Work Text:
By the time Wei Wuxian reaches him, Jiang Cheng is long gone.
He hears them first, voices loud and disrespectful among the wreckage of his childhood home. They’re laughing, and he wants to rip their throats out for daring – but he can’t. Jiang Cheng is in here somewhere, and saving him is more important. Even more important than revenge, because nothing will bring the dead back. But Jiang Cheng is alive, and here, and needs him.
Still, his fingers curl into a fist as laughter grates on his ears. Then he starts listening to what they’re saying, because they might know where Jiang Cheng is, and suddenly everything becomes worse.
He’d assumed that Jiang Cheng, always headstrong even as he tried his best to be so cautious and responsible – to be fit to be a Sect Leader, to temper his passion into something that his parents might approve of – had been trying to get his parents’ bodies back. And he understood that. He knew it was stupid but he understood because he wanted to do the same thing. If not for Jiang Cheng he would have tried to do his very best to get their bodies back too. He was angry and upset because he was scared, not because he didn’t understand.
“Young Master was so sure that Wei rat would be with him. Who knew even he’d have abandoned the Jiang the moment their fates turned.”
“It’s a pity, really, how the mighty have fallen. The heir to a great sect, reduced to wandering alone in a village, abandoned even by his own shixiong. He even had the energy to lead our patrol on a nice little chase around the whole village.”
“Isn’t that really something though? They sang praises of that Wei Wuxian, saying he’s the better son. Who knew when push came to shove he’d jump ship?”
“If you think about it, that’s natural. He’s the better of the two, but he’s also the bastard son. Why wouldn’t he hate the real heir? No matter how his talents get recognized, he’ll never be the heir.”
Their steps fade away, but their voices linger in his ears.
When Wei Wuxian finds Jiang Cheng, amidst a pile of other corpses wearing the Yunmeng purple, he has been dead for hours. His body is cold, and beginning to show the onset of rigor mortis. Wei Wuxian looks at him, and knows that he will never scold him again for pulling stupid pranks, never pretend to be annoyed at his silly antics while trying to hide his smile, never chase away dogs from him only to end up petting them when he thinks Wei Wuxian isn’t looking anymore.
Jiang Cheng died with his eyes open, the blue-grey dulled and lifeless.
For a second Wei Wuxian thinks what Madam Yu would say if she knew he had failed her in her last and only request of him, what Uncle Jiang would say if he saw his son (his son who led the patrolling Wens on a chase, who didn’t go back to Lotus Pier and face down Wens for the sake of the dead but for the sake of the living) – or would he say nothing, and just look at Jiang Cheng with that slightly disappointed expression of his that said he had never expected anything better in the first place – how this would break shijie…
But he can’t pursue that line of thought for more than a few seconds. Jiang Cheng is dead, what does it matter what anyone would say anymore? He can’t think over the roaring of blood in his ears, over the realization that Jiang Cheng must’ve tried to lead the guards away from him, had apparently lied that Wei Wuxian wasn’t with him even with his last breath, had died protecting him-
He wants to kill every single Wen, he wants to make them suffer and burn, he wants to tear them apart with his bare hands, he wants
He just wants Jiang Cheng back.
Even when everyone else was dead, he had at least had Jiang Cheng. Jiang YanLi was safe, would be safe, and the Twin Prides of Yunmeng would restore Lotus Pier to where it belonged. Even when they had nothing else, they had had each other. They had had hope.
When Wei Wuxian goes to see YanLi, eight months after Lotus Pier burned, she cries so hard that he can pretend his own sniffles don’t exist under the cover of her loud sobs. Then, he brings Jiang Cheng into the room and YanLi screams.
She keeps screaming for a good while even as Wei Wuxian tries to explain the situation to her and Jiang Cheng stares at them with impassive eyes. Come to think of it, Wei Wuxian is sure that his dead-eyed stare isn’t helping the situation, but in his defense Jiang Cheng is. Just that. Dead.
