Lan Zhan opened his eyes to the dawn light streaming into the Gentian house. The day was cool and clear with the fragrance of the blossoms blowing in through the window. Wei Ying was sharing his pillow and smiling at him. It had taken him a long time to learn how to wake as early as Lan Zhan, but the chance to wake first and watch Lan Zhan sleep seemed to have incentivised him.
Lan Zhan smiled in return. Wei Ying's grin widened at the rare treat.
"Stop looking at me like that."
"How am I looking at you?" Wei Ying's eyes gleamed with a hint of mischief. His hand crept onto Lan Zhna's chest, toying with his robes.
"Like I never want to leave this bed."
Wei Ying grinned, pleased with himself for getting such a reaction from the usually reticent Hanguang-Jun. He leaned in close, his breath teasing against Lan Zhan's lips. "Then let's never leave."
Lan Zhan grabbed at him, one hand around a slim waist pulling Wei Ying on top of him, the other tangling in his hair. Their mouths sealed together as if they never wanted to part. This was his sustenance, his sunlight, the very air he breathed. Lan Zhan never wanted it to end. His teeth nipped at those enticing lips that were only silent when he was asleep or being kissed.
Wei Ying suddenly pulled away. Lan Zhan was about to apologise for biting too hard.
The stunned look on Wei Ying's face froze him in place. Confusion turned to terror as the hands Wei Ying held up dissolved. Lan Zhan reached for him frantically, but hands grabbed at him from behind. Figures clad in white wearing the Lan Clan forehead ribbon held him back as his love drifted further away from him. The asturne white walls of the Gentian house blackened to rock like the caves of the Burial Mounds. Wei Ying reached for him, screaming as he was torn apart, his body shredded by an unseen force.
"Wei Ying!" Lan Zhan struggled, but found that he had no spiritual power to stop what was happening. He could do nothing as Wei Ying was ripped away from him leaving not a shred of flesh or a wisp of soul.
He screamed. "WEI YING."
Lan Wangji opened his eyes. He was in his bed at the inn. Alone in his bed.
Lan Wangji raised his hand to feel moisture on his face. A shuddering breath escaped him with the last of the tears he'd cried in his sleep. It was a dream, a variation of the dream that he'd been having for the last thirteen years. It had been a long while since he'd last been inflicted by it, and he couldn't think what had triggered it tonight.
He'd seen the Lan Clan junior's off early in the day to attend to a mission that their training should well equip them for, a simple matter of walking corpses harassing the local townsfolk. The Mo family had called on the cultivation clans for help.
Maybe that was it. Walking corpses…Wei Ying could make such creatures dance for him with a whistle.
Lan Zhan got out of bed and wiped the sweat from his brow. He moved to the window to allow the cool night air to wash over him.
It was only a dream.
Tonight's dream had started out so sweetly. In it, he had convinced Wei Ying to come back to Cloud Rescesses with him. Safely hidden away from the world that wanted to tear him down, Wei Ying had come to love Lan Zhan as Lan Zhan loved him. A sweet, impossible dream.
Occasionally, very rarely, he got to stay in the dream where Wei Ying loved him. In the day Lan Zhan would bring Wei Ying all of the things that made him smile, and at night they would lay together and do other things with nothing and no one intruding on them. But far more often, like tonight, the dream ended with Lan Zhan witnessing Wei Ying's death.
It was the death he had been told about - Wei Ying being torn apart by malicious ghosts that would no longer obey him, the backlash of his own power that Lan Zhan had always feared. Lan Zhan was left with tortuous wondering: had it been a quick death, or as painful as his nightmares depicted. How much had Wei Ying suffered?
Sometimes it was Jiang Wanyin that killed him. Wei Ying cornered in the siege of the Burial Mounds, unwilling to harm his own brother, his shidi's sword stabbing Wei Ying through the heart.
Or else being captured alive to be publicly executed in a spectacle that Lan Zhan could never get there in time to stop.
Or locked in a dungeon for the rest of his life - a living hell for a soul as wild and free-spirited as Wei Ying - waiting for Lan Zhan to save him, and cursing him when he didn't because Lan Zhan could never find him.
From those dreams, he would wake with an unending pit of despair. Like he was still trapped in the nightmare, still searching, unwilling to admit that there might be nothing left to find.
Thirteen years living with that pit where his heart should be.
In reality, Lan Zhan had not seen Wei Ying's death. Had not been there for him, had not been able to save him. And even after the fact, he had not been able to find a single trace of him. No matter how many times he played Inquiry, played until his fingers bled, to try to reach his soul, there was never any response.
It was some consolation that no one else had been able to find him either; no one in any of the great sects had been able to summon Wei Ying's soul to trap and destroy him. Of course Wei Ying could evade traps, even in death. Lan Zhan shut his mind off from the possibility that Wei Ying's soul had been destroyed along with his body. That possibility was too painful, too- It could not be. It just- it could not be.
He was out there, somewhere. And someday, somehow he would return.
Lan Zhan would wait for him. He would wait… And one day he would find him.
Through the window, an emergency flare suddenly lit up the sky, the glow highlighting the tears lingering on Lan Zhan's cheeks.
Lan Zhan took a cleansing breath, banishing his grief for the present moment. The juniors had run into some trouble on their mission. Grabbing his guqin and his sword, Lan Wangji took off to assist them.