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robininthelabyrinth · 9 months

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The Other Mountain - ao3 - Chapter 9

Pairing: Lan Qiren/Wen Ruohan

Warning Tags on Ao3

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Interlude

Adults, Lan Xichen had learned, generally thought that children were stupid.

And possibly also deaf.

Shufu hadn’t thought that way, but that was one of the many reasons that Shufu was the best.

He always tried to explain things, even several times and in several ways if they didn’t understand it the first time – maybe he wasn’t always the most patient, maybe sometimes he had a bit of a temper and scolded them when they did something wrong, but he didn’t get tired of doing the same thing over and over and he never got really angry, not in a way that might make Lan Xichen worry that he wouldn’t be forgiven. Shufu took things very seriously, always, and if maybe that meant that he only looked confused when Lan Xichen told him the jokes that everyone else laughed at, then it also meant that he didn’t ignore Lan Xichen when he told him things like what made him feel worried and what made him feel sad. No matter how silly Lan Xichen was being, he always listened.

Father…didn’t.

When Father had first come out of seclusion, Lan Xichen had been very excited.

Well, no, that wasn’t quite right. Everyone else had been extremely excited – well, not Wangji, but Wangji never liked anything that was too different, too quickly, and Lan Xichen doubted very much that he would have liked anything at all in the time immediately following their mother’s death. But Lan Xichen was a little less stubborn than Wangji, a little more flexible, and maybe also a little more impressionable, and everyone was just so happy and talking to him as if they expected him to be excited, too.

So, happy to oblige, Lan Xichen really had been excited – though admittedly a little confused as to what exactly his father would be adding to his life. After all, he already had Shufu, who did all the things a father normally would and quite often the things a mother would, too, because their mother couldn’t leave her house and do them herself. Their mother had just died, though, so Lan Xichen had tentatively assumed that maybe their father would be taking up her role in his life: someone Shufu took them to visit once a month, a person who said nice things and played with them, telling jokes and teasing him and Wangji.

Mostly Wangji.

That was fine – well, not really. Not long before his mother died, Lan Xichen had gotten a little sad about how much more attention he felt that she paid to Wangji over him, more than he thought could be entirely justified by Wangji being smaller and younger and in need of more support. He’d started feeling that maybe he was just no longer capable of being the focus of their mother’s attention, maybe because he’d gotten too old for it, somehow, and it had made him quite upset. He’d tried to remind himself that Wangji was the cutest little boy ever and Lan Xichen would prefer playing with him over himself any day, so he could understand her having a preference, but it hadn’t really helped that much.

Shufu had helped. When he’d explained his feelings and his reasoning to Shufu, Shufu frowned and stroked his beard a few times, then he went and had a conversation with Mother that wasn’t anywhere nearly as quiet as he probably thought it was – but she’d gotten so much better after that, spending some of their very limited visiting time focusing on Lan Xichen and making sure he was included when she played with Wangji and sounding really apologetic, like she meant it.

It still wasn’t the same as when he was younger, though.

Before he’d started to look quite so much like Father.

Maybe that was why he wasn’t as sad about Mother dying as everyone seemed to think he should be. Which wasn’t to say that he wasn’t sad at all – Lan Xichen was sad about it, really he was, really sad. He got very sad any time he thought for too long about Mother being really truly gone forever, but most of the time…

Well, most of the time, it just didn’t seem real that she was dead. He only saw Mother once a month anyway, and sometimes he missed a month because he had something else to do or because she was feeling sick, and then it’d be a while before he saw her again. Sometimes even a long while.

It was really easy to pretend that that was what was happening now. Easy to pretend that Mother was still there, at her house just out of sight, and he’d be able to see her next month, maybe.

Wangji had taken it very hard, though. Maybe it was because he was too small to really understand why he couldn’t go see her as he normally did – he’d never missed a day with her, not ever, so he had been very upset about it. It had been the biggest upset of his life…or, well, it had been until Shufu had had to go away, because he’d taken that much worse.

Much, much worse.

It took a while before Lan Xichen was able to figure out that Wangji had initially assumed that Shufu’s absence meant that he’d died as well, and after that he’d had to spend a lot of time calming him down from a panic, explaining that that wasn’t the case. He’d explained that Shufu had just gone away for a little while, a temporary absence, and that soon enough he’d be back and everything would go back to normal.

He felt stupid about it later.

Because later, much later, Lan Xichen realized that this time he’d been the one who hadn’t understood what had happened, what it meant, what was really going on. He’d thought that Shufu had only gone away for a little time, the way he did when he went to discussion conferences or other important missions the sect needed him to do, the way he always did, and so he’d thought Wangji was just overreacting.

He didn’t think he was overreacting anymore, obviously!

