（ there are moments where the desire to be selfish is weighed against the knowledge that his friend also knows the yawning maw of loss. that is the thing, ultimately, that hauls him to his feet.
the response is not returned via the earpiece, but after a handspan of heartbeats the door slides open. itachi stands there, pale and gaunt, with a tightness to the eyes that usually speaks to pain — but he is otherwise perfectly normal. dressed, hair braided to his uninjured side for easy maintenance of both it and the wound. he scarcely looks worse than if he'd caught a brisk cold.
he stands aside, giving the man tacit permission to enter his space. the smell of sandalwood is strong in the room, the last piece of a stick of incense smoldering down to nothing in its holder. the room is still spotless, still smells clean, antiseptic mixed in with the aromatic wood.
as the door closes behind him and wei wuxian takes off his shoes — ）
[It takes him a moment to answer (and a moment to move past the doorframe) because the second Itachi had opened the door, Wei Wuxian's eyes were glued to him, carefully assessing from head to toe. His gaze lingers on the man's torso where he knows the brunt of his injury must be, and he stares hard as if he can see through the layers of fabric straight to the healing flesh beneath.
Eventually he comes back to himself for long enough to enter and remove his shoes, but like a man dying of thirst, his eyes snap back to his friend once he's inside, this time to his face. It means he's aware enough at least to hear the question.]
Enough. [His voice shakes with it and he swallows hard. He won't betray Finn's panicked moment of explicit detail.] I know it was bad.
[I know you almost died, he doesn't say, but it's loud and clear in his eyes and in the way that even seeing Itachi now doesn't entirely alleviate the stress of it all.]
But you're okay now. [It's meant as a statement though it does not come off like one.]
（ he allows that much, with a faint lift of his right shoulder. it does not bother him. death has lived alongside his life so long that he feels no especial aversion to it even now. every time death pulled in towards him like a tide, he never failed to greet it as an old friend. but wei wuxian puts a value on his beating heart that he does and cannot.
he can, at least, respect that. it's why, as wei wuxian's attention falls on the area of injury, he exhales faintly. reaches out — fingers curling in around the man's wrist, and then itachi lifts their hands up, displacing the soft black sweatshirt over the injury as he presses wei wuxian's hand in against his side. the bandages are neat and clean, no heat radiates from them, and the bulky dressings that had been necessary to absorb the various things humans leak when badly damaged and then healing from that damage are gone to the bare minimum. harder to say i'm fine when showing is so much easier. ）
But the intervention was enough. If not, you would have known.
[His fingers instinctively curl around the warm skin beneath his palm—warm with blood and the beating heart that pumps it through Itachi's veins—and he exhales a shaky breath. Alive. Itachi feels alive.
His face crumples slowly at first, the slight crease of his brow, and then all at once, expression caving in as he closes his eyes in a failed attempt to halt the tears that have been brewing since the moment in the Sunlight room when Finn had detailed the extent of his friend's injuries. They're silent tears and his body doesn't shake, but they spill down his cheeks and he bows his head to hide them.]
Good. [That it was enough. That Itachi wouldn't have left without telling him.] Good.
[He reluctantly pulls his hand away, raising the other to swipe at his eyes.
I told you we were uneven. [He gripes eventually, some of his regular humor finally peeking through.]
[If he weren't so recently injured, Wei Wuxian would shove him over (or try) for being so obnoxiously all knowing (and for that joke.) Instead he lets out a light snort and lowers himself into the desk chair, draping his arms over the back of it.]
I know. I would have done the same. [There isn't a single part of him that holds Finn responsible or is angry at Itachi's actions. Of course Itachi would throw himself in front of someone else. Of course he would. How could Wei Wuxian hold Finn responsible? How could he be mad at Itachi?
The only one to blame here is Jun.] Working on convincing him. He's...[He sighs.] That kid takes on the weight of the world.
Struggling. [Is his honest answer, though he qualifies it a moment later.] With more than just your injury. There's definitely misplaced guilt there, but...[He trails off with the faded words that Itachi might recognize as a sign that Wei Wuxian is thinking rather than avoiding a subject.]
