Work Text:
"Wei Wuxian, stop. Come back to Lotus Pier, please."
In this secluded Yiling clearing for their false duel, Wei Wuxian refused his plea, so Jiang Cheng produced his YunMeng Jiang clarity bell. He rang it once, and Wei Wuxian lifted his flute.
A cacophonic note drew resentful energies to it, and Jiang Cheng rang his bell a second time. The resentful energies recoiled. With each chime, they drew back, weaker and weaker.
"What are you doing? How are you -" Wei Wuxian shouted, stepping back, "stop it. Stop that!"
He played his flute and produced nothing but sound. Jiang Cheng advanced, eyes blazing and bell full of spiritual energy. In this clearing away from the dilapidated shacks of the Wen Remnants, no one was privy to Wei Wuxian's powerlessness.
And if they were, who could stop the Sandu Shengshou? "Stop. Stop ringing the bell!" Wei Wuxian shrieked, trying to grab the silver object, but Jiang Cheng batted his hand away easily and grabbed his wrist, which trembled uselessly.
"Stop this madness," he ground out, "come home with me."
A blow to the Yiling Patriarch's neck had him knocked limp and unconscious. A purple blur flew through the skies as Jiang Cheng carried his shixiong - so unnaturally light - back home where he belongs.
Wei Wuxian slumbered like the dead he surrounds himself in, and time passed. Jiang Cheng received word that the last of the Wen remnants from the burial mounds had been taken care of by Lanling Jin, exterminating Qishan Wen once and for all.
When Wei Wuxian woke up and discovered what has happened, he screamed.
"What have you done?"
"Brought you back home, for one," Jiang Cheng snapped at his apoplectic shixiong, glaring back into his silver eyes. There was a flash of red in them.
Until the bells rang.
Everywhere he could, surrounding his office, surrounding Wei Wuxian's chambers, along the boardwalks - Jiang Cheng hung YunMeng Jiang bells, paid a small fortune for the silver to be crafted before filling with days-worth of qi, produced during Wei Wuxian's sleep.
The red in Wei Wuxian's eyes fizzled out, and he sagged.
"They're innocent!" Wei Wuxian protested, staggering, "A-Yuan-"
"They invaded Lotus Pier and destroyed our clan and sect," Jiang Cheng spat, stepping forward to catch his tottering shixiong. "It is what they deserve." The YunMeng Jiang clarity bells will cleanse his mind of demonic madness.
Jiang Cheng pulled Wei Wuxian close to him, tucking his head into his shoulder. With such deprivation in the burial mounds, surrounded by nothing but resentful energy, his shixiong is tired and must rest. While some members of the Wen remnants may have been innocent - they painted a target on his foolish shixiong's back, and when he stupidly decided to play hero and defend them, they threatened the rebuilding YunMeng Jiang sect with retaliation from the other stronger sects.
Most unforgivable of all, they came between the twin prides.
Wei Wuxian struggled fruitlessly against him as the bells continued their monotonous chiming. "Rest," Jiang Cheng commanded.
Wei Wuxian is home, the thorn between them removed, all is finally as they should be.