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Lan Wangji comes home one day to find Chenqing on the table. It’s the first time he's ever seen Chenqing not with Wei Ying, either at his hip or in his hand, and Lan Wangji has always been a little curious, though he never once hinted at that fact. He’s always wanted to see the instrument up close. Now, though, it’s close enough at hand for him to examine. Wei Ying has always been free with his possessions, has always given Lan Wangji free access to any and all that he owns, so Lan Wangji knows he is not overstepping by handling his beloved’s dizi.
Lan Wangji picks it up. Chenqing is…strangely light in his hands. It feels dry and Lan Wangji can sense the resentful energy clinging to it like mud caked on a shoe. He tries to brush it away with his hand, running his fingers over the dips and grooves of design that run the length of the dizi, as if the movement would sluice away the tendrils of darkness and he would be left with the instrument as it was meant to be, a spiritual implement without the taint of darkness clinging to it. As he tries to free it of resentment, the lightness of Chenqing becomes even more apparent, as if the walls of its body were hollow.
His hand catches on a particularly deep groove and he ceases his movements. He brings Chenqing to eye level where he can see a scratch on the surface of it, cutting the black paint away to reveal that the body of the instrument isn't green or brown, like bamboo or wood. Instead, it's a stark white.
He wonders what it could possibly be made out of. It's too sturdy to be made from porcelain, though that would be the only thing he would think could be light enough to make up the dizi, the only thing that could make it that white.
Lan Wangji knows how to play the dizi. He knows how to play many different instruments, having learned in his youth, though he prefers the guqin to the rest. So he raises it to his lips and plays one note, then two. He plays a small refrain and though he hasn't put any energy into it, any power, he can feel the resentful energy curling through the notes like smoke.
He drops the dizi, hearing the light clatter of it against the wooden floor. That wasn't—that wasn't normal. Playing music without pushing energy through it should be just that, even with a spiritual instrument. Yet, somehow, Chenqing can call it forth without aid. The wrongness of it grates against him. He will have to talk to Wei Ying, ask him about it. Was it Chenqing that had enticed Wei Ying to manipulate resentful energy? It hadn’t been something that Lan Wangji had thought possible before but after playing it Lan Wangji can’t stop considering the idea, his thoughts circling it like vultures around a corpse.
He places Chenqing back on the table where it had rested before, the bright black paint glistening innocently in the dimming evening light.
“Welcome home, Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says as his husband enters the Jingshi.
“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying says with a small smile, eyes bright. He toes off his shoes and then makes his way over to where Lan Wangji is standing and gives him an absentminded kiss on the cheek.
“How was your day?” Lan Wangji asks softly.
“It was good!” Wei Ying says, grinning, glancing up as he recalls the events of the day. “I ran into Sizhui on my way back from the library and we decided to go visit the rabbits.”
“Mn,” Lan Wangji replies. A beat of silence passes between them before Lan Wangji speaks. “Wei Ying?”
“Yes, Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying responds, eyes once again meeting Lan Wangji’s.
“Why does Chenqing call forth resentful energy on its own?”
Wei Ying's eyes go wide and his eyelashes flutter as if he’s trying to blink dust out of his eyes. His smile drops from his face completely. “Wh-what do you mean Lan Zhan?” he asks, a light tremor in his voice.
“I tried to play it and it…suffused my notes with resentful energy,” Lan Wangji explains.
“Are you sure you didn’t play anything that would have caused that?” Wei Ying asks and the edges of his lips lift up in a smile that does nothing to disguise the fear dancing over his eyes. His voice sounds bright but it’s not the true lightness that had just moments ago been present in his voice. Instead, it’s forceful and pointed, brittle and false.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says and he can see Wei Ying's eyes widen slightly, making him look cornered and trapped, in spite of the smile that’s still plastered to his face. Lan Wangji didn't mean to cause it. He never wants Wei Ying to look like that again, for him to be the cause of it, but Lan Wangji needs answers, and so he doesn’t back down.
