#also me like *aims wildly at what a slightly precocious 6yo sounds/acts like probably*

[tanoraqui]

hey, pls tell us about those 'kidnapping sizhui back to the burial mounds' aus? 'grave dirt baby'? 'speaker for the dead'? put me down as Scared! and! Intrigued!

Alright, so, the au I’ve mentally titled Speaker for the Dead is inspired by this fic series, which I think has great concepts but wildly insufficient follow-through on consequences

edit: er, this is gonna be the first of several parts. At least 3.

You know the Cluster in Steven Universe? Think of the Burial Mounds like that. Hundreds, maybe thousands of restless souls; some shredded, some simply lost; all neglected. Forgotten. Stewing in their own resentful energy and their exponential shared resentful energy, trapped in these abandoned lack-of-real-graves and forged over time into a nearly-single mass of rage and loss and unfinished business.

And then someone came along - well, was bodily dropped from a height - who could match them rage for rage and loss for loss, unfinished bloody business for unfinished bloody business. No one living and perhaps no one dead remembers if he said, “serve me, lend me your power, and I will carry your sentiments into the living world”, or if the Burial Mounds said, “serve us, wreak our fury and sorrow upon the living world, and in turn you will live and wield our power.” Or maybe it was an instant mutual recognition and agreement?

Well, we all know what happened next. And then he came back, their deathly messenger, and brought others, and for a brief while there was...life, inexplicably, in the land of the dead. Stubborn, hopeful life.

Then death swept through once more, from the outside this time, and the Burial Mounds took their diplomat into their embrace - but they’d gotten a taste for having their voice heard, now. The living far and wide had buckled under the force of their weeping rage, shared the burning sorrow of their thousand dead hearts. And there was one living thing left on their grounds sympathetic to their power...

But not because he shared their rage, loss, unfinished business - save in that he was young, and all his life was unfinished before him. And he was starting to understand loss, as the rest of his family died out of sight. Mostly he was sympathetic in the other way: kind and accepting, and even as a child disinclined to forget those abandoned by everyone else.

Well. Disinclined to forget intentionally. Because a three-year-old isn’t designed to be swarmed by the thousand and one voice(s) of the Burial Mounds, howling their rage and loss and determination to be heard. 

A-Yuan would have died that day, if one ghost in particular hadn’t been too fresh to have sunk into the horde. Barely aware of his own death yet, save that it had hurt, the Burial Mounds’ previous master/messenger stepped in between the boy and the onslaught of the dead - and he was a warrior and defender, he always had been. It had served them well when their unfinished business was little more than the bloody spread of death. 

It’s hard to say what exactly happened, then. Suffice to say, once the dest and resentful energy settled - and certainly by the time the cultivator in white arrived - the Burial Mounds had a representative to the living again, their roots sunk deep into his soul, and their representative had a guardian.

-

Lan Xichen was very carefully not wondering where his brother had gotten this child, not wondering at all - why question; there were far too many orphans, these days, and of course Hanguang-jun was noble enough to save one even while wounded to near death himself.

But the fact remained that the boy - A-Yuan, Lan Yuan now - was laced with incredibly persistent resentful energy. The healers had noticed it first and done their best to cleanse it, and the best of the healers of GusuLan was no small effort. At first, it had seemed to work - the darkness stopped wisping from his lungs when he coughed; the cough and fever themselves disappeared. But still the resentful energy remained, a patina of grime on an otherwise pure soul, and even when Lan Xichen himself played Cleansing, it only seemed to fade, not fully dissipate.

A-Yuan grew sick again, feverish and weeping, complained of hurting in the way of a small child too miserable to give clear answers. Lan Xichen stayed with him, playing Cleansing through the night, and by the wee hours of the morning the boy was positively listless - and still, under close inspection, resentful energy clung to him. 

Lan Xichen closed his eyes and sat back to meditate for a moment. He had to collect himself. 

His brother was asleep in the next room over. He’d been asleep since he got back from...somewhere, nearly collapsing off his sword with blood pouring from every whip mark and with a feverish child in his arms. His continued unconsciousness was partly at the order of the healers, partly of his own accord.

