Chapter Text
The news is delivered over the radio first, the old thing spluttering to life in the old police van Jiang Cheng had carjacked years ago and nearly causing him to run off the road.
It’s probably only meant for the few police still out there to hear, so they can start rounding up the little colonies of survivors, but the sergeant who used to drive this was already long gone when Jiang Cheng came across it, a bullet clean through his brain with his own rifle and a bite just on the turn of changing him on his arm. Brave guy.
“Surviving officers,” the voice says, as Jiang Cheng scrambles to check this is really coming through an official channel. “It is with pride and relief that we can confirm that the treatment developed by Dr. Wen’s team in the capital is both safe and effective for humans.”
For a few moments, there’s nothing but the sound of the birds.
“Trials on infected subjects and deeply appreciated volunteers have given us the confidence to say that the jab offers comprehensive and long-lasting protection from infection. This is a groundbreaking development that will save countless lives.”
The man takes a shaky breath like he can’t believe what he’s reading.
“We also believe that for Type-B infected citizens, that is, those infected who suffered symptoms whilst surviving the initial bite, the jab offers approximately a 50% chance of recovery from symptoms and a return to lucidity. Research in this area is ongoing. Distribution of medication to national hubs will begin soon. Await further instructions.”
Jiang Cheng pulls over, drops his head onto the steering wheel, and weeps.
-
Base camp has exactly one radio that Wei Wuxian had been able to access the official channels on before he left them, including the one intended for law enforcement.
Someone is always manning it, so it doesn’t surprise Jiang Cheng that their little commune is already in chaos by the time he arrives back with the pitiful offerings of this week’s supply run.
“Is it real?” Mianmian half collides with him as she runs out of the old schoolhouse to him, deftly sidestepping the remains of a Type A that Jiang Cheng has just taken out. He can tell he was a Type A because his guts are hanging out of his shirt. “Did you get it in the van?”
“I got it.” Jiang Cheng wraps her in a hug, feeling her warmth and racing heartbeat against his stomach. “She did it. Wen Qing did it.”
The pride and love for his friend threatens to overwhelm him for a moment, but he stays on his feet.
“Woah,” Mianmian says, noticing his exhaustion. “Come sit down inside.”
She punches in the door code and drags him inside to the ratty green velvet couch on the second floor.
“It’s hard to believe they did it,” she says, settling into the foam. “I thought it would never happen.”
Her face goes carefully blank for a second. Jiang Cheng knows she’s thinking of the people who aren’t here to see it. So many people, so awfully missed.
He can’t open that wound right now.
“It could take months to roll out,” he says cautiously. “We could lose more people in that time. They won’t all be Type B, and even if they are…”
His rant trails off. It’s hard to talk about these things.
“But the end is in sight,” Mianmian declares, and fixes a brave smile on her face. “We’re going to get through this, Jiang Cheng.”
They’re interrupted by his nephew bursting through the door, cheeks flushed with exertion and his face open and hopeful, brighter than Jiang Cheng’s or Mianmian’s.
“It’s true,” he says, not bothering with any greetings. “Jingyi was manning the radio. It’s real. Even the cure part.”
“A-Ling…” Jiang Cheng says, tone as gentle as he can shape it into. “Look, they’re going to distribute it as fast as they can, if we just keep doing what we’ve been doing for maybe a few months-”
“We don’t have a few months!” Jin Ling shouts back at him. “And if there’s a cure out there that can reverse this, I’m not sitting around hoping it gets to us in time!”
“What are you suggesting?” Mianmian picks up her water bottle, takes a sip. It’s a nervous tic. “Jin Ling, honey, they’ll get here when they get here.”
“Jiujiu.” Jin Ling turns his attention to him, and Jiang Cheng sees the tears in his eyes. “We can take the van, it’s set up for this kind of thing, we can get him the medicine and come straight back. If we get it too, the journey back will be safe and-”
“Jin Ling.” Jiang Cheng runs a hand through his hair. “There’s a reason they tell us not to try and travel to the cities.”
