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oOo
Bravery and courage, thinks Wangji, are very different things.
Wei Ying has never been brave: He’s never been blind to danger, he’s never been fearless. He’s too clever, too lucid for that kind of ignorance. His mind is too logical, and he’s never been in the business of lying to himself (He’s tried lying to Wangji, without success because Wei Ying might fool anyone but Wangji who knows him best; his ineptitude in deceiving Wangji is one of the many reasons why Wangji loves him more than anything).
Wei Ying is courageous: He knows exactly what he’s doing, what the odds are, what he’s confronting, and does it anyway. Because this is what his conscience tells him, this thing that knows neither mercy nor excuses. His kind heart and iron soul, his clear mind and his unending willingness to carry other people’s burdens make him the epitome of a tragic hero.
Wei Ying doesn’t know how to protect himself from himself.
Sometimes, Wangji looks at him and catches him unawares, and he reads Wei Ying’s gaze before it can shutter. He sees fear. The knowledge of mortality. The understanding that Wei Ying no longer can strive for ascension because his core, this blazing furnace, now spins in someone else’s shell.
Wangji finds this heartwrenching. It makes him feel helpless and desperate; it stirs him to tears. Because he knows, as well as Wei Ying does, that there’s nothing, nothing at all to undo the past: What’s done is done. Immutable, cast in stone.
The only thing he can shape is the present.
He does it by showing Wei Ying he loves him. Every gesture, every breath, every heartbeat. “I love you,” he spells out because he’s also learned that silence can be deadly, and regret is a wound that will never heal. “I love you, Wei Ying, I love you.”
And lets relief wash through him as the flicker of fear vanishes, extinguished by love as if it had never been.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, “my love. I’m so lucky.”
When he’s been anything but. Wangji versus fate. For the man he loves, he will defeat hell and heaven. “I love you. Wei Ying.”
Because this, he’s learned, works like a charm. Something to remind Wei Ying of living. Something to drive away the fear, dispel the worry, and suffuse him with fresh strength.
“I love you.” For this is everything Wangji ever needed to tell him.
“I love you.” For this is what Wei Ying needs, and wants, and thrives on more than anything.
Wangji is rewarded with a smile that’s more than ten thousand words, and it makes his heart soar.
Immortality, he thinks, is nothing against this.
oOo
END