Chapter Text
Flowers Sprinkled With Blood/Blood Sprinkled With Flower Petals
For Haoppopotamus (wangxianbunnydoodles)
It was nothing but pure coincidence that found Lan Qiren exiting the library right at the moment his punished nephew erupted in a violent coughing fit. Naturally, if he had just heard him without bearing witness or given himself a moment to reflect about it before taking action—if it was any other disciple than his younger nephew—and perhaps even him, if he was even slightly less rattled—he would have simply recommended at the punished party to visit the physicians once his disciplinary action was done and moved on… However it was Wangji and he found himself rooted on the spot.
He was right to be concerned, what he had taken as a mere coughing fit (Wangji had still managed to remain in position, the disciplinary rods not lowered a single cun) continued for long moments, Wangji’s sternum—his whole body—shook like a leaf, hoarse sounds turning wetter and wetter….
—Wangji who hasn't been sick not even a single day in his life—not even as tiny A-Zhan, who spent hours upon hours kneeling outside his late mother’s door, in the snow and heavy rain, without even the help of a formed golden core to sustain him--
…until—Heavens!—it culminated in a final fit with blood spraying forth, painting his nephew’s mouth and chin, even failing down on his robes…
That was it, Lan Qiren had enough.
He wasn’t going to stay still while Wangji suffered a Qi deviation.
Qiren couldn’t stand even thinking about it; he grabbed his nephew’s wrist — not a major imbalance on the Qi flow but not quite normal either — and he took to racewalking towards the infirmary. Wangji, being aghast either by the sudden malaise or his own atypical reaction, didn’t put up any fight. He followed him dazetly, even submissively, and that terrified Lan Qiren most of all……
“Find the Sect Leader and tell him he’s needed at the infirmary,” he all but barked at the first disciple he found on the way.
“Shufu!?” Wangji sounded utterly scandalized and almost openly irritated, far closer to a normal state than his dazed spell, which made Qiren’s own breathing ease the tiniest bit. They were going to deal with the problem, whatever it was.
It was only after they reached the infirmary that Qiren got a closer look at the bloodstains on his nephew’s robes that he took an even greater shock. It wasn’t just blood that sullied A-Zhan’s pristine robes, some of the reds were actually flower petals, flower petals from red lotuses if his eyes weren’t mistaking him, to be exact. Qiren froze.
“Wangji!” Xichen had found them just in time to be equally horrified, the risk of a Qi deviation, even small, was bad enough—this was something worse.
It wasn’t a story they would ever willingly share outside their clan but every single Lan by blood had heard about it as a child, as something between a cautionary and a fairy tale, why they needed to restrain themselves for all their propensity for love. Why love without measure could be deadly for them….
—How Lan Bai, courtesy name Biming, fourth son to Lan An (and the most spoiled) grew restless and wanderlusting in his longing to meet his own fated one and had left the newly built Cloud Recesses to find her.
How he had traveled all over the world, even down to Dongying, how he had met a Dongying Samurai girl and had loved her with his entire being but she was engaged and he left to not dishonor her. How he returned in Cloud Recesses deadly sick and spewing flowers, utterly expecting to die from it.
(Healers, then and now, couldn’t find neither an explanation nor cure)
How Matsumoto Ichika couldn’t accept this and had thrown her honor to follow him home, dodging her father’s wrathful retainers and traveling millions of Li to be with Lan Biming—her a woman alone even with her high education and her form of cultivation, it was a miracle that she —indeed— found him even belatedly as she did.
How she had found Lan Biming, nearly three years later, right at the death’s door and had thrown herself at his feet, how the man with the destroyed lungs and squashed heart—surviving so long only due his golden core—had become able to breath good as new not even a month after their reunion — the physicians not finding even a trace of the cursed flowers in his lungs or bloodstream.
How the cursed affliction (not exactly a curse for no cultivator nor healer in all their generations had been able to deal with it as such) kept reappearing every few generations and taking its toll, for not everyone had been lucky like Lan Biming. For some—very few, Thank Heavens—it had been nothing more than a lingering excruciating death.
