Chapter Text
Jiang Cheng was glad that Wei Wuxian was safe. Glad that he was back. Glad that they could all be together at Lotus Pier.
That is what he had said to his sister, or what she had said to him, or some combination of those.
Jiang Cheng had never felt glad in his life. It was too nebulously, superficially rosy to be within his emotional repertoire. He did feel—something—about the whole thing. Several somethings. The sort of somethings that smoldered inside his chest, that made him clench his teeth across a scream. He wanted to cling to someone about it. He wanted to make someone bleed about it. Someone being, probably his brother. His brother. Was he his brother.
Not far off, Wei Wuxian had moved a few paces out of the throng of Wens at last. He was turning a slow circle, gaze lifted, taking in the courtyard.
“A-Cheng,” Jiang Yanli said at his shoulder. Her voice was so gentle; she was eternally gentle with him. Jiang Cheng hadn’t realized until Jin Ling came along that the voice she always used with him and his brother, maybe, was her mothering voice. It had only gotten worse, these last few years.
“A-Cheng,” she said, “go and say hello.”
A-Cheng had heard these same words, from her mouth, directed at her toddler, then her grieving child, then her artless teenager. And at him. More times than he would like to dignify with a count.
He went and said hello, before she could say it again. He placed himself, girded and wincing, into the arc of his brother’s attention, which fixed immediately, nervously, back on him.
“Jiang Cheng!” Wei Wuxian said, with more volume and enthusiasm than the circumstance could quite accommodate.
“We are glad to have you back at Lotus Pier.” Jiang Cheng could hear how stilted it sounded as he spoke. “I trust you have made yourself comfortable.” That, accusatory. He didn’t mean to be accusatory, not really. He flinched.
“Ah—” Wei Wuxian surged a little toward him, then seemed to contain himself, one hand hovering in the small space between them. Jiang Cheng wished he would put it somewhere. Anywhere, fixed.
Wei Wuxian slapped his own leg. “You know me,” he said, still with that slightly breathy bravado. “I’ll make myself comfortable any old place.”
Was he thinking, too, about the Burial Mounds now? His slight grimace mirrored the one Jiang Cheng could feel on his own face.
“But what a place!” Wei Wuxian said, again too loudly, with a wide sweep of one arm behind him. “You’ve really done well here. It looks—” his face fell a little, and then he caught it. “As grand as it ever did. Grander.” His voice had softened. He sounded like Jiang Cheng’s sister. “A-Cheng,” he began.
Jiang Cheng trembled.
“Sect Leader Jiang,” Wei Wuxian amended. It was half a tease, but his voice was still sincere. “I really can’t thank you enough. For all you have done here. Welcoming the Wens—” he shook his head a little. “I couldn’t have asked for a better place for them.”
There was something about being thanked for this that hurt. Hurt because of the distance, perhaps. Perhaps the implication: the Wens fate, tied to Wei Wuxian’s; Jiang Cheng a neutral arbiter, a charitable stranger.
“I have my own debt to them,” Jiang Cheng managed. His voice was taut.
Wei Wuxian shifted, his eyes cutting away from Jiang Cheng’s. He was looking suddenly uncomfortable, in a different way than he had a moment before, looking as if he might make a dash back for the crowd. “Well,” he said.
The moment stretched long and brittle between them.
“The food will be ready soon,” Jiang Cheng said at last.
Wei Wuxian seemed to come alive, relief washing over his face. “Ah! It’s all I’ve been thinking about. The whole way here, I swear it.” And here he really did lean over and cuff Jiang Cheng on the shoulder. “Years away from anything more interesting than radishes, and where do I end up but Cloud Recesses. Imagine it. I haven’t seen food that wasn’t brown or green in a month.”
There was a fragile warmth blooming inside Jiang Cheng’s chest. He could not think how to let it out. “I should check on the preparations.”
“Tell them as fast as they can.” Wei Wuxian’s throat bobbed in a swallow; Jiang Cheng waited. “Their old first disciple is withering from so long away from it.”
So things were alright. Not—comfortable, but alright. Jiang Cheng still felt that striking awareness of his brother whenever he was nearby, a buzzing, nervous attention to his movements.