Multiple rules forbade superstition and the taking of omens, but Lan Xichen could feel in his heart that if the boy died, Lan Wangji wouldn’t wake. Or if he did, he would be...empty, the way he’d been for years after their mother’s passing. The way he’d been, to be quite honest, until Wei Wuxian walked into the Cloud Recesses.

Meditation didn’t help. Lan Xichen picked his [xiao] again and began the first notes of Cleaning, pouring every ounce of power he had into the music. On the bed, Lan Yuan whimpered weakly.

There was a rattling from his waist, where jade keys to all the wards of Cloud Recesses hung as a badge of office. An instant later, something yanked Liebing from his hands and flung it across the room, and with the same force shoved him backward. For an instant, he saw a figure standing above him, dark-robed and terrible.

Then it was gone, a mirage of the flickering lantern - but on the bed, A-Yuan had moved. Instead of lying flat, he was curled up as though leaning against something, clutching the air near his chest like something invisible had been placed there for him to hold. ...Hovering slightly above the mattress as though on a lap, and tired tears spilled from his eyes; he murmured something too quiet to hear.

(Cool hands picked A-Yuan up and held him; a hand brushed through his hair and a gentle voice said, “Shh, shh, A-Yuan, it’s alright. I’ve got you.” He looked up to see a pretty face and soft, sad smile, clad in robes that were dark and smelled of damp and blood.

“Mama?” he said blearily. It wasn’t right, but it was the closest word he had for how safe and loved and somehow refreshed be felt. He clutched the roughspun robes like they might vanish from his grip.

“Is that what we’re working with?” The man’s smile turned teasing, and he held A-Yuan a little closer. “Sure. I did birth you from my own body.”)

Lan Xichen picked himself up carefully, retrieved Liebing from beside the far wall and eyed the boy on the bed. Some presence watched him back - resentful, to be sure, but not like any spirit he’d ever felt. The tokens representing the wards against resentful energy and restless ghosts had both stopped shivering - because it was quiescent, or because it was already inside?

He needed answers, but at the same time, he very much needed to not have answers, because they might force him to a decision that his brother would never forgive.

-

Lan Yuan has never left the Cloud Recesses since he arrived. This wasn’t entirely abnormal - he’s only just six years old; there are few reasons for a child that young to go beyond the wards. There are excursions for hikes now and than, to introduce the children to nature, but something always interfered - illness, other duties or even punishments. There is the Spring Festival in Caiyi Town for which disciples of all ages are permitted one day free of all responsibility, including the youngest who are taken down with appropriate adult minders. But Lan Yuan always filially elected to use the special dispensation of this holiday to spend all day with Lan Wangji (per Rules 267-270, exceptions to seclusions were allowed for close family, at the Sect Leader’s discretion.) 

In his third year of seclusion, Lan Yuan now age six and bubbling enthusiastically about the tales and treats he expected his friends to bring back from the festival, Lan Wangji had asked why he refused this holiday. Wide-eyed and pious, Lan Yuan had replied, “Because I want to spend time with Father!” 

Sensitive to too-wide eyes, and too aware of his own shortcomings in the area of festivity and excitement, Lan Wangji had pressed to be sure that this was how he wanted to spend his day: sitting quietly inside, playing music, practicing reading stories of Lan Sect history? 

Pressed, Lan Yuan admitted that his Mama said he shouldn’t go outside the boundaries of Cloud Recesses unless his father was with him.

It wasn’t the first time this “Mama” had come up. Lan Yuan’s Mama said it was not just permitted but required that he run shrieking up the path to the jingshi, to greet Lan Wangji by tackling him about the knees with gleeful laughter. Mama said it was okay if he didn’t eat dinner when he was supposed to, Lan Yuan insisted, because the food was “boring anyway.” 

“Mama”, Lan Wangji was very, very sure, knew a song that Lan Wangji had composed at the age of sixteen and only ever played for one other person, because somehow Lan Yuan knew it to hum himself to sleep on restless nights. It was possible that he simply remembered it subconsciously from the times he couldn’t otherwise call to mind - music was like that. But when asked, he took on the overly cute look of an untrained liar rather than the dreadful uncertainty that slipped into his voice when questions arose of any time before the Cloud Recesses.

