Jingyuan X Reader - Blog Posts

say you'll remember me.

pairing. jingyuan x gn. reader.

summary. you've disregarded time long enough, and now there's a million things both of you have yet to say, but the other is slowly fading away — so much, you've become utterly unrecognisable to one another.

Time kills just as ruthlessly as any other weapon — death is a mercy, now that you’ve seen what other horrors have been brought from forsaking one’s humanity for the price of more time.

You’ve become a victim to such yourself, the curse that had been passed down from your ancestors mistakes, have finally caught up to you.

You hate them for it, all this pain you now suffer, of the petals having begun to crawl their way up your throat, and the hacking coughs riddle your body. Those words of a ceaseless hatred repeat within your mind, as they suffocate you — drowning you in a sea of these cursed flowers.

Such affliction kills you slowly, tearing apart your body and mind, as you can only accept your inevitable descent into madness. Your thoughts are already a jumble of anger and regret, as you look down at the sprouting growths that have spread over your body. It disgusts you, to even look upon your face in the mirror, which is far beyond recognisable.

You don’t know what you even are anymore. You don’t know anything. Pain has taken over your entire body, each movement tearing into a part of you — you cannot think of anything beyond it. It’s all a blur, you cannot focus on anything except your own anguish, the world having faded to obscurity around you.

You’ve started to forget. You feel your grip on the precipice that is your own mind slipping.

You think you would rather rip your own throat out and bring an end to this suffering, because you know there is no cure. In the thousands of years you’ve been around, no one has found one. Yet the healers still believe they can, that they are close.

You want to die already. They’re clinging to a fool’s hope, forcing you to cling to life — a life you no longer can stand to live.

But you’re chained to a bed as a precaution, unable to rise nor speak, silently suffering, your thoughts unbeknownst to the two people who circle around you — a small purple Vidyadhara, who feeds you spoonfuls of random concoctions, and a silver-haired man who looks at you each time with pained sorrow in his golden eyes.

You want to say something, because it hurts, each moment you spend here; except nothing escapes your lips but a muffled sob. The male reaches out as if in response, but his arm is smacked away by the healer. He shouts something indiscernible — perhaps it was your name.

You don’t remember. You don’t remember his name either. But it was the faintest shred of familiarity.

Strangely enough, you feel a surge of unprovoked anger at the Vidyadhara girl who had pushed you apart. A sudden burst of strength courses through you as if in response, writhing against the chains that hold you down, reaching for him.

He’s still looking at you, but he’s drawing back — recoiling, and you feel as if you’re being pulled away from your last remaining anchor of familiarity, your fingers slipping away from these memories, your extant shreds of humanity. You want to call out his name, but you don’t remember.

You want to remember. Yet you only know flashes of pain and rage, constrained by these chains — they bind you to this earth, this reality of suffering.

You sound as if you’re screaming your outrage to the heavens itself, a strangled noise escaping you as a wave of madness takes you, blindly lunging for him to no avail — all while Jingyuan can only watch in stunned silence.

It hurts him to see you in this way, but sometimes, Jingyuan is grateful for those chains. It’s a reminder of restraint to himself, for he wants nothing but to hold you and whisper reassurances in your ear, yet it’s with resignation, he knows it won’t do anything to help you.

He doesn’t know what you would do anyway — you’ve grown unpredictable. Some days, you lie completely still in contemplative silence, your eyes glazed over and blank, while others you’re thrashing around, threatening to snap the chains that bind you.

The look in your eyes is animalistic, feral even. There’s barely a hint of recognition within them.

Everytime you lock eyes with him, his heart sinks further into desolate hopelessness. He knows you’re unable to see him in the same light you once did, your memories of him ruptured by the mara that tears you apart in both mind and body. Your reaction to his touch is something of a stranger’s.

He’s lived too long, seen too many deaths, watched as those close to him perish as well, none of them immune to the madness that stemmed from their own roots. It finds a new way to hurt him every time, as he thinks of his mentor Jingliu, and the remainders of the high cloud quintet — all who’ve met such violent ends.

Sometimes, he wishes it was him that had gone mad alongside them. It hurts far more to witness it all from the side, unable to do anything — nothing had struck him in the heart as much as you had.

You’ve lived forever in his memory since the day you first met, and he still remembers that day, among so many others. He reminisces upon them, as you are before him.

It’s been so long since he’s heard your laughter, much less see you smile.

He wants to stand under the sunset again, amongst that field of marigolds with nothing but the feel of the autumn wind blowing through his hair, and your hand in his. And when you had laughed, it was like music to his ears, the merry tinkling of bells — you were simply exquisite, breathtaking beneath the golden light of the setting sun.

He remembers placing a flower in your hair, brushing it back as he had kissed you. Your lips tasted like honeyed wine, addicting and divine — Jingyuan could barely bring himself to part with you, after having savoured such for so many years. If he had known what would soon befall you, he would’ve never let go, memorised every inch of you.

You’ve never had enough time.

It’s one of his fears. That one of you is left to persist in eternity, having to bear witness to the other fall victim to the mara that inevitably overtakes all of you. To live in regret, left to carry nothing but memories within an empty heart.

But not the greatest.

Jingyuan remembers you asking this too, laying in his lap as you had gazed upon the stars in the sky above.

"What's your greatest fear?" you had asked, back when this future hadn’t yet become your reality.

It had all seemed like a distant dream then, when you had eternity stretching out before you. But how quickly such illusions of time had been shattered, these statements turned true.

"To be forgotten," he replied. "But not just that. To be forgotten by a person who I could never forget."

But even you have forgotten that.