“We could…” Jin Ling trails off as tears spill over. “We could- we…”
“I know,” Jiang Cheng says gently, because what Jin Ling is suggesting is a bad idea but not the wrong thing to do, and he could never fault him for wanting it.
“I’m coming back,” Jin Ling says shortly, and leaves the room with a slam of the door.
“Oh dear,” Mianmian sighs. “We should have seen that coming.”
“Shit.” Jiang Cheng rubs his head. “It’s impossible, right?”
“He’s grieving.” Mianmian squeezes his elbow. “There was no hope. Now there’s hope. How do you let that slip away?”
“It’s a bad idea,” he says sharply. “And I know there was no cure back then, but look what happened to Nie Mingjue.”
“Yeah. Maybe you should talk to Huaisang.”
Jiang Cheng frowns at her. He doesn’t talk to Nie Huaisang much, not anymore. He can be kind of a lot to deal with, which, given the circumstances they’ve found themselves in, is understandable.
“Sorry,” she winces. “Bad idea.”
“I’ll check on the kids,” he says finally. “Maybe once the shock wears off, he’ll let the idea go.”
-
If the kids (who are really adults now, but honestly, who’s keeping track?) have any inclination towards dropping the idea, they’re not letting on.
Jin Ling is sitting in the doorway when Jiang Cheng approaches. His sword is resting in his lap as a precaution, but Jiang Cheng knows he has no intention of using it.
“You can come closer, you know,” Jin Ling says tiredly. “He’s not going to get you. The chain is holding.”
There’s a loud groaning from inside the room, followed by a brief scuffle.
“We’re fine!” Sizhui calls from the other side of the door, which is only about half as reassuring as it should be.
Jiang Cheng is not exactly a fan of the fact that his nephew and his best friends have, for the better part of a year, been keeping Ouyang Zizhen chained to a wall on the top floor of their quarantine zone.
But, the kid’s a Type-B which means he’s technically still alive, which means Jin Ling will never forgive his uncle if he puts the poor guy out of his misery.
“He had a lucid moment this morning,” Jin Ling tells him, and Jiang Cheng knows what he’s trying to ask for. “He kept screaming, and then he was going to hurt himself so Jingyi knocked him out. He was gone again when he woke up.”
“I’m sorry.” Jiang Cheng sits down next to him. “Is he still running a fever?”
“Yeah, it’s worse today.” Jin Ling runs a hand through his hair. “We’re trying to get some meds into him.”
“Mm.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Jin Ling says grimly.
Of course he does. Jiang Cheng, though sympathetic and still allowing this to continue, has not made a secret of the fact that he can only see this ending in more devastation than a simple, immediate execution would have done.
“We haven’t talked about it yet,” Jin Ling says, slowly like he’s thinking it through. “But if we get him the cure and it doesn’t work, I think…”
Jiang Cheng nods. He doesn’t interrupt, but Jin Ling doesn’t finish the sentence.
He remembers how all this had gone down years before when Huaisang had arrived into their safe zone, his brother in tow but no longer his brother, and the tragedy of the way it all ended.
It wasn’t Huaisang’s fault, he tells himself again. It wasn’t even really Nie Mingjue’s.
This mantra is the only reason he allows the current charade to continue.
Still, he wants Jin Ling to feel like he’s being listened to, at least a little bit, even if the outcome of this will be the same no matter what.
He squeezes Jin Ling’s shoulder and, with one hand resting on the gun in his holster, steps into the room.
Zizhen pulls towards him as soon as he crosses the boundary, but the chains stop him before he can get close enough to be any danger. Jiang Cheng’s finger twitches on the gun anyway.
“It’s fine,” Jingyi says quickly, seeing his frown. “Were you startled, Zizhen? It’s okay, it’s just A-Ling’s jiujiu, you know him.”