Lan Yuan had never stepped foot outside the Cloud Recesses since the day he’d been carried in, yet it was Lan Wangji who hesitated on the border, marked on this back hill by nothing more than a thin strip of bricks at the edge of the field.

“Rabbits!” Lan Yuan cried, and tugged him forward by the hand. “There are rabbits!”

“Xichen would not have misled you,” Lan Wangji said, amused.

“I know.” Lan Yuan immediately slowed down contritely, and looked up at him with confusion. “But there are no pets allowed in the Cloud Recesses.”

“The rabbits are not pets,” said Lan Wangji, perhaps more automatically defensive than the occassion called for. “They simply find this meadow enjoyable, as it is filled with clover and, coincidentally, sometimes scraps from the kitchens. Also - ” He gestured to the line of brick several feet behind them - “we are no longer in the Cloud Recesses.”

“Huh.” Lan Yuan cocked his head as though this was something he’d never heard before, rather than something he’d been explicitly told they were going to do, this first day of Lan Wangji’s release from seclusion. “It’s colder, in a nice way. And there’s a lot of - ”

He shut his mouth abruptly, as though someone had hurriedly told him to stop talking.

“Rabbits!” he shouted suddenly, for all appearances remembering thei presence with absolute delight. “Can I play with them, Father?” He pulled on Lan Wangji’s hand again. “Can we play with the rabbits?” 

“You can and you may,” said Lan Wangji, and let his hand go.

Lan Wangji was itching now, burning, to draw his guqin. But of course this permission meant that he had to spend several minutes carefully coaching Lan Yuan on the way to quietly approach a rabbit without causing it alarm, how to offer some of the lettuce they’d brought and how to pick one up and hold it safely. Mitigating his impatience was the unabashed awe on Lan Yuan’s face when the first rabbit let him pet its ears, and his own gratitude at how several of the older rabbits seemed to remember him. (Or possibly they just recognized “man in white sitting quietly with lettuce”, and found it a more attractive invitation than “quietly bouncing six-year-old with lettuce.”)

But, fascinated though he’d been, Lan Yuan quickly lost interest in the rabbits. He pet them absently, but kept looking around as though more interesting things were happening in the clear air. A sudden wind whipped though the meadow, acrid with resentful energy, and he scooted to Lan Wangji’s side.

(”Everyone shut the fuck up!” Mama’s robes and hair lashed as resentful energy rushed out from him, pushing back the clamoring crowd of ghosts. His fists clenched and his eyes flashed red, and the scent of blood rose about him. “You will line up single-file to talk to A-Yuan, if and when I say you get to talk to him! Right now, he’s playing - oh, look, Hanguang-jun’s getting out his guqin, probably to play Inquiry. Go bother him!”)

Lan Wangji couldn’t stand it anymore. He settled Wangji on his lap and set his fingers for the strong opening chords of a general Inquiry, to announce his presence and summon any spirits within range - and paused, and leaned over to ask Lan Yuan, “Is your Mama here, now?”

“Ye - ” Lan Yuan squeezed his lips shut and shook his head. “I mean, no. Who’s Mama?”

“Lan Yuan,” Lan Wangji said sternly.

Lan Yuan shrunk, but didn’t break. 

“Mama’s a secret,” he whispered fiercely. “It’s a rule, like on the wall.”

“I know.” They’d had this conversation before, and Lan Wangji had never pushed beyond this. Even a child was allowed secrets, and Lan Wangji was in forced seclusion, punishment for a crime he didn’t regret but would accept the consequences of nonetheless, in spirit as well as letter (fave for A-Yuan’s near-daily visits - but that was allowed.) Moreover, even from the secluded jingshi, someone might hear his Inquiry and have questions of their own, and- and what if he was wrong? The disappointment would be like death again.

