Day Three, Part One

The splashing of water pulls Wei Wuxian out of his thoughts.

The tortoise must be eating the bodies around its pond. It is indeed a horrifying monster, but in a way, it’s lucky that the bodies are being taken care of before they can fill the cave with their rotting scent.

Beside him, Lan Zhan stirs.

As he watches, Lan Zhan shrugs off the overcoat blanketing him. His hand reaches for his wounded leg and Wei Wuxian catches him by the wrist. “Ah, don’t do that.” Although he wishes that Lan Zhan would stop being so anxious about his headband, he no longer finds it annoying.

He tries to cover Lan Zhan with the overcoat once more, but Lan Zhan pushes his hands away. “It’s hot.”

“You’re warm?” He puts his hand against Lan Zhan’s cheek, then his neck, and sure enough, the skin he touches is no longer cold or clammy. Wei Wuxian checks on the wounds too; the medicine looks dry and there’s no blood, old or fresh, to be seen, and he heaves a sigh of relief like he never has before.

He’s not particularly cold either, but he wears the overcoat anyway. It’s a little stiff, probably with from being soaked in dirty pond water, but also slightly warm from the heat of Lan Zhan’s body. It’s probably as close to a hug as he’ll get from Lan Zhan, he thinks with a chuckle, as he runs a hand over the fabric. The burnt patch is rough under his palm. That’s two sets of clothing that the Wen clan have ruined; first, his favourite overcoat had been mauled beyond repair by that mutt and now his most comfortable overcoat and more importantly, his expensive lotus silk inner robe, has been burnt by Wang Lingjiao. And since he’s feeling petty, he’ll add Lan Zhan’s bloodstained white robes to the tally as well. The Wen clan, destroyers of good clothing: that’s a reputation they deserve.

With Lan Zhan on the mend, he’s free to stretch his legs a little.

Since there’s enough wood for the moment, Wei Wuxian decides to check on the tortoise monster. There is a distinct reduction in the number of bodies littering its cavern; he was right to suspect that the splashes he heard earlier were of the monster eating the bodies around its pond. The Jiang clan disciples are gone, and so is one of the Wen soldiers.

He kicks a rock into the water.

The shell starts bobbing. Wei Wuxian had expected a reaction, but not so quickly, and he scrambles to hide himself behind a stalagmite. Not a moment too soon, because the tortoise’s head soon breaches the water and it starts sniffing around.

It’s a lot more intelligent than he had realised.

If it can pick up the sound of a single stone breaking the surface of the water, it must have heard the lot of them stumbling about and shouting, and yet, it had bid its time until it could do the most amount of damage to them. So not only is it intelligent, it’s malicious too.

When it fails to find the source of the noise, the tortoise monster grabs another Wen soldier. Its sharp teeth poke through his bloated body like a needle through bellows and he bursts open. The smell is revolting. Wei Wuxian gags into his shoulder, hoping that the monster’s bloodlust will dull its hearing, and readies himself to cast a talisman to distract it. It doesn’t come to that; the tortoise it sinks back into the depths of its pond with its prize.

And though he should be grateful to escape, he only feels frustration. For all of the roaming he has done and for all of the narrow escapes and scares they’ve had, nothing has changed. They’re still as stuck here as they were two days ago.

He’s about to return to Lan Zhan when something stops him in his tracks.

Something is different, but what?

Wei Wuxian desperately wheels around; he trusts his instincts, he knows there’s something here that he should be paying attention to.

And then he sees it.

The shell is on the far right side of the pond. It’s no longer blocking the escape route.

With the monster currently occupied, wouldn’t it be an opportune time to find the opening that Jiang Cheng did?

*

Damn that tortoise!

Wei Wuxian scrambles up the rocky slope, grasping at anything that’ll take him out of reach of the monster, and curses Wen Chao yet again when he grabs at a rope and it flops uselessly in his hands. That loathsome toad-faced goon could easily have wiped out the heirs of all of the major clans with his opportunistic pettiness.

