Chapter Text
At first there was nothing. Nothing after nothing. Then between one moment and the next, something unfurls.
He awakes slowly and clumsily like swimming through silt, until there is something else in the seconds, the eons, of darkness. Wei Wuxian sifts through consciousness and suddenly there exists a dim, murky green, but how could that be? And Wei Wuxian realizes his eyes are open. Realizes he has eyes to see. Realizes he has thoughts to know it. Realizes he’s alive.
The color blooms from above, so far away. Around him there is only darkness.
Wei Wuxian thrashes.
Physical senses and memories return in a collision. Something – tendrils? – coil around his limbs, up his spine, into his mouth. He gags and his hands rise reflexively but they find a slimy tether, rooted deep down his throat. He pulls until it dislodges from what feels like the end of his guts, feeling sick and empty when he finally chokes it loose. It doesn’t last. His gasp heaves some sort of liquid into his lungs and he realizes the tether had been passing him air.
He tries to kick his legs and reaches down when his flailing does nothing. More slimy tendrils up his calves, skimming his thighs, are pulled free.
Wei Wuxian slams a hand in front of him, colliding with some fibrous, soft tissue. It’s all around him, smooth except for where the tendrils protrude, like he’s in some giant spherical pod. He digs his nails in the tissue to twist and wrench himself free. He rips an opening and water gushes in, enlarging the gash, flooding in, and it overwhelms everything for a moment: the pressure and the senses of it all bursting through until the pod reaches some sort of equilibrium and he’s suspended in water, diluting the remains of what he’d been submerged in. It had been thick, like blood.
Water, though, he can do. Good thing he’s always been a strong swimmer. Clutching the edges of the ruined pod, Wei Wuxian pulls it off him and propels himself out. His eyes are open and straining, starting to burn as much as his lungs. He sees only the green light somewhere above him, then movement, feeling the current of approach. Something is darting towards him. He kicks.
Wei Wuxian just barely dodges something large. He keeps going. Up, up, up some more. Another assailant - this time Wei Wuxian twists out of the way, but it was much too close; he could feel tendrils glancing his legs.
Wei Wuxian breaks the surface and takes his first breath. It pulls itself into him more than he draws it in. He chokes on putrid water and stale air. He feels so heavy and sluggish. But his legs still work - so work, then. He kicks again. He sees a dark shape not too far away and kicks to that. Whatever was moving towards him is coming again, he can feel it. It’s fast, and he’d been motionless for so, so long.
The dark shape materializes into a shore. He pulls himself to a rocky ledge just as a shape rises from the water behind him, ducking low and into the depths before he can decipher more than two crescents, folded into each other, tipped with flailing tendrils.
Moments from the ledge, he loses consciousness.
Some time later Wei Wuxian struggles awake. His limbs feel like stones, reacquainted with the weight of gravity. He sits up.
Around him the cave is dark and silent. As close as he is, hair is still dangling over the edge and freely floating on the surface. He grabs it to pull it out, and pulls, and pulls. Things are harder than he remembers, but surely this is longer than normal? He keeps pulling.
Spools of his own hair surround Wei Wuxian and drip a new pool around him. He shudders and looks down at himself in the dim light - no longer a green hue but instead a dismal blue - to find white skin, thin arms, soaked robes. His nails are overgrown too, but his hair is what really gives it away. It’s at least ten meters long.
How long had he been down here?
He decides that at this length, it must have been over seven years, at least. Perhaps ten.
Ten years in the waterwheel womb, Wei Wuxian guesses. He has no memories since... since the nothingness, until now. No reason to assume he’d been anywhere else. Because the plantlike prison below was certainly the waterwheel. And the nothingness was most certainly death, but stretching his thoughts back to when there were no thoughts at all makes him shudder more violently than the dank cave air.
The waterwheel-lotus cultivar must have safely entombed him for ten years. The carnivorous jaws growing in whorls along the central air sac had kept intruders at bay, snapping anything that moved, while he’d slumbered in the crux, metabolically sustained until his consciousness finally returned.
