Chapter Text
(LWJ POV)
All we need to do it move you from this cursed body back into your own.
Wen Qing said it as though it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain, and all Lan Wangji could do was blink at her because he hadn’t considered it at all. He’d been ready to throw himself on his own sword, and he hadn’t even once considered that there was an alternative. When Wei Wuxian had blustered about fail-safes in the Sacrificial Summons Curse, he’d known his zhiyin was lying through his teeth. But Wen Qing was not. Wen Qing had a perfectly plausible solution.
His hands shook as he realized how close he had come to destroying everything while in the momentary fog of despair.
He expected Wei Wuxian to console him, or possibly even gloat for being right about there being another way, but when he glanced over, Wei Ying was still as a statue, face as white as a ghost.
“No,” he whispered, the single word sounding strangely disembodied, as if it’d been uttered automatically.
Wen Qing, with her overly analytic mind, seemed to entirely miss that there was something worrisome underpinning Wei Wuxian’s answer. She launched into an explanation that she probably thought would address his reluctance. “Your body isn’t dead,” she explained. “You wouldn’t be a fierce corpse, if that’s your concern. Xue Yang helped me devise a series of talismans that kept you alive all this time, in a sort of stasis.”
Wei Wuxian shuddered at the mention of Xue Yang, a revulsion that Lan Wangji shared deep in his bones. The thought of Xue Yang collecting Wei Wuxian’s soul, tending to Wei Ying’s broken body… he shut away the thought. Xue Yang was dead. Whatever his plans for the Yiling Patriarch had been, they’d died with him. He would spare it no further consideration.
But Wei Wuxian didn’t seem as able to push the comment aside. “Xue Yang,” he echoed, expression shifting to disgust, “How could you collaborate with that degenerate? He killed—”
Wen Qing held up a slender hand. “I don’t want to know. When he was here, Xue Yang was a friend.”
“You don’t care what your friend did? The harm he caused? The cruelty?” Wei Wuxian’s brows pulled together in disbelief.
“I don’t,” she answered with a tone of finality. “I’m sorry if you think less of me for that. I’m sorry if you think I was a more righteous person than that. Maybe I was, once, but after I escaped Jin Guangshan and found out what happened to our people at Nightless City, to you?” She trailed off, eyes glazing over. After a moment, she straightened her back and recovered herself. “Xue Yang came for me when I had no one else left. He protected me when nobody else would.”
“You were safe at the home in Baling,” Lan Wangji interjected. “You didn’t have to go with Xue Yang.”
Qing snorted inelegantly. “Yes, I was safe there, but for how long? Do you think the Ouyang Clan wouldn’t have immediately handed me over if my real identity had been revealed? It was a fear that hung over my head every day, the fear that I would be unmasked by someone. At least with Xue Yang I didn’t have to pretend I was somebody else.”
“So, he offered you safety in exchange for…?” Wei Wuxian let the question hang in the air.
“Nothing. There was no transaction like you’re implying,” she insisted.
Lan Wangji found that hard to believe. “He had Wei Ying’s soul, and his body, and the pieces of the Yin Tiger Tally. He didn’t try to force you to help him?”
“Force me?” Wen Qing scoffed, “Why would he have to force me to try to save my friend?”
Wei Wuxian shook his head. “I still don’t understand. You must have known he was planning to use me for something terrible if he succeeded.”
“Did I? Was he?” Wen Qing shot back, hands clenching at her sides. “What I know is that Xue Yang was enamored with you, admired you: the Yiling Patriarch, the scourge of the Orthodox Cultivation world. I think he thought if he brought you back that the two of you would destroy the Great Clans together. You say he did terrible things after he left here – and that may be so. The last time I saw Xue Yang was over four years ago. You’re so eager to list all the evil things he did, well allow me to remind you that none of our hands are impeccably clean, except perhaps for Hanguang-Jun. Did you think I didn’t know what you did during the Sunshot campaign when we met again outside Carp Tower? The deaths at the Yiling Supervisory Office? I knew your hands weren’t perfectly clean, but I needed your help.”
Lan Wangji straightened indignantly at her implications. “Do not compare Wei Ying to Xue Yang. They are not the same.”
“They are not exactly the same,” she acknowledged, “But they are not exactly different, either. Wei Wuxian was lucky to be found by Jiang Fengmian, who taught him to help others at his own expense in order to turn him into a shield for his own children. Xue Yang was found by Wen Ruohan who turned him into a knife, who stoked his worst instincts for revenge and cruelty. Both were manipulated and forged from a very young age.” Her next question was aimed at Wei Wuxian alone. “Do you still run away from dogs?”
“Yes,” Wei Wuxian answered hesitantly, uncertain of how the question was relevant.
