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When he descended from Baoshan Sanren’s mountain, Wei Wuxian was nowhere to be found.
There were a great many Wen soldiers. All skulking around, hands on swords while townspeople scurried around with their heads down. Taking up all the rooms in the inns. Rage seethed in Jiang Cheng’s stomach every time he saw them, the urge to destroy them pulsing in his restored golden core, but he held himself back.
Find Wei Wuxian first. Then the two of you can kill them together, and go join up with the others in Lanling. There’s a war to fight.
Just find Wei Wuxian first.
But Wei Wuxian seemed to have vanished into thin air.
Jiang Cheng waited for three days in that little town. Maybe Wei Wuxian had gone to ground, with all the Wen about - it’d be the sensible thing, and while ‘sensible’ and ‘Wei Wuxian’ didn’t often belong in the same sentence, he could sometimes manage it, when it was important. But he would come back. He’d be watching for Jiang Cheng, looking for his return.
He wouldn’t have given up on him, would he? It’d been longer than he’d expected, but - Wei Wuxian would’ve waited. Right?
He wasn’t an idiot. Of course it occurred to him that something might’ve happened. But surely if Wei Wuxian had been captured, he would’ve heard something about it - some rumor, or bragging.
But there was nothing. Nothing but silence, and Wen soldiers, and anxiety gnawing harder and harder at Jiang Cheng’s stomach.
He waited for three days, but he couldn’t wait forever. Wei Wuxian must’ve gone on ahead, he told himself. To meet up with the others in Lanling. Maybe he’d tried to leave a message saying as much, but it’d gotten lost - or it’d just been too dangerous to try.
He couldn’t keep hanging around, and the town wasn’t that big. If Wei Wuxian had still been there, he would’ve shown up by now.
Jiang Cheng set off for Lanling with the firm conviction that he was going to give Wei Wuxian a beating for not waiting where he’d said he would. He’d deserve it. But maybe not that much of one, because Wei Wuxian had brought him to Baoshan Sanren.
Every morning so far Jiang Cheng had woken up with a brief swoop in his stomach, a momentary feeling of raw terror that it had all been a dream, that his golden core was still gone, that he was still broken, crippled - only for the fear to drain away in the face of the energy circulating through his meridians, steady as it had ever been. He was more aware of that energy now - he felt even stronger than he had before, like he’d never properly appreciated his own power until Wen Zhuliu had ripped it out of him.
(Wen Zhuliu. That name was carved on his heart, and would be until he found the man and killed him as slowly and painfully as he deserved.)
(It would probably linger longer, a shadow in his dreams.)
At Jinlintai, Jiang Cheng found a small group of Jiang Sect disciples - those who had been away from Lotus Pier when the Wens had attacked for one reason or another. They greeted him with nearly overwhelming joy and relief.
“Jiang-gongzi,” Yan Ling said, nearly crying. “We thought you were dead. Jiang-guniang wasn’t certain...”
Jiang Cheng swallowed several times to force down the lump in his throat. “No,” he said. “I’m not. Is a-jie safe? Is she here?”
She shook her head. “Not now, no,” she said. “But she is under Jin-gongzi’s protection.” There was a brief pause. “What about da-shixiong?” she asked, and the sprouts of hope Jiang Cheng had been clinging to shriveled up and died.
“He’s not here?”
The disciples glanced at each other and shook their heads slowly.
“And no one’s heard anything from him?” Jiang Cheng asked, his voice tightening like the knot in his chest. Silence, and murmured denials, and nervous glances among themselves, and Jiang Cheng thought he might choke.
“Nothing,” he pressed, like maybe that would change the answer. “You haven’t heard anything. No letters, or, or rumors, or…”
“Jiang-guniang said that Wei-gongzi was with you,” said Xie Peizhi, and Jiang Cheng had to try very hard not to flinch. Of course. Of course a-jie would know that they’d been together. When she saw him again, alone-
“We were separated,” Jiang Cheng said shortly. “I thought he’d come here for the rendezvous.” No one could know about his golden core - not that it had been destroyed, and not how it had been restored. It would remain a secret between him and a-jie and Wei Wuxian.
He didn’t want anyone else to know.
“I’m sorry, Jiang-zongzhu,” one of the other disciples said, and Jiang Cheng felt the title stab through him like a sword with the force of its truth.
You are, now. They’re looking to you to lead them through this war.
