As Spring Will Surely Come 1/10
Jun. 3rd, 2023 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silver_sunAlthough it is approaching mid morning the air is cold, last night's frost still clinging to the ground as Lan Wangji walks along the winding, woodland paths of the Cloud Recesses. It is a walk that he has done many times since returning there with Wei Wuxian as his husband almost three years earlier.
It is also one he wishes he did not have to do.
The small house where Lan Xichen has decided to live in seclusion is set well away from any others, the single path that leads to it narrow and barely used. Apart from himself, his uncle and the whichever junior whose task it was to bring cooking supplies once a week the path is unused.
It is a beautiful part of the Cloud Recesses, especially in the spring when the flowers there bloom. However, the longer he remains there separate from the world, the greater Lan Wangji’s fear grows.
He can find no fault in his brother’s decision to take time away from the running of the sect. The aftermath of the Guanyin temple had shattered him in a way that Lan Wangji hadn’t thought was possible. Lan Xichen had always been so strong, never placing any worries on either him or their uncle if it could be avoided. To see him hollowed out with grief, his smile and gentle optimism lost, is wrong in a way that he hasn’t been able to put into words.
Lan Wangji pauses at the gate, uncertain what more he can say to persuade his brother that it’s time to start making plans for leaving seclusion. He knows his brother’s choice weighs heavily on his uncle who is once more dealing with the day to day running of Gusu Lan.
The fear that has taken root in both of them is that Lan Xichen is, as his father had done before him, treating his seclusion as something more akin to punishment than a period away from the stresses of the world to find peace and a place within oneself for reflection and healing.
He looks at the small house. It is too reminiscent of the one their mother was confined to before her untimely death. He doesn't know how his brother can willingly stand it, not for so long. His own seclusion had, for much of the time, been a medical necessity. By the time the three years were over he had been more than ready to re-enter the world. Yet after three years his brother seems distant, a shadow of his old self. Music and painting which had once given him so much joy are abandoned, their associations now forever linked in his mind to Jin Guangyao.
How he fills the long, solitary hours, Lan Wangji doesn’t know. He wishes it was with something positive, something that aided recovery. Yet he suspects that his brother spends hours mired still in exhausting grief and guilt, until he sleeps.
It is a powerless feeling not knowing how to help him.
There is nothing to be gained from standing in the chill winter air and Lan Wangji walks to the door and knocks.
There is a pause. He hates these moments. The moments when he’s standing in front of a door, fearing that it will not open again and that he has already seen the occupant for the last time.
Thankfully it doesn’t last for long, and the door is opened.
“Wangji, it’s time for your visit already?” He looks confused. Not upset or annoyed, just baffled. “Weren’t you here a day or two ago? There isn’t anything wrong, is there?”
“It has been a week, as agreed.” Lan Wangji’s heart sinks. Today was not going to be one of the better days.
“Oh, time really does fly. Come in. It’s getting cold now. I suppose it will be winter soon.”
“Midwinter Festival in three weeks.”
“So soon? Will Sizhui be back in time?” Lan Xichen asks. “He’s travelling, is he not?”
“In the spring and summer,” Lan Wangji replies. He sets out what he needs to make tea before continuing. “He returned for the Mid-Autumn festival. He brought mooncakes as gifts for you and uncle.”
“Oh. Yes. I couldn’t remember when…” he trails off. Looking down at the table rather than at his brother, he sighs, but says nothing more.
“Xiongzhang?”
There is a pause and Lan Xichen blinks, as he is rousing himself from sleep. “Don’t mind me, Wangji. It really is nothing.”
“I do not mind.” Hurts that his brother could think him uncaring and angry in the face of what is clearly still overwhelming grief. What it does is worry him, but he cannot abide the thought of burdening his brother by telling him so. “Time passes differently when one is alone.”
There is a brief murmur of agreement before he goes quiet again, lost in his own thoughts.
The kettle heats and Lan Wangji pours the hot water over the tea leaves. He waits for it to steep, then finally pours for them both. All the time the room is silent, the whisper of the wind through the bare trees branches outside and faint hiss of the embers used to heat the water breaking the hush.