When YanLi’s screams finally stop, she looks at them both with wide, unbelieving eyes. She looks like a child who has just been told the candy she had been handed was chalk instead. She has lost her parents, her sect, her home… but this feels worse, because now she feels like she has lost both her brothers as well.
She looks at Wei Wuxian, at the dark circles under his eyes, at the swirl of red in his eyes. Even when he isn’t actively channeling resentful energy its impacts on him are tangible. He looks haggard, like he has been getting too little food and sleep. Her heart hurts, even as she recalls all the things she has been told about demonic cultivation. The things forefront on her mind aren’t about morality or ethics, but about how it impacts its practitioners.
She very carefully does not look at her other brother, who stands by the window shrouded in silence. His eyes are empty, and his expression vacant. He doesn’t…he doesn’t feel like A-Cheng. He doesn’t even fully look like A-Cheng. His skin is greyed and cracked in places. His hair isn’t in a bun anymore – someone has been kind enough to braid it into a thick braid that hangs over his shoulder. She suspects it was Wei Wuxian – who else could it have been? For some reason the thought of Wei Wuxian braiding this corpse’s hair disturbs her. She wonders how A-Xian sees it now. Its just a corpse, there’s no sentience in it. Its no better than the fierce corpses they are taught to kill.
Except, she wasn’t taught how to kill them. She was weak, and she liked the kitchen more than the training ground. Maybe, if she hadn’t, maybe they would still be here. She knows she couldn’t have saved Lotus Pier alone. But maybe if she had been with them, A-Cheng would still be here. Maybe A-Cheng wouldn’t have been a fierce corpse, waiting for his master’s command like an obedient dog.
That’s what bothers her the most. A-Cheng had tried so hard to be obedient to their parents, to win their approval – but his nature always found a way to shine through when he was in his sister’s and A-Xian’s company. He was stubborn to a fault, caring and loyal but still stubborn as a mule. Somehow or the other, he must have gotten it into his head when he was still young that showing your love for things openly was a weakness that must be avoided. She wondered often if it was her mother he had looked at to come to that conclusion. But he never could hide it. The quirk of his lips when A-Xian would say or do something he’d deem particularly offensive, the ways his eyes lit up when he saw a dog, the small smile he reserved just for her.
“- he’s still here.” A-Xian says, almost panicked, and for the first time in her life she wants to slap him. But his voice is desperate and pleading, on the verge of breaking, and she knows that if A-Cheng were here – really here – he would’ve looked at her with a pleading look from behind A-Xian, where A-Xian would never see or know about it.
But what they didn’t understand was that they never had to. A-Xian was a traumatized child, and when he came to their home he naturally wanted to please them, at first out of a child’s instinct to not be sent away and then slowly to do everything in his power to pay them back for taking him in. A-Cheng, well, A-Cheng was A-Cheng. She couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t striving to make their parents notice him. A-Xian’s arrival only made him strive harder.
But with YanLi, they never had to worry about approval.
She just wished they had realized it before it was too late.
YanLi closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Then she smiles at A-Xian, carefully avoiding looking at A-Cheng.
“I think we’re all out of lotus roots, but I made pork rib soup for you.” Not you two, anymore, because A-Cheng won’t ever fight A-Xian over soup again.
And then, because she is not quite the saint people think she is, she adds, not entirely unkindly, “There’s too much soup for one, though.”
She stands and walks to the door, trying determinedly not to look at the way A-Xian's face goes blank. A-Cheng is worse, because his face doesn't do anything at all. He doesn't feel anything at all.
But something in her still softens, looking at her two brothers. She thinks back to the time she found A-Cheng and A-Xian crying their eyes out, thinks back to the weak girl who could never train with the weights like a real cultivator but carried two children back home with her anyway, huffing under the weight but always smiling.
"Welcome home, A-Xian, A-Cheng."