This Is Not A Courtship (Said the Bridesgroom To the Suitor)

by midnightsnapdragon

In which Jiang Cheng proves to be a questionable grief counselor but a faithful correspondent, and no one has seen Lan Xichen since his little brother's wedding.

1. Part I

…

To the esteemed Zewu-jun,

I apologize for disturbing your seclusion. I don't know whether or not correspondence counts as "contact with the outside world," but I wouldn't risk breaking Lan tradition for anything less important than what directly concerns both our sects.

I'm writing to tell you personally that Wei Wuxian's marriage to Hanguang-jun will take place at Lotus Pier. This is a decision my brother and I came to on our own and is in no way meant to snub Gusu Lan. I apologize for any offense, and promise that the celebrations will be worthy of an interim Chief Cultivator and head disciple of Yunmeng Jiang.

I wish also to ask if you would be willing to add your support and experience to the wedding preparations, and when your seclusion is to come to an end.

Respectfully,

Jiang-zongzhu

…

Jiang-zongzhu,

Thank you for your letter.

Regarding your question: I had not intended to involve myself. I am certainly not offended at you taking on this duty; I well remember the splendour of Jiang-furen's wedding, and know that the planning is in capable hands.

My seclusion is voluntary and has no designated end date. I appreciate your thoughtfulness in reaching out to me. I hope you are well.

Regards,

Lan Xichen

…

Zewu-jun,

I am well, thank you. I'm enclosing a few colour palettes and decoration concepts along with this letter; if you could look them over, I would be grateful for your opinion.

Does your brother know you're not coming to his wedding?

Respectfully,

Jiang-zongzhu

…

Jiang-zongzhu,

Attached to this letter are the same samples you sent me. I have circled the ones I believe strike a good balance between the styles and traditions of Gusu Lan and Yunmeng Jiang. If I am any judge of beauty and harmony, your artisans are to be commended.

Wangji understands that my seclusion is indefinite. He has thus far respected my wishes and refrained from asking me to attend.

Please give my regards to your brother.

Lan Xichen

…

Three months pass before Jiang Cheng makes another venture. He has enough on his plate planning a wedding of enormous political consequence, keeping everything tasteful yet spectacular, and trying not to strangle his brother's fiancé. If Zewu-jun doesn't wish to come out of seclusion, then he's not coming out of seclusion. Jiang Cheng doesn't have the tact to gently hint to a man he only kind of knows that his presence at the wedding would make Jiang Cheng's life a lot easier. Or maybe he's just not brazen enough to ask the only person alive mourning Jin Guangyao to put himself in front of a cultivation world that still demonizes him.

But one evening, over dinner, Jiang Cheng makes a snide remark to his future brother-in-law about Lan Xichen's reticence, and said future brother-in-law snaps back coldly that it's none of his business, and this is familiar territory, everything's going great, right up until the moment Jiang Cheng realizes that Lan Wangji is actually distressed at the reminder that his brother isn't coming.

That night, Jiang Cheng sits at his desk and stares at a blank sheet of paper.

Hanguang-jun is wrong about one thing. It is his business. This wedding is his business, and anything that might affect the proceedings and the final outcome is, by default, his business, so the matter of Zewu-jun's attendance has to be resolved.

One more try.

He picks up the brush and dips it in ink.

…

Honoured Zewu-jun,

May this letter find you well. I understand that you expect your seclusion to preclude you from attending Lan-er-gongzi's wedding to my brother. I am asking you to reconsider. It will look strange to have three of four great sect leaders present, but not the last. The goal is to deflect rumors, not foment them, and I fear what others might make of your absence.

I hope you will also think of your brother. He tells me I cannot advise on fraternal matters but I am pretty sure about this one.

Lastly, consider me, your future brother-in-law. I need at least one other capable adult sect leader present for the sake of my remaining sanity.

I have enclosed a possible seating chart. Please let me know your thoughts.

Respectfully,

Jiang-zongzhu

…

Zewu-jun comes to the wedding. The announcement was made just a few weeks prior, first to Jiang Cheng by Wei Wuxian, who gave him the news with an air of bewildered anxiety; then to the five major sects, which set off a shockwave of gossip. This is to be a three-day hiatus in Lan Xichen's seclusion – enough to attend two nights of feasting and the ceremony itself, no more.

He arrives in shining blue-and-white brocade, with a headpiece more modest than what he once wore as leader of Gusu Lan. Jiang Cheng stands at the head of the reception hall, himself decked out in Yunmeng's best purples, and watches Lan Wangji's sunny, diplomatic, unmatched elder brother drift inside like a shade. His steps are as graceful as ever, but uncertain, as if the floor is full of invisible fault lines only he can see. When the deputy of a minor sect near Yunmeng turns and sees the First Jade of Lan five feet away from him, there's a flurry of people hurrying forward, and bowing, and effusively saying hello, how have you been, it's an honour that you're here, are you truly going back into seclusion after the festivities? Are you sure? Do you need to? Hasn't it been long enough?

Lan Xichen greets them one and all in return, bowing with precision, and answers them with more composure than Jiang Cheng can ever remember having in his life: hello, I've been well, you are too kind, and yes, I am. Yes, yes, and no, I am afraid not.

He looks regal. He looks exhausted.

Jiang Cheng sweeps across the hall, making the cluster of cultivators around Lan Xichen step back, and stops in front of him, and bows.

"Zewu-jun," he says. "I'm glad you could come."

Lan Xichen bows back with an expansive swish of sleeves. "I am glad to be here."

Well, Jiang Cheng has attended a sufficient number of excruciating parties in his lifetime to not immediately give credence to that. "May I have a word?" he says, and when Lan Xichen and their little audience of magpies all look at him expectantly, he realizes he has to provide some kind of excuse to back it up. He casts about wildly for a wedding thing he could conceivably want to bother Zewu-jun with. "There's a … table arrangement I'd like your advice on." They're still looking at him. "We have a lot more guests than we expected."

Lan Xichen decides to put him out of his misery. "Please excuse me," he says to the others surrounding them, and gives them a nod before turning to walk with Jiang Cheng down the length of the reception hall.

Jiang Cheng gives it five minutes before Lan Wangji, who's probably off sucking face with his intended, gets word that his brother is here and comes looking for him. If Jiang Cheng has anything to say to Zewu-jun, it should probably be now.

Conveniently, everything he thought he wanted to say has evaporated from his mind. Lan Xichen is looking around himself with a mild, appreciative expression, perhaps observing all the flower arrangements and colour patterns that he himself suggested to Jiang Cheng all those months ago. Maybe they should start with small talk. Hey, Jiang Cheng imagines saying, as they walk without speaking through the crowded hall, glad you could make it, now there's someone here who can deal with your pain in the ass of a brother. Did you know he looked genuinely upset when I brought it up to annoy him at dinner one time? I didn't even know his face could do that. Hey, glad you could make it. I'm sorry you killed Jin Guangyao at Guanyin Temple. I'm not sorry he's dead, but how it happened was pretty fucked-up. If you're going to kill someone it shouldn't be half by accident. Hey, glad you could make it. There's some light soup in the banquet hall for your spice-intolerant taste buds.

Fuck it.

"If it helps," he says abruptly, "I will personally make sure Nie Huaisang doesn't try to talk to you for the duration of the wedding," because that's the most comforting thing he's got right now, and also what he would have wanted to hear in Zewu-jun's shoes.

After a pause, Lan Xichen says, "I appreciate the thought." They come to stand at the far end of the reception hall, where corridors lead east through Lotus Pier. No one else approaches them, being too respectful of their host in the company of someone of equal rank. "Jiang-zongzhu, Lotus Pier looks magnificent. You must have worked tirelessly to put this wedding together in so short a time."

Subject change. Okay. "Not tirelessly," Jiang Cheng says dryly. "I was very tired. But," he adds, before his attempt at a joke has time to sound like a complaint, "it was worth it."

Lan Xichen smiles again. This time, it reaches his eyes. "I have never seen my brother so happy."

"Mine either."

They stand together for a minute, watching the ebb and swirl of the crowd. There are cultivators in Jiang purples, Lan blues, Nie greens and Jin golds, mixed with members of minor sects and ordinary people, some of which aren't associated with any sect at all. Most of those are people Wei Wuxian met on his travels after Guanyin Temple and became instant best friends with, and who naturally all had to be invited. Jiang Cheng is at a loss to explain how so many people can think his brother is so wonderful, when he can barely stand him. Besides, it's not their place to like him, it's his, and whether or not he decides to is none of anyone's business –

"Thank you for inviting me."

Jiang Cheng starts out of a viciously familiar train of thought. "What?"

Lan Xichen is looking at him with that crinkle in the corner of his eyes: he's not smiling anymore, but there's a real warmth to his expression. "Thank you for inviting me. I wanted to come, I truly did, but …"

"It's fine," Jiang Cheng says gruffly. He knows what self-recrimination is. "The pleasure is ours. Do you know where you're staying? Or have my juniors been unprofessional?"

"No, they've been very considerate. They showed me here from my rooms."

"Good." Jiang Cheng has no idea how to proceed. "Well. If there's anything you need – let me know."

"I will."

But when Jiang Cheng moves to walk away, Lan Xichen stops him with an upraised hand. "Jiang-zongzhu. The table arrangement?"

"Oh," Jiang Cheng says, flushing, and stops. "There isn't one. I just thought I'd get you away from all of them. You're free to go back, of course," he adds ungraciously, glancing toward the gaggle of gossips still lurking by the entrance. "If you so desire."

Zewu-jun raises his eyebrows. Jiang Cheng feels compelled to add, defensively, "Lying isn't prohibited at Lotus Pier."

"Ever?"

"No. Well –" Jiang Cheng reconsiders. "Only if you're a Jiang disciple. And only if it's to me."

"I have nothing to worry about, then."

"No."

They salute each other and Jiang Cheng exits stage left, leaving the entrance hall behind and striding down the eastern boardwalks to a pavilion where he heard someone might have accidentally set the drapery on fire. Gods, he hopes someone set the drapery on fire. That would give him an excuse to shout at people instead of being polite to them.

This wedding is so close to completion. Three days, and Lotus Pier will be back to normal. Three days, and his brother will be married, for real, just like in the wedding scenarios they once dreamed up with A-jie when they were little.

Somehow three days doesn't seem like long enough.

…

Yet they pass. Three days go by and before Jiang Cheng has any time to prepare himself, he's embracing his brother good-bye and then letting him go, and then watching the sun set over Lotus Pier long after Wei Wuxian's boat has disappeared into the fading light.

His brother waves to him until they can't see each other anymore.

Well, Jiang Cheng thinks, staring out over the water, that's it, then. He's gone. By choice this time, and not by pseudo-death kind of, sort of at Jiang Cheng's hands. It's for the best. Wei Wuxian was lost to him the moment he first set eyes on Lan Wangji back in Cloud Recesses eighteen years ago. Everything else has only been a detour in their grand romance.

He tears himself away from the docks and paces back through the remnants of a three-day-long wedding. All around him, servants are cleaning up, the final guests are leaving, and as he goes by, they nod and congratulate him for his wedding-planning accomplishments. When he returns to his rooms, he only bothers to release his hair from the silver piece holding it together before collapsing on his bed and falling asleep.

…

Wei Wuxian shows up at his doorstep six months later.

"JIANG CHENG!" he yells, delighted, as Jiang Cheng walks down the docks toward him. He's wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and several shades of suntan, as if he spent his absence from home doing fieldwork. "Lotus Pier is still running without me, I see!"

"Why wouldn't it be?" Jiang Cheng snaps, stopping an arm's length away.

"I dunno." Wei Wuxian hops lightly off the boat. "I figured without me, you'd forget what fun even is. But look at you! You're so chipper that you probably don't even need me here. Maybe you don't even have a guest room open for me anymore, eh?"

"Idiot," Jiang Cheng says, and shoves him with both hands. "Do you think you're a guest now? You think I'm going to serve you tea and make nice? You start work tomorrow teaching the younger disciples. If you're not on time, I'm ordering Gusu Lan's medicinal broth and having it served to you every day for dinner."