Luckily for him, although the shell bobs right up to the edge of the pond, it stays in the water. Wei Wuxian flattens himself against the ground and holds his breath, playing dead. The tortoise pokes its head up and looks this way and that, but unless he moves, it can’t find him. Perhaps because it had eaten recently, the monster quickly tires of the hunt and withdraws into its shell.

Then, unexpectedly, the shell floats over to the left side of the pond and settles right next to the escape route.

Go right ahead you bastard, Wei Wuxian thinks, I’m not trying that again anyway. His little swim had been fruitful and not; he had located the opening that Jiang Cheng and the others had escaped through, but it is clear that something – what else other than the monster? – had violently attacked it and caused a cave in, effectively blocking that route of escape.

His chest hurts.

Wei Wuxian creeps to safety, wincing as each movement jostles his wound. It hadn’t really hurt yesterday, but the exertion of searching for the escape route and the dirtiness of the pond water probably hadn’t helped. Just as he’s about to enter the tortoise-proof crevice, though, he spots the body of the Jin clan member, and he gets a silly little idea.

*

Lan Zhan has thrown off the thin robe too even though the fire has burnt low since he last tended to it. It’s just as well, because Wei Wuxian is now the one who feels cold. He’s not soaked through from his brief swim; it’s just his overcoat that’ll need to be dried again. He removes his belt and wriggles out of it, letting it fall to a heap at his feet. He’ll get to it in time, there’s something else he wants to do now.

“Lan Zhan.” He keeps his voice low. “Lan Er Gongzi.”

No response.

Wei Wuxian keeps his movements as light as and careful as possible as he circles Lan Zhan’s injured leg with the wrist wrappings he had stolen from the Jin clan disciple and ties it in place; they are thicker and wider than Lan Zhan’s headband, so they should provide better support to the healing bones. When he’s satisfied that the splints are secure, he unties the headband and pulls it free. Flakes of medicine fall off, but the wounds, having completely scabbed over, don’t re-open.

The headband isn’t too badly stained. Wei Wuxian uncorks the gourd to wash it and there, he pauses. Does he really want to use their meagre supply of clean water to wash something as unnecessary as a headband?

But it’s not just a headband, is it?

If his worst fears – and Lan Zhan’s too, even if he won’t say so aloud – are true and the Lan clan has been wiped out, then it’s one of the few artefacts Lan Zhan has to link him to his people, his home, his family. And it’s dear to him too; though Lan Zhan had only used it to tie them together out of expedience, his heart still skips a beat every time he thinks of that moment.

Catching sight of Lan Zhan’s face in the firelight – the contrast of his dark eyelashes against the pale skin of his regal cheekbones, the small pink buds of his lips – Wei Wuxian is struck with longing for something he cannot put into words.

Jiang Cheng is convinced that Lan Zhan hates him. Jiang Cheng has said it so many times in so many ways that sometimes he almost believes it, but sometimes he looks at Lan Zhan and sees-

-what does he see, he wonders.

Should he see the person who ignores his existence unless he makes it absolutely impossible to do so? Should he see the person who tried twice – once unsuccessfully, once successfully – to abandon him despite them sharing a pledge to keep their shard of the Yin Tian secure? Or should he see the person who threw himself in front of a whip twice to protect him, who was willing to be thrown in the dungeon with him, who saved him yet again at the cost of a mauled leg and who has not breathed a single word of complaint about all of the pain he’s endured trying to protect Wei Wuxian from the consequences of his own choices?

Who is he to Lan Zhan?

I’d chase you to the ends of the earth if only you’d give me the smallest sign that you want me to.

Ever so carefully, he centres the metal ornament on Lan Zhan’s forehead and slides the long ribbon through his hair – Lan Zhan’s brow furrows, but he stays asleep – until the cloud pattern sits in place, before reaching behind his head to tie a simple knot to fasten the headband in place.

