#LQR post canon is bitter and tired and not really here for any of this

[robininthelabyrinth]

WWX and Lan Qiren bonding, please! LQR sees WWX teaching and alongside LWJ at conferences and when he realizes, he sees WWX as part of the main family now. And so does the other Lan elders. Give WWX a found family one more time!

Etude No. 289 in A Minor - ao3

(series: Variations on WWX & LQR in Assorted Keys)

When the change with Lan Qiren had happened, Wei Wuxian wasn’t sure.

Lan Qiren had spent a lot of time avoiding him since he’d come to the Cloud Recesses, and the few times he wasn’t able to avoid him, he looked as if seeing Wei Wuxian standing there put a bad taste in his mouth, or maybe that he was having a heart attack just at the sight of him. He’d even forbidden the juniors from approaching him with threats of making them copy the entire set of rules.

Wei Wuxian didn’t mind. He’d never paid attention to the old man before and he wasn’t going to start now, no matter how much Lan Wangji respected him – he didn’t have nostalgia or whatever it was that made Lan Wangji continue to go pay respects at least twice a week, and he did have Lan Wangji with him, sharing every day with him from morning to night. So what did he care about what Lan Qiren thought of him?

Which is what, Wei Wuxian supposed, made it all the more shocking to find the man defending him.

There very well might have been smaller signs of an improvement earlier on, more subtle ones, but Wei Wuxian had never been the most observant when it came to people – it wasn’t until it came up and smacked him right in the face that he even noticed there’d been a change.

Some doddering old antiquity in the Lan sect that had wanted Lan Wangji to do something for him and been refused had loudly remarked some sneering comment about Wei Wuxian sucking up attention the way a desert plant did water. He’d said it just as Wei Wuxian had passed by, clearly intending for him to hear it. Yet before Wei Wuxian could respond – he had at least three retorts in mind and was just picking between them – he heard Lan Qiren bark: “Be careful with your words!”

Instinctively, Wei Wuxian opened his mouth to protest that his scathing rebuke had in fact been very carefully chosen, only then he realized he hadn’t actually gotten the words out at all. Which meant that the target of Lan Qiren’s words had been…

The elder?

The elder had looked equally taken aback, glancing over at where Lan Qiren was coming down the path, hands perfectly placed in the correct position as always and the usual dark look on his face. “I did not –”

“Talking behind the backs of others is forbidden,” Lan Qiren intoned, and he sounded just the same way he did when he was scolding Wei Wuxian – because he was scolding, actually, only he was scolding his own sect elder. “If you have any grievances with Wei Wuxian, you must take it up with him directly.”

The old elder puffed up in anger. “What grievance? If he feels badly about taking up so much of Wangji’s time away from more beneficial pursuits, that is his own conscience speaking.”

Lan Qiren met the elder’s anger with his own glare.

“Honored elder,” he said grimly, managing somehow to make the respectful term sound like an admonition. “The rules are clear: If others win over you, do not envy them.”

The elder’s jaw dropped, and Wei Wuxian’s, too.

Lan Qiren ignored them both and swept on along his way – he was doing a patrol, actually, Wei Wuxian recognized the path he was taking – and left the elder having a fit of near apoplexy and Wei Wuxian on the verge of a fit of giggles. He was very well aware of how to use the Lan sect rules to shove someone’s words back down their throat, but he hadn’t been aware that Lan Qiren was similarly aware, or that, even if he knew, that he would ever do such a thing.

Much less on Wei Wuxian’s behalf!

How strange.

Driven by curiosity, Wei Wuxian decided to crash one of Lan Qiren’s lectures, since that was one place the old man could reliably be counted on being. It was the off season, so there weren’t any guests from other sects, just Lan disciples, so Wei Wuxian stuck out like a sore thumb, especially shuffling in as he did a few incense sticks into the start of class.

Lan Qiren glanced over, eyes narrowing in disapproval, but when Wei Wuxian seated himself down at the back of class he turned away and continued lecturing. The subject of today’s lecture appeared to be Do not give up on learning, and Wei Wuxian had no idea how Lan Qiren planned to stretch out the discussion of a rule as straightforward as that for the entire class period.

In fact, it occurred to him that he hadn’t attended any of Lan Qiren’s classes since the first few sessions way back when, after which he’d promptly been ejected and sent to study in the Library Pavilion with Lan Wangji all day. Sad, really, that they couldn’t arrange for that to happen again…at any rate, when he finally finished all that copying, Lan Qiren had been away on sect business for a little while, and then Wei Wuxian had managed to get into that fight with Jin Zixuan right when he’d been due to start back up again – in short, one could only barely claim that he’d been the man’s student, although it was inarguable that he’d eventually learned something through all that copying.