Wei Wuxian pales. "You wouldn't."

Jiang Cheng turns around and strides back down the dock.

"Jiang Cheeeeeeeeeeng! You wouldn't!"

"Watch me!"

Light footsteps sound on the wooden boards behind him, and then Wei Wuxian throws an arm around his neck. "Jiang Cheng, aren't you glad to see me? I've been away six months and twelve days! You missed me, right? Don't lie! I'll know if you lie! I have a secret sense!"

Jiang Cheng tries to push him off. "What secret sense? The only secret sense you have is for dogs."

"Ahaha, that's true … There aren't any dogs here, though, right?"

"No."

"See, it works!"

"Oh, get off –" His brother is nearly hanging off him by now, his feet dragging behind him. Jiang Cheng shifts, tries to throw off his weight, but Wei Wuxian has been an annoying brother and a little shit for longer than either of them can remember and doesn't budge. "Wei Wuxian! Let go!"

"Make me!"

Jiang Cheng takes a step, twists, gets both hands on his brother's chest and shoves him, for real this time. Wei Wuxian flails backward with a shriek and lands with a splash in the water.

Jiang Cheng crouches at the edge of the dock, elbows braced on his knees.

Wei Wuxian bursts up from the water, shaking droplets from his eyes. He gives Jiang Cheng a look of deep betrayal. "I can't believe my own shidi would do me like this."

"Feel refreshed?"

"You are the worst. All I wanted was to greet my very own brother after a long and unbearable separation, and this is how he repays me."

"You should be thanking me. Now you don't have to take a bath before your smell offends all of Lotus Pier."

"That settles it," Wei Wuxian says under his breath. "The first thing I'm teaching the disciples is manners, since you're not qualified to do it." He gets an elbow up on the dock and extends the other hand to Jiang Cheng. "Help me up?"

Jiang Cheng clasps his forearm and starts to pull him up onto the boardwalk. For a moment he has a brief and terrible vision of what he has come to think of as the last time he ever saw his brother – when he'd walked up to the cliff's edge at Nightless City, sword in hand, and seen Wei Wuxian slipping from Lan Wangji's fingers, looking up at them both with a bloody smile – and then it's unceremoniously dispelled when Wei Wuxian yanks him down off the pier. Jiang Cheng swallows nearly a quart of lakewater before he manages to kick back up to the surface and revenge himself on his brother properly.

…

These pleasantries concluded, they head to their separate rooms to dry off, ignoring the gawking juniors and servants who stopped to stare at their sect leader and first disciple trying to drown each other. Jiang Cheng works the sect leader's headpiece out of his hair as he walks: it didn't get lost in the water, thank heavens, but his hair did come loose and painfully tangled around it. He can't bring himself to care that they had an audience. What matters is that Wei Wuxian came off worse in the end, breathing heavily as he heaved himself up onto the pier, his hair and clothes in complete disarray; which means Jiang Cheng won, so there.

That night, they dine together on spicy soups and Yunmeng vegetable dishes, which Wei Wuxian falls upon with ravenous enthusiasm. Jiang Cheng is privately, foolishly pleased to see how much his brother has clearly missed the cooking they both grew up with, but instead of remarking on it, he tells Wei Wuxian what he expects the junior disciples to be able to do once he's done teaching them. If it means Wei Wuxian has to stay longer at Lotus Pier, oh well. That's just the dues he has to pay as first disciple of Yunmeng Jiang.

"You realize, I hope," Wei Wuxian says delicately, looking down at his soup bowl, where he is trying to herd three different types of vegetable into his spoon in one go, "that this means you'll have to put up with me for a while? I'm not as quick a teacher as others are."

"Whatever," Jiang Cheng says. He is just as focused on reaching for a small dish of mantou without trailing his sleeves in anything edible. "You have responsibilities here. You're not abandoning them again."

There is a brief, awkward silence. Then Wei Wuxian says, in a small voice, "No. I'm not."

Jiang Cheng relaxes, and grudgingly pushes the steamed buns across the table. The subject is closed.

But near the end of the meal, Wei Wuxian startles him by saying, tentatively, "Jiang Cheng … I have a favour to ask."

Jiang Cheng looks up at him, already scowling. "A favour? Are you my first disciple or not?"

"It's not for me," Wei Wuxian says quickly. "It's for Lan Zhan."

"No."

"Jiang Cheng, just hear me out!"

"Maybe your sweet, sweet Hanguang-jun should ask me himself. Or would His Excellency be too sickened to look me in the eye?"

Wei Wuxian gives him a sorrowful look. "You guys seemed to be getting along by the end of it."

It refers to the wedding, when Jiang Cheng told Lan Wangji he'd better get used to putting up with him and Lan Wangji said "Hm" in a resigned sort of way, which is the friendliest they've ever been and are ever likely to be. "Whatever," Jiang Cheng says. "He's Chief Cultivator. If he wants to ask a favour of me, he should do it through the official channels."

Wei Wuxian shakes his head. "No. It's a personal favour, and he doesn't know I'm asking. It'll take, like, five minutes. I promise."

Jiang Cheng frowns and puts down his chopsticks. "Okay?"

"Okay," says Wei Wuxian. "So. Remember how Zewu-jun came to the wedding and went right back into seclusion?"

"Sure."

"Well, it's been six months and no one has heard from him in a while. I mean, we assume he's all right since the food trays come back empty and you're supposed to send for a doctor if you get sick in seclusion, but Lan Zhan is worried. He says he hasn't heard music from the Hanshi since … what happened at Guangyin Temple. Just silence."

"Why doesn't Hanguang-jun just ask his brother if he's all right? Write him a note, or something?"

Wei Wuxian winces. "You're not technically supposed to do that when someone is in seclusion."

"So? This is his brother. Shouldn't that be more important than Lan Clan's three thousand rules?"

"Aw, Jiang Cheng, would you write me notes if I were in seclusion?"

"Yeah, to tell you to stay there."

"Jiang Cheng!"

"Well, so what? It seems like Zewu-jun just wants to be left alone." And Jiang Cheng can't blame him. Sometimes it takes every ounce of self-control he has not to wade into the lily fronds and join the frogs in their screaming chorus at dusk. "What am I supposed to do about it?"

Wei Wuxian scoots closer around the table and leans his arms on the empty space between two plates. There's no humour in his face, just honest entreaty. "Could you write to him and ask him if he's doing okay? He replied to you when you asked him to come to the wedding, remember?"

Jiang Cheng frowns at him. "I thought you said you're not supposed to write to someone when –"

"Yes, but you're a clan leader! It's different! He can't not reply and risk offending the Jiang Clan. At least in theory," Wei Wuxian amends. He's clearly making this argument up on the spot. "No one from any of the major clans has tried – Jin Ling won't dare, and I have it on good authority that Nie Huaisang won't either. So it's up to you."

"Maybe we can't afford to offend the Lan clan either, have you thought of that?"

"What are you talking about? You and Lan Zhan pissed each other off a million times before the wedding, and nothing bad happened."

Jiang Cheng has the sinking feeling that his brother's poor memory has, either out of denial or stubborn wish fulfilment, retroactively edited out all the hostility Jiang Cheng himself remembers from his face-offs with Lan Wangji these past two years. "Wei Wuxian," he says, "the last time I interfered with Hanguang-jun's brother, he nearly bit my head off."

"He won't this time, I promise!"

Jiang Cheng regards him suspiciously. "How do you know?"

"If he tries, I'll stop him."

"Oh, that makes me feel much better."

"Jiang Cheng, don't you have any faith in me?"

"No."

"Just one note, I swear." Wei Wuxian cocks a three-fingered salute against his temple. "Just one little note, and you'll have my gratitude, and Lan Zhan's too. And I won't ask you for anything else while I'm at Lotus Pier!"

Jiang Cheng stares at him, processing this. Then, abruptly exasperated, he gets up from the table and paces toward the door.

He doesn't want Wei Wuxian's gratitude. All he has ever wanted was for the two of them to be equals. This is one of his oldest, most deeply anchored fears, and it will never truly fade: that his brother is better than him, that someday he will leave, that he will go where Jiang Cheng cannot follow. But all of these things have already come true, and so what is there left to be afraid of? The worst has already happened. Wei Wuxian died that day at Nightless City. His relationship with Jiang Cheng shattered beyond all hope of repair. Yet here they are, having dinner together, and they are alive and they are equals, and his brother is asking him for a favour so small that he could just refuse out of spite and it wouldn't cost him anything.

"Fine," he tells the door. His fists are clenched tight inside his sleeves, hidden from view. "One note."

Wei Wuxian sounds relieved. "Thank you!"

Don't thank me, Jiang Cheng wants to say. Promise me you'll come back. But he is too proud to say anything of the kind, and so he opens the door and walks through it with his head high, as though it doesn't matter at all that his brother will not give his word to stay without first being asked.

…

Zewu-jun,

I hope this letter finds you well.

Please send word to Hanguang-jun that you haven't fallen sick while in seclusion. Or, failing that, send word to Wei Wuxian. He is less circumspect about bending Lan clan rules. I have been made to understand that correspondence with the outside world is prohibited for anyone in your situation, but my first disciple is very persuasive, and since his happiness depends on your brother's, and your brother's depends at least in part on yours, I thought it would be worth a try.

Respectfully,

Jiang-zongzhu

…

Jiang-zongzhu,

Thank you for your letter. I am well. Please tell Wangji not to worry on my behalf, and Wei-gongzi to take care. I have faith in their ability to manage the cultivation clans without my interference.

Regards,

Lan Xichen

…

Zewu-jun,

It's kind of you to say so. I'm not so sanguine about Wei Wuxian's relationship with the cultivation clans, but he already hit rock bottom once before so it better all be uphill from here.

If you want for anything, Yunmeng Jiang would be happy to provide. We're just starting our lotus harvest, and a junior disciple of mine has invented a new type of bird feeder that attracts species I didn't even know existed. It wouldn't be any trouble to ask her to make another, for Cloud Recesses or the Hanshi. Whatever works.

Let me know,

Jiang-zongzhu

…

Jiang-zongzhu,

Please do not trouble yourself. The Hanshi is adequate to my needs and I want for nothing at this time. I appreciate your solicitude in reaching out to me, however, and trust that Yunmeng Jiang continues to prosper under Jiang-zongzhu's capable leadership.

Regards,

Lan Xichen

…

Jiang Cheng sits in his dark, quiet office, staring at this last, short missive folded open on his writing-desk.

Zi shi has come and gone. From somewhere in Lotus Pier echoes the soft chirruping call of a nightjar and the gentle slap of lake water against the wooden docks. His brow aches from furrowing it at the letter, which – although perfectly polite – is almost completely toneless. He's been glaring at it for what feels like hours, trying to figure out what about it ticks him off. Not the courtesy, which actually sounds sincere. Nor the brevity, which is a breath of fresh air when it comes to diplomatic correspondence. And yet now he finds himself seized by the familiar, irrepressible urge to call bullshit. Why does it feel like Lan Xichen is lying to him?

He reaches across the desk and opens the first reply. Thank you for your letter. I am well. The blandest, most benign of openings. Zewu-jun wrote too little to invent any kind of convincing falsehood.

He re-reads the second letter. The Hanshi is adequate to my needs and I want for nothing at this time.

Again, so brief as to be perfunctory.

Unbidden, Jiang Cheng remembers what Zewu-jun's face looked like after he stabbed Jin Guangyao in the temple. There was grim resolve, but it soon turned into horror and anguish. The same anguish Jiang Cheng still feels in his teeth even after eighteen years.

Thank you for your letter. I am well.

Zewu-jun's hands had been shaking on the steps of the temple, afterward. Jiang Cheng remembers that too. He'd never seen them shake before. The First Jade of Lan had broken open that day, like a small shelled creature on the beach picked up and pried apart.

I want for nothing.

Looking down at these two letters, so gracious and meaningless, he is abruptly, irrationally angry.

