Chapter Text
Wei Wuxian’s fever broke before the sun rose anew. It had been three days since Lan Xichen discovered him, three days since Lan Xichen had stowed him within the barest bones of an abandoned shack in Yilling.
Placid Wei-gongzi, lashes flickering in that recumbent dark. Lan Xichen hadn’t known what to make of him as he drew his hands from the cradle of his chest, folded them over his mouth—like gauze, skin so pale as to be nearly translucent. Hadn’t known what to say from the far corner of that room, watching Wei Wuxian’s blanket scatter across the floor as his torso barreled outward in a breath that looked so much like a scream.
Quiet, their first moment together. Such quiet. The war had splintered them, skinned them to the marrow, into mere pieces of themselves.
“Wei-gongzi.” In theory, daybreak supplants the nightmares of old; gives way, by essence, to healing. But Wei Wuxian is no optimist. He wears the robes of one; presents himself, by expression, as a person given to the inherent kindness of the world. As sunlight spills through the slatted windows, he sits, raises his arm, and smiles as Lan Xichen cycles qi through his limp meridians. Inflamed along the pathway, red in the mind’s eye. In the dantian, bottomless and cold. Will he answer if Lan Xichen asks? Will he smile that self-same smile, maintain the silence tangled between them? “Your injuries—” too many and varied to mention by name “—should heal within the month.” Shall Lan Xichen cut his teeth on the truth? Take the coward’s path out? “You are lucky.”
“Lucky?” Wei Wuxian laughs without inflection. “Zewu-jun, ah, Zewu-jun. If the peerless, honorable Zewu-jun, First Jade of Lan, says as such, then it must be so.”
Truth in jagged metal, like rust on the edge of a blade: Lan Xichen had recovered Wei Wuxian from the base of a hill far into the mountains of Yilling. If he hadn’t found Wei Wuxian, if he’d left him to the elements…
“Wei-gongzi.” No qi, no bitterness, no expectation between them. Yilling has been overrun and Wei Wuxian is barely healed. There will be no escape for them, not now or in the near future. They will need to forge an alliance, and to do so, they must first establish a modicum of trust. “What’s happened to you?”
Wei Wuxian looks at his arm, still clasped between the palms of Lan Xichen’s hands. Insignificant intimacy—to hold, to warm, to stay. Wei Wuxian fastens his gaze to Lan Xichen’s chin, seems to follow the thread of his lips: the words as they are spoken in plain, without the emotion to guide him along. Wei Wuxian flexes his wrist, says, “I don’t think I need to explain what happened in Lotus Pier. The massacre—this, you’ll already know. Shijie is in—should be in Meishan. Jiang Cheng and I, we evaded capture… we… I made a friend a long while ago and he remembered me and he helped.”
“A Wen?”
“He doesn’t know how to—to use a sword. He wasn’t even supposed to be there, Zewu-jun! Should we challenge all the good he’s done just because of his name? He rescued us! He brought us Jiang-shushu and Yu-furen’s remains! He helped us! He helped me! He—he—”
Lan Xichen runs his thumb along the soft flesh of Wei Wuxian’s wrist as Wei Wuxian's eyes mist over. It’s easy to forget in the midst of these things: Wei Wuxian is a boy no older than Wangji. Even beyond this recollection, barely a survivor, barely more than a victim of the Wen aggression.
Insidious, the thoughts these words forment. For what is the worth of a name if not the history chained to it? Yet… should every child be persecuted for the sins of the father? What more for a clan as expansive as the Wen? Are they marked by their leader, destined for execution by the happenstance of their birth?
“Peace, Wei-gongzi. Please, calm yourself.”
Deep breaths. Wei Wuxian’s gaze has fallen to Lan Xichen’s chest, the slow, rhythmic rise and fall. Deep breaths. Lan Xichen gathers Wei Wuxian’s hands to himself and says nothing. Waits for the silence to crest upon them; wash through the raw agony, the burbling outrage.
“Better?” Wei Wuxian nods. “I will not bother you further, Wei-gongzi. What is important is that you are alive. For the meanwhile, you are safe and you have time enough to heal.”
“Zewu-jun?” Lan Xichen squeezes Wei Wuxian’s hands gently before releasing them, allowing the boy to relax into the blankets and spare robes that make up his bed. Wei Wuxian sighs aloud. “Have you heard anything about Jiang Cheng?”
