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Language:
English
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Published:
2020-11-06
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2,250
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
15
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121
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lotus grows (and blossoms out of the mud)

Summary:

Lotus Pier is surrounded by water and Jiang Cheng knows water. He has played in the shallows with a-jie since he was young, sneaked out to the lotus fields with A-Xian and delighted in stealing some lotus pods together and eating them along the banks. Jiang Cheng has drifted off on the river more times than he can count, has seen how the sunlight ripples along the water’s surface, has seen the stormy undercurrent when the clouds would gather and the heavens would be blocked from view — Jiang Cheng can close his eyes and picture Lotus Pier in sun, rain, shine, and monsoon. Jiang Cheng can read the water better than he can read his mother’s anger or his father’s indifference, can read the water better than the looks Wei Wuxian and Jiang Yanli send each other, their eyes lighting up at the sight of one another, twin beings of light that coalesce into one shining enigma that burns Jiang Cheng’s retinas. Jiang Cheng can read the water and there is no warmth to be found in those depths.

Notes:

For Val<3

Title is from LAY'S "Lit" :3c

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

His fingers twitch once, twice — a miniscule spasm that Jiang Cheng knows is imperceptible to the untrained eye; it is a sensation more than movement, a phantasm of what has been done and a promise of what is to come.

According to his mother, it had been a failing on his part, another strike in his long list of vices that extolled his shortcomings, and most importantly, in Yu Ziyuan’s eyes, his inferiority.

(He knows a lot about that, about inferiority. It is a poison well-steeped, like the various teas that a-jie would make for him when he would fall ill, too stubborn to admit that he was sick when he really should have been lying in his bed resting.

Jiang Yanli would smile at him, indulgent even then, and Jiang Cheng would dutifully drink from the piping cup that she would place before him.

Once when he had been particularly congested and particularly obstinate, Jiang Yanli had placed the teacup in Jiang Cheng’s hands, curled his fingers around the molten china, and with her hands covering his, guided the cup up to his lips.

Spluttering he nearly gagged, sinuses assaulted by the repugnant taste of onion.

“Jiejie!”

She had cupped his cheek then, her voice warmer than the tea even, but her eyes were sharp. “No longer as congested, hm? Be good and listen to your jiejie and go back to sleep.”)

No, inferiority is not anything like tea, not at all. Inferiority is like the water that laps at the bay of Lotus Pier, familiar and cutting and serene and stinging the bruises that run up and down his arms and legs. Inferiority is bloody and terrible  — it is Zidian sending electric shocks through his veins, a-jie cold and dead in his arms, Sandu shaking in his grasp as he makes his way over to the edge, Wei Wuxian’s whispered greeting, and Jiang Cheng, always a step behind, always too late to reach out and —

(Inferiority is not a solid mass that lies heavy and swollen in his stomach; no — it morphs, it shifts, it twists, but the flavor is always the same, acrid and ashy and bitter and biting. Inferiority scrapes at the back of his throat, cuts up his gums with edges sharper than Sandu or the words Yu Ziyuan spoke when she was last alive; it is the blood that pools and gathers in his mouth, choking him before he can even cry out for help, it scratches and tears down the length of his spine, down his esophagus — burning, burning, burning like Lotus Pier on that bleak day when Wang Lingjiao sauntered in — and hangs heavy, heavier than anything that Jiang Cheng has ever felt on his brow — )

( — he can feel himself sinking.)

It was not love, not really, that bound Jiang Cheng to Yu Ziyuan — respect, obligation, and filial duty run deeper, run bolder, and it is seared into his bones. Jiang Cheng has never been just himself, not really — through the thick veil of his fears, Yu Ziyuan’s sneering face, and Jiang Fengmian’s dismissal, there were two things constant in Jiang Cheng’s life, two truths that Jiang Cheng was certain of: his place within the Jiang clan was secured, his fate undeniable, his variability like the stagnant, stale cups of tea that bore witness between his mother and father’s frigid conversations. The other was Jiang Yanli and Wei Wuxian, the three of them pulled helplessly in orbit with one another with a gravitas greater than anything, a string which tied the three of them together, unable to be cut by any blade, not even if Sandu and Suibian themselves attempted to shear through their bond.

