Chapter Text
sunrise
Lan Yuan is 10 years old when he watches his father kill two men. He watches and watches as blood pools on the floor. Perhaps if he were to approach one of those pools, he would see his own reflection in stark relief—wide eyes and pale skin. A twisted, red reflection. He does not know how he is meant to feel at such a sight.
It does not feel real. A-Die kneels beside the man who is supposedly his brother and he wails. Jiang Cheng. This is grief, Lan Yuan knows. It is loss. That is familiar even if the ache has long been soothed.
When Fuqin had taken him from his grandmother, he had cried and cried. It had made no difference, and it does not matter now because now he has two fathers in a big house where they teach him cultivation and let him play with bunnies. What little he remembers of before is not something he would choose to remember. He is 10 years old, and all he can think about is how easy it was for Fuqin to slide his sword in and out—a neat and simple action twice duplicated.
“Fuqin?” Lan Yuan says. He does not know what else to say. In response to his words, Fuqin stands up from kneeling at his brother’s (Lan Xichen in red and white with a permanent curve of his mouth) side. Fuqin has killed his brother, and Lan Yuan touches his own chest with a wondering hand. It could be so easy. It was easy and now he knows of death in a way that will linger.
“A-Yuan,” Fuqin says, voice soft and low, “close your eyes.” Blood drips down from the hems of his robes and onto the floor. It is a soft plinking sound.
It is too late. “Blood, baba,” Lan Yuan says, a little boy once again and nowhere near his age of 10 years old. He still closes his eyes even if what he has seen will linger with him for many more years. An afterimage burned into his eyes—blood and nothing but blood, red-tinted and metallic.
His eyes are closed, and the world is so loud.
”My brother!” A-Die shouts. “You killed my brother!” His loud and harsh breathing makes Lan Yuan’s chest tighten. It is sympathy; it is empathy. In another world, it could have been enough, but in this world, he listens to Fuqin speak.
“He was not your brother,” Fuqin says calmly.
“You’re insane. Your own brother! Dead!”
"Wei Ying, they were not real. Put down your sword.”
A-Die does not put down his sword, and Lan Yuan listens to the clang of clashing swords. Now, this—this is true metal and not a red-tinted imitation that rests on his tongue and fills his lungs. As his fathers fight, Lan Yuan kneels down and claps his hands over his ears. He can still hear them, and A-Die keeps on yelling and yelling. Lan Yuan starts to hum the special goodnight song to block out the sounds.
It is the only song that he can remember now. This is the song that makes A-Die stay A-Die. A-Die always gets confused and angry every so often. That is when he starts asking questions that Lan Yuan knows better than to answer. Fuqin says that A-Die needs help in a way that A-Die will never understand and that he and Lan Yuan must persevere. Fuqin says that happiness does not come easily, and you must work for it.
Lan Yuan hums and hums until another pair of hands gently clasp around his own. These hands drag his hands down and away from his ears. Now, the world is quiet, like it is only him and Fuqin who are real.
"Open your eyes, A-Yuan," Fuqin says.
Lan Yuan opens his eyes and stares at red-white robes. "Baba," he says in a small voice. He wants to close in on himself like a flower bud opened too early. The conditions are no longer good and there is a storm coming.
"You were a very good boy," Fuqin says.
When Lan Yuan looks over Fuqin’s shoulder, he sees A-Die sprawled on the floor, but his chest rises and falls in an even fashion. Suibian, he observes, is with Fuqin now.
"What happened to Mama?" he says plaintively. He does not ask about the two men still dead on the floor. The words do not come out, and they hang heavy on his tongue. He knows better than to free them.
Fuqin smiles in that quiet way of his—a thin curve of his mouth. "He is tired and he needs to rest," he says.
This is a familiar state of events. After A-Die has one of his fits, he sleeps the whole day and night away as Fuqin plays the special goodnight song on the guqin. “Do you think,” Lan Yuan says slowly, "that A- Die will ever get better?"
Fuqin continues to smile but his eyes are not smiling. A predatory gold and he fancies he can see the feathers sprout from his father's back. “The problem,” Fuqin says, “is that A-Die does not want to get better. He wants freedom, but he will hurt himself. He will die again. You don’t want that, do you, A-Yuan?”
