Archive of Our Own

“Are those flower scars?” says Jin Ling, way too loud.

Wei Wuxian fires his most charming grin as he tries to yank his torn black robes back up around his shoulders, but the yaoguai’s claws had really done a number on them and they mostly just shred more. Worse, the assembled night-hunting cultivators have already whipped their heads around at Jin Ling’s yell, and Wei Wuxian is now being stared at by assorted wary Jin disciples and even some stone-faced Jiang as he and Jin Ling lounge around where Wei Wuxian had pitched them both to the ground. Wei Wuxian privately thinks there’s no call to be gawping at him when the yaoguai has just barely been killed and is actively still smoldering with spent talismans and purple lightning-smoke, but hey, that’s never been Wei Wuxian’s call to make. He simply draws eyes wherever he goes!

Jiang Ch- Jiang-zongzhu lands heavily, jumping the last few chi to the ground and snatching Sandu from midair, and storms over with Zidian still crackling on his hand. “Jin Ling,” he barks. “Did you get yourself clawed? Where is your medical kit? What kind of sect leader can’t even keep alert during night-hunts?” His gaze is even more thunderous than usual as it slides over Jin Ling—probably checking that the blood spatters aren’t his, and that the worst Jin-zongzhu has suffered tonight is embarrassment—then catches on Wei Wuxian, who’s still trying to discreetly pull his robes over the yao-scratches and whatever else might be visible on his torso. Jiang Cheng’s expression darkens even more. “What happened?”

Wei Wuxian shrugs, carefully. “Nothing much. A stray claw-strike as the yaoguai was thrashing around. Came a little close to Jin-zongzhu, barely clipped me.”

“He shoved me out of the way and got cut,” Jin Ling tattles.

Jiang Cheng goes to one knee beside where his nephew’s sitting, gripping Jin Ling’s shoulder in one still-sparking hand to tilt him and check for injuries to his chest and throat. He hisses— “This is why you should hunt with your own sect most often, not your Lan friends, by now you should be able to move with your Jin disciples without thought; they should have been guarding you, and you should have let them—” Jin Ling begins to complain, but Jiang Cheng ignores him and then, to Wei Wuxian’s great surprise, rounds on him. “And you! What did you even take that hit for? You couldn’t dodge?”

Wei Wuxian hadn’t expected to meet Jiang Cheng’s eyes today. Narrowed, flashing. He feels like he’s tripped sideways, or rather backwards; Jiang Cheng has barely looked at Wei Wuxian since the temple three years ago, and certainly hasn’t addressed him so directly, even on the other occasions that Jin Ling had wrangled them into being in the same place at the same time. He must have been really worried about his nephew, for that concern to bleed out to encompass bystanders like this. “Forgive this one, Jiang-zongzhu, I’m, ah, just not quite as nimble anymore as I used to be.”

“Why—” Jiang Cheng’s expression slams shut again, turning cold and blank.

Jin Ling tugs at Jiang Cheng’s shoulder, flapping a hand toward Wei Wuxian. “Jiujiu, never mind that, look! On Wei Wuxian’s chest, aren’t those—”

Jiang Cheng looks. His face goes blanker than ever.

Wei Wuxian wrenches his robes up. “Aiya, Jin-zongzhu, your uncle doesn’t want to look at some man’s naked torso. How scandalous! Don’t pester him—” The outer robe rips fully in half and droops around his waist like a sad curtain. “—Ha. Well, shit. Um.” Clothes don’t come cheap, especially for poor rogue cultivators. Maybe he can ask Jin Ling to get him a new set?

Jiang Cheng is still looking at him. Not in the eyes, but at his—at the blood from the shallow claw-marks, probably, Wei Wuxian’s inner robes are still mostly intact, not much is actually visible. Wei Wuxian folds his arms over his chest, because it’s chilly out here. In late Yunmeng spring.

Jiang Cheng keeps looking for another long moment. Then he looks away. “Bai Xiaodan,” he says. One of the Jiang disciples comes forward; she wears a doctor’s bag belted across her body, and the pin in her sash is the same shape as those that had designated medics, back in the old days of Yunmeng Jiang when Wei Wuxian was still a disciple.

Last ditch. “I’m seriously fine, I can just—”

“Shibo,” Jin Ling says, which makes both Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng twitch for no doubt very different reasons, “I’m the one who invited you on this night-hunt, and now you got hurt—and this yaoguai’s claws were venomous. Bai-daifu has taken care of my injuries since I was young; she’s very skilled. Please let her at least treat the cuts.” After that little speech he hits Wei Wuxian with big Jiang Yanli-shaped eyes, which is just unfair.

Wei Wuxian almost resists, still—he won’t get anywhere by looking weak—but then Jiang Cheng gets up and goes over to the other Jiang disciples, so Wei Wuxian relaxes enough for Bai-daifu to kneel down and check him over. Jin Ling stays nearby as he pretends to talk with his own disciples. Not ideal, but not Jiang Cheng either, so, fine. Bai Xiaodan cleans and dresses the claw-marks with efficiency, and without commenting on anything but his bleeding shoulder. Wei Wuxian makes himself appreciate her, since the cuts actually were starting to burn forebodingly.

It’s a little embarrassing to have been injured at all. Jiang Cheng wasn’t wrong; once, he would have been able to dodge the swipe like it was nothing. Wei Wuxian is slower than he should be, than he used to be, not just when he was his old self but slower than he was when first resurrected—muscles stiffening, joints tightening in ways this new body hadn’t had issues with before. Issues he’d thought he was done with, until recently.

“The patterning is odd,” says Bai Xiaodan, catching him off guard.

“Of the claw-marks?”

“Of these older scars, Wei-gongzi,” she says, wry, kind. A jolt goes down Wei Wuxian’s spine. “The depth of color looks to be typical of advanced cases of flower sickness, but the shapes aren’t quite standard—not fully formed, I’d say.”

“Ah,” says Wei Wuxian. Jiang Cheng is still talking with the Jiang disciples. “Well, could be something different then, if the symptoms don’t line up. There’s all sorts of strange things in the world. Curses! Blessings! General weirdness!”

She snorts and pats a fingerful of particularly sting-y ointment into the deepest of the cuts. “Yunmeng Jiang sees a lot of variants of the flower sickness, since we get so many travelers on the river, and various Jiang disciples have been treated for it as well. ‘Odd’ doesn’t mean ‘unheard of.’ My shifu has developed various methods to help treat the most common strains.”

Wei Wuxian keeps looking straight ahead. The yaoguai’s body is starting to collapse into ash and blow away; the night-hunt’s almost over. “What, so, a cure? Theoretically speaking? That must be in high demand. What a windfall for Lotus Pier.”

Bai Xiaodan hums. “There’s only one cure for the flower disease.” Not quite accurate—dying technically cures the flowers! —but Wei Wuxian lets her have the point. “But there are plenty of ways to live comfortably with it, if one’s willing.” She winds a bandage around Wei Wuxian’s shoulder as he sits silently, then gives him a friendly pat on the shoulderblade. Ow. “At any rate, Wei-gongzi, these cuts need to be checked in the morning to ensure the venom hasn’t caused the wounds to fester. If you’d like to be on your way, I’ll give you some ointment and advise you to call on a doctor sooner rather than later. Or—” She says it like it’s nothing— “Lotus Pier is close, and Jin-zongzhu will be staying there tonight with his disciples. You could do the same, and see one of our medics in the morning.”

It’s like a change in pressure—jumping into a lake and plunging deep, sounds muffling, lungs tightening. “Bai-daifu,” he says slowly, “surely you should check with Jiang-zongzhu before inviting me to the heart of Yunmeng Jiang?”

She doesn’t look up from stowing her medical supplies back in her bag. “I don’t need to,” she says. “Zongzhu has already given orders about you.”

Orders to what, exactly, Wei Wuxian wants to ask. But he bites his tongue for once as people bustle around.

This is—not how he expected to get access to Lotus Pier again. He didn’t expect to get it at all. It’s too soon. It’s too much. He could leave now, he should leave; if the cuts do fester, he’ll find a doctor, easy. He can handle cuts. He can handle scars, and pain, and his body failing him in annoying ways, at inopportune times. He can handle everything, just like he has before.

That’s the issue, though. He has done this before. He handled it, with… let’s say. Mixed results.

By contrast, in the time that he’s been alive again, it’s become increasingly clear that the new body he’s been handed is truly alive, and could, theoretically, live for quite a while. Not forever (unless he does something about it, cultivates a proper core and such) and not for only a mayfly-quick instant (unless he does something about it in the opposite direction, and keeps letting himself take stupid hits on night-hunts). The body, apparently, could be perfectly capable of living for an ordinary human amount of time. If Wei Wuxian will let it.

The scars throb.

The sky has lightened in the east. The yaoguai is dissolved completely. The disciples are letting the last of their purifying talismans dim. “Xiaodan. We’re leaving,” Jiang Cheng calls, and Bai Xiaodan joins with the rest of the Jiang disciples. Jin Ling gathers his own, and keeps glancing back and forth between his uncle and Wei Wuxian, seeming about to vibrate right out of his vermillion mark. Jiang Cheng doesn’t look.

He doesn’t look, but he doesn’t leave.

Well. No matter the circumstances, Wei Wuxian is getting what he wanted. Besides, getting rebandaged in the morning does sound necessary. “I appreciate Jiang-zongzhu’s hospitality,” he says—not shouts, but Jiang Cheng’s got cultivator ears. He’ll hear.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t acknowledge him, only steps up onto his sword. Wei Wuxian watches him go out of the corner of his eye. Jin Ling, looking triumphant, starts pestering Wei Wuxian to get on the Jiang head disciple’s sword, like he’s not only the little lord of Carp Tower but of Lotus Pier too.

The flower scars along Wei Wuxian’s meridians ache faintly, hot and gritty-feeling, like roots thirsty for rain.

~     ~       ~

Until the past century or so, the flower sickness was unheard of in the jianghu. Then it was brought into the country by merchants, or was concocted by wicked enemies of the emperor, or was a twisted blessing bestowed upon the people by a god with a very disturbing sense of humor—whatever it was, it spread through the population fast. And now basically anyone, provided they’re repressing an intense enough emotion, has the potential to start spewing flowers.

There’s assorted variants of the disease. The coughing strain is the most common; people grow gardens in their lungs and hack out petals. The blood variant is, thankfully, rare— that one’s nasty, and, as one would expect when someone has plant matter gunking up their veins, usually fatal—and there’s also the much-romanticized crying variant, with petals spilling from the affected person’s tear ducts. (When that strain first appeared, it was the fashion for a while for noble ladies to glue petals beneath their eyes and down their cheeks, and there was a rash of truly terrible literature featuring blossom-blubbering star-crossed lovers—plus some equally terrible but far more entertaining spring book series, which all started with something like Pardon me, gongzi/guniang/title of choice, but a certain bodily fluid of mine has become a bodily flora, and only your beautiful self can administer the rigorous medical treatment required to save me! Huaisang had been really fond of those at school.)

Regardless of which strain someone has, the early symptom onset is the same across the board: A golden core (for those who have one) sometimes stuttering or surging, not always able to regulate qi properly; a sense of pressure throughout the spiritual system. A constant sweet taste. A faint but inescapable fragrance in the nostrils. And then—distinctive bruising at the acupoints, stippled like seeds, then thready lines of roots traveling along the meridians. Raised, textural, as if something is buried beneath the skin. Then as the sickness advances, deeper bruises blossom at the dantians—

Literally blossom, as these take the shape of flowers.

The specific flower shape varies, the particular dantians affected vary, the timeframe varies. Plenty of quacks claim they can use these to decipher whatever repressed emotion has caused the illness—osmanthus for hidden love, hibiscus for crushed ambitions, common weeds for envy, white chrysanthemum for grief, oleander for malice, etcetera. Pfft. Swindlers. Wei Wuxian can diagnose himself just fine.

But anyway, a person can live like that for a long time—swallowing down whatever emotion it was that sparked the sickness, carrying scars on their skin that carve themselves deeper and dye their colors more richly by the day. But eventually the disease will worsen. And then the patient starts expelling petals from their mouth, or eyes, or veins.

They’re not real flowers, quite—something something tangible manifestations of imbalanced qi, something something physiological bodily reactions to a metaphysical illness. If Wei Wuxian, for example, ever sliced open his own scars in a fit of mania to try to remove the root (heh) of the issue—which he definitely hadn’t, even during his worse nights crawling through the Burial Mounds! —there wouldn’t be anything there except blood and disappointment.

(Which is actually somewhat similar to the makeup of golden cores, which have no physical form but DO have physical effects and can be affected by certain physical means, i.e. melted or surgically removed! Wen Qing would have loved this shit. Wei Wuxian should’ve chatted with her about her theories more, except for a while in there talking or thinking about core stuff OR flower sickness made his brain flinch away like he’d grabbed a hot pan. He wishes he’d paid more attention, now. Maybe he’ll write a research paper on his current condition in her honor. He’s kind of looking forward to seeing what will happen if the flowers start actually manifesting, anyway. The timeframe for this bout of flower sickness is already wildly different from his first life; the progression this time was much faster, but now seems to have entered something of a remission period—he’d expected to have started coughing petals by this point, but the symptoms eased slightly once he headed for Lotus Pier. What else might change? What a fascinating new field of study this could be; he’s lucky to be at the forefront without even trying!)

But anyway. The flowers may not be quite real flowers, per se. But they’re real enough to suffocate on, once they manifest. Real enough to choke a person’s veins of blood.

It’s not always fatal. The tears variant is more often painful or embarrassing than deadly, though it can cause major vision problems in the long-term; coughs can be suppressed with medicine; there’s not much to be done about the blood variant, but meditation and regular qi infusions help tamp down symptoms of all kinds. Best-case scenario, the feelings, and the need to share them, fade in time, and then huzzah, problem solved.

…Or, the person processes their emotions and, instead of disgorging flowers, spews their secrets to the person who caused their ailment and thus returns to health pretty much instantly!

(Or so people say, but that cure’s not very common. Wei Wuxian can’t imagine why.)

At any rate, his scars actually aren’t SO bad. They form a knot at his central dantian, then spread along his meridians, out across his torso and down his arms. They look feathery and wispy for now, stained a shadowy color not even as dark as a bruise, the raised texture barely distinguishable from the rest of his skin. They might hurt, and limit his range of motion quite a lot—hence getting clawed like an amateur, haha—but they’re not overly alarming to look at. He’s got plenty of time, now that he’s in Lotus Pier.

And he’s curious about what treatments Yunmeng Jiang can possibly offer.

