Chapter Text
As a child, he’d asked his parents to tell him about soulmates as they sat around the campfire under a canopy of stars. He remembers the warmth of the fire, the gentle fingers in his hair, the hum of her voice beneath his ear where it rests over her heart, telling stories about soulmates who fell in love and overcame tremendous adversity to live happily ever after.
How do you know they’re your soulmate? he'd ask, every time, just to see the light in their eyes as they meet each other’s gazes over the fire.
A soulmate is the perfect complement to your soul, his mother would tell him. Your perfect match. And when you meet them, it’s like a missing piece of you has finally come home.
And then they would lie back on the grass and count the stars until he would drift off to sleep in her arms and dream of his own soulmate.
They’d be strong like A-die, his childish mind had decided, and beautiful like A-niang. And we would spend every day having lots of fun and travelling the world and having adventures.
It’s been two years since he met his soulmate and fell in love with him at first sight. Twelve months, since he had left the Cloud Recesses with his heart broken. Nine, since he had left seclusion to find Lan Wangji kneeling at the gates of Lotus Pier and had felt the cracks in his golden core start to heal. Six, since they had exchanged vows to acknowledge their soul bond, tying them together for the rest of their lives.
Now, as he watches Lan Wangji shed his outer robes, folding them neatly and placing them away in the cupboard alongside his own, he wonders if this is what his parents had felt together. Seeing Lan Wangji move about his rooms—their rooms—in Lotus Pier with such familiarity fills his heart with an indescribable warmth, a sense of peace and contentment he has not felt since he had first laid eyes on him and recognised him as soulmate.
He rests a hand over his abdomen, where his golden core hums with life. It’s been nine months, and his spiritual energy has largely returned to normal, but the healers have said the damage done is likely to last for many years. He feels it, sometimes, in the shadow of doubt that lingers in his mind when Lan Wangji tells him he loves him; in the cold trickle of fear in his heart when he watches Lan Wangji leave.
“Wei Ying?” Lan Wangji is kneeling before him, as he often does now when they’re alone, his honey-coloured eyes dark with concern. “Is something the matter?”
Lan Wangji doesn’t know. Has no idea of the damage Wei Wuxian has inflicted upon himself in those three months after he had left Gusu. How he had almost been too late to salvage the fragile bond he had fought to create, to nurture, in their time together. How, if he had not appeared at the gates that day, this would not exist.
He had not had the heart to tell him then, when the wounds were still fresh and his heart still bleeding. Not when they knelt before their families and made the vows to each other, and Lan Wangji’s eyes had been bright with joy as he had tied his forehead ribbon around their wrists in the sacred custom of Gusu Lan. He had not wished to spoil that day, or watch the light in his eyes give way to horror and to guilt, so he had kept quiet, and nursed his wounds on his own.
The key to any good relationship is trust, his mother had told him as they watched his father clean and sharpen their swords by the fire. As long as you trust each other, it doesn’t matter if they are your soulmate or not.
He smiles and covers the hand on his cheek with his own, leaning down to press their foreheads together. The Gusu Lan forehead ribbon is soft and smooth against his skin.
“I love you,” he whispers between them, feeling his breath hitch. “So much.”
“I love you,” Lan Wangji replies tenderly, without hesitation. “More than life.”
And there it is. That wisp of doubt dancing at the back of his mind. His fingers twitch and tense and he freezes, just for a second, but it is enough. Lan Wangji notices and pulls back.
“Wei Ying?” He tips his head back to search his eyes. “What is the matter?”
--
Soulmates have been well-studied and documented throughout history. Ancient texts speak of the first time this phenomenon had been discovered, when the first golden cores had been cultivated and their wielders felt them sing in harmony with another’s. All throughout history, people have studied the very nature of soul bonds: how they are formed, how they are nurtured, how they are broken.
When Wei Wuxian had first laid eyes on Lan Wangji two years ago, his golden core frail and flickering and close to death, he felt his own golden core spark to life. It had reached out immediately, tendrils of gold running through their linked hands and wrapping around the weakened core before it, cocooning it in his spiritual power. Protecting it. Nurturing it. Healing over the cracks and shadows, filling it with his energy, his soul.
When Lan Wangji had woken up, three days later, and their eyes had met for the first time, Wei Wuxian’s heart had joined it too.
This is it, he had thought to himself as the rest of the world fell away, this is what A-niang had always talked about.
However, that joy and hope had been dashed the moment Lan Wangji pulled his hand away, his eyes cold and distant. It had left Wei Wuxian floundering, reeling, uncertain. Had he got it wrong? No, that wasn’t possible. There can be no mistaking a soul bond, not one as strong and potent as theirs, even after only three days. Lan Wangji is his soulmate. But then why—
Soul bond rejection.
Lan Wangji had rejected their soul bond, the one Wei Wuxian had spent three days and nights cultivating without rest to bring him back from brink of death. He had taken one look at Wei Wuxian and said no, I do not want you. I do not want this.
A wiser man would have seen it for what is was—futile, hopeless, doomed to fail—and left. Their bond was only three days old and, while it would sting and the longing would remain for a lifetime, he would survive. Once it has grown too strong, too powerful, the rejection would likely kill him.
