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It hurt to breathe.
The pain on Lan Wangi’s back was like lines of fire torn through his skin, raw flesh and nerves exposed to the cold air. They throbbed with every beat of his heart. Every time he moved his back, his chest, his arms, the pain lanced through him and made him feel as if he were going to collapse. He hadn’t slept in days — the pain was too intense for him to rest.
He looked up bleakly at the moon hanging over Cloud Recesses. Its cold light made him feel even more alone, even though hundreds of disciples were swarming over the mountains around him. And as he looked over the mist-enshrouded trees, towards the main compound, he was reminded of a nimble, dark-clad figure leaping over the wall under that same moon, laughing and carrying a jug of Emperor’s Smile.
His heart clenched.
The pain would have been all right if things had turned out differently. If Wei Ying had survived, he could have borne the pain. If he had fled the Nightless City and was somewhere out there, hiding but alive, then Lan Wangji could have gladly tolerated anything the Lan elders had chosen to do to him. Nothing they could do to him — nothing — hurt as much as losing Wei Ying.
Not just losing him. Knowing he was gone. Completely gone.
They had struck him thirty-three times with the discipline whip — more times than anyone in his sect had ever been struck. Some of the elders were amazed that he had survived, especially since he had immediately dragged himself back to the Burial Mounds. He hadn’t cared if he bled until the back of his white robes were stained crimson. Hadn’t cared if his wounds festered. He had to go.
He didn’t remember the journey to the Burial Mounds at all — it was all but a miracle that he had managed to stay conscious on Bichen the entire time. But he remembered every second of his time there. He had scoured every corner of that dark wasteland for a trace of the man he loved — even though he knew it would tear out his heart if he found one.
When he returned to Cloud Recesses, he had ignored his brother when Xichen begged him to let his back be bandaged. He had locked himself in the Quiet Room, and played Inquiry until his fingers had bled. He had stretched his will across the world, to every spirit his guqin could reach… and he hadn’t found Wei Ying. Not even his soul remained — not even a fragment that Lan Wangji could reach out to, to assure himself that Wei Ying still existed somewhere out there.
He slowly lowered his dull eyes to the pale stones of the path in front of the Quiet Room. A shuddering breath escaped him, sending fresh pain burning over his back.
A part of him wished that he hadn’t survived the lashes. He knew it was wrong to want that… but if he had died, then at least he might be wherever Wei Ying was now. He wouldn’t be alone, facing the bleak, cold expanse of his life without Wei Ying in it.
Something hot trickled down his face. For a moment, Lan Wangji thought it was blood — but then he realized that it was a tear. Another tear followed. And another. He hadn’t cried in years — and no one except his brother and Wei Ying had ever seen him do it.
He wanted to curl up on the ground, scream into the crook of his arm, let sobs convulse his body until he was too exhausted to move. But the slightest movement of his torso caused his muscles to spasm, and the painful gasps that escaped him just made the spasms worse. He clutched the doorframe tightly, trying to will his ravaged body to relax enough that he wouldn’t be on the verge of spitting up blood —
“Wangji?”
He looked up through tear-blurred eyes to see a tall, white-clad figure standing in front of him. His brother.
“Your back is bleeding again,” Lan Xichen said sorrowfully, sitting down beside him. “Wangji, let me help. I brought some salve and fresh bandages.”
Lan Wangji shook his head slightly. The tears were still flowing freely from his eyes — and though it didn’t diminish the pain in his heart or body, it felt like the pressure in his chest was being released.
“How is Yuan?” he whispered.
Lan Xichen sighed. “His fever broke a few hours ago. He’s sleeping peacefully now.”
Lan Wangji closed his eyes. He had been clinging to the few things that reminded him of Wei Ying. Rabbits. The taste of Emperor’s Smile. The brand mark on his chest. And the toddler he had found hidden in a twisted tree in the Burial Mounds, feverish and crying, surrounded by the blood of his slaughtered family.
He would have rescued Yuan even if the child didn’t have a connection to Wei Ying. But he wouldn’t have fought desperately to keep him, to make him a part of the clan. Wei Ying had cared about the boy, and so Lan Wangji would keep Wen Yuan — or Lan Yuan — close to him, no matter what.
He suspected that many of the Lan elders believed that Yuan was his son. They probably thought Wei Ying had corrupted the perfect disciple into fathering a child with some random woman. They could think that if they wanted — Lan Wangji didn’t care what they thought, as long as he was allowed to keep Yuan.
He was fairly sure that Xichen had figured out where Yuan had come from, but if he had, he hadn’t said anything to anyone. Unlike some other people Lan Wangji had encountered, his brother wasn’t the kind of person who would endanger an innocent child by revealing he was a Wen.
