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Lan Wangji remembers his mother's smile.
Distantly, he remembers her laughter, too. It's faded with time, pronounced at the beginning but growing rarer and rarer as the days he visited her went by. He thinks, too, of Wei Ying: his bright smile, his radiant laugh, that became less and less common as the war raged on.
Time, he learns, takes viciously.
It is time, too, that steals answers. Why did Wei Wuxian abandon his sword? Where was he when he disappeared, and returned like a vengeful spirit coated in resentment? Why did no one stay by him, when he tried to uphold righteousness, why did Lan Wangji not? Why was his mother imprisoned?
All of these questions haunt him, but the last one has perhaps done so the longest; a specter that loomed over him from birth till now, that will never vanish no matter how much he wonders. Yes, he remembers his mother's smile: how it grew weaker and weaker until it vanished completely, the longer she sat in that house to rot.
Was that just? Lan Wangji cannot even imagine it, locking Wei Ying up for his crimes, until he withered into himself, until he withered into nothing. Or perhaps he can, and that is what disturbs him so: the thought that he, as always, is his father's son.
There are no reasons given for why mother did what she did, in killing that elder. There are no answers to be found, having died with his father when the war was first waging. Perhaps his uncle knows; but uncle blamed mother full heartedly, perhaps because it hurt too much, too deeply, for uncle to blame his brother.
He would be biased, as he is in all things; as he has been to Wei Ying, and perhaps Wangji himself—seeing him as only his father, repeating his sins, in loving the wrong person.
But Lan Wangji resents that characterization; Wei Ying could never be the wrong person. Neither could his mother; if Lan Qiren wishes for her to have never come to Gusu, Lan Wangji himself would no longer exists. Wishing that seems cruel, of his uncle.
But Lan Wangji is starting to think that his uncle has always been cruel, hiding under false righteousness, hiding under rules like that will wash him of the blood on his hands: his mother's blood, his child's families blood, Wei Ying's blood, Lan Wangji's own, that he bleed with each strike of the discipline whip in defiance.
Another answer is lost to time; whether his mother and father even loved each other at all.
How was Lan Wangji and his brother conceived? It is a question even now Lan Wangji shys against; that he flinches from. Another answer, lost with his parents deaths. Did his mother love his father? Did she resent being trapped? Did she even consent, to having her children? If there was no love, where did Lan Wangji come from?
Lan Wangji is almost ashamed of it; of the question. How could he think that? How could he wonder such awful things about his own father? But , Lan Wangji will wonder, a moment later, when was he ever a father to me?
(Lan Wangji has no memories of his father, for he had been in seclusion all his life.)
He thinks of A-Yuan, looking up at him with tear stained eyes before fever burns out his memories, begging for his Xian-gege; he remembers kneeling at his mother's doorstep, begging to be let in, and Lan Qiren's sharp reprimand of, excess grief is forbidden. Excess grief, when he wasn't even properly aware of what he was mourning, at the age of only six. And he will not understand.
He hates the thought of A-Yuan not being allowed to mourn; of being constrained, confined, trapped by the rules to such a point as Lan Wangji once was. He hates, too, the reality of the first few years of their life together: monthly visits, with Lan Wangji confined to a bed, repeating history once again. Lan Wangji is always cast in two roles: the sin of his mother, or the sin of his father. You cannot escape legacy, though he tries.
He will wonder. He will question. He will get no answer, no matter how many times his fingers play out Inquiry.
Gusu was never meant to be a punishment.
Lan Wangji never intended to lock Wei Ying up; never intended to punish him; to diminish him. It was always meant as an offer of sanctuary, of healing. Wei Ying was hurt; Lan Wangji could see that, and he wanted, more than anything, to fix it.
He wonders, now, if his beloved knew that. If he knew it was an offer for help, not imprisonment. Wonders, further, as the years go by, how much what Wei Ying was suffering from was perhaps not resentful energy hurting him, but instead the war itself. If perhaps, if what his beloved needed more than anything, more than an offer to shelter him away and heal him, was for someone to believe in him. Stick by him. In this, Lan Wangji knows he has failed.
Gusu was never meant as a punishment. It was never meant to trap him.
What about Qinghe Nie?
The cultivation world's consensus on Nie Huaisang is that he is a lovesick fool, who does not know what he is doing.
He's useless. That's what they say; so obsessed with the Yilling Patriach's sister that the moment he became sect leader, he wed her with his brothers body still warm. If he was any less incompetent, they would wonder if he himself killed him somehow, to marry her without him to disapprove. He keeps her locked away, in a room that is her entire world, like she is one of the birds he's collected. Only recently has he let her go on (supervised) walks. The only two people in her world at large: Jin Ling, her nephew, and Nie Huaisang himself. She must have seduced him; she's using him, to get out of the jail she belongs. He is a fool to allow it.
There's not a lot of fear in their whispers; even at the height of her so-called degeneracy, her golden core was weak and wrath helpless. Plus, she is a woman; there is an inherent dismissal when they talk about her. This, Lan Wangji suspects, is how Nie Huaisang walked the delicate balance of looking foolish enough to get away with such a thing while remaining strong enough to protect his wife.
Lan Wangji does not know Wei Sing. This much, he will admit to. Still, Wei Ying had talked so fondly, so vibrantly about her, and Lan Wangji hates the thought of someone who shares Wei Ying's bright smile being trapped so thoroughly. Nie Huaisang glows when he talks about her; Lan Wangji has no clue if such love is even requited , and the cultivation world has no care.
Perhaps it is, and Nie Huaisang's presence in the room they share is a boon to Wei Ying's sister, like Lan Wangji had been to his mom; one bright spot in a world of loneliness. But perhaps, his presence is a terror that she cannot escape from—there is no way to know, not really.
The cultivation world thinks she is a fox, leading away poor hapless Nie Huaisang's heart. Trapping him in his desire for her to the point where he traps her in turn; in this narrative, the narrative told to Lan Wangji of his own mother, she is the heartless minx that seduced away an innocent man's heart.
Lan Wangji looks at Nie Huaisang and wonders: are you the fox instead?
Like always, there are no answers.