#wen ruohan | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

robininthelabyrinth · 10 months ago

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Descent - ao3

Pairing: Lan Qiren/Wen Ruohan Summary:

Lan Qiren was old. Lan Qiren was tired.

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Lan Qiren was old.

Lan Qiren had pain in his body that would never leave him. Lan Qiren had pain in his heart that grew worse by the day. Lan Qiren had one nephew in seclusion, still, and one who did not speak with him, preferring the company of his husband over everyone else in their sect – over everyone else, period. His obsession seemingly permitted little closeness to any of his blood kin, no cousins, no nephews, nothing; even the juniors who were no longer juniors were closer to Wei Wuxian than Lan Wangji, for all that they still idolized him. Lan Qiren had spent his entire life being his sect’s acting leader and exactly none of it enjoying it.

Lan Qiren was old. Lan Qiren was tired.

Lan Qiren was too tired to teach any longer.

Lan Qiren was too tired to live any longer.

Lan Qiren closed his eyes every evening and woke up every morning without fail.

Lan Qiren did not understand why.

He was old – too old, really. His cultivation was good, but nothing particularly special, and yet he kept on going, and going, and going, long past the point of reason. His peers in the other Great Sects had all died unnatural deaths, but at the rate he was going, he was going to outlive all of his peers, period.

And when they were all gone, he might keep it up, and outlive his juniors, too.

Lan Qiren was tired.

Lan Qiren was full of regret.

Lan Qiren went to sleep as he always did, and then he opened his eyes the way he always did –

But everything was different.

His body, which had ached ever since his torture at the burning of the Cloud Recesses, did not hurt.

His surroundings, which had been ever so subtly but distinctly wrong since the Cloud Recesses had been rebuilt in ways that tried but failed to match his memories, had resumed the appearance they had had in the first half of his life.

His nephews…

His nephews were still young.

Teenagers, though he could not tell on sight exactly how old; it had been too long. They pretended to be so serious, particularly Lan Wangji, but compared to their adult selves, they seemed in Lan Qiren’s eyes to be so very light. So unburdened.

He was in the past.

The Cloud Recesses had not yet burned. Lan Xichen had not yet based his emotional stability on the goodness of a young man he met while on the run. Lan Wangji had not yet loved and lost – or at least he had not yet lost, since it was entirely possible that Wei Wuxian had already come and gone and taken Lan Wangji’s heart with him while he was at it.

Lan Qiren was in the past.

Lan Qiren did not know how it had happened, but his every sense confirmed that it was so.

Lan Qiren had the chance to change everything.

He only needed to strain his memory and dig up everything he could about the Sunshot Campaign. He only needed to figure out what parts of the past to change and what parts to keep – what tragedies he could prevent, and which ones he couldn’t, and which ones had to be tolerated because to go another way would lead only to something worse. The burning of the Cloud Recesses, his brother’s death, Lan Xichen’s terrible flight and subsequent fateful meeting with Meng Yao, Lan Wangji’s broken leg and the indoctrination camp, the destruction of the Jiang sect, Wei Wuxian as the Yiling Patriarch, Meng Yao as spy…all that tragedy, all that sorrow, and every piece of it potentially inextricably connected to some other potentially invaluable piece, without which life might not be worth living.

Lan Qiren…

Lan Qiren was tired.

He was tired, and he was old.

He had to change things. That much was unquestionable.

But he did not have to change them like that.

“Inform the elders that I am going on a short trip,” he told one of the disciples with a no-longer-familiar face that passed by his door, doing his best not to guess whether this was one of the ones that died in the burning or in the war or thereafter. “I will be departing immediately. I do not require company.”

“Yes, Teacher Lan,” the disciple said respectfully. “I will tell them at once. Do you want me to summon your nephews so that you can bid them farewell?”

Had Lan Qiren done that, once upon a time, so long ago, and done it often enough that this disciple would know to ask about it? Had his nephews appreciated it when he did, or at least tolerated it, or had they treated his efforts to include them in his life as a burden, the way he knew they would in the future?

He could no longer remember.

“No,” Lan Qiren said. “It is a short trip. I will not disturb them.”

The disciple saluted.

Lan Qiren left.

He flew in the general direction of Qinghe for a while, no longer willing to blindly assume that his orders would be obeyed and that he was not being followed. When he had confirmed he was truly alone, perhaps because of how quickly he had departed, he turned his sword to Qishan instead, and went to the Nightless City.

“I do not have an appointment or an invitation,” he said to the guard that waited outside the gate. “But I wish to speak with Sect Leader Wen regardless.”

The door guard’s expression suggested that this was a very foolish thing to want.

Lan Qiren did not disagree, familiar as he was with Wen Ruohan’s current state of mind – to be more specific, his increasing lack of sanity and equally increasing ambition – but he did not falter or change his request. He did not leave.

He waited.

Even as the time dragged on and on, he did not mind the insult, and he did not lose his temper.

He waited.

In time, he was allowed in, and shown to the receiving hall.

Wen Ruohan was sitting on the Wen sect’s main seat when he arrived. There were no servants or guards in the hall, but then, none were needed to make his appearance more intimidating: just him, the most powerful cultivator of their age, and him alone, looming above all the rest.

It was enough.

It was more than enough.

In Lan Qiren’s entire life, he had never known anyone who could match Wen Ruohan in all his might and glory. Even Wei Wuxian in the height of his glory, with all his demonic cultivation, had only been able to contend with the Wen armies, rather than the man himself; Wen Ruohan himself had remained within the Nightless City, easily repelling them all, even when they had all tried to attack him all together at once.

