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Unclean Realm is loud.
At every moment, dawn to dusk, there is a cacophony of voices, scraping stone, hammers falling on metal and sabers shrieking against each other. Wolves call and wildcats scream in the distance, the wind howling through the mountain peaks and thundering into the sides of buildings, rattling roof timbers and slamming window shutters. Even a fraction of the noise that is simply the background of Unclean Realm would call for a council of elders at Cloud Recesses, where even playing an instrument too boisterously or at an inconvenient time will draw censure. Lan Xichen can barely hear himself think, most days he spends here.
It’s quieter, in the healing pavilion.
It makes sense. Even the Nie have to acknowledge that quiet is better for healing than noise. The general recovery rooms are not quite as insulated as those which Lan Xichen has been told are for housing those recovering from qi deviations— as Meng Yao, technically, is— but nearly the entire pavilion has strategically-placed talismans and cleverly-designed rooms that dampen sound. In a few places the effects are clear even when speaking, words falling from lips as if wrapped in wool, to make the least disruption possible.
It works admirably, also, to keep the effects of Lan Xichen’s efforts on Meng Yao’s behalf from bleeding into the rest of the healers’ work.
He plays, and he plays, and he plays. In the mornings and the evenings, with meals and as lullabies. He plays the xiao, and when that fails he drags a guqin out of his sleeve and plays that. He sings, and convinces Meng Yao to hum along with him. He plays in his dreams, as his body shivers in the autumn chill of Unclean Realm and even his sleeping mind seeks answers.
Clarity, and Rest, and Restoration. Beautiful songs, brimming with spiritual power, known to heal and comfort, to settle and soothe the spirit.
Meng Yao smiles shyly, and listens obediently, says with quiet confusion, “Lan-gongzi is very skilled. This one feels very refreshed by his music.”
And perhaps he even does.
But he is still not healed.
This is the heart of the matter: it is Lan Xichen’s fault.
To be sure, he did not poison a-Yao, and the healers are sure now that it was the poison, at least, which brought on the qi deviation. All the same it is his actions which put a-Yao in danger. His temper, his outrage, unleashed on Meng Yao when he was most vulnerable to it, pushed a-Yao away from them when he most needed their help. Perhaps if he had been more patient, if he had been gentler, Meng Yao would have brought his struggles— even some part of his struggles— to his sworn brothers. Perhaps he would have trusted them. And if they had known whatever fears or furies lurked in his heart, they might have been able to protect him from the ravages of his own mind.
And the worse thing is that he is still angry— at Jin Guangshan, at Wen Ruohan, even at Nie Mingjue and Meng Yao. It seems as if every person he knows has conspired to prevent him from helping, to hide from him the truth and ensure that he would only be able to watch, bitter, as his loved ones collapse— even those loved ones, themselves. He knows that anger is a poison, a dagger in his own ribs, with nothing of value or consequence to tell him, and yet it still squats in his belly, hot and ugly. It bites bitterly at the back of his words, and he has to strangle it back to avoid repeating his mistake.
It comes out worst, of course, with Nie Mingjue. They snap and bite at each other like circling dogs, fighting over the same scrap of tooth-worn bone.
Anger feeds anger, after all.
Anger was never one of Lan Xichen’s sins, as a child. Of the two of them, it was Lan Zhan who struggled to contain his outrage over every small injustice or inconvenience. He typically chose to express that wrath with his teeth, which was certainly appropriate to his intentions, if also rather alarming to witness. It was, Lan Xichen assumes, far more alarming to endure, but he is one of the very few people in their childhood who never suffered Lan Zhan’s teeth personally. The privileges of being a gege.
Lan Qiren had no such privilege— uncles, evidently, did not merit exemption from biting— and so was often subjected to Lan Zhan’s grim expressions of anger. He was their caretaker, after all, and the effective leader of the sect, and so to them it had seemed as if all crimes laid at his feet. Their mother’s sadness, their father’s distance, the quiet judgement of the elders… who else could they blame? Who else was there to be angry with? It was his hands that brushed their hair, so it was his hands that were close enough to bite.
He is sure, looking back, that it drove Lan Qiren to distraction— that it wounded him, too, in far more ways than Lan Zhan’s blunt baby teeth could manage. But despite disappointment and frustration, only ever shown in the tightness of his mouth and the furrow of his brow, his correction was always patient. Lan Zhan would be handed to Lan Huan to corral, and they would be given another lesson in the rules, in managing their emotions, in the proper behaviour of young masters.
“Anger is the second most perilous of the poisons,” ran Lan Qiren’s lectures, “Preceded only by attachment in its capacity to harm.”
And afterwards, whatever he felt in his heart, his hands would still be gentle, combing through their hair, fixing guan into place.
(Sometimes Lan Xichen has an almost overwhelming sense memory of Lan Qiren’s hand cradling the curve of his skull, and somehow never touching his ribbon. It was a rare skill to cultivate, and a necessary one, bitter as vinegar. After all, he was not their parent.)
When it becomes clear, as it must, that a-Yao’s condition is not improving, it is inevitable that Lan Xichen will have to return to Cloud Recesses.
