As Spring Will Surely Come 9/10

[silver_sun]

Part 9

The first week that follows Lan Qiren’s stroke passes in a blur, to the point that Lan Wangji cannot separate one day from the next. He wakes early and spends the whole day at his uncle’s house trying to assist in any way he can. Sharing energy and helping his uncle direct and control his own. Playing for him. Assisting him to eat and to drink the medicine that Lan Qiuyun had provided.

It’s hard, almost impossibly so, to see his uncle like this. To see him struggle to make himself understood, both in finding the correct words and being able to speak them clearly enough so that those listening know what he means. To see the fear in his eyes as he tries to move his fingers, but only the left hand complies, the right shaking, but otherwise unresponsive. How that look of fear turns to one of despair as he realises that his legs are the same, and that he will not be able to stand or walk unaided.

It’s hard too to watch his brother struggle with everything that has happened, not just recently, but since the events at the Guanyin Temple in Yunping. Allowing him to have some time by himself had helped, but leaving him entirely alone had been every bit as detrimental as Lan Wangji had feared that it might. Perhaps not every bit, in his worst fears and nightmares the door to that house never opened again.

He sees Lan Qiuyun take Lan Xichen aside, sometimes it’s just a brief word, sometimes it’s longer and he comes back red eyed from weeping, on others it’s clear that she has told him to rest and give him something to be able to do so.

So the days pass. There is little time or energy left for anything other than sleep, even time to be intimate with Wei Wuxian. Even the sleep that he does manage to get is disturbed, the constant worry that fills his days bleeding over into his dreams. He hides the nightmares from Wei Wuxian the best he can, not wanting to disturb him or make him any more concerned than he already is.

It is exhausting both mentally and physically, especially as Lan Wangji cannot see an end in sight to the situation. All he can do is get through one day at a time.

One week becomes two and then three, and slowly Lan Qiren starts to recover.

It’s difficult as Lan Qiren is frustrated and angry by his current limits, and that frustration all too often comes out as anger. More than once he has seen Lan Xichen excuse himself after their uncle has snapped at him, scolded him for being too soft and too like his father, too willing to give up.

Despite Lan Wangji’s fears that such harshness will harm the small signs of progress that his brother is starting to make, their uncle’s irritability actually seems to drive Lan Xichen on with more determination.

“If I can help him at all, no matter how long it takes,” Lan Xichen had told him, late one night when once their uncle was asleep and Lan Qiuyun had left for the day. “Then perhaps I still have a purpose in this life.”

It does not feel like a solution or even something that is healthy in the long term, but all Lan Wangji can do is cling to the hope that in helping their uncle, in seeing him slowly recover, Lan Xichen will find some level of peace and perhaps find some shared healing.

---

With Lan Qiren’s health slowly improving, but Lan Xichen still not ready or able to lead Gusu Lan, Lan Wangji finds himself taking on most of the roles of running the sect, while his brother becomes his uncle’s carer.

It is not a position that he has ever wanted or one wishes to keep doing. Yet he finds that he cannot say no to it - how can he when there is no one else who can do it?

Tiredness has become his constant companion. Early mornings, late nights and when he does finally sleep, all too frequent nightmares, have sapped his energy. He finds that leaving his bed, and the warm and sleeping form of Wei Wuxian each morning increasingly hard. He has never been a lazy person or one lacking in stamina, nor is he one to shirk his duties or break rules needlessly. So he finds it strange that he finds himself wishing that just once he could sleep past the prescribed waking hour, that he could spend a whole day with Wei Wuxian without the constant need to worry about what needs to be done or what will go wrong if he does not do it.

Yet that isn’t the only reason. There is also the lingering concern about where Wei Wuxian goes and what he has been doing during all the times that Lan Wangji has returned home and found him absent.

He has asked him directly, but has been met with only vague replies - training, exploring, just seeing what’s out there, none of them seem like the whole truth. He has tried asking Sizhui and any other members’ Gusu Lan who work in places that Wei Wuxian might frequent, such as the library, but he is there only rarely compared to his absences. He has tried ignoring his fears, telling himself that they are baseless, that Wei Wuxian has every right to spend his day as he pleases, but in the end nothing works.

The only way he can put his mind at ease, he decides, is to find out for himself what Wei Wuxian is doing. It feels awful to even consider following him, to watch him in secret, but he doesn’t know what else to do.

So when Lan Wangji returns from teaching what would normally have been one of his uncle’s classes to find the Jingshi empty yet again, he decides that it is time to find out. Lan Xichen is with Lan Qiren, so his presence isn’t needed there for the moment.

It is with concern that he notices that Wei Wuxian has taken Subian with him as well as Chenqing, the sword missing from the stand where it normally resides next to Bichen. He would not need his sword to go to the library or visit Little Apple or the Cold Ponds.

Taking Bichen with him, Lan Wangji walks down to the gates to the Cloud Recesses. If Wei Wuxian has left then the disciples on duty would have seen him and if he is lucky might even know where he was going.

Lan Wangji’s heart sinks as he realises that the two juniors on the gate are the same two who hadn’t acknowledged Wei Wuxian’s present when they had arrived back after their time in Luhe village. They can confirm however that he had left barely more than an hour earlier.

