Chapter Text
The night air is quiet and still as he steps from the edge of the guest house and down onto the ground, the puppy in his arms. He feels tired. Exhausted. But he would imagine he’s hardly the only one feeling that way this night— What a day. More than one day, really, but right now he can just about cope with the events of this day, if he starts thinking too much of the events of the days leading up to it he may have to run off into the forest and scream.
It will be over soon—
Come the morning and the ritual to destroy the first half of the Stygian Tiger Seal will be conducted, a few days more and the same can be said for the second half, and once that is done he can return to Lotus Pier. He can’t help wondering if Meng Yao will be coming with him.
He sighs, glancing down at the puppy squirming in his arms. He told himself when he left his guest room that he was taking her out to go to the toilet, so he might as well put her on the ground, even though right now what he wants is to cling to her soft warmth.
She is getting more agile with her splint, so when he does put her down she manages to spin in a couple of excited circles in front of him without tripping on herself. She is a cute thing. Sweet, fluffy, soft— some mixed breed, he thinks, with some companion animal in her, and if he’d have to guess at least some other part one of the non-Cultivator’s breeds of hunting dog. There may be some Spirit Dog in her, but he suspects it’s not the main part of her makeup.
He is thinking of calling her Blossom, for all he knows Sect Leader Wei would laugh at him for it, and for all he also knows if he does so he will forever be reminded of the blossoming trees of the Cloud Recesses and all the bittersweetness of this place in his mind. Her colour reminds him of them a little though, if you look up from beneath and catch sight of layers and layers of white flowers and darker branches against the sky.
He watches as she pees on a patch of pristine Cloud Recesses ground, and then watches a little more as she sniffs a few things, but it’s late— early to be more accurate— and he no longer trusts the things lurking in the dark in this place, so he soon goes and scoops her back into his arms.
She snuffles him, happy and affectionate, and for a moment he lets himself simply hold her, lets himself stand in the stillness of the night and take what comfort he can. He should go back to his room. He does not want to go back to his room.
Chifeng-zun is in his room, finally asleep, Meng Yao dozing on the floor next to the man’s bed.
Before he sees the two of them awake again he needs to work out how to seem sincere if he’s forced to wish them all happiness for their future together back at the Unclean Realm— he also needs to work out how not to choke on his own resentment. Of course Meng Yao would choose the other, would choose Chifeng-zun, over him. Everyone always does choose the better offer.
It stings though.
Not that either of them have said anything, but he knows full well that Meng Yao still loves Chifeng-zun, his friend’s actions this night, the fussing, the anger, the protectiveness would be enough to suggest so, even without all that he had said earlier. Not that the man said the words outright when he let slip so much of his past, but it was obvious in the pain and resentment and hope in his friend’s voice when he spoke of the other man.
Not only that, not only does Meng Yao love Chifeng-zun, but he now suspects Chifeng-zun loves Meng Yao back. He sees the way the proud, so very proud, Nie Mingjue is with his friend currently, the way the man seems to want to be close to him, the way his eyes never seem to stray from the other— unless he’s caught in one of his moments of staring into nothingness, no doubt caught in memories. And doesn’t he just know how that feels? Also, to look back and see all the anger always so obvious in Chifeng-zun’s behaviour, the affrontedness that now seems more of a man that felt rejected than a man whose honour was insulted by allowing someone who had spied within the Wen camp back into their world.
Meng Yao was Wen Ruohan’s lover— The thought still sends an icy chill through him. He does not understand it, cannot understand it, how someone could— And it still sounds as if it was voluntary.
But Meng Yao has been kinder to him than most, and even though he knows that if he was a more sensible man he should doubt the other’s words, assume they are nothing more than a ploy to win back his favour, he can’t help the way he longs to trust his friend. To keep his friend as his friend. Why would Meng Yao ever admit to such a thing in the first place if the man was attempting to manipulate him? Any fool knows the name of Wen is hardly going to inspire anything like sympathy in him. Also, if Meng Yao truly had wanted to use the relationship to worm his way deeper into his trust the man would have said it was forced, like he had assumed at first, like his early questions would have suggested he wanted the man to say, instead of denying it to the end.
People are complicated. He has always known that and always struggled with that knowledge.
