Chapter Text
In the guest hall at Cloud Recesses, Wei Wuxian was trying to restrain his curiosity about the woman that A-Yuan brought back. From her demeanor, it was as though Cloud Recesses was the last place she wanted to be, yet A-Yuan had informed him that she had formally requested for help from Gusu.
Despite her beauty, her expression was cold and forbidding. She was dressed much like a rogue cultivator, in dark-coloured, hard-wearing robes, with a utilitarian ponytail high on her head, and a sword with such a deadly presence that even the Yiling Patriarch felt embarrassed to be in the same room with it.
Still, Wei Wuxian wasn't someone to be quelled easily. His dignity, what was that? He hugged A-Yuan in welcome, whining about how long it'd been, how much he'd missed his radish child and had A-Yuan grown taller, again, all the while studying the woman out of the corner of his eye. She held herself with an air that was entirely opposite to that of a supplicant, her deep-set eyes unnervingly direct as she looked around the guest hall that they were in. There was something about her face, Wei Wuxian thought with an unease that had started prickling at his senses after his first look at her, and now suspicions bubbled up within him as he finally put some pieces - not together, but rather closely. Assessment done, he finally released A-Yuan and turned to her.
"Madam," he bowed perfunctorily. "This one is Wei Wuxian. May I know your name and reason for coming to Cloud Recesses?" He found himself the target of a penetrating stare, which also felt unnervingly familiar, and Wei Wuxian mentally let himself draw more conclusions about her identity.
"You are the one who is married to my Lan Zhan?"
Wei Wuxian bowed again, though his manner was more deliberate now. "You know my husband?" he asked, and inwardly he was puzzling out the complexities inherent in the phrase "my Lan Zhan".
Almost involuntarily, "He wouldn't remember me, he was only six when I left."
Ah.
To the side, A-Yuan frowned. Did A-Yuan too, know? Wei Wuxian bowed again, a smidgen of sincerity in it this time. "You would be surprised, Madam-" he trailed off deliberately. Her name – even her surname - had been left out of the family records - out of pure malice, Wei Wuxian had thought.
She returned a shallow bow of courtesy, one hand covering a fist as jianghu practitioners do. "I am Yue Yiren, courtesy Yue Gu."
"Madam Yue, I am glad the rumours of your death were greatly exaggerated."
The offended look she now aimed at him could have been Lan Zhan's, in another guise and in another time. "I might say the same to you, Wei Wuxian, the Yiling Patriarch," she said.
It was never a friendly start when his other titlewas brought up. Wei Wuxian merely bowed. "Touché. But perhaps it would be better to explore that topic for another time, as I see that you're here on another matter. Please, be seated."
Still on her dignity, she gave a clipped nod, and sat before the low table, her sword by her side. Wei Wuxian settled down opposite her. "A-Yuan," he said, "would you ask the kitchen to send up proper refreshments (at least we have tea, hm, such an improvement on the last time I played host), then go up to the Jingshi to ask Hanguang Jun to come here?"
"Yes, Senior Wei." He glanced between them, then bowed and exited.
The mention of the Jingshi did cause Madam Yue to look up, though the only thing she said was, "You call him your child, but he does not address you as 'Father'."
"No." Ordinarily, Wei Wuxian would have considered it an impertinence for anyone else to entertain any sort of speculation about his and A-Yuan's relationship. A-Yuan was A-Yuan was A-Yuan, his sweet radish child, semi-adopted by him in the Burial Mounds. A-Yuan had been his little bundle of hope in the starkness of the Burial Mounds and Lan Zhan's beacon of light in the years Wei Ying was dead. A-Yuan could call him 'Senior Wei', or 'Xian-gege' (or even 'Poor Gege', the brat) like he used to, and Lan Zhan 'Lan Die-die', 'Father', or default to the use of his many titles (it was just like the Gusu clan, drowning children in so much formality), and it wouldn't – it didn't matter to Wei Wuxian an iota. Feelings and relationships were not determined by titles.
But this was her. The erstwhile Lady Lan of Gusu, though it would be a foolhardy man who dared to address her as such. He unbent enough to elaborate, "In public, Sizhui – A-Yuan prefers to use a form of address that most other Gusu disciples use as well. It doesn’t matter to me; he's my child through and through."
"And does Lan Zhan regard truly him as his child too?"
"He is in Gusu's family records as Lan Zhan's son," Wei Wuxian answered.
"I saw the forehead ribbon," she said. "But that does not tell me much."
Wei Wuxian scoffed inwardly. If only she knew how much opposition Lan Zhan had gone through to adopt A-Yuan. If only she knew how Lan Zhan had put aside his own grief and his natural reticence to take charge of an orphaned child, to ensure that A-Yuan grew up as loved and protected as he had been in the Burial Mounds. "Oh, he's definitely Lan Zhan's child too," he said with a studied carelessness. "But what is the reason behind Madam Yue's questioning? Are you concerned for A-Yuan, or are you concerned for Lan Zhan, more than thirty years after you left him?"
She didn't flinch, though it came close.
For once, the Yiling Patriarch in him had pity. In such a matter as returning from the dead, confronting all your past and the people that you thought you had left behind, he was surely an expert by now. "Lan Zhan is fine, if that's what you wish to know," he said. "He grew up well, and even before he was twenty, he had gained the title of Hanguang Jun."
"I had heard something of that."
Wei Wuxian considered telling her that Lan Zhan definitely got his looks from her, except Lan Zhan was far better looking, in his not-so-humble opinion.
"I also heard how he came to be with you," she went on, looking almost disapproving.
