( He smiles, and it's mostly genuine, just as part of it is to mask worries and concerns of his own, just shy of anything anxious. If Jiang Cheng didn't want him here on some level, there'd have been no concession. Most likely, most probably, it helps to be here on his own, without Lan Zhan or Wen Ning, but one's gone on to build monuments to his dead, and the other's sitting atop the cultivation world, and Wei Wuxian is a man wandering with a flute and a donkey.
Someone figuring out and finding his own way.
So he smiles easily enough, stepping toward his (once) shidi, someone he's failed and cares for and doesn't figure there's enough to truly make the mess of them okay, and still, and still! He's familiar for his colours, all black now, no reds, no highlights beyond the one found tied around his top-knot. Lean as always, but not gaunt, no shadows lingering under eyes, and less alcohol flowing through his veins. Still the easiest way to calm his thoughts, but a crutch he's trying to address, in his own way. Not make a staple to getting by day to day.
Been there. Lived that, more than once. It's nice having to do less laundry because he's not pouring wine down his front, too keen on the effects, not wise enough to the mess. )
Jiang Cheng! I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying, and I wasn't a bit late!
( He does have a qiankun pouch, this one not holding any angry spirits, resentful spirits, spirit swords, or anything else of a particularly unusual nature: instead, a bundled book that he pulls out with a motion of his hand and tentatively offers toward the crossed arm figure of his adoptive brother. Martial brother. Ah, family, even if he's hurt Jiang Cheng in ways he hadn't even realised until... weeks ago. Secrets and memories, things that find their way out eventually. )
If you wanted to look at this. You know what they say about my memory.
( Which is a cop out, ha ha ha. Yes, he has said let's put thing behind us, he's let go of old injuries, old events, but it's less out of a forgetful nature (oh, if he could only have one that worked on the things he wanted it to) and more out of a forward facing one. He's always been that way, and if it seems like it means he forgets the unpleasant fast, and remembers only the good, it's as careful in design as anything he's ever done that wasn't on a whim.
The truth here is simple: he doesn't want to get anything about their sister wrong. )
[ There's some truth in the notion that if Jiang Cheng didn't want him here then he wouldn't be here - no one would let Wei Wuxian anywhere near Lotus Pier of the Jiang Sect Leader hadn't offered permission first. The fact that he has even got this far speaks more for Jiang Cheng's lenience than anything else.
It's a struggle all the same. Seeing him back here leaves an ache in his chest, a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar all at once. It's painful.
His eyes skim over Wei Wuxian quickly, drinking him in. The body is different, but the spirit is the same; recognising that doesn't make this process easier. No one could fault him for his allowances, no one could fault him for letting his brother come back to his home once again. It was still his home, no matter how much Jiang Cheng might be filled with hurt at the notion of it; he would never be able to truly turn Wei Wuxian away. Not in his heart, nor with the memory of Yanli hovering at the edge of his mind.
Wrinkling his nose, he breathes out. ]
You were lucky this time.
[ He hesitates for a moment before he reaches out to take the book and begin to skim through the pages. It's a good thing - it's something that Jin Ling will appreciate, once he has wrapped his mind around what had truly happened with the deaths of his mother and father. Losing one uncle and gaining another - it's more than a little painful for the boy that Jiang Cheng sees as more of a son than a nephew in all honesty.
His hands shake, just a little, but he hopes it isn't obvious. ]
You might as well come in then. He knows what Lotus Pier looks like, but more memories couldn't hurt.
( He only realises he's been holding his breath when Jiang Cheng accepts the book, his exhalation soft but notably long. He's not quite sure he wants to smile or not; Jin Ling has had to deal with enough, having one of his closest uncles who had loved him well for years reveal the lengths to which he was willing to harm him, and for what amounts to such sad reasons... gaining anything uncle or wise out of it was not going to make sixteen years of an understood truth any easier to understand.
He supposes Lan Xichen faces similar complications, but from a different perspective, and a different age. Also, it'd been the uncle willing to near-kill him who'd told him not to start fights, where-as the uncle learning he'd been set-up along the way who'd been so easy to hate for all the losses in his life was the one saying fight while you can get away with it.
... Jiang Cheng doesn't need to know about that. In fact, Wei Wuxian will now endeavour to forget he said as much. )
Sometimes having the familiar held close to you means as much as the entirely new. Thank you... ( And anything else he was about to add onto that, he rethinks, trailing off and remembering to smile. ) Is it... would it be okay if, at some time before I leave, I pay my respects?
( Yes, he'd done so the last time, but it's not something that simply stops, and the argument that had followed had been ugly and painful. That he knew now what else had happened after his body had given out, that's not precisely easier, but he wants a sense of what boundaries he needs to skirt. Being self assured about any of them when it comes to this? He's not. )
[ Accepting Wei Wuxian back into his life is not something he had ever been prepared for; he had thought that the moment he had fallen from that mountain might have been it. Though it is likely he would never admit it to anyone, the months after... He had learned the pathways of that mountain far too well. He had searched for a body for long enough that he had thought himself certain.
His brother had died, and now his brother was back. It is a difficult thing for him to completely rationalise. Who could ever believe such a thing?
Fingers brush over the book idly before he breathes out, trying to keep himself calmed down as much as possible. The Jiang Sect might be well versed in dancing around the coiling emotions of their leader, but Wei Wuxian has been gone for sixteen years. He's not the same as he had been when he was younger, free of any guilt and regret. ]
You don't have to thank me. It is hardly a trial.
[ But it is, of course. Bringing Wei Wuxian back to the home that he had turned away from, choosing Wen over Jiang... He grits his teeth and turns, robes flicking, to stalk back towards the heart of Lotus Pier. ]
( Wei Wuxian personally believed it out of necessity, not so much understanding. Not having any recollection of a moment of death, of a moment of stasis, of anything but a blurred impression of passing time and no passing judgements, a state of unbeing and being and now: alive. Exchanged in position for another, meaning what? Mo Xuanyu is now suspended elsewhere, alive? Yet not, or else what had his spirit been doing, addressing Wei Wuxian and telling him of his own sacrifice for summoning a body and soul that had lain sixteen years dormant in some unknown, hidden state?
There are things he thinks about now to no known end, searches out on roads that cross into lands he's never set foot in, and across those he has. Coming back around here, with a degree less of the stress that had him walking even more cautiously than he does now...
... Okay, so he's still uncertain, just trying to hide it well. He hadn't lied, in his mumbling before Fairy's unrelenting stare, when his mask had been exposed and his brother had demands Wei Wuxian had no explanation for. Explanations, sometimes, ring more like excuses, and he won't excuse himself for his role in Jiang Yanli's death. Not even learning what else was happening at the time.
Hypocritical as it had been, the man who struck the killing blow had wanted to see Wei Wuxian die for the sake of the brother who had also tried and failed to see Wei Wuxian die, then died for it. That culpability had everything to do with turned tides of public opinion, and one man allowed retaliation where another man was not.
Past days. Things which he only lingers on when facing the engravings bearing witness to the lost, but not yet.
He'd never once failed to want to come back to Lotus Pier, but he does know, and has known, it's not his home. He doesn't have one of those, not these days.
He trails after Jiang Cheng, not side by side, a good three steps or more behind, partly from glancing around when it's not the middle of the night and partly because he's still not sure he should be here. Is allowed here? Yes, he is, but last time it'd been on the fringes, there'd been the yelling, the near fight, the passing out—and everything he never fully learned had been said until later, with all that fallout too.
At least he's gotten permission to pay respects where they're most due. That twists his lips up into something of a sad smile, eyes turned in the direction of the Jiang family shrine as a matter of course. )
Then, could I—I won't go wandering around, I promise.
( Itchy feet to wander familiar walkways, but holding back, since he's the guest. And this is not the memories he was here to renew, now, was it? Or it was, but not strictly what he planned to put to the page in ink. Perhaps he ought to, given the number of times he ended up kneeling and speaking with her there before things hit the point of no return, but... boats over lotuses in lakes and rivers, laughing and splashing, a young woman expertly peeling lotus seeds. There are so many living memories, too. He can feel them here in a way that he didn't otherwise, the location alone enough to stir up old ghosts and familiarities. Not the bad ones: he doesn't want to waste time on those. Better left forgotten. )
[ The difficulty for him is built on a thousand different levels with a thousand different things; Jiang Cheng has emotions, depth of feeling that he cannot even begin to try and deal with, that he has tried to ignore for almost two decades. Looking at Wei Wuxian is a trial in itself, knowing all the mistakes he had made in terms of his brother, in terms of what the two of them had done to each other.
It was so easy to blame his ills and upsets on Wei Wuxian, to blame him for everything that went wrong when they were so much younger than they are now - or, at least, than he is now. Wei Wuxian's age and state is still far, far too confusing for him to begin to wrap his mind around.
Moving back towards his home is easy enough, but he feels as though he is heavy with the echoes of the past. Heading towards home means heading back to ancient memories, to ghosts that haunt every corner of Lotus Pier. Jiang Yanli whispers to him in his nightmares; his mother and father storm into his mind when he is at his word, questioning all the choices that he has made and way he had rebuilt Yunmeng with them lost and gone from the world.
He had thought he was further than this, better than this, but at heart he is still the man so, so desperate for attention, needing and wanting the confirmation that he has done something right.
Breathing out, he lets his hands flex gently. ]
You can wander. I don't care.
[ I don't mind is what he means. This is still your home is what his heart is screaming at him to say, but he doesn't let himself even whisper it. Jiang Cheng lets himself swallow it down and force it to the depths of his stomach, to worry about later. He cannot think about it now: he can worry about it later.
He stops at the edge of home, staring forward. It's been a long time since Wei Wuxian stepped foot this close, not since so much had happened, since they learned the truth about Jin Guangyao.
( If Jiang Cheng finds it easy to blame Wei Wuxian, so does Wei Wuxian. More aware now than he had been from before, sixteen years and then some ago, when he'd felt more and more hemmed in to the path he was walking, trying to live by his creed and finding that with the world facing him down, just had everything to do with perception. Nothing to do with fact.
The line of people he'd failed did not start or end with sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years ago. He knows now it wasn't just his decisions, or just up to him to make those decisions alone. That he didn't need to, though here, again: he makes his decisions, still alone, but less presumptively. He asks, tentative, instead of assume. The things he'd wanted hidden had already been unearthed, albeit remained not fully addressed. He tells himself he'll be fine if they never are.
There are selflessnesses that are selfishnesses, and he's never stopped caring for the brother, martial or adopted, he was raised with. Through the harsh words, the whipping, the righteously aimed angers, or the less understandable ones. That he'd only objected when Jiang Cheng had aimed his anger at Lan Wangji, or anyone else, says more about his personal feelings on his actions than on Jiang Cheng's, in these cases.
So he stops, still a half step behind, but closer than he'd been trailing. )
Yes.
( No hesitation, staring up at familiar buildings, feeling the presence of familiar ghosts. Remembering another homecoming, years ago; the one where everyone lived, and the one after everyone had died. When he'd been worth boasting about, and later, when he'd been hiding every reason why he was no longer boasting. Growing up is a long and painful process, he supposes. Better to forget about it, live up to what he'd told Jiang Cheng in the temple, in letting go, in moving forward.
It's something they all need to do, without forgetting why it'd mattered. Remembering the people, but not being stuck on the details. What Jiang Cheng has built, he built with his own hands. What core sits within his chest doesn't define the ways in which it's been used.
But Wei Wuxian doesn't say that, least of all right now. He has his own filial piety and respects to pay to Jiang Cheng's parents, and a heartfelt respects to pay to their sister. He blinks away the water in his eyes, trying not to let it matter once again that he stands here, tentative or otherwise. No confidence in it, but trust in the things Jiang Cheng says, even now: both what's extrapolated, and what's stated in plain terms.
He meets Jiang Cheng's turned head with wet eyes he's ignoring are damp at all, and swallows again, nodding his head. He's already said yes.
He's still waiting for permission. The reassurance that he, for too often after his resurrection, has needed. This is really okay. )
Edited (... my over-eager browser hitting post) 2020-11-19 11:16 (UTC)
i am sorry this is so long he has a lot of feelings
[ Learning how badly he had misinterpreted so much in his life is an agony that Jiang Cheng cannot ignore. After meeting Jin Guangyao in the temple and hearing his words he understands how, in his youth, he had been a fool. The other Sect Leaders had wished for him to 'deal' with Wei Wuxian because they were afraid of what would happen if he and his brother had shared a united front - what would happen if Jiang Cheng had the fearsome Wei Wuxian standing with him. Yunmeng Jiang would have been unstoppable, but in his haste to be a proper leader, to take the mantle that had been thrust upon him, he had been too eager to prove himself.
There are a thousand other choices that he and Wei Wuxian could have made. His regret and hurt over his brother's choice could have softened - he knew, even in the moment, he did not truly blame Wei Wuxian for what happened to Lotus Pier, or for his choices when it came to the Wens. He had been too quick to anger, too hurt, too damaged and filled with pain over his losses. If he had accepted the Wens into Lotus Pier, if he had, perhaps, wedded Wen Qing, if he had chosen a different path... How many lives would be different?
Would Yanli have lived? Her husband? Would a-Ling had grown with parents who loved him, softening the sharp edge that Jiang Cheng had given him? Would he and Wei Wuxian have stood side-by-side, or would he have gone off and got married?
It's stupid to think about those things, idle thoughts that do more to damn him than help him. Jiang Cheng is in no position to make wishes, as if he's ten years younger. He's not his nephew; he doesn't have the world at his feet. He has only bitterness and hurt as his companions, guiding him through all the choices he makes and the rest of his almost eternal life.
