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Wei Wuxian has lost everything, and ruined everything, and doesn’t really expect to wake up. First he’s aware of the motion, bouncing and swaying, and he tries to move but can’t.
Then he hears the voices.
“Do not tell lies,” a high, familiar voice says. “ Do not…gossip. Do not…eat the weak?”
“Hm,” a deep, familiar voice says. “That is not an official rule, but do not do that either. Perhaps it should be added.”
This is not the first time he’s hallucinated Lan Zhan, but it is the first time he’s hallucinated an A-Yuan to go with him.
Wei Wuxian thinks he is probably dead.
Then he figures out he can open his eyes.
He is on a donkey.
This is so unexpected Wei Wuxian has to sit with it for a minute. He is on a donkey? He is on a donkey! What the fuck.
He looks a little higher, and there’s Lan Wangji, leading the donkey. A-Yuan is on his shoulders.
Wei Wuxian is definitely dead.
Or maybe it’s a really good hallucination. Now that he knows he’s on a donkey, he can feel the ache in his legs and back— it’s been a long time since he’s ridden anything. He tries to move, and can’t— a talisman?
He clears his throat. He has to work at it before it produces any noise, but Lan Wangji, holding tight to one of A-Yuan’s legs, spins around at once, so fast it’s like he was being attacked.
“Xian-gege!” A-Yuan shouts, and the only reason he doesn’t launch himself off Lan Wangji’s shoulders is Lan Wangji’s iron grip on his leg.
“Be patient,” Lan Wangji says, in the gentlest tone Wei Wuxian has ever heard him use.
They all stop— or at least, Lan Wangji and the donkey stop. Lan Wangji carefully lifts A-Yuan off his shoulders and seats him on the donkey, in Wei Wuxian’s lap. A-Yuan flings himself at Wei Wuxian. The donkey grunts in displeasure.
Wei Wuxian can’t move.
“One moment,” Lan Wangji says, still soft and gentle. Wei Wuxian is a little freaked out, actually, and then Lan Wangji peels the talisman off his back and Wei Wuxian’s body snaps back to life.
He wraps his arms around A-Yuan.
“What…is happening?”
“I went to the Burial Mounds,” Lan Wangji says, some judgment there. To look for you, Wei Wuxian understands. “I found A-Yuan. We found you on the road to Qishan.”
“And…?”
“You have both been ill,” Lan Wangji says.
Absolutely nothing makes sense. Sure, now that Lan Wangji brings it up, Wei Wuxian remembers he was going to get revenge for… the Wens… damn.
But A-Yuan is here. Wei Wuxian hugs him until he squeaks.
Lan Wangji offers him a waterskin, and suddenly Wei Wuxian realizes how thirsty he is. He takes it and drinks greedily. There’s only a swallow left when he realizes and stops.
“Finish it,” Lan Wangji says, in his strange, gentle voice. “I have more.” Wei Wuxian takes the last gulp. Now he’s hungry, now that his stomach is awake.
Lan Wangji, continuing his mind-reading, hands him a pancake. It was cooked sometime this morning but it’s gone cold. Wei Wuxian tries to shove the whole thing in his mouth.
That, finally, gets a frown out of Lan Wangji. “Do not make yourself sick,” he says. “We will stop for a meal soon.”
“Rich-gege, what will we eat?”
“I don’t know. What would A-Yuan like to eat?”
And just like that, Lan Wangji starts walking the donkey again. “Hey!” Wei Wuxian complains, lurching in his seat.
“Hold on to A-Yuan,” Lan Wangji instructs.
“Yes, hold on to A-Yuan!” A-Yuan cheers. What can Wei Wuxian do, but hold on to this child and let Lan Wangji lead them where he will? He presses his face into A-Yuan’s hair. He’s alive. Wei Wuxian also, somehow, is alive.
There is a small city with a couple restaurants. Wei Wuxian washes in the stable before going inside, so he looks less like an embarrassment to Lan er-gongzi. If they both look like itinerant cultivators, Wei Wuxian reasons, they’ll draw less attention.
They draw attention, but it’s the “look at the cute family” kind. Wei Wuxian doesn’t even know what to do with that. Lan Wangji only lets him eat soup, but he does give in and let Wei Wuxian eat spicy soup, at least.
Wei Wuxian understands when he’s full after a small bowl. He tries to eat a bit more, but his stomach complains. So then he sits and sips tea and watches Lan Wangji put food in A-Yuan’s bowl. Wei Wuxian reconsiders if he’s dead. How else could this be happening? Maybe he’s in a coma, and this is an elaborate dream.