Wei Wuxian was different than he had been, some of the boyish bravado stripped off of him over the years. But the thing that unsettled Jiang Cheng most was the change in his physicality. Wei Wuxian had clearly not recovered from his latest ordeal, or perhaps the one before it. Besides the too-sharp cheekbones and the bruised look of the skin around his eyes, he moved almost carefully, his shoulders hunched slightly, his endless swagger muted. Someone had found him a set of thick purple and black robes to replace the white and blue he had arrived in; he looked to be drowning in them. And it seemed there was always someone hovering around him—the worst offenders were Jiang Cheng’s sister and the Wen-Lan cultivator boy, who fretted and doted constantly, but Wen Ning and the other Wens—even, distressingly, Wen Qing—found opportunities to partake.
It had always been difficult for Jiang Cheng to stand alongside the beam of attention fixed on his brother, and he could not fully disentangle this from the way he felt now, having him back. But it was one thing to live under the constant eclipse of Wei Wuxian’s charisma and natural skill, another to feel strange and resentful beside this feebler version of him. Jiang Cheng could not make it out.
And then Lan Wangji arrived.
If Jiang Cheng had thought Wei Wuxian was being coddled before, it was nothing compared to the way Lan Wangji treated him. He seemed permanently plastered to Wei Wuxian’s side, ready before he lifted a finger with a cup of wine, a plate of food, a hand to help him up. Jiang Cheng could not make out which was worse: Lan Wangji’s arm, readily catching him, steadying him, circling Wei Wuxian’s waist; or Wei Wuxian, leaning into it.
There was something else. Even at their best moments, it would have been a stretch to call Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng friends. But they had been allies any number of times, and, in Jiang Cheng’s estimation, never more than now. Now, with Wei Wuxian exonerated and safely returned to them all. Now: as he, Sect Leader of the Yunmeng Jiang, welcomed Lan Clan’s esteemed Hanguang Jun as a guest to Lotus Pier, as the attaché of his recently-redeemed shixiong. If anything, Lan Wangji might find himself duty-bound to show a little humble courtesy, or at least a smidge of gratitude. Instead, he was chillier toward Jiang Cheng than he’d been even as a pretentious, pent-up teenager. And it was toward Jiang Cheng specifically. Jiang Cheng had been taking note. With Wei Wuxian and Lan Sizhui Lan Wangji was unrecognizably familiar; with the Wens he was deferential, with Jiang Yanli he was unaccountably, infuriatingly warm. Jiang Cheng he could apparently not lower himself to even acknowledge in most interactions.
The two of them had their greeting the day after Lan Wangji’s late-night arrival. Jiang Cheng had made a point of being out where Lan Wangji might happen by him, and when he had, had welcomed him courteously to Lotus Pier. To which Lan Wangji had only stared for a while, and finally, with a stiff nod, accepted his hospitality and turned to go.
It made Jiang Cheng’s hackles raise, made him defensive without understanding exactly what he was defending against. It was confounding, for just a moment, then it was galling. They all thought he was so noble, the Lan Clan’s little twin jade. Even after everything with the Jin sect, even after all his conspiring with Wei Wuxian, persona non grata of the cultivation world. Or perhaps now, with Wei Wuxian’s reputation relatively restored, that had become a point in his favor.
At any rate, Jiang Cheng had been prepared to set aside the past, to shelve his own resentments, as far as possible. But he had expected at least basic decency in return. Not this level of cold-shouldering.
It had gotten worse and worse. A week after Lan Wangji’s arrival, Jiang Cheng had stopped acknowledging his presence in turn. He’d nearly stopped speaking with Wei Wuxian as a natural consequence. Wei Wuxian, who at first had seemed to be trying to bridge the distance between them, in an awkward, wincing way, had mostly acquiesced. Acquiescence, in this case, being to allow Lan Wangji to lead him away from most of their encounters with, at most, a rueful smile aimed over one shoulder in Jiang Cheng’s direction.
Jiang Cheng seethed in silence.
It had always been this way, hadn’t it. Since the moment his brother had laid eyes on Lan Wangji, since the moment he’d decided on a more interesting rival than Jiang Cheng, and then, betrayal of all betrayals, gone tender on him. It was hard to blame either of them completely. Jiang Cheng had no choice but to be angry at them both.
