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“You light it like this. Wait—here. You try it.”
“Isn’t this dangerous?”
Wei Wuxian shakes his head, smiling like serenity incarnate, torch in one hand and flare in the other. “No. It’s an old technique. It can even be used to stun a ferocious corpse.”
Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi nod where they’re crouched together with him in the grass. The hut is a mile outside of Gusu. When Wei Wuxian tried to drag them out there, Jin Ling was torn between an absolute and bone-deep assurance that it would be a waste of time, and his own fatal curiosity. “Uncle says the signal flares are for emergencies only.”
Wei Wuxian sighs. “Who knows more about ferocious corpses? Me or that old man?”
You’re an old man too, he wants to say, but doesn’t, for dignity’s sake.
“As cultivators, you need to use every tool at your disposal. Improvisation is the secret of genius.” Wei Wuxian looks over his shoulder. “Right, Wen Ning?”
Wen Ning’s corpse eyes betray nothing, but after months of cultivating together, Jin Ling likes to think he can read them well. He likes to think Wen Ning has a modicum of sense. He doesn’t move for a solid ten heartbeats and gives a noncommittal, “Mmm.”
Jin Ling glances between them and then between the two Lan disciples. They have stars in their eyes, as if they weren’t all dragged out of bed past midnight to go light off fireworks at abandoned buildings with a former dead man. An old former dead man. A man who died once, doing something stupid, and is asking them now to do something stupid, too.
“I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Jin Ling mutters, and wishes Fairy wasn’t banished back to the Cloud Recesses. Dogs are scared of fireworks, Wei Wuxian said. When Jin Ling explained that Fairy was scared of nothing and that he was projecting on the dog, Wei Wuxian ignored him—much as he is now. He’s bent over the firework now, doing something to it that involves a knife and an excess of concentration.
“What are you doing?” Jin Ling asks against his better judgment.
“Shortening the fuse,” Wei Wuxian says after a moment, implying both that there is a fuse long enough to be shortened and that this is a thing anyone would want to do.
“I don’t think that’s—”
“Jin Ling. Please. He’s an expert.”
Both Jin Ling and Wei Wuxian turn to Lan Jingyi in mild disbelief, but Wei Wuxian coughs and waves his hand. “Don’t flatter me. One day you’ll all be experts. And when you are, you can thank me for teaching you such invaluable techniques.” He lifts the flare to his eyes and inspects it before sitting back on his heels with a satisfied sound. “It’s ready. Lan Sizhui?” He holds the instrument of discord out as if it’s a sword he’s bequeathing.
Lan Sizhui takes it with as much reverence. Jin Ling has to resist rolling his eyes as he watches Wei Wuxian walk around and set his hands on Lan Sizhui’s shoulders and gesture out to the night ahead of them.
“Imagine… There you are. Alone, weaponless, in front of an army of corpses. They're closing in fast and you have nothing, but what's this? A signal flare—”
“What about the corpse powder?” Lan Sizhui interrupts.
A pause settles over the clearing and then Wei Wuxian gives a small and unwarranted ah-ha. “Well said, well said. If you get close, you’ll be poisoned. Even humble corpses can be dangerous in large numbers. That is precisely why this is such an important skill to learn.”
Jin Ling rolls his eyes. “I still think this is a stupid idea.”
“Jin Ling, you should treat Senior Wei with more respect.”
Wei Wuxian doesn't respond to that, but he does pat Lan Sizhui on the head, who smiles up at him. The pair lean on over the flare and Wei Wuxian shows him how to position and aim it, and then Wei Wuxian lowers the torch to the half-inch fuse. Jin Ling closes his eyes in anticipation of pain a beat of three seconds passes and then a roar like a dragon waking from slumber echoes through the clearing. Sparks light against his closed eyelids as the chatter of powder burning itself out wars with the ringing in his ears.
When it dies down, he blinks his eyes clear. The clearing is dark—almost peaceful.
The shack is gone. In its place sits a pile of sticks and boards lying in haphazard accord, like a forgotten bunch of toys left by some careless child.
“It didn’t do anything,” Lan Jingyi says after a moment. Jin Ling motions to the wreckage as if to say, That isn’t something? but then the ruin bursts into flames, and that is something.
