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There were five of them, persons built not for kindness, but rather to carry the weight of their world across their well-honed shoulders.
A wily pilot who sails the solar winds with little regard for herself. A master ironworker who’s calloused hands crave the heat of a forge and never the battlefield. A woman of the sword, her blade a mirror to her soul as she searches and searches . An arrogant old dragon, not yet molded, not yet reborn, teetering on the edge of his whims whilst being crushed under the weight of expectation.
Comparatively, Jing Yuan has very little to his name aside from a stubborn drive to outlive just about every one.
It does not come easily; the drive to survive. Instinct pulls at his being and tugs at the corners of his brain, infecting every cell that flows through his body. For many, it is a means to an end. For him, though, it is the tide of the ocean, the boat that comes into port, an expected course, well-charted and clear.
He is wise. He knows this. Others know this. The universe knows this. But preventative measures are only as wise as the person who plots, and even Jing Yuan is wrong from time to time. Like the tide of the solar winds, everything is push and pull. Ebb and flow. Except for the rules of the universe. Those are strict, unpardonable sins, things which there are no getting around.
Time passes. Jing Yuan ages but does not die. Instead, he learns; learns how to read people, how to anticipate action and reaction, and how to draw out the potential of oneself, both good and bad. Life is a game, the worst kind with high stakes and rarely good endings.
Jing Yuan should have known. He is old now but was so young then. Laughter and friendship were the only things he thought about in his youthful, foolish idealism. Strength built on camaraderie without a shred of consideration that his plucky little team might not withstand the test of time.
If he had the chance he would go back. Stick his hand into the muck of the past, right their wrongs, and hope to still have a family in the future. Those days of laughter and shared drinks in Scaregorge Waterscape wouldn’t be the distant past, but a constant in the present.
But, if given the chance, he also knows that he should and would not.
#
Baiheng dies as Jing Yuan expected; with a smile on her face and sticking her hand directly into danger. It should have been simple enough after; they would mourn her loss, find another fifth, and move on with their lives.
Things are never simple.
Jing Yuan is long-lived and has lost many in his life, but this is the first time that he truly experiences grief. It is a dull simmer in his gut. It curdles the lifeblood that flows through his veins, turning his being sour. Not for the first time he wonders what mortality would be like, to only have to live with such a feeling for barely a few decades. A relief, he thinks.
He does not know that pleasure. He will never know that pleasure, so once the curiosity of his grief settles into a dim pulse, Jing Yuan picks up his sword, states his intentions, and moves on.
The others do not. The others do not look to the future, keeping their gazes turned to the past instead, bodies twisted at the waist. Caught between then and now.
Jing Yuan knows he can guide them. But Jing Yuan also knows that they will not listen, so he does nothing. Just stands there and watches as they plot their doom, watching as their downfall begins to slowly unfold. Nothing good lasts forever. He was a fool to think anything but.
And it stings; the knowledge that this will come to an end but it isn’t the first time he’s ever thought as such. As he does with everything, Jing Yuan plans. Reads between the lines and anticipates the future, weaving together dreams and foresight, and every inkling of expectation and regret.
He anticipates the tragedy for decades at this point, he just didn’t know what form it would come in.
#
The unshakable Imbibitor Lunae is the first to fall from grace and give in to grief. Mistakes are made because he is an arrogant man. Powers are stolen and used because he thinks it is his right. All suffer.
Jing Yuan watches from afar knowing that he should not get involved. There should be at least one left behind in the aftermath of sin. But it is hard. He prides himself on being a rational man but it is hard. He is pulled between his loyalty to his people and his family found. The answer should be obvious. He swore an oath and it should come easily.
The answer is not obvious nor does it come easily. He nearly finds himself stepping ankle-deep in the mess. He has to moor himself, tether himself to the dock with his work, a rope as thick as his forearm. Conviction comes at the price of pain. Jing Yuan loses not one, but the rest of those he loves, one after the other, like a stack of cards coming down.
Sins are sins. There is little he can do but click his teeth at Dan Feng and watch him part the seas, even if he knows why. Even if Jing Yuan feels that same anger and need deep in his bones and wishes that he could have been beside him to help.
Jing Yuan steps in too late. The Ten-Lords Commission and the Vidyadhara only listen to his pleas because of his title and rank, and because they cannot risk his fury. Because his cooperation is worth more than losing his loyalty.
He does not do much. He is allowed to give Dan Feng his shackles. Jing Yuan whispers his apologies as he snaps them around the too-thin wrists of a man who deserves better.
When they meet for one last gaze, Jing Yuan expects anger.
But Dan Feng just gives him a soft sigh, the skin around his eyes wrinkled, aging him one thousand years.
Jing Yuan never forgets that look. He thinks about it often, even now.
#
It’s anyone’s race as their merry band barrels to the end. Yingxing is no fighter and yet, survives their tampering and comes out the other end immortal. Mara-struck. Unhinged. Dying and dying and dying.
When he is banished, Jing Yuan does not stop it. He does not go after him, nor does he plead for his case. There is no saving a man who cannot be saved and by now, Jing Yuan has learned to pick his battles. This is one that he cannot win. His efforts are better spent somewhere that can actually make a difference, honoring the Xianzhou and all that Jing Yuan is supposed to stand for. A hard but important lesson.
He lets Jingliu steal Yingxing away. And Jing Yuan is no fool; he sees creepings of that same madness in her as well. Jing Yuan, not for the first time, chooses humanity over those he loves.
And oh, it hurts. That he will not save them, that he cannot. That these two will suffer the same fate as the others, and that for all the power and influence that he holds in his palm, Jing Yuan is utterly useless when it matters most.
Grief after grief, pain after pain. These are the years that Jing Yuan spends with a smile on his face that masks the sadness that cuts through his being. How can one be so lonely when so surrounded by others? It is because he has no one, that those he cared for have all left. Because it is not them who left, but rather he who abandoned them.
Jingliu had a dream, once. “I will cut down even the stars in the sky.”
Jing Yuan wonders if her mara-addled mind will ever get the chance.
#
And then there was one.
Even when standing in a sea of people on the Luofu he is helplessly alone. Even when sparring with Yanqing, or giving orders, or charioteering a starship that rides the waves of the stars, there is a deep-seated longing that spoils his soil.
He stands on the bridge alone, old and bitter, broken and beleaguered. His grief has carved so deep into his soul that Jing Yuan wonders if he is capable of happiness anymore. Part of him thinks there is no point—and that part is the angry part, the one who wishes he wouldn’t waste time on others.
But the rest of him is caught in the past, soaking up those days that only he seems to know. The others do not remember. Two are mara-struck and two are dead. Dan Heng is a ghost of the man he once was and Jing Yuan hates that he looks at him and sees only a memory.
Tonight, like many nights, he sits outside his home. He nurses a measure of alcohol so long, lost in his thoughts, that he almost forgets to drink it. Fu Xuan sits beside him and rudely pours herself a cup.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks even though she already knows the answer.
“Nothing,” he replies before lifting his hand in a mock toast.
He likes that when he smiles, she knows it is false, a sarcastic little mask that he dons to hide his pain. And despite her curiosity, Fu Xuan says nothing. She doesn’t even sip her drink, she just sits beside him and for a moment it’s almost like those days gone by.
The burn down his throat is the most alive he’s felt in what feels like decades.