His legs, sore from days of donkey riding and no exercise, tell him otherwise.
They camp that night, though. Lan Wangji uses spare robes to make a little bed for A-Yuan, and it’s so cute Wei Wuxian wants to cry.
“What about me, Lan er-gege?” he pouts.
Lan Wangji’s hands might fumble, just a bit, but it’s hard to tell in the flickering light of the fire.
“Where does Wei Ying want to sleep?”
“Lan Zhan, aren’t you afraid I’ll run away in the night? Don’t you want to tie me up?”
The silence between them is suddenly charged, like lightning just flashed across the sky and the whole world is waiting for the thunder.
Wei Wuxian reviews the words that came out of his mouth. What the fuck is wrong with him? Lan Wangji is going to run him through—
“Does Wei Ying want to be tied up?” Lan Wangji asks.
Wei Wuxian can’t move. He’s going to die. How can that come out of Lan Wangji’s mouth? He makes a noise like a mouse.
“Wei Ying will not leave A-Yuan,” Lan Wangji finally says, very much with an air of taking pity on Wei Wuxian.
Wei Wuxian is too mortified to argue, and obediently lays down between A-Yuan’s nest and the warm bulk of Lan Wangji next to him.
“Good night, Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, as if anything about this is a remotely normal thing to be doing.
“Good night,” Wei Wuxian whispers. He kind of hopes his soul leaves his body, so he doesn’t have to deal with anything.
They come up on a market town, but before they go in, Lan Wangji has a talk with A-Yuan. “While around other people,” he says, “it is best if you call me 'A-die' and Xian-gege 'baba'.”
What.
“Why?” A-Yuan asks.
“It is to protect your Xian-gege,” Lan Wangji says, because he is a dirty cheater. A-Yuan nods, very seriously, and Wei Wuxian has to squish him a little bit to deal with his emotions about that.
“Okay,” A-Yuan says. “A-die and—” he leans back to look up at Wei Wuxian. “Baba.”
It hurt less to be stabbed in the stomach by Jiang Cheng.
“Xian— baba? Are you okay?”
Wei Wuxian nods. He can’t talk, but sure, he’s okay.
“A-die,” he calls to Lan Wangji. “Is baba crying again?”
“Baba is not crying again!” Wei Wuxian protests, and wow, that is a lot to say.
Lan Wangji looks at him closely.
“We should get you a hat,” says Wei Wuxian.
“Why?”
“Your ears are getting burned. They’re turning red!”
Lan Wangji finally makes an expression Wei Wuxian recognizes— “Ridiculous!”
But Lan Wangji is just being stubborn, because his ears are definitely red.
“Where are we going?” he finally asks. “This isn’t the way to Gusu.”
“Wei Ying will not be safe in Gusu now,” Lan Wangji says.
Wei Wuxian is not often struck dumb, but that does it. “Safe? What has safe— what are you doing, Lan Zhan?”
“Wei Ying,” he says, with a certain emphasis that is opaque to Wei Wuxian. It is all he ever says.
Wei Ying knows the answer is there, if he could only find it. He could even see it, if he wasn’t so afraid of it.
He huffs. “What if I run away?”
Lan Wangji turns to him. “Hold on to the baby,” he says, and shoves A-Yuan into his arms. Wei Wuxian has to scramble to make sure A-Yuan is secure.
“Not a baby,” A-Yuan complains sleepily, snuggling into Wei Wuxian’s shoulder. Wei Wuxian is seriously impressed. He had no idea Lan Wangji could play this dirty.
“I apologize,” Lan Wangji says seriously. “You are not a baby.”
“Yes, you are!” Wei Wuxian says, because he doesn’t know what else to do. “You’re my baby, aren’t you, A-Yuan?” he pouts.
“Hmm,” A-Yuan peers at him skeptically. “No?”
Wei Wuxian has no choice but to nom on his cheek.
“Xian-gege, no!” A-Yuan laughs, squirming so much he almost slides off the donkey.
Lan Wangji is smiling. What a bastard.
Wei Wuxian had forgotten what it felt like to feel like this: to be a person with a family, people he belonged to. Yes, Wen Qing and Wen Ning had become his family, but there was always a divide between the Wens and the Yiling Patriarch, and he hadn’t belonged to them in quite the same way. Or maybe he’d been wrong, and stupid, and that was why they’d all gone to die for him.
Although Wei Wuxian had chosen the Wens, it was not the same as this family, which… which was a family he would choose given any choice in the world.
By day, as they travel, Wei Wuxian’s memory trips, over and over, and something in him sings this is right, this is right, this is right.
