As Spring Will Surely Come 6/10

[silver_sun]

Part 6

They stop twice more on their journey home, both times at Wei Wuxian’s insistence, never staying in the air for more than half an hour at a time. There is no recurrence of losing track of where and when he is, but Lan Wangji is grateful all the same when they land just outside the Cloud Recesses.

It is late in the afternoon when they arrive, daylight starting to fade, although it is still a few hours before curfew.

It feels duplicitous to take off the sling just before they are in sight of the gate and the juniors who will be on duty there, but Lan Wangji does it all the same. He doesn’t want to have to answer questions about it, nor he doesn’t want to cause anyone unnecessary worry. No, all he wants to do is get to the Jingshi where he can be alone with Wei Wuxian and rest.

If he moves a little stiffly and if his shoulders and back aren’t quite as straight as usual it goes unnoticed or at least unremarked upon by the juniors as they greet him.

“Hanguang-jun, I hope your journey was good,” the older of the two youths says. “Grandmaster Lan has been awaiting your return.” He turns to the younger junior who is guarding the gate with him. “Go and inform Grandmaster Lan of Hanguang-jun’s arrival, as he asked.”

Lan Wangji feels a twist of nerves in his stomach. What could his uncle need him so urgently for? Perhaps it is only that his return is later than expected, but fears relating to his brother’s wellbeing grow all the same. He knows asking the junior will be pointless. They will not be aware of any private family matters. “I will wait for him at home.”

It annoys him that they do not speak to Wei Wuxian or extend their welcome to him. It is better than hostility or distrust, and in time he hopes that will change to acceptance.

“Come on, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, putting a hand on his arm. “Let’s go home.”

That Wei Wuxian thinks of it as home and speaks of it as such still brings a rush of joy. So despite his concerns about what his uncle wishes to speak with him about, there is contentment to be found in walking down familiar paths to the home they now share.

The Jingshi is as they had left it. Quiet and peaceful, the garden that Wei Wuxian has worked on around it is still full of life despite the cold season. It is their sanctuary against the world outside.

Pausing just long enough for them to take off their shoes, Lan Wangji pulls Wei Wuxian into his arms. He needs this moment. Needs it as he needs air or water or food. It’s automatic for Lan Wangji to kiss him, for it to be hungry and fierce with desire.

Wei Wuxian’s response is every bit as fervent, tongue and teeth teasing at his lips, his hands straying to rest low on his back.

Wanting more Lan Wangji holds him tighter, bodies pressed together from chest to thigh. The movement, as undemanding as it would normally be, hurts, his shoulder protesting at the sudden force of it. He swallows back a soft sound of pain. He doesn’t want to stop, willing to suffer, if it means that this moment of closeness won’t end.

The sound doesn’t escape Wei Wuxian’s notice and as soon as they break the kiss, he pulls back and he takes the sling from inside his sleeve. Holding it out to him, he says, “No one can see you here, Lan Zhan. It’s just you and me. Put it back on.”

It would be wise to do so, but not yet, Lan Wangji decides. “Later. I do not wish my uncle to see.”

There is something close to annoyance on Wei Wuxian’s face, although he sounds more exasperated and angry when he says, “What does it matter if he does? He shouldn’t get cross at you for being hurt. I don’t want to see you in pain.”

“It is not that,” he replies. Before he can elaborate that it isn’t that he wishes to spare himself his uncle’s displeasure, it is that he does not wish to cause him worry, there is a sharp knock at the door.

His uncle has already arrived. Worry builds once more. His uncle must have left what he was doing immediately to come to see him.

“I guess this means it’s time for me to check on Little Apple.” Wei Wuxian presses a quick kiss to his cheek, then leaves via the back of the house, telling him, “I’ll be back soon.”

Taking a deep breath, Lan Wangji holds it, before exhaling slowly, steadying himself. Then hoping whatever it is his uncle wishes to see him about isn’t too serious, he opens the door.

“Uncle, I hope you have been well.”

“As well as I can be with the worry you put us all through,” Lan Qiren says as he walks in. “Seven days and not a word.”

“Uncle-”

“Do not interrupt! You informed me you would be gone for two days, three at most,” Lan Qiren snaps as he takes a seat at the low table. “I was beginning to think he had tricked you into running off again.”

