Chapter Text
The Burial Mounds stretch across the land like a shadow, the line where their twisted, curse-ridden soil meets Yunmeng territory sharp, distinct. On one side of the very visible border the trees are clean-limbed; lush, fertile. On the other they are gnarled, their growth stifled and their leaves wilted. Blighted.
Lan Xichen lands on the edge of the shadowed land, the land that formerly had belonged to no clan, no inhabitants. The land that now belongs to the Yiling Patriarch.
Wangji had told him about it. About the way the crabbed trees closed in over the sky, the dead air that pressed in close and choking against warm skin, the lifeless underbrush that crunched underfoot. About the gardens the Wens were trying to grow in unhealthy soil, the lean-tos they were erecting from rotting timber. That was what he had been willing to talk about, when he came back: the land, the colony. Not Wei Wuxian.
There is a path leading from the nearest town into the Burial Mounds. Lan Xichen sheathes his sword and follows it into this colourless, parched landscape. Dead branches creak overhead, dry leaves rustle in the moistureless wind. The air is hot and arid, like the breeze off a desert. It cloys close to him as he walks, against his face, his throat. There’s a feeling of hunger, and of malice. This place wants corpses, wants flesh and blood to feed its desiccated soil. It is a home of evil, all want and no give.
Lan Xichen clenches his teeth.
Up ahead, he senses rather than sees a barrier. As he approaches he is able to locate the talismans on the trees and stones that form it. It’s unorthodox, unique. Strong. The Yiling Patriarch’s skills have advanced to an unrecognizable degree, full of cunning and intelligence and innovation. Lan Xichen is not surprised the clans fear him; they have accepted very few innovations in recent memory. His is more guilty of this than most.
Wangji had spoken around Wei Wuxian, not of him, but he had been clear that Wei Wuxian was in control of his land. That he was aware of all that happened in it, and regulated it. At the time, Lan Xichen hadn’t been sure if his words were meant to reassure or to warn; he still isn’t. The idea that Wangji feels he must defend Wei Wuxian even from his brother is… difficult. But now is not the time to think on that.
Lan Xichen pulls out his qiankun bag and, from its depths, draws Wangji’s guqin.
He is not Wangji, of course. His spiritual energy is not identical. But they are brothers, trained in the same school by the same instructors. He can only hope it is close enough. He plucks the strings and sends out a burst of spiritual energy.
The barrier wavers, then thins. Lan Xichen grabs the instrument and runs through a moment before it firms up again. He breaths a sigh of relief and returns the guqin to the safety of his pouch.
Ahead the path is meandering, the light that filters through the trees dusty and bleak. He cannot see the end of the trail, has no idea how far it is to the Wen village. He is very tired, is in fact exhausted. But he has no choice other than to go forward. He cannot go home empty handed.
Up ahead something heavy crunches in the underbrush, and he pauses. Then a clear, familiar voice calls out – full of cheer and teasing. “Lan Zhan, ah, Lan Zhan – couldn’t you –”
Wei Wuxian comes around a bend in the path, and stops dead. The carefree smile falls from his lips, replaced not by fear but surprise.
He looks very different than the last time Lan Xichen saw him. Gone are his flawless silken robes, dark as night and perfectly tailored; gone is the leather and the metal. He’s dressed in thin, dirty linen and there is dust smeared on his cheeks and a long cut across three fingers of his left hand. His hair is combed but no longer sleek and oiled, and dust sits there too, turning the dark jet matte. His face is thinner, hollower, and Lan Xichen has no way of knowing if it’s his demonic cultivation that has done this, or something else.
“Zewu-jun,” he says. And then, belatedly remembering his manners, he bows.
Lan Xichen realises, abruptly, that he doesn’t know how to address this man. He has become known across the land as the Yiling Patriarch, but Lan Xichen doesn’t know if this is a title he chose, a title he prefers. He cannot risk insulting him.
He returns the greeting. “Yiling Patriarch,” he begins, and Wei Wuxian’s face clouds.
