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[consignation]

jiang wanyin

missives | encounters

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xianxian of yunmeng jiang

[weifinder]

Jiang Cheng, I've retrieved the feathers and left Wen Qing to the decoction of the medicine for antidote—you will be taking it, as soon as she's done. Have you heard anything else, any murmurs from the people around him; do you know how many have been poisoned in addition?

un: sect leader jiang

[consignation]

[ Wen Qing? Wen Qing???? Why are you so familiar with her, Wei Wuxian?! Yes, you lived with her for a long time, ran a village with her, in fact raised a child with her, but how dare you? How dare you speak her name like it is worthy of being uttered by mortals, by men?

...Jiang Cheng may be running a fever. He fumes this to himself for long enough one might think he does not intend to answer. Or has died mid-conversation, surely. ]

Besides Lan Wangji? The room we were in when the healers were tending to us held at least a dozen. Perhaps more succumbed after, I'm not sure.

[ He was too busy posturing with Wangji to notice. ]

We must repay Lady Wen for her troubles.

un: absterge | dragonpocalyse

[downswing]

( EXCUSE the water sloshing in the background, this man has carved himself a fresh life in pipelines: )

Mistress Wen lingered in the banquet halls. Secure her.

( 'Greetings, fair brother-in-cliff-law, how art thou,' etc etc etc )

We cannot return in time.

[consignation]

[ This man has but two moods: anger, and confusion. Except on rare occasions, where an elusive third emotion may be glimpsed such as right now.

It's anger and confusion. ]

Lan Wangji! What's going on? Where are you? Where is Wei Wuxian? How have you been appraised of Lady Wen's status?!

[ But don't worry, Wangji. Contrary as he is, he's already hiked up his skirts to go looking for his dear lady. It's the one name you don't have to say twice to send him running, except maybe Yanli's but, well. Her well-being isn't a problem he's fortunate enough to be having. ]

un: absterge | during the chaos

[downswing]

( In the beautiful period after the Huntress has dashed through the city, calling the dead and necromancers in her service: )


Jiang Wanyin. I beg patience.

un: sect leader jiang

[consignation]

Then beg.

un: absterge | during the ellethia-allayar trek | video

[downswing]

( Peer at the most splendiferous visage of Lan Wangji, second Jade of Lan, in full, dripping local regalia.

How did he fall into the waters? Irrelevant. How many mermaids perished on the coast, so he could escort himself to safety? Dead fish-girls tell no tales. How many crabs are lining the ends of his suit? Eight, but that's again inconsequential. What is the mop of violently green weed on his head? A sartorial statement.

...and what about the two small, stubborn turtles that are somehow peering from the inside of his suit, raising their heads to look out through Lan Wangji's helmet visor? Landscape. )

Jiang Wanyin. ( Squeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaakkkkkkkkk of the suit. Drip-drip. Squelch. The turtles click and cluck. ) I entrust you to collar Wei Ying for half a shichen. ( The turtles squeal. ) I require. ( His soul's salvation. A turtle chomps on his hair. The other brays tragically, while climbing his chin. ) A moment's reprieve.

( To address the infestation. )

un: sect leader jiang

[consignation]

[ There's....... so much to unpack here. First of all, why? Secondly, why?? Thirdly, WHY??? As often with these encounters, Lan brevity proves contagious, infectious, and Jiang Cheng can only stare. Practice aligns his back straight, shoulders up, mouth firmly closed and jaw set so as not to repeat the baffled slack-jawed stares of his youth. ]

Lan Wangji, [ he greets in return, curtly, tone measured. Befitting of a sect leader. Jiang Fengmian would be proud. Yu Ziyuan would have both of them knelt for ancestral mercy, but that is neither here nor there.

Jiang Cheng pauses, trying to find the words. They do not come. Instead, he speaks delicately⁠— ]

You are being eaten.

[ In case you did not know. ]

while they're in the lighthouse tower, action

[weifinder]

( pray tell, where does one go searching for Jiang Cheng, when one knows one is trapped in a rather ambitiously tall tower with all of one's traveling companions, and also, Jiang Cheng.

too many things they still need to talk on, but this one predates most, and for that, can be easier to speak. which is why he shows up, with a bowl of soup with chunks of chicken and vegetables and suspicious looking other probably vegetables in it, and is slid onto the table before Jiang Cheng with a look of sheepish awareness that they both of them are horrific when it comes to cooking in anything other than the roasted sense.

both of them roast meat and each other just fine. he doesn't seat himself because he's half prepared to, potentially, dodge backward from being grabbed, or dodge forward into being grabbed. he hasn't decided. )

Jiang Cheng! Did you know I've apparently been married twice and never knew it?