Lan Yuan looks down at his twisting fingers. A-Die always wants to leave when he has one of his fits, but they can't let him go. lt would be—"negligent" of them to let A-Die go. It would be like letting an injured bird free to fly off into a world of predators. There is something wrong with A-Die and that's why Fuqin has to take care of him. In another world, A-Die had made bad decisions and the world had been very mean to him. A- Die had died in that world and left them alone, all by themselves in a world that did not remember him fondly.
"I want A-Die to live," Lan Yuan says.
He listens to the sound of the guqin and he hums the same song.
When Fuqin slings the two bodies over his shoulder, A-Die is still asleep. Lan Yuan is a big boy at 10 years old. He nods solemnly when Fuqin tells him to watch over A-Die. His hands enclose around the talisman that he is supposed to set off if someone comes to the house since the barrier is down. He waves a goodbye at his father's retreating back, and then he retreats back into the house.
Lan Yuan sits himself next to A-Die on the bed. A-Die is only in his inner robe because the blood had seeped through all of his other layers. Lan Yuan is also in a fresh set of robes, and he contentedly smooths down the front of his robes. Fuqin had also retied Lan Yuan's forehead ribbon, and his hands were warm and calloused on him. Those hands will soon be Lan Yuan's hands too—calloused from qin and sword.
The rooms are all clean of blood now. Fuqin and he had set off a cleaning talisman at all corners of the rooms until all of the blood had neatly lifted away and dissipated. Everything is all nice and clean, and A-Die is quiet and not screaming anymore. A-Die always get so angry at Fuqin when he starts to remember things he should not remember because these memories make A-Die think that he should be "free" and away from him and Fuqin. It is very mean and rude of A-Die to want to leave when Fuqin and he love him so!
Still, A-Die gets very lively when he remembers. When he does not remember, he is quieter even if he still plays with Lan Yuan and teaches him cultivation. He is quiet even when he and Fuqin play their duets together and go to sleep together. He is quiet when Fuqin dresses him up in all the layers of white robes that a main member of the Gusu Lan sect just wear.
Soon, they will all return to the Gusu Lan sect together. Fuqin has said that now that his brother was dead that he would become sect leader. That means that Fuqin will get to do things he couldn’t before without being questioned. Fuqin has said that Lan Yuan would finally get to have friends and learn to cultivate among his peers.
Lan Yuan just hopes that they can bring the bunnies back to the Cloud Recesses too.
Fuqin is sect leader now and he takes Lan Yuan by the hand when he introduces Lan Yuan to his own uncle, Lan Qiren. They bow and offer their greetings but Lan Qiren does not look very happy, as if they have been impolite in some way. It doesn't make any sense. Lan Yuan frowns as his father and his grand-uncle speak with stilted words.
"Wangji,” Lan Qiren says, "what...have you done?"
"He is my son," Fuqin says, "and my wife will arrive soon. She is very sickly and will need to be isolated for her health.”
Lan Qiren shakes his head, slow and lost. "What have you done?" he repeats.
"I understand the impropriety of my conduct but I believe xiongzhang would forgive me," Fuqin says.
"I think," Lan Qiren says, "that I have not known you for a long time."
"Shufu, please. Will you not support me?"
"I will not stand in your way. You have become as foolish as your father. I have not taught you well."
"I understand. I hope seclusion suits you well, shufu."
As Fuqin and he walk out, Lan Yuan looks over his shoulder.
Grand-uncle looks like a walking corpse.
This is familiar.
Lan Yuan is too big to hold hands but he still holds A-Die’s hand as they walk around A-Die’s new home. It is a surprise! Fuqin and he had cleaned up the cottage together without the aid of any servants. Lan Yuan had been the one to suggest an indoor cage for some of the rabbits to always keep A-Die company on the days he doesn’t like to get out of bed. Fuqin had softly pat his head after realizing what a good idea it was.
“And! Here is where Little Black and Little White can stay!” Lan Yuan says. “I told Fuqin that it would be a good idea and he agreed.”
A-Die laughs, patting Lan Yuan’s preening head. “My little bunny has been a very good boy,” he says. He is laughing and smiling but there is something soft and wistful dimming his eyes. It does not matter because he is still here.
Lan Yuan continues to tug his father's hand as he leads him around the cottage. He keeps up a running commentary on everything in sight. “Fuqin,” he continues, “said that the cottage used to belong to his mother!”
“Oh, Lan Zhan said that?” A-Die says.
“Mn! He said, he said”—Lan Yuan pauses to frown—“that he and his brother would have monthly visits.”
A- Die exhales softly.
Lan Yuan squeezes his father's hand. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I'll visit you every day!”