It seems a summer of pleasant weather has dried it to a crisp—the wood goes up like it's been doused in oil. Violet flames spire up into the sky at a height that won't be missed in Gusu or the Cloud Recesses.
Jin Ling has time only to think, I should never have let him use my flare, before he realizes that Wei Wuxian is gone.
The other disciples don’t notice. Lan Sizhui runs to the fire and starts stamping at the edges of it. “Help me put it out,” he yells, but for every spark he kills, the fire spreads another foot and soon he'll be overtaken.
It takes Jin Ling and Wen Ning's efforts combined to drag him away, and then the four of them stand and watch as embers from the fire begin sparking the nearby brush and carry off into the trees. “We should go,” Wen Ning murmurs in monotone.
“Run,” Jin Ling says, and then demonstrates what he means by starting toward the edge of the clearing, at speed.
The two Gusu Lan disciples don’t follow. They seem frozen to the ground. Lan Sizhui’s white robes and pale face are stained with soot. “He left us,” he says, sounding lost.
Jin Ling walks back and grabs him by the sleeve. “Yes, he left us. Let’s go.”
Lan Sizhui doesn’t move. “The rules of the Gusu Lan forbid running from the scene of a crime—”
“No they don’t.” They might. Five thousand is a lot of rules. The Yunmeng Jiang has fewer and they're not written anywhere outside of Jiang Cheng's mind, but Zidian is a good teacher. Among them, there is an entire section dedicated to the Yiling Patriarch. If this act isn't forbidden, it's only because he hasn't thought to forbid it yet. It's only because no one will live to do it twice.
Lan Sizhui still doesn’t move. Jin Ling grabs one Gusu Lan in each hand and pulls at double time. He could leave them and it might be the smarter move—bait, a distraction—but they would never lie for him and if Jiang Cheng finds out why a Yunmeng Jiang flare was used to deface a building, he might really break Jin Ling’s legs.
It’s an arduous journey. In the end, he only makes it a total of five steps beyond the clearing before the sound of footsteps comes from behind them.
Wei Wuxian bursts through the foliage, panting. “What are you still doing here? I think—” He doubles over, panting, and points in the direction opposite of any form of civilization. “—I think you better just run for it. I can hold them off if you go now.” He waves at them and coughs and then mutters, “I’m out of shape.”
Lan Jingyi grabs for Lan Sizhui’s sleeve, eyes wide as the moon overhead, but Jin Ling steps between the pair and Wei Wuxian. “This is your fault. Why do we have to run?”
“Oh, Jin Ling.” Wei Wuxian bows his head. “I’m sorry. Jiang Cheng—” A cold wind blows through the clearing as Wei Wuxian bows his head and gasps for breath. “He’s here. I just saw him arrive and then I ran back here as fast as I could. I’m sorry.” Wei Wuxian swallows and shakes his head again. “I think I can hold them off for a little while. Please, go. I’ll take responsibility.”
Jiang Cheng is a compassionate, reasonable man. Jin Ling trusts him and loves him—and Jin Ling is going to do whatever he needs to to get as far away from this as possible.
Lan Sizhui breaks from his stupor for a moment and argues, “No—Senior Wei. You can’t. This is my fault—”
“No!” Jin Ling and Wei Wuxian say at the same time. Wei Wuxian reaches out a hand and sets it on Lan Sizhui’s shoulder with gravitas. “I am proud of you. But let me take care of this.”
“But—”
Jin Ling slaps a hand over Lan Sizhui’s mouth and he may be taller, but Jin Ling is faster and stronger and not taking responsibility for anything. Not tonight. “Thank you for your sacrifice. We will honor you,” he says and with that he starts dragging Lan Sizhui toward the trees again. “Come on!” he yells behind him when he says Lan Jingyi is still frozen in place, staring at the fire.
“Do you think we can ever go back?” Lan Jingyi asks.
Jin Ling pokes at the meagre fire with a stick. Not a fire, not really. Nothing more than a wisp of smoke and enough light to see each other’s faces by. “No.”
Not for a week or two. Maybe a month. Maybe until winter. They can do small nighthunts under assumed names, like rogue cultivators—at least until Jiang Cheng has had time to calm down.
