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It is so very easy to starve.
You have always been prepared for this. Even when the Jiangs took you in, even when your ribs were no longer visible and your shoulders broadened with fat, even when you learned how to leave the table with food still on your plate, you have always been prepared. Your mouth remembers the sour taste of your breath when you haven't eaten in too long. Your stomach remembers the gnawing constancy of hunger. Your bones, your blood, your tissue and flesh. You have always been prepared.
Like a bad habit, you think. Like an old tendency that you could never shake.
The soil is rough and unyielding. You are more so. You have clawed your way to the top of a mountain of corpses, and slowly, methodically, you tear the mountain apart. You rake at the dirt with your hands, because you have no shovels. You tear food from the ground, wring clean water from the stream. Your sister used to say you were good at growing, at nurturing; you find that you are better at forcing things to take root.
You eat. You drink. You starve.
You have always found it easy to breathe in humidity. The Wens, not so much. You hear them joke about it, about the hot Yiling sun and the muggy air that fills their lungs. Fourth Uncle sheds his outer robe ten minutes into the day.
You are so, so cold.
You can never feel your fingers, these days. You press them to the tender skin of your neck, against your pulse. Ten concentrated points of freezing cold. Sometimes, you sit beside Wen Ning's stone altar and stare at them, waiting for frostbite to set in. Waiting for them to turn black. Waiting for a sign that you can cut them off.
The frostbite never comes. You're disappointed, for some reason. But you need your fingers—need them to tie talismans on Wen Ning's limp arms, and to clutch Wen Qing's hands when she's too tired to pretend she wants to be alone, and to comb through A-Yuan's hair. So. Maybe it's a good thing, after all, that you haven't lost all your uses. That you still have what you have.
(It's easier to think about what you have than it is to think about what you don't.)
So here you are, Wei Wuxian, knee-deep in dirt like the feral thing you are. Here you are, in the glare of the sun. You do not have to use your hands this time; you have a shovel. A crude thing, but better than your nails. You hack the earth apart and coax forth crops from its mutilated body. Radishes. Turnips. It is better than last time, less bloody than last time. After all, you cannot give the Wens the same food you ate the first time round. You cannot. It would crack something clean open in them, the way it did to you.
Despite what the stories say, you are not cruel. You would not make them anything like you.
Days melt into nights melt into days. What would you know, of the sun and its cycles? What would you know, when you spend all your time in that lead-lined belly of a cave?
You cannot spend all your time on talismans, but you try your best anyway. There is always something to plan for, always another contingency needed. You make a wall, a barrier. You connect it all to yourself—always, always yourself, never anyone else, no matter how much Wen Qing tries to argue that she should be keyed in to the alarms too.
At this point, your whole world reeks of blood from base to summit. If you ran your fingers through charcoal and pressed them to a page, you wonder if your fingerprints would show up. You've cut them open so many times now, and the skin is scarred over and tough. Wen Qing scolds you for it, but you have no choice. You cannot, after all, afford the luxury of ink.
A-Yuan, at least, doesn't mind your scar-thick thumbs when you brush the hair out of his face. He takes your hands and fits his own against them. It is in these moments that you gain feeling in your fingers again, when the warmth of A-Yuan's palm is pressed up against yours. It is in these moments that you think you might be a person, living and breathing and whole.
At least, you tell yourself, you have this. At least you have someone who has never, in his short short life, looked at you with pity in his eyes.
Perhaps it's pathetic to find such solace in a child. You don't really care.
What exactly do they think you're doing? What fantasies have they concocted? Sometimes, it seems like a good thing that you left the sects behind, because they're all full of idiots. Yes, here is the fearsome Wen army; here are the legions of fierce corpses that you've raised to do your bidding. A fearsome army of elderly farmers. Legions of radishes that are barely big enough to eat.
You wonder at the logistics of it. Do they think you live in some kind of corpse castle? Do they think you feed off resentful energy? Do they think you've been forging armour and swords from bones? Do they think you're, what—leading sword drills every morning to dozens of fierce corpses? If you were half as powerful as the sects think you are, then you wouldn't be scraping at the fucking dirt for food, now would you? You wouldn't be unpicking your old robes for thread to mend the hole in A-Yuan's sleeve, now would you?
If you were half as powerful as the sects think you are, then you wouldn't even be here, now would you?
You can't help it. You laugh. You're lying on this fucking slab of stone and Wen Qing is trying to sew up the wound, and you laugh. It makes your whole body shake, and Wen Qing slaps your chest and snaps at you to stop moving.
