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Several hours into battle, Lan Xichen finds himself screaming.
Wei Wuxian was cornered. Lan Wangji was starting to swing his sword in a manner too desperate to be effective, but he continues to fight half-dead and drenched in his own blood.
The world around him was screaming so loud that everything was starting to spin. From across the battlefield he spots a familiar figure. There was someone lying limp in his embrace sticky with blood, Jiang Cheng looks down and realises that it was his sister. Her eyes didn’t flutter nor did she reach up to touch his cheek and assure him that’d it’d all be okay, instead her robes were blooming with more and more red, soaking through onto his own robes.
So much, so much blood. He lets out a shaky breath, and suddenly he’s losing all feeling. His eyes burned and Jiang Cheng shakily pulls his sister’s corpse closer, her blood-matted hair smearing his cheeks with red.
“A-Jie?” Xichen hears him whisper. “A-jie. A-jie, A-jie. A-jie A-jie A-jie A-jie A-jie,” he repeats under his breath, as if it would speak her into existence.
“A-jie, wake up.” Jiang Cheng mutters. From the corner of his eye, Lan Wangji gets slashed and he buckles. Wei Wuxian was slowly losing control, and—
“Wanyin,” he hears himself call, but then he glances down and there’s a serrated blade poking out from Jiang Cheng’s stomach. The next thing he knows, warm blood had been splattered on his face and his Wanyin was lying in his arms, eyes half-lidded and threatening to shut.
“Wanyin,” he says desperately, pushing more spiritual energy into him when he feels the boy slipping through his fingers, yet Lan Xichen was unable to catch or hold on to him. Maybe grief had turned him blind, but Lan Xichen continues to force a steady stream of energy into him, even as Jiang Cheng slowly wilted.
“Wanyin.” He repeats, but when he looks up, there’s no Jiang Cheng. Only the lifeless shell of the boy that had once been, and Lan Xichen screams.
Somewhere along the way, the ringing in his ears had gotten so loud that he hadn’t heard the clumsy footsteps of an enemy soldier charging up from behind him.
Seclusion.
That had been the only solution that had surfaced in his mind on the battlefield, when everything had gone quiet and Jiang Cheng had insisted on sleeping. His uncle had disagreed at first, but Lan Xichen gave no room for argument when he surprised himself by glaring at the elder.
He had let himself stay there, reeking of the metallic scent of blood with Jiang Cheng snugly in his arms and rocking back and forth like a child seeking comfort. Even as his uncle starts shouting at him to get a grip, Lan Xichen doesn’t hear and he hugs Jiang Cheng closer, tighter. His eyes had gone stone-cold and the smile on his face had long disappeared, and all he could think of was Wanyin, Wanyin, Wanyin, Wanyin, Wanyin--
How had this happened? When did it all go wrong? His Wanyin, Wanyin. He should be breathing, and celebrating their victory together.
Lan Xichen regrets. He should’ve kissed him sooner.
His brother had been worried, but Lan Xichen paid no mind to it. His face eases itself into an expression similar to that of the one Lan Wangji carries, so similar that Wei Wuxian freezes on the spot, but he tearfully begs for a moment when Jiang Cheng is lifted up in his carry. The only difference between them was that Lan Wangji was warm, but he was frostbitten, and when Wei Wuxian asks he unrightfully refuses.
His Wanyin, Wanyin.
He had brought him back to the Hanshi, ignored the agonized begging that followed. Cleaned them up, and no one needed to know when Lan Xichen soaked with him in the bath tub for hours too long. He had spent the time watching, tracing the curve of his nose or tickling his long lashes, even when the water trickling down his face felt eerily the same as the blood of the Wen soldiers.
He watched. Water gathered and dripped from Jiang Cheng’s eyelashes, rippling the water. And for a moment, Lan Xichen thinks that this was better, if the peace on Jiang Cheng’s face was anything to go by. He didn’t mind staying forever just to watch, and part of him had fully intended to, if not for the violent rapping on the Hanshi’s door.