In fact, Lan Xichen had figured out that something was wrong really fast – faster than other people in the sect did, even the adults. Even the elders! Maybe they believed that Shufu had gone away for a trip on sect business, the way that Lan Xichen had at first, but Lan Xichen knew that sect business or no sect business, Shufu would never have stayed away from the sect once he’d heard that Wangji was having a meltdown because he missed him.

Not just a meltdown, either, but multiple meltdowns. Full on temper tantrums, kicking and screaming and beating his little fists against the floor, biting anyone who came near him meltdowns. Wangji hadn’t had them as bad as this in years, not since Shufu had taught him all those tricks and breathing exercises and such that helped him maintain his own discipline. It had only gotten worse, too. It was actually starting to get pretty worrying, how bad it was getting…

Anyway, Shufu should’ve come rushing back as soon as he’d gotten the news about them, which naturally he should have gotten right away. But Shufu hadn’t come back.

That was when Lan Xichen decided it was necessary to do some exploring of his own.

Well, first he’d tried to do things the right way, the way he always did. He went and asked questions from his elders, polite but persistent, finding new people to ask and new ways to ask, showing how good he was behaving in hopes of wringing out some concession or indulgence…but it hadn’t worked this time, not one bit. Everyone he asked didn’t seem to know anything, and they didn’t seem to be worried about not knowing, either.

They’d all shook their heads and told him not to worry, instead. They said that everything was going to be fine, really, and then they tried to change the subject to how happy he must be to have his father back. Constantly. It was really unhelpful.

After that he’d decided he needed to figure it out on his own.

Well, on his own, plus Wangji.

Wangji might only be six, but he was very good at finding things out. Probably even better than Lan Xichen was, to be honest, but on the other hand he was also too young to understand what people meant when they weren’t being straightforward. That meant he needed Lan Xichen to interpret for him. Teamwork!

Shufu did always say they were strongest when they worked together.

It had been Wangji who’d first managed to figure out that Shufu had gone into seclusion, mostly through sheer stubbornness and checking every possible place in the Cloud Recesses where Shufu could possibly be, but it had been Lan Xichen who’d figured out that Shufu hadn’t wanted to be in seclusion, not the way their father had. That had come as something of a relief, since both of them had been very confused by the idea of Shufu going into seclusion willingly – Shufu had never gone into seclusion before, not for real, not even for a couple of days the way Lan Xichen had once he’d been old enough.

Certainly neither of them had been able or willing to believe that he would go into seclusion the way Father had just because he was jealous that Father had come out of his, no matter what some of the nastier boys Lan Xichen’s age whispered behind their hands.

(Lan Xichen had gotten into a fight with one of them over that, deciding that the punishment for no fighting without permission was worth it to enforce no talking behind people’s backs, since none of the adults were doing a good job of it. Oddly enough, when he’d gone to report his misbehavior to Father, he hadn’t gotten any further than ‘I decided to punch him’ when Father had absolved him of having to serve any punishment at all. It had been very weird, though in retrospect he was finding it to be completely typical of Father’s usual refusal to listen about anything. In the end, Lan Xichen had gone to the library and looked up the prescribed punishment, then served it quietly by himself, even though no one had told him to. That’s what it meant to maintain your own discipline, after all.)

Anyway, he and Lan Wangji had figured out that Shufu was in seclusion in their mother’s old house, except his was apparently the sort of seclusion where he couldn’t see them at all, not even once a month – that had been what made Lan Xichen really suspicious, because he might be able to believe that Shufu decided to try out seclusion but he wouldn’t ever believe Shufu would lock himself away from them when they needed him. From there, they’d investigated, and in doing so overheard the elders talking about it and that was how they’d found out the truth that he’d been locked away all right, locked away against his will.

Okay, maybe they hadn’t just overheard the elders. It had been Lan Xichen’s idea to sneak into the Hall of Serenity, the place where the elders liked to meet when they were having important discussions, to listen in on them on purpose. They’d used a back entrance Shufu had once shown them when he’d needed them to leave really fast, and then they’d deliberately waited there until the elders showed up and started talking, and then they’d listened to what they were saying before sneaking back out again. So it wasn’t really overhearing but rather eavesdropping, and intentional eavesdropping at that. But even though eavesdropping wasn’t exactly polite, there wasn’t an actual rule against it, either!

…which was why they were back here again, Lan Xichen supposed. But what else were they supposed to do when no one would answer their questions about Shufu?!

“I still find it questionable,” one of the elders said. Lan Xichen couldn’t see him, but he was pretty sure it was one of the ones with the very long white beards, and he was pretty sure he was stroking it the way Shufu often did his own smaller, black one.

“There is no point in treading over old ground, Yiran,” another one snapped. “Haven’t we talked the matter of Qiren’s seclusion to death?”

