Chapter Text
It’s not that Jiang Cheng isn’t aware that he has faults.
He knows that he’s a flawed person; quick to anger, and easy to incite. It had displeased his father, reminded his mother too much of herself, but his siblings had always been able to read him well enough.
And then, the only two people with any real understanding of how to communicate with Jiang Cheng had died.
He’d spent a lot of time blaming Wei Wuxian before his return. It was easier than the other times, when Jiang Cheng would lie awake and think about how he’d done nothing but watch him slip away like trickling sand. Watched silently, as the shadows in his eyes grew until they’d consumed him.
“How cheap your admiration was,” he had shouted, from the pantiles of a dark rooftop.
Cheap, indeed.
It takes him an embarrassingly long time to come to terms with the events of Guanyin Temple. He doesn’t want to think of it, afterwards. He wishes he could remove it from his mind entirely; but Wei Wuxian has never been far from his thoughts, not even when he was dead, so he supposes it doesn’t matter very much what he wants.
It starts with a letter to Cloud Recesses.
Or, at least his attempt at one. He manages several drafts, before he scraps them all. He abandons the wastes of his effort on his desk, instead flying by sword to ask his questions in person.
To his surprise, when he finally arrives, Wei Wuxian isn’t there.
“What do you mean, he’s traveling alone?” Jiang Cheng demands.
“I mean what I have just said,” says Lan Wangji, the tea between them sitting cold. “Wei Ying needed… time.”
The half-Jade of Lan is even testier than normal. On the best of days, he isn’t terribly fond of Jiang Cheng, but all the annoyance does is betray his worry. The corners of his mouth are downturned, and he stares resolutely at a plate of pickled greens that neither of them has touched.
“Time? It’s been sixteen years.”
“For us. Not for Wei Ying.”
The thought is one he hadn’t yet considered. He doesn’t pursue it, lets it sink into the back of his mind to be returned to later. Or never, if he can manage it.
“You’re worried,” he says instead.
He doesn’t acknowledge his own concern. It’s too hard, after such a long time spent hating his brother, both publicly and privately. It’s far easier to make it about Lan Wangji’s feelings, poorly disguised as they are.
Lan Wangji says nothing, but his mouth tightens, and it’s all the answer Jiang Cheng needs.
Jiang Cheng returns to Lotus Pier, and begins to make inquiries.
The first is to Jin Ling. It’s buried within a series of unrelated matters, so as not to make it the entire point of the letter. He places it towards the end, as though it were an afterthought. Have you heard anything from Wei Wuxian?
The letter he gets back comes within a day, and unlike him, Jin Ling doesn’t bother pretending the response was about anything else. I ran into him on a night hunt with my shidis. He said he was excited to see me, but he looked sad, whenever he thought I wasn’t looking.
Jiang Cheng is familiar. He thinks about the aftermath of the Sunshot Campaign, when he would smile to Jiang Cheng’s face, then drink himself half to death as soon as he’d turned his back.
I think you should talk to him; Jin Ling had finished. Jiang Cheng wonders when he’d gotten the confidence to start telling him what to do. Probably around the time he had started being right.
He frequents some of the inns in Yunmeng, inquiring after any unusual guests in a way that must come across as anything but casual. None of innkeepers, bartenders, or merchants have seen the guest they all know he’s looking for.
He starts taking night hunts that he’d normally assign to his advanced disciples, telling himself that it’s good leadership. He stays overnight at some of the inns, with one excuse or another. He doesn’t see Wei Wuxian, and he tells himself that he isn’t disappointed.
It’s been close to than a month of Jiang Cheng’s new routine when he discovers a case of corpse poisoning, close to the border of Qishan. It’s fairly standard, nothing he wouldn’t send his own shidis to handle, which is why he’s surprised when he sees the signs of a fight.
Felled trees and scattered underbrush litter the area, and in the middle, Lan Sizhui is bent over, recovering his breath, while a mussed Wen Ning frets at his side. Corpses surround them, unmoving.
“What happened?” he asks, but Lan Sizhui brushes him off, straightens to look past Jiang Cheng, into a nearby thatch of trees.
“We should find Wei Wuxian,” he says instead.
“He was here?” Jiang Cheng asks, ignoring the swooping in his chest.
“He led most of them away,” Lan Sizhui replies, while Wen Ning nods in confirmation.
Jiang Cheng doesn’t wait, hurrying in the direction that they give him. His pulse pounds in a constricted throat, but the trees around him reveal nothing, their branches thick and intact.
He stumbles out into a clearing, only to see the object of his concern just beginning to lower the dizi from his lips. The relief that hits him is punchy in the moment it has to settle, but swiftly sharpens into irritation.