In the end, he had only fallen to a strike from within.

“Sect Leader Lan,” Wen Ruohan said. His voice was rich and slow, thick with menace and unspoken threat. “And without any advance notice, too…What an unexpected surprise.”

Lan Qiren saluted politely, but did not apologize.

“What emergency brings you here?”

Here of all places, Wen Ruohan meant. His gaze was as steady as a snake about to strike its prey.

“No emergency,” Lan Qiren said steadily. “A question.”

“A question?” Wen Ruohan didn’t so much as blink. “How interesting. One that only I can answer, I suppose. By all means, then, go on, tell me: what is your question?”

Lan Qiren looked up at him, meeting those blazing red eyes with his own steady, unshaken gaze.

“What will it take?” he asked.

Wen Ruohan arched his eyebrows. He seemed unmoved, even bored, as if he had anticipated all the potential paths this conversation could take and found them all equally dull. “What do you mean? What will it take – what will what take?”

“What will it take,” Lan Qiren said patiently, “for you to stop?”

Wen Ruohan frowned.

Apparently he hadn’t anticipated everything.

Strange. To Lan Qiren’s mind, it was all perfectly logical.

“I do not want to burn,” Lan Qiren said, and Wen Ruohan’s eyes abruptly narrowed. “I do not want to be tortured, to lose my home, or for my family to suffer unimaginably. I have come here to ask you how I can prevent that.”

Wen Ruohan was silent for a long while.

“Now that is indeed a question,” he finally said. He seemed thoughtful. “Doesn’t your sect have a rule against making assumptions?”

“It is not an assumption,” Lan Qiren said. He had forgotten much about the past, but he would never forget the smell of smoke, the crackling blaze, the screams. Nor would he forget upon whose orders it had been that it had happened at all. “It will happen. I do not know if you have already drawn up the plans or if that is still to come, but if we continue along our present path, it will happen. You will send your army to burn the Cloud Recesses as a demonstration of your power and as warning to all the Great Sects, telling us to bow before you or face the consequences.”

Wen Ruohan did not deny it. Perhaps the plans really were already in place.

“I do not want to burn,” Lan Qiren said once more. “Tell me what I must do to prevent it, and I will.”

Wen Ruohan seemed to be waiting for him to continue, but Lan Qiren did not. He had no more to say.

“What, is that all?” Wen Ruohan finally asked. The faint traces of surprise on his face made him seem oddly human, in a way he had not been earlier. A sign of hope, perhaps, though maybe that was just Lan Qiren deceiving himself; he had grown far too good at that. “No conditions? No restrictions? ‘Tell me what I must do, as long as it’s not’…?”

Lan Qiren shook his head. He had come with no conditions.

“What if I asked you to surrender your sect to me?”

“I am only acting Sect Leader, and lack the authority to bind my sect,” Lan Qiren said promptly. He’d expected the question. “But I can submit a proposal to the elders asking them to agree to it and put forward all my strength to argue for it, if that is what you wish.”

“What if I asked you to murder someone for me?”

“I am a scholar, not an assassin,” Lan Qiren said. “But I have a sword, and I can use it if I must.”

Wen Ruohan’s gaze was thoughtful, and heavy.

“What if,” he said slowly, “I asked you to give yourself to me?”

Lan Qiren frowned – not in refusal, but in confusion. He did not understand.

“Is that not what I am already doing?” he asked, a little hesitantly. “I am here, asking for you to instruct me. I have made no conditions, imposed no restrictions, set in place no limits. If you ask me to violate my principles and my family’s rules, I will do so, though it breaks my heart. If you ask me to give up my sect’s freedom and autonomy, I will do so to the best of my ability, though I cannot promise to succeed. All I ask in return is that you not harm my family or act in a way that brings harm to them. What part of myself have I not already submitted to you? Or is it my life that you want..? If you want it, you may have it, freely offered.”

“I do not want your death, if that is what you mean,” Wen Ruohan said. “But I admit to having unexpectedly developed some interest in your life. Come here.”

Lan Qiren approached the seat – the throne, if he were being honest. Wen Ruohan saw himself as the ruler of the cultivation world, and the Nightless City reflected that belief. In his past life, Lan Qiren had visited this place a number of times before it had finally fallen, and he had never been permitted to approach as he did now; Wen Ruohan was too paranoid for that.

Perhaps Wen Ruohan no longer considered him a threat.

He was right not to.

Lan Qiren approached, then stopped at a respectful distance, only a few large strides away.

“Closer.”

Lan Qiren came closer, stopping only a small step or two away.

“Closer.”

Lan Qiren came to within arm’s length, until he was very nearly standing right before Wen Ruohan, their knees very nearly brushing against each other.

“Kneel.”

Lan Qiren knelt. He was too close to the other man to go into a full kowtow, as he knew Wen Ruohan preferred his servants and disciples to do, so he did not do so.

“Look at me.”

Lan Qiren looked up and met Wen Ruohan’s eyes.

“You never answered my question,” Wen Ruohan said, and Lan Qiren frowned. “If I agree to ensure that your sect is unharmed, your family does not suffer, your home does not burn…will you give yourself to me?”

“Yes,” Lan Qiren said. He still did not understand what exactly Wen Ruohan wanted, but that was immaterial, as long as his goal was obtained – as it seemed, impossibly, that it would be. “I will.”

“Good,” Wen Ruohan said. “Then we are agreed.”

And then he kissed him.

#my fic #my fics #lan qiren #wen ruohan #old ficlet

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