“Please. That’s not – you know me, Zewu-jun. What’s wrong? Why are you here?” He walks over and Lan Xichen sees he has no weapon, not even his flute. He came to meet Wangji unarmed, defenseless. With a smile on his face.
“I’m here to ask for your help. It’s Wangji. He’s ill.”
Wei Wuxian’s face tightens. “What happened? Ill how? Is it a curse?”
“No. A fever – intense, intractable. He has been delirious for several days now. If the fever doesn’t break soon, recovery is unlikely,” Lan Xichen forces himself to say these words, the words he rehearsed as he travelled here.
“How can I help?” asks Wei Wuxian, just like that. No bartering, no prevarication. “Do you want Wen Qing’s advice? Or –”
Lan Xichen looks him straight in the eye. “He is asking for you. In his fever dreams, all he speaks of is you. If you come, perhaps it will ease the fever.”
He sees Wei Wuxian’s mouth click shut, sees the way his face tightens like a child who has been struck. Not with pain, because before pain comes shock. Shock that Wangji would ever ask for him. Shock that Lan Xichen would come here to beg for his help. It’s an image that’s difficult to reconcile with the man who attended the cultivation conferences, who spoke back to Jin Guangshan and threatened his relative in front of all the clans.
“You want me to come with you? Where?”
“To the Cloud Recesses.”
Wei Wuxian stares. “I… Zewu-jun, you know who I am. I’m not someone you invite to your home.”
Lan Xichen looks at him, and feels he can almost read his thoughts. I’m someone who can only be visited furtively, shamefully. Is that what he thinks? Does he believe Wangji kept his visit secret? Does he not know Wangji accepted his punishment without complaint, and likely, without repentance?
Of course he doesn’t; Wangji would never tell him.
“Surely that’s my decision to make. It is my clan, my home. My brother, Wei Wuxian. I would do anything to save his life.”
Wei Wuxian takes a breath, his jaw tense and his eyes bright. “I…” he pauses, then looks back over his shoulder. “Zewu-jun, there are people here who depend on me.”
“It will not be for long. The journey is less than a day, by flight. No one knows I have come to you for aid. There will be no threat to your people. Wei Wuxian: please.” He joins his hands and bows, feeling the cruelty of it, of the position he’s putting Wei Wuxian in. He doesn’t care. He can’t care.
Wei Wuxian sucks in a dry breath, then nods shakily. “Alright. Alright. I – I’ll just be a minute. You can come –” he doesn’t even finish his sentence, just turns and takes off running through the twisted trees. Lan Xichen follows.
Not far from where they met the trees open out to a clearing at the base of the Yiling Mountains. Overhead the sky is full of swirling clouds, its colour strange, sickening. The ground here has been cleared and small plots of dirt cleared and planted with struggling plants. There are old men and women dressed in peasant clothes weeding and hoeing and doing menial chores. There is a rough wooden lean-to, and an ancient pavilion with rotting walls and a dangerously-sagging roof. In one of the earth plots, a tiny child – barely older than an infant – is playing with a toy made of sacking.
There is no army of fierce corpses. There is no army of malcontent Wen cultivators.
There is no army at all. There are perhaps a dozen elderly peasants, and a child.
Lan Xichen is, very suddenly, sickened.
He watches Wei Wuxian run over to a tiny woman in crude brick-dust-coloured robes, her face worn and her hands covered in dirt. Wen Qing, he recognizes after a moment. Wen Qing, a reportedly brilliant doctor, digging for turnips in the earth. They talk, then they argue. Wei Wuxian isn’t giving orders, isn’t speaking as a warlord. He’s pleading.
Wen Qing looks from him to Lan Xichen, who bows. She looks back to Wei Wuxian, her face dark. He shakes his head. She says something, and he shakes it again. Finally she turns away, arms crossed.
He jogs back to Lan Xichen. “Okay, let’s go. I mean – I don’t have a sword. Is that alright?”
Lan Xichen has heard this; like everyone else, he doesn’t understand it. But he was prepared. “I can bring you on mine. If that’s acceptable?”