Small talk has never come easy to Lan Wangji, but it seems unkind when his brother is so withdrawn not to try. “It will be the Mid Winter Festival in three weeks. Wei Ying went with Sizhui to Caiyi town to buy gifts this morning.”
Lan Xichen slowly turns his cup in his hand, but does not drink.
“This year, will you spend it with us?” Lan Wangji knows that to anyone else his voice would sound neutral, as if it did not matter to him what the reply might be. He also knows his brother will hear it is not.
“I don’t think I can. I….” Lan Xichen stops, his breathing growing unsteady. There is something frightened, almost panicked, like a wild animal caught in a trap, in his eyes. “Wangji, I can’t leave. I can’t…”
It is awful seeing his brother like this, being powerless to bring him back to who he once was, to be terrified that it is no longer possible. Lan Wangji does the only thing he can. He pushes down his own fears and replies, “We can come here. Uncle and I.” With his brother being in seclusion he knows he shouldn’t ask for more, but he cannot help but add, “And Wei Ying.”
“All together?”
There is so much worry in his voice that breaks Lan Wangji’s heart to hear. “We can each come alone. Or Wei Ying and I, then uncle can visit later with Sizhui. He also wishes to see you. He misses you.” It feels demanding, manipulative even, to mention him, but he knows how much he misses the man he views as his uncle as much as he does a sect leader.
“Perhaps.” There is a faint tremor to Lan Xichen’s hand as he lifts his cup, perhaps hoping the tea will settle his nerves.
“Do not answer now,” Lan Wangji says, despite being uncertain if it is the correct course of action. “Think on it. Next week when we speak again, give your answer.”
Lan Xichen nods and sips his tea, but doesn’t speak.
There is nothing to be gained by pressing the matter again so soon, so Lan Wangji turns his attention to other matters. He checks the fuel basket and the brazier. With the weather getting colder it would be needed.
He considers asking if he should play something for him. He has his qin with him as he will be going directly from visiting his brother to teaching a class with some of the senior disciples. Yet hearing the qin doesn’t seem to provide any comfort to him. The association of it with what Jin Guangyao had done to Nie Mingjue being more than Lan Xichen can deal with.
For all he could play to calm the spirit and strengthen and balance his core, it caused his heart to be in so much turmoil that negated most of the positive effects it would otherwise have.
So Lan Wangji turns his attention to food, checking that his brother has enough there to make his meals and that he is eating them. Meals in seclusion are simple affairs even by Gusu Lan standards, and Lan Wangji knows that Wei Ying would find it unpalatably bland. He wonders if something more interesting would help his brother find his appetite again. There have been times when both he and his uncle have considered asking the sects doctors to intervene in Lan Xichen’s seclusion, to bring an end to it or at least a temporary cessation of it on health grounds.
Neither of them have so far been able to bring themselves to do it so far, out of the fear that he will further distance himself from them. Lan Xichen eats, even if neither of them think it is really enough. He had lost weight during the first few months, to an extent that had been concerning. Since then however he appears to have plateaued and while that is the case both he and his uncle have agreed to not press the matter further.
Lan Wangji fills the lingering silence the best he can, telling his brother of anything significant that has happened over the last week. He limits it to only positive things as much as he can: A junior who is doing well in their studies, the completion of transcribing and binding new texts to be used in training, seeing migratory birds arrive for the winter or how good the persimmon harvest has been.
All too soon however it is time for him to leave. There are many things to keep him busy these days, as although the sect elders have been against him taking a more active role in representing Gusu Lan in any form of sect business other than night hunts, Lan Wangji has found that they are still happy with him teaching. This is one burden at least that he can take from his uncle.
“I will return next week,” Lan Wangji says as he pauses by the door. “Is there anything you wish me to bring?”
Weary despite the fact that it isn’t even noon yet, Lan Xichen shakes his head. “You don’t have to.” He makes a small, hopeless seeming gesture with his hands. “You don’t have to come. I’m not…” he stops and sighs. “Wangji, I’m grateful, but you do not need to burden yourself with these visits.”