There were some things that hurt worse, hurt too much to try to remember to completion. There was a period of their lives that consisted, in Jiang Cheng’s untried memory, of Wei Wuxian chasing after his newest infatuation as the cultivation world burned to the ground. As Lotus Pier burned to the ground. Wei Wuxian, first disciple of the Yunmeng Jiang, wielding bravado and charisma in unequal measure to protect Lan Wangji against the violent might of the Wen clan. Wei Wuxian, betting the fate of Jiang Cheng’s family against Wen Ruohan’s bluff. On behalf of someone they barely knew, on behalf of a boy that had done nothing more commendable than match Wei Wuxian in a duel, and then have him punished about it.
This boy, this man, who now, after everything that had happened, slept under Jiang Cheng’s roof and apparently could not bring himself to speak a word of friendship or thanks to him. Oh, but it rankled.
It all came to a head late one night, when Jiang Cheng, on his way back to his rooms, heard voices coming from the Jiang ancestral shrine as he passed.
“You have to understand,” Wei Wuxian was saying, “how difficult it was for him, back then. His mother…”
The audacity of it, to hear Wei Wuxian justifying his own demeanor to the blunt, tactless Lan Wangji. Jiang Cheng burned, with a mixture of betrayal and embarrassment and hot, righteous fury.
Lan Wangji murmured something too low to make out. Jiang Cheng edged closer, peering through the slats. The two of them were kneeling together before the altar, freshly lit incense burning in the holder. Lan Wangji was half turned toward Wei Wuxian, bracing him with a hand under his elbow and one at his wrist as if he might need the support. Jiang Cheng gritted his teeth.
Wei Wuxian turned to face Lan Wangji. His expression in profile was conciliatory. There was that indulgent half-smile, the tenderness that Jiang Cheng rarely saw directed at anyone but his sister.
“Alright, Lan Zhan,” he said softly. “Time for bed, hm?”
Jiang Cheng knew he ought to go. Pass on by, leave it alone. Instead he surged forward as they stood. Wei Wuxian turned quickly to see him, startled off balance, and Lan Wangji’s hand shifted to circle his shoulders. It made Jiang Cheng want to cut it off. His hand moved instinctively to grip Sandu’s hilt.
Wei Wuxian caught the gesture. “Jiang Cheng,” he started, voice already appeasing, “We were just leaving.”
Jiang Cheng turned his glare on Lan Wangji, who was staring studiously at a point beyond Jiang Cheng’s left shoulder.
“You have some nerve,” he bit out. “Bringing him here.”
“We came to pay our respects.” There was still that soothing tone to his voice. “To Sect Leader Jiang and Madame Yu. Hanguang Jun is their guest as well.”
Jiang Cheng snorted. “Their guest! Is this what you call a guest, now? This host hasn’t noticed any particular courtesy.”
Wei Wuxian’s face darkened, but Lan Wangji still had not shifted his gaze or spoken.
“Your Hanguang Jun—” Jiang Cheng could feel the sneer on his face as he spoke— “is intimate enough to kneel before the shrine of my dead parents, but too ill-bred to—”
“Jiang Wanyin!”
“Oh yes, leap to defend him, won’t you? Have you already forgotten it was your running off to defend Lan Wangji that lead to the ruin of my sect? To the deaths of my mother and father that you came here to pay your respects to?”
Wei Wuxian lunged toward Jiang Cheng as if he might strike him, then seemed to catch himself just short. He stood frozen there a moment, breathing hard, then stumbled back a few steps, doubling over as he went. Lan Wangji surged forward to catch him, pinning him upright with an arm around his waist.
“Are you alright?” Lan Wangji demanded, low-voiced. Jiang Cheng let out a sour huff. So Hanguang Jun could speak, after all.
Wei Wuxian waved a hand dismissively, still panting from some unrealized effort.
“Wei Ying.”
“I’m alright,” Wei Wuxian said breathlessly. “I’m fine. Lan Zhan, let’s go.”
At last, Lan Wangji raised his cool stare to Jiang Cheng. There was something almost murderous there. Jiang Cheng hated him. Hated them both. Hated, most of all, how diminished his brother had somehow allowed himself to become.
“When did you get so weak?” The accusation had ripped out of him, and as he spoke, he saw his own right hand strike instinctively out toward them. Saw his mother’s Zidian, unfurling toward Wei Wuxian.