He's naive. [He settles on finally, and the word is gentle rather than critical.] At least a little. Not entirely. He's been through too much to have much of it left.
I don't think he knows what to make of people who don't fit the mold he expects them to. [His steadfast faith in Jun and the betrayal that came with it is clear as day.
After a moment, he adds, somewhat considering] I've never been betrayed by someone I trusted like that.
[He pauses, remembers his audience, raises his eyes to Itachi, and very abruptly laughs.] Well, not on a larger scale.
[Because despite everything, he would have let Itachi's betrayal pass with some irritated remarks if it hadn't been for the state of Gwen's mind. And for all that the betrayal had stung, they'd only really known each other for a handful of weeks by then. It was never the full fledged belief in a hero that Finn had clearly held for Jun.]
（ the words do not land like a blow — he would not have flinched from them, then. instead, it is the levity that drives the downturn at one corner of his mouth, the tightness around the eyes. were he not worn down to nearly nothing, he never would have slipped. ）
No. It would have been more difficult if you had been.
[It's enough of a tell from Itachi that Wei Wuxian picks it up where he might have missed it before they'd known each other so well. He opens his mouth immediately and then closes it, biting back the instinctive need to rephrase and reassure.
When he does speak again, he doesn't acknowledge the momentary weight between them, returning to the subject of Finn.]
In all that I dealt with, I don't know what it's like to trust like that and have it broken so badly. Even my brother...[He stops himself from finishing that sentence. For all that Jiang Cheng has been mentioned from time to time, he always stops himself from detailing everything between them.]
...I betrayed him, it was never the other way around.
（ he does not know the entirety of the story. but there have been pieces, scattered throughout countless conversations, that have given him the rough outline. itachi presses his hand briefly over the bandages as he shifts his position, and then, very gently — ）
Did you? Or would it only seem so, from his perspective?
（ wei wuxian is a selfless, loyal man, and he so clearly loves his brother despite the complicated nature of their relationship. he has no doubt wei wuxian could not be driven to appear to oppose him, but in his heart? no. such a thing would have been impossible. ）
[His own perspective is...clearer where it concerns Jiang Cheng. Maybe because their relationship has always been one of contradictions, or maybe because he could more easily admit to some of the pains Jiang Cheng caused him. For whatever reason, it's easier for him to see what happened between them without the clouded lenses of self-hatred and sacrificial love.
And still he doesn't know how to answer.]
...maybe a little of both. He knew my defection was to protect the Jiang name so that my actions wouldn't implicate them. But I'd promised him...I'd promised him a future as his right hand man. And I never told him why I couldn't fulfill it. He didn't know about my missing core. I couldn't tell him.
（ if wei wuxian had stopped at couldn't fulfill it, itachi would have simply assumed he meant his own death. instead, with the clarifying point, his mouth presses into a thin line as he works his way through a review of what he has been told. the loss of the core had happened, he said, at the hands of a man who could destroy them with a touch. surely that would be seen not as a betrayal, but as enemy action? jiang chang was close to wei wuxian's own age, no such childish notions should have been clouding his brain in a time of war... it would be as abhorrent as feeling as if shisui's death had been so.
there is a piece there he is missing. his lips part, and then thoughtfully press together again. ）
If you continue hinting at what occurred between the two of you, I will piece it out eventually. Would you rather tell me outright?
[His eyes swivel to Itachi's so fast it's no wonder he doesn't get dizzy.]
I'm not hinting! It's a long ugly story, and all that matters is that without my core I couldn't serve him anymore. My lifespan was reduced, my strength and abilities...I had to give up the sword. I can still fight with one fine, but against even someone with the faintest hint of spiritual power, I'd lose.
And I...I lost it helping him. He went back to Lotus Pier to try and avenge has parents after it had fallen to the Wen Army. It's because of that I lost mine. So I couldn't tell him because he wouldn't have been able to live with it. He'd have blamed himself. [It's all true even if he's missing some of the larger details. Jiang Cheng did go back and it is why Wei Wuxian ended up losing his golden core.
