Chapter Text
Lan Xichen comes to with a gasp, like a drowning man breaching the surface of the water after diving too deep for too long a time. He ends up coughing immediately after, both because of the suddenness of it and because there's a weight on his chest, pressing down and preventing him from drawing full breaths. A body, warm and equally gasping, weighing heavy on him.
Wei Wuxian lifts himself up with an arm across Lan Xichen shoulders, pressing him down further, nearly strangling him. There's wildness in his eyes as he looks around, taking in their surroundings, and, tilting his head, Lan Xichen does the same. The room is familiar - to him, at least. It's the Hanshi, but not as he'd come to know it - as it had been, before… before. Sparse and airy, barely decorated with paintings and scrolls of Lan edicts, dimly lit by the pale morning light screening through the windows. It looks like a memory.
"Wei Wuxian," Lan Xichen manages, looking up at him.
The man on top of him pushes up fully, sitting almost astride him. "Zewu-jun," the demonic cultivator says and looks down at him. It's not exactly searching, but Lan Xichen can see the revelations and realisations in his face, as he takes in what he sees, and knows what it means. "We did it?"
Lan Xichen swallows and pushes himself up to his elbows slowly, watching him carefully. He can see the lurking resentment in Wei Wuxian's eyes. They glimmer with that eerie unnatural red light still, and there's something manic about him, about how Lan Xichen can see the whites of his eyes all around the irises even in the dim darkness of the room.
"This is the Hanshi, as it was before the attack by Wens," Lan Xichen confirms carefully, and Wei Wuxian gets off him, all but jack-knifing off the bed and to his feet.
"When?" Wei Wuxian demands, running a hand through his bangs, pushing them off his face. "When are we? Do you have - how do we tell?"
Lan Xichen gets up, careless of his half-dressed state, and goes to check his desk. The last day's paperwork is still there, everything from patrol reports to night hunt missives to lesson plans and essays and other things, and most of them are carefully dated. Kneeling down, he shuffles to the papers, and Wei Wuxian comes to see. They see the date, and their eyes meet.
It's shortly before the guest disciples are slated to arrive - shortly before Wei Wuxian would meet Lan Wangji and everything would begin.
"We did it," Wei Wuxian says and collapses on his behind on the floor across from Lan Xichen's desk, blowing out a shaking breath. "We're here." He sounds incredulous.
Lan Xichen nods slowly, smoothing his shaking hands over the papers, watching him. Wei Wuxian doesn't belong in this room, in his black and red robes, dripping with resentment and forbidden techniques. The body he is in doesn't belong here. Though a far cry from the thin thing he'd been at the beginning of his existence in Mo Xuanyu's body, he is still a stranger to this time, a duplicate of a person who would only be a child at this point. And his soul…
"Are you certain your… younger self will be unaffected?" Lan Xichen asks carefully.
"Shouldn't you worry about your younger self?" Wei Wuxian asks with a wry, dark laugh. "He's dead."
Lan Xichen looks down, at his hands. There's not much difference - his cultivation had kept his appearance youthful and his hands in the future and his hands now are the same, smooth and ageless, with well maintained nails and no hint of calluses. But he can feel the differences in himself - in his Golden Core, many, many years younger and weaker than he knows it to be. He feels it in the injuries that are missing. The shoulder that doesn't sting, the side that doesn't twist, the knee that doesn't ache. Old injuries made nonexistent by the rewound time.
His body is younger and far less blemished, and he had killed his own self to take it. Was that murder? Lan Xichen doesn't know. He doesn't know how to mourn for his own self, knowing the foolishness he was about to embark upon so unknowingly, and which now would never come to pass.
Setting his hands in his lap, Lan Xichen looks up and lifts his chin. "We are earlier than we even hoped. This will undoubtedly affect our plans."
"Undoubtedly," Wei Wuxian repeats, not quite mocking, and leans back, his palms flat on the floor as he leans on his arm. His posture is sprawling and irreverent - he'd lost all pretence of manners with his family, and Lan Xichen lost the will to reprimand him for it. "Fuck, I - I don't know. I thought maybe I could - no," he clasps a hand over his mouth and then looks at Lan Xichen. "I thought I could save the Wens, save Jiang Chen's Core, and keep Shijie alive, but… fuck, we're so early. Wen Ruohan hasn't even attacked anybody."
