[ the wagging tongues and the fluttering carrion birds of rumours don't reach wei wuxian's ears, buried deep within the mountains like some fell thing, some beast that haunts the night and children's dreams. they speak of him as some cursed creature, driven mad and insane, a man that has descended into something less than human; a demon, a devil, an evil terror that fleets through shade and shadow and everything dark.
he knows what they say. he knows what they whisper of his brother when they think he cannot here, and sometimes within his hearing, too. he knows that he would break every bone in their bodies for it.
the skeletal hands grab for his hands hold more strength than anyone would have guessed, but there is still a part of him that remains, even now, completely unsurprised - wei wuxian has always been someone on some higher pedestal, always just above and out of reach. just because he has shut himself away like a hermit within these mountains hasn't changed the fact.
jiang cheng doesn't break the hold. he lifts his head and stares into those eyes tinged with red, tinged with some sort of madness, and he doesn't flinch away.
perhaps it is because the same sort of madness that burns in him. the same smile, the same sort of strange, ghostly light that flickers in time with the way the fire and the smoke rises from the ashes of their home. ]
Idiot, [ he only ends up saying, in the end, reaching his free hand up to touch palm to the curve of a shoulder, briefly; a light touch from a hand that has only really know how to break and kill. ] you mean we could.
[ later, when they find themselves within the caves, he sits upon the seat directed and watches the candles light one by one, each tiny speck of light highlighting different parts of wei wuxian; a pale wrist here, a wisp of dark hairs falling over the line of his jaw, the eyes that still gleam and glow. they aren't the eyes of the dead. he is still - terrifyingly alive, even after everything that has happened to him and by him.
he almost doesn't catch the other's words, but when he does, jiang cheng nearly jumps out of the seat. ]
[ jiang cheng touches him, grips his shoulder in solidarity and gives voice to a thing wei wuxian has tried, time and again, to free his shidi of. the bondage of his madness should not touch jiang cheng, who is already so deeply pained by his losses and his furious grief, yet here he is all the same -- saying such thing as we could and warming him with the brush of his palm. his own hands lift, cupping around jiang cheng's hand now, fingers against the arch of wristbone, thumb set along his palm as he moved and manipulates that hand to hold it against his face.
quiet, pressed in against his shidi's hand with the aura of a once-beloved animal slowly giving in to sickness. he has enough mind to recognize the hand that has fed and loved him, but parts of him want to set his teeth into the meat of it and force jiang cheng away from the burial mounds, away from him - to save him from having to watch the way wei wuxian will waste away and rot. ]
Those too-clever foxes in the Tower wants us to marry, for you to be my husband - for all of my assets to become yours, for you to collar me legally and make a kept thing of me and prevent me from threatening their rise. You and I know it well, what they're up to. But, they could give so much to the Lotus Pier, if you do this - you could have so much, and it'd be foolish to decline. The fact that I'm a man, like you, has no bearing on such a thing.
[ he practically coos the words, stepping closer to jiang cheng; fingers on the small braid along one side of his head ]
I'm asking you not to speak with your pride, Jiang Cheng: would you want to marry me, if you weren't being told to? I just want to know where we stand, before we inevitably agree to their terms. They've got us pinned down, using shijie and her happiness against us, tch...
[ jiang cheng shivers - the movement involuntary as his brother's hand come to rest against his face, his hair, fingers moving over the tightly braided hair at the side of his head. they are still strong - he can feel the strength beneath those thin limbs. he has seen him rend countless lives to dust, to unlife, with a mere breath from his lungs.
strong, yes, but at the same time it feels like that of a stranger; the calluses of his hands are different, the knotted hard flesh against his fingers in places unfamiliar to him - he had held those hands in his own many, many times before, he could not forget it.
it makes him want to clasp the other's hands in his own once more. it remembers trying forever to play catch up with him, following in the shadow of his wake, catching the tail end of a glimpse like a meteor over the horizon, and he wishes -
all I care about is your happiness.
be well, be well, be well.
if he were a better man, maybe, he would be able to say such words. if he were truly his father's son, if he would do something, achieve a thing near impossible - if he had the mind and guts to do it. but jiang cheng still feels the loss keenly - his chest is still an open, bleeding thing, as if the wound of the discipline whip has never closed over. if he were a better man, someone less selfish, he would be able to - might be able to, but jiang cheng knows that he is not.
their sister's happiness rests on them. the fate of yunmeng, its blooming flowers with their lack of luster, the soft pink edges of the petals faded and bleached anemic, is more precarious than ever.
as always, it rests on wei wuxian to come to his rescue once more.
as always, it is he who ends up benefiting, wei wuxian willingly carving flesh and blood to feed these rabid, raving beasts. ]
It is only for a short while, [ he reasons; he voices his hesitation out loud. he tells himself that it is not an excuse. ]
Only for a short while, just until she is settled.
