Lan Wangji (蓝忘机) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lightbearinglord) wrote2023-12-13 07:17 am
lightbearinglord) wrote2023-12-13 07:17 am
Entry tags:
[ at dawn, through a silken window ]
There is a door a handful of paces down the hallway from Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian's quarters. That door typically opens onto the small, spare room that Lan Wangji uses for meditation and handstands. This morning, barely past mao hour with Wei Ying still warmly and enticingly asleep in their bed, it opens onto the interior of the hanshi.
Lan Wangji is very still. A return to the Cloud Recesses cannot possibly be this simple. His mind scatters in a thousand directions: he must return to Wei Ying. He must seek out Tress and introduce her to Sizhui. He must find Claudius, and Magnus, and tell them—
“Wangji,” his brother says.
The door shuts behind Lan Wangji, who has stepped forward without conscious thought. Lan Xichen is as he ever is, seated at the low table that makes up the centerpiece of the hanshi. A cup of steaming tea sits at his elbow. He looks, too, as he ever does, a face nearly identical to Lan Wangji’s own, framed by his own cloud-patterned forehead ribbon, but smiling, dark-eyed, kind. This smile, this once, does not appear forced. Lan Xichen is happy to see him.
Abruptly weak and unable to speak, Lan Wangji sinks to his knees. He has spent longer apart from his brother than this, but never before been so unsure of seeing him again, and never so very far from home. He is a child again, mute and simmering with unnameable emotions, even more so when Lan Xichen says his name again, “Wangji,” and comes over to kneel before him and fold Lan Wangji into his arms. As adults, they rarely touch this way. When Lan Wangji was younger, they would curl around one another like a pair of clasped hands, sharing Lan Huan’s bed the evening following every doled-out visit with their mother, Lan Zhan trembling with something he couldn't begin to explain and Lan Huan holding him through it rather than beginning to shake himself.
Lan Wangji tangles his hands into the front of his brother's robes. Familiar embroidery, familiar white silk, everything familiar, with such an ache of recognition to it that Lan Wangji's eyes are hot. He has longed for his home so keenly that evidence of its existence is sharp enough to resemble pain. “Xiongzhang.”
There is a smile in Lan Xichen's voice as he says, “I've missed you too.”
Lan Wangji looks up, uncertain whether to be embarrassed. Lan Xichen would never ask him to be, but his brother has always treated him gently. He doesn't know where to begin. The hanshi smells of Lan Xichen's tea and the clean perpetual mist of the Cloud Recesses. The light inside is patterned geometric through the stalks of bamboo outside. In the corner, Lan Xichen has been painting, although this piece is half-abandoned.
“I got your letter, Wangji.” Lan Xichen draws back to look at him, and now Lan Wangji can see the weary cast to his face. He looks better than he did when Lan Wangji first visited him in seclusion, but that is an easy achievement.
Lan Wangji can only nod. He is afraid to look at anything beyond his brother's face. It all has the sense of ephemera, as though the mansion has been reality all along and the Cloud Recesses never existed after all.
As if in answer to the thought, Lan Xichen's face twists with sorrow. “You won't be able to stay long, will you?”
“No,” Lan Wangji says, after a moment's silence. He will not leave Wei Ying. He would not like to leave anyone else without, at the very least, making his farewells. And he knows, without needing to wonder, that the next time he comes to this door, it will lead only to a small, spare room with an incense burner and a view of a lake. Nothing comes so easily. This morning can be a temporary gift, nothing more. It could be a greater number of weeks still before the next time he can speak with his brother, and yet he has no choice. To stay here, to walk out the opposite door and back into the Cloud Recesses, would be to abandon his husband, and a number of other people who are coming to mean a great deal to him. He is nearly thankful that the decision is so simple, that Wei Ying is still abed and that there can be no question about what he will do.
