Chapter Text
“Xichen,” Uncle calls, not for the first time, and Lan Xichen blinks back into awareness in the Hanshi, to a cup of cold tea in front of him and an empty one in front of Uncle.
He tries to focus again, to recall the winding path of their conversation, but his uncle’s previous words are lost to the fatigue of his mind. He stalls, by picking up his cup and drinking. The tea is almost icy from how long it has sat before him, and the flavor is proof of how long the box of tea leaves has sat untouched since he entered seclusion.
It had been a gift from Jin Guangyao.
Why hasn’t he thrown it out?
“Xichen!”
There is a headache building behind his eyes. Most days, it’s a dull ache, distant but present. Today, it’s more. The windows are covered to let in as little light as possible, but even what scant diffusion makes its way in is too much.
What noise makes its way to him is too much. What exists of the outside world is too much.
Uncle’s presence inside the Hanshi, raising his voice, is overwhelming.
“Apologies, shufu,” Lan Xichen says, and sets the cup back down, pale tea still inside. He inhales, and it feels like he’s encased in clay with the effort it takes. “I—”
The rumors the servant heard had been partially correct. The story the Nie Sect gave almost entirely a fabrication. Either would have been easier than the truth Wangji slipped into his report and attempt to reassure Lan Xichen and Shufu he is unharmed.
Nie Huaisang is dead. Or he’s not. Because Wei Wuxian found a way to send him into the past. But there was a body left behind. And Wei Wuxian’s notes sit bound neatly in the library.
Any answers Lan Xichen had been hoping to get from Nie Huaisang are gone.
Uncle tugs on his beard and sighs. “You cannot stay in seclusion forever, Xichen.”
He cannot. That much he knows. He knows he cannot become his father, as much as the crushing weight of his failures would like him to. And yet, the thought of being responsible for anything more consequential than boiling water for his tea causes his hands to shake.
How easy it would be to make the wrong choices. He doesn’t even know if he can make the right ones anymore.
“I won’t permit you to become your father. You will have to involve yourself in sect matters again at some point.”
He will. But not now. He isn’t ready.
Wangji is. And yet, it should not be his responsibility.
It was never meant to be Uncle’s. And yet it became his twice now.
Because Lan Xichen has failed his uncle. His brother. Everyone.
What little energy he collected before is pulled away, drained by the prospect of how much he has already failed everyone and how easily he could do so again. Lan Xichen has to close his eyes to remain upright, bracing against the internal sapping of his strength, at how impossible Uncle’s request to resume his duties is.
“I cannot do so yet, shufu,” Lan Xichen says. He has neglected his cultivation over the past months, and while his core itself seems unharmed, it no longer seems to have the strength to grant him even a fraction of the fortitude it once did. This conversation has exceeded his limit for the day.
Is this how their father felt every time Uncle visited him?
“I cannot yet resume my duties. Until then, I ask you to continue handling sect matters.” It is as close to a direct dismissal Lan Xichen can give without demanding Uncle leave. Without disrespecting his elder.
Uncle tugs on his beard, lips twisting in annoyance. He cannot disobey his sect leader, so he eventually puts his hands on his knees and pushes himself up with a sigh. “Take care of yourself. Eat something before you rest.”
Wanting to avoid lying, or breaking a promise, Lan Xichen remains silent.
Uncle sighs again, flicking his wrist and sleeve as he turns to leave. He doesn’t close the door as he leaves, and steps over the breakfast tray he had done the same with on the way in.
Lan Xichen stares at it, at the glaringly bright patch of sunlight on the walkway outside, the too saturated green of the trees and the blue sky above.
It’s too much.
Lan Xichen slumps forward, back bowing inline with his head and he exhales, too exhausted to inhale enough to straighten again.
He sits like that for a long minute, summoning the will to rise. When he does, he leaves the tea on the table, the door open, the tray outside.
He should meditate.
He lays down on the bed instead, head pounding and heart aching. The privacy screen cuts the worst of the light, and closing his eyes blocks out the rest. When he falls into sleep, it is an easy abdication of his body to unconsciousness.
-
The whip arcs through the air, the force slithering along the length of it before the tip races downward, slashing at Wangji’s back, cutting cloth and skin, sending blood spraying into the air, the red falling onto dark wood and white robes like rain.
