Your dreams

Chapter 20

"Lan Zhan, I am so happy to finally have you back..." Wei Ying sighed into Lan Wangji's shoulder and cuddled a little closer to him.

It was now later into the evening of the same day and they both calmed down substantially. Wei Ying had crawled into his sick bed as soon as he had made sure that Lan Wangji was healthy enough so he would not aggravate his condition. Since then, they both stayed like that, fully satisfied with just laying there – occasionally dozing off but none of them was about to point it out – and being close to each other.

"Mn," agreed Lan Wangji. He was happy to see his husband too. And more importantly, the loving version of him, not the cold and distant one from his dreams.

He was still confused with what had happened while he had been fighting with the poison. Now seemed like a good time to ask: "Wei Ying, how?"

Even with that simple of a question, which definitely did not contain the entirety of the situation, his husband still understood. He stirred a little and sat up, Lan Wangji followed his motions until they ended up with their backs against the head rest, still intertwined in a comfortable and soothing hug. He had a feeling that this was not going to be easy for either of them.

"After you have blocked that dagger for me, you just fell down like a dead. It was only a small wound so we were quite shocked a immediately called the healers. Brother Nie had arranged for you to stay here in the Unclean Realm and had smoothed the situation. I do not know how exactly, I did not care, I only wished to stay by your side and see if you were alright and how I could help.

We discovered pretty soon that the dagger had been poisoned. Though, it took us a lot more to understand what kind of poison it was. We had to contact your brother at that point and he arrived with all sorts of secret books from the Cloud Recesses Library pavilion. It was for nothing in the end, we still had no idea about anything. We would have not been able to even get a clue if Brother Nie had not caught the culprit behind the assassination attempt. They finally shed light into the curse the poison had triggered.

Such an ancient and vile curse... We were getting desperate as no one knew the cure. It was said that it had been used to punish criminals by making them relive their whole life in a dream. They would never wake up as the curse would take them through every small detail and would not be lifted until their memories came to the present day. What more, the victim would not remember anything from outside of the dream and would be trapped with no will to escape. What more, their memories would be altered ever so slightly to turn the whole ordeal into a nightmare."

Suddenly, Lan Wangji had a bad feeling. He was suspecting he knew where this was going. But he kept quiet, unwilling to interrupt his husband. He just hoped that none of them would ever have to live through something like this again. He had had it easy, it had been Wei Ying who had suffered terribly.

"After days and days of research, we finally found a loophole in the curse's structure. A loophole I decided to use to get you back."

Wei Ying stopped talking and his expression suddenly looked very strained and his smile very fake. It seemed like he was not willing to reveal the exact functioning of the loophole. He was probably behaving like this because he believed that he could protect Lan Wangji in this way. Like all those other times when he would not say anything and needlessly suffer while pretending he still had his golden core and only chose to turn to demonic cultivation out of arrogance, not bare necessity of survival.

However, Lan Wangji needed to know the truth, if not to help his husband move on from his terrible past, than to protect him in case they should ever find themselves poisoned and cursed again. No matter how unlikely that was.

"Loophole?" he gently prompted and kissed Wei Ying's forehead.

His husband sighed and turned his eyes away, a clear sign that what was coming was definitely not of a pleasant kind. However, he too understood that the solution needed to be known to both of them, for their safety.

"If the victim of the curse could remember their future, like the life they had lived before the curse was activated, then they would possibly be able to wake up.

There is a catch though. First, they would not be able to remember on their own and someone would have to risk going into the dream with them. The catch is, they would have to forget their own life beforehand or they would not be able to enter. One of the healers had given me a special medicine, apparently a secret of his family, which could make one forget. Secondly, that someone, the closer they had been to the trapped person before, the more their relationship would turn opposite to what it had been. After all, this curse was created to make people suffer and turn their life into a living nightmare... And last, depending on what exactly the trapped person would remember, they would also have to make the other recall the same memory or truth or they would only be able to escape the dreamland on their own, leaving the other stuck there forever."

Lan Wangji drew his husband closer to his chest and hugged him tightly. Now he understood everything. Why Wei Ying had seemed so cold to him and also why he had been having so many nightmares. And especially how much danger he had put himself in when he had willingly drunk medicine to forget his life and joined Lan Wangji in his dream.

As he had made himself forget his life and was made to hate Lan Wangji on top of it, this was what probably caused him to have nightmares. Nightmares, that he would not remember once he had woken up because the curse would make him forget over and over again. The medicine must have only repressed the memories, not erased them. Such a cruel torture. It was true to say it should be used to punish criminals. Only, Wei Ying was not one. Never have been.

The only thing that Lan Wangji did not understand was why he had been able to see his husband's repressed memories. Why had the curse not let him forget as soon as he had seen them? Why had he been able to witness them in the first place?

Wei Ying chuckled awkwardly in his arms and admitted quietly with a hint of guilty conscience: "I am happy it worked. The text we have found was only a theoretical study. No one had ever attempted to actually dive into the dream to rescue the cursed one. Or at least there were no recorded cases ever since the curse has been created hundreds of years ago by the founder of the Qishan Wen sect."

With this, Lan Wangji could feel his husband's breaths suddenly getting deeper and slower. Wei Ying fell asleep. He must have been truly exhausted from trying to rescue Lan Wangji and caring for him before that. He needed rest.

As did Lan Wangji himself. Any conversation he wanted to start could wait. They could tackle the open questions together at a later day. What did it matter that Lan Wangji had been able to see Wei Ying's worst memories right now? Of course, they would have to talk about everything that his husband had been trough but was still hiding, but that could wait as well. Their minds would be refreshed and clearer after a good rest.

Lan Wangji's eyelids were falling and he did not fight anymore. With the warmth of his husband in his arms and his soulmate's head safely tucked in the crook of his neck, he slowly drifted to sleep. His dreams were ones of happiness and his beloved smiling Wei Ying stood by his side in all of them. 

A little bit of an open ending, but I believe you can pretty much guess why Lan Wangji had been seeing Wei Ying's memories. If not, here is a little hint, the word starts with S and is present in the last paragraph of the story :)

Thank you very much for your support throughout the story, it motivated me to keep going. I could not have done it without you. Hope all the mysteries have been explained properly in the end, let me know if there were any holes in the storyline. I took great liberties with the initial prompt as you could probably say.

If you feel like it, I would be happy if you let me know what you thought about the story :)