[ jiang cheng is not one for wistfulness, he knows. still, part of him feels the pain of those words; they are to be wed to one another politically, not even for their own gains but for the security of the other sects. because yiling is a power too great to be left to fester and loom over this new era of prosperity after the fall of the qishan-wen. jiang cheng, especially, must be sore over such a decision being made on his behalf; he may be young, but he is a sect leader as well. to be told to marry himself off to a sullied, former cultivator of his sect, a rogue one that is sick with madness... it must sting. it must feel like an insult, added onto all other injuries.
at the least, it does let him know where they stand. ]
Of course, [ away, his hand trails from the braid in jiang cheng's hair. it slides away into the deep folds of his robes, flowing like storm cloud and night fogs around him; unnaturally alive, as so many things in the bowels of the burial mounds were. wei wuxian has always known he is not material fit for marriage; he is a fatherless child, a fallen cultivator, a murderer of thousands. he bears the power of the burial mounds in limb and organ, held together as a corpse would be by the fickle graces of this place. ]
For only as long as necessary, then.
[ they can play this foxes's game, together. ]
Before you leave to tell them of your decision, I want you to have something. It's important you hold it close to your heart, okay? Don't misplace it or leave it behind, you'll make me cry if you lose my gift to you. It's a poor wedding gift, but you can consider it an advance on my meager dowry, future-husband Jiang.
[ it's with deft fingers, slender and pale, that he picks apart the folds of his dark robes. little by little, until the angle of his collarbone is visible and the robes are slack around his torso, the edges of the brand burned across his heart barely visible. there is ribbon there, that he fumbles with, bound to the inner folds of his robes -- and as he draws out one half of the tiger seal, the room smolders with sudden heat. hot and damp, as the depths of the cavern where he had found that cursed iron blade; sticky and wet, the way the inner thigh, the small of the back would become in the middle of the warmer season. he holds it up, before jiang cheng's eyes.
wei wuxian's own are scarlet, the pupils blown wide and dark - rapidly constricting to pinpricks, then back. the focus-disfocus of his eyes is almost hypnotic, were it not alarming how quickly it happens, how eerie it appears as he grows gaunt and fragile while the seal's half is boldly on display. ] Take it. You'll take it, won't you? I won't tell you where the other half is, but you should know that if I need this one, I expect you to be at my side with it, Jiang Cheng. You can't go far from me, for as long as you have this. You'll promise me, won't you? Just one promise, between us - the foxes at Koi Tower can find out, I don't care. I hope they squirm. Don't you?
[ the words are sharp, savage little things. hooks and barbs that he sinks into jiang cheng. ]
[ when wei wuxian undresses, loosening the folds of his robes - when he holds up the broken jagged half of the tiger seal before his eyes, jiang cheng has only one thought.
a stranger.
a strange creature, perhaps, staring at him from out of what had been his brother. it is a monster who gazes back, an unseemly, unearthly thing that is not who he knows wei wuxian to be.
he had always been the scorching midsummer heat and the cool of the river water. he had been as ripened fruits hanging heavily in the trees for them to pick - he had been such things as everything is bright and warm and good, to jiang cheng, and he cannot remember the days without the other at his side, behind him, warm like the very sun that hangs upon the sky.
now, it is like some shadowy ghost that he presents himself to him; he is the dying light of the dusk, the red glow of bonfires stretched across blood soaked fields. he is some sickly creature that has hidden itself deep within these mountains to wait out his time of death.
but jiang cheng will not let him.
call it childish, call it selfish if you will, but he had always held onto the idea deep within him - that one day, he could restore everything that had been taken from him. that he could have everything the same as it had been before. yunmeng jiang, for all its lacklustre withering, has been rebuilt to the smallest panel, to every detail he could remember. all it needs, all he needs is -
his hand closes about the other's. the air around them wavers hot and hazy, nauseating in the sudden turns, but his grip does not waver. ]
I do.