“Sit with me a while, then,” Lan Xichen says, doing Lan Wangji the favor of making it an order rather than a question. He knows that Lan Wangji will listen to his older brother.
Lan Xichen produces an additional cup, setting it out for Lan Wangji. An easiness settles across the room, the easiness of expectation understood. Grateful, Lan Wangji rises, dips into the bow he should have given his brother at the outset, and then kneels across from him. He pours tea for Lan Xichen, filling his half-drunk cup, and then for himself.
“Wangji,” Lan Xichen says again. The smile has fallen from his features again. “Tell me everything you can with what time we have, won’t you?”
Lan Wangji is silent, but Lan Xichen is patient—for everyone, but for his younger brother the most of all. The scent of the tea, freshly-poured, catches in Lan Wangji’s lungs. If he strains his ears, he can discern the sounds of junior disciples doing their morning recitations in the lanshi. He wants to see Sizhui. He wants to admonish Jingyi. He wants to watch magnolia petals drift past the library pavilion.
He breathes in, once, and then out. He lifts his gaze to meet his brother’s.
Lan Xichen’s expression is soft. “You’re feeling conflicted, aren’t you?” There is no one alive who can read Lan Wangji’s face the way that Lan Xichen can. Wei Ying is nearly there—but he has had far fewer years to study. Lan Xichen has known Lan Wangji his entire life. He was the first to wipe Lan Wangji’s tears, the first to place his forehead ribbon around his head and tie it into place for him, the witness to the first time Bichen answered to his qi. Uncle was the second for most things, but Lan Xichen was always first.
Relieved, Lan Wangji nods again. He isn’t certain how to explain it. He has been suffused with a longing for home for weeks, and yet he would feel an echo of that same longing for the mansion and its people if he left it behind. Wei Ying has loved his freedom, and he can hardly bear the thought of abandoning Magnus. Leaving Claudius without a goodbye would be leaving an open wound untended. For most of his life, Lan Wangji has felt directed by a purpose. At any given time, there was a goal, and there was its pursuit: become a disciplined cultivator; stop the Wen clan; prevent Wei Ying from harming his body and spirit; survive the greatest grief imaginable. His success was not guaranteed, but clarity was. Now, he feels split in two. He has duties and important commitments at the Cloud Recesses, and people who need him. He has important commitments in his new home, too, and—he guesses, but he thinks he may be right—people who need him there, as well.
With the air of someone stepping through a patch of brambles, Lan Xichen says, “I know that you won’t leave Wei Wuxian.” Lan Xichen is still wary of Wei Ying, but he knows that when Lan Wangji decides on something, there is almost never any dissuading him from it.
“No,” Lan Wangji says without hesitation.
“Then, truly: tell me everything.”
Lan Wangji begins, “It is impossible to describe. The architecture is unfamiliar. The people are foreign to me, even those who do not seem to be.” He pauses. There is too much. He has been transformed, in ways he could have never anticipated. He has taught cultivation principles to people who had never heard of qi in their lives. He has been an adolescent again; he has made at least one friend, perhaps more; he has cried, and smiled, more in a handful of weeks than he once would have in years at a stretch. He has learned of gods beyond his understanding, worlds beyond his imagining. He has loved Wei Ying, now, in a place where those who hear of his marriage grant him sincere congratulations rather than strained smiles and polite obfuscations of their feelings about the Yiling Patriarch as they wonder whether Hanguang-jun has taken leave of his senses.
As always, Lan Xichen gifts him time to summon his words.
“It is changing me,” Lan Wangji says slowly, “and I am uncertain if I mind.”
“Ah,” Lan Xichen says, his voice fond and, at the same time, brushed with sadness, “I see.”
Lan Wangji feels his own brow creasing. He holds his tea with two hands.
Lan Xichen, this time, is the quiet one. “I worried for you after Mother died,” he says. “You wanted nothing of the world—I know you remember. You kept to the jingshi, emerging only to night-hunt. You always had that way about you, the ability to freeze everything and everyone around you, and I was afraid you would never thaw.”