“Is it rational? Your fear of all dogs, even the harmless ones?”
Wei Wuxian knew it was not. He thought about Jin Ling’s dog Fairy, whom everyone assured him was impeccably obedient and would not bite. That silly-looking fluffy dog had never harmed him, and yet the very idea of it sent cold shivers through his body. He knew that his response was disproportionate, but couldn’t stop himself from reacting that way. “No.”
“No,” Wen Qing agreed. “You were attacked by dogs when you were very young and it shaped you. Xue Yang was attacked by an upstanding cultivator when he was very young, and that shaped him, too. When he sought help, he was belittled and dismissed, his injuries exacerbated by the cultivators who he’d gone to for protection. You learned to run away from the thing that scares you most to protect yourself. Xue Yang learned to kill the thing that scared him most to protect himself.”
“So, you turn a blind eye to his misdeeds?” Lan Wangji pressed.
Wen Qing surprised him by laughing. “Hanguang-Jun, how many misdeeds did you turn a blind eye to back then? Was it you who saved the Dafan Wen from the prison camps? From Jin Guangshan’s gallows?”
“Wen Qing!” Wei Wuxian shouted, his voice pitched in warning.
“Wei Wuxian!” she shouted back, undeterred. “You see Xue Yang as a villain and perhaps you are justified. But you should also know that he shielded me here, that he found the few remaining members of my clan who’d been sold by the prison camps to brothels and forced labor. He brought them here, to me. You should know that he exacted vengeance on Jin Guangshan for me and for our people; for that alone I would be grateful to him. But he also doted on A-Yinuo, brought her little gifts whenever he visited. He taught her how to fight so she could defend herself. If his misdeeds shouldn’t be ignored, then neither should his kindnesses. A person is more than their worst moments. Aren’t you more than the slaughter at Nightless City?”
“That’s different,” Lan Wangji protested, “Wei Wuxian was—”
“Justified? I agree, but the wives and children of those who died there might not,” Wen Qing pressed. “I’m not saying you need to agree that Xue Yang was not a villain—I’m just asking you to consider that there were people to whom he was also a friend. And I’m asking that you not… that you not burden A-Yinuo with his worst deeds. Please, allow her to remember the uncle who brought her candy.”
“I understand,” Wei Wuxian acquiesced softly. When Lan Wangji shot him a deeply shocked look, he explained, “Isn’t this what we told Jin Ling after Guanyin temple? That the kind things his uncle did for him were not false, even though the rest of what was revealed had been abhorrent?”
“Mn,” Lan Wangji considered the parallels. Jin Ling’s complicated feelings after Guanyin temple were not dissimilar to the argument Wen Qing laid out. Though Jin Ling had'n’t had the luxury of being willfully blind to his uncle’s depravities, having witnessed his confession directly.
It grated on Lan Wangji that Wen Qing would dare compare his zhiyin and the psychopath Xue Yang, though. He knew Wei Wuxian’s heart and his temperament and so he refused to acknowledge even the hint of any similarities between the two. Instead, he returned the conversation to the more pressing issue of the Sacrificial Curse and Wen Qing’s solution. “How do you propose moving a spirit from one body to another?” Lan Wangji asked.
“Well, first we will need to—”
“No,” Wei Wuxian interrupted in that same automatic, strangely dispassionate way.
“What do you mean ‘no’,” Lan Wangji turned to him, having to acknowledge his refusal this second time.
“I mean what I said: no.” He shuddered as he explained, “You stitched that body back together and then kept it in a box for thirteen years. I won’t be stuffed into it. No thanks. We will find another… other way.”
“Wei Ying,” Wen Qing began gently, “There is no other—”
“No means no,” Wei Wuxian interrupted, striding to the door as if fleeing her words. Lan Wangji didn’t expect him to actually leave right in the middle of their discussion, before they’d had a chance to talk about… all that had just happened. Wei Wuxian did not stop at the threshold and a moment later had disappeared down the corridor beyond. Wen Qing and Lan Wangji were left behind to stare at each other.
“I guess I’m not surprised.” Wen Qing sighed heavily, “That is exactly how his soul responded every time I tried to rejoin him with his body before.”
A frown tugged the corners of Lan Wangji’s mouth down. “I see,” he said, even though he really didn’t.
Wen Qing sighed again. “Before he interrupted me, I was going to say that first we need to determine why his soul had rejected his body.”
“Why do you think it did?” Lan Wangji asked.
She lifted one slender shoulder, then dropped it. “I thought it was some mistake of mine, some limitation in my ability. But now, seeing this, I think he really does not want to go back to the person that he was.”