But Wei Wuxian had always believed in soulmates. His faith had been instilled in him from a young age, seeing his parents bonded in both heart and soul, even in death. Even after he had moved to Lotus Pier and learned, for the first time, that the heart and soul could want different things—had felt firsthand the repercussions of that dichotomy in harsh words and harsher punishments—he had had faith that his would be different. His soul bond would be built on love, and faith, and trust. And that, no matter what trials they would have to go through, he just needed to keep faith in his soulmate and all would be well.
So he had stayed. For a whole year, he stayed by Lan Wangji’s side, healing him, helping him, learning everything about him. He poured his heart and soul into their bond, watched the cracks smooth over and the shadows disappear from Lan Wangji’s golden core, until it was strong enough to generate power on its own. He had endured the cold silences, sharp words and closed doors for those twelve months, keeping faith that one day Lan Wangji would see his wholehearted devotion for what it was and see him.
That...had not happened.
Lan Wangji had only withdrawn further, grown colder even as he grew stronger and no longer needed Wei Wuxian by his side. He had rebuffed Wei Wuxian at every turn, refused his offers of friendship, rebuked his tales of soulmates as fanciful nonsense. He had made it clear that, on no uncertain terms, their bond had been formed without his consent, and that he did not want, nor have need, of it any longer.
And so, on the rooftop of the Jingshi on what was to be his final night at the Cloud Recesses, Wei Wuxian finally admitted defeat. He gathered up the fragments of his heart, the worn, weary threads of their bond, still pulsing beneath his body, and returned to Lotus Pier. But still, Lan Wangji’s words haunted him.
Their bond had been formed without his consent.
Lan Wangji had been unconscious, dying, completely unaware of the world around him. And Wei Wuxian had seen that, had taken advantage of that, to link their golden cores together and bind Lan Wangji to him. He thought he had been helping. That was what he had been tasked to do, when Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren had turned up at Lotus Pier that day to beg for his help. To know that Lan Wangji had felt it a violation—
For the first time in his life, Wei Wuxian had learned what it was to fear a soul bond.
In all his years of cultivation and studies, he had devoured every text about soul bonds he could get his hands upon. He knew of all the ways to form and strengthen a bond and the dangers of soul bond rejection. But these texts had also recorded the ways in which people have tried to break soul bonds after they have formed, to varying degrees of success. He’s read them, he knows the theory.
Their bond should not have formed. Lan Wangji did not want it.
So Wei Wuxian would set him free.
--
Lan Wangji listens to him as he speaks, his hands curling into white-knuckled fists in his lap, honey-gold eyes widening in horror and guilt. But Wei Wuxian manages a smile and takes his hand, placing it where his golden core lies beneath his skin.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji breathes, pained. “You—”
“I’m alright, Lan Zhan,” he says quietly. “Everything is fine.”
He lets Lan Wangji crowd close, lets him draw him into his arms. He feels the way his body shudders, the heat and the damp of his sobs against his skin, the way he clutches at him like a lifeline. His own eyes are hot and wet, but his chest feels lighter now, clearer.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Lan Wangji asks, pulling back to look into his eyes. His hands cup the back of Wei Wuxian’s head, his thumbs running along his cheekbones gently. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
Wei Wuxian returns the gesture, tracing the line of Lan Wangji’s jaw, the bridge of his nose, the curve of his cheekbones reverently, as if he had not committed them to memory long ago.
“Because I didn’t want to see you like this,” he tells him honestly. “And because everything is fine. I’m fine. You got here just in time.”
He had meant to offer comfort with his words, but it has the opposite effect as Lan Wangji’s breathing grows harsher, his eyes fierce.
“And what if I hadn’t?” he demands to know. “What if I had been too late? What then? Would you have gone through with severing the bond?”
The silence that follows is answer enough. When Lan Wangji next speaks, his voice is thin and brittle, teetering on the edge of breaking.
“You could have died, Wei Ying—” he inhales sharply, forces himself to breathe. “You could have died. Because of me. Because I was too proud and foolish to admit that I was wrong, about soulmates and soulbonds—about you.”
“But you did,” Wei Wuxian reminds him gently. “And because of that, we’re here now. Together. Bonded. You proved to me that my faith was not ill-placed. And that all my waiting was worthwhile.”
He leans forward and presses their lips together, pouring all of his love and devotion into the kiss as he sinks into Lan Wangji’s embrace. Their golden cores hum and sing, joining together where their bodies touch, chasing away the shadows and doubts and lingering chill of fear. He is loathe to part when the kiss breaks, and leans their foreheads together to look deep into Lan Wangji’s eyes.
“I love you, Lan Wangji,” he says. “I love you.”
“I love you, Wei Wuxian,” Lan Wangji says. “More than life, and beyond death.”
He waits with bated breath for the fear to creep in, for the doubt to return, but finds only warmth, and peace and love filling their bond, their golden cores and their hearts, until it is bursting at the seams. The missing part of his soul, of his heart, has finally come home.