Jiang Cheng felt suddenly, profoundly alone. A flash of anger seared his lungs (where are you, Wei Wuxian?) followed just as quickly by a sick plunge. If Wei Wuxian could’ve come here, he would have. He would have. That he wasn’t here meant he couldn’t be.
But that didn’t mean he was-
Maybe he was just in hiding somewhere, pinned down but not hurt. Or recovering from an injury somewhere. Or a prisoner in some Wen dungeon-
He thought of Wen Zhuliu’s core-melting hand. He thought of Wen Chao’s vicious cruelty - and then flinched from thinking about that too much. He clenched his hands into fists and fought for control of himself. His shixiong was strong and damnably smart and had survived being trapped in a cave with no sword and a legendary monster. He was out there, somewhere.
Jiang Cheng just had to find him, and he would.
But there was also a war to fight.
Jiang Cheng squared his shoulders. Fine. He could do both. They’d shoot down the Wen sun - and as he carved his way through their armies, wherever Wei Wuxian was, Jiang Cheng would find him.
His left hand flexed. He missed holding Sandu - he wanted its familiar weight in his hand, the comfort of its presence. But of course it was locked away in a Wen stronghold.
Suibian would be there too, and some stupid part of him briefly imagined that if he could retrieve Suibian Wei Wuxian wouldn’t be far behind.
Jiang Cheng saw Lan Wangji only a moment before Lan Wangji saw him; the moment Lan Wangji did he turned and made a beeline in Jiang Cheng’s direction, eyes fixed on him like he thought Jiang Cheng might run away.
He didn’t, obviously. He did watch how Lan Wangji’s eyes moved from him to next to him like he was expecting to see someone there, and his stomach clenched.
“Where is Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said, without benefit of either greeting or bow, and the last sliver of vague hope Jiang Cheng had possessed - that Wei Wuxian had gone to meet up with his new best friend Lan-er-gongzi - perished.
“Hello to you too,” Jiang Cheng said. Lan Wangji just stared at him. “I don’t know,” Jiang Cheng said finally, refusing to look away.
Lan Wangji’s expression was immobile. “You don’t know,” he echoed. Jiang Cheng’s hackles came up.
“No,” he said. “I don’t. We were separated after the attack on Lotus Pier. He said we were going to meet in a town near Yiling but I waited three days and he didn’t show up.”
“Three days?” Lan Wangji said, and it sounded heavy with judgment, like he thought that hadn’t been long enough.
“The place was swarming with Wen soldiers,” Jiang Cheng snapped defensively, a prickle of guilt crawling down his spine. “If I’d waited longer, I would only have gotten myself captured.” Again. And there’d be no second chance.
Lan Wangji’s expression didn’t soften, but Jiang Cheng thought he saw, maybe, a slight furrowing of his brows. Worry, he thought, and felt an unwelcome, unwanted twinge of sympathy.
“I guess you haven’t heard anything either,” he said grudgingly. “I wondered if maybe…” Lan Wangji just looked at him, and he finished, “if maybe he might’ve gone looking for you.”
It was hard to read Lan Wangji’s expressions. If he had expressions. He probably did; Wei Wuxian seemed to have been able to read him, somehow. Was he worried? Upset? Hard to say. As far as Jiang Cheng could tell his expression was just a perpetual blank.
“I haven’t seen him,” he said finally, and it sounded reluctant, like he didn’t want to admit it.
“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng said, before he could stop himself. “I figured.” Oh, there was an expression. Lan Wangji’s eyes narrowed and he moved like he was about to turn away. Jiang Cheng half formed the word wait, then stopped himself. Then said, “wait” anyway.
Lan Wangji paused, and didn’t turn.
“I’m going to look for him,” Jiang Cheng said. “Whenever I can. Everywhere we go. Someone will have heard something. He can’t have just vanished.”
Lan Wangji did turn, slowly. Regarding him. Finally he said, “where first?”
The relief that welled up surprised him. He might not be particularly fond of Lan Wangji. Scarcely knew him at all, other than a vague impression of dislike that he felt was mutual. But having an ally in the search for Wei Wuxian couldn’t go amiss, and Lan Wangji was an inarguably capable fighter.
“I don’t think it matters,” Jiang Cheng said grimly. “We’ll start with the first Wen-dog den we can find, and go from there until someone tells us what we want to know.”