[ jiang cheng had, and always have, been the one with the softer heart, the one who feels the most and for longest.
he breathes out - soft and secret, and it feels less like the promises of old. it feels like a pact, like some contract with a power he does not fully understand, and he tilts his head - he leans up, to briefly press their foreheads together, their lashes almost touching. ]
[ it hangs between them, the most horrendously beautiful thing he's ever crafted; a weapon with a mind all its own, given to its own whim. he does not command the stygian tiger seal, anybody could do that, but it does reflect upon him as the children of echidna look upon their mother - the one that gave them form. the half that he offers to jiang cheng burns, where the other half feels like a cold weight against his stomach, settled low and hidden within the folds of his dark robes until he hides it away.
the command that yiling and yunmeng marry could only come from someone seeking to fetter them both in one another's embrace, to collar yiling's patriarch and bring him and his armies of the dead to heel under the strength of a proper cultivator. even if that cultivator was the remnants of a once-destroyed sect. they'd want the tiger seal, and he was not going to let them have it. not it, not wen ning and not chenqing. they could have him, in his shidi's family register, owned as a wife would be -- but they'd never, ever have him. ]
You really are so precious to me. My wonderful shidi, you're going to make me blush like this! My knees feel so weak, are you going to hold me up? You should hold me up, you're the one who's gone and made my heart flutter! I can't believe they want to waste you on me rather than finding you a proper wife.
[ the words are soft, tucked in the meager space left between them as jiang cheng leans in to his space. he feels the warmth of his brow, the soft flutter of his eyelashes; softly, wei wuxian's fingers find the softness of jiang cheng's throat, stroking down the fragile column to the hollow of it. his outburst of merriment fades softly, replaced again by that more somber, unnatural sheen that grips him. ]
Take it with you, okay? You need to go back and tell them we're agreeing to this demand, show them the seal's half to prove my word, and I need to prepare for the trip.
[ earnest, he has always been. serious to the point of rigidity, constricted by all of what he should be and could be, jiang cheng is no more free of the shackles than wei wuxian is, the lands of yunmeng binding him down as surely as that of yiling, how it sinks its claws into the flesh and coils dark in his blood and narrows, shining slick like oil spill in the gleam caught in wei wuxian's eyes in the candlelight.
they are trapped, each in their own ways. they are cornered as wild animals might, their backs to the wall and the rest of the cultivation world against them who seek to collar them both like this, against and along each other, to drown or rot or tear each other to shreds and they would watch gladly.
jiang cheng does not trust easily. the other three great sects - the only three great sects, yunmeng's faded brilliance obviously not worth being counted upon for much, by them - have induced them to hold a ceremony of brotherhood amongst them, to live and die by each other.
what then, remains? what can jiang cheng possibly do, but to turn to wei wuxian, to live and die by him as they have promised?
in the end, he only has his brother to call upon. in the end, he is the only one he could ask to help.
the hand against his throat feel gentle, creeping down and down along the too-fragile skin to the dip against his collar like some spider, like some snake that coils itself around. his voice too, is soft - soft like some poisoned mist that would choke one in their sleep, and jiang cheng swallows dry, nods without speaking.
he does not stay long, after that. wei wuxian is his ( just as much as he is wei wuxian's, now and forever ) but the air of yiling is too much for him, the dark cloying aura that spills from the depths of burial mounds sticking to his throat. as he steps out from the mouth of the cave and alights on his sword jiang cheng feels that he can still taste it; the metallic bitter tang of power like blood, like steel. the half of the tiger seal tucked into the folds of his inner robe burns and freezes in alternating fits and stutter that has him ever conscious of it.
i will go to koi tower, he has told wei wuxian. i will go tell them. they cannot deny it, not with this. ]
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no subject
he knows what they say. he knows what they whisper of his brother when they think he cannot here, and sometimes within his hearing, too. he knows that he would break every bone in their bodies for it.
the skeletal hands grab for his hands hold more strength than anyone would have guessed, but there is still a part of him that remains, even now, completely unsurprised - wei wuxian has always been someone on some higher pedestal, always just above and out of reach. just because he has shut himself away like a hermit within these mountains hasn't changed the fact.
jiang cheng doesn't break the hold. he lifts his head and stares into those eyes tinged with red, tinged with some sort of madness, and he doesn't flinch away.
perhaps it is because the same sort of madness that burns in him. the same smile, the same sort of strange, ghostly light that flickers in time with the way the fire and the smoke rises from the ashes of their home. ]
Idiot, [ he only ends up saying, in the end, reaching his free hand up to touch palm to the curve of a shoulder, briefly; a light touch from a hand that has only really know how to break and kill. ] you mean we could.
