Chapter Text
1.
“Do you remember the first time we met?” Wen Qing asked, a sudden, sharp change of topics they were discussing just a few moments prior.
Yet Jiang Cheng -- but he was Wen-gongzi now -- barely bated an eye at her, thoroughly unfazed as if he was too used to Wen Qing's random bouts of thoughts, which he was. He tilted his head to the side and stared at Wen Qing with his all-seeing blue eyes. “I was five then, wasn’t I?”
The sun was bright above their head, the shadows gone from under their feet. They were standing side by side, away from the center of the festivities, yet somehow still failed to escape from all those curious eyes.
Wen Qing hummed low, feeling strangely nostalgic. Maybe because it had been a long, tiring time for her. Or maybe there was something in the air, with all these young masters gathered in her home and all those sect leaders making inquisitive eyes at her brother after his brilliant performance during the archery competition. She could guess the sort of thoughts that crossed their collective mind, all those hushed talks -- that apparently there was one young master from the Wen sect who wasn’t as useless as the sect leader’s own sons. Perhaps this new young master would eventually become the sect heir, replacing the firstborn son Wen Xu who, despite his decent cultivation, sadly didn’t have the correct temperament needed to lead a sect as big as Qishan Wen.
No, Wen Qing firmly believed, that distant cousin of hers was made to be a follower, dutiful and loyal to a fault, but still a mere follower. Her A-Cheng though, Wen Qing knew, he was different, he was made different. Because in some distant world that had escaped them, he was once a powerful sect leader -- so brilliant in his might that he had single-handedly rebuilt his sect literally from the ashes of destruction.
Wen Qing greatly respected that Jiang Wanyin; no matter what kind of world they lived in, what kind of pain and suffering he had to endure -- Jiang Cheng, Jiang Wanyin was always brilliant in her eyes. And maybe that was why it was easy for her to give him the same name, Wanyin, Wen Wanyin -- because deep down, his soul was the same. He was still that same boy from eons ago who cried under the moonlight. The sole person in the whole world who could see her and who would always look for her, the anchor to the madness that was her dreams, her tether to reality for her to come back home. The boy who she so desperately wanted to save, no matter what the cost.
“The first time I met you, you were seventeen," Wen Qing said.
It sounded like a whispered confession of sin. It sounded like a cracked, fragile thing. Maybe that was why A-Cheng made that face when he replied, “Yeah? Was that the night of the Jiang massacre?” His face was set in neutral, tone indifferent as if he was merely reciting a passage from some obscure history book. As kind as he was, it still twisted something unnamed in Wen Qing’s chest.
Her A-Cheng, her bright and brilliant Jiang Cheng, who now knew more things than Wen Qing would ever do. Her A-Cheng who sometimes talked to thin air in whispers carried by the breeze, face closed off, the subdued slope of his shoulders, a tinged of melancholy bleeding through his eyes. In those moments, Wen Qing found that she had no courage to ask him what kind of dreams her dream self saw and what kind of tales she had regaled him with.
Wen Qing was afraid.
Did he ever wonder what kind of life he would have had, if only Wen Qing hadn’t told her sishu where to find him all those years ago, making the world believe that Jiang Cheng of Yunmeng died tragically young, that only bits of his mangled body could be found? He wouldn’t be known as Wen-gongzi then. He would be Jiang-gongzi and spend his days around water and lotus, forever doubting his own self-worth, or worse -- loathing himself because he loved the wrong person. Did he ever regret letting Wen Qing take him away? Did he ever wonder about the world he left behind where he had his Lan Huan, even at the cost of his father’s love? Did he ever ask her what kind of dream she saw in her sleep?
Wen Qing couldn’t say she ever regretted taking A-Cheng away, but now she wondered if perhaps he had begun to self-doubt everything because lately when she dreamed of him, he didn’t really smile anymore.
Yet, none of those questions went past her lips.
She studied the way A-Cheng tilted his head with a faraway look, like he was seeing something no one else could see, not even her. Maybe he was seeing her dream self, Wen Qing thought bitterly and she wondered, not for the first time, what she had said to him.
“I’m not a god, A-Cheng,” she said, pulling her brother’s attention back to her, the real her. Or was she? Was she even real? “There are still so many things I couldn’t control just because I know them beforehand. And some things are simply meant to be, no matter what I say or do.”
