Outside Muxi mountain, the four Lan disciples assigned to protect them sit a short distance away from Wen Qing, Lan Zhan, and Wei Ying. Wen Qing looks alert and purposefully unbothered as if she doesn't care about whatever is happening in the cave that all of them are watching.
Lan Zhan has his arm wrapped around Wei Ying's waist, and both of their faces are turned towards the deep and dark yawning mouth, the home of the Xuanwu of Slaughter.
Conversation died out ages ago, and now they're all just waiting, tense and silent.
Wei Ying is fidgeting with a tied piece of string, weaving it through his fingers and giving each pattern a name when he holds it up to show the other two.
"Look! I'm gonna call this the cat's cradle!"
"This looks like a witch's broom!"
"Peacock feathers!"
"Lan Zhan, I'm tired!" He whines.
The last one is when Lan Zhan turns him on his back and lets him lie down with his head resting in Lan Zhan's lap. Absent-mindedly, his fingers card through Wei Ying's ponytail, the movements precise and evenly timed, while his other arm covers Wei Ying's shoulders across his collarbone.
Wei Ying falls asleep in minutes.
"You know, I never thanked either of you for what you did," Wen Qing says softly, the light breeze from the river sending her words to Lan Zhan.
"No need," Lan Zhan replies, tearing his gaze away from the mountain to look at her.
She's chewing on her bottom lip nervously, though there's no other visible signs to show how she's feeling. Her large dark eyes are deep wells of emotions as she looks at them both, her glance resting on Wei Ying.
"I think there is," she disagrees. "You know, that night on Qiongqi Way, I was too tired to open my eyes, but I heard everything. It was so cold and dark with the rainfall, but when Wei WuXian told you he didn't mind dying by your hand, I realised that he was always expecting to have things, people...his happiness taken away. He hardly spoke about his early days, brushing off the time he spent at Lotus Pier growing up. But I knew he had it bad because I had to treat him so often.
"I'm not just talking about the core transfer. That time was bad enough, the three of them, Jiang YanLi, Jiang WanYin, and Wei WuXian, had just escaped the burning of their home, but why was it that Wei WuXian had the worst injuries? And on his back, too, whip marks so severe that they were still bleeding weeks after the fact? Whip marks that were layered, old scars covered by newly forming ones, marks that could only singe like a spiritual weapon could.
"But what truly horrified me was the way Madam Yu got inside his head to make him feel like a burden, to make him feel like he was just an expendable shield for Jiang WanYin to use and be discarded. The psychological damage that bitch inflicted on him caused so many internal scars that he hid, and you know the worst part? He never even allowed himself to criticise them. That's mostly the reason why it was so easy for him to give up his core, because he never saw it as wholly his own to begin with.
"When we reached the Burial Mounds, all of us were too tired to do anything much. But as the days passed and we began making it into a home, every day I realised how much he was giving up by standing up for us. I knew we would be killed if Wei WuXian decided to leave us, I knew he was the only thing standing between us and certain death, and I kept telling him to go back. Go back to his life, go back to being a respected member of the Jiang Sect, and an active member of the Cultivation world.
"But he laughed at me then. He said he had never been respected, only feared. There was no longer anyone outside of the Burial Mounds who would take his side except for his sister...and possibly, you. He didn't trust anyone else anymore, and he said we were his family. That's when I realised that that was all he ever wanted. To be part of his own family, to be wanted. Not just that, but to be wanted for himself, simply and honestly, not only for what he could provide.