Lan Xichen considers the question, lets the moment stretch a finger’s width between them before he shakes his head. “No. Nor have I heard news of Wangji—though I suppose, in this climate, no news means no sudden development, no movement in the battlefront.”
“No news means good news,” Wei Wuxian interprets.
“As you say, Wei-gongzi.”
“Zewu-jun?”
Slender fingers, nails clipped short, and unassuming. Wei Wuxian's palms, bruised and red at the meat. Battered body. Tumbledown body. Here, in this shack, just one more casualty of the war.
“Wei-gongzi?”
“What about you? What's happened to you?”
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“The Wen Supervisory office in Yilling had taken on a new master. I hid… farther underground to preserve my safety, my sanity.”
“Mn.”
The query arose often, embedded into the groves of the increasingly cloistered Nie stronghold: would it truly take a year to salvage an army from the wreckage of the Wen conquest? Fallen clans abound, orphans and stragglers aplenty. If a single speech from Zewu-jun is all it takes to rally the hearts and minds of these remnants, why the long wait to regather, to retaliate?
Nonsense, thought Lan Wangji. To lay the burden of a fair war, a winnable war, on the shoulders of one person. They were, in this stronghold, a constellation of cultivation clans, elites, and victims in turn. What about their contribution to the war effort? Their recruitment strategy and plan of attack?
Unseemly. Yet.
The first chip in the armor, the first inkling of oncoming disaster: Xiongzhang’s expression in the half-light of their assigned rooms, fingers poised over the rim of his tea cup as though contemplating the heat, his gaze elsewhere.
“It was not cruelty, Wangji. I had always intended to return.”
“I understand, Xiongzhang.” But why, stifled behind the cage of Lan Wangji’s teeth. Feelings are difficult to dissect, to enumerate, and relay. Meaning is easier to convey in action—the language of their upbringing, the indelible silence of their home and family—yet to become an interpreter, one must first open one's eyes to what sits before them. Pursed lips, lifted brows, fingers splayed: shades of stillness, translation only conceivable through the art of comparison. The statue of Lan Wangji, dismayed, as by the whisper of a crease beneath his eyes. Ripples of humanity in jade.
Xiongzhang sighs, folding his hand over the cup, caging in steam. He appears sallow, this way. Shoulders brought low, mouth affixed into a thin line. The sun, peering through the windows, only serves to highlight the shadows carved into him: in the jaw, beneath his chin, like a hand around his neck, pulling him towards the ground.
Will you not look at me? Lan Wangji wants to say, cannot bring himself to say. See me. Say anything. Pierce the quiet you have entrapped us in.
“Wangji.” Staggered. A fissure in the space between them. Xiongzhang nurses the tea, now at height with his chest; seems to collect his bearings, his strength, from the warmth and scent of the brew. Still, even like this, he refuses to spare Lan Wangji a glance. “Do you ever find yourself… frightened by what is to come?”
Lan Wangji lowers his head.
Xiongzhang breathes, lifts his cup and sips. After, he asks, low and measured, “Do you find yourself… furious with the state of things? The Wen? This war?”
“Yes,” Lan Wangji responds, though he has no clear perspective as to why Xiongzhang feels these questions worth asking. Lan Wangji rests his gaze on the table, on his own cup of tea, and their untouched plate of baozi. Lan Wangji and Xiongzhang shared a room through much of their childhood. They learned together, trained together, broke their fast, shared lunch, and supper, and all manner of extracurricular activities together. Solitude meant a solitary existence alongside Xiongzhang. To have lost him for so many months; to find him, now, changed beyond doubt—it is impossible to express the ache of it. To realize, in the eye of this metamorphosis, that Lan Wangji cannot even discern the point of divergence, what to say, how to fix him—
“Wangji,” Xiongzhang, from deep in the chest, each syllable threaded together by strings. “Have you ever—do you—are you upset with me?”
Lan Wangji squeezes his right hand, beneath the cover of the table, into a fist. That biting sting, fingernails cut into flesh, pinpricks along the palm—good pain, grounding pain, distraction from the agony settled like a stone before him.
What looms in their future? What, of the near-past, of distance and separation, has taken hold of Xiongzhang and led him so astray?
“No,” Lan Wangji says. “Never. Xiongzhang’s life is precious and worth every delay.”
