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Wei Ying missed his sister. That was the truth, plain and clear. Some days he missed her so bad that it was hard to breathe, so bad that he would rather let himself suffocate in isolation and guilt and grief. Grief, mostly, if he was honest with himself, which was something he was trying to be.
He’d developed a penchant for wallowing in his own mourning, which was a bad habit left over from his days of solitude in Yiling, but Wei Ying hadn’t realized that yet. (Of course he hadn’t realized that. He barely remembered those days in any conceivable manner, memories blotted out like the sun behind clouds.)
“I know it’s my fault,” Wei Ying tried to explain to Lan Zhan once. “I do it on purpose— the thinking. It’s never productive or useful, it’s just… destructive.” He knew he was self-aware. His husband had argued before, Not enough.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said, shaking his head gently, “thoughts do not need to be labelled like that. You are not to be blamed for having them.”
“But I’m the one who— well, no, ah, what I mean is— I’m the one who… who thinks them.”
“It is unhealthy to police your own mind.”
“I’m not policing anyone’s mind!”
Lan Zhan’s hand massaged Wei Ying’s shoulder where it lay.
“I don’t know how to explain it. Sometimes I sit down and I think about these things on purpose, I force myself to think… bad things, and I... I choose that. I choose to do it. I know I should stop. But I don’t know how.”
Lan Zhan was silent. After a moment, he said, “It seems that stopping these thoughts does not need to be the aim, then.” Fingers traced firm patterns into Wei Ying’s shoulder-blade.
“If… if that’s not the…” Wei Ying let out a breath. “Then what am I supposed to do?”
“What are the ‘bad’ thoughts?” responded Lan Zhan. “What are they about?”
His question turned over in Wei Ying’s mind.
“Take your time.”
Wei Ying did. “…I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Can’t say it,” he insisted.
“You can.”
“I don’t know how to.”
“You can.” And before Wei Ying could argue— “But it is alright if you find it difficult.”
“I… I want to, Lan Zhan.”
“I know.” He held him close, a hand carding through Wei Ying’s hair.
“I really do, I just don’t… I don’t know how.”
“I know,” repeated Lan Zhan. And that was enough.
Every time Wei Ying felt he had figured out how to verbalize his thoughts, he would open his mouth and the words would dissipate in the space between his lips and the air. He felt like he was being brought back to life again, mind blank and contorted, lips refusing to form around words he didn’t remember how to say.
Later, when Lan Zhan was asleep, or busy, or really anywhere away from Wei Ying, the words finally came to him. I think about my family, he would say. I think about how alone I made them feel. I could have stopped that. That was in my control.
He imagined Lan Zhan answering, Wei Ying, you were not fully in control.
Fuck, Lan Zhan, but that was my fault too, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?
You did what you had to do to survive.
You’re not answering my question.
It is not a question worth answering.
No, Wei Ying thought. Lan Zhan would never say that to him. The word ‘worth’… it would put them both off.
You’re not answering my question.
I know, Lan Zhan would say. I know.
◈
When Wei Ying was younger and had not experienced death before, he would have these same conversations in his head with his sister as they sat under a colourful late afternoon sky; things he could never bring himself to say to her out loud.
Shijie, is Jiang Cheng mad at me?
No, he would imagine her saying.
No he’s not mad at me, or no he’s not mad?
It’s not your fault he’s angry, A-Xian.
But he’s still mad?
Not at you.
You’re not answering my question, shijie.
Yanli would answer, You didn’t do anything wrong. A-Cheng is not mad at you.
Wei Ying couldn’t bring himself to agree with either of those statements.
Later in his demonic cultivating career, he revisited these imagined conversations, this time under the roof of a dark cave rather than in the midst of a brilliant Yunmeng golden hour. He had grown unknowingly fond of Yiling, yes, but the view of the setting sun from Burial Mounds was barely a view at all.
Wei Ying stared down at the pile of talismans aflame on the ground before him and he wondered what he would want to say to his sister now. The cave filled with smoke and ashes.
I don’t know where to go from here, he considered saying. Nothing’s working.
He could almost see the concern in her eyes. A-Xian, she would say, you need to take a break.
All I do is take breaks. When do I ever get anything done?
Just because you’re not seeing the results you want doesn’t mean you’re not making progress.
Wei Ying took a deep breath and concentrated on the fire in front of him, careful not to let it spread beyond the mountain of talismans he worked on. It’s easy for me to ‘take my time,’ isn’t it? But what about the people I’ve made dependent on me right now, shijie?
You’re trying your best, A-Xian. I know that. And, more importantly, they do, too.
What’s the point of ‘my best’ if it counts towards nothing in the end?
A-Xian—
This is for them, shijie, Wei Ying would interject. All of this. And if I can’t even do that one job right— my one job of keeping them safe— what good has any of this been? Am I just postponing their deaths? If I screw up now, will their fates be worse than if I hadn’t intervened?
The Jiang Yanli in his mind did not know how to answer that, and so Wei Ying stood silently and listened to the crackling of the flame. Heat matted his hair to his forehead with sweat. Smoke made it harder for him to breathe. He did not move away.
One step forward and he could walk into the fire, he thought. One step forward and Wei Ying could watch it curl around his legs and his waist and his torso until anger circled his ribs and his chest and his lungs. He could. He didn’t.
