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[consignation]

jiang wanyin

missives | encounters

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[consignation]

[ 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?

[weifinder]

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. )