“Could it be because that body lacks a golden core?” Lan Wangji asked, grasping onto the most probable explanation he could think of.
“He told you? About the core transplant?” Wen Qing blinked in surprised. “He made Wen Ning and I vow to never tell. I thought he would take that secret to the grave—which, I guess, he did.”
“He didn’t tell me. I found out,” Lan Wangji decided not to tell Wen Qing who had spilled the secret, not wanting her to be disappointed in her younger brother. Mention of the core transfer reignited the anger he’d felt toward Wen Qing when he’d first found out that she had been carved into his zhiyin… that she’d done so with only a fifty-fifty chance that the procedure would succeed… that she’d subjected Wei Wuxian to days of operation with no anesthetic, then left him to fend for himself afterward.
“I suppose it could be part of the problem, but I don’t think it’s the entire reason,” Wen Qing concluded after pondering his earlier question.
“If you did the procedure again, would it still be a fifty-fifty chance? Would it still be as painful?” Lan Wangij needed to know.
She considered him carefully with her wide, dark eyes. “You think that if we replace the golden core in Wei Wuxian’s former body, he would be willing…? But who would the donor be? You?”
“The body he has now—” he could not bring himself to utter the name of Mo Xuanyu, not so soon after reliving the darkest, most humiliating moments of his past, “—has a golden core.”
Just then, Zizhen came barreling down the hall, skidding to a halt in front of the open door. “Hanguang-Jun! Hanguang-Jun! You’re still here!” he wheezed with relief, bracing his hands on his knees . He bent over to catch his breath, then pointed over his shoulder, “Wei-gongzi, he’s… he just went… are you two… splitting up?”
“We are not,” Lan Wangji assured him. “Wei Ying just needed a moment to clear his head.”
“Oh good,” Zizhen leaned against the doorframe with a nervous smile. “Jin Ling said he would whip me with Zidian if I let either of you leave before you figured your shit out.” He glanced quickly at Lan Wangji, tapping two fingers against his lips. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Those were his words, not mine.”
“Mn.” Zizhen was not his disciple to punish, but he could not condone a junior cursing in front of his elders. He used a little bit of spiritual power to seal Zizhen’s lips shut with the Lan silence spell. The boy, having already recognized his mistake, barely protested when he realized his lips were stuck together, but his eyes widened at something he saw just inside the doorway. He barged over the threshold and scooped up the battered silver shape of the incense burner he’d delivered a few hours previously. He held the crushed figure up toward Lan Wangji, conveying his surprise via a series of sharp Mm’s? and wildly darting eyes.
“It could not be avoided,” Lan Wangji explained simply as he passed the junior on his way out of the room, walking in the direction Zizhen had indicated Wei Wuxian had fled.
Wei Wuxian was not in the Inn’s dining room, nor outside on the porch, nor strolling through the bustling market beyond. Lan Wangji eventually found him on the outskirts of the little town, sitting on a log that faced a modest ornamental pond. He’d stacked a pile of rocks precariously beside him, turning an oblong grey stone thoughtfully between his fingers. When Lan Wangji sat down beside him, he flicked his wrist and sent it skipping across the top of the water, disturbing the serenity of the ornamental pond.
“It’s too bad the incense burner’s visions didn’t start earlier,” he remarked, watching the ripples expand across the surface of the water and not at Lan Wangji. His words were light, with that practiced easy quality he was so good at, but his motions were angry as he picked up another rock and sent it skipping, his arms tense. “I would have liked to see that first fight we had at Cloud Recesses. You remember? When you tried to stop me from smuggling in Emperor’s Smile. You were so sanctimonious, but poised, and gorgeous. Meanwhile, I was too preoccupied to appreciate the moment when I was in it.” He tossed another rock. Too round for skipping, this one plunged into the water with a plunk. “Yes, I would have much rather relived that night.”
Lan Wangji would have preferred that as well, to what the incense burner revealed instead. “You didn’t even unsheathe your sword,” Lan Wangji remembered, picking a smooth stone from the top of the pile and running his thumb across it.
“I didn’t?”
“Mn,” Lan Wangji answered, thinking of the many challenging, infuriating, and utterly vexing ways Wei Wuxian had flaunted each and every rule that had defined his life in Gusu back then. Thinking also of how exhilarating it had been to find someone who was actually his equal. Perhaps, if he were being truly honest, more than his equal.
Wei Wuxian laughed, but it was a tired sound, and it did not carry a smile. He tossed another stone into the pond, not even trying to skip it this time. He said bitterly, “I don’t remember that. I was too busy worrying about the bottles you were intent on smashing, I think. But, ah well, you know how bad my memory is when it comes to these things.”
