Thread by @stiltonbasket

#WarprizeJiSeason where Wei Wuxian joins the war in disguise, and returns to the Burial Mounds with the Wens without letting anyone know he's alive (apart from JC and JYL, whom he told about his missing golden core).

After people start spreading rumors about him snatching maidens off the street--and providing evidence of their daughters and female servants and even wives going missing--Lan Wangji starts to notice a pattern.

For every woman who was stolen away, *someone* insists that she was unhappy, or in some kind of danger.
Families who abuse their staff end up with all their maids and cooks missing, ripped from their beds in the dead of night with no sign of a struggle.

Men who keep adding concubines to their households wake up to find their childless legitimate wives gone, along with all their belongings.

Young girls are kidnapped from their families on their wedding days, snatched out of their bridal sedans and spirited off to the Burial Mounds; and at last, Lanling Jin decides to appease the Yiling Laozu with willing sacrifices in an effort to stop the kidnappings.

"He used talismans to paralyze us," say the men assigned to guard one of the brides. "He threw them down onto our heads from above, and we were forced to sit and watch as he snatched our young mistress. After that, our own legs walked us away against our our will."

Lan Wangji has only known one man who could bend people to his will with talismans.

And even after all these years, that man is still the love of his life.

When the first round of sacrifices goes to Yiling, Lan Wangji disguises himself as a woman and takes the place of the youngest.
"My family took five gold ingots for me," she wept, on the day of her departure. "Young Master Jin said they would be punished if I tried to run away."

Lan Wangji gives her money and food, and tells her to make her way to the Cloud Recesses.
"My brother will not give you up, and you are young enough to become an accomplished cultivator in your own right. Go and be well, and never come back to Lanling again."

(a/n: in case it wasn't clear, Young Master Jin = Jin Zixun.)

As Lan Wangji expected, the Yiling Patriarch accepts the girls; and also as he expected, the Yiling Patriarch is his Wei Ying.

He was expecting to find a community struggling to live, because Wei Ying left the cultivation world with nothing but the clothes on his back and the Wens he stole from the prison camps.
Instead, he finds thriving fields, schools and craftspeople, inns and packed libraries.

All the missing women are here, living in peace and plenty, and Wei Ying comes to meet the Jin tributes with a laughing child in his arms.
Lan Wangji's heart skips a beat at the sight of him.

He speaks to the girls gently, assures them that they will be safe, and summons a group of ghost brides to lead them to their quarters.
Lan Wangji is last in line, clad in too-short golden robes with a veil tied over his face; Wei Ying only reaches him after the others are gone.

He looks at Lan Wangji without recognition, only with honest kindness, but Lan Wangji cannot bear to be looked at by his sworn zhiji in that way.

Wei Ying once looked at him with a kind of reverence-as if every word he spoke was immeasurably precious-and used to tease him, too. This Wei Ying does not needle him or cling to him or talk about his beauty-he smiles, asking Lan Wangji if he would like a living maid or a ghost.

Lan Wangji pulls off his veil, shoves Wei Ying into the nearest wall, and leans in close to his face.
Wei Ying gasps. "Lan Zhan-"
"Two years," Wangji growls, while the baby reaches up to play with the beads on his gown. "Two years, and not one word to tell me you were alive!"

He puts his hand over Wei Ying's heart, and wishes he could lay his head there and listen to it beat.
"Your robes are too thick," he whispers. "I cannot feel your heartbeat through them, nor your warmth. Give me your hand."

Wei Ying closes his eyes.
"Lan Zhan," he says painfully, "I knew you thought of me as a friend. Did you--did you truly think I would let you believe I was gone forever, if I had another choice?"

"You could make me suffer however you wished and I would hold you just as dear. Give me your hands, Wei Ying, and put me out of my misery."

Wei Ying puts his palm on Lan Wangji's chest and pushes him away. Not forcefully, of course, but Wangji takes a step back all the same.

"It's true that I wear thick robes these days," he says, with a small, sad smile that nearly rips Wangji's heart in two. "I never used to, you remember, but now--well. They keep A-Yuan from catching a chill, Lan Zhan. He won't find living warmth in my hands, or anywhere else."

Lan Wangji's blood runs cold. "Why wouldn't he?"

In answer, Wei Ying places his upturned hand in Wangji's.

There is no rush of spiritual energy flowing under his skin, he realizes. Wei Ying has lost his cultivation.

And worse--oh, a thousand times worse--there is no pulse, either.

Lan Wangji looks up, terrified.

"Wei Ying," he chokes, "Wei Ying, what--"

Wei Ying pulls his high collar aside, revealing a forest of black veins and scars on his throat.

"Now you see!" Wei Ying whispers, with another wretched smile. "I couldn't stay at Lotus Pier. I entered the war and took my revenge, but the way home was barred. Losing my golden core was one thing, but I don't eat. I don't sleep. When I saw Shijie again, I couldn't cry."

