an echo chamber of my own

or silm + Finrod & Olwe + “I know you too well for that.”

For this you get twice the length :) For this prompt game.

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Mei Changsu comes back from the war.

He’s alive. Mostly. He is sicker than Xiao Jingyan has ever seen him, and his companions all agree that it’s a miracle that he made it through the journey back. But he’s still hanging on, and as long as he is alive, there is hope.

For the long months of spring and summer, he is bedridden at Su Manor and rarely conscious enough for speech. Jingyan visits whenever he can afford to — most often during the late hours of the night, after long days of holding court and handling papers.

Mei Changsu’s men no longer bother greeting him with more than a bow at the door; he comes too often past their bedtime. To them, Xiao Jingyan has long lost, or perhaps never had the awe-inspiring aura of the Crown Prince, and he’s only glad for it: these days, Su Manor is the only place where he doesn’t have to stand on ceremony.

Feiliu is always there somewhere by Mei Changsu’s sickbed. Often, he is already asleep on his own bed across the room, but some days he curls up at Mei Changsu’s feet instead. Sometimes, he wakes up and his silent gaze follows Xiao Jingyan’s movements in the semi-darkness. Mei Changsu almost never wakes up, but Xiao Jingyan sits silently by his bedside for an hour or more, using this moment to let go of the tensions of the day.

And always, somewhere out of sight, there is another, observing. Lin Chen, Mei Changsu’s doctor. In all these months, Xiao Jingyan hasn’t seen him once, but he can always sense his presence.

They haven’t talked since the day Lin Chen plastered a smile on his face and came to tell him that Mei Changsu was more than healthy enough to go to war. Xiao Jingyan had known he was lying, and Lin Chen had known that Xiao Jingyan knew. He’d signed the imperial edict anyway. Lin Chen had donned armor anyway.

That day, Xiao Jingyan had recognized the look in Lin Chen’s eyes. There is little that the two of them wouldn’t do for Mei Changsu.

“You’re not who I thought you were,” is Lin Chen’s quiet pronouncement when he finally comes out of his hiding place.

He’s wearing white silk robes with the sleeves tied back, in the sweltering heat of the summer evening. His hair is fully down, and the ring on his left ear glistens between two black strands when it catches the light of the moon. Xiao Jingyan’s breath catches.

“Who did you think I was?”

Lin Chen meets his eyes confidently. There aren’t many people left, now, who hold his gaze.

“Someone who could never love him back.”

Xiao Jingyan sighs. “Didn’t he tell you? That I loved him from the day he was born?”

“You loved Lin Shu.”

“Not just xiao-Shu,” Xiao Jingyan shakes his head. Mei Changsu had come into his life like a whirlwind of change, of which he was the unmoving center. “The first thing he did was free my elder brother’s child. So easily, as if he did that every day. Even when I thought he’d only done it to win my favor, I couldn’t help but feel moved toward him.”

Lin Chen’s smile widens predatorily. “Ah, so you’re actually attracted to the scheming. I should have guessed.”

Xiao Jingyan feels his cheeks heat, in embarrassment or anger, but only briefly. “Who can be indifferent to that brain of his?” he asks innocently.

Lin Chen coughs in his sleeve. “Indeed.”

He kneels close to the bed, beside Xiao Jingyan, and seeks the pulse at Mei Changsu’s wrist out of what seems like habit. “His condition is stabilizing,” he says. “He should start waking up more.”

Xiao Jingyan studies Mei Changsu’s still face. There’s nothing left there of his xiao-Shu, but it’s handsome in its own way, the delicate features not marred but somehow underlined by the sickly paleness of the skin. Even in sleep, Mei Changsu looks tired and gaunt, but there’s a beating heart in his ribcage. It’s more than Xiao Jingyan thought he’d have.

“His body is extremely weakened. It will be a while before he can get out of bed, or even speak reliably. It will be a long and incomplete recovery.”

Xiao Jingyan inclines his head. “I’ve lost him twice already. I can be patient.”

“You’ve proven that,” Lin Chen admits. “Any other prince would have stormed this place with imperial physicians.”