“Ah, A-Yuan, A-Yuan. Don't make promises you can’t keep.”
“But I will! I promise, I promise, and I'll come every day!”
“Funny. Why can't I come visit you every day?”
“A-Die—”
“Don’t worry about it, little bunny. Stop wrinkling your nose.”
Sheepishly, Lan Yuan rubs at his nose.
“I think…I think in another world you could have been good.”
”But I am good!”
”One day, A-Yuan, you will have to make a choice. I won’t blame you if you make the wrong choice. You don’t know any better, my little bunny.”
”I am good.”
And A-Die looks at him with an awful pity that makes Lan Yuan too warm and tight in his skin.
Lan Sizhui is the son of a sect leader now. It is a polarizing position amongst his peers—simultaneously attracting and repelling them. They admire his strong cultivation base and attribute it to the teachings of the great Hanguang-jun. The reality is that Wei Wuxian, the once head disciple of Lotus Pier, had been Lan Sizhui’s most formative teacher. When Fuqin had been busy with sect work, A-Die had been the one to tutor Lan Sizhui in the six arts and to train him in cultivation.
He will never forget learning his first fire talisman on the same day two men would die in front of him. He shows this same talisman to a classmate named Lan Jingyi. They set it off outside the bounds of their classroom and any supervision. With exhilarated smiles, they flee the scene.
(He does not like breaking the rules but Lan Jingyi breaks at least one rule every day.)
This is Lan Sizhui’s first friend.
Friendship and closeness, he thinks, is about sharing secrets. There is no greater tie than guilt and equal culpability. This is how he ensnares an entire generation—with a smile and whispered words. He has a smile that makes the older generation remark about the late sect leader Lan Xichen. It makes him smile even more.
There is something sacred in blood, he thinks. Especially spilled blood. He has Lan Xichen’s and Jiang Wanyin’s blood on him, seeping through his robes and into his skin. He wonders what he has of Jiang Wanyin.
(Jiang Wanyin does not leave behind any sons but he leaves behind a nephew.)
Lan Sizhui knows better than to think that his father’s guqin music is a nighttime’s lullaby. When he is finally approved to go into advanced guqin lessons, his father takes over. His classmates look on in envy when he departs for the jingshi when their lessons begin. To be taught by the great Hanguang-jun is truly an honor, they think. It is true. Fuqin is very talented and A-Die’s presence exemplifies his talent.
Music had been such a fundamental part of his childhood that his earliest and most coherent memory is the sound of his father’s guqin. A sound that leaves him with a cold thrill. It is music from Dongying, his father would later explain. The musical cultivation of the Lans knows no bounds despite the restrictions of the Cloud Recesses. The rules burst at the seams, overstuffed with intent and human foibles. They pull at loose threads.
You play it like this, Fuqin says. His hands cover Lan Yuan’s small hands and they slide in smooth horizontal and vertical movements. It is such lovely music that all Lan Yuan can do is hum along, buoyed by the current of memory. How intimately he knows this music and to finally execute it by his own hands is a euphoric experience.
Fuqin praises Lan Sizhui when they resume their lessons. Good boy, he says. A-Die does not call him “good boy” anymore or even “little rabbit” even when they have to guide him back onto the wrong path. The emotions linger, calcifying in his chest. One day, they will have to excise it but for now, they let A-Die fill in the blanks with his own suppositions.
The hurt grows with Lan Yuan and hollows him out. It has to take up space—everything always takes up space but this—it needs too much. It grows too quickly in his chest, and it spreads through him like a particularly voracious curse. There is no cure even when he grows into being Lan Sizhui.
It leaves him hungry.
He wants.
midday
“I'm still growing! ” a loud voice insists. The lonesome air of zen in the Cloud Recesses dissipates as a young man in Lanling Jin sect robes gestures sharply at a pair of junior Lan disciples in front of him.
One of the Lan disciples lets out a scoff. “Even with all the time in the world," he says, “you’ll never catch up, young mistress.”
“Jingyi,” the other Lan disciple says, “please stop antagonizing Jin Ling.”
A smile of triumph crosses Jin Ling’s face as Lan Jingyi twists his face in resignation.
“I’m not apologizing, Sizhui!” Lan Jingyi warns. He looks away from Jin Ling’s smug face.
Lan Sizhui smiles placidly—a smile that often leaves the older generation to remark on his similarity to his deceased uncle. “Is it that hard to get along?” he says.
“I don't understand what you see in Lan Jingyi,” Jin Ling says with a haughty toss of his hair over his shoulder.
