#It's literally just reposting what already exists only with proper chapter breaks and stuff

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

Why Not Me?

At last: the LQR raises LJY fic from my WIP Wednesdays has a name and proper chapters. My baby has been AO3 legitimized lol (the title is a link to it on AO3).

This whole idea, by the way, was sparked by this post by @korpikorppi about how Lan Qiren and Lan Jingyi seem to be really comfortable/familiar with each other during the Second Siege of the Burial Mounds, so I took that and ran with it while also shamelessly committing to my “Jingyi’s un-Lan-like behavior is actually at least partially because of ye olde ADHD because I say so” agenda.

-/-

“You.”

Jingyi stumbles to a guilty halt. Lan-xiansheng hadn’t called him by name, but he didn’t have to for Jingyi to know he’s the one being addressed. After all, the other children are all behaving exactly as expected as they walk from their classroom to the dining hall -- only Jingyi can’t resist bouncing on the balls of his feet and swinging his arms as he walks. They just had to sit for so long today! His limbs are tingly and restless and he needs to get the feeling out before he has to sit and be quiet for lunch, but he’s not allowed to wander somewhere more secluded to do it.

Which just means that he’ll get in trouble for it.

Again.

He decides to save Lan-xiansheng the trouble of trying to recall his name. Instead, he simply ducks his head and approaches him much more sedately. Once in front of one of the three most intimidating people in the Cloud Recesses, Jingyi dips into a bow and keeps his head down, eyes lowered.

“The way you were walking --“

“Is unacceptable,” Jingyi interrupts before he can stop himself and he winces, though he manages not to break his bow to clap his hands over his mouth. It won’t turn back time to 5 seconds ago before he’d interrupted anyway, so there’s no point.

“Do not interrupt,” Lan-xiansheng reprimands as expected, though he doesn’t sound any sterner than when he’d begun. Jingyi nods and dips a little lower in his bow briefly. He really doesn’t mean to be bad, but no matter what he says it always ends up the same. There’s no use trying to defend himself anymore.

“Yes, Lan-xiansheng.”

“Do not cause further disruptions.”

Jingyi hesitates but nods again. At least he’s not getting a punishment this time -- his last one had been for a few different things and it had taken forever to get all the copying and handstand-ing out of the way. He straightens up again in time to see Lan-xiansheng wave him away and he turns quickly, eager to go get something to eat -- and immediately smashes face-first into someone’s knees.

“Ow!” he yelps and rubs ruefully at his nose, his face blanching when he catches sight of the boy accompanying whoever he’d run into. It’s Lan Yuan, which means --

“Ha..Hanguang-Jun,” Jingyi barely manages to stammer. Hanguang-Jun came out of seclusion a few years ago now, but he still barely ever interacts with the rest of the Sect (at least as far as Jingyi can tell). His son is nice, but Jingyi feels ugly things that he know he shouldn’t whenever he sees the boy, and so it’s with the twin guilt of having run into Hanguang-Jun and for not liking Lan Yuan, Hanguang-Jun’s pride and joy, that Jingyi hurries to bow again.

“Move carefully,” Hanguang-Jun instructs, his voice deep and slow. Jingyi nods in a rush and is finally allowed to make his escape from what is now two of the three most intimidating people in Cloud Recesses.

Jingyi walks slowly to the dining hall, scuffing his heels all the way. He knows that it’s not fair of him to not like Lan Yuan. And an even tinier, even secreter part of him doesn’t like Hanguang-Jun either. Or Lan-xiansheng. Or Zewu-Jun. He respects them, of course he respects them! And he knows he shouldn’t feel this way, which is why he hasn’t said a word of it to anyone. But any run-in with any of them always puts a sour taste in his mouth.

Jingyi sits down with his rice and starts eating glum little bites. He usually can’t get the food in his mouth fast enough, cramming his cheeks full of rice and vegetables until it feels like they’ll split open. He’s always reprimanded for it, though never actually punished since he never eats more than the proscribed amount. Today he eats like he’s supposed to, and he pouts down at his rice feeling not very like himself at all.

The thing is, Jingyi knows that he’s related to them. He’s a Lan too - a clan one, with the cloud ribbon and everything - but he doesn’t get to have a family. When he was little, he used to cry for his parents and the aunties in the children’s house would tell him that they’ll be back soon, just sleep Yi-er, your family will come back for you.

