Inbox: Ximilia

[singlelogbridge]

// Wei Wuxian

TEXT • AUDIO • VIDEO

XIMILIA

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[blackfire]

Perhaps it is both.

Brotherhood can be complex in that way.

[singlelogbridge]

Complex is definitely accurate.

You know when Jiang Fengmian first brought me home, Jiang Cheng didn't want anything to do with me. Mostly he was upset because he used to have half a dozen pet dogs and when Jiang Fengmian saw my terror, he gave them away.

He wouldn't talk to me at all after that. Then one night he locked me out of our room and threatened to send dogs after me. I ran away into the neighboring forest and climbed a tree. Only, Jiang Cheng got so scared when I didn't come back right away that he came after me and ended up tripping in the dark. I fell out of the tree too and Shijie found us both and carried us back.

After that, he cried a lot and promised to never let any dogs near me. We were brothers after that. Complicated messy ones, but still brothers.

[He's at the border of Elindes now, less than twenty minutes from the place Itachi was staying in the village. Almost there.]

[blackfire]

（ perhaps he knows wei wuxian too well.

he does not answer for a while, and then, at long last, a ping to his location. ）

The third room from the left on the second floor.

[singlelogbridge]

Thanks

[He's close enough he doesn't continue with another story, instead focusing on making his way to the right inn. When he gets there, he knocks once and then tries the door, slipping inside when it opens, and kicking his shoes off out of habit once he's in.

He isn't sure what he's expecting, but the first thing he does is assess Itachi for physical injury, just in case.]

Are you injured?

[blackfire]

（ he's sitting on the bed in the soft homespun linen of the sleeping clothing in this place. there's evidence that he had a bath not long before — wet hair drawn back in a braid at his nape, clothing that clings to the dampness of his skin. he looks much the same as always. paler, perhaps. wan. but certainly not injured. ）

No.

（ it isn't a wholly unreasonable guess, but if he were he would have contacted a cleric. he's not so foolish as to risk himself, given what is on the line. there will be no rest until the orb is once again whole. ）

[singlelogbridge]

[Wei Wuxian nods and pulls out his qiankun pouch. From it, he removes a packet of tea leaves and two mugs.]

I asked for hot water on my way up. They should be here—[Now, apparently, as there's a knock on the door. Wei Wuxian answers and takes the kettle of boiling water, closing the door and then setting to work preparing tea for the both of them. It takes him a couple of minutes and he doesn't rush through the process. If Itachi wants to talk, he will talk. In the meantime, Wei Wuxian can at least do this for him.

When it's done, he hands one of the mugs to Itachi and takes the other for himself, dragging over a small table so that they both have somewhere to put their mugs if they want to put them down. He takes a seat on the bed next to him then, not close enough to touch unless either of them reaches.]

[blackfire]

I apologize. I did not mean to worry you.

( it is said somewhat stiffly, even as his fingers curl around the mug. )

[singlelogbridge]

You don't need to apologize. [And then, after a pause.] I didn't think you were injured. I just wanted to make sure.

[He lifts his cup to his lips and blows idly at the steam. It's some of the tea he had left from the last supply drop—a white tea blend from Yunmeng. He sips at it, ignoring the way it scalds his tongue.]

Would you like for me to talk?

[blackfire]

（ there is nothing in him accustomed to comfort. yet, here they sit. the hush and quiet of one who understands you in the furthest reaches of their soul, every inch of knowing hard-won and harrowing. the warmth of the mug suffuses him. his hands have felt corpse-cold since mccoy.

itachi is silent for a long while, simply drinking his tea. sweet and clear, like mountain dew.

then: ）

Someone told me they had entertained the idea of altering their regret to change the course of my life.

（ wei wuxian may be able to guess the individual involved, and he finds he does not especially care about keeping it secret. he will know, at least, that itachi does not speak of gwen. ）

[singlelogbridge]

[He inhales, soft but sharp and his fingers twitch around the mug in their grip. The weight of the offer doesn't escape him, and nor does the pain of it. He understands immediately that it must have been offered in sincerity from someone Itachi trusts or they wouldn't be having this conversation at all.

He also understands how an offer like that would cut the same as a knife plunging into his chest. He knows because it wouldn't be so different if it were him.

When his fingers twitch again, eager to reach out and take Itachi’s hand, he squeezes his mug tighter instead.]

Do they intend to follow through?

[blackfire]

I was not especially encouraging.

（ to put it mildly. he thinks that mccoy's heartbreak will live alongside the rest of what he has inflicted on those who have ever shown him kindness until he need not concern himself further with the mortal coil. ）

[singlelogbridge]

[No, he thinks, he wouldn't have been. Itachi chafes at even the slightest forms of gratitude, and his tolerance for kindness directed towards his person was...low, to put it mildly. For someone he cared about—someone he respects, most likely— to have made such an offer...Wei Wuxian takes another drink of his tea and then sets it down on the table.

