Chapter Text
For the first time in months, Wei Wuxian was actually awake to see the sunrise.
His stomach was a tight ball of nervous energy, his fingers fidgety against the threadbare sheets of the inn’s bed that he had tossed and turned in all night.
The second his bare feet hit the floor, he was pacing in his nightclothes. He was only a few hours walk from where he would meet Lan Zhan. Good news, but he was a full day early.
It was getting light, so Lan Zhan would be awake in Cloud Recesses. Likely meditating, preparing for another day as Chief Cultivator, unaware that Wei Wuxian was currently annoying the innkeeper below his room with his constant walking in circles and audible muttering to himself.
After half an hour of creaking each and every floorboard and swinging his hands, he exhaled with a puff. Nothing for it. He couldn’t spend the day wound up this tight.
He strode over to the room’s desk, where he had unceremoniously dumped out the contents of his pack the night before.
Talisman papers, cinnabar sticks, books and papers, random bits of fluff and crumbs, worn out extra clothes and bits of candy, dried chillies and bits of unfinished carvings that looked to be misshapen attempts at rabbits.
The only thing in the pack without something sticky on it was a stack of letters, carefully wrapped in cloth. Lan Zhan’s, mostly, a few from Sizhui with impertinent postscripts from Jingyi, a few from Wen Ning, one short but promising open invite from Jin Ling.
He fumbled for talisman paper. Unlike the Jin sect’s butterflies, his way was a little more… intimate. Once dry, he held the talisman to his lips and began speaking.
***
Lan Wangji rose far earlier than usual.
Meditation was difficult. He found himself without his typical focus in the morning, going through his routine without much awareness of his movements and finding himself fully dressed, breakfasted and ready for the day while it was still dark. It would be another hour before his first meeting.
Outwardly, few would notice any difference in his comportment.
Lan Wangji knew that his brother and uncle would know. Xichen would take one look and see that Lan Wangji was practically vibrating with tension. His Shufu would huff at his obvious lack of composure. One more day.
Lan Wangji slid open his doors, staring into the pre-dawn darkness. He should attempt to meditate again, or answer some of the less pressing letters on his desk that he had found himself significantly less diligent about answering as Wei Ying’s arrival grew closer.
Instead, he found himself simply staring to the east, willing the sun to rise, willing time to speed up.
Lan Wangji chided himself for his impatience; he knew there were important matters to tend to today, as there were every day in his new role.
Six months as Chief Cultivator had done very little to enamour him of the job. His days were full, and yet felt empty of meaning.
The one saving grace was receiving missives and requests for help from ordinary folk: townsfolk or farmers or merchants with urgent problems or longstanding issues which had been ignored for the sake of political manoeuvres under Jin Guangyao.
He often insisted on their importance as excuses to leave endless meetings with sects looking to shift borders, grudges and allegiances now that Jin Guangyao’s death had left power vacuums everywhere and an endless list of promises, contracts and favours unfulfilled.
His uncle continually reminded him that the gratitude of villagers was not enough to maintain the alliances and funds needed to sustain the cultivation world.
These had to come from the cultivation clans themselves, and their willingness to contribute was apparently contingent on their right to blather incessantly until Lan Wangji was ready to snap.
Many cultivators seemed to take his immovable face as a challenge, or his silences as an invitation- they had to talk more, embellish more outlandishly, fill the nervous quiet with bombastic claims and ridiculous accusations.
Lan Wangji returned to the Jingshi every night exhausted, not in his body but … emotionally. It felt strange to acknowledge this after decades of discipline to pretend this wasn’t the case.
He felt numb and deadened, often lighting only one candle and sitting in the near-darkness and silence, too depleted to practice guqin or answer letters or do anything at all.
He wondered if Wei Ying, someone so unmasked that he wore every emotion on his face, had been the reason he’d started to find his own mask so stuffy.
But more than that… he was lonely. Lan Wangji had spent thirteen years without Wei Ying, thinking of him every day. His death had been a constant drag on his soul, but over time, it became a blunted ache.
Keeping busy had become second nature, so once Wei Ying had left on his travels, being Chief Cultivator should have fit in easily with this already familiar way of coping. But it didn’t.
Lan Wangji watched the dawn begin and closed his eyes, memories flashing.
***
Wei Ying had woken up screaming, again. He tried to stuff his pillow into his mouth to muffle himself, to not wake Lan Wangji up, again.
His guest bed in the Jingshi was soaked with sweat. And as Lan Wangji had rushed to him, grasping his shoulder, Wei Ying had looked away, again. Lan Wangji was a dignified man, but he was close to pleading.
Talk to me. Tell me what the dreams are about.
Wei Ying’s sad smile and watery laugh had no humour in them.
“Everything. They’re about everything, Lan Zhan.”
Lan Wangji tried. But every time he came back to the Jingshi in darkness after another day of exhausting meetings ran long, every time he came back dejected and turned away from the Hanshi because his heartbroken brother still couldn’t face anyone, and every time a peaceful dinner with Wei Ying was interrupted with another urgent messenger from a sect demanding an audience, he looked up to see that look on Wei Ying’s face.
