#*ficmdzs

“Aiya, Lan Zhan, I told you not to wait up!” Wei Wuxian admonishes even as he plops down at Lan Wangji’s side, slipping his cold fingers underneath the opening of Lan Wangji’s nightrobe.

“Mn,” Lan Wangji hums in response, setting aside the scabbard to wrap his arms around Wei Wuxian’s waist, drawing him closer against his body. “The night-hunt went well?”

“It was alright. The juniors managed to track and lure the monster without my help, but I had to— ah— lend a hand when it came to the final blow. Oh, and Sizhui performed admirably, as always.” Wei Wuxian lets a hint of pride tint his last words. He shifts comfortably into the warmth of Lan Wangji’s hold.

“I expect nothing less,” Lan Wangji intones.

A breeze carries the crisp scent of dewy grass into the Jingshi, and the two men, caught in each other’s embrace, sit in for a moment in comfortable silence. After a while of nuzzling against Lan Wangji’s chest, Wei Wuxian finally lifts his head.

“Jiang Cheng?” With a nod, Wei Wuxian acknowledges Suibian, which Lan Wangji had abandoned on the tabletop.

“Brought with one of the YunmengJiang guest disciples,” Lan Wangji confirms.

“I guess we couldn’t have expected a personal visit.” Wei Wuxian disentangles his arms from Lan Wangji’s clothes to pick up the sword, swiping a gentle thumb against the “随便” etched into the exterior of the sheath. He catches the gravity of Lan Wangji’s gaze and ducks his head.  

“Okay, okay.” With a fluid motion, Wei Wuxian draws the sword out and sends spiritual energy singing into the blade. Red light thrums and dances along its narrow, glinting edges, teasing at the power that simmers beneath. Lan Wangji watches the performance quietly, his posture still. He has not seen Wei Wuxian wield Suibian since his time as a student at the Cloud Recesses.

“Hm. Not bad, my old friend. Missed me, huh?” Wei Wuxian examines the sword contemplatively. The blade flips with a soft gust of air as he turns the hilt. “I can’t believe you can’t tell apart me and Jiang Cheng, really. Preposterous! I’m expecting you to fix your eyesight, you know. Now that I’ll have to start lugging your weight around again.” At Lan Wangji’s slight squeeze, Wei Wuxian sheaths Suibian and turns to face Lan Zhan with a grin.

“I suppose we’ll have to thank Jiang Cheng. If I break another GusuLan practice sword, your uncle might really kick me off the mountain!” Winking an eye, his expression turns mischievous. “Say, Hanguang-Jun, would you honor this one with a duel sometime? I’m much better now than when I was fifteen.”

Wei Wuxian spots a hint of red crawling up edges of Lan Wangji’s earlobes, and he continues with renewed delight. “Just give me, ah, five years, and see if we can draw again!”

Even now, his cultivation level is already much higher than it had been when he was eighteen, around the time when he had given up his core in his previous body. Though Mo Xuanyu’s originally frail physique hinted of long years of abuse and malnourishment, Wei Wuxian had found that dedicated medication, GusuLan training, dual cultivation, hearty meals, and an absolute wealth of past experience contributed to condense his newfound core rather quickly. He’s still taken aback sometimes, at the orb spinning behind his ribs, the light that surges at his fingertips. At the ease with which he can now tamp down the lingering effects of resentful energy, something which had consumed his old self like arsenic.

“No need,” Lan Wangji says, looking down at Wei Wuxian with a soft glow. “Your talent for acquiring new skills has always been remarkable. We will draw within two summers.”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian moans, burrowing his face in the crook of Lan Wangji’s shoulder. “Don’t say things like that, I’m only joking. I’ve only got one foot on the sword path, you know. And I’m only good at learning things I’ve made up myself.”

Lan Wangji opens his mouth, perhaps to point out that the very ability to invent things speaks to Wei Ying’s acumen, but he’s distracted again by the sheer, painful familiarity of Suibian lying haphazardly next to Wei Wuxian. Instead, what comes out is: “Do you think things could have changed?”

“Hmm?” Wei Wuxian pulls back to look at Lan Wangji, reaching up to tug gently at a lock of his hair. Lan Wangji catches Wei Wuxian’s errant hand in his own.

“The past. Do you think… the story could have played to a different conclusion?”

A careful stoicism decorates Lan Wangji’s smooth features, but Wei Wuxian can spot the anguish lurking in the press of his lips, the pools of his eyes. He scoots further into Lan Wangji’s lap, cradling his face and placing soft kisses on his cheeks, his nose, his cupid's bow.

“Ah, my good Lan Zhan. I know what you’re really thinking. You’re asking if you could have done anything to change things.” Wei Wuxian angles Lan Wangji’s chin so that they stare eye-to-eye, noses centimeters apart and breaths intermingling in the cool night.

As a principle, Wei Wuxian tries to avoid analyzing his previous life too closely. To think is to dwell, and to dwell means to revisit a knife slice under his ribs; three months spent scavenging among corpses; the dust of the Stygian Tiger Seal scattered with his last breath of life. But Lan Zhan has to understand, so Wei Wuxian would tell him, just this once.

“There is nothing you could have done.” The words simmer in the space between them, low and clear. “A single-plank bridge only goes one way. I never expected to reach twenty-five.” Lan Wangji inhales like he’s been stabbed.

“Wei Ying.”

“Shh,” Wei Wuxian soothes, smoothing the twist in Lan Wangji’s brows with a brush of his thumb. “Listen. Even if Wen Chao didn’t find me that day, didn’t throw me into the Burial Mounds. Would I have survived the battlefield?”

