Backlash Part 2

Chapter 205: Warm

Wei Wuxian woke up warm. His mouth unconsciously curled into a smile. It was a rare and cherished experience to wake up warm and comfortable. Wei Wuxian hated being cold. He hated waking up chilled, or getting out of bed and shivering in the early morning air. Waking up cold and shivering wasn't a strange experience for Wei Wuxian, but that just made him hate it all the more.

When Wei Wuxian lived on the streets he could rarely find a place to shelter from the elements. The spots that best blocked the wind, or protected from the rain were either taken or forbidden by people who did not have to sleep outside. Wei Wuxian's years on the street were marked by pain, hunger, and cold.

He spent his years in Lotus Pier trying to fill the holes that had been left behind. He sought warmth, safety, and family. His success was somewhat mixed. Aware that not everyone wanted him there. Aware that his place could be taken away. He got eight years.

After eight years almost everyone in his approximation of home was gone. He lost the closest thing he had to a home, and even when the war ended he never quite got it back. Lotus Pier fell.

Wei Wuxian remembered laying in a field. His throat burned and ached where Jiang Wanyin had gripped it tight. Cold rain soaked Wei Wuxian's clothes as he thought, 'This is familiar.' Injured and cold, with no one there who wanted him, and with no shelter from the rain.

Every step after that seemed to make everything worse. He gave away his golden core. He gave it to try and preserve the last little bit of the life he had made. Jiang Yanli and Jiang Wanyin had lost everything. Their home and family were gone. Even if they didn't want him anymore, Wei Wuxian would still want the best for them. So he carved out the best of himself and hoped it would be enough to preserve that tiny bit of family.

Then the Burial Mounds happened. Worse than the cold painful streets of his childhood. The Burial Mounds were cold and sharp. The resentful energy poured into him, carving a place for itself inside his body. Wei Wuxian felt the cold penetrate deeper than his bones, suffusing his soul with a frostbitten chill he could never escape.

The resentful energy screamed horrible and painful things. Gave him hallucinations that scarred his soul. It was filled with violent entities that only knew how to attack and kill. There was little there that could be eaten safely, especially if you didn't have the ability to travel far to look for food. Three months of pain, hunger, and cold that his childhood couldn't hold a candle to.

Even when Wei Wuxian escaped the Burial Mounds things changed very little. He was still cold. He was still carving himself apart piece by piece for the only people still tethering him to the world. The war was painful and cold in his first life. No one to catch him when he couldn't keep going. Just him collapsing in the mud as he coughed up blood until he could crawl back into camp.

When Wei Wuxian returned to the Burial Mounds he was tired and broken. It wasn't really a decision. Lotus Pier already wasn't his home anymore. He had been changed too much to squeeze back into the place he used to occupy there. Innocent people needed help, and no one else would help them. It was never a choice. The only answer was to help. The only place to take those who were hunted by everyone, was a place where no one wanted to go.

He returned to Yiling. He returned to the Burial Mounds. The new family he cultivated from the unwanted gave him a small warmth against the creeping ice of the resentful energy. There was little to eat. All his energy was poured into trying to make a safe place for them. He was in almost constant pain by then from injuries that never had the chance to heal quite right, and nightmares he could never be rid of. He was always hungry, getting by on as little as he could to try and spare A-Yuan from having to feel that way. Wei Wuxian had no golden core to counter the chill that came with resentful energy. No way to truly escape the cold he was steeped in.