Chapter Text
“Won’t you stay and die with me?”
The wind is fierce, the spray of rain harsh and cold against his fingertips, bloodied against the guqin strings.
‘Those with great spiritual power could take others’ lives in just three notes.’
After months of locking it away, his power is no longer what one would call ‘great’. But he has time, until morning.
Time enough.
***
When A-Huan is three, his mother draws him close with a gentle hand to show him the small bundle in her arms.
“This is A-Zhan, your brother. You are his Gege. Do you know what that means, A-Huan?”
He shakes his head, mesmerized by the way the little baby scrunches up its nose and claws its tiny fists into the blanket.
“It means you must protect him. You must catch him when he stumbles. You must wipe his tears and teach him well. The world can be a cold place, and there might come a time when you will have no-one but each other.”
A-Huan reluctantly tears his eyes away towards his mother, wondering at the odd inflection in her voice. He wishes he wasn’t too young to understand her hidden meanings, especially if they concern his brother.
His brother is important.
A-Niang’s voice sounds strained when she says, “Take good care of your Didi, A-Huan. You must promise me that.”
He will.
The two are inseparable. In fact, it would not be wrong to say A-Huan absolutely adores his little brother, his most favorite person in the world. The boy’s first stammered word is ‘Gege’, always crawling after him and asking to be picked up by A-Huan’s reed-thin arms. He will simply have to train more to be strong enough to carry him. There’s not a single thing A-Huan wouldn’t do for him. As A-Zhan grows, it’s their mother he tells about his day, but it’s his Gege’s approval that he seeks. The two spend every free moment with each other.
Then mother dies, and A-Zhan does not speak for nearly a month.
It is as if the grief has left him speechless, stolen his voice overnight like a ghost.
No matter how A-Huan pleads with him, cajoles, offers him treats and rewards for even a single word, A-Zhan stays quiet; returning every night to the front porch of the Jingshi, as though if only he waits long enough, the doors might open. It leaves A-Huan, himself only nine years old and struggling with the loss of the loving half of his parents, feeling like he’s already failing the one task his mother set for him. The days go on, a week turns into two, turns into three, and their uncle starts to lose his patience.
“This has gone on long enough, Lan Zhan! For heaven’s sake, I know you’re sad, but this is no proper way to act for a Lan! Do not grieve in excess.”
It’s all A-Huan can do to soothe Uncle’s ire, to distract him with questions about his schoolwork that are transparent and paper-thin. There is no time for himself to grieve. A-Huan spends whatever moment he’s not studying either flute or calligraphy or how to be the future sect leader with gaining mastery at reading his brother’s silences.
One evening, closing on a full moon cycle since their mother’s death, A-Huan brushes his brother’s hair after taking off his ribbon, as is their daily routine. And he says, “It doesn’t matter if you never speak again, A-Zhan. You will still become a great and powerful cultivator, no matter what Shufu might say; I know it.” He puts the brush aside and strokes a hand softly through his brother’s silky hair, his own helplessness welling up inside him as he inhales shakily. “…but – if you want to speak, I promise I will listen.”
I miss your voice.
A-Zhan turns around and looks at him for a long time while Lan Huan keeps carefully still. Finally, the boy frowns and clutches at his brother’s sleeve. It is almost time for bed. “Will you play for me?” he asks, simply.
Lan Huan has never been so happy to break a rule in his life.
“Will you play for me?” A-Yao asks over the golden rim of his teacup, looking as poised and pleasant as ever in the low light of Jinlintai’s splendid, frigid halls. His eyes are carefully widened, a pure picture of innocence and shining mask firmly in place.
He’s so glad to see his brother finally adjusting that it almost doesn’t hurt when they’re told to sleep in separate beds. When Lan Zhan stops asking him to brush his hair, or clutching at his sleeves when he wants something. The first time he calls him by his curtesy name. The loss of their mother has left a deep trench inside their hearts, even after they realize she’s not coming back, and he tries his best to make up for it.
Lan Xichen does his best to catch his brother when he stumbles, and teach him well. There are no more tears to wipe; their uncle had that beaten out of him. Nevertheless, Xichen does his best to cheer his brother up when he notices A-Zhan’s mood taking a turn for the worse, small and imperceptible enough that someone unused to his multitude of silences couldn’t pick up on it. A mild joke here, an unexpected treat from the kitchens there.
Sometimes his brother even comes to seek him out, under the guise of needing guidance in his meditation, though Xichen suspects (hopes?) Lan Zhan finds his presence soothing when he is troubled. Lan Xichen, at least, learns to treasure those times with all his heart.
