#this is like the opposite energy from my previous fill for the same prompt alkflkj; | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

whetstonefires · 25 days

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A LA MEME. MDZS, Really nice guy who hates only you, hate at first sight?

It was totally inappropriate for a corpse to be popular.

But there it was: the Ghost General was more well-liked every day. He seemed to spend all his time wandering around rescuing maidens from monsters and lifting wagons off of old men. In a few years he'd be a hero of the people.

Even the cultivation world didn't expect harm from him anymore. Most of Jin Ling's peers addressed the corpse as qianbei; Jin Ling didn't, but he seemed to get on with him well enough.

Jiang Cheng hadn't actually said out loud, when he saw Wen Qionglin parting ways with Sect Leader Jin with an exchange of polite salutes, he killed your father, but he'd looked it. Jin Ling, fluent in Jiang Cheng's expressions, sighed.

"It was an accident," he said. "And he's apologized. And, you know, uncle, he was held prisoner by Jin Sect almost my entire life, you can't say he hasn't paid for it. And..."

And they had killed his whole family. And his older sister.

Jiang Cheng looked away. "Huh."

When Jiang Cheng had made his first, clumsy attempt at mending a little of the gruesome breach between himself and Wei Wuxian, the Ghost General had been there, glaring daggers at him from behind the Yiling Laozu.

It had been more disconcerting than it should have been, and Jiang Cheng had stumbled, interrupted himself, and fallen silent enough times that eventually Wei Wuxian had taken pity on him, reached out, patted him on the arm one time, said, "Good talk, Jiang Cheng," and extricated them both from the situation.

Freed from the burden of conversation, he'd returned Wen Qionglin's glare, and lost. Corpses didn't need to blink.

He didn't want the bastard to like him. Which was just as well since it was out of the question. Jiang Cheng had never for a second in his life liked Wen Qionglin; from the first time he'd laid eyes on him when they were youths he'd interpreted him as a pathetic, burdensome coward, and despised him for it.

Owing the man his life had made it worse--he hadn't even wanted to be saved, and it was Wei Wuxian's stupid horrible charm and habit of interfering where he wasn't wanted that had done it, and like hell had he owed anything, when that person's family had murdered his. (I owe him nothing, he'd told himself once, because Wen Qionglin had been the reason he lost Wei Wuxian.)

Another time, he found himself in both their company and drew apart, letting the Yiling Patriarch and the Ghost General play at being mentors to the youth. Neither of you lived to see twenty-five, he wanted to shout. What do you think you have to teach them?

Even Jin Ling...it made him furious. Furious to glance over and see a corpse's stiff face conveying softness.

Furious to look past the crowd and see Lan Wangji's eyes falling on Wen Qionglin with an unmistakable resentment. And to know that it wasn't the stiff propriety of the Lan Wangji of their youths, objecting to the heresy of that fierce corpse's existence; that it was the look of a petty, jealous man resenting the way Wei Wuxian knocked his shoulder together with the Ghost General's and laughed.

"Where do you get off hating Wen Ning?" he asked the next time he found himself alone with Lan Wangji. It was a stupid thing to ask, but if he let himself think about how they were threshing through the underbrush looking for Wei Wuxian, about the last time they had looked for Wei Wuxian together...

Lan Wangji ignored him.

Jiang Cheng snorted. "Okay. So maybe you don't hate him. But he likes you! He's so deferential it makes me want to puke."

Lan Wangji favored him with the merest hint of a sneer, just enough to show he was listening to Jiang Cheng talk.

"You're disgusting," said Jiang Cheng. "Do you really think he shouldn't have anyone but you in his life? That he's your property?"

Lan Wangji's stride broke. It was a triumph, in a way--Jiang Cheng had never thrown him so badly in all the years they'd known each other.

"Each man judges others by his own heart," said Lan Wangji, thick with contempt, and then he was walking ahead with pointed rapidity, determined to separate from Jiang Cheng, until staying together would have meant chasing after him, and Jiang Cheng turned and went the other way, muttering blackly.

In the end, fittingly, neither of them caught up in time to be of use. Wen Ning, with his homing sense for Wei Wuxian, had shown up out of who the fuck knew where and bailed him out.

Jiang Cheng stumbled upon the haunted spring just in time to see a sodden, bedraggled Wei Wuxian launch himself away from his pet Wen's supportive arm and fling himself against the upright form of Hanguang-jun, which bent around him with a reverent murmur.

Jiang Cheng was already turning away in disgust to head back home, hating that he'd let himself be dragged into this, when he heard Lan Wangji say with careful, solemn deliberation: "Thank you, Wen Qionglin. For taking care of him."

Jiang Cheng glanced back against his will to see the Ghost General saluting deeply, wide-eyed, infinitely humble, his murmur that it was nothing special, Hanguang-jun, nearly drowned out by Wei Wuxian's delighted shouting about how good his Lan Zhan was and how much Wen Ning deserved to be appreciated.

Jiang Cheng walked away.

Wen Qionglin wasn't rude to him. Not in any way you could point at. And he knew full well he'd be making an ass of himself if he tried to pick a verbal fight.

After all, they had killed Wen Qionglin's older sister.

The whole cultivation world had done it, but only Jiang Cheng had done it after Wen Qionglin saved his life. He'd told himself he owed no debt for that, and perhaps he hadn't, but the fact remained: of the two of them, one had been brave and virtuous and earned the loyalty of Wei Wuxian.

And one of them had been pathetic, a coward, a burden.

Jiang Cheng could never look at the man without seeing the look in his dead eyes across the length of Suibian.

Jiang Cheng had never been good at lying to himself, especially if the lie was meant to be comforting. He always tried it anyway. Comforting lies used to sound so true, in Wei Wuxian's mouth; he should never have gotten into the habit of relying on that. To letting that person think Jiang Cheng was someone who needed to be swaddled in falsehoods to give him the strength to bear up under his own duties.

Wen Qionglin was a kind, gentle, courageous dead body, shy and courteous and increasingly appreciated for his virtues, in this strange new world created in the wake of Jin Guanyao's disgrace. And whenever his eyes fell on Jiang Cheng they were cold, hard, flat, contemptuous.

Every time he looked at him Jiang Cheng could nearly hear him thinking, like a cold wind against the back of his neck: I should have left you in that heap of corpses with the rest of your family.

What are you worth, Jiang Wanyin, that so many should be spent in saving you? That Wei Wuxian would drag us all into the shadow of death to make you whole, only for you to turn your face aside when it was me lying there, and let him die for us without lifting a finger?

Selfish, whining coward. If only I had left you there to die.

If only, Jiang Cheng imagined spitting back, anger hot and bracing in his throat. If only! I never asked for any of it! How dare you expect me to repay you!

But Wen Qionglin never spoke any of the words out loud. He only looked, cold dead flat black eyes. A frozen river. Sometimes Jiang Cheng thought that if he lashed out hard enough he would break a hole in the ice, and be devoured whole.

#ask #hoc est meum #ramblebrambleamble #jiang cheng is projecting like a drive-in movie theater here to be clear #like he's not wrong that he is wen ning's least favorite living human being #but wen ning also doesn't generally think this hard about it lmao #or like about him at all if he doesn't have to #mdzs #jiang cheng #wen ning #ask game #reverse tropes #really nice guy who hates only you #this is like the opposite energy from my previous fill for the same prompt alkflkj;#writing #my fic #fanfic #realized these 'mini fics' are long enough to need a cut woop

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