Chapter Text
If Lan Wangji has learned anything at all in the last few months of complete upheaval, it's that routine has the power to save lives. Or maybe just, in this case, his own life. And he now knows what it is like to not be in control of his own life.
He rises at five like he did before. His hair is too short now to support a guan, so instead he pulls it into a high bun. It's not the same, but the silhouette is similar enough that when he catches his own reflection somewhere he doesn't startle. The lack of anything draping down over his back is odd.
He will get used to it.
Every morning he does his best to clean under the posture collar. It's loose enough that he can get a thin rod of bamboo wrapped in cloth under it with manageable discomfort. Now that his golden core is no longer sealed he can hold his breath more than long enough to make sure the skin of his throat is washed. The metal boning digging into him leaves bruises. They are always hidden from sight, and his cultivation sees them healed by nightfall.
Then he dresses. He wears the same robes he did before the trip to Nightless City that changed everything. They feel like they lay on him differently even though there is no reason they should. His body has not changed beyond the length of his hair, but he is not so foolish as to think that his own self perception remains unscathed. He visits Tian Junbi twice a week, partly because Lan Qiren asked him to, but mostly because his brother made him promise to.
"Is Tian Junbi still alive and in Cloud Recess?" Xichen asked, spread out next to him on the couch in his and Meng Yao's sitting room.
Lan Wangji nodded.
"You ought to see her," Xichen said mildly. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say more, and both Lan Wangji and Meng Yao waited patiently, but he seemed to change his mind and remained silent.
Once it became clear he was not going to continue, Meng Yao's eyebrow raised. Lan Wangji had not seen his expression so open before, nor so soft. He looked at Xichen like he was a god, like the most precious thing in all of existence, even when it was clear that his silence frustrated him. "Is she a mind healer?"
"Yes. One of the best," Xichen added. He'd put his hand over Meng Yao's, the touch so casual and natural that it made joy for his brother's fortune and agonizing misery due to his own lack of it war in his chest.
"She will want me to talk," Lan Wangji said after a few minutes.
And Meng Yao fixated him with his dark eyes. "Some things can only be purged by talking about them, Hanguang-jun."
He understood what Meng Yao meant after the first session. He had not talked much, not more than he was comfortable with, but then halfway through he began to cry. Tian Junbi was the only one, aside from Lan Qiren and Lan Wangji, who was told the full truth of the conspiracy in the fire palace. And Lan Wangji told her more.
It hurt.
He sobbed harder than he had in his life.
He cried for Wei Ying, dead and gone and never even his. He cried for his brother, not gone but with too many forces trying to take him away. He cried for the forgiveness his uncle will never earn and how it will never erase how much he loves him. He cried for the marks on his body and his soul. He cried for the purity both Nie Mingjue and Tian Junbi insist he has not lost, which he feels was torn from his body all the same. He cried, again, for Wei Ying.
Afterwards, he could face the sunrise again. Not without every kind of pain, but it is managable now.
He still cries during every session.
It keeps the pain bearable, it keeps him upright, and it is his promise to keep to his brother. When everything is over and Xichen can return to Cloud Recess with his husband, Lan Wangji will be here to greet him. He will be as whole as he can be in a world that's taken so much from him.
Some days, he wears his brother's forehead ribbon. Most days, actually. Since the evening that uncle sat across from him as they drank tea and Lan Wangji told him in full everything he learned and everything he endured while in the harem, he's kept it on his person.
"I don't think I should be trusted with it," Uncle told him when he passed it across the table. His eyes were dark with some emotion Lan Wangji could not recognize on his stoic uncle's face. "You never betrayed him. You never lost faith in him."
Lan Wangji still isn't sure if any of those are the correct words to describe the way Lan Qiren disowned his brother. But he can't think of any more fitting ones, not then or now.
So now he ties his brother's forehead ribbon on his head, letting the ends dangle down the nape of his neck. They're touching his own ribbon, the one he can't wear properly. It's used to lace up the back of the pure white, custom-made posture collar, with some new charm laid on it that no book nor elder nor force of his own will has managed to undo.
