Chapter Text
The sky is the color of deep, dripping scarlet, a nasty stain over the dry, heavy atmosphere. They all force their way through the thin fog covering their path, different sects grumbling at one thing or the other. Insults and complaints get thrown around in the tense, hushed group.
The Jiang Sect remains calm with disciples simply keeping their eyes straight and focused.
Jiang Yanli doesn’t know how it came down to this. It went wrong so slow yet so fast, and she barely surfaced long enough to catch her breath.
Her a-Cheng...
Beside her, Wei Wuxian bites at his bottom lip, chewing on the skin there, one of the many habits Jiang Yanli knows her little brother tends to resort to when in concentration. He stays silent but somehow he exhibits such noise. Jiang Yanli can hear all the thoughts racing through his head, zigzagging in the wonderful space that is his mind.
Jiang Yanli hides a fond smile, knowing she isn’t in a position to show even a hint of favoritism toward her head disciple, even if she finally had him instated into the family records. Yunmeng Jiang’s instability rocks back and forth through every day, and vulnerability isn’t an option.
But, oh how she wants to lean over and ruffle Wei Wuxian’s hair. To feed him soup and spicy pork buns until some fat finally sticks to his bones. To secretly cook with him in the kitchen without care for decorum. To show how much she loves her little brother.
Wei Wuxian was insistent, though. The disciples are getting jealous, he would explain in their meetings.
It becomes serious when Wei Wuxian has to maintain rationality and discretion, and with the nods of the elder cultivators they inducted into the sect, Jiang Yanli relented and distanced herself.
Now, as they trek up the ashy grounds of the Burial Mounds, Jiang Yanli wonders how she could even care. With one brother out of her reach, she knows how important it is to savor the time she has with Wei Wuxian.
Jiang Yanli stifles a sigh and examines the area around her. The place is just...so barren, so dusty, and so uncomfortable. The environment exudates that heavy, bitter-sour taste of resentment. She doesn’t know how Jiang Cheng managed to survive a year here with the Wens and three months alone. It must have been so...scary, lonely.
They’re almost there, Jiang Yanli notes with a frown, close to confronting her brother.
She hadn’t wanted to go but the new elders pushed and pushed and the rest of the major sects pushed as well, and she eventually had no choice to give in, floor underneath her too fragile to find any grounding on. They were too unstable to gain any animosity from others.
Wei Wuxian wasn’t happy when he heard. But if they didn’t listen to the Jiang sect leader, why would they listen to a disciple, even the loved brother of Jiang Yanli.
So, they sent themselves off, joining the other sects at the base of the mountains.
Strangely, it’s cold when they reach the area where the Wens had supposedly settled, a sharp chill that hits at Jiang Yanli’s bones. And there, Jiang Cheng is, eyes glaring down at them and one hand twirling his flute.
Jiang Yanli’s gasp gets stuck in her throat.
Oh, a-Cheng.
He’s achingly thin, and Jiang Yanli bets if she opens his robes, his ribs would be showing, sharp and evident against his body. His normally smooth hair is oily and tangled against his ashy pale skin.
Jiang Yanli feels tears creeping at the edges of her eyes. She hasn’t seen her brother in so long, and it feels like a broken sense of joy at being able to meet him, even in these circumstances, even in his state.
What are they doing? What is she doing?
She has to speak. She has to, but before she can, Jin Guangshan opens his greasy mouth and cries out, “Yiling Patriarch, what do you have to say for your crimes?”
Jiang Cheng merely spits out, “Innocent but that doesn’t matter to you rats!”
This only seems to enrage Sect Leader, his beady eyes almost bulging out of their sockets and through clenched teeth, he screeches out,” Innocent! You dare, even after killing Hanguang-Jun, you—.”
Lan Xichen steps forward, his normally peaceful exterior damaged by the intense grip he has on his sword. His expression remains calm but Jiang Yanli knows the absolute pain rolling inside him. The love of a little brother...
It would break her, she knows, to lose either Jiang Cheng or Wei Wuxian.
