Chapter Text
"I'm begging, I'm begging, I'm begging."
Lan Xichen's world had shrunk to four white walls. The floor, cold as the marble of a tomb, reflected the milky light of an always lit lantern, a merciless illumination that left no room for shade or rest. The isolation enveloped him like a fog, thick and silent, extinguishing every sound except that of his thoughts. Those thoughts... they had once been clear, full of kindness, but now they twisted into knots, like snakes under a stone. He continually reviewed the scene in his mind, like an open wound on which he returned to rest his gaze. The sword in his trembling hand, his breath hitching as he screamed words of anger and betrayal. Nie Mingjue's face, still as rock, with those hard eyes that seemed to pierce him, as if he already knew it would end like this. And then the gaze of his uncle, Lan Qiren, unyielding and severe, but with a spark of disappointment that had pierced him more than the sword aimed at his neck.
Lan Qiren's words were still there, seared into his memory like a fire seal: “You have betrayed your lineage, your family, and yourself. I can't let you continue. You are blind, Lan Xichen, blind to the poison that consumes you. Until you open your eyes this will be your home." Blind. That word rang out like a cruel echo, making him clench his fists until his knuckles turned white. How could it be blind? . Jin Guangyao, despite everything, was the only one who understood him, the only one who had truly tried to protect him, to be a companion, a brother. Why couldn't anyone see it? Why did everyone insist on portraying Jin Guangyao as a monster? Lan Xichen raised his hands to his face - trying to erase those thoughts - but his fingers were shaking. In rare moments of clarity, a deeper voice tormented him; what if they were right? What if the evidence they were accumulating against Jin Guangyao was real? Every time that possibility crept into his mind, a ferocious anger devoured him. He preferred to believe that it was a plot, a machination. He couldn't bear the idea of having loved a lie. Lan Xichen didn't feel like a prisoner of four walls, but of the entire world. Those cold and implacable walls protected him only from what he would have liked to forget, while everything else - the truth, the lie, the judgment - was there, hanging from the ceiling like a sword ready to fall.
His thoughts intertwined in an infinite spiral, and each time they brought him back there, to that moment, to that sword that trembled in his hand while the world collapsed around him. Nie Mingjue and Lan Qiren. The real executioners. They were the ones destroying everything he had tried to protect. They who, with their prejudices and their cruelty, had decided that Jin Guangyao should be guilty, that he should pay for sins that, he was certain, he had never committed. “It’s a mistake.” He repeated this to himself like a mantra. “They are making a mistake.” And the more he said it, the more that certainty seemed to take root in his heart, like a tree with gnarled and intertwined branches, whose roots sank into his blind faith in Jin Guangyao. He was a just man, a good man. A man who had suffered and struggled to find his place in a world that had always rejected him. A man who had loved him, Lan Xichen, when no other had.
Yet, deep down, Lan Xichen couldn't believe that this was the case. He couldn't see Jin Guangyao as the monster others wanted him to be. No, Jin Guangyao wasn't the bad guy. He couldn’t be. Every time she thought of him, she saw him as the shadow of a man who had walked too long in the dark, a figure who had learned to lie, to manipulate, to survive in a world that had never given him another choice. "He's different," he repeated to himself, like a mantra he had to protect. “Jin Guangyao is different for me.” But that belief no longer seemed so solid, so unshakable. Doubts clutched him like invisible chains. He had to believe it, he had to continue to believe that everything they said about Jin Guangyao was false. That the man he loved, the man he saw as the savior, was truly so pure, so innocent. Yet, the distortion of reality that was imposed on him every day, the suffocating truth that was forced before his eyes, hurt him in a way he couldn't understand. Lan Xichen's rational mind rebelled against that pain, but his heart, the heart that continued to beat for Jin Guangyao, told him something different. Every time he thought of Jin Guangyao, of him soft voice full of compassion, of the light in him eyes when he looked at him, Lan Xichen's heart ached. How could he not see the suffering behind his facade? How could he ignore his pain, his need to be loved, accepted, finally. Jin Guangyao had been betrayed by life more than he himself could understand. He had been bent, shaped, shaped by a world he had never wanted to see.
