Work Text:
I.
Under the swamp here, all the roots grow together. There is no gap where one plant ends and the next begins. There is no need for such formalities in such abundance. The green is endless, even swallowing the water in the great grasps of the mangroves. The insects exalt the sun, singing away until it lays down its head, the birds lift themselves on the thick air, the water runs sluggish, propping up the heavy wood of the docks.
The boys always sit under the lattices, watching the sun finally extinguish beyond the horizon. The days are long and sleepy. Wei Wuxian lies back, always tempted to relax away the hours. Summer presses its heavy hand on his brow, but it never stifles the smile that creeps across his face, infectious like the vines winding around high branches. Jiang Cheng frowns at him as he inches closer and closer, then shoves his face away. “No.”
“Oh, come on. What else is there to do while shijie is away?” Wei Wuxian just presses towards him anyway, causing the boat to tilt dangerously to one side.
“Ah! I said no.” Jiang Cheng flails as the edge of the boat disappears out from under his arm, then turns away and crosses his arms. The sun outlines his silhouette in molten gold.
“You’re no fun, Jiang Cheng.” But Wei Wuxian grins wide, the wild strands of hair escaping from his ribbon just to stick to his face. The boat rights itself. The sun will rise again, waking before each of them. The force of the summer currents always brings the same waters back to their doorstep.
But the boat overturning is inevitable. Jiang Cheng still finds himself wading in the mud, frowning, as Wei Wuxian scrambles to turn the boat back over. “You know, when I ride with anyone else, we don’t end up tipped over.”
Wei Wuxian only laughs, as he always does. “But with anyone else, do you find the best lotus roots?” He finally turns the boat back over.
“There are so many lotus roots out here that it doesn’t matter! You don’t need such an involved plan!” Jiang Cheng sighs loudly, his hands leaving prints on the wood before the droplets trickle down to cover them.
“We just need to give shijie the best ones for when she comes back tonight. I promised her!”
Jiang Cheng shakes his head, but he can’t completely hide his smile. He knows shijie just asks him such things to keep him out of trouble. Who was the real older brother?
II.
To the woods surrounding, the fire is beautiful, the flames painting the watching water with short, bright strokes, each a fluid flick of the wrist holding a rough brush. Autumn leaves. The small sparks of marigold petals. The sounds did not come to Wei Wuxian, and the night seems to hold an echoing silence, as if he were underwater.
It dances, like a bride on her wedding night. Soft and warm and bright.
It isn’t real. Lotus Pier is the bonfire of the gods, a pile of kindling, the heavens gathering around its crackling. Or maybe it means nothing to them. He sees Jiang Cheng next to him, the light reflected in his eyes, just candle flames floating beside him in the darkness. From so far away, it could be a hearth, it could be something that fosters life rather than ring the bell of destruction.
Wei Wuxian sees this light again once more, when Jiang Cheng’s eyes fall upon their sister, a marigold blooming, draped in wedding robes. The currents are taking her away, petals, plucked from their stem, floating on the surface of the water.
She smiles, ever gentle, a moonflower, as she gazes at her brothers, her dark eyes the tender sky that cradles the moon. Is she happy? Jiang Cheng realizes he doesn’t know anymore. Could such a union make her happy? The currents won’t return her to their ancestral home this time.
But he frowns. No Jin needs that gentle scaffold. No Jin holds a soft glow like a moon, would appreciate her soft touch, holding it up in the sky. Each of them flare and blaze like the sun, never thinking of the sky around them. They never think of their pedestals.
But Jiang Cheng sees that incessant smile when he gazes over at his brother. It was even more unyielding than the softness of his sister. He realizes he is jealous. Both their roots must reach much deeper than his, to be immune to the anger and the uselessness. How could there be joy in any of this?
But she stands beside her husband, still, a statue of a goddess. The serenity pours from her. The marigolds gaze up at her, winding their stems around her feet. And Jiang Cheng realizes. She’s tempering that intense Jin glare. The light is softened. His hands have fallen open.
Maybe these years won’t be so bad. The leaves rustle; the maples turn red. Maybe the currents don’t return sometimes, but the water remains warm for now.