No one in grief feels well. No one in grief wants for nothing. Jiang Cheng knows: he remembers. In grief, he'd wanted to shout at anyone and everyone, and he had; he'd wanted to sob his heart out until he couldn't speak anymore, and he had. He had wanted revenge. He had wanted to die. He'd wanted time to rewind itself like a spool of thread. Most of all, he'd wanted them all back: his parents, dead; his juniors, massacred; A-jie, slain; Wei Wuxian, lost forever. He lived with that grief for sixteen years, and he lives with it still. The difference between him and Zewu-jun is that Zewu-jun wants to be alone with his heartache, and Jiang Cheng has never, ever had that luxury. If anyone had ever tried to offer him solace or pity, he probably would have used Zidian on them without hesitation. But he's not planning on offering either of those to Lan Wangji's recluse brother.

Pressing his lips together, he flattens a fresh sheet of paper out on the desk and aggressively dips his brush into ink.

Lan Wangji would kill him if he knew, but what Lan Wangji doesn't know won't hurt him.

…

Honoured Zewu-jun,

With all due respect, I'm not sure that you are well. Have you spoken to anyone besides me these past two years, apart from at the wedding?

Jiang-zongzhu

…

Lan Xichen's reply, when it arrives, is even more polite than the last. I have not spoken to anyone, as the laws of seclusion dictate. I am content here and will remain so. Thank you for your concern. Jiang Cheng reads it three times, flips the page over to check for any more writing, and when he doesn't find any, throws it onto his desk along with several drafted responses.

Zewu-jun,

How can you call yourself content? If you were, you wouldn't still be in

Zewu-jun,

How dare you call yourself content? I was a wreck for years after Nightless

Zewu-jun,

I always thought Lans couldn't see past their own noses, but you always seemed a little less full of it than your brother

Zewu-jun,

As you wish. I respect your decision to give up the post of Chief Cultivator until you can be sure you can bear it, but I also wish to remind you that you have responsibilities to your clan and to your family and just because you're in grief doesn't mean you get to

Zewu-jun,

I realize now that my inquiries have been entirely discourteous. Please accept this one's humble apologies for causing a nuisance, and humour me by answering one last question: if you had known that he had deliberately manipulated the whole world to shun and outlaw my brother in his stead, that he was responsible for the death of my sister and her husband, that he had orphaned Jin-zongzhu, that he had arranged for Chifeng-zun to qi deviate, that he was a murderer and a snake, would you have stood by him anyway? Would you have loved him still?

Jiang Cheng looks at what he's written, takes several deep breaths, and turns it face-down upon the desk.

Zewu-jun,

I understand that you have no wish to speak to the outside world, but the outside world won't wait forever. Even in Yunmeng, cultivators and commoners all expect that Zewu-jun will take on the burden of Chief Cultivator when he emerges from seclusion. Your brother is worried. My brother is worried. Please advise us as to how we should take your continued silence and the apparently indefinite nature of your self-isolation.

You gained a nephew when Hanguang-jun married Wei Wuxian, just as I did. He could benefit from a diplomatic role model to look up to

Too late, Jiang Cheng realizes that Jin Ling did once have a diplomatic role model, and that that role model had been Jin Guangyao.

He crosses out the last line.

You gained a nephew when Hanguang-jun married Wei Wuxian, just as I did. You and he were introduced to each other as family at the wedding. Maybe you should follow up on that and fulfill your duty to him, preferably by teaching him something besides complaining and running off on night hunts without backup.

I doubt I have anything to offer Lan Sizhui that he hasn't already learned from the Lan sect and his incorrigible parents, but if you have any suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them.

Jiang-zongzhu

...

When Jiang Cheng finds a letter sealed with the crest of Gusu Lan on his desk a week later, he pushes everything else aside and opens it with a grim sense of satisfaction, already preparing himself for another courteous brush-off.

Instead, he finds a letter twice as long as what he usually receives. Zewu-jun has apparently stopped trying to politely end the conversation and troubled himself to write an actual response.

Jiang-zongzhu,

According to Lan sect tradition, a cultivator may enter into secluded meditation for a variety of reasons. They may find it necessary in order to recuperate from their injuries, to re-centre themselves if they have lost focus, or to process a great personal shock. I will freely admit that I continue to stay in the Hanshi out of selfishness, but there is no alternative. I must ask Jiang-zongzhu to trust that my judgment in this, at least, is sound.

Jin-zongzhu has already grown into a capable young man and an accomplished leader in his own right. He is young, but he will learn; and if he has not forgotten kindness and compassion despite all that he has suffered, then that is entirely to your credit. To raise a child is a lifelong undertaking that I myself have only taken part in at a teacher's distance. Should Jin-zongzhu ever need assistance, I hope he knows he may call on me.

As for my nephew Sizhui, he already respects you a great deal. He may not yet know how to speak to you, having grown up with so few direct family relations, but I am sure that he would enjoy learning more about his uncle's home at Lotus Pier.

Regards,

Lan Xichen

Well. Zewu-jun has clearly given up on trying to make Jiang Cheng understand through hints and subtle tone changes that he wants the matter to be laid to rest. It's just as Jiang Cheng told Wei Wuxian at the very beginning: Lan Xichen is in seclusion, in perfectly good health, and he isn't coming out. And that's that. Jiang Cheng has been deliberately obtuse up till this point, but he's not going to try to convince anyone to come out of anything before they're ready.

Hearing him praise Jin Ling is a different matter altogether. Obviously Jiang Cheng knows he's a good kid, but it eases his mind a little bit that Jin Ling's basic good nature is visible to the most good-natured person in the whole cultivation world. It's like showing the melon you grew in your own garden to a wizened old melon farmer and hearing him say hmm, good job. You did something right. The metaphor works because Jin Ling is a melon-head even when he's not being a brazen twerp. Jiang Cheng would have probably hated Lan Xichen immediately if he'd pointed this out instead of tactfully offering "He is young, but he will learn," which everyone knows is code for "He's kind of a mess right now, but he'll grow out of it." Ha. Right. Jiang Cheng has been a mess for over thirty years and he hasn't grown out of it, so Jin Ling is likely doomed if he doesn't get a steadier uncle-figure to guide him. All his other ones are/were batshit insane.

Jiang Cheng reads the letter through a second time. Whether it's because Lan Xichen spoke in Jin Ling's favour, or because he'd seriously answered Jiang Cheng's question about Lan Sizhui, or because there's nothing of anger of hostility in his letter, Jiang Cheng can't say – but he's oddly grateful. It feels nice to talk to someone without feeling the need to pick a fight.

The candle on his desk has been reduced nearly to stub by all his late nights. He squints against the dim flickering flame and starts to write.

Zewu-jun,

Thank you for what you said about Jin Ling. I'm glad that I haven't completely failed in raising him. Thank you, also, for not mentioning that he's way too proud and impulsive even for a seventeen-year-old, though his time as a sect leader has at least tempered his habit of shouting at people first and thinking later.

I realize how hypocritical that sound, but as an established sect leader with trustworthy people around me, I don't have to be as careful. Also, I don't think I could improve my character even if I had to. He can, and must.

Jiang Cheng hesitates, holding the brush in place over the inkwell so it doesn't drip on the paper. He's tempted to say something really honest, like: I just wish he didn't have to grow up so quickly. Or: I don't want him to go through the same pains I did after the Sunshot Campaign.

But he doesn't.

This is why I think he should speak with you properly. From what I remember, you have always been the essence of grace, moderation and tact, all of which Jin Ling has yet to master. He could stand to learn from you.

He wavers again, and finally, grudgingly, adds:

As could I.

That's it. He might get hives if he's any more sincere. He concludes the letter with some bottled nicety, signs it, seals it with the Jiang sigil, and sets it aside onto the corner of his desk to await morning.

The second letter is addressed to one Lan Sizhui, and is noticeably shorter and gruffer.

We're in the middle of the lotus harvest and could use some extra hands. If your studies will allow it, you'd be welcome to come to Lotus Pier to lend your assistance.

Jiang Wanyin

…

Wei Wuxian stays nearly two and a half months at Lotus Pier. Every morning he teaches a small mob of Jiang disciples how to use spirit flags, talismans and his own demon-detection compasses. They make their way gradually from performing simple spells (which he manages to criticize in good-natured but excruciating detail) to complex arrays that Jiang Cheng suspects are entirely of his own invention. He teaches them how to recognize a myriad of curses and maledictions, ghosts, spirits and fierce corpses. He takes the juniors on night hunts – along with a few reliable seniors, because Jiang Cheng isn't an idiot – and when they return to Lotus Pier at an ungodly hour to celebrate, he makes sure no one is too drunk to get back to their rooms.

Jiang Cheng hasn't seen his brother so happy since – since –

Since the wedding? Even that wasn't very long ago. Maybe he'll get to get used to seeing him happy. Wei Wuxian isn't made for clan administration, but he clearly loves teaching, and he's good at it.

This is how it should have been, Jiang Cheng thinks as he stands on a nearby boardwalk, watching Wei Wuxian playfully knock one of the juniors upside the head with a looped-together bundle of reeds; as the junior turns and makes some kind of caustic rejoinder that has Wei Wuxian throwing his head back in laughter. This is how it should have always been.

Lan Wangji comes over for dinner twice a week, probably to make out with his husband when no one's looking. Jiang Cheng tries to be as civil as possible, but it's difficult to remember why he's even trying when the two of them start gazing at each other softly in the middle of an otherwise perfectly adequate silence, right in front of his soup. It's the worst. He knows this is the price of Wei Wuxian staying here – just as he'd told Lan Wangji that he'd have to put up with him, Jiang Cheng himself will have to put up with Lan Wangji – but he doesn't have to like it. Especially not when they start leaning in to whisper to each other, throats bared, lips hovering parted over the shell over the other's ear.

Eurgh.

I wish they'd have a little decency, Jiang Cheng gripes in his next letter, the characters coming out slapdash on the paper. Wei Wuxian threw an arm around his shoulders that morning as they watched the youngest juniors practice archery by the stream, and kept it there for a full stick of incense time because Jiang Cheng didn't shake him off. He can't decide whether to be mad or happy about it. They're not newlyweds anymore, and they already spend more time together than I've ever wanted to spend around any one person. They should get a little tired of each other sometimes for propriety's sake. And I know what you're going to say – "They're happy, that's all that matters" – but you don't have to see your own brother shamelessly canoodling with the same damn person after twenty years. I'm tempted to go into seclusion myself so I don't have to see it anymore, that's how embarrassing they are.

Appallingly, Jiang Cheng knows he's being spared the worst of it, because Wei Wuxian regularly sneaks out of Lotus Pier after dinner – presumably to Cloud Recesses – and comes back the next morning giddy and blissfully sleep-deprived, punch-drunk on the embraces of Hanguang-jun. Jiang Cheng has no idea how he gets there and back so fast without a sword, but he refuses to care. Maybe the Ghost General is giving him piggyback rides. And he knows that Wei Wuxian sends his husband about a hundred thotty papermen a day, each one no doubt instructed to give him a little smooch and then unfold into a sappy love letter or something, whatever. Jiang Cheng doesn't know what married people do.

The point is, it's incredibly gross.

Zewu-jun's reply, when it arrives, carries a tinge of dry amusement. My deepest sympathies, run the opening lines, at which Jiang Cheng narrows his eyes and holds the page closer to his face. If it is as you say, then perhaps the interval between Wei-gongzi's departure and his next visit will be a more restful one. But you are right: all that matters is that your brother and mine are happy. It is a blessing that two people who care about each other so deeply can be as openly affectionate with one another as they desire, without the censorious gaze of the world upon them.

If I may ask, has Jiang-zongzhu himself never thought of marrying?

Jiang Cheng stares at this last line as the wind coming in through a nearby window cutting ruffles some papers stacked within arm's reach on his desk.

It's not the question per se that perplexes him, since he's been hearing it from various interested parties ever since he ascended to his current position. It's the fact that Zewu-jun asked at all.

They've been corresponding regularly for over two months by this point – Lan Xichen because he is, presumably, too polite to break it off, and Jiang Cheng because he has no qualms about rudely imposing on someone's peace and quiet for their own good – but this is the first time that Zewu-jun has bothered to make any kind of personal inquiry into Jiang Cheng himself. He has so far given the impression of trying to engage with him as little as possible, so as not to draw out this chore of a diplomatic correspondence; every single one of his letters is framed like the gentle conclusion of a small-talk conversation, the kind where one is generally supposed to take the hint and let the other person walk away. But Jiang Cheng mulishly refuses to take the hint, and so they continue to write each other letters as if nothing in the world were wrong.