**
Jiang Cheng’s parents were dead. A-jie was far away, safe (as far as he knew, please let her stay safe, Jin Zixuan if anything happens to her-) but distant. Lotus Pier had been destroyed, made a Supervisory Office for the Wen Sect. Sandu was under lock and key, deep in enemy territory.
Wei Wuxian was missing.
Then there was Zidian.
Zidian, coiled around his wrist, his mother’s last gift to him and he didn’t actually know how to use it.
He’d been practicing, not in secrecy but in privacy, but sometimes it just crackled on his hand without manifesting fully, and other times it lashed out, wild and uncontrolled. It made him want to scream. Zidian was his weapon, a-niang had passed it to him, and here he was failing to wield it as he knew it could be wielded-
Failing her.
What else is new, whispered the poisonous voice of his doubts. Isn’t that just what you do? What you always did?
Jiang Cheng shook the numbness out of his fingers, growled to himself, and tried again. He would learn. He would figure this out, dammit, and every Wen he killed with it would be revenge for a-niang and a-die, for all the disciples who had been slaughtered at Lotus Pier-
(For Wei Wuxian, whispered that same poisonous voice. You know, don’t you? You know why he’s not here, why no one has seen him, why there’s no word. It’s because he’s gone. It’s because he’s dead. All you can do now is get revenge.)
No. Wei Wuxian was still alive somewhere, and Jiang Cheng wasn’t going to give up on him. Or Zidian. It was his, now, and he would figure out how to make it answer to him the way that it should.
But apparently not today, or not yet, not based on the painful tingling up his arm.
Lan Wangji intercepted him on his way back to the camp, his expression set and shoulders tense, and Jiang Cheng felt himself tensing as well.
“What is it,” he barked.
“Prisoners,” Lan Wangji said.
Jiang Cheng waited for elaboration without result, and finally gritted his teeth and said, “what prisoners?”
“The Nie have brought Wen prisoners.”
Oh. “Where? When?”
“Just now.” Lan Wangji paused, and said, “you should be there for the questioning.”
Jiang Cheng read that as I came to find you first, and was a little touched. “Let’s go,” he said, and followed Lan Wangji.
The Wen prisoners did not look very formidable. Jiang Cheng’s eyes swept over them, looking for faces he recognized, somehow thinking there would be one there - some soldier he might’ve seen jeering at Lotus Pier, there when Wen Chao had tortured him. But nothing.
And none of them knew anything about Wei Wuxian, either.
“Wei Wuxian,” he growled, looming over one of them, almost snarling. “Wei Ying, where is he?”
“I don’t know,” the cultivator said, head bowed. “I don’t know, I’m just-”
Zidian crackled and unfurled, lashing across his chest and sending him flying. A few Nie cultivators moved hastily out of the way, but Zidian had already vanished again. But it had been a clean blow - no tingling, no backlash. Breathing hard, Jiang Cheng stared at the Wen cultivator, struggling to get up.
For a moment he saw Wei Wuxian sprawled on the floor of Sword Test Hall, taking blow after blow from a-niang as Wang Lingjiao looked smugly on, and wanted to recoil. But he held his ground.
“Anyone else want to tell me something useful?” Jiang Cheng said through gritted teeth.
More silence, but they were looking at him with fear now, or at least wariness. Perhaps he shouldn’t be glad of that. He was. They deserved much worse, anyway. He was being kind, compared to what they’d done to his family, his home.
Lan Wangji stepped up next to him, his face icy and gripping Bichen like he would rather have his hand around someone’s throat. His eyes swept across the prisoners like he might be able to see into their heads and pluck the knowledge out of them.
“Where is Wei Ying,” he said.
“Upstarts,” one of the Wen cultivators spat abruptly. “The Yunmeng Jiang and Gusu Lan deserved what they got.”
Jiang Cheng saw the bodies strewn in the courtyard. Felt the sting of the whip. The empty ache where his core should’ve been.
His sword was drawn and in his hand in one blink; in the next, he’d driven it through the Wen cultivator’s chest. The man looked surprised. Jiang Cheng was surprised, too, distantly. He hadn’t exactly intended to do that. He hadn’t been planning on it. But it was already done.
He pulled the sword free and the man collapsed to the ground. He still looked surprised.
Jiang Cheng’s stomach rose toward his mouth and he swallowed it down.
“Let me know if anyone happens to remember information I should know,” he said, to no one in particular, then turned around and stalked away.