By night, he lays next to Lan Wangji, sometimes with A-Yuan squirmed between them and sometimes not. That’s when the doubts assail him, because how can he deserve this? How dare he walk the earth like this, after all the death and destruction he’s caused?
Lan Wangji does not let him get up in the middle of the night to pace out his jitters; he says it wakes A-Yuan up, that it’s bad for Wei Wuxian, and he makes Wei Wuxian lay there. And then… Wei Wuxian falls asleep. He keeps sleeping most of the night? Bizarre.
And then he wakes up to another day with A-Yuan, who might be his child, and Lan Wangji, who might be his…?
His brain still skitters away, terrified of the word. Now that he knows what it’s like to lose everything, he doesn’t know how he’d survive it again.
It gets better, and worse, when they find a small village with an empty farm. “No one owns that farm anymore, but the land is still good,” the uncles in the village tell them. “The last people who tried said there was a ghost. But if you got rid of it, well, no one else wants it. You could have it.”
“We’re not afraid of ghosts,” says the Yiling Patriarch.
Indeed, the ghost is weak and easy to disperse, relieved more than angry by their interference. They send her away and then set to cleaning the farmhouse, repairing the furniture, inspecting the fields. There is one big bed, and a little cot that is the right size for A-Yuan. The repair the fences and lay wards.
“We don’t have a plow,” Wei Wuxian points out, something desperate clawing at his insides.
“I have money,” says Lan Wangji, and that is that.
“When are you leaving?” bursts him out of him one night, after they have crawled into their shared bed. Lan Wangji freezes next to him. “I just ask because A-Yuan will really miss you when you go, you know, so… so it would be better if you go sooner rather than later. If you… when you go.”
There is a long quiet moment. It’s another of those charged silences, and Wei Wuxian thinks Lan Wangji is about to get up and go now.
“I will not go,” Lan Wangji says.
Wei Wuxian waits for a qualifier. It doesn’t come.
“What?” he squeaks.
“I will stay.”
Wei Wuxian opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. Lan Wangji is ridiculous! How can he say that? Wei Wuxian’s heart is pounding. Is he panicking?
“Lan Zhan!” he protests.
“Wei Ying.” Which— how dare he!
“Lan Zhan— your sect! Your brother!”
“Brother understands.” Wei Wuxian doubts that very much.
“You can’t just abandon them! For—” nothing, he thinks. For me.
“Already done,” Lan Zhan says, which is also ridiculous. Wei Ying opens his mouth to argue. “I have broken many rules,” Lan Zhan continues, which effectively shuts Wei Ying up. “I have kidnapped the Yiling Patriarch,” he says, and is that— pride? Is Lan Zhan proud of himself for that? “And the last Wen,” he adds, thoughtfully.
“Lan Zhan, that’s—” true, technically. Wei Ying doesn’t know what to do. Lan Zhan doesn’t lie, though, and Lan Zhan said he would stay.
Wei Ying sees, suddenly, how it will work. They are Lan Zhan and Wei Ying. A-Yuan will soon forget he ever called them anything but A-die and baba. They have a farmhouse, and a donkey. Someday, Lan Zhan will come home with chickens. Someday, Wei Ying will bring home two rabbits. Soon, they’ll have a bunch of rabbits, enough to bury A-Yuan under, because Wei Ying knows Lan Zhan and Lan Zhan is absolutely a soft touch for rabbits.
And a soft touch for A-Yuan, and… for Wei Ying.
They’ll teach A-Yuan how to read and write beautifully and draw. They’ll teach him how to play pranks and eat spicy food. They’ll teach him sword forms he will hopefully never need, unless they all go night hunting. Wei Ying will grow food and Lan Zhan will cook it. At night they will sleep in the same bed, Wei Ying and Lan Zhan, and everyone will think— and no one will know—
That’s when Wei Ying starts sobbing, great gulps, and clutches onto Lan Zhan’s robes. “Stay,” he gasps through his sobs. “Stay, Lan Zhan, stay.”
Lan Zhan holds him tight, pulling him close so there’s no space between them, arms around him like iron bands nothing can cut through.
It is several years later when a lone figure makes its way onto their farm. This isn’t a big deal; neighbors and villagers will sometimes come to trade, sometimes a tinker comes through with things to sell.
This one has a golden core, which trips Wei Ying’s carefully constructed and hidden wards, so both Wei Ying and Lan Zhan meet him in front of the house, at the front of the garden. A-Yuan is out back, feeding the rabbits (there are 20).
Nie Huiasang is, honestly, the last person they expected. “I’m very sorry to do this,” he says. Something about him is different, more fragile and harder both, like pottery after firing. “I need your help.”