Work Text:
orbital decay: a gradual decrease of the distance between two orbiting bodies over many orbital periods.
eventually the smaller object strikes the surface of the other; or it burns or explodes in its atmosphere
★
"This is where we say goodbye," said Wei Ying, and Lan Zhan had let him.
-
It is 352 Sol standard days later when Wei Ying returns. Lan Zhan is waiting for him; has been waiting for him since day 278. Given the average speed of Wei Ying's ship, Suibian, that had been when he likely would need to refuel again, depending on how much time he spent actually flying it. There are other systems big enough to have fuel supplies to spare – Yunmeng system or Lanling system the two other obvious choices – but Lan Zhan had hoped, nevertheless.
It's longer, much longer than Lan Zhan had expected the fuel to last, but that just means they must have stopped somewhere and stayed planetside. Somewhere around Day 300, the thought that Wei Ying could fly somewhere and stay there and never fly back or need fuel seizes Lan Zhan with an absolute fear. By the time day 352 and Wei Ying's arrival actually happens, he has managed to get a grip on himself again. Mostly.
"Lan Zhan!" Wei Ying says it with obvious surprise when he pokes his head out of Suibian, like he isn't expecting Lan Zhan to be waiting him for the space port at the back of Caiyi, the one that is generally used for freight transports. In hindsight, to be here already, having hurried down from his quarters in Cloud Recesses in time for Suibian to be given parking approval, perhaps reveals too much about Lan Zhan's eagerness.
Suibian's door sticks a bit, and Wei Ying beckons someone forward to help him heft it back into the right angle for the hydraulics. This companion has a non-descript hood pulled high over his head, falling forward until the shadows obscure his face. Wen Ning, Lan Zhan presumes; he says nothing.
"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan, once the two of them are done and they step off the ship ramp. "How are you?"
"A welcome party, how auspicious," says Wei Ying, his smile too wide. His eyes dart to Lan Zhan's right and left, as if he's expecting Lan Zhan to be accompanied by other Lan. As if Lan Zhan would tell any of them that Wei Ying was here.
"I –" happened to be in the vicinity. The lie drops into his head as easy as a raindrop falling off a roof, but sticks in his mouth, too many years of upbringing for it to slide off easily enough to be believable. And the truth – that Lan Zhan has set the surveillance feeds to redirect into his own study, with alerts for any ships matching Suibian's description – isn't something he finds so easily parted from him either. "I missed you," he says, which is a different truth that is also too raw.
"I missed you too," says Wei Ying, but it's with confusion.
The conversation stalls there; Lan Zhan for all that he has been waiting for Wei Ying to come back, has never quite managed to imagine how it would go and now that it's happening, he finds himself woefully underprepared. Wei Ying waits, presumably for him to say something, and when nothing comes, he turns to Wen Ning, hovering slightly behind him. They speak quickly, and Wen Ning peels off towards the Caiyi market.
Wei Ying turns his attention back to Lan Zhan. "How long has it been? Almost a Sol year, I think. How are the repairs?"
"Almost a Sol year," agrees Lan Zhan. "It is going... slowly."
It's fortunate that Wei Ying has always known how to carry a conversation. He falls in step with Lan Zhan easily, like he hasn't been gone at all, and they start walking. Lan Zhan doesn't have a destination in mind – certainly not back to Cloud Recesses yet – and so they circle towards the market behind Wen Ning. "Yeah, it's going slowly everywhere. Especially when so many planets don't have trained cultivators planet-side."
"Is that what you've been doing?" asks Lan Zhan.
Wei Ying shoots him a sideways look.
Still like water; a smooth reflection. Lan Zhan breathes until he has himself under control again.
"It's probably better if I don't tell you all the details of what I've been doing," says Wei Ying, and that hurts. Wei Ying has always been open about himself to the point of fault. Lan Zhan remembers teenage years of Wei Ying talking about himself more than Lan Zhan ever wanted. And instead it is now, when Wei Ying won't talk about it, that he wants.
"Is it dangerous?" asks Lan Zhan instead.
Wei Ying makes a hum of ambiguity, tilting his hand. "It's not about whether it's dangerous or not, but it's not all, you know. Completely legal."
Lan Zhan blinks. "You're trying to protect me."
"Yeees. And also not get into trouble. You'd crack under the burden of my secrets, you know. Not that I'm saying that you're bad with pressure of anything like that, but because you're so good. You're so just. You're just – phew." Wei Ying exhales loudly. "You know?"
Lan Zhan does not know.
Wei Ying places a hand on his arm. "Don't take it personally, Lan Zhan. No one's meant to know. I'm not even telling the Jiangs."
That does make Lan Zhan feel better, for some reason. Wei Ying would tell Jiang Yanli everything if he could.
"Do you need anything?" Fuel, Lan Zhan already knows.
"My associate is taking care of that," says Wei Ying, like he knows that Lan Zhan already knows it's Wen Ning but they both pretend anyway.
They walk around the gardens instead. Neither of them probe too deeply into how Wei Ying was likely meant to also go into the market, or how Lan Zhan just happened to be here but happens to have a block of free time in such a timely manner.
"Real grass?" asks Wei Ying, immediately recognising why Lan Zhan has brought him here.
After the Wen invasion, the dwarf planet the Lans inhabited had been drained of its natural energy. It's taking every cultivator the Lan have to nurse it back to life. The grass is light and tufty, an indication of new sprouts, but it's the most obvious indication that there is life on the planet, that it's not just a husk of dried rock. Wei Ying crouches and sinks gentle hands into it reverently.
The gardens are as much scientific as they are decorative. The turned piles of dirt are planted with different kinds of seed, each responding differently to the qi that the cultivators pour into the planet. It has taken several years for the dirt to turn from barren dust into being able to hold grass. They are hopeful for trees soon.
"It's doing so well," says Wei Ying, a naked mix of admiration and envy in his voice.
Lan Zhan wants to show him everything – the qi amplification chambers, the labs, the sprout nurseries. But no one outside of the Lan is allowed in any of those, and Wei Ying certainly not. Lan Zhan is already breaking the rules by not reporting Wei Ying the moment he stepped on planet. He's a corrupt security official, bribed too easily by the promise of Wei Ying's smiles. He cannot bring himself to feel guilty about it.
The time passes too quickly. Wei Ying looks at his thick utility watch and back at the sun, and the other sun. "I should go," he says eventually. "See if Wen – my associate made it back with everything."
When will I see you again? Lan Zhan does not ask. Instead, he takes out a package from his bag – nonchalantly wrapped, like it hasn't been sitting ready on Lan Zhan's desk for 80 days.
"I hope these will be of use," he says. There's a mix of things in there, borne from Lan Zhan trying to anticipate Wei Ying's needs without being able to consult him. Some useful on an everyday level: some qi converters, talisman papers, cinnabar, water filters; some creature comforts: dehydrated alcohol, underwear and socks, submicrofibre blankets, sweets. He'd packed and repacked it, until it was as lightweight and space efficient as possible.
Wei Ying looks at him suspiciously. "So you weren't just in the area?"
"I am in charge of planet security," says Lan Zhan. "I am alerted when there is a request for the qi shield to be lowered."
They've circled around in a slow walk back to the port. Wei Ying looks at Suibian, tucked into the far corner. "And you recognised my ship," Wei Ying fills in.
Lan Zhan nods.
"I should do something about that. She's so recognisable to people who know me," sighs Wei Ying. "I just haven't been able to bear changing her."
Lan Zhan also hopes he doesn't change his ship, because then Lan Zhan wouldn't recognise it, but that's an unreasonable ask of a man trying to keep on the down low.
"I would not mine either." Bichen had been at the forefront of technology when Lan Zhan had commissioned her – she remains so now only because all of their technology had been destroyed or seized by the Wen, and all of their spare resources now go into agri-tech. There's nothing to spare for space travel developments when the Lan are all needed planet-side. There are those who think that Lan Zhan should trade in his ship, or at least parts of it, for more resources; none of them have voiced this to him aloud though, and he has always maintained quietly that should they require to go get assistance or supplies from outside of their system, they will need at least one ship capable of space warp.
Wei Ying nods. He gets it. "Well, Lan Zhan. This is where we say goodbye."
And Lan Zhan lets him.
-
This time, at least Lan Zhan doesn't have to wait for Wei Ying to return for fuel to hear from him again.
!! comes through on his personal comms frequency. And then, WY!! followed by details of Wei Ying's personal frequency in return.
