Chapter Text
Jing Yuan feels like he’s been old all his life. Deep in the slimy, twisting corridors of his mind, there lingers a faint shadow of being a child; joyful, unrestrained, and barefoot as he tore through the labyrinth of saffron blooms behind the Yashiro Commission. He doesn’t know if that memory belongs to him or some phantom he conjured in a quieter moment.
What fills him now is weight. The heavy, suffocating drag of his armor, even when it rests in its usual place against the ginkgo wall beside his bed. The echo of his glaive cuts through his mind like the strident crack of bones, a throb that never truly leaves, no matter how many Vidyadhara alchemists visit the palace. His stomach is in constant knots, his heart caught somewhere between his chest and throat, bracing for the inevitability of peace shattering like brittle porcelain underfoot. He is strong. He is capable.
But he is tired. Seven hundred and twenty-one years have stretched him thin, worn him down like a blade that refuses to break and no longer shines.
It’s not that he doesn’t care for the people around him, nor that he wouldn’t give the rest of his years to keep them safe. Yet he’s tired of a world that chews up the boys he trains, spitting them out before they have a chance to grow into men. There’s an ache that settles in his bones some days, an ache that whispers for the embrace of his quarters: the mute, tender arms of darkness where sleep might finally find him, if only for a little while.
(Rest is a distant concept that slips through his fingers like water from the Lunarescent Depths.)
The General rises, pulls on his armor, and feels the cold heft press into his hands; seeping into his chest. People are dying, he thinks, sitting on the edge of his bed as his knees buckle under the gravity of the knowledge. He cannot leave them alone in this colossal, sprawling mess. He muses if the child he used to be ever envisaged this. All the evil long-lifespan species are capable of. Could he ever have imagined being this exhausted before the world revealed its cruelty?
He straightens, his back stiff against the unrelenting pull of responsibility, and strides out. Boots echo in the empty hall, each step a measured retrace of the military rhythm ingrained in his body: one, two, one, two. On his right is the Merlin’s Claw of the Xianzhou Yaoqing, on his left, stands Master Yukong, and behind him, a procession of Cloud Knights follows. They believe in him. They believe he holds the key to a better future. He carries that weight with a smile, one that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and fights the urge to crumble under its pressure.
Jing Yuan has learned (painfully, intimately) that there’s a unique kind of exhaustion in surrounding yourself with people you know will someday meet their end.