And though Wei Wuxian’s intentions in tying the ribbon for Lan Zhan had been entirely practical, the inherent ism of the act doesn’t escape him; even if his mind hadn’t made the confection, his body certainly has. It’s a good thing that his inner robes are long and his pants loose and that Lan Zhan is not awake to see the flush that’s heating his ears and cheeks.

“There,” he says aloud, crouching awkwardly in front of Lan Zhan “your precious headband is back where it should be.”

“You are so thoughtful, Wei-gege,” he replies to himself in an admittedly poor mimicry of Lan Zhan’s voice. “I can always rely on you. You are my hero.”

It’s absurd, so much so that Wei Wuxian loses all amusement the moment those words leave his mouth. “Tsk.” He’s angry now, out of the blue, and frustrated both at himself and Lan Zhan.

“Lan Zhan,” he says, knowing that Lan Zhan can’t hear him – if he were awake, he’d probably prefer to throw himself to the tortoise than to endure this conversation – but hoping that what he’s about to say will on some level make an impression on Lan Zhan “you are the most infuriating person I’ve ever met.” He sighs. “You don’t exist in this world alone. Like it or not, there are people who care about you. When you suffer and try to bear it all by yourself, it just hurts to watch. It hurts so much.”

Tears slide down his cheeks. Wei Wuxian wipes those unexpected tears away, grinning humourlessly. “See? So if not for your own sake, then for my sake, please learn how to ask for help. Or at least… at least, if you can’t ask for help, when I notice that something is wrong, let me help.”

He glances at Lan Zhan, who is as unmoved as a statue, and watches the steady rise and fall of his chest.

“Look at you… is it comfortable, sleeping against rock? Would it kill you to sleep on my shoulder? What sort of friendship is this?” Indeed, now that he’s asked the question aloud, Wei Wuxian wonders how Lan Zhan sees their friendship. “If you had just followed everyone else instead of waiting for me, you’d be free now. And if you had just left me to deal with the monster, you wouldn’t have been bitten. Imagine you thinking you need to protect me. My arms and legs are fine, you could barely hobble up the mountain, what the hell made you think I needed you to save me? You thought I couldn’t outrun the monster, but you could?”

He knew he couldn’t.

The sight of Lan Zhan’s face suddenly becomes unbearable. Wei Wuxian drops his gaze to the fire, and then, to his wet and abandoned clothes. He might as well get to work drying them. He wrings as much water as he can out of his overcoat and holds it open in front of the fire, but the mechanics of drying his clothes do little do distract him from his earlier line of thought.

Lan Zhan knew what he was risking when he put himself between the monster and Wei Wuxian. He could have died. He could still die.

Does he value his life so little?

Wei Wuxian’s gaze is inevitably drawn back to Lan Zhan.

If you value your life less than mine, then I’ll just have to take care of yours for you.

Day Three, Part Two

I should have followed him.

Lan Wangji is not a person familiar with regret.

He lives by the Lan disciples and his own sense of right and wrong, never compromising on either even where convenience or courtesy might call for their relaxation. He knows what that has done to his reputation. To his face, people praise his composure; behind his back they say he's a prude, a stick in the mud, as immovable as the mountains of Gusu and twice as cold. He doesn't care. He's not answerable to them, only to his own conscience.

And so he had lived until Wei Ying had come along and upended everything. Every time he had argued with Wei Ying, he'd walked away questioning himself until he finally learnt to listen to what Wei Ying says instead of the disagreeable way he says it. He knows what Wei Ying's reputation is like too. People are drawn to him like ducks are drawn to water, but behind his back - and to his face too, sometimes - they call him shameless, immoral and a danger to the cultivation world. They don't see the steel that Wei Ying hides under his flippant exterior, nor do they see how his sense of justice and empathy is far superior to theirs.

Which is why he should never have agreed to allow Wei Ying to enter the Tulu Xuanwu's shell alone. How dare he claim to understand Wei Ying better than others when he failed to see past that flimsy excuse about his injury and about the Chord Assassination Technique not working inside the shell?