It hasn't been unpleasant. Jiang Cheng has actually never minded Lan Xichen as a person, mostly because – as he has repeatedly, heroically refrained from pointing out in his letters – Lan Xichen is not as totally full of it as so many highly-ranked cultivators are. He has never been disingenuous or snooty, like his brother; and also, he is very capable and impressive and handsome and all the other garbage people say about the Twin Jades of Lan, but that's a side issue. Mostly, Jiang Cheng likes talking to him because they are peers, and Jiang Cheng doesn't have a lot of those.

Sometimes, he even convinces himself that they're friends. But then he remembers that if he stops writing, Zewu-jun will not trouble himself to write back, and so he continues to address his letters to the Hanshi almost out of spite.

I've never seen the point in getting married, he writes in his next letter. I can always choose a successor from among the juniors and adopt them, like Hanguang-jun did with that Lan Sizhui. It will save me a lot of headaches. Also, I don't think I have it in me to plan another wedding. The last one took about ten years off my life.

More to the point, he's still blacklisted by every matchmaker in Yunmeng. But Zewu-jun doesn't have to know that.

"That Lan Sizhui" appears on the docks two weeks into the harvest, white robes gleaming under the full glare of the summer sun. He's alone, thankfully, and looking back over the lake he must just have crossed, holding one hand up to shade his eyes. When he sees Jiang Cheng striding down the pier toward him, followed by two members of the household staff, he turns to face him and delivers an immaculate salute.

"Jiang-zongzhu," he says. "I hope I'm not too late."

"What? No," Jiang Cheng says tersely, still recovering from his surprise: he hadn't expected the kid to actually show up, given how touchy Hanguang-jun is about letting his nearest and dearest within a mile of Lotus Pier. He stops at a less paranoid distance away and frowns. "The harvest won't be over for another six months. Where's the Ghost General?"

"He has some business of his own to attend to."

Jiang Cheng scoffs. Lan Sizhui's posture stiffens infinitesimally.

"May I ask if Jiang-zongzhu has been well?"

"I'm fine," Jiang Cheng snaps. "You didn't write to say you were coming."

Lan Sizhui winces a little. "I was afraid I'd miss everything if I waited for Jiang-zongzhu's confirmation."

"Then clearly your education has been lacking. Lotus harvesting takes a long time," Jiang Cheng says imperiously. "You have to get the root, the stolon, the leaves and the flowers, and it's all done by hand – didn't Wei Wuxian teach you any of this?" he demands, seeing Lan Sizhui's wince grow more and more pronounced.

"Ah … no."

Well, at least Wei Wuxian left something for him to do. "You'll be shown to your rooms," Jiang Cheng says, turning to pace back down the pier. "Once you're settled in, come find me in the lotus field north of the complex."

"Yes, Jiang-zongzhu," Lan Sizhui says, falling into step behind him.

"And don't drag your feet."

"No, Jiang-zongzhu."

Sure enough, not five minutes after Jiang Cheng's attendants drop him off in his guest room, Lan Sizhui catches up to Jiang Cheng at the edge of the flooded northern field where Yunmeng Jiang grows lotus. It's not the only field ready for harvest, but this one has grown in surprisingly lush. Jiang Cheng's agricultural handlers have informed him that they've had to put out a second notice for paid manual labour, which hasn't happened in a while; usually the first brings in enough hands to fill their quota. The field is a kaleidoscopic pattern of broad green leaves and ordinary people bent over their work, homespun clothes soaked with sweat and spattered with mud, straw hats bobbing here and there and hands coming up to swat at gnats and mosquitoes. Jiang Cheng leads Lan Sizhui along the edge of the field and brusquely tells him that the stolon – the horizontal stem branching out from every primary plant – is currently being harvested; he explains why this has to be done before the lotus flowers and how you have to pull on the stem and shake the leaves in the water to make it come free.

The people working on the edge of the field straighten and shade their eyes as Jiang Cheng and Lan Sizhui walk past, bowing or raising a tired hand in greeting, but the ones further in don't pay them any mind. Jiang Cheng approaches one woman who's been working seasonally in these lotus fields for over ten years and asks her to show "this young disciple, who knows nothing" how the work is done up close. When she's finished, Lan Sizhui nods seriously. "Okay," he says. "I think I get it," and bends to take off his pristine boots and set them on the ground.

It takes Jiang Cheng a full minute to say, blankly, "What are you doing?" and by then Lan Sizhui has already hiked his robes up to his knees and tied them with a string he appears to have produced out of thin air.

Lan Sizhui looks up at him. "Um," he says. "Helping?"

Jiang Cheng's mind is working very slowly, perhaps from the summer heat. "What?"

"You said in your letter that you wanted me to help with the lotus harvest?"

He says it so earnestly, too, as if he can't imagine what the problem might be. Looking at him, Jiang Cheng feels suddenly, inexplicably wistful. Could any of them ever have been that young, that hopeful, like everything good was still waiting for them in the future? He can't remember. The only person he knows for sure had the same kindness and thoughtless generosity was A-jie. She should have been the one to give their nephew this tour, not him.

"Yes," he says, through an inconvenient lump in his throat. "Obviously. I just thought you would have changed into something more appropriate first."

"Oh." Lan Sizhui looks down at his robes. "It's fine, I'll just use a cleaning talisman on them afterward. These are my work clothes anyway."

His work clothes look exactly the same as his everyday cultivation robes. "Good," Jiang Cheng says. "Mine too," and wades into the muddy field before Lan Sizhui can say anything to stop him.

It's been a while since he's helped with the lotus harvest himself, but after a few minutes of surreptitiously watching the farm hands out of the corner of his eye, it starts coming back to him, and he reflexively corrects Lan Sizhui's technique without thinking. After a few minutes, predictably, he ends up wishing that he'd sacrificed dignity so far as to remove his boots and tie up his robes after all, but he's not going to get out and do it now, where everyone will see. He's not a kid anymore; he can't just show his bare knees to the whole world, like his shameless brother. So he resigns himself to having wet, squelching boots and probably ruining his own robes, and tries to lose himself in the soothing work of the harvest.

Zewu-jun, he will later write, today that Lan Sizhui showed up at my doorstep, and we picked lotus together like I used to do with my family. Now he has one more skill he can use to make a living if the cultivation thing ever doesn't work out. Which it will, obviously. He'll have to leave in a few days for an assignment Hanguang-jun is apparently sending him on – one of the last before he becomes a full-fledged cultivator. I suppose he is coming of age soon, like Jin Ling, but it's still jarring. Somehow I thought he'd stay a junior a little longer, the way we never got to be.

But I've seen how Sizhui acts around his family, and that's not how he acts here, around me. I don't think he's willing to forget any more than Hanguang-jun is. We're on polite terms and that's the best that I can say.

Lan Xichen's reply, when it arrives, is almost consoling. I think you misjudge my nephew. Sizhui has a forgiving and understanding nature; as long as you make sure he knows he's welcome with you, there is no reason why your relationship cannot grow. Just give him time.

(He will be proven right when Lan Sizhui comes back two months later for the harvest of the roots and leaves; when, having found a perfect lotus blossom shyly opening at dawn, he will turn to Jiang Cheng with the unplucked flower in his palms and say Jiang-shushu, look what I found! And then, hearing himself, he will give Jiang Cheng a look of horror as if convinced that he's about to be thoroughly dismembered, and Jiang Cheng will have to turn away without speaking so that his nephew won't see him cry.)

It becomes a pattern, after a while. Jiang Cheng describes anecdotes from his day-to-day life, minus the crying, and Lan Xichen offers neutral commentary, though not without warmth – until one day Jiang Cheng looks up from his desk and sees a cultivator in impeccable Lan whites and blues in his office doorway.

For the briefest instant, he thinks it's Lan Xichen himself, come out of seclusion and here to – what, surprise him? – and his heart jumps into his throat. Then his brain catches up to his eyes and he realizes that the Lan cultivator on his doorstep is not the serene Zewu-jun but a coldly furious Hanguang-jun. His hair has been swept tidily into a great silver headpiece; his robes fall neatly to his boots; but both his hands are clenched tight at his sides, one around his sword sheath, in a rare display of temper. He radiates the energy of a man who has walked into a room with the express purpose of throttling whoever happens to be in it.

Jiang Cheng puts down his inkbrush. He knows what this is about.

"You have been corresponding," Lan Wangji says, very evenly, "with my brother."

"Yes."

For a full thirty seconds – in which Jiang Cheng stares him out while Lan Wangji keeps his eyes pinned somewhere around Jiang Cheng's left shoulder – nothing happens. There's a shriek of laughter from outside as one of the youngest juniors chases her friend down the boardwalk, accompanied, inexplicably, by the confused warbling of a spotted toad.

Jiang Cheng informed Wei Wuxian of Lan Xichen's first response to his not-so-subtle inquiries, the one where he'd placidly assured them that he was fine and wanted nobody to worry about him. He remembers Wei Wuxian nodding in disappointment and saying, "Okay. Thanks, Jiang Cheng, I guess that's about the best we can do for now. We should respect his wishes." Which sentiment Jiang Cheng had promptly ignored, knowing full well how Lan Wangji would feel about him bothering his recluse brother, due to things like "tact" and "respecting people's boundaries." Neither of those things are Wei Wuxian's strong suit either, so really, in the end it's Hanguang-jun's fault for marrying into a family that doesn't know the meaning of stop.

Now Lan Wangji says, in a truly forbidding voice, "Regular correspondence with a cultivator in secluded mediation is prohibited."

"I am aware," Jiang Cheng says.

"You oblige him to break the rules."

"I've obliged him to do nothing. He can stop responding at any time."

"Seclusion is a time for self-reflection."

"You can write a letter to someone before half an incense stick burns down. I really don't think I'm imposing on his busy schedule."

Lan Wangji does not respond to this.

"What makes you think he doesn't want to talk to anyone? Maybe he's going crazy, cooped up in one building for so long."

Lan Wangji does not respond to this, either. Another silence stretches out between them as someone outside shouts demanding who has released fifteen toads into the kitchens. Just outside the window, where a set of decorative pottery might have concealed a child or two, there comes a storm of giggling and shushing.

After an eternity passes, Lan Wangji speaks.

"If it were me," he says slowly, with obvious reluctance, "I would not wish to speak with anyone."

Jiang Cheng narrows his eyes. He hasn't the faintest idea if Lan Wangji is trying to conciliate him, or ask him for empathy, or simply offering up his own experience as the universal standard, but none of these appeal to him very much at the moment. First Wei Wuxian, then Lan Sizhui – he is sick and tired of His Excellency policing who Jiang Cheng does and doesn't get to talk to, as if it's any of his damned business. Lan Xichen's letters make him feel saner than he can remember feeling in a long fucking time. "Well, Hanguang-jun," he says, with a great and spiteful satisfaction, "I'm afraid your brother isn't you."

"Do not," says Lan Wangji, looking up at him at last with a truly savage glint in his eye, "presume to tell me about my brother," and Jiang Cheng, despite himself, reaches for the snake ring on his right hand so Bichen won't catch him defenseless. But then the moment passes, and when he realizes Lan Wangji is not actually attacking him, he reaches instead for an unfolded piece of paper on his desk and holds it out defiantly.

"Fine," he says. "See for yourself."

Lan Wangji appears to realize what is being offered to him, and opens his mouth to deliver a scathing indictment of Jiang Cheng's morals in sharing private correspondence. "I'm not in your brother's confidence, Hanguang-jun," Jiang Cheng says, cutting across whatever Lan Wangji had been about to say. "He hasn't shared anything about himself or your private family affairs, so you can rest easy. Everything has been done with the utmost propriety." This he adds with not a little sarcasm. "You know Wei Wuxian will just steal it for you to read later, anyway, so save yourself another half a year of worrying and read it yourself."

Lan Wangji's eyes flick to the letter.

