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Wei Wuxian was doing nothing special when he suddenly saw the entire jingshi covered in blood.
In fact, he would argue that nothing had been strange up until the moment his neck prickled and he spilled ink over his papers, and when he blinked, everything was drenched in a pungent red that split through the air and stole his breath—badly, not even in a good way—and he sat completely still as he stared at the sudden murder scene. The ink had turned crimson, and Wei Wuxian knew that he hadn’t been tampering with any resentful energy in weeks—there hadn’t been a reason—and now his skin was crawling and he could see everything ruined. Things were flipped upside down. There were bloody handprints dancing along the floorboards, climbing up the walls—the ceiling was collapsing, falling, and Wei Wuxian couldn’t convince his body to move.
You see, it had been a very long time since he last hallucinated something so vivid and unpleasant.
He saw shadows dance all the time. Sometimes doors would close and he would look back up and they would be wide open. Sometimes he heard voices and couldn’t sleep. Sometimes it took a few kisses from Lan Zhan to feel better, and sometimes nothing helped and he just faded in and out for days.
Wei Wuxian was very accustomed to all these things, right?
Being dead and then resurrected after thirteen years of—sleeping, maybe, in a too-warm place where nothing quite changed—didn’t alter the fact that he once dreamed of murder every waking hour, and had to ignore the Wen Remnants because otherwise he would get too angsty. His mind used to take him on trips. Lotus blossoms that curled outwards like peeled skin. Apricots with teeth inside, rather than seeds. Skin coming up like wood shavings, blood in his food and then blood in his vomit from how often he used to—die, feel like death, be dying. The Burial Mounds used to speak to him, and he used to be able to hear it, too—but things like this weren’t supposed to happen anymore.
His throat was too thick.
Wei Wuxian stared at the blood covered paperwork and thought, with a stark kind of sharpness, I should tell Lan Zhan.
But his mouth wouldn’t move. Lan Zhan wasn’t in the room right now. As a matter of fact, he wasn't even in the jingshi. If Wei Wuxian wanted to say anything at all, he would need to get up, go to the classroom where Lan Wangji was helping teach the newest juniors of the Lan Sect, and then draw Lan Wangji away with some kind of expression or statement that would easily convey the absurdity of the fucked-up mind belonging to Wei Wuxian, the no-longer-active Yiling Patriarch, and the current (and only) husband of Lan Zhan, the Hanguang-Jun, the acting head of the Lan Clan while Lan Xichen sorted himself out in seclusion.
Wei Wuxian, after a prompt moment of thought, decided to stay sitting.
The room stayed bloody.
He blinked a few times, breathed in through his nose. It wasn’t quite like blood—he couldn’t truly smell the iron, but memory could fill in the gaps where reality blotched. He knew what copper was like, and how blood clung to every available surface.
Wei Wuxian slowly lowered his gaze back to his paperwork.
Over the large spill of ink that was mysteriously as red as someone’s heart juices, the words YOU ARE GOING TO DIE were written in an even darker shade.
Oh.
Oh, wow, it was certainly creative this time around.
His heart thundered in his chest at the sight, but—that was it—because Wei Wuxian had already died. He had already been ruined and slaughtered. Life had moved on. He was twenty-whatever and all his peers were a decade older than him. He didn’t—think, he didn’t grieve. There had been no time to grieve, because Wei Wuxian made the wrong choices and the right choices—he tried so hard—and he came back against everyone’s wishes, anyways, because a young and misguided cut sleeve cultivator had summoned his soul to do some casual murder-vengeance-reconnaissance.
Wei Wuxian swallowed thickly. He couldn’t convince himself to get up, and he couldn’t convince himself to take hold of the talisman paper and send a single alarm towards Lan Zhan.
He watched the blood drip, and merge.
And he watched for a long time—who knew how long—because Wei Wuxian stayed perfectly still and ignored the rising collision of whispers—over his head, all around him. There was a second where he thought someone put a hand on his hand, where he was no longer holding his paintbrush. He stared at the empty spaces. The red slowly turned into burgundy, and then split off and turned into cascading spirals of grey and black and white-ash.
Something creaked at the front of the jingshi, and a door slid open. “Wei Ying?”
Through the noise, Wei Wuxian felt his mouth fill with salvia. He thought he had gotten over throwing up. Being disgusted at what his mind said—how it ruined things—he wasn’t meant to be so weak-bellied. “Yes,” he mumbled, and then tried to be louder. “Lan Zhan? Lan Zhan!”
Lan Zhan appeared so easily. He was in white and blue and looked glorious. His eyes were crisp and gold and perfect.
Oh.
I should tell him, thought the dead patriarch.