The surface of Lan Wangji's tea is glassy as he holds it, perfectly still. He remembers going down to the Gusu market alone, fifteen years old, his every second thought about Wei Ying. Every vendor and villager turned mute around him, covering their mouths with their hands and whispering to one another. The women flushed pink when they saw him, but were no more inclined to speak with him. He knows that he has this effect on people, that others cannot see the neatly-ordered but overwhelming collection of his feelings.
“Wangji,” his brother says, still gentle. “I know you. If you've found something that reaches through to you, then I'm glad.”
Lan Wangji thinks of Magnus, holding onto the jade token where it hangs next to the pendant of his talking blade. He thinks of Tress, dutifully meditating per the schedule that Lan Wangji urged for her. He thinks of Laertes, the boat made by his own hands and his insatiable hunger for knowledge. He thinks of Nina, entrusting him with something dangerous after one meeting only, because she could sense his steadiness. He thinks of Galahad, staring into a fire and asking what to do if he cannot be rebuilt. He even thinks of Crowley, cast out of his Heaven and still searching for answers. He thinks, finally, of Claudius, growing gentians in the wintertime for no reason other than that Lan Wangji misses them.
Lan Wangji wants to see the gentians outside the jingshi, but he wants to see the gentians that grow in answer to Claudius’ care, too. “I have,” he says. Haltingly, then, he adds, “It is not only Wei Ying there for me.” That is one of the things Lan Xichen always wanted the most for him—friendship and community outside of the tranquility of the Cloud Recesses. It does not escape Lan Wangji’s notice that he, now, is the one deriving happiness from blossoming connections, while Lan Xichen’s friendships have destroyed him.
Lan Xichen lets the silence unfurl, which may be a mercy. It is peaceful here. The tea cools and Lan Wangji sips it, letting it warm him. The youngest disciples will be taking their breakfasts now, laughing to one another and then quieting hastily at the scolding from their teachers. Sizhui may be tending to the rabbits at this very moment, holding them with care the way Lan Wangji taught him.
“Sizhui is doing well,” Lan Xichen tells him with a hint of a smile, almost sheepish to have picked up on his little brother's thoughts so handily. “He and Jingyi have taken on a night-hunt by themselves recently. The young Jin-zongzhu joined them.”
Unsurprised but gratified, Lan Wangji nods. He knew that Sizhui would be excelling. He begins to ask a question, but then Lan Xichen is already answering it:
“He knows you're thinking of him. I asked Uncle to tell him. I will again.” Lan Xichen swallows a measured sip of tea.
The word shufu sends fresh longing and fresher dread lancing through Lan Wangji. With some guilt, he is glad that Uncle is not present. Uncle loves him—Lan Wangji's life is proof enough of that—but he does not have the capacity to indulge him the way that Lan Xichen does. Shouldering the weight of an entire sect on behalf of his angry, unseen brother stripped him of that softness. He would hate the small ways in which Lan Wangji has begun to lapse; he still hates, as much as he tries to hide it with propriety, that Lan Wangji stole away in the night with Wei Wuxian and that he feels no remorse for loving the Yiling Patriarch.
Again, there is quiet. Lan Wangji memorizes, unnecessarily, every detail of the hanshi: the cabinetry, Lan Xichen's neatly-ordered pile of books, the unremarkable and currently unlit incense burner in the corner. He wonders if his brother would play Liebing for him if he asked—but he will not ask. He isn't certain if Lan Xichen has played at all since Guanyin Temple. Once, it was a matter of instinct for Wangji and Liebing to liberate and suppress spirits together; now Lan Wangji thinks first to make room, instead, for the sound of the dizi. He never exorcises the people he loves from his heart, but the shapes of their occupations can change with time, he has found.
