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Wei Ying is away on errantry, as he is wont to do when tensions mount within cultivational politics. He insists he doesn’t have the stomach for it; Lan Wangji knows it has something to do with the look in his own eyes when Wei Ying is inevitably implicated in whatever nonsense is transpiring that year. Wei Ying can handle it; his husband finds such slanders difficult to hear. “It makes you cranky, Lan Zhan, and then nobody gets anything done. I’ll just wander for a bit, walk the earth. Get that chubby donkey of mine some exercise.”
Lan Wangji is, by now, used to these absences. As much as one can be, anyway; the ache hadn’t faded in sixteen years, and it certainly wouldn’t die away after a few weeks. Anyway, he promised to return, and Lan Wangji believes in his husband. Before he left, though, he had extracted a promise from Lan Wangji to "do something nice for yourself, something you can’t do while I'm here! Something just for Lan Zhan, and not for anybody else. Even Hanguang-Jun has to have something to indulge in, every once in a while."
"...."
"Other than my pliant and willing body, of course."
And Lan Wangji is dutiful and Lan Wangji had Promised, so he gives the question due consideration. The immediate answer is, of course, "Wei Ying back in my arms and laughing," but he had specified that he was excluded as a factor.
Further investigations of the question yields no further results. He resolves, instead, to try his husband’s methods. Wei Ying clearly knows how to want things. He does it all the time. It’s why he’s constantly in trouble.
Lan Wangji is going to Wing It.
So the next morning he wakes up at five (he really does like it) and spends some time with the bunnies and with Sizhui. He plays the guqin. Heconvinces Xichen to take his place in a minor meeting he doesn't want to attend. (This serves two purposes: it's good for Brother to take on such things. It keeps him from spiraling. It also tends to result in much quicker resolution of disputes.)
By the position of the sun, it is midmorning. Lan Wangji has run out of tasks to wing.
He sighs. Though he did make an honest effort to follow his own desires, if he stops now after such a tame morning Wei Ying will most certainly Pout. Wei Ying's pout is far too close to Wei Ying Sad. This is unacceptable.
He goes to the cold springs to think.
What... does he want? What has he ever wanted?
When he was little, very little, he wanted to see mom.
He wanted to follow Brother around and make him smile.
He grew. He wanted Uncle to be proud of him.
He grew. He wanted Wei Ying to go away.
He grew. He wanted Wei Ying to come back.
He grew. He wanted Brother to smile again. He wanted Uncle to be proud of him again. He wanted Wei Ying to come back, again.
All he has ever wanted is other people.
He meditates.
What does it mean about him, that the only way he can desire is through devotion?
A thought occurs. It’s an unorthodox thought, a dangerous thought, a thought Wei Ying would let spin out into the neutral air. There’s someone else known for his devotion. Someone named for it, even…
He returns to the Silence Chamber, which has heard more music than some palaces. He sits before Wangji the guqin, steadies his fingers, and Wings It.
"Zhao Zhuliu." The odds that he remains in the ghost realm are high. He died violently, failing in his task. He will likely not have moved on, though Lan Wangji cannot yet detect his level of resentment.
No answer. As expected; he doesn't answer to that name.
Lan Wangji is peerless in the practice of guqin Inquiry. There is nobody alive with a more complete understanding of its intricacies, uses, and limits.
This silence is not an absence, but a willful lack of speech. Lan Wangji doesn't force an answer. He wants to have a conversation, and a true conversation must allow silence. Wei Ying always allows his silence, dances unworried around it.
He plays, "Wen Zhuliu. Do you know me?"
"You are Hanguang-Jun, Lan Wangji," the faint harmonics sing. Flat, precise, efficient. If there had been any doubt this spirit was truly Wen Zhuliu, it was dispelled.
"Yes. I wish to talk."
Qin language is meant to be phrased as concisely as possible. One of the earliest exercises for novices learning Inquiry is the practice of trimming sentences to their barest bones.
Lan Zhan speaks in qin language.
So, it seems, does Wen Zhuliu. "I see no reason."
"I have a question regarding devotion."
"Why are you asking me?" Me, a Wen? Me, a servant? Me a failure? Me, dead? These pass unsaid, but heard.
"Your name. You let it kill you. Why?"
Wen Zhuliu. Drifting in the current, following with no apparent will of his own, a deadly and fearsome weapon of a man who died in the service of a tyrant and his worthless fool son. All for a name and the virtue of being recognized.
"...." He is thinking, not refusing. "...It meant something," he says, finally.
"Meant slaughter."
"Meant something beyond mere living."
"Cultivators do not merely live."
"No. Most of us merely live. I wanted to follow . What service could mean more than service to greatness? The Wens were the Sun."
Lan Wangji's fingers pause on the strings. With a flick of his wrist, he beckons Zhuliu to continue.
"To serve meant that I could do nothing of my own. Neither could I fail. I served the one who knew my strength and would use it without flinching."
"Use it for pain. Use it to your death."
"Hanguang-jun. Have you ever known what it means to belong to someone?"
A wave. The glint of moonlight off two jars of Emperor’s Smile. That smudge of dirt under that left eye, left from the turnip fields, and the way he had needed to overwrite that dust with a kiss.
"Yes."
"Does that person belong to you?"
A drink snatched from Jin Zixun's hand. A wiggle of delight, and its counterpart moan. A new rabbit hutch appearing overnight with wards built into the walls.
"Yes."
Zhuliu sounded almost hesitant. Like this question wasn't rhetorical. …”Was it worth it?"
A horde of desecrated corpses. A beloved voice twisting his courtesy name into a vicious snub. Thirty-three lashes. Sobbing repentance into Brother's robes, a brand new-set in the flesh of his chest.
"It was," Lan Wangji affirms. "Was it worth it?" he retorts.
".... I could not have chosen differently," Zhuliu replies, a hedge but as good as an answer.
"You could have." That's the tragedy. That's always the tragedy. But they didn't. And because they didn’t, they couldn’t ever have. The person who could have chosen the other path never got to exist. Every choice you make kills the you that made it. And the you that lives never gets to mourn.
"Wen Ruohan was worth serving, once. He betrayed me," says Zhuliu with the dispassionate distance of death without bitterness. Zhuliu's spirit is almost completely free of resentment, Lan Wangji realizes. “Betrayed me by not being worthy of my loyalty. But I never betrayed him. That was worth it."
"Thank you," says Wangji, bowing slightly over his guqin.
"Thank you," says Zhuliu, "for understanding."
Wangji takes a deep breath, and admits something to a dead man. "I am... grateful to Wei Ying. For being worth it, in the end. But. I would have followed him, either way."
"You were fortunate, Lan Wangji."
"May you be fortunate in your next life, Wen Zhuliu."
"I will be loyal," he replies--not a contradiction, but not an agreement.
It's who he is. It's who they are. They are the most fragile of all kinds of people--the devotees, destined for bliss or ruin attendant on the worth of another. They are kindred. Lan Wangji wants good things for his kindred. "May I play Rest?"
A harmonic, one that almost sounds like a sigh. "Please."
Lan Wangji plays Rest, and, when Wen Zhuliu's consciousness fades, he slumps over. There's nobody here to see him, no approval to seek. No direction to take. No Rules, not really, in this space he shares with chaos incarnate, his only mistake and the only mistake worth making.
It is noon. He has the rest of the day to drift with the currents--the currents are safe, here. He picks up a brush, and writes.