Chapter Text
Their trip started in Nightless sky where they’d been faced with absolute nothingness.
“This was The Palace of the Sun and Flames is the tallest building in Nightless Sky.” Wen Ning had said, sadness in his voice when he motioned to a great empty clearing amongst the emptiness.
“Did I ever..”
“Master Wei brought you here once. You were too hungry to enjoy it.” Wen Ning recalled, smiling a bit. “You clung to my sisters leg for quite some time, or whenever anyone were to walk by you.”
Sizhui couldn’t help but chuckle. He wished he remembered. Anything, just something small. Anything he could call his own.
They’d spent about five months there. Everyday Wen Ning would recall something different, show him something knew, teach him something. He loved it, learning and understanding what he was, what he used to be, who he still was.
But that love didn’t contain the festering sad, hurt, pain and anger that started to grow in him. His people were innocent. They didn’t deserve the fate they were met with. Not even Wei Wuxian deserved what he’d gotten.
“A whole clan died, and for a while, it seemed no one cared. There was so much death and destruction and for nothing.” Wen Ning had said and it stuck with him. At night he’d find himself envisioning burning buildings, screams of children, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. He started to get nightmares. Horrors his mind came up with plaguing his dreams.
They visited Yi City next. It was more passing through than anything, but they took three months there.
There was a temple. Abandoned, dirty and tears and years old. “Uncle Ning, look at this.” he felt his uncles presence at his side as he motioned towards an old burner with the symbol of the Wens. “It’s an incense burner.”
“Inquiry.” Wen Ning said after a moment, reaching out and brushing his fingers over a plaque the burner stood on with words written on his Sizhui couldn’t understand.
“Inquiry? What do you mean, how can it be—“
Fire. He hadn’t been able to face fire since the disastrous night hunt where he thought he was going to lose Jingyi. But there it was and the incense was burning. He knew how it worked but he was afraid.
“What would you like to see A-Yuan.” Wen Ning said after a moment.
He knew what he wanted to see, but could he live with what he wanted to see? “Sunshot campaign, I want to see the Sunshot Campaign.” he said before he could convince himself otherwise.
That night he closed his eyes only to open them to the smell of fire. He flinched back into Wen Ning who helped him calm slightly. There was so much fire, so much burning, screaming, fighting and blood.
An incoherent strangled sound left his throat as he watch a Wen slaughter a Gusu man. His homes, destroying one another. Swords were clashing and the smell of burning flesh and blood filled the air, he held a sleeve to his mouth to prevent from gagging.
“They’re.. they’re killing each other without a thought.”
Wen Ning hummed behind him, he was too afraid to turn and see the expression on his face. “This is Nightless sky. Is this the final battle?”
“He will be here.” Wen Ning replied answering the question Sizhui couldn’t bring himself to ask. He flinched when a sword was stabbed through his spiritual body and into another, another body that was lost certainly not spiritual.
He made the mistake of looking over, and into the eyes of the man who had just fallen to his knees, but when he did he froze. The man looked familiar. Too familiar with his Gusu Lan sect forehead ribbon, bright shimmering gray eyes filled to the brim with tears yet the determination set in his brow took away the youthfulness from his face. He looked so familiar yet he couldn’t place it. He couldn’t know who it could be anyway, he was too young when all of this, not to mention he’d lost all memory of his childhood.
He couldn’t bare it, he couldn’t look any further, so he turned, only to be met with more fire. Only this fire was not in Nightless Sky, it was in the Cloud Recesses.
The burning of the Cloud Recesses.
His heart raced with the flames growing, so much fire, so so much destruction. There were people running, and these ones were far too familiar to him. White and blue forehead ribbons, pristine robes that were covered in sut, dirt, grime and blood.
Both of his homes had been destroyed, and one of them was at fault for destroying the others. He felt guilty. His clan destroyed the only father he’d ever hads home.
Just then a woman ran past him, something cradled in her. He didn’t know what it was about her, about the way she ran away from the fire that compelled him to follow, but he was waking, no, he was running to keep up with her.
It wasn’t until she stopped and was kneeling over something did he realize she was holding a child.
“We should leave.” Wen Ning said gently, putting a hand on his shoulder but he couldn’t look away. The woman, was whispering to the child, settling him into what looked like a bunker. A mother trying to protect her child, a mother saying her final goodbyes, his chest tightened. He stepped closer, the pain he felt compelling him to go to them even if they couldn’t see or hear him, even if he couldn’t do anything.
He was just close enough when his blood went cold at her words, a painful shrill went up his spine, his heart stuck in his throat. “A-Meili loves you, be brave, Lan Jingyi.”
Sizhui jolted up, a screaming dying on his tongue. “It was- I-It was him, his mom, it was his dad, b-back at Nightless Sky, he looked j-just like him, Ji-Jingyi—“ he was stuttering and blubbering as Wen Ning pulled him into his arms, the tears already creating rivers on his face.
“I-It’s my fault. Our Clan destroyed families, w-we’re killers.” he sobbed into his uncles robes. Wen Ning could only rub circles on the boys back, hushing him gently, unsure of how to comfort him best.
The boy fell asleep after hours of crying and spitting nonsense, and only then, did he regret showing Sizhui the truth.
It just nearing the end of their fourth month in The Burial Mounds, a full year that he’d been away from his home.
He’d learned so much. Learned maybe more than he wished he had. He was writting his final letter of his trip, it was the alternative for leaving classes, one he would happily agree to. He was ready to go home, he was changed in the sense of knowledge.
He knew too much and yet still not enough But when he thought about it, where with his curiosity lead, how would figuring out all the truths and demons end. He promised himself he wouldn’t ruin his image of the Wens with their mistakes, and as the months went by, he learned the correct people to blame and the ones to be honored.
He and his uncle made tombs, burials and gave the proper goodbyes to the Wens along with other fallen clan members who were forgotten in the chaos.
There is so much, yet too little. These people, all of these people who suffered at the hands of the Wens and even the Yiling Patriarch, did they really deserve it? Did they deserve death, torture? Did they deserve the pain of losing their loved ones, being forced to say goodbye to those they cared about and new in order to protect those they didn’t?
To what end would the fighting pertain? When would it have been enough, what was the real end goal and why did so many have to suffer for it to become a reality?
But if It hadn’t, who would I be today? Where would the world be today? Who would be in my life? Who wouldn’t? Jingyi, I wouldn’t have him. He would have his family, he wouldn’t have the self doubt he has, he wouldn’t hold the self hatred for himself that he has since he was little. He wouldn’t know me.
Would it be selfish to say I wouldn’t change the path in order to preserve my own relationships? Not to change the amount of death and bloodshed for my own gain? It is selfish, it is selfish to all those children, the mothers and fathers, to say that I wouldn’t change their fate and order to keep mine the same.
Selfish. But I’d like to think, it’s my turn to be selfish.
Lan Sizhui