched and he glared at Qiren.
"Do not speak of him like that." Wangji hissed and looked over at his son who squealed when a rabbit jumped at him.
"It is not hard to love my son. I lost my xingan, but a-Yuan lost his a-niang. A-Yuan has suffered horrors no child should ever even hear about." Wangji explained with a soft voice what made Lan Qiren freeze. "We are both grieving, it is not hard to love my son in our grief."
Lan Qiren stared at the ground and he felt as if the image he had of his xiongzhang was being lit up in the flames of Wangji's own love for his other and their child.
Lan Qiren had experienced many things now. He had been trying to convince himself he wasn't wrong, that he made the right decisions. He had believed his xiongzhang was going to be zongzhu of Gusu Lan. He is now clinging to the hope that his zhizi's son will be zongzhu. When the boy choose to receive his muqin's sword Lan Qiren felt like it was the catalyst that led to the boy leaving Gusu Lan with his fuqin.