Chapter Text
You are just going about your regular business, hunting evil spirits with your squad, when you meet this guy who used to be part of the Jin sect but got kicked out and apparently is crazy and always wears a mask? But he’s also clearly being mistreated by his family, and you know that whatever got him kicked out, he does not deserve this humiliation and abuse.
You feel sorry for him, even when he stomps a spirit-summoning flag into the ground and runs unprotected into the middle of a fight and generally causes mild distress and irritation to your fellow Juniors.
Except then it turns out he actually seems quite competent and he even figures out a lot of what’s going on with the goddess statue, and sure he has weird habits, but he is nothing like how Jin Ling describes his bastard uncle. Also maybe he summoned and sent away the Ghost General with his flute? But that’s impossible because the Ghost General should be ash, and anyway, the only one who could control the Ghost General was—
And that’s not even the weirdest part, because then Hanguang Jun arrives. You are certain the two of them have not been close in the past, because surely he would have mentioned it, and besides, when would their paths even have crossed?
But Hanguang Jun is your adopted father/mentor figure, and even though he has shown you nothing but kindness, you know how stoic and reserved he is to the rest of the world. Yet he treats Mo Xuanyu with a care you have never seen him offer to anyone besides yourself and his brother. He is never like this around strangers, and you don’t understand what is going on.
You part ways, then meet back up again not too long afterwards, and any pretense Hanguang Jun might have had at not being incredibly close to Mo Xuanyu dissolves. When they fight together at Yi City, there is a familiarity in the ease of their movements, the way they never have to look to make sure the other has his back. Sometimes when Hanguang Jun looks at Mo Xuanyu, you see more open emotion than you possibly have ever seen before. Hanguang Jun never flinches away from Mo Xuanyu’s touch.
Any pretense Mo Xuanyu might have had at being anything less than an expert cultivator also vanishes. He slips into the role of mentor and protector with ease, joking to keep all of you calm while he teaches you how to save your lives, always putting your safety above his. You wonder if it would be weird to consider a near-stranger fatherly.
He feeds your poisoned fellow Juniors ridiculously spicy congee, and it does cure them, despite all their complaining about how it murdered their mouths. You had tasted some when helping him make it, but even with how strongly it burned your tongue, there was a strange part of you liked it. For some reason it taste familiar, like home somehow, even though you have lived in the Lan sect for as long as you can remember and they only have bland, spiceless food.
That’s when the memories begin coming back, slow and weak, like a faint flute melody in the wind, too quiet to fully make out.
You do not remember your early childhood. This is hardly an unusual phenomenon, but you still feel its loss . You were not always a Lan. That development came when you were around four or five, according to what others have told you. Four seems an old enough age that you always thought that you should have at least some idea of what happened before, but you never have.
But now you have the faint impression of a different vendor in a different city selling a similar grass butterfly to the one you bought on impulse despite being far too old for toys. You think of the familiarity of congee, of the reedy melody you heard the night you met Mo Xuanyu and then again as the Ghost General stopped attacking the juniors and ran off into the trees. You have a handful of clues, but they paint no coherent picture.
These thoughts haunt you for three months, but since Mo Xuanyu returns to Cloud Recesses as you continue on your night hunts, there is nothing but the occasional sparks of familiarity around random items or phrases to fill in the missing parts.
And then the word comes out that Mo Xuanyu is actually Wei Wuxian, the Yiling Patriarch, the founder of demonic cultivation. This is the man who killed thousands, who betrayed the clans, who murdered his own family, including the parents of your—your friend? the boy you’ve run into a few times and survived life-or-death situations with?
Except when everybody else reacts with anger and fear, you... don’t. You can’t explain why, but the name Wei Wuxian brings an echo of comfort, half buried under all the horrible stories you’ve heard about him.
Part of you wonders if it has anything to do with the whispers of memories, that faint deja vu that has started haunting you. Or maybe it’s the way that Hanguang Jun has always turned sad at the mention of Wei Wuxian, how he never speaks a bad word about him despite their alleged rivalry. All your fellow juniors are terrified and furious and hurt at having been deceived, at having grown to like this eccentric man who teased them and saved their lives then turned out to be the monster from all their childhood bedtime stories, and even though you understand them, you feel none of that.
He saves all of you not too long afterwards, and you can’t say you are surprised. Even when all evidence pointed to him being the one to trap you and your friends in a cave for days, it never seemed quite right to you.
It was a set up you learn, as he and Hanguang Jun and the Ghost General save you from an army of corpses and reveal the true traitor. All those terrible deeds you’ve spent your whole life hearing about are not explained away, but this one is, and you have faith that Wei Wuxian is not the villain everyone has made him out to be.
His Ghost General, Wen Ning, certainly isn’t. A living corpse who has slaughtered armies sounds terrifying, but in reality he’s rather sweet. There is something so soft and hopeful in his eyes as he approaches you and asks you for his name. Your friends keep their hands on their swords, but you offer him a smile and an answer. There’s something familiar about him too.