Wei Wuxian doesn’t even seem to think about it. “Yes, fine, let’s go. It will be fastest if we leave through the main ward – then I won’t have to fix it after.” He takes off jogging down the trail. Lan Xichen catches Wen Qing looking after him, her face drawn, worried. Then he turns and follows.
***
At the entrance to the line of protection Wei Wuxian walks through without pause, and Lan Xichen follows him. He turns and does something quickly to the talisman, then nods. “That should keep it for a few days.”
Lan Xichen summons his sword from its sheath and steps atop it. Wei Wuxian looks up, then without waiting turns to present his back and holds up his wrist. Lan Xichen takes it, helping him to stand in front of him, one hand lightly on the man’s side to stabilize him. Wei Wuxian doesn’t react.
The sword rises, flying slowly at first, Lan Xichen waiting to see what kind of passenger Wei Wuxian will be. As it turns out, he’s a good one, making no attempt to control their flight and letting Lan Xichen keep a firm grip on him. Strange for a man who has always been so head-strong.
“Can’t we go faster?” shouts Wei Wuxian over the wind, as they head northwards.
Lan Xichen tightens his grip. They go faster.
***
It’s past nightfall by the time they make it to the Cloud Recesses. Unlike Wei Wuxian’s wards on the Burial Mounds, the protections on the Cloud Recesses are multilayered and ancient. They recognize the jade pass Lan Xichen carries as his birthright, and they are able to land right in the courtyard without bothering with the formal gate.
Lanterns glow beneath eaves and inside buildings, but the chill courtyard is empty. The cultivators will be at meditation, preparing for bed, while the servants will already be finished their work for the day. No one to see the clan head escort his clan’s most dangerous enemy through its home.
He leads him straight to the Jingshi, of course, where he left one of the more senior – and more sympathetic – cultivators to watch Wangji. They hurry up the steps and into the interior of the home that Wangji has recently taken for his own. Lan Xichen sees a white-robed, dark-haired figure kneeling beside Wangji’s bedside and steps forward. And then, as the figure turns, he stops.
It’s not Lan Lixin, who he had left here. It’s Lan Qiren.
His uncle’s eyes flick to him and, for an instant, show relief. Then they fall on Wei Wuxian, standing just behind his shoulder.
“Uncle –”
Lan Qiren stands, unfolding with the slow speed of unfurling wrath. “You,” he says, his voice barely controlled, barely contained in speech rather than snarl. “How dare you come here? How dare you bring your malicious, weak-minded evil here? Here, where we were generous and charitable enough to try to set you on the right path? A path you disdained and discarded for demonism, for necromancy!”
“Uncle, please, Wei Wuxian has come –”
Lan Qiren rounds on him. “And you, Xichen. Bringing the enemy of your clan – of all the clans – into your home. What do you mean by this? How can you –”
“I mean,” says Lan Xichen, firmly, “to save my brother. Wei Wuxian’s choices are complicated, and some are in conflict with our laws. But I do not believe he is motivated by evil, and I am not convinced he has done evil. And if he can save Wangji’s life, I will look the other way.”
“You would break this clan’s laws for sentiment? Even your father obeyed –”
Lan Xichen strides forward. On the bed behind his uncle, Wangji is breathing hard, fretfully. His muttering is low, inaudible, but Lan Xichen can guess at the words. Wei Ying. Where are you? I should have come. Wei Ying. Come back. “This is my decision, as Clan Leader,” he says. “It is final.” He turns behind him. Wei Wuxian is watching, silent, his hands fisted. “Wei Wuxian, please.” He raises his arm and moves his uncle aside, clearing a path for the younger man.
“If he brings his evil here, you will have damned your clan,” says Lan Qiren. He turns away and strides out.