“I'm trying to forgive—Jin Guangyao.” So there is still that pause, that tripping of the tongue from a man heretofore so calm and assured, as Lan Xichen remembers not to say A-Yao.
They have had this discussion several times before. For his brother, Lan Wangji would have it a thousand more. He sets down his tea. “Do you feel that you need to?”
Lan Xichen's mouth thins. “Da-ge would tell me not to,” he says. Their understanding goes both ways. Lan Wangji easily hears the array of emotions in Lan Xichen's voice like a fan slowly spread open to display an intricate design. He is so fond, still, of Nie Mingjue, his oldest friend, and rueful that Nie Mingjue was proven correct about Jin Guangyao’s nature, and grieving the loss of the both of them.
Lan Wangji says nothing, because Lan Xichen does not need his answer.
“My heart will rest easier if I can,” Lan Xichen says, softly.
It doesn't matter whether Lan Wangji would forgive Jin Guangyao if this were his misery. Jin Guangyao is dead, shut away in a coffin in the remains of the brothel that ground away his mother’s spirit, and Lan Xichen is alive, and must endure.
All Lan Wangji needs to do is look at his brother with understanding and hope on his behalf, and Lan Xichen rewards him with a weary smile. “Thank you.”
Sharing a cup of tea with his brother, Lan Wangji could be any age at all. He could be six, so proud to bear his forehead ribbon, listening to Lan Huan eagerly speculating about their upcoming visit with Mother. He could be fifteen, drawn as tight as a qin string, his head bowed and his fists clenched, hardly able to bear Lan Xichen saying, Wangji, it looked like you wanted Wei-gongzi to accompany us. He could be twenty, his mouth bruised and his shame deeper than the sea, Lan Xichen coming to sit with him in their guest quarters at Carp Tower. He could be twenty-five, partway through his seclusion and certain he would never emerge, drinking in Lan Xichen’s stories of everything A-Yuan had learned that month. He could be thirty-seven, and he could still be growing.
“Wangji,” Lan Xichen says, hushed, in the way that he once said, You are allowed to want something, you know, before he knew that the thing Lan Wangji wanted above all else was the man whose name would become an embodiment of fear. Lan Wangji looks over his shoulder. The door that leads back to the mansion is an incongruous sight in this room, like a bruise on an expanse of unmarked skin. It rattles, the handle shaking, and when Lan Wangji glances back at his brother, he knows that they both know it is calling him back, and telling him that there is very little time remaining.
So as not to be wasteful, Lan Wangji finishes his tea. He stands, and it is painful to look at Lan Xichen, but it would be more painful still to look away. Lan Xichen smiles at him. He comes nearer. He reaches up with care and adjusts Lan Wangji’s forehead ribbon, which needs no adjusting, for him.
“Xiongzhang,” Lan Wangji says one final time.
“Don’t look like that.” Lan Xichen’s smile shrinks without vanishing. “I’ll read every letter you send.”
Lan Wangji nods, his throat tight, and pulls his brother into a crushing embrace, only the second ever that he has initiated himself. They are matched in strength, and exactly of a height, and Lan Xichen holds onto him in return, the Twin Jades of Lan proving their claim to the moniker.
As he leaves, Lan Wangji does not look back. This morning, he will slip back into bed. He will kiss Wei Ying's sleep-stale mouth, watch the sunlight of another world filter through their curtains as a day begins, and remember not to regret the choice he has just made.
Lan Wangji is very still. A return to the Cloud Recesses cannot possibly be this simple. His mind scatters in a thousand directions: he must return to Wei Ying. He must seek out Tress and introduce her to Sizhui. He must find Claudius, and Magnus, and tell them—
“Wangji,” his brother says.
The door shuts behind Lan Wangji, who has stepped forward without conscious thought. Lan Xichen is as he ever is, seated at the low table that makes up the centerpiece of the hanshi. A cup of steaming tea sits at his elbow. He looks, too, as he ever does, a face nearly identical to Lan Wangji’s own, framed by his own cloud-patterned forehead ribbon, but smiling, dark-eyed, kind. This smile, this once, does not appear forced. Lan Xichen is happy to see him.