Slowly, A-Zhan grows as a cultivator, the quiet pride of the clan, their little model student. He’s a sight to behold. Naturally, Lan Xichen’s track record is similarly flawless, but then, that is to be expected. He is the clan heir; to fail is an impossibility. It’s only proper for him to stand up early, hone his cultivation to the maximum, attend his classes, learn how to wield the sword and xiao and guqin, look over his brother’s schoolwork, and then spend the evenings with his uncle learning politics.
Much as he misses their physical closeness, Lan Xichen is even more worried about Lan Wangji, who still remains without friends. He knows his brother is a sensitive child, and that others often do not understand him. After their mother’s death, Lan Wangji never did regain his mindless chatter, keeping himself at a distance instead to not get hurt again. A pale statue of jade, he gets called.
In fact, that’s a moniker that spreads to the both of them. The Heir and his First Disciple. Then, the Sect Leader and his Heir. Twin Jades of Gusu Lan is what people start calling the two of them, for their elegance and similarity. At least in looks; in temperament they couldn’t be more different. Though Xichen doesn’t think the metaphor is too far off – both of them are made of jade, his brother’s mask one of aloof indifference, Xichen’s that of a serene smile.
It’s almost a relief when Wei Wuxian stumbles his way into their lives, because he won’t stop touching Wangji. Lan Xichen knows humans need touch – even his seemingly unsociable brother. So if he happens to arrange a few playdates for the two – who is to know? Who is to judge? All he wants is for his brother to be happy and healthy, and maybe that Jiang clan disciple with the quick and easy smile is a good start.
Xichen isn’t lonely. He has his friendship with Mingjue, his peer in sharing the burden of early sect leadership, and he has his clan besides – dozens of disciples vying for his attention, from the elders to the little ones. There isn’t even any time to feel lonely.
And if Mingjue’s friendly shoulder claps are nothing like the tight, warm hugs Xichen used to share with his brother, hidden under their blankets – that is fine. A sect leader, one mature enough to bear the title of Zewu-Jun and accomplished warrior besides, doesn’t need something so childish as a hug.
“He’s been sneaking around my halls again, doing heaven-knows-what!”
“Da-Ge… as a guest here, isn’t he allowed to walk under his own power? Should he need to inform you of every step he takes?”
“Well, I wouldn’t have to mind it if he didn’t do it with that damn sneaky smile of his! Up to no good, I’m telling you…”
“Da-Ge – ”
“And his music!”
“His music?”
“There’s something off about his playing. Gives me a bloody headache!”
A soothing touch against a grey-robed shoulder, fraught with tension. “A-Yao is a quick study, and you know I taught him myself. Perhaps you need to lay off the alcohol a little if your head is bothering you, my friend…”
The Cloud Recesses burn, and suddenly Lan Xichen – himself not yet twenty – doesn’t feel so grown-up anymore. Hidden away in a brothel after fleeing from his desecrated home is the first time he lets himself crumble. The first time someone else picks up the pieces. He knows A-Yao has his own fair share of issues, but for just a moment, Xichen allows himself to feel the gentle touch of another’s hand upon his arm, lets himself be taken care of.
Hindsight will tell him how every little move had been carefully calculated to draw the most sympathy out of his battered, touch-starved self. But that is something he cannot fathom yet, when he sees his friend’s face light up upon entering the room and seeing Xichen sitting on the bed.
What comes next is war, and stress, and the short-lived joy of seeing letters addressed to an alias. Affection is needless when survival is at the forefront of your mind, when Zewu-Jun’s people keep falling every day and every death weighs heavy on his conscience, when he knows his leadership is what brought them here. He sees Wangji’s soft soul harden with every battle, sees him despair a little more with every time Wei Wuxian draws away from him.
There’s nothing Xichen wants more than to protect his brother, and in the end, he fails.
“Wei Ying… Wei Ying! Come back! Please…“
„A-Zhan, it’s alright. A-Yuan is here to visit you, won’t you open your eyes? He’s been looking forward to seeing you very much.”
A whimper. “Ngh… Wei Ying…”
He sighs, and replaces the warmed cloth on his brother’s forehead with a cool one.
Wangji’s scars – both mental and physical – will bear witness to his failure for the rest of their lives. In the end, it’s all he can do to clean his wounds, sooth his fever and raise his son.
A-Yuan wakes from nightmares frequently, their uncle grows colder every day, and the elders rage for blood. Nie Mingjue starts showing signs of falling into qi deviation while the cultivation world is still unstable and Jin Guangshan’s power grows steadily.