“I don’t imagine they’d be more useful than the one who’s taken care of him all these years.”

“You’d be right.”

Xiao Jingyan turns to look at him. “I won’t do you the insult of personally thanking you for his care. But…” he hesitates, taking a breath. “Thank you for not taking him back to Langya Hall.”

Lin Chen looks genuinely surprised. “How did you know I wanted to?”

“Just because I don’t say much doesn’t mean I don’t notice everything,” Xiao Jingyan smiles self-deprecatingly. “You don’t like this place. You didn’t want him to come here at all.”

Lin Chen huffs. “Do you know why?”

“Because it’s noisy and stinking and full of scheming politics?”

“Now you’re just projecting,” Lin Chen laughs.

Xiao Jingyan inclines his head in acknowledgment. “Why, then?”

Lin Chen stays silent for a moment, looking at Mei Changsu’s face. “Because just like you, I sat at his bedside waiting. For twelve years, I watched him recover and relapse, build the Alliance, raise a child, and the only goal in his mind was to come back here to destroy himself. He had no interest in the life that he built with us.” He gestures between himself and Feiliu, who is sleeping curled up in a ball on his bed. “So yes, I hate this place that took so much from him, and I hate that it took him from us, too.”

“Then why are you here at all?”

Lin Chen’s eyes bore into Xiao Jingyan like red-hot arrows. “Because I can’t let him go, and I can’t make him let you go.”

Xiao Jingyan averts his eyes first.

And I have become calmer since I began to live only for myself.

He waited until Wei Wuxian had disappeared reluctantly back inside. Wangji glared at him, challenging, disappointed, stubborn, angry. He had, of course, more right to be than he knew. Lan Xichen could not endure that gaze. He didn't know where to begin, or how to say what he'd wanted to say for years, or how to face this moment he had feared more than anything. And so he said again "I know A-Yao could not have done what you are accusing him of." His voice was hollow-sounding, and he felt more than saw his brother's face curdle in disgust. The gravel of the courtyard crunched as Wangji turned to go. "Because I know who did."

Silence. Another crunch of gravel as his brother turned back. He couldn't face him. His jaw worked as he struggled around the fear and the guilt and the endless, endless shame clogging his mouth. He swallowed, uselessly, and closed his eyes. "Wangji," he tried, his voice strangled-sounding, "There is something I have to tell you."

Not for the first time, Lan Xichen wished his brother could read him as well as he read his brother, could understand from his mien and fragmented, disjointed statements what he was trying to convey. And like every other time he hated himself immediately for wishing Wangji anything other than himself. He, after all, was not the one who ought to have been different. "I--" He had spent so long waiting to be found out, waiting to be accused. It would have been so much easier than this. It was a cowardly wish. He cleared his throat and tried again. "You are right, that Da-ge was killed. But it wasn't A-Yao." He cast a pleading glance at his brother. It was too much to hope that he would be spared having to say it. He didn't deserve to be spared.

"Xiongzhang," was all Wangji said in return. He looked, now, more confused than disgusted. Well. That would change soon.

"I..." He closed his eyes again, drew in a long breath, and let it out, let it take the roiling feelings with it until all he felt was cold and empty. "I killed him. And if the evidence points to A-Yao, it is because he," his voice caught on the next words like a root in a path, "he made sure I would not be suspected."

Everything that night had happened, as he remembered it, quickly, but when he tried to draw upon the memories, they were piecemeal, unfocused, silent flashes of image and motion. A-Yao sailing through the air like a kite loosed from its strings. Da-ge rushing after him with Baxia held aloft. Feeling the vibrations from blocking the blow pinging down his arm. Liebing under his fingers, which never made sense to him because he could not wield both Liebing and Shuoyue at once. The cold of the stone step against his cheek and the soles of Da-ge's boots above him. The glint as Shuoyue flew after him. The blood on A-Yao's face. The blood under Da-ge's unmoving form. A-Yao's hand on his arm. The small crack running along a rafter in the guest-room A-Yao had left him in for hours after.

Wangji's face had contorted in horror and disbelief. "Xiongzhang," was all he could say.