Lan Wangji’s heart sinks. He doesn’t want to do this. He really doesn’t feel well enough to do this. He keeps his voice even and replies, “Wei Ying has never tricked me.”

“How would you know?” He holds up a hand indicating that he expects Lan Wangji to stay silent. “You’ve never had any sense where that boy is concerned.”

“Husband. He is my husband.” His shoulder aches and he wishes he’d listened to Wei Wuxian and put the sling back on. It will have to wait until his uncle has left now.

Lan Qiren makes a derisive sound. “You went on a night hunt against a spirit that had already injured a skilled senior disciple, with only him for support.”

“He is all I need.”

“Really?” Lan Qiren looks at where he is holding his arm, trying to ease the ache. “Then how did that occur?”

“I was careless.”

“Because of him, no doubt,”

While technically true, it feels like betrayal to say such a thing. It was not Wei Wuxian’s fault he had turned round to speak to him. To say no however is a lie and he will not lie to his uncle. “The fault is mine alone. I turned my back to check the spirit flags.”

“Can’t you trust him to do it?”

“Do not let personal dislike cloud your judgement,” Lan Wangji replies. He tries once more to settle his shoulder into a more comfortable position and fails. It throbs, the muscles around it pulling tight and increasingly painful. “Wei Ying’s ability has never been in question.”

“Ability, no. Motive? Most definitely.”

It is rare that he argues with his uncle, despite their differences of opinion, but he cannot, will not allow such words to be spoken unchallenged. “If you can only speak ill of him, do not speak at all. If you cannot be civil in my home, leave.”

“How dare you!” Lan Qiren looks incensed. “That man has-”

“Enough!” Lan Wangji brings his hand down sharply on the table top. “You-” The flare of pain through his shoulder and across his back steals his breath, cuts off anything he was going to say.

“Wangji?” There is no annoyance in his uncle’s voice now. Lan Qiren is on his feet and round the table to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “What happened?”

“It will pass.” Cradling his injured arm against his chest, Lan Wangji’s voice is unsteady as he takes faltering breaths, trying to bring the pain under control. “It is an old injury.”

“What old injury?” Lan Qiren asks, not sounding reassured at all. “When did you ever hurt your arm?”

“My shoulder. My back.” He feels as if he is being unfair in even mentioning it, but Lan Wangji can’t bring himself to lie. “The scars are old, but not everything heals.”

Lan Qiren blanches, the colour draining from his face so sudden and severe that Lan Wangji wonders if he is going to faint. His voice has none of its usual confidence and command as he asks, “All these years, you have been in pain?”

“It is not constant.” He looks at where his uncle’s hand is placed on his shoulder. It is an old man’s hand, skin wrinkled and joints slightly swollen from the cold weather. It’s upsetting in a way that he can’t put into words. He swallows. He’s exhausted and in pain to the point he’s starting to feel dizzy with it again. “It rarely troubles me.”

There is no sense that Lan Qiren has been reassured by this.

“Your choice was limited.” Closing his eyes, Lan Wangji concentrates on his breathing and flow of energy. “I am not unaware.”

In choosing to turn his back on his family, his sect and the rest of the cultivation world by saving Wei Wuxian he had been committing treason. It did not matter that it was for love. Treason meant death. Losing his own life in exchange for Wei Wuxian survival had been something he’d been willing to accept. He would have moved on to the next life knowing that he at least had put Wei Wuxian first.

He had been resigned to death. He had not questioned it when he had been told what his punishment would be. Thirty-three strikes with the discipline whip for the thirty-three elders he’d injured while protecting Wei Wuxian. Thirty-three strikes and three years of seclusion to recover and reflect on the rules that he had broken.

There were only two qualified to punish him. Only two within all of Gusu Lan who had the right to use the discipline whip: His brother and his uncle. By rights it should have his brother as sect leader to do so, but it had been his uncle who had always overseen discipline. His brother has never used it, neither before that day or since.

He remembers his uncle’s face, hard and serious, as they had walked out into the courtyard, the whole sect gathered around to watch and learn the repercussions of such actions.