“Talking things to death is the prerogative of sect elders, is it not? The present Sect Leader Lan’s return was supposed to be a tremendous joy to us all. It was meant to signify a return to order, a return to orthodoxy, the proper path,” Lan Yiran argued. “A return to normality,after everything that happened with his wife back then…”

“Are you suggesting you’re not pleased at the return of the proper Sect Leader, Yiran?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth, Yuanbai. You know that’s not what I meant.”

“I agree with Yiran,” a third voice said. “It is not that any of us are not pleased that the Sect Leader has reentered the world. How could we be anything but overjoyed that he has returned to us, after we had thought him lost forever? Qingheng-jun is not merely the oldest son of the former Sect Leader, our dear friend and cousin, not merely is he the rightful inheritor and leader of Gusu Lan, not merely the father of our two young heirs – don’t forget, he was the pride of his generation! Of all the heroes and stars Gusu Lan produced in those years, he shone the brightest. We are all more than delighted by his return. It is only that…well. It must be admitted that having his first act upon exiting seclusion be to force Qiren to enter a similar seclusion seems a little…inauspicious.”

“Inauspicious! Suiying, you’re talking around the subject again. Can’t you just say what you mean? You’re afraid the Sect Leader lost his mind while in seclusion.”

“And you’re afraid that he’s not going to live up to all those illusions you all made for yourselves about him,” a new voice said, this one even older than the rest, harsh. It was old Lan Jinyan, their granduncle, Lan Xichen thought to himself with surprise: he hadn’t been aware that the old man still attended the meetings of the elders. Most of the time he just sat around in his garden. Shufu had taken them to visit him on a regular basis, saying he needed the company. “That’s what’s really going on in all your heads, isn’t it?”

That got the other elders murmuring objections, but Lan Jinyan wasn’t done yet.

“You all criticized poor Qiren time and time again, always insinuating that his brother would have done a better job, even when there wasn’t any way that things could have gone any better,” he said, sounding grouchy. “All because you lot kept imagining his brother there in his place, doing everything you wanted him to do, play-acting scenarios where everything worked out for the best no matter how implausible that ‘best’ might be, never giving Qiren credit for doing the best he could with the situation he had…but now the Sect Leader is there for real, and things are different than what you’d thought. Quite rude of him to be a real person with actual faults and limitations, wouldn’t you say? Reality’s not quite matching up to your daydreams, is it?”

There was a lot of angry talk after that. Not yelling, exactly, but certainly getting closer to the prohibition on making noise than adults usually did.

Lan Jinyan was the loudest, or maybe just the closest to where Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji were hiding. He kept saying things like “It’s certainly easy to say that one’s better than another when one of them has to deal with real life situations and the other one doesn’t, isn’t it?” and “You know exactly how hard Qiren worked to win that privilege for us, I won’t let you pretend it was nothing,” and “Oh yes, please do tell me, what exactly the Sect Leader would have done in that scenario that Qiren didn’t do? How exactly would it have turned out better than where we ended up? Let’s not leave it vague any longer, so that each of you can come away with a different idea – you want to talk about it, let’s talk about it!”

He also, at one point, loudly made a sound not unlike blowing his nose or sticking out his tongue and said, “Jealous? Qiren? Of all people! Even if he was, which he wasn’t, he would never do a damn thing about it and you know it as well as I do. He’s a better man than half of you lot all put together and he doesn’t deserve this.”

“I’m never going to complain about visiting Granduncle ever again,” Lan Xichen muttered, impressed, to Wangji, who just gave him a dark look and hissed, “Talking behind the backs of others is forbidden.”

Which…that wasn’t even what that rule meant! At all!

Though Wangji was right: if they didn’t want to get caught, Lan Xichen needed to cut the comments.

He patted Wangji’s shoulder apologetically and went back to listening.

“He deserves a chance to make a name for himself as Sect Leader, a chance he didn’t have the first time around,” one of the elders was arguing. “And as our sect leader, he is entitled to insist on doing so without the burden of his younger brother standing in his shadow, particularly a younger brother that has taken for ten years the position that was rightfully his. I think we can all generally agree to concede that Qiren is not the sort of person likely to quibble over power or try to cause trouble because he’s upset about being demoted, no matter what some people have been implying. I am even willing to admit that it makes me personally uncomfortable that he has been sentenced to seclusion against his will, without even a hearing before us elders first. But surely we cannot go so far as to say that the Sect Leader has acted irrationally, or that he has gone too far…?”

“Being wrong isn’t reason enough to criticize someone anymore? Or is it just our dear Sect Leader that is immunized…?” Lan Jinyan huffed. “You’re all being ridiculous. Of course he’s gone too far! Imprisoning a man, his own brother, without a trial, that isn’t enough?”

“Third Uncle, please. You are exaggerating. Hasn’t Qiren always been complaining –”

“If I recall correctly, he was never much for complaining.”