“Ah, Jiang Cheng? Are you here to help? Sorry, there’s not very much left for you.” Wei Wuxian waves, a laugh on his lips as he gestures to a field of corpses freshly returned to a less animate, more amicable form of death.
The ire that washes up at his words is hot and immediate, shame flushing at the back of his neck. A voice that sounds like his mother echoes in his head. Jiang Cheng, always the fool, rushing after a brother that doesn’t need saving. Who, it seems, never needed saving, content to cater to his own whims.
Only now, with Wei Wuxian finally in front of him does he admit to himself that he had been worried. The feeling of embarrassment is nearly as recognizable as the vitriol that follows.
“It doesn’t look like you need any,” he observes sourly.
“Jiang Cheng-ah,” Wei Wuxian complains, the tone plaintive and put-upon.
It’s familiar, and Jiang Cheng realizes it didn’t take more than a minute for them to be drawn back into the exchanges they used to have, the kind he thought he’d grown past. Sixteen years without him, and Wei Wuxian makes him feel the same way as he did when he was ten years old.
All of this lasts as long as it takes for Wei Wuxian to bound up to him, the tassel on Chenqing swinging as he comes to a stop, and clasps it behind his back.
Closer to him now, he can see what hadn’t been obvious from afar.
This close, Jiang Cheng can make out the bruised quality of his eyes, the pinched, moisture-less character of skin suffering from poor sleep. When he stills his flighty gestures, the robes he wears sag in all the places where he isn’t quite filling them out.
This too is familiar, but in a way that Jiang Cheng wishes he didn’t recognize.
Against his will, he feels the faint stirrings of concern he’d stifled so quickly just a minute before, and he chastises himself.
As soon as Wei Wuxian had opened his mouth, it had been like a tide sweeping him away, old habits tugging in an inexorable pull.
It will be different this time, Jiang Cheng reminds himself. He’s older now, not the same overwhelmed leader that had emerged from the death of his parents and the aftermath of war.
In the past, he’d ignored all the signs, as though he could hold everything together with enough willpower and a healthy amount of ignorance.
He’s no longer so easily convinced.
“What can I do for you, esteemed Sect Leader?” Wei Wuxian asks, and Jiang Cheng notices how the accompanying smile strains, like his face struggles to support the weight of it.
He knows that to Wei Wuxian, what he’s offering is a gift. Jiang Cheng could walk away now, contented by the shallow front, and they could both exhale in relief at another conversation successfully avoided.
Unfortunately for Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng has grown up since the last time they played this game.
“I heard you were traveling around. Alone.”
“Ah.” Wei Wuxian avoids eye contact, scratching the back of his head with the accursed flute. “Yes, yes, it’s been a while since I’ve seen the sights. So much has changed.”
Jiang Cheng thinks about moon-pale hands, made whiter by the clenching of a porcelain teacup.
“Hanguang-Jun didn’t want to come with you?”
Wei Wuxian fights to hide his surprise behind a cough.
“So many questions! Why can’t you ask me them over a meal? I am so hungry after laying to rest all of those poor souls,” he complains, clutching a hand to his chest.
Jiang Cheng knows Wei Wuxian isn’t expecting him to say yes. This is the point in the conversation where he strides away with a temperamental huff and a flick of his elegantly draped sleeves, while Wei Wuxian congratulates himself on a successful evasion.
His eyes catch on ill-fitting cloth, clinging to a slim shoulder. Drift down, to a tightly cinched belt.
“No winehouses,” he declares, and watches surprise flicker for the second time, before it’s overtaken by performative groaning.
He turns to step over an inanimate body, reminding himself to send word to his disciples when they reach the nearest town. Lan Sizhui and Wen Ning are staring at him as he does, both with indiscernible expressions.
“You can come too,” he grates out, and almost doesn’t taste blood in his throat when he says it.
The tavern they find isn’t very busy, at this time of day, and their party is easily granted a table. They would have been even if the establishment was packed full, by the way their server eyes Jiang Cheng’s prominent robes and ornate hairpiece. He settles them by a window, and hustles away quickly once he collects their orders.
When he leaves, they are left to contend with the awkwardness of their situation. Around the table sit the Sect Leader of Yunmeng Jiang, the Ghost General, The Yiling Laozu, and his maybe-adopted son, in what must make the beginnings of either a fight, or a very good joke.
Wei Wuxian breaks the silence first, in a move that couldn’t have been more expected of him.