Meng Yao’s history had been enough to make him sick with sympathy, with sorrow for what the man has gone through, as well as a horrible kind of understanding of why the other might have sought refuge amongst the Wens, not having been raised in a Sect, having lost his mother, having been predated on, his father being— Jin Guangshan— only knowing brief moments of kindness, but then that kindness accompanied by loss and judgement.
The important thing is that in the end his friend had chosen the Sunshot Ca— No. No point lying to himself. He knows what Meng Yao had said. In the end his friend had chosen Chifeng-zun’s life over that of Wen Ruohan. Honourable enough, if a bit personal— No. He reminds himself of Meng Yao’s horror at what the Wens were doing— real horror, he believes it, has seen too far beneath that placidly smiling mask to doubt it— and that his friend had turned spy long before Chifeng-zun had been captured.
He will just have to accept that his friend has things in his past that are less than ideal and try not to think about them too much, because if he does he may find himself trying to pick fights with the man in the future.
He feels bad about what he said. He feels very bad about calling Meng Yao a whore. He has always had a terrible temper, and when it’s roused he has always been prone to lash out, to act like his mother, to use his sharpened tongue to cut those around him where it hurts.
No wonder Sect Leader Wei— Enough. Enough of those thoughts.
What does it matter? It is all over, all done.
Even this peace he has found with Meng Yao is done, but how can he blame the man? To love someone that loves you in return—
Especially when the other choice is him.
But still the resentment rises, and he does not want to feel it, does not want to be jealous and possessive, does not want to feel anger when he sees Chifeng-zun. He has always respected the man, they may not have been close, and he may have suspected that the other thought somewhat poorly of him, but he has always respected the man. Even has liked him when they have interacted recently. Also he has felt a great welling of pity somewhere deep inside, for the way it is getting increasingly obvious that it will not be long until Chifeng-zun Qi Deviates— and that was what he thought even before Meng Yao spoke to him, asked him for a Clarity Bell, not outright saying that the man was dying, but not really hiding it either.
Though, in honesty, some of his sympathy for Chifeng-zun is a bit tainted by confusion and contempt about Qinghe Nie’s choices of Cultivation techniques. Oh the sabre looks very impressive, and he was very impressed when he was younger, but he has seen the fear in Nie Huaisang, and the older he has gotten the more doubt has grown in him about the honour involved in dying dramatically but unnecessarily, like the hero in a book— But perhaps that was simply trying to save Sect Leader Wei from the Wen guards, most of him not expecting to survive from the moment he was caught, and then not only not dying, but being forced to live as he had been, for those days without a Golden Core, and ever since then with his memories—
Perhaps what happened to him, his inability to get past it all, is why his new Golden Core now seems to be— No, he will not think of it, not now. He cannot waste his time right now contemplating the fact that it seems as though he is also in danger of a Qi Deviation, without even Qinghe Nie’s flawed cultivation to excuse it, to explain it, to give it a reason other than his own inadequacy.
When this is over, when this is done, then he can force himself to come face to face with his own mortality for the second time— If he can. The first time still feels raw, scabbed over but ulcerous beneath, infected, rotting.
How has Chifeng-zun lived so long, done so much, been so strong with death at his heels the whole time?
Perhaps that is simply because the death the man expected was a death the rest of the Cultivation World would call an honourable one, going out striving to be the best at his family’s particular style of Cultivation. He wonders what the Cultivation World would have thought had the man died earlier, Qi Deviating as the result of such an assault by a man he believed he could trust.
He knows what the narrow minded, cruel, men who make up so many Cultivators would think. They would find some way to twist it, to make it Chifeng-zun’s fault, and then to remake everyone’s memory of him until he was nothing. No longer the Cultivator he has sacrificed so much to strive to be.
What a sad little trio they make, himself, Meng Yao, and now Chifeng-zun. The world is not supposed to be so dangerous a place for a man and his virtue, if you can call it that. The notion is insulting enough when applied to women. A reduction of self to the body and what others can take from it.
Honestly knowing that Zewu-jun attempted to rape Chifeng-zun boggles the mind. It sounds more like a rumour, and not a particularly believable one, than anything else.
He doesn’t think they know he knows. They certainly haven’t said anything about it. He doesn’t know how they explain his willingness to allow Chifeng-zun to stay in his room— He assumes they believe that Meng Yao’s concern that the man might Qi Deviate, and that he thus needs Meng Yao on hand to save him from that fate, is what has convinced him, just like he suspects it’s the justification Chifeng-zun himself is using for his current clinginess. Maybe he even would have believed it himself, if Hanguang-jun hadn’t told him the details of everything that happened.