Wei Wuxian saw him step into the room, and then blood drenched all over his husband’s face and Wei Wuxian’s shoulders went tense. “Lan Zhan,” he croaked. “Don’t come in.”
Lan Zhan paused in the doorway. “Wei Ying,” he said, carefully. “What is it?”
“You’ll get bloody,” Wei Wuxian whispered.
“What?” Lan Zhan asked, and maybe the question itself was—hilarious—because so rarely did Lan Zhan ask something so nonsensical. But it must be absurd, really, to try and approach his husband only to be told no, and then the justification coming forth as you’ll get bloody, when there was no blood visible at all.
But Wei Wuxian saw it.
He saw it, the way he had seen it countless times before.
“There’s,” Wei Wuxian mumbled, slowly, and his hands were pressed palm down on the table he was sitting at. His heart thundered. “There’s blood,” he said, and the words were very useless. “Or, ah, I’m seeing blood.” He swallowed thickly. The silence was stark, making him ache, making him feel worse. The blood didn’t evaporate. He couldn’t stop it from clinging. “It’s really nothing,” he hedged, next, “But I… I don’t want it clinging to you. I, this has happened before.”
And the confession was uncomfortable, and he wasn’t good at sharing all his thoughts—not the painful ones—he was better at talismans and energy and inventions and cultivation ideas and art and poetry—not all the time—and swordsmanship and other things, like mindless ramblings about wanting a farm and potatoes and a hundred baby Lans running around.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said, very quietly, “I’ll come to you.”
“I don’t know, er-gege,” Wei Wuxian’s mouth moved on its own. “I don’t want you to get ruined.”
“I won’t be ruined,” Lan Zhan said, without any hesitation. He stood in the doorway, tall and unmoved. He was pure white on the other side. “Wei Ying.”
If he came into the room, he would be all red and gross and awful and hurt—and it wasn’t real, you know—there wasn’t actual blood or violence in the jingshi—but something was tugging at the corners of his mind and he could taste the sourness. He remembered it. Way in the past, back when the Burial Mounds was the only place he could go—take his people to—bring a baby to. The sourness and acrid tang of death had followed, too, and had haunted.
YOU ARE GOING TO DIE had been a very common phrase back then, too. Sometimes it had been his own handwriting staring back at him. Sometimes it had been his voice. Sometimes—
He heard the floor creak.
(—it was an echo, a reprieve, sometimes it was spoken like a grace.)
Wei Wuxian looked back up, eyes wide, heart thumping like a rabbit running in a meadow. The room was painted bright red, and he could almost feel the maggots twist under his skin. But his husband approached, firm and without reluctance, and he kneeled right next to where Wei Wuxian was sitting. And then, with great ease, Lan Zhan extended both his arms and waited. The posture was very open. Ah. He could be so manipulative with—
”Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian’s lips turned downwards. He screwed his eyes shut. “It’s not a good day, er-gege.”
Lan Zhan carefully tugged him close, just enough so they could wrap each other’s arms around each other. “How long has it been happening?” Lan Zhan asked, neutrally. “Since I was gone? Or earlier?”
“It’s happened before,” Wei Wuxian mumbled. He pressed his nose into Lan Zhan’s shoulder, breathing in the scandalwood scent. “Before I died. But—today? Not long. Just… while you were gone. I looked down.” And there had been blood. So much blood, and so much death, and he saw the outlines of bodies pressed along his knees, and he had wanted to die just from seeing something so fake—an imitation to horror. He swallowed thickly. “I was doing paperwork, you know? And then it just, poof, all blood. I spilled my ink. All ruined.”
“I see,” Lan Zhan said, in that painfully controlled voice of his. “It’s not ruined.”
Wei Wuxian laughed, tartly, and he squeezed the fabric of his husband’s robes a bit tighter. “It’s a little ruined,” Wei Wuxian said, though he wasn’t too rigid in his faith in this fact. “It’s… I’ll clean it. Later, I mean.”
“No need,” said Lan Zhan, and his hand came up and gently smoothed down the back of Wei Wuxian’s hair. He was so careful, so steady.
It was a good thing.
But if Wei Wuxian opened his eyes, there would likely be blood. Lan Zhan’s insides might be draped over the mats on the floor. There might be a sword impaling him from above. The sword might be Suibian, too—because memory combined with hallucinations, and that was what this was—raw and skittish and fresh again, because being dead for thirteen years didn’t cure him of the way his mind fulfilled his worst nightmares.
“Hmm,” hummed Wei Wuxian, who didn’t believe a lick of it.
“Mn,” hummed Lan Zhan, who knew these things quite well after being married for a year—and knowing Wei Wuxian for longer—yes, even in death. “Wei Ying should open his eyes.”
“I don’t think so,” Wei Wuxian sighed, a mixture of apologetic and weak-wille.