He stabbed you right in the side of the stomach. Not even on your calf or your forearm. Just—right in the stomach. If he'd moved his sword just a little to the left, if he'd sunk the blade in deeper, maybe he would've hit the empty place where your golden core used to be.
You laugh, again. Wen Qing's hands are stained red with blood. What a waste. You could've used all that for talismans. You consider asking her to collect it in a jar for later, but you think she might actually, literally break your neck if you do.
Ah, fuck, it hurts. Asshole. Jiang Cheng's such a fucking asshole. And yet.
You love him so much it could kill you. In fact, it almost did.
You wonder about her. Of course you do. Is she happy, is she healthy? Did she catch some kind of minor sickness again, the way she always did when you were kids? Did that corner of the library that she liked so much, the one with the big window that she said was perfect for reading—did it survive the attack? You never thought to check once the war was over. You should've checked. You should've helped rebuild. You should've done a lot of things.
At least you know she's safe. She's with Jiang Cheng, and he'd never let any harm come to her.
Fuck, you miss her. If she were here, she would've made a feast out of all the fucking radishes. She would've made it good.
Fucking—medicine. You need medicine, don't you? You got lucky this time, lucky that the fever passed on its own, but. But. Next time, you won't have this luck. It could spread. Fever and cold would be deadly to any of the elderly in the camp. And—god, A-Yuan. Not A-Yuan.
You were five years old when you learned to steal. You're twenty now, but you haven't forgotten.
It's raining tonight. Even the rain doesn't smell clean. Who knows what kind of gases are in the air above the Burial Mounds? Maybe that's why, when you stand at the mouth of the cave and collect rainwater in your cupped hand, it smells like a stagnant lake. Like the lakes that have algae growing round the edges. Like the lakes that all the adults told you not to drink out of.
God, you hope the crop fields won't flood. If you lose those crops now, then all of you will starve. Please. Please. Please, let them live. If someone has to die, then let it be you. You were always raised to be expendable. You were always ready to be the spare.
He visits, once and only once. You can't bear to touch him, to dirty his robes. You watch him across the restaurant table, A-Yuan happily nestled in his lap, and you ache from head to toe. It's the most feeling you've had in this useless body in weeks.
When he leaves, you want to ask him not to. You want to ask him to stay. You want him to come close, to cradle you and all your broken bones, to wrap you in warmth and take you away. You want him to be here when you die.
You think of what you said months ago, when you had rainwater running down your nose and clogging your throat. You think of how you asked him to kill you. You think of how you wish he had.
You don't know what you are to him. You don't even know what he is to you. You've left a trail of old words behind you, tossed aside like forgotten coins. Friend. Confidant. Soulmate, once.
Do you love him? Maybe. Perhaps. When you stare at the ceiling of your stupid cave and think about him, his hair and his eyes and his mouth and his hands, it's—you don't know. Nebulous. A confusing mess, just like the rest of you.
He's something. He's important. How important? Well—very. He's very important. He's right up there with Jiang Cheng and Shijie. When you saw him, your rotten insides had felt raw and bleeding, like he'd spread his hands over the butterfly of your ribcage and pushed through your paper skin. Like he'd cupped his hands around your foolish heart and held it so tenderly, like he would've been happy to let you bleed all over him.
Maybe you should've kissed him. Just once. Just to know how it felt.
You probably should've kissed him.
When Wen Ning wakes up, Wen Qing cries and clings to him. You leave them be; this reunion is not for you. You lock yourself away in that cave of yours and you think of all the things you saw.
There were black veins crawling up his neck. His skin was so pale. When you held his hands, they were cold to the touch, but his smile was the same as ever. Soft. Gentle. Completely undeserving of all the shit that happened to him.
Look, Wei Wuxian. You've done it. For once in your life, you've helped someone.
You said you'd stand for justice. You said you'd protect the weak. Don't you know that you should keep your promises? It's the honourable thing to do.
You didn't manage to do the last one. Live with no regrets. But two out of three isn't so bad.
How did you do it? How did you have the fucking energy to be such a nuisance, huh? You were six months away from seventeen, one leg slung over the Cloud Recesses wall. How? How? You're so tired these days. You wouldn't be able to climb a wall if you tried.
So much for the Yiling fucking Patriarch. If only they knew you had back pain.
Is this his first toy? You're not sure. You've made him things before, little pieces of cloth stuffed with dry thistle, but he's never had something as pretty as this.
That butterfly. That damn grass butterfly. A-Yuan loves it. He won't stop waving it around. Every time you see it, your heart clenches a little bit. Then A-Yuan remembers the wooden swords, too, and your hands ache with the memory of something you'll never have again.