Wei Wuxian is already at the bedside. He drops down sloppily, legs splayed beneath him, one hand on Wangji’s and the other resting carefully against his forehead to feel the heat of his skin. There’s no grace to his posture, his body seeming to fold over the bed – over Lan Xichen’s brother – like a blanket. Without stilted ceremony; heartfelt. Something unknown to their clan. “Lan Zhan? Lan Zhan it’s me. I’m here. I’m here and you’re going to be fine. Can you hear me? Lan Zhan!”
“I will summon the physician for an update,” says Lan Xichen. There is a small stack of talismans near the bed which can be used to alert the physician if he is needed; Lan Xichen burns one now.
Beside the bed is a bowl and cloth; Wei Wuxian wrings it out and begins to wash Wangji’s face, sponging away the sweat as he talks. His voice is soft but pleasant; comforting. He seems to have no aversion to sick-nursing, no pride that keeps him from tending to Wangji with diligence. Lan Xichen stands back and watches, and hopes.
The physician, an older man named Lan Yufei, appears a few minutes later with his hard-sided box of medicines and tonics. He bows to Lan Xichen, then glances at Wei Wuxian.
“Our guest has come to help Wangji recover,” says Lan Xichen. “How has my brother been since I left?”
Wei Wuxian doesn’t leave Wangji’s side, but he does turn to listen, dividing his gazes between the doctor and Wangji.
“There has not been any improvement I’m afraid, Clan Leader. In fact… in fact, he grows weaker. The fever is draining him. He has not responded to any of my medicines, and he accepts little liquid. If the fever does not break by the morning, I am afraid his chances of recovery are very slight.”
Lan Xichen feels as if the autumn chill has settled in his bones, radiating cold from within him. His golden core seems to be without heat, his body touched by frost. “Is there nothing you can do?”
Lan Yufei shakes his head.
“Then… then you may go.” He dismisses him without rancour, but also without hope. Medicine has failed, and now there is only Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian who has already turned back to Wangji, and seems to be telling a story. Something about home-made plum wine.
Lan Xichen walks over to the space Wangji has dedicated to music. There is a low table for his guqin, and a few books of music on a shelf behind. He settles on the low pillow and closes his eyes. Listening to the smooth sound of Wei Wuxian’s voice, he slips into meditation.
***
Lan Xichen doesn’t mean to sleep. There’s far too much happening to sleep. He needs to monitor Wangji, he needs to ensure Wei Wuxian behaves himself – and is left unmolested. He needs to eat, something he hasn’t done in a while. And then of course there is the whole other matter of his clan duties.
But he has only slept a few hours a day since Wangji’s fever became dangerous, and he falls down the well of exhaustion without ever feeling himself trip.
When he wakes soft, dawn light is filtering into the Jingshi. The lamps have all gone out, and a chill breeze is blowing. He sits up in panic, afraid that something has happened, that Wangji has – has –
On the other side of the room, Wei Wuxian is still talking. His voice is no longer soft, smooth; it’s rough now, gritty. He coughs once, then again. But he keeps talking, saying something about Brother Rich and A-Yuan, a story that makes no sense to Lan Xichen.
He stands and comes over, his body stiff and aching.
Wei Wuxian is bent haphazardly over Wangji, his back curved in what must be an uncomfortable position. He’s holding one of Wangji’s hands to his throat, his head bent, speaking softly to it. His words are no longer cheerful, upbeat. They’re desperate.
Lan Xichen can see, even from here, that the fever has not broken. Wangji’s face is waxy with sweat, the colour poor. But he is no longer muttering, no longer restless. He’s hardly breathing, his lips blue.
Dying.
Wei Wuxian turns, his story breaking off in the middle of a sentence, and Lan Xichen reads instantly in his face that awareness. His cheeks are hollow, his lips chapped. His eyes are red-rimmed and wild, like an animal’s. “He’s not hearing me,” he says, his voice wrecked. “He doesn’t know I’m here. He kept calling – calling – calling –” he can’t find the words or maybe the strength to finish. His voice breaks and his face contorts, flashing: pain/grief/terror before he controls it.
You tried, Lan Xichen should say, perhaps. You came. But those thoughts are febrile, flimsy as wet parchment, and disintegrate utterly in the face of his grief.