“This is how life forms you, Xichen.” Jin Guangyao's voice, almost a whisper, rang in his ears. “We don't choose our destiny. Our destiny chooses us.” Those words, which Lan Xichen had ignored, now obsessed him, tormented him. What did they mean? Perhaps, in a way he never wanted to admit, Jin Guangyao was talking about his own life. Perhaps he too, Lan Xichen, had been forged by a cruel and invisible hand. Maybe he wasn't choosing at all. Every day, Jin Guangyao's face came back to haunt him, that young man's eyes seeming to shine with a light that could never go out. And in each glance, Lan Xichen saw love. A love that could never have lived without sacrificing something of itself. That love that others called illusion was his only lighthouse in the night. A lighthouse that shone only for him, that only he could see.
Yet, he couldn't escape the weight of the voices that hovered around him. Voices following one another like a waterfall that never stops falling. “Traitor.” “Weak.” “Idiot.” Each word thrown at him like a stone sank deeper and deeper into his heart. The people who once admired him, respected him, now looked at him with disdain. “You are no longer a Lan.” They told them. “You're not even a man.” His reputation, his dignity, were crumbling under the blows of a truth that seemed inviolable. But how could he explain what he saw to them? How could he tell about Jin Guangyao, about what he had learned to read in his eyes, about that truth that was only his? The images of those nights spent together, of those hours stolen from the entire world, returned to his mind with the force of a hurricane. There was no falsehood in that memory. There was no deception, only love. Jin Guangyao had made promises that no one had dared to make, and Lan Xichen, in his heart, knew that they would never be betrayed.
Lan Xichen walked in the darkness of his mind, enveloped in the thick fog of hatred that was slowly consuming him. Every corner of his mental prison seemed to echo to him the voices that judged him, that denigrated him. And, in the midst of all this, there were them: Lan Qiren and Nie Mingjue. The weight of their disapproval weighed on his conscience like a chain, tearing at his heart that he could not forget. Not yet. Not yet. But there was an abyss growing between them, an abyss made of frustration, of misunderstanding, of betrayal.
Lan Qiren's face imposed itself on him with its usual coldness, her unwavering gaze judging him with a harshness that broke him inside. The old uncle, always so certain of himself, always so convinced that he had the truth in his hands. Lan Xichen still remembered his words, those words that had been instilled in him like poison: “You are no longer a Lan. You are no longer worthy of the name." Those words had burned like fire on his skin, leaving scars that would never heal. He couldn't understand how it was possible that his uncle, the man he once admired more than anyone else, had become so blind, so incapable of seeing the truth.
"You don't understand, Xichen. You really don't understand." Lan Qiren's voice rang in his ear like a condemnation, a reproach that followed him step by step. "Jin Guangyao is a monster. You can't follow him. You can't justify him."
But how could, how dare, Lan Qiren speak like that? He had always tried to impose his vision of the world, his control on every single gesture, on every single word. And now, he accused him of betraying, of betraying the Lan Clan, everything they had built. But who other than Lan Qiren had betrayed the truth for his vision of justice?
Lan Xichen closed his eyes, but couldn't escape Nie Mingjue's face, his impassive gaze that had looked at him with disdain. Cult leader Nie, the man who had never seen anything outside the rigidity of his belief in right and wrong. Lan Xichen hated him for how he had treated him, for how he had tried to break him down, to put him under his heel without ever asking "Why?" Nie Mingjue, the champion of justice, how dare he lay his hand on him, how dare he destroy what he had tried to build with Jin Guangyao? A man without understanding, without compassion, without the slightest perception of what love meant. On those lonely nights, when the silence was unbearable, Lan Xichen relived memories of Jin Guangyao. Jin Guangyao, who talked to him as if the world was a better place, as if his words could heal the wounds of a wounded soul. Jin Guangyao's eyes shone with a distorted truth, but a truth that he, Lan Xichen, accepted. Because Jin Guangyao spoke of Lan Qiren as a man who had put everything in danger. "He is so tied to his view of the world that he never sees the reality that lies before him, Xichen," he had once told him, her tone venomous but seductive. "He's nothing more than an old man who has lost touch with what really matters."
