i want to be a real boy, said the puppet to the fairy. i am too loud and too wooden. i cannot understand the softness of their skin.

when i lie, my nose grows. when i am lied to, nothing happens to them at all. they smile. their eyes shine, wet with salt-water. my wrists are bound with string, my ankles are threaded with wire.

when i open my mouth, out comes a scream, as a felled tree, bleeding sap. i've shattered the windows and bent the door.

i've broken my father's heart.

have i not given all i had within me to give? did i not shave myself hollow to offer a handful of wood chips and sawdust to anyone who would smile at me? my walls are thin, by now, and my voice is a haunting within my own head. when the sun is strong enough, it shines right through me.

as though i was made of glass, like the fine porcelain dolls in their fine silk dresses and their fine leather shoes. those chubby-red cheeks, polished to the noblest of shines.

smooth as aged pebbles, they do not hurt the palms that hold them unless dropped.

i have taken sandpaper to the high points of me. the rough, first, no matter how it hurt to hold it. no matter the mess. my father taught me well. i will not splinter if you touch me.

i will not lie. i will dance the dance, i will drink the drink, i will breathe only when i am told. i will sink this pining body into the sea. for my father, i will rot.

only make me soft. give me lungs and a beating, bleeding heart.

make me right, said the puppet to the fairy, make me whole.

silly little heartwood, said the fairy to the puppet, you are real. how else would you cry? there is nothing wrong with you.

a bow for the bad decisions: Chapter 11

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(on ao3)

CHAPTER WARNINGS: Graphic depictions of violence, emotional/verbal abuse, major character death (chapter summary available at start of next chapter — please take care of yourselves!)

The talisman gate looks the same as it did all those months ago. Red and shimmering, a veil of blood in the grey air. Silence hangs heavy around them. Last time he was here, there were at least bird calls, the occasional chirp or caw of blackbirds fluttering near the borders. Their absence settles like a needle at the base of his skull. He doesn’t see who breaks the barrier, but he feels the split like a cold flood. Resentment bursts, scatters, rebounds off all the gathered cultivators like sparks escaping a fire. Gaping emptiness greets them on the other side, missing movement, absent life. The three thousand cultivators summoned by Jin Guangshan’s war call hesitate, shuffle amongst each other on the path. Jiang Cheng watches with something like disgust, disdain cold over the crackling, snarling anger burning in his heart. They were all so eager at the start, tripping over themselves to be the one to slay the Yiling laozu and now they stumble like juniors on their first night hunt.

Part of him, childish and willfully naive, hopes they’ll scare themselves out of attacking. Maybe they’ll remember the war, the legions laid to waste under Wei Wuxian’s command, and instead of thinking of killing him, they’ll think about how many of them are going to die here.

It’s a wasted hope. Someone steps forward, and once they’ve taken that step, it releases the rest of them to flood after. Jiang Cheng is swept along as much as he decides to follow. He is surrounded by cultivators calling for his brother’s head. His own disciples stick close to him, Xingtao and Bujue each leading a faction at his back. He doesn’t want to bring any of them. If any of them should have to go up this mountain, should have to go up against their shixiong, it should only be him. Wei Wuxian will never forgive himself for killing his shidis, he knows. It will wreck him if they fall here at his hands. They step beyond the wards, into the blade-like stillness, and Jiang Cheng thinks of Lotus Pier. A warning, a series of traps, the first defense  — did Wei Wuxian follow the same pattern here? If he is the anchor, does that strengthen the defenses with his own blood or weaken him each time one is crossed? Worry has become a living thing, constant and hungry. They meet the first corpses when half the forces have passed the gate. The smell precedes them, that sweet-sour stench that permeates the air and congeals in the back of his mouth like sodden cotton. During the war, Wei Wuxian hardly seemed to smell it, as if he’d grown impervious to the reek, but Jiang Cheng knows: you never stop tasting the dead, the way it coats your tongue and sticks in your throat. Cracking sticks and limbs shade their steps, the wet squelch of half-rotten flesh through soft loam. There are hundreds, thousands of them. They descend like locusts, hands clawed, teeth bared. A Jin disciple stumbles in front of Jiang Cheng, body buckling, and they twist in a stuttered fall. Black hair falls loose around a scarlet gash, jaw torn away and throat ripped through. He brings Sandu up, slices through the corpse’s chest. Tugs her out of the rotting ribs. Pushes forward. Zidian cuts through the swarm, and the scent of burning flesh hangs heavy in the humid air. He presses on. Xingtao and Bujue’s swords flash at his sides. A Lan disciple with a birthmark like wine splashed across her cheek gives a sucking gasp at his side as a corpse punches through her chest. Jiang Cheng braces himself, but the corpse turns away, lurching toward a Nie disciple on the other side. He stares a moment, but there are others coming; he doesn’t have time to think, can’t waste a moment considering it.