The personal frequencies aren't able to send much data in one go, nor can it hold it; most people have a convertor pack connected to something that transcribes a message if anything comes through while they're not there, but Lan Zhan hadn't known if Wei Ying might have one, travelling as light as they are, so he sends out a return message straight back.
Hello WY; LZ
And then he stalls. He's had so long to think about what he wanted to express to Wei Ying, but he had never managed to settle on the best way to say it. 'Tell me where you are' sounds like a demand; 'tell me whatever you want' too intimate and 'keep in touch' too impersonal. 'Message me whenever' is what he finally settles on.
!! comes through instantaneously, followed by You'll regret haha
That Wei Ying spent signal space on typing out his laugh makes Lan Zhan smile. Of course he would.
Wei Ying seems to take him at his word. The messages come infrequently, and at all times of day, which makes Lan Zhan think that he's travelling around, or visiting places with different lengths of day, and they're mostly innocuous. Lan Zhan largely finds out whether they're still flying or stopping for a bit. Other tidbits include Eating real food!! and S H O W E R real water whoo!! They never include any information about where they are, or what they're doing though.
Lan Zhan replies as soon as he can each time with something inane about himself. He'd feared that he was altogether too boring for Wei Ying, but Wei Ying seems to find it amusing when Lan Zhan replies with variations of qi regeneration stretches and qi regeneration meditation and qi regeneration cleanse.
Once, Wei Ying replies with battery powered Hanguang-jun and a strange set of signals coded that takes Lan Zhan's tablet a solid ten minutes to decode as a sonar signal that resolves into a 3D image of Lan Zhan as a battery, hooked up to the planet, and radiating light.
It's a decent replica likeness of him, and Lan Zhan uses one finger to swirl through the 3D image in amazement. It's a joke, he realises, Wei Ying making a commentary on him spending all of his time cultivating in order to pour his qi into the planet. Like a human-sized battery.
He hadn't even known that sonar could be encoded into the personal frequencies. It makes sense now he thinks about it, but someone would have to not only have an image they wanted to send, but be able to code that image into sound waves, compress it to be small enough to fit on a personal frequency, and also code it to be able to unpack itself on the other end. Lan Zhan holoprints out the image, and hangs it in his room.
Sonar?? He remembers to reply to Wei Ying's message eventually, when he takes a moment off being awed by Wei Ying's invention. Surely everyone would do this if they could; the personal frequencies have such limited usefulness due to their short message format and time limitations.
Tee hee, replies Wei Ying, as if he was waiting for Lan Zhan's reaction. Tell later; too long
Lan Zhan holds on to that. That means that Wei Ying means to see him again.
-
"Lan Zhan!" This time, Wei Ying sounds pleased to see him instead of surprised. It has been 384 Sol days since the last time he was here, which is too long even with the messages in between.
"Wei Ying." Lan Zhan helps him squeeze off the ship. Suibian's door still sticks a bit halfway down the track. "You should fix that."
"Ah, it'll take so many materials that we could use for more urgent things," says Wei Ying, waving it off. "It's fine, really. We just need to – yeah, thanks."
Lan Zhan braces his shoulder against the door and helps Wei Ying lift it back into place. "You're by yourself today?"
"Nah, but they've got some stuff to finish up inside first."
Lan Zhan accepts that. It's probably easier for the Wen to come out when he's not lurking around like a well-intentioned creep. Wei Ying falls into step with Lan Zhan again. "Where to today?"
Lan Zhan blinks. He didn't exactly have an agenda in mind. "Wherever you'd like."
Wei Ying shrugs, and then falls into step with him. He pulls out a tablet – old, scuffed around the edges and encased in a very sturdy anti-break case – and opens something up. "I have a list, by the way, so it's your choice whether you want to be in public for this."
"A list?"
"Of things I wanted to tell you that were too long for the personal frequencies. The first one is thanks for all of the stuff. It was really useful and I have no idea how you knew I was running low on underwear. It was sort of psychic, actually."
Ah. Lan Zhan realises quickly that he does not, in fact, want to be in the middle of the walkway for such a conversation, and starts steering Wei Ying towards the research compound instead. "It was something I remembered from the Wen invasion of Gusu. There were so many things more important: people dying, research and resources being destroyed or stolen, buildings being destroyed. But after a few months of fighting and running, I discovered that it was the small things that made a difference. Perhaps exactly because it was such a small issue, but I remember being very tired of wearing dirty underwear."
Lan Zhan has never said this to anyone before. Who would he have told? Not his uncle or brother, both of whom were also injured and battling the Wen and trying to save as much of their generational knowledge as possible; certainly not his father, already in his deathbed by then after being caught in the first attack. It's such a frivolous tale, but he can't take it back now. And, he thinks, the underwear is a metaphor for all the other small things.
Wei Ying laughs. "Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean. There are people out there with it so much worse, what's being a little bit gross now and then in comparison? But I did need them, so thanks. And for everything else."
Wei Ying's list of things he's wanted to tell Lan Zhan is extensive, ranging from anecdotes about every time they found one of his items useful, to updates on how the recuperation effort is going in other systems – Lanling and Jiang and even Qinghe and smaller systems like Baling.
"You would make a good information broker," Lan Zhan observes. Wei Ying waggles his eyebrows and gives him a sly sideways look. Lan Zhan realises belatedly that this means that he probably already is. He feels honoured to receive Wei Ying's information for free, even if he doesn't know what to do with it.
There's been something slightly off about Wei Ying that's been bothering Lan Zhan sub-conciously since they started walking away from Suibian – not in his manner, but something physically – but it takes Lan Zhan a while to figure out what it is. He stops on the steps up to the Research Library, which is one of the few areas open to visitors. "Wei Ying. You are – shorter?"
He frowns, because it doesn't seem possible but last time, Wei Ying was almost the same height as him, barely an inclined look down required to meet his eyes, but now Lan Zhan looks across and meets the top of Wei Ying's head. Lan Zhan hasn't grown since he was fifteen, so it seems unlikely to be him.
It's disconcerting. Lan Zhan has always had trouble meeting Wei Ying squarely, matching the amount – or more accurately, the intensity – of eye contact that Wei Ying gives; but now it is no longer there, he misses it.
Wei Ying freezes. "Ah. Yes. We should be sitting down for this one. It's on my list, but we haven't got there yet."
They find seats inside, Lan Zhan signing Wei Ying in before he asks so that he doesn't have to put his name down on the visitor log. It's an extended period of silence, Lan Zhan's mind coming up with increasingly alarmingly scenarios as Wei Ying peeks into the reading rooms to find somewhere they can sit undisturbed.
The reading rooms are more cubicles than anything else; the Lan don't have the luxury of space in the same way they did before the invasion, all of the inhabitable areas condensed into the parts of the planet that are not desiccated rock. They squeeze in, wall to shoulder to shoulder to wall.
"So, you know when you snap a pen and you want to fix it?" asks Wei Ying.
Lan Zhan grips his knees. "Is the pen a metaphor?"
"No, it's hypothetical but not a metaphor. Keep up." Wei Ying demonstrates visually by pointing his two first fingers towards each other, putting the tips together to form a straight line. "Okay, so the pen snaps," he says, pulling his fingers apart, "and the normal way to fix is by fusing the snapped ends together." He puts his fingertips together back into a straight line. "But if you don't have the technology available that you need to fuse it back together, you can also put it back into a straight line by overlapping the ends and then strapping them together?"
He slides his fingers closer together so that the first knuckles overlap. "And this way, it's still a straight line, but like slightly shorter than before, right?"
Lan Zhan stares at Wei Ying's fingers for a long moment. "But then pen is still broken," he says eventually, because equating the pen to whatever actually happened in real life is making his brain collapse into static. "You can make it into a straight line again but the pen is broken and no longer works."
Wei Ying looks down at his fingers. "Fuck, I knew there was something missing from this analogy. Anyway, long story short, there was this thing where I broke both my legs. But they do still work."
Static in his brain. Fuzz, fuzz, static.
"Lan Zhan?" says Wei Ying's voice from seemingly a long way away. He can feel Wei Ying leaning against his shoulder though, so it can't be that far. "Lan Zhan, are you all right?"
"Am I all right?" asks Lan Zhan. "You broke both your legs. And didn't have the technology to fix them."
"And they still work!" says Wei Ying. "The conclusion of the story is the most important bit, which is that they still work!"