“Fine. Complaining aloud or no, which among us doesn’t know how much of a burden the sect leadership was for Qiren? Perhaps he’s treating it as a vacation.”

Lan Xichen was pretty sure he could hear the sound of Lan Wangji’s teeth grinding. Also, that elder must never have met his shufu even once if he thought that Shufu would treat being away from them as a vacation.

“You’re all making assumptions,” another one said, speaking a little louder to get over the sound of Lan Jinyan’s spluttered protests. “Don’t forget, the Sect Leader is Qiren’s older brother. They’re family. All this talk of resentment between them, of one forcing the other, is purely hypothetical, the stuff of rumors. Do the rules not say Do not argue with family – ”

“Yiran, talk some sense into your twin brother, will you?” someone snapped, interrupting. “Yichi, if you have nothing to add, shutting your mouth is a good first step. Speak meagerly.”

“How dare you! You have no right to speak to me that way.”

“No? Maybe not. But at least I’m not so charmed by our new Sect Leader that I’ve lost touch with reality.”

“I’ve hardly been charmed – ”

“Even if he is, so what? The ability to lead is critical in a sect leader, and one must admit that personal charm is an area in which the Sect Leader vastly exceeds Qiren.”

“Which will make no difference at all if it turns out that he’s lost his mind – ”

“There is no reason to assume such a thing,” someone interrupted, voice cool and unbothered. It must have been someone important, because all the other elders quieted down, even Lan Jinyan. “Our Lan sect is famed for its orthodoxy and conservatism, and justly so. As Suiying has pointed out, according to hierarchy and the rules of inheritance, Qingheng-jun is our rightful Sect Leader. His reemergence into the world is a delicate moment in time for the whole of our Gusu Lan sect – both internally and externally, readjusting to the new balance of power. It is a moment to be cautious, and also a tremendous opportunity.”

Lan Jinyan made a noise of protest, but the other elder ignored him.

“For us elders to oppose him now would seem unfair, breeding discord and discontent internally and making us seem weak externally, wasting this chance to show strength. We cannot do it. Yes, even if that comes at the cost of Qiren staying unjustly in seclusion for a little longer – he is a grown man, after all, and it’s not as if we would permit him to be locked away forever. It’s only seclusion. He’s perfectly capable of being in seclusion without coming to harm, even if he has to stay there a year or more.”

“A year –!”

“Hasn’t it been nearly half a year already?”

“That seems too long…”

“And furthermore,” the new voice said, overriding all the voices once more, “we can afford to be practical. If we later reach the unfortunate conclusion that Qingheng-jun’s seclusion has caused harm to his mentality, we can at that time relieve him of the burdens of sect leadership to give him the opportunity to heal. Qiren would at that point resume his prior duties, which naturally cannot be done from seclusion.”

“Qiren is a member of this family,” Lan Jinyan said coldly. “Not some placeholder you can put on a shelf then take out at will to use as a game piece, Zhengquan.”

“Of course,” Lan Zhengquan said. His voice was smooth and unhurried, unbothered. “But as a member of the family, he can make some small sacrifices for the good of the whole. That hardly seems to be too much to ask of him. Don’t you agree?”

Lan Jinyan disagreed, naturally, but by then most of the murmuring had died down, and soon afterwards someone changed the subject, with all the rest following along, even Lan Jinyan. Lan Xichen, frowning, poked at Wangji, indicating that they should go, as it seemed unlikely that the elders would go back to that subject of discussion. They crawled out of the small space beneath the room and slipped into the gardens, heading back towards their rooms where they were supposed to have been practicing meditation.

Lan Xichen would admit the truth of what they had been doing if anyone asked – the rules said do not tell lies! – but he didn’t think anyone would ask. In fact, he was almost positive: these days, everyone seemed to think that someone else was keeping an eye on him.

(Shufu would’ve asked. Shufu cared what Lan Xichen was doing, what Wangji was doing, and not just for a dry report on their accomplishments once every few days that he didn’t even listen to – unlike him.)

“Xiongzhang,” Lan Wangji said, tugging at Lan Xichen’s sleeve. He was frowning, though on his round little face it came off as more of a pout. “Xiongzhang, do the elders not yet know that Shufu is gone away?”

“I don’t think they do,” Lan Xichen admitted, disappointed. They’d come to eavesdrop on the elders in search of more news about where Shufu had been taken away to, and it turned out they knew even less than they did. “They were talking about Shufu like they thought he was still in seclusion. Though I suppose that it’s not that strange. I mean, it’s not as though there was a big announcement when he left…yes, I think that's right, Wangji. I think that they really don’t know that Shufu’s not in the Cloud Recesses anymore.”

