For Wei Ying

[lan_wangji]

Thirty six hours. Lan Wangji has not rested in thirty six hours. He cannot and he will not, no matter how many times the guardians of the City tell him to leave this place or how often his back and shoulders protest. He can feel the badly treated wound trying to reopen but the pain is incidental and he is Hanguan-Jun of Gusu Lan. He has trained for this. He will not fail Wei Ying, again. He will not lose him.

He has heard rumor of another man recently arrived with similar looks to himself. He'd arrived two days prior; Wei Ying had died two days prior. It must be him.

The sun has set again over the park where Lan Zhan sits next to the river, desperate for quiet as his fingers pluck at his guqin. Inquiry rings out over the park, broken up only when he switches to his Wangxian until his heart can no longer stand to hear it.

His Wei Ying has to be here.

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[lan_wangji]

Lan Zhan's fingers jerk, a discordant sound ringing out over the water before silence descends again. Some presence, barely there, has made itself known and he sets the guqin aside, whirling around on his knees as he searches through the dark trees for the source.

His mouth opens and closes once before he manages to summon enough hope and courage to speak. "Wei Ying?" he half whispers to the dark, voice rough from lack of use. "Wei Ying?"

[yiling_laozu]

From the drawn breath Wei Wuxian can feel through the doll's paper feet, he knew speech was coming, but he still gasps when it arrives. Lan Wangji sounds awful, exhausted and pained and desperate enough that the paper doll flies forward, settling on one of Lan Wangji's forearms so it can peer up at his face.

"So red," Wei Wuxian murmurs, staring up at Lan Wangji's bloodshot eyes. The doll flies high enough to land on Lan Wangji's shoulder, one fingerless hand lifted as if to inquire. What on earth has happened to lay him so low?

[lan_wangji]

One hand comes up to cradle the little paper man as gently and carefully as he can as Lan Zhan stares down, heart pounding. It's been years since he's seen this but it has to be him and he doesn't understand why it is here instead of Wei Ying himself but he will take it. He will take any piece of him that Lan Zhan can get.

"Wei Ying," he breathes, cradling him to his chest. His wide, red eyes threaten yet again to burn and he is unsure he can stop them, not when he is so close. "Are you here? Come back, please. Come back."

[yiling_laozu]

He is so warm. The paper doll that is Wei Wuxian all but melts into his chest, soaking in the now unfamiliar comfort of an embrace. It takes him a shameful amount of time to notice that the heart beneath him is beating hard and fast, that the breaths that push against him come too quick. All at once, the paper doll wilts, lifeless, and Wei Wuxian's boots meet the earth.

His knuckles are white where they clutch Chenqing, and Wei Wuxian has trouble lifting his eyes, even as they hunger for more of Lan Wangji. "Why?" he finally asks, his voice a shameful whisper, only loud enough to carry across the bend in the river that flows between them. "Why are you hurt?"

[lan_wangji]

Lan Zhan startles, horrified when the paper man collapses in his hands. For a moment he thinks he has hurt him, has done something terrible before he hears a voice he'd feared lost to him forever.

He tucks the paper man into his robe and stands, frantic eyes straining until they land on a white face standing out among all the black, just across the river. The question does not even register, his wounds unimportant in the face of Wei Ying whole and real and only just out of reach.

"Stay there," he demands, grabbing Bichen as he hurries towards the small bridge. "Don't - just stay there."

[yiling_laozu]

Wei Wuxian's traitorous feet take a step back before he steels his spine. It feels so long ago now, those words spoken in the mud of Qiongqi Path, yet Wei Wuxian meant what he said. If it's his fate to be punished for his crimes, if Lan Wangji is the one to take his life in recompense for all those that Wei Wuxian has ended, he'll accept it.

Even so, Chenqing is half lifted as Lan Wangji scurries to the bridge, and Wei Wuxian wonders how he means to kill him if he cannot even jump the short distance of a river.

[lan_wangji]

He's too slow like this, injured and weak and maddeningly slow but Wei Ying does not disappear even as he scrambles to the other side and stops in front of him. He looks pale and gaunt and so much like he had when he'd fallen that Lan Zhan has to fight to take a proper breath.