Fandom: Word of honor Characters: Wen Kexing & Gu Xiang Prompt: After her death, Gu Xiang’s voice (and ghost?) appear to Wen Kexing, the expression of his guilt because no, she won’t come back even as a ghost. (So you say you like angst? THERE! You’ve been served! 😈 )

This is set in a nebulous alternate ending where ZZS and WKX both survive but suffer severe consequences.

On AO3 here.

-

“What’s wrong?” Zhou Zishu asks as he finds his lover’s arm and drapes himself around it.

Wen Kexing stays frozen under his touch. He’s kneeling on the floor, the folds of his robes in disarray around him as if he’s fallen rather than sat. In the sweeping light of the setting sun coming through the window, his white hair stands out in Zhou Zishu’s dimmed vision like the veil of a shrouded ghost.

“Is it a headache again?” Zhou Zishu tried after waiting in vain for an answer.

He feels Wen Kexing’s hitched breath in the crook of his shoulder, a whisper he can’t make out. “You’ll have to be louder,” he says apologetically.

“Sorry,” Wen Kexing’s hand signs onto his chest, repeatedly.

The hand signs was something they made up when Wen Kexing first woke up inside the mountain with broken meridians, so weak that he could barely speak, let alone loud enough for Zhou Zishu’s diminished hearing. They’ve been useful, but they only have a handful of words; it doesn’t tell Zhou Zishu what’s going on.

“Are you in pain?” he asks, softly, in case it is indeed one of Wen Kexing’s headaches.

“No.” A fist, laid on his chest. Then, “Yes. No.”

Zhou Zishu frowns and adjusts his grip on Wen Kexing’s arm.

“A-Xiang,” Wen Kexing’s actual voice says at the edge of his hearing. Zhou Zishu refocuses on his lips, trying to understand his jumbled words. “She shouldn’t be here! I don’t… No! She was supposed to—”

“Lao Wen,” Zhou Zishu gently cups his face. “Are you seeing a-Xiang?”

“Can’t you see her?” Wen Kexing asks desperately.

“Lao Wen, I can’t see much on a good day, you’ll have to show me.”

For his own peace of mind, he still follows Wen Kexing’s gaze, but the sun has nearly set, and the room is too dark for him to distinguish anything but Wen Kexing’s white hair and pale face.

Wen Kexing stumbles forward out of his grasp, desperately reaching. “A-Xiang…” His voice is loud now, hoarse as if he’s been crying. “A-Xiang, you weren’t supposed to stay… Your Cao-ge, he’s waiting for you… Don’t stay for me…”

“Lao Wen, there’s nothing there,” Zhou Zishu says, embracing him from the back, if only to keep him from hurting himself.

Even if he can’t see well, he’s reasonably sure that a-Xiang hasn’t come back as a ghost. It’s been months now since her death; she’s been buried and avenged, and she’s hopefully at peace. This girl who was a ghost in life—Wen Kexing hasn’t stopped blaming himself for her tragic end, and he’s the one for whom peace will not come.

Zhou Zishu can’t bring himself to regret not letting him die in the mountain, much like he can’t regret his own survival, but the price to pay for Wen Kexing was steep. The loss of his martial art was only the start of it; the weakness of his body made the headaches and fainting spells much worse. And then there are the visions.

From what Zhou Zishu can tell, Wen Kexing has seen and heard things others didn’t for most of his life, or at least that’s what a-Xiang told him when he asked her. The inhabitants of Ghost Valley called him crazy—Zhou Zishu did too, once. But now that Wen Kexing’s control over his own body keeps failing, he easily loses his grip on his mind too. Or perhaps, now that their lives are more simple, the gap between his perception and reality is more obvious.

“She’s not there,” Zhou Zishu says soothingly. “She’s gone over. She’s found her peace.”

“No,” Wen Kexing sobs. “Once a ghost, always a ghost. There’s no peace for us. This is all my fault…”

“Lao Wen…”

Zhou Zishu isn’t sure what to do. Wen Kexing won’t snap out of this just because of his denials—he’s already pushing Zhou Zishu away, stumbling up again, reaching. But there’s nothing to reach for; just as Zhou Zishu’s hands find him again in the darkness, Wen Kexing falls to the floor and curls up on himself, whimpering.