Lan Qiren glanced towards Lan Xichen and his nephew did the same with something like pleading, both looking away almost at once. They were both all too well aware of the stakes as well the recipient to say a single word. Wangji was now with healer Lan Baozhai, and they were going to have a time estimation at least.
Neither had Wangji said a single word, either in sorrow or with shame, but he had met his eyes without shame almost in pure defiance-—-looking for once exactly like his father, when he presented the bloodied gentian to the elders, when they had come for that woman’s head.
(Qiren had been as shaken as the rest of them, back then, but his opinion had changed over the years. —Mere acceptance had never been enough to apeace the affliction, there were at least three separate cases that had died a scant few years after their wedding, it had to be wholehearted love or nothing else, and it was all but apparent that that woman loathed his brother to her dying day. More to the point his foolish brother had supposedly lived with this all nine years of their marriage—and ten after—. For all his incredible cultivation there was no way he would have survived that long if he had indeed had the affliction, he had deceived them all to save her life)
Lan Qiren would have suspected that his equally foolish and passionate nephew would have tried to pull the same trick to save Wei Wuxian but no, even if he hadn’t been a witness to this, Wangji—his little A-Zhan—wasn’t capable for such a deception.
Xichen’s heart trembled in his chest and it took every single scrap of his discipline to not allow the trembling to show on his hands. His baby brother was dying.
His baby brother was dying from love, it may not happen today or tomorrow or maybe not for a few years, but it was going to happen all the same. The only thing capable of stopping it was if Wangji was loved by Wei Wuxian.
Lan Xichen had very mixed feelings towards Wei Wuxian.
In the early days, when he was here for lessons, he quite liked the spirited boy, primarily for all those feelings he had inspired to his brother—as well pulling him out of his shell (Xichen was always going to feel grateful for that)—as well generally enjoying his mischievous nature, maybe a tad too mischievous for Cloud Recessess, but enjoyable none the less….
War reshaped everyone, most of all Wei Wuxian.
Lan Xichen was never going to tell anyone, not even his sword brothers — and definitely never Wangji — but there was something like atavistic terror inside him every time he saw Wei Wuxian bring his demon flute to his lips, every time he saw him totally devastate a battle….He wasn’t going to forget what he had seen not even if he wanted (and he wanted it, desperately) .
—and that was the man that his brother loved…
Wangji insisted that for all the harsher temperament Wei Wuxian—his Wei Ying (even if had far too much decorum to call him so in front of him) — remained very much the same person. Xichen himself had seen enough, even right before everything blew up, to recognise a great deal of truth to this.
So, Wangji’s wish to bring Wei Wuxian in Cloud Recesses to protect him and cure him from his resentful energy addiction was concerning but very acceptable to him, both for brother’s happiness (always his first concern) and as a chance to peacefully correct a source of corruption before things escalated (what should have been his first concern).
But now the stakes were very different, it wasn’t just A-Zhan’s happiness but his very life. The question whether Wei Wuxian could love—or learn to love—Lan Wangji became of the essence not merely an ideal solution.
Xichen was ashamed to admit—though not regretful—that if it actually came to this he cared infinitely more whether his brother lived or not than whether Wei Wuxian ever deigned to return at the righteous path or not, it was utterly inconsequential to him at this point.
Their uncle may see things differently, even believing that Wei Wuxian was already lost to them and irredeemable, making even attempting it an insult to Wangji’s dignity but Xichen himself didn’t care. It was hypocritical and despicable but he really didn’t.
So what if Wei Wuxian refused to take up again the sword, he himself had seen his face light up like the sun at the mere idea to see Wangji and it was only due his own insistence to return on the righteous path that had seen all that warmith extinguished. He would have gone for very different choices just now.
So what if the dead Jin soldiers from the Qiongqi Path were seeking their own justice, Xichen was regretful over what had befallen them but there was a good possibility their hands weren’t that clean in the first place. He believed A-Yao who had told him that from all the information he had it was a camp for Wens’ most powerful but he had also been there at the Banquet Wei Wuxian’s frantic worry and concern about Wen Ning had been nothing short of utterly genuine.