The only reason the two of them knew that their shufu was gone was because of Wangji’s extraordinary diligence. He’d been excused from classes again for excessive biting and hitting – that was the situation more often than not these days, with his teachers clearly torn between wanting to suggest that he take an entire year off to “mature more” before coming back and not wanting to anger Father by suggesting even implicitly that Wangji’s regression had something to do with his return. Thus far, they’d felt strongly enough on the latter to err in favor of simply excusing him from attending class without reporting it to anyone. And, as usual for when Wangji wasn’t in class, he was keeping watch on the house surrounded by gentians that their mother had lived in and where they’d figured out their shufu was being forced to stay.

Lan Xichen was pretty sure that Wangji had been plotting yet another method of trying to break through the arrays that protected the house, even though they were both far too young to be able to do anything like that. Lan Xichen would’ve supported him in whatever he’d been thinking of trying, of course, even if it meant that they’d both be punished when it got found out, but they never had a chance to get that far.

Instead, Wangji had noticed a profusion of boxes piled up at the back of the house and had informed Lan Xichen, wondering if it meant that Shufu was coming out of seclusion soon. Lan Xichen, in turn, had looked at them and realized they were full of clothing, the way they were whenever Shufu needed to go on a long trip. That was when he’d decided it was time to risk sneaking in a note – one of the wrapped-up shapes was very obviously a guqin, though oddly enough not the one Shufu normally liked best. But it was still a guqin, and Shufu would never go very long without playing.

He’d figured that it was the perfect place where no one would think to check.

Lan Xichen hadn’t dared to write anything too suspicious, though, since he wasn’t sure where Shufu was going and who might be there when he finally found the note – after all, he didn’t want to get Shufu in trouble or anything. He kept it simple: just that they missed him, and looked forward to his return.

Shufu would understand what it meant. Lan Xichen was sure of it. As soon as Shufu saw the note, he would know that it meant that they were absolutely miserable without him, not having a good time at all, and then, once he knew that, he’d come back and fix everything.

Or so Lan Xichen hoped, anyway.

He wasn’t…actually sure Shufu could fix things this time. Which was an awful thought.

But – even if Shufu couldn’t fix it – what else could he do about it?

He had to hope for the best.

“Xiongzhang.”

“Yes, Wangji?”

“Should we tell someone?” Lan Xichen blinked at Lan Wangji, who scowled up at him. “About Shufu being gone. Maybe Granduncle? You heard him just now. He likes Shufu.”

It was a compelling thought, but Lan Xichen shook his head. His trust in adults that weren’t his shufu had been deeply damaged these past few months.

“What could we tell him?” he asked skeptically. “We don’t know anything for sure. We didn’t even actually see Shufu leaving, we just saw boxes and assumed he was.”

“Granduncle could insist on checking. He’s an elder. The rules say Do not disrespect your elders.”

Lan Xichen wasn’t entirely sure their father knew that one. Or maybe he just didn’t care – which was wrong. He was the Sect Leader! He should care more about the rules than anyone, the way Shufu did.

“Maybe,” he said, chewing on his lower lip. “But what if he gets talked over again, like he did today? Then nothing would change, only they’d know that we listened to them, and we’d get punished. We wouldn’t be able to do it again. And then where would Shufu be?” Lan Xichen shook his head, deciding. “No. I don’t think we should tell them.”

Lan Wangji nodded solemnly. “Then what do we do, Xiongzhang?”

Lan Xichen hesitated. “Well,” he said slowly, thinking it through. “I mean…if the sect elders don’t know where Shufu went…that doesn’t mean no one knows.”

Lan Wangji looked up at him. “You mean him.”

Lan Xichen swallowed and nodded.

“But how will that help us? He doesn’t talk to us. He doesn’t listen to us.”

“I’m just going to have to make him listen,” Lan Xichen said with confidence he didn’t feel. “It’ll be all right, Wangji. Don’t worry.”

Lan Wangji didn’t look convinced. Lan Xichen couldn’t blame him.

They hadn’t exactly gotten off on the best foot with their father.

Even before Lan Xichen had figured out that it must have been their father that had locked Shufu away – which would have been automatically unforgivable – he’d already started to dislike him. Which seemed like it was a terrible thing to say about one’s father, except that Lan Xichen had a little bit of practice in kinda-sorta-not-really-well-maybe-sometimes-a-little being angry at his mother. And unlike Father, he’d actually seenher and spent time with her before!

(He’d loved her, too. Rather a lot. He still couldn’t believe she was gone…)

His father, though – Lan Xichen had thought that he’d loved him, at least theoretically. All the elders who told him about his father had said that Lan Xichen loved him and that he looked up to him, and it was easier to just agree with them than worry about what it meant that he didn’t.