“This tea is very good, wouldn’t you say, Wen Ning? Not as good as the wine, I’m sure, but…”
He continues on, making cheerful observations about the food, the decor. When he exhausts those topics, he turns to a discussion of the corpse poisoning cases. He manages to prod Lan Sizhui into an account of the fight, nodding encouragingly in all the right places.
Jiang Cheng tries as best as he can to ignore Wen Ning, which isn’t admittedly difficult, since the undead man barely speaks. Wei Wuxian seems to have elected to do the same when it comes to Jiang Cheng, hardly looking in his direction.
Jiang Cheng would call him out for it, if it seemed like it came from a place of ridicule. It doesn’t. The avoidance is far more reminiscent of trepidation, than of disrespect.
Most of Wei Wuxian’s food is still piled on his plate, since he picks at it more than he actually eats it.
“I thought you said you were hungry,” Jiang Cheng observes.
“Ah, you know how I get when I’m talking, Jiang Cheng! I didn’t notice.” He takes a large, exaggerated bite of food, and almost manages to stifle the wince he makes directly after. He swallows, opening his mouth for what is undoubtedly another ridiculous anecdote, and Jiang Cheng interrupts before he gets the chance.
“You were going to tell me why Hanguang-Jun isn’t with you,” he reminds him.
A complicated expression occupies his face for the barest moment, before it’s smoothed over with a grin.
“Lan Zhan is very busy.”
He narrows his eyes. “Too busy for you? That’s not what it looked like when he was defending you in front of half of the cultivation world.”
For an instant, the smile falters, revealing a look that is cold and affronted.
“I don’t need anyone to look after me.”
Jiang Cheng snorts, he can’t help it. “Of course. The hands-off approach worked so well with you the last time.”
“Well, I’m here now, and I’m doing fine.” Wei Wuxian smiles again. His hands shake, almost imperceptibly, where they rest on his knees.
“Yeah. You look fine,” he notes, tone bitingly acerbic.
No one is eating now. Wei Wuxian’s eyes flick across to Lan Sizhui, and Jiang Cheng knows he’s about to hear another watered-down denial of what is obvious to everyone who can see him.
It makes Jiang Cheng grit his teeth, watching Wei Wuxian act like there isn’t anything wrong, in the face of everyone else’s discomfort.
He feels like they’re repeating something, stuck in a cycle neither of them can escape. The last remaining Wens are even here, shielded at Wei Wuxian’s side.
He takes it in, and the words leave him before he can think about their implications.
“I want you to come back to Lotus Pier.”
They fall with all the grace of a lead mallet, and Jiang Cheng watches the Yiling Laozu’s face contort as he chokes on a sip of tea.
“You… what?”
“You’re coming to stay in Lotus Pier. With me.” This time, he uses his Sect Leader voice. He’s had sixteen years of practice.
On either side, Wen Ning and Lan Sizhui just sit and watch, eyes wide. Lan Sizhui’s eyebrows are raised, like the proposal merits his surprise, and Jiang Cheng wonders how much he knows.
He doesn’t think either of them have taken a bite in over five minutes. He’s also not sure Wen Ning needs to, but he’d been doing well enough so far.
Wei Wuxian finally manages to swallow his cough, eyes streaming.
“If Sect Leader Jiang insists, who is this humble one to deny his wishes?”
And that is that.
The journey back to Lotus Pier is long enough that Jiang Cheng has a wealth of time to second-guess his decision. They move slowly, most likely because of the donkey that Wei Wuxian refused to leave behind.
He can’t complain, not really. He’s part of the reason Wei Wuxian can’t travel by sword, after all.
Lan Sizhui and the famed Ghost General (who, somehow, has gotten grass stuck in his hair after less than an hour of walking) bid them farewell before they’re more than halfway through Yunmeng, with a fumbled excuse Jiang Cheng accepts gratefully.
This will be easier if there are less opportunities for Wei Wuxian to deflect his attention.
Then, it’s just Jiang Cheng, and his… whatever Wei Wuxian is to him.
They walk in a silence that would be awkward if it weren’t already tense, and Jiang Cheng thinks he might regret every decision he has made that day, up to and including his invitation to Wei Wuxian.
It only lasts until their return. Wei Wuxian looks at Lotus Pier with such sadness, like he can still see it falling, and Jiang Cheng’s regret stills, compresses into something firm and hot in his chest.
He steels himself, marches resolutely through the halls without checking to see if Wei Wuxian is following. He must be, because he hears footsteps behind him.
“Where are we going?”
Jiang Cheng pauses long enough to shoot him a disparaging look, but the wide eyes he’s greeted with tells him that it hadn’t been a joke.