In the end, is it such a wonder when he turns to A-Yao for comfort? When he lets himself be weak?
It’s no excuse.
Xichen has tried to be strong through his entire life. He has tried to shield his brother, lead his sect to be strong, to make his uncle proud. To be diplomatic, friendly; a pinnacle of good behavior, a role model for his people by sticking to the thousands of their rules. To never let his back slump under the weight of all he’s made to carry.
In the end, what is it worth?
His best, it seems, is not enough.
***
His brother sometimes visits him for tea.
Later, after all is said and done, when the rubble of Guanyin Temple has settled and news spread and decisions been made. The crown of Chief Cultivator rests heavy upon Lan Wangji’s head, and Xichen doesn’t fool himself for even a moment for whose sake he’s taking up that burden. For whose sake he stayed, when his heart is out travelling the countryside.
They did have a talk, supposedly – Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. Admitted their feelings (finally), laid out where they stood, planned a far-off wedding, and decided on time to let the world settle down again while Wei Wuxian grows used to being in a borrowed body. It doesn’t make him feel any better.
It doesn’t make him feel any worse.
Lan Xichen feels surprisingly little, these days. Numbness had carried him through the first few of them, through cleaning Shuoyue and burning the robe with the bloodied handprint on the front. It carried him to his uncle’s office to settle his affairs and receive a pair of unmarked robes, all he’d need during his time in seclusion.
It had carried him out into the woods and the solitude of his Hanshi, where he could finally… shut down.
He knows his brother worries. Sees it in the way he keeps coming back, once a week at least, despite his busy schedule of whipping the cultivation world back into order. At first, Wangji had even offered to play Clarity for him, to calm his mind, but Xichen hadn’t been able to stand the sight of the guqin strapped to his back. He’d politely sent him away again, hand clenched tightly in his sleeve, until he’d had solitude enough to fall apart.
His brother’s worry chokes him. How can he still stand to look Xichen in the eye? How can he still care for him? After all he’s done?
He’d stood in that courtyard, Baxia’s pale blue glow barely faded, and ignored their warnings. He’d stood inside the Jingshi and told Wei Wuxian to his face that he believed Jin Guangyao over him.
“You believe in your judgement, then am I not allowed to believe in mine?” he asks. Wangji won’t even meet his eyes, disappointment radiating from him in waves.
But his judgement was false, and Wangji’s was not. Once again, it showed that Wangji was the better man of the two. He’d warned him time and time again, but what had he said in turn, inside that thrice darned temple? “Wangji, I know what I am doing.”
What a joke.
The two ghosts are even more frequent companions than his brother.
In his dreams, he sees Da-Ge with the stitches in his throat, looking at him accusingly from bleeding eyes. Sometimes he finds himself lying on the table, Xue Yang’s blade held above his struggling body and bearing down. Sometimes it’s Da-Ge’s head lying on some dusty shelf in the Jin’s treasury, covered in restraining talismans.
Other nights, he sees Lianfang-Zun grasping his arm oh-so-gently with a sickeningly sweet smile, turning him away from doors that have streams of red leaking through the gaps, lets himself be guided away with a pleasantness in his heart that turns to blood-freezing terror when he wakes.
He’s let a murderer worm his way into his heart, and now he gets to pay the price.
“Er-Ge, there is no third ending. It is either their death or mine.”
He’s failed A-Ling, a boy he helped raise, and he’s failed Wei Wuxian, his brother’s soulmate.
“Why, why? Why the hell did you do such a thing?!”
The pain in both their eyes when Jin Guangyao confessed to being complicit in Jin Zixuan’s murder is something that will never leave his memory. And wasn’t he himself complicit, by doing nothing?
Oh, how much easier his brother’s life could have been if Xichen hadn’t chosen to trust the wrong man. And Wangji managed to turn out so well despite everything, despite all the ways in which Xichen failed him.
In the end, it seems A-Zhan didn’t need his Gege at all.
Lan Qiren comes to visit seldomly, and when he does, their conversation is always stilted. It reminds Xichen that he has disappointed his uncle’s high hopes in him, broken sect rules, was led astray. Lan Qiren looks at Xichen and sees his father. It’s humiliating.
Just as humiliating as the one time when he had dared going on a walk through the woods and overheard some disciples gossiping, about how alike he was to the former Lan-Zongzhu – protecting someone undeserving before locking himself away.
Xichen hasn’t left the Hanshi since.
