Chapter Text
Lan Xichen was going to die.
This was it. He could feel it. The end was near. He was going to perish right here, sitting on the random balcony of this random inn, overlooking the twilit shore of Biling Lake.
Hysteria bubbled up, fit to burst his ribcage. He had both sleeves pressed over his mouth, but it was no use. Snorts of laughter still escaped; how very undignified and unbecoming for Zewu-Jun, Leader of the upstanding and righteous Lan Sect…
Meanwhile, Nie Mingjue, deliberately oblivious to Lan Xichen’s plight, was seated across the table from him, still talking, and it was no help whatsoever.
“So there I am, standing there in the middle of my own throne room, and what do I see but Huaisang, naked as the day he was born, on my throne, with Wen Ning balls-deep on one end and Wei Wuxian balls-deep on the other,” Nie Mingjue was saying, sounding deeply aggrieved. “And of course they were much too busy to even notice my presence – until I started yelling.” He gyrated his hips wildly on his seating mat, presumably to indicate various angles of thrusting, and Song Lan made a hasty grab for the wine-jar as it teetered on the edge of their table.
“Now, never in a thousand years would I expect to say this,” Nie Mingjue went on, as Song Lan poured him another cup, “but of the three of them, who is the only one with sense enough to grab his clothes and dive out the window? Wei fucking Wuxian! Does Huaisang have that much sense? NO, HE DOES NOT.”
Nie Mingjue swept his arm dramatically through the air to illustrate Wei Wuxian’s airborne trajectory, and Lan Xichen peered at him helplessly, dabbing tears of mirth from his cheeks.
“Huaisang, the little shit, just looks me right in the eyes, wipes the drool off his chin, and says, Daaaaa-geeeeeee, do you mind? I was right in the middle of something!”
Nie Mingjue’s imitation of Nie Huaisang’s petulant whine was born of long experience, and, as ever, was absolutely spot-on. Lan Xichen, completely breathless by this point, wheezed like a dusty old blacksmith’s bellows.
“Stop, Mingjue, stop – I beg of you,” Lan Xichen gasped. “Have mercy!”
“No,” said Nie Mingjue, with a touch of smugness, and knocked back his drink. “I had to suffer through it, so now you do too. In any case, I said – well, I forget exactly what – but eventually I said, Congratulations on your ascension, Sect Leader Nie, I hope you enjoy filling out paperwork, and that finally killed the mood.” He nodded to himself with an air of great satisfaction, and the Clarity bell at his waist chimed softly, as if in gentle agreement.
“And what was Wen Ning doing all this while?” asked Song Lan, quiet and dignified as always but sounding vastly amused.
“Oh, Wen Ning,” said Nie Mingjue, huffing out a gusty sigh. “You know, I used to think he was this hopelessly shy little mouse of a person, but now I think he just knows when to keep his mouth shut, which is more than I can say of Huaisang.” He refilled his cup again, quaffed his wine, and then made a wry urchin’s face. “By this point, I’ve seen more of Wen Ning’s personal attributes than any brother-in-law ever should, but even I can’t deny that he and Huaisang are very well-suited; it’s a much better match than I could have hoped for.”
A short interval of almost-silence followed, punctuated by Lan Xichen’s poorly-muffled snorts. Then, just as Lan Xichen had almost wrestled himself back under control and was taking a sip of tea, Xiao Xingchen, who had been sitting next to him wearing a look of polite befuddlement, suddenly said brightly, “Oh! In the middle of something! I get it now!”
Lan Xichen choked and nearly spat his mouthful of tea over the table; Nie Mingjue hooted with laughter and beat him on the back. Xiao Xingchen grinned around at them all, delighted to be in on the joke, and even Song Lan wore a soft smile as he gazed fondly at his husband.
As he wiped tea from his nose, Lan Xichen spared a quick glance at the fifth member of their party, sitting at a slight remove from the table and the conversation. The man’s eyes were closed, yet he was surely not asleep – his broad, impassive face, half-hidden beneath a thick fall of unbound silver hair, held an edge of alertness. He cradled his wine-cup in one hand, taking occasional tiny sips; it was still almost full.
He used only one hand, because his other sleeve was empty, neatly folded and pinned out of the way.
With an effort, Lan Xichen averted his eyes once more, and refilled his teacup.
*
As the evening advanced, their talk turned to news of a nearby haunting that Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen planned to attend to, and Nie Mingjue quickly decided to accompany them, seeming lighter of heart than Lan Xichen had seen him in many years.
A short time after that, he even challenged Xiao Xingchen to a drinking contest, and despite the man’s ethereal appearance, it soon became patently obvious that he could hold his liquor even better than Wei Wuxian. When they finally called it quits, Lan Xichen had to haul Mingjue up off the floor, while Xiao Xingchen bowed with unaffected grace and retired to the bedroom where Song Lan was already asleep.
“It must be a Baoshan Sanren thing,” Nie Mingjue slurred philosophically to Lan Xichen, as Lan Xichen half-carried him down the hallway to a second bedroom that the innkeeper had hastily prepared.
“No doubt,” replied Lan Xichen with suitable gravity, and helped Nie Mingjue take off his boots.
Nie Mingjue fell asleep almost at once, sprawled out like a carefree child, and Lan Xichen clicked his tongue softly as he tucked the man in and put a cup of water next to his bed.