He glances down at Chenqing at the hand wrapped around it. Lan Zhan should have been able to hold on to him. He had hardly weighed anything, Lan Zhan should not have let him pull away.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs, raising his eyes to Wei Ying's tense face. He feels as if he will come apart, all those years of training gone in an instant at seeing his friend he'd known was lost to him. He raises his arms in a bow, ignoring the tearing pain along his back. "Should have saved you. I'm sorry."

[yiling_laozu]

Wei Wuxian cocks his head.

"You should have," he answers at length. He should have been stopped, he should have been stepped on, stamped down, he should have been destroyed before he ever rose to power. Shijie would have suffered for his loss, but she would have a husband still, a beloved child to raise - she could have had the world itself if not for Wei Wuxian.

But that burden doesn't belong to Lan Wangji. He might have taken it up, but it isn't his fault, nor his responsibility. He breathes in. "But I should also be dead many times over. I don't fault you for failing, Lan Zhan."

[lan_wangji]

"Don't say that," he bites out, raising his distressed face back to Wei Ying's. "Wei Ying should never -" he cuts himself off, trying to gather himself as he stares into Wei Ying's dark, steely eyes. He wants to tell him how hard he'd tried to hold on, even though he had failed. He wants to tell him what if felt like to feel his fall away. He wants to tell him he'd tried to keep the others out of his home.

But Wei Ying died because of his failing and his own pain is irrelevant.

"What they did was wrong," he says instead, voicing what he ought to have said to him before it all fell apart. "Wei Ying did not deserve it."

[yiling_laozu]

Startled, Wei Wuxian's eyes focus on him more sharply. "You - " he begins, only to fall silent again. No one speaks for him. Shijie had, but that time is gone now, and Wei Wuxian long ago gave up hope for his brother. Any who loved him are dead, but Lan Wangji has said...he's said...

"The Wens didn't deserve it," he says softly. "I'm the one who lost control over Wen Ning. I'm the reason shijie is alone. What the Jin clan did was wrong, but not to me."

[lan_wangji]

Wen Ning does not make sense. The change in the battle right before it all fell apart does not make sense. There is something wrong but Lan Zhan cannot prove it beyond a feeling and his need to defend Wei Ying so he does not try.

"Should not have been yours to bear, alone," Lan Zhan manages, voice tight as he looks again at Wei Ying's wrist. "Let you fall."

[yiling_laozu]

"Let me fall?" Wei Wuxian scrunches his nose, folding his arms around Chen Qing to hug it to his breast. "You fought harder than even Jiang Cheng to make me turn from my chosen path." Has Lan Wangji been convinced of this all this time?

"I will unburden you, Lan Zhan. No one lets me do anything. I do want I want, and no one is powerful enough to stop me. It hasn't to do with you at all."

[lan_wangji]

Lan Zhan's head snaps up, shocked at Wei Ying's continued defiance when he had seemed so utterly defeated at the end.

"Wei Ying," he breathes, stepping even closer to look at Wei Ying's red rimmed, sharp eyes. "After what happened, after I had to watch you die, you are still like this?"

He doesn't know what he had expected, but in those last moments he'd seen his Wei Ying even in the grief and defeat. That had been his Wei Ying lost to that long fall. This, this person is not at all what Lan Zhan had thought he'd find.

[yiling_laozu]

Fear trips like ice down Wei Wuxian's spine. What on earth is he talking about? Wei Wuxian might have lost this round, but he isn't dead. One of them has lost his mind, and for once, it isn't him.

"Are you fevered?" he asks, genuine concern warring with the irritation in his voice. Lan Wangji is so unnerving now, with his exhausted eyes and strange wounds across his back. Frowning, Wei Wuxian's hand drops to one of his pouches. Wen Qing left him herbs before she went to her death, where are they?

[lan_wangji]

Frustration and terror tie Lan Zhan's tongue as he tries and fails to argue, to make some kind of sense of what has happened to both of them and finally is only able to smack at Wei Ying's rummaging hand with the hilt of Bichen as he gathers himself.

"You fell off a cliff. You jumped," he spits out, exhaustion and agitation making a spectacle of the great Hanguang-Jun. "Your memory must be impaired by death. The battle and then you died in front of me."

[yiling_laozu]

Wei Wuxian yelps, but all of his outrage shifts to unease the longer Lan Wangji rants. "What are you talking about?" he asks, taking a step back. "I haven't jumped from anything. I - I ran to see my shijie in her grief, but they chased me away. I ran to the forest and then I was here."