(Lotus Pier is surrounded by water and Jiang Cheng knows water. He has played in the shallows with a-jie since he was young, sneaked out to the lotus fields with A-Xian and delighted in stealing some lotus pods together and eating them along the banks. Jiang Cheng has drifted off on the river more times than he can count, has seen how the sunlight ripples along the water’s surface, has seen the stormy undercurrent when the clouds would gather and the heavens would be blocked from view — Jiang Cheng can close his eyes and picture Lotus Pier in sun, rain, shine, and monsoon. Jiang Cheng can read the water better than he can read his mother’s anger or his father’s indifference, can read the water better than the looks Wei Wuxian and Jiang Yanli send each other, their eyes lighting up at the sight of one another, twin beings of light that coalesce into one shining enigma that burns Jiang Cheng’s retinas. Jiang Cheng can read the water and there is no warmth to be found in those depths.)

Jiang Cheng had never been A-Cheng to Yu Ziyuan, had always been Jiang Cheng, and on occasion, Jiang Wanyin. Names mean something, names have power — that has never been something which Jiang Cheng has disputed nor doubted; after all, more things haunt him than the absence of his mother’s love or his father’s neglect.

( — future sect leader, young master Jiang — )

( — the water laps at his ankles and it is so terribly cold.)

Yu Ziyuan had never held back her distaste for him well — Jiang Cheng was well aware, too aware, and although he had never ran to his mother’s side, he had turned towards her and saw the grimace on her face as his too wide-eyed gaze stared back.

(“Jiang Wanyin!” She had said, and the usage of his courtesy name hurt more than anything because he was Jiang Cheng. “Look at yourself! Unable to even control yourself — you think you can call yourself a future sect leader to the Jiang clan? Embarrassing.”)

The tremors had started since he was young, young enough that Jiang Cheng could always count on his hands to tremble when emotion overtook him, and emotion overtook him far too often. His hands had shook with anger and desperation when Jiang Fengmian had taken his dogs away for a brother that, at the time, Jiang Cheng did not want nor believed he needed.

(Later his hands had shook for an entirely different reason — overhearing that Wei Wuxian had run off into the forest alone in the falling twilight and would undoubtedly become lost in a terrain he would not be familiar with, and the gnarled roots of trees and bushes could so easily twist an ankle. And in the dark, in the quickly falling darkness, the shapes of the branches and the wind whistling through the leaves and the whispers of lost spirits that would come out to inquire, to play — Jiang Cheng had snuck out after his jie had gone out searching, got lost himself, and wailed at the splitting pain in his forehead. His hands had shaken then as he convulsed into wails, sobbing his heart out until a-jie and Wei Wuxian found him later.)

(Later still, when Wei Wuxian’s hand had found a home in his, Jiang Cheng’s hands did not even quiver, a stabilization that surprised even him and it blossomed, unfurling like a lotus flower in his chest as he grinned back at his brother.)

He remembers, even now —

(Wei Wuxian will be right, although Jiang Cheng does not know this yet, that Jiang Cheng keeps things in his heart, burrowed so deeply into his chest that it entwines with his lungs, his blood, his very being. For now, Jiang Cheng will sit and wonder or look outside at the turbulent waters of Lotus Pier and be stricken — haunted by two ghosts whose gentle fingers he can feel upon his own.)

— he remembers —

(He remembers even now, the sound of Zidian, effortlessly wielded by Yu Ziyuan, as every single one of her hits landed upon Wei Wuxian’s defenseless back. And Jiang Cheng remembers, remembers the floor cold as the winter earth underneath his knees, his hands, his shoulders, his arms shaking uncontrollably as he pleaded, scared to death of his mother not for the first time, and scared to death for his brother not for the last time — )

( — Jiang Cheng will never admit this, will never speak of this. But sometimes he looks in the mirror, feels the weight of Zidian upon his fingers, and he sees Yu Ziyuan staring back at him, aristocratic and serene and cruel, and Jiang Cheng wants to cry.)

Jiang Yanli and Wei Wuxian had been well aware of Jiang Cheng’s uncontrollable habit, of his tells, of his rising anger — and often, even from when they were small, Jiang Cheng could count on the press of a-jie’s soft hands against his own or Wei Wuxian’s palm covering his spasming fingers. It was a ritual, something sacred, almost holy between the three of them and they had indulged in its practice even when the three of them had become adults themselves.

(It had been startling, Jiang Cheng remembers, when he realized he no longer could count on Jiang Yanli or Wei Wuxian’s hands to slip into his — remembers the sneers on the other sect leaders' faces, the way they had spoken crudely of the Jiang clan, had spat on each and every one of their names, had turned their backs away despite the numerous sacrifices paved in purple that allowed for them to survive the Sunshot Campaign. Jiang Cheng had grit his teeth, bowed his head as custom allowed in greeting, his hands out of sight as they twitched, once, twice, thrice.)