After they had come to the Library, after he had been updated on what had happened by Meng Yao— or been given what he now knows is a very incomplete version of events by the man— he and Hanguang-jun had been left alone together to finish the small amount of work he had not yet finished himself.
At first he had not realised something was wrong with the man, too caught up in contemplating the story Meng Yao had told him, which was that someone— probably Xue Yang, though possibly Zewu-jun, as no one had asked the man if it was him— had searched Sect Leader Wei’s room and the bronze workshop seemingly for the Stygian Tiger Seal, that Sect Leader Wei had reported this fact to Hanguang-jun, that the two of them had investigated but found nothing, so had decided to take the matter to Zewu-jun, but had not been able to find the man, and had ended up searching for him with Meng Yao until they stumbled upon him and Chifeng-zun— the only information he’d been given at the time being that the latter was on the verge of Qi Deviation— and then the discussion that had been had, the plans made, and everything leading up to the moment that Hanguang-jun and Meng Yao returned to the Library.
It had been enough of a distraction that he can forgive himself for not noticing the staring at first, especially as the object the man was staring at wasn’t him for once but off into some middle distance, enough hints of expression there to lend an almost broken look to that usually impassive face.
For a moment he had feared another apology, feared being forced to remember the way the man’s large, strong hand had felt cupping the side of his face for that split second before he’d regained his senses and pushed him away— not a truth he’d shared with Meng Yao, because he’d been ashamed, so ashamed, and because Meng Yao seems to be protective, and he wasn’t quite sure what the man would do if he knew Hanguang-jun had actually laid hands on him.
He is not sure what he should do about it himself. What he feels about it. He should be angry, and part of him is, but the rest of him is just— Well. Sad and confused but most of all ashamed. In the truth of his own mind he can admit his shame is not just because for a moment he’d almost thought he’d wanted the man to kiss him, wanted to be desirable, wanted to be all right after what he had told Meng Yao, wanted to think he could lie with someone other than Sect Leader Wei— though all that was shameful enough, but also for the tiny flash of victory, of vengeance, of the thought that he had, for the moment at least, stolen the attention of the one who had stolen the attention of his lover from the lover in question. Petty, so very petty.
His pettiness little matters, his feelings about that moment with Hanguang-jun little matter— it was not an apology, it was not Hanguang-jun confessing that the man thought him so simple, so shallow, that giving him a puppy was enough to make him spread his legs. Instead, all of a sudden, just when he had really begun to worry and wonder if he should fetch Lan Qiren, Hanguang-jun had spoken. Hanguang-jun had disclosed what he is sure both Meng Yao and Chifeng-zun want hidden— and Zewu-jun of course.
The reason Chifeng-zun had almost Qi Deviated was because Zewu-jun had assaulted him, sexually assaulted him. Half stripped him. Bitten marks all over his throat so deep they had drawn blood. Bruised his wrists nearly black in restraining him. Either bitten his mouth or slapped him so his lip split.
Each injury had been detailed, Hanguang-jun’s eyes still staring into oblivion, that look still on that handsome face.
It was horrible to hear.
It was— He had gone cold, chilled, and for a moment memories had—
But then Hanguang-jun’s despair had drawn him out of the past, and he’d almost been compelled to comfort the man, but then, of course, Hanguang-jun had to bring Sect Leader Wei into it and ruin his kinder impulses.
‘He stopped,’ the man had said, ‘He stopped before he could go through with it, but what he did was enough— The man who could do that to someone is not my brother. I do not know who that man is. I cannot see Xichen in him— and I can’t help wondering: Was it just the Stygian Tiger Seal? Or is there something in the man I thought I knew that could do that anyway? I don’t know. I just don’t know— and if it was the Seal— What does that say about Sect Leader Wei’s behaviour? Has it been controlling him too? Is that why he has behaved so badly to you?’
The thought had occurred to him also, in the forest after his tantrum, after though he hadn’t said anything to Meng Yao at the time. How could he when the very idea made a sickening kind of hope well up inside of him? It is dispiriting, realising that for all he is trying to move on he can’t help that he still loves—
He does though, that is the thing.