No, in the absence of A-Yuan, who is out travelling with his undead uncle, the only one whose presence he can even remotely bear is Lan Wangji. Much as their distance hurts him, the plainly set tea table between them stretching miles and miles in his imagination, Xichen still shamefully enjoys his brother’s visits.
He always brings with him a breeze of familiar sandalwood, grasping his cup in elegant, long fingers and black tresses framing his chiseled features like a work of art. Xichen reflects on how strong and grown-up his brother has become, wearing his new title with grace and poise, and not crumbling under all those responsibilities. He thinks of how proud he is of him, how proud their mother would be, too.
Of how far Lan Wangji has come, the respect he’s earned, even though he is not a people-pleaser, nor a socializer, the way Xichen used to be. The way Xichen is no longer.
How the tables turn.
The guilt that wells up inside him each time he sees Wangji is painful, but somehow – cleansing. Let him hurt. Xichen deserves it.
He thinks about how they used to share tea when they were young and Xichen helped him with his schoolwork and answered all his endless questions about their rules. How even their silences were always comfortable. And how strained they are now.
“How are you faring, Xiongzhang?” Wangji will ask every time without fail, and every time Xichen will reply with some generic non-reply, glossing over the giant elephant in the room before settling down to stare at the small crack feathering out from the bottom of the kettle.
I cannot sleep.
I spend the days sitting in the middle of my home, all alone because I’ve killed my only friends, staring into space and talking to my ghosts.
Is that what you want to hear?
How dare he burden his brother even more than he already does? Xichen tries to put on a brave face and act like nothing’s wrong. Forcing a smile on his lips and sitting upright is so much harder than it used to be, and Wangji has always seen through his masks anyway, but what else can he do? It’s only proper.
He wishes his brother wouldn’t take so much time out of his busy schedule to look after him, but at the same time he despairs every time he has to leave again. Lan Xichen is selfish. Lan Wangji’s visits are the only bright moments in his life nowadays, even shadowed, as they are, in guilt.
It might have been the friendly weather that gave him the strength to stand up that day, that triggered the restlessness in his legs that are slowly starting to atrophy and made him wander the Hanshi aimlessly like a spirit, until he stumbles upon a closed box and only remembers its contents when it’s too late.
The pale stone makes a clicking noise against the polished table, followed by a soft scratch as it is pushed in his direction, tassels rustling almost inaudibly.
“What do you mean by this?” Lan Xichen asks.
“I’m giving it back to Er-Ge.”
“I’ve given it to you.”
“This jade token was effective for many years. Now it seems to have lost its efficacy. It’s time to return it to the owner.” What he means is this: It used to open door and window to me. Now, your welcome has turned cold. The token alone will not grant me entrance here.
Pain bites through his palm, a second before the realization flashes through his mind that his fist has clenched around the delicately carved stone so hard it shattered into a dozen pieces.
It’s… a good pain. Trickling through the numbness. Lan Xichen likes it.
It feels like punishment.
Experimentally, Xichen clenches his fist tighter until blood wells up and dribbles onto the floor, then opens his fingers one by one and uses his free hand to drag the shards over his wrist, down his forearm, leaving white-hot scratches in their wake.
His cultivation, one of the strongest in their known world, is already healing the cuts and he realizes he doesn’t want it to. So he. Stops it.
His spiritual energy.
A simple thought, and his qi, which he has continuously circled through his body without a second thought for nearly all his life… ebbs to a stop, ever-coursing river settling into an unnatural stillness.
He watches the blood bead up.
Eventually, Lan Xichen puts on a bandage, feeling lightheaded and cold when standing up; then he takes the bloodied shards outside to bury behind the house where he won’t have to look at the freshly turned earth.
“Er-Ge, do you want to see Da-Ge? I’m going to bury him; do you want to see him off?”
Wangji, of course, asks him immediately what happened to his hand.
Xichen evades, Wangji reaches for him anyway, seeking to heal him. “Don’t,” Xichen snaps at him, for one of the very few times in their lives.
“You’re more than I can handle.”
The abyss gapes and gapes between them.
Wangji’s shocked eyes narrow under a perpetually stressed brow, slowly drawing back and putting more space between them. “Fine,” he says, voice clipped. Like putting on armor. As though to say, Have it your way. And he leaves.
The visits don’t stop, much as Xichen had expected them to. But the two brothers stay distant from each other, never touching, always proper. He watches Wangji over his teacup as he talks about the latest issues of the cultivation world, the matter of his injured hand ignored between them like so many others.
