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It all happens very quickly. Wangji is playing, interrogating Xue Chengmei, when Jin Guangshan leaps off the dais, sword raised to hurt Xichen’s little brother. Xichen moves faster than thought, blade outstretched in defence.
It sinks into Jin Guangshan with surprising ease, burrowing itself deep in his chest. Jin Guangshan’s blade clatters to the ground as he gasps for air. His hand slides up the sword, in Xichen’s direction, and he yanks Shuoyue straight out of the asshole’s hands, out of his chest.
Jin Guangshan crumples to the ground, dead.
Xichen’s knees buckle, staggering back into his brother’s arms in shock, staring at Jin Guangshan’s crumpled body in front of him, the red blood slowly spreading across the floor.
For a moment, Koi Tower melts away and is replaced by a cold, drafty temple. By the anguished face of a man he had loved but hadn’t understood even once, impaled on his sword, begging him for another chance.
Lan Xichen drops his sword. His head hurts. The world spins.
And then the other memories flood in.
~
He’s eleven years old. His mother is dead and he’s afraid his little brother will never smile again. His little brother, who is so much like their mother, who smiles like her and dreams like her and talks like her, goes mute and cold. He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to fix it, except by trying to keep smiling himself, to never let A-Zhan see his pain, so that at least his brother has him to lean on. When he meets Nie Mingjue for the first time that same year, they make friends so easily that Lan Huan actually forgets to be sad, just for a little while. He laughs again, for real, and he lets go, just a little. Let’s himself have this. In these memories, Nie Mingjue doesn’t bring little A-Sang along that summer. In these memories, when Nie Mingjue finally leaves at the end of the summer, a door between Lan Huan and his little brother has irrevocably closed.
He’s sixteen when he falls in love for the first time. Nie Mingjue is there for a lecture series and he got so strong, so handsome, since the last time Xichen saw him. They’re down by the lake, swimming, and Lan Xichen cannot look away from Mingjue’s strong shoulders, his wide roguish smile. Their first kiss feels like a sunset at the tail-end of summer—comfortably warm and safe. He might not ever want to stop kissing Mingjue. He tells himself he doesn’t need to.
He meets little Huaisang much later in these memories. He’s still an adorable child, and Xichen still likes him immediately. It’s clear why Mingjue struggles with him, sometimes, the child is quiet and gentle and shy, much preferring his paints over his blade, and Mingjue has no idea how to deal with that. Little A-Sang seems to be almost as frightened of the Cloud Recesses as he is of his blade, but he takes to Xichen easily enough. Soon, Xichen has a second little brother to dote upon, one that doesn’t push him away, but that smiles at his jokes, hides behind him when he’s frightened, and asks him for painting lesson. Huaisang is so easy to love. The only way it could be better would be if he got along with Wangji.
When he’s twenty-one years old, he sees two different versions of his little brother fall in love for the first time. Wei Wuxian is a tornado in both, blowing through all his defences as though they’re not even there. For the first time in years, the tiny, tiny smiles on his brothers face actually reach his eyes. He sees some of their mother’s life return to Wangji, breaking through the cold, frozen exterior that always reminds him of their father. He sees this versions memory of Lan Wangji respond to it much more poorly, despite the fact he clearly cares just as much. He just doesn’t have years of friendship with A-Sang to fall back on.
This version of him is so happy to watch his brother fall in love that he barely even realises that he has fallen for someone again himself; Meng Yao is a beautiful, clever, and kind young man with a smile that Lan Xichen wants to drown in. He doesn’t do anything about it, obviously, except write to Da-ge, because he’s mentioned Meng Yao in his letters often enough that Xichen thinks perhaps this particular interest of his doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
When his uncle tells him the truth about their parents, he can rest easy in the knowledge the Lan curse has missed him; he loves two people at once, after all. His brother, however, might not be so lucky.
They hunt the Waterborne Abyss in Biling Lake, and Wei Wuxian tumbles into the water, barely making it out alive. In this memory, Huaisang isn’t with them, and Su Minshan doesn’t die.
In these memories the Wen attack the Cloud Recesses much later. Su Minshan turns on them, is the reason his little brothers leg is broken, and Xichen almost dies escaping with their most precious books. Would have died if not for Meng Yao, miserable and exhausted, running into him during his flight and somehow managing to get them both to safety. He won’t tell Xichen what happened, why he’s not with the Nie any longer, but Xichen doesn’t push. Should he have pushed? When Meng Yao offers to spy for Xichen, to throw himself into the lions’ den, Xichen has to kiss him. It’s the only kiss they’ll ever share, but one he never forgets.