Zizhen jolts around to look over at him, which is probably more to do with tracking noise than anything else, not that Jiang Cheng says this out loud.
“I know, I know it’s scary,” he continues patiently, slowly reeling the chain back to shorten it. “It’s not going to be much longer, okay?”
Jiang Cheng looks over at Sizhui. He looks exhausted, his hair scraped into a messy bun and wearing the makeshift armour the three of them had cobbled together, a far cry from the always angelic and put-together tween he was before this started.
“Sorry.” Sizhui wipes sweat from his forehead. “He’s usually calmer. It’s the syringe with the meds. It freaks him out.”
“You heard the news?” Jiang Cheng says finally.
“We heard,” Jingyi says. “And I told Zizhen, see? This will all be over soon, Jiang Cheng will get you right to Doctor Wen, and we’ll all be laughing about that one year you went crazy and tried to eat people.”
Jiang Cheng looks at him like he might be mad.
Lan Jingyi looks away.
It’s Sizhui who speaks next, much less eloquent and reasoned than usual.
“Please.”
Jiang Cheng sees the pain in both their eyes, the same way Jin Ling has looked since they brought Zizhen back last winter after a week gone, blue with the cold, snow and mud gathered in his hair and still wearing his yellow summer camp t-shirt.
He might have been about to tell them no, that it was too dangerous a risk for too slim a chance, that they’re not taking a chance on any more lives for one that’s already over.
Then, he makes the mistake of looking at the kid’s face.
Zizhen doesn’t look a lot like himself these days. He’s lost most of his baby fat because he barely eats what they try to feed him and his usual sunny smile is replaced with a twisted snarl or slack jaw, but his eyes are still his own and they’re fixed on Jiang Cheng now with an intensity that’s either hunger or a plea.
Whether it’s to be saved or killed, Jiang Cheng can’t say.
Either way, he doesn’t think they’d all survive the journey.
“We’ll take you,” a voice says in the doorway that is not Jiang Cheng.
Nie Huaisang is leaning against the doorframe, a pocket knife in one hand that he’d only be able to use if he was already in danger. He’s wearing a grey vest and black shorts, but this building isn’t well-insulated in any way, so he’s wearing one of Nie Mingjue’s old fur-lined coats over it. It comes down to his knees.
“Nie Huaisang!” Jiang Cheng snaps.
“Relax, Jiang Cheng.” Huaisang rolls his eye, the one that still works, as if Jiang Cheng is the one being unreasonable here. “Your kids are good fighters, and the little zombie will be fine in the cell in your van.”
“Don’t call him that,” Jin Ling says sharply from where he’s followed Huaisang into the room, face angry but suddenly hopeful. “Will you really take us?”
Jingyi and Sizhui are watching them carefully, but Jiang Cheng can see the same thing mirrored on their faces. Suddenly, this all feels nothing but cruel.
“Come with me,” Jiang Cheng hisses at him, then grabs Huaisang by the soft flesh of his elbow and marches him out of the room past his nephew and to the currently empty med bay down the hall.
“You always yank me around,” Huaisang says breezily as Jiang Cheng accidentally half-throws him into a wall. “I mean, if you want to manhandle me, you can always just ask. I'm into it.”
“What the hell are you doing?!” Jiang Cheng yells at him, steamrolling over…well, whatever that was. “Huaisang, you can’t promise them things like that! How the fuck are we supposed to get into the city?”
“It can’t be that bad,” Huaisang says dismissively. “We’ve got bullets.”
“It is that bad!” Jiang Cheng says, incredulous. “Pretty much the only thing they’ve told us the last eight years is don’t go into the city!”
“Yeah, and you think that’s because they’re overrun with zombies?” Huaisang raises an eyebrow at him. “Jiang Cheng, sometimes you are so dense.”
“What are you talking about?” Jiang Cheng pushes the heel of his hand into his eye. He can feel a headache coming on.