Xichen itches to brush his brother’s hair after relieving it of the burden of evermore elaborate and pointy headpieces, smooth over the wrinkles in his robes and on his face, the way he used to when they were younger and much closer. But he knows he can’t. He wants to make his brother’s face light up and soften the way it used to when Xichen smuggled a kitten into their dorm, to smudge those lines of stress out of his features.
Even after their mother’s death, while they were still boys, Xichen had sometimes been allowed to hold his brother’s hand when he taught him how to cultivate his qi, sitting cross-legged in front of each other. He’d been allowed to give soft nudges to his shoulder to correct his sword stance in the training yard, or help him up after a fight with a particularly vicious spirit on a night hunt that turned awry.
Now, with no more elders around to regulate their every move, they are farther from each other than they’ve ever been, and that space hurts like a dagger to the heart.
But touch is something given, never taken. They learned that early on. And now, no touch is given, so Xichen will not take.
It’s almost too easy now, when he sits in the middle of the Hanshi with eyes closed, to hear the storm and see the temple in his mind.
Sealing his spiritual powers results in the world growing cold and dulling down to less than nothing, moving even farther away from him while his limbs feel more dead than alive; but it also has other, graver consequences.
Xichen hasn’t had much of a mind for food ever since being taken hostage and his world flipping upside-down, and now that he can no longer practice Inedia, turning away his meals is finally starting to show.
The disquiet in his brother’s eyes tells him enough about his appearance without having to seek out a mirror; he himself can feel the way his ribs become more prominent, how the skin stretches across his face. Lacking even the energy to raise his arms and bind his hair back, the lackluster tresses fall into his eyes more often than not. He is wasting away and cannot bring himself to care.
When Wangji finds out the cause, he is appropriately horrified.
They are sitting outside on the porch in the slight chill of early fall and Xichen must not have suppressed his shivers sufficiently, because Wangji notices his brother isn’t staving off the cold like a proper cultivator should.
It’s the first time in a long while that his brother touches him, if only to grip his no longer bandaged wrist tightly. It startles Xichen enough that he doesn’t manage to draw away in time. “Xiongzhang!” he exclaims sharply at the lack of flow beneath his brother’s pulse point and the stagnant state of his reservoirs, looking at him with his eyes wide and blank. Then, “Why?”
Xichen looks away.
He’s tired.
“Why don’t you ask me to explain?”
“I don’t know if I should believe you anymore.”
There’s pain on A-Yao’s face at those words, the first flicker of what could almost be self-doubt, could be regret. But likely not. Even when he falls to his knees in front of Xichen, in front of Wangji and Wei-Gongzi and all the other witnesses, isn’t all that still an act?
One grand theater play, and Lan Xichen nothing but a guileless spectator.
The new development makes for a very stressed Chief Cultivator, who has the political responsibilities and the sect leading to deal with on top of watching his brother fade into nothing, trying to get him to eat or drink or even just rise from bed.
“Xiongzhang. Eat.”
It’s a command from Hanguang-Jun, and yet it sounds almost weak, desperation thinly veiled. His brother knows he cannot force Xichen to eat, short of feeding him against his will himself.
Lan Xichen lets his spoon scrape against the bowl of congee, listless; asks Wangji a question about his fiancé to distract him from the fact the spoon doesn’t rise to his mouth.
He isn’t hungry, so why should he eat?
Why should he waste food his body clearly doesn’t need?
He wishes his disciples would stop leaving dishes at his doorstep and instead give them to someone who could appreciate their efforts.
There’s an obsessed glint in his eye as Jin Guangyao drags Xichen deeper into the temple to make sure that at least they’ll die together, all three of them; the Venerated Triad reunited once again.
In the end, dragging himself closer on the sword, pleading with him, was that just another trick to get close enough to grasp him?
The cultivation world used to frequently describe Hanguang-Jun as merciless and frigid.
Watching Wangji kneeling at his brother’s bedside, trying to get him to drink some broth, having grown desperate enough to plead – Xichen doesn’t know how anyone could look at his brother and think him cold.
And still.
The former Zewu-Jun, Lan-Zongzhu, once renown, now sunk so low, remains unresponsive. The shadows have been clawing at his mind for weeks and weeks, reaching out and asking to draw him into their midst. What should hold him back?
“Aren’t you afraid? …afraid of him coming back for you?”
The red glow of Baxia in the dark.
“This place is gonna crush. Run!” – “Hurry!” – “Run!”