But. He comes to you, his little face so hopeful, and asks for his Xian-gege to teach him. So. Here, A-Yuan, look how you hold it. This is a basic sword form. Shoulders back. Yes, very good. A fine cultivator in the making! Ah—what's this? A battle with the fearsome Yiling Patriarch? How impressive.
You teach him. You duel him whenever he asks you to. The sounds of your swords meeting each other echo up and down the mountain. And you look at A-Yuan, sword in his hand, and you think: what if?
The cart rocks unsteadily beneath you. What do you look like, you wonder, with your dusty robes and wheat in your mouth, lounging sideways on an empty cart as Wen Ning pushes you through town? Ah—not empty. The radishes you didn't manage to sell are knocking against your hip. That's fine. There's still a part of town where you haven't tried yet.
Ow—that's a pothole. Oh, no, Wen Ning, it's fine. See, look, barely even a bruise. Ah, come now, you'll need to reach the far side of town by midday, or you'll never sell these radishes!
You wonder if Wen Ning sees through you the way his sister does. Maybe. Maybe not. When you asked to ride on the cart, you'd chalked it up to simply feeling lazy. You hope he doesn't realise that it's because you can't walk on your own without falling to your knees. You hope he thinks you're okay. You don't want to worry him.
Well. Would you look at that. She was right, wasn't she, Madam Yu? She was right in the end. You're more trouble than you're worth. Uncle Jiang should've left you in the dust where he found you.
You've tried so hard to make it worth it. To make yourself worth it. But look at yourself, Wei Wuxian. Look at your hands, look how they shake. Look how your skin is pale and grey. Look how your hair falls thick and heavy. Look how your blood congeals.
What did they see in you, you wonder. Your siblings, your uncle. Your Lan Zhan. What did they see in you? Why did they try to pull you back from the brink when they could've just let you fall?
What did they see in you, to make them think you were worth it?
Fourth Uncle's fruit wine is heavy on your tongue. Here, drink more. This, at least, you have not forgotten. This, at least, is familiar.
You regret it in the morning, when your head is pounding and your mouth tastes like a carcass left in the sun, but you're used to it by now. Your head will hurt and your mouth will taste like decay even when you've had nothing to drink. You do regret the drinking, though, when Wen Qing gives you a long look and tells you that you talked about him.
Ah. That's embarrassing.
Well. It's not anything she didn't already know. You're not subtle. You've been obvious from the start. How did it take you so long to realise that you'd given him some precious part of you? You clung to him like a parasite in the early days, a moth to a light. You orbited him like you were a planet and he was the sun. How did you not know, Wei Wuxian? How did you not know that he meant something?
God. You fucking hate hangovers.
If someone had come to you when you were seventeen and told you you'd spend your twenty-first birthday like this—kneeling in the dirt, pushing bones aside to find the plants beneath—you would've laughed in their face.
On the bad days, you think you might have a chance of making it out of this alive. On the good days, you remember that you don't.
You have them all fooled. Even Wen Qing, with her sharp needles and sharper eyes. She can poke and prod at you as much as she likes, but she can't cut you open from collarbone to waist. She can't peel you apart like an overripe fruit. She can't hold you up to the light and examine you, can't dig into your bones and draw out the rotting marrow within. She can't stick her hand into your head and take out what's left of your stupid, stupid mind, no matter how much you wish she could.
So, yes. You've fooled them all. They think that you will be alive this time next year, and maybe you will be. Maybe you'll make it to thirty. Wouldn't that be nice?
(You reach into your own chest, your own bleeding lungs, your shattered ribs and seizing heart, and you think you will barely make it past tomorrow.)
You don't wake up in the mornings, because you never went to sleep. You sneak your food to Wen Qing's plate, to Granny's plate, and most of all to A-Yuan's. There's no use in feeding a dead man. But if anyone catches you doing it, they'll stare you down until you manage to eat something. Until you manage to waste a part of what little food they have.
Wei Wuxian, you wonderful liar, you.
The mud is cold and thick and sludgy. It's not the same consistency as the mud back in Yunmeng, which was warm and slipped smoothly through the fingers. Do lotus seeds freeze? Will they grow in mud like this? You don't know. You're not a gardener. You've never had to grow your own lotus pond, not when you always used to have a dozen of them right outside your window.
It's hard work, digging a pond from scratch. Ah, your clothes are all muddy, even though you rolled up your sleeves and trousers to try and keep them clean. Wen Qing's going to scold you later, isn't she? You barely have enough water for drinking and cooking. How are you going to find water to wash your clothes?
