Lan Wangji is fourteen and has barely received his courtesy name when his immediate family gets pulled into the bitter fight for the throne for real. With his father long since dead his older brother and himself are the only ones of the Lan family who have a very tenuous claim to the throne - something the more ambitious branches of his clan try to leverage to their own gain.
Lan Wangji's mother and his uncle refuse to see their sons/nephews used like that because they know the coup will be brutally beaten down and the two will lose their lives.
Wei Wuxian, only child of the old emperor and still very young, just a few months older than Lan Wangji, has the best claim and, with the Jiang's, one of the biggest and politically most influential clans behind him. Rumor has it that Wei Wuxian and the two children of current Jiang clan leader are as close as siblings, something that has driven rumors about his true parentage for years. The Lans want to capitalize on that quasi-scandal.
Lang Wangji and his brother are kept under close supervision, in comfort but cut off from the world. While Lan Xichen has, at least, started to cultivate a golden core and has received some sword training before things got really bad, Lan Wangji, a couple of years younger, never had the chance.
He has a courtesy name and a sword - Bichen, given to him as a status symbol, a nod to his rank, nothing else - he can barely unsheathe. His brother tries to teach him whatever he can but the truth is that he's helpless against any half-competent fighter. Or anyone, really.
Madam Lan and Lan Qiren hatch a plan to rescue their children - Lan Qiren with Lan Xichen goes first, Madam Lan and her younger son are supposed to follow the same night.
Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen manage to escape.
Madam Lan gives her life defending Lan Wangji from their own family when they are caught and driven into a corner.
Lan Wangji is caught in a room with the corpse of his mother, some distant relative he barely knows is looking at him with murder in his eyes and he knows that it's over. Now he'll be a prisoner for sure, a show piece to cement a claim that's so old it's almost non-existent. He's far too weak to put up a fight and besides they don't want to kill him. Apart from that they can make his life a living hell.
He has managed to unsheathe Bichen and holds it out in front of him as if it can really protect him. He's holding it with both arms and he can barely hold it up, he's trembling and only long experience at keeping his emotions under wrap keep him from breaking down crying whenever his eyes stray to his mother's body.
He has no idea if his brother and his uncle made it. A-Huan is a fighter, his uncle was a guard to the old emperor. Not quite as skilled with as sword as his mother, which is why she took Lan Wangji because he's useless in a fight. His inexperience, involuntarily as it is, got her killed.
He refuses to live as a puppet, powerless, abused and probably, going by the threats that have been going on for years, drugged into compliance. He has lost his family. He has nothing left but his pride, his stubbornness and a burning desire to take whatever's left of his family down for good.
Slowly, unblinking and without hesitation he turns Bichen until the blade rests against his neck.
"No," he says loud and clearly, startling everyone. He is known for being stubborn and insubordinate, but mostly in a quiet way. He never found it necessary to speak to those who only want to exploit him. He knows that tendency has given him a reputation of being slow-witted and he has never done anything to discourage that.
He will end his life himself before giving somebody else any kind of power over him. He closes his eyes and tries to find the last shred of confidence he needs to put an end to it all.
There is a loud crash just the moment he decides to go through with at and the blade is taken from his hands. He would prefer to say 'wrestled', but really, he doesn't have the strength to resist even for a moment, not even aided by all the desperation inside of him.
What he doesn't know is, that, in the very same night Wei Wuxian and his allies have started an assault on the last Lan stronghold to eradicate the annoying threat at last.
He looks up, startled, and looks into the furious visage of a boy he's never seen before.
A loud "What the fuck?" drowns out everything else and his eyes are drawn to the man standing in the only door the room where they were cornered. "What's going on here?"
The man - or rather a boy, he must be around the same age as Lan Wangji himself - has an unsheathed sword in his hand and he looks like he knows how to use it. He's dressed in black and red and that, combined with the purple of the man who has disarmed him, tells him all he needs to know.
All around them are the bodies of the men who had killed his mother.
He doesn't know much about the world of the politics but the names Wei Wuxian and Jiang Wanyin have been fed to him over and over again.
He knows this is the end. He's kind of glad he won't have to kill himself, after all. Wei Wuxian will do it for him. Or maybe his right-hand man. Brother in arms or maybe brother for real. He doesn't know and it doesn't matter.
He looks up at them, wordless and unblinking, daring them to do it.
He doesn't realize how he looks - a frightened boy, in torn robes, trembling with tear tracks all over his face, the corpse of the woman next to him whose body's position makes it clear that she died trying to protect him. He doesn't know that Wei Wuxian looks at him, connects the dots about who he is and what was done to him, and immediately is grabbed by an intense urge to protect and comfort.
Instead of killing Lan Wangji he goes down onto his knees before him and takes his ice-cold hands between his own warm ones. To comfort him, yes, but also to restrain Lan Wangji to keep him from lashing out and hurting himself.
Wei Wuxian carefully sends out a tendril of spiritual energy. The only thing he finds is the barest hint of a golden core, so tiny and weak it is barely discernible. And this is supposed to be the one who wants to fight him for the throne? Laughable, if it weren't so sad.
So many things about the Lan rebellion suddenly make sense and Wei Wuxian is angry. So damn angry he could explode with it.
Instead, he takes a deep breath and smiles at the frightened boy right in front of him. It's clear he isn't the threat he was made out to be but a helpless, frightened pawn.
Still, Wei Wuxian can feel that there's so much more hiding behind the trembling shell. Beauty, yes, but also an immense, untapped potential.
Jiang Cheng, in the meantime, picks up Bichen, sheathes it, and sets it down right next to the boy, before getting out of his outer robe and draping it around his shoulders.
The two gestures say more than any words could.
He boy looks at them, overwhelmed and unable to comprehend anything.
Lan Xichen, Wei Wuxian had thought at first, from a distance, but now he sees that he was wrong.
Besides him Jiang Cheng shakes his head, coming to the same conclusion about who they have found just in time.
"He's so young and can barely lift a sword. He must be other one. The hidden one."
The younger brother. The spare, in case something happened to Lan Xichen. While the first was somewhat known and sometimes seen at official banquets, always under heavy guard that in retrospect looked more like prison guards, there was barely any information about the youngest member of the Lan clan.
Just the fact that he existed and a name… Wei Wuxian wracks his brain.
"Lan Zhan?" Wei Wuxian tries again because that is the only name he has ever heard of his so-called rival. His courtesy name is a secret thing, bestowed by his mother and his uncle only a few weeks ago. Too soon, really, but they had seen the signs of what was to come and acted accordingly.
There is no need to clarify. So Lan Wangji just nods, everything that has happened hitting him all at once.
He doesn't know the exact progression of things after the moment Wei Ying first called him by his name; he just has some vague expressions of first being held, then being carried and a voice he will come to love telling him that he's safe now.
"You know you just invited a shit ton of troubles into your lives, right?" Jiang Cheng complains but Wei Wuxian simply laughs.
"If you didn't think he's worth it you wouldn't have saved him and given him your robe, A-Cheng."
"A decision I'm sure I will come to regret."
The words should make Lan Wangji afraid but they are said in such a grumbling, long-suffering tone that he can't really take them to heart. Instead, he concentrates on the beautiful sound of Wei Wuxian's laugh.
It's only the first of many times Wei Wuxian will carry him, but the last time he does so because Lan Wangji is a helpless victim, hurt, and unable to defend himself.
(Apart from the one time he had his leg broken but he could have totally walked on his own back then, only Wei Ying didn't let him. He gets his revenge by grabbing and carrying Wei Ying when he least expects it.)