In a way it makes sense. It has not been that long since their final parting, and feelings rarely do what you want them to do. Just because he wants to be able to think of, look at, speak to Sect Leader Wei and feel nothing, does not mean his heart is willing to cooperate.
He would not feel so much anger, so much hurt, if he was not still trapped by the feelings he has had ever since he was little more than a child. Since before that, probably, because he thinks he already loved Sect Leader Wei long before puberty hit, though perhaps not loved romantically until he realised that was an option.
The other was as another part of him, not a brother, no matter his mother’s accusations of his father raising another man’s child alongside his own, another woman’s child alongside her own, a servant’s child alongside the son of the Sect Leader, as if that was what they were.
No, he does not think he has ever felt Sect leader Wei was his brother.
If he was a romantic he would say that when he was younger he thought the other was his soulmate— but that sentiment died the moment they went to the Cloud Recessed and Hanguang-jun wandered into Sect Leader Wei’s field of view.
That was a bitter pill the swallow. That memory had obliterated the momentary, sweet, delusion that all of Sect Leader Wei’s unkindness and neglect was nothing more that the Stygian Tiger Seal influencing him. That— and the reality that the other man had never given any guarantee that the pathetic feelings he had for the man were reciprocated in the first place.
A soulmate cannot be one sided.
Ah. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to think about it anymore.
It’s almost over.
When all this is done and he’s back home he won’t have to risk bumping into the man around every corner. He won’t have to— He really can just avoid him as much as possible from now on.
He hates the way a stab of pain lances through his chest at the idea. Isn’t that what he wanted? Yes, of course it is, but what his head wants and his heart wants are obviously two very different things.
If only the Stygian Tiger Seal had never been created. A monstrous thing, seeming capable of twisting and perverting people’s very nature— but also a convenient excuse some weak part of him has latched onto. If it was just the Seal making Sect Leader Wei—
NO. He cannot let himself think like this.
Weak. He is weak—
But he is not the only one. A strange thought. He may try to hide it from himself, but deep down inside he is so used to seeing himself as somehow— as— as— almost as an imposter or something, not as strong or as smart or as composed or capable of self-control as the other Cultivators. Inadequate, totally inadequate, totally unworthy of being Sect leader Jiang and just desperately hoping no one ever figures that out, no one ever sees through him, but now—
Well. In truth he still sees himself as inadequate, not good enough, but it’s hard to see some of those he has so looked up to— or been envious of— as being as perfect as he has imagined them. Especially the Twin Jades of Lan, the epitome of what he should have been but never was.
Hanguang-jun the man the one he loved preferred to him, Zewu-jun the perfect Cultivator.
He can’t imagine how Zewu-jun must feel now, if it really was only the Stygian Tiger Seal. To be controlled into doing something like that—
It must be sickening.
Why Chifeng-zun though? Of all people, why would he go after Chifeng-zun?
As if there needs to be a reason for such things other than cruelty, but he cannot help his own curiosity there. The large, strong, physically imposing Chifeng-zun seems the least likely candidate for such an assault of almost anyone in the Cultivation World, except maybe Sect Leader Yao— But then, the things he saw and heard of during the war. Yes, cruelty really is the only reason needed.
The Wen soldiers were notorious for battlefield rape—
But then— There is more than one Sect still standing after the Sunshot Campaign with a reputation for the same almost as, if not as bad as, the Wens. Not Yunmeng Jiang of course, never Yunmeng Jiang. Neither he nor Sect Leader Wei would stand for it, had stood for it. There was more than one occasion when they’d had to punish a Cultivator who had—
And not Qinghe Nie either, Chifeng-zun was very firm about that.
But of the Great Sects. Lanling Jin, for example— Though not all of Lanling Jin. In truth it is a Sect split in allegiance between Jin Guangshan and Madam Jin, and the latter would no more put up with rape than Chifeng-zun. The former though— his loyal soldiers, himself. He can guess the fate of the prettier maidens of Qishan Wen that survived to be taken prisoner.
It makes him sick.
He really should have been firmer, earlier, not wavered, and thrown his support behind Sect Leader Wei when the man had acted. Politics has never been his strong suit, not in the way battle is. But they were Wens, and even if he knew the righteous path to take it was hard to get his feet moving down it when all he could remember was blood and death and his own private, personal, pain—
It does not matter though. He should have at least tried to be a better man.
