The Tears of Thirteen Years

Wow. Here it is the beginning of the end. :)

It is a little bittersweet writing this. A happy end is the best kind of ending and after so many chapters of heartache, a relief for poor Lan Wangji.

The last chapter was a little too big, so I have split it into two. The true final chapter is a gift for all the amazing readers I have met through this fic.

Thank you so much. For every comment and all of your wonderful encouragement. Without you, I would have simply ended at chapter one. It was supposed to be a one-shot after all! :)

Thank you. I hope this ending is what you hoped for.

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I made Wei Ying's eyes grey again. He looked identical in the manga and in Untamed. Plus, I could not find the part where his eye color changed in the novel. So I thought why not? If you hate it, I'll gladly change it.

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At Buddha's Feet, tension was in the air.

Lan Wangji knelt before the polished table in the only tea-house the village offered, perhaps ten chi from where Jiang Cheng sat sipping his own tea.

Both of them waited for news, worry sitting on their shoulders for a boy that each raised for fathers long dead. A father murdered and a family torn to pieces with the loss that could not be understood. Not in ten years, not a thousand. Three deaths that weighed heavily. Three deaths that would forever dictate the tapestry of their lives. Everyone's lives.

One death in particular remained a source of their grief.

Neither of them spoke, barely acknowledging the other was seated nearby in direct contrast with polite etiquette. To do that, was to acknowledge that one death that had long stood between them. One who tried to end his life and the other who would have done anything to have saved him from the hand of fate. There could be no reconciliation between them. Never friends, but once comrades bound by the same desire for revenge, for the end of the Wen tyranny.

Now, one feared the day of Wei Ying's return and the other waited for nothing else.

In all the world, two men could not be more different and yet the same. Trapped like insects in amber waiting for the day Wei Ying would return, never fully living in the present when the past was rich with pain. With memories of better, happier times when two of those three laughed and smiled. Darker times to dog their steps and tragedy that left a permanent mark on their souls.

So they sat, as islands in a vast sea in heavy silence wrapped in pain. No one spoke, unwilling to pull the attention to themselves, not when a fight brewed in the air as it so often did when Lan Wangji was in the vicinity of Jiang Cheng.

What was there to say? They both laid blame firmly at each other's feet and the sting of betrayal was only tempered by promises to their Sect. Relations had to be kept between their people but truly, both of them would rather face anyone else.

To look upon each other was tor remember the three that were not there. Cruelly ripped from life, so Wei Ying could never see his son grow. The sister and brother by marriage lost so young leaving behind a boy so lost.

The man running towards them from the forest, his feet stumbling as he came closer, diverted the stress immediately, pulling both men from their memories.

"What is it?" Shouted Jiang Cheng fear already tightening his chest. Jin Ling.

Lan Wangji stared at the man with a cold, indifferent expression but ice ran down his spine. Sizhui.