~     ~       ~

He half expects to get thrown out of Lotus Pier after his yaoguai cuts are treated—but he isn’t. The head doctor Peng Ziyi checks them over, recommends he stay for another day until Jin-zongzhu leaves with his disciples, prescribes another day of rest after that, and then—then nothing. Nobody kicks him out onto the street or tries to avenge themselves for any crimes the Yiling Laozu committed. Nobody says much to him at all, although people shoot him a lot of sidelong glances whenever he leaves his bland, tiny guest room. So Wei Wuxian begins to explore Lotus Pier, partly out of boredom.

He’s well-behaved and sticks to the semi-public areas and gives no one any excuse to eject him. (Nowhere in his wanderings does he find Sandu Shengshou’s subterranean demonic-cultivator-torture-dungeon, alas. He knew those rumors were too interesting to be true! Plus, Wei Wuxian frankly doesn’t know where Jiang Cheng would put an underground torture dungeon in a floodplain. Maybe a torture room, lame though that is?) Even sans dungeons, there’s still plenty new stuff to see; he hasn’t been back here since Jiang Cheng threw him out of the ancestral hall three years ago—since Wei Wuxian had inflicted himself on the ancestral hall—even though Jiang Cheng had been the one to threaten to drag Wei Wuxian there himself—whatever, Wei Wuxian’s over it, he’s fine—and everything was such a mess at the time with the sects all yapping for Jin Guangyao’s blood that Wei Wuxian barely had a chance to even look at the resurrected Lotus Pier. And to be fair, it had also been pretty dark at the time, so.

Anyway, the new Lotus Pier is very nice. Clearly Yunmeng Jiang has ascended to new heights while he was dead.

He’s been there half a week when one of the disciples (not the new head disciple, who seems like a competent, qualified woman and who Wei Wuxian has been kind of avoiding while he explores—this is some other person whose name Wei Wuxian hasn’t caught) asks Wei Wuxian if he can spare a moment to review something.

Wei Wuxian blinks. “Is this a subtle way of telling me to quit bothering the merchants?” he says. He has spent a significant chunk of the past few days wheedling free samples out of the river-market vendors. He can’t help it; proper Yunmeng food is hard to come by in other regions. And since arriving here, Wei Wuxian has been surrounded by delicious spicy smells all the time and suddenly felt hungrier than he had for months prior! He might as well keep busy by filling up the big starving hollow inside himself.

“Not at all, gongzi; I’m sure the merchants are delighted to be subjected to your sparkling wit.” The disciple says it smooth as you please. Wei Wuxian is impressed enough that he creaks his way down from the wall he’d been sitting on (fuck, the roots really are fucking up his joints) and takes the paper the disciple holds out to him.

He blinks again at his own name, marked down for sword training—the basics, meant to build muscle and spiritual energy control; Wei Wuxian’s been assigned to go through the forms alongside the junior disciples and correct them if needed, though he’d be a fellow student, not actually teaching—and there’s also a meal plan with a list of recommended warming foods, a schedule for rotations for kitchen work, blocks of time marked out for meditation, for chores and other light duties around Lotus Pier, for swimming practice, for, sorry, what, painting?—and something just labeled ‘speech sessions.’ “Uh,” he says, half-laughing, “what’s all this?”

The disciple rocks back and forth a little on his heels, impatient but polite. “Standard health program, gongzi,” he says. “Our chief doctor designed the curriculum, and Senior Disciple Bai Xiaodan has been assigned as your go-to consultant. Please let her know if you want to adjust the schedule or if you have any questions.”

He does have questions. This all seems somewhat ominous.

But he gets lost while trying to find the medical wing, and accidentally passes by Sword Hall. The wide doors have been thrown open; Jiang Cheng’s voice rings out from inside. Wei Wuxian hesitates, then makes himself walk at normal speed past the doors.

He hasn’t actually seen Jiang Cheng much since he arrived. Jiang-zongzhu is a busy man, only to be glimpsed occasionally as he strides about with his head disciple at his heels. She’s there now, showing Jiang Cheng some kind of report as Jiang Cheng leans over sideways from the Lotus Throne to see, his chin propped on one hand and his legs casually crossed, clearly not expecting anyone to come in. Their heads are tipped close together. They both have wry half-smiles on their faces like the head disciple just said something sarcastic.

Ow.

Jiang Cheng looks up to see Wei Wuxian. His spine goes stiff, and the smile drops.

Ow.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t say anything, just sits, straight-backed and stone-faced, and gives Wei Wuxian a long glance up and down. Judging his clothes, Wei Wuxian supposes—Jiang Cheng had always dressed well as a sect heir and is now positively grand as a sect leader, albeit ridiculously buttoned-up and heavily layered. (In this weather! He’s probably covered in sweat beneath those fancy robes.) Wei Wuxian, on the other hand, had managed to repair the rips in his inner robe himself the first night he’d arrived, and the Jiang found him a spare black outer robe to wear over that; it’s a little big on him, but good quality and gracefully cut, embroidered in black thread with a wave pattern. He’s definitely not grand, but he’s not a disgrace. Not in this aspect, at least.

Wei Wuxian nods deeply—proper respect from an oh-so-lowly rogue cultivator to a sect leader—and hurries on.

Once he hits the medical wing, a disciple directs him to Bai Xiaodan’s small office. She’s grinding something into paste, and doesn’t stop when he steps inside, though she does smile warmly. “Wei-gongzi. Cuts doing well?”

“Like they never happened, daifu!” Ah, shit. Wait. Jiang Cheng will definitely make him leave if he’s not still recovering from helping Jin Ling. But he can’t come across as weak. He needs to strike the right balance between being a poor injured hero in need of medical care with the disciples vs. a capable confident competent yet aloof and independent adult with no needs whatsoever near Jiang Cheng. He can do that, he contains multitudes. “Or at least, they will be soon, under such fine doctorial care! Now, more interestingly: Health program?” He brandishes the paper.

Bai Xiaodan keeps grinding and smiling. “It certainly is. Wei-gongzi had a question? Or just wants to announce things to the air?”

Even though Bai Xiaodan is easily twice his age, Wei Wuxian is strongly reminded of when his shidimei would rag on him mercilessly. “This one has been delivered a health program, esteemed and honorable Bai-daifu, and is so horribly confused as to the nature and purpose of it.”

She huffs a laugh, raising an eyebrow at his antics. “This is Lotus Pier’s standard program for maintaining one’s general health. Wei-gongzi came injured to Lotus Pier, with an additional suspected illness, so at Jin-zongzhu’s request I wrote up a recommended treatment plan, tailored to what I’ve heard about Wei-gongzi. Of course, the program is only a suggestion—Wei-gongzi is free to follow it or not as he sees fit.”

Wei Wuxian grins. “Jiang sword forms are standard for a patient? Arts and crafts sessions are standard?”

“Moderate physical exercise, to keep the body strong—though naturally a martial sect will recommend martial methods. Exploring the arts for the purpose of self-expression, to ease internal turmoil.” She chuckles at his dubious look. “I told you Peng-daifu developed techniques specifically for treating flower sickness. When the underlying cause of an illness is a lack of ability to communicate one’s feelings, you’d be amazed at the good a bit of painting or poetry can do to mitigate symptoms.”

“Oh? What about a bad bit of poetry? I once drove a fairy into a rage with my vexatious verses.”

“So I’ve heard. But don’t worry—raw, unpolished poetry can be even better for treatment! So long as it comes from the heart.”

Ah. “Aha,” says Wei Wuxian, then grins. “Well! These activities all sound very amusing, daifu, but I hardly think food, fresh air and poetry are the key to curing flower sickness. If that is indeed something I have.” He knows she knows, and she knows he knows she knows, but. Still.

“They aren’t cures,” says Bai Xiaodan, bluntly. “They only address the broadest symptoms. They’re stopgaps, to give the body a fighting chance while the patient addresses the illness’s root cause. There is, Wei-gongzi,” she says, still smiling, still warm, still preparing medicine to help the sick, still relentless, “as I said, only one cure for the flower sickness: To identify the underlying, unaddressed emotion that’s manifesting itself as flowers, express it, and accept it.” She leans back and gives the paste a smoothing stir. “Everything else is just patching leaks in a boat. But better to go on-river in a patched boat than an actively sinking one, ah?”

“Right,” says Wei Wuxian, slowly. He blinks down at the paper a few times. “I guess all of this stuff… does make sense, in that case. But speech sessions, those are…? I’ll save you the trouble of those; I’m already an expert at talking.”

“Mm. Yes, speech sessions are my specialty, in fact. I simply talk to disciples who are having trouble, whether it’s related to an illness or not, and we try to work out what they feel the underlying cause is. Just talking about whatever upsets them—or whatever brings them joy, too, whatever they’re feeling at all—seems to be useful. It’s nice speaking to someone in general. Having space to do so.” Bai Xiaodan tosses a fresh handful of herbs into her mortar, then keeps grinding as she gives Wei Wuxian an assessing look. His skin prickles. “For your particular program, I’d recommend an additional exercise… Hand me that bowl, Wei-gongzi, please. Thank you—I’d recommend that, several times a day, you pause to reflect on what you are feeling, and identify the emotion.”

Wei Wuxian waits. She pours the bowl of powder into her paste. “…What.”

“Identify the emotion.”

Is this some kind of joke? He doesn’t know the new Jiang disciples well enough to tell what they find funny. “No, ha, I follow you, just—Why? Like, what particular emotions am I supposed to be…?” He already knows what’s causing his flower disease; he doesn’t need to make a note of it every time he gets root-kebabbed over Jiang Cheng’s smile. Assuming Jiang Cheng ever smiles anymore, and assuming Wei Wuxian is in the vicinity to see it. Both of which will probably be never. So, moot point!

“Not ‘supposed,’ per se. The point isn’t to note any one specific emotion—though of course if you do feel something you think is noteworthy, that’s great to recognize! But just becoming more aware of your own feelings, taking stock of them, and understanding them is a useful skill. And it is a skill, which requires practice and reflection. Plenty of people have trouble identifying their feelings at all.” She smiles again, warmer, like she’s assuring him that Ah, but he won’t struggle with that, will he.

He won’t struggle with such a simple thing. Or wouldn’t, if he were to do it. “So I just make note of, what, I’m hungry—”

“I’d suggest identifying actual emotional states, but pinpointing physical states as well can’t hurt.”

“—or, I’m doing great—”

“Also a good start, though specificity will be more helpful in the long run.”

This sounds like a huge pain. His scars itch. He thinks a little longingly of just walking out into the world again. There’s grand forests he could still explore, tiny towns surely in need of a rogue cultivator’s help, the sea he never did take the chance to swim in, the soft dark dirt perfect to lie on. All of those sound marvelous, much better than this silliness.

(But he’d had all that, and come to Lotus Pier anyway, hadn’t he.)

“—and then I… report to you about it. And you tell Jiang-zongzhu?” As is only proper—

“I will not,” says Bai Xiaodan, so firm Wei Wuxian automatically straightens like a soldier. “Certainly I’ll speak to you, Wei-gongzi, at length. And I do hope you’ll discuss your observations of your own emotional state with me, and if you bring up a topic you wish to explore, I may guide the conversation. But I will not share what we discuss with anyone outside this room, unless you are in immediate physical danger. The point of this exercise is to create a tool, a skillset, for yourself.”

“…Ah,” says Wei Wuxian, after a long moment. “Ha. Okay.”

“I’ll also ask you for regular updates, mind,” says Bai Xiaodan, and sets down her mortar and pestle at last. The paste is smooth, glossy perfection. “Wei-gongzi. How are you feeling?”

He stands in an herb-scented office, on structures completely rebuilt from the ones he knew, above water that is changing and flowing all the time. Lotus Pier isn’t dark like the last time he was here. Warm sun reflects off the lakes, the dazzle almost as disorienting as the fact that the water doesn’t lie in the same places anymore, and Wei Wuxian keeps half-tripping into unexpected ponds. The shorelines have been reshaped, the walkways reconfigured and rebuilt. Buildings that had still been half-burnt when he left for the Burial Mounds have been torn down and made grander. The food in the market tastes delicious and familiar, but not exactly the same, and all the faces behind the stalls have changed. The frogs in the pond shallows have too many spots. The sword forms the disciples practice on the too-big training grounds have more spins and flips than he remembered, which could be his lousy memory but could also be because Jiang Cheng was always a theatrical bastard who liked to flare out his skirts dramatically as he spin-kicked something to death and now his sect is imitating him, which, cute. Jiang Cheng himself is too grand for Wei Wuxian’s tastes, and even if he’s looking at Wei Wuxian now, more than he ever did in the past three years, Wei Wuxian can no longer read those looks—and he doesn’t need to be able to.

Everything in Lotus Pier, down to the specific smell of the rich lake-mud, is lush and beautiful and not just well-cared-for but obviously well-loved. And all of it is wrong.

But it’s so close to right that Wei Wuxian’s scars twinge. So close they burn.

The body wants to live.

“I feel…” he says, and wrinkles his nose. “…A little hungry. The delivery of your health program interrupted my lunch, Bai-daifu!”

Bai Xiaodan snickers and lets him have the retreat, wipes off her hands, and, from a bowl on her desk, offers him a single candied hawthorn stuck on a tiny skewer, like he’s a bratty child raising a fuss about taking his medicine. (The indignity! He accepts the candy anyway.)

~     ~       ~

He expects everything to keep feeling awkward and spiky like that first exploratory half-week. And he’s right! The Jiang take him in stride, but don’t seem to know quite what to do with him; there’s still a lot of staring at best and glowering whispers at worst. But it’s a little scary how quickly he falls into a rhythm anyway—the gongs striking the hour, the ceaseless flow of the river, the tempo of Jiang bells. The days measure themselves out by these beats, accumulating. He remembers this rhythm from when he first was brought to Lotus Pier as a child, except at a slightly different pitch—his training was always a bit different than everyone else’s; from the start, he was never treated as an ordinary disciple. Now, he’s… well, still not exactly an ordinary disciple. But he progresses like one: slowly.

The first thing of note is that, yes—eating good, healthy food, at regular times, in adequate and occasionally ample amounts, spiced and seasoned just the way he likes—it does, in fact, improve his overall health. He hadn’t starved the body, like had happened to Mo Xuanyu—although Mo-gongzi had certainly been undernourished during what should have been his growth spurt years, hence the slightly shorter height that meant when Wei Wuxian was first resurrected he kept tripping over misjudged distances, banging his toes on doorsills and such—but after he left the temple and began traveling, the healthy weight Wei Wuxian had gained while investigating Jin Guangyao’s crimes gradually melted off again. It made him weaker than he liked, when he was already weakened by the roots. (He really did embarrass himself on this most recent night-hunt. Next time he’ll dodge and weave with ease, and impress everybody! Including—especially—well. He’ll impress everybody.) So there’s a satisfaction in bulking back up now. And there’s always nuts or melon seeds or crisp crackers lying around in the kitchens, easy for Wei Wuxian to stash away to munch on when he’s restless. The tightness in his gut brought on by being unsure of his next meal, which has been a recurring and unwelcome companion throughout his life, fucks off, finally.