If they had gone to Chifeng-zun and spoken of the injustice being faced by the aged, the injured, the non-Cultivators, the children— and the rumours of the fate of the maidens— Yes. He should have. He should have just accepted that he was never going to be the son his mother wanted, or his father, and just been himself. Angry, blunt, undiplomatic.
Yes, if he had sided with Sect Leader Wei and they had just gone to Chifeng-zun— Surely Yunmeng Jiang and Qinghe Nie together would have had the political force to change things— and surely it wouldn’t have taken much more to talk around Gusu Lan—
But Sect Leader Wei had taken the Wen Remnants and fled, not even to him, but to Yiling, to the Burial Mounds, and in his pain and rejection—
The puppy wriggling in his arms brings him back to the here and now It is unlikely he will get any more sleep, he managed a little, an hour’s maybe, but then the nightmares woke him to an empty bed, and when he sat up he found Chifeng-zun and Meng Yao as he left them and just couldn’t deal with it all anymore.
He glances back at the guest house, then forward into the dark of the Cloud Recesses. He really should go back—
What he wants is to go to the clearing with the rabbits again, though Blossom might chase them. He thinks he could teach her not to— But that might take time, and in that time he would probably lose their trust. He sighs, readjusting his grip on her and then leaning down to place a kiss on her soft, fluffy head.
It was so good of Hanguang-jun to rescue her, so kind of both the Twin Jades of Lan to give her to him—
It is so hard to imagine Zewu-jun doing what Hanguang-jun described.
The man has always seemed so calm, kind, considerate— but then he remembers the way the man had forced him to work with Hanguang-jun even though he had made as many excuses as he could, and even though the man already knew what had really happened. The Stygian Tiger Seal’s influence again?
He cannot tell.
He still wishes he could run away, flee back home, forget all of this ever happened.
It’s too late now. The ritual is as ready as it’s going to be with what little time they had, everyone has been informed of their role, everyone has been given this night to rehearse, and in the morning it is to be done. What kind of coward would flee just before the end?
Perhaps the kind of coward that fled from that conversation with Hanguang-jun by telling the man that they needed to get their work done, that his brother’s actions were further proof that the Seal needs to be destroyed and destroyed as soon as possible, and that they really could no longer afford to dally, instead of comforting the man even though it was obvious he needed it. He just hadn’t known how to. Hadn’t wanted to hear more. Hadn’t been able to cope with the way it was all making his skin crawl—
And does he really owe Hanguang-jun anything? Well. Other than for Blossom— but a cynical man could call her reparations for seducing Sect Leader Wei away from him.
Enough of this. He needs to find some kind of peace, some kind of serenity. The ritual will be a dangerous one, one that none of them can risk messing up.
Knowing it’s a stupid idea he still lets his feet carry him away from the guest house, into the early morning dark. It won’t be long now before the sky starts lightening, and once it does, once everyone wakes, it will be time.
He knows his own part, he will stand at the ritual’s very centre, one hand holding the Greater Clarity Bell if it’s finished in time, the other using Zidian to help suppress the Seal. Meng Yao had tried to protest once his role had become clear, but he’d overridden the man. It is his duty.
Not just as a Cultivator, but as the Cultivator closest to Sect Leader Wei for all that time, the Cultivator who did nothing until now to lead the man from his dangerous, deviant path and back onto the righteous one.
Ah. He feels very confused right now— No. Confused is the wrong word, what he feels is uncertain.
He needs to be certain— at least, he needs to be certain later, for the ritual. Sect Leader Jiang cannot be seen to waver. If he wavers those from lesser Sects may waver likewise, and that will be very, very dangerous.
It is all dangerous. It is all ridiculous. How did he, of all people, end up one of the ones running this show? How did he end up the sort of person who could boss around Sect Leaders and Head Disciples and be obeyed?
It makes no sense, but it is how things are.
Though— it’s not as if they’re easy to boss around. They may accept him as one of the ones permitted to do it, but they’ll still argue with every word he says.