If Chenqing was the cause of Wei Ying's descent into the heretical path, Lan Wangji will…well he won't be able to do anything now but at least he'll be able to stop Wei Ying from going down it again, from suffering again. “I was not playing anything that would call up resentful energy.”
“Y-yeah,” Wei Ying says, his smile slipping slightly once, twice, before he finally lets it drop from his face. It only magnifies the fear already present in his expression. “You wouldn't do anything like that would you Lan Zhan? I uh…well. It's a—It's not a pretty story?” Wei Ying sniffles as if he’s about to cry and curls in on himself and Lan Wangji wants so badly to go to him, to comfort him, so he does. He strides over to where Wei Ying is standing and envelopes him in a comforting embrace. Wei Ying collapses into it like a puppet with his strings cut, and for a minute, Lan Wangji just holds him.
“Wei Ying. Whatever it is you can tell me,” Lan Wangji assures him as he releases Wei Ying from his embrace. “I will not think any less of you for it.”
“You won't be saying that after I tell you,” Wei Ying says quietly and Lan Wangji stills, a furrow in his brow as he shakes his head. Nothing could make him think less of Wei Ying. Wei Ying continues, “If you—if you hate me after this please—please don't—” he covers his mouth with his hand and takes a shaky breath before looking back at Lan Wangji. “You know…I would understand. It would…I would understand, if you left, after learning this. It’s—”
“I could never hate Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji interrupts. He is unable to listen to Wei Ying spiraling in this way. He is unable to listen to Wei Ying try to convince him that he would be fine if Lan Wangji left him. “I do not—I will not leave you over this, whatever it is.” Lan Wangji does not know what could possibly have Wei Ying so convinced that Lan Wangji will leave him, after all this time.
Wei Ying nods, wiping away at the tears that had collected at the corners of his eyes. “So I—when I got Chenqing…in the Burial Mounds?” he begins, voice turning up at the end as if it were a question rather than the statement that it is, and then pauses.
Lan Wangji nods encouragingly, his hand tracing circles on the space of the back of his husband’s neck in an attempt to comfort him.
“When I got Chenqing,” Wei Ying says again, “I was in the Burial Mounds. And there are a lot of uh bodies? Were a lot of bodies. There, I mean. In the burial mounds. Where I was alone for—um…A few months. And even if I’d had Suibian I wouldn’t have been able to use it. I couldn’t—I didn't have any weapon and there were…Things. Monsters. I needed to protect myself, Lan Zhan, you understand that?” he asks beseechingly and Lan Wangji nods. He understands having to protect oneself through any means necessary, even if he wouldn't have reached for the means that Wei Ying used himself.
“I had to protect myself and I didn’t have any weapons. I didn't have any…anything, Lan Zhan. But there were—there were bodies. You—you have to understand,” Wei Ying says, his words spilling from his lips like sand from an hourglass, “some of them were no more than skeletons. No meat on their bones. No—no person left, nothing to indicate they were ever a person. They—they weren't using their bones, Lan Zhan. They didn't need them. I needed…I needed something. Something to protect me. And I had read, when I was in Yunmeng, about a kind of spiritual weapon. one made out of the bones of an animal, that would help you to harness extra energy, the extra lifeforce of the animal it had come from, and would let you channel it.”
Lan Wangji can feel an understanding dawning on him. He isn't sure where Wei Ying is going, exactly, but he begins to be filled with a growing sense of dread as Wei Ying continues his story. Some of this must show on his face because as Wei Ying takes a breath his face goes pale. He takes a step back, away from Lan Wangji, separating himself. “I thought…I thought, since I didn't have any spiritual energy, I would need something more. And, and Lan Zhan, they weren't using them,” Wei Ying says, pleading desperately, and then breaks and takes a deep, shuddering breath. Lan Wangji opens his mouth to give reassurance, to tell him that whatever it was Wei Ying did, he understands, but Wei Ying continues before he can. “Lan Zhan I—I needed to. Please understand that I had to do it. If I didn't have to have, if I hadn't needed to I wouldn't have done it,” he says nonsensically.
