#lxc does not invent demonic cultivation. he invents something worse (magical fax services for intelligence gathering purposes)

[searchingforserendipity25]

emperor covered in linens

lan wangji has been searching for his brother for three months, long enough to lose his faith half a dozen times, if lan wangji were someone who lost his faith.

lan xichen returns to cloud recesses stumbling, staggering up the mountain. the guards on duty before the feeble new wards barely recognize him, at first.

lan xichen returns - bruises beneath the eyes, startlingly thin, and without a golden core.

the first gentlemen of the cultivation world, the first in generations to challenge wen ruohan's goal to cultivate to immortality: of course wen ruohan had sent his son wen chao with the core-crushing hand to hunt him down, bring him down from the arrogant heights of power and admiration the lans sought to achieve. to diminish him, the better to humiliate the lan sect, and all their possible allies.

lan xichen kneels before the elders and apologizes for losing the treasured books of the lan sect, and all the effort put into his abilities.

he is, lan wangji thinks, hollowed out in a very true sense. an empty house of a man, and empty face with two coal-bright eyes, staring up at the elders, at lan qiren, at lan wangji. it hurts, hurts to look at him.

there is naturally no longer a place for him at the head of the sect: lan wangji must succeed him, under their uncle's guidance. lan xichen apologizes to all their ancestors. lan xichen requests to be permitted to dwell in seclusion, and not bring greater shame to their people.

he apologizes to lan wangji, too. bows lower than he ever has to his younger brother, for altering his life so sharply, failing to protect him as he had always striven to.

"brother should not bow," lan wangji says. he holds his brother's arms in both hands, presses his tongue against his teeth to avoid biting out something too sharp about their lightness, the narrow slant of bones beneath the light seclusion robes.

"there is no need for bowing, between brother," lan wangji says: and lan xichen, zewu-jun, the first gentleman of the cultivation world, lays his head on his brother's shoulder, very silently. makes heavy with salt lan wangji's brocade robes, and shakes, horribly.

there is nowhere in him lan wangji can lay a gentle hand without causing him pain; he feels sick, sick with it, all the comfort he does not like to give and would burn nightless city whole to be able to offer now.

something hardens, grows terrible and dire as steel, all through the next days and months, watching how the grass on the way to the hanshi remains untrodden but for his feet most of the day.

the lan sect, so proud of its first jade, so quick to beat and whip and punish him from first childhood into his immaculate manners, his faultless talents: they turn their back on him so quickly.

cloud recesses is burned, barely standing; all hands are needed, and his uncle chides him often for spending too long with his brother, in a room that ought to belong to the sect leader, and which lan wangji refuses to occupy. lan xichen will not be moved from the hanshi to the infirmary, will not be exiled from his house, the one he decorated with such care for feng shui of on his fifteenth year.

lan wangji does not know how to ask, how to question: but he knows the sect principles, and all the disciplines that call for some better righteousness than this.

if the healers are not inclined to continue their care strigently, then lan wangji will do it himself. brings his brother salves and pills, plays healing songs until the ache in his muscles eases, his fever lowers, his weeping eases.

lan wangji does his sect heir duties, which are more plentiful, and less suitable to his temperament; and then he does what he can, every day. brings his brother ink from the place in caiyi he favours, and tea. brings music and company, and sits with him on the steps to the garden their father planted, when lan xichen cannot lift liebing from his lap to his lips, cannot bear to produce beauty without usefulness.

there are wounds on lan xichen that take so much longer to heal than they ever had before.

lan xichen does not know how to move inside his skin, how to account for the long healing of broken bones. he is too ashamed to ask for help from anyone, to heal anew the injuries he opens again: lan wangji has to insist. it is not a burden. brother is not a burden.

he does not know how to ask - only learns how to walk a little louder, and more more slowly, so lan xichen will not startle. it is not hard, only different. they have always been careful with each other. they hace always been gentle - lan xichen taught him how, at least.

lan xichen is all out of gentleness for himself, now. he strives to meditate, shaking with pain to attempt to be upright; tries to punish himself for the weakness of the body he cannot escape.

it frightens lan wangji, in a more concrete and visceral way than his disappearance had. he does not know how to do this. he does not know -

lan wangji does not ask how his brother escaped the wen's custody. what they did to him. for how long; how badly. when he was questioned, lan xichen spoke of an abetter, a conspirator; but would name no one, refused that if nothing else to the elders.

lan wangji's brother bleeds, bleeds through his linens. it was a magical sword that struck him, many times: his leg is brother, his back. his sword arm is broken, and was to be cut; wen chao had meant to do it just before he presented him as a spoil of victory wen ruohan's throne room, as a filial gift.