Swordwork—sorry, moderate physical exercise—is less straightforwardly helpful. Not helpful at all, in fact. It hurts. Every time he moves too suddenly he could swear there’s a tearing noise as a dozen tiny interconnected metaphysical roots snap and re-form between his joints. He used to wield Suibian like it was an extension of his own limbs; now he has a different practice sword, and different, half-useless limbs. The constant pain, and the gap between his muscle memory and the lack of actual muscle, make him clumsy and frustrated (as does the fact that, even though he’s been placed with a junior class and most of them seem eager to learn from him, some of them are technically more advanced on the actual forms). The forms themselves don’t help, just similar enough to the old ones for the new modifications to trip him up as he re-learns them (though he does have a natural flair for the dramatic spins). He sweats and strains like he never used to have to and gets yelled at when he tries to push through anyway, which makes the humiliation sting even worse.

Still, he doesn’t disgrace himself too badly, apparently, since after a few weeks the instructor Ye Zhou lets Wei Wuxian lead the juniors’ afternoon sword sessions, then try his hand at archery. Wei Wuxian pulls the bowstring back and realizes the draw is easier than before—not good, but. Not as painful. Even if he may miss targets now on occasion, he can at least impress the babiest of the juniors, who watch him with big eyes.

The art sessions (self-expression!), at least, are nothing but good dumb fun. It’s not an actual class, he’s just encouraged to make whatever he feels like. Someone leaves a set of colored inks in his room, similar to the set he had back as a young master; with them he paints caricatures of stern Ye Zhou and scary Peng-daifu and any junior disciples who ask, and forces himself to do landscapes of the new layout of Lotus Pier, painting unusual views from the tops of roofs or looking up from the damp spaces beneath the docks. He writes ridiculous poetry that would have any flower fairy beating him with brambles. He practices calligraphy via a tentative, awkwardly polite letter to Gusu; he’d tapered off letter-writing while Lan Zhan fulfilled his stint as Chief Cultivator, and then, when Lan Zhan wrote to him to ask if he’d like a traveling companion, he’d stopped writing back entirely—but Lan Zhan had been a good and true friend, and deserves better than being ghosted. He even feels the itch to make music again; he’d shoved Chenqing into a qiankun pouch ages ago, no longer able to scrape up interest in composing (and he thinks playing a demonic flute inside Lotus Pier is probably in poor taste, anyway—unless he wants to be introduced to that torture dungeon after all), so he borrows a pipa from the music master and spends quite a few cheerful afternoons strumming songs with the old man, getting sworn at for butchering the melodies and laughing that he can’t remember how they’re supposed to go, and then making up tunes on the spot that get passing disciples to bob their heads and skip in time.

He lets Peng Ziyi, Lotus Pier’s senior doctor, poke at him and analyze his pulse and test his qi flow and chart his scar growth and examine his growing muscles and measure his increasing waistline and give him salves that help soothe the flower scars, to apply onto himself once he’s alone. She’s the one who pioneered the health program, so they have great fun arguing over how, yes, the food and exercise and whatnot are great, but If Wei-gongzi wants to recover from anything, he’ll need to actually meditate, sleep more, and pull his head out of his silly little ass, vs. My ass may be neither here nor there—though I posit that it’s a fantastic ass and very generous, not little in the least—but I’ve come up with a brilliant solution for the other two! I simply nap while I’m scheduled to be meditating! I can’t possibly sleep all through the night, you see, nighttime is best for coming up with fresh talisman ideas, Peng-ayi must understand— Who’re you calling ayi, you brat— Ah, apologies, popo— Gongzi is cruising for an acupuncture needle to the generous ass, I see— Ai! I mean daifu, youthful and honorable daifu! Mercy!

(He gets used to the nocturnal frog chorus, so different from the old one, and sleeps at night.)

He even does all his speech sessions, sipping tea and flirting outrageously as he tells Bai Xiaodan how he’s filled his days. She’s a smart, easy conversationalist, readily smacks him down when he gets too hyper, and lets him pour out a million circling words. He usually sticks to cheerful topics, bright and transparent as the lake-shallows—and he’s not lying, there are things to feel positively about in the new Lotus Pier. But now he not infrequently finds himself wading through old memories he’d meant to stay away from—the stories still bright, but dappled with shadows. Tales of his parents, his travels. Once, the start of a story about his first real night-hunt, before he catches himself and changes the subject (he’d said ‘we,’ because of course he had gone with—That is, of course he hadn’t gone alone). Anyway, all that is to say, Bai Xiaodan is a sneaky and manipulative conversationalist on top of being pleasant company. Wei Wuxian is annoyed by it, but can also respect a compatriot.

He hasn’t made much progress on the whole identify and take stock of your emotions front. He does attempt, sometimes. When things go quiet and still and cold inside his brain, he’ll check in with himself. What are you feeling?

He’s—

It’s hard to tell. This is already so much more than he expected. He probably feels—grateful. (As he should be.) Content. A little amazed that he’s getting away with this, that Jiang Cheng hasn’t thrown him out yet, that Jiang Cheng deigned to let him in at all. Yes. Things are going great.

~     ~       ~

He still doesn’t see Jiang Cheng very often. Or, rather—he sees him. At a distance. Jiang-zongzhu spends much of the day shut up in his office, like his father had (though Jiang Fengmian always had time for Wei Wuxian), but he’s also more hands-on with the sect as a whole than Wei Wuxian expected. He’ll roll up the sleeves of his elaborate robes to pitch in with harvests or repairs, if he has free time, and he overlooks much of the disciples’ advanced training. When petitioners come to complain at him, he’s just as likely to head out with a group of disciples to address the issue himself as he is to delegate someone. Wei Wuxian sees him occasionally down at the animal pens, working with the horses (Wei Wuxian himself stays far away—since Jiang Cheng is now the kind of person who traps Wei Wuxian in tiny rooms with dogs, there must be kennels over there, full of vicious, slavering canine beasts! Except then Pan Bo and Liu Yan, born troublemakers and Wei Wuxian’s favorites of the baby disciples, mention that zongzhu doesn’t allow any dogs in Lotus Pier save for Jin-zongzhu’s pet. Weird. But there still might be donkeys in there, which would remind Wei Wuxian of Little Apple. He stays away anyway just in case). Sect kids catch frogs and offer them to Jiang-zongzhu (who doesn’t even like frogs that much more than any other animal! Jiang-shushu is the one who picked Jiang Cheng’s sword! …which is decorated with a toad, anyway!!) and giggle, like it’s a line in a play they know by heart, when he tells them to leave the poor damn things in their natural habitats. Jin Ling sends golden message butterflies that his uncle always makes time for, snatching them out of the air when he’s alone to listen intently to whatever his nephew is complaining about with a scowl on his face but the line of his shoulders relaxed and easy.

Once, Wei Wuxian is out painting the spill of moonlight that hits the roofs of the empty family quarters—from a distance, okay, even he’s not shameless enough to to get too close to that area, he gets plenty of info just by chatting with the disciples and peering around corners during the day!—he sees a flock of sword-riding disciples descend from the star-studded sky, black shapes that abruptly flare with color as they head for the lantern-lit courtyard. They’re all dressed for night-hunting and covered with mud and monster ichor, but no human blood, and Jiang Cheng is in the lead. He twists to look over his disciples, lifting his chin with obvious smugness at them having successfully killed whatever yaoguai it was that they killed, the white moon and orange lanterns illuminating the sharp bones of his face. Then he grins, wide and proud. It makes him look startlingly young.

Then they all dip below the roofline, and Wei Wuxian can’t see anything else.

(He stays awake for a while, thinking, after he washes the ink from his brushes. He would’ve thought—All over the jianghu, for years, he’d heard that Sandu Shengshou ruled the Jiang with a clenched fist and a crackling whip. The disciples are casual and almost shockingly tolerant with the former Yiling Laozu, sure—but that’s Yunmeng, and it’s Wei Wuxian; he’s easy to get along with, albeit hard to put up with. He figured that Jiang Cheng, by contrast, would be feared, fierce, freezing cold even to his own people—but instead, does Jiang Cheng, what, smile at all his disciples? Just because they’re his disciples?)

The next day, Jiang Cheng and his head disciple Han Yueying come to talk to Ye Zhou during Wei Wuxian’s teaching lesson. Wei Wuxian can’t resist adding some flair to his next demonstrative thrust—just a little flick at the end to taunt his invisible opponent, flamboyant enough to catch an idle eye, the movement almost as smooth and painless as it would have been in his old body. The baby disciples don’t comment, but they eagerly all try to replicate the motion and mostly fail, which is adorable.

Even this far away, he hears Jiang Cheng snort under his breath. It’s probably derision, not amusement, but he warms with the knowledge that Jiang Cheng’s watching, even for just this one second.

It is only one second, though. The next time Wei Wuxian spins to face the edge of the training field, Jiang Cheng is leaning away, eyes on some paper Han Yueying is handing to him, Ye Zhou gesturing outward away from the training grounds. Jiang Cheng doesn’t look over again, preferring to focus on his actual disciples.

So, the length of a training field. That’s about as close as Wei Wuxian gets to Jiang Cheng these days.

The perfect amount of distance, really! It’s exactly what Wei Wuxian had decided on, when he was lying faceup in the dirt with an angry donkey screaming (literally) in one of his ears and his own hungry body screaming (metaphorically) in the other, feeling the slow crawl of roots through his anatomy and the weight of the empty sky pressing down on him. This is the way to balance things, to get better. This is exactly what he wants.

(The thing is, if it was just as straightforward as “more time nearish Jiang Cheng = feel good” and “less time near Jiang Cheng = feel bad,” and “time spent in Jiang Cheng’s immediate vicinity = data unavailable, but probably cataclysmic,” that would be simple enough to deal with. But it’s all Jiang Cheng. All of Lotus Pier is Jiang Cheng. All of it hurts. Jiang Cheng being next to him hurts, him being far away had hurt. No matter what food Wei Wuxian eats or sword he swings or disciples he half-befriends or sunlight he soaks up or words he doesn’t find, he’ll still be caught off-guard by something totally innocuous, something that reminds him Jiang Cheng is here. Here, but holding himself at the length of a training field.

And then the roots drive deeper into him so fast he swears he can see them moving.)

~     ~       ~

Wei Wuxian stares at the black banbi jacket he’d been in the process of unfolding. He runs his thumbs over the embroidery at the seams. Pan Bo left the fresh outfit outside his door, casual as anything, after Wei Wuxian had gunked up his own robes during the day’s activities (wherein everybody in Lotus Pier, excluding Jiang Cheng, had rolled up their trousers and plunged into the mud to harvest lotus pods). (To be clear, Jiang Cheng had plunged into the mud too. He’d just kept every single bit of his clothes firmly on, like a weirdo. Jiang-zongzhu is apparently too prudish to allow anyone even a glimpse of his long bare legs.)

Anyway, before this, Wei Wuxian had simply figured Lotus Pier stocked an unusual amount of spare black clothing, to be able to give him a new robe every time he messes up whichever one he’s wearing—but that’s not too weird. Lotus Pier hosts more traveling rogue cultivators than any other sect, and Jiang-zongzhu’s pride would not let him be a poor host, even when housing rogues. And black is pretty standard attire for unaffiliated cultivators. Of course there would be spare clothing for them.

But this is—

Wei Wuxian’s memory may be shit, but he can recognize this stitchwork. Shijie never much liked embroidery for art’s sake, but she enjoyed it well enough if it was useful; when Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng ripped their clothes, which was often, she’d darn up the holes by stitching little pictures over them. She was good at fish, and water plants. She was good at birds.

She was good at foxes, like the one sewn in red on the short, wide sleeve of the jacket.

Wei Wuxian faintly remembers being careless with the sleeve, tearing it. And this fox, curled up like it’s sleeping, this was the first one Shijie tried sewing for him—

These are his clothes.

These are his clothes.

Wei Wuxian nearly drops the banbi as he flails through the rest of the clothes he’s been given since he arrived. Some spark memories, now that he knows what to look for; most don’t, but the quality is still clear. Rich enough for a young master, or a not-quite-a-young-master-but-usually-treated-as-such-so-who-knows-what-to-call-him. Black, or black with red trim. Nothing purple, but—

He stands in the middle of his guest rooms like an idiot, panting, surrounded by the attire of his previous life. He can’t think why the Jiang have these. Why they kept these.

And the disciples have just been giving these to him. Straight-faced. Without any shame. Right from the moment Wei Wuxian arrived! Did they know these had been his? They couldn’t have. They must have just kept them out of ignorance. But fuck, no wonder the few times Jiang Cheng has glanced at him, his mouth went sour like he’d bitten into a lemon; if anybody could recognize a robe that hadn’t been worn in twenty years, it’s image-obsessed, fashion-forward Jiang-zongzhu. And Wei Wuxian’s been prancing around in these for months.  

Last week, Ye Zhou had said Wei Wuxian had graduated from borrowing practice blades and handed him a familiar sword, its hilt and sheath fashioned to look like a plain piece of driftwood. Even with his qi imbalanced from flower sickness, Wei Wuxian’s physical state is much improved now; Suibian weighed well in his hand, which was somewhat mitigated by the fact that he nearly dropped it in sheer shock. (He polished it carefully that night in apology, feeling the faint hum under his hands.) But in retrospect, Suibian’s presence makes some sense, at least—he’d left it here when he fled Lotus Pier three years ago—or rather, Wen Ning had; Wei Wuxian’s a little fuzzy on the details—and Jiang Cheng has too much respect for spiritual weapons to have had it melted down. Ordering it to be returned to Wei Wuxian was a perfectly efficient way to get rid of it.

And Chenqing. Everybody knows Jiang-zongzhu kept Chenqing to lure the dreaded Yiling Laozu’s spirit to him. The prize to pull him in like a moth to moonlight, and then, once in range, Sandu Shengshou would lash him apart. …Maybe in the torture dungeons (Wei Wuxian now knows the new Lotus Pier backwards and forwards and upside-down, and he still hasn’t seen that damn dungeon. Don’t get a guy’s hopes up, rumormongers!). Also reasonable. Understandable. It’s the duty of a righteous cultivator to whip down the wicked and unorthodox. And when Jiang Cheng tossed the flute back to him in the temple, that had been a last resort—pretty much everyone but Wei Wuxian weaponless and with their qi sealed, helpless to fight against the storm of resentful energy trying to tear the temple apart. Jiang Cheng is pragmatic enough to have recognized the need for his power in that moment. To rationalize that returning Wei Wuxian’s weapon was worth it, in the short term.

