Work Text:
They don’t talk about what happened at Guanyin Temple. They never talk about anything, really.
When they dock at Lotus Pier, Jin Ling climbs silently ashore, one hand still clutching the bandage to his throat. The wound must have healed by now - it had stopped bleeding before they even boarded the boat - but Jiang Cheng is reminded of Jin Ling as a small child, the way he had clung to his toys for comfort after a nightmare, and leaves him be. Jin Ling used to cling to him too, but he hasn’t done that in many years now.
“Take a bath,” Jiang Cheng tells him. “And go to bed. I’ll send for a healer to look at you in the morning.”
Jin Ling juts his chin, defiant. “I don’t need a healer. Look, it’s fine already.”
Jiang Cheng takes his face in his hand and tilts it to catch the moonlight. Already, the wound has faded to a thin, pink line, no longer beaded with blood. As a child, Jin Ling had cried over lesser injuries, but now he stands firm, dark-eyed with compounded pain, an adult expression on such a young face. Jiang Cheng wants to hold him. Instead, he says, “You stupid boy, do you want it to scar? Do as I’ve told you.”
For once, he listens. Fairy follows at his heel, a silent presence, and Jiang Cheng hopes that she at least will offer comfort in the ways he cannot.
The moment he is out of sight, Jiang Cheng feels his legs give way beneath him. He’s shaking, exhausted in every sense of the word, and he sinks against a pillar and forces down the familiar rush of breathlessness. That’s the problem with pain: it can’t be ignored forever. It sours inside you, turns dark and bitter until it bleeds into everything like resentful energy. Jin Ling is only a child; he’s too young for this kind of poison. But he has no choice, because Jiang Cheng has once again failed to protect those he loves.
Forcibly, he straightens up with a long exhale. What if the night guards were to see him like this? You are a sect leader, he scolds. Get a grip on yourself.
He already knows he won’t sleep tonight, but he walks to his bedroom and stands for a long time at the window, looking out over the darkened courtyard. This is the home he had built from the ashes all those years ago, so hauntingly familiar. Children play in this courtyard now, disciples train, the plum tree blossoms and falls bare. Life has forced itself up through the cracks. It’s different, nowadays, to how it once was, just as Jiang Cheng is a different person, but some things will always remain the same.
It comforts him, sometimes, to stand here and watch; to know that, of all the broken things in the world, this he has managed to fix.
Mindlessly, he wanders the empty corridors, watching as pale moonlight casts shadows on the walls. He remembers running through these halls - not these halls, but the ones before - shrieking with joy, fighting his brother with wooden swords in the endless summers of their childhood. His jaw tightens. Jin Ling had never played like that; he had no brother to play with, and every time Jiang Cheng saw him - this small, headstrong child with his mother’s eyes - he had felt such a blow of grief that he had shut himself away.
His love for Jin Ling is raw and chafing, like a wound that reopens before it can heal. It hurts for both of them.
Out on the waterfront, he sees a familiar figure. He shouldn’t be surprised; this is where Jin Ling had come to sulk as a child - it’s where Jiang Cheng had often come, too, on his worst days. His instinct is to turn back - surely Jin Ling wants to be alone - but something stops him. There’s no such thing as being alone in grief; it ripples out, like water disturbed by a breeze, and touches everyone in its path. Solitude is easy, but it doesn’t help. He knows that well enough.
In his lifetime, Jiang Cheng has made many, many mistakes. This, at least, he wants to get right.
“A-Ling.”
Jin Ling glances at him as he approaches. He isn’t crying as Jiang Cheng had expected, but his eyes are dark and swollen. In his white undergarments, his hair plaited over one shoulder, he looks painfully young.
Neither of them speak. Jiang Cheng eases himself onto the pier beside him, close enough for their shoulders to almost touch, and lets his feet hang in the water. It’s cold at this hour, and they almost immediately go numb, but he doesn’t complain. He’ll sit here for as long as he needs to.
“I thought he loved me,” Jin Ling whispers, his voice as fragmented as the moon on the water.
Jiang Cheng swallows. “Sometimes, the people who love you can hurt you the most.”
“Then how do I stop it hurting?”
He shakes his head, wills away the emotion rising in his throat. He will not cry; not for Jin Ling, for the betrayal that will forever mark his ascent to adulthood. Not for the things he should have done and the things he has, for all the people he has left broken by his own brokenness. Not for the overwhelming love with nowhere to go, the love that ferments into sorrow.
“I don’t know,” he says. And then, because it’s something he should have said long ago, “I’m sorry, A-Ling.”
Jin Ling looks at him. He doesn’t tell him there’s no need to be sorry - that would be a lie - but he nods, and a single tear slips down his cheek; then, in a way he hasn’t done since he was very young, he rests his head on Jiang Cheng’s shoulder.
Dawn comes slowly, and with it the end of Jin Ling's childhood. Come morning, he'll be stepping up to lead the broken Jin sect, charged with fixing problems that were never his fault. Jiang Cheng had done the same at his age. He knows he isn't enough to take the pain away - he isn't enough for Jin Ling in countless ways - but this time, at least, he can bear some of the burden.
So, as the water turns orange and yellow and pink, and Jin Ling's head leans heavier on his shoulder, he allows himself to breathe. Perhaps he isn’t strong enough to stop the past repeating itself; the aftermath of tragedy is far from over. But there are some things he can fix - so, for now, he guides Jin Ling’s head to his chest and holds him until morning.