With a seething patience, Lan Jingyi refrains from reacting to the provocation. He does, however, spare a look at Lan Sizhui, who stands between him and Jin Ling.
”I’m sure Jingyi thinks the same about you, A-Ling,” Lan Sizhui says.
Pink suffuses Jin Ling’s face at both the tease and intimate address. He falls into his blistering default, and the words fly from his mouth. Their wings are too heavy for flight but all the same, they fly and they land.
Laboriously, Jin Ling drags his brush against paper as he references an opened scroll next to him. All of Gusu Lan’s rules written in his messy brushstrokes. His uncle would be disappointed at his calligraphy while his mother would smile sweetly and say that he had learned better, hadn’t he? He scowls. Three thousand rules are three thousand too many!
A soft huff of laughter besides Jin Ling distracts him from his scowling contemplation. With puffed out cheeks, he glares at Lan Sizhui. “I can’t believe you told on me!” he exclaims. He throws down his brush and does not mind the way ink splatters over his transcription. A deep black sullies the paper.
Lan Sizhui still smiles that awful, mild smile of his. Smiling should make him look soft and weak but it just makes him look confident and entirely in control of the situation—not that there’s much of a situation here beyond Lan Sizhui ratting Jin Ling out for misbehavior.
“A-Ling— ” Lan Sizhui says.
“Don't call me that!” Jin Ling interjects. Heat trails up his face, focusing on the high points of his cheeks, and he looks away from Lan Sizhui.
“Jin Ling,” Lan Sizhui amends. “Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to write out the rules. There’s no rush.”
Jin Ling snaps his head to look at Lan Sizhui with his mouth open and his brow furrowed. “Plenty of time! Is that a threat?!” he says.
Lan Sizhui laughs. “Jin Ling, they’re the terms of your punishment.”
“It’s not fair!”
”Oh?”
”If—if Jin Chan didn’t want to get hit, then he shouldn’t have said those words!”
”What words?”
”…”
”What words?”
”…Why are you so close?”
”Oh, sorry.”
”You didn’t move back!”
”Please stop yelling.”
Jin Ling opens his moth but it hangs open uselessly. Indignantly, he clutches at his throat with one hand and rudely points another at Lan Sizhui.
”Write out the rules, A-Ling.”
“Did you know,” Lan Sizhui says, “that my father met my—mother in the same situation?” He has an odd, odd smile on his face and Jin Ling leans back.
”What?” Jin Ling says.
”Just like this. He had to punish her for her mischief.”
”Punish her? But…wouldn’t he have only been in charge of the boys?”
”I never said that my mother was a woman, A-Ling.”
”Are you mocking me?!”
”It’s a secret, A-Ling. Madam Lan is a man. I’m adopted, you see, but Fuqin and I—we’re still the same.”
Jin Ling scrambles backwards, his brush raised high. A cultivator should be able to make a weapon out of anything! And, and...Jin Ling thinks he will need it. “Don’t come closer!” he shouts.
Lan Sizhui laughs and it is a soft, pleasant sound. “Lianfang-zun,” he says, “told Fuqin that I could have you.”
“What, no! No, he didn’t! ” Jin Ling says. He holds out his hand with the brush hairs pointing inwards, but then Lan Sizhui wraps a large hand around his wrist and tugs.
Jin Ling tries to stab forward with the brush, close enough to Lan Sizhui’s chest but a hideous arm strength restrains him. Another arm wraps around his waist and plants him firmly in Lan Sizhui’s lap. He bucks like a wild horse with all the intent of crushing a human beneath its hooves, but it is a futile endeavor. He rains down blows with his free hand.
“Let go!” Jin Ling shouts. His breath hitches with the uselessness of it all.
And Lan Sizhui does not stop smiling. His hand tightens around Jin Ling’s wrist until it hurts so much that his fingers flex and his brush drops to the floor. Then with two hands, he crushes Jin Ling close to his chest.
The strength of the Lans has never felt so terrifying and immediate. His chest works uselessly as the large hand encompassing the back of his head manipulates him into place.
“You were never going to be sect leader,” Lan Sizhui says softly. There is an awful tenderness to his voice that Jin Ling hates with an intensity that surprises him. He is used to anger, but he is not used to this feeling that leaves him burning and eager to hurt.
“Shut up!” Jin Ling shouts.
”They were never going to respect you, young mistress,” Lan Sizhui says.