He thinks, with some anger-tinged sorrow, that Xichen would not have been upset if Lan Qiren continued to care for his ribbon.
The time in Nightless City has changed his brother, certainly. But not altered the core of his being.
He is still an endless well of gentle understanding and soft forgiveness, even if he has had a few of the outwardly softer parts filed down to razor edges. This is why Lan Wangji knows Xichen will forgive their uncle, if he has not already. Part of him is certain Xichen forgave him that very night that it happened.
In this, Lan Wangji finds himself in agreement with Meng Yao. His brother in law never said it out loud, but from the way his eyes burned when they discussed Lan Qiren, he knows they are of a like mind. For harming Xichen like this, he'll spend the rest of his life making reparations and it still may not be enough for either of them. It settles some of his anxiety over his brother being so far away and in such an awful place. Xichen's gentle heart has as powerful and fierce a guardian as anyone could ever hope for.
Once he is dressed, he goes to the small shrine he keeps inside the jingshi. He has three plaques there: one for his mother, one for his father, and one for Wei Ying.
His mother's first plaque was destroyed along with the Lan ancestral shrine at the beginning of the war. This new one is shoddy and slapdash and still so much better than nothing. He sweeps away any dust or dirt that might've accumulated throughout the night before he bows to each of them.
"Mother," he whispers. "Today we are working on the eastern wing of the library. It will not be too much longer before we can call the building rebuilt and move on to the western wing."
He pauses to place a cup of clean water between the plaques. He uses it in place of something nicer, like a flower or a fruit. No flowers will grow again on the mountain until spring, and they have no fruit to spare. There is not enough food for the living. His mother would be deeply upset if any were to be given to the dead in such a situation.
"Father," he continues, "your younger brother is still trying his best. As am I. We work to rebuild every day." It's harder to speak to his father, to give him updates of his daily life when his father never seemed to much care for it when he was alive. "Lan Shanbei's twins are still doing well, they are both healthy and hale. Lan Xi continues to be more subdued and observant than Lan Ting, but I am confident both will grow up into excellent disciples."
The hardest part is finding the words to speak to Wei Ying's plaque. It's not even a proper plaque, really, just a carved bit of wood with his name on it. But he still bows as if it were, and emotion tightens his throat.
"Wei Ying," he says, and he pauses because he always has to after saying his name. "I miss you." It's hard to talk past the lump in his throat. "Every time I remember the world no longer has you in it, it gets a bit harder to go on."
A few tears fall onto the floor. He lets them. It's normal at this point.
After a while he gets up, puts on his shoes, and composes himself. Even though his brother is not truly lost, he is the only jade of Lan available now. His people need to see him for what he is, unbroken still. He knows the crying and mourning does not make him broken. Still, he wants to tuck away his less decorous parts once the demons they hide are fed. Everyone has had to make sacrifices. Compared to the things Xichen and Meng Yao have endured, compared to the current lives Chifeng-zun and Jiang Wanyin live, his burden is light. Even if it isn't he will carry it.
It's what Wei Ying would have done, what he did right up until those last moments of his life. His burdens were heavy, but he carried them cheerfully and gracefully and without hesitation or complaint. It pains him that he can only truly see now just how much Wei Ying carried. How heavy it was.
Lan Wangji closes his eyes against a fresh rush of tears. All that time he got to spend with Wei Ying, and he wasted it. If he'd sorted out his own feelings sooner, if he'd been braver, if he'd been faster.
So many ifs, and only one reality.
He breathes deeply. Clears his nose. Waits for the heat in his cheeks to recede. Only then does he step outside the Jingshi and into the crisp morning fog.
Breakfast will be sparse, as usual. He eats even less than the others, he is not injured and his core can sustain him. Too many of those left in Cloud Recess are still healing from injuries that should've left them dead. Or have healed as much as they ever can and will never be the same. Or are too young to have enough of a golden core for inedia to be able to sustain them.
