He stares at her and is torn in so many directions at once. To smile, which given he's teary eyed, and wants to cry for an entirely different reason now, is almost a feat in and of itself. Should he laugh? Cry and laugh? This is beyond any expectation, because unlike Xue Yang, unlike Meng Yao, Wen Qing is someone he's dearly, deeply missed; someone else whose death was so incredibly unfair, her life and talent rare flames suffocated ruthlessly far too soon.
He's going to end up stabbed for this. Part of him relishes the thought, but it's also the only thing he can think, when she is touching his face, when she's apologising for not having her sacrifice, the Wens sacrifice, be enough, until he doesn't have to think about it any more.
He's a terrible hugger. He knows this about himself. He still steps forward and tries to squash her in a hug, because the catch in his throat and the burn at his eyes is a different sort of emotion than his blind panic from earlier. "I'm sorry," he says in turn, and he does seem to breathe that out as a half-choked sob trying, desperately, to sound more like a laugh, "I'm so sorry that no one was willing to let any of us live."
Because he understands her trying. He understands it, and hates it, because he understands it. And he's sorrier that their series of sacrifices amounted to ashes on the wind, and a missing body, and pain that echoed down the generations, along with so few beautiful things, but oh, there had been those too. A-Yuan living, Wen Ning surviving even in that horrible puppet-forced state. A future for them, if only them. Another cleaning of the ranks, if it changed nothing of the past. "And thank you," he says, and he's aware he's crying, voice tight, "For having tried. Even if I'm mad you went!"
He's not. He's sad, and that anger which had been tied into his fear of loss has already been morphed into later stages of grief, had been the implacability of his features when he sat on the roof and listened to Jin Guangshan justify his ruthlessness on the back of some two dozen hardworking people, with only two cultivators, one a noncombatant, among them. Everything else he's learned, the machinations, the way his loss of control was not only his doing, but egged on further by one man's shadow games for power, all of that doesn't need saying right now.
... And he's still sure, somehow, he's about to get needled, and he can't imagine anything more weirdly reassuring in all this metal encased world.
ARTEMIS YOU CAN IGNORE THIS BUT I WANTED TO GET IT TO YOU STILL
He's going to end up stabbed for this. Part of him relishes the thought, but it's also the only thing he can think, when she is touching his face, when she's apologising for not having her sacrifice, the Wens sacrifice, be enough, until he doesn't have to think about it any more.
He's a terrible hugger. He knows this about himself. He still steps forward and tries to squash her in a hug, because the catch in his throat and the burn at his eyes is a different sort of emotion than his blind panic from earlier. "I'm sorry," he says in turn, and he does seem to breathe that out as a half-choked sob trying, desperately, to sound more like a laugh, "I'm so sorry that no one was willing to let any of us live."
Because he understands her trying. He understands it, and hates it, because he understands it. And he's sorrier that their series of sacrifices amounted to ashes on the wind, and a missing body, and pain that echoed down the generations, along with so few beautiful things, but oh, there had been those too. A-Yuan living, Wen Ning surviving even in that horrible puppet-forced state. A future for them, if only them. Another cleaning of the ranks, if it changed nothing of the past. "And thank you," he says, and he's aware he's crying, voice tight, "For having tried. Even if I'm mad you went!"
He's not. He's sad, and that anger which had been tied into his fear of loss has already been morphed into later stages of grief, had been the implacability of his features when he sat on the roof and listened to Jin Guangshan justify his ruthlessness on the back of some two dozen hardworking people, with only two cultivators, one a noncombatant, among them. Everything else he's learned, the machinations, the way his loss of control was not only his doing, but egged on further by one man's shadow games for power, all of that doesn't need saying right now.
... And he's still sure, somehow, he's about to get needled, and he can't imagine anything more weirdly reassuring in all this metal encased world.