When Lan Xichen is twenty-three-years old, they, or rather Wei Wuxian, win the Sunshot Campaign. There is little left of that smiling boy that brightened up his brother’s life, and Xichen fears for him; for Wangji.
Meng Yao doesn’t stay Meng Yao in this other, awful, version of his life. He turns up in pale yellow robes with a red dot adorning his forehead. His father calls him Jin Guangyao. He doesn’t look happy. Xichen knows he wanted this, but he doesn’t look happy. He’s drowning in his robes, hiding his braids under his hat, and his kind smile is replaced by an empty polite mask Xichen knows all too well from his own mirror.
He himself feels unsteady; although he swears brotherhood with both A-Yao and Da-ge, it’s done nothing to improve their relationship. It’s nothing like the other sworn brotherhood he remembers, the easy bond between him, A-Sang, Wuxian, Wanyin and Zixuan that he's grown to love and depend on. Da-ge and A-Yao don’t talk to one another except through him, and sometimes he feels like he’s stuck in a tug-of-war between Qinghe and Lanling.
Later, he’ll wonder how much he missed, how much he purposefully ignored, and how much he lied to himself about. When Wei Wuxian is accused of heresy, of immoral cultivation, of building an army on a mountain of corpses, this version of Lan Xichen believes it. Somehow, in these memories, it is easier to believe that Lan Wangji’s moral compass might be compromised than his own, because the implications of Lanling being involved mean that A-Yao might be. And A-Yao can’t be. Xichen loves him too much.
Lan Wangji tells him he wants to hide someone in the Cloud Recesses, and Lan Xichen fears for him. Wonders if he should have seen their father in Wangji’s golden eyes from the start, instead of their mother in his smile.
Lan Wangji tells him that the Burial Mounds house nothing but farmers, but Lan Xichen assumes that Wei Wuxian simply hid from his brother what he didn’t want him to see, that the obvious demonic cultivation has corrupted him. It’s easy. It’s what everyone believes, even, it seems, Jiang Wanyin.
(Except Jiang Wanyin never says that, does he? Never agrees that his brother is building an army, never stops visibly worrying, goes along with them grudgingly because they’ve all pushed him into a corner, because they let Jin Guangshan manipulate them into a corner. Because Lan Xichen lets Jin Guangyao drip poison into his ear with every breath.)
In these awful memories, Lan Xichen is twenty-five years old when Jin Zixuan is killed, and it is so very obvious Wei Wuxian is now a murderer. That he must be stopped.
When his brother fights their own disciples to defend Wei Wuxian, this version of Xichen takes that as confirmation that it was always their father looking back at him from his brother’s face. Seclusion is a kindness, a kindness that hurts so bad it might as well be punishment for them both, but it is the best Xichen can do. The elders called for death, for banishment, for the utter destruction of what little is left of Xichen’s family. He cannot let that happen. He agrees to the lashes, to the seclusion.
Memories overlap with childhood dreams, slotting into place with painful clarity.
His brother shows up bleeding and near death with a child in his arms, and suddenly Xichen can see their mother in him, once again.
In these memories, Xichen suspects that perhaps Lan Yuan is that demon boy’s son by some Wen woman, perhaps even Wen Qing, but cannot bring himself to hate the child. He’s sweet and he’s funny and Xichen can tell plain as day that he is the only reason Wangji is still alive. It isn’t a hardship to write him into the family ledgers, to adopt him as his favourite nephew, to fight the elders for something on Wangji’s behalf, at least.
For three long years, only he and A-Yuan are permitted to visit Wangji. For three long years he watches the ghost of his mother sit there in his brother’s clothes, tending to a toddler as though he is the most precious thing in the entire world, holding Lan Yuan in the exact same way that their mother had held little tiny Lan Zhan. For three long years, Xichen pretends it doesn’t hurt.
The only one he can turn to is A-Yao. Da-ge doesn’t understand, and besides, his temper has been getting worse, and worse, and worse, and Xichen is so very worried about him. Poor Huaisang seems to be getting the brunt of it, and he feels terribly guilty for enjoying that he’s at least able to be a good older brother to one of them, that A-Sang depends on him and A-Yao as much as he does.
A-Yao gets married, and Xichen tries not to let it hurt. Qin Su is a lovely woman who will make a lovely wife, and he will be happy for them. He will. He’d rather at least one of them isn’t lonely.
