( 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.
[ Jiang Cheng has never been able to let go of those closely guarded feelings, the intense jealousies that have clouded him from childhood to now. He thinks of the fact that now, with Jin Ling, with his family, with his connections, even now people will not choose him. Why would A-Ling come to him, Sect Leader Jiang, when Wei Wuxian is more interesting, more personable? He had sent fairy away. That was enough to show Jiang Cheng that Wei Wuxian was worming his way, even now.
But for all his irritation and all his jealousy he's not truly mad. He's sad, sad that his nephew can forgive and overcome boundaries far faster than he was ever able to do. Jiang Cheng has never been well-versed in forgiveness, for himself or for others, and that has not changed. He feels the burden of it as a leader, as a brother and as a father, no gentleness saved for any kindness towards himself. Why should he, when blame stands at his feet even now?
Hands shaking, he can barely look at Wei Wuxian, ashamed and broken all at the same time. (He has no mind to dwell on A-Yuan left behind, the small boy that had claimed his leg, not making the connection in his broken state -) ]
Wei Wuxian. You don't understand.
[ His breathing is a little more ragged now, trying to restrain tears even as he tries to swallow through the sobs in his throat. It's too much. ]
You were never nothing. You were everything.
[ Brother, disciple, friend, ally, saviour, hero - then enemy, villain, martyr. So many things that Jiang Cheng could never have hoped to be. So many things that he should have learned to be with his brother there to guide him, but it had slipped through his fingers as surely as his brother's hand had slipped through Lan Wangji's on the mountain. ]
I didn't keep chenqing for a joke. I kept it because I never wanted to let you go. I never chose that.
( Wei Wuxian cannot take that, not this close. All he can do is shift, pull his forehead away, and pull Jiang Cheng into his arms again, because he's both cold and hot right now, flushed and at the edge of tears, because it's too much, he's not worth this, but they both are. They both are. Shijie had always said so.
Easier to have faith in her, even now, than to believe himself in some things. He's never wanted to stop believing in Jiang Cheng, had defended him to Lan Zhan and Wen Ning, had made the excuses, and said he's not as harsh, he isn't, he's not just the sum of his worst parts.
And he's not. Neither of them are. But-- )
I never wanted to leave.
( He should have said more, but he clings, holds tight to his once upon a brother. He'd cut ties, wanting to spare him. Or more, opened up the possibility, dared Jiang Cheng to do it, challenged him to make that call.
They were both idiots. It makes him laugh, but in a choked up, half sobbing way, burying his head at Jiang Cheng's neck. )
Back then, I didn't know what else to say. I couldn't give up on them, I didn't feel like I could tell you to face off against the rest of anyone... I didn't want you to have to be stuck.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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
But for all his irritation and all his jealousy he's not truly mad. He's sad, sad that his nephew can forgive and overcome boundaries far faster than he was ever able to do. Jiang Cheng has never been well-versed in forgiveness, for himself or for others, and that has not changed. He feels the burden of it as a leader, as a brother and as a father, no gentleness saved for any kindness towards himself. Why should he, when blame stands at his feet even now?
Hands shaking, he can barely look at Wei Wuxian, ashamed and broken all at the same time. (He has no mind to dwell on A-Yuan left behind, the small boy that had claimed his leg, not making the connection in his broken state -) ]
Wei Wuxian. You don't understand.
[ His breathing is a little more ragged now, trying to restrain tears even as he tries to swallow through the sobs in his throat. It's too much. ]
You were never nothing. You were everything.
[ Brother, disciple, friend, ally, saviour, hero - then enemy, villain, martyr. So many things that Jiang Cheng could never have hoped to be. So many things that he should have learned to be with his brother there to guide him, but it had slipped through his fingers as surely as his brother's hand had slipped through Lan Wangji's on the mountain. ]
I didn't keep chenqing for a joke. I kept it because I never wanted to let you go. I never chose that.
HONESTY HURTS
Easier to have faith in her, even now, than to believe himself in some things. He's never wanted to stop believing in Jiang Cheng, had defended him to Lan Zhan and Wen Ning, had made the excuses, and said he's not as harsh, he isn't, he's not just the sum of his worst parts.
And he's not. Neither of them are. But-- )
I never wanted to leave.
( He should have said more, but he clings, holds tight to his once upon a brother. He'd cut ties, wanting to spare him. Or more, opened up the possibility, dared Jiang Cheng to do it, challenged him to make that call.
They were both idiots. It makes him laugh, but in a choked up, half sobbing way, burying his head at Jiang Cheng's neck. )
Back then, I didn't know what else to say. I couldn't give up on them, I didn't feel like I could tell you to face off against the rest of anyone... I didn't want you to have to be stuck.
( Like he was. )