It was also equally established that Wen Ning ended up dead that night and no matter how many people had called Wei Wuxian unbalanced he frankly doubted the young Wen had died at his hands. More so, he had Wangji’s own witnessing that while Wen Ning was terrifyingly powerful, as a fierce corpse, Wei Wuxian’s work had restored him to his living sweet and timid personality and that was nothing short but the work of the most devoted friend.
Honestly while many people—Xichen among them—considered Wen Ning’s current existence a crime against very nature it wasn’t a crime he would wish rectifying, if the price was his brother’s life.
Wen Qing: while as far as Mingjue was concerned she had been Wen Ruohan’s enabler, allowing him to live and pursue the war, when he could have died years earlier, as well leading a Supervisory Office she was also more of a loving sister than a devoted Wen subject and she refrained from giving in the Jiang siblings during their time of need (or at least that he had gathered from Jiang Wanyin’s scant explanations) Mingjue didn’t consider it quite enough to buy clemency in light of her crimes but Mingjue could sit on it as far he was concerned…
There was still the matter of the Wen cultivators (Wangji had said he seen only old and civilians but it could simply be that Wei Wuxian didn’t allow him to see them) and he couldn’t believe there were none—for what would be the point to have a work camp with old civilians, one must be insane from resentful energy—like Wen Ruohan had been, a monster.
—And whatever else may be called Jin Guangshan was very much sane.
No, it was far more in character to Wei Wuxian, twisted though he had become, to also take the infirm relatives to those he had already saved, that one he could believe.
There could still be problems if those liberated Wens were heavy war criminals and—according to A-Yao’s sources—that camp held the worst of the worse… Still, as far he was concerned, they could be all that and he was still willing to take the fail, if it came to this. They could even be among those that had burned Cloud Recesses and he was still going to demand clemency on their behalf. Wens had taken from him more things that he cared to count they—alive or dead—weren’t going to take Wangji as well.
He would rather spit blood himself and be shamed, or answer to their ancestors, than bury his brother.
Lan Wangji allowed Lan daifu to examine him while his mind worked furiously in finding ways to deal with his condition.... He wasn’t truly surprised that this had happened to him, he was already aware that he loved Wei Ying well beyond measure, the only question of some note was: ‘Why now?’
The only answer he could come with this was the feeling of permanence that had settled in his soul the moment he saw Wei Ying with A-Yuan in his arms. Everything before, even their common oath, had some transience to it. For all the intensity of his feelings all they could be to each other, friends, comrades, even zhiji held peripheral places to their lives and nothing—not even the wild imagination that Wei Ying could someday respond to his feelings—looked like it could lead to their own personal road…
...And yet, everything changed that dusty day in Yiling, Wei Ying with that sweet little child in his arms that called his own culminated all his dreams, even those he hadn’t yet dared to make.
A child, a family with Wei Ying, a way for him to keep his oath to something that felt more than mere afterthought to the rest of his everyday life …
That frankly eventual day he had seen his future as he wanted—as he needed—it to be, not as it was already shaped.
It didn’t change anything, Wei Ying didn’t love him and all the same he regarded him too much, as his friend, to ask him to risk his own standing to help them. Wangji himself had done his best, from the position he was, and had talked with his brother.
For the first, and hopefully the last, time Xiongzang had utterly disappointed him. Firstly he had explained that this couldn’t officially concern Gusu Lan, it was a problem mainly concerning Yunmeng Jiang and Lanling Jin not anyone else. When Wangji had protested that all those people Lanling Jin made such a huge fuss about it were just a handful of old and infirm his brother had looked at him sadly and told him that it didn’t agree with his own report, he had probably not been allowed to see them…
Wangji had never felt such helpless resignation, sour bitterness had risen to his mouth (even more choking than the flower petals that now dominated his taste) and he had been unable to find his words, like he was facing a stranger and not his brother. Never before Xiongzang had treated him with such placid condescension, not even as a child, it was like his love for Wei Ying had transformed him in their eyes (his brother and uncle) to something less than himself, something feeble.