"You want to know if your brother's all right," Jiang Cheng says. "Don't you?"

Lan Wangji hesitates – visibly struggling with his instinctive refusal to read a letter not addressed to himself, against his desire to hear from his brother and make sure Jiang Cheng hadn't said anything untoward – and then slowly, deliberately stalks across the floor and takes the letter from Jiang Cheng's hand.

Jiang Cheng watches his expression change as he reads. He already knows what the letter says, but he finds himself running through it anyway, mentally cataloguing anything that, in hindsight, might not actually fall under the purview of "utmost propriety."

Jiang-zongzhu,

Thank you for the story about the rabbits. I can't remember the last time I laughed like that. Next time, perhaps you should remember not to feed them directly in your vegetable gardens.

To answer your question, yes, it could be the force of habit. But there are too many things I would regret missing if I did not rise early. I enjoy watching the stars vanish and the sky change colours. When the air is clear enough, watching the sun rise over the distant mountains sets my heart at ease, if only for a little while. And it all happens without a sound instead of being set to music. How strange that something so magnificent can also be so silent, and so ordinary.

What do you do with the lotus seeds after they are harvested?

Lan Xichen

Zewu-jun is a thoughtful person, but he doesn't normally let himself to musing aloud like this. At least not in his letters. They are, more often than not, bland and polite and perfectly uninformative. And yet …

"He laughed," Lan Wangji says softly. He hasn't taken his eyes off the letter in his hands.

Jiang Cheng wavers, unable to decide if he should be defensive or if he should take this opportunity to de-escalate the situation. "Yes," he agrees at last. "He says so, anyway."

"Xiongzhang does not lie."

"No."

Lan Wangji passes the letter back grudgingly, as though he'd like to keep it – the evidence that his brother is still capable of laughter. Or maybe he just doesn't want to admit that Jiang Cheng might be doing something right. Neither of them say anything until Lan Wangji says, "What about the rabbits."

It takes Jiang Cheng a moment to realize what he's talking about. "Ask Wei Wuxian," he says instantly. "It was his fault anyway."

Lan Wangji remains pointedly, judgmentally silent.

"Hanguang-jun." Jiang Cheng knits his fingers together under his chin, as if in the spirit of greatest curiosity. "Did any of your rabbits come back fatter when he snuck them back into Cloud Recesses? Or didn't you notice they were gone?"

Lan Wangji glances at the letter Jiang Cheng had put down. "He should not be writing to you."

"To whom, then?" Jiang Cheng demands, but Lan Wangji has already whirled around in a billow of white robes and stalked out of his office.

"Write to him yourself, if you're so worried!" Jiang Cheng shouts, half-getting up from his desk.

The crash of splintering decorative pottery comes from just outside, followed by a hushed, horrified child's voice: "Jiang-zongzhu's gonna kill you!"

"Ugh," Jiang Cheng says, and sinks back down onto the floor. At this point, he doesn't even have the strength to scold his least favourite in-law, let alone chase after a child. Let them break as much useless crockery as they want. All that matters is that Lan Wangji has apparently decided, for the first time in their acquaintance, that something matters more than making sure Jiang Cheng knows just how much he hates him.

…

Wei Wuxian looks at him like he's insane. "What are you talking about? Lan Zhan doesn't hate you." He swallows a mouthful of food. "He never hated you. He's just, you know …"

"Completely deranged?" Jiang Cheng suggests.

"Protective," Wei Wuxian finishes.

They're having dinner together before Wei Wuxian goes off and leads the juniors off on a joint night hunt with Lanling Jin. The whole thing was arranged two weeks in advance between their two sects, which Jin Ling had made a big deal out of accepting only on the condition that he himself would get to come along, along with two pupils from Cloud Recesses to "act as chaperones." Personally, Jiang Cheng thinks the day Lan Jingyi needs to chaperone anyone is the day Lan Wangji decides to let bygones be bygones and hug it out with him, but it's still kind of funny that Jin Ling pulled rank to be included in a group activity that's now technically too pedestrian for a clan leader.

See? Melon-head.

Wei Wuxian empties a small bowl of spiced chicken and makes a thoughtful face as he chews. "He's just like that with Sizhui. You should have seen his face when Ouyang-zongzhu tried to suggest a marriage alliance of heirs."

Jiang Cheng nearly spills wine all over the table. "What? He's too young to get married."

"Oh, no, trust me, Lao Ouyang is way past his prime."

"Not him, dumbass, your son!"

"I know. I'm just kidding. Why didn't you tell me you were writing to Zewu-jun?"

"You're the one who told me to write him in the first place."

"Yeah, but I thought you'd just ask him how he was doing, like, once. You didn't tell me this was a thing now."

Jiang Cheng glowers. "It's not a thing. We were never even friends, remember? He and Jin Guangyao and Chifeng-zun didn't invite me to their little triumvirate after the Sunshot Campaign."

"And I can tell you've completely gotten over it. Still, why didn't you tell me?"

"Maybe it's none of your business."

"You wouldn't have sent him any letters at all if it weren't for me."

"Shut up. I was doing you a favour. If I want to keep writing him, I will."

"You're going to keep doing it?" Wei Wuxian puts down his chopsticks and gives him a puzzled look. "I thought Zewu-jun wanted to be left alone."

That is … a fair assessment. "He did," Jiang Cheng admits.

"Then – Jiang Cheng, don't get me wrong, I think it's great that he has someone to talk to – but what made you keep trying?"

"I dunno." Jiang Cheng thinks about it for a minute. "I don't like being brushed off, I guess."

"Hm," says Wei Wuxian. There's a brief silence. Then he ventures, casually, "How long have you been writing each other now?"

There's a glint in his eye that Jiang Cheng doesn't like. He eyes his brother suspiciously. "Nearly six months."

"Six months!" Wei Wuxian blows out a breath, impressed. "I bet that's the longest you've ever talked to anyone, huh? What do you talk about?"

"I don't think this counts as talking."

"Fine, then. What do you write to him about?"

"I don't know. Normal stuff."

"Like what?"

"Like how my first disciple keeps asking weird questions and sticking his nose where it doesn't belong."

Wei Wuxian gives him an injured look from across the table. "Jiang Cheng, you're so mean. I'm just trying to look out for you."

There's literally nothing else he could have said that would have made Jiang Cheng more uncomfortable. "Uh-huh," he says.

"You know, like Lan Zhan does with A-Yuan."

Wow. Never mind. Jiang Cheng stares at him, and stares at him, and stares at him.

And when he finally works through what this means, he draws back from the table like he's been dealt an electric shock. "Wei Wuxian!"

"What?"

"Don't – you shouldn't –" He struggles for words and then settles on the ever-reliable, "Just shut up!"

Wei Wuxian opens his eyes very wide. "Why? What did I say?"

Jiang Cheng is this close to leaping to his feet and looming over the whole dinner table. He settles for slamming his soup bowl back down. "You know what you said!"

"I never know what I'm saying," Wei Wuxian says cheerfully. "You should probably just forget it."

"Yeah? I will!"

"Good."

"Good!"

Another brief silence. Jiang Cheng hides behind his soup bowl, tipping it up to catch the last drops. The back of his neck is prickling-hot. When he lowers it again, he finds that Wei Wuxian has pushed aside his own bowls of food and propped his chin up on one fist in a posture of casual contemplation.

"Jiang Cheng," he says sweetly, gazing up at him, "could I read one of Zewu-jun's letters?"

"No."

"Pretty please?"

"Absolutely fucking not."

Wei Wuxian pouts. "You let Lan Zhan look!"

"Yeah, because it looked like he was about to take my head off for being improper with his brother."

"Were you?"

"No!"

"Jiang Cheng, if this is your first courtship, I have to know about it."

"Shut up! I am not courting the First Jade of Lan!"

But it's too late. Wei Wuxian, his eyes sparkling with merry mischief, half-leans across the table to say in a theatrically secretive whisper, "You've got it too, don't you?"

Jiang Cheng is going to strangle him. "What, dementia?"

"The Lan fever! Whoo!" Wei Wuxian fans himself, as if in appreciation. "Come on, you have to admit they're amazing. So elegant! So proper! It just makes you want to get them alone and tear their clothes off."

Jiang Cheng gapes at him, his mouth working uselessly. He doesn't even know what infuriates him most: getting teased for – for – this – or the fact that whatever brand of audacity his brother was born with, it sure hadn't burned away after he'd fucking died.

"I'm going to kill you," he says at last, very calmly.

"Oh," Wei Wuxian remarks, also calmly. Then, as Jiang Cheng gets up and rounds the table, "Shit."

He manages to hurtle down three boardwalks and through two pavilions before Jiang Cheng tackles him to the floor and sits on him.

(Three feet away, a maid sighs and bends down to pick up the linens they'd knocked out of her arms. This is not the first time she has seen this scene play out.)

Wei Wuxian wheezes out something unintelligible and flaps his arm a little, patting Jiang Cheng's side in a conciliatory sort of way.

"Jiang Cheng, would you let me up?"

"No."

Wei Wuxian twists, trying to throw him off. Jiang Cheng leans his weight back and knits his fingers together, like a brat.

"Ugh! Are you sure you don't want my help?"

"With what?"

"With Zewu-jun!"

"Yeah," Jiang Cheng says. "Positive."

Wei Wuxian pats his side again. It's pretty condescending, considering how his arm has less pivoting range than a radish. "All right, Jiang-zongzhu. I hear you loud and clear. But just so you know, you don't have to be so bashful. I'm here to help. If you decide you want my advice after all, I promise I won't say I told you so."

…

The door opens and a bleary-eyed Wei Wuxian stands there in his underrobes, scrubbing a hand over his face.

"Jiang Cheng? Is everything okay?"

"Your advice. I could use some," Jiang Cheng says, not looking at him.

Wei Wuxian's jaw unhinges in a truly massive yawn. When he's done, he says, "I knew it."

Jiang Cheng turns around and walks away.

"No, Jiang Cheng – come back! Jiang Cheng, I'm sorry! Come back!"

…

It's a few minutes before Wei Wuxian manages to drag an unwilling clan leader in purple sleep clothes back to his chambers and close the door behind them. "So," he says, working out a crick in his neck as he walks into the room. "Rule number one of seducing a Lan: they'll always be better than you. There's just no beating a Lan for virtue, propriety and discipline. That's just the facts. The second rule –"

"Wei Wuxian," Jiang Cheng growls.

"The second rule is remember that they're prudes, which means they're never going to make the first move. This goes double for the Twin Jades. If you want to get anything done, you have to corner them and make it clear that they can do whatever they –"

"Have a little shame," Jiang Cheng hisses. "For heaven's sake, he's in seclusion!"

Wei Wuxian sticks his tongue out at him. "I bet he's still a better flirt than you."

"I'm here for a talisman, idiot! If I wanted to flirt with someone, I wouldn't ask for your help."

This is clearly not what Wei Wuxian expected him to say. "A talisman?"

"Yes."

"What for?"

"For … perfume."

"Perfume?"

Jiang Cheng flushes. "I'm not … good … with words. But Zewu-jun asked me to describe Lotus Pier, so …"

Wei Wuxian squints at him, and then at the folded paper in his hand. "What's that?"

Jiang Cheng crisps it behind his back. "Nothing. It's irrelevant."

"Jiang Cheng. If you want me to help, you have to give me a little context."

"Why do you need context?"

"Show me the letter or no deal."

Jiang Cheng wavers.

Quick as a snake, Wei Wuxian grabs it from him and scuttles backward. Jiang Cheng yelps and lunges forward, but Wei Wuxian has already danced out of the way, holding the letter up to the dim predawn light filtering in through the windows. "Interesting! He still calls you Jiang-zongzhu … Wow, you really do need my help. I can't believe you're still so formal with each other after six months."

"Eighteen years," Jiang Cheng snaps, snatching at the letter. "I didn't say yes, give it back –"

"You know, sometimes I get the impression you don't want me to interfere in your personal life. Could you get me a light? I can't see shit like this."