With a sigh, Lan Xichen fixes his state on Jiang Cheng. “Jiang Wanyin, you committed a great grievance. My brother is dead by your hands. Your brother’s fiancé was killed by your weapon. What can you possibly profress innocence to?”
At this, Jiang Cheng’s eyes harden even more and his shoulders sag with what Jiang Yanli can detect as guilt. He flitters his gaze to Wei Wuxian briefly, and even without speaking, Jiang Yanli knows exactly what his thoughts are.
Wei Wuxian lips thin but he maintains a steady composure.
It was supposed to be a joyous occasion, one that Jiang Yanli fully immersed herself in the preparation of. Her little brother’s wedding.
They were in the bridal chambers where Wei Wuxian would be waiting after the wedding, alongside Jiang Yanli’s two handmaids when it happened. While her maids were fighting with a-Xian about his makeup, Jiang Yanli allowed herself a peek into the main hall.
Rouge-colored lanterns and banners lined the hall that day, gold patterns glinting brightly underneath the sunlight. The younger disciples were giggling, running around in their purple dress robes, while sect leaders chartered amongst themselves. The front doors were wide open for once, welcoming all for the grand ceremony and exposing the lotus blooms floating on the clear, glimmering water.
And Wei Wuxian?
Wei Wuxian was gorgeous. Even only half-ready and laughing at the struggle of her maids, Jiang Yanli felt proud tears peaking out at the sight of her brother. In his wedding robes he exhibited the aura of a flower goddess. The gown flowed around his waist with smooth elegance, clinching from the waist and falling just below his feet. The fabric glowed underneath the glimpses of sunlight from the pavilion’s porch, a deep red with golden embroidery of phoenixes and lotus blossoms, a reminder of where Wei Wuxian’s place is.
Jiang Yanli was smiling, amused at her brother’s antics when the news came. Lan Wangji was dead, killed by the hands of the Corpse General, who had been by Jiang Cheng’s side. Lan Wangji had been notified of the situation on the path toward Yunmeng and had headed off to investigate when he was murdered in the conflict.
Everything in the room stilled, and when Jiang Yanli turned to look at Wei Wuxian, all she saw was a frozen figure staring at the disciple who came bearing the news with blankness. His hands were clenched around the fabric of his robes and he was biting down hard onto his bottom lip.
Then he finally spoke. He blinked and asked, “Was it...was it quick?”
The terrified disciple quickly nodded, stumbling over his words as he explained how Lan Wangji probably died instantly.
Wei Wuxian didn’t say anything more, and with that Jiang Yanli dismissed the shaking disciple and her handmaids. She turned to Wei Wuxian only to find him crouched down with his hands over his face.
“Lan Zhan,” is all she hears him whisper before he looks up from his hand and stares Jiang Yanli straight in the eyes with nothing more than a, “Shijie.”
Nothing else mattered after that. With Wei Wuxian trembling and sniffling in her arms, she ignored the rest of the world, stroking his hair and leaving the rest to deal with the aftermath.
And now? For a moment, Wei Wuxian doesn’t say a word, keeps his silence, before he grants Jiang Cheng a quick nod and slight smile.
Not forgiveness but acceptance, Jiang Yanli considers.
This seems to make Jiang Cheng straighten up and he turns away from Wei Wuxian and to Lan Xichen once more.
“It was an accident,” Jiang Cheng says with hardened eyes. “Besides, the Wens are dead. What more do you want?”
Lan Xichen tightens his lips and turns his head away. Nie Mingjue steps forward to put a hand on his fellow sect leader’s shoulder. Jin Guangshan takes that as permission to step forward.
“What more? What more? The audacity of this monster!” He cries out and looks over at the cultivators behind him and then back to Jiang Cheng. “What we want is your head!”
What?
Jiang Yanli freezes and she feels Wei Wuxian do the same beside her. This isn’t the plan, she wants to cry out. But with that final note from Jin Guangshan, Jiang Cheng snaps and the world comes to an end. Corpses crawl their way out from the ground, undead white eyes glaring at everyone but their master, and without another moment, the sects draw their swords and stand their ground against groaning creatures of the once living.