Clothes, though. The clothes Wei Wuxian had worn in his old life. There’s no obvious purpose to keeping them. They haven’t been used as rags. They’ve been maintained. They’re useless. What possible reason would there be for keeping these? Jiang Cheng hates him. Or, if not hates, then the best Wei Wuxian can get is indifference.

(What possible other reason—?)

He buries his face in the fox-stitched cloth and breathes in. The taste of flowers rises in the back of his throat.

~     ~       ~

By this point, Wei Wuxian’s pretty sure that literally everybody knows about his flower scars. He hasn’t been swimming with the disciples or anything (he’s aaaalmost shameless enough—and definitely sweltering enough as summer approaches in earnest!—but for now he’s just been sticking to quick dips late at night when nobody can see). But even without him flashing his purpling bruises to every Jiang in Lotus Pier, he’s still been following the flower-sickness health program, he’s still been (sometimes a little too loudly, he can admit) chatting about his flowery observations to Bai Xiaodan or pushing back against Peng Ziyi. And Lotus Pier has no rules against gossip. They all know.

At least the flower type itself isn’t too obvious yet, since the scars, for now, are still just long dark-bruised lines up and down his meridians—disproportionately long stems that run under the surface of his skin while the roots plunge deep and invisible through his body. The stems might be recognizable to a lake-raised Jiang disciple, in good light, but just a glimpse here and there should be safe.

But once the shapes of the flowers themselves blossom at his dantians, they’ll be unmistakable.

They’ll be lotuses.

He knows, because he formed the exact same scars in his first life. For most of his childhood at Lotus Pier, he only felt occasional twinges, and his pulse points sometimes bruised in the shapes of different kinds of seeds. Things he swallowed down, and occasionally coughed over—the realization that he was forgetting the cadence of his parents’ voices, the memory of sharp canine teeth sinking into his skin, the roil in his stomach when Madam Yu reminded everyone whose son he wasn’t, the look on Jiang Cheng’s face when Jiang Fengmian congratulated Wei Wuxian on his achievements after Jiang Cheng couldn’t quite keep up…

Or, more happily, the way Jiang Cheng always leaned into him when Wei Wuxian threw an arm around his shoulders, even if Jiang Cheng then elbowed him away; the flutter in Wei Wuxian’s chest when Jiang Cheng grinned at him as they sprinted away from a successful prank...

Or the summer they were fourteen and swimming and Jiang Cheng was climbing out of the river onto the dock, and the edge of dazzling sunset-gold along his shoulders and the equally dazzling cling of his wet trousers to his thighs made Wei Wuxian cough, then choke on water, then have to knock Jiang Cheng back into the river when Jiang Cheng made fun of him for almost drowning, which just increased the wet trouser problem. It was a hell of a way to ring in the realization that Wei Wuxian was maybe, sort of, a little bit—Not that there was much point thinking such things about a sect heir! Ha!

Anyway, not all of those feelings hurt, at the time. But they all did have to be swallowed down.

But Wei Wuxian genuinely shared almost everything else he felt with Jiang Cheng, so none of those things ever turned into full-on flowers or even scars. And for the rest, he could talk, quietly but truthfully, to Shijie. He’d let her pet his head, she’d whisper reassurances, and he believed her. So it was fine.

But once Lotus Pier burned—

—once Jiang Cheng lost his core, and Wei Wuxian had to give his own up—

Seeds sprouted, and roots ripped deep.

Even then, things didn’t get truly awful until after the war ended. Oh sure, Sunshot had been bad (do you know how big lotus rhizomes are. They are huge. Awesome in soup, significantly less awesome when growing in your organs), but bearable. On the warfront, Wei Wuxian had easily kept wrapped up in thick dark robes, kept busy, kept moving, kept everyone at corpse-arm’s length. The flower sickness wasn’t even unusual, at the time; plenty of the new Yunmeng Jiang fought through Sunshot with flower scars crawling up their faces like vines, hacking out flowers after battles, weeping blood-slick petals into their hands—sorrow there was no time to voice, hatred that had to be strangled down in favor of coolheaded strategizing and politicking.

But after the war was won and Wei Wuxian was back in Lotus Pier, everyone, including Sandu Shengshou’s wayward head disciple, was expected to pull themselves the fuck together. Jiang Cheng started demanding things of him he could no longer give. Started losing patience, started nagging. Insufferable. He stood so close and frustrated and golden-bright but so plainly, irrevocably untouchable, and Wei Wuxian, cold and scraped empty, missed the sensation of living skin warm under his hands. The need to sink his fingers into Jiang Cheng and shut him up for once about things he didn’t understand was building to an explosion beneath Wei Wuxian’s skin, it was in his viscera, his lungs, behind his clenched teeth—

It was kind of lucky the Dafan Wens ended up needing help when they did. Wei Wuxian probably wouldn’t have been able to hide that he’d started coughing up lotus petals for much longer.

Wei Wuxian had done the right thing, taking the Wens to the Burial Mounds, and doesn’t regret it. But being away from Lotus Pier felt like missing a limb. He soon moved from spitting out petals to coughing full flowers—seed pods, strangling-long stems and all. Which, great! Food source! Except the seeds tasted like blood and ashes, and refused to grow. (There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.) He ended up planting his little lotus pond with seeds he bought, from town, like a pleb. Disgraceful!

And all the while, the scars spread, bruise-purple lotuses blooming all across his skin.

The marks covered most of his body by the time he died; his lungs were so choked with plant matter his gasps were punctuated by the rustling of leaves. He doesn’t recall much after throwing off Lan Zhan’s hand at the cliff, but—well. People say the Yiling Laozu’s body was never found. He wonders if the roots finally overtook his body as he fell, ripped him apart so that nothing landed at the base of the cliffs save for a bit of meaty offal, some shards of bone, and a shower of tangled roots and blood-streaked petals.

The idea feels fitting, somehow. The greater part of him had already been ripped out to spin, warm and golden, inside Jiang Cheng; the roots were probably all that had been holding him together, after that.

(Or maybe his old body was incinerated by lava! Badass.)

When he awoke in a new, scarless body—his own face staring back at him but everything else completely alien—all that unmarked skin was both mildly horrifying and an unimaginable relief. He was a blank scroll of paper, the silence before the first note of a song. He could almost imagine the body had no wants, no needs, no past, and so neither did he. To that end, after the temple, after Lan Zhan and A-Yuan and Wen Ning and Jin Ling and everybody else all left him for the places they truly belonged (except Little Apple, who was bridled and had no choice), Wei Wuxian wandered without goal or destination, other than Away. And it was great, for a while! He could drift alongside Wen Ning and A-Yuan when he happened upon them, pop in on Jin Ling every so often to night-hunt with him and the little Lans, squeeze his eyes shut while laughing through the tiny number of incredibly awkward meetings Jin Ling arranged between him and Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian—and then head out again, leaving the barest ripple behind. He didn’t have to be anything. He barely even had to be alive.

He went on thinking that, as he wandered—at least until he finally recognized the specific, slithering, growing ache along his meridians. As faint bruises sprouted at his dantians, as he ran his fingers along the old familiar pathways of his new unfamiliar body, then watched as the scars drove through his skin like furrows tilled into a field, just where he’d known they would.

(Even as it happened, he could not fucking believe this. He’d meant what he said, in the temple: However he might have felt before, it was the past. It wasn’t anything. He didn’t even think about Jiang Cheng anymore. He didn’t really think about anything anymore. He was done with all of that, like shrugging out of clothes that didn’t fit anymore, and so much the better.)

But then he figured, fine—great, actually! He wasn’t doing much. He could keep walking in a straight line, Away, until he choked on flowers.

He came pretty close, several times. He periodically decided that he was allowed to lie on the soft dark nonjudgmental earth and not get up anymore.

But then, the body.

He can blame everything on the body. The body that could live, apparently wanted to live. Every time he flopped down, since it’s carving itself right into my skin again, what’s the point of pretending otherwise, just die or don’t, will you—the body insisted on complaining of hunger and cold and achiness (and of pained ears, what with Little Apple screaming with furious, frightened hunger right next to him, even though it’s not like she was tied up, he didn’t understand why she wouldn’t leave) to the point that he couldn’t relax enough to croak. Complained and complained. The body wanted to live.

(…Which is a little rich considering the body communicated this by infecting itself with life-draining semi-physical ultimately-fatal flower roots just to make a point, but, y’know.)

But apparently Wei Wuxian wanted to live too, at least more than he wanted to lie in the dirt and guiltily listen to Little Apple screaming.

Because eventually he gave in. He stood. He found a farm that would take in Little Apple. He forced himself to eat enough to keep up energy for his long, painful journey on foot. He drank only water, which made him shake and throw up at first because he wanted wine instead, but he did it.

He made his way, slowly but unerringly (save for a brief period where he chickened out and detoured to Carp Tower to bother Jin Ling, who was so relieved to see Wei Wuxian alive after months without contact that he smacked him and didn’t speak to him for a week and then called him ‘shibo’ for the first time), to Yunmeng.

(Die or don’t! Die or don’t, but get on with it either way! Just do something, you coward!)

And with every step, he planned.

If he reached Lotus Pier, there was plenty he wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t be like the terrible books (of the literary OR spicy variety); he wouldn’t confess his old feelings and magically recover. Jiang Cheng’s inevitable reaction to (rejection of) such a declaration would only make his feelings more unbearable, and then he’d probably perish on the spot. No. He’d settle near Lotus Pier, find some excuse to stay within spitting distance, and just… keep an eye on Jiang Cheng until the flowers faded, and Wei Wuxian could leave again.

(Because if the flowers wanted him to express his feelings, well, what was a clearer expression than Jiang Cheng’s golden core? Jiang Cheng upright and powerful, safe, cultivating cleanly, commanding a sect the way he’d been born to—the way he couldn’t have done, without Wei Wuxian’s sacrifice—surely all that counted as an expression of feelings far more than simply shouting them out like a lunatic. Seeing it should appease the flower sickness.)

The key would be for Wei Wuxian to keep close enough to settle the knotted tangle under his skin, but not so close that Jiang Cheng could lash out to drive him off. Not so close that the two of them could fuck each other up even worse. They’d just… meet, every so often. That’d be enough. As long as they were both alive in the world, that was plenty, ah?

So now, many flowers and much trouble later, here he is.

He runs his hands over the ridged, purpling scars hidden beneath his black clothes, the way he always used to, and watches the color deepen as he presses down on them with a firm thumb. The rate at which the scars are spreading has definitely slowed, since he came here. It hasn’t stopped, though.

But Wei Wuxian hasn’t quite stopped, either. Not this time. He hasn’t lain back down just yet.

~     ~       ~

Wei Wuxian is reaching for the door of Bai Xiaodan’s office when it slams open under his hands (but doesn’t quite bounce off the wall; the eager exiter catches it before it hits). Jiang Cheng comes storming out. He’s half-turned back into the room, saying to Bai Xiaodan, “—can just keep my distance, and I’ll be—” and finishes with “fuck,” as he narrowly avoids smacking right into Wei Wuxian. He must have been getting an examination; his fancy purple outer robe is loose, hanging off his elbows, his inner robes are open at the throat, and his bracers are gone, exposing his wrists. His eyes are wide and slightly reddened at the corners; he’s rubbing at them with one hand, like they ache. In the brief moment in which his and Wei Wuxian’s gazes meet, his expression shifts rapid-fire from furious to startled to what almost looks like the briefest flash of horror. His free hand shoots up to yank his robes closed.

There are old, faded scars visible along his clavicle.

Wei Wuxian stares. Jiang Cheng has scars across his chest from the discipline whip, a few of which go up not quite to his collarbone. Wei Wuxian knows that. He’d memorized them, when Jiang Cheng was lying unconscious in Wen Qing’s supervisory office; he’d insisted on helping change the bandages whenever Wen Qing treated them, gritting his teeth at the idea of anyone else touching Jiang Cheng. He knows the scars’ exact shape and number. These aren’t—That’s not the right placement for any of the whip scars. Not the right texture.

That’s not the right shade of red. This one is the dusty petal-red of dried flowers.

Instinctively, like they’re twenty years younger, Wei Wuxian reaches out to pull Jiang Cheng’s hand away from his collar. “Jiang Cheng, what happened to you, show me—”

Jiang Cheng jerks backward, his other hand clamping hot around Wei Wuxian’s wrist. His inner sleeve falls back as he does it. There are more faded scars down the meridians of his bare forearms.

They both freeze.

Then Jiang Cheng’s jaw sets. “Don’t presume to touch people so casually,” he says roughly, and releases Wei Wuxian’s wrist. “And my routine checkups aren’t your concern, Wei—Wei-xiansheng.”

Routine checkups? He wouldn’t usually clarify that; getting Jiang Cheng to volunteer personal information is always, was always, like pulling teeth—unless he thinks an alternative is worse. And Wei Wuxian’s attempted touch was the opposite of casual. Everything about this is the opposite of casual. “Those,” Wei Wuxian says, tongue numb, “are—”

“I said that’s not your concern.” Jiang Cheng shakes him off, pulling his collar closed and snapping his outer robe up across his shoulders as he strides off. He makes sure to keep his front turned away from Wei Wuxian.

Wei Wuxian stands outside Bai Xiaodan’s office like an idiot, staring straight ahead. Half-formed thoughts ricochet through his head and roots wriggle beneath his skin.

He—Fuck. Okay.

It’s—fine. This will be fine. So Jiang Cheng had the flower disease at some point. While Wei Wuxian was dead, certainly, he would have noticed otherwise. He would have seen. Is this just common knowledge? Did everybody else know but him? Fuck, Jin Ling must know for sure, that was why he’d recognized Wei Wuxian’s flower scars so quickly, he’s already seen them on one uncle—no, but it can’t be widespread knowledge, Wei Wuxian’s never heard even a hint of gossip that Sandu Shengshou ever suffered a bout of the flower disease. It would be too juicy of a rumor to contain. The whole cultivation world would be chattering about what emotion, and for whom, sent roots crawling through Sandu Shengshou’s body.

(Wei Wuxian’s first thought is to wonder if it was him, if the sickness was for Wei Wuxian. Jiang Cheng kept his flute, his clothes, searched obsessively for his imitators. Who else could have rooted in Jiang Cheng so deep?

But if it was for Wei Wuxian, then the feeling must have been—

 Rage, of course. Or grief. For Jiang Yanli, for his family—grief not for Wei Wuxian but caused by him, by his mistakes, and by whatever else Jiang Cheng blamed him for. Wei Wuxian can imagine those feelings sprouting under Jiang Cheng’s skin, building toward rupture from his lungs or his veins or his eyes, no way to expel the emotions because the person who should’ve weathered that inevitable explosion was dead. That makes sense. No wonder Jiang Cheng developed the flower sickness. His scars are all, always, Wei Wuxian’s fault.)

