#based on the donghua mostly since i'm only ep3 of the untamed

[problematiquefics]

i’ll bet your sadness shimmers (wangxian, g)

for day 29: frozen of untamed winter fest. cross-posted to ao3. 

Lan Wangji was born with a curse.

Cold seeped from his finger tips and ice crystals formed on everything he touched. When his emotions got the better of him, the surrounding air turned frigid and storm clouds gathered over his head.

So he didn’t lose control. He wore gloves. He didn’t touch anyone. He didn’t allow himself the luxury of feelings. The heart, where emotions were rooted, was a traitorous organ – and it was where the curse lied.

Conceal, don’t feel, he reminded himself again and again. He said it to himself when he woke up in the morning, when he ate his breakfast around the other students of Gusu Lan, during lessons with Lan Qiren, each time he flipped a page while studying alone in the library, and every night before bed. Forgetting wasn’t an option. If anyone knew…

He doesn’t remember the first time his powers manifested. Too young. Perhaps he was an infant, reaching for his mother’s hair with chubby hands, crystals of ice forming before his unknowing eyes. Maybe he was a toddler, first learning to walk, each step leaving a footprint of frost. He doesn’t know and no one has told him.

(He’s also never asked.)

But his first memory is related. It wasn’t of his powers. It was of a discussion about them.

He was sitting on Lan Qiren’s lap, playing with strands of his uncle’s hair. Words were spoken around him, about him, but he was too young to care. Too young to know what most of it meant. In hindsight, he flinches when he remembers some of those suggestions. They were cruel, more fit for a ferocious ghost than a little boy. But what were they to do? They didn’t even know where the powers came from. But they knew, with certainty, that it had to be a curse.

An unbreakable one, evidently.

Lan Wangji’s control is impeccable. He was seven the last time he lost control, an incident he’ll never forget – not when his uncle still has a stripe of white hair. The gloves never come off, he never loses his temper. He can’t afford to. Yet…

A boy with dark hair and a wicked grin arrives in the Cloud Recesses.

He has no respect for the rules. He sneaks wine in past the gates and offers it to Lan Wangji like it’s no big deal. It’s not, not to Wei Wuxian. He is reckless and wild, a storm of black and red and flashing teeth. On his first day in class, he suggests another way to combat ferocious enemies – to harness resentment, to practice dark magic.

Wei Wuxian is trouble.

Lan Wangji knows this.

But he stirs something inside of Lan Wangji. He has a temper that Lan Wangji can’t have. He has a rebellious streak that Lan Wangji can’t have. He has a soul that Lan Wangji wishes he could have.

Wei Wuxian leaves him conflicted, confused, and out of balance. No one and nothing has ever tested his control like Wei Wuxian has.

If Wei Wuxian were the only one to test him, he thinks he could handle it. But then the Qishan Wen burn the Cloud Recesses. They gather the young members of each clan and force them to work under Wen Chao’s cruelty. He is trapped in a cave with little hope of survival. Lotus Pier is razed to the ground.

Wei Wuxian goes missing.

They find Jiang Wanyin but the only sign of adopted brother is his bell.

Lan Wangji searches. Night after night he plays Inquiry. Gossip may be against Cloud Recesses’ rules but it doesn’t stop him from listening to every whispered word. He needs to knows. He has to know.

Finally, he hears something.

Wen Chao cast Wei Wuxian into the burial mounds.

His heart thuds against his ribcage.

No.

It can’t be true.

Wei Wuxian can’t be dead.

Because there is only one fate if it is true – that wicked smile, that storm cloud of a cultivator, is gone.

Lan Wangji locks himself in his room. The temperature plummets inside, icicles forming on the ceiling. Snowflakes hang suspended in air. He sits on his bed and tries to breathe. Tries because his lungs feel frozen.

“Lan Wangji?” a familiar voice calls from the other side of his door.

Lan Xichen.

The door slides open. His brother’s eyes scan the room. He breathes in and then out, a white cloud escaping his lips.

“What’s wrong?”

Barely louder than a murmur, he answers, “Wei Wuxian.”

“We’ll find him.”

“He’s dead.”

“Maybe not,” Lan Xichen says, a look of desperate hope in his eyes. “Wen Chao boasts. It might be a lie.”

“He’s gone.”

The room grows colder, darker. Outside, clouds block the sun – the rarest of occurrences.

“Brother…”

He can barely hear Xichen. There’s a storm inside his mind, a blizzard howling in his ears. It’s consuming. The cold is racing through his veins.

“Brother!” Xichen squeezes his wrists. He hadn’t even realized his brother had moved. “You’re losing control. You need to control it.”

Objectively, of course, he knows that but the words he has told himself all his life are drowned out by the storm.

“I can’t.”

A broken whisper but it goes off like a firework.

The storm rages but it’s no longer inside his head.

The world is white – from Lotus Pier to the Nightless City. If one thing can be said, it puts a damper on the fighting. Yet it certainly doesn’t stop the war. Rumors spread of Wen soldiers bbeing gruesomely massacred – it’s not the work of any clan nor the work of any ghost. Dark shadows fall over the fresh snow.

But Lan Wangji knows none of this.

After the blizzard started, he fled the Cloud Recesses.

He can’t tell you where he is now. Some mansion, some place, somewhere. Completely alone. Yet it doesn’t calm his mind and it can’t tame the storm. His mantra has stopped working.

At this point, he doesn’t know what can.

“Lan Zhan?”

That voice…

He opens his eyes, tilts up his head, looks at the face staring back at him.

It’s changed but… The same, too.

His hair is done, somehow more wild than even. His eyes are the same shade yet colder. And the energy that radiates from him is…

Dark.

Wei Wuxian kneels beside him. Slender fingers reach out, caressing his cheek.

He grins. It’s a different kind of wicked.

“Did you miss me?”

Lan Wangji blinks at him. “You died.”

“Rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated. Besides… I couldn’t die without saying goodbye to you, could I?”

It’s not right. He’s not right. But Wei Wuxian is right in front of him, alive, and the storm outside stops.