Resigned. As if another nail was being hammered into place.
Lan Wangji arrived home to the Jingshi one night, five weeks after the death of Jin Guangyao, to find Wei Ying had packed a bag. Wei Ying’s eyes were downcast. He twisted his hands as he spoke.
“I just think I need some time.”
Lan Wangji stared at the bag, jaw clenched, not moving.
“Lan Zhan…”
His voice was quiet, serious. Lan Wangji hated it.
“You and me, we spent those days after I came back chasing down leads and fighting for our lives and unravelling it all and I couldn’t catch my breath for a moment but… it’s been over a month now and the dust is settling, and I still don’t know where it all leaves me. You have this whole big thing you need to do, and you need to be here for your brother. But I don’t know what to do now, what I’m… here for.”
Lan Wangji said nothing. His heart was in his throat, a lump forming. He knew, he did. He understood that Wei Ying could not just be here for him. That was just a fantasy, not a whole life for a whole person.
It was especially not enough given he saw Wei Ying for at most a few hours every day, when he was at his most tired and drained from sect politics and petty power plays.
Wei Ying was beloved by the Juniors, but Sizhui was gone with Wen Ning, and between the others’ classes and duties he had spent most of his days wandering and bored and trapped in his memories, which were coming back first in a trickle and then in a flood.
He should have done more. He should have not accepted the job and done whatever it took to let Wei Ying heal and find purpose and work through everything. But in his heart he knew: only Wei Ying could do that for himself.
He tried to keep his face careful and blank, but it must not have worked.
Wei Ying’s hand was on his shoulder. His voice had dropped to just above a whisper.
“You are…the best thing about this life, zhiji. Nothing changes that. But I can’t let you be the only thing. I need to go find some other good things and...work out how to deal with the bad things. With all this time I’ve had to remember it all…” He scrunched his eyes shut. “The bad things are winning out right now.”
Lan Wangji met his eyes. Wei Ying looked fragile and sad.
He knew. The few times he heard Wei Ying forming words in his sleep, they were always heartbreaking apologies to people who had long since died. Every part of him wanted to rage and fix it for him.
But each time he had held Wei Ying in the dark as he violently shook through the aftermath of another nightmare, he could feel Wei Ying withdrawing further, determined not to need him like this.
He couldn’t reach him there, in that place where he couldn’t accept why anyone would want to help him, let alone love him. He knew he should have said more about how he felt, but he could feel that Wei Ying was not ready.
Lan Wangji took a breath that was shakier than he wanted. He was determined too. He would not be his father.
He knew the difference between want and need, and knew that Wei Ying wanting to come back to him because he was well and free was infinitely better than Wei Ying needing to stay because he was too scared and hurting to do anything else.
It didn’t make watching him decide to leave hurt any less. He hated knowing that it was best for Wei Ying to be without him for a while, that Wei Ying coming back to life was not a straightforwardly joyful second chance.
The next morning Lan Wangji walked him to the edge of the Cloud Recesses territory and watched him go.
Wei Ying turned to him and put on his brave smile, and made a twitching move with his hand as if he wanted to touch his face, but thought better of it. He swallowed and looked in Lan Wangji’s eyes.
“I will come back, Lan Zhan. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but I’ll always come back. And I’ll write. I’ll figure out ways to annoy you that you won’t even think are possible from a distance.”
His smile was crooked now.
Lan Wangji took a deep breath. “Be safe. And come back, Wei Ying.”
The words he meant were unsaid. He’d have to live with that, again.
Wei Ying didn’t look back.
***
Lan Wangji had spent six months not knowing whether Wei Ying would be gone for six years.
Wei Ying did write, faithfully, often, his words on the page exactly like words from his mouth: rambling, full of exaggerations and funny stories and observations of the world and avoiding anything too detailed on where he was or whether he was eating well and not drinking too much.
He was eking out his living night hunting- though his letters often mentioned taking payment only in meals, wine and places to sleep, and Lan Wangji doubted he had used the silvers he slipped into his pack. Lan Wangji had to stop himself with every letter from asking when he would come back.
Until a week ago, when he finally had a precious few hours and enough energy to practice the guqin in the evening.
At the exact moment he decided to play Wangxian, a talisman materialised in front of his eyes and began, to Lan Wangji’s shock, babbling in Wei Ying’s voice.
Unlike the Jin butterfly messages, which could only pass on a few words, Wei Ying had somehow figured out how to contain an entire multi-page letter’s worth of words into his.
Lan Wangji listened to his love mutter incoherently for a full minute about whether the talisman was working or not (“Wait… is it? No, that brushstroke is wrong… Hang on, oh wait …no it is working!”) and then:
“Ah! Lan Zhan, I think you can maybe hear me now! It’s me, I hope this works, let me know if it does! Do you like my new invention? I told you I’d figure out new ways to annoy you from a distance, haha! I figured out how to extend the time limit and scope of voice magic, took me weeks but I think I’ve got it! I’m not sure when this will run out but if I’m right I should have a couple of minutes…”
“Well… this is a little strange. I thought it would be easy to talk to you like this because I’m always prattling in your face and you hardly say a word but without you actually here listening and looking at me it’s not the same.”