That's true. Wei Ying walked with him all the way here, after all, and showed no indication that he had trouble with it.
"How?" asks Lan Zhan.
"How did I break them? I don't want to tell you that bit, you'll get angry. And sad."
Lan Zhan is already angry and sad. He has been angry and sad for years by now.
"But how do they still work? We don't have any regenerative healing technology onboard Suibian, since she's not exactly a medical ship, but we do have a fabricator unit. It's barely a step up from being a 3D printer, but I coded an extra module for it and it's not that bad anymore. And Wen Qing helped out with the organic materials coding part, and Wen Ning has obviously a lot of experience with biomechatronic body parts, and between us we figured something out."
Wei Ying peels off his knee-high boots, pulls up the bottom of his trousers and rolls down the thick socks that go all the way up to his knees, alternating layers that cover the length of his leg. Halfway down his calf, the pale skin disappears into a metal casing. It almost looks like a boot, stylish in the way the polished plating curves up at the shin, down and around the back of the calf, dipping down below the swell of the widest part of the muscle.
Lan Zhan is glad that he is sitting down; and angry that Wei Ying had made sure that he was doing so. "Your feet are cybernetic," he says. He wants to touch them, but he doesn't know if Wei Ying will let him.
Wei Ying pulls his socks all the way off, to reveal where the metal ends. "Actually, my feet are still mine, to just above the ankle, but some of the nerve endings are a bit fucked. Wen Qing thinks they'll settle down once my body recalibrates what signals are coming from my feet. But yeah, it's just the middle bit that's metal. Overlapping the broken parts and then strapping them together, remember? There were a few centimetres of bone that was crushed and couldn't be recovered, so. Yeah. I'm shorter now. I have to say, it really affects your balance when you're used to being one height for the whole of your adult life."
Lan Zhan breathes the recycled air in through his nose and out through his mouth. It's unfair, he thinks. This accident, whatever it was, clearly happened to Wei Ying a while ago. The skin is smooth against the metal, meaning that it has not only healed, but also accustomed itself to the seam. Wei Ying has had time to process all of this and come out of the other side (relatively) unscathed, and yet he expects Lan Zhan to cycle from anger through to acceptance instantly, bypassing bargaining and depression entirely. He's allowed to be depressed for a little while, he thinks.
He evidently stares for long enough that Wei Ying wiggles his toes at him and says, "If I knew you had a thing for feet, I would have rolled my socks down earlier."
Lan Zhan doesn't take the bait. "I'm glad you're all right."
Wei Ying hadn't mentioned any of this in his messages. But then, what would Lan Zhan have done if he had known while it was happening? Borrow one of the Lan medical room's regeneration machine and flown off into the unknown after Wei Ying? The planet would have literally vibrated itself apart without the amount of qi that Lan Zhan contributes into its slowly recuperating core.
"Me too!" says Wei Ying, getting dressed again. He puts a hand on Lan Zhan's arm, as if he can tell what Lan Zhan is thinking. Lan Zhan has an immaculate stone face, this he knows from other people telling him so, but he thinks that his feelings are plain as day on his face.
"Hey. I would have told you if it was serious. Or one of the others would have."
That will have to do. Lan Zhan clasps Wei Ying's hand in return. "Thank you."
Wei Ying smiles at him. "Wow. You reacted so much better than Jiang Cheng. He threatened to break my legs if I kept him out of the loop like that again, and I got to tell him that he couldn't anymore because they're made of biometal alloy now, ha."
Lan Zhan hates being compared to Jiang Wanyin in any form, and hates even more when he agrees with the man. He rubs his temple to stave off the headache forming in his head, an amber alert flashing on his utility watch to tell him it's about to give him a microinjection of painkillers.
"Did he say that he would just break your legs at the thigh instead?" he asks tiredly.
Wei Ying beams. "How did you know?"
-
By the time they get back to Suibian, the ship is already on the list of clearances to leave Caiyi port, which means that whoever else is inside has restocked and refuelled and is ready to go.
They've dallied, weaving out and around the Research centre, back through the gardens, and taken the long road back here. It might be forbidden to run in Cloud Recesses, but it is also frowned upon to delay past the point of sense.
Once, or perhaps twice, the backs of their hands had brushed against each other and by the third time it happens, Lan Zhan had discreetly rotated his hand so that it faces outwards, the back of Wei Ying's hand almost swinging into the cusp of his palm.
He knows Wei Ying senses it, from the way he freezes for just a moment. And then he turns his arm around and slots his hand into Lan Zhan, and carries on walking.
Wei Ying's hand in his is radiating warmth, his a cool neutral in return. He's clutching Wei Ying a little too tightly, he thinks, but he doesn't let up. If he only gets to do this this once for another Sol year, he will savour it for that long.
Wei Ying's face tells the same story, from when Lan Zhan looks over at him. He's smiling, but sad, and Lan Zhan doesn't want to make Wei Ying sad but he also doesn't want to let go. They reach the dock eventually.
Lan Zhan hands Wei Ying another package, and Wei Ying raises his eyebrows like he hadn't been expecting it. Perhaps he truly hadn't.
"Lan Zhan, you don't have to," says Wei Ying. "We do – all right. The Lan aren't exactly heaving with extra resources."
"I know."
Wei Ying goes up onto his tiptoes and leans forward until he tips into Lan Zhan for a hug. It's been so long that anyone has touched him like this that Lan Zhan is stunned for a moment, frozen under the weight of Wei Ying's body. He hugs back, making sure to slide his arms all the way around Wei Ying's waist until he can feel the weight of Wei Ying on his chest.
"Thanks." says Wei Ying, his voice warm near Lan Zhan's ear. "I'm going to say it now so that it doesn't have to be on my list for next time. I don't know what's in here yet, but I know it's going to be too much. And I don't have enough shame to insist that you take it back, so I can only say thank you."
"No need," murmurs Lan Zhan, waiting for Wei Ying to disengage first, his arms unlocking from around Lan Zhan's neck until he dips back down flat on his feet, the top of his head bobbing into Lan Zhan's view. He memorizes Wei Ying from head to toe, in case he looks different again the next time.
"Well, Lan Zhan. I guess this is where we say goodbye."
And Lan Zhan lets him.
-
The next time Wei Ying comes back, it's only 132 days since Suibian last docked. Lan Zhan isn't expecting it, to the point where he gets the alert from the security system halfway through a qi infusion session and almost stands up to go greet him before remembering where he is.
There's a flicker of motion opposite him – his brother, likely sensing the fluctuation in Lan Zhan's qi flow through the stone pillar that conduits their qi into the core of the planet – and Lan Zhan shakes his head minutely before renewing his connection.
This room is occupied at all times of day, a constant stream of cultivators swapping shifts in and out to maintain a steady flow of qi to the planet, each of them either sending their qi into the stone pillar directly or into the shoulderblades of the cultivator in front to be passed forward in a chain. Usually, there are more people in here, ten or twelve at least, but Lan Zhan and Lan Huan are powerful enough to maintain a whole shift by themselves.
Lan Zhan usually prefers it when he gets paired with his brother, a peaceful eight hours spent in meditation. It doesn't always happen – the necessity of the continuous qi flow means that he goes whenever he is scheduled, along with whoever else is on the same shift, with no complaints, but sometimes when it is solely him on one side and five or six other cultivators maintaining the other, he can feel the weight of their stares through their closed eyelids.
The principle of it is that everyone offers what they can. Those who can offer more, do; those who cannot, have other duties around the research compound. But humans are humans in the end, and there is a certain amount of pride in being able to generate more qi, and a certain amount of competitiveness amongst the disciples. And no one likes being reminded in so obvious a manner that Lan Zhan outstrips them all by so much.
And so, usually his sessions with Lan Huan are the ones he is most comfortable with. But Lan Huan can feel every little moment when Lan Zhan's concentration lapses and his qi flow pulses like it's being squeezed out of a tube. He's concentrating so hard on maintaining it as a steady stream that he has a headache by the time he's done.
"A-Zhan?" asks Lan Huan quietly once their shift is up, an hour later.
Lan Zhan waits until they're out of the room – its importance demands constant surveillance and he doesn’t want to be recorded right now – and collects his things from the room outside. "I got a notification from my tablet and it distracted me for a moment," he says.
"Someone trying to get in the qi shield?" asks Lan Huan, eyebrows raised.
Raiders exist, people who attack planets recovering after the Wen invasion in order to swoop in and steal their resources, but the Gusu system is known for having strong cultivators. They have not been raided since directly after the last attack.