He’s muttering something Zhou Zishu can’t hear. At a loss, Zhou Zishu lies down beside him and gently catches his wrists. He brings Wen Kexing’s hands up to his own face—hands that immediately start signing against his cheeks, over and over, “sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Zhou Zishu whispers. “She loved you, and you did your best for her. Her death wasn’t your fault.”

Even this close, he can’t see much of Wen Kexing’s face, but he can feel the gradual relaxing of his posture. Carefully, he gathers his lover in his arms, touching their foreheads together. “There. It’s okay, go to sleep. It’s okay.”

Wen Kexing whispers something indistinct, a vibration against Zhou Zishu’s lips, and kisses him tiredly. “Sorry,” he signs again on his neck, but this time, it’s addressed to Zhou Zishu.

“It’s okay,” Zhou Zishu repeats. “I love you. You can sleep.”

Wen Kexing’s body goes slack in his arms, and Zhou Zishu lets out a breath. “I’m sorry, a-Xiang,” he murmurs to himself. “I’m doing my best to take care of him.”

There is no response, but he wasn’t expecting one.

-

Jin Zixuan lives, because A-Jie has two younger brothers who get into trouble, and she has made them each carry a stack of various healing talismans since childhood. Jin Zixuan lives because A-Jie has always worried for her family, so she gave her husband the same talismans to keep in his robes.

One of those talismans activated as Jin Zixuan lay choking on his own blood in the dust, using the last dregs of his spiritual energy. Its spell sedated his body and slowed his life processes, gave him thirteen minutes to cling to life instead of thirty seconds. Just long enough for a second party of cultivators, Jiang Cheng included, to find the aftermath of the massacre and its single survivor. Inspection of the remarkable talisman proves Jiang Cheng right- the design is Wei Wuxian's. He doesn't know whether to laugh or scream.

Wei Wuxian, however indirectly, nearly kills and manages to save the life of Jin Zixuan. He does not save his own. The slaughter of several hundred Jin and the nephew of the Chief Cultivator is grounds enough for Jin Guangshan to call for his blood.

In the end, Jiang Cheng does not need to kill his brother because of Jin Zixuan. He watches Wei Wuxian fall to his demise, instead, because Jiang Cheng felt A-Jie slump dead in his arms, and she has a husband who still lies unconscious and an infant son waiting for her to come home. Jiang Cheng leaves a broken Lan Wangji at the cliff edge, refuses to look back, look down. Hanguang-Jun may be the one waiting for Wei Wuxian to return, but Jiang Cheng cannot afford to join him. There is family now he needs to protect for the future. The ghost of Wei Wuxian is a regret of the past.

In the days he waits for Jin Zixuan to wake up, Jiang Cheng scours the ravine below and tucks Chenqing into his belt anyway.

Fandom: Word of honor Characters: Wen Kexing & Gu Xiang Prompt: After her death, Gu Xiang’s voice (and ghost?) appear to Wen Kexing, the expression of his guilt because no, she won’t come back even as a ghost. (So you say you like angst? THERE! You’ve been served! 😈 )

This is set in a nebulous alternate ending where ZZS and WKX both survive but suffer severe consequences.

On AO3 here.

-

“What’s wrong?” Zhou Zishu asks as he finds his lover’s arm and drapes himself around it.

Wen Kexing stays frozen under his touch. He’s kneeling on the floor, the folds of his robes in disarray around him as if he’s fallen rather than sat. In the sweeping light of the setting sun coming through the window, his white hair stands out in Zhou Zishu’s dimmed vision like the veil of a shrouded ghost.

“Is it a headache again?” Zhou Zishu tried after waiting in vain for an answer.

He feels Wen Kexing’s hitched breath in the crook of his shoulder, a whisper he can’t make out. “You’ll have to be louder,” he says apologetically.

“Sorry,” Wen Kexing’s hand signs onto his chest, repeatedly.

