weiyingdown | popdrop: ic inbox

I have never hated you.

You kept trying to lock me up!

[closes his eyes]

No.

You did! You kept trying to bring me back to Gusu with you.

Not to denounce you. Nor jail you.

Then why?

[the truth of it feels already known; but he's anxious, so anxious that what he's thinking might be wrong]

Demonic cultivation damages the mind and heart.

I wished to...

[shakes his head]

No. No matter what you thought your intentions were, you know it would have turned into an excuse to keep me locked up there.

[his breath strangles on Wei Wuxian's name; he just tried to say it so vehemently he feels like he's choking, for a moment. his hands have curled fully into fists.]

No.

Then what was your plan, exactly? To settle me and the Wens in a nice little empty spot on the mountainside? How long do you think you could have kept the Jins away, or your own family?

[it's not what he wants to ask or say. the futility of it still feels like a stab through the stomach, even now: a slow and painful realization that no matter what path they took, it couldn't have ended well. it would have always ended like this. at least the way it went meant Lan Wangji didn't get dragged into it.

his breathing evens out, steady even as he digs his nails into his palms so hard they draw blood]

...It was better than you didn't. There was nothing you could do.

[nearly ragged]

I thought you spoke of a different time. Before you went to the Burial Mounds.

Once that had passed, you and I knew. "Nobody can give me a nice, broad road to walk on. A road where I could protect those I want to protect." You told me yourself.

I regret that I did not stay, then.

Even if you had convinced me before that, as soon as I learned about the Wens I would have gone to them. It would have ended up the same way.

I'm glad you didn't stay. It would have meant getting caught up in our troubles. You don't deserve that.

I do not care what I deserve.

I should have stayed.

Don't say that. I care about what you deserve. You've already done too much for us. You--you deserve to be happy.

[this is breathlessly hurtful at this point; he feels it in his gut like an open wound, tearing ever wider. Wei Wuxian has always been good at this, when he chooses to be: at turning his own good intentions into blows, at discounting that others might have been able to help him at all, regardless of their own.]

No joy in safety.

Nor in hearing of your deaths.

[hunches over himself, eyes on his hands clenched in his lap. the fuzzy memory of a bad dream floats through his consciousness, of Lan Wangji wandering alone through the Burial Mounds while bleeding out. the thought of it being real sends his pulse racing in alarm.]

...It...already happened a long time ago, Er-gege. If you had died back then, I wouldn't get to be here with you now.