Work Text:
It is not a particularly sunny day when Sect Leader Jiang slips and falls on the docks of Lotus Pier.
For a cultivator of his caliber, for Sandu Shengsou, someone who can inspire fear with a gaze and command lightning strikes with an iron fist, a slip is but a slightly embarrassing inconvenience.
But time has taken a huge toll on Jiang Wanyin.
A decade and a half of rising and setting utterly alone in unforgettable misery. Forgotten and left behind by all but an infant. Sect Leader Lan, once a senior. Sect Leader Nie, once a friend. Sect Leader Jin, fourteen years old and still so dependent on him.
Jiang Wanyin spent thirteen years kept at arms length and the fourteenth in slow roasting agony over fiercely ripped open old wounds. Rage, Bitterness and Loneliness slowing down his steps into a slow crawl, weighing down his body, crawling into his lungs and spilling over his eyes. And yet he persists for he is a Sect Leader and there is no one else by his side.
And so Sect Leader Jiang takes a tumble, hits his head on the corner of the dock and breathes in mouthfuls of clear water. When he is pulled out, blood gushes from his nose and ears in a simile of a qi deviation, except not quite.
And when he wakes up in his room, Wei Wuxian sits by his bedside. “A-Cheng,” he says. Whispers, almost.
Jiang Cheng’s head bobs dangerously forward and his vision swims, taken by fever.
Wei Wuxian is by his bedside. He wears blue and his face is not his own and so Jiang Cheng knows he’s real.
Jiang Cheng has his grievances with Wei Wuxian. hates him even. Hates his choices and his consequences. Hates that he died and hates even more that he came back to haunt him. Hates both Wei Ying of Yunmeng and the Yiling Patriarch.
And Wei Wuxian knows that. Reciprocates in some capacity even.
The fact of the matter is that Jiang Cheng has gotten hurt and fallen sick and a few hours later Wei Wuxian (who lives in Gusu, let that be known) is the one sitting by his bedside.
Jiang Cheng bursts into tears in a way he hasn't since before his last baby teeth finished falling off decades ago.
Wei Wuxian spent thirteen years dead and uncaring and Jiang Wanyin spent them all without a single person to spare him a second glance. And then Wei Wuxian came back and fucked right off to the Cloud Recesses as Jiang Wanyin wished he kept himself dead and buried.
But then he took a tumble and Wei Wuxian rushed to Yunmeng for him.
He has his grievances with Wei Wuxian and they're so big and so ugly and so many but he pretends he’s hallucinating a time when he was eight years old with a sprained ankle and Wei Ying, also eight years old, was the first one to come to his aid.
His head droops forward and he falls like a stone in his shixiong’s arms.
The only times his brother wasn't the first one to take care of him, were times in which he was dead.
Wei Wuxian has his grievances with Jiang Cheng too for he wasn't perfect and his judgment wasn't always right. But just as he came to his shidi’s aid despite it all, after a decade and a half of no one being there to do so, his arms encircle Jiang Cheng’s body and cradles him as if their (ugly, so ugly ) differences don't matter.
Jiang Cheng knows that if he ever wants to put them aside and talk to Wei Wuxian, even if he knows they still care for each other despite it all, they’ll argue and yell at each other because there's no right or wrong. Only what happened and what could've been. And yet…
And yet!
Jiang Cheng spent a lifetime hating a brother who came to him in the blink of an eye because he tripped and fell. He might still hate him even.
Wei Wuxian's love was what broke them and what still keeps them together despite it all. Jiang Cheng recognizes that his brother’s most selfish decision was made out of love for him but it was still unfair. He doesn't have to and will not ever forgive him for that.
And Wei Wuxian is not a saint. He certainly will hold disdain for some of Jiang Cheng’s actions for the rest of his days.
When Jiang Cheng's head hurts too much, Wei Ying lays him back down as if he's in on it and they're both eight years old with no grudges in between them.
defection and betrayal, selfishness and selflessness, death and transmigration.
Wei Wuxian loved him and destroyed him and blew himself up in front of him on purpose; didn't even leave a whole corpse behind, and still managed to keep his promise in the end.
Attempting the impossible and succeeding every single time, it seems, still fond of the YunmengJiang sect’s motto despite being more Lan than he was ever a Jiang.
(Blood wise. But Wei Wuxian is his brother by heart. A sibling that he loathed but still a sibling nonetheless. And he’s just proved that he’s willing to be Jiang Cheng’s brother before Lan Wangji's husband even if Jiang Cheng hates him for the rest of his second life.)
Lotus Pier isn't the same without his brother, be that for the better or for the worst. Maybe Jiang Cheng can be strong enough to work towards keeping up his own end of the promise too, even if it's bitter work.