"I told them I lost my jindan to Wen Zhuliu, so they let me leave Yunmeng. And now, here I am."

Lan Wangji can scarcely see through his tears. "It must be corpse poisoning. If you are still conscious, still speaking, then surely--"
"I'm possessing my own corpse, my Lan Zhan," Wei Ying says gently. "A corpse preserved and pieced together, but a corpse all the same."

After that, Lan Wangji can't bear to leave Wei Ying's side.
He gets rid of his Jin clothing and puts on one of Wei Ying's spare robes, and spends the rest of the day following him around.
In the evening, he sends word to his brother.

I have found what I seek, Lan Wangji writes. Xiongzhang need not expect me home for the foreseeable future.
His brother will understand. Lan Xichen is newly married, and hopelessly in love with his own husband; he would never call Wangji away from Wei Ying, especially not now.

Over the next week or so, Lan Wangji keeps forgetting that Wei Ying is technically dead.
His steps are as lithe as they ever were, his laughter as bright, and having Wei Ying's eyes on him still feels like gazing into the sky at dawn.

But then he moves a little too quickly, or fails to appear at the Wens' dining hall during mealtimes, and sometimes he touches Lan Wangji--not often, but sometimes--and the touch is far colder than living flesh should be. Sometimes, Wei Ying wonders aloud how A-Yuan can stand it.

"He treasures it," Lan Wangji says each time, "because he treasures you."

As I treasure you, he wants to say. Your touch is still yours. It has not changed.

After that night, he leaves the guest quarters Wen Ning set up for him and moves into Wei Ying's bedroom.

"How did you die?" he asks, about a month later. It's almost an afterthought; before then, he hardly believed the fact of Wei Ying's death, and he never dared to contemplate how it might have happened. "Was it Wen Zhuliu?"

Wei Ying is silent for a while.
"From what I can tell," he says at last, "it was a combination of thirst and infection. I had deep wounds in my back from a whip, and my golden core was gone, and there was no water to drink."

"I don't know how far I walked, looking for a pond or stream. But then I fell down, and I couldn't get up again."

"When I woke, I was still lying where I fell-but my body was shambling through the underbrush a hundred feet away, trying to find a path to the Yiling River. I never had a soul-calming ceremony, and with the resentment in the air, my body became unsettled the very moment I died."

Lan Wangji turns onto his side and pulls Wei Ying into his arms.
"You feared what I would think of you, if I knew the truth?"
"No, not really. I thought you would rather believe that I died at peace and crossed the Naihe Bridge, rather than lingering here."

"If you had died--even if it were in peace, and not torment--the world would have been dust and ashes to me until I followed you," Lan Wangji tells him. "But now you are here, freed from pain and surrounded by loved ones, and I am with you. I am glad you stayed."

He does not speak of love, just then. Wei Ying knows the truth of his heart, and that is more than enough.

"Perhaps you will find a way to bring yourself back to life," Lan Wangji whispers in the dark. "This kind of survival is already a miracle. You might yet make another."
Wei Ying laughs.
"That would be wonderful," he sighs. "But even if I never do, I think I could be content."

Wei Ying's body changes as the months go by. He works at himself night and day in the winters, standing in front of a mirror and painting arrays and blood wards all over his skin; and by the second winter, he has regained his senses of touch and taste.

The first thing he feels is the skin of Lan Wangji's hands, silk-smooth on the backs and thick on the palms; and when their fingers touch, Wei Ying can count every ridge and valley in his fingerprints.

"I think I'd like to try eating again," Wei Ying says one day, "but the first thing I eat should be something you made for me."

Lan Wangji kisses the middle of his forehead. The two of them are as good as married now, the unspoken becoming taken for granted.

"Is it safe?" he asks.

"I've tried drinking blood, and it makes a difference. I feel stronger, after."

The first food they try is plain sweet porridge. Wei Ying starts crying the moment Wangji puts the bowl down in front of him, and he doesn't stop until the bowl is empty.

As long as Lan Wangji lives, they never quite stop finding ways in which Wei Ying differs from a true living person.
But in truth, neither of them care much. Each difference is part of the reason Wei Ying is still here to love and be loved.

Their marriage is a happy one, though Lan Wangji rarely leaves the Burial Mounds, and it outlasts the fall of the Jianghu as they know it.

When Lan Wangji finally breathes his last, it is in a world entirely different from the one he was born in.

He closes his eyes, and Wei Ying dissolves the arrays anchored to his heart before climbing into bed beside him.

Whatever death brings them, they will face it as they faced their long lives: together.

//end.

I might clean this up and post it on AO3 eventually, but in the meantime, here's a link to the top of the thread.

https://twitter.com/stiltonbasket/status/1523214657338576896