He swallows hard.

(The other option—the one that feels like thorns tearing at him—is that Jiang Cheng felt that intensely about something or someone else while Wei Wuxian was gone. Somebody else who sank their colors into Jiang Cheng’s skin, and Wei Wuxian has nothing to do with the marks on him at all.)

It’s fine.

None of that matters, anyway. The flower scars on Jiang Cheng’s skin just now were faded and faint in color. Old. Jiang Cheng had been sick, alone—but then the underlying emotions withered, and he healed. He got over it. Whatever it was. Whatever it was. It’s done.

“Wei Wuxian,” calls Bai Xiaodan.

Wei Wuxian finally enters her office. His feet seem very far away and his chest is tight and hot.

“So,” says Bai Xiaodan. She marks something in one of her books, then looks up at him. Whatever she sees on his face makes her pause. Her voice turns careful. “So. Wei Wuxian. How are you feeling?”

How is he feeling? What is he feeling?

He’s feeling a thousand tiny, prickling stabbing sensations as roots dig into his meridians. He feels his innards burn and stretch to accommodate whatever is growing in them. He feels acid boil up his throat, burning-bitter and lotus-sweet all at once. He feels the urge to storm after Jiang Cheng, grab him, shake him, make him really look at Wei Wuxian, make him talk. What the fuck is he feeling?

“Feeling okay,” he says. “No complaints here.”

~     ~       ~

Lotus-shaped cuts unfurl along his spine. He towels away the blood and, in the polished copper mirror, watches the cuts seal over into ropy, raised lines. The petals’ colors don’t stay within the outlines of the flowers themselves, but seep outward like ink in water, staining him in shades of pink, lavender and plum, all down his back.

~     ~       ~

“Wei-xiong,” mutters tenth disciple Wang Dan, gesturing at Wei Wuxian’s wrist with his chin. Wei Wuxian adjusts his grip on Suibian, holding his breath until the pressure in his chest eases and his hand stops its minute trembling. The baby juniors who’d been glancing at Wei Wuxian and Wang Dan for direction all hastily shift their own grips. Wei Wuxian grins, focusing on how cute they are to let the buzz of his own frustration dissipate.

Suibian has felt heavy the past few days, heavier than when it was first returned to him. Not actually too noticeable, except that the hilt had finally started to feel familiar in his hand, and any backslide is exasperating. The fact that he’s started coughing again probably isn’t helping; he’s had to hold his breath periodically through this class. But they’re not quite real coughs, just dry, irritated little spasms, nothing near as bad as the wet choking that had characterized his previous life. And he’d been super responsible and casually gotten both Bai Xiaodan and Peng-daifu to examine his pulse, and neither identified anything lodged in his lungs or realized the scars on his back had bloomed. He’s actually kind of encouraged.

He breathes as steady as he can, firms his grip on the sword, and flows into the next set of forms. Suibian may be heavier than yesterday, he assures himself, but it’s lighter than before. It’s still his sword. His training. His borrowed body, much as it’s fighting him. Being here in Lotus Pier, even like this, is still better than lying in the dirt.

A flash of indigo and violet in of the corner of his eye: Jiang Cheng is walking past the training fields, deep in conversation with Han Yueying. Wei Wuxian doesn’t do any flashy flourishes with Suibian, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t glance over. Which is fine. Wei Wuxian’s been living at this exact, carefully-kept distance from Jiang Cheng for over three months, and now he can (usually) wield his own sword with ease. He’s getting better.   

Even at this distance, he can see that Jiang Cheng’s high collar is fastened all the way up his throat, hiding the flower scars that Jiang Cheng never mentioned, the scars everybody in the sect must have known were there. Everyone except for Wei Wuxian.

His grip on Suibian slips again.

(Was it a lover, Wei Wuxian had wondered this morning, as he jolted awake just before dawn. In the week since finding out about Jiang Cheng’s old flower sickness, his dreams had been muddled, he never remembered them in the morning—but last night’s was so vivid and sharp that it felt like a blade on skin. Was it a lover who gave Jiang Cheng flower sickness.

He’d dreamed of greedy hands, a fervid mouth. Somebody else, thumbing open Jiang Cheng’s high collar to mouth at the hollow of his throat. Jiang Cheng’s face turned away but his responding hitched breath unmistakable, his head tipping back, his hands coming up to tangle in a stranger’s hair as they pressed him backwards against an unseen wall. Said stranger shifting form—a woman, a man, broad and lithe and looming and brawny and slender and shy and aggressive all at once, whatever it was that Jiang Cheng wanted. Their body always blocking Jiang Cheng’s from sight, as Wei Wuxian watched all of it from far away.

It’s plausible, is the thing. Jiang Cheng may be stubborn, spiteful, and impossible to get along with, but he inherited his mother’s indisputable good looks, and has made himself rich and powerful to boot. So him having had a lover at some point wouldn’t be too out of the realm of possibility, would it? Even if the person never bothered to look more deeply? And in that case, it would make sense for Jiang Cheng to develop some kind of feelings, but never let himself be vulnerable enough to speak them, and for none of the disciples to know about the relationship, because that’s the sort of thing Jiang Cheng would be secretive about; Wei Wuxian’s already been pestering everybody all week to find out what friends Jiang Cheng had while Wei Wuxian was dead, what companions outside the sect, and there was nobody, nobody, so—so—)  

But Wei Wuxian’s over it, just like Jiang Cheng. It’s not even his business in the first place. It’s not why he’s here! He’ll just—

Jiang Cheng tips his head back a little, his collar shifting just the tiniest bit down the curve of his neck, and Wei Wuxian’s breath stutters.

That’s all the warning he gets. Then he twists too far in the form, and suddenly there’s a sharp, tearing sensation across the torque of his torso and the insides of his extended elbows, and then a tickling rush of what must be blood.  

What. He drops his sword (sorry, Suibian, you’re the most patient sword in the world) and goes to one knee in the dirt. His eyes burn, his nose, his throat. He coughs, but nothing comes up. So he’s fine, probably? The baby disciples are shouting, high-pitched, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Wang Dan hurrying over with wide eyes. Aiya, Wei Wuxian scared them. He sniffs hard, licking his lips to clear the blood off so when he smiles to reassure everyone it won’t look too gory—but instead of iron, he tastes something… sweet? Sweet and soft-textured, fluttering—

Ah. Shit. Ahhh, fucking shit.

“No worries,” he croaks, even as a wave of exhaustion crashes over him. “Better to get bad blood out, and all.” Optimistically, he tries coughing again. Nothing but spit. But the convulsion of his ribcage stretches the cuts that have opened on his torso, and more blood seeps out. He wraps an arm around himself to hold that in, wipes his gross face with the other hand—a soft crushing sensation as he bends his arms, the thin skin inside his elbows splitting—and looks down at his palmful of slimy, red-stained petals.

Well.

Not the lung variant, after all. Blood variant.

Great! It is great. Two bodies, two separate strains of the same disease, identical initial symptoms but wildly different final manifestations? Fascinating. He really will have to write a research paper at some point. Write it quickly, since the blood variant usually has a pretty brief life expectancy once the flowers start materializing, even with aggressive healing transfusions of—

Two palms slam into his back. Wei Wuxian splutters out another noseful of bloody petals, then refuses to groan at the surge of qi that erupts through him, thrashing-hot like lightning. For a moment it only makes things worse—it’s going to burst from his skin like the petals did, burn out his eyes, it hurts—but—it’s familiar, and bright. It hurts but he still needs it.

And then Jiang Cheng gets his shit together and starts guiding the energy along Wei Wuxian’s meridians properly, pulling Wei Wuxian’s own roiling qi along with it, intertwining the two until it all cycles smooth. Still too hot and too fast, still overflowing Wei Wuxian’s meridians, but he’s not going to literally die of qi deviation in front of poor Wang Dan and the kids.

Wei Wuxian chokes a little on lotus petals—which are coming from his nose, not from his lungs; apparently his coughing fits are just the ordinary, your-lungs-are-irritated-by-all-the-plant-matter-building-up-in-your-veins variety—and then starts chuckling. All this mess over a spring dream and a fastened collar! “This is the second-most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me,” he gurgles—forgetting, in the hot rush of Jiang Cheng’s qi, the distance he’s supposed to keep. “The shidis will never think I’m cool now.”

“Shut up. How is that your concern,” says Jiang Cheng, also forgetting the distance he’s supposed to know to keep. His hands are hot and broad and shaking very slightly with annoyance. He must have vaulted straight over the entire training field as soon as Wei Wuxian started to bleed. Too bad; Wei Wuxian would’ve liked to see that. “You’ve never been embarrassed in your life, anyway.” Wei Wuxian laughs again, because why not, at this point? Jiang Cheng curses at him, then breaks off to shout for someone to bring hot water and gauze, to bring Peng Ziyi now, damn it.

While Jiang Cheng yells about all that, Wei Wuxian examines the petals in his hand. Loose petals, no leaves or stems. Clearly lotus petals, though, identical in shape and color to the large, round-petalled variety that grows in Lotus Pier. (Or maybe a bit darker and rosier in color. Considering that these grew in, y’know, blood.)

They are not identical to the ones Wei Wuxian coughed out in his old life, however. The color is different, but then again, the lotuses that regrew here after the war are different—Jiang Cheng had to transplant some of the flowers from nearby lakes, he vaguely recalls, and the ones growing here now have subtly different color striations than the old variant, slightly wider, flatter leaves, stamens that make for harsher-tasting wine, etcetera. He looks down at the new petals, his skin searing, hands sticky. Under all the blood, Wei Wuxian wouldn’t have realized the difference without having spent the past months here in the resurrected Lotus Pier.

But they’re still lotuses. He closes his hands around them so Jiang Cheng won’t see, but it’s probably a lost cause by this point.

 “—numb anywhere? Your feet, your legs?” Jiang Cheng asks, bafflingly. Wei Wuxian shakes himself.

“Why would I be numb, zongzhu? Nothing’s wrong with my spine; it’s flowers bursting spontaneously from my veins. These things have literally nothing to do with each other.”

“Aggressive roots can dig into the nerves around the—fuck it, you don’t care,” says Jiang Cheng. Without breaking the flow of qi, he jams his arms under Wei Wuxian’s knees and back—Wei Wuxian yelps and drops his handful to grab Jiang Cheng’s shoulder—and hauls him up, standing with Wei Wuxian held to his chest.

His chest is. Firm. Wide. Wider than it had looked in Wei Wuxian’s dream. Wei Wuxian is getting blood on him. “Aiya,” Wei Wuxian wheezes. “I can walk. Where are we walking to?”

“Doctor’s taking too long. Just put up with it. Don’t you dare fucking choke on the way to the medical wing just to spite me; the juniors will be traumatized enough after today as it is.”

And then with a stomach-turning heave they’re airborne, arcing from roof to roof across Lotus Pier in qinggong leaps so high Wei Wuxian swears he’s leaving lotus petals fluttering amongst the clouds. His head whiplashes sideways with momentum against the hollow of Jiang Cheng’s throat and leaves a smear of blood there, exactly where he’d dreamed of a stranger pulling open his collar to lay a kiss. He’s getting gunk all over Jiang Cheng’s fancy robes and Jiang Cheng doesn’t even seem to mind.

Held aloft above his not-quite-home, Wei Wuxian thinks—

(He’d hardly ever thought it in words. He can barely even think it now, in the privacy of his own brain. But he feels it everywhere: In the roots sliding through him, the sharp petals gouging the underside of his skin, the sweet pollen taste on his tongue—in the insurmountable distance between his cold, useless, petal-wracked body and Jiang Cheng’s golden-warm one. An insurmountable distance, even when he’s literally being held to Jiang Cheng’s chest. But it’s there, it’s still there.

He’s identifying his emotions. Bai Xiaodan would be so proud.)

He lets Jiang Cheng carry him, and lets himself think:

I love you. I love you. I came here to be near you, because I realized I still love you.

And a tiny whisper choked by twisted roots, inexcusable, inadmissible, fatal:

I want you to love me back.

~     ~       ~

“I have an idea,” says Jiang Cheng. “Up.”

Wei Wuxian jerks out of his doze. “A-Chnngh?” he mumbles, then, when there’s no response, he blinks up through the medicinal fog in his brain. Jiang Cheng is bent over his bed, lit by the moonlight that streams in through the healing ward’s round windows; he’s only wearing two layers and his hair is pulled back in a simple low ponytail, a stray lock falling down the side of his forehead. The sight is very disorienting and, when he remembers where and who he is now, is almost enough to make Wei Wuxian burst bloodily into bloom yet again.

“No qi transfusions right now,” he says instead of exsanguinating. He’s too tired to be clever. “Sleep.”

Jiang Cheng doesn’t even frown, just grabs him by the wrists and tips him up, feeding him qi anyway so he doesn’t start oozing petals with the motion. Wei Wuxian tries not to grimace at the sensation; Jiang Cheng’s qi is too intense for his ragged meridians, right now. “Come,” Jiang Cheng says once he’s gotten Wei Wuxian upright, then manages to be completely impersonal about flopping the blanket around Wei Wuxian’s shoulders and levering his own shoulder under Wei Wuxian’s arm to take his weight. Wei Wuxian can almost muster up some embarrassment about it, but he’s too tired. He’s been so tired, for a while, even before coming to Lotus Pier, even—if he’s honest with himself, which, not his strong suit—before the flower scars made their reappearance. He shuts up and lets Jiang Cheng walk him out into the night.

 Lotus Pier is quiet at this late hour, but not silent—the frogs are awake, croaking softly, and the river burbles past in its familiar, steady tempo. The air smells like oncoming rain.

When Wei Wuxian first collapsed two weeks ago, Peng Ziyi looked him over and pronounced him Not Dying Yet—the petals had only manifested at the epidermal level thus far, hadn’t yet clotted in his organs or deep arteries, despite the dramatic quantities of bloody flowers Wei Wuxian was geysering. So, yay. But her face was grim as she gave her diagnosis, and Bai Xiaodan and the other medics all looked nervous.

 Jiang Cheng was grimmest of all. Which made sense. He still pours everything that could be called love into his nephew and into the sect, after all, and now Wei Wuxian is—not a disciple, dressed in rogue black as always. But a guest, someone Jiang Cheng is nominally responsible for. It’s bad PR for a guest to become deathly ill under Yunmeng Jiang’s care. No wonder Jiang Cheng was furious. No wonder Jiang Cheng has kept coming back every day, jaw clenched with the weight of duty, to feed Wei Wuxian qi, when it turned out that Mo Xuanyu’s body responds best to it.