"It doesn't seem like it, but I will go and see. Perhaps it is just a courier ship that didn't know the new access codes."
Lan Huan accepts that easily enough and leaves Lan Zhan to hurry down to the port, powerwalking as fast as he can without attracting attention. By the time he gets there, Suibian is already parked at the edge of the port. He slows, unsure what to do. He loiters outside Suibian for a moment, but the door doesn't open.
Wei Ying must have already left the ship and headed into the market area. He could go look for him there, but he doesn't know what shops Wei Ying will stop at, and he risks missing him entirely crossing the wrong part of the market. He dithers, not knowing what to do.
The door hisses open behind him, and Lan Zhan startles. The door disengages, but doesn't slide open.
"Hanguang-jun," says a female voice from the inside. "Wei Ying isn't here."
Lan Zhan turns towards it. "Wen-guniang."
The voice inside neither confirms nor denies her identity.
"Do you know where I might find him?"
"If I might be blunt, Hanguang-jun. This isn't a good time. We only have time to refuel and then we must leave."
That makes sense. The most likely reason Suibian is back so early is because she's out of fuel – which must mean that they've been flying almost non-stop since they last left.
"Are you being pursued?"
She's quiet before every answer she gives him, as if assessing whether to give him the information each time. "Not currently."
Lan Zhan thinks it over. He doesn't want to delay Suibian. They have more important things to worry about than Lan Zhan's desire to see Wei Ying and speak with him.
"May I help?" he asks. Wei Ying has not asked him for help, and he has not yet prepared a package based on the things he has deduced would be helpful based on Wei Ying's messages.
Wen Qing is silent for longer this time. "I am not in a position to refuse whatever help you can give," she says eventually. The door opens, wide enough for Lan Zhan to squeeze in sideways. She stays back, hidden in the shadow from anyone who might look in, and closes it straight after him.
The inside of Suibian looks the same as Lan Zhan remembers it, just a little older. Wen Qing doesn't lead him down towards the bridge or the common areas that he knows exists, instead leaning against the side of the corridor there. He can hear the faint noises of other people aboard – footsteps in the distance, voices calling every so often.
"I would rather you not meet anyone else who is aboard," she says softly. "I hope you understand, Hanguang-jun. Me and my brother – everyone already knows that we travel with Wei Ying – but the others I would not reveal."
"I understand," says Lan Zhan as he pulls out his qiankun pouch; he only has on him what is inside of it, but he keeps it well stocked anyway. Money, a decent amount; some spare clothing; some research materials; his emergency care kit.
"It's not much. If I'd had advance notice, I could have secured more for you."
Wen Qing watches him. They don't know each other well, Lan Zhan having interacted more with her brother than with her, but he assumes that Wei Ying has spoken of him to her in much the same way that Wei Ying speaks of her to him.
"We were too busy to send notice. Perhaps Wei Ying will tell you in more detail," she says eventually. She rolls the credit drive around in her hands, the amount available on the digital display. "Are you sure?"
"Yes." Lan Zhan doesn't have much to spend his credits on anyway. "Gusu Lan is not in want of money. Just cultivators and qi."
No amount of money can buy those, not when every other planet and system out there is looking for the same; they can only be gained with time and training.
She takes him at his word, and tucks his items away with a bow.
"I have to prepare us to leave," she says with a glance at her watch. "If you would like, you may remain here to greet him when he gets back."
Lan Zhan nods, and indicates that she should ignore him and get on with whatever she needs to do. Wen Qing leaves him, and heads towards the bridge. Shortly, he feels Suibian move beneath him, rotating so that the cargo doors in the airlock instead of the personnel door point towards the dock, and he makes his way towards the back of the ship where the cargo bay is.
He opens the doors, ready to greet Wei Ying when he gets here, and hears a gasp from within.
"My apologies," he says immediately. Wen Qing had asked exactly one thing of him, and he has already gone against it. "I am only here to wait for Wei Ying and help load the ship."
There's no reply. It's dim in here – and odd that someone would be here in the dark. Lan Zhan reaches over for the overhead lighting and flicks one of the switches. They work.
"Hello?"
There's a scuffle from near the wall, behind some of the crates stacked there, and then Lan Zhan sees the top of a head come up quickly to peek at him and then disappears back down again. A child.
"I didn't mean to scare you," he says, even though he was the one startled. The same head bobs back up to regard him curiously, wide eyes and tilted head. Lan Zhan stays silent, because he doesn't know what else to say.
The cargo door opens then, from the outside, revealing the silhouettes of Wei Ying and Wen Ning.
"Lan Zhan! What are you doing here?" asks Wei Ying, as Lan Zhan's vision adjusts to the influx of light. The child darts out towards Wei Ying and wraps his arms around his leg, pressing his cheek up against his knee. "And A-Yuan! What are you doing here?"
"Hide 'n' seek," mumbles A-Yuan. "Long hide."
"Sure was, Popo's been looking for you since lunchtime," says Wei Ying, reaching down and hefting him up into his arms. Lan Zhan watches blankly. It seems unlikely that Wei Ying has had a child and not told him about it, but there is a kernel of doubt in him still, hard and stale.
"Lan Zhan?"
"I was occupied when your arrival alert came through. Wen Qing let me in to wait for you. She said that you don't have time to linger."
Wen Ning walks up alongside them, and bows to Lan Zhan and then reaches out for A-Yuan. "Ying-ge, I'll take him in first."
As A-Yuan transfers ownership from Wei Ying's arms to Wen Ning's and then is carted off, A-Yuan turns and eyeballs Lan Zhan, points at his own eyes with two chubby fingers and then jabs them at Lan Zhan.
"A-Yuan," says Wei Ying in exasperation. "Sorry, I don't know where he got that from."
"Was it you?" asks Lan Zhan.
"Ugh, probably." The moment that Wen Ning closes the door behind him, Wei Ying sways towards Lan Zhan, and Lan Zhan towards him, like magnets that have been held apart, and Wei Ying pulls up short with a laugh. They take turns to incrementally close the gap between them; Wei Ying steps into the circle of Lan Zhan's personal space; Lan Zhan reaches out towards him, Wei Ying folds himself into Lan Zhan's arms. Lan Zhan completes the circle.
"I thought about waiting for you to get down here, but Wen Qing's right, this is a fly by," says Wei Ying ruefully, his face resting against Lan Zhan's chest. As if on cue, the mechanism for the storage pallets hiss as they detach from the wall, probably controlled by Wen Qing in the bridge.
Lan Zhan lets go first. He understands duty before all else; it's why he's still here, after all.
"I wish –" Wei Ying sighs, and stops. "Never mind. You know. Wishing doesn't change anything." He stays there for just a moment longer, and then turns towards the manual forklifts.
"I wish, too," says Lan Zhan, and receives a small smile in return.
The pallets parked outside of the airlock are marked with a variety of symbols – some perishables, but largely clothing, utility tools and multi-use fabrics, medical supplies. Lan Zhan notes all of them. "Are your crew all right?"
"Yeah, yeah. This isn't for us. We were in the middle of helping someone when we got discovered by one of the remaining main Wen branch and had to abandon their stuff and take off. They chased us down hard for a good while, but we finally evaded them somewhere near Lanling's fourth planet. And then by then we'd burned through all our fuel supplies." Wei Ying chews his lower lip. "And then we thought that they would probably camp out Lanling waiting for us to refuel and we'd be sitting targets. So we rationed what was left and came here instead."
Lan Zhan had not been going to ask why they were here instead of Lanling, but the little sideways glance Wei Ying gives him tells him that it's just an excuse, and they both know it.
The restock takes far too little time, especially once Wen Ning has taken the child in and rejoins them. It's barely enough time for Wei Ying to tell Lan Zhan about when they spent some time with a settler group on the edges of Yunmeng system, not even inside it but nearby, and Jiang Cheng's fit when he had found out that Wei Ying hadn't been intending on visiting and the way he'd propelled himself all the way out past their eighth planet in a shuttle pod to see him, fully forgetting he'd need fuel to get himself back to the Jiang base on the third planet and needing to be rescued by his disciples.
It helps to lift the mood. Wei Ying always knew his way around such things; Lan Zhan will remember Wei Ying in this moment as laughing and animated as he imitates Jiang Wanyin, instead of a regret that this moment couldn't be longer.