Only they didn’t, because the aunties said one day that they were actually gone forever in the war that took a lot of kids’ parents. And Jingyi had cried and cried, wanting them so badly it hurt all the way down to his fingertips and his toes. The aunties would try to comfort him, but then they left and new aunties came in, and they didn’t know him at all and he just became another kid in the house.

And then the other kids started leaving. The sect was getting bigger again, and people were able to take in kids that weren’t theirs and give them a home and a new family, but no one ever came for Jingyi. And then one day he heard the aunties chatting amongst themselves that Hanguang-Jun had left the Cloud Recesses completely and come back with a son. He claimed the boy for his own, but the aunties thought with the way the boy was so sick that he’d been a war orphan that Hanguang-Jun wanted. Well Jingyi was a war orphan too, but Hanguang-Jun hadn’t wanted him. He’d gone all the way to Somewhere Else to find a son he wanted more.

It just doesn’t feel fair sometimes to be a Lan but not a Lan. He’s not the only kid in the children’s home, of course, but the others are all children who were sent here to live by their parents so they can become disciples. Sometimes their parents are even allowed to come and see them, and they can send letters every season. Sometimes Jingyi wonders if he’s maybe the loneliest kid in all of Cloud Recesses. Maybe the whole world.

Jingyi finishes his first bowl of rice and doesn’t reach for a second, his belly too knotted up and full of his sad mood to eat any more.

Every time he sees them he’s reminded that they don’t want him. They have to know he exists, even if they don’t know his name - he wears the ribbon, after all, and he’s in all the right classes for his age. Don’t they care? And Lan Yuan never leaves Hanguang-Jun’s side, which means he gets to be around his dad all the time! Jingyi wants that! He wants someone who will hug him and let him run around the house and play with him and take care of him - just him!

He’s never allowed to do that in the children’s home. The aunties tut over him and ask him what they should do with him and they give him extra chores to keep him out from under their feet while they take care of the others. They tell him he’s a lot to handle and he needs to be better behaved if he wants to be allowed to become a cultivator. Jingyi wonders sometimes if that’s why his family doesn’t want to take him away from the children’s home -- he’s too much, and at least there he’s someone else’s problem.

Jingyi’s mood follows him for the rest of the week like a big cloud over his head that he can’t get rid of. It wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t have to see Hanguang-Jun and Zewu-Jun all over the place, but for some reason he sees at least one of them every day as he walks to and from class or his chores or the dining hall. Every time he sees them he has a foolish little flash of hope that they’re out and about looking for him, but they never are and each time it feels like a fresh rejection.

He skips class.

He skips class all week long the next week to go hide in the woods, near enough to hear the bells and the occasional hushed chatter of disciples on the other side of the trees but far enough away that no one can find him perching in branches or sitting on soft patches of moss.

It takes ten whole days for someone to find him and tell him he’s in trouble and to report to Lan-xiansheng. Even though he knows it’s to be punished, it almost feels like a reward. If they won’t notice him on their own, it seems he can make them notice him if he acts badly enough. He doesn’t want to be bad, and actually he wasn’t even trying to be, but if doing things to get in trouble will get him noticed then maybe it’s worth it.

“Your teacher informed me you have not been attending class,” Lan-xiansheng remarks once Jingyi has knelt in front of him across a table stacked with essays from the older classes. Jingyi dares a glance up at his stern gaze and immediately falters, dropping his eyes back down to stare at his fists on his knees instead as he shakes his head. “Where have you been instead?”

“The woods,” Jingyi manages to reply, still addressing his own lap. “There’s a nice clearing off the path to the sword grounds.”

“What makes this clearing better than attending your classes?”

Jingyi shuffles uncomfortably and immediately reprimands himself for fidgeting, the voice in his head a strange mixture of the sternest auntie and his teacher.

“I don’t know.” It comes out easily, almost desperately, and Jingyi can’t decide if it’s a lie or not. He doesn’t know why he didn’t want to go to class, but the thought of going made him sadder than the thought of sitting by himself in the woods so he’d just…done that instead. But he already knows from experience that that isn’t the sort of explanation anyone wants to hear when they ask things like this, so “I don’t know” is safer. They can’t be mad at him for something he can’t explain, right?

“Perhaps you will think of the reason while you do handstands until the evening meal.”