He settled in and anticipated being horribly bored.

Much to his surprise, he wasn’t.

It seemed like the later classes were a lot more complex than the early ones – still a monotonous lecture, but far less than a simple recitation of the rule. Lan Qiren explained how the rule was developed, why, and in what circumstances, as well as the ensuing debates that apparently sprung up in the generations following about what the rule meant, all before going into examples of how it might be relevant to the lives of his students.

He even occasionally stopped to ask if there were questions.

There was a little bit of shifting around, but eventually one student asked, “Teacher, are there situations in which continuing to learn is not a good decision?”

Lan Qiren frowned and stroked his beard. “None that I know of. Do you have a situation in mind?”

The student hesitated, and then their eyes drifted over to where Wei Wuxian was sitting.

Wei Wuxian leaned back, put his hands behind his head and smirked.

Lan Qiren glanced over as well, his frown deepening. Still, he didn’t scold Wei Wuxian, but rather said to the student, “Say what you mean.”

“Well, for example, demonic cultivation,” the student said. “If you get into that, you should stop learning, right? You see what I mean?”

“I see only that you have failed to absorb the initial lesson that precedes this one,” Lan Qiren said flatly. “‘Learning’ does not refer merely to book learning or research, but to all forms of learning. Demonic cultivation is an abomination because it is ethically unsound – it desecrates graves and upsets ancestral spirits, increasing resentment and causing the deterioration of the user’s temperament; it is antithetical to good conduct and allows evil to spread. Now tell me: how do we know all this?”

The student opened his mouth, then paused, confused.

“It is no different than encountering a new creature while on a night-hunt. In order for the creature to be defeated, it is critical to learn about it – what it is, what it does, and how to defeat it. Your obligation is to continue learning, no matter the circumstance; that you are also obligated to act virtuously and avoid the crooked path does not lessen that obligation.”

Lan Qiren paced slowly back and forth at the front of the room.

“The virtue of upholding learning is one of the few that appear multiple times in our family rules,” he said. “In addition to Don’t give up on learning, there is Learning comes first. Based on the principle of no unnecessary repetition, we can infer that these two rules, however similar, represent different commands: the first in the persistence of the requirement, while the second in the ordering thereof. ‘Learning comes first’. The rules also say: Diligence is the root, morality is the priority, harmony is the value. Think about what these four rules together mean.”

He turned to face the students.

“To live a good life is like climbing a mountain. Morality is the priority – it lies above us, our summit and our goal, for which we must always strive. Diligence is the root – it is the ground beneath our feet, and through our diligence in good conduct we support ourselves in our quest for morality. Harmony is the value – it is the pathway beneath our feet, stabilizing and supporting us as we diligently strive towards morality. Learning comes first – because without learning, we do not know even how to begin to climb.”

Suddenly, Lan Qiren raised a hand and pointed to Wei Wuxian, who abruptly straightened out of his slouch in surprise.

“The Compass of Evil and the Spirit Summoning Flags that each of you use in night-hunting were designed by Wei Wuxian after he established demonic cultivation, and using the principles thereof,” the old teacher said. “How many lives have been saved by these inventions in the past years, and will be saved in the future? Can you count them?”

The students shuffled in their seats.

“The pursuit of knowledge is an unending path. No matter the pits and deviations you may encounter, it must be walked. Maintain your own discipline, mind your conduct, live a virtuous life; remember these things, and you can walk that path with your head held high. Do not give up on learning is the rule.To refuse it is to be condemned, for only the stagnant dead lack ability to change.”

Lan Qiren put his hands behind his back once more and looked around the now silent room.

“Each of you, write me an essay explaining how this rule is applicable to your own lives, using an example from the past year,” he said. “Deliver them to me by the start of class tomorrow.”

The students filtered out, talking to each other in a low hum of noise.

Wei Wuxian got up and out of their way, then approached Lan Qiren who had seated himself with a flick of his sleeves.

“Do you actually think that?” Wei Wuxian asked.

Lan Qiren eyed him warily. “Naturally. Do not tell lies is a rule. But the condemnation is as true as the compliment.”

Wei Wuxian had figured that. That part wasn’t a surprise – the existence of any complimentary thoughts in his direction at all, however, were.

“Awww, Teacher Lan! You like me!” he joked, grinning at Lan Qiren.

“I do not,” Lan Qiren said crisply. “In your pride and arrogance, you introduced demonic cultivation into the world, causing boundless harm.You murdered thousands, and you hurt my nephews, and for those reasons I do not like you. But the rules say Do not hold grudges. You are part of the Lan sect now, and if you have once greatly hurt Wangji, you have also now brought him great joy. I would defend you with not only my words but my sword and my life if need be.”