It seems, inexplicably, the wrong thing to say. Xiongzhang closes his eyes. In the face of Lan Wangji’s resolve, he shutters inward and dares not speak again.
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A week in and, restless, Lan Xichen dissects Yilling into quadrants. East, for the markets and the peasants who run them. South, for the collection of lumber and bamboo that make up each civilian shanty. West, towards Qishan, where the sun melts into the underbrush. North, where Yilling’s forests slough into Luanzhang Gang.
Wei Wuxian encourages the poetry of these extremes. Yilling is their foxhole; the city streets, sections of a battleground. To learn her is to inhabit her properly, and to inhabit her means to win.
“Or,” says Wei Wuxian, “to get out of here alive, yeah? That’s a kind of winning.”
Lan Xichen hums, tearing strips from an overrobe he hasn’t worn since his flight from Gusu. Wei Wuxian’s body is a menagerie of bruises and open lacerations. In the days since Lan Xichen discovered him, he’s bled through every bandage, wrap, and sash Lan Xichen owns. He lacks strength, still. He heals as fast as a child.
Or a commoner, Wei Wuxian mentioned once and never again. Why the long face, Zewu-jun? Commoner. To be common. Is that so unappealing?
“The Wen bring harm to these civilians,” Lan Xichen states. “We must do what we can to assist them.”
Wei Wuxian pats Lan Xichen on the shoulder. Slow fall, fey heat. Wei Wuxian’s fingers trail Lan Xichen’s unclothed forearm, his palm, before he takes the overrobe from Lan Xichen with a small, wan smile.
“I see where Lan Zhan gets it.”
“Where Wangji gets what?”
Later, Lan Xichen will disguise himself in the rags of a civilian traveler and again roam the streets of Yilling. Better to be deceitful herein than ignorant to the enemy in their midst. Better to compromise what righteousness he harbors within him than to rescind his freedom to the Wen; to deliver Wei Wuxian to certain death, for no other reason than sheer unmitigated hubris.
“That!” Wei Wuxian exclaims, eyes glimmering. “That look on your face!”
First quadrant: stopover to purchase food, bandages, blankets, herbs—necessities to last through the cold and scarcity of the oncoming winter. Third quadrant: spy the animal who’s taken command of the supervisory office and the dogs who cater to him; mark them for death by uniform, power, and loyalty.
War, Lan Xichen has learned, is a game of numbers. Number of weapons, number of soldiers, the quality and durability of both alone and in tandem. Stocks of food, of medicine, and land treaties, of days to subsist as a warring entity.
“I don’t understand,” says Lan Xichen. “What about my face?”
“Did I never tell you, Zewu-jun?”
Numbers. Survival by numbers. The remaining gold, silver, and copper ingots in Lan Xichen’s purse. Food, rationed to stretch through a month. The month itself split into weeks, into nights and days, into shichen. Two cultivators. An abandoned shack. Water from the river. Water from snowmelt. Pieces of the forest needed to fuel for themselves a fire.
“Wei-gongzi—”
“You want to save everyone. It’s admirable, y’know? You’re all alone out there. I mean, you’re Zewu-jun, of course, but you’d be facing a whole fortress!”
One cultivator. Wei Wuxian, hollow-bodied, nothing-bodied, mere victim of this war.
Commoner. To be common. A more difficult, permanent injury.
“It isn’t a fortress,” Lan Xichen says, disregarding the compliment entirely as he watches Wei Wuxian fold and unfold the overrobe. Such dexterity. Sections of fabric fitted along the calluses on the heels of Wei Wuxian's palms, between the joints of his fingers. Where is Suibian now? Lan Xichen wonders. Where is the sword to go with those beautiful hands?
Wei Wuxian tries to tear a strip from the overrobe.
“Wei-gongzi, why don’t I—”
“I can do it,” Wei Wuxian states, lips thinned in concentration. The rip is marginal. From the frayed edge of the robe to the inner lining, the width of a nail. “Just. You’ve done everything for me since you got here. I just—I can do this one thing.”
“It’s really alright.”
Locate the point of tension. Pull. Wei Wuxian will bruise himself this way: fingernails eating into flesh, knuckles bulging, arms straining. He’ll bleed through his bandages and run himself ragged.