Tied up with all of this is just how difficult it is for him to bring Wei Wuxian back here. He does not blame him, not anymore - his breakdown at the temple was enough to put all of that to bed - but there's still hurt inside of him, pain mixed with guilt and regret and bitterness that has had too long to blossom and develop. Jiang Cheng wishes that he was better at this, but with no sister here to translate his snippy words into meaning he fears he will be forever adrift with no anchor.
(A-Ling has Lanling, his his friends. Wei Wuxian has Lan Wangji. Nie Huaisang has Qinghe and his old friend back. What does Jiang Cheng have but loneliness and pain, crushing his shoulders until he crumbles under the weight of it?)
It does not take long for him to move forward to where the shrine is. He hesitates on the edge, staring at the wood, breathing out, before he lifts his head high. He has been here more often than anyone could ever ask of him, beyond duty. He comes for his sister more than his parents, the bitterness of their rejections still a wound unhealed to this day.
When he speaks, his voice is soft and low. ]
I'm back, A-Jie. I know it was not long ago that I was here, but someone has brought a gift for your son. I think they would like your approval before they give it to him. I am sure you'll be happy to see his face, even if it is still stupid.
[ His hands shake as he moves, kneels, bows, squeezing his eyes shut. All these years and his heart still breaks - he still thinks of his sister's body in his arms, reaching for Wei Wuxian, pulling away from him even in death. He doesn't blame her; hadn't everyone preferred A-Xian, in the end?
Breathing out, forehead so close to the ground he feels cold, he has to calm himself down. Purple surrounds him as he stands, casting his long sleeves behind him as he motions, trying to be strong and severe and failing. Wei Wuxian could always see through him anyway. Why try? ]
Wei Wuxian is here, A-Jie. He's come back and he wants to see you. I'm sorry that you're not together anymore, but I think perhaps this is what you would have liked either way.
this is why we're attempting to smash their heads together and go TALK, FOOLS
( Jiang Cheng had not been a fool alone. Jin Guangyao painted a pretty picture, manipulating as always, because he spoke truth but simplified, implied, and the realities were more complex. Wei Wuxian still acted without consulting his brother in arms, brother in raising, martial brother: fact. He did not fight for Jiang Cheng to stand by him; he did not demand that Jiang Cheng open a home of rebuilt pains to the starving, average remnants of a clan that had left his home in tatters. He couldn't have known the ways to twist his brother's arm, whisper strive for what you want, the only failing is in not trying, couldn't fight to keep himself a place by a side he saw by then as standing opposite across a gulf he'd dug for himself the night he held Chenqing up to Lan Wangji, and said, is this our justice.
Wei Wuxian had failed to push, to press, to ask for help. Had instead made it eaiser to let him go. If you can't stand with me, then cast me away. Say I've defected. Face a broken arm and a stab to the gut and two men too proud and too young for the wisdom they might have now to see where they'd allowed it all to start unravelling at the seams.
He doesn't regret, exactly. The past remains as it happened. It cannot change. And he's not disappointed, unlike Lan Zhan, in the thigns Jiang Cheng has done, because the underlying truth is he's preserved, been acknowledged for, kept thriving Lotus Pier, and that was what he'd wished. Only one of them had ever been the intended heir, and to this day, it's no burden Wei Wuxian would take.
There are no what ifs for their lives. There's only what has, and what may. Striving for the may is something that wasn't easy for him to do at first, and has only recently stopped feeling like claws digging into his soft, unprotected places.
(Wei Wuxian has Lan Wangji, and his silences, and his presumptions. There is a closeness and caring there that he leans into, wants more than anything, doesn't think he deserves, accepts for existing; at the same time, it is not one met on equal ground, and he as a living man is not the ghost that Lan Wangji had chased after in memory for years. Wei Wuxian still wanders, because for whatever his heart yearns for, he still has not yet found a way to understand its home.)
What he does is watch Jiang Cheng, both obviously and indirectly. He carries nothing to leave outside the threshold of this room, no wine jar, no weighted promise of violence or misery. Hears what Jiang Cheng says, and swallows, lips parting after. A twitch toward a smile he allows to blossom partway, stepping inside at last as Jiang Cheng shakes, a leaf caught in a river, swirling and twirling downstream. ]
Hello, Shijie. You hear Jiang Cheng? He acts like he's not happy to see my face, but I think he is just a little, stupid looking or otherwise. And it's not stupid looking, it's very good looking still, if any wished to know.
[ He hopes Jiang Cheng is a little glad, and knows he is, or else Wei Wuxian would not be here, going to his knees by his side, and bowing, to Jiang Cheng's father and mother, to their shared sister, the only one of those three without a weighted burden Wei Wuxian had never been able to do anything constructive about.
He bows as Jiang Cheng does, but when Jiang Cheng stands, Wei Wuxian doesn't; instead he reaches out, fingers twitching, and catches at the fabric of Jiang Cheng's robes. Outermost, barely holding on to the seaming, and with no more strength than in an uncoordinated kitten's claws. ]
Wei Wuxian wants to see you, Shijie, but can you remind your little brother that it's never seeing just one person alone?
[ That tug at his robes, and then Wei Wuxian's hand twitches away, apologetic, falling back to his lap. He bows again, to Jiang Fengmian, to Madam Yu. One who gave him a love he wished could have felt better shared, and the other giving him rebukes he wished had only been aimed his way. People could be so at odds and still care for each other. Love doesn't always work out in kindness or fairness.
Jiang Yanli, however, believed that it could. Not just in romance, he finds. She'd given love, a painful, harrowing emotion, the gleam of something more powerful and lasting than it was sour. )
Your son has done the Jiang Clan credit. His years have only strengthened the teachings of the clan's disciples, and there is no one in all the regions who can say he's less than a dedicated, attentive hand in all things.
( Overly attentive in some things. Eradicating tricks and demonic cultivators, searching for someone who had no way to explain where he had or hadn't been. Accused of killing a former brother, with the ones who knew better dead or tight lipped. Lan Zhan's antagonism with Jiang Cheng was a palpable thing; likewise Jiang Cheng's toward Lan Zhan.
He hopes less so, now. Not because everyone can get along, but because he can hope they will. Or that he alone will be the target of Jiang Cheng's tongue in the future. Lan Zhan doesn't deserve it. Neither does Wen Ning.
(Wei Wuxian, well. Perhaps at least half the time he does.) )
He's a man to be proud of, and I apologise... that this lowly one has not been what he was meant to be. ( Not support. Just dedicated to ensuring that Jiang Cheng survived, that he thrived, no matter the cost. Wasn't that supposed to have been enough? (It isn't. Wei Wuxian's slowly learning that himself.) ) I offer no excuses, only my humility and apologies. ( And a bow, agian, with that said. Because he owes it to them, and to himself, and to Jiang Cheng. ) Shijie, I'm here to visit, at least for a while. I've been painting, you get up to all kinds of things when you're on the road for long stretches, and while my memory isn't the best—you remember that, don't you? Can you forgive it still? I'm trying to recall all the better memories, the splashing fights on the lakes and river, lotus seeds and soup and nights spent on the riverside with what passed as creative thoughts on wine.
( He wonders without saying: does anyone here make it, still? )
For your son. He's a good young man, more like you than he knows. Like his uncles, too, but more honest. I know that's not from Jin Zixuan, so shijie, just know that it's you who gave him an honest tongue. The rest of us, we still mess up the things we should say, and say the things we shouldn't. I'm sure you'd tell me I'm being silly again, and you'd be right, but it's no less true.
( His voice stays soft, a sort of two way confessional, to the dead before him, and to the living standing tall in this same quiet, incense scented space. )
Jiang Cheng has done well by your Jin Ling. You always knew he would, didn't you? Remind him of that, in your ways. I think sometimes even sect leaders and clan heads need to hear when they've done well.
( Like they don't, but it's for the things which matter beyond persons. This, this is personal, and he's half expecting to get kicked or pulled up or shouted at, in this litany of soft sincerities. He does finally look up to Jiang Cheng, tongue still for a moment, a fond smile from his words to Yanli still lingering on his lips. If his eyes look uncertain, and his shoulders don't rest easy, it's the world he's learned to live in, step by step coming back from resignation to reclaim a space that can be his when he had, seemingly, thrown everything that once was away, a long, long time ago. )
who TALKS in the untamed universe. only suffering in silence and regrets.
[ It's terribly painful to hear Wei Wuxian speak to their sister, to hear him say things that have echoed for sixteen years - longer, even, if you count the times before. He wanted to turn away immediately, to hide his grief in something private, to isolate himself from his aches and his suffering, but he can't tear his eyes away from the mantle of his parents, from the name of their sister hovering before them. With her there, watching over them, it feels impossible for him to turn away and abandon Wei Wuxian to his whispered words, to give him the benefit of isolation and quiet for his bows and his honour to their family.
What a relief it had been to return to Lotus Pier and see this left barely broken by the horrors of the Wen Clan.
He's back, he wants to say, thinking of rabbits on a hillside, thinking of the promises that A-Jie and Wei Wuxian had made when they had thought him asleep, broken from losing his core. He's back; he came back from the dead. Can you as well? Can you come back to me? It's the broken plea of a child that knows his dream cannot come true - there is no hope in this. Jiang Yanli will never return to his side and A-Ling will never have his mother.
An uncle for a father will have to suffice, a poor a one as he has been.
A small part of him imagines that he ought to be more annoyed or irritated at the way that Wei Wuxian speaks in honour to long-dead Jiang Sect members, their leaders and blood kin alike, but it is exactly what their sister would want to hear. She wouldn't want his stilted, awkward respects, only able to give an honest whisper when no one is around and when alcohol burns on his tongue and tears prickle at his eyes. She would want their brother's honesty, the sharp wit of Wei Wuxian, the kind she had always preferred. He cannot be angry at that preference, not when his brother had always been the one easier to love.
The touch to his robe stops him, halts him in his need to hide his grief, and all Jiang Cheng can do is stand there and listen as Wei Wuxian continues, as he speaks, whispering to his parents and his sister both. The lump in his throat only grows tighter and tighter as his heart reacts, over and over, to the things he hears.
It hurts to think that, even now, his parents might find little reason for pride in their son. His mother had left him Zidan and he had used it to hunt Demonic Cultivators, secretly hoping for a whisper of his brother whilst loathing all memories. His father would be disappointed that he had not chosen to stand with his favoured son, that he had not kept Wei Wuxian close, had not kept him as part of the Yunmeng Sect. Even the words that Wei Wuxian says does little to soothe the ashes on his tongue: he's a man to be proud of.
A broken man, embittered and angry because of the world, filled with grief and regret so sour it has changed him so completely? A man who would be dead, who may have given up on all his life and future, if not for the cry of his nephew and the touch of his fingers wrapped around his own? No one knows the depths to which he had fallen, how low he had been - that death had felt more akin to a release, to joy, to freedom than living. If he had not been given time with A-Ling, had not had a child to raise in his sister's memory...
I think sometimes even sect leaders and clan heads need to hear when they've done well.
When was the last time someone had told him he had done well? That he had acted appropriately, that he had performed excellently, that he was a source of pride to Lotus Pier? He can barely recall Sect Leader Nie saying something about it, but that was paired with Wei Wuxian all the same. No one has ever been proud of him alone - the words and notion feel hollow and empty.
Jiang Cheng barely notices the fact that Wei Wuxian has turned to look at him, that he has stopped speaking. Tears are too busy rolling down his cheeks, his heart is too busy settling in his throat, and his hands are far too busy shaking. He does not know what to do or what to say and bows his head as some kind of option, shaking as he attempts the impossible in keeping his breathing regular, so he does not choke on his own sadness and his own grief. ]
You are an idiot, Wei Wuxian.
the untamed: where how much a sword or flute was shaking indicated emotion more than their words
( Wei Wuxian might have been sadly amused at how similar they still are, even in how sometimes death seems like the escape, and what holds them to life is cradled in a child's hand. Or in another living person's belief in them, despite the rest of the world.
Not that he's hit that rock bottom again, after the time he fell back off that cliff in Nightless City, having brought the dawn. It doesn't change the fact that once, Wei Wuxian chose death over living. Once, and never again, even if by means he'll never understand, he did not in fact die.
The truth is, looking up at the man he'd called brother for most all his remembered life, in the face of his tears, in the room before complicated parents and a phenomenal sister who had deserved more than what the world had given her in her too short brilliance, he doesn't know what to say. Tears like these distress him, make him want to fix it, leave his eyes heating up and tears threatening and then fattening at the corners of his blinking eyes, beginning their fall with no solutions rearing their heads.
Maybe he should just get himself kicked out (again) sooner rather than later. He pushes up to his feet, pausing, everything is an act of considered deliberation and allowance, and he doesn't know how much of Jiang Cheng's he has. )
Yeah, I am.
( An idiot for the things he cares about; for the people who had defined his world. One he'd believed would respond to righteousness in broad moral considerations, not in political plays, when he'd been younger. When he'd thought keeping quiet on a mountain might have been enough to save them all.
Turns out, he was always going to be someone's collateral damage.
May as well decide to be his own.
He reaches out, throat thick, swallowing, breaking into a smile that is truly breaking, because some things needed time to be found again between the pressure of their temple entrapment and his dismissal that their past is the past. It is, and they need to stride forward, but to leave it like this again and again, is that wise?
Is it what Yanli would have advised? )
So are you, Jiang Cheng.
( No bite to it, no particular hint of witticism, only a shared helplessness in acknowledging that truth: they both have their failings, and bright as he had ever seemed, it had not been Wei Wuxian who had raised a nephew, run a sect, and run off tearing into every hint of who he'd lost for explanations and apologies Wei Wuxian hadn't felt he deserved to fumble through making when they'd finally faced each other again.