Wei Wuxian instinctively opened his mouth to say something – something smart, something snappy, something that would lighten the mood and take it away from Lan Qiren’s ponderous recitations.

Instead, he found himself flapping his mouth aimlessly, unable to really speak.

“…but you hate me,” he pointed out, feeling a little helpless. That didn’t sound like ‘dislike’ to him! “You – you glare every time you see me!”

“The sight of you remains somewhat distasteful to me, as it reminds me of all that has happened in the past,” Lan Qiren agreed. “I can only do my best. Be strict on yourself, be easy on others, maintain your own discipline…I can only put in effort, and hope to see results. In another year, we might be able to share a meal without flinching; in five, we may be able to treat each other as family.”

Wei Wuxian would have thought a thousand years wouldn’t be enough.

It was – different, somehow, knowing that an effort was being made, though he couldn’t say why.

“You told the juniors not to approach me,” he said instead. “If any of them do, they need to copy down all the rules.”

“Mm. It was the most equitable way to approach it.”

Wei Wuxian sat down next to him. “Equitable?” he asked, curious. “How ‘equitable’?”

Lan Qiren looked at him sidelong, clearly wondering if the question was genuine or an excuse to engage in mockery, as it might have been even the day before. Wei Wuxian tried to keep his expression earnest as he was surveyed and seemed to pass the test – whatever it was that Lan Qiren saw in his face, it seemed to satisfy him.

“The sect decided long ago that we would use rules, not standards,” Lan Qiren said, stroking his beard. “The virtue of rules is that they are straightforward, they are easily applied, they can be applied even-handedly to all alike. Their primary disadvantage is in their lack of flexibility – you have either broken a rule, or not, and if you have broken it, you must pay the penalty, even if the circumstances seem to call for an exception.”

Wei Wuxian nodded, a little bemused as to how this related to his question, or for that matter to why Lan Qiren instructed juniors not to approach him. Still, you couldn’t really expect a teacher not to immediately lapse into teaching – presumably it became a habit after a while.

“As one grows older, it becomes easier to identify situations in which the rules do not apply, or which they do not fit," Lan Qiren continued. “In childhood, it is much more difficult. Take the rule ‘Avoid imparting knowledge to the wrong individuals’ – that is an advanced rule, and calls for the application of judgment. It is easy to get wrong, and difficult to apply.”

Jin Guangyao’s name was not mentioned, but lingered in the air between them regardless.

“In short: to obtain the fullest benefit of a rule, therefore, it must be simple, and it must be clear.”

Wei Wuxian tilted his head to the side.

“I think I get it,” he said, a little surprised by what he’d deduced. “The rule is ‘Do not approach Wei Wuxian’ – but the meaning is ‘Don’t pick up bad habits from Wei Wuxian’. Is that it?”

“Precisely. That is why the penalty is set at making a copy of the rules, which is only dire enough to frighten children. The older juniors will decide for themselves whether it’s worth approaching you or not, and if they do choose to do it, they will try to conceal what they are doing from the view of others. This in turn protects the younger children, who lack the judgment to determine which of your habits they ought to adopt and which they should not; they will see the apparent compliance of their elders and simply avoid you altogether.”

It made a certain amount of sense. If you thought of Wei Wuxian as a bad influence, and Wei Wuxian could certainly understand why Lan Qiren did, it actually made perfect sense to want to keep the most impressionable members of the sect away from him until they’d had a chance to get old enough to start thinking things through for themselves.

“Adults, naturally, may do as they please,” Lan Qiren added, though he looked long-suffering. “Maintain your own discipline, after all. I’m not going to tell Xichen to copy the rules every time he has dinner with you.”

Lan Xichen spent a lot of time copying rules anyway. Wei Wuxian suspected he felt the need to redeem himself in some way, and also that the mindless busy-work was soothing to him.

Wei Wuxian put his hand on his chin. “Will the prohibition ever get lifted?”

“As soon as you can be trusted to be an adequate role model.”

“…so, never,” Wei Wuxian smirked.

Lan Qiren frowned at him. “The rule is Earn trust. If you want it, it is well within your ability.”

Wei Wuxian felt himself go speechless again.

Lan Qiren made it sound so simple. As if it really was just a case of ‘you’re one of us now, so I’ll try to better myself until we get along; if you want to be trusted, all you have to do is try, and you can have it’. As if Lan Qiren genuinely believed that Wei Wuxian could be trusted to be a role model for the juniors, if only he wanted to be.

It was never that simple.

Was it?