Jiang Cheng is a compassionate man, but in his mind, Jin Ling has been playing out scenarios. Yes, Uncle, we burnt down that building because the Yiling Patriarch told me to. The worst he’s done is a slap or two with Zidian. Not this time. Fairy will come find him and he can live on the road, make enough money to buy food doing whatever it is people do.
He shudders despite himself and hopes Jiang Cheng will be satisfied taking his anger out on Wei Wuxian. The man has Hanguang-Jun and, by extension, all of the Lan sect protecting him. It's not as though he's in any real danger.
“But I'm hungry,” Lan Jingyi moans.
The fire isn't doing anything to beat back the dark and it's doing less to keep them warm. The Lan robes are a year-round affair that makes them look over-dressed in summer and foolhardy in winter, but for this autumn night, they look divine. Jin Ling is jealous. Both disciples are nestled into their outer robes, using them more as a blankets, and then pressed side by side for good measure.
“We're all hungry,” Jin Ling reminds him, and wishes for the hundredth time that night that he had a dog to huddle with.
Lan Sizhui blinks at him. “Are your teeth chattering?”
“No,” Jin Ling tries to growl, but instead a shiver steals all the heat from the word and Lan Sizhui's eyes soften horribly.
He holds one arm to the side. The invitation is clear and he does look warm, but Jin Ling can't accept. If he can't survive one night on his own, he's not much of a cultivator, and he needs to be the best. He needs to be a legend. He wills away his shivers and loosens the death grip he's been keeping on his own clothes to trap heat. It's not freezing. He won't die.
Somehow, the motion only makes Lan Sizhui's eyes go softer.
“We'll hunt in the morning,” he says, trying to divert the attention away. “Everything will be fine.”
Jin Ling wakes to the sound of birds and the phantom touch of dew on his face—and something else he can't identify for a moment. It takes a breath to remember who he's on the ground, outside, and another for the mistakes of the night before to come crashing down once more.
But none of it explains why he can feel an arm over his waist. He tries to stand, but his hair is trapped under something heavy. “Get off,” he mumbles, and then realizes the arm is from the body in front of him. He's in a pile of Lan disciple, sandwiched between them. “Get off,” he growls and tries to make it more threatening.
The only response is a snort in his ear. That's why he's warm. There's a whole disciple stuck to his back.
“Everyone get up right now!” he yells.
It works. Both of them shoot up—or try. The one against his back—Lan Sizhui—sputters and says something garbled that might be, “You're on my hair.”
“No, you’re on my hair.” Jin Ling decides the pain is worth it and half-rolls, half-stands his way to freedom, ignoring the jerk on his hair and Lan Sizhui's affronted cry when he accidentally pulls his hair in return.
It can't be past the first morning bell. At the Lotus Pier, Jiang Cheng insists on a strict morning schedule that makes noon feel more like evening, but usually it doesn't include a night spent sleeping on the dirt, in the cold, without even a dog to keep him warm.
Lan Sizhui is just slightly larger than fairy, but not nearly as soft. They all sit there a moment, Jin Ling's hand to his forehead, Sizhui staring at nothing but the ground.
“Do you think he's dead?” Jin Ling muses and waves a hand at where Lan Jingyi is still lying in a pathetic heap.
“No,” Lan Sizhui says, nudging at the body with a toe. “He always sleeps like this. Jingyi. Hey, Jingyi.” He taps the body again with his foot—less a tap and more a kick.
Jin Ling watches, expressionless, feeling as though even his soul has fled its mortal housing in protest of the horrid morning. His stomach growls like a beast. Hunger, until this point in his life, has been a kind of distant concept. He could get hungry, be hungry, have a sort of desire for food, but it was never this—never desperate. They might actually starve. They might actually die out here.
They'll forage for—for berries, or whatever it is people eat in the wild. Honey. Honey from bees. Surely there will be bees somewhere.
And if there aren't, well. There are always rabbits.
“We're not killing rabbits.”
Jin Ling would like to rip Lan Sizhui's perfect hair off of his perfect head. ”Why?”
They have exactly one weapon between them, and that’s Jin Ling’s bow. There is exactly one animal in this forest that can be killed and eaten with said bow.
Lan Sizhui shifts from foot to foot. “Well. Hanguang-Jun keeps them at the Cloud Recesses. What if we accidentally kill one of them?”
“Then we'll eat it.”
