Inbox: Ximilia

[singlelogbridge]

// Wei Wuxian

TEXT • AUDIO • VIDEO

XIMILIA

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[blackfire]

He will be fine, I am certain.

[singlelogbridge]

You said once that there had been someone here from your world but not someone you knew well. Was it strange for you when they left?

[blackfire]

No.

But those circumstances were different. He was one of my brother's classmates, we had not spoken before his arrival here.

[singlelogbridge]

Ah, that is different. [And then at the mention of brothers] I need to check on Lan Zhan. He might be taking it hard. I should have already.

[Itachi knows how difficult some of his interactions have been with his once zhiji, and why the words comes with a heaviness even over text.]

I think Zewu-jun was worried about his settling in here.

[blackfire]

It would be good of you to check on him.

[singlelogbridge]

Yeah.

[A thoughtful pause, and then]

You know I think in some ways the people here knew him better than the people back home. He got to be more than just a sect leader here.

I never even asked. Were you close? I know you were acquainted but I never thought to ask how well.

[blackfire]

We were not.

（ then again, he might say that of anyone, regardless of how close they were. ）

But there were certain things in each other we both understood and recognized, given the similarities between our cultures.

[singlelogbridge]

[He hadn't thought they were, perhaps more evidenced by how Zewu-jun spoke of Itachi than of the reverse.]

You're both heirs. In that, I imagine there was a lot to relate to. I wasn't raised with those kinds of expectations, and I saw what they did to my brother. [He pauses as his thoughts circle to Jiang Cheng and then shakes his head.]

Then again, you and Zewu-jun are nothing like my brother. He was...things weren't easy for him to begin with.

[blackfire]

Given the circumstances as you've described them to me, I imagine that much is true.

（ not everyone would take that as an invitation to continue, but wei wuxian is hardly everyone. ）

1/2

[singlelogbridge]

Mm. His mother was extraordinarily hard on him. She often compared him to me and found him wanting. It was a constant source of bitterness for her, and she made sure he knew.

[singlelogbridge]

[Wei Wuxian is all at once stricken and he curls his fingers into his palms, guilt a sudden blackhole in his chest. The next response appears barely half a second after the first.]

She had her own difficulties. It's exceptionally tacky of me to speak ill of the dead, and unfilial to speak so cruelly of someone who put a roof over my head. Madam Yu was brilliant, unwavering in her love and loyalty for her children, and wonderfully fierce.

[blackfire]

（ he understands, truly — and yet, on the matter of filial piety, in some way he feels he surrendered his right to an opinion on it. a man who raised a blade to his own blood... it was inexcusable then as now, as sins go.

perhaps that is why, of the two of them, he is the one who can speak thusly. ）

In my experience, it has been that speaking ill of the dead indicates behaviour or actions that warranted such a thing in their life.

You are considerate to emphasize her virtues. However, to me, such praise seems undeserved.

[singlelogbridge]

[A while passes without a response. Far longer than is normal for Wei Wuxian when he's engaged in conversation with Itachi. Eventually though, a reply appears.]

She was a good mother to her children. [It's an insistence on his words, but it isn't a denial of Itachi's either.

And then, an admittance he has never made aloud though he has long known.]

Jiang Cheng's father favored me. Enough that it created rumors about my parentage. It made me a threat to his standing. He never held it against me, but Madam Yu. I mean, you know what that would have done to her, don't you Itachi? [Her husband playing favorites with the son of a woman he'd loved more than her. The rumors of infidelity. The whispers about who was the true heir. If she was hard on Wei Wuxian, then it was only because she loved her children. He can't fault her for that. He never could.]

[blackfire]

I do.

（ people had been thrown from the uchiha compound and stripped of their clan name for less than the murmured suspicion wei wuxian speaks of. he was aware from a perilously young age of societal propriety, the rigid constraints of society. perhaps that was why the easiest cover story to reach for, when it came to the eradication of his kinsmen, was that he was tired of their limitations. ）

But she was an adult. The burden of responsibility was on her to know better than to to hold cruel rumours against a child. How she treated her biological children is irrelevant to me. I care for how she treated you.

[singlelogbridge]

[To that Wei Wuxian does not reply.]