A few months later, just as he was about to experience death for the first time, Wei Ying took a moment to watch as the sunset beyond the cliff painted the world an angry red, and golden light glinted off of the tip of his brother’s sword.
If I screw up now, will their fates be worse than if I hadn’t intervened?
Wei Ying had not known then just how right he had been.
◈
Life was not a chronological occurrence. Wei Ying knew this. Life was a map of people and places and words (and people and people and people) that stuck with you however they chose to, in whatever order. There were a lot of people that stuck with Wei Ying. Even before he watched his own life burn in front of him, he understood that it was not a linear entity. For a very long time, Wei Ying had believed that remembering things was only necessary if it was relevant to him in that moment. And what was life, if not the relationships between moments?
But at least back then he had had things to remember and connect. Now, he just ended up grasping at straws of memories from a first lifetime that never came to him; listening for a voice that didn’t exist or maybe one that didn’t want to. He could sympathise with that, at least. Sometimes he didn’t want to exist, either.
◈
Wei Ying didn’t like sunsets.
They were supposed to be beautiful, and objectively, he supposed, there was indeed a cliched kind of beauty about them, but he couldn’t bring himself to say he liked them. Wei Ying liked midafternoons. He liked nighttime. He could even stand mornings as long as his husband was there with him, but he did not like sunsets.
At least, he hadn’t since he was young and his shijie was there to watch them with him, but he told himself with an almost numb decisiveness that she wasn’t anymore and that sunsets were overrated and that was final.
Wei Ying pulled up his knees and sat cross-legged on the grass of the back mountain, watching as the sun dipped halfway below the horizon. Shades of pink and purple above him had made way for angry oranges and reds in the blink of an eye.
Fire; an end to all things rosy and beautiful. The end of a day, the end of a year— thirteen— a lifetime. Fire; slowly burning him alive inside out with the cruelest of flames. Leaving him charred and numb and alone, disoriented with memories of things he could remember too well sometimes but couldn’t ever feel. That was the worst part.
Not that he wanted to recall these things, far from it, but there were little frustrations as unnerving as knowing that you had been beaten and not remembering what it had felt like on your back, on your skin.
He could describe it all just fine. If you wanted a list, he had one stored away in his head. On days where Wei Ying truly felt like he was going insane, he would simply run the summary of shit he’d been through and, yes, it isn’t particularly comforting, and no, he doesn’t know why he does it. But if he thought about it hard enough…
The falling. It was the falling that he remembered. The only memory his body didn’t refuse and chase out like an unwanted beggar child. The air stilling as the world rose around him, a vacuum in his lungs. Hair licking at the sides of his face like flames.
It was the falling that he remembered, the apathy of the sky as it watched him close his eyes and say his goodbyes, a silent prayer of something like… hope? No. There was no hope in moments like these. Only desperation. Only dread. Only despair, and, finally, an end.
An end to all the mistakes made, to the misery and the hurt and the bone-deep aches. An end to all things rosy and beautiful; the end of a day, the end of a year— thirteen— a lifetime. How much time had he spent chasing away the grief before he was allowed to lose himself in it?
In those last few moments, he had wondered, did he deserve even that? An end? It was the only kindness he had granted himself in far too long. He had fallen, and it was the falling that he remembered.
And, just maybe, a hand. Calloused skin. Long fingers that traced patterns into his palm even in the face of death, even as they were slippery with red blood.
“Wei Ying.”
Wei Ying only realised his eyes were screwed shut when he felt his husband’s touch without the accompanying visual; white robes and dark hair. He looked up, and there was Lan Zhan as expected against the darkening sky. Yet, despite expecting it every time, the sight always snatched his breath away. Reached a familiar hand into the recesses of Wei Ying’s lungs and scooped out a handful of air. Settled itself into his chest with a warmth that spread through him all the way down his torso and his waist and his legs. His Lan Zhan was the warmth that didn’t burn.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan repeated, no urgency in his voice. Wei Ying had had enough urgency to last him a lifetime.
“Lan Zhan,” he answered, if just for the sake of hearing his name.
Lan Zhan’s gaze on him was steady. “Are you okay?”
“I miss my sister.”
Lan Zhan was still for a moment, considering. Neither of them spoke a word as he lowered himself onto the grass beside Wei Ying. They watched as the sky descended from its plethora of crimson into a muddy darkness and shaded over with the greeting of nighttime.
Wei Ying inched his hand closer to Lan Zhan’s and let their fingers touch atop the cool grass. He felt fifteen years old again, and maybe this time it wasn’t such an awful prospect. Their fingers intertwined, Lan Zhan’s hand both gentle and strong at once.
“She liked sunsets a lot.”
“They are supposed to be beautiful.” Wei Ying noticed how the soft dimness of the hour outlined Lan Zhan and Lan Zhan looked back at him. His eyes could cut through any kind of darkness. “Wei Ying.”
“Yes, Lan Zhan?”
“It was not your fault.”
They did not break eye contact. Wei Ying’s voice was small when he asked, “It wasn’t?”
“I forgive you for what you did to survive,” Lan Zhan said. “Even if you cannot.”
Wei Ying repeated, cautiously, “You forgive me for what I did to survive.” Nodding, Lan Zhan squeezed his hand tighter.
And that was enough.