"But he will," Lan Xichen says grimly. "Eventually. He's sending Wen Qing to the Disciple Exchange."
Wei Wuxian's expression brightens with excitement and then grows dark. "… and her job here is to get the Yin Iron," he says and runs a hand over his face. "Hell, maybe I should steal it right now."
Lan Xichen opens his mouth to argue and then closes it, thinking about it. That would be a bad idea in many ways, it would reveal Wei Wuxian as he is to the world, something they had planned to keep a secret, but at the same time… "How is your strength, compared to that of Wen Ruohan?" Lan Xichen asks. "If it came to it, could you fight him?"
Wei Wuxian snorts inelegantly and taps his nose. "Why, Lan-zongzhu, are you encouraging me to use demonic cultivation?"
"If Wen Ruohan had an… adversary of that nature…" Lan Xichen clears his throat, trying to put it delicately and finding no way to do it. "He might not turn his interest on the other sects at all."
"And if he's too busy hunting an impetuous upstart, he's too busy to start a war?" Wei Wuxian hums and gives him a wry smile, leaning forward. "Especially if that upstart has something he wants - and knows things he doesn't. Well, maybe. But he has a lot of people, he could just send his sons after me. Or whoever else."
"None of his sons are a match for you," Lan Xichen says plainly. "Question is, is Wen Ruohan?"
Wei Wuxian leans his elbow on his knee, his chin on his palm and looks away. He's thinking about it, serious, eyes simmering in the dimness. "I don't know," he finally admits. "By the time we met in the Nightless City, he was pretty far gone. And in the end it wasn't me who beat him, it was Jin Guangyao."
"Meng Yao," Lan Xichen corrects and then closes his eyes at the quiet stab of pain, aged and ever-present, at the memory of that name and the person it had once belonged to. "Still," he says. "It was you who wore his defences down, and you are the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. The things you invented, Wen Ruohan couldn't have even imagined."
"You flatter me, Zewu-jun," Wei Wuxian says grimly, sarcastically. "Maybe I could fight him, maybe I could beat him. I don't know. I could definitely give him a run for his money."
Lan Xichen nods and draws a breath. Though this isn't what they'd planned, they both knew their plans might need adjusting according to the situation of their arrival. "It was always my plan that, if we arrived early enough, I would endeavour to find a way to prompt Lan Sect to bolster their defences," he admits. "As we were before the war, we had grown lax and overconfident. The attack by the Wens humbled us, and taught us the truth. It would be best… if we learned this lesson earlier, and with less death and destruction."
Wei Wuxian watches him, his eyes dark. "Like by having a mysterious demonic cultivator attack the sect and steal a priceless dark artefact your sect was hiding."
Lan Xichen nods slowly. "We lost the Yin Iron eventually, and possessing it never benefited us," he says. "You could make use of it, could you not? You could use it against Wen Ruohan."
"I could use it against the Lan, too," Wei Wuxian points out.
Lan Xichen arches his brows. "No," he says. "You could not."
That makes Wei Wuxian look down, his smile wry and pained behind his palm, before he swings to his feet. "No, I could not," he agrees and then spreads out his arms. For a moment he looks like a dichotomy - a young, cheeky man with an infectious grin about to play a prank, and the deadly Yiling Patriarch about to unleash horrors upon his sect. "You'll have to fight me, Zewu-Jun, to really sell the whole thing."
Lan Xichen nods and rises. Wei Wuxian waits for him to dress, saying, "No, don't dress fully. You'll need to look like you woke up to a disturbance, not like you were expecting it," and Lan Xichen gives him a glance.
"Take your hair down," Lan Xichen says in something of a rebuttal - Wei Wuxian still wears it as he always had, in a high ponytail.
The demonic cultivator grins ruefully and takes his ribbon off, shaking his hair loose while Lan Xichen pulls on his outer robes only, as though he only had enough time to give lip service to propriety. Then he grabs Liebing, hesitating over Shuoyue.
Wei Wuxian takes out Chenqing and gives it a spin. "It would definitely make an impression," he comments.
"And it will spread word of your abilities," Lan Xichen says, uncertain. "Others might attempt to copy the technique you use."