It pains him so to see his partner like this. “I’m sure Wei Ying did what he had to do,” Lan Wangji soothes, his tone gentle as if Wei Ying were a spooked animal.
“Y-yeah,” Wei Ying says. “I did. And I'm—I’m so sorry Lan Zhan. I—if it had been avoidable I wouldn't have done it.” This time Lan Wangji just waits for Wei Ying to finish.
“So I had read about the—the bones of animals being used to channel energy and I thought: animals aren't the only ones with spiritual energy. People—humans—have much more of it. Cultivators especially. They have a lot of…residual energy, especially after they're gone. And there are—in the Burial Mounds—there are cultivator corpses. And they’re just lying there. So I took them—some of their bones—and I tried to fashion a sort of…a sort of instrument. It took a few tries—to get it right—but I was able to make,” and here he gestures to Chenqing, “I was able to make this. And that’s—that's why Chenqing is like what it is. Why it does what it does.”
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says and takes a step forward. There's sorrow in his voice and Wei Ying tries to take a step back and bumps into the wall, so he freezes in place. Lan Wangji stops. He doesn't want to make Wei Ying more nervous, more afraid. There’s nothing he wants less, in fact. “You did what you had to do. No more, no less. I could never hate you for that.”
“You—you don’t?” Wei Ying asks and Lan Wangji shakes his head.
“You do what you have to do. It is admirable,” Lan Wangji says. “May I…give you a hug?” Lan Wangji asks and Wei Ying nods, his tears starting up afresh.
Lan Wangji embraces Wei Ying once more, who puts his face into the crook of Lan Wangji's neck and sobs. Lan Wangji strokes Wei Ying's back gently, soothing him. When Wei Ying calms down a bit, Lan Wangji moves back from him a bit so he can look him in the eyes. “Wei Ying. My love is not…conditional. I love you. I will continue to love you, even if you tell me about the terrible things that you have done, have had to do.”
“But that’s—everyone has a point at which they stop loving me, stop caring about me,” Wei Ying says quietly and with certainty. “Even if this isn't it, I just…I hope I don't find yours,” he says, voice breaking.
Lan Wangji shakes his head, though. “I am not like your family. I do not love you with…expectations. With conditions. My love is not…it is not a thing that stretches only so far and no further. My love for you is like…it is like air. It is there. It will always be there. I would not be…me, without it. I breathe in and I love you and I breathe out and I love you and I do not think about it and I love you. Wei Ying, I love you, not regardless of what you have done but for what you have done, for the person it has made you.”
Wei Ying begins crying again. He had stopped, the tears had abated, but now they're back and he's crying even harder this time. “Lan Zhan,” he whines, “You can't just say things like that!”
“I can,” Lan Wangji says simply, “and I spoke the truth.” With that Wei Ying goes limp and Lan Wangji reflexively tightens his arms around him, holding him up. Lan Wangji shifts his arms and lifts Wei Ying up, bringing him over to the bed. Wei Ying makes a strangled noise when he does this but Lan Wangji just arranges them comfortably so that Wei Ying’s head is in his lap. He undoes Wei Ying’s hair ribbon and begins slowly and methodically working his fingers through his hair.
After a minute Wei Ying’s sobs once again subside and he lifts his head off of Lan Wangji’s lap slightly. Lan Wangji pauses his motions, looking down at Wei Ying. “Lan Zhan I…” he says, his voice raw.
“Mn?” Lan Wangji tilts his head slightly.
“I don’t know if I can believe all of that,” he admits, “but I’d like to try, if you’ll let me.”
“Always,” Lan Wangji swears. “And I will remind you every day. I love you, Wei Ying.”
“I love you too, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, wrapping his arms around Lan Wangji and burrowing his face into his chest once again. Lan Wangji rubs Wei Ying’s back. They will have time. And someday, he is certain, Wei Ying will believe him.