“Zewu-jun, Lan Xichen! Give him back, give him back!” Wei Wuxian sobbed.
He was careful—he treated his Wanyin’s body with the utmost tenderness, and when he dressed the boy in his robes, Lan Xichen felt his heart go soft. He runs his fingers over the fresh bumpy scar on his abdomen, and in a moment of poor judgement and madness he digs his nails into the wound. The flesh tears and sucks his fingers in with a squelch, then his chest tightens when Jiang Cheng doesn’t open his eyes or cry out in pain, and Lan Xichen apologetically kisses the injury, rushing to heal it with another burst of energy from his palm.
“M’ sorry. M’ sorry.” he nuzzles into his stomach. He showers it in butterfly kisses and cringes when there’s no blood on his fingertips.
The banging on his door hadn’t ceased, but he pretended not to hear anyway, though the shouting from the other end would soon grow too noisy for Wanyin to rest properly.
Jiang Cheng is settled in his bed. He pulls the covers up and tucks him in. Lan Xichen hopes that maybe this would warm him up a little, even if his body had gone cold.
“Wanyin,” he whispers once more. Perhaps then would Jiang Cheng wake up and respond to his call.
No one talks about the corpse in Zewu-jun’s room, the one that was dead yet looked too alive to be real. Everyone knew, even if no one was allowed in his rooms.
Occasionally, the man would set foot outside his Hanshi, if only to try his hand at a home cooked meal for his Wanyin. And when his hand touches the pan, it burns, but Lan Xichen was numb. So he continues to cook a mix of Gusu’s unsalted greens and Yumeng’s glaring red spices, until his nose was flushed and stung with chili.
Everyone pretends not to know. They close both eyes and pretend not to see the way there is a cold frost settled in his eyes, and they pretend not to know that their Zewu-jun injures himself everyday cooking a meal that would be left untouched and cold. They don’t stop Wei Wuxian from trying to hack the Hanshi’s door down everyday, which he would have succeeded in if not for the seal holding the door up in place. The Cloud Recesses remain a bystander, but they offer a part of their loyalty to Zewu-jun by blocking Lan Qiren from storming the place.
And Lan Xichen is grateful for that, at least, even if he tunes himself out to the rest of the world.
“Wanyin,” he’d say, kneeling impeccably beside the bed with the tray of ugly food in his hands.
“I’ve brought you dinner.”
He is rewarded with cold, silence.
“I know I’m not the best at cooking. But I tried for Wanyin’s sake,” he says, lifting up his bandaged fingers like a child trying to prove himself. “See? My fingers are all injured.”
More silence, Lan Xichen waits but there’s no one to yell at him for being so stupid, so clumsy, and then tenderly kiss his fingers better afterwards. Only the chilly breeze leaking through his open windows that fluttered his sleeves and took the heat away from his food.
He sits for the better part of the afternoon, until the sun is down and there’s no more light in the Hanshi until he flicks his sleeve and illuminates a candle on the table. All this while and the Hanshi had been quiet the whole time, no one had woken up or spoken to him.
Jiang Cheng was still asleep.
“...Why won’t you scold me?” Lan Xichen croaks.
“I know. Wanyin doesn’t like my cooking. It’s all charred and bland, hahaha…”
“I’m sorry, Wanyin. I promise to try harder.”
He stands up awkwardly, subtly stretching the limbs that have gone sore from sitting for too long. The food had finally gone cold but there was not a bite, nothing out of place.
“I’ll get better soon, Wanyin. And when I do, you promise to eat?”
Lan Xichen asks the air. The nothingness responds to him in the form of choking silence.
He leaves the room.
He gets better, after a while.
He tries his best, even when his fingertips are covered in scars and there’s bins filled with wasted food. Lan Xichen doesn’t stop trying and his efforts bore fruits eventually in the form of better food, tasty enough that the rabbits in his garden don’t run away when he feeds them—instead they come back for more.