(Jiang Cheng never had the luxury of walking away, of turning away from the call of Lotus Pier’s waters like Jiang Yanli or Wei Wuxian.)

Jiang Cheng remembers their promise in the Burial Mounds, the plan that both he and his brother had hatched together under the darkness of those trees, in the dim light of the candles in the rockface. Jiang Cheng remembers his arm, broken and bloody and remembers how easy it had been, too easy, to stab Wei Wuxian. 

His hands had shook when his jie had gotten married, radiant and resplendent, and he yearned for Wei Wuxian, for Zu Yiyuan and Jiang Fengmian even, to be there, by his side watching. His hands had shook when he first held A-Ling, and the tears had welled up in his eyes as his nephew’s impossibly small hands grasped his digits and squeezed.

(In Yiling, before everything went wrong, before Jin Zixuan died, before Jiang Yanli died, before Wei Wuxian died, before A-Ling was made an orphan, before Jiang Cheng’s world had been ripped apart once more, he remembers the three of them sitting as they shared that final bowl of pork rib and lotus soup. Jiang Cheng remembers the warmth of the broth in his stomach, the smile that etched itself on his face, as he watched as his two favorite people in the world were reunited.)

(Jiang Cheng has never minded being on the outside looking in. He has overheard a-jie and A-Xian’s conversations from the next room over, from the door, he has known that sometimes they too knew he was listening in. But Jiang Cheng had always been pulled into their gravity, into their spiral, a supernova brighter than anything Jiang Cheng has ever seen, and collapsing before his very eyes.)

— the figures and shapes in his mind’s eye dance and flicker and Jiang Cheng holds his breath —

— Wei Wuxian is dangling off the side of the cliff, Sandu is in his hands, there is a roar in Jiang Cheng’s ears as he makes his way over, he cannot hear the battle behind them, cannot even hear the warning in Lan Wangji’s voice —

— Jiang Cheng watches not for the first time nor for the last. He has walked these steps a hundred times, maybe even a thousand, in his mind, in his memory, his faltering gait forever stamped in his brain, has swung Sandu shakily up in an arc a million times and has seen the flickering smile on Wei Wuxian’s bloodied face when he closes his eyes.

Jiang Cheng walks down those steps once more, walks down that path that led to Wei Wuxian’s doom as well as Lan Wangji’s and his own. Jiang Yanli’s blood had still been warm on his hands, on his clothes, and Wei Wuxian would be cold and mangled on the floor a hundred meters below.

(Jiang Cheng had chased after Wei Wuxian too many times to count, but he cannot follow him in death, not even if he wanted to. Jiang Cheng has been bound to the Jiang Clan, has been bound to his title since birth, maybe even from a time long before, and Jiang Cheng is no longer Jiang Cheng, but Jiang Wanyin, Sect Leader Jiang.)

(Jiang Cheng would give anything to be Jiang Cheng again.)

“Jiujiu?”

Jiang Cheng startles. “A-Ling,” he breathes, seeing the small form of his nephew at the door. His cheeks, he realizes with horror, are wet and his voice is hoarse. “A-Ling, how long have you been there?”

Jin Ling, for once, is silent. There is a look on his young face that is unfamiliar, foreign; and Jiang Cheng realizes with a jolt that the expression on his face is eerily like that of Jiang Yanli peering down at him in worry when he had been caught in the throws of fever. Jin Ling clumsily makes his way across the room and reaches out —

— Jin Ling reaches out and places his small hand on top of his uncle’s.

(Jiang Cheng’s hand convulses and stops.)

Notes:

the onion tea is because one time my halmoni fed me onion root tea when i was sick and congested and i could actually taste for the first time in days osaijfoasij felt like something yanli would do when jiang cheng is particularly stubborn being like "actually im not sick" asodfjasoi

this was partially inspired bc on my uh 3rd? watch of the untamed i was like. oh. that first few scenes in ep 1 where jiang cheng's hands are shaking as he holds sandu as he walks over to where lwj and wwx are...and then all of this spiraled out asiofdjiosaj

um. hi :3c this is my first mdzs fic and it's for the wonderful ceo of jiang cheng, fruityumbrella!! happy birthday and scorpio season!!!!!!!!!! please check out her work it's the fuckign BEST.

while this fic isn't too long it felt long just bc it was all introspection oasdfjosa hopefully i could do our grape soda king justice<3 also like lmao. there's like 3 lines of dialogue in this fic i think that's kinda hot

i'm @ weiwuxianisms on tumblr so hmu!