It hadn’t stopped him from trying, his attempts to talk on Wei Ying’s behalf had led to more and more punishments from his uncle (he didn’t mind) to more and more condescending and pitying looks from his brother (that he actually minded) but he kept insisting, he wasn’t going to stop—not for anything.
-—-And now this had come in his life. Wangji honestly didn’t want to deal with it, the mere thought that Wei Ying could learn of this, that he would some how blackmail Wei Ying to try and love him was more sickening than his family treating him like a feeble child, more sickening than the war and all its brutalities, the mere thought of it was unbearable.
But still, the poisonous thought was still there, the insidious whisper... That his impossible dream—all his dreams—were now within his grasp:
That if there was someone that could willingly change his very self to help a friend, if someone could fall in love with a friend to save their life that was Wei Ying, his heart was huge enough for it.
Wangji shuddered with revulsion like if Mara himself had whispered to his ear. He was Lan Zhan, courtesy name Wangji and he was better than this, his love for Wei Ying was better than this and he would rather throw himself at Bichen than rape him in whichever way…
But willing to ignore it or not the family affliction was here, affecting him, his days were now numbered. Maybe this will be enough for his family to give his words some consideration, maybe this will be a way to protect him— to protect them all —better than before. It wasn’t in his nature, nor had any wish to deceive, but his truths, His Truth, may be heard better this time.
If not... There were options for this as well, tradition was on his side. No one with Lan blood would ever think to censure him if he chose to spend the last of his days at his beloved’s side, in whichever capacity. He was Hanguang-jun, he had earned that title, his word held weight in the outside world he could lend that weight to Wei Ying. Hopefully it will be enough to keep him safe.
Maybe, if he and his family of choice were indeed out of danger, Wei Ying would feel safe enough to let go of the resentful path and return to the sword and outside of everyone’s censure and contempt. If he managed to accomplish this Wangji was going to go utterly content to his deathbed.
Wangji and the healer returned, Wangji looking far too serene for someone that had received the news he had, (not his usual calm but something far deeper) it filled Lan Qiren with terror.
“Wangji?” he asked with the kind of terror that sounded like anger.
“Wangji is sorry for worrying Shufu, Xiongzhang. Wangji is not to die today.” his dry voice wasn’t utterly without emotion, and even some actual regret, but Qiren still buried the urge to scream at him.
Only then Lan Baozhai stepped forward, in a normal day Qiren respected her medical knowledge and quite approved her unpresuming and reserved nature, right this moment her second quality was driving him up the wall.
“Well?” He nearly barked.
“Lan-er-gongzi knows his own body indeed, we are but in the start. His Qi may shape small amounts of his blood into lotus petals but there are no leaves no shoots and definitely no roots, all symptoms are nothing but Qi actualization at this point. With the right kind of diligent meditation he can keep the creation of growths for two, three, five years, maybe even more if the discipline he’s known about holds on…”
“Could it be...” Xichen sounded hesitant and not entirely heartened from the first kind of hopeful news they had heard since they stepped foot into the infirmary.
Wangji shook his head. “I’m sorry Xiongzhang,” his voice sounded so very, very gentle.
Xichen flinced.
Qiren himself felt like the walls were closing on him. Not Wangji, not his little, A-Zhan... His brother had attempted to be a father the first year of Xichen’s life, his little A-Huan and just as precious, but A-Zhan had been placed right in his hands from the very start he couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, it was beyond him.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Xichen was now saying. “Only that it may have been brewing for years and was just slow in appearing,” a pause, “I wouldn’t, I won’t ask you to live with it if there can be the natural solution.”
“I understand, brother.” From Wangji who guarded his words more than silver that was both appeasement and apology.
“So......” Xichen wore his professional smile, slightly forced but—to Qiren’s trained eye—definitely more genuinely warm than what he put on business.
“We need to reintegrate the Wens into cultivation society, maybe even give them refuge into Cloud Recesses.” in the last sentence his eldest nephew’s voice was utterly forced.
Qiren understood. While it was an utterly acceptable price compared to Wangji’s life (and even happiness) none of those present were ever going to forget and even less forgive the burning of Cloud Recesses...
Wangji definitely wouldn’t, he knew this, but...