And Jiang Cheng never would have forgiven himself if he knew the truth. (And he never would have forgiven Wei Wuxian.)]
（ he has witnessed wei wuxian tell horrible stories with a sneer about his own life, talk about what he deserved and professed an acceptance of cruelties done.
this is not the same.
he spends more time justifying the situation, jiang cheng's reaction, the core being lost. before, he had said that he stopped using energy. then, that it had been destroyed by the man he spoke of then. itachi's instinct had laid bare the lie, but that was four months ago, now.
he had let it be, last time. swung his focus to another topic and pressed on there, instead. now: ）
'Lost' is not the correct word, is it? Merely the convenient one.
（ there is a gentleness to his tone that was absent during the discussion of madame yu. the sort of softly patient behaviour that wei wuxian may only recognize from how itachi had handled the boy in taeum. ）
Itachi. [The name is sharp and pained, but it's followed only by silence and eventually a long resigned exhale.
There's no damage to be done by admitting the truth to him. He wouldn't even be the first to know after Ziggy had witnessed his memory in that stupid school. Still he hesitates. His stomach clenches at the thought and he looks away, his brow furrowed.
In the end, it's the irrevocable trust that he has in Itachi that wins out. And the knowledge that the asshole would probably put it together for himself eventually if he doesn't just tell him.]
I didn't lie. He went back there alone without backup. He didn't stand a chance. [He sighs again, the exhale shaky.]
By the time I got there, his golden core was already gone. There was nothing to be done. In the history of cultivation, no one had ever recovered a destroyed golden core.
But Wen Qing really was the best most brilliant doctor of our generation. The surgery only had a fifty percent success rate and I had to beg her for weeks but...when she performed it, it was perfect. It worked perfectly.
I told him I'd found someone—my mother's teacher, an immortal cultivator named Baoshan Sanren. I told him she knew how to fix him.
When he woke up, he had a core again. He never questioned it.
He was the only heir and his parents were dead. I was the son of a servant who only became a cultivator because the Jiangs had taken me in in the first place. It was right to pay back what had been given. [But Jiang Cheng couldn't have lived with knowing what he'd done.
He'd told Itachi once, I let him win. I let him win and he wouldn't talk to me for days and Itachi had understood why. So. He's sure Itachi understands this too.]
（ there is some sweeping, immeasurable sorrow grown into the deep roots of his voice. it's too weary to be a reprimand, or any real reflection on the act. his hand drops away from his side, thumb shifting automatically to the faint pale line where the ring had sat since he was all of thirteen. ）
I would have done the same.
（ the dark mirror of the sacrifice isn't lost on him, but wei wuxian's choice was ultimately far more selfless than his own. yet it remains that they are both men that learned young just what they would surrender for a beloved sibling. ）
[There is a soft sound of warm agreement from the back of his throat and his eyes go soft at Itachi's admission.
Of course he would have. How could Itachi have ever done anything less in his position?]
Blood or not, he was my brother. [That was enough. It was all that mattered.]
He never understood why I turned to demonic cultivation. How could he when he was missing so many pieces of the story? And he resented me for bringing down so much trouble on myself. It doesn't matter. I would do it again even knowing everything that came after.
（ very likely, he would have wanted to help. but he can understand why wei wuxian was not in a position to accept it from him. being family makes it murky, further complicated by their dynamic since childhood.
itachi levers himself up off the bed at length, and then goes to make a pot of tea. remiss of him not to have done it at the start. ）
Doubtless he was frustrated to be denied an avenue to assist you.
[He bows his head at Itachi's words and nods. He knows that's why. He knows, just as he knows that if he'd asked for permission to give Jiang Cheng his golden core, it would have been denied, and if he'd told him about what he'd done after, Jiang Cheng never would have recovered.
It doesn't mean Itachi isn't right.]
I know.