The hand signs was something they made up when Wen Kexing first woke up inside the mountain with broken meridians, so weak that he could barely speak, let alone loud enough for Zhou Zishu’s diminished hearing. They’ve been useful, but they only have a handful of words; it doesn’t tell Zhou Zishu what’s going on.

“Are you in pain?” he asks, softly, in case it is indeed one of Wen Kexing’s headaches.

“No.” A fist, laid on his chest. Then, “Yes. No.”

Zhou Zishu frowns and adjusts his grip on Wen Kexing’s arm.

“A-Xiang,” Wen Kexing’s actual voice says at the edge of his hearing. Zhou Zishu refocuses on his lips, trying to understand his jumbled words. “She shouldn’t be here! I don’t… No! She was supposed to—”

“Lao Wen,” Zhou Zishu gently cups his face. “Are you seeing a-Xiang?”

“Can’t you see her?” Wen Kexing asks desperately.

“Lao Wen, I can’t see much on a good day, you’ll have to show me.”

For his own peace of mind, he still follows Wen Kexing’s gaze, but the sun has nearly set, and the room is too dark for him to distinguish anything but Wen Kexing’s white hair and pale face.

Wen Kexing stumbles forward out of his grasp, desperately reaching. “A-Xiang…” His voice is loud now, hoarse as if he’s been crying. “A-Xiang, you weren’t supposed to stay… Your Cao-ge, he’s waiting for you… Don’t stay for me…”

“Lao Wen, there’s nothing there,” Zhou Zishu says, embracing him from the back, if only to keep him from hurting himself.

Even if he can’t see well, he’s reasonably sure that a-Xiang hasn’t come back as a ghost. It’s been months now since her death; she’s been buried and avenged, and she’s hopefully at peace. This girl who was a ghost in life—Wen Kexing hasn’t stopped blaming himself for her tragic end, and he’s the one for whom peace will not come.

Zhou Zishu can’t bring himself to regret not letting him die in the mountain, much like he can’t regret his own survival, but the price to pay for Wen Kexing was steep. The loss of his martial art was only the start of it; the weakness of his body made the headaches and fainting spells much worse. And then there are the visions.

From what Zhou Zishu can tell, Wen Kexing has seen and heard things others didn’t for most of his life, or at least that’s what a-Xiang told him when he asked her. The inhabitants of Ghost Valley called him crazy—Zhou Zishu did too, once. But now that Wen Kexing’s control over his own body keeps failing, he easily loses his grip on his mind too. Or perhaps, now that their lives are more simple, the gap between his perception and reality is more obvious.

“She’s not there,” Zhou Zishu says soothingly. “She’s gone over. She’s found her peace.”

“No,” Wen Kexing sobs. “Once a ghost, always a ghost. There’s no peace for us. This is all my fault…”

“Lao Wen…”

Zhou Zishu isn’t sure what to do. Wen Kexing won’t snap out of this just because of his denials—he’s already pushing Zhou Zishu away, stumbling up again, reaching. But there’s nothing to reach for; just as Zhou Zishu’s hands find him again in the darkness, Wen Kexing falls to the floor and curls up on himself, whimpering.

He’s muttering something Zhou Zishu can’t hear. At a loss, Zhou Zishu lies down beside him and gently catches his wrists. He brings Wen Kexing’s hands up to his own face—hands that immediately start signing against his cheeks, over and over, “sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Zhou Zishu whispers. “She loved you, and you did your best for her. Her death wasn’t your fault.”

Even this close, he can’t see much of Wen Kexing’s face, but he can feel the gradual relaxing of his posture. Carefully, he gathers his lover in his arms, touching their foreheads together. “There. It’s okay, go to sleep. It’s okay.”

Wen Kexing whispers something indistinct, a vibration against Zhou Zishu’s lips, and kisses him tiredly. “Sorry,” he signs again on his neck, but this time, it’s addressed to Zhou Zishu.

“It’s okay,” Zhou Zishu repeats. “I love you. You can sleep.”

Wen Kexing’s body goes slack in his arms, and Zhou Zishu lets out a breath. “I’m sorry, a-Xiang,” he murmurs to himself. “I’m doing my best to take care of him.”

There is no response, but he wasn’t expecting one.

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