Jin Ling is so desperately hungry that even Lan Jingyi is starting to look appetizing. They collected berries to start with, making baskets out of their sleeves and robes, staining everything horribly. It wasn’t until after they wasted the morning and sat down to eat that it occurred to them they had no idea if they were edible or not. If anyone should know, it would be the two disciples from the mountain, but apparently not. Jin Ling suggested letting someone try one berry, just to check, because one couldn’t do enough damage to really hurt someone. He even nominated Lan Jingyi for the pleasure, but after great deliberation and protests from both Lan disciples, they sided with caution. After that, someone proposed bamboo shoots, but they found none of those either. No bamboo at all, actually. Jin Ling made the reasonable suggestion that they follow a bee back to its nest, but apparently nest was the incorrect word. Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi laughed at him for a full half hour.
There were no bees, anyway.
Lan Sizhui shakes his head. “How do you usually get food?”
The belief is that Jin Ling has spent more time hunting solo, which he has, but— “I pay for it. How do you get food?”
“...Pay for it.” Lan Jingyi agrees. “Or—”
“Wen Ning.”
Two images rush into Jin Ling’s mind and battle for dominance: one of Wen Ning, chef extraordinaire, slaving in a kitchen, presenting the Lan disciples with platters of steamed delights, and the other of Wen Ning chasing down some creature of the forest and tearing it limb from limb with his bare hands and carrying back the remains like a dog to its masters.
The three of them stare at the ground for a moment, and then at their stained robes, and then off into the forest, as if Wen Ning might appear just so. The silence is broken by the gurgle of someone’s stomach.
“Chicken,” Lan Jingyi says bleakley. “I miss chicken.”
It’s been a day, but Jin Ling misses it, too. And lotus pods. Melons. Jin Ling pokes at the ground with a stick and sighs.
“We could fish.”
They turn to stare at Lan Sizhui. “Fish. With what? Where?”
“There’s a river to the—” he frowns and glances around, squinting at the sun and then raising his hands to the light, moving them oddly, “—south?”
He repositions himself, looks at the sun again, looks at his hands again.
“What are you doing?” Jin Ling asks in growing alarm. It’s been a day without food, but that’s too early for madness to set in.
“I’m trying to tell what direction it is from here.”
It seems being woken from sleep in the early hours of the morning, conned into breaking sect rules by leaving the grounds after curfew, and convinced into committing a criminal act is too much even for Lan Sizhui’s unflappable composure. They watch him repeat the process for several minutes before Jin Ling decides he can’t let himself lose respect for a treasured friend in this way. “If it’s a river, isn’t it down hill?”
It checks out. After an hour of picking their way through brush and over mossy rocks, the low rumble of water starts to echo through the trees.
They come out at the base of a waterfall. A great pool of blue-black water stands at the center, surrounded by rocks, a slow meandering stream winding off from it through the trees. It’s lucky they didn’t come out at top, Jin Ling thinks. As far as rivers go, this looks promising. They drink, wash their faces, and then get down to discussing the finer points of fishing.
“I’ve never fished before,” Jin Ling offers first. The other children at the Lotus Pier surely did, but Jin Ling was never part of that group, and Jiang Cheng regarded such activities as frivolous at best. He certainly didn’t have anyone that was going to show him how—friend, brother, or uncle. “Don’t we need sticks? And string? Bait?”
“What about a net?” Lan Jingyi asks.
Both Lan Sizhui and Jin Ling turn to stare at him. Jin Ling puts his hands to the side as if to say, Do you see a net? and Lan Jingyi lowers his head.
“We could stack rocks,” Lan Sizhui offers. “I heard that's what they do in the South.” He demonstrates by squatting on the bank and stacking pebbles in the shallows, showing how the water gets caught up in the basin and how unwitting fish can be caught there. It seems plausible.
Jin Ling bends down beside him to watch. “But won’t we have to catch them with our bare hands then?”
Lan Jinyi tuts at him. “So even the carp is scared of the trout, eh,” he mutters, faux-wise, hand cupping his chin. It’s not a bad imitation of Lan Qiren, but this isn’t really the time.
Lan Sizhui glances at him and points off into the woods. “Jingyi, go find some poles.”
Jin Ling interjects, “And string.”
“And string,” Lan Sizhui adds.
“And bait.”
