"Wangji, a word," Lan Xichen said. "Alone," he added when the masked man they were all pretending was not Wei Wuxian made no move to leave. He watched his brother consider protesting, but whatever it was he saw on Lan Xichen's face nipped the words before they left his mouth. He hoped it was commanding determination, and not the helpless dread spreading like frost over his bones.
He waited until Wei Wuxian had disappeared reluctantly back inside. Wangji glared at him, challenging, disappointed, stubborn, angry. He had, of course, more right to be than he knew. Lan Xichen could not endure that gaze. He didn't know where to begin, or how to say what he'd wanted to say for years, or how to face this moment he had feared more than anything. And so he said again "I know A-Yao could not have done what you are accusing him of." His voice was hollow-sounding, and he felt more than saw his brother's face curdle in disgust. The gravel of the courtyard crunched as Wangji turned to go. "Because I know who did."
Silence. Another crunch of gravel as his brother turned back. He couldn't face him. His jaw worked as he struggled around the fear and the guilt and the endless, endless shame clogging his mouth. He swallowed, uselessly, and closed his eyes. "Wangji," he tried, his voice strangled-sounding, "There is something I have to tell you."
Not for the first time, Lan Xichen wished his brother could read him as well as he read his brother, could understand from his mien and fragmented, disjointed statements what he was trying to convey. And like every other time he hated himself immediately for wishing Wangji anything other than himself. He, after all, was not the one who ought to have been different. "I--" He had spent so long waiting to be found out, waiting to be accused. It would have been so much easier than this. It was a cowardly wish. He cleared his throat and tried again. "You are right, that Da-ge was killed. But it wasn't A-Yao." He cast a pleading glance at his brother. It was too much to hope that he would be spared having to say it. He didn't deserve to be spared.
"Xiongzhang," was all Wangji said in return. He looked, now, more confused than disgusted. Well. That would change soon.
"I..." He closed his eyes again, drew in a long breath, and let it out, let it take the roiling feelings with it until all he felt was cold and empty. "I killed him. And if the evidence points to A-Yao, it is because he," his voice caught on the next words like a root in a path, "he made sure I would not be suspected."
Everything that night had happened, as he remembered it, quickly, but when he tried to draw upon the memories, they were piecemeal, unfocused, silent flashes of image and motion. A-Yao sailing through the air like a kite loosed from its strings. Da-ge rushing after him with Baxia held aloft. Feeling the vibrations from blocking the blow pinging down his arm. Liebing under his fingers, which never made sense to him because he could not wield both Liebing and Shuoyue at once. The cold of the stone step against his cheek and the soles of Da-ge's boots above him. The glint as Shuoyue flew after him. The blood on A-Yao's face. The blood under Da-ge's unmoving form. A-Yao's hand on his arm. The small crack running along a rafter in the guest-room A-Yao had left him in for hours after.
Wangji's face had contorted in horror and disbelief. "Xiongzhang," was all he could say.
A strange and giddy relief swept over him. The corner of his mouth curled up in an ugly and twisted excuse for a smile. Fitting, from an ugly and twisted excuse for a man. "So you see, he couldn't have done these things. Because I did."
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