...To have Wens here sounded very much like a sacrilege.
Wangji was regarding Xichen with his own version of understanding, patient stare.
“Non combatants, eldery, doctors,” Wangji was gently insisting, “None of these people hurt our home, Xiongzhang.”
Well, except Wen Qing who spied on them and very probably reported their defence arrays…. But to ask for her head was to incite the Yiling Patriarch’s rage, his friendship with the Wen siblings was an unassailable fact…
Definitely not worth the exchange with Wangji’s life...
Xichen looked ready to refute this, still incapable to believe that if it was so they would have prosecuted them in the first place, but Qiren sighed and shock his head.
Xichen may have been idealist but Qiren knew better: Jin Guangshan—and people like Jin Guangshan—would have done this just because they could.
‘But then, if you suspected this, even if just you considered him capable why did you keep silent when word of what happened in those camps came around? Where is your Righteousness?’ Qiren could practically hear those words in Wei Wuxian’s voice, his eyes—so much like hers—judging him.
Lan Qiren didn’t have an answer to this, not one that could be considered righteous in deed not just in word. It was the easy answer that the Wens had gone so far that whatever happened to them was automatically righteous, some part of him was viciously pleased with that answer.
So many of their youth had been cut down by the Wen, children that he had taught personally (to say nothing about his brother) nothing was ever going to make those deaths right. And yet, if he had to ponder this facing some kind of mirror, he would have never been able to claim the money the Jin Sect had donated for the restoration of his home had absolutely no bearing to his decision…
‘Coward!’ He could practically hear Wei Wuxian calling him so, virtually seeing the characters shaped on his mouth, that same mouth smilingly mocking him... Sometimes he wondered if Wangji’s eyes also judged him...
Same, and even more complicated, about Wei Wuxian: he was just fifteen when he first spoke about controlling resentful energy and less than a year later he had executed it, it should have been an easy answer. What could have been more evil than disrespecting the dead, there shouldn’t have been any kind of question (Never mind that if he hadn’t done so, today, he and everyone he cared about would have been dead—and even more disrespected at Wen Ruohan’s hands) .
Wei Wuxian was still just fifteen the first time he addressed his younger nephew as his zhiji and Wangji didn’t refute it. Qiren could admit to himself, with slightly less self-hate, that he hated Wei Wuxian even more for this than his heretical ideas… (Not entirely for the cut sleeve inclination, the insufferable boy was utterly blind to this even if his nephew wasn’t, though Qiren hated the possibility that his nephew could lose face in society for this…) If Wangji had found some shy and unpresumptuous disciple he believed he would have been all too happy to look aside)
But his boy had chosen Wei Wuxian and no one else. Brilliant and arrogant and compassionate Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian who burned from both ends, just like her. Qiren had spent every day since that fateful ‘zhiji’ terrified that he would see those bloody flower petals, terrified that even if his nephew weren't rebuffed he was still going to end up all alone, or dead alongside the other in somewhere or else… (That was how —she— and her husband had died after all)
He had been so relieved that Wangji was like him after all. Able to love, but never putting everything that mattered—the Sect namely—behind this.
He had seen the woman he loved choose another (one that he could make her happy in the way she wished, not society) walk away with that man and die at his side just a few scant years later, leaving behind not even a grave to mourn her there….
Qiren had his Sect, had his teachings, his duties—his very life as he choose it—and yet for all that he never spat a single bloody petal for her, wasn’t longing for her, not a single day had passed since her confirmed death that he didn’t spent a solitary moment wishing that she was somewhere else alive and well and happy even if he never got to see her face, or hear her mocking laugh again….
Wangji wasn’t him, as it looked right now he wasn’t even slightly like him.
However, he was one of the children he had raised, his prized student, his beloved nephew. It was only natural to wish for him at least everything he had achieved in his life and more, so much more. Genuine happiness not just contentment.
