Work Text:
in the distance, you hear the cry of a crow.
your fingers lay upon the broken strings of your guqin, the trickle of red seeping through the wood base of the instrument. it has seen too much blood these past months. (you have seen too much blood these past months).
around you, the temporary base of the yunmengjiang clan is burning and jiang cheng stands at your back, an unlikely ally in the hell and mess of this unjust world and with a pang, you wonder if things might’ve been different, if his brother was also here.
you think of wangji, of the softness of his smile, barely noticeable but so warm and sweet nonetheless and you don’t think you have ever hated anyone like you hate wen chao in this moment, for robbing you of him.
an ugly laugh interrupts your thoughts and as wen chao emerges from behind his henchmen, you think to yourself disgustedly that of course the despicable coward would wait until the fighting is almost over to appear.
he sneers at the two of you and you can not help but snarl back. (uncle always did tell you off for being too brash, too emotional - you never expected him to back you on your bid for the clans to come together against the wens. your voice has always been too loud for the clan but the lan has never stood for injustice and when yunmeng burned and wangji disappeared you knew that inaction would be the greatest injustice). then there is a flurry of black feathers and around you the flames flicker a bright unnatural green. an eerie, lilting melody sounds across the battlefield.
you barely know what is happening but before you know it, the wen forces are being pushed back with an undead army and wangji is here, wangji is here.
but something is different about this wangji, there is something cold and cruel (and dead) in his gaze and it sends a shiver up your spine. it isn’t hard to guess what has happened in his disappearance and you ache for him, for his pain and suffering but you know that without a doubt, he can’t continue like this, that it would swallow him up and destroy him and a desperate fear sparks within you.
when the fighting is done, he stands staring off into the distance and you move towards him, grabbing his arm. “come back to gusu with me,” you say.
wangji stares at you incredulously before his features slide into blankness, his face void of emotion, of anything, and you never realised how much his little expressions meant to you (the small lift of his smile, the poorly hidden sparkle in his eyes, the soft flush of pink across his cheeks) until you lost them.
“...why?” he says and it’s that same empty voice, and something bitter crawls up your throat at the sound.
“because, you aren’t- it’s not right!” you hear yourself blurting out and immediately you know they are the wrong words to have said, jiang cheng flushing red with anger from where he’s standing beside wangji.
wangji face just becomes more blank, his eyes growing even colder and you hate yourself a little for making him look that way at you but somehow, no matter what, you want to, have to make him understand.
“who are you to say what is right and what is wrong? who decides that? you?” he says sharply, eyes shuttered as he wrenches his arm out of your grasp.
jiang cheng steps up to shield him from you (and you think no, you don’t need to protect him from me, I’d never hurt him, not him) and bows, formal. “second master lan,” he says, polite but unyielding, “no matter your intentions, wangji is a member of the yunmengjiang clan still. it will not be up to you to deal with him.”
from behind him, you see wangji soften, the hollowness sliding away a little and you sigh knowing that you have already lost. you only can hope that the two of them know what they are doing, what kind of things they are playing with.
you turn around and walk away, feeling as though there was something unspeakably precious, that was lost today.