What he does do, not before their predecessors, but before Jiang Yanli, is step forward, the awkward collection of his angles and his inability to understand comfort, how even to accept affection without hesitating, seemingly lost each time he's been held onto in the past, too slow to hold back before the moment's past—Wei Wuxian, a half wreck Jiang Cheng could break with one finger, were he so inclined, finally returns what he'd been unable to when he'd first come out of the Burial Grounds. He embraces his once-upon-a-brother, because it's what Yanli would have done. It's what Jiang Cheng has done, because he's always been more honest in actions than Wei Wuxian has known how to be, and he can learn from a shadow of Jiang Cheng's past just as well as from the reality of the present. Speaks from a tight and slightly nasally voice, chest constricted with a slurry of emotions he doesn't pin down. Think too hard, and he'll freeze up, try to laugh it off, fall back on every deflective habit he's had across two lifetimes. )
We're both idiots, and I missed you.
( Because if he's going to end up burning himself with this, he can at least do so knowing he has, for once, been honest. Not just in a way he thinks that Jiang Cheng can survive.
His once-upon-a-brother had always been stronger than he believed himself to be, and it had long since stopped being Wei Wuxian's luxury to think anything he did was to protect him, to think that family is family and he owed his everything to making sure his never knew the extent of what he was willing to do for them unasked and (perhaps, of course, inevitably) uninvited. )
[ It was all supposed to be so much easier than this.
When they were younger their paths had been set out in front of them, built by his parents with notes so easy to follow. Jiang Yanli would marry into the Jin Sect and create an alliance that would benefit Yunmeng for generations. Wei Wuxian would stay as the Head Disciple, to stand by their leader's side and prove the worth of the Jiang Sect for the rest of their long lives. He, Jiang Cheng, would rise up and take his father's place once he retired, being trained and well-educated in how best to continue. He would marry a suitable woman and raise children to take on the mantle once he, too, grew too old and tired.
None of that had happened. Yanli had died. Jin Zixuan had died. The option of marriage had been taken from him with the wreckage of the Sunshot Campaign, leaving Wen Qing a prisoner of fate - the kind that he could not save her from due to his own rage and heartache. Each person in his life had chosen something other than the path he had wanted - that he had thought was their plan. Yanli had been taken, had chosen Wei Wuxian in death. Wen Qing and Wen Ning gave their lives to protect another. Wei Wuxian had chosen the Wen Clan over the Jiang and taken his own steps into the future.
Jiang Cheng had never had a choice. Even in hindsight, looking back, he knows that he had been backed into a corner - either by desperation or by the other Sect Leaders, demanding that he choose, demanding that he either protect what remained of Lotus Pier or he protect the Yiling Patriarch. There had never been a choice there, not with the burden of dozens of deaths on his shoulders, with the ghosts of his parents staring at him from beyond the grave.
Hands shaking, he turns his gaze away from Wei Wuxian to stare up at the shrine, to their names hovering there, almost taunting. There is no chance that his father and his mother are proud of him now, no matter what Wei Wuxian might say. There is no way that Yanli looks down on him with a smile when he had been unable to protect her, when he had raised A-Ling to be an angry, bitter little boy, too much like his uncle.
At least Wei Wuxian can admit his stupidity. At least Jiang Cheng can recognise his own, hearing the words of Jin Guangyao echoing in his mind, punishing him decades later - they were afraid. If he had simply stood by his brother as he had expected Wei Wuxian to stand by him... Would people have lived? Would they be happy? How different the world looks when you look back and recognise the mistakes of the past.
In his chest, his golden core burns - a core that isn't his own. Perhaps it wishes it was back with its true master. Perhaps it hears the pain Jiang Cheng feels, thinking of how willing he had been to give up his own life, and begs for him to address it, to speak it aloud.
Take care, sharp words from his nephew in his mind. What an idiot he is. ]
At least you can say it now.
[ Because he won't, even if it's true, his face twisted in hurt and pain.
The only thing that breaks him out of it is the arms that wrap around him, holding him so gently, so tenderly, in a way no one has dared to do since their sister had died. How sad it is to realise that there is no one who embraces you, no one who loves you, who would hug you when you are sad - because he will hug his nephew, of course, and A-Ling did not grow without love and affection, but he would never allow it in return.
He is a pillar, but in the wake of his brother's arms all he can do is cry. ]
You stupid man. You're such an idiot, Wei Wuxian, blind to everything around you.
[ And Jiang Cheng wishes he could say what's on his tongue, what haunts him, but all he can do is grasp at the back of Wei Wuxian's robes, holding onto them and wishing he was someone different. ]
( Wei Wuxian denies none of it, not the accusations of his idiocy, not his blindness. They're true, and in other ways unfair, but in his younger years he had taken more and more and more on his shoulders, taken burdens he never discussed, never asked about, never sought support for. Not from the brother and sister he was trying to protect. Not from his heart's closest friend, his soulmate. He had instead compartmentalised and cut himself off, repeatedly, choosing to decide what people could handle, to determine what they should be spared, and never once asked. Manipulated, pushed, pulled, but didn't ask.
He's aware of that now, even with it still being hard to fully change those tendencies. The cruelty of telling his brother in the temple, it's in the past, we must move on. Like Jiang Cheng hasn't been living with and carrying any of these things for years. Like Lan Zhan hadn't been, as well.
So here he is, hugging Jiang Cheng, and he goes from gentle hold to more firm when he's not shaken off. )
I know I am.
( He can say, so he does. Along with: )
I'm trying to do better.
( Because that, too... is a truth he's wrestling with. )
What I said in the temple... the past is something we can't change. I messed up. It doesn't matter what Jin Guangyao was influencing as well, or what he said. I messed up, and I didn't think to talk to you about any of the things I thought you wouldn't handle well.
( Why is he saying this when hugging Jiang Cheng? Two reasons: neither of them can run away, they're both anchored, and Jiang Cheng knows now why Wei Wuxian keeps folding like wet paper under every strike that used to barely cause him to blink; second, now that he's initiated a hug, he does not actually know how to end one.
He is, in fact, going to keep holding on waiting for Jiang Cheng, and all his tears, to indicate when the hugging is over. Jiang Cheng will surely know! Because one of them needs to, and Wei Wuxian is not that man. )
[ It would be easier if Wei Wuxian would fight back - if his brother would make some kind of attempt to deny it, to pretend that he is something other than this. It would make some of the burden on Jiang Cheng's shoulders feel easier to bear, somehow, as if he could muster up the will to shoulder it all. It would be better if he felt as though he was being an idiot, that none of this was justified - because it would make it easier to forgive his brother.
That's not the case, however, and his eyes still burn with tears that he can't quite swallow back, that he can do nothing to stop other than squeeze them shut and hope that he wears thin somehow.
It would be easier if the embrace didn't feel so much like home. ]
It took a whole life for you to try, idiot.
[ He remembers another promise; let's be brothers, they said, even in the next life. Are they brothers now? Is that connection still there, with a different body housing Wei Wuxian's soul? Blood never linked them to begin with, that had never mattered, but it was a confusing myriad of thoughts that wrap up on his mind and leave Jiang Cheng wondering and wishing a thousand things.
He sinks into the embrace. ]
You should have told me. You didn't need to protect me. Even then I was Clan Leader, even then I was going to have to be stronger and better. I was a leader, not just your younger brother. You should have believed I could do it.
[ He breathes out, shiveringly, before he shakes his head. ]
I had been ready to die for you and A-Jie. I had left to do that. But then you were just as stupid as I was and it was all for nothing.
[ A confession he hadn't really been prepared to make, especially not here, hanging before his ancestors and feeling their judgement rain down on him. ]
locked in an awkward but soul affirming embrace, it's great
( If Wei Wuxian knew the particulars of Jiang Cheng's thoughts, he'd point out they were never blood related anyway, and their bond had always been in shared experiences and hearts. He doesn't, however, and he's now stranded in a hug he can't end, so he keeps holding on. Mildly distressed, but more glad to be of some scant help, even if it's in lancing the abscessed wounds of near two decades.
He listens, humming his agreement: it'd taken a lifetime, yes, because youth had meant a confidence in things, assumptions about burdens, what he'd done out of love and loyalty and a sense of justice, and where it had ruined the things which he loved, had been loyal to, had tried to save. Justice in an unjust world is asking to be driven to the brink. Backing matters. One cannot stand on their own and hold back the tide of public opinion.
If only he'd learned that earlier. If only he hadn't decided he was the most expendable variable.
(But he had. And looking back, he doesn't know he would have done so much different, aside from strive to save the lives whose loss had broken both men here in ways still jagged, still bleeding.)
He only truly stiffens when Jiang Cheng shakes his head, swallowing down the words of I believed in you, but I also believed in a guilt I didn't want you to bear. Because the words that follow, the... confession, if that's what it is, leaves his brow furrowed and his hold on Jiang Cheng tightening, clinging to him so he doesn't pull him away and stare into his face. He can't do that right now. Can't handle it. )
Jiang Cheng.
( His name, a touch sharp, but volume low. Because it takes thinking back, it takes remembering, it takes a fever of his shijie, it takes the inexplicable timing, the Wen Forces in towns, scouring after any of them. A massacre, and the broken man he'd begged Wen Ning to haul free, the depression that followed, and— )
You—you fool.
( And his breath catches, his throat tightens, his chest feels too small, too tight, to contain his heart and lungs. They've never been only one fool, have they? Two fools, in differing and similar ways. Brothers in all but name. Broken bonds, yes, but perhaps not burned so thoroughly there's no room for rebuilding, if just, if just...
The sob catches him by surprise, and he chokes on it, shudders in Jiang Cheng's arms, turns his face so it can't be seen when the tears flow hot, escaping his eyes and rolling down the planes of his slowly rounding out face. )
Can't you tell, I always believed in you?
( It is and isn't what he wants to say, but a shuddering breath, his slammed shut eyes, his hold on his once brother, all says the same thing in the end: everything in Yunmeng will always cut deep. He never stopped caring, even if his words failed. Taking after Jiang Cheng in this, who can say various things, but not the ones he means most. )
I'm sorry. And thank you, for loving us as well as you did.
( It's a word he trips over, because it has all different connotations, but this is not just loyalty, it's not duty. That's too backward: that was what he, Wei Wuxian, had owed and broken, not what Jiang Cheng owed.
(His thinking in this is flawed. Loyalty goes both ways; duty has more than one shade of meaning. But he cannot blame Jiang Cheng. He sees his own guilt too largely to do something like that.)
Acting in these ways, for the three of them, was always a form of love. Unsaid except perhaps by Yanli, who had always been the strongest, the steadiest, and the wisest of them all. )
[ When he realises the weight of the words he's said, the confession that he didn't mean to make or admit to, Jiang Cheng can do little more than swallow back the sudden rush of anxiety and nausea. He doesn't want to be the one to admit to these things, wanted this to be a secret he kept to himself - even if Jin Ling was pushing and pushing for him to admit to it, for him to say those unspoken words to his brother.
He hadn't been prepared for what it might been to unburden his heart, to pass on that knowledge, to let himself feel what he had felt, to delve into his own heartache. When Jiang Cheng had stepped out of the inn on that rainy day he had been prepared to die, had been prepared to give himself up entirely for what remained of his family - he was the heir to the Jiang sect, after all, and the Wens would likely want for him and no one else.
The fact that Wei Wuxian had come back to get him, that Wen Ning had snuck him out, that Wen Qing had healed him... He had never expected that to happen. He had never expected to be so dearly loved or cherished so much. He had hoped for Wei Wuxian and Yanli to find a place of respite, a place to care for themselves, not for them to risk their own lives and joys and futures to come to him. It had been too much for him to bear for even a moment.
There's no way for him to show his own face right now and he breathes out, shaken and unsure as he swallows back the lump in his throat. ]
You are the one who taught me to be a fool.
[ To admit all this in front of Yanli... He can only imagine what she might think of him, what she might imagine. It had cost him this much to even get to this point, to admit it, that made him feel as though he had the confidence and the strength to do it - and there's nothing else that he can do other than try not to let himself break down into more tears, to cry more and more until there's nothing left inside of him.
Jiang Cheng barely even realises that he's shaking, his hands clenched around fabric and nothingness as he tries to calm himself down. ]
You shouldn't have. You shouldn't have believed, because in the end I was a failure all the same.
[ He breathes out, shaking his head and leaning back, trying to pull himself away. ]
You don't understand, Wei Wuxian. It was a stupid mistake and in the end it was meaningless. All I wanted was to protect you and Yanli and I failed at that as well.
the whole meltdown process and everyone's scrambling for answers...
( He breathes in deep when his (former) brother lets go, finally having an out that he takes as shamefully as he can; it was awkward, but not for the crying. The not knowing what to do, or what to say. People's tears aren't easy things to deal with. Time's changed none of that for him, sixteen missing years a blank slate for nothing but the passage of time.
The words echo through his chest, and once he can see Jiang Cheng's face again, he reaches up to keep hold of one arm. A tenuous connection, but grounding, if not for Jiang Cheng, than for himself. He's used to this kind of grip, and he understands too acutely the feelings involved. Wanting to protect, failing to do so. Feeling powerless and useless no matter what you do. Having meant to do good, and having failed, and harmed the ones you loved best.
He wants the easy way out. To say, 'It's so long ago, who wants to focus on the past?' To say, 'Things were happening as they would.' To say so many things, but what he swallows down are all those impulses, meant for himself more than a placation offered to another adult who has run his sect as sole head and hand behind it for sixteen years. Long enough to help raise a nephew who shouldn't have been raised without his parents.