When Lan Xichen is twenty-seven years old, he loses the first love of his life to a qi-deviation. This version of Da-ge dies in a courtyard in Koi tower, and A-Yao barely manages to make sure he doesn’t take Huaisang with him. A-Sang turns into a shadow of himself, and all Xichen can do is try to be there, try to make sure his little-brother-by-proxy doesn’t fall completely to pieces. But though A-Yao kept his body safe, it feels like A-Sang’s spirit disappeared with Da-ge’s. For weeks, he doesn’t speak. Doesn’t smile. Doesn’t do much of anything unless he’s forced to. Xichen and A-Yao spend endless nights in the Unclean Realm, trying to put him back together again, but what finally emerges from the cocoon of grief is not the same man he was before. Huaisang has always been flighty, always been lazy, but now everything is too much, too scary, too big for him. His eyes are empty, and instead of a smile he now hides tears behind his fan. He looks so small on his big brother’s throne, so lost, a broken marionette whose strings were cut. Xichen wants to wrap him up and take him home and make sure nothing happens to him, but instead he has to leave A-Sang behind in the cold empty halls of the Unclean Realm.
When A-Sang finally smiles for them again, it feels like someone drained all the sunshine out of it and left only a shell behind. He answers 'I don't know' to questions Xichen knows he knows the answer to, but is unwilling to call him out for. Instead, he finds solace in taking care of A-Sang at least a little, knows that A-Yao probably does too. There is no call too small, no problem too insignificant for them to show up in Qinghe in the middle of the night to make sure Nie Huaisang is alright. It helps a little, but fixes nothing.
When Lan Xichen is twenty-eight years old, a cold, distant version of Wangji emerges from seclusion and promptly departs the Cloud Recesses, returning only when he cannot justify bringing Lan Yuan along on whatever Night Hunt he’s on and leaving him in the care of Xichen for short periods of time before taking Xichen’s nephew away from him again. He doesn’t talk to anyone he doesn’t have to, he barely talks to Xichen himself, and he completely ignores their uncle. Xichen’s heart aches, but he understands.
Years pass, so different from the life he’s living, sometimes quickly, sometimes in a slow crawl.
A-Yao loses his son.
Huaisang panics over insignificant things, blubbers and collapses and is nothing like the Huaisang he knows and loves today.
Lan Yuan grows, becomes Lan Sizhui, becomes the pride of the Lan Clan.
Hanguang-Jun travels.
And Xichen perseveres.
And then, when this other version of Xichen is thirty-seven years old, Wei Wuxian returns, and Lan Xichen’s life falls apart.
In the end, all of it is his own fault. For trusting people he shouldn’t have trusted and not trusting those he should. For closing his eyes to things he should have seen, and looking away from the injustices visible in plain sight.
A-Yao—Jin Guangyao betrayed him.
Betrayed Da-ge.
The second love of his life killed the first.
The Jin were guilty of all the things they laid at Wei Wuxian’s feet, and Jin Guangyao orchestrated it.
When Jin Guangyao asks Xichen to die with him, he thinks that he deserves to.
When Jin Guangyao pushes him out of the way instead, he learns perhaps dying is too kind a fate.
When Nie Huaisang, A-Yao’s hat clutched in his trembling fingers, tells him “I don’t know,” when he asks if Jin Guangyao really attacked him, Xichen knows now that between Wangji and himself, he is the one that resembles their father.
Seclusion is a kindness, a kindness he doesn’t deserve but that his brother doesn’t fight him on, doesn’t keep him from. Lan Wangji has only ever been their mother—kinder than the Lan men around her have earned, gentle with the sons she loved despite it all. He lets Xichen go. He takes over the clan and he takes care of his family as Xichen sits inside the Hanshi and stares into nothingness.
He stares into nothingness for a very, very long time.
He stares into nothingness for nearly thirteen years.
He sees Nie Huaisang only once, after, at the first discussion conference after he finally leaves his seclusion. He almost doesn’t recognise him, cannot find the boy he once knew in the man seated amidst the Nie delegation across the hall in full Chief Cultivator regalia, Wen Qionglin inexplicably at his right hand. His fan, though he still has one, does not obscure his face. He doesn’t fidget in his seat, doesn’t evade anyone’s gaze, not even Xichen’s. There is nothing in his eyes when they meet but an empty resignation; not the anger he fears nor the love he misses nor the guilt he feels owed. Huaisang looks as much like a walking corpse as Wen Qionglin.
He flinches, looks away, and in his peripheral vision sees the fan snap open and A-Sang’s shoulders shake, and knowing his A-Sang is still in there after all hurts almost worse than thinking he wasn’t. Wangji and Wuxian flank him the entire time, keep him steady, and he doesn’t deserve their kindness but he takes it, anyway.
He skips the next conference.
For a while, he works on slowly taking over his tasks from Wangji once again, focusses on being part of his family again, speaking to his nephew, getting to know his brother-in-law, trying to rebuild something of the husk of his life because he knows his absence has pained his little brother. For a while he tries.
