Chapter Text
And I took you by the sleeve
No other reason than to be your leading man
And you woke up with a fright
Our lives depended on the visions through the night
And all we had always, all we had always wanted to before
The hurricane inclined us, grappling on the floor
All delighted people raise their hands
It seemed that paternity had left a deep scar inside Lan Wangji’s heart that would burn whenever Sizhui was in danger.
He had been closely following the Juniors’ investigation, as he should, after the incident at the Mo village. He knew they were next to the Dafan Mountain but decided not to keep too close. After all, that was another place of memories.
Another, of many.
Of all the places Lan Wangji had been at for all the ten years he was allowed to search, he couldn’t count on the fingers of one hand the places that didn’t smell spicy-sweet like clove; that didn’t look, from the corner of one’s eye, as a bright and young smile; that didn’t sound like the loudest yet daintiest laugh. And still, there were things he didn’t dare do anymore; places he didn’t dare visit, things he didn’t dare see.
For someone known for being admirably collected, Lan Wangji discovered he could be easily unhinged when presented with visions of him.
He wouldn’t say he avoided searching, because certainly that was his entire life’s priority, hand in hand with raising Sizhui. But he did, now, after knowing better, stop strolling through the memories.
It was no use going through them again. He had done so every single day for so many years and it never brought him back.
It was more convenient to put himself to use.
Still.
There it was.
Never before had Lan Wangji crossed paths with a man that had so many similarities to him.
The height was inaccurate and the smell was more like fennel with a hint of clove rather than the spiciness Lan Wangji remembered, but the smile contained the same mischievousness. Oh, but the intelligence. The talent for the darkness.
Lan Wangji had yet to stare at Mo Xuanyu’s eyes. But he was not in a hurry.
After all, his body had almost been unable to take it when he held that sword in his hands and felt the power within it. Jingyi had said, “Yiling Patriarch,” and Lan Wangji’s heart, against all laws he so severely studied, tried to crawl its way out of his chest.
Later that night he had asked Sizhui about that man. All of what the boy knew was valueless, at first. A Lanling Jin background. Mental Illness. Rumors.
Lan Wangji listened patiently, because he was not one to interrupt. But he wanted to know the now. He wanted to get inside his son’s head to look at him. To feel Mo Xuanyu’s power as he fought the sword spirit and know if it was ever just the tiniest bit as magnificent as his. He felt insane, and it made him itch right in his core.
Eventually, Sizhui gave him the flicker of hope he so expected to hear.
“It was odd. I saw some familiarity in him, somehow.”
Lan Wangji’s gaze, that had been fixed upon the teapot, moved desperately toward his son’s eyes; even though his expression remained as cooled as usual.
“What kind of familiarity?”
Sizhui sipped on his tea delicately. “I’m not sure… Something about his posture, maybe. The way he carries himself. The way he tricks everyone around him easily. I really can’t remember where I could have seen him before, though.”
That was, apparently, all Lan Wangji needed to drown.
It was hard not to succumb to his impossible wishes as Sizhui asked, an incense stick time before bedtime, for Lan Wangji to play him that song.
“Which song?” he had asked, knowing perfectly well which one it was. Maybe he was stalling time.
“That melody you used to sing for me to sleep when I was younger. I think I heard something similar today, and got reminded of how I always slept better after listening to it.”
No more needed to be said for Lan Wangji to lose his mind. The coincidences were all there.
He felt like a madman, reaching for hope with so little to lean on, but did it nonetheless. It seemed it was not something he had any control of.
He played on the guqin, softly like the strings were made out of thin, easy to break cotton. If a tear or two slipped out Sizhui was already asleep and no one would ever know.
Now, walking through a path that led him away from the Mo Village — just close to the Juniors but far away enough that he wouldn't cross any paths he might have walked on in the past — he felt the overwhelming shakiness of his doubts about what was set in stone to be true (Wei Wuxian was dead) and irrefutable (Wei Wuxian's soul was lost).
He also felt, quick and suddenly, an intuitive worry.
It had been the same many times before. Recently, Sizhui went on a mission at Laoling and got into trouble with some ghouls. Before the signal was ever released in the sky Lan Wangji had already been on edge at his Lanling inn. The same happened the night before when the Juniors were at the Mo village. Lan Wangji had been peacefully meditating when he felt restless and went out to the balcony to look at the sky, immediately seeing the signal as soon as it was set off.
