the everyday world
Tags
Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern Cultivation, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Gender or Sex Swap, Female Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Female Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, yiling wei sect, Golden Core Removal, Established Relationships, Breaking Up & Making Up, Haircuts, Guilt, Sad with a Happy Ending, POV Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī, Embedded ART
Author Notes
This was written in collaboration with Niq to celebrate our friend Aubs, who was interested in seeing some angsty modern cultivation, wlw wangxian, and break up/make up. I didn't get too deep into the usual break up/make up style tropes since I figured modern cultivation can have inherently high stakes to play with, but I took a lot of inspiration from their rainy divorce scene for this one, though the entire set up and outcome of a lot of different aspects of this story are different. I hope it makes for an enjoyable read.
Niq is responsible for so many of the best details in the story, including the bunny slippers, Lan Wangji's duster cardigan, Wei Wuxian's lovely tattoo, and Lan Xichen bringing gentians into the residence where Wei Wuxian is staying.
There's a hair cutting scene in this that turned into a shave the side of Wei Wuxian's head scene. This is entirely the fault of me watching Temptation of a Monk last week. Watching Joan Chen having her head intimately shaved has changed my DNA entirely and this is the result.
Thanks to everyone who reads and thank you to Aubs for being a great friend. If you enjoy Niq's art, please go show some love on bsky.
the everyday world
The short crop of Wei Ying’s hair tickles Lan Wangji’s neck and the underside of her chin as Wei Ying cuddles close, her side shave prickling at Lan Wangji’s neck. It carries the scent of Lan Wangji’s shampoo, a bright and clean scent, crisp, the perfect cap to an evening spent indulging in play. After the gauntlet of examinations and demonstrations that have proved them to be competent cultivators in the eyes of the government, Lan Wangji can think of no better reward. She presses a kiss to the top of Wei Ying’s head and basks in the laugh that results, sweet and a little naughty. “Lan Zhan, you’re insatiable,” she says, as though an innocent kiss is meant to be a genuine provocation. “Ravishing this woman so thoroughly after she’s already cleansed the debauchery from her skin.”
Lan Wangji kisses her again, this time tipping Wei Ying’s chin to better access the mouth dropping such mischievous words. “You should rest, Wei Ying. I will ravage you again after you’ve slept.”
“Aiyou, how can I rest, Lan Zhan? We’re fully fledged cultivators now.” She begins ticking the various indignities they’ve suffered as students off on each long, elegant finger. “No more tedious practicums and theory lectures. No more essays and demonstrations. No more boring symposiums. That deserves a little celebration, doesn’t it? Give me something better to think about than this fucking conference we’ll be attending at Nightless City. Watching old men bloviate for hours, ugh.”
Though Lan Wangji fights to control her expression, her lips thin at Wei Ying’s disrespectful attitude. The last thing she wants to discuss is the conference, because if they discuss the conference, they’ll wind up discussing other things, things that are far less pleasant than a tumble in bed. After years of study that has stretched all the way back to early childhood, they’ve earned it.
Discussing the conference will only lead to an argument. And she’s only brought up now to get a rise out of Lan Wangji. There’s no reason to indulge in it.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says seriously when it’s clear she won’t budge. She lifts herself onto her elbows, her back arching beautifully. It would be very easy to distract her now. “I don’t have a very good feeling about it. I know you think I ought to place more trust in the other sects, but..”
Lan Wangji doesn’t want to think about this. It stings too much, the things Wei Ying cannot say: I don’t trust your sect enough. It leads her down a path of logic that ends in a conclusion she doesn’t want to consider at all.
I don’t trust you enough.
“Am I the insatiable one, or are you?” Lan Wangji asks, even as she cups the back of Wei Ying’s head and gently turns her so she’s flat on her back. Though it’s the act of a coward, she takes the out Wei Ying has provided, sliding her hand between Wei Ying’s damp thighs. “Remind me how many times you’ve come tonight?”
Blessedly, she goes pliant, splaying her freshly showered legs. Maybe she wants to be a coward, too.
“One more than I thought I’d get out of you,” she crows, delighted as always to be spoiled. For how independent she is, how self-reliant, how unwilling she is to share her burdens, she’s always enjoyed these few little things that Lan Zhan does for her. “Come on, Lan Zhan. Treat your jiejie well. She’s been good to you tonight, too.”
This is very true. Wei Ying did take Lan Wangji’s strap beautifully. For that, she says with a self-aggrandizing tone, Wei Ying deserves a reward. Though Wei Ying merely laughs, Lan Zhan is serious. In her opinion, Wei Ying deserves everything, certainly more than she allows herself to take, and certainly more, at times, than Lan Zhan feels she can give in return.
Like an answer to Wei Ying’s fears, or a promise that she will never stand alone among those fears at least.
But Lan Wangji cannot. She believes in what she’s been taught. She trusts that all will be right. Soon, Wei Ying will see it, too.
Wen Ruohan, like he always has and always will, presides over this illustrious gathering of cultivators with the lazy confidence of a big game cat, affable because he can afford to be as each guest is announced. It feels so archaic, after the time she’s spent studying with Wei Ying, but there is comfort in ceremony, too. She knows exactly what is expected of her.
Lan Wangji attends with a large retinue, a few elders and more than a few disciples of lower rank than she. Each of them dressed, including herself, are dressed in finery appropriate to the occasion. For the first time ever, she will be acting on behalf of her sect without her older brother, uncle, or father to guide the way. Though she is not expected to make any contributions, her stomach flutters from time to time.
Wei Ying attends with Xiao Xingchen, and Xiao Xingchen alone. Grave and austere, they are the only cultivators in attendance who wear their working robes. Yiling Wei will never be known for their pretension, but they’re often considered scolds by the other sects. As they make their way to their seats, they face snickers, rolling eyes, and disdainful huffs. Who are they to remind the other cultivators that they have jobs to do, that they should focus not on their appearance, but on the acts they take on behalf of the common people who lack their skills?
Normally, Wei Ying finds some excuse to pester Lan Wangji before sitting down. This time, she doesn’t even glance in Lan Wangji’s direction.
Lan Wangji knows immediately that something is wrong. It turns her blood to acid. Her heart, to quivering gelatin.
When Wei Ying stands, offers the most disrespectful bow to their chief cultivator that Lan Wangji has ever seen, and asks Wen Ruohan what he intends to do about the badly bullied villages around Qishan, Lan Wangji knows she ought to stand, ought to add her voice to Wei Ying’s, though she was unaware of any issues surround Qishan. Apparently, strange rumors have cropped up like mushrooms, hiding what are sure to be even stranger roots. Disappearing children, prominent figures of the Wen branch families dying under mysterious circumstances, more and more oddities that nobody wants to look at too closely. Wei Ying exposes them all.
As Wei Ying continues to speak, impassioned, Lan Wangji wants to grab her by the wrist and drag her out of this hall and bring her away from this place, protect her from the rage starting to crack Wen Ruohan’s magnanimously indulgent facade. Why Xiao Xingchen don’t stop her, she’ll never know, much like she’ll never know why she doesn’t support Wei Ying here and now, while it might still count for something.
Even when Wei Ying looks her way, pleading silently for back up, she remains silent.
She is not here as her own representative.
In the end, Wen Ruohan listens to her diatribe, and cuts her down with a sarcastic promise that he will look into it, that of course he cares about his own family and lands. What does Wei Ying take him for anyway? A cruel and capricious lord of old?
Wei Ying refuses to speak with her. In the end, Lan Wangji cannot blame her.
By the time Lan Wangji arrives, smoke already billows from the forested stronghold that serves as Yiling Wei’s training grounds, their life and life’s blood. Nestled at the foot of the Burial Mounds, it’s considered one of the safest places in the entire cultivation world.
Or, it was.
When she finds Wei Ying in the chaos, Wei Ying is mad with grief and a rage so comprehensive that Lan Wangji isn’t sure she fully recognizes that Lan Wangji is the one who has come at all. The only thing Wei Ying will say to her is get the fuck out of here, go. Go. When Lan Wangji refuses, she draws Suibian, and damns Lan Wangji with the knowledge that she’s perfectly aware of Lan Wangji’s identity. “I don’t want to see you, Lan Zhan.”
Before Lan Wangji can speak in her own defense, Wei Ying turns away and sprints into the worst of the conflagration. She shouts for Xiao Xingchen, voice cracking as she chokes on smoke. When she finds him, she shouts for him to take Wen Yuan and leave. There’s nothing left. Wen Qing and Wen Ning are waiting with him. Wei Ying will take care of the rest.
What is there still to take care of, Lan Wangji thinks helplessly.
“Lan er-gongzi,” Xiao Xingchen says, unnecessarily polite under the circumstances. “Take care of my shizhi.”
“Shishu, I—” But Xiao Xingcheng is the one person Wei Ying refuses to argue with. “Just take care, please. I’ll be along soon enough. I’ll find a way to meet up with you.”
