Take An AU Haunting Me For Ages Now: The “sects Go To The Terrifying Yiling Patriarch To Ask For His

take an AU haunting me for ages now: the “sects go to the terrifying Yiling patriarch to ask for his help in the war, WWX ends up demanding LWJ marry him” fics?

Yes, that, but kinda in reverse.

The Sects go to meet the Yiling Patriarch and he’s as expected: arrogant, bold, careless, demanding. And using heretic powers to keep his Burial Mounds untouched by the world.

They negotiate, he smirks properly wicked, and and says he wants to name a bride and a marriage to the Lan.

The Lan talk, outraged, but they have a war to win so the agreement is struck: marriage to the Lan and the Yiling Patriarch is allowed to name bride and groom. They write it down exactly like that.

The war happens, but with the Yiling Patriarch’s army of the resentful dead, they lose less soldiers, win more battles. The Lan wonder why they were chosen, perhaps because they hold enough moral sway that any hostage of theirs wouldn’t result in another war? Regardless, Lan Wangji makes it his job to stick close to the Yiling Patriarch, as close as he will let anyone. He has a whole entourage of ghost brides, though only one stays close to him at all times, veiled whenever they have company

They win the war. “Bride and groom,” the Yiling Patriarch says and swears to return in three months. There is talk of taking him down now that Wen are gone, but no one wants to go to war in the Burial Mounds.

The Yiling Patriarch arrives in three months as promised, dressed in red, followed by a parade of people. “I’ve come to collect my debt,” he tells them. “I will name Lan Wangji as the groom,” he says, sparking confusion and outrage. Does he intend to name one of his ghost brides next? And indeed, he reached for one, lifts her veil, revealing living woman, but takes the veil for himself instead. “And I, myself, will be his bride.”

The story goes a little like this:

One. Wei Ying’s parents die and he follows them. Only he is young and alive and curious and the Burial Mounds are very hungry. They devour him skin, flesh, bone, teeth. And they spit him out again. And again again and again.

Two. Wen Qing is her uncle’s favorite, but she’s her brother’s only sister. She fears what war means, what the retaliation might mean. Young Masters go to the Cloud Recesses for study on invitation, Wen Qing goes to the Burial Mounds to beg.

Three. There is very little begging to be done in front of a boy her brother’s age, who hasn’t been hugged in years and keeps the company of murdered brides as though they are his mothers, aunts and sisters. She asks for protection, he asks for a meal.

Four. They cannot stay in the Burial Mounds forever. It is not a place for children even Wei Wuxian realizes that one morning and promptly disappears in his childhood bedroom, a cold cave filled with trinkets of the dead. He survived on the cost of skin, flesh, bone, teeth. They cannot all pay this price.

Five. The Sects knock at his door, a solution presents itself. He dressed Wen Qing like his older sister, veil and all, and hides her among his undead. They strike a bargain.

Six. They could keep a hostage, but a hostage will not keep them fed. Brides, he knows from childhood on, marry out. One of his sisters would’ve taken with her all her servants, had her unwilling husband not killed her on the wedding night.

Seven. “This is why it has to be a Lan,” Wen Qing tells him. Your husband would not kill you like this. They might keep him in some other way, but what could be worse than skin, flesh, bone, teeth? A wedding night of death? Nothing. And if he can help his family by making them servants and himself a bride, he’ll stay locked up in the Cloud Recesses. At least this prison will not spit him out.

What Lan Wangji knows is this: the Yiling Patriarch is mocking them, but there is a debt and a debt must be paid.

They marry in name, no matter how much the Yiling Patriarch taunts him about the contents of a proper marriage, and then they live separately. They keep an eye on him of course, him and his servants, who keep to themselves, settling in Caiyi and the Cloud Recesses, wary, hungry, terrified people - not of their master, but of everyone else.

And then, on accident maybe, a slip of the tongue, one of those servants soak a different name. Within a second, the Yiling Patriarch is in front of them in protection, though he looks less arrogant, less bold, less careless, less demanding. He looks, Lan Wangji thinks, like someone who has more too lose than he’d ever admit. He looks terrified like no one in the Cloud Recesses ever should.

So maybe he should ask him why