Lan Xichen's Promise

I

Burial Mounds. Night Of Chaos.

The man trembled like a tower of cards. Every brush of wind threatened to topple him. He stood broken in a way the older man had never seen before. Even breathing near him felt violent. "Wuxian."

Lan Xichen is a brilliantly intelligent man. He lives by his sect's rules and challenges them when he feels they're wrong. He'll twist a broken rule into one he agrees with but never actually break it. He's used these rules as a guide his whole life, as has his brother. It's what bestowed Sect Leader upon him so young, what hailed him and his brother a prodigy.

Lan Xichen has realised, though, that his brother surpassed him somewhere along the way. Not in position, rank, or even capability. On a battlefield, they are as evenly matched as two can get, but outside, his little brother has outgrown him. He's shed the rules that moulded him, and the rejection has begun to craft him into something new. Better.

The catalyst for such change was a boy. He barreled into Cloud Recess what felt like only yesterday, and yet so far away at the same time. He had a smile that rivalled the sun, and Lan Xichen would have had to have been blind not to see the instant connection the boy shared with his little brother. Something in Wangji changed the day they met. Perhaps the potential for change had always existed, and Lan Xichen failed to nurture it.

The boy was the opposite of order. He took an explosive to the rigidity that Wangji had always known. The way he talked and walked was unruly but so fluid. Wangji was irrevocably drawn to him.

Wangji's wiring was changed forever, but a boy is a boy. Wangji is still a young boy, still able to be contained in the steel grip of his guardian's fist. It was tragic, but Wangji's growth is too little too late. His desire for the boy, his sect, and his Uncle's approval stunted the seedling of change inside him. He stood in the middle, torn, for too long.

As did Lan Xichen. Not only did he fail to help his little brother grow, he taught him cowardice.

Because Lan Xichen is undeniably a coward.

A brilliantly intelligent man but weak in the face of conflict. He always has been. He took a backseat in the Sunshot Campaign until his hand was forced, his sect was burned, and then, after, perhaps his worst mistake.

The peace was so fragile after Wen Ruohan's death. Lan Xichen was afraid to breathe before it, as he is now. Lan Xichen clenches and releases his fists. He did this.

He broke Wei Wuxian.

He knew the fight wasn't over. The war was won, but the Jins began to parade around like the new Wens. They slaughtered innocents, and Lan Xichen knowingly turned away. He was a fool. He hates himself just thinking of it, of his stupidity. He is a foolish, foolish man. He hoped and hoped and hoped that if he ignored it enough, it would go away, and the peace would settle, but of course, it didn't.

He believed Jin Guangshan's lies because it was easier. It was easier to believe one boy had gone crazy than to believe an entire sect was corrupt again. The Jins had leverage they held over the other clan's heads. They were unscratched from the Sunshot Campaign, while the remaining clans had been decimated. Cowardice Lan Xichen resented, yet mirrored.

Standing in the wreckage, Lan Xichen feels hysterical. They killed innocents, the elderly, farmers. The civilians Wei Wuxian had sacrificed everything to save, and Lan Xichen had done nothing. He may as well have been the executioner who tied the noose.

He had stood in Nightless City trying to swallow down bile. Shame threatened to claw up his throat, and crippling guilt. When Wei Wuxian showed up, he didn't realise how much worse he could feel until he looked into his maddening eyes. It was somehow worse than the eyes of the dead. He couldn't raise his sword to Wei Wuxian. Not when he began his attack. Not when he jumped down to find Jiang Yanli or when his little brother joined him on the battlefield.