On foot there is a limit to how far Wei Wuxian could have gone in such a short time, even if he were hurrying. The path leading down from the Cloud Recesses to join the road that runs between Gusu City and Caiyi town is a singular one, so the question becomes where would he go after that.

There is no sign of Wei Wuxian on the path or on the road, but there are a group of farm workers out in one of the fields to the side of the road, clearing the ditches along the field margins so that the newly planted crop would be less likely to be flooded out.

“Are you looking for the other young master who came by?” One of them calls out to him, when they see him Lan Wangji look first down one road and then the other.

“Dressed in black?” he asks, not quite daring to hope just yet that the person they’ve seen is Wei Wuxian.

“Yes, he was.” Leaning on his spade, the worker points down the road that leads to Caiyi town and beyond to Biling Lake. “He was in a hurry.”

“He usually is,” the other man working alongside him adds. “I don’t know what can be so urgent there, so often.”

Leaving the two men to their speculation, Lan Wangji hurries on towards Caiyi town. It would be quicker to fly, but as he doesn’t know where Wei Wuxian is going he decides against it, as it would be too easy to miss him.

Halfway to the town the road turns away from the farm land, cutting through the woodland until it reaches the edge of Biling Lake before curving around its edge to reach Caiyi on its far shore.

Still there is no sign of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji starts to wonder if the two men had been mistaken or worse had deliberately misled him, sending him in entirely the wrong direction. There is no reason to suspect them of such a thing, and all the other times that Wei Wuxian had gone out he’d returned unharmed. Unharmed, but often cold and wet.

The lake. Perhaps there was something in Biling Lake that had caught his interest. Years before the Waterborne Abyss had caused trouble for the people of Caiyi, but that had been dealt with long ago.

Leaving the road entirely, Lan Wangji walks through the trees, taking the most direct route to the lakeshore.

Standing at the water’s edge he looks around for any sign that Wei Wuxian might be there, and if he is what he might be doing. Were there Water Ghouls present again? Was he going out to fight them alone? Or was it something else? What could it be that he’d felt the need to keep it secret?

Off to his left across the lake there is a flicker of light. The winter sun glinting off something just above the water’s surface, something bright and metallic.

He turns to look.

The sight that meets him taking his breath away.

Wei Wuxian is flying, Subian skimming low and fast over the water, his hair streaming out behind him in the breeze.

It is a sight that Lan Wangji hasn’t seen since they were fifteen and had faced the Waterborne Abyss on this very lake. They’d been so young, so confident in their abilities. It makes him feel old. It’s more than half a lifetime ago, when they had no idea of what they would face in a few short years.

He watches, joy so long absent filling him. He’d not appreciated how Wei Wuxian had flown back then, the speed and power of it. No, he’d called it reckless back then, ridiculous and attention seeking. He’d been so confused and angry at himself for the feelings that came with being around him. So he’d been angry and confrontational, to the point that it appeared to those watching to be hatred, rather than the first stirrings of a love that would last beyond death itself.

Yet why was he training in secret? Why had he felt the need to hide it?

Yet why would he?

Why would Wei Wuxian want him to see the struggles that had to have come with getting himself back to this point? Why would he want to be watched as he lost power or balance and fell in the water?

Lan Wangji knows that when he was pushing himself during his recovery from his punishment from the discipline whip he’d not wanted to be watched. No, having anyone, even his brother or uncle witness his pain or weakness as he’d tried to run through a sword drill or hold a handstand.

Seeing their concern or worse, pity at how he was, would have made it so much harder. He had wanted privacy in those moments and they had allowed him to have it.

His joy at watching Wei Wuxian fly again vanishes. He is witnessing something that he was not yet meant to see. In time it would have been shared with him, but instead of trusting him, he has done something shameful.

Worse than breaking any rule is the feeling of guilt. He has done what he’d sworn to himself he’d never do. He has doubted him. He has been suspicious of him. He had not trusted him.

He will not interrupt Wei Wuxian, not now, but he will have to tell him the truth. All he can do now is return home, do the work that he has neglected by being here and trying to think of a way to apologise for his actions.

Although walking home would give him time to think, Lan Wangji returns to the Cloud Recesses by sword, Bichen covering the distance in a fraction of the time it would take on foot.

Filled with nervous energy, he cannot focus on the letters and paperwork piled on his table, so he turns his attention to tidying the rooms. It is a job soon completed, but has done little to aleve all the thoughts that are chasing round in his head.

He can’t play his qin as it is still at his uncle’s house, from where he’d played for him that morning. In his current frame of mind he cannot bring himself to go there, less he has to explain his mood to them.

He needs something to occupy his body as well as his mind.

It’s familiar, despite the fact that he has none done this for weeks, not since before going to Luhe. His shoulder twinges as he settles himself into position. It isn’t comfortable, but it’s bearable, and if he is honest he almost welcomes the pain.

It is punishment.

He has broken more than a dozen rules by doing what he did and for that alone he deserves to be punished. That he had betrayed the trust that he has always told Wei Wuxian that he has in him makes it feel like the punishment should be more severe.