He sighs. He had had to be very firm with all the Sect Leaders and Head Disciples, very insistent, very unyielding, just to get them to accept the necessity of performing the ritual earlier than expected, and then to accept their roles and be willing to even show up. Just remembering it makes him want to both sigh and scream, and that’s even without remembering the odd encounter he had with Sect Leader Yao after the meeting, the man insisting on drinking tea with him at the edge of the Library pavilion, on sitting so very close to his side whilst going on and on and on and on about how the privileged role the man has been assigned is obviously because he truly sees the power of the man’s Sect and honours it as it should be honoured, and that the man should not have worried so about Zewu-jun underestimating his Cultivation, and how good it has been that their two Sects have had the chance to work together so closely for the first time— though hopefully not the last time— at which point the man had had the audacity to place a large, hot, hand on his knee—
If that unpleasant little Su She hadn’t shown up to insist that his own role was not nearly good enough he would have lashed that hand right off Sect Leader Yao’s body with Zidian.
It truly is a wretched day when the opportunity to talk to Su She is a relief. He remembers the little worm from when they studied together— an underperformer, not the kind of man he has ever compared himself to and felt the lesser— but perhaps that is also because he remembers the man’s blundering in the cave of the Xuanwu of Slaughter. The man’s eagerness to sacrifice that poor girl to appease Wen Chao, and then the way he had lifted that bow and arrow and actually shot Sect Leader Wei—
In the days after he had escaped the cave himself and before they had finally managed to rescue Sect Leader Wei he had sworn to himself that if the man was dead soon so would be Su She—
No. No more dwelling on these things. His resolve is weakening.
He is weak.
He— a noise. His grip on Blossom shifts, becomes protective, even as he juggles her into one hand, the other summoning Zidian— in the purple light of the whip’s sparks he sees—
Oh. Oh, of course. Why would the world ever grant him any peace?
‘Sect Leader Wei,’ he acknowledges as he recalls the whip.
There is a pause, and then he hears, ‘A-Cheng,’ the other man’s voice sounding shaky, agonized.
Something in his chest aches. For a heartbeat he waits to see if his Golden Core will follow, and when it remains calm, he makes himself say, ‘Is the Greater Clarity Bell finished?’ instead of asking the man what’s wrong like some terrible, weak part of him longs to.
‘I-It is,’ the man manages after a moment. He risks taking a step closer, eying the figure slumped by the base of one of the blossoming trees cautiously. Sect Leader Wei looks absolutely dreadful, exhausted, rumpled, wide eyed— no, not wide eyed, wild eyed. The man looks almost mad.
He readjusts his grip on the puppy, knowing that once the other realises he is holding a dog all chaos will ensue, and right now not entirely sure he can trust the man’s reaction. If Zewu-jun can try to rape someone under the influence of the Stygian Tiger Seal, how can its creator be trusted to react as usual and run screaming from the puppy and not attack?
His tiny movement seems to have drawn the man’s attention to Blossom, because Sect leader Wei tenses, gets even paler— if such a thing was possible. The man already looks white as milk everywhere an unhealthy flush isn’t suffusing his cheeks or rimming his eyes.
He should leave. He does not want to talk to Sect Leader Wei, he does not even want to see Sect leader Wei, and Sect Leader Wei sure as hell does not want to see Blossom. He turns to go—
‘I-is she ok?’ a hesitant voice asks from behind him. ‘I did what I could for her, but she’s— Well. She’s a— She is what she is, so I couldn’t really—’
He whirls back around, ‘What do you mean you did what you could for her?’ Neither of the Twin Jades of Lan had mentioned anything about Sect leader Wei being involved in Hanguang-jun rescuing Blossom.
The man stares at him, looking sad and confused, ‘I splinted her leg, but I couldn’t tell if there was anything worse wrong with her— I mean. I think she had hurt ribs, but I wasn’t sure, and feeling them to check was difficult because she kept squirming and yelping— but surely Lan Zhan took her to a physician or something when I gave her to him?— Because she looks a lot better.’
When— Speaking very carefully he asks the other man, ‘Did you rescue the puppy?’
The man blinks. ‘I couldn’t exactly leave her in the gutter. She looked so sad—’ the man sounds as sad as the puppy must have been.
He wonders why, what Sect Leader Wei is thinking of, but then gets caught up in wondering why the Twin Jades of Lan had acted like it was Hanguang-jun who had rescued her. He thinks back— Actually, no, it was only Zewu-jun who suggested that, Hanguang-jun hadn’t said anything of the type, the man had been too—
The man had been staring at him again, hadn’t he?
Oh. He does not know what to feel about that.
Or about Zewu-jun lying about Blossom— The Stygian Tiger Seal again?
Why though? What could it hope to gain by making him think the one who rescued the puppy was Hanguang-jun?