[ later, when they find themselves within the caves, he sits upon the seat directed and watches the candles light one by one, each tiny speck of light highlighting different parts of wei wuxian; a pale wrist here, a wisp of dark hairs falling over the line of his jaw, the eyes that still gleam and glow. they aren't the eyes of the dead. he is still - terrifyingly alive, even after everything that has happened to him and by him.
he almost doesn't catch the other's words, but when he does, jiang cheng nearly jumps out of the seat. ]
W-what?
no subject
quiet, pressed in against his shidi's hand with the aura of a once-beloved animal slowly giving in to sickness. he has enough mind to recognize the hand that has fed and loved him, but parts of him want to set his teeth into the meat of it and force jiang cheng away from the burial mounds, away from him - to save him from having to watch the way wei wuxian will waste away and rot. ]
Those too-clever foxes in the Tower wants us to marry, for you to be my husband - for all of my assets to become yours, for you to collar me legally and make a kept thing of me and prevent me from threatening their rise. You and I know it well, what they're up to. But, they could give so much to the Lotus Pier, if you do this - you could have so much, and it'd be foolish to decline. The fact that I'm a man, like you, has no bearing on such a thing.
[ he practically coos the words, stepping closer to jiang cheng; fingers on the small braid along one side of his head ]
I'm asking you not to speak with your pride, Jiang Cheng: would you want to marry me, if you weren't being told to? I just want to know where we stand, before we inevitably agree to their terms. They've got us pinned down, using shijie and her happiness against us, tch...
no subject
strong, yes, but at the same time it feels like that of a stranger; the calluses of his hands are different, the knotted hard flesh against his fingers in places unfamiliar to him - he had held those hands in his own many, many times before, he could not forget it.
it makes him want to clasp the other's hands in his own once more. it remembers trying forever to play catch up with him, following in the shadow of his wake, catching the tail end of a glimpse like a meteor over the horizon, and he wishes -
all I care about is your happiness.
be well, be well, be well.
if he were a better man, maybe, he would be able to say such words. if he were truly his father's son, if he would do something, achieve a thing near impossible - if he had the mind and guts to do it. but jiang cheng still feels the loss keenly - his chest is still an open, bleeding thing, as if the wound of the discipline whip has never closed over. if he were a better man, someone less selfish, he would be able to - might be able to, but jiang cheng knows that he is not.
their sister's happiness rests on them. the fate of yunmeng, its blooming flowers with their lack of luster, the soft pink edges of the petals faded and bleached anemic, is more precarious than ever.
as always, it rests on wei wuxian to come to his rescue once more.
as always, it is he who ends up benefiting, wei wuxian willingly carving flesh and blood to feed these rabid, raving beasts. ]
It is only for a short while, [ he reasons; he voices his hesitation out loud. he tells himself that it is not an excuse. ]
Only for a short while, just until she is settled.
no subject
at the least, it does let him know where they stand. ]
Of course, [ away, his hand trails from the braid in jiang cheng's hair. it slides away into the deep folds of his robes, flowing like storm cloud and night fogs around him; unnaturally alive, as so many things in the bowels of the burial mounds were. wei wuxian has always known he is not material fit for marriage; he is a fatherless child, a fallen cultivator, a murderer of thousands. he bears the power of the burial mounds in limb and organ, held together as a corpse would be by the fickle graces of this place. ]
For only as long as necessary, then.
[ they can play this foxes's game, together. ]
Before you leave to tell them of your decision, I want you to have something. It's important you hold it close to your heart, okay? Don't misplace it or leave it behind, you'll make me cry if you lose my gift to you. It's a poor wedding gift, but you can consider it an advance on my meager dowry, future-husband Jiang.
[ it's with deft fingers, slender and pale, that he picks apart the folds of his dark robes. little by little, until the angle of his collarbone is visible and the robes are slack around his torso, the edges of the brand burned across his heart barely visible. there is ribbon there, that he fumbles with, bound to the inner folds of his robes -- and as he draws out one half of the tiger seal, the room smolders with sudden heat. hot and damp, as the depths of the cavern where he had found that cursed iron blade; sticky and wet, the way the inner thigh, the small of the back would become in the middle of the warmer season. he holds it up, before jiang cheng's eyes.
wei wuxian's own are scarlet, the pupils blown wide and dark - rapidly constricting to pinpricks, then back. the focus-disfocus of his eyes is almost hypnotic, were it not alarming how quickly it happens, how eerie it appears as he grows gaunt and fragile while the seal's half is boldly on display. ] Take it. You'll take it, won't you? I won't tell you where the other half is, but you should know that if I need this one, I expect you to be at my side with it, Jiang Cheng. You can't go far from me, for as long as you have this. You'll promise me, won't you? Just one promise, between us - the foxes at Koi Tower can find out, I don't care. I hope they squirm. Don't you?
