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In the frenzy of battle, Lan Wangji watches his love, his zhiji in this life (in any life) succumb to the forces he should never have tried to control. Fighting is always a time of clarity, his senses sharpening and his path laid out clearly for him - dodge, lunge, attack, parry, defend, repeat as often as necessary, in whatever pattern he must to both stay alive and keep others safe. Now, he finds that there’s nothing he can do. There’s nothing he could have ever done to train for watching Wei Ying finally falter and give himself over to resentment. There’s no way he could have ever prepared himself for the sight of Wei Ying, bloodied, broken, cast pale and motionless into the dirt to be surrounded on all sides by cultivators baying for his blood.
He tries to move to his zhiji ’s side, attempts to fly to him, to defend him, stand between him and the world until they can figure out how to fix this. There has to be a way to fix this. He can’t lose Wei Ying.
But time seems to have slowed and Lan Wangji along with it, and so he’s forced to watch as Wei Ying dies as violently as the rest of the cultivation world has demanded.
Lan Wangji’s anguished cry is lost in the din of thousands of cultivators celebrating their victory, hundreds more crying out in pain from the injuries sustained fighting Wei Ying’s ghosts and corpses. Ghosts and corpses that have turned on their master in his death, and Lan Wangji forces himself to witness their revenge, if for no other reason than someone in this world should remember it as the horrific tragedy it is, rather than a moment of final triumph. He watches until his vision blurs with exhaustion and tears, until his throat is raw from crying out in the vain hope that Wei Ying isn’t truly gone. He watches until he succumbs to his injuries, and then he welcomes the bliss of senselessness with open arms.
-/-
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying calls for him with a smile. “We’re friends, aren’t we? If you come to Yunmeng to visit, I’ll definitely show you all the best things to do in Lotus Pier!”
Wei Ying glows with the afternoon sun. His white robes are near-blinding in the light, but nothing comes close to his radiant smile that never seems to falter. The joy of birdsong has nothing on Wei Ying’s laughter ringing through the trees and off the rocks at whatever look is on Lan Wangji’s face. He doesn’t know how he keeps doing that, making Wei Ying laugh, but he supposes he doesn’t need to know. It’s enough to hear it now, after so long without.
“Aiyah, Lan Zhan, don’t be so stiff!” Wei Ying cries and moves one of his hands through the water as if to splash him, though of course it doesn’t work. “I promise you-” Wei Ying raises one hand to put a three-finger salute to his temple, “I’ll make sure you have a good time! No one can be shown around Lotus Pier by me and not enjoy themselves, just trust me!”
Lan Wangji takes a deep breath in despite the tight ache in his back, holds it, and spends one more long moment committing the sight of this Wei Ying to his memory. The young ones don’t last as long as the echoes of him that reflect his final years, but Lan Wangji treasures every single glimpse of his love equally. He loved him reluctantly, uncertainly when they were both so young and bright. Now that he loves the memory of him with every fiber of his being and without any hint of shame, these reminders of who Wei Ying had once been are as precious as pearls.
“I trust Wei Ying,” he says now, as if to make up for all the times he should have said it while Wei Ying was alive and he couldn’t find the words. Too little too late, but he hopes that these echoes of Wei Ying carry something of his soul in them, enough to hear what he tells him now.
“Ah?” Wei Ying looks utterly floored by that, and then his laugh is bright again, no different from the sunlight and the breeze dancing across Lan Wangji’s bare shoulders there in the seclusion of the Cold Pond. “Lan Zhan!! I knew you’d agree in the end! The moment we’re done with lectures and free to go where we please you have to come with me, alright? You have to stay by my side.”
The request is a knife hooked under his ribs, a shiver of the melody of Wei Ying’s Yunmeng accent turning his words into music that threatens to rip Lan Wangji apart at the seams.
“I will always accompany Wei Ying,” he promises. The words sit sharp and bitter with bile on the back of his tongue. If he had stayed by Wei Ying’s side, he wouldn’t be talking to a ghost. Wei Ying wouldn’t have died, Lan Wangji wouldn’t have to wait for these glimpses of him or search for the lingering evidence of his early influence in their son, now growing well into his position in the Lan Sect.
