WangXian Untamed

Chapter 31 - Fear

Shock. Fear. Disbelief.

So many emotions flooded through the Hanshi once the note was read by all.

Lan XiChen stared at his brother, who looked back with similar concern. Wei WuXian looked at the message, uselessly willing the words to change. They did not.

Eventually, Wei WuXian cleared his throat, breaking the silence that filled the Hanshi.

"Well, that's not good," Wei WuXian remarked with spectacular understatement.

"WangJi, will you please help me choose the Cultivators we must send to the Cold Cavern?" asked Lan XiChen., his voice tight with emotions held firmly in check. "I should think at least six per shift, three shifts per day...at least 18. And we'll have to tell them their task is to keep watch and..." his voice failed him. He could not finish. He could not make himself say what needed to be said.

"They must be prepared to fight and finish Uncle." Lan WangJi quietly said what Lan XiChen could not.

The two brothers looked at each other, caught in the reality that the man who had raised them could shortly threaten their entire community and it might be their responsibility to ensure he died before he could do harm.

"Hey, hey, hey, let's not get ahead of ourselves, here." Wei WuXian put a warm hand on each of the two Jades, pressing a gentle reminder to each that they were not alone. Sympathy shone from silver eyes as he looked reassurance to the brothers, sitting stiff with grief. "There is still the possibility we may find something or figure something out. We just found the pellets today. They should give us more information...at least we have a few days, and quite possibly more. You can't just jump to the worst case right away. Give me a chance to work with the pellets before you give up hope. Please. We'll find a way."

"Yes. Yes, of course," responded Lan XiChen automatically. He drew himself inwards, almost visibly taking less space as he steeled himself for what was required of him Sect Leader. "WangJi, would you please meet me in the Main Hall first thing tomorrow and we'll select the Cultivators? I think we should tell them as a group, as individual meetings will take more time that I think we should permit. And... and I think I'd like to be alone now, please."

"Mn." Lan WangJi bowed his agreement and he and Wei WuXian left the shaken Lan XiChen alone with his thoughts.

Back at the Jingshi, Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi didn't even try to recapture the delightful moment they had left behind on the floor of the workroom. Somehow neither felt able to set aside the heavy news just received, their own pleasures seemed almost disrespectful in the fact of catastrophe, possibly to arrive soon.

Quietly Lan WangJi moved to his guqin and began to play. First came Clarity, as per the routine the two men had established for their evenings. Then came WangXian. On this night, so laden with the weight of possibility and almost all of it negative, Wei WuXian took out ChenQing to accompany the guqin. So few realized that Wei WuXian was, himself, an accomplished musician. In the years of using ChenQing he had mastered the handling of his dizi to an exceptional degree. Even fewer realized that it was as much his skilled playing, the piping of his emotions into the song as much as his spiritual energy that made ChenQing such a powerful weapon. With no Core to provide a source of spiritual energy, and only the spiritual energy innate within him, it was purely Wei WuXian that imbued ChenQing's melodies with their might. Tonight, he harmonized on WangXian.

A plaintive descant wove its way about the melody composed by Lan WangJi so many years before. An echo of loss and yearning, and an answering call of longing too deep for words... somewhere in the second playing a sense of gentle finality seemed to settle like a balm. Wei WuXian watched the stress ebb from his husband's posture and the tension in his hands finally relax. As the song finished, Lan WangJi placed his fingers gently on the guqin strings to silence the instrument. He sat quietly, with his head bowed. Wei WuXian returned ChenQing to the stand where he kept her and moved to where his husband sat silent before his instrument.

"Lan Zhan?" Wei WuXian asked gently. "It's not going to come to that. We won't let it." He spoke directly to the fears he knew his husband harboured, unable to voice.

Lan WangJi raised his face to Wei WuXian. The tears simmering in the golden depths came as no surprise. Lan QiRen had raised his nephews. Despite his cranky, forceful, overbearing nature he had provided them everything they needed and as much of what they wanted as was within his power and nature to give. In his own way he loved them dearly and the idea that he was suffering, possibly unto death, was a knife in Lan WangJi's heart he had no means to manage.

Wei WuXian took his husband's hands and gently raised him to his feet, leading him into their bedchamber and sitting him down, before kneeling before him. He reached up to hold Lan WangJi's face in one palm, while the other hand clasped that of his husband, grounding him between the two firm touches as if a circuit passed between them, and travelled from heart to heart in completion.

"We're going to figure this out."

No response.

"We will find a way."

Silence.

"Lan Zhan, I swear to you that I'll find a way to force the resentful energy out of Lan QiRen. I won't let you lose your uncle."

One of the tears slipped down Lan WangJi's cheek, escaping his control.

Wei WuXian dried it with his thumb and pressed a soft kiss where it had been.

"We can do anything together," he whispered. "I know we can. I've lived twice and we found each other both times. A Qi deviation can hardly compare with that for a miracle, now, can it?"

A hitch in Lan WangJi's breathing showed that he was listening, even as his nose turned red with the effort to restrain his tears.

"Let me help you, beloved," said Wei WuXian. Gently he removed his hands and took Lan WangJi's forehead ribbon from him. A kiss to the silver clouds, and he folded it away on the side table, as was their custom. Carefully he removed Lan WangJi's boots before he pushed him back onto the bed. Removing his own boots, he slipped in beside his husband and wrapped him in his arms, pulling his head onto one shoulder and holding him close.

"There you go, my love. Let it out, now, yeah?" and he held Lan WangJi as he shuddered his way into the tears he'd never learned how to release. For the first time in his memory, Lan WangJi cried himself to sleep.

No good deed goes unpunished. Predictably, given the extreme weariness caused by the emotional roller coaster of the day, the now familiar nightmare introduced a new level of torture to Wei WuXian's exhausted mind and body.

Icy body. Check. Fiery winds. Check. Voices. Check. Wait, what? The voices were so much clearer tonight. The emotions being carried so painfully through Wei WuXian's very cells were somehow communicating, mingling impossibly with ideas and thoughts and words as concepts thrust themselves fully formed into his mind.

"We never meant you harm."

"We appreciate your help."

"Thank you... listened to us."

"You gave...we needed."

"You tried your best..."

"Thank you."

"We're sorry."

"...help you now."

"Thank you for caring."

"We'll give... you lost."

"... remember... debt to you."

Thought after thought, idea after idea, thrust like so many keen blades through Wei WuXian's mind and body. He was suspended in an exquisite place of ultimate agony of both mind and body throughout the long night, without surcease. Sometime in the wee small hours of early morning, only a few hours before Lan WangJi's habitual rising, he was finally permitted escape and his mind fled from all forms of consciousness even as his body sank in answer to gravity, his bones and muscles no longer capable of any fight.