He heard Wei Ying take a breath.
“Well…anyway, I made this because I wanted…”
Wei Ying cleared his throat.
“I want to hear your voice. Um…So, you have to do the same characters as for a normal voice message, but mix some of your saliva in the ink you use for all the downward strokes, and then breathe on it to dry it and then it works best if your lips are right up against it when you talk! So…can you send me one? Tell me it worked? Pleeease? I won’t move until you do. This inn is boring and their wine is no good anyway.”
Lan Wangji smiled, practically hearing Wei Ying pout against the talisman paper.
Wei Ying seemed to hesitate, and he cleared his throat again.
“So… um, I also wanted to ask you if I can come back to Cloud Recesses for a visit? I’m about a week away… can I come on the day of the next new moon? I’ll hike over that cliff and come down to you. I should have given you some more notice I guess, but I kept thinking I’d figure out this voice talisman thing earlier and I wanted to tell you this way. I hope that’s ok? Tell me if the timing isn’t good and I’ll come later, whenever you want. I have a lot of things to tell you…”
Lan Wangji stared at the talisman, barely breathing.
“Okay well… I hope I didn’t interrupt any important late night meetings. If I did, I hope you aren’t still sitting there letting everyone listen to me, and if you are, then this is probably pretty embarrassing for you.”
Lan Wangji could hear Wei Ying giggling mischievously.
“Ah, I think it’s about to run out of time. Can you tell me exactly when it runs out and you stop hearing me? It’s important for my research. Is it now? Or is it……now? The second now? Oh, well now I’ve said a third 'now', oh… well, that’s two more 'nows' so that’s confusing. Wait. How about…Rabbits! Was it when I said rabbits? That would be funny if that were my last word. Ah… it’s definitely stopped working now. I don’t think this can hold any more sound so I’m just basically kissing a piece of paper at this point…Ah. Ok yeah. It’s definitely done.”
A pause, a sigh.
“I miss you.”
Lan Wangji realised he was clutching his guqin so hard he was about to snap a string.
“You’re not still hearing me, are you? I’m just talking to myself.” Wei Ying groaned softly.
“This is silly. I don’t know why I’m still talking to no one…I can’t wait to see you. I’ve missed you every day, Lan Zhan. So much.”
He exhaled. “So, so much.”
Lan Wangji heard Wei Ying take a quavering breath.
“Lan Zhan, I-”
The talisman fell to the floor and disintegrated.
He sat, unmoving, back straight as a board. Wei Ying was coming back to him.
***
Lan Wangji’s only disappointment was that he could not replay the message, unlike each of Wei Ying’s letters, which he had reread so many times they had no trace of the folds from being sent, and all of which he kept under his pillow, rolled tightly and tied with a red ribbon.
Lan Wangji prepared a reply, careful to follow Wei Ying’s instructions, right away. He thought of Wei Ying sitting impatiently (and almost certainly improperly) in some cheap inn waiting for his voice to come. He was impatient too.
He stared at the talisman and raised it to his lips. He waited a beat, breathing softly against the page, the texture tickling his lips.
He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but the talisman seemed to be humming a little. His heart was beating quickly.
“Wei Ying. Message worked. A week will be suitable. I will see you then.”
He took a breath, and prepared to lie for the sake of Wei Ying’s dignity, and tell him that his message had cut off at “Rabbits.”
He paused, his breath hitching. He hated lying.
“Miss you too. Every day. So much.”
He sent it.
***
Lan Wangji watched the dawn light brighten the sky from indigo to pale blue to orange, his mind lost in the fog of the last six months without Wei Ying. One more day. He did not like feeling this…distractible, disconnected from what was happening around him.
Over the last week, they had traded voice messages every night. Lan Wangji’s message must have arrived successfully, because in Wei Ying’s reply he sent that same night he was laughing and sounded relieved.
“Lan Zhan, it’s really only going to be a week until I see your face!”
Every night, Lan Wangji had distractedly played the guqin, stilling at every rustle of wind or flicker of candlelight in case it was another message.
He began cutting off later meetings at the first hint of dusk, unwilling to let talismans materialise anywhere inconvenient and let anyone else overhear Wei Ying’s voice begin his nightly babbling about what he’d been doing that day and how it would be only six, five, four, three, two more days.
He had wondered if he should invite Sizhui to wait and listen to a message, but he informed him of Wei Ying’s imminent arrival and he seemed excited enough with that. Lan Zhan knew he shouldn’t guard the messages so jealously, but he wanted them to himself.
One more day, please let Wei Ying be safe for one more day…
A talisman appeared. Immediately, Lan Wangji was alert, eyes wide and breath held. This was the first time he’d received one in daylight.
Wei Ying’s voice sounded a tad husky from sleep.
“Lan Zhan! Good morning. Um, sooo, I’m a little early, there’s no rush but I’m just going to start making my way to you and I wondered if-”
Lan Wangji was on his sword before the talisman even finished speaking.
***