Wei Wuxian wasn’t Cangse Sanren either, but he had all her idealism and twice her craziness and arrogance. It wasn’t that he was afraid that he was going to have the same fate as his mother—a dazzling ……or terrifying…… firecracker, lighting or blinding and dying all too soon—it was that every day he was surprised that the boy yet lived and he hadn’t yet died in that corpse ridden mountain of his at some experiment……
To accept pairing together in his mind that pig with his prized cabbage is a painful stretch for him but much preferable to losing his nephew, even if he had to take the literal labor of keeping that boy alive. It was going to grate on his every nerve but He Will Do it.
But while he was distracted with settling all those ponderings inside him Wangji seemed to have taken a similar journey.
“Xiongzhang, shufu,” he started decisively, “I haven’t told you everything about those that live in the Burial Mounts with Wei Ying, beyond the eldery and the Wen siblings.” a pause.
“There is a little boy, an orphan, not even three that Wei Ying saved among his relatives. —and yes, I saw both A-Yuan and his grandmother that night, at Qiongqi Path. Later, I heard about a slightly older sister that died earlier.”
Wangji had clearly chosen each and every single word to a devastating effect, every word all but piercing them with its rage. It was equally clear how strong affection Wangji already held for that boy, it was the only good thing he could see.
Lan Qiren felt slapped and it was justified. He could hear once again Wei Wuxian’s cold mocking laughter…. ‘Coward, where is your righteousness?’ and he would have been right: For every child, Wen or not, that got tortured, that died in that horrible place the fault set on him and men like him. Men who believed that righteousness was above compassion.
But if he had been slapped Xichen had been crushed, not only because his elder nephew was more tenderhearted, but because the implication was clear. For Wangji to not say a word before it means that he didn’t believe his words were to be taken in confidence, even if they didn’t conclude in the desired result. It mean that he expected his words to reach Jin Guangyao’s ears at the very least if not someone’s more unsavory...
Qiren didn’t really blamed him for it, he had the experience to see exactly how it would have gone.: Some ignorant people may have seen it as the perfect way to resolve the conflict: A boy Wei Wuxian loved, here kidnap him, the 'perfect' way to bring him to heel. But no, a single hair to hurt on that kid and it would have been a bloodbath. He had read way too many reports on what Wei Wuxian had done to those that hurt his family...
Heavens helped them all if the Jins ever learned about the existence of that little boy….
It was also a sign of ultimate trust that Wangji chose to confide in them about this matter, Xichen certainly took it as such.
He had a tiny breakdown but then he regarded his brother even warner.
“Wangji, I understand, I’m sorry for doubting you, I will do my very best to find the absolute truth then bring the guilty to justice, you have my word.”
Wangji unbended enough to reply.
“I trust you Xionzabg.”
—then, Xichen addressed him…:
“Shufu, we need to investigate what really happened, we must—we will—go at the Burial Mounts as soon as possible.”
It wasn’t a question, or observation, it was an order from his Sect Leader. One that Lan Qiren was very happy and proud to obey. (Equally happy because Xichen was finding his footing at least)
“It will be as you say.” He saluted. Xichen blushed.
But Xichen was still Xichen, his way to get past such moments was to tease.
“So Wangji, I understood right that Wei-gongzi sees little A-Yuan as something like a son?”
Wangji was ecstatic enough and apparently had forgiven Xichen enough, that instead of blustering as usual he choose to play along. Ears scarlett he replied:
“The first time he officially introduced him to me Wei Ying told me that he had given birth to him with his own body...”
Xichen was delighted with this but Qiren suddenly wished for that huge nuisance to be there with them…. He was going to throw a book at his head-—-He was going to throw —all— the books to his shameless head…
Still, if everything went well, a tiny grandnephew………
-—Few days later—-
“How are things going Jiejie?” Wen Ning asked his sister after his lengthy patrol around their mountain.
Wen Qing was still ecstatic to have her brother back but something still itched at her, like the bite of a mosquito.
A-Yuan is still mopping that Lan-er-gongzi hadn’t returned and wei Wuxian mopes, even more, he has been stuck in his cave and hadn’t gone out even for food.
Suddenly Wen Ning went utterly still.
“Someone is right outside our wards.”
They both turned towards Wei Wuxian’s cave, the man himself was hurrying towards them.
“Two someones, we have two cultivators at our door.”