He doesn't need to tell Itachi they meant well; he already knows that. Knowing does nothing to lessen the sting of being told he deserved something he didn't feel he had any right to.

Always, Wei Wuxian remembers Newt's words to him as he lay alone in that cell on E23-B.]

They don't understand. [The statement is free of judgment, almost wistful. He's glad they don't. It's just that it makes things hard sometimes.]

The weight of it all...[They aren't the same, not exactly. The burdens they carry are different, but there is so much blood on both of their hands. Itachi isn't the only one who would rebuff someone trying to save him.]

[blackfire]

No. That isn't the case with this individual. They do understand — in a way, that is worse.

（ if it was done simply in ignorance, it would not have bitten so deeply. it would be easily set aside. very few people know what he has done, fewer still what he is capable of. he had intended to wound, by admitting to the doctor the exact nature of the massacre and what followed with sasuke. somehow, the man had clung to mercy. ）

[singlelogbridge]

[Oh. That is much worse.

He can still feel the deep ache of Lan Wangji's words, absolving him of his own guilt while knowing everything he'd done. Even the memory stings.

In response he closes his eyes for a moment before opening them again and reaching for his tea. He holds it without lifting it to take a drink, staring into the cup as if it holds the answers to all of life's questions.]

...can I tell you one more story?

[blackfire]

( he lifts one shoulder absently, tacit permission. )

[singlelogbridge]

[He's quiet for a moment in response. In truth, he doesn't think it'll be anything that surprises Itachi—if it was, he wouldn't tell it now—but it still takes a moment to gather his words to find the best way to share it.]

When the sects came after me that last night, they were disorganized and easily distracted. [The details about the Yin Tiger Seal don't matter so he brushes them aside.] They wanted...it doesn't matter actually, the point is they didn't kill me.

[A Pause.] They didn't have to.

There was nothing for me there. There's still nothing. [Only blood stained hands and a conscience too heavy to carry.]

I don't regret it. I never will. People knowing...it isn't the same as...[He frowns and furrows his brow.]

Peace is elusive.

cw: suicidality

[blackfire]

（ wei wuxian is correct in that it doesn't come as a surprise. he does not say the words, but itachi can see it in his mind's eye. the how of it does not matter, whether he slit his wrists or cast himself from a cliff. dead is dead. he will not mourn, but there is a quiescent coiling heat of nearly-spent coal that he will concede as sadness in the core of him, nested along empty keirakukei paths normally awash with the nurturing flame of his chakra.

his gaze stays level on wei wuxian, and he reaches out briefly, the press of two fingers against the fine bones of the other man's wrist, there and gone.

the truth is, he has found... not joy, but momentary paroxysms of eudemonia in the company of those he has come to call friend, and he does not regret coming to the ximilia, or choosing to indulge in those moments, or in having these bonds.

but he understands.

and he meant what he said to the doctor — that he intends to finish his work here and be done. there has been a weight on him for far longer than he has lived with the massacre, from that first moment he stood at the nakano cliffs and let himself fall he has courted death. there is a gentle poetry in the fact that it was sasuke's hand that delivered it, but he was never meant to live a long and peaceable life. he and wei wuxian share that commonality. ）

It would be worthless if it were easily found. （ he hopes everyone who has ever encountered it has seized it with both hands and refused to relinquish it. but peace, paradoxically, is a thing kept, often guarded by violence. it is also something you cannot know the value of unless you have lived in the cruel shade of its antithesis. ） But perhaps what follows us can be brighter.

（ he can close his eyes and imagine sasuke a decade on, freed of the shackles of the massacre. perhaps he will be married. perhaps he will have children with dark hair and solemn dark eyes, who will not grow up beneath the shadow of suspicion and fear that dogged the uchiha's heels since the first of them. ）

[singlelogbridge]

[There's a moment as Itachi's fingers rest against the pulse point in his wrist when Wei Wuxian feels a wave of sorrow and affection threaten to overwhelm him. Instead, he inhales quietly and the moment passes. It doesn't stop the surge of warmth inside of him though, and his eyes soften at his friend.

Itachi has never been fond of touch. Wei Wuxian had learned that early on, and while he still doles out touches here and there—a brief hand on Itachi's shoulder, a friendly side bump, a childish tug to follow him—he has largely held back his more exuberant physical affections out of a respect for and recognition of his friend's aversion.

But sometimes it is the only real way to communicate what he means.

Wei Wuxian stops fighting himself, reaching out not quite as quickly as Itachi—though not lingering either—and resting his hand on top of Itachi's. The touch lasts for only a moment before he lets go. There is a line, Wei Wuxian has found, between respecting Itachi's space, and withholding himself from his friend. In moments like this, he would rather error on the side of the former.]