Xiao Xingchen is too grief-stricken to sense the lie in Wei Ying’s words, but though Lan Wangji is heartbroken, she hears it well. Wei Ying has a plan, and it is not one that will free her to meet with him any time soon.
As soon as Xiao Xingchen has gone, Wei Ying turns her wrath on Lan Wangji. “Why are you still here? Fuck off! Just—”
She shoves Lan Wangji so hard that Lan Wangji stumbles backward and nearly trips over a rock. She doesn’t try to help Lan Wangji. Her mind and body are barely with Lan Wangji as she moves forward.
The sound of an explosion rips through the air. Wei Ying flinches so viciously that Lan Wangji fears she’s been struck by shrapnel. Fat, fearful tears roll down her face as a frustrated scream tears itself from her lungs. It’s only Lan Wangji’s sudden grip on her arm that keeps her from falling to her knees. She screams again and beats at Lan Wangji’s chest and when she’s done, she is startlingly clear-eyed despite the twin sooty tracks tracing her cheeks. “It’s going to be your sect one day, Lan Wangji. Wen Ruohan will never stop.”
“Wei—”
“Go! Heaven for-fucking-bid a Lan get her robes dirty. Just fucking go. There’s nothing left here.”
“What will you do?”
Her gaze flicks toward Lan Wangji and flicks away again. The flames reflect in her eyes, turning the warm brown of them red and demonic. “Whatever I have to.”
Lan Wangji isn’t there when Wei Ying is apprehended from Inferno Palace, but it’s said she came out of there covered in blood, Suibian broken by the ferocity of her attacks against the Wen patriarch and his sons. She fought through hundreds of the Wen Sect’s best disciples, it’s said. Lan Wangji finds no evidence of this in any of the records she looks at. As far as she can tell, there are three casualties and only three.
In every gleeful retelling she overhears, the torments Wei Ying has inflicted on the Wen grow more excessive and lascivious. Wei Ying is transformed into a cruel demonic creature hellbent on destruction. She’s crazed, a madwoman. She doesn’t know right action from wrong excess. Despite the near complete annihilation of her disciples and the hallowed grounds upon which her sect was built, Wei Ying is not justified in excising rot when she sees it.
The only truths her brother is willing to give her are as follows: Wen Ruohan, Wen Chao, and Wen Xu were killed by Wei Ying’s hands, and theirs were not easy deaths.
Because she cannot trust her brother to understand, she does not tell him good and they deserved it.
When she asks to see Wei Ying, she is denied the opportunity. When she asks why, she’s told it’s because it’s unsafe. Wei Ying will have to be neutralized first.
Neutralized.
For the good of the jianghu, her cultivation is to be destroyed, decreed so by Jin Guangshan. No one argues against this ruling, though Lan Wangji can cite a thousand thousand cases where courts of law have taken into account the nature of the crime. Avenging family and sect has a long tradition. It is expected, required. For the souls of the dead to rest easily, their murderers must face consequences. Wei Ying, in truth, was considered in her slaughter. In recompense for the crimes done to her, she could have razed Nightless City.
But Wei Ying is powerful, capable. She scares people with how strong and smart and determined she is.
Lan Sect physicians are to mete out the punishment, and Lan Sect cultivators are to oversee her confinement. She will only leave the grounds of Cloud Recesses when she is dead, and when that happens, she is to be buried in an unmarked grave, far from her home.
Jin Guangshan insists this is mercy, a sign of the esteem to which he still holds Wei Ying’s dead parents. The fact that this is considered magnanimous is not a distinction Lan Wangji can recognize.
“Ge, are we really to allow ourselves to be party to this?” Lan Wangji asks after the pronouncement is made. They speak privately, late in the night, Lan Wangji sneaking out after curfew to take tea in the hanshi. Lan Xichen hadn’t been surprised at her arrival. Tea is already prepared. “This is not justice.”
“Wen Ruohan was powerful,” Lan Xichen replies. “What else can be done to ensure Wei Wuxian doesn’t attack anyone else?”
“Wei Ying is not a mindless animal,” Lan Wangji says, feeling like she’s fallen into a rabbit’s hole and come out the other side into a world she doesn’t understand, where the people she loves can so easily cast aside their qualms. Her brother knows Wei Ying’s character. “She hasn’t ‘attacked’ anyone. She did what she had to do.”
“Wangji…”
“Who can say what Wen Ruohan might have done next? Nobody was willing to stand against them, but they flouted the norms set down by the major clans time and time again. Only Yiling Wei dared voice their objections to Wen Ruohan’s power grabs. What if Wen Ruohan saw fit one day to destroy Cloud Recesses? Or Jinlintai? Or Lotus Pier? What might have happened then? Would we not also want someone to fight for us? Would we punish the one sect willing to stand against them if more were at risk?”
“We don’t know—”
“I know.” Though her tea is still hot, she stands. “I know we’ve failed Wei Ying and countless others with our silence.”
“In exchange for assistance being given to the few remaining Wei Sect disciples, Wei Wuxian waived her right to fight this outcome. Wangji, it’s too late.”
Though Lan Wangji hears her brother’s words, she doesn’t understand meaning for long seconds, her brain refusing to understand what he means. It’s not too late. Of course it can’t be too late. They can decide not to abide by this punishment. The doctors could decline to conduct the surgery and her uncle could refuse to oversee her incarceration. What will Jin Guangshan do? Start a war against Gusu Lan?
They could call for a delay while they consider whether the punishment is commensurate to the crime committed. They could—
“She’s already recovering in the medical pavilion. The surgery went well, all things considered. It’s too late. She’ll be ready to move later today.”
—cut the life out of Wei Ying while Lan Wangji paced the jingshi, still arguing with herself over how to approach her brother, stacking arguments until she’s sure she’s made a case for Wei Ying that will make him see reason. She failed Wei Ying even before she ever ad a chance.
And no one told her. No one thought to warn her.
“We will care for her,” Lan Xichen says, “and in time she will be afforded some liberties if she proves contrite. It won’t be like how it was with our mother, I will assure you of that.”
In her life, she has never felt loathing for her sect or the principles she’s been raised to represent, even back then. She loathes her clan, her precepts, her own life for allowing this to happen.
She loathes Lan Xichen, too, so much so that she has to turn away before she lashes out too carelessly. She holds her anguish behind the shield of her sternum. “Someone will need to keep an eye on her, will they not?”
The evenness in her own voice terrifies her. How can she sound so disaffected by this incident?
“Someone will be assigned,” Lan Xichen says, “yes.”
“I will do it.”
“Wangji…”
“I will do it.”
“Wangji, I know what she was to you, but you don’t have to bear this burden with her. You’re entirely innocent. There’s no reason to get involved now that it’s done.”
She had thought her despair complete before, but it has nothing on this realization right now: everything she’s believed about herself, her family, her sect, has been wrong. Worse, her understanding of Wei Ying has been wrong, too. She’d thought they were equals, but all along…
All along, Lan Wangji has been deficient in her understanding. It shrinks to this: right is ensuring Wei Ying is safe. Wrong would be to elide what Wei Ying has gone through. She has already done wrong. She can do nothing other than right any longer.
“She is not a burden,” Lan Wangji says, “I would thank you never to refer to her as such.”
“That is not—”
“Take me to her, ge,” she says stubbornly. “Now.”
Lan Wangji has every intention of reckoning with what has happened immediately, but as Lan Xichen guides her down the only path in Cloud Recesses that leads to Gentian House, she finds herself choked with anxieties and fears. She sees herself as a child, thoroughly hurt and deficient in understanding then, too. Though Wei Ying is not her mother, it’s not difficult to transpose her into the memories Lan Wangji has of that place.
“I told you that you would not like it,” Lan Xichen says, not unkindly—at least, his tone is not unkindly. Lan Wangji finds the words entirely cruel. “Wangji.”
“I know the way,” she says, unable to look at him for fear of lashing out, of blaming him, of being right to blame him, one among many who has let this happen. “I would ask that you not accompany me any further.”
“I’m sorry, Wangji,” Lan Xichen says. “I wish things could be different.”
Then why didn’t you stop this, she thinks. Aloud, she says, “I wish for the same.”
As soon as he is out of sight, she turns off this path she hates so deeply. She is still too much a coward.
Cowardice drives her to the jingshi and has her searching her home for items that might preoccupy Wei Ying’s mind while she is here. Her instinct drives her to her personal library of cultivation manuals. She’s already curated a neat stack of texts, transcribed and bound by her own hand—a few of which she’d been especially eager to share—when she remembers, pain tearing through her afresh, that these items will be useless to Wei Ying now. Even as an intellectual exercise, it would be cruel to bring them to her.
Searching the room, she realizes she doesn’t own many things that would bring happiness to Wei Ying.
After retrieving her brushes, inks, and a thick stack of paper, the only items she feels certain won’t be especially painful, she feels frantic. She cannot return to Wei Ying with these things alone. Something in this room should bring Wei Ying true solace.