[It occurs to Wei Wuxian in this exact moment that he might have made his regret not telling Jiang Cheng, but he dismisses the thought even as it comes. It might have made a difference. (It wouldn't have been enough to save the Dafan Wen.) Even so, he still can't bring himself to stomach the idea.
His eyes track Itachi's tea making and he fights the urge to bat Itachi away and do it himself. Itachi should be resting, but he knows that suggesting as much will only annoy him. If he was in such poor shape that he couldn't get up to make tea, McCoy wouldn't have allowed him to return to his room anyway.]
（ once prepared, he sets a cup of tea down near wei wuxian's hand and retreats back to the bed. there is rather less ceremony to it now than is his custom, perhaps the clearest sign of how badly afflicted he still is despite all his assurances. ）
Knowing is easy.
（ it's something said with a faint note of commiseration, self-directed censure. wry, but tired. ）
Drink your tea, and if you have nothing further I will ask that you take your leave.
[With no desire to continue down that train of conversation, Wei Wuxian is more than alright with the shift in topics.
He hadn't planned to stay this long once Itachi had opened the door, and he nods in acquiescence, raising his cup with a nod of gratitude. The silence that follows is companionable even with the remnant of what he'd just revealed to his friend hanging in the air, and he revels in the quiet peacefulness of knowing that Itachi is well.
When he’s finished his tea, he sets the cup down with a soft clink and then fixes his gaze on Itachi as he rises.]
Get some rest, okay? [The words come with the slightest of sheepish smiles, clearly aware the the main thing stopping Itachi from doing exactly that so far has been him.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
the response is not returned via the earpiece, but after a handspan of heartbeats the door slides open. itachi stands there, pale and gaunt, with a tightness to the eyes that usually speaks to pain — but he is otherwise perfectly normal. dressed, hair braided to his uninjured side for easy maintenance of both it and the wound. he scarcely looks worse than if he'd caught a brisk cold.
he stands aside, giving the man tacit permission to enter his space. the smell of sandalwood is strong in the room, the last piece of a stick of incense smoldering down to nothing in its holder. the room is still spotless, still smells clean, antiseptic mixed in with the aromatic wood.
as the door closes behind him and wei wuxian takes off his shoes — ）
What did you hear?
no subject
Eventually he comes back to himself for long enough to enter and remove his shoes, but like a man dying of thirst, his eyes snap back to his friend once he's inside, this time to his face. It means he's aware enough at least to hear the question.]
Enough. [His voice shakes with it and he swallows hard. He won't betray Finn's panicked moment of explicit detail.] I know it was bad.
[I know you almost died, he doesn't say, but it's loud and clear in his eyes and in the way that even seeing Itachi now doesn't entirely alleviate the stress of it all.]
But you're okay now. [It's meant as a statement though it does not come off like one.]
no subject
（ he allows that much, with a faint lift of his right shoulder. it does not bother him. death has lived alongside his life so long that he feels no especial aversion to it even now. every time death pulled in towards him like a tide, he never failed to greet it as an old friend. but wei wuxian puts a value on his beating heart that he does and cannot.
he can, at least, respect that. it's why, as wei wuxian's attention falls on the area of injury, he exhales faintly. reaches out — fingers curling in around the man's wrist, and then itachi lifts their hands up, displacing the soft black sweatshirt over the injury as he presses wei wuxian's hand in against his side. the bandages are neat and clean, no heat radiates from them, and the bulky dressings that had been necessary to absorb the various things humans leak when badly damaged and then healing from that damage are gone to the bare minimum. harder to say i'm fine when showing is so much easier. ）
But the intervention was enough. If not, you would have known.
（ he would not have left him with nothing. ）
no subject
His face crumples slowly at first, the slight crease of his brow, and then all at once, expression caving in as he closes his eyes in a failed attempt to halt the tears that have been brewing since the moment in the Sunlight room when Finn had detailed the extent of his friend's injuries. They're silent tears and his body doesn't shake, but they spill down his cheeks and he bows his head to hide them.]
Good. [That it was enough. That Itachi wouldn't have left without telling him.] Good.
