The meaning of protecting you with my life

Heart wrenching regret

Yu Ziyuan's breath was caught in her throat hearing Wei Wuxian speaking. She had already feared the worst when she had seen him kneeling in front of Wen Ruohan but this, this was going way beyond anything she would have imagined.

The thought of Wei Wuxian actually wanting to join the Qishan Wen sect had never even crossed her mind. Not when she could see the boy's eyes looking at all of them in a way Wei Wuxian was just doing. There was so much in his eyes that Yu Ziyuan was not able to decrypt every single emotion but few of them were more visible than others.

First and furthermost was fondness for his siblings and Jiang Fengmian; she had been surprised when the emotion did not disappear when the boy looked her way but it was probably just her wishful thinking, surely Wei Wuxian could not feel anything resembling love for her, not after everything she had done to him. There was also sadness and remorse in his gaze, probably because he was thinking they could have believed his words. And the worst of all, there was so much guilt when the boy looked her way for one last time. She felt like it was physically crashing her, making her unable to breathe.

She knew fully well from where that guilt had originated. She herself had blamed Wei Wuxian for so many things over the years and most importantly, she had blamed him right before basically throwing him away with one last mission: to give up his life protecting her children. It could have also been guilt caused by Wei Wuxian thinking he had failed what he had surely thought had been her last wish, or order, to him. After all, if it had been before the fall of Lotus Pier, she would have scolded him and yelled at him for not succeeding in protecting Jiang Yanli and Jiang Cheng since they both ended up captured and in the hands of Wen Ruohan.

He could not have known that she had had her fair share of realizations and remorse during her time of imprisonment. She was way beyond trying to blame him for anything at all. They had talked long hours with her husband and she came to know that her insecurities about him loving Cangse Sanren could not have been farther from the truth. Moreover, even if there had been something between Jiang Fengmian and Wei Wuxian's mother, it would have nothing to do with the boy himself, after all, one could not choose their parents.

Unfortunately, Wei Wuxian did not have the slightest idea about her change of attitude towards him. How could he when the last thing she had told him was to give up his life for her biological children and she had not spoken even a single word since she saw him again? She wanted to tell him so many things; she wanted to apologize for not treating him like her son from the very beginning, beg him for forgiveness for all her harsh treatment and hurtful words, and most of all, she wanted to tell him that he did not need to sacrifice his life for them.

For that was exactly what he was about to do. He was willingly putting himself in Wen Ruohan's hands, giving him another hostage than the rest of her family. Should the boy refuse to cooperate with the demonic cultivator, he would surely be killed in an exemplary fashion. On the other hand, if he started to go against the rest of the cultivation world, he would be killed as soon as the war would be over. From what she had heard from Jiang Cheng, she did not doubt that the victory of the allied forces was inevitable.

She had never meant her words, she did not want Wei Wuxian to die protecting them, not really. Or perhaps, if she had to be truthful to herself, she had meant them at the time she had said them. But only for that one thing each time; so when she had told the boy to protect Jiang Cheng with his life before kicking the boat away from the pier, she had only wanted to say that he should take care of his brother and get him to a safe place, nothing more.

However, she knew that the boy had taken it in another way entirely. And she was the one to be blamed for that in the first place. If she had not been so harsh to him all the time, raising him more like a servant to the Yunmeng Jiang clan than like her son, would Wei Wuxian be a different person today? She had been responsible for shaping him young and formable mind into what it was today; someone who would put his own life on the line for the lives of her and her family.

She finally found her voice and asked brokenly, not making too much sense even to herself: "A-Ying, what will happen now..."

She could not even finish her sentence before feeling her eyes fill with tears and she was already busy blinking them away. While she had no problems crying in front of her family now, she did not want the whole Qishan Wen sect to see her this emotional and broken.

She could only hope that the boy had understood her question. She had not been asking what would happen to her and the rest of the family, he had after all already explained that they would be released. No, she wanted to know what would happen to him. She knew he was intelligent and quite ingenuous, for all she knew, he had a plan to save himself as well.

He flinched a little hearing her speak to him, and also perhaps because she had used un unfamiliar name when addressing him. But only unfamiliar for him, she had come to refer to him like that during the time of her imprisonment and she would not change it now. Despite everything, it seemed like the boy did not catch the meaning behind her question at all.

He looked at her with as much deference as he would show her when she had been scolding him or blaming him for something he had not done. He gave her a smile which was more painful than anything Yu Ziyuan had ever seen. Then came the falling hammer: "Madame Yu, please do not worry, all of you will be just fine."

No, that was definitely not what she had wanted to hear. That was not what she had implied. Why could Wei Wuxian not see that she had changed? That she now cared for him as her son and was genuinely concerned about his well-being and safety just as she was about Jiang Cheng's and Jiang Yanli's.

Her heart felt like it was breaking in her chest. Of course Wei Wuxian would not change his opinion of her just like that, from one moment to another, only because of one of her sentences that she could not even finish.

So she tried again, more desperately this time. She could now feel her tears finally slipping out of her eyes and making their way down her cheeks. She could not care less who would see her crying, she only wanted to show Wei Wuxian how sincere she was. She wanted to apologize to him for making him believe that his life only had worth if it served to protect her family and her.

"But what about you?"

The urgency and her tears must have done the trick at last. Wei Wuxian's expression softened as he replied: "Do not worry, everything will be just fine. This is the way things should be."

And that was it; Yu Ziyuan now could not stop crying openly. She knew that with his last words, Wei Wuxian just told her that he would not be alright at all. But also that he did not care in the slightest.

Oh, how much she had failed her child, how much she had distorted his beliefs and made him treat his own life this casually, as if it had no value at all. And she knew that with the situation being like this, she would never get to correct all of her mistakes. She would never again get to show the boy how much she loved him, how much all of them did.