III.
The trees reach up, their naked limbs grasping at the sky as if begging for mercy. Jiang Cheng just walks between them, clearly not for whom they ask. He isn’t a god, though he feels just as ancient. Was this what it felt like to fade from memory? His clan is gone. He’s become a statue, but with none of the prayers, none of the candles lit. Is he even a memorable force? He doesn’t ask them to appeal to him, for what could he provide? All he has is the cold burn of lightning striking skin, the lonely crack of it late at night. He can’t fill the palms that already face him.
How many mountains are there? How far away are the currents? How can he know they are still there? How many fires can one pair of hands build? What a hypocrite to build a fire for himself after the fire ravaged all that he knew. He seems to be perpetually building them. His hands are so cold. His mouth is atrophied from lack of speaking; his eyes are dry from lack of crying.
He builds a dam every day for them. His hands are calloused now, numb at the fingertips. He thought of the storybooks. Had there truly been emperors who had built it all themselves? He prays for it to be fortified, even in the gaps of his own strength.
He’s grown tired, though, of adding more bricks to the wall around his heart. What more could be taken? What other northern winds will blow? Shijie is gone. Wei Wuxian is gone. Yunmeng Jiang is gone. He realizes he doesn’t have to bother setting up defenses anymore. He looks down at the empty plain, only the pale faces of snowdrop flowers gaze back.
He realizes how privileged he was to grow up in a place without winters, with no memory of snow or frozen ground. The fireflies must go somewhere in winter, though, to be able to emerge anew again in the summer twilight. He gazes around him now, the lush greens a distant, impossible memory. Each and every one, a corpse. Everybody has to learn that sometime.
In the winter, even the thunder and lightning retreat, waiting again for the unbridled freedom of the typhoons. The snowstorms come instead, heavy and slow. So, in the drifts, he leaves a trail of footprints, a lone set with none beside them, only to be covered again by the falling snow. The snowdrops cannot follow, but yet every time he turns, he seems to see one’s face.
IV.
Jiang Cheng’s ribcage cracks open from holding the centuries, each bone snapping under the weight of the snow, held up for so long. But then one day, he finally feels the melting, the sunlight coming warm now. It starts with one drop, then two, until the droplets are flowing from his fingers, leaves budding on the shards he still had.
How cruel the gods are, their faces turned away for so long, just to decide one day to return on a whim, with their smiling faces. One season is nothing to them. How ignorant the mortal are, thinking every winter will last for eternity. But Jiang Cheng wonders if they can understand, if they remember how long it can be. With each gust of wind, he’d turned more and more to stone.
Here he is now under the sunlight. The green begins to unfurl, somehow bleeding into the landscape. His brows soften. How does it come all the way here, to the threshold of Hell? The flames never warmed him until now, the sun always a faceless disc in the sky.
The winter was so harsh, the soil blew away. Jiang Cheng doesn’t dream his rebuilding would grow fruit. For what could he give them? Yet he still finds himself crouching by the flower beds, watering and watering, watching for sprouts.
But somehow, before he knew it, here was the peony, grand and lush, a ray of sunlight itself in the center of the snowdrifts and the barren soil. He’d been watered by teardrops. His stem had grown thick and hardy, the blossom hard to rip free. He refuses to relinquish the life within him that easily, traced across his chest. He’s been endowed with that stubbornness from the day he burst forth.
The fire brings the grief and destruction, yet those who survive carry a flame with them wherever they go. Jin Ling was always miles ahead of him, no more snow to betray his path. But he can follow the trail of wildflowers he leaves in his wake. Is that what it is to see the new generation opening its wings?
Jiang Cheng found himself fiercely protective of it, watching this young blossom shed his petals behind him, then bending to collect them. Does he choose to feel it, or was it something he can't choose? It tangles inside him, a long series of roots. A thick stem. Since when has he carried sacks of arrows? Jiang Cheng holds out his hand, and Jin Ling takes the lotus seeds, pausing to set one on his tongue. The feeling comes alien to Jiang Cheng, a strange taste after so many years.
Maybe he can afford one smile.