Three emoji prompt
🔥🌺🤮
for @jiaoji who wanted angst.
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Ash rose around him, choking the air. Smoke billowing in thick plumes above the site Wei Ying had once called home.
It turned his robes gray, soot settling into the white silk turning him from a light bearing beacon, into a muddled shape against the black, the ash and the blooming plum trees.
Tiny pink and white flowers scattered across the barren, desolate landscape where a man that attempted to stand against the world made his final stand.
Pain.
Hot, bright, sharp. Up his back. His vision went white, his stomach turned.
Lan Wangji turned to the side, vomiting the megar contents of soup and rice onto the dry and cracked soil.
A radish was growing there. Far away from the Wen crops, hidden from the slaughter and devastation, growing against all the odds against it. Green among the black, white below the dirt, growing among the bones.
He wanted to stop.
He needed to see.
Wei Ying was the brightest star in the sky. So endlessly capable, intelligent, resourceful. He had made a home in the place the Sects feared. He tamed ghosts and won a war, he loved his sister with an intensity that would have leveled a city had he gone on longer.
If anyone could outsmart the sects and survive it would be him.
Pushing to his feet, he wrapped the black cloak tighter around him. He kept between the trees, away from the voices, he paused when Nie cultivators came close, trusting the talismans Wei Ying had once given him in the war to keep him safe, hidden, especially here in this place he called a home.
His back and stomach both protested moving any more, the blackness dancing at the edge of his vision urged him to rest, to return to Cloud Recesses, but he would not…not until he knew. Not until he saw.
His back was wet and sticky, the bandages were sticking to the wounds at the edges, they would pull the scabs off when they had to be changed, leading to fresh pain…and perhaps more damage.
He stopped, holding his breath.
Shufu stood in the middle of the path, on either side of him the ramshackle homes of the Wen’s burned.
Shufu, in his pristine whites, clad in glory and rich silks, stood on a graveyard of the ancient and the new and glared at the destruction around him as if it was distasteful. Like the slaughter of the poor, and the weak, was an errant student that needed strict correction.
He thought of such a student. Wild. Wilful, bright and playful.
Smothered, buried under rumors and lies and mounting distrust because he was not born good enough and didn’t have the good sense to know his place.
He would find no salvation here. There weren’t rules enough to cover the unfilial anger that had his hand on Bichan and two steps out of the trees before he caught himself.
He caught himself, pulling the cloak tight until he was a shade among the smoke, even if shufu did look his way, he would see little.
He watched his shufu, watched him accept papers, drawings of arrays that were undoubtedly Wei Ying’s.
Shufu would be punished for his transgressions. But it was not his to dispense.
He turned from shufu, keeping to the rear of the burning ruins, pushing further towards the cave where Wei Ying once claimed himself a demon.
Yellow dancing among the plum blossoms dragged his eyes away from his destination.
He felt a tug on his sleeve, a voice in his ear whispering. He spun, seeing only the yellow on the tree, fluttering in the wind like the last flag of a dead army.
He’s there! a voice, the wind, cried, go, go hurry, he needs you!
Lan Wangji did not think himself capable of running. He did not feel his back as his feet pounded over the rocks and rain-starved earth. He didn’t feel the pain until he dropped to his knees in front of the tree, ripping off the talismen.
The illusion fell away.
He wanted to throw up, he wanted to die, he wanted to have been here when his shufu came to end it all.
Wei Ying was within the tree. His skin was gray, his eyes, once so bright and dancing, empty. Lifeless. No light. No joy upon seeing his face.
He was holding a bedraggled bundle of hair and robes all covered in blood.
Wei Ying’s blood he realized.
There was nothing left to come up, but that did not stop his stomach from trying.
He spat into the dirt, wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
He reached for the bundle, stopping for a moment as he looked at Wei Ying again.
There was a peaceful acceptance upon his face, blood coated his chin, half his cheek was missing, as well as an entire hand, his robes were caked with mud and blood. Yet he still looked…serene in his repose. Perhaps because he knew, no matter what, all of his ills and sufferings were finally over, that death would be a version of peace.
“Please forgive me.” He whispered before lifting the bundle into his arms.
A-Yuan was dangerously warm, his skin was fever hot and pink, he was small for his age and already far too skinny.
He looked at Wei Ying's body.
Take him away from here.
Wei Ying had given him so many gifts over the years. The one that Lan Wangji thought he would cherish the most was his time. When his juniors and peers avoided him because of is taciturn, frosty nature, Wei Ying had easily danced his way through every wall, tugged on Lan Wangji’s sacred ribbon, laughing as he did so.
He gave Lan Wangji something he never charished, and now something he would have to life without.
He pressed his lips to Wei Ying’s, something he never would have thought himself capable of, but the world had changed so much, forcing Lan Wangji for change right along with it. Kissing the cold corpse of the man he loved seemed the lest offenseive thing he'd done in recent years.
It felt fitting their last kiss tasted of ash and blood.
Standing, he put the talismen back up, hiding Wei Ying’s body from desecration and disrespect. He stepped onto Bichan, rising away from the carnage, from the smoke clouding his vision into the clear sky beyond.
Below him spring was in full bloom. Everywhere he looked, the world was full of flowers.
~~~~~~~
I hope this is fits with what you were looking for. I'm not convinced it's angsty enough, feedback would be appreciated.
The ending feels a bit too.... hopeful to me, but I was going for the juxtaposition of the flowers with the carnage of the slaughter.
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