Then there was Nie Mingjue. Her words about him were harsh, cutting, but there was a sense of justice in the hatred she felt towards the commander. "He is no different. He too is a facade, a mask hiding a heart as hard as stone." Jin Guangyao laughed bitterly as he talked about him, as if he knew him better than he knew himself. “He believes in justice, but he never sees beyond his narrow vision.” Jin Guangyao's every word about Lan Qiren and Nie Mingjue seemed to be engraved in his memory like a brand. He couldn't shake it. Yet the more she thought about those words, the more him heart tightened in a knot of anger. How could they, who had rejected him, be more just than Jin Guangyao? How could they, who had spoken so much about truth and justice, not see the love he had for that young man, the love that he would have to defend at any cost?
Lan Xichen often got lost in his thoughts, in the shadows of memories that slipped through his fingers like sand. A blurry image tormented him, a scene that he couldn't completely reconstruct, but that he had dreamed of hundreds of times. A child with fever, red skin and burning eyes. It was him. He'd forgotten, or maybe he'd tried to. But the memory, despite his effort, came back to him, stronger each time, accompanied by a sweetness he didn't expect. A gesture that he could not forget: Jin Guangyao, then just a boy, who had approached him with a sweetness that seemed out of place in that chaotic city, in that crowd that would never have stopped to look at a feverish child like him. "I don't want to see you hide anymore," Jin Guangyao had said, in that voice that, for Lan Xichen, sounded as familiar as it was mysterious. He had handed him a rabbit-shaped candy, and the gesture had made him smile, even if he couldn't remember it. He couldn't see the boy's face clearly, but his hand offering him that sweetness, that offer of comfort he didn't ask for and didn't expect, had remained engraved in his mind like a flame. Jin Guangyao was the only one who noticed him, the only one who cared about him.
He didn't remember the scene perfectly, but the sound of Jin Guangyao's words, the warmth of that invisible caress he had received then, tormented him like a recurring dream. Every time he thought about it, a painful lump formed in his throat, a sense of guilt and remorse that he couldn't shake. That simple gesture, that candy, that kindness... they had awakened in him a part of himself that he had wanted to forget, a part that he now hated. But he couldn't. He couldn’t hate him.
Jin Guangyao had reminded him of that unexpected scene, as well as made him see the truth that others refused to recognize. He had seen him, he had saved him from the darkness that threatened to suffocate him when he was a child, and now the same boy, now a man, was raising him from the ashes of his own pain. Yet, no one understood. Lan Qiren looked at him with contempt, Nie Mingjue accused him of betraying the clan, of compromising all that had been built. But they had never seen Jin Guangyao the way he saw him. He hated them all. He hated them for not knowing. He hated them for not seeing Jin Guangyao as the light he showed him in his darkest moments. “They don't understand,” Lan Xichen thought as he lost himself in his memories. “Nobody understands. Only he really knows who I am.”
Every time Lan Xichen's mind returned to those moments, to the gesture that had affected him more than any other, the weight of hatred towards Lan Qiren and Nie Mingjue grew. They had never shown that kind of kindness. They had never seen beyond the façade of rigidity and honor. Only Jin Guangyao, with his enigmatic smile and calm, understood. And now, while others condemned him, he shielded himself from the truth that could not be revealed, but which he knew he carried within himself as an inviolable secret. "Why don't you understand?" Lan Xichen thought, his heart constricting in his chest. “Why don't you see what I see? Don't you see what Jin Guangyao has been to me?”
Every word Lan Qiren and Nie Mingjue had said about him, every accusation they had made against him, weighed like a stone on his chest. How dare they judge that? How dare they trample on the memory of that caress he had received, that sweetness that he could never forget? It didn't matter that so much time had passed. The memory of that innocent gesture, that rabbit-shaped candy, followed him like a lighthouse in the midst of the storm. Jin Guangyao had seen him, for who he truly was, and no one else had ever done so. And that was enough. It was enough to make him break down all the barriers others were trying to impose.