It was certainly easier to love someone in theory than it was to love them when they were right in front of your face being mean. And maybe Lan Xichen could’ve accepted him being mean – the way Father looked at him with a faint sneer on his face that only turned into a faint smile when someone was watching, the way he ignored everything Lan Xichen had to say in favor of telling him to value being quiet and not-annoying, the way he scoffed at Lan Xichen’s accomplishments and said he’d been better by the same age as if life was a competition which Shufu had always said it wasn’t – and maybe he would have thought that it was just a result of his own failings, except that his father was also mean about Shufu, and that meant he was just plain wrong.

The rules said love all beings, even the ones who were wrong, but it also said steer away from bad men so clearly there were exceptions. At minimum, it meant that simply having love for a particular person’s being didn’t mean you needed to like them or spend time with them or listen to them. That was how the rules interacted with each other!

So after the first few times Lan Xichen met his father, he decided to himself that he didn’t like him.

He’d felt a little guilty about it, at least at first, except then his father kept being dismissive about Lan Wangji without even trying to understand him and saying mean things about Shufu, which made Lan Xichen start feeling less guilty and more justified, and then he’d found out that Shufu wasn’t just gone temporarily on a work trip but was instead in seclusion and that it had been his father that’d made him go. Without even giving him a chance to say goodbye to Lan Xichen, which was just – there was mean, okay, and then there was just being bad. That crossed the line.

(Wangji, looking deeply shaken, said that Shufu had cried right before disappearing into seclusion. That was when Lan Xichen decided he didn’t just dislike his father, he hated him.)

And now Lan Xichen was going to need to go talk to him.

Technically, he saw his father every morning when he went to pay his respects – Wangji was supposed to do that too, except he generally didn’t, and his father didn’t care enough to even impose punishment, appalling as that was – but that was only for a moment or two. He also saw his father whenever he was summoned to report on his accomplishments, which was in reference to the vast amount of schoolwork Lan Xichen had been assigned. Supposedly he had to do all that work to “make up” for his shufu’s bad teaching, which was such an incredibly and unbelievably stupid idea that Lan Xichen assumed he’d misunderstood the first few times he’d heard it, but which his teachers tried to explain away by telling him that it was a father’s right to educate his son the way he preferred.

That didn’t make it any less stupid.

Shufu was a good teacher. Shufu was the best teacher. Everyone knew it!

Except maybe Father.

Father who Lan Xichen only saw when he had to, and who Lan Xichen had never, ever, not even once, gone to talk with voluntarily.

(He missed Shufu so much. Shufu taught him things himself, even when there were other teachers. Every afternoon Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji would come to his rooms and he’d ask them questions about what they’d learned that day and they went over it together until they understood it all. They’d do exercises and sword drills together, or meditate, and in the evening Shufu would play them music or read them stories before bed. And if Lan Xichen had something he wanted to tell his shufu, he knew that he could go to him any time and, as long as he was polite and Shufu wasn’t doing something really important, Shufu would stop and put aside what he was doing in order to listen to him.)

“What do you want?” Father asked. He didn’t even look up from what he was reading. He was marking up a piece of paper the way Shufu often did, except he looked angrier about it – maybe something wasn’t going his way.

Lan Xichen hoped it wasn’t, and he didn’t even feel bad about thinking it.

“I want to know what’s going on,” Lan Xichen said, because that wasn’t a lie.

That got his father’s attention, at least. Lan Xichen wasn’t sure that was better: his father was tall and broad-shouldered, giving off a feeling of being bigger than Shufu, even though he was pretty sure they were actually about the same height. Their faces were similar, and people said Father was more handsome than Shufu, but unlike Shufu his gaze always felt sharp and cold.

“You want to know what’s going on,” Lan Xichen’s father said thoughtfully. “Why should I tell you that?”

“Because I’m your son,” Lan Xichen said – and that wasn’t a lie either, even though these days he often wished it was. He curled his fingers into fists and met his father’s gaze dead on. “If I don’t know what’s going on, I can’t decide what I want to do about it.”

“Is that a sect rule?” his father asked, a strange smile curving his lips. There was a look in his eyes that Lan Xichen didn’t understand, but which he instinctively felt meant danger.

Because of that, even though Lan Xichen could think of several sect rules that could support what he’d just said and which he’d normally cite if he was talking to Shufu, he instead said, “No,” because technically there wasn’t a rule that said exactly what he’d said. And then, in a moment of inspiration, he added, “Not everything in the world is a rule.”

That was something his shufu had once told him and Wangji.

When he’d said it, Shufu had been trying to explain that there were things that they couldn’t control in the world, that sometimes things just happened. That there were disappointments and failures in life, and that those were inevitable, even if they’d done everything right and according to the rules, even if they’d been very good little boys and didn’t deserve for things to go wrong.

It wasn’t actually applicable to anything Lan Xichen was saying right now.