Jiang Cheng hadn’t consciously reached out for Zidian—certainly he hadn’t had any intention of actually hitting either of them. The blow, had it landed, would more likely have struck only the pier in front of their feet. It did not have that chance. It was parried, in an icy flash of light. In the next moment, Jiang Cheng’s wrist was locked in an iron grip, then, in one movement, twisted and forced sharply down. He dropped to his knees with a grunt, chin knocking against the cold steel of Bichen’s blade.
“Apologize.” Lan Wangji’s voice was a growl.
Despite himself, Jiang Cheng found himself laughing, half-manic, no more or less lost than he had felt on his feet seconds before. The blade pressed closer, its knife-edge biting at the soft skin of Jiang Cheng’s throat.
“Apologize to him!”
“Lan Zhan! Stop!”
Jiang Cheng should be focusing on keeping still, or he would do himself in on Lan Wangji’s sword with barely any assistance. But he couldn’t stop the laughter bubbling up hysterically in his chest. There was something about Lan Wangji, eyes wild, practically snarling at him, so close he could feel the hot current of his breath. “My god,” Jiang Cheng bit out, between gasps, “you’re as mad as he is, aren’t you?”
“I said apologize!”
And then his brother’s voice again, desperate, closer this time, “Lan Zhan, stop, please—”
Jiang Cheng’s still-torqued wrist jarred as Wei Wuxian tugged at Lan Wangji’s arm, and then suddenly he was freed, scrambling away from them, splinters digging into the heels of his palms where they scraped against the wooden slats of the pier.
“It’s not his fault,” Wei Wuxian was saying, like a mantra; his hands were wrapped around Lan Wangji’s shoulders, pinning him back against his own body. Lan Wangji looked more disarrayed than Jiang Cheng had seen him, Bichen still half-extended, its scabbard deserted several paces behind them.
Jiang Cheng let his eyes fall closed for a moment.
“It’s not his fault,” Wei Wuxian was saying, and, also, “he didn’t know. It’s not his fault; it wasn’t his choice.”
“A-Cheng!” Running footsteps not far off, rattling the pier as they approached. “A-Xian! What’s going on?”
Jiang Cheng only vaguely registered the gratification at being named first, at the brush of his sister’s hands on his upper arms as she fell to her knees beside him, beside him, first. There was a slick dread building in his stomach.
“What didn’t I know,” he demanded, and then, when Wei Wuxian didn’t look up at him, “What wasn’t my choice?”
“A-Xian, what on earth? What’s going on?” His sister, again. She was behind Jiang Cheng, holding him half upright, in a posture that must have mirrored that of his brother and Lan Wangji, just a few paces away.
Wei Wuxian seemed to see them at last. His gaze drew up to Jiang Yanli’s and then cut away, and he gave a little shake of his head, as if to dismiss the entire scene.
Jiang Cheng’s heart was thundering in his chest. “What don’t I know?”
“Enough.”
Jiang Cheng turned too quickly at the voice; his neck cricked painfully. Wen Qing, who must have arrived with his sister, was standing a few feet off. Her hands were folded before her in a gesture that looked calm and collected, until he registered how tight her grip was, white spots spreading from her fingertips where they pressed into the back of her hand.
“Wei Wuxian,” Wen Qing said, like a command.
When Jiang Cheng turned his gaze back to Wei Wuxian he was shaking his head again, this time with an edge of desperation. “Please,” he murmured, faintly enough that Jiang Cheng would have missed it if he weren’t looking at him. Between them, Lan Wangji sagged a little, his shoulders falling slightly, eyes slipping closed.
“It shouldn’t be me that tells him.”
“Tells me what?”
Then, from behind him, “A-Xian,” that voice his sister had, the one that made them small and naughty and loved again, all at once. It worked on his brother, too.
The anxious bluster in Wei Wuxian’s expression evaporated, his head lowering, a child schooled. He loosed his grasp on Lan Wangji’s arms to step around him, then in front of him, half-protective. “A-Cheng,” he said softly.
The name was so foreign from those lips. Jiang Cheng’s breath came in audibly.
“I’m sorry. There was no painless choice.”
Wei Wuxian’s eyes lifted somewhere over Jiang Cheng’s shoulder, then dropped back to the pier between them. He gave a little nod, something like compliance. Something like resolve.
“When your core was extinguished,” he began, taking another step toward Jiang Cheng, “we combed through every text we could find for some way to bring it back. We found nothing.”
Jiang Cheng felt a twinge of something close to annoyance. Would he never outlive this, the debt he owed him? “So we sought out Baoshan Sanren,” he filled in.