Wangji is dying.
His body curls inwards, his shoulders shaking; he presses his arms to his stomach and fights the urge to fold up and collapse.
“I need some air,” he whispers. Wei Wuxian has already turned away, back to Wangji, and doesn’t acknowledge him.
He slips out of the Jingshi. Out of the house where his mother died, alone, her life unnaturally shortened by the clan that denied her love or recognition or freedom. Just as it has denied Wangji, so used to prioritizing laws over love that he can’t even hear Wei Wuxian’s voice.
He doesn’t know where he goes. He just walks. Over stone, over grass, over late-blooming gentian flowers. His thoughts are a whirlwind of pain and grief. Wangji, curled outside the Jingshi in the snow. Seasons and seasons of studying the clan’s laws and principles, his uncle’s praise heartfelt only in recognition of their adherence to them. Wangji recognizing him at his inauguration, not as brother but as Clan Leader. Wangji sparring with Wei Wuxian, his face serene but his eyes so bright. Lan Xichen lying hurt and broken in the woods with the clan’s books, leaving Wangji to face the Wen’s wrath. Wangji’s face as Wei Wuxian stood up to take a drink for him. Wangji kneeling in the snow paying penance for visiting the Burial Mounds wordlessly, but also unapologetically. Wangji telling him he wants to bring someone home.
Lan Xichen believed for so long that if he could uphold the clan’s laws but also be kind, it would be enough. That if he showed Wangji he cared in little ways, if he supported him subtly, he wouldn’t be the man his uncle had become.
And now Wangji is dying, and he believes himself to be alone. Because Lan Xichen believed in compromise over compassion.
He is a failure. As a brother, and a nephew, and a clan leader. And his failure has cost him what he can’t even fathom, can’t yet bring himself to fully investigate. If he does, it will crush him.
***
Eventually he becomes more aware of his surroundings. He’s sitting on a stone in a garden behind his own quarters. Mostly he is brought back to himself by his stomach, which is contracting painfully. It’s been a day since he ate last. Which is, of course, unimportant. But it’s likely been a day since Wei Wuxian ate last, and as a guest he deserves consideration.
Lan Xichen goes along to the kitchens and has them prepare a simple tray of food; congee, tea, some dried fruit.
Walking back to the Jingshi, Lan Xichen’s thoughts are wrapped in a tight, painful twist of considering how to explain to Wei Wuxian that he brought food. Food, in the face of… what’s happening. Necessary, but also insultingly insignificant. It’s painful thinking about it, but this pain is infinitely less than turning his mind to the larger picture.
As he steps up into the small house, though, this awkward tangle is immediately forgotten in the face of someone shouting.
Lan Qiren shouting.
“You would make him one of your tame corpses? A mockery, an insult, a perversion?”
Lan Xichen drops the tray and runs in, to see Wei Wuxian on his knees with his back to the bed, facing Lan Qiren. Lan Qiren, who is holding his sword.
“I will punish you now as you should have been punished long before – as you deserve –” the sword slashes down towards Wei Wuxian and he dodges, flattening himself against the floor and drawing his knees up under himself. He reaches for his side, and his face falls.
He has no weapon. No sword, not even his flute.
He came to the Cloud Recesses, to the seat of one of the clans allied against him, with no weapon.
Lan Xichen reaches for his own sword, and pauses. Was Wei Wuxian truly intending to corrupt Wangji? To make him into an undead puppet?
On the bed Wangji is still breathing. His light sleeping robes have been pulled open, exposing his throat and chest. There’s no sign of demonic cultivation, no black veins or broken skin.
His uncle makes another strike; Wei Wuxian dodges this one too, but it is closer, the blade shearing open his sleeve. Lan Qiren pulls back, panting. “I will not let you corrupt him,” he snarls, and stabs the blade forward.
In a split second, Lan Xichen sees Wei Wuxian glance back and realise the same thing as he does. If he dodges, the blade will stab Wangji.