The hand draws back again, follows through, splattering blood on his face. Lan Xichen wants to stop, wants to catch the whip, let it wrap around his own hand. He wants to stop, but keeps going, his arms moving, the count methodically rising, each lash closer to the end, closer to taking Wangji to the edge of death. Lan Xichen wants to stop, he wanted to stop—he cannot, and the figure before him keeps going, his arm entirely beyond his control.
He reaches thirty-three, and his arm pulls back for another strike. The whip connects and he screams, silent as he’d been forced to be, clawing at his own body from within, caught in the inevitable momentum of the past.
It had been the only way to keep the elders from demanding more. It had been the only way to keep the peace, to preserve Wangji’s reputation, to—
It was the wrong choice. Lan Xichen has made so many of them. The world spirals out around him, Cloud recess shredding into fuzzy rays of light and darkness. Wangji was able to come to terms with his actions. Found a way through his grief, made better choices. Lan Xichen can only regret, knowing how wrong he had been. Can only wish to have never made the call that cut his brother open for standing by the only person who had been righteous.
Wangji collapses, crumbles, breath ragged as fall leaves, just as frail, just as easily crushed.
Lan Xichen finally regains control of his body. He drops the whip mid-strike, the leather falling onto the patio wood as he takes one step towards Wangji, bloody hand outstretched—
And the world lurches around him, vertigo overriding every sense of his until he’s standing in the Guanyin temple, the surroundings doubled around him, both standing and collapsed rubble at once.
The coffin sits, sealed where Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao are trapped together, the differences Lan Xichen had hoped to see resolved by their sworn brotherhood still throwing billows of resentful energy against the sealing array. He should never have suggested it, should never have pushed for it,
Maybe, if he had let them part ways, differences unresolved, they wouldn’t have fractured, wouldn't have turned distrust into resentment and they would both still be alive. He pulled them together, and like he does now, his own desire to see them again folding the space around him until he is before their tomb.
Lan Xichen splays his hands flat on the surface of the coffin. “A-Yao.” The regret over causing their fates is only overpowered by how acutely he misses them, the sharp ache to join them. “Da-ge.”
His last memory of them-- Nie Mingjue’s resurrected corpse, stitched together and the only thing left of him his anger, Jin Guangyao bleeding from the gaping wound Lan Xichen himself had delivered with Shuoyue, neck broken— materializes in front of him, the stone disappearing to reveal their tangled forms.
Lan Xichen stumbles forward, reaches out to touch as he gasps out a sob.
Jin Guangyao’s head turns, eyes opening as he sees Lan Xichen, lips curling into a cruelly sweet smile. “Will you die with me, er-ge?” Jin Guangyao’s delicate fingers wrap themselves around Lan Xichen’s wrist, and Lan Xichen closes his eyes, heart broken and guilt stricken and as ready this time as he had been the last time the question was asked.
And, like last time, he is pushed back, a force to his chest stopping his heart for one hopeful moment, expelling his air in a last sigh of relief. But it doesn’t stop, and he collides, solidly into stone behind him, alive, alone.
-
Lan Xichen wakes, into darkness, immobile. The phantom blood on his hands seared into eyes he cannot open. Unable to breathe as the weight of his heartbeat sits heavy in his chest, in limbs he cannot reach out with. But he can cry, and the tears sliding down his face are the only thing he can feel beyond the tangle of emotions within.
The door is still open, cool air blowing in.
A sob breaks freak and he can open his eyes, darkness and deeper shadows in the recesses of the ceiling above him. He sinks into the fuzzy exhaustion that dominates his days, a haze of loss and questions and uncertainty.
Too many what-ifs, about Jin Guangyao’s true intentions and Nie Mingjue’s fate, and Lan Xichen’s role in all of it.
If they’d never swore their brotherhood, would they still be alive? If Lan Xichen had listened more to Nie Mingjue, been less willing to believe in Jin Guangyao when they noticed him changing, could they have steered Jin Guangyao back onto the righteous path like Nie Mingjue intended with swearing their oath? Could Lan Xichen have stopped both their trajectories toward death? Was there any way to make it all work, to save both his sworn-brothers from themselves?