[He reluctantly pulls his hand away, raising the other to swipe at his eyes.
I told you we were uneven. [He gripes eventually, some of his regular humor finally peeking through.]
no subject
( that sense of humour, come and gone like a flash. itachi gestures for wei wuxian to take the chair at his desk — he eases himself down on the bed. )
Whatever the boy may have said, it wasn't his fault.
no subject
I know. I would have done the same. [There isn't a single part of him that holds Finn responsible or is angry at Itachi's actions. Of course Itachi would throw himself in front of someone else. Of course he would. How could Wei Wuxian hold Finn responsible? How could he be mad at Itachi?
The only one to blame here is Jun.] Working on convincing him. He's...[He sighs.] That kid takes on the weight of the world.
no subject
（ it's said with the sort of weariness that can only be borne of understanding.
itachi never should have spoken to him at all. ）
How is he?
no subject
He's naive. [He settles on finally, and the word is gentle rather than critical.] At least a little. Not entirely. He's been through too much to have much of it left.
I don't think he knows what to make of people who don't fit the mold he expects them to. [His steadfast faith in Jun and the betrayal that came with it is clear as day.
After a moment, he adds, somewhat considering] I've never been betrayed by someone I trusted like that.
[He pauses, remembers his audience, raises his eyes to Itachi, and very abruptly laughs.] Well, not on a larger scale.
[Because despite everything, he would have let Itachi's betrayal pass with some irritated remarks if it hadn't been for the state of Gwen's mind. And for all that the betrayal had stung, they'd only really known each other for a handful of weeks by then. It was never the full fledged belief in a hero that Finn had clearly held for Jun.]
no subject
No. It would have been more difficult if you had been.
no subject
When he does speak again, he doesn't acknowledge the momentary weight between them, returning to the subject of Finn.]
In all that I dealt with, I don't know what it's like to trust like that and have it broken so badly. Even my brother...[He stops himself from finishing that sentence. For all that Jiang Cheng has been mentioned from time to time, he always stops himself from detailing everything between them.]
...I betrayed him, it was never the other way around.
no subject
Did you? Or would it only seem so, from his perspective?
（ wei wuxian is a selfless, loyal man, and he so clearly loves his brother despite the complicated nature of their relationship. he has no doubt wei wuxian could not be driven to appear to oppose him, but in his heart? no. such a thing would have been impossible. ）
no subject
And still he doesn't know how to answer.]
...maybe a little of both. He knew my defection was to protect the Jiang name so that my actions wouldn't implicate them. But I'd promised him...I'd promised him a future as his right hand man. And I never told him why I couldn't fulfill it. He didn't know about my missing core. I couldn't tell him.
no subject
there is a piece there he is missing. his lips part, and then thoughtfully press together again. ）
If you continue hinting at what occurred between the two of you, I will piece it out eventually. Would you rather tell me outright?
（ ... so he's a little blunt, okay? ）
no subject
I'm not hinting! It's a long ugly story, and all that matters is that without my core I couldn't serve him anymore. My lifespan was reduced, my strength and abilities...I had to give up the sword. I can still fight with one fine, but against even someone with the faintest hint of spiritual power, I'd lose.
And I...I lost it helping him. He went back to Lotus Pier to try and avenge has parents after it had fallen to the Wen Army. It's because of that I lost mine. So I couldn't tell him because he wouldn't have been able to live with it. He'd have blamed himself. [It's all true even if he's missing some of the larger details. Jiang Cheng did go back and it is why Wei Wuxian ended up losing his golden core.
And Jiang Cheng never would have forgiven himself if he knew the truth. (And he never would have forgiven Wei Wuxian.)]
no subject
this is not the same.
he spends more time justifying the situation, jiang cheng's reaction, the core being lost. before, he had said that he stopped using energy. then, that it had been destroyed by the man he spoke of then. itachi's instinct had laid bare the lie, but that was four months ago, now.
he had let it be, last time. swung his focus to another topic and pressed on there, instead. now: ）
'Lost' is not the correct word, is it? Merely the convenient one.