“Has it been so long you can’t remember the way to your room?” Jiang Cheng presses onward, stalking up to Wei Wuxian’s door and flinging it open.
For a moment, he doesn’t move. He looks through the entrance warily, as if peering into the room of a stranger. “You kept it?”
Jiang Cheng doesn’t answer, instead watching him as he steps inside. He trails his fingers over old scrolls, the tops of half-finished drawings.
It’s pristine. Clean and dust-free, like he’d never left. Aside from the infrequent tidying, it had gone unoccupied for the entirety of his absence.
Jiang Cheng had ignored it, for the most part, over the last decade, but he’s never given it away.
He’d tried, more than once, but every time he’d attempted to dispose of the room’s contents, he’d had to face the innocent signs of Wei Wuxian’s former life. An ink sketch on the bedside, a pile of river rocks in a carved dish. They’re reminders of a different Wei Wuxian, his shixiong.
Even at the height of his anger, Jiang Cheng couldn’t bear to erase what little had remained of him.
Wei Wuxian stands in the middle of it all. His back is to Jiang Cheng, so he can’t see his reaction. He looks out of place, like the black spill of ink on fresh paper. With one hand, he brushes over some spot on the bedframe, over indents scratched deep into the wood.
Jiang Cheng clears his throat uncomfortably. “We’ll take dinner here. Try not to cause too much trouble while I’m gone.”
Jiang Cheng slides the door shut behind him, and tries to feel the least bit like he has any idea what he’s doing.
His meetings take up the majority of the afternoon, but he hardly gets through them, too inattentive to focus. He’s never been one to scheme, and it leads him to feel out of his depth. By the end of the day, he’s feeling irritable, set on-edge.
At dinner time, he carries a tray of Yunmeng-style fried noodles through the hall. Separate, smaller bowls of ground spice and chili oil are set to either side.
Inside his room, Wei Wuxian is rolling his dizi between his fingers, an inscrutable look on his face.
Jiang Cheng sets the meal down upon one of the low tables, and he looks up, smiling when he notices Jiang Cheng is there. He’s recovered some of himself in the time he’s been left alone, enough composure to keep a pleasant face. He sits at the table without prodding, sprawled in a way that makes some part of Jiang Cheng’s heart twist.
There’s no rule against talking during meals at Lotus Pier, but he still finds himself hesitant to speak.
Wei Wuxian doesn’t seem to notice, content to scatter the bowls of spice across his noodles, stirring until the change in color is uniform. The flecks of red stand out against the noodles, like the vermilion ribbon he keeps in his hair. Even his food looks distinct.
He still isn’t really looking up at Jiang Cheng. He wonders if it’s easier for him to pretend, that way.
“Jin Ling is worried about you,” he says. Internally, he cringes at how abruptly it comes out, but doesn’t let it show on his face.
He’s never been good with words.
Wei Wuxian pauses from where he’d been fiddling with his chopsticks. “Jin Ling shouldn’t worry,” he says mildly. His posture doesn’t change, still casual, but it grows just a touch more rigid.
Jiang Cheng pours a small amount of chili oil over his own noodles, mostly for something to do. “He wouldn’t, if you didn’t give him anything to worry about.”
Wei Wuxian sets his chopsticks down. “Is that why you brought me back?”
The pleasantness around him has slipped, decayed into something wearier. He seems to consider something, then nods. “I won’t visit him if you don’t want me to.”
The idea looks like it wounds him, but he doesn’t take it back.
“That’s not what this is about.”
He frowns. “I won’t travel into Yunmeng anymore, then.”
“It’s not that either.”
“Then why?”
Jiang Cheng grits his teeth, looks down into his bowl. The sauce inside is already beginning to congeal, aging as it cools. His hands clench on the edges.
Wei Wuxian doesn’t allow him any time to organize his thoughts, continuing on when Jiang Cheng says nothing.
“You shouldn’t worry, I’m not raising any corpses. I haven’t been any trouble for the cultivation world since we last saw each other.”
He says it knowingly, like he’s sure that he’s figured out the problem, and it’s the cool certainty that finally snaps his tender control.
Jiang Cheng slams his bowl down, and Wei Wuxian leans back, resigned, as if the outburst was the normalcy they had both been waiting for.
“You think I brought you here because I’m worried about what you’re going to do to everyone else?”
Wei Wuxian’s eyebrows raise, incredulous. “Why else would you bring me here?”
The genuine confusion in the question is what burns him the most, he thinks. His anger crumbles away, settles in his stomach like flakes of hot pepper.
Jiang Cheng wonders what a-Jie would think, that Wei Wuxian finds worry on his own behalf to be unthinkable. He knows she would ache at what her family has become in her absence, starting at the very moment of her death.
