Wei Ying had to fight against years and years of conditioning in order not to feel stressed about sitting next to Uncle Qiren...by himself.

True, their relationship had vastly improved from the elder Lan throwing missiles at him, to actually receiving and giving hugs, and they had both learned to adjust to each other and this gradual change in their conversations. Wei Ying could not believe it sometimes that Uncle Qiren even missed him when he wasn't around...

Wei Ying saw out of the corner of his eye that JingYi had hidden in some bushes not too far away and was using hand signals to ask him if he was okay being there...unfortunately, there was no way Wei Ying could respond without alerting Uncle Qiren, and therefore getting JingYi into trouble.

Wei Ying held his hands out in front of him, as if he was examining his thumbs, when really it was a thumbs up sign on the other side...he saw JingYi grinning wildly before scurrying off.

Over here, Uncle Qiren had already started speaking.

"While you and WangJi were not here...it was...difficult." He began. "I missed you two very much...as much as I missed your children. My grandchildren..." He smiled sadly.

"We missed you too..." Wei Ying said, hoping for sincerity in his tone.

It wasn’t that they hadn't missed him...more that there hadn't been time to miss him. At the very least, Wei Ying hoped Uncle Qiren couldn't tell either way...

"How are you feeling these days?"

"Much the same, Uncle." Wei Ying replied. This situation felt too surreal.

"I should not have tried to separate the both of you. That was my mistake."

Wei Ying was so surprised, he did look at him then.

"Do you remember the prophecy?" Uncle Qiren went on.

"Yes."

"Say it for me now." He requested.

"Alright Uncle." Wei Ying thought back, going over it in his head.

"Dark equals Light,
Eternal chase goes on,
Supremacy a fight,
Yet one cannot
Exist without the other.

Soul Bond complete,
Entices Demon hoard,
Two remain to ward
Each their own protection
Lest they perish into the dark."

They sat in silence, both of them mulling over these words.

"Whatever happens...it's best if you both stick together. Whatever is going to happen...I think it is unchangeable. It would be better if neither of you was alone."

"Yes Uncle." Wei Ying wasn't sure what had brought about this strange melancholy in the elder. "Actually...about this sleeping sickness that's spreading...I want to go and ask people about it...but I don't think Lan Zhan will be too happy about that."

"My nephew can be...overprotective sometimes."

They shared a look; Wei Ying raising a brow at that, and Uncle Qiren responded with a twinkle in his eye.

Wei Ying suspected that the elder did not find much amusing, but he surprisingly had a sense of humour, albeit hidden...heck no, buried...

"Still, discuss it with him. A good marriage is after all, based in communication. Maybe if you both aired your feelings, it might make him a little more pliant?"

"Okay Uncle, I will."

They were quiet for a while.

Wei Ying thought about how rare these moments were. Just sitting under the moon tree was .... therapeutic in many ways.

He felt a branch caress the top of his hair, much like a pat on his head.

"I started thinking about them...my grandchildren....the questions they may one day ask me...and I felt ashamed." Uncle Qiren sniffed.

Wei Ying did not dare to look over at him. Now what? Where had this come from, out of the blue?

In fact, Wei Ying wasn't at all sure how to deal with an emotional Uncle Qiren. What exactly was he supposed to say?

"You know...there's a reason it's called the past...because it's exactly that: passed. It's water under the bridge so to speak..." Wei Ying mumbled.

"That doesn't change what I did...I was a terrible role model. A terrible Uncle, and a terrible human being. I completely disregarded some rules in favour of others, ones which supported my thoughts only. I hurt WangJi...I hurt you. My soul shivers at the atrocities I have committed."

Big fat tears fell from his dark eyes, melting the frost at his feet. "I wish I could change the past...I want to...to ask for your forgiveness."

The ground was cold enough that ice could form...and Wei Ying was struck with the bizarre need to laugh hysterically at the mental image of an Uncle Qiren losing his balance and waving his hands in terror; all from a situation of his own making.

He bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from chuckling out loud. And he was regretting stepping outside of the Jingshi. This whole afternoon had been weird...

Wei Ying thought back to the hard ridges of skin growing back unevenly on Lan Zhan’s back. How each rough ridge felt under his fingertips every night, and under his lips when Lan Zhan allowed him to kiss them.

Lan Zhan said he deserved each blow for not standing by his side in Nightless City...but Wei Ying felt otherwise.

Lan Zhan had received one blow from the feared discipline whip for each Lan cultivator he had fought against, trying to stop them from destroying their sanctuary,  their home in Burial Mounds...

But no one deserved such a severe punishment, certainly not for standing up for him...but at that time, he was the feared Yilling Patriarch...and Wei Ying would always feel that guilt. He was the reason Lan Zhan suffered those blows.

He was vaguely aware of Uncle Qiren bowing to him and then leaving.

Now he was alone...sitting here watching the smallest flurries of snow dance in front of his face. Wei Ying closed his eyes feeling utterly wretched.

"Wei Ying!"

He heard his beloved’s voice just before warm fingers were wiping his face.

Wei Ying opened his eyes to see Lan Zhan staring at him, worry drowning in those golden orbs. Behind him, a jittery JingYi waved and ran off.

"What happened? Where's Uncle?" Lan Zhan sounded angry.

"H-he l-left.." Wei Ying stuttered, his lips feeling frozen.