During the day Wei Wuxian cracks jokes to the healers, dictates his research to Bai Xiaodan (he’s gonna get that paper written one way or another!), keeps promising the music master that yes, they’ll jam together once Wei Wuxian recovers, and reassures the juniors who toddle by the ward to check on him. (His veins and capillaries have all bruised and darkened, lines spiderwebbed across the surface of his skin like half-shattered glass, or, more to the point, like a mat of roots. He’s a little embarrassed about this—he had once ranked as one of the handsomest bachelors around! Now he has to cheer up Pan Bo and Liu Yan and all the other kiddos from behind a paper screen, so his face won’t scare them.)

At night, though, he can’t keep it up. The numbness, the this-might-as-well-happen that had characterized his post-temple travels, creeps back over him. It’s why he goes with Jiang Cheng now, even though Wei Wuxian doesn’t know where they’re headed. He just keeps putting one foot in front of the other.

He wishes he’d been a little more curious when Jiang Cheng stops walking, though—he looks up, and sees the Jiang ancestral hall.

He laughs, which is an unfortunate reflex to have when horrified. Jiang Cheng’s shoulder goes stiff under his arm. “Jiang-zongzhu, um. This one cannot—”

(I never want to see you awful people again, Jiang Cheng had spat, so enraged to see Wei Wuxian invade that sacred place that he was shaking with it, and then drove Wei Wuxian away with his whip.)

“You can,” Jiang Cheng says over him. “I’m permitting it.”

He half-carries Wei Wuxian through the door, into the dim, quiet, echoing space within. The trickle of water from the fountain encircling the shrine sounds very loud in Wei Wuxian’s ears, and the smell of incense is so strong it almost chases away the ever-present flower taste in his throat. His eyes fix on the memorial tablets—Jiang Cheng’s ancestors, his family, his parents—and the name Wei Wuxian had barely been able to look at the last time he was here, the honorary plaque he hadn’t been surprised to see, even though Jiang Yanli’s true tablet is far away in Carp Tower. Conventional or not, Jiang Cheng would never let his sister go unacknowledged in Lotus Pier’s hall.

(Wei Wuxian must definitely be dying, for Jiang Cheng to be doing this. Dying imminently, immediately. Peng Ziyi must have recommended Wei Wuxian be given the chance to give his last regards to the family who made the inauspicious choice to take him in.)

Jiang Cheng presses Wei Wuxian down onto his knees, lights incense for him. He pauses briefly before the shrine, shutting his eyes, then turns away to the door.

“Jiang—” A petal manifests under Wei Wuxian’s tongue before he realizes what address he’s using; he gags and swallows it, tasting iron.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t turn back. “Talk to her,” he says. Then he leaves Wei Wuxian alone.

With Shijie.

For a while, Wei Wuxian keeps kneeling in the trickling dark. There’s a lot that he should say to Jiang Yanli, things that he’s wanted to say, desperately, for years. He doesn’t even know where to start.

Finally he fumbles his arms out from beneath the blanket to at least bow properly. “Shijie,” he manages, “it’s me. It’s your—It’s Wei Ying. I’m sorry it took me so long to come speak to you. I’m lodging in Lotus Pier again, I’m doing all right. Jiang-zongzhu has been so kind to let me stay, and the sect has been very generous. I’m actually here at all because I, haha, well, it’s funny, it’s actually sort of because of Jin Ling—you should see him, Shijie, he grew up so well—”

But she would have seen, if not for Wei Wuxian. No, no. He’s finally here again; he should focus on Jiang Yanli, on begging her forgiveness, like he hadn’t the last time he was here. He hadn’t even spoken to her, then.

“Jin-shao-furen,” he tries again, and bows once more, lower, pressing his face against the floor. The skin of his palms splits. “This one apologizes for the pain he caused you. For m-my role in your—” He can’t make himself say it. “And for Jin-gongzi’s—” He can’t say that either. “I’m so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. You were always so kind, and I repaid your kindness with—” Repaid? Kindness? Shit, no, Shijie had loved him—truly loved him, called him her brother in front of the whole cultivation world. How would she feel, to have him speak of her love like a transaction?

(It was what I owed the Jiang clan pops into his mind, for no discernible reason. He shoves it down.)

“Jie,” he rasps. “I’m sorry that I—” and then his tongue slices open around a mass of flowers.

He can’t. All his talk is cheap. The things he can’t simplify into words congeal into clumps of petals inside his body.

There had been no one to talk to about Shijie after he was resurrected. No one else had known her. No one would understand, even if they tried, even if they knelt next to Wei Wuxian in this very hall and silently, supportively gave him space to speak, if he’d wanted to.

But he didn’t want. Not there. Not like that, not to Lan Zhan. Only one other person would have known the exact shape of the torn-out wound that was Jiang Yanli’s absence, and he was more impossible to reach than anyone else in the world. He is still impossible to reach, even waiting just outside the doors of the ancestral hall.

Wei Wuxian wants to talk to him. He wants to talk to her. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t.

Flowers burst from between his teeth and scatter, red-soaked, across the floor.

“Shijie,” he cries. “It’s so hard. It’s so hard being here without you. I think Jiang Cheng doesn’t even hate me anymore. Not even for your sake! How unfilial is that? He shouldn’t have let me in at all! He should have laughed in my face when I said I’d come along! He should have whipped me out of Lotus Pier! But he won’t even hate me anymore; he just stays away and doesn’t look at me. If he hated me, at least he’d give a shit.”

Words and petals pour out of him. He’s choking. He’s dizzy.

“I missed being able to talk to him, while I traveled, even if I didn’t think about it. I miss you. I missed you. For years! To everybody else you’ve been gone for even longer, but not for me! I thought if I came to Lotus Pier, maybe I could talk about you—” Is he lying to her? He had never intended to talk at all, had he? He had intended to soak up Jiang Cheng’s nearness like a flower absorbs sunlight, and then escape. He had told himself that’s what he would do. “—but I can’t, because nobody here knew you, and A-Cheng doesn’t want to talk to me. But I don’t want to talk to him, either. So I thought I could just—be here for a little while, get whatever’s wrong with me out of my system, and it would be enough. But it’s not. I can’t just stay near him and not hurt. But I don’t want to go away, either. I tried that already, in a bunch of ways.” He wipes assorted fluids off his face. He had been right, back when he’d asked Shijie why anyone would like somebody. It sucks. This sucks. He heaves and gags and sweats, and no matter how much he shakes or how gross he gets, the blanket Jiang Cheng had wrapped around him stays warm around his shoulders.

“Except maybe he did want to talk, a little, even if just to have somebody to blame. I don’t know. I get it, though. I think he might have had a lover, or friends—which is fine! Of course! It was just a surprise to find out! …Except he kept my clothes, and my flute, and Suibian—you should see them, Shijie, your embroidery is on all the clothes, and Suibian was way better polished than I’ve ever managed—but he kept them all, and he let me in here. Even though he had the flower sickness for somebody. And even though I know it wasn’t me—I still. Sometimes I still think it might have been for me.” He gulps a breath. “Except he got better. So I can’t tell him anything now, when he’s too coldhearted to feel even that much. When I’m the only one bleeding out. What would be the point? Just to make him feel bad about not caring? Or maybe he wouldn’t feel bad. That would just make me feel worse.”

Coward. Coward!

He grinds his face harder against the floor, blood bubbling in his mouth and nose. So what if he’s a little bit of a coward! He’s literally dying over this! He has every right to be a coward! He has every right to try to make it a little easier!

“Shijie, I’m sorry. I’m sorry to whine at you. But I don’t know what to do when Jiang Cheng doesn’t want anything from me anymore, not even for me to die.”

The fountain trickles, and the incense burns down. A light rain has started drumming on the roof, the rhythm so faint it’s barely a whisper. Everything else is silent.

Wei Wuxian knows what Jiang Yanli would do if she were here. She would swallow down whatever she felt (and what must she have felt, in those last horrific seconds?) for someone else’s sake, like always. She’d stroke his hair, and reassure him, and gather up everything he felt into one simple word and tell him how he could possibly speak it aloud—

If she were here.

But she isn’t.

~     ~       ~

When Wei Wuxian leaves the ancestral hall, the rain has become a light mist. Jiang Cheng is waiting in the dark space under the awning, leaned back against the wall next to the doors, his hair and the hems of his thin robes silvered with tiny droplets. He jerks upright as Wei Wuxian emerges. “Well?” he says, glancing inside. His face goes grim when he sees the petals and blood on the floor—a lot, Wei Wuxian feels bad about the amount of cleaning the hall will need—but not enough to indicate that Wei Wuxian had a breakthrough, that he’d not-quite-metaphorically poured out his heart. Not enough to indicate that speaking to Jiang Yanli healed the flower sickness.

Wei Wuxian doesn’t want to let himself look away from Jiang Cheng’s face, for once, even if he can only do it out of the corner of his eye. So he sees that tiny spasm, as Jiang Cheng realizes that Wei Wuxian just doesn’t love Jiang Yanli enough for that.

Wei Wuxian lets his head drop in a shallow bow, more exhausted than ever. “This one thanks Jiang-zongzhu for allowing him to pay his respects,” he rasps. Then he pulls the blanket tighter around his shoulders and begins to head back toward the healing ward.

Jiang Cheng grabs his arm as he shuffles past, pulling him up short. “Wait,” he says. He stares over Wei Wuxian’s shoulder, out across the dark, rain-rippled lakes. His mouth twists. “Fine. Fine, then.” He smacks a talisman onto the nearest railing—sound-muffling, not as efficient as one for a sealed room but it’ll do in a pinch—and turns to face Wei Wuxian.

It occurs to Wei Wuxian that this might be the first time they’ve really looked each other full in the face since the night-hunt, four months ago, when Wei Wuxian pushed Jin Ling out of the path of the yao’s claws. Jiang Cheng’s high cultivation has kept him youthful, all familiar sharp cheekbones and faint summer freckles; with his hair half-loose like this, Wei Wuxian could almost trick himself into imagining they’re both still dumb teens, snuck out for a midnight swim or a snack raid. But the years show in the set of Jiang Cheng’s jaw, the ever-deepening crease between his eyebrows, the barest hint of a flower scar that shows above his collar, the sharp heat of his gaze. The skin beneath his eyes is shadowed and their corners red as that gaze pins Wei Wuxian in place.

“Wei Wuxian,” says Jiang Cheng. Then, horribly, clearly: “Don’t you have anything to say to me.”

Wei Wuxian’s whole body goes cold.

Fuck.

Fuck.

“I,” he says after a long moment. “Not… really.”

Jiang Cheng shuts his bloodshot eyes. “For fuck’s sake,” he hisses, then snaps them open again. “Do you think I’m stupid? Well, sure,” he says, one corner of his mouth curling up as Wei Wuxian automatically starts to deny it, “but not everyone is stupid. Every disciple in Lotus Pier has clamored at me at one point or another for the past four months with their theories about the source of poor Wei-gongzi’s flower sickness.”

Only one person even suspected the source of his feelings. It’s probably hypocritical to feel betrayed, but—Wei Wuxian swallows. “So Bai-daifu did talk to you.”

“I didn’t need Bai Xiaodan to tell me anything; you’re not subtle. Even Pan Bo has come bursting into my office to cry at me about the damn flowers all over you. Pan Bo is six!”

Fuck for real. Wei Wuxian is scrambling, half-tripping on his own tongue. “I mean—it’s not my body, exactly, with damn flowers all over it.” He really can blame anything on the body. “Maybe the flowers aren’t due to me at all. Maybe, uh, maybe Mo Xuanyu had unspoken feelings he was too shy to share with anyone—” particularly with grand, untouchable, high-and-mighty Jiang-zongzhu, who he’s pretty sure Mo Xuanyu never even met, yeah, good, this is fairly convincing prattle, actually— “and those just happened to blossom right around the time he plunked me on in there.”

Jiang Cheng looks so offended that Wei Wuxian has to gulp down a horrified, horribly-timed little cackle. “You—! You just spit out the first bit of bullshit that comes to mind, don’t you? You really do think I’m stupid.” His eyes slide across Wei Wuxian’s body, making it clear that, even through the blanket, he knows precisely where the flower scars are, their exact shape and breadth. The heat comes back into Wei Wuxian’s face. Okay, fair enough, it would be weirder if Jiang Cheng didn’t know all that after spending two weeks cycling qi through the body, Wei Wuxian just hadn’t been thinking of it— Jiang Cheng takes a breath. “Those aren’t some random person’s flower scars. They’re the exact same as the ones from your last life.”

Wei Wuxian stares. His meridians, gouged with lines so deep he could map them out blind, throb.

Jiang Cheng looks away first, down at where his hand wraps around Wei Wuxian’s arm. “I buried you,” he says. As if that makes any more sense.

“What,” says Wei Wuxian faintly. “The fuck?”

“At Nightless City. After everything. I went down the cliff and I looked for you, to— Well. I found you. Your body. What was left. It was enough to tell, anyway.” Jiang Cheng’s lips peel back from his teeth. “So. I saw the flower scars.”

The ground is tipping away from under him. Not dissimilarly to when he’d tipped himself off the cliff, arms outstretched, Shijie’s blood going cool where it had splashed across his front and the lava far below burning at his back. The whole world tearing itself apart. “You found my body?” he says, airless. “Nobody found my body. Everybody knows the dreaded Yiling Laozu just dissolved into thin air.” Or disintegrated, ripped apart by roots, by petals. He’d hoped—

“Yeah, nobody found it because I buried it down there, keep up. You think I found a tiny flute but not your whole fucking six-foot-tall corpse? What, you wanted the Jin to get at it? They’d’ve put chunks of you on pikes—” Jiang Cheng snarls and breaks off. “That’s not the point! The point is, I know you had those same scars, even back then. I know they must have been growing for years, to be that extensive. I know why you didn’t say anything.  I know what flowers they were.” His hand tightens on Wei Wuxian’s arm; petals well up between his fingers. “I know what they were for. I know they get worse, now, after I come see you. I know they’re because of me.”

He says it with a resolute set of his chin and a bitter downturn of his mouth. The words hang in the air between him and Wei Wuxian like a physical thing.

“So you might as well say it now, and be done with it,” Jiang Cheng finishes, and waits.

The cold rain is soaking into Wei Wuxian’s hair and cold blood is soaking into his robes. His jaw feels fused together.

Jiang Cheng knows. He already knew.

Jiang Cheng knows that the emotion Wei Wuxian has been holding back is—love.