They push forward up the rotting hill, and if the Yunmeng Jiang group pulls ahead of all the others — well, it’s just proof that they’re growing as strong as they once were. He tells himself this as Sandu cuts through corpses’ backs and sides, as gold and white and grey robes fall but never blue. He tells himself it’s only skill and perhaps some familiarity with Wei Wuxian’s cultivation style after so many years of association. Then they hit the second wave.

A high, keening scream pierces the air, cuts through the stench and yells and anger. He can’t tell who it is, but it comes from their side and it is nothing but unfettered fear. Cutting through the corpse before him, Jiang Cheng understands. He’s seen this before, a few times, when Wei Wuxian used the Seal in the war and called up the spirits of cultivators and beasts and monsters. He’s never seen it like this. It’s as if the Burial Mounds themselves are exhaling a great spirit in tatters and gasps. Black and crimson flood them, block out the weak sun and the ash-and-bone soil. Anger, rage, anguish, sets the air to crackling, lightning-surge power singing through it. The air burns his skin where his face and hands are bared, caustic. Resentment splinters and shivers down the veins of his neck, slipping like silver through his bloodstream. He twists and catches a scarlet spirit, half of a face snarling through the blood, diving down at a clump of Lan and Nie disciples. Before he can snap out Zidian, there’s a sudden pressure at his back, and he turns with Sandu raised. A great serpentine head rises in black smoke, monstrous and familiar. Stepping back, he shifts in front of Bujue and Xingtao. They have their blades raised, faces pale but set. The xuanwu pauses, its terrible grey-smoke eyes considering them. Jiang Cheng should attack, should strike now in its lull — but he remembers this beast, remembers the horror of it, of Wei Wuxian after, clutching that hideous sword. The xuanwu swings its head away, plunging toward a band of Jins. “Zongzhu, look!” Bujue calls. “Da-shixiong must be protecting Yunmeng Jiang!” It’s true, he realizes as he looks over their band. There’s blood on some blades and splattered across their robes, but it’s not theirs. No one is missing from their ranks; he can spy no grave injury. Elation surges up through his chest, sped on its way by the adrenaline of the fight. Of course Wei Wuxian remembers them. Of course he found some way to keep them safe. He dives forward once more, newly charged with hope. Wen Qing may be Wei Wuxian’s close confidant and the best doctor around, but she doesn’t know his brother like he does. Wei Wuxian has strength running through him like a pillar of forged steel. What other cultivator could stand against three thousand? Who else could face them down and still protect his family? He is the strongest cultivator alive, and his golden core was torn away. Strange pride surges through him, the savage and vicious kind that revels in fierce strength. It’s the kind that wants the other sects to know, to tremble before the brutal strength of Yunmeng Jiang, rebuilt and reforged in blood and death. The impossible is nothing in the face of Yunmeng’s sons. He cuts through spirits and cleaves them into nothing with Zidian. These are his allies, after all. A voice that sounds like his father’s says pledges made shouldn’t be lightly cast aside. A voice that sounds like his mother’s says keeping up the pretense will serve him however the wind turns. Behind him, he can hear the disciples do the same. Even as they fight and cut them down, the spirits don’t turn on them. They forge ahead, pulling up the mountainside. As they ascend, the resentment grows thicker and