singlelogbridge | Inbox: Ximilia

（ funny, how mccoy had asked nearly the same thing of him when that story came out, wrung from him with a violent sort of desperation, a rejection of the kindness offered.

in a way, it was inoculation. the question now, on another's proverbial lips, does not draw a flinch.

danzō will receive no more of his protection. and of sarutobi hiruzen — ）

What is the answer that least offends you?

（ the second question goes unanswered. ）

[Wei Wuxian inhales sharply and then shakes his head even if no one is around to see it. He wipes at his eyes again.

It's impossible not to think of Xue Yang, gleeful and unrepentant as he stood above the bodies of the Yueyang clan, every man, woman, child, and even the animals left out to rot. The manic excitement in his eyes as he surveyed his work. It couldn't have been a starker difference from the glimmer of the night he'd seen.

Even if it hadn't been an order, it was not willing. It was not what he wanted. (It matters. It matters that he did it just as it matters whether it was his choice.) And anyway, if it hadn't been an order, he would have said so by now. Itachi has never shied away from casting himself in a poor light, only from speaking in defense of himself.

'Do you think so little of me?' It is perhaps the answer that Itachi himself would give. Turn it around and demand Itachi see the question for the hurt it might inflict. Wei Wuxian considers it and then tucks it away instead. It might work on Wei Wuxian.

It isn't what he wants to convey to Itachi. Not right now.]

I only ask for the truth.

I'll continue to care for you either way.

（ there is a long lapse in the messaging.

then: ）

It was not an order.

I was given a choice. In the end, I chose the path I could live with.

But I was a fool. It is something I have only come to recognize now — that I was blind, misguided, ignorant. And in that blindness, that ignorance, I failed to recognize that I was being manipulated by another until it was too late to course correct. I thought that because I was clever, because I was strong, I was inured against such things. It was unconscionable arrogance, and the cost of that arrogance was the blood of two hundred and seventy-four of my kinsmen.

Notably, that act is not the regret that drove me here.

[He was a child, not a fool, but Wei Wuxian doesn't give voice to the thought, recognizing how it would land poorly. His hand falls from the door it's still splayed against, and he turns so that he can lean on the door and slowly slide down into a seat with his knees bent in front of him.]

How could that be your regret if it was the path you could live with.

[No, Itachi regretting that night sounds as pointless as if Wei Wuxian's regret had been the battle at Nightless city. Wouldn't it all have just come to a head some other way, some other time? It wouldn't fix anything, only delay the inevitable. Itachi is too pragmatic to attack a symptom rather than a cause.]

If I ask, will you tell me what the choice was that you were given?

I will not make you ask.

The choice was to die with them, or to assume responsibility for their deaths.

The latter ensured Sasuke's survival.

[The wave of anger that crashes over him is powerful, and if he weren't already sitting, he'd have fallen to his knees with how it steals the steadiness out from under him. Choice, he'd called it. As if a child faced with dying alongside everyone he loved or being part of the extermination force to save his baby brother was any kind of choice. Anger surges within him and seeps out of his skin, a black spill of resentful energy swirling around him before he pulls it back into himself as the anger turns to grief.

How he must have suffered. How the guilt must have eaten him alive. How the pain must have destroyed him.]

That's no choice. That's a façade. It's—[He stops himself before his rage and sorrow can bleed into his words, hands covering his face for a minute as he tries to calm himself.]

Who gave you that choice?

A man named Shimura Danzō.

He was the leader of ANBU at the time, and the Hokage's right hand man.

[It is extremely unlikely that such a man would ever be allowed aboard the Ximilia, especially considering that Viveca must know about this, but if he ever makes an appearance, Wei Wuxian will kill him. He thinks even Viveca would forgive him for this one, but even if she wouldn't, he would not spare Shimura Danzo.

Wei Wuxian takes several minutes of quiet to steady himself.

He has a dozen more questions. Why Itachi? Did the hokage know about all this? What had the Uchiha done? The latter at least, he has enough of a picture of Itachi's world to guess at. Itachi has never shied away from explaining how terrified and jealous the world was of their abilities.

In the end, he doesn't ask anymore of his questions. They don't matter. Not really, not to him. (They matter insomuch as they speak to the level of cruelties and injustices that Itachi has faced, but he has no heart to hear them now.)]

Can I see you?

（ what follows is not — permission, exactly.

it is a simple thing: a picture of the lotus pond in the sunlight room.

when wei ying arrives there, itachi will be seated at its edge, pants rolled to his knees, bare feet in the water up to his shins. and he, who very rarely shies away from eye contact, does not look at the man. tension sings in every line of him, taut as a garrote drawn across the naked column of a neck.

his hands are laced between his knees, and he makes no move to invite wei ying into his space as has become their custom.

aloud, he says only — ）

If you cannot contain your anger or your sympathy intended on my behalf, I would ask that you instead leave me in peace, and return when you have marshalled yourself.

