[OOM] Cultivate Virtue in the Family, and it will be Overflowing

[thesecondjade]

Lan Zhan was under house arrest.

The jingshi is his again -- he is imprisoned there, his jade charm removed. The Elders believe he cannot escape the wards, and honestly, he doesn't care to. He doesn't need to. He knows at any time, he could leave. Anytime, he could ask. The Bar answered once, and the Bar will do so again. It will not leave A-Yuan fatherless. It knows too much is at stake.

He tends to his own wounds like the elders convene, puts all of his old clothing with it's bright blues and crisp, expensive whites into the brazier and pulls out his thin, mourning whites. He is dressed for a funeral. Potentially his own, he knows, but... if that is it, so be it. He has only one future he must secure now, and it is not his own.

Lan Zhan makes his last preparations. He takes his guqin and cuts its strings, a message to all that will see it. The cord is cut between him and Wei Wuxian, and this guqin that bore his same name will never sing again. Then he traces his most potent wards, infusing them with all the energy he can spare and still be functional. No one will find his cache of treasures, hidden beneath the jingshi floorboards. No one would bother to look, anyway. No one suspects Lan Zhan of sentimentality.

Then he waits. Lan Xichen will come to him when it is time. They will try to take his pride, may yet take his life, but there is only one thing that matters now: the child in need. So he waits, kneeling before the open doors of the jingshi in silence, while guards are posted at the gates to his courtyard.

Comments

[reachforblueskies]

"As you wish." He cannot grant much, with the shackles of clan responsibility weighing his every move, but this is within his power. "Though when I thought of it, I expected some warning before gaining a nephew."

[thesecondjade]

"Adoption was the only way you could get one," Lan Zhan says, turning his back on the threshold and walking back toward the jingshi. "After our last discussion, I thought I would just settle into teaching and forget the rest."

There would be no wife, and with no wife there are no children.

"Now, you have a nephew. He is a good, smart boy," Lan Zhan says. "He was... he was sick, very ill, when I found him. I was able to summon a threshold, and get him to the safe place beyond. They have good medicine, and kind people who are tending to him."

So if he survives, he knows that he will be well enough for travel. There is no way they'll let A-Yuan die.

[reachforblueskies]

"I will care for him, while you recover." Lan Xichen refuses to think about his brother dying under the lash, refuses to accept that can be an option. He also refuses to place the child under the care of Lan Qiren - he will always love his uncle, and revere him as the closest thing he has to a true father figure, but he knows Lan Wangji would never accept it. Not now. Probably never again.

Lan Xichen's small family is fractured in so many ways, and even with all of his effort, he is only barely holding it together. He stays at his brother's side, not wanting to hurry this moment on.

[thesecondjade]

"Mn." Lan Zhan is in no rush to return to the jingshi - half because he is exhausted and he needs all his spare strength to survive what it coming, half because he knows once he's on the otherside of this, he will never look at his family the same way again. For now he can delude himself that this will be survivable, that he will not be entirely changed by it.

He will be wrong, and he knows it. But he wants to believe that he will still be able to pursue justice without regret.

It's not the first lie he's told himself.