How can the teasing still hurt? He doesn’t care about Lan Sizhui’s opinion anymore when he uses those words against him. He shouldn't care. He shouldn’t. He—
“Too soft and emotional. Lianfang-zun said it was easy killing your father. Because, you see, your father trusted the wrong person,” Lan Sizhui continues.
Jin Ling closes his eyes and tries to shake his head. Shushu didn’t kill his father! No, he didn’t! Not shushu who gave him Fairy and would hug him when he would cry. Not shushu who had consoled him when jiujiu had died! Not him!
“Your mother will be sad, of course,” Lan Sizhui says.
Jin Ling lets out a small pained sound.
“When they find what they will think is your body,” Lan Sizhui says. “Silly, impulsive Jin Ling went out to night-hunt alone. So eager to prove himself.”
“No, ” Jin Ling says.
“Yes,” Lan Sizhui murmurs. “Fuqin said that we have to give closure. And your corpse is going to be so bloated that they won’t know otherwise. You’re going to drown, A-Ling.”
Jin Ling shakes in Lan Sizhui’s arms. This is not the Sizhui he knows and if it is, he regrets his own blindness—his foolishness. These are not the words of an impulsive person, but of a plan carefully crafted. How long has Sizhui harbored these thoughts? Who would have anticipated the immorality of Hanguang-jun’s son?
”I want you to remember this,” Lan Sizhui says. His hands smooth the lapels of Jin Ling’s robes.
Jin Ling scowls but he knows better than to fight back when he is so severely outmatched. Lan Sizhui does not hurt him with his fists but with his mouth. He was always the best at dealing with people, smoothing over Jin Ling’s rough words, and now he puts it to good use by pinpointing all of Jin Ling’s insecurities. It is the worst when Lan Sizhui is kind—soft and tender as if Jin Ling needs to be coddled.
“A-Die never remembers,” Lan Sizhui continues. “Not really. We always have to help him and it only lasts for so long but Fuqin is very patient.”
Jin Ling does not respond.
“It could have been so easy. It could have been so perfect. We had to kill your uncle, Jiang Wanyin, and my own uncle, Lan Xichen.”
It hurts. It is a hot hurt that makes Jin Ling’s eyes burn. One day, jiujiu had been there to shout at Jin Ling in his special brand of worry and the next day, the world had turned quiet.
“There was blood everywhere, but all I thought was how easy it was for Fuqin to kill them. I just stood there.” Lan Sizhui laughs softly. “It was easy.”
“ ...Dajiu?” Jin Ling says. It is a tentative recognition based on a rare self-portrait. Wei Wuxian had been a talented artist but the subjects of his paintings were rarely ever himself. His mother had kept all of the paintings he had left behind in Lotus Pier and what little she could recover after the fall of Lotus Pier. She had smiled a wobbly sort of smile when Jin Ling’s toddler hands had left stains on one of them.
The self-portraits had been of a teenager, not yet grown into his features. He was always depicted with a smile. The smile is not here now and the man before him has grown into a handsome man, if thinner and narrower than he would have thought.
Jin Ling had liked to pretend that he had a whole family—that if he would just look, then out of the corner of his eyes, he would see his father, his grandparents, and his uncles. There were days where the grief and loss did not seem present, and then there other days where he was so acutely aware of them. Waiting for laughter where there was none. Waiting for shouting where there was none. Waiting for something where there was nothing.
“Who?” Wei Wuxian says. He looks utterly baffled, dressed in ceremonial attire and yet so achingly out-of-place. His robes are heavy and expensive. Hanguang-jun rests a proprietary arm around Wei Wuxian’s shoulders, and he herds Wei Wuxian closer to Jin Ling and Lan Sizhui.
“It is your dajiu, A- Ling,” Lan Sizhui says with an affable smile. “Now you can bow to your family too.”
And Jin Ling looks down at his red robes in horror.
It sinks in.
He is falling.
There is no end.
sunset
“You,” Wei Ying condemns, “have always said that you loved me, but am I still the Wei Ying you fell in love with?”
“No,” Lan Zhan says, “but I still love you.”
“All that I am—all that I was—is gone...You have hollowed me out.”
“It is better than your death at the hands of your own brother.”
“But, Lan Zhan, I am already dead. I am not Wei Ying—not now, not anymore.”
”I no longer have regrets.”
”Do you even recognize yourself anymore?”
”You must be tired.”
”You…killed…me…”
And Lan Zhan hums and hums a song in a cage of his own making.