Fuck.

She turns her face away against the wall and doesn’t let herself look again. She cannot look. Wen Ying’s eyes have deceived her too many times already. 

(Lan Zhan is obviously injured, bloodied. She has obviously just been crying, if one looks closely. There are tear tracks through the grime on her cheek.)

"I--I brought medicine. And knives and talismans, in case you need them. I--

Lan Zhan I swear I didn't know. I didn't find out until it was too late, I swear I would have done something to stop it if I had known, I swear it. On--on A-Ning's life I swear it."

— if there is one thing Lan Zhan can still trust, it’s that Wen Ying cares very very deeply about Wen Ning. That gives Lan Zhan pause.

“Were you not planning for it?” Her voice scrapes painfully from her throat.

"Never," she whispers. "Lan Zhan, I would never--could never--I don't even know how many people survived, I didn't know you had survived until just now--Lan Zhan even if I was the evil kind of Wen I wouldn't want Cloud Recesses burned, it was so beautiful there--" She swallows. "Please tell me you weren't the only survivor--"

“Fifty survivors. Your wards saved the children.” Do you care? Is that what you wanted, is that why you did it, did you know?

“Brother is missing.” Do you care?

"I--I'm really glad the kids are okay. I hope your brother is okay." 

Deep breath. 

"I know I'm not--I know I can't--ever expect you to trust me again. Be friends with me again. But please, please, if you ever trusted me at all, take the medicine? I won't push about the weapons if you think it's a trap of some kind, to get you punished for having them, but please, if I wanted to poison you there would be easier ways, and it won't do the fifty survivors any good for your wounds to go untreated..."

She sounds painfully sincere, painfully gentle and earnest and good. Like she always has.

She sounds desperate.

Lan Zhan needs to stop thinking she can interpret anything about what Wen Ying does or does not sound like. She inhales raggedly.

“I have failed your inspection, then.”

"Inspection? What inspection?"

"--I didn't need to inspect anything to know you would be horribly injured, I only needed to have any idea of what Wen Xu is like as a person. I was relieved you were even alive. I don't--I'm not asking you to let me apply the medicine, or anything, just to take it and use it--Jie wrote instructions for what isn't obvious--"

“Stop.” Listening to this puts Lan Zhan’s chest in more pain than the broken ribs.

Deeep breath. In and out. “How long. Will I be here.”

"Um. If you want me to arrange an escape I can do that, I don't think you'd trust me enough but, if you're willing to, I can--I could. Probably get you moved somewhere less, uh, openly dungeony, but I didn't think you'd particularly prefer that--I can arrange a less blatant escape later if a good opportunity comes up--Wen Chao is planning to include you in the indoctrination with the other Sect heirs but I have no idea what fuckery he's planning there--um. If...none of that happens and things just sort of. Go on long enough. I'm, uh, probably going to have to move you to rooms at least sort of near mine at some point. Because I sort of, um, told Wen Chao I had dibs because I couldn't think of any other reason he'd accept for me to threaten him with grievous bodily harm if he ever touched you when he said he'd been spying on us being friendly after he tried to assault Qinghe--gods, I had no idea it would come up so soon--" 

Lan Zhan stirs so violently that the chains clatter.

"--I didn't mean it! I would never touch you without your consent, I don't--plan to force you to interact with me at all--probably it's not going to get that far anyway, something will happen--just, I had to bring you the medicine, please take the medicine--"

Lan Zhan starts to cry again, silent and motionless.

“You were lying?”

"To Wen Chao? Yes. To you? Never. I would never. I--" 

She swallows and looks away, tears glistening on her own cheeks now. 

"I love you." 

There was no risk of ruining their friendship now. It was already ruined. And it wasn't like there was any risk that Lan Zhan would say yes without meaning it, not when she hadn't even told Wen Xu the Yin Iron was in Qinghe. 

And if she didn't say it now she would never have another chance to say it. And she couldn't never say it, there were enough regrets already--

“— Wen Ying.”

She tries to reach out to her, managing to forget that she is both chained and injured and ow fuck mistake — keeps leaning forward in the chains anyway.

She is at Lan Zhan's side immediately, hands reaching out to her shoulders but then stopping and hovering, not touching. 

"Lan Zhan? Are you--is something urgently wrong--I mean obviously everything is wrong but like, medically, and worse than five minutes ago--"

“You. Were not planning for Wen Ruohan to give me to you. But you —”

Lan Zhan is experiencing intense emotional whiplash in approximately five different directions and all of those directions compel her to cry harder.

"I know it's not fair to make you deal with my feelings on top of everything else but I can't--lose you and never say it--and it had to be now, I wasn't planning to ever make you interact with me again but you really need the medicine--"

“You love me?”

Nodnodnod. 

"I love you, you're the most wonderful person I've ever met, I've had a crush on you since that first afternoon at the library but it took longer for it to get deeper than a crush--I think I was in love with you when we met Lan Yi but I'm not sure, this kind of thing is harder in retrospect and I know I didn't know I was at the time--"

“When we married,” she whispers. “I never told you.”

Screeching record noise. 

"When we what?"

“Lan Yi told us to — with the headband,” she mumbles. Lan Zhan hasn’t mumbled since she was five. “To leave the cave. I did not tell you because I thought you would not want...”