A year passes and Wanyin still doesn’t wake up. Lan Xichen returns to duty, burdened by guilt and he promises to work harder to make up for the year he was gone. Somewhere along the way, he’d started spiralling into a pit, if the tears on some dead of the nights and the talking to nothing was anything to go by. Maybe it had begun on the day Wanyin had closed his eyes, or maybe it had started when Lan Xichen found himself crawling into bed with his cold body.
He gets an idea on one of those lonely days, which ends up with mud-stained hems and a garden of lotus seedlings. Everyday, he’d look after them so carefully just so they could grow up beautifully, and when Wanyin came home, he would be able to see them all again. Lan Xichen hoped this would please him, it was something like compensation for the bad cooking he had tried to feed him the past year or so, but another part of him hoped that Wanyin would see the heartfelt feelings that came with the bed of flowers.
Lan Qiren stops shouting. There are bags under his eyes and the elder looks tired, really tired and he no longer asks about the body in his room. He doesn’t know, or perhaps he doesn’t want to know what his nephew had been doing with a corpse, so he chooses to remain silent. A year had opened his eyes to the reality of their situation, so much so that Lan Qiren decides to turn away and leave Lan Xichen alone, if what he was doing gave him peace.
Lan Wangji strongly disapproves. Lan Xichen thinks that his hatred and prejudice towards Jiang Cheng hadn’t dissipated at all, and sometimes he gets tired of being the better, older brother. On better days, he meets Lan Wangji’s demands to retrieve Jiang Wanyin’s corpse with a patient smile. And on lesser days, he loses it.
“Brother-”
“Wangji.”
“Brother! Stop this nonsense, you have to return Jiang Wany-”
“Return? Who does he belong to in the first place? The sect that fears him, or the brother that abandoned him?”
Lan Wangji remains silent, and Lan Xichen leaves it at that. He doesn’t like to argue.
Lan Wangji’s world had always revolved around Wei Wuxian, but Lan Xichen has come to hate any world that has no space for Wanyin. So if his brother was going to take Wanyin away from him for the world he called Wei Ying, then Lan Xichen doesn’t think he could be as kind.
(It goes unsaid. He’d kill anyone that got in the way.)
At sect conferences, he greets the other powers with a smile, but grasps the hilt of Shuoyue when they whisper about his rumoured nightly activities with a corpse behind his back. A cloud of anger shrouds him, but like a Lan, he keeps his composure. In the meantime, he likes to wander the halls in search of a flower to bring back for his Wanyin, who was waiting for him at home.
‘I’d never defile him,’ he wanted to scream, ‘I’d never do anything to hurt Wanyin.’ But it’s not like they’d hear him anyway, so he goes on his way.
His past-time has gradually evolved, from training to paperwork to cooking, and when he’s finally good enough at all three he locks himself in the Library Pavillion, turning every bookshelf for even a thread of information because there is nothing the Cloud Recesses’ Library Pavillion doesn’t have, Lan Xichen choses to believe. He absorbs pages like food and leaves no page unturned, then he rinse and repeats and by the end of the day, there are books scattered all over with their pages wrinkled from use.
On those days, he returns to the Hanshi looking for comfort, though the touch that he seeks would never touch his cheek. Maybe it had been desperation or the hopelessness of finding nothing even after weeks of searching, Lan Xichen retrieves the Guqin he hadn’t touched since he was a teen, and settles his marred fingers on the strings to play it. His fingers strum and the Guqin sounds in the form of a question, many spirits gather around him but even after looking it’s not the one he wants.
It’s okay, he tells himself. I’ll try again.
And that’s what he does. For the subsequent nights, the Cloud Recesses would be filled with the same sorrowful tune that Jiang Cheng wouldn’t answer to. But for every day that he doesn’t find him, Lan Xichen punishes himself to inquire an hour longer, and keeps going until his fingertips have been picked raw and dipped in blood. Every pluck stung his bones but Lan Xichen winces and takes it in stride. He plays and plays until his Guqin is coated in blood and when he strums, there’s a horrendous wet sound.