Lan Wangji does not reply, but the answer shines in his gaze like an open wound. At the time, all the four main sects— LanlingJin, GusuLan, QingheNie, YunmengJiang— had known that a war against the QishanWen sect was inevitable. The massacre of Lotus Pier had catalyzed the Sunshot Campaign, but even if Wei Ying had not been rushed to battle, he and Jiang Cheng would have independently sought revenge against the Wens.

How could Wei Ying, without a core, hope to fight with a sword and live in a cultivation war? How could Wei Ying have refused? His missing core was a secret kept for the grave. And even devoid of spiritual powers, how could he want to refuse? Perhaps Cloud Recesses had burned, but Lan Wangji’s brother had survived. His uncle had survived. He survived, and Wei Ying had even nursed his broken leg back to health. Apart from Wei Ying, Jiang Cheng, and Jiang Yanli, every single member of the YunmengJiang sect had been slaughtered.

Wei Wuxian gives a harsh chuckle. “I suppose I should thank Wen Chao for dumping me in that godforsaken place. For leaving me no other options. He extended my life expectancy.”

“I would have protected you,” Lan Wangji says at last. “If you did not have a method of protecting yourself.”

“Lan Er-gege, you’re so good. Do you know that?” Wei Wuxian smiles softly at the man before him. He rewards Lan Wangji with another feather of a kiss, a press at the corner of his lips. “But I wouldn’t have let you get close. You would have found me out in a heartbeat.”

“I—”

Wei Wuxian stops Lan Wangji with a finger against his mouth.

“At the time, Jiang Cheng was just beginning to rebuild the YunmengJiang sect. And he was so young. We all were. I couldn’t take any risks.” He holds one of Lan Wangji’s hands to his face, caresses the soft palm and presses kisses against the slender fingertips. After a beat, he exhales.

“You understand, don’t you? Why I couldn’t come with you to Gusu.”

Lan Wangji seems to have lost the ability to speak. Though his expression has hardly changed during their conversation, a pot of emotions bubble and lurch in his chest, thick and messy.

Wei Wuxian thinks that they're almost at a limit for such a fraught discussion. Still, if he gets all the words out now, clears out all the cobwebs of misunderstanding, then maybe Lan Zhan will let go of the notion that he could've possibly saved Wei Wuxian from an unavoidable downfall.

“I am glad, Lan Zhan, that you did not take a more determined approach. Even then, I liked you a lot. But I would have pushed you away. I would have hurt you even more than I already did.” At this Wei Wuxian pauses, squeezing Lan Wangji’s hand. “I liked you too much to let you seek your death on my single-plank bridge.”

Lan Wangji remembers. Get out, Wei Wuxian had uttered, repeatedly and incessantly, a low growl at his throat. His skin ran hot with fever, and Lan Wangji had bit back tears, desperately transferring spiritual energy into Wei Wuxian. It barely seemed to help. Wei Wuxian was weak, skin and bones, dark circles smeared like ink beneath his eyes. But he had enough strength to demand one thing. Get out!

“The truth is, I didn’t get dealt the cards for a long, happy life. And I made my peace with it, I really did.”

What he does not say, but Lan Wangji hears, is that he had accepted the ticking clock of the end of his life the moment he— a boy not yet twenty— watched the last tendrils of spiritual energy leave his body. When the surging tides of his power stilled into dead water, and a piece of himself, carved out of flesh and blood, took root and blossomed inside Jiang Wanyin.

“Tch, Lan Zhan, I can hear what you’re thinking. Disrespecting sect leaders is forbidden in the Cloud Recesses.”

“Mn. Not forbidden,” Lan Wangji grits out, face stony. For once, he resents his characteristic reticence. He holds a jar of jumbled thoughts and not a single word to express them.

Wei Wuxian knows what Lan Wangji must have looked like, when he first heard the truth about his core spill like blood from Wen Ning’s lips. He must have gazed at him the way he does now, with that mixture of shock, grief, and turmoil swimming in the amber of his irises.

He doubts that anyone, even Lan Zhan, will ever truly understand why he had made that initial decision, the one that kickstarted the tragic trajectory of the rest of his life. Because they didn’t hear the dying words of Madam Yu, slammed bone-deep into his chest: protect Jiang Cheng with your life. They didn’t watch Uncle Jiang openly chase his own demise, trusting Wei Wuxian with his only son.

They weren’t there to see the days of Jiang Cheng lying prone on Wen Qing’s bed, tatters of blood-stained purple hanging off his limp form, eyes blank and unseeing. Jiang Cheng, clad in the remnants of a sect with only three living members, a reminder of the revenge he couldn’t fulfill and the world he could no longer lead. Wei Wuxian would’ve given him anything then, to put the pride back in his stare and restore the anger that colored the lilt of his voice. He would’ve gladly given his life. What was a golden core? It was never even a question.

“I’ve made many mistakes in my past life, especially towards the end. But my core— that’s one decision I will never regret.” Wei Wuxian states firmly, nodding at Lan Wangji with intention. Lan Wangji replies with a barely perceptible sound.

“Wei Ying…” He trails off helplessly. What is left to say? Everything had happened more than ten years in the past. He cannot hope to alter the choices he had made, and neither can Wei Ying. Perhaps they would have always ended up here, Wei Ying in a foreign body and him in one marked by the scars born of his love. But if it ends with them together, no matter their shape or form, then Lan Wangji cannot bring himself to begrudge the path.

“Wei Ying, I love you.”