Work Text:
Death is death, Wei Wuxian decides.
It's final. It is a decision that he will not be damned for, a decision that he made on his own. It is his like so few things have been in his life. He feels the fragments of awareness in his soul, strings of fate stretching and wandering through the depths, pieces too small for the world to find. He knows they will look. There is peace in knowing that he cannot be found.
Wei Wuxian had never expected that, in so few years of life, he could die so tired.
It is quiet here. Simple. He drifts and thinks of the wrongs he has done, the sins that he will never atone for. Sometimes he thinks he hears whispers, cries from those he betrayed the worse. He thinks he might be able to join them, might be able to find them. He knows he does not deserve to, so he does not.
He drifts and it is better this way. He once despised punishment but he has now done enough wrongs to know that it is deserved.
He knew the price. He paid it. This is not rest, but Wei Wuxian did not deserve to rest in peace.
He does not know how long it has been. A flash of awareness -- a music note cuts through the nothingness like a blade. He thinks he knows --
He opens his eyes and sees Lan Wangji.
Time has passed and he is here. Lan Wangji looks like a specter in the night, a ghost that cannot rest, and Wei Wuxian would laugh if that part of him had survived the storm. Lan Wangji looks as though he is the one with the restless soul, deep circles under his eyes and jaw clenched and his forehead ribbon the only part of him that dares to flicker with the wind. Wei Wuxian is not whole enough to reach out but some part of him aches to, the part that saw the vulnerable shatter in Lan Wangji's eyes that final time they parted at the Burial Mounds.
Wei Wuxian had always meant to ask why. Another loose end he will lay to rest with him.
Lan Wangji frowns. He sends another jolting, painful note into the space between them. Wei Wuxian feels it land like a blow to his chest, a heavy, sinking hollow. He has been summoned somehow, a piece just enough for a breath, and Wei Wuxian is ready to walk away when he realizes --
There is blood on the guqin. Lan Wangji's face betrays nothing but blood drips from his fingers, sliced raw nearly to the bone. The beautiful snow white of the guqin is stained with streaks of red but Lan Wangji pretends not to notice, the smallest tick in his jaw betraying a crack in his composure.
Wei Wuxian cannot look away. The strings are razor sharp and Lan Wangji bleeds like he cannot feel it, bleeds like it does not matter, and it disturbs something so deep inside of Wei Wuxian that he does not even know how to name it.
Lan Wangji reaches to pluck another note but Wei Wuxian gets there first.
Two notes. A tentative hello.
Lan.
Zhan.
Lan Wangji's eyes fly open. He cannot see Wei Wuxian, will never be able to, but that stare pins him in place. Wei Wuxian is little more than a whisper of a memory, a phantom drifting towards nowhere in particular, but he feels whole in that moment. Just a flicker of muscle memory, as if lips that no longer breathe twitch to laugh.
Lan Wangji rests his hands on the strings. They shake so badly more skin splits, more blood spills.
Who are you.
It is not a question, but a demand. Wei Wuxian almost wishes he could laugh.
He has never seen anyone in the Lan sect play Inquiry before, but it is just as the stories say -- it is as though he is trapped there, a butterfly in glass. He is a wandering soul but under Lan Wangji's fingers he lingers, energy and pieces of his soul draining away with every passing breath. But Wei Wuxian clings onto the spiritual energy that Lan Wangji is offering him, silent and hesitant but unwavering as he clings to it, wondering how in the world so much time has passed that Lan Wangji would dare to seek him in the abyss.
Wei Wuxian is under his thrall, caught between the guqin and an emptiness that he had once condemned himself to in order to repent, and he thinks that the world will not end if he is selfish one more time.
He cannot lie and he does not want to. He plays his own name like a whisper. Wei Ying.
Lan Wangji's breath hitches. His eyes are open but they are unreadable, a flash of gold in the pale moonlight. He hesitates for one moment like he does not know what to ask, perhaps as if he has too many questions. Wei Wuxian waits for the accusation, the resentment.
The guqin sounds more like a cry as Lan Wangji plays, Are you at peace.
Wei Wuxian thinks that years and years ago, this would have made him split a rib in laughter. He would have rolled around howling on the ground and teased Lan Wangji through tears that he is bad at his job, that he knows the signs, of course he is not at peace. His soul is in tatters and he is clinging to the biggest piece and it is fading. It fades every moment that he is here and he cannot tell Lan Wangji and he knows he will not have to because he will not ask.
Lan Wangji searched for him, played until he bled, to ask Wei Wuxian if he was at peace. It would be funny if it didn't feel like another sin that he had committed, another thing that he would have to face when he inevitably faded back into a forever empty.