"Well. Thanks. Hopefully next time will be longer. Bye, Lan Zhan," says Wei Ying when they're both sticky-damp from the exertion and the main engine starts up, presumably Wen Qing's signal that she wants to get going. He squeezes Lan Zhan's hands, hard, before the door closes between them, the pressure hard enough that Lan Zhan's body might remember it.
He leaves. And Lan Zhan lets him.
-
Lan Zhan starts preparing the next package for Wei Ying immediately. He keeps it in his qiankun bag, repacking or adding to it whenever he thinks of something else. He doesn't want to be caught unaware again.
And now he's realised how limited his foresight had been. Suibian is a mid-sized ship that can house a crew of up to twenty; if it had just been Wei Ying and the Wen siblings, it would be difficult to manage a ship of this size. He had just assumed that Wei Ying would have made it work somehow. But now he knows that there are others, including a child, and a popo.
So this time, Lan Zhan is ready 0 Sol Days after Wei Ying has gone.
Another 105 Sol Days after that, the Lan elders reduce the amount of qi required to be channelled into the planet's core by 33%, the seismometers indicating that the core is stabilising itself, no longer threatening to disintegrate without qi holding it together. Each cultivator's work schedule is adjusted, reallocating a portion of their time to research. No point in having a habitable planet without anything to make it habitable.
Around 122 Sol Days later, Cloud Recesses' first tree bears fruit.
65 Sol Days after that, Lan Zhan is cleared to fly again for the first time in six years even if it's only as far as the rest of the star system, to trade with the other habited Gusu planets. It's a momentous event because up until now, everyone else in the system has had to fly to them in Caiyi to ask for help and request trades, since all the cultivators are too valuable to be allowed to leave the planet. The growing sense of resentment has not gone unnoticed, even if that's what has been stopping the planet from falling apart and sending tonnes of rock and shrapnel flying into the rest of the solar system.
He hauls barrels of qi-infused fuel and stacks of talisman charms and carefully cultivated fertile seeds and vague well-wishes back and forth on the one out of three days he is no longer working in the restoration room, and takes the opportunity to tune Bichen up for longer distance travel.
Another 146 Sol days later, Lan Zhan is expecting Wei Ying to be back at any time. His messages are no longer so cautious now, Wei Ying comfortable with revealing where they have been once they have left the area. His last few messages have implied turning to make their course back towards Gusu soon.
Another 20 Sol Days later, Lan Zhan is yet to get another message from Wei Ying. Unusual in that Wei Ying sends messages frequently now, perhaps in deference to Lan Zhan's insistence that he not be caught out unprepared for their arrival again. Or perhaps before that, he had thought that Lan Zhan wouldn't want to be bothered so often.
But it's unusual, is the point. Lan Zhan's last fourteen messages have gone unanswered. He brings up his star charts on his tablet and looks at the one saved where he has plotted out Wei Ying's path based on the clues he's dropped. Extrapolating based on his trajectory and speed, he should be in Gusu by now.
A message pings for permission to access Lan Zhan's private feed.
WY stranded;; NO REPLY;; WN and with it comes a burst of sonar.
Lan Zhan's entire body lurches as if dropped instantaneously from zero gravity onto a planet. He packs his things in the time it takes his tablet to decode the signal. It's a star chart, or part of one, a dot in the space in the middle of it highlighted and glowing. It looks familiar, but he can't pinpoint where it is just from the planets without the star as a reference for orbits.
He drops it into his star chart files on the tablet and tells it to run a search, and heads for Bichen. He takes a moment to lean over his table and clutch at his chest. He always thought that heartbreak would feel like a shattering, sharp sort of feeling; he didn't expect it to feel like drowning. His heart feels like a swollen engorged thing that's leaking into his lungs; he can feel each heightened heartbeat as it pulses his entire chest. His utility watch tells him that he has a slightly elevated heartrate, and nothing else. He gives it the manual command to give him a microinjection of painkillers with shaking hands, breathes in for a count of ten, and goes back to his star charts.
He has no proof that the message came from Wen Ning, apart from the inclusion of the sonar technology that Lan Zhan still hasn't been able to replicate. Wei Ying had told him how it worked, and it all seemed logical, but Lan Zhan simply doesn't understand how to take an image and code it into sound signals and then encode it further into the private frequencies. That in turn reassures him that it's really a message from Wen Ning; he has to assume that only someone who has spent a significant amount of time around Wei Ying would know how this works.
The tablet finally shows up a match – it's in Qishan, the complete opposite direction to the course that Wei Ying had been travelling in. If Wei Ying had about turned in that direction right after his last marker that had been sent to Lan Zhan, he would almost definitely be out of fuel by now.
He leaves a message for his brother, fills Bichen's tank up and takes another tank's worth for Suibian, and programs himself access out of the qi force field. He's at the edge of the star system by the time his brother messages him.
??
He ignores it.
Lan Huan messages him again. ?? Bichen out of port
His fingers itch to reply, but he doesn't. He's already mentioned in his note that he'd received an urgent request for help that he's replying to, and that he's sure now that the planet core has stabilised, they can cover for his shifts.
Lan Huan persists, pinging him every so often. Lan Zhan would turn his feed off, if not for the fear that Wen Ning might try to message him again and he'll miss it.
It takes him 35 Sol Days to get to Qishan, which is 35 too many for Lan Zhan's liking but much faster than Lan Zhan has ever flown this distance before. He's not carrying a full crew and cargo, which makes the ship lighter, but means that Lan Zhan has had to carefully plan out his days to make sure that her needs are balanced with his.
He could have got there even quicker, he thinks, if he hadn't slept as much. But Lan Zhan knows that he needs to arrive ready to fight or help or... anything. The best he can do is shift to a polyphasic sleep pattern.
He slows Bichen down once he gets into the Qishan system, activating her cloaking system. It had been cutting edge once; he no longer knows if it is. But she is designed for stealth, her systems redirecting power into the cooling system to make her presence undetectable.
When he reaches the area indicated on the sonar map, he doesn't see anything and nothing's getting picked up on the scans. He's in the space between the orbits of Qishan's third and fourth planets, but both planets are on the other side of their orbits at the moment. He checks, and double checks, and checks again.
He doesn't understand. This doesn't seem like some sort of ambush for him – he can't see any other ships in sight and there's nothing around that someone could be hiding behind.
He tries to zoom in on the map that Wen Ning had sent, but it's low-resolution and doesn't give any more detail. It could indicate anything within a 100,000 km radius. He wishes that Wen Ning had just sent coordinates instead, surely there had been room in the message for coordinates.
Wait, surely there had been room for coordinates. So why the sonar burst?
Lan Zhan brings up his recording of it. It looks like a completely normal message aside from that. Was it a clue? He feels like he's reading into it too much.
Sonar, sonar. What is sonar? Using sound waves to detect things unseen.
Excitement rises up Lan Zhan's chest so quickly it feels like vomit. He surges upright, pacing around his cockpit as he thinks it through. Perhaps he's not supposed to be able to see Suibian. He's also travelling in a cloaked ship, after all. And if it's a good enough stealth system, it won't show up on scans either.
Sonar's perfect, because it's low tech. It's just sound waves that will bounce off something if it's there. Sonar's so low tech it's never been fitted into Bichen.
Lan Zhan is not an engineer, or a mechanic. He gets out his qiankun bag, where all of Bichen's spare technology is still stored, waiting for the opportunity he never got to give it to Wei Ying.
Lan Zhan knows his limits. He is an extraordinary cultivator, but innovation and creating new things doesn't come easily to him. What would Wei Ying do? he thinks at every turn to try and stimulate his brain into figuring it out. Between the existing scanners and the medical equipment and the survey tools meant for planet-side ground use, he can cobble something together.
It takes another full Sol day.
Lan Zhan suits up to take his contraption outside. It's made up of units plundered from several different machines, and Lan Zhan has bound it together with spiritual rope, it to him with another thread of spiritual rope, and finally himself to the airlock with yet another thread, more secure than anything physical he could find on his ship. This way, if he fumbles the awkwardly shaped machinery in his space suit and drops it, it won't go careening into space quicker than he can retrieve it.
He has to disengage the stealth mode in order to open the airlock, and then even when he's outside, the output from the machine will only show on the display inside the ship. Lan Zhan maps out quadrants of space, delineated by stars he can see in each section, and methodically scans outwards from Bichen, rotating around the front of the ship, and then 'above' and 'below', although naturally neither of those words have meaning in space, they're merely orientated relative to Bichen.
