Searching for Perfection

16. Epilogue

Wei Ying woke up, confused and discombobulated. For a few breaths, he wasn't sure exactly where he was. It wasn't his home in Lotus Pier.... Sanctuary. He was in his home in Sanctuary. "Oof!" he exclaimed as a sturdy young body jumped onto his stomach.

"Baba! I meditated for a whole incense stick!"

"Oof!" A second body hurtled its way onto his.

"Baba! I did too!"

Wei Ying smiled warmly at his urchins, Liu and XiaoShu. "I'm proud of you." He turned his head to see his husband meditating in a patch of sunshine. "Good morning, husband."

Lan WangJi unfolded himself to rise and place a gentle kiss on Wei Ying's mouth. "Good morning, husband. The children are hungry but insisted on waiting for you." He turned to the scamps sitting on Wei Ying. "Would you please tell Cook we're almost ready for breakfast now?" Liu and XiaoShu nodded happily and scrambled off the bed to run downstairs. Lan WangJi waited until their heads disappeared before sliding into bed to hold Wei Ying tight. "Did you sleep well?"

Wei Ying stretched to further move into Lan WangJi's embrace. "I had a dream. It felt so real." He picked up the hand wrapped around his waist and kissed it. "I got to fall in love with you all over again."

"Was I in love with you, too?"

"Of course! I was such a dumbass. You gave me a love letter right before the final battle of the SunShot Campaign, and I spent years thinking you gave me a letter meant for someone else. We got into so many fights over it."

"A love letter? How could we fight over a love letter?"

"I didn't read the whole thing. You wrote that you saw me for the first time in the moonlight. So I thought it had to be someone else. I was rather upset about that."

"But I did see you for the first time in moonlight."

"Lan Zhan! We met at the gate to Cloud Recesses! In daylight!"

Lan WangJi shook his head. "I didn't really see you at the gate, did I? I thought you were beautiful, of course. And smart. I felt things I didn't know how to interpret. But I didn't really see you. Not then. Not until I saw you climbing over the wall. You tested my sword skills, and you didn't even unsheathe SuiBian. Beautiful, smart, skilled... how could I resist falling in love with you right then and there?"

"This dream... I didn't give A'Cheng my core this time. Wen Qing refused to do the procedure until I told him the truth about all of it. And he refused to accept it. Instead when we captured Wen Chao and Wen ZhuLiu, Wen Qing tortured Wen Chao to test her theories about how to remove a golden core and then gave Wen ZhuLiu's to Jiang Cheng."

Lan WangJi hmphed in derision. "That would have been preferable to giving him yours." A gurgling noise from the corner of the room made the two men sit up. "I'll get Qiu'Er; you get up and dress."

At almost one years old, Qiu was at the age where he was trying to be as grown-up as his siblings. He wanted to feed himself and would scream until he got a spoon and bowl of his own. Like all children his age, he succeeded in getting more porridge on his clothes and skin than inside his body. Wei WuXian was used to it, and easily sneaked in spoons of food around the baby's attempts. Porridge done, he handed a section of cooled potato to the baby and let him smash it all over his face and hands. "You know, the best part of having a nanny is that I don't have to clean you up!"

"Bababababa," Qiu agreed and smashed his potato-filled fist into his baba's mouth. "Numnumnum."

He had a class in the morning on talismans for his advanced students, but his mind wasn't on the class. What would I write in a love letter to Lan Zhan? 'I love you,' obviously. 'I adore you. You're so beautiful. You're incredible. You're my rock, my tether. You make me invincible. You make me feel like I am worthy.' He could write stupid stuff like that.... But a love letter should be less 'me' centric and more 'him' centric. Shouldn't it?