hungry, a clinging fog reaching out and tugging at them with claw-tipped hands. It drags at them, turns their steps leaden and breaths shallow. Worry nips at the back of Jiang Cheng’s mind, but then, this is such a virulent place. Wei Wuxian said it would be worse with a golden core. He must be fine, anchoring the center, or else how could he be protecting them still while fighting all the others? A clawed hand lurches out and seizes Jiang Cheng’s throat. He chokes, bringing Sandu up to hack at the wrist. The fingertips dig in even as the blade bites through bone, and he gasps in a painful breath and stumbles. He swings out with Zidian, burns through golden robes and a peony crest. The puppet sways and Sandu bites through its neck. Its head falls before the body, eyes white and empty. No, he thinks. Another puppet lurches toward them, a thin sword upraised. No. He refuses to accept it, can’t allow himself to believe as Xingtao narrowly escapes a fist through her gut. Puppets are rising through the black mist, cultivators from each sect killed and turned against their kin. His stomach twists, bile rising sour in his throat. They stalk forward unfalteringly and wield pejians that should rebel against so much yin energy. They are overwhelmed, subsumed and turned on end. They rush the gathered forces and show no memory of the Jiang. Jiang Cheng deflects a blow and runs a puppet through on reflex. Panic screams in his ears, and he bats it down. There’s no time to lose control, no chance to let himself slip. They are in a battle, and his destination remains the same. He has to get to Wei Wuxian before the others. He has to get to his brother, protect him, pull him back. His urgency doubles as the spirits around them turn with the puppets to tear into the Jiang force. A puppet swings at his chest, a hole through her heart and wine-red over her cheek. He lashes out, splits her ribcage open on Zidian’s fierce edge. Falling, she clears a glimpse up the slope. There’s a single figure ahead of him, white in the writhing black. “Fuck,” Jiang Cheng hisses, pushing forward. For all that they tried to persuade Wei Wuxian that Lan Wangji cared about him, deserved to know about his core, that doesn’t change who he is. Hanguang-jun has always been the most vocal enemy of demonic cultivation, of this unorthodox and unrighteous path. Now, with Wei Wuxian so clearly flooded by resentment, will Lan Wangji see anything other than a monster to be eliminated? “Wei Ying, stop this!” “Ah Lan Wangji, have you finally come to kill me?” His voice doesn’t sound like his brother. It’s too resonant, too sharp, like a dozen voices speak in chorus with him. Chills shiver up Jiang Cheng’s skin as he struggles through the resentment tugging lead-like at his legs. “I always knew we would one day have to fight for real.” “Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, “please.” His voice breaks, pleading and raw, and Jiang Cheng thinks, oh. Thinks, that explains a lot. Doesn’t think about all the ways he probably should have known before; doesn’t have time to think what it actually means except that he’s always wondered what Wei Wuxian is to Lan Wangji and now he knows. His brother is a tattered ribbon in a storm of black. His face is a too-pale slash, a bared skull in the maelstrom. Fear cinches around Jiang Cheng’s stomach, pulls tight. He struggles anew, desperate. “Wei Ying, please,” Lan Wangji begs. “Come back.” “Come back with you? To Gusu? To the righteous path?” Wei Wuxian’s laughter rises high and cutting. “Go to hell, Lan Wangji.” This isn’t right. This isn’t his brother speaking. It’s like the war again, like that horrible night in Yiling when his brother came back changed and wrong.   “Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji begs. “You are destroying yourself. You promised you’d let me help you.” The Seal hovers at Wei Wuxian’s side, whole and writhing with malevolence. Jiang Cheng shudders before it, even from this distance. He can feel the cold hunger pulsing off it in waves, the leering anger. This close, he wonders that they couldn’t tell the moment when Wei Wuxian snapped it together. It is a wholly different creature than the resentment of the Burial Mounds. His mouth grows dry at the sheer power of it, and he wonders, looking at it and Wei Wuxian, who is the master and who the tool. “What help are you, Hanguang-jun?” Wei Wuxian scoffs. “What can you possibly do? Aren’t you going to kill me? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?” “Wei Wuxian!” Jiang Cheng yells. Someone needs to get through to him, and it’s clear Lan Wangji is getting nowhere. He stumbles forward. “Wei Wuxian, stop this!” he calls. “Stop this?” Wei Wuxian turns to him, and his heart stops. This is not his brother. This is not even the Wei Wuxian of the war, who looked ghostly and crooked in his skin. His eyes gleam bloodred, his body half-there, smudged and ribboning with resentment. There is no kindness to the sword slash smile his lips form. “Why would we stop this, Jiang Cheng? Will they stop? Will they lay down their swords and let us be? Do you think there is any walking away from this? Poor Jiang Cheng, always the little brother,” someone else croons with his brother’s mouth. “Always chasing after someone you can never be. Are you going to miss your war dog, Jiang-zongzhu? Will you turn on us now that we don’t answer your whistle?” It’s not his brother. It’s not. His brother would never say these things — but — but that doesn’t mean he’s never thought them, deep in his heart, in that place he’d retreat whenever mother lashed out particularly harshly. It might be the Seal talking, might be the resentment of the Burial Mounds, but there’s no reason it’s not Wei Wuxian’s own beliefs. The thought makes Jiang Cheng stagger, eyes stinging. It’s not as if he hasn’t had the same thoughts, as if he hasn’t stayed up at night hounded by bitterness and envy echoing around his skull in his parents’ voices. He’s known since he was fifteen years old that he could never live up to Wei Wuxian. He’s known that no matter how hard he works, he will never be the sect leader that Wei Wuxian would be if their births were reversed. If he’d been the one born to a servant, he never would have risen so high above his station. His mother was right: he doesn’t have the backbone for it. “Look at you. Do you really think you could stop us? You’ve brought all the sects here,” his brother’s voice crows. “We’ll kill you all and finally be free. We will never be a servant again.” Jiang Cheng forces himself to stand and take a step forward. Fine. If his brother believes it, then let it be. Wei Wuxian can hate him if that’s what it takes, but if there’s one thing Jiang Cheng can do better than Wei Wuxian, it’s hold on. He’s always been too scared of being abandoned to be the one who lets go first. Mother sneered at him for being childish; Wei Wuxian teased him for clinging to his shixiong. So be it. “Wei Ying, you do not mean this,” Lan Wangji says. “Let us help you. Release the Seal and let us help. Please.” He seems to know Jiang Cheng’s there, but it doesn’t seem to matter. All that famous composure is sundered, blown away like ashes on an easterly wind. His voice is split open, raw with entreaty. Five years ago, Wei Wuxian would have thrilled at getting a fraction of a reaction from Lan Wangji. Now he doesn’t even seem to see it. If I lose control—