Suddenly he was so cold.

Lan Zhan picked him up and walked swiftly to the Jingshi. Once inside, he wrapped Wei Ying in more blankets, glaring at him when his teeth started chattering. He drew a bath for both of them and quickly stripped Wei Ying of his wet clothes, deposting him into the metal tub of hot water.

For a second, Wei Ying could only absorb the shock, the contrast of temperatures he was subjected to. Lan Zhan got in behind him, warming him with his body at his back.

He could feel the anger coming off Lan Zhan in waves.

Wei Ying turned around in the water and hugged him tightly.

"Normally...I love making you angry..." He whispered.

"I am not angry at you." Lan Zhan bit out.

Still furious then...

Wei Ying could feel the roughened skin on his back, his fingers grazing the old scars.

Love made you do crazy things, mad things, things that didn't make sense...and the same was true for Uncle Qiren. His punishment had come from a twisted place that had wanted to whip the love that Lan Zhan carried for Wei Ying out of him...but love itself was an unreliable, unpredictable temptress.

To this day, no one knew why they fell in love. No one chose who they fell in love with...it just happened.

One second a person could be doing something ever so ordinary, minding their own business, and then BAM!

They could see a person and that was it.

Like an arrow straight to their heart, their lives changed so dramatically.

"Do you...do you ever think about...what might have happened if you hadn't fallen in love with me?" Wei Ying asked, his voice barely a whisper over the sound of the water moving in their tub.

"What did Uncle say to you?"

The anger was still there, a bite under the surface of ordinary words.

Wei Ying knew without a doubt that anyone else could have used this opportunity to make it worse...but he knew better than anyone how important family was. And he felt responsible for being the cause of their rift between nephew and uncle...so he would always do his best to mend their relationship too.

"Uncle missed us and the kids...I mean, how could he not, right? They're so adorable...and it's not like SiZhui was here either." He leaned back so he could see into golden eyes suspiciously searching his face for a different truth.

So he continued, ignoring the way his voice became thicker, struggling to get past the huge lump in his throat.

"Uncle apologised for...for the way he treated us, both of us. He said...he was thinking about Rumi and Li XiWang...if they ever found out, if they asked him about it, how would he answer...he feels really bad about it now. And..." Wei Ying wiped his eyes, hating that he could not see Lan Zhan clearly.

"And?"

Wei Ying wasn't sure what to make of his tone. But he carried on.

"He said he was sorry and he bowed. He hoped we could forgive him."

Lan Zhan bristled at that.

It seemed that choosing to tell him everything was having the opposite effect. Lan Zhan was even more angry at Uncle Qiren.

"Why was Wei Ying crying? When it started to snow...why didn't you go back inside?"

And there it was...

Wei Ying looked up into golden eyes.

His Lan Zhan was so intense, getting to the root of the matter in a split second.

Lan Zhan had a feeling it was not just Uncle Qiren apologising that had Wei Ying crying like that. He hated to see his husband cry, and in Cloud Recesses, it was almost always his uncle's fault.

"How long was I there for?" He asked.

"A few hours."

"Oh...but weren't you going to be fast? What happened? Why were you so long?"

Lan Zhan loved how fast his mind worked...and how great Wei Ying was at distraction. From the very start of their acquaintance, Wei Ying flitted from subject to subject...hiding how he truly felt...but then, Lan Zhan was guilty of that too.

Not this time, though.

When JingYi finally caught his attention, and told him that Uncle Qiren was talking about something serious with his Wei Ying, all Lan Zhan could think about was the warning he had given about the Soul-Bond prophecy, how he made Wei Ying cry and try to split them up...

So any talk between his uncle and his husband was a no-no.

Lan Zhan had never walked back so fast in his life.

And when he had seen Wei Ying sitting in the cold wind, snow settling in his coat and on his lashes, he knew Wei Ying was lost in thought, not even paying attention to the change in his own body temperature.

And his uncle was to blame for that, no one else.

When he got even closer and saw that Wei Ying was crying...that ...that just broke his heart all over again.

"Why was Wei Ying upset?" He asked, ignoring his other questions for now.

Wei Ying bit his lip, afraid he was going to cry again and make Lan Zhan really angry with his Uncle. So he tried to breathe in through his nose and out from his mouth to calm his mind.

"When Uncle mentioned asking for our forgiveness...all I could think about was the scars on your back. How he had punished you for loving me..."

In spite of his efforts, the tears spilled out anyway.

Lan Zhan sucked in a painful breath.

So that's why Wei Ying had asked about him, if he had loved anyone else...what would have those consequences been like...

Lan Zhan held him close, letting him cry silently, and thought about what he was going to say now.

"That time...that...had nothing to do with you. The punishment was for going against thirty three elders."

"For stopping them from entering the Burial Mounds. Because that was our home..."

The only place they had left to go, because nowhere else was safe.

"It doesn't matter." Lan Zhan insisted.

His warm hands held Wei Ying’s face gently, looking into pain-filled silver starlight eyes.

"I will never regret falling in love with you. You are my Wei Ying, the only reason why this body still breathes. The only reason why this heart beats. You are my life." He crashed their lips together, both of them tasting the salt of their tears.

Hot lips glided over now warmer ones, protecting their love, fighting for their right to live as they pleased. This love was pure, it was right, and it was theirs.

No one could tell them otherwise.