Lan Xichen bolts forward, summoning his own blade, but it’s too late and the angle is impossible and –
And Wei Wuxian sits, unmoving, as the blade slides into his abdomen. In the instant that follows both Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen pause, frozen. Wei Wuxian reaches up and presses the palms of his hands against either side of the blade, holding it still.
“Now,” he says, voice guttural, looking up with blood-wet lips, “you’re going to listen to me. Lan Zhan is cursed. It’s a small curse, tiny. In his heart. It’s stopping him from hearing me – and you. I can’t tell why exactly. And I can’t remove it if I’m dead. So please take the sword out, and I’ll try to save his life.”
Lan Xichen sheaths his own sword, then puts his hand over his uncle’s on the grip. Lan Qiren’s face is white, his teeth clenched.
“Uncle, please.”
“Xichen –”
“He came here to help. Let him.”
Lan Qiren frowns tightly, then with a smooth movement withdraws the sword. Blood pours out, soaking Wei Wuxian’s faded robes; he presses one arm tightly to his stomach. “Ah – fuck – ngh.” His eyes flicker closed momentarily and Lan Xichen wonders if this is the right thing to do, if he shouldn’t bring him to the infirmary now. If he’s risking Wei Wuxian’s life for Wangji’s.
He needs Wangji to live. Needs it. So he walks over and burns a talisman to summon the doctor, but does nothing else. His uncle stands with his sword pointedly still unsheathed, dripping blood onto the floor.
Wei Wuxian raises the hand not putting pressure on his wound, and presses his palm flat to Wangji’s chest. His eyes close again, purposefully this time. “It’s small,” he says again. “Not surprising you missed it. Small, and cruel. Hard to distinguish…”
Around his hand, small puffs of black smoke are rising. Cursed energy. What his uncle saw, undoubtedly, when he entered the Jingshi. He keeps talking, his voice tight with concentration. “There’s a trick… I can’t read it… but I think I can…” his voice fades away and his fingers tighten, the tips pressing into Wangji’s chest. He’s silent for more than a minute, then he lets out his breath and raises his head.
“Wei Wuxian?”
Wei Wuxian looks back over his shoulder. His face is wan, tight with pain. “I couldn’t dispel it,” he says. “Not fast enough. But it’s okay now. He should hear us again.” He turns to Wangji and brushes his fingers over his forehead. “Lan Zhan? Can you hear me? I’m here. I’m here, Lan Zhan.”
“What did you do?” demands Lan Qiren, the sword trembling in his grip. “What have you done, Yiling Patriarch?”
Wei Wuxian doesn’t turn. “I transferred the curse to me,” he says.
Lan Xichen feels adrift, like driftwood on the ocean, out of sight of anything of familiarity. He realises that he doesn’t understand anything about this man sitting in front of him, quietly bleeding onto the floor. And, what little his brother chose to hint at of his feelings, he failed utterly to support. The boys he knew have grown into strangers, strangers he’s done nothing to help.
“Uncle,” he says quietly, looking down at the sword. Lan Qiren twitches his mouth into a tight line of displeasure, but takes the sword to the wash stand and cleans the blade before sheathing it. Lan Xichen goes over to stand beside Wei Wuxian, watching as he talks quietly to Wangji and touches him – his face, his throat, his hand. Wangji, who hates being touched. Wangji who, he can’t help but think, would not object to this gentling.
There’s a clatter from outside as Lan Yufei arrives and encounters the tray of spilt food outside. He hurries in and comes over. His face, once he sees Wangji, becomes grim.
“See to Wei Wuxian, please,” orders Lan Xichen.
“I’m fine,” says Wei Wuxian, tightly, not moving.
“He isn’t. Wei Wuxian, unless Lan Yufei orders it, I will not ask you to leave. But please let him take care of you.”
Wei Wuxian takes in a breath, then lets it out. He turns without releasing Wangji’s hand, so the physician can see his blood-soaked side. Lan Yufei unceremoniously pushes Lan Xichen out of the way and kneels to inspect the wound. Lan Xichen watches as he unwraps the stained linen robes to reveal a thin chest. Too thin, ribs prominent beneath his skin, the muscle of his stomach begun to give way to the stretch of starvation.