“You will survive this,” he had said as Lan Wangji had knelt before him. He had placed a hand on his shoulder, the last touch it would ever have as the unmarred skin of youth. “Wangji, I can do no more than -”

“Wangji.” His uncle's voice cuts into his thoughts. “Put this on. It is what it is meant for. Why aren’t you wearing it?”

Blinking, trying to clear his vision of the lingering images of the past, Lan Wangji sees that his uncle has picked up the sling that had been left on the table and is holding it out to him. “I did not wish to worry you.”

“If you do not wish me to worry, you will wear it and tell me what happened,” Lan Qiren grumbles.

“The spirit trapped me underwater. I attempted to free myself, but my arm was injured.” Unbidden, his heart rate starts to climb at the memory of it. Cold sweat beads on the back of his neck and he shivers. “I was drowning.” It had been so close. A few minutes more and… He swallows against the rising feeling of nausea.“Wei Ying saved me. I could not escape.”

Lan Qiren is silent, clearly shaken, as Lan Wangji’s words sit heavily as they were meant to. He looks weary, somehow older than when he had pushed his way into the Jingshi less than half an hour ago. Finally he says, “You need to stop being so reckless.”

Of all the things that Lan Wangji had expected him to say, this had not been one of them. “How? The spirit caused harm. We stood against it. Do not allow evil to go unchecked.”

“Correct in principle, reckless in execution.” Lan Qiren shakes his head. “You are not a child and you are not free to do as you please. Xichen has allowed you far too much freedom and not enough responsibility.”

Free is the last thing that Lan Wangji feels. It’s so wrong he doesn’t know where to start.

“You go where you please, you do what you please, speak to people how you please. You rarely think about how it reflects on the sect. Wangji, I will not be here forever.”

“You are not old.”

“I’m almost seventy.”

“Seventy is not old.”

Lan Qiren looks around the room and sighs, slow and so very tired. “Do you remember your grandfather?”

Confused, Lan Wangji shakes his head, uncertain why his uncle would ask him this. He barely remembers his parents. His grandparents had both passed on long before he was born. Before his father had become sect leader. Before his parents had even met. There is something that he is missing, but he doesn’t feel well enough to think clearly about it.

“We might not have the issues that the Nie sect have,” Lan Qiren says wearily, “but neither do we seem to have any ability for great old age either.”

Lan Wangji wants to argue against it, to say that there were many sects now where parents and grandparents were gone, lost in the war with the Wen. Yet with the exception of his father, that is not the case for the Lan sect. Confronting the thought that one day his uncle will not be there, that he and his brother will be the elder generation is worse than almost any spirit or creature he has had to fight.

“I was in your place once, Wangji, so do not believe I do not know how you feel. I was not supposed to be the one leading Gusu Lan,” Lan Qiren says. “But my brother’s actions left me with no choice.”

It would be easier if his uncle was still lecturing him about carelessness, Lan Wangji thinks, there would be a strange comfort in the familiarity of it. This kind of conversation, where emotion has as much of a role as facts, has never been something that they have done. Perhaps his uncle had with his brother, in preparing him for the task of being sect leader. Did this mean that his uncle was expecting his brother’s seclusion to become a permanent thing?

When Lan Wangji has said nothing, Lan Qiren speaks again, “I wasn’t much older than Sizhui is now when I had to take charge and deal with the mess that he’d made.”

His shoulder throbs despite the sling, and Lan Wangji closes his eyes. He wonders if his uncle means to imply that he should do more. That he is acting like a child and hiding from his responsibilities, as if they will vanish if he does not notice them.

Is that not what you have been doing?

The thought cuts deep, and he knows that now it has occurred to him he will not be able to put it from his mind. All the thoughts of the future he has dared to imagine now that Wei Wuxian has returned are ones of freedom and minimal responsibilities towards his sect. They are ones of travelling the world together, of living their lives however they see it.

Is he now to lose that?

Only the worst case scenarios come to mind. If his brother does not leave seclusion and his uncle grows too old to act as sect leader, what then? What if his uncle passes and that loss is what breaks his brother? What if he loses them both? There is no heir to the sect, officially or otherwise. Would the elders seek him to take up that role? Or would it fall to some distant cousin? What if it were one who was not accepting of his relationship with Wei Wuxian?

