Work Text:
Jiang Cheng was finally resting, a welcome break from his waking despair. Wen Qing had honored his wish–tantrum, really–for her absence,but she couldn’t resist the urge to check on him. She told herself it was merely the impulse of a healer, the proper care of a deeply wounded patient, but in the back of her mind, where she hid and protected her true self from the horrors of the main clan, some small part of herself allowed that she cared for the proud fool.
Wei Wuxian was in the library, making a mess of her books as he desperately searched for some miracle for his brother; sweet, gentle Yangli was nervously making soup for her brothers in a bid to calm their troubled spirits. Ning was…somewhere, hopefully out of trouble and remarkably not underfoot.. Qing would be spared dealing with her brother’s nervous hovering, Yangli’s solemn grief, or Wuxian’s anguished conjecture; she could treat Jiang Cheng mercifully alone.
She entered the Jiang siblings’ shared quarters quietly, carrying a tray full of medicinal herbs, tinctures, and her needles. For all her skill as a healer, all she could really do for him right now was ease his pain as he convalesced. He looked, well, he looked handsome as ever, really, despite the unfortunate bit of stubble he’d grown since he’d arrived, but…diminished. Not the damage to his golden core, which required further examination to detect, but his entire manner, even asleep, lacked his usual cocksure mien. She had always suspected it had a certain fragility, his self-righteous self-assurance masking a deep internal hurt, one for which her curatives held no relief.
Jiang Cheng was asleep, not the terrible waking coma of earlier, but still a deep and troubled slumber that hurt Qing to see. She set down her tray and began to examine him more closely, though she didn’t touch him for now for concern of disturbing him. The whip wounds on his chest remained red and awful, though they were largely superficial. His breathing was labored from the broken ribs, but only rest and properly managed care would set them right. Beneath his shadowed eyelids his eyes moved wildly; he was dreaming, and none too pleasantly from the pained sounds that escaped him from time to time.
Wen Qing observed him for a long moment, debating with herself. She didn’t want to wake him, but she didn’t want to see him suffer, either. The poultice for his chest wounds could be left for Yangli to apply when she returned, and there were teas for his sleep, if he could be persuaded to drink them. Still, he was ailing now, and she had brought her needles…
These were the thinner, small acupuncture needles Qing had for more delicate medicinal purposes, not the more robust ones that she sometimes deployed in more dangerous situations. A single, well-placed pin could numb Jiang Cheng while she worked, and bring him the relief he so desperately needed. Decisively, Qing retrieved her needle case and moved to the head of the bed. She worked quickly and precisely, having always prided herself on her efficiency; the first needle immobilized him, the second eased his pain. Only then could she begin her real work, attempting to restore the proper flow, as much as was possible with Jiang Cheng’s missing core. He gave a small sigh, heartbreaking in its near-imperceptibility, but his eyes momentarily ceased their panicked darting and settled into a calmer, dream-like rhythm.
—
Again and again, Jiang Cheng felt the horrid compression of the Core-Melting Hand, a young lifetime’s worth of cultivation destroyed, the promise of his clan burning in the fire of Wen Zhuliu’s terribly perfected technique. Now he lived, if could be called such, in abject failure: his clan, his parents, his siblings, he’d failed them all. He would remain, a living ghost, doomed to wander a world that held no further use for the disgraced heir of the Jiang clan.
Then it stopped, suddenly, but not jarringly. The pause lengthened, a momentary respite that Jiang Cheng somehow feared more than reliving his dishonor. He hung there, in dreamless slumber, for an eternal moment of solitude, before he became aware he was not truly alone. Something, somewhere in that darkness, called to him. Neither light nor sound, but a current, and eddy which drew him along the benighted course of his consciousness unmoored in the ephemeral realities of time and space. Powerless, he surrendered to the tide.
A rush of sensations flooded into him, images and sounds and emotions rushing through, some his own and some inexplicably other, jumbled and out of order, each deeply meaningful and robbed of context.
Wuxian, standing atop the Scorching Sun Palace, playing a damned flute for some reason in the middle of a great battle.
A ferocious corpse with the face of Wen Ning, brutally taking revenge upon a group of Jin clan soldiers.
A scared and scarred woman telling the harrowing tale of Jin Guangshan’s twisted murder to a meeting of clan leaders presided over by Jiang Cheng himself.
Wen Qing and Wen Ning, standing solemnly and defiantly together at the foot of Carp Tower, awaiting their end.
A confused and chaotic melee surrounding Jiang Cheng and his siblings as the cold blade of a clan disciple pierced the heart of his beloved sister.
A young disciple, strangely familiar, on the blistering end of an older Jiang Cheng’s upbraiding.
The qi deviation of yet another head of the Nie clan, on the steps of Carp Tower, his brother too late to save him.
Himself, standing triumphant atop the white pyramid in Qishan alongside Lan Wangji of all people, their swords recovered.
A carved wooden comb left on a table before a newly freed Wen Qing as he turned his back on her.
Wen Ning, standing before him, holding his brother’s sword as testimony to an unspeakable truth.
These and more assaulted his very self, waves crashing against his mind from the vast depths of the future. Jiang Cheng clung to himself, but drank deep of this well of knowledge, this unfathomable ocean of time. He could not say how long he fell beneath its surface, but he knew he could drown in it if he did not fight. He struggled, climbing, swimming, clawing his way back to himself, baptized by horrid certainty he now meant to overcome.
—
Impossibly, Jiang Cheng stirred under Wen Qing’s gaze, his eyelids snapping open. She didn’t want him to hurt himself, but also knew another outburst might undo any good she’d managed. Still, with a short series of lightning-fast movements, she removed her pins and awaited the storm sure to come.
Instead, Jiang Cheng took in a long breath and released it before pushing himself up to sitting. It was another moment before he turned to look at her, an altogether different tempest in those eyes.
“You’re still injured,” she cautioned, unsure. “I meant only to help.”
“I know,” he offered simply, his voice gentler than she had ever heard it. “You have.” He reached into his robe as Wen Qing looked on in concerned curiosity. He produced a folded silk cloth, which he laid before her on the bed. “I need you to allow me further aid. To help you, to help everyone.” He pulled back the edge of the cloth, revealing a comb, purchased what seemed ages ago. His eyes met hers again, full of longing, concern, and resolve.
“Please, help me change our destinies; help me do the impossible.”