Chapter 6

The world spun like thread and he lost time. It ran like water between his fingers, dripping and sometimes flowing away from him, staying briefly and then drifting away.

Pain was constant, so was heat. Sometimes there was a chill he had never felt before, but everything seemed so distant. Nothing could concern him here in this weary grey landscape, not grief, not physical pain, not even the shameful lack of discipline he was displaying by possessing no motivation to move, fight or do anything beyond breathing.

He heard his brother's voice, steady and reassuring, "Shh Wangji. I am here."

When he opened his eyes, it was to the sight of his beloved elder brother, his face pale and his eyes so sharp with boundless worry. Then the world would burn once more, setting fire to his skin and to his heart, time again slipping away.

He knows at one point he heard his uncle, so different from the last time he had seen him, his voice always so authoritative, now quiet, his words indistinct. Why and any other question Wangji didn't really care enough to know. He found it hard to care about anything really.

He sees blurry landscapes and half formed dreams, but he feels no fear...no stress or worry. He is content to not be present, to float and drift through the flames and the pain.

Wangji wakes sometime in the night, his broken mind trying to understand why his brother seems to always be there, right beside him. Xichen is the Sect Leader, with various duties and responsibilities to their people yet he is here with him, in this endless night. For every time he wakes, returns to himself it is night time yet he does not know the exact time. "Is it nine?" He asks Xichen once, drawing his brother's worried gaze.

"No. It is eleven." He answered calmly, applying another cloth to his neck. He lies on his chest taking the weight off his back and it is odd to look at his brother from such a strange angle, so improper and yet becoming almost normal with the frequency which it happens.

"You should be asleep." He tells him solemnly, shocked to see his brother breaking the rules in such a blatant manner.

"I couldn't sleep. So I thought I would sit with you brother." Xichen replied softly.

Who was he to judge? When their mother had died Xichen had rarely left him completely alone, the grief wearing on him differently.

He is tired down to his bones, he misses Wei Ying and his back feels angry and raw, the pain snaking down his chest, shoulders and down to the small of his back. What did it matter? Any pain or discomfort he felt now, was nothing to what Wei Ying had suffered.

Closing his eyes he is startled awake again by his brother sitting on the floor by his side. There are tears in his eyes, bright and so disturbing to see, his serene near perfect elder brought so low by sleepless nights and heartache he didn't understand.

"Don't go Wangji. Please don't go." He whispered urgently his hand falling to the back of his neck in a gentle grip, mindful always mindful of his injuries, but that touch said more than any words could. Xichen was afraid.

'I am here." Wangji tries to whisper, his throat parched and painfully swollen. He might be adrift and uncaring about himself, but everything in him rebels at the broken grieving look in those gentle eyes. Xichen did not deserve such pain.

"Stay. Don't go to him yet."

Even in his muddled state he knew exactly who 'him' was. "Wei Ying."

"Not yet. Please Brother. Don't go to him yet. Stay. A-Yuan needs you. I need you. Gusu needs you."

But Wei Ying doesn't? He wanted to ask but the words seem cruel and despite everything, he loves his elder brother. "I failed him."

"You didn't understand him Wangji. He did not want to be saved."

Who does not want to be saved? Wei Ying thought himself invincible but that was a lie. Wei Ying knew he was damned and yet Wangji could have saved him, brought him here, purged him of the resentful energy. Today he would be alive. Yet it was true that he did not understand him and oh that thought hurt more than his back and his grief combined.

"Wei Wuxian..."

"...Was never evil." He interrupts fighting his own mind for supremacy over this fog that builds around him. "He still loved and cared!" He whispered his voice cracked and soft despite his anger.

"No. Not evil." Xichen sighs. "He did kill so many Wangji."

"Would you accept him?" He asks suddenly brave because he has nothing left to lose.

His Brother's eyes are so bright with tears and his face is pinched in exhaustion and the mental toll that he cannot quite understand, lost to fever and despair.

Xichen's voice though is strong when he replies, "Yes. When he returns, I will give Gusu as a sanctuary. For you."

His jaw firmed and he wiped a hand under his eyes brushing away the tears. "I promise. I promise Little Brother."

There was a truth in his heart that he knew, had in fact always known. Gusu was his home, it was in his blood and his every breath. Wei Ying had time after time thrust that truth before him, a dagger and a reason, because Wei Ying believed that you should be proud of where you came from.

"Stay Wangji. Please." His brother asks again desperate, when his eyes slip closed once more.

'En." He replies already lost to the sea of flames and pain. The darkness was a welcome change, a respite for his mind and a relief to his soul.

Hours, years later the darkness recedes enough for him to realize he is sitting in the cave, so familiar after days spent trapped down here with Wei Ying. There was a fire burning before them and to his quiet joy, Wei Ying still young and undamaged by the lost of his family, still powerfully gifted but not tainted by resentful energy, lay with his head in Wangji's lap.

Wei Ying.

Desperate, he felt more alive suddenly than he had since he learned that Wei Ying was officially dead. Here he was, the weight of his head heavy on his thighs, the firelight flickering over his defined features, chiselled by the Heavens on a glorious day. He was wounded and feverish in the reality of this cave, but here in this version, he was neither the epitome of the Yiling Patriarch or the boy of the past. He was Wei Ying as Wangji loved to remember him. The man from every fantasy dreamed up on lonely nights, the man he had kissed beneath the tree, a stolen kiss that transformed vaporous feelings into unforgiving stone fit to last an eternity.

This was Wei Ying, this was man he loved. The one he cherished, treasured and missed so desperately.