They were together for a year before this happened and friends much longer than that. Why does Lan Wangji own nothing that Wei Ying might like? Before it burned, Wei Ying’s rooms were full to bursting with trifles Wei Ying had picked up for Lan Wangji’s amusement. Incense burners of particular beauty, a knickknack that reminded her of one of their exploits, a television and subscription services so Lan Wangji might watch the handful of dramas she likes whenever she visits. Here? Here, she finds nothing. She certainly holds no subscription services.
Wei Ying rarely visited Cloud Recesses, only once or twice, and even then it was in an official capacity, though she did sneak away for a few hours to be with Lan Wangji in an unofficial one. There had been little time to acquaint her with the space.
Desperate, she scours the shelves one more time, tearing through the different objects housed on them in the hope that something will have changed since she first perused them. Surely, there must be something. She turns toward her bed and the bits of furniture that sit around it, a table on either side, and opens the drawer in the one that she’d offered to Wei Ying for those singular nights they spent together here.
She doesn’t expect to find anything, but is surprised to see a battered translation of The Lord of the Rings sits inside. It’s a book she vaguely remembers giving to Wei Ying as a gift once, back when they were first growing friendly with one another and Lan Wangji wanted to make an impression. She remembers it was because Wei Ying mentioned enjoying fantasy tales and it, along with a stack of other novels in translation, happened to have arrived at a bookshop in Caiyi. She hasn’t seen it in years and Wei Ying hasn’t mentioned it, but when she opens its bent and weathered paper cover, she sees notes and underlines scrawled across many of the pages in crawling mismatched ink.
Had Wei Ying missed it? Was she waiting for Lan Wangji to say something all this time? Lan Wangji cannot guess the answer, but she adds it to the stack of art supplies and stubbornly continues overturning every corner of her room for more.
When she has searched her room and can delay no further, she tells herself that she can be brave, that it will only be hard this one time. Then, she will never leave again until Wei Ying does.
In a way, it feels fitting.
This is a habit of Lan women, she supposes. They find themselves trapped by circumstances outside their control.
As she approaches Gentian house, she’s surprised to see that the gentians for which the residence is named continue to bloom, and bloom beautifully at that. They form a blue mat around the residence. After her uncle took her away from here for the last time, she vowed never to come back to it, believing it would be a mockery of her mother’s memory to tend the flowers that stood guard over her prison. It must have been her brother who cared for them this whole time. She can’t imagine anyone else bothering.
She herself wants to cut them down, burn them, rip them from the soil and never again think of such a horrid flower.
No sound comes from within the residence. The sudden, staggering belief that Wei Ying is dead overwhelms her better senses. The truth is surely more mundane. The mutilation of her body will have taken her strength from her, that is all. That is all, she thinks wildly.
With a knock to announce her, she calls out quietly. “Wei Ying,” she says. “May I enter?”
No response.
Lan Wangji has no reason to fear that Wei Ying has escaped or been killed—her uncle wouldn’t allow the former and the rules of their sect disallow the latter—but terror wraps its spindly fingers around her throat regardless, telling her that something is very wrong here, that Wei Ying has gone in all the ways that matter, that she has died despite any and all effort made to tie her to this place.
Suddenly, the items she so painstakingly gathered feel like nothing at all. Or worse, an insult. What good will they do for the ghost that surely haunts this place?
She knocks again. When again she is ignored, she slides the door open and steps inside. Someone will have to come into this room at some point. Better Lan Wangji than a stranger.
Despite her certainty that this is the best course of action, it is awful for Lan Wangji—beyond that, really—to enter this place, this hell.
Too much daylight leaks through the freshly papered window on the opposite side of the building and too many lanterns are lit. Their warm, yellow light illuminates every corner of the room. No amount of light can diffuse the spindly fingered chill that clings. The room has been fitted with heating, but Wei Ying nor whomever brought her here thought to turn it on. She chokes on her instinctive need to lash out at the thoughtlessness of leaving a guest to freeze, of Wei Ying in letting herself freeze.
She fears the oversight is purposeful, whatever else her sect is meant to stand for.
Though she sets the thermostat, bands of pressure tighten around her chest. It will take too long to heat the space appropriately. Wei Ying will be uncomfortable until then, an abominable thought to endure despite how much worse she’s experienced in recent days.
Her survey of the room concludes quickly. Little has changed from those days when it served as her mother’s prison. The same trinkets she and her brother had brought month after month after month lined the shelves. They speak little to their mother’s taste, whatever taste she might have had independent of her children. The only difference is the mound hunched on the bed and the pot of gentians that have been placed in the middle of the table that fills one side of the residence.
They look freshly transplanted, bright and blooming and so very wrong transposed against the tray of congealing rice and a thin soup abandoned on it.
Crouching by the door, she places the items she’s brought next to the guest slippers, leaving them there as she unties the heeled brogues she favors when she’s not on night hunts. If Wei Ying is asleep, Lan Wangji doesn’t want to unnecessarily rouse her. On the other hand, she doesn’t want Wei Ying to think she’s here to spy on her. She is, therefore, uncertain how to proceed.
Her breath seizes as she turns her attention to the slippers, seeing the ratty white pair that belong to her placed right alongside the basic ones offered to all guests. They’re shaped like bunnies, incongruous in this place, in these times. It had taken her a week to get used to the floppy ears. Whenever she wore them, Wei Ying smiled at her, pleased that her gift had been well-received.
“Why bunnies?” she’d asked a few months after she’d worn them in.
Why not bunnies, Wei Ying had answered.
In this, too, she doesn’t know what to do. Wear them? Not wear them?
Before she can make the call, the bedding shifts and a small whimper sounds from beneath. Whether she is awake or not, she’s in pain now. Unthinking, she shoves her feet into the bunny slippers and rushes over, kneeling next to Wei Ying. Her hands shake as she grasps the corner of the quilt. “Wei Ying,” she whispers. “It’s me.”
It’s even worse than she expects, even knowing what happened. A deathly pallor has robbed Wei Ying of her vitality. Her hair is lank, heavy with oil, and plastered to her forehead. Pain etches itself across her brow and around her twisted, grimacing lips. She has squeezed her eyes shut. When Lan Wangji lifts the quilt further, she catches the scent of sour sweat and sees how Wei Wuxian has folded herself around her empty midsection.
Lan Wangji is unaware of any restrictions regarding the use of analgesics in cases like this, but she doesn’t see a single bowl of medicinal broth nor even a talisman anywhere. It’s possible something might have been added to the meal Wei Ying has ignored or been unable to eat, but Lan Wangji has to wonder if anything has been offered to her at all.
“Wei Ying,” she says, a broken record barely good enough to speak her beloved’s name. Though passing spiritual energy will be useless, she does it anyway, little better than an excuse to touch Wei Ying’s clammy skin. “Wei Ying, wake up.”
Wei Ying fights her way to consciousness, not quite all there yet even when she opens her eyes. Otherwise, she would surely look at Lan Wangji with hate in her eyes. “Lan Zhan,” she says, her voice soft and rough. “What are you doing here?”
Lan Zhan pushes back Wei Ying’s sweat-chilled hair. “This is where I should be.”
Wei Ying accepts this graciously as her eyes slide closed again. Lan Zhan remains on her knees, body half-braced on the wooden frame of the bed, content to watch Wei Ying sleep. She will cherish these moments, even while they turn her stomach, because when Wei Ying is fully lucid again, she won’t accept Lan Zhan so easily.
In fact, she might not accept Lan Wangji at all, and that is something Lan Wangji will simply have to live with.
Once she is certain Wei Ying is asleep, she gathers the items she brought and shoves them onto a shelf for another time, afraid Wei Ying will reject them.
A knock on the door rouses Lan Wangji from meditation. It is a timid knock. Lan Wangji isn’t the least bit surprised when she opens the door to find a young disciple standing there. In her hands is a tray, holding yet another meal of bland fare that will likely go uneaten. There are no medications here, nothing at all that might bring comfort to Wei Ying.
“Go to the medical pavilion,” she states, taking the proffered tray, “and ask the physician in charge of Wei Wuxian’s care to write a prescription to help with her pain. Return as quickly as possible. If they try to argue with you against it, tell them they can take it up with me directly.”
“Y-yes, qianbei.”
The girl is back within thirty minutes, a packet of herbs and the prescription in hand. She won’t meet Lan Wangji’s eyes.
Lan Wangji cannot help but wonder if the physicians have found a loophole to withhold care, that they might argue that Wei Ying hasn’t spoken of being in pain, so how can they do anything about it? She hates that this is her first thought as she brews it.
She hates even more that Wei Ying might never have received the care she needs at all, because she surely wouldn’t have asked for herself.
The meal congeals as Wei Ying sleeps and she, too, is unable to eat.
But she keeps the medicine simmering until it has evaporated entirely.
As the day passes into evening, cool enough that even the heat can’t quite keep the knowledge that soon it will be full dark from settling into Lan Wangji’s bones, she accepts she will have to wake Wei Ying and face whatever is to be faced. She waits until another nervous junior brings their evening meal. She is relieved to see another packet has been sent along with it.
Even if the physicians have been deceitful, it seems they aren’t entirely dishonest.