It’s okay, he tells himself. I’ll try harder.
He keeps himself chained to obsession, but it’s what little left he has of Wanyin and so he holds on to it. Lan Xichen’s heart holds a prison but he doesn’t mind it, if it means Jiang Cheng would wake up and hug him.
He forces himself to keep going, keep playing. He’d punish himself just a little more, a little more, until the sound he’s producing is terrifying and too violent for any spirit to answer. But his mind is hazy, and when he hears no answer to his call the only response he can form is to play more, play harder and play quicker or else they wouldn’t hear him, strum a chord and pluck it in thirds and now his nails are scraping the strings—
“LAN XICHEN!”
It’s Wei Wuxian, outside his door. He plays louder, to drown the noise out, strumming faster and harder and plucking the strings sharply and sliding his fingers, slicing his fingers faster, pressing—
“Stop trying, it’s no use! Jiang Cheng won’t come bac-”
And his Guqin is sent flying with such force that his seal shatters, the door creaks and snaps in half and Wei Wuxian is seen on the ground, clutching his stomach in agony.
But what could his pain compare to the torment that was Jiang Wanyin’s death?
Lan Xichen takes a breath, and screams.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
Lan Wangji was furious.
He’d whisked Wei Wuxian away, without a second glance at him. But Lan Xichen knows he’d forgive him, because he was his older brother and Lan Wangji pitied him, not that any of that mattered, forgiveness or not.
News of Zewu-jun’s revised choice of vocabulary had already travelled to his uncle’s ears, but the man brushes it off with the punishment of copying the rules until sundown. He hadn't spared his nephew a second glance, showing a rare moment of concern by sending Wei Wuxian herbs and medicines for the monstrous bruise beneath his ribs, and Lan Xichen thinks it might be better that way.
Lan Xichen doesn’t care. But he’ll follow anyway, because he still had the decency as a sect leader to set an example for the rest. In the hallways while he made his way to the Library Pavillion, he doesn’t stop to smile or nod at passing disciples. Instead, he soundlessly weaves his way through the crows, acknowledging their greetings with silence and none of his presence.
It’s quiet when he enters. He sits down and his back straightens on habit, Lan Xichen pulls his sleeves back and after dipping his brush in ink, he starts to write. He effortlessly lists the rules, pulling each and every one of them out from the corner of his memory.
Causing noise is prohibited.
Alcohol is prohibited.
Do not succumb to rage.
Somehow, the more he went down the line, the more the image of a boy clad in purple had inched his way into his mind.
His brush twists.
On the other end of the table, Lan Xichen sees Jiang Cheng in his violet glory. His chin was propped up on his palm in a way he’d seen Wei Wuxian do before, years younger than when he’d gone, still the innocent and unburdened Jiang Cheng of his teenage years. Most of all, he was smiling.
Lan Xichen forgets how to breathe.
His name was on the tip of his tongue. Lan Xichen tries to call out to him, ask him to stay this time and he reaches out to hold his face—
Then he blinks and Jiang Cheng is gone.
He drops his brush. It splatters ink all over the paper and his sleeve, but when he brings himself to look down, 'Wanyin’ is all he sees.
The rules had been written over.
That night, while transferring spiritual energy to keep his body fresh, Lan Xichen boldly scoops him up into his lap and cradles him like a child would with their favourite toy.
“Wanyin?” He murmured, nuzzling his face into the crook of his neck, only to frown when the familiar scent of lotuses doesn’t come. A haunting reminder, that Wanyin was fading. Had already faded, if not for Lan Xichen stubbornly clinging on and refusing to let go.
It sends him into a panic. It clouds his mind and he thrashes the room like a crazed man, searching for the flower with the scent that stuck to Wanyin like a stain. And when the Hanshi is fully turned and there is nothing, he shouts for the passing disciples to enter, all of which frantically flood the place to investigate.
They take in the sight of their leader and his room. Their eyes trail over to the motionless figure in his hold, and for the first time, they first-handedly witness the true extent of his emotions.