“Ah Lan Zhan, so serious!” Wei Ying teases with another attempted splash in his direction, his hand passing through the water without disturbing a drop. “Don’t break your promise now that you’ve given it! I know your face is thick, but how could you ever face me again if you didn’t grant me my only wish, Lan Zhan?”
“I would be unable to,” he confesses, because there’s no use in hiding it. Wei Ying disappears all at once like a bursting soap bubble, in front of him one moment and gone on a breath of wind the next, and though Lan Wangji has had to get used to it in the years since Wei Ying’s death, it never gets any easier to suddenly find himself alone again.
-/-
“Hanguang-Jun.”
Lan Wangji stills at the door to the Jingshi and takes a moment to breathe. He’s done this before, but as with nearly everything else regarding Wei Ying’s hauntings, if they can be called such, this type of encounter doesn’t get any easier to deal with.
Ceramic meets wood with a sharp clack and Wei Ying swipes the back of his hand across his mouth, rubbing away a few glistening drops from his pale lips. The smell of wine is sharp in the air and Lan Wangji gently slides the door shut - not that many people come this way, but any who might pass by wouldn’t need to see this.
“Hanguang-Jun,” Wei Ying says again as if he’s trying to taste it. “Hanguang-Jun, the savior of the cultivation world! You’ve finally managed to drag me away to Gusu after all.”
Lan Wangji tries and fails to keep his composure as Wei Ying looks up at him from the floor, his eyes red-rimmed and nearly sunken into his skull, the tender skin beneath them so dark it looks bruised. Lan Wangji’s hand clenches around Bichen and his lips tremble with the urge to defend himself, his intentions. But the words don’t come any more easily now than they had when Wei Ying had still lived, and he knows from experience that whatever he says now won’t matter anyway. He steps forward and refuses to let Wei Ying’s sneer deter him from settling down across the table from him.
“Nothing at all to say, Hanguang-Jun?” Wei Ying jeers, pours himself another cup of wine and slops a bit on the table. “You’ve never bothered to hold your tongue before, don’t start now. You’ve got me here anyway, might as well get it all out of your system and tell me yet again that I can’t do a damn thing right.”
Even like this Lan Wangji can’t stop himself from studying every little detail of Wei Ying, no matter how much it hurts him. He can see his ribs through his robes and the too-sharp angles of his collarbones, his body having long ago begun to deteriorate. This Wei Ying with such a bitter attitude, so much anger, all the hatred with which he looks at Lan Wangji, is the version of him that had died right at the end of life as Lan Wangji had known it. Mourning and furious with the world for ripping so many things away from him, this Wei Ying doesn’t have any space in him for forgiveness or laughter; Lan Wangji loves him like this, too, and so he sits up on his knees and takes the wine from Wei Ying’s hand to pour him a fresh cup.
Unlike the weak echoes of his younger self, the versions of him that are like this, fuelled by rage and resentment, are much stronger - it’s a real jar of wine from Lan Wangji’s own stash, and when Wei Ying lifts the cup to knock the contents back in one jerky movement the wine disappears to..somewhere. Wherever Wei Ying is. Lan Wangji still doesn’t understand why or how these ghosts of Wei Ying can’t answer his calls when he plays inquiry, but it doesn’t really matter when he’s at least allowed to have this painful pleasure of seeing him again, as clearly as if he were flesh and bone.
“I said once that I could stand to die if it was you,” Wei Ying says. Lan Wangji pours him more wine with steady hands. “You let me go back then. You’ve always let me go, and look what it’s gotten us.”
Lan Wangji takes a deep breath in around the lump of ice in his chest where his heart should be. It’s meant to beat for Wei Ying, but when Wei Ying himself is so frigid what good would it do? Better to remember that this is where they ended up - cold, distant, with Lan Wangji a failure and his only love hating the sight of him as a reminder of everyone who fought against him.