He’s exhausted even before he’s held the handstand for a few minutes. The previous night’s sleep had been almost nonexistent, the nightmare that had woken him in the early hours so disturbing that he’s almost been physically sick.

The ache in his shoulder grows worse, but he still holds position, determined that he will see it through. Without warning his whole shoulder seizes, cramping so sharply that pain lances down his arm.

Off balance and too exhausted to compensate quickly enough, he falls.

It’s not the first time. It had happened often enough when he’d been trying to regain his fitness once the whip scars on his back had healed enough not to rip open with movement.

Laying on the floor where he’s fallen, Lan Wangji breathes through the initial burst of pain, waiting for it to settle to the lingering, bruise-like ache that he knows will come next.

“Lan Zhan!”

From the doorway, Wei Wuxian is looking at him with something close to panic in his eyes. Dropping Subian and the bag of food that he’d been holding, he runs to his side and falls to his knees beside him. “No, don’t get up. What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Sick?”

“I fell.” His shoulder throbs and while he knows it is going to be a very uncomfortable few days he knows that there is no new or lasting damage. He feels stupid. Pathetic. “I was doing a handstand, and I fell.”

“A handstand? Why were you doing that?” Wei Wuxian gives a shaky laugh and puts an arm around him. “You had me so worried there for a moment. You really can’t do things like that to me. You know what a weak man I am. How am I supposed to take it?”

It’s a joke. In Lan Wangji’s heart he knows that it is, but he makes him feel awful all the same. He is causing him distress. He’s failing him as

“You know I’m teasing you, right?” Wei Wuxian says when Lan Wangji hasn’t replied. “I know I laughed, but you didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”

He shakes his head. It isn’t a new injury and he doesn’t feel like he can accept love and kindness that will be heaped on him if he says yes. Not when he hasn’t admitted the shameful truth of what he has done.

“I saw you flying.” He feels sick admitting it, but lying would be worse. He must be honest about his failure of trust and take whatever harsh words or punishment that Wei Wuxian will give to him. “Earlier, I followed you. Spied upon you.”

“What? Why?” The confusion and hurt at why he would do such a thing is clear in Wei Wuxian’s voice. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”

Although he hadn’t thought it possible, he feels worse now than before. He has ruined everything. He has failed him.

You failed him the first time too. Why should it be any different this time? You let everyone down in the end. You disappoint them. You’ll lose them all. You’ll bury them and there will be no getting them back.

His eyes burn, his throat too tight to speak as he tries to push down the storm of emotions inside. He can’t burden Wei Wuxian with this. He should be stronger than this. He has to be.

He just needs to breathe. A few deep breaths to pull himself back from what feels like standing on the edge of a bottomless well from which there is no escape.

One breath that’s all he needs. It catches in his throat, the sound leaving him as a sob.

And he can’t stop the hot spill of tears that have started to flow.

“Don’t cry!” Wei Wuxian says, “Hey, it’s alright. It really doesn’t matter that much. Lan Zhan, please.”

He wants to tell him that it does matter, that he should be furious with him, that he’s let him down, that he should have trusted him, but feels like he’s choking, drowning in every tear that he’s swallowed back these past weeks and months.

There is fear in Wei Wuxian’s eyes as he tries to wipe away the tears coursing down Lan Wangji’s cheeks. “Whatever’s wrong? You have to tell me.”

“Everything.” Because it is. It’s almost drowning and the injury to his shoulder. It’s the pain of infection, the flare up of old hurts and the associated memories that had threatened to overwhelm him. It’s his brother’s seclusion and depression. It’s his uncle’s illness and all the stresses of running the sect. It’s all the nights he’s woken with a hammering heart, sick with fear and barely knowing where he is. And it’s his worries for Wei Wuxian’s safety and their future together.

Keeping an arm around him, Wei Wuxian gently pulls him down, so that Lan Wangji can rest his head on his knee. “That’s it, Lan Zhan.It’s alright, you can let go now. I’ve got you.”

Not that holding on is an option. Something feels like it has torn loose inside him, the floodgate of repressed emotions now opened and in full flow.

Clinging to Wei Wuxian, he lets himself fall, raw sobs and more tears than he thinks it’s possible for anyone to contain overtake him.

It stops slowly, leaving him dizzy with exhaustion, his throat and eyes are sore to the point he doesn’t wish to speak or open them. Yet in spite of all this he somehow feels lighter for finally having been able to let go.

Slowly, the discomfort in his shoulder once more making itself felt, Lan Wangji sits up. “Wei Ying, I-”

“It’s alright. You don’t have to explain yourself, not to me.” Wei Wuxian wipes his eyes on his sleeve, they look as red from weeping as Lan Wangji’s own. “I understand. It all builds up and then ‘boom’ it goes off like a firecracker, right?”

It’s not the analogy that Lan Wangji himself would have used, but it is not inaccurate. He nods and leaves it at that.

They sit together on the floor, Lan Wangji’s head resting on Wei Wuxian’s shoulder, the weak sunlight of a winter’s afternoon shining in on them, giving hope of a brighter tomorrow.

Part 10 (final part) - https://silver-sun.dreamwidth.org/274315.html