wen chao had meant for the limb to be fresh, without need for conservation talismans; for the smell of blood to be that much more vivid. it was, wen chao told lan xichen many times, his father's favourite fragrance.

lan wangji knows these things, now. learns them through many long vigils. his brother speaks without being asked, without clarity, on nights when the pain sweeps through him without reprieve, and none of lan wangji's exemplary musical cultivation can seep through his ruined meridians to bring some reprieve to his fever.

wei ying, he thinks, a dozen and a hundred times. helpless, helplessly swallowing back tears, anger, tears again. wei ying, wherever you are, please live. please be well. do not leave the world, be safe.

a hundred and dozen times he nearly writes to lotus pier. lan xichen's condition has been determined to be a sect secret; lan wangji puts brush to paper, lets it blot out the empty space where his words do not exist.

a summons comes, the threat implicit in every character, the mocking derision mortifyingly clear. lan wangji is to attend a gathering of young cultivators in nightless city: wen ruohan kindly excuses his older brother from attending, being as he is no longer one such.

lan wangji burns it with a flare of barely restrained spiritual power. even lan quiren cannot scold him for it with any conviction.

"i shall tell brother," lan wangji says, and leaves before barely excusing himself. all things considered, he does not think he will be punishing himself very badly for his lack of courtesy.

it is early enough to find his brother steeping his first tea of the day.

the order has been for a screen to be raised in front of the hanshi's door, for discretion, to keep out the cold air from his sick lungs, to keep out stray eyes to his unsightly form. wangji can see him, very clearly, in the first light of the day, uncurling a hidden scroll from the bottom of his kettle, where a cluster of leaves has opened with the heat to reveal a rare blossom.

do not sow discord. do not say one thing and mean another. do not break faith and abandon right.

lan wangji hesitates. his feet over the cool grass grow damp before he walks to the other side of the screen.

the message his brother is holding up to the light would be indecipherable to him, even if the papers were not stained by tea and enchanted to confuse the eyes of those it is not written for. he can read the quick, keen light in his brother's eyes much more easily.

"i will miss you, wangji," lan xichen says, very softly. "please take care. please keep well. we shall see each other soon."

lan wangji does not ask how his brother knows of the summons. he has not asked, very carefully.

he does not ask now, either. his brother had been made into the image of benevolence, which is to say wisdom, which is to say he acts only deliberately, from a distance, a height, with a careful image of effortlessness.

the best leader, the principles agree, ought not to act, to act only as if he were doing nothing at all, unperceived. lan wangji has not done well, in becoming his brother's successor. it is very, very difficult. his brother had been an excellent cultivator, a great gentleman.

lan xichen lifts his face to him. it is early, the early hour lan wangji has carved out of his horrible schedule to visit his brother in the morning; the sky over the mountain is charchoal-dark, smudged, loose around the edges.

cloud recesses is burned, repairing itself slowly, warily waiting another attack. no other sect has reached out to them to offer aid; they have not asked for it, not permitted it.

it would only cause them to be targets to the wen's violence, all the quicker. nonetheless, the nie have written. addressed their letters to zewu-jun, all of them; lan wangji has been glad, selfishly glad, for the excuse to force the world a little further inside the hanshi, lest his brother truly close his doors to it without regret.

lan wangji ought, perhaps, not have worried. this house, that was once his father's, has been his brother's since he was fifteen.

zewu-jun looks up. smiles his flower-blooming smile at him. for the first time in months, a faltering thing, achingly slow beneath the whip marks marring the lovely lines of his cheeks - but it is a kindness lan xichen can give them both.

and lan xichen has always done best with some kindness to give. lan xichen has always been lan wangji's older brother, the one who apologized for failing to be able to protect him, broken fingers gripping tightly at lan wangji's robes.

he has no spiritual energy to burn his spy report, but there is an incense burner at the ready beside his teacup.

the smell of the sodden paper burning is thick in the air, a little cloying, ink-dark. they sit down together, the twin jades of lan, letting the tea grow cold to watch the steam rise over their heads.

something eases in lan wangji's shoulders. he breathes in, a little easier.

"i will take care," he says. his heart, pressing against his throat, is immense and alive with pride, a burning faith. in this, if nothing else; in him, if no one else. "wangji promises."

he bows low, on his way out. a vassal to their sect leader, a filial brother to his elder. lan xichen taps him lightly with the side of his crutches, lifts him up, gives him his blessings.

wen ruohan's deputy cuts his arm off, before killing him. lan wangji wraps it carefully, to send to gusu, the very night of victory.