“I’m saying the cities aren’t that bad.” Huaisang uses his pocket knife to point, looking more sad and exhausted than smug. “They’re running the damn research labs out of them, why would they put them there if they could risk losing it all so easily? Everything is in the city. They don’t want us overrunning it, because then they have to provide for us.”
“That’s bullshit,” Jiang Cheng says, ignoring the way his body has started feeling too hot. “No, there were millions of people living in the city. That many zombies…”
“We made it out,” Huaisang shrugs. “So did lots of people, probably. And all the people who died in the residential areas, level the neighbourhood and they’re dealt with.”
“Fuck, that’s dark.” Jiang Cheng sits down on the bed and buries his face in his hands. “This is why people don’t talk to you.”
“There are a lot of reasons people here don’t talk to me, and conspiracy theories are probably pretty low down the list.”
Jiang Cheng doesn’t miss the discomfort on his face at that moment, a flash of pure misery at the kind of life they’re living. It’s true that a lot of people don’t talk to Huaisang much anymore. Jiang Cheng himself doesn’t seek him out exactly, but he has a hard time pretending he doesn’t exist. Huaisang is something of an indisputable fact of his world.
“It’s still a bad idea,” he says stubbornly, back to the easier topic. “If we even all make it to the lab alive, which we won’t, it probably won’t even work. And then what? We all put our lives at risk again to get a hopeless case all the way back here so they can keep doing this?”
“Then you finally put the poor kid out of his misery without destroying your relationship with your nephew who knows you did everything you could.”
Jiang Cheng goes silent.
Huaisang has, as always, landed right on the money.
If the kid had been anyone else, if the circumstances had been different, Jiang Cheng would have committed a quick and merciful execution the moment the boys first dragged him back into the main building.
“You’re not usually the type to risk your life when you don’t have to,” he says finally. “What is it you want?”
“Well.” Huaisang presses his knife to his lower lip, just short of drawing blood. “That seems like a very uncharitable way to think of me.”
“Hard to believe you want to come out of the kindness of your heart,” Jiang Cheng says flatly. "You don't even go on supply runs."
“I will concede that’s not the reputation I’ve cultivated,” Huaisang says, seeming as unhurt as if he didn’t know exactly what Jiang Cheng is talking about. “Jiang Cheng, if I could have done this for my Da-ge…”
Jiang Cheng scowls, and feels the first cracks in his armour. The guilt of that never seems to soften.
“You could have helped me and you didn’t,” Huaisang continues, voice softer now, even though he’s throwing the blame at him for something he said he never would. “You couldn’t save your sister. You couldn’t stop Jin Ling from becoming an orphan. But you might be able to give him his person back. These kids are better than us. We want a better world. This is how we do better.”
“Shut up,” Jiang Cheng says sharply.
“I’m sorry.” Huaisang holds his hands up, as if he’d had no idea that was a sensitive topic. “I am. You know your nephew better than I do.”
Jiang Cheng feels the hurt roll over him in a wave, but the exhaustion stops it at its crest.
He thinks of his sister’s face, and the way it’s reflected in Jin Ling’s, and he lets himself walk right into Huaisang’s carefully laid trap once more.
-
Jiang Cheng takes a deep breath and looks over at Nie Huaisang before he opens the door again.
All eyes turn to him as he walks back in, waiting as if he’s going to announce the cure himself.
“We can’t take all of you,” he says, and hears the rushing exhales of the kids. “Zizhen and Jin Ling.”
“He only calms down for me,” Jingyi says immediately. “He’s gonna freak out the whole time. He’ll be terrified, you need to take me too.”
“I don’t care if he’s terrified,” Jiang Cheng says, regretting how harsh that sounds. “I care that I need to get everyone there safe, and Jin Ling is a better fighter. I can’t keep an eye on any more people. He can cope with a little confusion if it gets him to a cure. He’ll have to.”
“Fine.” Jingyi blinks back tears. “Take the sedatives.”
