Work Text:
..rejoice, wei wuxian is dead
..dead without a corpse
..someone of bad character
..what goes around comes around
..rejoice
..rejoice
..rejoice
Lan Wangji’s ears ring as he feverishly looks through the Burial Mounds. Rejoice, he thinks bitterly, as he tears the mountain apart to find something, anything.
Anything. Anything that remains of the man who loved to tease him, who held his heart unknowingly, who Lan Wangji did not want to love but couldn’t help love anyway, the man who Lan Wangji wanted to save.
Even as his body sings in pain, he refuses to stop. This pain is nothing in face of the panic Lan Wangji feels and in the face of what awaits him if he fails.
He desperately plays Inquiry on his guqin, trying to find a wisp of the soul he holds dear, but it’s as if the melody is mocking him - there is not even a whisper to suggest anything that remained of wei wuxian.
He finds the toddler, A-Yuan, Wei Ying had called him, tucked inside a tree. The child is sick with fever, on the verge of death, and is the only proof that Wei Ying had lived.
He takes A-Yuan to Gusu.
Failure, he mumbles through a haze of alcohol.
He bought a jug of Emperor’s Smile, hoping to understand the man who’s gone a little better.
He understands a little, but without a lilting voice teasing him, calling out his birth name with a hint of mockery, he feels emptiness claim his body.
He thinks of failure.
He thinks of how Lan Wangji, the best disciple of the Lan Clan of Gusu, lauded for doing everything perfectly, has failed so completely.
Failure was not something Lan Wangji was afraid of, before this. He approached every endeavor with calmness - if it succeeded, good, if it didn’t, he’d learn something. Isn’t it ironic that when he didn’t care about whether he failed, he never did, and the one time he was terrified of it, he failed spectacularly?
He wonders if he hadn’t loved Wei Ying, if he hadn’t been so desperate in his efforts to save him, if he had not been so afraid of failing, would Wei Ying have lived?
How could he have done that though? He carried, carries, a universe made up of Wei Ying inside him. His love for Wei Ying is interwoven in every thread that makes up his soul. Trying to unravel those threads might have destroyed his mind. He would have tried to do so anyway, no matter how impossible it might be, no matter how much it would have hurt, if it meant Wei Ying did not suffer the pain he did.
It’s too much. He wants Wei Ying. He can’t find him.
He wants to hear Wei Ying play the flute, feel the melody coursing through his body, making him feel the same way Wei Ying has always made him feel.
He can’t hear it. He can’t even find Wei Ying’s flute.
He finds the brand instead.
..wangji-xiong
..wangji
..lan zhan
..lan-er-gege
He’s dreaming. The dreams seem gentle and kind, but only Lan Wangji knows the edge of cruelty hiding behind.
He will gladly accept the cruelty, gladly embrace it and let it cut him a thousand times, if he gets to see his love’s face so clearly, gets to hear his laughter ridden voice over and over again.
The image of Wei Ying smiling overlaps with an image he hasn’t seen in a long time, an image he hasn’t dreamed of for years, a smiling face that teased his younger self the same way Wei Ying liked to. Both images scatter like someone dropped a stone into a lake, fading away to leave only longing behind.
He wants to get out of here, he wants to try summoning Wei Ying’s soul again. Maybe after a month of being gone, Wei Ying might come back?
His body is too scarred though - he can only lie on his front and wait to heal.
He wants to go see A-Yuan and try to find traces of Wei Ying in the child.
He can’t.
He shuts his eyes again.
He sees Wei Ying in every corner of the Cloud Recesses.
He thinks about the irony of his rooms being called the Tranquility Room, when it is behind the doors of the room, he lets his anxiety take over him as he plays Inquiry over and over again.
As his fingers bleed, and as tears drip down his face and stain his robes, and as he never hears a response.
He only stops at hai time - not because he cares about the rules. He stops because his xiongzhang has been worried. He stops because if he pretends to be able to sleep like he did before, maybe his xiongzhang and shufu might believe he is getting better.
He doesn’t know that his eyes are shuttered permanently, and that the hollow emptiness he feels is evident, and no amount of pretending will fool his brother and uncle.
His dreams get crueler but not in the way he wants them to. They’re starting to add a gossamer film to hide Wei Ying’s features. He sees his face through a layer of blurriness he doesn’t like. He wants to reach out in his dreams to clear away the water, to touch Wei Ying’s face. Everytime he tries to though, he ends up dissolving Wei Ying’s image completely.
He wakes up with a new kind of heartbreak. He tries to calm his mind, and tries to recall Wei Ying’s features with the clarity he could before.
Was his smile as wide as he remembered it to be? Was there a tiny dent on the right side of his mouth? There was a tiny mole behind his ear, right? Was it the left ear or the right ear?
He feels like his mind is betraying him - he loved, loves Wei Ying. Why can’t his mind remember the way he wants it to?
The more he tries, the more the image slips through his mind like sand through his fingers. His breathing gets rougher, he gasps as he pulls out all the small tactile tokens he’s hidden away - the perfume sachet, the dried peony, the flower pinned to Wei Ying’s chest during the night hunt on Mount Baifeng.
He touches them reverently, hoping they help him remember.
They don’t.
He gives in to the pain and the tears.
He’s sitting with the rabbits with A-Yuan.
He watches as A-Yuan pets the rabbits with so much gentleness, like he doesn’t want to scare them away.
He watches the two rabbits that Wei Ying had gifted him, the way the boisterous one frolics around and tries to bite at his forehead ribbon. He feels a temporary peace wash over his soul, as he holds his forehead ribbon in place. He watches as the quiet one follows his companion, and how the two bunnies eventually snuggle with each other as they fall asleep.
He looks at A-yuan, and thinks of the way he played Inquiry this morning, and will continue playing Inquiry forever.
He finally decides A-Yuan’s courtesy name.
Sizhui