The voices still scream in little A-Ying's head. He runs. He runs just like his Baba and Mama tells him to. He runs until his little paws hurt. He runs until his lungs burn.
He runs, not daring to stop, too afraid to look back. He runs through fear and tiredness until the sun sets and the darkness slowly lands over the forest.
He runs until he can run no more. Sorry, Ma, Ba... his little paws just can't go on. Everything darkens before his eyes.
Exhausted and in pain, little trembling Foxian finds shelter in a hollowed tree and passes out. The last thing that echoes in his head is his parents' screams.
-----
β Present day β
Although being a grown-up fox, Foxxian is not good at hunting. His instincts are not enough and
His awakening is slow. Long before he opens his eyes, his head is being split by a horrible headache. It takes a lot of effort and time to lift the heavy eyelids, and when he does, he is met with bleak daylight and ceiling that does not
feel even remotely familiar.
His mind is foggy. It's like his brain is wrapped in a thick duvet, not allowing a single clear thought through.
He shifts in his bed and that's when the sickness swirls in his stomach. Forcing himself up, he staggers towards the only door he sees
and right into the bathroom across the little hallway, where he spends at least half an hour throwing up nothing but liquid. Over and over again until he passes out on the toilet.
The next time he awakes, he feels worse. His stomach, although no longer turning, hurts.
They met when they were no more than little kids. When Dragonji fell from the sky and met the little Crowxian wandering the streets. Both scared and hungry, they found shelter with each other, cuddling up together against the winter cold.
But everything eventually came to an end. Their families found them and Crowxian and Dragonji never met again, years slowly erasing the few precious memories they had together.
Unlike other clans, the great Lan dragons lived high up above the clouds where the air was cold and fresh. Older than the time itself, they did not bother about the world down below, keeping themselves away from the wars and the arguments of other clans.
Woke up with a thought of post-canon LWJ going missing during a night hunt. Lans pour every resource into finding him, but no success. A year later LWJ is proclaimed dead. Meanwhile, WWX locks himself in Jingshi and is slowly fading away. LQR tries his best to shake WWX up.
"Wangji wouldn't want you to be like this," he says when he finds WWX curled up on the floor in a fetal position in Jingshi.
But all WWX replies with is: "I want MXY to take this body back."
Continuing the thought.
WWX has completely exhausted himself trying to find LWJ. He's been joining Lans in their search parties and contacted the spirits and the dead nonstop.
But after a year, due to his health and his state of mind, WWX gives up. He lives in a constant
cw: mpreg (not a/b/o), some angst, happy ending etc.
---18 years ago---
Wei Ying doesn't know why exactly he ended up on /this/ island. All he knows is that he's scared and alone and hungry.
And with a child.
Wei Ying suddenly feels tears climbing up his throat and he shakes his head. "You don't know what you're asking, Lan Zhan. Look at me. You saw what happened last night."
Lan Zhan catches a loose lock of hair and places it behind Wei Ying's ear with such a gentle touch that
Wei Ying is afraid he'll fall apart again β this time for a different reason.
"I'm looking at you," Lan Zhan's tone is serious. "I see someone who has been through a lot and who's been strong for such a long time. You are no longer alone, Wei Ying. I want to be there for you."
There are nights when Wei Wuxian still dreams of the Burial Mounds. It's not the dreams in which he shares the table with Wens and plants radishes with little a-Yuan.
No.
These dreams are nightmares. Nightmares of his broken body after the fall. Of the endless
darkness and the overwhelming hunger. And what he did to satiate it. The kind of nightmares that make his guts twist painfully and he wakes up drenched in cold sweat. The kind of nightmares that make him shake to his core, teeth rattling in the darkness of the room.
He sits and waits, unmoving, hoping that it will soon pass. It usually does.
But the sickness swirling in his stomach is forcing it's way up and he jumps out of bed as swiftly and quietly as he can and runs outside.
Wei Wuxian slides the door closed and wretches right into