“This is a very serious injury,” says Lan Yufei.
“It’s fine,” replies Wei Wuxian. “I’m fine. I heal fast. Look – nothing’s even fallen out. Hear that, Lan Zhan? I’m fine, so don’t worry, you concentrate on getting better and maybe giving me a sign because it’s tough here without you.” He gives the physician, and Lan Xichen, a clear look: Do not upset Lan Zhan.
So Lan Yufei frowns and packs the wound with healing moss and herbs to prevent infection, and then binds it tightly to stop the bleeding. So tight that Wei Wuxian has to stop slouching and sit up straight, which he complains about to Wangji. When the physician is finished he asked when Wei Wuxian last ate or drank, and isn’t rewarded with an answer. Lan Yufei’s frown gets, if possible, deeper. He stands.
“He needs water, and food. I will have some brought. Make him eat it.”
Lan Xichen nods. “And… Wangji?”
Lan Yufei’s face softens; his look is helpless. Lan Xichen turns away.
***
Wei Wuxian’s voice is giving out.
Lan Xichen is sitting across the room doing paperwork, because there is nothing else for him to do. His uncle comes and goes, silent and disapproving. Every few hours, Lan Yufei makes a visit.
Wei Wuxian seems to have an endless supply of light-hearted tales, which by this point Lan Xichen has to assume are made up. He has no way of knowing. All he knows is that Wei Wuxian is convinced Wangji will hear him, and wake up.
As the sun passes its peak, though, he’s coughing more and speaking less. His voice is dry and rasping, like a sponge out of water. He’s hardly slept, hardly eaten. Just talked. His uncle always complained about Wei Wuxian’s smart aleck mouth, his fresh comments and his insatiable need to hear himself speak.
Now, it may be the only thing keeping Wangji alive.
“Do you remember the lantern, Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian is saying, gritting out in his rough voice. “I remember… you got mad at me. But you loved that rabbit. So cute. We promised… to uphold what was right. I wish I could’ve done more with you. Fighting with you… fighting alongside you… it’s always the best. Lan Zhan? Please. Please. Be okay.”
There’s a quiet sob, then silence.
Lan Xichen closes his eyes.
***
He’s supposed to be reviewing the foodstuffs budget. Or perhaps the equipment and supply budget? Lan Xichen isn’t sure anymore. He can’t focus. He needs sleep, and hot food, but what he needs most of all is for Wangji to recover. He looks down at the rows of characters on the sheet in front of him; they blur.
Across the room, there’s a soft sound. Wei Wuxian, gasping. Then: “Lan Zhan? Lan Zhan!”
Lan Xichen stands so fast he knocks a book off the table. He crosses the room to kneel beside Wei Wuxian, who is white-faced with ugly shadows beneath his eyes. Eyes that are hawk-bright.
On the bed, Wangji’s eyes are open. His fingers are curled around Wei Wuxian’s.
Lan Xichen’s heart feels like it might burst. “Wangji!” He presses the back of his hand to Wangji’s forehead. It’s cool, the fever gone. Lan Xichen lets out a breath that almost turns to laughter, his relief dizzying, incredible.
Wangji licks his lips softly. “Wei Ying.” His voice is tender.
Wei Wuxian frowns. “I – did he speak?” he looks at Lan Xichen. Who looks back at him, confused.
“He did.”
“I – okay.” He turns back to Wangji. “Lan Zhan. You’re gonna be fine. You’re doing great. So great. Maybe have some water, though.” He lifts the small cup to Wangji’s lips, trickles a stream into his mouth with care. Wangji takes a few sips, then closes his eyes. “Yeah, that’s good. Rest. You need rest.”
Wei Wuxian puts the cup down with a trembling hand, then pushes himself away and stands. His face is very white. “So, I think I know what the curse does,” he says.
Then he faints.