Jiang Cheng gives up and waves a hand to light the few candles scattered about the room. Wei Wuxian peers at the letter in the softly flickering yellow light. Rapidly, he starts reading it under his breath. "Jiang-zongzhu, please don't say such things. I treasure your letters and all your descriptions of life at Lotus Pier. Sometimes I feel as though I have forgotten what the outside world looks and sounds like, but every time you mention the rising dust off an unpaved road, or the taste of peaches, or the texture of lotus petals, I drink up the words like the sweetest water. You cannot know what it has meant to me … Oh my god. Jiang Cheng, I didn't know you were such a poet."

"Shut up."

"To answer your question, what I miss most in the world is music. Hearing it, playing it, sharing it. I forbade myself the guqin when my seclusion began, and for nearly three years I have not touched it. It reminds me too much of – oh, there's something blotted out here – it reminds me too much of my own failures. And of … everyone I have lost."

The pause is Wei Wuxian's, not Lan Xichen's. Jiang Cheng glances up at him. Wei Wuxian isn't smiling any longer: there's a pensive, faraway expression on his face, as though these words have reminded him of his own sorrow.

No – not his own sorrow. His husband's sorrow. His husband's grief.

Jiang Cheng looks away.

There's more to the letter, but Wei Wuxian abruptly clears his throat and hands it back to him. "So," he says, rocking back on his heels. "I see Zewu-jun's alive and well. That's … that's good to know."

Jiang Cheng can't meet his eyes. He asks, lowly, "Was that enough context for you?"

"Sorry. I shouldn't have pried."

"Yeah."

There's an uncomfortable pause. Jiang Cheng doesn't know what to say. Zewu-jun's letters have become a little less guarded over time, less formulaic, imbued with tentative overtures of honesty. Jiang Cheng always ends up drafting a dozen different scribbled-out responses, afraid that he'll say the wrong thing and make Zewu-jun shut him out again. He suspects that part of the reason this correspondence has gone on so long is precisely because he's at liberty to erase and edit what he says before he says it. Otherwise, he probably would have already ruined everything.

It's not a happy thought.

"Okay!" Wei Wuxian slaps his hands together awkwardly. "I'm probably going to need to sketch out a few drafts. This shouldn't take too long. Um … what was it that you wanted again?"

"A perfumed talisman," Jiang Cheng mumbles.

"Right, okay. What did you want it to smell like?"

This is a normal request to make. This is a normal request to make. Jiang Cheng takes a deep breath. "You know when the lotus fields blossom and there's that smell in the air whenever you walk back in from town? Like mud and silt, but – a bit floral?"

Wei Wuxian's eyes light up. "Yes. Yes. I know exactly what you're talking about." He pulls an empty sheet of paper from under a pile of scrolls on his desk and slaps it down. "Just give me a minute and then you know what we have to do."

"What?"

"Mud-hunting. We can't conjure the smell out of nothing. If you want to be useful, go find a lotus that hasn't gone brown or been picked yet – that'll be the hard part." Wei Wuxian folds himself down into a cross-legged position. "Then I'll come join you and we'll slap a mud sample on this bad boy."

"I am not," Jiang Cheng says with dignity, "picking flowers for Zewu-jun."

Wei Wuxian looks up at him in confusion. "I thought you wanted something that didn't smell completely like mud?"

"Yes, obviously. I'll get you a lotus blossom. But I am not," Jiang Cheng stressed, "picking flowers for anyone. I want this to be perfectly clear."

"Uh-huh."

"I am not interested in Hanguang-jun's recluse brother."

"Got it. Not interested. I'll let Nie-zongzhu know."

"What?"

"Why, can't anyone else be interested?"

"No, I mean – just, he'd be the worst –" Jiang Cheng struggles to express how appalling he finds the idea of Nie Huaisang make his dewy-eyed, fan-fluttering advances on Zewu-jun, who clearly deserves better. "Has he said anything about … You've got to be joking."

Wei Wuxian grins up at him. "Yeah. I am."

"You –!"

His brother waits, with perfect angelic sweetness, as Jiang Cheng struggles again, this time to decide which expletive to use first. Then he laughs, because Jiang Cheng has chosen to salve his pride and walk away without another word. "You've really mellowed out!" Wei Wuxian calls after him. "I wonder whose influence that could be!"

…

Honoured Zewu-jun,

Please find enclosed a perfumed talisman that should do a better job showing you what Lotus Pier is like this time of year than anything I could describe. Wei Wuxian designed it, but I made him teach me how to draw it myself, so it's a fifty-fifty chance on whether it'll malfunction and fill the entire Hanshi or just explode on contact. If either of those things happen, I apologize. This is the scent I associate most with home. Whenever the lotus field blossom, a few months into the harvest, the air fills with the smell of mud plants lakewater Never mind. You'll see. I hope it at least breaks up the tedium.

Does everyone who goes into seclusion have to deny themselves what makes them happy? Or is it your own personal form of self-punishment

That was rude. Don't feel compelled to answer. If you're not permitted to play music, I hope you're at least allowed to sing a little. Maybe it would help.

Respectfully,

Jiang Wanyin

P.S. My first disciple requests that even if I "completely fuck this up and Zewu-jun never writes again," you still let us know if the talisman works so he can perfect the design and potentially send the other clan leaders some choice perfumes.

…

Jiang-zongzhu,

Thank you for the talisman; it was really a thoughtful touch. I think I must have activated it by accident when I opened your letter, because it flew into the air and scattered into pieces before I even knew what I was looking at. I have not set foot outside in almost a full year, and have since grown so accustomed to my aseptic room that the smell of green and growing things, of dirt and decay, was something of a shock to my senses. I think I lost track of time for how long I sat there, breathing it in.

The talisman's effects lingered upon my clothes and the contents of my desk for several hours after the fact. I tell you this not out of displeasure but in the interest of practicality: if this was not what you had intended to happen, you may wish to tell Wei-gongzi that his design will need tweaking. As it is, I trust that whatever he chooses to send the other sect leaders will accord them all due respect and consideration.

The bulk of my musical education was focused on spiritual instruments, chiefly the xiao and the guqin. Singing is not as highly prized an art in Lan sect tradition. But even if I could, I would no more sing here, now, than I would at someone's funerary rites.

I know I sound morose, but please don't think of me as an object worth your pity. After all, I have solace enough in tranquility, and in the knowledge that my brother is happy. I would gladly spend the rest of my life in seclusion if it meant he could put his grief behind him for ever.

I hope you are well.

Lan Xichen

…

Zewu-jun,

So you're not allowed to sing. What about humming? That hardly even counts as music. Even cicadas are allowed to hum. I don't think it would be exceedingly arrogant to put yourself on the same level as a lowly insect. Or does Cloud Recesses forbid even that, now?

(By the way, Wei Wuxian says thanks and don't worry, even he can't do anything stupid with such a small and harmless invention. Which I think is about as believable as it sounds, but whatever. I'm not getting my hopes up. You could lock him in a room by himself and he'd still be wreaking havoc halfway across the province by noon. If I lost my head every time he invented something new or did something stupid, my hair would have turned white twenty years ago.)

I don't pity you, but I don't understand why you think you've lost the right to play. You've been in seclusion for almost three years – isn't that punishment enough? If you have to sit vigil in silence to fulfill whatever requirements you first set for yourself, the Hanshi must be a real mausoleum by now. How have you kept from losing your mind?

I'm fine, but I'd be better knowing you were, as well.

Jiang Wanyin

…

Jiang-zongzhu,

If I have kept from losing my mind, it is partially thanks to your letters. They have tethered me to the outside world in a way I had not wanted to be since the destruction of Guanyin Temple. I am still not sure if I should be guilty or grateful or both. Apart from that, reading and meditation suffice to fill my days. Silent vigils have always been part of Lan sect discipline.

I know Jiang-zongzhu speaks from a place of concern, but there is no basis for it. I chose this not out of a desire to punish myself but out of duty. And, I am ashamed to admit, out of self-preservation. In the end, I am held together not by meditation, nor by spiritual energy, nor by the fact that I still have responsibilities to my sect and my family, but by the certainty that if I try to face the world now, I will disintegrate. Silence is nothing by comparison.

This is the safest and most fitting place for me. I hope you can understand.

Lan Xichen

…

Zewu-jun,

I don't think I do understand. And I'd appreciate it if you could explain a little more clearly. Your duty to whom, exactly? Your sect? Your conscience? Or to Liangfang-zun, who was responsible for the deaths of Chifeng-zun and Jin Song and who knows how many others? I know you were friends, but if you're going to consign years of your life to seclusion, it shouldn't be out of duty to the dead. There are other ways to commemorate them than by joining them. And it definitely shouldn't be because you're afraid to leave. I would trust your judgment in a lot of things, but I'm not sure if I trust you on this.

We've never talked about what happened at Guanyin Temple. If you want to, we can.

Jiang Wanyin

…

Jiang-zongzhu,

Thank you for the offer, but I have no wish to discuss what happened at present. Please do not be concerned for me. I am well and will continue to stay in the Hanshi for all the reasons earlier provided.

I hope all is in order at Lotus Pier. The next time Wei-gongzi comes to stay and teach, please tell him hello from me.

Lan Xichen

…

Zewu-jun,

Don't brush me off like you did before. This is important. I know that duty and punishment basically amount to the same thing under Lan sect discipline, and everything you do is for love of one or both, but I also know that you'd never shunt your responsibilities off on your brother for anything less than all three thousand of your rules put together. If you were that kind of person, you wouldn't be the Zewu-jun that I remember. So what exactly compels you to stay in seclusion after so long?

Jiang Wanyin

…

Jiang-zongzhu,

Thank you for your concern. Unfortunately, I must tell you what I told the other sect leaders three years ago: I do this because I must self-reflect before rejoining the cultivation world. Nothing more.

You have been generous in corresponding with me for so long. However, I am sure Jiang-zongzhu is too polite to say that I have been distracting him from his duties, and I dare not impose on his time any longer. I have been far too permissive with myself as well, having repeatedly flouted the laws of seclusion for nothing more worthy than personal comfort and reassurance. This letter will therefore be my last.

Please accept my most sincere apologies.

Regards,

Lan Xichen

…

Jiang Cheng's next letter goes unanswered.

And the next.

They are short and blunt, half demanding and half pleading. They are also, admittedly, not very polite. The first he sends in the usual way; the second he entrusts to Wei Wuxian and orders him to deliver it to the Hanshi's doorstep when he arrives back at Cloud Recesses. His brother gives him a questioning look but doesn't ask. Two weeks later, he writes to Jiang Cheng inquiring if Zewu-jun has made any answer, and Jiang Cheng is forced to admit that he has not.

Which means it's over. Jiang Cheng has finally, unequivocally fucked up, and lost one of the few people in the world who know him; whom he wanted to know him, bad temper, terrible manners and all. How much of himself did he lay bare for the First Jade of Lan in the intervening months since that first letter? How much, by contrast, did he learn of Zewu-jun in return?

Almost nothing. Lan Xichen repaid his honesty with evasion and the same superior aloofness that all Lans project to the world, as if nothing can touch them that hasn't first been purified within an inch of its life. And the minute Jiang Cheng asked for a little more – heavens, he's so sick of people who never stop smiling and deflecting like everything is fine when everything is clearly not fine – Zewu-jun gave him the equivalent of a polite bow and a dismissal, and promptly vanished from the world again.

He thought they might be – what, becoming friends?

If Jiang Cheng seethes through the next few weeks – if he snaps and bellows and hasn't a single furious thought for the terrified juniors, who don't know what they've done wrong to provoke him – no one dares say anything about it. A sect leader has more liberty to be angry than anyone else in the cultivation hierarchy, and they know better than to try and moderate his ill humours. He'll simmer down eventually.

They hope.

…

If I try to face the world now, I will disintegrate.

Zewu-jun's words speak softly in his ears, a lullaby on the fringes of sleep. Jiang Cheng lifts his head from where it was pillowed on his folded arm. It takes him a blurred, fuzzy minute to get his bearings: he's slumped over his desk, where he must have fallen asleep while the candles burned down. There's a mess of letters about an upcoming cultivation conference that he was supposed to get through but hasn't bothered reading, and a small porcelain cup, mysteriously empty. The sharp scent of liquor has already dissipated.