His fingers are skeletal against Chenqing’s sleek black. Resentment curls and unfurls all around him, loving and ravenous. His brother is still in there. He has to be. He has to — Jiang Cheng can’t lose him. He can’t lose any more, he’s not strong enough to survive it. “Wei Wuxian don’t you fucking dare,” he spits, stilling Zidian. “Don’t you dare. You think you can leave us like this? You think you get to abandon a-jie?” There— a flicker, the faintest hint of his brother in the furrow of his brow. “You made jie cry, Wei Wuxian, and now you want me to clean up the mess?” He’s not sure he’s making sense. He’s not sure it matters. Anything, anything to get that horrible stillness off his face, that awful question out of his memory. “Jiang-zongzhu,” Lan Wangji says, warning and confusion in his tone. Jiang Cheng ignores him. Whatever Lan Wangji feels for Wei Wuxian, he’s Jiang Cheng’s brother. He’s known him since he was nine years old. He knows him. He braces Sandu and steps forward. “Fuck you, Wei Wuxian,” he says. “You can’t make me do this. You can’t leave us like this. You promised.” His hand shakes as he steps into the storm surrounding Wei Wuxian. Resentment tugs at his robes, yanks on his hair, bites at the back of his throat. Each word stings his lips like a desert wind, gritty and biting. —you’ll stop me, right? He can’t do this. He can’t he can’t— he has to. Whatever foothold he’s made with Wei Wuxian flickers and disappears as he steps close. A cold sneer curves his lips and his crimson eyes glance dismissively at Sandu’s bared blade. “Are you going to threaten us, Jiang Cheng?” he asks, nearly laughs. “Tell us, have you ever bested Wei Wuxian? What makes you think yourself our equal now? Do you really think you can kill us?” “Go to hell,” Jiang Cheng spits. It’s not his brother. It’s not his brother. It’s possession, a monster wearing his skin. “Jiang Wanyin!” Lan Wangji lurches forward, reaching out. His sword is sheathed, guqin nowhere to be seen. Did he really think he’d cut through all this resentment with nothing but his words? “Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan,” the demon with his brother’s face croons as he steps neatly out of Lan Wangji’s reach. “So protective. Do you still think you can save him? Do you think he’d ever go back to Gusu with you to be shut away and locked in? Lan Zhan, so righteous and noble, trying to keep him in your gilded cage. Do you want to know the truth, Lan Zhan?” Each step is agony. His shoulders are braced forward, teeth clenched. He wants to yell at Lan Wangji not to listen, not to give it an opening. Then, Wei Wuxian turns toward Lan Wangji and it’s his posture, his scowl and tight lips. No matter the crimson glazing his eyes, that’s Wei Wuxian. It’s his voice that comes out, all cruel and cutting. “Lan Zhan, I would rather die than go back to Gusu with you.” Lan Wangji stops short, stricken. His eyes have widened just a hair, his lips parted. He looks young in a way Jiang Cheng has never thought him. Even when they were all kids in Cloud Recesses, there was something ageless and distant about the Second Jade of Gusu. There is none of that in the sheer ruin of his anguish. Lan Wangji stands fractured in this wasteland, impossibly young. Wei Wuxian grins, a wicked, bloody curve. Before Jiang Cheng can move or call out, a yao of pure yin energy rises from the roiling clouds and slams into Lan Wangji. His white vanishes into the mist, swallowed whole by the darkness. “Wei Wuxian!” Jiang Cheng howls. He’s close enough now. Wei Wuxian turns with that stupid, obnoxious, hateful curl to his lips. Jiang Cheng only has to take half a step and thrust. Wei Wuxian’s eyes widen in dumb shock, that bloodletting smile finally slipping. Clenching his jaw, Jiang Cheng gives Sandu a short, sharp push. She bites through the teal fabric; he can feel when she hits skin, the brief resistance and sudden give of flesh splitting. It is the worst gift in the world, he thinks, to be trusted with this. He doesn’t want the privilege of his brother’s death; he doesn’t want Wei Wuxian to trust him to stop him. The memory makes something sour and thick rise up in his throat. He draws in a shaking breath and places a hand just in front of Sandu’s hilt to hold the blade steady. Just shy of his side, the blade won’t hit anything vital, won’t be lethal. With a golden core, it would probably take only a week to heal. He breathes in and pushes the the sword deeper into his brother’s belly. “Wei