Maybe that’s why you talk to him, despite the intense look in his eyes. Or maybe because he seemed so sad, alone, separated from everyone else, and the intensity seems anything but dangerous. “You—look like my cousin,” he says, and you start to wonder, everything so close to sliding into place.
You don’t know who your parents are or where you came from, but there is something about the clan name Wen that feels so close to something right, despite all the tales you’ve heard about the destruction they wrought.
Then he gives you a grass butterfly, so similar to the one you bought at the market, so similar to something you know was important to you long ago. And like one last pebble taken out from the base of a wall, this small token brings everything above it crumbling down, and suddenly the memories start spilling in. You look at him properly now, because this was your relative , and you once lived with and played with him. He sees the recognition in your eyes, you know, because he steps forward, trembling.
Of course, Jin Ling has to ruin the moment, but now that you know, there is nothing in the world that could keep you from talking to him and finding out more. You were a Wen, you think. You must have been raised in the Burial Grounds by Wei Wuxian, the Yiling Patriarch. You were one of the people he betrayed all the clans to protect. No wonder you never feared the stories of the monstrous Wens and Yiling Patriarch. How could you when they were your family, when you were one of them?
You never could have lived among the Lan Sect if people knew, so you understand why it had to remain a secret.
Still. You have to know more.
“Did Master Wei really put a five year old child in the soil like a turnip?” you ask Wen Ning, at the nearest opportunity. That child was you, and both of you know it, even if you can’t say it out loud, not this close to all these people who would be willing to turn on Wei Wuxian on any excuse, who would be willing to turn on you if they knew the truth.
Wen Ning smiles and nods, and there is more life in the glow of his eyes than any corpse has the right to have. “Just like this!” he says, gesturing, as sparks of memory come back even stronger than before.
And then of course everything goes wrong. Wen Ning throws you into the temple where all the leaders of the four main clans plus Wei Wuxian and Hanguang Jun and a few others are. Jin Guangyao is holding a thread around your friend’s (you think you can call him your friend by now) throat and there is blood, and so many secrets spilled, confessions made.
In the midst of it all, you see Wei Wuxian for the first time since you started to remember, and now there are more memories, sharper, clearer. You remember his spicy congee, the toy butterfly so similar to the ones you hold now that Hanguang Jun bought for you that day Wei Wuxian took you out into the city. Back then, you hadn’t really understood the significance of all those things, why you lived on a mountain full of buried bones, why Wei Wuxian hadn’t bought that toy himself, but now you are older and you know some of the history behind it. Not all of it, you are sure, since so many assumptions of the past have just been proven wrong tonight, and the history you were told had never mentioned the existence of a small child among the supposedly evil remnants of the Wen clan.
You do not know the full truth, but you want to.
Even once everything is over, with the enemies dead and gone, there are a million things going on, relationships being broken or repaired for the first time in over a decade, injuries to be treated, people to reassure that you are okay, that you made it out alive. It takes a bit for you to peel away from everything, to speak to Wei Wuxian, but you find Wen Ning, and the two of you manage to catch up before Wei Wuxian and Hanguang Jun can go far.
Your thoughts and memories are still chaotic and scattered, little bursts of images and sensations that only barely form a coherent picture. But you summon all your determination, sixteen years of questions that are now clamoring for answers in your brain. You take a deep breath. “I have something important that I must ask you.”
Your heart is pounding, and in the past few days, you have faced an army of fierce corpses and fought against the Ghost General (for which he has apologized a thousand times) and helped confront a master manipulator, and somehow this is the most terrifying thing you have done. You are so sure of the truth, but some part of you doubts. How can you truly be sure when you were so young? And even if the man in front of you helped raise so long ago, how can you know if he still has any affection for you, that he is willing to recognize you? These are irrational fears, you know, but they weigh heavily.
Still, you meet his gaze with eyes that are already starting to water and begin to speak of your long-buried memories, the words spilling out with more and more ease as you continue to talk, as his expression changes from confusion to something full of grief and slow realization.
“Wen was my surname,” you say, now confident of this fact, your previous doubts melted away in the face of Wei Wuxian’s teary eyes.
He looks away, blinking as if he can’t believe it and mutters, “Wen was your surname? Isn’t Lan your surname? Lan Sizhui... Lan Yuan... Lan Yuan.” Then he looks up at you with so much hope, full of a scared longing that you know is the same as what fills your own heart. “A-Yuan.”
It has been a lifetime since you last heard your name called out in that voice, and you wonder how you could have gone so long without even knowing you were missing it. You nod. Tears threaten to spill out of your eyes, but you can’t be bothered to fight them.
You can tell it doesn’t seem quite real to him, the way he looks so afraid to believe it. He thought you were dead this whole time, you realize when he turns to Hanguang Jun for confirmation. And that breaks your heart a little more. He had lost so much, and you had lost so much even if you weren’t fully aware of it, but now you have found each other all over again, and the miraculousness of that is almost too much to bear.
You rush forward to hug him, sixteen years of Lan propriety forgotten. You are a child again, clinging onto a man you have always loved, except you are also an adult with so many years of separation only hitting you now that you are finally reunited. You are both and neither, and as his arms come up to wrap around you, you know that all that matters is that you are home.