Well, that's alright. You can wash your clothes downstream, in the dirtier part of the river. Who cares if there's a weird smell after? Who cares if the blood in the water leaves stains? Oh, there's a thought—why don't you just go ahead and wash your clothes in the Blood Pool, huh? Go around in blood-soaked robes, leave a trail of reeking footprints behind. Doesn't the rest of the world already think you do that? Doesn't the rest of the world already think you bathe in the blood of innocents and gnaw on the bones of your prey?
Oh—A-Yuan wants to join you. He kneels down beside you and starts scooping at the mud the same way you are, though he's not really doing much. He's just moving the mud from one place to another. He looks so concentrated, tongue sticking out the side of his mouth. There's already mud on his cheek—how is there already mud on his cheek?
You sit back on your heels and watch him. Your terrible heart is cracking in your chest, spilling golden light from the fractures.
Who needs a core, when you have this?
You've lost your taste for the colour red. Ironic, isn't it? It's your signature now. Wei Wuxian wears a red ribbon in his hair. Wei Wuxian has a red tassel on his flute. Wei Wuxian's eyes glow red when he summons the dead from their graves.
But you've seen so much red these last few months. The blood on the talismans, god. And everything else. That ribbon in your hair, dirty and tattered. Your old robes, the Wens' old robes. Even the fucking apples that you see selling at the market. You're sick of red.
But here is your sister. Here is your sister in her wedding dress, red as a fresh-ground pile of cinnabar powder. It's so intricate, this dress, full of tiny golden beads and embroidery so delicate it looks like it was printed. Spiders and their webs could not compare to the sash of your sister's dress. And her hair, god, her hair—will it hurt, when she takes it down later? Will it hurt when she slides all those jewelled pins out of their places? It better not. If it does, you'll hunt down the seamstresses of Koi Tower and make them change it until Shijie doesn't have to feel any pain at all.
Here—she pushes a bowl of lotus root and pork rib soup in your hands. It's warm enough to scald your palms. It's warm enough to bring feeling back to your fingertips. When you dare to drink it, you can barely taste it. Your tongue is so used to ash and earth and cold, bitter things. By now, you know the taste of blood better than you do your sister's soup.
But you drink it, because this is your last feeble attempt at coming home again. This is the closest that you will ever come to the life you had before: here, in this courtyard, sitting at a too-low table with your siblings on either side of you. Jiang Cheng is sitting right there, hands wrapped around his bowl, Sandu resting against the table. You still remember how cold its blade was when he sank it into your stomach. But that's alright. That's in the past. Right now, the both of you are drinking soup and letting yourselves be warmed from the inside out.
Shijie brings a bowl to Wen Ning, who is waiting outside the door. The hem of her beautiful dress, that red hearth-flame of a dress, sweeps along the ground. You want to tell her that you can do it, that you'll be the one to let your clothes be sullied. Shijie doesn't belong in the dirt and dust. You, on the other hand, do.
God, you want to be selfish. You want to ask her to stay, her and Jiang Cheng both. You want them to come and meet the rest of your patchwork family. But to keep them in the Burial Mounds would be to condemn them to a life of hazy days and hollow stomachs, and you can't do that to them. You love them too much to make them stay. You love them too much to let them go.
You should've kissed him.
Wen Qing has been hounding you about it for weeks now. You've been tight on money lately, and she won't let it go. We won't make it till next summer, she says. At least, not all of us.
She comes up with a new reason every other day. The other Wens are old. Sickness or famine or simple age would kill them easily. She and Wen Ning have targets on their backs, and Wen Ning will never be safe the way living people are. A-Yuan is the only one with a chance at surviving past the next ten years. And you, apparently, are his best defence.
Take him and run, is what she tells you. The rest of the Wens will turn themselves in. Buy you and A-Yuan some kind of redemption. And you will be out in a town somewhere, hiding from the sects until it all blows over and you can once again show your face.
No. No, you'd never. You won't. A-Yuan deserves his family. You won't do that to him, won't take him away from these people who love him. This is the only thing you can give him.
You're a dead man walking, Wei Wuxian, but you still have some pride left. You've never been the kind of person who'd let someone else reach the execution block first.
The lotus has sprouted. Is it traitorous to be so happy? Are you allowed to claim this, even after you left?
Your fingers ache. If Wen Qing were to see you now, slumped against the wall in a sad, pathetic pile of dirty robes, she'd pull you up by the ear and march you to the fire. But Wen Qing is in town for once, because you insisted on buying potatoes and now she doesn't trust you with the money. So she's not here, and you're free to be pathetic in peace.
