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( ... )

I am the eldest son of my clan's patriarch. Had I remained in my village, I likely would have been so by now.

( not quite what was asked. )

[Normally, he doesn't push when Itachi circles around a question, but this time he clarifies, if only because it's the part of this that matters to him.]

But did you want to?

[He only lets that sit for a second before he immediately regrets it. Itachi is a private person and it seems a cruel thing to push on when he'd sidestepped it to begin with.]

you don't have to answer that, I'm just. Being stuck here on my own gives me so much time to think. Too much time really!

I did though. Want to be a father. I mean it would have been expected of me as well, but I wanted it.

What has turned your mind to this?

I had a child. Did I ever tell you that?

[He didn't of course, he knows he didn't.]

He wasn't actually mine. Sometimes I'd tell people he was but. He wasn't. I once mentioned that at the end of my life there was a group of people under my protection. A-Yuan was one of them. His parents passed even before the war and I was only one of many who took care of him for around 2 years.

Fatherhood is not blood alone.

I'm sorry.

（ the word feels hollow. wei wuxian had spoken on how the innocents he looked after were slaughtered — he knows too much of war to think that a child would have been spared. ）

[That brings a shaky smile to his lips and there's another pause before he replies again.]

Have I told you that Zewu-jun has a brother? They're not alike. Lan Zhan—that's his birth name, not his courtesy name, he's called Lan Wangji by others—is quiet and reserved. He's kind, but not in the same way as Zewu-jun. Zewu-jun is a peace keeper. He plays the game to keep the peace. Lan Zhan keeps the peace by holding his tongue, and his kindness is extended to those in need, not just those who need to be subdued by a gentle smile.

You remind me a lot of him actually.

A few days ago, Zewu-jun told me that a-Yuan survived. After the rest of the Wen were slaughtered, after I died, Lan Zhan went and found a-Yuan. He brought him back and didn't tell anyone who he was, and he raised him as his own.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it.

（ a lot of things meant as kindnesses pass as cruelties between them. it has been so even in taeum, before things stand as they now do. itachi takes a sharp breath, exhales evenly, and puts that comment away.

(after all this time, wei wuxian still does not know him at all.) ）

Was it because he was a child, or because he was yours?

（ these are distinctly different motivations in his mind. a child could have gone to anyone to raise, after all. ）

[It's a question he wasn't expecting and it hits with the same power as a physical blow. Wei Wuxian closes his eyes and his hands curl into loose fists. He doesn't know how to answer this. He doesn't want to think about it.]

He would have saved him no matter who he belonged to.

[He does not know why Lan Zhan chose to raise him. He doesn't know if he would have done that for any child. Whatever he meant to Lan Zhan...it's too painful to think about now.]

a-Yuan is 16 now. He got to grow up happy and cared for. When I see you again, I'll show you a portrait I did of him. He was really the cutest child. So well behaved and sweet. Not at all like me.

Edited 2022-07-16 00:57 (UTC)

（ the last statement is the unnecessary one. so well-behaved and sweet — not at all like me. but it is nothing unexpected — wei wuxian always frames himself as worse than he is. there is a moment of brief, uncomfortable parallel and then he pushes past it to say —

(it is not lost on him, that sasuke too was sixteen.) ）

I would like to see it.

I wish I knew what he was like now. Zewu-jun says he's very sweet.

When Lan Zhan took him in, he had a bad fever. It took all of his early memories so he probably doesn't remember me at all. It's for the best though. It was a rough couple of years. [At this point he knows he's just rambling, and he pauses with a sigh, staring idly at a wall as he recalls some of his favorite memories of a-Yuan.]

He really wanted siblings. He was the only child who survived the labor camps and he was all alone, and he kept asking for siblings. So, one day I buried him in our garden alongside the other radishes and told him that I would grow him some siblings this way. I can't believe he's forgotten such important memories! Now he'll never know where children come from.

That... is a curious story.

（ wei wuxian can't see it, but even though he recognizes it as one of wei wuxian's avoidance tactics, it's pulled a smile to his face. faint, just the barest upturn at one corner of his mouth, but there. ）

It's very you.