But now he was not just out of his house but beyond the border of the Cloud Recesses for the first time in three years, far from any plausible earshot save the rabbits’  and soaking in sunlight that reminded him of a smile. Now, he thought he’d seen a figure in black for a split second when the cold wind blew. and suddenly the idea of being right and not knowing it was more horrific than any other outcome.

He swallowed a rasping, Please - unseemly, and unjust to burden a child with. He gathered parental authority about himself like a cloak and improvised, “Rabbits do not like secrets. It is rude to keep them in this, their home.” 

Lan Yuan bit his lip, and Lan Wangji gentled his voice. “They will still be secrets away from the rabbits’ meadow, and there will be no consequences for any broken rules.”

“Oh!” Lan Yuan sagged against Lan Wangji’s side and let out a sigh like he was coming home at the end of a month-long night hunt. “Thank you, Hanguang-jun.” He bowed formally, from the seating position, in the direction of the greatest cluster of rabbits, which seemed unconcerned by the gathering resentful energy. “And thank you, rabbits, for your hospitality!” 

He sat up, posture Lan-perfect, and pointed. “Mama’s there, pushing all the other ghosts into line. He says they have to talk one at a time, like in lessons. Are the ghosts in lessons, now? Is Mama a teacher, like Senior Feng and Great-Uncle?”

Lan Wangji, quite honestly, didn’t hear most of his son’s questions. He was too busy playing, perhaps more hesitant than he had ever played Inquiry in his life, Wei Ying?

He held his breath as the small light of a lost soul alighted upon the strings and plucked out, I am Ying Huang.

The breath seemed lost for good.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Miss Ying,” said Lan Yuan. “Um - ” He glanced at Lan Wangji and back at the space above the guqin. “Yes, I- we- Father can tell your husband that it wasn’t his fault - oh wow, you had a baby? What’s its name?” A pause. “That’s pretty! I bet she’ll be pretty, too - you are, so I bet she’ll be pretty just like her mother!”

The chatter, a six-year-old’s mix of earnestness and polite nothings mimicked from adults, reeled him back from that distant, breathless place. Inquiry was still in effect and the spirit continued to play, far more slowly than Lan Yuan responded, Tell Ying Chao it was not his fault, nor the baby’s. 

“A-Yuan,” Lan Wangji managed. “This - Ying Huang. She is not your Mama?”

“No?” Lan Yuan looked utterly baffled. He pointed to somewhere directly ahead of him. “Mama is right there. He’s tall and wears black and has blood all over, sometimes, when he’s angry or sad. Miss Ying is here - ” he pointed at the space on the opposite side of the guqin - “and she’s short and has a greenish dress, and only only has blood on her - oh! Mama’s coming here now...”

Another spirit light solidified as it approached the guqin. This one was brighter and darker at once, strong and resentful - yet not...active in it. It simply was. 

It hovered over the strings for a moment, quivering side to side like the eyes of a shamed person, before alighting and gently plucking out, Hello, Hanguang-jun.

There was no way to know that it was him, and yet... Lan Wangji was breathless again, but this time it felt as though he simply had too much inside him to have room for air.

His fingers moved over the strings without conscious direction. He thought he might be mouthing the name. Wei Ying.

The guqin language of Inquiry was necessarily limited; there were only so many combinations one could make of seven strings. There was only one clear affirmative, yes, and no formal or informal intonations.

Nevertheless, Wei Wuxian managed to express, Yeah. Lan Wangji could imagine him shrugging, giving a rueful smile. Sorry about the whole ‘Mother’ lie. It was his idea.

Understandable. The rhythms of Inquiry called for question and answer. Did you not birth him yourself?

“Mama is laughing,” Lan Yuan announced, as pleased as though he’d organized every part of this himself. He sat up straight, hands in his lap, every inch the proper Lan disciple. “Father, can- may we just talk, now, instead of using Inquiry? It’s much faster, and I can understand it.”

“I’m afraid I cannot understand Wei Ying any other way,” said Lan Wangji, feeling real regret, On the guqin, Wei Wuxian played, We really do need a better way - this is boring. But a way with less soul-binding resentful ghost fuckery.