Lan Zhan doesn't know how long it takes him. Without a sun or moon to show him the pass of time, he finds himself mistrustful of his own senses. Perhaps it is an hour; perhaps it is a day. He doesn't find out until he finally finishes and hauls himself back inside the airlock.
Three hours, apparently. He hurries back into the cockpit, leaving his space suit discarded on the floor of his bridge, which is beyond appalling for him, who has kept his equipment so carefully maintained over his planet-bound years.
His ship computer is still rendering the data, confused by an input that it has never had to deal with before. But Lan Zhan sees it the moment the grid lines appear on the screen, curving into the shape of the nose of a spacecraft. He is glad now that Wei Ying has never changed the shape of Suibian; he recognises her body from its outline, the sleek ridges that stripe across her forehead, the way her wings pull back a bit further along than later models.
Wei Ying has been here, all this time, barely 1 kilometre from him.
Lan Zhan tries to signal Suibian. He gets no reply. He has to assume the worst, that Wei Ying is incapacitated and unable to work the controls of the ship because if Wei Ying could see him, he would surely recognise that Lan Zhan is in Bichen. That means that he has to force the door open somehow, without depressurising the ship, without damaging her, without even being able to see her properly. He scoots Bichen over slowly, letting her drift towards where the sonar revealed something invisible, and he can see start to see the outline of the ship. Not fully, but it's like he can see the distortion in the air out of the corner of his eye if he's not looking directly at it.
Lan Zhan is still thinking, still looking around seeing what other parts of Bichen he can dismantle to make something that will help.
He jumps when a ping comes through his comms system. Sonar.
"Record," he says quickly, and then waits in excruciating silence for whatever it is. Ping, says his speakers. Ping, ping. Whatever it is, the signal comes through slowly, sporadically, with large gaps in between. He pulls up the frequency data on his tablet as he waits to see if it keeps pinging and if it's another message somehow.
2, 3, 0, 1. 2, 3, 0, 1. 2301. 2301. The same four numbers keep repeating themselves. A code? A key? Lan Zhan tries 2301 on anything he can think of: he hails personal frequency #230.1; he sends the number 2301 to Wei Ying's personal frequency, he replies to the pings with 2301 back at them.
The pinging stops. The comms system alerts him to an incoming message attempt, and Lan Zhan opens up the channel as fast as he can.
"Access granted," chimes a soft voice. Not Wei Ying's. "Please dock."
And then it's gone again.
Lan Zhan waits, the unnerving feeling of having just been invaded by an unknown technology and presence in his own ship weighing down his bones. But the pings are gone, and so is the voice.
Bichen has the equipment to dock a tunnel with another ship. It's meant to be an easy, uncomplicated feature, but Lan Zhan has to suit up and stand on the edge of the tunnel as it extends to manually connect. He thinks he's caught Wei Ying's location correctly, but he's still aiming blind to some degree.
The extending edge of the tunnel clanks as it hits something, and Lan Zhan has to reach out with his hands to guide the tunnel into the right angle. Even if he can't see if very well, Lan Zhan is reassured the moment he reaches out his gloved hands and feels the smooth metal of a ship underneath his hands.
It's painstakingly slow as he pats across the body of the ship to find ridges or bumps that will give him a clue as to what part of the ship he's touching. He slowly adjusts the angle to align the edge of the tunnel with where the airlock opens; the tunnel clamps in place and forms a seal and he feels rather than hears the hiss of air out from Suibian.
The airlock door disengages. Lan Zhan steps inside gratefully, the interior of Suibian suddenly visible and familiar to him.
Relief threatens to bubble up inside him, but he swallows it down. Just because he's found Suibian doesn't mean anything. There's still something wrong with Wei Ying, otherwise he wouldn't be hiding here, not responding to Lan Zhan's summons.
Lan Zhan has always considered Suibian a modest sized ship, but now its multiple rooms flummox and frustrate him as he makes his way through in the darkness, the only light the one built into his space suit near the helmet. The emergency lights suddenly light up. No, they're gone again. No – Lan Zhan waits for it again. A strip of the tiny emergency lights that line the edges of the corridor light up, on and off, one after the other in a row.
Lan Zhan follows them.
Wei Ying is in the bridge. He's lying, unmoving, on a long table on the far side of it but Lan Zhan can recognise him even from the little he can see – one out-turned knee, the fall of his thin wrist.
"Wei Ying!" Lan Zhan hurries forward even as his eyes struggle to process what he's seeing.
There are wires attached to Wei Ying, snaking up to attach into the electrical circuits of the ship. And when Lan Zhan steps up next to him, his knees almost buckle. The wires cluster around his lower torso. His torso, which is cracked open, a hole the size of Lan Zhan's fist just under where his ribs are, right in Wei Ying's dantian.
Lan Zhan sways, and ends up clutching at the table to steady himself, accidentally brushing against Wei Ying's arm, which is there. The arm moves when pushed, the lolling motion of one asleep, not dead.
Not dead. Lan Zhan can start from there. Yes, he can see Wei Ying breathing, ever so slightly, the rise of his chest as he inhales. And he's not bleeding. He's not – the hole is not a wound, he realises eventually.
"Wei Ying, what did you do to yourself?" asks Lan Zhan in horror as he can scarcely bring himself to look. The hole is lined in shiny metal, the same as on Wei Ying's shins, and there's something happening in there, a light thrum of something moving. Energy, Lan Zhan realises as he stops his eyes from skirting the wires and finally looks inside and sees the glow emanating from it, energy whirling around until it gathers together like a tiny compressed sun, or, or, or a golden core.
Lan Zhan presses his fingers to Wei Ying's wrist and checks his qi flow. Wei Ying has always been abundant in qi, tapping into his flow feels like throwing himself into a river and being carried along with it. Now, it is like a stream after a drought, thin and slippery, all the way until Lan Zhan's qi hits Wei Ying's golden core.
He sees it with his own two eyes as the ball of energy, exposed to the air, swells with the addition of his power. Whatever happened to Wei Ying's golden core, whatever this is, it's Wei Ying's golden core now, connected to his qi flow as much as his old one was.
Lan Zhan rocks back onto his heels. This is unnatural. His entire soul recoils at how wrong it is. And yet, it's genius.
"Wei Ying," whispers Lan Zhan. He's so close. Wei Ying is right here. And yet, he doesn't know what to do, doesn't know how to help.
A light at Lan Zhan's eye level blinks at him several times in quick succession, and then turns off. He stills. Yes, there was something – is something – that has been guiding him, responding to him as he figured out the clues left behind. He could have fooled himself with thinking that it was automated, that they were set responses left behind to trigger when he did the right thing, right up until now.
"Wei Ying?"
The light blinks repeatedly again.
"Three blinks for yes," Lan Zhan says hoarsely. He doesn't know if it's relief or fear crushing his throat. Why, he wants to ask. How, too.
The light blinks three times.
Lan Zhan muffles the cry that spills out of his mouth. Wei Ying is here. Wei Ying is alive and responding to him and somehow controlling the ship. This is great. This is awful.
"How do I – What can – What do you need?" he asks, not sure which question is more urgent.
One light on the pilot dashboard blinks on. Lan Zhan follows it.
"Safety on," he reads from the small switch the light is for. "Safety on? I need to click this switch?" The light turns off. "No. Safety. Safe? Are we safe? Is that what you're asking?" Three blinks. "Yes, I think so. No one else in the sector when I arrived."
Suibian hums, and the ship comes to life. The overhead lights click on, and the air fills with hums and whirrs of various stations turning back on. Lan Zhan has to squint as his dark vision is ruined.
"It is good see you," garbles the ship's speakers.
"Wei Ying? Are you talking to me?" Lan Zhan whirls around to look at the actual Wei Ying's body. No, it lies on the table still.
"Affirmative. Yes yes."
Each of the words sound stilted and slightly off timing, like they've been cut out of pre-recorded audio files and pieced back together, like a glitching AI.
"Are you – all right?" It seems such a banal question. He's obviously not all right, he's lying on the table with a facsimile of a golden core lying exposed to the air.
"Repairs complete. Disengaging. Require help."
"Yes, of course. Tell me, whatever you need." Lan Zhan watches as Wei Ying shepherds him slowly through whatever 'disengaging' means. He clicks the switches that light up, he raises the temperature of the table – he hadn't even realised that the table was cold to the touch – he adjusts however much voltage is coming through the wires down one at a time under Wei Ying's guidance. He tries to take note of what it is he's doing, to understand how it might affect Wei Ying's body, but Wei Ying moves too fast for him.