She delays a little longer as she simmers more of the medicine and finally cannot delay any longer.
“Wei Ying.” Standing over the bed, tray held carefully between her too steady hands, she watches as Wei Ying’s body trembles beneath the quilt. “Wei Ying, you must eat.”
“Get fucked,” Wei Ying calls from under the quilt. Though this is to be expected, Lan Wangji is still disappointed.
“Wei Ying,” she says again.
Wei Ying pushes back the bedding and peers up at her, eyes narrowed, rage banked there, brightening the color. She doesn’t turn to face Lan Wangji. “I didn’t dream you up, then?”
“No.”
“Oh.” She grimaces as she looks at the meal. Even Lan Wangji cannot do anything but feel embarrassed by how thin and ascetic it seems. Even by Lan Sect standards, it’s bleak. Limp vegetables, watery broth, plain rice. Though she has already transferred the majority of the tofu in her own portion into Wei Ying’s, it isn’t enough.
“You cannot starve yourself,” Lan Wangji insists. “If you wish to regain your strength, you must replenish yourself.”
Wei Ying is unmoved. “What’s the point?”
“Please, Wei Ying.”
Wei Ying ignores her.
“It will taste even worse if you don’t eat them now,” she cajoles desperately. There was a time not so very long ago when Wei Ying would have crowed to hear such an admission. Now, she doesn’t even scoff. Determined, she sits on the edge of the bed while she cups the bowl of medicine between her palms, the tray balanced on her lap. “I will help if you need assistance.”
“No point.” Wei Ying gasps as she pushes herself upright. Her shoulders are tense beneath the thin robe wrapped around her frame. It’s come loose while she was resting, exposing the nape of her neck. Labored, she tightens it and twists around. A light sheen of sweat gathers at her hairline. Her skin is gray with fatigue. Agony has burned the anger out of her, leaving only ash behind. She lifts her arm as though intending to slap the bowl out of Lan Wangji’s, but before she can move it any further, she hisses, the limb falling limply to her side.
“Lan Wangji would lower herself in this way?” Wei Ying’s voice is soft, rasping, lacking in heat, but striking true regardless. “Where was that spine when I needed it?”
Wei Ying is not wrong. What can she say in response? There is nothing that suffices. She holds out the cup of medicine. Wei Ying must feel awful, because she takes it without argument, swallows it in one long, slow pull.
“Was it your idea to lock yourself in here with me?” Wei Ying has always enjoyed picking at things. In the past, it was cultivation theory. “Couldn’t stand the thought of letting me rot in your mother’s prison all on my own?”
Wei Ying’s words cut Lan Wangji’s tongue to ribbons. Even if she wanted to defend herself, she can’t.
“You think you can fix this now by diligently tending to me?”
Wei Ying’s eyes are glassy with pain. Though her words are hurtful, honed to injure, to kill, Lan Wangji cannot lose herself in her own guilt deeply enough not to see how many scores they leave in Wei Ying’s own expression, fury crumpling into utter devastation. She might mean what she is saying, but she hates that she is saying it, that she has to say it, that she feels such a deep need to get Lan Wangji away from her that she can wound Lan Wangji in this way.
Lan Wangji will not oblige her. Though each strike scores her heart, she will not bleed from this.
“I was wrong not to stand by your side when you spoke out against Wen Ruohan.” She keeps her head bowed in order to avoid having to look at Wei Ying. “I couldn’t save you from this, and I was wrong for that as well. Wei Ying, I am so sorry.”
Though Wei Ying scoffs, she can’t find any more venomous words to spit at Lan Zhan. “Don’t act like you’re the one who chose to cut me open,” she says instead, holding her hands out to take the bowl from Lan Zhan. Her arms shake, but Lan Zhan knows how far she can push and how far she can’t. Wei Ying will not accept her help in this.
Wei Ying’s grip is weak, but she doesn’t spill even a drop of the soup as she slowly, painstakingly eats it. Next, she takes the bowl of rice and picks at the vegetables. Mostly, she eats the tofu, moving her jaw mechanically.
After she’s eaten, she lies down again. It hurts Lan Wangji to watch how difficult it is for her to fall into slumber, and it hurts worse when even at rest, she is plagued with nightmares, muttering, crying, and gasping through the many hours of the night.
Lan Wangji doesn’t sleep easily.
The nights that follow are no better for either of them.
Lan Wangji brews tea on autopilot, yawning and pouring water and staring out the window as she waits the requisite four minutes for the tea to be ready. Outside, a dusting of snow has settled across the courtyard. It will either melt with the sun or form an icy, crunchy crust that lingers for days. The gentians will surely die, save for the ones her brother brought into the house.
Wei Ying was always the one looking at forecasts, chattering away about the chance of rain while Lan Wangji organized their coats and retrieved umbrellas from the closet. It feels strange, wrong not to have heard that there might be snowfall from her.
When the tea is done, she brings a cup to the be, sits beside it, waits for Wei Ying’s eyes to open.
Muscle memory guides Lan Wangji’s hand as she brushes the lank tangle of Wei Ying’s bangs off her forehead. Her fingertips sweep over the side shave that’s begun to grow in. The fragile skin under her eyes is bruised and her skin is still too grayish for Lan Wangji’s liking. Her forehead is greasy and her cheeks are dry. It never used to fight Wei Ying this way, her skin. Once, she woke up every morning with a perfect, gilded complexion.
“How are you feeling?” Lan Wangji asks.
“Like shit,” Wei Ying answers unnecessarily. The question was a bad one anyway. It’s too obvious how ill she is. She wrinkles her nose. “My face itches.”
“Drink this,” Lan Wangji says. “It might be the cold weather. I will see what I can find to help you.”
Lan Wangji rifles through the bathroom, but nobody saw fit to offer Wei Ying more than a dispenser of soap. As Lan Wangji cleans the dispenser of scum, she berates herself for not having grabbed the slew of products Wei Ying brought to and abandoned in the jingshi. Wei Ying’s skin, like most cultivators’ skin once they reach a sufficiently high level of practice, didn’t need much beyond simple cleansing, but she’d always enjoyed being spoiled, and that was one of her favorite ways to indulge.
You have to help me, jiejie, she used to say whenever she bought some new serum, mask, or moisturizer, turning her face toward Lan Wangji as she hiked herself onto the cramped counter space in their bathroom, her legs tangling with Lan Wangji’s. She would watch Lan Wangji as she read the directions and smile faintly as Lan Wangji patted product onto her skin. Her cheeks and forehead and chin came out of these moments gleaming and glistening and soft. It made her so happy that, after it was all wiped away or had soaked into her skin, she would touch and touch and touch Lan Wangji, everywhere she could reach, babbling about how well Lan Wangji cared for her and how much she wanted to take care of Lan Wangji, too.
She doesn’t imagine one of the disciples could be pressed into retrieving those items for her, and in truth, she doesn’t want anyone else going through their personal things to find them. “I’ll see if my brother will get some moisturizer for you,” she says when she returns. “You should drink more water.”
Wei Ying’s choking laughter is loud enough to echo off the walls. “I don’t think water can help me now.”
“It can’t hurt,” is all Lan Wangji can think to say, voice sharper than she intends it to be. As an apology, she asks more gently, “Are you in any pain this morning?”
Wei Ying laughs again, but doesn’t answer, which is answer enough. By the time Lan Wangji finishes warming this morning’s portion of the medication that came last night, Wei Ying’s ashen skin has taken on an even greater pallor. When Lan Wangji holds the wide-brimmed bowl to her lips, she doesn’t complain or say she can do it herself.
She complains later of being bored in a manner that makes Lan Wangji thinks she’s forgotten her anger for a moment, because the very next moment, she scowls and turns aside, pulling the quilt around her shoulders. Soon, Lan Wangji will have to launder it.
“Would you like to play a word game?” Lan Wangji asks, the same distraction Wei Ying used to love when they were investigating night hunts together and didn’t have anything better to do than wait for their quarry to show up.
“No,” she replies.
Lan Wangji has tried several times to bring up the items she’d brought, but the words stick in her throat again. Instead, she retrieves the art supplies and the book and brings them to the sideboard table. Wei Ying doesn’t move from the hunched position she’s curled into.
Their days take on a natural rhythm, something akin to the movement of the sun, shaped entirely by the regular arrival of their meals and the amount of light filtering inside the residence. Between those times, they interact rarely, passing the time in silence. If not for the rounds of cleaning Lan Wangji completes every day, the art supplies, the book, they’d all be covered entirely in dust. Everything, she thinks, would be covered in dust.
Late morning sunlight spills through the courtyard when there is a knock, untimely, out of the norm. The knock is forceful. Lan Wangji prepares herself for the worst. No junior of hers would knock in such a fashion. Wei Ying shifts on the bed, turning toward the door. Her eyes peek out briefly, caught immediately by Lan Wangji as she passes. When Lan Wangji looks at her again, Wei Ying has hidden herself away again.
Lan Wangji opens the door. She is not surprised to see the severe expression of an elder as her guest is revealed. She is surprised that an elder has come at all.