And he’s miserable about it, that’s obvious. It radiates from his whole body. He hates that Wei Wuxian loves him. Has loved him. Not that Wei Wuxian couldn’t have figured that out already, with how revolted Jiang Cheng was when he found out about the core—his face twisting in the temple as he demanded why shouldn’t he hate Wei Wuxian for it, as he wept with anger and wounded pride, rejecting everything Wei Wuxian had done until Wei Wuxian assured him that it wasn’t anything so awful—it was for the sect, because that was the only reason Jiang Cheng would ever accept. That’s the only thing Jiang Cheng wants to love.

But he hadn’t realized the anguish was because Jiang Cheng already knew about the flowers, on top of everything else. About the reason for it all. Even Wei Wuxian had barely let himself know, back then.

Jiang Cheng found out about Wei Wuxian’s feelings, and it drove him, weeping, to his knees. How the fuck can Wei Wuxian say it now?

But Jiang Cheng keeps glowering at him, not letting him go, for once. Waiting.

Okay. Worst-case scenario here: Wei Wuxian confesses—and Jiang Cheng is disgusted. Livid. Sure, confessing his feelings might clear the flowers from Wei Wuxian’s veins, for a moment. But there’s plenty of documented flower sickness cases where a person afflicted with unwanted love vomited out their secret to the object of their affections—and was thus cured! Ta-dah!—but then the rejection caused an immediate backlash of regret, flowers bursting anew and even more fiercely from their body. At this rate, Sandu Shengshou won’t need a dungeon to leave the Yiling Laozu tortured to death at his feet.

Or. Other worst-case: Jiang Cheng won’t be disgusted, he’ll just be resigned. He’ll be cold. Jiang-zongzhu will respectfully listen to Wei Wuxian’s feelings, then explain that in the past, such talk would have driven him into a rage, but now he’s simply indifferent.

(Frankly, Wei Wuxian would rather go for the torture.)

But best-case—

Jiang Cheng might be disgusted, but like Wei Wuxian told Shijie, he doesn’t hate Wei Wuxian anymore. Wei Wuxian might hate that fact, but. Jiang Cheng doesn’t hate him. He doesn’t… hate him.

So maybe it would be fine. Maybe it’d be… closure. An inevitable end, an unpleasant but ultimately cathartic conclusion. Jiang Cheng’s refusal will hurt, but wouldn’t it be a relief to finally have it all out, like cleaning old clotted blood from a wound? The backlash might even be gentle, since Wei Wuxian already knows it’s hopeless. Wei Wuxian could do what he’d intended from the start, get rid of the flowers and leave Lotus Pier for good.

Wei Wuxian’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Not blood nor flowers, but also no words.

The thought of closure should be a relief. And yet.

And yet.

(Wait, is what Wei Wuxian actually wants to spit out. The want wells up from his chest, weighs floral and metallic on his tongue. Wait just a little longer, let me keep trying, let me, let me—

Because it hasn’t been nothing, being here in Lotus Pier. The body wanted to live, fine, but Wei Wuxian had been the one to walk thousands of li to reach Jiang Cheng. He’d taken back his sword, he’d meditated, he’d found beauty to paint in the new Lotus Pier, he’d rubbed shoulders with the disciples and learned more names than he’d thought he was capable of. He’s so bad at doing what Bai Xiaodan asks of him, but he’s stayed and kept being bad at it. He’s been so good.

Wei Wuxian told himself he wasn’t trying. He told himself he wasn’t staying. But he was, he was, he has been.

I love you. Don’t reject me. Let me keep trying to convince you to want me back.)

“Can you—” Wei Wuxian croaks. He firms his shoulders under the damp blanket, braces himself against the heat of Jiang Cheng’s hand, still wrapped around his arm. “Can you say it?”

Jiang Cheng scowls. “That’s not going to cure you. It has to be your own words.”

“Yeah, I know, I just—It’ll be helpful. Gives me a jumping-off point, ah? You know so much, say how I feel.”

His heart surges unsteadily in his chest. He can do it if Jiang Cheng starts it. You love me. It’ll sound good in Jiang Cheng’s mouth.

Jiang Cheng scowls more miserably than ever. He glares down at his own hand on Wei Wuxian’s arm, exhales, then releases him—cold, don’t do that, come back—and then straightens his spine, lifts his chin like a challenge, stands stiff in the rain. Meets Wei Wuxian’s eyes with an expression like he’s waiting to be slapped.

He opens his petal-red mouth. Flowers unfurl, soft and hungry, against the inside of Wei Wuxian’s skin—

“You resent me.”

—and turn razor-edged.

Jiang Cheng keeps staring down at him. His eyes are hard.

“…Come again,” Wei Wuxian manages eventually, in a croak that might, under other circumstances, be funny.

“You resent me. You always have, apparently, for the scars to have been so deep on your old body, for them to worsen so quickly on this one.” Jiang Cheng’s lip curls up in a sneer; he gives a short, ugly laugh. “Not that the feeling isn’t justified. Didn’t I steal your core? Didn’t I eject you from the sect after your grand secret sacrifice? Don’t people say I killed the Yiling Laozu myself? And after you were so magnanimous, so charitable! So generous to me, who was too stupid to realize my only worth came from you, that I should be grateful, that I should have known I could never compare to you unless you maimed yourself for the purpose!”

Wei Wuxian keeps staring. This is so much worse than what he’d thought was happening. “That’s not,” he stutters. “I don’t—I never thought that. You—”

Jiang Cheng had been infuriated by Wei Wuxian’s sacrifice, sure, and it’s not like Wei Wuxian ever wanted, ever expected Jiang Cheng to be mature enough about it to thank him. But—that’s no excuse to call it this. To lie.

Wei Wuxian never resented, never resented Jiang Cheng. He’s never resented anybody! (Other than the fucking Wens, and even that was mostly for Jiang Cheng’s sake anyway.) He’s lived his whole life letting go of grudges, smiling like Shijie had asked, forgetting the bad done to him, rising above resentment. Just like his mother had lived her own life, letting go of everything (including him, in a way. Which is kind of a theme in his—don’t think about it). He’s been so—understanding, so tolerant, every time—

—Jiang Cheng is the one who always resents things—

Something wrenches deep inside his body. Hot, molten.

Jiang Cheng scoffs. “You never said it? Sure, maybe your pet Wen was the one who finally told me to my face.” What the fuck, when—Oh right. But Wen Ning would never have talked about the core transfer so cruelly, reduced it to— “But he and I spoke maybe twice before he died, and not at all after you clawed his corpse up out of the grave to puppet around. So when he told me about your fucking core, how did he have such deep, profound insight into my character? When he spoke of how competitive and jealous I am, how I could never face being the mediocre person I truly am—who did he hear it from? Whose words were they, Wei Wuxian?” Jiang Cheng grinds the heel of his hand against his red eyes, then smirks through his own fingers. “Because whoever said them sounds pretty resentful to me.”

Wei Wuxian finds his own hand coming up, the blanket falling off him in a rush of cold as his hand wraps itself into Jiang Cheng’s collar. (He’d done this the last time he was at this hall, grabbed Jiang Cheng by the lapels as Jiang Cheng sneered and spat poison at him. The heat of Jiang Cheng’s skin through the silk matches the heat building inside his own body.) “I never once—” he hisses, fist tightening. And then he stops.

Okay, so. Actually. Wei Wuxian had said—sometimes, to Wen Ning, in the Burial Mounds—not in so many words, but—things a little like the bullshit Jiang Cheng is spitting here. Wei Wuxian had been kind of off-kilter at the time, without Jiang Cheng next to him (even as naggy and snappish as Jiang Cheng’d been by the time Wei Wuxian left), and so he’d had to fill up the empty space with words. It didn’t mean—He was just explaining why Jiang Cheng was the way he was. It’s not like it wasn’t true, anyway. Jiang Cheng may be grand and powerful now (and scornful, and unkind, and COMPLETELY off the mark), but it’s not like he wasn’t competitive as a young man, not like he wasn’t jealous. Not like he hadn’t wasted away when he lost his core, through his own damn recklessness—

He changes tack. “I’m not like that,” he says. “Don’t say such spiteful things, don’t say I ever bore you a grudge. I’d never. That’s the opposite of how it was. That’s the opposite of how I—” feel— “am!”

“Oh, really,” Jiang Cheng sneers. “You don’t feel anything about any of that? In Guanyin Temple, you did say the past was nothing, a debt owed; you claimed you don’t think on it anymore. That you never did in the first place.” Wei Wuxian clenches his jaw against the reply that wants to come boiling up his throat. That’s not what he said. And besides, Jiang Cheng would know all about not thinking of the past, wouldn’t he! He’s the one who put his feelings aside, stopped growing flowers—

“But you do think on it,” Jiang Cheng continues, merciless. His own hand curls around Wei Wuxian’s wrist, tight but not digging in. “You do. You do, you liar, or you wouldn’t be in this state. You don’t feel nothing about me. You resent me. You think I can’t tell when someone despises me? I am well-versed, Wei Wuxian!” His red-rimmed eyes, fixed on Wei Wuxian, are strangely bright. He’s resentful and cold and bitter and even now, as Wei Wuxian hurts and bleeds and dies for his sake, again, he still holds himself aloof. He still won’t even hate Wei Wuxian properly.

And he’s wrong. He’s wrong.

Wei Wuxian tightens his hands to fists and shoves. He’s so alight with heat that he’s barely surprised when he actually manages to push Jiang Cheng backward, both of them tripping a half-dozen quick steps that drive Jiang Cheng’s back into the wall. Jiang Cheng keeps hold of him the whole time, eyes brighter than ever; when they collide with the wall his hands clamp around Wei Wuxian’s elbows as if to brace him against the impact. Wei Wuxian’s hands twist in Jiang Cheng’s lapels and his robes yank into satisfying disarray, exposing the flower scars that have turned vivid red against the knotted white whip-cuts, baring everything he knows Jiang Cheng is ashamed of to the rainy night air.

And even that doesn’t change Jiang Cheng’s expression. He’s barely winded as he steadies them both and snarls,

“Say it. Say it! How proud are you, that you’d let yourself bleed out and die pretending you’re too good to feel bitter? You’d leave your precious Hanguang-jun behind again, and the kid you claimed was like your own fucking son? You’d let Jin Ling mourn someone else, after all he’s already lost? The disciples that don’t know any better than to get attached to you? For pride! For spite! Coward! Say it so you can spit out your damn flowers and LEAVE, like it’s always so easy for you to do!”

Wei Wuxian is full of churning, searing things. Petals, roots, words he wants to shout. He loves this man. He loved him when they were young and naïve, he loved him when they were torn-apart and furious, he’s loved him these past months, finally getting to see, clear-eyed, the adults they’d both grown into. He loves Jiang Cheng. Wei Wuxian has to remember that. That’s what he needs to say, the only thing he needs to say, the only true thing, the only thing he can stand to be spoken aloud, it’s terrifying to think about but not as terrifying as—as—

He opens his lips, and—

(“Come on, idiot,” Jiang Cheng whispers, so faint Wei Wuxian can barely hear it over the roaring in his ears, “say it. I can take it.”)

—in a rush of blood and petals that will doubtless stain the wooden walkways of Lotus Pier beyond repair, pours out the truth.

“You’re right,” he snarls—gurgles, around the blood. “Fine, you’re right! You are stupid! You are ungrateful! You’re cold! You’re spiteful! You resent me! Screaming at me to leave when YOU’RE the one who left first and that’s what led to everybody dying! It’s your fault! You left! You left! You left me! You ran off to the Wen to get your parents’ bodies and practically fucking asked to get your core melted and so I had to fix it, and then you hated me for that! Is it just that you were always going to leave? Just that you never wanted me? You’ll choose anybody else in the world, as long as it isn’t me? I could give and give and it’d never be what you wanted, just because it came from me? FUCK YOU!

I DO RESENT YOU!”

His whole body erupts with petals. They rip their way out of his every vein, burst from his mouth, from his open eyes, soaking him in blood. He staggers with the force of it, folding in half at the waist so sharply that Jiang Cheng has to grab him to keep him from falling. He can’t move or feel anything or do anything but keep pouring petals out over his and Jiang Cheng’s feet.    

(He thinks—finally can’t help but think, helpless as he is against the deluge—of how there’s a part of him that has always… that is still standing in the rain, in that nameless town that they’d fled to after Lotus Pier burned. Paper-wrapped flatbread lukewarm in his hands, sore eyes blinking slow and stupid at the room empty of everything but Shijie’s fever-rough breathing, the room where Jiang Cheng was supposed to wait for him. The numb shock, the disbelief, the terror, the—

Jiang Cheng would rather go to the Wen. Would rather die. Than stay with Wei Wuxian.

—the seeds of resentment, bitter and burning, that grew in him as he ran back toward Lotus Pier, the bread dropping into the mud. The seeds that spread when he watched Jiang Cheng walk away from him up the mountain, not knowing what Wei Wuxian was about to give up for him, probably not even caring. That bloomed when Jiang Cheng bared his teeth at Wei Wuxian from across the clearing in the Burial Mounds with his own shattered arm dangling, blood welling from Wei Wuxian’s stomach, the cut just barely too low to have pierced his lung and spilled out all the flowers he’d grown for Jiang Cheng—that thrived as Wei Wuxian spent the final years of his life unallowed to even touch the people he loved, unable to draw his own sword, unable to even breathe unhampered—that ripped forth when he died, alone, having to do everything his damn self because Jiang Cheng couldn’t even fucking give him that, wouldn’t cut him down even after he’d done the worst, most unbearable thing, when Jiejie was dead because of him—that rioted back to life alongside him, just for Jiang Cheng to set dogs on him and try to pry answers out of him and lash out at him and cry over him and choose other people over him and stop caring about him and let him go, let Wei Wuxian remain starving, powerless, breathless, bleeding, worthless, alone, and all because—

How dare you, he’d thought as he stood abandoned in the rain, hating the boy whom he loved beyond measure, resenting him so much it could’ve choked them both. How dare you.

He’s loved Jiang Cheng since childhood, but the flowers in his body only fully bloomed after that night.)

He keeps choking. Keeps bleeding. Jiang Cheng keeps holding him up. After a long, horrible muddle of time, the flood seems to slow slightly, then taper off. Finally, Wei Wuxian is left sweat-soaked and shaking, held suspended above a veritable sea of crushed, gore-spattered lotus flowers, spread ankle-deep across the walkway.

I didn’t know, Wei Wuxian thinks dizzily, staring down at the mess that had flourished inside him. The mess that he finally has spat out. I didn’t realize I felt that.

He feels awful. He feels so much better than before it’s unreal.

“Sorry,” he whispers in the direction of Jiang Cheng’s knees—wheezes it, really. His throat is wrecked.

