okay. so. @nyx4's amazing yunmeng siblings as demonic cultivators au kind of grabbed me today. (you might have noticed.) i asked if i could write something about it and ended up coming up with... idk the prequel? so here. have that. idk if i will write more, but i really really love this au, so i probably will. but first: some pain.
(this is a super fast first draft that is also a writing warmup, so don't judge me too hard, pls!)
[T?, 1.4k, 1/?, Yunmeng Siblings]
--
The transfer fails.
.
Wei Wuxian watches through a thick haze of pain and exhaustion as Wen Qing pulls the light from his body. Cold seeps in with a rush as the last connection is cut. And then, there, cupped between the palms of her hands, is a tiny sun.
“Focus, Wei Wuxian,” she says, and he doesn’t understand. What is he supposed to focus on? But then he sees the light of that sun begin to waver, begin to fade.
It’s harder now, without the familiar sensation of pulsing warmth, to hold his core together. He’s been doing it for hours -- maybe days. It’s why he couldn’t sleep. Why he couldn’t be numbed. He had to focus, to keep his core from spinning apart. He’s not entirely sure what he’s supposed to do, now that it’s outside of him, disconnected, removed.
The light of it continues to dim.
“Wei Wuxian!”
He can’t respond to her -- his jaw is still clenched around the roll of cotton she’d had Wen Ning shove in his mouth, his throat still ragged with the screams it absorbed. He can’t ask her, “What do you want me to do? What more can I possibly do?”
On the table to his left, Jiang Cheng lies limp and pale. His body is cut open, too -- matching scars, they’ll have. Or maybe Jiang Cheng won't have a scar at all.
Wen Ning stands on the other side of that table, firelight flickering across his face, ready and waiting to help Wen Qing connect Wei Wuxian’s core to Jiang Cheng’s spiritual arteries. Three needles held between his gentle fingertips. His eyes follow the golden core as it nears. His brows furrow as he watches the light of it darken.
“Wei-gongzi,” he says, without even the hint of a stutter, “you need to keep spinning it. Like it’s still inside you.”
Oh.
Okay.
Wei Wuxian can do that. Probably.
His body feels like it’s on fire, but also like ice crystals must be forming along the empty, bloody parts of him. But he’s blocked out pain before.
Yunmeng Jiang focuses on breathing exercises, possibly more than any other sect. They swim so deep and so far that they build their cultivation around their lungs. Holding breath can tax a core, or it can grow it; but breath is life.
It’s easy to slip into those exercises now. To allow the memory of warm breeze and meandering rivers to coax his breath into meditation. Sitting in lotus pose with Jiang Cheng on the sun-drenched docks, wooden planks pressing the patterns of their heartwood against the soft silk of his first set of disciple robes. They closed their eyes together and allowed their breath to open the world to them in this other way.
They’d built their cores together like this.
Wei Wuxian doesn’t close his eyes this time -- he watches the light, now cradled in his brother’s body, with a desperation he cannot soothe. It flickers softly, like stars in the night sky do.
“Good,” says Wen Ning. “Keep doing exactly that.”
A kind of heat blooms in Wei Wuxian’s belly, melting the frostbite rime that must be crusting the whole of his torso, crawling up the open veins of his meridians.
He ignores it all.
He breathes.
The tiny sun brightens, throwing horrible shadows against the walls, across the Wen siblings’ bloody hands.
“You’re doing well, Wei-gongzi,” Wen Ning says, again.
It’s difficult to say if the praise is helpful or not. If nothing else, at least it keeps him somewhat updated on whether or not what he’s doing is even working.
He can’t feel it, is the thing. The purpose of this whole procedure is that Jiang Cheng will feel it. But Wei Wuxian won’t. So it’s not easy to know if his breathing is doing what he knows it should, or if he’s off in some unknowable way.
Wen Ning’s hands are inside Jiang Cheng’s belly. His eyes shine with the light of Wei Wuxian’s core.