Free-floating, hungry, the waterwheel was gigantic compared to its natural siblings, growing for as long as the demonic energy simmering in the water kept elongating its stem. The waterwheel’s air sacs were combined with the innate water-repellant and heat regulating abilities of the lotus to create a central temperate pod in which something could grow… or heal.
The symbolism of it all - the lotus, the wheel - had felt fitting when he’d devised it. He had not actually meant for it to function so literally.
But if he’s here, in his creation, that gives him some clue as to what had happened and who put him there. The ideas slip away like slurry in the sieve of his mind, and Wei Wuxian sleeps once more.
Many naps and ideas later, he thinks he can stand up. His legs have not atrophied too terribly - he managed to swim here after all. He’ll have to move soon anyway, to satisfy his earthly cravings: answers and food. Inedia and a liquid diet can only do so much. His stomach gives a weak lurch, used to being ignored, but trying anyway. He rubs it in consolation and thinks.
Wei Wuxian must be in Dusk Creek cave, as evidenced by the waterwheel he’d placed in the putrid pool to feed off the Tortoise of Slaughter’s corpse. He’d never really finished this particular endeavor because he had had concerns over whether the demonic energy that sustained the waterwheel host would bleed into the pod and affect the patient. It was a risky invention even by his measure. But then other events had transpired, and suddenly he was dead, and that was the end of that project.
Well, Wei Wuxian thinks, looking down at his flesh. He’ll just have to observe for any adverse effects on his person, and hope he’ll actually notice this time.
As for how he got here: only two others knew of this experiment, and both — Wei Wuxian swallows — both Wen Qing and Wen Ning are dead.
The only likely explanations are that Wei Wuxian had dragged himself to the cave but had no recollection of it, or that one of them miraculously survived and brought him here. He tries to recall his last conscious memory from all those years ago. Screaming, blood. A great and terrible fury. He flinches away from those thoughts. He remembers only one thing clearly, a fact so terrible he cannot shape it even in his own head, letting it scuttle away.
There could be one other possibility— one other person who knew of his work with plants, and had a history in these caves — but the thought was too ridiculous to entertain. Wei Wuxian must have brought himself here, then. Maybe to avoid implicating the rest of the Wens.
He hopes they still live. but Wei Wuxian has learned his lesson about hope.
Still. Ten years have probably passed. Where else to go but forward?
Slowly Wei Wuxian makes his way to the exit of the cave. It takes a while, step by shaky step, but he gets there, just where he remembers. Using a simple system of planks and pulleys, a boulder can be moved to reveal a rope to the entrance above, disguised by more rocks and stones, complete with a concealment talisman. Once, this entrance had been blocked in by Wen Chao, and later cleared again by the search party looking for Wei Wuxian, lifetimes ago at the start of the Sunshot Campaign. Then after it, Wei Wuxian had needed a simple but camouflaged method of accessing the cave for his comings and goings, and the entrance was hidden once more.
He’s weaker now, and nearly slips down the rope, but he twists it over his grip and ascends like that, fist over trembling fist.
At the top he pushes the rocks out of the way and crawls into warmth. A stream of sunlight. He turns his face into it and breathes. The bustle of nature is all around him, the sun is high in the sky, and he’s alive. It’s real, he’s really here. He knows death well; this is no delusion.
He gives himself a second, then two, feeling the primal need to give up and lay down, so shakily he rises to his feet once more and pushes the concealing rocks back in place. His skin is atrophied thin and the rocks scrape and cut into him. He covers his trail as best he can, but it’s exhausting. When he's done he finds a thick bush to crawl in.
No matter what, he couldn’t stay here. He should go to the Burial Mounds and get his bearings, see if someone or something survived. And where else could he go? Although, Dusk Creek Mountain was not terribly far from Gusu or Lanling, so capture was a possibility. He’d have to cut away from both, arch above Yunmeng, and approach Yiling from the northwest. It would be a tiring journey, but if he was still a wanted man - ex-deceased or not - he was certain people wouldn’t take kindly to the Yiling Patriarch strolling into town. He’d take the long way.
He needs to eat, and soon. He needs some paper, for talismans, for dry clothes and protection. But first, he needs to sleep for what feels like another ten years.