He made it safely out of sight and hearing range before he ducked behind a tree and threw up. His ears were ringing, and the taste of bile made him gag. Bracing his left arm against the tree, Jiang Cheng took deep breath after deep breath until he felt calmer.
To his relief, Lan Wangji did not seem to have followed him.
Pull yourself together, he thought viciously. This is a war. They slaughtered everyone at Lotus Pier. They all deserve to die themselves.
He missed a-jie with a sudden, vicious intensity. Missed Wei Wuxian like a stomachache.
He felt very, horribly alone.
Lan Wangji was a surprise.
Jiang Cheng had never paid him all that much attention, outside of the knowing that he was a peerless jade of their generation and also that he almost never spoke to anyone. He didn’t seem inclined to socialize with anyone at all. He barely seemed to speak to the other Lan cultivators, either.
Then came Wei Wuxian’s inexplicable obsession with him, despite Lan Wangji’s seeming indifference or, more likely, active dislike. At first Jiang Cheng thought he was just making a nuisance of himself, but he’d quickly become less sure of that. And more-
All right. More jealous of that.
Then came the cave on Dusk Creek Mountain, and its monster, apparently defeated by the two of them together despite their lack of swords. Jiang Cheng wasn’t an idiot. He could see what was happening.
Somehow, through the unique and overpowering strength of his charm, Wei Wuxian had managed to make friends with the iced-over jade statue that was Lan Wangji. Not that he was bitter about it.
And now Lan Wangji seemed to have attached himself to Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng wasn’t stupid. He knew it wasn’t about him, and you couldn’t exactly call Lan Wangji good company, not when he barely spoke and was next to impossible to read. But he was capable, a skilled warrior, and he wasn’t bad company either.
And he was, outside of Jiang Sect, the only person who understood why he couldn’t give up on Wei Wuxian. The others thought he was being foolishly optimistic at best. He could see it in their faces, though no one actually said to his face he’s dead, it’s time to let this hopeless hunt drop and move on.
Not Lan Wangji, though. Lan Wangji approached every interrogation with the same determination and resolve. He showed no signs of discouragement or doubt. His absolute certainty made it easier for Jiang Cheng not to waver, except sometimes in the middle of the night when he dreamed of the corpses at Lotus Pier, and this time Wei Wuxian was among them.
One night, dirty and exhausted after a nasty skirmish, Jiang Cheng sat down next to Lan Wangji. His eyes slid in Jiang Cheng’s direction but otherwise he didn’t move.
It felt like he should make conversation. Talk, about something. But he wasn’t Wei Wuxian, to run his mouth about whatever he was thinking-
“You and Wei Wuxian,” he said abruptly.
Lan Wangji said nothing. Which was fair, as Jiang Cheng hadn’t actually said anything.
“You’re...friends.”
Lan Wangji’s head turned very slightly in his direction. “Yes,” he said, after a long enough pause that Jiang Cheng honestly thought he just wasn’t going to answer.
“I thought you hated him,” Jiang Cheng said honestly. Lan Wangji’s expression did not so much as twitch, but Jiang Cheng had the vague sense that he was annoyed anyway, which, Jiang Cheng had no idea what he had to be annoyed about.
“I don’t,” Lan Wangji said.
What did he say to that, anyway? There were so many things bottled up in his chest, all his fears and anxieties and grief, but he couldn’t exactly pour those out on Lan Wangji.
Do you really think he’s somewhere out there? he wanted to ask. And also didn’t.
“Wei Wuxian should’ve cut Wen Chao’s throat in that cave,” he said darkly. “And that Lingjiao bitch, too, then maybe Lotus Pier-”
His voice cut off. He couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said to Wei Wuxian in that field. He remembered yelling in his face, his hands around his throat, but he couldn’t remember the words that had come out of his mouth like bad blood. He definitely hadn’t apologized.
The thought flitted into his head that maybe Wei Wuxian had left him on purpose once he knew Jiang Cheng was - was better, but - no, that didn’t make sense. He wouldn’t do that. I’ll be your right hand, like my father to your father. Gusu has the Twin Jades? Then…
He shook the doubt away.
It must be a relief to know Zewu-jun is all right, he considered saying, but he didn’t know if he’d be able to keep it from coming out bitter.
“You will rebuild,” Lan Wangji said. His voice still had very little inflection, but the fact that they were said at all took Jiang Cheng aback.