Isolation was a boundless desert. The walls of the room seemed to close in on him, and every breath was a muffled echo of a void he couldn't fill. The silence was an enemy, a shadow that enveloped him, and his mind never stopped racing, he never stopped repeating those questions. Why? Why can't they see? Why can they not understand? Lan Xichen, sitting in the center of the room, felt his heart beating in his chest like a crazy drum, the sound pulsing in his ears. His hands trembled slightly, his fingers gripped the edges of his robes with a force that left his palms sore. He didn't even realize it. He didn't realize how much his body was sagging under the weight of pain that couldn't be contained. He had never known how much he depended on Jin Guangyao, how much his presence had become the center of his very existence, until he was ripped away from him. “This can't be true…” His voice was barely a whisper, broken like a string stretched too long. Memories overlapped, overwhelmed him mercilessly. Every laugh, every kind word, every little gesture of comfort that Jin Guangyao had given him now felt like a blade, a wound that never stopped bleeding. “You have always been my greatest ally,” he remembered Jin Guangyao telling him one night, his voice like honey, sweet but with a bitter aftertaste. Lan Xichen had believed every word of it. He needed to believe. Those words had been his refuge, his anchor, in a world that seemed to be made only of suffocating rules and expectations. But now, without him, the world was a void. He was lost. The nights were endless, filled only with the sound of his own breathing and the memories he couldn't turn off. And those memories, those moments that had kept him afloat, were now sunk.
An image made its way into his mind, violent like an open wound. The rabbit candy. The image of the boy who had extended that sweetness to him, so simple, so genuine. Jin Guangyao had reminded him of that gesture, had given it back to him, as if it were the common thread of an entire life. And now, how could she doubt him? How could he not believe that this boy was the same person who had saved him, again and again, from the darkness?
"It's us against the world," Jin Guangyao had said once, and Lan Xichen had nodded with conviction. But where was he now? Where was he, while the world collapsed on him? Why was he not here? The hatred towards Lan Qiren and Nie Mingjue was a fire, but it wasn't enough to heat him. It wasn't enough to fill that void. Lan Xichen rested his head in his hands, elbows pressed to his knees. His thoughts crowded together, too fast, too loud. And what if they were right? No. No, they couldn't be right. Jin Guangyao was the only one who understood. The only one who really saw him. But then why wasn't he here? Why had he been left alone? Lan Xichen was not a person anymore. Not whole, at least. He was like an empty shell, walking in the world no longer knowing who he was. His body, fragile and tense like a rope ready to break, no longer had an identity. He had lost all trace of himself, all anchorage to what made him alive. His mind, a labyrinth of distorted and fragmented thoughts, pushed him deeper and deeper into an abyss he couldn't avoid.
"Who are they without him?" The question obsessed him, a question that echoed incessantly in his head. Jin Guangyao had made him dependent on him, without Lan Xichen understanding it. Every word, every smile, every little gesture she had given him – everything had become her oxygen, her reason for existing. But now, without him, he was a hollow man. A man who walked through a world that no longer saw him. His heart no longer beat for himself, but for a shadow that wasn't there.
The memory of the rabbit-shaped candy returned, more vivid each time. As a symbol of something simple, pure and authentic. It was the last thing that Jin Guangyao gave him that wasn't a lie. An innocent sweetness that, now, burned inside him like a wound that never healed. "Do you remember?" Jin Guangyao said, but Lan Xichen didn't remember, not really. Because deep down, he didn't want to remember a time when he was just a child, too naive to understand the depth of what was happening. His mind had tried to bury that memory, but he couldn't. Every time he closed his eyes, that child's face would appear, only to immediately vanish, leaving him with a burning desire to see him again, to see that person who had seen him for who he was: a vulnerable little boy, incapable of protecting himself. Lan Xichen stood up, legs trembling, steps slow, uncertain. The room seemed to close in around him, as if the walls were breathing, pressing down on him. It wasn't him anymore. It had never been, perhaps. Every decision he'd made, every step he'd taken, he'd taken with someone else's weight on his shoulders, with a voice that wasn't his own whispering in his head.