“Lotus,” they hear him whisper before his voice rises demandingly, “Bring me Lotuses. Now!”
They oblige. The young disciples filtered out of the room quickly, and in no time they were back. In their hands, were freshly plucked lotuses from the garden.
Lan Xichen knows this isn’t how it works, he’d turn it into something more long-lasting later on, but for now he crushes the fresh blooms in his grip and from his drawer, grabs a vial of massaging oil. He shoves the flower into the vial and shakes it harshly, and with clumsy movements he slathers it all over Jiang Cheng’s neck, shoulders, and collarbones.
The soothing scent of water and floral permeates his senses. Lan Xichen quivers and the vial slips from his grasp, spilling a small pool of its contents onto his floorboards but he doesn’t spare the mess a glance. With unsteady hands he pulls Wanyin into his embrace once more, letting the fresh fragrance linger under his nose.
“Wanyin,” he calls out in a shaky voice. He moves his head and presses his cheek against Jiang Cheng’s hair, combing through the raven locks with his long, scarred fingers. Lan Xichen’s gaze remained unfocused while he stared at nothing.
“Wanyin, when will you wake up?” He asks.
“Wanyin, I’ve been waiting.”
“Wanyin, I nearly forgot how you smelled like.”
“Wanyin, please wake up.”
“Wanyin, I’m scared i’ll forget.”
“Wanyin, I can’t hold on.”
Under his breath, he continues to repeat mindlessly. Awakened by the commotion, the Cloud Recesses stared on in horror.
They left him alone for a good while. The third year comes in with undisturbed peace, despite the sympathetic stares sent his way by the outside world. It was a small price to pay to keep Wanyin by his side, and Lan Xichen had always preferred staying inside to spend time with him. It wasn’t much different.
Life goes on. His cooking has improved in leaps and bounds, but at the end of the day they still go uneaten. His lotuses have wilted, grown and wilted again, now they were budding but even after a season and a half, there’s no one to come flower-gazing with him. Wanyin still doesn’t wake up to praise him and tell him that ‘you’ve done well,’ but until that day comes, Lan Xichen promises that he’d keep working harder, so that he’d grow into a better man even just a fraction worthy of his Wanyin’s love, and then he’d propose to him with all the bottled-up feelings that had come spilling out after he’d left.
Now, he spends his mornings playing inquiry, a routine that goes unchanged even if a hurricane were to strike. A change of time in day, maybe the reason Wanyin hadn’t been answering was that he just hated the nighttime. Maybe sunrise was more favourable to him, so Lan Xichen tries and tries again.
Lan Wangji watches from a distance as his brother slowly loses himself. He’d tried on many occasions to talk some sense into him, and at some point he’d nearly convinced Lan Qiren to pass the position of sect leader to him. “A-huan is sick,” he’d reasoned, but they never went through with it.
“You make me out to be ill. But you would do the same for Young master Wei, would you not? Become ‘sick,’ that is.”
His brother’s voice echoes in his ear, and Lan Wangji wills himself to tear his eyes away from the figure with disfigured hands. It’s the last thing he can do for his brother, and Lan Wangji is willing to give him that.
Nie Huaisang comes to visit soon after. His brother had just passed was his excuse, and because Chifeng-zun had been a close figure in Lan Xichen’s life, Lan Wangji lets him in. He is not blind to the knowing glint in his eyes, Lan Wangji thinks he’s hiding something but decides to let it go, just for today. His brother might do well with an external company.
“Zewu-jun?” Nie Huaisang meekly interrupts. Lan Xichen pauses in his playing and settles the guqin strings with his palm. The song dwindles into nothing and the spirits scatter.
“Huaisang,” He acknowledges. Nie Huaisang knew better than to expect tea as hospitality, so he plants himself a distance away from the man and speaks.
“Da-ge is gone. We held the funeral yesterday,” he starts. ‘Thought you might want to know’ goes unspoken.