“When this is over,” Lan Wangji said.
It didn’t undo the deaths. It didn’t lessen the grief. And it wasn’t like there was any certainty they’d win, or like Lan Wangji knew what he was talking about, at all.
Hearing him say that was still...he appreciated it. Was, stupidly, reassured by it.
“Thanks,” he said. It sounded strange, and felt stranger. Lan Wangji barely dipped his head in acknowledgment. They were both quiet again. Lan Wangji’s posture was perfect, his body stiff.
“Cloud Recesses, too,” Jiang Cheng said. “We’ll take it back.”
“Mm,” Lan Wangji said. It was quiet, but Jiang Cheng thought he saw his face harden, a trace of anger briefly visible.
The fire crackled. Jiang Cheng caught himself fiddling with Zidian on his wrist and made himself stop. Do you really think we’ll all walk away from this alive, he wanted to ask, and didn’t.
He couldn’t let himself consider defeat, the same way he couldn’t let himself consider the idea that they were never going to find Wei Wuxian - that he would just vanish into empty air without a trace.
Again, and again, and again, the same question. Where is Wei Wuxian? No matter who he asked, the answer remained the same.
I don’t know! I haven’t heard anything! I really don’t know!
“I heard he was dead,” someone said, once, and both Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji turned toward her almost at once. She stared back, chin raised proudly and gaze defiant.
“Heard where,” Jiang Cheng said, though his throat had suddenly gone tight. It was what he’d thought, wasn’t it? Any number of times. What he’d feared to hear.
What he couldn’t believe.
Lan Wangji at his side was very still, though Jiang Cheng thought he might’ve caught a slight tremor of the hand holding Bichen at his side.
“Just rumors,” the Wen cultivator said. “That Wei Wuxian of Yunmeng Jiang was caught and executed.”
“Rumors,” Jiang Cheng said. His voice barely sounded like his own. Zidian crackled on his hand and he clenched his fist to control it; it took a moment to force it to subside. His control was still imperfect, especially when he was angry. “Rumors from where?” She said nothing, and Jiang Cheng took a step forward and gritted out, “answer me.”
“Sect Leader of Yunmeng Jiang,” she said, disdainful. “More like an undisciplined child.”
Fury washed through him, but Lan Wangji’s low voice said, “Jiang Wanyin,” in a tone that gave him pause. He glanced toward him, but Lan Wangji’s eyes were on the Wen cultivator rather than him.
“What,” he snapped.
“She knows nothing,” Lan Wangji said.
“How do you know,” Jiang Cheng snarled. Lan Wangji simply turned his back and walked away. After a moment, Jiang Cheng followed, quickening his steps to catch up. “Lan-er-gongzi,” he said, failing to keep his voice measured. “How do you know? This is the first time-”
“I know.” Lan Wangji’s voice was firm.
“Do you?” Jiang Cheng demanded. “Or do you just not want to believe it?”
Lan Wangji stopped, but he didn’t turn. Jiang Cheng’s breathing felt too fast and his throat hurt like someone had a fist around it.
“I won’t give up,” Lan Wangji said, and it wasn’t accusation but Jiang Cheng felt it like it was anyway. Anger seared through him.
“Who said I was,” he barked.
Lan Wangji still didn’t turn. “I didn’t. Are you?”
“No,” Jiang Cheng snapped. “Of course not.” And if there was a part of him that wanted to say he was my shixiong before he was ever your whatever he is.
“Then there’s no problem,” Lan Wangji said, and maybe it was Jiang Cheng’s imagination that he sounded stiffer than usual. Or maybe it wasn’t. This time he let him walk away without following.
It didn’t feel like there was much of anything else he could say.
He hoped a-jie was all right. She’d be worrying. Wondering if her a-Cheng and a-Xian were safe.
When he saw her again, he told himself, it would be with Wei Wuxian in tow, even if he had to carry him there.
From here, Wei Wuxian said, I won’t be able to go any further with you.
He remembered the words, but this time Wei Wuxian didn’t blindfold him. Goodbye, Jiang Cheng, he said, and turned around, and started walking away.
“Wait!” Jiang Cheng called after him. “Wait, where are you going?”
Wei Wuxian raised a hand and waved at him without turning around. Dread building in his chest, Jiang Cheng tried to run after him, but he couldn’t move his feet.