Lan Xichen knows, intellectually, that Wei Wuxian lacks a golden core, that the overrobe, even half-scrapped and worn through, is bespelled Gusu-Lan silk but… maybe…
“Just—I just—”
Wei Wuxian’s hand slips and flies towards Lan Xichen in a wide arc, clipping him over the shoulder with a thump.
Lan Xichen blinks.
“You didn’t even react,” Wei Wuxian murmurs, trembling. He’s bowed over the robe now, running a thumb across the frayed thread, the shock of blue near the inseam, the spell work embroidered therein. “Well. I mean, I guess all those rumors were true, yeah? You Lan’s and your monster strength, haha!”
“Wei-gongzi, are you alright?”
“Zewu-jun, ah. I’m sorry. We were talking about the Wen, weren’t we?”
It is, perhaps, the consequence of proximity: this aversion to lesser conflicts, arguments that bubble beneath the surface, unspoken. Wei Wuxian has chosen a wall to harbor his emotions, and Lan Xichen must follow suit: allow the tides of Wei Wuxian's forced apathy to shape the very space between them in fallow irreverence and casual inflection.
“Wei-gongzi…”
“So Wen Chao’s taken control of the supervisory office?”
“Wei-gongzi, I truly believe—”
“Scratch that. Wen Chao—it doesn't matter. We’ve got to plan. Make up plans, do the plans, whatever. We've got to get you out of here alive, Zewu-jun!”
Wei Wuxian smiles like sunrise. It is the first fact Lan Xichen learns with any confidence about him. Even this smile, crumpled into itself, thin: sun over mellow water, warm like summer breeze.
“Both of us,” Lan Xichen states firmly. “I refuse safety without you, Wei-gongzi.”
Later, Lan Xichen will pour across this moment in a fervor. The seamless shift; the naked candor. Wei Wuxian had always been the howling wind, ever changing, ever welcome, and Lan Xichen let himself be swept into his frenzy.
“Wuxian,” Wei Wuxian corrects with a fond laugh. “If you’re going to say such sweet things to me, Zewu-jun, you should at least drop the formality, no?”
“You may refer to me as Xichen, then,” Lan Xichen replies.
“Xichen-ge,” Wei Wuxian crows. “Xichen-ge! Xichen-ge, I like this a lot! I’ll bug you so much! I’ll say your name all day, every day, and make you regret ever, ever lending it to me, Xichen-ge! Xichen-ge!!”
Lan Xichen laughs and… tonight will meld into all other nights this winter. Still water. Intractable shadows in this cloistered shack of a home. Company in silence and distraction. Lan Xichen will forget the murmur of doubt, the blanket devastation in Wei Wuxian’s gaze as the overrobe slipped from his fingers. After all, it is in Wei Wuxian’s nature to swallow his pride. So named, without envy, he is destined to live despite his inferiority.
That is how Lan Xichen reasons with himself, anyway. When this night is swept beneath the annals of war, when all that is left of Wei Wuxian’s memory is ash.
Even in heartache, even in inconsolable pain, Wei Wuxian was born with a smiling face.
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It is an acceptable cause for restlessness. The first evening after Xiongzhang’s return, Lan Wangji’s body and mind were yet to come to an accord with the fact of Xiongzhang’s safety and relative health. Curfew is long in the waiting, regardless. It is… expected for one brother to seek the guidance of another.
Yet.
The image of abject regret, the second inkling of this slow-growing cage: Xiongzhang beneath the moonlight, in the sparse garden that once served as Nie Huaisang’s aviary. He doesn’t notice Lan Wangji encroaching upon this space, standing near the bronze, ox-headed fountain at the mouth of the enclave. Instead, he stares, dim-eyed, into the shallow pool; at the koi burbling beneath the surface of the water, scales flashing in the dark.
“I see you in my dreams,” says Xiongzhang, “you dance so beautifully, yet I realize I’ve never seen you dance. What am I to do? Every thought… every memory… but I don’t regret meeting you. I will never regret any of the time I spent with you.”
It is simple enough to fashion a story: in the months since Xiongzhang’s disappearance, Lan Wangji has buried disciples and civilians alike, mere casualties of this senseless war. Xiongzhang was gone for half a year. Despite his prolonged absence, he returned scathingly alone.
Lan Wangji clenches his hands into fists within the folds of his sleeves. When Xiongzhang collapses to his knees, he turns and walks away.