Lan Xichen doesn’t bat an eye, nor does he lift his gaze from the view in front of him. “Is that so?”
After a moment of consideration, he tacks on, “My condolences,” but Nie Huaisang figures that he isn’t that sorry after all.
Lan Xichen takes his silence as acknowledgement. He lifts his hands to call the spirits back, but retracts his hand. He takes note to punish himself later on with an hour of copying rules doing handstands, because Wanyin wouldn’t like him to be rude, as much as he had been anxious to find him.
“Will you come?” Huaisang asks.
He firmly replies, “No.”
If Huaisang had taken any offence, he doesn't show it. He sighs, reaching into his sleeve to retrieve an item and sets it by Lan Xichen’s feet. It’s a piece of paper, bound with a dark olive chord and marked with the seal of Qinghe Nie. In the corner, signed Nie Mingjue.
“Da-ge wanted you to have this,” Huaisang explains, and when Lan Xichen picks the letter up he takes it as his cue to leave.
“Read it when you’re alone. You might cry, hahaha…”
He stands up. “I’ll be taking my leave now, Xichen-ge.”
A short and curt visit. Nie Huaisang scurries out of the Hanshi’s territory, and when his footsteps descend into silence, Lan Xichen absentmindedly unties the letter in his hand. The paper springily uncurls itself, and when he holds it in place, something smaller falls out of it.
The writing on the paper had been familiar, niceties and some silly things about friendship that Lan Xichen wouldn’t put past the dead man to say, but something about the handwriting was off to him. It was unsettling, but Lan Xichen paid it no mind. He searches the floor for the fallen article, and finds a yellowing and crumpled paper with creases that looked like it had been sloppily folded in a hurry. Its frayed edges had been stained in blood.
When he opens it, his jaw goes slack. His eyes widen in shock, and Lan Xichen has a sound mind to question how Nie Mingjue had gotten his hands on such a thing. But then the next moment he’s on his feet, Shuoyue is drawn and his wrist is spilling blood. His sword clatters to the floor.
On the paper, written in blood was a forbidden sacrificial ritual, lost to time.
He is shouting. Lan Qiren would've hated it.
Malevolent energy explodes from inside the Hanshi, slamming back into himself as he recites the enchantments written on the floor, an array painted in his own blood.
"My flesh as lure, my soul as compensation."
The whole of Cloud Recesses had always known about his feelings, and now they watch as their sect leader shatters his soul in exchange for his beloved’s. All of them draw their swords and brace themselves to burst into the Hanshi, but remain frozen to the spot at the dense fog of evil that covers the place, and the wafting smell of blood that stung their noses.
"Here, I summon the sinister ghoul."
"Sandu Shengshou, Jiang Wanyin!"
Lan Wangji goes first. He’s rushing into the Hanshi, but by then the ritual has been near complete and Lan Xichen has long collapsed, his body nothing but an empty shell, ready for exchange in ownership albeit forcefully done. When he reaches out to flip his brother over, the haunting image of the array is printed onto the front of his robes, and when he shakes his shoulders, his eyes don’t open.
Was this how brother had felt with Jiang Wanyin?
Wei Wuxian comes running in. The Lans had always lost themselves to love. Lan Wangji thinks, that he finally understands now.
When Jiang Cheng’s eyes flutter open, the first thing he sees is his own face, his body lying cold and undone on someone’s bed. He looks down, there was a familiar xiao strapped to his waist, his wrist was open and leaking blood and there was a crowd clad in white robes and clouds watching him unnervingly.
Lan Wangji is amongst them. Wei Wuxian stares with a face full of disbelief.
“Brother..?” The former says, his words shaking with uncertainty, maybe a thread of hope. But it’s all it takes for the weight of the situation to dawn on him. Jiang Cheng takes it all in—the painting on his clothes, the blood on his hands, pieces together the bits in his mind, but all he could croak out was,
“...Xichen?”
He looks away. His body lies cold, and he is met with a lonely silence. The gaping wound on his arm inches open.