The Untamed Oneshots / CQL / WangXian

Painful Whispers

Author's Note: 1k reads special.

Some days were worse than others. The fact remained that Wei Wuxian might have been brought back from the afterlife, he might have gotten the happily ever after he'd wanted, but he still carried the scars of a life that has long since passed.

The truth was, there were days when he felt crippled with guilt over every incident that had went wrong, evenings when he woke with silent screams dripping from his lips like the remaining traces of Emperor's Smile. There were days when he ached to the very depths of his bones with chronic pains, days when his scars and muscles knit together like a quilt woven by pain and misery, injustice and resentment.

There were days when the pain turned to whispers that caressed his mind, and those were the days that Lan Wangji feared the most.

He'd never said as much but Wei Wuxian knew the Jade would sometimes embrace him a little closer, brush his hair a little softer and sharpen his gaze to catch every miniscule change in his demeanour. As one of the esteemed Twin Jades of Gusu Lan, it is well-known that he fears nothing. Neither war nor the discipline rod, as was proven with the 33 warbled lines that decorated his back. But Wangji fears. In his heart he fears more than he'll every say, more than he'll ever show, because if he were to lose Wei Ying once more, it would crack his soul and shatter his sanity. He'd be lost to the world. The tears he'd shed over sixteen years would be a puddle compared to the ocean of sorrow he'd drown in.

Today was one of the bad days.

Wei Wuxian had gone to bed wrapped in the arms of his Lan Zhan, feeling safe and warm and loved. And then the nightmares struck, a bolt of lightning that zapped his body and shook him to his core.

His shijie stumbled across the grounds of Nightless City, mourning robes torn and tainted with the petals of bloody roses that bloomed on her back and from her chest. A broken shard of a sword stuck out of her heart like a thorn, tarnishing her once fair lotus flower complexion. Lips chapped and face ashen, the warring clansmen seemed to pass through her as she loomed closer and closer to Wei Wuxian.

"A-Xian..." Her voice sounded like the echo of a ghoul howling agonizingly in the valley of the dead. No more was she the sweet beauty of Lotus Pier, the Maiden of Yunmeng Jiang or the Madam of Koi Tower.

"A-Xian, you promised Shijie you'd stop this. You promised me, a-Xian. Why? Why did you kill your Shijie?"

He wanted to run to her. He wanted to hug her and tell her that he is sorry, that he didn't do it, that everything was a misunderstanding. His Shijie that carried him back to Lotus Pier when he'd ran away and hidden in a tree as a child, that had made him Lotus Root and Pork Rib Soup when he was sad and needed comfort. His Shijie that held him in her motherly embrace and welcomed him with open arms after the death of his parents.

His Shijie...

"A-Xiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnn-"

Wei Wuxian did cry then. An ear-splitting wail that misted and distorted his surroundings before it shattered, pieces of glass cutting through his subconscious and scraping against his heart painfully, making him want to claw the organ out and just make it stop-

He jolted awake, sweat drenching through his inner robes and pearly tears clinging to his lashes like dew drops on blades of grass. The cry ripped from his throat involuntarily and he instinctively reached over to the other side of the bed, only to be met with cold sheets and the phantom outline of his husband. Realization came to him slowly, the bits and pieces of a conversation with his Lan Zhan putting themselves together in his mind. An urgent meeting with the Ouyang sect over border issues that he'd been summoned to attend to as Chief Cultivator, a visit that would last at least two days.