He shuddered as Xichen touched the collar of his robes. “Don’t.”
“Wangji, you’ve bled through your robes again,” Lan Xichen said softly. “If you let them dry like that, your wounds will rip open when you change your clothes.”
Lan Wangji’s lips pressed together. “It doesn’t matter.”
His brother was silent for a moment, his hands lowering to his lap. The tears still blurred his eyes, so he couldn’t see Xichen’s face — but he knew that his brother’s face was filled with frustration and unhappiness.
“He wouldn’t have wanted this, Wangji,” Xichen said at last.
His heart felt like it was tearing in half. “Don’t. Don’t.”
His brother’s hand lightly landed on his arm, keeping away from the wounds on the backs of his shoulders. “Even after everything that happened between you… I don’t think he would have wanted you to let your wounds bleed and fester like this.”
Lan Wangji’s hands were gripping his knees so tightly that he could feel an ache in his fingers. “Don’t,” he whispered.
It hurt to breathe. Not just from the gashes that crisscrossed his back, or the burn on his chest. It hurt to breathe because he knew that Wei Ying was gone forever, his death celebrated by everyone except the man who had loved him. He had known Wei Ying more deeply than any of them had — his determination to do what was right, his love for his family, his strength and effervescence and the brightness of his smile that filled Lan Wangji with warmth.
And when the pain of his body healed, Lan Wangji would have nothing to distract him from the pain, and the loneliness, and the grief that was tearing his heart to shreds.
He knew that Wei Ying wouldn’t have wanted him to suffer. The other man had tried to help him when his leg was injured, and even wanted to carry him on his back. He had pried Lan Wangji from the jaws of the Xuanwu of Slaughter with his bare hands. He knew that if Wei Ying were here, he would be coaxing him to let Xichen bandage and salve his back… if he weren’t demanding to do it himself.
He grimaced as he slowly raised his trembling hands to the front of his robe, and peeled it down to his waist. More pain streaked across his muscles, but he forced himself to be silent.
Lan Xichen let out a sigh of relief. “This will hurt,” he said gently.
Lan Wangji closed his eyes, as his brother carefully washed the blood from his wounded back. Then came a salve that first cooled the hot, throbbing pain in his back, and them numbed his flesh slightly. Finally — and he nearly cried out from the pain of it — Xichen wrapped bandages from his lower back to his shoulders, enclosing his entire torso in white fabric. His brother hesitated over the still-fresh brand on his chest, before carefully salving that as well and covering it with the bandages.
“Do you need me to help you to your bed, Wangji?” Xichen said gently.
Lan Wangji raised his eyes back to the moon. His tears had dried sometime during his brother’s treatment of him, but the pain in his heart hadn’t abated.
“In a minute,” he said quietly.
There was one other thing about Wei Ying that still lingered in this world, he thought. It was intangible, unlike a child or a jar of liquor or a rabbit. It was the way he had tried to help others who had no one else to defend them or save them, even if the whole world was against him. They had destroyed him and cursed his name because he had chosen to save innocent people who couldn’t save themselves.
Lan Wangji closed his eyes. If he had to face a life without Wei Ying, he would try to do the things that the man he loved would have done. He couldn’t be the kind of person Wei Ying had been — he simply wasn’t the same kind of person — but he could live the kind of life that Wei Ying would have approved of and praised. He would protect people, save them, no matter whom he had to fight to do so — even if he had to fight everyone in the world, the way Wei Ying had.
It was a small thing. But it was all he could do.
He let Xichen help him up, half-carry him back to his bed, and carefully place him on his stomach. Then his brother knelt beside his bed, watching his face with gentle eyes.
“Do you want me to stay here with you for a while?” Xichen asked quietly.
Lan Wangji looked up at him. “Mn.”
“If you want to talk, then you can speak freely. Anything you want to say about Wei Wuxian… I won’t tell a soul.”
Lan Wangji was not a man who spoke of his feelings. Even when his mother had died, he hadn’t been able to speak of how he had felt to anyone except Xichen. He had known even as a child that no one except his brother would understand how much he loved her, and that he would never think of her as the despised outcast that the Lan sect treated her as. Just like Wei Ying.
In slow, broken sentences, he began to tell his brother about Wei Ying, about the consuming love that he had been hiding for all these years, and the emptiness that he was facing now. His brother held his hand tightly, listening to every word he spoke, and comforting him with what little reassurances he could find.
Even when the bell rang to signal that it was time to sleep, Xichen knelt by his bedside and listened. Only when Lan Wangji fell into an exhausted slumber, the first one in several days, did he rise and leave.