audio | un: xianxian of yunmeng jiang

[weifinder]

Bear!? Bear! There was a bear in the bath!

( So comes this startled and startling shout, as elsewhere in camp, Wei Wuxian is (unfortunately) streaking past in damp, confused glory, a bear of arctic composure lumbering after him, soap bar still in mouth. Come back! He was just handing the soap over, he wanted to help! )

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[weifinder]

( a pause, and still a whisper: )

Hahahaha, what, he did what? ( she has to be kidding? ) He proposed?

( WHAT A JEST??? )

[silverneedles]

He didn't mention it to you? He gave me a comb, told me if I needed anything, just to ask.

[ and well, proposed but she'll just gloss that over ]

[weifinder]

( the gift is a proposal, you don't simply give someone a comb for their hair! )

No, he—he never did. I knew he held you in high regard, but, that much, I...

( the worst part is this is all still muttered. in fact, you can possibly also hear Jiang Cheng in the background. )

I didn't realise to what degree.

[silverneedles]

I thought you helped him pick out the comb.

[ not that any of it mattered. he might have been able to help her but he couldn't help all of the wens ]

I returned it to him eventually. It was a foolish promise he made.

[weifinder]

( what follows, since it was likewise stated from Jiang Cheng moments before, is at normal volume: )

Wen Qing—all those years ago, I think we both did my brother a disservice of belief. Thinking we were protecting him from decisions he couldn't make, or people he couldn't protect.

( He pauses, probably looking at Jiang Cheng as he says: )

It was our wrong, to not talk with him first and try to find a way. I don't think his promises were foolish... I think we all were in our desperation, in a situation with no simple fix.

[consignation]

—stop talking about me to her! Wei Wuxian!!

[ He's so absolutely mortified with absolutely everything going on that he's 100% failing to absorb any of Wei Wuxian's words and just wants to stop having his face rubbed in one of the worst mistakes of his life. He tries to grab the crystal from Wei Wuxian, but then his emotions rush ahead of him as they always do, and his words tumble out all at once. ]

There was no fix!! It was war. We were kids.

[ The older Jiang Cheng gets, the more Jin Ling grows up, the more ridiculous it seems. The younger it feels he was back then. He looks at Jin Ling now and thinks, 'This is just a boy, a child.' Just a brat with no sense of the world, but that's how it should be. He would do anything to keep Jin Ling from having to make the choices he did, from going through the heartbreak he lived. He hates himself for his mistakes. He hates Wei Wuxian for his. Jiang Cheng does not know how to let go, to forget, to forgive. But more and more, he thinks...

How could they have done better? How could any of them have done better in their inexperience, in their youth, in their limited scope of the world?

It should not have been put upon them.

But it was.

And they made the awful, bloody messes they made.

And they keep going, or they stop.

Strange to think that Wei Wuxian died, but found ways to keep going.

Jiang Cheng lived, raised his sister's child, rebuilt his sect, led it well.

But he has not taken a single step forward from that cliff.

He stands at the cliff's edge now, hands balled into fists, shouting the words he's held in his heart since he watched Wei Wuxian take that fall, choose that fall. ]

But you always thought you could do everything! Fix everything! You were spoiled and you left me alone!

[weifinder]

I know, and I'm sorry.

( What he can do, standing here, is strongly dislike a conversation he's had to degrees before, but never—never in this way, because of how things were between them back home until the moments they were shifted, but still estranged. He can't answer for Yanli's death in any way that satisifies, not even knowing, now, who's fingers stroked and stoked that final song.

He doesn't disclaim his responsibilities for the lives he's helped take, even if it was not his sole authorship. Opportunity does not exist without reasons; and he was blinded, was not prepared, to fight against another living mind seeking to undermine his control.

Arrogance. Arrogance and despair. He had felt, when seeing that naked greed for power, the jest of why the Wens had been killed, the insatiability of the righteous, that there was one way to end it. One way, and the thin trail of hope that might have fished him back off that ledge disappeared under the shaking of the rock on which Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng stood, as Sandu struck down into stone and not flesh, under the certainty that if he did not let go, Wei Wuxian would destroy the last two remaining people in the world he cared about.

Let one man fall, not three. Just one, and he'd already fallen oh so low.

(Not right, in reflection. Just something in grief and breaking that only so many times one can stand without feeling their marrow's been sucked out to feed the ghosts of their haunted present, and the future feels impossible, before human greed and human failing and the frailty of justice when one has chosen to stand alone.) )

I was wrong, and I can't undo that. All I know is the man I've learned to be in the months since waking... is one thankful for the brother who protected Chenqing all these years.

[silverneedles]

[ Speaking at the same time as Jiang Cheng, although her voice is much softer this time, as though she really doesn't want Jiang Cheng to hear: ]

Was there any chance of clearing the name Wen? What could he have done to help? There was no reason to let him toss aside everything we'd done to— to—

[ There are regrets in her heart, for pulling Wei Wuxian away from his family, for further dragging him into the political turmoil that surrounded her clan after the war.

Living those few months with her brother, with Wei Wuxian and a-Yuan and the remnants of her family, had been more than they deserved. She had been content, almost happy, despite the hardship and the stress, but it couldn't have lasted, and walking away from the Burial Mounds had been her only option. ]

What else could any of us—

[ In the background, she hears Jiang Cheng's voice rising, and abruptly stops, half tempted to put down the crystal just to give them some privacy, although she doesn't.

Some of this is her doing, too. ]

[weifinder]

( Not only does she get to hear what he says, he swallows, and adds thickly for her: )

We could have asked. We could have tried standing together, united. But it isn't what we did, and all we can do now is hear each other, and not rush into making the same mistakes again.