Work Text:
Wuming wasn't a selfless man.
Wuming wasn't a man - he was a boy, naive and innocent in his charge into suicide, once more in his charge into life. He was scrappy and determined in a childish way that made his flailing seem like that of a child's first weapon, useless and pathetic in the shadow of his beloved. He didn't mind this.
Wuming wasn't selfless. He was selfish, crawling and kneeling and ripping and tearing himself apart for his own obsession. Allowing harm to come to those around him because he was too devoted to put himself to good enough use, selfless to anyone who glanced at him only for it to be to an entirely selfish end. He did mind this.
He was a selfish boy, one who wasn't good enough to be called anything but that. One who hadn't worked hard enough to earn such a kind title that was being bestowed on him now, one whose efforts will forever be in vain in the face of the violence that chased his beloved through every life he tried to live. He minded that last part the most.
“San Lang…”
Wuming wasn't San Lang. The name that rang from his beloved lips was swallowed by the jagged edges of his heart, dispersing into the corners of his soul that had already been padded by his voice - any words spoken by him were sacred, kept regardless of their misdirect. He could never mind this.
“.... wuming?”
That was his name. Forced past lips and warped under it's weight of negligence and failure, shaped by his beloved and gifted by his beloved and despised all the same. He struggled with it's bestowment for centuries, before settling on a contradiction of truths - he loved it, as it was from him. He despised it, as he saw the way it made his highness flinch. It was his.