“It is no burden.” Worry that he doesn’t want to give credence to builds, the fear that his brother will start to decline visits as their father had done, until in the end he would see no one. Food and anything else that was needed being left at a distance from his home, to be collected only once the person placing it there had long since left. By the time their father died it had been more than five years since he’d spoken to any of them in person.
“If you are certain.” Lan Xichen turns away. “I will not dissuade you.”
“I am certain, Xiongzhang. To see you is not something I will turn from.” He reaches out a hand to place it on his brother’s shoulder, but he has already stepped away, back into the house. Once, initiating such a thing would have been unheard of for him, but four years with Wei Wuxian’s means that for those close to him, touch is no longer something which he always avoids.
Lan Wangji waits until he is out of sight of the house, before leaning against one of the ancient gnarled pines. Sunlight falls on his face and closes his eyes. A moment to compose himself for teaching a class is all he can spare himself. The visit hadn’t been awful, he tells himself, there have been worse ones. It is little comfort however as there doesn't seem to have been any real improvement in his brother’s mood and thoughts for a long time. There are good days and bad ones, but any hope that the good ones will slowly grow to become the most frequent, with those, like today, being rare occurrences, has failed to materialise.
It scares him. It is not a battle he cannot fight on his brother’s behalf, nor can he tell him how to win the fight: He has no answers to give. There are times when he feels like weeping or raging because he has lost the brother he remembers. It feels too much like grief, even though Lan Xichen is still living. Gone are the smiles, gone is composing music together, gone too is the way that his brother could draw him out of himself when all Lan Wangji had wanted to do was hide. He has a shadow of him, a ghost with his face and it is slowly shattering him.
That Lan Xichen’s continuing seclusion is breaking their uncle too hurts more than he can say. For all their uncle has been strict with them Lan Wangji knows that it comes from his love for them. He and his brother are Lan Qiren’s only living family. Never marrying, he’d placed Gusu Lan and his nephews above all personal desires, so now as older age sets in he has no children of his own.
Seeing how the grey, once just a few strands, has become predominant in his hair and beard is a reminder of how heavily the last few years have weighed upon him. The tears he’d seen his uncle shed, even if he had denied, when Lan Xichen entered seclusion had been devastating.
Opening his eyes, Lan Wangji looks at the woodland, leafless now, waiting for spring. It is only dormant, not dead, just waiting for warmer days. Hoping.
Hope.
Even when everything seems bleak, he has to hold onto that, the idea that eventually Spring will come for them all.
He breathes in the cold air, the scent of damp earth and old leaves, the chill of frost. The world is as it always has been, the seasons turning as surely as day follows night. There is a comfort in it, a certainty, a rightness, which he finds reassuring.
Lan Wangji straightens, smooths the fabric of his sleeve where he’d leant against the rough bark, and takes another breath. Satisfied that he looks neat and composed, he leaves.
“Hanguang-jun, may I speak with you?”
Turning, Lan Wangji sees one of the junior outer disciples, Gu Shen, waiting at the door to the classroom, from which the seniors that he’d been teaching had just left. They aren’t one of the students that he has been responsible for teaching, although he remembers them mostly for the fact that they had had little aptitude for musical cultivation, to the point that it had been suggested that they might not be a good fit for Gusu Lan. They had shown, however, an interest in medicine and had a clear concise writing style that had impressed one of the sect’s doctors enough for them to agree to be responsible for their training.
There is a flicker of worry about why one of the apprentice doctors might seek him out, about whether someone close to him has fallen sick. Nothing of those concerns shows on his face. “Speak.”
Gu Shen bows. “Hanguang-jun, Lan Xiuling wishes to report an unsuccessful night hunt to you. She apologises that she cannot come in person as she is in the infirmary.”
Lan Xiuling is a senior of the same generation as himself. An accomplished cultivator, her weapon of choice is also the qin, which, he thinks, is most likely why she wishes to speak to him. Any spirit of creature that could withstand her, and injure her enough that she was in the infirmary, would be a formidable one indeed. Yet it must not have originally appeared so, or Lan Wangji knows that he would have been informed of such a dangerous night hunt and most likely asked to take part, even if only in a supervisory capacity.