He struggles with this fact— and it is a fact— as if it were a command to remove his own heart. To leave Meng Yao as he is feels like a failure and a betrayal. But however much he is willing to give a-Yao of his own person, he cannot give him his mind back. That much is clear, from the words of the healers, from his own strange and stunted conversations with a-Yao, from playing all the healing songs he knows until his own spiritual energy begins to deplete— all to no effect. Whatever plagues him, it is beyond the powers of any cultivation that Lan Xichen knows. Perhaps there will be something to find in the libraries of Cloud Recesses, or in the memories of his elders. But whether that is true or not, he cannot stay in Unclean Realm and leave the affairs of the Lan to his uncle forever.
(He promises himself that if his efforts did have an effect, no matter how minor or how slow, he would stay. He hopes that it’s true, that his devotion extends that far. He wishes he was not, in a small and bitter way, relieved not to be faced with the choice.)
Nie Mingjue, of course, sees him off at the gates of Unclean Realm.
“If Huaisang is right,” he says, a bracing hand on Lan Xichen’s shoulder, as if he is not equally in need of comfort, “We’ll get him back.”
Lan Xichen cannot imagine how Nie Huaisang’s plan possibly could work. What will seclusion and Huaisang’s whim accomplish that the healers have not? He is not sure even Nie Mingjue truly believes it. But for want of an alternative, he has agreed to it— at least for now. If nothing else, it ensures that Meng Yao will be safe. He does not doubt that Nie Huaisang truly wants to help, and neither Nie brother will willingly allow any harm to come to Meng Yao. But even so, he finds he cannot muster optimism.
“And if he is not? Will a-Yao be confined for the rest of his life?” he says, and nearly chokes on the question, the cold horror crawling up his throat.
“Then he will join you in Cloud Recesses,” Nie Mingjue says grimly, through clenched teeth, “As you have insisted. So that will be your decision, not mine.”
Shame supplants the horror, no less choking. “I know that… I know. I just…”
They argued over it for shichen, first with quiet conviction and then with shouted recriminations, going around in circles over it. All that transpired between Mingjue and a-Yao, all that they shared and struggled together to overcome, seems to have resolved the distance between them, at least on Nie Mingjue’s side. And Lan Xichen celebrates that reunion, of course! It was precisely what he hoped their brotherhood would achieve. But still, he doesn’t think it was only selfishness that spurred him to seek custody of Meng Yao despite Nie Mingjue’s objections. Whatever virtues Unclean Realm and its master possess, restfulness is not among them, and… he thinks Meng Yao deserves rest, even if he cannot remember why.
(But he cannot deny that it was, also, selfishness. That it was, also, bitterness and resentment. Failure, again.)
Nie Mingjue gives him a measuring look, squeezes his shoulder once, and steps back. “You’re not Qingheng-jun, Xichen.”
He wishes he believed that, too.
There is peace in flight. Quiet, too, though the kind brought on by an unceasing flood of sound rather than by its absence, the rushing wind drowning out any other noise that might intrude on Lan Xichen’s contemplation. There is no rush back home. He can take his time, opening spaces in his heart to admire the serenity and beauty of his surroundings. The sky is an overturned dish, vibrant blue splashed with pearl clouds. Qinghe’s expanses of stone are overtaken by rolling blankets of green, dotted here and there with the knotted roads of towns, split by the courses of rivers and streams. Lan Xichen dips low enough to touch the tops of trees with his fingers, catching the yellowing leaves of birch and oak.
Soon enough, the peak of Cloud Recesses emerges from the misty horizon.
His return to the quiet halls of home is marked by a daunting pile of paperwork, which serves as a merciful distraction. In his absence it seems that a hundred things have happened, each consequential in its own small sphere. The builders have stopped work on a pavilion claiming that the site is cursed, and a dispute among a few disciple somehow escalated into a brawl. The elders are fighting amongst themselves on some point of philosophy, which has led to half a dozen separate and variably-tactful complaints about proper conduct. A veteran of the campaign has seemingly disappeared; no one is sure if he has gone into seclusion, gone out on a night hunt, or suffered some more regrettable fate. There are bills, and contracts, and requests for night hunts that all need his seal.
He realizes, at length, that Lan Qiren chose not to do any of the work that required the sect leader’s hand. Lan Xichen took on his father’s responsibilities, after all, which means that they are no longer Lan Qiren’s. The neat stack of overdue reports and papers is his punishment for leaving without an explanation. It is more patience than Lan Xichen really deserves for what must have been a very distressing incident for his uncle.
Lan Wangji still has not returned. Lan Xichen adds writing a letter to him in Lotus Pier to his overfull to-do list.
His uncle arrives in Lan Xichen’s office two shichen after Lan Xichen’s return, bringing a shock of bracing autumn air through the open door with him, ruffling the papers on Lan Xichen’s desk. An orderly knock at the doorframe, a curt and proper bow, and then Lan Qiren sweeps over to the desk to gaze down at him with what feels like a year’s worth of disappointment in a single glance. Lan Xichen fights an impulse to fidget and forces himself to meet his uncle’s eyes. He resolves himself not to apologize for going, but he is prepared to admit that the approach lacked grace.
“I trust,” says Lan Qiren, with grave indifference, “That Lianfang-zun is well.”
Lan Xichen doesn’t get a chance to decide what part of this hurts most. Whatever emotion makes its way onto his face instantly alarms Lan Qiren. He steps quickly around the desk, the hurried pace of any caretaker sensing his child’s distress, and presses a hand to Lan Xichen’s cheek, just for a moment, like the touch of a moth’s wing.
“Oh, Lan Huan,” he murmurs, “What will I do with you?”
Lan Xichen does not know the answer to that. What will be done with any of them?
What can be done?