Abruptly weak and unable to speak, Lan Wangji sinks to his knees. He has spent longer apart from his brother than this, but never before been so unsure of seeing him again, and never so very far from home. He is a child again, mute and simmering with unnameable emotions, even more so when Lan Xichen says his name again, “Wangji,” and comes over to kneel before him and fold Lan Wangji into his arms. As adults, they rarely touch this way. When Lan Wangji was younger, they would curl around one another like a pair of clasped hands, sharing Lan Huan’s bed the evening following every doled-out visit with their mother, Lan Zhan trembling with something he couldn't begin to explain and Lan Huan holding him through it rather than beginning to shake himself.
Lan Wangji tangles his hands into the front of his brother's robes. Familiar embroidery, familiar white silk, everything familiar, with such an ache of recognition to it that Lan Wangji's eyes are hot. He has longed for his home so keenly that evidence of its existence is sharp enough to resemble pain. “Xiongzhang.”
There is a smile in Lan Xichen's voice as he says, “I've missed you too.”
Lan Wangji looks up, uncertain whether to be embarrassed. Lan Xichen would never ask him to be, but his brother has always treated him gently. He doesn't know where to begin. The hanshi smells of Lan Xichen's tea and the clean perpetual mist of the Cloud Recesses. The light inside is patterned geometric through the stalks of bamboo outside. In the corner, Lan Xichen has been painting, although this piece is half-abandoned.
“I got your letter, Wangji.” Lan Xichen draws back to look at him, and now Lan Wangji can see the weary cast to his face. He looks better than he did when Lan Wangji first visited him in seclusion, but that is an easy achievement.
Lan Wangji can only nod. He is afraid to look at anything beyond his brother's face. It all has the sense of ephemera, as though the mansion has been reality all along and the Cloud Recesses never existed after all.
As if in answer to the thought, Lan Xichen's face twists with sorrow. “You won't be able to stay long, will you?”
“No,” Lan Wangji says, after a moment's silence. He will not leave Wei Ying. He would not like to leave anyone else without, at the very least, making his farewells. And he knows, without needing to wonder, that the next time he comes to this door, it will lead only to a small, spare room with an incense burner and a view of a lake. Nothing comes so easily. This morning can be a temporary gift, nothing more. It could be a greater number of weeks still before the next time he can speak with his brother, and yet he has no choice. To stay here, to walk out the opposite door and back into the Cloud Recesses, would be to abandon his husband, and a number of other people who are coming to mean a great deal to him. He is nearly thankful that the decision is so simple, that Wei Ying is still abed and that there can be no question about what he will do.
“Sit with me a while, then,” Lan Xichen says, doing Lan Wangji the favor of making it an order rather than a question. He knows that Lan Wangji will listen to his older brother.
Lan Xichen produces an additional cup, setting it out for Lan Wangji. An easiness settles across the room, the easiness of expectation understood. Grateful, Lan Wangji rises, dips into the bow he should have given his brother at the outset, and then kneels across from him. He pours tea for Lan Xichen, filling his half-drunk cup, and then for himself.
“Wangji,” Lan Xichen says again. The smile has fallen from his features again. “Tell me everything you can with what time we have, won’t you?”
Lan Wangji is silent, but Lan Xichen is patient—for everyone, but for his younger brother the most of all. The scent of the tea, freshly-poured, catches in Lan Wangji’s lungs. If he strains his ears, he can discern the sounds of junior disciples doing their morning recitations in the lanshi. He wants to see Sizhui. He wants to admonish Jingyi. He wants to watch magnolia petals drift past the library pavilion.
He breathes in, once, and then out. He lifts his gaze to meet his brother’s.