“Hm,” said Lan Zhan, contemplative, but he didn’t repeat himself so Wei Wuxian knew he was being given more time.
It was—funny, somtimes—with the way Lan Zhan acted. They were both good to each other. In the past they had bitten and chewed at old wounds, and then made new ones. Now, though, Lan Zhan would get a certain way about certain things. He would push and push until Wei Wuxian either explained himself, confirmed his absence of answer—saying things like not now or not yet or later or some other time, okay? But on many occasions, Lan Zhan would seemingly wait for him until he could vocalize his thoughts, and that meant he waited and pried and made those deceptively soothing little ms until Wei Wuxian caved. Or, like, said he really couldn’t. And then Lan Zhan would accept that answer, and say something like Wei Ying can tell me anything, at any time, even after he said he wouldn’t. Which was code for Lan Zhan saying Wei Ying was free to express himself and change his mind and confess and keep quiet and do all those things, in any given situation, at any given time.
“Sorry,” Wei Wuxian mumbled, on instinct. “And don’t say that apologies aren’t necessary, because… I think this one is fair.” He swallowed the sour taste again. His mouth was full of spit, and not the good kind—not like when he saw his husband without robes, for example. No, this kind was from—nearly vomiting.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said, simply.
“Okay, alright,” Wei Wuxian said, into Lan Zhan’s shoulder. “Okay.”
A hand smoothed down his back, next. It went up and down, up and down. It followed the curve of his body’s spine—not at all like his original body, because Mo Xuanyu was a malnourished teen who never did grow up the right way. Wei Wuxian had been a malnourished boy, and then filled out fine, and then starved again up until his death—ha—with the war and the siege and the normal day-to-day radish soups that he often couldn’t stomach. But this was different.
“It’s not ruined,” Lan Zhan said, after a bit of coddling. Or, comforting. It wasn’t quite like spoiling. Wei Wuxian was better at accepting comfort these days. More or less. “Even if it were,” his husband murmured, only a little hesitant. “We would lean the blood off. We would fix things.”
Wei Wuxian’s throat hurt. “I don’t think you can un-ruin something.”
“You aren’t ruined,” Lan Zhan replied.
“Oh,” Wei Wuxian paused. “I—I wasn’t talking about me, Lan Zhan.” His heart hurt, all of a sudden, like it always did when Lan Zhan said things like this.
“Mn,” Lan Zhan said, though it wasn’t one of his agreeing hums.
What a man, really.
(Sorry for crying all over your sleeves and getting blood all over our home and making the evening feel sickly. I swear it wasn’t my intention to see maggots whirl and blood spill and have a ghost hand that wasn’t my own write death all over my paperwork. I love you more than the ghosts love me, I think. Maybe the blood will go away in an hour.)
He pushed his eyes open, more out of surprise than anything. He saw blurriness along the fabric covering Lan Zhan’s shoulder. If he adjusted his face, he would see the ruined room and his ruined hands and his ruined desk work. But he didn’t want to see any of it. He didn’t want to know what it was like—it would be bad. So many things were bad, right? Him included, during certain points of his life. He often said things vaguely—on purpose, actually—because it meant others could interpret it differently than how his mind did. It gave him wiggle room to agree or disagree. It gave him wiggle room when he needed it, because Wei Wuxian was not a sought-after figure. He was already once-dead, once-resurrected. Or, well, depending on how you looked at it—twice-dead, twice-resurrected. The impact on falling into the Burial Mounds probably killed him, way back when. (Not that he remembered the earth-shattering feeling, or the sounds he made.) But that might be true. He wasn’t ruined. He was, on the other hand, unable to mend ruined things. He just kind of slapped a patch on them and carried on until he needed to get a new patch. He did his best. So did everyone else. Probably. Maybe.
His throat was thick, and his eyes stung a little. He sighed heavily into Lan Zhan’s shoulder. “I just meant,” he mumbled. “If there was blood everywhere,most of the stuff wouldn’t be salvageable.”
“We would get new stuff if we couldn’t salvage it,” Lan Zhan murmured.
“You’re rich,” Wei Wuxian laughed, rawly.
“If it helps,” Lan Zhan said, after another second. “Then we would clean all of the jingshi.”
Wei Wuxian took a deep breath. He squeezed Lan Zhan again, a too-tight hug—Lan Zhan squeezed him back in return—and then the resurrected guy living in a different body blinked. He pushed his head upwards, out of its hiding space, and surveyed the backside of the room. Most of the blood was gone. The only thing left was that faint copper-tang memory. He swallowed again.
“Well,” Wei Wuxian said, only a little pathetically. “Luckily there’s nothing to actually clean.”
Lan Zhan stroked a pattern into Wei Wuxian’s spine. “Mn.”