Come, move your fingers. You know how to do this; it's muscle memory by now. Do a scale. One note at a time. Maybe one day you could try doing that trill thing with the tongue that you've seen professional dizi players do, when they were performing for a crowd. You once saw a busker in Yunmeng do it. The sound was high and sweet, a hummingbird drunk on nectar at the height of summer.
You don't dare put your mouth to the dizi just yet. What would happen, if you blew into it? Would the sound ricochet, would it bounce off the walls? Would it raise something strange from the Blood Pool? Would Wen Ning come running, all the way up from town, his eyes black and his blood blacker and his every undead nerve ready to obey you?
So. You force yourself to learn how to use your fingers again, covering and uncovering the dizi's openings. But Chenqing stays silent, because you're unsure. You told Lan Zhan you could control it. The truth is, you can't.
Would it really be that bad if they killed you?
Oh, it would hurt, certainly. Jin Guangshan will not let you die quickly. But you're no stranger to pain. You can take it. If it means everyone else goes free, you can take it. You'd have regrets, of course. You don't want to hurt your sister. You wish you'd be able to see A-Yuan grow up. But it's selfish to want that, isn't it? When it comes to people like you, to things like you—is it selfish that you still want to live?
Ha. There's someone selling Yiling Patriarch talismans in the marketplace. You're ugly! Why are you so ugly? Don't these people know you were once fourth on the list of most eligible bachelors?
Sometimes you see them, your so-called 'disciples'. Wearing black-and-grey robes, wearing red ribbons in their hair. Going around waving nonsense talismans drawn in paint that's too bright to look even remotely like blood. Sometimes you think about what would happen if you just strode forward, Chenqing in hand, and told them to fuck off. Isn't it embarrassing for them, to pretend that they've been taught by you? What do they think they'll get out of it?
You entertain the idea for the briefest of moments: a school in the heart of the Burial Mounds. Who wants to come learn how to plant seeds next to decomposing bodies? Who wants to learn how to sew with rusty needles? Do they really want to be like you, these fresh-faced disciples? Well, alright then—let's carve out their cores. Let's throw them to the corpses. Let's give them brands on their chests, and scars on their stomachs. Oh, do they want the whole package? Then here—here's the hollow bones, and the half-mad mind, and the nightmares that will leave them thrashing on their stone beds. Here's the weariness, the ache that reaches right into their throats and curls around their lungs. Here's the headaches, the paranoia, here's the fucking fear of dogs, do they want that too? Maybe you should just go ahead and take a little piece of their hearts, and ship them all off to the Cloud Recesses. Imagine the look on Lan Zhan's face.
Ugh, no. You'd be a horrible teacher.
He's up past his bedtime, but he looked so cute and pitiful when he sat on your foot that you can't bring yourself to bring him back to Granny. So you hoist him up into your arms—he's giggling again—and carry him up the mountain. There's a flat outcropping of rock there, and you sit on it—make sure he's far away from the edge—and point out the constellations to him. He'll probably forget by the end of the week, but you teach him how to navigate with the north star as his guide. You can draw him a map tomorrow; you'll burn a stick in the remains of tonight's fire until you have enough ash to draw with, and you can probably find paper somewhere.
If nothing else, you can make sure he has this. You can make sure he knows the stars, that he knows the stories. You can make sure that if he's ever lost, he'll be able to find his way home.
And now, again, one more time:
The air is getting colder, but for once you have enough money to buy a few threadbare blankets. You all huddle around the fire and Second Aunt tells you stories. You're sitting next to Wen Ning, who has A-Yuan carefully balanced in his lap. Wen Qing is on his other side, contentedly drinking water.
The radishes are growing better now. Maybe your soups will start to have actual flavour. Wen Qing surprised you with a jar of chili oil last week, and you had to run to your cave so she wouldn't see you cry. You've been trying to get A-Yuan to adapt to spice, but after he burst into tears because his food was 'biting his tongue', you've decided that maybe his training can start a little later in life.
Today is a unanimous lazy day. Everyone's lounging around in the sun, aunties and uncles chatting amongst themselves. A-Yuan is dozing in his grandmother's lap. Wen Ning is playing a game of go with Third Uncle; the board is a square they drew on the ground, and the pieces are rocks and darker rocks. You sit with Wen Qing and pass a bottle of Fourth Uncle's wine between you, both of you dreaming of different and identical things. You stare down the path and imagine Lan Zhan standing at the end of it. You imagine Jiang Cheng and Shijie behind him, Jin Rulan a squirming bundle in her arms. They won't stay, you know they won't. But they've come to see you. They've come to visit. They want to know how you're doing; they want to hear your voice.
You'll run out of time eventually. But for now, at least, you can pretend.