He clenches his teeth, inhaling a deep breath. “Maybe I just don’t want to see you throwing yourself off another cliff.”
Wei Wuxian pauses, goes frigid and still, like a jade carving.
“That won’t be a problem,” he responds, after a protracted stretch of silence.
His gaze is far off, hand going lax around where it had come up to grip the edge of the table. He doesn’t blink, and Jiang Cheng gets a vague sense that he isn’t really seeing the room around them.
Jiang Cheng opens his mouth, not yet sure what he’s going to say, but Wei Wuxian cuts him off before he can decide.
“I’m tired,” he interrupts, and even with his eyes unfocused, it’s clearly a dismissal.
Jiang Cheng feels the frustration spike again. “Fine,” he returns, and stands sharply.
He feels helpless. It’s a familiar feeling, if an old one.
It rains that night.
Jiang Cheng stares up at his ceiling. He’s ill-suited for what he’s attempting.
It doesn’t matter.
There isn’t anyone left to help him, but he’s never been any good at fixing things.
A part of him, young and bitter, wonders why he’s even trying. If Wei Wuxian wants to fall apart again, he should let him, and damn the consequences.
Eventually, he drifts away to the sounds of the water falling against the roof.
Wei Wuxian doesn’t show up in the dining hall for breakfast. Jiang Cheng stares at the empty seat across from him, resigned. It seems that Wei Wuxian truly isn’t fated to be at his right hand; in this life, or the last. That doesn’t mean he’s allowed to skip meals.
After he eats, Jiang Cheng goes to rouse him, determined. He’ll eat even if Jiang Cheng has to force him. He didn’t bring him back to Lotus Pier only for him to get even skinnier.
He’s prepared to give the same tirade he used to give when Jin Ling refused to eat his vegetables, but when he gets to Wei Wuxian’s room, he isn’t inside.
Jiang Cheng gaps at the empty room, refusing to acknowledge the thrum of anxiety that runs through him at the sight.
Behind him, a shimei passes by, clearing the loose branches that had fallen from the rainfall during the night.
Jiang Cheng beckons to her. “Have you seen Wei Wuxian?”
“Not since last night.”
“Last night.” His voice is flat, and the shimei looks as though she might start to wring her hands with nervousness.
“Yes. He was asking about… night hunts?”
Jiang Cheng swore, spinning on a heel. Screw what he’d said the previous night. When he found him, he was going to kill him.
So much for not causing trouble.
He’s nearly to the edge of the circular courtyard when the gate swings open, Wei Wuxian holding onto it like he needs it to stay upright, and Jiang Cheng comes to an abrupt stop.
His robes are soaking wet, and they drip slowly onto the ground. The hand not clinging to the gate holds his dizi, and water runs from it, too.
Wei Wuxian looks almost abashed, like a child hiding a broken vase. He’s out of practice with not being caught.
For a moment, they just stare at each other.
“…I was going for a walk?” He tries.
“I’m going to throw you into the sun.”
Wei Wuxian huffs a laugh, then winces, and Jiang Cheng notices where an arm comes up to clench tightly about his ribs.
Unbelievable.
Jiang Cheng reaches out and grabs his other arm, refusing to yield to the startled yelping that follows.
He tugs Wei Wuxian all the way back through Lotus Pier, past startled shidis just beginning their morning training.
They’re watched with undisguised curiosity; and Jiang Cheng is sure his reputation for being unapproachable is the only thing preventing them from being accosted with questions.
It’s probably a good thing they don’t ask; he wouldn’t know how to explain it to them if he tried.
“Call for a bath,” he says to the same shimei from before, pushing the errant demonic cultivator back into his childhood bedroom.
Wei Wuxian attempts to look put-out, but it’s undercut by the way he’s shivering, lips tinged blue around the edges.
When the bathwater arrives, he hesitates, looking pointedly at Jiang Cheng. Jiang Cheng decides that if he’s uncomfortable with being watched, then he should have thought of it before running off to nearly die of exposure during the night.
When it becomes clear he isn’t planning on leaving, Wei Wuxian rolls his eyes. “I can take a bath by myself, Jiang Cheng.”
Jiang Cheng folds his arms over his chest, nodding toward the water. “With your luck, you’ll drown yourself reaching for the soap. Now get in.”
They grew up together, after all. It’s not like staying will show him anything he hasn’t seen before.
Wei Wuxian must truly be cold, because he doesn’t offer further resistance. He begins to peel off his soaked outer robe, and Jiang Cheng does him the slim courtesy of averting his gaze until he settles in the water. Even half submerged, his limbs tremble faintly where they come up to wrap around himself.