But for the sins of their generation, Jin Ling would have had a family beyond two uncles, one willing to make light of his life for his own ambitions.
Still, what gives his caught tongue strength is the name on the plaque, Jiang Yanli watching them with eyes that had always believed better out of them both than either of them had been on their own. )
Jiang Cheng...
( His fingers tighten around his arm. Listen. Please? He doesn't know how to say that. )
If they'd taken me first, would you and shijie have run, like I asked? Would you have never turned back to see if you could find me, for the same wish to protect? Would you have not tried to gamble on bringing me or the remains of your parents out, would you have not found a place to run?
( Some of this, he thinks, can only answer with a no. He doesn't believe Jiang Cheng would have trusted Wen Ning the way Wei Wuxian had gambled, when Wei Wuxian had also believed Wen Ning was betraying him, until the moment he had not. He doesn't know that their paths would have rejoined, but if they had, would the end journey have been to Wen Qing's mansion, to a chance at recovery? Pride has made things difficult in the past, on both their parts. One course changing, but others? )
When Wen Chao caught me, ( and he pauses, because bad memories are the haziest for him, the things he tries hardest to forget, and he doesn't want to reach back for these ones. He's trying, and he hates it, and he thinks of Yanli and what is owed and what apologies are, and what useless thoughts they both entertain. There's no going back. He does not want to mention any of this. He wants it buried, but what hasn't already been wrested from him by others? He can pry this out, too, for someone used to making him bleed. He owes Jiang Cheng that much. ) when he caught me, they were the ones who thought they melted my core. If I'd had one, I'd have lost it then, if not sooner. Do you understand? At least one good thing came out of this, in all our trying to save each other. We weren't both lost.
( He doesn't know how tight his hold has grown. Doesn't think about how it's weaker than it was years ago. He has to concentrate to cause physical harm, to not conserve qi as he must, and it's not crushing strength he needs.
He doesn't want to look to the past. It hurts. Partly for his own hubris, always, but also for the things he could do nothing about, not then, and not now. )
You protected us the way you thought you could. If the results aren't what were expected... Jiang Cheng, I know how that is. You didn't fail us. Do you need me to count the ways? Trusting my memory that much, ( and his lips quirk, pull into a lopsided grin as he ignores whatever tracts of tears there had been down his face, at the drying salt and cooling lines of it, his neck faintly damp now; ) it's a little much, isn't it?
jiang cheng's blank face when he realises his core is gone will haunt me
[ The weak, pathetic part of him wants to turn and simply walk away; it would be easier if he did that, if he stormed off and left Wei Wuxian to pay respects here alone, to wander around Lotus Pier as if he still belonged. It doesn't matter that he's also Jin Ling's uncle; it doesn't matter that he had hoped that his brother would choose a better path for such a long time, that he had been prepared to open the halls of Yunmeng to him whenever he had asked. The reality was too painful and too awkward for him to muster the emotion for; he's never been good at this.
The touch to his arm is an anchor, which he is sure Wei Wuxian intended. There's a knot in his throat and he has to breathe in and then out, to muster whatever strength he has left to knot the emotions in his stomach. He cannot fall apart again, not when there is still so much correspondence for him to reply to, so many things he must take into his own hands now that things are beginning to change. Jin Guangyao has not been gone too long and yet Jiang Cheng knows his nephew is relying on him to help guide him to being a better sect leader.
He had taken over a clan young as well, after all.
So much of this would be easier of Yanli was here to bridge the gap between them; they had never learned to do it entirely on their own, never dreaming there would come a time their sister would not be at their side. She had been the one to say they needed to be together, the three of them, children of Lotus Pier growing into lives shaped for them, far out of their control. The bitter anger and resentment he feels towards Wei Wuxian for her death has faded over the years, but the hurt of her reaching for him, falling from her blood brother's arms, as she took her last breath was a sting hard to forget.
Pursing his lips, he closes his eyes, but he stops and waits. It feels like that moment when he had visited Wei Wuxian and the Wen Clan, when his brother had tried to drag him here and there before abandoning the Jiang Sect; painful and expected all at once. ]
That's not the point. [ The retort comes easily; of course he would have gone back for them. He would have ensured Yanli had found her way to their mother's family or at least to the welcoming arms of the Jin Sect - Madame Jin would have never let Yanli suffer any kind of hurt, no matter how awkward the Peacock was at the time - before he had found his way back to Lotus Pier to save his brother. He likely would have failed; Wen Ning had no reason to help him, after all.
One hand lifts to his chest where, under his robes, the scars of the whip still mar his skin. Yet another reason to be blacklisted by the matchmakers - his body was found, scarred, half of it not his own, lent to him by the Yiling Patriarch.
Again it comes down to Wei Wuxian making a clear, good point; it was likely inevitable that they would both lose their core as long as Wen Zhuliu lived. He had lost it and regained it - that had been enough for him to gain vengeance. But - but. If he had never lost his core then Wei Wuxian would not have taken him to the mountains, would not have had to wait for him in town, would not have been caught.
There is always a way for him to blame himself; his mother and father had taught him that from a young age.
Pulling his hand away, he turns his head, eyes damp and his hands shaking. ]
Everyone died. My mother, my father, my disciples, Yanli, you... There is nothing you can say that can absolve me of that, Wei Wuxian. All that I had was lost and I did nothing to save it. [ Here he scoffs, hurting in his heart. ] I could not even save a-Ling in the temple. Is that not failure enough?
( Scars carried outwardly or inwardly, most everyone had them. The longer they lived, the more they accumulated. How well they healed, if they did at all, was another matter entirely.
They were both collections of their own scars, mentally and emotionally. Jiang Cheng even made sure to leave new ones that Wei Wuxian cared no little or more than he did past ones, from the same source; some fates are inevitable, one might say.
Self-blame is something they can both be good at, and it's powerfully difficult to break away from. That he'd throw himself under a cart to try and make it up goes without saying, as is the fact he's learning that isn't the best way of handling things.
So what to say?
He clucks his tongue, blinks his eyes, breathes in through a tight chest. Let's Jiang Cheng pull away, as if he could ever really stop him. )
No. Failing would have never been coming at all. Where would we have been then?
( He'll spell it out if he must, but he hopes he doesn't need to. He didn't have Chenqing without Jiang Cheng having held onto and then returned the flute intact. Sixteen years of that, and then some. His own rough and slowly better carved bamboo flute had just been shot and he had nothing but his voice, and the control that was needed, that saved lives later, came because he had the right tool.
Given to him by someone who had made no bones about his disappointments with him. Bonds truly are hard to break, ah? That aches, too. )
Jiang Cheng, aren't you the one who just said it to me? We can't decide to face everything alone. Bear every burden alone. People are stronger for working together, aren't they? Think back, tell me how A-Ling was saved in the temple.
( Don't tell him how all those other deaths are ones he carries on his shoulders, not the sole cause of, but always inextricably the excuse. In Yanli's case, also the sole reason. She would never have been there if he hadn't gone looking for her first; to this day, he has no idea how she ran all that distance, tired and distraught as she was, disinclined toward so much of cultivation. But of course she had.
And she'd died sparing him a death he then sought not five minutes later. )
Jiang Cheng tries not to think too much about that night, about how afraid he had been. He hadn't been scared to face Jin Guangyao; he hadn't been afraid of meeting any other man or woman in that place, hadn't been afraid to fight them. The only thing he had been afraid of was losing his nephew, losing another member of his family, seeing someone else's life stolen from right in front of him. That had scared him almost more than anything else - and instinct had guided him more than anything else, leaping in front of swords and danger to protect his nephew and brother both.
It had come as a shock to Jiang Cheng as much as he is sure it surprised Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji.
It's equally hard to rationalise his place in it when his life has been a long list of failures, from childhood to growing into the Sect Leader he was today. His stomach twists and all he can do is breathe out, frowning as he tries not to let his emotion get the better of him - again. Weak, vulnerable, foolish, all words from his mother what whip him like Zidian even now. ]
Don't act as though you were not the hero in the temple, Wei Wuxian. He was saved because of your Demonic Cultivation.
[ The kind he had tracked down and hunted for years. His attempts - fighting, trading his life for a-Ling - had failed. ]
What do you want me to say? What do you want me to do? I know what I have done in this life, Wei Wuxian. I do not get a second chance.
( There's more than one way to be defeated. Self-defeating, self-recriminations, self-doubt. Wei Wuxian knows more about all those these days than he did when he was younger, more confident that between the two of them, the world could be managed, would be sorted, would be just. It's not growing up so much as growing into the awareness of how complicated a concept that was, how power and political structures and connections and finances drove all of that, and how even each one of those things could be toppled by public opinion. Right or wrong. On heresy or with evidence.
His smile is drier than his eyes, even now, and his laughter is brief and low and ends with a sigh. )
Jiang Cheng, we do get second chances. Shijie would tell you the same. You and I can't change the people we've been, or the things we've done in the past. That's not the same as not changing the people we're still becoming, or the things we do each day we're here.
( Alive, conscious, and working. Sixteen years that he cannot explain as anything other than darkness, his awareness limited to that fact. A summoning and a curse, and being abandoned and collected all over again, this time with even less warning.
He's happy. Not whole, not complete, but he can breathe, he can tilt his head back and see skies in all their flavours, he has the chance to speak with one of the only people left alive who has ever felt like family, and that's incredible. He smiles, because wrestling with himself to say these things is harder than he wants it to be, and a smile can be like armour, too. )
Yes, I did calm Chifeng-Zun's resentment filled spirit, but can you honestly tell me I did all of that alone? You're calling me a hero, haven't you figured out the same thing I have? Heroes don't work alone. Heroes don't survive alone, Jiang Cheng.
( He hadn't. Wouldn't have still, if Lan Zhan hadn't stood by him in the last few months. He breathes in, then sighs out, rubbing at his own cheek like he can rub off the tear tracts there. )
Shijie was so much better at this. Jiang Cheng, you get a second chance, you deserve it more than I do, so why do you make it sound like you don't?
i've had this reply in my head but finally creativity comes
It's so easy for Wei Wuxian to look back at things and be gentle with it, to gloss over the things he had done. He hasn't had the many, many years to gaze at himself and see all his failures and mistakes. He hadn't had to raise a child desperately hoping he wouldn't turn into his mother or father, wishing desperately that his sister was there, that his brother-in-law lived. That Jin Ling would be good, would be happy.
He didn't spend years staring at the shrine to his family and feeling the weight of their expectations burn down on him. He can feel the knot in his throat building again, choking him and making him feel as though he feels something desperate is curling over him. He doesn't want to bare himself again, but here he is.
Why does Wei Wuxian does this to him? Why does Wei Wuxian still have this power over him? ]
Because I don't!
[ His hands are shaking and his eyes are flickering. ]
I didn't save Yanli! I failed to protect you from the other sects! It is as Jin Guangyao said - I did not stand by you and keep you at my side - I didn't make sure that you didn't... That they didn't take you away from us.
[ His head bows, his throat tight. ]
I did not stop Wang Lingjiao from setting off her signal and I did not protect Lotus Pier. It is as my mother always said - I am a failure. Nothing more.
[ How can he ignore what his mother and father had thought of him for so long? ]
( Oh, he needs more patience, he needs depths of it that Jiang Yanli had, but he's only himself, matured or otherwise. Wei Wuxian breathes in, swallows against the thickness in his throat and the frustration there, the anger, not as his former brother so much as at himself and the world for having been what it has been. Unfair?
That's the nature of it, and the good things are the blessings that are fought for and held onto and earned. He lifts both hands to cradle the sides of Jiang Cheng's face, voice low and intense, eyes red rimmed as he resists banging their heads together. Sometimes he thinks it'd be faster, but he knows the more they fight, the less either one of them really hears.
It'd be so much easier fighting. It's be so much easier not trying to struggle through facing these tangled emotions, ones that knot in his chest in different ways, but no less familiar. He wants Jiang Cheng to be okay. He needs him to be, and he doesn't know how to fix this. But that's part of it too, he thinks. It's not something either of them can fix on their own. )
And I told you to let me go! I said cut me out, so the clans would stop hounding you. We both made mistakes, Jiang Cheng! I helped get shijie killed. That was my fault, just like believing it was going to be okay coming to Carp Tower. I should have known better. I shouldn't have trusted staying quiet was enough, but I did, and I let that play out by walking right into their hands.
( His voice breaks on this, because he does not want to talk about it, does not want to revisit things he remembers, does not want to flirt with the abyss he'd dropped into when he'd seen the light in Jiang Yanli's eyes go forever dim. He'd killed her killer; he'd lost what was left of his ability to hold back, or to hold together. He'd destroyed the stygian tiger seal while crying through laughter partially hysterical.
He had sought his own death, and then, caught and dangling from Lan Zhan's hand, the blood binding them, and Jiang Cheng, grieving and looming, had not struck him down. Yet the shuddering of rock had been another fear through him, and Wei Wuxian had pulled back, had thrown himself down, rather than see the last of anyone he cared about still alive in the world fall down with him, and damn them all. )
You survived so much loss, helped raise your nephew, grew the sect to be a strength and power of its own... Jiang Cheng, your only failure is in believing in yourself.
[ It's too hard for Jiang Cheng, who feels as though he is sixteen again when he is twice that age, who feels as though he is back in his childhood home with his brother knocking on his door to be let in, to beg forgiveness. That's how it had always worked out, wasn't it? Wei Wuxian would do something stupid and Jiang Cheng would go and save him or dig him out of it, for the benefit of Lotus Pier and because he loved his brother more than he ever loved himself.
The touch to his face is enough to undo him but he keeps himself together, fresh out of tears and exhausted from the weight of his own feeling and the pain of existence. He hasn't had enough time to mourn, not really - a thousand years wouldn't be enough time to get over his sister, his family, his parents, his home. None of it would be enough, not when his heart is so heavy and so burdened with the agony of being alive.