“We will.” Jiang Cheng nods. “We’re leaving at dawn. Jin Ling, get ready. Have him ready.”
“Thank you.”
Sizhui, voice brimming with emotion, crosses the room and wraps his arms around him in a tight hug. He hasn’t hugged him like this for a long time, not since a little after Wei Wuxian left. He feels so much more fragile now.
“I can’t promise anything, you know that,” Jiang Cheng tells him, though he adds a squeeze for good measure. “Get some rest.”
The boys turn away again, their attention immediately turned back to Zizhen, who, in a few days, will either be back with them or finally gone beyond reach.
Jiang Cheng turns away from them to give them some semblance of privacy.
Huaisang is watching him again.
“I care about the kid, you know,” he says as he follows Jiang Cheng back to the stairwell. “I don’t always have some ulterior motive. I’m tired, Jiang Cheng. I want a happy ending.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you know the situation we’re in,” Jiang Cheng snaps. “You could have just signed all our death warrants, you know that?”
“Probably mine,” Huaisang agrees morosely. “I’m terrible with my gun. But you guys will be fine!”
Jiang Cheng, suddenly overwhelmed by the idea of losing Huaisang on this trip, of losing the last anchor to his old life, to his childhood, nearly pushes him down the stairs.
“Keep saying that shit and you’re not coming,” he grumbles instead. “I don’t fancy dealing with the cleanup.”
“You are so angry!”
“Why would I not be angry?” Jiang Cheng says, incredulous. “The world ended. Everyone we know is dead.”
“We’re still here.” Huaisang shrugs, as if this is obvious and uncomplicated. “And I like that vegetable soup that Mianmian makes. It’s not too spicy.”
Jiang Cheng stares blankly at him, then, with no possible response to this bullshit, slams the door in his face and goes to bed.
He dreams of the city all night, alive with people and a sense of a future every way you turn.
He’s five minutes early to the meeting point at the police van, but the boys are already there.
Huaisang is nowhere to be seen, which is both unsurprising and a little appalling.
“I told you brats I can’t take you all,” he says, dropping his bag of supplies into the back seat. “If you make a scene then we’re not going at all.”
“You are such a dad,” Jingyi huffs. “We’re not making a scene. We’re saying goodbye.”
“If you drag it out, it’ll be harder,” Jiang Cheng tells him. “Say goodbye. We’ll be fine.”
Sizhui disappears into the back of the van without protest. Jiang Cheng can see the edge of a long chain and a pink blanket on the floor, but the quiet within tells him they’ve already had to knock Zizhen out to get him this far without risking an attack.
This was a terrible idea.
Jingyi stays outside with Jin Ling, rubbing his shoulders with both hands as they talk quietly. Jiang Cheng can’t imagine what they’re discussing, how anyone can find the words for the things they’re doing and say them aloud without screaming.
He climbs into the driver’s seat, resting his hands on the wheel as an instinct, used to having to speed off at any moment. Sometimes he wonders about the man who used to drive this van before the world changed, imagines looking out of a squeaky clean windshield at a busy road lit up with traffic and the hum of music on the radio. All he has is what’s left of a highway and yesterday’s crackle of life. He feels like he’s sitting in his skeleton.
Still, there’s a beauty in it. The smog has dwindled every year since industry collapsed, and it means a clear view of rolling hills and mountains, all bursting at the seams with flowers.
The world, he remembers, has only ended for the people.
“You’ll be okay,” he hears Jingyi saying now, voice louder than Sizhui’s once he entered the van. “Don’t be scared. This is how much we love you. That’s why you’re going, see? And you’ll come home to us and we’ll make sweets again, we saved up the supplies. So we have that to look forward to!”
Jiang Cheng closes his eyes at the first sense of stinging.
“I’m here!” Huaisang’s voice rings out across the courtyard, obnoxiously loud for so early. He’ll have woken the kids back in the settlement. “Fuck, it’s early. Are we on a deadline?”