It turns out to be a good thing that Jiang Cheng stays.
When Wei Wuxian tries to wash his hair, he can only lift them about halfway to his head before faltering with a cut-off hiss. Even through the water, the bruising on his side is plainly visible.
They could call for a servant to help. Wei Wuxian might find it embarrassing, but he wouldn’t be able to argue, with the state he’s in.
“Lean your head back,” Jiang Cheng instructs.
Wei Wuxian looks doubtful, but does as he’s told, settling back against the edge of the tub. Jiang Cheng tugs his ribbon free from his hair, removing the band underneath so it falls flat against his back.
Without thinking too much about what he’s doing, Jiang Cheng pushes his sleeves back, tucking them so they won’t get wet, and grabs the hair-washing liquid. He pours some over his hands, applying it throughout the hair and beginning to scrub.
Wei Wuxian’s eyes close against the soap, but his body is stiff with tension.
Jiang Cheng is not a gentle person by anyone’s judgment, but he makes an effort to keep his touch light. He finishes washing and rinses the hair, applying a light-scented oil to the now clean strands.
Underneath him, Wei Wuxian slowly relaxes when Jiang Cheng doesn’t attempt to shove his head under.
He finishes up, toweling the head dry, and Wei Wuxian’s eyes flutter open. Jiang Cheng hasn’t been this close to him since he came back from the dead. He looks as young as he ever has.
Jiang Cheng, like most cultivators, hasn’t aged very much physically, but he knows his years are visible if one knows where to look. He carries it in experience, in the leadership he has learned to wield. There’s a youth, a rawness in Wei Wuxian’s eyes that hasn’t yet had time to fade.
“Thank you,” Wei Wuxian murmurs, and Jiang Cheng can feel his face warm.
“Shut up,” he says. “I just didn’t want to have to look at your greasy hair.”
Wei Wuxian nods without argument and pulls himself up, wrapping a towel around his middle, and Jiang Cheng busies himself by drying his own hands.
Wei Wuxian redresses, tying his hair back up and running his hands along the ends. “It’s so soft,” he says wonderingly.
Jiang Cheng snorts. “It would feel like that all the time if you bothered to oil your hair.”
Wei Wuxian cuts him a look that is just short of a pout, then turns, as if to head for the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Jiang Cheng interrupts.
Wei Wuxian is nonplussed. “To sit by the lake?” he suggests, as if it could be a reasonable course of action when he’s injured, and the circles under his eyes are nearly as purple as his bruising.
He straightens. “You’ve been out all night. You’re not going anywhere but your bed.”
Wei Wuxian’s eyes flash in preparation to argue, and Jiang Cheng sets his face; sticks out his chin.
He sees the exact moment Wei Wuxian recognizes his expression, and he swallows whatever arguments he had prepared, accepting defeat.
He lays down on top of the blankets instead of climbing inside them, and shuts his eyes without relaxing a single muscle.
Jiang Cheng waits. Despite his combativeness, it takes Wei Wuxian surprisingly little time to fall asleep. He fights it at first, but eventually he settles, going pliant and still.
Jiang Cheng pulls a blanket free from where it’s been trapped under his legs, spreading it across the sleeping body. He won’t have him getting sick when he’s just been warmed up.
He has some of his documents brought from his office. Even now, he doesn’t quite trust Wei Wuxian not to make an escape when he isn’t looking. After the previous night, he won’t take any chances.
The morning passes quietly, still but for the sound of Jiang Cheng’s brush against paper.
Sometime in the afternoon, when the sun begins to sink from its peak, his focus is broken by a faint rustle emanating from somewhere behind him. When he pauses to look around, he finds Wei Wuxian twitching in his sleep, head moving as if fighting off some invisible thing.
He must be dreaming.
Jiang Cheng gets back to his work. A few minutes pass before he’s interrupted again, this time by a low moan.
Again, his brush stills, and he watches this time as Wei Wuxian’s limbs begin to move. His eyebrows furrow, distress creeping over his face.
Jiang Cheng sets the brush down just as he jerks hard, almost falling off the bed, and he makes it over just in time to pull him away from the edge.
“No,” he mumbles. With Jiang Cheng’s hands on him, he begins to fight harder, dislodging the blankets over his chest. “No!”
“You’re okay,” Jiang Cheng tries to shush him. He’s awkward, his soothing unpracticed.
It doesn’t matter because Wei Wuxian doesn’t hear him.
“Wen Qing,” he cries.
Jiang Cheng stills, reassurances dissolving on his tongue.