Wei Wuxian cannot lie and he does not want to, so he replies, No.
For all the years that they knew each other, for every bittersweet meeting and solemn goodbye, Wei Wuxian would not have assumed that HanGuang-Jun, the youngest master of the Twin Jades, would have considered him anything more than an enemy. Lan Wangji had faced him on the battlefield toward the end after warning him for years that he would turn into the worst version of himself. Wei Wuxian had ignored him because he was stronger than that, he would not be imprisoned by someone who believed himself to be righteous when he was simply too naive to understand what Wei Wuxian would give. What he was willing to lose, again and again, if it meant that he could even leave one good imprint of his life and legacy behind him.
He had wished Lan Wangji could have been his friend, had chased after him like it had been anything but hopeless. And now, their roles were reversed.
Lan Wangji had summoned him here after years. He asked him, impossibly, about rest.
He does not think that his honest answer will mean anything even as the solemn notes dissolve into the starlight. And then Lan Wangji shudders, his whole body shivering like he is seconds from falling apart at the seams, and for the first time Wei Wuxian sees the flicker of true pain cross that frostily beautiful face.
Why, Lan Wangji asks. His eyes chase the shadows like he might catch sight of something ethereal.
Wei Wuxian has more than one answer. He decides to say, Lost.
Where do you need to go.
Wei Wuxian hesitates. Nowhere.
Lan Wangji's frown carves deep into his face. His next notes take longer, echoing through the pieces of Wei Wuxian until he can pick out every single shred scattered into the winds; he says, How can I help you.
Can't, Wei Wuxian manages. He feels himself fading. He knows he will not last.
Lan Wangji must as well. His words play faster. Let me help you.
Can't.
Please.
Lan Wangji has never asked him for anything before. He has certainly never begged. Wei Wuxian feels the sharp sting of something like despair.
Better this way.
You deserve to rest.
He does not. Wei Wuxian still feels the blood on his hands, knows that some of it must have belonged to the Lans. He does not understand. He is tired.
Lan Wangji floods spiritual energy into the air and begs, Stay.
He wants to cry, he can't cry, he is tired. Can't.
Will you come back when I play.
Can't.
Lan Wangji's blood stains the strings. It sounds like a sob when he plays, I am sorry I could not save you.
Wei Wuxian wants to smile. It is better this way.
He feels his hands losing purchase although he does not have to physically touch the strings. He feels like he might fall asleep, like a limitless nothing is waiting for him. He has wandered for so long and he has found himself here, despite all the odds, the last fragments of his heart playing through guqin strings. There are a thousand things left unsaid but this will have to be enough. He is so tired and he has traveled so far. He is not heading toward the voices he knows, the ones he loves and the ones he doomed. He will wander the earth until every piece is gone and, maybe then, he will know some semblance of peace. Or maybe he won't. Wei Wuxian figured he would find out when he got there.
He does not wait for a question. He knows he is out of time. He feels the first sign of letting go, of closure, when he plays, Thank you, Lan Zhan.
He does not know what he is thanking Lan Wangji for. Perhaps it's for calling him here for one last talk, or maybe for remembering him enough through the passage of time to play for him at all. Or maybe it's something else lost in the torn pieces, Wei Wuxian thinks quietly as he watches Lan Wangji shudder with a sob that does not break through those marble lips. Wei Wuxian looks at them, wonders what they would look like when he smiles. Hopes that, someday, someone will find out. It is better this way.
The melody sounds like a carefree laugh fading away, like a final cry of a forgotten memory as Lan Wangji uses his hands to cry, Wei Ying.
But Wei Wuxian is already gone.
He does not know that Lan Wangji sits there for a long time. That he feels emptier than he has since he found out that Wei Wuxian was no longer of this world, emptier than when he stood among the ashes of the Burial Mounds with no signs of the soul of the man he loved. Lan Wangji had never been one for speaking but he had screamed into the echoing silence of the graveyard, the destroyed refuge of the home Wei Wuxian had tried to build for those the world no longer believed in. Wei Wuxian's soul is long gone by the time Lan Wangji screams again, fingers cut to the bone and his heart hurting worse than that first night. That first moment. That first breath after knowing that he was alone. He would always be alone.
Lan Wangji screams Wei Wuxian's name. No one hears him.
He stays there for a long time before he slowly turns for home.
He comes back the next night, and the next. The next one after that and every single night that follows.
Until Lan Wangji stands on the Dafan Mountain and hears new notes in the breeze. A memory just beyond the trees.
A tentative hello.