He shifts, again holding Chenqing between them, as much to keep Lan Wangji's awful words away as the man himself. "Stop talking nonsense. You can't - you can't frighten me."

[lan_wangji]

It must be some kind of memory impairment or shock from being brought back from wherever Wei Ying had fallen to, Lan Zhan surmises. He'd only heard pieces while waiting for his punishment: that Wei Ying had gone to Carp Tower and been seen, that is was why Lady Jiang had arrived at the battle.

"Not trying to frighten, trying to save you," Lan Zhan insists, taking a step forward and thrusting a hand out to try and touch Wei Ying, to prove to himself that he is solid and whole and not going to disappear, again.

[yiling_laozu]

"Don't!" Wei Wuxian snaps. It's irrational, but part of him believes that those words will somehow be true if Lan Wangji gets his hands on him, and they can't be. He's standing here right now, isn't he? He's alive. He's fine!

"Don't touch me if you're going to talk nonsense," he says, stepping back. "I'm standing right in front of you. I'm not dead!"

[lan_wangji]

"Sorry, I'm sorry," Lan Zhan breathes, stepping forward for every step backward. "Not dead, now. Not dead. Alive. Glad Wei Ying is alive."

He carefully sets Bichen down on the ground and raises both hands in supplication, ignoring the way his back and shoulders rip and pull.

"Am sorry. All of it. Sorry for all of it."

[yiling_laozu]

Lan Wangji's empty hands come up, and Wei Wuxian becomes aware that he is cringing, shrinking away from his estranged friend. He makes his back straighten, even if his feet still itch to run. "Sorry for calling me dead," he decides Lan Wangji means, a hint of challenge in his voice.

But his fierce expression doesn't hold, and Wei Wuxian dares a half step forward. "You move like you are injured," he says, craning his neck to try to see the stripes of red on his back. "What happened, Lan Zhan?"

[lan_wangji]

Lan Zhan opens his mouth to clarify, to explain that he's sorry for telling Wei Ying about his death so bluntly. He's sorry he couldn't hold on. He's sorry he didn't defend him before everything had gone so wrong.

Before he can do so, he finds himself now stepping back, angling his back away automatically. "It does not matter," he answers, because it doesn't, only so much as it prevents him from helping Wei Ying. It is a weakness and he will need to swiftly overcome it. "What matters is I found you. Want to help you. Want to stand by you."

[yiling_laozu]

"Of course your back matters," Wei Wuxian sighs, taking comfort in the familiar conversation. He'd hounded Lan Wangji for ages to rest when he had a broken leg - he assumes the struggle to help him through this injury will be no different.

Still, what Lan Wangji has said is extraordinary. "You mustn't stand by me," he says, brow pinched. "They say we will go home eventually, and I will ruin you," he reasons. "You've already risked enough for my sake among the other clans. I won't destroy you, too, Lan Zhan."

[lan_wangji]

"Wei Ying will not be rid of me," he states, entirely firm in his resolution, despite the tiny trembles running through him as lack of sleep and proper wound care allow themselves to be known now that he has found what he sought after.

"Made a mistake not doing it, before. Will not make it, again. Want to stand with Wei Ying. Do not want to lose you."

[yiling_laozu]

He's wanted an ally for so long. Not only someone he loves but must protect like the Wens, but a friend, someone standing beside him and not behind. Yet Lan Wangji's sudden fervor brings him disquiet rather than comfort. What has changed that has made him so certain of his alliance, so afraid of losing him?

Death, Wei Wuxian's mind supplies, and he shies from it. The evidence of his continued life is here before both their eyes, whatever Lan Wangji thinks. He only needs to ignore his strange words long enough, and like everything else that troubles him, they will go away.

"Lan Zhan can scarcely stand now," he says, moving more forcefully this time to look at Lan Wangji's back. "These haven't even been treated!" he says, scandalized. "Let me tend to them, Lan Zhan."

[lan_wangji]

Lan Zhan stiffens as Wei Ying moves but does not try and pull away, afraid that if he refuses him, Wei Ying will leave him, again. The city is large and he needs to know where to find Wei Ying, especially if he is still so unstable.

"Wei Ying should not look at them," he murmurs, staring resolutely at the ground until this inspection is over. "They are distasteful." It is bad enough that Lan Zhan has been in nothing but an inner robe for so long, but to have Wei Ying see him in such a state would be unbearable. "Is Wei Ying hurt? You look pale."