“Qianbei,” Lan Wangji says, offering obeisance to the elder who has come. “How can I assist you?”
“Your uncle wishes to speak with you about your current arrangement,” she replies, mouth pinched.
“Then he should have considered coming himself,” Lan Wangji says. “I apologize for the trouble I have caused you.” Lan Wangji again offers a bow. “Thank you for alerting me.”
“You oughtn’t make things difficult for him.”
A twinge of guilt settles in her chest at having to disappoint an elder in this way. It’s still not enough to convince her to go to him. She has nothing to say to him, and she is not interested in anything he might say to her. “Nevertheless.”
“Wangji, I’ve known you since you were small. You were always so obedient to him.” Her eyes flick away, taking in as much of Gentian House as she is able to see. Her expression calcifies as it falls on the bed. Even worse, they reach Lan Wangji’s slipper-clad feet “It wasn’t until…”
Though she’s so careful to keep from outright stating it, Lan Wangji is very, very aware of what she means to convey. It wasn’t until you became close to Wei Wuxian that you began causing trouble. And there may be some truth in that. Lan Wangji would just not consider it trouble, not of the sort she means, and certainly not the sort her uncle means. Being with her has made Lan Wangji a better person, not a worse one.
“Would it not be better to ensure he has no more reason to condemn her than she’s already given him?”
Few questions are useful where Lan Wangji’s elders are concerned. That is something Wei Ying has taught her. Nevertheless, she feels moved to try. “You blame her for this outcome?”
“She had to know there would be consequences for trifling with the Wen Sect.”
At this elder’s knee, she’d learned once that precise language is important to conveying oneself properly. Now she sees the truth for what it is. She must speak precisely in a way that the elders agree with, whether it is accurate or not. “Indeed,” Lan Wangji agrees, “but I did not expect the Lan Sect to become an instrument of her punishment in this way.” She respectfully inclines her head. “All the precepts state it is morally correct to right a wrong done to one’s family and sect. As Yiling Wei’s heir, was it not her duty to redress the crime done?”
“Nothing is ever as simple as the precepts state.”
“Forgive me,” Lan Wangji says. “I may be deficient in my understanding, but from my perspective, the destruction of one’s sect for the crime of asking after the well being of innocent bystanders seems simple. I clearly haven’t learned well.”
“Wangji…” she replies, cheeks reddening. Though Lan Wangji owes this woman the respect of her position, it must be uncomfortable for Lan Wangji to imply she is criticizing the education of one of the Lan clan’s direct descendants.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she says, intending to slide the door to Gentian House shut.
The elder’s hand slaps against the door frame, as though she knows Lan Wangji wouldn’t dare cause her physical harm. “Do you want to burden your friend with even more grief by being so stubborn? You’ll make things more difficult for her, too. Your uncle only wants to speak with you. You owe him your respect and diligence.”
Friend. They are the most intimate of friends possible. They are friends in a way that goes beyond what she means by the term.
Lan Wangji feels very much as though the only person she owes anything to right now is Wei Ying, but she’s still capable of understanding the threat that underlies this elder’s message. “Very well.”
Classes are already finished when Lan Wangji arrives at the lanshi, her uncle pacing the wooden floors. As soon as he notices her, he stops and stares at her. An uncomfortable silence stretches between them as he waits for her to approach. Though she doesn’t want to, she steps forward and inclines her head. “Shufu,” she says. If he expects more from her, he will not get it.
“Stop with this foolishness, Wangji,” he says finally, reaching the point before they’ve had a chance to discourse on it properly. She isn’t surprised, and though his words disappoint her, she is not hurt by them. Nothing can hurt as much as being made to leave Wei Ying to wither and rot in Gentian House.
“With all due respect,” she answers, “I will not.”
Her uncle turns and turns again, shoes clicking lightly against the wooden floor. The rhythm would be soothing in different circumstances. Like this, it only adds to Lan Wangji’s anger, her unease. Ever since she was a child, she has sought to please him. As she grew older, she knew there could be no pleasing him. She used to settle for making him proud, but even that she can no longer do.
It is not the loss she would have expected, being unable to make him proud or pleased.
“Wei Wuxian murdered the most powerful sect leader in modern memory,” her uncle states, as though this is in question, as though Lan Wangji might care. “She has murdered his sons. Do you know how many hundreds of cultivators are now without sect backing? What are they to do?”
They, like the cast-offs of any other decimated sect, will be folded into less established sects, bringing their rare knowledge with them, raising their status in the cultivation world. This is not the grand tragedy her uncle is trying to paint it to be, when the most powerful sect leader in modern memory and his children were tyrants. “This is what you would concern yourself with?”
“I would concern myself with you and the reputation you’ve so carefully crafted for yourself over the years. Despite your dalliances—”
“They are not dalliances,” Lan Wangji says, because she can stand many things, but she will not stand for her own family disregarding the woman she loves in this way, not when they’ve disregarded her in all others.
“Needless to say, you are well-regarded and known for your righteousness. How can you support Wei Wuxian against all reason?”
“Her entire sect was destroyed,” Lan Wangji points out.
“Wangji! This is nonsense. You needn’t throw your life away to serve as her guardian.”
“You were not there. You didn’t see how and why it happened.” Lan Wangji cannot say in good conscience what she would do if the same circumstance befell Cloud Recesses. All she knows is Wei Wuxian has insured it will not happen. “I cannot be the one to judge her for what she’s done.”
“Then you wish to bear responsibility for her even in this?”
That has been my only wish this whole time. “I will.”
They will share this punishment. It will be no different than when she was a child, punished for kneeling incessantly before the closed door of Gentian House. At least this time, she will be inside it, sharing the space with the one unjustly locked away.
“Go then,” her uncle says, disgustedly waving her off.
She goes. What else can she do?
At the door, she stops and simply looks at her uncle for a time.
He merely glares at her in return and says, “She will not thank you for this. She has never been anything other than an ungrateful, arrogant whelp.”
Wei Ying is awake when she returns, finally calm after having spent twenty minutes outside the residence, meditating away the worst of her ill mood and wrath.
She would be pleased if not for how Wei Ying’s idea of awake involves shuffling toward the restroom, one hand pressed to the wall, the other pressed to her lower abdomen. She’s clearly exhausted herself even though she’s not even halfway there. “Lan Zhan,” she says, voice trembling badly. Her face, already so sallow and wretched, seems to have aged impossibly in the hour or so Lan Wangji has been gone. Pain and embarrassment have etched themselves into her features. For a moment, the things that stand between them are nothing at all. Wei Ying is simply the woman she loves and wants desperately to help.
For Lan Wangji, she glowed once. So bright was the shine that Lan Wangji feared being blinded by the sun of her smile. If Lan Wangji has her way, she will shine again.
Shaken, Lan Wangji eats the distance between them, takes gentle hold of Wei Ying’s bicep, thumb pressing against the blooming red moth tattoo rendered beautifully across the span of it. She’d agonized over how she wanted her body marked back then, and made Lan Wangji go with her when she had it done. When it had healed, Lan Wangji targeted it incessantly with kisses, memorizing the shape of it with her tongue.
As Lan Wangji reminisces, Wei Ying’s knee buckles. Despite Wei Ying’s weak protests, Lan Wangji carefully scoops her in a bridal carry. Even as gentle as Lan Wangji is, it’s not enough to stop her from wincing, from stifling a cry. “Lan Zhan, you don’t—”
“I’m sorry I left you,” she says, because conveying her regrets are more important than listening to all the things Wei Ying doesn’t want from her. “My uncle wished to speak with me. He wouldn’t be turned aside.” Somehow, it’s easier to speak like this, with Wei Ying’s warm breath gusting over her throat as she clings to Lan Wangji’s neck. “I should have been here.”
I should have been there, she thinks.
She waits for Wei Ying to gut her for daring to say such things. Wei Ying has never been one for wishes and should haves. She is not interested in dwelling on the past and has never liked the way Lan Wangji falls into sorrowful melancholies that cannot be changed. But Wei Ying merely sighs, exhausted, and leans her cheek against Lan Wangji’s shoulder. She asks, “Was he very awful?”
“He was as he’s always been.” Inflexible, intractable. Lan Wangji once saw him as the ideal for which she should reach. He is righteous. And though he is not effusive, she’s always thought him good. There is no good in this, no righteousness. He is simply a man, too, and a flawed one. “I cannot mind it when I expected nothing less or more.”
“Lan Zhan, come on.”
“I will remain here with you,” she says, though already she feels the glimmer of a lie in her words. She cannot see Wei Ying living out the rest of her life here, can’t even visualize it. “That is what matters. He can think whatever he wants.”
If she has her way, she will not let such a thing come to pass.
As Wei Ying recovers, she regains color in her features and she rouses for longer stretches of time. A little of her old liveliness returns, though none of it is directed at Lan Wangji. She is not warm with Lan Wangji, but she is not cold either. They do not talk about what has transpired. Useless apologies crowd Lan Wangji’s throat until they choke her. Even if she truly disagreed with Wei Ying’s methods, she would not have wished this upon her. She cannot allow herself to be warm with Wei Ying, but she is not cold.