But his father didn’t know that, and his father didn’t need to know that. He didn’t need to know that Lan Xichen was connecting two completely irrelevant (but true) sentences, the way Shufu did when he was being political. His father said that Shufu was boring and uncreative, that he thought the rules were day and night, that he was indifferent to important things because of them – which wasn’t true at all – and that meant, however impossible it might seem for a Gusu Lan sect elder, much less a Gusu Lan sect leader, that maybe the answer Father was looking for was not in the rules.

Sure enough, his father laughed.

It wasn’t a very nice laugh.

“So it seems that at least one of you can learn after all,” he said. “Good, good. But why do you need to make decisions at all? You’re my son. You should trust me.”

Lan Xichen probably should, but he didn’t. Be careful with your words, he reminded himself. He’d seen his shufu apply that rule before when he was talking with people he didn’t like, specifically the variation of the rule that meant that he should pick and choose his words very carefully because sometimes he wanted to give off an impression that he meant something he didn’t mean. Which was getting a little close to lying, but not quite enough to violate the all-important do not tell lies.

“If I don’t know what’s going on, I can’t be helpful,” he said firmly, and deliberately didn’t mention who it was that he wanted to help. And then, because his father had made a jeering statement about at least one of you, he added, “Wangji isn’t being very helpful to you.”

That was true, too. Unrelated, but true. Not a lie.

“I see how it is,” his father said, and his strange smile had turned into a smirk. Still faint, as if his face had forgotten how to make expressions – he could do them just fine in public, but Lan Xichen thought that that might be fake because he didn’t bother when he was in private. At least the smirk seemed a little more natural to his face than the smile did. “You see an opportunity to win my favor. Is that it?”

Do not attach yourself to those in power and influence.

“I just want to be helpful,” Lan Xichen said stubbornly. “I want to do something. But that means I need to know what’s going on, so I don’t make a mistake or get in the way of something important.”

Please work, he mentally begged. Please work.

His father was silent for a while, thinking it over.

“Fine,” he finally said. “I suppose there’s no harm in it…and perhaps even some good. You’re my son, after all. My heir.”

There was something Lan Xichen didn’t like in the way his father emphasized those words, the sounds dropping from his mouth as if they were weapons rather than words. As though they were meant to hurt someone. Someone else. Someone who wasn’t even there.

The terrible thought occurred to Lan Xichen that maybe that someone was his shufu.

“Sit next to me,” his father ordered, and Lan Xichen quickly obeyed. “Let us speak, then, of war.”

Of…war?

Lan Xichen’s stomach twisted. He didn’t like the sound of this.

He continued to not like the sound of it as his father explained, though he mentally chanted speak meagerly for too many words bring only harm, speak meagerly, speak meagerly to himself and forced himself to react only by nodding and making quiet sounds of agreement. Every once in a while, he asked a very technical question to show he was paying attention, usually definitional – “What does an ‘offensive talisman’ do?” and “What’s it called when you divide people into groups before attacking like that?” and “How would you keep the fire from spreading to other buildings if it gets set there?” – and he didn’t say anything at all about whether he thought any of this was a good idea or not.

After a while, his father let him go.

Lan Xichen went to find Wangji.

Well, he wanted to first go find some bushes to throw up in, because he’d been so scared the entire time he was in there with Father, but his father was a really good cultivator, with really good senses, which meant that first he had to go to find Wangji, who was waiting for him in their rooms. Rooms that, critically, had silencing arrays for privacy that Shufu had put up for them himself to show them how they worked and reassure them that they meant that he trusted them, and then he could throw up.

Which he did.

“Did you find out something useful about Shufu?” Wangji wanted to know, patting Lan Xichen sympathetically on the back.

Lan Xichen nodded and wiped his mouth. He’d been so scared. He’d thought his father would figure out what he was doing – but he’d gotten lucky, he supposed. It had become pretty obvious not too far into Father’s recital that he wasn’t telling Lan Xichen about the war because he thought Lan Xichen would be able to help him with anything, but for reasons of his own, reasons Lan Xichen didn’t entirely understand. Reasons that involved telling Lan Xichen about all sorts of gristly possibilities that might not even come to pass, and probably wouldn’t, like some sort of horrible scary story that children told just to scare each other.

Lan Xichen had the sinking suspicion that his father had told him all of that awful stuff less because he wanted Lan Xichen to hear it than because he wanted to tell someone else that he’d told him. Maybe even that he’d scared him with it – or maybe just that Lan Xichen had listened to all of it without complaint. Lan Xichen really hoped he was wrong about the second part, because he didn’t want Shufu to think, even for a second, that he’d liked any of it at all.

In fact, Lan Xichen was pretty sure he was going to have nightmares for at least a few days, if not many days. But it was all worth it, every last bit of it, future nightmares included, because somewhere in the midst of all that horror his father really had told him something useful about Shufu.