He rubs a hand against his eyes and, straightening, twists his back to one side and then the other, working several cricks out of his spine. When he feels something pop back into place, he grimaces.

… face the world now, I will disintegrate …

His eyes fall on the carved wooden box sitting on a decorative table beneath the window.

A-jie used to keep her combs and jewellery in that box. Now it holds all the letters Zewu-jun has sent him over their eight-month-long correspondence, stacked neatly together and tied with string, one treasure exchanged for another. He usually burns official letters when they're no longer useful, but these he carefully keeps where he won't lose a single one. He used to take them out, sometimes, in the early days, and re-read them before going to bed, reassured somehow by Zewu-jun's benevolence. Happy to talk to someone he liked so much – someone who'd be honest with him, even if they were going to be maddeningly polite about it.

Just one, he thinks. Just one, and then I'll go to sleep.

He brings the box over and seats himself at his desk. When he lifts the lid, there are so many letters compressed inside that a few of them fall into his lap, and he spends a moment or two arranging them back into chronological order. He doesn't want to read the most recent entries. Instead, he pulls a few out from the middle of the stack and unfolds them in the candlelight.

Jiang-zongzhu, your senior disciples sound like skillful, dedicated students. They must have learned from your example.

Jiang-zongzhu, I am not surprised that Wei-gongzi is a good teacher. If there is a way to suggest his teaching Lan disciples at Cloud Recesses without unduly distressing my uncle, I am sure my brother will try.

Jiang-zongzhu, thank you for your letter. It gave me a sense of peace to imagine you and Jin-zongzhu picking lotus together on the lake, the way you once did with your own brother and sister. Anyone can see how much you love him.

Jiang-zongzhu, forgive me the late reply. I have been distracted of late and tend to lose track of time. Please tell me the rest of the story from when Wei-gongzi brought home those two crates of loquats when you were eleven – knowing you both, that cannot have been the end of it.

Jiang-zongzhu, I am afraid not. The Hanshi, despite its name, cannot entirely disperse the summer heat; this month has been extremely stifling, especially when one stays indoors every day. Yet I am always cold somehow, deeper down than I knew I could be. Even when I sit directly in the sunlight that falls through the northern windows at noon, something leaches the warmth away.

And finally, in response to the letter where Jiang Cheng called him the essence of grace, moderation and tact:

Jiang-zongzhu, I think you are too severe in your assessment of your own character, and too generous in your assessment of mine. I would gladly trade all the grace and tact in the world to have been a little more perceptive when it mattered the most.

A year ago, two years ago, five, Jiang Cheng would have been in a rage over these letters. Even now, he feels the same pang he used to feel around Wei Wuxian: hurt and resentment and self-pity all mushed together, the temptation to say why did you leave, what did I do, why wasn't I good enough. But it's not as potent as it used to be. He used to be angry with Wei Wuxian because he didn't understand why that bastard did what he did. This is different. He understands what Zewu-jun is doing.

He understands all too well.

Lan Xichen sounds tired. He has never once said outright that anything is wrong, but the impression Jiang Cheng gets from all these letters is of overwhelming fatigue. The only reason he didn't pick up on it earlier is because the clues are a little too well concealed in each individual letter, tucked between all the well-practiced courtesies and pieces of half-amused advice. Clever, gracious Zewu-jun, who would rather enthusiastically talk about whatever the fuck Jiang Cheng brings up in his letters than turn the conversation toward himself. Peerless, flawless Zewu-jun, a paragon of virtue, who trusted the wrong person and paid for it in blood. The Honourable First Jade of Lan, murderer of a man who hadn't been trying to hurt him.

Jiang Cheng, staring at the mess of letters scattered across his desk and the floor, comes to a long overdue realization.

He has been incredibly, unforgivably stupid.

Letters covered in Lan Xichen's graceful calligraphy go flying as he sweeps them off the desk with his sleeve. He reaches for a fresh sheet of paper, grabs a dried-out inkbrush from behind the empty wine cup and starts to write, hardly even knowing what, exactly, he means to say.

Zewu-jun,

I don't know if you're reading these anymore, but if you haven't already burned this letter, please hear me out.

I never wrote to you so I could interrogate you or convince you to come out of seclusion. I wrote to you because I didn't think you were okay.

Actually, there's no way in hell that you're okay. I know what it's like to love and depend on a person and then have them turn into someone completely unrecognizable right in front of you. I know what it's like to kill someone who mattered to you and then have to live with it afterward. It doesn't matter that I wasn't solely responsible for his death; I've spent half my life torturing myself with all the what-ifs, wondering what I could have done differently to change the outcome. And it didn't get any better when he got resurrected, because at the time I still didn't know what to believe about him, nor whether what I'd done was right.

I'm not sure how close you were with Liangfang-zun, but if Guanyin Temple was to you what Nightless City was to me, then I'm willing to bet it feels pretty wretched.

Jiang Cheng pauses, stunned, holding the brush suspended over the paper as he catches up to what he just said. He's never been so honest about Nightless City to anyone in his life, ever.

But at this point, it would hurt his pride worse to start over than to keep going.

I know I'm probably the last person in the world you'd want to talk to about this. But I would have given anything, eighteen years ago, not to have felt alone. There was no one left who was close enough to our family to mourn properly, and at the time I hated Wei Wuxian so much that I would never in a thousand years have gone to the shrine for him myself. But even if I'd asked someone to sit vigil with me, it wouldn't have done any good. How could they have known how much I hated him, how furious I was, how I despised myself for waking up every morning still his brother and his killer? Better to sit vigil alone than explain any of that to an outsider.

So you don't have to explain anything. I may not know exactly how you feel, but I think I can get pretty close.

He thinks for a moment in silence.

For what it's worth, I'm sorry for your loss.

Jiang Wanyin

He folds the letter, seals it, and sets it aside until morning. His good-for-nothing first disciple isn't on hand to act as courier, so he'll have to send one of the maids to town with his correspondence. That way, anyone who's still awake will think the lights in his office were on due to conference paperwork, and not because their sect leader was in the process of baring his soul to a world-renowned scholar of Gusu Lan.

In the middle of the night. Tian ah, he needs sleep.

…

"Jiang-zongzhu!"

No one hears the distant shout. "Shoulders squared," Jiang Cheng tells one of his juniors, lined up at the archery range with a dozen others of the same age. "Don't lift them up to your ears. Relax. Good posture. Now try again."

Jiang Xuancao nods, biting the inside of her cheek. Jiang Cheng watches her raise the bow, pull the string back, and aim into the sky. One of her friends down the line hisses, "Just shoot! Don't think about it!"

Jiang Cheng says, "No, you absolutely have to –"

Jiang Xuancao lets the arrow fly. It soars through the air like a falcon's dive in reverse, vanishing to the left of the decorative kite fluttering far above their heads.

Someone snickers. Jiang Xuancao lowers the bow, crestfallen.

Jiang Cheng holds out a hand. "Here. But this is the last time. You have to pay attention or no one's going to help you. That goes for all of you," he says sharply to the other juniors, who snap to attention guiltily.

Jiang Xuancao mumbles an apology as she passes him the bow. He takes an arrow from her quiver, nocks it and positions himself on the line.

"Jiang-zongzhu!"

Jiang Cheng hears it, this time, but opts not to care. He lifts the bow and aims, pulling his arm back along a straight line with the kite.

You know that before, you could never have been his equal.

He lets fly. The kite lurches to one side.

"Jiang-zongzhu!" The runner's voice breaks through a half-admiring, half-grumbling murmur from the juniors, who have none of them yet managed to hit this last, highest kite. "Jiang-zongzhu, there's a letter for you from Gusu."

Jiang Cheng all but shoves the bow back into Jiang Xuancao's hands and turns to meet the runner, who holds out a small folded letter with both hands. "Good. Dismissed," he says shortly, and leaves the juniors to practice alone.

He'd instructed his runners months ago, when he and Lan Xichen were still corresponding regularly, to notify him immediately and before all other concerns when any letters arrived for him from Cloud Recesses. But he hadn't expected this quick of an answer. Only three days have passed since he sent that last mortifying letter – one less than it usually takes. Which can't be good. Judging by how thin the response is, Lan Xichen is probably going to ask him to take the hint and mind his own damn business for once.

It's what Jiang Cheng himself would have done.

But when he ducks into a deserted sandy path between thick trees and foliage and opens the letter, he stops, struck dumb, and has to read the thing several times over before it sinks in that that's not what Lan Xichen is asking him at all.

There's no addressee and no signature. Just a single line in modest, compact characters, no less neat than they usually are:

How did you bear it?

"Jiang-zongzhu!"

Footsteps down the path. Jiang Cheng turns, mute, to look at the breathless runner who approaches and salutes him: a different one this time, her cheeks still round with youth. "Sorry to bother you," she says, "but our scouts have returned from the southern quarter. They have news of the cannibal ghosts."

"Bring them to the audience hall," he says.

She bows again and takes off. Jiang Cheng looks back down at the letter, his throat closing.

How did you bear it?

The rest of his duties that day pass in a blur. He listens to the scouts' report and instructs one of his senior disciples to lead a team into the forest where they think the cannibal ghosts are hiding. He consults two of Lotus Pier's three doctors, who have decided to go to Qinghe and ask Nie-zongzhu's permission to copy a rare medical text from his library. He refuses dinner and shuts himself into his office, and spends an hour watching the sun set through the window instead of dealing with the paperwork that hasn't disappeared off his desk.

How did you bear it?

He's brimming over with … something. Relief, maybe, that Lan Xichen read his letter at all instead of burning it out of hand. Wonder, that he not only read it but accepted everything in it, that he turned toward Jiang Cheng instead of turning away. Gratitude, that even if they'll never be friends, at least they can each hold up a mirror to the other's grief.

Hope, even. For something he can't quite name.

How did you bear it?

Bear it? Bear it? Wasn't it obvious that he hadn't borne it at all?

Jiang Cheng watches the last sun's rays wink out behind the treeline and wishes more profoundly than ever that he could talk to Zewu-jun in person. He can picture him, a little: seated in perfect form on the other side of the desk, hands settled on his knees, sleeves gracefully and expansively swept out to either side. For some reason, Jiang Cheng can only picture him in this specific pose, the way he's seen him countless times at interclan meetings and at Cloud Recesses – serene and self-possessed, matchless and untouchable, further out of reach than the moon. The bluish light of dusk would gild his hair, and his eyes would be tired, but kind.

The rest is a little harder to imagine. What would it be like to meet the First Jade of Lan not as a fellow sect leader but as someone he'd confided in? Someone he'd talked to about Wei Wuxian and Nightless City, and who understood, maybe better than anyone else, what he has gone through?

What would they say to each other now, if they came face-to-face?

How did you bear it?

The only way I knew how. Like you.

Jiang Cheng sets his jaw and reaches for paper and ink.

…

Zewu-jun,

I'm flattered that you think I bore anything. I didn't. Or if I did, I did a pretty bad job of it. If I hadn't had Lotus Pier to manage and Jin Ling to raise, I know I would have gone mad. That's what might have saved me, actually: I had too much work to stop and feel sorry for myself

That's a lie. I felt plenty sorry for myself. But my nephew was depending on me, and the Jiang sect was depending on me, and I was angry enough at everything and everyone that it fueled me instead of making me fall apart.

Maybe you could try the same thing.

Jiang Wanyin

…

The reply comes three days later.

…

Jiang-zongzhu,

You suggest using anger. I understand what you mean – heaven knows I have seen people take refuge in it over the years, cultivators and commoners alike. But this is the one thing I have never learned to do. Nearly two decades have gone by since my education at Cloud Recesses came to an end and I became, strictly speaking, free to learn whatever our clan precepts refused to teach me. Yet somehow I never internalized the language of wrath, which Mingjue used so freely, and with which you, Jiang-zongzhu, likewise seem intimately familiar. How can I be angry, when I don't have the words for it? All I have is grief.