Wangji sealing his powers while staring at the garrote around his lover’s neck.
Wangji staring at him, trust in his brother shaken for the very first time in their lives.
“Er-Ge… won’t you stay and die with me?”
Warmth and wetness against his hand.
Touch is something neither of them learned to take, but in that moment, it seems Wangji is so overcome by the fear for his brother’s life that he has no other choice but to grasp Xichen’s clammy palm, lean forward and rest his head on Xichen’s chest to hide the fact that he is crying.
Xichen’s heart breaks, crumbles piece by painful piece inside his ribcage. He lifts a hand to softly stroke his brother’s hair.
“ – won’t you stay and – ”
All I do is cause him pain.
He makes a choice.
It will take some preparation to make sure his brother will be cared for, but that’s alright. It’s obvious now, that being here as a useless lump in bed hurts Wangji more than it’s worth. He almost wonders how he didn’t see it earlier.
So he forces down the soup left on the porch that day so that his head will stop spinning long enough for him to write a letter. Later when Wangji comes over, he doesn’t hide his quiet joy at seeing the empty bowl. Lan Xichen has to swallow down against the bile rising in his throat. It will be better, this way.
It’s a cold decision, a quiet decision, but one that fills him with resolve for the first time in oh so long.
The next day, Xichen sends the letter out to one Yiling Laozu, telling him politely that he’s spent enough time frolicking away from his fiancé and that Wangji needs him here beside him.
Wei Wuxian’s arrival a week later visibly brightens Wangji further, and Xichen makes an effort to get out of bed, to eat a few bites when he can stand it. His brother is happy at his progress. Xichen can only hope Wangji will be able to forgive him, later.
He waits a few weeks to make sure Wei Wuxian is here to stay before making his move. Wei Wuxian visits him a few, spare times in the Hanshi. They make pleasant talk, but they don’t really know each other, not anymore. At least, Xichen feels like a changed man, ever since Guanyin Temple. He doesn’t know how he should act around his brother’s lover, especially after the kind of letter he sent him telling him to stop gallivanting about and return to his soulmate, so he’s shamefully glad when Wei Wuxian takes his leave again, though not before thanking him for calling him back to Wangji.
“I think I was scared… and waiting for some magical sign that it was time to come back, that I was ready; only I knew that sign was never gonna happen. Being away stopped being what I needed a while ago and I never even realized.”
Wei Wuxian spends his nights in the Jingshi, and Wangji starts looking decidedly more relaxed every day. They make plans for their eventual wedding, but it’s far enough away that Xichen knows what he’s about to do shouldn’t cast too big a shadow on the ceremony. At least he hopes his brother knows that they would have his blessing.
“Zewu-Jun, it’s going to rain. Let’s take shelter inside.”
He waits until the darkness of night has settled in firmly, long past any time a Lan would be up and about. He doesn’t leave a note. He takes his instrument and a small lantern and leaves for the back woods where he won’t be heard over the howling wind and threatening rain.
Not much longer now, and he won’t be his brother’s burden any longer.
Maybe it’s morbid that he chose to use this kind of method. Maybe he just wants to feel close to the two sworn brothers that he lost one last time. Maybe it is punishment. Xichen doesn’t think about it too closely. In fact, by this point he’s not thinking much, at all.
Restarting the flow of his spiritual energy is terrifying and painful, but necessary; and in the end – it won’t be too much longer, now. Not quite three notes, not anymore, but – soon. He settles down in the grass in front of his guqin and takes a deep breath before he begins to play.
I’m sorry, mother. This is the best that I can do.
Later, he will remember the scene in snippets; disjointed, like pieces of a puzzle that won’t quite fit together.
It will be almost funny to him what details stand out, like his brother’s naked feet peeking out from under a hastily shoved-on robe. No – that was later. First, he thinks, was the howling of the rain, and the wail of the guqin, and the chaos of his qi bubbling over in panic and distress, burning through his meridians like molten stone.
First was two dark figures in the night, bending down and ripping him away from his instrument, bloodied fingertips catching on the strings and tearing further open. Too many hands, copper on his tongue and cheeks, shivers through his limbs. The faint sound of windchimes. He can’t breathe.
Frantic words, cold fingers to his pulse point.
There are large chunks missing, lost to the frenzy inside his head, and then – and then, bare feet, his brother’s hand upon his stomach, pushing his blindingly bright energy inside Lan Xichen.
The simple devastation on his face when Xichen slaps the hand away, as his world visibly rocks sideways, because Xichen doesn‘t want to live.
Then nothing.