A-Cheng looked at her and she knew he caught on to what she didn’t say. He knew that she noticed his growing feelings, the wistful staring. She knew that he understood that she could know of things and could still be wrong -- that he could still have his Lan Huan despite what she had stupidly claimed all those years ago, that he didn’t have to look so defeated every time his gaze strayed to the figure in white and blue, peerless as jade.
But A-Cheng only smiled at her. Maybe it was something she had said before to him, always searching for him in her dreams, the secret of the universe she had no business telling, all the things he never told her in turn -- all of those that made him say, “Don’t worry about it, jiejie. I’ve got it figured out.”
That was the only thing he said that day. Wen Qing didn’t understand what was that supposed to mean, though she never found the courage to ask him again.
2.
It was a beautiful spring wedding, all red and gold and merry ambiance, and surely both the grooms couldn’t look any happier than this.
Even the ever-serious and stingy Gusu Lan had spared no expense in arranging their young sect leader’s wedding, turning the blandness and the monotony of Cloud Recesses into a scenery worth a tale -- even went as far as overlooking the fact that their new Lan furen was a begrudgingly acknowledged bastard son of another sect leader of questionable morals. Love trumps all, so it seemed. Wasn't it funny that their stuck-up morals were nowhere to be found now? Wen Qing stubbornly refused to hide her indignant snorts and glares through it all, despite A-Ning’s whispered frantic pleas of please stop it, jiejie.
Wen Qing turned to look at her other brother, the one she gained through dreaming, and felt her heart stutter painfully in her chest. He was standing solemnly beside her as sect heir, eyes reverent as they all witnessed the two grooms performing their three kowtows. There was a fleeting smile on the corner of his lips, wistful and bittersweet that turned her stomach upside down. She caught a glimpse of heartbreak buried deep in the depth of his blueish eyes that could only be noticed by extremely trained eyes, eyes like hers. The heartbreak, the heartache -- the same heartbreak and the same heartache from a thousand lifetimes away, the same pain and grief she had tried so hard to chase away again and again even at the cost of upending the fabric of time.
She thought she had succeded this time. She naively thought she had done well, that this was it -- and yet here she was, forced to face her failures, one of the many. This was not supposed to be like this, Wen Qing found herself thinking, heart in her throat, legs unsteady. Her world tilted and off balance.
It was only after the tea was served and all the guests had cheered so joyously that A-Cheng finally touched his cup filled with the best wine Gusu could offer -- yes alcohol even though it was clearly prohibited according to their own rules (ha! hypocrites, the lot of them) -- brought it to his lips and knocked it back with such a force that a small part of her wondered how in the seven hells he managed not to spill even a single drop of his drink.
Somehow, her and A-Ning’s bottles were drained out of their content without them ever needing to lift a single finger. It was A-Cheng who was steadily, calmly, drinking their wine in small, continuous sips. Only once the wine on their table was spent and there was a noticeable blush at the tips of his ears did A-Cheng put down his cup for good. He still didn’t say anything then, content with spectating the celebration unfolding all around them, the wedding of the century that was most probably going down in history.
Up in the raised platform for the ceremony, the two happy newlyweds bid their goodbye to the guests before retreating together, hand in hand. They looked happy, too happy, that it made Wen Qing sick.
She then turned her attention to her brother once again, studying with rapt attention the way his eyes shifted, the blue deepened with something so forlorn, untouchable. She saw something break a little more -- like fractured porcelain, a single breath away from shattering completely yet still held together only by sheer will.
“A-Cheng…” she breathed out, voice a mere whisper that was easily drowned out by the loud, bordering on improper cheers.
A-Cheng who managed to catch it nonetheless, turned to look at her from across the table. He didn’t say anything because she knew he understood what she couldn’t say. Because even across a thousand worlds, past and future, A-Cheng was the only one who understood. And exactly because of that, A-Cheng only smiled at her, soft in a way that meant to say it’s okay, jiejie, you don’t have to fix everything for me. Oh, how she wanted to scream and howl and rage.
How Wen Qing hated and hated and hated until there was nothing left of the world, except blood and fire and grief and anguish.
3.
It was Jiang Cheng who started from the beginning this time.