Lan Jingyi frowns. He looks between Jin Ling and Lan Sizhui as if they’ve been concocting a conspiracy. “Why do I—”
“Jingyi, please.”
Lan Jingyi’s mouth snaps shut and then he turns on his heel and stomps off into the woods, in no particular direction—not the direction Jin Ling would have chosen, anyway. Lan Sizhui stares after him, frown vague and disapproving and a fair imitation of the look Hanguang-Jun has perfected over years. It makes the younger of the Twin Jades look like a storm that’s about to crash, but on Lan Sizhui’s face it’s a little too pinched, a little too serious, and almost comical as a result. Jin Ling feels a smile tug at the corner of his mouth, tries to force it down, fails, and ends up with his face half a grown and half a grin—a face his uncle would have warned him against as if were a catching plague.
Fishing is easy in theory and in theory it involved less arguing and more trying to, well, fish. They make it only five minutes after Lan Jingyi leaves before Lan Sizhui starts talking about all the wisdom Wei Wuxian has to offer on the art of catching prey. Every word gives Jin Ling a separate twitch until he feels as if he’s convulsing.
“And Senior Wei also says—”
Senior Wei says that the hunter must be deliberate. Senior Wei says that one must never tell tales of fish. Senior Wei says that fishing is the art of pursuit of that which cannot be known. The last one gets him. Jin Ling slaps water at Lan Sizhui and feels a victorious thrill when it nearly soaks him. “Senior Wei says,” he mocks. “That old man is why we’re here.”
Lan Sizhui looks at him, wet hair flopping under his forehead ribbon, dripping water. “You—you have no respect for him! This isn’t his fault.”
On one hand he can count the number of times he has seen anyone from the Gusu Lan get angry, and Lan Sizhui only once before. A thrill races up Jin Ling’s spine. “You’re right. It isn’t his fault—it’s your fault. You did it. You burnt down a temple, and now we’re all cursed—”
A wave of water comes flying at his face without warning and crashes over him like a coming tide. It soaks what little part of him wasn’t already wet to the bone. Jin Ling has a moment to consider, to judge the distance between them, and then returns fire and then. For good measure, he reaches inside himself and pours spiritual energy into his next strike. This time, he makes it less a wave and more a single shot and aims right for Lan Sizhui's stupid, perfect face.
It hits dead on.
Lan Sizhui flies back several feet and goes down with a wondrous splash. When the air clears, he’s gone—sunk like a stone in the water. Victory sings through Jin Ling as he stares at the rising bubbles where he went down and waits for him to surface for another hit.
And waits. And waits.
It occurs to him only after he’s been standing, waiting, for thirty seconds that maybe Lan Sizhui’s aversion to boats extends to a more general aversion to water.
“Sizhui?” He asks the water, as if maybe he can be summoned back, but nothing surfaces save a few bubbles. Fuck, Jin Ling thinks elegantly, and jumps in after him.
It's deeper on that side, but the water is calm. Jin Ling blinks in the murk and feels for anything—a sleeve, hair, the forehead ribbon. Finally he sees a flash I'm the water, a flicker of white snaking upwards. He grabs the end and follows it down until he can grab an arm, and then he grips tight and hauls for the surface, kicking as hard as he can. It's only a few feet, but Lan Sizhui isn't only taller—he's heavier. The Lan disciples are all this way.
Jin Ling remembers the effortless way Lan Wangji lifted Wei Wuxian after the sword incident and carried him off. Maybe it's a secret. Maybe it's a forbidden Gusu Lan technique. Maybe if he saves Lan Sizhui, he can ask for some training tips as repayment—but even once they're out of the water, Lan Sizhui doesn't move.
He's not breathing. His face looks too pale and his black hair is stuck across his face without the headband to hold it back.
Jin Ling pounds on his chest and then leans over him to check for a heartbeat. Still going, still strong, but still his chest isn't moving. One summer at the Lotus Pier, a village boy knocked his head on the dock as he was jumping in. When they brought him up, one of the others breathed air into him until he could breathe again.
It might work. It might save his life. It's Jin Ling’s sworn duty to at least try. Just so, he bends to the still form of Lan Sizhui and bends and hovers right above his mouth.
The closer he gets, the harder it is to move.