"Mm," Wei Wuxian agrees and then looks at his dizi consideringly. Making a face, he touches the lotus charm hanging off it, and then takes it off. "Maybe there will be a death tonight," he comments idly, putting the charm into his qiankun pouch. "Su She might become an unfortunate victim of this insane cultivator. Wouldn't that be a shame. A young man with such a future ahead of him."
Lan Xichen looks down, swallowing the sudden taste of bile in the back of his mouth, and hesitates over the xiao.
"Give me like a quarter of a sichen," Wei Wuxian says, turning away. "You'll find me at the back entrance to the Cold Caves."
Lan Xichen doesn't wish him good luck, closing his eyes and drawing a slow breath, waiting until the other man is gone.
Then he takes Liebing, and makes his bed.
Their fight is one of the hardest Lan Xichen has ever fought. Part of that is the balancing act of appearances, but only part. Mostly it's the fact that Wei Wuxian is an incredibly strong Demonic Cultivator, and he is hardly holding his punches while Lan Xichen is trying to manage with a Core that is weaker than he's used to. Lan Xichen has never fought Wei Wuxian head on like this, and he isn't like Lan Wangji - he doesn't take that much pleasure in sparring.
"What is going on here?!" Lan Qiren demands. "Xichen, are you alright?"
Lan Xichen wipes blood from his cheek and looks up to Wei Wuxian. He looks like a character from a painting, standing above them on the mountain wall, the winds tugging on his dark robes and red ribbons as he lifts Chenqing to his lips, eyes gleaming over the dark shaft of the spiritual, resentful, flute. Hurriedly Lan Xichen takes out Liebing and meets him in the battle that makes the mountainside quiver.
A rush of darkness shoots forward and crashes into a barrier Lan Xichen plays into existence, and the air around them shudders and rattles like storm winds and lightning were barely contained in between. Lan Xichen almost falls to his knees at the weight of the power pouring off of Wei Wuxian, but he keeps to his feet, gritting his teeth.
In Wei Wuxian's playing, in his resentment and bitterness, Lan Xichen can feel the loss he's feeling. There, in that hollow, is the absence of his brother. There, in that agony, is the absence of his nephew. Contained in it are Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan and likely Wei Wuxian's parents too, and everyone else he'd lost along the years. His many families, the Wei, the Jiang, the Wen, the Lan…
And all of it only empowers Wei Wuxian, adding fuel to the fires of his resentment. Unfair, his playing cries out. All of this loss is unjust.
Lan Xichen plays a discordant tone, and Wei Wuxian stops to laugh at him, at them - at the Lan Cultivators brought low at the feeling of his agony, the magnitude of the grief coming off of him. "And here I thought I was up for a challenge!" he cries out, waving his dark dizi at them. "Look at you!"
Lan Xichen pants for a breath, his breath hitching and only then realises that his cheeks are wet, his throat is stinging - his eyes are blurry with tears. Wei Wuxian really had reached new heights with his cultivation - he can now impose his emotions upon others. Or maybe it is Lan Xichen's own sorrow, resonating. He can't quite tell.
"Who are you?!" Lan Qiren demands while struggling to his feet, coming up to support Lan Xichen the best he can. "What is it that you want?"
"What I want, what I want?" Wei Wuxian asks and tilts his head, considering the question almost playfully. "What I want is - "
"Brother."
It's like a stab in the back, sudden and unexpected. Somehow, despite everything, Lan Xichen hadn't prepared for it. This is what everything is about, this is why they're here, and yet he hadn't thought of it. And neither, he realises, had Wei Wuxian. Lan Xichen looks up, and he can see Wei Wuxian's spirit crumbling at the sight of Lan Wangji hurrying to Lan Xichen's side, Bichen bared and ready in his hand and a grimly determined look about his face.
Neither of them had expected to run into Lan Wangji this soon, though they should have, they should have known.
Lan Xichen steels his resolve and lifts Liebing to his lips again, and attacks Wei Wuxian in his moment of weakness, sending forth a twisting melody intended to capture him. Reflexively Wei Wuxian dances away and lifts Chenqing to meet the melody, his cacophony tearing the technique apart with sheer discord.