（ there is a gentleness to his tone that was absent during the discussion of madame yu. the sort of softly patient behaviour that wei wuxian may only recognize from how itachi had handled the boy in taeum. ）
1/2
There's no damage to be done by admitting the truth to him. He wouldn't even be the first to know after Ziggy had witnessed his memory in that stupid school. Still he hesitates. His stomach clenches at the thought and he looks away, his brow furrowed.
In the end, it's the irrevocable trust that he has in Itachi that wins out. And the knowledge that the asshole would probably put it together for himself eventually if he doesn't just tell him.]
I didn't lie. He went back there alone without backup. He didn't stand a chance. [He sighs again, the exhale shaky.]
By the time I got there, his golden core was already gone. There was nothing to be done. In the history of cultivation, no one had ever recovered a destroyed golden core.
But Wen Qing really was the best most brilliant doctor of our generation. The surgery only had a fifty percent success rate and I had to beg her for weeks but...when she performed it, it was perfect. It worked perfectly.
no subject
When he woke up, he had a core again. He never questioned it.
He was the only heir and his parents were dead. I was the son of a servant who only became a cultivator because the Jiangs had taken me in in the first place. It was right to pay back what had been given. [But Jiang Cheng couldn't have lived with knowing what he'd done.
He'd told Itachi once, I let him win. I let him win and he wouldn't talk to me for days and Itachi had understood why. So. He's sure Itachi understands this too.]
no subject
（ there is some sweeping, immeasurable sorrow grown into the deep roots of his voice. it's too weary to be a reprimand, or any real reflection on the act. his hand drops away from his side, thumb shifting automatically to the faint pale line where the ring had sat since he was all of thirteen. ）
I would have done the same.
（ the dark mirror of the sacrifice isn't lost on him, but wei wuxian's choice was ultimately far more selfless than his own. yet it remains that they are both men that learned young just what they would surrender for a beloved sibling. ）
no subject
Of course he would have. How could Itachi have ever done anything less in his position?]
Blood or not, he was my brother. [That was enough. It was all that mattered.]
He never understood why I turned to demonic cultivation. How could he when he was missing so many pieces of the story? And he resented me for bringing down so much trouble on myself. It doesn't matter. I would do it again even knowing everything that came after.
no subject
（ very likely, he would have wanted to help. but he can understand why wei wuxian was not in a position to accept it from him. being family makes it murky, further complicated by their dynamic since childhood.
itachi levers himself up off the bed at length, and then goes to make a pot of tea. remiss of him not to have done it at the start. ）
Doubtless he was frustrated to be denied an avenue to assist you.
no subject
It doesn't mean Itachi isn't right.]
I know.
[It occurs to Wei Wuxian in this exact moment that he might have made his regret not telling Jiang Cheng, but he dismisses the thought even as it comes. It might have made a difference. (It wouldn't have been enough to save the Dafan Wen.) Even so, he still can't bring himself to stomach the idea.
His eyes track Itachi's tea making and he fights the urge to bat Itachi away and do it himself. Itachi should be resting, but he knows that suggesting as much will only annoy him. If he was in such poor shape that he couldn't get up to make tea, McCoy wouldn't have allowed him to return to his room anyway.]
no subject
Knowing is easy.
（ it's something said with a faint note of commiseration, self-directed censure. wry, but tired. ）
Drink your tea, and if you have nothing further I will ask that you take your leave.
no subject
He hadn't planned to stay this long once Itachi had opened the door, and he nods in acquiescence, raising his cup with a nod of gratitude. The silence that follows is companionable even with the remnant of what he'd just revealed to his friend hanging in the air, and he revels in the quiet peacefulness of knowing that Itachi is well.
When he’s finished his tea, he sets the cup down with a soft clink and then fixes his gaze on Itachi as he rises.]
Get some rest, okay? [The words come with the slightest of sheepish smiles, clearly aware the the main thing stopping Itachi from doing exactly that so far has been him.]
no subject