Now, he couldn’t help his gaze wandering off to Dafan Mountain; only he wasn’t sure if it was because his son might be in danger or if he just felt the sharp nails of grief combined with the restrictiveness of doubt pulling and scratching at his heart.
With just that mild but certainly hurtful feeling he decided to go up on his sword and head over to the path that led to the mountain.
He did so slowly, like a man walking towards the sharp tip of a blade.
Lan Wangji was midway there when he was forced to stop; imbalance swept over him like a strong breeze when he heard the first notes of a flute. It was untuned, but just eerie enough that his whole body halted.
How many coincidences were there now?
A random cultivator causing trouble where the Lan Clan had an investigation going. He used demonic magic. He was intelligent and witty. He was scared of Jiang Wanyin. Sizhui found him familiar. Sizhui heard Wangji’s song, somehow, not played by Lan Wangji, that same night. An eerie melody from a flute traveled through the mountains with the air.
Lan Wangji took a deep breath. Then another. Then another.
And then he heard it.
The first notes of WangXian played, and Lan Wangji fell to his knees.
Gladly, because of his high cultivation, he controlled himself fairly quick and fled like a moth to the flame towards the sound.
It wasn’t that far, by the sound. It took him no more than a minute to see.
He saw, from above, a man playing a bamboo flute, and another one following his commands.
Looking back at it Lan Wangji would say it was absurd how unsure he still was at that moment. There was no denying at all. No one knew that melody but him, no one would use the flute like him, Wen Ning would never be sweetly pulled in and controlled by anyone’s powers but his, and Lan Wangji’s throat would never choke on a sob like that if it wasn’t for looking at him.
Still, even when refusing to believe it, he almost stumbled down from his sword; hand promptly attaching itself to an arm: strong, but weaker than his. And still, the same electrifying buzz that he’d felt many times in his youth run through his vein at his touch burned the tips of Lan Wangji’s fingers.
As a high standard cultivator Lan Wangji was always very aware of his breathing, but perhaps at that moment there wasn’t any air coming in or out of his lungs, as he saw the man, startled, turn his head towards him.
The features weren’t his. And still… Lan Wangji’s chest felt constricted, because Mo Xuanyu looked right into his eyes, and he was not Mo Xuanyu.
He was no one but him.
Right there, in front of Lan Wangji, was Wei Wuxian.
What was supposed to be Mo Xuanyu’s body moved right in front of him. Lan Wangji’s grip on his arm was strong; perhaps too strong, and the man wouldn’t be able to run away, but he could lift the flute to his face. He blew into the instrument, and Lan Wangji was sure it made a sound, but he couldn’t hear. He sensed movement and instinctively looked back to see Wen Ning disappearing between the trees, but his brain didn’t process that information. Everything was mute as Wei Wuxian dropped the flute from the force with which Lan Wangji held his arm, and gripped Lan Wangji’s wrist as well with his other hand.
Their skins touched, and Lan Wangji heard the loudest silence he ever heard since his heart fell from a cliff at Nightless City. He turned his head to look back at him.
Mo Xuanyu’s irises were darker than Wei Wuxian’s.
His face was softer — none of that rigidness that Wei Wuxian acquired after all that he had been through, but instead they carried the same youthfulness of the man Wei Wuxian was before becoming the Yiling Patriarch.
His body was thinner, weaker and smaller. His hair was shorter and looked softer to the touch than Wei Wuxian's did.
Still. The look he had in his eyes wasn't of a lively youth. It was the same look contained within the eyes of the man Lan Wangji loved so dearly.
It seemed like they had been staring at each other for hours when Wei Wuxian, startled out of it, listening to a voice Lan Wangji had yet to pay attention to, cowered next to him, looking down.
At first Lan Wangji didn’t realize anything wrong at all. He could only look, take in the man before him. Until he sensed a flickering purple light from the corner of his eye.
Fortunately, Lan Wangji's reflexes didn't depend on his emotional well-being; therefore he was quick to take out his guqin and strike right back at Jiang Wanyin.
He dreamed for a long time about this. This wasn’t a quarrell. This was what Lan Wangji had wanted to do for all this time: strike at Jiang Wanyin without holding back.