"5, 4, 3, –" The speakers cut out.
When it would have reached zero, Wei Ying inhales. As in, his actual body inhales, loud enough that Lan Zhan hears it. And then his eyes flutter open, rolling around the room before settling on Lan Zhan. His mouth opens, the sound coming out of it so thin that Lan Zhan has to lean down to hear him. "Hey, Lan Zhan."
Lan Zhan is startled to discover that he's crying. He only realises when his vision starts going blurry, and then he sees himself dripping tears onto Wei Ying's chest. He's smiling too, his cheeks pressed so high on his face that his muscles hurt.
Wei Ying smiles too – a slow lopsided movement like he can't quite remember how to move his muscles – but Lan Zhan understands what it is immediately. Wei Ying has always smiled with his eyes.
Wei Ying is weak. Understandably so, and Lan Zhan doesn't even know how long he's been here. He's not sure Wei Ying should be sitting up, but Wei Ying tries on his own and Lan Zhan catches him around the torso when he wobbles. He doesn't mean to, but his hand presses in to the divot of Wei Ying's dantian, into the hole, into – nothing. He'd expected to feel the current of the gathered qi, but there's nothing there.
It feels rude to look, like he's peeking inside Wei Ying's body, but his eyes betray him and flick down. Nothing. It's just a cavity inside a metal bowl.
"Gone again," says Wei Ying ruefully. He's too quick not to have noticed Lan Zhan's reaction. He reaches down and slowly pulls a flap of fabric across his torso, attaching it the other side of his stomach.
Wei Ying must have had this body modification for a while, if his clothes have been changed to accommodate it.
"I'll explain, promise," says Wei Ying, his voice still a little hoarse. "But you need to set a course for Qinghe. Also, I need to pee, desperately."
Lan Zhan wants answers, but not more than he wants Wei Ying safe, comfortable. He helps him detach all of the wires apart from one, which Wei Ying leaves in, and helps him to the bathroom. And then he goes to find Wei Ying a blanket. Heat some water and find some food. Heads back into Bichen for long enough to put her on stealth mode and then disengage the tunnel. There's a pang in his heart as he leaves her – what if someone else finds her in the same way? But Lan Zhan will worry about that later. She is as hidden as Suibian was previously. He brings the spare fuel he'd brought with him. And then he sets a course for Suibian towards Qishan.
He hovers around Wei Ying until Wei Ying sinks gratefully down into the pilot's chair, Lan Zhan's blanket tucked fussily around his shoulders. He arranges food and water next to him, and putters around until Wei Ying reaches out and tugs at him to make him sit down.
The pilot's seat isn't really big enough for both of them, but Lan Zhan squeezes in one side and Wei Ying presses himself in close. Lan Zhan pulls him in closer yet, as close as he can before he starts worrying about bruising Wei Ying in his delicate state. He wishes they had got to do this for the first time under different circumstances.
"We have to go pick up the others. I had to leave them planet-side when we got discovered by one of the Jin branches. I flew away to draw them off. They kept on me until I burned through most of my fuel. Suibian's old, you know. Not fuel efficient anymore. I decided to try the hiding in plain sight thing, except to really stay off scans, I had to power Suibian off."
To power Suibian off would have meant no gravity control, no air, no heating. Wei Ying wouldn't have survived that, not unless he made a version of himself that didn't need those things.
"I pulled all of her power into me, and kept just enough rotating around the ship occasionally to keep things functioning."
"The golden core," says Lan Zhan.
Wei Ying nods, pressing a hand over it. "It's not a real golden core. I was just storing Suibian's power for her."
Lan Zhan is missing so many pieces of this – why Wei Ying is missing his golden core at all, how anyone could have come up with whatever technology is in his torso now, the sheer thought that must have gone into the idea of converting any natural energy into qi. But he doesn't want to press Wei Ying.
"I knew," says Wei Ying in a small voice, "that if I did this, I wouldn't have any way of reverting into my body without help. I let Wen Ning know where I was, but I didn't think anyone was going to find me before my body gave up. Inedia's not as effective without a golden core. But it was worth it, to protect the others."
"I would have come," says Lan Zhan. He's hurt, he thinks, that Wei Ying didn't reach for him across space. He's hurt, and he's aware that he doesn't have the right to be. Wei Ying was dealing with something so much more important than him.
Wei Ying laughs, his thin shoulders shaking. "You're planet-bound, Lan Zhan. You can't fly further from your planet than two days' travel or Cloud Recesses won't have enough cultivators to keep the planet from falling apart. Why are you here? Cloud Recesses is more important. If your planet disintegrates, it'll affect every planet in the entire Gusu system." Wei Ying's eyes grow wide as he finally realises what Lan Zhan's presence must mean.
"No, Cloud Recesses will survive," says Lan Zhan quickly. "The core is healing. The need for cultivators is less intense."
Wei Ying stares at him, white lipped, until Lan Zhan repeats it. "They can do without me. Cloud Recesses is safe. And I needed to find you. Wen Ning sent me a message to let me know where you were."
"And you came." Wei Ying closes his eyes and basks in it for just a moment. And then he begins to laugh. "Lan Zhan did you cruelly deprive all the other Lan cultivators of their chance to decrease their qi contributions?"
"And I would do it again," says Lan Zhan, blushing faintly. It was selfish of him. He acknowledges this. But he has contributed five, ten times more what most other cultivators have. Wei Ying needed him more.
They sit in silence for a little bit. Occasionally, Wei Ying's eyes unfocus, as he thinks of something and the ship responds, the heating turning up or the wormhole scanner turning on. It should unnerve him, thinks Lan Zhan as he watches it happen.
Wei Ying notices him watching – not because he turns his head, but because the panel of screens showing the internal camera displays demonstrate how the interior cameras have swivelled to look at Wei Ying. Yes, perhaps that is a bit unnerving.
"I'll unplug soon," says Wei Ying. "I just need to get used to having a physical body again. My limbs aren't as good at doing what I want them to do now I've got used to existing outside of my body. Or maybe it's that my body has expanded to encompass the ship, I'm not sure which one."
"Perhaps you need to eat," says Lan Zhan, and nudges the soup towards him.
The interior cameras move back to their intended position and Wei Ying substitutes it by turning his head, like he's just remembered that's the human thing to do, and presses his whole face into the side of Lan Zhan's neck.
It's not a kiss, not really. It's just the closeness of being able to touch, skin to skin.
"Did it hurt?" asks Lan Zhan, and even though he hasn't clarified what he's asking about, Wei Ying catches on.
"Like a motherfucker," he says, and the smile isn't all real. "But at least that meant I was numb by the time Wen Ning put the qi converter in."
"Wen Ning?" Lan Zhan had thought that Wen Qing was the doctor out of the two of them.
"He knows the most about cybernetic parts of all of us, since he's about 40% cyborg these days. I designed it and made it, but he's the best at grafting pieces onto bodies and making them feel like part of the body again."
Lan Zhan imagines them, the two Wen siblings and Wei Ying, huddled over a corner of their bridge, trying out untested technology by welding it into Wei Ying's body, not knowing if it would work.
"You know the really weird bit? If I move, I can tell that the space in my body where the golden core was, it's gone. But sometimes I feel the weight of this and it feels familiar. Better than when I had nothing at all there." Wei Ying rubs his hand over his abdomen thoughtfully. "Is it vain that every so often I see it, and think it looks ugly? I have a literal crater in my chest."
"You're not ugly," says Lan Zhan, his voice crackling like electricity. The force of it shocks him – and Wei Ying too, from the way he leans away, taken aback.
"You're – you," says Lan Zhan shortly. He's not good at these types of descriptions. "You're you whether you're in the body of the ship or in your body or five centimetres taller or five centimetres shorter. And I am grateful to see you again each time after you change."
Wei Ying laughs. "Oh, Lan Zhan. You're so angry!" He doesn't sound upset at all, which is what Lan Zhan would be if Wei Ying were angry at him. He tucks his legs up onto the seat, draped over Lan Zhan's own, and wraps his arms around Lan Zhan's neck and smacks a loud kiss onto his cheek. "Well, you're the only one whose opinion I care about, so that's all right then."
Lan Zhan's arms come up naturally to help balance Wei Ying as he pours himself in against all of Lan Zhan's crevices.