Wei Wuxian shook his head. “It was a trick.”
The dark memory bubbled back up. Jiang Cheng had spoken his own name—or nearly—she had discovered them. Of course. It had been unforgivably rash, trying to deceive someone that old, that powerful. “What did she do to you?”
But Wei Wuxian was still shaking his head. “No. I’m sorry. A-Cheng—” again— “it was a trick. She was never there.”
The world seemed to be tilting slightly around Jiang Cheng. “What do you mean?” he demanded.
“It was Wen Qing waiting for you on that hillside. She and Wen Ning had come around to meet us. And I—I followed you there. It was the only course left to us.” His gaze flicked, again, toward Wen Qing. “I saw only one course,” he amended. “If I had been honest with you about our intentions...I could not be sure you would agree.”
“Agree to what?”
Wei Wuxian’s eyes squeezed briefly shut, as if in response to pain. When he opened them again, his expression was strained. “To accepting the transfer. Of my core into your body.”
This time, the world spun distinctively. “No,” Jiang Cheng gasped. “No. That’s impossible.”
Wei Wuxian had gone wry. “Under other circumstances, it might have been. Wen Qing is an exceedingly accomplished physician.”
“No.” He broke free of his sister’s grasp, stumbling to his feet. “You’re lying.” A manic laugh burst out of him. “Again! All you do is lie!”
Wei Wuxian’s face pinched. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Not this time.”
Jiang Cheng’s hand had lifted to rest at his lower abdomen, fingers pressing against the steady force beneath the skin there. Now his nails curled in, clawing at it. He stood panting for a moment, a mix of guilt, fury, and a curious terror warring within him.
“Then you were right. I never would have accepted it,” he spat. “You’ve wanted to upstage me our whole lives, haven’t you? I could never compete with this kind of insane stunt, could I?”
Wei Wuxian’s hand darted out all at once to catch Lan Wangji, who had made a lunging start out from behind him, by the wrist. His expression was infuriatingly still and stoic, as if he had arrived to bear this punishment. There was something so smug about it. Jiang Cheng hated him, hated the world, hated himself, hated in a way that burned inside.
“You can take it back!” he gritted out. “I don’t want it.”
At this, Wei Wuxian’s expression shifted. “No,” he said, with a quick finality.
“Why not?” Jiang Cheng whirled around to include Wen Qing in his gaze. “You’ve done it before.” He sneered. “Shall we blindfold him and lead him like a stupid dog into the countryside first?”
Wen Qing didn’t flinch. “It is half a miracle it worked once. I will not risk it a second time just to take part in your battle of egos.” Her face darkened. “My brother was right. The two of you have warped this thing between you into something so ugly, and for what? It’s sheer fortune that you can both stand here alive. You should be on your knees with gratitude.” She glanced down at the pier before her, as if she might spit on it. “I’m glad the truth is out. My part in this is done.” And she turned on her heel and strode away.
In the silence left behind by Wen Qing’s exit, Jiang Cheng noticed his sister again, still on her knees on the pier. Her eyes were shining, her face a moe of shock. It crumbled something within him. He turned back to Wei Wuxian. “Why?” He was instantly ashamed at how plaintive his voice sounded, how pitiful. “How could you?”
“A-Cheng,” Wei Wuxian said again, all sorrow.
It was too much. He was going to break down, right there on the pier. Instead he turned and ran.
For a while there were only Jiang Cheng’s own foot falls, thundering beneath him, the breath tearing through his throat, his heart at his ear drums. When he collapsed in the meadow beyond the trees he felt a hundred versions of himself colliding there; a small, distraught child, a brittle, competitive youth, a shattered man. Waiting, sure no one would come, sure he didn’t want them anyway.
This time, he didn’t have to wait long. It was Jiang Yanli who found him. Her eyes were still reddened, but her expression was schooled.
“A-Cheng.”
“He couldn’t even face me himself, huh?”
She knelt beside him, unfazed by the outburst. “I told A-Xian he should give you time to come to him.”
“Huh!”
She reached across the small space to him, resting a hand on one of his folded knees. Jiang Cheng almost pulled away. Instead, he noticed the weary cast of her gaze, the sudden age he could see at the corners of her eyes. Instead, he didn’t. The thing inside him doubled over, a new kind of pain.