Lan Xichen’s expression is soft. “You’re feeling conflicted, aren’t you?” There is no one alive who can read Lan Wangji’s face the way that Lan Xichen can. Wei Ying is nearly there—but he has had far fewer years to study. Lan Xichen has known Lan Wangji his entire life. He was the first to wipe Lan Wangji’s tears, the first to place his forehead ribbon around his head and tie it into place for him, the witness to the first time Bichen answered to his qi. Uncle was the second for most things, but Lan Xichen was always first.
Relieved, Lan Wangji nods again. He isn’t certain how to explain it. He has been suffused with a longing for home for weeks, and yet he would feel an echo of that same longing for the mansion and its people if he left it behind. Wei Ying has loved his freedom, and he can hardly bear the thought of abandoning Magnus. Leaving Claudius without a goodbye would be leaving an open wound untended. For most of his life, Lan Wangji has felt directed by a purpose. At any given time, there was a goal, and there was its pursuit: become a disciplined cultivator; stop the Wen clan; prevent Wei Ying from harming his body and spirit; survive the greatest grief imaginable. His success was not guaranteed, but clarity was. Now, he feels split in two. He has duties and important commitments at the Cloud Recesses, and people who need him. He has important commitments in his new home, too, and—he guesses, but he thinks he may be right—people who need him there, as well.
With the air of someone stepping through a patch of brambles, Lan Xichen says, “I know that you won’t leave Wei Wuxian.” Lan Xichen is still wary of Wei Ying, but he knows that when Lan Wangji decides on something, there is almost never any dissuading him from it.
“No,” Lan Wangji says without hesitation.
“Then, truly: tell me everything.”
Lan Wangji begins, “It is impossible to describe. The architecture is unfamiliar. The people are foreign to me, even those who do not seem to be.” He pauses. There is too much. He has been transformed, in ways he could have never anticipated. He has taught cultivation principles to people who had never heard of qi in their lives. He has been an adolescent again; he has made at least one friend, perhaps more; he has cried, and smiled, more in a handful of weeks than he once would have in years at a stretch. He has learned of gods beyond his understanding, worlds beyond his imagining. He has loved Wei Ying, now, in a place where those who hear of his marriage grant him sincere congratulations rather than strained smiles and polite obfuscations of their feelings about the Yiling Patriarch as they wonder whether Hanguang-jun has taken leave of his senses.
As always, Lan Xichen gifts him time to summon his words.
“It is changing me,” Lan Wangji says slowly, “and I am uncertain if I mind.”
“Ah,” Lan Xichen says, his voice fond and, at the same time, brushed with sadness, “I see.”
Lan Wangji feels his own brow creasing. He holds his tea with two hands.
Lan Xichen, this time, is the quiet one. “I worried for you after Mother died,” he says. “You wanted nothing of the world—I know you remember. You kept to the jingshi, emerging only to night-hunt. You always had that way about you, the ability to freeze everything and everyone around you, and I was afraid you would never thaw.”
The surface of Lan Wangji's tea is glassy as he holds it, perfectly still. He remembers going down to the Gusu market alone, fifteen years old, his every second thought about Wei Ying. Every vendor and villager turned mute around him, covering their mouths with their hands and whispering to one another. The women flushed pink when they saw him, but were no more inclined to speak with him. He knows that he has this effect on people, that others cannot see the neatly-ordered but overwhelming collection of his feelings.
“Wangji,” his brother says, still gentle. “I know you. If you've found something that reaches through to you, then I'm glad.”
Lan Wangji thinks of Magnus, holding onto the jade token where it hangs next to the pendant of his talking blade. He thinks of Tress, dutifully meditating per the schedule that Lan Wangji urged for her. He thinks of Laertes, the boat made by his own hands and his insatiable hunger for knowledge. He thinks of Nina, entrusting him with something dangerous after one meeting only, because she could sense his steadiness. He thinks of Galahad, staring into a fire and asking what to do if he cannot be rebuilt. He even thinks of Crowley, cast out of his Heaven and still searching for answers. He thinks, finally, of Claudius, growing gentians in the wintertime for no reason other than that Lan Wangji misses them.
