consignation | eastbound inbox

( here he is gently nudging the soup back again, also patting himself for a length of fabric he doesn't have to absorb what was splattered around while Jiang Cheng attempted valiantly to choke on soup, and also has his spare hand out and patting his brother's back, don't die this is expressly forbidden: )

Yes, well, neither of us would think so, but it turns out there's all sorts of hidden ceremonial significance in Lan traditions I had no idea about, and no one saw fit to explain to me. Breathe! Please, the soup wasn't that terrible, was it?

( he knows it's not about the soup. PAT PAT PAT?! )

[ Except Wei Wuxian said the word. The WORD. That obscene, completely predictable and entirely unforeseen word.

Lan.

Jiang Cheng stands so fast he sends his chair clattering to the floor, jostling the table and sloshing the soup. Zidian crackles across his as he clenches both fists.

He's still coughing, now wheezing, trying to speak. ]

Lan Wangji?! You've somehow let Lan Wangji convince you that you were wed several times over?? Is he— What is he— What do you—

[ Jiang Cheng drags a shaking hand over his red face. ]

Are you— Are you allowing this?! Do you want to be—...?

Jiang Cheng!

( he's rising, hands up, motioning for calm, a man set to soothe a tiger and doing so with empty palms and a prayer of what's being slowly built again anew. )

It was explanation, and I was mad, of course I was, in what world would I not do the most for fam...ily...

( mad, to have something taken from him that he didn't know; mad, to be made a worse version of himself unknowing, to add more silence to the lies that had padded a desperate existence as not being entirely forsaken. mad, because it wasn't his only blindness in his youth, and how to say that again, to jiang cheng?

how to say anything, when, instead: )

He chooses to stand at my side. In spite of the world, and in spite of himself, and in spite of me. Sometimes all three. Just... Jiang Cheng, sit down, please? He hasn't forced me into anything, I tied the ribbon the third time, which only makes sense if you know about the whole ribbon nonsense with the Lans, and if you do—wait, do you?

( trying to get jiang cheng to break out of that shell of his angry shock, his lack of breath, the coughing. placating gestures and wide eyes and a half smile lost to a simpler, serious mien. see me. )

[ And in those simple words, Jiang Cheng's inadequacies are once more laid bare. He would have liked to make different choices, back then. Not a day passes that he does not think of it, does he not trace over the pathways of memory in his mind, wearing deep grooves into the 'what ifs' and 'if onlys'.

If only Wei Wuxian had not attracted so much attention from the Wens. If only he'd trained harder, been stronger, smarter, faster. If only they hadn't been home that day. What if Jiang Cheng had more forgiveness in his heart? What if he hadn't been so sick with fear, all the time? What if he'd stood with Wei Wuxian, with Wen Qing? Could he have fixed it? Could he have saved them? Would Lotus Pier have burned again?

He's asked himself a thousand times, then ten thousand more.

There are no answers. He did what he did, and he ended up alone in an empty home with nothing but his ancestral shrine for company. Was it worth it? He'll never know. He can't make sense of it most days, what it was he traded all that he loved for.

But Lan Wangji, the second son, unburdened by inheritance or expectation, clan suffering casualties but wholly intact amongst its inner disciples—

He stood by Wei Wuxian when no one else would, and Jiang Cheng is surprised by the bile this brings upon his tongue. Lan Wangji claims his brother's loyalty, his brother's love, and he traded nothing for it. Not an ounce of dignity, not a fraction of responsibility. The second son, free to do however he pleased and still return a war hero, celebrated and revered.

Jiang Cheng does not sit, nails digging welts into his palms. ]

Get to the point, [ he hisses, the tension in him evident in his voice. ] That's what you're telling me? He stood by you, so of course you owe everything to him?

At one point ( he says, very softly, face falling toward neutrality, a different sort of mask than his smiles often are; ) I would have said yes.

( and he says nothing more, just leaves the implication: at one point, and not now. but if he couldn't explain in his pathetic attempts to ask why love is frightening, why it's nonsensical, how it's felt at all and it's wonderful and horrible and fixes nothing to the sister they both looked up to...

... he knows how to say all this even less to the brother who has had to mourn them all. )

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