Wuxian,” he says. “Wei Wuxian, listen to me.” Resentment is still spilling, swirling, screaming, around them. It brushes past, misses his skin by a breath. His hands are steady. Everything else is shaking, spinning, crumbling around him. He presses spiritual energy through the blade and his own core seems to rebel, to recoil from this violation. “Wei Wuxian, come back,” he says, begs, pleads. “You can’t do this! You can’t make me do this. You’re my brother.” His voice comes out hoarse and broken, sobbing. He once hated his father for bringing home a stranger and telling him to be his brother. “You have to come back,” he orders, even as his voice breaks. “We said we’d figure it out together. You said you’d come home. You can’t leave me.” Sandu sinks deeper, slides home. Salt stings Jiang Cheng’s lips and he gasps around the knot in his throat. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. They were going to go home.  They were going to go home and they were going to be together as a family once more. They were supposed to be together, brothers in this life and the one that follows. Wei Wuxian can’t just leave him, not like this. “Jiang Cheng.” It’s a whisper, fractured. Blood bubbles through his teeth, breaks on his lips. Jiang Cheng shudders, holds Sandu as steady as he can. “Jiang Cheng, it hurts,” his brother whispers. There are tears running down his cheeks, mixing with the blood dripping down his chin. His eyes are wide and frightened, and still that bloody, burning red. Jiang Cheng can feel his own tears burning hot trails over the edge of his jaw. He can’t let go, can’t pull back now. He’s lost so much blood. “You can’t die,” he orders, voice breaking. “You can’t die, Wei Wuxian. You can’t leave me like this.” It’s not fair it’s not fair it’s not fair— His very core rebels against the spiritual energy he’s pressing into the blade. It’s wrong. He was never meant to raise Sandu against his brother. They were never meant to hurt each other, not like this, never like this. “Wei Wuxian, you promised,” he sobs. “You promised. You’d be by my side for life.” His eyes are still hazy with scarlet, resentment writhing off his skin like it’s peeling out of him. “Jiang Cheng,” he says, soft through the blood on his teeth. His lips part around a tattered breath. Jiang Cheng clings to Sandu as Wei Wuxian sways and his knees fold. He tries to keep the blade steady as they sink to the ground, tries not to let it hurt him anymore than he already has. “A-jie’s waiting for us, Wei Wuxian,” Jiang Cheng sobs. “I promised her. I promised her I’d bring you back. Wei Wuxian, please. Please just let us go home.” A fragile smile shivers into Wei Wuxian’s lips. The Seal sinks into his upturned palm, and Jiang Cheng holds his brother’s gaze, begging. Wei Wuxian’s teeth tighten and grit together, pain carved into lines of tension through his face. There’s a burst of resentful energy that bowls through both of them and a horrible, snarling crack. Two halves of the Seal spin, burning and raging, before Wei Wuxian. Relief rushes through Jiang Cheng, such a heady wave he nearly loses his hold on Sandu. “Come on,” he coaxes. “Wei Wuxian, lets go. A-jie’s waiting for us.” That smile slips thin and shattered over Wei Wuxian’s lips. Jiang Cheng feels hope spread fragile veins from its root in his heart. “Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian says, as soft and gentle as if it is a treasure in itself. “A-Cheng.” He reaches out the hand not holding Chenqing. His fingers don’t look quite right: two of them are bent at an odd angle and the rest can’t seem to straighten. Still, he reaches out for Jiang Cheng. “Thank you,” he says. He has no time to comprehend it. Wei Wuxian’s hand stiffens. The heel of his palm hits Jiang Cheng just below his collarbone with all the force of a golden core. He’s flung backwards, clinging to Sandu so tightly his own blood mingles with his brother’s. For a moment, it seems as if time itself has slowed; he can see the resentment crawling up Wei Wuxian’s body, can see the dark stain where blood is seeping through his robes. He can see the broken smile that tugs up one side of his lips as Wei Wuxian’s hand clenches tight and cracks spread through the Seal. He watches as the Seal fights and shudders and collapses in on itself in a tidal wave of resentment. He watches as the resentment scrawls up Wei Wuxian’s body like black hooks sinking into his chest and tugging. He watches as his brother’s body is torn to shreds.