It is quiet and solemn in the cave tonight, the fire crackling its light creating dancing shadows he had once watched so he didn't spend the entire time, staring at Wei Ying. For an endless time he looks at the sleeping face of his beloved, wishing that they were not here in this cave of tragedy and slaughter, but outside in the dignified spaces of water and earth, overlooked by the pure skies beneath the moon's gentle light.

'Wei Ying?" He breathed one trembling hand settling on his chest, right over Wei Ying's steady heart beat.

Grey eyes opened and blinked at him. "Lan Zhan?"

Hearing that longed for voice, Wangji for the first time in years, wept.

He didn't cry when his mother died or his father before his eyes. Nor did he cry really as a child, shouldering burdens and responsibilities that he was too young to understand, but he never cried. Not until the cave and the flickering fire, with a pair of grey eyes reflecting the flames in their stunning pure depths. He wept that night for his brother presumed dead, for Gusu and for the father he never really knew, perhaps too for his mother never fully grieved.

Wei Ying didn't judge him. He let him mourn and respected him for his grief. Now, sitting here with Wei Ying's precious form lying in his arms, he wept again.

He didn't made a sound. He didn't sob or wail or moan, even his ragged breathing was quiet, his tears an endless waterfall splashing onto his filthy robes and Wei Ying's gorgeous face. He tried to wipe them away to clean those beloved features that were blurry even as his throat closed, choked with tears.

Here, he grieved for Wei Ying.

A hand found his and he wept harder for the feel of those calluses and the strength behind grasping fingers. "Lan Zhan."

He would never cry in front of his brother, the person closest to him and the only one who really understood him. Xichen would not judge but he would worry, and some part of Wangji would be damned because those tears would prove that he was not as strong as he wished to be. He could not let his brother down, fail him with such weakness.

Wei Ying made him feel safe. It was an irony in itself. The boy who teased and pushed Wangji further away from everything he knew, believed in and took comfort in; the routines and the rules. A boy who was careless and reckless and so kind, so giving. The Yiling Patriarch and a demonic cultivator. A young man who found a child and called him his own, who smiled like the sun and who never, not once called himself a victim.

He felt safe, safe in way he had never experienced before and he had so much to hide from Wei Ying. His love, his admiration, his ever expanding feelings most of which he could not name but, he always felt safe no matter how uneven the ground beneath his feet.

"Lan Zhan."

He looked down into the perfect grey eyes he had spent hours memorizing. "Wei Ying."

"Who do you mourn for Lan Zhan?" He asked, his voice so soft, gentle and his eyes never strayed, staring straight up at Wangji, with no censure or judgement.

"You." He choked, the truth so easy in this cave, in the darkness.

"Why?" Wei Ying asked, a furrow in his brow.

Bold in ways he was never in daylight, Wangji reached out a finger and smoothed the frown away, unable to bear its existence. "You're gone."

The words were unfathomable still, like a nightmare he wished would go away, but they echoed in the cave, bouncing off the walls to hit him like a thousand knives. Gone. It threatened to end him, to destroy his crumbling defenses and leave him open to the maelstrom of agony, the circling carrion crows of his own despair.

Fingers callused and perfect stroked along his cheek startling him into opening his eyes, shoving him away from grief for a precious moment of reprieve. "I walk in chaos Lan Zhan." Wei Ying said formally, his eyes sharp and yet so soft.

"Mother never opened the door." He told him and he didn't know why he told him that, admitting that truth and the betrayal felt by a small child, who sat by a door that never opened proving the truth that Wangji wasn't enough to stay for.

"She wasn't a demonic cultivator. She didn't raise the dead or cause death."

The words were not cruel or goading, a simple fact whispered in the darkness. It seemed reasonable and Wangji clung to the surety of Wei Ying's voice in the solid ground promised in grey eyes.

"No."

"She didn't walk in chaos. She died a proper death. It was her time and her life was a good one."

"Father kept her prisoner." He had always wanted to say those words.

"So he lost her and cost his sons their mother." Wei Ying replied and the bitter truth settled like stones on a riverbed deep beneath the water.

"I never wanted you to be a prisoner. I just wanted you to live."

Grey eyes stared up at him, his long hair cascading over his lap like threads of silk. Time was endless as Wei Ying looked at him, but Wangji didn't care, choosing not to hide all the love he felt, his pain and his sorrow. Wei Ying deserved to know that someone mourned, would always mourn what happened.

"You know my soul is within chaos."

He had thought of little else, aware even in his limited understanding that whatever Wei Ying had done to himself, or that had been done to him by accident or design, had changed the very nature of his being. He walked the demonic path, created chaos in his wake and wielded the dead like a sword. Nothing about Wei Ying was exactly the same as it had been trapped in this cave so many years ago. If that could be established as true, then what did that mean for his death? Was anything about his end, because Wangji couldn't call it his death, comparable to anyone else before him?

Was he even truly, actually dead? Was he simply displaced from his body?

The only answer he could give was the one question he could answer. If he wasn't 'dead' then he must be within chaos and that was a frightening, disturbing thought. If true, how was he going to save him? To find him and bring him home? So he said, "Yes."

The word echoed in his chest, expanding through his soul to resonate in the cave. If Wei Ying wasn't dead and gone like his mother, like so many...then he could come back. How he didn't know but believing in Wei Ying had never been difficult, even when Wangji wished to hide, wished that Wei Ying wasn't the owner of his heart.

"Then wait. Wait for me. Prove your devotion."

The words were not ones Wei Ying would have chosen. They were the words spoken with Wei Ying's mouth, but came directly from the heart this man owned. But, yes. Yes. This felt right, an almost promise that was more than he had ever had before. He could wait, would wait an eternity for this gorgeous, perfect man.

"En."