Lan Wangji pours him the last of the jar of Emperor’s Smile and Wei Ying drinks it as mechanically as he had the rest of it. Lan Wangji watches his throat bob around the mouthful of it, and he stays kneeling, penitent, as Wei Ying stands and steps around the table to loom over him. Wei Ying reaches out to grip his chin and his touch is ice-cold, utterly inhuman. Lan Wangji tips his head back enough to look up at his zhiji , the Yiling Laozu in all his undead glory, and the ice around his heart cracks into painful shards that bury themselves in the tender fluttering of his lungs.
“Stop asking for me,” Wei Ying says, cold as snow. “Don’t look for me. Leave me and the Wens be, stay up here on your miserable mountain, perfect and untouchable as ever. My life doesn’t concern you, Hanguang-Jun. Get lost.”
Lan Wangji allows himself one moment of weakness; he raises one hand from his lap to clutch at the inky black skirts of Wei Ying’s robes in the moment before he disappears, and without his restraining touch Lan Wangji curls forward to try to wrap himself around the gaping hole in his chest, the scars on his back protesting the sudden stretch. He chokes on a sobbing exhale and reminds himself that this is nothing more than what he deserves.
-/-
Lan Wangji opens his eyes to find himself kneeling on the floor of Demon Subdue Palace. Wei Ying had laughed when he’d explained his reasoning behind the name; he isn’t laughing now. The Yiling Laozu looms above Lan Wangji, wreathed in shadows and eyes glowing a furious red. His fingers drip blood, long clotting strings of it, black in the uncertain flicker of candlelight.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji attempts to plead, only to choke on something hot and metallic. He bends forward to retch, his pure white robes stained with flecks of red, black dirt on his hands and his knees and blood spattering onto his lap with each wet cough. It takes forever to clear his throat but Lan Wangji finally manages it, looking up as his chest heaves with each desperate inhale to find Wei Ying still towering over him, utterly unmoved.
“Wei Ying,” he tries again, and this time it at least comes out a rough croak. “I’m sorry.”
“Your apologies are so hollow, Hanguang-Jun,” Wei Ying replies, the whisper of a thousand voices distorting his beloved voice into something unrecognizable. “We are dead - what can apologies do for us now?”
Lan Wangji spits out a final blood clot onto the floor and straightens up again only to abruptly find himself flat on his back, wrists and ankles pinned and Wei Ying straddling his chest with a snarl on his blood-red lips. Resentment boils thick in the air around them, the tendrils of it burning him where they brush against his skin. Wei Ying’s hot-slick hands close around his aching throat and Lan Wangji gives himself over to it. There’s something..beautifully obscene about it, an untouchable hero of the cultivation world giving himself over to the worst enemy of it. The world threw Wei Ying away, down into the dirt amongst his dead, and Lan Wangji no longer thinks twice about throwing himself down with him.
“Too little too late, little Lan,” Wei Ying rasps. “We’re nothing but a nightmare now.”
Lan Wangji startles awake with a gasp, his lungs burning and his hand automatically flying to his throat. He can still feel Wei Ying’s bloody hands around him and he chases the memory of the sensation for a long, confused moment before there’s restless shifting in the bed beside him.
“Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying nuzzles into his side. “Y’okay?”
Lan Wangji slows his racing heart with an effort and closes his eyes against the familiar dark domesticity of the Jingshi to attempt to chase away his dream. He lays down again without answering, bundling Wei Ying to his chest with too much strength, but his husband doesn’t complain.
Wei Ying hasn’t asked about Lan Wangji’s life while he’d been dead (outside of wanting to hear stories of A-Yuan’s childhood). Lan Wangji can only be glad of it; his husband doesn’t deserve the guilt of knowing that Lan Wangji had accepted every painful memory or reminder of him to have something . He doesn’t know that Wei Ying’s first life still haunts his dreams long after the strange, haunted echoes of his first life have faded from Lan Wangji's reality. He doesn’t need to know that should he ever slip into madness again Lan Wangji will happily slip right alongside him rather than lose him again.
Lan Wangji presses a long, firm kiss to Wei Ying’s forehead and falls asleep with a phantom ache in his knees, his throat, a cold stone lodged in his chest. He’ll be fine in the morning; until then, he can hold Wei Ying in his hands and appreciate this second chance to keep him safe.