Lan Xichen closed the door on his friend’s thunderous snores and took himself back to the balcony. It was late, well past curfew, and by rights Lan Xichen should have returned to Cloud Recesses long ago, but he found himself lingering. The moon hung over the lake, low and tempting, and Lan Xichen felt possessed of an unusual restlessness. He had no desire to return to the silence and chilly solitude of his Hanshi – not just yet, at least.
His eyes fell upon the silver-haired man who was still seated at their table, wine-cup in hand. He was gazing out over the dark waters of the lake, casting his eyes along the moon’s long reflection, traversing it like a slender bridge. Lan Xichen cleared his throat.
“May I join you?”
The man nodded slowly, and shifted over, so they could sit side by side and partake of the view together. He did everything slowly, Lan Xichen had noticed. Though his face was unlined, he moved like an old, old man, someone whose body was brittle and breakable, fragile and friable, like a castle built from sand.
Lan Xichen seated himself and poured the last of the tea into his cup, even though it was now rather cold and over-steeped. The two men looked out over the lake in silence. It was pleasant enough – companionable, even – but Lan Xichen was still infused with that strange restlessness, and found himself casting about for something to say.
“Do you intend to join the upcoming night-hunt, too?” Lan Xichen asked after a moment.
“No,” the man replied, his words as careful and slow as his movements. “I shall wait for my companions here. Joining them would require me to cross the Yunmeng border, which I cannot do.”
A very deliberate turn of phrase, that – not I will not, or I must not, but I cannot.
It piqued Lan Xichen’s curiosity. He would not be surprised to hear that it was indeed physically impossible for the silver-haired man beside him to enter Yunmeng; it would not shock him to learn that Wei Wuxian had gone so far as to ward the entirety of his shidi’s territory against this man specifically. His fancy conjured an image of the very earth rising up, exploding with outrage, should the man take a single one of his slow and careful footsteps in Jiang Wanyin’s general direction.
Nowadays, Wei Wuxian might flit about the Jianghu like a grasshopper, seemingly without a care or concern, but only a fool would discount the ferocious, focused, nigh-unhinged level of creative brilliance that he had revealed in Yiling, while establishing the Burial Mounds perimeter. Lan Xichen was certainly cognizant of it, even though his focus at that time had been all on Nie Mingjue.
It shamed him, even now, to remember how he, the First Jade of Gusu Lan, had struggled to reverse the core-draining curse he had set while under the influence of A-Yao’s – Jin Guangyao’s – compulsion talisman, distracted by his own gnawing guilt and remorse. He hadn’t touched Lièbīng since.
Those memories were still with him, seizing his attention at random, unguarded moments, like neglected children pulling at his sleeves in supplication. They made him shift uncomfortably on his seating mat, and the man beside him glanced over. Perhaps Lan Xichen was imagining things, seeing only what he wished so desperately to see – it wouldn’t be the first time, would it, he thought unkindly to himself – but he thought he saw a glimmer of compassion in the depths of those fathomless dark eyes.
“To enter Yunmeng would be – distressing,” the man went on, haltingly.
Lan Xichen nodded in fervent acknowledgement – after all, who in their right mind would choose to revisit the scene of their greatest regret? He would gladly flee the past, if only he could – but he was still Zewu-Jun, the Lan Sect Leader. He glided regally through the Cloud Recesses by day, while at night, he fled like a coward as devouring flames raced through his dreams, burning everything and everyone they touched.
Whenever Lan Wangji invited him to visit Lotus Pier, he wrote back with polite excuses and then woke, dry-mouthed and sweating, from panicked nightmares of being imprisoned in his own body, helplessly watching as his own puppet-limbs attacked his little brother.
He shook himself free of these unpleasant ruminations only to realize that his companion was still speaking.
“However, I would not be the only one to suffer,” he was saying, in his slow, careful voice. “I fear that my presence would only bring disquiet and painful memories to the people of Yunmeng… especially Sect Leader Jiang… and I find that I do not have an appetite to inflict any more pain, in this lifetime.”
Neither did Lan Xichen, and the fear of doing so was a torment to him. It crept up on him as he tried to conduct his Sect’s business, binding his body, choking his voice, freezing his thoughts, shadowing his every waking hour. What if you say the wrong thing, the unforgiving voice in his ear would hiss, as he sat paralyzed at his desk, ink dripping from the brush forgotten between his fingers, blotting his letters unforgivably. What if you make the wrong choice, it said, as he excused himself from hearing petitioners. What if you trust the wrong person, again.
Are you sure? How can you be sure of anything?
Lan Xichen looked again at the man seated beside him, and found his gaze returned with an air of calm certitude. It was the same air that Lan Xichen had carefully cultivated all his life, but which now felt like nothing so much as an ill-fitting mask. He was barely able to look at himself in the mirror, lest he come face-to-face with the truth that peered worriedly out from behind it, slack-jawed and timid and uncertain and unworthy.
Yet the silver-haired man wore his confidence as lightly and as naturally as a coat of dew on a leaf.
What is his secret, Lan Xichen wondered, a little desperately. I need to learn it.
“If Master Zhao has no immediate plans,” Lan Xichen found himself saying abruptly, “perhaps you would care to accompany me to the Cloud Recesses?”
Zhao Zhuliu’s eyebrows flicked upwards, in surprise.
*