Lan Xichen doesn’t have the answers, and his time in seclusion has shown him he will not find them within the silent walls of the Hanshi. Or even outside of it. All of the people who could give him them are gone.
Lan Xichen’s thoughts find a stillness, something approaching calm in the sense of a quiet wood undisturbed by birdcalls. Whisper soft, like the wind in the trees outside, Lan Xichen’s thoughts turn to the newest array locked in the library, and the answers it could provide.
He rises from his bed, pulling on a robe that has sat unused for too long, and heads out into the night. The trees continue their silent witness to the grief of his family.
So far past curfew, there isn’t anyone about, save for a few patrols that would not dare to stop their sect leader.
The library sits as still and silent as the Hanshi, but there is evidence of use. Paper and ink sit on the desk, brushes clean but ready to be picked up. A stack of books left behind, either unshelved by forgetfulness or an intent to return in the morning.
Lan Xichen pauses with his hand on the doorway, feeling far too much like the dormancy of night, the world passing by in daylight. It will remain as empty when he leaves, so he passes through, as much a ghost to this room as the rest of the Cloud Recesses.
The forbidden section opens easily to his jade token and a simple spark of his own spiritual energy. The doorway allows him to pass through. The security talismans protecting the entire place, additionally security added since the revelations in the Guanyin Temple, remain dormant.
Lan Xichen stares at them for a long minute, attempting to puzzle through the altered strokes Wei Wuxian’s quick mind had easily come up with. He briefly reaches up for one, and then lets his hand fall away before his fingers can so much as brush it.
If Huaisang’s body is any indication, Lan Xichen will not be able to bring a physical copy of the talisman with him.
It’s easy enough to locate the notes for the array that allowed Wei Wuxian to send Huaisang into the past. Like in the main library above, there is a section dedicated solely to Wei Wuxian’s work. The only difference is the ones in the library proper are readily available for disciples, these ones are not. Too dangerous if they were to fall into the wrong hands.
Lan Xichen pauses, at the section on music, and wonders briefly why they haven’t destroyed everything in this section that could be used for evil by the wrong hands. The Collection of Turmoil sits on the shelf, the top book of its stack.
Still numbed and distant to the emotions he should be feeling, Lan Xichen reaches out and picks it up, fingers tensing to rip it apart. It would be easy, with his strength, even as weak limbed as he feels now, even as much strength as he lost. It would be easy to destroy it. A surge of spiritual energy would shred it.
He can’t.
He turns back to place it down, and labeled in Wangji’s neat hand is a thin book titled: Variation on Songs of Clarity: Collection of Turmoil.
The nausea Lan Xichen had felt upon playing it for himself returns to him, the lilting way the silence turns into buzzing insects in his ears, the tension in his chest, emotions bubbling up from where he had dropped them to disappear into the dark depths of a well.
Lan Xichen reaches out and flips open the cover, revealing Wangji’s neat precision in marking down the notes for the modified version of Cleansing Jin Guangyao had used to murder Nie Mingjue. Folded and tucked into the space beneath the cover is a couple of folded pages, a messy scrawl where Wei Wuxian made his notes in transcribing the music.
A perfect memory for music, to match Jin Guangyao’s for people. To match Jin Guangyao’s for anything he did.
How had Lan Xichen not noticed? How had he only thought Jin Guangyao had made a mistake, after he had proven he could play it perfectly?
Why hadn’t Lan Xichen listened when Nie Mingjue told him Jin Guangyao’s playing didn’t help?
Had he always been wrong to place his trust in Jin Guangyao? Had everything with Jin Guangyao been a lie, or had there been enough that was true for it to matter? Had he truly never thought of hurting Lan Xichen?
Would Lan Xichen have been able to save Nie Mingjue if Jin Guangyao hadn’t corrupted Cleansing?
Hands shaking too much to hold the paper steady, the books fall to the floor.
If, if, if…would Nie Mingjue still be alive?
How had Lan Xichen misread everything so badly?
Seeking answers, and a chance to undo his mistakes, too see both Nie Minjuge and Jin Guangyao again, Lan Xichen turns to the shelves holding Wei Wuxian’s notes, and the array that can give it to him.