Wei Wuxian can’t see Wen Qing, except the backlit silhouette of her back. He watches her arms move. Watches the way her hair has slowly come loose from its neat knot, flyaway strands diaphanous in the orange firelight to one side and brilliant gold to the other.
“Good work, Wei--”
“Shit.”
Wen Qing’ voice is small -- so small, little more than a hissing exhale -- but it silences the room all the same.
He tries to focus. Things go wrong all the time, it doesn’t mean they can’t figure it out. It doesn’t mean Wen Qing, of all people, will give up.
And she doesn’t.
Her voice is louder as she barks orders at Wen Ning that Wei Wuxian doesn’t understand. Not wanting to draw her focus in any way, Wei Wuxian keeps breathing, keeps spinning his core as best he can.
The siblings work together, fast-moving but steady. Neither of them seem to fall into the frantic rush that Wei Wuxian’s heartbeat pounds out inside his chest. He tries to let that settle him just as much as he tries not to pay them any attention at all. He has only one job, now: keep his core spinning.
It was helping, he realizes quickly, the near-constant reassurances from Wen Ning. Without them, he struggles to keep his breath, to keep the Yunmeng summer sun in his mind and lungs.
Golden light still splashes against the Wens, the walls, and the ceiling. He turns his eyes up and doesn’t let himself think about the shadow-puppet shapes. He only cares about the light. About keeping that light from going out.
Slowly, gradually, he lets the new tempo, the new tension in the room, resolve itself into something normal. A background. It seems to be working, whatever they’re doing -- the cursing has thinned, at least. The light has stayed strong, still outshining the lamps of flame.
Wei Wuxian breathes and breathes and lets himself believe that this will work. He lets himself imagine meeting Jiang Cheng down in Yiling after. He never did figure out what he was going to say to his brother, how he might explain his own weakness. It doesn’t really matter in the end. Whether Jiang Cheng finds out and hates him for it, or whether Wei Wuxian can pull it off as simple exhaustion. He’ll figure it out as he goes. He always do--
“Fuck! A-Ning!”
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
“I don’t know, Jie.”
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.
“It’s not-- It’s not taking.”
Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
“It won’t merge. It won’t-- The core is being rejected by the host.”
Wei Wuxian breathes. It’s all he can do. He doesn’t know what else to do. So he breathes.
His eyes shut of their own accord.
A tear slips from the corner, tracks its saltwater line across his temple, pools along with the sweat in his hair.
The cotton in his mouth is eased free.
He takes a stuttering breath in. Out.
Wen Ning’s face is set with deep lines of guilt and grief, when Wei Wuxian opens his eyes again.
Golden light still shines from somewhere on the table next to him.
“It-t w-won’t take, W-Wei-gongzi.”
The stutter in Wen Ning’s voice drags another tear from Wei Wuxian’s eye. Two.
Wen Qing is much steadier than her brother. Her hands, held professionally in front of her chest, drip with red and gold, blood and liquid qi.
“We can try to put it back inside you,” she says. But they’d discussed this before. They’d come up with contingencies. Or. A contingency. It was not to return the core to Wei Wuxian.
“No,” he says, and his voice is barely more than a scratch of stones.
He lets his eyes flick to the right. To the pouch he’d sewed while Wen Qing had studied.
She follows his gaze, even though she doesn’t need to. Something sad and broken, like regret or defeat, flickers across her face. But she nods.
“A-Ning, the pouch, please.”
Wen Ning hurries to grab it for her.
“You will still need to focus on it,” she tells Wei Wuxian. “Your talismans will help, but they will need you to bolster them at least five times a day. I don’t know how long you can last like that.”
He doesn’t know either. Only that it will be as long as he needs to find a new way. A new solution.
He meets her eyes, doing his best to maintain his breathing even now, letting his own mettle shine out of him.
He will do whatever it takes; she knows this.
Her lips thin. But then she nods. “Fine.”
Wei Wuxian breathes.
The golden light is swallowed by the modified Spirit Capture Pouch.
Wen Qing places three quick needles and, finally, darkness consumes him.
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