Wei Wuxian had spent a lot of time complaining about Lan Qiren – overly rigid, pedantic, monotonous, boring, too harsh, too quick to anger…all sorts of things. But he’d certainly never accused the man of hypocrisy, he’d never had any basis for it. Lan Qiren lived and breathed the Lan sect rules, and he tried, in his serious and overly solemn way, to follow them in all aspects of his life.

If he interpreted his rules the way he said he did, then – then he meant it.

Wei Wuxian felt a smile start to appear on his face. A big one, one that would stay on his face for a good long while and make his cheeks hurt, one that would catch Lan Wangji’s attention and draw him in like a moth to a flame – no, better to say like a butterfly to a flower.

Lan Qiren was still frowning at him, probably thinking Do not smile foolishly or something like that, so Wei Wuxian did his best to swallow down at least some portion of that smile, since he couldn’t suppress it all.

“Everything is within my ability, if I put my mind to it,” he boasted, and couldn’t help thinking Arrogance is forbidden. “I’ll see what I can do, Teacher Lan.”

“I’m sure you will,” Lan Qiren said, and looked like he wanted to sigh. Then, begrudgingly, he added, “If you wish to make progress in the rehabilitation your reputation among the sect, you may as well start by coming to spend more time with me. People seem to think that surviving an afternoon in my company is sufficient evidence of a moral compass – utterly ridiculous, naturally…”

Wei Wuxian’s efforts to minimize his smile failed completely.

“I’d be happy to,” he said, and thought he might mean it, even if it did end up being a boring rehash of rules or something. He’d never actually given any thought to what Lan Qiren might like to chat about…

“Bring your flute,” Lan Qiren instructed, looking pained by the thought of spending more time together – which was fine, everyone looked that way at first before he endeared himself to them. Jiang Cheng had had a great version of the ‘ugh not this again’ expression when he’d been a kid, surpassed only by Wen Qing’s, and they both softened towards him quickly enough; winning over Lan Qiren, Wei Wuxian thought cheerfully, was only a matter of time. “At least we can spend some of the time without speech.”

Wei Wuxian snickered. “Will your reputation survive a duet with Chenqing?” he teased. “But what if I fit some demonic cultivation in there?”

Lan Qiren didn’t so much as blink an eye. “And do what with it? Raise the corpses of students that disobeyed me, which I have hidden in my garden?”

Wei Wuxian choked, and then cackled.

It had somehow never occurred to him that Lan Wangji’s extremely well-hidden sense of humor must have come from somewhere – or that the person who raised him was far more likely to be the source of it than either of his biological parents.

“There are other uses for demonic cultivation,” he said with a grin. “Do not give up on learning, right? Like you just said! If Teacher Lan wants to live up to his values, I’d be more than happy to give you a primer…”

“Have you written any of it down?”

Wei Wuxian choked again.

“Wait,” he said, recovering a moment later and staring. “Are you serious? You want to learn demonic cultivation?”

“You heard the lesson,” Lan Qiren pointed out. “I wish to learn about it, so that I can extract any good aspects and learn how to best guard against the bad. Did you think the books in the forbidden section of the library appeared there by themselves?”

That was…a very good point. Jin Guangyao wasn’t a creative genius, just exceptionally clever and creative at applying what he knew – if he hadn’t found the Collection of Turmoil, he would have killed Nie Mingjue another way, of that Wei Wuxian was certain, but the fact remained that he had found it.

Avoid imparting knowledge to the wrong individuals indeed.

“Well, then,” Wei Wuxian said, feeling a little bemused and somehow even warmer and happier than he’d been before. Lan Qiren’s begrudging willingness to make an effort to accept him somehow felt more real than Lan Wangji’s quiet and unending devotion, which still sometimes made Wei Wuxian have to pinch himself to see if he were dreaming or not; such a tetchy response was perfectly in character for the grumpy old teacher.

Even if he did end up winning him over, Wei Wuxian suspected he would just be put into the same category as Lan Jingyi – a beloved member of the family that Lan Qiren nevertheless wanted to strangle on a regular basis.

In five years we’ll be family, he thought, and smiled.

“Heeey, I just thought of something,” he said, turning the smile into a grin. “If you’d be talking about demonic cultivation with me, then what do you and Lan Zhan talk about in your afternoons together? Does he ever mention me?”

Lan Qiren looked at him as if looking at an idiot. “He does, at times.”

Wei Wuxian leaned in conspiratorially. “What’s the stupidest thing he’s ever said about me?”

Lan Qiren wanted to hit him, he knew. But he wouldn’t – and Wei Wuxian knew that too.

“…he inquired as to the variety of methods of counting days,” Lan Qiren finally said, looking mildly pained, and at Wei Wuxian’s slightly confused look, looked even more pained and clarified, “If one were inclined to seek alternate definitions for the term ‘every day’ –”

Wei Wuxian burst out laughing.