I hope so. [He says finally, ignoring the way his fingers feel cool even with the warmth of the tea mug back in his hand.]

[blackfire]

（ and he... tolerates it, that brief moment, without complaint, though he is still quick to withdraw when wei wuxian lifts his hands, slipping back into his own space. his thumb rubs along the lip of the mug like a worry stone, and then: ）

What do you think a better world looks like, in your home?

[singlelogbridge]

[It's instinct the way the words come to him immediately with a laugh in their wake. Anything without me in it. He bites his tongue before the reflex can make itself known.]

...better people in charge. Huaisang told me that Jin Guangshan died a few years after me. [And Jin Guangyao after him, though he doesn't mention.] That means the leaders of the cultivation world are Huaisang, Lan Xichen, my brother and...[It takes him a moment to figure out who has inherited Jin leadership, and when he has, he's almost sorry he thought about it at all.]...a boy named Jin Ling.

I don't know anything about Jin Ling, but he...he'll be...I'll bet he's rough around the edges, but wise and compassionate in a way none of the Jin who came before him were. Jiang Cheng will have helped raise him.

Anyway, the four of them...they have their flaws, but it's a better place to start already. I hope they'll learn from the mistakes of the past. I hope they'll look out for the common people, the way the Great Sects were always meant to.

[He's quiet for a moment as he contemplates the reality he's crafted in his mind. Eventually, he turns his gaze back to Itachi.]

What about for you?

[blackfire]

（ there is very little reason why wei wuxian would have imagined a situation where his brother raised a child not his own, and been so exacting in the imagination of his demeanor. he pieces it together in his mind — wei wuxian, after all, had a sister.

his mouth quirks downward at one corner, but rather than pursue the matter, he says — ）

The simple answer is 'peace'.

（ he says it tiredly. the naivety of the word is stripped away in the breath on which he exhales it, the dream of the child he used to be. the world was so much smaller when he was young, but even then... his earliest memories are still of war. he was never so ignorant of the cruelties of the world as to have the luxury to ignore them.

his fingers flex. he takes another drink of the tea and lets it sit briefly on his tongue, savoring the taste. ）

However, I cannot say what that might look like. There is no precedent in all of our recorded history. Truthfully, the most peaceful time my world has known was the time between the end of the third Great Shinobi War which ended when I was a child, and the time I died. （ his mouth quirks. ） Which isn't saying much. Conflict was still occurring, just not on a national scale. However, relations were reaching an inevitable boiling point, largely the work of the organization I was aligned with, the Akatsuki.

[singlelogbridge]

[He hums softly in response, trying and failing to imagine it. Despite the war that came for them when he was a teenager, war was no longer as common as it had once been. He can't imagine what it would have been like to grow up surrounded by it. He can't imagine being a child exposed to all of its horrors. He'd done all in his power to shield a-Yuan from the horrors going on around him. (Silently, he wishes someone had done the same for his friend.)]

They worked to destabilize nations. [A pause.] Do you remember the first time I heard you say that?

[blackfire]

（ simply, ）

Yes.

（ how could he forget? ）

[singlelogbridge]

[He huffs quietly and takes another sip of his tea, staring into it once more.]

We found peace. I know it's hardly an apt comparison, I don't mean it to belittle anything. But if you'd told me that I'd be sitting here with you almost a year later, well. I would have laughed.

I'm hopeful for your land is what I mean. Even if it doesn't seem possible, I didn't think it was possible for us either. So, there's hope for it.

[blackfire]

That has markedly more to do with your being stubborn, and the fact Viveca frowns on murder.

（ a bit of a joke at his own expense. if pressed, he would have told wei wuxian the same thing he had told gwen. that he would take no issue at dying at their hands if it meant his goal on the ximilia was fulfilled. even now, they remain the only two people he would not rally against. ）

There is a cycle of trauma in my world. Breaking it will require an immense sacrifice, someone needing to be the first to accept to their hurt and loss must be set aside rather than avenged. Others will also need to follow suit. Not just one person, one village. Thousands of individuals beneath the banners of the five great nations. It is not impossible. But it would be so difficult.

（ he hesitates, and then: ）

There is a boy. Uzumaki Naruto. He was one to whom I entrusted my... （ he wets his lips, and then rather than speak he sends the characters that represent the concept, unwilling to let it be roughly translated by the earpiece: 火の意志

it is clear the meaning for him lies in the specific words and the willful intent behind them. the hiragana for of will be familiar from their shared dissection of their respective languages. ）

Sasuke's closest friend. The one who loved him as a brother when I could not. I would like to believe he could be the one to accomplish such a thing, but our world is not kind to hopeful hearts.