( WAY TO JUMP RIGHT IN )

Three times, recently.

[consignation]

[ Wei Wuxian, can you go one day without trying to kill your brother? This is your one remaining childhood family member who you have not directly contributed to the death of, are you that keen on fixing it? Jiang Cheng gets as far as half a bite of soup, snorts most of it, and immediately doubles over choking.

He doesn't even manage to taste the brothy incarnation of sin Wei Wuxian has created, flavor completely overridden with the metal screech of his mind trying to even begin to process those statements.

Jiang Cheng shoves the soup back at Wei Wuxian, spluttering: ]

How?! How can you be married without knowing?? Who would marry you? There's no such thing as accidental marriage, that's not how marriage works⁠—

@taken for granite | audio

[rumorate]

[Sent sometime after this conversation, but pretend it was much more timely and that life hadn't eaten me alive, apologies!

Despite her matchmaking in Taravast, she's not sure how to broach the conversation, exactly, but she's willing to try all the same.]

If you have a moment, I've been asked to mediate a proposal between yours and Lan Wangji's families.

[How big a hornet's nest is she stepping in? Unclear. But that may be why she's reaching out over the devices first.]

un: sect leader jiang | audio

[consignation]

[ There's a long buzzy silence like someone who's picked up a call on their cellphone but is having reception issues. Jiang Cheng can hear just fine, however. It's the processing that's the problem.

A proposal. A mediation of a proposal, between Jiang and Lan. It can't be about the Lan child, and there are no Jiang sect children here, not even Jin Ling. His dear sister is not here, nor is the esteemed Zewu-jun. He does frown a moment, disturbed by the connections of his own mind. Lan Xichen would hardly be a bad husband, certainly a caliber above the man his sister did marry, however⁠—

Jiang Cheng physically waves that thought out of his mind.

Jiang and Lan.

The obvious solution is the only viable one, and it feels like someone is trying to drag Jiang Cheng's soul out of him with butcher hooks. When he speaks, his voice is low, patience already pulled taut. ]

And just what did you do to offend Lan Wangji so badly that he set you upon this task? Or are you the kind of fool who befriends my brother?

[ It's not that only fools befriend Wei Wuxian, of course, but one hardly sees Wen Qing here trying to broker a marriage. ]

letter #1

[downswing]

江 晚 吟

三 毒 圣 手

江 宗 主

|

曾经沧海难为水，除却巫山不是云。

Pained though I come with hungering hands, I beg you do not wish them bloodied.

To sunder heavens with red wet offence of family thrust against family.

I beg bowed-back:

Do not make of me a young heart, foolhardy. A reckless appetite, untamed. A core languished, mourning.

Do not make of me my nature, clawing. My vices, voracious. My weakness, listless.

Do not make of me a thief, and grant me your brother, fondly. Your clansman, willing. Your first disciple, without regret.

I beg, do not kneel me, lessened, to shadow. Make of my dust and ashes the better man.

I beg your wisdom before my folly. Your alms before my greed. Your mercy before my strain.

I beg in betrothal 魏无羡, born 婴, fallen 夷陵老祖.

Starved, I beg crumbs from your hands.

|

蓝
忘
机

[consignation]

拒
绝

[downswing]

( In Eidris, where gilded mouldings battle fungal drip, there is the exhilaration of bated breath, of magic and wait and wonder. Here, he greets Jiang Cheng under ceilings that stretch like bloated ribcages and groan, and he feels himself gently torn apart, flesh from bone, masticated and spewed before his brother-in-law in humble pour. Parts of him do not recognise the whole.

Wine of the land glimmers dark, overtly fermented. When Lan Wangji pulls his sleeve back, wrist over fold, it spills like viscera in native glasses fashioned too tall, as if their throats want chokehold. He hesitates, lingers over the half-pour, considers the gains of performative generosity against the costs of splintered aesthetic and decides, in the end, Jiang Wanyin may wet his lips and beg mouthfuls further.

It scratches him, honest back bowed and the stiffness of his wrists making tension learned, lax — anticipation like paralysis, like poison. Then, finally, sliding the glass onward towards Jiang Cheng over the lacquered low table, before binding his hands in the traditional bow — lower than rank commands of a chief cultivator, low enough to appease uncle during fit-spells of frenzy: )

I thank your gift, of which I am unworthy.

[consignation]

[ from wangji all of it rankles like insult, like mockery. offering him respect to such an extent that he knows wangji does not, has never believed him to have earned. all for what? to take wei wuxian from his side?