Wei Wuxian is immune to his discomfort, a moan low in his throat. “Wen Qing, keep going, you promised!”
A sudden horror fills Jiang Cheng. The pieces fall together, painting a vivid picture of the memory he must be reliving.
Jiang Cheng doesn’t want anything to do with it. He himself still hasn’t fully finished processing his own thoughts about that particular reveal.
Knowing Wei Wuxian still thinks about it, that the memory of the exchange still affects him, even now…
Unconsciously, his hands have pulled back from where they’d been holding Wei Wuxian to the bed, and an arm flies free, nearly striking him in the face.
He renews his hold, shaking him lightly, then more urgently when it fails to rouse him. “Wei Wuxian,” he urges. “Wake up.”
Wei Wuxian makes another distressed noise, now twisting in his grip, fighting him. He’s gotten louder, his wails high and indistinct, and Jiang Cheng raises his voice to match.
“Wei Wuxian!” He calls, and shakes him again. “It’s okay! You’re okay.”
Wei Wuxian jerks awake with a wild gasp. It takes a moment for his eyes to find Jiang Cheng’s, and the sight doesn’t seem to reassure him. He’s panting. A strand of hair is curled across his face, plastered to the skin with the sweat that wells there.
Jiang Cheng’s own heart is beating so fast, he feels it might escape. Beneath it, his core –Wei Wuxian’s core– hums steadily. His hands are on Wei Wuxian’s shoulders, who is still taking breaths like he can’t be sure he isn’t drowning.
“Jiang Cheng,” he gasps. “Jiang Cheng, I’m sorry.” His hands come up to grasp at his forearms. “I’m sorry, I’ll fix it, I said I was going to protect you and I will –”
His mind scrambles to catch up, and he gives Wei Wuxian a little shake. “You’re not– it’s not then, I’m fine, you’re fine, okay?”
Wei Wuxian gazes up at him for another speechless moment, before abruptly slumping. “Oh,” he says, awareness slowly filtering back into his eyes. “Jiang Cheng, you should have said something.”
He’s beginning to pull back into himself now, letting his hands drop from Jiang Cheng’s wrists. Jiang Cheng doesn’t let go yet.
A familiar feeling is burgeoning within him, the same feeling he gets when he sees Jin Ling about to cry. The sentiment is jarring to feel directed at Wei Wuxian, the very person who used to soothe him when he woke up in the night as a child himself.
But it’s Jiang Cheng that’s older now, older by more than a decade while Wei Wuxian’s soul has floated, untethered, unaware. The Lan shidis might call him qianbei, but the truth is that he’s barely old enough for the title.
Even clinging to scraps of composure, he’s strung-out, too fresh from sleep to put up a truly convincing front. Indents are pressed into his cheek, his hair mussed from the friction against the pillow. There’s a weight to him that seems bottomless.
It tugs at Jiang Cheng, at a protective instinct that is rarely stirred.
“Don’t…” he trails off. Trying, for once, to find the right words.
Wei Wuxian’s eyes dart over his face, searching. “What?”
Jiang Cheng’s throat closes. “Don’t pretend nothing’s wrong.”
Wei Wuxian makes a soft noise of protest, but Jiang Cheng cuts him off.
“You did a terrible job even when I was doing my best not to notice, so I don’t know why you think you can get away with it now.”
At last, the haunted look is wiped from his face, replaced by such inordinate shock that Jiang Cheng has to tamp down a bubble of inappropriate laughter.
He stares past him, at a spot over Wei Wuxian’s shoulder. He can’t say it to his face. “I didn’t want you to sacrifice yourself for me the first time. Stop doing it for no reason.”
Wei Wuxian’s mouth snaps shut, like he’d just realized it had fallen open. Guilt is trickling in. All those sharp edges turned inward, cutting him open.
“Okay,” he agrees lowly, like he knows he’s in no position to disagree.
It’s a small victory, but Jiang Cheng has been through war. He knows to savor even the most miniscule.
The morning after, when he isn’t in his room, Jiang Cheng doesn’t panic.
When Jiang Cheng finds him, he’s dangling his legs over the pier, staring across the water. In the light of the early morning, he’s a pale afterimage. It makes him think of the other times he’d looked distant, over the past several days.
He’d looked like that before his death, too. Even after they’d gotten him back, he’d be right in front of them and just… disappear. Wherever he went, none of them could reach him. Not even a-Jie.
Jiang Cheng wonders where he goes.
He sits next to him, dropping his legs down alongside. The edges of his robe brush the water, and moisture seeps in, purple flushing darker as it dampens.
“What does it feel like?” Jiang Cheng asks.