He wishes that he could draw Sandu and make do, that he could do something to end the torment of seeing his brother back to life - Wei Wuxian returned when Jiang Yanli, when Jin Zixuan, when Madam Yu and father - but he can't. He isn't strong enough to destroy Wei Wuxian when he is so glad to see him, when he is making a life for himself in Gusu, when he has Lan Wangji to love and support him and Jiang Cheng has no one but his own pain and isolation to keep him company. ]
We both know I could have protected you. I could have protected Lady Wen as well - I tried, but she...
[ She returned his comb. She had chosen a life where death would come to her rather than a chance of living at his side. Should he feel sour about that, still? That she would have chosen death over marriage to him when he had been so earnest in his affection for her? He understands the sentiment all the same; choosing her brother over love. He would have done it too - Wei Wuxian over Wen Qing.
His stomach churns with pain and agony, with the nausea of hurt and years of suffering, of punishing himself for things out of his control. Punishing himself by thinking about it, over and over, is the only constant he knows - other than his nephew, his home. He had lived with it for so long that it felt more like an ally than an enemy.
He bows his head, breathing out shakily. ]
Isn't that failure enough, Wei Wuxian? I was never anything without you at my side, and you were gone.
barely changes this LMF i can't imagine wei wuxian figuring out comforting kisses if ur not 5
( srsly what's he supposed to say to any of this? he can't account for the strength of will and self that wen qing had shown years ago, had always known of herself: one of the woman he also admired most in the world, after jiang yanli. protecting just two people, them, is something he understands: jiang cheng's loyalties are close and tight and fierce, but that might be the crux of it. jiang cheng fought harder for the small circle, and wen qing saw too much of the larger context. she trusted in that, and wei wuxian was forced to face it and hope, too, and both of them had those hopes and faiths in an imperfect humanity crushed.
anyway, what's thinking? if jiang cheng can't get out of those thoughts, then force them out, with a different kind of violence of expectation: wei wuxian keeps his hand there, at jiang cheng's face, and abruptly and without warning leans in to press his forehead against his brother's. that, he feels, is shocking enough. )
I couldn't be at your side, Jiang Cheng, but I was always with you. Do you get that? It's unfair, but we're the same kind of fool, sacrificing for each other what neither of us would want the other man to give.
( he hesitates, because he does hate this, and it sounds in his voice, the more strangled note in it. he can't even hint at being light and unaffected, blithe or anything of the kind. he wishes he could. didn't yanli say that was his way, to smile through it, let the bad roll off him like water from a duck's back? is it letting her down to not carry that on here and now? )
I wanted to believe in so many things, Jiang Cheng, without having anything to back them. Justice, people's word, that staying silent and quiet in Yiling for that year meant people would start being less afraid. Then I walked right into what got our sister's husband killed. I couldn't keep Wen Qing and Wen Ning from turning themselves in, along with everyone else. I didn't know A-Yuan was left behind, when I ran after them, and all I found was the whole of the world I thought had to be better denouncing me for everything I hadn't yet done, and not for the things I had. When did it become a sin to defend myself? But if I'd been stronger, if I hadn't tried to find shijie, if I hadn't gone by Carp Tower before I went to Nightless City, she'd have been here still. That wasn't Jin Guangyao's doing. Shijie wouldn't have run there if it hadn't been for me. I got her killed, and I don't know how to make up for that, not now, not then.
( this is a really long and awkward speech to be having like this, but he makes himself talk, his tongue feeling heavy and tired in his mouth, chest feeling tight and heart squeezed beyond measure. )
When it came down to it, I was the one who broke under all that pressure, not you. So who was nothing, without someone by their side? It wasn't you, Jiang Cheng.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
for fennu
( He smiles, and it's mostly genuine, just as part of it is to mask worries and concerns of his own, just shy of anything anxious. If Jiang Cheng didn't want him here on some level, there'd have been no concession. Most likely, most probably, it helps to be here on his own, without Lan Zhan or Wen Ning, but one's gone on to build monuments to his dead, and the other's sitting atop the cultivation world, and Wei Wuxian is a man wandering with a flute and a donkey.
Someone figuring out and finding his own way.
So he smiles easily enough, stepping toward his (once) shidi, someone he's failed and cares for and doesn't figure there's enough to truly make the mess of them okay, and still, and still! He's familiar for his colours, all black now, no reds, no highlights beyond the one found tied around his top-knot. Lean as always, but not gaunt, no shadows lingering under eyes, and less alcohol flowing through his veins. Still the easiest way to calm his thoughts, but a crutch he's trying to address, in his own way. Not make a staple to getting by day to day.
Been there. Lived that, more than once. It's nice having to do less laundry because he's not pouring wine down his front, too keen on the effects, not wise enough to the mess. )
Jiang Cheng! I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying, and I wasn't a bit late!
( He does have a qiankun pouch, this one not holding any angry spirits, resentful spirits, spirit swords, or anything else of a particularly unusual nature: instead, a bundled book that he pulls out with a motion of his hand and tentatively offers toward the crossed arm figure of his adoptive brother. Martial brother. Ah, family, even if he's hurt Jiang Cheng in ways he hadn't even realised until... weeks ago. Secrets and memories, things that find their way out eventually. )
If you wanted to look at this. You know what they say about my memory.
( Which is a cop out, ha ha ha. Yes, he has said let's put thing behind us, he's let go of old injuries, old events, but it's less out of a forgetful nature (oh, if he could only have one that worked on the things he wanted it to) and more out of a forward facing one. He's always been that way, and if it seems like it means he forgets the unpleasant fast, and remembers only the good, it's as careful in design as anything he's ever done that wasn't on a whim.
The truth here is simple: he doesn't want to get anything about their sister wrong. )
ty!
It's a struggle all the same. Seeing him back here leaves an ache in his chest, a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar all at once. It's painful.
His eyes skim over Wei Wuxian quickly, drinking him in. The body is different, but the spirit is the same; recognising that doesn't make this process easier. No one could fault him for his allowances, no one could fault him for letting his brother come back to his home once again. It was still his home, no matter how much Jiang Cheng might be filled with hurt at the notion of it; he would never be able to truly turn Wei Wuxian away. Not in his heart, nor with the memory of Yanli hovering at the edge of his mind.
Wrinkling his nose, he breathes out. ]
You were lucky this time.
[ He hesitates for a moment before he reaches out to take the book and begin to skim through the pages. It's a good thing - it's something that Jin Ling will appreciate, once he has wrapped his mind around what had truly happened with the deaths of his mother and father. Losing one uncle and gaining another - it's more than a little painful for the boy that Jiang Cheng sees as more of a son than a nephew in all honesty.
His hands shake, just a little, but he hopes it isn't obvious. ]
You might as well come in then. He knows what Lotus Pier looks like, but more memories couldn't hurt.
no subject
He supposes Lan Xichen faces similar complications, but from a different perspective, and a different age. Also, it'd been the uncle willing to near-kill him who'd told him not to start fights, where-as the uncle learning he'd been set-up along the way who'd been so easy to hate for all the losses in his life was the one saying fight while you can get away with it.
... Jiang Cheng doesn't need to know about that. In fact, Wei Wuxian will now endeavour to forget he said as much. )
Sometimes having the familiar held close to you means as much as the entirely new. Thank you... ( And anything else he was about to add onto that, he rethinks, trailing off and remembering to smile. ) Is it... would it be okay if, at some time before I leave, I pay my respects?
( Yes, he'd done so the last time, but it's not something that simply stops, and the argument that had followed had been ugly and painful. That he knew now what else had happened after his body had given out, that's not precisely easier, but he wants a sense of what boundaries he needs to skirt. Being self assured about any of them when it comes to this? He's not. )
apologies for my slowness!
His brother had died, and now his brother was back. It is a difficult thing for him to completely rationalise. Who could ever believe such a thing?
Fingers brush over the book idly before he breathes out, trying to keep himself calmed down as much as possible. The Jiang Sect might be well versed in dancing around the coiling emotions of their leader, but Wei Wuxian has been gone for sixteen years. He's not the same as he had been when he was younger, free of any guilt and regret. ]
You don't have to thank me. It is hardly a trial.
[ But it is, of course. Bringing Wei Wuxian back to the home that he had turned away from, choosing Wen over Jiang... He grits his teeth and turns, robes flicking, to stalk back towards the heart of Lotus Pier. ]
She will be upset if you do not.
[ Yanli, of course. ]
all is good <3 never a rush, and worth the wait
There are things he thinks about now to no known end, searches out on roads that cross into lands he's never set foot in, and across those he has. Coming back around here, with a degree less of the stress that had him walking even more cautiously than he does now...
... Okay, so he's still uncertain, just trying to hide it well. He hadn't lied, in his mumbling before Fairy's unrelenting stare, when his mask had been exposed and his brother had demands Wei Wuxian had no explanation for. Explanations, sometimes, ring more like excuses, and he won't excuse himself for his role in Jiang Yanli's death. Not even learning what else was happening at the time.
Hypocritical as it had been, the man who struck the killing blow had wanted to see Wei Wuxian die for the sake of the brother who had also tried and failed to see Wei Wuxian die, then died for it. That culpability had everything to do with turned tides of public opinion, and one man allowed retaliation where another man was not.
Past days. Things which he only lingers on when facing the engravings bearing witness to the lost, but not yet.
He'd never once failed to want to come back to Lotus Pier, but he does know, and has known, it's not his home. He doesn't have one of those, not these days.
He trails after Jiang Cheng, not side by side, a good three steps or more behind, partly from glancing around when it's not the middle of the night and partly because he's still not sure he should be here. Is allowed here? Yes, he is, but last time it'd been on the fringes, there'd been the yelling, the near fight, the passing out—and everything he never fully learned had been said until later, with all that fallout too.
At least he's gotten permission to pay respects where they're most due. That twists his lips up into something of a sad smile, eyes turned in the direction of the Jiang family shrine as a matter of course. )
Then, could I—I won't go wandering around, I promise.
( Itchy feet to wander familiar walkways, but holding back, since he's the guest. And this is not the memories he was here to renew, now, was it? Or it was, but not strictly what he planned to put to the page in ink. Perhaps he ought to, given the number of times he ended up kneeling and speaking with her there before things hit the point of no return, but... boats over lotuses in lakes and rivers, laughing and splashing, a young woman expertly peeling lotus seeds. There are so many living memories, too. He can feel them here in a way that he didn't otherwise, the location alone enough to stir up old ghosts and familiarities. Not the bad ones: he doesn't want to waste time on those. Better left forgotten. )
you're a gem <3
It was so easy to blame his ills and upsets on Wei Wuxian, to blame him for everything that went wrong when they were so much younger than they are now - or, at least, than he is now. Wei Wuxian's age and state is still far, far too confusing for him to begin to wrap his mind around.
Moving back towards his home is easy enough, but he feels as though he is heavy with the echoes of the past. Heading towards home means heading back to ancient memories, to ghosts that haunt every corner of Lotus Pier. Jiang Yanli whispers to him in his nightmares; his mother and father storm into his mind when he is at his word, questioning all the choices that he has made and way he had rebuilt Yunmeng with them lost and gone from the world.
He had thought he was further than this, better than this, but at heart he is still the man so, so desperate for attention, needing and wanting the confirmation that he has done something right.
Breathing out, he lets his hands flex gently. ]
You can wander. I don't care.
[ I don't mind is what he means. This is still your home is what his heart is screaming at him to say, but he doesn't let himself even whisper it. Jiang Cheng lets himself swallow it down and force it to the depths of his stomach, to worry about later. He cannot think about it now: he can worry about it later.
He stops at the edge of home, staring forward. It's been a long time since Wei Wuxian stepped foot this close, not since so much had happened, since they learned the truth about Jin Guangyao.
He turns his head. ]
Do you want to go to make your bows first?
no subject
The line of people he'd failed did not start or end with sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years ago. He knows now it wasn't just his decisions, or just up to him to make those decisions alone. That he didn't need to, though here, again: he makes his decisions, still alone, but less presumptively. He asks, tentative, instead of assume. The things he'd wanted hidden had already been unearthed, albeit remained not fully addressed. He tells himself he'll be fine if they never are.
There are selflessnesses that are selfishnesses, and he's never stopped caring for the brother, martial or adopted, he was raised with. Through the harsh words, the whipping, the righteously aimed angers, or the less understandable ones. That he'd only objected when Jiang Cheng had aimed his anger at Lan Wangji, or anyone else, says more about his personal feelings on his actions than on Jiang Cheng's, in these cases.
So he stops, still a half step behind, but closer than he'd been trailing. )
Yes.
( No hesitation, staring up at familiar buildings, feeling the presence of familiar ghosts. Remembering another homecoming, years ago; the one where everyone lived, and the one after everyone had died. When he'd been worth boasting about, and later, when he'd been hiding every reason why he was no longer boasting. Growing up is a long and painful process, he supposes. Better to forget about it, live up to what he'd told Jiang Cheng in the temple, in letting go, in moving forward.
It's something they all need to do, without forgetting why it'd mattered. Remembering the people, but not being stuck on the details. What Jiang Cheng has built, he built with his own hands. What core sits within his chest doesn't define the ways in which it's been used.
But Wei Wuxian doesn't say that, least of all right now. He has his own filial piety and respects to pay to Jiang Cheng's parents, and a heartfelt respects to pay to their sister. He blinks away the water in his eyes, trying not to let it matter once again that he stands here, tentative or otherwise. No confidence in it, but trust in the things Jiang Cheng says, even now: both what's extrapolated, and what's stated in plain terms.