Well. Since she really wanted to know. "Of course, it caused quite the furor," Wei Wuxian went on with an obviously fake long-suffering air, relishing the disapproval of others as had become his usual wont instead of getting angry, "it was something of a black mark against Lan Zhan that he associated with the Yiling Patriarch (of all people!) and even had a child (some say) out of wedlock." He grinned his most challenging, maniac grin at Madam Yue, the one that used to make Lan Zhan twitch, and watched her trying visibly to control herself. So that was where Lan Zhan got it from. "Scandal after scandal! Some would say the spotless reputation of Hanguang Jun has been utterly destroyed by his association with Wei Wuxian, the Yiling Patriarch!"
"Not destroyed. Only enhanced."
Wei Wuxian looked up to see his husband soundlessly entering the guest hall, a tray in his arms. He must have intercepted the kitchen staff. "Such flattery, Lan Zhan," he quipped, leaping to his feet to take the tray from him, suddenly aware of the potential for maximum awkwardness. He staggered at the weight of tray, more in exaggeration than anything, and indicated with a small nod of his head. "Ah… Lan Zhan, this is-"
"My mother." Lan Zhan gave a deep bow to Madam Yue, who had stood up, pale as the snow outside. "Mother, have you been well?"
***
It was the innermost hall of Gusu, one so heavily warded for privacy that Wei Wuxian's skin tingled each time he fidgeted. He had half-thought that he was best left out of any awkward reunions between Madam Yue and Lan Zhan, but he wanted to be here for Lan Zhan. He wondered if Zewu Jun would make an exception and leave seclusion once he knew who the woman was. He wondered if A-Yuan was going to call her Grandma. He wondered a great many things so that he could ignore the family drama that was unfolding right before his eyes.
"…are you saying, Wangji, that you have been aware all these years that your mother had not died, but had only left Gusu?" Lan Qiren looked like he was close to exploding, and Wei Wuxian (seated further away from them and not wanting to draw attention to himself, for once) watched him with queasy anticipation.
Old Man Lan Qiren seemed to be taking it better than he'd thought. Wei Wuxian had assumed instant qi deviation. (Pity.) Or perhaps immediately challenging Madam Yue to a fight to the death. Wei Wuxian would pay real money to see that fight. (Ten thousand pities.)
"Mm. That was what you said, wasn't it," Lan Zhan seemed unnaturally calm, "that Mother was no longer around and that I had no mother."
"I-I meant that she had died!"
"Then perhaps Uncle should have said that. Wangji was only six, but Wangji would have understood, and would not have waited for her for so long."
He sounded sanguine about his mother's disappearance, assumed death and now return. Wei Wuxian wondered if this was why Lan Zhan accepted the fact of Wei Wuxian's resurrection so readily – no, even expected it – and felt cheered by the realisation. Then he flattened with guilt. Hope was a double-edged sword, its comfort acting as the reminder of what was not. If he had not returned after all, Lan Zhan would have been lonely until the end of his days. He really had a lot to make up to Lan Zhan.
Madam Yue, though, had something to say. "A-Zhan, how did you guess that I was still alive?" she asked.
Lan Zhan glanced around, met Wei Wuxian's eyes, nodded at the encouragement that Wei Wuxian was trying to radiate towards him and replied, "Figured it out when Uncle said you were gone. I remembered seeing Mother's sword at the last visit. She never had a sword before. I reasoned that she must have left on that."
"Stolen," Lan Qiren gritted out.
"It was my sword," Madam Yue pointed out.
Lan Qiren opened his mouth, then closed it.
"Uncle and Brother had said she was no longer around," Lan Zhan continued. "I then thought she had left but would come back."
The words "for me" went unsaid.
Wei Wuxian swallowed. He'd tried to imagine a young Lan Zhan waiting outside the closed door of the Jingshi, but realised his imagination fell short. How much stubbornness, and how much sadness, was encompassed in that wait?
"I later realised Mother would never return," Lan Zhan went on. "The Jingshi was her prison."
His pronouncement made Madam Yue look away, her face turning dark.
Lan Qiren seized the opportunity. "And that bring us to you, Madam Yue," he said, now eyeing her. "You left, and we put out the rumour that you had died, to prevent anyone else from going after you, as the elders wished to hush up the matter." There was a complicated look on his face, as though he wanted to add more, but he only paused, and went on, "Since you chose to leave, I thought that you would no longer wish to have any connection with Gusu. Especially when we have heard nothing of you for more than 30 years. Pardon me for being blunt, but what is your reason for coming now?"
Madam Yue was quiet for a moment as she gathered her thoughts, then said, "I've lived these years outside of the Central Plains for the most part, travelling between the northeast and the kingdoms beyond the East Sea. Yes, I do not wish to have any further connection with Gusu, but I am not someone who can forget that my sons are here. When I dared, I enquired about the Twin Jades of Gusu.
"I was worried about Lan Zhan the most because of rumours that he associated with the Yiling Patriarch, the master of demonic cultivation-"
Wei Wuxian couldn't help a huff, and Lan Wangji, without looking away from her, reached out to hold his hand.
"-but my concerns came to nothing when they said the Yiling Patriarch perished at Nightless City."
It was Lan Wangji's turn to shake, for he never enjoyed being reminded of Wei Wuxian's death. Concerned, Wei Wuxian threw propriety to the winds and sidled up towards Lan Wangji, pressing close enough that Lan Qiren glared before he uncharacteristically rolled his eyes and then pointedly looked away.
"I thought that was it, until rumors started flying that the Yiling Patriarch had been resurrected."
Wei Wuxian bowed from where he was seated, managing at the last minute not to laugh hysterically and felt his husband's grip on his hand tightening.
Madam Yue glanced down at where their hands were linked, took a deep breath and met Wei Wuxian's eyes, her gaze severe and almost accusatory. "Wei Wuxian, have you ever heard of the Collection of Turmoil?"