Stubborn Attempts

1 - Reflection

It's been a couple of weeks since the jaw-striking reveal at the Guanyin temple and Jiang Cheng was sitting on his bed in Lotus Pier, feeling the cool breeze from the open window wrap around his still spinning head. Who could've thought Jin Guangyao had been playing the puppeteer this whole time? That he was responsible for most of the trauma, the pain and anguish everyone had gone through. And for Jiang Cheng and everybody else to have wrongly pinned it all on the Yiling Patriarch, villainizing him and smeering his name as the antagonist of history, writing it on the text books for the younger generation to consume even.

Jiang Cheng had always been a proud person, he got that from his mother. It was always so hard for him to admit he was in the wrong. In fact, he'd rather chew his entire right hand off than make himself lose face for another's sake, however backwards that is from the Jiang clan's motto. But the gravity of the lie they had been living all this while, and the repercussions suffered alone by an innocent person, his brother at that, having died submerged in a pool of gnawing hatred and to have come back to the surface battered and still despised by everyone. He could only imagine how painstakingly difficult it must have been, and he absolutely loaths himself for letting it happen.

He reminisces every night about the old Yunmeng Jiang trio that had roam the halls of Lotus Pier with seemingly never ending smiles and playful teasing, and about how at one point he was the only one left. Wei Wuxian did indeed come back, but with the animosity that brewed between them for years in mind, and all the deep and munggled feelings from countless misunderstandings that went to play since the seige of Lotus Pier, he still feels as though he is the only one left.

Wei Wuxian made it so that he swallowed all the blame, that he alone had been the antagonist of the story. And to a degree, Jiang Cheng does think it's true.

Had he not been the arrogant bastard he was, practicing wicked tricks instead of the sword, no clan would have a bone to pick with them.

Had he not forge the Stygian Tiger Amulet, no one would have thirsted and killed for it.

Had he just turned a blind eye to the injustice carried out against the innocent Wens and didn't lose control over the Ghost General which led to Jin Zixuan's death and eventually their most beloved sister's too, then maybe everything could have been redeemable still.

Had he not save Lan Wangji in the Xuanwu Cave then maybe this whole mess wouldn't have happened in the first place.

Jiang Cheng shakes his head.
He admits he has been a fair bit unfair.

Wei Ying did not have a choice but to resort to crafty tricks because he needed it to survive when he was thrown in Burial Mounds without a golden core. The core in which runs in Jiang Cheng's system at this very moment.

He did not have a choice but to forge the Stygian Tiger Amulet to at least have a semblance of a chance of winning against the Wen Clan and their Yin Iron, and to keep up the act of a powerful young master when he's supposedly just a mediocre soul after the core transplant.

He couldn't have turned a blind eye to the last remnants of the Wen Clan when they saved his life and that of his' and their sister's. Not to mention, the incident on Qiongqi way had been premeditated by Jin Guangyao and Jin Zixun. They ambushed him, of course he would fight back.

Jiang Cheng closed his eyes.

The only reasonable accusation made against Wei Wuxian was that he threw away the safety of their clan for Hanguang Jun, the man who he's probably snuggling all cozy with in Cloud Recesses right now. Although deep in his heart, he knew that whatever happened afterwards was bound to happen anyway no matter what Wei Wuxian did, he still holds on to the "what if" of it happening at a later date, with different circumstances. Maybe if Wei Ying didn't decide to play hero back in the Xuanwu Cave, they would have had time to prepare for the invasion. It's not like Lan Wangji wasn't capable of defending himself and others anyway. Jiang Fengmian possibly would have been home to protect Lotus Pier with his mother and they could have kept their clan leaders and disciples alive like all the other clans, had it happen just a while later.

He clenched his fist. All for Hanguang Jun.

He may just be being unreasonable but even if this wasn't the case, Jiang Cheng had a lot of reasons to hate Hanguang Jun other than that.

And by a lot, he means one.

He took Wei Wuxian away from them.

Sure it seems rightfully so that Wei Wuxian would opt to stay with him instead of going back here at Lotus Pier after he resurrected, because if his memory serves him right, during the battle at Nightless City, the day Wei Wuxian lost his life, Lan Wangji had been the only one impartial to him. He wasn't exactly not against him, but he still protected Wei Wuxian and even tried to save him from death, so Wei Wuxian naturally did not see him as an enemy and nor did he want to paint himself that way towards him.
Jiang Cheng has even heard rumors about them being each other's zhiji, and that alone makes him grit his teeth in silence. He was his sworn brother, he gave himself up to the Wens to protect him. Wei Wuxian gave him his core. He can even pull out Suibian unlike everybody else, and although he felt resentful about that fact at first, the more prominent emotion lurking in his heart back then had been self-hatred and guilt.
So why is he his zhiji? And how come that even if he was back, it still feels as though he is dead to him. That they have not reconciled, that they were not given the chance to.

Or maybe they were and maybe Jiang Cheng just blew it with his inability to say words.

Whatever it is, it could only be because Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji met.

He laughed at his own unreasonable, stubborn, and almost ugly logic. He could not make sense of it. However, it really did just seem like the same ridiculous thought was the actual truth because of how much ill feelings he harbored that he did not want to direct at Wuxian alone anymore.

Jiang Cheng went to sleep in anger.