Lan Wangji kept hold of the same rock he’d taken from the pile while he watched Wei Wuxian plunk three more into the pond. “You asked me if I had come to admire the moon,” Lan Wangji finally said, appreciating the irony that it was him who was uncomfortable with the silence now, feeling the need to fill it with words. “You also said that the many women cultivators who admired the famous Second Young Master Lan would be disappointed to learn what a relentless, unreasonable, and rigid person he actually was.”
He’d hoped the recollection would earn at least a self-deprecating laugh, but Wei Wuxian only sighed sadly. “Ah, Lan Zhan. How could you forgive me for so many careless words?”
“We were both careless back then,” Lan Wangji acknowledged. “I sealed your mouth shut with the Lan silencing spell so you couldn’t enjoy your jug of Emperor’s Smile.”
“That’s right, you did!” He finally, finally cracked a smile. But it was short-lived. His face grew solemn again almost immediately, and he tossed a handful of small rocks into the pond. “I suppose you and Wen Qing think you’ve come up with a solution to my problem, one that doesn’t require any input from me. She was always so self-certain and bossy.”
“Wei Ying, is the reason you don’t want to consider—” Lan Wangji struggled to find a tactful way of referring to Wei Wuxian’s former body that didn’t sound, well, creepy, “—because in your former life you had lost your golden core?”
“And meddlesome, self-righteous, interfering,” Wei Wuxian added to the list of Wen Qing’s attributes instead of answering the question.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji reached out to touch his arm, but Wei Wuxian rounded on him with an unexpected temper, sweeping his hand back and knocking the rest of the stones off the log.
“Is it so bad? Is it so bad that I like this life, this body? So inconceivable to you that I don’t want to go back to being the Yiling Patriarch in name and form. You can’t imagine why I wouldn’t readily give up this opportunity to start over? This second chance that someone sacrificed their life to give me?” He stopped short of mentioning Mo Xuanyu by name. “You think I should disrespect his sacrifice? That I would happily slide back into all of that… that… damage when I don’t have to?”
Lan Wangji blinked. It hadn’t occurred to him that Wei Wuxian… didn’t like his old self. “You do have to,” he reminded him as gently as he could manage. Whether or not he liked it, he could not stay in the body of Mo Xuanyu much longer.
“Why? Why can’t I stay just as I am? Why?”
“How you are now? Deteriorating daily from the Sacrificial curse?” Lan Wangji pushed back. “You’d ask me to watch you fade away?”
The bitter laugh that escaped Wei Wuxian now sent cold tendrils of dread skittering through Lan Wangji’s veins. “Need I remind you, Lan Zhan, that in the past twenty-four hours you’ve repeatedly tried to leave me? To return to Gusu and worse?”
Lan Wangji swallowed, his mouth dry at the reminder. He was going to have to atone for the threat he had made in that moment of hopelessness. Now that his mind was clear – now that he had distance from the effects of the incense burner and Wen Qing had suggested another way, he could see how reckless and hurtful his first instinct had been. “Wei Ying, I am truly sorry.”
Wei Wuxian scoffed, covering his pain with light words. “We don’t say that between us, remember? No ‘I’m sorry’s, no ‘Thank You’s. There’s no need.”
But there was a need. He’d grievously injured his zhiyin. He retreated into silence, contemplating his own actions.
“You scared me, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian whispered, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. “You really scared me. That sword at your throat. Losing you? I really wouldn’t have survived it.”
Lan Wangji took Wei Wuxian’s hands in his, pressed kisses to the bandages wrapped around his palm, then laid his head gently between them. “I’m sorry,” he said again, meaning it with every ounce of his being. “I swear that I will never do anything like that again. I was wrong. I should have listened when you said there was another way.”
Wei Wuxian lifted his face up, eyes flickering to the place on his chest where they both knew the crude brand mark was hidden beneath his robes. “You can’t hurt yourself because of me ever again,” Wei Wuxian warned, his demand unyielding. “Ever.”
“I won’t. If—” Lan Wangji sensed this may be his best opportunity to negotiate for what he knew needed to be done, but also knowing it was risky to push his zhiyin. “—if you’ll consider Wen Qing’s solution.”
Wei Wuxian tried to pull his hands out of Lan Wangji’s with a betrayed gasp, but Lan Wangji held tight. “I can’t lose you either. Please, just hear her out. She thinks she can transfer the golden core from this--” his words faltered, but only for a split second. “--body to that one.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Wei Wuxian said, the darkness of his closed expression warning Lan Wangji that he had indeed pushed too far. “That procedure… I can’t. I can’t go through that again.”
“Not even for me?” Lan Wangji allowed a note of naked pleading to carry his words. “Not even for us?”