“Maybe.” Jiang Cheng opens the passenger side door for him. “Zizhen’s had a fever all week.”
“I didn’t know zombies could get sick,” Huaisang chatters away. “I guess it makes sense for a Type B. It seems unfair though. Like if a virus takes over your body and controls you like a giant meat puppet, you should at least be able to stave off the flu.”
Jiang Cheng stares at him.
“I put my bag in the backseat,” Huaisang continues. “I’ve got my food rations for the week, warmer clothes, more guns and ammo.”
“I’ve got enough weapons already,” Jiang Cheng grumbles.
“Can never have too many,” Huaisang replies sagely. “Hey, if we want to reach the first fuel place before dark we need to head out.”
“You studied the maps?” Jiang Cheng asks, doing a poor job of hiding his surprise. Huaisang has never been the studying type, before or after the virus. He used to cheat off Jiang Cheng in exams.
“I like to know where my next meal is coming from.” Huaisang shrugs.
Huaisang does like a good meal. Jiang Cheng, though he would never say this out loud, quite likes to look at him sometimes when the scenes in the streets are too awful to bear. He has a round face with soft cheeks as if he’s still eating real meals every day, a smattering of freckles from the sun that look more like he’s been out on holiday than labouring in the gardens, and his eye that’s not covered by the patch is always moving, always full of some unidentifiable feeling, not the blankness of the dead or the traumatised beyond reach.
He looks like someone from before. He technically is, an old classmate of Jiang Cheng’s who he didn’t know as much more than a friend of his brother until he was the only other person still alive from that class.
He and the kids are the only familiar faces these days, ever since Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji took off from their base in a search for answers leaving him with Sizhui and no explanation. The kids are barely familiar faces now either, having gone through puberty in the midst of an apocalypse, taller and sharper and just different to anyone who was already an adult when this all started. With brains that developed in a barely surviving society, they’re more resilient and more broken than he can ever try to bridge.
They’ve never been taught rationality or logic, or anything really. It’s probably why their hope is so strong. He can see it in Jin Ling’s face as he hops into the backseat, leaning over the headrests to check Zizhen is secure.
His face is lit up by the dawn light for a brief moment until Sizhui and Jingyi close the back doors of the cell, and suddenly they’re really doing this.
Jingyi presses his palm to Jin Ling’s window. When he takes it away, there’s a residue left behind, a perfect imprint of a hand held too still to be a zombie’s.
They’re small in the distance so fast.
-
There are far more Type A zombies than Type B on the road away from their home.
Most people who are attacked are mauled beyond recognition before the virus takes over, dead beyond any ambiguity. Once a zombie starts eating, it doesn’t tend to stop until its prey joins it as predator.
No one is sure how Zizhen had only a bite to the shoulder when the boys found him wandering the pharmacy they had lost track of him in a week before, or why he hadn’t shot himself in the head to avoid the fate he had ended up with. At least then he would have died as himself.
Zizhen can’t tell them that, and the rest of them can only speculate. It just makes it a lot harder to shoot a Type B when he sees one, plagued by the memories of those tiny flashes of lucidity, just enough evidence that a real person still exists in the shell.
Weirder still with the Type B in question in the back of the van.
Zizhen has been quiet so far, still sleeping off whatever they gave him to knock him out initially. Jin Ling tells them he hasn’t really moved, still wrapped in the blanket they had tucked him into as if it offsets the muzzle and handcuffs enough to make it feel humane.
Huaisang doesn’t say a lot about that, just focuses on whatever he’s doing in the sketchbook on his lap. Jiang Cheng knows he’s thinking of Nie Mingjue, but he’s not sure how to bring that up, if there’s anything he can say that’s not stupid, if there’s a way to acknowledge the inevitability of its ending without implying the same ending to this story right in front of Jin Ling.
Jiang Cheng and Huaisang are only in their thirties, but sometimes the gap between their generations feels insurmountable.