（ there are so many things he can stand, but not that. and saying so, politely, is the compromise to allowing him near at all. ）

[The walk over had helped a little, as does the sight of Itachi with his legs in the lotus pond, but he still has to consider Itachi's words carefully. The anger has sunk beneath the weight of his sorrow, but whether he can contain that sorrow...

It's a long while before he moves again, and when he does he sits across from Itachi rather then next to him, removing his shoes and rolling up his pajama pants so that he can mirror his pose and dip his legs into the water. Itachi will understand that his choice to stay is implicit agreement to his terms.

He doesn't have to like the terms to understand that at least right now, they're what Itachi needs.

For a long while, he says nothing. It would be peaceful if it didn't threaten to plunge him straight back into emotions that Itachi shouldn't have to bear, and he pulls his thoughts back each time, fighting the urge to do exactly as Itachi has asked him not to.]

Thank you for telling me. [Is how he finally breaks the silence, voice quiet.]

（ if he were less certain of the man's character, perhaps the outcome would surprise him. as it stands — he sits in mirror of him, and dark eyes track briefly up, and then away. if wei ying was one to flinch at his monstrousness, taeum would have been the last of their acquaintance.

the water ripples away from him, as the man slips his feet into the water. itachi tracks the movement of the water until it settles, and when wei ying speaks it is the sentiment more than the sound that grates on his every sense like the wailing lament of a ghost.

his jaw shifts laterally, by a fraction. then, dispassionately — ）

My secrets are yours. For good or ill.

[He doesn't know what "ill" would look like. Not Wei Wuxian proclaiming Itachi's secrets to the world. He'd attempted to make Wei Wuxian do that himself for a goal, always so willing to throw his own comfort away for the sake of others. (Or if not others, then at least for Wei Wuxian.)

No, for ill would be if Wei Wuxian broke their agreement and expressed his anger or sympathy he thinks. That's what would hurt him. His fingers curl into fists and then open up again and he leans forward to scoop some of the sludgy water into his hand and watch it trickle between his knuckles. The pond is fairing well here. He's grateful. It's a nice addition to the room, he thinks. A little piece of home.]

What happened to Sasuke, after?

[He doesn't know if he should ask it, but it's all he can do not to crumble.

And he can't not wonder about him. The brother Itachi gave everything for.]

（ he lifts his gaze, and holds the man's gaze. ）

I tortured him.

（ he would never take pains to soften that blow. ）

Within the realm of Tsukuyomi. The impetus behind the massacre could never be publicly known — so, instead, I set him on a path of revenge. He remained in the village for a time, until his desire to gain the power necessary to kill me lead him elsewhere at thirteen. I know from... an old ally that was here for a time that he lives until at least nineteen.

[He doesn't flinch from Itachi's gaze, but neither does he manage to conceal his pain. He would be lying if he said he was trying that hard to do it. He can bite his tongue and try to keep his feeling from his tone, but he can't pretend not to feel. He does eventually look away for Itachi's sake rather than his own.]

And what was the impetus exactly?

（ he wets his lips, and then: ）

The Uchiha planned to unseat the Hokage and have my father step into the role. At the time, our clan was the most powerful within the village — but we had few friends and no allies among the other great families. They would have risen up against us, and in the ensuing civil war, Konoha would have been vulnerable to external attack.

（ he has explained this before, but this is the first time it is not done to wound. there is no bite to his words, only weariness. he has worked the uchiha affair over in his mind many thousands of times like a puzzle box with no solution, no key to speak of, and until only recently he continually came to the same conclusion each time — that there had been no choice, no hope, no escape.

yet sarutobi hiruzen, who had sworn multiple times that he would speak to his father, never did. positioned as he was, the fulcrum between the uchiha and the village, he would have known — be it from the council or the secret meetings of the uchiha. no such meeting occurred. no such effort made.

it pains him, to find folly with the man. yet there is no other explanation than that. sarutobi had years, between the time he joined anbu and the coup was first a whisper until the night the massacre occurred. in that time, he had done nothing. it may pain him, but the truth is writ plain in the blood of his kinsmen.

your hands, blue had told him once. but not only yours.

it is perhaps the first time he has possessed the temerity to lay a sliver of blame at the sandaime's feet. but lay it he does. ）

The Hokage was aware of this duplicity. I was tasked with observing them, and reporting back to the council — but the Uchiha became suspicious of me with Shisui's death. It was broadly assumed I killed him to take the Mangekyō. My usefulness to the village leadership was coming to an end, and the Uchiha were near their boiling point. Danzō sought to solve two problems at once — eradicate the clan he hated, and disavow the sole individual who knew him to be responsible having ended Shisui's life.