He’d forgotten about the people there, who were now crawling for cover behind the trees as Jiang Wanyin and Lan Wangji’s powers danced furiously around each other.
But Wei Wuxian moved behind him, trying to run away. It seemed that Lan Wangji’s senses were now intrinsically connected to that man’s actions, because he couldn’t help but look. He moved, because he was alive, and Lan Wangji had to see.
It took only this moment of weakness for Zidian to strike.
Lan Wangji, exactly like thirteen years before, couldn't react fast enough.
In a split second he thought of a million things. The sloppiness of blood on his fingertips against his wrists. The excruciating pain. His throat, burning from the scream on his tongue. The presence of Jiang Wanyin next to him and his inability to move and tear that man's head out of his shoulders. A tiny voice in his head saying “not again, not again, not again, not again.”
He couldn’t move . He couldn’t reach out to him. He couldn’t then, and he couldn’t now, and it took just a second but Lan Wangji felt like the entire span of a lifetime had passed until the man on the floor moaned in pain, trying to get up.
Slowly, painfully, Lan Wangji sucked in a breath. He was alive — again, he was realizing that again , in two ways more than one. Nonetheless, he realized something that kept him rooted to where he was:
It wasn't the same voice. It wasn't his voice.
For a moment he felt such an overwhelming pain in his chest that he worried he would faint, although his face betrayed nothing.
Lan Wangji couldn't help but think of when he saw Wei Wuxian's smile for the last time and realized he would never hear his laugh again. It was irrational, but even knowing that Wei Wuxian was right behind him, the realization that still, even if he was right there , Lan Wangji would never get to listen to that sound again, broke him as much as it did the first time it dawned on him.
He needed to come to his senses. He needed to protect. Lan Wangji turned his body to stare at Jiang Wanyin and sense the slightest movement the man could start. Wei Wuxian spoke, then.
“How amazing! You really can do anything when you’re from a powerful clan, can’t you? You can even beat up anyone you want! Tsk tsk tsk!”
Lan Wangji could only watch as Jiang Wanyin realized his Zidian didn’t work as supposed. First, because the realization that Wei Wuxian did not possess a body was too relieving — yes, he wouldn’t do that. Especially because his soul wasn’t around to be able to choose someone and do it. So was he not Wei Wuxian?
No, he was Wei Wuxian. Lan Wangji knew because he had another realization after that man spoke: he spoke exactly like Wei Wuxian. In a different voice, but that would be exactly what Wei Wuxian would say to get out of this situation. He knew, because he had catalogued in his brain everything Wei Wuxian ever said. He had burned in his memory every mannerism Wei Wuxian had ever shown around him. It was him.
But then, it meant that some external force had put Wei Wuxian inside that body, and this was something Lan Wangji had to look into, later.
He was slightly lost in his thoughts as Jiang and Lan disciples discussed whether or not Mo Xuanyu was the Yiling Patriarch. Lan Wangji didn’t care about the man’s story, especially now that he knew it wasn’t Mo Xuanyu before him. He occupied himself with staring at his face, meanwhile.
Soon, the Lan Juniors were teaming up to defend “Mo Xuanyu”. Lan Wangji had always felt proud of Sizhui, but hearing him standing up for Wei Wuxian made Lan Wangji feel like he could cry. He did not interfere as long as Wei Wuxian wasn’t in danger — he preferred to keep his strength and calm himself down — but it didn’t take long before Jiang Wanyin made a move at him again, and Wei Wuxian hid behind Lan Wangji.
He steeled his stance. Jiang Wanyin asked, gravely, “Second Young Master Lan, are you purposely making it difficult for me?”
Lan Wangji wouldn’t trouble himself with answering — he had long ago given up on reasoning with that man. Fortunately, his very well raised son interfered.
“Sect Leader Jiang. The evidence is clear — Mo XuanYu’s body was not taken. If so, why should you want to trouble an unimportant person such as him?”
Jiang Wanyin replied immediately. “Then, why is Second Young Master Lan going to such great lengths to protect an unimportant person such as him?” He screamed his next words, advancing one step forward, staring at the partially hidden man’s eyes peeking from behind Lan Wangji’s shoulder. “Tell me now, who are you?”
Lan Wangji glanced back, and saw as Wei Wuxian smiled.
Not his usually bright, full smile. But the same small smile he died with.
Then, Wei Wuxian blacked out.