(Another word that was absolutely not in the vocabulary of Inquiry. Wei Wuxian, as always, managed anyway.)

Three years of parenting practice had one of Lan Wangji’s hands protectively on Lan Yuan’s shoulder, the other darting across Wangji’s strings. What do you mean, soul-binding resentful ghost trouble?

Wei Wuxian’s soul moved back from the strings, fading until it was barely visible. Lan Yuan nodded and shifted until he was sitting beside the guqin, between them.

“Mama says don’t worry, A-Yuan is fine,” he told Lan Wangji seriously. “He says it’s a...” He narrowed his eyes in focus. “‘Severe but non-ma-lig-nant case of resentful energy inculcation and imprinting, with a side order of a little bit of passive possession. By the conjoined spirits of the Burial Mounds.” 

Lan Wangji must been visibly horrified, because Lan Yuan looked worried as he leaned forward and patted his knee. 

“It means I can talk to Mama and other ghosts,” he explained in his own words, “and they can understand living people better when I’m there.” His face twisted skeptically. “Because that’s special?”

“It is very special,” Lan Wangji confirmed, still reeling a little from “passive possession by the conjoined spirits of the Burial Mounds.” But if Wei Wuxian said it was fine, then it must be fine - he would, Lan Wangji was exquisitely sure, mask any danger to himself, but never to A-Yuan.

Still, his gaze flicked to beyond Wei Wuxian, where there was nothing but silence, sunlight, and idle rabbits sleeping, or gnawing down the grass - and, he was sure, still a line of ghosts apparently determined to speak to his son.

Wei Wuxian must have noticed the movement of his eyes, because Lan Yuan began reciting dutifully again: “Mama says that there’s fourteen more spirits here, not counting Ying Huang - who went back to everyone else, now. There’s a draw, he thinks, to A-Yuan, even if they don’t know con-scious-ly that he can talk to them. And, of course, the handsome - oh, the great Hanguang-jun, known master of Inquiry.”

"Will they accept Inquiry with myself,” Lan Wangji asked, “while Lan Yuan continues to play with the rabbits?”

Lan Yuan watched the space where Wei Wuxian was.

“’Lan Zhaaan,’” he repeated, less certainly. “’You’re too - sorry, Mama. ...Yes, Mama.” He turned back to Lan Wangji. “He says you’re a very good dad and he’s so glad you’ve learned so much since the street in Yiling.”

Lan Wangji felt his ears turn red, which was ridiculous. It wasn’t exactly a high bar, to have learned how to treat a child better than to stand in silent bewilderment while the child wailed at one’s feet.

Oh.

“A-Yuan. Do you remember...”

Lan Yuan shook his head, looking down in shame.

“That is fine,” Lan Wangji said firmly. “Do you wish to resume playing with the rabbits?”

Lan Yuan’s entire being seemed to brighten; if he’d been a rabbit himself, his ears would have stood straight in excitement. But he looked guiltily at the line of waiting ghosts.

(They were mostly common people of Gusu, ghostly echoes of clothing in rough cloth and dull colors. Many were bloody, from missing limbs or cut chests or more, others were simply pale and thin. One had the ghost of a cat draped stubbornly around her shoulders. The farther they got from him, the less clear they were to see, but sadness and yearning radiated from all of them, even the ones who scowled or glared, dark energy flicking around their forms like a shadow of the aura Mama could summon.

“Go on, A-Yuan,” said Mama, with one of his warm smiles that felt like home. “Your dad and I will handle the deathly supplicants, but we can’t play with the bunnies nearly as well as you will - but be careful! They might recognize that you’re part radish, and try to eat you!”)

Lan Yuan leapt to his feet with a grin, and bowed quickly to both of them. “I’ll be careful! Thank you, Mama; thank you, Father!” 

“Go slowly,” Lan Wangji called as he darted off. “The rabbits - ”

The rabbits had already scattered in the face of Lan Yuan’s run, save for one particularly lazy old one with a whole leaf of lettuce to itself.

He will learn, Wei Wuxian said on the guqin, with a meaningless trill that Lan Wangji had no trouble translating as a smile.