Backlash Part 2

Chapter 213: Working Out Frustration With Paperwork

Lan Xichen remembered being in this position before. He remembered sitting at Lan Wangji's bedside as his didi lay unconscious. In the first few years after their mother's death, Lan Wangji fell ill multiple times. No one could stop Lan Wangji from kneeling outside her door. No argument could convince him. No scolding could dissuade him.

Their Uncle would punish Lan Wangji for a full day following each visit. Lan Wangji would be ordered to spend the entire day in the library copying the rules. After the third time Lan Wangji fell ill, their uncle changed the punishment. Lan Wangji would be ordered to spend an entire week copying out the texts Uncle gave him. Lan Wangji never complained, and he did not stop visiting their mother every month.

After the first year Lan Qiren gifted Lan Xichen a book of advanced core techniques. Things that would not normally be taught until Lan Xichen was much older. Some of them were things that were not part of the common curriculum. His uncle never told him why, but Lan Xichen saw the section about using your golden core to cope with extreme temperatures. Lan Xichen didn't need anyone to tell him that he should study this section and teach it to his didi.

The last time Lan Wangji fell ill was three years after their mother died. He had just returned from a nighthunt. Without taking the proper time to rest and recover he had continued with his monthly ritual. Lan Xichen remembered the helpless feeling of waiting for his didi's fever to break. He remembered wondering if anything he could do would actually help.

Years later. A war later. Lan Xichen sat at his didi's bedside again. Lan Xichen felt so useless. He couldn't even give his didi spiritual energy. Wei Qing had done so. Her expertise as a healer allowed her to transfer it with more precision than Lan Xichen had ever been taught. Then she declared that Lan Wangji needed to rest and stabilize. Additional energy could be detrimental to that.

"Go get us dinner and all the paperwork in your office." Wei Qing's voice broke through the fog of Lan Xichen's mind.

Lan Xichen blinked blankly at her. Paperwork? Why? Lan Wangji had just had a second qi deviation. Wei Wuxian was missing. Nuan-er was missing. They were not in his office. They certainly were not in his paperwork. Lan Xichen must have been quiet for too long, or perhaps Wei Qing knew he was confused.

"Xichen." Wei Qing's tone took on a sharp commanding edge that startled him to attention. "Go to your office. Collect your paperwork. Bring it back here. Now." Wei Qing spoke in commands. Authoritative and self assured in a way that Lan Xichen absolutely wasn't right now.

Lan Xichen's feet took him to the Hanshi without any conscious thought on Lan Xichen's part. He paused for a moment. What paperwork was he supposed to bring? Did she say? Did it matter? Lan Xichen's work was sorted neatly. Everything was where he had left it when he had been first summoned regarding the emergency. Lan Xichen gathered everything that was incomplete or in progress. He'd have to re-sort them into their respective places later.

Lan Xichen hated being away from Lan Wangji. Even though Lan Xichen felt useless and numb, there was an extra layer of anxiety when Lan Wangji was out of his sight. Lan Xichen returned just as a disciple entered, their arms laden with food. Could Lan Xichen have really been gone long enough for a meal to be prepared? Had Wei Qing sent for it?

Lan Xichen stood just inside the doorway as the disciple laid everything out on the table. They bowed to Lan Xichen before leaving. Proper and routine movements that Lan Xichen felt confusingly detached from. Everything felt strangely off. Logically, Lan Xichen understood that everything was normal. Everything looked normal and he was interacting with objects and people. But it didn't feel right. It felt separate from him.

It reminded Lan Xichen of a maze array. The sense of disorientation. The expectation of your actions not quite matching what is happening in the world around you. But Lan Xichen knows this is not a maze array. It's the same sense of wrongness, but without the actual mismatched effects.

"Come sit." Wei Qing's voice is still confident, but not quite as demanding as before.

Lan Xichen goes to the table anyway. Lan Xichen had no appetite. He looked back across the room to Lan Wangji. He feels like he is looking at the pale six year old who had fallen ill after their mother died. Lan Xichen had been old enough to understand their mother was dead, but young enough to not be certain if any illness might be lethal. Terrified that his didi's fever might become more than just a fever and Lan Xichen would lose the didi he had promised to protect.

"Xichen. I am the best doctor in the cultivation world. Lan Wangji is going to be fine. He is going to be fine, because I am going to make absolutely certain he is fine. And then I am going to rip him a new one for being so reckless." Wei Qing said. "He's as bad as A-Ying." Wei Qing mutters.

Lan Xichen can feel the stab of sorrow and guilt echoing in his rib cage. Oh. That was Wei Qing's sorrow and guilt. Because while Lan Xichen's didi was laying in bed, her's was missing. Lan Xichen's didi might have been recovering from successive qi deviations, but Wei Qing's could be almost anywhere in any condition. Lan Wangji was here, where Lan Xichen could see him and doctors could tend to him. Wei Wuxian might be anywhere. Might be in equal need of a healer, but out of reach of Wei Qing's skills.

"Wei Qing," Lan Xichen pauses.

He can't say Wei Wuxian will be fine. Wei Wuxian came from a future where he died. He arrived in Cloud Recesses in a condition that was the very opposite of fine. Lan Xichen has no idea where he is, or why he has disappeared. Lan Xichen takes a deep breath and gives her the only reassurance he can.

"We will find him." Lan Xichen says quietly. Wei Qing let out a huffed sigh.

"Our connection is working both ways right now." Wei Qing replies. Lan Xichen blinks in confusion at the change in topic. Wei Qing sighed.

"Thank you for the reassurance. Right now there is nothing for us to do regarding A-Ying and Nuan-er. We have people looking. It is better for us to be here where those people can find us quickly in the event that Nuan-er or A-Ying are in trouble." Wei Qing's voice sounded tired, filled with a forced calm. It sounded almost as though she were repeating something she had been saying to herself over and over.

"Your didi is stable. If anything happens we are right here to deal with it." Wei Qing said intently. Lan Xichen wished those words soothed his anxiety. Instead he continued to feel uneasy. The world still felt weirdly muted and detached to Lan Xichen.

"Eat, and focus on the food. I can feel how dissociated you are right now and it is honestly a more unsettling experience through this connection than it is when I have dissociated myself." Wei Qing's words were forceful as she pushed his food towards him pointedly.

Dissociated. Was that what this was? It was uncomfortable, but even the feeling of it being uncomfortable seemed more like an abstract concept to Lan Xichen at the moment.

"After we eat we'll start going through some of your work. I have a lot of frustration right now that I would love to work out by politely telling some obnoxious sect leaders to shut up and deal with their own messes." Wei Qing's voice dipped lower as she spoke, but then she was lifting her chin with all the confidence and assurance she always seemed to carry herself with.

Lan Xichen rethinks all the times Wei Qing volunteered to respond to Sect Leader Yao's letters for him. Perhaps he should begin setting them aside for her whenever he receives them. Lan Xichen followed Wei Qing's prompting and began to eat. The motion of it and the mild flavours make everything feel a bit more real.

By the end of the meal Lan Xichen is still worried about his didi. He's still worried about Wei Wuxian and Nuan-er. But he begins going through the work he has been neglecting since they learned of Wei Wuxian and Nuan-er's disappearance. He allows Wei Qing to snatch the correspondence from his hand when the thought of writing a response makes something inside of him ache painfully.

Wei Qing didn't say anything. Didn't ask him why writing out polite responses felt like trying to swallow hot coals. Lan Xichen had always been the one who interpreted the discomfort of others and tried to relieve it. There was something soothing about having someone do it for him now.