He feels sick and he knows it’s not only from the pain. Every option is awful and he cannot see a way past or around any of them. Nor can he speak of his fears aloud, less doing so somehow makes them true.

“You look unwell,” Lan Qiren says, standing up. “You should rest and don’t let that husband of yours keep you awake all night or drag you into anything else.”

“You do not have to leave.” He can’t bring himself to say the rest. He can’t ask him to stay and not to leave him alone with the thoughts currently in his mind. “You are not unwelcome here.”

“It isn’t a matter of welcome. You need to rest and I don’t have time to talk all evening,” Lan Qiren says, retreating back to his usual brusqueness, as he prepares to leave. “I will speak to you once you are recovered.”

“If you are certain.”

“Of course I am.” He gestures for Lan Wangji to remain seated. “I will pass the news of your return and the defeat of the spirit on to Lan Xiuling. She had been concerned that she’d sent you into danger.”

“Her niece has recovered?” Caught up first in defeating the spirit and then in his own injuries, Lan Wangji hasn’t thought of Chunyue until now.

“The junior who was injured by the spirit? Yes, she has returned to her lessons. No lasting harm done.”

“That is good.”

Lan Qiren nods and then makes his way to the door. Before he leaves he turns back to Lan Wangji. “You will return to your duties soon also.”

It is a statement of fact. There is no possibility that Lan Wangji cannot do so. “Of course, Uncle. I will not neglect my duties.”

Lan Wangji is still sitting at the table, unhappy thoughts of what the future may bring chasing themselves around in his head, when Wei Wuxian returns.

Taking one look at him, Wei Wuxian goes over to him. Standing behind him, he put his arms about his shoulders. “What did your uncle want? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

“You may.” Leaning back slightly, Lan Wangji rests against him, grateful for the support. “Our absence concerned him.”

“Yours you mean,” Wei Wuxian says, not put out by it. “So everything is alright? Nothing happened while we were away? ”

Closing his eyes, Lan Wangji relaxes into the support offered to him. “It has not. There is too much work for my uncle to do alone. I will return to taking classes as soon as I am able.”

There is a pause filled with Wei Wuxian’s unspoken concern that he might not give himself time to properly recover. He sighs softly, then carefully touches the sling now on Lan Wangji’s arm. “You put it back on.”

“Uncle made me. He told me to rest.”

“He acts all cross, but he cares really,” Wei Wuxian replies, the relief clear in his voice. “You know he even spoke to me just now. Usually he ignores me or glares and walks off faster, but he told me to make sure that I look after you properly. I told you he’d like me in the end.”

“You did.” At the time he had wondered if Wei Wuxian’s optimism had been misplaced, whether there could ever be anything more than pointed silence between his uncle and his husband.

Kissing the top of Lan Wangji’s head, he replies, “You should listen to me now too.”

The now familiar teasing tone in his voice helps ease any concerns he has about what is going to be asked of him. “I should?”

“Yes. You should sit there and rest, while I make us something to eat.” Leaning down a little further, he kisses Lan Wangji’s cheek. “I know, no chilli in yours.”

“Correct. No wine either.”

“Ah you’re so boring, Lan Zhan! How did I ever marry such a boring man?”

“For love.” Lan Wangji doesn’t have to see Wei Wuxian’s face to know that he’s shy and blushing now.

They are home. The spirit had claimed no lives. They are safe and will recover. The future is uncertain, but he has faced worse situations and now he has Wei Wuxian at his side.

Do not assume the worst, only plan for it. It is good advice, but planning feels like tempting fate.

So Lan Wangji watches Wei Wuxian prepare their meal, listens to him talk, tastes the food he asks him to try. The fear for what the future might hold is still there, but for the moment it is relegated to being a shadow in the background of their life.

He cannot bring himself to voice his concerns to Wei Wuxian or to trouble him with those fears, not after how much worry he has caused him over the last few days. Nor will he place them on his uncle or brother. No, Lan Wangji tells himself, he has to manage then and any that the future might bring by himself.
 

Part 7 - https://silver-sun.dreamwidth.org/273444.html