Just as his mouth brushes Lan Sizhui's, an image of Hanguang-Jun crashes into his mind like the slamming of a gate. Their first conflict at Dafan Mountain—that glare, that imposing figure, all dressed in white and ready to silence Jin Ling for daring to look wrong at Lan Sizhui. If he does this, he really will be killed.
...But he's already dead. Hanguang-Jun and Wei Wuxian will have to get in line behind Jiang Cheng. It's unlikely enough of him will be left to make it worth the effort.
A kind of serenity settles over him as he takes Lan Sizhui's face in his hands and bends, with reverence.
In one moment Lan Sizhui’s face is still as death and then, without any courtesy or warning, it bursts to life. He gasps like a fish, spitting and coughing water everywhere—but mostly on Jin Ling. Spit and water and god knows what else, all over his robes. For a moment, it's on the tip of Jin Ling’s tongue to make a fit about it, but he’s already wet. After some point, it doesn't really matter.
He leans back so that when Lan Sizhui sits up, they won’t knock heads. They’re still close.
They’re close, and Lan Sizhui is missing his hair ribbon.
“Your—your ribbon.” In slow motion, Jin Ling glances down at his own hand and realizes the reason the hair ribbon is absent is because it’s still in his hand. He’s pulled it off. This is his fault. One more to tally up. “I think…” Jin Ling can’t look at him now, but he’s still so close that he’s forced to settle his gaze on Lan Sizhui’s damp lap instead of anywhere better. “I think I pulled it off. I’m sorry.”
“No.” Jin Ling glances up at him but aborts it when he realizes eye contact is no longer an option. His face must be redder than an apple. Still, he manages a glance. Lan Sizhui doesn’t look like himself without the ribbon. He looks… Jin Ling swallows, heart in his throat. “It’s fine. Thank you for saving me.”
This is a punishment from the gods. For what, he isn't sure yet. For trusting Wei Wuxian, or maybe for ever coming to the Cloud Recesses at all. I want to learn, he’d said, and thought of white-robed disciples and the warmth in his chest the image inspired. Friends. People he wanted to be around. Untenable, now, in the full light of this cursed day. “I grew up at the Lotus Pier,” he manages, trying for scoff and landing somewhere around a gulp and a stutter. “Swimming… something like this isn’t difficult.” He realizes he’s still—still—holding the hair ribbon and sticks his hand out, insistent. It would be less embarrassing if Lan Sizhui had lost his undergarments and Jin Ling had fetched them instead.
Lan Sizhui reaches out. “Thank you,” he says, but he doesn’t take the ribbon so much as clasp Jin Ling’s hand, the band of cloth the only thing separating them. “I’m sorry I gave you a hard time”
Against every ounce of will he can muster, Jin Ling feels a renewed blush creeping up his chest. It’s just the cold, he tells himself. “It doesn’t matter—” he starts to say, but Lan Sizhui is close now, and his eyes are clear, and his grip is strong. He’s very close and the color of his eyes is fascinating—
“What.”
Lan Jingyi’s voice is the worst sound Jin Ling has ever heard, in his life. He and Lan Sizhui jerk apart, but now both of them have one end of the forehead ribbon in their grasp and they’re almost in each other’s laps anyway. Lan Jingyi is staring down at them with a look both pitying and accusing. In his arms are several sticks; in his dirt coated hands what might be a worm or two, and a vine. He makes a sound like he’s trying to spit out something distasteful and then, without another word, drops all his treasures in a pile and turns to walk back into the woods.
The fishing goes no better once they’ve tied the vine to the stick and tied the worm to the vine. Eventually Lan Jingyi decides pouting in the woods is less fun than watching his compatriots fish poorly and he slinks back. They don’t bother with a fire that night; Jin Ling and Lan Sizhui are still soaked to the bone when they decide the only respite from their waking hell is sleep. Jin Ling ends up sandwiched between them.
“Why am I in the middle?”
“You’re the warmest.”
“But—”
“Shhh. Go to sleep.”
Lan Sizhui’s arms settle around him more fully, as if Jin Ling is a stuffed toy for a child and not the lean fighting machine he absolutely is. After a moment, Lan Jingyi shifts. “I hate this,” he says to no one. “Maybe… maybe we should go back.”
Lan Sizhui leans up. “But what about your uncle?”
“Maybe he won’t break my legs.” There’s a chance. It’s as miniscule as chance is capable of being, but it’s there. “I miss fairy. I miss a bed—no offense.”