They are almost like ghosts to one another, haunting the same house together, bound by the past and feelings they cannot shake.
One day, she catches Wei Ying staring at her feet intently. She doesn’t realize why until she remembers she’s wearing the bunny slippers Wei Ying bought before Lan Wangji quietly knifed their relationship in the back, leaving it bleeding necked in the banquet hall of Wen Ruohan’s palatial mansion.
“I can use the guest slippers,” Lan Wangji offers, pained.
“No,” Wei Ying says, voice distant, unsettled. “No, they’re yours. You should wear them if you like them.”
It isn’t a victory, nor a mending of Wei Ying’s broken feelings for her, but it isn’t the shunning she expects either.
Time passes. The days grow shorter. Lan Wangji keeps more and more lights lit to keep the early nights and late mornings at bay. Warmth floods the residence.
Wei Ying’s hair has gotten long. Her side shave is beginning to grow out.
“What are you thinking about?” Wei Ying asks her. It’s the first time she’s instigated a conversation of her own volition. Though they are in the middle of a meal, Lan Wangji doesn’t tell her she mustn’t speak while eating, not that Wei Ying is eating. “You’ve got a…” She gestures at her own face. Around her ears and neck, her hair is beginning to curl. Her bangs are overgrown, too. IT all ought to be trimmed back. She likes her hair shorter than this. “…look. On your face.”
“Your hair is getting long,” Lan Zhan says. Without thinking about it, she reaches across the table. Wei Ying immediately flinches back.
“Sorry,” Wei Ying says reflexively, baffled. She doesn’t relax her posture however.
Lan Wangji’s skin stretches around the shame expanding within her. She feels as though she’s fit to bursting, that the grief of it will rend her in two, leaving behind ragged flesh and snapped bone. Her fingers flex and curl back. She cradles her hand in her lap, hiding it away from what it has done. “You have nothing to apologize for, Wei Ying.”
She wishes she could unsay what she has said. It becomes a sore point immediately as Wei Ying keeps fussing with it. The motion is incessant, like she’s discovered a scab and can’t stop herself from picking at it. Days pass while she tugs and twists the strands between her fingers, frowning.
Lan Wangji wakes one morning to find Wei Ying staring at herself in the bathroom mirror, a pair of blunt scissors in her hand. Her nose is nearly pressed against the glass as she studies her face. With a scoff, she leans back and throws the scissors into the sink. She’s always been vain about her hair, would only ever allow Lan Wangji to do it, because she says Lan Wangji is the only one who has ever done it right.
“These won’t do,” Lan Wangji murmurs, wishing she had proper clipping shears and the shaver Wei Ying prefers. The ones she owns, so full of memory, both probably burned up in the conflagration that took the rest of Yiling Wei, small casualties amid a much greater loss. When she searches the contents of the bathroom, she finds a straight razor that will suffice, clean and sharp and new. She doesn’t know why it’s here.
Wei Ying opens her mouth, vitriol flaring in her eyes as she presents her prize. Lan Wangji is ready to argue, but Wei Ying’s shoulders slump. “Okay,” she says. “Fine. Whatever.”
Lan Wangji half expects Wei Ying to bite or snap her teeth as Lan Wangji works, anything to lash out to the person closest to her, but she surprises Lan Wangji with how quiet and small she makes herself as Lan Wangji drapes a towel around her shoulders and encourages her to come her into the tiny kitchen-like area to sit in a proper chair with proper light. Her hair is damp and her skin is warm from the shower she took. Lan Wangji is careful as she parts Wei Ying’s hair and applies soap to her scalp where she likes her side shave to begin.
The first few strokes of the blade over Wei Ying’s skin are uncertain and lacking in confidence, but muscle memory takes over. “Thank you for trusting me to do this,” she says into the cold, silent void before her.
“It’s not some grand act of bravery, Lan Zhan,” she replies. Her scolding, derisive tone paints the moment in an uncomfortable light. “Unless you’re planning on slicing my throat to avenge the great wrong I’ve done to the cultivation world.”
“No,” Lan Wangji replies. “I don’t intend to do that.”
“Then it’s fine,” she says sharply. “No need to thank me. I ought to be the one thanking you. You’ve basically been my errand girl this whole time.”
Lan Wangji’s gut twists with discomfort. Though Wei Ying pointedly doesn’t thank her, she hates the thought of Wei Ying feeling beholden to her, or thinking she ought to feel beholden to her. Nothing, in Lan Wangji’s opinion, could be further from the truth. She opens her mouth to say as much, but Wei Ying beats her to it.
“Lan Zhan has been so good to me. I shouldn’t give her such a hard time. She, of course, wouldn’t want to be thanked for doing anything. She’s so far above the need for things like gratitude. Compared to an ungrateful wretch like—”
Wei Ying sounds like Lan Wangji’s uncle. “Wei Ying, stop.”
“Stop, what? Stop talking? Stop wanting to thank the oh, so generous Lan Wangji for crawling into the muck with her? What should I stop doing now that I’m barred from doing so many things? I can’t keep track.”
Though this is calculated to anger her, Lan Wangji cannot be made angry. Nothing about what Wei Ying is saying is worse than what’s already been said. Instead, more and more she wants simply to hold Wei Ying close and promise her that she will make things better.
“Should I thank her for locking herself in a cage with me?” Wei Ying continues, a transparent attempt to needle her.
“I am where I want to be,” Lan Wangji says simply, truthfully.
They fall into silence, only the sound of the razor to accompany them. Occasionally, Wei Ying shivers, perhaps thanks to the coolness of the air against so much bare skin, or because she lacks a golden core, or simply because she’s cold. When Lan Wangji nearly nicks Wei Ying’s skin, she stops, takes the towel from around Wei Ying’s shoulder, rinses the blade, and removes the soft, warm cardigan she’s wearing.
When she places it around Wei Ying’s shoulders, Wei Ying instinctively clutches it, turns her head to inhale, and finally looks over her shoulder at Lan Wangji. She removes it and holds it out or Lan Wangji to take. “I don’t want it,” she says bluntly. Though Lan Wangji takes it back, she simply tosses it over the back of the chair. Neither of them will wear it then.
Lan Wangji resumes cleaning up Wei Ying’s side shave and her hairline at the nape. She uses the scissors to trim the rest.
When she’s done, it’s not perfect, but Wei Ying seems to relax into it anyway, feathering her fingers through it to break up the strands. “That’s better,” she admits after she has inspected herself in the bathroom mirror. The tone of her voice softens.
Lan Wangji returns to the kitchen to clean up the mess of short, fine hairs that layer themselves across the floor. When Wei Ying joins her, she pushes her luck. “It’s a nice day.”
Wei Ying stands in the corner, body holding up the wall as she leans against it. “It is,” she says, looking out the window.
“Would you like to walk around the courtyard?”
Wei Ying blinks, furrows her brow, studies Lan Wangji’s face as though searching it for signs of malice. When she finally speaks, it’s as painful somehow as everything that has come before, crumbling every bit of goodwill that has been wrought today. “Lan Zhan, I can’t leave the residence.”
She raises her arm, and though it is entirely free of marks, Lan Wangji senses something there, something…
“May I?” she asks, stepping toward Wei Ying as though she’s a skittish animal. Wei Ying nods reluctantly, but holds still. Lan Wangji probes the smooth expanse of her skin. She almost misses the wisp of a mark buried deep within her, as though carved directly into bone.
A curse, a binding.
“Wei Ying, I am sorry,” Lan Wangji says. It infuriates Lan Wangji more than she can bear that she is being treated as a monster that must be locked away.
“You don’t owe me anything.” Wei Ying wrenches her arm out of Lan Wangji’s hold. “And regrets are worthless. I don’t want them.”
Regret is worthless, yes.
But action is not.
“Here,” Lan Wangji says after she has retrieved the brushes, inks, and book that she’d brought with her. Wei Ying is sitting on the bed, legs crossed, eyes closed. She places these items on Wei Ying’s lap. “It’s too strange to see you so quiet.”
Wei Ying looks at the pile of items, hands hovering over them as though they might explode in her face if she touches them. “What’s this?”
“You seemed bored.”
“You can just say I suck at meditation now, Lan Zhan,” she grouses as she picks up the book. She holds it with reverent hands, smiling faintly, before putting it aside. The cruel rejection Lan Wangji had feared would result doesn’t come to fruition, but this isn’t the rousing success she might have hoped for either. “It’s not easy without…” She clears her throat. “You know me. It’s never been easy.”
“I could perhaps arrange to have my guqin brought,” Lan Wangji offers, knowing she’s pressing her luck and doing it anyway, “if you think that will help.”
Wei Ying picks up the book again, ignoring Lan Wangji’s offer as she rifles through the pages of the book. A soft smile steals over her mouth and disappears again, a fish darting through the water. “You know, I’d forgotten I left this here,” she says, wistful. “I never did get around to reading the others.”