“It’s a five day drive,” Jiang Cheng tells the van, watching out of the corner of his eye as Huaisang spreads out the map on the dashboard. “We pretty easily have enough supplies, but don’t overindulge. It could take longer if we can’t find fuel or we run into a horde.”
“There’s always the shops,” Huaisang says dismissively. “The closer we get, the more we can find.”
“And the more they’ll already have been stripped bare.” Jiang Cheng argues back. “Don’t eat everything.”
“Jiujiu.” Jin Ling taps urgently on the back of his seat. “Gun.”
There’s a zombie lurching towards the van, long dead by the looks of her, but fast. It already has one palm on Jin Ling’s window when Jiang Cheng leans out and delivers a clean shot to the head.
“This is why we can’t get distracted,” he snaps at Huaisang whilst Jin Ling wipes the blood from the outside of the window in silence. “This was a bad idea and you’re making it harder.”
“That wasn’t even a problem!” Huaisang shoots back. “One zombie, you took her out without even blinking!”
“We should turn back.” Jiang Cheng’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. “This is a ridiculous idea, the outreach teams will get to us when they get to us.”
“No!” Jin Ling half shouts at him, the same fucked up cocktail of anger and fear and grief that Jiang Cheng knows could come flooding out of him. “You promised we would do this!”
“Huaisang promised.” Jiang Cheng stiffly lays the blame at his feet. “I said no such thing.”
“Jiujiu!” Jin Ling cries, as Huaisang slides down in his seat looking as uncomfortable as he ought to. “We are not going back!”
“What are Jingyi and Sizhui supposed to do if they lose you too? You think they have the strength to keep you both like that? Or to lose you entirely? You would put them through that?”
It’s a stupid question to ask. Jin Ling comes from a long line of people who have done exactly that.
“I’d put them through it either way,” Jin Ling says, a defiant scowl settling on his face. “You know what I said before. I mean it now too. If you let him die, I’m leaving camp and I’m not coming back.”
Jiang Cheng closes his eyes.
Next to him, Huaisang lets out a shaky exhale at the enormity of what’s on the table. He pushed them all into this scheme with no idea of what he was doing. Jiang Cheng doesn’t know how he’ll ever forgive him.
“I’m not lying,” Jin Ling repeats, voice shaking. “He wanted to live. He was the only person who really, actually, actively wanted to stay alive. He loves our camp and growing new vegetables and teaching the kids art. Why do you get to decide we can’t have hope anymore? He would never have given up.”
Jiang Cheng turns to look at Huaisang.
Huaisang, for some unimaginable reason, is smiling.
“You are so like your mother,” Huaisang says softly, voice full of affection. “You really are.”
Jin Ling looks too stunned to speak, eyes bright and shiny.
Jiang Cheng’s chest hurts.
He thinks of his sister and the city and how much he misses them both, how it feels like there’s nothing left of her or home to cling onto. How Jin Ling is so like her in appearance and heart, and so is Ouyang Zizhen who carried himself through the years of the apocalypse that he survived with genuine joy and hope, helping to repaint the walls after they raided a design store, trying to recreate tanghulu from their local market in the city with a handful of fruits from their garden and stolen sugar, playing with the kids for hours to distract them from the sounds outside.
Huaisang is right. Not about a lot of things, but about this for sure. And Huaisang has also lost his entire family. Huaisang is the only other person who remembers his sister, as a person and not a mother.
They have to go to the city. His siblings would both have gone to the city without hesitation.
Jin Ling deserves to feel like they tried. If he gives up now, after everything they’ve been through, they might as well all lie down and die. Wei Wuxian and Jiang Yanli never would have taken that.
“If the city is unsurvivable, we turn around,” he says finally. “You don’t risk your life to protect Zizhen. And you, Huaisang…”
Huaisang looks at him, face guilty.
“Stop mentioning my sister,” he says, and steps on the gas.