But he can’t stop thinking of Nie Huaisang. He asks, about Wen Qionglin, and Wuxian tells him that he and Nie Huaisang are friends. That he visits sometimes. When he asks Wuxian if he and Huaisang are still friends, Wuxian smiles and shrugs, and tells him he and Huaisang promised one another to stay out of each other’s way.
He knows, then, that Huaisang is as lonely as he is. As lost as he is.
There is a part of him that wants to confront him, wants to get angry, or cry together, or, well, anything really. There’s a larger part that wants to comfort him, instead. Hold him close and make sure he knows that there is someone left alive still that cares. Despite everything between them now, Huaisang is probably the only person left who understands.
But Xichen is a coward, and he doesn’t reach out.
When Lan Xichen is just shy of forty years old, he finds a scroll in the forbidden section of the Lan library. It’s obvious Wei Wuxian wrote it, possibly all the way back when he lived in the Burial Mounds. It’s between the other paperwork Jin Ling allowed them to take from Koi Tower after his uncle’s treachery was uncovered. If Wei Wuxian knew it existed, it definitely wouldn’t be lying around here anymore, and Xichen knows that he should return it.
Instead he takes it to the Hanshi.
The scroll contains a time travel spell. At first he thinks that it must not work, or be unfinished, because if anyone might have wanted to go back and fix things it would have been Wei Wuxian. But then he realises that the array is in fact fully functional.
He puzzles about the reasons why Wei Wuxian never cast it as he looks through the confusing, jumbled notes with additions and corrections scrawled in every margin. The reason then, becomes painfully clear. Not only does the array not work on the caster themselves, but requires both a caster and a traveller, it also requires the caster pour so much blood into it that it might well kill them, and requires the use of a Golden Core. Wei Wuxian would never have let someone die for him to send him back, even if it meant unwinding their painful history, and he couldn’t have sent anyone himself.
Lan Xichen though. Lan Xichen could send someone.
The obvious answer would be to send back Wei Wuxian or Lan Wangji, except they’ve both been through so much and the spell can send only one. He can’t bear the idea of separating them, because even if it means they’ll be together again he will be condemning the one he sends back to losing their soulmate, to carrying memories of a life together all alone, having to choose their own happiness in a way he’s not sure Wei Wuxian is even capable of.
He cannot be the reason Wangji loses his zhiji again. And he doesn’t trust Wei Wuxian’s self-preservation instincts to make sure he gets out of it alive himself as long as it saves his family.
Besides, while Wuxian and Wangji might be best equipped to deal with injustice, they are not particularly subtle, nor particularly good at plotting.
But Xichen knows someone who is. Knows someone angry enough to want to do things over, and selfish enough he will come out of it alive at the end of the trip.
Nie Huaisang.
He knows that there is cruelty in that choice too, in making A-Sang relive his worst memories, have to work to improve things for all of them. He cannot deny that there is, somewhere deep inside, a spiteful reason for his choice as well, a wish to make Huaisang live with the guilt he so clearly feels instead of letting him forget it in a better world.
But anger aside. He knows no-one better equipped to change the past than the man who waited over ten years and resurrected a dead man to get revenge for his brother’s murder. He knows Huaisang is a good man, deep down. Selfish and a little lazy, yes, and justifiably angry. But he trusts Huaisang enough to know he’ll try to save Da-ge, try to make things better for the people he cares about, which he knows includes Wei Wuxian and Jiang Wanyin, and which apparently also includes Wen Qionglin. He will just have to hope that Huaisang has enough love left for himself and for Jin Guangyao not to make them suffer.
(Then again, if he doesn’t, then perhaps Lan Xichen deserves to suffer, anyway.)
When Lan Xichen is forty-one years old, he travels to Qinghe for the first time in over a decade and asks to see Nie Huaisang. He has learnt the array by heart. When he is told to wait for Huaisang in the reception hall, he slips past the guards and into Huaisang’s office. He paints his array on the floor right beyond the door, sits down at Huaisang’s desk, tries not to look too much at the knickknacks he recognises, the trinkets Xichen has given him over the years still littered in the space, and waits.
Huaisang walks in some time later, his nose in a scroll and mumbling to himself. Xichen activates the array and slashes his wrists with Shuoyue, pouring blood and spiritual energy into it in equal measure.
The last thing he hears before the world flashes a bright white is Huaisang’s horrified and confused whisper of ‘Er-ge?’.
~
He comes back to himself slowly, leaning heavily on Wangji’s shoulder, heart thundering in his chest. Two lives try to fit themselves into one, overlapping and deviating and changing everything he knows.
He breathes deeply, blocking out all the sounds and the chaos around him. He looks down at the corpse of Jin Guangshan in front of him, a twisted echo of his son’s death so many years in the future (in the past?).
He did it. It worked. And Huaisang has certainly been busy.