“Shufu’s in the Nightless City, where the Qishan Wen sect is,” he said, watching Wangji’s face, and he felt great relief when Wangji only blinked and nodded the way he did when hearing a fact. That meant that Wangji didn’t know about the Fire Palace.

Lan Xichen currently knew way too much about Wen Ruohan’s Fire Palace, because that was apparently where Sect Leader Wen sent prisoners of war when his wars of conquest were done. His father had told him that the Lan sect didn’t have anything similar because they were better than the Wen sect, but he’d said it in a really weird way. Almost – regretful, somehow. Or maybe like he thought it was a funny sort of difference, and that it was too bad for Shufu that he was now in a place where he would have to deal with it.

“Father sent him there because he and Sect Leader Wen agreed to work together,” he explained, “and Sect Leader Wen wanted to make sure that Father didn’t betray him.”

Wangji frowned. “Would he?”

Lan Xichen winced. His father hadn’t said anything like that. And he might not like Shufu, but they were still brothers, weren’t they? Even at the moments when Lan Xichen kind-of-maybe-sort-of disliked Wangji the most, usually right after Wangji had just bitten him for no good reason or when he was being really annoying, he would never want to hurt him, not really. Surely the same applied to his father and his shufu, who were brothers as well.

But…at the same time…

“I don’t think so?” he said, but he wasn’t sure. “The more important thing is that Sect Leader Wen can’t get the impression that Father did.”

“Why?” Wangji wanted to know. “What would happen if he did?”

Lan Xichen swallowed. “Sect Leader Wen might get angry. He might even…he might even try to hurt Shufu over it.”

Wangji looked rightfully appalled by the idea.

“Don’t worry,” Lan Xichen quickly assured him. “That’s good, in a way, right? It means Sect Leader Wen has no reason to hurt Shufu yet. They’re working together, Sect Leader Wen and Father, and that means Shufu’s safe.”

For now.

“What are we going to do?” Wangji asked. There was no hesitation in him, no fear, and for a moment Lan Xichen envied him that confidence – what are we going to do, he said, because in Wangji’s mind there was not a second of doubt that they were going to do something, even though they were only children.

Except somehow Lan Xichen was supposed to figure out what.

Sometimes he hated being the older one.

“We…need to talk to Shufu,” Lan Xichen said, because that was only right. Shufu would know what they needed to do. Shufu would fix things. The only reason he hadn’t come back to fix things already was because of their father, their awful awful father, who probably wasn’t telling him anything he really needed to know, like how much his nephews really, really needed him. That was probably the only reason that Shufu hadn’t come back already. As soon as they got to Shufu and told him about it, he would figure something out. “Yes, that’s right. We need to talk to Shufu about it. And that means that we need to get to Shufu.”

“We should go to the Nightless City,” Wangji said, nodding firmly in agreement. “Right away. How much food should we pack?”

Lan Xichen grimaced. He’d looked at some of the maps in his father’s office while they were discussing the war and the Nightless City looked like it was really far away. Too far to walk, probably, even if they packed food the way they did for a long hike. They hadn’t even been allowed to go down to Caiyi by themselves yet, and that was still in Gusu. How were they supposed to get to the Nightless City…?

Unless someone gave them a ride.

“I have a better idea,” he said, relieved to have thought of something. “There’s a discussion conference coming up soon, hosted by Yunmeng Jiang; I’ve heard all the teachers talking about it. You remember the discussion conferences, when all the sects get together…? We’re going to send a group, a – what’s the word – a delegation, and so will all the other sects. The Wen sect will definitely be there.”

“Will Shufu be there?”

“Maybe? I don’t know for sure. But if we sneak into the luggage that gets packed for our sect and go along, then even if Shufu’s not there, then we can use that opportunity to sneak into the Wen sect’s luggage. As long as they don’t spot us, they’ll carry us all the way back to the Nightless City with them!”

“That’s a good idea,” Wangji decreed solemnly. “Only one problem. How long do we have to wait until the discussion conference? I want to go right away.”

“Another month or so, I think? Maybe a little less. But that’s a good thing, not a problem. We need time to plan out how we’re going to do it, and time to pack what we’ll need to take with us to go, since we’ll be gone for a while. I mean, we can’t just take some snacks and a bunny doll the way you did the last time we went to Caiyi.”

Wangji’s expression suggested that he disagreed, and also that he didn’t see what else they might need. Which was stupid: obviously they also needed clothing, if they were going to stay somewhere else for more than one day.

And probably other things, too, though Lan Xichen couldn’t think of any right then.

“A month isn’t that long,” Lan Xichen said encouragingly, and found himself gaining confidence from trying to convey it. “Just a little longer, okay, Wangji? Just a month, and then we’ll get Shufu back.”

And then everything would be all right again. He was sure of it.

#mdzs #lan xichen #lan wangji #qingheng-jun #lan qiren #my fic #my fics #Megafic #Surprise!!!

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