Lan Meiying guides Lan Qiren into the breakfast hall just as Lan Wangji arrives. 'Guide' is not quite the correct word, she is more than half bodily dragging him. This is also normal now. Despite the qi deviation he experienced in Nightless City, his uncle is unwilling to use the resources they have towards his recovery. He does not eat unless the doctor all but forces him, and though he has not officially gone into seclusion he hardly leaves his rooms.
Perhaps it's a way for Lan Qiren to not be like his brother that he has not officially entered seclusion. It is as likely that Lan Qiren does not know what else to do. He never had it modeled for him by his seniors.
Lan Wangji strides over to meet them, arriving just in time to sit down as the healer strong arms Lan Qiren into a sitting position.
"Wangji," his uncle says hoarsely. "Good morning."
Lan Meiying looks exhausted. She gives them both a withered look before turning to the kitchens. There are so few servants left that they've all gotten used to fetching their own meals. Having the head healer of Cloud Recess return to their small table with three bowls of rice and steamed vegetables feels strange for so many reasons.
She sets one bowl in front of Lan Qiren, and one in front of Lan Wangji. "You will eat," she says. Her voice is as tired as her face. Certainly she is trying to model something healthier for his uncle, but she is stretched too thin.
Lan Wangji opens his mouth to refuse. This is more food in front of him than he usually eats in an entire day.
Then he catches sight of his uncle in a moment that seems to stretch on forever. He is looking down at the food with such fervent refusal, and opening his mouth probably to voice that refusal. He is thin and bruised and so pale. If someone were to draw corpse-veins up and down his neck in charcoal he would look no different from one of Wei Ying's undead soldiers.
"We will all eat," he says before his uncle can make a sound. He picks up his chopsticks and shoves a bite into his mouth far less decorously than he usually would.
Lan Qiren closes his mouth. If he wants to speak now he will be breaking the mealtime silence. But he still does not pick up his chopsticks. Not even when Lan Wangji gives them a firm, pointed look.
If no one who is his senior or peer will model a way forward for Lan Qiren, then Lan Wangji will.
After a brief stare down where neither of them move, Lan Wangji puts down his own chopsticks next to the bowl. He meant what he said. They will eat together, or they will not eat together. His uncle stares at him, hollow and pop-eyed.
Slowly Lan Wangji reaches across the table. He picks up his uncle's chopsticks in one hand, and his uncle's right hand in the other. Lan Qiren allows him, helplessly. His eyes look pleading. Lan Wangji does not know if he is pleading for him to stop or to continue.
He puts the chopsticks in his uncle's hand. Glacially slowly he shifts to hold them correctly, and only then does Lan Wangji pick his own up again. And only once Lan Qiren has chewed and swallowed a small bite does he take one as well.
Lan Qiren eats half his bowl. Lan Wangji eats no more than he does. One of the older women who is helping with the youngest disciples, a non-cultivator and still formidable, sweeps away with their leftovers.
"I will eat with you again at dinner," Lan Wangji tells his uncle. He isn't so foolish as to mention lunch. He himself has not eaten lunch since before the war. Some things cannot be helped.
Lan Qiren takes a soft, hitching breath. It's almost a wheeze. Then he shuts his eyes, long-suffering. "I suppose you will."
Lan Wangji nods. "I will."
That is that.
There is more he wants to say. This isn't what he wanted, not even in the face of how furious he still is with his uncle's actions. Once this is over, Xichen will need a home and a family to come back to. Their uncle cannot keep on this path of self-flagellation and still be what Xichen will need later. The need to be what he will need is one of many things keeping Lan Wangji himself going. There are still survivors, too. Those disciples who survived it all and those who joined during the war are still their responsibility. Both of them are needed and they cannot allow themselves to fall apart.
Lan Qiren ought to be seeing Tian Junbi as well.
Lan Wangji weighs all these thoughts. He can't figure out how to voice them yet without it coming out incomprehensible and more than a bit furious.
He will wait. He will figure it out, and he will convince his uncle. They'll both be ready when Xichen needs them, and before that they will be ready for whatever comes between then and now. Meng Yao's plans are sound enough to give him hope again, so small he can easily hide it in his heart.