“No need for apologies. I will speak with her there.” Lan Wangji had been planning to return to the Jingshi after the class so that he is there for when Wei Wuxian returns from Caiyi with Sizhui, this matter is more pressing. He is also reasonably sure that end up staying in Caiyi for lunch. He’d given them both money to spend freely, in the knowledge that spicy food, and for Wei Wuxian, wine, will brighten a cold winter’s day.
He looks back at Gu Shen. “I will go now.”
When Lan Wangji is shown into the room where Lan Xiuling is, he finds her sitting at the bedside of one of the juniors. The air smells of medicine and incense blended to ease difficult breathing.
“I thought it would be a good hunt to take her on,” Lan Xiuling says, her eyes never leaving the young woman in the bed. “I reviewed the reports myself. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I would never risk A-Yue. She is my only family.”
Lan Wangji has little to do with the women’s side of the Cloud Recesses, rarely speaking to or seeing any of them apart from in matters of training and night hunts. So while he knows of Lan Xiuling, the junior is unfamiliar to him. There is however a family resemblance with Lan Xiuling. Possibly a niece or a much younger sister, he decides.
A-Yue is about the same age Sizhui and Lan Wangji knows how awful he would feel were he find himself in this situation, how much he would blame himself. “What was reported?”
Lan Xiuling takes a slightly shaky breath and turns to look at Lan Wangji. He can see now that one side of her face is scratched and bruised as if it has been dragged across something rough like stone or wood. Sore certainly, but something that would heal with no lasting ill effect.
“Two hours flight South East is the village of Luhe. We had received reports that a spirit had pulled a young man into the water. He was unable to swim and became trapped against the waterwheel of a mill and was almost drowned. He was rescued by the mill workers. The spirit did not prevent the rescue in any way.”
Such a report suggested a spirit that was more mischievous than malicious. It had had its fun knocking the man into the river, what occurred after that was misfortune caused by the man’s inability to swim to safety. From such a report, where the spirit had done nothing once the man was in the water or sought any form of harm towards the rescuers, it would appear to be a safe and simple night hunt that was suitable to take juniors on. More information was needed. “Continue.”
“Chunyue and I arrived in Luhe just before noon and spoke with the miller. He said that the river there had always been haunted, however the spirit did not bother them as they knew not to be there after dark.”
“The young man was local?”
“He was the son of a merchant. He was travelling through on the way to the coast.”
“Did you speak with him?”
“No, Second Young Master Gao had already recovered from being in the river and had continued his journey some days before. I was not able to locate him,” Lan Xiuling says, sounding as if she regrets not having been able to do so. “I was able to speak with Doctor Hui who had treated him.”
Lan Wangji nods for her to continue, wanting more facts before he starts to consider what is going on.
“Doctor Hui is relatively new to Luhe, having recently qualified in Taizhou city, and had been interested to hear about any local stories, so he had asked Second Young Master Gao what had happened. Unfortunately the information was limited. Second Young Master Gao remembered something around his ankle tripping him and then being in the water. He then remembered nothing more until he was rescued. Doctor Hui said it was likely the shock of it and the coldness of the water that prevented him from remembering more.”
Lan Xiuling looks back at Lan Chunyue again. “There was nothing that we had heard that said the spirit was dangerous, and we are both well able to swim. So I decided that we should proceed with trying to speak to the spirit. A-Yue would observe, while I would play Enquiry to find out why it was lingering and what it needed to move on.”
So far, Lan Wangji thinks, everything that had been done would be his own chosen course of action. It is rather disturbing to know that at some point this had proved to be an incorrect choice.
“As Second Young Master Gao had encountered the spirit around half an hour before dawn we took a room at the inn for the night. We then proceeded to the mill an hour before sunrise to give us time to check the surrounding area before speaking with it.” Lan Xiuling shivers, and awkwardly adjusts the blanket that she has over her knees. “There was no indication that the mill itself was haunted, so knowing that Second Young Master Gao had been pulled into the river upstream from the mill we concentrated our search there.”
