( He'd flinch, if he wasn't used to worse. He'd made those choices, had tried to offer those outs to everyone he's ever cared about. Repeatedly, you don't have to keep me when it's easier to let go. Lan Zhan was the one who finally said no. Who stood firm against the tide of opinion pressing down over shoulders and the better politics, the better sense to most eyes, than to believe in the Yiling Patriarch.

His back had been to a wall for years. It's free now, and no, it isn't a wonder that the first name on his lips is Lan Zhan, the sword and shield for he who, previously, as Jiang Cheng has pointed out, does not have a sword.

He's working on that. A nod to Eleven, for the how and why, and that this place doesn't carry the weight of a world finding out again what he is and what he isn't, where he doesn't need to fend off spars meant to show off skill and little else. If he had a sword now, not one of their spiritual blades, but simply forged steel, he could fight. Would fight, with the brutal trained precision they both share, with the finesse that sets them off from the Nies.

Slow down, breathe. Say the things he needs to, in the face of the kinds of conflicts he's only been learning to have without shutting down in the newness of recent months, in the refinding of what and who Wei Wuxian, wreck of a cultivator, is in a world that no longer aches to drink him dry and dance on the ashes of his grave. )

I won't make myself the target.

( He won't make himself the risk to take. )

Jiang Cheng, I don't—their strength isn't in the bow.

( Flight if one must, fight of course, but if he's seeking a means out, there's that one. Probably. He's sick to his stomach and standing, the crunch of snow underfoot. )

I move for the citadel now, before the light's full. I'll return as soon as I can.