So here they are; a Lan Wangji who always does what he thinks is right being schooled in regret by a Wei Ying who isn't even trying to do so.

He regrets blindly agreeing to Wei Ying's plan.

He regrets his unwavering faith in the Chord Assassination Technique which had failed to visibly injure the Xuanwu but which had sliced his hand easily enough.

He regrets seeing talismans as an inferior method of cultivation. If he had cared to learn even the basics, he could have lit a fire as easily as Wei Ying had instead of wasting time struggling to revive embers from their long-since-dead campsite. He would gladly swallow his pride and ask Wei Ying to teach him if he weren't unconscious.

Which is why he needs a fire.

Mercifully, the tiny red glow around which he'd cupped his desperate hands comes back to life, growing warmer and brighter until he dares to feed it dried grass. It smokes and sputters before finally coming alight, and Lan Wangji whispers a word of gratitude to the flame. The bows they had collected earlier can now serve as firewood; he breaks one and stokes the flame and when he's confident that it will burn, he turns his attention to Wei Ying.

Wei Ying is shivering. He’s drenched; they both are, but Lan Wangji to a lesser degree.

Whenever he’d been in the pond, Wei Ying always removed his clothes to dry them instead of allowing them to dry on him. Would he tolerate Lan Wangji doing the same for him since he’s unconscious? Or would he feel violated, as Lan Wangji certainly would?

“Forgive me,” he says, making his decision. He’d rather bear Wei Ying’s anger, if it comes to that, than risk worsening his fever by leaving him to soak in his wet clothes. The belt and wrist wrappings are made of leather, resistant to water; he sets them aside. The thin outer robe and overcoat are dripping wet; he squeezes water out of both and spreads them out on the opposite side of the fire. The inner robe, made of surprisingly soft material, is not as wet and it’s mostly the bottom of the skirt that’s soaked; he decides against removing it.

With that out of the way, he checks Wei Ying for injuries. He’s burning up, that Lan Wangji already knows. He’s got blood smeared across his lips and chin, which Lan Wangji wipes away with the sleeve of his robe. The burn mark on his chest is raw, but not bleeding; it doesn’t look infected, as far as Lan Wangji can tell, but he knows very little about medicine and healing compared to his xiong-zhang. Perhaps it is infected after all, which could explain Wei Ying’s fever. Wei Ying’s hands are curled tight around that strange sword and there’s blood smeared over his fingers and between them, but when Lan Wangji pries each hand open there are no wounds from which the blood could have come.

With no visible wounds to treat, he decides to resume sharing his energy with Wei Ying. It quelled his fever earlier, so he might be able to cure it altogether if he keeps it up for a longer period of time. Lan Wangji reaches for Wei Ying’s wrist and tugs it to himself, and Wei Ying gasps as if it hurts-

-did he hurt him?

“Wei Ying.” He doesn’t get an answer, because Wei Ying is still unconscious, but as he searches for a reason why Wei Ying might be in pain, he notices how he’s left him sprawled across the ground in nothing more than his thin inner robe.

When he was hurt, Wei Ying didn’t just tend to his wounds; he kept him warm, fed him, fussed over him and even cleaned his headband for him.

Lan Wangji’s robes are wet and dirty. Any time he spends drying it is time that could instead be devoted to energy-sharing. He has no food to offer. Wei Ying doesn’t have any equivalent to a headband that he can clean for him.

The only thing he can give Wei Ying is somewhere comfortable to rest his head.

Lan Wangji sits as close to the fire as he can tolerate, crossing his legs even though his injured one aches in the this position, and pulls Wei Ying over to lay his head in his lap. “Better?” This time, he’s gentle as he pulls Wei Ying’s wrist to himself to resume sharing his energy. He closes his eyes and calls up his golden core, depleted as it is, and begins a slow and steady transfusion that he should be able to keep up through the night.

XXXXX

there's a POV switch in part 2, just fyi.