‘“What did you discover?”
“Very little. So I instructed Chunyue to wait and keep watch while I played Enquiry.”
“The spirit responded?” The spirit could choose to remain silent, but if it decided to speak it had to tell the truth to the best of its ability.
“It did not speak, although I asked it many times. There was a faint sound, like distant laughter. Chunyue then noticed a shimmering in the water upstream. We moved location with the intention of beginning again. I considered it possible that the spirit was old and faded, that perhaps I had not been close enough for it to answer.”
“Did it answer?”
“I didn’t get the chance to ask it. We had only just reached the new location when I was pulled into the water.” Stopping for a moment, Lan Xiuling breathing is unsteady for a moment before she continues, “It did not feel like a hand that grasped at me. More like a vine or a rope looped about my ankle. I did not have time to consider it for longer as once I was in the water it seemed to vanish. The current was very strong and the water was like ice. I couldn’t swim against it and there was nothing to fight. I thought I was going to die.”
The distress in her voice is clear, and Lan Wangji says, “If you cannot continue, do not force yourself.”
Lan Xiuling wipes her eyes, then shakes her head. “There is little more to tell. I must have become unconscious for a time as I remember little of Chunyue rescuing me from the river. She was conscious when I came round on the river bank. She had struck her head on the mill wheel while trying to free me and had become dizzy and faint. She was unable to manage her own sword, so I flew us both back directly.”
“You have done well,” Lan Wangji says. A two hour tandem flight isn’t an easy proposition, especially not when injured. Yet he knows how the desperate need to see someone you care about to safety can drive you on long past the point where it should no longer be possible.
She looks at the winter’s sun streaming in from outside. “It was only a few hours ago,” she says, a weary wonder in her voice. “It’s so strange. It feels so much longer and shorter at the same time.”
“It has passed. Rest now and recover,” Lan Wangji says, not wanting to intrude further now that he had all the information from her. “I will deal with the spirit in Luhe.”
Lan Xiuling stands, swaying slightly, she bows. “Thank you, Hanguang-jun.”
He returns the bow, then says, “Once the spirit is dealt with I will inform you.”
Outside, just far enough away so that he would be listening in on their conversation, but close enough if anyone were to call for assistance that he could still hear, Gu Shen is waiting.
“See that Lan Xiuling rests,” Lan Wangji says, before Gu Shen has a chance to ask him anything.
“Of course Hanguang-jun. Is there anything else?”
“The junior, Chunyue,” Lan Wangji asks once they are away from the room. “She will recover?”
“Yes, it’s nothing too serious,” Gu Shen replies. “She needs to rest for now. They both do. They will be able to return to the women’s area of the Cloud Recesses in a few days.”
After a brief visit to his uncle to inform him that he will be away from the Cloud Recesses for at least a day, Lan Wangji returns to the Jingshi to pack for the journey and to wait for Wei Wuxian to return from Caiyi.
He takes time to tidy their writing table, lingering over Wei Wuxian’s notes and drawings, the brush strokes fast and flowing, like the rivers of where he’d once called home. Ideas for water repelling talismans, a plan for using three compasses of evil in conjunction with each other to pinpoint haunting with more than one focus, a sketch of a small rabbit sitting under a leaf sheltering from the rain.
Lan Wangji knows that no one would consider his expression to be a smile, but it is there all the same as he runs a finger over the ears of the rabbit. Finding little drawings such as this, things that he knows Wei Wuxian has made for him, rather than because he has any specific interest in baby rabbits, are wonderous in ways that he cannot quite put into words.
This and so many other things; From drinking hot tea together on a cold morning, to watching the sunset over the mountain the heat of the summer day fading; from sitting beside each other as they work on their own projects, to nights or mornings sweat-damp and breathless as they find ecstasy in each others bodies.
It is joy and love in a myriad of ways, so that Lan Wangji’s heart feels full of it in ways that he’d dared hope for or even knew were possible.