(has wei wuxian ever been at his side? the years spent as children feel distant, dimming, like the departure of a dream.)

this land is senseless, as is wei wuxian's presence, as is lan wangji's goals and motivations. they are all adrift, unbridled, untethered. without clans, duty, or obligation. they answer to nothing and no one but their now self-imposed rules, and jiang cheng does not understand the lengths to which wangji will go for a blessing he does not need.

is wei wuxian forcing him to have it granted?

all of it makes his head hurt, and he should just make it clear he has no involvement and step back from the mess.

he should, he would step back, but there is a great yawning nothingness behind him and before him there is only wei wuxian. how will jiang cheng sustain himself on nothing, not even his father's sect, his sister's child. will zidian alone and the memory of his mother's merciless love keep him putting one foot before the other?

every day since the burning of lotus pier, he has been in danger of stopping.

it could have been him on the cliff, but for his father's sect, his sister's child, his mother's brutal devotion.

there, home, even when jiang cheng had nothing, he had the demands of his obligations dragging him on bloody feet to an empty future.

here, this is all he has.

this thing he has stolen, this thing that everyone accepts to be his but is not, has never been.

this thing lan wangji now asks of him

he knocks back the contents of the cup, wishing it poison, then sets it back down—hard—against the table while wangji is still bent prone. ]

Save it, [ he sniffs, the implicit insult burning far worse than the cheap wine. ] Pretending you actually respect me isn't going to get you anywhere.

un: absterge | post-unwinding

[downswing]

( When one's shared charge has been put through the emotional grinder, one learns to delegate responsibilities. )

Your brother thirsts.

un:sect leader jiang

[consignation]

Yes, and?

[ tell him something he doesn't know. ]

un: absterge | THE MOST RESILUENT

[downswing]

Allison Hargreeves claims to have petitioned you. Step of the etiquettes.

Now, choose bride price.



( WHAT DO YOU MEAN HER NEGOTIATIONS FAILED, SUCH DETAILS. )

voice

[consignation]

Your life.

back in december

[weifinder]

Ah-Cheng, when were you going to tell me what you and Lan Zhan got up to when I was... anyway! I had no idea you were so passionate! No, I did know, just didn't suspect the extent of your passions or what nights they'd sweep you into come spring!

( yeah he's. trying to figure out if lan zhan was giving him guff or if his bro and his now-husband-apparently-secretly-then-husband got around to banging wrathfully to keep themselves sane in their grief over the years??? )

[consignation]

[ what the FUCK is wei wuxian going on about now. are you high??? what's happened. squinting deeply, soul deep levels of squinting, he tentatively plays along as he tries to figure out what the hell is going on. ]

You're going to have to be more specific about 'when you were', because Lan Wangji and I have been through a considerable amount.

[ you know, like a war. ]

un: qishan

[silverneedles]

Sect Leader Jiang, a request.

[ Is it fair to ask him? He's in the same plight they all are, resources few and far between in a world with no claims on any of them. Would rites even reach their deceased loved ones?

It doesn't matter. Lan Wangji reminded her, and she has been remiss. ]

Lan Sizhui's parents have no tablets. Do you know a fair carver?

[consignation]

[ wen qing remains the only person jiang cheng has no desire to hear his title from. fitting that she be the one to insist upon it the most.

proper, distanced, orderly.

no more or less than he deserves.

jiang cheng grows ever wearier of getting exactly what he deserves.

his voice is quiet when he responds, level, each syllable enunciated with great care. ]

Lady Wen. Is there an occasion?

[ it's intentionally noncommittal, but he is only asking to see what time constraints they are under. ]

xianxian of yunmeng

[weifinder]

Can we make a tablet for her?

[consignation]

[ for the love of— ]

She already has one.

You should ask me to make one for you.

un: average sighren, text

[lanclan]

Wanyin, if you are free and it is no trouble, I would speak with you of a private matter.

[consignation]

Wh

How private

Of course. It is never any trouble.

What has Wei Wuxian done now troubles you?

un: xianxian of yunmeng jiang | text

[weifinder]

You're not planning to try and bring one of the bone hounds out of here are you

[consignation]

1) No.
2) You've LITERALLY died, can we work on this dog phobia yet??? You spent years LIVING IN A MASS GRAVE. I'm going to bury you alive.
3) Bone hounds have zero qualities I look for in a dog to begin with. Frankly hurtful that you have to ask.

voice; average sighren

[lanclan]

Wanyin, are you aware of having offended a young lady by the name of Hermione?

[consignation]

[ there's a perplexed intake of breath that this is what he's hearing from xichen without so much as a hello. are you mad, lan xichen? are you upset with him?? ]

It's difficult to be aware of having specifically offended someone who takes offense to everything with opportunistic enthusiasm. Why?