Wei Wuxian pushes Jiang Yanli back behind him, ordering her to stay close and drawing his sword. For this, she complied, knowing her cultivation is too low to handle this. But she won’t leave, not until she has Jiang Cheng safe and sound back at Lotus Pier.
She watches as cultivators clash with the corpses, some managing to take down the creatures while others falling to the grips of Jiang Cheng’s army. In front of her, Wei Wuxian quickly hacks away at the corpses their way, grabbing onto her wrist to guide her as he moves them forward toward Jiang Cheng.
“A-Xian, what are you doing?” she asks, eyeing the scene around her.
“We need to get him to safety before someone else gets to him,” Wei Wuxian assures her and forces her back more as another corpse jumps toward them. He slices off its head and pushes forth once more. Jiang Yanli feels her shoulders relax. She doesn’t want to doubt her brother but a bit of her still remained concerned, especially when it was his fiancé that died.
The corpses aren’t fighting them much, Jiang Yanli notes, instead sticking to the other cultivators. Her eyes stray to Jiang Cheng whose appearing closer and closer with every step they take and wonders if he’s doing this on purpose.
They’re about a couple feet away from him when she hears Wei Wuxian gasp, let go of her arm, and race toward Jiang Cheng. At first Jiang Yanli stumbles, confused at his action until she notices the cultivator behind headed toward Jiang Cheng with his sword raised. But a second too late it seems.
Red.
Everything in her shatters. She finds herself racing too but not to Jiang Cheng but the limp body in his arms.
Wei Wuxian had assured her they could reason with Jiang Cheng, that they would be able to take him home, safe and sound. He smiled in that easy, contagious way of his and leaned over to wrap a light arm around her.
“We’ll bring him home, shijie,” he assured Jiang Yanli. “It’ll be alright.”
Maybe she should have paid more attention to that smile. Maybe she should have looked closer into the truth of it. She fell so easily into the comfort of her brother’s ease, so weary from the heavy crown chained around her head.
She wasn’t trained for this, she thought, stroking the top of Wei Wuxian’s hair. She wasn’t prepared, not born for this role, so it should be okay to lean just a little bit on her brother’s shoulder. Just for now.
She should have known how foolish she was.
When Jiang Yanli reaches them, Jiang Cheng is crying out to Wei Wuxian, while her brother is whispering something to him, bloodied hand on his face before he stills. Beside him, the cultivator who stabbed Wei Wuxian lies dead, struck down by one of Jiang Cheng’s corpses.
Good, Jiang Yanli thinks through a sob and throws herself down onto her knees beside Wei Wuxian cradled in Jiang Cheng’s arms. She takes in the blank eyes and cold hands and bloodied stomach and does something, something she never expected to ever do in her life to Jiang Cheng—she pushes him away from them both.
Jiang Cheng stumbles and groans out in his grief, tears streaming down his face. She sees him reach into his robe for something but she doesn’t bother looking a second longer, lugging Wei Wuxian up into her arms and sobbing into the still (oh so still) curve of his shoulder.
Jiang Yanli doesn’t know what happens after that. Within a quick second, she grabs Wei Wuxian’s body and orders her disciples back to Yunmeng, hopping onto one of her senior disciple’s sword.
Maybe, she should have wondered more about how easy it was to get away but frankly, she doesn’t give a fuck.
They fly back to Lotus Pier in silence. No one dares to look at Jiang Yanli and she doesn’t care enough to focus on anything but the body in her arms.
Somehow, they end up in the main throne room with Jiang Yanli cradling Wei Wuxian’s head in her hands. She feels people try to call to her, to touch her, but she merely just slaps them away until the room finally empties. And until dark, she wraps her arms around Wei Wuxian’s body and sobs. She cries and screams and aches until her voice crackens and her throat ceases noise, and even then, her cries ring silent in the nape of her little brother’s shoulder.
A-Xian.
A-Xian.
Please.
Lotus Pier is quiet.