singlelogbridge | Inbox: Ximilia

[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.]

I apologize. I did not mean to worry you.

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

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?

Edited 2023-02-06 07:59 (UTC)

（ 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. ）

[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?

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. ）

[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.]

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. ）

[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?

Edited 2023-02-07 01:57 (UTC)

( he lifts one shoulder absently, tacit permission. )

[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.

（ 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. ）

Edited 2023-02-07 05:14 (UTC)

[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.]

（ 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?

[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?

（ 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.

[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?

（ simply, ）

Yes.

（ how could he forget? ）

[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.

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.

Edited (my god i am so sorry this is so many edits) 2023-02-12 06:07 (UTC)

[Wei Wuxian's expression twitches into a smile for a moment at the joke and then he sobers up, listening carefully to Itachi's words.

His lips form the name, mouthing it silently. Uzumaki Naruto. A faceless boy from another world who Itachi had once seen something in. Something strong enough to warrant a spark of hope. Wei Wuxian is grateful to this Uzumaki Naruto, someone he'll most likely never meet but who holds a piece of Wei Wuxian's hope now too. After a moment he speaks, voice steady and strong.]

No world is kind to people like that, but if you saw something in him, and if he loves your brother, I think he'll succeed. The people who love Uchihas are incredibly stubborn after all. They don't give up easily.

（ there is a hitch to his breath, barely perceptible. wei wuxian may not recognize the corner he has backed him into with the nature of that statement, but itachi does — the sword of damocles swings down. to avoid it means denying the possibility of sasuke's salvation. to endure it is to accept the dulcet agonies of being known. he is stymied by hypocrisy — have his words not cut just the same?

wei wuxian is not the type to seek vengeance for such a thing, but some part of it thinks it would be easier to accept were that the case. tolerating the recompense for the latest of his sins would be easy enough, the simple question — how differently would your lives have gone if she had but thought to be kind?

his eyes flicker briefly closed. he does not reach for what is not there — but he yearns for the familiar haze of the sharingan. ）

You shouldn't speak so confidently of what it is like to love an Uchiha. I warned you once of our tendency towards madness.

（ and its corrosive effect on them. the strength of their love coupled with the weaknesses in their souls... sometimes he wonders if their cruel end was an inevitability from the days of hagoromo on down. if not his hand, then whose? he was only the knife. clans with notable kekkei genkai flourish or perish by the whims of the villages that shelter, nurture and use them ruthlessly. to be remarkable is to accept the brand of a target on you and everyone you care for. ）

[He'd thought to word it in a way that afforded Itachi some plausible deniability, giving him the room to escape the words if he'd wanted. He'd been ready to leave if the words provoked a demand for solitude. He'd expected, well, not this. Not the direct acknowledgement of what he'd meant.

His eyes don't leave Itachi's, gaze unwavering.

For most of his life, Wei Wuxian had shied away from blatant declarations of affection. Instead he smothered the people he loved in compliments, flattery, and casual gestures of intimacy, laughing and praising them but never able to look them in the eyes and speak sincerely to the depths of his feelings. (Probably, because he feared they might reciprocate and that wasn't something he was prepared to hear.)

Then he started to lose those people and it never really stopped.

Loss changed him. Being on the Ximilia changed him. He's lost too much and left too much unsaid not to have learned his lesson.]

I remember. [He says finally, and his voice shakes despite everything, overwhelmed and so sincere it hurts.] That doesn't make it any less true.

（ honest sentiment doesn't sway him. it never has. ）

Foolish.

（ but that seems to be the only refutation he makes, and then he rises from the bed. goes to the teapot left on the room's small, singular table, and begins the process of refilling his cup. with his back turned — ）

Please, leave. I would prefer to be alone.

[Once, Wei Wuxian had made the mistake of not immediately heeding those same words.

Itachi is right, he is foolish (though not about this) but not so foolish not to learn from his mistakes. He makes quick work of gathering his own cup—fewer reminders for Itachi that way— and pulling his boots back on.

Half a dozen parting lines come to mind and he delivers none of them. They're all too tinged with kindness and affection, and even if he doesn't take the sentiment back, he won't hurt his friend with anymore of that today.

The door closes behind him quietly and then he is gone.]

Inbox: Ximilia

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cw: suicidality

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