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Wei Wuxian's head sways, heavy as a ton of bricks. His body weighs down on the ground but he can barely move. His mouth is dry as cotton and his eyes are shut, sealed with dried up tears and dust. He can feel his head hurting, his body still buzzing from latent adrenaline.
He tries to open his mouth, say something, but before he can, he gurgles and chokes on his own blood. Crimson spilling out of his mouth, staining his lips and sweat-soaked neck, his movements getting clogged by instinctual terror.
Something is inside him.
Something is moving inside him.
He is finally able to open one of his eyes, but his vision is blurry. Still, through the blur, and through the dark, he still makes out a shoulder, a neck, a person?
Two drops? of molten gold stare back at him.
Nothing makes sense.
Wei Wuxian gasps again, coughing out more blood. There's enough blood on his bare chest to sustain another person, throat raw and scratchy, he can feel more but it remains dormant under his ribs.
It's moving. Still. It's not moving.
It burns, Wei Wuxian thinks.
The two drops dissapear, and that's when Wei Wuxian realizes that they are eyes. He can feel a breath somewhere. Against his neck. Something wet glides across his chest, neck, collecting sweat and crimson. It comes up to lick away his tears.
"Wei Ying.." it—he?—whispers, Wei Wuxian's heart flutters, it beats too fast, faster, and it hurts. He opens his mouth, air barely escaping, his head feels like it's been stuffed with clouds.
"You are transcendent, my dear, gorgeous...like death herself.."
The voice whispers in his ear, heavy and low, authoritative. He thinks this kind of voice should be followed by war drums. His body warms at the sound of it, fire ignited in his fingertips. But it hurts, it hurts.
He lifts one bloodless hand, slowly and heavily settles it on his shoulder, clutching the familiar—unfamiliar—hanfu.
"Cold.." Wei Wuxian manages to say, he thinks he should say something more, but it feels like he can't. Nothing else he could say would be sufficient.
Why is it so cold?
"It's only temporary, beloved."
Wei Wuxian blinks, eyelashes wet with stray tears, there's...
Suddenly, his abdomen bursts with pain, burning worse than fire. As if someone had stuck a molten pole into his stomach. He cranes his head, it burns with every movement, and looks down.
If he had the capacity to vomit, he would've.
"Wh..what? What's going on—" Wei Wuxian manages to choke out, vision going blurry again, he's barely able to believe what he just saw. A finger presses down on his lips, gentle but insistent.
Nothing feels real anymore.
Maybe it isn't.
"Quiet." He says, no, commands.
Wei Wuxian obliges, barely able to believe in what he's seeing, nevertheless feeling. He shifts his trembling gaze up at the figure—dragon? demon? deity?—looming over him.
"You agreed to this...remember? Wei Ying, you agreed to this. Because you love me." Wei Wuxian is suddenly caught under a golden gaze, like a butterfly under a researcher's ministrations. He can barely muster a nod, but the deity looks pleased. His hand comes up to circle Wei Wuxian's wrist, holding his hand.
The hand is calloused and cold.
So, so cold.
The deity settles between his legs, one hand deep inside his abdomen, the other holding his hand tenderly, like a lover. The deity's hand moves again, dragging inside him. It feels under the fat and fascia, wandering amongst his entrails. Beneath the muscle and dermis, the gristle of love is found.
Blood slips from the slit torn in his body, spread open to fit the deity's hand and circle his wrist like a gory bracelet.
The demon's eyes are dilated in happiness, in affection. It frightens Wei Wuxian. His chest rises and falls in a cheap imitation of mortal life, a lovely abomination.
The hand inside him slides up and down in a painful orchestra, gliding along his tendons, his organs, like a skilled musician with his Guqin. He can feel it and not at the same time, it burns. It's numb.
There is a weird pressure under his ribs, the gurgling of blood in his lungs. There's pain in many other confusing places, it makes his head swim.
For a second, Wei Wuxian feels as if he's sixteen again, getting plunged headfirst into a Yunmeng river. He gasps and swallows down blood.
The hand pauses. Then it jerks to its right and pulls.
Immediately, there is—
Wei Wuxian screams. His body jerks sideways, animalistic instinct telling him to break free and run, tears flood his eyes as he breaks, breaks into a sob, it feels as if lava is being poured into him. Or perhaps it feels worse. It hurts as his kidney is torn out of him, ripped free from its lining.
He knows what it feels like. No, he doesn't know.
He doesn't know, afterall, how would he?
There's—
There's pain. No other senses. Just pain. Painpainpain.
Blood seeps from the deity's hand as he wrenches the severed organ out of him. He thrashes around again, crimson spilling anew from his belly. The deity holds down his legs and looks at him worriedly.
Worriedly.
As if he cares—
He stops thrashing, but his mind still running a mile a minute. The deity—no, this is not a deity—smiles contentedly at him, bringing his bloodied hand up to eat the...organ.
Wei Wuxian sobs harder, choking on bile and blood and his life itself. It's disgusting. He's disgusting.
It's filthy, he thinks as he sees the deity lick his fingers clean after finishing the last of it. A consumption so brutal that Wei Wuxian can do nothing but lay back and allow it. Can do nothing but fall into the deity's mouth like meat.
"My heart, it's like you were..made for this. For me." The deity says, placing a clean—bloody, no, clean—hand gently over his cheek.
The hand is cold but the touch burns hotter than fire.
He’s nothing more than flesh, a lovely meal on a silver platter.
Made for him. That sounds right.
The hand trails down, back in. It doesn't hurt any less than the first time. Everything is so..gentle and painful and agonizingly slow. Perhaps it isn't slow enough.
It's all numb. One painful tug after the other, Wei Wuxian sees it not happening to him, but perhaps someone else. He's an outsider peeking into someone else's house.
Wei Wuxian can feel his consciousness slipping, his head feels as heavy as bricks, everything hits him like wave after wave of blissfully sweet agony rolling over him like a tsunami. Tears stream like diamonds on his face.
The light fades slowly, his mind falling into panic. No, he thinks, he's not ready to die yet. What of jiejie? And his nephew? What of Jiang Cheng, or..or Madam Yu and Jiang Fengmian? No. Nononono—
A wheeze bubbles through him, long and hitching.
The dragon's—deity's, his husband's voice talks him through the end, "Wei Ying ...delicious. so admirable. So, so brave, my heart. My beloved." A hand brushes locks of hair away from his head, passing over crusting blood. It settles gently on a pale, round cheek. He looms over Wei Wuxian, like the very personification of war.
"My star..every part of you is worth cherishing."
And as the last dregs of his life slip, as the world goes silent, he hopes its true.
"My beloved, Wei Ying, I love you."
I love you too, Lan Zhan. He thinks, but he cannot say. Lan Wangji will understand it either way.
Wei Wuxian is now a part of him, a beautiful tapestry of bright and dull, loud and silent, sun and moon.
Silver and gold. Intertwined just so utterly.
His face is pressed against pristine white silk, limp fingers brushing against the golden hems. His eyes are still open, dull and unseeing, dead gaze focused somewhere beyond the deity's shoulder. Beyond what the deity—Lan Wangji can even control.
They stay like that for a while. For eternity.
It's cold.