A hesitant voice breaks into his thoughts, ‘Well— is she?’
‘Ok?’ he checks, and when the man nods, he nods in return, ‘You were right about the ribs, but she has seen a physician, and she has medicine to take with her milk—’ and that is as strong as he can remain, all his weakness rising up and choking him, ‘Why did you rescue her? I know how you feel about dogs.’
‘She’s just a baby though, and someone had hurt her, left her in the gutter to die—’ the man says, something unreadable in his tone. For a moment he wonders if Sect leader Wei is remembering the past, seeing himself in the puppy. He remembers how skinny the boy had been that his father had returned with. Starved and wary of the adults, but so quick to bond with him and A-jie.
‘It was very brave of you,’ he can’t help saying, wincing a little at how soft his tone is. Once upon a time he would have feted Sect Leader Wei as a hero for such an act, then probably spent the evening petting and cooing over him, praising him, letting him do whatever it was he pleased—
Which makes it sound as if he would have taken no pleasure from what the man did to him— and back then nothing could be further from the truth. Sect Leader Wei always was very good at bringing him pleasure, back when he could get his body to cooperate.
‘It wasn’t, really,’ the man rushes to say. ‘Anyone would have— anyone with even a single decent bone in their body at least—’ a tiny pause, and then, ‘I’m glad Lan Zhan gave her to you. I wanted you to have her from the moment I lifted her out of the gutter, I just couldn’t think of a way to give her to you that wouldn’t seem manipulative.’
‘To me?’ He squawks, incredulous. ‘Why would you want me to have a dog? You used to hate it if I so much as looked at a dog.’
The man shrugs, a bitter twist coming over his face. ‘I did, didn’t I? I’d forgotten that— or at least justified it away in my mind. I suppose—’ the man sighs, ‘I felt bad whenever I saw you with a dog, or even just— as you said— looking at a dog. I was the reason you couldn’t have one, because of how I am about them, and I always wanted you to have whatever you wanted— just not—’ another awkward shrug.
‘So now we’re over you decided you’d, what, end things on a pleasanter note by giving me the dog your presence always prevented me having in the past?’ it comes out venomous, sharp and cutting, as sharp as the sting Sect Leader Wei’s words have left in their wake. He knows he’s the one that ended things, if he can even say there was something to end in the first place, but the petty part of him does not want the other man seeming so resigned to it.
No. That small, weak, part of him wants Sect Leader Wei to protest, to tell him he was wrong, that the other man really did love him, does love him, wants to be with him forever.
Wow. Every time he thinks he can’t hate himself more he gives himself an unpleasant surprise.
‘No!’ the man snaps, suddenly annoyed, no longer slumped against the tree but sitting up, almost glaring at him. ‘Not because we’re over, but because I should have just done my best to get over it and let you have a dog before now. You love dogs. You—’ the man makes a frustrated sound, rubbing a hand roughly through the tangle of his hair. ‘I just— I know I fucked everything up. I can see it now, see all my mistakes, all the stupid, cruel things I did to you— But—’ a tiny hesitation, then the man barrels on, ‘—But I love you. I always loved you, I was just too much of a— of a— I was a coward. I— I love you. A-Cheng, I just— I love you so much, and I want you to forgive me, because the things I did— I hurt you, I know I did, and I was— I was so insensitive— and— and I don’t know if I forced you into being with me, at the start, I don’t know if I somehow made you love me, and I don’t know if I’m safe— What if I hurt you? I know I’ve hurt you before, but what if I really hurt you? I saw what Zewu-jun did under the influence of the Stygian Tiger Seal— what if I do worse? I dreamt I did worse. I dreamt such terrible things— and— and—’ the man starts hyperventilating.
From somewhere very far away he feels like he should go over there and do something to help, but he can’t manage it, can’t manage anything, all the strength going out of his body until he almost feels like he’s going to swoon. ‘You don’t,’ slips out from between his numb feeling lips. ‘You don’t love me, you never loved me—’
‘I did!’ the other man wails. ‘I do—’
‘I can’t listen to this,’ is what slips out next, surprising himself. He had thought— Who knows what he had thought. How he had believed he would react if he ever heard such words from Sect Leader Wei, but the truth is they hurt, they hurt like the man is killing him, and he can’t untangle his thoughts, can’t get the urge to scream you’re lying out of his throat, can’t help the way his Golden Core lurches uneasily inside his abdomen, and all he wants to do is run away from it all.