He meets Jiang Cheng's turned head with wet eyes he's ignoring are damp at all, and swallows again, nodding his head. He's already said yes.
He's still waiting for permission. The reassurance that he, for too often after his resurrection, has needed. This is really okay. )
i am sorry this is so long he has a lot of feelings
There are a thousand other choices that he and Wei Wuxian could have made. His regret and hurt over his brother's choice could have softened - he knew, even in the moment, he did not truly blame Wei Wuxian for what happened to Lotus Pier, or for his choices when it came to the Wens. He had been too quick to anger, too hurt, too damaged and filled with pain over his losses. If he had accepted the Wens into Lotus Pier, if he had, perhaps, wedded Wen Qing, if he had chosen a different path... How many lives would be different?
Would Yanli have lived? Her husband? Would a-Ling had grown with parents who loved him, softening the sharp edge that Jiang Cheng had given him? Would he and Wei Wuxian have stood side-by-side, or would he have gone off and got married?
It's stupid to think about those things, idle thoughts that do more to damn him than help him. Jiang Cheng is in no position to make wishes, as if he's ten years younger. He's not his nephew; he doesn't have the world at his feet. He has only bitterness and hurt as his companions, guiding him through all the choices he makes and the rest of his almost eternal life.
Tied up with all of this is just how difficult it is for him to bring Wei Wuxian back here. He does not blame him, not anymore - his breakdown at the temple was enough to put all of that to bed - but there's still hurt inside of him, pain mixed with guilt and regret and bitterness that has had too long to blossom and develop. Jiang Cheng wishes that he was better at this, but with no sister here to translate his snippy words into meaning he fears he will be forever adrift with no anchor.
(A-Ling has Lanling, his his friends. Wei Wuxian has Lan Wangji. Nie Huaisang has Qinghe and his old friend back. What does Jiang Cheng have but loneliness and pain, crushing his shoulders until he crumbles under the weight of it?)
It does not take long for him to move forward to where the shrine is. He hesitates on the edge, staring at the wood, breathing out, before he lifts his head high. He has been here more often than anyone could ever ask of him, beyond duty. He comes for his sister more than his parents, the bitterness of their rejections still a wound unhealed to this day.
When he speaks, his voice is soft and low. ]
I'm back, A-Jie. I know it was not long ago that I was here, but someone has brought a gift for your son. I think they would like your approval before they give it to him. I am sure you'll be happy to see his face, even if it is still stupid.
[ His hands shake as he moves, kneels, bows, squeezing his eyes shut. All these years and his heart still breaks - he still thinks of his sister's body in his arms, reaching for Wei Wuxian, pulling away from him even in death. He doesn't blame her; hadn't everyone preferred A-Xian, in the end?
Breathing out, forehead so close to the ground he feels cold, he has to calm himself down. Purple surrounds him as he stands, casting his long sleeves behind him as he motions, trying to be strong and severe and failing. Wei Wuxian could always see through him anyway. Why try? ]
Wei Wuxian is here, A-Jie. He's come back and he wants to see you. I'm sorry that you're not together anymore, but I think perhaps this is what you would have liked either way.
this is why we're attempting to smash their heads together and go TALK, FOOLS
Wei Wuxian had failed to push, to press, to ask for help. Had instead made it eaiser to let him go. If you can't stand with me, then cast me away. Say I've defected. Face a broken arm and a stab to the gut and two men too proud and too young for the wisdom they might have now to see where they'd allowed it all to start unravelling at the seams.
He doesn't regret, exactly. The past remains as it happened. It cannot change. And he's not disappointed, unlike Lan Zhan, in the thigns Jiang Cheng has done, because the underlying truth is he's preserved, been acknowledged for, kept thriving Lotus Pier, and that was what he'd wished. Only one of them had ever been the intended heir, and to this day, it's no burden Wei Wuxian would take.
There are no what ifs for their lives. There's only what has, and what may. Striving for the may is something that wasn't easy for him to do at first, and has only recently stopped feeling like claws digging into his soft, unprotected places.
(Wei Wuxian has Lan Wangji, and his silences, and his presumptions. There is a closeness and caring there that he leans into, wants more than anything, doesn't think he deserves, accepts for existing; at the same time, it is not one met on equal ground, and he as a living man is not the ghost that Lan Wangji had chased after in memory for years. Wei Wuxian still wanders, because for whatever his heart yearns for, he still has not yet found a way to understand its home.)
What he does is watch Jiang Cheng, both obviously and indirectly. He carries nothing to leave outside the threshold of this room, no wine jar, no weighted promise of violence or misery. Hears what Jiang Cheng says, and swallows, lips parting after. A twitch toward a smile he allows to blossom partway, stepping inside at last as Jiang Cheng shakes, a leaf caught in a river, swirling and twirling downstream. ]
Hello, Shijie. You hear Jiang Cheng? He acts like he's not happy to see my face, but I think he is just a little, stupid looking or otherwise. And it's not stupid looking, it's very good looking still, if any wished to know.
[ He hopes Jiang Cheng is a little glad, and knows he is, or else Wei Wuxian would not be here, going to his knees by his side, and bowing, to Jiang Cheng's father and mother, to their shared sister, the only one of those three without a weighted burden Wei Wuxian had never been able to do anything constructive about.
He bows as Jiang Cheng does, but when Jiang Cheng stands, Wei Wuxian doesn't; instead he reaches out, fingers twitching, and catches at the fabric of Jiang Cheng's robes. Outermost, barely holding on to the seaming, and with no more strength than in an uncoordinated kitten's claws. ]
Wei Wuxian wants to see you, Shijie, but can you remind your little brother that it's never seeing just one person alone?
[ That tug at his robes, and then Wei Wuxian's hand twitches away, apologetic, falling back to his lap. He bows again, to Jiang Fengmian, to Madam Yu. One who gave him a love he wished could have felt better shared, and the other giving him rebukes he wished had only been aimed his way. People could be so at odds and still care for each other. Love doesn't always work out in kindness or fairness.
Jiang Yanli, however, believed that it could. Not just in romance, he finds. She'd given love, a painful, harrowing emotion, the gleam of something more powerful and lasting than it was sour. )
Your son has done the Jiang Clan credit. His years have only strengthened the teachings of the clan's disciples, and there is no one in all the regions who can say he's less than a dedicated, attentive hand in all things.
( Overly attentive in some things. Eradicating tricks and demonic cultivators, searching for someone who had no way to explain where he had or hadn't been. Accused of killing a former brother, with the ones who knew better dead or tight lipped. Lan Zhan's antagonism with Jiang Cheng was a palpable thing; likewise Jiang Cheng's toward Lan Zhan.
He hopes less so, now. Not because everyone can get along, but because he can hope they will. Or that he alone will be the target of Jiang Cheng's tongue in the future. Lan Zhan doesn't deserve it. Neither does Wen Ning.
(Wei Wuxian, well. Perhaps at least half the time he does.) )
He's a man to be proud of, and I apologise... that this lowly one has not been what he was meant to be. ( Not support. Just dedicated to ensuring that Jiang Cheng survived, that he thrived, no matter the cost. Wasn't that supposed to have been enough? (It isn't. Wei Wuxian's slowly learning that himself.) ) I offer no excuses, only my humility and apologies. ( And a bow, agian, with that said. Because he owes it to them, and to himself, and to Jiang Cheng. ) Shijie, I'm here to visit, at least for a while. I've been painting, you get up to all kinds of things when you're on the road for long stretches, and while my memory isn't the best—you remember that, don't you? Can you forgive it still? I'm trying to recall all the better memories, the splashing fights on the lakes and river, lotus seeds and soup and nights spent on the riverside with what passed as creative thoughts on wine.
( He wonders without saying: does anyone here make it, still? )
For your son. He's a good young man, more like you than he knows. Like his uncles, too, but more honest. I know that's not from Jin Zixuan, so shijie, just know that it's you who gave him an honest tongue. The rest of us, we still mess up the things we should say, and say the things we shouldn't. I'm sure you'd tell me I'm being silly again, and you'd be right, but it's no less true.
( His voice stays soft, a sort of two way confessional, to the dead before him, and to the living standing tall in this same quiet, incense scented space. )
Jiang Cheng has done well by your Jin Ling. You always knew he would, didn't you? Remind him of that, in your ways. I think sometimes even sect leaders and clan heads need to hear when they've done well.
( Like they don't, but it's for the things which matter beyond persons. This, this is personal, and he's half expecting to get kicked or pulled up or shouted at, in this litany of soft sincerities. He does finally look up to Jiang Cheng, tongue still for a moment, a fond smile from his words to Yanli still lingering on his lips. If his eyes look uncertain, and his shoulders don't rest easy, it's the world he's learned to live in, step by step coming back from resignation to reclaim a space that can be his when he had, seemingly, thrown everything that once was away, a long, long time ago. )
who TALKS in the untamed universe. only suffering in silence and regrets.
What a relief it had been to return to Lotus Pier and see this left barely broken by the horrors of the Wen Clan.
He's back, he wants to say, thinking of rabbits on a hillside, thinking of the promises that A-Jie and Wei Wuxian had made when they had thought him asleep, broken from losing his core. He's back; he came back from the dead. Can you as well? Can you come back to me? It's the broken plea of a child that knows his dream cannot come true - there is no hope in this. Jiang Yanli will never return to his side and A-Ling will never have his mother.
An uncle for a father will have to suffice, a poor a one as he has been.
A small part of him imagines that he ought to be more annoyed or irritated at the way that Wei Wuxian speaks in honour to long-dead Jiang Sect members, their leaders and blood kin alike, but it is exactly what their sister would want to hear. She wouldn't want his stilted, awkward respects, only able to give an honest whisper when no one is around and when alcohol burns on his tongue and tears prickle at his eyes. She would want their brother's honesty, the sharp wit of Wei Wuxian, the kind she had always preferred. He cannot be angry at that preference, not when his brother had always been the one easier to love.
The touch to his robe stops him, halts him in his need to hide his grief, and all Jiang Cheng can do is stand there and listen as Wei Wuxian continues, as he speaks, whispering to his parents and his sister both. The lump in his throat only grows tighter and tighter as his heart reacts, over and over, to the things he hears.
It hurts to think that, even now, his parents might find little reason for pride in their son. His mother had left him Zidan and he had used it to hunt Demonic Cultivators, secretly hoping for a whisper of his brother whilst loathing all memories. His father would be disappointed that he had not chosen to stand with his favoured son, that he had not kept Wei Wuxian close, had not kept him as part of the Yunmeng Sect. Even the words that Wei Wuxian says does little to soothe the ashes on his tongue: he's a man to be proud of.
A broken man, embittered and angry because of the world, filled with grief and regret so sour it has changed him so completely? A man who would be dead, who may have given up on all his life and future, if not for the cry of his nephew and the touch of his fingers wrapped around his own? No one knows the depths to which he had fallen, how low he had been - that death had felt more akin to a release, to joy, to freedom than living. If he had not been given time with A-Ling, had not had a child to raise in his sister's memory...
I think sometimes even sect leaders and clan heads need to hear when they've done well.
When was the last time someone had told him he had done well? That he had acted appropriately, that he had performed excellently, that he was a source of pride to Lotus Pier? He can barely recall Sect Leader Nie saying something about it, but that was paired with Wei Wuxian all the same. No one has ever been proud of him alone - the words and notion feel hollow and empty.
Jiang Cheng barely notices the fact that Wei Wuxian has turned to look at him, that he has stopped speaking. Tears are too busy rolling down his cheeks, his heart is too busy settling in his throat, and his hands are far too busy shaking. He does not know what to do or what to say and bows his head as some kind of option, shaking as he attempts the impossible in keeping his breathing regular, so he does not choke on his own sadness and his own grief. ]
You are an idiot, Wei Wuxian.
the untamed: where how much a sword or flute was shaking indicated emotion more than their words
Not that he's hit that rock bottom again, after the time he fell back off that cliff in Nightless City, having brought the dawn. It doesn't change the fact that once, Wei Wuxian chose death over living. Once, and never again, even if by means he'll never understand, he did not in fact die.
The truth is, looking up at the man he'd called brother for most all his remembered life, in the face of his tears, in the room before complicated parents and a phenomenal sister who had deserved more than what the world had given her in her too short brilliance, he doesn't know what to say. Tears like these distress him, make him want to fix it, leave his eyes heating up and tears threatening and then fattening at the corners of his blinking eyes, beginning their fall with no solutions rearing their heads.
Maybe he should just get himself kicked out (again) sooner rather than later. He pushes up to his feet, pausing, everything is an act of considered deliberation and allowance, and he doesn't know how much of Jiang Cheng's he has. )
Yeah, I am.
( An idiot for the things he cares about; for the people who had defined his world. One he'd believed would respond to righteousness in broad moral considerations, not in political plays, when he'd been younger. When he'd thought keeping quiet on a mountain might have been enough to save them all.
Turns out, he was always going to be someone's collateral damage.
May as well decide to be his own.
He reaches out, throat thick, swallowing, breaking into a smile that is truly breaking, because some things needed time to be found again between the pressure of their temple entrapment and his dismissal that their past is the past. It is, and they need to stride forward, but to leave it like this again and again, is that wise?
Is it what Yanli would have advised? )
So are you, Jiang Cheng.
( No bite to it, no particular hint of witticism, only a shared helplessness in acknowledging that truth: they both have their failings, and bright as he had ever seemed, it had not been Wei Wuxian who had raised a nephew, run a sect, and run off tearing into every hint of who he'd lost for explanations and apologies Wei Wuxian hadn't felt he deserved to fumble through making when they'd finally faced each other again.