“I can’t do anything right on my own, can I? Not without him horning in to play hero.”
“You’re his little brother,” Jiang Yanli said quietly. “Of course he’s going to horn in.”
Another huff of wild laughter escaped Jiang Cheng, and then he was overtaken, rocking forward, his breath coming in great, wet, gasps.
“A-Cheng.” Her hands were on his shoulders, now, half an embrace. “You have nothing to prove to us. Do you understand me?” She released her breath in a soft sigh. “And what you’re trying to prove to yourself…I think—” she hesitated. “I think you’ll run yourself into the ground before you do. And that will break my heart.”
Almost unthinkingly, he reached out, one hand wrapping around her bicep so tightly it must have hurt. She only shifted closer, tugging him back against her chest, and he curled into her, feeling ungainly and far too large, wishing he could fold smaller, wishing he could fold into nothing.
“I know why it all torments you like this,” Jiang Yanli said. “I grew up in the same household, you know. But A-Cheng.” Her voice was plaintive. “If we can’t set our own selves free from it, who will?”
For a while he let himself cling to her and cry, and for a while she did the same, swaying rhythmically as she held him, a tree in the wind. At last he released his grip on her, straightening a little, though he didn’t move away, and she left her arms draped around him.
“I don’t think I can stop—resenting him for it,” he muttered. “I still don’t understand.”
But at once a memory came over him, the image of his brother, head covered and lowered, a rank of men turning toward him. The sudden, glaring certainty as he called out, and turned to run, drawing their attention and their suspicion away.
“Then perhaps you should ask him yourself,” Jiang Yanli murmured.
Jiang Cheng cleared his throat, still not meeting her gaze. “I’ve said horrible things.”
“So you apologize.”
“It’s not that easy.”
She drew away a little, her arms opening around him. “No, it isn’t. But it is, fortunately, quite simple.”
For two days, Jiang Cheng avoided it. Avoided everything, with relative success: the sun and his guests and his advisors and, critically, his brother, although not Jiang Yanli, who had visited twice. She hadn’t made any mention of Wei Wuxian or what had transpired that night on the pier, but the last time, she’d made a point of informing him that she would be going for a walk with the second young master Lan in the early evening, and he shouldn’t expect to see her before dinner.
Jiang Cheng didn’t feel entirely ready for the conversation he knew he was meant to be submitting himself to, but he couldn’t hide in his rooms forever. Late that afternoon, he emerged, ostensibly to check on the disciples’ daily training. When he saw the backs of his sister and Lan Wangji, retreating into the distance behind the back gates, he passed out a few perfunctory critiques and excused himself.
Wei Wuxian didn’t come to the door at once. Jiang Cheng pondered knocking again, then took one step away from the threshold, turning a little. Maybe he had gone out. He couldn’t decide if this would be a relief or a disappointment.
Then the door slid back, to reveal his brother, looking whittled down without his outer robes, expression carefully pleasant.
“Jiang Cheng!” he greeted, with a little more enthusiasm than the moment called for. “Come in. Would you like tea? Shijie brought some by when she came to fetch Lan Zhan away.” And then, apparently realizing for the first time the implication of what he’d said: “Oh.”
Jiang Cheng peered past him to the table, which was indeed set for two. He might have been irritated, to be so clearly at the whim of his sister’s manipulations, but he felt suddenly fond. “At least we can trust her taste in tea.”
Wei Wuxian chuckled, more naturally than he had in Jiang Cheng’s presence in years. “There is that,” he agreed, and swept a hand out to welcome him in.
Jiang Cheng eased past him and made his way toward the setting, but he was feeling suddenly apprehensive again. The conversation before them was not exactly his idea of teatime niceties. Pausing before the table, he swung around to face Wei Wuxian again.
“I’ve been—doing a lot of thinking.”
Wei Wuxian lifted his head a little, sniffing at the air. “So that’s what I smelled.”
Before he knew quite what he was doing, Jiang Cheng feinted toward him, one elbow thrusting out in the threat of a blow. “You shut up.”
It was Wei Wuxian’s responding dodge, that easy, familiar move away from him, that reminded Jiang Cheng why he was there.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted out, then winced.
The lightness on Wei Wuxian’s face faded a little. “Me too.”
Jiang Cheng snorted.
“No, truly,” Wei Wuxian insisted. “I’m sorry. For plenty of things. I’ve been doing some thinking myself.” He stopped; Jiang Cheng only waited, not trusting himself to speak.