Lan Wangji wants to see the gentians outside the jingshi, but he wants to see the gentians that grow in answer to Claudius’ care, too. “I have,” he says. Haltingly, then, he adds, “It is not only Wei Ying there for me.” That is one of the things Lan Xichen always wanted the most for him—friendship and community outside of the tranquility of the Cloud Recesses. It does not escape Lan Wangji’s notice that he, now, is the one deriving happiness from blossoming connections, while Lan Xichen’s friendships have destroyed him.
Lan Xichen lets the silence unfurl, which may be a mercy. It is peaceful here. The tea cools and Lan Wangji sips it, letting it warm him. The youngest disciples will be taking their breakfasts now, laughing to one another and then quieting hastily at the scolding from their teachers. Sizhui may be tending to the rabbits at this very moment, holding them with care the way Lan Wangji taught him.
“Sizhui is doing well,” Lan Xichen tells him with a hint of a smile, almost sheepish to have picked up on his little brother's thoughts so handily. “He and Jingyi have taken on a night-hunt by themselves recently. The young Jin-zongzhu joined them.”
Unsurprised but gratified, Lan Wangji nods. He knew that Sizhui would be excelling. He begins to ask a question, but then Lan Xichen is already answering it:
“He knows you're thinking of him. I asked Uncle to tell him. I will again.” Lan Xichen swallows a measured sip of tea.
The word shufu sends fresh longing and fresher dread lancing through Lan Wangji. With some guilt, he is glad that Uncle is not present. Uncle loves him—Lan Wangji's life is proof enough of that—but he does not have the capacity to indulge him the way that Lan Xichen does. Shouldering the weight of an entire sect on behalf of his angry, unseen brother stripped him of that softness. He would hate the small ways in which Lan Wangji has begun to lapse; he still hates, as much as he tries to hide it with propriety, that Lan Wangji stole away in the night with Wei Wuxian and that he feels no remorse for loving the Yiling Patriarch.
Again, there is quiet. Lan Wangji memorizes, unnecessarily, every detail of the hanshi: the cabinetry, Lan Xichen's neatly-ordered pile of books, the unremarkable and currently unlit incense burner in the corner. He wonders if his brother would play Liebing for him if he asked—but he will not ask. He isn't certain if Lan Xichen has played at all since Guanyin Temple. Once, it was a matter of instinct for Wangji and Liebing to liberate and suppress spirits together; now Lan Wangji thinks first to make room, instead, for the sound of the dizi. He never exorcises the people he loves from his heart, but the shapes of their occupations can change with time, he has found.
“I'm trying to forgive—Jin Guangyao.” So there is still that pause, that tripping of the tongue from a man heretofore so calm and assured, as Lan Xichen remembers not to say A-Yao.
They have had this discussion several times before. For his brother, Lan Wangji would have it a thousand more. He sets down his tea. “Do you feel that you need to?”
Lan Xichen's mouth thins. “Da-ge would tell me not to,” he says. Their understanding goes both ways. Lan Wangji easily hears the array of emotions in Lan Xichen's voice like a fan slowly spread open to display an intricate design. He is so fond, still, of Nie Mingjue, his oldest friend, and rueful that Nie Mingjue was proven correct about Jin Guangyao’s nature, and grieving the loss of the both of them.
Lan Wangji says nothing, because Lan Xichen does not need his answer.
“My heart will rest easier if I can,” Lan Xichen says, softly.
It doesn't matter whether Lan Wangji would forgive Jin Guangyao if this were his misery. Jin Guangyao is dead, shut away in a coffin in the remains of the brothel that ground away his mother’s spirit, and Lan Xichen is alive, and must endure.