Wei Wuxian’s head tilts. “Death?”
The wetness along the bottom of his robe spreads like a bloom. “Dying. Coming back.”
Wei Wuxian swings his legs where they hang over the water. “You know when you wake from a dream, and you can tell time has passed?”
Jiang Cheng hums.
“It’s like that. Everything happened so quickly. I tried not to think about… before.”
He doesn’t say until now, but Jiang Cheng hears it anyway. “They all say I killed you, but...” He hesitates. “We both know that isn’t true.”
“I didn’t want to die, Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian says quietly.
“Didn’t you?”
He exhales a frustrated breath, puffing away one of the strands that frames his face. “There wasn’t any other way out.”
Jiang Cheng recalls crumbling coherency, wisps of resentment wrapped about Wei Wuxian like a shroud. He remembers how the tight control would falter, revealing something warped, a shade away from unhinged.
Jiang Cheng hadn’t been able to make sense of it, and Wei Wuxian had never explained.
“You could’ve asked me. You could have told us what was going on.”
Wei Wuxian’s face twists. “Jiang Cheng,” he breaths. “It wasn’t that simple.”
“It was.”
He shakes his head. “I caused too much damage.”
Jiang Cheng wonders if he means to the world, or to himself. “If you had told me… I would have helped you. I would’ve tried.”
You were our family too.
Wei Wuxian mouth betrays the barest tremble. “I know I didn’t do what I promised you, Jiang Cheng, but you weren’t the only one I made a vow to.”
Jiang Cheng can taste salt. The memory of his own wails ring in his ears, bringing to life the way he had begged his parents to stay, begged them not to leave him.
They reach past him, toward Wei Wuxian, demanding from him something he never could have fulfilled.
They were children, and it was war. Wei Wuxian was his shixiong, not a human shield.
A-Niang had never seen him that way, but he’d thought his father, at least, had loved him more than that.
It’s worse, somehow, that Wei Wuxian had accepted the burden without complaint, that he thought he had owed them. Jiang Cheng wonders what might have happened if they hadn’t wrung that promise from him.
And Wei Wuxian still believes that it had been right.
Jiang Cheng had thought he was done being angry. His hands tighten into fists by his sides. The feeling bubbles up in his chest, a hot, caustic mess he’d never had the slightest idea how to pull apart.
“Shut up,” Jiang Cheng snaps, abandoning any attempt at eloquence. Instead, he reaches out to cross the unspoken void that stretches between them, pulling him into a fierce hug.
It proves to be what snaps the last thread holding him together, and Wei Wuxian sags into him, for once not even attempting to hold himself upright.
“I’m sorry,” he chokes. “I tried to help, but everything I touched fell apart. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t do anything.”
Jiang Cheng squeezes his eyes shut. “You weren’t responsible for everything.”
Wei Wuxian is quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry about Shijie,” he says, the word small on his lips, and even with his arms around him, Jiang Cheng can feel him drawing into himself. Jiang Cheng lets out a sharp breath, stiffening at the mention of her. The echo of his rage from that night rises up to batter him from the inside, aching to be let out.
“Don’t apologize for that.”
“I am, I’m sorry –” The pain in his voice is clawing, desperate, and Jiang Cheng remembers the desolation on his face, in his voice, when a-Jie had been struck through by that sword, the defeat etched over every part of him when he’d given up.
Even more disturbing had been the acceptance, the peace that had replaced it when he’d fallen. It leaves him cold.
“Jie chose to do that for you. It was her choice, not your fault. Don’t take that away from her.”
Wei Wuxian pulls away from him, scandalized, but Jiang Cheng kept a grip on him. Letting him distance himself is a mistake Jiang Cheng won’t make again.
“She knew what she was doing when she went out on that battlefield to look for you.”
Jiang Yanli had been many things, but she had never been stupid. The choices she had made, like all of them, had been her own. Jiang Cheng won’t take her agency from her in death.
Wei Wuxian just looks at him, mouth hard-edged. His eyes are red-rimmed, dark enough to swallow light. “Would you still say that if I had killed Jin Zixuan?”
His mouth opens, but no answer comes to fill it. He doesn’t know.
The confrontation at Nightless City, for a long time after, had seemed inevitable, like the erosion of a tall mountain; but there’s no point in speculating for himself, not when he knows that a-Jie had never blamed him for a second. Not even on the occasions when it had been deserved.
“What’s done is done. I can only tell you what I know now.”
He looks out over the water. They used to swim here, harvesting lotus pods under a hot summer sun.
“I forgive you.”
A breeze blows over the water, but the air is warm where it brushes his cheek.
It feels like healing.