I allow myself to think, sometimes, that perhaps I should be angry. With A-Yao, for hiding so much from me, for betraying the person I believed he was; with Huaisang, for his haste and carelessness in speaking out that day; with fate, for taking my friends from me in the most painful way imaginable. But I was angry once before, in Guanyin Temple. I struck him across the face. I shouted at him as I have never shouted at anyone before or since. I was furious enough to doubt him, and doubted him enough, in the end, to kill him. And so the only person I can be truly angry with is myself, for if I had had just a little more faith in him, everything might have turned out differently.

Or it might not. I will never know. When we meet in the spirit world, perhaps, I will ask him, for surely he would not dare lie to me then. But I have no idea what I wish to say. I no longer know if I desire more to forgive him, or be forgiven. Neither is possible now.

I am sorry for unburdening myself to you like this. Perhaps after three years, I have forgotten both discretion and dignity. You may burn this letter when you have finished with it.

Lan Xichen

…

Jiang Cheng does not burn the letter.

He reads it, sitting on the farthest wooden dock, his boots just touching the surface of the darkening lake. There are stars glittering to life overhead, and lanterns blooming along the wooden latticework edges of Lotus Pier: nightfall has swallowed the dusk in a single rippling sweep, like a woman drawing her skirts close about her waist. He has to hold the paper close up to his face to make out the delicate brushstroke characters.

And when he's done, he puts the letter down and presses a hand over his mouth.

How can I be angry, when I don't have the words for it? All I have is grief.

The sect leader's headpiece feels like a toy pin in his hair. The past twenty years feel like nothing. He may carry his mother's whip and shoulder his father's duties and raise his sister's only son, but he's still just a child himself. Still a child, standing on that clifftop with his sword upraised; still a child, staring horrorstruck into the butcher's shop they'd made of his family courtyard; still a child, clutching his brother's and his sister's hands on an enchanted boat, crying out for his parents not to leave him. Reading Zewu-jun's letter is like looking that child in the face and feeling again, like a physical blow, everything he couldn't then have said aloud: back when all he'd had was anger, because he didn't have the words for grief.

I know, he wants to tell Lan Xichen: take him by the shoulders and pull him against his chest, as though he were Jiang Cheng's younger self, and holding him close, say, I know, I know, I know.

There is nothing he can say that will make it better.

Zewu-jun, he imagines writing, you can't lock yourself away until the grief fades. It's not going to. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but it's been eighteen years and the only thing I've learned is that nothing can ever be the same again. All you can do is keep on living. That's it. There's no secret. The only thing left to do is endure, and it is going to hurt.

I'm sorry.

Jiang Cheng bows his head over the letter and does not move as, above him, the stars pinwheel quietly through the sky.

…

Zewu-jun,

First of all, you are not meeting anyone in the spirit world for at least a hundred years. I absolutely forbid it.

Secondly, you don't have to apologize for unburdening yourself when I literally did the same to you, unsolicited, after you'd repeatedly made it clear that you weren't interested in talking about Guanyin Temple. This whole time, I've been trying to get it through to you that

Discretion and dignity are overrated anyw

If you never learned how to get angry, I sure as hell never learned to be discreet. It's not in the Jiang sect vocabulary, as I'm sure my first disciple's behaviour over the past three decades will attest. Maybe you should stoop to our level for once and speak straightforwardly instead of

Sorry. I'm not good at saying things. The point is that you're not alone. There's your brother, who I know for a fact is worried because he asks about you whenever we see each other and doesn't otherwise deign to talk to me. There's Wei Wuxian, who already thinks of you as his own. There's Jin Ling and your other nephew Sizhui and all their loud junior friends, who could learn more about integrity from you than from anyone else. And there's me, if you want. I'm no diplomat, but if you ever need to stop being polite and just be rude to someone, I'm here.

There are people who would share your burdens if you'd let them. That's what family does.

I can't tell you things will get better. If someone had told me that after Lotus Pier was sacked, or after Nightless City, I would have called them a liar and a sycophant and probably hit them for good measure. But if anger doesn't work, keeping busy might. You sound like you've tried to make time stand still for yourself, but time doesn't stand still for anyone. Just the dead. Maybe you'd better rejoin the world of the living before you forget how.

You don't have to go anywhere, obviously. But if you wanted to, you'd be welcome any time at Lotus Pier.

Jiang Wanyin

– And one more thing: You say you won't learn the truth about Guanyin Temple until you meet Liangfang-zun in the spirit world. Have you considered using Inquiry to ask him directly? It would mean playing music, and it would mean leaving the Hanshi, but maybe it would be worth it to be certain of what really happened.

…

"Jiang Cheng!" There's a furious hammering at the door to his quarters. "Jiang Cheng! Wake up!"

Jiang Cheng knocks over an inkstone and two chairs in his haste to open the door. Wei Wuxian nearly punches him in the face by accident, he's knocking so aggressively. "It's Zewu-jun," he says, before Jiang Cheng can get a word in.

Oh. Oh no. Jiang Cheng yanks him inside by the sleeve and slams the door. Wei Wuxian trips over one of the chairs, catches himself and whirls around, his eyes wide and dark in the night. "I just found out from Lan Zhan. What did you say to him?"

"I didn't say anything!" Jiang Cheng is deeply affronted at the implication that he would go out of his way to talk to Lan Wangji. "I haven't even seen him since the last time he came to dinner."

"Not him. Zewu-jun. What did you say to him?"

"What the fuck are you talking about? What happened?"

"Are you still writing to each other?"

Jiang Cheng resists the urge to physically shake him. "Wei Wuxian, if you don't tell me what's going on right now, I'm throwing you out the window."

"Music," Wei Wuxian says softly. "He's playing music again. Jingyi heard him, in the Hanshi. He was playing the Song of Sorrow."

Jiang Cheng opens his mouth – to say what, he doesn't know. Nothing comes out.

His brother regards him steadily in the silence, as his breath slowly evens out. His hair is all in disarray, as if whatever cultivator he'd caught a ride with had gone double speed from Gusu.

There's been no word from the Cloud Recesses since Jiang Cheng sent his last letter. "When?" he finally asks.

"Tonight, around xu shi. I left for Yunmeng as soon as I knew."

"You couldn't have said this in a letter?"

"I thought you might want," Wei Wuxian says, "to hear it in person. Also, we didn't want to risk it getting intercepted."

"Oh," Jiang Cheng says.

"Jingyi says he listened for nearly half an hour. He heard a dozen different songs – they made him cry," Wei Wuxian says passionately, his eyes shining. "Cry, Jiang Cheng. I wish I'd been there. Lan Zhan didn't even make him do lines afterward for eavesdropping. Is Zewu-jun coming out of seclusion soon?"

"How should I know?"

"Well, he talks to you, doesn't he? I bet he's told you more than any other person alive." Wei Wuxian winces. "Well. Apart from Chifeng-zun and Liangfang-zun. But they're, you know …"

"Dead," Jiang Cheng says acidly. "You might be familiar with the word."

"Oh, shut up. How is he, how was his last letter?"

I no longer know if I desire more to forgive him, or be forgiven. Jiang Cheng looks down at his sock feet. Shame leaves a bitter, familiar taste in his mouth. "Better," he says. "I think. I can't tell you anything else."

Wei Wuxian nods, in a reasonably good impression of not yearning to know the details. "I understand. But, in your expert opinion …?"

"What are you asking me for? The Lans never make any sense. He didn't tell me he was going to start playing again, why should he tell me if he meant to come out of seclusion?" Jiang Cheng stomps over to pick up the two chairs still obstructing the room. "What songs did he play? It's not like it's hard to make Lan Jingyi cry. Your juniors get sappier every year."

Wei Wuxian points a warning finger. "Hey. You can make fun of me if you want, but you don't get to make fun of them. When have you even seen Jingyi cry?"

"When Lan Sizhui showed him a tiny frog that got stuck in an old teapot." This was during Sizhui's second visit to Lotus Pier. Afterward he, Jiang Cheng, personally made sure that that frog made it back safely to the lake, but the juniors were devastated when he confiscated it. Probably they thought he'd eaten the damn thing. "It was near one of those ponds by the south side, with the pine trees."

"Huh," says Wei Wuxian. "That's pretty cute."

"Also, when I caught the four of them doing a dramatic reading from one of my juniors' terrible romances."

"I'd cry too, if I suddenly saw your face like that."

"You – he was crying before I caught them! What songs is Zewu-jun playing?"

"Why do you care?"

"Because. Music is …" Jiang Cheng trails off, racking his brains for a way to put into words what he knows of Lan Xichen.

Wei Wuxian tilts his head, waiting.

"Sacred," Jiang Cheng finishes grudgingly. "To him. He swore he wouldn't touch the guqin while in seclusion. If he broke his own vow, he must have had good reason."

"You do know them," Wei Wuxian says, very softly. And, sitting down cross-legged, before Jiang Cheng can figure out whether or not that's something he needs to deny: "I didn't hear it, but Lan Zhan did. He went to listen after Jingyi told us. He says Zewu-jun played nonstop for ages. Songs for grief, regret, loneliness – hours and hours of it, all from memory. And he was still playing when I left."

Like a dam, Jiang Cheng thinks, that has been broken, when all the surging floodwaters come pouring out. "How do you know it's from memory?"

"Zewu-jun gave his sheet music back to the library when he went into seclusion."

"What, all of it?"

"All of it," says Wei Wuxian. He looks up at Jiang Cheng with an expression of such warmth that Jiang Cheng kind of wants to smack it off. "I don't know what you've been saying to him, but your letters must have done something. If he's playing music again, maybe he's decided … I mean, maybe he still has …"

A spark of life. A remnant of his old self. A reason to keep living. None of this is spoken aloud, and yet it hangs in the air. "Maybe," Jiang Cheng says, his chest constricting.

"You did good, Jiang Cheng."

"Right." He drops back onto the bed.

"You know what's funny? Zewu-jun's been in seclusion almost as long as Lan Zhan was." Wei Wuxian's tone is light, but forced. "I never thought he'd be the type to manage being alone for so long."

"Me neither."

"I hope he comes back out soon. Lan Zhan misses him."

"Well, don't hold your breath."

Wei Wuxian gives him an inquisitive look. "I thought you said you didn't know –?"

"I know he's not coming out anytime soon," Jiang Cheng says shortly. "He's heartbroken. His whole sense of self was shattered. You don't just get over something like that." He is, abruptly, tired of the conversation. Zewu-jun's despair feels like something too raw to be touched. "If you're staying the night, then stay the night. I'm going to bed." He lies down and turns over on his side.

"Oh," says Wei Wuxian. There's a rustle of clothes as he gets to his feet. "Okay. I'll just head off to my room, then. Good night, Jiang Cheng."

Footsteps.

"Wei Wuxian."

Pause.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks. For telling me."

"You're very welcome." There's a smile in Wei Wuxian's voice. "See you tomorrow, yeah? I'll say bye before I take off."

The doors slide quietly open and shut. Jiang Cheng stares into the wall and waits for sleep to claim him.

…

He is, naturally, proven wrong the next morning when a courier brings him a letter stamped with the official seal of the Chief Cultivator. It is signed not by His Excellency but by one of His Excellency's administrative assistants, who take care of all the letters that must be reproduced in triplicate for the benefit of every major and minor sect from the eastern sea to the deserted western reaches.

Jiang Cheng unfolds the letter and reads it where he stands, in the open courtyard where Jiang disciples have gathered for their daily strength training.

To the esteemed Sandu-Shengshou,

His Excellency the Chief Cultivator, Hanguang-jun of Gusu Lan, is pleased to officially extend to you and six adepts of your choice this invitation to the Cloud Recesses, for a conference concerning matters as they stand between the four major and ten minor cultivation sects. The conference will begin on the new moon and proceed in three installments, one at the beginning of each week until the end of the month. We ask that you preserve this invitation as proof of entry when you arrive.

We also ask that you extend a warm welcome to the honourable Zewu-jun of Gusu Lan, who has rejoined the cultivation world after a long period of time in seclusion and will be attending the conference by his brother's side.

Please prepare all relevant documents in advance so as to avoid any unseemly delays to the proceedings.

Regards,

Lan Songyu, Administrative Scribe and Senior Disciple of Gusu Lan

…