"Now, none of that," Wei Wuxian says against his flute, the manic look returning to his eyes as he hungrily drinks in the sight of Lan Wangji at Lan Xichen's side. "I was just leaving! How rude you are -" his voice is wavering.
Lan Xichen steps forward, and finds others joining him, adding their power to his attack, to his defence. Wei Wuxian deflects again, but this time he's pushed back and Lan Xichen can't tell if he can take it - if he can take all of them. Maybe, if they had prepared better, maybe if they had planned better, maybe if Lan Xichen could distract the others, but now… now there's a real danger of them not only pushing Wei Wuxian back, but subduing him, perhaps even killing him…
"So ferocious!" Wei Wuxian cackles, jumping to a higher point on the mountain wall, whirling Chenqing in his fingers. "Perhaps you aren't as weak as your defences let me believe! I guess I need to take this seriously after all!"
And then he swamps them in his resentment, calling it forth in a mist, poisoning the very air around himself and pulling it over himself like a cloak. It raises him up and lifts a dark wind that cuts through Lan Xichen's clothing, hot and cold and terrible. In a moment, the whole mountainside is mired in dark, hateful darkness, and Wei Wuxian is hidden from view. On the ground the Lan disciples, unused to such terrible power, back away nervously, and Lan Xichen realises what it is Wei Wuxian is doing.
"Stay back," he orders his brother, pushing him back with an arm and setting forth.
"Xichen!" his uncle calls, but is held back by the resentment.
Lan Xichen enters the cloud of darkness alone, struggling against it, and Wei Wuxian opens him a path, meets him with a wry grin.
"Had enough?" he asks.
"Are you done?" Lan Xichen asks, strained. "Did you do it?"
Wei Wuxian smiles, all teeth, and nods. He looks deranged. "Play something that'll call light," he says and lifts Chenqing. "Let's cause an explosion."
Lan Xichen lifts Liebing just in time to meet Chenqing's melody of ruin head on, the two sounds curling into each other and around each other as though trying to strangle themselves. Wei Wuxian feeds more and more power into the song, building it up higher and higher, and Lan Xichen rises to match it the best he can, unused to such violence and instinctively trying to calm it and quell it.
Wei Wuxian glares at him over his flute, and Lan Xichen closes his eyes, shaking his head ruefully. The moment he gives into the insistence of Chenqing, there's a flush of light, a crescendo of horrible screeching sound, rising, and rising, building and building…
"Take care of Lan Zhan for me," Wei Wuxian says roughly. "Keep him safe."
And then he's gone, and Lan Xichen is violently thrown back from the cloud of dispersing darkness.
He's caught by his brother, who catches him by the shoulders and keeps him on his feet as Lan Xichen coughs and tries to keep his hold on his xiao. His hands are shaking terribly.
He's felt Wei Wuxian's power before, many times, but never like this, directed at him alone.
"Xiongzhang," Lan Wangji says, and Lan Xichen swallows and struggles to stand on his own power.
"Xichen, what -" Lan Qiren asks, coming to his side.
"He's running," Lan Xichen says, hoping that Wei Wuxian had gotten a good enough head start to make his way out. "We must go after him - he's taken something -"
Lan Qiren immediately rounds up the disciples for a pursuit, and Lan Wangji supports his brother with a hand on his elbow so that he can join to hunt - but of course, it is not enough. Whether Wei Wuxian had swathed himself into the shadows and disappeared from view, or if he'd simply managed to make his escape it's hard to say. Either way, they cannot find him. A whole morning spent in searching brings no clues, only the eventual dark realisation of what, exactly, was lost.
Lan Xichen is left to deal with the aftermath alone, but that's fine. That was always the plan.
"Xichen," Lan Qiren turns to him later in private, once all avenues of search have been exhausted, and they are left with only the mystery. "How did you know?"
"I felt a disturbance," Lan Xichen explains - which is true enough, he had. "I couldn't sleep and so went to investigate, thinking I must've imagined it, nothing could've gotten through our wards, and yet…"
"What did you learn about this dark cultivator - did he say who he is, who he works for?" Lan Qiren asks.
Lan Xichen shakes his head. "I do not think he works for anyone," he admits. "But no, he said nothing. I cannot tell how he came to be here, how he knew about the Cold Cave, how he got in. I only discovered him after."