What he does do, not before their predecessors, but before Jiang Yanli, is step forward, the awkward collection of his angles and his inability to understand comfort, how even to accept affection without hesitating, seemingly lost each time he's been held onto in the past, too slow to hold back before the moment's past—Wei Wuxian, a half wreck Jiang Cheng could break with one finger, were he so inclined, finally returns what he'd been unable to when he'd first come out of the Burial Grounds. He embraces his once-upon-a-brother, because it's what Yanli would have done. It's what Jiang Cheng has done, because he's always been more honest in actions than Wei Wuxian has known how to be, and he can learn from a shadow of Jiang Cheng's past just as well as from the reality of the present. Speaks from a tight and slightly nasally voice, chest constricted with a slurry of emotions he doesn't pin down. Think too hard, and he'll freeze up, try to laugh it off, fall back on every deflective habit he's had across two lifetimes. )
We're both idiots, and I missed you.
( Because if he's going to end up burning himself with this, he can at least do so knowing he has, for once, been honest. Not just in a way he thinks that Jiang Cheng can survive.
His once-upon-a-brother had always been stronger than he believed himself to be, and it had long since stopped being Wei Wuxian's luxury to think anything he did was to protect him, to think that family is family and he owed his everything to making sure his never knew the extent of what he was willing to do for them unasked and (perhaps, of course, inevitably) uninvited. )
me: arrives late carrying angst
When they were younger their paths had been set out in front of them, built by his parents with notes so easy to follow. Jiang Yanli would marry into the Jin Sect and create an alliance that would benefit Yunmeng for generations. Wei Wuxian would stay as the Head Disciple, to stand by their leader's side and prove the worth of the Jiang Sect for the rest of their long lives. He, Jiang Cheng, would rise up and take his father's place once he retired, being trained and well-educated in how best to continue. He would marry a suitable woman and raise children to take on the mantle once he, too, grew too old and tired.
None of that had happened. Yanli had died. Jin Zixuan had died. The option of marriage had been taken from him with the wreckage of the Sunshot Campaign, leaving Wen Qing a prisoner of fate - the kind that he could not save her from due to his own rage and heartache. Each person in his life had chosen something other than the path he had wanted - that he had thought was their plan. Yanli had been taken, had chosen Wei Wuxian in death. Wen Qing and Wen Ning gave their lives to protect another. Wei Wuxian had chosen the Wen Clan over the Jiang and taken his own steps into the future.
Jiang Cheng had never had a choice. Even in hindsight, looking back, he knows that he had been backed into a corner - either by desperation or by the other Sect Leaders, demanding that he choose, demanding that he either protect what remained of Lotus Pier or he protect the Yiling Patriarch. There had never been a choice there, not with the burden of dozens of deaths on his shoulders, with the ghosts of his parents staring at him from beyond the grave.
Hands shaking, he turns his gaze away from Wei Wuxian to stare up at the shrine, to their names hovering there, almost taunting. There is no chance that his father and his mother are proud of him now, no matter what Wei Wuxian might say. There is no way that Yanli looks down on him with a smile when he had been unable to protect her, when he had raised A-Ling to be an angry, bitter little boy, too much like his uncle.
At least Wei Wuxian can admit his stupidity. At least Jiang Cheng can recognise his own, hearing the words of Jin Guangyao echoing in his mind, punishing him decades later - they were afraid. If he had simply stood by his brother as he had expected Wei Wuxian to stand by him... Would people have lived? Would they be happy? How different the world looks when you look back and recognise the mistakes of the past.
In his chest, his golden core burns - a core that isn't his own. Perhaps it wishes it was back with its true master. Perhaps it hears the pain Jiang Cheng feels, thinking of how willing he had been to give up his own life, and begs for him to address it, to speak it aloud.
Take care, sharp words from his nephew in his mind. What an idiot he is. ]
At least you can say it now.
[ Because he won't, even if it's true, his face twisted in hurt and pain.
The only thing that breaks him out of it is the arms that wrap around him, holding him so gently, so tenderly, in a way no one has dared to do since their sister had died. How sad it is to realise that there is no one who embraces you, no one who loves you, who would hug you when you are sad - because he will hug his nephew, of course, and A-Ling did not grow without love and affection, but he would never allow it in return.
He is a pillar, but in the wake of his brother's arms all he can do is cry. ]
You stupid man. You're such an idiot, Wei Wuxian, blind to everything around you.
[ And Jiang Cheng wishes he could say what's on his tongue, what haunts him, but all he can do is grasp at the back of Wei Wuxian's robes, holding onto them and wishing he was someone different. ]
add in some awkward five days later, chefs kiss
He's aware of that now, even with it still being hard to fully change those tendencies. The cruelty of telling his brother in the temple, it's in the past, we must move on. Like Jiang Cheng hasn't been living with and carrying any of these things for years. Like Lan Zhan hadn't been, as well.
So here he is, hugging Jiang Cheng, and he goes from gentle hold to more firm when he's not shaken off. )
I know I am.
( He can say, so he does. Along with: )
I'm trying to do better.
( Because that, too... is a truth he's wrestling with. )
What I said in the temple... the past is something we can't change. I messed up. It doesn't matter what Jin Guangyao was influencing as well, or what he said. I messed up, and I didn't think to talk to you about any of the things I thought you wouldn't handle well.
( Why is he saying this when hugging Jiang Cheng? Two reasons: neither of them can run away, they're both anchored, and Jiang Cheng knows now why Wei Wuxian keeps folding like wet paper under every strike that used to barely cause him to blink; second, now that he's initiated a hug, he does not actually know how to end one.
He is, in fact, going to keep holding on waiting for Jiang Cheng, and all his tears, to indicate when the hugging is over. Jiang Cheng will surely know! Because one of them needs to, and Wei Wuxian is not that man. )
we're the heroes these two needed
That's not the case, however, and his eyes still burn with tears that he can't quite swallow back, that he can do nothing to stop other than squeeze them shut and hope that he wears thin somehow.
It would be easier if the embrace didn't feel so much like home. ]
It took a whole life for you to try, idiot.
[ He remembers another promise; let's be brothers, they said, even in the next life. Are they brothers now? Is that connection still there, with a different body housing Wei Wuxian's soul? Blood never linked them to begin with, that had never mattered, but it was a confusing myriad of thoughts that wrap up on his mind and leave Jiang Cheng wondering and wishing a thousand things.
He sinks into the embrace. ]
You should have told me. You didn't need to protect me. Even then I was Clan Leader, even then I was going to have to be stronger and better. I was a leader, not just your younger brother. You should have believed I could do it.
[ He breathes out, shiveringly, before he shakes his head. ]
I had been ready to die for you and A-Jie. I had left to do that. But then you were just as stupid as I was and it was all for nothing.
[ A confession he hadn't really been prepared to make, especially not here, hanging before his ancestors and feeling their judgement rain down on him. ]
locked in an awkward but soul affirming embrace, it's great
He listens, humming his agreement: it'd taken a lifetime, yes, because youth had meant a confidence in things, assumptions about burdens, what he'd done out of love and loyalty and a sense of justice, and where it had ruined the things which he loved, had been loyal to, had tried to save. Justice in an unjust world is asking to be driven to the brink. Backing matters. One cannot stand on their own and hold back the tide of public opinion.
If only he'd learned that earlier. If only he hadn't decided he was the most expendable variable.
(But he had. And looking back, he doesn't know he would have done so much different, aside from strive to save the lives whose loss had broken both men here in ways still jagged, still bleeding.)
He only truly stiffens when Jiang Cheng shakes his head, swallowing down the words of I believed in you, but I also believed in a guilt I didn't want you to bear. Because the words that follow, the... confession, if that's what it is, leaves his brow furrowed and his hold on Jiang Cheng tightening, clinging to him so he doesn't pull him away and stare into his face. He can't do that right now. Can't handle it. )
Jiang Cheng.
( His name, a touch sharp, but volume low. Because it takes thinking back, it takes remembering, it takes a fever of his shijie, it takes the inexplicable timing, the Wen Forces in towns, scouring after any of them. A massacre, and the broken man he'd begged Wen Ning to haul free, the depression that followed, and— )
You—you fool.
( And his breath catches, his throat tightens, his chest feels too small, too tight, to contain his heart and lungs. They've never been only one fool, have they? Two fools, in differing and similar ways. Brothers in all but name. Broken bonds, yes, but perhaps not burned so thoroughly there's no room for rebuilding, if just, if just...
The sob catches him by surprise, and he chokes on it, shudders in Jiang Cheng's arms, turns his face so it can't be seen when the tears flow hot, escaping his eyes and rolling down the planes of his slowly rounding out face. )
Can't you tell, I always believed in you?
( It is and isn't what he wants to say, but a shuddering breath, his slammed shut eyes, his hold on his once brother, all says the same thing in the end: everything in Yunmeng will always cut deep. He never stopped caring, even if his words failed. Taking after Jiang Cheng in this, who can say various things, but not the ones he means most. )
I'm sorry. And thank you, for loving us as well as you did.
( It's a word he trips over, because it has all different connotations, but this is not just loyalty, it's not duty. That's too backward: that was what he, Wei Wuxian, had owed and broken, not what Jiang Cheng owed.
(His thinking in this is flawed. Loyalty goes both ways; duty has more than one shade of meaning. But he cannot blame Jiang Cheng. He sees his own guilt too largely to do something like that.)
Acting in these ways, for the three of them, was always a form of love. Unsaid except perhaps by Yanli, who had always been the strongest, the steadiest, and the wisest of them all. )
me, rewatching episode 17 and wanting to die
He hadn't been prepared for what it might been to unburden his heart, to pass on that knowledge, to let himself feel what he had felt, to delve into his own heartache. When Jiang Cheng had stepped out of the inn on that rainy day he had been prepared to die, had been prepared to give himself up entirely for what remained of his family - he was the heir to the Jiang sect, after all, and the Wens would likely want for him and no one else.
The fact that Wei Wuxian had come back to get him, that Wen Ning had snuck him out, that Wen Qing had healed him... He had never expected that to happen. He had never expected to be so dearly loved or cherished so much. He had hoped for Wei Wuxian and Yanli to find a place of respite, a place to care for themselves, not for them to risk their own lives and joys and futures to come to him. It had been too much for him to bear for even a moment.
There's no way for him to show his own face right now and he breathes out, shaken and unsure as he swallows back the lump in his throat. ]
You are the one who taught me to be a fool.
[ To admit all this in front of Yanli... He can only imagine what she might think of him, what she might imagine. It had cost him this much to even get to this point, to admit it, that made him feel as though he had the confidence and the strength to do it - and there's nothing else that he can do other than try not to let himself break down into more tears, to cry more and more until there's nothing left inside of him.
Jiang Cheng barely even realises that he's shaking, his hands clenched around fabric and nothingness as he tries to calm himself down. ]
You shouldn't have. You shouldn't have believed, because in the end I was a failure all the same.
[ He breathes out, shaking his head and leaning back, trying to pull himself away. ]
You don't understand, Wei Wuxian. It was a stupid mistake and in the end it was meaningless. All I wanted was to protect you and Yanli and I failed at that as well.
the whole meltdown process and everyone's scrambling for answers...
The words echo through his chest, and once he can see Jiang Cheng's face again, he reaches up to keep hold of one arm. A tenuous connection, but grounding, if not for Jiang Cheng, than for himself. He's used to this kind of grip, and he understands too acutely the feelings involved. Wanting to protect, failing to do so. Feeling powerless and useless no matter what you do. Having meant to do good, and having failed, and harmed the ones you loved best.
He wants the easy way out. To say, 'It's so long ago, who wants to focus on the past?' To say, 'Things were happening as they would.' To say so many things, but what he swallows down are all those impulses, meant for himself more than a placation offered to another adult who has run his sect as sole head and hand behind it for sixteen years. Long enough to help raise a nephew who shouldn't have been raised without his parents.
But for the sins of their generation, Jin Ling would have had a family beyond two uncles, one willing to make light of his life for his own ambitions.
Still, what gives his caught tongue strength is the name on the plaque, Jiang Yanli watching them with eyes that had always believed better out of them both than either of them had been on their own. )
Jiang Cheng...
( His fingers tighten around his arm. Listen. Please? He doesn't know how to say that. )
If they'd taken me first, would you and shijie have run, like I asked? Would you have never turned back to see if you could find me, for the same wish to protect? Would you have not tried to gamble on bringing me or the remains of your parents out, would you have not found a place to run?
( Some of this, he thinks, can only answer with a no. He doesn't believe Jiang Cheng would have trusted Wen Ning the way Wei Wuxian had gambled, when Wei Wuxian had also believed Wen Ning was betraying him, until the moment he had not. He doesn't know that their paths would have rejoined, but if they had, would the end journey have been to Wen Qing's mansion, to a chance at recovery? Pride has made things difficult in the past, on both their parts. One course changing, but others? )
When Wen Chao caught me, ( and he pauses, because bad memories are the haziest for him, the things he tries hardest to forget, and he doesn't want to reach back for these ones. He's trying, and he hates it, and he thinks of Yanli and what is owed and what apologies are, and what useless thoughts they both entertain. There's no going back. He does not want to mention any of this. He wants it buried, but what hasn't already been wrested from him by others? He can pry this out, too, for someone used to making him bleed. He owes Jiang Cheng that much. ) when he caught me, they were the ones who thought they melted my core. If I'd had one, I'd have lost it then, if not sooner. Do you understand? At least one good thing came out of this, in all our trying to save each other. We weren't both lost.
( He doesn't know how tight his hold has grown. Doesn't think about how it's weaker than it was years ago. He has to concentrate to cause physical harm, to not conserve qi as he must, and it's not crushing strength he needs.