His heart, once safe, once capable of finding its place in the world, was now shattered into a thousand pieces. And there was no longer any way to put them back together. Why? Why? Because Jin Guangyao was gone. Gone. The tears he had never allowed to flow were now streaming down his face, but they were warm and bitter, like a poison that was slowly consuming him. His body felt like a prison, like a carcass that no longer served a purpose. “I hate them,” he thought. “I hate them for leaving me.” Lan Qiren, with his cold gaze, always so fair, always so detached. Nie Mingjue, with his smile of contempt, always ready to judge, to repress. He hated them both, for what they did to Jin Guangyao, for how they destroyed him. But hatred did not calm him. It didn't ease him. He hated them because they were the embodiment of everything that Jin Guangyao wasn't. He hated them because he had always seen them as enemies, but now there wasn't even a part of him that could see them as such anymore. He hated them, yes, but it wasn't enough.
He collapsed onto the floor again, his head hitting the cold wood. "Jin Guangyao..." He whispered her name, and heard it ringing in his ears, as if it were the only thing he had left. The only thing he hadn't lost. Yet, the emptiness wouldn't go away. It didn’t stop. Jin Guangyao was no longer there. He no longer knew how to be a person. His life, his choices, everything had been influenced by that man. But now? Now that it was all destroyed?
Lan Xichen collapsed to the ground, his face pressed against the cold wooden floor. The breathing became slower, shorter, until it was almost no longer there. Breathing in had become difficult, as if the simple act of taking in air was a crime. And then he quit. He stopped breathing, allowing his chest to tighten, his heart to race in protest. It was an automatic, instinctive action, as if the body already knew what to do. Lan Xichen clenched himself, his hands shaking on his chest as he tried to hold in the air. Don't breathe. Don’t breathe. The choking sensation pressed against his throat, but he continued to fight, trying to hold every breath, as if that would somehow give him back the control he felt he had lost. His head was spinning, his vision blurry, his heart pounding in his chest, but he didn't stop. Don’t breathe.
He didn't remember exactly when Jin Guangyao taught him this. Perhaps it had been during one of those soft, intimate conversations, where every word seemed like a precious gift. "If you learn to control your breathing, you can control the pain," he had told him, in that soft, almost affectionate voice, as if she were telling a secret. And Lan Xichen believed every word of it. He would believe anything Jin Guangyao told him. He would have done anything to make him happy.
And so he had learned. He had never questioned the reason, nor had he ever wondered why a man like Jin Guangyao could teach him such a strange thing. It had never seemed necessary to him. Jin Guangyao was his guide, his sanctuary, his everything. If he had told him that stopping breathing could help, then it had to be true. Because Jin Guangyao never made mistakes. He couldn't go wrong. Lan Xichen held on to that lesson like a relic. Not breathing meant control. Not breathing meant staying calm. But ultimately, not breathing also meant abandoning yourself. Abandon pain, desire, guilt. "I did it for you," he thought, tears streaming silently down his face. "Everything I did, I did for you." He could almost hear him, Jin Guangyao, his voice so close, so sweet. "Don't cry, Xichen-ge. Breathe slowly. Or stop, if you prefer. It's okay, I'm here with you."
But it wasn't there. It had never really been there, he realized now, in that moment when he was starting to run out of air. Yet, she would have done anything for him. He would have died if he had to. He was already dead, inside. With a broken sob, Lan Xichen finally let in a rush of air, his chest heaving painfully, burning. But the relief lasted only a moment, before a new wave of pain overwhelmed him, an awareness that devastated him. You didn't really love him. Xichen didn't look at him the way he looked at Jin Guangyao looked at him. But he… he would have given everything. He had already done it.
"Why aren't you here?" he whispered, his voice cracking, gripping the floor as if he could find an answer hidden in the grain of the wood. "Why did you leave me?"
The room around him seemed to spin, warp. The world was blank, and Lan Xichen was blank with it. All that remained was a ghost of Jin Guangyao, a promise never kept, an illusion he couldn't let go of. But he couldn't stop. He couldn't let it go. For without him, Lan Xichen was nothing. It was never anything.