Everything he had discovered is of course questioned and examined. He is called to paint a portrait of Wei Wuxian for the other disciples and the Lan Elders to examine, but of course no one recognizes him nor his attire. Wei Wuxian no longer adheres to Jiang clan's style of robes, and his style is inherently his own - or, rather, that of the Yiling Burial Mounds, a mixture of a cultivator's robes with workman's practicality, utterly mired in his dark tools and talismans.
Lan Xichen still takes special care to make him look more like Mo Xuanyu and less like Wei Wuxian the Head Disciple of Yunmeng Jiang, just in case.
Serious, Lan Qiren strokes his beard. "It's troubling. That he knew about the Yin Iron at all, but that he got through all the defences Lan Yi set…"
Lan Xichen frowns, looking at his Uncle. "What do you think it means?"
Lan Qiren shakes his head and draws a breath. "We must find him," he says. "And we must warn others about him, as well. If he is after the other pieces…"
That is the righteous thing to do, Lan Xichen knows, and it is unavoidable. Wei Wuxian would be able to handle any hunt for his life, he has done so before and he's only grown more clever since those years. And yet… "Surely we should look into our defences first. For them to have failed so…" Lan Xichen trails away. If he'd learned nothing else from his frankly disastrous reign as Lan Clan's Sect Leader is that revealing such weaknesses to the other sects was never a good idea.
"Hmm. Our wards need to be examined," Lan Qiren agrees. "But the danger of the Yin Iron in wrong hands cannot be ignored. This cultivator clearly doesn't follow the orthodox path - people need to be warned to be on their guard against him."
"Very well, Uncle. Should we set a bounty on his head?" Lan Xichen asks quietly. "The man was remarkably strong, I don't think any regular cultivator will have a chance against him. Setting bounty hunters after him would be setting most of them for failure."
"You are right, this is no ordinary cultivator. We will inform the other sects only," Lan Qiren says and then looks at him. "In the meanwhile, we will distribute this cultivator's likeness inside the sect - let no one be caught unawares should they run into him again. And, Xichen?"
"Yes, Uncle?" Lan Xichen asks, schooling his expression.
Lan Qiren watches him searchingly for a moment and then nods. "Good work. Even though you couldn't stop him, you discovered what others might've missed, and who knows how long it might've taken for us to discover the theft." He clasps hands behind his back. "Take care to play Cleansing for yourself, or at least have Wangji play Clarity. Coming into contact with such dark power for so long cannot be good for you."
Lan Xichen smothers the urge to exhale and bows his head. "I will, Uncle, thank you."
With that, whatever changes had been wrought to his personality over the many years are covered up. He can insinuate the attack had left him shaken - which it had - and that he had to yet regain his balance - which he never would. Wei Wuxian would bear the blame there too, as he did for so many things over the years. Lan Xichen would beg for his forgiveness, if he thought the man cared. He doesn't think he does.
Wei Wuxian, much like himself, had so very little left in the future to care about - and it all boils down to one thing now.
"Brother," Lan Wangji says, watching him carefully, searchingly.
"I'm alright," Lan Xichen promises, smiles, and does his best not to cry when his brother begins playing Clarity for him, like he had so many times for Wei Wuxian. Well, not quite - Wei Wuxian required Cleansing, which the current Wangji isn't capable of quite yet. Perhaps this time Lan Xichen would be the reason Lan Wangji mastered the more difficult song.
Ah, what a mixed feeling that is, what a terrible, convoluted remorse it is to bear! Wei Wuxian's resentful loss and sorrow still lives in Xichen's breast, trapped like wild bird in a cage, and here is the man who will never again know that version of him, soothing those old familiar injuries in Lan Xichen instead. Utterly unknowing of the many layers of precious, grim significance.
Lan Xichen closes his eyes and hopes he can be enough for this, that he can do better - that he, and Wei Wuxian, might undo what had already come undone. So many ways the future might develop here, and not all of them are better for Lan Wangji. Should their plans come into fruition, Wangji would never know such resentment again, or how it was to play Cleansing to a beloved so utterly lost in darkness.
This time there will be a little less sorrow on his brother's part, at least.