He doesn't want to look to the past. It hurts. Partly for his own hubris, always, but also for the things he could do nothing about, not then, and not now. )
You protected us the way you thought you could. If the results aren't what were expected... Jiang Cheng, I know how that is. You didn't fail us. Do you need me to count the ways? Trusting my memory that much, ( and his lips quirk, pull into a lopsided grin as he ignores whatever tracts of tears there had been down his face, at the drying salt and cooling lines of it, his neck faintly damp now; ) it's a little much, isn't it?
jiang cheng's blank face when he realises his core is gone will haunt me
The touch to his arm is an anchor, which he is sure Wei Wuxian intended. There's a knot in his throat and he has to breathe in and then out, to muster whatever strength he has left to knot the emotions in his stomach. He cannot fall apart again, not when there is still so much correspondence for him to reply to, so many things he must take into his own hands now that things are beginning to change. Jin Guangyao has not been gone too long and yet Jiang Cheng knows his nephew is relying on him to help guide him to being a better sect leader.
He had taken over a clan young as well, after all.
So much of this would be easier of Yanli was here to bridge the gap between them; they had never learned to do it entirely on their own, never dreaming there would come a time their sister would not be at their side. She had been the one to say they needed to be together, the three of them, children of Lotus Pier growing into lives shaped for them, far out of their control. The bitter anger and resentment he feels towards Wei Wuxian for her death has faded over the years, but the hurt of her reaching for him, falling from her blood brother's arms, as she took her last breath was a sting hard to forget.
Pursing his lips, he closes his eyes, but he stops and waits. It feels like that moment when he had visited Wei Wuxian and the Wen Clan, when his brother had tried to drag him here and there before abandoning the Jiang Sect; painful and expected all at once. ]
That's not the point. [ The retort comes easily; of course he would have gone back for them. He would have ensured Yanli had found her way to their mother's family or at least to the welcoming arms of the Jin Sect - Madame Jin would have never let Yanli suffer any kind of hurt, no matter how awkward the Peacock was at the time - before he had found his way back to Lotus Pier to save his brother. He likely would have failed; Wen Ning had no reason to help him, after all.
One hand lifts to his chest where, under his robes, the scars of the whip still mar his skin. Yet another reason to be blacklisted by the matchmakers - his body was found, scarred, half of it not his own, lent to him by the Yiling Patriarch.
Again it comes down to Wei Wuxian making a clear, good point; it was likely inevitable that they would both lose their core as long as Wen Zhuliu lived. He had lost it and regained it - that had been enough for him to gain vengeance. But - but. If he had never lost his core then Wei Wuxian would not have taken him to the mountains, would not have had to wait for him in town, would not have been caught.
There is always a way for him to blame himself; his mother and father had taught him that from a young age.
Pulling his hand away, he turns his head, eyes damp and his hands shaking. ]
Everyone died. My mother, my father, my disciples, Yanli, you... There is nothing you can say that can absolve me of that, Wei Wuxian. All that I had was lost and I did nothing to save it. [ Here he scoffs, hurting in his heart. ] I could not even save a-Ling in the temple. Is that not failure enough?
yeah, the whole of it is so hard...
They were both collections of their own scars, mentally and emotionally. Jiang Cheng even made sure to leave new ones that Wei Wuxian cared no little or more than he did past ones, from the same source; some fates are inevitable, one might say.
Self-blame is something they can both be good at, and it's powerfully difficult to break away from. That he'd throw himself under a cart to try and make it up goes without saying, as is the fact he's learning that isn't the best way of handling things.
So what to say?
He clucks his tongue, blinks his eyes, breathes in through a tight chest. Let's Jiang Cheng pull away, as if he could ever really stop him. )
No. Failing would have never been coming at all. Where would we have been then?
( He'll spell it out if he must, but he hopes he doesn't need to. He didn't have Chenqing without Jiang Cheng having held onto and then returned the flute intact. Sixteen years of that, and then some. His own rough and slowly better carved bamboo flute had just been shot and he had nothing but his voice, and the control that was needed, that saved lives later, came because he had the right tool.
Given to him by someone who had made no bones about his disappointments with him. Bonds truly are hard to break, ah? That aches, too. )
Jiang Cheng, aren't you the one who just said it to me? We can't decide to face everything alone. Bear every burden alone. People are stronger for working together, aren't they? Think back, tell me how A-Ling was saved in the temple.
( Don't tell him how all those other deaths are ones he carries on his shoulders, not the sole cause of, but always inextricably the excuse. In Yanli's case, also the sole reason. She would never have been there if he hadn't gone looking for her first; to this day, he has no idea how she ran all that distance, tired and distraught as she was, disinclined toward so much of cultivation. But of course she had.
And she'd died sparing him a death he then sought not five minutes later. )
again i am the slowest of slows
Jiang Cheng tries not to think too much about that night, about how afraid he had been. He hadn't been scared to face Jin Guangyao; he hadn't been afraid of meeting any other man or woman in that place, hadn't been afraid to fight them. The only thing he had been afraid of was losing his nephew, losing another member of his family, seeing someone else's life stolen from right in front of him. That had scared him almost more than anything else - and instinct had guided him more than anything else, leaping in front of swords and danger to protect his nephew and brother both.
It had come as a shock to Jiang Cheng as much as he is sure it surprised Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji.
It's equally hard to rationalise his place in it when his life has been a long list of failures, from childhood to growing into the Sect Leader he was today. His stomach twists and all he can do is breathe out, frowning as he tries not to let his emotion get the better of him - again. Weak, vulnerable, foolish, all words from his mother what whip him like Zidian even now. ]
Don't act as though you were not the hero in the temple, Wei Wuxian. He was saved because of your Demonic Cultivation.
[ The kind he had tracked down and hunted for years. His attempts - fighting, trading his life for a-Ling - had failed. ]
What do you want me to say? What do you want me to do? I know what I have done in this life, Wei Wuxian. I do not get a second chance.
laughs it's okay, we are of a kind in this
His smile is drier than his eyes, even now, and his laughter is brief and low and ends with a sigh. )
Jiang Cheng, we do get second chances. Shijie would tell you the same. You and I can't change the people we've been, or the things we've done in the past. That's not the same as not changing the people we're still becoming, or the things we do each day we're here.
( Alive, conscious, and working. Sixteen years that he cannot explain as anything other than darkness, his awareness limited to that fact. A summoning and a curse, and being abandoned and collected all over again, this time with even less warning.
He's happy. Not whole, not complete, but he can breathe, he can tilt his head back and see skies in all their flavours, he has the chance to speak with one of the only people left alive who has ever felt like family, and that's incredible. He smiles, because wrestling with himself to say these things is harder than he wants it to be, and a smile can be like armour, too. )
Yes, I did calm Chifeng-Zun's resentment filled spirit, but can you honestly tell me I did all of that alone? You're calling me a hero, haven't you figured out the same thing I have? Heroes don't work alone. Heroes don't survive alone, Jiang Cheng.
( He hadn't. Wouldn't have still, if Lan Zhan hadn't stood by him in the last few months. He breathes in, then sighs out, rubbing at his own cheek like he can rub off the tear tracts there. )
Shijie was so much better at this. Jiang Cheng, you get a second chance, you deserve it more than I do, so why do you make it sound like you don't?
i've had this reply in my head but finally creativity comes
It's so easy for Wei Wuxian to look back at things and be gentle with it, to gloss over the things he had done. He hasn't had the many, many years to gaze at himself and see all his failures and mistakes. He hadn't had to raise a child desperately hoping he wouldn't turn into his mother or father, wishing desperately that his sister was there, that his brother-in-law lived. That Jin Ling would be good, would be happy.
He didn't spend years staring at the shrine to his family and feeling the weight of their expectations burn down on him. He can feel the knot in his throat building again, choking him and making him feel as though he feels something desperate is curling over him. He doesn't want to bare himself again, but here he is.
Why does Wei Wuxian does this to him? Why does Wei Wuxian still have this power over him? ]
Because I don't!
[ His hands are shaking and his eyes are flickering. ]
I didn't save Yanli! I failed to protect you from the other sects! It is as Jin Guangyao said - I did not stand by you and keep you at my side - I didn't make sure that you didn't... That they didn't take you away from us.
[ His head bows, his throat tight. ]
I did not stop Wang Lingjiao from setting off her signal and I did not protect Lotus Pier. It is as my mother always said - I am a failure. Nothing more.
[ How can he ignore what his mother and father had thought of him for so long? ]
asdflkj the struggle is real i feel you
That's the nature of it, and the good things are the blessings that are fought for and held onto and earned. He lifts both hands to cradle the sides of Jiang Cheng's face, voice low and intense, eyes red rimmed as he resists banging their heads together. Sometimes he thinks it'd be faster, but he knows the more they fight, the less either one of them really hears.
It'd be so much easier fighting. It's be so much easier not trying to struggle through facing these tangled emotions, ones that knot in his chest in different ways, but no less familiar. He wants Jiang Cheng to be okay. He needs him to be, and he doesn't know how to fix this. But that's part of it too, he thinks. It's not something either of them can fix on their own. )
And I told you to let me go! I said cut me out, so the clans would stop hounding you. We both made mistakes, Jiang Cheng! I helped get shijie killed. That was my fault, just like believing it was going to be okay coming to Carp Tower. I should have known better. I shouldn't have trusted staying quiet was enough, but I did, and I let that play out by walking right into their hands.
( His voice breaks on this, because he does not want to talk about it, does not want to revisit things he remembers, does not want to flirt with the abyss he'd dropped into when he'd seen the light in Jiang Yanli's eyes go forever dim. He'd killed her killer; he'd lost what was left of his ability to hold back, or to hold together. He'd destroyed the stygian tiger seal while crying through laughter partially hysterical.
He had sought his own death, and then, caught and dangling from Lan Zhan's hand, the blood binding them, and Jiang Cheng, grieving and looming, had not struck him down. Yet the shuddering of rock had been another fear through him, and Wei Wuxian had pulled back, had thrown himself down, rather than see the last of anyone he cared about still alive in the world fall down with him, and damn them all. )
You survived so much loss, helped raise your nephew, grew the sect to be a strength and power of its own... Jiang Cheng, your only failure is in believing in yourself.
too many deep emotions and no brain
The touch to his face is enough to undo him but he keeps himself together, fresh out of tears and exhausted from the weight of his own feeling and the pain of existence. He hasn't had enough time to mourn, not really - a thousand years wouldn't be enough time to get over his sister, his family, his parents, his home. None of it would be enough, not when his heart is so heavy and so burdened with the agony of being alive.
He wishes that he could draw Sandu and make do, that he could do something to end the torment of seeing his brother back to life - Wei Wuxian returned when Jiang Yanli, when Jin Zixuan, when Madam Yu and father - but he can't. He isn't strong enough to destroy Wei Wuxian when he is so glad to see him, when he is making a life for himself in Gusu, when he has Lan Wangji to love and support him and Jiang Cheng has no one but his own pain and isolation to keep him company. ]
We both know I could have protected you. I could have protected Lady Wen as well - I tried, but she...
[ She returned his comb. She had chosen a life where death would come to her rather than a chance of living at his side. Should he feel sour about that, still? That she would have chosen death over marriage to him when he had been so earnest in his affection for her? He understands the sentiment all the same; choosing her brother over love. He would have done it too - Wei Wuxian over Wen Qing.
His stomach churns with pain and agony, with the nausea of hurt and years of suffering, of punishing himself for things out of his control. Punishing himself by thinking about it, over and over, is the only constant he knows - other than his nephew, his home. He had lived with it for so long that it felt more like an ally than an enemy.
He bows his head, breathing out shakily. ]
Isn't that failure enough, Wei Wuxian? I was never anything without you at my side, and you were gone.
barely changes this LMF i can't imagine wei wuxian figuring out comforting kisses if ur not 5
anyway, what's thinking? if jiang cheng can't get out of those thoughts, then force them out, with a different kind of violence of expectation: wei wuxian keeps his hand there, at jiang cheng's face, and abruptly and without warning leans in to press his forehead against his brother's. that, he feels, is shocking enough. )
I couldn't be at your side, Jiang Cheng, but I was always with you. Do you get that? It's unfair, but we're the same kind of fool, sacrificing for each other what neither of us would want the other man to give.
( he hesitates, because he does hate this, and it sounds in his voice, the more strangled note in it. he can't even hint at being light and unaffected, blithe or anything of the kind. he wishes he could. didn't yanli say that was his way, to smile through it, let the bad roll off him like water from a duck's back? is it letting her down to not carry that on here and now? )
I wanted to believe in so many things, Jiang Cheng, without having anything to back them. Justice, people's word, that staying silent and quiet in Yiling for that year meant people would start being less afraid. Then I walked right into what got our sister's husband killed. I couldn't keep Wen Qing and Wen Ning from turning themselves in, along with everyone else. I didn't know A-Yuan was left behind, when I ran after them, and all I found was the whole of the world I thought had to be better denouncing me for everything I hadn't yet done, and not for the things I had. When did it become a sin to defend myself? But if I'd been stronger, if I hadn't tried to find shijie, if I hadn't gone by Carp Tower before I went to Nightless City, she'd have been here still. That wasn't Jin Guangyao's doing. Shijie wouldn't have run there if it hadn't been for me. I got her killed, and I don't know how to make up for that, not now, not then.
( this is a really long and awkward speech to be having like this, but he makes himself talk, his tongue feeling heavy and tired in his mouth, chest feeling tight and heart squeezed beyond measure. )
When it came down to it, I was the one who broke under all that pressure, not you. So who was nothing, without someone by their side? It wasn't you, Jiang Cheng.
( it was me. )
that icon. ouch. also have some honesty
HONESTY HURTS