To Lie Divine

Between Two Fates

It begins with footsteps.

Lan Wangji doesn’t mean to follow them. He tells himself he’s simply walking. That his path — through mist-soaked courtyards and winding lantern-lit corridors — is dictated by duty, not desire.

And yet, he ends up here.

At the edge of a quiet pavilion veiled in soft moonlight, where Wei Wuxian sits alone, barefoot and cross-legged on the low stone wall, his flute resting lazily across his lap. His hair is unbound, and his sleeves rolled up, revealing arms marked faintly with bruises and ink.

He looks like he belongs nowhere. And everywhere.

“You follow me often, General,” Wei Wuxian says without turning.

“I don’t.”

“Mm,” Wei Wuxian hums, unconvinced. “Then the moon’s been lying again. Naughty thing.”

Lan Wangji doesn't respond.

He should turn back. He never seeks people out like this — never trails shadows just to be near them, never lingers in places where duty doesn’t bind him. This is foolish. Dangerous. Unlike him.

And yet… he stays.

“I want to understand you,” he says quietly.

It’s the most unguarded thing he’s said in a decade.

Wei Wuxian stills. His fingers stop moving over the flute, his body still like a breath held too long. Then, slowly, he tilts his head, not quite looking back.

“You know the story of the stormbird?” he asks. His voice has lost its usual teasing lilt. “The one that never lands?”

Lan Wangji says nothing, listening.

“It was born without a nest. Every time it tried to rest, the winds would howl. So it learned to fly and fly — always chased by storms.” He laughs bitterly. “It never stopped. Not even when it bled.”

He finally turns then.

His eyes find Lan Wangji’s — unreadable and strange, wild with things unspoken.

“A curse?” Lan Wangji asks, voice low.

“No,” Wei Wuxian says. “A habit. A survival.”

The words lodge somewhere in Lan Wangji’s chest.

This — this moment, this man — makes no sense. He makes no sense. Wei Wuxian is loud and chaotic and undisciplined, everything Lan Wangji has spent his life avoiding. And yet, here he is, reaching across a silence he doesn't understand.

And doing something he has never done before.

Lan Wangji steps closer — not as a general, not as the Emperor’s hound — but as a man with no armor, no script.

“Maybe I can offer a place to land.”

Wei Wuxian goes perfectly still.

For a second, it looks like he might believe it. Then, quietly — too quietly — he says:

“Maybe I don’t want to be understood.”

Lan Wangji’s gaze doesn't falter. Without thinking, he reaches out. Just a touch — a gentle brush of fingers against Wei Wuxian’s hand.

But Wei Wuxian recoils as if burned.

He stands in one smooth movement, that trademark grin slipping back into place like a knife sheathed.

“Careful, General,” he says lightly. “People will think you’re growing sentimental. Maybe check whether Ye Yun's slipping soemthing in your tea.”

Lan Wangji says nothing. The space between them feels cold now, too wide.

Wei Wuxian lifts the flute again, fingers trembling faintly.
He doesn’t play. He only says, quieter than before:

“You shouldn’t waste your time on storms.”

And then he walks away, barefoot in the grass, vanishing into the mist.

Lan Wangji watches him go.

Something tightens in his chest — something he hasn’t allowed to exist in years. Not after the war. Not after everything he gave up in its name. He tells himself it's confusion. Curiosity.

But he knows that’s a lie. This is more dangerous than any battlefield.

And still… he doesn’t step away.

Behind them — in the alcove of the moonlit hall just beyond the lattice door — a shape waits in silence.
A fan flicks open once, quietly.

His eyes glint like steel behind shadowed lashes.

He says nothing.

But his silence… records everything.

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