“Don’t be.” Jiang Cheng’s voice is flat, dull. He’s still propping Wei Wuxian up, one arm wrapped around him and one hand at his pulse point to pour qi into his ripped-open meridians. Energy flows through Wei Wuxian’s body, familiar and hot and aggressively soothing—flows smoother than it has in weeks. In years. Unobstructed. The flowers are clearing from his veins.

“No,” Wei Wuxian says, a little louder. He tries to get his feet under him, petals squelching, but he only manages to shuffle a little. “That wasn’t what I think.”

Jiang Cheng barks a short, exhausted laugh. “Yes it is. You wouldn’t have bled out so many flowers if it wasn’t. Fuck off.” His voice goes flat again. “It’s better than the crap you said at the temple, anyway.”

“No! How the hell is it better? I’ve thought it, but it’s not what I think.” Wei Wuxian swallows. The taste of blood is sharp in his mouth, but it’s a little easier to talk hanging facedown like this. And he has to say it, no matter how undignified he must look. “You’re not stupid. You’re not cold. Look at you. Look at Lotus Pier, and the Jiang—look at Jin Ling. Jiang Cheng, you’re amazing.”

Jiang Cheng’s arms go tense. “Don’t patronize me. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Are my flowers building back up from repressed, unspoken feelings?” Silence. Jiang Cheng’s qi keeps streaming through Wei Wuxian’s body, steady and smooth. “Right, so I’m not lying. This time!”

Silence, still.

The tiny glow of warmth Wei Wuxian had started to feel fades. He stares down at the flowers on the walkway. They’ve smeared the hems of Jiang Cheng’s sleeping-robes; the edges of the stains soften in the gentle rain, red feathering out into rusty pink across the fine cloth.

“Do you hate me,” Wei Wuxian says at last. No petals emerge, but the words still feel like knives coming up his throat.

Jiang Cheng’s hands twitch. After a long, gritted-teeth pause, he sighs. “Not for this. Anymore.” So, he had for all the other things. Wei Wuxian knows. “I told you, I already guessed that you resented me. It’s the only thing that made sense.”

That makes Wei Wuxian give a twitch of his own. “The only thing?”

“What else.”

Wei Wuxian stares down for a second longer, then tries again to straighten. He works harder at it this time, bracing his feet in the soft slick crush of flowers, gripping Jiang Cheng’s arms for balance. “No. It wasn’t what I wanted to say.”

 “Yeah, not wanting to say something is, in fact, how the flower sickness works. …Look, you’re still bleeding, would you just hold still for once and let the qi transfusion do its job?” Wei Wuxian shakes his head, leaning on Jiang Cheng to try to lever himself up. Jiang Cheng hisses and shifts his hold in response, trying to lower Wei Wuxian to the ground. (Contrary, even now.)

Then Jiang Cheng’s grip suddenly tightens, voice sharpening. “Hold up. Your meridians still aren’t fully cleared of growth… What the hell. Saying everything just now should’ve fixed it—” He gives Wei Wuxian an almost panicked little shake. “The fuck else do you have to say!”

Wei Wuxian wants to laugh, or cry. “See,” he says again. “I wasn’t done talking.” Standing up feels like climbing a mountain. Jiang Cheng obligingly braces him at the elbows again, but doesn’t help pull him up. “What I said just now wasn’t—I didn’t mean for it to be true. I didn’t think it was,” he adds, as Jiang Cheng sends a pointed flare of qi through his body. “But it is. It was. I’m—I did. Resent you. You say not to be, but I am sorry.” Looking at the flood of broken flowers, thinking of how he’s been these past months, these past lives, how he’s thought of himself and of Jiang Cheng and the way he’s thought of both of them together, he can’t deny it, and is too exposed to even try. But— “But it’s not—all there is. It’s not the whole way I feel. That’s not the only thing feeding the flowers.

“That’s not all I wanted to say to you.”

He finally straightens fully, gripping Jiang Cheng’s shoulders for balance and to hold him in place so Wei Wuxian can look at him again, properly. If Jiang Cheng looked braced for a slap earlier, now he looks pummeled. His eyes have gone from reddened to downright bloody-looking, the color vivid against his pale face, and his mouth has clenched with hurt. But he squares his shoulders under Wei Wuxian’s hands, not breaking the flow of qi. “Fine, then,” he growls. “Let’s get you cured. The rest of it. What else.”

Ah, fuck—Wei Wuxian’s heart squeezes—Jiang Cheng really is brave.

Wei Wuxian vomited out the ugliest, most poisonous words possible. Things he was sure would crack Jiang Cheng apart if Wei Wuxian let himself so much as consciously think them in his first life, things he was sure Jiang Cheng would sneer at in contempt in his second. He’d been certain that speaking them aloud would give them more weight than anything else, would wipe away everything else he feels—everything else Jiang Cheng might feel for him, might someday feel.

And yet Jiang Cheng is still right here, stubborn and hurt but holding him up and keeping him warm, and Wei Wuxian is alive, and the flowers are clearing from his veins. They’re almost clear.

Wei Wuxian grips Jiang Cheng’s shoulders, thumbs brushing the sides of Jiang Cheng’s neck where his pulse beats fast. Lotus-taste blooms on Wei Wuxian’s tongue, and it stings as much as ever—but it’s sweet, too.

(Except if he says it now, after all that bile and bitterness, Jiang Cheng will never believe him—

—but maybe he will. He wasn’t wrong to call Wei Wuxian a liar, but if there’s one sure thing about these petals, it’s that they’re true.

And didn’t Jiang Cheng say what he expected Wei Wuxian to do, after the flowers are gone? He expects Wei Wuxian to leave. He expects Wei Wuxian to want to leave. An accusation, not an order.

So maybe if Wei Wuxian keeps staying—

—If he keeps staying, here in the resurrected Lotus Pier, which still feels wrong but less wrong by the day—here in the first place he’d truly decided to go, in this stolen second chance, other than Away—the place where he has trained and rested and bled and started, just a little, to actually live—Here, here, right here—

Even if Jiang Cheng doesn’t want Wei Wuxian back in the same way Wei Wuxian wants him, he wants to finally say it, and then show it. He wants Jiang Cheng to believe him. For both of them to know this deepest, truest thing:)

“I love you,” he says. “And so I want to stay near you.”

It’s quiet, after he says it. The rain is a hushed hiss across the walkways and water, a muted tapping along the carpet of petals. It’s no longer full night; the clouds are still thick, but have gone a brighter gray, just slightly, at the hazy horizon. Jiang Cheng stares at him.

The last petals in Wei Wuxian’s body melt away. He can feel it happening this time, a ticklish, twisting sensation, a thousand tiny shudders all through him—and then it’s over. He knows Jiang Cheng feels it too, with his qi still sliding through Wei Wuxian’s spiritual paths; Jiang Cheng’s face doesn’t move, save for his pupils blowing wide, but his pulse beats hard against Wei Wuxian’s hands, and his energy surges reflexively, flooding through Wei Wuxian in a frantic wave as if to seek out any remaining infection.

There isn’t, Wei Wuxian can already feel. Damage, certainly (he’ll be working with Peng Ziyi for a while yet)—but the flowers, the roots, the seeds—they’re all gone. He spoke both twinned truths that he’d kept buried for so long.

In a way it’s like that sudden absence of the fear of going hungry—the easing of something awful but bone-deep familiar, something that had helped keep him pinned into his body. He sways. Jiang Cheng’s hands, still at his elbows, clamp down to steady him.

They don’t move otherwise. Neither of them pulls away.

“So,” Wei Wuxian says at last, when the silence gets to be more than he can stand. “That’s—how I feel. Um. Thoughts?”

Jiang Cheng’s breath hitches. His expression goes stormy, crumpling like he’s about to shout. He tears his hands away from Wei Wuxian’s arms, who sways again with a yelp, but keeps hold of Jiang Cheng’s shoulders, partly out of self-preservation. “You—” Jiang Cheng rasps, “where do you get off—” Then he makes a splintered noise as he lifts his hands to hide his face.

Not quick enough, though.

The red in his eyes gleams, thickens somehow. Then it wells outward like vermilion ink. Blood soaks his rising hands, drips down over his sharp-boned cheeks, runs down his chin and throat to stain his collars; something pulpy and dark spills down afterward, dripping farther to fall at Jiang Cheng’s feet. The flower scars visible through his loosened collars gleam a liquid-looking red, as if the blood has carved paths all the way down his chest. Jiang Cheng hisses with pain and covers his mouth with one hand, covers his eyes with the other.

Wei Wuxian reacts with collectedness and calm.

“AAAAAA SHIT WHAT’S HAPPENING,” he says, as he tries simultaneously to pull Jiang Cheng’s hands away from his face and use his own sleeve to mop up the blood and drag Jiang Cheng closer so Wei Wuxian can see exactly what’s wrong and fails to correctly do any of them. His yell isn’t any louder than Jiang Cheng’s when he’d been shouting at Wei Wuxian earlier, but Jiang Cheng hisses at him to shut up, damn it, people are sleeping and swats his flailing hands away.

“Calm down, you know what’s happening,” Jiang Cheng growls.

“I don’t! Are you qi deviating? Are you poisoned? I’ll get Peng Ziyi, I’ll get—”

“It’s just the damn crying variant, you moron. You already knew I had it!”

Wei Wuxian freezes. Jiang Cheng has grabbed his arm again, keeping Wei Wuxian close while he scrubs at his own eyes. Looking now, the blood is thick with—petals. Long, thin, red petals, curling and drying in scattered clumps among the lotuses Wei Wuxian had bled out.   

“Oh,” he says. “That’s… terrifying.” He can’t believe people write romantic, lyrical literature about this, full of crystalline tears and tiny, delicate petals fluttering to the moonlit floor. He can’t believe he bought that those were accurate descriptions. His hands hover near Jiang Cheng’s face, wanting to touch but not wanting to make it even worse. “I—does it hurt?”

“Yes. I am squeezing solid mass out of my eyeballs,” Jiang Cheng grits out. “It’s fine. The flare-ups don’t last long.”

“Okay,” Wei Wuxian whispers. He lets his hands finally settle at the very edges of Jiang Cheng’s sleeves, where Jiang Cheng can knock them away if he wants.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t do so. He stays still for a long time with his hand over his eyes, breathing slow and shivery through his teeth. Finally, he lifts his face. His eyes are still red, but an ordinary, sore-looking redness.

But even as Wei Wuxian watches, they start to well up again.

“I’m sorry,” Wei Wuxian says, wretched. “Sorry, I didn’t want to hurt you again, should I not have said—”

“Don’t apologize!” Jiang Cheng snarls. “I told you I could take being yelled at. I didn’t want you to lie to me, even about this. That’s your whole fucking problem! That’s the problem! I just wanted you to—” He breaks off, swipes a hand across his face. Blood streaks his fingers. “I just wanted you to tell me. I wanted you to tell me, and to be safe—even when I hated you—” More blood, more petals. He curses under his breath. “God damn it—I’m glad I know!”

He glares at Wei Wuxian like he’s going to electrocute him. He’s covered in blood and tears and petals and he’s young-looking and vulnerable and grand and intimidating and everything he’s been in his whole life, the whole life he’s lived both with and without and alongside Wei Wuxian, and Wei Wuxian may still want to apologize for everything else but not for—this part. Not for loving him.

“I’m glad I know!” Jiang Cheng continues. “Maybe you resent me and it pisses me off to hear, but I told you I can take it. I’d always rather know. I always want to know about you! Even with all the rest! ” He stalks closer. “And you listen to me, Wei Wuxian. Wei Ying. You think I don’t understand about resenting someone and caring about them? Missing them and wanting to never see their fucking face again? Thinking every worst possible thing about them, and that they never gave a shit, and that I was wrong every single time I thought they loved me, and simultaneously—always—thinking no, I wasn’t wrong, that I’d never been surer of anybody in my life? You think I don’t get it?” He takes a deep, deep breath.

“Do you know,” he says, “why I got the flower sickness, while you were dead. And why it healed.”

Wei Wuxian’s ears roar. The rain seems so loud. “Was it,” he croaks, and has to check, for a minute, that he’s not choking on any more petals. But he’s fine. He’s fine. The only thing he’s choking on is his own cowardice.

Jiang Cheng is being this brave, and so Wei Wuxian can try to do the same.

“Was it for me.”

Jiang Cheng lifts his chin. “It was.”

The rain is even louder. A monsoon.

“Is it,” he says, even more croaky, “for—me, now.”

“It is.”

Wei Wuxian’s face is wet. Rain, of course, but also everything is blurring. He doesn’t want it to blur, he wants to look properly at Jiang Cheng’s face.

“Jiang Cheng,” he says. “Jiang-zongzhu, A-Cheng. I—I resent you, and I’m sorry for it. And I love you. I missed you, for—for a long time. For our whole lives, basically. I wanted to talk to you. I always want to talk to you. I always want to. When I was away from Lotus Pier, I kept thinking about you, and making myself stop. And after I came here, I was still thinking about you, even more. Even when—even when I’m angry or being unfair or—resentful—I still love you.” He swallows. There is no taste in his mouth of blood, or flowers—just rainwater. “I always want to know—What are you feeling?”

Jiang Cheng steps forward, and takes Wei Wuxian’s wet face in his warm hands. Wei Wuxian wants to nuzzle into them, but he keeps looking Jiang Cheng in the face. Stormy expression, summer freckles. His hair is absolutely ruined.

“I resent you more than I’ve ever resented anybody in my life,” Jiang Cheng says. Petals flood down his cheeks. Wei Wuxian wipes them away as best he can. Jiang Cheng’s voice is wrecked as he says, “I’ve hated you. I hated you. Sometimes I still hate you, when you’re right here and I still can’t really talk to you, when you’re still keeping secrets from me, when you pretend both you and I are things we fucking aren’t.” He swipes his own thumb across Wei Wuxian’s cheek, in turn. “But my flower sickness eased when I admitted to myself that that wasn’t all I had to say to you. So—”

He grips the back of Wei Wuxian’s head to tip his face forward and press it into the warm crook of Jiang Cheng’s neck, bringing his mouth level with Wei Wuxian’s ear. Ordinary, miraculous warmth blooms in Wei Wuxian’s chest as he listens to what Jiang Cheng has to say.

He says it.

It sounds even better in Jiang Cheng’s mouth than Wei Wuxian had ever dared imagine.

~     ~       ~

The red and purple-pink petals scattered across the walkway are hopelessly waterlogged now, but still bright; they’re streaked with blood and tears and other ugliness. But it’s still their feelings, laid in soft vivid colors all across this lush, beautiful, well-cared-for, well-loved place, which had burnt once but been built anew. And for all the awfulness it took to speak them, Wei Wuxian is glad they’re out, now.

They’ve been spoken, aloud, into the clean and open air.