“Wei Wuxian!” he said. “Stop!”
He didn’t listen. Of course he didn’t listen, he never listened. Just kept walking, getting farther and farther away. Jiang Cheng shouted, but he didn’t even glance back over his shoulder.
And then he was gone. Vanished between one step and the next, into thin air.
Jiang Cheng woke up. It was still dark out, and he laid there staring at nothing, fiddling with Zidian on his wrist. It was a legacy. It was a symbol of failure.
He needed Wei Wuxian to be here. It felt pathetic, thinking it that plainly, but it was true just the same.
Where are you, he thought plaintively. Where are you? Don’t you know that you and a-jie are the only family I have left?
To the world, he thought, haven’t I lost enough?
He rolled over and got to his feet. He wasn’t going to sleep any more tonight. He left his tent and went out.
In the dark, Lan Wangji was plainly visible, glowing white and gazing up at the moon. Jiang Cheng stared at his back and wondered what Wei Wuxian saw in him, other than the high cultivation level. Sterling reputation had never seemed to matter all that much. It seemed like there must be something else, something he was missing, that had made it so Wei Wuxian put himself on the line for him, and through that, endanger others.
Though he probably hadn’t been thinking about that last thing at the time, even if Jiang Cheng had told him he had to. Wei Wuxian never thought through the consequences of his actions, not really.
Never had. Should you start getting used to thinking about him in the past tense?
Jiang Cheng strode over toward Lan Wangji. “Lan Wangji,” he said, his voice rough from sleep. Lan Wangji’s head turned very slightly in his direction.
“Jiang Wanyin,” he said.
“You’re awake,” he said. “At this time of night?”
“So are you,” Lan Wangji said, and he thought he could hear just a trace of waspishness, maybe, though a moment later he thought he must have imagined it. Jiang Cheng thought about saying I’m not the one with an imposed bedtime but left it as a thought rather than anything else.
He shifted on his feet. “The campaign is going well,” he said. “We’re gaining ground, now that the sects are united.”
“Yes,” Lan Wangji agreed.
Like pulling teeth. If Wei Wuxian was here he’d be talking Jiang Cheng’s ear off.
That thought still hit him, viciously painful. He shoved it aside.
“I don’t get it,” Jiang Cheng burst out. “How can there be - nothing? You’d think they’d want to say if they’d caught him.”
Lan Wangji said nothing.
“All he had to do was wait and keep his stupid head down,” Jiang Cheng said. “He should’ve been there.”
“Why did you separate?” Lan Wangji asked, and Jiang Cheng hesitated. For a moment something hovered at the corner of his thoughts, but it was gone before he could do more than glance at it.
He imagined saying it. Imagined telling Lan Wangji, but he’d sworn to say nothing and he didn’t want anyone to know anyway. Didn’t want to admit what had happened to him.
“We all separated,” Jiang Cheng said, looking away. “A-jie to Jinlintai and the two of us...it was too dangerous to stay together.” It sounded like a weak explanation. “He and I were going to meet back up later.”
They were supposed to be together. Side by side. Twin prides of Yunmeng.
He glanced at Lan Wangji, who was no longer watching the moon but looking at him instead, something intent and piercing in his gaze. Like he was trying to see through Jiang Cheng and discern...something. Jiang Cheng had no idea what it might be.
“Are you going to judge me for that?” Jiang Cheng said, bristling. “I didn’t abandon him. It was only supposed to be a few days!”
Lan Wangji said nothing.
“I suppose you think you could’ve done better,” Jiang Cheng said bitterly. “That if you’d been there, Hanguang-jun, then-”
He didn’t finish the thought. He couldn’t.
Still silence. Lan Wangji’s gaze moved away from him and Jiang Cheng hated that it was a relief.
“I wasn’t passing judgment,” Lan Wangji said. Jiang Cheng gave him a skeptical look, but as usual he couldn’t read anything in his expression.
“Weren’t you,” he said.
“No. I-” Lan Wangji paused, and Jiang Cheng was struck by the feeling that he was struggling for words. “I’m trying to understand.”
Oh, Jiang Cheng thought.
He remembered how many times he’d gone over everything that had happened. Combed through everything he could remember, every detail, poring over them and picking them apart as if the answer to his question - where did you go - might show themselves if he only looked hard enough.
His shoulders slid down, the anger bleeding out of him - though all that left was exhaustion and unhappiness.
