Run, run. Run for your life.
Your life has always been moving, Wei Wuxian. You have always been running. From the cultivation world. From the dogs. From the Yunmeng Jiang. From the Burial Mounds.
From yourself.
And for a brief, beautiful moment, he'd had someone to grab his arm and pull him to a stop and say "it is okay to pause, to breathe."
But even that was eventually left behind.
He'd hurt Lan Zhan. There was nothing left to do now but run.
His room looks different now, a little dustier, a little sadder, a little greyer. Like all the colour had dried out. It's not the same and well, he supposes, flute in hand, neither am I.
Chenqing quivers in his fingers, anxiety leaching into her from him. He's not quite sure why he came back, there's nothing here worth taking. He can work as a rogue cultivator for money, so long as no one recognises him. He has slept on the street and scavenged for food before, he is not helpless. So why is it so hard to leave?
On one of the bookshelves, a worn book bound in deep blue leather catches his eye. He knows what's tucked in those pages. A leaf from the Cloud Recesses garden, the fabric lid to a jar of Emperor's Smile, an ink drawing of Lan Wangji before war hardened his young face. He tucks the book deep within the qiankun pouch nearest his heart.
A sudden call outside the door startles him but the voice is as familiar as his own skin, he would know its every mark, scar, and freckle. The bleeding pain in it, however, is something he has only heard once before in a dream. A dream so vivid as to be pulled from a page of life. A dream with a cliff, a scream, and hands just out of reach.
And somehow, despite all that he has survived, it's the agony in that voice that makes him scared.
"Wei Ying, please don't run away. Not again."