Work Text:
In Jiang Cheng’s dream, it turned out differently.
When Jin Guangshan called for an attack on the Yiling Patriarch, he didn’t have so good a reason as a murdered son. A cursed nephew, maybe, a pile of rumors—excuses. Excuses.
Jiang Cheng didn’t come when summoned, and Wen Qing didn’t give herself up when asked, and Wei Wuxian didn’t feel the need to appear and make everything worse. And when the Sects moved on Yiling, as of course they always would have done, Jiang Cheng went and he argued, and he pushed, and he fought for his idiot shixiong who didn’t deserve it but didn’t deserve this, either—
In the end, Lotus Pier burned.
His sister was alive, as safe as she could be in Jin Tower, but his home—his disciples—everyone who’d trusted him to lead them, to build up his birthright again—they were all—
A corpse wandering amid the ashes, blasted and blackened, right hand and face burned up when the Tiger Seal was destroyed, looking up at him through the wreckage. “Jiang Cheng,” it said, familiar dark eyes in the ruin of the face, familiar voice from a mouth not fit for speaking. “Jiang Cheng, I never wanted this.”
“A-Jie is alive,” Jiang Cheng told Wei Wuxian’s ruined corpse, lips stiff, jaw aching tight, all of him aching, all of him rigid, because he was a corpse too, wasn’t he, a dead man meeting a dead man in the ruin where they’d lived.
“I didn’t save you,” he said. “I couldn’t have saved you. You didn’t leave me the choice to save you!”
The burned corpse reached out to him, bones beginning to break through the ends of his left fingertips, as though he’d been digging through the ruin, looking for bodies, or for someone left alive. “A-Cheng,” said Wei Wuxian’s voice, scraped and ruined from his dead body.
“I hate you!” Nothing had ever been more true. His tears were hot on his face, so he must be alive after all.
No. He didn’t want to be alive. Not after failing like this. All his disciples—everyone he’d said trust me and led them through a war—
“I know.”
“Lie down,” Jiang Cheng told his shixiong, who was supposed to be the person he got to keep, the only person it was safe to want to keep for his own always. “Lie down, go on ahead. I’ll bury you first.”
“Jiang Cheng.”
“Lie down, Wei Wuxian. It’s over.”
“Jiang Cheng. I never wanted any of this.”
Jiang Cheng woke up. Got out of bed, dressed carelessly, took up his weapons, and went to the outbuilding where the demonic cultivator was locked up.
The young one, the one who, after he’d determined it wasn’t his dead shixiong in there, he’d had locked up, because the fool boy hadn’t committed any serious crimes yet, not even grave desecration; was no Xue Yang, no Yiling Patriarch either, and maybe, he’d thought, looking at the narrow, miserable shoulders and bowed head, maybe this one wasn’t unsalvageable.
Maybe the methods he’d turned to in desperation he could give up again, maybe—
Jiang Cheng sent the disciples guarding the building away with a gesture, stormed in, and sliced the ropes binding the kneeling prisoner’s hands safely overhead.
They flew apart, failing to catch the youth against the floor as he fell.
Zidian flew, and landed. Flew and landed. Thin black robes shredded apart and revealed red. The demonic cultivator’s stuttering shrieks filled the storehouse. Wei Wuxian had borne up better under the lash, at that age.
In the end, he ended the pain with Sandu, a swift clean thrust through the heart like he’d failed to deliver to Wei Wuxian.
Sandu, unlike Zidian, needed the blood cleaned from its length, and he did it with the dead boy’s clothes.
He waved the disciples who had been on guard duty in to take care of the body. They wouldn’t ask what had changed his mind, he knew. No one at Lotus Pier ever challenged his decisions, especially not when it came to the ghost path and those who walked it.
Sect Leader Jiang returned to his bedchamber, took off the blood-spotted robe, let his hair loose. Slipped easily back into sleep.
In his dream, he cut Wei Wuxian down for treachery before it could all go wrong.