“I should have bought them for you,” she says. “I don’t know why I didn’t.”
“Lan Zhan, that’s not…” She sighs, scrubs her hand over her freshly shaved head. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know, but—”
“You aren’t responsible for fixing everything that’s wrong in this world. Thank you for bringing it to me.”
The worried tangle of Lan Wangji’s heart loosens as Wei Ying opens the front cover and reverently presses her fingers to the pages.
Lan Wangji nearly always wakes before Wei Ying. This was true back when Wei Ying was perfectly well, and it has remained true now. Being in the same space as Wei Ying but being unable to sleep next to her is difficult. After she’s put aside the mat she’s taken to using, she moves into the main living area and finds Wei Ying sprawled across the low table, cheek pillowed on her arms as she sleeps. For one terrifying moment, she is so certain that Wei Ying has passed away from some complication or sheer force of will that she doesn’t notice the gentle rise and fall of her spine, nor the paper, brush, and dried up well of ink strewn about her.
She remembers then: Wei Ying had been painting when she went to bed. Before going, she’d gently suggested that Wei Ying rest early. Wei Ying had promised her she would.
Wei Ying is a liar, and somehow, Lan Wangji can only feel worried affection for her all the same.
She tugs the pages from beneath Wei Ying’s arms, hoping the ink hasn’t smeared or stained. She’s too curious about what Wei Ying has drawn to avoid looking at it, and finds herself humbled to see that it’s an image of Lan Wangji herself, far more beautiful than it has any right to be. Her hair is long, so long, an elegant spill of ink all on its own, and her lips are sweetly plump, if expressionless. The eyes are sad, heroically so, like she alone stands against the evils of the world, isolated her from the world around her.
It is how she feels sometimes.
But she is not truly this beautiful, nor this heroic. By this image, Wei Ying lies, too. It takes every effort to stop herself from tossing it away. The best she can do is flip it over so only the echoes of the ink show through, a good compromise.
“Wei Ying,” she says, studiously ignoring it as she curls her palm over Wei Ying’s shoulder, gently shaking her. Her skin is cold to the touch. She shrugs out of her cardigan and wraps it around Wei Ying’s shoulders. “Wei Ying, you mustn’t sleep like this. Let me take you to the bed to rest properly.”
Wincing, Wei Ying mumbles, “Time is it?”
“Early still,” Lan Wangji says. “I only just woke up.”
She hums blearily and rubs her knuckles over her eyes. Blinking a few times, she squints up at Lan Wangji. As she pushes herself upright, she winces again.
“Where do you hurt?”
Wei Ying laughs, bitter with self-deprecation, and lets Lan Wangji help her to her feet. “Everywhere,” she answers, though Lan Wangji cannot tell if this is meant to be the truth or an exaggeration to hide it. “Haven’t fallen asleep at a table in years. Ma used to—” She cuts herself off with a cough, staring at the ground as Lan Wangji helps her shuffle toward the bed. “Well, you know what she used to do.”
She does in fact know. Because Wei Ying is the daughter of a sect leader, she was often brought to Cloud Recesses as a youth, sitting alongside her parents at various events in order to learn what will be expected of her. As one can imagine—though not Lan Wangji at the time, who always thought Wei Ying frivolous and childish—Wei Ying often fell asleep at the banquet tables, especially when it got around to the moment when everyone falsely praised one another, drawing out an event that was already overlong. Her mother would simply laugh and, when no one was looking, sprinkle water across the back of Wei Ying’s exposed neck, startling her awake.
The truth is, even back then, Lan Wangji looked at her. She just didn’t make it obvious. Even when they were children still learning basic forms and attending primary school with the other cultivation students of their generation, Lan Wangji never knew how to look away. She saw everything.
Rather, she saw almost everything. She could not see this fundamental divide that stretches between them, their understanding of right and wrong skewed in such a way that the gap feels utterly impassable.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji starts, though she doesn’t know what she wants to say. It is simply a small comfort to be allowed to speak the syllables in Wei Ying’s name. “You should rest.”
“Yeah, yeah. You said that already.” Her voice is churlish now, and she seems very much as though she intends to be recalcitrant. Yet she surprises Lan Wangji by not kicking up a fuss. “I guess I’ll have to be careful about staying up late now, huh?”
“Why did you?” Lan Zhan asks.
“Felt like painting,” she answers simply. “You brought all those fancy brushes and ink. Might as well use them, right?”
Lan Wangji is a coward for not having properly asked her question from the start. “Why did you draw me like that?”
“Shouldn’t you know?” Wei Ying says. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because it’s inaccurate,” Lan Wangji manages, proud of herself for being able to say it. “And untrue.”
As Lan Wangji speaks, she grows furious. She is a cornered creature, hemmed in by Wei Ying’s regard for her.
“Lan Zhan?”
She decides here and now that she will be what Wei Ying sees in her. After Wei Ying goes back to sleep, she writes a note for her brother.
It’s just as well that he’s the one to bring it.
“I know what was done to her,” Lan Wangji says, keeping her voice low as she stands in the doorway, blocking her brother from coming in. “I know one of the physicians marked her so she is unable to leave. I want to know how to reverse it.”
There is guilt in her brother’s eyes. She is glad for it. It means he knows what’s been done and how to reverse it. “Wangji…”
“If you don’t help me, I’ll work at it myself. She won’t be made to stay here. I won’t allow it to happen to her. She won’t become our mother.”
“I can’t help you, Wangji,” he answers. “I’m sorry. This is what was decided by every other sect attending the conference regarding this. I cannt simply go against what was decided by our elders and other sect leaders.”
Can you not, she thinks. Are you not also a sect leader?
No wonder Wei Ying felt moved to take justice with her own hands. There was no one left in the world who would stand with her, who would stop these indignities and punishments from being inflicted upon her.
But Lan Wangji will stop them whether her brother helps her or not.
“In that case, I have nothing left to say,” she replies, composed. “Thank you, ge.”
The day passes too slowly, each moment tormenting her with the step she knows she must take. Without backing from her brother, there’s no chance she won’t find herself in a deep well of trouble should she fail. Even Wei Ying notices, casting odd looks her way often enough that Lan Wangji almost snaps in frustration. If Wei Ying were to ask what’s wrong, she’s not sure she wouldn’t tell the truth.
But she makes it through, and after Wei Ying has gone to bed, it’s easy enough for Lan Wangji to sneak out, so easy that it’s a mockery at its heart, like nobody in the sect considered the possibility that she might break a rule.
The library is more carefully secured, but the security measures set on the doors barely stop her, now that she is prepared to do what she needs to do. The forbidden area is trickier, but she knows she would be wasting her time looking anywhere else for information on the curse.
The only thing stopping her is her belief in who she is and who she should be. In her heart, she doesn’t want to be someone who would sneak into a library. Of course, Wei Ying would surely like to not be a murderer either. This world doesn’t always allow people to be what they want to be. Thinking of it that way, it’s not difficult for her to find her way down the stairs leading to the most secure documents the Lan Sect library possesses.
Her instincts guide her to the section that contains many carefully preserved original works that fill the furthest portions of the cavernous space.
Though she could scour pointlessly through the books readily available, she is certain the answer she seeks is contained in one of the safe-like vaults that squat in the corner, protected by a keypad.
She feels sure she can guess the right combination of numbers to open it.
She barely hesitates in her approach. Even when she hears footsteps on the stairs, she doesn’t stop. This is the path she’s set herself upon. She won’t disappoint Wei Ying by failing now. No matter who might have come, she won’t let it end without an answer.
“I wouldn’t, Wangji,” her brother says, catching her mere seconds from inputting the code that will open the vault.
“Brother,” she says, turning toward him. He stands at the bottom of the stairs, fear and disappointment and profound grief etched into his features. Though he’s only a few years older than her, he seems ancient in this moment and so far away.
She realizes now that they are on different paths, ones that will never fully intersect again if they’ll cross at all.
It isn’t enough to stop her, not now. Not when she’s seen what the world is willing to do to someone like Wei Ying. Even for her own brother, she cannot look away and pretend any longer.
“Wangji, are you sure?” he asks. Though the question is simple on the face of it, she hears what he doesn’t ask. You know what you’re doing, don’t you? She’s worth this much to you? You know you won’t be able to come back? You’d give us up for this? He knows these are unworthy questions. She’s grateful he doesn’t bother asking them, because neither of them will like the answer.
“Wei Ying has accepted what has happened to her,” she says. “I never will.”
“I understand,” he says. As he comes to stand next to Lan Wangji, he sighs and smiles wistfully. “I used to think Wei Wuxian would be good for you. For a long time, she was.”
He doesn’t say: I think I was wrong. Or: I think she is the worst thing that’s happened to you.
“Ge,” she replies. It hurts to know what he is thinking, even the things he cannot voice aloud. Out of everyone, she might have thought he would understand her. “She is good for me.”