All Lan Wangji needs to do is look at his brother with understanding and hope on his behalf, and Lan Xichen rewards him with a weary smile. “Thank you.”
Sharing a cup of tea with his brother, Lan Wangji could be any age at all. He could be six, so proud to bear his forehead ribbon, listening to Lan Huan eagerly speculating about their upcoming visit with Mother. He could be fifteen, drawn as tight as a qin string, his head bowed and his fists clenched, hardly able to bear Lan Xichen saying, Wangji, it looked like you wanted Wei-gongzi to accompany us. He could be twenty, his mouth bruised and his shame deeper than the sea, Lan Xichen coming to sit with him in their guest quarters at Carp Tower. He could be twenty-five, partway through his seclusion and certain he would never emerge, drinking in Lan Xichen’s stories of everything A-Yuan had learned that month. He could be thirty-seven, and he could still be growing.
“Wangji,” Lan Xichen says, hushed, in the way that he once said, You are allowed to want something, you know, before he knew that the thing Lan Wangji wanted above all else was the man whose name would become an embodiment of fear. Lan Wangji looks over his shoulder. The door that leads back to the mansion is an incongruous sight in this room, like a bruise on an expanse of unmarked skin. It rattles, the handle shaking, and when Lan Wangji glances back at his brother, he knows that they both know it is calling him back, and telling him that there is very little time remaining.
So as not to be wasteful, Lan Wangji finishes his tea. He stands, and it is painful to look at Lan Xichen, but it would be more painful still to look away. Lan Xichen smiles at him. He comes nearer. He reaches up with care and adjusts Lan Wangji’s forehead ribbon, which needs no adjusting, for him.
“Xiongzhang,” Lan Wangji says one final time.
“Don’t look like that.” Lan Xichen’s smile shrinks without vanishing. “I’ll read every letter you send.”
Lan Wangji nods, his throat tight, and pulls his brother into a crushing embrace, only the second ever that he has initiated himself. They are matched in strength, and exactly of a height, and Lan Xichen holds onto him in return, the Twin Jades of Lan proving their claim to the moniker.
As he leaves, Lan Wangji does not look back. This morning, he will slip back into bed. He will kiss Wei Ying's sleep-stale mouth, watch the sunlight of another world filter through their curtains as a day begins, and remember not to regret the choice he has just made.
- The title is from this poem by Wang Wei, a Tang Dynasty poet.
- “Xiongzhang” is a fairly formal way of addressing/referring to one’s older brother. I like to leave it untranslated because it’s one of multiple ways to say “older brother” and I think it’s a fun character note that Lan Wangji unerringly uses this specific one.
- A little background info for non-MDZS-knowers: Lan Xichen, birth name Lan Huan, is Lan Wangji’s older brother. They are described as essentially physically identical except that Lan Xichen has dark, kind eyes and is usually smiling vs. the way Lan Wangji has light eyes and a fairly forbidding, cold facial expression. They’re both extremely beautiful and accomplished cultivators, hence they’re known as the Twin Jades. They were both taken away from their mother at birth and raised by their uncle, Lan Qiren, and were permitted to see their mother only once per month until her death when Lan Wangji (then still known as Lan Zhan, his birth name) was six years old. They’re very close, and Lan Xichen knew Lan Wangji was interested in Wei Wuxian practically before Lan Wangji did.
- I’ll spare you the details of exactly what went down with Jin Guangyao, Lan Xichen, and Nie Mingjue (iykyk) but they had a sworn brotherhood and at the end of Mo Dao Zu Shi, Lan Xichen is the only one of the three left alive. He’s so devastated by what happened that he goes into seclusion. When Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian get back from their months-long post-elopement honeymoon, one of the first things Lan Wangji does is go visit his brother in said seclusion and have a lengthy talk with him.
- The Lan forehead ribbon is sacred and can be touched only by members of one’s family or one’s cultivation partner.