Experience Tumblr Like Never Before
More content brought to you courtesy of chronic insomnia: lately I have been banging the drum that actually I think Wei Wuxian needs to know about “take care”. It would be good for him, once he stopping having an epic meltdown about it and what it signified for his relationship with Jiang Cheng, The One Whom Must Be Protected Always, and it’s critical to the evolution of said relationship. The big problem here is that do we think Jiang Cheng is likely to bring up this incredibly pertinent fact now? After sixteen years of never feeling that it was worth mentioning that he let himself be captured by his family’s murderers specifically to distract them from Wei Wuxian? Do we think he’s going to bring this up now, when he knows that the golden core that replaced the one he lost to the Wens came from Wei Wuxian, who suffered immense harm from it, thus rendering Jiang Cheng’s own sacrifice meaningless (he probably feels)? Besties, we do not.
The question, therefore, is how can someone find out, and pass this information on to Wei Wuxian, ideally in some relatively blithe way that is not remotely going to prepare him for the emotional shock of it. So far I have:
Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji end up on a night hunt together and get idk briefly trapped in a haunted cave that plays out visions of emotionally significant past events. Lan Wangji thinks very little about the revelation that Jiang Cheng once risked his life to save Wei Ying. It’s no less than Wei Ying deserved, after all. If anything, he’s thinking about how embarrassing it is that Jiang Wanyin just saw his teenage library sex fantasies. It takes awhile before the subject of oh, so that’s how Jiang Wanyin lost his core comes up between him and Wei Ying, and he’s confused when WWX hightails it outta the Cloud Recesses on his way to Lotus Pier so fast he leaves one of those little cartoon dust clouds.
Jiang Cheng mumbled something about it to Wen Ning while Wen Ning was rescuing him from Lotus Pier. He has no memory of this. Wen Ning didn’t think it mattered at the time, and never mentioned it. If it’s occurred to him since that actually, this would be a pretty big deal to Wei-gongzi, he’s currently withholding it out of spite because ugh, fuck Jiang Wanyin, actually. He’ll only bring it up if there’s an opportunity to do so in a way that’s insulting to him, and oops, he did know this might bother Wei-gongzi a little bit, but he wasn’t expecting the BSOD—Wei-gongzi, maybe I shouldn’t have said that, Wei-gongzi, are you all right—
Jin Ling weaseled it out of Jiang Cheng years ago, long before Wei Wuxian came back. He gets that Jiujiu doesn’t like to talk about any of this shit, though, so it’s only months or years after Da-jiu comes into Jin Ling’s life that the subject comes up. He’s just matter-of-factly correcting the record, after Wei Wuxian mentions that Jiang Cheng was captured by the Wen trying to retrieve his parent’s bodies from Lotus Pier. (He was just trying to explain what a big deal family is to Jiang Cheng! I mean it was a bad idea, but it was very filial of him.) WWX is like what the fuck who told you that that can’t be right, and Jin Ling says Jiujiu told me, who else? Excuse me, waisheng, I need to go scream at your jiujiu for several hours I can’t believe how stupid he is why would he do that for me oh my god oh my god oh my god, and Jin Ling has to get him a paper bag to breathe into.