Work Text:
The only thing Yue Qingyuan properly remembers before his time in the sect is Shen Jiu. Not, of course, the context about or around Shen Jiu. He doesn’t know why the boy was doing anything he did. He doesn’t remember. He has to guess. He just remembers he was the most important thing and he had to get to him, then later, that he failed him.
So of course he goes askew. He treasures those old memories, he studies them after the failed rescue and determines he must have been the feral boy’s protector, making sure that his actions didn’t cause harm to others while doting on him at every opportunity. When he once again sees the boy, and he comes to the sect, he knows he was right.
It doesn’t matter that Shen Jiu saved him, not the other way around, it was a fluke, a one time thing. He remembers how it was. He doesn’t remember the people around them, but he remembers that, surely. He was there for the boy’s whole life, he knows him, and he knows what’s best.
He’s apologized for failing! He understands why he’s angry and takes it as his due. He only has Shen Qingqiu and the sect, after all, and he’s a very good sect leader now that he’s got the title so it all works out.
His lack context means that he stops anyone from looking into Liu Qingge’s death. It means that he doesn’t trust that the feral angry child didn’t turn into a violent adult, but he can wait to be asked for help. He doesn’t intervene because he’s trying to listen when Shen Qingqiu gets mad about his interference. He gets mad about his lack of interference so he tries, pressing harder and harder, because he needs to keep him safe.
Then the conference happens and it sends shockwaves through the sect, and he can’t fathom why the man was so angry. He had only lost one disciple! One he hadn’t even liked! One he’d made sure everyone turned a blind eye from so he had a way to vent! Surely it couldn’t be such a tragic loss as all that.
He doesn’t notice the scramble on Qing Jing as the disciples rush to fill gaps, to hide what they were doing from a Shizun who sees it all just fine but has no recourse but to accept the situation far too late. He doesn’t notice how much more bitter the man was, or how humiliated he was by what his student had done in public before everything fell apart.
He just sees the anger, and he tries to curb it, curb him, so it doesn’t end up aimed poorly, and it just makes him lash out more, makes the rumors spike in all kinds of awkward ways he tries to smother. He deflects and deflects on his behalf, inside the sect and out, never addressing concerns, never doing anything at all that would soothe Shen Qingqiu’s ire.
He did so try.
And then the boy returns, and suddenly Shen Qingqiu is taken to account for everything he’d tried so hard to hide for him, and he has to allow it. Has to, because he has to be a responsible sect leader, has to be the man who lets it go when there’s so much pressure.
He regrets it immediately.
He tries to convince Shen Qingqiu to let him do something about it, to give him the word that he would accept his help.
But he doesn’t.
He never does.
He never has.
Then the legs come and he doesn’t care anymore, he would do it, he would keep him safe. He’d finally uphold his end of the deal. He’d be the protector he’d been when they were small. That was his job, that was his place in things.
He didn’t see how his protection had always led to ruin. That it made things worse, that it made it all slowly more horrific.
He abandons his sect for the man he’d allowed to become the eye in a storm of suspicion and hate. He abandons his students to the armies of the only one that his Shen Qingqiu ever picked.
He dies in a hail of arrows, looking up to see that same student who would burn it all. Who kept him from keeping his promise to come. A promise long since broken. A promise long since taken out of context.
Even then, he doesn’t see what part he played in it all.
But Shen Jiu. He knows.
He always knew, and he remembered when Yue Qingyuan did not.
Shame the man never bothered to ask.