They sit, with the kiss undiscussed between them. Now that Wei Ying has done it once, even in jest, the air feels heavy with the possibility.
Possibilities. Lan Zhan has not let himself think about such things in so long, not when his people and his planet needed him. And he's not foolish enough to think that they don't need him still, but perhaps not so much. Not all of the time. Perhaps he is allowed to need things for himself.
He kisses Wei Ying before he can overthink it. Wei Ying gasps into his mouth, a little noise of surprise and delight and leans into him, his hands coming up to press cool against Lan Zhan's jaw. Wei Ying feels like spun steel under his hands; fragile and delicate but unexpectedly strong. Lan Zhan feels the rhythm of Wei Ying's breath swelling under the palms of his hands, feels the tips of Wei Ying's fingers dig into him like he has to make sure Lan Zhan is really there, feels the way he nuzzles his face around, trying to feel out what a kiss feels like from every angle against Lan Zhan's face. Like sonar.
They kiss until Lan Zhan is out of breath and he's subsiding on breathing in Wei Ying. He can feel Wei Ying pressing him back into the chair, crushing the air out of his lungs with the weight of him, and still he would not stop. They kiss until Wei Ying makes a small noise and Lan Zhan realises that he is crushing him back, the breadth of his hands encasing Wei Ying's ribcage as it struggles underneath him. He holds, to feel Wei Ying's body move on top of his for a moment longer, and then releases.
Wei Ying hisses, and bites his lip in retaliation. Lan Zhan smiles, hidden against Wei Ying's lips, and Wei Ying pulls back immediately.
"A smile!" says Wei Ying with delight, and stares at him. Memorising him, Lan Zhan realises, in the same way Lan Zhan has done each time they have parted their separate ways, waiting for the orbits of their lives to come around and let them pass again.
Perhaps it is not only Wei Ying who has changed in the years they have spent doing this pull and ebb; his have only been more immediately obvious. He wonders what changes Wei Ying has seen in him from the snapshots of their meetings.
"You should eat," he says eventually, and demonstrates how much of Wei Ying's waist fits in just his two hands.
"Fine," Wei Ying grumbles, and settles sideways against Lan Zhan's chest, and holds the bowl out for Lan Zhan to hold.
"Is this really all right?" asks Wei Ying quietly, later, when he has eaten and is blinking sleepily up at Lan Zhan, caught between the need to sleep and the desire to not let go of Lan Zhan. "It's hard to believe that Gusu Lan will be fine if their best cultivator just up and left."
"My brother is the best cultivator," says Lan Zhan automatically. And then he thinks about it properly; it's difficult to articulate all of his conflicting feelings. "One man cannot be so indispensable that the entire clan would perish without them. If I had fallen ill, or been killed, they would have found a way to cope without me. There are so many planets and systems that also need cultivating, it seems selfish to only care about the one we live on."
"So black and white," says Wei Ying, but it's with fondness as he reaches out and tucks a lock of hair behind Lan Zhan's ear. "I've always admired that about you. You have such a strong sense of what's right. You're wrong, of course. The world operates in shades of grey. But sometimes when I lose track of things, I think about you and I pick a slightly less dark shade of grey at least.
"The context is important. If Cloud Recesses collapses, it will wipe out at least three other habited planets and disrupt the orbits of all the others. Gusu Lan isn't hoarding the available cultivators out of spite or selfishness or lack of willingness to share. It's necessity."
This is something Lan Zhan has always admired about Wei Ying. His ability to empathise even with those he doesn't agree with. Lan Zhan does not have this ability, and he cares not to develop it.
"It was necessity," he agrees. "But it no longer is. It's been long enough that the planet's core is stabilising and the newest generation of disciples is strong enough to help. I think about you and remember to try to find the light in the dark."
Wei Ying stares at him for a very long time. Lan Zhan stares back, with nothing to do but bask in how much he feels for Wei Ying. He feels stuffed, bloated with the feeling, like he could live off it forever. Wei Ying huffs a soft laugh, as if he's thinking the exact same thing.
-
There are things to be done, eventually. They need to head back to Qishan and pick up the Wen siblings – and the rest of their family, as Lan Zhan discovers. They need to then fly back to Qinghe to pick up Bichen and fly her back to Gusu. There is a more efficient way to do this – Lan Zhan could head back to Bichen now, for example, but he's unwilling to entertain any options that don't involve travelling with Wei Ying now that he has waited so long to be able to do so.
He will need to have an actual conversation with his uncle and the elders. Lan Zhan has no illusions that the conversation will go well, given he has no intentions of doing anything apart from gift Bichen to his brother and then go live aboard Suibian with Wei Ying, but he can at least attempt to foster a line of communication.
And then they will move on to other planets, other systems, which need cultivators, skirting all of the places where the remaining Wen and Wei Ying are wanted criminals.
They make vague plans as they lie pressed together on Wei Ying's bed, whispered into each other's ears. The entire rest of the ship is empty, but neither of them mentioned Lan Zhan taking up another room. Wei Ying is cold, something in his body not regulating temperature. Lan Zhan holds him as he shivers.
"It's always like this," Wei Ying says apologetically. "I've never realised how much work my golden core did towards keeping me warm."
"What if I –" Lan Zhan reaches around, curling his fingers around Wei Ying's wrist and infusing him with qi of his own.
Wei Ying gasps, and Lan Zhan sees the fine hairs on his arm raise at the sudden change. The shivering stops almost immediately; he feels guilty he didn't think of this earlier.
"Lan Zhan, this is so much, you don't have to," says Wei Ying, except now that he's doing it, Lan Zhan has realised the possibilities.
"Wei Ying. If I give you enough qi, can you create a golden core? In your converter?" He remembers how the golden core had grown when he'd added his qi in when Wei Ying had been unconscious.
"I – hypothetically, yes," says Wei Ying. He speaks slowly, with reluctance, as if he has already thought of this and decided not to ask it of Lan Zhan. "It would take a lot though. And it wouldn't last. This was – is – a prototype, we haven't figured out how to make it work without at least some loss of energy in the conversion. So you could create a golden core for me, but it would get used up eventually, faster if I ever did any cultivation."
Lan Zhan sees why Wei Ying didn't want to ask. Wei Ying is wrong though. "Then I would keep replenishing it. And you can keep researching the technology to create a more energy efficient version."
"I can't ask that of you," says Wei Ying softly.
"I know. I'm offering."
Wei Ying squirms around in Lan Zhan's arms to face him. "Lan Zhan."
"Haven't you figured out by now that I would do anything for you?" Lan Zhan's heart is in his throat as he says it. This is more than they have ever said to each other before, feelings always previously couched in anecdotes or actions or implications. He feels uncomfortable saying something so directly and he can see Wei Ying equally uncomfortable hearing something so directly.
Wei Ying acknowledges it with a kiss. "I know you abandoned your planet for me," he says desperately, only half joking.
"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan, steering them back around to the conversation. "Let me. I used to power half the qi of a planet. Your golden core cannot possibly demand more than that."
Wei Ying laughs then, the sound wet with tears. "I've never said any of this aloud," he says, the tip of his cold nose rubbing little circles into Lan Zhan's shoulder. "I've barely even allowed myself to think about it. And now we're here. I always thought the best case scenario would be that after long enough, you would get tired of only seeing me once a year and move on to find someone else. Someone who could stay with you planet-side."
"How is that the best case scenario?" asks Lan Zhan, bewildered.
"Because then you'd be happy," says Wei Ying like it's obvious. "And then you wouldn't look sad every time we had to say goodbye."
Lan Zhan feels his heart break all over again, this time on Wei Ying's behalf.
He waits for Wei Ying to think about it, before silently moving Lan Zhan's hands and guiding them to his lower back. Lan Zhan kisses him back, and sends his qi forward. He watches, as the dim space between them starts to glow, a speck of light that grows and grows until it's an orb, hanging suspended within the metal curve in Wei Ying's chest. Lan Zhan feels Wei Ying's qi pathways fill, until the meagre streams turn into plentiful rivers.
When he removes his hands, the golden core remains there, stable. He goes to pass a hand through it and the frisson of qi, strong and warm, up his hand is also felt by Wei Ying, given his gasp.
Wei Ying stares down at himself for a long time. Long enough that Lan Zhan's arm that Wei Ying is lying on goes numb.
"Feels good," he says eventually, tracing one finger around the metal rim. "I have some ideas about how it could be improved, I think."
Lan Zhan smiles. "You always do."