He turns once more to go, making it barely a couple of steps, before Sect Leader Wei is scrabbling after him, not even bothering to stand and walk, instead crawling across the ground to fling himself at his feet in a deep, mortifying, bow, the man’s forehead pressed to the earth just in front of his toes. ‘I am so sorry for everything I did wrong A-Cheng,’ the man is saying, though it’s hard to hear over the rush of blood through his ears. This is wrong. Get up. Get up. Wei Wuxian should not be crawling on the ground for anyone. ‘I am so sorry I made you think I don’t love you. I’m so sorry I hurt you. I’m so sorry I touched you inappropriately when we were younger. I’m so sorry I kept flirting with Lan Zh— Wangji. I’m so sorry—’
‘Get up,’ he manages to grit out. The man does not. Just keeps apologizing. He feels like he’s going to die of embarrassment— ‘If you don’t get up I’m going to put Blossom on your back,’ he threatens, even though he would never put the puppy in such danger. Even if he did not intend to hurt her the other man very well may do so in his panicked flailing.
A tiny pause, then, ‘Blossom?’ the man’s face still pressed to the ground. ‘You called the puppy Blossom?’
‘So what if I did?’ he snaps defensively. ‘Blossom is a perfectly good name.’
The man slowly sits up, looking up at him with an expression of— of— Oh. ‘Of course Blossom is a good name,’ Sect Leader Wei says with unspeakable fondness. ‘It is a wonderful name. It is exactly the sort of name you should give a puppy— Oh, A-Cheng, I have missed you so much.’
For a moment he’s not sure if he’s going to burst into tears or hit the man or both, but eventually he manages to choke out, ‘If you insist on carrying on like this I don’t want to do it here, in the middle of the Cloud Recesses, where anyone could stumble upon us.’
Soft, dark eyes roam his face for a moment, before Sect leader Wei nods. ‘You are right. I was being inconsiderate of you, as usual. Where would you like to go? Would you allow me into your room?’
He shakes his head, ‘Meng Yao and Chifeng-zun are there now,’ and even if they were not he does not trust himself with the other in such a place. He already knows he’s weakening even further, he does not need to do so where there is a bed. ‘What of the bronze workshop?’
A grimace crosses the man’s face, ‘Zewu-jun is sleeping there. We both thought it would be better if he did not return to the Hanshi, where the— Where the abomination I made is being kept. I left Wen Ning to keep an eye on him in case he wakes up and tries anything else. I would suggest my own room, but it is small, crowded, and the walls are thin— Not the kind of place to go if you want privacy.’
‘I know a good privacy talisman,’ he offers, thinking of the ones he has seen Meng Yao draw— and even though he had just determined that going to a room with a bed with Sect Leader Wei was a bad idea. This whole encounter is a bad idea. He just knows it’s going to end— Well. Badly. But— But Sect Leader Wei said he loved him, loves him, and Sect Leader Wei apologized— and he is not a strong man, and even if he was, he would have to be the strongest man alive to not waver in the face of such words when he has wanted to hear them for so long.
The man hesitates for a moment, and he can see calculation in those familiar eyes, and he wonders what the other is thinking, before Sect Leader Wei blows out a short breath. ‘If I try to do something you don’t like promise me you’ll lash me with Zidian. Properly lash me, not like your mother did to try and appease that wretched Wang bitch. I don’t know I trust myself alone with you— I should protest, I should suggest we go somewhere else, somewhere I don’t have the upper hand— But I honestly can’t think of anywhere, and I don’t want to give up now, so, I suppose my room it will have to be— just promise me that if I do something you don’t like you won’t let me get away with it. I feel like I’ve gotten away with far too much already.’
‘I don’t understand,’ slips out, sounding young and unsure and like everything he does not want to be right now. He needs to be Sect Leader Jiang, strong and in command—
Sect Leader Wei opens his mouth, then closes it again with a click of teeth. ‘Not here, you were right— The whole Cultivation World does not need to know the details of our private lives.’ With an exhausted sigh the man shifts back on his haunches, getting his legs underneath him, and then stands. For a moment dark eyes are once more roaming his face, but then Blossom squirms and her movement must catch the other’s attention, because he flinches, blanching again, before giving him a wavering smile and gesturing in the direction he knows the man’s guest house to be in, ‘This way if you please.’