Chapter Text
Lan Zhan’s mother is dead.
Three months ago, she had teased Lan Zhan for the quiet expression that he could never quite smile away, ruffled Lan Huan’s hair as he showed off his calligraphy, and coughed exactly once into her hand as they were escorted away by Uncle. Lan Zhan had glanced back and seen his mother looking at her palm, frowning for the first time in his life.
Two months ago, she had swayed while standing to compliment Lan Huan on his improved cultivation, sneezed as she hugged Lan Zhan so tightly he would have protested were it anyone else, and held a handkerchief to her mouth as if she thought her sons could not see the red underneath. She did not stand to see them leave. Lan Zhan closed the door in time to see her attention return to the papers on her desk, scattered and haphazard like nothing else in the world Lan Zhan knew, and full of writing that she had not let her sons read.
One month ago, she had not been able to rise from her bed. She pushed several papers under her pillow at the knock and subsequent entrance of Lan Huan and Lan Zhan, who did not acknowledge her paleness and tremors out of courtesy. She was quiet, distracted, full of nervous energy - everything she was usually not. Lan Huan’s face had grown drawn, worried, but Lan Zhan was not troubled. His mother was a fixture in his life. She could not leave so easily. Would not.
“A-Huan, make sure to take care of yourself and A-Zhan,” she said as they were pulled away, the fear in her eyes stalling Lan Zhan’s feet. “A-Zhan, come here.”
Lan Zhan hesitated, looking at his uncle’s stone face, and walked to his mother. She cupped his face, smiling. “You will be okay. Smile for me.”
He did.
“Remember yourself as I see you, yes? No matter what the world tells you, you are my A-Zhan, brave and beautiful and loving. Okay?”
He nodded, and left, and did not look back.
And now she is dead, and A-Zhan is frozen where he kneels.
Xiongzhang tugs, and he comes. They need to sort through her things.
Her bed is burned in case of contagion, as are all her clothes. The small rabbit figurine Lan Zhan made for her when he was young sits crookedly on the windowsill, and he shakes his head when Uncle asks if he wants it. It is Mother’s. It should not leave her.
And yet she has left it. Them. Him.
His hands shake once before he returns them to his side and resumes the perfect posture he has been taught.
“What of her papers?” a disciple Lan Zhan faintly recognizes asks, and Uncle holds out his hand. He skims Lan Zhan’s mother’s handwriting, frowning, and traces a half-drawn talisman.
Lan Zhan shivers and looks away. His brother pulls him closer, enveloping him with his robes, his grip the only thing keeping him tethered.
- - -
Next month, his brother finds him kneeling at the door to his mother’s room. “Lan Zhan,” he says gently. “Let’s go.”
He shakes his head, and Lan Huan sighs.
“She’s gone, A-Zhan,” he says, incomprehensible. “Come on, stand up. Let’s go.”
He goes. He keeps looking back until he is blinded by the snow, as if he will see his mother smiling, waiting for next time.
- - -
Next month, Lan Huan does not come for hours. It has stopped snowing, but Lan Zhan shivers where he sits. He does not understand why his mother does not open the door, why his brother is not beside him.
“A-Zhan?”
Lan Zhan turns to see his brother standing at the open gate. His brother runs his hand through his hair, almost flustered. “I didn’t- I didn’t know you were here. I forgot that you-” Then he does something uncharacteristic - he pauses mid-sentence. His face goes blank, dazed. He half-swivels, as if to leave.
“Xiongzhang?” Lan Zhan says, perhaps pathetically.
Lan Huan turns back, looking startled. “A-Zhan!” He rushes over. “I didn’t know you were here.”
Lan Zhan blinks.
His brother shakes his head, reaching him. “Come with me. Ah, you’re freezing.”
He is, and so he lets his brother tuck him into his robes and pull him back to his rooms. His brother looks at him strangely during the walk back, startling at nothing, almost as if he has forgotten that Lan Zhan is beside him.
- - -
Next month, Lan Zhan watches the sun set.
Lan Huan has not talked to him in three weeks and neither has Uncle. They do not acknowledge him when he requests permission to speak in class. Their eyes skim past him, as if he is empty air.
He has been kneeling for hours. He is surprised that he still exists, has not wafted away in the cold dusk and the isolation and the strangeness of no one having spoken to him in days.
He did this to Mother, perhaps. It is the only thing he can think of, the only reason why his brother does not smile at him and his uncle no longer praises him and his heart and knees are scraped raw from waiting. The punishment is not one he has seen administered before, but Lan Zhan hardly speaks, so it is fitting that his sentence is such that no one should speak to him. Mother has left, forever - he thinks he understands what gone means, now, the hole in his month and chest that will never again be filled - and it is his fault, and he will never be forgiven.
His fate is to be as alone as she was. As she is, now.
Lan Zhan shivers as the last of the light dips below the horizon, swathing his world in black. He stands, slowly.
“Mother?” he whispers quietly to the unopened door and overwhelming dark, as if he will conjure up a life in which he is not condemned at six years old for something he doesn’t understand. He misses Lan Huan’s quiet hold, quiet words, quiet gaze, special in a way that nothing else is and now gone.
Gone.
Before the isolation, before his family and sect began treating him as they do now, he heard Uncle speak to his brother about how Lan Zhan did not understand what it meant to be gone. He wonders if that is the nature of this punishment, the understanding it brings. The knowledge of the desperate loneliness and aching quiet settling into him that does not leave with waking. Lan Zhan’s mother is gone. Lan Huan’s comfort is gone. Lan Zhan himself has disappeared in their wake.
He does not like it, but his objections go unheard.