[ the words are sharp, savage little things. hooks and barbs that he sinks into jiang cheng. ]
no subject
a stranger.
a strange creature, perhaps, staring at him from out of what had been his brother. it is a monster who gazes back, an unseemly, unearthly thing that is not who he knows wei wuxian to be.
he had always been the scorching midsummer heat and the cool of the river water. he had been as ripened fruits hanging heavily in the trees for them to pick - he had been such things as everything is bright and warm and good, to jiang cheng, and he cannot remember the days without the other at his side, behind him, warm like the very sun that hangs upon the sky.
now, it is like some shadowy ghost that he presents himself to him; he is the dying light of the dusk, the red glow of bonfires stretched across blood soaked fields. he is some sickly creature that has hidden itself deep within these mountains to wait out his time of death.
but jiang cheng will not let him.
call it childish, call it selfish if you will, but he had always held onto the idea deep within him - that one day, he could restore everything that had been taken from him. that he could have everything the same as it had been before. yunmeng jiang, for all its lacklustre withering, has been rebuilt to the smallest panel, to every detail he could remember. all it needs, all he needs is -
his hand closes about the other's. the air around them wavers hot and hazy, nauseating in the sudden turns, but his grip does not waver. ]
I do.
[ jiang cheng had, and always have, been the one with the softer heart, the one who feels the most and for longest.
he breathes out - soft and secret, and it feels less like the promises of old. it feels like a pact, like some contract with a power he does not fully understand, and he tilts his head - he leans up, to briefly press their foreheads together, their lashes almost touching. ]
I will.
no subject
[ it hangs between them, the most horrendously beautiful thing he's ever crafted; a weapon with a mind all its own, given to its own whim. he does not command the stygian tiger seal, anybody could do that, but it does reflect upon him as the children of echidna look upon their mother - the one that gave them form. the half that he offers to jiang cheng burns, where the other half feels like a cold weight against his stomach, settled low and hidden within the folds of his dark robes until he hides it away.
the command that yiling and yunmeng marry could only come from someone seeking to fetter them both in one another's embrace, to collar yiling's patriarch and bring him and his armies of the dead to heel under the strength of a proper cultivator. even if that cultivator was the remnants of a once-destroyed sect. they'd want the tiger seal, and he was not going to let them have it. not it, not wen ning and not chenqing. they could have him, in his shidi's family register, owned as a wife would be -- but they'd never, ever have him. ]
You really are so precious to me. My wonderful shidi, you're going to make me blush like this! My knees feel so weak, are you going to hold me up? You should hold me up, you're the one who's gone and made my heart flutter! I can't believe they want to waste you on me rather than finding you a proper wife.
[ the words are soft, tucked in the meager space left between them as jiang cheng leans in to his space. he feels the warmth of his brow, the soft flutter of his eyelashes; softly, wei wuxian's fingers find the softness of jiang cheng's throat, stroking down the fragile column to the hollow of it. his outburst of merriment fades softly, replaced again by that more somber, unnatural sheen that grips him. ]
Take it with you, okay? You need to go back and tell them we're agreeing to this demand, show them the seal's half to prove my word, and I need to prepare for the trip.
no subject
they are trapped, each in their own ways. they are cornered as wild animals might, their backs to the wall and the rest of the cultivation world against them who seek to collar them both like this, against and along each other, to drown or rot or tear each other to shreds and they would watch gladly.
jiang cheng does not trust easily. the other three great sects - the only three great sects, yunmeng's faded brilliance obviously not worth being counted upon for much, by them - have induced them to hold a ceremony of brotherhood amongst them, to live and die by each other.
what then, remains? what can jiang cheng possibly do, but to turn to wei wuxian, to live and die by him as they have promised?
in the end, he only has his brother to call upon. in the end, he is the only one he could ask to help.
the hand against his throat feel gentle, creeping down and down along the too-fragile skin to the dip against his collar like some spider, like some snake that coils itself around. his voice too, is soft - soft like some poisoned mist that would choke one in their sleep, and jiang cheng swallows dry, nods without speaking.
he does not stay long, after that. wei wuxian is his ( just as much as he is wei wuxian's, now and forever ) but the air of yiling is too much for him, the dark cloying aura that spills from the depths of burial mounds sticking to his throat. as he steps out from the mouth of the cave and alights on his sword jiang cheng feels that he can still taste it; the metallic bitter tang of power like blood, like steel. the half of the tiger seal tucked into the folds of his inner robe burns and freezes in alternating fits and stutter that has him ever conscious of it.
i will go to koi tower, he has told wei wuxian. i will go tell them. they cannot deny it, not with this. ]