Burning Bridges | | Jing Yuan X Reader | |

Withheld Embrace

(Alternate storyline) 

Yanqing had hurriedly rushed back to the general's estate, noticing immediately the harsh winds that blew the open doors. Seeing you hunched over the stone grave the General had carved. Running your unsteady hands over the headstones, it made you sick. 

"Y/N!?" He called. 

You dared not stare back into him, afraid that the malice within your heart would scare him. Disgusted with yourself for having loved to love- if love was like a spiraling thorn, it was ripping apart your barely beating chest. 

"Please Y/N! The General is in trouble-" 

"Him and I are no longer acquainted. For what he's done- you were right, it cannot be forgiven."  Staring so bitterly into your own reflection, the tips of your hair nearly threatened to drag you below the water's depths. How you wished to drown- so consumed in your guilt before your family- would it not serve as a proper apology for your sins?

"Then don't forgive him! Stand before him and admonish him, berate him! Slap him!" Yanqing threw out hastily, watching as your shrunken form began to fade away. He knew that the moment you truly left this world would be the end of the General. A calamity would form within him that he would never again recover. 

"I am leaving Yanqing. Tell the general not to look for me." 

"You know that he won't stop until he finds you." He shakes his head slowly. 

"Let him look." You responded, hobbling out of the courtyard on your bad legs. The effects of the poison would probably return in full swing the moment you stopped fighting it off. 

Blade had been right about Jing Yuan, ever since you were children. He was destined to become the lapdog of that woman, forever fighting against you for her sake. It no longer mattered if his love had ever been sincere, you despised him. 

"Y/N..." You flinched- his voice nearly as low as Jing Yuan in that moment. With the poor quality of your ears, you nearly imagined it to be him. 

"He is fighting against the imperial palace as we speak. This may be the last moment he is alive for you to finish your resentment." He clarifies, understanding the pains in which your heart refused to see him. 

With a begrudging sigh, you climb atop the sword he summoned, and rush through the skies towards the palace. The closer the both of you became, the more fearful you were of what your reaction might've been upon seeing him. 

Love to adoration, that never truly dies. Upon seeing his broken and beaten face, would you be able to refuse? Perhaps, but you still needed to end things once and for all. Not for his sake, but for yours. 

The palace stairs were aligned with bodies, small clashes of harsh metal below you. Yanqing was nearly struck out of the sky as the palace guards tossed spears at the both of you. Quickly descending, Yanqing brings a hand to usher his blade to strike the guard in the chest. Pulling it back the moment you collapsed against the ground. 

Vomiting blood, you refused to walk further. "Are you alright!?"

"I am on borrowed time-" You explain through coughs. He allows you to lean on his shoulder as he cautiously brings you up the stairs. Not able to react upon seeing a guard rushing to stab you, you catch the blade meekly and stab Yanqing's sword into his gut. 

"Here-" You heaved. Yanqing was utterly confused as of when you had grabbed his sword from his hand. 

Finally making it up the white marble stairs with horrible red bloodstains- you saw him. His disheveled white hair coated in what looked to be the same crimson stains of blood. Feeling your heart begin to twitch uncomfortably, you could not step a single inch further into the grand hall.