“None taken,” Lan Sizhui says serenely. There are several roots under them, and more rocks. Some pinecones.
“I miss chicken,” Lan Jingyi adds.
“We know,” says Lan Sizhui. Somewhere, an owl sounds off.
“And I’m sad.”
“We know, Jingyi”
Jin Ling wishes he were anywhere else. “Is everyone in agreement then? We go back?” He tries to rise, but— “Please get off my hair.”
Once they’re sorted and up, they begin the trek back to the Cloud Recesses. It’s difficult in the dark, but up hill seems like their best bet. They follow each other in the dark, Lan Sizhui leading and Jin Ling behind him with one hand wrapped in his robe to keep them from getting separated, Lan Jingyi behind doing the same.
“Do you think they’ll lock us up?” Lan Jingyi asks.
“The Cloud Recesses have a prison?” Jin Ling can’t imagine it.
Lan Sizhui pauses where he’s picking his way around a massive boulder. “No. And probably not. We might just… get disciplined.” He swallows.
“Well, you did burn down a temple.” Lan Jingyi snorts and glances and Jin Ling. “Both of you did.”
Lan Sizhui kicks at him, misses, and hits Jin Ling instead. “You helped,” he mutters.
“No, I didn’t! I didn’t touch anything. I just got dragged along on your da—”
Lan Sizhui kicks at him again and this time it must connect because there’s a wounded cry by Jin Ling’s ear. It’s followed by a whisper as Lan Sizhui drops back beside him and says, “You’ve been quiet. Are you worried? I’m sure he won’t be that mad—”
“No. He’s really going to break my legs this time. I don’t care.”
Lan Sizhui takes his hand. He runs his thumb over the back in wordless comfort. He says nothing, but when they start walking again, this is how they go, hand in hand up the side of the mountain. Watery light is starting to leak through the canopy when they finally, finally, hit what might be a path. It is. And it leads right to the main road.
Stomachs growling, clothes covered in mud, leaves, berry stains, and a few things no one wants to name or think about, they make their triumphant entrance to the Cloud Recesses. It’s lucky only a few people are about to stare at them. A clerk does a double take and drops his scrolls as they walk up to the main building, where someone important will be. Jin Ling’s advice was to head to the Jingshi and beg clemency from Hanguang-Jun and Wei Wuxian, who at least would be more merciful than any alternative, but the honor of the Gusu Lan dictated they head directly to Lan Qiren to confess their sins and Jin Ling was too tired to argue.
It seems they needn’t have bothered. Lan Xichen, Lan Wangji, and Wei Wuxian are seated together at the low table in the center of the room.
“Oh. You’re back.” Lan Xichen puts down the scroll he’s poring over. “How was your trip?”
The three stare at him. A bit of stick falls from Lan Sizhui’s hair. He bends to pick it up. “The trip was—fine?”
“Good. Inter-sect cooperation is healthy.”
“...Cooperation,” Jin Ling echos.
Wei Wuxian is mostly hidden behind Lan Wangji, but Jin Ling glimpses his hair falling over his shoulder as he bends over a pile of papers, his shoulders visibly shaking.
Lan Xichen tips his head to one side, smiling at them. “My. What a creative way of clearing that old shack. I’m afraid it was gathering malevolent energy… Burning it down.” He nods. “That was very efficient, if over-enthusiastic.”
Jin Ling feels faint. “My uncle… He went home?”
Lan Xichen cocks his head to one side. “Jiang Wanyin has not come while you were gone.” He flicks his eyes at Wei Wuxian who is less laughing silently now and looks as if he’s going into a state of hilarity that’s physically painful. Hanguang-Jun sets his hand on Wei Wuxian’s head, soothing.
Jin Ling wishes to lie himself down on the ground, to never get up, to become part of the sediment below the deck and to rest forever in peace there.
“I must admit, I’m surprised at the sudden enthusiasm for camping, but I’m proud of you. All of you. Perhaps I should send a letter of commendation to your uncle, Jin Ling.”
It’s only Lan Sizhui’s steadying hand on his arm that keeps him standing. “Thank you. Sir.”
Behind Lan Xichen, Wei Wuxian pounds his fist on the table, gently. Hanguang pats his head, once more.