Dinner?! It’s only just after breakfast now! Jingyi’s head snaps up and a protest forms on the tip of his tongue; he quickly bites it back along with the sudden frustrated burning in his eyes to nod instead.

“Yes Lan-xiansheng,” Jingyi replies with effort. He was wrong -- this hurts worse than being ignored. Not worth it at all.

And yet he can’t seem to stop. He serves his punishment and lasts a few days before he acts out again and is once again delivered to Lan-xiansheng for punishment. Sometimes he does chores around Cloud Recesses, sometimes he does handstands, sometimes he copies, sometimes he copies while doing handstands -- it all makes him feel about as big as an ant getting poked with a stick, but he can’t help it.

It goes on for months, and Jingyi develops a reputation for being a troublemaker. Other children avoid him, adults watch him closely waiting for him to slip up, and he’s more miserable than he’s ever been.

Today he’s meant to be fetching water for his chores. The Cloud Recesses has running water, but Lan-xiansheng is running out of new ways to punish him so Jingyi is fetching water. He decides to go all the way up into the back hill for it, just because, and stumbles upon a secret place that’s way better than his old clearing in the woods. It looks about the same as that one, except this one is full of rabbits!

Jingyi drops his buckets and hurries into the clearing with a gasp, something happy lighting up in his chest for the first time in a long time to see the fluffy little things gamboling about in the grass. That little spark fans itself quickly into a desire to join them so intense he can’t possibly keep it under control, and so without a second thought he begins jumping and running around with them, giving chase and laughing when they all scatter away. He lunges for them and tries to catch them, wanting desperately to find out what they feel like.

He can’t help but scream in sudden fear when he’s yanked to a stop by a hand in his collar. He looks up and feels the happiness in his chest burst like a soap bubble as he finds himself staring up at a glaring Hanguang-Jun.

“Ah…” he tries to start, but terror has closed his throat.

“Do not chase them,” Hanguang-Jun intones, his voice cold and inflectionless. It somehow feels just as bad as when people are angry with him. “You will hurt them.”

Jingyi struggles against Hanguang-Jun’s grip with a sudden burst of anger and the fear closing up his throat turns into a lump that he can’t swallow away and a burning in his eyes. He gulps down big, shaking breaths and scrubs at his eyes while Hanguang-Jun releases him without another word. He should leave, he knows he should, but it’s not fair! He just wanted to play and there’s yet another rule! Another ‘do not’ that can be used to make him bad!

“I didn’t mean to hurt them!” Jingyi protests, finally finding his voice again. He glares at Hanguang-Jun’s feet through the warbling of his tears and scrubs at his eyes again. “I wanted to play! I’m s’posed to be doing another --“ he hiccups -- “another punishment for being bad but I found them and wanted to play instead! I’m sorry Hanguang-Jun, I don’t want to be bad but - but - but -“

Jingyi trails off into sobbing as he curls up in a little ball on the ground. Why couldn’t he have been born a bunny? Bunnies don’t have rules, bunnies can be soft and fluffy and have a million-billion siblings and be safe in meadows. They can run and hop around and no one will tell them they have too much energy, that their behavior is inappropriate, that he’ll never be allowed to become a proper disciple if he doesn’t learn to control himself and not lose face for the Sect.

That must be why none of his family want him -- embarrassment. He’s not like the rest of the Lans, even Lan Yuan who’s his age and a war orphan too is quiet and nice and all the right things that the teachers want to see. Jingyi’s just a nuisance.

Jingyi isn’t sure how long he cries, but it feels like he’ll never be able to stop. At some point through his heartache he hears Hanguang-Jun greet a new set of footfalls with a quiet, “Shufu,” and Jingyi tries to pull himself together. He doesn’t want to cry in front of Lan-xiansheng too, not when yelling and crying in front of Hanguang-Jun is bad enough. He uncurls with an effort and stands up to offer a bow to Hanguang-Jun and then to Lan-xiansheng at the entrance to the little meadow.

“I’m sorry,” he says thickly. “I didn’t carry the water.” Jingyi leaves a wide berth between himself and Lan-xiansheng as he returns to his discarded buckets and picks them up, one in each hand. They already feel as if they weigh a thousand pounds, exhaustion and sadness dragging at his limbs before the buckets are even filled.

He’s nearly to the path when Hanguang-Jun calls for him. “Jingyi. Come back.”