Finally he places the drawing back on the table and turns his attention to placing everything that they might need in Luhe village into qiankun pouches so there is little that they have to carry. A necessity as they will both be flying on Bichen.
As much as Lan Wangji would like to be able to take to the road with Wei Wuxian, to spend time travelling and listening to him talk, he is too busy with his duties within Gusu Lan to be gone for long. He hopes that in time his brother will leave seclusion and once more take an active role in running the sect, which will allow him more freedom.
It worries him that their uncle is no longer young, that if his brother remains in seclusion for many years that more and more of the running of the sect will fall onto himself. The more Lan Wangji thinks of it the more he is certain that he doesn’t want to do it. He can teach, take juniors on night hunts and maintain the library, but he has no patience in dealing with the political side that comes with running a sect. He doesn’t want that responsibility of having to placate elders or have to attend conferences where he cannot walk out or cut people off with a glare or a sharp word, where he might have to maintain polite, banal conversations with people like Sect Leader Ouyang or Sect Leader Yao.
He doesn’t want to do it and he won’t unless there is absolutely no other choice. Sometimes he has even found himself wishing that he and Wei Wuxian had not returned to the Cloud Recesses after their elopement. They had both been truly free, for the first time in either of their lives, beholden to nothing but their own desires.
It is not a thought he wishes to have. It feels unworthy as if it contradicts everything that he should rightfully stand for. How can he continue to see himself as a righteous and upstanding person if he cannot place his sect and family before his personal wishes? If it were only himself he knows that he would do so, he would be unhappy, but he would not place the knowledge of that unhappiness on his family’s shoulders. Now however he has Wei Wuxian to consider as well, and his happiness matters more to Lan Wangji than his own.
It is the uncertainty of the future that is most difficult to bear, and the worry that there will be nothing that he can do to prevent his worst fears from coming true. It is the helplessness of it that weighs on his mind. Not that he can speak of it to anyone. How can he burden his family with unfounded fears of things that may not even come to pass?
He has just finished packing when the door opens and Wei Wuxian all but tumbles inside the Jingshi. His hair is wind blown and he is laughing, dragging Sizhui with him.
Seeing Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian shoves the cloth wrapped parcel that he’d been holding to Sizhui’s hand, then stands in front him, arms spread. “No peeking!”
“I will not look.” It is a joy to see the playful side of Wei Wuxian, to see him so relaxed and happy and Lan Wangji no longer hides his smiles.
Bounding over, Wei Wuxian wraps his arms about him, and gives him a kiss on the cheek. “Why is my husband home in the middle of the day? Could he be missing me? Or is he missing something from this morning?”
Sizhui looks slightly embarrassed at the display, lowering his eyes, but not retreating.
“Wei Ying, we are not alone.”
“Don’t mind us, Sizhui, we won’t do anything inappropriate until you’ve gone.”
“We will leave shortly,” Lan Wangji says, hoping to prevent any more awkwardness. “A matter requires our attention.”
“A matter?” The earlier joy in Wei Wuxian’s voice dips. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“A haunting. Do not be concerned.”
“You had me worried there for a moment there, Lan Zhan. Wei Wuxian smiles again. “Today is going to be the best. A morning at the market with my little radish and then a night hunt. Lan Zhan, it’s not my birthday is it?”
“May I accompany you?” Sizhui asks, bright and hopeful.
It is tempting to say yes, but it feels irresponsible to do so. Worse, it feels like tempting fate. The thoughts about how Chunyue and Sizhui being the same age feel even more uncomfortable now. Better disappointment now than injury later. Lan Wangji shakes his head. “Not today. While Wei Ying and I are away Uncle will require your assistance.”
It is clear it isn’t the answer that Sizhui had hoped for, but the look of disappointment is brief, and asks, “When is Grandmaster Lan expecting me?”
“Eat with him this evening, then ask how you may assist,” Lan Wangji replies. “Until then complete any tasks you need.”
“Of course, Hanguang-jun,” he replies. “I will see you both on your return.”
Part 2 https://silver-sun.dreamwidth.org/272281.html#cutid1
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