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Lan Jingyi, in his youth, had not been renowned for his responsibility. He had often been scolded by his teachers for his inattention, had always been found in the midst of trouble, had broken more rules than any Lan disciple save for one. That one was his dearest teacher, the father of his best friend, a surrogate father to Jingyi on many occasions as he was to all the young disciples he taught.
He could remember a time, when he had been very young, when Lan Wangji, their beloved Hanguang-Jun had been quiet and sad, something like ice surrounding him despite his gentleness. He had known his young teacher had been in seclusion for a great offence, that the stiffness of his movements were due to the scars of the punishment whip on his back, that his name was often whispered alongside the name of the feared Yiling Laozu.
He could remember the time that all changed the night that Wei Wuxian, the Yiling Laozu that everyone thought long dead, had tumbled back into their lives to save them all. He had returned with tales of the future, with evidence of what awaited them all if the true perpetrator of a great many of the crimes he was accused of was allowed to continue on his destructive path. Within an hour of returning, Wei Wuxian had saved the life of Nie Mingjue and brought the crimes of Jin Guangyao to the fore. His name had been exonerated and they had all been saved.
He remembered getting to know the man who so many had spoken of in fear only to find him personable, clever, but also deeply sad. Lan Jingyi knew he had been pulled into a time far into the future, had met the reincarnation of Lan Wangji there, had lived a life there before he had returned to save them. It was only later, when he was an adult himself and Wei Wuxian and the Lan Wangji he knew had been happily married for many years, that he learned the whole story.
Though Wei Wuxian loved Lan Wangji, he had also loved the Lan Wangji he had met and then lost in the future time and missed him greatly.
It was many years later still, when those years in the future had grown into little more than a story, their lives full and busy, that Lan Jingyi had been given his solemn duty by Wei Wuxian.
With the majority of cultivators now forbidden to strive for immortality for fear of the future Wei Wuxian had prevented becoming a reality, Lan Jingyi had found himself one of the select few permitted to do so in an effort to protect their memories and their teachings for the future. He had never been one for responsibility but his love for his sect and their teachings had made him a true candidate for the honour and he had taken to it with a seriousness he had never before known.
It was when he had been chosen to carry their teachings into the centuries ahead that Wei Wuxian had approached him with what felt like the simplest of requests. To learn a song.
'It's very simple,' Wei Wuxian had said when he spoke with him, 'A tune from the future. Sort of like a folk song. Lan Zhan, the other Lan Zhan from then, loved it. He was always singing it. I would like to hear it again and, if you ever meet him in the future, I'm sure he would love to hear it played. It will be like a connection from here to there.'
Lan Jingyi had agreed, meeting Wei Wuxian whenever he could and gradually learning the strange melody he wanted him to learn, striving to make it work on the strings of his qin and lamenting that he had not studied as hard as some of his peers had. Still, he learned the tune, wrote it down so he would not forget it and put it to the back of his mind as life went on as it always had done.
Immortality was a bitter pill. Though he was proud he would continue to protect their teachings, he was forced to watch as those around him went on to whatever came next. He laid down the bones of his friends and his loved ones and remained sentinel over their tombs as the centuries passed by.
He never forgot his promise. He knew there would come a year when Lan Wangji would return to the Cloud Recesses but it would not be the Lan Wangji who had taught him, instead it would be a reincarnation of the man, raised in modern times with different tastes and a different life. Wei Wuxian had spoken of him often, the man who had loved to study, to row, and who loved all things from the 1980s. Lan Jingyi looked forward to meeting him and seeing the differences and similarities.
When the time had come, when Wen Qing and Wen Ning had gone out into the world beyond the Cloud Recesses and flown to England to save this Lan Zhan's life, Lan Jingyi waited. He waited and he practised once more the song Wei Wuxian had taught him so many centuries before.
Lan Zhan's return to the Cloud Recesses had been a strange one. He looked almost identical to Lan Jingyi's teacher, sounded like him too even when he spoke in English to his companion Jenny who was as infamous in Wei Wuxian's stories of the future as any of the other players. Lan Zhan, with his memories of both his own self and the person he had been in the Cloud Recesses centuries before, had of course been sad on his return. He had gone to kneel at the bones of the man he had loved and Lan Jingyi wondered if it had been the right idea for him to come to such a place, his grief seeming insurmountable for several long days until hope returned. Hope that, as Lan Wangji had returned, so had Wei Wuxian and one day, if fate was kind, they would be reunited.
Lan Zhan and Jenny soon began to ask for stories of Wei Wuxian, of the life he had lived when he had left them to return to the past, and Lan Jingyi found great joy in the telling of them all, reminding him of the teacher who became and friend and then family to him over the years.
When Lan Jingy finished speaking and it finally felt Lan Zhan was leaning closer to hope than he could towards despair over his lost love, he ventured that he had one last thing to pass on from Wei Wuxian. Both Lan Zhan and Jenny had sat quietly patient as Lan Jingyi had tuned his qin and then called to memory the tune he had learned from Wei Wuxian so many years ago.
He had not expected the frown on Lan Zhan's face, worrying for a moment that he had forgotten the piece in the intervening centuries and that the music no longer resembled the beloved folk song the man before him had been reported to love. It was Jenny who began singing quietly first, her voice shaking with suppressed laughter before something in them both broke and Lan Jingyi was treated to the rare joy that was Lan Zhan's laughter.
He tried for several minutes to calm them so he could understand just what had been so funny about the song he had played. Lan Zhan finally recovering himself for long enough to pull his phone from his pocket and play the song that Lan Jingyi had played for him.
Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.
And that, my friends, is the tale of the most long awaited Rick Roll in history.