“I can’t help you there,” he said.
He couldn’t shake, even now, the feeling that Wei Wuxian should’ve been fine. He should be fine. He’d made it right after - what Wen Zhuliu had done to him. He’d won almost every fight Jiang Cheng had ever seen him take on. It didn’t make sense that suddenly he would just…
If you’ve learned nothing else, shouldn’t you know that nothing, and no one, is ever safe?
He saw a flash of frustration in Lan Wangji’s eyes before it was gone, so quickly he might not have believed it was there.
We’ll find him, it felt like he should say, but he had the irrational conviction that if he said it, they wouldn’t.
He was thrown into the Burial Mounds.
Those words transfixed him like a sword through his stomach. He grasped desperately after the hope that it might be a lie, but the terror in the Wen disciple’s eyes, the desperation as he groveled at Lan Wangji’s feet, carved that hope hollow.
No one had ever emerged alive from the Burial Mounds. Jiang Cheng’s mind scrabbled at the thought that there might be a first, that Wei Wuxian had achieved impossible things before, that Wei Wuxian was clever and strong-
Three months was too long. If he had been there all that time–
Jiang Cheng looked at Lan Wangji, searching for a hint of his thoughts. For doubt or grief or uncertainty but all he could see was cold determination and anger.
He wanted to absorb that for himself, but suddenly he felt his own anger, at Lan Wangji. For his determination. Why? Why did he get that and all Jiang Cheng could access was fear and doubt and the growing shadow of grief.
Lan Wangji had no more reason to believe that Wei Wuxian was still alive to be found than Jiang Cheng did. And yet he never seemed to question it.
Jiang Cheng looked at Suibian in his hands, sealed, and resentment burned like bile in his throat. He swallowed it down. He wished he could ask the sword: tell me where he is. Tell me where to find him.
Tell me if he’s gone.
Please.
He started to reach to take Suibian from Lan Wangji, and Lan Wangji pulled ever so slightly away, his grip tightening. The anger flared up again and the words what, do you think if you cling to his sword it’ll draw him back to you took shape on his tongue, but he didn’t speak them. As if Lan Wangji heard him anyway, he glanced in Jiang Cheng’s direction, but whatever he felt wasn’t visible on his face.
“That isn’t yours,” Jiang Cheng said. Lan Wangji blinked slowly.
“No,” he agreed. Or maybe it was denial.
“Are you going to keep it?” he said, trying not to sound as testy as he felt.
“I’m going to return it.”
You are, Jiang Cheng thought. You’re going to return it, you’re going to find him, again that surge of feeling that said he isn’t yours, either.
He took a breath through his nose and curled his right hand into a fist by his side, then forced his fingers open. Lan Wangji was his ally. Lan Wangji was - not a friend, but he’d been a companion, a solid point in a world that had gone insane.
“Why you,” he said. “Why should it be you who-”
He cut himself off, hating the way his voice sounded. The petulance, the envy.
Lan Wangji just looked at him like he didn’t understand the question. Jiang Cheng turned his back.
“Fine,” he said. “You can hang onto Suibian for now, if it’s so important to you.”
He sounded like a child. It didn’t matter. All he’d said was for now. When they found Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng would be the one to put his sword back in his hands.
He knew what Lan Wangji suspected about the altered talismans and the dead soldiers. He didn’t speak it aloud, but Jiang Cheng knew him a little bit by now and he knew it because it was the same thought he’d had, half-formed, even as he wanted to deny its implications.
Someone - or something - was cutting a swathe through the Wen forces, using an unfamiliar method (evil, said Lan Wangji’s voice, evil method). Wang Lingjiao was dead. Wen Chao was running like he was being pursued by demons.
By a demon.
No one who went into the Burial Mounds came out again.
(And what if they did, murmured a dark voice in Jiang Cheng’s head, but no, no, he wouldn’t entertain the thoughts, wouldn’t follow the paths they went down.)
He told Lan Wangji that as long as they had the same enemy as this mysterious Wen-killer, it didn’t matter what methods they used. He told Lan Wangji, the name unspoken between them, the possibility thoroughly unvoiced.
Neither of them wanted to admit the possibility that the Wei Wuxian they found (if they found him) (they would, they would) might not be the same one Jiang Cheng had walked away from, three months ago outside Yiling.
Three months wasn’t such a long time. But it was long enough.