（ he was poisoned, he had told wei ying once. he had not, at the time, admitted who had done so. but the man is clever enough, and mindful enough besides, to make the connection immediately. ）

The massacre, therefore, was committed by a rogue agent driven mad with the genetic instability known to the clan. The Uchiha's loyalty remained untarnished. The sole survivor had the protection of the most powerful men in Konoha. And my home endured.

[Somehow out of everything, it's the suggestion that he could have murdered Shisui for power that makes him let out an angry scoff, and he quickly bites it back and keeps his gaze lowered, determined to keep his unspoken promise to uphold Itachi's wishes. It's all so much more horrible than he could have ever imagined, it's hard to process all of it which is probably for the best. It'll haunt him tonight and for many nights to come. Later though, all of that later. The anger, the outrage, the raw despair at it all will have its time.

Not now. This is not about him. His feelings on it, no matter how powerful, are not more important than Itachi's.

He rises from the pond and turns his back on Itachi, standing there for a moment to look out at the sunshine room. He isn't crying but he scrubs a hand over his face all the same, exhaling quietly. When he's given himself the moment he needs, he makes his way to Itachi's side and sits down with only a scant few inches between them. He does not face him and keeps his gaze on the grassy fields across from them.

Only after several minutes of silence have passed does he speak.]

What happened to Danzo?

（ it skirts the spirit of the edict he had laid down, but does not break it. he watches as wei ying stands, turns.

(it would be hurtful, itachi thinks, if the man could see the brief look of surprise that he cannot cull in its infancy, when he sits back down beside him.

lucky he is choosing to direct his focus elsewhere.) ）

I do not know.

（ if either shikamaru or kakashi had known, neither had mentioned it to him. when he had told kakashi he would kill danzō himself, the man had not indicated it would be an unnecessary task — so he can only assume that he survives at least that long. he had always been a powerful shinobi. ）

He was more powerful than I was at thirteen. He would not be so now.

Edited 2023-08-05 04:03 (UTC)

Okay. [He says, because it's all he can say that isn't 'I would happily torture him to death and then scatter his body to pieces so he never finds rest.' There is in fact very little he can say at all that won't violate Itachi's wishes, so he stays silent.

After another few minutes have passed, he slumps and scoots over, allowing his side to press against Itachi's and his head to lean on his shoulder. He doesn't know if it will be welcome but he can't do nothing, and if it isn't welcome, then he can hardly take offense.]

（ he does not move, to welcome or reject it.

merely says — ）

You are a very foolish man, Wei Ying.

[Not for loving you.

Wei Wuxian closes his eyes and exhales through his nose before opening his eyes again. After a moment he sits up straight. He'd gotten his message across and that's what matters. He won't force Itachi to endure something he doesn't want right now.

Words continue to fail him, but that's alright. What is there to say in the face of all Itachi has spoken of tonight?

Instead, he stays seated within arm's reach. It doesn't matter that Itachi won't reach for him, only that he remains and that Itachi knows he could reach for him if he wanted to.]

（ the silence is like a bleak river that twists between them, dark as a moonless night. it is a deep and fathomless thing, but — the heart knows still waters. perhaps he resisted telling wei ying for so long because he knew the man would react like this. not the inward-directed judgment, not the hatred that he has burned with for years in a form of self-immolation.

there was a reason he laid down conditions first. because the idea that wei ying could do anything but join him in the fire is a laughable one — foolish indeed.

he opens one hand, and a small rumpled leaf that had been tucked in against his palm falls to the water, where it does not sink. ）

One day, perhaps, I may find the strength to forgive myself for my role in that atrocity. If I do, it will be in no small part due to those I have met here, befriended and come to love. You should know this, too.

[The fist that had been clamped so tightly around his heart loosens with the words as an inkling of hope takes root. It's more than he expected and he's warmed to be wrong. He doesn't know how much it must have taken Itachi to speak them into existence, but he knows it's probably more than he can understand.

His eyes fall on the leaf floating on top of the water and he reaches out for Itachi, setting his fingers on the back of Itachi's hand. He hopes that he'll understand it as the declaration of love that it is, and not anything born of sympathy or pity.]

You don't need me to tell you that I'll be here, either way. Still, some things should be said aloud. [Itachi might be able to read between the lines, but there is power in words. It's something he's learned only more recently.]

You are my xingan, Itachi. Until the end of our days.

（ his fingers twitch faintly beneath wei ying's, but he doesn't move away.

there is something to be said for the fact that the liver is what processes poison. almost, he makes the quip.

but he is neither the first nor the last person to use humour as a deflection — so, rather than give voice to the subterfuge, he says nothing at all — simply focuses on the warmth of the man's hand, his presence and nearness, and the faint smell of camellia oil on his hair.

it is perhaps a small eternity later that he lifts their twined hands together, and presses a kiss against the back of his companion's hand.

and then, quite abruptly, he is gone.

if anyone will understand why, it is wei ying. ）

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