“She’s made you miserable,” he says, opening the vault with a few pressed buttons, feigning a nonchalant attitude that Lan Wangji immediately sees through. The documents are bound well, but the covers are unadorned. To Lan Wangji’s eyes, they all look exactly the same. “You’re effectively defecting. You understand that, I imagine?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“If my sect were burned to ash and you were killed, I would do everything I could to correct that injustice. I don’t think anyone would accuse me of being wrong for doing that. I think if I did not, I would be chastised and ridiculed for weakness. I have never understood why it would be different for Wei Ying.”
“Her sect was—”
“Her sect valued individuality and taught cultivation techniques to whomever came to them with an open heart and mind. As far as I can tell, the only thing that separates us is elitism.”
“They should have considered the ramifications of confronting Wen Ruohan in the way they did,” he says. “He would never have let such an insult stand, especially after they took what Wen remained and sought to teach them.”
No, that’s not right at all.
“She was able to kill Wen Ruohan. Wangji, he was the most powerful—”
“Clearly not,” she answers. “At least not before we destroyed what Wei Ying has worked so hard to cultivate in herself.”
“Who is to say she wasn’t so powerful because of what that Wen branch brought to Yiling? The great sects were afraid of what she might do. That kind of power is terrible to contemplate, Wangji. What if she were to—”
“She wouldn’t,” Lan Wangji says. She wouldn’t, and nothing her brother could say would make the justification stick. She simply doesn’t believe Wei Ying was powerful because she learned secret Wen techniques. “She has done what she set out to do.”
Her brother fixates on a thin booklet, unassuming among a stack of larger volumes.
“This is what held our mother here,” Lan Wangji says, “isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” he admits.
“Ge, I want to save her from our mother’s fate. I cannot care about anything in this world more than that. Whether she is right or wrong…”
But she is not wrong.
Tears prickle in Lan Wangji’s eyes as her brother hands over the booklet. Lan Wangji reads it three times over to ensure she’s memorized it before handing it back.
Wei Ying is awake when she returns, hair disheveled, eyes bloodshot. She looks lost and alone in the middle of the bed, clutching Lan Wangji’s cardigan tightly around her. Lan Wangji aches to see the pain in her expression and wants to do anything she can to fix it.
Before she can stop herself, she sweeps across the room, takes Wei Ying’s face between her hands. As she cups this face that is so beloved to her, she presses a kiss to Wei Ying’s forehead, then presses the fingers of one hand between Wei Ying’s shoulder blades. The other wraps in a band around Wei Ying’s arm. With the knowledge Lan Wangji has gained, it’s easy to find the mark again. She visualizes a knot and slices it into two disparate pieces with a sharp burst of spiritual energy.
Wei Ying gasps, staggers forward into Lan Wangji’s embrace. Lan Wangji holds tightly to her, arms secure around her body as the curse dissolves.
“Wei Ying,” she says, when Wei Ying stops shaking, “are you alright?”
“I’m okay,” Wei Ying answers, voice unsteady. “You—”
“You are free to go,” Lan Wangji says. She cannot speak her one shameless desire into being yet. Let me go with you.
Wei Ying’s hands tighten against Lan Wangji’s back, fingers twisting in the fabric of her shirt. She holds just as tightly to Lan Wangji as she used to, her grip like iron and steel, precisely the degree of intractable that Lan Wangji wants her to be. If she could feel as though Lan Wangji can be relied upon, that would be enough. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. I…”
But she doesn’t move. It’s as though in her freedom, she can’t imagine being anywhere else.
“Where do you want to go?” Lan Wangji asks her, holding her at arm’s length, touching her face, her neck, her shoulders. As long as Wei Ying doesn’t stop her, she’ll touch as much as she dares.
“Anywhere,” Wei Ying replies. “I don’t care. I—” She pulls Lan Wangji into another tight hug. “Will you come with me? Are you—you’ll be in trouble, won’t you? For doing this? Will you go?”
She settles her chin atop Wei Ying’s head, wraps her arms around Wei Ying’s frame, cannot imagine leaving Wei Ying again. “I cannot stay after what has transpired.”
“Will you go with me?” Wei Ying asks, voice painfully small.
“If you want me to,” Lan Wangji says, “I will.”
“Where will we go?” she asks. Lan Wangji’s heart clenches at how uncertain she sounds. She is used to Wei Ying knowing everything, but she has clearly not thought she’d ever get out of this place. She hasn’t planned for that or any eventuality. She truly thought she was going to rot in her lover’s home until she finally died. “Lan Zhan, you can’t leave. They’ll definitely—”
“Your disciples are scattered.” Lan Wangji says. “We’ll find them.”
“I…” She chokes up and buries her face against Lan Zhan’s neck. “They didn’t do anything wrong. I’m sure they settled in other sects, where they’ll be safe. I can’t go to them and jeopardize that.”
Lan Wangji squeezes her eyes closed, breathes in the scent of Wei Ying’s body. “They will want to be with you.” Lan Wangji knows the feeling. She would do anything to be with Wei Ying, even risk the cultivation sects’ wrath. “Or we can disappear among the common people. There’s no reason we can’t live peaceful lives if that’s what you wish to do.”
“But—”
“No buts, Wei Ying. We will make it happen.”
“But your family,” Wei Ying says. “Your life here. You can’t just go.”
“You are as much my family and my life as anything I have here. I will go with you if you want me to go. That’s the only thing that matters to me in this.”
Wei Ying breathes deeply, presses her ear to Lan Wangji’s sternum, sure to hear the rapid beat of Lan Wangji’s heart beneath her breastbone. Finally, she says, “Okay.”
They leave the restrictions and freedoms of the jianghu behind.
They find the trail on a small family living in a village some kilometers from Yiling, a strange family, a family matching the description of Wen Qing, Wen Ning, Xiao Xingchen, and Wen Yuan. They are said to perform miracles for the locals and they travel extensively, helping where they can and asking for nothing in return. Wei Ying refuses to harbor hope, but Lan Wangji is certain, as she maneuvers the junky old truck they’ve purchased, that they’ve found the right people.
“I don’t even know why they went into hiding,” Wei Ying says, arms crossed. “They didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I’m sure they have their reasons,” Lan Wangji answers, most of her attention on the potholes dotting the road ahead of them. “Maybe they didn’t want to remain after everything that happened.”
“I suppose.” She forces herself to relax, stretching her legs and arms as she studies the scenery. She falls silent and eventually falls asleep with her head pressed to the window, soft mouth parted as she breathes deeply. Her rest is calmer than Lan Wangji has heard it in a long time.
Lan Wangji slows even further, creeping the truck along the road carefully to avoid waking her.
Lan Wangji watches Wei Ying startles awake to the sound of a child screeching, knocking her head against the window with a hiss of pain. She looks around her, eyes wide. Only belatedly does her gaze settle on Lan Wangji, who has allowed Wen Yuan to crawl into her lap and then across the center console toward Wei Ying. “Xian-jieie!” he calls, reaching for her.
Eyes wide, she stares at Lan Wangji and then looks around. “How long did I sleep?” With a whuff of air, she takes hold of Wen Yuan. Wen Qing and Wen Ning are standing by Lan Wangji’s open door, Xiao Xingchen only a few meters away talking with someone who appears to be another villager.
Though Wen Ning looks pleased to see them despite everything, both Wen Qing and Xiao Xingchen wear somber expressions. “We heard what happened,” Wen Ning says sadly. “We couldn’t stay after that.”
“It’s good to see you both,” Xiao Xingcheng says, finally reaching the cab. “I knew it was only a matter of time.”
Wen Qing says nothing for a long time, assessing Wei Ying as he cuddles Wen Yuan. “I’m going to fix it, Wei Wuxian. I promise you that much.”
As Wei Ying cuddles A-Yuan close, she grins, blindingly beautiful. “I leave myself in Qing-jiejie’s capable hands,” is all she says, too happy, apparently, to fight her assertion.
Wen Ning settles them into the room Xiao Xingchen insisted they take and then leaves them to their own devices. For a few moments, Lan Wangji doesn’t know what to do, but after they’ve put their few belongings away, Lan Wangji crowds Wei Ying toward the freshly made bed and presses her into it.
“Aha, Lan Zhan, you can’t already be thinking about—”
Lan Wangji brushes a kiss over her forehead. “Go back to sleep.” She presses her thumb to the bruised skin beneath Wei Ying’s eyes. “You should get some decent rest.”
“How can I sleep, Lan Zhan? I’ve been napping this whole drive.”
“Even so.”
Though Wei Ying rolls her eyes fondly, she acquiesces, but before Lan Wangji can rise, she grabs Lan Wangji’s wrist and tugs her back down. “I’ll only sleep if jiejie comes to bed with me.”
She had intended to help with chores, but perhaps she can make it up to the others later. “Alright.”
“And… maybe I’ll only sleep if jiejie reads for me?”
“What would you like me to read?” As soon as she says it, she knows what to do. They only get through ten or so pages before Wei Ying’s breathing evens out, but Lan Wangji doesn’t mind. They have time enough to finish it, and everything else they could possibly want to do together.