“I am, in many ways, the more pitiable of us two—” he had dipped into that familiar, faux self-conscious way he had, all but batting his eyelashes— “but between us…” he trailed off. “You shouldn’t be forced to blame yourself for something I never told you.”
“So why didn’t you ever tell me?” Jiang Cheng burst out, although the answer seemed suddenly glaringly clear.
For a moment Wei Wuxian only stared at him. To Jiang Cheng’s alarm, his eyes had begun to glitter in the soft light through the screens. “Because you would have blamed yourself,” he said at last.
“I do blame myself!”
“For what?”
“You want me to list it all out?” he could hear the edge creeping into his voice, hating it as it came, powerless to pull himself back. “Should I prostrate myself before you? Here are the wrongs I have done to Wei Wuxian—”
“No!”
The word landed like a slap. Jiang Cheng settled back a little, breathing hard.
“No,” Wei Wuxian repeated, seeming to restrain himself. “I want you to see it as I do. A choice I made.”
“Without taking my choices into account!”
“Exactly.”
Jiang Cheng’s breath hitched audibly, and to his horror, Wei Wuxian stepped closer to him, something terribly tender in his expression.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, voice very soft.
“Why—” the question died in his throat. Jiang Cheng tried again, forcing it out. “Why did you do it?”
Wei Wuxian only stared at him for a long moment. “When we brought you back, after—well. I had made a promise to your father, to your mother. To take care of both of you. What Wen Zhuliu did…” He stopped, swallowing. “I didn’t trust that you would survive it. I thought that I could.”
Again, Jiang Cheng found himself sunk into that memory. The Wen guards, turning as one toward him. He had assumed then that it was his only own life he was betting with. He should have known better.
“Let’s say I’ve had my arrogance checked for me.” Wei Wuxian added, voice stripped.
For a moment, they stood facing each other in silence.
“You still could have told me.” It came out petulant.
This time, Wei Wuxian’s words were certain. “You are too inclined to doubt yourself. We needed you at your strongest. I needed you at your strongest.” He lowered his gaze for a long moment. When he raised it again, his eyes were shining. He took another slow step toward Jiang Cheng, so close that he could have reached out and touched him. And then he did, lifting one hand to cup Jiang Cheng’s chin. “I know—” he started— “I know I broke my vow. To stay beside you, to rebuild with you.”
There was an terrible ache in Jiang Cheng’s chest, threatening to burst out of him.
“This way, well. A part of me was with you all along. Maybe it was the best I could give.”
Jiang Cheng’s breath hitched. He squeezed his eyes shut, torn between battling urges to lean into and pull away from the light touch of Wei Wuxian’s hand. “I would never have asked for this,” he muttered at last, eyes still closed tightly.
Wei Wuxian’s thumb grazed his cheekbone, half a caress, and then fell away, along with the warmth of his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I know.”
Jiang Cheng opened his eyes. For a few seconds they stood there in stasis. No more to dredge, or perhaps only no willingness to.
“Where do we go, then,” Jiang Cheng’s voice felt raspy, “from here?”
“Let’s not dwell in it anymore, can we? There’s no changing the past. And I have no desire to return to it.” Wei Wuxian’s lips quirked up in a half-pained, half-hopeful smile. “I would like to be your brother again.”
Jiang Cheng was all raw, all hollowed out. He seized on it, before he could think his way out of it, taking Wei Wuxian roughly by the shoulders and reeling him into his arms. Wei Wuxian’s breath came out of him in a startled huff. And then he embraced him back, clinging to him in a way that Jiang Cheng almost could not recall ever happening. After a moment, he loosed his grasp, and Jiang Cheng pulled away a little.
“I missed you,” he said, thumping Wei Wuxian as lightly as he could bring himself to in the chest. “Asshole.”
Wei Wuxian gave a little hiss, grabbing at his chest, and then met Jiang Cheng’s eyes and straightened back up, laughing. “Kidding! I’m kidding. You should see the look on your face.”
“Asshole!” Jiang Cheng repeated, not a little relieved.
“You missed me!”
“I’m not going to say it again.”
“I missed you too.”
“Asshole!”
Wei Wuxian thumped him back. “I missed you too, asshole,” he said, as if taking the correction. “Now come on. Tea’s going cold.”